for music lovers of all ages followed by refreshments and a chance to meet the musicians. This fun program features popular music on the theme of “Rochester Weather” by the Women of Note.

These are some of the best singers in our region and they will be at our very own Arnett Library! We hope to see you and your families there!

Click here or on the image above to download a printable PDF flyer.

for music lovers of all ages followed by refreshments and a chance to meet the musicians. This concert features the RPO Salaff String Quartet accompanied by the Eastman Performers.

These are some of the best musicians in the area and they will be at our very own Arnett Library! We hope to see you and your families there!

Click here or on the image above to download a printable PDF flyer.

for music lovers of all ages followed by refreshments and a chance to meet the musicians. This concert features one of the Eastman School of Music’s Community Youth Ensembles.

These are some of the best up-and-coming musicians in the area and they will be at our very own Arnett Library! We hope to see you and your families there!

Click here or on the image above to download a printable PDF flyer.

The first event will be on January 19, 2017 from 12-1 pm at Arnett Library, kicking off with a tribute to King with guest speaker Monroe County Legislator LaShay Harris, the 19th Ward Youth Choir, poetry by Eric Hines, and spoken word drama by the MIBG group coordinated by Robert Ricks. The program promises to be an inspiring event!

U of R Medical Center

On Monday, January 21 at 11:30am to 12:30pm the 38th Annual Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration in Poetry, Dance, and Song will be held at the U of R School of Medicine and Dentistry, Whipple Auditorium (2-6424), 415 Elmwood Ave, Rochester, NY 14642. The event is sponsored by 1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers East and Medical Center administration.Jonathan Jamel Reynolds, pastor of Aenon Baptist Church, will present the keynote address.

19th Ward Community Association

For many years the 19th Ward has celebrated Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday in a public, community-building manner and will be doing so again this year. The 14th Annual Luminary Evening begins at 6:00 pm on Monday, January 21 when residents of the 19th Ward will begin setting out luminaries on the sidewalks in front of their homes to celebrate community, friendship and the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream.

The luminaries themselves are small paper bags weighted down with sand or kitty litter and containing a votive candle. Neighbors make a number of luminaries and set them at the sidewalk edge of their tree lawn from sunset until 9 pm, making a beautiful sight. We will have a limited supply of Luminary kits available for pick up January 19 at the MLK celebration at Arnett Library and from the 19th Ward Association office 216 Thurston 1-3 pm the prior week. Click here to see how to make your own Luminaries in a YouTube video by a 19th Ward resident, Moiet.

Some people host warming fires and a hot chocolate stands, called Hot Spots. Open your door in 2019 sign up as a Hot Spot; this is a social gathering serving a hot beverage and maybe cookies to your neighbors and sharing your thoughts on legacy of King. We are looking for more homes willing to be Hot Spots. This simply means that you provide hot chocolate and/or hot cider and/or a bonfire, anything warm, and of course a friendly smile on a cold winter night. Send questions or a commitment to info@luminaryevening.com.

Contact or info@luminaryevening.com. or MLK Committee Chair Zola Brown at 585-210-9370 if you have any questions,  Celebrating MLK Day serves as an opportunity to honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s commitment to social activism and the legacy that has inspired us to continue his movement.

for music lovers of all ages followed by refreshments and a chance to meet the musicians. This concert features an Eastman Pathways Concert by the Rochester School Performers.

These are some of the best up-and-coming musicians in the area and they will be at our very own Arnett Library! We hope to see you and your families there!

Click here or on the image above to download a printable PDF flyer.

We enjoy seeing so many of you in the neighborhood and surrounding community often and are praying for your continued success and growth, not only for this year but in the year to come.

We’ve had a very full year as a family, including Dr. Bill’s retirement from active practice after 45 years of service. Please click here to go to our Christmas report web pages where you’ll find our letter and some fun videos from the past year, along with other items of interest.

God bless you all!

Bill and Susan

This year’s community Christmas tree in our Garden Park on Arnett Boulevard has been a great success! From its arrival from Naples and set up by an enthusiastic group of neighborhood volunteers and local Firemen on December 1, to its decorating from top to bottom the following Monday by classrooms of local elementary school students, its been lighting up the neighborhood with the Christmas spirit of unity and harmony.

Look for scenes from our community caroling around the tree event on December 11, in the slideshow posted below. We had a bright bonfire going to roast marshmallows on, warm refreshments to share, and a time of celebrating all that’s good in our neighborhood. Click here to read a full report.

Come on by and visit while it’s up!

And contact us to volunteer in community park events in the future.

Saturday, October 13 from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. residents will have an opportunity to take part in “Inspiring Our Community: Today, Tomorrow and Always”, a conference sponsored by Mayor Lovely Warren, WDKX Radio and MJS Productions.

Please see the attached letter from the Mayor for conference details, workshop descriptions, and information on how to register.

You may also use the graphic below to post on your social media platforms.

Please feel free to share this information with your ministry networks and if you have any questions, please call me at 585/428-6684 or email me at the email address above, thank you!

Tracey D. Miller, Assistant to Mayor Lovely A. Warren Esq.

She has one of the most influential positions in the country, but as a girl who did not grow up privileged, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor credits her incredible journey to one thing.

“The key to success in my life, it’s the secret that I want to share with kids and how I became successful. I’m here as a Supreme Court Justice only because of books,” said Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

The first Latina Supreme Court Justice spoke to a packed main hall of over 2,000 people at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center on Saturday at the 18th annual Library of Congress National Book Festival.

Organizers said Sotomayor is the first children’s book author invited to speak on the main stage at the festival. After the main hall filled up, several hundred more watched on monitors in the hallways.

“I wish every kid here could see that if I can do it so can you!” said Sotomayor.

An avid reader growing up, Sotomayor’s new book for young readers, Turning Pages: My Life Story, is a richly illustrated book that chronicles her life growing up in New York City.

“Reading books opened the world to me. Especially for children growing up in modest means as I did, books give you the chance to explore the wider world. Television and especially now the Internet don’t let you imagine,” said Sotomayor.

Click here to read the full NBC News report.

Library Story Readers Needed!

Interested in being part of our Story Reader program for kids at the Arnett Branch Library? Click here for more information!

In New York City, thousands more black babies are aborted each year than born alive.

As Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination tees up another national debate about reproductive rights, is it too much to ask that abortion’s impact on the black population be part of the discussion?

When the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade in 1973, polling showed that blacks were less likely than whites to support abortion. Sixties-era civil rights activists like Fannie Lou Hamer and Whitney Young had denounced the procedure as a form of genocide. Jesse Jackson called abortion “murder” and once told a black newspaper in Chicago that “we used to look for death from the man in the blue coat and now it comes in a white coat.”

In the intervening decades, those views shifted. Mr. Jackson abandoned the pro-life ship to run for president in 1984, and leaders of black civil-rights organizations today are joined at the hip with abortion-rights proponents such as Planned Parenthood. A Pew Research Center survey taken last year found that 50% of Hispanics, 58% of whites and 62% of blacks now say abortion should be legal in all or most cases.

Social scientists aren’t sure why black attitudes toward abortion have changed. One theory is that as more blacks migrated out of the conservative Deep South and settled in other regions of the country with more liberal views on reproductive rights, their attitudes changed accordingly. Another possibility is that people with higher incomes and more education tend to be pro-choice, and since the early 1970s the socioeconomic status of blacks has increased dramatically.

What’s not in doubt is the outsize toll that abortion has taken on the black population post-Roe. In New York City, thousands more black babies are aborted than born alive each year, and the abortion rate among black mothers is more than three times higher than it is for white mothers. According to a city Health Department report released in May, between 2012 and 2016 black mothers terminated 136,426 pregnancies and gave birth to 118,127 babies. By contrast, births far surpassed abortions among whites, Asians and Hispanics.

Nationally, black women terminate pregnancies at far higher rates than other women as well. In 2014, 36% of all abortions were performed on black women, who are just 13% of the female population. The little discussed flip side of “reproductive freedom” is that abortion deaths far exceed those via cancer, violent crime, heart disease, AIDS and accidents. Racism, poverty and lack of access to health care are the typical explanations for these disparities. But black women have much higher abortion rates even after you control for income. Moreover, other low-income ethnic minorities who experience discrimination, such as Hispanics, abort at rates much closer to white women than black women.

The more plausible explanation may have to do with marriage. Unmarried women are more likely to experience an unintended pregnancy, and black women are less likely than their white, Asian and Hispanic counterparts to marry. It’s true that many of these would-be partners are sitting in prison, but it’s also true that this racial divide in marriage, which started in the 1960s and has grown ever since, predates the “mass incarceration” of black men that took off in the 1980s.

Among civil-rights activists today, talk of black self-destructive behavior is unpopular and minimal. Writing in Commentary magazine last month, Jason Hill, a professor of philosophy at DePaul University, noted the hypocrisy of groups like Black Lives Matter, who “want white people to esteem black lives and value the humanity of black people when they themselves can’t condemn and express moral outrage at those who maim and kill black children in the course of gang warfare, senseless street violence, and drive-by shootings.”

Mr. Hill added that the “moral hysteria raised by a few incidents of police brutality in the face of this larger national tragedy is reckless hyperbole” and “hides from the nation a deep malaise at work in the psyche of some in the black community: a form of self-hatred that manifests itself in a homicidal rage not fundamentally against white people, but against other black people.”

When you combine the amount of black violent behavior directed at other blacks with the number of pregnancies terminated by black women, the rate at which blacks willingly end the lives of one another is chilling and far surpasses what goes on within other racial and ethnic groups. Racial disparities in abortion rates are no less disturbing than racial disparities in income, crime, poverty and school suspensions. Why are the people who want to lecture the rest of us about the value of black lives pretending otherwise?

By Jason L. Riley, Wall Street Journal, July 10, 2018