Last week Randstein at http://hyperionsturm.wordpress.com. nominated me for the esteemed Blog Tour Award. Randstein is the most creative writer, he draws a picture in my mind with his words. I consider him a friend and mentor. No one can pull me into the story like he does. Even more if story line is wrapped with sex. He writes often about Mythology which I can not comprehend in a good way. He writes about life, love, loss, history and his life experiences. When he goes into Mythology or the universe, I have to ask what he means. I thank him for always taking the time to explain.You have to check out http://hyperionsturm.wordpress.com. Hyperion Strum is your new addiction. I hate to cheat on rules but Lyme Disease is holding me to the ground. My post is a reblog, it’s a story that’s funny after the fact.

The Rules:
Compose a one-time post on a specific Monday (date given from your nomination — Looking for the Light scheduled for release before April 27, 2015.
Give your nominees the rules and a specific Monday to post by – dear nominees, please post your story on Monday May 11, 2015 if you can or let your readers know when you can post so they will look for it.
Pass the blog tour to four other bloggers.
Answer four questions about your creative process which lets other bloggers and visitors know what inspires you to do what you do.

The Questions:

What are you working on at the moment?

How does your work differ from others in your genre?

Why do you write or create what you do?

How does your writing/creative process work?

The Nominees:

Better Not Broken   http://betternotbroken.com

Alygeorges       http://alygeorges.wordpress.com

DD Dangerous       http://dddangerous.com

From the Darkness into the Sunshine     http://fromthedarkintothesunshine42.wordpress.com

The Asp Wrangler For A Day

Summer and searing heat are just ahead, it’s time to introduce you to the Texas Asp.

One morning while pruning roses I noticed these furry cream-colored caterpillars. I grabbed my camera and started clicking. Something about them was familiar, I just could not put my finger on it. I had taken photos of critters all week so my husband was not surprised I discovered something new. Curiosity got the best of me, I had to see what kind of caterpillar they were. I had thoughts of beautiful butterflies flying around my yard. To my surprise and horror they were Asp! If you are not from the south you can not fully appreciate the terror that was growing within. It is close to impossible to kill them. When you get stung by an Asp it’s like having acid poured on you. Their hairs can get imbedded in the skin and every time you touch the area it’s like a new dose of acid. When I was a kid one fell from the porch ceiling at my grandparents house. It fell down the back of my shirt. I was screaming and crying so hard it was difficult to stop to tell granny something was on my back. They leave a mark that looks like a branding iron. My back looked like red tire tracks. With this memory I had to go out the next morning a find them not only for me but our pets. Like a scene from Mission Impossible, I found three. I had read how hard they are to kill so I carefully put them in a sealed plastic bag and let them bake in the Texas heat. This method worked beautifully. I knew there were at least two others and did find one the next day. I look everyday and can’t prune my favorite rose without thinking one is still on the loose. I was The Asp Wrangler.

If stung, take clear tape and carefully put over area.

Pull slowly the opposite direction of hair.

It will pull the hairs out. Make sure all are gone or you’ll get a reminder every time touched.

XO  Warrior

FUN REBLOG FROM 2009 

I want to give a big thanks to Blogger One Among Many for nominating me for The Versatile Blogger Award. I appreciate how you stop by often and leave comments. What makes your Blog interesting is your free form style and open conversation about just about everything. I urge everyone to visit https://oneamongmany.wordpress.com.

7 Things About Me

In my high school street racing days, I stood between cars to start race.

I raced our 76′ Camaro SS at Green Valley Raceway. My husband normally drove 13’s in quarter-mile. I drove 14’s even with mistake of throwing into neutral. Racing gets me high, high, high!  This is correct model yet not a racing car. Our car had no back or passenger seat. Super Hulk under the hood.

Driving in a NASCAR race is the pinnacle for me. I would wear my depends, you never know.

I love books, sometimes it’s nice to touch pages instead of a keyboard.

Once I am well, I plan to minister to sick/dying children, elderly and the homeless. I now know why I survived.

I love birds of prey. A Red Tail Hawk family stops by daily for a drink and bath. Highlight of my day.

I’m excited about starting The Pud’n Cup Charity. My gramps called me “Pud” all my life

Awards are time-consuming yet your Blogs are special and I want to let you know. I want the WP family to meet you and enjoy your site as much as I do. The nominations for The Very Inspiring Blogger Award. It will not hurt my feelings on how you choose to bend the rules.

Putting My Feet In The Dirt   http://puttingmyfeetinthe.com

Better Not Broken   http://betternotbroken.com

Van By The River   http://vanbytheruver.wordpress.com

Bipolar for Life   http://bipolarforlife.me

Noir      http://sedge808.com

DDDangerous.com      http://dddangerous.com

Adoption   http://caseyalexanderblog.wordpress.co

**Guidelines**    

Thank the person who nominated you.

Display Badge on site.

Tell us 7 things about yourself.

Nominate 7-10 Blogs

SMILE REAL BIG! Each of you have inspired, educated and entertained me, Thank you. Have fun passing the award along to your inspiration.

XO Warrior

Published on Apr 16, 2015
Psychiatrist John Kane, M.D., discusses treating first episode psychosis using coördinated specialty care. Dr. Kane, of The Zucker Hillside Hospital and Hofstra North Shore-LIJ School of Medicine, is one of two lead investigators on the Recovery After Initial Schizophrenia Episode (RAISE) research project. Designed to reduce the likelihood of long-term disability that people with schizophrenia often experience, RAISE is funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).        XO  Warrior

For more information about RAISE see:
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/raise

 

 

I was excited to find a doctor talk about the treatment medications for mental illness and side effects including weight gain. His approach is working with the lowest amount medication and stay very aware of the metabolic issues. I’m a firm believer mental illness effects everyone in family and their peers. He shares ideas on how to work with/off set the weight gain. After thirty plus years with Bipolar Disorder, taking over 40 medications, weight gain is a given with certain types of drugs.

If you have a child,spouse or family member with mental illness please watch the video together to open dialog. Young girls have many pressures with weight already. Open dialogue may help down the road. He provides a short overview of types of drugs with high risk of weight gain or metabolic problem.

Tell Congress to Support Accountability for Students with Disabilities!

The Senate has introduced a bipartisan bill to rewrite the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (also known as No Child Left Behind). The bill includes important provisions that support students with disabilities, but does not go far enough to assure accountability for student outcomes.

The final bill must include provisions protecting students from the harmful use of restraint and seclusion in school, provisions that ensure that schools are assessing the academic progress of students with disabilities, including mental health conditions, and measures that hold schools accountable.

Action Needed: Contact your Senators today to thank them for their support for students with disabilities and ask that the final bill include provisions designed to ensure that students with disabilities, including mental health conditions, are given the opportunity to reach their full academic potential and are protected from harm.

Email Your Senators

 

JOYFUL HEART FOUNDATION 

Friend,

It was always having a heart-to-heart with one or maybe two other people at a time, sitting on a bathroom sink or on a stoop. This was how I had shared my story up until 2013, when I took a deep breath and, for the first time, recounted my sexual assault—and everything that followed—publicly at a Joyful Heart event.

My name is Sukey Novogratz, and I write to you today not only as a proud board member and supporter of the Joyful Heart Foundation, but as a survivor with a call to action.

When I was 17, the summer after my senior year in high school, I was doing a summer theater program at a prestigious, picturesque Ivy league school. It was unfamiliar terrain for me.

On the night of my rape, I had gone out with some new friends from my res hall. We were playing drinking games, and I chugged a glass of OJ and vodka. It wasn’t long before everything started melting away from me. I learned later that’s what Rohypnol, the date rape drug, does to you.

Over the next eternity of hours, I flew in and out of consciousness as three young men raped me over and over that night, leaving me naked, drugged, bruised and left for dead in the boathouse by the river.

It’s not just what happened that night that sticks with me. It’s everything that happened afterwards: the campus police who had neither the power nor the intention of bringing charges. The judiciary committee, who said things like, you’re Puerto Rican, correct? We hear you’re a sexy dancer. What makes you think you were raped? The three boys who assaulted me who walked into my hearing while I gave my testimony, prompting me to pass out cold.

Many things have changed for the better since my assault. But all too often, I hear about survivors whose stories are frighteningly close to my own. Rapists who, time and time again, just get away with it. And those victimized, like me, are told to change residence halls, change schools or simply let it go.

It is for these reasons I am part of the team behind The Hunting Ground, a new documentary that takes a deep and much-needed look at rape on college campuses. I signed on as an Executive Producer of the film because I believe in its power to bring change. And yes, there is great potential—and a great need—for change.

That’s where you come in. There are four things I’m asking you to do. Do one, do them all.

See the film. The Hunting Ground is playing in theaters across the country. Find one near you.
Host a screening. By bringing the film to your campus, community or organization, you can ignite a vital conversation about this issue. You can organize one or attend one of many that are already happening. Get started.
Take the pledge. As students, alumni, parents and teachers, we must all commit to holding our institutions accountable. Add your support.

Donate to Joyful Heart. I know I am not alone when I say that Joyful Heart helped me find something in myself I didn’t know was still there: a certain joy, a fearlessness. I am honored to support Joyful Heart’s transformative work today, and I urge you to join me. Get started with a $25 donation.

To me, change looks like an end to our society’s victim-blaming attitudes—the ones that expose themselves in the likes of those questions that I heard. It looks like holding perpetrators accountable for their crimes. It looks like supporting one another and all survivors with compassion, care and a resolve to do better.

Thank you for being a part of it.

Sukey Novogratz

 

“But I don’t believe that life is supposed to make you feel good,or to make you feel miserable either. Life is just supposed to make you feel.”         Gloria Naylor

My heart aches for the families torn apart by sex trafficking. I pray the dedication of law enforcement ends the abuse of young girls.

RAINN UPDATE 

(March 19, 2015) — “Testing rape kits should be an absolute priority for the United States,” declared Vice President Joe Biden after touring a Maryland State Police crime lab responsible for analyzing evidence for crimes of sexual assault.

Biden was in Baltimore to draw attention to the Sexual Assault Kit Initiative (SAKI), which will award up to $24 million to local law enforcement agencies working to test rape kits and investigate open cases.

President Obama’s Fiscal Year 2016 budget proposal also includes $20 million for backlog-related research at the Justice Department, and $105 million for reducing the DN A backlog and related purposes. Rebecca O’Connor, RAINN vice president for public policy, and Smith have been lobbying Congress to communicate the importance of not cutting funding. “At a time when the national spotlight is trained on the rape kit backlog and efforts to move more rape kits from law enforcement evidence rooms to public crime labs for testing, it’s imperative that Congress provide at least level funding for this critical program.”

Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), who joined Biden, urged the public to remember that “behind every kit, there’s a victim, and behind every victim there’s a predator. When you get a predator off the street, you not only do justice to the victim, but [prevent “future crimes].” Mikulski is the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Rape survivors Debbie Smith, after whom the primary federal DNA law is named, and Helena Lazaro joined the political leaders at the press conference.

Biden, a lead sponsor of the Debbie Smith Act, noted that he can still remember the day Smith told her story to a Senate committee in 2004, spurring Congress to act to reduce the testing backlog.

The vice president noted that SAKI is intended to complement the Debbie Smith Act and the Sexual Assault Forensic Evidence Report (SAFER) Act, passed by Congress as part of the 2013 reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA).

SAFER, which requires that at least 75% of DNA funds go towards reducing the backlog and will help law enforcement agencies audit their unsubmitted rape kits, is awaiting implementation by the Justice Department.

Also pending are details of a national grant initiative announced by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance, Jr., last year. The DA pledged $35 million in funding to help jurisdictions working to address backlogged kits.

President Obama’s Fiscal Year 2016 budget proposal also includes $20 million for backlog-related research at the Justice Department, and $105 million for reducing the DN A backlog and related purposes. Rebecca O’Connor, RAINN vice president for public policy, and Smith have been lobbying Congress to communicate the importance of not cutting funding. “At a time when the national spotlight is trained on the rape kit backlog and efforts to move more rape kits from law enforcement evidence rooms to public crime labs for testing, it’s imperative that Congress provide at least level funding for this critical program.”

 

Change.org Petetition

https://www.change.org/p/mary-fallin-hear-oklahoma-house-bill-1362

We are a group of mothers, fathers, students, and concerned citizens in Oklahoma. We urgently need your help to make sure that a crucial bill to help stop the rape and victimization of young girls in our state is heard in the Oklahoma State House. HB 1362 is a vital bill that will make sure that victims have support, that school officials are trained to handle these situations, and that our students are effectively taught about consent and proper boundaries. It is essential that this bill is passed, not just for the safety of Oklahoma’s students, but also as a signal to the rest of the country that this type of legislation is needed to protect all of our young people.
House Bill 1362 successfully made it out of the Common Education Committee on Tuesday, February 24th — but now the real fight begins. The next step is a vote on the house floor, and if the bill is voted down it will be two more years before this essential legislation can be reintroduced.
Last fall, we organized the group Yes All Daughters after three teenage girls in our hometown of Norman, OK were raped by the same classmate and then bullied out of school after they reported their assaults.We organized a peaceful protest and the school district responded by creating a task force to address issues related to victimization and bullying. The perpetrator was arrested following our protest and is currently awaiting trial on First Degree Rape charges.
HB 1362 was introduced as a direct result of the assaults on these three girls, and our work to bring their stories to light. But the work is not done. There is no guarantee that the Oklahoma State House will pass this legislation, even though the rape and sexual assault of minors is still an enormous problem in Oklahoma.
Last week, in the town just over from Norman, four more students (all aged 18 and 19) were arrested for the alleged gang rape of a girl under the age of 16. We cannot continue to let this problem go unchecked in our state.
Girls ages 16-19 are four times more likely than the general population to be victims of rape, attempted rape, or sexual assault, yet this bill was not on the agenda until our last-ditch effort compelled legislators to read it in committee. We must demand that House Bill 1362 become a priority among the Oklahoma State Legislators.

Sign the petition. Stand with us against sexual violence.
No more silence. No more shame.

 

Change.org Petition    

 https://www.change.org/p/south-carolina-state-senate-take-action-to-save-victims-of-domestic-violence?

Vote for stronger punishment against Domestic Violence in South Carolina

My name is Melissa Davis Walker, I am a survivor of domestic violence and I am tired of living in a state with the highest rate of domestic violence in the country. We need laws that protect victims from the people that abuse them. Currently, the laws are failing victims and they make little sense. First time offenses hold a 30 day sentence. But if you beat a dog, you could get up to 5 years. Tell Governor Nikki Haley and the South Carolina legislature that victims deserve stronger laws that protect them from the threat of domestic violence, pass Bill S3.

For 13 years, my five children and I lived in fear. My husband threatened, beat and choked me for the duration of our marriage, and I felt like the law couldn’t protect me. It was only when my son bravely confided in a school official after my husband pointed a loaded shotgun at his head, that we finally got the legal support we needed to put him behind bars. If he had only been charged for attacking me, he would be walking free today, and I might not be here to tell my story.

South Carolina is ground zero in the domestic violence fight. The toll of domestic violence is especially high on women. The state has the highest rate of female murders at the hands of men in the country, most attributed to domestic violence. Last year South Carolina’s murder rate for women was more than double that of the nation. Despite all this, there are few resources for victims of domestic violence and lax laws to punish their abusers.

The state is considering a bill that will require harsher punishments for offenders in the hopes of stemming the cycle of abuse. Bill S3 will allow the government to base punishment not on the number of times a person has committed the crime, but on the severity of the injury caused to the victim. No longer would a first time offense put you behind bars for a mere 30 days with a chance at release after serving just 15.

We must make sure this becomes law. Our laws reflect our values, and currently, our values are not adequately represented in our legal system. This doesn’t just reflect poorly on the state of South Carolina, but nationally, as domestic violence is a serious issue all throughout the United States. Victims’ lives must be protected and this law is a step towards that. Tell Gov. Nikki Haley and the South Carolina Legislature that women matter, pass Bill S3.

LETTER TO
South Carolina State Senate
Take action to save victims of domestic violence.

Change.org Petition
Petitioning Andrew Eulass, Michelle Gallo, Dr. Paul Gordon
Don’t allow our daughter to be segregated because of her Down Syndrome

The first thing you might notice about our daughter Hiba is that she has Down syndrome. But to those who know her, Hiba is a beautiful, intelligent, and compassionate 9-year-old. She loves math and her favorite show is “Doc McStuffins.” If you ask Hiba what she wants to be when she grows up, she will tell you “a doctor.” This is not surprising considering how much she loves helping people. As her parents, we see a child with all the potential of any other child. Unfortunately, her school system has kept Hiba segregated from other students and it has taken its toll on her education and spirit. All they seem to see is a child with Down syndrome.

Down syndrome does not define our daughter. We are asking Glen Ellyn School District 41 to allow Hiba her legal right to be fully integrated and allowed to learn alongside “typical” students at Churchill Elementary.
For the past 5 years, Hiba’s education has been spent in isolated, 1-on-1 settings. It has been painful to watch Hiba not be responsive to this education approach. She has become depressed, withdrawn, and as a result, hasn’t performed well in her studies. Hiba knows she is being treated differently and separated from the “normal” kids.
Districts across the US have diversified the classroom to include both children with disabilities and those considered “typical” for the past few decades. Education research and organizations like the National Down Syndrome Society endorse full inclusion in education settings. This approach would allow Hiba to be fully integrated into the general education classroom with her “typical” peers the entire school day. She would be learning the same things, but with a modified lesson plan, technology support, and 1:1 aide in the classroom. This plan would be developed by a well-known inclusion specialist. We know this is the best approach for Hiba.
Educational inclusion won’t just benefit Hiba. When children with disabilities are educated alongside their “typical” peers, research shows academic and social benefits for everyone. True acceptance of diversity begins in the school environment. It is then carried out in the home, workplace, and community.
Glen Ellyn School District 41 insists this is not the best approach for Hiba. They point to how she has behaved and performed in the isolated classroom. School officials can’t see these are symptoms of being segregated and exactly why Hiba belongs in a classroom with her “typical” peers. This is why we started the petition. We need you to help Hiba get in a classroom setting where she will thrive. Your voice can make all the difference.
Our dream is for Hiba to be afforded all the same opportunities as everyone else so she can achieve her full potential and be a kind, active member of society. Please sign and share our petition calling on Glen Ellyn School District 41 to allow Hiba to be fully included and allowed to learn alongside “typical” students at Churchill Elementary.

Sign Saadia’s petition

https://www.change.org/p/illinois-state-board-of-education-michelle-gallo-dr-paul-gordon-allow-our-9-year-old-daughter-with-down-syndrome-access-to-her-home-school?