This news is not sweet at all

Every once in awhile, you hear a statistic that makes your blood run cold.
You stop short.
It may take a second or two . . . or maybe three or four . . . before you can respond.
The one I heard the other day from the folks over at the Diabetes Education Center at Catskill Regional did me in.
The generation of children we’re raising – I’m raising – is expected to have a shorter life expectancy than their parents.
Wait a second.
Yes, they said shorter.
With all the medical advances, with all the technology quite literally at our babies’ fingertips, we’re setting them up for a life less than the best we have to give.
Why?
Because we’re letting our kids get fat. We’re saying it’s OK to eat three slices of pizza or pick more chicken nuggets over a helping of green beans.
Frankly, weight stinks.
I’ve struggled with it all my life, and there’s nothing fun about lying on your bed, sucking in your breath and tugging with all your might on a zipper that just won’t budge.
But I could always buy bigger pants.
I can’t buy my daughter five more years.
This weekend, I’ll be front and center at a cause that’s more dear to my heart than any I’ve championed over the years (and yes, I realize, there have been quite a few).
I’ll be trying to convince people to give up just a little part of their Saturday to head to the hospital in Harris to make life a little bit better for their kids, grandkids – anyone they love.
Technically, it’s a diabetes education center fund-raiser.
I know, even typing those words I’m bored.
I’d rather call it what it is – a Diabetes Expo and Celebration, sponsored by us here at the Sullivan County Democrat and the folks over at Thunder 102 who have shaved their heads for me (and kids with cancer) and now find themselves on sugar strike to help me make a mark on a growing population of diabetics.
Celebration does mean a good time. Food, fun, free stuff – I promise it all.
There will be a silent auction – a chance to win some good stuff for your hard-earned dollars.
And did I mention free stuff?
More importantly, there’s the cause.
We have a lot of fat people in Sullivan County. We have a lot of not-so-fat people in Sullivan County.
We have people like me who have diabetes on both sides of the family and realize – whoa, I’m next.
To eat that last Oreo or not has become a question not of the price of a pair of jeans at the Gap but the price I pay down the line when heredity catches up with me.
To stock up on Halloween goodies or opt for non-food prizes was an easy choice. The eyeball bouncy balls and rubber bangle bracelets won handily.
Not allowing Jillian the sugar cereal she’s spotted on the shelf at the grocery store will be much harder.
But there’s that old adage about the village raising a child.
If we all learn to dabble in the bad stuff in moderation. If we each gave one gooey treat for Halloween and a handful of fun stuff.
If we helped keep the Diabetes Education Center alive for the next generation . . .
I’m putting my money into the event on Saturday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the hospital cafeteria – so I won’t have to buy Jillian five more years.

I apologize

I'm sorry to everyone that I've been behind the 8 ball lately in posting. I'll be better - I promise! I have been running like a crazy lady, and I'm eagerly awaiting Nov. 7 (for folks who don't live in Sullivan County that's POST-NUTSO ELECTION TIME)!

She is always on my mind

I was warned well before Jillian was born that I would lose my “talking points.”
I would no longer be able to flit from topic to topic in conversation.
I’d be stuck on “well, you’ll never guess what my little one did today!”
I promised myself, no, not I.
I will come armed to every conversation with knowledge of at least one current event, and I vow never to use “poopy” or “binky” in a business setting.
Ok, so I come crawling to you corrected.
I’ve realized that slipping Jillian’s latest escapades into conversation isn’t just a habit – it’s a necessity.
The moment calls for a joke? Let me tell you about my methods to clean up my sailor mouth.
Jillian can now best any fine herr in the German navy. Her great-grandfather will be so proud!
Are we stuck on the weather? You know, it can be tough to dress your children appropriately when the temperature keeps jumping and dropping like it’s been.
It’s appropriate, I’d guess, that my daughter is at the top of my mind. I am, after all, her mother.
But I’ve found the root to the mother complex. While we love and adore our children (I mean, really, we are a species that can speak lovingly about teeny, tiny butt cheeks), our kid-centric communication has a much darker source.
With each “pee-pee on the potty,” I’m losing my ability to form a full sentence!
I can picture my brain clogged with post-it-notes, the stick-um starting to come un-stuck on some of the newer items.
“Lunch for Jillian, no tuna.” “Pick up milk.”
“Meeting at 10 a.m., Liberty”
“Jillian to pediatrician, Fri. 10:30.”
Which Friday? And how am I going to make it from Liberty to the pediatrician in half an hour?
I don’t need an organizer, I need a personal assistant – the human variety, not the digital “PDA.”
No Palm Pilot in the world could make sense of the mumbo jumbo in a mother’s brain.
We are the finders of lost stuffed bunnies and cutters of crusts off the ham sandwich.
Fathers do plenty, of course, and Jonathan is no slouch.
He asks about my day, and hears the list of new words in the Jillian vocabulary and the number of times she’s tried feeding the bran from her cereal to the dog.
Oh, and I did a few interviews today, wrote a column, took a few pictures – nothing major.
But did I tell you Jillian’s new way of counting?
Oh, it was the funniest thing.
At least, I think it was.
What was I saying again?

Put 'em up if you believe

Election season brings out the worst in people. For once, I’m not talking about the politicians.
It’s the so-called supporters. The ones who take it upon themselves to spin things in their favored candidate’s favor.
Last week, we ran two rabidly opposed letters to the editor.
The first, from a candidate, called out the folks who have been stealing her campaign signs.
The second, from someone I can only guess supports her opponent, told her to get real and get over it.
In two and a half weeks, no doubt she will.
But in the meantime, I wonder what folks who are out there stealing campaign signs have guiding their moral compass.
The candidate in question wasn’t the only one who has fallen victim to the vandal and the thief.
Banners – worth more than some local politicians spent on their entire campaign – have gone missing.
Signs have been plucked and the pumpkins surrounding them smashed to a sticky orange mess.
The letter writer who warned it comes with the territory is absolutely right.
That doesn’t make it acceptable … or all that mature.
And it’s far from practical.
It could earn you a ride in a police car and the politician you’re fighting some positive press.
It could make them fight harder, and the landowner who commissioned them to prop up the signs to order a cool dozen to replace the one flapping in the breeze the week before.
Where one purloined placard could easily be thrust under the front mat for safekeeping, try going back for a dozen without being caught.
Oh the irony when you’re spending election day in jail instead of casting your ballot!
Perhaps I’m a bit touchy about this particular part of campaign season.
It is after all a violation of free speech, if you really think about it.
The folks who are all for a democratic election where they can choose their own candidate are putting the cart before the horse.
I want to make my voice heard, they’re saying, so shut up!
Their kindergarten teachers would be so disappointed.
Want to pump up your candidate?
Write a letter to the editor. Send him a donation to help cover the cost of advertising.
Help her go door to door. Offer to plant her sign on your lawn.
Better yet, get out there and encourage people to register. Offer to drive them to the polls.
Then cast your vote.
Oh yes, and on Nov. 7, take your signs down. After the election, it’s called litter.

The other eye of the beholder

I guess I was due. I’ve tortured enough people with my shutter click, click, clicking.
Saturday, it was my turn.
With 100 shutterbugs in town for the annual Eddie Adams workshop, this past weekend was well-documented – including a snippet of the lives of the Sager family.
While her regular subject was missing in action, a Pennsylvania newspaper staff photographer wandered over into our yard Saturday afternoon looking for someone to shoot.
“Don’t let me interrupt,” she said. “Just do whatever you were going to do today.”
I was supposed to be the subject, but I couldn’t turn off the reporter in me.
While she snapped away at my futile attempts to get a ponytail holder in Jillian’s wild mane and my daughter’s glee as I drew an outline of her body in bright-colored sidewalk chalk, I found myself peppering her with questions.
“So,” I started, “where are you from?”
“What do you do? How’d you end up at Eddie Adams’?”
I’m accustomed to being on one end of a camera, my right eye smushed up against the viewfinder, my right hand spinning around my lens focusing, framing.
As a reporter, I hang back, try to be as unobtrusive as possible. At people’s homes, shooting their Christmas photo, I’m in their face, snapping away.
But I’m never, ever, on the receiving end.
A few times, shooting a wedding, I’ve been asked by the bride or groom to hand over the camera and pose for a photo – they take one with their caterer, their DJ, their minister, so why not the photographer?
Usually I change the subject.
But as Emily trained her Nikon on me, I couldn’t help moving and reacting as a photographer.
Not entirely comfortable with thinking of myself as a photo subject, I kept my mind busy anticipating how to help her make her photos better.
When I needed to paint Jillian’s toenails, I parked her right in front of our picture window – for the ambient light.
When Emily insisted I go about my regular routine, I sat on the driveway picking bug-bitten leaves off the herbs I planned on drying with my head down. No sense looking up to smile and throwing off what’s supposed to be a candid telling of the story.
Hesitant when contacted the previous day to be a “back-up” story for the photographers, I found I was intrigued with the idea that the make-up of an every day schedule for me could be turned into something useful.
I shouldn’t have been surprised.
My job is often finding the story – usually through my constant questions. But that old adage about the picture’s worth has proven true time and again – the camera capturing the matted fur and deep wounds on an abused dog or the mega-watt smile on the husband-to-be.
Every time I pick up my camera, I notice a new part of my world. I just wonder what Emily’s camera saw in me.

Its (sic) a sign of the times

I had to laugh at the quote on the cover of our sister publication last week.
“What are they, the grammar police?” one woman asked The Towne Crier of the Village of Liberty’s much maligned sign commission.
Well, yeah.
Although the story’s gotten play in both the Democrat and the Crier, I have to plead ignorance on all the details.
People are mad. The committee is fighting back.
That’s all I know.
The whys and wherefores I don’t have down, and I don’t profess to know how size, shape or color have impacted the landscape in Liberty.
So here’s where I can weigh in: I know all about the grammar police.
A slip of my fast-typing fingers has earned me a letter to the editor or two in my nearly decade long reporting career.
And well it should.
Poor grammar in the newspaper, poor spelling on a permanent sign – they’re as blatant as a dunce cap.
Here at the newspaper, we have proofreaders who are charged with reading our work before it hits the front page.
Their job is to act as a second set of eyes, to make up for my tendency to think faster than I type and for spell check’s failure to pick out “pubic” where “public” belongs.
When they do their jobs, they save a lot of us a whole world of embarrassment.
You can see why I’d delight in a group of grammar police at the ready.
Apostrophe’s in the wrong place?
Well, thanks for noticing. I’ll move it one character to the left.
“I” before “E,” except after “C”? Good catch – that “receive” gets me every time.
A dear friend who once did a stint as an advertising representative winces every time he’s reminded of the full page “hug”sale he once ran for a car dealership.
Personally, I still get a bit itchy behind the ears when I recall the time I referred to the Callicoon population as “having dissimilar pairs of genes for any hereditary characteristic” rather than the more appropriate “consisting of dissimilar elements or parts” when I typed “heterozygous” in place of “heterogenous.”
I know, I know. As a Callicoon native, I’m proud to come from a town where the entire population doesn’t share one gene pool!
That was four years ago, in one article.
Most of you have forgotten it by now.
Imagine if I’d paid $1,000 for the wrong word to be painted on the sign inviting folks into my business.
That’s one big mistake.
You could have driven by it this morning. You haven’t forgotten.
Now what if your kid saw it?
How do you explain the need to study his spelling list when he passes at least five different signs on his way to school with glaring errors?
“Singles support group meats here Thursdays at nite.”
“Eat at Charlies’ Place.”
“Open weakdays accept Sunday.”
If you don’t think anything’s wrong with that picture, let me ask you something.
Do you think those grammar police need to drive their patrol car into your hometown?

That’s why they call them rumors

It’s hard to explain the adrenaline rush to someone who hasn’t been there.
The blood pulsing.
Your heart thudding.
You’re excited, yes, but it’s that nail-biting, stomach-knotting, heart-wrenching kind of excitement that could shoot you out of your skin at a sudden noise.
The closer I got to the fire at Hills Resort, the worse it hurt.
It’s my job to go to fires.
I don’t relish the experience, don’t envy the firefighters racing into harm’s way.
Every inch of me wishes this wasn’t happening because I know somewhere there’s an owner watching those flames do their dance over their memories and their life.
My job tells me to put that aside.
Like Joe Friday said, “just the facts, ma’am.”
Fortunately, I work in community journalism.
I can gather my facts with at least a smattering of tact, a sense of humanity, a spark of respect.
I choose to put the people as close to first as I can muster.
I give the owners a wide berth and leave the officials to do their job – provided they give me a number to reach them later.
It’s a line I’m proud to have created, a line I’ve seen crossed by the gung-ho folks I classify in that villainous group “the media.”
That’s them, and this is me.
I watched the Hills’ clubhouse burn as a reporter.
That’s why I was there at 4 a.m., ratty sweatshirt and work-out pants thrown over my pajamas, my mouth still reeking of unbrushed teeth, eyes bloodshot from contacts quickly jammed in place.
But I also watched it burn as a neighbor whose lawn would soon be covered in the detritus of 50 some years of concerts and wedding receptions, dances and fundraisers.
By daylight, the rumors had already begun to float.
“They’re selling. They’re staying. It was arson. It was carelessness.”
I thanked my lucky stars once again that I work at a community newspaper.
I can officially ignore the sensational idiocy that springs from too many jaws with nothing better to do.
I wrote the facts.
No more. No less.
I suppose there’s adrenaline of a sort that fuels the rumor mill.
I hear the same story after every fire.
“They were selling it anyway. The neighbor down the road did it.”
People get excited. They start yapping, and away she goes.
The bigger the whopper, the harder the teller’s heart starts thudding, the wider their eyes grow, the faster the pulse.
My job makes me an adrenaline junkie, so I’ve got to strike a balance.
A smattering of tact, a sense of humanity.
It works every time.