Michelle Obama

RE FATIMAH Ali's "Advice for the Sister": I'm not surprised that a column so quickly criticizing Michelle Obama was written by another black woman. One of the things I love about Ms. Obama is that she is herself. Most black women today are too insecure to be themselves. She obviously is a confident woman. She is brilliant and attractive. I hope and pray that she won't listen to other women and their "girlfriends" who think black women are inadequate and need "jaw reshaping" and probably weaves or extensions down her back to sling and toss to give her self-esteem.

MICHELLE OBAMA used a pitchfork yesterday to pull sweet potatoes from the soil of the White House kitchen garden, and Robin Shreeves of Haddonfield was there to tweet about it. Shreeves, a stay-at-home mother of two boys and an eco-friendly food blogger for the website Mother Nature Network, was among about a dozen people selected for the first White House kitchen-garden "tweetup" and the garden's fall harvest. The tweeters were participating in a series of activities surrounding Let's Move, the first lady's initiative to end childhood obesity.

Michelle Obama told a crowd of 3,000 in Southwest Philadelphia yesterday that if they want a president who understands what it's like to be raised by a single mother who relied at times on public assistance, they need to help their neighbors register to vote and cast their ballots for her husband. "Don't you want a president who brings that perspective?" she asked. "This is personal, and I know that these issues are personal for so many of you because you're feeling this every day. " The crowd gathered at the Francis Meyers Recreation Center at 58th and Kingsessing, many of whom were women with children, cheered that sentiment.

WASHINGTON - She's mingled barefoot among Aspen's elite, stirred a Vermont utility executive to tears and bucked up disenchanted New Yorkers. The 2012 presidential campaign is well under way for Michelle Obama, and the first lady is promising to put herself into the election effort like never before. More than a year out from Election Day, she is hauling in millions in campaign cash and sketching a portrait of her husband that is drawn with an intimacy that no one else could duplicate.

Michelle Obama will be in Philadelphia tomorrow to visit two sites - one of them Fairhill School in North Philadelphia - where she will discuss her initiative to prevent childhood obesity, according to a representative. She will be joined by Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to highlight the problem of so-called food deserts - large swaths of urban areas that do not have supermarkets. They will also discuss steps that Philadelphia antihunger groups have taken to bring healthy, affordable food to various neighborhoods.

Michelle Obama pushed supporters in eastern Pennsylvania to lobby just one neighbor, relative, or friend for their votes Thursday, amid concern over waning enthusiasm in the Democratic coalition that propelled her husband into office. "That one new voter you registered in your precinct, that one voter you get to the polls, that could be the one that makes the difference in this election," she told a fired-up crowd of 3,000 grassroots organizers and spectators at the University of the Sciences in West Philadelphia.

Next spring, when the warm weather brings on thoughts of gardening and summer harvest, Michelle Obama will publish her first book. American Grown: How the White House Kitchen Garden Inspired Families, Schools and Communities will be served up in April. It's the first book for the first lady, who went to Harvard Law and Princeton after starting out in Chicago's public schools. Her professional life has included being a lawyer, community activist, and staffer at the University of Chicago.

WASHINGTON - Opening another front in her nearly year-old campaign to support service families, first lady Michelle Obama on Wednesday unveiled a new push for jobs on or near military bases. She also announced plans to mark the Joining Forces campaign's first anniversary with a two-day, four-state swing next week that will include stops in election battleground states Pennsylvania and Florida and a chat with comedian Stephen Colbert on his show, The Colbert Report . The Joining Forces organization said it has lined up commitments for more than 15,000 jobs in the coming years.

WASHINGTON - Michelle Obama was once a reluctant campaigner, but there are plenty of reasons why she's primed to play a major role in her husband's reelection bid. She's more popular than the president. She's seasoned now. And she's so careful in her public remarks that even at campaign fund-raisers, she sometimes relies on a teleprompter. Observers said her top causes - getting children fit and embracing the nation's troops - were shrewd political choices, ones that have given her allies from coast to coast.

Americanah By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Alfred A. Knopf. 496 pp. $26.95 Reviewed by John Timpane     Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a MacArthur Fellow and onetime Drexel University student who, as every available blurb says, "splits her time between Nigeria and the United States. " Her brave, sprawling novel Americanah tackles the U.S. race complex with a directness and brio no U.S. writer of any color would risk. We start with a Nigerian couple, Ifemelu and Obinze.

On a mobile device? Click here to view the video. WASHINGTON - Michelle Obama experienced a rare face-to-face encounter with a protester late Tuesday - approaching the activist and threatening to leave a fund-raiser if the person did not stop interrupting her speech. Obama was addressing a Democratic Party fund-raiser in a private home in the Kalorama neighborhood of Northwest Washington when Ellen Sturtz, 56, a lesbian activist, interrupted her remarks to demand that President Obama sign an antidiscrimination executive order.

Americans gathered at memorials, museums and monuments and the president laid a wreath at Arlington National Cemetery to honor fallen service members on Memorial Day, as combat in Afghanistan approaches 12 years and the ranks of World War II veterans dwindle. "Let us not forget as we gather here today that our nation is still at war," President Obama said after laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns. "When they give their lives, they are still being laid to rest in cemeteries in quiet corners across our country, including here in Arlington," he said.

* How to top a successful White House recipe challenge for kids? Have another one. Epicurious and first lady Michelle Obama are teaming up for the second Healthy Lunchtime Challenge & Kids' "State Dinner. " Kids ages 8-12 and their parents or guardians can submit an original lunch recipe through May 12 ( recipechallenge.epicurious.com , or mail to "The Healthy Lunchtime Challenge c/o Epicurious.com," 1166 Avenue of the Americas, 15th floor, New York, NY 10036). Winners get lunch at the White House with Mrs. Obama.

Manteo Mitchell always wanted to serve as an inspiration. He never figured he would have to break his leg to do it. "I didn't plan on that," Mitchell said. An injury on the international stage has worked out wonderfully for the 25-year-old from Shelby, N.C. One moment, Mitchell was a promising but relatively unknown runner for the U.S Olympic team. The next, President Obama was praising him at a White House reception and the athlete was making plans to visit 36 schools to tell his made-for-Hollywood story.

WACO, Texas - President Obama consoled a rural Texas community rocked by a deadly fertilizer-plant explosion, telling mourners Thursday that they would have the nation's support to rebuild. "This small town's family is bigger now," Obama said during a memorial service at Baylor University for victims of last week's explosion in nearby West, Texas, that killed 14 and injured 200. Nearly 10,000 gathered to remember the first responders killed in the blast, a crowd more than triple the size of West's population of 2,700.

CHICAGO - Michelle Obama, with tears in her eyes and her voice cracking, spoke out for the first time here Wednesday about the gun violence afflicting young people in cities across the nation. She took a rare step for any first lady into the legislative fight of the hour, saying her husband, President Obama, is "fighting as hard as he can, and engaging as many people as he can, to pass commonsense reforms to protect our children from gun violence. " "These reforms deserve a vote in Congress," she said, drawing loud applause from hundreds of Chicago's business executives and civic leaders who were gathered at a luncheon to raise money for a new antiviolence initiative.

Michelle Obama will appear on Vogue's cover in the April issue; it's her second time. But when it comes to the inside pages, she doesn't appear alone: President Obama joins his wife in the interview. The couple say their values and focus in life haven't changed since they moved to the White House with daughters Malia and Sasha , now 14 and 11. "Our job is, first and foremost, to make sure our family is whole," says the first lady. "You know, we have small kids; they're growing every day. But I think we were both pretty straightforward when we said, 'Our No. 1 priority is making sure that our family is whole.' " Adds Mrs. Obama, "The stresses and the pressures of this job are so real that when you get a minute, you want to give that extra energy" to the kids.

HOLLYWOOD celebrities: Lock your cars! Or, at least, don't stash $100,000 worth of jewelry in your Mercedes, and leave the doors open. That's what dancing actress Julianne Hough , star of "Safe Haven," seems to have done after parking outside a pal's apartment building. Not surprisingly, when she came back to the Benz, the driver's-side door was wide open, the car's interior was trashed and the bling was long gone. The jewels were gifts from the prince of E! himself, Hough's long-term (yet still short)

New word: doxxing , the practice of piecing together detailed personal information from initial stuff you glean from Internet-available sources - such as when you find an e-mail address, then burrow through that to find phone numbers, addresses, info on chat rooms. It's a form of stalking. Hacker(s?) on the website exposed.su have either doxxed or hacked directly into celebrity private info, publishing photos, credit reports, mortgage details, Social Security numbers, etc. And now, says the FBI, the louts are "using" the info.