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CLIMBING VINE STUFF! HAS MOVED.
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http://www.heroic-climbingvinestuff.wordpress.com
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The Literate One The Uphill Downhill Climb Edition.
Volume 7, Edition 1. January 2023.
When Life Throws Curved Balls, Get a Larger Catcher's Mitt.
Op-Ed Editorial by John E. Staff Editor.
For some strange and annoying reasons, events locally that I normally would have taken for granted in terms of personal scheduling, have been delayed, stunted, halted, frozen or otherwise interfered with. In my own case I'm experiencing extended delays of one sort or another, and that includes paying higher than normal prices for food and gasoline, electricity and dealing health-wise with the increasingly extreme weather mentioned last month in December's edition. Although I have lived through many winter seasons locally, I have never experienced the frustrating conditions of this last year, namely, rainy, blizzard-like and flooding conditions, local socially trending interpersonal life upheavals caused by international news reports, maybe, and moving around from place to place just to manage the house while ingesting pill after pill of over-the-counter flu and pain medications. I might be simply getting old however, but I do notice the stress in my own body more these days, and seek to alleviate the day-to-day abrupt left and right turns that cause some forms of periodic havoc in my day-to-day-life and socially, while keeping my wits about me.
So when I speak of "getting a larger mitt" in terms of dealing with my new, often overwhelming problem-solving and way-of-life life plans, I really mean spending less for more and calculating new bargain budget shopping for items that I'll need in 2023, like robot vacuum cleaners, robot mops, automatic disinfecting fan assemblies and perhaps even a larger medicine cabinet in my bathroom! Not to mention new body devices such as a work-related back brace, shoulder harness, new contact lenses, and multi-carbohydrate frozen prepped foods that are less expensive than the raw stuff that I am running out of time to cook, etc. etc. The "larger mitt" is a way of saying to myself "get larger oversight about what you are doing to sustain yourself and your loved ones in life and improve that as much as you can".
No, I admit, I don't like some of the needed and necessary changes in my own life that I'm forcing myself to adapt to because I becoming older. But I also need sleep! And I need to reserve my energy and finances for my health, sanity and energy needs at work and also at home, not to mention time off activities like.....doing laundry, an occassional trip to the mountains or the ocean, or budgeting money for computer stuff that needs maintaining for work-related purposes at home. Throw in car issues and home maintenance and I really have my hands full, so I thank God through Our Lord Jesus Christ that some people out there who are waaaayyyy more techno-savvy and creative than I ever could be have developed computers and programs - and robots - that can accommodate my need to stay busy even while I sleep, if that makes any sense.
Here's a toast then, to the New Year 2023 in the 21st century, and all of the new ways of doing things that make life easier, if not always more interesting for we fragile human types and our beloved children and pets! May we stay in reasonably good overall health and keep moving along productively and safely in the coming new year.
(And I'm making sure to bless our helpful computer machine friends, without which and whom I could never have published this freaky website at this way-out-there sort of online bookstore!)
![CVS Books Elder Care Caring for your Aging Parents NIBM 12.99.jpg](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/702aac_b3202770b342453fa5d4fc52cb0985c4~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_260,h_335,al_c,q_80,enc_auto/CVS%20Books%20Elder%20Care%20Caring%20for%20your%20Aging%20Parents%20NIBM%2012_99.jpg)
Ukraine, Russia and China: An Evolving Academic Perspective for Early Learning Developments in Childhood.
Op-ed by John E. Staff Editor.
What a tragic and lethal mess! That would at present and currently describe early childhood development ideology and protocols in several subjects of early learning here in the West, all because of the Russia-Ukraine War. Ever since Russia invaded Ukraine, and bombed civilian schools, hospitals, residence apartments and government buildings, killing thousands of non-combatant civilians in Ukraine, a serious question has to be asked: "How are teachers supposed to incorporate lesson planning along the lines of ethnic conflicts involving Russians and Ukrainans when most of the world knows that Russia is responsible for the invasion and Ukraine is not an easy culture or language to translate into the West?"
For as long as I can remember as a trained, educated and certified schoolteacher, Russian culture, language and systems of social and interpersonal developments involving Russian immigrants and ethnic peoples emigrating to and being educated in the West have been the main courses of academic study, opportunity and technical practice, and not Ukrainian, or for that matter, any other post-Soviet-bloc satellite nationality after 1991. But, how were academic people in the recent past supposed to predict that someone like Putin would come along and start to imperialize Russian government perspectives, starting wars that could ultimately lead to more invasions past Chechnya, Georgia and Crimea-Ukraine anyway? Were we in the West ready for the wars, when previous to the invasions, Putin was recorded several times as stating publicly "...no invasion of Ukraine is being planned..." or words to that effect? Is more coming along the way? Is it even possible to predict Russia's next military moves in light of all of the above mentioned?
His apparent lack of international and social as well as contemprary world political vision and apparently clear judgments about invading Ukraine were stymied and ultimately interfered with, in a deadly way, by the immediate armed responses by Ukrainian military and security forces and their arming by Western NATO nations, including billions of USD, high-value supply and humanitarian assistance. Russian leadership warned the West that they would judge the U.S. and NATO defense of Ukraine to be a proxy war conducted against Russia, but the Western world interprets that war supply as defense of a smaller nation that was invaded by Russia-simply that-and that Ukraine was in immediate need of adequate or better defensive armament and financial aid. To date, there have been only a few attacks militarily, ostensibly by Ukrainian forces but never admitted to, against Russian military targets just across the Ukrainian Russian borderlines. Most of the attacks have been critical in disabling Russia's ability to invade nearby Ukrainian defenses as a potentially pre-emptive move against Russian forces to prevent future armed and air attacks against Ukraine.
In the meantime, critical decisions need to be made by experienced schoolteachers about what to prioritize in the cases of transformative education styles for early learning, involving notably Chinese, Russian and Ukrainian students under age 5 and also patterns of socialization involving those particular children. I opine that measures of personality and behavior must be assessed in these children and background checks to protect security, national and social identity and importantly, pre-existing and familial relationships and established friendships between the said groups involved, in order to not create a catastrophic world future filled with warlike themes of aggressions and subdivisions of the human race. As well as assumptions, guesses and unskilled non-trained formats of "new education," any new paradigm of early learning involving these nationalities may or would not only inhibit normal learning development in said young people, but sever familiar ways of cognitions and thought patterns that are natural for those/these children. The predictable and resulting educational vectors in multiple layers of social stigmatizations, bullying, stunting of natural emotional, cognitive and mental and also physical developments and personal and interpersonal capabilities in such children, would potentially create more childhood development problems and issues -and consequentially amongst more children from various backgrounds, as they grow.
I hope and pray that the future of this world can accommodate successfully any positive-if any-cease-fire and a complete ending to this current war. It is slowly becoming a war of attrition, meaning that the forces are trying to force each other to drop out and surrender to the other side, which would seem obviously impossible to any knowledgable observer. Ukraine isn't Russia and Russia isn't Ukraine, geo-poltically, in the year 2023, and hasn't been officially since 1991.
It is clear that war is hell. But for the sake of growing children all around the Earth, it is again my sincere hope and prayer that much, much more can be done to cease-fire and end this regional conflict in order to repair the civil and geopolitical damage as well as the international damage that has been done by Putin's war against and assumptions about Ukraine. His was, in the final analysis, a complete error of judgment and wholly flawed in his apparent assumptions not only of Ukrainian passivity, but mainly of Russian superiority in the practices of international law and clear decsion-making in the face of such a large population of Russian citizens and Ukrainian nationals and victims of Russian leadership's terrorism and war.
U.S.News.
Washington D.C.
(Link to AP News for educational purposes only. TLO Staff Editor John E.).
New York.
New Year's Eve Celebration Packs Times Square.
California.
California Colleges and Universities At Present Offer Higher Education Language Classes and Majors and Undergraduate Student Curriculums for Both Russian and Ukranian Languages 2023.
California Governor Proclaims State of Emergency.
The CA State Governor proclaimed a State of Emergency January 4, due to the destructive effects of the week's storm and blizzard activities. All throughout the State, rain, flooding and whiteout snow conditions have damaged roadways, caused power outages and flooded entire cities leading to evacuations of many areas.
The emergency is ongoing and is caused by the new forms of "atmospheric river" aka "bomb cyclone" weather conditions that are related to the cumulative effects of El Nino and La Nina storm activities. The overall effects carry excess armospheric rivers of moisture evaporated from the Pacific Ocean and bring them rapidly onshore in a wide swath of circular and convective storm activities causing severe weather events along coastal and some inland areas.
Freezing Conditions and Flash Flooding Severly Affect Travel and Mass Transit in Northern California After Atmospheric River Conditions Manifest Extreme Weather Conditions.
Midwest.
Heavy Snow Blankets Cities from New York to Denver. Emergency Declarations as Winter Weather Travels its Due Courses.
Alabama.
Alabama Experiences Deadly and Destructive Tornado, Flooding.
![CVS Books Caring for the Sick and Elderly A Parish Guide. M. Roccapriore MPF HBJ 15.00.jpg](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/702aac_7af2ded2a79145dabfa1e295d9f314f3~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_176,h_232,al_c,q_80,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_auto/CVS%20Books%20Caring%20for%20the%20Sick%20and%20Elderly%20A%20Parish%20Guide_%20M_%20Roccapriore%20MPF%20HBJ%2015_00.jpg)
International News.
Israel.
Deadly Synagogue Shooting Around Jerusalem.
(Link to AP News for educational purposes only. TLO Staff Editor John E.).
42 people were arrested after an assumed Palestinian man from East Jerusalem was accused of killing 7 people who were exiting a synagogue after praying on the Sabbath near Jerusalem during a Shoah (Holocaust) related event.
The event, named "The International Holocaust Remembrance Day" marks the Holocaust of WWII in which over 6 million Jewish and many other people from Europe were sent to Nazi concentration camps and killed by Hitler's forces.
This news follows the 2022 admission of the Israeli Defense Forces' IDF killing of a teenage girl during a raid in the West Bank in December, 2022. Previously, a well-known and popular female Palestinian West Bank investigative reporter was killed while accompanying IDF soldiers during a house raid in the West Bank in May 2022, who met up with armed Palestinian resistance locally. The IDF was accused of, and later admitted to the high possibility that one of their soldiers was involved in killing the reporter with a bullet to the head while engaging Palestinan fighters defending homes during the IDF raid.
AP News Links for educational purposes follow:
1) https://apnews.com/article/politics-west-bank-middle-east-israel-8df6c999627efcef2fe0ca2b401e7a2c
New Zealand.
To be replaced by NZ Education Minister.
(Link to AP News for educational purposes only. TLO Staff Editor John E.).
Europe.
Questions Arise as to Fatal Ukrainian Helicopter Crash Near Kiev.
(Link to AP News for educational purposes only. TLO Staff Editor John E.).
Spain
Disturbing Effigy of Popular Brazilian Soccer Player Hung Near Bridge Near Madrid.
(Link to Al Jazeera News for educational purposes only. TLO Staff Editor John E.).
Brazilian Soccer Player Accused of Sexual Abuse Against Barcelona Woman.
https://apnews.com/article/sports-soccer-dani-alves-c37aa7bb2ca6a9d9950d9541592c7d65
(Link to AP News for educational purposes only. TLO Staff Editor John E.).
Latin America.
Brazil.
Brazilian Protesters Emerge from Latest Election Results.
Peru.
Pope Asks for Peace Talks in Peru.
(Link to AP News for educational purposes only. TLO Staff Editor John E.).
New Protests Signify Change in Attitudes Among Peru's Younger Generations.
Russia.
(AP News link 2023).
Russian President Putin has declared a 36- hour unilateral ceasefire which reportedly Kyiv authorities are not interested in. The declaration also involved in separate reports that Putin wants Ukraine to accept that Eastern Ukraine is a part of Russian territory.
Who the ceasefire applies to is also in question. In a unilateral ceasefire, only one side agrees to stop fighting. In this particular case, it is assumed that the ceasefire applies only to Russian fighters and troops. But that is only an assumption, and more developments are coming through international news reports at present.
Europe.
Europe Encountering Unusual Heatwave in Winter 2023.
European nations are experiencing an unexpected heatwave originating from warm African air rising through to the north. Temperatures in the UK and Spain have prompted their citizens to bathe in the winter waters of the Atlantic Ocean as London and Bilbao endured 16-20 C weather patterns.
In Alpine nations, Switzerland and Germany have reported on a surprising lack of new snowfall and rapid snow and glacier melting. Affecting european ski resorts and creating new public questions about whether or not global warming is responsible, the heatwave is a serious cause for concern for meteorologists andEarth scientists as last summer produced unusually high temperatures in 2022 as well. This new series of weather events could be a developing cyclical Earth pattern, and it should be noted that the heating is happening despite new and older European greenhouse gas emissions controls laws and societal transitions to large-scale EV vehicle usage.
Vatican City.
Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy Plans to Implement Ukrainian Laws Limiting Unregistered Media Reporting.
Ukrainian leaders have praised the recent moderate weather, stating publicly that the warmer northern european weather conditions are helping their afflicted people to survive the cold season and that the weather was "on their side" as they defend their nation from Russian invading and occupying troops. Their international conflict has lasted since February of 2022.
TLO note: TLO will no longer be reporting about events surrounding the Ukrainian conflict in depth. For applicable updated news and information from the U.S. concerning Ukraine, please contact the State Department of the United States at:
for updated contact and news and travel information about Ukraine.
Former Roman Catholic Pope Benedict XVI Dies Age 95.
Ukraine.
Russians Continue Multi-Missile Shellings of Kiev and Energy Grids.