http://granades.com/feeder/?FeederAction=clicked&feed=Articles+%28RSS2%29&seed=http%3A%2F%2Fgranades.com%2F2009%2F11%2F26%2Fthankfulness%2F&seed_title=Thankfulness

http://granades.com/2009/11/26/thankfulness/

Happy Black Friday Eve!

I understand we used to be thankful for things other than low low prices and artificial scarcity, but hey, lookit those deals!

Off spending time with family. See you on the flip side.

http://feeds.sfgate.com/click.phdo?i=1585bada6ec3bc68632b426354f89991

http://feeds.sfgate.com/click.phdo?i=c325b0b16305b9388030d9a66baa09d8

http://newsmomsneed.marchofdimes.com/?p=5819

Prematurity Awareness Day was a big success! On Facebook, Twitter and all over the blogosphere, people were talking about premature birth to help raise awareness of this serious and common problem.

The March of Dimes worked with MomsLikeMe.com, a Web site created for moms by moms, to ask their users if they considered premature birth a serious issue in the United States. At 54 percent, just over half of those polled thought the issue was “extremely serious,” and 46 percent felt it was only “somewhat serious” or “not serious at all.”

As Prematurity Awareness Month draws to a close, our work to raise awareness of premature birth as an extremely serious condition is not over. And we need to continue the fight for the half a million babies born too soon each year.  You can join in the conversation and share your experices with other moms at MomsLikeMe.com.

• She was well into her ninth month of pregnancy... Before she left for the hospital, Ms. Pinckney said, a corrections officer wrapped a chain twice around her waist and handcuffed her to it. Then he covered the handcuffs with a locked black box to further limit her range of motion. Finally, her ankles were shackled...
  
• "...right after I pushed him out, the guard shackled me to the bed rail,” Ms. Knox said. “I had to push the placenta out with the shackles on. That was the worst.”
  
• “I was cuffed through the entire C-section,” Ms. Graves said.
  

• ...a prisoner at the McPherson Unit in Newport, Ark., had been in labor for more than 12 hours when she arrived at Newport Hospital on Sept. 20, 2003. Ms. Nelson, whose legs were shackled together and who had been given nothing stronger than Tylenol all day, begged, according to court papers, to have the shackles removed... The experience of giving birth without anesthesia while largely immobilized has left her with lasting back pain and damage to her sciatic nerve...
  
• "Here this young woman was in active labor," Ms. Simpson wrote, "handcuffed to the armed guard, wearing shackles, in her orange outfit that was dripping wet with amniotic fluid. Her age: 15!"
  
• Merica Erato, serving time for negligent homicide after a car accident, went through labor with chains around her ankles in Fond du Lac, Wis., in May, her husband, Steve, said in an interview. "It is unbelievable that in this day and age a child is born to a woman in shackles," Mr. Erato said. "It sounds like something from slavery 200 years ago."
  

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Send some lovin' thanks to your friends with our holiday vgifts!

Photos of the week

We're so delighted with the immense talent of our growing, global lj_photophile community that we've decided to introduce a poll. Each week, we'll choose a half-dozen photos (based on user comments and staff feedback) and ask you to select a photo of the week. The winning photo will be announced in the next newsletter. If possible, please limit photo size to 350x350 to ensure that images display properly on friends pages. We want to thank you again (and again!) for sharing your passion.

Check out this week's photo poll and more fantastic user content after the jump!

( Read more... )

Curtains

Thanks for joining us. To our American friends, have a fantastic Thanksgiving. To all of our international neighbors, we'll eat a little extra for you!