Tag: politics

Button Sunday

Some Not Really Trivia:

In 1981, the United Nations voted to observe an International Day of Peace each year. The U.N. invited all Member States, organizations of the United Nations system, regional and non-governmental organizations, and individuals to commemorate the Day in an appropriate manner, including through education and public awareness, and to cooperate with the United Nations in establishing a global ceasefire.

During the first year of the observance, 1982, the date chosen was Tuesday, September 21, the opening day of the U.N. General Assembly. In subsequent years, the date varied because it was on the third Tuesday in September.

On September 7, 2001, the United Nations voted to designate a set day for the International Day of Peace, choosing September 21 of every year, and also voted to officially call for a 24-hour global cease fire on each International Day of Peace. The official Peace Bell ceremony to announce this decision was scheduled for Tuesday, September 11, 2001, at the U.N.

The Peace Bell ceremony did not take place until September 14 that year.

This year, at the Peace Bell ceremony which began the International Day of Peace at the U.N., homage was paid to late United Nations Messenger of Peace Luciano Pavarotti.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, by 2005, world military expenditure had reached an estimated $1.1 trillion per year.

The web site that provided information through 2006 regarding the International Day of Peace is no longer updated because of lack of financial support.

On September 21, 2007, one French soldier and 40 rebels were killed in Afghanistan by a suicide bomber.

The focus of this year’s International Day of Peace was Afghanistan. According to news reports, people gathered in Afghanistan’s cities to mark the occasion in numbers the U.N. had not seen in that country before…

…as occurred all over the world with vigils, prayer, meditation, demonstrations, moments of silence, and celebrations involving children, parents, teachers, artists, bloggers, and religious and civic leaders in schools, town halls, public places, work places, places of worship, and online.

If you didn’t know that September 21 was the International Day of Peace, there’s always next year–and every day.

Thinking about creativity

Does anyone remember as a kid collecting money at Halloween to give to UNICEF? Do kids still do that: find ways to raise money and awareness of the plight of children all over the world?

The United Nations Children Fund began in 1946 as a way to help children impacted by World War II, and over the decades, it’s grown into an organization that provides humanitarian relief that helps children globally, focusing on child survival and development; basic education and gender equality (including girls’ education); child protection from violence, exploitation, and abuse; HIV/AIDS and children; and policy advocacy and partnerships for children’s rights.

Here’s how my journey to thinking about UNICEF began.

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Just another manic Thursday…

I can barely hold my eyes open right now. I’m too tired to even get up and go watch Hillary Clinton on Letterman, though I can hear the audience and Tom cracking up, so she must be doing well. Since I’m immovable, I figured I could at least post about my day.

First of all, these things right here?

They are fantastic. I love Crystal Light lemonade, and these are designed to pour into a single bottle of water. Today I mixed one with water and crushed ice when I was working at the remote office. Mmmm. Only five calories. Also, I guess Crystal Light makes some with electrolytes added, a bit like Gatorade. There are flavors other than lemonade, including green tea with honey and lemon.

No, I’m NOT getting paid for this post. I just wanted to share something that made me happy.

Another thing that made me happy was going to a reading/signing by The Times-Picayune columnist Chris Rose at Murder By the Book. He had a funny account of his experience with Oprah’s people when he was scheduled to be on her show for the Katrina anniversary. If you’re interested (and if the link still works), his column about it is here.


Chris Rose signing books.

Rose is a dynamic speaker. I think he’s feeling all the anger and frustration of anyone who lives in and loves New Orleans. But he was also able to talk about a few things that are going right–mainly the spirit of the people who are staying there and moving there and trying to make New Orleans even better than it was before. I got a copy of his collected post-Katrina columns, 1 Dead in Attic. He’ll be in Houston Friday, too, at Barnes & Noble on Westheimer at 7 p.m. (for more information call 713.783.6016). Or check here for signings in Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana.

Another good commentary on post-K New Orleans is this post from chefcdb. Again, anger mixed with determination and optimism.

While at Murder By the Book, I also got a copy of New Orleans Noir and got to read Greg Herren’s short story “Annunciation Shotgun” which I’ve heard so much about. It lived up to its glowing reviews.

Now if I could just have some actual time for such pleasures, I’ve got lots of good stuff to read as I sip my lemonade.

My today’s grrrr moment

Years ago, my mother was having a problem with a certain retail giant who kept incorrectly charging her credit card for something she didn’t buy. This situation went on for months, and finally someone at the retail giant seemed to understand the problem and correct it. So imagine my mother’s fury a month later when she got her bill and the charge was back.

She jerked the phone book from the cabinet, looked up the number, dialed it (yeah, we still had rotary phones and used phone books in those days), and began an angry rant as soon as the phone was answered. She spoke for several minutes without letting the other person get a word in, detailing the entire history of the conflict and her determination to HAVE JUSTICE and even to close her account. When she finally stopped to take a breath, the voice on the other end of the phone said, “Ma’am, I’m so sorry, but you misdialed. This is Dr. Stewart’s office.”

I like to call that kind of event “being Julia Sugarbaker and finding out the microphone’s turned off.” I had such a moment today, when a post provoked me to write what I thought was a well-reasoned response, then before I could submit my comment, the post was removed. Now I’m just annoyed at myself for getting sucked in to another of those discussions in which no one’s mind is ever really changed anyway.

I have a novel to finish.

One of my heroes

When Tom, Amy, and I went to Washington, D.C. in October 1996 as volunteers for what has been (to date) the last full display of the NAMES panels of the AIDS Memorial Quilt, there were several sites on our agenda to visit. We stayed in Georgetown (it was lovely) and used cabs (more expensive than New York) and the excellent subway system to get into, out of, and around the city. High points of the sightseeing part of our trip were the various memorials (Lincoln, Jefferson, Washington monument, the graves of the two Kennedys at Arlington, the Korean and Vietnam war memorials), the capitol, the White House, and several museums (historical and art).

It was in Washington that we discovered the marvels of Streetwise Maps. As helpful as the maps were, we also found that any time we stopped to study one, locals would also stop and ask us if they could help us find our destination. Never was “the kindness of strangers” more apparent than during those few very cold but magical days in the capital.

There was one place in particular that I wanted to go, and in those pre-Internet days, finding it presented a bit of a challenge. Fortunately, one of Amy’s Streetwise Maps came through for us. The place was the Congressional Cemetery. It was tucked away in what we were warned was a less than ideal neighborhood. We emerged from the subway in the late afternoon to find that the cemetery was a farther walk than we’d realized. It was cold, the sunlight was fading, and gray clouds threatened a drizzle. But Amy and Tom knew this was important to me, so they gamely kept going.
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Wednesday night

As Tim said, our friend Steve has flown in for a mini-vacation with us on his way to a family reunion. He knows he’s in for a lot of picture-taking, but I figured I’d give him at least one night’s respite before I began snapping.

Steve was kind enough not to mind that there was a little something I wanted to do that meant I wouldn’t be at The Compound until an hour or so after he arrived. It’s possible that people who live in other places that are not Texas don’t understand what a rare and exciting thing it is for me to be in a room with hundreds of my people. “My people”: a range of voters from the “I can’t take the way things are anymore” to “yellow DAWG.” As in…Democrats.

So…
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The political gets personal

I was paying bills earlier when the phone rang. Probably one of the few things I dislike more than paying bills is answering the phone, so I figured why not do two miserable things at once?

It happened to be a call from the campaign of the person I’m currently supporting for president. (See how gender- and party-neutral that is? Starting no debates here. Yet.) When I agreed to make a donation and the caller was verifying my information, he asked what I do for a living. When I said “writer,” it stopped being just a fundraising call. The campaign worker is a young poet. Both his parents are poets. He loves and hears music in his head all the time, and he thinks that’s why he writes poetry.

Suddenly, talking on the phone while paying bills got a little more fun. And you know, I gotta love a candidate who has poets making campaign calls.