Category Archives: Viva!

▶ Ann & Nancy Wilson (Heart) Stairway To Heaven Live HD – YouTube

▶ Ann & Nancy Wilson (Heart) Stairway To Heaven Live HD – YouTube.

Tsipras urges ‘no’ in bailout vote, says EU leaders won’t kick Greece out of euro

Alexis Tsipras says he is open to 11th-hour negotiations as Greece veers towards a default on a 1.6 billion euro loan payment. He hinted he would resign if Greeks rejected his plea for a ‘no’ vote on a possible aid deal.

via Tsipras urges ‘no’ in bailout vote, says EU leaders won’t kick Greece out of euro.

Fed Up

fearful-look-at-sky

Dear Allah
Are you seeing all your servants who
made themselves lord of this land?
Are you seeing how easily they take the
valuable life you have given us and
snatch from us the laws of humanity you made?
I am fed up with
all the cruelty, panic, violence, and darkness
I am fed up with seeing
tears in children’s eyes
Seeing hopelessness in a family’s eyes
I am fed up with my struggles,
protests, advocacy, and fights
when our government is deaf and blind.
I am fed up with all my
dreams for peace, stability,
happiness, unity, and humanity.

By Sayara

Photo by Sgt. Daniel P. Shook

Monday Mimisms ~ Whose Words Will Win?

anne%2Bfrank%2Bquote%2Bmimi%2Blenox%2BphThere’s a small piece of parchment paper that I keep on my writing desk. I’m holding it here.  Everyday I look at it as I sit down to read, gather my thoughts, and write. If I hold it up to the light just right, I can believe every word.

I found it at a rummage sale down the road from where I grew up in the country – barely a mile from home – in a box of old diaries, records and journals from the seventies. I took the whole box home with me. In it were treasures of a young girl’s thoughts – her favorite quotes, her original poems, scrapbooks painstakingly written and typed on old typewriter font, love poems, secrets, and words such as these from the courageous Anne Frank. I felt privileged, and a bit guilty,to peer into the heart and mind of another seventies girl I never knew, but who could have easily been my soul-sister, had I known she lived just down the road.

Fast-forward forty-five years.
 And I am holding the same thin paper, so beautifully detailed. It is almost like new, and I begin to read… I still believe that people are really good at heart.... and I feel a giant, stubborn lump swell up in the throat of me, because I cannot continue, I cannot read on, I cannot absorb it – I cannot believe it.

But Anne, I say, there are lovely people being shot in places of worship. In Charleston, South Carolina. While they were praying. Didn’t you hear? Atrocities done by the hand of ‘people’… people called humans, like me and like you, the same species of which you speak, slaughtering and killing, hating and maiming without remorse. Where are these other people, Anne, of which you speak? Are we to be divided into those who have souls and those who don’t? Or do you mean to say, really, surely, that all people aren’t really good at heart?
What I see in my world is not good, Anne, it is evil.
And I want to stop with the Pollyanna platitudes if you don’t mind.


Anne is not pleased with me. Neither is the seventies flower-power girl.
Neither am I.

There’s a war going on inside of me you see…. You feel it too, don’t you?
People are not just randomly killing each other, there is attention for my soul. The axe keeps falling on the root of my beliefs. With each new horrible news story, each new morality debate, I retreat a little further into cynicism, swimming in daily reality checks, and trying to fit words like bigotry, white supremacy, evil, terror, hate, murder into a jigsaw puzzle with hope, forgiveness, God, mercy, grace and love.

annefrankwordsmimilenoxphotography8.jpg

What has become my reality, Anne? Who has the loudest voice? What has become the standard on planet Earth? Which part of the puzzle will I become?  Whose words will win? Things didn’t turn out so well for you.

Look, Mimi”, she whispered. “I said you had to look for it.” 
And in my stubborn heart a question railed: Do you believe in the power of words or not?
Do you believe in God or not? Do you believe what you say you believe…or not?

The_steeple_of_Emanuel_African_Methodist
Mother Emanuel

I remembered the woman who stood face-to-face with that fresh-faced killer in Charleston last week. You remember her, don’t you? I will never, ever, forget her. In a courtroom of justice, swallowed and sick with grief, she looked into the face of the most heinous of people among us and said to the evil, “I forgive you.” And once again another uttered, 
“We have no room for hate. We have to forgive.”

The weight of those words broke the divide. 
The lump in my throat came pouring down my cheeks, because thank God, thank God, Anne was right. There are people like that. They do walk among us.

 More powerful than all the demons from hell, all the bullets, all the bombs, all the terrorists, all the tyrants, all the benders of civilization, all the bigots – are words of love.

Hold me to that standard.

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BlogBlast For Peace November 4 ~ Join us!
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Fed Up

fearful-look-at-sky

Dear Allah
Are you seeing all your servants who
made themselves lord of this land?
Are you seeing how easily they take the
valuable life you have given us and
snatch from us the laws of humanity you made?
I am fed up with
all the cruelty, panic, violence, and darkness
I am fed up with seeing
tears in children’s eyes
Seeing hopelessness in a family’s eyes
I am fed up with my struggles,
protests, advocacy, and fights
when our government is deaf and blind.
I am fed up with all my
dreams for peace, stability,
happiness, unity, and humanity.

By Sayara

Photo by Sgt. Daniel P. Shook

Monday Mimisms ~ Whose Words Will Win?

anne%2Bfrank%2Bquote%2Bmimi%2Blenox%2BphThere’s a small piece of parchment paper that I keep on my writing desk. I’m holding it here.  Everyday I look at it as I sit down to read, gather my thoughts, and write. If I hold it up to the light just right, I can believe every word.

I found it at a rummage sale down the road from where I grew up in the country – barely a mile from home – in a box of old diaries, records and journals from the seventies. I took the whole box home with me. In it were treasures of a young girl’s thoughts – her favorite quotes, her original poems, scrapbooks painstakingly written and typed on old typewriter font, love poems, secrets, and words such as these from the courageous Anne Frank. I felt privileged, and a bit guilty,to peer into the heart and mind of another seventies girl I never knew, but who could have easily been my soul-sister, had I known she lived just down the road.

Fast-forward forty-five years.
 And I am holding the same thin paper, so beautifully detailed. It is almost like new, and I begin to read… I still believe that people are really good at heart.... and I feel a giant, stubborn lump swell up in the throat of me, because I cannot continue, I cannot read on, I cannot absorb it – I cannot believe it.

But Anne, I say, there are lovely people being shot in places of worship. In Charleston, South Carolina. While they were praying. Didn’t you hear? Atrocities done by the hand of ‘people’… people called humans, like me and like you, the same species of which you speak, slaughtering and killing, hating and maiming without remorse. Where are these other people, Anne, of which you speak? Are we to be divided into those who have souls and those who don’t? Or do you mean to say, really, surely, that all people aren’t really good at heart?
What I see in my world is not good, Anne, it is evil.
And I want to stop with the Pollyanna platitudes if you don’t mind.


Anne is not pleased with me. Neither is the seventies flower-power girl.
Neither am I.

There’s a war going on inside of me you see…. You feel it too, don’t you?
People are not just randomly killing each other, there is attention for my soul. The axe keeps falling on the root of my beliefs. With each new horrible news story, each new morality debate, I retreat a little further into cynicism, swimming in daily reality checks, and trying to fit words like bigotry, white supremacy, evil, terror, hate, murder into a jigsaw puzzle with hope, forgiveness, God, mercy, grace and love.

annefrankwordsmimilenoxphotography8.jpg

What has become my reality, Anne? Who has the loudest voice? What has become the standard on planet Earth? Which part of the puzzle will I become?  Whose words will win? Things didn’t turn out so well for you.

Look, Mimi”, she whispered. “I said you had to look for it.” 
And in my stubborn heart a question railed: Do you believe in the power of words or not?
Do you believe in God or not? Do you believe what you say you believe…or not?

The_steeple_of_Emanuel_African_Methodist
Mother Emanuel

I remembered the woman who stood face-to-face with that fresh-faced killer in Charleston last week. You remember her, don’t you? I will never, ever, forget her. In a courtroom of justice, swallowed and sick with grief, she looked into the face of the most heinous of people among us and said to the evil, “I forgive you.” And once again another uttered, 
“We have no room for hate. We have to forgive.”

The weight of those words broke the divide. 
The lump in my throat came pouring down my cheeks, because thank God, thank God, Anne was right. There are people like that. They do walk among us.

 More powerful than all the demons from hell, all the bullets, all the bombs, all the terrorists, all the tyrants, all the benders of civilization, all the bigots – are words of love.

Hold me to that standard.

Like Our Facebook Page

Pin It submit to reddit

BlogBlast For Peace November 4 ~ Join us!
http://mimilenox.com

14 Adorable Photos of Baby Liza Minnelli from the 1940s and 1950s

Liza Minnelli (1946) is an American actress and singer best known for her portrayal of Sally Bowles in the 1972 musical film Cabaret.

While her first appearances were with her superstar mother, Judy Garland, Minnelli has been able to step out of her mother’s shadow to establish a substantial career as a performer. In addition to Garland, her father Vincente Minnelli was also well known in Hollywood for his work as a director.

Baby+Liza+Minnelli+%281%29.jpg
With mom Judy Garland in May 1947.
Baby+Liza+Minnelli+%282%29.jpg
Judy Garland with baby Liza Minnelli, ca. 1947.
Baby+Liza+Minnelli+%283%29.jpg
Liza Minnelli as a toddler sitting in her mother Judy Garland’s chair.
Baby+Liza+Minnelli+%284%29.jpg
Liza Minnelli on the set of In the Good Old Summertime (1949)
Baby+Liza+Minnelli+%285%29.jpg
Judy brings her daughter Liza to see Mickey Rooney on the set of Words and Music, 1948.

<a href=”http://www.vintag.es/2015/06/14-adorable-photos-of-baby-liza.html

via 14 Adorable Photos of Baby Liza Minnelli from the 1940s and 1950s.

Bundeswehr uber allis

Bundeswehr circles are calling for German military activities to be extended in the Indian Ocean. According to an analysis by three political scientists at the Bundeswehr University in Munich, the ocean linking Eastern Africa, Southeast Asia and Australia is the most important sea for global trade. It will replace the Atlantic, to become the most important “Ocean of the 21st Century.” Germany, therefore, must become more active – militarily as well, beginning, for example, with joint maneuvers with the bordering countries. Until now, Germany only has a permanent presence in Djibouti, in the western Indian Ocean, which is seen as insufficient. This plea for opening a parallel theater of conflict alongside the power struggle with Russia, dovetails with existing German activities, for example, the reinforced arms buildup of the East and Southeast Asian rivals of the People’s Republic of China. As has now been confirmed in the new Arms Exports Report, published in the middle of this week, Germany’s arms export policies have already begun to focus on East and Southeast Asia. Four countries from these regions are among the top ten customers of German military hardware, but only two NATO member countries.

via www.german-foreign-policy.com.

Israel and al-Nusra

Nervana

Golan

A tank on the Israeli side of the border in the Golan Heights, near Majdal Shams. BAZ RATNER/REUTERS

Until last week, against the backdrop of the ongoing civil war in Syria, the Israeli-annexed part of the Golan Heights had been usually quiet. All that changed last Monday, when dozens of Druze residents of Majdal Shams, a village in the Israeli-annexed Golan, attacked a military ambulance carrying two injured Syrians. The villagers beat one of the Syrians to death on suspicion that he was an Islamic militant. Two Israeli soldiers in the ambulance were also slightly wounded. The incident raises many questions about Israel’s involvement in Syria, particularly its alleged cooperation with the radical Islamist group, the al-Nusra Front, and the future implications of such involvement.

Former Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman ridiculed suggestions that Israel was aiding al-Nusra. However, many reports indicate some sort of cooperation between Israel and Islamist Syrian…

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