A Biblical Story of the Concentration of Wealth During a Disaster
Today I find myself thinking about a story in Genesis 47:13 – 26. It is the story of a famine in Egypt. I’ll share the text from the Bible, and…
Christy Knockleby
Actions Matter
I am fascinated by this short poem by Piet Hein: CONSOLATION GROOK Losing one gloveis certainly painful,but nothingcompared to the painof losing one,throwing away the other,and findingthe first one again.…
Donald Trump, corrupt CEO of America
What Trump says reveals so much about him. In the last presidential debate of 2020 Trump said that only those of low IQ would show up for their immigration hearings…
Little House on the Prairie Books and the Problem of Messy History.
It is a perennial questions in homeschool circles, whether one should read the Little House on the Prairie books with one’s kids or whether the racism in it makes those…
A Secular Bible Study
My book A Secular Bible Study is now available. I based this book off of classes that I have been teaching online to homeschooling students. My classes are for students…
Thoughts about justice inspired by a town council meeting
I’m going over a town council meeting video to write a news story about it as a favor to my dad, the editor of a weekly newspaper. Every time I…
Cancel Culture and the Need to not Define Acceptable Speech to Narrowly
There has been a lot of discussion on Cancel Culture recently as a result of an open letter by a group of writers and academics. This post is based on…
Political Studies through Minecraft
I have reopened my Minecraft server in light of the Covid-19 restrictions and the need to have extra online social activities for children. I host events a couple of times…
American Political Studies Resources for Highschool Student
I am a Canadian homeschooling my children, but we can’t help hearing about American politics. So, my husband and I are insisting that our children learn to understand the American…
Jinx! and Political Studies Goofiness
The following conversation is being shared with the permission of my children. My teenager jinxed the eleven-year-old. This rules of jinxing is that two people attempted to say the same…
Where does political authority come from?
One of the books I’ve been reading recently is called Piety and Politics: The Dynamics of Royal Authority in Homeric Greece, Biblical Israel, and Old Babylonian Mesopotamia. One of the…
Sophists And Today?
Aaron Sorkin’s television show Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip aired in 2006. Already, the show feels somewhat dated and when watching it with our children my husband and I…
The true reason I haven’t been involved in political activism for a while: not time shortage but fear of being wrong.
Life is complicated. I look back at so many things I used to believe and I don’t hold those beliefs anymore. The knowledge of how my beliefs have changed makes…
Conversations with Leigh Robertson and some reflections about making change in the world.
I had a great talk with Leigh Robertson the other day. Our conversation wandered from talking about child labour as a focus for teaching children about the history of the…
Making a difference
Sometimes I feel helpless in the face of all the problems of the world. Then I remind myself there’s lots I can do to make a difference. I can: write…
teaching civics with reflections on a small town council meeting
It is Saturday morning and I’m watching a video recording of a town council meeting that took place several provinces away. I’m taking notes to write the story up for…
“500 climate change denying scientists” – yeah, no.
I’ve been bothering to engage with some of the climate change deniers on the Sudbury Star’s Facebook page. They link to a Brietbart article saying that there’s over 500 scientists…
Biblical history and Israel
Did you know there’s a political component to the question of the literal truth of the Bible? There are people who argue for it being true not just because they…
On the Trail of Ella McLean
As a child growing up in Smoky Lake, I remember my dad, newspaper editor Lorne Taylor, taking me up to the graveyard off Victoria Trail. We pushed through the bushes…
Independant Media and the Canadian Budget
Today on Facebook I noticed a story about how the Trudeau government is creating “newspapers and websites deemed reliable.” That makes it sound like the government’s creating a serious official…