Community leaders, including Georgia State Sen. Lester Jackson (center), gather to celebrate 100th anniversary of the Carnegie Branch Library in Savannah with a new historic marker . (photograph by Aberjhani) Measuring the success of a given year by the percentage of profits gained or lost is a sensible enough practice for many individuals and an essential one for various organizations. However, I decided going into 2014 that I wanted to commit time throughout the year to finding ways that creatively honored the concept of mutually-empowering and life-enhancing partnerships. The goal was to combine as much as possible measures of social responsibility with different types of creative endeavors. Why such an intensely-focused approach? Because the still-straggling uncertainty of the economy, the domestic gun violence that broke America’s collectively-beating heart nearly every other week, and rising waves of conflict on the global front made it far too easy to succumb to su

                     Nigeria and Mother's Day illustration by John Cole for The Times-Tribune . When confronted by something too painful, incredulous, or monstrous to believe, a person will sometimes say, “I  couldn't  even wrap my head around that!” Such was probably one of the main reasons the international community took so long to respond in any meaningful way to the abduction of the almost 300 Chibok school girls in Nigeria. The emotional impact was, and is, not completely unlike that of seeing for the first time a film clip of the aircraft exploding against the Twin Towers on 9/11. It was an image unprecedented in one’s mental model of what reality is supposed to be and therefore an image one was not able to immediately process.   Who could believe that an army of armed adult men would attack and abduct nearly 300 school girls in the middle of the night? Moreover, in retrospect, why were the girls left in such a vulnerable position in the first place?  F

Nigerians protest mass abduction of school girls and call for laws to protect young women . (Reuters photo) In chilling contrast to the lyrical verse and candy-sweet images that millions of American families are preparing to enjoy on the 100th anniversary of Mother’s Day, May 11, the families of almost 300 abducted school girls in Nigeria are struggling to maintain sanity while praying for an end to the ordeal. The students reportedly were abducted from the Government Secondary Girl School in Chibok, northeast Nigeria, on April 15 (some reports say April 14). On May 4, Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan issued an appeal to the international community for assistance finding and returning the students, who range in age from 16 to 18. President Jonathan stated, “This is a trying time for this country... it is painful," and promised parents that he would not allow the kidnapping to go unsolved. Video in which the extremist leader of Boko Haram, Abubakar Shekau, claime