paths of broken steps
water without drips
snow without flakes

when i think about life
when i think about happiness,
a complete thought,
a complete jesture towards the right direction

i wonder where i am
i wonder what direction

my path may appear jaggered
my flower my not have petals,

but its mine

Buying a home can be a ticket out of poverty. It can symbolize a shift from the poor camp to the middle class.  Owning a house can represent a sense of financial security and mobility for many families and their children.

A few days ago, Kate Brumback from the Associated Press reported that Lorenzo Jimenez finally found his ticket about four years ago to buy his first home in a suburb outside Atlanta. But Mr. Jimenez had one problem that many working fathers don’t have to consider when buying a house for their family.

While Mr. Jimenez had been working and paying taxes in the United States for about a decade, he didn’t have the documents required to prove his American patriotism. In other words, Mr. Jimenez didn’t have the papers to prove his citizenship. But he could prove his work ethic and that he was a lovely father by taking a quick survey from his closest neighbors, even from Nicole Griffin – but only before Mr. Jimenez put his house on the market.

Nicole Griffin is a 28-year-old single mother that lives down the street with her mom. She also didn’t mind if her two kids play with Mr. Jimenez’s children inside of his home. But all of this changed after Mr. Jimenez decided to sell his house.

click here to read the entire article

As I pack away my memories from working in rural Missouri for the last 1 ½ months, tears of love and happiness fall down my face. Tears of joy, sadness, and pride fill this large lump in my throat.

I no longer have to prove who I am. I no longer have to explain why I love my country. I no longer need to prove my patriotism, why I’M proud to be an American. I no longer have to hide my red, white, and blue strips of pride when the soil beneath my feet is foreign.

I can now hold my hold my head high. I can sing with pride. I can shout on the top of my lungs, “I’m American and MY president is Barack Obama!

But while Barack Obama’s election doesn’t erase history. While his election doesn’t sooth every point of pain. THIS win – THIS moment – represents an unrecognizable footprint from our previous steps.

It represents why I love my country. It reminds me why I love MY American Identity.

It’s interesting to think of the comparisons between the Dust Bowl and today’s economy..

(Originally posted on Imagine 2050)

Floods, Drought, & a Population on the

Brink

September 23, 2008  by Jill

Several years ago my Dad said something rather prophetic during a family conversation about living in California. A few of us were expressing our reservations about ever moving to a state that was a couple dozen earthquakes away from falling into the ocean. He said “Californians are going to sink themselves long before earthquakes do.” He was referring to the housing market there, where lenders were handing out mortgages like candy. Of course many who followed the financial markets knew what was coming, the writing, as they say, was on the wall. But ordinary Americans were blissfully unaware and lenders liked it that way. The bubble unfortunately hasn’t burst in one catastrophic moment, it seems to be bursting in slow motion, the devastation mounting with each passing month.

As misfortunes pile into one another like the driving rains Hurricane Ike pushed across the country, I can’t help thinking about drought. Not just any drought but that man-made disaster called the Dust Bowl. There’s a sadly ironic parallel between Steinbeck’s depiction of cracked Oklahoma cornfields and the Midwest crops bloated by rain this summer.

75 years ago the Dust Bowl was a combination of drought, an agricultural market that forced farmers to overuse the land, and the Great Depression. Today it’s hurricanes, a housing market forcing people out of their homes, and an economic downward spiral that is seemingly out of control. Then the people fled for California in search of better opportunities, today they are fleeing the country’s southern coasts in search of higher ground.

*click here to read the entire article

A little sweet story for your Sunday afternoon!

Welcomed Home: Part 2

by Nicole Hallengrogg

Inside, I shut the door and run my hand over an antique desk where She used to sit and do her make-up. The tainted mirror reflects my image and behind me, I can almost see her standing, searching in the closet for one of her rarely worn evening dresses. Her scattered fragrances fill my senses. Her powders and forget-me-nots still occupy the drawers, dresser and closet. So many times I have wanted to touch these things, to investigate their mystery, they seemed so foreign and strange to me these useless pretty nick-naks and fancies. I will not be shooed out tonight; there is no one here to defend her properties that she so intimately kept.

Everything is left as it was before. As if her absence will be short lived and we will see her soon. I keep thinking that she has forgotten her special this-or-that, like the lovely plated silver hand-mirror and brush set that often reflected her primping gaze; so seldom used in the past few years. The brush; probably used last when the final hairs on her head were combed away from chemotherapy.

I can still smell her. The hint of ammonia, vanilla perfume, dust, from the carpet, the shampoo, and laundry detergent, she wore them all. I anticipate her appearing around the corner of the hallway, asking if I’d like something to eat. “Spinach and Liver, maybe?” To her amusement, I had often asked in all seriousness for this delicatessen as an after school snack. I still imagine her rolling her eyes and proceeding to the basement to fetch the liver from the freezer. I think, sometimes I hear her call me from the kitchen and trick me into helping her with the dishes..

click here to read the rest…

Below is a link to a website that describes the ballot initiatives up for vote, November 2008, in each state. The sight also informs the reader about some alternative motives hidden behind specific initiatives. For instance, while an initiative may say their goal is to make America stronger, the sponsors of the initiative are more interested in dividing American neighborhoods.

The name of the organization is Ballot Initiative Strategy, and the website is www.ballot.org

Here’s something I wrote up this morning about the American Economy.

I originally posted the article at Imagine 2050.

The American Economy and the Greedy PeopleThe federal government has now bailed out three major US financial institutions: Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, and American International Group. Some folks disagree with this decision. You hear people shout, “No More Big Government.”

The people who support the popular catch phrase, “Big Government,” believe that the free market can fix itself. Free market die-hards, like libertarians – Ron Paul’s Revolutionaries, believe that human beings are rational enough to fix the mortgage crisis and inflation (the rise of food and gas). Libertarians believe that a person’s financial interests will always supercede a person’s emotional desires, like greed.

But if that’s the case, why did white business owners before the 1950’s only accept business from white customers? Or better yet, how can libertarians categorize a person’s financial interest as rational thinking? Because to me, it seems when folks are more concerned with following their own pocket books, they can get a little greedy and act completely irrational.

Take a look at today’s economy. The American financial system is in shambles. Not one economist will predict an end, and the federal government is running out of strategies to bail out Wall Street. So now, taxpayers have to pay for their mistakes.

Now, I’m not against taxes. I’m glad I won’t have to pay for my kids to go to school K-12. But I am against die-hard free-market thinkers, and I blame them for today’s 6.1% unemployment rate and the mortgage crises…

sorry, click here to read the rest of the story

SPORTS: United through Disaster

by Joel Ebert

The world of sports has found itself between a rock and a hard place. With the landfall of Hurricane Ike, expected to be this weekend, numerous high school, college, and professional sports teams have been forced to postpone, cancel or relocate their games.

At least five college football games have been forced to make adjustments to their plans. Three high school football games have been affected by the hurricane, with one canceling the game altogether. And the three game series that the Houston Astros had been scheduled to play against the Chicago Cubs is threatening to be postponed. This is a terrible thing for both teams, since they’re both in the hunt for October baseball. The management for both the Cubs and the Astros has been discussing playing the games in an alternate location, but thus far, neither side has been willing to compromise on selecting one

Last month Hurricane Gustav hit Louisiana so badly that Louisiana State University (LSU) was forced to postpone their football game against the Troy Trojans until November.

Of course the sporting world wasn’t the only one affected by the presence of these powerful forces of Mother Nature. The Republican National Convention was even forced to cancel some of its festivities due to concerns over Hurricane Gustav. The strange part is what…

to read entire article, click here

For those of you jumping behind the Sarah Palin wagon, think again. Do you really want her to be the next president? We’ve already seen what can happen when a president that hardly knows anything about foreign policy can do to our country. I’m sorry, but governing more than 300 million people is a little different than trying to control 700,000 people in your home state.