Monday, December 29, 2008
From Ann
Begin forwarded message:
The parents did have to make the hard, hard decision to take Res off of life support and he did pass away at 1 am this morning. Please do uphold them especially, along with extended family, and their baby, in your prayers. Res' mother's mother and sister are travelling from the east coast today.
Thank you all again,
Mary Ellen,
Full story here.
The parents did have to make the hard, hard decision to take Res off of life support and he did pass away at 1 am this morning. Please do uphold them especially, along with extended family, and their baby, in your prayers. Res' mother's mother and sister are travelling from the east coast today.
Thank you all again,
Mary Ellen,
Full story here.
"The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button"
From Lagniappe in the Times-Picayune:
It's right there, writ large on the Paramount Pictures movie poster: "Brad Pitt" and "Cate Blanchett." They are the marquee stars of David Fincher's fantasy-epic "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," but they are by no means the film's only stars.
It's not spelled out there on the placard, but within the film's opening minutes another key character makes a grand entrance: the city of New Orleans. And the general consensus seems to be that the movie, which opened on Christmas, is better for it.
To think, it almost didn't happen. After all, Baltimore was the setting for the F. Scott Fitzgerald short story that inspired the film, about a man who is born as an 80-year-old and, as everyone around him ages, keeps getting younger.
Grandpère and I went to see "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" Saturday night. As the TP says, the movie stars Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, AND the city of New Orleans. Although F. Scott Fitzgerald's story, on which the movie is based, is set in Baltimore, the costs of filming there would have been prohibitive. When the promoters of the film industry in Louisiana, which offers extensive tax-credits to moviemakers, pushed for filming the movie in New Orleans, Frank Kennedy, the producer, agreed.
Oh, and am I glad that he did. Once I suspended disbelief and accepted the magical realist basic premise of the film and let go to groove with the ambiance of New Orleans as a major character in the movie, I was entranced. Brad Pitt's acting was the best I've seen since "Seven". Cate was excellent as a free spirit, a ballet dancer. Taraji P. Henson, Benjamin's adopted mother, is wonderful as a woman who well knows the vicissitudes of life and accepts Benjamin just as he is.
Kennedy added, "When you're dealing with a kind of sense of magical realism, which is inherent in this kind of storytelling, it just felt like New Orleans was perfect, because you just believe a story like that could come out of a place like New Orleans. So Eric just embraced that and made that a part of the script."
For Roth, the task really wasn't that difficult, he said. The Oscar-winning screenwriter of "Forrest Gump," "The Insider" and "Munich" did some slight tinkering with his script -- throw in a Sazerac here, a streetcar there -- but, for the most part, the city boasts such a singular quality that four simple words took care of most of it.
"As soon as I wrote 'Exterior, New Orleans, day,' it became like a whole other character," Roth said. "It was amazing. It was like you could see right away there was nothing you had to add to that. In other words, you don't have to do a big description of what that means. It carries such a sort of febrile quality to it. In fact, everything about it -- the sound, the smell, the taste of New Orleans -- is so distinctive and so American."
In some of the scenes, the locations seemed familiar, but I couldn't quite place them. I think of one restaurant. The Peristyle and the lagoon in City Park (pictured above) were obvious, along with the St. Charles Avenue streetcar. Benjamin grew young in a house on Coliseum Street. I'd love to know the locales of the other local scenes. If I'd waited for all the credits to roll, I suppose that I would know. I searched around the internet, but I wasn't able to find a list.
Some of you may think that I make up stories, but I don't - at least, not from whole cloth. I plead guilty to the occasional embellishment. After all, I'm from the South, and if a little tweak of the truth improves the story, then I'll do it. Grandpère knows the local contact for movie people when they want extras, locations, and whatever for the film. The movie paid money for a boat from the boat museum that GP directs and an old wooden picnic table of ours that we were about to throw away. Neither of us remembered to look for the boat or the picnic table while we watched the film because we were caught up in the story, so we don't know if they were used or not. When the movie comes out on DVD, we'll watch again to see if they made it onto the screen.
Jason Flemyng, an Englishman, who plays Benjamin's biological father, won my heart even before I saw the movie when I read this:
Jason Flemyng ("Snatch," "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen"), the gregarious English actor who plays Thomas Button -- the father of Pitt's title character -- said his time in the city "changed my opinion of America."
He had never been to New Orleans before the film, but he still lights up when he talks about the city.
"I listen to WWOZ on my laptop still, to this day, check the Saints results every week," Flemyng said at the Beverly Hills press event. "It changed my life. That city changed my life."
He added: "I know Finch (David Fincher) sees this film as an apology to the city. It's an apology to the city for having let it down so badly, internationally and nationally, and I think Finch is very clear about that."
Amen!
On Sheltering The Homeless
In response to Sarah's comment on the "Sleeping Giant Wakes Up":
thejanet has left a new comment on your post ""Sleeping Giant Wakes Up"":
What Sarah describes as her experience is not the same as my experience. That might possibly be explained by different regions, or the passage of several years, I don't know. But I can tell about my experience, because I think that my experience, expanded exponentially, would work at the federal level.
Oh cool. I get to be the hope in this conversation!
I sat on the board of the only homeless shelter in this county. Unbelievable but true, my city drives its homeless up to the shelter 25 miles away, the result of its NIMBY attitude. The shelter was an outgrowth of a need the local ministerial alliance saw and did something about. Our ministerial alliance includes most clergy, except for the Catholics and the Baptists, and yes, represents less than half of the churched Christians. Anyway...
I started on the board during the Reagan administration, and so initially I saw a preponderance of families, the ones on the cusp that, when their assistance dried up, they couldn't make it so ended up at the shelter. We also got a lot of recent prison releases, a spattering of Vietnam vets, and a few of the mentally damaged. Over the time I stayed involved with the shelter, our demographics changed, with fewer families, way more veterans, and about the same percentage of prison releases and mentally ill.
At first the shelter was only a night shelter, open from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. The evening meal was supplied by whatever church was on the schedule, each coming around approximately every six weeks. Breakfast was another volunteer making the rounds and picking up all the day-old doughnuts (which were free for us). Rules for the shelter were few and simple: no drugs, alcohol or weapons allowed inside the door, and everyone must take a shower every evening. And that was it, if someone didn't want to leave his/her stash of drugs/alcohol/weapons out on the porch, they could sleep in the front yard and come no closer. Oh yeah, and that a person could only stay 45 days in total in any one year. That one we broke as often as it was kept, as long as the family (it was always the families) would not show up for a week's time so we could document them as in the midst of a new crisis, not the old one they'd used the 45 days on.
We saw the clear need for expanding our hours (just watching the families trying to get their kids moving and out by 7 was painful) and we had no family spaces, just a room for men and a room for women. Parents decided if their children were separated by gender, or if they slept in the women's room with mom. But there were no funds for that, we were just managing to pay our one employee (the director).
(this is already getting too long, so just pretend that about 14 years passed between last paragraph and this one.) With all the new space (possible from a grant from the county and state, paying us a price per head served) we had 10 family bedrooms, four classrooms and a workshop out back. We were now a 24 hour shelter, also housing the food pantry, the clothes closet and the furniture warehouse (all charitable organizations serving our population once they were out of the shelter in their own place) and we had expanded payroll to include a grant writer, a social worker (who mainly helped shelter residents apply for what benefits they could qualify for) and oh I forget what we called him, but two someones who split the night sheltersitting duties),
Here's the part I think could be expanded or at least built upon to make up a national program... in our classrooms we ran classes all through the days and evenings, classes such as how to manage a bank account, basic computer skills, how to budget, how to parent, you know, basic life skills plus literacy skills and a series of classes to help earn their GED. These were mostly taught by the different kinds of social workers out of the various county agencies. And in the shop area, those not going on job interviews were either working on bicycles or computers.
Last paragraph, I promise, but I've got to explain that... I'm particularly proud of this because it was my project. We put out the word that we'd love to get donations of old bicycles and old computers. Didn't have to be working, we were going to strip the usable parts out of them anyway. And that's what they did, they broke down the bicycle/computer and sorted the parts into our "parts graveyard," then those who had been trained (by us volunteers) were building new working bicycles and computers, which we either sold or used.
This came out of a need for computers for our basic computer skills classes (which have now expanded into various software training to improve a residents "hire-ability" like Excel classes, etc. And we'd already identified a huge problem with our residents finding a job, actually two problems, one was no residence or phone to be contacted at, and the other was no transportation to interviews or jobs. So that's why we started canabalizing bicycle parts to make whole bicycles. But it turned out that we were building way more computers and bikes than we needed, so we sold a lot of them, too. The residents who worked that week (doing anything in the shop) got credit for their share of the split. This resulted in them able to save that almost impossible first and last month's rent required to get a place.
It was like magic, everything worked. And the intangible worked, too. I saw residents turn into different people the first time they got their script to be cashed in the day they moved out for good. More than once someone would turn to me and brag "I'm now worth x amount of dollars." This was a real accomplishment, and the pride and self worth was way more than the dollar amount (usually between $50-150 a week per shop worker).
I have more, but Chere Mimi doesn't need a novel in her comments. But see? Can't you see the way forward? We didn't help all the homeless in the county, we didn't have the space. I hated having to keep a wait list. But we'd call all the police departments in the county with how many openings we had each day and I don't know for sure what they did for those we didn't have room for. I strongly suspect several of them were in the habit of taking these people home for short periods of time, in fact I know that was true.
And that's my story of hope for today. I can see how to adapt this to work on a larger level, and there are sooo many federal agencies that should cut into their budget for us, like the defence department, the justice department (rep for the VA), etc. Now our population is mostly ex-military young ones with PTSD. I know the VA doesn't get the funds it needs to take care of our veterans, but it should!!
Janet, don't worry about running long in the comments. The comments belong to my readers. Plus, you gave me a post on a wonderful story of hope.
thejanet has left a new comment on your post ""Sleeping Giant Wakes Up"":
What Sarah describes as her experience is not the same as my experience. That might possibly be explained by different regions, or the passage of several years, I don't know. But I can tell about my experience, because I think that my experience, expanded exponentially, would work at the federal level.
Oh cool. I get to be the hope in this conversation!
I sat on the board of the only homeless shelter in this county. Unbelievable but true, my city drives its homeless up to the shelter 25 miles away, the result of its NIMBY attitude. The shelter was an outgrowth of a need the local ministerial alliance saw and did something about. Our ministerial alliance includes most clergy, except for the Catholics and the Baptists, and yes, represents less than half of the churched Christians. Anyway...
I started on the board during the Reagan administration, and so initially I saw a preponderance of families, the ones on the cusp that, when their assistance dried up, they couldn't make it so ended up at the shelter. We also got a lot of recent prison releases, a spattering of Vietnam vets, and a few of the mentally damaged. Over the time I stayed involved with the shelter, our demographics changed, with fewer families, way more veterans, and about the same percentage of prison releases and mentally ill.
At first the shelter was only a night shelter, open from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. The evening meal was supplied by whatever church was on the schedule, each coming around approximately every six weeks. Breakfast was another volunteer making the rounds and picking up all the day-old doughnuts (which were free for us). Rules for the shelter were few and simple: no drugs, alcohol or weapons allowed inside the door, and everyone must take a shower every evening. And that was it, if someone didn't want to leave his/her stash of drugs/alcohol/weapons out on the porch, they could sleep in the front yard and come no closer. Oh yeah, and that a person could only stay 45 days in total in any one year. That one we broke as often as it was kept, as long as the family (it was always the families) would not show up for a week's time so we could document them as in the midst of a new crisis, not the old one they'd used the 45 days on.
We saw the clear need for expanding our hours (just watching the families trying to get their kids moving and out by 7 was painful) and we had no family spaces, just a room for men and a room for women. Parents decided if their children were separated by gender, or if they slept in the women's room with mom. But there were no funds for that, we were just managing to pay our one employee (the director).
(this is already getting too long, so just pretend that about 14 years passed between last paragraph and this one.) With all the new space (possible from a grant from the county and state, paying us a price per head served) we had 10 family bedrooms, four classrooms and a workshop out back. We were now a 24 hour shelter, also housing the food pantry, the clothes closet and the furniture warehouse (all charitable organizations serving our population once they were out of the shelter in their own place) and we had expanded payroll to include a grant writer, a social worker (who mainly helped shelter residents apply for what benefits they could qualify for) and oh I forget what we called him, but two someones who split the night sheltersitting duties),
Here's the part I think could be expanded or at least built upon to make up a national program... in our classrooms we ran classes all through the days and evenings, classes such as how to manage a bank account, basic computer skills, how to budget, how to parent, you know, basic life skills plus literacy skills and a series of classes to help earn their GED. These were mostly taught by the different kinds of social workers out of the various county agencies. And in the shop area, those not going on job interviews were either working on bicycles or computers.
Last paragraph, I promise, but I've got to explain that... I'm particularly proud of this because it was my project. We put out the word that we'd love to get donations of old bicycles and old computers. Didn't have to be working, we were going to strip the usable parts out of them anyway. And that's what they did, they broke down the bicycle/computer and sorted the parts into our "parts graveyard," then those who had been trained (by us volunteers) were building new working bicycles and computers, which we either sold or used.
This came out of a need for computers for our basic computer skills classes (which have now expanded into various software training to improve a residents "hire-ability" like Excel classes, etc. And we'd already identified a huge problem with our residents finding a job, actually two problems, one was no residence or phone to be contacted at, and the other was no transportation to interviews or jobs. So that's why we started canabalizing bicycle parts to make whole bicycles. But it turned out that we were building way more computers and bikes than we needed, so we sold a lot of them, too. The residents who worked that week (doing anything in the shop) got credit for their share of the split. This resulted in them able to save that almost impossible first and last month's rent required to get a place.
It was like magic, everything worked. And the intangible worked, too. I saw residents turn into different people the first time they got their script to be cashed in the day they moved out for good. More than once someone would turn to me and brag "I'm now worth x amount of dollars." This was a real accomplishment, and the pride and self worth was way more than the dollar amount (usually between $50-150 a week per shop worker).
I have more, but Chere Mimi doesn't need a novel in her comments. But see? Can't you see the way forward? We didn't help all the homeless in the county, we didn't have the space. I hated having to keep a wait list. But we'd call all the police departments in the county with how many openings we had each day and I don't know for sure what they did for those we didn't have room for. I strongly suspect several of them were in the habit of taking these people home for short periods of time, in fact I know that was true.
And that's my story of hope for today. I can see how to adapt this to work on a larger level, and there are sooo many federal agencies that should cut into their budget for us, like the defence department, the justice department (rep for the VA), etc. Now our population is mostly ex-military young ones with PTSD. I know the VA doesn't get the funds it needs to take care of our veterans, but it should!!
Janet, don't worry about running long in the comments. The comments belong to my readers. Plus, you gave me a post on a wonderful story of hope.
It's Still Christmas - Day 5
The Madonna icon was written by Luiz Coelho. Isn't it lovely? Luiz is mon cher petit-fils adopté. Luiz is originally from Brazil, but currently lives in the Atlanta area, here in the US.
The icon is approximately 6 in. by 8 in. in size. It is to be mine. Luiz says it is, or soon will be, on the way. How lovely it will be to read the icon, knowing of Luiz' prayers which accompanied its creation. Icons are windows into heaven. Look through the icon and see God.
Please Pray....
From Ann:
Storm the doors of heaven for this family -- please -- St. Thomas is about 75 miles from where I live and was my first placement. Ann
Begin forwarded message:
"Yesterday afternoon a three-year old boy was life-flighted to Salt Lake City after collapsing while at play. His mom is on the Vestry at St. Thomas, Dubois, WY and has flown early this morning to Salt lake with her infant daughterl. His father was on the flight with the 3 year old who had heart surgery last summer and seemed to be thriving. They are not sure yet what has happened, but he is in intensive care, on a respirator and in a coma. Just now they were told we may not know the outcome for up to three days. Res was baptized here last year and is a fixture at our altar rail all during the eucharist - mouthing many of the words of liturgy. Please help us pray for this child's healing, and comfort and strength for all the family."
UPDATE from Ann: Prayers for his family. Ann
Begin forwarded message:
I just received this email from my friend in Jackson, WY
We just got news that Res died last night.
May Res rest in peace and rise in glory. May God give comfort, consolation, and the peace that passes understanding to all those who love Res. May God enfold them in healing love.
Storm the doors of heaven for this family -- please -- St. Thomas is about 75 miles from where I live and was my first placement. Ann
Begin forwarded message:
"Yesterday afternoon a three-year old boy was life-flighted to Salt Lake City after collapsing while at play. His mom is on the Vestry at St. Thomas, Dubois, WY and has flown early this morning to Salt lake with her infant daughterl. His father was on the flight with the 3 year old who had heart surgery last summer and seemed to be thriving. They are not sure yet what has happened, but he is in intensive care, on a respirator and in a coma. Just now they were told we may not know the outcome for up to three days. Res was baptized here last year and is a fixture at our altar rail all during the eucharist - mouthing many of the words of liturgy. Please help us pray for this child's healing, and comfort and strength for all the family."
UPDATE from Ann: Prayers for his family. Ann
Begin forwarded message:
I just received this email from my friend in Jackson, WY
We just got news that Res died last night.
May Res rest in peace and rise in glory. May God give comfort, consolation, and the peace that passes understanding to all those who love Res. May God enfold them in healing love.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Please Pray for Anne
Mark Harris' mother, Anne, who is 90 years old, fell and broke her hip. Please pray for Anne and for her family and friends. Mark says:
Anne is teaching our family about getting really old, and doing a fine job of it.
Anne, may God bless you, and heal you, and surround you with love,
Anne is teaching our family about getting really old, and doing a fine job of it.
Anne, may God bless you, and heal you, and surround you with love,
"Sleeping Giant Wakes Up"
In response to this post by MadPriest, on the bishops in the Church of England speaking out against the Labour Party's economic policies:
So I am delighted that yesterday a whole bunch of my bishops laid into the Labour Party's economic policy big time, in particular its dubious moral basis. In fact, they savaged our political leaders like Jack Russell terriers in a barn full of rats. Of course, the labour politicians are squealing like cornered rodents and are quoting statistics like only called-to-account politicians are capable of doing.
Of course, it would have been better if the bishops had collectively been prophets before things got so bad.
Now I know that many of the bishops in the Episcopal Church have spoken out against economic policies which continue to favor the wealthy amongst us, to the detriment of the "least of these", but a collective effort would be fine thing to see. Here, too, it would have been good to see the collective message some years ago, preached from pulpits, not just in open letters.
What struck me most were the comments to the post on policies in England having to do with the homeless, such as:
If you're a single woman and pregnant your local council has an obligation to house you.
or
Actually, it is very difficult to be homeless in England. You have to chose to live on the streets or somehow slip out of sight of social services and homeless charities (this does happen especially with the mentally ill). I have worked with the homeless and the people using emergency shelters are all either addicts or mentally ill. Once we get people into the shelters we work with them and housing providers to get them off the streets as fast as possible. Unfortunately, this usually means that the alcoholics and junkies will have less money to spend on alcohol and so they go back on the streets. Even then we continue to offer them food, shelter, a bed for the night, medical care, advice and washing facilities in our facilities as often as they want it. We even have wet centres where alcoholics can bring their drink inside (we put in plastic bottles for them to avoid any nasty messes). All this is paid for by a mix of local councils and charities and by getting "sell-by date" food free from supermarkets.
Now I know that many churches, private charities, and civil authorities are giving aid to the homeless, and that some folks choose to be on the streets, many of them because of mental illness or addictions, but the efforts are, in many cases, small scale, ad hoc approaches.
When the Obama administration takes over, would it be too much to ask for those who legislate to pass laws requiring communities to give aid to the down and out so that the private and small-scale operations need not bear the whole brunt of the growing, sometimes overwhelming, problem of homelessness and the wandering mentally ill? The numbers of homeless veterans is growing after declining for 20 years after the Vietnam War. Many of them suffer from PTSD, and are not receiving adequate mental health care through the military health services.
Comments to the post from folks in the US highlight the sorry state of government help for the homeless and for the mentally ill who are poor. There are many more homeless than the small-scale operations can care for. Attitudes like "the homeless choose to be homeless" abound. Is it time to take another look at the policies that mentally ill folks cannot be hospitalized against their will unless they are an immediate danger to themselves or others (with many falling through the cracks) to see if that is truly the best way to go? And how about adequate funding for outpatient mental health care, once the folks are released?
Read a few of the posts at Under the Overpasses, a blog by Under There, who works the homeless who live under the overpasses to see a bit of the reality of homelessness in the US.
Surely, we can do better.
So I am delighted that yesterday a whole bunch of my bishops laid into the Labour Party's economic policy big time, in particular its dubious moral basis. In fact, they savaged our political leaders like Jack Russell terriers in a barn full of rats. Of course, the labour politicians are squealing like cornered rodents and are quoting statistics like only called-to-account politicians are capable of doing.
Of course, it would have been better if the bishops had collectively been prophets before things got so bad.
Now I know that many of the bishops in the Episcopal Church have spoken out against economic policies which continue to favor the wealthy amongst us, to the detriment of the "least of these", but a collective effort would be fine thing to see. Here, too, it would have been good to see the collective message some years ago, preached from pulpits, not just in open letters.
What struck me most were the comments to the post on policies in England having to do with the homeless, such as:
If you're a single woman and pregnant your local council has an obligation to house you.
or
Actually, it is very difficult to be homeless in England. You have to chose to live on the streets or somehow slip out of sight of social services and homeless charities (this does happen especially with the mentally ill). I have worked with the homeless and the people using emergency shelters are all either addicts or mentally ill. Once we get people into the shelters we work with them and housing providers to get them off the streets as fast as possible. Unfortunately, this usually means that the alcoholics and junkies will have less money to spend on alcohol and so they go back on the streets. Even then we continue to offer them food, shelter, a bed for the night, medical care, advice and washing facilities in our facilities as often as they want it. We even have wet centres where alcoholics can bring their drink inside (we put in plastic bottles for them to avoid any nasty messes). All this is paid for by a mix of local councils and charities and by getting "sell-by date" food free from supermarkets.
Now I know that many churches, private charities, and civil authorities are giving aid to the homeless, and that some folks choose to be on the streets, many of them because of mental illness or addictions, but the efforts are, in many cases, small scale, ad hoc approaches.
When the Obama administration takes over, would it be too much to ask for those who legislate to pass laws requiring communities to give aid to the down and out so that the private and small-scale operations need not bear the whole brunt of the growing, sometimes overwhelming, problem of homelessness and the wandering mentally ill? The numbers of homeless veterans is growing after declining for 20 years after the Vietnam War. Many of them suffer from PTSD, and are not receiving adequate mental health care through the military health services.
Comments to the post from folks in the US highlight the sorry state of government help for the homeless and for the mentally ill who are poor. There are many more homeless than the small-scale operations can care for. Attitudes like "the homeless choose to be homeless" abound. Is it time to take another look at the policies that mentally ill folks cannot be hospitalized against their will unless they are an immediate danger to themselves or others (with many falling through the cracks) to see if that is truly the best way to go? And how about adequate funding for outpatient mental health care, once the folks are released?
Read a few of the posts at Under the Overpasses, a blog by Under There, who works the homeless who live under the overpasses to see a bit of the reality of homelessness in the US.
Surely, we can do better.
Our Gal Maxine
1. Jim Baker and Jimmy Swaggert have written an impressive new book.It's called .........'Ministers Do More Than Lay People'
2. Transvestite: A guy who likes to eat, drink And be Mary.
3. The difference between the Pope and your boss, the Pope only expects you to kiss his ring.
5. The only time the world beats a path to your door is if you're in the bathroom.
4. My mind works like lightning, One brilliant flash and it is gone.
6.I hate sex in the movies. Tried it once. The seat folded up, the drink spilled and that ice, well, it really chilled the mood.
7. It used to be only death and taxes. Now, of course, there's shipping and handling.
8. A husband is someone who, after taking the trash out, gives the impression that he just cleaned the whole house.
9 My next house will have no kitchen - just vending machines and a very large trash can.
10. A blonde said, 'I was worried that my Mechanic might try to rip me off. I was relieved when he told me all I needed was turn signal fluid.'
11.Definition of a teenager? God's punishment...for enjoying sex.
12. As you slide down the banister of life, may the splinters never point the wrong way.
Thanks to Ann.
It's Still Christmas - Day 4
The angel of the Lord encamps
around those who fear him, and delivers them.
O taste and see that the Lord is good;
happy are those who take refuge in him.
(Psalm 34:7-8)
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