Why we keep a landline

1. I have never had my cordless phone fall out of my pocket or purse.
2. I have never dropped our land line-based cordless phone (or the corded one) into the sink–or the toilet, a snow drift, onto the road, or under a car seat.
3. If someone takes a mobile phone (or we lose it), we can always use our land-line to make all the appropriate calls.
4. We have never left our land-line cordless phone someplace else where we couldn’t easily find it by looking for, or paging, it.
5. We can call anyone in the US and Canada for free (haven’t checked on the other places, but I don’t call outside of the places listed), and they don’t have to use our carrier!
6. My long-lost friends from high school, college, and other place, can actually find me readily by looking me up.
7. It’s easy to block numbers/callers.
8. Although our kids are now older, if someone wants to call them, they call ONE NUMBER, the house, and we KNOW who our kids are talking to.
9. If we ever needed someone to watch the kids when they were much younger we could call the HOUSE and…
   1. not need each number of every possible person who might be a sitter
   2. not worry that the sitter’s phone might be off, on vibrate, out of battery, out of minutes, misplaced, in their car, or they are on it.
   3. if, for some awful reason, something should happen to the sitter (sick, seizure, etc) the kids would know where OUR phone was and could easily call for help.
10. Cell scanners don’t work on landlines – my conversations are safe from stalkers; only the government and police can listen in on that, and only by extreme measures and, with the proliferation of mobile phones, most people pretty much disregard land lines (it’s called flying below the radar).
11. If, for some weird reason, we didn’t want further privacy, we could use the old-fashioned corded phone – the number doesn’t transfer to display on Redial on the cordless phone.
12. WHEN the power has gone out for various reasons in the past, we ALWAYS have a working phone. We have had neighbors ask to use our phone because they couldn’t charge theirs without electricity, it was charging in the car, or they couldn’t find the charger, or something was up the cell towers (wind storms, etc).
13. Our monthly bill has never exceeded $80, and we have 2 lines!
14. I can send and receive both digital and printed faxes at my home/business without having to be there, and I can schedule them to be sent at a time when it is convenient and I don’t have to be there.
15. We have an ANSWERING MACHINE (in addition to voice mail) and we can actively screen our calls. If an unknown number shows up, we wait and listen because sometimes it’s a new person from an organization or group, and then we can pick up right away instead of the hassle of having to call Voice Mail to find out, then call back.

Kickin’ it old school!

 

Did I miss anything?

Upheavals in Physics: The Speed of Light Exceeded

I wish this would actually display part of the article, but check this out! What a concept.

 

Upheavals in Physics: The Speed of Light Exceeded – Chuck Missler – Koinonia House.

Common Core – Controversy Continues

So what is all this fuss about the Common Core? Wow. Where to begin?

I live in one of the states that “voluntarily” took on Common Core. “Voluntarily?” Hardly! There is a huge groundswell against it and they want it repealed. Things are NOT better as a result and there is no consensus on positive outcomes. We are expected to just go along quietly with this crap that got ramrodded through against all parents’ wills – NOT HAPPENING.

Parents are refusing the tests, organizing opposition, putting their kids elsewhere and even deciding to homeschool, in spite of the challenges of doing that in our particular state. Homeschool co-ops and other similarly academically structured homeschool support groups are burgeoning. In fact, my particular group has nearly doubled in two years, which tells you something. Homeschooling is growing in popularity, but this is a huge jump.

There are a lot of videos about it on YouTube, but there is a documentary about it which is well worth you time to watch if this issue concerns you. BTW, the states that have rejected Common Core are Alaska, Minnesota, Nebraska, Texas, and Virginia.

Trailer for the movie/documentary “Building the Machine”

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The documentary “Building the Machine – The Common Core Documentary”
* Part 1 (5:58)     –   The Players
* Part 2 (12:04)  –    The Validation Committee
* Part 3 (15:51)   –    “Among the best in the world…”
* Part 4 (26:25)  –    Humans, Not Machines
* Part 5 (31:42)   –    The Lynchpin

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Trailer for the parent interviews “We Are All the Same”

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The parent interviews of “Building the Machine”