Last day of the year's magical month. June will be different, hotter, children are all off school, and the fireflies come out because even the longest day of the year does not give out enough light.
Today I saw a post on flying Igbos, so my attention swung there and stayed until I had constructed a page about them, to read, click here.
I have mostly completed the pages on the lovely weekend gatherings to honor Black veterans at Cliveden Mansion, then to the residence of the Dairmount for a birthday party of our guest of honor, and then the next day to the Aces Museum and the park immediately opposite. For pictures and stories about the Cliveden and Dairmount events, click here, and the Day of Honor events, click here. You will enjoy reading about Sergeant Sherman, a WW2 soldier in the segregated US army: he is still smiling and stands straight and has a single mission: to get Dorie Miller awarded the Medal of Honor. Aces Museum, click here.
I have added pages with news feeds from Mali, click here and also from Liberia click here.
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May 25, 2012, Kenyan doing all she could,click here.
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Picture above, I took in Philadelphia on the way to the annual Caribbean Festival in 2009. Antigua & Barbuda was part of the British Empire. So was Grenada, and several more Caribbean countries. This day was called in countries throughout the British Empire, Empire Day, Queen Victoria's birthday.
We celebrated Empire Day when I was a small child in Australia where it was all about fireworks in the evening. I remember a school assembly where we sang songs for each country of the British Empire, before going home to light sparklers and blow up rockets. The next year too many countries had slipped away and fireworks were held off until the first weekend in June.
In 1997, the volcanic eruption in Montserrat that resulted in the evacuation of about 10,000 citizens cut the population of the non-UK British Empire in half. Today say a prayer for all who perished when Britain decided it wanted to rule the world.
Say a prayer for Biafra, one of the worst sins committed by Britain. Say a prayer for the mothers who lost their babies, and their small children and their adult children.
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I remember first hearing this song in the Physiology lab belonging to Professor Peter Gage at the University of New South Wales, in Australia. I first came to the attention of medical student Gavan Schneider in September 1973 and before the month was out, we were engaged.
I was finishing my honors year in Biochemistry, in the lab of Professor EOP Thompson, who worked on his PhD thesis in the UK lab of Professor Fred Sanger on the work that netted Prof Sanger the first of his 2 Nobel prizes (click here for African Nobel laureates). I was determining the amino acid sequence of a monotreme hemoglobin of a monotreme, not platypus, the other one, spiny anteater. The sequence and writing my thesis, I finished early, and I remember hanging out with Gavan night after night while he was finish8ing his project, playing with very primitive computers that were then top-line. And listening to this song.
Ah, I married Dr Gavan Schneider, but I was in a rush to conquer America, and our marriage was left behind in my dust.
But over the next 21 years I married again, and gave birth 4 times, and today I was given the graduation photo of my last born, my daughter. And all I could think was how proud I am of my 4 children, and how I want to kneel down and hug them, cut off my limbs for them.....
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This song, written and sung by Australian Ms Helen Reddy, "I am Woman" is about having a plan based
on a pure heart and a good idea, and not being forced on the ground to
grovel. My daughter Peach, preparing to graduate high school
and go to university to acquire skills to change the world, this song is for you.
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Picture left, I took it in New York during the 49th Nigerian Independence Day Parade. The sign says "Enough is Enough! Let the suffering stop!" and was made by the New York - based Nigerian Democratic Liberty Forum, which has the wonderful slogan "Patriots are never mute." For constanty updated stories from Nigeria, click here.
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So many good things are happening in the 54 countries of Africa. Every day I hear from good people who are doing good things, working hard, keeping their heads down, not drawing attention to themselves.
My primary interest has always been on health: preventing diseases and therapies for diseases. As someone highly at risk for Type 2 diabetes, as are a great many humans, I post a lot about therapies to treat and prevent diabetes. But the single most important way of being healthy is living in a country that is at peace, where the citizens are not in constant battles with the government.
I have started posting news feeds from individual countries of Africa, you can read articles from all over Africa on one page, click here, and from there you can link to country pages with articles from Algeria, Angola, Nigeria, Sierra Leone.
Keep checking back.
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Small pox vaccine was introduced in England in 1721. Polio vaccine was introduced in England in 1956, and my parents, who were both physicians, injected it into me as soon as it became available.
On the left is a picture of 3 children: me and 2 of my 4 brothers in 1957, shortly before my parents vaccinated us against small pox so we could travel on the ship The Southern Cross from England to New Zealand. My elder brother died at 2 months. My youngest brother was born in New Zealand. Yes, that is Australian lawyer Patrick Dodgson in the middle, making sure Robert and I did not kill each other.
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Vaccinations save lives. I have been vaccinated against everything, and with my 4 children, I made sure the health professionals gave them "everything you've got".
Because life is a minefield. Bugs and bullets and even our own DNA are working hard to blow us up all the time. All we can do is get plenty of sleep, stay away from processed foods, get enough iron so we don't bleed to death from a cut or childbirth, get enough calcium so our bones don't break, eat green and fiber-filled vegetables and fruits. And get vaccinated against the very few, very few diseases we can be vaccinated against.
What can we be vaccinated against? Yellow fever, diphtheria, measles, mumps, rubella: all diseases that kill kids, and adults. All diseases we have vaccinations against in the United States are listed by the Food and Drug administration, for the list and other vaccination resources, click here.
Vaccinations against small pox actually eliminated this disease. No mother has to wake up in the morning to see her child ill from small pox, and in the evening bury that child. Small pox is gone. Read the amazing story about eliminating small pox, click here.
I saw a post recently from a friend who has an appalling belief, that vaccinations have only been invented to make drug companies rich and the population sick.
That young man needs to sit on a stool in a corner and watch children who are paralyzed or dying because they were not vaccinated with polio vaccine, for stories, click here.
He needs to talk to the young Nigerian activist from Edo State that I met at an Occupy Nigeria protest in Manhattan, who was not vaccinated until it was too late, he is in a wheelchair because he already had polio. He told me that he believed the vaccine had expired when they gave it to him after it had been sitting around for weeks unrefrigerated, and he had stories about vaccines being watered down before injection.
Cripes. Get your vaccinations only from licensed health professionals who have clearly visible refrigerators.
He needs to talk to Quaker activist and Ganymede Movies LLP board member Christopher Roberts, who now in his 70s is suffering from post-polio syndrome.
If these stories have not broken your heart enough, read about polio and the parents in Northern Nigeria who are making sure that polio is transmitted to their children, through their children. They believe that vaccinations only exist to cause them trouble, I guess that lunatics believing that vaccinations are bad are listened to in Northern Nigeria.
Ahh. Say a prayer for the children who have been condemned to lives paralyzed.
And say a prayer for the parents, to understand that vaccinations save lives. When vaccines are given at the right time.
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A long day at the Africom Philly Health Fair. Great people there, wonderful health professionals giving up their Sunday to talk about health to my friends in the immigrant African and Caribbean communities.
On Friday I drove through North Philadelphia the long way so I could watch my daughter race on the Schuykil River: her final race as a high school student. I drove past a house that had a prominent sign, saying that John Coltrane had lived there.
Ah! John Coltrane lived across the street from Fairmont Park, with its vast fields and mansions and hills and mighty river!
Since Friday I have been hearing John Coltrane play in my head, here is a lovely song that goes on and on.
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The Week before Memorial Day is always frantic. Colleges are in a rush to graduate and kick students out, young couples are in a rush to marry before the weather gets too hot and everyone would rather be swimming in oceans, rivers, lakes, swimming pools.
The British Government does not celebrate Memorial Day. It has managed to maintain an attitude towards America for at least a century that is deep scorn mixed with unbridled admiration.
This attitude was shared by my parents who met as young physicians when bombs were dropping on them in London, across the bridge from the seat of the British Empire and the British Government, the Houses of Parliament, click here. I remember my mother telling me that my father had been offered a job as a pathologist in America but she vetoed acceptance because she did not want her children growing up as Americans.
When I was finishing my PhD I applied for jobs in my native nation. I remember a letter from a Nobel Laureate, hand written, telling me that Britain was finished, had nothing to offer a bright scientist like me, I needed to go to America.
And so I came to Philadelphia in 1978, clutching my PhD, and set about the business of a working scientist and becoming the mother of 4 Americans.
I have done things in America I could not have done elsewhere, no question. And I am reminded of that when I consider 2 stories that have been big this week: the pubic offering of Facebook and the gathering of the world's crowned heads in a party at Buckingham Palace to celebrate Queen Elizabeth's 60 years as Queen of England and the British Commonwealth.
The crowned heads of the world caused a lot of problems in the 20th century. But the people who are guiding the 21st century, for all the emergence of China, are all working and living in America. Bill Gates came out of Harvard, so did Mark Zuckerberg. My personal favorite is Jimmy Wales, who is CEO of Wikipedia, the most exciting successful social project of all time.
My advice to Britain: celebrate Memorial Day. Have a barbecue and a swim and settled down to dream big and change the world. Like Bill, Mark, Jimmy, and Liberia's Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who studied and worked for many years in the United States. And has changed the face of Africa.
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Above, May 18 was the Africom Annual Pre-Health Fair Dinner! A picture I took last night at the Ghanaian restaurant where members of the African and Caribbean communities gathered and enjoyed each other's company. A lot of work has gone into organizing this years' health fair, which is tomorrow! May 20, click here.
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I spent a lot of the day looking for evidence that eating a teaspoon of cinnamon a day can reverse diabetes, make it go away or make you able to live more happily with diabetes.
Looks like it is true: sprinkle it on tea, coffee, oatmeal, baked into bread, cake, read the story and check out the evidence, click here.
Way back centuries ago, before we had insurance, microwaves, refrigerators, we had ancestors who survived childhood and were healthy enough to produce children, who were cared for by adults. Who built houses, bridges, roads, pyramids, empires.... How did they do it? They understood the simplest and most complex of all concepts: everything to take into your mouth affects your health.
Everything. Every fluid, every solid. And not only through your mouth, but through your skin, either soaking in through your skin, or scratching through your skin. Say a prayer for the beautiful young woman who has lost limbs and organs from bacteria that moved in with a leg wound.
Everything you take in through your skin affects your health.
And then we have the huge effects on your health through loving contact of sexual partners. How much does giving birth affect the health of a woman? Completely. Giving birth can kill a woman, and often does, especially if the young woman is in Sierra Leone, click here.
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May 19, today is the
anniversary of the birth of Malcolm X, the father of the tall lady in
the picture! I am the blonde lady. The 2 girls are friends of CACCI,
which is the Caribbean American Chamber of Commerce and Industry Inc.
This is the picture I have been using in Facebook ever since it was
taken, in August 2011 at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn.
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It is Friday night! MJoTA Night at the Movies: a movie about Sierra Leone, http://www.drsusanna.org/sierraleone.html, click here.Or if you are in the mood, movies about tropical diseases, click herePlenty of bomber pilot movies on this site, follow the links to Bombing for Biafra, or Wartime Speeches or movies from last Friday night, click here. Maybe something light? What about Ready, set in Mauritius, watch below.
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Picture above, a group of us who accepted the Queen Mother of Harlem's invitation to the African Burial Ground in August 2011. Structural Engineer Melbourne Garber worked n the African Burial Ground, click here. He is Sierra Leonean and MJoTA has published his story, click here.
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Are you afraid of vaccinations? Come to our Africom Philly Annual Health Fair on Saturday, and talk to medical doctors or nurses or social workers, or all of them. You can even talk to me, and I will direct you, click here.
The bottom line is this: get vaccinated with everything you can.
Vaccinations prevent diseases. The greatest success story is the small
pox vaccine. Every traveler had to be vaccinated against small pox, and
small pox has been eliminated. The same success was hoped for with
polio, but some rumors were spread and polio has a free run in parts of
Africa. Vaccinations that health professionals are permitted to inject in the United States are in a table that you can see, click here.
The MJoTA vaccinations page also includes minutes from the advisory panel on vaccines, which you can download and read, click here.
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Melbourne Garber CEng is a Sierra Leonean, Proud Sierra Leonean. He was born 2 years before Sierra Leone became independence from Britain in 1961, he was born into a country full of hope for good health and education in West Africa. His father was Registrar of Fourah Bay College, I have been there. It is gorgeous, on a mountain. It was the foremost university ion West Africa, it may have been the first.
When he was a young man, when the currency the Leone was a hard currency, he was sent to Britain to study engineering on a Sierra Leone Government scholarship. When he was away his country started collapsing, which collapse was complete during the 1990-2002 civil war.
Mr Garber works in a Manhattan firm as a structural engineer on huge works, one such building was the African Burial Ground. Go to the article MJOTA has published by him, click here.
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Picture at left of room with mirror walls, 2011 Africom Philly Annual Health Fair networking dinner. Network with Africom Philly 6pm Friday night at 5938 Chestnut St, Philadelphia. Dinner, $25 minimum per person. I will take your picture and send you the jpg for a $10 donation to Africom Philly to help defray costs of the fair. Get your picture taken with an Africom Philly leader or a Philly Mayor's Commission leader for a $20 donation. Africom Philly is run by leaders in African and Caribbean communities, our president is Dr Vera Tolbert who is a Liberian-born, German and US educated biological scientist. You can see pictures of her in MJoTA pdfs throughout the MJoTA sites, here is one, click here'
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Pictures of people outside red brick building at left, click on them and you will be taken to picture galleries of the 2009 and 2011 Annual Health Fairs of Coalition of African Communities in Philadelphia. (I was in Sierra Leone in 2010, click here.) The 2012 Annual Health Fair is on Sunday, May 20, 2012 at 4901 Kingsessing Avenue, Philadelphia. Bus from NYC, Newark, Baltimore, DC to Chinatown at 11th and Market, or train or bus to 30th and Market then train, bus or tram to Kingsessing Avenue (about 4 miles from Chinatown, 2 miles from 30th St Station, you could walk, I have done that). ------------------------ When is a questionnaire called a clinical trial, or a study, or a survey? A questionnaire can be part of a clinical trial, in fact, asking questions is an essential part of a clinical trial. And sometimes, as in the National Institutes of Health lifestyle study described below, it can be the entire clinical trial. In 2008 for 6 months I had living in my house a Kenyan who was a graduate of Nairobi University School of Medicine. We drove through Framingham on our way to the Drug Information Association annual meeting, where I presented a talk in a session on professional careers in the pharmaceutical industy. Framingham is the site of the biggest clinical trial in history, an observational clinical trial. For story on clinical trials and Framingham, click here. ----------------------- Coffee is all over the news today because of a report published in the New England Journal of Medicine, click here. This is how the information was collected that turned into the report in the New England journal of Medicine, according to the people who ran the study at the National Institutes of Health: "From 1995 through 1996, we mailed 3.5 million questionnaires to current
members of the AARP (formally the American Association of Retired
Persons), aged 50-71 years, and who resided in one of six states
(California, Florida, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, North Carolina, and
Louisiana) or in two metropolitan areas (Atlanta, Georgia and Detroit,
Michigan). The questionnaire included a dietary section as well as some
lifestyle questions. Over 500,000 people returned the questionnaire,
making this the largest study of diet and health ever conducted! In
1996-1997 we mailed our participants a Risk-Factor Questionnaire which
asked additional questions about lifestyle and behavior. In 2004-2006
we’ve mailed our follow-up questionnaire." If you look at the abstract of the report that was studied, click here, you can see that no-one was hovering over anyone counting cups of coffee drank. What the curious at NIH did was include in this questionnaire a line to ask if the respondent was a coffee drinker, or not. One question, once. No follow-up question about whether the respondent was still drinking coffee, nothing. That question about coffee drinking was answered yes enough times by respondents who lived longer to make the statisticians do cartwheels, and that is why all over the news today are triumphant calls to drink coffee and live longer. As a scientist and someone who made a living writing clinical documents, I looked at the reports sideways and decided to find out for myself what was going on. Simply, coffee drinkers do live longer. A study from Finland showed that coffee drinkers were less likely to develop Alzheimers dementia, click here. Which is an extraordinary finding. A study from Japan shows that coffee drinkers are less likely to get diabetes and other diseases that are part of a mega disease called metabolic syndrome, click here. I rarely drink coffee. Time I did. Gosh! Articles I referred to: NEJM abstract, click here; Japanese coffee drinkers, click here; Finnish coffee drinkers, click here.
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I published a page of photographs that I took from the 2009 annual Health Fair run by Africom Philly aka the Coalition of African Communities in Philadelphia. Click on the picture above and you will be taken to the page, or click here. We are all busy at Africom Philly this week, getting ready for the 2012 Health Fair on Sunday. Come to get tested, come to get advice, come to find how to get treatment at a price you can afford. Or come to watch the soccer games, eat lunch, listen to music or just to hang out with cool Africans from Africa, the Caribbean or from the United States. Africans are in communities all over the world, and Philadelphia is a welcoming place for all Africans. ------------------------- Asthma is a horrible disease, because it kills children and young people. During my 6 years at Sydney Girls High School, one girl who was a current student died: she was 15, her name was Janet Brown, and she died as a result of asthma: her heart stopped when she was sleeping. Her heart had more burden on it than it could bear, that is what happens when a young frail body tries so hard to bring in air. Janet died in 1966. When the world was on fire in Vietnam, in the United States because of civil rights protests, in London because of fashion (fashion?). In Australia we did not notice that the new country of Nigeria was chewing out its own heart. Thirty four years later, in January 2000, at the start of the millennium that was supposed to be clean, new and nonviolent, a baby was born to a young woman still in high school, Colleen Finlay. Six months later Colleen was dead from a massive asthma attack in her parents' house that was so sudden and so violent that Colleen could not be saved. The father of her baby had died before the birth, I was not told how. I would say the saddest event I have been to with any of my 4 children was going with Miles, who was 17, to the viewing, and the next day, to Colleen's funerall. She was his classmate, his friend and the young mother of a baby who was left with no biological parents. Asthma kills. That is why it must be taken seriously. From the CDC and the National library of Medicine: "Asthma continues to take its toll on Americans, with almost 19
million adults (8.2%) suffering from the disorder in 2010,
according to a report from the U.S. Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention.
The CDC analysis also found that more than 29 million (almost 13 %) of adults have been diagnosed with the illness at some point in
their lifetime.
Children are also being hit hard by the wheezing and discomfort of
asthma. According to the report, in 2010 about 10 million children had
been diagnosed with asthma in their lifetime and 7 million (9.4%)
still had asthma.
Rates of asthma are rising, not falling, the experts noted. From 2001
to 2010, the proportion of people with asthma increased by almost 15%. And by 2009, asthma accounted for nearly 3,400 deaths, nearly
480,000 hospitalizations, 1.9 million emergency department visits, and
8.9 million physician office visits."
What really sucks is that children of African ancestry are more likely to have asthma. To access MJoTA asthma news about treatment and prevention, click here.
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Above, photo I took of Dr Chika Onyeani who gave a speech of thanks to the Consul General of Angola during a reception in her honor in June 2011 in Manhattan.
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I wondered why I woke agitated, and then I remembered, today is May 15. On so many years this day has changed my life. In what might be called corrections.
Last year, my correction was in a jail cell in Brooklyn.
I was arrested for sending out a Mother's Day greeting on Mother's Day. Forgive me for not sending out greetings this year.
I was running for president of AAUW NYC, a last-ditch effort to save the branch after the national organization decided to shut us down.
The president Igbo-Salonean-American Dr Nkechi Madonna Adeline Agwu and her assistant treasurer - constant companion Chief Lookman Bashiru Mojeed L&K Sulaimon had wild-west accounting practices in this non-profit 130 year old institution, and had happily endorsed a male candidate for election in a foreign country: Nigeria.
They were mad at me for realizing that they were burning through money in the Nigerian presidential style. In March Lookman sent out to the AAUW NYC membership (mostly white women) a mass mailing of 4 emails with documents he had mostly forged more or less representing some documents he had acquired from me when he and I were sued for $20 million by Christ Apostolic Church lady Evangelist Janet Oluwasolape Ogundipe Fashakin RN, Esq, PhD.
I immediately took out a restraining order against him. Forbidding him from coming to the AAUW NYC house, or any AAUW event, including the April weekend state convention that he and his constant companion had decided to attend together.
Lookman immediately made up some more nonsense and took out a restraining order against me. Which did not work, he could not find me. I artfully dodged service for 6 weeks (remember my name is Dodgson). He finally served me at the funeral of a Yoruba priest. He found some cops who chased me into the bathroom of the funeral reception, who escorted me out.
"Classy!" said the Brooklyn cop I told.
Three days later was Mother's Day, and I sent out a Mother's Day text greeting to every person in AAUW NYC. About 200. I did not look at the names, just typed in phone numbers. I had no idea that I had sent one to Lookman, it is a women's organization and I forgot.
The next day a Brooklyn cop called me, and I arranged to show up at the police station the following Sunday, May 15. I sat down, talked with the cop, who told me he had to arrest me. Lookman had shown up with a stack of letters, phone records, documents proving I had spent the past 3 days trying to contact him in every way known to earthlings.
Eight hours later, Lookman's shady past as a forger caught up with him. The cop walked up to my cell and told me "Lookman is full of s**t. I am releasing you."
My first phone call on the lovely May evening was to a Senegalese photographer I had arranged to spend the afternoon with at a party. Turned out the party was given by dear friend Dr Chika Onyeani, who was with General Ojukwu when Biafra became independent. During the Nigerian Civil War remembrance in January in Queens, he gave a great talk about the circumstances leading up the Biafran War.
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Picture above, my compost heap. Story about the compost heap and nazis, scroll down past the video. ----------- Lovely song below from the immortal Nigerian musician, Cardinal Rex Lawson. To get you moving on a May Monday. And
the Cardinal was singing during the Biafran War, he was there when
Biafra was declared an independent state. He was there when the UK, US
and Russia decided they had killed enough Nigerians and the war ended.
One million dead. I have heard it was 3 million. The greatest tragedy of
the 20th century, in a century that had a lot of tragedies. I
posted a page about the commander of the Biafran forces. Major General
Alexander Madiebo took over as the second and last commander of the
Biafran Army after General Ojukwu relieved Brigadier Hilary Njoku of
the command, click here.
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Nazis are everywhere. Who is a nazi? Someone who hates Jews, Africans, Gypsies, Australian scientists.... What do they do? Spy on you, report your neighbor to authorities, because they hate Jews, Africans.... and you don't hate these children of God, in fact you love them, you might even be them. I live next door to nazis. For the past 6 years I have had Africans staying in my house for a few hours, a few days, a few months. Women, men, children, families. From east and west African communities in the United States, Africa, the Caribbean. All are welcome in my house. Well, I must admit Ta is scary. He is long and lean with dreadlocks, and has a gold front tooth, and he liked to stand outside on the porch and smoke tobacco leaf in the evening. Scary, but harmless, a graphic designer who took shelter in the large basement bedroom for 6 months. He is always respectful, and liked planting trees. And feeding Leo the lion-cat when I was in New York, in DC, in the Caribbean. Ta was a refugee from AAUW New York City, after the antics of Dr Nkechi Madonna Adeline Agwu and her constant companion Chief Lookman Bashiru Mojeed Sulaimon L&K Arounfale (yes, that is him in ACRIS, in 2006, IRS took a $9,000 lien against anything he owns). These 2 were the President and Assistant Treasurer of AAUW NYC, and they forced out the treasurer and took control of the finances themselves. Which meant they paid themselves, and paid themselves well, in the Nigerian presidential style. Ta was not a crook, and ended up being the liaison between the crooks Nkechi and Lookman and the white women who knew that Nkechi and Lookman were crooks but did not have the skills to remove them. Although they tried, oh Lord, they tried, click hereSeeing Nigerians collapse a 130-year institution, favored by Eleanor Roosevelt, Marion Anderson, Gloria Steinem... this was unbearably sad for me, and left a gap in my life, I was no longer going to Manhattan to hang out near the United Nations. So I joined a gym and went swimming every day, and started hanging out at the African Cultural Center, a banquet hall in West Philadelphia that books weddings and events that do not mind not having a kitchen or running water other than in the usually flooded bathrooms, click here. So when AAUW NYC locked its doors and Ta had to leave, I took Ta in so he could reconfigure his life for the next stage. I had hoped he would take the time to reconcile with the mother of his son, or marry a nice Igbo lady, but his experiences with the women's organization shooed all interest in any relationships away from him, and he lived quietly in the basement bedroom, emerging only for cleaning and cooking and his night-time smoke. At the same time a Senegalese web designer also moved in. Moussa Loub was young and Muslim and tall as Ta. He loved cutting down trees and adored short white women who had been in the Peace Corps. I repaired 2 chainsaws and bought a long-handle chainsaw, and he got stuck into cutting down branches, climbing high up on trees. My neighbors did not like living next to Africans. They never did, and they never will. They ignored the Africans for 6 years, but decided enough was enough! So they built the biggest white fence they could. One morning, it was there. I was not asked, which is illegal, but I decided having a sheet fence reflected light, and gave me 6 inches more garden, because they built it entirely within their property lines. But even though they could no longer see Moussa climbing trees and Ta smoking his evening tobacco leaves, they saw them coming and going, and they wanted them out. So they bought a telephoto lens, climbed up on a chair in their 2nd floor bedroom, and photographed my compost heap. And sent the picture into the township police. At court today, where I went to have the case dismissed, the zoning officer told me they called to make sure the town was going ahead with the complaint, because they wanted me and my African friends to move far far away. The zoning officer told me that my neighbors said they thought that the pile was smaller, but they did not understand how it could be, because they had not seen me throw out piles and piles of stuff on trash day, when we pile our trash on the front road. Where could all the stuff on the compost heap have gone? Ah! The zoning officer said he told my neigbors that beavers ate it. Yes indeed. Beavers ate it.
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Lovely Mother's Day! Last night the purple daisies were fully open before my walk through the woods, but when I came back, the flowers had closed, they were sleeping in the evening light. This morning they fully opened to greet Mother's Day, hundreds of them, open and welcoming and celebrating their own life! Breakfast was prepared for me, hot peppers and sweet peppers and oatmeal and tea and mango. That is what this mother eats!
African churches that I know always celebrate Mother's Day in a big way. In Philadelphia's St Cyprian's, the ladies dressed in turquoise wrap skirts and geles with white lacy blouses. And we all danced together, danced while the men prepared and served us food.
Afterwards, my sons called and we talked about Biafra and making movies. My children would certainly preferred having a fat mother who sat home and made cookies and food they can dream about. Well, mothers come in all shapes and sizes, with all sorts of dreams and education, all sorts of aspirations. My wish for Mother's Day is that one day they will look kindly on my work in Africa.
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Lovely Saturday on Mother's Day weekend. My children are tricklng by, they do not quite understand why they got to have a mother who is a scientist and loves Africa. If I want anything for Mother's Day ever, it is that some day, they understand, and take up the fight when I cannot. So many good professionals are working so hard to get information to African communities about the risk of HIV infection. We have the man from Gilead who will show up anywhere, with lunch, and give a comprehensive lecture about the need to prevent, the need to test, the need to treat. We have Dr Ada Okika who runs conferences in the United Nations, and sent me a lovely Mother's Day card yesterday. And we have Africom Philly, click here, which is running its annual health fair all day next Sunday at 4901 Kingsessing Avenue, where everyone can be tested free for HIV infection (I always get tested) and can get counseling to prevent HIV infection, or treat it. An article from the CDC explains the burden of HIV infection in African communities, for full article, click here. For HIV/AIDS updated news, click here. "As of 2008, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that of the 1.2 million persons living with HIV, over 500,000 are African American. Although African Americans represent only 13.6% of the US population, in 2009, they accounted for 52% of HIV diagnoses and 44% of new infections, with a new infection rate 7.7 times that of whites in the US. The HIV prevalence rate for black women is 18 times that for white women, and the HIV prevalence rate for black men is six times that for white men.4 Furthermore, the burden of HIV is greater among some subpopulations. For example, in 2009, when examining behavioral risk groups by age, black MSM aged 13-29 years accounted for 66% of all new HIV infections among blacks. CDC estimates that about 21% of infections among African Americans are undiagnosed.4 Although in 2007 a greater percentage of adult African Americans surveyed reported having been tested for HIV (52%) compared to Hispanics (38%) and whites (34%), 31% of adult African Americans have never been tested5 and over 70% report not being offered an HIV test by their health care provider."
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Above, the Rev Zemoria Brandon, getting ready to answer questions about Sickle Cell Disease at the 2011 Africom Philly Annual Health fair. Pastor Brandon lost her husband to sickle cell disease, and has devoted her life to ensuring that all with this disease live aa long and healthy a life as possible. She runs the Sickle Cell Disease information center next to Faimount Park in South West Philadelphia. Pastor Brandon is a member of Africom Philly, and has been setting up interviews and announcements about the Africom Annula Health Fair. ---------------- Today is Friday, and so I have posted movies on MJoTA Friday Night Movie. The first movie is a delightful story from India about a man in a happy marriage whose wife dies in London, and he does everything he can to keep his adult children connected to India and the family, click here. I love India and the peoples of India. My great-grandparents, lawyer Charles Heathfield Dodgson and his wife
Caroline Tooth Dodgson (heiress to Australian beer fortune) moved to
Dharmsala to be spiritual and act rich, because they were. India was the birthplace of Uncle Rex and my grandfather Hubert, the young soldier in the picture on this page. And India widowed Caroline, who moved her sons and fortune to England, to Mayfield, and watched her fortune slowly vanish in World War 1 (both sons survived unwounded), the Depression and World War II. My youngest brother is the namesake of our great-grandfather. Charles hopped on a boat to India in 1979, when he was 19, hopped off in Madras and spent the next year traveling around India (he even managed to get himself into Afghanistan when the Russians were at war) and has devoted his life to communications in Asia. Our mother, Dr Patience Uprichard Dodgson, click here, never went to India, but endured a lifetime of curries and Indian music because of an abiding Dodgson love of all things Indian. When I visited Australia in 2010, after an absence of 21 years, the first thing Charles did was take me to a Devali festival and to an Indian concert. And in New Jersey, I mostly shop in an Indian supermarket, because it makes me feel at home. And they sell real tea. And I don't drink anything except water and tea. Story of my mother, click here. So because I always loved India, I love Africa. India loves Africa too. India makes a lot of the medicines for Africa. For a page of articles about India in Africa, click here.
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Above, a picture of me I took myself on May 07, 2012. After coming back home after going to court. I won. Notice the Peoples Flag on the mirror. The flag for oppressed peoples. For more on the flag, click here.
For a great story on a Brooklyn farm on rooftops in Brooklyn, New York City, click here.
For a page about that fruit, the persimmon, that looks like a cross between a tomato and the sun, click here.
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I am preparing for the May 25, 2012 Memorial Day celebration at the Aces Museum in Germantown, Pennsylvania, and drove there yesterday to chat with the professional woman who daily puts her heart and soul into running the museum to honor Black veterans and into running her medical practice, Althea Hankins, MD, MEdu. For story about and pictures of the Aces Museum, click here.
Dr Hankins is very proud of her MEdu, that came in the last few years with great effort. She went back to school when she was not seeing patients because she sees the Museum as an opportunity to teach children about science, about health, about the fact that the worst thing that can happen to your health is violence. Nothing like a bullet or a bomb to destroy your health or your education.
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Why war? Why ever? My wise daughter, whose father survived the German genocide of Jews, tells me to follow the money. I saw an article yesterday in an Australian news source. The Australian dollar is higher than the US dollar, as it was when I arrived in Philadelphia as a post-doctoral scientist in 1978. Then, the war in Vietnam had recently finished; now, the war in the Middle East is winding down, and Australia cannot recruit enough soldiers to fill its military. So they are asking US soldiers to become Australian soldiers, because they pay more.
I was having trouble wrapping my head around this. But then I remembered, since World War II, and especially since the Battle of the Coral Sea when the US military unquestionably stopped Japanese conquest of Australia, Australian has relied n US military. National boundaries are arbitrary, both countries started off as British colonies, and each country thinks the other country is the coolest on the planet.
Maybe this is the start of a new country called United States of America & Australia. named like the country of Trinidad & Tobago. And Antigua & Barbuda. Why not. Hawaii is midway between Australia and the west coast of the USA, so Honolulu could become the capital.
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Above, I took this picture way up in the stands during the Penn Relays in 2009.
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Haiku I wrote to describe the seasons, spanning life, how being a mother works for me.
My mother was far more organized than me. She was born August 26, married a man born October 26. Although she was a physician (MBBCh Queens University Belfast 1940) she objected to induced childbirth, her first son was born 4 days after her birthday, her second son a year later, 8 days before, both in August. For me and my younger brother she gave birth in my father's birthday month, October, but missed the month entirely with my youngest brother, who was born 6 days into November.
That untidiness always annoyed her. It was so efficient getting all the birthdays over in August and October.
I rather took after my father. Delighted in confusion and mess. My 4 children were born all over the year, in chronological order, in March, December, September and July.
I wrote these haiku maybe 15 years ago, when every morning I woke and laughed, even 2 or 3 years after my daughter was born, I could not believe my luck in having 3 healthy sons and then finally a daughter. I still can't.
These haiku are published in a book of short stories Emerald Pademelon Press published in 2001, "Tiny Dogs & Violets" by Me!
1. He's only having dinner
She's naming children
Life nudges summer first date.
2. On life's best Spring day,
I push, l;laughing, "It's a boy!"
A tiny hand waves.
3. He wakes, "My ear hurts."
Fever, phone. "Get in the car!"
He holds Mommy's hand.
4.Raspbr'ries picked in hill-top woods
Downfield cows are milked
Bells fill churchyards with mourners.
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Above, 2011 Independence Day parade through Center City Philadelphia.
At Africom Philly, we are getting ready for our Annual Health Fair. I have posted pictures from the 2011 Health Fair, click here.
Africom Philly is all about African communities, but is also all about Africans who are working hard and succeeding in an often hostile country and horrible economy. We have in the organization Africans from the 3 major African groups - from the continent of Africa, from Caribbean African communities and from communities in the United States identified as black, and descended from kidnapped enslaved Africans, native Americans and Europeans, click here.
Doing the rounds of talk shows this week are 2 strong, competent, well-educated, elegant African women, Dr Vera Tolbert and Raphia Noumbissi. They spoke with Susan Lomax yestedray on WURD fm, and they are scheduled to be chatting with others during this week and next week leading up to the fair.
Dr Vera has a PhD in Biochemistry from Germany, where she lived for many years after leaving the land of her birth, Liberia. Her late father, who died last year and was mourned by us all in Africom, was from Togo, and grew oranges for export in Ghana. Dr Vera is the president of Africom Philly, the first woman president. She is employed by a health insurance company as a researcher.
Raphia is from Cameroon, and is a social worker currently employed working in providing treatment and prevention in HIV/AIDS. She organizes a group of Philadelphia health professionals every year to travel to Cameroon and treat patients. This is her second year organizing the health Far, which is a gargantuan task.
All are invited to the Health Fair on May 20 at 4901 Kingsessing Avenue, click here, and to the pre-fair social gathering on Friday, May 18, 2012 at Aku's Kitchen at 5938 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19139 at 6pm until 9pm. Africom Philly is asking for donations of $25, $50, or $100.
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Dr Susanna's guide to MJoTA sites
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Above, physician Althea Hankins MD in the basement of her building at 5801 Germantown Avenue. Read about the ballroom at the top of the building that houses her medical practice, click here.
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I have been steadily updating the pages on diabetes, HIV/AIDS and asthma, to link to them all, click here.
During the past week I have been communicating with the father of a young man whose diabetes is severe. They are in Kenya, and they need help. I am trying to organize diabetes resources so they, and anyone else who needs help, can follow step 1, then step 2 until he or she gets the help needed.
One concern I have is knowledge about medicines for diabetes.
If diabetes has not progressed too far, and no other diseases are evident, diet and exercise can an will reverse diabetes. By this I mean that when food is eaten, insulin will be released by the pancreas normally, and the insulin will take care of the blood sugar, happily moving it into where it needs to go. And blood sugar tests will be normal, which means a fasting blood sugar. Frequently, what is needed is weight loss.
Be careful: if your pancreas is not making insulin, and you have lost a lot for weight and you are frequently urinating, you need to be injecting insulin to survive. Any disease concerning the blood; pressure, sugar, cholesterol, you need to be under the care of a health professional.
When you are diagnose with diabetes mellitus, you may not need to inject insulin, most do not. You can take pills. Some pills squeeze insulin out of your pancreas, some pills make your body respond to insulin. Click here for diabetes resources.
Contact me if you need help, either by email (publisher@mjota.org) or on Facebook (Wanjiru Susanna J Dodgson). I cannot guarantee I can help you, but I will try.
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United States Air Force. Mutiny in the air force? Pilots have spoken publicly about their unwillingness to fly raptor F-22 fighter planes. Very expensive planes, the 187 planes cost the US taxpayer USD79 billion, the most expensive plane in the airforce, according to ABC news. Even with all that cost, they forgot to give pilots something to breathe continuously.
Quote from ABC news: "Despite being the most advanced fighters on the planet, none of the
planes have been used on a combat mission since they went combat-ready
in late 2005. Critics told ABC News that's because the jet was designed
to fight rival, sophisticated fighters – an enemy that doesn't exist
right now."
When are the Bush presidents when we need them? I bet they could find an enemy.
No nonsense like that back in the day when we had the Tuskegee airmen and Count von Rosen and the Biafran Air Force.
But one thing has never changed. Air Force pilots are the brightest and the best in the military, and rarely has a country been good enough for these heroes.
We are moving towards Memorial Day, and the Aces museum in Philadelphia at 5801 Germantown Avenue has a terrific program on May 26.
I was hoping that Captain Okpe would be talking about his experiences as Biafran Chief Pilot at this event, but he has flown off somewhere. You can however listen to him speak on this website, watch videos made of him and read about him. A good place to start is by clicking here.
And the Aces Museum, which is the Black Veterans Museum, watch the video, click here.
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May is always frenetic and fluorescent, even the azaleas and rhododendrons look like they should glow in the dark. We have only a month in South Jersey before we really do have things that glow in the dark, fireflies. So the global war ending operations n Europe with the surrender of Germany on May 8, 1945 was huge, huge news, and a great excuse for a party.
The war ended in Europe on that day, but it not end for Africans, many had ended up in the British Army one way or another; my father Dr MCH Dodgson was 25 and Captain and medical officer for an African regiment? troop? in Burma. My father did not return home to England and his bride for another 2 years because the limited number of ships ferrying soldier out were fewer because of bombs and they had to go all the way back to England to unload soldiers before they traveled all the way back again around the Horn of Africa.
The war ended in Germany, and immediately a German Catholic woman, classified Jewish by the Nazis, and her German Lutheran husband marched up to the local mayor and asked if they could finally be married, immediately! The next day, Ruth Noerdlinger married Gilbert Lothar Blossfeld, and their 4 year old son tasted ice-cream for the first time, read more and listen to the story Roses for Ruth, click here.
When Ruth died in 1993, 3 years after Gilbert, I was given her wedding ring, and I have never taken it off. That enormous promise of hope and love that was born of devastation and genocide is with me 24 hours a day.
VE Day brought a wedding to my children's family, and also a death.
My father's maternal grandmother, Agnes Doherty Dalzell-Piper Canbie (she was widowed twice by Anglican priests) dropped dead on VE Day when no-one could get to her.
I think it was a great day for an old lady to die; the world was fresh and blooming, her grandsons were mostly coming home (Robert Thomas, dead in Italy; Anthony Dodgson, bullets shot the use of his legs out of him in France). Any time I talked to any of her grand-children about her, they laughed before they said anything. Clearly a lot of fun.
How did this affect Africa? Greatly. Nigeria, Kenya, Sierra Leone, Ghana were all British colonies, and the soldiers came home.
Meanwhile in Germany a highly trained Air Force (called the Luftwaffe) was suddenly unemployed and its commander, Hermann Goering, on trial for crimes against humanity. Click here for stories about his nephew, Count von Rosen, and click here his predecessor in the World War II air squadron known as the Flying Circus, the Red Baron.
The Luftwaffe somehow, I really do not understand how this happened, signed a contract with Nigeria after independence in 1960, agreeing to set up the Nigerian Air Force. Read about that in the book written by the Biafran Air Force Chief Pilot, August Okpe, in The Last Flight, click here.
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Ah! When my friend Brother Austin Tuitt sends me a link to a reggae video, you can bet I will post it.
Brother Tuitt is all about Brooklyn, all about Trinidad & Tobago, all about brotherhood of all Africans in and out of Africa, and all about devoting his life to lead oppressed peoples to freedom. His organization commissioned a flag, and you can believe I have one of his flags in my house, next to the cushion I was given by my Guyanian friend Halim and the cushion I bought when I was guest of Zoomradio iin Antigua and Barbuda. Enjoy the video!
For fair balance, a Republican reggae is below it.
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Above, Brooklyn on a lovely January evening. I was in Brooklyn to celebrate the bravery and hard work of Haitians 2 years after the devastating earthquake. Bed Stuy Vollies were first on the ground in Haiti after the earthquake, thanks to the vision and tenacity of the Bed Stuy Vollies Commander Rocky Robinson and the generosity of John Travolta and the Scientologists. God bless them all. Story about Bed Stuy Vollies, click here.
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An essay I wrote some years ago after the Sep 2001 plane
explosions blew me into a year of HIV/AIDS traveling around the US and
Europe to work with experts talking about the protease inhibitor
nelfinavir. It was first published by the European Medical Writers Association in 2002. I like to read it because it reminds me of that time, and because it is still relevant. HIV/AIDS is not going away, click here.Which really hit me when I was in Sierra Leone in 2010, bringing 99 boxes of supplies collected by Zainab Wai-Lansana for her philanthropic organization. Half the boxes were disposable gloves donated by Kings County Hospital. I was chatting with the single medical officer for the region of over 80,000 people after formal handover of supplies. He told me that 2 of his informal midwives, known as traditional birth attendants, had been infected with HIV when they were delivering babies. And the gloves would prevent that happening again. I loved his faith in disposable gloves, and hoped they can indeed block a virus. For a story by Cecil Samba in Sierra Leone about traditional birth attendants, my trip to Nigeria and Sierra Leone in 2010, a story about Bibi, the IMATT dog, click here.
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May 05, 2012. Persimmons, diabetes, Cinco de Mayo, click here.
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I am a member of the African Communities in Philadelphia, a group started in 2000 to address the needs of African immigrants in Philadelphia. We have a health fair every year, free screening for cardiovascular disease, diabetes, eyes, feet, teeth, consultation with a pharmacist.
A great group of health professionals give up their Sunday to treat African community members, and anyone else who wants to show up.
This year the fair is on Sunday May 20, at 4901 Kingsessing Avenue, a huge mansion in the middle of a park that takes up a whole city block. Usually a soccer game or 2 is organize.
Above, a young professional tested me for HIV/AIDS. More pictures from last years fair, click here. Also, videos from African organizations around Philadelphia, some of these organizations are part of Africom Philly, click here.
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I have updated the diabetes resources section, click here.
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Below, a picture of me with Captain August Okpe, who was Squadron Leader August Okpe in the Biafran Air Force.
This picture was taken in Philadelphia, when I drove to New York to collect him, bring him to the Igbo community for a celebration of his heroism, and then drove him back.
That was when I first saw his book The Last Flight. When I finally reached home, after 16 hours of driving a total of 360 miles, I started reading the book, and could not put it down.
That is why I am selling copies of it for August, and am preparing the movie script. The word unique was invented for this book.
For my book review, click here, for video of August when he was bombing for Biafran babies with Count von Rosen who as a young pilot happened to be close to his inlaw, Hermann Goering, click here.
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Friday night is MJoTAtalks movie night!
For tonight I have found 10 movies which are on someone's list of the best movies ever made that are available complete on the internet.
So, I am taking you to a Multiplex. You can watch "It's a Wonderful Life", or "Mr Smith Goes to Washington" or "Nosferatu", or if you are really feeling strong, "The Passion of Joan of Arc".
I may watch one of those, but I know I will watch the movie badly made from my favorite novel, "All Quiet on the Western Front."
Why is that novel, by Erich Maria Remark, my favorite novel? Because it is subtle, which subtlety was lost by Hollywood when the novel was adapted for screen. However, no matter how hard they tried, they could not destroy the message of the movie: that young German men died senselessly in World War I.
During frequent visits with our children to German physicist Lothar Blossfeld in the Black Forest, I often stopped to look at the graves of young German men who had died in World War I. Stone crosses stuck in the middle of fields, looking at mountains and streams and forests. So many. And nearly a century later, as tragic as the day they were fresh.
So many of my own relatives died on the other side. Four Dodgsons, my paternal grandmother;s first husband and step-brother, and I recently learned a whole lot of relatives of my paternal great-grandmother, Mrs Caroline Maud Tooth Dodgson. I remember getting off my bicycle at one of those graves, reading the inscription about God and man, and wondering how many of my relatives he killed. Ah. War is hell.
Enjoy MJoTAtalks Friday Night at the Movies, click here.
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The last few days I have watched a documentary on the 1940 Battle of Britain. After watching the fictionalized account. The documentary was far more exciting, and listening to the speeches of Winston Churchill made me feel that I was there, with my parents who were so young and beautiful, both young physicians patching up the civilians after horrible bombing raids in which more than 40,000 were killed.
Listen to leaders declaring war on Germany after Germany launched the first tri-force invasion (air, land, sea) of Poland in 1939, click here. All I am hearing is sorrow that war had not been prevented, and that war has been declared to block Germany, not conquer it.
Watch videos of Churchill giving stirring speeches, click here. And read the declaration of independence of the nation of Biafra, click here.
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Very exciting times at Ganymede Movies LLP. The movie script and the financial plan are in the middle stages, and will be ready for a meeting of the Ganymede Movies LLP Advisory Board in South Jersey in September.
The first movie project is slated to be a fictionalized version of the stories of Biafran Air Force Squadron Leader Augustine De Hems Okpe, who was Chief Pilot of the defunct nation of Biafra, and after enormously difficult times, went on to become Chief Pilot of Nigeria's defunct national airline, Nigeria Airways. You can read a lot about Captain Okpe on this site, a good place to start, click here. (In April he sent me 200 copies of his book in April, you can buy a copy from me, click here for my book review.)
We have good people on the Ganymede Movies LLP Advisory Board, mostly African, African American and Caribbean African. You will not read their names on any of my sites, the working of the Advisory Board is secret, but you will see how well they do by what comes out of it.
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Don't get diabetes! If you are of African descent,
you have a higher chance of developing diabetes, and you have a higher risk of
dying from it. You can remain diabetes-free forever, or you can cure yourself
of diabetes in the early stages.
Far easier than treating a disease which will cripple you, blind you and then
kill you when your kidney dialysis no longer works or you get a stroke or
massive heart attack. You may have genes that mean you will get diabetes if you
drink sugar drinks, eat salted, fatty foods and are not active.
I have these genes, and I knew that, in 1982 when I gave birth to a big baby (my 2nd, Miles Pekala, was 9lb 13oz; my 4th, Patience Blossfeld Dodgson, was 10lb4oz). Once I knew that my body was programmed for diabetes if I was not vigilant, I decided I did not want diabetes. And to this
day, my blood sugar is normal, blood pressure is normal and blood
cholesterol is normal.
I have compiled some of the diabetes resources on MJoTA.org, to access them, click here.
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New Jersey. As gorgeous as Richard Stockton College looks from the air, it is even more gorgeous to walk around. I met the president when I was a member of the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce in 2008; he is an affable, approachable administrator. And clearly extremely interested in the environment.
And so I was not surprised in 2011 when my youngest son Allister Dodgson-Blossfeld enrolled in the Stockton College environmental studies program. It is the perfect college for an athletic outdoors type like Al. He loves it, and I enjoy driving to the campus, walking around the enormous lake that is in the middle of the campus, and driving to the Jersey shore, which is right next door.
And it is a state university. Which means the fees for students are not exorbitant.
Below is an article that was published in the Richard Stockton College newsletter, written by its staff writer.
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Richard Stockton College April newsletter
Stockton was named one of America’s most environmentally-responsible institutions of higher education.
The Richard Stockton College of
New Jersey has been ranked among the nation’s most environmentally
responsible “green colleges” by the highly respected Princeton Review.
Stockton is included in “The
Princeton Review’s Guide to 322 Green Colleges: 2012 Edition” released
earlier this month in collaboration with the Center for Green Schools
and the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC).
Long an advocate for the
environment and the only college or university in the nation located in a
federally protected pinelands reserve, Stockton demonstrated its
commitments to sustainability and environmental education to earn
inclusion in the volume.
“Since its inception, Stockton
has embraced sustainability and environmentally responsible practices,”
President Herman J. Saatkamp said. “We are New Jersey’s Green College,
fostering accountability and stewardship in research, academic programs,
and student learning in our community, nation and internationally. We
are delighted to be recognized in the Guide to 322 Green Colleges.”
Stockton’s environmental
initiatives and academic programs include one of the nation’s first and
largest closed-loop geothermal heating and cooling systems, a new degree
program in sustainability and a highly ranked environmental science and
marine biology program.
Stockton’s Nacote Creek Field
station is near fresh and salt water estuaries and home to the Coastal
Research Center, one of the nation’s leading resources for the study or
beach erosion and restoration.
The College’s Aquifer Thermal
Energy Storage System (ATES) is the first project of its kind in the
United States. The system, installed in 2008, reduces the amount of
energy used to cool Stockton’s buildings by storing cold water
underground in the winter and drawing it back out in the summer.
Stockton embraces green building practices and includes sustainability
as a major component of its long range strategic planning process.
“College-bound students are
increasingly interested in sustainability issues,” said Robert Franek,
Senior VP and Publisher, the Princeton Review. “Nearly seven out of 10
(in a recent survey) told us that having information about a school’s
commitment to the environment would influence their decision to apply to
or attend the school.”
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Click on any picture and you will be taken to another page or document on MJoTAtalks.org or MJoTA.org
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Click here to register to access free locked pages on mjota.org, mjotatalks.org and drsusanna.org. I will email you only when passwords change. Would you like mjota.org or mjotatalks.org to link to your news or business site or advertise your book, movie, cosmetic? Want to talk? Email to publisher@mjota.org or chat on Facebook Wanjiru Susanna J Dodgson.
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Read the constantly updated news on health from the CDC, FDA and NIH, click here.
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Biafra was the eastern third of Nigeria that tried to become its own
nation on May 30, 1967 because other Nigerians were murdering them, on Jan 15, 1970 the
rest of Nigeria stopped murdering them and they became again part of
Nigeria.
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MJoTAtalks, click here
-MJoTAtalks:
Art Bearing Witness with Omenihu Amachi, click here
-MJoTAtalks: Health with MJoTA publisher, click here
-MJoTAtalks: Fiction with MJoTA publisher, click here
-MJoTAtalks: Music & Youth with Irv & Carlos, click here
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Biafra audio. Listen to speeches by General Ojukwu and the Biafran national anthem. Click here.
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Haddonfield New Jersey mayor is Tish Colombi. Lovely picture of Tish in article on Olympic runner who grew up in Haddonfield, click here.
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Above, Wikipedia conference I attended in Manhattan, January 2011.
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SJ Dodgson. MJoTA 2012 v5n1p520
Picture above, Liberians in the streets of Philadelphia after a Town Hall meeting with elected officials from Liberia. The lady in the long dress is the kick-butt Mayor of Monrovia, capital of Liberia, Mary Tanyonoh Broh. Mrs Broh moved back to Liberia from the United States in 2005 to work in the government of the president of Liberia, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.
In 2011, President Sirleaf was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize along with another Liberian woman and a Yemeni woman, click here.
The president of Africom Philly is Liberian, Vera Tolbert PhD (Biochemistry). Liberian women are tough. Do what they tell you and they will clean up your act, your community, your country.
Dr Tolbert today is inviting you to the Africom Philly Health Fair at 4901 Kingsessing Street, Philadelphia, click here for directions.
From 11am, free physician visits, free HIV/AIDS diabetes, eye, teeth testing. This year we have a psychiatrist. Also advice on sickle cell disease, anything that ails you. And free games, music, clothes, food. Run by the African and Caribbean immigrant communities (we are all immigrants) for the African and Caribbean immigrant communities and anyone else who needs free healthcare or just wants to hang out.
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