Month: April 2001

I should have known better than to ask my husband’s opinion about hanging the picture, but it was a portrait of the two of us. I just couldn’t decide whether I should buy a new frame or rip off the professional backing of a framed print in an expensive frame and replace it with the…

Recently the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette featured a Science News article on the massive number of flaws found in science text books. Those errors are compounded with the minimal training of science teachers. Been there, done that. My cum laude college degree, course work and high national test scores qualified me in the late 1980s for certification…

There is something rotten in the state’s Youth Services Division. A stench that once again gives the public reason to distrust governmental agencies – especially with the care of the state’s most troubled teens. In 1998 the Youth Services Division made headlines as reporters uncovered rampant physical and sexual abuse by those entrusted with the…

Part of allowing children time to grow up is recognizing that children thrive on time with their parents and learn the most while working with or imitating mom or dad. After writing one too many columns about children helping out, I received a series of e-mails from the mothers of the youngest of the grandchildren.…

As a child growing up on a small dairy farm, I repeatedly heard that my parents were millionaires five times over because they had five children. A recent story from Bucharest astounds me with the immense devaluation of a child. A short news story reported that in Bucharest, the capital of Romania, some 20,000 homeless…

I was in favor of Welfare to Work long before the governmental programs were instituted. It is a no-brainer for me after mothering a houseful of children. Each child began life on the family dole and thought they were set for the rest of their lives. It was my job to slowly disillusion them. “No…