Good morning!
Photo by Zdeněk Macháček on Unsplash
Schools and teachers and students are not OK:
I am a Chicago public school principal. My wife is a teacher. This month was our fourth time on opposite sides of a picket line.
Now school is open again, mid-surge, and it is the wildest stretch in two years of pandemic schooling. COVID is everywhere. Kids are in and out of quarantine. Teachers are online and in person at the same time. Yesterday we COVID-tested a line of students 300 children long.
But this surreal circus is not the main plot of this year. The surge is ending. The crisis will still be here.
Children are not okay. Teachers are not okay. Schools are not okay.
We need help and we need understanding.
We knew this year would be hard. We did not know it would be like this: a kindergartener throwing chairs, a second-grader tearing up a classroom, a middle-schooler swearing in your face and then falling to the ground in tears. Every teacher I know feels like they are failing.
Children suffered in this pandemic. They experienced loss. They lost experiences. U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy declared a mental health crisis in youth. In fifth grade, a day’s objective is: “I can identify signs of frustration in my body. I can use calming strategies to help me feel calm.” …
After being attacked on the job, one nurse chose to trade in her scrubs for a trucker’s cap.
Leah Gorham, 42, left the job she had for 15 years as a licensed practical nurse to become a licensed long-haul driver.
“I feel the freedom of the road and freedom to make my schedule and be adventurous and see new places I’ve never been before,” Gorham said.
Having some company helps as well — Gorham and her boyfriend, who’s also a truck driver, sometimes drive together.
Staffing shortages in hospitals, which have been plaguing health care systems nationwide since the COVID-19 pandemic began, had already been making Gorham’s job challenging. But the straw that broke the camel’s back was when she was assaulted at work.
OAKLAND COUNTY, Michigan -- Your email spam folder isn't all junk mail.
Laura Spears of Oakland County, Michigan, can attest to that, as she recently discovered a $3 million lottery prize sitting in hers.
The lucky winner had purchased a Mega Millions ticket on the Michigan Lottery website for the December 31, 2021, drawing. She matched five numbers to win $1 million, plus had the Megaplier to multiply her prize by three.
"I saw an ad on Facebook that the Mega Millions jackpot was getting pretty high, so I got on my account and bought a ticket," Spears, 55, told Michigan Lottery officials. "A few days later, I was looking for a missing email from someone, so I checked the spam folder in my email account."
"That's when I saw an email from the Lottery saying I had won a prize. I couldn't believe what I was reading, so I logged in to my Lottery account to confirm the message in the email. It's all still so shocking to me that I really won $3 million!"
A 73-year-old grandmother from Long Island was the target of a phone scammer and decided to get some justice of her own.
Grandma Jean, who asked to be identified only by her first name, received a phone call from a man claiming to be her grandson needing $8,000 bail money after a drunken driving incident. But she recognized the call as a scam right away.
“I hang up on them all the time. I don’t know what came over me,” Grandma Jean said during an appearance on “Morning in America”. “I figured I’d play this game.”
Grandma Jean doesn’t have a grandson old enough to be able to drink — or even drive. But Jean played along with the scammer and notified the police.
“I know all the numbers for the police department,” she said.
As a former 911 dispatcher, Jean has heard it all and decided she was not going to become another statistic.
Nassau County police sent several officers to Jean’s home and instructed her to go along with the scam.
“Within the hour, the guy was at my door,” Jean said.
The scammer showed up to her doorstep pretending to be a bail bondsman expecting the money discussed.
Jean answered the door and gave him an envelope full of paper towels instead of cash.
Moments after, several police officers sprang from their hiding places, taking the suspect by surprise and into custody.
Mike Bird and Tom Schreiner, with my comment at the end:
Prof. Thomas R. Schreiner is a preeminent biblical scholar in whom there is no malice or malevolence. He is by conviction, complementarian, and yet holds his view with humility rather than hubris. His manifold volumes ooze with exegetical insights, pastoral applications, and a concern to nurture disciples upon the word of God.
He recently wrote a piece for CT on Gender Questions Should Send Us To Scripture where he argued that complementarians and egalitarians are both influenced by culture and therefore Scripture should be the final arbiter in the beliefs that we hold to be God-given and true.
Schreiner is certainly open to the prospect that complementarianism has been unduly influenced by cultures with a patriarchal bent and American vision of life. But he urges egalitarians to remember that that door swings both ways and the sexual revolution rather than Scripture might shape their beliefs about family, marriage, and sexuality. No one is immune to cultural influence and no one is neutral in approaching Scripture. Thus, Schreiner opines:
[S]ince there are cultural arguments, forces and pressures on every side, we must always return to the scriptures to decipher their meaning—and I believe that meaning can be retrieved. At the end of the day, it should come down to whoever offers the most plausible and persuasive reading of the biblical texts in question. The complementarian view isn’t nullified by saying Trump and Republicanism and the egalitarian reading isn’t contradicted by crying out feminism and liberalism. Yet I worry that in some circles, cultural arguments receive precedence over scriptural ones—as if they alone have the final say on the truth or falsity of a particular biblical interpretation.
I concur insofar that everyone is influenced for better or worse by their cultures and sub-cultures. Whether you lean complementarian or egalitarian there are pressures pushing us in various directions. Also, I agree that our best exchanges happen when we discuss which paradigm better accounts for the depictions of Christian men and women in the early church, their roles, ministries, titles, and work in light of the apostolic commands and prohibitions. I’d rather discuss Rom 16:1-7 and 1 Tim 2:12 over warm beverages than trade tirades over twitter with taunts of “miscreant misogynist” or “flatulent femo-nazi.” Bible study in person is better than bitter impersonal polemics.
At the same time, I think we have to do more than say, “Let’s reasoning over Scripture rather than listen to culture.” I think we have to wrestle with an interactive connection between the “catholic consensus” over Scripture and the “development of doctrine” from Scripture.
SMcK: Plus, recognizing the very contextual nature of the text itself.
AURORA, Colo. (KDVR) — When Brittany Tesso received a doctor’s bill from Children’s Hospital Colorado for $676.86 after a panel of doctors observed her son for two hours to see if he needed speech therapy, she thought the amount was extreme, but she paid it.
But when she got a separate bill two weeks later for $847.35, she was speechless.
“I can tell you right now I would’ve gone elsewhere if they had told me there was an $850 fee, essentially for a Zoom call,” Tesso said.
Her 3-year-old son’s appointment was virtual, a telehealth visit conducted from their home computer, yet she was told the $847.35 bill was a “facility fee.”
Settling into a new home can be tough for anyone. So scientists have come up with some tricks to make transplanted burrowing owls feel like they are not alone in their new digs, playing owl sounds and scattering fake poop.
The owls’ grassland homes are often prime real estate, and they’ve been losing ground to development in fast-growing regions like Silicon Valley and Southern California. Biologists have tried moving the owls to protected grasslands but the challenge has been getting the owls to accept their new homes.
Just dropping off the owls in prime habitat wasn’t enough, prior attempts showed. In a pilot program, scientists took pains to create the impression that owls already lived there so they’d stick around. And it worked.
“They like to be in a neighborhood, to live near other owls,” said Colleen Wisinski, a conservation biologist at the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, which launched the experiment with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
The scientists played recordings of owl calls before and after the new arrivals were released at four locations in Southern California. Wisinski used a syringe to squirt around fake owl poop — in reality, white paint.
Many of my clients are now teachers, school counselors, doctors, and nurses. The pandemic has taken a toll. My heart is with them. What you shared says it well. And, go Grandma Jean!! Meanderings.... you got me with your appreciation for owls and habitats.