Is My Councilor Better Than His Voters Because He Served?

Dedication of the James Ayube Memorial Riverway, September 30th, 2011

A few days ago, I was reading the threads on Salemweb, and ran into Lloyd’s political commentary mixed amongst his Christmas best wishes.  (Christmas is not my favorite holiday, but I hope everybody had good festivities nonetheless.)

I don’t pay a lot of attention;  most of the threads on that board rehash old arguments that would never be settled even if Kim Driscoll were hit by a meteorite in bed tonight.

And why would I take issue with best wishes anyway, even if they’re satirical?  But Lloyd, in this thread, said something that has bothered me enough to stick my head out on a topic I never felt safe to bring up before.

Lloyd:

To Mike Sosnowski - Many thanks for your hard work in the face of dealing with individuals who have little or no appreciation for your service to your country, or your dedication to the ward you live in. Semper Fi.

I’m sure Lloyd didn’t mean anything negative in particular, except for criticizing those who don’t agree with Mike.

Or who don’t appreciate Mike’s service to his country as a Marine.

I respect his service.  But I have disagreed with Mike on many occasions.  I don’t approve of his performance.  I don’t like how he toadies to the Common and the Federal Street associations.  I was livid when he let someone from Northfields tell me what I should have or not have in my neighborhood.

But he’s a veteran.  I should not speak.

Right?

One of Mark Twain’s best short works, “The War Prayer”, goes right to the heart of my unease.  He describes the great swell of patriotism surrounding the Phillipine-American War, which he hated.

In a church, a fervent pastor is leading his flock in excited, vigorous prayer, praying for their young men, soon to go into battle, and for their total victory over their enemy.

In the middle of the prayer, a wild man walks in, and explains:

"I come from the Throne -- bearing a message from Almighty God!" The words smote the house with a shock; if the stranger perceived it he gave no attention. "He has heard the prayer of His servant your shepherd, and will grant it if such shall be your desire after I, His messenger, shall have explained to you its import -- that is to say, its full import. For it is like unto many of the prayers of men, in that it asks for more than he who utters it is aware of -- except he pause and think.

"God's servant and yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused and taken thought? Is it one prayer? No, it is two -- one uttered, the other not. Both have reached the ear of Him Who heareth all supplications, the spoken and the unspoken. Ponder this -- keep it in mind. If you would beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware! lest without intent you invoke a curse upon a neighbor at the same time. If you pray for the blessing of rain upon your crop which needs it, by that act you are possibly praying for a curse upon some neighbor's crop which may not need rain and can be injured by it.

"You have heard your servant's prayer -- the uttered part of it. I am commissioned of God to put into words the other part of it -- that part which the pastor -- and also you in your hearts -- fervently prayed silently. And ignorantly and unthinkingly? God grant that it was so! You heard these words: 'Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!' That is sufficient. the *whole* of the uttered prayer is compact into those pregnant words. Elaborations were not necessary. When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory--*must* follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!

If you pray for our victory, Twain says, you are praying for some mother’s son to die, for someone’s home to be bombed, for some child to die in fire.  (It’s worth going back to read the whole piece;  I do it no credit.)

I’m no pacifist.  I’ve grown up all my life knowing a military and veterans and armed forces and I don’t see that going away.  But war, as Sherman put it, is hell, and I hate sentimentalizing it or romanticizing it.

More to the point of my councilor, when I am told to support my councilor because he served,  I hear these unspoken things:

• “I served and I’m a better citizen than you!”
• “You can’t tell me what to do.  I served and you didn’t!”
• “You’d act better if  I sent you to boot camp, wouldn’t you?!”
• “Yes, I can tell you what to do!  Say Sir, Yes Sir!”
• “You didn’t serve.  You’re not really a citizen.  Or a person.”

This last point is inordinately cruel:  Though I did register for Selective Service and had no qualms or fears of the unlikely possibility that I would be called up, I would have never been able to pass the physical in any event;  my early eye history and my hearing loss would have certainly disqualified me.

If my councilor is superior to me because he served, and if I could not serve, I would have to think I’m an untermenschen.   (Societies that thought they had untermenschen they needed to deal with have all been stable and happy societies that have never made war within their nations or outside of it.  Right.  Sure.)

Mind you, I don’t think Mike himself thinks this of me.  He might hate what I wrote.  He could even yell at me as if he were my DI—and he’d be perfectly entitled to do so, given our disagreements!

But I’ve heard comments like Lloyd’s from so many people in the past few years.  Several years ago on Salemweb, I had made a comment on Eisenhower (whom I admire) and how I would not necessarily vote for a veteran because none of them were like our former General and President.

I got an extended lecture on the Greatest Generation.

I suspect the person who gave me that lecture, which has become a catechism over the years, did not serve.  Many people who are gung-ho about our military, who love our military above all else, the Fighting Keyboard types who would bomb Iran tomorrow, did not themselves serve.

To too many Americans, our soldiers are totems.  We worship them.  We use them to make ourselves feel better.  We can stand next to the lowest Army private and be his or her friend and be better because we are associated with a soldier.

To hear people tell it, the late James Ayube died for our sins.  I attended the dedication ceremony that named the bypass road for him, and I was dismayed about how my state rep, John Keenan, and my mayor Driscoll, just waved away the facts of Ayube’s death as if they were just a force of Nature.  I am left thinking that ceremony was not so much for Ayube’s family but for ourselves.

I don’t expect a ceremony like that to be a discourse on our foreign policies, but we, the people, are responsible for the well-being, the safety and most importantly the prudent use of our forces, with our  young people that we have asked to fight for us on our behalf.

We can’t take his death for granted, nor romanticize it, nor sentimentalize it.  But I’ve given up on our politicians realizing that because they of all people benefit the most from standing next to a soldier.

Getting back to my point, I’ve heard from a lot of people over the past few years, and not a few of my Facebook friends, who love the idea of a military government, even though it’s against our Constitution.

The military will just make things work!  In a military government, Lloyd can have me sent away for treason.  The Army can kill all them liberals!  Shoot illegal aliens all day, all night, with dogs and choppers and night vision, everywhere! 

I have to think if I am going to toady up to my councilor just because he served, I am helping to insure that the military takeover that we have always criticized other nations for doing, that could never happen because we loved Freedom more than anyone else, will easily happen right here at home.  To hear some tell it, we’re well on our way to welcoming our new Army overlords.

I won’t do it.

Mike can show up at my door anytime and give me General Patton’s method of discipline.  I understand it.  I’ll take it.

But I won’t kiss his ass just because he served and I didn’t.

Four Years Blogging

As is my tradition, I pay tribute to my late Mom and mark the anniversary of my blog.  As is also my tradition, I am tardy with it.  By at least two weeks!

Before I explain the picture, I want to give my belated welcome to Keep It Klassy, Salem, a relatively new blog that has been around for several years.  I don’t agree with the blogger on many things but I am delighted that someone is following Salem politics after the demise of the old Salem Politics blog.  His blog is in my blogroll now, as is the new Salem Patch, which has flashes of excellence and could be the future of news media on the North Shore, at least if AOL lets it.

Now, the picture.  As I’ve said on numerous occasions, I came from a foster home, and Jeannette Moisan was my foster mom and for all purposes my defacto Mom.  On the left is Pauline, Jeannette’s biological daughter.  If we were related by blood we would be brother and sister.  But she wasn’t my foster sister;  we had many girl foster children but none of them was ever, or ever could be, a “sister”.  So Pauline was also my defacto sister.

The cute little toddler with her is Monique.  Mom looked after many kids like her, but she was one of the sweetest.  She would turn on the charm and be manipulative as only a toddler could.  We had a dozen Monique stories, such as when she learned to say my sister’s name—and then kept her up all night saying “PAU-LYLINE!”  Or the time Pauline was in a fruit stand in Peabody and Monique yelled “DA-DA” (her name for me.)  Pauline tells her, “Da-da’s not here!”  Unknown to her I had, for whatever reason, walked down from Varney St. to find Pauline and walk into that same fruit stand…

What a sweet kid she was.  It was hard to see her go back to her Mom.  I hope she’s doing well today.

One last picture with Jeannette:

Back after an absence

Essex Street Mall 2011-05-26 007, originally uploaded by dmoisan.

Via Flickr:
Nature finally turned a switch to "Summer" today, as these folks are realizing.

And I've turned a switch, too.

I haven’t posted in almost six months.  I’m dispirited.

Last winter, my building had the bedbug hysteria that has affected many households in recent years.  Dealing with bedbugs has combined the worst aspects of moving and losing your house to fire or flood.  The Salem News covered the story in my building and it brought out the worst aspect of pest infestations—the moral opprobrium that comes when your betters can look down on you for being “dirty” and “unclean”, even though bedbugs, roaches and mice are blissfully unaware of class distinctions.  

In a building with a shared laundry space, like I have, I’ll never know how I got bedbugs and I just don’t care who or what “gave” them to me.  I just know that pest infestations don’t make me or my neighbors “immoral” or “unclean” or “lazy”, but that was on the minds of many of the Salem News commentariat.

There’s more, too.  Last spring I had quite a screaming match with my ward councilor Mike Sosnowski over a parking proposal at the Jail.

What I learned from that affair is that it doesn’t matter what neighborhood I live in, or what stake I have in anything, if someone more important than me thinks different.  At that meeting, a person from the Northfields neighborhood association asserted that me and my neighbors did not want commercial use at the Jail no matter what.

It doesn’t matter that that Northfields guy probably doesn’t even have a view of the Jail from his house.  And he never cared before about the apartment complex I live in.

As far as I can see, Mike Sosnowski has more or less aided and abetted groups like Northfields.  If you live in cheap rental housing, you will not get representation in Salem.

You will not get it.

Better that you show Mike your mortgage statement—or proof of McIntyre architecture—before coming to him with a problem.

I was at a meeting this past Saturday of the Alliance of Salem Neighborhood Associations.  It was held at the function room of Beverly Cooperative Bank, which is where the Downtown group meets.

I had my own problems with that group, and didn’t want to attend this meeting, except that I made a verbal commitment on recorded video and had to go. 

(I know the camera is on during our Commission meetings.  If I make a gaffe or a curse, then I do.  I don’t try to walk back what I said.  I said it and it’s on tape and that is that.)

Several people in the Alliance complained about being “outsiders”.  I wanted to say to them:  “Where’s Lucy [Corchado, head of  the Point association]?  Where are they?  The Point is a neighborhood, isn’t it?”

Those people have their own advisory board at the highest level of city government.  They have Jason Silva’s [Mayor Driscoll’s chief-of-staff] private number on speed-dial.  I have no doubt that someone like Michael Coleman can have Mike Sosnowski swing into action at 3 AM on a Sunday if he so commands it.  If Teasie Goggin wanted to repeat Mike Bencal’s Al Haig moment (“I’m in control here”, after the attempted assassination of President Reagan in 1981) when he tried to take charge of City Hall when the mayor was away a few years ago, she has more than enough social capital to do so!

They have that advisory commission in addition to the Alliance!  Tell me they are outsiders again?

As it happened, the meeting was a waste of time for me and and my colleagues on the Commission on Disabilities, since it was supposed to pertain to the MBTA parking garage, but was instead an unfocused rambling about pedestrian access and getting traffic usage stats, only to find out the state had already done that but nobody from the Alliance even read the report.  The Commission probably could have used that, but the person presenting that report didn’t bother to tell us where we could find the data from the state website.

(I’d filmed video of the meeting.  It would have been nice of them to tell us when the MBTA part of the meeting would get under way so I wouldn’t have to guess how long the batteries in my camera would last.  Not long enough as it turned out.)

If I can’t be involved in the workings of my own city, the one that I have spent 47 years in, I think, why am I bothering to blog?

I’ve asked myself that question over and over during the past six months.

The only thing keeping me going is the Commission—whose purpose I believe in with all my heart and soul—and Salem Access Television, where I have been applying my IT talents for 11 years.

I’m very proud, in fact, that SATV now has much of its local programming available over the Net.  Public meetings—including the Commission’s—are now available through our Government page.

I worked very hard with Sal Russo and the staff over the past year to make this possible and I am inordinately prideful.  I’ve been delighted to flip the figurative “bird” to a few former board members who thought this was a “fad” or “something for Dave and Sal to spend money on”.  (In fact, video-on-demand has been a roaring success at SATV.)

There are many other thoughts, ideas and initiatives at SATV and the Commission to make fodder for many more years of blog posts, which is why I’m continuing to blog.

But I will never, ever, let myself believe that I have a stake and a say with what happens in Salem.

I don’t.  And I won’t.

Starting a 4th year of blogging

I have recently completed 3 years of blogging.  By tradition, I have a picture of my mom, Jeannette.  This year, I found pictures of her cat Frisky, her most recent and last pet.  She is minding Mom’s motorized scooter;  Scooters like hers are now commonplace but this was really something in her day that helped her independence.

Another Frisky picture:

She’s with me, her “daddy”.  I could not leave the house without her at my ankles. (“DADDY GOES!  DO NOT WANT!”) When I did leave, she would tell Mom endlessly and at length in many words, “PAPA GONE!”  (And then, coming home, she would see me—and totally ignore me!  “NOT TALKING!  YOU WENT OUT”)  It’s been 16 years and I miss them both.

My past year’s blogging saw an old Salem blogging duo go away, and a new one emerge.  A dear friend of ours passed on. I saw a lot of rancor and strife, no small amount from myself.

We saw the design for a new Salem Depot go forward, and I also saw blogging burnout.  I’m still fighting that—if it were not for SATV and my work on the Commission I would be lost..

My apartment was rearranged when a new elevator was built in my building this past year.  It still isn’t open yet but hopefully soon…

Last year I missed the groundbreaking ceremony for the Salem Jail.  The ribboncutting was yesterday.  I missed that too.  But I did go to the open house!

To another year of blogging!

Final Thoughts on Jail Parking and the Greenspace

Final followup, I hope, to the ongoing Salem Jail Parking drama.  The Salem News gave an account of last Tuesday’s meeting, and talked about it some more.

Any time the neighborhood associations get involved in discussions like this, I’m unhappy.

I say this even though I was in substantial agreement with those opposed to the parking plan. 

Had New Boston Ventures came to the meeting with their original 39-space plan, I would have opposed it as well.

But NBV proposed what I thought was a very interesting compromise:  12 spaces and an access road.  The access road is required by the fire department in any event.

During the day, NBV suggested that the new spaces could be used by the elderly housing complex in which I live next door.  We have a serious parking problem.  Whatever my views are on over-dependence on the automobile in downtown, there’s an undeniable need for visitor spaces in my building and the adjoining building next door.  You can’t expect an oxygen delivery van to park in Museum Place.

I’d hoped that the committee would take that under consideration and table NBV’s compromise proposal until the next meeting.  The neighbors would vent and rant a bit but that’d be fine.

I had wanted it to work out—having green space, parking and the restaurant all at once.  Maybe it wasn’t possible but no harm in wanting it!

But that did not happen.  Mike Sosnowski had come into the meeting against the idea and went out against it.  The neighborhood groups were a big reason why.

I’d expected the meeting to have fewer attendees than I expected.  I had thought this was a matter for my immediate neighborhood, the Bridge St. Neck association, and perhaps the few urban planning experts amongst us.

Over 100 people showed up, most all from various neighborhood groups around the city.   They all spoke out against the proposal, whether they lived nearby or not. Despite what the News reported, there was no turn of opinion there.  All came in against, all left against.

Low point—angriest point for me—is when a gentleman from the Northfields spoke out against the proposal.

That’s not what I was angry about;  he had expressed many of the concerns I had had as well.  If he had a view of the Jail from across the river, he may have even had a point.  One point I’ve come back to is the great vista of the Jail from both northbound and southbound Bridge St.  It is beautiful!  I can only imagine what it looks like from the river and am looking forward to finding out when spring finally arrives.

But this guy started talking about how my building (and the building next door) didn’t want the restaurant and any commercial development. 

He didn’t ask us.  I know I didn’t coordinate my talking points with others from my building, but I wouldn’t pretend to speak for them.

He of Northfields, likely of a mortgage with five or six zeros in it, dictating to me and my neighbors what we think.

I was livid!

And he’s wrong about commercial development.  Next door to me is 10 Federal.

10 Federal has been a commercial property for the 60 years it existed;  at first for New England Telephone, then NYNEX, Bell Atlantic, Verizon and now a renovated private office building.

Ironically, it’s very visible coming down the Veteran’s Riverway from the north.

The associations are all of a piece, they all think like this man.

And my councilor has no choice but to go along.  I’m very frustrated with him but ultimately I’m sympathetic—he has an impossible position to govern from.

He answers to the Downtown, Salem Common, Bridge St. Neck and Federal St. Associations.  I’m certain that once the Jail is occupied, there will be the Salem Jail Neighborhood Association. 

My greatest fear is that they can and will all speak for me, without actually needing or appreciating my input.  It isn’t as though people in public housing have an “investment” in Downtown.

And that Mike is just going along, out of necessity.

[Note:  I had posted an earlier draft online that was a bit too vituperative overall and particularly unfair to my councilor Mike.  My frustrations with him have been long pent up because I have never been able to have that hard, though productive, conversation that clears the air.  Perhaps we’ll have one sometime. 

PS:   Despite speculation on Salemweb, I doubt that Mr. Treadwell was the guy who spoke—Mr. Treadwell is an expert who would have well known the exact makeup of my neighborhood and that it was once all commercial.]

Christmas with my “godchildren”

Katie Harris:  “O Hai, I can has an uncle?”

For years now, I’ve known my chairman, Jack Harris, and even lived in his building.  He adopted two special needs girls.  They insist on being my surrogate nieces whenever I visit.  Katie, the younger, paid her regards moments after I took my coat off and sat down!

Emily Harris, the older sister, gets a present here.  She’s not as easy to photograph.

I much prefer a quiet Christmas with few gifts, but Jack and Donna gave me one that seems appropriate:

Note the size.  OMG.  I don’t even have a TV at the moment since I had to wait for the work in my apartment to be done before shopping.

But time with friends and family is my favorite time.  Even if they’re “surrogate” family.

Not Thinking Pink: Sentimentalizing Illness

This week’s Salem Gazette was printed on pink paper to promote breast cancer research.  In October, everything is pink, as corporations sprout pink ribbons, pledging money to breast cancer research.

Not everyone likes pink.  Quoting from “Sick of Pink”:

When Kim Zielinski was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2007 at the age of 33, well-meaning friends inundated her with products bearing a little pink ribbon. Each product’s maker promised a cut of the sales price to a breast cancer charity, and these friends felt they were supporting the cause and, by association, Zielinski. A petite brunette who’s now 35, she was enormously grateful for the millions of dollars that these pink-ribbon products direct each year to charities that fund breast cancer research and education.

But it wasn’t long before she got a little sick of the pink. “I felt kind of hateful,” says the insurance company sales manager who lives in Charlestown. “I was like, ‘What makes you think I like pink now?’

“I think that the pink ribbon, as a symbol, tends to pretty up what is a pretty crappy disease. But a pink ribbon is easier to look at than the disease itself.”

The marketing of breast cancer disturbs me.  We’ve been marketing illness and disabilities for a long time.  The cycle usually goes something like the following.

1. Someone has a disease, a disability or an illness.
2. They’re at least cute, photogenic, or articulate.  They’re probably Caucasian, too.
3. A disease-of-the-week movie gets made (remember those?), or an article in People, or the morning entertainment shows do a feature.
4. A charity is formed to get money for research or “awareness”, the latter is often just a celebrity showing up at a fundraiser or on TV.
5. Rinse and repeat

There have been many such cycles for many illnesses and conditions, some more “successful” than others.  The Susan G. Komen For the Cure Foundation is amongst the most visible for any disease.

The foundation’s website doesn’t really tell us much about Ms. Komen:

Susan G. Komen fought breast cancer with her heart, body and soul. Throughout her diagnosis, treatments, and endless days in the hospital, she spent her time thinking of ways to make life better for other women battling breast cancer instead of worrying about her own situation. That concern for others continued even as Susan neared the end of her fight. Moved by Susan’s compassion for others and committed to making a difference, Nancy G. Brinker promised her sister that she would do everything in her power to end breast cancer forever.

So, Ms. Komen got breast cancer and died.  So do many other women (and sometimes men).  Did Komen die so she could have a foundation, to be elevated to Heaven, to have a cruel disease and a hard ending?  Did she die to be sentimentalized?

Here’s a conversation in the near future that I immediately imagined:

A patient waits, alone, in her doctor’s office.  She’s terrified.  She got The Call or The Letter and is waiting for news.  News she doesn’t want to hear but can’t avoid.

The doctor enters.  “Good morning, Ms. Jones.  I’m sorry to tell you that your breast biopsy tested positive.”

“I have cancer?”

“Yes, but it’s not bad news.  I’m working with a foundation to fund your treatment and they agree you’re an excellent candidate.”

“You mean remission?”

“No.  You might not make it.  But it’ll be a good story and a great PR campaign.  We might be able to get money for your family, but you’ll need to work with us.”

Or this office visit elsewhere on the same day.  A patient, man or woman, has also gotten their same bad news.   The doctor is more blunt:

“I’m sorry.  I can’t help you.  I wish I could but the PR on your condition isn’t favorable.  Face it, Mr. Jones, most people think your colon cancer is your own fault.  Don’t be mad at me, it’s what my funding sources say.

People who have needed transplants or experimental treatments have often had to play the PR game to get money for treatment.  Bake sales, raffles, and telethons.

Increasingly, ordinary people with “ordinary” medical conditions have had to play the same game.  They have to hold raffles and bake sales for their care, too.  They will be judged.  They will have to air their complete medical histories to the world, hoping that they and their loved ones will be worthy of charity, hoping against hope that some celebrity gets their condition so they’ll get noticed.

But even this can backfire.  Over the summer, Farrah Fawcett died of cancer.  When a celebrity gets sick, many people idealize what happens.  Slate quotes a fan:

When Fawcett announced her apparent cure in 2007, one writer wished that her mother, who had died of cancer, "had half of the courage and fight that Farrah has." These war metaphors, which pervade the coverage of celebrity cancer cases, perpetuate the false notion that survival is directly related to how hard the patient tries to live.

That’s a terrible remark.  I sincerely hope that person hated her mother, because that is not something said or meant out of affection.

My own mom died of complications from colon cancer and diabetes, and fought to live for the last three years of her life.  She was finally taken down by a hip infection that left her in agony for three weeks.

She just wasn’t sentimentalized like Farrah was.  Ryan O’Neal, a longtime friend of hers, has been quoted a few times after her death.  He hasn’t said much, but reading between the lines, her death was a hard one, as are most cancer deaths.

But we were too busy watching her ascend to Heaven to notice.  I’m not sure if my mom ever made it there.  Colon cancer and diabetes are, after all, our just deserts for not being personally responsible.

At least, they could have a better PR agent.

UPDATE:  Barbara Ehrenreich thinks the same, and doesn’t like pink ribbons either.  (I like Ehrenreich and have read most of her books, and her blog.)

Salem Healthcare Vigil

I recently attended a healthcare vigil in Salem sponsored by MoveOn.org.  People were encouraged to read health care horror stories, of which there has been no shortage.  I certainly could have told stories about my own care, and that of my late mom, but it was only an hour-long event.

Here’s what I said that night:

I belong to a minority group.

I am disabled.

I’m in a minority group anyone can join.  All it takes is an accident, or bad news from the doctor.

I’ve seen this happen in my own family.  The Salem Commission on Disabilities has seen this happen to families over and over.

If you become disabled, you will probably be destitute.  Your life just changed.  To get help, you’ll likely lose or give away everything you’ve worked for in your life.  If you apply for SSI, you may have a long wait to be approved.

Sarah Palin makes a lot of fuss about her youngest, Trig, with Downs Syndrome and how he would fare with those so-called “death panels”.

Sarah has no need to fear that.  She is well-off and has considerable resources to take care of Trig.

But many families with disabled children don’t have those resources.  Their life is often changed for the worse.  Many such families love their disabled, special-needs children very much.  But it’s still very stressful, and hard on them.

We expect people to overcome their disabilities, overcome their illnesses, and overcome the insurance companies.  The Commission has seen this over and over.

70 percent of us are unemployed.  Employers aren’t willing to hire us because they’re not sure we can work but more importantly because we represent a cost on their health insurance.

Our future as people with disabiliites—all people with disabilities, not just the photogenic ones that go on TV or People magazine to look heroic and inspirational—depends much on reforming our health care system. 

It’s broken for us and all Americans.  It’s got to change.

Salem News story

Salem Gazette story

Changes at Home

Changes are coming to my very home!  For the past several years, the Housing Authority has been trying to get funding for a new, second elevator for my building.  The original elevator is breaking down.  If a second elevator could not be installed and the original elevator needed to be replaced, the whole building would be uninhabitable, so I was told by the executive director when she came here for a tenant meeting.

I have mixed feelings:  The renovation will take away two of my living room windows. and move two others.  One doesn’t miss natural lighting until one doesn’t have it anymore.

There’s no possibility of stopping this or depriving my neighbors of an elevator, but I think I’ll miss my windows.

I’ll be chronicling this project on Flickr.

Happy Mother’s Day

Jeannette Moisan, Varney St., July 1979

If Jeannette saw me at Commission meetings, I’d never hear the end of it!  I’m sorry she’s not with us, not least because she would be an endless source of agenda items!  It’s our loss and mine.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Remembering Jeannette Moisan

Jeannette Moisan's 400 Children

I was a Boston Marathon volunteer

[Photo by Paul Keleher]

Last week, I was a Boston Marathon volunteer, and I was in the Salem News!   (“They Also Serve:  Local volunteers help keep Boston Marathon running”)

I’m a ham radio operator (N1KGH) and have been for 18 years.  Amateur radio has a long tradition of public service, assisting emergency officials when regular communications are unavailable.  Ham radio is usually mentioned when there’s news of a tornado hitting a community, and radio operators work in shelters and emergency operations centers to get people and supplies moving.

Salem once had amateur radio involvement through our former Civil Defense director, John Smedile, but that faded away when he retired just before I got my license.  I’m not currently involved with any emergency planning in Salem.

However, I am a trained severe-weather spotter.  And I do volunteer for two big events in the Boston area.  One of these is the Marathon. 

I work in the finish area.  My job, broadly, is to assist the medical team, communicating with others to get supplies and assistance.   Many times, I have “shadowed” race officials, helping them get in contact with other officials to get supplies they need, or to provide updates on conditions.  (“Don’t send any more runners to Med Tent B, it’s full!”)  There are fifty hams on the finish team, working with hundreds of volunteers and medical staff in the area.

This is my radio:

And these are my Marathon credentials:

This year, I spent time in our backup medical tent on St. James St at Park Plaza.  (The center of finish line activity is the huge medical tent that takes up a whole block in front of the BPL.)   The ham that was there had radio problems, so I offered to relieve him.  From then on, I provided updates of our status (“We’ve had 8 beds free for the past half hour.”)  Our tent served over 300 runners this day (out of a 50-bed tent;  the main tent has 200.)

In past years, I’ve been able to watch the runners;  this year, and most years (I’ve done this since 2002) I’m just too busy.  Every year I want to bring my camera, but don’t, because photos in the medical tents are a Bad Idea and I spend almost all my time there.  I did wave to the women’s wheelchair winner this year, Wakako Tsuchida, as she passed through the main tent.

The ARRL, our amateur radio association, also reported on the Marathon.

I had one question from the News reporter that didn’t make the paper:  Why do we use ham radios?  Why not walkie-talkies or cell phones?

The BAA did once have Verizon phones for its race officials, up to a few years ago.  That got expensive.  At one time, early in the history of cell phones, some carriers did provide phones and service to charity events but that never became widespread.

The other reason is range and reliability.  The blister-packed GMRS radios you find at Wal-Mart don’t work so great in Copley Square on Marathon Day.   You will never see more radios and cellphones in use in that four-block area anywhere in Boston but on Patriot’s Day.  Combine that with the numerous transmitters on the Prudential (including Channel 68) and you need a good radio even on a regular day.

Ham radio works at least as well as professional equipment, and with much less infrastructure (we were dispatched out of a trailer next to the medical tent.)  More importantly, we have a relationship with the BAA that lets us take this burden out of their hands.

As I write this, I am (and should be) long-rested from my very long day (up at 5 AM to catch the first train to Boston, back at 7 PM) at the Marathon.

But in a week, I’m working again, for the Walk for Hunger:

For Randy Moisan, 20 years on the bus are over

I’m doing something different on this blog.  I have a foster brother who drove school buses for the city for 21 years.  He wrote a great letter to the Gazette last spring, reflecting on his years with the city.  Since the Gazette doesn’t post letters online, I want Randy to have his moment on my blog so I have “volunteered” him to guest post:

To the editor:
Where do I start? Oh yeah, how about at the beginning. On March 21, 1988 I was hired by Jim Parisian to drive the field trip/athletic bus for the city of Salem’s School Department. Little did I know at that time how long and how much I would enjoy this job. This was supposed to be a temporary job until I found a “real one.

The first week on the job started with a literal bang. The leased bus I was assigned to drive was torched overnight and damaged the rear of the high school. I couldn’t believe when I was shown what remained of the bus: The front end was completely gone and the tires were burnt so much that there were only rims left. What a way to start off a job, but I stuck with it.

I learned how to get to the sporting fields by Salem’s greatest coaches, Ken Perrone and Al Giardi, and even got lost taking Charlie Maihos’ softball team over to Lynn Classical. I started out being the driver that followed everyone to eventually being the driver everyone looked to for directions.

I drove in and out of Boston all the time and loved it. I watched the Big Dig happen all around me and only regretted coming back in September every year because so many changes happened over the summer months and I had to learn the new routes around Boston.

I really loved driving the kids of Salem and was considered the cool bus driver because I never stayed on the bus — I would join them on field trips, helping teachers chaperone or watching the games. I even got to sit on the parquet floor at the old Boston Garden with. our basketball team during a championship game. I was there when Jeff Juden was being scouted and I remember the Saugus game, watching the radar gun, seeing him throw over 90 mph. I still have the bail he signed for me after he got recruited to the Houston Astros.

There was only one school year that was really
tough on me. That was when Salem High’s class of
2000 were seniors. They were in kindergarten when
I started driving a bus and I watched them grow up,
even though I hadn’t changed a bit, or so I thought.

I loved saying “good morning” to every kid on my bus as they got on and “have a good day” when they were leaving. I even let them know they were missed when they were out sick. I still have many of the gifts given to me over the years by the children and their parents.

I will miss being seen in a store and being run up to or pointed at and hearing the kids say, “that’s my bus driver.” How many looks did I get when some of those special angels would run up to me and give me a hug to say hi in a store and I would never return it, but say “I don’t do hugs,” showing that it was the child and not me initiating it. Those were the tough parts of the job, because I knew that some of those kids really needed a hug back.

These are just some of the things I remember fondly about being a bus driver. I could go on and on about the kids I drove, but sadly all things must come to an end. For personal reasons I resigned my position on April 11, 2008 so for the first time in 20 years and 21 days, the city of Salem does not have everyone’s favorite bus driver at the wheel of a bus. I will cherish all of those years driving Salem’s children.

To the Salem School Department and all of my bus driver friends, thanks for all of the great memories. To the parents of all of the children I drove over these 20 years, I thank you, for the greatest gift: getting to drive your children.
Randy Moisan
Dunlap Street, Salem

Ironically, the year Randy was hired, I got a temp job as a bus monitor for a week where I got to ride around in one of our special-ed vans with Jan, one of Randy’s fellow drivers.  Even though it really wasn’t my kind of work, it was an interesting job and I really enjoyed working with Jan.  Sadly, Jan succumbed to cancer shortly after my time on the bus, so I never got to tell her personally.

The past nine months have been very difficult for Randy and I as we deal with some very personal and emotional issues.  But one thing is clear from his letter:  He loved Salem.  My deep cynicism makes it impossible for me to appreciate this fact, but there it is.

This school year is different without Randy, no doubt.

Jeannette Moisan's 400 Children

Jeannette Moisan and one of her charges.

Continuing my dedication to Jeannette from my last post:

Mom was an energetic foster parent for over 30 years.  In her later years, she had homemaking services provided her, as they are to many elderly who can no longer keep house.  Mom got mentioned in the newsletter of the home care agency:

Intercity Mini News

December 1985

Client Profile

JEANETTE MOISAN

On our first visit with Jeanette Moisan she spoke of being the foster mother to over four hundred children. As we visited in the welcome atmosphere of her home, she revealed her gentle manner as she spoke of her own family life and how she devel­oped a keen interest in helping others.

While still in her teens, she began helping to care for a neighbor's child and took over much of the care of her young­er sister. Jeanette was raised in a "plain, hard-working" family. Her mother took in boarders and Jeanette was well-adapted to helping out and getting along with others.

Jeanette later married and had two daughters of her own. Sadly, her younger daughter passed away from leukemia at the age of two and a half. At that time, doctors who knew of Jeanette's compassion recommended that she channel her love and attention beyond her own family toward others. It was at this time that the idea of caring for foster children came about.

Jeanette opened up her heart and her eleven room home. The influx of babies and children began. A nursery was set up to accommodate up to five babies at a time. Among the babies sent to "Nana" Moisan were the sick and handicapped. None were turned away.

Jeanette set about providing the home atmosphere on which children thrive. She reached out to those in need and offered them security and love to give them a good start. She recognized and respected each child's individuality and did her best to meet their physical and emotional needs with patience and understanding.

During our conversation Jeanette ex­hibited two sheets of poster board filled with photographs of the tiny faces of those she has cared for. She revealed satisfaction and pride in the work she has done and deserves the caring and recognition from those who have kept in touch from as far away as London.

Intercity Homemaker Jeanne Flynn is assigned for four hours a week. Through Jeanne, Intercity hopes to meet Jeanette's needs with the understanding she has of­fered to others.

Here are some of the 400 children:

 

Remembering Jeannette Moisan

I meant to write this on Mother's Day, but my late mom's birthday was May 25th.  She would have been 94 years old today.  My one-year blog anniversary also passed a few weeks ago, but it's only appropriate to mention it now.

I've written about my mom several times before, in Poverty, the disabled and personal responsibility, and The Salem Commission on Disabilities.  She died in Salem Hospital on the early morning of February 28th, 1994. 

I was devastated.  She was my dearest friend.  I miss her fiercely. 

Recently, I went through some old newspaper clippings, intending to scan them into the computer (I just got a new Epson scanner), and found an article about my mom that I'd been looking for for years.  I won't reproduce the whole thing (written 19 years ago, it's nowhere on line) but just the parts about Mom.  North Shore Sunday:

A Bitter Pill

Senior Citizens Find Their Access to Medications Limited Both Physically And Financially

By Mark Vogler

July 9^th, 1989

Jeannette Moisan navigates across the sidewalk in her motorized wheelchair, checking the pavement for ruts or bumps that might jar the insides of her sensitive body. She keeps her eyes peeled for wayward motorists as she approaches the pedestrian crosswalk.

Even on a hot summer day, a roll through the streets of downtown Salem is an enjoyable journey for Moisan, who lost her ability to walk about nine years ago when she began suffering the pains of rheumatoid arthritis, a crippling disease that attacks the joints and leaves her arms and legs puffy.

A seven minute wheelchair ride might seem like a lot of trouble for a 75 year-old handicapped woman to put herself through just for the sake of buying medication from the local drug store. In addition to the condition, which causes her body to swell up so badly she can’t bend her fingers, she has heart problems and high blood pressure. She says she also suffers from angina, a disease of the throat or chest which is marked by painful choking spasms.

The CVS Pharmacy on Essex Street at Salem’s pedestrian mall, where she prefers to shop, could just as easily deliver drugs to her home. But the fiercely independent woman on wheels would rather do things her way.

“I love going out and looking around the stores just seeing what I need, like everyone else,” says Moisan, whose smiling face hides any sign of pain as she drives herself around town like a kid on a go-cart.

“I want to act as if I’m not sick, I can’t afford to have a car. So, this is my pleasure car. This is my good time,” she says.

But on any given day, Moisan’s pleasure trip can turn into a bittersweet experience, since her wheelchair can’t fit through the store entrance unless the two double doors are held store entrance unless the two doubled doors are held wide open for her. Sometimes it's a 15 to 20 minute wait. Sometimes no­body's available or willing to hold the doors open.

"I've gone to the drug store a couple of times, but had to turn around and come back because I couldn't get in. Sometimes, peo­ple just don't want to help and they just pass you by," says Moi­san, who personally opened the doors of her own home to more than 400 children during her life­time — abandoned children who lived with her while she worked for the state or various private charitable organizations as a fos­ter parent.

Opening the doors of North Shore pharmacies so they are ac­cessible to all wheelchaired cus­tomers has become Moisan's lat­est mission in life.

And, a photo:

Mom is the white-haired lady in the scooter.  Two passers-by helped her get into the CVS on Essex St. downtown.

Things are better at that particular CVS--it was remodeled a few years after her death;  it, and almost all other CVS stores in the area have automatic doors, as does Walgreens.

However, there are still many other  establishments that aren't accessible.  My optician--Banville Optical, on Lafayette St., the only optician in downtown Salem proper--is not accessible via wheelchair.  (One disabled resident, a regular attendee of our commission meetings, has filed a complaint with the state Architectural Access Board.  We wish her luck.)

What my mom did for me and the 400 other children in her care is unsurpassable.  She looms very large in my life.  The North Shore Sunday reporter called her "feisty".  She was that and then some.  She is of a generation in Salem that is going away.

I don't expect to be as feisty or as good as she was.

Governing with an Invisible Disability

I almost never comment on national politics in this blog, but the situation in New York has put one man with a disability front and center to me.  Governor Elliot Spitzer has resigned, due to his alleged sexual misadventures, and his lieutenant governor, David Paterson, will assume the governor's post.

Paterson has been legally blind since infancy.

In an interview with the New York times, Paterson says:

But I play basketball, and I’ve done things that people with my vision aren’t supposed to do. I’m in this interesting sort of zone between the sighted and the unsighted, and have never really met anyone who I visually relate to, I’ve never met anyone who is kind of like me. ...

My truest disability has been my ability to overcome my physical disability. So in other words, as soon as people see that I can be independent, then they hold me to the standard that everyone else is. So I remember once I told the airlines that I had a sight problem, and they put me on this bus to go to a hotel because there were no other flights out of the airport that night, and I gave up my seat to everyone got on and they passed me, and then like this 90-year-old woman, who was trying to get up the steps, and I couldn’t take it anymore so I helped her up the steps, gave her my seat and took another seat. First stop, the bus driver tells me to get off. And I know that he’s doing this now because he thinks I have no problem. He goes, “Go that way.” And I almost fell in the wishing well in front of this hotel. That’s because he saw me able to fend for myself.

I'd like to meet Mr. Paterson, because I feel the same.  I too am in a twilight area between the able bodied and the disabled.

I have a hearing loss, and ADHD, and I have been fighting the ups and downs of low vision all my life.  I have had people tell me I'm not really disabled, and people who've patronized me because I "looked like a special-needs case."

This made me so bitter for a time that I wrote a webpage about this in the early days of the Net, the Invisible Disability Page.   The essay is perhaps more angry than it should be 10 years afterwards, but I heard from a lot of readers who immediately identified with me.

The experiences I wrote about, and the experiences of Mr. Paterson, are very familiar to those with disabilities, especially hidden disabilities like hearing loss or fibromyalgia or any of the mental disorders.

People without disabilities have a fixed conception of people with disabilities.  They are either heroes, as I've wrote before, or they are pitiable.  If a person with disabilities does a thing that they aren't "supposed" to do—they are not "disabled".  Paterson wasn't "supposed" to be able to see that old woman trying to get on the bus.  He wasn't "supposed" to be able to play basketball.

When I was a young preemie baby with multiple health problems, I wasn't supposed to be able to live outside an institution.  Wasn't supposed to be able to walk or talk or read.  Yet I learned to read at a very young age and I learned to take apart things (not with my mother's knowledge!) at age 3 and that is why I have the coping skills to use a computer and become an IT professional.

But we pity people who don't "overcome their disability".  People used to, and sometimes still do, compare me with other disabled people.  "Don't complain because that other guy is in a wheelchair and is worse off than you!"  I'm a proud man not much for pity, but really?  That's a race to the bottom I don't want to win. 

I have close friendships with people who are sightless, those with muscular dystrophy, stroke victims and brain injuries.  I don't consider myself "better off" or "worse off" than they are.  I don't feel sorry for them, nor do I worship them because they're "role models" for their conditions;  each of my friends has challenges of their own.  I look out for them, they look out for me, but always as people, not for collections of medical conditions or "heroes" or whatever the conception of people with disabilities is at the moment in the popular culture.

Like Paterson, I cope as best I can with my conditions but there are still times that bring me to tears.  Once, I was at a friend in the Barnes & Noble coffee bar talking.  One man went up to us and told me to keep my voice down, he could hear me from several seats away.

I don't knowingly raise my voice to be annoying in a public place.  My hearing loss makes it hard sometimes to modulate my voice to a good level, and I had been focused on my conversation, as one would with a friend.

I left in tears. 

Another time, I was waiting for a bus.  It was morning and the light, as is often the case where I was waiting, made it hard for me to see when and where the bus was coming.  I had lost my attention for a moment—remember, I have ADHD—and my bus had just appeared right there.   In those days, I could not read the electronic signs on the buses at that time (this was in 2001 and the signs on the old RTS buses were unreadable and often broken).

I panicked and ran on the bus, not seeing the woman waiting next to me.  I'm blind in my left eye and didn't see her at all.

Bus driver tore me a new one;  I was inadvertently rude.  I had not gotten up that morning just to be rude to someone, but that is what had happened.

There are those incidents, and many others, that remind me, sometimes cruelly, of the limitations I have.  The fact that I can only recount a few such incidents is due mostly to the people I surround myself with, at both SATV and the Salem Commission on Disabilities, who have provided me with a niche I can live in.

Paterson, at 53, has had the time and the opportunities to find a niche and coping strategies that he uses in his daily life.  Now, as Governor of New York, he'll have to use them all and then some.

I wish him the best of luck.

More:  How a Blind Man Will Lead a State - Well - Tara Parker-Pope - Health - New York Times Blog