A Girl Named Stanley

You would think that as much hullabaloo we've heard about our current president concerning his birth and religious preferences, we would have heard a little bit more about the woman who gave life to such a controversial president. During Obama's run for the presidency we heard about her struggles with her insurance company as she fought for her life. We also heard about her struggles as a single mother on food stamps raising a bi-racial son with the help of her parents. Yet we didn't hear about the passionate exotic independent life she led. And what a life she did lead!

Before I read "A Singular Woman" I thought that I was a lot like Ann in the sense that I was a struggling single mother who relied on the kindness of her family to help her raise her sons, and who also, like Ann, struggled with insurance coverage. However when I began to read about this extraordinary woman, I realized that we had very little in common save for the struggles of single parenthood.

A Singular Woman, written by Janny Scott, gives us a unique picture of Stanley Ann, a strong-willed, yet impulsive, financially stressed, yet philanthropic, woman of the late 20th century who admittedly made many mistakes in her personal life, yet never gave up her dream of doing what she felt was most important, giving her children a good education and integrity.

With success however there sometimes comes a price, Stanley Ann's life was rocky, often lonely, riddled with not only stormy marriages but heartache because she spent a great deal of time being absent in her son's life.(Which as a mother I find that to be reprehensible) Ann did adore Barack and Maya, however she was more passionate about her anthropological work in Indonesia than she was about parenting and wifery. Even though I feel one should have more passion for parenting your children than anything else I cannot deny that she wasn't a brilliant woman who contributed significantly to female equality.

A Singular Woman lacks the presence of Obama and how he felt about the choices his mother made and what effect that had on him. My hope is that President Obama will write a more detailed autobiography later and discuss the major role his mother played in his life.

In the end whether you agree with her choices or her politics, Stanley Ann Dunham led a life worth reading about even if she not been mother to an American president. She was not your typical girl from the American Midwest. The girl named Stanley, like the "Boy named Sue", learned to think for herself and ignore the constraints of the norm. She sprang from generations of mavericks and had the courage to carve out her own history.

Grace in the 5th Quarter

If you're attracted by high-tech special effects and big Hollywood names, then the Grace Card and 5th Quarter might not be the movies for you, but if you're interested in watching films that's are profound as well as spiritual then you definitely will not want to pass these two movies up. One movie is based on true events, the other sends a message that most of us need to acknowledge-FORGIVENESS. Both deal with tragedy and grief but in very different ways.

In the Grace Card Mac McDonald loses his young son in a tragic accident, and his life spirals down from that moment. As the years pass, he becomes bitter, estranged from his family, his career as a law enforcement officer suffers and he allows his grief to become bottled-up anger that leads him on a path to self destruction.

As a final straw Mac is forced to pair up with Sam, an African-American pastor who took the job as a police officer to pay the bills, though his true dream is to do full-time ministry. Their relationship is tense and neither understands quite why their paths intersected. When tragedy strikes, the design becomes apparent and both men realize that nothing happens by mistake. What is the lesson to be learned here? Forgiveness is free and should be given to everyone-Give them the Grace Card.


"For the entire history of mankind everyone is born and everyone dies. You think we'd have learned to handle it, but we don't." The 5th Quarter is the true story of how the Abbate family comes to terms with the most profound of losses, and how a team(Wake Forest Football) rallies around a teammate's love for his brother. This is more then a sports movie, it is a film about dealing with loss and grief in a positive way. It is a movie that everyone can relate to simply because at some point we all will lose someone we love dearly and even though we know this we are still never quite prepared for when it happens.

Keep the Kleenex close by for these two movies.