To be hopeful is to cherish a desire with anticipation.

Project Runway

I LOVED Emilio's dress! i also loved Mme. Ptak's(I dont know her name). Great new season!

My Thoughts This Morning

There needs to be a massive campaign to have trees sent to and planted in Haiti....I hope wherever Israeli ambassadors go from now on, they are made to sit on pillows...on the floor...

Please Donate to Haiti

The Continuously Sorry State of the Economy: Job Openings are at a record low

Is this the new Great Depression?

Sexual Repression in America

Last night I had a long, thoughtful conversation with one of my mentors who happened to call me on the phone. We touched on a lot of subjects, but one of the most interesting ones-which she encouraged me to explore further and write about-was the idea of sexual repression in America and the changes(for the better and for the worse) that have taken place in the United States in regards to individual freedom in sexual expression. I still have not gathered my thoughts yet. However, here is a very good article that I ran across this morning on the internet. More thoughts coming....

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: January 7, 2010

Contact: Dianne Feeley, 313-843-2125; 734-272-7651 or feeleyd@earthlink.net

Contact: Frank Hammer, 313-863-3219 or fkhammer@ameritech.net

Websites: www.autoworkercaravan.org



WHAT: Public rally against a “jobless recovery”

WHO: Autoworker Caravan - a group of auto workers, retirees, & supporters

WHERE: North American International Auto Show, Cobo Center , Detroit , MI

WHEN: Monday, January 11, 2010 (Press Day), 10:30 AM to Noon



The Autoworker Caravan, a rank and file organization of active and retired autoworkers and supporters, is organizing a demonstration in front of the North American International Auto Show at Cobo Center on January 11, 2010 (Press Day). The rally’s central demand is for Michigan workers to be re-employed as part of a conversion to a green economy, thereby reviving “ Main St. ” - as opposed to “ Wall St. ” - and simultaneously helping to reverse the growing threat of global warming.



The 2010 Rally follows a similar demonstration organized one year ago that challenged pending plant closings and layoffs in the wake of the Wall St disaster that resulted in a steep drop in car sales. The subsequent bankruptcies, plant closings and layoffs have contributed to an official Michigan unemployment rate of 14.7% - the highest in the nation.



The solution promoted by the government, auto companies, and the UAW is to salvage what are increasingly global corporations at the expense of U.S. autoworkers’ and retirees’ livelihoods. Jobs are being eliminated as workers are whipsawed plant against plant within – and across – US borders, to strip away union-won standards in a “race to the bottom.” This is what government officials refer to as a “jobless recovery,” a concept thoroughly rejected by Michigan ’s autoworkers.



Meanwhile, there is now international recognition that countries and peoples around the world must reduce their “carbon footprint” immediately if we are to help prevent some of the worst consequences of climate change. Michigan and especially Detroit can be leaders in converting to clean energy and transportation, comparable to the rapid changes made by government to the auto industry at the beginning of WW2. Today’s autoworkers are demanding a massive infusion of government funds to convert idle plants and retrain/rehire laid-off workers to produce components for clean, renewable energy and for public transit. Old transportation systems must give way to new ones to reduce reliance on a significant source of carbon emissions – the gasoline-powered cars, trucks and SUVs which continue to be displayed at the auto show, oblivious to the danger they pose to the planet.



“Autoworkers at this year’s rally,” according to Wendy Thompson, a retired autoworker and one of the demonstration organizers, “will be demanding JOBS, JOBS, JOBS – but not just any jobs. We want good jobs in a revitalized manufacturing sector that will help reduce global climate change.” In the words of UAW-GM retiree Frank Hammer: “President Obama committed to massive support for the devastated, auto-producing centers of the Midwest and to move forward on the environment – we intend to hold him to these promises.”

Cosmic dancer dance with me
Dance
Let the guitar dance
Spread your legs across the sea
Cosmic dancer wont you try
Spread your wings so that we can fly
Cosmic dancer if you do
We can do the things that dancers do
You don’t have to worry
Confusing your mind
You wont have to hurry
All we have is time
I Wonder where you’ll sleep tonight
I wonder whose arms will hold you tight
In the tender lonely night
Cosmic dancer dance with me
Pick a tune and we will see
Tell me whose been cruising who tonight
Aren’t you dancing hot under the light?
Cosmic dancer if you do
We could dance like lovers do
You don’t have to worry
We’ve nothing but time
We don’t have to hurry up
I won’t have to lie awake and wonder where you’ll sleep tonight
And I know whose arms will hold you tight
Til the tender morning light
Cosmic dancer dance with me
Amy and I we will see
Cosmic dancer if you try
We’ll fly away and span the sky
Cosmic dancer if you choose
We can dance as lovers do
You don’t have to worry
Confusing your mind
We don’t have to hurry up
We can learn to fly
And I wont wonder where you’re gonna sleep tonight
And I know whose arms are gonna hold you tight
Til the tender morning light
Cosmic dancer dance dance
Let the guitar dance
Cosmic dancer dance dance
Let the guitar dance
Dance heh
Dance heh
Dance
Dance Let the guitar dance
Dance dance
Let the guitar dance

The Dangers of Privatization

Privatization-a new word and an old concept. There is a dangerous trend in the United States that has been afoot for the past several decades, that of privatization. Privatization, to lay out the case, is simply the effort to take public entities and institutions and put them in the hands and under the control of private interests. Highways, parks, prisons, schools, public services, healthcare- everything of public value is being sought after by certain public officials to be remitted to private interests for the benefit and use of private investment. There used to be a time in this country—and throughout much of the Western world, when the lives of the rich and comfortable and the lives of the poor were quite different. Not more than a century and a half ago the realities of American society were such that, if you wanted the services of a doctor, you paid for it, or if you wanted your children to receive any level of education, one paid for that too. As such, these services were considered privileges of the wealthy elite. There were parks that belonged to the rich and roads that belonged to the rich and police that worked on behalf of the rich. All of these things worked for the benefit, prosperity, and upkeep of a certain class of people in society.

If one was poor, to learn to read and write was a privilege. Any schooling beyond the first or second grade was considered noteworthy. The services of a doctor were something in the realm of imagination. One could really define one’s life by the parameters of the community you lived in. The average person never traveled more than three or four miles beyond their place of birth at any given point in their lives and their life’s prospects never contained more than dreams and hopes of what their local community could offer them. If you lived in the rural, you worked on the farms, if you lived in the cities, you worked in the factories. People eked out meager existences for little pay and little reward for their life’s efforts.

There is an interesting continuum that exists between the wealthy elite of not so very long ago and those interests in American society who would like to refashion our society in that model. What transpired between that time and the times we live in now was nothing short of social revolution. Beginning in the last decades of the 19th century, there were urgent calls for social reform and a strong push towards remaking society to extend better living conditions to those at the bottom of the economic ladder. With many middle and upper-class women such as Jane Addams and Margaret Sanger taking the lead, reforms were made to clean up the cities, to eradicate disease and poverty, and to ensure the medical, moral, and social needs of those that existed at the bottom rungs of society were taken care of. Other people, like Mother Jones, Mary Lease, and Ida B. Wells fought for better living conditions and social justice for workers, Blacks, women, and every other oppressed group in America. They and others like them fought for government intervention in the disease and decay overrunning urban America-and the founding of social work as an occupation. They fought for an eight hour work day, a living wage, public education, and the rights of workers to organize. They lived through such tragedies as the Triangle Shirt Waist massacre, the Ludlow Massacre, and the race riots that swept this nation in the summers of 1917 and 1919. They remade this society and refashioned it to broaden the horizons of every person who lived on American soil.

In this new millennium, you have such people as Mitch Daniels, the governor of Indiana, trying to sell the public highways to private companies. You have Mike Rogers, a republican congressman from Alabama crying over the injury that healthcare reform legislation will do to insurance companies. You have a congress that sells our public airwaves, public health, and even national security to those who will pay for their reelection bids.

This current debate over healthcare is really a debate over privatization. Will the public health be guaranteed and publicly funded as apart of our social contract or will we contend with Blue Cross Blue Shield and other major corporations who are more than willing to step in? It is time that we looked at this debate in a new light. It is time that we viewed the healthcare debate as a debate over privatization. We must decide whether we will hand over our national resources to private interests and if so, at what cost. These are matters that cannot be taken lightly, but must weigh on the conscience of every soul in this country.

Happy New Year!

Labelle's "What Can I Do For You?" is my mantra from henceforth;-) Happy New Year to all!

"Films and life are like clay, waiting for us to mold it," she said. "And when you trust your own insides and that becomes achievement, it's a kind of principle that seems to me is at work with everyone. God bless that principle. God bless that potential that we all have for making anything possible if we think we deserve it.
I deserve this."

-Shirley Maclaine's Oscar acceptance speech

"There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist thru any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. ... No artist is pleased. [There is] no satisfaction whatsoever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others."
-Martha Graham to Agnes de Mille

1968 Academy Awards

Make Someone Happy

Barbra Streisand

Make someone happy,
Make just one someone happy.
Make just one heart the heart you sing to.
One smile that cheers you,
One face that lights when it nears you.
One gal you're everything to.

Fame, if you win it,
Comes and goes in a minute.
Where's the real stuff in life to cling to?
Love is the answer,
Someone to love is the answer.

Once you've found her,
Build your world around her.
Make someone happy.
Make just one someone happy
And you will be happy too

Chicago: Health Gap Widens Between Blacks, Whites

Health Study For Chicago: Health Gap Widens
Between Blacks, Whites
Problem is worse in Chicago than nationwide,
Sinai Urban Health Institute study says.
A new study finds a widening gulf in the health status
of blacks and whites in Chicago, even though
disparities between blacks and whites nationally
have remained static.
By Deborah L. Shelton
Chicago Tribune
December 18, 2009
http://www.chicagotribune.com/health/chi-chicago_health_gapdec18,0,628023.story

A widening gulf in the health status of blacks and
whites in Chicago comes even as disparities between the
two races nationally have remained relatively constant,
a new study has found.

The disparity is particularly jarring in five areas:
death from all causes, heart disease mortality, breast
cancer mortality, rates of tuberculosis and the
percentage of women who received no prenatal care during
the first trimester of pregnancy.

Nationally, the racial gap got worse from 1990 to 2005
for six of the 15 health indicators researchers studied.
However, in Chicago, disparities worsened for 11 of the
15 indicators, according to research by the Sinai Urban
Health Institute, published online Thursday in the
American Journal of Public Health.

Poverty, segregation and access to health care all
appear to play a role, researchers said. In Chicago
neighborhoods and medical offices, doctors and patients
see the same factors.

Dr. Charles Barron, medical director at Access Southwest
Family Health Center, said many of his patients struggle
to pay for health care.

"Access is definitely an issue, even at federally
qualified health centers such as Access Community Health
Network, which offers treatment on a sliding-scale
basis," he said.

Tonya Jackson, 39, of North Lawndale, takes seven
medications to treat heart failure. She is a patient at
Mount Sinai Hospital, which is widely known for its
initiatives to treat low-income and poor patients.

"Even with health insurance, a lot of medicines are very
expensive," she said. "When you're a single parent,
you're trying to pay rent, you have your child, and
you're trying to pay bills and buy food, so it's
difficult. A lot of people don't get the care they need
because they have to decide whether they want to eat
that day."

Dr. Niva Lubin-Johnson, an African-American physician,
has witnessed the disparities firsthand in her 20-year
solo practice in Chatham.

"Based on what I see," she said, "we have a greater
disease burden, and part of that comes from lifestyle,
part of it comes from income, part of it comes from
health literacy and people not understanding what they
need to do to live a healthy lifestyle."

An author of the study, institute director Steve
Whitman, previously has compared breast cancer
disparities in Chicago and New York. He said the health
of African-Americans in Chicago fares worse than blacks
elsewhere.

"The underlying issue here is racism and poverty,"
Whitman said. "In Chicago, it's exacerbated by
segregation. Black people in Chicago are forced to live
in neighborhoods where there are no stores to buy fresh
fruits and vegetables, where schools are failing, where
they don't have parks to exercise in and where they tend
to go to segregated health facilities that are poorly
funded and, in different ways, failing."

Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American
Public Health Association, cautioned about making
geographic comparisons.

"While it is important to measure an urban city like
Chicago against national numbers," Benjamin said, "the
national statistics include lots of places where some of
the challenges of racial disparity don't exist.

"When you average numbers out -- even though researchers
try statistically to correct for some of those things --
you have to be cautious."

But he agreed that racial disparities appear to be
worsening in Chicago.

"Despite Chicago's ... transit system, it still has
pockets of people where people have tremendous problems
accessing care, and that's a huge overlay," Benjamin
said. "Part of it is lack of insurance, and part of it
is access to care."

Ultimately, money might matter most when it comes to
good health, Benjamin said.

"If we were serious about doing something about
eliminating these disparities, we would pay attention to
the social determinants of health that put people in
these situations to begin with," he said. "At the end of
the day, there is very strong correlation between health
and wealth."

Sinai researchers analyzed the 15 measures using data
from city communicable disease records and Illinois
birth and death records.

The study builds on work published in 2004, believed to
be the first to examine the health of blacks and whites
in a major urban center over time and put findings in
the context of national trends.

Researchers reported that the African-American death
rate from breast cancer was 99 percent higher in Chicago
than for white women, a fivefold increase since 1990.

In 1990, blacks in Chicago were 8 percent more likely
than whites to die of heart disease.

In 2005, blacks were 24 percent more likely to die.

In 1990, black women were two times more likely to go
without prenatal care in the first trimester of
pregnancy. By 2005, they were three times more likely to
go without prenatal care.

Most of the measures showed improved health for both
blacks and whites nationally and locally, but whites'
health status improved much more, widening the gap.

If health indicators were equal, 3,200 fewer African-
Americans in Chicago would die every year, or about nine
a day, the study estimates.

Joseph M. Harrington, assistant commissioner for chronic
disease for the Chicago Department of Public Health,
agreed that the problem in Chicago is significant.

"But," he said, "what do we do about it? You can keep
talking about how bad the numbers are, but the real
question is, what do you plan to do?"

The city health department has initiated programs to
address the problem, including a federally funded
project focused on cardiovascular disease among blacks
and Hispanics living in North and South Lawndale,
Harrington said.

"These findings should provoke us to think about what
can be done, that's the call to action," Harrington
said.

"This should provoke us to do something."

_____________________________________________

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Sleeping in Aunt Earnestine's Bed, Part One

One memory of my childhood that I now find hovering over me, just above my consciousness is that of sleeping in my Aunt Earnestine's bed. My aunt Earnestine had one of those tall, high backed, old-fashioned beds, the type that if you successfully climbed up into it on your first try you really needed a medal or something. There were two windows surrounding the bed, one directly behind it, where her climbing rose could be seen growing through the pane right behind the bedboard. The other was in the bottom right hand corner of the bed, letting out onto the front porch. The television sat on a separate stand at the foot of the bed. Mounds of Ebonys and Jets sat on the bottom shelf of the stand. A bookcase sat at the direct right of the bed, a buffer between the bed and the wall. There was always something that I might pluck from the shelf to hold my interest while lying in bed--the entire complete series of those children's bible stories that you always find in doctors' offices; anthologies from the Reader's Digest-always interesting reading material; and other books of varied degrees of interest. On the nightstand situated at the left side of the bed, she always kept various copies of The Daily Word, her glasses, and various other items.

In the top drawers of the chest of drawers across from her bed, one could always find sweet, crunchy peanut butter candy or whole sticks of peppermint, or lemondrops. Those drawers also contained thousands of letters, perhaps merely hundreds, but mounds of them--correspondence that she had kept with her relatives, friends, and other people going back for years. Aunt Earnestine was a renowned letter writer Among her most treasured correspondences, I believe was that she kept with our Cousin Cottye, which went on or over forty years. Also in those drawers, along with those letters, were an autographed picture of a 1950s popular do-wop group and hundreds of notebooks, papers, obituaries, photographs of various relatives, and other documents which altogether I'm sure transcribed her years as a teacher and a principal, her two master's degrees, doctoral work, years as a church steward, sunday school teacher, baker of communion bread and steadfast relative and friend. Her papers not only resided in her chest of drawers. They also claimed their own space in stacks against the back wall against one chiffarobe and again against another chiffarobe in the lower right hand corner of the room. Without fail, as one spent the night in Aunt Earnestine's bed, one could retrieve from the stack of papers that stood against the rear wall, either at her invitation, without her knowledge, or to be shared with her, oreo cookies in the blue paper package, in various states of either smoothness or crumble. Sometimes the package, you could rest very assured, had been in that corner for one or more years, however, you obligingly ate the cookies-not only because they were offered and they were good, but because it wasn't so much the age of the cookies as the sentiment behind them that was enjoyed.

To spend the night in Aunt Earnestine's bed, one was either comforted by the warmth of the mounds of quilts that she kept on the bed, winter, spring, summer or fall, or one constantly tried to fight one's way to the top of the bed to have at least your nose sticking out from under the covers so that you might breathe and not suffocate under the mounds and heaps of bedcovers.