Affleck a Daddy?
Seems that this tidbit has been floating around the gossipsphere for this past week. Jennifer Garner, star of “Alias”, and Ben Affleck, a fellow of heretofore questionable sexuality, are about to be parents.
This should dispel those rumors about Ben. Though we must remember that Michael Jackson has three children.
From E Online
Jennifer Garner's next alias: mommy.
The Alias star is expecting her first child, E! Online and E! News have confirmed.
Multiple sources close to Garner and beau Ben Affleck say the actress is three months along. News of the pregnancy comes just two weeks after several published reports claimed the couple were engaged.
According to E! Online columnist Ted Casablanca, Affleck flew Garner's kin from West Virginia to California in April for his leading lady's 33rd birthday party. The question subsequently was popped in private, Casablanca reported.
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And Sharon Stone Becomes a Parent Again
Well I suppose congratulations are in order. Except this woman is divorced from her husband. So why adopt a child now?
But hey, it is a good publicity stunt.
Just throwing it out there.
From Yahoo.com
Sharon Stone has adopted a baby boy. The baby was born to
"unknown and unrelated parents in Texas" on Saturday, Stone's
publicist, Cindi Berger, said in a statement Wednesday.
Stone, 47, has named the baby Laird Vonne Stone. The actress has a
4-year-old son, Roan. She and her husband, Phil Bronstein, divorced in
2004 after five years of marriage.
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original Blog post
Gwynn Oak and Hairspray
"You really have to go see that play, Pat. You look just like the lead character." I nodded my head at my co-worker's comment. He wasn't the first person to point out to me that the female protagonist in the musical Hairspray, a chubby female wearing the ubiquitous bow in the center of a circle of bangs,- a style very popular during that era- resembled my own chubby middle-aged self. I'd long ago ditched the bow in the circle of bangs hairstyle but was still a chubby, pretty-faced female. As was Rikki Lake in the movie of the same name.
It's an offhand comment made by my colleagues. They could not possibly know that I not only looked the part of the female lead in that musical, I really LIVED it. And it wasn't such a pretty life.
In fact, the writer of that movie, Barry Levinson, is from my home town of Baltimore. He was writing about that city's Gwynn Oak Park, once a darling of Baltimore, the town's only city-based amusement park. Gwynn Oak Park was a hallmark of the civil rights era though many students today have likely never heard of the place. I remember it so well in that it was not only a place of endless hours of my childhood delight, it was also my first introduction to blatant bigotry.
Gwynn Oak Park was a segregated establishment. Colored persons were not allowed entrance.
"Tasha, Pierre and Jerold will be going to the Enchanted Forest," I remember Sister Digna telling my second grade class.
My seven- year old eyes regarded the three students named. They were all colored. I wondered even then just why Tasha, Pierre and Jerold couldn't go to Gwynn Oak with the rest of the class.
Every year the parochial schools of Baltimore rented Gwynn Oak park for a day. We were all given bright yellow badges to pin on our shirts. The badges allowed us entry on any rides in the park as many times as we could get on and off of them. For weeks leading up to the event I was filled with happy anticipation. I loved going on Gwynn Oak's roller coaster. Those times when I'd been to the park with my family a ride on the roller coaster cost fifteen cents a turn. With the badge I could ride it over and over, not limited by the two dollars my Dad would give me for the entire day. The prior year, as a first grade student, I'd rode the roller coaster over twenty times! I remember laying in bed that night and feeling the thrill of the coaster's first big drop by a thrilling dip in my stomach that came from my memory alone. Over and over I would think of the slow climb up the coaster's big hill, then my stomach would react with the same sudden dip and pleasant thrill just as it had when I was riding it earlier that day. This even though I was laying in my own bed! To a second grader, a trip to Gwynn Oak park with unlimited rides was paradise.
That park's roller coaster was nowhere near the height or drop of today's monster coasters. But to an excited seven year old it was as sweet an anticipation as a child could dream.
I wondered why Tasha, Pierre and Jerold couldn't come along. They were parochial school students just like me. What was the Enchanted Forest, I wondered. Why did the Enchanted Forest allow Tasha, Pierre and Jerold to enter when Gwynn Oak would not? Why did the nuns and priests of the parochial schools not rail at the Gwynn Oak management regarding their very un-Christian attitude towards persons of color? Didn't the sisters teach us that Jesus loves everyone? Wouldn't that include Tasha, Pierre and Jerold? Didn't Jesus especially love the little children?
"Patricia, just as soon as you let the colored in Gwynn Oak the place will go down hill," my father patiently explained to me when I presented some of my childish questions to him. His response was probably a typical Baltimore native's attitude of the time and was likely exactly why Gwynn Oak would not allow the colored. I wondered how Tasha, Pierre and Jerold would make the place go down hill any more than I would.
Gwynn Oak eventually became a nationwide focal point of the burgeoning Civil Rights movement. This was when I was right about the age of the Hairspray protagonist. This was when I was old enough to understand the bigotry and hatred of people like my father. This was when I could not forgive the complacent hypocrisy of Baltimore's Christian community.
Because Tasha, Piere and Jerold deserved the same gleeful anticipation of the upcoming trip, as well as the joy of re-living the thrill of the coaster's drop in the following night's dreams. Because there were many children such as myself who grew up not understanding it at first, and despising it later.
Though I was quite white, I would march with the blacks who protested segregation. Young and idealistic, I often couched my participation with an ideal that I was part of it all for Tasha, Pierre and Jerold. My father was often livid with me, badgering me about my stupidity deep into the night. Martin Luther King was my hero.
They were heady and changing times, those mid-sixties of the Civil Rights Revolution. Gwynn Oak eventually began admitting black patrons in response to public pressure. Gwynn Oak eventually died a business death. Urban amusement parks, tiny affairs with dated rides, were part of the past. Though my father righteously maintained that Gwynn Oak would still be around if they hadn't began admitting blacks.
My story's too lengthy and filled with vague innuendoes and the confused memories of a child. When my much younger colleagues tell me how much I resemble the female character in Hairspray I don't have the heart to bend their ears about childhood bedtime thrills and happy anticipation. For sure I could never explain Tasha, Pierre and Jerold. To them it's a happening and popular musical, simply all the rage.
I lived it. The experience helped form me and fashion my mindset.
And I am a far better person for having lived it than for merely resembling the lead female character.
Delaware Phones Me Up
Yon Ladies and Gems there is a mission now upon. For doesn’t someone in the state of Delaware phone me up for this, the second such “opinion poll” I’ve been asked to participate in during the two years I’ve lived in Delaware.
Which isn’t an awful lot, I understand. But consider that of my entire 52 years in Merryland I have never been polled, …ever!
Oddly, I often DO happen to have an opinion.
This past month it was something called DNREC. I had never heard of them but I do know that Delaware is in danger of using up all the possible alphabet combinations for all these government things created by Nanny Minner that her political supporters have jobs.
So I let the initials melt past my ears. I answered the eager young man’s questions and you’ll not believe that I often inserted mine own handsome editorial to the fellow’s dismay.
Either they’ll never call me again or they’ll call me all the time. The young man, who did a fine job by the way, did quite enjoy talking to me. Or so he said.
Now I must investigate.
Here is DNREC’s web site.
I must say it’s one of the better government web sites I’ve seen in a while.
I discover on said web site that DNREC does the following:
Now @Your_Service for Park Passes and Campsite Reservations, Dog Licenses, Hunting & Fishing Licenses, Boat Registration, Asbestos Reporting and On-Site Wastewater Permitting and Licensing!
Only the fellow on the telephone is talking about something called, get this, “Environmental Control’s Green Infrastructure Initiative”.
I note a reference to whatever all that is above in this quote from DNREC’s web site:
Lake Forest High School, Felton, is putting out the welcome mat for birds, butterflies, rabbits, deer and other wildlife while offering students an outdoor classroom that will introduce them to habitat restoration and management techniques that are essential for the future of Delaware's natural resources.
The Kent County school is one of the first in the state to participate in Project Nature Share, a new component of the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control's Green Infrastructure Initiative. The schoolyard habitat program provides materials and expertise to encourage the creation of wildlife habitat areas as learning centers in schools throughout the state.
I also spent the better part of that polling call trying to figure out what this fellow wanted from me.
It was a multiple-choice thing. But before he asked the questions he mentioned that DNREC was now in charge of that Environmental, yada, yada, above, recently signed into law by Nanny Minner.
Right then I knew it was a government bureaucratic boondoggle. Give the woman an election, with the help of the great dead vote in Wilmington, and there’s gazillions of jobs she must fill. Thus all the alphabet agencies.
Also Nanny Minner loves to do surveys. Or hire expensive firms to do surveys. This DNREC survey was just such an idiotic waste of time but I figure Nanny paid off a couple of her political debts by arranging for this survey. To bother citizens like myself.
An example question, and I’m paraphrasing here, was like “What would be the best way for DNREC to reach Delaware citizens?” With choices like a)school b)media ads c)town meetings.
Anyway, that sort of thing.
A complete waste of time and money.
I must conclude with what this “Environmental Control’s Green Infrastructure Initiative” really is in disguise.
It’s nothing more than a program mine own wise self is involved in. Which is the National Wildlife Federation’s Backyard Wildlife Habitat program. A program with a goal of persuading and teaching us all to use our own personal property to invite the wildlife in. Both for our own and their greater good.
To show you how close they are, the NWF has had a schoolyard habitat program and for many years before DNREC got Nanny’s nod. Also, the NWF is very active in the state of Delaware. They’ve already recruited me for three big projects since the NWF reported me to these people in Delaware as having moved from Merryland. Which was true.
And get this…quite a few of these NWF things I’m involved with are in conjunction with some other nature organization! I’m going to be manning a NWF table at a native plant sale sponsored by DNS, or the Delaware Nature Society.
They’re all tripping over each other to save Delaware’s streams, native wildlife, etc.!
Now we have a Delaware state agency doing the same thing.
A complete waste.
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