Archaeological sites are like open books, revealing to us the story of an era, a civilization, of trades and relationships between nations. These are the stories of our humanity and the roots of a nation’s cultural identity. They must be preserved.

Let us ACT now for the Heritage of Afghanistan and protect Mess Aynak, an ancient and vast Buddhist monastic ensemble under threat from a proposed copper mine. While economical development is necessary through the mining of precious minerals, it cannot become an additional tool for cultural destruction.

Help protect Mess Aynak’s treasures–please ask UNESCO to include Mess Aynak, Afghanistan on the List of Endangered Sites and the World Heritage List.
Protect Afghan Archaeological Sites, the case of Mess Aynak

In an interview with CityBeat, Webber said exotic pet ownership may be shocking, but it’s not an obscure phenomenon. “I started paying attention and that’s when I realized this was the elephant in the living room. This big, enormous thing that’s going on in our country and no one is really recognizing it.”

Until now.

It’s no coincidence that the Dayton, Ohio, filmmaker aimed the camera at his own state. Ohio has some of the weakest exotic animal laws in the country, a flaw which gained national attention this summer when a bear killed his caretaker. Despite obvious and repeated negligence on the part of the bear’s owner, Sam Mazzola, authorities’ hands were tied because you can pretty much own whatever you want in Ohio. And Mazzola isn’t the only one whose choice of pets has caused problems.

“It’s like the wild, wild west in the State of Ohio,” Tim Harrison of Outreach for Animals told WKRC Local 12 in Cincinnati. Harrison is a police officer, firefighter and paramedic from the city of Oakwood. He’s also the go-to guy when it comes to exotic animals, fielding as many as 200 calls a year, and he’s one of the stars of The Elephant in the Living Room.

On the other side of the equation, the film follows Terry Brumfield, who keeps two African lions, hand-raised since they were cubs.

Webber says following the personal stories of Harrison and Brumfield “has a completely different effect on people from an entertainment standpoint, from an education and awareness standpoint, you take it personally. When people get affected in that way, that’s when the awareness starts to explode.”

The explosion of The Elephant in the Living Room comes just in time. Although this issue plays out across the country, it’s been stampeding across Ohio politics lately, especially since Governor Ted Strickland promised an exotic pets ban as part of a package deal of animal welfare reforms negotiated with the Humane Society of the United States and Ohio’s Farm Bureau.

The proposal was applauded by several animal welfare groups, but various contingents protested, from reptile enthusiasts to schools with wild mascots. Some, like Brumfield, feel their wild animals are their children; others feel they simply have a right to own whatever animal they want.

It’s likely that an exotic pet ban in Ohio would grandfather in existing animals, with the caveat that troublemakers like Mazzola could finally be held accountable. This Midwest state has been the wild west for too long; it’s dangerous for people and unfair to the animals. Tell Ohio legislators to pass the exotic pet ban.

Harrison’s opinion is clear: “When you bring a dangerous large predator, snake, bear, crocodile, anything of that nature, you’re signing a death warrant for either you or the animal … one of you is going to die.”

The website for the documentary calls it “a movie too big to ignore.” Let’s hope so.

The Elephant in the Living Room is currently screening in Cincinnati, Ohio. If you’re not in The Buckeye State, don’t worry: the movie is due for nationwide release in early 2011.

Photo credit: eMaringolo

Documentary Brings Ohio’s Elephant in the Room Out of the Shadows

It also advised that “a bat comes in handy” for the more powerful sharks, once you manage to get them on board.

Change.org member Patricia Terry was shocked when she read the article. A scientific diver, oceanography professor at Humboldt University, and engineer who has worked for the Department of Fish and Game and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Patricia started a petition demanding that UrbanDaddy.com stop the promotion of shark fishing as sport.

Patricia wants to spread the word that despite what the article implies, there is hardly an abundance of sharks in the San Francisco Bay. Apparently UrbanDaddy.com’s fact checker, if it has one, was asleep at the helm.

“I care because I hate seeing people wasting life and disrupting the balance of the ecosystem,” Patricia said. “I fish, but I eat what I catch. I think sharks keep our ecosystem in balance and they are fantastic to see in the wild — alive.”

Patricia found out about the article in an email from Greg Barron, who she once worked for at Incredible Adventures, a company that takes people out for encounters with great white sharks … but to observe them in their natural habitat, not to kill them.

On the other hand, Greg wrote that he had personally witnessed sharks from the chartered fishing boats left on the docks to die. Well, as the UrbanDaddy.com story warns, “Nearly eight out of 10 catches will be leopard sharks, with the occasional seven-gill at the end of your line, so with a per-boat limit of three, you’ll have to choose wisely.”

David McGuire, director of Sea Stewards, a group working to restore the health of oceans and the San Francisco Bay, is conducting research on the effects of shark fishing.

“Writing like this helps reverse years of study and shark conservation,” he wrote in a letter to the editor of Urban Daddy. “Sharks cannot sustain a focused fishery. They have late reproductive age, have few young and cannot have many pups in their lifetime.”

As for the fear factor element of the shark fishing trips, David dismisses it. Millions of surfers, swimmers and kayakers have enjoyed the San Francisco Bay, yet only one shark bite has ever been recorded.

Instead of promoting the hunting and killing of sharks solely for the purpose of photo opportunities, Patricia wants UrbanDaddy.com to retract the story and instead urge sport fishing companies to use a catch-and-release method, or only allow killing for food.

Or maybe UrbanDaddy.com — which calls itself “devoted to bringing you the single thing you need to know every day about your city” — could one day do a story about Patricia’s idea for a fun, shark-related outing: “If people want to see leopard sharks, they only need to go to La Jolla Beach in the summertime and put on a snorkel and mask.”

Photo credit: Capt. Dave Sipler

Shark Killing Is Unsportsmanlike

El Paso prohibits texting and talking on a cell phone while driving in city limits. The City Council approved the ban on March 9 and it went into effect May 1. Hands-free cell phones OK. Fines up to $500. El Paso already outlawed use of handheld cell phones in school zones.

Galveston has banned text messaging while driving within city limits. Fines up to $500. The City Council voted to outlaw texting for motorists on Jan. 14 and the ban went into effect immediately.

Arlington%u2019s City Council refused to consider a ban on text messaging while driving.
Statistics show that driving while distracted has a higher percentage of fatalities compared to drunken drivers. A Virginia Tech study illustrates the distance required to stop while driving 35 mph and texting on a phone compared to a drunk driver stopping. A drunk driver travels an average of four feet more before stopping and the texting driver travels 25 more feet before stopping. The study also goes on to show that drunk driving increases the likelihood of causing a car crash by four times. A texting driver increases the likelihood of causing a crash by eight times.

Please join me in asking the City of Arlington to PLEASE help me and all of AISD’s bus drivers protect the children of Arlington, help us keep them SAFE by making the use of a hand held device against the law while in city limits.

Tell Arlington, TX to make txting and driving against the law!

Local government, trying to mitigate a $175 million budget shortfall, has determined that about 10 percent of those who apply for shelter and other homeless services in the city are from elsewhere — and officials want them to go back to “elsewhere.”

People from neighboring Prince George’s County have been known to come to D.C. looking for shelter, in some cases claiming to have been sent by service providers in Silver Spring, Maryland. In response, D.C. Councilman Tommy Wells introduced legislation that would require all people seeking homeless services in the District to produce city identification. He later withdrew it in an effort to avoid creating any unintended consequences.

Washington, D.C. gave the homeless a “right to overnight shelter” in 1984 and rescinded it in 1990, due to the financial burden that it put on the city. (This is reminiscent of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s recent claim that he was saving taxpayers money by sending New York’s homeless elsewhere.) Now homeless Washingtonians only have a right to shelter if the temperature is 32 and below or 95 and above.

However, D.C.’s “low-barrier” shelters have traditionally allowed people to enter without showing identification and even allowed them to give a false name. Those who are on the lam, undocumented or avoiding family need not worry about having the police called, so long as they don’t commit any new crimes while in the shelter. The same is true for those who enter the shelter drunk or high. The city has, in effect, removed all barriers to entry in an effort to encourage people who might otherwise stay outside and freeze to come in, thus saving their lives. Tell D.C. to provide winter shelter to people in need!

Furthermore, many homeless people lack identification. They’ve not needed it in the past in order to stay at most D.C. shelters. The legislation would’ve created long lines at the DMV, as scores of homeless people rushed to buy I.D. cards so that they wouldn’t be left out in the cold.

In its original form, the proposed legislation would’ve prevented even many long-time D.C. residents from acquiring emergency services, thus putting their lives in jeopardy. Furthermore, the city has an obligation to assist all people who are experiencing an emergency, regardless of where they are from. These and other considerations caused the Councilman to withdraw his proposed legislation so as to revise it. Additionally, since he is no longer introducing the bill on an emergency basis, there will be a public hearing during which the homeless and their advocates can voice their concerns.

This story encapsulates several concerns: the need for emergency shelter, the limited financial capability of municipal governments to provide essential social services and the tendency of local governments to push the homeless off on other jurisdictions. But it is this practice of making the homeless someone else’s problem which I find to be most problematic and indicative of the moral turpitude that plagues municipal governments in this nation and around the world. To his credit, Councilman Wells is not the culprit in this case, but is simply pushing back against other jurisdictions that sometimes send their homeless to D.C. or whose homeless come here after hearing about the better services.

With the harshness of last winter still fresh in people’s minds, I hope and trust that the final version of the Councilman’s legislation will be fair and equitable, affording emergency shelter to all who need it. The question at hand is: will people be identified as D.C. residents upon entering shelter or will their next of kin have to identify them at the morgue?

Photo credit: Rebecca C.

Getting a Positive I.D. at the Shelter … or the Morgue

Going forward, organizers hope that non-profits and corporations will provide matching donations for money the families manage to save. For the first year, the great local non-profit EARN will match the first $100 that all families save this year; it will match $100 savings from low-income families only in future years. The San Francisco Foundation will make additional matches if parents go to financial education classes and make routine deposits.

The idea is that students who already have a college fund will be more likely to matriculate — seven times more likely, according to one study. City officials urge families to commit to depositing even $5 a month.

Many of the children who receive the accounts will be the first in their family to have one, since half of San Francisco’s black and Hispanic population lack a savings account.

Mayor Gavin Newsom presented a similar idea, the Baby Savings Bond, in his inaugural address in 2008. He says he cribbed it from then-Sen. Hillary Clinton. “No one else in the country is doing this,” he says. “We are not just saying every child can go to college. We are now providing families with the financial tools necessary to make this a reality.”

Other city leaders oppose the program for financial reasons, like next year’s projected city deficit of $460 million. The cost of this program is just $257,000 this year, though. Not much in the scheme of things, and it comes with a potentially gargantuan payoff. If these children go to college now, but otherwise wouldn’t have, they’ll be improving their own economic outlooks as well as those of the city and state.

While I applaud the program and hope that it helps these children reach higher-education and is then replicated nationwide, I wonder why students from every socio-economic class were selected for the pilot. It makes no sense to pretend that all kindergartners have the same opportunities; some need more hand-ups than others. Giving some wealthy students $50 and some desperately poor ones $100 isn’t likely to close the achievement gap. Shouldn’t help be targeted where it’s needed most, at least at the beginning?

Photo credit: moyerphotos

Kindergarten to College: S.F. Starts Savings Accounts for Kids

1. Don’t try to do everything. SoCap is chock full of content. Like, overflowing. Like, don’t even try to see it all. The number one tip for content at any event that has so much of it is to accept that you can’t see it all.

2. Consider how you fit into the space before you arrive. SoCap is designed to be a crossroads where investors meet entrepreneurs meet philanthropists meet impact analysts meet everyone else. Knowing how you fit into that space, what you have to teach and what you want to learn before you arrive could dramatically increase your enjoyment of the event.

3. Pick a content track. One of the ways to make the large amount of content more manageable at the event is to pick one of the handful of content tracks like “Tactical Philanthropy” and focus on it. Because they’re curated by individuals, it’s likely that many of the panels with work well in the context of one another.

4. Know the 1 or 2 people who you must meet, and make it happen. One of the keys to successful event networking is figuring out who you want to meet. SoCap has made that easier with a community tool that allows you to browse other attendees in advance and discover mutual interest.

5. For everyone else, just let it happen. If making it happen matters a lot in networking, so does letting it happen. It’s extremely hard to know which of our connections are going to step up with the resources we need, but it is clear that the deeper the relationship, the more likely it is that people will have your back when you need it. Cutting off conversations that could be going somewhere fun to rush around like a head-cut-off chicken may not, in the long run, be the right strategy.

6. Engage with the community online in advance. SoCap has set up a community portal that allows attendees of the event to begin the conversations they want to have in advance of actually showing up. It’s a great way to get to know the people you’ll spend the next week with.

7. Go with the flow. Any in-person gathering is ultimately a collection of energy produced by new connections between people. Even when its great, content can get in the way and impose artificial barriers on conversations that feel like they’re only just getting started.

8. Save some for the night. At any event, the real connections happen at night over dinner and drinks. Take the time to get rest in advance in order to enjoy the best the community has to offer.

9. Lay down some roots in San Francisco (such as by visiting the Hub). For my money, the Bay Area is the informal capital of this space, and I believe that connection is going to get deeper as more tech money flows into the sector. SoCap is a great chance to lay down some SF roots in a place that is valuable to have a foot it.

10. Go to the Day 3 Unconference. SoCap veterans know that one of the most intimate, fun, and differentiated parts of the event is day three’s Unconference. Facilitated by the inimitable Jerry Michalski, the sessions are where a lot of the deepest connecting actually happens.

Photo credit: sociate

10 Tips for Maximizing Your SoCap10 Conference

According to the man who owns the bakery, rainbow cupcakes and cookies celebrating LGBT pride violate the values of the bakery.

“I explained we’re a family-run business, we have two young, impressionable daughters and we thought maybe it was best not to do that,” said co-owner David Stockton to a local Fox television station. He then added that it’s his bakery’s decision to decide what is obscene. Apparently rainbow colors fall under that label. “We have our values, and you know, some things … for instance, if someone wants a cookie with an obscenity, well, we’re not going to do that.”

All of a sudden making cookies and cupcakes for a gay student group is against family values? So much for customer service, and so much for making a good impression on those daughters, who were just shown by their parents that discrimination can come in the form of baked goods. Meanwhile, the Indianapolis City Market has a mission to enrich “the city’s economy, expands its educational options, enhances its culture.” Having vendors that refuse to serve LGBT customers doesn’t do any of that.

Customers have also started to take to other social media channels to complain about the bakery’s actions. On Urban Spoon, several users blasted the bakery for its actions.

“Having been a previous customer (fortunately the clerk didn’t inquire about my sexual orientation at the time) I can say that my experience with their product was on par with the treatment of an entire segment of society – POOR,” wrote user Eric Benge. “Last time I checked, my money is as green as the heterosexual community.”

Pretty good point there with that last statement. You’d have to bet that the cookie order for National Coming Out Day would have earned Just Cookies a nice haul. Now, the negative publicity from turning down a group of students who just wanted rainbow baked goods could just paint the bakery in a thoroughly negative light.

“[The students] weren’t asking to petition for anything, they just wanted cupcakes for an event,” said Rebecca Scherpelz, a friend of an IUPUI student, to the local Fox station.

Here’s hoping this can be a teachable moment. Maybe this can be the impetus for the Indianapolis City Market to make sure that all of its vendors are serving every eligible customer. Sure, it’s easy to see the bakery owner’s point about having the right to turn down orders they consider offensive. But rainbow cookies? Could anything be more harmless?

The students did find another bakery to place their National Coming Out Day order. Good for them, and here’s hoping their celebration is successful, educational and tasty.

Photo credit: Aldo Fonticiella

Indianapolis Bakery Won’t Serve Gay Students

Dear fellow taxpayers,

Please take the time to sign this online petition to stop Miami-Dade County governments from raising our taxes.

A quick look at my tax notices for Miami-Dade County shocked me to find that my property taxes were increasing 10%.

What I can see is that, at least with regard to the Miami-Dade County School Board, Metro-Dade, and the City of Miami, government entities wish to raise taxes by increasing debt or raising the taxable millage rate on that debt or our properties.? Your local government may be doing the same.

This is unacceptable because government is wasteful.? The School Board, for example, in the depth of the Great Recession, had a budget averaging $14-15,000 per student.? While I did attend public elementary at West Lab, my alma mater, the highly-regarded Belen Jesuit Prep, charged $10K per student last year, and has state-of-the-art sports and science facilities, and interactive, internet-connected Smart Boards in every classroom.? Of the $14-15,000 per student budgeted to the School Board, only $3K actually reaches schools for salaries and maintenance.? Where the rest goes is anyone%u2019s guess.

For confirmation of these numbers, please visit:

http://teachdade.wikispaces.com/Effective education spending

We don%u2019t need more taxes from government entities, which are the sort of institutions that got us into this economic mess in the first place.? We need fewer taxes so that we can have the freedom to make the right decisions and improve our lives one neighborhood, one household, and one person at a time.??

Please sign the petition.? Thank you.

No new taxes in Miami-Dade County

But that seems to be changing – a bit. You’d never think it, but it seems that professional sports teams are warming to the idea of having LGBT nights. When it comes to the National Basketball Association (NBA), the Golden State Warriors in California became only the third team to hold an LGBT-focused event earlier this year. The Toronto Raptors were first in 2004, followed by the Philadelphia 76ers.

I wanted to get a sense of what’s going on behind the scenes at a professional sports team. I got in with Lorrie-Ann Diaz, director of marketing communications and advertising for LeBron James’ new team the Miami Heat. Lorrie-Ann is out and proud and offered some great insight on what it’s like to work for a professional sports team and how “the straights” and she interact.

I want to know what your experience has been like as a lesbian working for a major sports team. It sounds like it has been a positive one. Can you tell me why?

I’m delighted to say that my experience as an out lesbian working for a major pro sports team has been a very good one. Perhaps it sounds cliché, but the HEAT’s business operation is a microcosm of our city. We are a very diverse workforce – at every level. And fortunately for those of us who work here, this diversity is welcomed and celebrated.

At the end of the day, we work in sports and entertainment: an industry that creates fun. As such, playfulness and fun is part of our professional DNA. Well, during my first year with the club, my then girlfriend sent me a bouquet of flowers. As I carried the bouquet back to my desk (our office is wide open, like a newsroom), my boss jokingly teased, “Ooh! Someone’s got a man!”

I smiled to myself and thought: “There’s no way I’ll be able to stomach more of that teasing! It will be too stressful and taxing to lie about who I am.” So a few days later, I invited my boss (the EVP/CMO) out to lunch.

At lunch, when I disclosed my sexuality (and he apologized for his unwitting faux pas), he was incredibly kind, compassionate and very supportive. And I knew part of that compassion and understanding stems from his own life (he’s a minority himself and in an inter-racial marriage).  When I think back to that time – 2010/2011 will be my 11^th season – it was only about eight months into my employment with the HEAT. I knew I was taking an enormous risk. But his reaction exceeded my expectations and, as the fairytale goes, we’ve lived happily ever after!

Have you heard of other sports teams where people work that aren’t so welcoming to LGBT folks?

Unfortunately, intolerance still exists all over this country and our industry is not exempt. I personally have not heard of any team that is not welcoming to the LGBT community. But I’d prefer to focus on the positive. As my own experience illustrates, taking a risk can often lead to the opening of doors and the start of an important and ongoing dialogue. In my humble opinion, this is the way we break down stereotypes and intolerance: one person, one conversation, one experience at a time.

Do you think players would want domestic partner benefits? I know plenty of straight couples who like that option because they don’t feel forced to be either “together” or married. It’s a nice middle ground.

That’s a good and valuable question although I can’t purport to know what the players want and don’t want. In my own life and career, I was overjoyed when the HEAT announced that it would begin offering domestic partner coverage as part of our overall benefits package. I was proud of my franchise for considering the needs of all of its employees. And as you point out, gay couples aren’t the only ones who stand to benefit from domestic partnership coverage — an important detail that is often overlooked.

Is there any professional organization that welcomes LGBT workers at sports teams? If not, why not?

I’m not aware of any organization that formally welcomes LGBT workers if/when they join a sports team. I can only speculate as to why that is but I’d venture to say that perhaps it is so because sexual identity is such a highly personal and private matter. Notwithstanding, having been out for so long in my workplace, I guess I’m a one-woman welcoming committee of sorts. Throughout the years, some of my co-workers have approached me for guidance simply because I’m very open about my lifestyle.

Do you belong to any queer professional organizations? How long have you been with the Heat?

While I don’t formally belong to any queer professional organizations, the 2010/2011 season will be my 11^th at the HEAT. I know many local movers and shakers in our community and they often and actively seek me out for sponsorship and promotional support for things like events and fundraising and I am happy to oblige them as often as I can.

In addition, I prefer to work behind the scenes, leveraging games and/or concerts to organize social opportunities for professional lesbian women to meet and network.

I wasn’t always in sports management. I kind of fell into it back in 1998, the year of the lockout (I was still living in Los Angeles in those days). I answered a classified ad placed by the Los Angeles Clippers, who were looking for a marketing assistant. After a year there, I decided to come back to my hometown here in the Magic City and thank goodness, got my foot in the door at the HEAT. I worked my way up from Marketing Assistant to Advertising Manager to my current position as Director of Marketing Communications and Advertising. As the years have gone on, I realize how blessed and lucky I am to work in such a supportive environment with such great, smart, and talented people.

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

Out and Proud, and Working for the Miami Heat