
ISSN: 1530-5775
July 2010, Vol.12 #7
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Demons from Georgia Jones
from David Donar
I Am Mother from Zan Benham
Hyperbolic Fun
Stress Spray and Ford's Edict
Kids Who See Ghosts
Parenting Issues with Molly Koch
The Truth to Conquer Emotional Eating
Robin Hiersche
Let's Envision Gender Equality from Jane Roberts
Audio News and Samples
Numbers Tell the Story
A Review of The Cellist of Sarajevo
Bugs and other things that bug me
Your chance to say what you think
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About Partners in Publishing at LadybugBooks.com
July 2010!
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From Ann Sutherland
Back Ward In the 1930s Dr. James Freeman introduced into state hospitals throughout the United States a lobotomy procedure known as ice pick surgery for the treatment of psychotics which left its victims with wide, black circles around their eyes. The black eyes, as these patients were called, were forced onto the back wards - wards hidden from view, far back on the asylum grounds where visitors are not allowed - where patients die. In the historical novel, Back Ward by Ann Sutherland, the brutal treatment of psychiatric patients during this post World War II period and the emerging feminist and civil rights movements that would expose, and change forever, the treatment of women and the mentally ill in the United States is dramatically portrayed.
Back Ward |
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From Susan Diodati
I knew It Then
I Knew It Then |
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From Danielle Joy Linhart
From Deep Within "In my heart I believed that I wasn’t good enough for anyone else and that I couldn’t get anyone else who would put up with me. So, I accepted the relationship and all of the consequences that it brought. I even protected him and stuck with him because I thought that I was the cause of everything. Feeling at fault became a normal feeling for me and I blamed everything that went wrong in the relationship on myself. No matter how bad I could have been, there is absolutely no excuse for mental and physical abuse. The fear that my boyfriend created stopped me from getting help and stopped me from confiding in others." This is an important story for every teen and everyone with a teen in their life, and the book not only warns but offers help. We are grateful to Danielle Joy Linhart for writing her story so other young girls may avoid such abuse.
From Deep Within |
Elizabeth talks with musicimpressario Eugene Foley about poetry and song
Our bookstore.
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A new series... collections from LadybugFlights!
Ms. Elani's Recipe book.
You will find Ms. Elani's Recipe book in our book store. The View from Anywhere.
The View from Anywhere is a Signature Series Audio Book plus text, read by author Shimon Weinroth. On the Money by Beatrice Spreadmoore.
You have read her good advice, now have it in your book case.. in our book store. Light Hearts and Heavy Packs by Lesli Brown
![]() To tell you it was all great and there were never any tears would be a lie but when it’s all said and done, I would pack my things tomorrow and head right back out there. It is a sense of freedom that not many experience, it is being one with the things around you and realizing that we are a very tiny part of this incredibly large world. It gets in your blood and makes you thirst for more. It is freedom and beauty in every sense of the word. It is hiking to the highest peak and looking at what’s before you but never forgetting what’s behind. It is a million different smiles and a million different tears, blisters and mosquitoes and the most unimaginable sunsets, raging rivers and desert skies. It is the trail; it will live in me forever. I cannot honestly say that there is a single day that goes by that I don’t think about being on the trail. It is a feeling you cannot fully understand until you’ve been there. So here is my journal, the closest thing I can give in terms of putting it all down on paper. Read and enjoy with an open heart and mind.
![]() JuneBug Winner! This collection of short stories was chosen for the 2003 best short story collection!
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4 Part Harmony by Marcie Brown ![]()
The "quilt book" Lives in Process: The Second fifty Years by Dottie Moore with portraits by Michael Harrison
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a book every woman should own
Screaming Quietly by Hadassah Bat Haim,
![]() Also from Hadassah Bat Haim: Off the Rails
A multimedia book on CD ![]()
Start Writing!The perfect tool to fire that urge, focus your efforts, and improve your writing. A perfect gift for some other writer in your life as well! A Writers Adventure with Georgia Jones
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Extraordinary Ordinary Women
Winds of Change.
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Winds of Change is a Signature Series Audio Book, read and sung by author JoAnn Vickers Wilburn. Winds of Change is an interweaving of stories and songs, which deal with a relationship as it moves through changes that lead toward divorce from a fairy tale beginning through the nightmare of abuse and betrayal, to a new understanding and a new beginning. These stories are complete within themselves and also tell a complete story in their entirety. Stories and songs are written and performed by the author herself.
34 Million Friends
34 Million Friends, an honorable mention in the IPPY (small publishers) book awards!
34 Million Friends A memoir of Jane Roberts' fight for social justice for women through the organization she founded with Lois Abraham, 34 Million Friends. This book is in its thrid printing. You better get your copy now! |
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Dear Jane, Thank you so much for your donation of a copy of 34 Million Friends of the Women of the World. It's generous donations like yours that make it possible for our library to exist, and your enthusiam is heartwarming. I'll make it our featured book to help spread the word about www.34millionfriends.org.
Sincerely, |
Books to buy, read, donate, and get a discount. It is a circle we are proud of. To purchase a discounted book send information on your donation to Georgia Jones |
You will find a special section of the LadybugBooks.com site devoted to information about domestic and workplace violence. Ending Violence is an important issue all year!
THIS MONTH:
Poetry Corner
Robin Hiersche
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Robin Hiersche
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Teen Dating… Can it be that violent too?
from Danielle Joy Linhart Yes, absolutely, just taking someone out can turn into an abusive relationship. In this case the cycle of abuse might move a bit quicker. So, you have to look for the signs faster. The cute jealousy and possessiveness will come on a lot stronger quicker. The aggressive behavior whether it is abusive or verbal with also come a lot quicker as well and you can't let your guard down. Being strong is key all of the time when dating, especially someone new. The kicker is… it can even be someone you know for seven years. Let's go over the signs of Dating Violence:
This is the point when it is time to leave and move on because the abuse hasn't started and it is much easier to leave the relationship at this point in time. There is no need to stay with someone who would treat someone like this!!!! Anyone can be a victim of dating violence. Both boys and girls are victims, but boys and girls abuse their partners in different ways. Girls are more likely to yell, threaten to hurt themselves, pinch, slap, scratch, or kick. Boys injure girls more, are more likely to punch their partner, and more likely to force them to participate in unwanted sexual activity.
These statistics are outstanding and with an open an honest relationship with a parent/child relationship this can be avoidable. Remember Mom and Dad… your child is not your best friend… you are the parent, so please be the parent. Support no matter what is also, the most important thing and I can attest to that one, because my parents were by my side every step of the way during my abusive relationship. With that being said… If you think you are in an abusive relationship, get help immediately. Don't keep your concerns to yourself. If you think you might know someone in an abusive relationship be there unconditionally. Please write to me and send me poems or articles about your experiences… you can even send me some short stories at daniellelinhart@aol.com. Love ya bunches. Danielle Joy Linhart is the author of From Deep Within A portion of the proceeds from her book will be donated to LoveIsRespect.org. Please visit www.daniellejoylinhart.com to get help on Teen Dating Abuse, and, if you would like to send poetry or articles to Danielle.
If you know of a woman who will no longer grace our future because of domestic violence, please send us her story, or your own. |
We invite any of you to contribute on this subject. We feel it is important to continue the discussion of domestic violence.
We are looking for your stories remembering women's history. Send in your story and we will publish it.
Exceptional Women are Our History and Our Future:
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Let's Envision Gender Equality-Nothing Else is Working
Jane Roberts is someone who does envision a world of gender equality. The co-founder of 34 Million Friends and author of 34 Million Friends of the women of the world is an exceptional woman herself and we are always plesed to have her with us.
At the 2007 Women Deliver conference in London, The Lancet put out a special edition with this message on the cover: “Since the human race began, women have delivered for society. It is time now for the world to deliver for women.” I envision a world where people, men and women together, will deliver for women, who will climb over the barricades in a nonviolent struggle for enormous change. We have to make it happen. We need a peaceful, purposeful, stubborn, and obstinate revolution. Gender inequality is the greatest moral challenge of our age. There has been a willful denial of girls’ and women’s full humanity by individuals, governments, religions, cultures, and customs. We have to imagine a world where all people, men and women together, in equal partnership, with no artificial legal, cultural, religious, or economic barriers, work together for the greater good. We must imagine a world where all people, regardless of their gender, are judged, as Dr. Martin Luther King might have said, only by the content of their character. Nothing else is working. To be pessimistic about the future is to be realistic. With food, water, energy, environmental, climate crises present and looming, we need all human beings to be educated and motivated to demand long-term solutions that won’t be sacrificed on the altar of short-term and private gain. Wow, wouldn’t that be revolutionary! Envision a world where all female babies were welcomed as much as their male counterparts. This would mean an end to sex-selective abortion, female infanticide, and neglect of the girl child. This cultural shift would have enormous implications for both people and planet. Envision a world where the education of all their citizens might be the first priority of governments. Universal education as encompassed by Millennium Development Goals two and three would affect many more girls and women than men and boys. The whole world is saying that girls’ education is crucial. Educated, literate girls value themselves, marry later, marry “better,” have fewer children, educate their children, and keep them healthy. They become educated women who participate in their communities and are empowered to earn both income and respect. Country-specific budgets must prioritize quality education for girls. If this is done for girls, boys will benefit, too. In important ways, education leads to health. What if every girl and woman on the planet were given access to health? For instance, what if every baby were guaranteed to have a birth weight of seven to eight pounds and to be AIDS-free? That would give every baby a good start. Imagine the revolution in health that this guarantee would imply. It would imply a world commitment to every aspect of reproductive health. It would imply that early marriage might disappear. It would mean the end of female genital mutilation. It would probably mean that every pregnancy was wanted, that prenatal care was universal, that every birth was safe, that obstetric fistula and maternal morbidity and mortality would disappear. It would mean that family planning would be universally available, as promised in human rights documents—particularly at the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, Egypt, in 1994 .The health benefits of family planning are so vast as to be almost invisible. 200 million women lack access to family planning. The underlying cause of this dereliction of duty is gender inequality. The Cairo Consensus has been more honored in the breach than in the implementation. Fulfilling the Cairo Consensus to the letter would mean that the huge toll of unsafe abortion (70,000 deaths and 5 million injuries, hemorrhages, and infections every year) would disappear. The acronym PAC (post-abortion care) would disappear. The fact that abortion remains illegal and that family planning remains controversial, especially in the developing world, results from gender inequality, from women’s disempowerment politically and culturally, from enormous hypocrisy on the part of power structures, and from, in my view, the pernicious influence of certain religious persuasions. When the world takes care of women, women take care of the world. We have to envision a world that takes care of women. Let’s be honest—for once! Africa is on a path toward a humanitarian disaster. Its population, if present predictions hold true, will nearly double by 2050, from 1 billion to 2 billion people. Women do most of the work in Africa, and men make most of the decisions. Forty percent of Africa’s children are undernourished. If maternal mortality is a measure of the African continent’s well-being, then Africa fails. If infant and child mortality are measures of health or lack thereof, then Africa fails. Africa does not take care of its women. Beyond Africa, the countries of the world that are the most unstable and have the highest misery index, and whose people are the most poverty-stricken, the least educated, and the least healthy, are those where women’s status is low. On February 28, 2010, on the eve of the two-week session of the 45-member U.N. Commission on the Status of Women, Thoraya Obaid, executive director of the United Nations Population Fund, said, “We can’t continue to pay lip service to gender equality.… World leaders should not just say they are committed, but must prove their commitment with tangible allocations of budgets and people…. When men and women have a respectful relationship in which they recognize each other as equal partners, men will benefit as much as women.” That is the whole point. Gender equality would achieve enormous tangible benefits for people, the planet, and peace. I do not believe that change will come from the top without pressure from the bottom, from the grassroots, from both women and men. Media attention to this profound issue is the key to mobilizing world opinion. Come on, CNN! Stop twittering and dithering. Come on, Bono. Write us a song. Come on, peoples of the world! Ponder the prophetic words of Stephen Lewis, the UN special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa: “I challenge you…to enter the fray against gender inequality. There is no more honorable or productive calling. There is nothing of greater import in this world. All roads lead from women to social change.” And those of the late Dr. Allan Rosenfield, a world-renowned champion of women: “It is not enough to know for the sake of knowing. We have the responsibility to act on what we know. Acting on knowledge is an imperative. And that imperative we can truly delight in.” At 3:00 a.m. on the morning of July 23, 2002, I lay in my bed lamenting how Colin Powell had sold his soul the day before by announcing that the George W. Bush administration was not going to release $34 million to the United Nations Population Fund—for what I knew to be totally spurious reasons. After all, the whole world knows that UNFPA takes care of the world’s women. My thought was to ask for one dollar from 34 million Americans. It was time for me to take a stand. I envisioned, and still do envision, that 34 million people—not only Americans, but people from around the world who hear about 34 Million Friends—would eagerly comply. Grassroots at its purest and finest! The world is out of balance, careening toward an uncontrollable unknown. Gender equality in education, health, and the opportunity to contribute to family, community, and world is at the very core of any acceptable future. So I repeat: We need people, men and women together, who will deliver for women, who will climb over the barricades in a nonviolent struggle for enormous change. We need a peaceful, purposeful, stubborn, and obstinate revolution. Envision gender equality. Make it happen. |