Music moves, heals, and inspires us.
Enjoy this beautiful New Year’s song by a wonderfully creative group of artists.
Editor’s Note:
Many thanks to the writer/producer of this song, Michael A. Levine, who also composed for: science fiction series Siren on Freeform, for George Lucas-produced Star Wars Detours animated parody, and for Jerry Bruckheimer/CBS dramas Cold Case and Close To Home for which he received 8 ASCAP awards. He scored films: Landfill Harmonic & The Makeover, and wrote the theme song for Resident Evil 7 Biohazard and closing credits song, Running, sung by Roberta Flack for the documentary feature 3100: Run and Become.
Levine produced, with Michael Wolff, the songs for the Nickelodeon TV preteen comedy series, The Naked Brothers Band. Levine also wrote “Gimme a Break”, the Kit Kat jingle, named one of the 12 greatest jingles by MSN in 2013.
Levine was also a Governor of the music branch of the Television Academy (Emmys).
Dr. Janét Aizenstros is a signatory with the United Nations Business Action Hub (UNBAH) for the United Nations Global Compact Network. She is an award-winning businesswoman with several leadership awards such as the Top 40 under 40, a recipient of the 2020 WXN Canada’s Most Powerful Women Entrepreneur Award: Top 100, the Stevie® Award winner for Female Entrepreneur of the Year Canada. She also received Employer Of The Year for Canadian Business which ranked her company 12th on Canadian Business ’s 2020 Growth List. Thus, she became the first Black Canadian woman in history to scale a 9-figure organization and sole female founder to be featured on the list.
Dr. Janét Aizenstros is also a member of the Young President’s Organization (YPO), a participant with Concordia Leadership Council and a Global Goodwill Ambassador for the Global Goodwill Ambassadors Foundation.
Many of you are changing your lives and work to care for others and yourselves in new ways. The ADR honors all of your efforts and shares these COVID stories to inspire and motivate.
How does one consider achieving peace while living in a world that is currently confused, polarized and disunited? How do we live in a manner that leads to peaceful cooperation? We have, historically, tried various political and economic systems and yet we, as a society, continue to exist in a seemingly endless downward spiral with only brief peace-like respites. Given our current set of conditions, we can guess where it all leads if a fundamental change doesn’t occur.
It appears that humanity is in need of asking itself certain fundamental questions, such as: Who am I? What is the purpose for my existence? What do I believe in? How should I correctly act towards others?Once we begin to discern answers to these and other questions of value and character can we start to move ourselves and our society towards a more unified and productive direction. A direction that leads us out of ourselves and begins to widen our vision.
This pandemic has affected the world population and we are facing different kinds of problems. But we believe that we will come out much stronger from this crisis. Hence we need to take some steps to ensure that the world becomes a better place for living in post pandemic era. We need to take some steps towards that. Helping others is not only good for them and a good thing to do; it also makes us happier & healthier too. It also helps us to build a strong communities & a society at large. It is not only making money & creating wealth, but also sharing time, energy and ideas.
“The greatness of humanity is not in being human, but in being humane… Change yourself – you are in control.” ~ Mahatma Gandhi
COVID-19 cases are on the rise and it’s upsetting to see the rising number of hospitalizations in so many states. It’s even more upsetting that the White House told Governor Lee to mandate the wearing of masks to head off a likely surge in Tennessee. But it’s downright horrifying that the governor didn’t discuss this publicly. The White House message was only discovered through a records request. Did Governor Lee hope that by hiding it, no one would find out?But we’re at a tell-all moment as the Supreme Court prepares to debate the Affordable Care Act. And there’s no hiding how the rush to affirm Trump’s Court nominee comes just in time to vote the ACA out of existence.
This is an invitation to the Jewish diaspora and the African diaspora to see and hear with their hearts, not their heads, and not even though the lens of religion or traumatic memory of the events that occurred over the past 500 years and beyond.
I have a desire to see us all whole again and embrace the undeniable and long hidden truth of our connectedness.The ancient bloodline between us is speaking and revealing itself.The Native Americans acknowledge this existence of “blood memory”.Native American Storyteller and Journalist, Mary Annette Pember shares the Ojibwe people’s definition of the blood memory in her article published in the Daily Yonder, 16 July 2010. “The Ojibwe understand that blood memory is their ancestral (genetic) connection to their language, songs, spirituality, and teachings.It is the good feeling they experience when they are near these things.”
A couple of mornings before Thanksgiving (or Indigenous Heritage Day, depending on how politically correct or “woke” you are) I got a call from a Native American friend who has run into a patch of bad luck. He initiated a conversation on the political situation in the United States, and how he was glad that he could go to sleep and not be afraid of waking up to more craziness by President Trump. My first thought was “It’s a new morning in America.” Only later did I remember that this was a slogan used by Ronald Reagan in his 1984 Presidential campaign.
Organizations gripped in COVID-related fear, uncertainty and job insecurity these days are ones that are most vulnerable for empowering bullies who thrive and exploit those realities.
Keep that thought in mind as you read this recent email.
“Terry, those in our office love your articles and want to know if you have written – or could write – something on bullying; not the overt type, but the subtle kind we’re seeing that’s hard to put your finger on. Got anything?”
When I got that email, two things entered my mind. First, given the havoc COVID is wreaking today, why on earth should we worry about bullying of all things?
The May, 2020, Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd launched thousands of anti-racism proclamations.Millions took part in that performative aftermath.Include me among those millions.
Like many people, I wear multiple hats.One is chairing the Mayor’s Multicultural Forum in Riverside, California.My half-century hometown is a sizable (330,000-person) city, whose steady but not explosive growth has enabled it to maintain a community feeling.My wife and I continually encounter people we know when we go to a restaurant or take our daily two-mile walks around a nearby lake loaded with noisy ducks, geese, and egrets.
