Vicky Collins Online

Oil Spill: The Ripple Effect

Vicky Collins — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 09:12:30 +0000

I finally got to the Gulf coast to work on a story about the oil spill for the PBS Newshour. I didn’t see any oil but what I saw was a a boat load of fear. Correspondent Tom Bearden and I visited Bayou La Batre, Alabama to attend a town hall meeting with Ken Feinberg, the Massachusetts lawyer who must decide how to allocate BP’s 20 billion dollar compensation fund. He has done this kind of work previously for victims of 9/11 and Virginia Tech. Feinberg was mostly reassuring people that help was on the way and was listening to the concerns among the folks who packed city hall at 7 a.m. on Saturday morning. What struck me was how far reaching this catastrophe is on the people who live in towns that dot the Gulf coast. Bayou La Batre bills itself as the “Seafood Capital of Alabama.” The oil spill has rippled through the whole community disrupting the entire seafood chain. Obviously the fishermen have lost the season, then there are the people who store and process the seafood like brothers Bruce and Delane Seaman who had to shut down their oyster shucking plant putting about 40 people out of work. They don’t expect to ever reopen. Their customers have gone elsewhere. Then there are folks like Patrick and Lillie Kraver who own Kraver’s restaurant in Daphne, on the other side of Mobile Bay, that sells the seafood and have seen business tumble by about 40%. When Tom asked them if they could survive they said “God would provide.” These are people whose families have worked in the seafood industry for generations. And then there are the more indirect losses. The man who has a candy and gift store on the beach and has seen his tourist traffic dry up, another man who has watched his real estate property values tank, even the local minister who has seen his offerings cut almost in half. He reminded Ken Feinberg that when everyone leaves the area it will be the churches and faith based organizations that care for fragile residents. People came from as far away as Pensacola, Florida. Everyone had a story of loss and hardship and a sense of skepticism deep as the Gulf about whether help was really coming or whether this was more PR. Most have felt jerked around by British Petroleum and are hoping Ken Feinberg is really here to help make them at least partially whole. He says he has received claims from 48 states so he has a huge task trying to decide who will be eligible to receive money and who doesn’t qualify. Unlike a hurricane which comes and goes this catastrophe and its impacts could crush the community for years and everyone needs help to weather the storm and stay afloat.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/july-dec10/compensation_07-27.html

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Miracle Birth

Vicky Collins — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 05:22:02 +0000

A fascinating story out of the UK. A Nigerian couple residing in Britain gives birth to white baby with an amazing head full of blonde hair. Ben and Angela Ihegboro are overwhelmed and overjoyed and are welcoming their newest child, Nmachi, whose name means “Beauty of God” with awe and love. The genetics of this are mindboggling but what a beautiful family. Great comment after the article by Sean99. He writes “God is the greatest artist of all time.”

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3060907/Black-parents-give-birth-to-white-baby.html

For more information on Vicky Collins visit http://teletrendstv.com.

Politics and Plagiarism

Vicky Collins — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 17:47:35 +0000

Middle school and high school students are taught to never plagiarize. When you turn your paper in it better be your work. My then tweenage son forgot the rules and got a big fat zero once. Apparently Colorado GOP gubernatorial candidate Scott McInnis missed class that day. Or maybe he thinks politicians should be held to a lesser standard. He is being accused of virtually lifting word for word essays on water policy, speeches to Congress and various and sundry columns. He never attributed anything to The Washington Post or now-Colorado Supreme Court Justice Gregory Hobbs who actually were the authors of his work. He even had the temerity to blame it on his researcher Rolly Fischer. The Hasan Family Foundation which paid him the handsome stipend of $300,000 for his “original” work on water issues is demanding their money back and the heat is on for McInnis to get out of the gubernatorial race. When asked by Adam Schrager of 9News about the controversy he said unapologetically “voters don’t really care about this issue. They care about jobs, getting back to work.” Hello? Are you kidding me? Of course we care about jobs but we also want our politicians to be honorable. Hearing our politicians lie and cheat is usually something that comes out after they are elected to office. Why would we put this guy in the statehouse when he already has this kind of baggage and bad judgement. His opponent Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper said the reports of plagiarism “create a cloud” over McInnis. That’s a politically correct way of putting it. Talk about the understatement of the year. I really don’t know much about McInnis as a public servant and there are much bigger problems that we face then plagiarism but at this point I think it would be difficult for him to have the kind of credibility and good sense Coloradans deserve from their governor. And you can quote me on that. Just put it in quotes.

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Kampala World Cup Massacre

Vicky Collins — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 16:05:00 +0000

I had hardly stopped fist pumping in the air over Spain’s victory in the World Cup when I heard the news about the simultaneous bombings in Kampala, Uganda. What caught my eye immediately, besides the death toll in the senseless attack, was that one of the locations of carnage was the Ethiopian Village restaurant in Kabalagala. When we were in Uganda in June we stayed on the hill right above this district and would walk down to Kabalagala to eat and use the internet. The Ethiopian Village had an enormous TV in the main room and people would crowd in to watch the World Cup. We were in Uganda when African teams were still in the hunt so people would spill onto the street. You would often see enthusiastic fans packed 100 deep on the street looking into some bar with a tiny TV just to get a glimpse of the action.

When I heard about the bombings, I immediately worried about my friend, Matt Anderson. He’s a student from the University of Colorado, on his first trip to Africa, who is helping BeadforLife with its inventory this summer. He was staying in the same guest house where we were and it would have been completely logical for him to have walked down the street to the Ethiopian Village for a Nile Special and the finals between Spain and the Netherlands. Ethiopian Village has great food and my colleague, Paul, and I took Matt there one night after we all were done surfing the net across the street at The Lion’s Den. My instincts were right. Matt was in the bombing. I received an email shortly after the attack from Devin Hibbard, our host and one of the founders of BeadforLife, that yes, Matt had been there but he was alright. Thank God. This morning I received this email:

Vicky,

I’m OK. I was at the Ethiopian Village when the bomb went off. Thankfully, I was in a side room watching a smaller TV, not the large projector screen, so there was a wall between me and the blast. I wasn’t hurt at all by the blast but helped some Americans who got shrapnel in their legs – everyone’s instinct was to rush out as fast as possible but these people were on the ground and couldn’t move, I had to do something. Eventually, people kicked me out saying it wasn’t safe even though these Americans were still inside and injured. I didn’t know what to do until someone yelled at me to call my embassy. Thankfully I had the number in the Uganda phone Devin gave me. I called the embassy and shortly afterward greeted an agent who arrived on the scene. This is all very scary and unfortunately put a damper on the whole trip. I don’t know how much longer I will be staying but friends at BeadforLife say that there will be political unrest for a while… we’ll see. Thanks for the email. I’ll keep you posted. Matt

A Somali group called Al-Shabab, which has ties to Al-Qaeda, is taking credit for this massacre. A leader for the militants said “Whatever makes Uganda cry, makes us happy.” The group has a beef with Uganda because they have peacekeepers in Somalia and have ties to Ethiopia. There are worries that there will continue to be instability leading up to next year’s Presidential election. According to news accounts, the bombings at the Ethiopian Village and at the Rugby Club killed at least 74 people. This is unthinkable. This is so senseless. During my visits there I have always been amazed by how safe I feel in Kampala. It is such a shame that radicals would disrupt and disorganize the place like this. And it is such a shame that my friend Matt, who was so overjoyed by the opportunity to do good in Uganda, had to witness such evil. I hope he doesn’t lose heart. Please pray for the people of Uganda and most of all please pray for peace.

For more information on Vicky Collins visit http://teletrendstv.com.

Deed for Life

Vicky Collins — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 05:54:28 +0000

Ndagire Sarah walked the red dirt carpet in her perky hairdo and a beautiful blue and white gown. She carried herself like a rich lady in a gomesi, the formal dress of women in Uganda. When I saw her I was overcome with tears of joy. I had met Sarah in 2006 when she was so sick with HIV/AIDS that she could hardly breathe. She lived in a slum in Kampala and was poor beyond belief, a widow who could not afford to feed her family or send her children to school, one of the hundreds of millions of women who live around the world in extreme poverty. But that was then. Today, just four years later, Sarah was being honored, with 21 other women for an incredible achievement. She had paid off a home that she built for herself in the village of Mukono, and was being awarded the title to the land she sat on. Sarah, who just a few years ago thought she would die and leave her children with nothing, was now a homeowner and one of the very small percentage of women around the world with land in her own name.

Ndagire Sarah in 2006

Sarah’s transcendent moment came because of her partnership with BeadforLife. For many months she rolled beads out of recycled paper and saved her money for a down payment. Beads became bricks and a ladder out of poverty. She didn’t eat the profits, worked hard, and became an entrepreneur who also raised poultry. Sarah was the pioneer in Friendship Village. She built the very first of 130 homes, even though the men who helped her thought she would not live long enough to sleep in it. Today she is the proud owner of a brick house with a tin roof. She has a lawn, a garden and 1000 neighbors. The women roll beads to pay off their mortgages and not a single one defaults. On this festival day, Sarah and 21 others call themselves brides, and they march from home to home. Each woman is given a certificate and dances with it on the porch she dreamed about. ”This is really a day of glory for each of you,” BeadforLife founder, Devin Hibbard, proclaims. She tells Sarah and the others to close their eyes. ”Think about where you were and think about where you are now and my challenge to you is to create your next dream as you become homeowners today. What do you want to accomplish in the next three or four or five years? Can you picture yourself and where you will be if you accomplish your next big goal? Because this is not the end of the path. This is only the beginning for you.”

Ndagire Sarah in 2010

In November another 60 women will become homeowners and receive the titles to their land, and in March the last deeds will be given out. The women will sing and ululate and shout “BeadforLife Oye” as they parade through the village. They will celebrate with their neighbors and dance until midnight. They will never fear that they will be thrown out of their home again. They will never worry that they will die and have nothing for their children. They will have an asset they can sell or carry from generation to generation, and a garden so they can feed their family. For when you have a home you are never poor. ”Being a homeowner means the pride, the success, the light in your eyes, knowing you have worked hard and you have accomplished great things,” Devin reminds them. ”Being a homeowner means the confidence and pride to carry yourself like a big woman.” Today Sarah is a leader in the village. ”Because of BeadforLife I’m so happy and so proud. Sometimes when I sleep in my bed I say every person never lose hope. Let me be the woman determined to win. Because of BeadforLife I have my own house.”

For more information on BeadforLife visit http://beadforlife.org.

For more information on Vicky Collins visit http://teletrendstv.com.

We are the World (Cup)

Vicky Collins — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 17:03:05 +0000

Sad to see the United States go down to Ghana in the 2010 FIFA World Cup but also glad to see Africa still in the game. The energy in the streets of Kampala was amazing while we were there. People would crowd outside of bars and stare through the windows of stores to watch the tiny televisions tuned in to the games. I’m sure they’re proud to have a team still in the hunt. This song was playing during every commercial break in Uganda’s World Cup coverage. It featured a little animated African boy drinking Coca-Cola. I like the full length celebration mix. A rousing anthem to keep me in the spirit even if the trophy is not for America (this year.) Love how the world can put aside its differences and come together for soccer. Thanks K’Naan for the rousing anthem.

For more information on Vicky Collins visit http://teletrendstv.com.

Animal Suicide: The Video

Vicky Collins — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 23:07:14 +0000

Can animals commit suicide? Richard O’Barry, who starred in the Oscar award winning documentary “The Cove,” says they can and a dolphin named Cathy that he captured and trained for the TV show “Flipper” did just that. Outrageous? Jennifer London traveled with him to Key West, Florida to look into this controversial subject for HDNet’s World Report. She also spoke to animal behaviorists, Dr. Ann Weaver in St. Petersburg, Florida and Dr. Lori Marino at Atlanta’s Emory University.

Animal Suicide from Vicky Collins on Vimeo.

Produced by Vicky Collins

Story: Animal Suicide

Network: HDNet – World Report

For more information on Vicky Collins visit http://teletrendstv.com.

Toy Story 3: A Mom Reflects

Vicky Collins — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 16:51:11 +0000

I guess it was inevitable. Andy in “Toy Story” would grow up just like little Jackie Paper in “Puff, The Magic Dragon.” To this day I cry when I hear Peter, Paul and Mary sing the song so I wasn’t surprised that I got sentimental when I saw “Toy Story 3″ last night. What I wasn’t prepared for was the complete welling of emotion. I had been warned by a friend on Facebook that this was a tearjerker but I didn’t see it coming through Woody’s antics and Buzz Lightyear’s Spanish speaking tango romp. Then I became a blubbering mess. My 12 year old said I was crying louder than anyone else in the theatre. You see, in two years I’ll have my own kid heading off to college and I’m already filling with nostalgia. My baby, the one who was photographed in his diapers and cowboy boots, the one who poured flour all over himself, who cried in the closet when he missed the ball that could have won the game, then years later played on the team that won the championship, will head to college too. And like Andy’s mom in “Toy Story 3″ I’m not prepared to let him go and be left standing alone in a cleared out room.

This sophomore year has been a difficult one and there have been many times I’ve wished he would grow up, but when I actually stop to consider it, like I did last night, I realize how I’m dreading this rite of passage. It occurs to me that it probably hit my parents like a load of bricks too. I was the only one in our family to go to college. My dad only completed 8th grade, my mother dropped out of nursing school to get married, and my sisters chose not to go. My father was immensely proud to have a college student but I know when he wrote the check that guaranteed my spot at the University of Colorado he had a difficult time signing his name. Everything he dreamed of and dreaded would come to pass with the misty eyed stroke of a pen. My mom took it hard too when she brought me to Boulder and I couldn’t wait to run out with my new found friends. Now as my son hurtles towards adulthood (he’s 16, has a license, a truck and his first job) and passes through the house for food and showers, I can’t help but wish I had hung on to his playthings. I wish I hadn’t been in such a rush to send them to Goodwill. They’re gone, and soon he will be too, and I’ll be missing him in a room without toys and my boy.

Kyle Ewalt at 22 months old

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Out of Africa

Vicky Collins — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 18:42:53 +0000

Just returned from a three week trip to Uganda where we did more video production for BeadforLife (http://beadforlife.org.) The highlight was seeing women who were dying of poverty just three years ago celebrate paying off homes they saved for and built themselves. In a joyous ceremony BeadforLife presented 22 women with the titles to the land they sit on. The women paraded from home to home dancing and ululating, and from what I heard they partied late into the night. Women owners are extremely rare in Africa and BeadforLife’s Friendship Village in Mukono is an example of what’s possible. Housing ministers from all over Africa came a few days later to see Friendship Village for themselves and other countries throughout the region are looking to emulate this poverty eradication success story.

This trip we also visited Murchison Falls National Park to see the animals and also learn more about the oil drilling that’s going on there which is quite shocking in such a pristine place. It is all happening very quietly and needs to be exposed. We also visited Worldvision’s Children of War Rehabilitation Center in Gulu. To hear the testimonies of young men who were abducted in grade school, held captive for 15 years, and forced to be child soldiers in Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army is extremely sobering. One boy was forced to kill his own brother, another had 22 gunshot scars and a third, thankfully, was now back in school and in his village. I will blog more about this all later but my friend Mark Jordahl, who was with us on our trip and is a prominent conservationist in Uganda, has written a very powerful blog about the child soldiers. I hope you’ll read his very moving account of the experience.

http://conserveuganda.wordpress.com/2010/06/21/what-if-it-was-my-son/

For more information on Vicky Collins visit http://teletrendstv.com.

Animal Suicide

Vicky Collins — Fri, 28 May 2010 03:12:07 +0000

Richard O’Barry gets misty eyed when he talks about Cathy. His beautiful girl died in his arms. Suicide he says. Cathy was a bottlenose dolphin, one of five he trained for the 60′s television hit, “Flipper.” Her death in captivity at the Miami Seaquarium changed his world and set him on a course of activism. “I knew she was tired of suffering,” O’Barry says. “She was living a miserable life and she was tired of being miserable.” Does O’Barry feel responsible? “Of course. I’m the guy who captured her. She’d have been better off if we left her alone.” According to O’Barry, Cathy chose to stop breathing, something dolphins are physiologically capable of, and he believes it was an intentional act brought on by her captivity. He doesn’t care if you believe him or not. It’s his story and he’s sticking to it. Since then he has spent his life crusading for a future where dolphins and orcas will never again see the inside of a tank.

We were out on the water off Key West, Florida, working on a story for HDNet’s World Report about this wild notion of animal suicide. Our correspondent, Jennifer London, was on a journey of discovery to see if it was indeed possible for an animal to commit suicide. O’Barry, who first floated this notion to raised eyebrows in the Oscar award winning documentary, “The Cove,” wanted us to see dolphins in the wild, frolicking in their natural environment, swimming 40 miles a day, speeding through the waves like torpedos in their watery world of sound and vibration. Afterwards, we went to the Miami Seaquarium on Key Biscayne to see how the other half lives, performing for audiences, swimming in circles in small, concrete tanks, begging for fish, away from their social circles and the rhythms of the sea. The contrast was striking.

But can captivity really cause a dolphin to commit suicide? They seem to be smiling, don’t they? What kid hasn’t been charmed by the dolphin’s toothy grin? Dr. Ann Weaver, who studies dolphins in Tampa Bay, calls it a frozen face and doesn’t buy the notion of animal suicide. She acknowledges that animals can get depressed (that’s well documented) but the leap to despair, which is a hopelessness that carries into the future, doesn’t occur. She speaks about a continuum from melancholy to the blues to depression to despondency to despair. According to Dr. Weaver, the final step to despair, which is a tipping point in suicide, is uniquely human. Then there is the powerful survival instinct. “I think everything they are designed to be is to keep on keeping on. So I think suicide is the curse of the human consciousness, but not other consciousnesses. I don’t believe they give up and that’s what suicide requires.”

Dr. Weaver tells us about a dolphin named Whitley who used to beg for food. She chokes up as she describes how the dolphin who had been turned into a beggar, then was maimed by a shark, still came to her looking for one last handout before sinking into the water for the final time. She mentioned a heron who had its bill ripped off yet still tried to catch lizards until it eventually starved to death too. Giving up, she said, is not in the DNA of animals. And suicide involves intention. How can you know what an animal is thinking? “How do we ask the animal if it intended to do this?” Dr. Weaver wonders.

Finally, we visited Dr. Lori Marino, a neuroscientist and marine mammal specialist at Emory University in Atlanta. In the animal behavior world she is a rock star for a mirror test study that showed dolphins recognized their reflections. Self awareness and a sense of past, present and future are essential if one is to commit suicide. She shows us a human brain and a dolphin brain and explains how evolved they both are. Such big brains indicate a high level of cognitive processes. In fact, Dr. Marino believes that humans and dolphins share emotions, that they are more alike than different. “I think the idea that other animals can’t commit suicide because they are hardwired to live is very old fashioned,” Dr. Marino explains. “Basically it says that we are aware of what we are doing and other animals are just driven by this hardwired red in tooth and claw to survive and there is no evidence for that.” So how would they commit suicide? There are examples of dolphins and whales beating their heads on walls and jumping out of their tanks. Hard evidence? No. Tantalizing information. Yes.

So at the end of the day did we find the answer to the question “Can Animals Commit Suicide?” You’ll have to watch HDNet’s World Report on June 8 for a deeper exploration. It’s a provocative inquiry and scientists agree it requires more research. But no matter what the science says it won’t change what Rick O’Barry saw when Cathy looked in his eyes and let herself go. “I lived with her for seven years. She commited suicide. She died in my arms and I experienced that.”

For more information on Vicky Collins visit http://teletrendstv.com.