Depressing Threads

[LADoug1]

So many depressing threads and posts lately.

 

More upsetting than the movie "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead".

[kewtex]

You're depressed? You're depressed? I posted an irreverent photo in the "Why do straight guys always stare at me? Lol" thread, and no one has written about or liked it. Talk about being depressed.

[bigvalboy]

So many depressing threads and posts lately.

 

More upsetting than the movie "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead".

 

 

 

I'm a half full guy myself...

[rvwnsd]

I'm a half full guy myself...

Totally agree! I look at the posts about murder and suicide like this: Police, forensic pathologists, crisis intervention counselors, and the entire funeral industry are kept in business when these events occur.

[BgMstr4u]

They are depressing. But in a sort of, Ain't the world weird kind of way. For a while I looked forward to the publication of the annual Darwin Awards, which were very much in the line of some of recent posts here. The main idea of the Darwins is that the gene pool is improved by the voluntary withdrawal through demise of some of the stupider participants. My favorite was a man who rigged up his aluminum lawn chair to enough balloons to go flying away, without having provided himself a way to stabilize the chair, from which he eventually fell. The lists recently posted remind me of that kind of thing. A shame for all involved. I suppose. But really....

[LivingnLA]

It's not depressing to me. It's enraging. America has made choices over the last 40-50 years that essentially consigns the bottom 80% to struggle, pain, crime, and suffering with little chance of reprieve or escape. In our family, we do what we can to encourage a course correction and also protect ourselves, but at the end of the day, these trends are in motion and will require many tens of millions of Americans to organize and fight back before it's too late. Once very good automation exists--in another 10-20 years--it'll be game over for nearly all of the bottom 80% because they'll be unemployed and unemployable. Sorry if I've veered too far into "politics."

[marylander1940]

So many depressing threads and posts lately.

 

More upsetting than the movie "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead".

 

May we have some examples of what do you consider depressing?

[Mocha]

It's not depressing to me. It's enraging. America has made choices over the last 40-50 years that essentially consigns the bottom 80% to struggle, pain, crime, and suffering with little chance of reprieve or escape. In our family, we do what we can to encourage a course correction and also protect ourselves, but at the end of the day, these trends are in motion and will require many tens of millions of Americans to organize and fight back before it's too late. Once very good automation exists--in another 10-20 years--it'll be game over for nearly all of the bottom 80% because they'll be unemployed and unemployable. Sorry if I've veered too far into "politics."

 

I agree. I mean, what is America now? A pretend country where people act like they're the shit and have a lot of shit but really ain't shit lol. Lots of articles out there describe the 70s and 80s as the true prosperity and invention of the middle class. Rents in New York $500 a month. All you had to do is have a dream and you could do it.

 

However, having not been around during those times I can't really vouch as to whether things were better full scale. Race issues, gay issues, and technology have all advanced to where....I can't say I wish I was around then lol. But, why have we gone so far away from the affordability of that time?

 

Now, everything is all about money, money, and more money. Everybody wants extra money for nothing. For their IPhone payment and ripoff car lease. As escorts, we have to raise our rates to keep up with the ever parasitic demands of living in America. Of course, doesn't help much because now more and more are trying to turn to this work.

 

And it DISGUSTS me that people, who one would think can understand...want to come on here and talk about how successful someone isn't being. That's just so sad. But that's what Americans do. They kick you down when you're down, and envy you and still say you're not doing enough, even when you're up. And people here think it's funny, no it's not f-ing funny.

 

That makes America feel like a hostile environment, and then people believe that shit and vote, and then get disappointed when their expectations aren't met. It's because people have grown accustomed to putting others down on social media, and being all about money in America. So now that's who we have representing our country.

 

And now, we have to deal with the repercussions of that mentality of thinking for the next 4 years. Maybe even 8. I'm not complaining nor did I vote. I knew either way, we were gonna get played. But, I think different doors would have opened under the other candidate.

[Mocha]

You're depressed? You're depressed? I posted an irreverent photo in the "Why do straight guys always stare at me? Lol" thread, and no one has written about or liked it. Talk about being depressed.

 

Lol by the way I hope no one took that as depressing. Though I did use that word later in the thread, the whole thing was meant to be whimsical and entertaining but also theoretical and abstract as well.

[rvwnsd]

Guys, I think the OP was referring to the threads about suicide and death. Yes, the Darwin awards are amusing when they are released, but we don't need a new one every couple of hours.

[evensteven]

Guys, I think the OP was referring to the threads about suicide and death.

 

Yes, curious that many of them seem to be connected to a certain individual, who, despite his journeyman status, is quite new among us. I gather he recently turned 55; perhaps he finds it depressing.

[+ Charlie]

I agree. I mean, what is America now? A pretend country where people act like they're the shit and have a lot of shit but really ain't shit lol. Lots of articles out there describe the 70s and 80s as the true prosperity and invention of the middle class. Rents in New York $500 a month. All you had to do is have a dream and you could do it.

 

However, having not been around during those times I can't really vouch as to whether things were better full scale. Race issues, gay issues, and technology have all advanced to where....I can't say I wish I was around then lol. But, why have we gone so far away from the affordability of that time?

 

.

Rents in New York $500/mo.? That's $6000/yr. In the late 70s my total income, before taxes, as a middle class fully employed professional was $10,000/yr, so two-thirds of my net income would go for rent. The going rate for a NY escort (not a street hustler) was $55/hr. Vietnam dragged on until 1975. Watergate. Oil shortages. And gay men started dying of a strange new disease.

 

My working class father lived through two World Wars and the Great Depression, but he found the 1960s depressing. It's all a matter of perspective.

[MikeBiDude]

Go read most posts by news quoter SamHexum

May we have some examples of what do you consider depressing?

[marylander1940]

Yes, that's depressing but isn't this a place for us to share?

 

We all have the right to ignore a poster or a thread.

 

@samhexum Don't you worry, if you want to say share any thoughts on here, just do it. I wouldn't post a thread like that but is up to you what to post or what not to post.

 

I do know about a couple of former big spenders whining they don't have any more money to spend blah-blah-blah... yet talking about their hires 5 or 10 years ago. Considering the big opportunity we (older men) had buying property and rebuilding the inner cities in the 80's and 90's... don't get me there.

 

Missed opportunities in life, that would be depressing for me.

[MikeBiDude]

Thanks for the link I'm on a "stupid" low-bandwidth browser this morning

@samhexum

[marylander1940]

Thanks for the link I'm on a "stupid" low-bandwidth browser this morning

 

LOL... I had to @ him to find the search...

 

Shame on me... I'm always searching before posting yet I didn't know any other way to find the forum member!

 

You @MikeBiDude did nothing wrong!

[samhexum]

Chen Zhitong has mastered the impossible.

 

The 35-year-old man from China won 15,000 stuffed animals from “claw” machines last year alone.

 

Zhitong’s unique talent has drawn the ire of some business owners who operate the machines and fear his skill set.

 

In a

, Zhitong says in translation, “When I play the toy claw machine, the owners are not happy. Some buy me meals and beg me not to play their machines.”

 

Zhitong breaks down the machinery into two categories: skill-based and simply unwinnable (he says the latter are “programmed” for players to lose).

 

The gamer said that when he plays the claw machines, he completely focuses on his goal.

 

As such, he breaks it down into “several key parameters to winning.”

 

One is the claw’s holding capacity. He says the claw needs to grip the toys tightly.

 

The second, he says, is the angle of claw rotation.

 

The third is the layout of the animals in the machine.

 

Zhitong also adds that his immense winnings have cluttered his apartment.

 

His heartwarming solution was to donate the cuddly items to struggling kids.

 

“Last year I donated about 1,000 toys to schools for the deaf and the blind,” he says. “Those kids were thrilled and I was happy, too.”

 

[LivingnLA]

Guys, I think the OP was referring to the threads about suicide and death. Yes, the Darwin awards are amusing when they are released, but we don't need a new one every couple of hours.

 

I was too @rvwnsd. The increases in alcohol use, opioid addiction, suicide, and violent crime can all be linked to what I was discussing. It's the lose of opportunity and hope for the vast majority of Americans that's driving these trends.

[samhexum]

The first sign that Dr. Arabia Mollette is a physician like no other is the absence of the traditional white coat. Depending on the day and her mood, other signs might include neon pink nails and a nose ring.

 

Then there’s her smile. Warm and inviting, it puts even the most in-distress emergency room visitors at ease.

 

It’s not uncommon to hear her break into fluent Spanish while treating a patient while working as an ER doc in busy Woodhull Medical and Mental Health Center in Brooklyn.

 

With her thick and authentic Cuban accent, she sounds like a Caribbean native — a gift from the seven years she spent studying medicine there on a fellowship because she couldn’t afford to attend medical school in the U.S.

 

Despite her Cuban degree, Dr. Mollette is all-American — born and mostly raised in the Bronx. Even as an 11-year-old in East Tremont, cadging beers off older friends with her cousin to sneak behind buildings and drink away the pain found in their broken homes, the idea of being a doctor was always there, lodged in the back of her mind.

 

It was her one flicker of hope.

 

“It never left my head, even though I had no idea how to get there, how to make that dream real,” said Mollette, now 37.

 

“Like many people, I grew up in a lot of pain, with a lot of depression, but I didn’t recognize it for what it was. It just felt normal to me, coming from a family that suffered from substance abuse, domestic violence and horrible poverty.”

 

By age 15, she was homeless on the streets, sleeping in parks, running with a dangerous crowd and carrying drugs for dealers and sometimes dealing herself.

 

Her mother, suffering from mental illness, had tried to kill herself. It was something Mollette considered, too.

 

“As a child, I had thought about committing suicide. You know the song ‘Black Girl Lost’ by Nas? I felt like that, really a black girl lost, because of all the ongoing trauma and tragedy in my family,” Mollette said. “It just seemed that nobody in the world cared about this lost black girl.”

 

Her mother, realizing she was in no state to care for Mollette, sent the teenager to Peekskill to live with her father, who had just left a rehab facility for drug addiction.

 

Mollette fell into a romance with a much older man, who eventually began to beat her. She wound up pregnant at 17, trapped in an abusive relationship.

 

“Like many lost kids, I was looking for love. I’d endured abuse since I was a childhood, physical and sexual assaults. This was what I thought life was,” she said.

 

On Feb. 19, 1998, her son Jahmeek, who was four months old, was attacked by his father, Artie Holmes. Holmes shook Jahmeek with such force, the infant suffered a heart attack, bruised abdomen, fractured skill and brain injuries. He died the next day. Holmes, 30 at the time, was sentenced to 22 years in jail.

 

“The day my son took his last breath, I just sat there and said, ‘This is it,’” said Mollette. “A piece of my soul died that day, and it’s still dead.”

 

Just shy of 18, Mollette had to be institutionalized for a few days, a period she can’t remember. The months after Jahmeek’s death were a blur. Eventually Mollette — who had turned into an honor student at Peekskill despite the chaos in her personal life — found herself at Pace University.

 

“I was an alcoholic, I drank all the time. Anything to escape the pain,” she said.

 

Alone, depressed and not finding relief in therapy, Mollette was expelled from Pace for fighting during her freshman year in 1998.

 

By 2000, Mollette was ready to try again. She enrolled in Hunter College to get a bachelor’s degree in science and psychology. She found friends who could relate to her traumatic childhood and was finally able to focus on her studies and future career.

 

But in 2003, violence returned to her life. “One of my sisters was shot and killed in Schenectady,” Mollette said.

 

It brought all her painful experiences flooding back. This time, however, Mollette was determined to avoid alcohol and seek out therapy — and the entire family went with her. Individually and together, they started to heal.

 

“Sometimes you don’t make it on that first try, maybe not even the second, third or fourth time, and that’s okay. Maybe it’ll be the next time when it will all come together. You never know, so you just keep trying,” she said.

 

By 2006, Mollette had her bachelor’s degree, a host of pre-med prerequisites completed at Westchester Community College, and a graduate degree in biomedical science from SUNY Binghamton. The dream to be a doctor was as strong as ever. But there was no way to pay for it.

 

“I really had no idea what I was going to do next,” she said. “I don’t even know if I would have qualified for a loan to go to medical school. I couldn’t even afford to pay to take the medical college admission tests.”

 

Through a friend, she heard of a unique scholarship Cuba offered to low-income students from other countries to the Latin American School of Medical Sciences. Fidel Castro had partnered with the Congressional Black Caucus in 2000 to include American students. The only condition imposed in exchange for a full seven-year ride was that graduates return to their communities and help the underserved.

 

“I had no idea what I was signing up for,” Dr. Mollette said. “I spoke no Spanish, and everything is taught in Spanish. You have to get your medical degree in Spanish. I lived like a Cuban, with a Cuban family, and we got to experience it all — blackouts, food shortages — but all the wonderful things about Cuba, too.”

 

It took about three months to get a decent grasp of the language, but the training was real from the minute she got there, Mollette said.

 

“In Cuba, you may not have the best or the latest equipment, but you are getting hands-on experience. You are talking and diagnosing and interacting with patients from day one — and there is so much emphasis put on learning how to talk to patients and hearing what they say,” she said.

 

Mollette and other U.S. students also had to worry about getting arrested on visits home under the administration of then-president George Bush. “He wanted to have us put in jail, but thanks to Congresswoman Maxine Waters, they put a stop to that,” said Mollette. “She and California Congresswoman Barbara Lee did a lot for us, and made sure our medical licenses would be recognized in the U.S.”

 

Since returning to New York in 2012, Mollette’s been completing a residency at Woodhull Hospital and will soon be adding Coney Island Hospital to her résumé. She also treats patients on Long Island a few days a week, and goes to Kenya every year to teach emergency medicine.

 

When she dashes into the ER, usually wearing scrubs and comfortable black fleece jacket, all high-energy and big smiles, none of her personal trauma is visible. But Mollette has grown comfortable unpacking parts of her story, because she’s found it to be a potent medicine.

 

“A lot of patients come in and they’ll say, ‘You’re a doctor, you can’t know about what I’m experiencing,’ and I’ll tell them a bit about myself, and a lot of times that really makes a connection. The only difference often between them and me is that I have a degree,” she said.

 

It also helps patients to be honest with her, she said.

 

“A lot of people are ashamed of their situations, be it teen pregnancy, assault, substance abuse, whatever. I’m here to say to them that I have lived all of that, and it’s not the sum total of who you are, of your greatness as a person,” said Mollette, who does a regular podcast online dedicated to informing historically underserved communities about medical options and treatments.

 

And a few other childhood dreams have come true for Dr. Mollette. Her father has been drug-free for 25 years and got his masters in education. He’s a teacher in the city. Mollette’s mother is doing well and works as a medical assistant.

 

He gave it the ol’ college fry.

 

A conversation at a Popeye’s drive thru in Kansas City, Mo., led to an employee seeing her dreams of earning enough money for an education come true.

 

Don Carter had a brief talk with employee Shajauna Mays, specifically how they were both exhausted after a long day and how she was trying to go back to school and become a nurse.

 

He would soon leave with his perfectly spiced dinner, but the conversation stuck with him.

 

“I was literally crunching on the chicken and this thought dawns on me: ‘What if you pay for her to go to school?'” Carter told KTRK.

 

In a Facebook post that would quickly cook up some attention, the former Kansas City Police Department detective recalled how he did some research and found that $1,500 should be enough to pay for Mays’ nursing license.

 

“I have about 1,300 or so ‘Friends’ on Facebook,” wrote Carter, adding, “I figured if I could get about 300 of my Facebook friends to put up $5 each, we could do it no problem.”

 

In reality, that bar was way too low.

 

As of Tuesday morning, his GoFundMe campaign (“Send a Random Girl 2 Nursing School”) has collected $14,635.

 

After getting surprised by Carter with the news of the incredibly successful fundraiser at Popeye’s last week, Mays told WDAF that she believes in guardian angels.

 

“This is definitely my angel,” said Mays, laughing, “and my angel eats chicken.”

[samhexum]

Quadruplet brothers in Ohio have all been accepted at some of the nation’s top universities, including each of them to both Yale and Harvard.

 

The Wade brothers of the northern Cincinnati suburb of Liberty Township say they have been notified in recent days of acceptances from a number of notable schools. Lakota East High School principal Suzanna Davis tells the Hamilton-Middletown Journal-News that the four seniors epitomize academic focus but are well-rounded, “great young men” with individual personalities.

 

Aaron, Nick, Nigel and Zachary haven’t made their decisions, though Aaron likes Stanford University and his three brothers are leaning toward Yale. Financial aid offers likely will play an important role.

 

The youths said they are grateful to their parents and to the Lakota schools and their teachers.

 

“It’s really something we couldn’t have done on our own without all the support we have had through our lives,” Nick said. “It has been awesome.”

 

Their mother, Kim Wade, is a junior high school principal in the Lakota district, and their father, Darrin Wade, works at General Electric Co.

 

“We feel like getting into these schools show who the people around us are,” Nigel said.

 

Zachary added that they have always gotten encouragement that “the sky’s the limit” with their hard work.

 

“We were never told that we couldn’t get somewhere,” Zachary said.

 

The Washington Post reports that Harvard doesn’t comment on admission statuses and that Yale said by policy, it doesn’t discuss admitted students.

 

How a mayor’s wife brought a factory town back from the brink

 

Gisele Baretto Fetterman, the only Latina in a sea of black women, stands in a cheerfully painted former shipping container in the parking lot of an abandoned nuisance bar, directing customers toward the supplies.

 

Groceries, clothing, towels, blankets, diapers and formula are all separated into neat aisles for the people of Braddock, Pa. — the rough-and-tumble steel town that she and her husband have adopted as their home.

 

Outside the shipping container, a cheery sign marks the entrance to “The Free Store,” which fills the needs of those living in a town whose once important place in American history is now largely forgotten. It also gives those people more optimism than they have seen in a generation.

 

“The store rules are, ‘Be kind, take only what you need, and pay it forward,’ ” Fetterman says.

 

The statuesque, raven-haired, 35-year-old mother of three is a force of kindness, faith and beauty, both inside and out.

 

And people do pay it forward, she says: “When things are at their worst in this community or in this country, I find that faith, no matter what your belief system is, brings us all together. It provides us dignity and hope when we cannot find it anywhere else.”

 

A large, shiny white Pepperidge Farm delivery truck pulls up. Its driver greets the store’s volunteers with a smile — he knows them all by name — as he rolls up the back of the truck and hands over a variety of cases of crumb cakes, donuts and the company’s signature cookies.

 

He gets a hug from every woman standing there; he beams and leaves. All of the racial tensions, so prominent in daily news reports, are missing from this scene, even though all of the volunteers and customers are black and the delivery man is white.

 

To say that Braddock is a rough town is an understatement, but it has moved away from its darker days, thanks to the efforts Fetterman’s family has inspired.

 

She is married to the mayor, John Fetterman, who is 6-feet-8 inches tall, built like a linebacker, his skin etched with more than one tattoo of Braddock’s zip-code. He’s a physical contradiction: a Harvard-educated, conservative-reared, progressive politician who was put into the national spotlight when he conducted the first gay marriage in Pennsylvania, despite that being illegal back then.

 

But Mrs. Fetterman’s own journey here is nothing short of remarkable. So is her ability to bind this community together.

 

“I was 8 when my mother, a single mom, brought me and my brother to the United States from Brazil,” she recalled. “It all began quite innocently. Mom was having a conversation with my aunt, and she said very casually, ‘You know, this year we’ve only been robbed seven times, and only four were at gunpoint.’ ”

 

The realization of what life had become in her native country hit her mother like a bucket of cold water; this was not how she wanted to raise her children.

 

Fetterman’s eyes fill with tears as she explains how her mother, a woman who held a PhD, came to America with nothing and began to carve out her family’s life as a coat-check girl and housekeeper.

 

“We did not know anyone, we did not speak English, we were alone and undocumented and living in New York,” she said.

 

When they needed furniture for their home, they picked at what other people discarded on garbage day, salvaging some things to turn their apartment into a home.

 

Years later, Fetterman came to Braddock on a whim after reading about the plight of the once-mighty steel town in a magazine story; she hand-wrote a letter to the mayor who eventually would become her husband, offering to start a summer program for kids.

 

She fell in love with the town and its people at first sight.

 

Braddock has this tragic beauty that is hard to resist, nestled in the valley along the ancient Monongahela River. Ten miles from the city of Pittsburgh, it was at the heart of American exceptionalism before we were even a country.

 

It was here that General Braddock, with a young George Washington fighting by his side, was fatally wounded in the Battle of the Monongahela, marking the beginning of the French and Indian War, which led to the American Revolution.

 

A century later, a determined little Scotsman named Andrew Carnegie built the first Bessemer steel mill here, the Edgar Thomson Works, that fueled the industrial revolution.

 

Nearly a century after that, the same mill provided the steel, iron and coke for the war effort during World War II, as well as during the boom years of America’s great expansion after the boys came home.

 

It used to be, when you walked the streets of Braddock, that it was hard to dodge the crowds jamming the sidewalks. People were everywhere, and so were furniture stores (there were four), taverns, restaurants and grocery stores. Everyone knew everyone else, as people sat on their stoops discussing their shift at the steel mill that lined the town’s river for what seemed like miles.

 

The Edgar Thomson steel mill still stands today, forming a backdrop behind Fetterman as she greets the residents shopping at The Free Store. Steel used to employ 90,000 people in this valley; today, around 900 work in the plant.

 

Gone are the days when the workers lived in town. No one carries a lunchbox down the slopes into the mill’s gates; the people who work there fled years ago, as crime, drugs and gangs decimated the area.

Twenty-thousand people once lived in this town. Now there are 2,000.

 

Mayor Fetterman has worked hard not to make the town what it used to be but, instead, to revitalize it into something that gives hope to its majority-black, impoverished citizenry. He focuses on bringing in new industry (a medical marijuana plant is in serious discussion) and was instrumental in getting a brewery and tavern to locate here — several eateries, too — while demolishing, one by one, the blight that has eroded the once-majestic Main Street.

 

His wife focuses on healing hearts and restoring self-respect. In 2012, she founded The Free Store, which she stocks with donations provided by local businesses and residents wanting to make a difference.

 

“But there is also faith,” she said. “Faith in each other, faith in God, no matter where you worship, and faith that together we can make Braddock whole.”

 

She’s right: Despite the dwindling population, 20 churches still stand in this town, they still hold services and they still draw the community together — in the same way that The Free Store does, each serving a need with dignity, deference and a sense of togetherness.

 

Thick white columns of smoke swirl out of the stacks of the steel mill as Fetterman tends to the store. The energy shared between those who volunteer at the store and those who benefit from its inventory, feels as if it might be sufficient to power the steel mill for a month.

 

Fetterman expects there will be families looking for a special dress or tie or hat for Easter services today. “Usually we see people looking for something for a job interview, but people love to look special when they sit in a pew for Easter Sunday,” she said.

 

There aren’t any pews at The Free Store. But Fetterman has found a way to bring people together with a different kind of faith — in themselves.

[samhexum]

A Southern California university has awarded an honorary degree to the mother of a quadriplegic student after she attended every class with him and took his notes while he pursued his Master of Business Administration.

 

Judy O’Connor, a retired elementary school teacher, pushed her son Marty in his wheelchair for him to receive his degree during commencement Saturday at Chapman University in the Los Angeles suburb of Orange.

 

Then a choked-up graduation announcer said the school’s faculty, administrators and board of trustees had decided to give her an MBA. The idea for the surprise honorary degree came from her son.

 

A stunned but composed Judy O’Conner blew a kiss to the crowd giving her a standing ovation.

 

“I’m a geek. I love being in school,” she said before the ceremony. “I’m not going to lie. I’ve enjoyed every minute of it.”

 

Marty O’Connor received an undergraduate degree from the University of Colorado and was working as a salesman for a packaging industry company in 2012 when he fell down a flight of stairs and was paralyzed.

 

“After I got hurt, I didn’t know which end was up. I didn’t really have a direction,” Marty O’Connor said in a story on the school’s website. “I needed that mental challenge and wanted to add some professional value to myself.”

 

His mother was living in Florida but moved to Southern California to help her son do his MBA.

 

He uses an iPad, laptop, voice-recognition software and a special mouth stylus to communicate, but could not take notes or write the answers to tests. So his mother did.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you live in NYC, chances are you’ve come across the following strange and wondrous sight: A huge, colorful arrangement of fresh flowers placed at a seemingly random location. Perhaps a larger-than-life bouquet of forsythia and sunflowers bursting from an empty city trash can. Or a mammoth garland of roses draped around a statue in Central Park.

 

These installations are so striking, they’ve likely caused you to stop in your tracks. They’ve also likely caused you to ponder the identity of the genius bandit behind these glorious acts.

 

The genius bandit, it turns out, is Lewis Miller, a florist known for his fantastical wedding and party arrangements. Over the last few months, he and his merry band of beautifiers have been stealthily creating what they call Flower Flashes. Their goal? Only to bring joy to their fellow citizens’ daily commutes. “Gifting flowers to New Yorkers is a simple idea that I have been thinking about for years,” Lewis says. “I am in the business of fantasy and flowers, and it’s my job to transform key moments in my clients’ lives into joyful, everlasting memories. I wanted to recreate a similar feeling for the everyday city-dwellers and tourists of New York City.”

 

Below, Lewis gives Vogue a closer look at his Flower Flashes, and shares what else we can expect from his burgeoning side project.

 

“My team and I work really fast and very early in the a.m. Our call time for these flashes is 5:45 a.m., and we try to finish them before sunrise. We always recycle flowers from events when possible.”

 

“With our first one, the Imagine Mosaic in Central Park, we were surprised at how quickly a crowd had formed. And in this age of social media, we saw the fruits of our labor and were instantly rewarded via Instagram! We got to see how our idea translated in real time with hundreds of selflies and photographs documenting the flowers throughout the course of the day. It was really cool to see how people changed and altered the installation, sometimes by rearranging the flowers, other times by simply taking them!”

 

“I don’t see us stopping anytime soon. These flashes are so gratifying and rewarding on many levels. There is something sort of ‘Banksy-esque’ about what we do, which is fun and exciting!”

 

“We never broadcast where our next flash will be. They just pop up randomly. We do have a hashtag that we spray by each installation: LMD x NYC. It is chalk spray paint, so it washes away in the rain. It’s our way of saying #LMDWasHere.”

 

“I can’t tell you what’s next, but I can reveal that we are thinking bigger and planning for that! I would love to get some funding to do these flashes on a much larger scale and reach a lot more New Yorkers. I’d also like to Flower Flash other cities. Chicago, Mexico City, Miami, Los Angeles . . . they are all on my list.”

 

“Who doesn’t love to get flowers? They are such a luxury, and New York City is a very gritty, fast-paced town. If we can bring nature—something wild and sumptuous—to New Yorkers and make them smile, the way people smile when they witness a random act of kindness, then that is a great thing. That is my goal. It’s a really simple vision but powerful, I think, to try to create an emotional response through flowers.”

 

http://www.vogue.com/article/lewis-miller-flower-flashes-new-york-installations

[samhexum]

He wasn’t cut out for the police force, but his friendliness got him new work in politics.

 

Gavel, a German Shepherd, was booted from the police dog academy in Australia because he was too friendly.

 

Police said Gavel often greeted strangers and “did not display the necessary aptitude for a life on the front line,” according to BBC.

 

But he found a new home with the Governor of Queensland, where he was previously fostered as a puppy before heading to the academy.

 

Gavel arrived at the home of Governor Paul de Jersey last April when he was just six weeks old.

 

At the time, police had high prospects for the German Shepherd.

 

“Gavel comes from a long line of pedigree… if the family bloodline is anything to go by, in 16 months Gavel will be tracking and catching criminals as a proud member of the Queensland Dog Squad!” a police statement at the time said, according to BBC.

 

Gavel’s career in Australian law enforcement was short lived. The aspiring K-9 officer couldn’t live up to his family reputation, however.

 

What he lacked in police gruffness, he made up for in political charm.

 

He hung up his police coat and was reposted to the Government House in Queensland earlier this year, tasked with greeting guests and tour groups.

 

“Gavel’s new full title is ‘Gavel VRD’ (‘Vice-Regal Dog), and he will now wear a specially-made Government House coat, emblazoned with the Governor’s Personal Standard, the St Edward’s Crown and the brolga, the official bird emblem of Queensland,” reads a February statement from the Queensland governor’s office.

 

Indeed, the German Shepherd is seen in multiple photos sporting his custom coat or a scarf of the local rugby team.

 

A spokesman for de Jersey told the Brisbane Times that Gavel was a “valued and much-loved” part of the governor’s house.

 

“Gavel on occasions sits in on briefings with the Governor,” he said.

 

 

An Oklahoma police officer rescued a little boy tied up in a bin and then decided he would spend the rest of life making sure he stayed safe.

 

Poteua Police Officer Jody Thompson met his son, John, for the first time when he was responding to child abuse call in 2015.

 

“… when we found him he was bound by his hands and his feet with rope and had been submerged in a trash can held in the shower,” Poteua Police Chief Stephen Fruen told the news station. “They weren’t feeding him. He didn’t have much too eat. I think what he did get to eat he got at school. Bruises, he was covered in bruises from head to toe.”

 

Thompson said as soon he first laid eyes on the boy he knew that he was meant to be his son.

 

“When I’d seen him in that house shivering and his hands tied — just soaking wet from confusion — I knew at that moment the only time I would be satisfied and sure that he was safe is if he was with me,” he told CBS News.

 

First responders took John, then 8 years old, to the hospital where Thompson remained by his side as he recovered in the intensive care unit. The next day, he contacted the Oklahoma Department of Human Services to become a certified foster parent and brought John home.

 

Thompson, who had 15-year-old and 8-year-old sons already, said he didn’t tell his family initially, though they trusted he was doing the right thing.

 

On April 2015, the Thompsons welcomed John into their home. Two days later, the police officer learned his wife was pregnant with their third son.

 

Nearly 7 months later, the family received a call informing them John’s biological mother had given birth to a daughter while serving jail time — they took her in too, according to the news station.

 

John’s biological parents have relinquished their parental rights — though they have not done the same for their young daughter.

 

Now 10 years old, John is a straight-A student and a part of the gifted and talented program, according to KXNW. He said he’ll be forever grateful for his new family, especially his police officer father.

 

“He’s the reason I’m here right now,” John said.

 

The police chief praised Thompson’s heart, calling him a strong man and a great cop.

 

“All of us can sit back and say we would do the same in that situation, but to come through with it and to do that, that’s a measure of a man — and a very good police officer,” Fruen said.

[samhexum]

A security guard came to the rescue of a boy and an elderly woman who were trapped by a fire that tore through a Bronx building Monday.

 

Alex Pineiro was walking to his job as a security guard by E. 163 St. when he noticed the flames and people screaming from an apartment building shortly before noon.

 

“I saw the fire. It was bad,” Pineiro told the Daily News. “I knew I had to go in.”

 

With only a white tank top to shield his body from the heat, Pineiro went in through the front door, climbed to the second floor, and went into action.

 

“I grabbed the kid first,” Pineiro recalled. “The kid was probably about four years old. He was OK. He was breathing. He just didn’t know where he was. He was confused. I took him to the ambulance.”

 

Moments later, Pineiro saw an elderly woman, and came to her aid.

 

“She was severely burned on her arm,” Pineiro said. “I grabbed her as well. She fainted on me, and I carried her from there to the ambulance. I grabbed her and put her on my shoulder and I ran downstairs.”

 

Witness Chilly Reyes, 28, saw two children trying to escape the flames from the third floor.

 

“There were two boys about 10 years old,” Reyes said. “They were screaming and asking for help. We started telling them, Come down the fire escape. Use the stairs.' They were scared, but the flames were getting to be too much. We just kept yelling,Come down the stairs.’ The flames were getting to them. They looked scared. But they did. They got down.”

 

The building’s handyman said he was working on the second floor when he saw orange flames and started getting people out.

 

“I got an extinguisher,” the man said. “I tried to put it out. But it wouldn’t go out. The flames now are shooting from the second floor to third floor,” he said. “It just kept going. I said, we have to get the f–k out of here.”

 

“Then this guy came in,” the handyman said, describing Pineiro. “He’s a hero. He rescued a kid and an old lady out. I saw him running down the stairs with the kid, then the lady. He’s the man.”

 

Fire officials said 106 firefighters responded to the blaze, and got it under control at 12:45 p.m.

 

Nine people including two firefighters and a police officer were taken to Jacobi and Lincoln hospitals in stable condition.

 

 

 

SAD GOOD NEWS

An Ohio native in hospice care in Virginia had a dying wish fulfilled last month — one last mocha milkshake from a popular suburban Cleveland restaurant.

 

Fifty-year-old Emily Pomeranz died Friday of pancreatic cancer. With help from a friend in Virginia and the longtime owner of Tommy’s in Cleveland Heights, the shake arrived four days earlier.

 

A photo of a smiling Pomeranz holding the shake and the “The Milkshake Mission” story have traveled much farther than the drink’s 375-mile trip.

 

Restaurant owner Tommy Fello initially wasn’t sure how it could be accomplished after getting a call from Pomeranz’s friend Sam Klein. Fello made it work, packing the shake in dry ice and shipping it overnight.

 

Fello says the photo of Pomeranz proves giving is better than receiving.

 

[LivingnLA]

It's all a matter of perspective.

 

There's some truth to that because a positive attitude can help a great deal, but not when the entire deck is stacked against you. The data is pretty clear: upward mobility in the USA has always been bad and now we have the data to prove it. We're barely staying in the top-5 for entrepreneurship or innovation, nor are we well ranked for education or healthcare. The USA decided a few decades ago to prioritize capital accumulation, largely to the exclusion of all else, which impoverished the middle class because much of that capital used to be middle class income/wealth. All of this at the same time that public education was underfunded and undermined and healthcare costs grew like crazy. The USA as it exists now is for the top roughly 10% to 20%. Everyone else will struggle.

 

http://www.epi.org/publication/usa-lags-peer-countries-mobility/

http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2013/dec/19/steven-rattner/it-easier-obtain-american-dream-europe/

http://www.businessinsider.com/harvard-upward-mobility-study-2014-1

[+ Charlie]

Enough already samhexum! We're not depressed anymore!