Tag: Idaho

Just reading the local paper’s top story…

This morning’s top story in the Missoulian, our local daily newspaper;

“Grizzly, cub killed in Glacier Park“.

            By Michael Jamison of the Missoulian: WEST GLACIER – “The old grizzly sow was rumbling straight toward a campground full of hikers, chubby cubs laboring along behind, when two rangers simultaneously pulled their triggers.  It wasn’t the way they’d planned to kill the bear, but there she was heading for camp, a big wild bear as unpredictable as the campers she was about to surprise…”

…”When a grizzly bear begins approaching people on purpose, that bear must go.”

…”And although the Bronx Zoo finally agreed to take the cubs, no zoos wanted a 17-year-old adult.”

…”cubs”…”tranquilizer”…

“But the male cub didn’t look so good.  It’s tough to gauge a dosage when you don’t know an animal’s weight, temperature, vital signs, underlying health condition…”

“…First one ranger  tried CPR, then another, going mouth to snout while coaxing the 100-pound yearling back to life.  It did not work.”

“But what’s really sad is loosing three bears from this ecosystem.”–Jack Potter, chief of science and natural resources at Glacier National Park

“The outcome while arguably unavoidable, was tragic, Potter admitted, particularly for those wildlife lovers who had rallied around the three bears.”

“We need to make a positive out of a negative,”  Witulski (a retired forester from Idaho)  “We need to tell the story better, so the public pays more attention.”

“…perhaps all those who followed the story with such interest can donate to grizzly bear habitat protection, or to the parks bear management team…” which is currently trying to get two other grizzly groups away from the park’s backcountry chalets.

When we get back to New York I’m going to take My Kid to see the surviving grizzly bear cub at the Bronx Zoo.

 

 

More Standardized Testing

It’s not much of a stretch to imagine that someone who identifies herself as a clown would not think much of standardized tests.

So it is not a stretch to imagine how appalled I am that Mayor Bloomberg has announced a pilot program including timed paper-and-pencil assessments for children as young as kindergarten. That’s insane. Children spend the year of kindergarten learning to sit in a chair without touching anybody else, how to transition to circle time, again without touching anybody else, at least not hard enough to knock them off balance. In addition they must practice standing in line without playing with the hair of the girl in front of them. There are other activities involving reading and math. But, learning to sit in a chair when the teacher says it is time to sit in a chair is the main objective of the average kindergartner.

My Kid is going into 3rd grade this year, the first year of high stakes testing in New York City. She has been aware of THE BIG TEST for months. She has thought long and hard, and has decided the best way to prepare for this public evaluation is to brush her hair everyday

I too am being mature about the test. My fantasy back up plan is to pull her out of school in January and put her on a plane to Montana so my brother can teach her to ski like her Idaho born cousins because that’s a learning deficit in my family.

However, I think My Kid is actually looking forward to the test and would be really upset if she missed it.