The Blaisdell Blog

I have come close to getting kicked out of a lot of places, almost none of which involved alcohol.   Among them, is the time we were touring the site of a huge earthen, “saddle” dam in Hemet , California .   The series of dams being constructed would eventually create Diamond Valley Lake .   This reservoir almost doubles the surface storage area of Southern California and provides a six month emergency supply in case of an earthquake. At the time we were on tour we were being apprised of the efforts being made to preserve a particular, obscure species of ground squirrel.               While it was assumed that everyone present was squarely in the squirrel’s camp, I was taking an economists view of things.   It turns out that this particular type of squirrel was so picky about its breeding parameters (I can only wish that some of the people in our poorer communities had the same instincts.) that it was well on the road to extinction.   For hundreds of years, this species had been dw

On the morning of August 15, 1635, off the coast of Pemaquid, Maine a ship, the 250 ton Angel Gabriel , thrashed at anchor. It had arrived at one of the most beautiful harbors on the east coast of the New World the day before and on this morning the crew and passengers were busy off-loading possessions and livestock. While those with a weather eye may have known that trouble was brewing, none could have guessed that the Angel Gabriel was about to be set upon by a storm that history would call the “Great Colonial Hurricane.”   This is the first great storm recorded by the Europeans who were steadily populating New England and the Mid-Atlantic Seaboard. It was probably a Category 3.   As the colonists frantically sought shelter, a storm of what must truly have seemed like “biblical” proportions closed in on them.   The Angel Gabriel was torn from its moorings and dashed onto the solidly pre-Cambrian rocks of Maine .   Among the immigrants huddled on shore, watching as their only lin

Today is my husband’s birthday so I am thinking of light and love.   We all remember the first person with whom we have sex.   Of course, not all of us remember that person, that evening, and that moment in connection with a dip, a trip and a trek.   However, I am getting ahead of myself.             It was 1966.   I was a sophomore at Colorado State College in Greeley , Colorado , and I had decided that the man and the hour had finally arrived.   He was willing and I was eager (or was it the other way around?).   I had gotten those new and wonderful birth control pills, and was ready to join the sexual revolution.   On the romantic side, and with women there always has to be a romantic side, the Greek Ball was coming up.   My boyfriend was in a fraternity and this dance, held in the dead of the Colorado winter, was a grand event.               A wiser person would have seen the burlesque begin early that day with an unexpected meeting with my intended around noon.   I was walking a

The memorial to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King in Washington , D.C. will be dedicated this weekend.   While I am a bit upset that the statue was both designed and built in China I think the conception is good.   I would like to hold up Dr. King as proof that there are no excuses for not living a good life.   Here is a man who attended segregated schools in the heart of the Confederate South.   I have no doubt that his schools were sparsely built, poorly equipped and inadequately staffed.   What is more, they existed in the midst of a hard-boiled, legally sanctioned segregation that, frankly, endangered every man, woman and child in those schools.   Yet, he learned.    Dr. King went on to become the pivot point around which this country had its greatest reiteration since the Civil War.               The same story could be told about a long parade of minority groups who started their education in the rough and ended it in graduate school.   Quite frankly, growing up in poor, blue-co

Everyone says something stupid once in a while.   I don’t have to go back farther than a few weeks to think of a situation I got myself into with the usual deadly combination: more mouth than brain.   My sister and I were cooking up a storm in her kitchen two days prior to my niece’s wedding.   My mother, who lives with Sis, was sitting at the dining room table.   Mom swears she can’t hear any more, but, as you shall see, it is selective deafness.   When my niece came in she started regaling us with her trip to the spa for some bridal landscaping when I blithely asked her is she’d gotten a, “Brazilian.”   She was about to offer a blushing answer when my mother called out, “What’s a Brazilian?”   My sister, niece and I looked at each other and it was clear no wanted to fall on that grenade.   Getting my mental feet under me first I turned to Mom and said, “It’s the kind of wax they use, Mom.”   With that bit of information, Mom spent the rest of the evening telling everyone who stopped

I met Richard Nixon once.   I was at the Western States Young Republicans’ Convention in Albuquerque , New Mexico my freshman year of college.   A group of us had driven down from Colorado State College in Greeley , Colorado to the convention.   It was a good time.   The dynamic Barry Goldwater (fresh from his Presidential drubbing) was the keynote speaker, but the person I remember most is Richard Nixon.   Even knowing everything I do now about all the demons this man fought and gave in to, I can say that he was warm and charming in person.   I was with the group introducing him and as we waited off stage he was chatty and gracious.   He was, frankly, good at the things Presidents are good at: he could make you feel as if you were part of his inner circle just by making eye contact.   There was no doubt that Nixon “had” each of us when he regrouped, reinvented and ran for office again.               My very first Presidential vote was cast in 1968 for Richard Nixon.   Then came Wat

I believe that President Obama is probably being the best president he knows how to be.   The problem is his best is woefully short of adequate.   This man was nominated on the thinnest of credentials and he has found himself distressingly overwhelmed by a job far beyond his ability.   He certainly is not the first person I have seen who is educated beyond his intelligence, or promoted beyond his talents.   Unfortunately, his handlers (the same people who created his candidacy and thought they could manage his presidency) counted on two things, neither of which materialized. First, the, “President makers” hated George W. Bush (a good president who only looks better with time) so much that they were sure the problems he faced couldn’t be real problems.   They had to be just miscues and misinterpretations by a dimwitted, swaggering Texan.   It turns out, these problems were complex enough to stymie a nuanced-up-the-tailpipe, self-absorbed Illinoisan.   There are no easy answers and, at

I have eight grandchildren who all started school this week.   I am excited about every one of them, eager to share their year, listen to their woes and cheer their successes.   I am a, “lifer” in education.   I taught for 30 years, worked as a principal and college instructor.   I co-authored of a major science text book.   Frankly, I’m good at what I do.   And as the school year starts I want to talk about public education.   You will notice that I said, “public” education.   I’ve got no problem with private education but public schools educate 80% of our students and have been the source and heart of our great melting pot.   I love public education.               Don’t get me wrong.   If I had my ‘druthers we would change a great deal about public education—and precious little of it would be approved of by the NEA.    Essentially, I feel the same way about the NEA that Charlton Heston felt about primates .   They are all a bunch of damned, dirty apes.   So I will ignore the apes fo

Warren Jeffs is not a prophet.   The only message he ever got from God came in the voice of some jurors when they sent him to prison for life.   Jeffs is an abusive pedophile who tried to hide behind religious tolerance to rape children.   He is, however, just one in a long line of people who try to live life outside the rules and then hide behind the law.   So, here I am, on my soapbox, trying to explain a few things to the short thinkers out there. Tolerance is a double edged sword.   When you protect a citizen’s right to diversity you also, by definition, place the same burden of acceptance upon them.   You may not break the laws of the land, while counting on them to protect you.     That which is given must also be returned, else you lose all.   It is this requisite largess which is truly the sharper edge of the sword. Living in a free society carries responsibilities as well as rights; and those responsibilities devolve upon the government just as surely as upon the people them

It took longer than I thought it might but, sure as shooting, some limp, bilious liberals have decided that the London Riots are the fault of the Tea Party.   Maybe not our Tea Party, but its east coast (waaaaaay east coast!) franchise warped in both space and time to the British austerity program, instituted by Prime Minister David Cameron.   In an op-ed piece in Thursday’s New York Times, Professors Richard Sennett and Saskia Sasson (a husband/wife team of Sociology professors who evidently work both sides of the Atlantic) put their teamed intelligence together (I’m sure that equaled a number in three digits) and decided that Cameron’s closing of libraries in the afflicted areas brought on the riots.   Really?    Do they really think that those thugs were driven over the brink by an expired library card?   I’ll bet most of those rioters couldn’t slap a subject and verb together if it kept them out of hell.               But it had to happen.   The minute London exploded there had to

My husband is a die hard Democratic atheist and I am a dyed in the wool Republican Lutheran, so our house is an interesting, occasionally noisy place.   However, if we can achieve détente anyone can.   One of our rules of engagement is not interrupting the other person’s choice of news.   If Tom is watching MSNBC, I shut my mouth and leave it alone.   If I am watching Fox News he grumbles, but leaves it alone.   The Weather Channel, blessedly, is neutral territory.   Since the debt ceiling talks, and its spin-off dramas—the bond rating slap, and Wall Street’s drop—I believe that MSNBC has been a little more fun to watch.   I have a crick in my neck watching the back and forth of the same pundits and politicos that made this President now alternately attacking and excusing his uniformly poor performance.               It is quite a tennis match.   You have apologist Bill Richardson (still hoping to be Obama’s VP selection) lobbing over a comment like, “He needs to clear his head…” only

President Obama is going to be campaigning in 2012 on the same ticket that won him an election in 2008:   “I am the anti-Bush.”   He is not going to be running as the father of this economy but that may be a tough paternity test to pass.   First of all he is going to have to deny the reality of our own history.   A big shaper of the Bush economy was the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.   It plunged our economy, and by extension the world economy, into a tailspin.   Second was our inevitable war against the perpetrators of that attack and those who provided them with aid and comfort.   Considering how the Taliban in Afghanistan were systematically victimizing women for a decade before this, while the liberal feminists of this country sat on their fat opinions I would say that time was well past its prime.   That casual attitude toward Taliban atrocities, by the way, was the direct result of not wanting to rock President Clinton’s laid back boat; and that bring

I am in favor of contraception.   I am a zero population proponent and firmly believe in teaching our children, in age appropriate ways, about sexuality.   I think that discussion should start with abstinence and end with condoms.   After all, teaching your children to drive defensively doesn’t mean they don’t need to wear a seat belt.   But with all of that being said, there is no mistaking the fact that the sexual revolution has not served this country well.   In fact, it has been a disaster that has turned out daughters into victims, the homosexual community into a medical experiment and African-Americans into a grim, fast growing statistic.               The Centers for Disease Control has released their latest numbers on AIDS, and the information needs to be laid out in the bare light of day.   The number of AIDS infections has settled at the appalling number of 50,000 new cases per year for the last decade.    The epidemic is still concentrated primarily in gay men and gay black

It would have been sad if it wasn’t so amusing.   I am talking about the photo of President Obama signing the budget and debt ceiling deal.   He is sitting at his Oval Office desk with the usual array of commemorative pens lined up in front of him.   There must have been 20 pens there, ready to be handed out as high value souvenirs of a major legislative accomplishment.   What hurt the heart of anyone who has been the last one picked for a sandlot ball game, was the fact that there was not a single soul in the room.   It was as if some fatherless child had just been born and no one wanted to be seen in the vicinity for fear of being taken as a possible sperm donor.   Even the usual suspects couldn’t be rounded up for this bill signing and President Obama had to carry the burden alone.   The good news is, he was up to it.   He even ventured into the Rose Garden and gave us a steady stream of the old rancid.   Right on cue, he blamed big oil, big corporations and tax loopholes for those

On January 8, 2011 Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was holding a, “Congress on the Corner” meeting in the parking lot of a popular supermarket near Tucson , Arizona .   She is a three term representative from the 8 th District in Arizona and is a moderate Democrat.   Surrounded by constituents, she was approach by a vile, cowardly loser—whose name I refuse to mention—and shot, point blank in the head.               The miserable excuse of a man that shot Giffords then continued to fire wildly, hitting nineteen people and killing six of them, including a nine year old girl.   He was subdued by an amalgam of personal initiative.   One woman grabbed the loaded magazine of ammo he dropped while trying to reload.   Another bystander hit the gunman over the head with a folding chair, and a 74 year old retired U.S. Army Colonel, though wounded, tackled the assailant and threw him to the ground.               Giffords’ shooter was an insipid, worthless joke of a person.   Described as an