The purposes of this Association are to:

  • The purposes of this Association are to:
  • A. Promote and protect the interests, rights, and welfare of the retired educators of the Stevens Point area in conjunction with the Wisconsin Retired Educators’ Association (WREA).
  • B. Monitor and work to improve the benefits for retired educators and other members of the Wisconsin Retirement System (WRS).
  • C. Encourage Association members to maintain membership in the Wisconsin Retired Educators’ Association (WREA).
  • D. Develop working relationships with local service organizations whose main emphasis is on aging groups and with organizations sharing goals similar to those of the Association.
  • E. Inform Association members about and advocate for educational and other relevant societal issues.
  • F. Inform members of activities in the area provided for senior citizens.
  • G. Encourage Association members to be active participants in community affairs on an individual basis.

Wednesday, January 12, 2022

A Movie Review!

Our SPARTA president has no time for TV viewing or sitting down in general, so it was somewhat shocking that she mentioned seeing this Netflix movie and suggesting that movie reviews during this LOOOONG covid time might be a good idea.

The movie she saw was "Don't Look Up."  In short, it's a satire/spoof/comedy/tragedy about scientists discovering a comet about to hit the Earth, and their attempts to warn authorities.  Many see it as an allegory about climate change, still others see it as a metaphor about covid.  Whatever the topic, it's a thinly disguised, very liberal interpretation of current affairs.

I enjoyed basking in a viewpoint that shared my own villains.  The movie was funny. but too close to the truth.  Throughout the movie, little snippets are shown of the other beings that share this planet: polar bears, bees, forests.  These are extremely touching and remind us of the real tragedy that we're about to face.  The final lines delivered around a family dining table might be our epitaph:  "We really did have everything, didn't we?"


But sit through the end credits.  Revenge is sweet, even 22,740 years later.

A better review can be found at DailyKos: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/1/11/2074128/--Don-t-look-up-Its-creators-say-it-s-a-satire-To-me-it-was-too-real-to-be-a-satire

(You'll have to copy and paste the link.  Their warnings about linking scare me a little.)

To be fair, there are loads of reviews panning this film.  Rotten Tomatoes scored it at 54%, audience scoring 78%.  Roger Ebert disliked it, even Huffington Post deemed it too heavy-handed. 

Satire is dead.  Real life is now beyond satire. 


Tuesday, January 11, 2022

Newsletter, January 1, 2022

 Go to "pages" on the sidebar and click on 2022 January newsletter.  No graphics are included, since transferring a pdf or word document to this platform is a trick that hasn't been mastered yet.



Monday, January 10, 2022

The Center for Media and Democracy

If you are looking for news of the hidden workings behind the headlines, check out the Center for Media and Democracy.  Many thanks to Joyce for passing along these articles:

About war against Science in the war against covid:

 https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2021/12/22/how-the-koch-network-hijacked-the-war-on-covid/

The war against public education:

https://dianeravitch.net/2022/01/03/who-demoralized-the-nations-teachers-readers-respond/

These folks are out of Madison and give a different perspective.