Speak Out

Last week Chico State’s president generated a message condemning the actions of a few hateful people. It seems that some misguided person or group had defaced the campaign poster of a non-white candidate for student government. The behavior was deemed unacceptable, declared intolerable. Then, as 23 year-old Joseph Igbineweka, Chico State’s A.S. president who is from Fresno but is of Nigerian descent, was walking alone in the early morning hours of Sunday, he was attacked and repeatedly stabbed by one of two men shouting racial slurs. He sustained multiple stab wounds, one of them nearly fatal. It was only by chance that Igbineweka’s girlfriend was out of town and not with him, or a horrific event could have been much worse. On Tuesday, Chico Police Chief Mike Maloney referred to the incident as a “brutal assault” “characterized as a hate crime” by the Chico police department. On Wednesday, Chico Mayor Ann Schwab promised united efforts between the city and the university in addressing the attack and its future implications. It seems everyone is up in arms over what the general population wants to dismiss as a random occurrence. Why then did the Chico Enterprise-Record website have to remove the comments option from the e-version of the story due to hate speech? The voice speaking on behalf of tolerance must be louder than the intolerant. Which is why I chose to read Muriel Feelings’ Swahili-alphabet book jambo means hello to Scarlett. I’m loud. She’s loud. I figure that’s a good start.

http://www.chicoer.com/advertise/ci_14912583?IADID=Search-www.chicoer.com-www.chicoer.com

http://www.amazon.com/Jambo-Means-Hello-Swahili-Alphabet/dp/0140546529


http://www.answers.com/topic/muriel-l-feelings

Lost And Found

One of the scariest parts of having children is the idea of losing them. I don’t mean euphemistically losing them (although that is terrifying, too), but truly not being able to find them for any heart-stopping reason. There is a process we go through as soon as we notice a missing kid. We progress from exasperation to concern to panic to shrieking at a decibel level that can shatter glass and only dogs can hear. It seems silly afterwards to have been so distraught because, after all, what are the chances that something scary really happened to your child? But the (admittedly paranoid) way I think is that it happens to someone’s child and I am not exempt from the odds. Reuniting with a lost child also has several steps, beginning with hysterical affection and progressing through to threatening all kinds of things for future occurrences. Connor was famous all over Chico for sending me on the I’ve-lost-a-kid roller coaster ride. Literally every store in town went on red alert at some point because of him. Not only was he fast, he could fit, hamster style, into places a fraction of his size where you would never think to look. I tried everything, from strapping him into the cart to the wildly unpopular baby leashes, to no avail. I’d look away and he’d be gone. The little dog in Cyndy Szekeres’ Puppy Lost loses his mommy but remembers to follow the rules until he finds her. Crisis averted. For now.

http://biography.jrank.org/pages/1293/Szekeres-Cyndy-1933.html


http://www.amazon.co.uk/Puppy-Cyndy-Szekeres-Learning-Picture/dp/0307622878