First-Place Women’s Physique Winner Linda Bolton of Newnan, GA with Eight-Time Mr. Olympia Lee Haney Photo credit: Shandra Hill Smith
Hello World,
With a goal to promote fitness in a way that appeals to the entire family, eight-time Mr. Olympia Lee Haney hosted – in its inaugural year – Lee Haney’s Physique & Fitness Games in Atlanta. Lee Haney’s Physique & Fitness Games, presented by Steve and Marjorie Harvey, was an all-day event (LeeHaneyGames.com) that took place on Saturday, October 31, 2015, at the Georgia International Convention Center. It followed the South Carolina Games that took place on July 11 in Haney’s native city of Spartanburg.
A National Physique Committee (NPC) national qualifier, the Atlanta event featured activities for children, teens and adults — including KiDsGyM gymnastics, BattleFrog Obstacle Race Series, with indoor obstacle courses for teens and adults, Strongman/Woman, women’s and men’s physique and bodybuilding events. Some 700 attendees had the chance to witness around 300 athletes compete for prizes such as cash, trophies, medallions, and equipment. There was also a KidZone area featuring games, bounce houses, moon walks, trick or treating and more. The Atlanta event marks the final event leading up to the NPC national bodybuilding championships to take place in Miami. The overall winners from Saturday are: Men’s Bodybuilding- #19 Alex Carson, Men’s Physique- #105 Kevin Roach, Women’s Bikini- #146 Megan Petty, Women’s Figure -#46 Ashley Sparks and Women’s Physique – #137 Linda Bolton.
Lee Haney’s Physique & Fitness Games served as a fundraiser for Haney’s Harvest House, a 501(c)(3) organization that provides a mentoring program for boys eight to 17. One of Haney’s mentoring programs, through Haney’s Harvest House, is facilitated at the Rock Church of Atlanta. For more information on starting a mentoring program at your church, go to haneyharvesthouse.com.
Below are some pictures from the event courtesy of Extreme Fitness Media in Charlotte, NC!
The Armor of Light is Playing Today Through November 5th...
Hello World,
Three years ago as of Nov. 23, at the tender age of 17, Jordan Davis was shot and killed at Gate Gas Station in Jacksonville, Florida. He was murdered by Michael Dunn, a middle aged software developer because he was agitated about how loud Jordan and his friends were playing music in their car. Their case was considered a mistrial in February 2014. The case was re-tried in September 2014 and Michael Dunn was convicted of first degree murder in Jordan’s death. Since then, his mother Lucy McBath has been championing and fighting for common sense gun legislation and solutions to the issue of our country’s rampant gun violence. Lucy is the national spokesperson for Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America. In her work as a gun safety advocate, she has testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on the “Stand Your Ground Laws: Civil Rights and Public Safety Implications of the Expanded Use of Deadly Force” as well as both Georgia and Florida State Legislature Committee Hearings for Repeal of the Stand Your Ground Law.
Lucy is a co-star in THE ARMOR OF LIGHT, the directorial debut of Abigail Disney (granddaughter of Roy O. Disney, co-founder of The Walt Disney Company with his brother Walt Disney) in which Disney follows the journey of an Evangelical minister trying to find the courage to preach about the growing toll of gun violence in America. The film tracks Reverend Rob Schenck, anti-abortion activist and fixture on the political far right, who breaks with orthodoxy by questioning whether being pro-gun is consistent with being pro-life. Reverend Schenck is shocked and perplexed by the reactions of his long-time friends and colleagues who warn him away from this complex, politically explosive issue.
Along the way, Rev. Schenck meets Lucy McBath. McBath, also a Christian, decides to work with Schenck even though she is pro-choice. Lucy is on a difficult journey of her own, trying to make sense of her devastating loss while using her grief to effect some kind of viable and effective political action—where so many before her have failed.
Below is my interview with Lucy McBath about THE ARMOR OF LIGHT which debuts today (If you prefer to listen to the interview, please go to the end of the questions):
I know you’re coming up on the three-year anniversary of your son’s death and I just wanted to find out how you’re coping.
Fairly well as can be expected. I have kind of moved on from the devastation now because I am really kind of understanding my role on a larger scale and a bigger purpose and Jordan’s role on a larger scale for a bigger purpose. And I can’t really be angry or mad or devastated because in the prayers that I prayed for Jordan and myself for years and years, I asked God that we would be used for His purpose so here I am being used not in the way I expected to be used, but most certainly in the way that God would use me and so I am being used just as well as Jordan so I’m okay with that. I’m accepting my role. I’m accepting what God is calling me to do because I know the work that I’ve been given to do is not just for Jordan. It’s way beyond Jordan. It’s for a bigger purpose so I’m doing okay. I think I’m starting to adjust to it. I’m learning tremendous amounts of information. I’m learning so much about the gun culture. I’m learning deeply my moral beliefs and understanding and how much it plays a really large part in being able to really change the kind of gun violence in this country. So I’m accepting and moving forward.
How did you get involved in “THE ARMOR OF LIGHT?”
I met Abigail Disney, which has been such a tremendous blessing. I met Abigail Disney through my attorney John Phillips, my civil attorney. And I’m not exactly sure whom contacted whom between John and Abby but we came to meet Abby here in New York City through my attorney.
When you were first approached about this film, were you skeptical? Did you have any concerns? What was your thought about it?
Well, of course you know, I had to do a little bit of my research and research Abigail Disney because I just knew she was a part of the Disney family, but I really didn’t know who she was. And frankly, I was just in awe. I was very surprised that she would be interested in our story. But then as I got the chance to talk with her and find out where her heart was, her willingness to really kind of do far more investigating and research, finding out more about public opinion in terms of the NRA gun lobby, the moral part of that, I thought, ‘Well, Wow, why not consider it a blessing and an honor to be able to work with her.’ It was pretty much not to the end of filming that I really understood that she was only following Rev. Schenck and myself. I thought all along, she, because she said she talking with different organizations and individuals, and I would just be a part of it. But it was not my understanding that I would be one of the principals until toward the end of filming I just asked the crew, ‘Well, who else is she filming?’ And they said, ‘Just you and Rev. Schenck.’ I said, ‘Wow!’ So I really didn’t have any idea.
3. What was your opinion of Rev. Schenck before you met him and now since you’ve met him?
Well, of course, I didn’t know of Rev. Schenck. I had to Google him and read about him on Wikipedia, but I was really excited to meet him because I felt that he was the kind of person, a voice, that I needed to speak with. Of course, my community, the minority community, we’re all about safer gun laws and curbing gun violence in the country. But I truly believe that the right evangelical community, most of them, a lot of them are gun owners, NRA members. That was the community that I thought that we really needed to speak to morally. So when Abby said to me, ‘There’s this pastor, Rev. Schenck, that I think you might be interested in speaking to, I was absolutely very nervous because I didn’t know how well received I would be by him but excited at the same time because it was my opportunity to really try to engage someone who was absolutely not like me in this conversation.
And do you think you changed his mind at all about gun control laws? Well, he says I did. He says that my appeals to him and my story and my coming to him was the impetus for pushing him, giving him that last bit of inertia to move forward on those stirrings, the moral stirrings he had about the problems of gun violence in the country.
4. And what is he working on now, as far as you know, as far as that is concerned?
Well, most definitely, he has some new initiatives that he is working on which I’m probably sure I cannot talk about but definitely just beginning to galvanize a lot of support from pastors across the country that are defending what he has been feeling that are morally disturbed by the gun culture in our country, and he says, ‘It disturbs me that people in the United States think the only way they are going to solve their problems are to shoot people dead.’ And so based upon the inkling, that the preservation of life is foremost for him, absolutely pro-life from beginning to end, then this is about him stepping out of the boat into the water, treading the water and going toward what he believes God is calling him to do.
5. Now, why do you think the evangelical right are so adamant about having guns?
Well, I will say, I can speak to you from that viewpoint of being a minority, as a black woman, I think what we have is just is an overly exaggerated, unadulterated fear that America is changing and that America is becoming far more diverse and that there may be an element in this country that believes that they’re losing their power and they want their power back. And the NRA gun lobby feeds right into that with creating and instilling fear in the community that you’re gonna be gunned down, you’re gonna be raped, you’re gonna be carjacked, all those kinds of things. I think it just plays into the whole idea, the ideology that I should be afraid of people who don’t think, act or look like me, and gun violence plays a huge role in that. And that is the element that we’re afraid of. So I think from my perspective, that is what I believe is happening in the country.
I talk to people around the country that blame the government, and I ask them, ‘Who do you mean by the government?’ Because I want them to say to me, ‘President Obama’ because that is really who they mean. So I press them to say, ‘Who do you mean by the government?’ And when they say, ‘Oh you know, the administration,’ I know exactly what they’re talking about. And I have to say to them, ‘Trust me that is not President Obama’s goal to take away every gun out of every household. He is for 2nd Amendment rights, but he understands equivocally that we have to have some tempered laws in place to protect those rights and to protect the rights of individuals that are not gun owners that don’t want to use guns, that don’t want to walk in fear in this country and being gunned down.’ I have to really say, ‘I understand what his platform is. And it is not to take your guns. It is not come in and control your household.’ And the NRA gun lobby spends a lot of time and rhetoric on pushing that. And that is just absolutely not the truth.
6. So what types of laws do you think need to be made or what types of laws need to be eradicated? I’m sure you want the ‘Stand Your Ground’ laws to be eradicated, but have you ever given thought to what types of laws would be most effective?
And let me say, I don’t think ‘Stand Your Ground’ laws should be eradicated because in some instances they can work if used properly. That an individual should be able to protect themselves from imminent threat and danger but not based upon a, you know, the threat has to be credible. It can’t be based upon a perception of a threat and that is how the law is interpreted now, on a perception. I think that is very, very dangerous. And so in some regard, the laws can work if used properly. But I think background check legislation is the number one way that we know in this country to deter a lot of the crimes with guns that we see here. When individuals can walk into gun shows and buy guns with no background check, online sales, no background check. People are selling guns to their family members. We know most definitely that women in large numbers go into gun shows and into gun stores and buy guns because if an individual in their family is a convicted felon and cannot legally get a gun, they’re buying guns for them. So these kind of loopholes.
These are the kinds of things that have to be addressed, child access prevention, making sure that law-abiding citizens that have guns, making sure that those guns are safely put away so that children don’t have access to them. Domestic abusers, making sure that there is legislation put in place, background check legislation that prevents domestic abusers from getting their hands on guns if they’ve already been convicted of domestic abuse because we know the number one way that women are dying in this country in domestic violence confrontations is by a gun. So there are a lot of big moving parts and pieces to the gun culture. A lot of laws have to be examined, but we know the number one way is just background check legislation. We know that 90 percent of Americans in this country agree with what I’m talking about. They all agree that, ‘Yeah, there has to be some sort of sensible solution put in place to close the loopholes that allow people to do the things that they are doing with their guns in this country.’
So do you think that background check legislation would have helped with what happened at the college in Oregon or at Emanuel AME? Absolutely because we know that there was a default with that background check in Charleston that allowed the young man to buy the gun that he used in the Charleston shooting! So there again, we’ve got defaults in these existing laws that allow people, that are allowing gun sellers to sell their guns to people that really aren’t even supposed to have them.
7. My final question for you is I know you were involved in another documentary “31/2 Minutes, Ten Bullets” and that is supposed to be coming to HBO this fall. When will it debut on HBO?
November 23. Do you have any times or just to look at HBO’s website? Yes. Nationwide, it will drop Nov. 23, but you can definitely go on to the website.
Below is a trailer for “THE ARMOR OF LIGHT”
For more information about where you can see “THE ARMOR OF LIGHT” which is being shown in more than 20 cities across the country, go to armoroflightfilm.com.
Keisha Pooler, her mother Mary Marshall and Keisha’s daughter
Hello World,
I could not let the month of October go by without acknowledging that this month is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. I lost two of my Delta line sisters to this hideous disease so this is a cause that is very dear to me. When another one of my sorors Keisha Pooler shared on Facebook that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer and began posting pictures of herself at her chemotherapy treatments, I was inspired by her openness and bravery so I thought I would tell her story here. I hope her openness and bravery inspires you as they did me.
Jacquelyn Pullins aka Aunt Jackie
As an invincible and healthy college freshman at Morris Brown College in 1992 with nothing but time ahead of her, the last thing on on Keisha Pullins’ mind was breast cancer. But an arbitrary search for a pen in the lingerie drawer of her Aunt Jackie Pullins, who the Dublin, Georgia native lived with while enrolled in the Atlanta school, put her in the path of the deadly disease in a way that forever changed her trajectory. “I was digging in her drawer, trying to find a pen, and I ran across her prosthetic. It was shaped in foam and had a nipple on it. I asked her, ‘Jackie, What is this?’ She said, ‘It’s a fake titty. What do you think it is?'” Her aunt’s clear-eyed, straightforward answer was representative of the sister relationship that Keisha had with her mother’s baby sister, who was in early 40s, who Keisha saw as mostly a sister but a sometime surrogate mother. Her Aunt Jackie also told her niece to not tell anyone as she did not want anyone to worry about her. However, Keisha was worried. “Her diagnosis changed my life. It was representative of something that could transfer into death in my home, in my family.” From then on, at the recommendation of her Aunt Jackie, who found the lump in her breast, Keisha began doing self-exams and has ever since. While Keisha kept her Aunt Jackie’s secret, her secret revealed itself when her aunt came home to Dublin several months later by the end of Keisha’s freshman year to go the the funeral of Keisha’s stepfather. “At the funeral, she became very ill so she started chemotherapy in Dublin. She never made it back to Atlanta.”
While Keisha continued at Morris Brown College, she returned to Dublin periodically to check on her Aunt Jackie and go with her to her chemotherapy treatments when she could. “She was not married, and she had no children so my sister and I were her kids.” After her treatment, her aunt went into remission for roughly four to five years but the cancer came back in 1997 or 1998. She was told she had months to live, but she didn’t want to go through chemotherapy again. Despite her prognosis, she didn’t pass away until 2001. During that time, however, she continued to live and deliver her deadpan humor. When Keisha asked her Aunt Jackie why she was adamant on getting a loan at one point, her Aunt Jackie replied, “Keisha, I’ll be dead before they get the money back.” “I remember thinking that in that moment, she was laughing and dying simultaneously.” However, there were serious moments too. Her aunt made her the beneficiary of her life insurance policies and showed her where to find all of her important documents. Although Keisha’s mother was her Aunt Jackie’s official caretaker, she felt like the then 25-year-old Keisha would be more responsible. “My Aunt Jackie was adamant about my mom getting a mammogram, but she never did. She always said she was scared to find out.”
Keisha and her husband at the Making Strides Against Breast Cancer walk on Saturday, October 24. Their daughter is in the background.
In fact, Keisha’s mother, Mary Marshall, would not have a mammogram until she was 68 years old, in May 2013. It was recommended that she get a mammogram as part of a all full-body exam after she got sick with shingles. Keisha was concerned when her mother called her after her mammogram and told her that a biopsy was the next step. She called the medical center and asked about her mother’s results. “I said, ‘I know you’re limited in what information you can give, but do I need to make a trip to Dublin to see my mother?”’ She was told that she should come to Dublin so Keisha and her sister made the trip. The same doctor, Dr. Samson, who took care of her Aunt Jackie during her breast cancer treatment was the same doctor that told Keisha’s mother Mary Marshall in front of her daughters that she too had breast cancer. “My sister had to leave the room. I took out my pen and started taking notes and asking questions. My mom took a deep breath and said, ‘Okay, what do we do next?’ There were no tears. She was stoic.” She was diagnosed with stage 1 breast cancer in June 2013, and six months of chemotherapy followed by four to six months of radiation was recommended for treatment. Mary Marshall says she cannot pinpoint exactly why she waited so long to have her first mammogram except to say that she saw what her sister went through and did not want that for herself. “I just put it out of my mind.” However, her sister’s example came back to her when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. “In my mind, I said, ‘I’m going to be strong like Jackie. ‘”
In fact, her sister’s strength inspired Mary Marshall so much that she urged her daughter to have a follow up exam after Keisha’s first mammogram at 40 years old revealed that she had some cysts that needed to be further evaluated. Keisha delayed making and keeping the appointment for roughly eight to nine months. While she spent spring break with her daughter in Atlanta earlier this year, she told her that she would not leave until Keisha made the appointment. “I had that feeling that she might follow in my footsteps so I said, ‘Keisha, have you gone?'” So Keisha made and kept her follow up
“The beautiful thing about breast cancer is that it puts you in a sorority you never asked to be in.”
appointment. An ultrasound was done, and a more in-depth evaluation was recommended. She was told she get the results in a week. “I went about my life, but I felt like I was in a cloud like when you see a character in a Spike Lee film and their feet aren’t moving. It felt like I was floating,” says Keisha, who is an instructional coach at Maynard Jackson High School in Atlanta. When she got the call, she was at the school. The news wasn’t what she hoped for. “I stopped breathing for a second. I went outside and sat on one of the benches and took my legs up under me. I asked the doctor, ‘Am I going to die?’ He said, ‘I’m not telling you that is going to happen. Let’s take one thing at a time.” Keisha was reassured when her doctor told her he would be meeting with a team of medical professionals to immediately work on a treatment plan for her stage 1 breast cancer. She was also encouraged when he told her that not all breast cancers are the same as Keisha has borderline triple-negative breast cancer. She had a lumpectomy in June and started chemotherapy in July. Now, she is undergoing radiation. She did not hesitate to share her story on Facebook with her community of friends and has shared photographs throughout her treatment. “I’ve been given the gift of speaking and writing. I think I got it from my mother’s father who was a preacher. He was so influential in the community, and he was always being vocal. It something sits inside of me, it sickens me. And I feel like I am soldier on the front lines, and if I kept it to myself, I’m not only doing an injustice to myself but to Jehovah Jireh.”
After she was told about her diagnosis, she told the news to Marcus, her husband of 16 years. “He said, ‘We’re gonna kick cancer’s @$$! You’ve seen your mama. You’ve seen your aunt.'” The couple then told their 10-year-old daughter. Although her eyes were filled with tears, she said, “‘Okay, mama we got this!'” She gave me a high five, and she gave her daddy a high five.” Providentially it seems, after Keisha’s diagnosis, her husband broke his hand in a car accident and as result, he has had to recover at home with Keisha. “I feel like I am a seed that was planted, but I was not meant to be buried, I am planted to bloom.”
