Something to blackmail my grandchild with...

when she runs for president----partial nudity!

Seriously, isn't she the cutest thing you've ever seen?

(I'm not predjudiced, am I?)

Why Didn't Speilberg Make A Movie Out Of This?

I just read this article on Yahoo news, and it blew me away---I can't do any better, so I'll just re-copy it here:

Polish Holocaust hero dies at age 98
By MONIKA SCISLOWSKA, Associated Press Writer Mon May 12, 12:35 PM ET
WARSAW, Poland - Irena Sendler — credited with saving some 2,500 Jewish children from the Nazi Holocaust by smuggling them out of the Warsaw Ghetto, some of them in baskets, died
Monday, her family said. She was 98.
Sendler, among the first to be honored by Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial as a Righteous Among Nations for her wartime heroism, died at a Warsaw hospital, daughter Janina Zgrzembska told The Associated Press.
President Lech Kaczynski expressed "great regret" over Sendler's death, calling her "extremely brave" and "an exceptional person." In recent years, Kaczynski had spearheaded a campaign to put Sendler's name forward as a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Sendler was a 29-year-old social worker with the city's welfare department when Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, launching World War II. Warsaw's Jews were forced into a walled-off ghetto.
Seeking to save the ghetto's children, Sendler masterminded risky rescue operations. Under the pretext of inspecting sanitary conditions during a typhoid outbreak, she and her assistants ventured inside the ghetto — and smuggled out babies and small children in ambulances and in trams, sometimes wrapped up as packages.
Teenagers escaped by joining teams of workers forced to labor outside the ghetto. They were placed in families, orphanages, hospitals or convents.
Records show that Sendler's team of about 20 people saved nearly 2,500 children from the Warsaw Ghetto between October 1940 and its final liquidation in April 1943, when the Nazis burned the ghetto, shooting the residents or sending them to death camps.
"Every child saved with my help and the help of all the wonderful secret messengers, who today are no longer living, is the justification of my existence on this earth, and not a title to glory," Sendler said in 2007 in a letter to the Polish Senate after lawmakers honored her efforts in 2007.
In hopes of one day uniting the children with their families — most of whom perished in the Nazis' death camps — Sendler wrote the children's real names on slips of paper that she kept at home.
When German police came to arrest her in 1943, an assistant managed to hide the slips, which Sendler later buried in a jar under an apple tree in an associate's yard. Some 2,500 names were recorded.
"It took a true miracle to save a Jewish child," Elzbieta Ficowska, who was saved by Sendler's team as a baby in 1942, recalled in an AP interview in 2007. "Mrs. Sendler saved not only us, but also our children and grandchildren and the generations to come."
Anyone caught helping Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland risked being summarily shot, along with family members — a fate Sendler only barely escaped herself after the 1943 raid by the Gestapo.
The Nazis took her to the notorious Pawiak prison, which few people left alive. Gestapo agents tortured her repeatedly, leaving Sendler with scars on her body — but she refused to betray her team.
"I kept silent. I preferred to die than to reveal our activity," she was quoted as saying in Anna Mieszkowska's biography, "Mother of the Children of the Holocaust: The Story of Irena Sendler."
Zegota, an underground organization helping Jews, paid a bribe to German guards to free her from the prison. Under a different name, she continued her work.
After World War II, Sendler worked as a social welfare official and director of vocational schools, continuing to assist some of the children she rescued.
"A great person has died — a person with a great heart, with great organizational talents, a person who always stood on the side of the weak," Warsaw Ghetto survivor Marek Eldeman told TVN24 television.
In 1965, Sendler became one of the first so-called Righteous Gentiles honored by the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem for wartime heroics. Poland's communist leaders at that time would not allow her to travel to Israel; she collected the award in 1983.
Yad Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev said Sender's "courageous activities rescuing Jews during the Holocaust serve as a beacon of light to the world, inspiring hope and restoring faith in the innate goodness of mankind."
Despite the Yad Vashem honor, Sendler was largely forgotten in her homeland until recent years. She came to the world's attention in 2000 when a group of schoolgirls from Uniontown, Kan., wrote a short play about her called "Life in a Jar."
It went on to garner international attention, and has been performed more than 200 times in the United States, Canada and Poland.
Sendler, born Irena Krzyzanowska, said she lived according to her physician father's teachings, arguing that "people can be only divided into good or bad; their race, religion, nationality don't matter."
She married Mieczyslaw Sendler but they divorced after the war's end. Sendler then married fellow underground activist Stefan Zgrzembski, and they had two sons and a daughter. One died a few days after birth. The second son, Adam, died of a heart failure in 1999.
Sendler is survived by her daughter and a granddaughter.

Into the WILD!

Maybe not this bad (this is a picture from "The Day After Tomorrow") but it sure felt like it!

Thursday evening I was holding down the fort at job #2 as tornadoes ravaged the city. Then, after I got home, we had a SECOND round of storms,even worse than the first , that hit about 2 am. These storms came with hurricane-strength winds, causing even MORE damage. I actually saw a large, uprooted maple tree get blown down the street before I went downstairs.

Luckily, no one in this area was killed or seriously injured, unlike the poor folks down in Arkansas.

Ah, springtime in the midwest....

Okay, not really, but...

...it sort of feels that way. I've spent the past week being sicker than I can remember in a long, long time. At first I thought it was a variation of S/O's "disease", but now I believe mine was some genetic mutation from the great beyond, or a really bad voodoo curse. I'm still not 100%, but I gettin' there...

I'm still on the hunt for the Plant Murderer, even though it was actually only attempted murder, as the plant is still somewhat alive. It still looks pretty bad though; all the leaves on top have fallen off---the poor thing looks like it had a bad comb-over.

Seriously, I did have a couple of really scary days while sick; one ENTIRE day of continuous coughing, so much so that I blacked out at one point. Yes folks, it's true; Robutussin does not cure everything. After another day of minimal breathing, I did get into the doctor, and was able to get sufficiently drugged up to carry on.

I am now ready for a week-end of what I hope to be peaceful healing. More bitchin' next week.

Not My Best Day

Yesterday, S/O got really, really sick (and she's never sick, so I knew it was bad). I fussed over her as much as I could; made about a week's worth of Jewish Penicillin (chicken soup), whipped up numerous cocktails of grape juice, 7UP and crushed ice, etc. But due to my numerous handicaps, I felt I was unable to care for her the way I should. However, I told myself , the crip situation may end soon, as I was scheduled to have outpatient surgery on Wednesday.

*********************************************************

So what should I get when leaving Job #1 ? A message from the surgery center stating they were cancelling my surgery, as I am more messed up than they realized, and my procedure would need to be done in a hospital.

Great.

*********************************************************

I get to Job#2, and there is my beautiful, big philodendron, my plant baby, it's formerly big, beautiful green leaves turned a sickly yellow, and its' vines withered and drooping. Upon closer examination, it seems someone dumped what looks to be a nasty substance in its' pot. So now I have to track down a plant murderer!

Great!

*************************************************************************************************

Finally, I find out my 2 best work friends have given their notices, and will be leaving next week!

Greeeaaattt!

*************************************************************************************************

I just hope that that old saying about bad things happening in 3s is (for this day anyway) true.

Standin' on the corner; The 1968 Kansas City Riots, Part II

If you're ever "goin' to Kansas City", don't bother looking for the corner of 12th St. and Vine. This is all that is left of the famous area that was home to such clubs as "The Orchid Room" and "The Boulevard Club," where such entertainers as Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington and Charlie Parker performed.

During the riots of 1968, much of this historic area was burned. No efforts were made by the community at large to restore it; some say that was to punish those residents of the East Side that those in power blamed for the riots. In the early 1970's, the remaining neighborhood was torn down. There is now a park and a lonely street sign where jazz greats once sang and played.

In the 1990's , Kansas City's first African-American Mayor, Emmanual Cleaver Jr. spearheaded redevelopment of the old Jazz District, this time centered around what was left of the district at 18th and Vine. Where there once were dozens of jazz clubs, the now is only one--The BlueRoom. The Jazz District is a tourist draw, but it's struggling. Municipal Stadium, where the Monarchs once reigned triumphant, was also torn down in the early 70's, replacing it with Royals Stadium (later Kaufmann) out in the safe suburbs. Think of all that history, created by racism, then lost to it.

For more information on the '68 Riots, go here:

http://www.realcities.com/mld/kansascity/18542956.htm

Forty Years Ago

I was 13, and just beginning to be interested in politics, society, and the world outside my own. I was on the road with my family for a long week-end in Joplin, Mo., when I heard the news on the radio. My father pulled over at a truck stop, and he and my mother discussed whether we should continue. After a long conversation, it was decided we should go on---going home wouldn't change anything, and might even frighten the little ones.

We were accompanying my Dad on a business trip, and the whole point of the trip was a stay in a swanky hotel. But when we got there, the hotel was deserted; most of the guests staying there had left. There was also a rumour about, that claimed Dr. King's killer was headed to the Joplin area. (Joplin, the southeastern area of Kansas, and northwestern Oklahoma was an area that is infamous for harboring criminals---it was said to be a favorite of Bonnie and Clyde's.) It was a strange weekend, sometimes scary, and very sad, as we watched the faces of Dr. King's wife and children.

We were back in town by Monday. Dr. King's funeral was scheduled for Tuesday. The school district of Kansas City Kansas had called off classes for the day, so that students and staff could watch the services on televison. But the Kansas City Missouri school district decided to hold classes after all.

Emotions were running high. Students from Lincoln, Central and Manual High Schools (mostly black schools) staged a walk-out, and headed downtown to the Mayor's office and school district headquarters. Police in riot gear confronted the students at the intersection of Truman and Paseo, and after heated words were exchanged, a gas cannister was dropped, and the violence began.

More students marched from other schools, some threatening to attack the mostly white schools in other parts of the district (white enrollment in the Kansas City Mo. School District has dropped steadily every year since.) Police confronted those marchers as well, beating and arresting the young students.

By then the riot was full scale; a major part of the east side was burning, police and public were exchanging gunfire, people were dying. The National Guard was finally called in. I remember feeling the fear emanating from my mother as she drove all five of her children to pick up my dad at the bus station from yet another business trip, as National Guardsmen held their weapons at the ready, as they patrolled the city streets.

City leaders finally came together, and the rioting eventually ceased. The neighborhood I now live in looks much the same as it did 40 years ago , post riot. Most of the white population of the city has left for the suburbs. The only difference is a large mural of scenes of Dr. King's life looms over Troost Avenue, surrounded by empty buildings, vacant lots, and small businesses, struggling to survive.

For a really excellent snapshot of this time in history, read this piece posted on Maggie's Meta Watershed by my friend Maggie Jochild:

http://maggiesmetawatershed.blogspot.com/2008/04/reverend-king-childhood-diary-entry.html




HARLEM
by Langston Hughes


What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

......Or does it explode?.