City Council – Vote by Mail Only

The Lt. Governor has asked cities to consider implementing vote-by-mail-only for next year’s municipal elections. All registered voters would receive a ballot in the mail. The ballot would need to be mailed or submitted to the city prior to or on “election” day. This would be the only means of casting a ballot.

The city recorder asked each councilman to share their concerns (if any) prior to the upcoming city council meeting (2-Dec-2014), where this will be discussed. If you have a viewpoint on this issue please attend and share it with the council.

Here is a copy of the email I sent:

Educating for Seven Lives – William George Jordan

William George Jordan, was a strong advocate of changing the focus of education. In 1891 at the age of 27 he left his position as editor of Current Literature in NYC to lecture on “Mental Training” in Chicago. He had developed a series of 10 lectures on educating the mind:

1. The Indescribable and Analysis
2. Genius, Education and Habit
3. Simplicity and Uniformity of Nature
4. Memory and the Simplicity of Mind
5. Reading, Observation, and Conversation
6. Paradox: A Study in Polarity
7. Inequality in Nature and Life
8. Character—How best to Study It
9. Trifles in Life and Mind
10. Reserve Power in Nature and Life

What’s the Matter with Education? – William George Jordan

William George Jordan, was a strong advocate of changing the focus of education. He argues that “there is not one single power, faculty, process or quality of the mind that is trained and developed by our present system of education. Our powers are not merely untrained—they are positively mistrained.” He says that “the theory of education, not as we get it from the ideals of educators but as it is evidenced in every detail of the system as it actually exists today, can be given in a single sentence: Education believes that by forcing a certain amount of knowledge, principally by means of textbooks, into the minds of children, that somehow in the divine mystery of mental processes this knowledge will not only be retained, but the mind of the individual will be exercised, trained and developed.”

City Council 21-Oct-2014: Ashford, Cemetery Policy

Thirty residents attended the council meeting. Fifteen were scout affiliated (youth, leaders, parents), thirteen were there to discuss the Ashford Care Center north wall, one about the Dry Creek trail closing, and one good friend (thanks Mike) came for moral support.

Presentations

1. Annual Library Report – Highland Library Board
   Blythe Shupe (Library Board Chair) and Kent Slade (Head Librarian) reviewed the status of the library and discussed metrics. There were some general questions. A broader and more detailed discussion will occur at an upcoming work session that will include the library board and city council (no date set yet).

The Crimes of the Tongue — William George Jordan

The following is the 2nd chapter from William George Jordan’s first book, The Kingship of Self-Control, 1898. After elections are over, I often wish everyone had read this before the campaigns started. Oh well, I’m sharing it now. It is a great read anytime.

The Crimes of the Tongue

The second most deadly instrument of destruction is the gun—the first is the human tongue. The gun merely kills bodies; the tongue kills reputations and, ofttimes, ruins characters. Each gun works alone; each loaded tongue has a hundred accomplices. The havoc of the gun is visible at once. The full evil of the tongue lives through all the years; even the eye of Omniscience might grow tired in tracing it to its finality.