We've hit the end of another month with only three more to go in what has been an interesting year. For me, September did not seem to go any faster or slower than any other month. It just was--and that's not a bad thing. Here are some of the highlights:

-People keep falling for phishing scam posts on Facebook (and probably other sites) despite the obvious (at least, to me) indicators.
-As I predicted, our healthcare premiums went up substantially again this year. A good deal of this increase was avoidable, but people acted in short-term greedy interests and are now paying the costs (literally) of those poor choices.
-Sockeye really likes that my desk is in the living room and frequently purrs her appreciation.
-We had a rare, violent thunderstorm pass through our area on the day of Homecoming.
-Rowen really showed his moves during the Homecoming dance. Connor seemed to enjoy the dance--if not as enthusiastically.
-Autumn fell upon us well before its equinox, but around its normal time.
-My grandchildren have enjoyed joining in with my exercise routine--at least, some of the time.
-I enjoyed playing through Hogwarts Legacy and am interested in playing a sequel should one come out.
-My grandchildren have had two minor, but expensive, emergency department trips that have raised my ire towards America's healthcare system even more.
-An service trip to Anchorage turned into a full family outing.
-My blood pressure was almost high enough to make it so I couldn't donate blood this month. Just thinking about it stresses me out.
-I put up the decorative autumn lights.
-I started replaying The Ghost of Tsushima with Japanese voice acting (and loving it) just before the sequel (which looks amazing!) was announced.
-We've had a bunch of moose visiting for their evening dining pleasure.
-I took my DDF (drama, debate, and forensics) team up to Chugiak for their first tournament of the year. They all seemed to have a great time (even Connor)!
-Topic Dump count: 3. Hmmm ... It felt like I relied on Topic Dump posts more often than I actually did. 

Today, just before I closed out the Japan trip, we filled the last seat on the bus. In celebration, I entered my passport information as well as the information for the younger two boys. We're only a little more than five months away. I guarantee that it will be more on my mind in these coming months.

Jesus tells his followers that if a part of their body is causing them to sin, they would be better off to remove that piece of their body and go through life lame or deformed than to be excluded from heaven because of it. At the time, the people in His culture were horrified of people with physical disfigurement. In making this statement, Jesus was warning that spiritual disfigurement is by far the worse condition.

People often take this to mean that they need to cut off bad influences in their lives--avoiding temptations. This is not a bad idea, but it's specifically not what Jesus is expressing. He was telling His followers to remove the parts of themselves that lead them to sin, not to go around rooting out the sins of others that might tempt them. He intentionally makes all the references internal to the body. This is a continuation of other teachings of His where He explicitly states that sinfulness comes from within, not from contamination from without. 

In this, modern "christian" policies and movements have strayed far from Christ's teachings. They push for a war with modern society rather than seeking a peace within it. They continually try to force others to change rather than deal with the sinful elements within themselves. In doing so, the truly become forces against true Christianity, turning people away from Christ through their misrepresentation. 

​I need to work on dealing with my own faults rather than spending that same time in condemnation of others.

The second day of our DDF tournament went really well for our competitors. All eleven of them managed to make it to the final round in at least one of their events, with one of our acting teams getting first place and one of our debaters getting first place in speaker points. We had a particularly strong showing in the debate categories--with Connor and his teammate earning second place out of fourteen teams--and our duet acting groups.

As an extra prize, first place finishers received random, goofy hats as an award. One of my team was given a unicorn hat with cords that allow a person to twitch the unicorn's ears. I could tell that the prize was highly valued as I kept seeing the ears twitch on our ride back to Soldotna. 

The overall mood as we left was upbeat. I am glad that they had such a good experience. However, I now desperately need the comfort of my own bed.

It’s been a long day, but a productive one. I brought eleven students with me to this first tournament of the season, and all of them seem to have had a great time. I spent the first round helping my new members get to their events. I was called up to judge for the second and third rounds. Thus, it was mostly during the final round that I had the chance to hear some of their stories. 

In general, they realize that they need to spend more time preparing. Almost all of them have talked about things that they want to improve for tomorrow, let alone next month. I’m hoping that means that they all plan to continue throughout the season. 

Right now, I need to get some sleep as we have another early and long day tomorrow. 

A momma moose and her two children have been visiting our lawn this week. This evening, they decided to eat their dinner shortly after we had eaten ours. Starbuck was the one to alert us to their presence. For some reason, River was content to quietly watch them this time. 

The moose had their even repast in our clover field near our pagoda/fire pit. Considering how much they seem to be enjoying it, I feel a little better about not having gotten around to mowing it lately. Granted, I'm willing to use almost anything to justify not mowing--if I can get away with it.

The grandchildren were all suitably impressed with our moose visitors. They seemed to have a great deal of questions about them. For me, I'm just glad that they were polite visitors and were happy with their meal.

My younger sons told me yesterday that Sucker Punch (the video game company) is making a sequel to their amazing samurai-esque game The Ghost of Tsushima for the PlayStation 5. I was surprised that the first mention I saw of the game online had to deal with controversy around their choice to make the protagonist a woman. Sucker Punch is being accused of being to "woke" with this move even though women warriors have certainly been a part of Japanese history--in fact, some battle site excavations have revealed that a much larger percentage of those in armor were women than historical records have suggested.

For me, I'm beyond excited for the game. Not only is The Ghost of Tsushima one of my all-time favorite games, it happens to be the game that I'm currently playing. I've justified this replay due to my upcoming trip to Japan. I've switched the spoken language in the game to Japanese--but I've kept the English subtitles. I don't understand most of what is said; however, I do know enough of the language to realize that at least some of the subtitles don't really match to what the characters are saying. It makes me wish that I knew the language better.

The game is absolutely beautiful, and its sequel looks to be even more so. I feel pity for those who cannot step past their misogynistic conditioning and realize that their is more to the world than the narrow views that they hold. It looks like they will be missing out on another fantastic game.

I have only one scripted show coming out still this year that I am interested in watching, Star Trek: Lower Decks. Usually, about this time, there are a number of shows on my radar that I'm eager to see, but this year has been pretty sparse. Agatha All Along is out right now, but it's not a facet of the MCU that I like that much. I also haven't seen anything about Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, which is coming out in December, that makes me interested in it either. 

I know that at least some of this is due to the earlier strikes for writers and actors. At a minimum, that pushed back Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Star Wars: Andor, and Daredevil: Born Again. This will certainly make next year an interesting one when it comes to those shows. However for this year, we've mostly held to watching M*A*S*H*--which has been more interesting this time around as Peter had never really watched it before. We did take a brief foray into the 17th season of Taskmaster (which was great!), but those ten episodes have come and gone. 

At least The Great British Bake Off is coming out soon. 

Why is it that some of our best ideas come to us when we have no means to write them down? As I tell my students, "We write to remember." That writing is what allows us to converse with people who are not present in the moment that we are writing--including our future selves. Unfortunately, we do not always have available the tools needed to record our thoughts.

For me, the primary areas where I find myself having unrecorded ideas are when I'm in the shower, when I'm driving, and when I'm mowing the lawn. It's almost as through the ideas are hiding out, waiting to pop out at a time when I am incapable of recording them. More likely, it is during those times that my mind is dealing with a rather low-energy task (thought-wise) and has the extra processing power available to come up with unique and sometimes even interesting ideas. 

I'm not saying that I've come up with solutions to the world's major problems during those times. I would say that a few times that I have tried to have the ideas recorded (often by asking Siri to take a note for me) have ended up with either a garbled message or an idea that was not nearly as interesting as I originally thought that it was. Perhaps it's the lack of tools to record these sorts of ideas that makes me think that the ideas are better than they actually are.

We won't know; I haven't been able to write them down.

In today's Gospel, Jesus tells his disciples that He will be handed over to be killed but will rise again after three days. The Gospel then says, "But they did not understand the saying, and they were afraid to question Him." Jesus' disciples had been so used to Him speaking in parables that they couldn't understand that they just figured this was another one of them. Rather than look foolish, they chose to not ask Him what He meant--the irony being that He meant precisely what He had said.

I've been working at asking more questions when I don't know what someone is talking about. In a few cases, it has turned out that it was something that I should have known about before but had forgotten. In some others, my assumptions about what was being talked about turned out to be correct. However, there have been many times that I truly learned something that I didn't understand or that I didn't continue believing the original misconception that I had. 

Unfortunately, more often, I find myself acting like the disciples--being afraid to ask what someone meant out of concern of looking foolish (even if looking foolish is one of my special traits). Meanwhile, people often speak the truth out in the open when they know that no one will believe them. Jesus was making certain that what happened to Him already had an explanation (even if He did have to come back and spell it out for them). This is true for the warning signs that people give to those they love that something is wrong. It's important that we ask questions in the present rather than deal with regrets in the future.

[Note: the following post is my own and is not representative of the views of my school, my district, or my union despite my positions in them--even if it should be]
The biggest issue with education is funding. Without proper funding (which public education has not had since the 80s--and even then it depended on where a person lived), schools cannot hire (let alone retain) highly qualified educators in every position, they have to overload and overwork those undercompensated educators, they cannot provide the healthcare needed to keep those overloaded, overworked, and undercompensated educators healthy and at work, they cannot hire or retain the substitute teachers needed to come in when those overloaded, overworked, and undercompensated educators become ill, they cannot provide the resources needed for students to properly learn, they cannot keep up with the repairs (let alone improvements) to their facilities, and they thus cannot meet the needs of their students--a growing number of whom are not receiving the nourishment, knowledge, or care at home (if they have one) that they need. Surprisingly, schools are still managing to educate students and prepare them for the rapidly changing world that we live in, yet they are continually under attack by meddling mouthpieces who are only looking to keep people angry (and undereducated) enough to see how much wealth has been stolen by the uber-healthy.

We're in a negotiation year which means that the educational staff, district office, and school board will be pitted against one another despite all of them being devoted to improving the lives and education of our students. Because of the state of Alaska's refusal to increase the base student allocation for over a decade, all of the above problems have amplified the issues of rising costs due to inflation, America's broken healthcare system, and Alaska's broken retirement system for public employees. Unfortunately, I can already tell that too much of our energy will be spent fighting one another when the real culprits are wasting time, money, and effort in Juneau. Worse, some of the worst abusers have a solid chance of taking office, riding on the lies and disinformation that they spread without remorse or conscience. 

Our best hope lies in this coming election. However, I'm of the mind that--should the governor and legislators continue to not properly fund (let alone support) education--educators in Alaska should take the state government to court for the intentional sabotage of our children's futures. In fact, there are some legislators (and members of the executive branch) who should be personally charged, fined, and even arrested for their criminal neglect of Alaska's students.

... I might be a little riled.

Yep. I'm already here again. Rowen's been playing Ghost of Tsushima on the main TV that I can see in front of me, and I am again just astounded at how beautiful and entertaining the game is. Unfortunately, it has distracted me enough that I cannot seem to focus my thoughts to write anything of value (even regarding that game) at the moment. Thus, here are some of the possibilities that I have decided not to write about.

-Please stop sharing memes that have "Read more" buttons above them. I'm seeing people continuing to share posts that can contain dangerous malware despite such an obvious sign.
-People crave validation, and we give it all too rarely to one another. It's easier to point out faults (like the meme issue above) than to reassure someone that they have done well.
-Sixteenth birthdays are a huge deal in a person's life when they reach it. It seems like such a milestone at that point in life. As I often teach sophomores, I regularly have the pleasure of handing a "Happy birthday!" note to people when they reach that important age (I long ago learned that the Happy Birthday Song was significantly less appreciated than a quiet acknowledgement of the birthday). 
-I'm glad that Facebook and PowerSchool give me reminders about people's birthdays.
-I have had a growing concern that I might be wishing happy birthday on social media to people whom had passed away without me knowing--or remembering.
-Raising tariffs, cutting taxes (especially for the wealthy), and deporting immigrants are all proven ways to make inflation rise. Unfortunately, easily deceived people are being told the opposite.
-Everyone's vote counts the same in the region that they live--no matter how gullible the people casting them might be.
-I hate missing days of exercise--even if what I did instead was completely worthwhile.
-I don't like the title "Topic Dump."

I'm feel quite blessed that I've been able to get back into playing Dungeons and Dragons. Even though I was not as prepared as I should have been for today's session, I still had a great deal of fun running it. I didn't have the energy to fully get into the role-playing fact-finding section, but the action/adventure portions seemed to flow very well--even if one of them was called (appropriately) a cut-scene sequence [a flaming ship snapped its tether and crashed into the cliff that they were climbing down, exploding soon after].

Basically, it's good to sit around, joke, laugh, and have fun with a group of interesting and entertaining people. We try to meet a couple of times a month, but we had a bit of a gap since our last session. Thus it was even more enjoyable to finally get together. I'm looking forward to doing so again in a couple of weeks.

At present there are 41 people traveling with me to Japan during the coming spring break. Our travel specialist said that there are only 44 seats on the tour buses in Japan (six fewer seats than my the buses in Rome and Athens. One of those seats must be reserved for the tour director. I get one of them as well. That leaves only one seat remaining.

I had originally thought that we would be trying to fill two buses. However, when we had ten seats open at the beginning of school (and especially considering the no-show meeting at the end of last school year), I was concerned that I would have to pay a penalty for making my tour private (which I had to do because of the adjustments I requested). Thankfully, we passed that line five passengers ago, and have still been filling up spots these past two weeks (my cut-off date is the end of this month). I might have to take down my signs sooner than I expected.

This is a trip that I have wanted to take for all of my adult life. I'm glad that I'm getting this chance to share it with so many other people. We're less than six months away at this point. I try not to wish away any moments of my life, but I am really looking forward to this coming March!