When Hard Work Wasn't Enough

A dear friend contacted me recently to ask about the last speech I gave at the 6th grade promotion ceremony at the last school where I was principal.  This school was 100% Title 1, which means all of the students' families were on welfare.

After four years of incredibly hard work and dedication trying to get the students to where they needed to be, I was being replaced.

It was a difficult time, for sure.  At that point my future was uncertain, and truth be told, I was angry and bitter.

It was traditional for the principal to speak at the 6th grade promotion ceremony, and I had done this many times before, but this time, I took the opportunity to share some things from the heart.

Below you'll find my notes from that speech.

~~~~~~~~~~

ü STUDENTS – Thank you – for working hard and doing your best; I've witnessed your growth & maturity

ü We love you, but you must move on

ü Don’t fall into the trap of not doing well in a class because you don’t like a teacher – remember your teachers are being paid to teach you not to like you; if they like you, it’s a bonus.

ü Please allow me to deviate from my usual script as this is my last time giving these remarks here

ü Let me share a story about a former student who left here Proficient & Advanced

ü His principal & I were at a meeting and she asked if I remembered him & if I’d go by and chat with him

ü She said his grades were A+ in Leadership and F’s in all five of his other subjects; know this - your teachers will let you FAIL

ü I told him I was going to go by his classes and check on him to make sure he was going to class and doing his work

ü In a matter of weeks, he brought three of his grades up from F’s to C’s – not great, but a step in the right direction

ü One day I went to see him and he wasn’t there, so I went to his home to see what was up; when I knocked on the door, his Mom was incensed.  She asked, “What are you, the truant officer now? You’re doing too much.”

ü She was right.  So I publically apologize for trying to help her child.  It was not my job to get him to school every day.  It was her job.  It was not my job to make sure he was in class doing his work.  It was her job.  It was not my job to meet with his teachers to make sure he was on the right track. It was her job.  So I apologize for trying to help her child get ready for high school and beyond. 

ü Let me tell you another story that happened very recently

ü I witnessed . . . let me repeat . . . I WITNESSED students playing on their way to school throwing a basketball from one side of the road to the next in traffic; others were throwing pine cones at cars and each other

ü I slowed down and yelled at them to stop

ü I turned onto 5^th Street and looked in my rearview mirror and could see them chasing each other down the street

ü Shortly thereafter two of the boys entered the office with one crying where he had fallen and was bleeding and bruised

ü I shared how dangerous this was with the students at breakfast and at the Assembly that morning

ü At the end of the day I went to the homes of two of the parents and met the other in the court yard of the third parent and shared the incident with them, sharing how dangerous this was

ü The next day two of the parents were waiting for me in the office, accusing me of lying about what I saw

ü WHY WOULD I LIE?  WHAT PURPOSE WOULD LYING SERVE?

ü I simply stopped by the parents’ home to let them know their children were participating in CRAZY, OUTRAGEOUS, DANGEROUS BEHAVIOR!

ü So I apologize for trying to help these children as well.  The next time I see them playing in the street where the cars are swerving to avoid hitting them, I’ll keep going and let them play on, so that I’m not accused of lying on them again.

ü Someone asked me recently if I would miss being here

ü There are some things I won’t miss –

o  I won’t miss begging parents to send your kids to school and having to get the police to knock on your doors to do it

o  I won’t miss getting cussed out by parents who think their kids can do no wrong

o  I won’t miss students saying “My Momma told me to fight” and

o  I won’t miss students who disrespect staff

ü There are things I will miss -

o  I will miss being around some of the smartest students I’ve ever known

o  I will miss some of the kindest students I’ve ever known

o  I will miss some of the best staff I’ve ever worked with

o  I will miss the best support staff I’ve ever worked with

ü Remember this is a “Promotion, not a graduation”

ü I expect all of you to graduate from high school

ü I expect all to you to graduate from college as well

ü We visited Stanford, UC Berkeley, UC Davis, & CSUS because we want our students to feel comfortable on a college campus; we want them to start thinking about college

ü I wanted for your kids what was available to my kids – a great college education

ü My sons went to two of the best colleges and universities in the country, and that’s what I want for your kids

ü Everything I did here was to try and get your kids prepared for them to achieve that goal

ü But I realized recently that the dream of college for your kids has been my dream, but in order for it to happen, it has to be your dream as well

Good News!

Jalen Rose Leadership Academy’s Entire Inaugural Graduating Class Headed to Promising Future

The former NBA star opened the school in 2011 and saw his first class graduate Saturday. One hundred percent of the graduating class will either attend college or a trade or technical school or go into the military.

BY: STEPHEN A. CROCKETT JR.

Posted: June 8 2015 4:20 PM

 

The 2015 graduating class of the Jalen Rose Leadership Academy TWITTER

In 2011, Jalen Rose put his money where his heart is and started a school in his hometown of Detroit. On Saturday the 13-year NBA player-turned-ESPN and ABC analyst told the 100 young men and women of the school's first graduating class, "The only person that you are destined to become is the person you decide to be."

According to the Detroit News, all the students who started at the Jalen Rose Leadership Academy in 2011 graduated, and 100 percent of the graduating class will be either attending college or a trade or technical school or serving in the military.

The Detroit News notes that many of the "students worked hard and received full scholarships to the schools of their choice, including University of Michigan, University of Michigan, Dearborn, and Michigan State University," with the "total amount of gift aid for the Class of 2015 exceeding $2.1 million."

Each senior received a tablet and was treated to inspirational speeches from Detroit-native rapper Big Sean (who, according to the newspaper, graduated from high school with a 3.7 GPA) and adopted Detroit hero Isiah Thomas.

"I truly have love for the city. It made me who I am," Big Sean, whose real name is Sean Anderson, told the students. "I feel like we can do anything because our city has gone through so much. We have seen the bottom and we have seen the top. No matter what, we are going to be who we are and find a way to survive."

Thomas, the Hall of Fame former point guard for the Detroit Pistons, wasted no time in dropping a basketball analogy.

"You just made it to the playoffs," Thomas, now president of the WNBA Liberty, said. "Now we have to get ready for the finals. Your job, your responsibility as leaders, is to make sure you leave the door open. Jalen Rose, thank you for opening that door."

Rose told all the students that although they are leaving the school, they are not leaving the school family.

"This is not 'Goodbye,' " Rose said, according to the Detroit News. "This is just 'See you later.' The job is not done."

Amazing Grace

Is the name of a wonderfully rich, smooth, creamy lotion that I use.

I discovered this on one of the international flights I was on where you can regularly find fine lotions and perfumes for use on the long flights.

In fact, I thought this lotion was exclusive to the airlines, when I saw it later in a store and picked a bottle up.

It's from a company called Philosophy.

The label reads:

Amazing Grace

Philosophy:  The natural aging process may cause our bodies to descend, but our spirits need not descend into worry.  With time comes wisdom, character, strength, and perspective.  Our bodies are teaching us flexibility and the glory of embracing change on our beautiful journey.  We can fight against the flow, or we can yield to knowing our bodies, gaining our souls and finding our grace.

Isn't that an inspiring message.

The lotion feels amazing on your body, too.

You can find it on Amazon.

A Common Language

This is interesting because it's one of the first things I noticed when I arrived - hearing the local language sprinkled with techie language/brands, like "iPhone," "Facebook," "Snapchat," etc. - and it was exciting because it was something I recognized and could appreciate right away.

From The New York Times -

‘Le Selfie’

By RYAN BRADLEYJUNE 5, 2015

In the 19th century, language scholars coined a new word — “wanderwört” — to describe old words that wandered global trade routes from one language to the next. Back then the word referred to spices and other exotic goods: “Cumin” can be traced linguistically to ancient Sumerian, “ginger” began its journey in Sanskrit and “coffee” and “orange” started in Arabic. The wanderwörter of the information age travel more quickly, of course, and now even the French, ever resistant to vulgar Anglicisms, have accepted “email” and “le selfie,” which in 2016 will make its debut in France’s Larousse dictionary. Here we collect some of the other adjustments that high-tech terminology has made to languages around the world.

Liked it? Loved it 

In 2013, Facebook removed the thumbs-up icon from the now ubiquitous “Like” button, which the company has translated, with a few subtle variations, into 70 languages. While the thumb created cultural problems of its own (a raised thumb can mean “No. 1” in Germany and an unprintable insult in Iran), the intensity of “like” can also be tough to gauge from nation to nation. The Lithuanian patinka and the Afrikaans hou van both just mean “like,” for instance, whereas the Dutch vind ik leuk is a noncommittal “This is nice,” and the Danish synes godt om is a seemingly more emphatic “like this well.”

Languages from top to bottom: Korean, English, Russian, Greek, Spanish, Malaysian, Hebrew


Lots of Laughs


In English, LOL stands for “laughing out loud.” In France, it’s “mdr,” for “mort de rire” (dying of laughter). In Thailand, the number “5” is pronounced “ha,” so putting three 5’s together, 555, reads as “hahaha,” or laughing out loud.

Song Remains the Same

In French, you tweetez and in German you twitterst. In American Sign Language, some of the many signs for Twitter and for the act of tweeting simply modify the A.S.L. sign for bird.

Obscene, Not Heard

Internet slang evolves quickly in China, where a lot of wordplay involves swapping in similar-sounding characters to get sensitive terms past censors. A classic example is the “grass mud horse,” 草泥马, a fictional creature usually depicted as an alpaca or a llama. That phrase is phonetically similar to a common insult that is unprintable in this magazine.

Exit Strategy

Around 2010 in Ukraine, Control-Alt-Delete, the Windows force-quit command, gained a specific name: Дуля (dulya). Dulya is also a three-fingered gesture, sometimes called the fig sign, that is a mellower version of an upraised middle finger.

The Rigging of Jury Selection

From The New Yorker - (Bold is mine)

Why Is It So Easy for Prosecutors to Strike Black Jurors?

BY GILAD EDELMAN

Last week, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case of Timothy Tyrone Foster, a black man sentenced to death by an all-white Georgia jury in 1987 for murdering an elderly white woman. Foster claims that the prosecution deliberately eliminated all four eligible black jurors. The state argues that race played no role in jury selection. It’s an odd argument in light of the evidence that emerged decades after Foster’s conviction: in their notes, the prosecutors highlighted the black jurors’ names in green; circled the answer “black” on the questionnaire where jurors had been asked to identify their race; labelled three black jurors “B#1,” “B#2,” and “B#3”; and identified which person to keep “if we had to pick a black juror.”

The Supreme Court may well grant Foster a new trial on the grounds that the state violated Batson v. Kentucky, a landmark 1986 case in which the Court declared it unconstitutional to strike potential jurors because of their race. But a victory for Foster won’t change the fact that, nearly thirty years later, prosecutors across the country, and especially in the South, continue to get away with intentionally striking black people from juries in trials of black defendants. The most remarkable thing about Batson, it turns out, is how easy it has been to ignore.

Jury selection occurs in two steps. First, the judge dismisses potential jurors “for cause” if they can’t be impartial. Second, after questioning the remaining jurors, the defense and the prosecution each have a number of peremptory strikes (the number varies by state) to remove jurors they don’t like until twelve are left. The lawyers don’t have to give any justification for these strikes, and they don’t need the judge’s approval. That poses a problem for a legal system that forbids racial discrimination: If the prosecutor doesn’t have to give a reason, what’s to stop him from getting rid of a juror because he’s black?

The Supreme Court’s answer in Batson was to allow a defendant to force the prosecution to explain a strike if it seems to be racially motivated. When making a Batson challenge, as it soon came to be called, the defense must first convince the judge that there is reason to suspect that a strike was based on race, usually by pointing out the high proportion of black jurors being targeted. Next, the prosecutor has to give a race-neutral reason for striking the juror. Then it’s up to the judge to decide whether the reason is legitimate or a pretext for a race-based strike.

Justice Thurgood Marshall voted with the majority in Batson, but in a concurring opinion he warned that its procedure wouldn’t really solve the problem of race-biased jury selection: it would be too easy for prosecutors to make up race-neutral reasons for striking a juror.

Marshall’s skepticism was quickly vindicated. As soon as Batson was decided, prosecutors started coming up with tactics to evade it. In a 1987 training video that became notorious when it was leaked years later, Jack McMahon, an assistant district attorney in Philadelphia, told new prosecutors, “When you do have a black jury, you question them at length. And on this little sheet that you have, mark something down that you can articulate later. . . . You may want to ask more questions of those people so it gives you more ammunition to make an articulable reason as to why you are striking them, not for race.”

A consensus soon formed that the Batson remedy was toothless. In a 1996 opinion, an Illinois appellate judge, exasperated by “the charade that has become the Batson process,” catalogued some of the flimsy reasons for striking jurors that judges had accepted as “race-neutral”: too old, too young; living alone, living with a girlfriend; over-educated, lack of maturity; unemployed, employed as a barber; and so on. The judge joked, “New prosecutors are given a manual, probably entitled, ‘Handy Race-Neutral Explanations’ or ‘20 Time-Tested Race-Neutral Explanations.’”

As it turns out, that really happens. In the nineteen-nineties, the North Carolina prosecutors’ association held training sessions where prosecutors got one-page handouts such as “Batson Justifications: Articulating Juror Negatives,” which listed reasons for striking jurors based on traits like age and body language. A similar list distributed in 2004 to Texas prosecutors included justifications like “Agreed with O. J. Simpson verdict” and “Watched gospel TV programs.”

Stephen Bright, the president of the Southern Center for Human Rights, who is representing Foster on its behalf, argued and won a Batson appeal at the Supreme Court in 2008. But Bright, a longtime capital trial and appellate lawyer, doesn’t see that victory as a vindication of the procedure.

“It just makes such a farce of the system,” he said. “Nobody—the judge, the prosecutor, the defense lawyers—nobody thinks the reasons are really the reasons they strike the people. They strike the people because of their race. I mean, we all know that. And then you try to come up with a good reason for doing it and see if you can get away with it.”

“You’re asking the judge to say that the prosecutor intentionally discriminated on the basis of race, and that he lied about it,” he went on. “That’s very difficult psychologically for the average judge.”

There are no comprehensive statistics on how often prosecutors strike jurors based on race, but there is little doubt that the practice remains common, especially in the South. In Caddo Parish, Louisiana, prosecutors struck forty-eight per cent of qualified black jurors between 1997 and 2009 and only fourteen per cent of qualified whites, according to a review by the Louisiana Capital Assistance Center. In Jefferson Parish, where a quarter of the population is black, the split was even greater—fifty-five per cent to sixteen per cent—so that twenty-two per cent of felony trials between 1994 and 2002 had no black jurors. According to a 2010 report by the Equal Justice Initiative documenting discrimination in eight Southern states, half of all juries that delivered death sentences in Houston County, Alabama, between 2005 and 2009 were all white; the other half had a single black juror. Houston County is twenty-seven per cent black.

In 2012, a North Carolina judge found that in capital cases between 1990 and 2010 prosecutors statewide struck potential black jurors at twice the rate of non-blacks.* A regression analysis showed that the disparity held even when controlling for other factors that correlate with race. In a pained opinion, the judge concluded, “Race, not reservations about the death penalty, not connections to the criminal justice system, but race, drives prosecution decisions about which citizens may participate in one of the most important and visible aspects of democratic government.”

Why do race-based peremptory challenges persist? Because race is an unfortunate but powerful basis for generalization. To state the obvious, black people are more likely to have been targeted or abused by police; to be affected by the extreme racial disparities in arrests, incarceration, and the death penalty; and to understand that crimes against black victims are prosecuted less vigorously than those against whites. All things being equal, a prosecutor has reason to think that a black juror is less likely to side with the government against a black defendant than a white one. (Former prosecutors with whom I spoke stressed that attorneys defending black clients are just as likely to strike whites in order to get more blacks on the jury. The Supreme Court has held that defense strikes of white jurors also violate Batson.)

Research backs up the common-sense intuition that excluding black people from juries can influence verdicts. A 2004 study by the Capital Jury Project found that in cases with a black defendant and a white victim, having one or more black male jurors drastically lowered the chances of a death sentence. Experiments have shown that all-white mock juries spend less time deliberating, make more factual mistakes, and are more likely to convict a minority defendant than racially diverse juries. These studies suggest what some prosecutors have long assumed: striking potential black jurors raises the odds of a black defendant being convicted and increases the penalty he is likely to receive.

Even apart from trial outcomes, discriminatory strikes distort a basic premise of the jury system: the notion that a jury represents the whole community. “Maybe the most powerful thing that a citizen can do, more powerful than voting, is to serve on a jury,” Tye Hunter, the former director of the Center for Death Penalty Litigation, which brought the 2012 North Carolina case, said. “And the fact that black people are routinely over-excused from that duty is just another very public, very significant badge of inferiority and second-class citizenship.”

The defense bar celebrated Batson when it was decided. Even Justice Marshall, who had expressed concerns about its effectiveness, applauded the majority for taking “a historic step toward eliminating the shameful practice of racial discrimination in the selection of juries.” It’s clear today, though, that Batson rested on faulty assumptions. The Court placed too much faith in trial judges and underestimated prosecutors’ motivation to circumvent the rule, possibly because it refused to recognize that there was any rational reason to strike jurors based on race. And once it became clear that the Batson test wouldn’t do the trick, the Court refused to strengthen it. In fact, later decisions did the opposite, holding that judges can accept even a “silly or superstitious” reason—like a lawyer thinking that a prospective juror’s mustache is “suspicious”—as long as it doesn’t explicitly invoke race.

What should be done? In his Batson concurrence, Justice Marshall argued that only banning peremptory challenges would solve the problem. While that idea has picked up support from academics and judges, including Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, it’s a political nonstarter. Most trial lawyers, even on the defense side, just don’t want to give up their ability to use strikes to shape the jury, and they have the clout to prevent it from happening.

Richard Bourke, who has worked on Batson appeals as the director of the Louisiana Capital Assistance Center, suggested that the most powerful, realistic reform would be to have states track the racial makeup of jury selection in the same way they track the racial statistics of traffic stops. He has a point. Neither courts nor legislatures will think seriously about replacing the feeble Batson procedure if there aren’t public objections to it. But cases like Timothy Tyrone Foster’s, where the defense uncovers the prosecution’s blatantly racist notes, are rare. Race-based peremptory strikes are almost always invisible, or at least, as Batson has shown, hard to prove. Only when such strikes are added up can they be seen. Batson is a reminder that a legal system formally blind to race is just as often blind to racism.

Correction: A previous version of this post misidentified the North Carolina court that issued the 2012 opinion.

Fox Movie-of-the-Day App

This app offers discounted movies every day.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/movie-of-the-day!/id987008789?mt=8

As seen on:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2015/06/07/cutting-the-cord-fox-deal-of-the-day-app/28435979/

Books for Boys

From The Root - 

Barbershops Get Stocked With Books for Boys, Thanks to Ala. Attorney

The Books for Boys project seeks to promote literacy and self-esteem.

BY: NIGEL ROBERTS

Posted: June 7 2015 3:00 AM

 

Royal Touch Barbershop owner Reggie Ross gives a touch-up to a young customer while he reads in Palm Beach County, Fla.
WPTV SCREENSHOT

An article published in The Root last year about a Florida barbershop that promotes literacy sparked a movement miles away in the cities of Prichard and Mobile, Ala.

Freddie Stokes launched Books for Boys about three weeks ago. He initially intended to establish small libraries, of about 75 books each, in two or three barbershops, but the response to his initiative was so overwhelming that Stokes says he’s now able to establish libraries in at least six barbershops. The first one will open in mid-June.

“We don’t want to stop until all the barbershops in this community have libraries,” he says, with an air of reserved confidence that it will be done.

Stokes is supplying books with which black boys can identify. “When our boys say they don’t like to read, a lot of that is coming from not being interested in reading about characters that don’t look like them,” he explains. His growing stockpile includes biographies, such as Malcolm Little: The Boy Who Grew Up to Become Malcolm X, 12 Rounds to Glory: The Story of Muhammad Ali and Barack Obama: Son of Promise, Child of Hope.

In addition to promoting literacy, Books for Boys aims to raise self-esteem. Stokes grew up in public housing and struggled early in school, having to repeat the third grade. A teacher inspired him to read books, including those about successful African Americans, which allowed him to dream big and ultimately achieve his goals.

Freddie Stokes RODNEY R. CLIFTON

Stokes worked in classrooms for two years through Teach for America, an organization that places recent college graduates and professionals in underserved classrooms. He introduced his students to books with positive black characters and watched their self-esteem grow.

“When I went from the classroom to the courtroom, I was able to connect the violence to a lack of reading and self-esteem,” says Stokes, who is also a criminal defense attorney in private practice.

“After reading the article in The Root, I asked myself, why isn’t this [barbershop libraries] in every community?” he recalls. “Then one day I got an epiphany: Just get up and do the work. We can’t wait on the government to do it for us.”

Stokes admits that he didn’t expect the overwhelming response that he received. 

Barbershop owners said that they are expecting scores of boys to come in over the summer and would gladly offer them books. Parents, sometimes groups of them, are donating with a request that Stokes open a library where they take their sons. And local professionals are opening their wallets to sponsor barbershops, sometimes with a request that Stokes purchase books that emphasize math and science.

In a few short weeks, Stokes’ grassroots effort raised more than $1,500 on GoFundMe. Folks in the community have also given about $800 in cash donations toward the purchase of books. Stokes hopes that this small effort ignites a larger movement that reaches well beyond the Mobile area.

Nigel Roberts is a New York City-based freelance writer. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.

Someone Thought This Was A Good Idea?

From The Root - 

‘Ghetto Award’ Lands Texas Teachers in Hot Water

The mother of a child at a middle school in Sulphur Springs, Texas is not laughing about the award.

BY: LYNETTE HOLLOWAY

Posted: June 7 2015 10:35 AM

FOX 4 NEWS SCREENSHOT

Teachers at a Sulphur Springs, Texas middle school are under fire after handing out “Ghetto Awards” to an eighth-grade special education class, according to Fox 4 News.

Jerrika Wilkins sparked controversy after posting a photo of the certificate on Facebook, explaining that it was part of the “8th Annual Ghetto Classroom Awards,” given to her eighth-grade son at Sulphur Springs Middle School for saying “Huh?” a lot in class, the report says.

Wilkins told Fox News that her son was “pretty hurt” by the award. “He feels pretty inferior,” she said. “You know, he want to succeed. You know, it just kind of hurt his feelings.”

The school’s principal called an emergency meeting where Wilkins says that one of the teachers, Tim Couch, who also serves as pastor at the Cross Branch Cowboy Church in Sumner, Texas apologized. The other teacher, Stephanie Garner, offered to resign, but the family said they didn't want that, Fox writes. The district also issued an apology to the family.

The family says they were told the awards went out to all the kids in the classroom as a joke, and was not meant as a racial slur.

“Ghetto was not supposed to be a malicious intent to degrade him,” said Wilkins. “It was supposed to be all in fun. I didn't take it that way.”

Another Reason to Love This Man

How cute is this?

Really, Really Interesting

From GQ - 

My Gucci Addiction

In the past few years, I've bought eighty-one leather jackets. Dozens of boots and leather gloves. I've purchased pants that cost $5,000. I own a $22,000 coat. This winter I took a tour of Milan's Fashion Week (all expenses paid by Gucci, in appreciation of my many, many purchases), where I spent tens of thousands more and began to seriously grapple, once and for all, with a compulsion that could cost me more than just my life savings. My name is Buzz Bissinger. I am 58 years old, the best-selling author of 'Friday Night Lights,' father of three, husband. And I am a shopaholic

http://www.gq.com/news-politics/newsmakers/201304/buzz-bissinger-shopaholic-gucci-addiction

Yeah California!

California will later this year become the first state in which women can get birth control without a doctor's visit.

http://www.vox.com/2015/6/5/8737007/birth-control-over-the-counter

Maybe We Should Consider This

Clearly what we've been doing for years in our war against drugs and the people who use them, is not working, so why not try a different approach?

~~~~~~~~~~

From The Washington Post - (Bold is mine)

Why hardly anyone dies from a drug overdose in Portugal

 By Christopher Ingraham June 5 at 11:56 AM

Portugal decriminalized the use of all drugs in 2001. Weed, cocaine, heroin, you name it -- Portugal decided to treat possession and use of small quantities of these drugs as a public health issue, not a criminal one. The drugs were still illegal, of course. But now getting caught with them meant a small fine and maybe a referral to a treatment program -- not jail time and a criminal record.

Whenever we debate similar measures in the U.S. -- marijuana decriminalization, for instance -- many drug-policy makers predict dire consequences. “If you make any attractive commodity available at lower cost, you will have more users," former Office of National Drug Control Policy deputy director Thomas McLellan once said of Portugal's policies. Joseph Califano, founder of the Center for Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, once warned that decriminalization would "increase illegal drug availability and use among our children."

But in Portugal, the numbers paint a different story. The prevalence of past-year and past-month drug use among young adults has fallen since 2001, according to statistics compiled by the Transform Drug Policy Foundation, which advocates on behalf of ending the war on drugs. Overall adult use is down slightly too. And new HIV cases among drug users are way down.

Now, numbers just released from the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction paint an even more vivid picture of life under decriminalization: drug overdose deaths in Portugal are the second-lowest in the European Union.

Among Portuguese adults, there are 3 drug overdose deaths for every 1,000,000 citizens. Comparable numbers in other countries range from 10.2 per million in the Netherlands to 44.6 per million in the U.K., all the way up to 126.8 per million in Estonia. The E.U. average is 17.3 per million.

Perhaps more significantly, the report notes that the use of "legal highs" -- like so-called "synthetic" marijuana, "bath salts" and the like -- is lower in Portugal than in any of the other countries for which reliable data exists. This makes a lot of intuitive sense: why bother with fake weed or dangerous designer drugs when you can get the real stuff? This is arguably a positive development for public health in the sense that many of the designer drugs that people develop to skirt existing drug laws have terrible and often deadly side effects.

Drug use and drug deaths are complicated phenomena. They have many underlying causes. Portugal's low death rate can't be attributable solely to decriminalization. As Dr. Joao Goulao, the architect of the country's decriminalization policy, has said, "it's very difficult to identify a causal link between decriminalization by itself and the positive tendencies we have seen."

Still, it's very clear that decriminalization hasn't had the severe consequences that its opponents predicted. As the Transform Drug Policy Institute says in its analysis of Portugal's drug laws, "The reality is that Portugal’s drug situation has improved significantly in several key areas. Most notably, HIV infections and drug-related deaths have decreased, while the dramatic rise in use feared by some has failed to materialise."

As state legislatures debate with issues like marijuana legalization and decriminalization in the coming years, Portugal's 15-year experience may be informative.

A Powerful TED Talk

Tribute to Mama

Ben shared this song with me and it's a keeper.

I love it!

Share it with yo momma.

99 Cent Movie Rentals from iTunes

I discovered iTunes offers new release movies for 99 cents.  They change each week.  You can find them after the New & Noteworthy section.  The featured movie will have a red banner across the bottom that says "Movie of the Week."

Enjoy!

Know When To Hold 'Em, Know When To Fold 'Em

Contrary to popular belief, I'm not opposed to marriage.  I think it's a wonderful institution that can be enriching and rewarding.

However, I am opposed to staying in a marriage just for the sake of appearances or convenience.

I was on a road trip yesterday, listening to music, when I heard Sly Stone's "Thank You (Falettineme Be Mice Elf Agin)."  Translation = Thank You For Letting Me Be Myself Again.

The more I listened, the more pissed I got.  Thank you for letting me be me?

WTF?

Everyone should have the freedom to be who they are, no matter what anyone else thinks.

The problem is that we're (I am/was as guilty as anyone) willing to move ourselves to the background in our efforts to please someone else.

DON'T DO IT!

DON'T allow someone to take over your life.

DON'T dim your light so that his/her can shine brighter.

DON'T put his/her needs above your own.

OK, wait . . .

Occasionally - yes.

Always - HELL NO!

DON'T stay together hoping things will change or he/she will change.

They won't.

I'll end this rant with the thought from my Mom who used to say, "The folks that give you advice don't pay for your mistake," so take what I've said with a gain of salt.

I was married for 20 years (trying desperately for most of that time to make it work) and have been divorced now for 16 years.

I wish I'd given myself permission to take care of me for me.

That's my wish for you.

~~~~~~~~~~

From The Huffington Post -

4 Signs The Person You're With Isn't Right for You

By Sarah Williams for DivorcedMoms.com

Not long ago I found out what it's like to be with someone who says he loves you but somehow makes you feel utterly alone. We'd been together for years.

There I was sitting across the table from him at a nice restaurant, pushing asparagus around my plate with a salad fork, with nothing on my mind other than the thought that, eventually, we'd just be two strangers sharing dinner together, who can't describe to each other what's missing, or what's already gone. But did I really know it was going to end the whole time we were together?

If I'm honest with you and myself, I have to say yes. When I look back at our relationship, there were plenty of times there should have been something going off in my head somewhere that said: "Warning. He's not that great. Smiling comes naturally and doesn't have to be forced." Now that I have the fortune of hindsight, I know just how many signs there were along the way. Here are four signs that he isn't right for you.

People say you've changed:

This one's hard to pick up on at first. We all just want to love and be loved by somebody, and sharing interests and time with our partner is necessary when building any relationship. That's how I've always felt and how I still feel, to some degree. But now I know how important it is to hold onto what makes you unique.

Before we were together I spent weekends with my family and went out with my girlfriends at least once a week. Nothing extreme. After a while, as we became closer, I spent less and less time with the people I cared about. The truth was I couldn't. My partner made it impossible for me to go anywhere. When I wasn't with him, he texted constantly and wouldn't leave me alone. It got to the point where I just shut down, just quit making the effort to go out or be a position where I might be seen with anyone but him. I lost myself. If you're in a relationship that changes you and the way you used to live your life, maybe you should think about whether or not it's a healthy relationship.

You avoid his company:

I remember what it was like not being able to imagine what life would be like without my partner. I would lie in my bed half-dressed in his t-shirt and breathe in the scent of his lingering cologne, never thinking that someday its spicy top notes would become more nauseating than English Leather.

I couldn't put a finger on any point in time when avoiding his company became essential to my sanity, but somehow, after a while my schedule became filled with various errands and activities, as his schedule did as well. Have you made plans, real or otherwise, to have some time for yourself or with someone else? Why would you avoid someone who's supposed to mean so much to you?

He's number one:

This is one of the most blatant warning signs that it's time to pack up and hit the metaphorical road. Early on in our relationship, my partner made it very clear that what he said and did was what mattered most. This didn't happen years down the road. Oh no. It started subtly, with comments dropped here and there that if my plans included him that he'd have to come first. In the beginning, I laughed these comments off, but when his career, his friends, his life outside of what we shared mattered more than what I had to do or say, I couldn't ignore it any longer.

Humans are naturally social, people pleasers. If you have to give in to your partner's every whim and desire, what does that leave for you? A great relationship starts with mutual respect and a desire to foster the development of each partner. You don't have to come second. Love isn't a contest for attention or wish fulfillment.

You're reading about what to do:

When I was with my ex, I couldn't believe how many books, blogs, conversations and other relationship advice sources I sought. I read so much in an attempt to find out if I was the cause of our problems and how I could fix myself. It was crazy!

Just breathe. You're not crazy or likely the underlying cause of your problems. When things feel like they're falling apart, it's easy to start internalizing the problems. The bad thing is that oftentimes we blame ourselves for things that are completely out of our control.

Meeting the right person can feel as elusive as finding a polar bear in a snowstorm. But you don't have to feel stuck or settle for someone who isn't right for you. Happiness is something you shouldn't have to work hard for in a relationship. Truly, you have to be happy with yourself before you can find happiness or be with anyone else. If he's not right for you, don't waste your time. You're worth it!