You Think What?

Contrary to the conventional belief of most Americans living in the United States May Day began here in this country.  The is known in other places around the world as the International Workers’ Day of May Day. It has its basis in the secular celebration of rebirth and fertility from the  holiday of Beltane,  festival day that pre dates Christianity. The date and associated celebrations of May 1st are not as thought by some the result of some labor movement in Communist countries like Cuba or the former Soviet Union. (more…)

“A young black man can’t understand what it means to have something he’s never been denied. I can’t make them understand the mental relief I feel at the rights we have. It almost infuriates me that people don’t understand what integration has done for this country.”
~ the late Benjamin Hooks in an interview with
U.S. News & World Report~

Benjamin Lawson Hooks was a son of the American South. (more…)

“Have you seen the bigger piggies
In their starched white shirts
You will find the bigger piggies
Stirring up the dirt
Always have clean shirts to play around in.”

“In their sties with all their backing
They don’t care what goes on around
In their eyes there’s something lacking
What they need’s a damn good whacking.
“Everywhere there’s lots of piggies
Living piggy lives…” ~ George Harrison

All this talk about Goldman Sachs— the fraud, greed and malfeasance associated with the so-called financial experts at the world’s largest global investment banking and securities management company has brought to mind a tune written by the late George Harrison a member of the Beatles and recorded by the the Fab Four many years ago, 1968, for the White Album. How prescient those mop-headed Brits were.

The decision makers at Goldman Sachs, have been since 1869, (more…)

Dorothy Irene Height a renown and respected educator and activist has died. She was a champion for women and a champion for Black people in the United States and elsewhere around the world.

Dorothy Height was born in Virginia and at a young age moved to Pennsylvania with her family. When she was 17 years-old she was admitted to Barnard College; (more…)

He is known as an engineer, entrepreneur, and later in life a medical doctor. He will forever be known as the designer of the first commercially successful personal computer the Altair 8080.

In 1975 Henry Edward Roberts, called “Ed” by friends, family and associates, through his company Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems or MITS; brought his computer to the public with the help of Bill Gates and Paul Allen who developed the language, BASIC, and wrote the program to operate the machine.

Ultimately  Roberts’ machine would become the PC we’re all using today. The BASIC language of the machine’s operating system (OS) has become the Microsoft Windows operating system we all know and some love to hate. (more…)

“Jessye Norman said not long ago that she simply “would like it to be that it made a difference to some people that I came and went, that I was here.” She has made a difference to anyone who loves music, and indeed it matters quite a lot that she is here: Jessye Norman, a great American singer.”~ from Kennedy Center: Biographical Information for Jessye Norman

We echo those sentiments. Ms Jessye Norman, is the youngest recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors

Norman’s vocal range is uncommonly wide, encompassing all female voice registers from contralto to high dramatic soprano.

When she was 16 years-old, Norman was entered in to the Marian Anderson Vocal Competition in Philadelphia. (more…)

This is news from Seattle, Washington, Starbucks  headquarters on Thursday April 1, 2010

Starbucks announced today, through its VP of Volume, the introduction of two new beverage sizes in stores in the U. S. and Canada this Fall.

Plenta™ (128 fl oz) and Micra™ (2 fl oz) cups arrive in Starbucks stores this Fall. Derived from Italian word for plentiful or small, (more…)

Dr. Edmondo Robinson is medical doctor with an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He is an internist who completed residency at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. A 2003 graduate and Dean’s Merit Scholarship recipient of the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Medicine,  Dr. Robinson participated in an AIDS Care Fellowship at the University of California-San Francisco AIDS Institute while attending UCLA. He also served as National Vice President for the Student National Medical Association and was an appointee to the National Board of Medical Examiners.

Dr. Robinson earned a master’s degree in business administration, with an emphasis in healthcare management, from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, during a two-year leave of absence from medical school. During his studies at Wharton, Dr. Robinson traveled as a member of a team of students and alumni to South Africa to make an assessment of state-sponsored, community clinic operations for the Director of Health Services for the Cape Town Metropolitan Region.

Dr. Robinson graduated from Wharton with honors in 2002. He completed his undergraduate degree in Neuroscience at the University of California, San Diego, in 1997. His research interest involves the development of indicators to measure the value and quality of health care delivery to special populations. One can readily see Dr. Robinson’s credentials make him eminently qualified to be a member of the medical profession’s newest specialty. Dr. Robinson is a hospitalist. His practice is near Delaware’s Christiana Care Health System. (more…)

For the past year a documentary film, “Fresh”, has been  making the round in communities all across the country. If you are going to be in New York City beginning April 1st 2010 you don’t want to miss “Fresh Week”.

The documentary film by Ana Sophia Joanes takes on as its subject the inferior quality of our food, and the promising features of our national food system. (more…)

Philadelphia Judge Raymond Pace Alexander (RPA) has been called by historian Darlene Clark Hine, one of the “black legal soldiers … who transformed constitutional jurisprudence to embrace the primacy of civil rights over states rights, and replaced the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ with one of equality.”

Raymond Pace Alexander born in Philadelphia in October 1898 into a working class family, the grandson of slaves was destined to beat the odds to become a distinguished Philadelphia lawyer, who later was to serve as a judge as well as advisor to other lawyers including the future federal Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.

Raymond Pace Alexander with his talented wife, Sadie T. M. Alexander, worked to transform a segregated society in order to afford opportunity for those who had been denied.

Early on in his education Alexander, influenced by historian Carter G. Woodson, chose to study black history and use it as a tool to vigorously oppose racism and develop better relations between the races. (more…)