Pondering current events

The telephone/ electric pole "fence" I promised to show you. ( photo by PL on a throwaway camera's CD)
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by Pat Laster

           Recently, I jotted the following sentence in my journal.
           “The three top National Geographic Bee winners were Rahul Nagnikar, 14, from Texas; Vansh Jain, 13, from Wisconsin, and Varum Mahadevan from California.”
            My ponderings: One, we are still a country of immigrant families. Despite all the negativity about illegal aliens, these families are ensconced in their communities and schools. Some may be home schooled or attend private or public schools.
           Two--and I’m merely asking: Do these children do better test-wise than those of many-generations-in-America’s past immigrant children? Do the newer immigrant parents think they have something to prove? I think I would, were the situation reversed.
            Are they vying for the $25,000 prize or for the thrill of winning over their classmates? Do they study online? Have they traveled a lot? There are other variables. 
           Just wondering. People comment about President Obama’s “foreign” name, but in my collection of given names, many sound as though they are from places other than the British Isles and Germany—as our forebears were.

           Other political topics in my journal dealt with Mitt Romney’s visit to an inner-city school where he touted two-parent families (good grief!), good teachers and strong leadership as the cure-all for every school. Class size shouldn’t matter, he continued. No, not if you have a sensible ratio of teacher and qualified para-professionals to children. My written comment echoed some of the teachersstatements in the school he visited: “He’s really out of it!?!”

            Another item, with much less gravitas, caught my eye recently. “Tamae Watanabe, 73, (that’s what I honed in on, since I’m facing another seventy-something birthday soon) who was the oldest woman to climb Mount Everest when she did it 10 years ago, beat her own record during a successful climb last weekend, saying, ‘It was much more difficult for me this time. I felt I was weaker and had less power. This time it was certainly different, I felt that I had gotten old.’”
           Well, duh! Poor thing, I guess so!
            I found more about her online. She’s Japanese and a retired office worker. She lives at the foot of Mt. Fuji. Always in love with mountains, she’s been climbing the Japanese Alps (did you know Japan had Alps?) and other mountains around the world for many years.
            “Banks are going to figure out a way to extract revenue from the customers in any way, shape or form,” says Stanley J.G. Crouch, chief investments officer at money manager Aegis Capital, in an article by P. Gogoi, AP.
             And that’s exactly why I’ve changed banks—at least for the present. Three months ago, Arvest began charging my account $6 per month. I protested. “Oh, all banks are doing it,” the teller said.
            When I told that to the First Security manager in the Salem Community—closer to Couchwood than Arvest, which I’ve been with since we lived in Arkadelphia—she assured me her bank was not going to do that.
            Now if I can get Kid Billy weaned away from Arvest, then I won’t have to travel so far so often to replenish his bank account. #

c 2012 by Pat Laster dba lovepat press