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I?m not much of a poetry guy but I?m real big on kids learning how to train and operate their mind and body and have confidence in themselves and learning how to train their memory is useful not only in poetry but in sports and nearly everything else.

Skiing deep powder requires that you pick out and memorize the path you want to take down the mountain because after you start you?re skiing blind with the snow going over your head, it?s like skiing on a cloud.

Sometimes racing a slalom the freezing fog blows through, covers your goggles and blinds you and you have to keep going with the confidence that you memorized the course perfectly, so one mistake in that memory can make you fall.

Memorizing poetry is maybe the easiest way for all kids to learn how to train their brains to memorize and gain that confidence so I?m all for it.

posted 5 years, 2 months ago
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I like that more things are being shown to be of value but I also see a real danger in financializing them. The seemingly insatiable demand for more and more wealth and power makes it inevitable that some people and corporations will want to "privatize" everything and that of course would include the pollinators you study.

Monsanto and their "Roundup-Ready" genetic engineering is an example to be studied and their methods and results ought be fought and prevented in areas like yours.

I think it would be better that things currently in the Public Commons be shown to have value and that Privateers be forbidden to harm them in any way.

posted 5 years, 2 months ago
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I think of GDP as a metric used by the superwealthy to measure how efficiently wealth is redistributed from the lower classes upwards to the those at the top. It shows what they value, property, and what they consider to have no value, human beings, and so it is very much a traditional Conservative idea.

I look at two pages in the Conservative The Bend Bulletin newspaper to demonstrate that, the Stocks and Bonds and the page requesting Volunteers. The stocks page values property and the volunteers page shows that human beings are considered to be of no value and so are left to their own devices.

I like that you guys are considering other values, including human beings but that is very Progressive and will be fought hard by Conservatives.

posted 5 years, 2 months ago
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I'd point out that under Oregon and Federal Law it is illegal to hunt non-game birds and illegal to hunt squirrels and other small game out of season and usually illegal to hunt within city limits and I would argue that since domestic cats are natural born predators, any cat owner who allows their cat outside without a leash is committing some or all of those crimes.

I wonder if one could catch such a cat, read the collar and then request that the appropriate police charge the cat owner with one or both of those crimes.

posted 5 years, 2 months ago
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Some of us are advocating for cat leash laws, so I ask that you consider a leash, which would let you take your cat outside safely. That would help prevent unplanned pregnancies as well as protecting native birdlife and those of us who garden would appreciate not grabbing cat poops while getting our hands in the dirt.

posted 5 years, 2 months ago
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Good point.

Traditionally the wealthy and powerful have used up and destroyed their local environment and just moved on to somewhere else, but now that the fossil fuel industries and other extractive industries are threatening the death of all life on this little blue planet some different way needs to happen, because there is currently no other planet to go to.

posted 5 years, 2 months ago
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It?s the old Golden Rule isn?t it? The man with the gold makes the rules. Some wild-eyed idealist trying to save the world gets labeled a terrorist and goes to jail at the same time that Bush/Cheney and their Global Oil Corporations are committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in Iraq to continue their Global Warming which threatens to kill all life on the planet.

It really is an upside down ?Alice Through the Looking Glass World?.

And considering the current home loan crisis I would suspect builders self arson on those homes in Seattle to cut his losses, after all that is traditional in these kinds of times. Time will tell.

posted 5 years, 2 months ago
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