Monthly Archives: December 2009
It could have been easy
This little girl
waved shyly
free of her parents
out from under the umbrella
free to turn her face to the rain. Read the rest of this entry
Happy Consumer Holiday
My older family members are a bunch of assimilationists. Which I can kind of understand, given family history. Hey, who wouldn’t want to fit in? And I dearly love my grandmother, despite her proclamation that Christmas is an “American holiday.”
Depends on who you view as American, I guess.
So how do we celebrate Christmas? Why, we celebrate it in the true spirit of capitalism!
(It should be noted that what follows is just a collection of loose thoughts that drifted out of my head. Don’t blame me if you read the whole thing and then want ten minutes of your life back.)
First Chinese American woman to serve as federal district court judge
Los Angeles Attorney Dolly Gee today became the first Chinese-American woman in U.S. history to serve as a federal district court judge when the Senate confirmed as a U.S. District Court Judge for the Central District of California.
“Dolly Gee has an exemplary record and she will be an outstanding addition to the federal bench,” said Senator Barbara Boxer, who recommended to President Barack Obama that Gee be nominated. “As a daughter of immigrants from rural China, she personifies the American dream. She used her position as a prominent attorney in Los Angeles to promote racial tolerance and fight for justice for those who face discrimination. I know I speak for many Californians, especially those in the Chinese and Asian American communities, in expressing my pride in Dolly Gee’s historic confirmation as a U.S. District Court Judge for the Central District.”
Words, unheard
Don’t know what to say to you
when you tell me about those angry adoptees
and how you had a hard time listening to them
because their words
weren’t what you wanted to hear.
Read the rest of this entry
Will I lose my ten bucks?
Brandon Piekarsky and Derrick Donchak will remain in jail until their federal trial. We can only hope. It will be the best ten bucks I ever spent.
Attorneys for Piekarsky and Donchak argued for their release. Honor student, altar boy, blah blah blah. But Judge Malachy Mannion cut to the chase: Read the rest of this entry
Grace! Lee! Boggs!
Received an honorary degree from the University of Michigan. Here’s a clip from the University:
Grace Lee Boggs, a labor and civil rights activist, writer and speaker from Detroit, who has been engaged in various social and political movements for more than six decades …
Boggs will receive a Doctor of Humane Letters from the university. She has championed issues related to labor, civil rights and justice for causes such as equal treatment for African Americans, Asian Americans and
women.Boggs was born in Rhode Island to Chinese immigrant parents. By age 25 she had earned a bachelor’s degree from Barnard College and her doctorate in philosophy from Bryn Mawr College. She moved to Detroit in 1953 and married James Boggs, an African-American labor activist, writer and strategist, with whom she worked for more than 40 years.
She and others founded Detroit Summer, a multiracial, intergenerational collective, and she has been involved with the Detroit City of Hope Campaign and the Beloved Communities Initiative.
Boggs has received numerous honors, including two Lifetime Achievement Awards in 2005, from the Detroit City Council and the Michigan Women’s Federation, Michiganian of the Year by the Detroit News in 2007, a Distinguished Alumna Award by Barnard College in 2000, and several honorary degrees. She is an author and her life has been chronicled in a book published by the University of Minnesota Press.
Just like ‘flesh-colored’
Are there any black people at HP? Its facial-recognition software is supposed to track people using a webcam. But as the linked video demonstrates, it is massive fail.
I’m a little surprised given that HP in Palo Alto has a number of people of Asian Indian descent, and they sometimes have dark skin.
Random unrelated HP anecdote follows:
Forever.
A “Chinatown man.”
A “Vietnamese immigrant.”
An “immigrant from Vietnam.”
His name was Man K. Wong, but he went by Mike. According to news reports, he was an IT professional, the manager of a computer company, a 29-year-old married man with many family members and friends. He arrived in the U.S. almost 20 years ago, attended high school and college, made his life.
On Sunday evening, a drunk driver took his life.
They called us racists!
How dare they!
Did you ever notice how downright offensive it is to mention that another person’s words and actions might be perceived as racist? It’s an insult, after all. Vicious and unjustified. Maligning others. Reckless disregard. Unwarranted and insulting our integrity!
Apologize, damn you! Apologize!
