One of the things I forgot about mentioning over the weekend is that I shared a plane with someone who is (moderately) rich and famous. Now, I expect he is much more famous than he is rich. While politicians make well above average salaries, politics usually doesn’t turn them into millionaires.

At various times, in her blog, Andrea has mentioned I have the knack for running into people I know while I’m travelling. On Friday, when the boarding call came for the flight back to NB, I immediately recognized the person who stepped into line 2 people in front of me. Frank McKenna has most recently held the prestigeous position of Canadian Ambassador to the US. “(Frank) won the largest electoral victory in Canadian history in 1987 when his party won every seat in the (New Brunswick) legislature.” (wikipedia)

Now what made that a somewhat memorable event is that in passing through boarding security you have to show photo id. The airline agent looked at him, then at the photo id and boarding pass and then asked him if he was McKenna. Because my seat was further back in the plane I ended up standing by his seat waiting for the person in front of me. He looked up at me and I asked him (with somewhat of a wry grin), “So, is it a good thing when they do recognize you…or, when they don’t recognize you?” He laughed and nodded assent to the second.

Tonight, Andrea, Emma and I went to do a bit of shopping. We ran into a woman (who is now retired) at the grocery store that I worked with 7 years ago. And there was a second lady shopping there who I met in the same time frame but, so far, I’ve been unable to remember where she worked. (I was doing contract work at the time and probably met 1000 people over a span of 5 years.)

The trip was better than I expected (I’m not much of a travel for work traveller). It was definitely worthwhile from a work perspective. I got to meet a few people that heretofore I had only exchanged emails with. Also, on Wednesday night I met up with a long time internet friend. I have to say long time because I don’t remember when it was we had our first chat via the internet but I would expect it was at least 6 years ago.

Even though the trip went well, there is nothing like being home again. So, for tonight, I’ll post some pics of this week’s arrivals in the garden (hover to see description, click to see full size):

At the moment, everyone else here is snuggled in bed. One of the handy features of wordpress is that you can future post something. When this post shows up in the blog, I will be descending to Pearson International Airport in Toronto. I wanted to reserve Sunday for Father’s Day. But, I’ve been thinking about this post since I wrote the last one about That Organization (TO).

The common 2 reasons I’ve seen which might explain the otherwise bewildering things that the organization does are money and a theopolitical agenda. Our society is structured in such a way that money plays a role in most matters. I would not argue that money is not in fact a factor in this situation. But, I do not believe that either of these reasons provide a satisfactory explanation of the behaviour of TO. One of the things I’ve learned is that outward behaviour is often a by-product of something else. And that is what I believe both of these are. When we talk about having a cold, we are generally referring to the symptoms while the real cause is a virus, germ or allergin.

Last fall, when I read the actual wording of the HoDA bill(s) which was introduced into the federal legislative bodies in the US, I saw that it had consistency with legislation which TO had helped pen here. Yes, I left out the N deliberately because when Andrea and I discuss that bill, that’s what I call it. What I would like to do is explain why I call it that. While I’m doing that, I’ll explain my theory of the real motivation which drives the organization.

TO’s webbsite says that its ‘mission is to protect the freedom of all homeschoolers’. That statement, if taken at face value is absolutely false. TO’s public relations person was pressed on the issue of HoDA and said that the legislation was for their membership. Yet, technically, I believe that statement is true and that everyone who works for TO believes that it is true. The technicality that is involved is, ‘what freedom are they trying to protect?’ You see, there is a mountain of difference between having the freedom to make all the choices (including delegating those choices to your child) related to your child’s education and having the freedom to choose to educate your child yourself. But, technically, both can be described as freedom.

In the the other post about TO, I mentioned that our province amended our HS legislation last year. This time last year (prior to the change in legislation) homeschool rumour had it that there was a move afoot to sue the government. It would be a repeat of what had been done in at least 2 other provinces. The result of those lawsuits has been legislation like this. While we’ll never know for certain, I believe that the legislation was changed to prevent the lawsuit. The suit and grounds used in those other provinces can no longer be used as grounds here.

If you took the time to read the legislation above and you are familiar with TO’s membership application form, what you might have noticed is that every homeschooler who keeps within the confines of that legislation would also be eligible for membership in TO. If we added diligent staff at the DOE, every homeschooler might be in a situation where membership in TO would be considered a good investment. In fact you could use the information you provided to the DOE on your application for membership for TO. Unless we were prepared to do a lot of spin doctoring, TO would reject a membership application from our household.

Do you see why I dropped the N? Because HoDA isn’t a non discrimination bill. It’s a discrimination bill. The purpose it would have served, if it had passed, would be to force the state to recognize (and provide preferential treatment to) homeschoolers who were eligible for membership in TO and to reject homeschoolers who were not eligible for membership in TO.

One of the results of the US civil war was the abolition of slavery. Within a generation or 2 segregation was brought into effect in areas where slavery had been abolished. When slavery was initially abolished much of the social structure remained the same because the freed slaves owned nothing. At the heart of that structure was discrimination. Slavery is not possible without discrimination. Segregation became necessary after a period of time because over time the freed slaves accumulated possessions and some degree of wealth. Segregation ensured that the state was obligated to observe the discrimination which had existed in the slaving society thereby ensuring the sociopolitical position of the slavers.

TO has been up against a similar situation for a number of years. Free homeschoolers have accumulated a wealth of knowledge and experience without TO. To the vast majority of us, TO is no longer relevant, important, or even necessary. I’m sure that TO could alter its direction, survive and perhaps even thrive if the right choices were made. However, any choices that I believe would lead to that success would also require that it walk away from the sociopolitical aspirations it has. I’ll leave it to you to guess what I believe are the chances that those choices will be made.

I wanted to wish all the homeschooling dads out there a happy Father’s Day. When I got home last night, Addison was just putting the finishing touches on the preparation he was making for the weekend:

Mom had helped him with some areas of the yard, but as I understand it, he did most of it. The mowing and hedge trimming extends to the back yard (I didn’t get a picture clear enough to post). The green in the landscape caused the green in the house paint to be pretty washed. There are hundred of blooms in between the front and back yards of irises, day lilies, columbine, roses, bleeding heart, chives, forget-me-nots & phlox.

The unschooling carnival is being promoted in the HEM Editor’s blog. Thanks Helen and Joanne.

In my little world, I’ve been working on getting Gentoo up and running. It does not come with an installer and it is preconfigured with a minimal configuration. It is bringing back memories from 15 years ago when I first started working with unix. I’ve been using up my evening mental energy on that. I took last night off (mostly) and went on a 2 hour drive to explore the countryside. Tonight I’m trying to catch up.

Next week I will be away from the internet for the week. I’m getting on a plane very early Monday morning and flying to Toronto. I will be there all week. I’m hoping to meet up with at least one homeschooling family while there.

This news story is just weird.

A seven year old boy, while eating his (unidentified) lunch with a fork and spoon, was chastised for it. The school won’t apologize and I’m still trying to figure out what went on. The parents say he was single dout for eating in a traditional Filipino way.

It said an “educational intervention” on April 12 was “in no way aimed at the cultural practices of your community. It was very specifically linked to the way your son was ingesting his meal that day and in no way to the method or utensils used to bring his food to his mouth.” (emphasis mine)

So they don’t like how he ate? Je ne comprende pas.

This isn’t the first weird school story to come from Quebec.

Joanne from A Day in our Lives has taken over the CofU. The information page can be found here. Next Carnival is scheduled for July 1st, so go submit those posts!

And thanks to Joanne for taking up the torch and running with it.

Click on any image to see it full size.

I think Sarah took this picture of a brooding sky. I thought it might make a decent desktop wallpaper:

Emma takes a pic while we are driving:

We stopped in to take a picture of a small castle I drive by twice a week:

Andrea took this while we were driving through the world’s longest covered bridge. We weren’t driving at the speed the blur suggests:

A couple of light effect images (both by Sarah):

I mentioned I bought a new computer (I have to hear alot of ooOOoo’s and aaaaahhhhhhhhh’s):

About 3 weeks ago Andrea added the Spam Karma 2 plugin to this blog. She had tested it in one of the other blogs we have. It has outperformed our expectations. About the same time she added it to Homeschool Journal. Spammers had found the site and on one abandoned blog I enabled the plugin before deleting the blog. Without spam protection, the blog had collected up almost 1500 spam comments in a few weeks. Spammers have obviously found the site.

Before I move on, I want to say that I recommend the Spam Karma 2 plugin for spam control.

This week I had the oddest comment show up. The comment began with the statement that the author represented a non-profit organization. However, the comment included numerous links, a phone number for the organization and what purported to be sample content from the NPO site. I didn’t bother to check and see if any of the content of the comment was legit. I deleted it.

Whether or not this particular comment met the definition of spam, it was spam in my book. If you oversee a legitimate NPO that serves some worthwhile cause, you will likely find that many blog owners won’t mind you leaving a comment. However, the comment ought to relate to the blog post in question. Adding portions of your site map, contact information and unrelated samples of your site content is presumptuous and certainly not representative of any NPO which I would be likely to support.

OT: I spent a couple nights this week working on putting together a Gentoo Linux box. It is the first 64 bit processor I’ve worked with in 7 years. I chose Gentoo because it includes native support for the chipset (CPU, Video & Network) in that system. Hopefully, I’ll have it up and running sometime next week.

You may have read this in my blog, but we were having computer issues. We found a place that sold the cord we needed. It might take us a day or two to iron out the rest of the details and logistics.