The Blaisdell Blog

The First Fleet arrived at Botany Bay on January 20, 1788.   There were 775 convicts on board the 11 vessels of the fleet, and an almost equal number of military personnel, civil servants and their families.   Great Britain was solving a problem at home and populating a remote colony of the British Empire abroad, all with one stroke.   It was the birth of a nation.   Over the next 80 years more than 165,000 convicts—men, women and children—were taken from over-crowded British jails and exported to Australia.   Upon settlement, the convicts were still prisoners.   They were kept in compounds, assigned to forced labor and, upon completion of their sentence, were set free.             Britain’s decision to send its native sons and daughters to a primitive and hostile environment literally half a planet away started, as all fateful decisions do, with a miscalculation and unforeseen circumstances.   We all know what paves the road to hell.             In 1770 there were no less t

The Washington Post ran an article today that says that most people of color do not believe that their children are given the same educational opportunities as are White children.   This article was run today, as a side-bar on Martin Luther King Day.   I have a question.   Are the educational problems of any of today’s children equal to the segregated schools and institutionalized racism that Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King faced?   Obviously not.   So where do the differences lie?   I believe I have an answer. While individual teachers, principals and schools have chosen to fight the good fight of education, they are singular soldiers fighting a losing battle against a culture that could not have undermined education more insidiously if they had been led by the master criminals of comic books.   Who are the villains?   In no particular order there are teachers’ unions who are interested only in protecting power instead of education; there are colleges of education whose professors

A child was born in the Tanana River Valley in central Alaska (about 50 miles southeast of present day Fairbanks).   The birth had been difficult.   The mother was too young.   The labor too long.   But the child was a girl and, as any neo-natal nurse will tell you, if you must birth an at-risk infant, make it a girl.   They are born fighters.   Nature knows that it takes more women than men to carry on a species and therefore females are slightly hardier at birth.   That is why, even in modern times, there are more male babies born, but more female babies live to celebrate their first birthday.     Life finds a way.             But this birth did not take place in modern times.   This girl was born around 11,500 years ago.   There was no medicine beyond folk lore and the hard living on the Alaskan interior took their toll.   She died when only about six weeks old.   This child, and another, younger, infant (also a girl) were buried together.   They were covered in red ochre and