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1/12/10
Wavin' Flag Celebration Mix- Let the Countdown Begin......
"Give me freedom, give me fire, give me reason, take me higher, see the champions take the field now, unify us, make us feel proud"..
Perfect song, from the perfect artist for the occasion!
12/24/09
Happy Holidays!!!!
Let Christmas not become a thing
Merely of merchant's trafficking,
Of tinsel, bell and holly wreath
And surface pleasure, but beneath
The childish glamour, let us find
Nourishment for soul and mind.
Let us follow kinder ways
Through our teeming human maze,
And help the age of peace to come
From a Dreamer's martyrdom.
~Madeline Morse
11/13/09
Empire State of Mind
Beautiful, arresting view from the cold and windy top of The Empire State Building.....
11/7/09
The Lost Tribes of New York City
The Lost Tribes of New York City from Carolyn London on Vimeo.
From The London Squared Productions
Brilliant!!!
10/20/09
Education + Girls= Global Poverty Solution ????
""Tererai is a long-faced woman with high cheekbones and a medium brown complexion; she has a high forehead and tight cornrows. Like many women around the world, she doesn’t know when she was born and has no documentation of her birth. As a child, Tererai didn’t get much formal education, partly because she was a girl and was expected to do household chores. She herded cattle and looked after her younger siblings. Her father would say, Let’s send our sons to school, because they will be the breadwinners. Tererai’s brother, Tinashe, was forced to go to school, where he was an indifferent student. Tererai pleaded to be allowed to attend but wasn’t permitted to do so. Tinashe brought his books home each afternoon, and Tererai pored over them and taught herself to read and write. Soon she was doing her brother’s homework every evening.
The teacher grew puzzled, for Tinashe was a poor student in class but always handed in exemplary homework. Finally, the teacher noticed that the handwriting was different for homework and for class assignments and whipped Tinashe until he confessed the truth. Then the teacher went to the father, told him that Tererai was a prodigy and begged that she be allowed to attend school. After much argument, the father allowed Tererai to attend school for a couple of terms, but then married her off at about age 11.
Tererai’s husband barred her from attending school, resented her literacy and beat her whenever she tried to practice her reading by looking at a scrap of old newspaper. Indeed, he beat her for plenty more as well. She hated her marriage but had no way out. “If you’re a woman and you are not educated, what else?” she asks.
Yet when Jo Luck came and talked to Tererai and other young women in her village, Luck kept insisting that things did not have to be this way. She kept saying that they could achieve their goals, repeatedly using the word “achievable.” The women caught the repetition and asked the interpreter to explain in detail what “achievable” meant. That gave Luck a chance to push forward. “What are your hopes?” she asked the women, through the interpreter. Tererai and the others were puzzled by the question, because they didn’t really have any hopes. But Luck pushed them to think about their dreams, and reluctantly, they began to think about what they wanted.
Tererai timidly voiced hope of getting an education. Luck pounced and told her that she could do it, that she should write down her goals and methodically pursue them. After Luck and her entourage disappeared, Tererai began to study on her own, in hiding from her husband, while raising her five children. Painstakingly, with the help of friends, she wrote down her goals on a piece of paper: “One day I will go to the United States of America,” she began, for Goal 1. She added that she would earn a college degree, a master’s degree and a Ph.D. — all exquisitely absurd dreams for a married cattle herder in Zimbabwe who had less than one year’s formal education. But Tererai took the piece of paper and folded it inside three layers of plastic to protect it, and then placed it in an old can. She buried the can under a rock where she herded cattle.
Then Tererai took correspondence classes and began saving money. Her self-confidence grew as she did brilliantly in her studies, and she became a community organizer for Heifer. She stunned everyone with superb schoolwork, and the Heifer aid workers encouraged her to think that she could study in America. One day in 1998, she received notice that she had been admitted to Oklahoma State University.
Some of the neighbors thought that a woman should focus on educating her children, not herself. “I can’t talk about my children’s education when I’m not educated myself,” Tererai responded. “If I educate myself, then I can educate my children.” So she climbed into an airplane and flew to America.
At Oklahoma State, Tererai took every credit she could and worked nights to make money. She earned her undergraduate degree, brought her five children to America and started her master’s, then returned to her village. She dug up the tin can under the rock and took out the paper on which she had scribbled her goals. She put check marks beside the goals she had fulfilled and buried the tin can again.
In Arkansas, she took a job working for Heifer — while simultaneously earning a master’s degree part time. When she had her M.A., Tererai again returned to her village. After embracing her mother and sister, she dug up her tin can and checked off her next goal. Now she is working on her Ph.D. at Western Michigan University.
Tererai has completed her course work and is completing a dissertation about AIDS programs among the poor in Africa. She will become a productive economic asset for Africa and a significant figure in the battle against AIDS. And when she has her doctorate, Tererai will go back to her village and, after hugging her loved ones, go out to the field and dig up her can again.
There are many metaphors for the role of foreign assistance. For our part, we like to think of aid as a kind of lubricant, a few drops of oil in the crankcase of the developing world, so that gears move freely again on their own. That is what the assistance to Tererai amounted to: a bit of help where and when it counts most, which often means focusing on women like her. And now Tererai is gliding along freely on her own — truly able to hold up half the sky.""
----
“Investment in girls’ education may well be the highest-return investment available in the developing world,” Larry Summers former chief economist of the World Bank, currently Director of the White House's National Economic Council.
---
Excerpts above taken from the NY Times article ==> The Women's Crusade
Moral: If we educate one girl, chances are we change the destiny of her descendants ..........
The teacher grew puzzled, for Tinashe was a poor student in class but always handed in exemplary homework. Finally, the teacher noticed that the handwriting was different for homework and for class assignments and whipped Tinashe until he confessed the truth. Then the teacher went to the father, told him that Tererai was a prodigy and begged that she be allowed to attend school. After much argument, the father allowed Tererai to attend school for a couple of terms, but then married her off at about age 11.
Tererai’s husband barred her from attending school, resented her literacy and beat her whenever she tried to practice her reading by looking at a scrap of old newspaper. Indeed, he beat her for plenty more as well. She hated her marriage but had no way out. “If you’re a woman and you are not educated, what else?” she asks.
Yet when Jo Luck came and talked to Tererai and other young women in her village, Luck kept insisting that things did not have to be this way. She kept saying that they could achieve their goals, repeatedly using the word “achievable.” The women caught the repetition and asked the interpreter to explain in detail what “achievable” meant. That gave Luck a chance to push forward. “What are your hopes?” she asked the women, through the interpreter. Tererai and the others were puzzled by the question, because they didn’t really have any hopes. But Luck pushed them to think about their dreams, and reluctantly, they began to think about what they wanted.
Tererai timidly voiced hope of getting an education. Luck pounced and told her that she could do it, that she should write down her goals and methodically pursue them. After Luck and her entourage disappeared, Tererai began to study on her own, in hiding from her husband, while raising her five children. Painstakingly, with the help of friends, she wrote down her goals on a piece of paper: “One day I will go to the United States of America,” she began, for Goal 1. She added that she would earn a college degree, a master’s degree and a Ph.D. — all exquisitely absurd dreams for a married cattle herder in Zimbabwe who had less than one year’s formal education. But Tererai took the piece of paper and folded it inside three layers of plastic to protect it, and then placed it in an old can. She buried the can under a rock where she herded cattle.
Then Tererai took correspondence classes and began saving money. Her self-confidence grew as she did brilliantly in her studies, and she became a community organizer for Heifer. She stunned everyone with superb schoolwork, and the Heifer aid workers encouraged her to think that she could study in America. One day in 1998, she received notice that she had been admitted to Oklahoma State University.
Some of the neighbors thought that a woman should focus on educating her children, not herself. “I can’t talk about my children’s education when I’m not educated myself,” Tererai responded. “If I educate myself, then I can educate my children.” So she climbed into an airplane and flew to America.
At Oklahoma State, Tererai took every credit she could and worked nights to make money. She earned her undergraduate degree, brought her five children to America and started her master’s, then returned to her village. She dug up the tin can under the rock and took out the paper on which she had scribbled her goals. She put check marks beside the goals she had fulfilled and buried the tin can again.
In Arkansas, she took a job working for Heifer — while simultaneously earning a master’s degree part time. When she had her M.A., Tererai again returned to her village. After embracing her mother and sister, she dug up her tin can and checked off her next goal. Now she is working on her Ph.D. at Western Michigan University.
Tererai has completed her course work and is completing a dissertation about AIDS programs among the poor in Africa. She will become a productive economic asset for Africa and a significant figure in the battle against AIDS. And when she has her doctorate, Tererai will go back to her village and, after hugging her loved ones, go out to the field and dig up her can again.
There are many metaphors for the role of foreign assistance. For our part, we like to think of aid as a kind of lubricant, a few drops of oil in the crankcase of the developing world, so that gears move freely again on their own. That is what the assistance to Tererai amounted to: a bit of help where and when it counts most, which often means focusing on women like her. And now Tererai is gliding along freely on her own — truly able to hold up half the sky.""
----
“Investment in girls’ education may well be the highest-return investment available in the developing world,” Larry Summers former chief economist of the World Bank, currently Director of the White House's National Economic Council.
---
Excerpts above taken from the NY Times article ==> The Women's Crusade
Moral: If we educate one girl, chances are we change the destiny of her descendants ..........
10/15/09
10/11/09
By The People: The Election of Barack Obama
I predict that this documentary, which premieres on HBO on November 3, 2009, will revitalize the support behind the President and remind us of the energy, the hope and other emotions we felt during the election year and the night he was elected. He needs it, we need it , things haven't been hopeful for most since that night and maybe we do need to revisit those moments to reawaken the hope and more......
By The People: The Election of Barack Obama highlights never-before-seen footage of Obama, as well as interviews and candid moments with wife Michelle Obama, the couple’s young daughters, and senior campaign staff, volunteers, reporters, supporters and opponents.
The 120-mintue documentary is produced by Edward Norton, Stuart Blumberg and William Migliore, and is directed by Amy Rice and Alicia Sams.
Source of quote
10/9/09
President Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize (for His Potential??)
Without a doubt, Oslo is rewarding Potential as opposed to Action. Though I believe in the potential of President Obama and I admire his commitment to diplomacy as a method to resolve world issues, this was a very premature move by the Nobel Committee. It is as if they are saying, you (President Obama) have a platform that can reach further than most and you have mentioned your preference for diplomacy, this is the route we always want you to take. But shouldn’t the peace prize be a reward for past (and successful peace) actions?
It may aid him but it will also hamper him. What happens when diplomacy fails, when multi-lateral talks fail, when only a show of force can be effective? For e.g. General McChrystal has requested a troop surge to combat Taliban gains in Afghanistan. The decision was already tough for President Obama, how will the peace prize factor in the final decision?? We shall see...We shall see....
See below reactions from President Obama, his press secretary, aides and others in response to the announcement... courtesy of Huffington Post
You know this win was going to be Kanyed....:)
It may aid him but it will also hamper him. What happens when diplomacy fails, when multi-lateral talks fail, when only a show of force can be effective? For e.g. General McChrystal has requested a troop surge to combat Taliban gains in Afghanistan. The decision was already tough for President Obama, how will the peace prize factor in the final decision?? We shall see...We shall see....
See below reactions from President Obama, his press secretary, aides and others in response to the announcement... courtesy of Huffington Post
You know this win was going to be Kanyed....:)
10/8/09
"An Education"
"But there were other lessons Simon taught me that I regret learning. I learned not to trust people; I learned not to believe what they say but to watch what they do; I learned to suspect that anyone and everyone is capable of 'living a lie'. I came to believe that other people -- even when you think you know them well -- are ultimately unknowable. " (pp. 55-56)
Relatable Life lessons...
Excerpt from Lynn Barber's memoir "An Education"
The Film, based on the memoir opens 10/9/09
Relatable Life lessons...
Excerpt from Lynn Barber's memoir "An Education"
The Film, based on the memoir opens 10/9/09
10/7/09
In Paris, Alexander McQueen Was 10 inches Above Ground
Be the chicest .....
Stand above all in the office :)
Fabulous night out!
Click any of the images to watch the show...Nope, no models were harm, they survived the show and made history!!!....@10 inches, they may be a tad bit high for the everyday walkway but the designs are amazing!!!!
10/6/09
Frank Dellé (Eased from Seeed) is all about the "Pound Power"
I love this video!! Frank Dellé, aka Eased from Seeed, who is half-Ghanaian, half-German went home to Ghana to film this video and included some of his Ghanaian relatives!!! It was all about the fun and Pound Power!:)
His highly anticipated solo album "Before I Grow Old" is out and it's in English and Patois, hooray for us non German speakers:).. You can listen to entire album here ==> "Before I Grow Old" .
I also love "Waiting on the world to change", the entire album is brilliant, it passes the shuffle play test!!...plus "he well broad & heavy & sexy" ;)
Dankeschön Ingo!! ;) I Love It!!
9/30/09
What does an African tribe have to do with the launch of Snickers in Russia?
Snickers will be in Russia very soon. This is the ad used in the promotion. My Russian fails me here as I cannot see the connection....you?
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