A Highland Park mom is pushing for uniforms, prayer in public schools. (I had to check several times to make sure it was New Jersey–there’s a Highland Park in Illinois and one in Texas and others, too).
Here’s the story:
HIGHLAND PARK — Parent Karen Blount-Torres is saying “Enough.”
The Highland Park resident said the rising incidence of sexual harrassment in New Jersey schools has gotten to her.
And she wants to do something about it.
She started a signature drive for a petition to introduce uniforms and prayer into the New Jersey school system — as a solution to the problem.
Blount-Torres said the recent incident in South Brunswick, where a teacher was allegedly involved with a student, was the last straw.
‘I’m simply tired, there’s so much mess going on in the world,” she said.
The 38-year-old mother of three children, who are in the school system, said she looks back to the old days when she was a student and prayer was a part of school.
She said reintroducing a common prayer that does not offend any religion will help the students and staff realize their purpose in school and focus on it.
She also strongly believes that a uniform system would require students to cover up and bring back standards and principles to the system.
Uniforms for students will ensure that “the staff can identify them as children and not adults.” It would also save money for parents, she said.
Blount-Torres, who has served on the Parent Advisory board for Highland Park High School and on the PTO committee board, said she has seen firsthand how the clothes worn by the students can be distracting.
‘The prayers and uniforms will keep both staff and students safe,” she said.
A week ago, she started a signature drive, getting people throughout Middlesex County to sign a petition that asks to include prayer and uniform in the school system.
She has been out at barber shops, diners, stores, Dunkin Donuts, Sam’s Club and other stores. Her efforts have led to a record 700 signatures in the first week itself.
Two questions here:
1) What is a Google Ranking? (and should I even care)
2) What is MY Google Ranking? How do I find this out?
Let’s start with question 2. If you type “Google toolbar” in Google, you can get a link to the Google Toolbar. Download the toolbar and install it in your browser. I have mine turned off most of the time (because it takes up a little space at the top of the page), so now I’ll go turn it on so I can see the Google Ranking for every page I browse.
The Google Ranking for my own blog is 3 (out of 10). For my main website page, https://www.leoraw.com/, my Google Ranking is 4. Why is it higher for my main website page? I design websites, and I often link from the home page of the site I designed back to my main website page. So if the site I designed has a higher ranking than mine, it helps boost my ranking. I’ve been designing websites longer (10 years?) than I’ve been blogging (6 months?).
You can read more about Google ranking technology here. But the basic answer to question 1, what is this ranking stuff, if you want your page to show up higher on a Google search than a similar page, you need a higher ranking. The best way to get a higher ranking is to have related web pages with a higher ranking than yours link to your page. Note that I said related. If you are writing about dog food, and someone who is writing about poetry in China links to you, that is not as valuable as a dog food company linking to you.
Now comes the fun part. Let’s take some blogs and find out their Google ranking:
Maybe at some point I’ll discuss Technorati ratings.
So I have this idea to interview interesting individuals in Highland Park on this blog. For example, someone here was one of the only women among thousands of Breslov men who visit the grave of Rebbe Nachman in the Ukraine. Yesterday, Mark Shoulson was mentioned on this post on Deciphering Samaritan. And my friend Elisheva aka Liselle could talk all about hypnotherapy or about the Algerian Civil War and how the Jews got *&$#@!ed (misled?) by the French government.
Here’s where I need your help: I don’t know what to ask. I’ve never done an interview before. What would you ask? Thanks.
My daughter’s kindergarten class is doing a section on artists. So far, they have learned about Seurat, Jackson Pollack, Monet and Matisse. And they met the illustrator of Only Nine Chairs: A Tall Tale for Passover, who happens to be the grandmother of one of the kindergarten students.
Today, they met an artist who likes to do Jewish subjects: me.
First, I showed them my havdalah painting:
I asked them what they saw. They mentioned the candle, the cup, the plate. Then I asked them about the colors. What colors did they see on the cup? What colors do you see? Any idea why I put red next to green? I told them I was inspired by Rembrandt. Their teacher then pulled out the Night Watch (that’s not its real name, just its popular name), and I pointed out how the light and the angles of Rembrandt’s painting had similarities with mine.
Next I presented the four cups:
We talked about pointillism, and how the colors in this one differed from the previous painting. Besides the cups, what else is 4 in the hagaddah? The kids reminded me that there are four questions. But what I had in mind was the four sons. Why is one son separate from the others? They believed it was the “rasha”, the bad son. That wasn’t what I had in mind when I did the painting, but I let my viewers find their own interpretations.
They loved my final painting, a watercolor:
Not only is it someone they know well (my daughter), but the setting is their classroom.
Here are the flowers on my neighbor’s dogwood tree.
Here’s the whole dogwood tree.
I learned from Gail that the cherry trees bloom first, and then the dogwoods show their flowers.
See my dogwood painting.
Name the only country in the world that has more trees in 2008 than in 2007. To find the answer, go here.
Ever wonder if your blogging can have effect? This morning I woke up and found this:
Remembering in New Jersey
So I felt I should share with you the next day as well, the annual RPRY Yom Ha’Atzmaut parade, which is always a lot of fun. This year, the sky was rather cloudy. But out came many people: students, teachers, parents, neighbors. We march around the block.
I enjoyed talking with some other moms about my chauffeuring 5 teenage boys to Teaneck on Tuesday, and how as a mom of a teenager you are “not supposed to say anything in the car.” No adding your own jokes, no reflections on the conversation.
In the end, it did rain on our parade.
But I had brought my daughter’s treasured umbrella, and she enjoyed sharing it with a friend.
Some of the littlest children went for shelter on a porch:
We had live musicians accompanying the parade, too, to add to the merriment.
The younger children returned to their classrooms, and the older children, such as my boys, continued the celebration with dancing in the gym.
On my walk home, I was tempted to take some photos of some of the homes with Israeli flags. Instead, take a look at all the flags in the Tel Aviv area here.
My garlic spread just came out of the oven, so here’s how it looks:
It didn’t make a lot, but that’s enough for my husband, my father and me for Friday night dinner. I used about 1/2 a clove of garlic. You can, alternatively as Baila mentioned, bake the cloves whole and then squeeze them.
Baila wrote (on this blog, not on her blog):
I do the roasted garlic. I cut the top off the head of garlic, put a bit of olive oil and spices–whatever I have lying around (oregano, pepper, paprika etc)–wrap it in silver foil and leave in the oven until I remember to take it out. My kids then squeeze the cloves out and use it to spread on challah. I also do this without about three other heads and put it in a pan with chicken and maybe some parsley for some really garlicy chicken (inspired by the Enlightened Kosher Cookbook).
I decided to set up a fake account called Random Commenter to see what it is like to be YOU, a reader of this blog. So here is what I have learned:
- The first time you leave a comment, it will tell you that the comment will need to be approved.
- The second time you leave a comment, if you use the same log in as before, you shouldn’t need approval.
- You can’t edit a comment, but I can.
- You should be able to leave links in either html anchor tags (looks like this
<a href=”http://www.somedomain.com/boo.htm”>txt</a>) or as plain text (start the url link with http://).
I am still trying to figure why Lion of Zion’s comments once went to the Akismet spam folder (I thought it was because of the links) or why Batya’s once went to Akismet, since she has posted many comments before this Akismet incident. So it could just be Akismet flakiness, something called “false positives”, when a comment that is fine for some reason goes to the spam folder.
So if your comment “disappears”, which should be a very infrequent occurrence, it may have gone to the spam folder, in which case you will have to wait for me to fish it out. You can let me know by using my contact form.
Notable Links from the Internet:
The Best Overall:
On Israel:
Art Links:
- Parshat Acharei Mot: Leviticus 16:10 Scapegoat by by William Holman Hunt
וְהַשָּׂעִיר, אֲשֶׁר עָלָה עָלָיו הַגּוֹרָל לַעֲזָאזֵל, יָעֳמַד-חַי לִפְנֵי יְהוָה, לְכַפֵּר עָלָיו–לְשַׁלַּח אֹתוֹ לַעֲזָאזֵל הַמִּדְבָּרָה
“But the goat, on which the lot fell for Azazel, shall be set alive before the LORD, to make atonement over him, to send him away for Azazel into the wilderness.”
This a good example of a pre-Raphaelite school painting.
- Israel Broytman, painter
Famous Bloggers:
From this article:
Male bloggers tend to write about politics, technology and money; women are more likely to blog about their private lives and use an intimate style of writing.
At some point, I may do a post about women bloggers. Especially on how they deal with conflict. If anyone finds any relevant links, feel free to leave them in the comments. Or any of your own experiences with conflict and blogging. (Jack tried to help me find some a few weeks back, but the ones he sent me didn’t seem to fit my idea. Thanks for trying, Jack).
