We were strangers once, too...

“My fellow Americans, we are and always will be a nation of immigrants. We were strangers once, too. And whether our forebears were strangers who crossed the Atlantic, or the Pacific, or the Rio Grande, we are here only because this country welcomed them in, and taught them that to be an American is about something more than what we look like, or what our last names are, or how we worship. What makes us Americans is our shared commitment to an ideal that all of us are created equal, and all of us have the chance to make of our lives what we will.” 

—President Obama  during his speech to announce executive action on immigration

put a smile on my face head boppin' song of the season

Basic Purpose

view of the Potomac from The Kennedy Center rooftop 

“Each individual is capable of: 

– both great altruism and great venality. 

He has it within his means to extend the former and exorcise the latter.

– both great compassion and great indifference. 

He has it within his means to nourish the former and outgrow the latter.

– maintaining great societies and staging great holocausts. He has it within his means to fortify the former and avert the latter.

– ennobling life and disfiguring it. 

He has it within his means to assert the former and anathematize the latter.

If he recognizes that his basic purpose is to justify his humanity, he will have no difficulty in addressing himself to these choices. 

Basic purpose and human destiny do not lie outside him, but within him.”

 quote from Norman Cousins book, The Celebration of Life

reality is politically incorrect

This powerful video has gotten SOOO much attention and I love that because I'm VERY anti Catcalling, but now the new headline has been made into a racial one, which I find annoying because yes, it's also part of the ugly truth, minority men ehhhhHem, blacks and latinos in my personal experience, are THE WORST offenders.

NPR came out with an article : 'Video Calls Out Catcallers, But Cuts Out White Men' to continue the conversation. And what it said the regular blah blah blah, but then the first comment I read below the article was spot on!



David Golann •

" I have lived in New York City for 5 years and I can tell you that cat calling is worse in minority neighborhoods. It just is, and the video reflects that. It's the reality of the situation. The video is going to be politically incorrect because reality is politically incorrect.

The reasons why there is more catcalling in minority neighborhoods are complex. It is obviously not due to the racial ancestry of the people involved. To believe that would, in fact, be racist. Instead, it is a complex cultural issue that is largely above my paygrade.

I think working class men anywhere are more likely to catcall than white collar men, who express their misogyny in more subtle ways.

The problem is that white working class men have departed from most of the inner boroughs of NYC. You don't see white working class men in the video any more than you hear the old working class white accent "fugghedaboudit" anymore. They are just gone.

The white people in the inner boroughs of NYC are now educated transplants and gentrifiers, who just don't catcall that much. I don't claim these white gentrifiers are all good people or feminists. But generally they don't catcall. "