Oklahoma's Tornado Disaster - The Courage of Teachers

One of the perennial bogey men that the Republicans like to trot out and beat up are the nation's teachers and their various teachers unions.   Teachers are all too often depicted as lazy bureaucrats who are failing to do their jobs and who support a liberal agenda that would destroy traditional America.   And when it comes to slashing budgets, the Republicans love to slash education spending and to cut the ranks of teachers in our public schools. And then every once in a while, a tragedy happens that shows that teachers are not what the far right and the GOP would have the public believe.  Last year we saw the amazing courage and sacrifice made by teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School in the face of a maniacal shooter.  This week we are seeing profiles in courage and selflessness by teachers at the devastated elementary schools in Moore, Oklahoma.  CNN looks at this latest example of heroism - some would say simply doing their jobs - by teachers.  Here are highlights:

Each day more than 55 million students attend the country's 130,000 schools.  Each day, parents and guardians entrust some 7 million teachers with the education of our children.  And on a normal day, that is all we expect teachers to do -- teach.

But on those not-so normal days we are reminded that for six hours a day and more, five days a week, teaching is not the only thing teachers are charged with doing. On those not-so-normal days, we are reminded that teachers are also asked to be surrogate parents, protectors, heroes.  Monday was one of those not-so-normal days.

The nation watched in horror as a 2-mile-wide tornado with winds up to 200 mph tore through Moore, Oklahoma. As sirens blared and the ground shook, the full force of the twister hit Plaza Towers Elementary School around 3 p.m. It was full of students, young scared children who had nowhere to hide as the tornado ripped off the roof, sending debris everywhere.

"We had to pull a car out of the front hall off a teacher and I don't know what her name is, but she had three little kids underneath her," a rescuer said. "Good job teach."  And that teacher was not the only one whose body shielded children from harm.

A couple of years ago, as state and local officials were looking for ways to cut spending, a study from the American Enterprise Institute emerged in 2011, asking a provocative question: Are teachers overpaid?

Using abbreviated metrics -- such as comparing private sector employees' SAT and GRE scores with those of teachers -- the study's co-author Jason Richwine said the findings suggested that "years of education could be an overestimate of cognitive skills."

A counterintuitive and insulting proposition. But in retrospect that shouldn't be too surprising considering Richwine's doctoral dissertation advocated keeping out immigrants with low IQs, which he maintained are lower than those of the "native white population." He also co-authored an attack on immigration reform for the Heritage Foundation. And he resigned as the group's senior policy analyst shortly afterward.

We can certainly talk about the realities of the economy, debate the best method to evaluate effectiveness and discuss the drawbacks of unions. But anyone who characterizes teachers as overpaid is forgetting what we entrust them with each and every day.  Our children.  On a normal day, you don't think about that too much.

But on a not-so-normal day, that is all you can think about.  Anne Marie Murphy, a mother of four, died trying to protect 6-year-old Dylan Hockley as Adam Lanza terrorized the halls of Sandy Hook Elementary School in December. When police found the two victims, Murphy was still holding Hockley in her arms.  And five other educators did not run away from the threat but gave their lives trying to protect students, trying to protect children.

There is more to the article that deserves a read, but you get the point.  The GOP loves robber barons of Wall Street who make millions exporting American jobs, but as a party the GOP cares little about teachers.  Teachers, many of whom are unsung heroes.   Rather than support them, the GOP is always scheming to lay them off or divert funds to Christofascist schools via vouchers.  We need to rethink how we pay and honor teachers.

Romney: Shut Down Federal Disaster Agency, Send Responsibility To The States

With literally millions of Americans huddling in their homes as Hurricane Sandy bears down on them, there is one point that ALL of us need to remember: Mitt Romney would eliminate FEMA and leave disaster relief to the states.  States that have nowhere near the money or ability to handle serious disasters.  In Romneyworld, it's all about spending as little as possible on regular Americans so that he and his fellow plutocrats can pay as little as possible in taxes.  And as for  the rest of us?  We are on our own.  When talking about the 47% of Americans that he holds in contempt, Romney for once was honest when he stated: it's not my job to worry about these people.  So much for the Gospel message to care for others.  I find the man to be morally repulsive.  If it's not his family and rich cat friends, his attitude is "f*ck them" - be they men, women or children.  Here are highlights from Huffington Post:

During a CNN debate at the height of the GOP primary, Mitt Romney was asked, in the context of the Joplin disaster and FEMA's cash crunch, whether the agency should be shuttered so that states can individually take over responsibility for disaster response.

"Absolutely," he said. "Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that's the right direction. And if you can go even further, and send it back to the private sector, that's even better. Instead of thinking, in the federal budget, what we should cut, we should ask the opposite question, what should we keep?"

"Including disaster relief, though?" debate moderator John King asked Romney.

"We cannot -- we cannot afford to do those things without jeopardizing the future for our kids," Romney replied. "It is simply immoral, in my view, for us to continue to rack up larger and larger debts and pass them on to our kids, knowing full well that we'll all be dead and gone before it's paid off. It makes no sense at all."

To Romney - like so many among the Christofascist and Tea Party circles, most of us are disposable garbage.  A point that is underscored by Romney's desire to repeal the Affordable Health Care Act and leave millions with emergency rooms as their sole source of medical help.  It's morally sick, but it is the face of today's GOP. It is the true face of Mitt Romney.  Are all Mormons this morally bankrupt?

Hampton Tornado Update

This video was filmed in front of one of our friend's home and is where we worked most of yesterday helping with clean up.

As a number of readers have gathered, tornadoes are very unusual events in this part of Virginia.  We are accustomed to northeasters, tropical storms and hurricanes - all of which have plenty of advanced warning associated with them - so Friday night's event caught everyone by total surprise.  The National Weather Service has confirmed that Friday night's tornado was an EF1 with winds of 98 miles per hour.  A small event by Mid-West standards, but again something that rarely is seen here.  The tornado came ashore about 2 miles to the east of our home on Chesapeake Avenue in the Old Wythe neighborhood first slamming into Chesapeake Avenue where it continues after a brief break in the Merrimac Shores neighborhood (all the news coverage mentioning Chesapeake Avenue caused us to receive a deluge of calls checking on our safety).  The storm then roughly followed the west bank of the Hampton River up into downtown passing over the Crowne Plaza Hotel before a brief jump to the east side of the river.    The map below shows the curse of the storm track.  

Click image to enlarge

Two of our good friends - the owner of the shop beneath the boyfriend's salon (which was totally fine) and Hampton's mayor, Molly Ward - live in the Park Place area of what's called Little England from the name of the colonial era estate that once encompassed the area which was very hard hit.   The boyfriend and I helped move a totally destroyed aluminum john boat that had come to rest on the shp owner's front steps - we never did figure out where it had come from.    The tree damage at the Ward residence and the adjoining home of the late mayor's mother was horrific: several 100+ year old live oaks uprooted, half of a giant magnolia down, and tree sized limbs ripped off of other century old trees.  The homes suffered relatively minor damage all things considered most likely because they were built in the 1800's when houses were built to truly last.  The boyfriend and I spent over 6 hours yesterday helping these two friends clean up the huge mess, with the boyfriend wielding a chain saw and yours truly dragging limbs and chunks of tree trunk to the huge pile that quickly developed on the corner of the park in the center of the neighborhood..  While a number of other friends assisted in the effort, some total strangers that none of us had previously met also pitched in to help.

The City of Hampton estimates 206 single family homes and 99 multi-family homes were damaged to varying degrees.  WTKR-TV (which filmed me briefly while I was hot and dirty!) reports that the two hardest-hit neighborhoods, Merrimac Shores and Victoria/Park Place are still without power as of last evening. Many poles were snapped and lines are down and both neighborhoods are blocked off to vehicles (even residents and we parked and walked in to Park Place) while power crews replace poles and lines.  We saw one friend that lives right near the Hampton Yacht Club who said their roof had blown off.  Below are some photos:

Near the yacht club

Hampton Yacht Club - friends were there went the tornado hit

Tree damage

Amory's Seafood plant near downtown

Tornado Hits Hampton, Virginia

It was a crazy evening last night as a tornado touched down here in Hampton, Virginia.  The photo above is a shot taken from Chesapeake Avenue (our street) of the water spout/tornado headed across Hampton Roads harbor towards Hampton.  The twister came ashore further to the east on Chesapeake Avenue in the Merrimac Shores neighborhood and proceeded from there through the area of the Hampton Yacht Club where it did extensive damage and then through a residential area called Little England (named after a colonial era estate) which has some of the most beautiful old homes in the city and then into downtown wreaking havoc on the pirate themed weekend festival that had kicked off yesterday afternoon.

Our home and the boyfriend's salon in downtown Hampton came through unscathed (a friend drove by the salon to check it out and said other than some debris in the parking lot it was OK) but some friends (who texted us to say they were safe) who live in the Little England area probably were not so lucky.  The owner of the women's apparel and home furnishings store called "Cricket" that leases the first floor of the salon building reported that her home on Park Place in Little England had lots of large tree limbs down and that a boat of unknown origin was sitting in her front yard.  She said a neighbors Mercedes had a tree on it. Reports are that several homes have been condemned due to damage.  The photo below shows the storm approaching downtown with the Virginia Air and Space Museum in the center of the photo in front of the approaching funnel cloud.  Behind that are the Hampton Yacht Club where a number of friends keep their boats and the Little England neighborhood. 

The first video below shows some of the damage at the Yacht Club.  The second is filmed in front of our friend's home in Little England.  I will post more as additional information is available.

Witnesses describe tornado sighting: wavy.com

Tornado Strikes Nearby

Thank you to those of you who called or sent messages inquiring about my safety after hearing of the tornado strike in Suffolk, Virginia, which is located about 25 miles to the west of downtown Norfolk and is considered a part of the metropolitan area. I am fine and Norfolk saw little damage and only experienced heavy rains. Suffolk was not so lucky - as the photo above indicates - and at the moment we are waiting to hear whether a home we did a closing on yesterday afternoon suffered damage or not. Unofficial reports are that the house was not damaged.

UPDATE: 145 homes in Suffolk have been condemned and many others have damage. This truly is not a normal event in this area.