It's almost spring!!!

We've all got spring fever around here, and it's really showing this week by how much money we've been spending! We decided that we didn't want to order the minimum of 25 from the hatchery we had planned to order from and chose to order 8 chicks from mypetchicken.com instead. We spent as much on shipping as we did on chicks, but we're getting the smaller flock that we wanted. We didn't have any references from anyone for mypetchicken, so we're taking a bit of a risk. Hopefully it works out in our favor. If not, then we may end up ordering 25 chicks later on and having a larger flock afterall. Either way, we're soon to be "egg farmers" as my son used to say.

These are some of the "working girls" we chose: Black Australorp, Golden Laced Wyandotte, and "Easter egger"

And these are the "pet" chickens that the kids chose: a Japanese true bantam and a Silkie bantam

They won't be arriving for several weeks, but we're already preparing by running around to various farm stores looking for feeders and waterers, checking prices on litter, and reading lots of chicken books and websites. Our biggest hurdle has been finding organic chicken feed. No one in our area seems to carry it, so we're looking into ordering pre-made organic feed online vs. making our own with grains that are available from our food co-op. So far, making our own is in the lead, especially since I'm already a big believer in raw, organic food for both people and pets.

We've also been ordering gardening seeds, plants and gadgets this week. I ordered a small seed dispenser for planting lettuce, carrots and other small seeds. I've put that inexpensive purchase off for years, yet I continue to grumble about "wasting" seeds every single year. How silly! So, I finally added one to my cart this year. On a whim, I also added a pot maker. It's a cool little gadget that makes pots for starting your own seedlings from paper.

We spend a small fortune in seeds and plants each year, so I want to start saving more seeds from year to year and growing more of my own seedlings. We start a few things from seed that are difficult to find, but I'm still buying most of my tomatoes and peppers and a few other things as plants. That gets kind of expensive with the large garden plot we have. Besides, there's something extremely satisfying about saving seeds from plants that you grew yourself and watching them turn into healthy, thriving plants again the next year.

We have several varieties of many of these fruits and veggies, but this is a general list of the things we are growing this year: bush beans, pole beans (for the bean teepee), beets, broccoli, brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, celery, chard, sweet corn, pop corn, cucumbers, eggplant, endive, ornamental gourds, kale, kohlrabi, lettuce (leaf and romaine), watermelon, okra, onions, peas (shell and snap), sweet bell peppers, hot peppers, pumpkins, shallots, spinach, yellow summer squash, zucchini, and tomatoes. Oh, and lots of flowers for Catherine, of course. She fills many, many vases of flowers during the summer, so we have to make sure we have plenty to pick. We don't have any potatoes, sweet potatoes, herbs, or garlic yet, but there's still plenty of time for more shopping!

The kids are also in the process of planning their own garden alongside the family garden. We haven't had a separate kid's garden for a few years. They've just been helping out with planning and taking care of the family garden, but when they saw the kid's pack from Seeds of Change last week, they decided they wanted to plant that this year. Together we came up with a 12x12 "garden in the round" plan with a statue surrounded by flowers in the middle. They are mostly planting miniature versions of things such as Tom Thumb lettuces, little round carrots, mini corn, mini bell peppers, and cherry tomatoes. In the big garden they also wanted to try different colors of some of their favorite foods, so we will be planting multi-colored carrots, various colors of tomatoes, red okra, green, orange and purple cauliflower, multi-colored sweet corn, red lettuce, and a few other rather psychadelic looking veggies. Boy, are we going to have one colorful garden this year!

Can it get any better?

The short answer... ABSOLUTELY!!



What the heck am I talking about?...The Unschoolers Winter Waterpark Gathering, of course!



I thought last year was fantastic, but this year blew last year's UWWG out of the water! (No pun intended.) The worst thing I can say about this year's UWWG was that it was impossible to be in two places at once. I just couldn't get to all of the things I wanted to do and see! I didn't get the mehendi area at all. I only got to glance at the kids marketplace while going from one presentation to another, but I wish I could have shopped! There were some really cool things there! The kids missed the DS funshop and the Webkinz gathering, and we all missed out on the ATC funshop. I wish I had a timeturner so we could go back and do all the things we didn't get to do! The kids got to do the one thing they were looking forward to most, which was spend lots of time in the waterpark. And I did get to most of the things on my "high priority" list too.

I made it to both of Kelly Lovejoy's presentations. I've enjoyed her posts on unschooling lists for quite some time and was surprised to find that she is exactly as I always imagined her! She's a lovely, lively, engaging speaker and I enjoyed her presentations immensely. Although, in retrospect I think that perhaps "presentation" isn't the right word for what transpired at all. It sounds a little too stuffy for the interactive, spontaneous exchanges that occurred.

I went to the unschooled teens and young adults panel discussion too. Very interesting stuff there, although I will admit to being ever so slightly disappointed that there wasn't a totally unschooled teen on the panel. I sometimes feel sort of like the odd woman out, even around other unschoolers, because it seems that so very few of them have been doing it from the beginning like we have. We've never done highly structured "school at home" either, so we seem to be in the minority even among other unschoolers. It was still interesting though. I'm on lots of unschooling lists and read lots of unschooling blogs, but they are most often from the parents (usually the mother's) perspective. It was refreshing to hear from the kids themselves.

I also made it to Bethany Hagensen's raw foods demo (www.bethanysstory.com). What an inspiring story she had! It was just the kick in the pants that I needed too. I was eating a high raw diet most of the last year but had dropped to about 50% (some days even less!) since the holidays. My health issues were starting to flare up again but I still was having a difficult time getting back on track. Eating a non-standard diet is difficult enough, but I was having the most trouble with the lack of support. I don't know any other raw foodies IRL and my online support just wasn't working for me during the really difficult patches around the holidays and the start of my usual season of depression. I was so excited to see that a raw foods demo was scheduled and made it a top priority. I wasn't sure what to expect since I've never even met another raw foodist, but it was WONDERFUL!! The food was fabulous and the people who have been at this longer than me were so inspirational. Best of all, I wasn't *alone*. I had a room full of people who were high raw, totally raw, transitioning to raw, or interested in eating more raw. I can't begin to express what a boost just being in the same room with all those people eating delicious raw foods was to my resolve. And the healing stories I heard there were just amazing. I had already been eating more raw foods and was motivated even more after going to the program. I've been high raw all week and am feeling great...and I actually *lost* weight while on vacation! How often does that happen? LOL

Cameron was inspired by someone at the UWWG as well. He was interested in stage magic for quite a while, but lost interest about a year ago. Just a couple of weeks ago he pulled out all of his magic stuff again and had been talking about the possibility of learning some tricks for Catherine's birthday party this summer, but he hadn't really done a lot with it. It was like he was waiting for something. Then off we go the the UWWG where we see a young magician perform several times during the week. Cameron was totally engrossed in each and every performance and he talked about them all week long. Then this morning I went downstairs to find him curled up on the sofa looking at magic kits in a catalog. The spark is back in his eyes when he talks about magic and he's planning on spending a nice chunk of change on some new magic supplies in the next couple of weeks. Yay for happy coincidences!

I also led a bellydance funshop this year and I had such a blast! I'm now convinced that there is no better place to share something you love than at an unschoolers convention! It was a totally freeform hour long whirlwind tour of bellydance without any real structure. I decided not to focus on any one style of bellydance but encouraged everyone to do their own thing. We just kind of went with the flow and the interests of the attendees, and it turned out so cool. I have never had so much fun teaching bellydance!

And then there was the carnival with all the cool games and prizes. The kids came away from that with lots of ideas for projects and contraptions to build at home! And there was the dance on the final evening. I think Dave and I enjoyed that more than the kids since we so rarely get to dance with each other anymore. And I can't forget getting to meet so many interesting people either. Some of them I've only known online until now, but now I've got faces and voices to put with those names. I'm sure there's more that I'm forgetting at the moment, but oh, what a wonderful time we had each and every day!

Let's not forget the Kalahari itself! It was as awesome as it was last year and then some. Cameron struck out with a friend and rode many of the rides that he wasn't ready to ride last year. Catherine isn't quite big enough for most of the rides, but she was perfectly content to spread her time in the waterpark between the Lazy River ride, the wave pool and the spray grounds. The weather was kinder to us this year too. Last year it was so cold outside that they had trouble keeping the waterpark warm enough. No problems with that this year though. It was like a warm summer day inside the waterpark, and if you were there at just the right time of day you could even bask in the sun through the overhead windows. Ahhhh!

We were all sad when it was over. It goes by far too fast! But true to form, by the time we were on the road home the kids had already started the countdown to next year. UWWG 2010, here we come!

Light Bulb Moment

Catherine made a neat discovery this evening while we were reading bedtime stories. She discovered a very powerful word - the word "I". Not only is it a letter, but it's a word all on it's own too. How cool is that!

We are spending the week at the Unschoolers Winter Waterpark Gathering in Ohio (which is *AWESOME* by the way!). We brought a few new books to read while we're here, because we don't go anywhere without books. Cameron brought Fablehaven to read on his own, Catherine chose Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, which is her current favorite book. We also brought the Faraway Tree series from home. And both of the kids wanted to get the Skippyjon Jones books to bring. We all love Skippyjon Jones, so I surprised them with several Skippyjon Jones books and a Skippyjon Jones stuffed animal. Skippyjon was the favorite the last couple of nights, but not tonight.

Cameron was down in the arcade with a friend. Dave went down the street to the store because we already used up the 5 gallons of drinking water we brought from home. Catherine and I found ourselves with a little "girl time" on our hands. We danced around the hotel room in our pj's for a while, had a snack, then settled into bed to read some books. She picked Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. We read it through just like we've done dozens of times, but tonight she noticed the alphabet in the front and the back of the book. She started looking at them and pointing out the letters that are in her name, then other letters that she knew. She talked about which ones were big and which ones were little. Then she noticed that the big "I" didn't have the serifs on it. We talked about how sometimes the big I has those little lines on the top and bottom and sometimes it doesn't and talked about how without the serifs the big "I" looks just like the little "L". We talked about those letters for a while longer and then I noticed something different about the way she was looking at them. She was really studying them, and then there was this sudden *explosion* of understanding. I don't know what the exact trigger was, but I could tell she just *got it*. She understood what I was doing when I read to her. WOW! That realization was so POWERFUL for her, and the amazement in her eyes was absolutely priceless.

She closed her book and studied the front. Suddenly those letters "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom" had *MEANING* to her. They were *WORDS*. She ran her finger across them over and over, saying the words again and again, imprinting them in her mind. I just watched her for a while, then she started playing with the words and I joined in. We covered up the "m" in "Boom" and that made a totally new word! What a discovery! She covered up every single letter in each word and wanted to know what it said *NOW*.

I told her that that "I" that she was looking at earlier was a word too. I told her it said "I" as in "I went to the store". She repeated that phrase over and over, letting it roll around in her mouth, then *CLICK*...another light bulb went on. I could *SEE* it and it was amazing! I happened to have the book I was reading lying on the table next to the bed, so I picked it up and showed her how in my book the big "I" had the lines. She gasped and said "Mommy! They're EVERYWHERE!!" She sat there for a good 15 minutes flipping through my book and pointing out every single "I" she could find. ("There's another one! And another one! Look, Mommy! There's one on this page too!") She couldn't get enough! Then she noticed a lower case "i"...and another...and another. She noticed there was an "i" in the middle of the word "Chicago" and wanted to know what it said. Then she wanted to know what words followed that word "I", so I read those sentences to her and she repeated them, running her finger over the words as she did.

Right about that time, Dad returned from the store. She yelled "Daddy, Daddy! I want to show you something!" and proceeded to show him how she could read the words "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom" on the front of her book, and the word "I" in my book as well. Within a few minutes she had moved on and started working on the jigsaw puzzle we brought with us. It was such a *BIG* moment, yet she took it in stride. I, however, am still reeling from the "bigness" of it.

Sheltered?

I've been hearing this one a lot lately. I thought perhaps it was dying off, but no...it's back lately and seemingly as strong as ever. IT is the idea that homeschooled children are "sheltered". It seems that people who know very few homeschoolers have this idea that we all sit around our kitchen tables forcing our kids to do school work for 6-8 hours a day just like kids in school sit around doing school work in desks all day. I've been in the homeschooling community since my oldest was born 12 years ago and I honestly don't think I've ever met a homeschooling family quite like that. Granted, that may be because they are at home sitting around the kitchen table and we never see them (lol), but in all seriousness I just don't think that type of homeschooling family is very common. People are by nature social creatures. Even the most reserved of us crave human contact and a change in scenery on occasion. And even the most reserved homeschoolers I know get out more often than your average school child for field trips and learning opportunities outside their homes.

Forgive me. I'm getting side tracked by trying (once again) to explain that homeschoolers aren't as "sheltered" as people might think. Flogging that horse was not what I inteded to do however. Where I was really going with this diatribe was slightly different this time. I was thinking about this whole "sheltered" business again the other day while explaining to a mom on a forum about all the interesting things we do in an average day, when it suddenly dawned on me that maybe I should turn this question around. Maybe the question isn't "Are homeschooled children sheltered?", because in reality all children are, and should be, sheltered (i.e. protected) to a certain extent. Maybe the question should instead be which group, on average, is REALLY more sheltered in our society? Is it the children who are at home or those who are in school? Many people whose experience is solely school based seem to think that homeschooled children come up short, but having been a public schooled child myself and now seeing the other side of the coin, I beg to differ.

In an average week, my supposedly "sheltered" children go many different places and communicate with many different people. They might take swimming lessons from a beloved swimming coach with children of various ages, learn Japanese phrases and culture from their sensei who is from Japan, or call the naturalist on staff at the local nature center to talk about the cool snake they found. They might get into a dinosaur discussion with a childrens museum staff member while on a field trip (which is very different from a lecture by the same staff member!). They might go stargazing at midnight, watch and discuss world news because it's INTERESTING to them, chat on line with friends from all over the globe, ask the vet questions about instruments and tests and animal health while taking the dog to the vet. They might scour our cookbook collection looking for something new to fix for dinner, spend time catching snowflakes and looking at their shapes, or spend days on end watching birds at the birdfeeder and learning to identify them by their cries ("here comes a nuthatch!"). They might decide they want to try their hand at cartooning, rocket building, gourmet cooking, piano, or ballet. They might grow their own food in the backyard, take "behind the scenes" tours of the local museum (because they are the only kids who come in there during the day), or ask the waitress at our favorite Indian restaurant about her trip to India, or do any number of other things.

These are just a sample of the average, every day types of activities and interactions my kids have. They aren't special, once in a lifetime experiences. They aren't things that we go out of our way to do specifically for their "educational benefits". We don't live in a big city. As a matter of fact, we live in the country outside a small rural town. We don't drive long distances very often or spend a lot of money going exotic places. These are all things we do within a short drive from our home on a single income, yet, we communicate with people of varying ethnicities, economic levels, and backgrounds regularly by simply going about our lives and doing the things that interest us.

Compare this with the average experience of public schooled children. Unless they move several times a year, the vast majority of public schooled students are limited to a small number of teachers and a small number of classrooms. They go to ONE school with ONE cafeteria serving limited food selections. They are exposed to ONE pre-determined set of children, all of whom are the same age, and most of whom are from the same geographic area and most likely from a similar economic background. They are expected to learn ONE lesson at a time from ONE pre-chosen curriculum and ONLY when told to do so. They are never allowed to leave the watchful eye of their teacher, nor are they allowed to leave the "safety" of the school walls and fenced in playgrounds, except on rare field trips, during which they are kept under even stricter supervision than at school. Their daily experiences are, on average, extremely limited in number and restricted by highly controlled circumstances. Even after these children leave the school to go home, what they do with their time is STILL determined by the school via homework and at home assignments. It seems to me that it is school children, not homeschooled children, who are more "sheltered" - from themselves, from others, and from learning.

The Holidays Came Early

It all started because we were looking for Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Ballet for Catherine. She's dancing to the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy in ballet class this month and wanted the music so she could dance to it dance at home. While we were looking for Tchaikovsky we came across a bunch of other holiday music that we wanted to get too. (More than we could get on our card, as a matter of fact, so we had to put back a few that we really wanted.) We didn't have anywhere to be today, so we decided to hang out in our pj's and make cookies and tea while listening to all the crazy music we picked out. We started off the morning with The Brian Setzer Orchestra's Boogie Woogie Christmas, then moved on to a compilation of Doo Wop Christmas songs. Now we're listening to Dr. Demento Presents the Greatest Christmas Novelty CD of All-time.

I started swing dancing around the living room to Boogie Woogie Christmas, so in order to prove to my son that I wasn't completely insane we took a break from our premature holiday celebration to watch a bunch of swing dancers on youtube. We talked about things like prohibition and fashion for a while, then we talked about the changes in the way people dressed and wore their hair from the 20's to today and why some fashions that don't seem bad by today's standards were considered risque back then. We talked about women voting again (that's been a frequent topic the laste month or so) and racism. We talked about the way dancing has changed too, which brought up dance dance revolution and the kids' wish lists. (Cameron recently became hooked on DDR and it's at the top of his list.) That led us to talking about what they would like to get for other people, so Cameron called his friend's mom to ask some questions about what her baby brother would like. That sort of stuff went on for a while, then we put in Doo Wop Christmas and a similar thing happened. We stopped listening to it for a while to watch some Sha Na Na, Chubby Checker's The Twist, Elvis, and a few others. We talked about their clothes and hair again and discussed when Elvis went off to war, which sent us off on a tangents on the Viet Nam war and tuberculosis, then WWII, and several other things that I don't even remember anymore.

I've said many times and I'll say it again...ANYTHING can send us off on a learning streak, and this is a good example. We started out going to the library to get a book, ended up getting The Nutcracker Ballet on video, which reminded us we wanted to look for the music. We ended up with music we didn't even plan on getting, which led us to all sorts of questions and discussions on everything from history to the origins of words. It always starts off so simply. Something sparks a conversation or question, which leads to explanations and searching for answers, which leads to even more conversation and questions, etc. and before you know it...KABOOM! A learning explosion! This is just the way learning happens for us. Very naturally and effortlessly and based on whatever our interests are at the moment. Even though I've watched this process more more times than I could possibly count, it's always interesting to see where one will lead because you never know where they will lead. Who would believe that Doo Wap Christmas music could lead to a discussion on tuberculosis hopitals? LOL

I'm sure we'll be having lots more conversations and looking up many other things today as we listen to our music and go about our day. We've still got several Celtic Christmas CDs, the Bob Rivers Comedy Group's Twisted Christmas, and Windham Hill's Winter Solstice to listen to. (Oh, and New Wave Halloween too. LOL)

And yes, amazingly enough, we actually DID remember to get the Tchaikovsky CD!

10th grade graduation?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20081107/us_time/shouldkidsbeabletograduateafter10thgrade

I read this article earlier and was completely befuddled by it. One the one hand I might be able to agree with allowing kids who are ready to move to do so, but on the other hand, I also think that the way they are proposing doing this will exacerbate an already out of balance educational and socioeconomic system. In other words, it won't change anything for most kids, it *may* change for the better for a select few, but it will very likely make it worse for others.

Lyonel Tracy, New Hampshire's Commissioner for Education, was quoted saying some things in the article that sounded good on the surface, but that didn't make as much sense to me when I really thought about them. First he said that those kids who were "ready and able to move on" should be able to do so. Sounds good. But then he said that educators could then "focus more on those kids who need more help getting there". Hmmm...that didn't sound quite so good though. It probably sounds good from the educator's perspective, but what about from the kids'? Imagine being one of the kids who "needs more help getting there" for just a moment. Not the ones who choose to stay in school so that they can go on to prestigious universities, but those who don't pass the tests in order to move on to community or technical colleges and are *STUCK* in school for another two years. I think it will perhaps have the opposite effect on those kids. (I also predict that universal pre-K will eventually add to our drop out rates as well, because kids will be so burned out by the time they reach high school. But that's a topic for another post.) Do they honestly think that most of those kids are going to just suck it up and stick out those last two years? I doubt it. Some of them will probably look at the situation and see no way that they can "win". They probably hate school in the first place and would love to move on, but they couldn't pass the test to be allowed to do so. They may also know that even if they stay in school they will never go on to college. If I were in that position, dropping out would be sounding like an awefully good idea.

There were a couple of things in this article that had me excited at first. One was when Marc Tucker, co-chair of the New Commission on Skills of the American Workforce and president of the National Center for Education and the Economy in Washington, stated that "most American teenagers slide through high school, viewing it as a mandatory pit to stop, hang out and socialize." YES! Yes, they do! But why is that, Mr. Tucker? Why do our kids consider high school a "mandatory pit"? Perhaps because it *IS*? Thank you for actually saying so, Mr. Tucker.

Another point that excited me was when the author asked "But can less schooling really lead to better-prepared students at an earlier age?" YES! Yes, it can! The author goes on to mention that outside the US the idea isn't as radical as it sounds and that some of the very countries who are passing us by in the education department expect their children to be college ready at 16. But that was the end of my excitement because the author then goes on to quote William Brock, one of the chairs for the New Commission on Skills of the American Workforce and a fromer US Secretary of Labor. Brock said that "40 years ago, the United States had the best educated workforce in the world. Now we're #10 and falling." That may very well be true, but how is more testing and a more rigorous curriculum going to put us back on top? If US education was so much better 40+ years ago, why not go back to some of the fundamentals of that era? Or better yet, why not go back even further to a time before mandatory education when literacy rates were at their highest. (Since the implementation of mandatory education, literacy rates have declined fairly steadily. Check out this link for some more reading on the subject of literacy rates: http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/3b.htm)

It was the last line of the article really irritated me though. "We're simply telling students that it's okay to go at your own pace", Mr. Tracy says. That part sounded really good...too good to be true, as a matter of fact. Maybe that's because it WAS too good to be true, because Mr. Tracy then went on to add "especially if that pace is a little quicker than the status quo". Grrr! Arrrg! *gnashing my teeth in frustration* It's okay to go at your own pace AS LONG AS YOU GET THERE QUICKER???? Why did he even have to say that? What about those kids who will NEVER be "quicker"? Not every child is going to go on to college, or even trade school, but EVERY child is important. Why not let every single child in our educational system go at their own pace? Get rid of all your useless "standardized" tests, your one-size-will-never-fit-all curriculum, and your mandatory education policies and meet the children's INDIVIDUAL educational needs. Then maybe you'll start to get somewhere close to an educational system that really does work for everyone.

The way I see it, the so-called "experts" in education are still focusing on the wrong area. They continue to focus on the teachers - how much training they should have, how much they should get paid, etc. They focus on the curriculum - what should be taught, when it should be taught, how it should be taught, etc. They focus on the tests - what should be on the tests, how often they should be administered, what are the consequences of failing said tests, etc. They aren't focusing on the REAL issue, which is THE CHILDREN. As long as our education system is focused on TEACHING and EDUCATING (things that are done TO the children) instead of LEARNING (which is an internal process that can not be controlled by another), it will not succeed. It will continue to decline because they aren't addressing the REAL problems with our education system.

More money, more tests, more time in school, more teachers, more schools...none of these things will ever be able to change the APATHY in our students, which is what I consider to be the real problem in American education. Continually re-creating slightly different, more extensive version of the same failing system will never fix it. Adding more and more of the very policies that created the conditions in which student apathy took root in the first place will never fix it. Getting to the source of the apathy is the only thing that will. I believe that apathy takes root when a person (no matter what their age) is put in a situation in which they feel they have little or no control over their own life. They may fight it at first, but eventually most of them give up. They give in. They stop caring. They may continue to go through the motions because they feel they have no choice, but they don't actually care about what they are doing. That pretty much describes most of the public schooled children in America, doesn't it? They have no control over where they have to be, when they have to be there, what they get to do with their own time. They have no control over what they get to read, watch, listen to, see, etc...most of them don't even have control over when they get to go to the bathroom. They go through the motions of "learning" but they really don't care and only truly *learn* when a topic or a very special teacher brings to life a spark of their innate desire to learn. (It's rare, but it does happen in public school.)

Imagine spending your every waking moment under the control of other people - being told when to eat, when to sleep, when to work, when to rest, when to have fun. Imagine being told that you don't have to right to even complain about the way you are treated because you aren't capable of understanding. (Not that they would explain it to you anyway.) And then imagine being told that they are "doing it for your own good". ("Someday you'll thank me for this.) Ugh. I don't know about the rest of you, but the very idea of living life like that is sickening to me. No...there's no way that more of THAT will never fix our education system. The way I see it, giving students more control over their education, not less, is the only thing that will fix this system because that is the only thing that will fix the apathy that is at the core of the "educational crisis" in America.

Out of the Mouths of Babes

Someone on one of my lists just posted a link to this speach by a 12 year old girl at the UN Earth Summit in 1992. Her words are just as potent now as they were at the time, so I thought they deserve repeating. I have seen this clip several times, yet I am moved to tears every single time...perhaps moreso now because I know what she will say, but I also know that we have moved *backwards* from where we were when she first said these words.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5g8cmWZOX8Q&feature=related