I’m not sending Christmas Cards

That’s not entirely true. I’m not sending actual physical Christmas cards to any of my friends or out-of-state family this year. Those that have email (and these days – EVERYONE does) – you’ll get a “green” card (i.e., an electronic Christmas wish).

I did buy 2 boxes of Christmas cards this year to supplement the ones that I had left over from last year. And I am sending those to some very deserving people.

I saw on Facebook tonight a post about sending a Christmas card to a recovering soldier at Walter Reed. I looked at my boxes of Christmas cards and the ones I had left over and though, “I’m going to take this a step further.”

THEY’RE getting my Christmas cards this year. The two boxes of 24 (48) and the 18 left over from last year are being addressed to: A Recovering Soldier, c/o Walter Reed Army Medical Center, 6900 Georgia Ave., NW, Washington DC 20307.

I encourage you to send at least one of your Christmas cards to a Recovering Soldier this year. This is the least we can do for these brave men and women that sacrificed a lot to ensure the freedoms we enjoy every year.

Its a small gesture – but I bet it’ll make you feel so much better.

If you want to go a step further, enclose a postage-paid envelope in there with a note to use it to send a letter to someone they love and miss.

“E” is for Education

I try not to get too political because if I climb up on my soapbox about issues I’m passionate about, it’ll take more than a ladder to get me down. You know that beanstalk that Jack had to climb to get to the Giant? Yeah … that’s nothing.

But I have to talk about the importance of education and how early it starts. Education starts in the womb. We weren’t ones that put headphones on my belly and played tapes of Stephen Hawking, or something like that for either of my kids. However – with Danielle, we did play classical music in her room at all hours of the day and night. As a result – she’s got a great math capacity. She doesn’t like to admit it, but she does. With Jack, we’ve never baby-talked him (we never did that to Danielle, either) and I think he took to the vocabulary a lot faster and easier than Danielle ever did.

We specifically live in a city with terrific schools. Yes, the property taxes are out of this world, but we figure to get these great schools – its worth it.

But property taxes is not the only thing that plays into the public education that our children should be enjoying. The budget for schools in the state of Michigan is a many-layered beast which should not be as extensive and troublesome as it is. The budget for schools that fall in a certain category in this state have been slashed in the millions of dollars.

What that means is there will be teachers and staff laid off, services will be deleted or reduces, fees for special events will go up, class sizes will increase, and the overall quality will go down.

Laying off staff and teachers will strain the already slim resources due to the already-strained budget. When teachers are laid off, what do you do with those students? They have to go somewhere, so that means class sizes are going to increase. When class sizes are larger, the teachers are under more strain to be able to teach each student the way they need to be taught. Kids are going to start falling through the cracks – and do you know what the next complaint is going to be? Yep – class sizes need to be smaller.

So what can be done about this? First off, the schools need to tighten their belts like every other industry in the state has had to do. No one else has gotten a pay raise, their benefits have been cut, or at the very least reduced, and when employees leave, they have had to take up the slack of that missing worker. Schools have continued to operate in the same way that has brought us here.

What can the government do about it? Stop giving tax breaks to industries! Yes, we understand that it’s an incentive to get businesses in to an area, but that does nothing to help out the tax base. When we have more tax dollars coming in from businesses, the education of the children (potential future employees) will be better, thereby keeping that talent and that future earning capacity in the state and the community.

Come on businesses and government – get it right!