Nest is great for saving money on energy, but the method for doing so has been limited. BigAssFans, who make a lineup of well designed ceiling fans, are letting their fans converse with Nest to increase your savings and keep you comfortable. Their Haiku fans just might be the smartest connected home buy you can make. A ceiling fan can … Continue reading
Attention: College students, parents, faculty, staff, and administrators. Did you know that sexual assaults are more likely to occur during the beginning of the fall term than any other time of the year?
Millions of college students will soon return to school, and according to research for the National Institute of Justice, reports of sexual assault are most frequent during the months of September and October.
Student organizing around issues of sexual violence continues to grow on the national and campus levels. Know Your IX is a national “survivor-run, student-driven campaign” against sexual violence that provides resources and multiple avenues for becoming involved. At individual campuses, student groups are putting together events, raising awareness, and developing new creative ways to build and sustain momentum.
Now, faculty members are also organizing.
Faculty Against Rape (FAR) officially launched on Monday, August 25th with the mission of getting “more faculty involved in sexual assault issues on campus, and to protect faculty members who experience retaliation for doing so.”
FAR’s three main goals include developing resources for faculty to better serve survivors, helping faculty who want to be part of the anti-rape movement organize on campus, and providing strategy and legal resources for faculty who are retaliated against by administrations.
Retaliation is illegal, and reports of retaliation against faculty members for their involvement in efforts to support campus sexual assault survivors made headlines earlier this year at Harvard and Occidental College.
Beyond how-to guides for filing Title IX and Clery Act complaints, the site also includes classroom resources such as articles about professor experiences with students who disclose sexual assaults, and a sexual violence response guide. An anti-sexual misconduct toolkit contains links to activities for supporting classroom discussions about assault, tips on presenting sexual violence issues to students, background information, statistics, and more.
“I was invited to join the group from a friend at another campus and will be working with other SDSU colleagues this year to bring more attention to the issue,” said Ronnee Schreiber, Professor of Political Science at San Diego State University. “In fact, we’re hosting a Gender Justice in the 2014 Elections symposium in October in which this issue will be featured.”
Members of the Faculty Against Rape advisory board include national experts on gender-based violence, community educators, filmmakers, and activists, and faculty members at campuses including Scripps College, West Virginia University, University of Wollongong (Australia), Oklahoma State University, University of Oregon, University of Arizona, Vassar College, Lehigh University, and Cornell University.
“As a student and as a survivor, I’m very excited about an organization like FAR,” said Jay Jenkins, Associated Students Chief of Staff at California State University Long Beach and sexual assault student advocate. “It is my hope that there will be more support for survivors on campuses than ever before. It’s been too long that survivor voices has been neglected and forgotten at universities. FAR recognizes there is a huge problem in regards to student safety, and access to education if relationship violence like this continues.”
As of this writing at the start of the 2014-15 academic year, more than 75 colleges and universities remain under federal investigation for how they handle campus sexual assaults.
On some campuses work is being done to improve sexual assault prevention and response policies. On other campuses administrators are sidestepping improvements to safety, instead throwing tens of thousands of dollars at consultants who offer trainings and seminars to keep schools technically in compliance and out of court.
Curious about what your school is doing to improve sexual assault prevention and response policies? #AskYourCampus.
Nina M. Flores is a PhD candidate at UCLA, an instructor in the Social & Cultural Analysis of Education program at Long Beach State, and works with The OpEd Project. Follow her on twitter @bellhookedme.
About three years ago, we had a decision to make as a family. Our oldest son’s birthday is August 31 and our community’s cut-off for the school year is September 1. We had to decide if we were going to hold him back a full year or send him to kindergarten with many of his neighborhood friends.
It was not an easy decision to make. Although he was young for his school year, he was very tall and developed; in the 99th percentile for height and in the mid-80s for weight. In his preschool, he was literally a head and shoulders taller than his peers.
We invested in costly therapy, testing and expert consultation with highly recommended professionals. After almost a month, they came to a recommendation: They suggested we hold him back. As two very lovely women explained their logic to us, a thought crept into my head and came out as a question: “If there’s ever a tussle in the school yard with another boy, won’t being a year older and more physically developed automatically count against him, especially since he’s African-American in a predominantly white neighborhood?”
My husband and I waited for a response, but for several long and very awkward moments, none came. Their silence was deafening. Despite having consulted on education matters for 50 years collectively, neither of them had thought of that last question. They attempted to compose themselves, but it was clear they had forgotten that the sweet, shy and eager-to-please young boy they had come to know and genuinely like was indeed an African-American male living in the U.S. As parents who aren’t African-American ourselves, we also sometimes slip into an alternate reality as well.
This summer, as accounts from Ferguson, Missouri and other encounters between young African-American men with law enforcement come to the nation’s attention, we are snapped back into reality. I think of the hundreds of adoptive families, LGBT and straight, who have transracially adopted African-American or biracial children. I think of the thousands of biracial biological families. I think of the millions of African-American families.
Despite good grades, accomplishments, pleasant manners and common sense, many of our sons are seen as aggressive or prone to violence. When they transgress, as kids will always do, they are judged on a double standard. Their white peers are rebellious or “testing out a look,” but our sons are somehow programmed for something darker.
Trayvon Martin’s references to marijuana use, his hoodie sweatshirt, the music he listened to and photos of him flashing pseudo gang signs were seen as evidence of his thuggish character. What idiocy!
I view the Facebook pages of my white high school and college-age nephews and their friends. They dress the same way and listen to the same music as Trayvon. Some even make the same gestures in their Facebook photos, yet no one ever accuses them of anything more than typical rebellious teenage behavior.
The double standard doesn’t end with childhood. The now infamous Cliven Bundy, who owed over a $1 million to the U.S. Federal government, raised a small army to push federal officers off his land. So-called patriots rose in his defense, some figuratively and some by taking sniper-like defense positions on bridges and roads and aiming assault rifles at federal officers. Yet Bundy was heralded as a reincarnated George Washington by many here in the U.S. Many of those very same people now people believe that a community grieving over the death of a young man needs to stand down and respect the rule of law.
It’s inconceivable to me that people would think of my sons as anything but sweet little boys, but I know that they have and will continue to do just that. I’d recount examples of women grabbing their purses when my son and I entered an elevator when he was in first grade. Or when my son stepped in as a peacemaker on the playground, but was singled out as an aggressor by the adult in charge. She backed down only when challenged by both of the other boys, who were the ones actually fighting. Even then, white testimony exonerated my son, not his own. It’s a sobering and maddening list, and he’s only 8.
Somehow, the “otherness” of an African-American male has disassociated our notion of youthful innocence from our self-protective instincts. We’ve conditioned ourselves to respond to a particular look and react in almost cartoonish fear. Usually, the results are embarrassing, but dismissible. However, when law enforcement and other authority figures make the same contortion of logic, the results can end tragically. I don’t propose a solution for any of this here. The legacy of racism in the Americas begins with the exploitation of the slave trade and lives on in the irrational fear of our Black and brown young men. It’s too deep and complex problem to be fixed with bumper sticker advice. However, we must find a solution. And fast. My sons are growing up faster than society is changing.
My husband and I dread the day we’ll have to tell our teenage sons that the world will not treat them like their white peers. In any confrontations with the police, we will advise them to be polite to the point of being obsequious and always insist the police call us immediately. Their youthful indiscretions will make them accountable as adults and they will be judged on a different and unfair standard. It is unfair, it is unjust and it is maddening. But it is reality. How can we ask them to understand something we ourselves don’t?
Every family must deal with some unfairness that parents, despite our best intentions, cannot set aside for our children. Fathers must send their daughters into the gaze of a world of uncouth men. Parents of children with special needs deal with the harsh realities of a world not built for their children. Often, children facing such unfairness grow up and become promoters of real justice. Perhaps there’s a solace there. For now, we watch the news and struggle to find the right words to explain what it all means to our sons and to ourselves.
This post originally appeared on GaysWithKids.com
LOS ANGELES, Aug 26 (Reuters) – An American man suspected of fighting with Islamic State militants operating in Iraq and Syria has been killed in the region, a U.S. security official said on Monday.
The official, who asked not to be identified, told Reuters that the FBI was investigating the death of 33-year-old Douglas McAuthur McCain.
A spokeswoman for the U.S. State Department would not confirm media reports that McCain had been killed in Syria but said the department had been in contact with his family and was providing “all consular assistance.”
Family members told the Minneapolis Star Tribune that McCain’s mother had been called by an official from the State Department reporting that he had been killed in Syria over the weekend.
The newspaper reported that the family had been concerned with McCain’s expressions of support of the Sunni Muslim militant group Islamic State, which has seized large areas of Iraq and Syria to the alarm of the Baghdad government and its allies in the West.
The Star Tribune and NBC News reported that McCain graduated from high school in the Minneapolis area in 1999 before moving to San Diego, where he attended community college. (Reporting by Mark Hosenball and Warren Strobel in Washington, Marty Graham in San Diego, David Bailey in Minneapolis and Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles; Writing by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Eric Walsh)
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott’s (R) gubernatorial campaign claimed last week that the candidate “awarded over $1 billion to victims of crimes like sexual assault and domestic violence” — but a closer look at the numbers reveals the campaign has exaggerated that total.
Abbott’s campaign made the claim in response to pressure from his opponent, former State Rep. Wendy Davis (D-Ft. Worth), who has spent the past couple of weeks highlighting her work addressing sexual assault and criticizing Abbott for repeatedly siding against rape victims as attorney general.
“Victims of sexual assault in Texas have no greater advocate than Greg Abbott, who as attorney general has spearheaded the arrests of over 4,500 sex offenders and awarded over $1 billion to victims of crimes like sexual assault and domestic violence,” Amelia Chasse, deputy communications director for Abbott’s campaign, fired back against Davis.
Chasse had claimed two days earlier in an email to the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal that $1 billion had been awarded “to victims of sexual assault and domestic violence,” not “crimes like” those. Contacted about the discrepancy, Chasse said the Avalanche-Journal must have misprinted her statement.
Chasse told HuffPost that her team had reached the $1 billion total by adding up all the money the state legislature has appropriated for the Crime Victims’ Compensation Program — which includes legal services grants, a statewide victims notification system and children’s advocacy centers — from 2004 through 2015.
According to the latest annual report of the Crime Victims’ Compensation Program, $12.4 million was awarded to sexual assault victims and $23.8 million to victims of child sexual abuse from 2003 through 2013. The total amount of money awarded to victims of all crimes during that time period, including including robbery, homicide, driving while intoxicated and arson, equals $782 million — just short of the “more than $1 billion” in Abbott’s claim. Abbott was elected in 2002.
“Sen. Davis and her campaign are grasping at straws to undermine Greg Abbott’s unmatched record of fighting for crime victims as Texas’ Attorney General,” Chasse said.
The Davis campaign claims Abbott is deliberately exaggerating the amount of money he has awarded sexual assault victims.
“The reason Greg Abbott has to mislead the public about his record on sexual assault is that as a Texas Supreme Court Justice, Abbott ruled against victims of rape four out of five times and now he’s desperately trying to paper over that record,” Lauren Weiner, a spokeswoman for Davis’ campaign, told HuffPost.
Organizations are filled with people with brains. These people have been using their brains — granted, with varying degrees of success. Neuroscience, being the scientific study of the nervous system, is relatively new. However, it exists now not because we’ve only just found people with brains but because we’ve only just created the technology to look at those brains.
So what has neuroscience enabled us to see that is occurring in people in organizations all over the world? This blog post introduces three ways that people’s brains are shaping their behaviors. We suggest how organizations can take a revolutionary stance and focus on approaches that deal with the organ that delivers all the results.
1. Change
“Neuroplasticity” is a classic area of neuroscience. You will see a lot of people mention it as a new discovery. In fact, for many years scientists and philosophers have toyed with linked ideas. In case the technical term has so far not crossed your path, it simply means the capacity of the brain to change. We see neuroplasticity occurring every day in organizations. A stark example is when companies offer people training: By doing so they are acknowledging that people can change; they can learn new things.
It is worth mentioning that the reality of doing the job we do, in the environment we do it in, with the people we work with, has the potential to change our brain. The culture of an organization can be hugely powerful. For example, the people who work at ASDA (the British supermarket chain, a subsidiary of Walmart) are said to be, on the whole, fun people. They are caring toward one another and have fun at work, and, as you may have seen in a video on our website, the brain loves fun. In a recent interview, Matt Milbrodt, Senior Director of Talent at ASDA, acknowledges that just by coming to work, people were shaping their colleagues’ brains.
The opportunity is to understand how to go about making the most of that effect to achieve lasting change. One of the ways this is happening is through “Hebbian learning,” which adheres to Hebb’s rule, the theory that “neurons that fire together wire together.” If a leader has frequently responded abruptly to suggestions of different ways of doing things, then he is reinforcing the pathways of these responses, making it more likely that he will behave in this way again in the future. Conversely, if a team member sits down at their desk and gets straight to work, being super-productive, they will find this easier to continue doing over time.
“Neural Darwinsim” proposes that the neurons that we use most survive and get strengthened, whereas the others wither away. We can see this principle occurring at many levels within companies. Cultures are shaped by the critical masses that exert their influence. Being clear from the start about who you are is something that companies like Innocent have gotten right. They have evolved fairly consistently, and the values that were there at the start, with just three people, are still cited now.
The opportunity we have is to link within a company to what the company is about. This will be moving toward a place that takes full advantage of Hebb’s rule. Most companies are just scratching the surface: Innocent has AstroTurf flooring, and their environment is pretty “on-brand.” External environment is definitely a great place to start.
2. Connection
We use the term “connection” from the “Synaptic Circle” model described in my first book, Make Your Brain Work. Any concepts that make it into this model are thoroughly underpinned by neuroscience research, which we cover in depth in white papers and trainings. In essence, though, as a social species, we have evolved so that isolation heightens our sensitivity to social threats. This helps motivate us to renew social connection. Perceived social disconnection activates areas in the brain similar to the experience of physical pain.
Louise Fryer, L&D Director at Cath Kidston, told me about their Stanley Standards magazine, which goes out to the whole organization every couple of months. It is affectionately named after Cath’s last dog and contains lots of personal stories and insights from team members. This is great, from a neuroscience perspective, because it has the potential to bring people together and facilitate connection.
Many organizations really consider their employees’ external environments when trying to create opportunities to connect. They have nice, well-maintained cafés, staff rooms or games rooms. They arrange parties, informal drinks, themed events and other ways to draw people together to get to know each other.
3. Meditation
You are unlikely to have missed the flurry of excitement around mindfulness meditation. Google is proudly extolling the virtues of mindfulness and drawing employees in with promises of increased emotional intelligence, resilience and focus. Benefits can occur quickly, and with long-term practice mediators can enjoy a shrunken amygdala and an enlarged prefrontal cortex, which correlate with the experienced benefits.
In this case, many people are attracted to these classes and ongoing personal practice initially because they hear that it literally changes your brain (pure neuroscience). They quickly feel the good it does them and choose to continue. With Google leading the way with provisions such as a labyrinth for walking meditations and silent, mindful lunches, the bar is being set for others.
Bucketloads of research support the practice from a neuroscience perspective, and it is great to see such a clear example of the science enabling people to engage with something that they shied away from previously.
As you can see, neuroscience can offer a lot to the corporate world. Based on these points, here are three valuable actions you can take now to positively and productively impact your culture, environment and organizational results: Get clear on how you are shaping your people’s internal environments (their brains); ask people how many close friends they have at work; and find out what your culture really is and what effect that is having on people’s performance.
FERGUSON, Mo. (AP) — The choir sang, the preachers shouted and the casket stayed closed. The body was taken to the cemetery, and Michael Brown was laid to rest.
Thus went the most recent enactment of “the ritual” – the script of death, outrage, spin and mourning that America follows when an unarmed black male is killed by police.
With a few variations, the ritual has followed its familiar course in the two weeks since the 18-year-old Brown was shot by white police officer Darren Wilson in this St. Louis suburb. It continues as we await the judgment of a grand jury considering whether or not Wilson should be charged with a crime.
Will the ritual ever change, and is it even possible that Ferguson could be part of that? This time, can recognition of the well-known patterns help heal the poisonous mistrust between police and many black people? Is the ritual already helping, in small gains buried beneath the predictable explosions of anger and media attention?
“This tragedy, because the world’s attention has been galvanized, this is one of those things that’s ripe for change,” said Martin Luther King III after the funeral Monday. “There are no guarantees, but what we can say is we have to be committed to doing the work to bring about change and justice.”
The ritual began to take shape in the 1960s, when instances of police mistreatment of black people led to organized resistance in many places across America – and sometimes to violence. As the decades passed, a blueprint developed for how black advocates confronted cases of alleged police brutality: protest marches, news conferences, demands for federal intervention, public pressure by sympathetic elected officials.
Sometimes this led to charges or even convictions of police officers. Sometimes there were riots: Miami in 1980 after police were acquitted in the death of a black motorist; Los Angeles’ Rodney King rebellion in 1992; Cincinnati in 2001 when a 19-year-old was fatally shot by an officer; Oakland’s uprising in 2009 after Oscar Grant was shot in the back while face-down on a train platform.
The 2012 killing of Trayvon Martin by a neighborhood watchman in Florida added the transformative element of social media. The public was now participating much more intimately in the ritual.
And still, the unarmed black males kept dying. The chants of “No Justice, No Peace” kept rising.
So what happened after Brown was shot on Aug. 9 was predictable:
First, protests and outrage. A narrative forms in favor of the deceased: According to accounts of several witnesses from Brown’s neighborhood, he was shot with his hands up. He was a “gentle giant” headed to college. Pictures of Brown circulate that show him smiling, baby-faced – reminiscent of the childlike photos that first introduced us to Trayvon Martin.
The day after Brown’s shooting, protesters are met with a militarized police response. Violence and looting erupt, and persist for days. Police respond with tear gas and rubber bullets, “scenes that have brought back visions of the 1960s when civil rights activists were met with force in the streets,” says the president of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, La June Montgomery Tabron.
“This has become an all-too-familiar scenario in America,” Tabron says in a statement.
Michael Brown’s death goes viral. Ferguson trends on Twitter. A horde of media descends. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson arrive.
“Events surrounding the killing of unarmed teenager Michael Brown look all too familiar. As Yogi Berra would put it, it’s `deja vu, all over again,'” reads a column by Bill Press in the Daily Journal of Marietta, Georgia.
A backlash builds against the protesters. There are complaints that the liberal media skew the facts to create a false narrative about racist white police. As with Trayvon Martin and Oscar Grant, a narrative forms against the deceased: Based on a video released by police, Brown is characterized as a weed-smoking thug who robbed a store minutes before his death.
Social media spreads facts, rumors and lies at Internet speed. There is a chain email with a fabricated arrest record saying, falsely, that Brown was charged with several felonies. A photo circulates of someone who is not Brown pointing a gun – like the menacing photo of a gangsta rapper that some said was Martin.
“Every time a black person does something, they automatically become a thug worthy of their own death,” the actor Jesse Williams says in a TV appearance.
The media reports new versions of the old stories: White flight has created poor black neighborhoods policed by white cops. Black people don’t trust the police. Black males are stereotyped as violent.
Then, the funerals.
The main sermon at Brown’s service was delivered by Sharpton, who is as much a part of the ritual as police tape. He began by issuing a collective call of responsibility: “All of us are required to respond to this. And all of us must solve this.”
Sharpton’s solution is twofold: Change the nation’s policies on policing, and repair the black community from within.
“We got to clean up our community so we can clean up the United States of America,” he said to thunderous applause.
“Nobody is going to help us,” Sharpton said, “if we don’t help ourselves.”
Can it actually happen? In Michael Brown’s case, can the ritual be remembered for more than riots?
“Most definitely,” said Ferguson resident Jeremy Rone as he completed a protest march on Saturday.
He said Brown’s death should increase voter registration, which would “put the right people in the right places” to change the way police deal with the black community. Soon after the unrest started, a voter registration booth went up on the corner of the hardest-hit street.
Phillip Atiba Goff, a UCLA psychology professor and president of the Center for Policing Equity, does believe Ferguson has brought us into a different moment, “but with a small window.”
“While I think there will be a push for stronger accountability and data collection that comes from this, I worry that we will repeat the amnesia that followed Los Angeles, Newark, Watts, and so many other urban centers for the past 50-plus years,” Goff said in an email.
“Whatever the immediate good that may come in the wake of the events of Ferguson,” he said, “we fail to honor the legacy of Mr. Brown if our collective attention to these issues and collective memory lasts no longer than the month or two after peace returns to the streets of his hometown.”
Hazar Khidir, a Harvard medical student who traveled to Ferguson with friends to support local community activists, suggested strict policies to regulate police conduct. The current protests, she said, “represent an opportunity to highlight a problem and bring about institutional change that saves other young black men from dying.”
There are a few glimmers of institutional change.
Those concerned that Brown’s death might not be fairly investigated took note of the high-profile appearance of Eric Holder, America’s first black attorney general, in Ferguson to meet with locals and discuss the federal probe he ordered. At least three police officers in the Ferguson area have been suspended for behavior that came to light due to newly heightened scrutiny of police. The White House is reviewing policies that have supplied police departments with military hardware, an issue that received much scrutiny in Ferguson.
“I trust that what’s happening in the street-level conflicts and clashes in Ferguson are the birthing pains of a new American social order,” Sam Fulwood III wrote for the Center for American Progress.
“I truly believe,” he wrote, “something revolutionary is occurring there that signals a pivot point for American society.”
America likes to measure progress, to count it. When it comes to the killing of unarmed black males, progress will be found in the uncounted:
The young man who doesn’t run from police.
The officer who doesn’t pull the trigger.
The ritual that doesn’t get repeated.
___
Jesse Washington covers race and ethnicity for The Associated Press. He is reachable at http://www.twitter.com/jessewashington.
Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This
material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
While you’d like to blame that compulsive purchase of rainbow-colored Adirondack chairs on a moment of mid-winter delirium, the state where you live might actually offer more insight on your shopping habits.
According to an infographic created by eBay, the items people purchased the most over the last year can be categorized by state. Virginians, for example, have purchased their share of patio and gardening supplies, while their neighbors in North Carolina are racking up on baby gear. We’re partial to vintage home decor (though eBay has our home state of New York pegged otherwise) and it appears that Arkansas and Illinois residents are into their homes, too.
Check out what your neighbors are buying in the infographic below.
h/t Mashable
Apple Inc.’s suppliers are preparing to manufacture the company’s largest-ever iPad, with production scheduled to commence by the first quarter of next year, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
By Nancy Chuda founder and Editor in Chief of LuxEcoLiving and Healthy Child Healthy World
Backstage at The Flamingo Hotel Las Vegas Nevada
Denise Truscello photo credits
Friends for life! Suzanne LaCock Browning, Nancy Chuda, Colette Ament, Linda Grey Heitz, Marcy Hamilton, Cindra Ladd, Rebecca Foster and Lindy Willingham pay special tribute to Olivia after her spectacular performance at The Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas
Take a journey through Olivia’s life and you will be more than entertained. It’s her passion; to reach out to others whose lives like her own have been touched by illness.
It’s more than a medley of super hit songs all of which resonate with an audience of every age.
She asks, “How many of you have seen the movie Grease?” And the crowd goes wild. Some as many as 100 times and the beat goes on and on. The movie, a genre all its own, is more than a classic. It’s a culture that keeps growing in a petri and Sandy keeps dishing it out. Night after night, Olivia reigns in Vegas. They come in droves into the cozy atmosphere of the Donny and Marie Osmond theater and leave energized by the music, validated by their culture (Boomers and others dancing in the aisles) and are left humbled by her heart of gold; added her ability to transcend through the hardest part of her journey, breast cancer and how she never gave into it.
Vegas for Newton-John is “the candle” on top of the icing of a hugely successful career, spanning over four decades with over 100 million records sold world wide. But the key to her success now is more meaningful than ever. A portion of ticket sales from her Las Vegas show benefits the Olivia Newton-John Cancer and Wellness Centre in Melbourne Australia.
She is determined to help others through a revolutionary multi faceted approach in having created one of the first state-of-the-art hospitals that heals more than just the disease… the entire person.
The Olivia Newton-John Cancer and Wellness Centre is located at the Austin Hospital in Heidelberg, Melbourne. Her vision from the beginning, was to create a world-class Cancer & Wellness Centre dedicated to providing the very best in medical care and treatment; combined with research programs for new treatments to help stop cancer from destroying the lives of so many people. She’s done it!
Cancer still claims lives but Olivia is using the power of her celebrity and her own personal experience to help others heal.
And speaking of healing… to listen to her voice capture the range of a twenty five year old, to see her in motion chronicling her life, dancing across the stage, working out to Physical, swooning and swaying in the medley of country hits that launched her career, then if that wasn’t enough… putting on the black leather jacket and slinky black pants, looking svelte and with swag while swinging, literally with the Pink Ladies.. if that doesn’t bring chills to an audience I frankly don’t know what will.
And when you think of her hits… don’t just think Grease. You get (“If You Love Me Let Me Know),” (“Please Mr. Please,”) “Let Me Be There“); the Xanadu oeuvre (title tune, “Magic” and “Suddenly“); and more (“Have You Never Been Mellow,”) (“I Honestly Love You,“) John Farrar’s major hit and one of Olivia’s favorites (“Sam“) then (“A Little More Love“); of course ONE of the show stoppers is “Physical“). And when the song came out Olivia was ONE of the first artists to hear the words “banned.”; then comes more, “Over the Rainbow,” and two of my favorite songs, “Cry Me a River” and “Send in the Clowns“).
She leaves you breathless while your left wondering how does she do it? At 65 you have to believe in her kind of magic…she’s a consummate artist whose athletic abilities coupled with years of hard work puts her in front of the stratosphere of Divas… some who would rather kiss their lucky stars before they say goodbye. But not our Olivia… she’s got the whole world and the universe wanting more.
Editor’s Notes:
To raise critical awareness about children’s health and the environment in 1990, Olivia appeared with Bette Midler (also a Wednesday Mom) and Meryl Streep, Goldie Hawn, Cher, Lilly Tomlin and the late Robin Williams in the ABC Variety Special I co-produced with Jeff Margolis, An Evening With: Friends for the Environment.
Wednesday Moms is a group of dedicated friends that helped to support (CHEC) Healthy Child Healthy World, a non-profit organization Jim and I founded in memory of our daughter Colette Chuda who died at the age of five from a non-hereditary form of cancer, Wilm’s tumor.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
