Montebello E-News

 August 14, 2008

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.  
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835 – 1910,
better known by the pen name "Mark Twain", was an American humorist, satirist, lecturer and writer. Twain is most noted for his novels Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which has since been called the "Great American Novel", and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. He is also known for his quotations. During his lifetime, Twain became a friend to presidents, artists, industrialists and European royalty.  

[Twain makes an important point humorously:  check a source before acting on it.]

1.  Anything to Make a Buck?

2. Social-Impact Report, Part 8

3. Announcements

4. Fun Facts about West Virginia

5. The Flashback Quarterback:  Good Idea?

6. Be Aware and Share:  One Man’s Secret to Surviving a Disaster   

7. About Montebello E-News and “My Montebello”

Anything to Make a Buck?  

News flash: Sex is sold to young girls!
by Tracy Clark-Flory, June 24, 2008  

Hold on to your hats, Quebec's Council on the Status of Women has some news for you:  The media hypersexualizes young girls. (No! What ever could they mean?) The council's 100-page report argues that the media is selling sex to younger and younger female audiences and teenagers spend several hours a day watching media that "convey the conception of a sexuality based on inequality, stereotypes and the objectification of women." For instance, a highly popular site among Quebec teens is www.ma-bimbo.com, where the aim is to create an avatar that is "the hottest, coolest, most famous bimbo in the whole world" by buying her breast implants and snagging her a rich boyfriend. And, what do you know, as a result of digesting this cultural cotton candy, young girls are adhering "to the ideology of seduction," says the report. Council President Christiane Pelchat told Montreal's Gazette, "It becomes their role model for behaviour, and we've noticed young people -- both girls and boys -- mimicking what they see." ... http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/2008/06/24/quebec/index.html  

If you answer the multiple-choice questions below and e-mail to lessonanswers@mymontebello.com with “Lesson answers” in the subject field, you will be credited toward a “certificate of recognition in community affairs” to be awarded in 2008 by a local nonprofit organization. 

1. What is the point of the news from Quebec?

(a) Girls are being exploited.

(b) Behavior is being manipulated through advertising.  

2. Should we be concerned about what is happening?

(a) No, because “sexuality based on inequality, stereotypes and the objectification of women” is part of the human condition.

(b) Yes, because “sexuality based on inequality, stereotypes and the objectification of women” handicaps a girl from reaching her potential.

When most companies close the year, they assess their financial performance and thank their customers for sales. While we definitely succeeded on that dimension this year with over 1,000 retail locations across the United States and 300% sales growth, our far more important impact was increasing the quality of life for thousands of women and children across the globe – and we want to thank you for making that possible.  ...
Priya Haji, Co-founder and CEO
“World of Good” Social-Impact Report 2006, http://www.worldofgood.com/impact/index.shtml

A “social-impact report”?  We have heard of “environmental-impact report”;  for example, one has to be filed with regard to the disposition of our Montebello Hills before a decision be made about the hills.  A social-impact report would talk about the probable and possible social consequences of a planned or existing activity.  

Before a social-impact report could be written, the affected group has to be well understood.  The author below says that society has misunderstood a young woman’s desire for motherhood.  

“Gloucester Girls Gone Wild"
Why they did it.
From City Journal, Kay S. Hymowitz, 23 June 2008

The nation’s latest what’s-the-matter-with-kids-today story comes from Gloucester, Massachusetts, and it’s a jaw-dropper.  According to Time, a group of 15- and 16-year-old girls at Gloucester High School made a “pregnancy pact”—an agreement that they would all get pregnant and then raise their kids together.  And at least on the first part of the pledge, they’ve evidently been successful, with one of the baby mamas choosing a 24-year-old homeless guy as her co-parent. ...

The dominant narrative may have had some truth to it in the pre–Madonna/Paris Hilton era. But it ignores several key changes in contemporary teenaged life—changes that the Gloucester posse has graciously illustrated for us. First, many young women who become pregnant these days either want to have a baby (as in Gloucester) or are, at the very least, open to the idea.  In order for birth control to work, you have to use it religiously, and the only way you use it religiously is if you really, really don’t want to get pregnant.  Yet researchers like Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefelas in “Promises I Can Keep” find that’s not the case for many low-income mothers.  They describe young women who speak longingly about the “joys of motherhood” and who find the middle-class penchant for putting off motherhood until the later twenties incomprehensible. ...

In the past, the problem was held at bay by a combination of sexual reticence, social disapproval, and a no-baby-without-marriage rule, since it wasn’t easy to find a presentable boy ready to sign on to a life sentence at 16. No more.  Sexual reticence is now deemed something on the order of a Victorian perversion.  Social disapproval?  Nowhere evident. ... http://www.city-journal.org/2008/eon0623kh.html

FOR EVERYONE.  Time to bite nails?  ...The reason I’m deeply concerned about this is because the press, increasingly, doesn’t have the courage to stand up to government and government propaganda. Or, in some cases, even to report the truth. We’ve now reached the point where I think American journalism is in a crisis. ... Dan Rather, June 23, 2008, http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/78/
american_journalism_in_crisis.html.  

FOR EVERYONE.  Beverly Hospital events.  A variety of events for health maintenance.  For details, Alice at 323.725.5032.

FOR PARENTS AND TEACHERS.  Rotary book fair.  The Montebello Rotary Club, spearheaded by Phyllis Murakawa, sponsored a “Reading for Fun” book fair at Grant Rea Park to reward students from La Merced Elementary School and Montebello Christian School for books they read in class and on their own.  “In order to help promote post high school education, the Montebello Rotary Club wanted to start a program to encourage reading for students in their formative years,” said Murakawa. … By Anne Donofrio-Holter, as printed in Spotlight on Montebello, July – August, 2008.  

FOR EVERYONE.  YMCA awards.  Each year, the YMCA pays special recognition to volunteers who have provided outstanding service and leadership to the Montebello-Commerce YMCA.  ... The following volunteers were recognized at the ... annual dinner on May 29 [2008]:  Marisol Delgadillo, Sanchez-Bernal family, Aikido Men, Kathy Kohn.  Excerpted from Spotlight on Montebello, July – August 2008.

FOR EVERYONE.  Commission meeting.  The Montebello City Planning Commission is holding its regularly-scheduled meeting on Tuesday, August 19, 2008, at 7 p.m. at city hall.  The meeting is open to the public.  For more information, 323.887.1200.

West Virginia is the only state in the Union to have acquired its sovereignty by proclamation of the President of the United States.  [Why did Lincoln do that?]

West Virginia has the oldest population of any state. The median age is forty.  [Why do you think that this would be so?  If one assumes that West Virginia were a poor state, then one might think that the families would be large.  However, if there were a job scarcity in West Virginia, one might think that young adults would be leaving the state.]

According to the crime index for 1997, West Virginia had the lowest crime rate in the country.  [Because of relatively few young people?  Because, generally, people were too poor to become victims of crime?]

On January 26, 1960, Danny Heater, a student from Burnsville, scored one hundred thirty-five points in a high school basketball game earning him a place in the Guinness Book of World Records.  [How tall was Heater?  Recall that, in 1962, Wilt Chamberlain scored one hundred points in a professional game.]

The world’s largest sycamore tree is located on the Back Fork of the Elk River in Webster Springs.  [I hope that the tree be protected.]

Some famous individuals from West Virginia include Pearl Buck, author;  Peter Marshall, television host;  Chuck Yeager, test pilot and Air Force General;  Don Knotts, actor;  Mary Lou Retton, Olympic gold medalist for gymnastics;  Kathy Mattea, country music singer.

Nearly seventy-five percent of West Virginia is covered by forests.

Moundsville is the site of the continent’s largest cone-shaped prehistoric burial mound. The mound is sixty-nine feet high and nine hundred feet in circumference at the base, and was opened on March 19, 1838.  [If nine hundred feet in circumference, what is the diameter or “length”?  Not quite the length of a football field, from goal line to goal line.]

Mrs. Minnie Buckingham Harper, a member of the House of Delegates by appointment in 1928, was the first African American woman to become a member of a legislative body in the United States.

Chester Merriman of Romney was the youngest soldier of World War I, having enlisted at the age of fourteen.  [How on Earth did he get in?]

Thinking outside the box might save us yet.  Take a look at the idea below.  

“A Cost-Effective Way to Save the World?”
June 22, 2008, by Bryan Walsh

If you had $75 billion to spend, how would you save the world? Would you invest it all in alternative energy research, to fight global warming? Would you revamp America's border and port security, to fight terrorism? ...

But what if there were a way to calculate the exact value of global priorities, a way to figure out just how much human suffering we could alleviate per dollar spent?  

That's how the Copenhagen Consensus works. Over the past two years, some of the world's top economists have been crunching the numbers on the most efficient way to spend that $75 billion, roughly the sum total of global foreign aid budgets. ...  

In its work, the Copenhagen Consensus poses a useful question: what if instead of trying to tackle the world's myriad problems in a piecemeal fashion, we focused our efforts tightly on where we could get the most value for our dollar?  It's a very economist — and unglamorous — way of looking at the world. So one of the group's top global priorities is salt iodization for the poorest regions of South Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe.  (An estimated two billion people in the world suffer from iodine deficiency, which can lead to goiter and which can be prevented with iodized salt.)  For $19 million, this problem can essentially be solved. Delivering salt to the developing world isn't as dramatic as saving the polar bear, but the benefit of reducing human suffering is real. "It shouldn't be about who has the cutest animal," says Lomborg. "It's about the value of life." ...

To some degree, Lomborg is right.  It would be a mistake to let fears over warming in the future overwhelm the endless list of ills today, and at times it does seem as if environmentalists care more about climate in the abstract than real human suffering. But not every threat can be broken down in terms of dollars and cents.  Climate change is a unique challenge because if the dire predictions turn out to be right, our planet — and our civilization — might no longer be recognizable.  We remain frustratingly incapable of nailing down how much warming we'll experience over the next century, or what the exact effects of climate change will be.  But we know more every day, and the evidence, while not flawless, is frightening.  By all means spend the money to halt malnutrition, or improve reproductive rights, or clean up water sanitation.  But if I were asked to come up with the world's most pressing challenge, I wouldn't need to crunch the numbers.  It's climate change — because we only have one Earth.

Excerpted from http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1817036,00.html

"Fear Factor"
Surviving a disaster often depends on self-control.
John Robb, 21 June 2008

I’m living, breathing proof that you can survive a disaster.  I’ve lived through two airplane crashes (“catastrophic mishaps” in Air Force jargon), one at the start and one near the end of my Air Force piloting career, as well as a countless number of close calls in between. ...  Based on my experience, the top objective in all catastrophes is to move to a safe zone and take as many people with you as you can.  While this goal may seem simple, achieving it during the onrush of chaos isn’t.  Thinking clearly during a crisis is tough, for reasons more complex than we realize.  Ripley shows us what stands in our way as we navigate what she calls the “survival arc,” which consists of two phases: denial and deliberation.... [This is a book review of The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes, by Amanda Ripley.]

To learn about this newsletter, Montebello E-News, and the accompanying, growing Web site, “My Montebello”, visit www.mymontebello.com.  Also, you will find instructions and contact information for submitting announcements for publication in this newsletter, and for submitting stories to “Montebello Memories” at the Web site.