The Blaisdell Blog

Every family has an Aunt Sarah.   The names change, but the person remains the same.   My Aunt Sarah was a stolid, rotund woman with a tongue and wit so sharp she could skin you with a single line.   She was related to us on both my father and mother’s side.   Dad’s favorite brother, Marvin, had married Mom’s favorite cousin, Sarah, so they were frequent visitors at our house.   That is how I happened to witness the one time when an opera singer caused Aunt Sarah to be caught speechless.             As I said, Aunt Sarah was rotund.   She was medium height but about as big around as she was tall.   My Uncle Marvin was a head shorter than his wife, and thin as a rail, so they had a, “Jack Sprat” quality to them.   Sarah liked spending Thanksgiving with us, and since she ruled the roost, we counted on them every year.   November of 1956 was special.   We finally had a television...

In 1946 President Harry Truman signed the National School Lunch Act.   Like the road to hell, it was paved with good intentions.   The NSLP is now rift with fraud.    Consider this: the NSLP currently serves 60% of all students in both public and private schools.   We know that two-thirds of all Americans do not live at or below the 130% of the poverty level required for free school lunches.   For every person who signs up for free and reduced lunch the school district gets extra benefits beyond the subsidy for the food itself.   What is more, no income verification is required for enrollment.   When families enroll their children in school, they have the form for free/reduced lunches pushed across the counter and are simply told to fill it out and return it.   Sometimes they are enticed by the phrase, “This is so your child can get free lunch.”   The result is an environment where everyone (except the tax payer) benefits from lyi...

On May 7, I pointed out some economic facts about Baltimore ’s poor and then married those facts to the anthropological precepts of Ruth Benedict, one of our nation’s premier cultural anthropologists.                In Baltimore , a welfare mother of two children can receive up to $35,000 in aid, which puts her $15,000 above the poverty line.   That is more money than a first year teacher in 27 of our 50 states!   The schools in Baltimore rank fourth in per student expenditures.   They spend $16,578/student which is 52% higher than the national average.   Their taxes for both business and personal property are some of the highest in the nation, their taxes on small businesses (traditionally our largest employers) are the 7 th highest in the nation.               Still, the worst parts of Baltimore have 50% unemployment, 60% of all fam...

Ruth Fulton Benedict is my favorite anthropologist and the first female president of the American Anthropological Association.   When it comes to Baltimore , Benedict had this dystopian tragedy figured out decades ago.   She laid out both the problems and the answers in her book Patterns of Culture .   What we see manifested in this troublesome summer is seated in her quote, “Group ethos is just personality writ large.”   In essence, Benedict says that any society unconsciously selects, supports, gives obeisance to and promotes the character traits it admires and sees as beneficial.   You are the person the people around you want you to be.   Unfortunately, our nation is paying a horrendous cost for what that societal self-selection is doing in Baltimore .   But first, let’s ask the gorilla to please leave the room. Item 1:   We give the police extraordinary power which requires extraordinary accountability.   If what happened to...

On April 12, 1861, Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard opened fire on Ft. Sumter in South Carolina’s Charleston Bay, beginning the American Civil War.   Three months earlier, Benito Juarez had been elected President of Mexico.   Like Lincoln, Juarez inherited a country with serious, perhaps fatal, problems.   In Juarez’s case, however, the problems were primarily external. In 1861, Mexico was a country in financial ruin.   It owed money to all of the major European powers and, smelling blood in the water, they were circling the drowning nation.   When Juarez defaulted on the loans France, Britain and Spain all sent their ships into the harbor of Veracruz to wrest something, anything, of value from the destitute government.   Britain and Spain were satisfied with negotiated settlements but France’s Napoleon III saw a chance to claim some semblance of imperial grandeur by annexing Mexico.    Napoleon III (nephew of the great Bonaparte) was certain he co...

On Thursday, March 27, 2003, Dr. Benjamin Solomon Carson, Sr. addressed the opening general session of the National Science Teachers’ Association’s national convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.   It was my introduction to the man who announced his candidacy for President of the United States today.    I was active in the National Science Teachers Association for years and attended its yearly conventions.   I have seen a host of great speakers: Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov, Mae Jemison, Richard Leaky…the list goes on.   Dr. Carson stands out for two reasons.   First, no one can fail to be inspired by his message of success in the face of adversity.   Second, this man has only one standard for honesty and he sticks by it, no matter who his audience is.   That is courage.     Dr. Carson learned discipline at his mother’s knee.   This man, who is a world class neurosurgeon, was an indifferent and moody student through eleme...