Ignore the political handicapping--pay attention to the close races. Mesita's biodiesel plant. A thinkpiece on education.
Ignore the political handicapping, here is the important bit:
if you live in one of the districts in one of the screenshots below (numbers 1 through 6 from the Sun article linked first below), or if you know someone who does, make sure you are registered and make sure you vote this November.
Not sure what district you're in? I got you. The second link below is how you can look up your (or a friend's) address and know.
I'm not a huge fan of political prognostication for a number of reasons. One of those reasons is that I think it gives people a false sense of security. The Sun article (if you read it) was written after Biden's disaster, but before the upper echelon of the Democrat party booted him out. As such you'll see lots of talk about Biden dragging candidates down, enthusiasm waning, money pouring here or there, and on and on.
None of that matters. I suppose it may matter if you find it entertaining and like to speculate, but I would urge you here to focus on what you can control.
All that you really control is what you choose to do. Do that and then put the rest in God's hands. Do that and know that you did your part.
You can, regardless of polls, regardless of social media, remember to vote and you can remind likeminded people to do the same.
This is especially critical in the races above where conservatives stand a decent chance, and thus, Colorado stands a decent chance.
We need to get enough of the opposition party into the Capitol to make it so that the Democrats are forced to go to the negotiating table. In today's climate, until the statewide Republican party can get their poop in a group, this is the best we can hope for.
Take a look at that list. Think you know someone in one of those districts? Shoot them an email. Remind them to vote. Send a text.
Make sure your registration is up to date. Make sure you remember to vote.
And don't let polls, articles, yelling on social media, stop you or give you a false sense of security.
https://coloradosun.com/2024/07/11/top-colorado-legislative-races-2024/
https://leg.colorado.gov/FindMyLegislator
Mesita's Biodiesel plant
One more niblet on the San Luis Valley that didn't quite fit on Friday.
While down there I heard about a biodiesel plant in the little town of Mesita at the far southern end of the valley, located in Costilla County.
Sure enough, if you look at the screenshot from the first link below, you'll see that there is one.**
From my (limited) research it seems that the biodiesel is only now at the point of powering the county vehicles. I saw mention of expanding that out soon, but I'm not sure that's going to happen next week.
Still, an interesting concept. What do you think?
I hear radio ads (less now, but used to be more frequent) trying to convince farmers to grow an oil-rich crop (forget now what it is) to sell for biodiesel and I wonder. It raises a lot of questions.
Is seed to oil to biodiesel any more efficient than ethanol (which is in my mind kind of a bust)?
Where do we put the balance here? After all, every bit of land used to generate fuel might make us feel good and seem efficient, but it's more land that cannot be used to feed animals or people. Or put clothes on their backs.
Is this the proper role of government?
If you know more than I do or if you have a desire to add your two cents, please do. Toss them into the comments.
**Take note, too, near the bottom of the screenshot how you can buy the leftovers of the oil process, the "squeezed out" seeds for animal feed. Made me think of how the sugarbeet leftovers, that is the bits left after squeezing out the juice to boil down for sugar, are also used for animal feed up here.
Because it's a Sunday, indulge one more thinkpiece, this one on education.
Independence Institute recently released a report with their thoughts on 5 school board policies. I thought I would share and have been saving it for a Sunday in the hopes that you'd have more time to read and think on it.
If you do read it and have some thoughts you'd like to share, please feel free to post in the comments.
I'm not going to go point by point in the report (I'll leave it to you), but there were a couple things that merited special mention, some things that got my eye, that I thought I'd mention.
Page 8 begins with the heading "EXPAND CURRICULUM TRANSPARENCYFOR PARENTS". My young one is close to her first year of school in my local school district. I'm not too worried about indoctrination, but this topic hits home for me because I am wary about indoctrination (and/or what gets covered and what doesn't get covered) and also--perhaps MORE so--because I want to know how they will be learning.
I am worried about the amount of time my daughter will spend in front of a computer to learn. Again, this to me is more process than content per se. I also want to be clear that I'm not accusing anyone of any wrongdoing.
I just wonder what happens when a student is working on a computer program. What is the program doing? What is the teacher doing? What help is offered? What accountability is there for getting the work done and assessing learning?
What my daughter learns, how she learns are going to be things I intend to watch. State level policy (as outlined in the report) is a good thing, but there is no substitute for you talking to your child's teacher if you share my concerns. If I encounter resistance in this, I intend to take that up the chain. I encourage you to do the same (and make use of the language in this report if it's helpful).
The section starting on p 10 (with header "INCLUDE PARENTS AND COMMUNITYMEMBERS IN SOLVING THE LITERACYCRISIS") was intriguing to me. I thought it was a novel idea and worth some consideration.
I attached the report's recommendation as a screenshot.
What do you think of this idea, involving the whole community in improving literacy?
I'm intrigued by it. I think it's a good notion, but then I start to think about the actual logistics. If the school district had volunteers, I would presume some form of background/safety check would be needed. How does that happen? Who pays? How do you fund any training? Where do you host the help/reading sessions?
Secondly, how do you implement this? My experience teaching high school (here I note a couple caveats: high schoolers are different than younger grades and my experience lies entirely in teaching one particular kind of student--the kind that went to the private school I taught at) tells me that the best success would be had by making this something either mandatory or something that a teacher would refer a student into.
That is, I wonder how much it would get used (and how much it would get used by those that really need it) if you put a flyer up in the hallway announcing story time and/or reading help Tuesdays after school.
None of this is to say that the idea is bad or that it wouldn't work. It's just to say that the idea here offered is just that. An idea, not a prescription.
One last thing I'd like to note. I am glad to see that other groups outside of the traditional school milieu are offering thoughts on how to improve things.
School choice to me is not just about the ability to take your child to a school you like. I enlarge it to include the concept (theme?) that everyone has something to contribute. We should be asking for ideas across the board, not just from teacher unions and not just from public schools.
https://i2i.org/wp-content/uploads/IP_2_2024_d_web.pdf
Two things:
Biodiesel is corrosive, just like ethanol. For the same reason E85 equipped vehicles must have corrosion resistant, more expensive engine components, so must higher mixed biodiesel vehicles.
Public school "the blob" curriculum is, by its very nature, behind the times. When my younger children were in elementary school, seemingly innocuous lessons on species numbers and risk status were years out of date - winged squirrels of Virginia and a middle eastern rodent come specifically to mind (it has been almost a decade, forgive my lack of specific recollection). I sent messages, complete with data from pro-conservation groups pointing out the errors to my childrens' teachers in an attempt to aid them in their chosen craft, to what ends I'll never know. To your point about computerized lessons, now that they're in high school, it falls to chance that their education won't mislead them. I wish I had the temperament to be an educator; I would homeschool haha.