U.S. storm deaths reach 22 as new tornadoes hit Texas

US | Sat Dec 26, 2015 9:59pm EST

Related: U.S., ENVIRONMENT, NATURAL DISASTERS

DALLAS | BY LISA MARIA GARZA

Traffic goes across the bridge on Alabama hwy 87 at the Pea River in Elba, Alabama, December 26, 2015.

REUTERS/MARVIN GENTRY



Four people died in a storm-related incident in Texas near where a tornado touched down on Saturday, bringing the death toll from tornadoes and flooding this week in the southern United States to 22, according to officials and local media.

The four victims were killed in what was believed to be a traffic accident in the Texas city of Garland, about 15 miles (24 km) northeast of downtown Dallas, police spokesman Mike Hatfield told the Dallas Morning News.

The National Weather Service confirmed tornadoes hit multiple cities around Dallas on Saturday evening. Weather officials said there were reports of debris falling from the sky onto a highway in nearby DeSoto.

The Weather Service said a tornado had touched down to the south of Dallas in Ellis County, where Emergency Management Coordinator Stephanie Parker said: "We have destroyed and damaged homes."

Weather officials also confirmed tornadoes striking the Texas towns Ovilla, Farmersville and Rowlett - which neighbors Garland. Images uploaded to social media showed a massive tornado near Rowlett and at least one destroyed structure.

Flash flood and tornado warnings extended into Saturday night for the region, according to the Weather Service.

Officials in Benton County, Mississippi, on Saturday found the bodies of a man and woman who were missing since being caught in a tornado on Wednesday, said Greg Flynn, spokesman for Mississippi Emergency Management Agency.

The cause of their deaths was not disclosed, but they brought the total dead from tornadoes in Mississippi to 10, in addition to 56 people injured, officials said.

The tornado damaged 403 homes over a seven-county area in the state, Flynn said. In addition, flooding left 50 homes uninhabitable and closed 40 roads in Monroe County, which got 10 to 12 inches (about 25 to 30 cm) of rain, he said.

The tornadoes also killed six people in Tennessee and one each in Arkansas and Alabama, bringing the three-state total to 18.

State authorities told local broadcaster WTVY that they had recovered the body of a 5-year-old boy who drowned when the car he was in was swept into floodwaters on Friday. A 22-year-old man who was in the car remains missing, the station said.

U.S. post-holiday travelers can expect a mix of stormy weather during the remainder of the weekend, with blizzard conditions in New Mexico and western Texas and flooding rain in the southern plains from south Texas through Indiana, forecasters said.

In California, high winds fanned a wildfire that closed parts of the much-traveled U.S. 101 northwest of Los Angeles and forced evacuations, fire officials said.

The wet and snowy conditions come after a Christmas Day of unseasonable warmth on the East Coast, with record-high temperatures set or tied in several cities, including New York.

"It looks like it's going to be pretty bad across the southwest into the southern plains," said Evan Duffey, meteorologist for AccuWeather.

He added that given the blizzard conditions expected for Saturday, anyone hoping to travel in Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas "should try to get going as soon as you can" to beat the storm.



(Reporting by Lisa Maria Garza in Dallas, Mary Wisniewski in Chicago and Kevin Murphy in Kansas City; Additional reporting by Curtis Skinner in San Francisco; Editing by Bill Rigby and Dan Grebler)

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Gay-rights group opening offices in 3 Southern states

Dustin Barnes, USA TODAY 3:21 a.m. EDT April 27, 2014



(Photo: Danny Johnston, AP)



JACKSON, Miss. — The nation's largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender organization is setting up shop in the South, announcing plans to establish field offices in Alabama, Arkansas and Mississippi.

The Human Rights Campaign said the new $8.5 million campaign, called Project One America, is focusing on these states because they lack nondiscrimination protections for LGBT residents in the areas of employment and housing.

"The opportunities for progress couldn't be clearer, and the need couldn't be greater," said Brad Clark, director of the new initiative.

Joce Pritchett and her partner of 10 years, Carla Webb, are raising two children in Jackson, location of one of the new field offices. Pritchett carried the couple's two children, but Webb was the egg donor in both pregnancies.

"They're her biological children," Pritchett said, referring to Grace, 5, and Ethan, 20 months. "But in Mississippi, the laws are antiquated. According to them, I'm their birth mother. She has no legal rights."

STORY: 12 states still ban sodomy a decade after court ruling
STORY: Gay rights group angry at White House press secretary

In spite of the lack of legal protections, the couple has remained in the state because it's their home, Pritchett said.

"What I'm personally hoping (HRC Mississippi) will be able to do is help bridge part of the divide in the state," Pritchett said, pointing out that the diversity of the state's LGBT residents has resulted in fractures among the community.


Often people in the South have faced discriminatory laws. We’re not at the place where other states are.-

Former Arkansas state legislator Kathy Webb said HRC's clout will have a large impact, particularly on residents in more rural parts of the same state where the organization's president, Chad Griffin, grew up. Griffin is the first Southerner to head the Washington-based group.

Having an established office and people on the ground working with Arkansas' LGBT residents can bring significant change, she said.

"Often people in the South have faced discriminatory laws," Kathy Webb said. "We're not at the place where other states are."

Serving as Arkansas' first openly gay legislator, Webb said her career is a testament to how minds can change.

Bryson Pickens, a longtime central Mississippi resident and transgender male, said he hopes the offices will bring more attention to the lack of resources to members of the transgender community in his state.

And though he's noticed the attitudes toward gay and lesbian Mississippians changing in the state, Pickens said the transgendered community still worries about the general population's close mindedness.

"A lot of transgendered people are afraid of coming out," he said. "This is an at-will state, and they're afraid of losing their jobs, their livelihoods."

The lack of legal protections for LGBT residents in the South also highlights the growing gap on these issues.

"Right now, this country is deeply divided into two Americas, one where LGBT equality is nearly a reality and the other where LGBT people lack the most fundamental measures of equal citizenship," Griffin said. "Project One America is an unparalleled effort to close that gap, and it opens up a bold, new chapter in the civil-rights movement of this generation. In this grand struggle for equality, we can't write off anyone, anywhere."

As Pickens said, "It shows that somebody's listening and cares what we're going through."

Dustin Barnes also reports for The (Jackson, Miss.) Clarion-Ledger.


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Marriage equality advocates fly South, and not just for winter

Robert Roman and Claus Ihlemann, of Virginia Beach, celebrate a ruling that declared Virginia's same-sex marriage ban unconstitutional on Feb. 14, 2014, in Norfolk, Va.
Bill Tiernan/The Virginian-Pilot/AP


02/26/14 07:21 AM—Updated 02/26/14 11:13 AM


By Emma Margolin


Marriage equality advocates – emboldened by mounting victories in courtrooms and legislatures across the country – are turning their attention to the deep-red South.

The group Freedom to Marry and local state LGBT equality organizations officially launched Southerners for the Freedom to Marry this week, a $1 million initiative to pave the way for equal protections and benefits currently denied to the hundreds of thousands of gay couples living in 14 southern states.

The campaign follows recent federal decisions striking down all or part of state bans on same-sex marriage in Kentucky, Oklahoma and Virginia – three states the effort will focus on – as well as a federal challenge to Texas’ 2005 voter-approved amendment banning same-sex nuptials.

Though many on both sides of the marriage equality debate believe the constitutionality of the issue will ultimately be decided nationwide at the Supreme Court level, advocates still believe it’s crucial to grow public support across the country – even in areas that have typically been resistant to gay rights.


NOW With Alex Wagner, 2/14/14, 5:16 PM ET
States push for equality, Cruz pushes back

“The strategy has always been to create the climate for the Supreme Court to bring the country to a natural resolution,” said Evan Wolfson, founder and president of Freedom to Marry, which is directing the campaign. “We don’t have to win the freedom to marry in every southern state, but we want southern voices to be part of the chorus saying that America is ready for the freedom to marry – all of America.”

The campaign will focus on Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia. According to a December 2013 poll from Anzalone Liszt Grove Research, 46% of voters in the South said they favored marriage equality, while the same number – 46% – said they were opposed. Though it was the weakest region in the country in terms of support for same-sex marriage, Wolfson noted the results from the South were “certainly higher than most people would think.”

In addition to partnering with state LGBT equality organizations for field and media work, Freedom to Marry will also draw upon the influence and expertise of political leaders, some of whom are members of the GOP.

Former media adviser to President George W. Bush, Mark McKinnon, was named co-chair of the initiative down in Texas, along with Democratic Rep. Joaquin Castro. The Lone Star State’s Republican Gov. Rick Perry and Attorney General Greg Abbott both staunchly oppose same-sex marriage, as does every Republican running to replace Abbott. But McKinnon says his support for same-sex marriage is firmly rooted in his political allegiance to conservative principles, not antithetical to it.

“I’ve long believed as a Republican that opposition to gay marriage is philosophically inconsistent for a party that is supposed to support less government intrusion into our lives,” said McKinnon via email to msnbc. “We will be communicating with voters and opinion leaders that the idea of marriage equality has its roots firmly planted in the constitution and, therefore, deserves the support of those who say they support the constitution.”

In Florida, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, one of the first and few Republicans in Congress to support same-sex marriage, said in an email she was “pleased” to be named an honorary co-chair of the campaign, and congratulated Freedom to Marry on “working to make marriage equality a reality in the South.”

And in Georgia, where the initiative was launched on Monday, Democratic Rep. John Lewis also lent his support to the cause. In a powerful web video, Lewis, once a friend and ally to Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., called the right to marry a civil rights issue.

“I’ve fought too hard and too long against discrimination based on race and color, not to stand up and speak out against discrimination against our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters,” he said.

On Tuesday, Lewis’ home state became the latest to consider legislation that could sanction anti-gay discrimination in the name of religious liberty.



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Storm Lashes Northeast With Snow After Icing South

Photo (Courtesy) http://www.livescience.com/43378-naming-winter-storms.html

Brian K. Sullivan, ©2014 Bloomberg News
Published 1:37 pm, Thursday, February 13, 2014





(Corrects “above” to “below” in 14th paragraph.)


Feb. 13 (Bloomberg) -- The winter storm that cut electricity to more than half a million customers across the South and grounded 10,000 flights this week turned its power on the U.S. Northeast, bringing heavy snow from Virginia to Maine.

In Washington, 11 inches (28 centimeters) were reported at American International College, said Carl Erickson, a meteorologist at AccuWeather Inc. in State College, Pennsylvania. New York’s Central Park had 9.5 inches by 10:45 a.m. and 12 inches were on the ground in Fort Lee, New Jersey, the National Weather Service said.

At least 14 deaths were blamed on the system as it moved out of the Deep South, the Associated Press reported.

The storm “is going to continue to deepen and strengthen as the day goes on and the snow will expand up through the Boston area up to Maine,” Erickson said. “It looks like there will be a very large swath of 6 to 12 inches from Virginia to Maine.”

The storm contributed to 10,681 flights being canceled across the U.S. in the past three days, said FlightAware, a Houston-based airline tracking service. As of noon New York time, 5,883 flights were scrubbed today.

More than two-thirds of all trips from Washington’s Reagan National Airport were called off, as well as at least half at New York’s LaGuardia, the company said. US Airways, a unit of American Airlines Group Inc., canceled all flights into Charlotte, North Carolina, for the rest of the day.


Power Out


About 610,000 homes and businesses from Arkansas to New Jersey were without power as of 11:30 a.m. New York time, according to utility websites. More than half were in North Carolina and South Carolina. New Jersey and New York utilities reported about 6,000 customers blacked out.

Heavy snow fell in New York, where the weather service increased its forecast to 10 to 16 inches from 8 to 12. The snow was expected to change to sleet and rain later today before beginning again tonight, said Joey Picca, a weather service meteorologist in Upton, New York.

Across western Connecticut, 20 inches may fall and northern New Jersey could get 17, the weather service said.

“We’re looking for more snow to come across the area late this afternoon into the evening and that would give us another few inches,” Picca said.


N.Y. Emergencies


New York Governor Andrew Cuomo declared a state of emergency for New York City, Long Island and the mid-Hudson Valley. He didn’t close roads, as he has done in previous storms, though he urged motorists to stay off them and said there may be shutdowns later.

Cuomo warned residents not to get complacent because of this winter’s frequent snowfalls.

“Don’t get cocky about it, don’t take it casually because any one of them could generate a loss of life,” Cuomo said on a conference call with reporters. “These storms are more frequent and they’re more ferocious.”

New York has had eight days this season with a snowfall of 3 inches or more, the most since 1960-61, according to Weather 2000 Inc. It has also had the most days with maximum temperatures below 32 degrees Fahrenheit (zero Celsius).

The snow even shut down the Heraeus Precious Metals Management gold refinery in Newark, New Jersey.

Baltimore Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport reported 12.3 inches, Erickson said. More than 8 inches fell in Washington, while Philadelphia reported 8.8.

Government offices in Washington closed, and classes were canceled in Philadelphia and Washington.


Icy South


The South is struggling to recover from snow and ice that has been falling there for the past two days. As of 9 a.m., 19 inches were reported in Cherry Grove, West Virginia, 18 in Winchester, Virginia, and 15 in Saluda, North Carolina, according to the U.S. Weather Prediction Center.

A half-inch or more of ice fell across a wide area of central Georgia, including in Augusta and Marietta, the center said. Three inches coated Forest Acres, South Carolina, where the state asked people not to drive until the storm passes.

A half-inch of ice is all that’s needed to bring down a power line, said Rob Carolan, owner of Hometown Forecast Services Inc. in Nashua, New Hampshire.

The precipitation “is starting to wind down over the Southeast,” Carolan said, and should improve starting tomorrow.

The storm also prompted warnings across eastern Canada from Quebec to Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, according to Environment Canada. Parts of eastern Quebec may get as much as 20 inches of snow, the weather agency said.

After the system pulls away from the Northeast tomorrow, there is a chance a smaller storm could bring an additional 1 to 3 inches from North Carolina to Washington in two days, Erickson said.


--With assistance from Lynn Doan in San Francisco, Jim Polson in New York, Cheyenne Hopkins in Washington, Duane D. Stanford in Atlanta, Mary Schlangenstein in Dallas, Rebecca Penty in Calgary and Freeman Klopott in Albany. Editors: Charlotte Porter, Richard Stubbe


To contact the reporter on this story: Brian K. Sullivan in Boston at bsullivan10@bloomberg.net


To contact the editor responsible for this story: Dan Stets at dstets@bloomberg.net


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Grassy Knolls - Conspiracy Thinking in American History

... ...

President John F. Kennedy greets the crowd in Dallas on November 22nd, 1963, shortly before his assassination (Library of Congress).



Published: November 22, 2013

On November 22nd, 1963, 50 years ago, President John F. Kennedy was killed while riding in a motorcade in Dallas – a tragedy that inspired conspiracy theories that persist to this day. Why have alternative assassination theories proven so resilient over the years? And why do other conspiracy theories persist in public memory? This episode takes a look at conspiracy thinking throughout American history, and finds a long tradition stretching all the way back to the Founding.

From a political party formed to combat the secretive power of Freemasons, to whispers of a “slave power” conspiracy in the 19th Century, to an outcry over a criminal network fostering “white slavery” in the early 20th Century, and, of course, an abundance of Communist conspiracies during the Cold War – the Guys and their guests discover that while conspiracy theorists might sometimes be on the fringes of American society, conspiracy thinking has always been mainstream.


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Protestant South Becoming a New Catholic Stronghold

(20731)
Dixie Catholics credit the strong Southern sense of community, and dialogue with faithful Protestants, with helping to power the Church’s growth there.



by STEPHEN BEALE 05/11/2013 

Courtyard of St. Dominic's Monastery in Linden, Va.

– www.lindenopnuns.org


LINDEN, Va. — In the waves of turbulence that rippled throughout the Catholic Church in the 1970s, the nuns of St. Dominic’s Monastery found themselves forced to leave their longtime home in Wisconsin in search of a new one.

The nuns moved to a temporary residence in Washington, D.C., while looking for a permanent setting conducive to the cloistered, contemplative life they sought to lead. It would be more than two decades before they found one. When they did, it was what may seem a most unlikely place: the rural northeast of Virginia, considered one of the Protestant Bible Belt states of the South.

The story of St. Dominic’s Monastery’s southern move may be the story of U.S. Catholicism. New data shows that some of the fastest growing dioceses in the country are deep in the U.S. South.

The third fastest developing diocese is Atlanta, which saw the number of registered parishioners explode from nearly 322,000 in 2002 to one million in 2012 — an increase of more than twofold, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University. Atlanta also has the largest Eucharistic Congress in the country, with an annual attendance of about 30,000, according to an archdiocesan official.

Atlanta is not alone. Charleston has seen a 50% increase in parishioners over the last decade. Charlotte grew by a third, as did Little Rock. The Diocese of Knoxville, established just 25 years ago, is now the 25th fastest growing in the nation — and would rank near the top if those official figures counted as many as 60,000 unregistered Hispanic congregants, according to a diocesan official.

Dioceses like Knoxville stand in stark contrast to former Catholic strongholds like Boston and Philadelphia where parish consolidations, school closures, and dwindling priests are the norm.

“Instead of us closing parishes and closing schools, we’re doing the opposite. We’re in total growth mode,” said Deacon Sean Smith, chancellor for the Diocese of Knoxville.

When Knoxville was established as a diocese in 1988 it had 37 parishes. It has since added 14, including four mission parishes. It has also expanded three parishes, built a new high school, and opened one middle-elementary school. Meanwhile, the number of parishioners has doubled.



Bountiful Vocations

One telling indicator is vocations to the priesthood. Knoxville expects to have 23 men in graduate seminary next year. Contrast the Archdiocese of Chicago, which has 37 times as many parishioners but only three times as many graduate seminarians next year, at an anticipated enrollment of 70. Boston, which is nearly 30 times the size of Knoxville, will have 60.

“There’s excitement here in Tennessee and I would say in the Southeast in general,” Smith said.

That sentiment is shared by the nuns at St. Dominic’s Monastery, who have found a thriving local Catholic community that boasts nearby Christendom College as another institutional gem.

“We ourselves are astounded by the depth and beauty of the Catholic culture and community that surrounds us,” said one nun, permitted to speak only on the condition of anonymity because of rules governing the cloistered life of the monastery. “We never felt so loved by the surrounding community.” The Southeast does not have a monopoly on exponential growth. Among the top 25 high-growth dioceses, nearly half are in the U.S. Southwest, stretching from Fresno, California, the second-highest ranking diocese, to Laredo, Texas, the first. But there, Hispanic immigration is behind most of the growth, according to Mark Gray, a research associate at the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate.

In the Southeast, however, something different is happening. In a region where churches sit on seemingly every street corner and billboards belt out Bible verses and calls for repentance, local Catholics say they have found fertile ground for the renewal of the Church.

“Our Protestant brothers and sisters have done us a great favor. Talking about faith here in the South is like eating, breathing, and sleeping,” said Randy Hain, a managing partner at Bell Oaks Executive Search in Atlanta and co-founder of The Integrated Catholic Life, an online magazine. “There’s an openness about faith here which makes it easier to be open about your faith if you’re Catholic.”

Smith, who grew up in Colorado, suggested that it is easier for Northern Catholics to take their faith for granted because most of their friends belong to the Church. “It doesn’t really challenge the Catholics there to know their faith as well or be able to explain it clearly,” added Lisa Wheeler, founder of Carmel Communications, a Catholic marketing firm in the Atlanta area.

But in the South, where they are a decided minority in predominantly evangelical Protestant population, Catholics must constantly defend their faith. As a result, they come to cherish it, Smith said.



Streams of Converts

Dialogue with Protestants has produced a steady stream of Catholic converts, who now constitute one of the driving forces of growth in the region, Wheeler said.

When Hain, himself a convert, was received into the Church in 2006, there were 27 members of his confirmation class. His wife’s class, in the same year, had 33. At the time, there were 1,900 registered families his parish, St. Peter Chanel in Roswell, an Atlanta suburb. Now, there are more than 3,000, according to Hain.

Converts do more than just fill pews: they bring enthusiasm and passion for their faith with them into the Church, said Hain and Wheeler, a fellow parishioner at St. Peter Chanel. Such energy is reflected in the breadth of ministries at the parish, which number more than 60—and that’s not counting the many independent ministries run by parishioners.The Integrated Catholic Life is one example of the broad reach of the parish: the other co-founder of the site is a deacon at St. Peter Chanel.

Besides converts, transplants are a second source of growth. In Knoxville, many out-of-state arrivals are known as ‘halfbacks’: people who moved from the cold North to Florida, only to move half-way back, settling in eastern Tennessee, where they can enjoy four seasons, without the cold weather, Smith said. Atlanta has the added allure of being a major transportation hub for business, Wheeler said.

Hispanic immigration is still a factor in regional growth, but it is mentioned more as a secondary contributor than as the leading cause.



Strong Sense of Community

Another potential advantage working favor of the South: a greater sense of community associated with the predominantly rural character of the region, as contrasted with the dense urbanization of many Northern states.

The difference between rural and urban dioceses can be measured in terms of vocations. “I have seen a trend over the last ten years where the most rural dioceses are tending to generate more seminarians per capita than the major rural metropolitan dioceses,” said Father Thomas Baima, the vice rector at Mundelein Seminary in the Chicago area. He says higher-density cities have greater mobility, meaning young people don’t put down roots and make those long-lasting connections to parish communities out of which vocations arise.

Every single state in the U.S. South has a lower population density per square mile than each state along the Boston to D.C. urban corridor, U.S. Census data shows. At the extreme ends, New Jersey has just over 1,195 residents per square mile against 56 in Arkansas, as of the 2010 Census. In the middle, Pennsylvania has nearly 284 residents per square mile while Virginia has just over 202.

Even a large city like Atlanta is more decentralized. Most of the metro population is in the suburbs outside city limits, where communities coalesce around church and school, Hain said.



Lessons for the North

Catholics in the South say their experience holds lessons for their Northern counterparts. Wheeler says Southern hospitality has also rubbed off on local Catholics.

“I think that is something that is missing from many parishes in the North,” Wheeler said. She noted that some of her extended relatives in the Northeast have moved to Protestant churches due to a lack of hospitality in their local parishes.

Hain believes that if Catholics in other areas were as open about their faith as Southerners are, there would be a resurgence in the Church.

“Let’s worry less about offending others,” Hain said. “Let’s worry more about practicing our faith.”

Stephen Beale writes from Providence, Rhode Island.



Source: http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/protestant-south-becoming-a-new-catholic-stronghold/#ixzz2TBZnujcx

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Gay guide released for New Orleans

Posted: Friday, 03 September 2010 8:00AM

Gay guide released for New Orleans

Associated Press Reporting

There's now an official gay and lesbian destination guide for New Orleans. The Navigaytour will launch just in time for the 39th Annual Southern Decadence Festival, which welcomes on average 100,000 attendees for events over the Labor Day weekend.

The 32-page guide highlights events, attractions, restaurants, bars, clubs, accommodations and neighborhoods.

This year, the Navigaytour guide features the first-ever Gay History Trail Map for New Orleans.

Its website says Navigaytour guides are only produced in conjunction with official tourist bureaus and Chambers of Commerce. The first was created in 2004 for Philadelphia; the group also has guides to Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Chicago and San Diego.


Source: http://www.wwl.com/Gay-guide-released-for-New-Orleans/8068017

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South Central's First Female Pastors

07/03/10


(L-R) Pastor Lola Moore, President Dana Edmond, Pastor Josie Frampton, First Lady, Jill Edmond at the 59th General Conference Session, Atlanta, GA (Photo: M. Harpe)

I am grateful to announce the first females added to our pastoral staff in the history of our conference, Pastors Lola Moore (Assistant Pastor, Oakwood University SDA Church) and Josian Frampton (Assistant Pastor, Birmingham Ephesus).

We take this historic step, not to be politically correct, but for the following reasons:

1. We believe that it is the Conference Administration’s responsibility to get the very best people that we can find to work in the South Central Conference, regardless of gender, age, ethnicity, etc.

2. We believe that the more diversified our staff is, the more people we can reach with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

I recognize that this represents a major change in how ministry is done in the South Central Conference. Often, change is difficult. I recognize that this particular change represents a seismic shift that not everyone may be prepared to accept immediately. I can personally relate to that-once upon a time, I was not prepared to accept this kind of change.

But I believe that the end of the day, the people of this conference will give to these ladies the same opportunity that it gave to me and all of our other male Pastors: The opportunity to prove the call of God upon their lives.

These ladies are gifted, spiritual young people, whom I believe will be an asset and a blessing to the mission of the South Central Conference, which is, to paraphrase that old AYS aim, “The Advent message to all our conference in this generation.”

Elder D. C. Edmond, President South Central Conference

--
Elder Michael A. Harpe
Director of Communication
South Central Conference of Seventh-day Adventists
http://www.scc-adventist.org/
michael.harpe@scc-adventist.org

"Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, Unto him [be] glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen." (Ephesians 3:20-21).

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Source: http://www.scc-adventist.org/news-press-releases-detail.cfm?id=776

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P.S. Meanwhile, at the General Conference Session one of the subjects of diversion was the ordination of women as Deacons? While all over the place they are ordaining women pastors as if there was a thus saith the Lord to support this paradigm shift. No, they aren't "trying to be politically correct"; They're following another principle: "When you go to Rome, do as the Romans do".

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Thank God for the Bible! Thank God for discernment - Thank God for His faithful servants, and the eleventh hour remnant that have not bent the knee to Baal. They have no guile in their mouths......

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Arsenio.

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P.S. II:

South Central's First Female Pastors? How about calling themselves SWP (Sisters with Pulpits), straight out of South Central? Or, maybe Females in the Hood? How about, G's in the House?

The possibilities for this topsy turvy situation are endless. Might as well make light of this end time phenomenon.

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.Maranatha.

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South Central Adventist Conference Hires Two Female Pastors

Posted by Luther Blanchard on Jun 17th, 2010

Photo by Bidgee

On Sunday, the South Central Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, headquartered in Nashville Tennessee, made history by hiring their first two female pastors according to a statement on their website. With this action, South Central Conference joins a number of Adventist organizations that hire women as pastors.

Conference President Dana Edmond said in a recent sermon that the conference will hire women in the pastoral role, “Not because it is politically correct, but because the more diverse our staff is the more people we can reach for the Kingdom of God,”

Pastor Lola Moore was assigned to the Oakwood University Seventh-day Adventist Church in Huntsville, Alabama as an assistant pastor. In addition, Pastor Josie Frampton was assigned to the Ephesus Seventh-day Adventist Church in Birmingham, Alabama as an assistant pastor.

While women cannot be ordained as ministers in the Seventh-day Adventist Church, women do serve as pastors and are often “commissioned.”

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Source: http://www.powernewsnetwork.com/south-central-adventist-conference-hires-two-female-pastors/876/

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Note: Bolds and Highlights added to emphasize the contradictions...

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St. Augustine Movement

Muriatic Acid Poured to get Coloreds Out of the Pool. June 1964.

Photo (Courtesy) http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2009/02/perceptions-2.html

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
St. Augustine, Florida is the oldest city founded by Europeans in the United States and a major tourist destination. In 1963 and 1964 it also played a key role in the Civil Rights Movement and the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.[1][2]

Despite the 1954 Supreme Court act in Brown v. Board of Education, which ruled that the "separate but equal" legal status of public schools made those schools inherently unequal, St. Augustine still had only six black children admitted into white schools. The homes of two of the families of these children were burned by local segregationists while other families were forced to move out of the county because the parents were fired from their jobs.

In 1963 a sit-in protest at the local Woolworth's lunch counter ended in the arrest and imprisonment of 16 young black protesters and seven juveniles. Four of the children, two of whom were 16 year old girls, were sent to “reform” school and retained for six months. The St. Augustine Four, as they came to be known, JoeAnn Anderson, Audrey Nell Edwards, Willie Carl Singleton and Samuel White, had their case publicized as an egregious injustice by Jackie Robinson, the national NAACP, the Pittsburgh Courier newspaper and others.[3] Finally, a special action of the governor and cabinet of Florida freed them in January 1964[4]

In September 1963, the Ku Klux Klan staged a rally of several hundred Klansmen on the outskirts of town. They seized NAACP leader and local dentist Robert Hayling and three other NAACP activists (Clyde Jenkins, James Jackson and James Hauser) whom they beat with fists, chains, and clubs.[5] The four men were rescued by Highway Patrol officers. St. Johns County Sheriff L. O. Davis arrested four white men for the beating and also arrested the four unarmed blacks for "assaulting" the large crowd of armed Klansmen. Charges against the Klansmen were dismissed, but Hayling was convicted of "criminal assault" against the KKK mob.[3][6]

In the spring of 1964, Dr. Hayling put out a call to northern college students to come to St. Augustine for spring break, not to go to the beach, but to take part in civil rights activities. Accompanying them were four prominent Boston women: three wives of Episcopal bishops, and the fourth the wife of the vice president of the John Hancock Insurance Company. It was front page news on April 1, 1964 when one of them, Mrs. Mary Parkman Peabody, the 72 year old mother of the governor of Massachusetts, was arrested in an integrated group at the Ponce de Leon Motor Lodge, north of town.[7]

That event brought the movement in St. Augustine to international attention. Over the next few months, the city got more publicity than it ever had in its many centuries of existence. The massive non-violent direct action campaign was led by Hayling, and Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) staff including: Martin Luther King, Jr., Ralph Abernathy, Andrew Young, Hosea Williams, C. T. Vivian, Fred Shuttlesworth, Willie Bolden, J. T. Johnson, Dorothy Cotton and others. Civil rights activists made St. Augustine the stage for a moral drama enacted before a world audience.[8]

From May until July 1964 protesters endured abuse, beatings, and verbal assaults without any retaliation. By absorbing the violence and hate instead of striking back the protesters gained national sympathy and were a key factor in passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The movement engaged in nightly marches down King Street. The protesters were met by white segregationists who violently assaulted them. Hundreds of the marchers were arrested and incarcerated. The jail was filled, so subsequent detainees were kept in an uncovered stockade in the hot sun.[5][9]

When attempts were made to integrate the beaches of Anastasia Island, demonstrators were beaten and driven into the water by segregationists. Some of the protesters could not swim and had to be saved from possible drowning by other demonstrators. [10]

St. Augustine was the only place in Florida where Dr. Martin Luther King was arrested, on June 11, 1964 on the steps of the Monson motel restaurant. He wrote a "Letter from the St. Augustine Jail" to his old friend, Rabbi Israel Dresner, in New Jersey, urging him to recruit rabbis to come to St. Augustine and take part in the movement. The result was the largest mass arrest of rabbis in American history on June 18, 1964 at the Monson motel.[3]

The demonstrations came to a climax when a group of black and white protesters jumped into the swimming pool at the Monson Motor Lodge. In response to the protest the manager of the motel, James Brock, who was the president of the Florida Hotel & Motel Association, was photographed pouring acid into the pool to get the protesters out.[3] Photographs of this, and of a policeman jumping into the pool to arrest them, were broadcast around the world and became some of the most famous images of the entire civil rights movement. The motel and pool were demolished in March 2003, despite five years of protests, thus eliminating one of the nation's important landmarks of the Civil Rights Movement.[11] A Hilton Hotel was built on the site.

References
1.^ Civil Rights Movement Veterans. "St. Augustine FL, Movement — 1963". http://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim63b.htm#1963staug.
2.^ Civil Rights Movement Veterans. "St. Augustine FL, Movement — 1964". http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis64.htm#1964staug.
3.^ a b c d Branch, Taylor (1998). Pillar of Fire. Simon & Schuster.
4.^ United States Commission on Civil Rights, 1965. Law Enforcement: A Report on Equal Protection in the South. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, p. 47.
5.^ a b St. Augustine Movement - M.L. King Research & Education Institute, Stanford University
6.^ Duncan, Gwendolyn (2004), "Dr. Robert B. Hayling", Civil Rights Movement Veterans, http://www.crmvet.org/info/staug1.htm
7.^ Lincolnville Historic District - National Park Service
8.^ St. Augustine FL Movement — 1964 ~ Civil Rights Movement Veterans
9.^ Garrow, David (1986). Bearing the Cross. Morrow.
10.^ Bryce, Shirley (2004), "St. Augustine Movement 1963-1964", Civil Rights Movement Veterans, http://www.crmvet.org/info/staug.htm
11.^ St. Augustine Record: March 18, 2003-Demolition begins on Monson Inn by Ken Lewis

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Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Augustine_Movement"

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Tornadoes, Heavy Rain and Flooding for Eastern U.S.

Four Tornadoes Overnight in Arkansas; Forecasters Concerned About Flooding From Melting Snow

By NED POTTER
March 11, 2010

At least it's not snowing anymore. The unusually-harsh winter of 2010 is giving way to spring -- which brings the problems of rain, flooding, and in some places, tornadoes.

Eight states report wind damage, hail and flooding.

Today a cold front swung from the Southeast toward the Eastern Seaboard, causing tornadoes in Arkansas late Wednesday, including one that tracked across much of the state, killing one person.

There was a threat of tornadoes today in Florida, from Tampa Bay to the Orlando area, and parts of Alabama got 7 inches of rain.

Now the front is moving toward the Northeast.

"In central New York, northeastern Pennsylvania and up into central New England, we're looking at a couple of feet of snow melting very quickly," said Mike Sowko of the Hydrometeorological Prediction Center of NOAA, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. "We're going to have three, four, in some isolated places five inches of rain over the next few days. When you combine that with the melting snow, that's a lot of water that has to drain."


Source: http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/tornadoes-flood-threat-thunderstorms-late-winter-storm-moves/story?id=10074658
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N. Carolina Commemorates 50th Anniversary of Civil Rights Sit-Ins

Human Rights and Law


Chris Simkins Greensboro, North Carolina 01 February 2010



The Woolworth department store in Greensboro, North Carolina that was the site of the famous sit-ins on 1 Feb 1960

February is Black History Month in the United States. It pays tribute to people and events that shaped the history of African Americans. A pivotal moment happened 50 years ago when four black university students in North Carolina sat down at a whites-only lunch counter to get something to eat. They were denied service, but their actions re-ignited the U.S. civil rights movement and the struggle by millions of African Americans to achieve racial equality and justice.

Hundreds of people gathered at a former Woolworth department store to pay tribute to what happened here 50 years ago. Inspired by civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., four black college students walked into a Woolworth store in Greensboro, North Carolina on February 1st, 1960. They sat down at the "whites only" lunch counter but were denied service because of their skin color.

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"In our hearts we all thought that racial segregation was evil," said participant Joseph McNeil.

Joseph McNeil was just 17 years old when he and his friends refused to leave the segregated counter. At the time, they could have been arrested for breaking so called "Jim Crow" laws that were enacted to keep blacks and whites separated at public places such as theaters, hotels and restaurants.

"If we had to be arrested for a week or one day or two months or three months we felt what we were trying to do was worth it to make that statement and to defy racial segregation," he added.

Franklin McCain says he was driven to participate in the sit-ins because of the discrimination that surrounded him.

"I was quite ready to do something to seek relief, a spot of dignity, humanity and my manhood," said McCain. "And fortunately I met three other guys who felt the same way."

Jibreel Khazan from Greensboro remembers what the white waitress told them.

"'What do you boys want?' And we said we would like to be served very politely. And she said. 'You know we don't serve colored people here, there is a lunch counter over there, a stand up counter.' And we said thank you ma'am we'd rather sit here," recalled Khazan.

Days later and tired of the discriminatory practices, more blacks and even some white people got involved in the sit-in movement. Joseph McNeil says that at one point more than 500 students jammed the lunch counters at Woolworth and other stores with segregated lunch counters.

"We were doing what needed to be done," said McNeil. "Not just that, but keeping up the commitment of coming back day after day as we promised the stores what we would do if they didn't open the [lunch] counters to everyone."

Longtime civil rights activist Julian Bond says the Greensboro sit-ins changed the course of the civil rights movement during the 1960's.

"It injected a degree of activism in the civil rights movement which until then had been largely confined to activism in the courts," explained Bond. "All of a sudden, activism in the streets became part of the arena, part of the weaponry that the movement used and that just changed everything."

In July 1960, and after $200,000 in lost business, Woolworth agreed to integrate its store allowing blacks to be served at the lunch counter.

Historian Lonnie Bunch says the Greensboro campaign was not the first, but it did capture national media attention and spark hundreds of similar non-violent protests across the country.

"So celebrating the Greensboro sit-in really tells us we are celebrating the sit-ins that occurred in other parts of the south and other cities throughout the north," noted Bunch.

Jebreel Khazan says he's honored to have a place in history but gives credit to the wisdom of his ancestors.

"We just happened to be blessed to be the four that did this and it caught fire throughout the country but all things are possible if we only believe and that was what I was taught," he said.

On the 50th anniversary of the Greensboro sit-ins, a new chapter in the history of the civil rights movement has begun with a new international civil rights museum. Community leaders want it to be a lasting tribute to the sacrifices so many African Americans made for equality and social justice.

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Source:http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/human-rights/N-Carolina-Commemorates-50th-Anniversary-of-Civil-Rights-Sit-Ins-83278357.html

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Beliefs, culture cause Bible Belt to resist cremation

By Bob Smietana • THE TENNESSEAN • January 10, 2010

When the Rev. Enoch Fuzz dies, he has one request for his family.


Please don't bury him.

Instead, like a growing number of Americans, the pastor of Corinthian Baptist Church in Nashville wants to be cremated.

"I don't want to be out in that snow, in that ground, in that rain," he said. "Cremate me and put me in one of those bottles. And then throw me up into the attic."

Related
MAP: Cremations increase, but South still prefers burial

Fuzz's family and congregation aren't too keen about the idea. His daughter objects to cremation. And so far, he said, none of his church members have been cremated. And, he doesn't expect that to change anytime soon. That's not surprising.

About a third of Americans are cremated when they die, according to the National Funeral Directors Association. But Baptists and other evangelicals have been slow to embrace the practice. A recent survey among leaders of the National Association of Evangelicals found that only 8 percent said they would choose cremation. Cremation rates in the Bible Belt remain among the lowest in the country.

Americans first began practicing cremation in the late 1800s. But it remained relatively rare. In 1967, for example, less than 4 percent of Americans were cremated. By 1990 about 17 percent of Americans were being cremated. That figured doubled to about 34 percent by 2007.

Gary Laderman, a religion professor who studied the history of cremation, says that Christian taboos about cremation have declined.

Traditionally, Hindus and Buddhists have cremated their dead, while Christians, Jews and Muslims have buried their dead. But today, Laderman said, Americans are more likely to mix and match spiritual practices. For example, a recent study by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life showed that 24 percent of Americans, and 22 percent of people who call themselves Christians, also believe in reincarnation.

"It shows the decline of traditional religious sources of authority," Laderman said.

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Source:http://www.tennessean.com/article/20100110/NEWS01/1100356/2066/NEWS03

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Martin Luther King, Jr.

“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”

- MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

Martin Luther King, Jr.Civil-Rights Leader, 1929 - 1968

Martin Luther King, Jr. was born on January 15, 1929 at his family home in Atlanta, Georgia. King was an eloquent Baptist minister and leader of the civil-rights movement in America from the Mid-1950s until his death by assassination in 1968. King promoted non-violent means to achieve civil-rights reform and was awarded the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts.

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King's grandfather was a Baptist preacher. His father was pastor of Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church. King earned his own Bachelor of Divinity degree from Crozier Theological Seminary in 1951 and earned his Doctor of Philosophy from Boston University in 1955.

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While at seminary King became acquainted with Mohandas Gandhi's philosophy of nonviolent social protest. On a trip to India in 1959 King met with followers of Gandhi. During these discussions he became more convinced than ever that nonviolent resistance was the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom.

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As a pastor of a Baptist church in Montgomery, Alabama, King lead a Black bus boycott. He and ninety others were arrested and indicted under the provisions of a law making it illegal to conspire to obstruct the operation of a business. King and several others were found guilty, but appealed their case. As the bus boycott dragged on, King was gaining a national reputation. The ultimate success of the Montgomery bus boycott made King a national hero.

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Dr. King's 1963 Letter from Birmingham Jail inspired a growing national civil rights movement. In Birmingham, the goal was to completely end the system of segregation in every aspect of public life (stores, no separate bathrooms and drinking fountains, etc.) and in job discrimination. Also in 1963, King led a massive march on Washington DC where he delivered his now famous, I Have A Dream speech. King's tactics of active nonviolence (sit-ins, protest marches) had put civil-rights squarely on the national agenda.

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On April 4, 1968, King was shot by James Earl Ray while standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. He was only 39 at the time of his death. Dr. King was turning his attention to a nationwide campaign to help the poor at the time of his assassination. He had never wavered in his insistence that nonviolence must remain the central tactic of the civil-rights movement, nor in his faith that everyone in America would some day attain equal justice.

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Source:http://www.lucidcafe.com/library/96jan/king.html

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Pig, Smoke, Pit: This Food Is Seriously Slow

Peter Frank Edwards for The New York Times
Scott's Bar-B-Q in Hemingway, S.C. draws local people as well as day-trippers.

By JOHN T. EDGE
Published: June 9, 2009
Hemingway, S.C.

Multimedia
Audio Slide Show
The Whole Hog
Interactive Graphic
Drive 900 Miles. Cook a Ton of Pork (Literally). Drive Home.

AT 3:45 on a recent Saturday morning — as frogs croaked into the void and a mufflerless pickup downshifted onto Cow Head Road — Rodney Scott, 37, pitmaster here at Scott’s Variety Store and Bar-B-Q, gave the order.

“Flip the pigs,” he said, his voice calm and measured. “Let’s go. Some char is good — too much and we lose him.”

A. J. Shaw, a college student home for the summer, and Thomas Lewis, a onetime farmer, left their seats and joined Mr. Scott in the pit room, a rectangular shed dominated by two waist-high concrete banks, burnished ebony by wood smoke, ash and grease.

Ten butterflied pig carcasses — taut bellies gone slack, pink flesh gone cordovan — were in the pits when Mr. Lewis reached for the sheet of wire fencing on which one of the pigs had been roasting since 4 the previous afternoon. In lockstep, Mr. Shaw topped that same pig with a second sheet of fencing, reached his gloved fingers into the netting, and grabbed hold.
As the men struggled, the 150 pounds of dead weight torqued the makeshift wire cage. When the carcass landed, skin-side down, on the metal grid of a recently fired pit, skeins of grease trailed down the pig’s flanks, and the smoldering oak and hickory coals beneath hissed and flared.

“I cooked my first one when I was 11,” Mr. Scott said, as he seasoned the pig with lashings of salt, red pepper, black pepper and Accent, a flavor enhancer made with MSG.

Working a long-handled mop, he drenched the pig in a vinegar sauce of a similar peppery composition. “You’ve got to always be on point, when you’re cooking this way,” he said.
Cooking this way isn’t done much any more. This place, a couple of hours northwest of Charleston, as well as the Scott family approach to slow-smoking whole hogs over hardwood coals, appears to be vestigial.

For aficionados in search of ever-elusive authenticity, Scott’s offers all the rural tropes of a signal American barbecue joint. The main building is tin-roofed and time-worn. Dogs loll in the parking lot, where old shopping carts are stacked with watermelons in the summer, sweet potatoes in the fall. On church pews under the eave, locals visit with neighbors and barbecue pilgrims commune with foam clamshells stuffed with pulled pork, $8 a pound.

The cookery is simple, but the processes used by the Scott family are not.

In the manner now expected of the nation’s white-tablecloth chefs, the Scotts shop local, whenever possible. They buy pigs from farms in three nearby counties. And they turn to Mel’s Meat Market, in the nearby town of Aynor, for butcher work and delivery.

That commitment to local sources extends to the tools of their trade. A local welder constructs the burn barrels, where wood burns down into coals, from salvaged industrial piping and junked truck axles, the latter from a mechanic just down the road.

And then there’s the issue of the wood itself. Barbecue, as it’s traditionally defined in the South, requires loads of it. Some North Carolina restaurants buy surplus oak flooring from planing mills. Some Tennessee pitmasters bargain for hickory off-cuts from ax-handle manufacturers.

The Scotts take matters into their own hands. They trade labor and chainsaw expertise for oak, hickory and, occasionally, pecan. “If you have a tree down, we oblige,” Rodney Scott said that afternoon, following the all-night pit vigil. As he talked, his father, Roosevelt Scott, 67, founder of Scott’s, stood on the highway, negotiating with a man who had arrived with a limb from a live oak and the promise of two to three truckloads of pit fuel.

“We keep our own wood in reserve,” the younger Mr. Scott said. “We’ve got 100 acres. But most of it comes walking in. Everybody knows we’ll bring some boys and cut your tree for you, so long as we can get to it and it’s not hanging over your house or your garage.”

The crowd that Saturday afternoon was typical: Half black and half white, half locals and half pilgrims.

Locals, many of whom work at the Tupperware plant, on the other end of Cow Head Road, came to pick up half-pound orders, pulled from various quadrants of the pig and tossed with sauce in the manner of a meat salad. They knew to ask Virginia Washington — Rodney Scott’s cousin, the woman behind the high-top order counter — for a cook’s treat of fried pig skin, still smoky from the pit, still crisp from the deep fryer.

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Source:http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/10/dining/10United.html?8dpc

P.S.

I include this story to prove one of the comments to the article below...

I saw this article "after" having alluded to the consumption of pork and barbecue.

People, we're being fed a bunch of hogwash!

All over again, like in the good olde days......

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