US Health Care Policy is Humiliating: We Can Really Do Better

       We could Do Better if we cared.  This is why Public health care is a key part of Phase I of #ProjectDoBetter:

“Many people don’t know that we are in a maternal and infant health crisis in… Our country is currently the least safe to give birth and be born in among industrialized countries, and…not having access to high-quality maternity care…”

(from NPR By Rachel Treisman…)

     While these are difficult problems to solve, maternal health care and the long held biases that lead to these outcomes, the problems can be solved.  But, working together across issue interest divides to connect all of our work together is crucial:

 

     We really can Do Better

Shira

Action Items:

1.) Thoughtful Readers, share your ideas for health care solutions, please.

2.) Write a story, post or comment here, that uses those thoughts.

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Click here for:

Learning through story:

                                                   Babylon5, Hakan: Muhafiz/The Protector, Sihirli Annem,  Lupin,  La Casa de Papel/Money Heist, or El Ministerio del Tiempo Reviews

Learning via Holistic College Algebra & GED/High School Lesson Plans,

           or

 Learning from Long Range Nonfiction, or Historical Fiction Writing (including Ann & Anna…)

Thoughtful Readers, please consider reading about Phase I of #ProjectDoBetter.  This work is my personal way (as opposed to founding the Project, overall) of contributing to building tools that can help increase empathy and compassion in our world.  Story, as part of how we see our world, helps us make sense of and define our actions in this world.  And remember how important story is also as part of this project. Let’s Do Better.

Shira Destinie A. Jones, MPhil, MAT, BSCS

ShiraDest

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Climate Change Policy: Brookings is Right, We CAN Do Better

     Reparations in various forms can address climate change and the needed cultural changes which must come before and during these redressments.   This is precisely what Project Do Better advocates, particularly during Phases II and III, although communities may opt to edit their editions of the Do Better manual, freely available in editable form from me, to start that phase of the Project sooner.  Any community may decide to update their own Project Do Better community manual,  as distinct and derived from the current #ProjectDoBetter manual, which  starts by emphasizing free forms of intensive community and self-education, in Phase I, before emphasizing greater housing, reparations, and land-related advocacy in Phase II:

“A reparative stance for climate change policy begins with granting reparations for Black Americans and advancing land reclamation for Native Americans as a moral responsibility to minimize climate change impacts for the most vulnerable…”

ManannanAD and Perry

(from The Brookings Institute …)

     While not all of our problems can be fixed immediately, education and collaborative advocacy are the common denominators for solving them,  and working together across issue interest divides to connect all of our work together is crucial:

 

     We really can Do Better

Shira

Action Items:

1.) Thoughtful Readers, share your ideas for long term climate change related solutions, please.

2.) Write a story, post or comment here, that uses those thoughts.

*****************

Click here for:

Learning through story:

                                                   Babylon5, Hakan: Muhafiz/The Protector, Sihirli Annem,  Lupin,  La Casa de Papel/Money Heist, or El Ministerio del Tiempo Reviews

Learning via Holistic College Algebra & GED/High School Lesson Plans,

           or

 Learning from Long Range Nonfiction, or Historical Fiction Writing (including Ann & Anna…)

Thoughtful Readers, please consider reading about #ProjectDoBetter.  This work is my personal way (as opposed to founding the Project, overall) of contributing to building tools that can help increase empathy and compassion in our world.  Story, as part of how we see our world, helps us make sense of and define our actions in this world.  And remember how important story is also as part of this project. Let’s Do Better.

Shira Destinie A. Jones, MPhil, MAT, BSCS

ShiraDest

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Black Maternal Health: We Could Do Better if We CAREd…

     This is why Project Do Better starts by emphasizing public health care and self-education for advocacy, starting now, in Phase I:

“Black women are three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications compared to white women.”

(from NPR’s April Dembosky, and others at NPR, several times since October…)

And it’s preventable…

       While not all of our problems can be fixed immediately, education is the common denominator for solving them, which is why independent and learner-led education forms the bedrock of Project Do Better’s Public Health Care advocacy:

starting in Phase I, particularly via the free Holistic High School and college algebra lesson plans linked below, and then becoming even more personalized during Phase II.  Health care, education, and other key infrastructure issues all come to bear on one another in an interconnected way.

     We really can Do Better

Shira

Action Items:

1.) Dear Readers, share your thoughts on long term problem-solving solutions, please.

2.) Write a story, post or comment that uses those thoughts.

*****************

Click here for:

Learning through story:

                                                   Babylon5, Hakan: Muhafiz/The Protector, Sihirli Annem,  Lupin,  La Casa de Papel/Money Heist, or El Ministerio del Tiempo Reviews

Learning via Holistic College Algebra & GED/High School Lesson Plans,

           or

 Learning from Long Range Nonfiction, or Historical Fiction Writing (including Ann & Anna…)

Thoughtful Readers, please consider reading about #ProjectDoBetter.  This work is my personal way (as opposed to founding the Project, overall) of contributing to building tools that can help increase empathy and compassion in our world.  Story, as part of how we see our world, helps us make sense of and define our actions in this world.  And remember how important story is also as part of this project. Let’s Do Better.

Shira Destinie A. Jones, MPhil, MAT, BSCS

ShiraDest

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Repost of Day 54/67: Five Month GED, Equations of a Line, Bee lines — Project Do Better, Phase I

So, why do you think that equations of a straight line, aka linear equations, may be related to bees, transportation, (especially Public Transportation) and bee lines?  And why do they call it a bee line, when bees never seem to move in a straight line, or do they?  Today’s reading comes from a well-known source that is citing […]

Day 54/67: Five Month GED, Equations of a Line, and Making a Bee line to Save The Bees — Context, Critical Thinking, Continuous Learning: Project Do Better

Financial Self-defense Saturdays Repost & Service Adulthood: Project Do Better Phase II

Adults are expected to be able to take care of themselves, and to accept responsibilities that we associate with adulthood. #ProjectDoBetter has updated some of these proposals on Adulthood: What do you think?  One of these responsibilities is voting, which is meant to give each citizen a voice on decision-making for the common good.  Another such responsibility is financial self-defense, and of course, paying one’s bills, avoiding scams, and honoring contracts, including the […]

Thoughtful Thursdays, emotional and financial self-defense, and Phase II: Adulthood — Context, Critical Thinking, Continuous Learning: Project Do Better

Housing Policy: We Can Do Better

     This is why Project Do Better starts by emphasizing free forms of intensive community and self-education, in Phase I:

“In 2020, the federal government spent more than $193 billion on subsidies for homeowners — “most families who enjoy this benefit have six-figure incomes and are white” — but just $53 billion on direct housing assistance for low-income families. That’s not for lack of need. Because of chronic federal underinvestment, only 1 in 4 extremely low-income Americans who qualify for housing aid get it.”

(from NPR, this morning…)

     While not all of our problems can be fixed immediately, education is the common denominator for solving them, which is why independent and learner-led education forms the bedrock of Project Do Better’s 

starting in Phase I, particularly via the free Holistic High School and college algebra lesson plans linked below, and then becoming even more personalized during Phase II.

     We really can Do Better

Shira

Action Items:

1.) Dear Readers, share your thoughts on long term problem-solving solutions, please.

2.) Write a story, post or comment that uses those thoughts.

*****************

Click here for:

Learning through story:

                                                   Babylon5, Hakan: Muhafiz/The Protector, Sihirli Annem,  Lupin,  La Casa de Papel/Money Heist, or El Ministerio del Tiempo Reviews

Learning via Holistic College Algebra & GED/High School Lesson Plans,

           or

 Learning from Long Range Nonfiction, or Historical Fiction Writing (including Ann & Anna…)

Thoughtful Readers, please consider reading about #ProjectDoBetter.  This work is my personal way (as opposed to founding the Project, overall) of contributing to building tools that can help increase empathy and compassion in our world.  Story, as part of how we see our world, helps us make sense of and define our actions in this world.  And remember how important story is also as part of this project. Let’s Do Better.

Shira Destinie A. Jones, MPhil, MAT, BSCS

ShiraDest

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

#LanguageLearning for Global Learning and Fraternal Community?

This was one of the introductory lessons, with your basic verb set, and a very pleasant surprise:

Anyone can learn to conjugate every verb in Esperanto in 5 minutes.

Esperanto is a very simple language to learn, by design.   No sets of verbal endings for different persons, just one per time, and only three sets of times.   Simple, right?!  And a great way to help others learn a language that can help the world become more cooperative.

Given the interest readers have expressed over the years, I thought I might share some of my newest language learning journey here on my blog.  Once I have found others to help with Project Do Better, I will rework my notes in French and Turkish, and then the Greek as I go back to working on it (and maybe the Hebrew, if I am asked to teach Biblical Hebrew again).

Any thoughts on how your previously learned languages help hook the new material?

More soon,

and

        Hopefully, the empathy that studying languages builds, and a little more good example via story, will help all of us learn to be more open to the needs, feelings, and happiness of others.

…

Hoşça kalın!  Saluton!  !Nos Vemos! 

Shira

*****************

Click here to read, if you like:

B5, Hakan:Muhafiz/The Protector, Sihirli Annem, Lupin, or La Casa De Papel/Money Heist Reviews,

Holistic College Algebra & GED/HiSET Night School Lesson Plans,

           or My Nonfiction  & Historical Fiction Serial Writing

Thoughtful Readers, please consider reading and sharing, or even writing a guest blog post here, about #ProjectDoBetter.  Phase I aims to build empathy for public goods (libraries, transit, healthcare, and education) via language study and story, among other tools.

Shira Destinie A.  Jones, MPhil

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Writing Process Wednesdays, and, Plot vs. Character

Well, now I know where I stand on that famous debate, even though I was trying hard not to take sides while I plotted out my novel as I thought I was also getting to know my characters at the same time.  Wrong.  I find, personally, that it takes writing some scenes and bits of dialogue over and over again for me to understand how each individual character feels, behaves, speaks, and changes over time.   

This makes planning out such a complex novel as Who By Fire much less simple than I had imagined, and I find that it seems to be, currently, beyond my writing skills.   I continue to work on honing my craft, of course, and to work on plotting out this novel, while remembering that it         

comes based on all of my prior work.  Also, having the very positive experience of writing and getting surprisingly strong feedback both for this novel project idea that I developed from my family history research, and especially for my short short series (which I wrote completely off-the-cuff, and found both easy and pleasurable to write) more so but perhaps also with the help of the novel journaling process, in a different way than I had expected.  The series: (Ann and Anna) was so easy, and even fun(!), to write that it now makes me wonder how on earth I can keep slogging my way through Who By Fire, which is proving to be so difficult for me at the moment.  Every time I think I know my protagonist, Isaias (whose name will later change…), he changes!  He still looks mostly the same, sort of, but his way of thinking keeps changing on me, and I am having a very difficult time nailing down how he interacts with his two best friends (who were initially meant to be a mentor or advisor type, and a ‘particular friend’ as they used to say back then, or a best friend, who was also a rival for a love interest that has now turned into a cautionary tale subplot protagonist.  All of this with old scenes written that now need to be either altered or simply thrown away and rewritten altogether, which is hard to do, given that I am a person who values productivity and hates to see time and effort go to waste (yes, I know that that effort did not go to waste, but it feels like the time I spend writing initial scenes, voice journals, and novel journals, indeed are a waste of time since they do not end up directly in a publishable novel that I can immediately begin querying!!).   I think I am starting to realize that Who By Fire is currently biting off just a bit more than my writing skills to this point can chew, and I am itching to go back to Ann & Anna, make that series of posts into a prequel for a novel (especially since several people have called the series “#NovelWorthy” (which I had never heard of, many thanks, ladies) and just take off from there, if a novel based on an already blog-posted (and thus published, which I also did not realize back then serial can be shopped for publication?

 

Thoughts, Writing-Knowledgeable  Readers?

Shira

Action Items:

1.) Share your thoughts, please.

2.) Write a story, post or comment that uses those thoughts.

*****************

Click here to read, if you like:

B5, Hakan: Muhafiz/The Protector, Sihirli Annem,  Lupin, or La Casa de Papel/Money Heist Reviews

Holistic College Algebra & GED/High School Lesson Plans,

           or Long Range Nonfiction, or Historical Fiction Writing (with link to Ann & Anna serial…)

Thoughtful Readers, please consider reading about #ProjectDoBetter.  This novel is my personal way (as opposed to founding the Project, overall) of contributing to building tools that can help increase empathy and compassion in our world.  Story, as part of how we see our world, helps us make sense of and define our actions in this world.  And remember how important story is also as part of this project. Let’s Do Better.

Shira Destinie A. Jones, MPhil, MAT, BSCS

 

 

ShiraDest

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Repost of Day 53/67: Five Month GED, The Water Cycle, and Adulting —Phase II of Project Do Better

So, as citizens of a republic, why do you think that the water cycle may be related to Adulting? ProjectDoBetter proposes a free long term plan…  Middle of week 14/18 Day 53, Week 14 Grammar: Prepositional Phrases review Math: Combining like terms review Science and history: Who were the Anasazi, and what was their relationship with water? Please see the Lesson plan […]

Day 53/67: Five Month GED, The Water Cycle, and Adulting — Context, Critical Thinking, Continuous Learning: Project Do Better

SoL Saturdays Update, Context, PTSD, Homelessness & Debt: Project Do Better

What we still need our children to prove, for recognition of Service Adulthood (Phase II of Project Do Better…), is not their prowess in battle or the hunt, not their virility, not their adeptness at social maneuvering, but their ability to contribute meaningfully to society by teaching another person, from level 0, how to do something that is both difficult and absolutely necessary in our society today. By requiring our pre-adults to teach some other person a needed life skill, over the course of at least a year, that pre-adult shows persistence, perseverance, discernment, and of course, the skill in question.

Thus we provide an esteem building exercise and respect building accomplishment which we then reward with full adult status, whatever the age of the pre-adult in question. This obviously assumes that the person has had opportunity to prove his or her good judgement in other ways as well, prior to seeking adulthood recognition. This might help as one step of a series of steps implemented by and through local communities which could lead to more long-term thinking in society at large, given a critical mass and good faith in the ability of humankind to rise above our instincts, and learn to cooperate.  Certain pre-requisites should apply: knowledge of emotional, financial and physical self-defense.

Tying into emotional challenges like PTSD, pre-adults must learn how to communicate non-violently, manage their own emotions and prevent emotional manipulation, which eases the recognition and treatment of difficult past traumatic disorders.   Homelessness and debt both relate to issues of financial self-defense, by which I mean the ability not only to balance a check book and write up a home budget, but also to avoid falling victim to scams of all sorts, as well as the ability to plan for long-range problems like job-loss, or illness, etc.
Hence the post I mentioned developing the idea of an Adulthood Rite of Passage:

 

Then the prerequisites which are essentially being able to defend oneself physically, financially, and emotionally:

 

(A useful side effect of this idea is that it would effectively increase the number of available tutors, and also lead to every adult in our society coming away with an understanding of the challenges involved in teaching anyone anything non-trivial.)

ShiraDest
May 7th, 12017 HE   

1.1.12018 update:  and scans of my long-term project (The Adulthood Challenge project) to build a movement in 4 parts toward Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms…) replaced with above link to Project Do Better book (free downloads in multiple formats).   Here is some of how I conceptualized Phase II, the Service Adulthood Challenge:      

 

 

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Click here to read about:

Learning Empathy Through Film and TV Reviews,

Independent or Classroom Learning via Holistic High School and College Algebra Lesson Plans,

           or Learning With Long Range Plans, & Historical Fiction Serial Writing

Shira Destinie A. Jones, MPhil, MAT, BsCs

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.