Another Mass Shooting

This latest mass shooting should be taken as a wake up call, to remind us that we are in this world together. Today, a woman was killed by her one of her sons who then went on to kill the kids  she taught. As the nation focus on gun control and people hug their kids tighter, we must not forget the kids or adults  that are struggling and lost. We must get to them before they hurt others and themselves.

Regarding: The Half Sky documentary

 The PBS program Independence Lens' documentary "The Half Sky" has me thinking again that  the problems facing girls that is being  highlighted stem from the worldwide view of girls and women as "second class citizen";  the view that holds that we are  less than boys and men, properties to do with whatever one pleases and here on this earth only to serve men.

For rape, human trafficking, lack of education for girls, and lack of opportunity for woman to end, society's mentally about a woman's role must change.  We must all watch how we treat both sexes, and what role we expect each to play in society.  We must start seeing each person as human being, each with his or her own gifts to contribute to society in whatever capacity they chose.

It is great that there are many organizations working to bring these problems to light and to combat it, and I hope laws will be create to help make those committing rape and human trafficking accountable. If you want to help find out more here at PBS.org

But there is another way we can all help, we must hold each other accountable by speaking up against and discouraging one another for making comments and doing things that downgrade women and girl to second class citizen.

What to consider as we reach our higher self

Pat Monahan asks  "As you move towards reaching your higher self, are you sure that you considered EVERYthing?" He mentioned ignore and hurting others as he touches others positively doing what he loves. 

I do believe everything that should work out will but the catch is, how do we know what will and what will not, or maybe we are not to know.  As we move towards our higher selves, we will have to let go of things, people and behaviors that stands in our way and that will create some problems for those in our lives. I think to create harmony it will all comes down to balance,compromise and setting rules we and the people in our life must adhere to. In the end we are all here to fulfill our soul's purpose and the way others reaction to our life plans is part of what they as well as we are here to experience. We will never be able to avoid causing pain to ourselves or others as we are humans. So everything that should will work out, the rest will be saved for another lifetime.
Also, what happens when we reach our higher self, is it the end, or the beginning? or do we continue and experience life but on a different spiritual plan.

Favorite new thing

My favorite new site is PatBlogahan.com, go there and you will find the musings of Train's lead singer Pat Monahan. He is a great writer and he is great with the emotional stuff. He is honesty. I love that. I am in my head a lot and I think he is the same way, glad to know I am not alone. Also check out Train's Albums, they are awesome. Pat singing range is huge and you will definitely find something for you among their songs. Anytime I think I have a favorite train songs, another will pop in my head. Also go to their show if you can, you will not regret it.

I restarted my healthcare blog, I figure I could work on enhancing my writing skills as wait for work. Also, there is so much going on in the health care industry at the moment and I am very excited for the opportunity to be part of it in any capacity. Please check it out here.

What to do now?

Hope’s up, hope’s down, longing, not longing, give up, not given up- These words sum up my year of job hunting and networking. One of the most important lessons I learned at an early age from observing people is to take words with a grain of salt and that action does trump words. I am grateful for that life lesson as it was keeping me from living in the pit of depression and forgoing my career and life plans. Recently I have been wondering if networking actually works, especially for those just starting out and for the other unemployed. Last week I overheard someone saying that they have been an active member of a professional organization for two years, they volunteer at the organization’s events and they haven't gotten any job leads. Most books and seminars on networking give the same advice- go out, mingle, send emails and make calls, but none tells you, how to get the person on the receiving end to respond,as this is a world where reciprocity is the law of the land, no one tells you what to do when you have nothing to offer. I have been somewhat lucky, though none of the leads I’ve received panned out, some of the people who had allowed me to send them my resume did take a look at it and send it out as promised. Wait and see, is not working for me as I have bills and student loans to pay. – so now what? I don't even have lemons for lemonade.

'An American Story' by Ethan Russell

Please check out this ebook- An American Story by Ethan Russell. It is "the first interactive, socially-enabled, multi-media, cross-platform eBook" and it has "Over 200 photographs, 40 Chapters and 400 links".- Ethan Russell. This e-book has a companion blog to which anyone can add their story; check mine out here. Thanks, Xm.

Update>
My piece

 I grew up believing that whenever you hear music you must dance, well except in church of course, as I was a Methodist. Even now, I can’t help to bob my head or click my fingers when I hear music. I find it strange when I see people in concert sitting and listening, it goes against my core.

                Music from America, England, the Caribbean and my birthplace Sierra Leone, was all around me after I was born in the late 70s. Then, I was surrounded by teenagers, their music, (the popular music of that time and the decade before) I learned from them learned by osmosis.  So many time when I hear songs from the 70s that sounds familiar, I would get an image of me as a child dancing to the music coming from an uncle’s room or of me refusing to go to sleep and staying up late at an aunts 21^st birthday party or of Saturday mornings dancing with the adults to the music on the radio.

                By the early 80s the teenagers were gone and so were ‘Wonder Woman’, ‘Hawaii Five O’ and Sesame street, but thanks to vacationers and VHS tapes,  music videos and programs such  the UK’s ‘Top of the Pops’ made it way to my part of the world. Some of my cousins and I use to spend hours singing and dancing imitating singers like Madonna, Michael Jackson, Boy George, and Neneh Cherry. It was during one of this video watch sessions that one of my cousin and I promised each other never to fall in love with a singer or pretend a singer was our boyfriend, we even pinky swore because of the shocking thing we had just witnessed; her sister and an older cousin of ours (who were teenagers) holding pillows, singing and pretending the pillows were their pop star boyfriends.  I am proud to say we remained true to our words, though we do give credit, were credit is due to the “cute” and “hot” ones.  It was one of the pillow hugging cousins that told me once during a dance off she organized that I dance like an American, to which I responded, great, I do plan on going to University in America.

 

                My brother and I moved to the US in the early 90’s to join our mom in Maryland and as I learned about everything America, I became fascinated with Country music, the singer song writer, television, Broadway musicals and old movies.  Along with MTV and VH1, I would watch The Nashville Network (TNN).  My favorite show on TNN was Crook and Chase.  I enjoyed watching them interview country singers as I loved hearing the stories behind the country songs, which helped satisfy my curiosity about people and life.  I spent most of my allowance buying Country music from Columbia house.  I loved turning on the radio to sing and dance pop and R and B songs and playing my CD’s to sing along and bob my head.  Also through television, I learned about Shirley Temple and I would watch her movies on AMC every Sunday Morning.  I also watched The Patty Duke Show, Mr. Ed and I love Lucy daily.

                 At times a song will bring up a sad memory and would stop listening, now I that am older I can finally get through songs that does that to me. For a long time I could not bear hearing “Right here waiting for you” by Richard Marx, and Bob Denver’s “Leaving on a Jet Plane” as it takes me back to the day I left Sierra Leone.  On that day some of my cousins were singing those songs to me, teasing me because I was leaving behind a boyfriend, my first love. At other times, music has been my noise barrier noise out at home and at work.  I could not afford to go to college after high school and the weekend I was scheduled to leave for college, I spent all day in my room with my Columbia House CDs, those were only things I wanted in my space.

 

 

                The day we came to the America, as we drove through the bad part of D.C, I thought to myself, “If this is America, I want to go back. I made a mistake; I do not want to live in this Country”.  Now twenty years later, every time I visit I admire the condos that have occupied the area and I don’t see myself moving back to Sierra Leone.  In Maryland there was and still is a huge Sierra Leone community and though I was shy and lucky to go to a high school with some old Sierra Leonean schoolmate I was eager to get to interact with American Kids but go the shock of the century, self-imposed segregation, the only diverse group were the foreign students.  It was as if the different races and was forbidden to speak with each other.   I did not want any part of this and I did speak to whomever when I felt like it but the only High School function I went to was my senior prom.  I did love most my America teachers better than I did the ones in Sierra Leone, as they were more caring and exhibited a passion for teaching that I admired.

 

                When I finally made it to college in the late 90s in Michigan, along with listening variety radio stations I watching the music video countdown shows on BET, VH1and MTV. TRL with Carson Daly was my friends and my favorite music show, until the Carson Daly left. On day one of these friends asked me when we should stop watching TRL as the TV audience was become younger than as,  I replied “when the host is younger than us”; Carson Daly’s last day was the last day I watched TRL. 

                Being born with the gift to withstand chaos, I was able to handle the people in college who seemed repulsed by me and my accent and the ones who yelled “coming to America” as me and other foreign students would walk by, all I felt was sadness for them and as time goes people, they all learned to leave me alone as they did get the reaction they wanted from me.  Through all this and still shy my finesse of being able to get along with people of diverse background helped me make friends at work and at school. It was then that I attended what I refer to as my first “real” Thanksgiving, at the home of an American friend.

 

                Through the Americas that I met during and after college I got to do a lot of things I did not do when I was in Sierra Leone and when I first arrived, such as eating apple pie with Ice-cream, roasting marshmallows for smores and attending barbeques on holidays.  My American friends then and even now try to let me experience their America. For instance, when I was in graduate school in New York State, friends from the church choir bought me a pumpkin when they found out that I had never carved a pumpkin. They still make fun of me for wearing a glove when taking the seeds out.

 

 

 

                In 2001, I moved to upstate New York for graduate school.  September 11 was the day I was to teach my first Chemistry lab class. At 8:45 I board the bus to school, 20minutes later as I nervously prepared the lab for the students, someone came in and told me to turn on the T.V. The next day the grand aunt whose house I danced with my cousins, died and because the phone lines were down and planes were grounded, it was days before I could speak with my cousins to offer my condolences and days before they could leave from the U.K to attend her funeral.

                After 2003 I spent most of my free time (which I did not have a lot off) reading for work and pleasure so television and music took a back seat and again much of what was being covered by the media and played on the radio did not appeal to me; now my mood dictates what I listen to, watch and read.  I do not have one artist or one type of music that I can say has influence me the most, many have come along on trips, dance-a-thons and memory walks.  The top two artists on my IPod today are Alanis Morissette and Rosanne Cash; I love them because I love their minds and their values.  

                As I read “An American Story” by Ethan Russell and write this piece I realized that events that I have happened during my lifetime and those that I have read about of the past has been a mirror for me, they’ve helped my define my values, and beliefs as well as  given my courage to stay true to myself.

 

 

Some of the song that popped in my head as I read ‘Ethan Russell’s America Story and thing about music are

“All I have to do is Dream” by Everly Brothers

“Red Red Wine” by UB40

“Like a Prayer” by Madonna

“Thriller” by Michael Jackson

“Save the Best for Last” by Vanessa Williams

“The Song Remembers When” by Trisha Yearwood

“Together Again” by Janet Jackson

“Western Wall” by Rosanne Cash

“It is my life” by Bonjovi

“Everything” by Alanis Morissette

Thinking and reviewing and making plans.

Yep it has been a while.. Well, I am still at it with the job hunt. My professional organizations are in hiatus until fall so there aren't any networking events and seminars for me to attend until then. I have had many rejects and few interviews in the New York City area, and hopefully my next employer is right around the corner. I have given myself until end of August to find suitable employment,If I can't, I will enroll either in a six sigma certification program or a health care IT certification program, to enhance my technical skills. I took a basic course in each subject during my MBA studies and with the current health care climate and its forward trajectory, either course will be beneficial. I am still renting a room as my friend's mum's house and bless her heart she still makes me dinner and we go to church together. I enjoying chatting with her church friends and they enjoy chatting with me, one even invited me to her 90th birthday party. She is a fellow Gemini so you know our connection is great. Whenever I had a seminar in NYC, I would go down early and spend time in the there, it helped a lot as all this downtime is making me anxious and restless. I love being busy doing the things I love and since job hunting is not one of them,it is torture and I am beyond bored as well. I had a birthday last month and I named this new year 'Bold and Daring' though my birthday was not fun because I had a terrible time at an interview, I was bold and daring that day because I had to fight a thunderstorm to get there and I was dry when the interview started. I finally ordered some contacts and a glasses to replace the one I lost last year in Boston. I vendor called on Sunday saying it was ready but I have yet to go pick it up as It is ready two hours away. I made a impromptu decision and ordered them when I went for a hair appointment two weeks ago in Albany. AH well- it is all part of year bold and daring and it gives me something to do as I wait for the call.

I think it is on its way-Spring

I woke at the crack of dawn, and saw birds playing on the lawn. I felt strong radiant energy from the sun, and noticed the delayed arrival of dusk. Yes, yes, yes, spring is definitely on its way.

Entering 2012 sick...

I started 2012 with the flu which evolved from a cold that started on the last Tuesday of 2011. As I see it, this is my body's way of getting rid of all the crap that happened to me in 2011 and the years before it. If this is not true, why did 101 temperature and chills visit me during the wee hours of the last Thursday of 2011 especially since everyone and everything knows unwanted visitors are never welcomed? 2012 is a year of new beginnings whether I like it or not, and I hope circumstances bring me opportunities that will help me enhance all areas of my life especially the professional, spiritually and financially ones.