Earlier this month, Verone (pictured), a 59-year-old convenience store clerk, walked into a Gastonia, N.C., bank and handed the cashier a note demanding $1 and medical attention. Then he waited calmly for police to show up.
He's now in jail and has an appointment with a doctor this week.
Verone's problems started when he lost the job he'd held for 17 years as a Coca Cola deliveryman, amid the economic downturn. He found new work driving a truck, but it didn't last. Eventually, he took a part-time position at the convenience store.
But Verone's body wasn't up to it. The bending and lifting made his back ache. He had problems with his left foot, making him limp. He also suffered from carpal tunnel syndrome and arthritis.
Then he noticed a protrusion on his chest. "The pain was beyond the tolerance that I could accept," Verone told the Gaston Gazette. "I kind of hit a brick wall with everything."
Verone knew he needed help--and he didn't want to be a burden on his sister and brothers. He applied for food stamps, but they weren't enough either.
...
Because he only asked for $1, Verone was charged with larceny, not bank robbery. But he said that if his punishment isn't severe enough, he plans to tell the judge that he'll do it again. His $100,000 bond has been reduced to $2,000, but he says he doesn't plan to pay it.
In jail, Verone said he skips dinner to avoid too much contact with the other inmates. He's already seen some nurses and is scheduled to see a doctor on Friday. He said he's hoping to receive back and foot surgery, and get the protrusion on his chest treated. Then he plans to spend a few years in jail, before getting out in time to collect Social Security and move to the beach.
Verone also presented the view that if the United States had a health-care system which offered people more government support, he wouldn't have had to make the choice he did.
"If you don't have your health you don't have anything," Verone said.
As it is, Verone said he thinks he chose the best of a bunch of bad options. "I picked jail." (source)
Lawyers. Accountants. Software engineers. That's what Mom and Dad encouraged us to become. They were wrong. Gone is the age of "left-brain" dominance. The future belongs to a different kind of person with a different kind of mind: designers, inventors, teachers, storytellers-creative and empathic "right-brain" thinkers whose abilities mark the fault line between who gets ahead and who doesn't. Drawing on research from around the advanced world, Daniel Pink outlines the six fundamentally human abilities that are essential for professional success and personal fulfillment-and reveals how to master them. From a laughter club in Bombay, to an inner-city high school devoted to design, to a lesson on how to detect an insincere smile, A Whole New Mind takes listeners to a daring new place, and offers a provocative and urgent new way of thinking about a future that has already arrived.
“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in, forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day, you shall begin it well and serenely...”
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[/caption]Hold your head high, stick your chest out. You can make it. It gets dark sometimes, but morning comes. Keep hope alive. Don't you surrender! Suffering breeds character, character breeds faith. In the end faith will not disappoint.
- Jesse Jackson
You are on the eve of a complete victory. You can't go wrong. The world is behind you.
- Josephine Baker
The other day I was talking to a sales lady at AT&T and the subject turned to natural hair. She mentioned flat ironing her hair, and I kinda guffawed because we've had 100+ temperatures this past week and humidity through the roof. I had to ask how long her blowouts last, and guess what she said? She said it lasts til she washes it!! A week, two weeks... It stays straight. She doesn't even have to retouch it. Y'all know I was jealous right? Seriously, my hair starts to frizz up the day after I straighten it. Even when I did my blowout in December (when the humidity is pretty much non-existent) it started poofing up the next day. I did notice that her hair appeared courser than mine, and maybe that had something to do with it. We didn't have time to talk products though.
Now my mission is to find out whether I need to use different products or whether my hair type is just rebellious. Actually, scratch that last part; I know my hair is rebellious. The question is whether or not it can be tamed!
Do you/have you had problems with your hair reverting back soon after a blowout? If you no longer do, what is your secret? Help a sista out!
And the LORD answered me, and said, Write the vision, and make it plain on tables, that he may run that reads it. - Habakkuk 2:2 (AKJV)
When I heard of vision boards, initially I was skeptical as all get out. My first semester of grad school I took Entrepreneurship as an elective. My professor, Dr. Calhoun, had us to create one before we even started discussing business plans. Not taking it very seriously, I just put something together, using "visions" of things I thought would be good to say. It was a little strange to me; he almost made it seem like there was some kind of magic in the board. O_o But the more I think and read about positive energy and how your thoughts shape your reality, the clearer the importance of the vision board becomes. Because I haven't done a vision board since the one I threw together over two years ago, I decided to take to the web and create one. I feel like it's pretty self-explanatory so I won't go into detail about it; just wanted to share it.
If you want to make your own online vision board, there are plenty of sites where you can do so. I happened to make mine on Oprah.com.
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Cadbury is facing the prospect of a black consumer boycott after it compared Naomi Campbell to a chocolate bar in a new advertising campaign.
The supermodel – hardly known for taking things in her stride – is incensed that Cadbury used her name in the strap line to promote its new chocolate bar called Bliss, accusing the company of racism. The ad says: "Move over Naomi – there is a new diva in town."
Yesterday Campbell revealed she is considering "every option available" after Cadbury, owned by the US giant Kraft, refused to pull the ad campaign, which ran in newspapers last week: "I am shocked. It's upsetting to be described as chocolate, not just for me, but for all black women and black people. I do not find any humour in this. It is insulting and hurtful."
Disgust at the ad prompted members of the public to complain to the campaign group Operation Black Vote (OBV), which has called for Cadbury to apologise. OBV's Simon Woolley said that without an apology, the "only recourse black people have is not to buy its chocolate". He has written to the American civil rights activists Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson to ask them to mobilise the country's Afro-American population. "I want them to know what their parent company is doing in Europe. I've asked them to support us."
Mr Woolley said that, for black people, being likened to chocolate was as bad as being called a golliwog. "Racism in the playground starts with black children being called 'chocolate bar'. At best, this is insensitive, and at worst it demonstrates Cadbury's utter disregard for causing offence. Its lack of apology just adds insult to injury. The Eurocentric joke is not funny to black people. (source)
