Yahoo names Google Executive Marissa Mayer as New CEO
via Feministing.com

Yahoo made a major announcement yesterday, naming Google executive Marissa Mayer as their new president and CEO.  Mayer – Yahoo’s fifth CEO in as many years – is one of the most well known women in tech and business and the move came as a huge surprise even though she has a stellar reputation in Silicon Valley.

An even bigger surprise came later in the day with is Mayer’s announcement via Twitter that she is pregnant.  Mayer has already said her future maternity leave will be brief and it’s clear that such a demanding and high profile position for a woman may reignite the “Having It All,” conversations from a few weeks ago.  Mayer told Fortune that she plans to work from home throughout her maternity leave in order to ensure a smooth transition to her new company.

Mayer will be under intense scrutiny to be sure and that was before her announcement regarding her growing family. Obviously, we don’t yet live in a world where her being pregnant is irrelevant in terms of how her competence is perceived by the public and media, thus this bit of news will be viewed and made into a number of editorials over the next few weeks to be sure.

Mayer is wealthy and can afford plenty of help to juggle all of her responsibilities.  Her being able to afford domestic help to assist her with her familial responsibilities as her professional ones expand with her new role at Yahoo makes for an interesting framework considering a female tech CEO is seen as such progress.  Sadly, the predictable conversation about Mayer, her new job, and her pregnancy will surely illustrate how much further we have to go.

Via zerlina
Published: JULY 17, 2012

While shopping at a local pharmacy today, these caught my eye. Could it be? Oh, but yes. You wear her clothes and now she is in your snack! With all the vibrant colors, I thought perhaps they were frosted in the designer's characteristic pastel hues. Either way, they're a fashionable (and charitable) treat!

In motion

Blank piece of paper stuck to the wall above my desk. Black lines blur with the white page and the white wall and all is sterile and inert. I try to add color. Want to float on the music unraveling from the CD player. Calls my mind to a different place. Familiar.

Selling a chance on a trip to a go no-where place. Folks unwilling to move from what they know . Hesitant to swap poverty for perhaps. Do those who leave pay a greater price in the end? What is the cost? Stalemate.

Flesh wounded by an internal struggle. Inside something died. Something new is spilling out, or trying. Pain in my side and left-hip sleep fills the night. Rain falls. I rest.

"Don't enter here." "Follow protocol." Signs in a maze of sameness and forfeiture. Some are lulled to sleep and wake to take a backward look at what could have been. Thankful for a scheduled departure. A chance to change. From the stillness; movement.

"Angels descending, bring from above...

...Echoes of mercy, whispers of love." ~Fanny J. Crosby

Local Commercial Round-up!

I heard the audio of this commercial played on WUSY (US 101FM) this morning and had to check it out to see the full production. In such dire economic times when the housing and building trades industry is flailing, it's hilarious and somewhat refreshing to see such a painfully accurate, no-nonsense ad for affordable shelter. So watch it, or don't...'i don't care'...(watch the clip to get this last bit of humor...) ENJOY! Hope this brings a smile to your day!

oh o oh...the sweetest thing

Read more about it...

Weddings and Babies

a review by Andrea Passafiume
Weddings and Babies (1958), Morris Engel’s most personal and mature cinematic work, centers on Al (John Myhers), a New York photographer whose pictures of weddings and babies are his bread and butter. However, Al is restless and dreams of something bigger. His longtime assistant/girlfriend Bea (Viveca Lindfors) is turning 30 and wants to get married, but Al isn’t sure he is ready to take that step. Trying to decide what to do with his life, Al juggles the pressures of his relationship, career and an ailing mother (Chiarina Barile) he is trying to care for at the same time.Weddings and Babies was considered by many to be the final film in what became known as Morris Engel’s “New York Trilogy” following in the footsteps of the highly successful The Little Fugitive (1953) and its follow up Lovers and Lollipops (1956). Engel, a pioneering influence in independent cinema and the French New Wave, utilized new technology on Weddings and Babies that allowed him to film while simultaneously recording live sound. Engel liked to shoot in a verité-like style in which he often took to the streets with a small portable camera to capture the spontaneous sights and sounds of real people and places. “Engel’s earlier films,” said noted documentarian Richard Leacock in a 1958 Harper’s article, “had been dubbed – that is, they had used a system perfected by the postwar Italian film-makers of shooting a scene with a silent camera and then fitting dialogue to it in the studio. This made it possible to photograph anywhere, without being chained to the big clumsy sound cameras or upset by ‘extraneous noise.’...To my amazement, Weddings and Babies was not dubbed...Here was a feature theatrical film, shot on regular 35-mm stock, with live spontaneous sound...[it] is the first theatrical motion picture to make use of a fully mobile, synchronous sound-and-picture system.”Morris Engel shot Weddings and Babies in 1957, but it wasn’t released theatrically in the United States until 1960. After winning the prestigious Critics’ Award at the 1958 Venice Film Festival (an honor he shared with Ingmar Bergman’s Wild Strawberries, 1957), Engel tried for two years to find a distribution deal that was to his satisfaction, but he could not. Ultimately, he decided to book Weddings and Babies into theaters himself and release it independently.Reviews of Weddings and Babies were positive, though they didn’t reach the same high level of praise as Engel’s first film The Little Fugitive. “Weddings and Babies...as a technical exercise in cinema is one of the most exciting feature films the U.S. has produced in a decade,” said Time magazine. The New York Times said, “Like his two previous films, The Little Fugitive and Lovers and Lollipops, this one is done in a highly distinctive and often impressive off-the-cuff photographic style. It is so seemingly casual and impromptu, so evidently uncontrived, both in story development and in the manner in which the shots are made and arranged, that it might be seriously labeled the ‘method’ way of making a film. This accounts for some suddenly exquisite and isolatedly eloquent little bits in Mr. Engel’s picture...The girl is played by Viveca Lindfors, and everything she does—every movement, every gesture, every reaction, every lift and fall of her voice — is so absolutely right and convincing that the style drapes most fitly around her...She is the solid core of this film.”Viveca Lindfors’ real life son with director Don Siegel, Kristoffer Tabori (née Christopher Siegel), appears in the film as the little boy in the photography studio. Chiarina Barile, who plays Al’s elderly Italian mother, was discovered by Morris Engel in true verité style while she was sitting on the stoop of a New York City apartment building.Producer: Morris EngelDirector: Morris EngelScreenplay: Blanche Hanalis, Mary-Madeleine Lanphier, Irving Sunasky (story treatment); Morris Engel (original story)Cinematography: Morris EngelMusic: Eddy Lawrence MansonFilm Editing: Michael Alexander, Stan RussellCast: Viveca Lindfors (Bea), John Myhers (Al), Chiarina Barile (mama), Leonard Elliott (Ken), Joanna Merlin (Josie), Gabriel Kohn (Carl), Mary Faranda (Mrs. Faranda), Kristoffer Tabori (Chris).BW-81m.

by Andrea Passafiume

Source: http://www.tcm.com/

Image: http://www.ifc.com/

See for yourself and tune in:

Wednesday, April 8,2009 4:00 AM

Wednesday, April 8,2009 11:00 PM

Saturday, May 16,2009 10:30 AM

Read more: http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/26/engel.html

Goodbye-Hello

Tomorrow is my last official day working for the Cooperative Extension, and this quote was put in my path today.  It brought me comfort and excitement for the road ahead.  

"We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us."

―Joseph Campbell

Faces of Funny

Ever since I was a little girl, I've dreamed of a life in comedy. Along the way (I'm only 25, i know), life happened, and academia took more of my time than open-mic night...[actually, I've never gotten the courage up to try my hand at stand-up...professionally at least]. Maybe that's why I so enjoy Tina Fey's clever comedy and the fact that she is still a writer at heart. Knowing this inspires me to keep writing, keep dreaming, and keep cracking myself up... Today, blogging; tomorrow...? I'll keep you posted!

30 Rock Factoid: Liz Lemon's love of 'Sabor de Soledad" 

chips once led to a false positive reading on a pregnancy test.  

Say what you will, but I love me some 'fancy pageant-walkin'...

So, even Bijou, I mean, Liz had to work her way up to the boy's club...I laughed so hard I threw up...

BBC News Article - Monday, 30 March 2009 10:51 UK

Shopping sprees linked to periods

Women may be able to blame impulse buys and extravagant shopping on their time of the month, research suggests.

In the 10 days before their periods began women were more likely to go on a spending spree, a study found.

Psychologists believe shopping could be a way for premenstrual women to deal with the negative emotions created by their hormonal changes.

Professor Karen Pine will present her work to a British Psychological Society meeting in Brighton later this week.

She asked 443 women aged 18 to 50 about their spending habits.

The spending behaviour tends to be a reaction to intense emotions
Professor Pine

Almost two-thirds of the 153 women studied who were in the later stages of their menstrual cycle - known as the luteal phase - admitted they had bought something on an impulse and more than half said they had overspent by more than £25.

A handful of the women said they had overspent by more than £250.

And many felt remorse later.

Professor Pine, of the University of Hertfordshire, said: "Spending was less controlled, more impulsive and more excessive for women in the luteal phase.

"The spending behaviour tends to be a reaction to intense emotions. They are feeling stressed or depressed and are more likely to go shopping to cheer themselves up and using it to regulate their emotions."

Hormonal

She said much of this could be explained by hormonal changes during the menstrual cycle. And the findings were exaggerated in the women with severe PMT.

"We are getting surges and fluctuations in hormones which affect the part of the brain linked to emotions and inhibitory control. So the behaviour we found is not surprising."

Another explanation might be that women are buying items to make themselves feel more attractive - coinciding with the time of ovulation when they are most fertile, typically around 14 days before the start of a period.

Most of the purchases made by the women were for adornment, including jewellery, make-up and high heels.

Professor Pine said: "Other researchers have found there is an ornamental effect around the time of ovulation."

Researchers have found women tend to dress to impress during their fertile days.

Professor Pine, author of the book Sheconomics, said if women were worried about their spending behaviour they might avoid going shopping in the week before their period was due.

This old house is falling down around my ears
I'm drowning in a river of my tears
When all my will is gone you hold me swaying
I need you at the dimming of the day

You pull me like the moon
pulls on the tide
You know just where I keep my better side

What days have come to keep us far apart
A broken promise or a broken heart
Now all the bonny birds have wheeled away
I need you at the dimming of the day

Come the night you're only what I want
Come the night you could be my confidant

I see you on the street and in company
Why don't you come and ease your mind with me
I'm living for the night we steal away
And, I need you at the dimming of the day
Yes, I need you at the dimming of the day...

Recorded by Bonnie Rait
Written by Richard Thompson
Photo Credit: Embrace
Artist: Richard Ford

So it's Friday! I'm almost down to my last week(s) here with Extension. The funding for my position was cut earlier this month and so I'm back in the job market. Maybe not for long. There is the prospect of a departmental transfer, that I'm not super-excited about. I think it's really interesting how things come about at such unique times coalescing with circumstances that, on a surface level, may seem unrelated. Little things like this reaffirm that God is in control...how ever out of control I may feel, I can rest on that.

So what's next for me? Your guess may be as good as mine. But for now, I'm trying to take it all in and make some sound decisions. Don't know how good of a job I'm doing at this, but I'm trying. I would ideally like to find myself in a non-routinized position where my creativity is allowed to thrive. Documentary production is at the forefront of my consciousness, so I'm trying to identify a career-route that could lead me to the autonomy and freedom of someday making my livelihood off of my own creative work. I recently shared a conversation in which I discussed my long-standing fear and disdain for working a 'desk-job'...8-5...day after day. I realize that for some people this is very satisfying; the predictability may suit them just fine. But as far back as I can remember...[as long as i've know such a thing existed], I have dreaded and feared the monotony of the proverbial 'desk job'. As a society we undoubtedly need individuals who thrive in these types of occupations, but for me, I know I want something different. Even if part of what I end up doing requires some degree of routine and 'desk work', at least I might potentially have the luxury of setting the schedule of these events.

So yes, it's still Friday, but instead of anticipating-the-weekend-excitement, I feel choked down with the doldrums. I received my 'Real-Simple' daily quote in my inbox this morning, and it made me think...so maybe you'll enjoy it too:

"In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order."

—Carl Jung

So here's to trusting in the divine order of things and the hope that they will all fall into place.

Oh, the perils of self-report

Busted not for selling babies, but for the abortion clinic

Busted not for selling babies, but for the abortion clinic

From 1951 to 1965 Dr. Thomas Jugarthy Hicks began to quietly offer babies for adoption from his Hicks Community Clinic in McCaysville, GA. Quietly, because the clinic he’d been running since the mid-1940s was not a licensed adoption agency. Hicks cared for the mundane health issues of local farmers and townspeople in the front of the clinic, while performing abortions, which were illegal during that period, in the back rooms.

Law or no law, he advertised his abortion services on phone booths, bus stations and bridges. Women came by bus, car and train to pay $100 to "fix their problem." A small airstrip was built in nearby Ducktown so the prominent could fly their daughters in from Atlanta and Chattanooga for an abortion.

His black market baby-selling ring, which may have ‘moved’ as many as 200 babies with no questions asked, relied on young, poor women from North Georgia and Eastern Tennessee. They’d come to him for an abortion, and he persuaded some to carry the babies to full term. The women would reside in the clinic for a few months, or the good doctor would provide a room for them at his farm, or in the New York Hotel in adjoing Copperhill, TN, or in his apartments in the telephone company building.

Hicks knew he could count on word of mouth to bring in the baby buyers. The Fannin County Courthouse records list 49 babies, for example, who went to Summit County in Ohio. All the fathers who bought them worked in the Akron tire companies, except for a Cuyahoga Falls doctor who bought two babies. All the sales were arranged by a West Akron Goodrich employee who bought four babies for herself. All of them paid up to $1,000 for a baby no one could trace back to its mother.

Hicks made sure the birth certificates listed the people adopting as birth parents. The doctor kept no known records of the birth mothers, who discreetly vanished.

Thomas Hicks was no stranger to shady dealings. After getting his medical degree from Emory University in Atlanta in 1917, he moved to Copperhill, TN, but lost his medical license and served time in federal prison for selling narcotic pain killers to a veteran working undercover for the FBI.

While incarcerated, he studied a lung disease that kept copper miners from living past the age of 40.

Once out, he was hired by the Tennessee Copper Co. to treat miners. The only problem was, he filed more claims than there were miners with the disease.

After he was fired from that job, he opened up the Hicks Community Clinic in McCaysville.

Once a baby was available, Hicks wasted neither time nor words with his prospective buyers. "You have 24 hours to come or I call the next person on the list," he's reported to have said to more than one client.

Hicks warned his baby buyers not to be picky. If you told Hicks you only wanted a boy or you wanted a girl, you could forget about getting a baby.

It may never be known how many illegal adoptions were conducted by Dr. Hicks, who was stripped of his medical license in 1964, but never jailed. He was, after all, a member of the Copperhill Kiwanis and the Adams Bible Class of the First Baptist Church (to which he donated a Wurlitzer organ). He was known to give free medicine to the very poorest in town. He made house calls to those who couldn't otherwise get to his clinic.

Dr. Thomas Hicks' abortion clinic was an open secret tolerated by a town that appreciated the bulk of his medical contributions. "He didn't perform any services that anyone didn't request,'' noted local resident Marlene Matham Hardiman, who once rented an apartment from Hicks.

The court papers disbarring him made no mention of the black-market babies. The abortion charges against him were dropped, and he continued practicing for a time thereafter.

Thomas Hicks died of leukemia in 1972 at age 83. His lawyer, nurses, wife and son are dead. His only living relative, a daughter, lives in seclusion in North Carolina.


sources:www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20124848,00.html
freepages.misc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~msroots/BMA/HICKS4.htm
query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950CE1DE103EF930A1575BC0A961958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1
immigrantships.net/adoption/hicksbabies.html
chronicle.augusta.com/stories/012098/met_LG0411-9.001.shtml
http://hillbillysavants.blogspot.com/

Originally blogged at Appalachian History

Look who just walked in...

Have you ever met 'these guys'...chances are, you have.  I love Andy Samburg's humor...