Parents Trying to get Science Teacher Fired for Teaching Science.

My boyfriend graduated from Dietrich High School (in a class of 12 people). I've visited Dietrich, Idaho, many times and it's exactly as you'd imagine. The population in "town" is more than 300 people but less than 400, everyone else lives out on farms. The largest structure other than the school (which houses K-12) is the Mormon church. There is no gas station or grocery store. There is, however, a tiny bar and a little shop called the Mercantile which sells overpriced grocery items and deep fried burritos. The nearest town is 8 miles away and it has something like two restaurants, maybe 3, don't quote me on that. You get the picture, Dietrich is a hole in the wall kind of town that you drive past and never remember, or more likely, didn't even notice. Don't get me wrong, it's a nice little place, but the emphasis is definitely on "little."

Dietrich High School is best known for their sports, their girls' basketball team just won their 3rd straight State Championship title. Go Blue Devils! Nobody thought Dietrich would be on the national news networks for their science program but, alas, it has happened, in the worst possible way. Some overzealous and not-so-enlightened parents are trying to get one of the high school science teachers fired for {gasp} using the word "vagina" while teaching about the reproductive system, straight from the book, I might add. Oh man, what an unfortunate choice to use the v-word. He probably would've been better off with hoo-ha, or perhaps love mound (I read that in a romance novel once), or maybe cum dumpster would've been more their speed. Cum dumpster, got that one from a thesaurus, those things are so useful.

I would be laughing at this whole thing if it weren't real. I'm curious as to how a person is supposed to teach the reproductive system without mentioning the vag. Should they just glaze over that part?

"You see class, after you have the sex, which involves the penis, and well... the penis, you may or may not get pregnant and have a baby after 9 months, but I can't tell you where that baby would come from."

Magically appearing babies actually sound much better than the traditional, through the vagina, mode of delivery. Sign me up.

There is another complaint about Mr. McDaniel though, and that is that he, "supported a political candidate," by having his students watch Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. I think this is probably the actual reason the parents want Mr. McD gone, and the hoo-ha stuff is just a convenient reason to complain. And no, I doubt it has to do with politics either. I mean, Al Gore, seriously? That guy has been irrelevant to politics for a long time, he's been busy inventing the internet (I'm sorry Al, snopes totally has your back). The issue here is climate change, and maybe cum dumpsters. This teacher is teaching about things these parents want their kids either completely left in the dark about or they want to be the only source of information the child has on these subjects, so they can grow up believing exactly what mommy and daddy tell them to. What a great disservice they're doing their children by telling them to not pursue knowledge. Too bad it backfires and now all these kids are spending the next 12 hours staring at diagrams of whisker biscuits on google images (probably) and maybe that one awkward kid is looking at tide tables. And let's face it, in a town of a couple hundred people in the middle of nowhere, kids learn about sex at, like, 10. It's the most fun to be had in Dietrich, except for that one time a guy's dentures fell out at the bar, no wait, that was in Shoshone (the town with gas stations) - scratch it from the record, please.

The nice thing about this witch hunt, if there can be a nice thing, is seeing Mr. McDaniel's former and current students and neighbors stand up for him. They've started facebook groups and letter writing campaigns, they're calling government officials, and they made enough noise that this is now national news, hilarious, sad, pathetic, national news. So G-O, Go Dietrich, Go! Tell those conservative bastards that science is important, that competent teaching is important, that vaginas are important. Tell them that it's not a teacher's job to confirm parents' belief systems to their children. Save your science teacher! The free thinking world is behind you.

I'm going to jump off my soapbox now and return to applying copious amounts of makeup to my forehead to give it the appearance of being round again. I did some damage from repeatedly slamming my face into my keyboard upon originally reading about this ridiculousness.


P.S. What the hell is wrong with people that penis is allowable but vagina is strictly off limits? As if women haven't been oppressed enough, now we aren't supposed to talk about our sex organs...again? This is a discussion for another day, I feel my temperature rising (that indicates I'm about to Hulk Smash) and this after I just got it under control.

We Had Visitors!

A few weeks ago Jake's dad, brother, and nephew came from Idaho for a quick visit. Even though I ran around like a crazy woman trying to get my brother's disaster of a bedroom from his teenage years turned into a guest room, it was so nice to have them. Jake's dad had never seen the ocean so we spent most of our time hanging out at the Pacific. No complaints here, I love the sand and the sea. Unfortunately, due to the fact that I still have trouble with my right leg and with exhaustion, I spent a lot of the time in the car, but that was okay too, I still got to enjoy the view.

We went to beach after beach, enjoyed delicious food and each other's company, and had a great time. We tried to take them to restaurants that offered fresh seafood since they don't get that back in Idaho. A lot of clam chowder was happily consumed. We played and explored and visited. One day when the tide was out the guys went and explored the tide pools. That's always fun and I haven't been since I was a kid. I sat in the car and worked on my knitting, my balance isn't quite up to that adventure yet but hopefully it will be soon.

We had a great time with family and hope they'll come again. It's always a blast to show people around our part of the world, and even more so when they've never experienced anything like it. Watching Jake's dad as he laid eyes on the ocean for the very first time was really special. He was awestruck, and I was right there with him.