Mothers Matter Fulfills Dreams

From Kristy Davies in Gannett's Courier-Post:
Thousands of personal hygiene, health and beauty products lined about a dozen tables at the Grenloch Community Center in Washington Township. Green, purple, pink, blue, yellow and black shampoo and conditioner bottles stood straight in a line ready to be chosen for a gift basket that could make all the difference to a mother in need on Mother's Day through the Lauren Rose Albert Foundation's Mothers Matter program." I'm very particular because each one is a gift," said Susan Rose, 70, of Cherry Hill and the founder of the organization. "When a woman receives this it has to be beautiful." Scented and decorated soaps, creams, body butters, candles, perfumes, deodorant, lotions and make-up are all used to fill baskets for mothers who might otherwise not receive anything for Mother's Day. More than 2,500 baskets are being distributed this year to women at 45 facilities and organizations such as day cares, drug abuse counseling centers, domestic violence shelters, hospitals and pediatric medical facilities. Rose started the organization, based in Cherry Hill, two years after her daughter, Lauren Rose Albert, was killed in an automobile accident while on vacation in Morocco in 1999. After a year of grieving, friends and family encouraged Rose to do something to honor her daughter. That's when the foundation was born in 2001 after 265 baskets were delivered. By 2005 that amount had more than quadrupled."We receive a lot of support from schools, scout troops, businesses and organizations," Rose said as she weaved in and out of tables full of health and beauty products. "We try to make every basket special." Hundreds of volunteers work to sort, organize and pack the baskets, which are actually in bags because of the sheer number of them. From the end of March until the week before Mother's Day the volunteers work every day and night during the week and even come in on Saturdays. The Star Tour and Riding Club chapter 287 out of Deptford provides about 25 volunteers every Wednesday evening to help Rose with the project. Rose met one of the club's members, Kathy McKenna, of Mantua, at an event at Gloucester County College and the motorcycle club has been involved ever since." My wife and I have been doing this for a long time to help people out," said Frank Jennings, 45, of Woodbury, the club's president. "We each have three kids and know how hard it is on some families and we try to give back a little bit." One of the recipients of the baskets is the Greater Collingswood Children's Center. They have been a part of the program since its inception." It's really exciting for the kids, but also for the parents," said April Weaver, director of the children's center. "It's a natural thing for mothers to take care of the children, everyone, house and job, but not often do they think of themselves and then they're presented with a basket from people they don't know -- parents are blown away by the generosity." Businesses such as the Dollar Tree and Campbell Soup Co. gave toiletries in addition to items from the more than 150 donation bin locations throughout the area. Rose's close friends, Anne Cutler and Clare Carmody, both of Cherry Hill, gave up their golf and tennis activities for six weeks to help their friend with the cause by sorting and packing baskets." I want all of them to have a bar of soap," Cutler said as she maneuvered items in a bag. " All women like a lipstick and nail polish.""It's a good feeling," Carmody said. For now Rose is hoping to find a permanent location for the Mothers Matter program and continue giving baskets throughout the year." I want to do this year round and partner with some other organizations," she said. "I'd like to give baskets for other occasions."

Thanks, Tom!

The following letter ran in yesterday's Philadelphia Daily News:
Thanks to Daniel Cirucci for his great article on death in the secular age, one of the most thought-provoking, insightful and, yes, entertaining pieces of writing I've seen in quite a while.
The spiritual aspects of death and mortality seem to have been forgotten in our current culture, but as a noted clergyman once said, "Death isn't the end, it's just the beginning."
Tom On'Neill
Philadelphia
I know there are some of you who must think that Tom O'Neill is my Irish cousin.
And I'm thinkin: I'd love to claim him.
Yet, the truth is that I have no idea who he is.
But I thank him from the bottom of my heart.

The Radical As Moderate

From Mark Steyn in the Orange County Register:
President Obama's strongest talent is not his speechifying, which is frankly a bit of a snoozeroo. In Europe, he left 'em wanting less pretty much every time (headline from Britain's Daily Telegraph: "Barack Obama Really Does Go On A Bit").
That uptilted chin combined with the left-right teleprompter neck swivel you can set your watch by makes him look like an emaciated Mussolini umpiring an endless rally of high lobs on Centre Court at Wimbledon. Each to his own, but I don't think those who routinely hail him as the greatest orator since Socrates actually sit through many of his speeches. On the other hand, if you just caught a couple of minutes of last Wednesday's press conference, you'd be impressed. When that groupie from The New York Times asked the president about what, during his first hundred days, "had surprised you the most … enchanted you the most … humbled you the most and troubled you the most", Obama made a point of getting out his pen, writing it down and repeating back the multiple categories: "Enchanted," he said. "Nice."
Indeed. Some enchanted evening, you may see a stranger, you may see a stranger across a crowded room, but then he scribbles down your multipart question to be sure he gets it right, and he looks so thoughtful, and suddenly he's not a stranger anymore, and the sound of his laughter will ring in your dreams.
The theater of thoughtfulness is critical to the president's success. He has the knack of appearing moderate while acting radical, which is a lethal skill. The thoughtful look suckered many of my more impressionable conservative comrades last fall, when David Brooks and Christopher Buckley were cranking out gushing paeans to Obama's "first-class temperament" – temperament being to the Obamacons what Nick Jonas' hair is to a Tiger Beat reporter.
But the drab reality is that the man they hail – Brooks & Buckley, I mean; not the Tiger Beat crowd – is a fantasy projection.
There is no Obama The Sober Centrist, although it might make a good holiday song:
"Obama The Sober Centrist
Had a very thoughtful mien
And if you ever saw it
You would say it's peachy keen …"
And it is. But underneath the thoughtful look is a transformative domestic agenda that represents a huge annexation of American life by an ever more intrusive federal government. One cannot but admire the singleminded ruthlessness with which Obama is getting on with it, even as he hones his contemplative unhurried moderate routine on prime time news conferences.
On foreign affairs, the shtick is less effective, but mainly because he's not so engaged by the issues: He's got big plans for health care, and federalized education, and an eco-friendly government-run automobile industry – and Iran's nuclear program just gets in the way. He'd rather not think about it, and his multicontinental apology tours are his way of kicking the can down the road until that blessed day when America is just another sclerotic Euro-style social democracy, and even your more excitable jihadi won't be able to jump up and down chanting "Death to the Great Satan!" with a straight face.

Senator Weather Vane

There are two schools of thought about Arlen Specter's defection (or rather, homecoming) to the Democrats.
The first is that he was so desperate to keep his spot in Congress, so incapable of hearing his name without the honorific "Sen." before it, that he jumped ship to avoid being destroyed in the GOP primary.
That's probably true.
The other is that he no longer felt at home in a party that had become increasingly conservative, rejecting his views on abortion, stem-cell research and trillion-dollar budgets, etc.
That's also probably true.
And guess what? The party is better off without him.
Specter is a weather vane, yielding to the strongest political wind. While he considers himself a "maverick" like his friend John McCain, the truth is that our senior senator is an opportunist.
Or, in his lexicon, a "moderate."
Moderates say they're for limited government spending, but then cast tie-breaker votes for trillion-dollar budgets.
Or think that subsidizing people who bought houses they couldn't afford is the right thing to do, even if those who lived within their means have to pay the bill.
Moderates admit that experimenting with human stem cells is moving into dangerous moral territory, but worth the effort if "real" human beings can be spared any physical pain.
Moderates vote for brilliant judges like John Roberts and Samuel Alito, but single-handedly kill the nomination of the most brilliant of all, Robert Bork. Spector pandered to the hysterics on that one.
Moderates, in a word, are inconsistent and undependable.
I prefer someone with strong convictions, someone who isn't so worried about offending the other side (but with moderates, what side is that?), someone who takes a stand even if it's the wrong one politically and doesn't apologize for being passionate about something. Anything.
To read the rest of Christine Flowers' wonderful column from the Philadelphia Daily News click here.

Obama 'Luck' May Vanish

Steve Holland at Reuters points to Obama's "unprecedented power" and personal popularity but wonders how long the President's good fortune will endure:

How long will his [Obama's] luck last?

With the U.S. economy reeling and millions of Americans without jobs, Obama has his work cut out for him. He has a long list of challenges, and spoke of them at a news conference this week.

"If you could tell me right now that, when I walked into this office that the banks were humming, that autos were selling, and that all you had to worry about was Iraq, Afghanistan, North Korea, getting healthcare passed, figuring out how to deal with energy independence, deal with Iran, and a pandemic flu, I would take that deal," Obama said.

Pollster John Zogby said that after his first 100 days, Obama now embarks on another weighty period in which Americans will want to see evidence that his $787 billion economic stimulus approved in February is working.

"I think by late June, they are going to have to start seeing some of these economic indicators stabilizing or at least some orange cones and hard hats out on the roads -- something that indicates either a stemming of the tide or some kind of progress," Zogby said.

Those who keenly watch the poll numbers also point out that while Obama is personally popular, some of the items on his agenda are less so.

"I think he will always stay personally popular," said Republican strategist Charlie Black, who was a senior adviser on Republican John McCain's presidential campaign last year. "But when you test the individual policies, a majority will tell you we're spending too much money."

"On the policy proposals the jury is out as to how popular they will be," he said.

Calmer In Chief

Cartoon by Glenn McCoy - TownHall.com

Biden Relegated To Train

From the Associated Press:
One day after saying he wouldn't travel in tight quarters because of the swine flu scare, Vice President Joe Biden rode a train Friday from Washington to Delaware. Known for speaking freely, Biden told NBC's "Today" show on Thursday that he had urged family members to avoid airplanes and subways for fear of contracting the H1N1 flu virus. " I wouldn't go anywhere in confined places now," Biden said. The comments infuriated the travel industry and triggered several revisions from the Obama administration, whose official advice is less severe. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano commented, "If he could say that over again, he would say if they're feeling sick, they should stay off of public transit or confined spaces." By Friday night, Biden seemed ready for his own do-over. A longtime rider of Amtrak, he took a train from Union Station to his Delaware home, his office said.

White Men: Don't Apply

As President Obama prepares to make his first nomination to the United States Supreme Court everyone seems virtually certain that the nominee will be a woman and possibly a woman who is also a member of a minority group.
The handwriting is on the wall: White men need not apply.
This from Charlie Savage in the New York Times:
“We think it’s incredibly timely and important that the president replace Justice Souter with a woman, and hopefully more women to come, so that the court will be representative of women in the profession,” said Roberta Liebenberg, a Philadelphia antitrust lawyer who heads the Commission on Women in the Profession at the bar association.
Near the top of many lists of women as possible nominees is Sonia Sotomayor, 54, a federal appeals court judge of Puerto Rican descent. A Yale Law School graduate, she was appointed to the district court by the first President George Bush and elevated to the appeals court by Mr. Clinton.
Other potential candidates among the nation’s appeals courts judges include Kim Wardlaw, 54, and Diane Wood, 58, who was a colleague of Mr. Obama’s when he taught at the University of Chicago Law School.
Two former law school deans, Elena Kagan of Harvard and Kathleen Sullivan of Stanford, are also widely considered to be potential nominees. Ms. Kagan, 49, was an associate White House counsel in the Clinton administration and recently became solicitor general; Ms. Sullivan, 53, is a constitutional law professor.
Curt Levey, the executive director of the Committee for Justice, a conservative legal group, said conservatives were convinced that Mr. Obama would pick a woman to replace Justice Souter and were focusing opposition research efforts on 17 women, whom they have divided into two tiers based on their perceived chances.
“The men are in a separate category,” Mr. Levey said. . . .
Nan Aron, president of the Alliance for Justice, a liberal legal group, said the growth in the pool of women on the appeals courts and in the broader legal world would put pressure on Mr. Obama to pick one.
“There are so many more women in the legal profession and on the bench throughout the country, and it’s imperative to have greater gender representation on all of our courts, including the Supreme Court,” she said.

Showin Off The Gams

We showed the First Lady's big feet so it's only fair that we show the President's long legs.
Yes, that's the POTUS gettin ready to go golfing at Andrews Air Force Base last weekend. Note the Hollywood shades, the sporty cap, the polo with the presidential seal, the proper golf shoes and those smooth, tapered gams.

Riding The Rails

Last night we watched an wonderful documentary on DVD: Riding The Rails: Teenagers On The Move During the Great Depression.
In its extraordinarily tender account of the lives of teenage freight-train riders, Riding the Rails offers a visionary perspective on the presumed romanticism of the road and cautionary legacy of the Great Depression. From “middle class gentility to scrabble-ass poor,” the undiscriminating Great Depression forced 4,000,000 Americans away from their homes and onto the tracks in search of food and lodging. Of this number, a disturbing 250,000 of the transients were children. Through painstaking research and with tremendous sensitivity, the filmmakers relay the experiences and painful recollections of these now-elderly survivors of the rails. After sifting through three thousand letters in response to their call for memoirs from the former teenagers, Michael Uys and Lexy Lovell have compiled a deserving tribute to the memories and experiences of their unforgettable subjects.
We meet the actual teenagers then and now and hear their stories in their own words.
I was struck by some of the similarities between these times and those of the Great Depression. But (thank goodness) I was more struck by the differences. In many, many ways we are in far better shape today than we were then. Still, I'm not sure people care for one another or feel the same sense of camaraderie today that they did then. We seem to have lost something deep inside us; we're more cynical, less trusting, more suspicious, hardened.
Riding The Rails presents a portrait of growth, struggle, heartbreak, loss and maturity. It also illuminates that wanderlust that lurks somewhere in nearly all of us.
This is a rare, sensitive, informative. deeply moving documentary.
Get your hands on it ASAP!