Register for Pangea Day Films – Cleveland

A few weeks ago I blogged about Pangea Day, a world wide event on May 10th using the power of film to bring people divided by borders, difference, and conflict to the realization that we are all the same.

Tip of the hat to Craig James for his comment on my original post with information on Pangea Day events in Cleveland – there are 2 public locations. Admission is free but seating is limited – you must register to attend.

Sarava at Shaker Square, hosted by Cat-Strat | Experiences. To watch at Savara register here.

Talkies Ohio City, Hosted by H&A International. To watch at Talkies Ohio City register here.

Fluff and Nonsense

Fluff and nonsense now with cute Kitty pictures!

Free Beer Tuesday

Life has been far too serious of late and I am suffering information/emotion overload. So today I am all about fluff and nonsense.

And I will write this post just as soon as I finish my beer.

UPDATE:

I never got my beer. I didn’t feel like writing either. Instead I went to my granddaughter’s spring concert “Now for something completely dinosaur.”

Then off to Dave’s Cosmic Subs - delicious!

Another Taser Death

Police departments throughout the world purchased Tasers as a safe alternative to disable suspects, only they are not safe.

Newsnet 5 reports the death of 24-year-old Benedictine graduate Kevin Piskura. Piskura, a 2006 Miami graduate, was tasered after getting into an argument with Oxford police after a friend was escorted from a bar. Raw video feed documents the incident.

Tasers are meant to be used in lieu of deadly force. Arguably they are less lethal than guns, but the increasing statistics of death after taser use against unarmed individuals, reveals that they are used far too casually.

I am moved to write this because of a comment my son made at a community carnival last summer. Wandering around among all the children, adolescents, parents and grandparents were members of our local police force. I noticed something on their belts that I couldn’t identify – my son told me they were tasers. As a criminal justice major he knew the statistics, and risk, of their use. He told me; I was surprised, but I didn’t do anything. I didn’t take any action and every time there is a taser death or injury I feel guilty.

No more. Their use is too commonplace and too dangerous. Tasers are more dangerous to people who have heart conditions, on certain drugs or flooded with adrenaline. I have tremendous respect for our police forces, but in a situation of a bar fight, where you have a young man who is upset and unarmed, the risk of use is simply and completely unacceptable.

Please write to your elected officials to speak out against taser use. Ask that taser use be banned pending further study into these unexplained deaths.

To Kevin Piskura’s family – my deepest condolences. The price of bad judgment should not be death.

Understand the risk:

Nobody really knows exactly why these people are dying, we only know that people are dying after they are Tasered,” said Cox. “When we started doing our first study, 70 people had died in the United States. Now it’s nearly 300 people who have died in the United States. They’re Tasered and then they die. We’re calling for a study to find out exactly why.

Cardiac experts have warned against taser use:

When 50,000 volts of electricity from a Taser surge across the body, it can instantly incapacitate a person — more safely than a blow from a police baton or a blast of pepper spray, its manufacturer contends.

But cardiologists are concerned that, in certain cases, the device might also interrupt the rhythm of the human heart, throwing it into a potentially fatal chaotic state known as ventricular fibrillation.

Rather than pump blood in sequence through its four chambers, a heart in ventricular fibrillation writhes uncontrollably, wiggling like a bag of worms. It is a common cause of sudden death.

Cardiologists also know that the window in which a jolt of electricity can halt a heart expands significantly when a patient is treated with certain drugs, or when the body is flooded with the fear hormone, adrenaline. Patients with underlying heart problems are also more vulnerable to the condition.

Amnesty International spoke out against taser use.

The degree of tolerable risk involving Tasers, as with all weapons and restraint devices, must be weighed against the threat posed. It is self-evident that Tasers are less injurious than firearms where officers are confronted with a serious threat that could escalate to deadly force. However, the vast majority of people who have died after being struck by Tasers have been unarmed men who did not pose a threat of death or serious injury when they were electro-shocked. In many cases they appear not to have posed a significant threat at all.

An excellent summary of Kevin’s story and related links is available at Mahalo.

From Truth Not Tasers a list of the dead in North America.

Taser use is banned in New Jersey, even by police. Thank you to Twisted Family Antics.

Wikipedia article on Tasers.

Day of Silence – stop name-calling of LGBT children

See why here.

A family of lost souls

Today was Son No. 1’s birthday. I wish I could write a happy, jolly, rollicking good story about food and celebration shared with family and friends, but I can’t. Not that we didn’t celebrate, because we did, only it was very subdued.

The past few months have been challenging to say the least. Divorce, job loss, stress and more stress have exacted a toll on my small family. For my boys my mom was a safe haven through the storm. She has always been their rock, so much so, that they didn’t notice that she was aging. When she fell in February they were certain that she would recover better and more sassy than ever. And she did, but once she was discharged home she began to change becoming more forgetful and fuzzy with each passing day.

Thursday morning she got it into her head she had a doctor’s appointment. First she went across the hall to her neighbor’s apartment to ask her for a ride. She became flustered when the neighbor wasn’t home, so she called her upstairs neighbor – repeatedly. Then she started calling a friend of the family. He called me. I had him take her to the ER to make sure she wasn’t having a stroke.

The fact of my mom’s decline kicks the family drama into high gear. After my brother’s death, without discussion with any other family member, my mother signed over all her health care to my brother’s widow. I objected, without success, and this woman now controls every aspect of my mother’s life.

It is heartbreaking because the bottom line is that my mom is fading and the woman who controls her destiny does not want to communicate with me. I took care of my mom during her last serious illness, now I am an outsider. I have to fight for even basic information. The isolation I feel and the hard reality of her decline break open my heart and flood my senses with memories and regret.

I am a grown woman and a child in the same instant. I am here writing this and at the same time I am back on Ravenwood walking home from school. One moment I see my mom bent with osteoporosis, struggling for words, and the next I am standing in the hallway of my childhood home answering a ringing phone the day after my father’s death.

I am here now, full of sadness and grief that I cannot share with my only living sibling, and at the same time I am a 15 year old girl, full of sadness and grief over my dad’s depression, that I try to share with him, but he’s not listening.

My family doesn’t communicate, nor do they forgive. This dynamic explains why I am constantly on alert, ready to bend my soul to fit within a constantly shifting emotional landscape. Nothing has ever been clear; nothing has ever been safe.

Son No. 1 shares the same birthday as my older brother and my father’s father (both deceased), so it is natural that birthdays bring up family history. His fiancé is a genealogy wizard and since she had just received my dad’s Navy records, the discussion turned to family history and dynamics. The discussion was made even more poignant because of the events of the past week.

Neither of my parents was raised in a stable home. My mother immigrated here when she was a teenager; her father had lived in the USA through most of her childhood. My grandmother stayed behind in Europe until he was ready to bring them here. It was not an easy life. My grandmother knew nothing of mothering; she herself was illegitimate, given away at the age of 8 to work as a servant to a distant relative. My grandmother, although loving to her grandchildren, was never very motherly towards my mom. In fact I never saw her show any affection to her only daughter. Ever.

My father’s birth mother died at the age of 29. His father remarried almost immediately to a woman who, family lore says, hated the very ground my father walked on. His home life must have been miserable because he ran away at the age of 7 to work in the circus. He returned home briefly at age 11, but was gone for good by the time he was 15.

I can’t imagine what it was like for either of them, but it sure explains the lack of laughter in our home. The knowing of their history now, against the backdrop of my mom’s fragility and the larger family dysfunction, makes me feel as though I am falling through time. I can’t get my footing.

I miss my brother. I wish I could tell him how my heart is breaking that my mom is at the end of her life. I miss being able to talk about my dad and growing up. I miss him. I miss him even though he doesn’t miss me.

Hell yeah we’re bitter

Regular readers to this blog may have noticed the prevalence of depressing posts focused on job loss, job searching, depressed economy and depressed Five Husbands. Getting me to laugh was damn near impossible. Until today. Linking from social network contact to contact I discovered the root of my unhappiness, dare I say bitterness, broken down in a pie chart that brought tears (of laughter) to my eyes courtesy of 23/6.

Tip of the hat to to MarilynM for linking to Lee Stranahan’s Obama in 30 Ad (excellent) and the happy coincidence that brought me to Bitter Pennsylvanians really bringing us all down.

Life is fleeting – what will you do?

Tip of the hat to Shape + Colour. And he is right the You Tube version doesn’t do it justice – watch the HD version to appreciate the true beauty.

The devil and the Compact to Help Ohioans to Preserve Ownership

Bill Callahan’s well stated “Now the devil is… where the devil always is” observation on the Governor’s Compact to Help Ohioans to Preserve Ownership offers a key insight to the value of these non-binding measures. The compacts are non-binding, but as Callahan points out

the servicers are committing themselves to report progress to the Commerce Department and otherwise stay engaged with Strickland, Zurz and Dann. Presumably these officials will be checking in regularly with local governments and community agencies, and looking to broker (or jawbone) cooperation where it’s lacking. Will this work? It could. The Compacts establish an agreed-upon set of benchmarks — public expectations, in effect — for good servicer behavior. These benchmarks are definitely a big improvement over the industry’s standard practices to date. The reporting obligation, combined with a strong capacity for public monitoring and feedback (at least here in Cuyahoga County), should create some pressure on the servicers to honor their “nonbinding” commitments. If they don’t, a public record of their failure will be created — a record to support the need for binding action by the State.

I read the Citi compact and agree that the benchmarks are a big improvement over standard practices, but I wonder, given the problem of unemployment, whether early contact and free nonprofit counseling will make any difference at all. I echo Callahan’s observation that the public monitoring of these nonbinding compacts will build a record to support the need for binding action by the state.

Reviewing the compact with my jaded lawyer eyes I see this:

Citi’s specially trained servicing unit will work with borrowers to find solutions short of foreclosures and try to ensure that no borrower loses his or her home.

If a borrower has the desire, ability and intent to make their mortgage payments, Citi will work with them to keep them in their home.

To the extent permissible within existing fiduciary, contractual or other legal obligations and in accordance with prudent mortgage lending and servicing practices Citi will: waive fees and/or penalties; provide fixed rate loan modifications; modify loans based on the homeowners’s ability to repay; forgive some loan principle; or assist homeowners to remove negative information on their credit reports.

But read this:

Citi’s specially trained servicing unit hey we got a 100 million dollar subsidy to pay for counseling and all those out of work lawyers come CHEAP – talk as long as you want will call work with borrowers night and day, especially on holidays and call your neighbors to put notes in your door if you don’t’ answer the phone to find solutions such as charging you a one time fee you can’t afford and add another year or two on the mortgage short of foreclosures and try to ensure that no borrower loses his or her home.

If a borrower is not one of those lazy poor people has the desire, ability and intent to make their mortgage payments, Citi will work with them to keep them in their home.

To the extent that it doesn’t affect our CEO’s huge inflated salary or upset our stockholders permissible within existing fiduciary, contractual or other legal obligations we always have a GOOD reason for not helping you and in accordance with prudent mortgage lending and servicing practices but you know that is not going to happen because we have to take what we can get before your fold Citi will: waive fees and/or penalties; provide fixed rate loan modifications; modify loans based on the homeowners’s ability to repay; forgive some loan principle; or assist homeowners to remove negative information on their credit reports, ha ha just kidding we aren’t going to do this but it makes us look good to say we will try.

Volunteer for Earth Day 2008

You still have time to get involved!

Earth Fest 2008 sponsored by Earth Day Coalition, north east Ohio’s nationally recognized leader in community-based environmental education and leadership is just around the corner. The 19th annual Earth Day celebration will be held in Cleveland on Sunday April 20, 2008 at Cleveland Metroparks Zoo, from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm. It takes hundreds of volunteers make this event possible. You still have time to be a part of making this exciting event happen.

Attend a Volunteer Orientation this coming Saturday, April 12, 2008 from 10:00 am to 11:30 am at the the Carnegie West Branch of the Cleveland Public Library:

The Carnegie West Branch of the Cleveland Public Library is located at 1900 Fulton Road (just north of the intersection of Fulton Road and Lorain Avenue), Cleveland, 44113, right across the street from the Earth Day Coalition offices.
Ample free parking on the street or in the lot located at the corner of West 38th and Bridge Avenue. RSVP by calling Earth Day Coalition at 216-281-6468.