I am a native of the great city of Pittsburgh, PA. Go Steelers!
Go Pirates! Go Penguins!.
It is great to be back in Pittsburgh after working in Boston and living in Brockton for last eight years.
Would enjoy communicating with anyone having an interest in anything from politics, the environment, and women with big legs, to ethnography & qualitative field methods.
It would also be nice to meet a woman with a formidable... chess game. smile.
MyHotComments
Activities include: reading, chess, church involvement, theater, politics, backgammon, bid-wist, spades, pinocle, movies, going to museums, sports, cooking, travel, hiking/camping, bicycling, swimming,and whitewater rafting.
I enjoy all kinds of music including Jazz, Blues, Classical, Rock, R&B... Al Jarreau, Sade, Eddie Harris, Santana, Roberta Flack, Mozart, and Chopin, are a few of the musical artists whose music I greatly enjoy.
Books that I have enjoyed include:
Little Scarlet; Devil in a Blue Dress; The Man in My Basement, Blonde Faith and other works by Walter Mosley.
The Bluest Eye, Jazz, and Tar Baby by Toni Morrison.
Brothers and Keepers, and other works by John Edgar Wideman.
I have found the following authors to be very enjoyable:
John Le Carre' (Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; Call for the Dead; The Spy Who Came In From The Cold; Smiley's People); Robert Ludlum (The Bourne Identity; The Bourne Supremacy; The Bourne Ultimatum); J. California Cooper (The Future has a Past); Philip K. Dick (Minority Report & Blade Runner); Mario Vargas Llosa (The Bad Girl); Gabriel Garcia Marquez (One Hundred Years of Solitude); Paulo Coelho (The Alchemist); Carlos Fuentes (Inez); Jhumpa Lahiri (Interpreter of Maladies; Unaccustomed Earth); Khaled Hosseini (The Kite Runner); Dennis Lehane ( Gone Baby Gone, Mystic River, and Shutter Island); Joyce Carol Oates (Middle Age: A Romance); Stephen King (Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile); David Guterson (Snow Falling on Cedars); John Irving (Cider House Rules, and A Widow for One Year {The Door in the Floor}); Tracy Chevalier (Girl with a Pearl Earring).
SOME FAVORITE QUOTES:
The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made..., have been born of earnest struggle.... If there is no struggle there is no progress... This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.... Frederick Douglass
People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it very simply; by the lives they lead.... James Baldwin
"What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us." Ralph Waldo Emerson
This above all, to thine own self be true;
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Polonius to Laertes in Act I, Scene III, Hamlet. William Shakespeare
I have to remind myself that some birds aren't meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright. And when they fly away, the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up DOES rejoice. Still, the place you live in is that much more drab and empty that they're gone. I guess I just miss my friend.” Morgan Freeman as Ellis Boyd 'Red" Redding in the Shawshank Redemption(1994).
A great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.
- Walter Bagehot
The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? Psalm 27:1
God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Psalm 46:1
Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things. From Paul's letter to the Philippians-4:8
A QUOTE IN REFLECTION:
I have seen the following quote on other pages here at BlackPlanet and on MySpace, but it was after I had gone through some things recently that these words have come to have special significance to me...
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant,
gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small does not serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking
so that other people won't feel insecure around you.
We are all meant to shine, as children do.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously
give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear,
our presence automatically liberates others.
A Return to Love, by Marianne Williamson
A PERSONAL NOTE: There are many diseases that may deeply affect our life experience. I support all efforts in the fight against diseases like Cancer, Heart and Cardiovascular Disease, Multiple Sclerosis and Diabetes. I have selected the pages of World_Aids_Day and Gil L Robertson to be part of my page favorites because of our need to be educated about HIV/AIDS and how it impacts families and communities worldwide:
*Nearly half of adults living with HIV/AIDS around the world are women.
*Most HIV+ women have been infected through heterosexual sex.
*Children under 15 account for 1 in 6 global AIDS-related deaths and 1 in 7 new global HIV infections. A child under 15 dies of an AIDS-related illness every minute of every day, and a young person aged 15-24 contracts HIV every 15 seconds.
*African-Americans make up 13% of the U.S. population but account for 50% of new HIV cases.
*African-American men are diagnosed with HIV 8 times more often than White men.
*African-American women are diagnosed with HIV 20 times more often than White women.
*Check out: http://www.avert.org/women.htm
http://www.unaids.org/en/Knowl edgeCentre/HIVData/GlobalRepor t/default.asp
http://www.uniteforchildren.or g/knowmore/knowmore_28763.htm
http://www.cdc.gov
A Note on Darfur:
The genocide and dislocation of the people of Darfur, which is located in the western provinces of the Sudan (northeast Africa), should be of great concern to us all. It has been shown that the Sudanese government has trained and sponsored militias which are responsible for murdering and raping thousands in their attempt at ethnic cleansing.
Below I am posting the communication I received at work, for all interested to read, and hopefully sign the petition which goes to the President of the United States and the Secretary General of the United Nations. Please also consider participating in the groups on Black Planet which are involved with spreading information and discussing ways in which to respond to the plight of the people of Darfur:
Did you know that 2.5 million people have been driven from their
homes in Darfur, Sudan? Each day, they face threats that are
hard for us to even imagine including rape, disease, and
starvation.
These people need our help to put an end to the genocide and
they need it NOW.
The Save Darfur Coalition is urging the president and the UN
Secretary-General to prevent further killings, displacement, and
rape by deploying UN peacekeepers, strengthening the
understaffed African Union force that is already in Darfur,
establishing and enforcing a no-fly zone, increasing
humanitarian aid, and ensuring access for delivery of food,
medication and other essential supplies.
Please do not stand by while the violence continues - you can
make a difference.
Click below now to get involved.
http://ga6.org/campaign/saveda rfurcoalition
Then please forward this message to your friends and family and
ask them to join you.
Help build the political pressure needed to end the crisis in
Darfur by supporting the Save Darfur Coalition's crucial
awareness and advocacy programs.
The Save Darfur Coalition is an alliance of over 180
faith-based, advocacy and humanitarian organizations whose
mission is to raise public awareness about the ongoing genocide
in Darfur and to mobilize a unified response to the atrocities
that threaten the lives of more than two million people in the
Darfur region. To learn more, please visit
http://www.SaveDarfur.org
Thanks for your help.
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Please check the following links for information on the Sudan:
http://www.worldatlas.com/webi mage/countrys/africa/sd.htm
http://crawfurd.dk/africa/suda n_timeline.htm
http://news.xinhuanet.com/engl ish/2008-06/06/content_8320496 .htm http://www.lonelyplanet.com/wo rldguide/sudan/
http://allafrica.com/sudan/
http://www-sul.stanford.edu/af rica/sudan.html
http://www.dosomething.org/nod e/20284?gclid=CI--iKrx5pMCFQRJ FQ
http://www.savethechildren.org /emergencies/africa/sudan/darf ur/
