December 21, 2013

For fans of Julian Castro - Holiday Photo

Facebook message:

Mayor Julián Castro
48 minutes ago

Wishing everyone a happy holiday season. May the time with your families and loved ones be special and memorable. — with Julian Castro and Erica Lira Castro.

December 6, 2013

Words of wisdom from Nelson Mandela

as we continue to fight economic inequality --

November 25, 2013

Alice's Restaurant

Thanksgiving is my least favorite holiday. Land grab by imperialistic europeans - slaughtered our indigenous people and then celebrated over dinner. So I will skip the holiday greeting on this one and instead give you the best part of the season - the tradition of listening to Alice's Restaurant. Enjoy --

November 15, 2013

Future My Love

FUTURE MY LOVE is a unique love story challenging our collective and personal utopias in search of freedom.

At the brink of losing the idealistic love of her life, filmmaker Maja Borg takes us on a poetic road trip through the financial collapse, exploring a radically different economic and social model proposed by 95-year-old futurist Jacque Fresco. How much freedom are we prepared to give to the ones we love? And how much responsibility are we ready to take for our society?

Carefully weaving a texture of archive footage, black and white Super 8 film, and colour HD, Borg poignantly depicts the universal struggle between our heads and hearts in times of big change.

http://www.futuremylove.com/#home

The Venus Project: http://www.thevenusproject.com/

Beyond Politics, Poverty and War

November 11, 2013

DAV: Fighting for our military when they come home

My dad is a disabled war veteran (Vietnam era) and this organization is the one he belongs to. He reports that they actually fight to keep his benefits because of course there are those in Congress who love war-mongering until they have to pay the bills ...


Honoring Our Heroes on Veterans Day and in Everything We Do
November 11, 2013

As you celebrate Veterans Day, know that your support of our organization and cause honor the service and sacrifices of the heroes whose service ensures our American Way of Life.

Now ninety-three years after our founding by World War I veterans, DAV service officers, members and volunteers are helping each generation of heroes transition to civilian life and ensuring the rights and benefits we’ve earned over the course of generations are maintained.

The relationship between the public and its veterans is important – as is the sense of community we build with all our veterans – men and women, young and old. Our fellow citizens respect service today and recognize that caring for those who serve is the right thing to do. They expect that our government will meet its obligations and expect the institutions like DAV to ensure veterans receive the benefits and opportunities they’ve earned.

To that extent, DAV thanks you for making our mission possible in all you do. On this important day, we share some figures that quantify the organization you make possible and thank you for helping us fulfill our promises to the men and women who served:

serving 1.2 million members

maintaining 2,300 service officers who provide free claims assistance nationwide, all of whom are disabled veterans

assisting with more than 300,000 claims for benefits in 2012, securing more than $5 billion in new and retroactive benefits for disabled veterans and their families

More here: http://www.dav.org/learn-more/news/2013/honoring-our-heroes-on-veterans-day-and-in-everything-we-do/

November 9, 2013

Clinton/Castro (photo)

Nice! (From Julian Castro's facebook page today with the caption "Today in Los Angeles)

October 9, 2013

"We've got you where we want you ... " (toon)

September 19, 2013

The Invisible Man

Whenever a book is banned that I have not read I rush out to buy it. Preferably in hard-cover so I can save it for my children. Not much makes me angrier than censorship by small-minded bigots. This is what happened in North Carolina:



Invisible Man Banned: Ralph Ellison's Landmark Novel Banned From School Libraries

Posted: 09/19/2013 10:40 am EDT

A lack of "literary value" has apparently left Ralph Ellison's landmark 1952 novel, Invisible Man banned from school libraries in Randolph County, N.C., the Asheboro Courier-Tribune reports.

According to the Tribune, a parent of an eleventh grader wrote the school district expressing her disapproval of the book's availability to students stating:

The narrator writes in the first person, emphasizing his individual experiences and his feelings about the events portrayed in his life. This novel is not so innocent; instead, this book is filthier, too much for teenagers. You must respect all religions and point of views when it comes to the parents and what they feel is age appropriate for their young children to read, without their knowledge. This book is freely in your library for them to read.

As the school district's policy requires, the parent's complaints lead to votes on the school and district levels. Both held that the book should remain available to students in the library. However, in a 5-2 vote, the school board voted to ban the book, with one board member, Gary Mason, stating, "I didn’t find any literary value."

Mason's blunt assessment however, runs counter to decades of intellectual criticism of the novel, which won the 1953 National Book Award for fiction, beating out Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea and John Steinbeck's East of Eden.

In 1995, writing for the New York Times, Roger Rosenblatt praised the novel as a masterpiece.

"Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man," which won the National Book Award in 1953, was instantly recognized as a masterpiece, a novel that captured the grim realities of racial discrimination as no book had, " Rosenblatt wrote. "Its reputation grew as Ellison retreated into a mythic literary silence that made his one achievement definitive."

Including the book in its list of 100 Best English Language Novels since 1923, Time literary critic Lev Grossman also expressed great admiration for Ellison's work ...

More here, including a nifty slide show: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/19/invisible-man-banned_n_3953740.html?utm_hp_ref=books&ir=Books

September 2, 2013

Happy Labor Day --

"Which Side Are You On?" is a song written by Florence Reece in 1931. Reece was the wife of Sam Reece, a union organizer for the United Mine Workers in Harlan County, Kentucky. In 1931, the miners of that region were locked in a bitter and violent struggle with the mine owners called the Harlan County War. In an attempt to intimidate the Reece family, Sheriff J. H. Blair and his men (hired by the mining company) illegally entered their family home in search of Sam Reece. Sam had been warned in advance and escaped, but Florence and their children were terrorized in his place. That night, after the men had gone, Florence wrote the lyrics to "Which Side Are You On?" on a calendar that hung in the kitchen of her home. She took the melody from a traditional Baptist hymn, "Lay the Lily Low", or the traditional ballad "Jack Munro". Florence recorded the song, which can be heard on the CD Coal Mining Women.

Happy Labor Day!

August 30, 2013

Why do we have wars? (Photo)