Do We Really Want Our Kids Accepting a Surveillance State?

"Pioneer Passage: The Journey of Cornelia Rose Book 3 is the third but hopefully not the last of author J.F. Collen’s epic story of a journey across America, taken by Cornelia Rose and her family in the mid-1800s. Cornelia Rose has left her beloved family and her lovely home in Sing Sing, New York to dutifully follow her husband, Obadiah, who has recently been appointed a Federal Court Justice in the territory of Utah. To reach the great Salt Lake City required a dangerous and arduous wagon journey on the famous Oregon Trail where mountain crossings, deep river fords, restless Native Americans and dangerous animals await these intrepid emigrants.

But a recent article I read in National Geographic confirmed the alarming amount of garbage filling the world. Everything we use –footwear, clothes, plastic goods, metal and machinery, and food– its all still with us, in various stages of disgusting decomposition. The figures documenting this waste are astounding.

Can any of us look at ourselves in the mirror and see what it truly reflects, without our prejudice altering the image there? Do we always focus on the negative and let our eyes go to the thighs that we perceive as too big, or the ‘balcony’ that is too small? Can any of us look in the mirror and see what the rest of the world sees?

Eighty enthusiastic students peppered me with questions about the writing process last week. They were third graders at the Munger Hill Elementary School in Westfield Mass. Teacher Deb Chouinard coordinated an author visit with the rest of the third grade teaching team and I was the lucky author.

If each of us just thinks of one way to reduce our personal plastic consumption, we can join the millions of companies making inroads into plastic waste reduction.

Flirtation Walk, the first book in the three book series Journey of Cornelia Rose finally completed the editing phase!

I’m trying to muddle through. But there are days when the pieces look like they won’t ever go together. Honestly, some days the pieces don’t even look like they belong together. I have learned the hard way I am an overachiever, excessively compelled to volunteer. When someone I know says, “Can you help me __________?” I say “Sure.”

I can’t even count the number of times I have said, “Just a minute, I’ll be right there,” to my kids. Embroiled in the minutia required to keep a family fed, clothed and running, I often missed some of the fun, or at least, joined it already in progress. Eventually, it became a habit — I would be so busy getting everything prepared, packing, figuring out logistics, and then once we got arrived, worrying about when we had to leave and how we were getting home, that I forgot to make time to enjoy the event.

I believe in reading to kids any way that is fun! My preference: goofy voices and silly accents. I love engaging them in a story, making them care about the characters.

The #MeToo movement has successfully gotten the winter song Baby It’s Cold Outside banned from play on many radio stations around the country. How ‘Baby It’s Cold Outside’ Went From Parlor Act to Problematic. I am agast. Not that I don’t applaud the group for using this song as a discussion starter to show the messages deeply engrained in our culture that promote sexual aggression. But really, this is another case of a ‘one issue’ group forcing a modern cause célèbre on a song written decades ago that merely reflected acceptable mores of a different time.

In June the American Library Association (ALA) renamed the Laura Ingalls Wilder Children’s Book Series Award. This honor was taken away from Mrs. Wilder because her memoirs honestly and accurately depict the fear and distrust between the Western Pioneers and the Indigenous People — from the settler’s point of view. I don’t want this issue to fade from view after its 15 minutes of fame! This retroactive censorship strips the praise and esteem given to an author with little formal education who suffered through extreme deprivation and yet still managed to publish a well written, popular children’s book series.