Should Recess Be Longer Quotes

Because we approach the gospel with preconceived notions of what it should say rather than what it does say, the Word no longer falls like rain on the parched ground of our souls. It no longer sweeps like a wild storm into the corners of our comfortable piety. It no longer vibrates like sharp lightning in the dark recesses of our nonhistoric orthodoxy. The gospel becomes, in the words of Gertrude Stein, … a pattering of pious platitudes spoken by a Jewish carpenter in the distant past.

In May 2002, the principal of Franklin Elementary School in Santa Monica, California, sent a newsletter to parents informing them that children could no longer play tag during the lunch recess. As she explained, “The running part of this activity is healthy and encouraged; however, in this game there is a ‘victim’ or ‘it,’ which creates a self-esteem issue.”4 School districts in Texas, Maryland, New York, and Virginia “have banned, limited, or discouraged” dodgeball.5 “Any time you throw an object at somebody,” said an elementary school coach in Cambridge, Massachusetts, “it creates an environment of retaliation and resentment.”6 Coaches who permit children to play dodgeball “should be fired immediately,” according to the physical education chairman at Central High School in Naperville, Illinois.7

And by the early 1970s our little parable of Sam and Sweetie is exactly what happened to the North American Golden Retriever. One field-trial dog, Holway Barty, and two show dogs, Misty Morn’s Sunset and Cummings’ Gold-Rush Charlie, won dozens of blue ribbons between them. They were not only gorgeous champions; they had wonderful personalities. Consequently, hundreds of people wanted these dogs’ genes to come into their lines, and over many matings during the 1970s the genes of these three dogs were flung far and wide throughout the North American Golden Retriever population, until by 2010 Misty Morn’s Sunset alone had 95,539 registered descendants, his number of unregistered ones unknown. Today hundreds of thousands of North American Golden Retrievers are descended from these three champions and have received both their sweet dispositions and their hidden time bombs. Unfortunately for these Golden Retrievers, and for the people who love them, one of these time bombs happens to be cancer. To be fair, a so-called cancer gene cannot be traced directly to a few famous sires, but using these sires so often increases the chance of recessive genes meeting—for good and for ill. Today, in the United States, 61.4 percent of Golden Retrievers die of cancer, according to a survey conducted by the Golden Retriever Club of America and the Purdue School of Veterinary Medicine. In Great Britain, a Kennel Club survey found almost exactly the same result, if we consider that those British dogs—loosely diagnosed as dying of “old age” and “cardiac conditions” and never having been autopsied—might really be dying of a variety of cancers, including hemangiosarcoma, a cancer of the lining of the blood vessels and the spleen. This sad history of the Golden Retriever’s narrowing gene pool has played out across dozens of other breeds and is one of the reasons that so many of our dogs spend a lot more time in veterinarians’ offices than they should and die sooner than they might. In genetic terms, it comes down to the ever-increasing chance that both copies of any given gene are derived from the same ancestor, a probability expressed by a number called the coefficient of inbreeding. Discovered in 1922 by the American geneticist Sewall Wright, the coefficient of inbreeding ranges from 0 to 100 percent and rises as animals become more inbred.

Most charities already target the poorest people in our communities: the homeless, the chronically unemployed, the unskilled, those living well below the poverty line. I think that's important and necessary. My philosophy as Good Sam is this. It's not only those who've hit rock bottom who deserve help. Corporate mergers, globalization, recessions, tax cuts for the super wealthy - these all the effect of punishing all Americans. What about those who appear to be getting by on their own? The man who works two jobs to put a roof over his family's head, who pays his taxes, yet still fights to makes ends meet?He doesn't qualify for food stamps or low-cost housing or handouts from charities. He's laboring longer, earning less, and has fewer job protections than he did twenty-five years ago. Yet few government programs or charities address his needs.... I gave to people in a wide variety of professions and financial circumstances. But most of the money went to the people who keep the factories and stores running, who fix our cars and our plumbing, who bake our bread and serve our coffee, who teach our children in school. They are the soldiers in our everyday lives, and they cannot and should not be forgotten.

Millennials used job hopping to improve their income with every move in order to compensate for the initial low pay they accepted when joining the workforce during the 2008 recession. This acts as a caution to employers who are seeking to incorporate Gen Z into the workforce in what is expected to be a recessionary period after COVID-19. Companies should carefully consider whether compromising entry-level compensation in the short term is worth it, considering the potential benefit of gaining Gen Z’s long-term loyalty. Gen Zers are eager to stay longer in the organization. If we find ways to make it work for them by meeting their expectations, it will be a win-win.