Wednesday, August 10 -   "The Lockdown Club:  Five Very Different Kids, A Teacher and A Classroom"   A Play in 2 Acts. Written by: Valerie Udeozor Directed by: Jennifer Dove

The Lockdown Club is about five very different high schoolers stuck in a classroom while their school is on lockdown. (Running time approximately one hour)

A Fundraising Event For The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. Tickets in advance only.  $10 adults, $6 youth.  Call 310- 720-5476 for reservations. Stella Adler Theater, 6773 Hollywood Blvd 90028 (Near Hollywood &Highland)

Children Uniting Nations  will be hosting its 3rd Annual Dodgers Day event, for Los Angeles foster youth and their care givers.  Sitting with a group of foster children, even for a few hours, can have an everlasting positive impression. So, please come out and support/volunteer on Dodgers Day. The day is hugely rewarding. For information call Children Uniting Nations 310-203-0500.

Wednesday, August 17, 6:30 p.m. "Boards, Commissions and Elected Officials - The Gap and How To Close It"

Soroptomists International of the Verdugos will host Pauline Field as the speaker. Conference Room, Montrose Travel, 2349 Honolulu Avenue, Montrose

California Museum for History, Women, and the Arts, Sacramento, CA

Join CEWAER to honor women who have been appointed to boards and commissions at the local, state and federal levels. For more information visit www.cewaer.org

Marie Callender's, 707 N. Pacific Ave., Glendale (just north of the 134 fwy.) Please call restaurant at 818/242-6836 for directions. Dinner is no host

For more information or to register your family for this project, please call Foothill Unity Center 626-358-3486

Friday, August 26 - Women's Equality Day - 85 Years since women got the vote in the U.S. What will you do to celebrate it?

For rsvp and more information go to the Commission's website - www.women.ca.gov

http://www.thepeacealliance.org/events/sept_conf_05.htm

Judge Roberts' Nomination to the
Supreme Court
From Patty Murray, U.S. Senator, Washington
Six Democratic women senators joined me in launching an interactive Web site to engage Americans in the Supreme Court confirmation of Judge John G. Roberts, Jr. The site allows all Americans to submit questions they want Judge Roberts to answer during his upcoming Senate hearings.

In 1991, as I watched the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings, I simply couldn't believe that this nominee was not asked about issues that I cared about. This Web site provides an outlet for all Americans to share their thoughts, questions, and concerns during this important process.

Judge Roberts has been nominated to a lifetime appointment on the highest court in the land and will influence our path on a number of issues that directly impact our rights and our lives as Americans. I want to have an open confirmation process, and I encourage all Americans to take advantage of this opportunity to have their concerns heard.

Make your voice heard on the Roberts nomination :
http://democrats.senate.gov/askroberts

Another First
Seventh Day Adventist members at their worldwide conference, elevated a woman to a top leadership post for the first time.  Ella Louise Smith Simmons will serve as one of the 9 VPs.

These Women Are Changing Their Nations
Excerpted from an article by Lyric Wallwork Winik, Womens eNews
Published: July 3, 2005

They are mothers with children-a wife and a widow who are risking their lives for a shot at politics. Narmin Othman, 57, is an Iraqi Kurd and a one-time high school teacher. Massouda Jalal, 41, is an Afghan and a doctor by training who boldly ran for president in last fall's elections. Both are now cabinet ministers in their respective countries. But their journeys have been arduous. Othman lost most of her family to Iraqi strife, while Dr. Jalal was threatened with arrest and hanging by the Taliban.

Indeed, like or loathe the U.S.-led invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, both nations now must struggle to create working governments. And U.S. leaders are pinning significant hopes on these women to help transform their countries.

Narmin Othman knew long ago the price of politics in Iraq, where guerrillas already have assassinated two high-ranking female officials as well as mid-level activists. "I started my life in a political family," she says in a voice raspy from lack of sleep and years of cigarettes. Her father, brother and husband were active in the Kurdish resistance and spent years hiding in the mountains of northern Iraq, living as guerrillas, or peshmerga . All were jailed by Saddam Hussein. "My husband was imprisoned from 1975 until 1979," Othman recalls. "I worked hard, but I did not have enough to bribe my husband out of jail. They used every kind of torture. They beat him, pulled out his fingernails and brainwashed him."

When her 5-year-old son said at school that his father was in prison, police "came to my house and told me that he must not say that," Othman recalls. She was arrested numerous times and had to leave her son behind when she and her husband fled to exile in Sweden in 1984. During their eight years there, she experienced the freedom she'd only imagined in Iraq.

"I touched the democracy in Sweden," says Othman. "Every nice thing that you see, you dream that you can bring to your own country. In democracy, people can use their voice without any fear." Othman returned to northern Iraq in 1992, after the Gulf War, and became minister of education in the Kurdistan region. She did not leave that area until Saddam was overthrown in 2003.

Her husband passed away in March 2004, just as she was offered a post in the interim Iraqi government. "I didn't care for my life, so I always put some mission before me," says Othman. "Loving your people is bigger than loving yourself."

Dr. Massouda Jalal is a mother of three and is married to a professor. Dr. Jalal calls herself "the most lucky woman in Afghanistan." After the Taliban came to power and forced her to stop teaching at Kabul University, she signed up to head a United Nations program. The UN said it could not guarantee her safety because Afghan women were not allowed out on the streets. "Any moment I could be taken to jail," she says. But, covered in a burka, "I went outside and took the risk." She started bakeries in Kabul to allow the 10,000 war widows in that city alone to feed their families.

When the Taliban fell, Dr. Jalal was drawn to politics. "As a doctor or a teacher, how many people can you help?" she asks. "As a politician, you will be able to help the whole society." Dr. Jalal ran for Afghanistan's highest office twice-in 2002 and in 2004-against now-President Hamid Karzai. Her slogan was "Vote for the Mother." She traveled to 30 provinces in a pickup truck without security guards. "It took two months for me to convince my husband that I should run," she recalls. "He thought I was dreaming." She won him over, and he became her appointments secretary.

Dr. Jalal only got about 1% of the total but earned votes in all of Afghanistan's major cities. She hopes to run again-and win. It is not an impossible dream. Women have an enormous opportunity to determine the futures of both Iraq and Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, an estimated 44% of all registered voters are women. In Iraq, more than 55% of the population is female, as are a third of the delegates elected to write the new constitution. Decades of bloodshed have left both countries with many widows.

The U.S. is not sitting on the sidelines. The U.S. Congress has offered support through its Iraqi women's caucus, and First Lady Laura Bush recently visited Afghanistan.

Despite the obstacles, both women are optimistic. Dr. Jalal especially warms to the nuts and bolts of governing. She reels off the issues that matter to her-from freedom of speech to improving basic health services. (Average life expectancy in Afghanistan is about 46 years for both sexes.) "We have to translate the new constitution into reality," she says. "Women need legal protection. We can't go back."

For Iraq, the questions are more immediate, including whether the new constitution will be largely secular or follow a fundamentalist Islamic model. Othman, a Muslim, opposes the extreme fundamentalist elements. "If we can come out of terror, we can do it," she states.

Does she believe that is possible? "If I'm not hopeful," Othman replies, "I'm not working for my people."

Women in Politics:
How Does the U.S. Stack Up?
As democracy takes root around the world-often with America's encouragement-more women are joining the political process. So it's striking how low their participation rates are here at home. When nations were ranked for women's involvement in national legislatures and governments, the U.S. was 61st. Rwanda was first, followed by Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark. Iraq, with its new national assembly, ranked 15th. Afghanistan is still unranked, but its new constitution guarantees women 25% of the seats in the lower house and 17% of the seats in the upper house of parliament. (Of course, in a few countries-including Kuwait and Saudi Arabia-women still can't even vote or hold office.)

In Iraq, women are pushing for 40% of the assembly seats, while they're still at just 14% in the U.S. House and Senate. The White House Project, a nonpartisan organization dedicated to increasing women's leadership in our society, is training 300 women to become more active in U.S. politics this summer. Marie Wilson, the project's president, says more women need to be encouraged to run for office. She stresses the importance of women's involvement in state and local offices, which serve as a pipeline to national positions. Visit www.thewhitehouseproject.org to learn more.

Feeling Old and Ugly? Take Another Look
Excerpted from an article by Margaret M. Gullette, Womens eNews

For the complete article, click on http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm?aid=2398

In my youth there was scarcely a part of my body I could look at without critique.

But over time I made peace with a few parts I had disliked for decades. My feet, for one. Those broad peasant feet began to look sturdy, smooth-skinned, touchable, with attractive outlines. The toes were charming.

Like many other women touched by the magic wand of feminism, over the last few decades I began to overcome the self-hatred that comes of having a young female body in patriarchal, capitalist American. Thank the goddess for no longer being so young.

And then--perhaps as a consequence--in the shower one morning I was twisting to look back and down my side. In the shower you can never see your whole self, only parts. Suddenly the curves of my hip, buttock, thigh, calf and ankle came into view--startlingly elegant, powerful and voluptuous.

It was an angle of myself I had never before observed, at least consciously.

I was so impressed that I took a longer glance the next time I thought of it. The view was definitely one a painter might love. But had I ever seen an image created from the point of view of a woman looking down at her own body from above?

Never. Nor could any mirror show it. Certainly no TV or magazine ad had ever captured those satisfying curves. The assumption of our culture is not just ageist but middle ageist, that bodily decline starts not in old age but ever younger. Even as early as 30.

Excuse me for being the one to say so, but I think my discovery may be important and not just for me.

The reason that I can admire these parts of the "aging" corpus is precisely because no TV ad or magazine article has ever focused on them. I hadn't learned to hate them as signs of decline. In the shower I saw them fresh.

Ad campaigns exist only to get us to want their products badly. By giving us views of younger models they create a critical comparative eye. That eye is rapt in delight only by the tall anorexic body. It is ready to frown contemptuously at the average American woman, 5 foot 4 inches tall and 140 pounds.

Fortunately for my graceful lower extremities, no corporation has yet devised a product that could improve that view. No youthful model owns it. It is my point of view. You could say it is copyrighted by me.

Having rescued a subjective view of myself from advertising's mean scrutiny, I freely offer you the same pleasure. Try it. There is nothing wrong with a little healthy narcissism once a day, in a steamy bathroom filled with the heady aromas of shampoo and olive-oil soap.

Suppose that every single day, for just two minutes, every single woman in America loved that much of her body. What a different attitude toward ourselves and other women we would carry out of the bathroom and into the world.

But my new insight is this: We don't need masochistic empathy here. Let's not reinforce women's supposed ugliness in the guise of friendship. If friendship really exists, one of the women needs to stop right there and ask judiciously, "Isn't that product placement speaking?" Or, "Isn't 'I'm not the same' just what a plastic surgeon wants to hear you say? If the perfection industries didn't make billions on your misery, would you be worrying so much about your hair, your abs, your waist?"

End the lamentations. Let's not allow ourselves to be walking commercials for the commerce in aging. Let's deny the bosses another excuse to downsize our jobs. Could we focus instead on the parts we have learned to love? (Did I tell you already that my shoulder looks strong and silky from above? No? Well, it's another hot-shower effect.) And then you would have to say something similar about a once-unloved body part that you have taught yourself to find pleasing.

Maybe, in time, what we praise could be the whole integrated body-mind, with its spirit, character, charm and responsiveness. Confession of a new kind is in order. This is not a boast to each other but a taunt to decline culture. It feels good.

An Event Location
Looking for a place to have a party or an event?  What about the Radisson Wilshire Plaza Hotel at Wilshire and Normandie?  Danita Soriano, the Sales Manager was kind enough to invite me to lunch recently to give me a tour of the hotel.  I had not been there for many years and forgot what a convenient location it is - out of the crowds of Beverly Hills/Santa Monica, and without the parking hassles of Downtown.  Give Danita a call at 213-368-3014.  She'll take good care of you.

Emergency Information
Thanks to Margalo Ashley-Farrand, Attorney, Feminist, Co-Founder of Shades of Culture

This information has been passed on from First Responders.  Paramedics will turn to a victim's cell phone for clues to that person's Identity. You can make their job much easier with a simple idea that they are trying to get everyone to adopt:   ICE stands for :   I n C ase of an E mergency . If you add an entry in the contacts list in your cell phone under ICE, with the name and phone no. of the person that the emergency services should call on your behalf, you can save them a lot of time and have your loved ones contacted quickly. It only takes a few moments of your time to do. Paramedics know what ICE means and they look for it immediately. ICE on your cell phone NOW!

Parents Take Note
Thanks to Catherine Yesayan, Co-Founder of Shades of Culture, Realtor for the following:

First I'm going to tell you a little about me and my family. My name is Jeff. I am a Police Officer for a city which is known nationwide for its crime rate. We have a lot of gangs and drugs. At one point we were # 2 in the nation in homicides per capita. I also have a police K-9 named Thor. He was certified in drugs and general duty. He retired at 3 years old because he was shot in the line of duty.  He lives with us now and I still train with him because he likes it.  I always liked the fact that there was no way to bring drugs into my house. Thor wouldn't allow it. He would tell on you. The reason I say this is so you understand that I know about drugs.

I like building computers occasionally and started building a new one in February 2005. I also was working on some of my older computers. They were full of dust so on one of my trips to the computer store I bought a 3 pack of DUST OFF. Dust Off is a can of compressed air to blow dust off a computer. A few weeks later when I went to use one of them they were all used. I talked to my kids and my two sons both said they had used them on their computer and messing around with them. I yelled at them for wasting the 10 dollars I paid for them.

On March 1st, I left for work at 10 PM. Just before midnight my wife went down and kissed Kyle goodnight. At 530 am the next morning Kathy went downstairs to wake Kyle up for school, before she left for work. He was propped up in bed with his legs crossed and his head leaning over. She called to him a few times to get up. He didn't move.  He would sometimes tease her like this and pretend he fell back asleep.! He was never easy to get up.

She went in and shook his arm. He fell over.  He was pale white and had the straw from the Dust Off can coming out of his mouth. He had the new can of Dust Off in his hands. Kyle was dead.

I am a police officer and I had never heard of this. My wife is a nurse and she had never heard of this. We later found out from the coroner, after the autopsy, that only the propellant from the can of Dust off was in his system. No other drugs. Kyle had died between midnight and 1 AM

I found out that using Dust Off is being done mostly by kids ages 9 through 15. They even have a name for it. It's called dusting. A take off from the Dust Off name. It gives them a slight high for about 10 seconds. It makes them dizzy.

It contains a propellant called R2, a refrigerant like what is used in your refrigerator. It is a heavy gas. Heavier than air.  When you inhale it, it fills your lungs and keeps the good air, with oxygen, out. IT KILLS YOU. The horrible part about this is there is no warning.  There is no level that kills you.  It's not cumulative or an overdose; it can just go randomly, terribly wrong.  Roll the dice and if your number comes up you die.  You don't die later. Or not feel good and say I've had too much. You usually die as your breathing it in. If not you die within 2 seconds of finishing "the hit." That's why the straw was still in Kyle's mouth when he died. Why his eyes were still open.

After Kyle died another story came out. A Probation Officer went to the school system next to ours to speak with a student. While there he found a student using Dust Off in the bathroom. This student told him about another student who also had some in his locker. They will tell you they don't have a drug problem there. They don't even have a dare or plus program there. So rather than tell everyone about this "new" way of getting high they found, they hid it. The probation officer told the media after Kyle's death and they, the school, then admitted to it. I know that if they would have told the media and I had heard, it wouldn't have been in my house.

We need to get this out of our homes and school computer labs. Using Dust Off isn't new and some "professionals" do know about. It just isn't talked about much, except by the kids. They all seem to know about it.

This Officer is asking for everyone who receives this email to forward it to everyone in their address book, even Law Enforcement Officers.

(I checked this out for its veracity: http://www.snopes.com/toxins/dustoff.asp )

Letters to the Editor
I couldn't resist writing a note to you, Helen Sipsas and, of course, Valerie Reitman of the LA Times to let you know how much I appreciated this article on "Caltech to Harvard: Redo the Math."  I even love the headline.  I had somehow missed this when reading the Times.   I suppose that is an indicator of how important The Equality Standard is, too.  It keeps us from missing a thing!  Best, Carolyn Howard-Johnson

Editor's Comments
Ellen Snortland, fellow Board member at Fifty/Fifty Leadership, chided me recently when planning an event.  One of our supporters volunteered to give of her time and expertise for a whole day to help us raise money.  "That's just what we women do,"  Ellen said, "we give our time and expertise away for nothing as if we have no value."  Good point.  Over the years that I have been publishing this newsletter several people have asked me how much time I spend putting each edition together and it is a considerable amount of time.  I am going to listen to Ellen's advice and put a value on my time.  I am, therefore, going to add to each newsletter a request for contributions for subscriptions.  Because I do not want to exclude anyone from receiving the newsletter, however, I am not going to make it mandatory - kind of difficult anyway as its by email!  I am going strictly on the honor system.  If you cannot afford it, its my pleasure to send it to you.  I do, however, thank you for honoring me and my time with your contributions.

Subscriptions
Subscriptions to The Equality Standard are $12 per year, prorated monthly. So, for those of you willing and able to pay the subscription, please send a check made payable to Pauline Field for $5 for the remainder of 2005 to Equality Standard, 1315 Ruberta Avenue, Glendale, CA 91201 or complete the credit card information below and email back to PaulineField@att.net

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Final Words
"Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all."

Hypatia, world famous mathematician, circa A.D. 400

Pauline Field
818-243-2322