millennica

I am writing from Panama where I am currently visiting, at the moment in Panama City. This is my third visit. A trip from Panama City down the Pacific Coast to see the beaches is easy to make as is a trip to the Atlantic side which is only 50 miles away and can easily be reached in about an hour on the recently completed highway that goes from the Pacific to Atlantic sides of the country. In addition to Panama City, a trip to David, a city to the north is worth a visit, mainly because it is a jumping off point to Boquete and other places in Chiriqui Province that are much smaller, are in the mountains ( a non active volcano, Volcan Baru is located in this area), have beautiful landscapes and flora. Bocas del Toro, an archipelago very close to the Costa Rican border is also worth the visit, particularly if one likes to surf and scuba dive. There are regions worth visiting in Panama, but the ones described above are the most popular.

Texas Couple Accused of Shooting Man, 2 Kids By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Published: May 8, 2009 Filed at 4:53 p.m. ET HOUSTON (AP) -- A couple is accused of opening fire and wounding four people -- including a 7-year-old boy and a 5-year-old girl -- who they mistakenly thought were trespassing on their property. The victims, who were off-roading near a residential area about 40 miles northeast of Houston, were struck with shotgun bullets late Thursday after stopping their vehicles near the Trinity River so the children could go to the bathroom, said Liberty County Chief Deputy Ken DeFoor. http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/05/08...d-Shooting.html

I currently live in California and having been to both cities, I'm not surprised to see Stockton, CA and Modesto, CA on the list of the 10 most miserable cities.

My biggest savings will come from having purchased all new energy conserving appliances, which saves me 10.00 per month in electric bills. I also installed a new furnace which has a 92% efficiency rating instead of the 50% efficiency rating on my old furnace. I'm hoping that this will result in a lower gas bill. As far as cutting back in other areas, this is difficult as I was already more frugal that is probably warranted.

Until 2003, even though my taxes were complicated, I did the old fashioned way, with paper and pencil, because I was too frugal to pay to have them done. Beginning in 2004, I started using Turbo Tax which has made the process so much easier because not only don't I have to worry about calculations, but the previous years' taxes are automatically uploaded.

I prefer airports that can easily be reached using public transportation. For this reason, the airports I like in the US include Boston' Logan, New York's Kennedy, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Oakland, and DC National. I like others because they are easy to navigate. Oakland and Hobby are two that I like. In the Caribbean, I like Tocumen the airport in Panama as well as the airport in St.Maarten/St. Martin because both are small and easy to navigate.

Nothing

If you think the word influence is inappropriately used in the article, I'm sure the reporter would be glad to hear from you. While I don't want to get into a semantic argument with someone whose handle is "editor" the word influence applies to a force exercised and received consciously or unconsciously. So as much as people make choices with their brains, they are often subtly influenced by other factors, at least that's what cognitive psychologists, anthropologists and sociologists argue. Of course, it's possible that you are correct and they are wrong. But I believe that is a debatable proposition.

Someone I met when I was visiting Houston mentioned this site.

For anyone interested in a more complex analysis of the voting patterns on Proposition 8 within the city of San Francisco, today's issue ( 14 November 2008) of the San Francisco Chronicle published an article worth reading. Other information--interactive features, photos-- is available for within the article. For all the talk of San Francisco values, a Chronicle analysis of how the city voted on the state's same-sex marriage ban shows a city geographically divided on the issue - and voting trends that turn San Francisco's typical political spectrum on its head. One in 4 San Franciscans voted in favor of Proposition 8, far fewer than the 52 percent who voted to ban same-sex marriage statewide. But a closer look shows race, age and education influenced voters more than anything else - even among those living in one of the world's most gay-friendly cities. Voters in 54 of San Francisco's 580 precincts supported the ban, with a high of 65 percent of voters favoring it in parts of Chinatown and downtown. More than half of voters in large swaths of Bayview-Hunters Point, Visitacion Valley, the Excelsior and areas around Lake Merced also voted to ban same-sex marriage. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?.../MNIQ144185.DTL

I'm Black, so is my spouse, and although originally from the East Coast, spouse from New York City, me from Boston, we have lived in California since 1991 and we and vote in California. Both of us voted in the November election for Obama-Biden and "no" on Proposition 8, which places us in the 30% of Blacks who didn't vote "yes" on Proposition 8. We didn't vote on the down low and in fact all of our Black friends and colleagues know we voted "no" on Proposition 8. In fact, we've argue with some of our more conservative religious acqaintances about about the issue. Neither my spouse or I are religious; we do not belong to or attend church of any denomination. A larger percentage of Black folks are church goers, often attending Black congregations, many of which are quite conservative on social issues. Many, but not all of the preachers in the California Black churches told the members of their congregation to vote 'yes" on Proposition 8 and apparently many did which I believe accounts for the fact that 70% of Black voted "yes" on Proposition 8. There have been quite a few discussions about this issue since the election and some of have claimed that the "no" on Proposition 8 was not as well organized as the "yes" on Proposition 8 did not have a presence or reach out to communities of color or other socially conservative communities for that matter--The Inland Empire, for example-- which were likely to vote "yes" on Proposition 8. I can't say for certain that these last points are accurate, but that is what the pundits are saying.

Exactly! The idea was known by the term "one drop rule", which in the United States historically holds that a person with any trace of African ancestry was considered Black and subject to being held as slaves and later subject to the "Jim Crow" laws. This was a tactic in the South that strengthened and codified segregation and the disenfranchisement of Blacks. During slavery and afterward Plessy vs Ferguson the Supreme Court Decision that legalized separate but equal, state legislatures adopted this rule to segregate Blacks. Tennessee, Texas, North Carolina, Louisiana, Florids, Kentucky, Maryland Missouri, Nebraska, Georgis and several other states had these laws and the one drop rule included people who were one, sixteenth and one thirty second Black. There were lots of half Black half white people who were held as slaves and later bound by Jim Crow. If they were light enough to pass as white, some of them did, which of course meant leaving their families behind as they dare not let the white community in which they were passing know they heritage. But others in the same family who weren't light enough to pass as white had to live as Black people. This is what happened with Sally Hemmings and Thomas Jefferson's children. Some of them lived as Black people and some of them who were light enough to pass simply blended into the white community. The Blacker the Berry, the Sweeter the Juice tells the story of a contemporary family some of whose members remained Black and others who became white. In my own family, my great great grandfather was half-white, his father was his owner and his mother was a slave. My great great grandfather was much whiter looking than Obama and was raised by a white man--his father--, but lived as a Black man and was subject to everything that entailed throughout his life. The "one drop rule" and the fact that no matter how light they might have been Black people were historically considered Black is one reason that Black folks cling so strongly to the belief that half-Black people are Black. Black people didn't make the rule, but it did become part of the way Black folks consider who is Black.

She broke her ankle.

Thanks for the shout-out.

Lazarus and the Yoruba deity, Babalu Aye, Lazarus' syncretic version in Santeria