Monthly Archives: September 2009

A Twig for Tischa

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Seeing a childhood friend after 35 years, a friend who is family in your heart is about as uplifting and joyous as it gets. To discover that your friend is married to someone who is as loving and kind and beautiful human being as one could hope to join lives with is, well, wonderful beyond words. And so it was for me last evening when I saw Tischa for the first time in too many years and met her husband, David.

They took me out to the Blackbird Cafe in Canton. New York for dinner.  While there is no way you can catch up on all things after 35 years in a single conversation, I can say that our table glowed with love and friendship.

One of the unspoken truths that join me and Tischa this, we have known each other since we were something like nine years old we knew each others parents. I knew her Mom and Dad and she knew my Mom and Dad and her Mom and Dad liked me and my Mom and Dad liked her.

And so it was deeply special when I told her how, when I was visiting my father’s grave some 25 years after his death in 1969 it dawned on me that his body had begun to break down and was now feeding the soil, which, I also realized, meant that my father was in a real way feeding the Oak Tree that grew next to his grave, which is why, on nearly every visit to his grave, I gather up the twigs the tree sheds and take them with me so by having these twigs I have a part of my father with me.

Over the years I have given a twig to people who are deeply special to me or people I believe to be deeply special to the world we live in. Always I say, as I hand them the twig, My father would have liked you.

Last night, over dinner, I gave Tischa a twig, and when I gave it to her, I was able to say something to her that I have never been able to say before, My father loved you very much. And he did. And had he met David, he would have loved him too. I know I do. I love both David and Tischa. Anyone would, unless, of course, the weren’t paying attention.

What About the Child?

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Once upon the time a man in his mid-forties had the hots for a 13-year-old girl. So he gave her champagne and a sedative, then raped and sodomized her.

The man? Roman Polanski, now 76.  The voices of some now pleading for his release, for the charges against him to be dropped are despicable. 

Polanski fled the United States in 1978 after he plead guilty to having sex with a child rather than face charges that included rape and sodomy. And now I read some nitwit philosopher from France, a  Bernard-Henri Lévy said Polanski may have simply committed "some youthful error." Youthful error? He was in his forties, when exactly does youth begin in your ivory-tower no-conscience world?

Lévy is not alone. Among the names in a 100-person petition supporting Polanski are, horrifyingly enough, Woody Allen and Martin Scorsese.

Polanski raped a child. I don’t care about his film-making prowess. Talent does not an innocent make. Keep him in jail, bring him back to the United States to face the charges and let justice have its say.  And who knows, maybe during the trial it will be revealed that Polanski was making an autobiographical statement when he directed Rosemary’s Baby.

 

Humility, Charisma, Humility Redux

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When you are the leader or founder of a group or movement it is expected that you will show, well, leadership. It is hoped that God has blessed you with an ample supply of charisma and the innate ability to remain humble no matter the accolades you may encounter. Having said this, leadership requires a kind of presence, strong, certain, put together, an image of determination, the very definition of tenacity and preparation. In other words, real leadership skills. And so it was with these truths dancing in my head that I left my home recently to meet with the steering committee that is forming the Kahrmann Advocacy Center.

Our meeting site is about 25 miles from my home and damned if I was leaving almost on time. I am invariably 15 minutes late for nearly everything. I am late like this with a consistency so staggering (and I secretly think, impressive) that one might think it was a second calling. And here I was, breaking with my norm and leaving my house on time. How on earth had this happen? Never question success, I think, you might just forget to enjoy it.

And so off I drive, heading for the meeting, my notebooks, shoulder bag and writing pen with me along notes on things I’d like to bring up to the committee. The day is early-Fall beautiful, the leaves already bursting into color. A glorious day!

I stop at a red light four or five blocks from the meeting and decide to put my socks on. I always drive in in my bare feet. While it has been well over 20 years since the athlete’s foot that plagued me as a result of living without shoes for a time during homeless days, I am still blisteringly diligent about letting air get to my feet whenever possible. My socks are on and I am looking forward to the meeting when, at two blocks from the meeting site, I make a horrifying discovery. No shoes! Nothing! No shoes, no sneakers, no boots, slippers, sandals, nothing. I am suddenly feeling so sheepish I am embarrassed to be seen with me.  But, I remind myself, I am a leader, a founder of this group, I must lead, I must found, shoes or no shoes, stiff upper lip, chin up, and forward!

I park my car in front of the meeting sight (there is a God), climb out of the car, thank mother nature for not raining, and walk, head held high into the building. The meeting went well. There were the requisite rounds of laughter at my, well, predicament, and fortunately no one brought of the subject of a dress code. It was also not lost on me that had I remembered my shoes, I would have been 15 minutes late and, truth be told, I do like tradition.

It’s Pitiful

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I don’t get taken in much anymore, but damned if doesn’t happen from time to time. And it hurts, deeply. Not long ago I was involved with a company whose owner for several years  gave every sign and symptom of being a real friend. He kept this behavior up until, I later realized, he didn’t need my presence to make his company money and off the cliff I went. Brutally painful. Then along comes some people who help me enormously in life, more than I could have imagine or prayed for, and in doing so they profess friendship, one even suggested I think of them as a sibling. This lasted until I told the truth about a situation they were not ready to face and subsequently I was on the receiving end of the shoot-the-messenger syndrome. Easier to shoot the messenger than deal with the message. Again, brutal pain.

Well, I am only eight days away from turning 56, the first birthday my father didn’t reach, and I am looking at and considering some major changes in life. But the heart-and-soul bruising of recent events distracts me and has me wrestling with a hefty dose of sadness, and, to be frank, an equal size dose of anger. All of the folks just mentioned didn’t have the backbone to tell me of their retreats to my face, the sent emissaries, in person, by phone, and, in one case, by e-mail. I am, by nature,  a deeply forgiving person.  Sometimes to the point of forgetting that I have a right to my anger and, by the way, it’s expression.

Years ago, and I mean many years ago, 35  probably, I just would have simply pulverized two out of the three just mentioned. While I have never been a bully in life (I was the one who would seek out and level the bully) I didn’t take shit from people and didn’t take kindly to getting fucked over by people who were supposed to be my friends.  Fortunately for my heart and soul and sobriety (not to mention the physical welfare of two of the just mentioned) those days are long gone. But let me tell you something, if you’re one of those who go around telling somebody you love them or are like a sibling to them when the truth is you’re nothing but lip service, you ought to fucking be ashamed of yourself. Your behavior? It’s pitiful.

Am I going to end this brief missive with some piece of wisdom or heartfelt peacemaking? No. I’m not. I’m hurt. And I’m angry. Maybe some other time.

 

NY DOH Official Says Bogus Degrees Irrelevant

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A New York State Department of Health official this week said it’s irrelevant that one of the department’s high-ranking contract employees misrepresents his credentials to the public he is being paid to serve.

When asked why a September 16 letter to this advocate did not address the fact Timothy J. Feeney continues to refer to himself as Dr. Feeney or Timothy J. Feeney PhD when he is neither, the DOH’s Lydia Kosinski said: “It’s irrelevant. People can call themselves reverend, honorable, the divine Miss M, the point is what he does.”

Kosinski said the contract does not require the director of the Neurobehavioral Resource Project (NRP)  to have a PhD or Masters degree, a disturbing fact in and of itself. Asked about the fact Mr. Feeney’s continues to present himself to the public as Dr. Feeney or Timothy J. Feeney PhD, Ms. Kosinski said, “He signs his name Mr. Feeney when he communicates with us,” and admission of sorts that the DOH know only too well the kind of “game” Feeney is playing.

For 15 years now Feeney has headed up the NRP for New York State’s Traumatic Brain Injury Waiver. Several million in state tax dollars have funded the project The NRP is arguably the most powerful influence over the TBI Waiver, a Medicaid program designed to provide services to brain injury survivors across the state. Mr. Feeney’s contract expires September 30 and the question is, will it be renewed, directly or by awarding it a company that then hands the reigns back to Mr. Feeney.

According to the September 16 letter, the current contract is held by the Southern Tier Independent Living Center (STIC) in Binghamton and they handed the reigns to Mr. Feeney. Mr. Feeney’s resume says he received his masters and doctorate from a now defunct diploma mill called Greenwich University that operated in Hawaii and California in the 1990s before moving to Norfolk Island of the coast of Australia in 1998. Greenwich closed its doors in 2003. Degrees issued by Greenwich are not recognized as valid anywhere in the world.

Calls to Deputy Commissioner Mark Kissinger’s office and State Health Care Commissioner Richard Daines’ office have not been returned.