What is going wrong with our city???!! Round 2

Leave it to Glenn Beck yet again to bring national attention earlier to our city today after yet another atrocity...this one occurring at the National Conference of Black Mayors held and hosted here in Columbus by the absolutely inept mayor of our city, Michael Coleman.

As I stated in an email yesterday (and picked up by Mr. Beck - he had to actually confirm that the pdf document I had attached was official), this conference touted a "youth day" event to be hosted by rap artists ludacris and Mos Def. Several hundred public school kids were given the day off today and invited to attend this event. That's what makes this whole affair outrageous!!! Kids were invited to see the creme-de-la-creme of of filth-laced rap artists.

Glenn made mention of the scheduled affair on his nationally-syndicated program this morning in full-blown detail between 10:00-10:30. All of the local press was hot on his heels as Glenn was scheduled in to Columbus this evening for a sold-out event to discuss the Mifflin high school rape incident. A number of the local news stations carried audio segments of Mr. Beck's heated response to the mayor for inviting such an artist to a "youth day" event. Yet amazingly, not one local channel had camera coverage at this particular event today - an event that was to get underway at 11:15 a.m, and one that was thoroughly ripped on Mr. Beck's program...a great media morsel just waiting to happen!!!

Well the hundreds of kids at the event weren't to be disappointed. As was first reported tonight by a local fox station here in Columbus, some other foul-mouthed act performed (again - not a single local station had cameras available for the event today - now tell me how that's possible??). The act was the artist "dead-prez". According to the news report, this act played for nearly 30 minutes and had their sound pulled after the profanities started to roll, including "f... the police, f... the police." Yep, that's teaching our kids well - and all under the watchful eye of hundreds of young kids under the wings of hundreds of this country's mayors...AND THESE FOLKS ARE SUPPOSED TO BE LEADING OUR CITIES???? What is going wrong???
A very pissed off resident! C'mon folks, speak up! It's time to say enough is enough!

Here are a multitude of related links:

dead-prez song lyrics can be found here: http://www.lyricsfreak.com/d/dead-prez/

city of Columbus (with mayor event schedule) here: http://www.cityofcolumbus.org/sample

ludacris song lyric can be found here: http://www.azlyrics.com/l/ludacris.html

What's Happening To Our City?

This week, Columbus and mayor Mike Coleman are hosting the 31st annual meeting of the National Conference of Black Mayor's. In light of the seemingly un-ending string of horrendous events occuring with the Columbus Public schools (including the big Mifflin high school incident), I was appalled at what I saw while perusing the agenda for this conference. I've attached a pdf file that details the agenda. The file can also be found at the city's website located here:
http://www.cityofcolumbus.org/

Take a look at page 2 of this document. Thursday's (today's) 11:15am topic is "Youth Day", featuring special guests Ludacris and Mos Def. I guess I'm getting old, but I've not heard either artists' (I use that term lightly) music, but have heard about the supposed vulgarity in Ludacris' music. Well, I searched on google to learn a bit more about Mr. "special guest" Ludacris, and what's linked below is what I found. I'll warn you, the language in his material is unbelievably graphic!! I cannot believe that a mayor of a city the size of Columbus, or any city for that matter, would have the gall to have such a topic of discussion hosted by jerks like this. No wonder our kids are becoming so screwed up! This is so absurd!

Ludacris lyrics here:
http://www.azlyrics.com/l/ludacris.html

Just one small sample of his music here (1st song on the list linked above), but it's all just like this one:
http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/ludacris/ugotaproblem.html

Sorry to get on a soapbox, but this just ticks me off to no end.
Dave.

A Beautiful Day!

Monday, April 4th, 2005 will be a day I'll remember for the rest of my life. It was absolutely beautiful not only for the weather, but also for an event that took place at Riverside Hospital here in Columbus.

Having come back this past weekend from a trip to my dad and stepmother's in Daytona Beach, the day began as a normal ho-hum, back to the typical grind routine...nothing really out of the ordinary. I was a bit more uplifted in spirit than normal as the day had started with crystal clear blue skies and the birds were chirping up a storm outside. Today would divert a little from my normal routine, as Barb (my wife) had a 9:00 am appointment at Riverside Hospital to have tests run to determine any possibility that our baby may have neuro disorders due to our ages.

After running Christopher to school, Barb came back home and met up with me to head to the hospital. There was just a slight bit of anxiety on my end as Barb had mentioned that her belly felt a little weird. So I was a little concerned.

We weren't at the hospital for long when we were asked to head to the patient room. Barb briefly diverted to make a bathroom pitstop before having the ultra-sound run. While waiting for Barb, I sat in a chair next to the patient table and took in the sights of the room...photo's of the doctor's family, a neat little lighted, gurgling waterfall, large images on the wall of baby's in various stages of development, peaceful, soothing music playing on a radio on a table, and a large tv monitor that we would soon be watching images of our baby cross.

Barb arrived back in the room at the same time as the doctor. The doctor was female, and turned out to be just wonderful! She seemed to enjoy taking images of our baby just as much as we enjoyed watching them cross that large screen. Just as soon as that "wand" was placed on Barb's belly, beautiful images of a perfect baby came across that screen.



Initially the baby was very calm and not making much movement at all, however he was very much alive, as his little heart was vividly pumping away! The doctor continued moving the wand, prodding a bit to get the baby to move a little so that she could get pictures and measurements at different angles. It wasn't long before the baby became very active, doing little summersaults! The baby was going gangbusters, now making it hard for the doctor to get the baby in a "calm" position to get an accurate measure of his heart beat. The neatest miracle of all was when he actually yawned and then took a couple of gulps of amniotic fluid. It came across the screen as clear as day! And to think the baby is a mere 3 inches long, yet so perfect in appearance down to its little hands and fingers.





It was a very moving, wonderful and beautiful day for both of us. Though we had had a couple of ultrasound pictures already taken, these images showed that the fetus had grown into a baby. All day long I could not get thoughts out of my mind how amazing it is that the union of sperm and an egg can grow into a living thing. Life is wonderful and today was truly a beautiful day!