Tuesday, November 10 the newest season of Sesame Street will premiere, with an anxious audience of pre-school aged children ready to sing, dance and learn.

What makes this premiere so special is that it marks the 40th anniversary of this iconic children’s show.

To really give this milestone the attention it deserves, first lady Michelle Obama will make a guest appearance, sharing her love of vegetables with the neighborhood.

It’s a fitting segment, as she introduced the first White House vegetable garden since Eleanor Roosevelt. In the segment, she’s going to show four children how planting seeds in the ground will yield fresh, healthy produce like tomatoes, lettuce and carrots. Just last week it was announced that Michelle Obama is adding childhood obesity to her issues of interest, and there’s no better way to help curb that than by introducing the value of fresh vegetables to young eaters.

The first lady will be competing for air space alongside the featured letter “H” and counting to 40 by 10s. Read the rest of this entry »

In stadiums and auditoriums across the country, graduates are joining for the pomp and circumstance that grants them their hard-earned degrees.

President Obama at the Naval Academy commencement. via Chicago Tribune

Much like the hours spent in lecture halls, graduates must wait through just a couple more speeches before their caps are tossed to the air and their diplomas rightly earned. Every graduation has a guest speaker, some more memorable than others. For the class of 2009 at many notable colleges and universities, these famous commencement speakers are certain to be a memorable closing to their college careers.

President Barack Obama
The President spoke at Notre Dame, U.S. Naval Academy, and Arizona State University, where he implored the graduates to see our troubled economy as an opportunity, not a hurdle. “I know starting your career in troubled times is a challenge. But it is also a privilege. Because it is moments like these that force us to try harder, dig deeper, to discover gifts we never knew we had – to find the greatness that lies within each of us.”

Read the rest of this entry »

First Lady Michelle Obama has long hoped to gather an “amazing group of women” to help inspire young people to do well in school to prosper as adults. She had her chance this week as she visited Anacostia High School in the capital, a struggling school in a poor D.C. neighborhood, and 21 other famous women visited schools around the country.

Michelle Obama at Anacostia High School (via New York Times)

Mrs. Obama recruited the likes of Sheryl Crow, Alicia Keys, Alfre Woodard, Bobbi Brown, as well as former astronaut Mae Jemison and the Army’s first female four-star general, Gen. Ann Dunwoody, to participate in this Women’s History Month initiative at both public and private schools. Read the rest of this entry »

On February 2, First Lady Michelle Obama visited the Department of Education to give employees a pep talk.  She praised new Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, and said that she herself was a product of the department’s work.

Here’s what the First Lady had to say.

In the last few weeks, I’ve been writing about the college records of the presidential candidates, VP candidates, and our current president and VP.  But it seems like the brainiest one out of the whole bunch may be prospective First Lady Michelle Obama.

Check out Michelle Obama’s educational background.  According to the Chicago Sun Times, Obama (whose maiden name was Michelle LaVaughn Robinson) was a brilliant and curious child who pulled herself out of her poverty-stricken childhood through hard work and academic talent.  She could read by the time she was four and skipped the second grade.

After attending a prestigious Chicago magnet school, to which she had been handpicked, Obama was accepted to Princeton University, where she was one of only a few African American students.  At Princeton, she majored in sociology and African American studies.  She found her minority status to be a challenge, and wrote an honor’s thesis about that experience.  Despite the challenge, Obama graduated cum laude from Princeton.  Immediately afterward, she attended and graduated from Harvard University School of Law.

Now that sounds like a role model!

Read more about the college records of Cindy McCain, Barack Obama, John McCain, Joe Biden, Sarah Palin, George W. Bush, and Dick Cheney.