Trayvon's Mom asks us to sign a petition.

Here are her words:

Why This Is Important

On February 26, my son Trayvon Martin was shot and killed as he walked to a family member's home from a convenience store where he had just bought some candy. He was only 17 years old.

Trayvon's killer, George Zimmerman, admitted to police that he shot Trayvon in the chest. Zimmerman, the community's self appointed "neighborhood watch leader," called the police to report a suspicious person when he saw Travyon, a young black man, walking from the store. But Zimmerman, who is white, still hasn't been charged for murdering my son.

Trayvon was my hero. At the age 9, Trayvon pulled his father from a burning kitchen, saving his life. He loved sports and horseback riding. At only 17 he had a bright future ahead of him with dreams of attending college and becoming an aviation mechanic. Now that’s all gone.

When Zimmerman reported Trayvon to the police, they told him not to confront him. But he did anyway. All I know about what happened next is that my 17 year-old son, who was completely unarmed, was shot and killed.

It's been nearly two weeks and the Sanford Police have refused to arrest George Zimmerman. In their public statements, they even go so far as to stand up for the killer - saying he's "a college grad" who took a class in criminal justice.

Please join me in calling on Norman Wolfinger, Florida's 18th District State's Attorney, to investigate my son's murder and prosecute George Zimmerman for the shooting and killing of Trayvon Martin.


Here is a link to the petition.

And, I hope people will use the box on the side of this blog, too...

This is heartbreaking.

Sending Love to the Family of Juliet Steer

I have only just today learned of the cruel effort made by one woman to have Juliet Steer removed from her resting place.

From what I have read about Ms. Steer, she sounds like a very thoughtful caring woman. Firstly, I offer my condolences to her sons & loved ones for the loss of her presence....

I cannot imagine what it is like to have to hear this woman's complaints and have to deal with lawyers & more...

It is good the Congregation of Ahavath Achim is defending your family's rights.

Racism must be confronted.

The particular irony, which I have not seen in any of the articles I read, is that:

Ahavath Achim means: The Love of Brothers.

!

I am in Rhode Island, not that far from Connecticut, and I share in your grief.

Thank you, Steer family, for your Grace and Faith, and please, know that I am honored to imagine being near you. I will hope to learn more about my Sister Juliet Steer to keep her memory alive.

Four Black Mothers Arrested --- February 2, 1962

I would like to know the ages of those mothers' children & everyone's name ( mothers, grandmothers) & so much more. But reading that minimal account excites my imagination & emotion.

I am so grateful for the unknown activists, the supportive family members....

Thank you, friends. ♥…

Was Joe Paterno molested as a child ?

Years ago, in a training that addressed symptoms of children who have been sexually abused, the trainer said, once you have started learning this material, you cannot unlearn it.

"You cannot unring a bell".

I am passionate about baseball and baseball history, and increasingly am informed about basketball, and especially the Providence College Friars Mens' Basketball. I can tell you which college basketball coaches have the most wins in their records.
Football, college or professional, has been completely foreign to me.

The issue of sexual abuse of children, however, is one I have been schooled in professionally (academically and not)for over 20 years.

When I was first told how many girls and boys experience sexually inappropriate behavior by caregivers, sometimes family members, and by other adults, I was shocked.
As I became prepared to hear adults share their histories, I found that many women and men did have traumas to refer to.

In some of my work, I have taken very quick histories, the kind where you ask about family background, illnesses, and "dysfunctions/abuses"....and we did not ask for many details, but we asked people to be truthful or to let us know, if they preferred not to answer...We asked people not to give us an answer they thought we were looking for.

I learned that survivors of sexual abuse do not offer any one image as adults. Some became very religious and/or spiritual, some not. Some had many partners as adults, some not. Some married, some not. Some developed alcoholism, other addictions, depression, etc. Some were healthy in every way.

Was Joe Paterno molested as a child ?

I have no idea.

I no longer assume that any one is free of that experience.

Outside of professional settings, I have found friends, and in one instance, the parent of a friend, have survived different forms of abuse. Sometimes, it was "just" being groped, or "just" related to pornography. Some were touched "just" once, and someone entered the room, or they were able to avoid that relative for the rest of their lives.

I hope that Joe did not experience any form of child abuse. That is what I hope for everyone.

I know that some who survive never tell anyone. They are not interested in hearing about others' experiences.

They find ways to forget.

I believe that he regretted doing the minimum when he was given McQueary's report.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

ALL persons in Rhode Island are required by law (RIGL 40-11-3) to report known or suspected cases of child abuse and/or neglect to the Department of Children, Youth, and Families within 24 hours of becoming aware of such abuse/neglect.

Call the Hotline at 1-800-RI-CHILD (1-800-742-4453) to report child abuse and/or neglect!

The bold italicized text above is copied from the DCYF site.

How Grace Paley influenced one writer

I have just found this today, and greatly appreciate it.

Near the end, Summer Wood writes,

". . . the one time I met her in person I was overwhelmed with her warmth and kindness toward me."

That was precisely my experience & I have written those words almost verbatim. ! !

The internet has its failings & flimsiness, but I am grateful for the connections & awareness it offers....

Mazel Tov, Mayor Taveras !

Providence, RI's Mayor Angel Taveras has shared some splendid news:

"Today, we welcomed a wonderful blessing into our lives!

Farah Rose Escamilla-Taveras was born at 5:36 A.M., weighing 7 lbs, 11 ounces!

Mom and baby are doing great!

Thank you to all the nurses, doctors and our fantastic midwife, Lynnette, who have been absolutely great!"

Jacob's blog ~ Or I ♥ my cousins

The blogroll here is undergoing very deliberate revision.

Jacob's Scraps

is the newest addition.

Jacob Hodes is my cousin. Ok, perhaps once removed; our moms are First Cousins.

The Rhode Island connections are these: J. grew up in Massachusetts or the vast RI Metropolitan Area.

J.'s mom went to RISD, and was among the first to discern the Henry and Carol Reagan Shelton romance..

John Medeiros is from Rhode Island !

If you visit the internets, which, of course, you do or you would not be here, then you may well have seen this Apology published first in a Minnesota paper.

Yes, John Medeiros lives in Minnesota and directs his apology to one local politician (or ex-politician? ).

John is from Rhode Island!

I can say that through his work at the International Institute of RI & mine at John Hope Settlement House, we became friends.

He is a wonderful person & I am happy this letter is receiving acclaim.

John is truly a mensch & his brother is a gentleman, too.

" Empathy is a Wave..." -- Alice Walker

I have never met Alice Walker, but I was influenced by her poetry and fiction way back in high school, and I love her non-fiction and activism, too.

Here is a brief essay that she wrote for the Middle East Children's Alliance:

Empathy is a Wave: The Banning of Palestinian Children's Art (From the Museum of Children's Art in Oakland)



The Good News is that the Exhibit will take place tomorrow!

" Empathy is a wave that need never be stopped." ~ Alice Walker, 2011

"You gotta get that mike in close." -- It's Rich Kincaide's Birthday !

I have never met Rich Kincaide. We have not even spoken on the phone. Thanks to the wonders of the internets, I have "known" him for a few baseball seasons, and then some.

Everybody Wants To Read My Blog

was one of the first blogs to link to this one.

His posts about his family are unfailingly poignant. Who says Hockey Players Have No Feelings?

His baseball blogging is splendid in every sense; he knows that there is no Met infielder named Robinson Tejada.

Here is an excerpt from Rich's blogging of a Mets/Tigers game. Or if you prefer, Tigers/Mets game. June 16, 2011.

7:58 I think we are in for it tonight. I think Jim Leyland is going to be mad as Hell and won’t be taking it anymore after this one. It has already been a very, very interesting week in terms of the media–of whom I am one–and relations with the Detroit manager. On Monday after he got thrown out of the game, when we showed up at his office door he was sitting at his desk in street clothes and he screamed at us, “Don’t come in here! Don’t you come in here! Go talk to (Tigers Hitting Coach Lloyd) McClendon!” So, we went to talk to McClendon only to find out he had made the smartest move of the night. He was taking a shower. A nice, long shower. So, we all retraced our steps and went into the main locker room to interview players. All the time I was keeping watch on the door to Leyland’s office out of the corner of my eye. Sure enough, after ten minutes or so, the Tigers PR guy said he’d talk to us. Because I’d been watching just in case Leyland relented, I was first man in so my microphone placement was perfect. That’s half the battle in the post-game game. You gotta get that mike in close. The first thing Leyland says is, and actually he more yelled it than said it, is, “Don’t ask me about that (expletive deleted) play!” So, we don’t and I manage to get some halfway decent material about how it had been a “character win” for the Tigers what with them rallying in the 8th and whatnot. Reporters began heading for the door. I dawdled, a bit. Jason Beck of mlb.com, who as an aside does a great job covering the Tigers, told Leyland he a question about the rules and after some hemming and hawing, Leyland says to the three of us left in his office, “Okay, I’ll talk to you about it. But, (expletive deleted) it’s off the record.” He proceeds to give us his entire version of events. We can’t use it, but the big thing to me was that he trusted me enough to let me in on the story. And the next day he talked about it on the record. But me and those other two reporters, we had it first.

In case you missed the play in question, here’s what I wrote on the blog as it happened here a couple of nights ago:

8:15 Let me see if I can explain what just happened. Andy Dirks bunted and was called safe at first. The umpire asked the home plate umpire for his thoughts on the play, and the home plate ump said Dirks was out. Which he was. The first base umpire kicked the call. But once a man is declared safe, he’s safe. That’s how this game works! But they changed the call, Dirks was declared out and let’s just say Tigers manager Jim Leyland got his money’s worth arguing the reversal. He was, of course, run (baseballese for when one is excused by the officiating staff from further participation in a game). The only good news is that Raburn’s at second with one out. It should be men on first and second with none out. What a show. b-7: Detroit 2, Toronto 2.

The paragraph above describes as stunning a thing has I have ever seen in a big league game, and as it says on the masthead, I’ve been going to big league games for 47 years–48 next month. And what Leyland said–off the record the night of the game and on the record the following afternoon was, “In my 48 years in baseball, I’ve never seen that. Once you make the call, you live with it. He was telling me he’d missed the call. I was telling him, ‘You should be saying that to the Toronto manager!’”

The thing I couldn't stop thinking about was poor Armando Galarraga losing his perfect game a year ago this month with two out in the ninth on the exact same thing: a blown call at first base. My most vivid memory of that night, of that moment, is the feeling of utter helplessness that washed over me when first base umpire Jim Joyce spread his arms palms down, calling Cleveland’s Jason Donald “safe”. I knew the perfect game was over. I knew there was no appeal. That’s how baseball works. Once the call is made, it doesn’t matter if you have Edward Bennett Williams defending you, that call stands. And now, on a play of relatively little importance when compared to that one, the umpire who kicked the call is asking another umpire for help, and for the first time I’ve ever seen, for the first time I’ve ever even heard of, they change the call. As Leyland said, “In a thousand years of baseball, they’ve never done that.” (He may have been exaggerating the “1,000 years part, I don’t know.)

Rich, I will think of you tonight when I am at Fenway.

Thank you, for being a Blog Brother, and a Kind Funny Person, and I sure hope that I meet you and your wife and daughter some day !

Have a Wonderful Day and Many, many more!

In the photo below. . .

. . . are my grandmother, Tillie [ Miller ] Frank & Eric S. Richardson, the father of that baby my Bubbe is holding.

And Eric's birthday was on Saturday...Tillie's birthday was in June.

Before that baby was born, they had developed an affection for each other. . For years Tillie saved the pile of cards and letters he'd sent her.

Until this moment, I haven't pondered that their deaths were only months apart.

The baby is thriving and will clearly be taller than Eric, and it's better if I write very little about him.

Blogs did not exist in my teenage years.

My Mother's Play -- Opening Soon in Connecticut !

Is this cheerful unabashed nepotism ? Or simply daughterly pride? I have not seen it, although I have read the book which inspired it. My mother adapted it into a theatrical form.

Thank you and Break a Leg (or a bunch of them) to The Hartford Children's Theatre.

Young man from Iowa has Wisdom for Rhode Island

At least five of my friends have shared this on facebook. I hope the number grows and grows. This nineteen year old is so clear and eloquent.

If this video isn't working here, please, someone let me know. Thanks !

Solidarity with Rhode Island Janitors

Here's a little history:

In 2007, the Justice for Janitors campaign spread beyond Providence, and contracted Amica janitors in Lincoln went on strike for fair treatment and a voice on the job. Their courage, your support, and Amica’s intervention opened the door for hundreds of Rhode Island contracted janitors outside of Providence to get a voice on the job and better working conditions. 
Now, Amica is dishonoring the sacrifice of those contracted janitors by bringing in Martins Maintenance, which has already demonstrated its inhumane and repressive treatment of workers, and has made no effort to hire the long-time Amica subcontracted janitors. Come join us on Thursday to remind Amica that their courageous contracted janitors deserve to work for a responsible contractor that will retain them at the site and will honor the standards they have sacrificed so much for.

That's copied directly from the Rhode Island Jobs With Justice website.

N.B. Most of this blog's visitors do not live in RI or even New England, so please consider visiting the RI Jobs With Justice facebook page (the link is on the above site) or spreading the word to your friends and readers....

My friends, whose spirits and memories inspire this blog, would be supportive, I believe. Grace Paley and Rhett Jones and Harold Rogovin: definitely. Marsha Z. West, I am a tiny bit less sure of, but I think very likely, yes.

Christina Taylor Green -- Presente --

There is a facebook page, In Memory of Christina Taylor Green.

STL-PSC Flash Mob: Boycott Israeli Apartheid in Palestine!

David McReynolds shared this with me...

¿ Secure Communities ? or War on Immigrants - RI AG-elect has a very bad idea.

I was hoping to post something light today or something about Elizabeth Edwards or a few lines from Grace Paley, but I heard this sad news on the radio.

Fingerprinting people who are accused of crimes ?

Here's the Providence Journal story.

By W. ZACHARY MALINOWSKI
Journal staff writer

PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- Attorney General-elect Peter Kilmartin plans to adopt a federal initiative that would allow law-enforcement officers to fingerprint people under arrest and have them automatically checked against an immigration database to see whether they legally entered this the country legally.

Officials at Immigration and Customs Enforcement said that Rhode Island is just one 1 of 17 states nationwide that has yet to implement the cross-checking program known as the Secure Communities Program. The government hopes to have the program up and running in all 50 states within two years.

If you read the article, take a few minutes and read the responses. They were overwhelmingly in support of this, and several were explicitly hostile to Steve Brown, of the ACLU.

I wrote a little comment of my own, but as of this moment, it is "awaiting moderation."

When I think of my family, friends,clients, neighbors and this issue, I sometimes get quite emotional. There was an amazing woman named Ilse Politzer who used to bicycle all over the city (Providence) to vigils and everywhere else. She had fled the Nazis and expressed concerns two decades ago, about the way this country was developing.

I found this quote from Franklin D. Roosevelt which is apt:

“Remember, remember always that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists”

The source might be: remarks before the Daughters of the American Revolution, Washington, D.C., April 21, 1938. The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt,1938, p.259.

On a funny note, a client of mine was deported once, and he sent me a short letter to my workplace. He wrote that he was praying for my advancement to a director position within the agency. That was not in my prayers, but he meant well.

~ ~ ~




“Let us go forth with fear and courage and rage to save the world.”

~ Grace Paley

Love is the answer

I believe in Love.

My clients from other countries used to ask me, very gingerly sometimes, if I was a "flower child" and was at Woodstock ( the concert )...

Really, I was too young to have been at Woodstock unless an older person would have brought me. And I'm sure that happened for some, but not me...

I remember doodling the phrase, " Make Love Not War " in school books and having no idea what "make love" meant !

My neighbors have been singing John Lennon's "Imagine" and feeling the love.

Queer Action of Rhode Island shared this news article.

Gratitude to Activists' and Artists' Responses to AIDS

When I think about HIV and AIDS, I have many responses.

I remember the first time a friend shared HIV+ status with me.

I think of the many people I have known with HIV and how eclectic they are; some are thriving in every sense; some are struggling or have died.

I am grateful to many activists who responded to the bigotry and negligence, and to artists ( of all genres ) who have found ways to illustrate the experiences.

Here is Fading Ad Blog
which I have just discovered...

Rhode Island, the smallest of all 50 states, has how many AIDS Service Organizations ?

How have cuts to the Department of Health affected us ?

Congratulations Clarice & Elmo & Marsha Z. West : 22 Years Ago

This week I have been feeling the spirit of Marsha Z. West and recalling her vivid performance in George Wolfe's The Colored Museum at The Providence Black Repertory Theater four years ago. Every moment of that production was transforming.

Only a trip to the hospital ( son's appendicitis ) prevented us from seeing the last night of that run which was the week before Thanksgiving...

I did one of my little searches for Marsha on the internet , and found a New York Times Article from 1988

If that link works, you'll find that Marsha and Clarice Laverne Thompson and Elmo Terry-Morgan all won Audelco Awards.

Surely George Houston Bass and Rhett S. Jones won Audelco Awards for their founding of Rites And Reason Theatre, and I will someday track that down. Rites and Reason was one of the best things at Brown when I was there.

As an undergraduate, I was simply in awe of these folks, and now meeting them and having been directed and instructed by them, my respect only grows. One day Ethan and I were leaving a PC Basketball game, and he spotted Elmo. It was such a sweet moment.

Happy Birthday, Elmo ! Ok, this is about 9 days late, but birthdays can be extended. Extended Family, Extended Birthday, Peace and Love.

Clarice's birthday is not that far off . . . so Early Happy Birthday to you, And Love to Everyone....

As Marsha said: "Smooches".