Sexual Harassment at the United Nations

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This originally appeared under my byline on PassBlue, which has Creative Commons license to reproduce their content for free. MeToo-2

As its people of the year, Time magazine recently named the Silence Breakers — people who have spoken against sexual harassment and launched the hashtag #MeToo into an international phenomenon with more than seven million hits on social media.

Just before the announcement, more than 230 women who work in national security for the United States, from former ambassadors to military personnel, signed a public letter protesting sexual harassment, under the hashtag #MeTooNatSec. Continue reading “Sexual Harassment at the United Nations” →

Refugee Slide Show

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The photographs below are courtesy of the United Nations High Commission on Refugees.  They show just a glimpse of the lives these refugees live and the importance of sports and active recreation.

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Go Ahead, Posse, Come At Us

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I have a confession – I read romance books. Ideally, it is a great way to unwind and decompress, and clear your mind in the same way that only a Madonna tune can unstick a song from the brain. In terms of the written Happily Ever After, I’m not alone as a fan of the romance genre. Combined with erotica, this is the top selling genre in bookstores, both physical and online, with over $1.4 billion in sales in 2013. Sadly, these sales aren’t all going toward books written by alums of the Iowa Writers Workshop, or by the likes of Jennifer Crusie (MFA and ABD on her PhD), Julie James (JD, who has worked in the US Court of Appeals) or Lauren Willig (ABD on PhD at Harvard, JD at Harvard.) Continue reading “Go Ahead, Posse, Come At Us” →

Word Nerd

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A wish for 2016 – free the noun ‘creatives’ from its misuse of being synonymous with ‘artists.’ Emails referencing creatives vs non-creatives, or even addressed to “To my friends & acquaintances who are non-creatives” – what huh? and I’ve received these from multiple people –  have come across my desk fairly regularly in the last year.

To quote Indigo Montoya, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

Continue reading “Word Nerd” →

What we talk about when we talk about immigrants

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Girls with Bubbles
One of these girls may create the next Google or Yahoo! But in the summertime, they’re just going to be children and play with bubbles in Buffalo, NY.

Migrant to some Americans conjures up a mental image of Jacob Riis’ How The Other Half Lives and that 10th grade English teacher who was passionate about Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men to a mental soundtrack of Woody Guthrie songs and a dry mouth in sympathy for the Dust Bowl. In the 1930s, economic and environmental conditions drove many farmers, tenant and independent, from the plains states to California in hopes that the arable land and mild climate there would provide work. Across the country at that time, unemployment hovered at 30 percent. Continue reading “What we talk about when we talk about immigrants” →