Tuesday, August 30, 2005

Live feed from local New Orleans news

Live webfeed. From the comments section of People Get Ready. I'm glad Schroeder is safe and hope he has a home to return to.

posted by Michelle @ 10:16 PM, 0 comments

Thursday, August 25, 2005

Free armed tour of Nuevo Laredo, anyone?

According to La Jornada:

"Es un intento de rescatar la mala imagen (sic) que tenemos y darle un empuje a los restaurantes y mercados de artesanías, donde el comercio es casi nulo", señaló ayer el director de Turismo de Nuevo Laredo, Ramón Garza.

El consejo turístico de la ciudad, vecina de Laredo, Texas, está enviando autobuses a recoger turistas a San Antonio para visitas de un día escoltados por guías y policías en motocicleta.

El servicio, que se ofrece tres veces por semana, comenzó a mediados de agosto y ocurre luego de que más de 115 personas han sido asesinadas este año en Nuevo Laredo en medio de una batalla entre bandas de la droga por el control del tráfico de cocaína, mariguana y heroína.

Rough/sloppy translation:

"It's an attempt to save the bad imagen that we have and give a boost to the restaurants and artesan markets, where commnonexistentost nonexistdirectorid the direcotr of Turismos de NL, Ramon Garza.

"The tourism board of the city, neighboring Laredo, Texas, is sending buses to San Antonio to pick up tourists for day visits escorted by guides and police on motorcycles.

"The service, which is offered three times a week, began in the middle of August and occurred after more than 115 people have been murdered this year in Nuevo Laredo in the midst of a battle between drug gangs for control of the traffic of cocaine, marijuana, and heroin

Given that many of the deaths in N.L. occurred due to gunfights between police and drug dealers and that some police have been implicated in some of the drug-running, I'm not sure I'd feel that much safer on my day-trip to the artisan market with the police. If they are the targets, why would I want to be near them? And hanging out with a bunch of obviously American gringos on a big bus (with all of their oversized Sombrero purchases)? Will that make me safer? Hmmmm. I doubt it, though the naive may feel safer.

During the day, you're probably o.k. crossing the border for a little light shopping in the big markets. At night, I wouldn't go within 100 yards of a bar or nightclub, with or accompaniment accompaniament. But come to think of it, I probably wouldn't be found near a N.L. nightclub even if it were the safest city in Mexico.

posted by Michelle @ 3:04 PM, 2 comments




The role of the World Bank in domestic policy

Academics tend to have intense debates about how, when, and how much the World Bank does or does not influence the public policy decisions of developing countries that receive World Bank aid or loans.

According to La Jornada, President Fox's economic proposals to be presented next week will include some of the World Bank proposals for addressing poverty in Mexico.

The President made the announcment while discussing the results of a recent World Bank study that suggested that poverty is still a serious problem in Mexico, though poverty rates are declining. In attendance at the press conference was Dr. Bourguignon, a VP of the World Bank.

The press conference apparently did not include details about the poverty alleviation plans of the administration. Fox will present his annual state of the union address next week, and more details are likely to appear in the printed Informe de Gobierno that is published concurrently with his address.

posted by Michelle @ 10:06 AM, 0 comments




Happy News

It's what you'd expect.

posted by Michelle @ 10:05 AM, 0 comments

Wednesday, August 24, 2005

Choosing a dissertation committee

Profgrrrrl has some useful advice and insights into choosing a dissertation committee in the social sciences. I've heard horror stories, but was lucky (or wise) in my own committee choices.

Best advice I received? You want your #4 and #5 people to be (at least marginally) helpful but unlikely to create long-term problems. This wasn't really my strategy, but I can see its virtues.

posted by Michelle @ 5:28 PM, 0 comments

Tuesday, August 23, 2005

What I share in common with "W"

Not much. But, I do have trouble remembering names. And I do give my students nicknames to cover up that I can't remember their names.

I explain to my students the first day of class that I am horrible at remembering names; they should not take it personally. Then, when we do introductions, I ask them to tell us one thing about themselves that we would not necessarily know by looking at them or even eating lunch with them several times a week for a year. Examples are "the [uncool] music artist you like because your parents like them" (mine: Billy Joel) or "the first record/tape/cd you bought" (mine: a 45 of Love Me Tender by John Schneider/Bo Duke) or "a quirky habit you have" (mine: none). I learned this introduction trick as a grad student at UNC. (Paul, you should know who does this....)

And, I use the tidbit to remember my students. For weeks, I can't remember their names but I remember Guy-who-plays-tuba or Guy-who-is-GT-mascot or Girl-with-50-pairs-of-shoes-not-including-flipflops. After a few weeks, I learn some names, but some students (especially those with common names) are forever doomed to be the violin-player or the Tetris-addict.

For me, the most difficult students to identify and remember are those that look most like their peers. I can hardly tell two white girls with long, straight, brown hair apart, and blonde white boys with baseball caps all blend into one. I have the same problem with old black and white movies, when all the men wear suits and all the women have the same hairdo. They all look the same to me.

They say that Shrub's penchant for nicknames is either a result of his Skull & Crossbones membership or dyslexia. In my case, maybe it's mild dyslexic tendencies or maybe I'm on the borderline of the autisim spectrum. The latter may be the more likely since I also tend to engage in highly detailed conversations about things that other people don't find very interesting, like my tendency to give my students nicknames.

Added: This is a funny NYTimes story about W's nicknames.

posted by Michelle @ 10:51 AM, 2 comments




And you thought your back-to-school traffic was bad

Back-to-school traffic in Mexico City resulted in over 200 traffic citations, 80 towed cars, and two arrests. The first day of school apparently created "caos" in the big city.

posted by Michelle @ 10:38 AM, 0 comments

Sunday, August 21, 2005

Old news...

I've spent the last week scrubbing cabinets, moving furniture, and fighting fleas. Tonight, I took a break to look for the Terry Gross and Gene Simmons interview that I missed a few years back. I heard about the interview on Wait Wait, and I found an .mp3 of the interview online. (Simmons did not allow NPR to include the interview in the online archives.) There's also a funny tidbit about Simmons in this Al Franken Fresh Air interview.

posted by Michelle @ 10:37 PM, 0 comments

Saturday, August 13, 2005

Mexican wins asylum in U.S.

A Mexican man was granted asylum in the U.S. because the court detirmined that he would face persecution for being gay and would not receive treatment for AIDS in Mexico.

His lawyers cited widespread persecution and violence against homosexuals in Mexico. They also cited the lack of widespread AIDS treatment. I'm sure anti-immigrant groups will have a field day with this case.

I have written about homophobia in Mexico before. Mexico City does have a lively gay community, but I'm certain that violence, persecution, and prejudices persist.

As a random aside, it seems that the photo used to accompany the BBC story is of a trio that I also took pictures of at the 2005 gay pride march in Mexico City.

Photo included with the article from the 2005 Mexico City gay pride march:

BBC photo


My photo


My photo

posted by Michelle @ 9:57 PM, 3 comments




Why Atlanta is like Mexico, but without good food and rubber stamps

The only way to initiate water service at a residence is to go to one small office in downtown Atlanta with no public parking nearby and wait for 30 minutes to see a city employee between the hours of 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. M-F.

(I would hate to see the line at lunchtime when harried workers try to get their service taken care of while government employees get cranky from lack of food. Or, more likely, they go eat and leave people in line.)

This is true even if: 1. you've already had water service with the city and can provide an account number in good standing and 2. the water is currently turned on at the residence in the landlord's name.

You wait 30 minutes to see someone for less than 5 who doesn't even give you any kind of receipt to prove you were there and requested service. At least in Mexico they would be officious enough to give you a form with 3 rubber stamps to prove you visited the office. And, in Mexico they would have made a big show of asking for my identification, which according to Atlanta rules is required, though no one ever asked to see it.

posted by Michelle @ 9:16 PM, 0 comments

Friday, August 12, 2005

Gearing up for another social security conflict

Yesterday, the social security union in Mexico submitted its formal contract negotiation request and strike petition. This is part of the normal contract negotiation process, but the strike deadline is midnight on October 15.

A key area of negotiation will be the union's contractual pension benefits. The union has suggested that it's willing to consider a reform to its pension system, but is unwilling to accept full privatization or reduction in benefits for current workers.

The social security administration (with the support of other union leaders and business representatives) will try to use last year's reform to the social security law to threaten the union with bankruptcy in order to get a more dramatic pension concession.

posted by Michelle @ 2:32 PM, 0 comments

Tuesday, August 09, 2005

Welcome back party

This morning we had a nice birthday party for our most senior colleague and a welcome back party for me. Angie was super nice and bought a cute Dora the Explorer pinata.



Thank you, Angie!

Pinata Sponge Bob Square Pants was also in attendance.

posted by Michelle @ 4:47 PM, 0 comments

Sunday, August 07, 2005

Ibrahim Ferrer



Don Ferrer passed away yesterday in Cuba.

posted by Michelle @ 4:27 PM, 0 comments




LaTeX update

Thanks to all who offered LaTeX suggestions and alternatives. After downloading trial or demo versions of ScientificWord, MikTex with WinEdt, and MathType, I think I'm going to go with MathType and MSOffice.

Though I desperately want to be accepted by the cool methods crowd, I just can't envision dedicating all that time to learn LaTeX. Yes, you send a powerful signal when all your papers are in LaTeX--"I am super stats person," but it's at the expense of hours of learning new code. And, I figure as a comparativist who does both quantitative (numbers) and qualitative (interviews, digging through archives) research, being completely fluent in Spanish, a beginner at Portuguese, and applying (frequentist) statistical methods to answer my research questions (no, I'll never be a Bayesian, but at least I can admit that) should be enough.

[ASIDE in stage whisper: This last point is something I've thought about for a while. That is, it sure is much easier for Americanists in political science to become methodologists because they don't have to become fluent in a foreign language and spend all that time moving back and forth between countries. (When I say methodologist, I mean those that develop or refine new or existing methods, rather than just using the existing toolbox.) They can stay in their offices and work. And sure, their foreign language is math. But, then is it really fair for them to look down their noses at comparativists who only do "applied" work?

Now, of course, not all methodologists only study American politics, nor do they all look down upon "applied" comparativists, and some probably do speak foreign languages or travel. Some also applaud our efforts to learn and apply statistical methods. But, there is always this undercurrent of disdain for the applied quantitative researchers, who try as they might, just can't seem to estimate their models properly. My question for them, could they chat up a Mexican politician or bureaucrat in Spanish fluent enough to elicit and understand the subtext of the interview?]

Of course, I could "pose" as a methodologist if I want my department to shell out $550 in Tech Fee funds for ScientificWord. While it may seem like academic acceptance is cheap at that price, the time costs were still too high to search for and find and adapt good templates for what I want to do. It also seems that the TeX documents created by ScientificWord have a lot of unnecessary or non-functioning code, which can run amuck later if you start compiling with another shell. It would be a little like using FrontPage to design your website; you end up with lots of unnecessary code that eventually can muck up the whole effort.

I tried out the MathType demo, and it works really well with Word and PowerPoint. It also has lots of built in equations that I will need for my class slides. The key will be creating a keyboard short-cut in all my Office applications to open the add-in quickly. Then, I need to sort out some short-cuts for inserting certain symbols within MathType. I'm pretty good at customizing Office and using the keyboard short-cuts (using a mouse is so 1990s), so I think it will be a nice fit.

So, thanks, anonymous, for your suggestion, though I think I know who you are.

posted by Michelle @ 10:29 AM, 3 comments

Friday, August 05, 2005

Small miracles

I have officially finished the syllabi for both of my classes! Yay! I'm teaching graduate research-design-baby-stats (for the 3rd time and will do so indefinitely) and graduate IPE. IPE is my 7th new prep at Tech in 3 years. (I did one new prep as a Fulbrighter, too, but I'm not counting that. I'm actually starting my fourth year at Tech, if you can believe that.)

For IPE, I have uploaded the syllabus and all e-readings to our WebCT equivalent. For stats, I have uploaded the syllabus, all the homework assignments, all the data files for the homeworks, and all the instruction sheets for each of the four parts of their research projects. (I find uploading the homeworks ahead of time forces me to stay on schedule.) Whew.

I've also submitted all the book reserve requests to the library, not that students ever step foot in the library these days. Why...back when I was a student...we had to trudge over to the library...and then to the photocopy place....(you get the idea)

What a relief to be done with that chore. Now, I just need to finish unpacking and organizing my research materials.

Why am I so ahead of schedule? Because the week before classes, I will spend moving furniture from storage pods to our new (rental) home.

posted by Michelle @ 8:19 PM, 3 comments




The Mexican folk art market

Like most markets in Mexico, the government has had a hand in the folk art market for many years, providing subsidies to poor artisans who produce for national stores run by the government. The Social Development Ministry is revising the subsidy scheme, but how the changes will affect the income of artisans is not very clear.

You can view a catalogue online, but there are no online ordering or pricing information. I've been in these stores, and the art is nice, but more expensive than the pieces found in the private market. I wonder, now, how the salaries of government subsidized artisans compare to non-subsidized artisans.

The article also mentions that Chinese-made imitation artesania is being found in the private Mexican folk art market. Apparently, the Chinese have found a way to imitate Mexican designs and export their products to Mexico. Interesting, no?

Brian and I have several items of Mexican folk art, some of which we bought in Mexico City markets and others in regional markets. Only this last year, when we had a car in Mexico, were we able to go to the source. In Oaxaca, for instance, we visited one (San Martín Tilcajete) of the two towns that produces all of the painted wood animal art in Mexico.

These aren't the pieces we bought, but here's an example from the FONART site:


The amazing, but unsurprising, thing about this small town was that every family seemed to produce the little wooden figures. All the houses have signs on the outside inviting visitors to knock, and then you tour their little studios. We stopped at one of the first houses, and asked where we should visit next. The man of the house suggested we go to the back of town, along the dirt streets, and that there were more houses there. We visited one man who said that he made more money selling to the wholesalers, but that he liked to have visitors so he could see people's reactions to his creations. Unfortunately, he said, most visitors didn't make it to the back of town.

[Essentially, to visit without a car requires taking a bus from Oaxaca City and getting off at the entrance to the town. Then, you walk a kilometer to get to the town proper, and by then, most tourists don't want to wander around another square kilometer of town to visit all the houses. They stop at one or two stores along the main street and then hike back to the highway to catch a bus. When we visited, we made our way back out to the main street and stopped at one of the more "finished" shops. There we met a mother and daughter visiting from L.A. who asked for a ride back to the highway. We ended up offering them a ride all the way back to the City.]

Brian and I decided to buy one small piece from each family we visited in an effort to spread the wealth. Each family had a different style, too, which is not really apparent when you look at a store filled with all the figures in the D.F. One thing we noticed, however, was that the prices were higher and the quality poorer in the town. We attributed the prices to my unwillingness to bargain with someone over their art (it seemed unseemly) and the quality to the likelihood that the wholesalers buy all the "good" pieces.

In any event, so you get an idea of the types of towns that produce folk art in Oaxaca, take a look at these pictures.


That's our car, complete with Texas plates.


That's the town's Church.

The town had less than five paved streets, and the rest were dirt. The houses were made of cement block, usually unpainted.

posted by Michelle @ 11:15 AM, 0 comments

Thursday, August 04, 2005

Global solidarity

Sections of the national mining union in Mexico will stop work on August 12 in support of their companeros who work at a mine in Tuscon, AZ. The mines appear to be owned by the same corporation, which has posted decent profits since the beginning of this year.

Globalization scholars, make what you will of the announcement.

posted by Michelle @ 11:49 AM, 0 comments




Mexico now leader in kidnappings

Mexico is now apparently in first place for kidnappings worldwide. This year, it has already outpaced Brazil and Colombia.

I wonder, though, how these countries compare in terms of reporting of crimes. Many, many crimes, including kidnappings, do not get reported in Mexico. On the other hand, the government has had a public campaign aimed at increasing crime reporting, specifically for kidnapping. So, could the "increase" really be due to better data? I'm not sure anyone will ever know. Even if you compared police reported numbers to survey numbers, there would be so much noise in both sets of data, that I'm not sure you could ever really figure out an really accurate kidnapping rate.

In any event, Mexico now has the dubious distinction of being #1.

And to think, I never even thought about buying kidnapping insurance while in Mexico!

posted by Michelle @ 11:38 AM, 2 comments




Politics or football?

Politics. Football. At least the leaders of the PAN know their constituency. They have elected to have the national debate among the candidates for their party's nomination for president on either the 6th or the 8th of September. The 7th was ruled out because the Mexican national team will be playing Panama for the World Cup series.

posted by Michelle @ 11:34 AM, 0 comments

Wednesday, August 03, 2005

This brought back memories

Those were the days. Now imagine you are driving and not just sitting in a taxi.

posted by Michelle @ 10:41 PM, 0 comments




More drug violence in Mexico

This time not just along the border. Another police official was gunned down with an AK-47 (a.k.a. cuerno de chivo) outside a restaurant in Acapulco in the company of 5 friends. In border states, another four were killed.

Meanwhile, back in the Capital, opposition legislators criticized the government's characterization as "exagerated" the closing of the U.S. consulate in N.L. They admit the country is sufferng from "narcoviolencia".

The leftist press points out that new security measures have not been as effective as the government would claim.

posted by Michelle @ 10:12 AM, 0 comments




Avoid mugging, the remix

Alex at Marginal Revolution has a short list of tips to avoid being mugged while in Lima. I like the coke bottle idea, but I always preferred to carry a styrofoam cup of extra hot coffee while in Mexico City.

I also second the idea of choosing who you ask for directions (for safety reasons), and in my experience you must ask at least 3 people and triangulate among the responses. Mexicans, at least, hate to appear unhelpful and will often give you directions when they have no idea where you want to go. After 2 or 3 experiences of this, you learn to double and triple check directions before you walk 10 blocks out of the way.

His tips are much easier to remember than the long list I offered for those traveling to the D.F.

posted by Michelle @ 9:43 AM, 0 comments




All consuming

For a while, I have been looking for an easy way to keep track of the books and movies that I read and see, and maybe even have a feed to the blog. Tonight, Brian found it for me.

Note the short list (with pictures!) in the sidebar. All very easy to do.

posted by Michelle @ 12:09 AM, 0 comments

Tuesday, August 02, 2005

LaTeX woes

I'm no computer dummy. Maybe I know just enough to be dangerous. In either case, the online documentation for LaTex (and related editors, interfaces, etc.) is maddeningly obfuscatory.

Since I have realized that I will be teaching the intro stats course for our master's students indefinitely, I have become convinced that it would help both them and me if my notes were electronic and online. A very nice colleague at the Methods meeting convinced me that LaTex was the way to go in the long-term (and shared some useful .tex files), but in the short-term, it's very frustrating. I suspect that I only want to use about 10% (or less) of LaTeX's functionality.

Why can't smart people write clear user's guides? Can anyone suggest an easy to use tutorial site?

Update: Lovely, just lovely.

Update2: It's becoming less murky.

posted by Michelle @ 9:47 PM, 4 comments




Women in political science appear to be hitting a glass ceiling

Or, at least that's one of the conclusions that could be made from the NSF-sponsored, APSA research report on women in the discipline. Women are more likely to be hired as part-time or adjunct faculty, and less likely to be steadily promoted. The full report is online.

The report suggests that four forces shape the role of women in political science:

(quoting and paraphrasing from pg. 12)
1. A leaking pipeline (women leave)
2. A dual burden of tenure track and family (not enough support for family)
3. The institutional climate (women don't understand the unspoken rules of male political science/academic culture)
4. The culture of research (too much lone wolf research and an undervaluing of feminist political science research)

And contrary to what one Inside Higher Ed reader suggests, the report offers no evidence that "Maybe women are simply happier in non Tenure Track jobs?". I hope he's not a political scientist. BTW, men are part of families, too, and maybe they should get leave to participate in their families' lives?

posted by Michelle @ 7:04 PM, 5 comments




Consular offices in N.L. still closed

According to this report, the U.S. will only re-open its consulate in Nuevo Laredo when it is clear that violence in the city is under control. According to the article

En Nuevo Laredo, hasta el pasado 21 de julio habían ocurrido 101 homicidios violentos, superando los registros de 2004, cuando hubo 64 personas asesinadas. En todo el estado de Tamaulipas el número de ejecuciones en 2005 llega ya a 211 víctimas.

This means that murders in N.L. as of July 2005 were nearly double the total for all of 2004.

Officials of the Mexican government called the closing of the consulate an exaggeration.

posted by Michelle @ 2:30 PM, 0 comments

Monday, August 01, 2005

The PRI and TUCOM

This is an overdue post. Although TUCOM brings to mind images of talking birds hawking breakfast cereal, it really stands for Todos Unidos Contra Madrazo and its a political craze sweeping the nation. Well, maybe not exactly, but close.

Madrazo is the President of the PRI and will be one of the leading contenders for the PRI nomination for President in 2006. TUCOM (All United against Madrazo) is an alliance of other would-be PRI candidates who have banded together to stop Madrazo from becoming the PRI's next candidate. They either believe that Madrazo would be bad for the PRI in general, or that one of them is more likely to be a successful candidate in 2006. The five members of Tucom are: Enrique Jackson, Arturo Montiel, Tomás Yarrington, Enrique Martínez y Manuel Angel Núñez Soto.



This alliance has been around for a month now, but actual activities or agreements have been few because of such great uncertainty within the party. Initially, the members of the alliance agreed not to attack one another and instead focus their energies on defeating Madrazo. So here's the news round-up of Tucom activities over the last month or so:

July 14: Tucom announces that it will confer with Gordillo before announcing who will run against Madrazo for the PRI nomination. Gordillo is the 2nd in command at the PRI and will become President of the PRI when Madrazo steps down to run for the presidential nomination. She's a polarizing figure in her own right, as leader of the teacher's union.

One of the key movers behind the Tucom alliance is Genero Borego, who was director of the Social Security Institute when pensions were privatized in 1995 and was once a presidential candidate hopeful himself. He says that a PRI win is not guaranteed even with Gordillo's support (read: Gordillo can't bring the teacher vote like she once could). [Note: Gordillo and Madrazo are fairly bitter political enemies. Come to think of it, Gordillo is enemies with many other powerful men as well.]

Two articles about the divisions within the PRI in mid-July.

July 16: A new political party, Nueva Alianza, celebrates its formal registration. Though the party is associated with the teachers' union led by Gordillo, she stands up everybody at the formal announcement of the party.

July 27: Stress begins to appear within the Tucom alliance. According to the article, surveys don't indicate a clear winner among the Tucom candidates, and the alliance is considering putting forward two of the five to face off with Madrazo.

"Existe preocupación entre las empresas encuestadoras -seleccionadas por Unidad Democrática para elegir al candidato que contenderá en contra de Madrazo- para ubicar a los mil 400 notables que conforman una cuarta parte del ejercicio de auscultación planteado, porque buena parte de ellos están de vacaciones, y en el mejor de los casos podrán ubicar a 35 o 40 por ciento de ellos, lo que impide dar plena legitimidad a este proceso dentro de Unidad Democrática", revelaron fuentes de dicha agrupación de priístas que integran los gobernadores Arturo Montiel, del estado de México, y Enrique Martínez, de Coahuila; los ex mandatarios estatales Tomás Yarrington, de Tamaulipas, y Manuel Angel Núñez Soto, de Hidalgo, así como el senador Enrique Jackson.

A esta problemática operativa se suma la lucha que por esta candidatura protagonizan Montiel y Jackson, lo que hace pensar a los propios integrantes de Unidad Democrática que pudiera llegar a registrarse más de uno de ellos para enfrentar a Madrazo en la selección interna del tricolor, lo que implicaría, además, romper el acuerdo original de consensuar una sola propuesta en este grupo antagónico al dirigente nacional del PRI.

July 31: Unconfirmed reports suggest that Gordillo met with members of Tucom to discuss strategies.

The story was accompanied by this unflattering depiction of La Maestra (the Teacher), as she is commonly called.

Original context

August 1: Tucom has agreed to suspend television ads until they agree on their candidate to face Madrazo.

In any event, it will be interesting to watch the Tucom movement unfold. It's like having a mini-election before the election of the PRI nominee. The actual nomination process is only open to PRI members, since as one interviewee told me, they would otherwise risk sabotage by individuals voting for the worst candidate. [Paranoid much?] We'll see if it actually gives any more legitimacy to the Tucom candidate and whether it will convince Madrazo supporters within the PRI to back down and not impose Madrazo as the party's nominee.

To be continued....

posted by Michelle @ 8:16 PM, 0 comments




My HP alter ego is...



Is anyone really surprised?

"You scored as Hermione Granger. You're one intelligent witch, but you have a hard time believing it and require constant reassurance. You are a very supportive friend who would do anything and everything to help her friends out."

"Hermione Granger 100%"

Your Harry Potter Alter Ego Is...? created with QuizFarm.com

posted by Michelle @ 7:47 PM, 0 comments




If you have an auction, they will come and bid

The First Lady donated about US$30K in clothing to a charity for auction. Unfortunately, the auction was suspended because of too litle interest. The charity is the real loser here.

Before it ended, one nurse got a bargain: three dresses and a Hugo Boss jacket for under US$300.

A picture of the turnout:


posted by Michelle @ 12:22 PM, 0 comments