NEW ORLEANS -- When 4-year-old Cortez Stewart was reunited with her mother and five siblings in Texas last week, it brought a happy ending to a long journey that began with the devastation of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
Cortez represented the last of 5,192 Gulf Coast children listed as missing or displaced after the storms struck more than six months ago...
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Of the more than 5,000 children from both storms, all but 12 were found alive. Most were found living with other relatives, family friends or other adults...
At first glance, the regular Saturday morning gatherings of friends over coffee, bagels and books could be any gaggle of intellectuals at any one of San Francisco's arty coffeehouses.
But look closer and the dozen friends sitting at a round, wooden table in the corner of the Morning Due Cafe are teenagers from Mission High and their young social studies teacher. They're studying Dante's "The Divine Comedy" together, and they do it for two hours every weekend.
Not for credits. Not for resume building. Just for fun.
Mission High is composed of mostly low-income, minority students, many of them new immigrants learning English. The school's curriculum concentrates largely on modern, multicultural literature as a way to engage students in reading. While Mission students do read a couple of Shakespeare's plays and a smattering of other classics before graduation, much of the Western canon never crosses their desks.
Callen Taylor, 30, teaches social studies at Mission and said many of her students lack "cultural currency." They have no knowledge of Greek mythology or Renaissance artists or ancient Rome.
She was made especially aware of their gap in knowledge when they returned to Mission last fall after having participated in a variety of summer programs along with wealthier students from other schools. They told her they'd felt intimidated.
"They felt like why are all the kids smarter than us?" Taylor recalled. "Why does everybody seem to know Greek mythology? How do they know Jupiter is the same as Zeus? A lot of people would take that for granted."
Her solution? The Dante Club...
My official “hospital experiment” would come two months later. I deliberately chose the one that scared me the most, perhaps because I’d learned so much from overcoming my fear of accompanying the terminally ill in their final days. This would be a new kind of challenge—The Father Purcell Memorial Center for Exceptional Children in Montgomery, AL. For two months I would work with severely handicapped children, only two of whom could speak, and only a few of whom could walk. I worked mainly in physical therapy. Each day groups of children would come down, we would lift them out of their wheelchairs and exercises their limbs, something that they could not do for themselves. They ranged in age from babies to teenagers. It didn’t take long to see what a gift these children were, as surprising as that might seem. Despite their limitations, they had a capacity to love and to be loved that brought out the best in people, even if at times they could be inexplicably difficult. Still, it was hard work, sometimes made harder by the harsh reality of the fact that some of these children were born handicapped because of a parents’ drug abuse or rendered handicapped because of physical abuse. And several had been left at the hospital by family members who never returned. There I learned the importance of allowing your heart to be broken by another’s suffering, and also the importance of loving, even if the person loved cannot acknowledge or return that love in a familiar way...
A NEW institute is to be established at Edinburgh University to promote Chinese language, culture and business, it was announced today.
The decision to set up the Scottish Confucius Institute followed talks in Beijing between First Minister Jack McConnell and the Chinese Education Minister, Professor Zhou Ji.
Staff from one of China's top three universities will be seconded to staff the institute, which is expected to be up and running later this year.
Its first task will be to initiate language teaching, but it promises increased language teaching and the establishment of a programme of cultural activities next year.
The Ministry of Education in China intends to open around 100 Confucius Institutes across the globe by 2010. The network is intended to spearhead the teaching of Chinese language and culture worldwide and to strengthen economic and business ties.
[...]
Pundita has a short, heartbreaking excerpt from Two Birthdays in Baghdad: Finding the Heart of Iraq by Anna Prouse (Howells House, September 2005), focusing on the high incidence of serious deformities due to marrying within clans. From that, I expected a downbeat book, but then I looked at Barnes & Noble, and read:
FROM THE PUBLISHER
Back in Italy after 14 months in wartime Iraq, this Italian journalist felt the international news coverage of bombs, rockets, and insurgency lacked the optimism she witnessed there every day, and writing an account of her own impressions became an effort to set the record straight. Trained as an emergency medical responder, Anna Prouse arrived in Baghdad in June 2003 to work at the Italian Red Cross Hospital, where she found the Iraqis she worked with to be full of aspirations for the future despite danger and provision shortages. She was subsequently hired to work in public affairs for the Coalition Provisional Authority inside the Green Zone (or the International Zone), where occupation authorities live and work. There in the foreign community, as elsewhere in Baghdad, she discovered a spirit of energy, dedication, and comradeship in the mission of rebuilding a devastated country.
FROM OUR EDITORS
Charles "Pete" Conrad (1930-99) seemed to be the last person destined to make history. The dyslexic son of debt-ridden parents, the Philadelphia-born future astronaut took odd jobs at an airfield before landing a Navy scholarship to Princeton, where he majored in aeronautical engineering. A born risk taker, he became one of the nation's elite test pilots, then joined the Mercury Space Program, only to drop out. Some people thought that he was too free-spirited or too short in stature to become an astronaut. Conrad proved them wrong. On his four Gemini flights, he spent nearly 1,200 hours in space, but he is best known as the commander of the second lunar landing in November 1969. His first words on the moon were not exactly tailored for history: "Whoopie!" he shouted, "That may have been one small step for Neil, but it's a long one for me!" In Rocketman, Conrad's widow joins with Space Cowboys screenplay writer Howard A. Klausner to capture the life and achievements of a high-flying hero.
...Though Hillary lived, she sustained severe brain damage, losing her ability to speak. Here, Reston chronicles two decades of family life. Gradually, he and his wife, Denise, move from tortured self-pity to an absolute adoration of Hillary and an understanding that she is wonderful just as she is. Hillary's older siblings emerge as heroes, though near the end of the book (and none too soon) Reston reflects on the ways each of his older children has been shaped, and perhaps a bit scarred, by growing up in such stressful circumstances. There is real polemic threaded through this memoir-an insistence that disabled, retarded or handicapped children's lives matter just as much as everyone else's. (If you imagine that no one would say otherwise in this politically correct age, think again; sometimes even Hillary's physicians suggest that, well, if her kidney failure kills her, maybe everyone will be better off.)...
..."In the early years," Reston writes, "we often wondered, angrily, why our child had been singled out, and why we, far from perfect perhaps, but good and decent people, had been cursed. We demanded an answer about the randomness of tragedy.... We demanded to comprehend the incomprehensible." Meanwhile, the burden of managing Hillary's complicated care while still trying to provide a semblance of normal life for their other two children was a daily challenge. Their lives became a saga of doctor visits, medical jargon and complex drug regimens. Through it all, they lived with a persistent sense of loss.
A turning point came one night in the hospital, when 4-year-old Hillary lay near death. On top of everything else she had suffered, there was a problem with her kidneys, and her lungs had suddenly collapsed. Doctors predicted she would be gone within hours. Desperate, Leary climbed into the hospital bed with her daughter, settling in among the tangle of ICU wires. She held Hillary, caressed her, spoke in her ear -- and made a bargain with a God whom she doubted: She promised to "never, never again measure the losses ... only the gains. But let Hillary live."
This plea marked a new beginning in the journey of loving Hillary. From this moment, Reston suggests, the realization of how much they had took center stage in their lives, even in the midst of what felt like ongoing tragedy...
There are many famous quotes regarding fear. Franklin Roosevelt’s probably being the most famous: "We have nothing to fear but fear itself." But his wife Eleanor said it better: "You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’ You must do the thing you think you cannot do." ...
Self-pity and gratitude are mortal enemies. Where one exists the other cannot. Since both are highly contagious, individuals must choose gratitude before becoming too thankless to do otherwise.
The scale of the impact of these so-called "stealth" taxes is startling. Typical middle-to-high income earners now pay up to 50 per cent of their incomes to the Treasury by way of taxes, compared with 36 per cent in 1996. And, since 1997, revenue generated by stealth taxes, fiscal drag and stamp duty has increased a staggering 78 per cent - to £123bn today from £69bn.
One of the most dramatic increases can be seen in stamp duty land tax on house sales: revenue here has risen from just £675 million in 1996 to £5.5bn in 2004 - a more than eightfold increase...
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Soaring house prices have also created an inheritance tax bonanza for the government. They have contributed to an 81 per cent increase in IHT revenue - to £2.9bn from £1.6bn in the past eight years.
That has been driven by a surge in the IHT take on property, which has risen 129 per cent since Labour came to power in 1997 - to £1.1bn from £480m.
[...snip...]
Money is flowing into Revenue coffers from more surprising areas, too: more than a quarter of everyday motoring costs go to the government through a variety of taxes....
In this splendidly preposterous volume, John Tyerman Williams sets out to prove beyond all reasonable doubt that the whole of Western philosophy - from the ancient Greeks to the existentialists of this century - may be found in the works of A. A. Milne. Williams shows how Pooh - referred to here as "the Great Bear" - explains and illuminates the most profound ideas of the great thinkers, from Aristotle and Plato to Sartre and Camus.
Military Desertions Down Since 9/11
Rate of Military Desertion Much Lower Than In Vietnam Era
Desertion Among Active Iraq Military Very Rare
Military Desertion Rarely Due To War Opposition
Posters depicting in utero fetuses raised eyebrows and a small uproar last week. One of the posters, the second in a series created by Harvard Right to Life (HRL), featured the picture of a fetus named Elena with the words, “I’m 25 days old...and my heart already BEATS!!”
“The posters from this semester are getting torn down left and right,” said HRL President Meghan E. Grizzle ’07. “Apparently people find the picture of a fetus gruesome and I don’t understand why, because we’re not showing pictures of an aborted fetus or a dead baby,” Grizzle said. She added that HRL had to constantly replace the posters that were removed from displays across campus.
[...]
But not all students who opposed the posters agreed with those who tore them down.
“I personally find the image disgusting and don’t want to walk past it everyday,” said Nichele M. McClendon ’06, who said she did not tear down any posters. “It doesn’t have to do with abortion as an issue or free speech; it’s about being decent and not being disgusting.”
[...]
Grizzle said that posters from previous semesters had been torn down in far fewer numbers. Last semester HRL’s posters featured different facts and quotes, including posters saying that abortion is the number one cause of African American deaths surpassing AIDS and heart disease....
I'm a bit pressed for time, so I'll just toss up links for some books mentioned prominently in the show, and clear off for now. The authors were interviewed, and all of them were informative in person.
Jimmy Stewart: Bomber Pilot
Duty, Honor, Applause: America's Entertainers in World War II
Stars in Blue: Movie Actors in America's Sea Services
and World War II Combat Film: Anatomy of a Genre (textbook)
Soldiers who have seen combat have no problem remembering their mortality. They've seen it with their eyes, touched it with their hands and inhaled it into their nostrils. For those in a combat zone, every day is Ash Wednesday; the dirt on their faces is real and not a ceremonial embellishment...
"I WANT MY COUNTRY BACK!”- By Rick Roberts - 760 KFMB AMI don’t mean to go off on a rant here, but here’s the bottom line, I want my country back.
I want my kids to be able to walk to the store or walk to school without being abducted by some 3-time convicted child molester. And the politically correct powers that be in this country just can’t seem to get over themselves with “CAN’T WE JUST HELP THIS PERSON!” No! You can’t. But they’re let loose to prey on more children.
I want my kids back. I want my country back.
I don’t agree with everything this President does. I’ve never agreed with anything 100% that any President has done or said.
You know, I was very young during the Vietnam War. So I probably missed that thing by a hair. I don’t know whether I would have agreed with that or not at the time. I was too stupid to have an opinion at that point and time even though I thought I did.
I want my country back.
I want some semblance of respect for authority, whether I agree with it all or not.
I want the Boy Scouts to be “boy” scouts, not boy and “we think she’s a girl” scouts. I want Girl Scouts to be “girl” scouts not Girl Scouts and “Bruce.”
I want my country back.
I want to be able to wake up in the morning knowing that I can walk outside without some gang-banger on parole taking my life.
Or being able to go down and purchase a car without having to worry about you know 90% of the parts being made overseas in some sweatshop.
I want my politicians, when they finally do get my vote, to do what the hell they said they were going to do in the first place.
I want the Abramoff’s of the world to be labeled what they…nothing more than organized crime in a better suit.
I want the Hollywood elite to make movies to entertain me. Not use their celebrity to sway me politically one way or the other.
Quite honestly, if you’re a has-been-pseudo-celebrity I want you to go away quietly, so that I can remember you fondly through your “artiste work” that’s left in the archives.
I want people to say something and when they say something look at me in the eye. And mean what they say. Not say what they think I want to hear. And then do what they want to later politically or any other way.
I want to be able to go out and work and make a decent wage and buy a home. Half the people that are listening to me right now can’t even afford to buy a house unless they’re working three jobs.
And I want America to be America. All of those opportunities, all of those things that made her great, I want those returned to the forefront. If you want to come to this country we welcome you with open arms. We simply ask that you abide by our laws. I don’t want you to snub your nose at our laws, then take advantage of our opportunities, and then cling to the constitution most of which you can’t even read because you don’t speak the language.
I want us to secure our borders because the country is worth securing. The people that live here are worth protecting.
I want my country back. I want my children back.
I want some semblance of what this country used to be.
It’s worth protecting. It’s worth defending.
I don’t recognize this country anymore.
Not politically, not philosophically, not spiritually.
Whether you like it or whether you don’t God was a part of building this great nation. To remove him is to take away the very foundation of what this country was all about.
I don’t care about your political correctness!
I don’t want to know your sexual preference!
I could care less about all of that. Stop making it the headline of the day!
That’s not America.
I want my country back!
And the only way I’m ever going to be able to get this country back is if I reach out to the brothers and the sisters that all feel the same way and we say “Hell No! You can’t have our country.”
It’s not for sale! Take the price tag off this country!
Take the price tag off the heads of our children!
Stop it already!
The politically-correct-psychobabble-hug-a-tree-experts ; You are not qualified to release sex offenders back into our neighborhoods.
The southern border, more than any other border, needs to be secured tomorrow. For all those that wish to come to this country to take advantage of her opportunity, to live under a constitution a living document that breathes in and out just like you do, this country is not for sale.
I should know. I’m one of the owners. You can’t sell it without my permission.
I want my country back.
This year I plan to conduct my own Academy Awards. And in my newly created category of "Best Red-Blooded Male," I regret to say that I can offer up only one nominee: King Kong.
Where have all the tough guys gone? Really, it's enough to make you cry--that is, if all our leading men weren't already doing it for me. From its earliest days Hollywood has had a glorious tradition of punch-throwing, gun-toting, testosterone-oozing leading men, and the world has loved every one of them. James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, Gary Cooper, John Wayne, Lee Marvin, Charles Bronson, Steve McQueen, Sly Stallone, Mel Gibson, these were men. Some were strong and silent, some artisans of broken noses and busted rib cages, some villains, some heroes. But there was no doubt that they had a reason to walk with bowed legs.
And today? These marvelous males have given way to a new generation of Hollywood consumptives...
Add to that the fact that movies were getting darker and darker - It's been a long slide from Academy Award winners like Sound of Music and Ben Hur to American Beauty and Mystic River (ugh - what an ugly movie that was!)
Hollywood films were instrumental in shaping the resolve of the American public during the gloomy days of World War II. Hear the story of silver screen heroes who served their country and inspired the nation! Oliver North sits down with legends Tony Curtis, Mickey Rooney, and more! Visit FOX Fan Central for a preview from the all-new episode, plus, more exclusive extras.
http://www.foxnews.com/foxfan/index.html
...The road to stardom for Hank, however, wasn't all dog biscuits and gravy. Erickson graduated from the University of Texas in 1966 and studied for two years at Harvard Divinity School. He began to publish short stories in 1967 while working full-time as a cowboy, farmhand, and ranch manager in Texas and Oklahoma. Hank and his sidekick Drover are dogs Erickson worked with on the range. This mixture of true life experience, fun, and adventure has gained Hank a loyal following of thousands of children and adults.
In 1982, however, Erickson was at his rope's end. "I was working out in the cold; there was 8 inches of snow on the ground," he says, "I had just gotten a couple of rejection slips from New York publishers; and, I had a wife with two kids and another one on the way." So, with $2000 in borrowed money, Erickson started his own publishing company, appropriately named Maverick Books.
Hank the Cowdog made his debut in the pages of The Cattleman, a magazine for adults. An obvious favorite of readers, Erickson included two of Hank's humorous stories in Maverick Book's first publishing effort, The Devil in Texas (1982). Erickson began selling books from his pickup truck at cattle auctions, rodeos, and just about any place cowboys gathered.
When Erickson started getting "Dear Hank" letters, he knew he was onto something. So in 1983, 2,000 copies of The Original Adventures of Hank the Cowdog were published, and sold out in 6 weeks. Not long after that first printing, the book was recorded word-for-word on audiotape. Since then, every Hank book has been recorded, making Hank the longest running successful children's series on audio ever....
