“There is no one that I admire more than I do you. I too have been following your blogs, both on everydayhealth.com and in the Washington Post. You have been...” Cathy
“I've seen it before. Great stuff. Glass is a brilliant composer....” Proman
“ The Obama family represents what people can do despite the obstacles and the detractors try to take away from....” angie
“ Why have we condemned our children to cell blocks, and graveyards? Prisons are built based on third grade test scores. We are sending them into a world in which...” Dominic
“My deepest condolences to you and Sheryl's loved ones. I was honored to be a caretaker for my Grandmother who battled with cancer; as we struggled to observe her daily...” Lizette Lopez De Arriaga
Every actor who achieves success for a certain role will always be identified with that character in real life, to a certain extent, and there's a general assumption that the two are similar. This is especially true for a show like Curb, which stars Larry David, Ted Danson and other celebrities, ostensibly playing themselves. In her appearance on the show last week to discuss her new ...
I have a tiny, 750 square-foot house. But I've somehow made room for one of those enormous Obama "Hope" posters. You know the one. You've seen it a million times. This one sits framed in my kitchen. On it are the signatures of many of the volunteers I worked with on the Obama campaign last year.
Every day I am reminded of the miracle we pulled off. Every day ...
Q: I lost my job and haven't worked for 8 months. Most of my savings is gone. How do I prioritize my bills, house note and car payment? What is more important? What can you do if creditors give no slack to regular payments?
A Visitor, Upper Marlboro, Maryland
A: I don't have to tell you the awful unemployment numbers.
It's bad out there for a lot of people. I'm working one-on-one with several people who are unemployed, and often, after speaking with them, I want to cry. (Sometimes I do.)
At this point, you are in crisis mode. What gets ...
If you're like me, you spend way too much time trolling YouTube for nuggets of awesomeness like this. Hopefully, by my posting it here, I can save you some valuable time in your workday. Or, at least, give you a jumping off point for more video watching.
The clip is from a 2005 documentary called Looking Glass, about the composer Philip Glass, and sounds to me like it's narrated by Werner Herzog. I couldn't confirm the latter, but ...
Q: We hope to sell our home as soon as possible, but we are not due to leave the area until June 2011. When is it smart and not smart to refinance our interest-only mortgage?
A Visitor, Upper Marlboro, Maryland
A: First, I highly recommend you talk to a real estate agent and find out how long it's been taking for people to sell their home in your area. Given the uncertainty of the housing market and how difficult it's been for many people to qualify for loans, you might want to sell now and rent for a year ...
I have been taking some college classes recently, with students just out of high school. It is exciting to get to know these young men and women and hear about their goals, their dreams and their strategies for the future.
When I tell a woman in her twenties that I had breast cancer, I see her eyes glaze over. It is pretty obvious that this is a topic that she is just not interested in.
Q: I currently have a medical school loan that is $200,000. I went into deferment because I went back to school. While in school, I was paying on the interest. What is the best way to pay on the primary loan now?
A Visitor, Wadsworth, IL
A: I thought I'd share this with the masses.
The average educational debt of graduates in the class of 2008 was $154,607, an increase of 11% over the previous year, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.
Part of the reason the medical debt is so high is because students defer paying down ...
Most people enjoy taking the opportunity to sit down and take a photo
with their family. It's a fun opportunity to share and
cherish a brief moment in time for years to come. By the looks of all the smiles in the picture, it appears the
same is true for the Obamas.
The White House photo was taken back in September and released last week through its ...
In honor of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Tavis reflects on the loss of his friend and colleague, Sheryl Flowers. He emphasizes the need for African Americans to get checked in order to catch cancer as early as possible. He also responds to comments from viewers.
I've been a fan of The RZA since the first time I heard a Wu-Tang album back in the '90s. Among the members of that iconic hip-hop collective, his voice stood out, as did his lyrics.
I followed his work through his solo projects, through his collaborations with Jim Jarmusch and Quentin Tarantino, and was lucky enough to see him perform live on several occasions. No matter the project, The RZA could always be relied upon to create music that was unique, profound and totally satisfying.
I remember summer vacations with my family--my sister and I in the back of our parents' station wagon. We traveled from Washington, DC as far and as wide as Canada, Mexico and many states in between. But I never left the continent until I was an undergraduate and joined a group of African American students on a pilgrimage to Dakar, Senegal.
I made a point of kissing the ground after deplaning. And I will never forget how thrilling ...
Q: My husband's drug and alcohol use is threatening our credit and ability to pay bills on time. He's a ticking time bomb, and I could be paying the mortgage and bills by myself instantly. Should I forgo keeping my house, move someplace cheaper and take one hit to my credit report, or take several hits based on nonpayment to several creditors?
A Visitor, Southern Maryland
A: I'm so sorry you are going through this. But, before we get to the money stuff, I hope you don't mind that I recommend you seek qualified counseling. What you have on ...
As I mentioned Tuesday, the growing e-reader market and the new Barnes & Noble "Nook" had me shook.
After all, I'm a book lover and was worried that the ability to share electronic books would mean that traditional books would go the way of newspapers, records and CDs.
October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Have you or someone you love been affected by breast cancer? Please share your story and it may be included in an upcoming video blog.
I admit it. I buy music from an online store. I read the newspaper online. I read magazines online. I listen to the radio online. I occasionally download a movie rental from the Web, instead of schlepping to the video store.
I no longer have stacks of newspapers sitting in a bin in my dining room. The basket that my magazines once sat in is now filled with unopened mail that I haven't gotten around to. I have an MP3 player and bold plans to download all of my old CD's to my ...
Roland S. Martin takes on a new role as host of his first Sunday morning talk program.
Ask anyone in the television
business and they will tell you (or at least they should) that getting your own TV show is no easy task.
Having
said that, one man's drive and relentless pursuit has finally paid off.
You may have seen him on CNN
during the 2008 election coverage, or filling in for CNN colleague
Campbell Brown. You
may have even read his blog on Essence.com
or even caught a political commentary of his on TV
One or The Tom
Joyner Morning Show.
Q: In 2007, my brother was getting a divorce and did not know where he would live. He had no money to rent an apartment. I decided to purchase a townhouse for him. Now the house that he owned, and sold at the time of his divorce, is up for sale--with a significant price drop.
My brother wants to move back into that house, but I would have to sell the townhouse I bought him in order for him to buy his previous home. My real estate agent thinks that it would be a good idea, because there is more ...
Q: We paid off our house and received a letter from our mortgage company congratulating us. Aren't we supposed to get a title or deed showing that we are now the owners of this house?
A visitor, Cedar Park, TX
A: Can I put this question in perspective of the times?
Foreclosure filings--default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions--were reported on 358,471 U.S. properties during August 2009, an increase of nearly 18% from August 2008, according to RealtyTrac, a leading online source for foreclosure information. The same report found that 1 in every 357 U.S. housing units received a foreclosure ...
It was an unseasonably hot day in Washington D.C. when tens of thousands of activists marched to the capitol Sunday demanding federal rights for gay and lesbian Americans. Supporters walked two miles past the White House, decked out in rainbow flags, rainbow tights, rainbow scarves. There was even a giant rainbow flag stretched on the Capitol lawn. If there ever was a day to march, this was it.
Not everybody was seeing rainbows, though. Openly ...
Last week, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan
and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder visited the city of Chicago
to address the issue of violence in the public school system.
This fall, the Criterion Collection will release special HD editions of Monterey Pop and Gimme Shelter, two of the best concert documentaries of all time. Monterey Pop, directed by D.A. Pennebaker, documents the eponymous festival in 1967, at which Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Otis Redding, Hugh Masekela, Ravi Shankar and many others appeared. It was as monumental a gathering of popular musical talent as the world had ever seen in those pre-Woodstock days, and Pennebaker's unblinking lens captures it in all it's hippy-dippy glory. The double-disc set includes transfers of the film lovingly restored in HD, ...
Yesterday, as I jumped online and into the realm of cyberspace, I was reminded from an unlikely source of how passionate one should truly be in their life.
I visited a website which featured La Casa Norte, an inner-city program that works with the city of Chicago's youth.
I watched this story about the program and was captivated by one
of the young men whose participation in the program had made a positive
change in his life.
Towards the end of the story, he said something that really stuck with me. In terms of ...