The Smell of Oppression

Sunday I walked out of my door and was greeted by the most awful stench. Not the normal city smell of garbage and pollution, but it was more of a stale musty smell as if Detroit was in desperate need of a bath. I shook it off thinking "Man this city stinks literally" and got in my car and drove to work laughing at the little joke I made. I grabbed a newspaper from the girl selling them on the corner on the way for my dad, who is currently working in Afghanistan and has no way to get a local paper, so that I could send it to him. Since I had tons of time on my hands (we get next to no business for hours on Sundays at my job) I decided to take a look at the paper. I don't want it to seem as if I detest reading the paper but it seems as if everytime you open it there's never anything positive. I'm not saying that the good things about Detroit never get printed but it does seem as if the negative makes the headlines, which probably says something about us as a city but I'm not sure what yet. Every issue seems to get more and more like the tabloids with constant coverage of our city's scandals and downfalls. It makes it very hard to see the silver lining when the black and white tells you that there isn't one. But fortunately I, like many other of our cities residents, have mastered the art of making myself numb to the negativity.
But not this week. This week I allowed all of my built up emotions over ride my brick wall that I was trying to build. I may seem a bit over emotional but that's what happens when you love your city and you have to watch it fail. It's like loving someone knowing everyday that you will probably have to leave them. It's a sad feeling sometimes. So I look at the front page and I read in big bold letters, "It's ok,mommy...don't cry" and there's this picture of a woman hugging her little boy. I stared at the picture for awhile, all the time halfway listening to my co-worker talk about someone's wedding. I tried hard to show that I was paying attention by chiming in with a "yeah", "no way", or "I hear ya' " every now and then at the appropriate times as I read the article. There were stories about various families who have become victims of  Detroit's economic crisis, all of whom never knew where their next meal was coming from. A father who sacrificed eating a good meal for his children, a mother who had no choice but to depend on the free lunch and breakfast programs to feed her son, parents who had to figure out how to tell their young children that there would be no Christmas. How do you tell a 5 year old that Santa was affected by the recession? I'm sure that's a confusing bed time story.
These stories moved me. I looked at my medium coffee and breakfast sandwich from Dunkin Donuts and felt sick. My hunger suddenly disappeared knowing that some little kid would love the luxury of being able to grab a quick morning breakfast, but the thought of wasting food when there were so many hungry out there made it return quickly. I gobbled down my breakfast appreciating every bite as I never had before. I felt guilty for having enough as if I didn't deserve to eat until I was satisfied anymore. I threw the remains of my crime in the garbage and covered it with a paper towel as if to hide the evidence of my greed.
By the time I finished the article I was grief-stricken. I had never really thought about how scarce food was for other people and I thought about the many ways I had taken food for granted.  It was then that I realized that the stench I smelled that morning was the smell of an oppressed city full of people filled with hopelessness. And I decided that I couldn't be numb anymore. I couldn't just pretend that it wasn't happening just because it wasn't directly affecting me. I decided that I had to do something and soon. But what?
My first step is this blog post.
I want people to understand how serious this hunger issue is.
Here are some statistics from soundvision.com:
-According to the Bread for the World Institute 3.5 percent of U.S. households experience hunger. Some people in these households frequently skip meals or eat too little, sometimes going without food for a whole day. 9.6 million people, including 3 million children, live in these homes.
-America's Second Harvest (http://www.secondharvest.org/), the nation's largest network of food banks, reports that 23.3 million people turned to the agencies they serve in 2001, an increase of over 2 million since 1997. Forty percent were from working families.
33 million Americans continue to live in households that did not have an adequate supply of food. Nearly one-third of these households contain adults or children who went hungry at some point in 2000
-According to America’s Second Harvest, over 41 billion pounds of food have been wasted this year.
-According to a 2004 study from the University of Arizona (UA) in Tucson, on average, American households waste 14 percent of their food purchases.
Fifteen percent of that includes products still within their expiration date but never opened. Timothy Jones, an anthropologist at the UA Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology who led the study, estimates an average family of four currently tosses out $590 per year, just in meat, fruits, vegetables and grain products.
Nationwide, Jones says, household food waste alone adds up to $43 billion, making it a serious economic problem.
- Official surveys indicate that every year more than 350 billion pounds of edible food is available for human consumption in the United States. Of that total, nearly 100 billion pounds - including fresh vegetables, fruits, milk, and grain products - are lost to waste by retailers, restaurants, and consumers.




Isn't that bad?

So here's how to help...

First thing is to absolutely make sure that you cut down on food waste. Think about hungry children every time you are about to.

Here's a list of website sthat you can go to if you want to go a step further and donate time or money.

http://thefoodpantry.org/

http://foodpantries.org/

http://www.cofchrist.org/hunger/pantry/default.asp

http://www.lssco.org/lsspantry.html

Also Detroit's Ultimate Fashion week will be giving a portion of the proceed directly to feed the hungry. To become a sponsor visit here.


If you or your business support charities please let me know by sending an email to mzknowitallblog@yahoo.com and I will post a link to your website on the blog.
Read the entire article by Jeff Seidel by clicking here.

Celebrity Infidelities

So Tiger Woods has rocked the media for the past few weeks with the news of his car crash due to infidelity, rumors of a baby out of wedlock, and him leaving golf indefinetly because he needs to be with his family. Yes he has rocked it for sure, so much so that he has inspired my newest blog post. But I don't want to talk so much about Tiger Woods as an individual but more about male celebrities as a whole.
What is it that makes a man think that just because he makes millions that he has the right or the privelege to cheat on his wife? And what is it that makes a woman think that money is a good enough reason to forgive a man for his infidelities?

Is it true what they say? Can money really buy happiness? I'm not sure. I mean I am a woman who loves money but think about this. When your man is famous that makes you semi-famous. So that means everywhere you go you will be known as the dummy who stayed with him. And I'm not saying that if a woman goes back to her man after he has cheated then she is a dummy. What I am saying is that this world is full of nay sayers.

People who are always talking about what they would have done if it was them, the ones who always have the perfect response to a situation that they have never been in. So you have to be prepared for that as a woman. You also have to be prepared to be that woman that every cehating lying dog of a man will use as an example when he comes home with some sorry gift and an excuse for why he cheated. I don't think man ever think about the fact that the media makes a heart break even worse. I mean look at Kate Gosselin, I guarantee if Jon wasn't all in the media talking about how she abused him and making a fool out of him her and tehir basketball team of children, she would have stayed. My conclusion...if you are a celebrity you better either not have a relationship or make sure that you keep everything(and that includes your penis) under wraps!



Don't forget to check out your's truly in the first issue of True Link Magazine. Visit the website to sign up for your subscription.
Don't forget to register for the ICSY Beautiful contest. Visit some of my previous post for more info.

Skinny Jeans : A Not So New Trend

I remember when I was younger about once very year my mother and I would go through her large clothes collection and weed out the things that she had finally decided were definetly out of date, couldn't fit her, or just weren't her style. This was a wonderful time for me because I would then sort through her piles take the rejects and make my own piles. Being the fashionista that I am one pile would be things that I thought were so cute my mother had to be crazy to let go, things that I could cut up and reconstruct to be something totally new, and the absolutely hideous things that I can't believe my mother ever wore and I was so glad that she was giving away-this pile ususally ended up at Salvation Army or donated to some sort of charitable clothing drive. Amongst these piles some time in the late 90's I remember seeing my mother's skinny jeans tossing them to the side thinking it was another fad and would never come back much like the shoulder pad. My mother would say, " You should keep them, everything goes in a big circle there's nothing new.".
It's amazing how many times in life as I grow up and had one of those moments when I realized that the things I thought my parents were absolutely crazy for saying when I was younger come true when I get older. I think about moments like these everytime I slide myself into my skinny jeans, throw on some bangles, and decorate myself with neon make-up and glitter. I look at todays music videos and think " so this is what it looked like back in the day".

So how is it that some people are so shocked and even disgusted by young males wearing skinny jeans? Aren't they just copying the style of men in the 80's who wore straight leg Levi's as they perfected their break dance moves?

Even the founder's of hip-hop Run DMC used to wear skinny jeans and Adidas back in the day? So why is it that now wearing skinny jeans for a male raises unneccesary questions about sexuality?

Come on guys baggy jeans can't last forever. I can't believe rappers such as Jay-Z have actually went as far as to criticize the New Boyz for wearing skinny jeans. Come on they're just kids doing something different.

I'm glad that they are confident enough to go against the grain and try something new. Besides I think skinny jeans are cool and a part of true hip hop.

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It's That Time!

ICSY Beautiful Jewelry and Clothing has joined forces with Mz. Know It All to bring you the first Mz. Know It All giveaway contest!!!!!
Enter for your chance to win a free item of your choice from ICSY Beautiful!!!
Here are the rules...
Must be a blog follower...if you're not already then become one today!
Send your name address and telephone number to mzknowitallblog@yahoo.com
If you are the winner you must send a picture of yourself wearing the item that you won which will be displayed on the ICSY Beautiful website!!!
Winner will be randomely chosen!!!
Winner will be contacted by email and their name will also be posted on the site.

Monogamy of the Black Man

Okay so we have heard all about the Tiger Woods infidelity scandal. I'm not going to go to much into that. If you wanna hear about that its all over the blog-o-sphere. What I want to talk about is a comment that I heard the other day related to this issue. I'm not sure what radio station I was listening to during my daily commute but they were taking callers and this one young lady called in and said that she wasn't suprised to find out that Tiger cheated because he was a black man and that black men are incapable of being monagomous. I am shaking my head as I read this.
When will we stop making excuses like this?
If we all remember Tiger Woods never identified himself as a black man. He was canablanasian or some Harry Potter type species. When he won the PGA tour we didn't say that he won because African American males have greater athletic ability than any others and thats why he won. No he won because he was a great athletic male period!
Besides...to make statements like that woul mean that only black celebrities cheat. Hmmm....so I guess we forgot about David Letterman and his secretary, Josh Duhamel and a stripper, Jude Law and his nanny, and the infamous Bill Clinton scandal(wait you guys consider the last one to be black).
What I am saying is this....every time a black man does something negative it is not because he is a black man. That is another cope out excuse. There are plenty of good black men in this world who don't cheat. I'm proud to say that I have one. And if you are a woman who can't seem to find a good man maybe it's because you aren't a good woman.

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It's That Time

ICSY Beautiful Jewelry and Clothing has joined forces with Mz. Know It All to bring you the first Mz. Know It All giveaway contest!!!!!


Enter for your chance to win a free item of your choice from ICSY Beautiful!!!




Here are the rules...


Must be a blog follower...if you're not already then become one today!


Send your name address and telephone number to mzknowitallblog@yahoo.com


If you are the winner you must send a picture of yourself wearing the item that you won which will be displayed on the ICSY Beautiful website!!!


Winner will be randomely chosen!!!




Winner will be contacted by email and their name will also be posted on the site.