Yellow and blue and sunflowers too

 

On July 7th I hadn’t taken any plant pictures for two weeks so I headed out to see if I still remembered how to do that. In particular I went looking for sunflowers, Helianthus annuus, whose time to flourish has been for the last month and more. After spotting groups of sunflowers in plenty of places as I drove around, I finally stopped to portray some on the slopes of the pond at Strathaven Dr. near the Austin–Pflugerville border. Though most of my pictures caught an isolated sunflower, I chose to show this unconventional view with a few in the background that let me put the main one off-center.

 

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The long suspension of in-person learning at many elementary and secondary schools during the pandemic left students on average below even their already abysmal low from before 2020. Given that crisis in learning, you might think the National Education Association (NEA), the country’s largest teachers union, would be putting its greatest effort into raising American students’ level of knowledge. You might think that, but you’d be wrong. Its prime energies are going toward woke indoctrination and refuting science. As the Daily Mail reported on July 7th:

The National Education Association has proposed changing the word ‘mother’ to ‘birthing parent’ in its union contracts to be more inclusive to the LGBTQ community.

The teachers union claimed the proposed resolution would change the language used in contracts to be a more ‘inclusive reflection’ of all educators’ families.

Furious mothers slammed the proposal, calling the union a ‘K-12 Cartel’ that is ‘holding parents and children hostage’ to its woke agenda.

Fortunately that resolution, which also called for changing ‘father’ to ‘non-birthing parent,’ didn’t pass, but the fact that it was even proposed shows you the priorities of America’s educational establishment.

  

© 2022 Steven Schwartzman