The Future of Shopping
I like to shop as much as the next girl but this article I read in the December 2005 issue of Air Canada’s in flight magazine, En Route, made me laugh my diet coke right through my nose (talk about ruining a blouse!)
The article is entitled “The Future of Shopping” and it’s a bit much even for diehards who shop for a deal like I do. It’s too bad it’s not on-line as it’s way to hard for me to rewrite it here, let me post some excerpts…
Missing pregnant woman found dead
Link: Missing pregnant woman found dead – Yahoo! News.
I was pretty surprised to read this actually. I knew there was bias in media, but I guess I hadn’t thought about how much of it there really was until this article and the linked one here at USA TODAY opened my eyes. As I mentioned in my post regarding D (please click here to scoot back to that post) it’s really not so important that D was transgendered or that Ms. Figueroa was Hispanic. What matters is that these are people. They are valuable, they are not throw away. They all deserve to get as much respect, attention and justice as we can give them seeing that their perpetrators preferred to treat them as objects of contempt.
Corporate Christ?
disclaimer: I am a Christian, a born again Christian at that.
CNN ran a spot on Anderson Cooper 360 tonight featuring Alison Fahey, Editor of Ad Week, and, Bishop TD Jakes. The topic was on a current trend of corporations sponsoring of Christian events. Alison’s had two points, but the one that stuck out for me was that the advertiser may be sponsoring a Christian event one day, then an event with completely divergent values & views the next. Bishop TD Jakes’s view was that this trend was okay, that they didn’t want to “discriminate” against advertisers and that the money of Christians appears to be worth advertising too.
The real question, at least in this woman’s mind, is, what impact does this have on the message of the event? Does the sponsorship compromise the message? Is the sponsorship even necessary at all? If the costs are covered, is it necessary at all? Surely, marketers can slice the demographic up any way they wish and target market via whatever vehicle that is most effective. But the sponsoring of a specific Christian event smacks of more than an group of smart marketers choosing a demographic then going after it. It smells like the Christians working in league with the marketers. It smells like the money changers being let into the temple. While that may be a stretch (the money changes after all were selling sacrifices – a far cry from what Coke is doing. See John 2:12-22 & this article, The Cleansing of the Temple) it just doesn’t feel right, sort of like saying “Coke” is the soda of all Christians or “Delta” is the airline for the Born Again set. Why would any energy be spent even considering this kind of activity? Perhaps instead of sponsoring a Christian Music festival, those same sponsors could step up their support of feeding the poor, showing mercy to the downcast, and building homes for the homeless (Micah 6:8) – those are true directives from God worth sponsoring.
Community
I love people because they are what make up the world. It’s not so
much the html code that is the backbone of this blog nor the 0100101
that my typing is converted to and then moves along an Ethernet cable
to some servers that are then served up yummily to your browser when
you click on this link – no. It’s really all about people. Connecting
and interacting. Knowing and being known.
Groups of people can either be a gang, a rabble or…a community. A
community is (in the words of the Wikipedia): “an amalgamation of
living things that share an environment…What characterizes a
community is sharing and interaction in any number of ways.” There
have been some very cool things recently that mark our community, I’m
proud to say that these came from trans-women helping other
trans-women. I hate to “classify” us really. But given that we are
trying to change the view of society of trans-folk (for both the men
and the women) from societal
pariah to really just people, I thought these bore out some highlighting:
* Just recently a sister of ours is heading to get FFS (Facial Feminization Surgery). The word went out into our community that she needs support, encouragement and love as she goes through this very difficult operation. Many sisters responded to cheer her on!!! Image how it makes her feel 
