When it comes to breast-feeding, I'm in league with a quiet sect of men -- and women:
It grosses me out.
Not the idea of mothers bonding with their babies and providing them nutrition and other natural goodies for healthy, growing bodies. But the act of them doing so, anywhere in my visual range.
I am not a mother, I've never nursed, and I've never jumped out of bed for a 3 a.m. feeding.
On one side of the courtroom, family, friends and the system circled the wagons in the case of Timothy Workman, the man on trial for shooting Keith Bailey five years ago in a Roanoke parking lot.
Workman's wife, other relatives and supporters occupied row after row.
A representative from the U.S. Attorney's Office observed the proceedings, presumably not to take sides but to look out for the federal government's interests. A long-haired, undercover guy from Workman's former employer, the Drug Enforcement Administration, also showed up.
As the lights came up in the darkened auditorium at Patrick Henry High School, junior Angelina Crews sat stunned as she caught a glimpse of Sarah Panzau standing on stage.
Toned and tanned, Panzau sported a black tank top, sneakers and baby blue shorts with a racing stripe down each side. She's an attractive, engaging, spunky 25-year-old -- once you get past the flap of a left arm, amputated above the elbow.
Or the patch of skin along the left side of her neck that looks like it's been raked with a cheese grater. Or the left side of her back that looks like it's been pieced together like a quilt. Or the scars that snake down the former All-American athlete's muscular legs.
Panzau's body is her message.
It is, she stressed to the Patrick Henry juniors and seniors Friday morning, the reality of what happens when you drink.
And then slide behind the wheel of a car.
"I want you to take a long, hard look," Panzau said, perched on the cushion of one of the auditorium's chairs. "My future is in this body.
"I could sit up here behind a podium and rattle off statistics ... and you would forget every statistic and fact when you walked out that door. I want you to understand there are lifelong consequences to what we choose."
Don Imus didn't get a pass. Isiah Thomas shouldn't, either.
Thomas, coach of the once-storied New York Knicks, joins Imus as the latest non-rapper to direct degrading names at black women. I don't have to remind you what Imus called members of the predominantly black Rutgers women's basketball team.
This week, a New York jury sided with a fired Knicks black female executive who sued Madison Square Garden and Thomas for sexual harassment. Among her accusations was that Thomas routinely addressed her as the b-word and the h-word, "the alphabet of misogyny," as one New York writer aptly put it.
Where're Jesse and Al now? (I guess it's easier to rev up the base when the bogeyman insulting black women is an old white guy instead of a prominent black NBA Hall of Famer with a charismatic smile.)
During their 50-year marriage, Mary Lou Smith and her husband, Ollie, didn't have a lot. But what they had, they worked for.
Ollie Smith drove a dump truck for more than 30 years until disability forced him to retire in 1984. Mary Lou stayed home with the couple's five children. After the children got older, Mary Lou worked on and off as a waitress.
That modest life changed in March when Ollie, bedridden for 10 years, passed away. Mary Lou never had much. Now the 65-year-old widow has even less.
"I got to pay gas, lights, water," said Mary Lou, whose mother, Dorothy Casiano, 80, lives with her in a small, wood-frame house in Northwest Roanoke. "I'm lucky if I got a few pennies left over."
To help stretch her monthly survivor's Social Security check of $783, Mary Lou has signed up for the Local Office on Aging's one-time Soup for Seniors project. The agency wants to collect 3,000 cans of soup and 600 boxes of crackers by Oct. 15 to distribute this fall to needy elderly men and women.
The project began Sept. 1. By Monday afternoon, the agency had received less than 700 cans of soup and 175 boxes of crackers.
This community can do better than that.
In her signature plainspoken style, Michigan native Shanna Flowers peels away the layers and gets to the heart of the issues. No pretense. Just straightforward perspective. Shanna writes about local people whose circumstances reflect decisions made as near as City Hall or as far away as the halls of Congress. Other times, she weighs in on a topic because it is incredibly ridiculous. Or heartening. Or fascinating. Read Shanna's column three days a week, Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, at roanoke.com
