Supreme Court ruling on Hobby Lobby

"That some religious people believe the Hobby Lobby decision to benefit people of faith misses the underlying scandal: that corporations, legally fictitious person, have been given rights to restrict the behavior of actual persons. 
The owners of Hobby Lobby, or any other corporation, should be free to exercise their religious beliefs; but the corporation, as such, has no religious belief, and should be treated in that way--regardless of the sincerity of the owners. 
The consciences of the employees ought to be respected, in a benefit they earn by their employment. 

Sincerity is not a replacement for the common good--i.e., the good of reason. Those who closed the counters at Woolworth sincerely believed blacks were the children of Ham and should be kept from eating with whites, but such is not a right in a wisely governed country. But, in fact, the majority on the Supreme Court has based its decision not on precedent nor on law, but on a predetermined bias in favor of corporate identity. That is why they should be removed."
 John D. Whitney S. J.

Can you help?

"The village of Xeatzan Alto is in danger of completely sinking. It is urgent to move the families to a safe place.”   

We just received word from Gary Teale, Executive Director of Avivara, in Antigua, Guatemala, that families in Xeatzan Alto have been forced from their homes when the recent rain and mudslides destroyed their houses. 
These  families are now living in a plastic shelter without any electricity or running water. Because they live at an altitude of nearly 8,000 feet, the nights are extremely cold. You can donate through us or directly to Avivara 
Let Kids Be Kids via Universal Giving.

Thank you-

Dear Michael,
Thank you for your response to our appeal to help the families in Xeatzan Alto who have been displaced by the recent flooding and mudslides. Your contribution will really help them as they try to rebuild their homes and lives. We plan to head back up to the village this weekend with additional food, blankets and other supplies thanks to your help. On our last trip up there one of the village leaders actually cried when he said “Avivara are the only people who care about us.” Sadly, the government is too overwhelmed with “bigger” rain-related problems, and Xeatzan Alto is so remote that it doesn’t draw the attention of the bigger humanitarian aid NGO’s here. So again, your donation has really helped give them hope.

"You're kidding, right?"

"3 references including names, relationship, phone numbers, and email. Two references must be from youth (18 years and younger)"

Perhaps the worst, most unprofessional, alarming, incompetent, requirement on a job posting we have ever seen!! This is from an organization that works with kids but wants any semblance of confidentiality, protection of minors tossed to the wind. Incredible-

Email letkidsbekids@mac.com if you want a link to the ad.

Diamond & Smoke

Thank you Dan Niven for a very passionate performance of "Diamond and Smoke" presented last night to a packed crowd at the Eclectic Theater, in Seattle.

Your adaptation from "View from the Tent" brought all Atreus's passions to those in attendance. "Now, if only she could hear..."

http://www.glenbrook.mynetworksolutions.com

Stop the Madness!

Imagine, just for a second, being one of the parents at the high school in Troutdale, Oregon.

When will enough be enough?? 

Today’s shooting in Troutdale, about a half-hour east of Portland, comes just two days after the mass shooting in Las Vegas.

Which came just two days after the shooting at the courthouse in Forsyth County, Georgia.

Which came just four days after the shooting on the campus of Seattle Pacific University.

Which came just a week after the mass shooting near UC Santa Barbara.

Kids Deserve Better!!

Gone Gone Gone

Closed 2014

On a recent visit to the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle I was saddened to see that yet another landmark has disappeared. The Totem House, Seafood and Chowder, Family recipes since 1948, has given up the fight leaving a note on their door stating,

“Goodbye friends,  the economy has overtaken us, we will miss you greatly!”

Four people signed the note.
(Totem House has since re-opened)

It seems to me that more and more funky sites are morphing into condominiums, apartment houses and most unbelievably into - out of state banks bearing names foreign to the local tongue. Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Chase Manhattan Bank have replaced Peoples Bank, Rainer Bank and Seattle First National Bank, all absorbed by these and other larger institutions.

Change is change!

People new to the area never embrace the same emotion to what is no longer.

It all looks and feels great if you are new to the view.

Maybe this is the way it has always been, though I feel we have lost a lot of local color that made us a bit different from the big cities south of us. We still had a sense of humor and balance to who we were without the mantel of financial planning and success hanging over every decision.

Does every stitch of land have to produce some multiple of income to have value?

I miss the “Taj Mahal of Ballard.” Originally opened as Manning’s Cafeteria in 1964 it was taken over by Denny’s Restaurants in 1983. They managed it as a landmark-meeting place until it was leveled, after receiving historic preservation status, to make way for more income.

Architect Clarence Mayhew designed the vanished building from his office in San Francisco. It had a soaring, parabolic roofline referred to as “Googie” which was a dominant style evoking optimism during the cold war days.

I once knew a Russian immigrant who left, what was then called Leningrad, in the pursuit of freedom. She was training to be an English teacher. When she applied to leave she lost her job, school status and her apartment. With a sponsor in Jerusalem, she was given an exit visa allowing her to travel to Israel. Within three weeks of leaving Russia she was a cashier at Denny’s in Ballard!

Imagine the stories that have been swept away by the wrecking ball.

In a flash we lost the Twin Teepees, built in 1937. It was an eccentric place to meet close to Green Lake. It didn’t matter that Northwest Indians didn’t live in teepees as the experience of sitting in the somewhat bizarre environment was worth ignoring the historic misstep.

The Coliseum Theater, built in downtown Seattle in 1916 transformed into a Banana Republic in 1990. Fortunately they were kind enough to leave the façade to jar the memory of us who loved going “downtown” to the films.

Yes, there were ashtrays on the backs of chairs as smoking was allowed in the theater for most of its life.

The Coliseum was designed by B. Marcus Priteca, known as the architect of the Pantages vaudeville theatres between 1911 and 1929. Based in Seattle, Priteca became one of the “most renowned theatre architects” in the nation. In addition to his Pantages work, Priteca also designed the fondly remembered grandstand at the Longacres racetrack in Auburn, Washington.

Longacres moved to a new site renamed Emerald Downs so I’ll refrain from mourning its demise.

We have lost the Queen Anne Theater.  Originally, back in 1925 it was called Stradley’s Cheerio Theater. This was the only theater located on lower Queen Anne near the “counterbalance.”

Yep, income was down.

More recently The Uptown Theater, opened in 1926, is closing due to it “no longer competes effectively in the marketplace.”

There was a time before Seattle was referred to as the Emerald City that we were known as the Queen City. From 1869 to 1982 we carried that moniker proudly.

The Neptune Theater, 1921, in the University District is in the process of redefining itself. The word on the street is they will offer live entertainment.

Lets hope that works out well for all of us.

The Sunset Bowl, 1956, vanished to the screams of memories when the giant machine knocked down the pins for the last time. Gone forever are the five-cent coffees and the fifteen-cent shoe rental.

Gone forever are the neighborhood parties, the Saturday morning kids league, the laughs.

Presently it is a bare lot waiting for “good times to be here again.”

People aware enough to appreciate some uniqueness have saved lots of cool places in our fair city. I am thankful for what we still have but miss those spots that gave you a bit of warmth and a feeling of simpler times when you frequented them.

If Ivars Salmon House, on Lake Union, ever disappears it may be time to put up those billboards that said, “Would the last person leaving Seattle please turn out the lights” that were so prevalent a few decades before Boeing actually moved to Chicago.

For those of you who may have forgotten, Ivar Haglund, “King of the Waterfront” built the first Seattle Aquarium in 1938 on pier 54, owned the Smith Tower before he died, and brought us 4th of July fireworks for years. He successfully opened a number of restaurants, Ivar’s Acres of Clams, Ivar’s, Ivar’s Salmon House along with a few short-lived fish and chip stands. He was one of our more colorful citizens offering an optimistic view wrapped up in his often quoted, “Keep Clam!”

Perhaps it’s time to quit looking back and “Keep Clam!”

Imagine...

Had he not been shot down in June 1968 this might be the America so many of us hoped for---

-PLEASE READ!!

University of Kansas, March 18, 1968
"Even if we act to erase material poverty, there is another greater task, it is to confront the poverty of satisfaction - purpose and dignity - that afflicts us all.

Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things.  Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product - if we judge the United States of America by that - that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage.

It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them.  It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl.

It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities.  It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.

Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play.  It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials.

It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.

And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.
   
If this is true here at home, so it is true elsewhere in world."

Why I Write-

"Why do I write? It's not that I want people to think I am smart, or even that I am a good writer. I write because I want to end my loneliness." Foer. 


At Let Kids Be Kids we have tried to address this in our books, in order to show one giant challenge people face in our community. The challenge of loneliness!!

If you have any questions email us at Letkidsbekids@mac.com

Unloved and uncared...

“We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty.”

Worst places in the world for kids!!

Kids Deserve Better!

Join us in support of all kids needing a hand…

"The World Health Organization defines child mortality as the death of a child under five years old. In 2012, the worldwide number of these deaths was estimated at around 6.6 million annually. That’s 18,000 children per day, four-years-old or younger. The vast majority of these deaths are preventable and result from extreme poverty conditions in the world’s poorest countries.

This gruesome but informative death rate is a key global poverty indicator and has actually been reduced by almost 50 percent in the last 20 years thanks to critical investments made by the global community in health and development. Of course, this doesn’t mean the remaining half of these deaths will continue to be eliminated without further financial investment and intervention. Increased funding for such efforts should be highly prioritized if we want to have the most significant impact possible with our charitable giving and help save children’s lives.

If you want to fight the most brutal forms of extreme poverty, and child mortality specifically, you need to know where it’s taking place. It is helpful to point out which countries have the highest child mortality levels as a percentage of their population. Here are the 10 most dangerous countries to be born in, as of 2012. Spoiler alert — they’re all in Africa. In total, these ten countries bear the burden of approximately 1.8 million child deaths per year, or more than 27 percent of the world’s child deaths. Nearly 5,000 deaths occur each day in these places alone, and that’s just the kids under five. It’s enormous and tragic and mostly preventable.

(frame of reference: United States child mortality rate = 0.7%)

1) Sierra Leone: 18 percent child mortality rate. That’s more than one in six. In the U.S. it’s one in 142. In some European countries it’s less than one in 400. You are literally more than 2,500 percent more likely to die as a child in Sierra Leone than in the United States. Approximately 39,000 child deaths occur each year in Sierra Leone.

2) Angola: 16 percent child mortality rate — 148,000 child deaths per year. Angola’s population is about the same size as New York state, yet they experience more than100 times more child deaths.

3) Chad: 15 percent child mortality rate — 82,000 child deaths per year. Chad’s population is about the same as the state of Ohio but has nearly 70 times more child deaths.

4) Somalia: 15 percent child mortality rate — 65,000 child deaths per year.

5) Democratic Republic of the Congo: 15 percent child mortality rate —391,000 child deaths per year. This is six percent of the world’s child mortality in a single country. DRC’s population is similar to that of France but they suffer more than 130 times more child deaths each year.

6) Guinea-Bissau: 13 percent child mortality rate — 8,000 child deaths per year.

7) Central African Republic: 13 percent child mortality rate — 19,000 child deaths per year.

8) Mali: 13 percent child mortality rate — 83,000 child deaths per year.

9) Nigeria: 12 percent child morality rate — 827,000 child deaths per year. This devastating figure represents 12.5 percent of the world’s child mortality.

10) Niger: 11 percent child mortality rate — 91,000 child deaths per year.

(Mortality figures sourced from WHO and population stats from the CIA)

Of course this list is not comprehensive and will continually change as factors like war, famine, trade and development alter conditions around the world. In real time we know that other countries such as South Sudan will be on this list when data is next released. Each of these nations have different political and economic factors that further exacerbate their already poverty-disposed geographical locations, and their specific health and development challenges vary accordingly. At the very least, a list like this can point us to the locations where health conditions are at their absolute worst and most widespread in a given population.

So now that we know how severe the crises are in these epicenters of child mortality, what can the average person do about it? Is it even our responsibility? The latter question is up to each of us to decide on our own. The former is entirely answerable. Almost half (43%) of child deaths result from premature birth, birth-related complications and other neonatal conditions. For children who make it past their first month, half of the remaining child deaths are attributed to Pneumonia, Diarrhea or Malaria. Investments made in maternal and child health with a focus on obstetric care, midwife training, nutrition, food security, clean water, sanitation, hygiene, vaccination and malaria prevention are a clear necessity in order for progress to continue. There are qualified NGOs working in these same countries, addressing these very needs, and they need more funds to help more people.

The latest data on charitable giving indicates that worldwide just $5 billion is contributed annually from private sources for humanitarian assistance of any kind. To put this in perspective, the U.S. private sector alone donates over $300 billion to other causes each year. It can confidently be estimated that only a fraction of one percent of charitable giving by individuals in the United States supports work that fights extreme poverty, let alone child mortality. At 1% for Humanity, we want to help donors make a difference in the places where poverty and injustice are at their worst. This is why we’ve carefully selected nonprofit partners that work in many of the very countries listed above. For more on the relevance and efficacy of foreign aid, please see my previous post, "The Top 5 Lame Excuses Not to Support Extreme-Poverty Alleviation Work."

Addressing and alleviating child mortality in the world’s poorest communities is one of the most significant challenges and moral obligations we face as a global society. Instead of just waiting for governments to pledge more of their budgets to fight extreme poverty, individuals and businesses in the private sector should step up and support these efforts with more of their charitable giving. We can’t ignore such tragedy and we can’t get so distracted by all the other good causes out there that we neglect the opportunity to help save millions of lives.”

Chicken Soup Brigade

M. Barrett Miller, Managing Director, Let Kids Be Kids, volunteering with Lifelong AIDS Alliance’s Chicken Soup Brigade. This program feeds thousands of people a year who are living with HIV/AIDS and other chronic conditions in the greater Puget Sound area. 

Donations to Let Kids Be Kids or Lifelong provide *Over 900 bags of groceries, *3,400 meals a week, *75 volunteers delivering groceries per week. Thank you for your support.

"When did you form your opinion?"

Last week I attended a presentation entitled “I am Troy Davis” sponsored by a number of organizations working towards the eradication of the death penalty in Washington state.
While waiting for the evening to begin the lady sitting next to me turned to me asking when I first began to form my position on capital punishment. She correctly presumed that I was there as a supporter of ending the death penalty across the country.

My quick memory scan came up with nothing concrete to tell her.

I felt slightly embarrassed that I didn’t have a well thought out reply in my quiver.

Over the next couple of days I wandered back in time to see if I could find when the kernel of disapproval was planted.

I recall being in grade school, in San Francisco, overhearing adults talking about Caryl Chessman and his pending execution.
He was called the “Red Light Bandit.”
One of the older kids, at the park I went to everyday, told us younger kids that the moniker meant way more than his using a red light on his car to make his victims think he was a lawman. I only got the police car image. I had no idea at the time what else it could have meant.
At school one of the kids asked our teacher, a nun, about the upcoming execution and why so many people were talking about it. She brilliantly dodged the question and moved us on to whatever the subject was we were suppose to be concentrating on in class.
Since she didn’t answer, we, of course, wanted to know everything.

One of my friends had twin sisters, high school seniors, who took great joy in pointing out how bothersome we were and how they were planning on having us sold to pirates, as soon as they could figure out how to do that without the finger of the law pointing back at them.

During a brief moment of acceptance, at the kitchen table, by these worldly ladies, my friend Larry asked them to tell us what this whole thing was about. One of them, Janet, looked at us long and hard before telling us that she was totally against anyone being killed by the government. She told us Chessman had kidnapped a couple of girls and hurt them badly while he did it. She left out all the gruesome details that we wouldn’t have understood anyway. She explained that the governor had given Chessman a couple of stays of execution and that she hoped he would not be executed. Her sister agreed with her saying they were going to join a protest at school to spare Chessman.

The rest is a blur of grade school memories, though I do recall when he died. There were protests that were well covered in the newspaper and on TV though I didn’t really focus on them anymore than any other adult news. Part of me, the listening part, was taking in information, even if I didn’t realize it at the time.
One of my older brothers, at dinner, shared how Chessman was in the gas chamber when a phone call come through to the warden telling the warden that Chessman had another stay. Apparently the warden told the caller he couldn’t stop what had begun or the poison would leak out of the gas chamber and kill everyone in attendance. 

The caller, out of nervousness, had misdialed the prison number the first time she tried to pass on the news to the warden. 

That image of him in the death chamber, as the phone rang, stuck in my brain even though it didn’t come back to the surface for years and years.
I recall family members being happy that he was dead. I hope thats a false memory, but I dont think so-

Days later my friend Larry asked his sister Charlotte what she thought about Chessman's death.

After she shared her thoughts, and anger, about the execution I remember her reading to us the remarks of Herb Caen, a legendary San Francisco columnist, who our parents were always quoting about one thing or another.
I looked up his remarks to see if my memory had any truth to it.

Here is what he said.

“The purpose of capital punishment [is] to set an Example. And if this is so, why isn’t it done properly? Why isn't Caryl Chessman gassed in the middle of Union Square at high noon, so that thousands of people (plus millions of TV viewers) can witness the fate of wrongdoers and vow, then and there, never to step outside the law? But no, that would be an indecent spectacle, abhorrent to those who prefer to live by euphemisms. He must be done away with in a gloomy little room surrounded by a protective nest of walls, before the eyes of a few select witnesses - as though the act itself, the final demonstration of the majesty of the law, were some dark and dreadful thing. And a dark and dreadful thing it is.”

Thats when it began...

David has left...

 I attended a casual memorial for David a few weeks ago. He was a great guy and I'm going to miss him. He never totally lost his somewhat bizarre sense of humor or his anger at being sick. Perhaps that anger gave him a few more years.
The following is an excerpt from my book "Ice" which shares the stories of wonderful people I have met on the trail of service.
I was recently at a high school sharing a bit about HIV when one of the parents in attendance remarked that she had read that the epidemic was over. Well, the coverage seems to be over. Yes, there have been great strides and many people are living longer, though not necessarily better. That a full third of the high school kids thought they could be infected by mosquitoes speaks to what is happening in education in some schools.
The Navajo tribe, in Arizona, is experiencing an 18% increase in HIV among it teens, as reported by the N Y Times in November. The country of Greece reported a 22% increase last year.

David

David is somewhere in his late fifties. He works in a music store trying his best to stay current on the music of the day. He has told me that he has run out of interest in the ever-changing music craved by cash flush teenagers. He finds both very boring but he needs the job and the insurance so he dresses the part and talks the talk with his customers. He could, with a little makeup, look like her was a member of Kiss. Not as wrecked looking as Ozzy Osbourne or Keith Richards but well on the road to looking like a close relative.

David has shot or ingested so many drugs he can’t remember which were good and which were horrific. He’s shared more than one story with me on trying to force down drugs when he was so high he couldn’t differentiate between reality and the possibility that he was dreaming of taking drugs. I am pretty sure he still plays with meth every once in a while. Not my role to judge or offer my thoughts unless I am asked.  I most definitely haven’t been asked.

“I have no idea how I became positive. Before this shitty job I had been a base player in, probably, a dozen bands over the years. None were great but we made a living. One of the bands had potential but we blew it partying on the road. We partied non-stop. God only knows how many women came and went on that rickety old bus. It was cool though! It had a huge fucking Condor painted on the side that looked down a valley that looked like it had the shit bombed out of it. We were called the “Black Wings.’ It was a name that worked it’s way through the acid one night when we were broken down outside of Tempe. I remember because I woke up flat on my back next to a cactus tree. A real skinny broad was glued to me. She stuck around until we ran out of money and dope. Probably a grand mother now baking cookies for the kiddies. Funny, I think of her once in a while”

David is a crowd pleaser, particularly if we are speaking with high school or college students. I always ask him to be frugal with his language and he always promises he will. It never works out like that! I’ve only received one complaint about his non stop use of the word fuck and that was from a born again who took exception to David being in her school. She confronted him in the classroom about his language. I held my breath while I watched the wheels turning in his mind on how outrageous he was going to reply to her.  The kids were all at their most attentive when he replied. “I’m sorry. It’s just that when you are afraid all the time you like to pretend like you’re not.”

Dead silence in the classroom followed by clapping and cheering.

“I don’t know whether I want to think I became infected through contact with a woman or from picking up a dirty needle. I guess I prefer the needle, as then I don’t have to think about a woman out there infecting others. Shit, I don’t know how many times we had people in a hotel room or on the road that were sharing our needles. Never thought much about it but I wasn’t thinking clearly most of the time. Safe sex was a joke. The heaps of flesh we waded through didn’t offer objections or suggestions so you did what you did and you moved on. Crazy, huh! To be so fucked up you can’t think about what you’re doing with or to others around you.”

David became positive about four years ago.

“I was feeling shitty. More than usual. I tried to cut down on the drugs by increasing my consumption of alcohol. (Laughing) Well, that didn’t seem to be working as every morning I was tossing my cookies even before I coughed down the first smoke of the day. After about a month or this I wandered into the health clinic down in the market. I didn’t fool them for a second as their first questions were about my drug and alcohol use. Hell, I think I was loaded when I went in the clinic. I filled out their questionnaire and let them prod me a few times taking my blood. One of the nurses told me she bet I was suffering from hepatitis. Would have been nice to have kept her guessing to herself but she was kinda cute and I didn’t want to push her off. The doc shot me full of vitamins and gave me the doc talk on how I was fucking up my life blah blah blah. Heard it before. Heard it from myself more than once. As soon as I could I left with a promise of checking back in a week to get the results of the blood work. I did. Positive. A bomb dropped on me by the cute nurse and a different doc. What I recall the most was that they said it wasn’t a death sentence and I could get support etc. I recall thinking about where to score some smack while they were telling me I would have a pretty happy life if I took charge of my life. Life. Fuck. It was over.  Gimmee some happy drugs and set me adrift on Fantasy Island.”

If David shares how he became infected with an audience he is always humorous and self-effacing. He is ironic, according to himself.   Not sure I understand that but I think I get a glimpse into what he’s thinking about himself. I get it the most when he talks about the loneliness that carpets him. He’s a nice guy trying his best.

Contact us at Let Kids Be Kids if you have any comments.

 

"What? You want my references now?!"

“What?
You want my references now?!”

Recently I saw a posting for an interesting “social justice” job on Facebook. I tracked it as it appeared on Twitter, Tumblr, the Seattle Times, LinkedIn, the University of Washington Daily and distribution far and wide on Google.

Considering the times we live in we can presume that the company offering this part time position will be swamped with applicants.

In their posting they said applicants needed to submit a resume, letter of intent, four writing examples and three references.

A generic email address was offered with a warning that phone calls regarding the position would not be entertained.

Who knows where the documents are going or who is going to read them?
A number of Seattle companies have outsourced the collection of applicants information to unnamed companies who determine who gets in the finals. Who knows how that works!
For those of you reading this who have looked for a job you know your chances of hearing anything after you tailor make your submission is problematic.

References?
More and more employers are asking for references up front.
Why would anyone send in one of their most valuable assets prior to deciding whether or not they wanted to work for XYZ company?
Perhaps desperation to find a job clouds strategic thinking.

Hopefully your application package will get you an interview.
The interview process is not a begging exercise but the opportunity for an applicant to decide if he/she is going to give their valuable time for whatever is being offered in return. You may or may not want to work at the company after you meet the people working there-or get a better idea of what that complex posting description really meant.
Imagine you gave your references prior to deciding the employer was the last place on earth you would labor.
Now what?
Call your references and apologize for wasting their time?
Not a good strategy.
Your references, if they are as good as you think they are, will probably back away under the deluge of calls about your skill set.
Why would you do that to them?
The way it use to work was an applicant would find a position, research the company, get a friend to request all their marketing outreach info, call their competitors, see if you could find anyone who knew anyone there, check out who is on the board, advisory board, who they do business with, so you can get their references, and get a pretty good feel on whether or not you wanted to work there.
The interview is your opportunity to ask all the questions you need answered to determine whether or not you want to full court press them with key references from your quiver of references.
All references are not equal or applicable to all jobs. You need to make a strategic decision on who you want to speak for you and exactly what you want them to say for a specific job with XYZ responsibilities.

Too many people forget that their references need to be protected, respected, honored and not distributed willy nilly to anyone who asks for them.

I offered the above opinion to a number of newly graduated university students looking for any job that will service their debt.

The majority of the group I was speaking with thought I was nuts.

“If you want the job you have to follow what they ask for.”
“Every job at the state asks for references. If you don't give them to them they won’t consider your application.”

Maybe I am nuts?

Comments can be sent to Let Kids Be Kids

 

Australian Aboriginals and Teachabout

The following was received today from a man who has spent most of his life reaching out to various Aboriginal peoples across the Cape York Peninsula, Australia. 
I have been fortunate in that I have traveled with him a number of times to the back a beyond to visit, and stay, with a number of Aboriginal peoples in "their country."
He wrote the following after seeing that his introduction to Teachabout students in Melbourne led me to post a fund raising opportunity on Universal Giving.


"...Glad you are able to do something with the Teachabout mob. 
Even tho dollars may not flow, at least their outfit is now in the domain. 
Their approach has lots of potential if they can get other universities on board. There are a number of rich individuals here who are doing serious work running employment/training initiatives for Aborigines, particularly in mining. 
Universities are providing encouragement for kids from remote communities backed by funding from local community and government. 
There are very promising indicators that the attitudes of the past are slowly fading and a new mood of inclusiveness seems to be emerging, particularly among the young such as Teachabout and other student groups. 
As you will agree, there is an urgent need to educate the up and comers about the total Aboriginal picture because there is still very few who know anything much about our first Australians in a real sense, but that can change quickly if the young future educators are supported to go out to the remote places to see what you and I know so well about the culture. 
Our new prime minister is probably the best hope for improving indigenous advancement. He has always been active in helping in the communities, especially in education, and has now included Aboriginal affairs in his own department, making him the responsible minister for all that happens across the country in that area in the Northern Territory and other places way out beyond the Black Stump..."
Let Kids Be Kids, Advocacy for Those Seeking a Voice.
If you have questions or comments contact us at letkidsbekids@mac.com

 

Students Reaching out with a Helping Hand

On the Pennefather River. Mapoon People
Photo by M Barrett Miller

Let Kids Be Kids is supporting "Teachabout", a youth-led organization, Melbourne University, Australia, that runs a school holiday program for University students to extend and enrich learning to Aboriginal children in remote communities.

The program is currently running twice a year in Minyerri, a remote community 270km/160miles southeast of Katherine in the Northern Territory.

"Teachabout" ran its first program in 2011 with the eager Year 5s and 6s (middle School) at Minyerri School.

Terry Graham, Co-founder, Let Kids Be Kids, has spent most of his life reaching out to those in need in Australia and throughout the Pacific. M Barrett Miller, Co-founder, Let Kids Be Kids, has accompanied Mr. Graham into the outback on a number of occasions to assist his work with various "Aboriginal" tribes.

The name, "Teachabout", closely aligns with the word "tijimbat", a Kriol word from the Roper River region, which means 'teach your kids about everything'.

To see how you can help look at our page on Universal Giving.

For questions/comments email us at letkidsbekids@mac.com