Category Archives: Maria’s Musings

Voter Information Tool

November 3, 2014 9:08 am \

Please use this tool to assist you if you don’t know where your polling place is and please feel free to share this other folks that may be in need of the information as well. Tomorrow is our General Election in the United States and it is imperative that if you are registered to vote, that you actually do vote!

Please read yesterday’s post about my feelings on this matter, I won’t be redundant here by repeating what I wrote yesterday. Suffice it to say, it is our responsibility as good citizens to elect those leaders who we believe will serve our best interest as well as the less fortunate and those that may be unable to speak for themselves.

I must say I am a big believer in teaching people how to fish instead of handing them fish but I also know that there are times when through no fault of our own, we find ourselves in need of assistance and that’s when those programs become essential and why they exist.
The hours that the polls are open do vary by state and time zone.

Time zone note: Arizona and Hawaii do not observe Daylight Savings Time (DST). Thirteen states have multiple time zones. Idaho and Oregon are split between the Mountain and Pacific time zones. Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Texas are divided between Central and Mountain time zones. Florida, Indiana, Michigan, Kentucky, and Tennessee are split between Eastern and Central time zones. Alaska is divided between the Alaska time zone and the Hawaii-Aleutian time zone. Whew!

So please use our guide below or log on to your local county/clerk/recorder website for your community to fully understand where you will be going and at what time you are able to cast your ballot.

 

Posted in: Education, In the News, Maria Sanchez Show, Maria's Musings, Podcasts, Politics

General Election, USA, Tuesday, November 4, 2014.

November 2, 2014 1:03 pm \

General Election While we’ve kept up our blog posts on a regular (usually 3 times a week a www.TheMariaSanchezShow.com) basis, we’ve taken some time away from the website and the podcasts to focus on some other professional opportunities, political campaigns and family matters.  It is terribly important that if you are a registered voter that you vote on Tuesday, November 4th. I’ve been fairly political most of my life. I was always the President of my class or a Student Body Officer while in high school and pretty much the same scenario in college when I attended and graduated from the University of California, Davis.

As an adult, I registered at the age of 18 and feel that our votes count. One of my favorite personal mottos is, “one voice, one vote, one pay check.” What say, what we do, how we spend our money and how we vote matters! I think far too often people feel that it is one vote, what could it possibly matter?

Well it does. Whether we agree politically or not really isn’t the point. That we participate in the process of our democracy and go to the polls is really more important.
Our representatives in our state capitals and in the corridors of Washington, D.C. need to be there because the majority of the people voted and thus our leaders represent the majority of the electorate. That seems pretty straightforward to me.

Unfortunately, what we’ve seen in the past is that the minority of people show up, mostly the extremists of both parties and thus they elect the exception or the more polarizing candidate.

So please, whatever you do, V-O-T-E on Tuesday!

If you have an absentee ballot and you haven’t mailed it yet, BRING IT IN PERSON to your polling place. The postmark does NOT count! It has to be received on or before November 4th so don’t trust it to the USPS at this point. Hold on to it and take it to your polling place.

Posted in: Education, Events, In the News, Maria's Musings, Podcasts, Politics

Hotter than a witch’s . . .

September 15, 2014 11:37 am \

138 degrees

We here in Southern California are embroiled (pun intended) in not only a record setting drought but a heat wave that is nearly indescribable. Yesterday was most likely the hottest day ever recorded for the day/date/area.
I have captured a picture of the thermostat from my car. The day before my thermometer read 118 degrees.

Our water district has restricted the days and times that we are allowed to have our irrigation systems on. We are limited to three days a week, never on a Sunday as well as the specific times that the systems can be used.

My landscaping is fairly drought tolerant but under these constraints it is languishing and looking pretty unsightly.

I also have a pool and the heat is creating such evaporation that it has to be filled frequently.
The following lyrics are from a Bruno Mars song, “It Will Rain.” I am asking for the good of the order and for the well being of our planet, would someone jettison their relationship so that we can have rain? I’d offer to take one for the team but alas, I don’t have a significant other!

So I’m asking for those of you who do, would you please dump them for the rest of us and our climate challenged communities? You can always get another one but we cannot heal our world as quickly if what Bruno Mars has sung about would come to pass!

“‘Cause there’ll be no sunlight
If I lose you, baby
There’ll be no clear skies
If I lose you, baby
Just like the clouds
My eyes will do the same, if you walk away
Everyday it will rain!“

And if someone has a better idea, please share. Whatever it takes. We have to get rid of this heat and get lots and lots of precipitation.
Again, I’d fall on the sword but I am not in a relationship.

@BrunoMars; @MariaSanchezSho

Posted in: Humor, In the News, Maria Sanchez Show, Maria's Musings, Podcasts, Saving Our Planet

Facebook became my ‘friend’ in my time of need!

September 8, 2014 3:29 pm \

Mark ZuckerbergMost of us use Facebook for various reasons, not always alike. Connecting with friends, connecting with causes, connecting with celebrities, connecting with products and services.
However, an interesting thing happened to me recently with my ‘relationship’ with Facebook. I found myself in the Emergency Room of a hospital due to a friend’s medical situation. My time there was not planned. I rushed to be by her side as soon as I heard the news so I was unprepared for the hours and hours and hours that it took the physicians and medical staff to tend to her needs, get her body/health stabilized and ultimately, get her discharged.
Thus I found myself by myself as she slipped in and out of consciousness. I didn’t have a book or a newspaper. I didn’t have the use of a television. In short, I was stuck with nothing to do, no one to talk with and nothing to read.
Enter Facebook – I opened my Facebook account on my iPhone and suddenly a world opened up to me. Stories and posts that I might ordinarily have skipped over since I don’t usually have the luxury of having so much time to dawdle over everyone’s life events.
But on this day, at that moment, not only was I not going insane by simply being idle, I was able to delve and read and revel and shudder and cry at all of the humanity that were on those pages that folks took the time to share.
I know that it might sound trivial, or else you could ordinarily say, “get a life” but this time, at that moment, it was a life saver for me.
I was able to keep my vigil for my friend in her time of need and I was also able to fully relish the lives that others have and cared to share.
So in that instance, I realized what a life saver social media can be. It isn’t just bragging or being voyeuristic, for me it was a life line to the real world and it kept me company in my time of need.
Thank you Facebook and thank you all for sharing! Warmly, Maria

Posted in: Culture, Maria Sanchez Show, Maria's Musings, Podcasts, Technology

Changing the face of the world! Steven Svoboda

August 25, 2014 11:23 am \

Maria & Steven Svoboda August 2014

At the Maria Sanchez Show, we try and focus as much as possible on good news. Oftentimes it isn’t so easy to do so. For whatever reason, the human condition appears to need stimulation and we find it in salacious, dramatic, tragic situations. Thus the rubber necking that occurs on our roadways when there is an accident.

This is why the media focuses on blood and guts. Either we have prurient interest or we want to be distracted so very much from our own existences that we focus on the horror.

Enter one of my idols, a man that I am proud to call a collaborator, and someone who is literally changing the way we look at an issue that was traditionally and socially acceptable – male circumcision.

When I first met Steven, I was working at an NPR affiliate as a talk show host and I brought him on the program to talk about female genital mutilation and what was occurring at that time in Africa.

In our conversation, Steven compared that atrocity with male circumcision. Of course I rebuffed his words and the concept as “our” circumcision in the United States is conducted by a mohel (a Jewish practitioner) or a physician, in clean, sanitary, well lit and controlled circumstances.

After all I argued, my father, my 2 brothers, my 3 sons and my ex-husband were all circumcised. That’s just what we do. That’s how ignorant I was at that time in my life.

Steven’s point to me then and to this day (we’re talking late ’90s) was, “genital mutilation is genital mutilation, regardless of the gender and the circumstances.”

That began a 15+ year of professional collaboration. I affectionately have called Steven our “Circumcision Correspondent” because he visits with us whenever circumcision is in the news.

The organization he founded 20+ years ago which is his passion to this day, Attorneys for the Rights of the Child, seeks to educate people, physicians, cultures, countries about surgically removing viable skin for cosmetic reasons. www.arclaw.org for more information.

Steven and I had never met in person. This picture of the two of us was taken last Friday, August 22 in Santa Monica, CA as we finally had an opportunity to speak to one another face to face.

I hope you’re helping to make this world a better place! Steven is a shining example of that.

Posted in: Culture, Education, Health & Wellness, In the News, Maria's Musings, Philanthropy, Podcasts