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So did anyone read/listen to Obama’s speech he gave to the schools? I personally think it is a very good speech. As those of you who have known me from way back when, I was a bit of a trouble maker in highschool. The majority of my friends didn’t go to school and I hated it that I did…I wanted to be “cool” like them and not go. So…when I told my mom I was dropping out, she lost it. She said “Like hell you are!!” and we discussed it and she set me on the right path. I think that was the breaking point of my idiotic adolescence. My mom was my support system, and with her encouragement I worked my ass off the following semester and instead of dropping out, graduated early. So I still got to hang out with all my friends…but I had a degree, and they didn’t.
It was the best thing she could have done for me and I would not be who I am today without her intervention. Nor would I be attending Grad School to get a degree in Community Leadership! So…for all you youngin’s…take Obama’s words to heart. They really do mean something, whether you realize it now or not.
Prepared Remarks of President Barack Obama
Back to School Event
Arlington, Virginia
September 8, 2009
The President: Hello everyone – how’s everybody doing today? I’m here with students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. And we’ve got students tuning in from all across America, kindergarten through twelfth grade. I’m glad you all could join us today.
I know that for many of you, today is the first day of school. And for those of you in kindergarten, or starting middle or high school, it’s your first day in a new school, so it’s understandable if you’re a little nervous. I imagine there are some seniors out there who are feeling pretty good right now, with just one more year to go. And no matter what grade you’re in, some of you are probably wishing it were still summer, and you could’ve stayed in bed just a little longer this morning.
I know that feeling. When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a few years, and my mother didn’t have the money to send me where all the American kids went to school. So she decided to teach me extra lessons herself, Monday through Friday – at 4:30 in the morning.
Now I wasn’t too happy about getting up that early. A lot of times, I’d fall asleep right there at the kitchen table. But whenever I’d complain, my mother would just give me one of those looks and say, “This is no picnic for me either, buster.”
So I know some of you are still adjusting to being back at school. But I’m here today because I have something important to discuss with you. I’m here because I want to talk with you about your education and what’s expected of all of you in this new school year.
Now I’ve given a lot of speeches about education. And I’ve talked a lot about responsibility.
I’ve talked about your teachers’ responsibility for inspiring you, and pushing you to learn.
I’ve talked about your parents’ responsibility for making sure you stay on track, and get your homework done, and don’t spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with that Xbox.
I’ve talked a lot about your government’s responsibility for setting high standards, supporting teachers and principals, and turning around schools that aren’t working where students aren’t getting the opportunities they deserve.
But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world – and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed.
And that’s what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education. I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself.
Every single one of you has something you’re good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That’s the opportunity an education can provide.
Maybe you could be a good writer – maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper – but you might not know it until you write a paper for your English class. Maybe you could be an innovator or an inventor – maybe even good enough to come up with the next iPhone or a new medicine or vaccine – but you might not know it until you do a project for your science class. Maybe you could be a mayor or a Senator or a Supreme Court Justice, but you might not know that until you join student government or the debate team.
And no matter what you want to do with your life – I guarantee that you’ll need an education to do it. You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military? You’re going to need a good education for every single one of those careers. You can’t drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You’ve got to work for it and train for it and learn for it.
And this isn’t just important for your own life and your own future. What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. What you’re learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future.
You’ll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment. You’ll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free. You’ll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy.
We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don’t do that – if you quit on school – you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country.
Now I know it’s not always easy to do well in school. I know a lot of you have challenges in your lives right now that can make it hard to focus on your schoolwork.
I get it. I know what that’s like. My father left my family when I was two years old, and I was raised by a single mother who struggled at times to pay the bills and wasn’t always able to give us things the other kids had. There were times when I missed having a father in my life. There were times when I was lonely and felt like I didn’t fit in.
So I wasn’t always as focused as I should have been. I did some things I’m not proud of, and got in more trouble than I should have. And my life could have easily taken a turn for the worse.
But I was fortunate. I got a lot of second chances and had the opportunity to go to college, and law school, and follow my dreams. My wife, our First Lady Michelle Obama, has a similar story. Neither of her parents had gone to college, and they didn’t have much. But they worked hard, and she worked hard, so that she could go to the best schools in this country.
Some of you might not have those advantages. Maybe you don’t have adults in your life who give you the support that you need. Maybe someone in your family has lost their job, and there’s not enough money to go around. Maybe you live in a neighborhood where you don’t feel safe, or have friends who are pressuring you to do things you know aren’t right.
But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life – what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home – that’s no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That’s no excuse for not trying.
Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’ll end up. No one’s written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future.
That’s what young people like you are doing every day, all across America.
Young people like Jazmin Perez, from Roma, Texas. Jazmin didn’t speak English when she first started school. Hardly anyone in her hometown went to college, and neither of her parents had gone either. But she worked hard, earned good grades, got a scholarship to Brown University, and is now in graduate school, studying public health, on her way to being Dr. Jazmin Perez.
I’m thinking about Andoni Schultz, from Los Altos, California, who’s fought brain cancer since he was three. He’s endured all sorts of treatments and surgeries, one of which affected his memory, so it took him much longer – hundreds of extra hours – to do his schoolwork. But he never fell behind, and he’s headed to college this fall.
And then there’s Shantell Steve, from my hometown of Chicago, Illinois. Even when bouncing from foster home to foster home in the toughest neighborhoods, she managed to get a job at a local health center; start a program to keep young people out of gangs; and she’s on track to graduate high school with honors and go on to college.
Jazmin, Andoni and Shantell aren’t any different from any of you. They faced challenges in their lives just like you do. But they refused to give up. They chose to take responsibility for their education and set goals for themselves. And I expect all of you to do the same.
That’s why today, I’m calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education – and to do everything you can to meet them. Your goal can be something as simple as doing all your homework, paying attention in class, or spending time each day reading a book. Maybe you’ll decide to get involved in an extracurricular activity, or volunteer in your community. Maybe you’ll decide to stand up for kids who are being teased or bullied because of who they are or how they look, because you believe, like I do, that all kids deserve a safe environment to study and learn. Maybe you’ll decide to take better care of yourself so you can be more ready to learn. And along those lines, I hope you’ll all wash your hands a lot, and stay home from school when you don’t feel well, so we can keep people from getting the flu this fall and winter.
Whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it. I want you to really work at it.
I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work — that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you’re not going to be any of those things.
But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won’t love every subject you study. You won’t click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right this minute. And you won’t necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.
That’s OK. Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who’ve had the most failures. JK Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was rejected twelve times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once said, “I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
These people succeeded because they understand that you can’t let your failures define you – you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently next time. If you get in trouble, that doesn’t mean you’re a troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to behave. If you get a bad grade, that doesn’t mean you’re stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying.
No one’s born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work. You’re not a varsity athlete the first time you play a new sport. You don’t hit every note the first time you sing a song. You’ve got to practice. It’s the same with your schoolwork. You might have to do a math problem a few times before you get it right, or read something a few times before you understand it, or do a few drafts of a paper before it’s good enough to hand in.
Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don’t know something, and to learn something new. So find an adult you trust – a parent, grandparent or teacher; a coach or counselor – and ask them to help you stay on track to meet your goals.
And even when you’re struggling, even when you’re discouraged, and you feel like other people have given up on you – don’t ever give up on yourself. Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.
The story of America isn’t about people who quit when things got tough. It’s about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best.
It’s the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went on to wage a revolution and found this nation. Students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil rights and put a man on the moon. Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago who founded Google, Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other.
So today, I want to ask you, what’s your contribution going to be? What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make? What will a president who comes here in twenty or fifty or one hundred years say about what all of you did for this country?
Your families, your teachers, and I are doing everything we can to make sure you have the education you need to answer these questions. I’m working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn. But you’ve got to do your part too. So I expect you to get serious this year. I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you. So don’t let us down – don’t let your family or your country or yourself down. Make us all proud. I know you can do it.
Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.
September has turned out to be a good month thus far…our first 5 choices for Cat of the Month were all adopted!! Yeah!! So…the final runner-up is Charlie, my very own rescue! She is still at home with me…but my cats hate her, it’s really very sad…but she is ready for adoption and looking for a wonderful home. If she could get adopted without even having to go into the cage…I would be uber happy. Pass the word along if you are looking for one cute button!!
I was cruisin around Anderson Cooper’s 360 and came across this article from Rolling Stone. Its pretty cool when you think about it. I mean, sure…there’s been blunders, and things could be better…but think of where we were, and how NOT long ago that was. Not long at all!! Its only been 200 days…I think he’s done wonderful things in that amount of time. Keep it up Barack.
Program note:For President Obama’s 200 day mark, we’ll be talking to senior political analyst David Gergen on AC360° tonight at 10pm ET.
Rolling Stone
During Franklin Roosevelt’s first 100 days in office, congress granted every request the new president made. Barack Obama, despite enjoying a decisive majority in both houses of Congress, hasn’t been so fortunate. His economic stimulus package failed to win a single Republican vote in the House, and conservative members of his own party are trying to block his ambitious plans to provide universal health care and curb global warming. What’s more, Obama himself has alarmed supporters by compromising on key issues, and he has yet to flex his political muscle by mobilizing the tech-savvy network of grass-roots activists he assembled during last year’s campaign. All of which raises the question: Is Obama raising false hopes? Or does he have what it takes to deliver real change?
To assess Obama’s performance during his first six months in office, we sat down in our New York offices with three of America’s leading political observers. David Gergen, a senior political analyst for CNN and director of the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School, served in the White Houses of Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton. Paul Krugman, a New York Times columnist and professor of economics and international affairs at Princeton University, won the 2008 Nobel Prize in economics. Michael Moore is the Academy Award-winning director of Bowling for Columbine and Sicko; his new film, Capitalism: A Love Story, will premiere on October 2nd.
Well, after a wonderfully short 6 days as our August Cat of the Month, Cosmo was adopted!! He was a beautiful old soul, 10 years! He has been with us for a little bit now, so this is wonderful news. So…our dear little miss Julie is getting a second month in the spotlight. Shes a very beautiful little girl who just wants some friends to play with and cuddle up to. Are you that person? Know someone who is? Help get Julie adopted!! Our dear Valentina is still waiting too, though she’s back in the adoption center.
Now, on to August’s Foster Care Favorites! Learn about these little buggers and spread the word!!
I may have found my new favorite book. Ok, maybe not my favorite of all time, but this book…its amazing. Where do I begin…I guess I’ll begin with the author, Tim Sandlin. Tim Sandlin has long been one of my favorite authors, introduced to me by my good friend Kelsey…we both were in love with his wild and quircky stories of 13 year old pregnancies, drunkin escapades, and now the glorious experience of the sixties generation when they are 80.
This book, I fell in love. From the moment I saw the cover, I knew I was in for a trip…and what a trip it was. I’ve long idalized the sixties generation. The flower children. I’ve often thought I was born in the wrong generation…but I think alot of my generation thinks that. Probably much to do with being the children of that generation. But at least if I cannot be a part of that generation, I’m a child of the generation that changed the nation.
Sorry, enough blabbing, onto the book. I’m not great at giving reviews, especially when something touched me the way this did. So here are a few of my favorite reviews about this book. All I can add, is that its a must read!!
“After crafting uproarious tales about fatherhood (Social Blunders, 1995) and Washington sleaze (Honey Don’t, 2003), Sandlin asks, What will the age of assisted living be like for boomers who longed for the Age of Aquarius? It’s 2022, and Guy Fontaine, a widower from Oklahoma, finds himself committed to a California old-folks facility where the flamboyant residents have reverted to the pursuits of their glory days, the late 1960s. Pot smoking, group sex, a rock band called Acid Reflux, cliques formed according to where you were during the Summer of Love, and the motto “don’t trust anyone under sixty” all make for a wild, sometimes grotesque milieu overseen by a bitchy director who treats the oldsters like idiot children and a staff doctor who overmedicates them. When Guy inadvertently jump-starts an insurrection, the old hippies, old hands at civil disobedience, take over the compound. Hilarious in the fine-tuned details and rapid-fire dialogue, Sandlin’s antic yet precision-aimed and unfailingly entertaining novel is a mordantly witty, covertly poignant, and genuinely insightful dissection of our fear and loathing of old age.” —Donna Seaman, Booklist
“Part Cuckoo’s Nest, part Acid Test, and part Alamo, Jimi Hendrix Turns Eighty shows us that to awaken the passion and idealism we thought flatlined at thirty, we need only to slip it a dose of sunshine and poke it with stick of sandalwood. Tim Sandlin takes us on a comic flashback to the future that can give you the giggles and the willies at the same time. What a trip! Pound for pound, Tim’s stuff is as tight and funny as anyone doing this comedy novel thing.” – Christopher Moore – best selling author
“Tim Sandlin’s new novel, Jimi Hendrix Turns Eighty, makes you scared shitless of growing old while looking forward to it at the same time. He states that sometime in the future, librarians will move this book from fiction to non-fiction, and I have every inclination to believe him. No matter how bizarre some of the turns in this book; it’s not hard to think that this could be real, right down to Drew Barrymore as Governor of California.
Imagine hippies and boomers, who started a whole new counter culture, getting so old that their children think they can’t take care of themselves anymore. An assisted living facility is just what these people have rebelled against their whole lives: the establishment. Here they are, older, wiser (most of the time) and with much more worldly experience than the ones taking care of them. Now they are part of a booming business, with their children all too eager to drop them off, take their money and discard them once and for all.
Thrown right into the middle of all this is Guy Fontaine. Unlike the other residents, he was never a hippie, never did drugs or protested, and wasn’t at Woodstock. He’s from Oklahoma after all. But one trait they all share is that they know for sure, yet refuse to believe that they are getting old before their time. When a resident’s cat is confiscated, and the shit hits the fan at Mission Pescadero, Guy finds himself as the unlikely leader of the aging bunch, who prove that they still have plenty to offer, with mostly hilarious and sometimes tragic results.
Throw in Viagra, LSD, pot, orgies, protests, rock concerts, dementia, Alzheimer’s, catheters and more outrageous characters than any other Sandlin book, and you’ve got a novel destined to bridge the gap between generations. I’ve never before read a book that I could recommend to my sixty year-old father, my fifty year-old uncle, my forty year-old friend, my thirty-year old wife and my twenty year-old brother. And once they read it, I’m sure there are many more people of different ages that they would recommend it to. And the reason is that Tim’s themes are universal without being set in a conventional setting. Amidst all the craziness going around at the facility, new love is found, death is dealt with, friendships are made and broken, and happiness is both a fleeting memory and also right around the corner. Within ten pages of this book, I went from snorting out loud laughing to being choked up with tears. And not just once, but consistently throughout. Tim is one of those rare authors that makes me have feelings that are almost identical to those I’ve had in actual life situations, kind of like a karmic deja vu.” – Curt Pasisz, www.timsandlin.com
I cannot believe that it is already July 16th!! Where the heck did June go??! The summer is like 1/2 way over 
Boo. Anyway…enough of my ranting…I’m here to promo two very adorable cats up for adoption through KittyKind. We have our July Cat of the Month, Julie and our Foster Care Favorite, Valentina. Please spread the word, lets get these wonderful kitties their forever home!!
BTW…Shirley, our lovely featured June cat had multiple people fighting over her all in one day. Strange how that happens! But, she is finally off to her new home, we wish her all the best!!
