Camden NJ

He tells his officers that he measures their success not in tickets written, but in the number of children riding bicycles on the street.

The increased police presence has pushed drug dealing off the streets, and as a result, pushed a majority of homicides inside — and random gunfire away from children playing on sidewalks.

“When they see you every day, they can pull you aside,” said Officer Jeffries, who worked in Atlantic City before becoming one of Camden’s first newly hired officers. “I’ve had people say, ‘Act like you’re writing me a ticket.’ ”

Article

Andrea Schneider, LCSW

Individuals who have narcissistic tendencies typically lack solid, healthy self-concepts and must extract narcissistic supply from lovers, friends, colleagues, and/or family members to feel affirmed, adored, admired, attended to, nurtured, feared, or despised. Positive or negative, the reaction doesn’t matter, as long as the abusive person can excise a response from a target’s reservoir of emotional sustenance, thus rendering the abusive person “alive” by virtue of having his or her false self acknowledged.
-Andrea Schneider, LCSW
Article

Munroe Dairy Rocks!

Video

Seven Degree Houdini

It's seven degrees out and windy! We'll have to shovel the two flat roofs because more snow and then rain is coming. Like Houdini I am preparing mentally.

Combating New York Tenant Harassment

Combat tenant harassment. Article

Neal Porter Interview

...a young librarian seated beside me at a Newbery–Caldecott banquet a couple of years ago turned to me and said, “I’ve never sat next to an imprint before. I’m so excited!”

From the March/April 2014 issue of The Horn Book Magazine: Special Issue: Illustration.

Why are Detectives + Inspectors Colloquially Referred to as Gumshoes?

source

It turns out that the original "gumshoes" of the late 1800's were shoes or boots made of gum rubber, the soft-soled precursors of our modern sneakers... At the turn of the century "to gumshoe" meant to sneak around quietly as if wearing gumshoes, either in order to rob or, conversely, to catch thieves. "Gumshoe man" was originally slang for a thief, but by about 1908 "gumshoe" usually meant a police detective, as it has ever since.

The primary modern use of gumshoe is as a noun meaning 'a private detective'. This is a narrow remnant of a group of senses having to do with stealth.

Originally, gumshoe referred to a shoe with a rubber sole, specifically, galoshes or (more relevant to our purposes) sneakers. The senses of gumshoe leading to the 'private detective' sense all have to do with the idea that rubber-soled shoes give the wearer the ability to walk stealthily.

The earliest examples show gumshoe used as an adjective meaning 'being a stealthy or surreptitious thief or tracker', and thus 'being a plainclothes police officer or a private detective'. This adjective is first recorded in 1900 and occurs a number of times before 1910. A secondary sense of the adjective, found at about the same time, is '(of actions or activities) carried out stealthily or surreptitiously' (e.g., "No gumshoe democratic campaign in Nebraska," from a 1904 newspaper).

The noun in the sense 'a plainclothes police officer; (usually) a private detective' is first recorded in 1906, as your source notes. Less frequent noun senses are 'a police officer' and the military use 'an intelligence officer or a spy'.

Some additional uses: the verb gumshoe 'to come or go stealthily; sneak', from 1902; 'to work as a private detective', from 1908; gum, gumfoot, gumboot, and gumheel, all meaning 'a private detective; and gumshoe artist and gumshoer, both also meaning 'a private detective'.

Kim Addonizio Article

Article

Right-Angled Anglos

The right-angled anglos in our neighborhood are detectives.

Please Stay for Lunch

We count ourselves as lucky that when Anne-the-Plumber came she was able to replace and reroute the cracked drainpipe and make it safer as it was located very close to our circuit breaker box. I was thrilled that she was fixing a longstanding problem and a safety issue I didn't know about.

I heated up kale soup and roasted potatoes and made sourdough toast and Bill and I invited Anne and Mikey and her plumber nephew to stay for lunch. They accepted and we set the table. It was lovely. We realized we knew each other from the community garden. Her garden was the one that was most bountiful. She grew up here and had two cows and chickens and farmland along the river back when you could. My lifelong fantasy to be in the city with a dairy cow.

Oliver Sacks: My Own Life

The Opinion Pages | Op-Ed Contributor
My Own Life
Oliver Sacks on Learning He Has Terminal Cancer

By OLIVER SACKS FEB. 19, 2015

A MONTH ago, I felt that I was in good health, even robust health. At 81, I still swim a mile a day. But my luck has run out — a few weeks ago I learned that I have multiple metastases in the liver. Nine years ago it was discovered that I had a rare tumor of the eye, an ocular melanoma. Although the radiation and lasering to remove the tumor ultimately left me blind in that eye, only in very rare cases do such tumors metastasize. I am among the unlucky 2 percent.

I feel grateful that I have been granted nine years of good health and productivity since the original diagnosis, but now I am face to face with dying. The cancer occupies a third of my liver, and though its advance may be slowed, this particular sort of cancer cannot be halted.

It is up to me now to choose how to live out the months that remain to me. I have to live in the richest, deepest, most productive way I can. In this I am encouraged by the words of one of my favorite philosophers, David Hume, who, upon learning that he was mortally ill at age 65, wrote a short autobiography in a single day in April of 1776. He titled it “My Own Life.”

“I now reckon upon a speedy dissolution,” he wrote. “I have suffered very little pain from my disorder; and what is more strange, have, notwithstanding the great decline of my person, never suffered a moment’s abatement of my spirits. I possess the same ardour as ever in study, and the same gaiety in company.”

I have been lucky enough to live past 80, and the 15 years allotted to me beyond Hume’s three score and five have been equally rich in work and love. In that time, I have published five books and completed an autobiography (rather longer than Hume’s few pages) to be published this spring; I have several other books nearly finished.

Hume continued, “I am ... a man of mild dispositions, of command of temper, of an open, social, and cheerful humour, capable of attachment, but little susceptible of enmity, and of great moderation in all my passions.”

Here I depart from Hume. While I have enjoyed loving relationships and friendships and have no real enmities, I cannot say (nor would anyone who knows me say) that I am a man of mild dispositions. On the contrary, I am a man of vehement disposition, with violent enthusiasms, and extreme immoderation in all my passions.

And yet, one line from Hume’s essay strikes me as especially true: “It is difficult,” he wrote, “to be more detached from life than I am at present.”

Over the last few days, I have been able to see my life as from a great altitude, as a sort of landscape, and with a deepening sense of the connection of all its parts. This does not mean I am finished with life.

On the contrary, I feel intensely alive, and I want and hope in the time that remains to deepen my friendships, to say farewell to those I love, to write more, to travel if I have the strength, to achieve new levels of understanding and insight.

This will involve audacity, clarity and plain speaking; trying to straighten my accounts with the world. But there will be time, too, for some fun (and even some silliness, as well).

I feel a sudden clear focus and perspective. There is no time for anything inessential. I must focus on myself, my work and my friends. I shall no longer look at “NewsHour” every night. I shall no longer pay any attention to politics or arguments about global warming.

This is not indifference but detachment — I still care deeply about the Middle East, about global warming, about growing inequality, but these are no longer my business; they belong to the future. I rejoice when I meet gifted young people — even the one who biopsied and diagnosed my metastases. I feel the future is in good hands.

I have been increasingly conscious, for the last 10 years or so, of deaths among my contemporaries. My generation is on the way out, and each death I have felt as an abruption, a tearing away of part of myself. There will be no one like us when we are gone, but then there is no one like anyone else, ever. When people die, they cannot be replaced. They leave holes that cannot be filled, for it is the fate — the genetic and neural fate — of every human being to be a unique individual, to find his own path, to live his own life, to die his own death.

I cannot pretend I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and I have given something in return; I have read and traveled and thought and written. I have had an intercourse with the world, the special intercourse of writers and readers.

Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.

Oliver Sacks, a professor of neurology at the New York University School of Medicine, is the author of many books, including “Awakenings” and “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.”

Julienne Grey's Fabulous Article

Article

Bake a Chocolate Cake

All of this snow is amazing. All of this whiteness makes me want to bake a chocolate cake! Our plumber Anne is here with her nephew Mike and it might be a nice gesture to feed them cake.

I LOVE this poem by Alberto Rios

Coffee in the Afternoon

by Alberto Rios

It was afternoon tea, with tea foods spread out
Like in the books, except that it was coffee.

She made a tin pot of cowboy coffee, from memory,
That’s what we used to call it, she said, cowboy coffee.

The grounds she pinched up in her hands, not a spoon,
And the fire on the stove she made from a match.

I sat with her and talked, but the talk was like the tea food,
A little of this and something from the other plate as well,

Always with a napkin and a thank-you. We sat and visited
And I watched her smoke cigarettes

Until the afternoon light was funny in the room,
And then we said our good-byes. The visit was liniment,

The way the tea was coffee, a confusion plain and nice,
A balm for the nerves of two people living in the world,

A balm in the tenor of its language, which spoke through
our hands
In the small lifting of our cups and our cakes to our lips.

It was simplicity, and held only what it needed.
It was a gentle visit, and I did not see her again.

"Coffee in the Afternoon" by Alberto Rios from The Theater of Night. © Copper Canyon Press, 2007.

Leslie Gore's: You Don't Own Me

Leslie Gore's You Don't Own Me was a hit when I was in fifth grade. I received my first and most unexpected kiss that year too from a boy in my class. I always smile when I hear Leslie Gore.

You don’t own me, I’m not just one of your many toys
You don’t own me, don’t say I can’t go with other boys
And don’t tell me what to do
And don’t tell me what to say

So just let me be myself
That’s all I ask of you
I’m young and I love to be young
I’m free and I love to be free
To live my life the way I want
To say and do whatever I please

I LOVED this: Curious Case

Article

Lunch: Potstickers in the Snow

Last batch of dumplings eaten with brown rice as the snow was falling.

Three Generations of Threats

When I was a child my mother complained that her father always talked about the possibility of his imminent death. When I was a child my mother did the same. Now I catch myself talking the same way.

Erwin Marquit: Jon's Amazing Uncle Irwin

Neither FBI surveillance nor being blacklisted for jobs ever caused him to deny his principles, even as the party “went underground” during the 1950s, when Sen. Joseph McCarthy famously accused American Communists of ­treason.

Back then, he said, when someone called a party meeting, “there was a knock on the door and a messenger would hold up a piece of paper that told when and where.”
Article

Shrove Tuesday: Pancake Day

Shrove Tuesday
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Shrove Tuesday

Mardi Gras

Shrove Tuesday (known in some countries as Pancake Day) is a day in February or March, preceding Ash Wednesday (the first day of Lent), which is celebrated in some countries by consuming pancakes.

This moveable festival is determined by Easter. The expression "Shrove Tuesday" comes from the word shrive, meaning "confess".[1] Shrove Tuesday is observed by many Christians, including Anglicans, Lutherans, Methodists and Roman Catholics,[2] who "make a special point of self-examination, of considering what wrongs they need to repent, and what amendments of life or areas of spiritual growth they especially need to ask God's help in dealing with."[3]

Being the last day before the penitential season of Lent, related popular practices, such as indulging in food that one sacrifices for the upcoming forty days, are associated with Shrove Tuesday celebrations, before commencing the fasting and religious obligations associated with Lent. The term Mardi Gras is French for "Fat Tuesday", referring to the practice of the last night of eating richer, fatty foods before the ritual fasting of the Lenten season, which begins on Ash Wednesday.


History

Like many other European holidays, the pancake day was originally a pagan holiday.[4] Before the Christian era, the Slavs believed that the change of seasons was a struggle between Jarilo, the god of vegetation, fertility and springtime, and the evil spirits of cold and darkness. People believed that they had to help Jarilo fight against winter and bring in the spring. The most important part of Shrovetide week (the whole celebration of the arrival of spring lasted one week) was making and eating pancakes. The hot, round pancakes symbolized the sun. The Slavs believed that by eating pancakes, they got the power, light and warmth of the sun. The first pancake was usually put on a window for the spirits of the ancestors.[5] On the last day of Shrovetide week some pancakes and other food were burnt in a bonfire as a sacrifice to the pagan gods.[6]
Terminology
Russian artist Boris Kustodiev's Maslenitsa (1916)

The word shrove is a form of the English word shrive, which means to obtain absolution for one's sins by way of Confession and doing penance. Thus Shrove Tuesday gets its name from the custom for Christians to be "shriven" before the start of Lent.[7] Shrove Tuesday is the last day of "shrovetide", somewhat analogous to the Carnival tradition that developed separately in countries of Latin Europe.

In the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia and Canada, Shrove Tuesday is known as "Pancake Day" or "Pancake Tuesday" due to the tradition of eating pancakes on the day.
Catholic and Protestant countries (outside those mentioned above) traditionally call the day before Ash Wednesday "Fat Tuesday" or "Mardi Gras". The name predated the Reformation and referred to the common Christian tradition of eating special rich foods before the fasting season of Lent.
For German American populations, such as Pennsylvania Dutch Country, it is known as Fastnacht Day (also spelled Fasnacht, Fausnacht, Fauschnaut, or Fosnacht).
In the Netherlands it is known as "vastenavond", or in Limburgish dialect: "vastelaovond", though the word "vastelaovond" usually refers to the entire period of carnival in the Netherlands.
In Portuguese-, Spanish- and Italian-speaking countries, among others, it is known as Carnival (to use the English spelling). This derives from the Latin carnivale ("farewell to the flesh")[8] and thus to another aspect of the Lenten fast. It is often celebrated with street processions or fancy dress. The most famous of these events is the Brazilian Carnival in Rio de Janeiro, while the Venetians celebrate carnival with a masquerade. The use of the term "carnival" in other contexts derives from here.
On the Portuguese island of Madeira they eat malasadas on Terça-feira Gorda (Fat Tuesday in English) which is also the last day of the Carnival of Madeira. The reason for making malasadas was to use up all the lard and sugar in the house, in preparation for Lent (much in the same way the tradition of Pancake Day in the UK originated on Shrove Tuesday). malasadas are sold alongside the Carnival of Madeira. This tradition was taken to Hawaii, where Shrove Tuesday is known as Malasada Day, which dates back to the days of the sugar plantations of the 1800s, the resident Catholic Portuguese (mostly from Madeira and the Azores) workers used up butter and sugar prior to Lent by making large batches of malasadas.
In Denmark and Norway the day is known as Fastelavn and is marked by eating fastelavnsboller. Fastelavn is the name for Carnival in Denmark which is either the Sunday or Monday before Ash Wednesday. Fastelavn developed from the Roman Catholic tradition of celebrating in the days before Lent, but after Denmark became a Protestant nation, the holiday became less specifically religious. This holiday occurs seven weeks before Easter Sunday, with children dressing up in costumes and gathering treats for the Fastelavn feast. The holiday is generally considered to be a time for children's fun and family games. (see Carnival in Denmark)

Shrove Tuesday, Bear guiding (pl) in Poland (1950).

In Iceland the day is known as Sprengidagur (Bursting Day) and is marked by eating salted meat and peas.
In Lithuania the day is called Užgavėnės. People eat pancakes (blynai) and Lithuanian-style doughnuts called spurdos.
In Sweden the day is called Fettisdagen (Fat Tuesday) and is generally celebrated by eating a type of pastry called semla.
In Finland the day is called laskiainen and is generally celebrated by eating green pea soup and a pastry called laskiaispulla (sweet bread filled with whipped cream and jam or almond paste). The celebration often includes sledging.
In Estonia the day is called Vastlapäev and is generally celebrated by eating pea soup and whipped-cream or whipped-cream and jam filled sweet-buns called vastlakukkel. Children also typically go sledding on this day.
In Poland, a related celebration falls on the Thursday before Ash Wednesday and is called tłusty czwartek (Fat Thursday).
In Slovenia Kurentovanje is also the biggest and best known carnival in Slovenia. There are several more local carnivals: for example in west Slovenia, a very well known carnival takes place in Cerkno. This carnival is usually referred to as Laufarija.
In some parts of Switzerland (e.g. Lucerne) the day is called Güdisdienstag, preceded by Güdismontag. According to the Duden (semi-official dictionary of the German language), the term derives from "Güdel", which means a fat stomach full of food.
In some areas of the United States with large Polish communities, such as Chicago, Buffalo and Michigan, Paczki Day is celebrated with pączki-eating contests, music and other Polish food. It may be held on Shrove Tuesday or in the days immediately preceding it.[9]

Traditions

Pancakes are associated with the day preceding Lent because they were a way to use up rich foods such as eggs, milk, and sugar, before the fasting season of the 40 days of Lent. The liturgical fasting emphasized eating plainer food and refraining from food that would give pleasure: in many cultures, this means no meat, dairy products, or eggs.

In Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom and Ireland the day is also known as "Pancake Day" as it is a common custom to eat pancakes as a meal.[10][11][12]

In Newfoundland and Cape Breton Island small tokens are frequently cooked in the pancakes. Children take delight in discovering the objects, which are intended to be divinatory. For example, the person who receives a coin will be wealthy; a nail indicates that they will become or marry a carpenter.[13][14]
Festivities
A pancake race in England

In England, as part of community celebration, many towns held traditional Shrove Tuesday "mob football" games, some dating as far back as the 12th century. The practice mostly died out in the 19th century after the passing of the Highway Act 1835 which banned playing football on public highways. A number of towns have maintained the tradition, including Alnwick in Northumberland, Ashbourne in Derbyshire (called the Royal Shrovetide Football), Atherstone in Warwickshire (called simply the Atherstone Ball Game), St Columb Major in Cornwall (called Hurling the Silver Ball), and Sedgefield in County Durham.

Shrove Tuesday was once known as a "half-holiday" in Britain. It started at 11:00am with the ringing of a church bell.[15] On Pancake Day, "pancake races" are held in villages and towns across the United Kingdom. The tradition is said to have originated in 1445 when a housewife from Olney, Buckinghamshire, was so busy making pancakes that she forgot the time until she heard the church bells ringing for the service. She raced out of the house to church while still carrying her frying pan and pancake, tossing it to prevent it from burning.[16][17] The pancake race remains a relatively common festive tradition in the UK, especially England, even today. Participants with frying pans race through the streets tossing pancakes into the air and catching them in the pan while running.

The most famous pancake race,[18] at Olney in Buckinghamshire, has been held since 1445. The contestants, traditionally women, carry a frying pan and race over a 415 yard course to the finishing line. The rules are strict: contestants have to toss their pancake at both the start and the finish, as well as wear an apron and a scarf. Traditionally, when men want to participate, they must dress up as a housewife (usually an apron and a bandanna). The race is followed by a church service.[16]

Since 1950 the people of Liberal, Kansas, and Olney have held the "International Pancake Day" race between the two towns. The two towns' competitors race along an agreed-upon measured course. The times of the two towns' competitors are compared to determine a winner overall. After the 2009 race, Liberal was leading with 34 wins to Olney's 25.[19] A similar race is held in North Somercotes in Lincolnshire, England.

Scarborough celebrates by closing the foreshore to all traffic, closing schools early, and inviting all to skip. Traditionally, long ropes were used from the nearby harbour. The town crier rings the pancake bell, situated on the corner of Westborough (main street) and Huntress Row.

The children of the hamlet of Whitechapel, Lancashire keep alive a local tradition by visiting local households and asking "please a pancake", to be rewarded with oranges or sweets. It is thought the tradition arose when farm workers visited the wealthier farm and manor owners to ask for pancakes or pancake fillings.[20]

In Finland and Sweden the day is associated with the almond paste-filled semla pastry.

Pancakes are traditional in Christian festivals in Ukraine and Russia also at this time of year (Maslenitsa).

In London, the Rehab Parliamentary Pancake Race takes place every Shrove Tuesday, with teams from the British lower house (the House of Commons), the upper house (the House of Lords), and the Fourth Estate, contending for the title of Parliamentary Pancake Race Champions. The fun relay race is to raise awareness of Rehab, which provides a range of health and social care, training, education, and employment services in the UK for disabled people and others who are marginalised. In 2009 the Upper House won. The race was then won by the Lower House in 2010 with the Upper House reclaiming their winning title in 2011. In 2012, the Lower House were crowned the pancake flipping champions and they reclaimed their title for the second year running in 2013.