FOLLOW me on my popular Twitter feed. Just click this photo! @hbbtruth - David - Common sense on #Politics #PublicPolicy #Sports #PopCulture in USA, Great Britain, Sweden and France, via my life in #Texas #Memphis #Miami #IU #Chicago #DC #FL 🛫🌍📺📽️🏈. Photo is of Elvis and Joan Blackman in 'Blue Hawaii'
Beautiful Stockholm at night, looking west towards Gamla Stan
Because I've gotten behind in posting here about the terrific St. Luciatelecaston SVT, I'm going to go ahead and post one of the songs that Jill sang so well recently at Gothenburg Cathedral. Teaser Alert: The Lucia telecast was sublime again!
Jill Johnson - "Away In a Manger" from SVT's St. Lucia/Luciamorgon telecast of December 13, 2011
CBS News, Sixty Minutes: Hard times generation: Homeless kids, First aired: March 6, 2011 http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7358670n&tag=contentMain;cbsCarousel From the Sixty Minutes website: For some children, socializing and learning are being cruelly complicated by homelessness, as Scott Pelley reports from Florida, where school buses now stop at motels for children who've lost their homes.
Story at: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/03/03/60minutes/main20038927.shtml
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I originally had a lot to say about this Sixty Minutes segment from Sunday night's show but my draft of those comments was accidentally deleted this morning, and I'm exhausted, so this will have to do instead:
The emotionally-draining situation they describe -homeless individuals or families cleaning themselves atWalmart- is one that I actually used to see over at the Arlington County govt. HQ more often than you'd think in the 1990's when I lived in Arlington.
Since I moved back to South Florida in late 2003, I've occasionally written emails to friends and posted something here about how Arlington County, even more than usual, acted like a dog chasing its tail in their own policies on the homeless.
In the view of many well-informed people I knew -plus me- the County often seemed to be focused almost entirely on appeasing well-organized groups "helping" a segment of the homeless population, not entirely from Arlington, that, to me, at times resembled nothing so much as a very pushy and indignant voting bloc of the CDU under Helmut Kohl, constantly going on about what they wanted and needed, while simultaneously, the County seemed genuinely blind to instances where some assistance could really help some Arlington County families keep it together in their own homes.
It was hard not to notice that the constantly complaining spokes in the wheel, not the truly deserving, got the grea$e. And that was before the foreclosure epidemic hit the country.
Friends and acquaintances of mine who travel across Florida more than I do now say they see a LOT MOREfamilies cleaning-up in Florida Turnpike rest stops in the morning than they ever remember seeing.
Below, something I posted in January of 2010 on hemlösa, featuring the amazing Yohanna.
Yohanna - "Don't Save It All For Christmas Day" - HD -Dec. 15, 2009, TV3
Jóhanna Guðrún Jónsdóttir, December 15, 2009 in Stockholm, for TV3's broadcast of "En Sång För Hemlösa 2009" (A Song For The Homeless 2009) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVtoGYXsG4w
I'd been meaning to post this video of Yohanna rehearsing in Kuopio, Finland two months ago, capturing her singing both an ABBA favorite, Thank You for the Music, as well as Nick Cave'sInto My Arms. Though I've spoken of Yohanna more than a few times here in the past, I think even more than the previous videos of hers that I've shared here -the last new one being from a Christmas show in Stockholm that aired on TV3's"En Sång För Hemlösa 2009" (A Song For The Homeless 2009), where she sang a few songs, including a tremendous version of Don't Save It All For Christmas Day, see my January 1st post, http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/wow-yohanna-sings-dont-save-it-all-for.html- you can really see her tremendous earnestness and sense of purpose. Of, quite literally, wanting to get every note and chordjust right Over the weekend, while I was watching a Marlins-Padres ballgame on TV, a friend from overseas with a good memory emailed to remind me about a couple of posts I'd talked about in the abstract that had yet to materialize in this space yet.
You may well recall some of these as well, from prior posts of mine or thru emails, but as it happens, one concerned Yohanna's trip to Finland -Suomi. I'd told her previously that my plan was to put this video and some comments up over the Memorial Day weekend, sometime between watching the Indy 500 and the anti-climatic NCAA Lacrosse Mens Championship game between Duke and Notre Dame, but that, well, she hadn't seen it yet. Oops!!!
Having received that gentle reminder, I'm now sharing the video that Tiia Santavirta first uploaded for Chaos Tube at http://www.youtube.com/user/TiiaSantavirta
More photos of the trip are available at http://teamyohanna.blogspot.com/ and more Yohanna videos can be seen at the TeamYohannaYouTube channel,http://www.youtube.com/user/TEAMYOHANNA
