Sandra Quinones's blog

Transformation of the back yard/garden thus far.....

The first pic shows it minus much foliage,.....

 

 

The next pic is after Lei planted a few things.....

 

 

And then we have the 3rd pic with the logs & a lone pink flower stepping stone in the center of that plot o' land.....

  

 

The 4th pic shows after Lei planted a couple of bushy like plants...

 

 

The last two shows are taken from the deck looking down on the area,....the first shot being the "BEFORE" shot of the area and the last pic being the "AFTER" shot of the area......

 

 

Posting on The Daily Dish sums up my thoughts about Michael Jackson more eloquently than I could...

There are two things to say about him. He was a musical genius; and he was an abused child. By abuse, I do not mean sexual abuse; I mean he was used brutally and callously for money, and clearly imprisoned by a tyrannical father. He had no real childhood and spent much of his later life struggling to get one. He was spiritually and psychologically raped at a very early age - and never recovered. Watching him change his race, his age, and almost his gender, you saw a tortured soul seeking what the rest of us take for granted: a normal life.

But he had no compass to find one; no real friends to support and advise him; and money and fame imprisoned him in the delusions of narcissism and self-indulgence. Of course, he bears responsibility for his bizarre life. But the damage done to him by his own family and then by all those motivated more by money and power than by faith and love was irreparable in the end. He died a while ago. He remained for so long a walking human shell.

I loved his music. His young voice was almost a miracle, his poise in retrospect eery, his joy, tempered by pain, often unbearably uplifting. He made the greatest music video of all time; and he made some of the greatest records of all time. He was everything our culture worships; and yet he was obviously desperately unhappy, tortured, afraid and alone.

I grieve for him; but I also grieve for the culture that created and destroyed him. That culture is ours' and it is a lethal and brutal one: with fame and celebrity as its core values, with money as its sole motive, it chewed this child up and spat him out.

I hope he has the peace now he never had in his life. And I pray that such genius will not be so abused again.

 

I was at the Salvation Army last week....

.......donating the last few boxes of our Garage Sale leftovers and saw a woman with her two little kids.  They looked like they could have very well come from Ethiopia or some such place as mentioned in the news article below (as she & her children were the darkest people of color I had seen in a very long time)......

Had me wondering if she, too, did not have to run away from such circumstances as stated in this news article below.....

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8,000 miles away, the past still lingers

Posted by adn_jomalley        Posted: June 24, 2009 - 9:30 pm

 People hold prejudice in their hearts like a secret, Biringanine Bagalwa told me in his Midtown living room on Tuesday. You can’t see murderous intentions in their eyes or hear it in their voices, but don’t think they won’t arrive at your door late at night wanting to kill you. That is one thing he will never forget.

Bagalwa is part of small group of African refugees resettled in Anchorage by the American government. They come from Ethiopia and Sudan, Cameroon and Somalia, Liberia and Togo, Congo and Gambia. Many have lived for years in refugee camps. They have traveled 8,000 miles to start their lives over, but the people who work with them say the traumas of their pasts aren’t left behind.

Bagalwa’s story began in 2002 in the Congolese town of Bukavu, the day militiamen fired shots into his front door. The fighters were looking for his wife, he told me. She is Rwandan by heritage and he is Congolese. The country was being swept by genocide. Rwandans were being killed, and women were being raped and tortured.

When the men broke through his door, Bagalwa’s wife hid in the closet in the next room with their daughters. Bagalwa and his oldest son faced the militiamen. He told them no one was home, but they didn’t believe him. Bagalwa’s neighbors had told them his wife was inside, they said.

In Anchorage, he ran his fingers over a sunken spot on his head. He lifted his shirt and showed me a round scar on his back. He pointed to a puncture mark on his foot and searched for the English word to describe the weapon they used to attack him. A knife on the end of a gun. A bayonet.

As we talked, his wife was curled under a blanket on their couch. She was shy about her English, but I could tell she understood. Michelle Engebretsen, a Catholic Social Services volunteer, sat next to her. Engebretsen put a hand on her arm.

Bagalwa’s attack was brutal, he told me, but what happened to his wife was worse.

“They do many bad things to her,” he said.

Since last year, close to 150 refugees have come from Africa to Anchorage, resettled by the government because the threat of violence makes it impossible for them to return home. About 20 more are expected to arrive this year, according to Catholic Social Services. Many carry scars, both physical and psychological, from the days when their lives were upended in ethnic conflicts, when their family members were killed, when neighbors betrayed them, when they were forced to flee, leaving loved ones many have never seen again.

Engebretsen works with a family mentorship program, helping refugees adapt to life in Anchorage. Her family and Bagalwa’s have been sharing meals and holidays and soccer games since Bagalwa’s family arrived last year. Engebretsen and her husband decided to be part of the program because they wanted their children to gain perspective, she said.

“You can read about it in a book, but these are real people,” she said. “I want them to know these people and appreciate their lives, appreciate their suffering.”

Most of the families’ interactions are mundane. Engebretsen has taken them to doctor appointments and to the grocery store. The grocery was shocking because they were used to outdoor markets, Bagalwa told me. They had never seen so many things wrapped in plastic.

But sometimes the differences between them become more pronounced. Like when they celebrated Christmas together. Bagalwa and his family are Pentecostal.

“It was just sort of like, we don’t do that,” she said. “They had no income. There were no presents. There was nothing unusual or special.”

Michel Villon, another volunteer, has been working with Dede Osibande and Sarah Mbombo, a Congolese couple who live in Muldoon. Osibande is Rwandan by blood. He used to be a teacher in his country, but he fled the Congo after his parents were killed by militants, he told me with Villon translating from French. Their daughter, Cynthia Ngankoy, was born while they were on the run. Now she is 7.

When they arrived last year at their apartment in Muldoon furnished by a charity with secondhand couches and dishes, they were surprised and happy, Villon told me. Africans always say American people have everything, they said. They were sure it was true.

             Villon taught them how to use the stove and shower, and how to lock their front door. He walked them to the bus stop, because for many months they didn’t have a car. Mbombo works as a housekeeper at the Marriott; Osiban is in job training. Ngankoy is taking summer English classes. Their past seemed mostly behind them, but then, on New Year’s, the sound of fireworks made them hide in their bedroom.

“They thought it was gunshots,” Villon told me.  On Monday, Engebretsen was taking Bagalwa’s daughter to soccer practice. I watched her lace up her cleats in her bright orange jersey. Engebretsen told me that Bagalwa got a job as a custodian at the airport and the family has a new car.

“They are survivors and they are going to make it,” Engebretsen told me. I could see she was right. They would get used to Alaska’s long winters and bright summers, the snow and the indoor grocery stores. Their children would learn English and find friends in school.

              But I wondered if any amount of time or distance could help Bagalwa trust his neighbors, and stop him from expecting killers from his past to show up at his front door.

The front yard - thus far this year.....

......is coming along nicely,......perrenials are resurfacing after their "Winter Slumber".....those that chose not to return were uprooted and sent away, replaced by something else.  Not to many did that, just a few. 

 

 

 

 

 

The lower back yard begins it's transformation......

.......and Leiane couldn't be happier - after spending all day yesterday playing in the dirt & getting sooooooooooooooooo much done, yes, she's a VERY Happy Gardener!

 

 

Of course, now we'll be hitting a variety of nurseries & such for plants & such.  Not to mention the fact that some friends of ours have an abundance of FiddleHead Ferns in their yard - that they've offered up for transplanting! 

 

 

The last shot was taken from the top deck looking down at the entire area that was once covered by decking (which we tore out a couple of summers ago with the help of friend - thanks Jesus!).

 

When a tolerant city can't support a simple statement of tolerance

Posted by adn_jomalley        Posted: June 19, 2009 - 10:43 pm

I made it into the Anchorage Assembly chambers on Wednesday just about the time a Christian guy in a red shirt was testifying in detail about how gay people are into flogging. It was X-rated and creepy no matter how you cut it, but it was especially weird because my mom was in the room along with a lot of people carrying Bibles.

There had already been too many crazy-making, repetitive evenings of testimony about whether to add sexual orientation to the city’s non-discrimination ordinance. The ordinance defined “sexual orientation” as straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender. It covered housing and employment. It was not breaking new ground. Similar ordinances exist in more than 100 cities. Some are 30 years old.

But pressure from church groups led assembly members to tinker with it. By Wednesday it was absurd.
The Assembly was actually considering an ordinance that would exclude transgender people completely and would make discrimination against gays and lesbians legal for all private employers in Anchorage. So instead of protecting people from discrimination, they were writing the ability to discriminate into the law.

And they were letting the circular hours of testimony go on and on, including testimony from people who don’t live in Anchorage. I guessed it was because some of those who want the issue to go away were waiting for Dan Sullivan to take office. Sullivan is a conservative guy, and many expect him to veto whatever the Assembly approves. One way or another, it seemed the measure was destined to fail.

I was there because of a photo a friend had posted online of a big black Dodge Durango that showed up at the Loussac Library the day before. It had “Straight Pride. Say no to Homo!” painted on it in white. It shocked me because it tapped into something I don’t come into contact with that often in Anchorage: blatant homophobia.

The thing that was killing me as I sat there was that it was really just an ugly war over something symbolic. Was it going to make a huge tangible change in a huge number of lives? No. It was a simple gesture of tolerance. As it stands, only a tiny fraction of those who call the city’s Equal Rights Commission to complain about discrimination end up going through the process to find a remedy. It could pass and most of Anchorage would wake up the next day largely unchanged. But the Assembly lost perspective on that and couldn’t seem to get it back.

I stepped outside onto the library lawn. It had a tense carnival atmosphere. The Christians, wearing red shirts, waved anti-ordinance signs along 36th Avenue next to the gay people and supporters swathed in rainbow flags. There were hot dogs (Christian) and sandwiches (gay), techno (gay) and hip-hop (Christian). People bobbed heads to respective beats.

Jim Minnery, the head of the Alaska Family Council, caught up with me by the hot dog stand. He’s nice enough and we went around for a while even though we disagreed. His big thing was the issue of Christian businesses having to serve gay people. He gave the example of a Christian gynecologist who refused to do in vitro fertilization for a lesbian couple in California. They sued him under nondiscrimination laws and won, he said. I told him as a far as I was concerned, the Christian gynecologists could be excused from making gay people’s babies.

But I kept thinking about Minnery’s example. In vitro fertilization was one thing, but what about emergency surgery? When you sign up to be a doctor, do you have a right to refuse patients you don’t agree with? Where does religious freedom end and human rights for gay people begin? Is “religious freedom” in this case just a code word for prejudice?

And, what about common sense? Under the ordinance, churches would be allowed to discriminate in their hiring, but church-goers would have to follow the same rules as everyone else. That seemed fair. It’s not illegal for a doctor to say, “I’m obligated to treat you, but I don’t agree with the way you live your life.” If my doctor said that, I’d be getting another doctor in a hurry. If the ordinance passes, it might mean some uncomfortable conversations. I’m not sure uncomfortable conversations infringe on anyone’s religious freedom.

I walked through the crowd reading signs. “Truth is not hate.” “Hate is not truth.” “Everyone snuggles!” Then I ran into a kid holding a sign that said “Gays recruit children.”

“Do you really believe that?” I asked him.

He shrugged, and then looked straight ahead like I wasn’t there.

I went back inside just as Pastor Alonzo Patterson headed for the podium. He’s from Shiloh Baptist, maybe the biggest black church in town. He and my grandparents worked on civil rights issues in Anchorage 30 years ago.

About then I realized we weren’t just talking about Christian doctors, we were talking about any business in the city. Right now a restaurant owner can put a sign out front that says “No gays allowed,” and that would be totally fine. A health club could ban gay people from the pool. I really don’t think that’s the kind of city we live in. So why would it be so hard to make it part of the city code?

Patterson was getting worked up. He was outraged that anyone would compare the civil rights movement to the gay rights movement. Gays weren’t beaten down, he said. They weren’t lynched. I thought about Matthew Shepard, the gay kid beaten to death and tied to a fence in Wyoming in 1998. I thought of gays sent to concentration camps when my grandmother was a girl in Italy.

The ordinance change is about symbolism and that symbolism is important. It’s about making a statement that everyone is welcome here. It’s overdue. It’s common sense. I believe the majority of this town supports it.

But it appears a room full of red shirts is enough to convince some Assembly members otherwise.

MAGPIEs......

.....love these little guys......

Wee One!

5 - McKenna's WEE ONE

Isn't she ADORABLE!  Sela is her name & being cute is her game....... 

View from the roof of thr 4 story building I work in.....

....from May of this year.......

it was a good day for pictures.....and it's a great place to have lunch, catch a few rays & read a good book!

Palin: Just because she bugs you doesn't mean she isn't right

From the Anchorage Daily News - Posted by adn_jomalley Posted: June 16, 2009 - 9:42 pm

I wasn’t surprised when I watched David Letterman’s jokes about Sarah Palin last week. I wasn’t particularly outraged, either. In fact, to be honest, I laughed a little.

For anyone who missed it, the latest scandal in Palin world unfolded after the governor and her husband objected to Letterman’s jokes about Palin looking like a “slutty flight attendant” and her daughter (either Willow or Bristol, depending on how you read it) getting “knocked up” by Alex Rodriguez. Letterman made a weak apology. Palin went on the “Today” show. People organized a “Fire David Letterman” rally. Letterman made a more serious apology. And then Palin Facebooked that she accepted it on behalf of young women everywhere.

My first thought when I watched the clip of Letterman’s jokes at my desk last week was this: Hot lady winks at debates and wears Naughty Monkey pumps and encourages her daughter, the teen mom, to talk about not having sex on national television, and now she’s mad somebody made some sexist jokes? She opened the door. And, Letterman (who isn’t above going lowbrow for a laugh) just walked through it.

And I wasn’t alone. My Facebook filled with messages about how Palin was asking for trouble. Over the weekend, at the Alaska Run for Women, the governor’s flap came up in several conversations. I didn’t hear a lot of sympathy. I did hear questions about the timing. Palin and her family have been victims of sexism since they came to the national stage. Why didn’t she complain about the incest joke on “Saturday Night Live” last fall? Or the Eminem video where she’s depicted as a porn star? It seemed like opportunism. She is no feminist, people kept saying.

“My young female students react to her,” a former teacher of mine told me as we ran together for a while on the trail. “They really, really dislike her.”

I thought about that for the next mile or so. Most of the women I talked to didn’t agree with Palin politically, but I wondered about their reaction, and my reaction for that matter. Part of it was about politics, but it was about something else, too.

The last time I saw Palin in person was in November at Kaladi Brothers in Wasilla. It was early in the morning on Election Day. She was wearing old jeans and a Carhartt jacket, but she still seemed electric, sipping her white chocolate mocha as she smiled into a mob of cameras.

Palin has “that thing” people often ascribe to male politicians like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan. She’s warm, photogenic, telegenic, spunky and easy on the eyes. In male politicians, people call it charisma, but for women, the same quality is more complicated. My guy friends, especially the ones who voted for her, boil it down to one word: hotness.

Hotness is a volatile commodity in the world of politics that can rally supporters and generate suspicion all at once. Think of the prettiest girl in high school. She’s loved. She’s envied. She’s sexualized. People make assumptions about how smart she is. A lot of successful women in politics dial the hotness back. Think Hillary. Think pantsuit and sensible haircut. Palin embraces the hot in her knee-high black boots and lipstick. And that’s part of what makes her so controversial.

Palin’s hotness along with her Lifetime movie personal story made her famous. Standing on the stage of the Republican National Convention, she was the beautiful beating heart of the ticket. It continues to fuel her celebrity.

It’s also a liability that makes her fodder for late-night jokes. And it does something else, too. Palin’s hotness makes women resent her.

I looked out on a sea of women runners filling the trail ahead of me. They wore pink for breast cancer awareness. They’d written the names of their mothers and sisters and friends who’d died of cancer on their shirts. There we were, all moving together down the same path.

Sure, some of us don’t like Palin’s politics, but we should pay attention to what else is going on. I laughed a little when I watched Letterman’s jokes. It wasn’t because they were funny. It was because they were mean. And somehow watching someone be mean to America’s Hottest Governor felt good. And, that wasn’t feminist at all.

The fact is, even with the pumps and the winking, she didn’t deserve it. Maybe Palin is an opportunist, maybe she’s a drama queen, maybe she’s using a feminist argument to make political hay, but in this case her underlying point is right on. Letterman was gross and out of line, no matter which daughter he was talking about. Making Letterman apologize was a win for her and for women everywhere.

There are plenty of reasons to disagree with Palin, and there might even been some reasons to dislike her.
But hotness shouldn’t be one of them.