St. Louis Wedding and Portraiture Photography – Pinxit #stl

Yes, that’s a 3-year-old boy.

In his PJs.

Sitting inside a toy vending machine, the kind with the claw that picks up toys.

In Walmart.

Somewhere in Indiana.

During the 3 o’clock hour.

In the a.m.

This is how The Washington Post reported the story:

“ELKHART, Ind. — A 3-year-old boy upset that his mother wouldn’t let him use a crane vending machine to try to win a small stuffed animal took matters in his own hands. He climbed up the chute to get the prize himself.

Danielle Manges said she took her eyes off her son, James, for a moment to pick up a juice bottle he threw. When she looked up, he was in with the plush toys. ‘I bent over to clean it and within two seconds he had climbed through the hole, into the chute and pushed the door shut so we couldn’t get him out,’ she said. ‘He climbed up in the toys and was in there for a good hour.’”

Some key questions:

Why were they shopping at 3:30 in the morning? The mother told reporters that she decided to do the super-early shopping because the boy’s sleep schedule had been off-kilter due to a recent illness. I can identify for me since college the best way to shop Wally World is the middle of the night – tha why they leave them open 24 hours anyway .

Mom was looking away and this happened that quickly? Mom says yes. According to a BBC report, the mom said that this child “had become adept at climbing out of his playpen, doors and even windows. I can identify I swear kids can move at the speed of light as soon as you stop looking at them – See Cammy fly down stairs at 10 months old….

How did he get out? The fine folks at the local fire house broke the kid out after store managers couldn’t find a key to the vending machine.

The mom took pictures? Yes, in a classic Lynette Scavo move (mom of “Desperate Housewives” fame), the pregnant mom bought a disposable camera and took pictures of the entire event, no doubt to commemorate it in a family scrapbook. I would have had my digital I’m sure….

Did the kid get a toy as a souvenir? No, the mom told the Associated Press, unless you count the photos. I would’ve kept one for the scrap book..

Student-teacher matrimonials

Remember that sexual offender and former sixth grade teacher Mary Kay Letourneau well she married her former student (whom she met when he was her 12-year-old student) on last Friday. As you may recall from the sordid news stories, the two lovebirds — now ages 43 and 22 — have two children, the second of whom Letourneau gave birth to while she was serving 7.5 years in prison for child rape. And this is T.V people? Jerry was sickened by the display, Granny thought it was amusing. I after watching seasons and seasons of shows like the bachelor/bachelorette, wife swap, What ever the adoption show was, not surprised unfortunately, then proceeded to watch Amber and Rob tie the knot after proving to be two of the less desirable people on the planet. I had to watch, actually I just didn’t turn the channel – there is a difference.

While some people, once convicted of a sexual offense, might opt to conduct their lives in private, Letourneau and her groom, Vili Fualaau, chose instead to highlight their wedding festivities on “Entertainment Tonight,” which is featuring them as a celebrity couple. I can’t be mad if someone was willing to pay for the right to air Jerry and my wedding we’d do it in a heartbeat. Alas it has been mentioned by Jerry he would have to me a woman recovering from a sex change operation and I’d have to be suffering from some life threatening stupidity that catapulted me into mediocre celebrity – poetry withstanding. Its been on all week they aired each piece of the reception and actually showed you the whole thing in clips then just aired it all continuously one good time and called that T.V. (Remember, this is an EXCLUSIVE!) The “entertainment news” program is prominently featuring the story of this exclusive footage of the sex offender and her betrothed with the online headline, “Mary Kay & Vili’s Wedding!” (Yes, they included an exclamation point.)

Is it just me, or do the words “entertainment,” “celebrity” and “convicted sex offender” seem odd when used together?

Thanks to the other bloggin mom who I saw this posted on first. I just added my thoughts to hers She is my sister in Blogging – I gotta find her again!

Home buying sucks. It’s an endless maze of opinions, in the form of appraisals  and payoffs in the form of fees. And the worst part of all of this is I’m not getting what I want out of this purchase. Over a hundred thousand dollars and I can’t get what I want! A home. I get investment properties.  My landlord is getting jittery and dramatic but I said that was gonna be his M.O from the very beginning. Our neighbor is selling a unit very nearby for a lot more money and now he’s very very nervous.   Feels like he’s getting the short end of the real estate stick, so he’s bad mouthing us to the neighbors he never sees normally because he’s absent tee – unless his old friends are having a party then he’s around – he was totally taken back by all the things the in inspection report. He claims we (both us and the guys upstairs) never told him all the things that were wrong with the house but who lives with moldy walls and never calls their landlord? Really? My real estate agent is my mother – enough said. My future tenant is not being very helpful. And actually he’s not even my tennant he’s just staying with the guy untill he finds an apartment. The guy who lives upstairs is in Florida. This should not be as difficult as it is or has been.  

 

Random thought: I need to rent a rototiller for the gardens.

   

 Don’t get me wrong, it is what is best for our family. Establishing rental income, building wealth, capitalizing on a great opportunity, ect ect and so forth. But I wanted to find a place to call home.  I wanted to buy a place Cammy could grow up in. Make memories in – where our family can grow- Jerry and I agree on at least one more child  (he wants two – that’s another post) I wanted to find a home we could have that family in and not need to move again when the baby is four- who wants to move with a toddler? I wanted to plant my herb garden and not have to use portable pots because we don’t know hat next year will bring, wanted to mold and fold some home around us. But I guess more than that I didn’t want to move. Which was why I gave my vote for buying our apartment building. I hate moving in general, and I understand why we have chosen this way I really do. I sometimes just want to be regular and not know any better.

Just buy a house and live in it… But I guess that was what renting was for the most part. Just living in it. Anywho, its all neither here nor there. We close soon and can start fixing all the stuff that we know is wrong. Try and make our tenants happy – get the downstairs unit ready for renting and then maybe I can get my home.  

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Big ups to Mobrowne whos blog I jacked for these questions:

what i am reading right now:
The Bondwoman’s Narritave and a few random collections of poetry
what i am listening to:
Jill Scott and The Buena Vista Social Club
what i am wearing:
Green wide neck summer sweater and black Cargo capris.
what i am working on:
New poetry and closing on our home .
what i look forward to:
summer fun. The wedding! Owning the house, Re- landscaping the yard, Completing my CD by end of year, traveling a little bit more…
what annoys me:
Dramatic Gay people (my landlord in particular), self pity, unjust opinions – especially my own, bad drivers, My dog
what motto i live by:
This fish needs a bicycle. A response to the statement a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle – and a zillion moments in the bible
what i want to change about myself:
my ability to hold grudges – dispite feeling as though I have forgiven someone, My moodiness which rears its head at all the wrong moments the need to feel accepted by people who in the long run I don’t really care about .
what i love about myself:
i am loyal and I work hard at being the best person I can.
what i dreamt last nite:
i don’t retain dreams most times unless God is talking to me… and then I get a lot of Déjà vu
what i’m feenin’ for:
Traveling – getting away with my kid and my man.
what i regret:
the way I ended with Etefia ( a little harsh for me) Staying with Aaron So long, Not thinking of my self sooner, Not knowing how.
what i learned:
Life is honestly what you make it…
where i would move if i left STL:
I’m not sure, I want to be in a area that feeds my creativity (NYC) but I can’t live there… I love the country (Montana) but …. Its MONTANA, I thought about Las Vegas..but the lights would get me an dI’d be in Gamblers Anon in like six months , Chicago is too cold in the winter. Hawaii Would rock but Jerry doesn’t like Iving on islands. My answer is I don’t know
what is my biggest mistake:
Not majoring in education like I wanted when in college
what inspires me:
my daughter, my man, my family and certain contemporary poets.
what’s my favorite outfit:
a zillion outfits I don’t own cause I was too busy taking care of everybody else.
what’s my favorite word:
daughter.
what’s my biggest secret:
i don’t have any.
what is the biggest lie i ever told:
I love you – to a guy I really just liked and not even a lot.

Mos Def on Assata Shakur

I am, I believe, the worst kind of revolutionary. The kind that exists the most through out Nubian America. I know there is a problem and I know there is a struggle. I know we need to fight it but I’m so busy living I don’t have time to fight the battles. I know black people need to unify, I don’t have the energy to research and review to find the fight that fits my beliefs and fight it. I know my voice should be heard but I can’t neglect my family, my child to make the world better for her or her children. I know if someone doesn’t say it no one will hear. But I cannot fight the fight the revolution asks me for. I work for corporate America. My family has a large group of non black friends. I am the safe negro on most occasions. I am the one those non black friends can ask the stupid questions that have been burning in their minds but know they can’t ask just anyone. So I fight where I can. I make the best of what I can, do the little things that I can. Say the things that I believe and learn more so I can do better.

My lesson last week was presented by professor Mos Def on Assata. I have read her autobiography. And hope to read more of her work soon. Courtesy of Take a left here is a little back ground

Assata Shakur was a Black Panther Party member in New York. The Black
Panther Party was a revolutionary and socialist party that was greatly feared by
FBI head J Edgar Hoover, who led a campaign of repression in which dozens of BPP
leaders were murdered and many more jailed on trumped up charges. Assata ended
up in jail in the 1970s and broke out of jail in 1979 and went into exile in
Cuba, where she received political asylum. In recent weeks, New Jersey
government officials in collaboration with the Dept of Homeland Security
increased the bounty on Shakur’s head to $1 million, and added her to the US
government’s official “terrorist” list.

In reading and reviewing researching this this – I was sure things couldn’t have gotten that bad for the U.S that they are now trying to convince the public that Assata Shakur is a Terrorist? It has been theorized and I agree honestly that the U.S has placed this title on Miss Shakur so they have some response to Cuba’s claim that the U.S is harboring a terrorist Luis Posada Carriles. It’s pretty transparent what the U.S. regime intends by accusing Cuba of harboring “terrorists” in granting Assata Shakur political asylum. So they can say “well you got a Terrorist so we can have one too!” Two points stand out to me in this situation.
1. Who granted the U.S the all knowing power to determine who is and is not a terrorist? The U.S government has not recognized the Venezuelan title of terrorist on a man how as been tried and convicted of that same type of crimes committed against the U.S on 9/11. He has been accused and convicted of blowing up a 747 and killing 73 people. Noted in an article about the situation with Luis it is reported that;

Castro led a crowd reportedly numbering in the hundreds of thousands past
the U.S. mission in Havana and called the United States hypocritical in the war
on terrorism for not arresting Posada.
“This is not a march against the
people of the United States,” Castro said. “It is a march against terrorism, in
favor of life and of peace.”
Castro has castigated the U.S. about Posada’s
presence in Florida in regular television addresses, questioning how he could
enter the country undetected given the increased border security after Sept. 11
and calling for his extradition.

Castro has made it clear how he feels about the situation see here. The parallel between the two stories aren’t that similar to me and that the U.S has decided that Standing against the government is cause to be called a Terrorist, one day blogging these thoughts will make me a terrorist, and my second question would be – would I still do it?or How do you define terrorist?
Though Shakur has been branded a terrorist, federal officials have shown no such zeal for bringing to justice Luis Posada Carriles, whose terrorist credentials are far more authentic. He is rumored to have been involved in terrorist activities all over the world including rumors of involvement in the Kennedy assination . And this guy gets held on Charges of not declaring himself before he applied for asylum in Miami? But you rack up the bounty on a woman who it has been medically proven could not have committed the crimes she is convicted of? In a seperate artilce is was noted:

Posada, according to his lawyer, slipped into this country last month and is
in South Florida awaiting a decision on his request for political asylum. That’s
right, this guy, who was convicted in 2000 for his role in a plot to assassinate
Fidel Castro, wants the Bush administration to harbor him.
The Cuban and
Venezuelan governments also accuse Posada of involvement in the 1976 bombing of
a Cuban airliner that killed 73 people and a 1977 Havana hotel bombing that
killed an Italian tourist.

But instead of sending the FBI to Florida to flush out Posada and cart him
off for trial in Venezuela, which has requested his extradition, the Justice
Department waffles. It won’t say what it will do if Posada is apprehended.
Rather than offer a bounty for Posada, who in 1998 admitted his role in a series
of Cuban hotel bombings (he later recanted), the Bush administration has only
acknowledged it has received his asylum request. That it was not summarily
rejected is outrageous, but not surprising.
Orlando Bosch, a Cuban exile who
for many years was a close associate of Posada, has lived in South Florida since
1990, when President George H.W. Bush stopped the Justice Department from
deporting him. At the time, the Justice Department concluded that the only
country willing to take Bosch was Cuba, the main target of his terrorist acts.
The Bush administration balked, fearing that he might be mistreated.
Advocate of terrorism?
The deportation order that was overturned said
Bosch had been “resolute and unwavering in his advocacy of terrorist violence”
for 30 years. In 1968, Bosch was convicted of firing a bazooka at a Polish
freighter in Miami’s harbor. Like Posada, Bosch is wanted in Cuba and Venezuela,
which suspect him of involvement in the Cuban airliner attack.
What bothers
me is that while these men, whose suspected crimes fit the State Department’s
definition of terrorism, haven’t set off Justice Department alarm bells, Shakur
is being treated like a disciple of Osama bin Laden. If she killed Foerster (her
attorney argues the evidence suggests otherwise), Shakur should be returned to
New Jersey to spend her life in prison.
By not proclaiming that it will
arrest Posada on sight and deport him, the Bush administration caters to those
in the Cuban exile community who view him as a freedom fighter – and undermines
its leadership of the fight against terrorism. Article from Usa today By
DeWayne Wickham

People wonder why the US governmnet frustrates so may African Americans, why we can’t say Bush’s or many presidents names with out tasting bile on our tounges, why we don’t trust police unless we are realted to them in most cases, why the lines are so strongly drawn in our minds, its not just the history of slavery, although it should be on so many levels, not just segragation, not just jim crow laws, and false imprisionments, cointelpro, the KKK, the coutless other groups that have made hate a daily factor for black americans like sunrises and oxygen, its ALL of them piled on our backs and then thrown in our faces when the hyporcasy of the system is paraded in our faces the way this has been or when it has been hidden as this has been. Because if you don’t live in Florida, where Luis Posada lived, you probably hadn’t hear any of this? have you?

I’m hoping I’ve made it clear how I feel about the situation too. Maybe one day I’ll be a better revolutionary. I’ll teach my daughter better, show her the truth sooner so she can do better in her youth than I did.

My words to Assata, I’m trying to do better my sister and my thoughts and prayers are with you!!!

http://www.assatashakur.org/index.htm

Laura Bush’s Overseas trip

I’m not supposed to like Laura Bush. But I do. shes got spunk and carisma, its like she’s the brains of that opperation. She’s been in the news lately and is possibly the only reason I can imagine some people still sticking by W – “I mean Laura still likes him….” Her cute ribbing of the president during the White House Correspondents Association dinner was like seeing a great opening act before the headliner tanks. Her ease and polish showing during the protests of her middle east visit, Laura bush reminds me of the moms of my friends in college. Like she would send stuff and remember to mention all the right friends in letters and phone calls to her kids who are away. She, the perfect mom to be the buffer between ids and a imperfect dad. But kids grow up and see past mom, to who dad really is and with so many questions unanswered or the answers being not what the american public wants to beleive it really does make me wonder what a nice girl like Laura is doing with a guy like W- then again I wondered what Monica saw in Bill too. Since I rarly agree with W most people will right this off as Bush bashing- for me Bush bashing is way too easy, I’ve chosen a more challenging route, I’m trying to understand why Bush chooses the way he does. Sometime I really think he’s doing what he beleives is the right thing, sometimes I think he’s got people pulling his strings, including daddy Bush, and he still beleives hes doing the right thing. Sometimes I think like most politics its all about money and how much he can get or set up for later, Some times I wonder if my voice can be heard and if it even makes a difference if I disagree the status quo. But I talk anyway and I like Laura too. go figure.