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Good Morning Tom, Sybil, and Jay.

Well guys, hold on to your seats because we are coming up on what promises to be a very bumpy ride … Stuff is about to hit the fan…

Of course, as we all know by now, that longtime civil rights pioneer, Glen Beck, is holding a march in Washington at the Lincoln Memorial labeled Restoring Hope, on this Saturday August 28, the 47th anniversary of Dr. King’s 1963 March on Washington…

And Glen Beck speaking at the March on Washington site is like Hitler keynoting at the Anti-defamation league;
Or, David Duke joining the NAACP;

Or, Osama Bin Laden going to Sunday Mass;

You get the point.  It’s ridiculous!!!

Maybe not quite as ridiculous as Jay taking off all his clothes in that Booty meat video . . . but pretty darn ridiculous!!

Now, putting aside the brazen disrespect to King’s legacy shown by Beck—I’m going to tell you what upsets me even more, Sybil…

As a community, it seems like we’re always caught reacting to problems and devastating events rather than preparing and organizing for the challenges that will surely come…

Let me explain. Even though I don’t know all of the details of Beck’s successful permit bid for his upcoming march, you guys likely heard the incomparable Dick Gregory come out and justifiably blame black folks for not thinking ahead enough to secure the date at the Lincoln Memorial before Beck could get it…

Maybe we were blindsided and just didn’t expect anyone to pull something like this… But whatever the case, one thing is clear…

An organized community, or a community with strong organizations, will avoid these kind of surprises because someone is always standing watch…

Effective organizations are seldom caught off guard… We need look no further than BP and the Gulf spill to see an example of a fractured organization where folks were inept, asleep, disorganized and even criminal in their negligence…

Effective organizations have to communicate with each other as well… and I’m certainly not blaming any one group for the permit thing, but what I am saying is, if folks were well organized and communicating, it’s much less likely this would have happened…

If we’ve learned anything as a community from the lesson of Katrina, it’s that we can not depend solely on government agencies to take care of us or assist us in our times of dire need… even though we pay taxes for them to do so…

No, we don’t need to let them off the hook for what we deserve as citizens, but we need our own back up plans or safety nets in place in case government agencies don’t do what they’re supposed to…

An example: Many independent and nonprofit support groups were created in the aftermath of Katrina and the recent oil spill… and that’s a good thing…

Well what if we didn’t wait for these massive tragedies to happen before we thought of creating such support groups or “first-responder” groups…?

And, more importantly, since we know that future tragedies and communal slaps-in-the-face will come given the tumult in today’s world, unpredictable weather patterns, and opportunists like Glenn Beck, shouldn’t we be proactive and prepare now…?

I don’t know, Tom, maybe I’m just talking crazy… I certainly don’t have all the answers and would never claim to…

But I do feel the organizations that claim to lead us and stand watch need to be proactive and on the same page when it comes to protecting and representing our community…

So I am pleased that you, Tom, Rev. Al and the National Action Network will be marching that same day at the historic Dunbar High School in DC…

All of our groups must be prepared not only to respond to –but also to prevent– the slights and atrocities before they occur…

I mean come on, if the FCC were on its job, would Jay ever have been able to flash his naked behind all over the internet?

Just kidding, Jay.  But seriously, if nothing else, we should all think about how we can bring this about by petitioning, joining and supporting our existing organizations to make this happen, OR starting our own organizations and support groups to do so…

Because right now, we’re getting caught off guard much too often, reacting to the last atrocity as opposed to anticipating and preparing  for the next one…

I’ll leave you with this:
http://thinkexist.com/quotation/despair-is-most-often-the-offspring-of-ill/411141.html

Until Next Time, this is Stephanie, in Love and Hope.

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Good Morning Tom, Sybil, and Jay.

Tom, August is upon us once again and, in the South, it’s back to school for those countless students hoping summer would never end…

…don’t know if they’re gonna run that Staples commercial again where the joyous father floats through the aisle past those sad-lookin’ children on a shopping cart singing, “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year,” but they need to…

And speaking of sad realities for children going back to school, a new year brings a not-so-delightful return to school lunches as our children become reacquainted with such memorable entrees as Tater Tots, that durable American classic; Turkey Tetrazini, which most researchers have yet to figure out…

…and hot dogs & burgers as rubbery as MC Hammer’s checkbook…

But wait a minute –bad jokes aside—what if, this year, schools and communities became interested in taking a healthier, more local approach to their student lunch programs…?

What if, Sybil –given the mountain of research linking our poor diets to such childhood disorders as obesity, diabetes, Attention Deficit Disorder and other learning disabilities—there was a movement afoot to transform school lunches, where healthy food is a priority and where chicken nuggets lose out to fresh local produce…?

Well guys, there is… and the Kellogg Foundation is a big part of it…

The WK Kellogg Foundation, of course, has supported and advocated for children and their communities for almost 80 years… One of their current targets for reform is, in fact, school lunches…

In April, Kellogg surveyed adults across the country and found that most Americans believe nutrition in local school meals falls far short of what children need, and that the foods most associated with school meals – pizza, nuggets and burgers – are the same foods parents believe should be significantly reduced on school menus…

The survey also revealed that, given the crisis of childhood obesity, there is near-unanimous agreement that improving the health of American children requires communities to prioritize access to fresh produce and daily exercise…

Now this information is all well and good, Jay, but there are reasons why what these parents want has, for the most part, not happened thus far… especially in our communities…

The federal government currently only provides a few bucks to schools for subsidized lunches and most of that goes to pay for cafeteria workers and overhead, leaving little money for meal ingredients…

As a result, many schools don’t cook at all, but merely rely on reheating cheap, processed foods for their cafeteria menus…

But Tom, check this out… Here’s an example of what one innovative community is doing to combat this…

In Washington, D.C., some local chefs are collaborating with parents to take over kitchen operations on a nonprofit basis at Tyler Elementary, a school that is over 80% African American with most of its children receiving subsidized lunches…

They are replacing the prepackaged meals with food cooked from scratch and served on real plates with real silverware…

They’ve pledged to get rid of all processed foods filled with preservatives, additives, food coloring, and other chemicals, and to buy directly from local farmers, and organically when possible…

And they are getting around the money issue by putting parents to work in the cafeteria as volunteers and using the savings in labor to buy better food from local growers…

Wow… Now this is democracy in action… a community taking control of its food supply for the sake of its children…

And isn’t it time we stopped allowing institutions to feed our students whatever kind of crap they may while we sit around as parents and wonder why our children are obese, diabetic, inattentive, struggling in school, and constantly ill…?

Fortunately, Tyler Elementary is not alone; Other school communities, in CA and other states, have taken similar steps…

You can find out more about how your community can keep your children healthy and well fed by going to foodandcommunity.org…

I leave you with a very simple saying that is as timeless as it is true…

And that is: “You are, what you eat.”

Until Next Time, this is Stephanie in Love and Hope.

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Good morning TJMS Family.
Some of you may remember that end of the world commentary I did when the movie 2012 was released.
Of course, I wasn’t saying that the world was actually going to end… I was just talking about the need for us to live our lives to the fullest.
But I’ve got to admit, after the colossal tragedies in Haiti and Chile — I’m getting more nervous about this end of world thing…
While I still don’t believe its going to end in 2012 –trust me, the IRS wouldn’t allow that to happen – for me, the takeaway from such global events is not that we’re all going to die one day, but, more importantly, “What are we doing while we’re here?”
Cases in point. You may recall the recent deaths of the 26 year-old extreme skier, C.R. Johnson, and the 40 year-old whale trainer, Dawn Brancheau.   Both died a few weeks back on the same day in unrelated accidents…
Johnson, a world-renowned, extreme skier was killed after he fell and hit his head while skiing down a steep chute at Squaw Valley…
Brancheau, a veteran whale trainer drowned after a 22-foot, 12,000-pound Orca pulled her off a poolside platform…
While most people will naturally shake their heads at such tragedy, I choose to voice a different perspective…
Both of these folks understood the dangers of what they were doing and occasionally spoke about the real chance it could take their lives one day…
I celebrate both of them because, unlike most of us, they refused to spend their lives being “safe.”  They jumped in to their lives with both feet, and if they could come back, they would probably tell us they would do it all over again…
We know this because Johnson, the skier, was comatose for six years as a result of a similar accident in years prior, and Brancheau, often spoke about the dangers of her job, but insisted that she couldn’t imagine herself not doing it…
…these are activities that gave them that incredible rush, that heightened sense of existence, where – at least for that moment, they knew they were living fully…
And it doesn’t matter that it was skiing or whale training for them, activities many of us may never do. My point is about the beauty of discovering what you are passionate about, moving beyond fear and life’s obstacles to do it.
So I am challenging us all today to live fearlessly.
Spend some time exploring your passion and then carve out a way to make it a permanent part of your life…
We only pass this way once… Johnson and Brancheau not only knew this, they lived this…
I’ll leave you with a post that Johnson had on his MySpace page that pretty much sums up what living fearlessly is all about…
“I feel it is most important to keep it real and enjoy each moment, you know, take advantage of every opportunity life provides, because who knows what tomorrow may bring.”
You are listening to TJMS at its best.  Until next time, this is Stephanie in Love and Hope.

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