Category Archives: Viva!

A Mother Goose Seeks Police For Help | 3CHICSPOLITICO

The goose led him 100 yards away to a grassy area near a creek. Sitting there was one of her babies, tangled up in a balloon string. He was kicking his feet, desperate for help. He was wary of helping the baby on his own, worried that the goose might attack him, so he called for help from the SPCA, but no wildlife rescuers were available at the moment.

Source: A Mother Goose Seeks Police For Help | 3CHICSPOLITICO

Luckily, Given’s colleague, Officer Cecilia Charron, came to help. She began to untangle the baby, and the mother goose just stood there and watched, quacking. She didn’t become aggressive, and just let Officer Charron do what she had to do to set the baby free. It’s like the mother goose knew they were helping. Once she untangled the baby, she put her down and she ran right to her mom and they went back to swimming in the creek. Charron teared up and said it was the highlight of her 24 years on the force.

Ghosts of ’68 in Election 2016

“In the midst of all this, civil rights giant Martin Luther King Jr., is assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, and riots erupt across the cities of the United States. Two months later, Kennedy is murdered in the kitchen of a Los Angeles hotel just minutes after winning the California primary.”

I was attending American University – School of International Service at this time and worked part time at the Smithsonian. The morning after the assassination – school closed, students left and I went to work driving the wrong way down Rock Creek Parkway. When I got there, I could see machine guns on top of the Justice Department. When I lived in LA, I worked as a caterer and worked the kitchen the RFK was shot in. I watched them drive him to Arlington past the Natural History Building where I Worked

“In August, eight years after his defeat by John F. Kennedy, the Republicans bring back Richard Nixon as their presidential candidate and the Democrats select Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who has not run in a single primary, as their party’s standard-bearer.”

I grew up in John Birch Society country in LA and a friend of my mother once declined to go with Dick Nixon to her high school prom.

In the 1968 election, I voted for the Peace and Freedom Party – it was a mistake I will not repeat.

In Saner Thought

We have to admit that the election of 2016 is anything but normal….it has gotten damn right wacky.  So wacky that I am tuning most of it out.  There is only so much manure can be spread before my eyes glaze over and I turn to more interesting events and situations.

I have been looking for some historical perspective much to the chagrin of my readers….in the past their have been outsider candidates, convention fights and the atypical candidate…….and then I found a good piece in Consortium News….sure saved me a lot of headache trying to write something…..

The year was 1968 and it is a good one too……

Longtime observers of American politics have noted striking parallels between the unpredictable wartime election of 1968 and the bizarre presidential contest of 2016, another time of war and distress, as Michael Winship recalls.

Watching the mad, mad, mad, mad world that is…

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Casablanca actor Madeleine LeBeau dies in Spain aged 92 | Film | The Guardian

Born near Paris in 1923, LeBeau fled France with Dalio just days before the Nazis swept into Paris in 1940. The couple feared for their lives after Dalio’s image was used on a Nazi propaganda poster as an example of how to spot Jewish-looking features. They made their way to California and, thanks in part to Dalio’s connections in Hollywood, LeBeau was signed up to the Warner Brothers studio. She landed parts in Hold Back the Dawn in 1941 and Gentleman Jim in 1942. In 1942 the pair were cast in Casablanca. LeBeau’s marriage to Dalio fell apart during the making of the film; he divorced her citing desertion and Warners ended her contract soon after. Although no longer backed by a major studio, she won roles in two more Hollywood films: Paris After Dark (1943) and Music for Millions (1944). When the war was over she returned to Europe and in 1963 starred in Fellini’s 8½ (1963).

Source: Casablanca actor Madeleine LeBeau dies in Spain aged 92 | Film | The Guardian

There’s a Puerto Rican Superhero and She Can Fly

An article by Sandra Guzman for NBC News. With a crushing debt and a health care and humanitarian crisis in the making, the beautiful island of Puerto Rico could use a superhero right now. And thanks to Brooklyn-based Marvel Comics writer and comic book nerd, Edgardo Miranda-Rodriguez, it got one. Her name is La Borinqueña, […]

via Move Over JLo, There’s a Puerto Rican Superhero and She Can Fly — Repeating Islands

 

Photoessay: Layers of dusk to dawn — Ming Thein | Photographer

I have this habit of shooting against the sun at dawn and dusk – I think it must be a natural aversion to having the light source directly behind me, which it otherwise would have been had I been facing the other way. I didn’t consciously curate the images this way, but it turns out […]

via Photoessay: Layers of dusk to dawn — Ming Thein | Photographer

Egyptian Spring 2?

“Are women discouraged from achieving their dreams in Egypt?” That is a question a group of American University in Cairo set to discover with their student initiative ‘Men 7a2ik‘ (Arabic for ‘it’s in your right’). Unfortunately, the students soon discovered that 70 percent of women surveyed could not achieve their dreams. Who do they blame?…

via The Initiative Fighting for the Dreams of Egyptian Women — Egyptian Streets

An artful robe full of thoughts

The pieces of cloth that understands Huppert symbolizing skin were sewn on the inside of a large tarpaulin hemp fabric, which in turn is held by the wire in the form. 1997, “The Robe” finish – a seeming archaic, walkable tent object of 15 meters, 25 square meters outer surface and an estimated 250 kg weight, its internal and external appearance subject to change depending on the light. The handwritten texts float, formed into rolls of paper, unattainable far above, but can be found on the project website – here the entire history is documented. For the funded Kirchenstiftung resumption of the project Huppert had now specifically launched a new call. Since April 40 more pieces of fabric were sewn on Tuesday pulled a construction company, the sculpture carefully high. The original thought, “The Robe” to send on trips, Huppert was never realized until now – now she wants to tackle the idea again.

Source: An artful robe full of thoughts

The discussion of Sex in Arab Society … including mine

نادية حرحش

The discussion of Sex in Arab Society … including mine

The title of my unfinished MA thesis in Jerusalem Studies was: Moslem women in Jerusalem, between Tradition and religion.

A title that I look back at as modest. An attempt to hide behind my real intention, that by the time I started to write, was totally hindered. It even disappeared by the time I started researching what I really wanted to write was non-existent.

My intention was to talk about sex.  This taboo subject that we hide behind. I always had this belief that what our society needs is a sexual revolution by girls. I still have this hope in the generation of my daughters. As much as it is still hard to apprehend it, I feel proud to see the generation of my daughter represented by my daughter herself more aware about her sexuality. Still though, a cowardice awareness…

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training, racing, etc. — Fit and Feminist

You’d think that going silent for a while might indicate that I have nothing going on in my life and thus nothing to write about, but the inverse is actually true – I’ve actually got quite a bit going on. Some of it is actually relevant to this blog, even! So I decided to take […]

via Quick update on life, training, racing, etc. — Fit and Feminist

This Grocery Clerk Might Be Everest’s Greatest Female Climber – The Ladies FingerThe Ladies Finger

Back in 2000, Lhakpa Sherpa finished her first expedition to the top of Mount Everest becoming the first Nepali woman to make it to the top and back down alive. This was only the start to her successful journeys, to the top of the Sagarmatha. Yes, “journeys”. By that we mean she has conquered the 8,000 meter behemoth a total of 6 times. She went on expeditions each year from 2000 to 2006.The profile talks of Lhakpa’s childhood, growing up in Nepal at nearly 4000 meters. And how when she started climbing, her first summits were two 6,000 meter ranges, Mera and Yala and then the 8,000 meter ranges of the Everest. But this was over a decade ago and surely a woman who has climbed the Everest half a dozen times must be a somewhat recognised figure, right? Wrong.The most successful female climber lives in Hartford, Connecticut in the US and works two jobs, one as a cashier and another as a housekeeper. She has three children and is also a single mother. She just finalised her divorce from her husband George Dijmarescu and obtained full custody of her daughters. A common Google search on Lhakpa Sherpa barely churns out a hand full of pictures and some thin articles but none highlighting her enormous achievements. Unsurprisingly fellow champion climber and abusive husband Dijmarescu yields better search results for himself than Lhakpa. These results include stories from fellow climbers about Dijmarescu hitting Lhakpa and her teenaged sister during a climb. And a decade of violence and fear at home is partly why Lhakpa is said to have courted the shadows in the last few years.Lhakpa’s obscurity is also a reflection of how Sherpa climbers are viewed as a collective and nothing more than a homogenous, anonymous workforce, to support the glorious individualistic pursuits of First World Climbers.Most recently Lhakpa tried to climb the Everest in 2010, she was forced to quit halfway due to the bad weather. She is reportedly preparing for her next expedition and is looking forward to conquering the mountain one more time.

Source: This Grocery Clerk Might Be Everest’s Greatest Female Climber – The Ladies FingerThe Ladies Finger