Beth's Everything Blog

Archive for September, 2010

Here are a few women who could take on Sarah Palin and knock her off her pedestal.

Beverly Perdue, governor of North Carolina. She’s youngish, smart, pretty and a great campaigner. She is married with two grown sons, is pro choice (and on Emily’s List), an education champion for all children and an advocate for a clean, healthy environment.  Hillary C. suggested her as a possible presidential candidate. Check her out . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bev_Perdue

Elizabeth Warren: Born and raised in Oklahoma, she has three older brothers who toughened her up. She is President Obama’s new Consumer Protection Adviser.  She is brilliant (a law professor at Harvard) and scares the heck out of Republicans, so much so that they threatened to veto her appointment as head of  the newly-created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an independent entity within the Federal Reserve that would try to block risky mortgages and confusing credit-cards from making it to market. http://www.whorunsgov.com/Profiles/Elizabeth_Warren

Carol Bartz has served as Yahoo!’s Chief Executive Officer and as a member of its Board of Directors since January 2009 and President since April 2009. She is intelligent and lovely but probably wouldn’t be interested in running for president because she made almost a million dollars a year as Yahoo CEO. Still, you never know. I think she’d be great. She was raised in Wisconsin on a dairy farm, is married with three children and is a breast cancer survivor. She is seasoned enough to have bested Michael Arrington in a TV interview. http://people.forbes.com/profile/carol-bartz/8706

Maria Shriver, award winning journalist, a beauty with brains and Kennedy brawn. She’s been the first lady of California for almost eight years. Now is the time for her to run for president and make her husband the first gentleman of the country. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Shriver

Blair Christie: Senior Vice President, Corporate Communications for Cisco. Talk about an amazing woman. Blair Christie was chosen Working Mother of the Year. She is a dynamo of energy, extremely intelligent and a real beauty. http://www.workingmother.com/?service=direct/1/ViewArticlePage/dlinkFullArticle2&sp=2134&sp=79&pid=27165

Rebecca Onie: Harvard grad, founding Co-Chair of Project HEALTH’s Board of Directors and proponent of children’s health care. Oprah’s The 2010 O Power of the Big Picture award winner. http://www.oprah.com/world/The-2010-O-Power-List/14

“Say the name Erin Brockovich and you think, strong, tough, stubborn and sexy. Erin is all that and definitely more.” Tell the truth now. How would you like to have this fireball fighting for your rights.  http://www.brockovich.com/mystory.html

I have only scratched the surface. Who are some of the others? Let’s get behind them with our voices and our votes.

Finally, a couple of thoughts. Did you know that a recent Gallop poll found that men 18-49 oppose health care 45% to 30% while women 18-49 (who incidentally are the primary care givers)supported health care reform 47% to 27%?

Also, as Hillary Clinton prepared for the recent, big UN meeting, one headline read: Oh Hillary: That hairstyle just doesn’t cut it. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1313592/Hillary-Clinton-prepares-huge-UN-meeting-lank-locks.html?ito=feeds-newsxml#ixzz10BHExEGm

I didn’t see anyone comment on President Obama’s hairstyle.  (Grrrrrr)

Hardly creatures

As I filled out applications for college during my senior year, my father told me to skip Stanford. “You’re grades aren’t good enough,” he said, but I knew the real reason.  My boyfriend Clayton went there and my dad wouldn’t allow us to go to the same school. “Try Smith or Wellesley,” he advised.

I was a good athletic and that influenced my dad’s decision. He’d heard that Texas State College For Women offered a degree in gym and that the department head was a woman with a PhD in Physical Education. Texas was a lot closer to California than Massachusetts so I said yes.

That September, my parents drove me to the station in Kansas City and put me on a train. The next morning, I arrived in Denton.

Wobbling slightly on my high heels and clutching my hat, I hailed a taxi. “Do you know where TSCW is? I asked

“Yessum,” he drawled.

“Can you take me there?”

“No m’am.“I’m not allowed to carry white folks.”

My mouth fell open. I don’t remember how I got to school that day.

I loved TSCW but Clayton and I continued our romance and decided if we were to stay together, we at least had to be in the same state. He loved Stanford so I had to move.

I applied to Mills College only forty miles from Palo Alto. I got my letters of recommendations, breezed through the SATs and managed to talk my dad into letting me go. Only one thing stood in my way; a B in English. I needed an A. I had to find a way to bring up that grade. We’d already taken the final.

Frantically, I searched for my English teacher.

At first, I’d thought her dull. Then, something magical happened. She captivated my imagination. She made reading come alive. She red penciled my essays and made them better. I adored her.

Finally, I checked out her home. “She’s at the beauty parlor,” I was told

Back then, Denton only had one beauty parlor.

I found her under the dryer, her hair bobby pinned into tight little curls. She lifted the dryer, her eyes wide with surprise. “What are you doing here?” she asked.

I explained my predicament, how I needed to somehow raise my grade from a B to an A in order to get into Mills.

She pulled the dryer back down over her head. What was she thinking? She already knew about Clayton. .I’d written reams about him. I stood stock still.

Finally, she lifted the dryer. “All right,” she said. “If you can answer this question correctly, I’ll raise your grade.”

I nodded.

Over the hum of the dryer she asked, “Who wrote, “To be or not to be. That is the question.”

I laughed. “Shakespeare,” I cried triumphantly.

“Correct. You get an A. Now go away and let me dry my hair.”

I bent and kissed her on the cheek, knowing that she’d changed my life forever.

In 1900, my grandmother, Anna Lyon, wrote about her life in her diary. In 1950 I wrote about mine and just this year, my granddaughter wrote about hers. All of us unknowingly recorded history. Had human beings not documented their lives with pictures and words, there would be no record of what went before.

Though their purposes may vary, petroglyphs, or rock engravings, tell stories of the times. Museums are full of items that people saved to document their lives. Jews in the Warsaw ghettos stored their memorabilia in milk bottles and burying them in the ground so that one day, historians could reconstruct the past. We too have an obligation to preserve our histories.

The first Jew to take up residence in Kansas City was twenty three year old Henry Ganz in 1856 followed soon after by a young fellow named Louis Hammerslough. What brought these men to the town of Kansas? From whence did they come? We now know these things through the preservation of writings and records.

Take for example Eddie Jacobson. After he and his friend’s haberdashery business failed, Eddie struggled to support his family, even moving in for a time with his in-laws. Even though his friend went on to become president of the United States, without letters and records, no one would we know the huge influence plain-spoken Eddie Jacobson had on the development of the state of Israel.

You may think of yourself as unimportant but the truth is, you have great value. You represent an era, a class of people whose history will survive only through the pictures, letters and documents you have put away in drawers and scrapbooks. It is vital information to know where you or your ancestors came from, how you lived and what you did. Your name may not grace a building but your footprint will remain forever. If you wish to be remembered, you must leave a record of your time on earth.

The Jewish Community Archives, begun in 2002 by Civic Leader Sybil Kahn, has made it their mission to preserve the history of the Jews in Kansas City for future generations with the goal of collecting materials and educating the public.

At the helm of the not for profit organization is Laurel Rogovein assisted by Judy Parelman, Executive Director and a hard working board of directors who’s goal is to help people collect and preserve their photographs, awards, ledgers and memorabilia.

In a display case at the Jewish Community Campus, JCA has provided a permanent display case which traces the history of the Jews in Kansas City over the past 80 years. B’nai Brith Women have loaned their Doll collection to be used to teach diversity to children.

Here’s what you can do to help. Take the pictures and documents you want to save to Kinko’s and make copies in black and white or color, or scan them into your computer. Give the copies to your family.

Then, give the original documents and pictures to the Jewish Community Archives. We will see to it that they are forever preserved at the. Western Historical Manuscript Collection where your possessions will reside in a neutral place, safely stored for posterity with an organization whose prime purpose is preservation and research. Check our website for more information.  www.umkc.edu/whmckc/JCA/JCA.htm.

David Boutros, Associate Director, with the help of his staff and volunteers, will attach your information to each item, list everything in the accession book by name, date and description and ask you to sign a deed of the gift, transferring ownership to WHMC. They keep an inventory of all pictures, correspondence and so forth marked with the accession number.

Within a few days, your gifts will be carefully stored in archival boxes and folders in one of four locations, two at UMKC, one at Park University, and one at the University of Missouri at Columbia. If you or anyone else wishes to refer to the gifts, items can be retrieved for viewing within 24 to 48 hours.

If you are downsizing, don’t throw those scrapbooks away. If you are a business or organization, don’t toss out your files. Call Judy Parelman, Executive Director of Jewish Community Archives (913-649-2591.) She will help you while being highly respectful of your things.

Remember: history is written from documents that survive.

Oma Beth 1904

And the federal Department of Agriculture?

All four have allowed Austin “Jack” DeCoster to continue his egg businesses as usual. He owns one of the two operations that recalled almost HALF A BILLION eggs last month.

Here’s part of his record.

1960’s through present– Austin “Jack” DeCoster has owned multiple industrial confinement chicken and hog operations in Iowa, Maine, Ohio and Iowa

1994 – Iowa: four separate penalties for hog waste violations

1997 – Turner, Maine: DeCoster Egg Farms fined and paid $2 million for “unguarded machinery, electrical hazards, exposure to harmful bacteria . . .”

2000 – Iowa: designated DeCoster a “Habitual violator” of  environmental regulations.

2002 – Settlement of more than $1.5 million with Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for sexual harassment, rape and abuse on behalf of Mexican workers at DeCoster’s Wright County Iowa plants.

2007 –During one of four raids by federal officers, 51 suspected illegal immigrants were arrested at 6 DeCoster egg farms.

2010 – The Maine successor company to DeCoster Egg Farms  paid $125,000 in court penalties to cover charges of animal cruelty.

2010 – Linked to one thousand cases of salmonella poisoning, Wright County Egg, owned by Austin  “Jack” DeCoster, recalled 380 million eggs.

DeCoster Farms have been investigated and penalized by such agencies as the federal Occupational Safety and Health Commission, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Administration, Maine Human Rights Commissions, EEOC, Maine Department of environmental Protection and Iowa Department of Natural Resources.

He and his companies have paid millions in fines but the business is apparently so lucrative that the fines do not act as a deterrent and may even seem paltry by comparison.

Some in Iowa complain that the DeCoster farms buy large quantities of their corn and employ many local resident. Yet those same people pay a horrible price in the gross contamination of their land.

This month, Congress has subpoenaed DeCoster to explain how eggs from his farms were linked to the recent salmonella outbreak. (Yawn) My bet is that this will accomplish nothing.

Still, it is way past time to stop DeCoster’s desecration of our environment, the pollution of our food and the brutality to animals and humans as well.

It is up to Secretary of Agriculture Ton Vilsack and Secretary of Human Resources Kathleen Sebelius to work together with Iowa Governor Chet Culver, Senators Chuck Grassley and Tom Harkin and state Senator Gene Fraise, chair of a legislative committee on agriculture to put DeCoster and his ilk out of business once and for all.

Government officials don’t make it all that easy to contact them. The higher up they are, the less easy it is but this is important enough to try. Here’s how.

Secretary Tom Vilsack

U.S. Department of Agriculture
1400 Independence Ave., S.W.
Washington, DC 20250

(202) 720-2791

Secretary Kathleen Sebilius

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
200 Independence Avenue, S.W.
Washington, D.C. 20201
Toll Free: 1-877-696-6775

Senator Chuck Grassley

http://grassley.senate.gov/contact.cfm

Senator Tom Harkin

http://harkin.senate.gov/contact.cfm

Governor Chet Culver

http://www.governor.iowa.gov/index.php/constituent_services/contact_us/

(See. It’s getting easier)

and

State Senator Gene Fraise

E-mail: eugene.fraise@legis.state.ia.us

(Easiest of all)