A Howard Watson Intrigue

Dear Friends and Supporters of Haymarket Center , Just a reminder of the Skinny Williams Jazz Concert fundraiser for Haymarket Center on Wednesday, August 15, 2012.  Click on the link below as it will offer you a sample of Skinny’s wonderful sound. He is a dynamic performer and we are fortunate to have such a great artist perform for our fundraiser on Wednesday, August 15, 2012 from 5:30-8:00pm . Listen to his sound and then go to our website and for only $40 you can be part of the excitement. We accept VISA and MasterCard and you can pay by check. This will be an exhilarating and exciting 2 ½ hours on a hot summer evening in August!  www.HCenter.org  – you will not be disappointed! skinny williams on wgn tv children of the ghetto

This isn’t just any beach in Chicago I’m trying to save. In my opinion it’s the greatest beach in Chicago I’m trying to save. Chicago is known throughout the country for its beautiful front yard – we call it Lake Michigan . With its miles and miles of flowing tresses bordering one entire side of Chicago , many beaches are described as home to thousands of people from Memorial Day to Labor Day every year. I need your help.   The City of Chicago is strapped, economically speaking, and unless we “adopt” 57 th Street Beach and clean it up no one will be able to enjoy the wonderfulness that this beach offers in a myriad of ways: clean sands, numerous trees and bushes, beautiful landscaping and stonework, bike/walking paths, water fountains and BBQ grills. Oh, and let's not forget the field house on Promontory Point where weddings and receptions have taken place forever.   But some of you take this beach (and other beaches) for granted. Who cleans up the beach when City budget c

            “Nothin from nothin leaves nothin. You gotta have somethin, if you wanna be with me.”                                                                                     Billy Preston (The Fifth Beatle)                                                             This is a column about absolutely nothing. Well, not exactly nothing. Nothing in terms of what the heck am I going to write about today and will my fans (all four of you) be pissed off if I write about absolutely nothing? This prompted me to write about something. Exactly what though? I don’t know. I do recall however that Seinfeld was a television show that was on the air for a gazillion years and it was about nothing. Nothing is no thing , meaning, the absence of something . One of the earliest western philosophers to consider nothing as a concept was a guy named Parmenides , a 5 th century Greek philosopher. He argued that "nothing" cannot exist for the following reason: to speak of a thing, one has

“Others are on their way,” she said. “They will come armed with revenge. My little brother’s death will not go unnoticed...not by you or the venomous terrorizers who keep fighting over rocks they call precious. Precious to whom? Not my people. They will come, just like me. This is in no way over. The diamond owners and intermediaries must end their hold over our children and my country. Five deaths for my brother - that is still not enough. Do what you want with me...it does not matter.   My brother will not come back from the grave.” The above is an excerpt from my third book called The Lie . It is the third installment in the “Howard Watson Intrigue” series. It is also a quick and compelling view of the diamond wars from the victims’ perspective. Unless you have been living under a rock lately you have heard people mention the video that has gone viral on Joseph Kony, the head of the Lord’s Resistance Party, a Ugandan guerilla group seemingly bent on ridding its country of its chi

Haymarket Center is a comprehensive alcohol and substance abuse treatment center located in the West Loop . Each year since 1986 Haymarket has held a summer festival thanking the staff and volunteers for the tremendous work they do. Haymarket supplies FREE food, rides, animals, arcades, photographers, etc. to all who come to the Festival (mostly staff, their family members and donors). Alderman Walter Burnett’s office has consistently assisted in blocking off several streets for this fun event. For the past two years the State and Federal government has cut our substance abuse budget by 68%, leaving us with no choice but to help with the costs of the Festival. Last year we held a stair climbing event where the participant had to climb 676 stairs as many times as he/she could in our three buildings. We had 16 staff members, one District firefighter, two kids and several volunteers as climbers. We raised $1,684.00 in sponsorship donations. This year we hope to triple our climbers and

I remember when I felt the lump in my breast. It felt huge. I would like to say I was calm, but I can’t.   I…freaked…out.   At the time I had two little kids (three, counting my husband) and I was only 35 years old. I had just been to my doctor’s office and was told everything was fine.   My mammogram exam showed nothing significant. However, the very-next-week the lump found its way to the surface of my breast. I don’t recall what was worst - the lump or waiting days for the appointment with the surgeon who would later tell me it was “benign”. I had always been athletic, so a lump in my breast made me question what I was eating, drinking and stressing out on. It jolted me into looking at what I was eating, not how much I was eating. About 39,510 women die from cancer in the U.S. every year, with breast cancer being the most common after lung cancer. The chance of dying from breast cancer is about 1 in 36, even though breast cancer has been going down. (Research says finding the