Blog Archive » 2010 » April

(Map Above, Mexico and U.S. circa 1786)

What is it about the southern border of the United States that makes some people want to erect very tall fences — both physically and philosophically and legally?  Why is it that the children and grandchildren and great grandchildren of mostly European immigrants think that it's ok to enact laws that require other immigrants — those from South of the Border — to carry papers at all times to prove they're here legally?  While Arizona cracks down on people who might be illegal immigrants — how do they know? is it brown eyes?  will I have to prove my citizenship next time I'm in Phoenix?  I doubt it! —- folks who live along the northern border don't seem nearly as kerfluffled by the occasional Canadian incursion.  Eh? Full Article

For the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day, Mother Earth brought air travel in Europe to a screeching halt.  She rattled her tectonic plates furiously, wreaking havoc on large cities and remote villages from Haiti to Utah to Chile to Indonesia to Southern California to Tibet.

A cleric in Iran said that the rash of earthquakes is a result of women wearing pants.   Mother Earth is clearly mad these days, but I suspect she'd hike up her trousers and give that man a good boot if she wasn't otherwise busy plotting her next blizzard, tornado, tsunami, hurricane, drought or avalanche. Full Article

(Photo from NYU Alumni Profiles)

She knew Eleanor Roosevelt and worked alongside Mary McLeod Bethune.  She marched with Martin Luther King and cheered when Barack Obama's inaugural parade passed by the Pennsylvania Avenue headquarters of the National Council of Negro Women, the organization she led with such zeal and dignity for so many years.   Dr. Dorothy I. Height, who passed away this morning at age 98, was one of the last great icons of the Civil Rights Era.   She was one of few women at the very top of the civil rights movement.  Congressman John Lewis, a civil rights legend himself, said of Dorothy Height:

"She was truly a pioneer, and she must be remembered as one of those brave and courageous souls that never gave up, never gave in," Lewis said. "She was a feminist and a major spokesperson for the rights of women long before there was a women's movement." Full Article

The Brazilian rancher who hired assasins to kill Sister Dorothy Stang was convicted and sentenced to 30 years in prison this week for ordering her murder.    Vitalmiro Bastos de Moutura wanted Sr. Dorothy killed because this diminutive nun stood in the way of his plans for destruction of the Amazon rainforest.   The conviction was the third for de Moutura — the first two were overturned on technicalities.   Sisters of Notre Dame, environmental activists and Dorothy's friends and family hail this latest verdict and sentence as evidence that some justice might return to the Amazon basin where some estimates indicate that more than 1,200 environmentalists and rights workers have been killed in the last two decades. Full Article

(Photo from Trends International)

West Virginia mourns yet again today as the worst possible news emerged from deep within the Upper Big Branch Mine where searches found the bodies of four missing miners, raising the total death count in this week's mine disaster to 29.  This tragedy followed another mine explosion in China, this one with a good result as more than 100 miners were saved, but China loses thousands of miners annually in similar accidents. Full Article