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Not only may Congresswoman Griffords go home but she is reportedly reading Get Well Cards and looking at pictures on an I-phone. If you believe in God, say a prayer. If you don’t send her a card. Hurray!
Albert tells me that the Wal-Mart pictures are old news, so here is something funny from today.
My post today related to abortion. Regardless of your personal feelings about abortion, nothing about the subject matter is funny. However this article came out on Salon today, and I thought it only appropriate that I share it with you.
Monday, May 24, 2010 12:50 ET
Woman gives birth while driving to hospital
Minnesota newborn’s father steers car from passenger seat as the baby “just slid out”
By Associated Press
A Minnesota mother has given birth to a baby boy while driving herself to the hospital, with the newborn’s father steering the car from the passenger’s seat.
The Pioneer of Bemidji says 29-year-old Amanda McBride was rushing to the hospital Wednesday when suddenly her water broke and the baby “just slid out.”
McBride says she was feeling labor pains at work, so she drove to pick up the baby’s father and headed for the hospital. The father, 33-year-old Joseph Phillips, did not drive because he has a history of seizures.
Phillips told the newspaper that McBride yelled at him to take the wheel as she cradled the 8 pound baby boy, Joseph Dominick Phillips.
Officials at North Country Regional Hospital say they were stunned to learn the expectant mother was driving.
http://www.salon.com/life/pregnancy/index.html?story=/news/feature/2010/05/24/us_odd_pregnant_driver_delivers
By Ericka Blount Danois on Mar 16th 2010 1:38PM Black Voices
It took three trips to Madison Square Garden, but Boys & Girls basketball coach Ruth Lovelace finally has her trophy and her place in history. Right on time for Women’s History month, she has become the first woman to lead a boys PSAL basketball program to a championship, her first title in her 16 years of coaching at the Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, program.
The second seeded Boys & Girls defeated the No. 1 Cardozo, 55-50, at Madison Square Garden this past Saturday. This is their first championship since 1979. Boys and Girls had turned out legends, such as Pearl Washington, Connie Hawkins, and Lenny Wilkens, but had fallen on hard times, and Lovelace was hired by Principal Frank Mickens in 1994 to turn the program around. It was an unprecedented move that made her the first woman in the PSAL to coach an upper tier-boys basketball program.
“At the time the team wasn’t doing well at all,” Lovelace told Aol. Black Voices. “They weren’t making the playoffs. That was unheard of given their history. Mickens was really trying to get the program back in the right direction. A lot of people felt like–you’re trying to move in the right direction why would you hire a female?”
“He [Mickens] deserves all the credit,” Lovelace said. “Nobody would have ever hired a female back at that time. I was young, I was 23, but he had a vision for me that I couldn’t see for myself. I know he’s looking down.”
Mickens proved to be a visionary. Every year following, Lovelace took the team to the finals.
“I proved them wrong,” says Lovelace. “My first year there we went to the quarter finals, which is the Elite 8. We wound up losing to Lincoln with Stephon Marbury. Mickens means everything to me. Some people thought it was a publicity stunt, but he was brilliant. Fast forward 16 years and we’re proud champions.”
Lovelace said a couple of months before Mickens passed away she went to him and asked him if anyone had ever questioned him about his decision. His response was: “Are you kidding me?! They would never question me about a decision I made!” But Lovelace admits there were whispers and, “I hate to say, but I’m sure there were people who wanted to see me fail.”
Lovelace, a former standout basketball player at Seton Hall University before knee injuries derailed her career, strives for excellence from her players in the classroom and on the court. If players aren’t doing well in school, she requires them to sit out, even if they are star players.
“One of my star players was acting up today; I kicked him out of practice. We scrimmage tomorrow, so he won’t be playing with us,” Lovelace says. “It doesn’t matter if you’re a star or you’re the twelfth man on the bench, I’m trying to teach them life lessons, because basketball will end for them one day, and I want them to have life skills to make them decent upstanding young men. If you’re not a good kid, you’re not playing for me.
Lovelace and her champions dedicated their victory to Dr. Mickens:
“It’s bigger than just basketball,” says Lovelace. “When a guy comes back and says I’m going to send you an invitation to my wedding, or I just had my first kid, or I just bought my first house-those kind of things are what I want my legacy to be about, not because I won a city championship.” [She pauses.] “But still at the end of the day to know that you were the best team in N.Y.C., it’s like now, what do you guys have to say?”
Op-Ed Columnist
Divorced Before Puberty
Published: March 3, 2010
It’s hard to imagine that there have been many younger divorcées — or braver ones — than a pint-size third grader named Nujood Ali.
Nujood is a Yemeni girl, and it’s no coincidence that Yemen abounds both in child brides and in terrorists (and now, thanks to Nujood, children who have been divorced). Societies that repress women tend to be prone to violence.
For Nujood, the nightmare began at age 10 when her family told her that she would be marrying a deliveryman in his 30s. Although Nujood’s mother was unhappy, she did not protest. “In our country it’s the men who give the orders, and the women who follow them,” Nujood writes in a powerful new autobiography just published in the United States this week, “I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced.”
Her new husband forced her to drop out of school (she was in the second grade) because a married woman shouldn’t be a student. At her wedding, Nujood sat in the corner, her face swollen from crying.
Nujood’s father asked the husband not to touch her until a year after she had had her first menstrual period. But as soon as they were married, she writes, her husband forced himself on her.
He soon began to beat her as well, the memoir says, and her new mother-in-law offered no sympathy. “Hit her even harder,” the mother-in-law would tell her son.
Nujood had heard that judges could grant divorces, so one day she sneaked away, jumped into a taxi and asked to go to the courthouse.
“I want to talk to the judge,” the book quotes Nujood as forlornly telling a woman in the courthouse.
“Which judge are you looking for?”
“I just want to speak to a judge, that’s all.”
“But there are lots of judges in this courthouse.”
“Take me to a judge — it doesn’t matter which one!”
When she finally encountered a judge, Nujood declared firmly: “I want a divorce!”
Yemeni journalists turned Nujood into a cause célèbre, and she eventually won her divorce. The publicity inspired others, including an 8-year-old Saudi girl married to a man in his 50s, to seek annulments and divorces.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/04/opinion/04kristof.html
Please read the following story and follow the instructions at the end! Thank You.
Like most elementary schools, it was typical to have a parade of students in and out of the health clinic throughout the day. We dispensed ice for bumps and bruises, Band-Aids for cuts, and liberal doses of sympathy and hugs. As principal, my office was right next door to the clinic, so I often dropped in to lend a hand and help out with the hugs. I knew that for some kids, mine might be the only one they got all day.
One morning I was putting a Band-Aid on a little girl’s scraped knee. Her blonde hair was matted, and I noticed that she was shivering in her thin little sleeveless blouse. I found her a warm sweatshirt and helped her pull it on.. “Thanks for taking care of me,” she whispered as she climbed into my lap and snuggled up against me.
It wasn’t long after that when I across an unfamiliar lump under my arm. Cancer, an aggressively spreading kind, had already invaded thirteen of my lymph nodes. I pondered whether or not to tell the students about my diagnosis. The word breast seemed so hard to say out loud to them, and the word cancer seemed so frightening.
When it became evident that the children were going to find out one way or another, either the straight scoop from me or possibly a garbled version from someone else, I decided to tell them myself. It wasn’t easy to get the words out, but the empathy and concern I saw in their faces as I explained it to them told me I had made the right decision. When I gave them a chance to ask questions, they mostly wanted to know how they could help. I told them that what I would like best would be their letters, pictures, and prayers. I stood by the gym door as the children solemnly filed out. My little blonde friend darted out of line and threw herself into my arms. Then she stepped back to look up into my face. “Don’t be afraid, Dr. Perry,” she said earnestly, “I know you’ll be back because now it’s our turn to take care of you.”
No one could have ever done a better job. The kids sent me off to my first chemotherapy session with a hilarious book of nausea remedies that they had written. A video of every class in the school singing get-well songs accompanied me to the next chemotherapy appointment. By the third visit, the nurses were waiting at the door to find out what I would bring next. It was a delicate music box that played “I Will Always Love You..” Even when I went into isolation at the hospital for a bone marrow transplant, the letters and pictures kept coming until they covered every wall of my room. Then the kids traced their hands onto colored paper, cut them out and glued them together to make a freestanding rainbow of helping hands. “I feel like I’ve stepped into Disneyland every time I walk into this room,” my doctor laughed. That was even before the six-foot apple blossom tree arrived adorned with messages written on paper apples from the students and teachers. What healing comfort I found in being surrounded by these tokens of their caring.
At long last I was well enough to return to work. As I headed up the road to the school, I was suddenly overcome by doubts. What if the kids had forgotten all about me? I wondered, What if they don’t want a skinny bald principal? What if. I caught sight of the school marquee as I rounded the bend. “Welcome Back, Dr. Perry,” it read. As I drew closer, everywhere I looked were pink ribbons -ribbons in the windows, tied on the doorknobs, even up in the trees. The children and staff wore pink ribbons, too. My blonde buddy was first in line to greet me. “You’re back, Dr. Perry, you’re back!” she called. “See, I told you we’d take care of you!” As I hugged her tight, in the back of my mind I faintly heard my music box playing . . . “I will always love you..”
We need those of you who are great at forwarding information with your e-mail network. Please read and pass this on. It would be wonderful if 2010 were the year a cure for breast cancer was found!!!! This is one email you should be glad to pass on. The notion that we could raise 35 million by buying a book of stamps is powerful! As you may be aware, the US Postal Service has the “Fund the Cure” stamp to help fund breast cancer research. The stamp was by Ethel Kessler of Bethesda , Maryland . It is important that we take a stand against this disease that affects so many of our Mother’s Sisters, Friends, Coworkers, and Spouses of Coworkers.
Instead of the normal 44 cents for a stamp, this one costs 55 cents. The additional 11 cents will go to breast cancer research A “normal” book costs $8.80. This one is only $11.00. It takes a few minutes in line at the Post Office and means so much. If all stamps are sold, it will raise an additional $35,000,000 for this vital research. Just as important as the money is our support. What a statement it would make if the stamp outsold the lottery this week. What a statement it would make that we care.
I urge you to do two things TODAY: 1.Go out and purchase some of these stamps. 2.E-mail your friends to do the same. Many of us know women and their families whose lives are turned upside-down by breast cancer. It takes so little to do so much in this drive. We can all afford the $2.20. Please help & pass it on.
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