What is this Country Coming To??

For once, I have no words. These two stories horrify me. They anger me. They are both disturbing at the deepest level of common decency.

Multiple Pedestrians Ignore Dying New York Hero Hugo Alfredo Tale-Yax - AOL News

(April 24) -- A homeless man who was stabbed while saving a woman from a knife-wielding attacker lay dying in a pool of his own blood for more than an hour while several New Yorkers walked past without calling for help.

Surveillance video obtained by the New York Post shows that some passers-by paused to gawk at Hugo Alfredo Tale-Yax early Sunday morning and yet kept on walking...read more.

You want to get angry about something that *really* matters? Then get angry about this: From the National Center for Lesbian Rights website: Greene v. County of Sonoma et al.

Clay and his partner of 20 years, Harold, lived in California. Clay and Harold made diligent efforts to protect their legal rights, and had their legal paperwork in place—wills, powers of attorney, and medical directives, all naming each other. Harold was 88 years old and in frail medical condition, but still living at home with Clay, 77, who was in good health.

One evening, Harold fell down the front steps of their home and was taken to the hospital. Based on their medical directives alone, Clay should have been consulted in Harold’s care from the first moment. Tragically, county and health care workers instead refused to allow Clay to see Harold in the hospital. The county then ultimately went one step further by isolating the couple from each other, placing the men in separate nursing homes...read on, it gets worse.

I read the first article on AOL news today and am passing it on intact, via link. The second article, is courtesy of Colleen Lindsay's blog, The Swivet, which I also pass on intact, via link.

If these horrify you as much as they do me, please follow the links on both sites to write letters to the press, sign the petition, etc.

Why? Because it's the right thing to do. We don't have to stand idly by and let the Whackadoodles rule.

America's Food Revolution

For the last decade, an Englishman by the name of Jamie Oliver has given his time, his money, and most endearingly, his heart, to changing people's lives for the better.

Jamie grew up in the kitchen of his father's pub-restaurant, the Cricketers, in Essex. At the age of seven he was helping, by 11 he was prepping. At 16, he knew he would be a chef, so he left school and went to Westminster Catering College, then trained in France before returning to England. After working at a couple of area restaurants, he was approached by production companies for a possible cooking show. The Naked Chef series was born.

In 2002, Jamie invested his life's savings into a charity venture to help young people not in school or employed have a career in the catering industry. The program at Fifteen London restaurant is an ongoing success and three others were added in Amsterdam, Cornwall and Melbourne. A TV series called Jamie's Kitchen followed Jamie on this journey. The Fifteen Foundation charity is now funded by proceeds from his bestselling cookbook Cook with Jamie.

This was only the beginning of Jamie's burgeoning mission.

In 2004, he launched the School Dinners program to bring healthy food to Britain's school system. In 2008, after realizing the kids weren't eating any better at home than at school, he started the Ministry of Food program. Last year in 2009, he brought his fight for healthy food for children across the pond. And Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution was born.

This is Jamie's message, straight from his website: "I believe that every child in America has the right to fresh, nutritious school meals, and that every family deserves real, honest, wholesome food. Too many people are being affected by what they eat. It's time for a national revolution. America needs to stand up for better food!..."

"Okay," you say. "What's so whackadoodle about that?"

Not a thing. I applaud Jamie and embrace his mission with open arms.

What IS whackadoodle, though, is this. Following are two short clips. One was filmed in England and one in America. In both, Jamie shows school kids (of about the same age) how chicken nuggets, a common, even prevalent 'food' are made. In England, the kids are disgusted and refuse to eat the proferred nuggets, after their secret is revealed. The American kids dive right in. Even after admitting that the processed 'nuggets' were disgusting, they still chose to eat them.

Now that, my friend, defies common sense! Definitely and completely. And qualifies for my current Whackadoodle Dandy.

Here are those clips:



The American kids actually wanted to eat this crap. I mean...come on already! I, for one, have never liked these critters. Now I know why.

For some reason, the embedding is disabled for the second video, where the English school kids reject the icky stuff. Here, however, is the youtube.com link to watch it over there.

Happy watching. And, hey, click on over to Jamie's Food Revolution website and sign the petition.

Maybe together we can wrest our food out of corporate American's clutches and get healthy food back on our collective tables.

Picture entitled The Spirit of '76 (aka Yankee Doodle) is an oil painting by Archibald MacNeal Willard that hangs at the U.S. Department of State.