sunday funnies

In Memoriam – Susan Hill

RH Reality Check:

Sadly, the women’s health and rights community lost a courageous, loving advocate. Susan Hill, a women’s clinic owner and reproductive rights advocate, died today. Hill was the President and CEO of the National Women’s Health Organization in North Carolina.

…at one time, Susan Hill owned five health centers around the country, including the now famous Jackson Women’s Health Center – the last remaining health center providing abortions in Mississippi. For this, she was targeted mercilessly and violently by anti-choice activists. In fact, in October 2009 RH Reality Check contributor Carol Joffe wrote about Hill’s mission to share the anti-choice movement’s latest strategies against women’s health centers: suing the cities in which the centers reside, along with the police chiefs in these regions often times. Hill was particularly afraid, Joffe wrote, because simultaneously, violence against clinics and staff at clinics seemed to be escalating in the wake of Dr. Tiller’s murder:

“In the old days, at least we knew what they were up to. If they were blockading us or firebombing us, we knew it. This is more insidious, more like a stealth strategy. And it is making life a living hell for the providers.”

Hill was close friends with Dr. Tiller and remained extremely active working on behalf of clinic owners continually harrassed by anti-choice protestors:

Hill served as plaintiff in over 30 federal and state lawsuits concerning abortion rights, and was a key plaintiff in the NOW v. Scheidler case that charged abortion opponents with using violence, intimidation and extortion to put women’s clinics out of business.

Rest in peace Susan. Your spririt and activism will be missed.

sunday funnies

sunday funnies

sunday funnies

In Memoriam – Teddy Pendergrass

Soul Singer Teddy Pendergrass Dies In Pa. At 59
by The Associated Press

PHILADELPHIA January 14, 2010, 12:19 am ET Teddy Pendergrass, who became R&B’s reigning sex symbol in the 1970s and ’80s with his forceful, masculine voice and passionate love ballads and later became an inspirational figure after suffering a devastating car accident that left him paralyzed, died Wednesday at age 59.

The singer’s son, Teddy Pendergrass II, said his father died at Bryn Mawr Hospital in suburban Philadelphia. The singer underwent colon cancer surgery eight months ago and had “a difficult recovery,” his son said.

“To all his fans who loved his music, thank you,” his son said. “He will live on through his music.”

Pendergrass suffered a spinal cord injury and was paralyzed from the waist down in the 1982 car accident. He spent six months in a hospital but returned to recording the next year with the album “Love Language.”

He returned to the stage at the Live Aid concert in 1985, performing from his wheelchair.

Pendergrass later founded the Teddy Pendergrass Alliance, an organization whose mission is encourage and help people with spinal chord injuries achieve their maximum potential in education, employment, housing, productivity and independence, according to its Web site.

Happy Birthday Bailey

Bailey is one-year old today!

sunday funnies

what color is your bra?

By the end of this week women, and some men, were posting just a color in their status update … white, beige, black, blue … none. What did it mean? It didn’t take long to figure out it was the bra color of the woman posting.

It’s unknown who started this “campaign” but the end result was that for at least a day, people on Facebook were talking about breast cancer.

The world awoke Friday to discover that Davi’s bra is black. Janet’s is blue with bows. Kim’s is pink. And Susan’s is a “decadent beige.”

The colors were, at first at least, somewhat mystifyingly posted on thousands upon thousands of Facebook pages as their status updates, without any context. Just colors. “White .. for today anyway!” wrote Kerri.

By midday, the color craze had gone viral on the Internet and around the globe, as had the word that the colors were really bra colors. Almost immediately, cyber-arguments erupted about what it all meant. The blogosphere went wild. Was so openly and willingly posting something as intimate as one’s bra color an attempt to raise breast cancer awareness? Or was it all just another Facebook ‘send your friend a snowball’ or ‘take your celebrity boyfriend quiz’ silly game? A meme?

Whatever it is, its impact was immediate and dramatic: As bra colors went flying around the net, something strange happened at the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. After two years of intensive efforts to boost its profile through social networking, hiring two full-time people to do solely that, within two hours Friday morning, their fan base on Facebook exploded from 135 to 700.

But it can’t stop there. We must commit everyday to doing all we can to stop breast cancer, and all the other forms of cancer that have killed so many people we love.

The first thing you can do is take preventative measures. Have that mammogram, lower the fat content in your diet, stop smoking. Don’t do it as a New Years Resolution that will be broken almost as quickly as it took to utter the words. Make a commitment.

Urge friends and family to do the same.

I’m sure there’s more we can do … post your ideas below.

sunday funnies