I have had the luck to have always lived close to a National Park and I still do.I think despite the many problems we are facing in America today, it is important to take time to to celebrate our National Parks and the Presidents who set the land apart so future generations could enjoy the beauty of this land. If you have never been to one of our parks, I encourage you to take your family and have a new adventure. See America as it once was, wild and beautiful. Our country is huge and amazing and you owe it to yourself and your family to see it.
Namaste
Barbara
The upcoming show, America’s National Parks at 100 is a celebration of the vital role played by the National Park Service, and the second best thing to actually visiting some of the more remote parks, like this one. Can you name this park? Tune in on Sunday at 8PM for more #NPS100
Eve was the first woman to flee and find adventure. Intrepid women travelers have been pushing up against man-made boundaries and shocking their societies.
The first woman to document her travels was a nun named Etheria. In 381 A.D.
She wandered to Jerusalem and continued on to Egypt searching for freedom of choice.
In 1784, Elizabeth Thible became the first women to travel in a hot-air balloon because she knew the sky was not the limit.
Nellie Bly, an American journalist and Victorian lady traveled around the world in seventy-two days, six hours, and eleven minutes. What an inspiration to us in the twenty-first century!
Women have been having adventures and conquering their fears for centuries. They caused family scandles and much gossip in their lives. However, they didn’t listen to the people who said no, you can’t do this. They knew their hearts and went anyway. I am sure they were afraid at times but they grabbed onto life with all of the strength they had and held on for dear life!
Julia Archibald Holmes climbed Pike’s Peak in 1858 and wrote, “I have accomplished the task which I marked out for myself. Nearly everyone tried to discourage me from attempting it, but I believed that I should succeed.”
” Life seems to throw many more adventures your way when you are prepared, it is very sexy to know how to take care of yourself,” by an Italian woman named Sylvania.
Life can be scary and we can at times be filled with anxiety and hesitancy. We are here to experience life, and I don’t mean just the men. It is important to grab on to whatever is close-by and hold on. Allow yourself to laugh and love, eat and cry. This is life.
There are many books published documenting the adventures of women and they give us the luxury of sitting on a beach and walk in a Rainforest. You can absorb their experiences vicariously.
I have a friend who is a college professor of Photography. We have traveled together in days past when I was more mobile. She is a birder as well and has traveled from Peru to Siberia. I am lucky enough to see her slides and enjoy her stories. She is such a rich font of experiences and a true inspiration to her students.
I encourage every woman to visit their dreams and feel their strength. Take that step that will eventually take you to a rich and passionate life. If family or friends think of you as too wild, remember that ‘wild women don’t get the blues’.
There are several books that you could read and perhaps inspire the adventurer within. Spinsters Abroad; Victorian Lady Explorers by Dea Birkett. Living with Cannibals and Other Women’s Adventures by Michele Slung and a really good one called Unsuitable for Ladies by Jane Robinson.
Your adventures may be joining the YMCA, or joining a quilting circle, taking classes, vacationing on the Galapagos Islands. Take skating lessons, read a new author, buy a wide brim hat just because they are coming back into style.
Have fun and enjoy conquering your world. I did and have no regrets.
French Quarters, New Orleans; Photo by Barbara Mattio
Johnson Space Center, Houston, Tx.; Photo by Barbara Mattio
The Alamo, San Antonio, Tx.; Photo by Barbara Mattio
An illustration from the day in court that Judge Marvin Zuker announced Mustafa Ururyar’s guilty verdict.
“For much of our history, the ‘good’ rape victim, the ‘credible’ rape victim has been a dead one.”
That’s just one of the many powerful statements Ontario Court Justice Marvin Zuker said in court last week while delivering his verdict in a Canadian university rape case. The judge announced that he found the defendant guilty of sexual assault and proceeded to point out the insidious effects of victim-blaming in his 179-page verdict.
“The myths of rape should be dispelled once and for all,” Judge Zuker read aloud in court last Thursday. “We cannot perpetuate the belief that niceness cannot coexist with violence, evil or deviance, and consequently the nice guy must not be guilty of the alleged offense.”
Ururyar found guilty of sexually assaulting York U student Mandi Gray. ” Rape it was” @CityNews
The case, which began in February, involved Mustafa Ururyar and Mandi Gray, two doctoral students at Toronto’s York University. According to The Guardian, the two had been casually dating when Gray went to Ururyar’s apartment one night in January 2015.
As the two made their way back to Ururyar’s apartment, Gray said he became angry and started calling her “a slut” and “needy.” Gray testified that Ururyar forced her to perform oral sex on him and then raped her later that night.
Judge Zuker was not accepting Ururyar’s “twisted logic,” as he said in his verdict. The judge denounced Ururyar’s defense, calling it all a “fabrication” that is “credible, never,” adding, “I must and do reject his evidence.”
The judge described how traumatizing the defense’s character assassination must have been for Gray and condemned a culture that is so quick to victim-blame:
The court was constantly reminded, told, as if to traumatize the helplessness, the only one we can believe is Mr. Ururyar, because she, she Ms. Gray, cannot remember. What a job and a real bad one, trying to shape the evening. We must not create a culture that suggest we learn that rape is wrong through trial and error.
How can you prove it? You don’t remember. He knows you don’t remember. He is going to write the script and he did. Testimony incomplete, memory loss, etc. etc. And, of course, typically, no dialogue in the story. One full sentence by Ms. Gray? What is it? No power, no voice, defenceless. To listen to Mr. Ururyar paint Ms. Gray as the seductive party animal is nothing short of incomprehensible. He went or tried to go to any length to discredit Ms. Gray, if not invalidate her. Such twisted logic.
… There is no demographic profile that typifies a rapist. There is a danger of stereotyping rapists. When the accused is a friend of the victim and uses that relationship to gain, and then betray the complainant’s trust; there may be a need to be informed in order to recognize and understand the accused’s predatory behaviour. No other crime is looked upon with the degree of blameworthiness, suspicion, and doubt as a rape victim. Victim blaming is unfortunately common and is one of the most significant barriers to justice and offender accountability.
…The responsibility and blame lie with the perpetrator who takes advantage of a vulnerable victim or violates the victim’s trust to commit the crime of sexual assault. Rape is an act of violence and aggression in which the perpetrator uses sex as a weapon to gain power and control over the victim. It is too common to redefine rape as sex and try to capitalize on the mistaken believe that rape is an act of passion that is primarily sexually motivated, It is important to draw the legal and common sense distinction between rape and sex… There is no situation in which an individual cannot control his/her sexual urges.
Towards the end of his statement, Judge Zuker clarified what consent really means and why a survivor’s actions before the assault should never be used to excuse rape.
“Without consent, ‘no’ means ‘no,’ no matter what the situation or circumstances,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if the victim was drinking, out at night alone, sexually exploited, on a date with the perpetrator, or how the victim was dressed. No one asks to be raped.”
In his verdict, the judge actually underlined that last sentence (on page 172 in the embedded statement below).
The same day Judge Zuker read his verdict, Gray released a public statement in response to Zuker’s powerful words. “I am tired of people talking to me like I won some sort of rape lottery because the legal system did what it is supposed to do,” Gray wrote.
“I think it’s massive, these statements,” Gray said. “But, I mean, these statements don’t un-rape me, first of all, and nor does it erase the process that I’ve had to go through.”
I decided to publish another blog today because this Canadian judge has the courage and the strength to what three American judges have not done. He has not punished the victim for her own rape. He has stated for the record that No means No. Our judges slapped the hands of the convicted rapist and let them off without jail time.
American men, there is no reason for you to violate a woman. No does mean no. Rape has to do with power and control and not really sex. What kind of man can’t control himself? Once again, we see here in America that there is no respect for women, no consideration for their feelings…It is a War on Women.
Congratulations to our Northern neighbors. Hats off to the judge who is man enough to follow the law and do what is right.
The section of New York City called Harlem was the home of a very wonderful poet during the 1920s and 1930s. Langston Hughes was one of the most influential black poets of the twentieth century. The blog I wrote and titled “I, too, am America” is a quote from this very talented man. He was born in 1902 in Missouri, however he lived most of his life in Harlem.
Langston was a mentor and inspiration to many other leading black writers and writers. In his poetry, he sought to foster black pride, break stereotypes, and outrage people by telling people about the injustices of racism and inequality. He wrote about lynchings, poverty, and the inner rage of blacks confined and humiliated by segregation. Hughes considered himself the people’s poet. He wanted his writings to be read and not studied. His writing is direct, accessible and often dramatic.
For instance, his poem “Ku Klux,” is written in the first person voice of a black kidnapped by the Klan. The title of the poem is truncated, but all of Hughes readers knew what the third word word would be. The poem concludes inconclusively, but readers understood the grim fate awaiting the man accused of “sassin’ ” white folks.
Hughes first poem was published in the Crisis, the NAACP magazine founded by W.E.B. DuBois. Hughes graduated from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania.
He often wrote dark and pessimistic poetry, but considering his world, I believe it is understandable. Hughes did interweave his poetry with brighter optimism and humor. During his lifetime, the Civil Right’s Movement made progress toward equality, dignity and some of his work reflected this progress. Recently, Langston Hughes has been honored as a gay black male icon.
Portrait of African American poet Langston Hughes
Artists banding together to save Langston Hughes’ historic home in Harlem
Gentrification is a many-headed beast, and now that beast may be coming to devour the former home of Langston Hughes – one of the great pioneers of the Harlem Renaissance.
However, Renée Watson, a local writer who lives near the home, is trying to prevent that from happening. Watson has launched a fundraising campaign in hopes of raising $150,000 to rent the place and turn it into a cultural center.
As of today, the initiative has raised a little over $26,000.
“For the past ten years, I’ve walked past the brownstone where Langston Hughes lived and wondered why it was empty,” said Watson on the campaign’s homepage. “How could it be that his home wasn’t preserved as a space for poets, a space to honor his legacy?”
Photo: fullaccessnyc.com
“I’d pass the brownstone, shake my head, and say, ‘Someone should do something.’ I have stopped saying, ‘Someone should do something’ and decided that someone is me,” she added.
Watson also launched I, Too, Arts Collective (named in honor of Hughes’ poem I, Too, Sing America), a non-profit whose first major goal is to lease the apartment and “provide a space for emerging and established artists in Harlem to create, connect, and showcase work.”
Watson has lived in the city just over ten years, and she reached out to other writers once she learned of the possible fate of Langston Hughes’ home.
Old brownstones in the area are being torn down to make room for more modern buildings at an alarming rate. There is fear that the money won’t be raised in enough time, but “the current owner has agreed to hold off on selling to see how the project unfolds,” CNN Money reports.
Jason Reynolds, a young adult author, answered Watson’s call to action immediately. “I kept thinking, this is just like New York, nothing is sacred,” he told CNN Money.
Jennifer Denen, 30, allegedly allowed her boyfriend Clarence Reed, 45, to call her daughter ‘idiot’ so often, she thought it was her name. (GCJ)
Clarence Reed, 47 and Jennifer Denen, 30, both of Hot Springs, Ark., have been charged with domestic battery, permitting abuse of a minor and endangering welfare of a minor after a staff member at Cooper-Anthony Mercy Child Advocacy Center told police a 4-year-old girl showed signs of abuse. (KARK-TV)
The 4-year-old girl had deep purple bruises, a black eye, a swollen cheek and a mark on her forehead.
She also had healing scars across her back, dried blood in the corner of her mouth and ligature marks on her wrist, authorities said.
When a police officer asked her what her name was, she had a startling response: “Idiot.”
Her mother’s live-in boyfriend, police said, regularly called the child “Idiot” instead of using her actual name. He also zip-tied the girl to her bed as a form of punishment, according to a police report.
Clarence Reed, 47, and the child’s mother, Jennifer Denen, 30, both of Hot Springs, Ark., are now charged with domestic battery, permitting abuse of a minor and endangering welfare of a minor.
Police received a call Friday from the Cooper-Anthony Mercy Child Advocacy Center, where a staff member told an officer that a malnourished 4-year-old had been abused in her home.
Reed and Denen, who were at the center when police arrived, were later arrested.
Denen told police that she had seen her boyfriend strike her daughter with a plastic bat and said she’d heard Reed frequently call the child “Idiot.”
She admitted not seeking medical care for her daughter, the police report said.
Reed told authorities that he hit the child. But instead of a plastic bat, he told police, he had used a half-inch-thick wooden paddle, according to the report.
He also admitted zip-tying the child to punish her for climbing the kitchen cabinets.
And although he said he had called the child “Idiot,” Reed told police he meant it as a joke.
Cpl. Kirk Zaner, spokesman for the Hot Springs Police Department, told The Washington Post that a total of six children lived in the house, all of whom are Denen’s. One, an 11-month-old, is her only child with Reed.
Zaner said the 4-year-old girl and the 11-month-old are now in the custody of the Department of Human Services. The four older siblings are with their biological father.
In 2012, state and local child protective services received about 3.4 million reports of children being abused or neglected, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The majority of them, 78 percent, were victims of neglect; 18 percent suffered physical abuse, according to the CDC
About 80 percent of perpetrators were parents, the CDC said, while six percent were relatives other than parents. Four percent of perpetrators were the parents’ unmarried partners.
Child abuse is such an incredibly awful crime. Besides the physical abuse, there is emotional and mental abuse. The results of this abuse can last a lifetime even with good therapy and medication. My heart breaks for this child. I have seen child abuse close up and the scars it leaves. It used to be like battery and no one believed you and the abuse slowly broke you down. You grew up believing you were what you were told you were.
Putting a child into the system isn’t always an answer because the system often makes the problems worse. I hope that this little one has relatives who will be able to take her in and love her and raise her the way she deserves to be raised. People like this should not have children.
Nigeria Chibok girls: Boko Haram video shows captives
Article from BBC News
The Nigerian Islamist group Boko Haram has released a video showing some of the schoolgirls they abducted from the northern town of Chibok.
Some 50 girls are shown with a gunman who demands the release of fighters in return for the girls, and says some girls died in air strikes.
The government says it is in touch with the militants behind the video.
A journalist who had contact with Boko Haram has been declared a wanted man by the Nigerian army.
The group is said to be holding more than 200 of the 276 final-year girls it seized from a school in April 2014.
Non-Muslims were forcibly converted to Islam, and it is feared that many of the schoolgirls have been sexually abused and forced into “marriage” by their captors.
Parents of the missing girls have described their anguish at seeing their daughters in captivity.
Image caption One of the girls is seen answering questions posed by a militant
‘Forty married’
The video begins with a shot of a masked man, carrying a gun, speaking to the camera. He says that some of the girls have been wounded and have life-threatening injuries, and that 40 have been “married”.
Speaking in the Hausa language, the gunman says the girls on display will “never” be returned if the government does not release Boko Haram fighters who have been “in detention for ages”.
I have seen her: Samuel Yaga, father of abducted schoolgirl Serah Samuel, talking to the BBC Hausa service
I have watched the video several times. I saw her sitting down.
The fact is we are overwhelmed with a feeling of depression. It’s like being beaten and being stopped from crying. You helplessly watch your daughter but there is nothing you can do. It’s a real heartache.
Those who are still alive – we want them back. We want them back irrespective of their condition.
As ordinary men, there is nothing we [the other fathers and I] can do on our own. We are just here unable to do anything with our lives. You see your child but someone denies you from having it. They are being forcefully married and they now live in terrible conditions.
The video concludes with footage of bodies, said to be the victims of air strikes, lying on the ground at another location.
The militant also carries out a staged interview with one of the captives, who calls herself Maida Yakubu, in which she asks parents to appeal to the government.
Maida’s mother, Esther, is one of several parents of Chibok girls who recently published open letters to their daughters detailing the pain they feel at their children’s absence and their hopes for the future.
Another girl among those standing in the background can be seen with a baby. Some of the girls can be seen weeping as Maida speaks.
Boko Haram has waged a violent campaign for years in northern Nigeria in its quest for Islamic rule, and a faction of the group recently pledged loyalty to so-called Islamic State.
Thousands of people have been killed or captured by the group, whose name translates as “Western education is forbidden”. Many of the girls abducted in Chibok were Christian.
Bid to pressurise government? Analysis by Tomi Oladipo, BBC News, Lagos
Boko Haram has always maintained that the Chibok girls were safe and would only be released if the Nigerian government gave in to its demands.
Through this video, the group is again trying to make the government look like the villain for carrying out air strikes on the militants, which it claims have backfired and hit the abductees instead.
Reigniting public sympathy for the girls might be an attempt to force the government to listen. Boko Haram is attempting to paint the military campaign against the jihadists as a failure.
It is also significant that this video comes shortly after a split in the group, with one faction maintaining that it is the true regional branch of the so-called Islamic State. The video indicates that the other faction, led by Abubakar Shekau, is the one holding the Chibok girls and so it will use this to show why it cannot be ignored, even if its rivals have foreign backing.
Nigerian Information Minister Alhaji Mohammed insisted the government was doing everything possible to secure the girls’ release.
“We are being extremely careful because the situation has been compounded by the split in the leadership of Boko Haram,” he said.
“We are also being guided by the need to ensure the safety of the girls.”
The video is the first to be seen since CNN obtained footage in April purportedly showing 15 of the girls.
The Nigerian army declared journalist Ahmad Salkida a wanted man after he published details of the new video before it was released.
Salkida, who moved to Dubai a few years ago, has written extensively about the inside operations of the group.
The Chibok girls had been thought to be in a heavily forested area of northern Nigeria.
One of the girls was found wandering in the Sambisa Forest in May by an army-backed vigilante group.
I keep searching for news on “our Boko Harem” girls. Here is the latest I have found. It upsets me very much that they are being used as weapons of war.
I ask that we keep praying for them. The life I can see for them has got to be hell. Even the girls who have been “married” are not living happily I am sure. Their families must be very worried and that is pure heartbreak on top of all the stresses they have to live with every day.
I am already against the next war. But I want to be hearing about more diplomatic sessions here for these girls and all over the Middle East and in Russia.
If you are going to dream, dream big.
Thank you all for following my blog. You are the best virtual friends and readers anyone could ask for.
Today is the twenty first anniversary of my late husband’s death. I am dedicating this blog of music tonight to him. Thank you for the memories. I have not forgotten any of them. The flowers still bloom.
Thank you for listening and sharing this beautiful music with me. Blessings, peace and harmony, Namaste
Jewish group expresses solidarity with Muslims after imam is murdered in Queens
According to police, the gunman approached the men from behind and shot both in the head at close range in the Ozone Park neighborhood.
Community members pray outside the Al-Furqan Jame Mosque in Ozone Park after imam Maulama Akonjee and friend Thara Uddin were killed in the Queens borough of New York City. (photo credit:KENA BETANCUR / AFP)
ion League expressed solidarity with the Muslim community on Sunday after an imam and and another Muslim walking with him were fatally shot by a lone gunman. The double murder happened on Saturday following afternoon prayers at a mosque in the New York City borough of Queens.
According to police, the gunman approached the men from behind and shot both in the head at close range in the Ozone Park neighborhood. No arrests have been made.
While the motive for the shooting was not immediately known and no evidence has been uncovered that the two men were targeted because of their faith, some in the Muslim community have spoken out against Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump, blaming him for creating an atmosphere of Islamophobia.
The victims, identified as Imam Maulama Akonjee, 55, and Thara Uddin, 64, were both wearing religious garb at the time of shooting, police said.
The ADL said it is shocked and horrified at the murder. ADL New York Regional Director Evan R. Bernstein also urged the NYPD to investigate it as a possible hate crime.
“Unfortunately, such incidents have the potential to make communities feel unsafe and vulnerable,” he said. “However, the Muslim community should know that greater New York stands united with them during this extremely difficult time.”
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights and advocacy group known by the acronym CAIR, said Uddin was an associate of the imam.
“These were two very beloved people,” Afaf Nasher, executive director of the New York chapter of CAIR, told Reuters. “There is a deep sense of mourning and an overwhelming cry for justice to be served.”
“We are calling for all people, of all faiths, to rally with compassion and with a sense of vigilance so that justice can be served,” Nasher said. “You can’t go up to a person and shoot them in the head and not be motivated by hatred.”
The suspect was seen by witnesses fleeing the scene with a gun in his hand, police said.
Reuters contributed to this story.
Bless the love that brought these people together and stopped the hate which is building up in our world. Love is the answer. Love is the only answer. We are all one family in one world worshiping one God, one God. It does not matter what name you use.
Mensen maken de samenleving en nemen daarin een positie in. Deze website geeft toegang tot een diversiteit aan artikelen die gaan over 'samenleven', belicht vanuit verschillende perspectieven. De artikelen hebben gemeen dat er gezocht wordt naar wat 'mensen bindt, in plaats van wat hen scheidt'.
Jennifer Denen, 30, allegedly allowed her boyfriend Clarence Reed, 45, to call her daughter ‘idiot’ so often, she thought it was her name. (GCJ)
idealisticrebel 