GREAT BEND, Kan. - I remember the first time I seen a homeless person. My family took summer vacations each year to fantastic American destinations, the Grand Canyon, Lake Tahoe, Maine, Florida, we made it to each state by the time my sister graduated high school. The Griswold vacation movies hold a bit of nostalgia for me. A family that piles into a car with a pop up camper and an atlas share an experience never forgotten. For better or for worse. Most can write a book about their childhood. I'm pretty certain I could write a sitcom.

MANHATTAN, Kan. - On Monday, March 8th President and Michelle Obama celebrated International Women's Day. They were joined by Madeline Albright (the first female US Secretary of State) to mark the progress women have made in the United States and to draw attention to the problems women still face all over the world. Madeline Albright pointed out many struggles women all over the world face and said that while some may claim these are cultural differences and should be left alone, she believes "it is criminal and we each have an obligation to stop it." Michelle Obama pointed out many accomplishments women have made. She also made it clear that this day was not just to honor the famous women who have made history, but the "quiet heroes;" the first women in board rooms, on playing fields and battle fields.

MANHATTAN, Kan. - Noted sociologist Gay Seidman will be visiting Kansas State University to deliver the 10th Annual Donald J. Adamchak Distinguished Lecture Monday, March 8th (International Women's Day) at 7 pm in Forum Hall of K-State Union. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Professor Seidman is the Conway-Bascom Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, director of their African Studies program, and an internationally recognized expert on global production, labor, and human rights. Her lecture, Citizens, Markets, and Transnational Activism: Can Consumer Boycotts and Independent Monitoring End Sweatshops? builds on her recent book, Beyond the Boycott: Labor Rights, Human Rights, and Transnational Activism (Russell Sage, 2007). Professor Seidman has won graduate and undergraduate teaching awards, is a prolific scholar, and has experience as an anti-apartheid and human rights activist.

MANHATTAN, Kan. - For its March installation, Manhattan's Monthly Film Series presents Mike Ramsdell's The Anatomy of Hate; A Dialogue to Hope on Tuesday 16 March (NB: date change). Winner of the Best Political Documentary at the Philadelphia Independent Film Festival, it was also shown at the Carter Center as part of Atlanta's 2009 Docufest Independent Film Festival where it won the Audience Choice Award. The film reveals the shared narratives found in individual and collective ideologies of hate, and how we as a species, can overcome them.

For six years, Ramsdell worked with unprecedented access to some of the most venomous ideologies and violent conflicts of our time including the White Supremacist movement, Fred Phelps' brand of Christian fundamentalism as an anti-gay platform, Muslim Extremism, the Palestinian Intifada, Israeli Settlers and Soldiers, and US Forces in Iraq.

TOPEKA, Kan. - I'm glad they're taking a stand on this. I can't see how denying Kansans health insurance makes anyone more free. Such a problem to have; being all tied up with health insurance. Here's the press release:

The Topeka Branch NAACP and the Kansas State Conference of Branches NAACP will hold a Press Conference on Wednesday, February 24, 2010 at 3:00pm at the Docking State Office Building opposing the Kansas "Health Care Freedom" Amendment. This proposed amendment would block the implementation of any Federal Health Care Reform legislation here in Kansas. With over 300,000 Kansans uninsured, we can't afford to play these partisan games. Join us as we call on the legislature to reject this partisan anti-reform measure and to work for real health care reforms to provide quality and affordable health care for all.

For further information, please contact Rev. Ben Scott at the Topeka Branch NAACP, 26-NAACP (785-266-2227).

WICHITA, Kan. - During the 1960s, while male activists were out in the streets protesting the war, the draft, the CIA, Dow Chemical, or what have you, their female counterparts often complained that they were left behind to brew the coffee and tidy up the meeting rooms. By the beginning of the decade that started Jan. 1, 1970, however, the ferment that had started to percolate in the '60s erupted into a movement that eventually became a feminist tsunami of marches, political appointments, laws, and legal decisions that changed forever the lives of women and the men who lived and worked with them.

The feminist movement, often called The Second Wave, spread across the country and around the world. Women sought equality in the workplace, in education, in their relationships, and even in men-only bars. In New York City, feminists demonstrated to liberate the men's bar in the New York's Biltmore Hotel. McSorley's, a 116-year old New York bar admitted its first woman patron on Aug. 10 after Mayor John Lindsay signed a bill prohibiting sexual discrimination in public places, making New York the first major city to have such a law.

SHAWNEE, Kan. - Never should a reasonable person doubt that I love my son unconditionally. Isaiah will undoubtedly bring me some of the greatest joys and also greatest pains of my existence (especially if that "your kid will be 10 times as bad as you were" thing is true). It's a guarantee for which I will hold with a sense of responsibility. My unconditional love for my bambino won't allow me to give up on him when things may get tough. In my work, I encounter kids who don't have the privilege of experiencing that unconditional love.

At some point, someone gave up on a majority of them. I see their behaviors and I know they aren't perfect; but I also wonder what would bring a parent or guardian to the point where they don't recognize the value in their own children. When they reach that point, who will take responsibility for the development of character in their kids?

TOPEKA, Kan. - State Representative Anthony Brown, R- Eudora, is sponsoring the Covenant Marriage proposal approved Thursday by the Kansas House. This proposal was added to House Bill 2667 which deals, ironically, with issues of custody, property, and, even protection from abuse.

The bill was approved on a vote of 70-49. As written and passed, a covenant marriage is "a marriage entered into by one male and one female who understand and agree that the marriage between them is a lifelong relationship". By affidavit all who, voluntarily, enter into a covenant marriage are testifying that they have completed pre-marital counseling and fully understand that dissolution of their marriage shall be granted on limited grounds including, confinement of one spouse in a mental institution for a period of two years or more, or failure to perform a material marital duty or obligation. Bills and proposals such as the Covenant Marriage proposal purport to be about strengthening families and the institution of marriage.

SALINA, Kan. - In a new book, Gendered Tradeoffs: Family, Social Policy, and Economic Inequality in Twenty-One Countries, Becky Pettit and Jennifer Hook contend workplace equality for women boils down to not only whether women are included in the work force but on how they are included.

Despite big changes over recent decades, workplace gender inequalities endure in the United States and other industrialized nations around the world. These inequalities are created by facets of national social policy that either ease or concentrate the demands of care giving within households and shape expectations in the workplace.

DODGE CITY, Kan. - I was moved to write this article after reading the fascinating one concerning third trimester abortions and the flood of comments that followed. It made me think that there are many facts still not revealed about what happens in these cases. My knowledge comes from the time I visited Dr. Tiller's clinic as a new State Representative in the Kansas House. We had been invited, if we were interested in coming to Wichita, to learn what really happens there. I sent in my RSVP and arrived at the gate to present my ID. Dr. Tiller had been shot in the arm previously, so there was, already, a tall fence--a barricade, really, around the clinic. I drove my car to the gate and the guard at the gate allowed me to drive into the compound. There were protesters across the street, holding signs.