GOOGLE \Hilton Rates \ Call for Papers \ ACF Clarification \ Poverty\ Music - 2/14/08

Thu Feb 14 14:18:22 EST 2008

- CHECK GOOGLE'S VALENTINES HOME PAGE
- SAN FRANCISCO HILTON RATES
- CALL FOR PAPERS!!
- ACF CLARIFICATION: CONTACT YOUR ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES
- MARRIAGE COULD BE A TOOL AGAINST CHILD POVERTY
- AN ALL TIME GREAT MARRIAGE SONG
- MUSIC FOR TONIGHT BY THE FIREPLACE

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- CHECK GOOGLE'S VALENTINES HOME PAGE

http://www.google.com/

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- SAN FRANCISCO HILTON RATES

> Diane, I just got back from staying at the SFO Hilton...the room rate that the
> NADA conference negotiated was $279 per room. I sure hope you did better than
> that! - Jon Galucki, Playback Now

Can you imagine!  $279 a night and our rate is $115. I hope you've reserved
a room.  The conference brochures ARE IN THE MAIL and we know as soon as
they arrive in people's mailboxes, the hotel will sell out. Call
800-445-8667 and ask for the Smart Marriages rate at the Hilton on O'Farrell
Street. Also, let me know if you're the first on your block to receive a
brochure. Let me know if you receive an individual one in the mail or if you
receive your bulk packages. I like to track landing patterns.  - diane

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- CALL FOR PAPERS!!
> Hi Diane:  Please post this to the list:
>  
> CALL FOR PAPERS ON COUPLE EDUCATION: The Journal of Couple and
> Relationship Education:  Innovations in Clinical and Educational Interventions
> announces a call for papers on the topics of premarital, marital and remarital
> counseling and education and enrichment programs, sex education and counseling
> programs, divorce prevention programs, assessment instruments and methods,
> addictions and violence prevention and treatment,  outcome studies, creative
> programming and delivery, & other prevention ideas for couples in
> pre-committed and committed relationships. Contact the new Editor at:
> jeffry_larson at byu.edu  for more information or see us at:
> <http://www.haworthpress.com/>
>  
> Thanks, Jeff Larson, Editor, JCRT
> 
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- ACF CLARIFICATION: CONTACT YOUR ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES

> The way the Smart Marriages list explained the discontinuation of Compassion
> Capital funding (CCF) - almost makes it look like ACF just cut off funding.
> For clarification purposes: CONGRESS did not allocate funding for new
> Compassion Capital Fund (CCF) grant awards for 2008. Unfortunately, this means
> that ACF will be unable to award new grant funds under the CCF Demonstration
> program, the CCF Targeted Capacity Building program, or the CCF Communities
> Empowering Youth program this year. Funding for future grant cycles will be
> determined, as always, by future congressional appropriations.

In other words, this is a political process and we need to inform our
elected representatives that it makes sense to spend money upstream on
marriage strengthening and the prevention of family breakdown rather than
continuing to spend it all downstream trying to pull families out of the
river after they fall in.....  - diane

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- MARRIAGE COULD BE A TOOL AGAINST CHILD POVERTY

Marriage could be tool against child poverty
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Feb. 5, 2008
Patrick McIlheran, Editorial Columnist

> the correlation is nearly perfect. . . . .

> Given how marriage seems to protect everyone involved, society needs to crow
> its advantages, over and over. . .
> Marriage skills, say those in the field, are easily taught. Talking up
> marriage to children is something mothers and pastors and teachers can do
> right now. Marrying doesn't require a federal grant.
> 
> Marriage, no matter how dented, remains the institution that societies have
> used for ages to create a stable, protected space for children. The underclass
> stands out, statistically, in eschewing it. If society's looking for some
> means to break the cycle of poverty, it makes sense to take up the tool
> readily at hand.

News comes that a third of school-age children in Milwaukee live in poverty.
The usual to-do lists follow: Make more jobs, discourage dropouts. "I'm
begging you to stay in school," Mayor Tom Barrett says he tells children.
It's an admirable message, and it's good to work on getting their mommies
jobs.

How about a husband, too?

I'm not suggesting a city Department of Hookups. But if society as a whole
is daunted by the way crime and unemployment and truancy and poverty all
seem to cause each other, one place to start might be to encourage the thing
that's connected with less of each - marriage.

There is a correlation. Milwaukee's 33% rate of poverty in schoolchildren
puts it in the 10 worst among the nations' biggest school systems. Among
this Terrible 10, all have at least a third of their children growing up in
a single-parent home, according to census figures. Except for three
districts with many immigrants (who are often poor for other reasons), none
saw even half its children living with married parents. In Milwaukee, 58% of
children live in single-parent homes.

This sets Milwaukee apart from other big districts in Wisconsin. Racine
ranks next, with 40% of its children in single-parent homes. Its
child-poverty rate, at 15%, is tied for second-worst. Among the state's
biggest "unified" districts, the ones with the least child poverty are
Waukesha and Appleton. They also have the fewest children in single-parent
homes. Map all 10, and the correlation is nearly perfect.

"There are a lot of things that correlate with marriage," says Diann Dawson,
a former social worker who now heads the federal African American Healthy
Marriage Initiative. Chief among them is whether a family is poor.

Some caveats: Not all poor children or single-parent families are
African-American, though in Milwaukee, as nationwide, a disproportionate
number are, which is why Dawson's office exists. This wasn't always so, she
notes: Around the beginning of the 20th century, African-Americans were more
likely to be married than other people, she says. The following decades saw,
despite vicious racism, steady improvement in African-American
circumstances. You can argue about whether marriage precedes or simply
accompanies reduced poverty, she says, but there's no reason to think that
marriage is either irrelevant or impossible for the poor.

We have to make the case for people to reconsider marriage, she says:
"There's too much out there saying why you shouldn't marry." Given how
marriage seems to protect everyone involved, society needs to crow its
advantages, over and over.

It's starting to. Terence Ray, who heads the city-run Milwaukee Fatherhood
Initiative, also helps teach marriage skills. A Milwaukee nonprofit, the
Center for Self-Sufficiency, is planning a day of how-to workshops at the
Northside YMCA to mark Black Marriage Day in March. It's one of some 250
such celebrations nationwide. "The public conversation has changed," says
Dawson.

Not that marriage is a panacea. There are poor married families. In those 10
worst-off big school districts nationwide, about 11% of married families
with children are poor, according to figures from the well-regarded Annie E.
Casey Foundation. But in those cities, about 45% of single-parent households
are poor. In Milwaukee, single-parent families are more than three times as
likely as married families to be poor. If marriage isn't a cure-all, it at
least is powerful medicine.

Better, it's self-administered. Creating more jobs and reducing crime
probably would relieve poverty, but they're difficult to do quickly, and
they're things that generally must be done for poor communities rather than
by them. Marriage skills, say those in the field, are easily taught. Talking
up marriage to children is something mothers and pastors and teachers can do
right now. Marrying doesn't require a federal grant.

Marriage, no matter how dented, remains the institution that societies have
used for ages to create a stable, protected space for children. The
underclass stands out, statistically, in eschewing it. If society's looking
for some means to break the cycle of poverty, it makes sense to take up the
tool readily at hand.

Patrick McIlheran is a Journal Sentinel editorial columnist. His e-mail
address is pmcilheran at journalsentinel.com
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- THE ALL TIME GREAT MARRIAGE SONG

"Still The One" by Orleans:

We've been together since way back when
Sometimes I never want to see you again
But I want you to know
After all these years
You're still the one
I want whisperin' in my ear

You're still the one
I want to talk to in bed
Still the one
That turns my head
We're still having fun
And you're still the one

You're still the one
That makes me laugh
Still the one
That's my better half
We're still having fun
And you're still the one

You're still the one
That makes me strong
Still the one
I want to take along
We're still having fun
And you're still the one (yes you are)

Changing, our love is going gold
Even though we grow old, it grows new

You're still the one
That I love to touch
Still the one
And I can't get enough
We're still having fun
And you're still the one

You're still the one
Who can scratch my itch
Still the one
And I wouldn't switch
We're still having fun
And you're still the one

You are still the one
That makes me shout
Still the one
That I dream about
We're still having fun
And you're still the one

You're still the one
Yeah, still the one
We're still having fun
And you're still the one

YouTube:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73uHLQDSBYo

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- MUSIC FOR TONIGHT BY THE FIREPLACE

> Dance me to the End of Love
> 
> Dance me to the wedding now, dance me on and on
> Dance me very tenderly and dance me very long
> We're both of us beneath our love, we're both of us above
> Dance me to the end of love
> Dance me to the end of love
> 
> Dance me to the children who are asking to be born
> Dance me through the curtains that our kisses have outworn
> Raise a tent of shelter now, though every thread is torn
> Dance me to the end of love
> 
> Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
> Dance me through the panic till I'm gathered safely in
> Touch me with your naked hand or touch me with your glove
> Dance me to the end of love
> Dance me to the end of love
> Dance me to the end of love
> 
> - lyrics by Leonard Cohen. I think of this as "dance me until death us do
> part"
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ki9xcDs9jRk&feature=related

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12th Annual Smart Marriages® Conference, Hilton San Francisco Hotel,
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Pre-Conference Training Institutes June 30-July 2
Post-Conference Training Institutes July 6

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Coalition for Marriage, Family and Couples Education, LLC (CMFCE)
Diane Sollee, Director
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202-362-3332

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