The Blaisdell Blog

I am an American.   You can tell by looking at me.   It is in how I stand, walk and talk.   I spent the last four months in Australia and New Zealand and every one there took one look at me and said, “American.”   I like that.     I am guilty of the hubris of thinking that being an American is better than being from any other country.   Mind you, I have absolutely no imperialist ambitions.    We would do nothing but adulterate out strength and character by acquiring additional territory.   Neither do I think that we are smarter than other people.   Intellectually, I know that genius and inventive acumen are equally distributed throughout the human population.   That means, by the way, that the third world countries are an intellectual landscape lying fallow through economic deprivation.   We need to do something about that.   [I firmly believe that one of the greatest legacies of George W. Bush is going to be his aggressive economic and moral support for Africa .]    

I am currently reading The White Queen by Philippa Gregory.   It is a fictionalized history of the 15th century’s Wars of the Roses in England .   It is part of a series of books dealing with the bloody, tumultuous period when the House of York fought the House of Lancaster for the English throne.   Representative of the moral depravity of those times is what happened to the two sons of King Edward IV.   His oldest son, Edward, should have been crowned king upon his father’s untimely death.   Instead the dead king’s brother assumed the throne, had young Edward and his brother locked in the Tower of London .   They were later killed.   The bodies of the two boys (12 and 9 years old) were never recovered.   Nor do we know exactly who ordered the children’s murder.   These nebulous gaps in the chronology of the times have led to all sorts of tales about a possible survival of the boys.   All of these tales really boil down to just one thing: no one wants to accept the cruelty of

There is a flood of unaccompanied minors crossing the border between the United States and Mexico , most of them not from Mexico but from Central America .   Let me offer the perspective of someone who lives in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas.    Our papers have lists of supplies needed for these kids (soap, shampoo, deodorant, underwear, toothbrushes and toothpaste…the lists go on and they are just that basic), and the charities that will collect and distribute these supplies.   We have volunteers trying to provide a little care and comfort for these kids.   There are stories of the plastic gloved women, combing through the hair of young girls just out of the shower, trying to style lengths of long black hair and practicing their limited Spanish at the same time.               The federal government is gathering up these children and putting them in border patrol facilities, but it is the heart of America , the much maligned cadre of religious institutions and volunteers who

On December 26, 1991 the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics ceased to exist.   Born during the, “Great October Revolution of 1917” the Soviet Union died at barely 74 years of age. Eighteen months before the end of this totally failed experiment in social engineering, I told an assembled group of experts in various social sciences that this would happen.   They thought I was crazy.   Here is the back story.             In the summer of 1990 I was part of a group of educators working with some National Geographic money to help study and write curriculum for geography classes.   Since I have a master’s in economics, as well as a specialty in science, I earned a spot on the team. [My career was peppered with opportunities like this.   I had unusual specialties, write well, get work done on deadline and can get along with almost anybody.   It was a salable combination.]               During the course of our studies, we had a speaker who was telling us about life in modern

I am one of the lucky people who had a great father.   He was a loving, good natured man who never met a stranger.   When I was growing up, Mom was the law and Dad was the gospel.   He could always be counted on to make a joke of our foibles and give us a pass on minor infractions.   Mom, on the other hand, was sure that cutting us a break while young meant moral weakness later on.   They were a good team, which, I am sure, is how nature meant it.   Parenting is a young person’s sport and a two person job when ever possible.   Yes, I know there are plenty of great single parent homes out there but it surely can’t be easy.               Fathers are frequently the least appreciated and acknowledged part of the parental team.   [Part of the feminist movement seems to be not so much elevating women as denigrating men.]   Studies have shown us that if you want to raise strong, independent daughters with a positive sense of self-worth, the presence of a loving, involved father is abso