MAD about pride - but wrong in execution?

The new MAD pride drive is gaining momentum - and publicity. But it's also drawing criticism and concerns from the mental health professionals who view it as nothing more than false hope.

At issue is a recent New York Times article that focuses on blogger and columnist Liz Spikol, who appeared in a You Tube video smiling and animated, "the light glinting off her large hoop earrings."

"Deadpan, she holds up a diaper," the article said. "It is not, she explains, a hygienic item for a giantess, but rather a prop to illustrate how much control people lose when they undergo electroconvulsive therapy, or ECT, as she did 12 years ago."

According to the Times, Spikol is speaking candidly and publicly about her issues in a way that shows how her conditions do not preclude them from productive lives. Like many advocates, she's not afraid to call herself "mad," the Times said - to the point where people are using the term to promote their cause

The article then talks about "Mad Pride" events, organized by loosely connected groups in at least seven countries including Australia, South Africa and the United States, that draw thousands of participants. Recent activities include a Mad Pride Cabaret in Vancouver, British Columbia; a Mad Pride March in Accra, Ghana; and a Bonkersfest in London that drew 3,000 participants, the Time said.

But when author Paul Raeburn reads about the movement, he stumbles over the very first word, mostly because of it's attachment to stigma.

"Mad," he said, makes him "squirm."

"I understand the idea of co-opting pejorative words, but, geez. I just don't like it," he said. "Queer was co-opted a long time ago, as was the n-word, but those make me squirm, too."

Raeburn also asked if people should be proud of their illnesses.
"Would somebody be proud to be wasting away with breast cancer?" he said. "Proud to be wheezing with emphysema? Proud to be psychotic, or manic, or depressed?"

"To me, the idea of mad pride harks back to the old R.D. Laing notion that madness is some kind of gift of awareness, or it's the "mad" people who see the truth and the so-called "normal" people who are mad," he said.

"Or something - ick."

The changing face of homelessness

By LISA BIAGIOTTI
and TOM DAVIS
NYC24.com

[For an interactive web version of this story, click here.]

Growing up, Joe Wallinger had a distinct image of homelessness: drunks shuffling through the Staten Island Ferry Terminal begging for money and turning benches into beds.

But that image changed in 2005. Wallinger, a 56-year-old accountant and former resident of Tottenville in Staten Island, N.Y., now counts himself among the homeless.

Homelessness now hides behind shelter doors, walks in designer clothes and carries cell phones. Many homeless people are working-class, college graduates, parents or the elderly, according to Project Hospitality, a private nonprofit organization that operates Staten Island's homeless shelters and many food assistance programs.

Homelessness has blended into communities that still hold on to the image of the drunken or mentally ill nesting in the ferry terminal and don't "see" the new image.

Dennis Dell'Angelo, longtime resident of southern Staten Island, said homeless advocates and city officials manipulate the image of homelessness so they can justify expanding their services.

"If all the city agencies say we have a rise in the homeless, then the people who have facilities that deal with this will build them," said Dell'Angelo, 64, president of the Pleasant Plains/Princes' Bay/Richmond Valley Civic Association, a neighborhood watchdog group.

Staten Island, as a microcosm

But Staten Island now has the second-highest percentage of homelessness in the New York City, and the number of people seeking shelter has doubled since 2001. Fewer homeless people are living on the streets, but approximately 311 people crowd into Staten Island’s seven emergency shelters every night and wait in long lines for soup kitchens and food pantries.

"We've had people come in who've had condos and because they lost their job, they lost their condo and all their means of income," said Mamie E. Daniels, 76, who has run a soup kitchen at the Stapleton Church on the island since 1987. "Before you knew it, they're in a shelter."

Contrary to the worn image of chronic homelessness, today many people are either close to finding a home, or on the verge of losing one.

Almost 62,000 Staten Islanders eat at emergency food programs--up 300 percent since 2004, according to Hunger Safety Net 2007, a report produced by the Food Bank for New York City.

People gather outside the Stapleton Church Soup Kitchen at 3 p.m. on Mondays and Fridays for a prayer before mealtime.

Staten Island's nine soup kitchens serve 4.8 million meals a year. Lines for the island's 30 food pantries wind down church steps, and still, 70 percent of these food pantries and soup kitchens run out of food.

"The food pantry or soup kitchen is the last step of desperation," said the Rev. Will Nichols, director of Project Hospitality's communications and community outreach. "People who are coming here are homeless next."

It's not always obvious who is homeless unless they are walking into the Central Avenue “drop-in” center.

On a near-freezing April night, men and women wearing dark-blue Levi's, velour jumpsuits and sports jerseys signed-in to the center as "clients," before sitting upright in plastic-covered chairs. They covered themselves with thin, white blankets.

The city rejected Project Hospitality’s application for a permit to convert the facility into a full-scale, sleep-away shelter under pressure from local officials and residents.

Cassidy Mojica, a 9-year-old Staten Islander, knows about homelessness: Her cousin can't find a shelter.

Wallinger, an accountant with 72 credits toward his master's at Baruch College, calls the Central Avenue shelter home.

Wallinger left his apartment three years ago when he couldn’t feed himself, pay his rent and the $440 a month he owed in child support.

"This is what I have to do to make a living," said Wallinger, who lost his accounting job less than a year ago.

Wallinger was clean-shaven and wore an "Izod" brand pull-over and a clean pair of jeans when he fell into his "bed" -- a chair that resembled an airplane seat. He closed his eyes behind wire-framed glasses.

At 11 p.m., the lights went out and the cell phones popped open, glowing and bleeping amid the chatter of the dark room.

[Editors note: The writers put together this story as part of an interactive web magazine, NYC24.com, that's affiliated with Columbia University].

Outrun your tigers

By DARCIE BORDEN
Featured Blogger

It was so much simpler in primitive times. Not easier, but simpler. Here's how it worked: saber tooth tiger chases man, man receives stress signals to the brain, man perceives the stress as a threat to his survival, man fights the tiger or makes a run for it (most likely runs). Once the man has either become the victor in a battle against the beast or has successfully outrun the danger, he feels endorphins rush in and is restored to a state of calm.

If only the fight or flight response could work so well nowadays. Try to outrun the BlackBerry. We can't challenge the boss to a duel, and even if we could, we have to sit in traffic to get there. Our cave now has a mortgage. It's no wonder that human beings have invented pharmaceuticals to give us the calm usually induced after fighting the foe.

But, there's another way. Outrun the tigers on the elliptical machine, or let them chase you down Main Street, and after you've left them far behind, stop at the local coffee house for some cappuccino to celebrate the victory. You see, exercise has been a proven solution to anxiety and depression. But, we already instinctively knew that. We just forgot when we went to the zoo and saw the tigers behind bars.

We were made for movement. And everything we need to survive has already been given to us long before Prozac. However, I'm not sure we were meant to take on the modern stressors we've inflicted on ourselves, and at the end of the day, most hard-working people don't have any energy or motivation left for exercise.

Each person has a reservoir for stress, and if that reservoir starts to overflow, the anxiety which ensues can be debilitating. Where there is anxiety, depression is sure to follow. The two seem to go hand-in-hand. One thing for sure is that our bodies will usually tell us when something is wrong. We just have to pay attention.

Our hard-wired fight or flight response is triggered on a daily basis and sends stress hormones into our bodies which are meant to be metabolized by physical exertion. So, what happens to the stress hormones if they are not effectively metabolized? In other words, what about the couch potatoes or desk-sitters who never exercise? Well, the disorders that arise from the build-up of stress hormones were not known to primitive man. They are things like high blood pressure, irritable bowel syndrome, and even autoimmune diseases such as lupus and rheumatoid arthritis.

Our minds are on constant alert, scanning internal and external situations for signs of danger and threats to survival. We've come a long way, but our instinctive brains have not forgotten the tigers and are always on the look-out for new dangers, like looming college tuition bills, awaiting results from a cancer test, or losing a client at work.

Aerobic exercise, the kind that breaks a sweat, triggers the release of mood-lifting hormones, which promote a sense of well-being and reduce stress. Studies have shown that exercise can be just as effective at preventing and treating depression as anti-depressants can.

Sometimes, however, the stress hormones have built up to such an extreme level that medication may be needed temporarily. When someone is at such a point of major depression and anxiety, the last thing they want to do is exercise. They are usually in bed or on the couch, mentally exhausted and apathetic, and it would take an extreme effort to walk around the block, much less break a sweat. All of their energy is sucked out of them through the merciless vacuum of worry over perceived threats and the constant stream of negative thoughts. It would be great if all it took was a walk around the block and, BAM, serotonin and norepinephrine are automatically restored to normal levels. But for many people, that feat can only be accomplished initially with medication. To make matters worse, many anti-depressants cause tiredness, which can sabotage motivation for exercise.

Scientists are urging us to see body and mind health as deeply connected. The extra weight we carry can change our hormones and facilitate anxiety or depression, being sedentary can lessen blood flow and energy supply to the brain, which can cause sluggishness and a feeling of blah. Two common examples of physical symptoms of stress are eye-twitching and teeth-grinding. This is your body telling you to deal with your stress before that reservoir spills over.

Remember the old infomercial for Slam Man? It was a punching bag like boxers use, but it was in the shape of a man. So, not only could you get vigorous exercise, but you could fight that imaginary foe at the same time, possibly your boss who made you stay extra hours to finish that big project. Whatever the exercise or activity you choose, find one that suits your interests and provides a fight or flight solution.

One of my first dates with my husband, Bill, was to see a band called Hyperactive, which played songs like "Stop" by Janes Addiction. I found myself in the middle of a mosh pit – something I had never done before. This was, for me, the Cadillac of stress reducers, albeit not something that could be built into daily life, and I don't recommend it for anyone under 18 years old. You're close enough to the band so that the music is so loud you forget who you are. You never stop moving, as you are carried by the momentum of the people around you. On top of that, in a mosh pit you sort of have a license to bang into people, although you wouldn't want to get too carried away with that.

Now that I'm 38, I have to rely on more grown-up stress reducers, such as playing tennis or jogging. But, guess what's playing on my iPod?

Counting my chickens after they hatched

The chickens came home to roost last week.

The perils of doing grad school and two jobs at the same time came crumbling down on me like a Colorado avalanche.

There wasn't any long-term damage to report, actually. But there were several embarrassing episodes that made me question: Is this all worth it?

I am doing the classic journalism juggling act: I work full-time at The Record of Bergen County, N.J. I'm a part-time adjunct professor at Rutgers University. I am a part-time graduate school student at Columbia University. I am a dad full- and part-time.

And that's only half my workload.

On Thursday, I showed up at my Rutgers teaching job 10 minutes late, wearing the same clothes I wore the day before (and they weren't very professor-like) and smelling like Andy Dufresne after he crawled through that sewer pipe in "The Shawshank Redemption." I had just spent much of the previous 48 hours working on a final project at Columbia, with no sleep.

My class chuckled intermittently as I tried to explain away the previous 48 hours. The crowning blow came when I asked one student, "What do you plan to write about for your final assignment?"

"I don't have any idea," he said.

"I don't have any idea" was what I wrote on the board. Then came another laugh. It was a lighthearted moment, and I tried to play along.

But, inside, I felt empty. I felt like I just wasted a whole semester teaching 19 people how to write. Is this how they all feel? I thought.

Luckily, the next student I called on had an answer, and we moved on. But when they left at the end of the period, I felt sick and ready to collapse. All the adrenaline left my body, and left me feeling lifeless and bloodless.

I recovered soon enough, so I could go to work. Once I got there, however, my boss had some unpleasant news: I missed a story that appeared on the web involving a PATH accident near Newark.

My ever-supportive boss was not happy. And rightly so. What's interesting is that I was harder on myself than he was on me. "Don't worry about it," he said, over and over. But the sick feeling just got worse. I knew I could do better, and I didn't.

Then came Sunday. Place: Metuchen Little League field. Event: My 6-year-old's game at the town's elite field. Their names would be announced on the P.A. system. They would be given the complete major league treatment: National Anthem, dugouts, nicknames, a snack bar.

I was the manager, and I wasn't prepared for any of it. I scrambled throughout the game, carrying a piece of paper from my pocket. I wrote down the names of my players, accompanied by their favorite foods ("pizza" was the overwelming choice) and their favorite players. I continually forgot the line-up, and repeatedly sent players to the batter's box even though they were out-of-order.

I could hear one of the other coaches snicker. "He's gotta be better prepared for these games..." At the end of the game, my legs again felt lifeless.

This weekend, You Tube saved me.

Out of the ashes was my below appearance at the Metuchen Third and Fourth Grade Talent Show. It was am event that had me worried the least. But after the embarrassing of the events of the weekend, my fear-level hit an all-time high as I thought of appearing sleep-deprived, ego-blown and pale before 1,000 people.

Somehow, however, everything came together. When stressed, crawl out of your egg shell and remember your inner kid.

Raw and uncut - this wedding is not yet rated

By DARCIE BORDEN
Featured Blogger

This past weekend I had the pleasure of viewing my friend Kathy's wedding video. She got married last year, and had one of those really professional videos done, complete with pictures of her and her husband as children, background music, and even a nice ending to wrap it up in a neat and tidy package.

After watching her expertly choreographed and edited video, I told her I would find my wedding video and have her over for comedy hour. Mine, you see, was taken by my ex-brother-in-law, and as he got drunker, the video footage got weirder.

I had a suspicion that my wedding video (which really is a video tape and not DVD) was in the attic. So I climbed up there today, and I found it in a box with some of the videos the kids have outgrown, such as "Veggie Tales" and various Disney movies. Thank goodness we still have a VCR to play it on.

Here are some highlights, or lowlights, from my wedding video:

During the church service, where the priest (my Uncle Wayne) says, "For richer or for poorer," Bill, my husband, started laughing. We were poor. We couldn't afford an engagement ring or a honeymoon. All we had was our love. He laughed again when he had to repeat the words, "With all that I have." This was because he didn't have anything, except about $15,000 of debt. But, besides offering to share his debt with me, he vowed to share his life with me, and that has made me a richer woman than money ever could.

The rest of the service was fine, but the reception probably makes you cringe almost as much as watching an episode of "The Office." Not exactly a class affair, at least not from the perspective of the ex-brother-in-law, John.

At the reception, John seemed fixated on taking extended footage of the cake. As it turns out, the cake wasn't even ours. The bakery delivered the wrong one.

The telltale sign was the topper. I had ordered a crystal heart topper, because I didn't want the cheesy plastic bride and groom figurines. Well, the bride and groom figurines are at the top of some other bride's cake at my reception, and John captured them on camera more than any of the real people at the wedding.

I was so young (22) and naïve that I didn't even realize that I could tell the DJ what I wanted and what I didn't want. So, during the cutting of the cake, he played that horrible theme song from the old TV show "Married With Children," a show that I despised at the time. But I smiled through it.

I do remember, however, that my mother told me I could make out a little list of some of the music I would like played at the reception. But, I never heard a single song from my list. Instead, the DJ, who was also very young and probably very inexperienced, kept playing music requested by Bill's friends. So, it's no wonder our dance floor was empty when the DJ was playing Slayer. To make matters worse, the people who requested such music went outside to smoke anyway and left the rest of us to the tunes of Megadeath or some such thing. My poor grandparents!

That brings me to the crowd outside. John then became less interested in what was going on in the reception, and he was more amused by getting pranks on camera - such as one of Bill's friends pretending to pick his nose and eat it. Another of his friends, one of the many smokers, took a drag and blew smoke right into the camera lens. Nice. It's possible such atrocities are caught on camera at other weddings, but the professional videographer edits them out before creating the finished product.

There is no neat and tidy ending to our wedding video. It's just a bunch of people standing around saying goodbyes and goofing off, some of it disturbing, some sweet. Then you hear my sister-in-law yell at John, "Would you turn the damn camcorder off?!!"

But, ya know, I'm sort of glad he didn't turn it off. It was real. And marriage is not a neat and tidy package. It's messy. It's ups and downs. You will see some disturbing images during the course of a marriage, along with laughing, yelling, crying, and everything else that goes along with the union of two people who came from very different families and who have very different personalities. But at the bottom of it all is love and a fierce desire to make it work.

On Friday, May 2, Bill and I will celebrate our 16th wedding anniversary. My favorite passage about marriage has always been the Bible verse 1 Corinthians 13:4-7, because it emphasizes kindness, which is our number one rule for our marriage.

"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres."

Bill is patient and kind and keeps no record of wrongs. He is a gentle, unassuming, humble and easygoing man. He has the best work ethic of anyone I know and has carried everything on his shoulders without complaint for 16 years. He has seen me through high-risk pregnancy, breast cancer scares, multiple surgeries, financial distress, and depression. I have known him since I was 21 years old and he has watched me grow up.

Here's how you know you got married too young. At the end of our wedding video, which didn't use up the whole tape, is a "Ren and Stimpy" episode that Bill tacked on. My 15-year-old daughter, Faith, looked at me in bewilderment and slight horror and said, "Daddy put 'Ren and Stimpy' on your wedding video? Are you kidding me?"

That may have been something that would have bothered me in my 20's when I thought marriage and life had to be a perfect fairytale, but that childlike spirit is what has gotten Bill and I to where we are pretty much unscathed. He is still as goofy as he was in 1992, and thank God, because that will continue to get us through the challenges that lie ahead of us. He teaches me not to take life too seriously.

Happy Anniversary Bill. I love the heck out of you.

Dude, just chill... image isn't everything

Back when he had Bon Jovi hair, Andre Agassi used to appear in Canon camera ads and make millions of television viewers cringe by telling them: "Image.... is everything."

It was one of those forgettable pop-culture slogans that you hoped would have the life span of mosquito. But, dammit, there he was, every night for what seemed like years, exposing his God-awful Jersey hair in between innings of a baseball game or in the middle of an episode of the Simpsons. "Image.... is everything," he'd say. "Image is everything." It was like some kind of twisted Bohemian chant that was as intellectually bankrupt as a Lionel Richie song.

"Aaaarrgh!" you'd scream, though not necessarily in public.

Now retired, and bald, we thought we were rid of him and his corny words forever. Gone for good, Andre. A successful tennis career, yes. But that slogan...... somewhere buried in the trash heap of 1980s pop culture history, underneath Lionel Richie, Falco and "Baby-on-Board" signs.

Alas, it's back - the slogan, that is - but only in spirit. For, in my little corner of the world, the mere mention of the word "image" has been, at times, too much to handle. I'm attending grad school at Columbia University, and my fellow New Media students are pretty stressed out because we're working on an issue called "Image."

This week, as a result, image has been everything. It has consumed us. We are reminded of it while we sleep (sleep?) and eat. We telegraph it through telephone calls and emails. We type stories that we're convinced have a connection to "image." But, perhaps, the connection is not quite there. Yet, in our heads is that Agassian chant: "Image... is everything." "Image.... is everything."

The cringe-feeling has returned. But, this time, it's not caused by shame or embarrassment. Rather, it's the creation of tension that's as thick as smog. "Aaarggh" they're saying.

I'm reminded of another 1980s icon: Jeff Spicoli, the surfer-dude from "Fast Times at Ridgemont High." To me, a guy wearing a flashy red cruise-ship shirt that's hanging wide-open - while he's sitting in a classroom with a pizza on his desk, sassing his teacher - was much cooler than a then-underachieving tennis player wearing a Miami Vice suit jacket and Ray-Ban shades.

Spicoli had a one-word solution for every problem - well, he had other solutions, too - that could prove to be useful advice for every one of us once we discover the computers that are supposed to create a new media landscape have more glitches than than rodeo clowns:

Chill.

Just chill.

The ability to chill is inside us. But it's locked up behind a wall of tension that has stunted our creativity and slowed our potential to imagine "Image."

We are a class of high-achieving, high-I.Q., high-SAT-scoring people. Virtually every one in this class has performed work that is the envy of journalism schools - and perhaps good enough to rival anything produced by the national news media. The "Image" issue is going to kick ass.

Yet, some of the work produced for the "Image" issue shows - at this point, at least - there has been a need for more imagination and confidence and less tension, pain, suffering and feelings of "Aaaargh."

Just chill.

How do you chill?

Back when I used to surf (poorly), we discovered ways of chilling. We didn't think hard. In fact, we never really ever thought hard about anything. But we discovered methods that were simple enough to follow, and effective enough to rival popular solutions produced by intense sessions of psychotherapy:

1. Work hard, yeah, but, you know, have a beer. Have two. OK, if beer's not your thing, have a glass of wine. OK, fine, make it a shot of Jack Daniels. But, please, chill.

2. Watch an episode of "House." Tape it, too, or put it on TiVo, because, with House, you've gotta be quick. Watch it a second time so you can pay close attention to every little obnoxious remark House makes. Once you process each little snide statement, you'll laugh your ass off.

3. While you're at it, watch "Monty Python and the Holy Grail." Yeah, I know. You've seen it 20 times. Get the 25th anniversary edition, however, and watch the outtakes. Before they produced this work of art, they were a mess. But they got through it because, well, there was a lot of chilling going on (at times, they accomplished this through artificial means, but that's not the point).

4. Read that earlier paragraph about "kicking ass." Read it again. Know it. Learn it. Love it.

5. Use the style guide as a rule book, yes. But use it as a guide, too. Remember that each story should have a voice - get to know these voices. Enjoy these voices. Go out for a cup of coffee with the people who produce these voices. If you chill, they'll chill. Then you'll find more voices and, from there, a theme. Then you'll feel the Zen, and you'll find your nut graph that answers the question: What is this story about?

6. If chanting is your thing, as a way of psyching yourself up, forget Andre and consider the words of another American cultural icon, Bill Murray:

"It just doesn't matter."
"It just doesn't matter."
"It just doesn't matter."

Name it, claim it, and ride it like you stole it!

By DARCIE BORDEN
Featured Blogger

The two things we can be absolutely sure of is that we come into the world alone and leave the world alone. But, in between those two events, we are not meant to be alone. Humans were meant to live in groups, working together, loving together, and seeking truth together.

Some of us realize we need human interaction like air and fully give ourselves over to it, knowing the risks are rejection, hurt, but also great love and getting closer to the truth about life and ourselves. Others hide behind distractions, not knowing how to fully give themselves over to that experience, allowing fear to keep them from hurt and inevitable disappointments.

The sum of one's life can be equal to the number and quality of relationships he/she has experienced. Anything else that one thinks can bring happiness is never as fulfilling if not shared with another human being.

To be fully engaged in life is to put yourself out there, your whole self, and see what comes of it. Of course there will be pain, but also great joy. There's nothing to lose but fear.

I once read that the Chinese believe that sadness is a guarantee, and happiness should come as a surprise. In America, we believe we are entitled to happiness, and we are surprised by sorrow.

But, aren't we merely entitled to the PURSUIT of happiness? Happiness won't just walk in through our front door and present itself. It's the result of our choices, our actions, and our mental outlook. And even then, it can be disrupted by sorrow, because happiness is not really a tangible thing we can possess.

Sometimes life is a struggle just to keep our heads above water. But, that struggle is why we are here; that is life. From the struggle we learn about others, the world, and ourselves. From the struggle, we lose our pride and ego, and we gain grace, empathy and compassion. Without struggle, we would not become complete human beings. Our growth would be stunted.

It is tempting to question and curse the bumps in the road. But, usually on the other side of the bump is clarity, strength, revelation, but most important is compassion for fellow human beings. If only there weren't so many bumps! And some of those bumps are more like hills. When you've traversed enough of those bumps, you somehow turn into a life warrior and can pass that wisdom and strength on to the rest of your clan.

I will take a risk at being cheesy and quote my fellow New Jerseyan, Jon Bon Jovi: "It's my life. It's now or never. I ain't gonna live forever. I just wanna live while I'm alive."

Whatever it is that you want out of life, name it, claim it, and ride it like you stole it. What's stopping you? Pride? Ego? Fear? Those things are merely distractions from the truth. Invite people into your life who help you get closer to your truth. Finding truth is one thing that's hard to do alone, and I'm not sure we were meant to do it alone.