Go here, pick a person, and give. That’s all I’m going to say. You can read the “About” page if you need more info, but I honestly believe this is the coolest website ever. Oh — and your loan is tax deductible.
No tag for this post.Archive for June, 2007
The strangest things are missing all of a sudden — my Swiffer dry duster, my Moosewood cookbook (the original — I still have the other versions, and they’re right where they should be), and the USB cable for my camera.
What the hell? When was I robbed? And by a vegetarian neat freak who has a Canon digital camera?
No tag for this post.So the murder rate has finally hit the “magic” number of 150. Why is it a magic number? I have no idea. It just seems like a really big number, considering it’s the tally of people who died for no good reason, and it’s half of 300. Work with me here. I’m tired.
Anyway — I’ve decided that I don’t want to leave the city, and will probably stay in the neighborhood. I say “probably” because I’m piss-flat broke, thanks to a few rotten apples in what used to be an otherwise normal/dysfunctional family, who decided my money would be better spent…by them, and not me. Add the sinking suspicion that my father’s last hurrah was to make sure I ended up broke — well, it’s been a shitty hideous week. It’s not every day you wake up to the realisation that your father hated you that much. Add that to the fact that I’m a little overworked, a little high-strung even on a good day, and the weather — well, I think I deserve a drug habit at this point. At the very least a case of Ben & Jerry’s.
But…believe it or not, even after last night’s nervous breakdown, I managed to get out of bed and go to work. Yes, I had a really bad hair day, and my eyes looked like I went a few rounds with Hasim Rahman. But I managed to get through it. Not unscathed, but I’m going to be okay, I think. And I’m going to try to dig my heels in and make all of this work. My neighborhood, my cafe, and my life.
And I’m finally able to say goodbye to my father. For good, this time.
No tag for this post.I, like my neighborhood, am at a crossroads.
I have lived here for seven years now — it will be seven exactly the weekend after Labor Day. Personally, I’ve experienced so many changes: We brought our son home from the NICU, I began a life in a new city — a place I had never spent more than maybe a few hours before plunking down my messenger bag and boxes, I made two huge career changes — both of which affirmed my long-held belief that I could manage to see something through and be relatively successful. My father lost his battle with cancer, and in turn — I lost him. M and I, after a few half-hearted attempts at “starting over” ended things, this time for good. I turned 39, a year of discontent if I ever saw one.
I am heavily invested in this city. My son attends school here, and it’s the only place he’s ever called home — not just the city, but our neighborhood. I own a business here. People depend on my success, it would seem, as much as I do, but for different reasons. For better or worse, this is now the place I have called home for seven years, and it’s only been in the past month or so that I’ve been questioning whether I want to stay. I’m not one for sticking around for a long time — no, indeed. When the going gets tough, well, so do I. And feeling this way makes me feel like a big ol’ hypocrite, since I’ve been quoted a bazillion times as saying that what we need here are committed residents who are willing to put up with all the crap and help this city grow into the city I know (knew?) it could be.
And now I’m sitting here, wondering if I haven’t made a terrible mistake.
But then…maybe not.
Am I overthinking this? Do we owe the place we call home anything but taxes and good neighbor-ness? Is our relationship with our home a give-and-take? Or is it a give-until-you-have-nothing-left? Somewhere there has to be a happy medium, and somewhere I have to find it, in order to stay. I hear a lot of people saying “Well, when the neighborhood improves…” or “When things get better, you’ll be…” — and I wonder — should we expect any return on our commitment now? Should we live our lives in the hopes that something better will happen?
Or is it better to accept what you have in the here and now and try to find peace within those parameters?
Ah, somehow I think I just answered my own question.
No tag for this post.If you’re in the 11th District, I’d like to recommend a City Council candidate for you. William Cole. Click on the link and read what he has to say, especially on reducing Baltimore’s out of control crime problem. I’m not going to offer a bunch of BS reasons why you should vote for him — obviously the choice is yours to make.
But I will say this — Bill and his wife are lifelong residents, terrific parents, and they honestly believe in this city and care about its residents. From the first time I found out that Bill was running for the City Council slot, I never once felt schmoozed or gladhanded — I felt like I was listening to someone who truly gives a damn. And that’s hard to come by these days. I want a representative of my community — someone I can relate to, someone who’s going to do more than just show up at every social function, invited or not. I’m excited about supporting Bill, and I hope you will be, too.
No tag for this post.Typical Baltimore police behavior…blame the victim.
And I love this quote in the Baltimore Sun from Keiffer Mitchell, the other mayoral candidate:
“Crime in Baltimore won’t be reduced by sound bites or rehashing old ideas,” Mitchell said.
In the same article, Keiffer proposes “weekly press conferences to update the public” as part of his crime prevention plan. Guess he’d better hone those sound bites now. You know, the same sound bites that won’t reduce crime.
Nice to see some things never change.
No tag for this post.…yet it’s very fitting:
No tag for this post.Murder is unique in that it abolishes the party it injures, so that society has to take the place of the victim and on his behalf demand atonement or grant forgiveness; it is the one crime in which society has a direct interest.
W. H. Auden
There’s a revolt going on in the Republican Party — people are denouncing the president left (no pun intended) and right, refusing to donate to the RNC (I let loose on the guy who called me with a “survey” where all the questions skewed towards what a great job the president was doing) and generally crapping on the president that they supported through almost eight years of hell.
I am a registered Republican.
I voted for Reagan.
I voted for Bush Sr.
I did not vote for Bush Jr. in either election, simply because I found him to be two steps short of halfwitted and worried about his ability to press buttons on machines that could potentially launch rockets.
And I have never ever been so ashamed of a president, a party, or a government. Ashamed to the point where I actually considered handing in my passport and taking up….oh, I dunno…Yiddish. Turkish. Any language so I didn’t have to be an American anymore. I would move away, blah blah — yeah, at least I didn’t say “to Canada”.
But then I decided no, America really is a great country. Someday soon people will wake up and realise what a terrible president we have — a man who has not only destroyed a nation not his own — he’s attempted to destroy this one. And finally his people are getting wise to him. Speaking out — the very people who supported him in the first place. Even they’re disgusted.
Hopefully we can learn from this mess, grow from it, and for God’s sake — never repeat it.
No tag for this post.In Baltimore?
Not if our city council has anything to say about it. Unfortunately, it looks like martial law — curfews, ID checks, etc — may be Baltimore’s only solution when it comes to fighting crime. Bring in the troops, I say! Our police are doing nothing, the city council and the mayor’s office are doing nothing — what are people supposed to do? How many of my neighbors have to be victimized — if it wasn’t real life, I’d swear I was living in an episode of The Wire. A show, by the way, I have never seen and will never watch. But that’s a post for another day.
Under our interim mayor, Sheila Dixon, crime has risen sharply — we’re not even into summer yet and already we’ve had over 120 homicides for the year. Our city council president’s plan is to recruit recent high school grads. Yikes. Our long-in-the-tooth officers are all but useless, and she’s looking to hire kids?? Because everyone knows an 18 year old with a gun is the most qualified to keep the streets safe. We have many 18 year olds with guns running the streets of Baltimore already — why not just give them badges and call it a day?
An incompetent police force, officers who refuse to take reports or answer calls, a mayor who deludes herself into thinking that she’s doing a fine job — and you wonder why people are leaving the city in droves again?
Yikes.
No tag for this post.