Timeline for Education and Teaching

September 1974 to June 1979 High School

September 1979 to August 1980 Work doing Vacuum Installs

September 1980 to December 1980 University of Guelph

January 1981 to August 1981 Work and Lessons and Auditions for Music School

August 1981 found apartment in Hamilton - 40 Oxford Street

September 1981 Started Mohawk College

July 1983 Summer Tour with Heartbeat Band

September 1983 to April 1984 Graduating Year of Mohawk College

May 1984

September 1984 started McMaster Music

May 1985 Trip to Colorado Springs

May 1986 Trip to Philippines

April 1987 graduated McMaster Music

September 1987 started Bachelor of Education at Faculty of Ed. University of Toronto (FEUT)

April 1988 graduated FEUT, granted Ontario Teaching Certificate

April/May 1988 AQ course in ESL part 1

June 1987 Supply teaching in Oakville

June 1987 Interviews in Mattawa and Sudbury. Hired for Music at Lockerby Composite School in Sudbury. Starting salary approximately $25,000/year.

September 1988 moved to own apartment in Garson, just outside of Sudbury. Began teaching music, adult art, history.

April 1989 Lockerby Jazz Band won Gold at Northern Ontario Band Festival

May 1989 trip to Musicfest Nationals in Toronto, won Bronze

July/August 1989 trip to England, Jordan, Syria, Turkey, Germany

August 1989 engagement with Brenda :)

December 1989 moved to Walford Road apartment in Sudbury

May 1990 band trip to Boston

July 1990 our wedding. Honeymoon at Pat Shaw's cottage on Pickerel River. Travel to Indianapolis for the coveted "Bill Gothard Institute" OMG OMG I can't believe it. Somebody stole Brenda's new compact bible LOL. We hated the teaching about music being evil. Damn straight we did.

July/August 1990 getting moved and settled in at Walford Road apartment in Sudbury.

September 1990 Brenda starts BA at Laurentian University, while I continue music teaching, we opened our piano lab and I was also picking up some history and basic math courses.

May 1991 band trip to Bahams.

May 1992 band trip to Hawaii. Brenda came along as an additional chaperone.

June 1992 last day teaching at Lockerby. Resigned from Sudbury Board of Ed. Packing up and moving to Hamilton.

July 1992 moved into our basement apartment on Harvest Road in Dundas. Resumes sent out in all directions.

August 1992 interviewed with Glenn Mallory for Hamilton Board of Ed and was hired to work in teaching music at Tweesdmuir Middle School.

September 1992 first day teaching at Tweedsmuir. Brenda babysat for Linda, I would drop her off on my way to work.

February 1993 bought our house on Adeline Avenue and moved in on the coldest day of the year!

June 1993 Olivia enters the world!

September 1995 first day at Memorial (City) School.

December 1995 Ian enters the world!

September 1998 first day at Viscount Montgomery School.

December 1999 Elinor enters the world!

September 2007 first day at Parkdale Elementary School, teaching grade two.

September 2014 first day teaching itinerant music at Adelaide Hoodless, Queen Victoria, Franklin Road and Mount Hope schools. 

November 30 2014 retirement date. November 28 last teaching day.

Space Girls a movie short on Dust

 

Delicious Beef Stew Recipe

Delicious Beef Stew Recipe 

This recipe is largely based on a few recipes: 

 Chef Jean Pierre

   

 Anthony Bourdain

 

 Tatyana Nesturuk

 

Ingredients: 

• 1kg Beef: The beef should be from the shoulder area. I used pre-cut stewing beef which comes from who knows where... Cut into chunks whatever size you like (doesn’t matter because it will be fall-apart tender when done). 
• 1/2 cup red wine (optional) 
• 1 big onion 
• 3 cloves garlic or 2 tbsp garlic paste 
• 1 tin tomato paste 
• 2 carrots 2 celery stalks 2 cups sliced/chopped mushrooms 
• possible herbs: thyme, basil, rosemary, cilantro, parsley 
• 1 litre beef stock (minimum) 
• 2 bay leaves paprika 
• Worcestershire sauce 
• 1/2 cup flour 
• salt pepper 

Preparations: 

• Chop up the veggies to whatever size you like. 
• Prepare the beef: Make sure the beef is room temperature. Optional salt at this time. Braise the beef chunks in olive oil at a high frying pan temperature so the beef will brown; turn to brown all sides. Keep spaces between the chunks. 

Make the stew: 

1. Heat 1 tbsp olive oil. Sauteé the chopped onion for 3 or 4 minutes, add the garlic. 
2. Add the tomato paste and all the herbs, paprika and Worcestershire sauce. 
3. Add the mushrooms, salt and pepper, continue the sauteé to reduce the mushrooms, 3 or 4 minutes. 
4. Add the flour, stir to coat everything and begin cooking the flour, 2 minutes. 
5. Add the beef. 
6. Add all the beef stock. 
7. Add 2 bay leaves, salt and pepper. 
8. Once boiling, bring back down to low simmer for a minimum of 2 hours. 
9. Check the beef for tenderness; it should break apart with a nudge of a spoon. If thickening is needed at the end, mix some corn starch with some of the pot stock and add the slurry back to the stew. 

Makes 6 big servings or 10 small servings.

Corona Virus and the News Media

 No matter what else you show, make sure you show the following at least 50 times during the news broadcast:

1. Little tiny bottles of vaccines scooting through a drug manufacturing facility. My favourite is the ones with little purple caps.
2. Show people getting needles in their arm. Doesn't matter if they have a fucking ugly arm full of wrinkles and weird spots, just show as many arms getting jabbed with needles.
3. Show the mandatory stock video clips of kids in classrooms, so that by the end of the pandemic the average viewer will have seen the same clip about 1000 times.
4. Show the required clowns aka Health Care Officials talking on a Zoom meeting and commenting that they don't know for sure what is happening, but let's wait and see.
5. Don't commit to any kind of commentary (that would be bad journalism). Just report the required information backed up by no helpful information.
6. If there is some doubt about a vaccine or anything related to helping people, then make that the main story so as to be sure to inflame and increase the amount of worry. Whatever you do, don't share helpful information or communicate in any way that vaccinations are going great, and that most people are doing the right thing.

Book and Podcast: Jesus and John Wayne – How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation

I admit that my training with the Navigators is right in line with this. Navigators founder Dawson Trotman was touted as a tough heroic figure. His drowning was shared like a legend. The key leaders of the campus Nagivators movement that were our guest speakers at Glen Eyrie Discipleship Training were of the same ilk. They were tough dudes. Many of them military vets. The were guys guys. 

Let me tell you, if one of the young women at those training sessions argued for equality in leadership the whole leadership team would have come down all around them. They could have brought the entire fucking discipleship training to a screeching halt. Those young women could have had those old Navigators running round holding their dicks. 

How sad, that many of them did not see what was happening. And how sad for me, that at the time I didn't think it was okay for a young woman to be lesbian, or for guys to be gay. Hence my complete and utter confusion and my pathetic inability to process what was happening when I learned that some of my co-leader young women were, in fact, gay. Or they were struggling as leaders. They were "having trouble" or they were "struggling" in some way. But lots of hush hush, etc. 

For fuck's sake, one of our new young leaders in Sudbury ended up being convicted of child molesting.

My leader of my Lessons On Assurance bible study (BS for short) as a new believer was a Navigator staff member. He ended up being unfaithful to his wife and got divorced. Same thing happened to another long time staffer; his wife had an affair.

The failings and weakness, hell the outright humanity, of Christian leaders and workers in my Evangelical circles were like warning lights on the dashboard. But I wasn't ready to take it in. I was complicit because I was getting something helpful out of the church. 

But it wasn't God. 

It was an authoritarian, male-centred, comfort community.

It would be another twenty years before the scales fell away from my eyes and I was able to see things as they were. Just a bunch of useless, stupid people acting like they care for other people and acting like they love God and Jesus while in reality they were just full of shit.

Here is the podcast link:

https://lukejjanssen.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/48-kristin-du-mez.mp3

The Evangelical Christian church has become unplugged and detached from the theological basis for its existence and has replaced it with a cultural/political identity that is basically a lie and a distortion.

How can a believer in an evangelical church stay there when they realize that they are being sold out in terms of their standing as human beings?

For example, women in evangelical circles women are absolutely barred from holding ministry leadership roles. They can't take leadership roles where they would take authority. Women find it that they can't bring their whole selves to church. And they are okay with it. They swallow the kool-ade.

Boys and Girls clubs. Cadets for boys and Calvinettes for girls. The girls learned how to pick fashionable colours that match their hair, and do crafts. The boys would go out a learn survival skills. They would march into their meetings, etc. Structure, authority, expectations and gender distinctions ruled the day.

The concept of obedience is central to Evangelicalism but it is abused. There is a flawed power dynamic. The idea of submission to authority is a big deal. If you don't submit to the (men) in charge, then how can you be respecting God's authority? goes the saying.

Who gets to wield authority? Only men. The evangelical church is authoritarian and sexist.

So what then is the lifeline to faith for an honest and "woke" evangelical church-goer? How do we deal with a new awareness of our own complicity in going along with so many lies and distortions? Why would anybody be so comfortable in an obviously historically false institution? 

Where are the evangelical leaders who are trying to make corrections as leaders? Where are the introspections where leaders explore their complicity?

Can evangelicalism be saved or reformed? Not likely.

"Powerful evangelical men giving each other cover. When they really need to use their leadership to call things out, they don't. The tension between the mainstream leadership and the fringe is huge."

Evangelicalism is not christianity. And yet evangelicals have been taught to defend the institution. Why the effort to save a denomination that clearly has lost its way?

One solution may be to travel to where christianity is flourishing, whether it is in the same city or another country.

"Jesus doesn't need your protection, nor does your denomination."

Why do we even need to have this special category of christian believer called Evangelical? 

I say it's time for the evangelicals to walk away. Leave the fucking church empty just like the pandemic.