The Blaisdell Blog

When ISIS performed a beheading, not against a military foe (though that would have been just as despicable) but a helpless captive whose presence among them was totally benign (other than disseminating truth, which they would rightfully see as a threat) they made manifest their evil existence and intent.   This is certainly not the first time ISIS has been shown to be cruel--basely cruel--inhumanly cruel—unnaturally cruel.   The followers of ISIS are, in truth, not humans, so much as apostles of evil.    There is a force for evil which is universal, just as there is a force for good.   You can call evil Satan if you want, though it hasn't a physical form any more than God has a physical form.   But evil, as an entity, is most certainly real.   Just as I know that there is a perfection of love, mercy, strength and goodness which, by its very existence, draws us to it (Aristotle’s, “Unmoved Mover” if you will) likewise there is an opposite for...

It should come as no surprise that since the 1980’s there has been a steady decrease in population and a steady increase in unemployment in Ferguson .   The city is the victim of white flight, pure and simple.    The unemployment has risen from 5% in 2000 to 13% in 2012.   Inflation adjusted earnings have fallen by 1/3.   The main industrial employers in Ferguson , Emerson Electric, Boeing and Express Scripts have been around for a very long time, but they don’t employ marginally educated people, nor should they. What do the numbers tell us about Ferguson , Missouri ?               Median household income:   $36,121 vs. Missouri average of $45,321             Population Black 64.9% White 30.6%             Education:   Less than High School degree 11% High...

As I have stated earlier, I do not believe that the refugee children crossing our borders as unaccompanied minors should be sent back to the banana republic Hell holes they come from.   They have suffered enough in this life.   But, all along I have been concerned about their education.   The school year is upon us and educated people are our only chance for a future that is not dystopian.               Early today I read an article which pointed out that almost 3000 of these children will be entering the Virginia School system this fall.   In response to queries by the school districts, the VDOE sent out a memo referring to federal statutes that place, “Unaccompanied alien children” under the equal access provision of the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act.   This is a good law that assures educational opportunities to all children no matter what the circumstances are with which they come ...

Watching the rioting in Ferguson , Missouri is a window on my world.   I lived in Florissant , a short walk across the highway from Ferguson .   I was an elementary school principal in the Normandy School District , where Michael Brown, the black teen killed by a white police officer, went to school.               Worst still, I know that the black neighbors who were part of my neighborhood, my children’s friends, guests in my home and, also, viewers of this calamity, feel wariness about both my reaction and their own.   That bothers me a great deal.   Friends should be able to be candid with each other.                There are really two issues here, and they need to be discussed discreetly.   First, there is the initial incident.   Michael Brown and a friend were walking down the middle of a street near an apartment com...

This week, our oldest grandchildren are starting high school and junior high (still can’t get used to calling it, “middle school”).   What I observed was how the surface manifestations of going to school can change, but the participants stay the same.   For example, the entire incoming freshman class received laptop computers compliments of the school district.   That seems like a millennium change from my high school, where you took the bus to the book depository downtown, gave them your schedule and paid to rent either a new or used book for each course.   [Anyone who knows my mother knows I was in the, “used” book line!   You, too?   And yet we all grew up with no emotional scars.   Can I get an, “Amen” for the used book line?] My husband and I, both retired teachers, were eager to poke our noses in each classroom.   Tom was pleased to see lab tables for each pair of students in the science classrooms.   I was impressed with the ...

Under a microscope an Ebola virus reminds me of a sailor’s double half hitch.   It is a virus of African origin, a hemorrhagic fever, meaning it causes intense bleeding, frequently from every orifice of the body, in the later stages of the disease.   Ebola virus disease (EVD) typically emerges periodically in small villages of Central and West Africa , near tropical rainforests.    Ebola’s natural host is probably the fruit bats of the tropics.   When the disease moves to larger animals, principally primates (humans are primates) it becomes fatal.   When the people of these remote villages find the ill or dead primates and use them for food, Ebola enters the human population where is kills and spreads—always through contact with infected bodily fluids.   The disease first appeared in 1976 simultaneously in two countries, the Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo .   At that time it had a 90% mortality rate and was relatively self-...