Happy Father's Day "Pop"

A friend of mine sent this to me this morning.  Made me realize how much I miss my father and wish that I could say good bye one more time

I Wish You Enough

At an airport, I overheard a father and daughter in their last moments together. They had announced her plane's departure and standing near the door, he said to his daughter, "I love you, I wish you enough."

She said, "Daddy, our life together has been more than enough. Your love is all I ever needed. I wish you enough, too, Daddy." They kissed good-bye, and she left. He walked over toward the window where I was seated. Standing there, I could see he wanted and needed to cry. I tried not to intrude on his privacy, but he welcomed me in by asking, "Did you ever say good-bye to someone knowing it would be forever?"

"Yes, I have," I replied. Saying that brought back memories I had of expressing my love and appreciation for all my Dad had done for me. Recognizing that his days were limited, I took the time to tell him face to face how much he meant to me. So I knew what this man was experiencing.

"Forgive me for asking, but why is this a forever good-bye?" I asked.

"I am old, and she lives much too far away. I have challenges ahead, and the reality is her next trip back will be for my funeral," he said.

"When you were saying good-bye, I heard you say, 'I wish you enough.' May I ask what that means?"

He began to smile. "That's a wish that has been handed down from other generations. My parents used to say it to everyone." He paused for a moment, and looking up as if trying to remember it in detail, he smiled even more.

"When we said 'I wish you enough,' we were wanting the other person to have a life filled with enough good things to sustain them," he continued, and then turning toward me, he shared the following as if he were reciting it from memory.

"I wish you enough sun to keep your attitude bright.

I wish you enough rain to appreciate the sun more.

I wish you enough happiness to keep your spirit alive.

I wish you enough pain so that the smallest joys in life appear much bigger.

I wish you enough gain to satisfy your wanting.

I wish you enough loss to appreciate all that you possess.

I wish you enough 'Hellos' to get you through the final 'Good-bye.'"

He then began to sob and walked away.

May you honor your fathers today living or gone as we only have the chance to share with them when they are with us on earth.

Happy Father's Day!!

http://youtu.be/etundhQa724

Forget all that stuff about Bonser and the Doraville Duo. Close your eyes Rock and Remember

Led Zeppelin Kennedy Center Honors Tribute

http://youtu.be/JK_DOJa99oo

Thanks for showing this to me Chipper

http://youtu.be/oTATQ6ok7UA

Guilty, it is time to stop the madness

"Board Member Bahr move that the Board recommend to City Council for a public reprimand of Dr. Bonser for conduct failing to meet the requirements of courtesy in relation to her February 3, 2013 email. That the further recommendations of the hearing officer, with respect to revocation of email privileges be not recommended and that the Board is split with respect to the issuance of a strong letter of encouragement to Dr. Bonser with respect to apologizing in writing to the complainant."

I have been sitting back watching the latest Bosner ethics story unfold.  I must say that once again the dear dentist played the new system that she helped create.  Her ongoing behavior and her groundless counter ethics charges are making Dunwoody the laughing stock of the metro area.

Just as she tried to get the Ethics Board’s attorney removed during her first ethics hearing, this time her game was to get the new Hearing Officer disqualified by filing an ethics charge against her.  

The Hearing Officer was the shining star during this hearing. She did a great job keeping Mr. Chipka and Ms. Bosner on point during the hearing.  She was fair, asked pointed questions of both parties and handled the Board (who now act as jurors) in a smart professional manner.

When the Hearing Officer was told of the newly filed ethics charge against her, she immediately informed the Board, and stepped down from hearing future cases. This is a huge loss for the city.  Bosner played the system.  I hope you take the time to see Ms. Bosner behavior by viewing the videos available on the city website.  One video is particularly disturbing; you have to watch her comments from last week’s Council meeting.

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/34142149

In another life Ms. Bosner must have been a Vegas magician.  She has mastered the technique of distracting the public from what should be the point of focus. She provides distractions for everyone with meaningless “counter ethics charges”.  She tries to make people look away from the true issues at hand.  She plays the system well.

This time she attempted to do it again.  It is the Mayor’s fault, the Hearing officers fault, Ms. Lowery’s fault and now the City Attorney is at fault.  Everyone is conspiring against her to hang the first ethic conviction on her.  Again, watch the videos.

Even more disturbing today were the actions and behavior of the Chairman of the Ethics Board.  Repeating the same bias he demonstrated during last year’s hearing, his actions today were prejudicial and obviously biased.  Not under any system that I have ever witnessed is a defendant allowed to present additional information and testimony to the jury after a hearing has ended and closing arguments are made. This was jury deliberations, not a new hearing.

Apparently Mr. Blaske, the Committee Chair has his own way of conducting these hearings.

This morning he allowed Ms. Bosner to stand and attempt to re argue her case.  Oh, there were weak attempts to stop her, but he allowed her to testify for 20 minutes before she finally sat down.  Then without giving Mr. Chipka a chance to reply, he announced would not allow testimony for a new hearing.

You know the expression “the jury will disregard that testimony”.  Yeah right!

Her 20 minutes of additional testimony was totally out of order.  Ms. Bosner’s time at the mic was longer than the jury deliberation or the Hearing Officer’s presentation.

Watch and listen to his comments during deliberations, it seems as if Mr. Blaske is trying to provide justification for Ms. Bosner’s behaviors.  I am not alone in this observation. Check out Kerry’s blog for his view.  He beat me to the post.  I could not agree with him more.

http://www.kerry4dunwoody.com/2013/06/board-of-ethics-rules-against-dr-adrian.html

So now it is up to the City Council to decide Ms. Bosner’s fate.  Given her track record, a full public reprimand is in order.  She should be forced to step down from the dais and stand at the microphone while the city Council votes on her punishment and she receives the reprimand.  She should not be allowed to use her public comment time to refute the ethics charge or once again claim her innocence.  She should finally do the right thing now that she has been found guilty of a violation (not a “technical violation” as Mr. Blaske was quick to label it) and apologize to Mr. Chipka and to the citizens of the Dunwoodyy for putting us all through yet another public spectacle.  This time she should apologize by letter and in a public statement so she cannot renege on apology as she has done before.  Finally she should withdraw her complaints against the City Attorney and the Hearing Officer and put this entire embarrassing episode to bed. 

 

She is wasting our time, our money and making us the laughing stock of the metro area.

A New (well not so new) Dunwoody Hero

I have written about David Skoke before.  This is the cherry on top of the sundae, the crown jewel of the food pantry story.  A journey that started small and now is  a food program that is second to none...

Way to go David !  

Rather than trying to tell the story myself, I will yield to Pattie.  She is a much better writer than I can every hope to be, ( then again there are a lot of people who can make that claim)

http://www.foodshedplanet.com/2013/06/this-is-what-passion-looks-like.html

This Is What Passion Looks Like

So I was asked to speak to a group of teens who are taking a leadership class this week, and I was telling them about passion as we walked from the back field to the community garden to the food pantry (passing a bus shelter along the way, which I hope they now see with new eyes after seeing all the food pantry clients who rely on it). I told them about my friend, David, about how he simply asked for some potatoes to be donated from area supermarkets when we were planting last year, and then he kept going back and getting more and more to bring. In the process, he fell in love with gleaning. I told them that he found his passion, and that their challenge is to each find theirs. 

David usually brings about 500 pounds of fresh food each week to our local food pantry (that's a ton a month), and now also goes to two other places on other days as well. He just bought this van (which has no air conditioning and it was in the 90s today), and he drives something like a 25-mile loop to the stores. He brought about 1,000 pounds of fresh produce today. Twice his usual. 

He honks when he arrives. We all wave and gather. Lots of folks help him unload. It's fun.

Look at that face. That is a happy man. That is what passion looks like. If you look in the mirror and don't see a face that looks happy like that, you're not doing something about which you feel passionate. Perhaps it's time to make some changes in your life.

"Listen to your heart. It knows where it wants to go." That is what I told the teens. I also told them I'd give them shout-outs if they take a leadership action re: something about which they feel passionate and want me to share. Stay tuned.

Here are some other posts about David's journey:  

* What Happens at Meetings that Require Pitchforks (Featuring David Skoke)

*The Wooly Mammoth, the "Kevin Bacon of Wasted Food," and a Simple Request Made to Costco (Updated Twice)

*Our First "Naked Truth about Hunger" Male Model

* Costco, You Are Invited to the Table (Updated Twice)

Posted 2 hours ago by Pattie Baker

Refugees: “I learned from you how to make the impossible become the possible.”

Pure hatred and fear raised its ugly head or in this case heads as the Doraville Duo appeared once again at a Dunwoody City Council meeting to complain about REFUGEES!

I have been fighting the urge all night to refute these hate filled men, not wanting to give them any more than their three minutes of “public comment” time afforded them at our City Council meetings.  Pure ignorant hatred makes me sick.

Tonight Tonto (aka Joe Newton) spoke. Tom Owens has been assigned the role of the village idiot who sits there and grins as Tonto spouts statistics that have no meaning and tries to paint all refugees with the blood of the Boston Bombers.  Tonight he went even further to specifically point to the Fugees Academy in Clarkston as the training grounds.

Most people know my admiration for the Fugees Academy and its founder Coach Luma.  The work they do to educate and help train refugees (and their children) should be the example that we all follow to make this community, this County, State and Country a better place to live for all of us.

Instead Tonto spreads lies, misinformation and generalizations that would have us fear EVERY person of color, any color.  Anyone who does not look like them is the enemy.

Already this year 2 Fugees Academy Students have been recently assaulted in Clarkston, this is not a time to stoke the fire a racism and bigotry.

So I decided to post.  First a little bit of background on refugees in general.  How do they get here and where do they come from.  Who brings them?  Who pays?  More information can be found at the Friends of Refugees website.

http://friendsofrefugees.com/

Then a story about another school.  A school that is mainly staffed by volunteers dedicated to helping these children learn and prepare them for their future in a country that is as foreign to them as their homelands are to us.  It is a reprint from the AJC, with full credit to the author so I am sure she will not mind.

The stories from the students at this school are the same harrowing tales as those of the students at the Fugees Academy. 

And lastly, I once again to urge you all to read and reread “Outcasts United”.  If after reading all of this you can sit and listen to the hatred spewing from Tom Owen’s and Tonto’s mouth without feeling the same outrage I feel, then the conversation need not continue and I wish you peace.  I cannot forgive, only God can do that, even to those who feel such hatred, but I will not forget.
 

I have faith in the people of Dunwoody

About Refugees

What is a refugee?
According to the 1951 Geneva Convention, a refugee is a person with a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or unwilling to return to it.

How does a refugee get to America?
Once refugees leave their home country, most go to refugee camps to live…and wait. The average stay in a refugee camp is five years. Some refugees may marry and have children in refugee camps. Refugees await an interview and approval from the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) to go to a refugee receiving nation. For those who may come to the United States, the refugees also await approval from the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS). Only those refugees with sufficient proof of a well-founded fear of persecution in their homeland will be allowed to go to a new country.

Once approved, refugees must find a sponsor or borrow money to pay for the cost of transportation. Refugees will then fly to America. Before they arrive, they will have been assigned to a refugee resettlement agency such as World Relief or Lutheran Refugee Services. These agencies help the refugees with their settlement needs for the first ninety days in the United States. Since ninety days isn’t much time to get a household setup, find a job, learn English, etc. resettlement agencies also work to find sponsors to help the refugees long-term. Unfortunately, a majority of refugees are not sponsored.

Following their ninety days in the States, Friends of Refugees continues to provide long-term care and services to refugees.

Who we serve

Afghanistan	Croatia	*Kenya	Sudan
Angola	Cuba	Kosovo	**Thailand
Belarus	Eritrea	Liberia	Togo
Bosnia	Ethiopia	Moldova	Turks from Russia
Burma	Former USSR	Nigeria	Ukraine
Burundi	Indonesia	North Korea	Vietnam
Cambodia	Iran	Sierra Leone
Congo	Iraq	Somalia

*children from Solmalian or Sudanese families born in refugee camps.

**children from Southeast Asian families born in refugee camps

If you would like more information about the cultural backgrounds of refugee populations, please visit The Cultural Orientation Resource Center

From war to warmth: Refugee teens find a haven and hope at Global Village School

8:34 pm March 14, 2010, by Maureen Downey

In her poem about Kakuma, a sprawling camp of 61,285 African refugees in northwestern Kenya, 15-year-old Amina Osman begins, “In Kakuma life is pain. I am five and life is pain.”

The students at the Global Village School in Decatur with their art teacher Sally Wylde.

She ends her poem on a far happier note, “I am 16, life is shining.”

A Somalian refugee, Amina now attends the Global Village School, which opened in August to educate teen survivors of war. The refugee students rise early to take buses and trains to the downtown Decatur school; one girl begins her trek at 4 a.m. In many households, everyone rises early because the parents travel in van pools to chicken processing plants in Gainvesville.

“The girls coming here want to have an education,” says teacher Yang Li, one of the school’s two full-time teachers. Along with a part-time administrator, the teachers are the only paid staff at the school, which capitalizes on a daily stream of volunteers from the community and nearby colleges.

The school grew out of a Saturday class started for the older siblings of pupils at the International Community School, a public charter school for refugee children that goes to sixth grade.

From an initial class of five teenage girls who had been child carpet workers in Afghanistan, the nonprofit Global Village School now teaches 30 students in an intense, extended five-day program girded by grants and donations.

Many students attended school only sporadically while moving between countries and refugee camps. Their English is halting; their stories heartbreaking. Some have lost family to violence. Others have come here without their parents and yearn to see them again.

In their journals, the girls describe their ordeals. One Burundi student writes of her parents’ escape from civil war. “There were no highways. There were only jungle paths. They had to walk through the jungle, tired, hungry, sick and without medicine. They walked barefoot.”

Yet, few signs of these travails emerge when the students gather for their daily morning circle in the cheerful classroom space donated to the school by Decatur Presbyterian Church.

The girls around the circle range in age from 13 to 25 and come from Burma, Kenya, Sudan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Zimbawe and Eritrea. In unison, they tell a visitor that their school “is a school for peace, joy and justice.”

When a teacher announces that it’s Groundhog Day and attempts to explain Punxsutawney Phil, the news is greeted with bewilderment. What’s a groundhog, the students want to know.

Although their knowledge of American folklore and fauna is limited, the students have other extraordinary aptitudes, including foreign language skills. Many speak three languages, a byproduct of the multiple refugee camps where they spent their childhoods.

They enroll at the Global Village School to sharpen their English and math skills so they can move into a traditional public school or college. Several hope to attend Agnes Scott College down the street, where they walk every day to eat lunch in the dining hall.

At a table in the dining hall over pizza and salads, five Global Village students talk about their education. Two Afghan sisters in their 20s have no formal schooling, having fled with their families to India where they worked as seamstresses. They could not attend school because of the tuition costs, they explain.

But Zuhal Noori, 18, of Afghanistan and her sister Anousha, 13, attended school in Pakistan because their parents ran a school. “I like this school now,” says Zuhal. “The teachers are very kind to us. I want to learn English so I can go to college.”

The students understand the imperative for English fluency as they see how it holds back their parents from finding jobs.

At monthly teas, the girls show off their work, musical talents and writings to invited guests. At the recent March tea, students stage an impromptu auction for their artwork to raise the last few hundred dollars for a field trip later this week to Washington. An opening bid of $10 for a colorful collage shoots to $125.

While in the nation’s capital, the girls still have hopes of somehow meeting President Obama, who inspires them because of his own reliance on education to transform his life.

At the tea, they read the letters they have sent to the president in the hopes of winning an audience. Reading from her letter, Zuhal says, “I learned from you how to make the impossible become the possible.”

 

Dunwoody Remembers

Memorial Day 2013

Memorial Day Remembrance

Executive Mansion,
Washington, Nov. 21, 1864.

Dear Madam,

I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.

I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.

I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.

Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,

A. Lincoln

 http://youtu.be/uLDvVaLFqXI