FASworld National Alliance for FASD
452 Scarborough Golf Club Road M1G 1H1 Toronto, ON, Canada

Fasd Day live 2018

In our later years, Bonnie and I were giving FASD workshops for parent and professional groups interested in learning about the most common, most expensive, yet most preventible of all mental disabilities in the industrialized world. We'd had a call from a support group in Napanee. whose membership came from rural communities around southeastern Ontario and is located halfway between Belleville and Kingston. [ 735 more words ] https://fasdance.wordpress.com///well-always-have-napanee/

What have you read lately?Why? Who cares?Because it’s like weightlifting for the brain.So, who needs that?Everybody. If you don’t move your body, it gets flabby. It’s the same for your brain.Sounds like extra mental work and I’m too busy.No, it isn’t and no you’re not.Here’s the difference: Weightlifting or any repetitive exercise can be boring and hard to sustain. [ 67 more words ] https://fasdance.wordpress.com//reading-is-the-opiate-of-/

Bonnie burst into my life as an award-winning copywriter at Vickers & Benson Advertising in Montreal in 1964. The city was alive with the dynamics of Mayor Jean Drapeau as the city prepared for Expo ’67 and where every woman looked fabulous in the glittering fashion of the time. I had the good fortune to be managing the advertising and promotion for intimate apparel for Dupont of Canada. [ 622 more words ] https://fasdance.wordpress.com//06/29/bonnie-buxton-writer/

In this New Hampshire classroom I used to place my hand over my heart and recite the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the greatest country in the world, the ...land of liberty and justice for all. That's me behind the cookie house, looking bewildered. I didn't understand veneration of the flag, or trust what I was told about liberty and justice for all. This is partly because my parents came from Canada, where patriotism wears a modest face, but mainly because I was already trying to make sense of things and what my teacher said about my country didn't square with what I saw in the pages of LIFE magazine. If America was truly the land of the free, why were kids my age being barred from southern schools because of the color of their skin? I hadn't yet heard of Emmett Till, lynched at 14 a few months before my sixth birthday. To know that story in those days, to see the unfathomable brutality inflicted on a child, you had to see the photos published in Ebony and Jet. That story was too harrowing for LIFE. But I could tell I wasn't hearing the whole truth. I didn't feel American or love America. To love my native country, I had to put down roots in my second country, Canada, and return as a road-tripping visitor. I had to find myself both enthralled and perplexed by the various Americas I saw along the way, each with its own distinctive culture. I had to go to Monticello, where Thomas Jefferson kept slaves and fathered enslaved children while laying the foundations of the republic. I had to be mindful that America survived a civil war that killed more Americans than any other conflict. I have to grapple with my fear of another one. I have to weigh my deep affection for the Florida neighborhood where we've spent many winters against the many uncertainties of returning there safely. Walt Whitman heard America singing. From afar, I hear America shouting, cursing and struggling to force out the words "I can't breathe." To hear the voices of community, I have to bend down and listen closely. The hardest part of loving a person is holding fast to the best without looking away from the worst. I've found the same is true of countries. This is why my heart breaks for America and tears well up behind my eyes on a bright day in Canada. It's also why I haven't abandoned hope. The American dream is the greatest founding dream in the world. We still have a chance to make it real. I'll let Langston Hughes have the last word. Let America Be America Again Langston Hughes - 1902-1967 Let America be America again. Let it be the dream it used to be. Let it be the pioneer on the plain Seeking a home where he himself is free. (America never was America to me.) Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed Let it be that great strong land of love Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme That any man be crushed by one above. (It never was America to me.) O, let my land be a land where Liberty Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath, But opportunity is real, and life is free, Equality is in the air we breathe. (There's never been equality for me, Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.") Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark? And who are you that draws your veil across the stars? I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart, I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars. I am the red man driven from the land, I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek And finding only the same old stupid plan Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak. I am the young man, full of strength and hope, Tangled in that ancient endless chain Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land! Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need! Of work the men! Of take the pay! Of owning everything for one's own greed! I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil. I am the worker sold to the machine. I am the Negro, servant to you all. I am the people, humble, hungry, mean Hungry yet today despite the dream. Beaten yet todayO, Pioneers! I am the man who never got ahead, The poorest worker bartered through the years. Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream In the Old World while still a serf of kings, Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true, That even yet its mighty daring sings In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned That's made America the land it has become. O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas In search of what I meant to be my home For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore, And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea, And torn from Black Africa's strand I came To build a "homeland of the free." The free? Who said the free? Not me? Surely not me? The millions on relief today? The millions shot down when we strike? The millions who have nothing for our pay? For all the dreams we've dreamed And all the songs we've sung And all the hopes we've held And all the flags we've hung, The millions who have nothing for our pay Except the dream that's almost dead today. O, let America be America again The land that never has been yet And yet must bethe land where every man is free. The land that's minethe poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME Who made America, Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain, Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain, Must bring back our mighty dream again. Sure, call me any ugly name you choose The steel of freedom does not stain. From those who live like leeches on the people's lives, We must take back our land again, America! O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath America will be! Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death, The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies, We, the people, must redeem The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers. The mountains and the endless plain All, all the stretch of these great green states And make America again!