Iris

Look! I'm gonna get flowers this  year! I planted them the fall before last fall, and they did not produce flowers last year. But look!

Adam Herman, Missing For Eleven Years From Kansas

http://www.kansas.com./adam/        

This is a story about a child who went missing in 1999, and was not reported as missing until 2008. His name is Adam Herman, and his adoptive parents collected a stipend for him, as if he had not been missing, from 1999 until 2009, when his sister finally insisted that the adoptive parents quit giving her rude and evasive answers (a la Kansas Christian "rightousness") to her periodic questions about his welfare! Had I known that sisters were not supposed to love their brothers and care about them in this crummy state, I never would have moved here. In my world, this is not acceptable. These foster/adoptive parents were not up to standards that would have enabled them to adopt of foster children in most of the nation. Relatives of these monsters actually knew that Adam was not being cared for and often being abused, as well. Why didn't they report it? I don't know. I will not pretend that I have never seen child welfare ignored in other places, but Kansas seems to be the Land of Putting One's Buddies' Interests Ahead of What's Right. I am outraged.

Pictures of Kyron Horman

These are pictures of Kyron Horman. They have already been heavily circulated on the web, and chances are, he has grown taller by this time, and his hair has grown out. But I really should have included them in my earlier post about him.

Child Safety and Kansas Schools

Anyone who's listening, I will tell you a story. It's a true story, and it happened in October of 2009. Thankfully, it had a happy ending.

My oldest daughter used to be quite the avid cross country buff when she was thirteen years old. She was good at it, too. But one day, while she was at practice, and I was at home, just assuming that all was well, her coach drove past my house, stopping to talk to my eight year old son. Mr. Coach wanted to know if Mr. Eight Year Old had seen his older sister. Mr. Eight Year Old had not. No one had seen my daughter in over two hours. She was lost. Why was she lost? Because her coach had dropped her off by the side of a highway, four miles south of the town we live in, by herself, and just left her. It was part of cross country practice. No supervision. If she had been stung by a bee, had tripped and hurt herself, or had some other medical emergency, no one would have been there to help her. (at this juncture, you should know that I offered to volunteer to help with cross country, but since I do not attend a Christian church, my offer was rejected. The school staff thought it better to take chances with a child's safety in the way I just described) When my daughter realized that she did not know her way back, she started to wander of a side road, hoping it would bring her to a house, or another person. This area has a lot of commercial farms, and there were no houses or places my daughter could go to for help.

Back to my eight year old son.......Twenty minutes went by. While he did not realize the signifigance of his conversation with Mr. Cross County Coach, (also Mr. Guidance Counselor) he did realize that no one knew where his sister was, and it was getting later and later, and no one was looking for her. So he told me about it. I looked all over town, called all her friends, searched the school (why was the school left unlocked after everyone had gone home?) and finally started home to call the police, when a couple of senior boys drove up with my crying daughter in their car. It was still within a few minutes of when I found out she was missing, but this cross country coach had known all afternoon, and had not called the police, or spoken to me. Why? I guess whatever he cared about, it WASN'T my daughter. Well.........I actually DO care about my daughter. Nowhere else have I met a teacher that did NOT care, at least a little, about the children he teaches, but I think that is what the problem is with Mr. Cross Country Coach/ Guidance Counselor.

Suppose it was not young men from her school who found her, but a dangerous person? I have been told time and time again by the people who live in this small Kansas town that "those things don't happen here", and "there ARE no dangerous people here", but there was a sex offender whose address was with half a mile from where my daughter was abandoned. The police were quick to point that out, but the principal only argued his harmlessness as a sex offender with them and the school board is not worried about the incident.

My children no longer participate in cross country at their school. It isn't safe.

Kyron Horman

In July of 2010, I was en route to Maryland for a funeral. Hubby and I had all six of our kids in tow, which meant frequent stops. Grrrrr..............At one of the stops, my daughter and I stopped at Walmart for supplies, and she stopped and looked at the pictures of missing children. "Look Mom!", she screamed, telling me that Kyron looks JUST LIKE her younger brother. "Someone's gonna call the cops on you and report a Kyron sighting!" Ya know, folks, if only someone would look at a kid who looks just like Kyron and call it in. I'd have more faith in humanity.

Perhaps I should make a few more posts on this blog about child safety. It's a subject that the school board here in my part of Kansas have butted heads about more than once. Anyway, what does Kyron have to do with me, besides being an adorable little boy who looks just like one of my kids? I dunno.......but every time I look at the news and see that he has not been found, I am disappointed. He has garnered a lot of media attention. Lots of people have screamed "bias" about that, too, but I don't think so. His parents have worked a little harder to keep him in the news, and so have volunteers. Every missing kid should have volunteers who keep their cases in the news. Here's another thing: Kyron's case has attracted lots and lots of attention to the CAUSE of missing children. That's a cause that has gotton very little attention in the past. Just some food for thought, more on it later.

It's time to find Kyron.

Kansas. Land of farms. Land of wheat. Land of Dorthy and Toto. Land of..........Republicans...............

Ok. It's nothing personal. It's just that.............well; the comments section in a couple of Kansas news sites was filling up with too many comments about Governer Brownback and his stance on abortion, so rather than keep the comments going there, I decided to start posting my opinions here. First of all, why is abortion a big discussion here in Kansas? We really don't have a lot of abortions per capita, and I don't think it's a worthy pursuit for Brownback's time or my tax dollars. Secondly, why can't Brownback consider the benefits of reducing the market for abortion, and change the nature of womens' medicine in Kansas that way? Third, if birth control and abortion are unavailable here in Kansas, why can't better education for children with disabilities be available? Before he runs for governer again, I would like those questions answered.