Another year of school has begun

Here goes. Ready or not it is here. Last Monday, the bell rang at 8:10AM, and thus began another year of school. I get Freshman 7th hour this year- 21 of them, along with 8 other students. It is the first time I have 14 year olds in the afternoon for six years. So far so good. They are eager and cooperative. It must be the water. Of course, not the water at the school. The drinking fountain down the hall has rusty pipes, and for the first several days the water came out brown or yellow. Not very inviting.

It is strange starting the year two weeks before Labor Day. But then, we started about the same time this year, but Labor Day is later.

The school schedules early release days for the first week since it is usually too hot in our non-air-conditioned building. But the Lord had other plans this week. Thursday was the only "hot" day (85° and humid). The rest were low 80s, and today was 70! Now that we start our regular schedule on Monday, it will probably get too hot. But looking at the forecast, I guess I don't have to worry.

New blog you might want to read

My daughter and a friend have started a blog based on one of my favorite subjects: chocolate! Go on over and see Morsels of Chocolate. Now, if they would add coffee to the mix, that would be wonderful!

Health Care and Clunkers

Then, along comes Cash for Clunkers. I heard an interview on NPR
yesterday that disturbed me. The interviewee was a mechanic at a car
dealership who was about to make an old Ford undrivable. He said
most cars die after ten seconds when the caustic solution is poured
into the oil tank. Then they try to restart the car to make sure
they are dead, and again an hour or so later they try again (I guess
the solution does not always work the first time). The reporter
asked him if he thought it strange that he was destroying engines
when his usual job was repairing them. Of course he thought it so.

This got me thinking about the health care debate. It seems Obama
Care is not going to be good for the elderly, as the President seems
to have meant that they would be given a pill. Hopefully he meant
that his health care plan would make their last days comfortable, and
not that they would get a poisonous pill that would end their
lives. Imagine a few years down the line when NPR interviews a
doctor giving a an elderly patient the pill that will end his or her
life. It could happen. The elderly might be thought of as too old
to continue using health care resources, and therefore only get
terminated. You think it far fetched? Remember Nazi Germany.

ADDENDUM 8-8-2009: Someone sent an anonymous post, which I would rather not accept. I did accept the one below, as Monty signed his name. I will put the link the anonymous poster left (from PolitiFact.com), as it may or may not clear up what President Obama was saying in his "take a pill" statement. I say it may not, because the statement he made "I don’t want bureaucracies making those decisions" can be interpreted as "I alone want to make those decisions." Not that I think he meant that, I'm just saying it could.