December 28, 2013

28 Ways to Spot a Real Man...

1. A real man know how to pet a cat.
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2. He knows how to show his son that it’s OK to be different.


6. He’s the window cleaner who dresses up as Spider-Man when he cleans windows at the children’s hospital.


12. A real man knows that doing good is its own reward.



13. And isn’t afraid to admit when he is wrong.



14. A real man knows how to be a good winner…but an even better runner-up.



17. So is this guy…



more//

http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/28-ways-to-spot-a-real-man-hesaid/

How much do I love Boston~

On further research, the window cleaner is in Boston.

Boston has its very own super hero—one with the superhuman power of cleaning windows and making sick kids smile.

This week, Boston Children’s staff decided to take a new approach to getting the outside of their facility looking spotless while easing the minds of young patients. Using their contracted cleaning company, Hub Window Cleaning, representatives from the hospital worked out a deal to have one of the window-washers wear a Spider-Man outfit as he took care of his job. “He was pumped to do it, he was definitely excited. We did a test run last week, and he was a really good sport. He has been waving at the kids who were on the inside, and it has been pretty cool for not just the patients, but the staff is also excited,” said Lily Albin, the social media specialist at the hospital.

Albin said this is the first time Boston Children’s has tried this technique, offering an uplifting experience along with some of the other programs they’ve rolled out for children staying with them for extended periods of time. She said all day Monday, as Spider-Man scaled the side of the building, children crowded around the windows to watch the superhero at work. “[It] makes it a little extra fun. Any time we can do something fun for our patients that are here all day everyday, and get a little more excitement—we do that in a number of ways—I think anytime we can add that element it’s always a nice thing to do,” she said.

She said the hospital may consider bringing in some other superhero figures—like Captain America or Batman—to help get the job done in the future. The window washing at Boston Children’s is done once a month.

http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/blog/2013/07/29/spider-man-washing-windows-childrens-hospital-boston/

I so love Boston!

December 27, 2013

The State of Black America 2013: Unemployment and Poverty are Holding Us Back

The National Urban League released its annual State of Black America report on April 10. It is disheartening and dismal. The non-profit organization concludes that equality between black and white Americans hasn’t improved much since 1963, which is considered the height of the Civil Rights Movement.

The State of Black America – Redeem the Dream: Jobs Rebuild America is commemorating the 50 anniversary of the Great March on Washington by including a “retrospective analysis conducted through the lens of The Equality Index®” according to PR Newswire.

Overall the report shows minimal improvement in black America, particularly in education and employment.

More blacks are finishing high school. The completion gap has closed by 57 percentage points.

There are more than triple the number of Blacks enrolled in college compared to 1963.
Fewer blacks are living in poverty. This number declined by 23 points.

However, there is still a widening achievement and wealth gap between blacks and whites. Some of the startling findings include:

The Black-White income gap has only closed by 7 points. It is now at 60 percent.
The unemployment gap is still at 52 percent, which is only a 6 point decline.

No improvement has been made in the unemployment ratio. It is still two-to-one, as it was in 1963.

More//

http://www.clutchmagonline.com/2013/04/the-state-of-black-america-2013-unemployment-and-poverty-are-holding-us-back/

December 17, 2013

Valley Green Feast Brings The Farmer’s Market To Your Door

The Western Massachusetts co-op wants to deliver to the Boston area.


~VALLEY GREEN FEAST FALL PRODUCE BOX PHOTO BY REBEKAH HANLON

Ever wonder what it would be like to have a farmer’s market in your front yard? Readily available, local, fresh produce waiting for you as soon as your open your door? Sounds perfect, doesn’t it? Valley Green Feast (VGF) thinks so and they’re committed to bridging the divide between the farm and your front door.

VGF, a Western Massachusetts based co-operative, delivers locally grown, organic products straight to your home. “We live in a great area full of agriculture but not everyone has access to it,” says Rebekah Hanlon, one of the four owners of Valley Green Feast. “Some people don’t have cars so they can’t get to farmers’ markets, and people are really busy and sometimes don’t have time to go to the grocery store and walk back with all those bags. That’s the gap we’re trying to fill.”

That’s why VGF is trying to expand their co-operative into the Boston area starting January 8th. But with less than a month and more than $10,000 still left to go on their Indiegogo campaign, they need the community’s help. “We do a lot of work to help connect our farmers and our producers and stand behind the work they’re doing,” Hanlon says. “And we want to get the community involved in that because it’s really all about community.”


~THE FOUR VGF WORKER/OWNERS: BECKY SZLOSEK, ALLY STERLING, REBEKAH HANLON, AND RUTH ANN. IMAGE PROVIDED.

So what makes VGF different from similar fresh delivery programs like Boston Organics? Besides VGF’s status as a worker owned co-operative, all VGF deliveries in Boston will be conducted completely by bicycle. VGF teamed up with another local co-operative, the Boston Collective Delivery bicycle courier service, to handle the deliveries to a number of Boston neighborhoods on Wednesdays.

MORE~
http://www.bostonmagazine.com/health/blog/2013/12/16/valley-green-feast/

Labor and Delivery

Over the river and through the woods…no horse or sleigh, though there maybe a bell. Boston Collective Delivery, a South Boston based bicycle messenger collective, has teamed up with Valley Green Feast (Western MA) to deliver the goods. Both are owner-operated services (co-ops) that want to promote and provide fair-trade and organic goods to all by the most environmentally efficient means possible. South Bostonians are able to order an amount of produce, deposited to your front door, powered by pedal pushers. I’d call that fruits of labor.

bostoncollectivedelivery.com valleygreenfeast.com - See more at: http://southbostontoday.com/the-southie-scene-stepping-up-reap-what-you-sow/#sthash.NugZdI3W.dpuf


The children are our future and they are getting it right~

December 12, 2013

barack obama: 44th president of the united states

Validation. To really tell anyone what it means to be part of the Obama/Biden 2012 team right from central command is not an easy task. Although my role wasn’t so big, and was completely on a volunteer basis, it was a labor of love that will probably never be matched in my life again. I want to fast forward to the most memorable day ever….not the election night itself, which was just an incredible experience, and one of the happiest days ever. I want to talk about the day after the election. As tired as I was the day after election, I wanted to go into campaign headquarters for sentimental reasons…I wanted to know how the place was feeling the day after, and wanted to bask in the victory with everyone up there-and the phones were ringing off the hook.



I take a call from a woman from the South Side of Chicago. She was calling with an issue regarding a donation she had made. I took her information about the issue, and was saying my goodbye and thank you, when she was asked me if she could share a story with me. I told her, of course she could. She proceeded to tell me that she never really intended to tell this story because she never wanted it to be about her, or draw attention to herself about it. She knew this might be her last chance to tell someone involved in the campaign. I said okay.



She says she knew Barack Obama almost 30 years ago, back when he was doing work for ACORN, and their fight to end the destructive industrial pollution going on in the area, pollution that was potentially harming those residents. Barack, as she called him, was concerned about the children, and whether this would give them cancer. He was quite passionate about what he was doing. She was involved in the work as well, but not as much as he was.



She continued to tell me how back then Barack didn’t have a lot of money and didn’t own a car. He would walk miles and miles to participate in these activities and campaigns. Sometimes, she would see him walking, and she would pull over and ask him if he’d like a ride. He always said yes, and always expressed his gratitude. She was always impressed at his passion for doing the right thing, and his compassion for those who may be suffering. But more than that, she was struck by his shoes. For his shoes had holes in them. And he was always wearing the same Khaki pants he wore every time she saw him.

More~

http://theobamadiary.com/2013/12/11/barack-obama-44th-president-of-the-united-states/

He continues to do for us now, what he did then. Thank you Mr President~

For the BOG~

December 11, 2013

Holding on to Madiba~

A man holds the official programme ahead of the memorial service for Nelson Mandela at the FNB Stadium in Soweto

http://theobamadiary.com/

In our hearts, we hold his spirit and his compassion, yet~

Obama: 'He belongs to the ages'

"We've lost one of the most influential, courageous and profoundly good human beings that any of us will share time with on this earth," said current U.S. President Barack Obama, the first black leader of his own country who said his first public activism was an anti-apartheid protest. "He no longer belongs to us. He belongs to the ages."

http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/05/world/africa/nelson-mandela-dies/

December 9, 2013

~Set in Stone.... Warning Picture Heavy

Breathtaking~

https://www.pinterest.com/

December 9, 2013

Myrtilla Miner: Teaching 'colored girls' to teach

Far too many of the women who made a difference in our entwined histories—white and black—are forgotten or overlooked. One such woman was Myrtilla Miner.

Born in 1815 in Brookfield, Madison County, New York, into a white rural family with little or no education, Miner—who suffered from very poor health—was lucky to survive her childhood. She found a joy for life in reading, and borrowed every book she could get her hands on. She finagled an education, and ended up teaching, which led her to employment at a school for the daughters of plantation owners in Mississippi. This was her first look at the vicious plantation enslavement system. She was horrified, and at first tried to think up plans to free those she saw and heard under the lash. Those plans were soon abandoned but she resolved that she could at least help by giving reading lessons. She naively asked the owner of the plantation where the school was housed if she could teach the slaves to read, not knowing that was a criminal offense in Mississippi, which he explained to her, adding, "Why don't you go North to teach the nig**ers if you are so anxious to do it?"

She did—and entered the pages of history.


First graders from the Miner Normal School in Washington, D.C., brushing their teeth.
Their teacher was Ada Hand. (1910)

snip/

Frederick Douglass on Miss Myrtilla Miner,

"You have often urged me to tell you the little (and it is but little) I remember of Miss Myrtilla Miner, the founder of what is now the Normal School for Colored Girls in the city of Washington. The task is, in every sense, an agreeable one. If we owe it to the generations that go before us, and to those which come after us, to make some record of the good deeds we have met with in our journey through life, and to perpetuate the memory and example of those who have in a signal manner made themselves serviceable to suffering humanity, we certainly should not forget the brave little woman who first invaded the city of Washington, to establish here a school for the education of a class Long despised and neglected.

As I look back to the moral surroundings of the time and place when that school was begun, and the state of public sentiment which then existed in the North as well as in the South; when I remember how low the estimation in which colored people were then held, how little sympathy there was with any effort to dispel their ignorance, diminish their hardships, alleviate their suffering, or soften their misfortunes, I marvel all the more at the thought, the zeal, the faith, and the courage of Myrtilla Miner in daring to be the pioneer of such a movement for education here, in the District of Columbia, the very citadel of slavery, the place most zealously watched and guarded by the slave power, and where humane tendencies were most speedily detected and sternly opposed.

It is now more than thirty years (but such have been the changes wrought that it seems a century) since Miss Miner, in company with Joseph and Phebe Hathaway (brother and sister), called upon me at my printing-office in Rochester, New York, and found me at work, busily mailing my paper, the ' North Star.' It was my custom to continue my work, no matter who came, and hence I barely looked up to give them welcome, supposing the call to be an ordinary one, perhaps of sympathy with my work, or, more likely, an act of mere curiosity, and continued. I was not long permitted, however, to treat my callers in this unceremonious way. I soon found I was in a presence that demanded my whole attention. A slender, wiry, pale (not overhealthy), but singularly animated figure was before me, and startled me with the announcement that she was then on her way to the city of Washington to establish a school for the education of colored girls. I stopped mailing my paper at once, and gave attention to what was said. I was amazed, and looked to see if the lady was in earnest and meant what she said.

read more

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/12/08/1260525/-Myrtilla-Miner-Teaching-colored-girls-to-teach?detail=facebook#

December 9, 2013

His legacy lives on in all of us – it is in our hands now.

“What counts in life is not the mere fact that we have lived. It is what difference we have made to the lives of others that will determine the significance of the life we lead.” — Nelson Mandela

We know all South Africans and indeed the world join us in this profound sense of loss and sadness on the death of our beloved Founder, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela.

Our deepest sympathies and heartfelt condolences are with the Mandela Family and friends at this time.

Let us stand together now and in the days ahead, and do what needs to be done to honour with dignity Tata Madiba. We know you share with many of us the same passionate wish to see Nelson Mandela’s legacy being kept alive and made available to the world.

His legacy lives on in all of us – it is in our hands now.

Hamba kahle Madiba.

http://www.nelsonmandela.org/content/page/names

December 5, 2013

WHY IS IT CALLED "SUFFRAGE?"

A vote is just a vote, but suffrage is a vote with high purpose. Thus it is no surprise that the high-purposed radical movement to extend the vote to women adopted the term suffrage to sum up its goal. Suffrage was already enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, where it applies to a right so fundamental it cannot be amended away. According to Article 5, the Constitution can be amended with approval of the legislatures of three-fourths of the states, except that "no State, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate."

This was the first use of suffrage to mean, "voting as a right rather than a privilege." In the earlier sense of "privilege," suffrage had been in the English language since the Middle Ages. Suffrages originally were prayers. Then the meaning was extended to requests for assistance, then to assistance itself, then the assistance provided by a supporting vote, and finally the vote itself. So it stood when in 1787 the Constitution used suffrage to mean "an inalienable right to vote."

And the right to vote, not merely the condescending permission to do so, was what advocated of women's equality sought. Hence they used suffrage, either in the phrase female suffrage or simply by itself, with the understanding that suffrage referred to the vote for the half of the adult population that had been excluded. By the early 1840's there was a Suffrage Party with this as their mission.

Even beyond its legal meaning, suffrage had connotations that helped the cause move forward. The word often evokes the dual meanings of suffer: "to allow," but also "to endure pain and hardship," here for the particular sake of achieving a goal. The goal of the suffrage movement was accomplished in 1920.

more

http://www.lwvmp.org/newsletter/v200503why.html





The First Wave, a group of 19 life-sized bronze statues, depicts the organizers and supporters of the First Women's Rights Convention at Women's Rights National Historical Park in Seneca Falls, N.Y.

http://mediagallery.usatoday.com/Women's+Rights+National+Historical+Park

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[url=http://postimage.org/]

Declaration of Sentiments
Women's Rights Convention
Seneca Falls, New York
July 1848

“We hold these truths to be self-evident;
that all men and women are created equal;
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights;
that among these are life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness;
that to secure these rights governments are instituted, d
eriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
Whenever any form of Government becomes destructive of these ends,
it is the right of those who suffer from it to refuse allegiance to it,
and to insist upon the institution of a new government,
laying its foundation on such principles,
and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem
most likely to effect their safety and happiness.”

December 3, 2013

Rise. Release. Dance!

1 Billion Rising for Justice~



ONE IN THREE WOMEN ON THE PLANET WILL BE RAPED OR BEATEN IN HER LIFETIME.

THAT IS ONE BILLION WOMEN.

IN 2013, ONE BILLION WOMEN AND MEN SHOOK THE EARTH THROUGH DANCE TO END VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN AND GIRLS.

THIS YEAR, ON 14 FEBRUARY 2014 WE ARE CALLING ON WOMEN AND MEN EVERYWHERE TO HARNESS THEIR POWER AND IMAGINATION TO RISE FOR JUSTICE.

IMAGINE, ONE BILLION WOMEN RELEASING THEIR STORIES, DANCING AND SPEAKING OUT AT THE PLACES WHERE THEY NEED JUSTICE, WHERE THEY NEED AN END TO VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN AND GIRLS.

JOIN US!

RISE. RELEASE. DANCE!

This so beautiful~
1 Billion are rising.
Our mothers and fathers, sisters, brothers, everyone.

http://www.onebillionrising.org/