Don’t Cite Me on That

Sources are important when writing a scholarly article.  So, I was quite surprised when it came to my attention that this blog was cited as a source by Vivian Lee, Ph.D. in “Nobody Died at Sandy Hook.”

Since when do opinion blog posts written by unknown, anonymous authors, with no listed or verifiable credentials make good sources for scholarly writing?  The answer is never, but let’s first look at how I was cited.

On page 77 in “Nobody Died…”, Lee writes, “Not only did Lanza squeeze through this hole and edge carefully through the narrow space between the couch and table, but so did ten policemen, all with their guns and gear, according to sworn affidavits.61”

And here’s the referenced footnote 61 found on page 96:

My essay, Pictures of Lily, has nothing to do with the officer’s sworn affidavits on how the school was entered.  It has nothing to do with the shooter’s or police entry into the school, nor does it discuss the placement or possible movement of furniture in the Sandy Hook lobby.

My essay in no way supports Lee’s statement.  And let’s be clear.  No essay on this blog in any way supports a single line in that book and I’m a bit disgusted to be cited in it.

The inclusion got me looking a little closer at Lee’s article than I otherwise would have.  I wondered if perhaps she mixed up the citations and mine belonged the next page, where she discussed the Gaubert photo.

On page 80, Lee writes,”Lily’s mother supposedly discovered the error and made it public via Flickr.64.”  It seems Lee chose to cite a more conspiracy friendly source and selected a YouTube video by Enterthe5t4rz, probably meaning to delete mine altogether.

The Contributor’s section of the book purports Lee to be a Ph.D holder and a tenured professor at an American university writing under a pseudonym.  Surely, Lee is familiar with best practices for evaluating research sources.

Now, I’m no PhD, but I did have to write a few research papers back in the day on my way to earning a lowly B.A.  Back in those days, we didn’t have the internet and I had to rely on the university library, my knowledge of the Dewey Decimal System, and my finesse with a microfiche reader to find credible academic sources to support my research.

Today, college students rely on the internet which is great, but it makes the job of vetting sources much harder. Back in the day, our university librarians vetted the books on the shelves so I didn’t have to wade through thousands of flyers  and self-published materials distributed by people all around the world along the way.

Most schools today have published guidelines to help students determine the credibility of an internet source.  According to Cornell University’s Digital Literacy Resource Source Evaluation Checklist, one of the critical components to vetting a source is a critical review of authority.  The researcher should ask, “Is the author identifiable?”  Enterthe5t4rz is an anonymous author, just as is Lee and yours truly, making none of us good sources for scholarly research.  (I would have preferred to cite Lee’s own university’s guidelines on citing from the internet, but I was unable to since Lee doesn’t provide a way to verify her credentials– making her fail Cornell’s second test on the authority checklist.  I guess we’ve ruled out Cornell as Lee’s employer.  )

All this got me looking into Lee’s other sources.  On the same page as the misplaced reference to my blog, Lee states:

“But how did he get past the furniture, with all his weaponry, without moving anything out of position?60”

Here, she adds some commentary in the footnote as she oddly cites this New York Times article:

“60 Although it has sometimes been unclear who shot out the plate glass window, as late as December 28, 2014, The New York Times reported that “the Newtown killer had entered Sandy Hook by shooting through a window. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/28/technology/out-of-tragedy-a-protective-glass-for-schools.html.“

Reading the article, you’ll find nothing in it that discusses the placement of lobby furniture before and after the shooting.  It’s another citation that doesn’t support her argument.  However, she does insert her own editorial in the footnote in an attempt to cast doubt on the accuracy of the article. She seems to suggest the Times use of the term “window” is inaccurate.  Apparently, unless you specifically describe a window as “plate glass” you must be only be referring to a window three feet off the ground.

Earlier in the chapter, Lee supports her claim that “Images of Soto were inserted into photographs in which she did not originally appear, and several shots of her face were created from a single photo.62” Here, Lee references another anonymous YouTuber who demonstrates in a video that you can take two images of Soto’s face taken at approximately the same angle, tweak the sizing  of both images, and line up eyes, ears, mouth to a perfect match.  ‘Cause you know, you wouldn’t be able to do that with pictures of a real person that weren’t photo shopped because the facial features change drastically from picture to picture.  Not only is the source off base with his conclusion, he does not provide his identity or any credentials to verify that he is an expert in photo shopping.

I could go on and on, but I encourage you to check out Lee’s sources for yourself.  Lee sources 30 YouTube videos – including one that was terminated due to copyright infringement.  (Cornell doesn’t seem to provide guidance on what to do in that case, I’m thinking because Cornell undergrads are smart enough to know that a banned YouTube video isn’t a good source.)

There is some good news here.  If you are lucky enough to be one of Lee’s students at that unknown university, writing your research papers should be a snap.  Just make a few YouTube videos and have your roommate make a blog post to support your position.   Boom.  Research done.

Hatin’ on Kaitlin

Since the beginning, Kaitlin Roig has received more than her share of abuse from the conspiracy hoaxers.  And with the recent release of her book Choosing Hope, the hoaxers are out against her in full force. Why?  They claim she’s a liar.  Well, actually that’s one of the nicer things they say about her.  Here’s a list of the lies they’ve caught her in:

1.

That’s right, they haven’t presented evidence that Ms. Roig lied about anything. What they offer are opinions dressed up as facts, although I do admit their propaganda campaign has been quite successful.  They simply can’t have anyone believing Roig, because then all “evidence” they use to support their theories fall apart.  If you believe Roig, then you have to believe the school was open, a shooter came in, it was not a drill, the children and teachers were real people, and so on.

Here’s the list of reasons why conspiracy theorists tell us we shouldn’t believe Roig:

1. Fake grief – Leading the list is the usual tool in the conspiracy theorist’s pocket.  Ms. Roig doesn’t look sad enough.  This claim was 1st made after Roig’s initial interview of Dec. 14, 2012.  Again, this is an opinion. And not the opinion of a psychiatrist who worked with Ms. Roig in counseling sessions after the event, but the opinion of some un-credentialed yokel who watched a 4 minute video.

2. Fake identity – Ah, yes.  The second favorite device of the hoax propagandists.  From a single photo stolen from another woman’s Facebook page, hoaxers claim that Roig is really an actress.  It’s obvious to most of the seeing world that they look nothing alike.  But if you can present me with evidence other than your opinion, I’ll consider it.

3. 15 kids can’t fit in a 3×4 space. Really?  I guess you aren’t familiar with this phenomenon.

Or check out this video that shows that 17 adult female rugby players are able to cram into a mini cooper in one minute.

4. No sink in the bathroom?  Roig has said there was no sink in the bathroom.  We caught her!  Well, no you didn’t.  You haven’t been in an elementary school room lately, have you?  It’s not uncommon for lower primary grade bathrooms to be built into the classroom with the sink outside the bathroom door.  See, children need to was their hands at various times during the day.  A sink outside the bathroom avoids funneling in and out of the bathroom for clean up after messy art projects.

5. She couldn’t lock the door because her keys were too far away.  One genius has produced a two and a half minute video devoted to this subject.  He believes Roig lied when saying she didn’t have time to get her keys to lock the door.  He claims this is a lie because the doors had no locking mechanism on the inside, reasoning that she couldn’t have locked the door at all. Apparently, he’s not bright enough to figure out that, had she had enough time, she could have run across the room, grabbed her keys, run back, opened the door, gone out into the hallway, locked the door from the outside, and closed it again

Now,  be honest with yourself.  There is really one reason why you hate Kaitlin.

She’s beautiful.  Yes, if Kaitlin was a homely, middle-aged spinster, she would not be one of Glamour’s Women of the Year, and she may not be having a successful lecture and book tour.  Attractive woman have always gotten more media attention than Plane Janes.  While I agree that a woman’s value is determined by far more than her physical appearance, this isn’t really anything new or relevant to the discussion at hand.  Get over it. Or work to stop the objectivation of women.  But that’s really a post for another day.

There is camp of haters who claim she’s exploiting the tragedy for profit. If you are in this group, congratulations. At least you acknowledge that children died and Kaitlin is a real person who experienced the events of that day.  

Ms. Roig, apparently no longer able to earn her living as she did before Dec. 14, 2012 has found a new path.  She’s telling her story and it is hers to tell. I wish her the best.

And Again… The Umpqua Shooting

Another shooting. Another opportunity to lure the sheeple into the rabbit hole.

Just three days after the Umpqua Community College shooting in Oregon, there are over 100,000 videos claiming it was a hoax, some posted the day of the shooting, as the hoaxers try to make the viral video on the topic, awaken more sheeple to the hoax, and at the same time earn their own fame in the hoaxer community.  Keep in mind, the Roseburg police are still investigating. But those clever hoaxers have figured it all out, without even leaving their house!

Here is some of the propaganda that the hoaxers are spreading this time. If it sounds familiar, it is.  They simply recycle the same list of “anomalies” that they highlight each and every time:

Inaccuracies in early reporting

Inaccuracies in the early reporting of mass shootings will happen. Every. Single. Time. Reporters are trying to get the scoop and piece together the story from bits and pieces leaking out from shaken witnesses and other non-official sources.  When the dust settles, there will be a clearer picture of what occurred. Understanding that reporters on the scene don’t have the full story yet, will you choose to get your news from you-tubers?

Suspicious Witness Statements

Invariably, witnesses say things like “I thought it was a drill,” or “I heard banging.” Does that mean it was a drill? Does that mean the drill organizers “banged” to simulate the sound of gunfire? No. Witnesses are describing what they experienced in the moment. 

These hoaxers simply have poor comprehension skills. If I told you that, “I thought I broke my leg when I fell,” would you walk away thinking I actually broke my leg?  No.  And,have you ever heard a baby crying outside your door, only to discover it’s the neighbor’s cat?  Of course, you have.  Listen to the witnesses and not the voice overs telling you what the witness means.

Crisis Actors

The hoaxers have to discredit witness accounts and the only way they can do that is to apply the “crisis actor” label to them. It could be that the witness doesn’t appear sad or shaken enough. Or, stalkers may uncover that the witness has a background in theater or the arts. Or, it could be the witness bears a slight resemblance to a celebrity, or that the witness is a young woman with long dark hair, which is the only characteristic she needs to look like another young, brunette witness from another shooting. Having an opinion that someone isn’t sad enough or that someone looks like someone else, isn’t proof, and it doesn’t make the “crisis actor” claim factual. In the nearly three years that I’ve been following these hoaxers, not once have they been able to present a single shred of evidence to support the crisis actor claim– you know, like a signed contract or a cancelled paycheck from Crisis Actors USA, something along those lines.  But they are big on opinions.

If you were involved in a mass shooting, can you imagine any of your friends and family coming forward to share your story on the news? I bet you can. I know exactly who it would be in my family. My brother is calm and cool-headed in times of crisis, and would be comfortable talking in front of the camera. Another likely candidate is my sister, who has strong political opinions and tight control of her emotions (she’s confessed to me that if she needs to cry, she does it in the shower). And guess what? My brother has an acting background and my sister looks a bit like Jamie Lee Curtis.

Gun Control

After a mass shooting event, the gun control debate rears its ugly head. Yes, even Obama comes out to speak on it. Now, you may not be aware of this, but the gun control debate is pretty much on-going, whether there is a shooting or not. Obama has been pretty consistent in his position on gun control. Of course, politicians are going to leverage the national attention the issue is getting. That’s kind of what politicians do. And that’s also exactly what the hoaxer video makers are doing – rushing to put out their you-tube propaganda to promote their political agenda.  They want to rile you up to keep you from opposing gun restrictions.

Every American has an opinion on the gun control issue. So when a mass shooting happens, who do you expect to step forward? A father urging support for gun control to prevent another family from suffering a similar loss? Or a father urging us to keep the status quo in the name of 2^nd amendment rights?

Drill

The hoaxers will tell you there is always a “drill” going on shortly before one of these events.  But what they don’t tell you, is that they have a very loose definition of the word “drill.” In the Sandy Hook incident, the drill was a classroom lecture.  In Roseburg,the “drill” occurred during a in-session faculty meeting.  The local Roseburg paper, NRToday describes this drill:

In fact, the school held a brief meeting to cover emergency situations just a week prior, on Sept. 21, in the school’s Jacoby Auditorium. At about 3 p.m., officials from the school’s security conducted a verbal walk-through, building-by-building, of the safe places within the campus’s respective buildings.

During the presentation, security officials told staff that they would be alerted of emergency situations on their computer. Susan Rochester, the department chair for fine and performing arts at the school, asked how teachers who don’t sit in front of their work stations expected to be notified.

Probably not what you were thinking the hoaxers meant by a drill.

No blood

Yeah, it’s weird how the police haven’t released pictures of the dead bodies in the classrooms where the shootings occurred. You know, it’s pretty much standard procedure to show the gruesome images of a mass casualty. Doesn’t your local paper show blood and dead bodies every time there is a local murder or fatal car accident? Of course, they don’t. Why do you expect to see that here? And if you say “because Columbine,” I hope you know that the Columbine photos were never officially released, but leaked sometime after the event.

But regardless, there is blood. There just isn’t enough to satisfy hoaxers. There is a photo of a victim on a stretcher. One video speculates the victim is one of the deceased because there is a sheet over his face, although I suspect he is a living victim because he is not in a body bag.  The bed clothes have what appears to blood. It’s just not enough. These hoaxers have no idea of the victim’s identity or the extent or location of wounds, and if they did, I highly doubt they are medical professionals who could share an informed medical opinion, yet they are able to make a determination of how much blood should be present on the gurney.

Now, think about. If the above list of things the hoaxers like to call “anomalies” occurs at every mass shooting, are they really anomalies?

Please think for yourself before you share these videos and add to the pain of the UCC victims and the Roseburg community.

Here We Go Again

The shooting of Alison Parker and Adam Ward of WDBJ TV in Virgina is the latest event to fall into the target of the hoaxers.  As the hoaxers prove they either don’t care about spreading misinformation, or are incapable of making any sound conclusions from the available data, they have proceeded to unleash their hostility and vitriol on a new group of unsuspecting mourners.  Out of the starting gate, they are offering the same failed arguments they used the last time– Twitter time stamps, pictures that don’t look right, and people not behaving in a manner that satisfies the hoaxer’s ideal of grief.

So, let’s go through this again. 

• Twitter time stamps — You may remember when Alec Baldwin got into hot water over his wife’s alleged tweeting during a funeral.  Twitter’s servers are Pacific time. So the time stamp shows pacific time if you aren’t logged in. Otherwise, it shows the time in your local time zone. I’m on the east cost, so when I login, I see the correct time stamp.   This isn’t rocket science, people. Try it yourself. 
• Shooter’s clothing — Hoaxers want you to believe the shooter changed from a blue shirt when the shooting occurred to all black clothes when he appeared in the camera man’s view finder. Oh, and his hand looks white so he must be a white guy.  It’s the lighting, people.  Objects in shadows, or underexposed, will appear darker than they really are. Objects in bright light or overexposed can appear lighter than they are.   Remember the the blue and black dress?  Pictures don’t always show accurate colors. The shooter was a fair skinned black man, so yeah, his hand isn’t very dark anyway.   If you have more questions, go read a photography book. 
• Crisis actors — The newscaster’s father must be a crisis actor, because we all know that bad things can’t happen to anyone who has any kind of a background in theater.  Just ask John Travolta. Or Liam Neeson.
• No enough tears — Because some family members can remain composed for a ten minute news segment, hoaxers insist they can’t really be grieving. This is an opinion, and a ludicrous one. Hoaxers don’t seem to realize that the people exist outside of the television lens, and how they behave in private can be very different than the small glimpse they give us. 
• Camera man’s view shows 6:00am — Don’t fall for this one. I don’t know much about how TV news reporting works, but I’m pretty sure the date/time and scrolling news feed we see at the bottom of the tv isn’t coming from the camera mans feed.  And I’m pretty sure the studio doesn’t feed the camera man that scrolling feed in his view finder. Someone took a photo of the TV screen in a different time zone or the next morning and is trying to pass it off as something it’s not. These hoaxers like to one up each other and invent evidence. 
• Recycled names — The names Parker, Alison, and Adam are common to both the WDBJ shooting and the Sandy Hook shooting, so it must be a false flag. Yes, this argument was actually included in a list I just read. This is the intelligence level of some of these people.  Amazingly damning evidence, don’t you think?

If you are here because you’ve just heard about the Sandy Hook hoax, due to the resurgence of attention that tragedy is getting after the Virginia shootings, stay around and learn. Everything the hoaxers have told you is a lie. 

If you stumbled on my site because you have any kind of connection to the WDBJ shooting, go lockdown your Facebook profile and change your name.  Make sure your photos and friends list are private. They will steal your pictures and harass you and your friends. No one you are connected to is safe. The hoaxers are just getting started on this one.  

For a more thorough analysis on the WDBJ hoaxer lies, check out WideShut’s WDBJ Virginia Shooting: Hoax Theories Debunked.

Other links:

http://ontherewind.blogspot.com/2015/09/rewinding-virginia-wdbj-tv-shooting.html#gpluscomments

http://fromtheslaughterhouse.blogspot.com/2015/09/wdbj-shooting-truthers-targeted-by.html

Confessions of a Sheeple

I was a sheeple.

I admit it. I’d gone through life pretty much not questioning major news stories.

I mean, sure, I’ve wondered who really killed JFK.  Who hasn’t?  And there was a brief period of time in the early 70’s when my girlfriends and I huddled around the phonograph playing The Beatles White Album backwards, trying to figure out if Paul was dead.  But then came high school and boys, and I left Tiger Beat and my conspiratorial suspicions behind me.

While I’m being honest here, I did catch wind of the 9/11 conspiracies. But honestly, guys, some of those ideas seemed really out there. See, I lived in Washington, D.C. in 2001. I knew people who witnessed the plane crash into the Pentagon. I knew emergency responders. I knew people who knew people on the plane. So at the time, I didn’t waste too much time worrying about that one either. It didn’t occur to me that so many of my friends could be government agents and crisis actors.

And things like the moon landing, the holocaust hoax, and the flat earth theory?  I thought those were just things made up by the sheeple to make fun of the 9/11 crowd. Seriously, I did.  I had no idea there were actually people who believed these things.

But after stumbling upon the Sandy Hook conspiracy theories, my eyes have been opened.  Now, every time there’s a major news story, I say to myself “I bet it’s a hoax!”  And sure enough, I can google the event with the word “hoax” after it and find out that I was right. It’s really fun to be so much smarter than everyone else.

The hoaxes naturally include your mass shooting incident at schools, malls, churches, workplaces, but it’s other events too. Things like plane crashes and train wrecks, they’re not real either. Even the Ebola virus, smallpox and polio– all hoaxes.

I wondered when the government started implementing all these false flags. And guess what?  Even old stories– they’re hoaxes too!  The Titanic sinking?  Didn’t happen. There was no bomb at Hiroshima and the Hindenburg didn’t explode. The Manson murders? Fake. Chandra Levy murder?  Paul Walker car crash? Hoaxes. Even that crazy story out of Cleveland, you know the man that kidnapped those three girls and held them captive for years.  Yeah, that was a hoax too. Hurricanes Sandy and Katrina?  Ok, those weren’t hoaxes, but they were government controlled weather events.

Thank God for YouTube and Google. In two seconds, I can find out if something is real or not, right after it happens! And now that my eyes are open, I know that every event that receives national media attention is a hoax.  I don’t even need to bother considering alternatives anymore. I can figure it out before the investigators are done putting up the crime tape.

Everything the news reports is a lie and this has been going on for quite sometime.  It’s a wonder the news or government can get any real work done with all the hoax planning they’re involved in.  How does our economy work at all when so many people are government agents and crisis actors?  I’ll tell you how. It’s that dang Illuminati.

But really, this is all good news and it makes me feel much better.  Now I don’t have to worry about all those guns in my crazy neighbor house, ’cause, you know, she is really crazy, and it’s been a bit worrisome. Now, I can toss away my unfounded fears of crazy lady confronting my son at gunpoint when he attempts to retrieve an errant ball from her property. There’s no evidence that a crazy person with a gun ever shot anybody.  And, I’ve been a little nervous about flying recently, but no more. Terrorists and airplane crashes aren’t real, so recline your seat and ignore the flight attendant’s safety presentation. And boy, that Ebola thing sounded nasty, so it’s a huge relief that’s not real.

Of course, I do have some new worries.  I have to be on the lookout for secret agent government types taking away my guns and herding me into a fema death camp. And, of course, I have to wear a face mask to protect myself from those dangerous chemtrails. But, I think I can handle all that.

This whole rabbit hole experience has totally awakened me. There sure are a lot of seriously gullible people out there who will believe anything.   I’m sure glad I’m not one of them.

Will the real hoaxers please standup?

Why do Sandy Hook debunkers refer to those who deny the official Sandy Hook narrative as “hoaxers”?

Because it’s an accurate characterization.

From Merriam-Webster:

Hoax (verb):

1. To trick into believing or accepting as genuine something false and often preposterous

Hoax (noun): 

1.  An act intended to trick or dupe

2. Something accepted or established by fraud or fabrication

Hoaxer (noun):

1. A person who tricks or deceives someone by means of a hoax.

It’s pretty obvious who is fabricating information in an attempt to trick you into believing something preposterous.

Now let the irony of that sink in a little bit.

DNA Evidence

I’ve been busy lately but still trying to work through my list of debunking topics.   Tonight I’m being lazy, so I’ll take a page from the hoaxers and just link to someone else’s original work instead of spending hours attempting to articulate the same information.

Please enjoy Keith Johnson’s videos debunking the hoaxer claims related to Sandy Hook DNA evidence:

Sandy Hook Hoaxers Debunked: MrStosh DNA Analysis
Weird Stuff ‘Splain’d by Forensic DNA Expert

A Tale of Two Veroniques

The big buzz this week is the release of the hoaxer documentary entitled “We need to talk about Sandy Hook.” I haven’t watched the whole thing.  For heaven’s sake, it’s over two hours long and it’s almost two weeks before Christmas.  I will confess that I took a little peak at it, as much as I hated giving the hoaxers another view.

I jumped over the introduction and found myself about 14 minutes into the video where a “researcher” was giving information on the backgrounds of some of the parents.  What particularly caught my interest was the discussion of Veronique Pozner.

The “researcher” claims that Veronique, the mother of Noah, is an anti-gun Swiss diplomat.  Now, this is not new, earth-shattering speculation by the hoaxers.  This hypothesis has been around since shortly after the shooting.  In fact, I never touched on the topic because I’d thought that most of the hoaxers had realized early on that this suggestion was ludicrous.  Veronique Pozner, the the Connecticut RN,  and Veronique Haller, the Swiss diplomat, are two completely different people.  Let’s take a closer look at the compelling research this hoaxer presents to establish these woman are the same person.

The Check-In Sign Revisited

My husband likes to complain that I always have to be right.  I respond with a line I stole from Modern Family’s Claire Dunphy: “Sweetheart, I would love to be wrong, but the people I live with make that impossible.”

It’s like that with hoaxers, too. I would love to be wrong. I would love to live in a world where, when the story ends, the ship has returned to port, the women and children have been rescued, and the hero rides off on his white horse.  Only, that isn’t the real world.

I recently received a message regarding my original post on the Everyone must check-in sign at the Sandy Hook firehouse. The messenger sent the screen shot below:

The check in sign hasn’t been debunked, he claimed, as here is photographic proof that the sign was there on 12/14/12.

Hmm. I wondered. Could the hoaxers finally be right about something?

So, I viewed some news footage from 12/14/12. No sign of the sign here.

It should be there. Right in the middle of those “hidden” Christmas trees. (If you haven’t noticed yet, there are way more than 26 trees.  More on that here.)

And no sign of the sign here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMRf6hEYgPc at 1:49

We can see the white clapboard sign advertising those Christmas trees on 12/14/12, but no sign of the check in sign.  In the Rosen interview dated 12/18/12, the check in sign is between the tree sign and the firehouse.

So, what about that image the hoaxer sent me showing a group of people waiting at the firehouse, right under that sign?  Well, those people are not waiting for their children on 12/14/12.  That photo was taken on 12/19/12, as a group of mourners wait to pay respects to young Daniel Barden as his funeral procession passes.

http://www.ctvnews.ca/world/teacher-slain-while-protecting-sandy-hook-students-laid-to-rest-1.1086575

And here’s a link to the original Reuters photograph the hoaxer send me, confirming again that the picture is from Dec.  19, 2012.

You see, I really don’t always have to be right. It’s just that I am.

Gingerbread Houses

I helped my son dress as the ginger bread man for Halloween last year. 

Are you conjuring an image in your head of a rosy cheeked toddler dressed in a snugly warm brown footsie with white rick-rack trim and black buttons? If you are, you would be wrong. My son, a red headed teenager, dressed in a white apron and bakers cap. You see, he wasn’t The Gingerbread Man, he was the Ginger Bread Man. 

From the beginning, people have questioned the gingerbread activity at Sandy Hook.

Parents and teachers gave different party start times. 

No one does parties that early in the day. 

Why was Manfredonia the only parent there for the party? 

Why wasn’t the smell go gingerbread wafting through the halls? 

Why no pictures of sheets of freshly baked gingerbread in the kitchen? 

(Seriously, I’ve seen all these questions.).

But most importantly, What crazed teacher would have a room full of 6 year olds make gingerbread houses?

Now perhaps, Sandy Hook has some over achieving and patient parents and the plans were more elaborate that year. I don’t know. My kids’ school had some pretty ambitious PTA moms, and even they wouldn’t tackle this one. 

And here’s where my little story ties in. 

Our first image isn’t always the right one.

My experience making gingerbread houses with my kids involved gluing graham crackers on milk cartons and decorating the houses with frosting and candies. An upside ice cream cone covered in green icing makes a nice Christmas tree for the yard. Now, google “1st grade gingerbread house” and see what pictures turn up. This is a standard grade school activity across the country. In fact, Sandy Hook has done that very activity in first grade classrooms in years past. I so wish I could show you the pictures to support my statement, but I can’t. Some of your friends don’t play nicely. But if you are ambitious, search for yourself and you will find the supporting images. 

Well, what about the party times? The party times were staggered to accommodate parent parking. But schools have plenty of parking. That’s the stupidest thing I’ve heard all day. There are plenty of schools that have a parking problem.  Like these schools:

https://georgetown.edublogs.org/2014/12/14/holiday-party-schedule/

http://wes.tomballisd.net/apps/news/article/524464

Click to access DecNews16.pdf

Looking at the overhead pictures of Sandy Hook, I counted about 100 parking spots. With roughly 82 staff (http://www.shac.ct.gov/SHAC_Final_Report_3-6-2015.pdf) that would leave 18 spaces for parents. Not nearly enough to have all the first grade parents there at the same time.