Heat Wave

A good day today. I figured out how to set the timer on my coffee pot. I haven't been this happy since I set the timer on my VCR several years ago.

Heat waves seem common throughout the country now. The East Coast has had brutally hot temperatures for several days. Our heat wave started yesterday with the heat in the high nineties and an expected triple digit reading today. Because I want you to all be careful out there and get help if you suffer heat stroke I am passing on the following article on how to tell if your are suffering from heat stroke:

http://www.aolnews.com/article/heat-wave-how-to-self-diagnosing-heat-stroke/19543766?icid=main|htmlws-main-n|dl5|link3|http%3A%2F%2Fwww.aolnews.com%2Farticle%2Fheat-wave-how-to-self-diagnosing-heat-stroke%2F19543766

Now on to the next subject. The Wave. We have all been there, tooling along when a car coming the opposite direction wants to turn left in front of us into a shopping center, business, or driveway and trying to be a courtesy driver we wave the car to go ahead and turn in front of us. What happens if a car behind you is to stupid to figure out why you are stopping and goes around to smack right into that turning left car? Who is at fault? The person making the wave may be. Checkout the following article:

http://www.oregonlive.com/gresham/index.ssf/2010/07/portland_jury_decides_whos_at.html

Quoting one of the attorneys mentioned in the article: "We are blessed here with courteous drivers," Bachofner said. "That's why we moved to Portland, Oregon. ... What message do you want to send?"

Questions for the day. What are the temperatures in your neck of the woods? If you were on the jury of the trial mentioned in the second article, what message would you send? Would you deem the waver liable? The person making the left hand turn? The person that drove past you in the other lane that hit the car? All of them? Are you going to suspend the wave for a while?

Who Am I?

Yesterday's answer: was Mary Violet Leontyne Price

I was born in 1882 and died in 1972 and I am most noted as being a socialist and a labor union leader. I was born in Poland as the eldest of four children. My parents worked in the sewing trade to support our family. Two years after migrating to New York dad died and left our family in desperate poverty. My brothers and I spent over a year in orphanages before mom could reunite us. I worked as a cashier at age thirteen. We moved to Canada where I developed an interest in both radical politics and trade unionism. I returned to New York and started to organize women in my factory. I was elected the New York branch's vice president of a women's labor union. When a fire in a factory that had no fire escapes or alarms killed one hundred and forty-four people I was livid. I wrote a blistering article condeming law enforcement and unions. I served on the National Recovery Administration's Labor Advisory Board in the 1930s, was a member of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's "brain trust" during that decade, and worked as secretary of the New York State Department of Labor from 1937 to 1944. I was a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union, active in the American Labor Party in the 1930s and a close associate of Eleanor Roosevelt. In addition to my union organizing I was an active feminist, campaigning for women's suffrage as a member of the National American Women Suffrage Association and running for the United States Senate. I saw suffrage as part and parcel of my fight for economic rights. I, however, opposed passage of the Equal Rights Amendment to the United States Constitution proposed by the National Woman's Party on the grounds that it would deprive working women of the special statutory protections for which the unions had fought so hard. My most memorable quote is:

"What the woman who labors wants is the right to live, not simply exist — the right to life as the rich woman has the right to life, and the sun and music and art. You have nothing that the humblest worker has not a right to have also. The worker must have bread, but she must have roses, too. Help, you women of privilege, give her the ballot to fight with."

Who Am I?