It’s hard to believe it’s already 2010. But we’re here and there are still new things in store for this blog. When I started blogging, the main goal was to share information and hopefully open up dialogue on issues that affect the black community. I think I did that in some way this year, but it wasn’t to the extent that I’d done in previous years.

The goal for this year is to continue on the track of keeping the site informative. I plan on opening it up to others who are interested in sharing their point of view with the readers of this site. There are some talented, well-written people out there and I want to showcase them and get some real discussions going.

Late in the year, when I got swamped with projects for work, I fell off the blogging scene for a couple of weeks. Blogging can be a daunting task and coming up with things to write about can be time consuming (especially when it isn’t one of my strengths). So this year, I’m going to solicit your help. If you or someone you know are interested in blogging, but don’t want to manage their own site, email me at info @ theotalks.net. I’m always in need of someone to write and it usually turns out to be a win-win situation for both parties.

This year, I also want to focus more on minority small businesses. In these turbulent economic times, a lot of people are turning to owning their own business. I think that’s great, so I decided to start a list of some of my favorite small businesses. I’ll be highlighting small business owners throughout the year, so contact me if you’re interested in participating.

Finally, here are some websites that you need to keep an eye on for 2010. I’ll be blogging a lot about them and hope to be visible on most of them as time permits. Check them out when you get the chance:

• Liberate Magazine
• Tech Relations Firm
• Dallas South News
• Barter My Biz

Have a Happy New Year and God Bless!

Okay, this is a quick last minute petition to support the American Heart Association’s Dallas Heart Walk 2009. I’ve participated in the event and think it’s a worthwhile organization to support. For those who do not know, heart disease and stroke is very prevalent in the black community and events like this help raise money for research and improving treatments to combat these diseases.

I’m sure you know someone who has high blood pressure, diabetes (sugar) or high cholesterol. The American Heart Association is dedicated to helping people learn how to control and improve their quality of life by reducing the number of deaths from coronary heart disease. If there’s anyone who’s down for that, it’s me. My dad died of a stroke at the young age of 57. His first stroke happened in his early 40s. When I do walk in Heart Walk, I do it for him and my family. I do it because I understand what heart disease and stroke can do to a family. I do it because I want to bring awareness to others who may not know how they can prevent it.

If you would like to donate, please follow the link here. Donations can be accepted at any time throughout the year. If you are interested in walking in Heart Walk, I’ve provided some information below. For additional information, you can visit the Frequently Asked Questions page on the event website.

The Dallas Heart Walk is Saturday, September 12, 2009. The Opening Ceremony starts 8:30 a.m. and the walk begins at 9:00 a.m. The Dallas Walk will start at Victory Park (at American Airlines Center), 2500 Victory Avenue, Dallas, 75219 and will take a path through downtown for a total distance of 3 miles. Parking is free at the American Airlines Center in Lot F, Lot E and the Platinum Parking Garage. If you want to take the rail, the Red and Blue Line will be running to the American Airlines Center. DART passes are available from your Heart Walk staff person in limited quantities. DART passes will be acceptable for use on the light rail, buses and the TRE.

Last night I had the opportunity to attend an open house to see the Dallas South News newsroom. While I was supposed to be taking pictures for this post, I found myself engaged in some great conversation with various attendees of the event. It was a good chance to meet some new people and network I even got the chance to chat with some college friends I hadn’t seen in a while (shout to the A&M crew).

For those who haven’t been to the website, check it out at www.dallassouthnews.org. This is going to be a good deal for the South Dallas community. Blogging has opened up a different way in which news can be reported. Through it, us little people can have a voice and the real discussions can begin. Shawn Williams, the DSN editor shared an email with his board on how this type of media benefits the community.

Dear DSN Board and Advisory Board,

At the most recent board meeting, a discussion took place around why efforts like Dallas South News are important, and what type of value we bring to communities. I have reached out to a few people across the country leading initiatives on innovation in media to share their thoughts with us about just how significant our effort is at this critical juncture in journalism.

The first person that we hear from is Kelly McBride. Kelly is the Ethics Group Leader at the Poynter Institute, a school for journalists in St. Petersburg, Florida. More importantly for this discussion, it was Kelly that convened the “Sense Making” project funded by the Ford Foundation, “a yearlong project to help the public develop skills for making sense of news in the digital era.” At the gathering of “sense makers” last Spring, I learned about other cities utilizing local nonprofit news.

Here’s what Kelly had to say:

Humans understand the world through narrative. Communities exist because groups of humans share portions of a common narrative (That could be, “We live on this street.” or “We share the same faith.” or “We fought the same war.”)

The more narratives are communicated, the more effective they become in building communities. Communities are necessary to create positive social change. People may argue about the veracity of these statements, but I believe they are demonstrably true.

Since the dawn of American democracy, we have had reliable institutions that create a common narrative for our communities. Granted these have been flawed institutions that left out huge portions of that narrative. But these newspapers and later radio and television stations, at least had the capacity, if not the will, to tell the stories of their communities.

Today, those institutions are losing their ability to tell a community’s story. As a result the community is losing the ability to address problems and make the world better.

So, other institutions must be created to share stories and to document narratives, particularly untold stories, so that communities can continue to move forward.

Kelly McBride
Ethics Group Leader
The Poynter Institute
kelly@poynter.org
Twitter: kmcb
www.poynter.org

Check out the site and let me know what you think. If you would like to donate or volunteer, email editor@dallassouthnews.org or call 214-485-0683 for more information.
BTW, here a slide show with some of the photos that I was able to take between conversations.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is working hard to inform the public about how to prepare for and prevent H1N1 flu.

Know What to Do About the Flu:Visit http://www.flu.gov

To ensure that the HIV community is prepared for the H1N1 flu and understands how H1N1 can affect people living with HIV and AIDS, AIDS.gov is sponsoring a webinar on H1N1 Preparedness and HIV.

What: H1N1 Preparedness and HIV: A webinar for Federal staff and grantees who serve people living with HIV and AIDS

When: Wednesday, September 2, 2009, 2:00 – 2:45 pm (EDT)

Join experts from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and HIV grantees to hear an update on H1N1 preparedness, especially as it applies to people living with HIV and AIDS.

Register by Friday, August 28 by visiting www.AIDS.gov/webinars

Questions? Please email contact@AIDS.gov. For more information about H1N1, visit www.flu.gov.

The President talks about how the chatter and ruckus around health insurance reform on television obscures the reality of what’s happening in America. He discusses how in most towns people and Members of Congress are having constructive conversations, and how people are learning how reform will help them and their families with the real problems they have faced with the insurance system.

source

Feeding America provides low-income individuals and families with the fuel to survive and even thrive. As the nation’s leading domestic hunger-relief charity, our network members supply food to more than 25 million Americans each year, including 9 million children and 3 million seniors. Serving the entire United States, more than 200 member food banks operate 63,000 agencies that address hunger in all of its forms. For more information on how you can fight hunger in your community and across the country, visit www.feedingamerica.org.

For every $1 you donate, Feeding America helps provide 10 pounds of food and grocery products to men, women and children facing hunger in our country. Please join the Kellogg Company and Causes as we take small steps towards creating BIG change. 15% of all donations made through Causes on June 18, 2009 will be matched and donated by Causes to Feeding America. Visit your Causes homepage and invite friends to take action. For more information you can visit the Facebook page or check out the website above.

What is Photo Phinish?

If you talk to the people I hang around most, the majority will say that I’m a pretty quiet, easy-going, kind of guy. I tend to not get upset about a lot of things and when placed in a situation where some would flip out, I try my best to remain calm, cool and collected. For a long time, I thought patience was one of my greatest virtues. But then I had kids…
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The blogosphere is full of mom bloggers who are very active and organized. So it was nice to see the blogger dads organize and come up with a place where dads feel comfortable visiting. From what I could find out, this is a fairly new site and was started by bloggers Pete Janelle and Joe Schatz. If you are a parent, you can join the community and get to reading posts like “What I Really Want for Father’s Day”. I’ve included an excerpt of what dad-blogs.com is all about:

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If it ain’t one thing it’s another. Even at the young age of 33, I’m on a small dose of pressure medicine. It runs in my family (with both parents), but I hope to kick the pill soon. I’ve been slacking on the exercising and I could get a little more sleep, but that’s something I’m working on. I’ll do better. I have people depending on me. Check out this article published on Monday in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

source – www.chinaview.cn

WASHINGTON, June 8 (Xinhua) — Middle-aged adults who sleep fewer hours appear more likely to have high blood pressure and to experience adverse changes in blood pressure over time, according to a report published Monday in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

Almost one-third of Americans have hypertension or high blood pressure, a condition that contributes to seven million deaths worldwide each year, according to background information in the article.

“Identifying a novel lifestyle risk factor for high blood pressure could lead to new interventions to prevent or reduce high blood pressure,” the authors write. “Laboratory studies of short-term sleep deprivation have suggested potential mechanisms for a causal link between sleep loss and hypertension.”

Sleep deprivation is associated with increased activity in the sympathetic nervous system, which controls the body’s stress response. Over time, this activation could contribute to high blood pressure.

Kristen L. Knutson of the University of Chicago and his colleagues studied 578 adults who first had their blood pressure and other clinical, demographic and health variables measured between 2000 and 2001. In 2003 and 2005, the researchers measured sleep duration by using surveys and wrist actigraphy, in which a sensor is worn on the wrist to record periods of rest and activity. Blood pressure, demographic and self-reported sleep information were measured again in 2005 and 2006.

Participants (average age 40) slept an average of six hours per night; only seven (1 percent) averaged eight or more hours of sleep. After excluding patients taking medication for high blood pressure and controlling for age, race and sex, the researchers found that individuals who slept fewer hours were significantly more likely to have higher systolic and diastolic blood pressure.

Sleeping less also predicted increases in blood pressure over five years, along with the onset of hypertension. Each hour of reduction in sleep duration was associated with a 37 percent increase in the odds of developing high blood pressure.

“Consistent with other studies, we observed higher blood pressure levels in men, particularly African American men,” the authors wrote. “Also, as described in a previous report from this study,

African American men slept much less than white women. These two observations suggested the intriguing possibility that the well-documented higher blood pressure in African Americans and men might be partly related to sleep duration.”

“In summary, the present study provides evidence for a link between the duration and quality of sleep and high blood pressure levels using objectively measured sleep characteristics,” they concluded. “Intervention studies are needed to determine whether optimizing sleep duration and quality can reduce the risk of increased blood pressure.”

Editor: Fang Yang

I was watching the Today Show and saw this segment about the Financial Cost of Cancer. It tugged on my heart because growing up my family faced a similar situation when my dad had a brain stem stroke. The financial recovery from dealing with this type of situation can last for years and it takes making some tough decisions to get out of it.

What happens to those who try to do the things “the right way”, only to find themselves in a situation of financial ruin? It’s all ready tough enough dealing with the fact that your loved one is sick, only to have the hospital creditors bugging you about their payment. We need some type of health care reform and we need it soon. People are suffering and no one seems to know what to do. President Obama has pledged to have some type of health care reform by the end of the year. But with trillion dollar deficits, I have a hard time seeing how it will get done. Maybe someday all Americans will have access to the same heath care benefits as those in Congress.

We shouldn’t have to choose between doing what it takes to keep a loved one alive and food for our family. But it’s a sad reality of what people are having to do every day. What’s out there to help those who’ve been placed in this situation? If you know, feel free to share with us.