O Just one of those days
PAGE A10 - THE POSEY COUNTY NEWS A T M B B R
When was the last time you had “one of those daysâ€?? You know the ones‌one little thing happens that you didn’t plan for and it seems that every other little thing doesn’t quite go as you had hoped. While most often the issues add up to a minor annoyance, at the time they happen, well‌you know! Thursday was one of those days for me. Storms were predicted for the day. I’m a bit of a weather geek – geek being deďŹ ned as an enthusiast in an activity – so I was aware of the possibilities of the day and was prepared for them. I had my umbrella at the ready (didn’t do much good, though, as you will remember there was a bit of a breeze this particular day!), my calendar for work, my water bottle (reďŹ llable, of course), my purse (of course!), and the materials for the Junior Achievement class I was teaching that morning at Farmersville School. I left a few minutes early so as to check phone messages and email at my oďŹƒce since I would be gone for about an hour to teach said class. Good, Beth, plan ahead. Ninety-nine point nine percent of the time I have my set of oďŹƒce keys and my cars keys in my hand before exiting my car so as to not lock my keys in said car. This day, for reasons unknown to my poor little self, I dropped my keys in my purse. I thought. Just as I closed the car door, I glanced back at the front seat of my car. And there, as pretty as you please, lay my car keys. Uh oh. Since I did have oďŹƒce keys properly clenched in my ďŹ ngers, I was able to unlock that door and drop my purse, coat, calendar, and water bottle on the oor near my desk. Then I ďŹ shed my cell phone out of my purse and called Laura to see if she could pick me up and take me back to my house to get the spare set of car keys. Next uh oh. My house keys are locked in my car. OK, Laura, please bring your key to my house with
you. No problem, Mom, see you in a few. Her key ďŹ ts the door in my laundry room. I rarely use the door, except on really nice days when I open the door to let the sun shine in. When this happens, I lock the storm door. And usually remember to unlock the storm door, just in case I lock myself out of the house and need to borrow Laura’s key. Usually. Guess what – those storm door locks do exactly what they are supposed to do. Sigh‌Laura’s key won’t work. Back to her waiting van to call son John. John is a man of few words and occasionally doesn’t respond immediately when I text or call him. Please, please, please‌since I texted him during work hours, I think he realized this might be important. He has a key to the front door of my house. And, yes, he had the key with him, along with about a half-dozen other keys. Cue back to my taxi service‌and we head o to the junior high to pick up the key from the front oďŹƒce. Back to my house. YES! The sixth key ďŹ ts and I’m in the house. Luckily, the spare car key is exactly where I put it, so I grabbed it, locked the front door of my house, got back in the van, and we headed back to the junior high to take back the keys, since some of them are, I believe, job related. Don’t want to be responsible for losing his keys!!! Back to my oďŹƒce, my car, my keys, and the rest of the day. Thank you, Laura!!!! And Presley, too, who was too busy watching a movie in the van to give more than a cursory wave at Nana that morning. I knew the storms were to arrive late morning and early afternoon. No problem, I thought, I’ll be back in my oďŹƒce before they hit. Sure, right, OK. The ďŹ fth graders in Mrs. Kuhn’s class are great! They are attentive, smart kids who take part in the activities and answer questions when I am presenting the Junior Achievement materials. This morning was no dierent in that aspect. Then, just as I was wrapping up the discussion, I heard, I thought, a siren. I looked at Mrs. Kuhn and asked if she heard it, too. And
at that moment, Dr. Johns (building principal) announced on the intercom that we were under a tornado warning and that everyone was to move quickly to their safe place in the building. Kudos to the MSD of Mt. Vernon for all the safety training provided to sta and administrators. They and the students knew exactly what to do when they arrived at their safe locations. The class I was visiting went to the restroom (center of the building, no windows). I followed them and watched them get on the oor and cover their heads as they had been taught to do in the case of such emergencies. They were quiet and paid attention to what teachers and sta shared, as much as they could, to the occasional question asked by a student. We stayed in the safe place about half an hour, listening to the rain pounding on the roof. While some of the students were nervous, the teachers were great at alleviating their fears. When Dr. Johns announced that the warning
Is it possible to have a “newâ€? B D . G news story? We now have a colM lege admission’s scandal. Breaking stories of wealth and inuence traded for admission to some of the nation’s most prestigious colleges are just now unfolding. Allegedly Hollywood stars to corporate CEOs are being named for spending hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars to obtain a son’s or daughter’s admission to some of America’s most prestigious universities. Some students have reportedly received athletic team and even academic recognition based on ďŹ nancial inuence. There will be more to come from this story. “Whatever it takes to get ahead,â€? is the philosophy of a segment of our culture. Sometimes this is seen on the Interstate when one motorist endangers hundreds of other
drivers by driving a hundred miles per her while weaving in and out of traďŹƒc. Where does this put him and all the interstate drivers? In a very dangerous setting. The reckless driver takes on the attitude, “To heck with the world. The interstate is all about me.â€? Too often this selďŹ sh attitude maims and kills others. Criminals have adopted this philosophy. Their attitude is, “Why work hard? Just rob a store or a bank?â€? This attitude hurts others and eventually lands the criminal in jail. Job seekers who pad their resumes with false degrees and bogus glorious achievements have to live in fear that someone will check out their credentials. Their scam hurts the employer because they aren’t really as competent as they profess and other employees and potential other real candidates are hurt by competing with liars. The attitude trickles down to the used car dealer who is not forthcoming about what is really wrong with the
Guest Column: Jonathan Weinzapfel We have all heard the chatter: Our nation is more divided than ever, with urban and rural interests pitted against each other. But is it? Is it more divided than during the Vietnam War? More splintered than during the height of the Ku Klux Klan? More wounded than during the Civil War, when the ďŹ ght over slavery had Americans killing each other by the hundreds of thousands? Over the next two years, Indiana Humanities is inviting Hoosiers to explore Indiana’s urban-rural dynamic through a two-year initiative called INseparable. Our aim as a neutral convener is to oer programming that will spark conversations about the ways the futures of urban, rural and suburban Hoosiers are linked, and what might be preventing us from working together. The conclusion drawn from the nearconstant polling, media commentary, and academic analysis of the past two years is that America is culturally divided by its geography. A Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation poll in 2017 found that nearly 7 in 10 rural residents believe
car you are buying or the maid who ďŹ nds a way to steal something every time he or she cleans a room or someone’s house. Can you imagine a high school graduate being placed on an athletic team who has never played the sport before? All for money? What is life really going to be like for that kid when the practice session starts? What happens when the college professor starts grading papers at Yale for the kid who got accepted based on falsiďŹ ed information but can’t write a paper or read see Spot run? Is someone going to keep the money owing for the student to receive passing grades? What happens when the student is passed through graduation? How long will he or she remain employed? Being a celebrity and big money will obviously get you somewhere. Falsifying information and bribing people may move you further along the way. Eventually the way is a dead end if not a fast track to jail.
Letters to the Editor
Indiana’s urban rural dynamic: Are we really divided?
B J J R
had ended, students, sta and teachers moved back to the classrooms to pick up the normal activities of their day. At this point, I headed back to my oďŹƒce. I later learned that the schools had moved students to safe places two more times that day. What a day – for everyone! Luckily, the weather, while scary, didn’t develop into anything serious in our area that day. And my ďŹ asco with the keys only added an annoyance level to a day that, in addition to the class at Farmersville, had other meetings requiring my attendance. It’s all in the way you react to what happens in your day, isn’t it? There have been times when locking keys in my car might have caused me to be short-tempered all day long. Being with the students at the school in a tense situation put the situation with the keys in perspective that day. A locked door? Small potatoes. Sheltering to potentially save lives? That, friends, is all that matters.
College Admissions Scam - Fast track to Jail?
M V
G G
MARCH 19, 2019
their values dier from those who live in big cities, with many expressing fear that Christianity is under siege and that government cares most about helping urban dwellers. These feelings most frequently come to the fore through politics. But we don’t want to go there. There’s been enough of that. We want to focus on real things happening to real humans in our shared experience as Hoosiers. We want to encourage people to talk to each other rather than at each other. We want to use literature, history, poetry, philosophy and related disciplines to promote understanding and empathy across boundaries. No matter where Hoosiers live, we share some common experiences. When schools face potential closure or consolidation in a big city or a tiny farm town, the communities feel the same pain and possible loss of identity, no matter the setting. When the scourge of opioid addiction ravages entire families, it hurts regardless of whether it happens in the urban core or in seemingly pastoral Scott County. And when environmental troubles bubble up, it is just as concerning if the potential source is an old factory in a large industrial park or in a small town.
Kick Butts Day’ will combat youth tobacco use
In 2019 and 2020, Indiana Humanities will oer programming to encourage Hoosiers to search for that common ground and explore where it makes sense to work together. We’ll oer INconversation book tours, Chew on This dinner parties, a speakers bureau oering discussions on related topics, a statewide read of the book “The Year We Left Homeâ€? by Jean Thompson, a poster on Indiana’s changing demographics to share with classrooms across the state, a reading challenge for K-12 students and more. I’m particularly excited that Indiana Humanities will bring a Smithsoniancurated exhibit on changes in rural America to Historic New Harmony in May of 2020. The exhibit also will make stops in Salem, Vernon, Dillsboro, North Manchester and Bristol. In the meantime, join us on the journey as we examine Indiana’s urbanrural dynamic, encouraging Hoosiers to explore how they relate to each other across boundaries and to consider what it will take to indeed be inseparable, in all the ways that matter. Find out how you can get involved in one of our conversations or activities by visiting www.indianahumanities.org/ inseparable.
Since when was nicotine part of the curriculum? Classes, sports/music practices, college applications, social events, family obligations — high school students have enough on their plates. But now they have to deal with Juul? Imagine how hard it is to avoid e-cigarettes when 1 in 5 of their friends is using them. Simply walking into the bathroom—excuse me, the Juul room—is like walking into a Neapolitan haze of vape avors. On March 20, students across the country are taking a stand to say enough to this e-cigarette epidemic. Thousands of students across the country participating in Kick Butts Day, a national day of youth advocacy sponsored by the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, will be marching at the capital in Washington, D.C. to ask lawmakers to ban avored tobacco products. There are well over 15,000 avors of e-cigarettes and ci-
gars, and studies show that avors play a major role in tricking youth into using tobacco products — 81 percent of youth e-cigarette users started with a avored product. Tobacco and e-cigarette companies know exactly what they are doing. They see kids as their “replacement smokers,â€? and use avors to improve the taste, reduce the harshness and make their products more appealing to young beginners. Before kids realize it, they have a lifelong addiction. This has been the story for 3.6 million youth who now use e-cigarettes. It’s time for U.S. and state lawmakers to ban avored tobacco products to stop and reverse this epidemic. We hope they will stand with us on Kick Butts Day as we ďŹ ght for the ďŹ rst tobaccofree generation. Courtney Horning Smokefree Communities
The old college try
Mary Tyler Moore’s theme song advised: “Love is all around, no need to fake it. You can have the town, why don’t you take it? You’re gonna make it after all How will you make it on your own?â€? The Mary Tyler Moore show ďŹ rst aired September 19, 1970. Mary’s character was a single woman competing against the odds. She triumphed with grit, hard work and good character. Mary saw herself as America saw itself before the days of instant success achieved via money and proximity to power. The show’s message was clear and believable; work hard, do right, be honest, and success will inevitably follow. The antithesis of this infallible formula was the show’s character of Ted Baxter who invariably failed because he sought fame and acclaim through hook and crook, much as did the people and the institutions shamelessly enmeshed in the current fraudulent attempts to have unqualiďŹ ed students admitted to some colleges. Mary Tyler Moore only lasted until March 19, 1977. Perhaps the Viet Nam War and Watergate were too much for the message of high hopes and ethical behavior to overcome. Much the M E
T B news@poseycountynews.com
same may be true of the exhortation to students and student athletes to work hard and play by the rules if they wished to be accepted to colleges such as Yale, Texas, U.S.C., Stanford, Georgetown and several others. America’s self-image as a country where anything is possible by putting one’s shoulder to the wheel and one’s nose to the grindstone suered a wet blanket of reality when it came out that all one needed to do to be a successful applicant to some universities was to have wealthy and unscrupulous parents. The Mary Tyler Moore message of honesty and devotion was transformed by some parents to: You are not good enough on your own; Hard work is for suckers; Lies and bribes are the way to succeed; It is more important to get into a university than to learn something while you are there; and, It is more important for your parents’ friends to be impressed by which school you get in than by your accomplishments. The real danger is not that some people game the system, but that the system has produced or is still producing a generation, or generations, many of whom fervently believe dishonesty in the pursuit of their goals is preferable to risking not achieving those goals. For more Gavel Gamut articles go to www.jamesmredwine.com 0r “Likeâ€? us on Facebook at JPegRanchBooks&Knitting. S W C M T B sports@poseycountynews.com
O M
S D Ph. 812-682-3950 • PO Box 397 • New Harmony, IN 47631 Fx. 812-682-3944 • www.PoseyCountyNews.com
oďŹƒce@poseycountynews.com
P / E
D P
B C P
dpearce263@poseycountynews.com
Pocobooks@aol.com
W / R
L G W / R
P R V D G R J P
The Posey County News - USPS 439500 is published weekly for $45 in-state and $50 out-of-state by Pearmor Publishing LLC, PO Box 397, New Harmony, IN 47631. Periodicals postage paid at Mount Vernon, Indiana Publisher: Dave Pearce Postmaster: Shawn Medley Send address changes to: The Posey County News, PO Box 397, New Harmony, IN 47631