One of the things in my life I am most grateful for was the opportunity to hang out with Pete at various protest marches and music and folk life festivals. Heck I even got to perform FOR him at a young songwriters workshop. (He was kind in his neutral comments about my rather lame efforts)

Picking up trash with Pete at 6 a.m. -after a long night of song swapping- is one of my fondest memories. He was the Energizer Bunny... I could not keep up him!

To be at a Pete concert - whether it was a bunch of kids under a shady tree, or at a huge event, is like being swept up in an unstoppable swelling river of music, shared stories and human voices joined and tumbling in love...

Dear Pete, may you stay forever young.

I'm serious. Count your blessings, it might help.

Here are mine:

My son, who I had strongly advised to go over with his buddies from college to be somewhere near the Marathon finish line...was dawdling and wasn't there when the bombs went off...

My brother, who spent a sleepless night as swat teams and police combed thru his Watertown neighborhood, was not near where the actual two street shootings took place...

We are heartened by the outpouring of sympathy for the victims and for support for our city, even as footage of funeral after funeral shows on the news...

We have NOT been turning off the news... Actually, finding out more and more what really is happening, helps the vague feeling of not getting the straight story. DU, and reddit, has helped a LOT in that regard...

Volunteering for a few community things - Senate campaign, church...


And then there are the personal things that help keep us chugging along:

Family mostly doing well...

Dancing (in long time street troupe with friends)

Running again. Maybe not Marathon caliber, but EVERYBODY seems to have taken to the streets since Patriots Day so it seemed like the thing to do...

exploring the Mediterranean diet... (red) wine is actually good for you?!?

And, of course, music...playing it, and listening to Motown and World

That my prescription, anyway.

Here's something to cheer you up:

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more operations, months of rehab, and many dark days ahead for these survivors. But there is hope for these people to put a semblance of their lives back together.

Our hearts go out to friends and families of those that did not survive: Krystle Campbell, who funeral was today in nearby Medford, Martin Richard, Lu Lingzi, and Officer Sean Collier. Officer Richard Donohue who nearly died is likely to make a recovery.

I have said this before, but it bears repeating: the 'primary responders' where friends and strangers standing nearby or leaping in quickly to help stop bleeding, etc. before even the nearby EMTs and police got to the scene. This is almaost always the case. Average citizens rise to the occasion to help do the right things. Of course it helps if you have some skills. I think it behooves all of us that don't already have some, to think about getting some basic emergency training. I know I will be.

http://www.redcross.org/take-a-class

http://www.fema.gov/community-emergency-response-teams/training-materials

Carlos Arredondo - it may be safe to say we all would STILL be waiting for a break in the investigation, and the two brother terrorists would be long gone from Massachusetts.

Arredondo is the guy in the cowboy hat seen leaping over the barricades pulling down some fencing so the EMTs could get thru, then he turned to the first victim near him who turned out to be Jeff Bauman. Carlos put out his burning shirt and made a tourniquet for his missing legs, grabbed the nearest person with a wheelchair and helped hold Jeff together literally as they wheeled him to an ambulance...the first casualty to leave the scene and head to a hospital.

Police began the daunting task of sifting thru mountains of video to figure out if they could identify any suspicious activity or persons. Jeff came out of surgery and right away asked for paper. He remembered "Black Cap" setting down the backpack at his feet and described him to investigators. That was the break police needed. They were able to zero in on that detail and soon found the clips that showed the two potential suspects. The photos were given to the press and within one day the suspects had panicked and bolted.

The MIT cop shooting, carjacking, shooting spree thru Watertown and manhunt culminating with the younger brothers dramatic capture last night in that backyard boat ended what would have gone very differently but for two regular guys that became heros.
There are many many first responders, police, fire, FBI,ATF, and officials who all deserve praise for their work. But there are also many just regular folks - I'd call them "primary responders" - who, in desperate moments of crisis - found the strength and courage to do great things.

Jeff and Carlos changed history.


--FTC

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P.S. there is a fund set up to help get Jeff back to college:
From Chancellor Marty Meehan:
"We have established the UMass Lowell Boston Marathon Scholarship Fund, which will benefit any member of the University community, including their families and alumni, who has been affected and wants to pursue an education here.
Anyone who is interested in making a donation to the scholarship fund should contact

Danielle_Callahan@uml.edu <mailtoanielle_Callahan@uml.edu?Subject=UMass%20Lowell%20Boston%20Marathon%20Scholarship%20Fund%20Established> .

Danielle_Callahan@uml.edu

after a Big Sur Folk festival. She is still going, still singing, and still a lovely soul...

Music was everywhere then! (and I don't mean in ipod earphones)



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Society conference I attended. I happened to be in charge of the the "media" room on the day Roddenberry attended and he offered to let me screen a half hour video of BLOOPERS of Spock,Kirk, Uhura, and others flubbing lines, slipping on the set (they ALWAYS seemed to be running thru caves in those early episodes!) and laughing about some mistake... Well, you can imagine people were utterly astonished! The show was, the actors always seemed...so...serious. And here they were appearing like happy, normal humans -and Vulcans!

When Mr Roddenberry handed me the video, I said I would be sure to find him and return it right after the screening. "Oh, no" he said, "I think I'll stay here with it." So, for one fantastic half hour I got to chat with Gene while it played.

DU members.

Some of the posters use phrases or arguments that echo ones used to resist previous civil rights progress.

Maybe folks should spend some time actually reading up on Seneca Falls, Selma, Stonewall, Title IX, and the disability rights movement (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Disability_rights_movement ) and THEN reflect on which group they STILL do not believe should have the same rights they enjoy.

I'm guessing most here would say that (especially) public money should not be spent to benefit only the well-off, white, straight, male, able-bodied citizens.

These were long fought struggles by progressives of their eras. Let's not stop moving towards a 'more perfect union' in our era.

We can all do better.

-FTC

behalf of disability rights.

For his lifetime of civil rights advocacy Dad was asked to speak at the ADA signing and received the pen.

The 'greatest generation's legacy is being tarnished by these entitled chicken hawk zealots...

It's appalling.

I also am relieved my father is no longer around to see this betrayal.

‘Served’ in Afghanistan? Scott Brown?

http://articles.boston.com/2012-10-12/politics/34386883_1_scott-brown-afghanistan-senate-debate

Many heads were doing a 'Scooby Doo' when Brown said in the Warren/Brown debate that he had "served in Afghanistan". Turns out he had REQUESTED the brief deployment -putting real soldiers guarding the Senator at risk- and was on the ground in Afghanistan only seven days! His time there included meetings with officials and military brass (Brown pulls some purse strings for them as "a ranking member of the Arms Services Committee")

Another article in the same Globe edition goes into much greater detail of his self aggrandizing "military service" and his new ties to the Pentagon:

"For Brown, politics and military entwine" -Boston Globe

http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2012/10/11/brown-guard-service-has-taken-political-patina-since-joined-senate/tGB08DEjELGZmgR271qOlN/story.html

Brown has tried to make this campaign hinge on the trustworthiness of Elizabeth Warren. Brown is the one with THAT problem!!

Grünenthal, shaken from a half century of denial by a class-action lawsuit in Australia, had made “some kind of statement that they are emotionally connected to our suffering. They’ve had 50 years to make billions of dollars while we struggled and our parents committed suicide. And now, they’re apologizing for not saying anything. How dare they do that and think it’s going to be enough?”
--Berrisford Boothe, 51, an associate professor of art at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, PA

As someone who saw many of these families, and heard their struggles to have their children try to adapt to a shocked community, I can only add my anger about the years gone, and the compensation never given to the thousands of victims. Grünenthal is just another greedy corporation that turned its back on the tragedy it had created.

Once again props to Dr Frances Kelsey of the Food and Drug Admin. for keeping thalidomide out of the US at that time