| Young Actors for Young Audiences Demonstrates the Lessons of the ...
Forty-six Montreal Jewish youth raised their voices to sensitize 5,000 high school students in Ottawa and Toronto to the plight of children and teenagers facing the extremes of anti-Semitism, racism and genocide. The catalyst for this consciousness-raising is a play performed by youth about youth during the Holocaust, No More Raisins, No More Almonds: Children's Ghetto Songs by child survivor and Jewish educator, Batia Bettman and directed by Bryna Wasserman.
YAYA (Young Actors for Young Audiences) recently performed at Canada's largest museum, The Canadian Museum of Civilization in Gatineau (Ottawa) and at The Leah Posluns Theatre in Toronto. Post-performance talkbacks between the young actors on stage and the diverse teen audiences were wide-open, dynamic and meaningful.
No More Raisins, No More Almonds: Children's Ghetto Songs is a play centred on songs written during the Holocaust about the children and teenagers in the ghettos.
Presidential Hopeful Obama Stumps In Upstate
SPARTANBURG, S.C.-- Heading into Father's Day weekend, presidential hopeful Senator Barack Obama's message during his visit to the upstate was one of strengthening families. Addressing members of the predominately African-American church, Mount Moriah Baptist Church of Spartanburg, Senator Obama said declining benefits, an inflation that has gone global and a government that has left American families vulnerable. "Without a doubt, the hardest hit have been those families who were most vulnerable to begin with," Obama said. "They are families who live in inner-cities and remote rural areas. They are disproportionately African-American and Latino." He said the government alone can't legislate healthy families, good parenting or economic success.
Mama loves Nandinibabsmamba; sister loves connection
IF I QUOTED relevant song lyrics in this column, I'd be a hack, and you'd judge my musical taste and find it wanting. Also, various royalty seekers would want to charge this newspaper more than I get paid in a year. So just imagine the 14-year-old "River of Dreams" Billy Joel album playing inside the dented blue-green 9-year-old Toyota Corolla, on its way to the Washington, D.C., bus station. I visited my sister the weekend of her graduations. She got two master's degrees in addition to her two bachelor's degrees. Now she's not just Nandini, but Nandini, B.A., B.S., M.A., M.B.A. Nandinibabsmamba. It's fun to say. I visited again a week later, and Nandinibabsmamba had the old Billy Joel tape playing in her car as she drove me downtown. Rain spattered the windows as we passed buildings grand and standard.
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