Memphis News (The Good, The Bad…The Ugly) 9.29.10

Once a week I will  post a compilation entry  of Memphis news!

The Good

• Running throughout the month of October at the National Civil Rights Museum will be series of community hosted films and conversations  on topics of freedom. Each host community is presenting a series of conversation-provoking films, followed by an open dialogue. The audience will discuss freedom in response to the films, moderated by guest speakers specifically related to each program.  Here is more info on The National Civil Rights Museum & The Freedom Series.
• Principal Rita White of Riverwood Elementary Charter School is the winner of this year’s National Distinguished Principal Award. Her campaigning in Washington D.C., talking to congressional leaders about education reform, her advocacy for the children and her strategy to develop successful students, put her on the map. Congratulations Principal White!
• Douglass K-8 School in North Memphis is a 2010 Blue Ribbon School of Excellence winner. The school has been recognized by the federal government for boosting student achievement and test scores. The school which sits in a high poverty area, has increased its student proficiency in reading and math from 67% to 90% from 2004 to 2009.  On November 15th, the principal and several of her staff members will travel to Washington D.C. to pick up their plaque and to meet the President of the United States.
• The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock and the Regional Medical Center in Memphis are now part of Arkansas’ statewide trauma-care system. The trauma system will help avoid taking patients to hospitals that can’t treat their specific injury.  More on the statewide System trauma care system.
• The Tri State Defender  is accepting nominations for its Second Annual Men of Excellence Awards now through October 8.  The annual event recognizes 50 African-American men who motivate and inspire others through their vision and leadership, exceptional achievements, and participation in community service. 

The Bad

•  Recently a good Samaritan was shot after he went to the rescue of a 12-year old boy that was being robbed of his moped by two men. The Good Samaritan was shot in the hand and in the liver. He has undergone surgery and is expected to have a full recovery. The suspects have not been captured.
• Within a two-week period two women have been attacked and almost raped in the same downtown parking garage. The garage  is usually very busy  is often used by downtown office workers and U of M Law School students. The first attack was stopped by a passerby and the second attack was seen and stopped by a security guard. Two separate men have been arrested for the attacks; Darius Wright for the first , and Bernard Richmond for the second attack.
• Recently the news media obtained photos of two women posing and having fun on Memphis Police T-3 scooters. The photos were taken in downtown Memphis. Memphis Police Director Larry Godwin is furious over the photos and says that he hopes the officers were not involved because that behavior is against police policy. He hopes that the ladies snapped the photos while the policemen were maybe handling a call. The Memphis Police are investigating this incident.

The Ugly

• The Lester Street murder trial began Monday.  Jurors will hear State Prosecutors lay out the details of a crime so gruesome it has been labeled the worst mass murder in Memphis history. Alleged mass murderer Jessie Dotson is accused of brutally murdering   6 people in March of 2008. The victims include: four adult victims, Cecil Dotson (Jessie Dotson’s brother), Cecil’s girlfriend, Marissa Rene Williams, Cecil’s friend, Hollis Seals and Seals’ girlfriend, Shindri Roberson. The child victims were Cemario Dotson, 4, and Cecil Dotson II, 2 — and the three injured children — Ceniyah Dotson, 2 months at the time of the attack, Cedric Dotson, 5, and Cecil Dotson Jr., 9 — all are children of Cecil Dotson. Click here to read more about the Lester Street Mass Murders and to follow the trial.
• Investigators have searched the apartment of  Shakara Dickens to find evidence related to the disappearance of Dickens’s 9 month old daughter Lauryn who she reported missing September 15, 2010. Dickens stated that she handed her daughter over to a stranger and neglected to get the woman’s name or contact information. Weeks later Dickens is now in custody and a FEMA dog has detected the odor of decomposing human remains in the apartment lived in by Dickens and the baby. However, the dog did not find any human remains. Shakara Dickens is in police custody charged with child neglect, endangerment and false reporting.

BGT’s Betterment Journey (Post I: F!@k Yo Couch)

Come along with me on a journey to becoming a better person…….

I remember the very first time I launched into a string of expletives…..

I was around ten or eleven years old and cursing back then was something I had to sneak and do. You see I’m an 80s baby, I grew up in a period of time when it was in no way acceptable to curse in front of adults (unless you were told by an adult to use a specific curse word/s and that was the ONLY time it was acceptable) You could grow up in a household where every adult drank Champale  and cursed like sailors, yet you still knew that the very moment you so much as said damn, your ass was grass.

…..yep the 80s …good times people, good times. Any who, back to my potty mouth, I remember being either excited or upset about something and launching into a curse fit. It went something like this fuckyoushitbitchhodamnmuthafucka!

From that point on I was hooked. I would curse in my head. Outwardly you may have seen an eye roll and a little stomping away madness, but inside my head I was dropping “the F Bomb.”  I remember several times while in school I almost forgot myself and cursed in class. Thank God I never did because I also had a Black 80′s mother who would have come up to the school purse strap in hand ready to wear me out.

Let’s fast forward a few years to my teenage years. As a teenager cursing was a normal way of life for me. I still knew better than to curse in front of adults, but around friends, oh yeah buddy it went down, and I mean it went down in a big way! Let’s fast forward even more to my adult life….needless to say, it goes down and it goes down in a major way.

With that being said, as part of my journey into becoming a classier, more sophisticated, more respectable woman, I have decided that I shouldn’t be dropping “the F Bomb.”….well not unless it is completely unavoidable. I don’t know if there is ever a time that it is mandatory to say the F word, but I can think of quite a few times when I haven’t been able to avoid using it. But it’s not just the F word; I would like to stop cursing altogether. When I first decided that I’d had enough of my own bad language I honestly felt that I could not stop cursing. When I made the decision to stop no more than three hours into quitting I said “Fuck you muthafucka!” What a way to stop cursing huh? I guess that’s called going out with a bang!  No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t stop cursing (in this case couldn’t means didn’t). I would be driving and drop “the F Bomb”.  I would receive bad customer service and call someone a female dog. I would stomp my toe and say the word that rhymes with hit. One of my favorite comedians is Dave Chappelle and watching his show and stand up acts didn’t make it any better. Once I heard his famous line “F!@k Yo Couch“,  it became my new haha line. I would use it frequently and I also liked to hear others say it. It was hilarious, it was wonderful, it made my day….It was horrible. That was a few years ago, and since then the cursing has decreased in volume, but in no way has it ceased,

 Now as a 29 year old woman, I know better and I want to do better. I made the decision (just now) to stop cursing. I want to be able to eliminate cursing from my vocabulary. This is just one of the many things involved in my Betterment Journey. A journey I describe as a form of Growth and Development (not the gang)  it basically means that I have come to a point in my life where I want to be the best that I can be. I want to look, act and reflect in every aspect of my life that of a classy lady. This means that I want to eat healthier, work harder, be positive and stop dropping “the F Bomb.” I know this will be a hard obstacle to tackle, but I am up for the challenge.

I am making a promise to myself that I will do better because I know better and it is the right thing to do.

sidenote:I saw a young lady yesterday who was in her early to mid twenties. She was on her cellphone and she was cursing up a storm. I mean that sistah was giving it a go! I was shocked, I was appalled, woooaah was that how I sounded? Granted I don’t normally curse excessively in public, but if this is how I sounded even in private I sounded like a cursing fool. That was even more encouragement to stop.

I may need this website to help me along the way —> Swear Word Filter

I typed in the words F!@k you whore just as a test (what??? I did it JUST AS A TEST lol) and the swear word filter gave me this to say instead,  ”Fornicate You Hussy”   —–DEAD—–  Good one! 

…the journey begins

Related Articles

• What the F#*K is with all the expletives in today’s pop culture? (chicagonow.com)