Oh the fun you can have by muting QVC and playing Robin Thicke…
Monday, October 14, 2013
Sunday, October 13, 2013
Why you won't see me at Pennhurst..
HAPPY VISIONS THAT NEVER WERE
Every year I am approached by a friend who tells me they yearn to go to Pennhurst State hospital in Spring City, Pennsylvania.. and it seems, in turn, that I have to tell someone yearly of the true horror that happened at that location in the late 20th century, during our lifetime, and in modern history..
It’s a place where misery occurred. True horror happened.
And yes, it’s the site of a modern day ‘haunted house’.. and that truly upsets me beyond compare.
Here is my opinion, should you wish to read on…
Pennhurst is one of those places that maybe should just get demolished….burned to the ground..destroyed beyond repair. Actual events that took place nightly at that damned place are a hell of a lot more frightening than anything the current owners can create to scare paying customers.
Children were left to fend for themselves.. they fought for their own lives. The “mentally retarded” and “misfits” were often malnourished..beaten.. treated worse than a sick dog.. And the ratio of patient to staff was so undercut that it created a nightmare for patients who lived to remember it.
And that is why articles, like this appearing in the Tri-County RECORD, anger and repel me.. The author of the story, titled ‘PENNHURST ASYLUM IS ONE SCARY PLACE’ writes this gem:
Can you imagine being a child left in such a place? It must have been terrible to be taken away from your family (if you had the benefit of having one that cared) and basically dumped off at an institution that labeled and discarded you into one of their many buildings or cottages. Understaffed the ratio of care taker to residents was absurd and the institute was severely underfunded, having little ability to change anything. Children were basically left to fend for themselves or tied into beds, becoming often the victims of neglect, beatings and even rape. Children drew into themselves, failed to progress – some became silent. Thankfully, Pennhurst was closed down in 1987. New laws emerged.
"New laws emerged." That is the most that can be said? All of the years of misery and torture, pain and misguided government policy in the state of Pennsylvania, and that is all we can say?
AND NOW, folks, it’s a ‘haunted attraction.’ You can pay someone loads of cash to enter a facility that one facilitated abuse and mistreatment, heard the screams of innocent children on a daily basis, and became a living nightmare for countless people who were forced to experience the trauma of it all…
And not it’s a haunted house.
There may be no respect for the dead, but I don’t think there’s respect for the living either.
1987 isn’t that long ago.. Patients and employees are undoubtedly still living.
But now it’s a haunted house………….?
During this season of the witch, everyone is entitled to ‘one good scare.’ But raking in loads of money off of true suffering—suffering that happened during many of our lifetimes? Nah.. I find that tacky…disgusting.. maybe even reprehensible.
So get your tickets here and be a part of the agony that the children suffered.. laugh at their mistreatment.. Shriek at the fake horror..
And suffer the children,
Always the children.
..always the children..
SPIDERS GALORE
I received a message today from a reader who inhabits a home somewhere in my neck of the coal region woods.. Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania.. I was asked if I am seeing orange spiders. I am..
I have seen spiders this year that I quite honestly have never seen before.. White bodies with black legs.. hairy legs with yellow bodies.. And yes, now that it got warm this autumn, these giant orange ones.. They are all over. It’s bizarre.. and quite frankly I am a little scared of them..
I get snakes in my house about once a year. This year they were in the house four times—that I know of! But that’s no big deal to me.. Compare that to the little eight legged freaks? I’d rather the snake.. At least the snake would eat the spider.
Anyone out there seeing bugs and spiders you’ve never seen before??
A job engine sputters as hospitals cut staff.. and lots of them cuts lots of jobs..
Hospitals, a reliable source of employment growth in the recession and its aftermath, are cutting thousands jobs amid falling insurance payments and in-patient visits.
BOOM!
Another great week.
A job engine sputters as hospitals cut staff.. and lots of them cuts lots of jobs..
Miley Cyrus' back-up dancer reveals she was left 'shaking' after VMA's
Los Angeles-based performer Hollis Jane revealed on her blog: ‘I was a bear in Miley Cyrus’ VMA performance and for the first time I felt ashamed of being a little person.’
I don’t know what to think of this.. everything lately associated with Miley Cyrus is a big giant freak show. This latest story only amplifies that fact..
Not to be TwerkJerk, but I’d still venture to say this Hollis Jane knew what she was getting into before …right?
Miley Cyrus' back-up dancer reveals she was left 'shaking' after VMA's
The photo you’re looking at is an example of Victorian post-mortem photography.
Our modern world may call this creepy and weird. But think of the times it happened in.. kids weren’t living very long due to disease and other issues. A big family of 10 could be taken down to much less due to some type of medical ailment. The photos, though taken so long ago, still reverberate with some bit of ‘strange’ quality.. but I find it to be just an example of how we, the living, deal with death. Maybe this does not happen now, but for it’s time, it was a touching tradition that was meant to honor the people taken too soon from life. Perhaps these photos are not for the squeamish..
The EBT crash.. 'Was it a dry run?' someone asked. Nah, said me. Then my brain started to ponder..
….but how long would it take before social unrest if they never did?
I asked this question of myself a number of times yesterday. If you didn’t know, the EBT system was down in much of the United States. The technological glitch stopped people from using their food stamps to purchase items at grocery stories across the nation.
I heard one person asking, “Is this just a dry run?”
And that is a fascinating question, given the possibility that if our government can’t agree on anything, October 17 may be a very bad day in the markets, and the global economy. That’s the date we default.. on debt.. owned by lots of other nations.
China will be seeing red!
Nonetheless, the prospects of permanent inactive EBT cards—and social security checks that stop being sent—are possible Armageddon-like scenarios that the United States faces. About 49% of people live in a household that receives some type of government assistance. that can be minor, to major.
I have long held a belief that the people on welfare and other programs, though maligned and used as political fodder during election campaigns to divide voters, don’t pose much of a threat to anyone.. As a matter of fact, numbers back up my way of thinking: The government spends MORE on corporate welfare and programs than it does on the social end of it.. fat cats stay fat while stray cats pick at the garbage .. The same goes for humans, where big companies can achieve greatness with the held of a long arm of Uncle Sam, while social programs seem to simply keep people in the darkness of a permanent lower class ..
But all of that aside, the prospects of the food stamp program going down …right now.. are interesting.
That comment, ‘was it a dry run,’ keeps sticking in my mind like glue.
I don’t propose any form of conspiracy theory that the government would use some sort of weird experiment to see how people would react (now they’d never do such things, right?), but it’s surely interesting timing. The week coming up when the system may actually halt, and this weekend a little 17-state issue for people trying to use their cards..
Corporations that rely on government have their safety net already. They bought it—often with money from the government.. but those relying on a weekly check or a pittance of money to live? They don’t have a safety net.. Their net is tattered and filled with holes.. filled with pitfalls. What would happen if the social security checks stopped? The EBT cards? The rest of it that 49% of Americans rely on? Some others have speculated on what would happen.. I will let them do the speculation. I am just asking questions—questions based on what we saw yesterday with the system crash.
So was it a dry run?
Probably not.
But I sure bet the powers that be, whomever they be, are studying the outcome of just a few hours of a system crash to see what would happen if one of those seven disasters played out in a post October 17 world…
Great autumn nights in Jim Thorpe
I went to Jim Thorpe, PA, with a friend last night.. Coming up next week: I will be going there with my wife for our 6th wedding anniversary..
It’s a great place. Worthwhile if your visit, should you be inclined. This time of year, especially, is perfect for a visit to the OLD JAIL MUSEUM where Molly MaGuires were wrongfully hung in public for a murder they did not commit. The town is loaded with history, mystery, culture, great food, great spirits, and maybe some real ‘spirits’ too..
I feel lucky to be so close in proximity to the gem in the refuse pile.. Jim Thorpe is a downright cool place.
I envision other towns in the coal region to be future great places.. I really do. Maybe that’s the hope in me..there is so much history in other locations—but the changing area and diminishing importance of it solidifies the role of backwards nothing, unless someone comes along and wants to make the town they live in the next historically preserved JIm Thorpe.
Saturday, October 12, 2013
Thursday, October 10, 2013
Obama and the chilling of press freedom
In the good old days they chanted ‘yes we can’..
Now they can’t.
Obama and the chilling of press freedom
Is the internet making you (think you're) ill? You're a cyberchondriac
And I am.
It could be the worst part of having all this information at my fingertips.. And lots of incorrect diagnoses to prove it..
Is the internet making you (think you're) ill? You're a cyberchondriac
Wednesday, October 9, 2013
Committing Miriam Carey..
This should not come as a shock to anyone who has any inkling of knowledge of the Miriam Carey killing in Washington DC, but it’s finally official revealed that she possessed no weapons and had “no motive” to do what she did.. Of course, her action and the lack of a weapon didn’t help stop her demise. Police shot her and killed her in front of her one-year-old child after a wild day of varied news reports ..
I ask you this, though.. Why the silence? An innocent African American woman gunned down at close range by an army of police officers in the Nation’s Capitol.. and what occurs? Congress gives a standing ovation … no civil rights leaders speak up.. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton don’t say a word any of this.. Who will weep for Miriam Carey? Her family, for one… perhaps one day her young child, a child who will luckily not remember seeing her mother be shot dead as the nation’s media happily cheered on the state’s actions in making sure she didn’t live any more seconds to tell why she was acting the way she was the day she died. enough, the family of Carey has not been permitted to view her body.. They haven’t seen the child.. few are asking how her car slammed security gates, but didn’t have air bags deploy, and didn’t have any hardcore visible damage when cops finally cornered her. And finally, the big one, why are no media organizations concerned with the reality of events and why she actually died that fateful day in Washington D.C. ??
Where the lonely people in New York City go after they die..
Hart Island is 131 acres and has been uninhabited for years..
It’s on the Western Part of Long Island.
And since 1869, the location has been used as a burial grounds for those who could not afford the luxuries of higher priced funerals and caskets..
According to the eerie report from SMITHSONIAN, 2,000 people a year are buried there, with about 850,000 in all over the past 100+ years..Even more: Dismembered body parts constitute a small minority of the burials. SMITHSONIAN REPORTS:
An estimated one-third of the burials are of very young children. With one exception—“special child baby 1 1985,” the first child to die of AIDS in New York City—the bodies are buried in mass graves..
McDonald’s worker arrested after telling company president she can’t afford shoes
You are reading that headline right. She was arrested—not told to stop, not removed—but arrested at the public event for heckling the President of McDonalds.
Even people who heckle the president don’t get arrested..that’s president of the United States.
McDonald’s worker arrested after telling company president she can’t afford shoes
Famous paintings are turning black.. and it’s being blamed on mercury..Apparently elemental mercury, which forms under exposure to light and chlorine ions in the air, degrades paintings.. and some famous images painted by famed men of the past, are turning black..
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