NYC Mom

I love movies. I've written about my bond with my father and movies. There are certain movies that I just can't pass up though. I'm sure we all have this happen. There's a movie that comes on and you have to watch it every single time it airs. No matter what point you've come upon it, you stop flicking the channels and stay and watch. I have several movies like that. The one that inspired this post is 50 First Dates. I know, I know...not a 4 star movie so shame on me! But it's sweet and cute and makes me laugh, and cry, every time I see it. Adam Sandler is just so sweet and endearing in this. Drew is just a pleasure as she is in every movie she's made. And Sean Astin. A side of Samwise Gamgee I could have lived without still enjoy in this movie. There are a lot of movies I feel like that about. The Quiet Man. Captains Courageous. How Green Was My Valley. I think it's the characters in these movies that draw me to them. Each one of these makes me laugh and cry. They just touch me. Most of them are too hard to watch right now because the memories of my father just overwhelm me. One day soon though, I'll be back to watching them again, thinking of him with a tear in my eye and much love in my heart.
Ok I'm going back to watch Lucy tell Henry he has to leave because she loves him too much. First I'm gonna get tissues.

I am having Sarah Palin nightmares. I dreamt last night that she was a member of a club where they rode snowmobiles and wore the claws of drowned and starved polar bears around their necks. I have a particular thing for Polar Bears. Maybe it's their snowy whiteness or their bigness or the fact that they live in the arctic or that I have never seen one in person or touched one. Maybe it is the fact that they live so comfortably on ice. Whatever it is, I need the polar bears.

I don't like raging at women. I am a Feminist and have spent my life trying to build community, help empower women and stop violence against them. It is hard to write about Sarah Palin. This is why the Sarah Palin choice was all the more insidious and cynical. The people who made this choice count on the goodness and solidarity of Feminists.

But everything Sarah Palin believes in and practices is antithetical to Feminism which for me is part of one story -- connected to saving the earth, ending racism, empowering women, giving young girls options, opening our minds, deepening tolerance, and ending violence and war.

I believe that the McCain/Palin ticket is one of the most dangerous choices of my lifetime, and should this country chose those candidates the fall-out may be so great, the destruction so vast in so many areas that America may never recover. But what is equally disturbing is the impact that duo would have on the rest of the world. Unfortunately, this is not a joke. In my lifetime I have seen the clownish, the inept, the bizarre be elected to the presidency with regularity.

Sarah Palin does not believe in evolution. I take this as a metaphor. In her world and the world of Fundamentalists nothing changes or gets better or evolves. She does not believe in global warming. The melting of the arctic, the storms that are destroying our cities, the pollution and rise of cancers, are all part of God's plan. She is fighting to take the polar bears off the endangered species list. The earth, in Palin's view, is here to be taken and plundered. The wolves and the bears are here to be shot and plundered. The oil is here to be taken and plundered. Iraq is here to be taken and plundered. As she said herself of the Iraqi war, "It was a task from God."

Sarah Palin does not believe in abortion. She does not believe women who are raped and incested and ripped open against their will should have a right to determine whether they have their rapist's baby or not.

She obviously does not believe in sex education or birth control. I imagine her daughter was practicing abstinence and we know how many babies that makes.

Sarah Palin does not much believe in thinking. From what I gather she has tried to ban books from the library, has a tendency to dispense with people who think independently. She cannot tolerate an environment of ambiguity and difference. This is a woman who could and might very well be the next president of the United States. She would govern one of the most diverse populations on the earth.

Sarah believes in guns. She has her own custom Austrian hunting rifle. She has been known to kill 40 caribou at a clip. She has shot hundreds of wolves from the air.

Sarah believes in God. That is of course her right, her private right. But when God and Guns come together in the public sector, when war is declared in God's name, when the rights of women are denied in his name, that is the end of separation of church and state and the undoing of everything America has ever tried to be.

I write to my sisters. I write because I believe we hold this election in our hands. This vote is a vote that will determine the future not just of the U.S., but of the planet. It will determine whether we create policies to save the earth or make it forever uninhabitable for humans. It will determine whether we move towards dialogue and diplomacy in the world or whether we escalate violence through invasion, undermining and attack. It will determine whether we go for oil, strip mining, coal burning or invest our money in alternatives that will free us from dependency and destruction. It will determine if money gets spent on education and healthcare or whether we build more and more methods of killing. It will determine whether America is a free open tolerant society or a closed place of fear, fundamentalism and aggression.

If the Polar Bears don't move you to go and do everything in your power to get Obama elected then consider the chant that filled the hall after Palin spoke at the RNC, "Drill Drill Drill." I think of teeth when I think of drills. I think of rape. I think of destruction. I think of domination. I think of military exercises that force mindless repetition, emptying the brain of analysis, doubt, ambiguity or dissent. I think of pain.

Do we want a future of drilling? More holes in the ozone, in the floor of the sea, more holes in our thinking, in the trust between nations and peoples, more holes in the fabric of this precious thing we call life?

Ok I know I'm late to the party but I just discovered this show! I've been following this season closely and I've been catching up on past seasons via reruns on Bravo. I know the show is fabulous but I'm just nuts about someone on this show. Tim Gunn.
Ahhh Tim Gunn. I don't know why but every time I see him on the screen my heart just sings. He seems so sweet and kind and fatherly to the shows designers. He just seems to hit the perfect chord between friend and mentor. I have yet to see even a smidge of a bad thing written about him. I'd love to go out to lunch with him and just talk. He just exudes this sweetness that moves me.
I'm a New Yorker through and through so when I see celebrities on the street, I never say a word to them. I'll tell ya though, if I saw Tim Gunn on the street, I'd go up to him and tell him that there's something about him that's magic and that he truly does make it work.

Here is my favorite photo of the Twin Towers. I've seen many but this is how I like to remember them. Standing guard over NYC. Below is a page from my sister and brother in law's web site about how people are still dying as a result of the tragedy that occurred on 9/11/01.

They have a store which has been in existence for about 15 years now. You can visit it here: http://www.nyfirestore.com/index.html



Dear Friends,

Recently a retired NYPD detective, who has been a long time friend and customer, stopped into the shop. He proceeded to tell me that his 37 year old son (expecting his 4th child next week) nearly died a few weeks ago from sudden kidney failure, and was since diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma. Multiple Myeloma is a very rare blood and bone cancer, which almost never appears in people under the age of 70. The son, until his illness forced him off the job, was with the NYPD Bomb Squad, and the cancer, is almost certainly the result of his months working at the Fresh Kills landfill searching the Ground Zero debris.

It is currently estimated that 40,000 people worked Ground Zero and Fresh Kills, and the Federal Government acknowledges as many as 71,000 are considered "at risk" from their exposure to the toxic cocktail that enveloped lower Manhattan.

I believe that number may be much higher when you factor in everyone who had to clean the apartments, storefronts, offices and streets following the World Trade Center attack.

Mount Sinai Medical center reported 70% of the 10,000 Ground Zero workers they tested reported new or worsening respiratory problems since their exposure to these toxins. Now, the number of deaths attributed to Ground Zero exposure are starting to mount.

The official 9/11 death toll is 2,752....it could easily reach 20 times that number before the full impact has been felt.

While the news media is starting to report on these matters, and the politicians and agencies responsible for the lax safety conditions, and misinformation regarding air quality, are starting to answer for it, I feel the media is not putting all the pieces together yet. The public is still oblivious to the magnitude of the problem.

Thousands of Ground Zero rescue workers and volunteers have already retired, or been placed on light duty, due to post 9/11 illness. If only 1/2 of the 71,000 figure develop medical complications, the ensuing cumulative medical costs will easily reach the Billions...yes BILLIONS. Some of these people do not have insurance, and many others who think they are covered by their job's insurance, or Workman's Compensation, will discover that the "job" does not consider the illness a "line of duty" injury, and therefore will not cover treatment.

The dollar figures that the Federal Government is currently proposing as relief or aid, will not even scratch the surface.

• We need to stay informed.
• We must share that information with family, friends and co-workers.
• We can not allow our government to abandon these Forgotten Heroes.
• We can not forget, even for a moment, that 9/11 is Still Killing.

Thank you for taking a moment to read this. Please check back, I will post more information about this subject as it comes available. I will also post information about related charities, and web sites that are supporting our Forgotten Heroes.

Below we have provided some links that we hope will offer further light on the subject, and provide resources for those seeking treatment or information:

WTC Environmental Health Center: http://www.nyc.gov/html/hhc/html/community/wtc-health-center.shtml
World Trade Center Health Registry: http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/html/wtc/index.html
FDNY Medical Screening: http://www.nyc.gov/html/fdny/html/units/bhs/wtcmm/index.shtml
NYPD World Trade Center Resources: http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/html/nypd_wtc_emerg.html
NY Times - July 18th 2007: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/18/nyregion/18treatment.html
TIME Magazine: http://www.time.com/time/photoessays/2006/first_responders/
WCBSTV: http://wcbstv.com/video/?id=96760@wcbs.dayport.com
New York City's Official 9/11 Health Site: http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/wtc/html/home/home.shtml

Sincerely,

Noam D. Freedman

Should be the title of my blog now. I haven't written much lately. I could blame summertime with the kids being home so I didn't have enough time to blog but that's not the case. I just haven't felt much like writing. I started a new blog, a sort of knitting journal to track my progress. If I have any. I'm getting sick of scarves but a lil bit afraid of going forward. But go forward I will. Eventually. Slacker I tell you.
So needless to say the boyos have begun school once again. All is going really well but it's early. I'm just waiting for Glenny to hit the wall as he always does in the fall/winter. We may have one more good month before his funk sets in. We'll manage though. We always do. Sometimes better than others.
We have one of our nieces staying at the country house while she reevaluates her life and decides what she wants to do. I like the fact of having someone there all the time though. Makes me feel that the house is being used well, if that makes sense.
I was going to go on a rant about my in laws but I decided they're not worth it. They're not worth neither the time it would take to write it nor the emotions. So I'll just say BLECH about them and leave it be.
All else is good. Contemplating going to the NYS Sheep and Wool Festival next month. Looks like fun.
I'm going to make an effort to write more. And write more interesting than this post.