“Let’s Not Be Scared, Let’s Be Prepared” Written by Parker A. Poodle™ ©2019 Every dog, every child needs a trusted chum, an adviser who can teach them the pees and queues. At age 16, never did I, Parker A. Poodle a Reading Education Assistance Dog, assume a howling need to explain a despicable decade increase in gun violence. Simply stated we must acknowledge America’s gun problem and teach children the particulars of personal and public safety. Including the new vocabulary—words like shots fired, active shooter, dangerous someone; inform, counter and evacuate. “Most children play with toy guns or use their hands to pretend they are holding a gun,” Rachel Schulson’s Guns What You Should Know explains. “Have you ever wondered about real guns?…A bullet shot from a gun can travel up to 5,000 feet per second. That means that if you and a bullet had a race, the bullet would get to the end of your block before you even took your first step…It is impossible to know exactly where the bullet will end up.” According to the U.S. Gun Violence Archive from January 1, 2019, to September 20, 2019, there have been 40,596 incidents of gun violence, including 10,744 deaths (26.5%). Today a hotel (Las Vegas), shopping center (El Paso), or movie theater (Aurora); office (Annapolis, Virginia Beach), church (Charleston) or school (Columbine, Blacksburg, Newtown and Parkland) is not always a place of safety. In October MGM International Mandalay Bay paid $800 million to 4000+ victims of the Las Vegas hotel shooting. About 228,000 students have experienced a school shooting since 1999—Columbine. “Let’s not be scared, let’s be prepared!” the National Center for Youth Issues, ALICE Training Institute suggests. I sometimes worry my dog house may not be safe should a dangerous someone draw near. …
They’re Burning Down the House! By Sarah Becker ©2018 President Donald Trump (R-NY) has done it again, he’s muddled history. On May 25, in a tetchy telephone conversation with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Trump unthinkingly said it was the Canadians, not the British who burned The White House in 1814. The British assault on Washington was in retaliation for an American attack on Ontario, then a British colony. The President referenced the War of 1812 when asked for what reason he claimed incoming Canadian steel and aluminum “a national security” issue. In the early 1800s the United States became inextricably involved in European affairs. Customs duties funded the federal government; British, French, and Spanish trading policies shaped local economies, and the ongoing commercial war between Great Britain and Napoleon’s France cost neutral American merchants unnecessarily. American merchants were little more than pawns. The North American continent was a showground of imperial competition. The British controlled Canada to the north, Spain controlled lands to the west and south. Both nations provided arms and encouragement to Native Americans, hoping to block American settlement beyond the Appalachian Mountains. As for Great Britain and France, “both sought to block the other’s commerce with America: through blockades, port closures, and the imposition of harmful customs duties,” Professor Michael Bottoms explained. “While both nations were equally guilty of abusing their American trading relationships, Americans focused their ire on Britain, partly because of Britain’s [sea-faring] impressment policy. The damage these policies did to the American economy, and to American prestige, led directly to war.” Georgetown resident and Federalist newspaper publisher Alexander Hanson, of Baltimore, described the War of 1812 as “without funds, without an army, navy or adequate fortifications.” Who were the War Hawks and to what extent did Americans support a second war with Great…