#West Thornton Primary School

[dopescissorscashwagon]

Princess Beatrice reads to pupils at West Thornton Primary School in Croydon as part of Oscar's Book Club in association with Amazon Reading Volunteers.

[ollyarchive]

Interview

Olly Alexander on success, sanity and It's a Sin: 'All those hot guys. I loved it!'

Simon Hattenstone

The Years & Years frontman is starring in Russell T Davies’ new drama about the Aids crisis. He talks about bulimia, his ‘dark’ clubbing days – and how he learned to enjoy filming sex scenes

Mon 11 Jan 2021 06.00 GMT

Olly Alexander was so certain he was destined for success that he saw a therapist to help him prepare for his future fame. It was 2014 and his band Years & Years had just signed to Polydor when he visited the shrink.

“I said: ‘The album’s coming out and I really want it to be successful,’ and he said: ‘What happens if it isn’t?’ I said: ‘Well, that’s not an option because I have planned it in my diary since I was a teenager.’”

That diary was less about chronicling the present than a series of promises he made to himself. “I planned my life till I was 25. I would be a famous musician ’cos musicians were the coolest people in the world. The biggest thing in the list was buying my mum a house, and I did that. That was the coolest thing to be able to do with my money.” He smiles. “That was the coolest thing ever.”

Now Alexander might well benefit from another visit to the shrink because he’s about to become a lot more famous. He stars in It’s a Sin, the brilliant new TV drama by Russell T Davies, about a group of young gay men living and dying through the Aids epidemic in the 1980s. The five-part series is funny, vibrant, sexy and heartbreaking.

This is by no means the first time Alexander has acted – he has appeared in the TV series Skins, films such as Bright Star (about Keats), Gulliver’s Travels and Great Expectations, and on stage in the West End alongside Judi Dench and Ben Whishaw in Peter and Alice; a pretty impressive CV. But with It’s a Sin, he knows he has struck gold. “Some actors would wait their entire careers and not get such a good role,” Alexander says, and he’s right. Davies has made a habit of creating groundbreaking TV series (Queer As Folk, Bob and Rose, Torchwood), and this is his best yet.

Alexander’s character, Ritchie Tozer, is an aspiring actor/singer who has just moved to London from the Isle of Wight in search of fame, fortune and a good shagging. He embraces his new freedoms with promiscuous abandon, while also struggling with his sexuality. Ritchie is equally cocky and vulnerable, lovable and insufferable.

Although It’s a Sin takes place in a time before Alexander was born, he says there are so many ways he relates to Ritchie’s life. There is one crucial difference – whereas Ritchie is secretive, Alexander is an open book. If there’s anything to tell you, he’ll tell you, even if he is embarrassed a second later about his indiscretions. It’s an endearing quality, and one that makes him great company.

We meet in his agent’s east London office in December, when Tier 4 restrictions are yet to kick in. Alexander is a boyish 30 – half punk, half catwalk model, with orange hair, earrings, multiple rings, stylish khaki trousers and a handful of inky tattoos. He is garrulous and giggly with a huge toothy grin.

Like Ritchie, Alexander was a stranger to city life when he came to London. He was born in North Yorkshire, went to primary school in Blackpool and Gloucestershire, and a comprehensive in Monmouth, south Wales. He was a natural performer who wrote his first song at the age of 10. “I performed it in my year six assembly.” Can he remember it? He squirms. “Yeah!” Let’s hear it then? “No!” Oh go on! “OK, OK. ‘The leaves are falling outside my window. I’m lay here all alone,” he sings quietly, in that delicate falsetto. He giggles, blushes and continues. “And now I’m a knowin’, the way it’s goin’, we won’t last for ever, for ever my love.’”

Wow, those lyrics are pretty sophisticated – and melancholy. He giggles again. “Oh thanks. It’s about unrequited love. Doomed love. I was getting in early on my themes. I had a bit of help from my dad.” He wrote it after experiencing his first pangs – for a boy in his class.

At secondary school Alexander was a victim of homophobic bullying. He responded with elan. “I would still come to non-uniform day in eyeliner.” Did he fight back? “Sometimes I would scream. I was not a good fighter. We did rugby a lot at my school – a Welsh school. The one time I scored a try, on the way back to the changing room the two popular boys from the year put their arms around me and said: ‘Well done, Olly,” and I was like: ‘I can’t believe it, this is it!’” He pauses long enough for me to get a glowing feeling. “Then they tripped me up and pushed my face into the mud. That was hard to live down.” After that he never went to another games lesson.

When he was 13, his parents separated, and from then he was brought up by his mother, events organiser Vicki Thornton (his real surname – Alexander is his middle name). His father had been a talented but disappointed singer-songwriter who made a living marketing theme parks. Although he gave young Olly a lifelong passion for adventure rides, there were tensions between the two of them. After his parents split up, he broke off contact with his father. When Alexander became successful, his father tried to rekindle their relationship via Twitter. Alexander wasn’t impressed.

With the sod-you eyeliner and supreme belief that he would make it, he sounds incredibly robust. So what else was in that teenage diary? “Pppprrrr.” He blows his lips as if feeling a sudden chill. “It’s a bit dark. I used to write that I really wanted to be skinny.” He exhales deeply. “My mantra was always: I’m not going to eat this again, I’m not going to eat cake again. I’m never going to eat pasta.” He was barely into his teens when he became bulimic and started to list the things he wouldn’t eat. Actually, he says it was worse than that. “I was writing down: don’t eat, don’t eat, don’t eat. Did he have a weight problem? “I was a little chubby at primary school, but no.” What does he think it came from? “It was something I could control. I felt very out of control in the rest of my life. I was struggling with my sexuality, my parents were divorcing, and I wanted to punish myself.”

I want to give him a hug, but I’m not sure he would appreciate it, particularly in the pandemic. Why did he want to punish himself? “It was self-loathing. I didn’t want to be gay. I was convinced I was the reason my parents were splitting up.” He never considered that their divorce may have had nothing to do with him.

He started to cut himself, too. Has he still got the scars? He points to his upper arms and thighs, “because people can’t see there. I was deeply ashamed of doing it. I wanted to hide it.” Are there many scars? “No. A friend saw a plaster on my arm and jokingly asked if I’d been cutting myself. After that, I was so embarrassed that I mostly stopped doing it. Bulimia carried on well into my 2os, but it became less and less frequent. It’s really hard to hold down any kind of job if you’re throwing up food all the time, and ultimately you have to choose.” It becomes a full-time occupation? “Yes, it’s all you think about. And you’re doing so much damage to your organs. I got taken into hospital once with my mum because I had this irregular heartbeat, which can happen through constant purging, and that really scared me. I thought I’d done something irreparable to my body, and my mum was so distraught. She couldn’t understand why her son was throwing up all the food she was trying to give him. She found out because I hadn’t cleaned the toilet properly.”

After studying performing arts at Hereford College of Arts, he moved to London and was liberated. He had a heady time of it – more drugs, clubbing and sex than even he had hoped for, while also getting regular work as an actor. But there was a downside. He saw friends struggle, sacrifice themselves to excess, fall by the wayside. “Everything was about going out and connecting with people at the clubs. I had a great time, but it was also a dark time. A lot of people took too many drugs. A few friends attempted to take their lives and one succeeded. That was devastating. You can see how easy it is for a party lifestyle to turn into something negative.”

Alexander has a strong survival instinct. There was his destiny to fulfil, the house to buy for his mother. He still struggled with his mental health, so he cut down on the destructive stuff. Today, he says, his main drug of choice is the antidepressant sertraline. “I was worried about longterm use, and the doctor said: ‘Well, the latest research shows it can promote neurogenesis, and I was like that’s the coolest thing ever.” Neurogenesis is the process by which new neurons are formed in the brain. “She was basically saying antidepressants are giving you superpowers, and I was like: ‘Amazing, I’ll keep taking them for ever.’” He starts giggling, and he can’t stop. “Neurogenesis – ooh, I love that. I’m going to be neuro-supercharged.”

Years & Years formed in 2010. Founder member and synth/bass/keyboard player Mikey Goldsworthy heard Alexander singing in the shower and asked if he wanted to become lead singer. When Alexander joined, Years & Years were a five-piece band, before shrinking to an electropop trio (Alexander, Goldsworthy and fellow guitarist and keyboard guru Emre Türkmen). Alexander, the main songwriter, has an ear for great sweeping choruses (think Sam Smith meets Pet Shop Boys with a dash of New Order). Their first album, Communion, went to No 1 in the UK, while the song King topped the singles chart and its follow-up, Shine, reached No 2. Many of their songs are about yearning and doomed love – particularly on their second album, Palo Santo – just like the first one he wrote aged 10.

Alexander also became known as an LGBTQ campaigner. He made a documentary, Growing Up Gay, for the BBC in which he talked to his mother in a tear-filled exchange about coming out; he also interviewed people about struggles with their sexuality, the pressure to be promiscuous and take drugs, and addressed schoolchildren about homophobia and mental health problems. Does he think of himself as an activist? He shakes his head. “It does a disservice to actual activists. There’s a tendency to use that word for anyone in the public eye speaking up about any issue. Going into schools and talking about mental health isn’t activism. I like doing that. If I can be helpful, I want to help.”

The week before we meet he was named celebrity of the year at the British LGBT awards. He doesn’t know why – he says he didn’t do anything in 2020. “Maybe they heard about my upcoming role and got in there early!”

He says he has learned so much from making It’s a Sin – not least about acting, and how tough it can be. “Doing an acting job where you have to turn up every day is really challenging. I was so used to my musician lifestyle, which is usually: get up late, get in a car, get driven to an airport, get on a plane, fall asleep, arrive somewhere, get driven to the venue, roll out of the car and do the show. It was too much like hard work every day. I thought I’d got past this!”

We see a lot of Alexander in It’s a Sin – in every sense. He gets more than his share of sex scenes, and says it was fascinating being taught how to do them properly. So he enjoyed them? “All those hot guys. That aspect I loved! And going into it I thought, I’m going to have so much fun doing this, I’m a confident-ish guy, love having sex, it will be great.” That’s so refreshing, I say, to hear actors admit they enjoy sex scenes.

Ah, well, he says, it wasn’t quite that simple – he initially became self-conscious. “I broke down into hysterical tears, like ‘don’t fucking touch me’. I found it really hard.” Then the intimacy coordinators got to work on him. “They were a life-changing experience. Intimacy coordinators are there for safety ’cos there’s a lot of shit that can go wrong between what a director wants and what an actor wants, and boundaries being crossed. They’re there to rehearse everything beforehand with the director and the performers. You talk about animals you might imitate, the sounds you make.” He pays tribute to intimacy coordinator extraordinaire Ita O’Brien, who introduced the Intimacy on Set guidelines in 2017 and worked on Normal People as well as It’s a Sin. “Anything with sex in it, she’ll be involved. She’ll be on all fours at one point, saying: ‘Now I’m going to be like a cow and moo in ecstasy.’ She’s amazing, amazing, amazing.” And yes, he did start to enjoy the scenes.

Did he find them arousing? Now it’s my turn to blush and I apologise for the question. Did he start to enjoy it too much? “No, that’s what I want to know. What if someone gets a hard-on – how embarrassing would that be? Ita said: ‘It’s natural and normal for certain body parts to get excited and if you get an erection that’s absolutely fine, but it’s not appropriate for the workplace.’” He adds a caveat: “Depending on what kind of job you’re doing. And she said: ‘If that happens, you just take a time out. So you’re all there thinking, OK, how embarrassing – because you say time out and everybody knows it’s because you’ve got a hard-on. Hahahhaa!” Did he have to take a time out? “No!” Did anyone? “Not to my knowledge.”

Who did he have most fun with? “I’d say best kiss was the guy who plays Ash [newcomer Nathaniel Curtis]. Great kisser.” And the best shag? “Sexual simulation,” he corrects me. “Best sexual simulation was Roscoe [Omari Douglas, another relative newcomer].” Has he told them? “It’s all coming out in this article, Simon.” And I can sense him calibrating what he has just said. “It’s going to ruin my standing!” But a second later he changes his mind. “No, that’s a compliment right? I compliment them both. Hahahaha!” And he laughs giddily.

I ask about the future. You sense he’s not sure where to go from here, acting-wise – that it can’t get any better than It’s a Sin. Fortunately, he owes the band an album’s worth of songs. He had them done and dusted before the pandemic. “But all that time in my flat going insane made me realise I didn’t like any of the music, it didn’t feel relevant. I just wanted to start again, which is what I did. Now it’s almost ready – again.”

It will be only their third album in seven years. “I know,” he says. “It’s embarrassing. Ariana Grande has had about five out in the time we’ve done one.” In the meantime, he says, Türkmen has had one baby, with another on the way.

What about his own love life? “It’s pretty dire.” Sex? “I’m hopeful to have more sex … it’s very difficult in the age of Covid if you’re single. I actually tried to lock someone down who would be my ‘friends with benefits’ sex buddy, because I saw that Holland were advising people to do that. In the first lockdown I said: ‘Look, we can just have sex with each other. I trust you, you trust me, we’re not together, but this is an arrangement. I’ve not had sex in six months, what do you think?’ But he said no. I was quite upset. So yeah, not a lot of sex in 2020.” For a split-second, the puckish Alexander looks forlorn. Then he grins his toothiest grin yet. “But I’m hopeful that it will pick up in the new year!”

It’s a Sin is on Channel 4 on 22 January at 9pm

[wilsonkirby577-blog]

How Punk Formed Digital Music

Genres in music are like branches of a tree. On Side One our Kate strikes a deal with God, throws her sneakers in a lake and poses as just a little boy using a rain machine. Turn over, and she's drowning, exorcising demons and dancing an Irish jig. All this to a soundscape that employs the shiniest synthesised studio toys the Eighties needed to offer within the service of one girls's distinctive yet totally English musical genius. Listen again to the delirious cacophany of 'Working Up That Hill', and it sounds like God struck that deal.

Country music is basically the basis of all other trendy music genres, betseyrechner46.wikidot.com simply take a look at Elvis he was country singer and he also basically invented rock and roll and blues. Nation can be the longest enduring genre, gaining popularity around the early 1900's. Since country has been round for awhile numerous adjustments have been made mostly for the worst it is all about ingesting beer and saying how "country" they're but the style misplaced what made it particular, the flexibility to convey emotion within the lyric. Different things that made it great are also gone like telling a coronary heart felt story, really instructing you a lesson, and telling the struggles of each day life. In conclusion trendy nation is crap, and older nation, for my part, is one of the best genre.P. S this is for traditional nation not modern. Herein one typically finds community nodes or concentrations of artists having multiple traits in widespread and thus forming a genre. Extra accurately speaking: sure albums or a group of songs by completely different artists, because the majority of music artists can't be labeled throughout the constraints of a single style. Many artists try to create a novel and distinctive sound, crossing over into near and distant genres, whereas also evolving in sound through the course of their albums. This is the reason in case-particular literature, the same artist can be a given example for various genres; which signifies that typically artists are located on the connection between two (or extra) nodes as a substitute of right on the node (style) itself.

Because the ethnographer and cultural theorist Sarah Thornton has observed, the house wherein electronic music was experienced by fans within the Seventies was simply as vital as the music itself. The discotheque, later shortened to disco, was a place where new electronic dance information were performed by a DJ and followers could dance to the music. This was a space free of the constraints and expenses of having a live band the place technology reigned supreme. These dance-centered environments have been the forerunner of what would turn into rave tradition and membership tradition. Kylie Minogue first single, " Locomotion " became a huge hit in Minogue's native Australia, spending seven weeks at primary on the Australian singles chart. The only eventually grew to become the highest selling Australian single of the last decade. All through Europe and Asia the tune additionally performed effectively on the music charts, reaching number one in Belgium , Finland , Ireland , Israel , Japan , and South Africa The Australian rock band Males at Work achieved success in 1981 with the one " Down Beneath " topping Australian charts for audio-transcoder.com 2 consecutive weeks. A great instance of this model is the Dad and mom Understanding Asian Literacy program, an initiative of peak mum or dad bodies ( ACSSO and APC) to promote Asian language schooling through father or mother advocacy. The campaign recognises that info alone cannot change the culture of a faculty and that folks must take the initiative to make the case for adjustments within the faculty. The Dad and mom Understanding Asian Literacy project is resourced to offer half-day coaching to 2-3 dad and mom from seventy five schools. Music Australia is not at the moment offering coaching on this scale however we're blissful to talk to folks who would like assets and assist to turn out to be better advocates. For extra data on this approach, visit the Dad and mom Understanding Asian Literacy website This approach may be associated to the college P & C (or P & F). If you're nonetheless having trouble identifying the style, the association of the music might offer you some clues. For instance in genres like chill-out and ambient there's a distinct lack of any structure, because the music doesn't progress radically over its period. 7. Hennion A. The manufacturing of success: an anti-musicology of the pop music. Widespread Music. 1983 Jan 1;three:159-93. A controversial term in hip-hop, many "aware rappers" don't prefer to be labeled as such. Nonetheless, there isn't any denying the significance of this subgenre, which promotes concepts akin to data of self and awareness of vast-ranging social issues. Many other subgenres accomplish the same, however alternative rap (a better phrase) is labeled as such on account of its smoother, extra laid-again manufacturing fashion.

I like music with power and fire. I really like music that takes you on a wild journey where you don't know where you're going subsequent. I prefer it when the vocals are diverse, diverse, and all over. Clearly these are typically most prevalent in very quick-paced experimental steel, but I like it because it options these parts. If I heard jazz that was the same approach, I'd absolutely find it irresistible. The three primary classes considered here offer solely a really tough define for the way we can think about musical categorization, style, and historical past. Many examples could possibly be supplied that don't fit neatly into any of those classes, or that fit sure parts of all three. Jazz, for instance, does not conform to any of the definitions we've got mentioned in this lesson, although depending on who you ask, it could be included in any of those three categories. Musical experts have often described it as the British counterpart to Nineteen Sixties American storage rock. As acknowledged before, there are those that use style classifications as a type of elitism, claiming that one model of music is inherently superior to a different. Though everybody has personal tastes and evernote.com preferences, no argument ought to ever be made that one type of music is basically extra invaluable than one other. The individuals who use genre terms on this manner are misguidedly abusing the taxonomic system and do not represent the process or intent of music classification.This list isn't complete, however merely goes over among the more standard sub-genres of EDM. Some artists do not fit very properly inside any of the genres and simply create a new sub-genre. For example DVBBS refers to their fashion as Woozy". Different artists classify themselves in multiple genres. West, Martin Litchfield (Could 1994). "The Babylonian Musical Notation and the Hurrian Melodic Texts". Music and Letters. seventy five. pp. 161-179. Just while you suppose rock is lifeless a New genres of rock music seems. Is Electro Dance Steel or Tin-Foil Dance Music? Nope! This style fuses elements of metal, Rock, and EDM.

[keywestlou]

NO ONE WATCHES THE MONEY

Lend Lease was a thought in Roosevelt’s mind in 1940. He was able to get it actualized in 1941 when it became law.

The U.S. was not yet at war. Hitler was rolling over Europe. The Allies needed items for war and food. They had no money.

Roosevelt came up with Lend Lease. Production took place in the U.S. Then shipped to Europe and where ever else needed as time went on.

The program ended with World War II in 1945.

Items shipped were free. If there was any thought of the Allies paying back, it never occurred.

Someone had to watch the money. Involved was $51.1 billion. In today’s dollars $575 billion.

A Congressional oversight committee was established. Harry Truman chaired it. He watched the money being spent as if it were his own. Not one penny of scandal while the billions were being spent.

Not the same today. I suspect billions are wasted or channeled into improper pockets during similar transactions.

Many believe Roosevelt selected Truman as his running mate in 1944 because of Truman’s stringent honesty and ability to hawk every dollar spent as if it were his own.

The topic is not Truman and Lend Lease this morning. Lend Lease merely a run up as to how things were done at a time when honesty was a given among most in government.

It is the first stimulus package and its Paycheck Protection Program (PPC) at issue. Money was “lent” to companies to assure employees would be kept working. If employees were kept on or called back, there ws no pay back provision. Free dollars involved. It was assumed at the time it became law that small businesses would benefit.

The vermin smelled the free money and came out of the woodwork.

Many companies applied for the monies, received them, and either laid people off or did not rehire them.

A total of $1.8 billion is involved. Nine hundred companies. The 900 took the bucks and in effect laid off 90,000 workers.

Scam time.

Sixty percent of the money was to go to pay employee salaries. Initially it was 75 percent. However lowered at some point.

Some examples.

Brady Linen Services in Las Vegas received $4.6 million. Unemployed were 800 employees. None hired back.

PBM LLC was approved for $10 million. Three hundred forty nine were laid off.

The  Buffalo law firm of Gross and Dolowy got $3 million. Employees laid off before and after 146.

The penalty for misusing the monies. Must be paid back at 1 percent interest. A million dollar loan at 1 percent. Sweet!

Criminal responsibility? The level of wrongdoing must reach the fraud level. What that is at this time, I don’t know. Doubt any criminal charges have brought.

Why, how did this happen? Simple. No longer are there any Harry Truman’s in the Senate. Or, the House for that matter. Statesmen and men of honor left years ago. Most politicians today are dishonest in one fashion or another.

Biden’s transition team was barred by the Pentagon this week. Admittance denied. Biden’s people were “stunned.” This all occurred without notice or warning.

Trump’s political hacks in the Pentagon said “maybe” meetings would occur after the holidays.

What is being hidden? Cybersecurity information? Where billions of Pentagon dollars went which cannot be accounted for?

Strange.

Trump is not going to have smooth sailing oncehe leaves the White House. He is going to find “oh, the web we make when first we seek to deceive” is going to hit him squarely in the face in a number of areas.

The end is near. Trump will be out on January 20. His “loyal” workers are trying to redeem themselves. Barr with his failure to find significant fraud and publicly announcing it. Now Pompeo himself. He openly admitted yesterday that Russia was the country that has the U.S. under cyberattack. He described Russia’s involvement as being “pretty clear.”

For several months, Trump has been bragging how delivery of the vaccine was covered. The U.S. Army was taking care of it. A specific General had been appointed. He and his men deep in experience.

So what is happening?

A Pfizer representative said this week, “We have millions more doses sitting in our warehouse but, as of now, we have not received any shipment instructions for additional doses.”

What happened? Again Trump assured the American people everything was worked out. Some entities that were to receive x number of doses are now initially complaining they have not received the number they were told to expect. Now additional numbers of vaccine are not being delivered per any schedule.

Why? Why? Why”

Three reasons come to mind.

First, the Army failed. Hard to believe. I cannot conceive of such a detailed plan having gone no further than step 1.

Or, is it Trump punishing the American people because he lost? Could be.

Finally, perhaps he wants to make Biden’s life more difficult when Biden takes over?

Thomas Paine’s name comes into play today. He published his first American Crisis this day in 1776. The opening line we all recall: “These are the times that try men’s souls.”

He wrote the American Crisis essays from 1776 to 1783. In 1776, he also wrote what most of us learned in grammar school. Common Sense.

His writings promoted revolution. Overthrow of existing governments. His writings helped inspire colonial patriots to declare independence from Great Britain.

Not one to let a revolution escape his attention, he was in France in the 1790’s and deeply involved in the French Revolution.

He was anti-Christian. He was not well liked as a result.

Paine died in 1809. Only 6 people attended his funeral. The low number attributed to his negative positions regarding Christianity.

Excuse how I am going to describe Paine. He was a fruitcake. A troublemaker. Yes, he knew the correct words to inspire men to  revolution. Nevertheless, he was way out. The U.S. looks upon him favorably because all we were taught was Common Sense and the American Revolution. If one digs deeper into his background, the real man becomes obvious.

Paine reminds me of today’s Steve Bannon. A man traveling the world seeking countries where revolution or overthrow of an existing government is possible.

Mel Fisher. American hero. Key West hero. Considered by many to be the greatest treasure hunter ever. He searched 15 years before finding the mother lode of the Spanish galleon Atocha in 1985.

He died this day in 1998 at the age of 76. People who knew the man speak fondly of him all the time. His name came up frequently in the Chart Room which was one of his favorite haunt.

Daughter Lisa worked at the Mel Fisher Museum for several years. She was Development Director.

Jean Thornton has even a closer relationship. She knew Fisher personally. Jean you will recall is Key West’s Golden Girl. She was diving with Fisher and came across gold and jewels. Her discovery so sufficient that she quit her school teaching job and never worked again.

I wrote yesterday negatively re Trump. I expected several pro-Trump anti-Louis comments this morning. Not one. Shocking. Only comments from those who apparently agreed with me.

Busy day yesterday medically. Blood screw up last time taken. Had to return to have a portion redone at the hospital. After leaving, I got a call to return. They failed to get blood for a third item.

I fell thursday. Going up the stairs. Third time in 2 weeks. I worry about fracturing a hip.

Anyhow, my head and left arm just below the elbow hit the wall hard. I’m on a blood thinner. My arm was bleeding bad, profusely, etc. Actually, I did not think it was that bad.

However, I could not stop the bleeding. Thought it would stop on its own. Bloodied a good shirt, 2 towels, a bed sheet, and I don’t know how many band aids.

Still bleeding yesterday. Did not want to go to the hospital emergency room. A long wait. Instead called my friend Susan Neill at Dr. McIvor’s office. Susan is a heart specialist.

She took care of me. In fact, wrapped my arm so tightly that I fear I may lose circulation in my lower arm and fingers. I have been opening and shutting my fingers last night and today.

Self-quarantine now in its 324th day. I had to see my primary care physician a couple of days ago. Told me I looked tense. I said I was not. We talked. He was right. This quarantine is subconsciously getting to me. It is imperative to one’s existence to have someone to talk with.

Enjoy your day!

    NO ONE WATCHES THE MONEY was originally published on Key West Lou

[national-theatre-scotland-blog]

Introducing our Starter Artists

Top row: Iain Craig, Diane Thornton, Hardeep Pandhal and Nima Sene.

Bottom row: Louise Ahl, Sean Wai Keung, Sara Shaarawi and Daniel Livingston.

Last year the National Theatre of Scotland marked its tenth anniversary by launching a brand-new development opportunity for Scottish artists. We are delighted that the Starter programme is returning for 2017.

The Starter programme offers eight artists a funded residency of £2,500 to help them develop their skills, networks, and explore a new idea for a piece of theatre. From more than 170 applications, eight ideas were selected which represent the breadth and scope, imagination and ambition, of a vibrant cross-section of Scotland’s diverse theatre-making community. Involving approaches that range from script-writing and text based work; to puppetry and visual theatre; to experimental and choreographic work; to street theatre and work for children and young people. The artists will explore topics as diverse as Chinese takeaways, race and police brutality, Gaelic audio and visual installations, and the medieval Scottish tradition of flyting.

The Starter artists selected are:

Louise Ahl

Louise Ahl is a Glasgow-based artist originally from Sweden, making experimental and choreographic performance work. She creates both solo and collaborative multi-art-form pieces. In 2010 she began making work with her performance persona Ultimate Dancer, who was born as a half-joke/half-critical/wholly-serious attempt to explode and lovingly re-manifest the art form of dance.

Louise’s work is dedicated to pushing at the edges of choreography, performance and visual art, working away from narrative based performances, instead making ambitious and detailed thematic concepts for work to exist in, using movement, voice, light, sonics and language.

Iain Craig

Iain Craig is an animator, illustrator and set designer based in Glasgow. Originally from the north west Highlands and a native Gaelic speaker. His work in theatre has included creating animation, set design, illustration and graphic design for companies including A Moment’s Peace, Theatre Gu Lèor, Starcatchers, Imaginate, Macrobert and he was storyboard artist for the National Youth Theatre Commonwealth Games Athlete’s Village opening ceremony performance.

In 2013 Iain was Visual Artist in Residence at Lyra Theatre in Artspace. He is also an Associate Artist with Imaginate, having recently competed a 11 week residency with Bun-sgoil Taobh na Pàirce in Edinburgh, working with Primary 6 to create an installation-led story telling development piece.

Daniel Livingston

Daniel Livingston is a multi-skilled theatre-maker who has worked across the U.K. and internationally. He has worked on many different productions in many different roles from director, designer, scenographer, makeup artist to actor and performer. He has worked professionally with notable theatre and film companies such as Channel 4, Citizens Theatre, The Arches and Cirque du Soleil. 

He is also co-founder of Inkblot Collective. Along with his professional work he has delivered many different workshops for young people to professional artists. His work merges different art forms together to create a strong visual performance.

Hardeep Pandhal

Born in Birmingham, Hardeep Pandhal now lives and works in Glasgow, having graduated with a MFA from The Glasgow School of Art in 2013 with the support of a Leverhulme Scholarship Award. He was selected for Bloomberg New Contemporaries (2013), the Glasgow International Open Bursary (2013), the Catlin Art Guide (2014) and the Drawing Room Bursary Award (2015).

Recent shows include a solo show ‘Hobson-Jobson’ at Collective Edinburgh (2015) and groups shows ‘The Vanished Reality’, Modern Art Oxford (2016) and ‘Nothing Happens, Twice: Artists Explore Absurdity’, Harris Museum, Preston (2016).

Nima Séne

Nima Séne is a performance maker from Berlin based in Glasgow. Their work questions, interrogates and celebrates obscure and known experienced facets of identity. Their agency lies in making the invisible visible, the undesirable desirable, the unknown known and the complicated, complex. Their work as a maker and as a performer/actor is situated in dance, music, film, visual art and performance. They currently work in Glasgow (spoken word and queer club performances, Transmission Gallery, acting in new Scottish short films, latest project “Bloody Love”), Berlin (Tangente Company) and have recently completed the Arts Admin BANNER graduate award scheme in London.

Sara Shaarawi

Sara Shaarawi is a playwright, translator and performer from Cairo who is now based in Glasgow. She has had her work performed at the Tron Theatre, Traverse, Village Pub Theatre, Platform and the CCA. Sara also took part in the Playwrights Studio Scotland’s 2015 Mentoring Programme and the National Theatre of Scotland’s Breakthrough Writers programme in 2016, and is one if the recipients of the 2017 New Playwright’s Award.

Other credits include dramaturg, performing and translation for ‘One Day in Spring’ (Òran Mór /National Theatre of Scotland) and ‘Here’s the News from Over There’ (Northern Stage).

Diane Thornton

Diane trained as an actor at Queen Margaret College, Edinburgh and Ecole Philippe Gaulier, London. She started off acting in London before joining an international crew of theatre-makers creating performances with communities in Kosovo and Bosnia. Those projects and her work with Contacting the World committed her to socially engaged and collaborative performances. 

She performs regularly as a Clowndoctor and Elderflower with Hearts&Minds. She is co-founder of Tenterhooks, making outdoor performances and wild play projects such as the interactive family show ‘Call of Nature’ and the intimate walkabout ‘Dance wi’ the Deil’.  Diane lives on the Cowal peninsula in Argyll.

Sean Wai Keung

Sean Wai Keung is a poet, performer and spoken word artist. His interests lie in the intersections between forms and he often utilises chance elements into his work. In 2013 he was awarded the Farrago Zoo Award for Best Debut Performance and his debut poetry pamphlet, to be released later this year, won the inaugural 2016 Rialto Open Pamphlet Competition. He has worked in London, Norwich and Glasgow, where he currently resides.

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New Jersey State Quotes

Official Website: New Jersey State Quotes

  • A new report reveals that New Jersey Governor Chris Christie spent over $82,000 on food at NFL games. Christie said, ‘Hey, both of those games went into overtime.’ – Conan O’Brien • A new survey indicates that Obama supporters love iPhones. So if you have an iPhone, chances are you are going to be supporting President Obama. In a related story, if you support Governor Chris Christie from New Jersey, chances are you love IHOP. – David Letterman • A New York doctor has finished a five year study on what smells have the biggest effect on New Yorkers. The smell New Yorkers like the most: vanilla. The smell New Yorkers like the least: New Jersey. – Jay Leno • A poet is a poet, whether he rides in a Ford or on a donkey; a sage is a sage, whether he plays golf in New Jersey or bathes in the Ganges, or prays in the desert; and a fool is a fool, whether he be a maharaja or a president of a post-war republic. – Ameen Rihani • After I returned to New Jersey, I thought I was safe, because I did not think Kenny G could leave the bad place, which I realize is silly now – because Kenny G is extremely talented and resourceful and a powerful force to be reckoned with. – Matthew Quick • All I’m saying is we got plenty of Texans, and people from Montana, and New Jersey, and Wyoming, or Kansas City. We got plenty of actors. So we don’t need some cat from Cardiff-upon-Rosemary-upon-Thyme, or whatever the hell it is, playing people from Montana. And in the reverse, they got plenty of people from Cardiff-upon-Rosemary-upon-Thyme that they don’t need our asses coming over there trying to do British accents. – Billy Bob Thornton • All music is based on country music. And that’s why so many different kinds of people relate to it. There are more country music fans in New Jersey than there are down South. – Loretta Lynn • All my life I’ve been involved with racial politics. I was a Freedom Rider in the South. I was the author of books on gang violence, I was a community organizer in Newark, New Jersey, and when I spoke to the Black Caucus, congressional and state, I realized they were going all the way for Hillary [Clinton] and so was the Latino caucus in Sacramento and I asked myself this question: “Do I really want to cast my vote against these people who have been central to my life and to the soul of the country?” And so I went with them. Period. – Tom Hayden • All of my favourite actors are American and I grew up watching American movies. It’s weird, but I used to do a New Jersey accent in every audition in the States just because I liked to do it, really. It’s completely bizarre. Everybody would ask: ‘Where are you from?’ And I would say, ‘Oh, I’m from London.’ – Robert Pattinson • All things start in California and spread to New Jersey, then to London and then throughout Europe. – Stelios Haji-Ioannou • Although the governor strongly disagrees with the court substituting its judgment for the constitutional process of the elected branches or a vote of the people, the court has now spoken clearly as to their view of the New Jersey Constitution, and, therefore, same-sex marriage is the law. – Chris Christie • And I think what people in New Jersey have gotten to know about me over the last decade that I’ve been in public life is what you see is what you get. And I’m no different when I’m sitting with you than I am when I’m at home or anyplace else. – Chris Christie • And I’m sure than in Poland, or somewhere, it is considered cool to drive a Porsche and wear necklaces and black silk, but at least back in Brooklyn if you did those things you were either a drug dealer or from – New Jersey. • And then we moved to New Jersey and I went to the Art Students League. – Donald Judd • Any intelligent woman would have made a dignified retreat, but this was New Jersey, where dignity always runs a poor second to the pleasure of getting in someone’s face. – Janet Evanovich • Artificial Intelligence leaves no doubt that it wants its audiences to enter a realm of pure fantasy when it identifies one of the last remaining islands of civilization as New Jersey. – Godfried Danneels • As I climbed the electoral ladder – from state assemblyman to mayor of Woodbridge and finally to governor of New Jersey – political compromises came easy to me because I’d learned how to keep a part of myself innocent of them. – James McGreevey

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'New+Jersey', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '68', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_new-jersey').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_new-jersey img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • Based on the number that they found, The New York Times reported that Hillary [Clinton] had basically clinched the primary ’cause you added the superdelegates to the number of delegates you’d already gotten. But this was on the eve of the California and New Jersey primary. – Terry Gross • Because I can’t seem to escape it. It’s a way for me to address and counter my questions about what it means to be human, or, in my case a Dominican human who grew up in New Jersey. – Junot Diaz • Block Watch, Crime Watch, we have hundreds of thousands of Americans, every day and night, risking their lives, going out for no pay as volunteers, protecting Americans like all of you and not asking anything in return. And the other day I’m speaking in a high school in New Jersey and the youngsters go, oh, you’re just like Zimmerman. – Curtis Sliwa • Brooklyn Heights itself is a window on the port. Here, where the perspective is fixed by the towers of Manhattan and the hills of New Jersey and Staten Island, the channels running between seem fingers of the world ocean. Here one can easily embrace the suggestion, which Whitman felt so easily, that the whole American world opens out from here, north and west. – Alfred Kazin • By failing to keep their end of the bargain, the Bush administration would allow New Jersey projects to deteriorate and make New Jersey highways and bridges less safe. – Bob Menendez • Chris Christie is New Jersey’s concern, not America’s. – Henry Rollins • Chris Christie’s rise in politics in New Jersey, in many ways, was built on his takedown of Charles Kushner. He got national headlines for that prosecution. – Steve Kornacki • Christine Todd Whitman had to resign as the head of the EPA. You know, when the governor of New Jersey decides the environment is hopeless, you gotta really think that one through. – Greg Giraldo • Cities are gentrified by the following types of people in sequence: first the risk-oblivious (artists), then the risk-aware (developers), finally the risk adverse (dentists from New Jersey). – Bill Kraus • Come with me.” “Come with you? To Pandemonium? To the Void? And here I thought that my invitation to summer in New Jersey was the worst I had ever received. – Cassandra Clare • Common Core has been eliminated in New Jersey. – Chris Christie • Conscious of our many problems, I seek today to lay a foundation to our public policy. My fundamental purpose is to devote my term of office to raising the standard of public service in New Jersey. – Charles Edison • Donald Trump didn’t know the [Democratic] vice presidential candidate he was running against: Tim Kaine [Senator] of Virginia, Donald! Not Thomas Kean, Republican [former Governor] of New Jersey, you moron! And his answer to absolutely every question is so simplistic and grand: “Oh, I’ll fix it. Trust me. I’m the best fixer. I love to fix!!! Look at everything I’ve fixed before!!!!”. – Chrissy Teigen • During Prohibition, Atlantic City created the idea of the speakeasy, which turned into nightclubs and that extraordinary political complexity and corruption coming out of New Jersey at the time. The long hand that they had-and maybe still do-even had to do with presidential elections. – Martin Scorsese • Each summer, for example, nitrogen and phosphate washing from farmlands in the Mississippi Valley enter the Gulf of Mexico, creating a massive algal bloom covering some 16,000 square kilometers. As the blooms die off, this area-roughly the size of New Jersey-is so deprived of oxygen that no fish survive. – Lester R. Brown • Ed Grimley lives in a retirement home in New Jersey. It’s called the Retirement Home in New Jersey for Characters Who Were Interesting in the ’80s for About an Hour. He’s there with the Whiners, Gumby and Jon Lovitz’s ‘That’s the ticket’ guy. – Martin Short • Feasting is also closely related to memory. We eat certain things in a particular way in order to remember who we are. Why else would you eat grits in Madison, New Jersey? – Jeff Smith • First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried letters from a girl named Martha, a junior at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey. They were not love letters, but Lieutenant Cross was hoping, so he kept them folded in plastic at the bottom of his rusack. In the late afternoon, after a day’s march, he would dig his foxhole, wash his hands under a canteen, unwrap the letters, hold them with the tips of his fingers, and spend the last hour of light pretending. – Tim O’Brien • From the look on your face, I’d say you know him.” I nodded. “Sold him a cannoli when I was in high school.” Connie grunted. “Honey, half of all the women in New Jersey have sold him their cannoli – Janet Evanovich • From the top of the quarry cliffs, one could see the New Jersey suburbs bordered by the New York City skyline. – Robert Smithson • Given my last position, that I was the first U.S attorney post 9/11 in New Jersey, I understand acutely the pain and sorrow and upset of the family members who lost loved ones that day at the hands of radical Muslim extremists. And their sensitivities and concerns have to be taken into account. – Chris Christie • Global warming has melted the polar ice caps, raised the levels of the oceans and flooded the earth’s great cities. Despite its evident prosperity, New Jersey is scarcely Utopia. – Godfried Danneels • Gov. Christie says ‘New Jersey First.’ State-based Isolationism! – Jonah • Growing up as a kid, we moved all over the country on a fairly frequent basis, from New Jersey to Texas, California, Illinois… we moved 21 times in my first 17 years. – J. Michael Straczynski • Growing up in a New Jersey suburb, my Catholic faith was an important part of my young life, shaping the way I approached the world. – James Lecesne • Heaven looks a lot like New Jersey. – Jon Bon Jovi • Hillary Clinton’s younger brother Tony is facing criticism for using the Clintons’ political connections to help his career. So on the down side, she has a sketchy brother named Tony. On the up side, she just locked up every vote in New Jersey. – Jimmy Fallon • his hair was permed and gelled like a New Jersey girl’s on homecoming night. Percy Jackson. – Rick Riordan • Hollywood is Newark, New Jersey with palm trees. – Weegee • Homeland Security Chief Tom Ridge made that critical leap from ‘be afraid’ to ‘be very afraid,’ raising the terrorist threat level to orange for financial sectors in New York, Washington, D.C., and northern New Jersey. … Ridge’s announcement comes amidst reports he will step down as head of homeland security after the election. Ridge himself has refused to comment on the story, though colleagues say he has often expressed a desire to spend more time at home, scaring his family. – Jon Stewart • I absolutely believe that, come November 2012, I’m going to be governor of New Jersey and not in any other office. But the fact of the matter is, if Gov. Romney, who’s going to be our nominee, picked up the phone and called me to talk about this, I love my country enough and I love my party enough to listen. – Chris Christie • I actually like south Florida. I never lived in a more interesting place than this. I’ve never met a wider range of people. I guess when I came here I thought there were Cubans and then there were people from New York and that was Miami. Now I know that it’s Cubans, people from New York, and some people from New Jersey. – Dave Barry • I also love horseback riding in New Jersey. – Eva Herzigova • I am obsessed with trash TV. I watch all reality shows. I watch all the “Housewives.” I am a huge fan of “New Jersey.” – NeNe Leakes • I believed passionately that Communists were a race of horned men who divided their time equally between the burning of Nancy Drew books and the devising of a plan of nuclear attack that would land the largest and most lethal bomb squarely upon the third-grade class of Thomas Jefferson School in Morristown, New Jersey. – Fran Lebowitz • I did a show in New Jersey in the auditorium of a technical high school … Technical high school, that’s where dreams are narrowed down. We tell our children, “You can do anything you want.” Their whole lives. “You can do anything!” But this place, we take kids – they’re 15, they’re young – and we tell them, “You can do eight things. We got it down to eight for you.” – Louis C. K. • I don’t get into politics, general or musical, but just call me if you get jury duty. Even in New Jersey I was able to help somebody. – Eugene Ormandy • I don’t have time for lie-on-the-beach vacations. I’m a zoo person. There’s one in New Jersey where animals actually come up to your car. I love the monkeys – I used to give them bubblegum to chew. – Missy Elliot • I feel like if you’re in Jersey, you have to be a Jersey Devils fan. Anybody born within the confines of the border of the state of New Jersey, I feel, should be a Jersey Devils fan. – Kevin Smith • I go to a church here in New Jersey that is just a very exciting place, and I just love to be there on Sunday morning – I just sit there in a pew with my wife, that’s all I do, but I’m very much a part of that congregation. We’ve got a fantastic rector,she brings in people from places like the United Theological Seminary in New Brighton, Minnesota, where you’ve got good teaching, and our people are being introduced to great material and they really respond. They’re able to believe without crossing their fingers. And I think that’s a real step forward. – John Shelby Spong • I grew up in New Jersey and my father was a golf pro, so I was groomed for sports, but I wasn’t very good, so my interests lay elsewhere. – Joe Dante • I grew up in New Jersey and never went up the Statue of Liberty. – Buzz Aldrin • I grew up in New Jersey in the ’80s. That means one thing: Big hair. … I had big hair, my boyfriends had big hair, we all had big hair. Our prom looked like the poodle division of the Westminster dog show. – Jancee Dunn • I grew up in northern New Jersey – the banlieue of New York – and I now live in Brooklyn. I am separated from my parents by about 50 miles, but really there is almost no distance between us. I speak to them nearly every day. – Jonathan Ames • I grew up in Queens and New Jersey. I started doing children’s theater when I was seven to get out of school because I didn’t fit in. – Jesse Eisenberg • I had just done what she does in the story just about a year earlier – I moved from New Jersey and came to New York and was working at a bar, and you know, trying to make it. – Piper Perabo • I have a very powerful sense of place, but I have a very powerful sense of being a migrant, so it’s both. It seems like I’m always leaving my home. That’s part of the formula. I love the Dominican Republic. I go back all the time. I love New Jersey. Go back all the time. – Junot Diaz • I have some Russian friends. But probably only 10 percent. I don’t hang out usually in the big Russian communities in Brooklyn and New Jersey. – Mikhail Baryshnikov • I just know what it’s like being an East Coast person, being from New Jersey. – Ray Liotta • I just want everybody to know my music and get to know my squad, Remy Boyz; just to show people New Jersey. New Jersey got talent, too. I mean, everybody sleeps on us, and they put us as the underdog. – Fetty Wap • I knew from a young age that I wanted to perform. I went to an arts camp called Brookdale Arts Camp, in New Jersey, from the time I was 6, and then I was a counselor there through high school. – Melissa Rauch • I know California isn’t a real destination. You can’t get there from New Jersey, not simply by following a line drawn on a map. The process of arrival is more subtle and complex. It involves acts of contrition. You must appease the gods. You must find novel forms of penance. You must tattoo your children and look at the wonder. It’s about conjuring and awakening and intuitions you wish you never had. – Kate Braverman • I later spent… five to eight months in hospitals in New Jersey, always on an involuntary basis, and always attempting a legal argument for release. – John Forbes Nash • I like Chris Christie also. I like him a lot as a person. He didn’t do anything to help me when I thinking of running for senate in New Jersey. But I give him a little slack. – Geraldo Rivera • I live in New Jersey now, which always gets a bad rap here and there, but I must say, I enjoy living here too – Paul Muldoon • I love music. I’ve just been putting studios together, here and at my house in New Jersey and so I can always make music and express my ideas and work with people to fine tune them to where they need to be. – Queen Latifah • I loved New Jersey. I thought it was the greatest place in the world because on Halloween kids could start trick or treating right after school. Isn’t that great? – Joel McHale • I may look like a nice Jewish girl from New Jersey, but inside I’m a 50-year-old, heavyset black man with a big thumb, like Wes Montgomery. – Emily Remler • I said we are going to balance an $11 billion budget deficit in a $29 billion budget, so by percentage, the largest budget deficit in America, by percentage, larger than California, larger than New York, larger than Illinois. And we’re going to balance that without raising taxes on the people of the state of New Jersey. – Chris Christie • I should call myself four market Norton. I’m great in Boston and Cleveland. I do good in Phillie, New Jersey. – Jim Norton • I still remember the first gig where I got people going, it was Rascals in New Jersey, and the place was packed. I was scared. People were expecting me to be funny. I gotta be honest, every time I walk into a club, it’s that same fear. – Bill Burr • I think Frankie Valli did everything right. He kept singing. And you also have to remember, he was confined to a certain society, which was this sort of like – the wrong side of the law kind of society of Italian guys from the streets of Belleville, New Jersey. So he found his way. – John Lloyd Young • I used to rent a house in Princeton, New Jersey, and whenever people came to visit me, I would drive them past Albert Einstein’s house, which is the most ordinary house in Princeton – a house, let me assure you, that now a salesman wouldn’t live in. I’d always say, “That was Albert Einstein’s house.” And they’d say, “What do you mean? Why would Albert Einstein live in a little house like that?” And I’d always say to people, “Because he didn’t care!” – Fran Lebowitz • I want them to believe I have a vision for the state of New Jersey. – Jon Corzine • I was a garbage man in New Jersey in summers during college at Yale. Everybody else got to go to Switzerland and I got to go to the dump. – Tom Perrotta • I was all-state in four sports in New Jersey, but sometimes I couldn’t get served at a restaurant two blocks from my high school. There were no job opportunities then… the only thing a black youth could aspire to be was a bellboy or a pullman or an elevator operator, or, maybe, a teacher. There was a time when all we had was black baseball. – Monte Irvin • I was born in Bayonne, New Jersey. I grew up in the projects. I never went anywhere. But I have lived a thousand lives and I’ve loved a thousand loves. I’ve walked on distant worlds and seen the end of time. Because I read. – George R. R. Martin • I was born in Havana, Cuba and raised in Madrid, Spain. Then I moved to New Jersey. – Daisy Fuentes • I was born in Long Branch, New Jersey, and no one had ever taught anybody that young, back in those days. – Bernie Worrell • I was born in New York City, but I was raised in New Jersey, part of the great Jewish emigration of 1963. – Jon Stewart • I was born in Newark, New Jersey, and grew up in Summit, an upscale town in north Jersey. There was this tiny area of Summit where most of the black families lived. My parents and I lived in a duplex house on Williams Street. – Ice T • I was born in Patterson, New Jersey, and raised pretty much all around the country. My family tended to move from place to place following economic prospects and jobs and looking for new opportunities, so we changed schools, colleges, grade schools, high schools every 6 months to a year – depending on the breaks. – J. Michael Straczynski • I was born just after the end of World War II, and with my friends in our little suburban backyards in New Jersey, we used to play war a lot. I don’t know if boys still play war, they probably do, but we were thrusting ourselves into recent history and we were always fighting either the Nazis or the Japanese. – Paul Auster • I was born on May 17, 1979, in Newark, New Jersey. – Joe Tex • I was the chief sponsor of the Business Employment Incentive Program bill, which resulted in hundreds of thousands of direct and indirect jobs here in New Jersey. – Joe Kyrillos • I was the Secretary of State of New Jersey in November 2000. I paid careful attention to the challenges that stemmed from inadequate voting systems in various places. – DeForest Soaries • I went home every night to New Jersey – or most nights – and to help with the six-grade math homework or to make breakfast in the morning, just to make sure that that was there. When I was single and didn’t have children, I used to laugh at this notion of quality time. – Kellyanne Conway • I went to a dialect coach and she told me that I had five problems; two were my Israeli accent and three were my New Jersey accent. I don’t even want to know what I sounded like back then! – Odeya Rush • I went to my last three years of high school in New Jersey. I just wanted to act, you know? – Stacey Dash • I worked as a teacher in the public school system in New York City for several years, and I was a victim of the layoffs, you know, in the mid-’70s. And then I worked as a sales engineer for a company in New Jersey that was selling industrial filtration equipment. – Feisal Abdul Rauf • I’m from New Jersey. I was born in toxic sludge. – Cassandra Clare • I’d literally rather hang out at the T.G.I. Friday’s in New Jersey than tool around at a place that sells $40 cheeseburgers. – Patrick Carney • If I had the choice now, I’d make New Jersey a state where you can have a shall issue on conceal and carry. Now our legislature won’t do that, but I have done recently is to make sure that we’re making it easier for folks to be able to get a permit in New Jersey because they deserve the right to do that as law-abiding citizens. – Chris Christie • If I use the media, even with tricks, to publicize a black youth being shot in the back in Teaneck, New Jersey… then I should be praised for it, and it’s more of a comment on them than me that it would take tricks to make them cover the loss of life. – Al Sharpton • If some unemployed punk in New Jersey, can get a cassette to make love to Elle McPherson for $19.95, this virtual reality stuff is going to make crack look like Sanka. – Dennis Miller • If you look at suburban education in New Jersey and New York, it’s pretty strong, intact, doing a pretty good job. You cap taxes for those communities, can we reasonably predict it’s going to be as strong 20 years from now? – Dannel Malloy • If you were back in the Cretaceous Period – the last of the time of the dinosaurs – and you were driving from New York to Philadelphia on the New Jersey Turnpike, you would be driving across water. – Kenneth Lacovara • If you’re Chris Christie, who is governor of New Jersey, a state that obviously was impacted by 9/11, this gives you an opportunity to talk about how, as governor, you had to deal with terrorism and security issues. – Amy Walter • If you’re from New Jersey, let people make all those bad jokes about our state. Don’t let anyone know how great it is here. It’s the best kept secret. – Jon Bon Jovi • If you’re in the contracting business in this country, you’re suspect. If you’re in the contracting business in New Jersey, you’re indictable. If you’re in the contracting business in New Jersey and are Italian, you’re convicted. – Raymond J. Donovan • I’m a conservative, pro-life governor in a state where it is really tough to be both. A state like New Jersey, with lots of Democrats, but still we cut taxes, we balanced budgets. We fought the teacher’s union. – Chris Christie • I’m a partner in a company called Helicopter Services and Instruction out of New Jersey. – Treat Williams • I’m from New Jersey / I don’t expect too much / If the world ended today / I would adjust. – John Gorka • I’m from the dirty depths of New Jersey. – Ezra Miller • I’m here helping Doug Forrester become the next governor of New Jersey. – George Pataki • I’m just this Dominican kid from New Jersey. – Junot Diaz • I’m Palestinian, I’m disabled, I’m female and I live in New Jersey. – Maysoon Zayid • Immigrating didn’t burn out my desire to travel, though that can happen. There’s nothing like immigration to make you want to just stay put. But what I think of as home is this life between Santo Domingo and the parts of New Jersey and New York City that were my childhood, so in my mind it’s like home is all those things combined. – Junot Diaz • In 1938, when I had decided that the only way to see the country was in a trailer, and I built the trailer which I still have and lived in it for eighteen months, and learned America from San Diego to the Canadian border, from Miami to New Jersey, and east to west in between. – Leslie Charteris • In dealing with Syria’s dictator…only force counts. No cease-fire was attainable in Lebanon until the 16-inch guns of the battleship New Jersey started shelling Syria’s proxies; suddenly, sweet reason prevailed in Damascus. – William Safire • In the eight years before I became governor, there was zero net private sector job growth in New Jersey. Zero. For eight years. – Chris Christie • In the end, all worlds, whether they’re set in the future or in New Jersey of today, are fictions. Sure, you don’t got to do too much work to build a mundane world, but don’t get it twisted: you still got to do some work. – Junot Diaz • It ended suddenly for Brenda, more slowly for me. My runs began getting shorter and less pleasurable. I’d feel bad after only one day, or only a few hours, instead of four or five days. And I began to want to stop. One of the proudest moments of my life was at a rock-‘n’-roll theater in New Jersey. A guy actually put some coke under my nose and I was able to say, “No, thanks,” and turn my head away. – George Carlin • It was around that time, early 60s. There were like three kindred spirits in New Jersey. I had two friends who played folk music, old-time music and bluegrass and we started a little band called the Garret Mountain Boys. – David Grisman • It was tough doing ‘Underneath the Lintel’ in New Jersey in the wintertime, but rewarding. Those audiences were lively and interactive. On-stage was great, but off-stage was difficult. – Richard Schiff • It’s about time that we create first class citizenship for every American plain and simple. Every New Jersey-ian. This should not be a popular vote. This is something we should do now. – Cory Booker • It’s great having Bruce Springsteen on my show. We have so much in common! We’re both from New Jersey, just from different neighborhoods. Sort of like how Martin Luther King and Margaret Mitchell both came from Atlanta. But from different neighborhoods. – Jon Stewart • I’ve been trained in dancing and I used to be quite good, though I am a bit rusty right now. But I could probably brush up in a couple of months. The funny thing is that I actually took classes from Savion Glover, who worked in Happy Feet, when I was a kid. Isn’t that wild? I was part of a selected group that was brought into New York from New Jersey (which is where I’m from) to study, every Saturday: ballet, jazz and tap. It was a musical comedy group. – Brittany Murphy • I’ve loved car racing all my life. I watch NASCAR regularly, and drag racing because we have Raceway Park in New Jersey. I think I got it from my father. – Queen Latifah • I’ve never been one for sitting on beaches. Let me tell you who I am: I’m a girl from New Jersey who moved to New York and worked in a bar while trying to make a living at what I really wanted to do, which was act. – Piper Perabo • I’ve travelled to many states and seen the suffering in people’s eyes I’ve visited communities in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Indiana and Ohio whose manufacturing jobs have literally disappeared. An embarrassment to our country and it’s horrible. – Donald Trump • Jason Oliver C. Smith, a big dumb guy who was tan, died March 30 of lung cancer and old age. He was 13 years old and lived in New Jersey, Pennsylvania. At the time of his death, his license was current and he had had all of his shots. He is survived by two adults, three children, a cat named Daisy who drove him nuts, and his lifelong companion, Pudgy, whose spaying he always regretted, as well as a host of fleas who have gone elsewhere, probably to Pudgy. He will be missed by all, except Daisy. He never bit anyone, which is more than you can say for most of us. – Anna Quindlen • Judge Samuel Alito was born and raised in the great state of New Jersey. Our state has a legacy of producing outstanding jurists, most notably the late William J. Brennan, who ushered in our nation’s recommitment to civil rights in the latter half of the 20th century. – Frank Lautenberg • Last week, I approved a mission over New York. I take responsibility for that decision. While federal authorities took the proper steps to notify state and local authorities in New York and New Jersey, it’s clear that the mission created confusion and disruption. I apologize and take responsibility for any distress that flight caused. – Louis Caldera • Like, a lot of people I know are wanting to get back to the Earth in some way and not raise their kids in this world of Apps and Internet all the time. I grew up on a river in New Jersey and I was in fantasy land. I could do anything. – Kirsten Dunst • Lordy, lordy, lordy do I love money. It is a character flaw, no doubt, one that springs from a panicked childhood in which I always felt as if our family was only a couple missed child support payments from being tossed onto the pitiless streets of our suburban New Jersey town. – Michael Ian Black • Madonna is my role model shes such a powerful woman. I love Gwenyth Paltrow, shes an actress I aspire to be like. And, of course, my mom. She drove me from New Jersey to New York every day for commercials so I could get where I am today. – Kirsten Dunst • Manchester United could have any goalkeeper in the world. I was a 23-year-old kid from New Jersey who, from an early age, had to cope with Tourettes Syndrome, a brain disorder that can trigger speech and facial tics, vocal outbursts and obsessive compulsive behavior. – Tim Howard • Manhattan is a narrow island off the coast of New Jersey devoted to the pursuit of lunch. – Raymond Sokolov • Maybe because I’m from New Jersey, I just have this kind of plain language hangup. But I would make very clear – I would not talk to Vladimir Putin. In fact, I would talk to Vladimir Putin a lot. But I’d say to him, “Listen, Mr. President, there’s a no-fly zone in Syria; you fly in, it applies to you.” And yes, we would shoot down the planes of Russian pilots if in fact they were stupid enough to think that this president was the same feckless weakling that the president we have in the Oval Office is right now. – Chris Christie • Michael Sanchez and I grew up in New Jersey, not far from here, playing soccer together. When I was in high school, I worked to start an organization to help senior citizens, which I learned a great deal from. – Andrew Shue • Mom put dense cheddar bread into a bag for a man who said this was his wife’s favorite – he’d driven all the way from New Jersey to buy it because today was their anniversary. Several women in the store jabbed their husbands on hearing this. I hung my head – Peter Terris wouldn’t cross the street to buy me a Twinkie. – Joan Bauer • My boyfriend is Italian and from New Jersey, so naturally he was thrilled to meet Joe Pesci. – Diablo Cody • My early childhood was spent in Newark, New Jersey, but my family moved to Denver when I was 12. – Anita Diament • My feeling about growing up in New Jersey was, ‘How come I’m not in New York?’ That being said, I’m older and I have a better worldview now, and so I think I grew up in an incredibly privileged position. The town I grew up in is beautiful. I got a great education, and I’m very grateful for it. – Anne Hathaway • My first waitress job was at Johnny Rockets in New Jersey, and then I waited tables at a sports bar. – Melissa Rauch • My goal was to make New Jersey’s state government a model for all other states to emulate, hopefully thereby to stem, or at least slow down, the flow of power to the federal government. – Charles Edison • My mother is a first generation American. Her father worked in the Roebling Steel Mill in Trenton, New Jersey.And yet my mother became the first person in her family to get a college degree. – Samuel Alito • My mother took care of us until my father scrammed, and then she ended up working in the small-factory sector of New Jersey with a lot of other immigrants. – Junot Diaz • My writing is really intuitive. As a kid, I went to school in New Jersey and hung out in New York, so the way kids used to talk got into our earlier songs. – Donald Fagen • New Jersey boasts the highest percentage of passport holders (68%); Delaware (67%), Alaska (65%), Massachusetts (63%), New York (62%), and California (60%) are close behind. At the opposite end of the spectrum, less than one in five residents of Mississippi are passport holders, and just one in four residents of West Virginia, Kentucky, Alabama, and Arkansas. – Richard Florida • New Jersey for me is so alive with history. It’s old, dynamic, African-American, Latino. – Junot Diaz • New Jersey gives us glue. – Howard Dietz • New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is going to Israel. He’s going to be pretty disappointed when he finds out the Gaza Strip isn’t a steak. – Jimmy Fallon • New Jersey is a great place to live. And we have given some of the best talent to the world, from Jack Nicholson, John Travolta, to Jerry Lewis to Bon Jovi to Frank Sinatra. – Queen Latifah • New Jersey is to New York what Santo Domingo is to the United States. I always felt that those two landscapes, not only just the landscapes themselves but their relationships to what we would call ‘a center’ or ‘the center of the universe,’ has in some ways defined my artistic and critical vision. – Junot Diaz • New Jersey Mayor Corey Booker last night personally rescued a woman from a burning building. Or as Fox News reported it, ‘black man loots house, steals white woman.’ – Bill Maher • New Jersey shaped who and what I am. Growing up in Jersey gave you all the advantages of New York, but you were in its shadow. Anyone who’s come from here will tell you that same story. – Jon Bon Jovi • New Jersey was actually a very cold place. There was such an intense concentration of wealth, and such a low concentration of any actual human happiness. A lot of people seem to be similar to the kid in school, which is doing a lot of things with no direct consequence to their joy, or their lives. – Ezra Miller • New Jersey was threatened like no other region in this country and what we did was we took action within the constitution to make sure that law enforcement had all the information they needed. – Chris Christie • New York and New Jersey are probably two of my favorite places to get really good surf in the summertime. – Brandon Cruz • New York City is filled with the same kind of people I left New Jersey to get away from. – Fran Lebowitz • Nike used to be known as Blue Ribbon Sports. What’s now Sara Lee used to be Consolidated Foods. And Exxon was once Standard Oil Company of New Jersey. These were name changes that worked. But for all the ones that do, there are 10 or 20 that don’t. – James Surowiecki • No, I live in New Jersey because I like living in New Jersey. – Jon Stewart • Not a good night for President Obama. He lost elections in Virginia, New Jersey, and he’s not doing good in Afghanistan either. – Jay Leno • Now, in New Jersey, we have more government workers per square mile than any state in America. But since I’ve been governor we now have fewer people on the state payroll at any time since Christie Whitman left office in January 2001. That’s the right direction, Mr. President, not the wrong direction. – Chris Christie • One of my biggest inspirations growing up was Whitney Houston, so I was devastated to hear about her passing. I’m from East Orange, New Jersey, and started singing at New Hope Baptist Church, so she was like my fellow Jersey girl. – Naturi Naughton • One of the things I like about my job is that it draws on the entire person: not just your knowledge of grammar and punctuation and usage and foreign languages and literature but also your experience of travel, gardening, shipping, singing, plumbing, Catholicism, midwesternism, mozzarella, the A train, New Jersey. And in turn it feeds you more experience. – Mary Norris • One thing he misses about New Jersey: One thing they don’t have out here in California is Rita’s Italian Ices. We used to have one right next to our house and it was so good! – Joe Jonas • Otherwise, I spend a lot of time at my boyfriend’s home in the country, in New Jersey. – Eva Herzigova • Our conversation with the supermarket manager had been about as helpful as a New Jersey road sign, and if you’ve ever been there, you know the signs don’t tell you the exit you’re coming up to, they only point out the exits you’ve just missed. – Neal Shusterman • Over 6 million people were evacuated from New Jersey ahead of the hurricane. And now, three of them have gone back. – Jay Leno • People cited violation of the First Amendment when a New Jersey schoolteacher asserted that evolution and the Big Bang are not scientific and that Noah’s ark carried dinosaurs. This case is not about the need to separate church and state; it’s about the need to separate ignorant, scientifically illiterate people from the ranks of teachers. – Neil deGrasse Tyson • Philadelphia merely seems dull because it’s next to exciting Camden, New Jersey. – Robert Anton Wilson • Philly is more East Coast than Pittsburgh. It’s closer to New Jersey and New York, so the vibe is way more fast-paced. – Wiz Khalifa • Prince Harry this week toured the Jersey Shore with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. It was the first meeting between the Prince, of the House of Windsor, and the Governor, of the House of Pancake. – Amy Poehler • Quick, name some towns in New Jersey – James Thurber • Reading a book, for me at least, is like traveling in someone else’s world. If it’s a good book, then you feel comfortable and yet anxious to see what’s going to happen to you there, what’ll be around the next corner. But if it’s a lousy book, then it’s like going through Secaucus, New Jersey — it smells and you wish you weren’t there, but since you’ve started the trip, you roll up the windows and breathe through your mouth until you’re done. – Jonathan Carroll • School is where children spend most of their time, and it is where we lay the foundation for healthy habits. That’s why New Jersey is the first state to adopt a comprehensive school nutrition policy that bans candy, soda, and other junk food. – Richard Codey • Six out of seven times we landed successfully [on the Moon]. I wanted to be a part of that and I was a part of that, so my personal feeling is of great gratefulness for having somehow been in a position to have been given the opportunity to be on that first landing. That’s a marvelous experience for a little kid that grew up in New Jersey. So I’m very thankful, and I asked the whole world to give thanks once we successfully landed. – Buzz Aldrin • Sixty one percent of Donald Trump`s supporters believe that President [Barack] Obama was not born in the United States.They believe Donald Trump`s lie about where President Obama was born, the lie he started telling four years ago and has since replaced with other hate-driven lies like the thousands of Muslims Donald Trump lies about having seen celebrating in New Jersey on 9/11. – Lawrence O’Donnell • Some of Buddhist texts say that, in the moment after you die, you think of New Jersey and you go to New Jersey or you think of 1820 and you go to 1820. Also, all your sort of inner-symbology gets writ large. So, if you’re a Christian, you see Christian iconography. – George Saunders • St. Patrick’s Day is a holy day for Roman Catholics in Ireland to pray and a day for drunk people to vomit with their pants down in New Jersey. – Margot Leitman • The British invasion was the most important event of my life. I was in New Jersey and the night I saw the Beatles changed everything. I had seen Elvis before and he had done nothing for me, but these guys were in a band. – Steven Van Zandt • The curtain rises on a vast primitive wasteland, not unlike certain parts of New jersey. – Woody Allen • The Democrats can’t lose, so they got rid of Bob Torricelli, way beyond when it was permissible. The time for a replacement had passed, but the New Jersey Supreme Court made up of Democrat hacks said, “Hey, if our candidate can’t go, sure you can put in a replacement.” – Rush Limbaugh • The first thing we should be concerned about the BLM movement should be the issues that the Black Lives Matter movement is bringing forward. There’s no fundamental platform being brought by activists in Oakland, Baltimore, or New Jersey. The main issues that you see, the commonality between activists all around the country, are trying to deal with the challenges in the criminal justice system, something that is very much central to my work. So my hope is that people stay focused on the urgency to create justice here at home. – Cory Booker • The great thing about New Jersey is that it’s close to New York. – Fran Lebowitz • The mosquito is the state bird of New Jersey. – Andy Warhol • The most difficult thing for me is to leave the New Jersey Devils, a great organization that I have a lot of respect for, and our fans that have been great to me. – Ilya Kovalchuk • The only time I’ve ever been mistaken for someone else is – and this arguable still – when a person came up to me on the boardwalk of Ocean City, New Jersey and said, “You look a lot like that guy from computer ads” and I said, “There is a reason because I am that guy,” and the guy looked at me for a minute, laughed and said, “That’s a funny joke, but you really do look like him.” He thought I was not me. – John Hodgman • The Palestinians have no other land. They are absolutely right about this. The Israeli Jews also have no other land and they are absolutely right about this. It is a tragedy of two peoples claiming the same very small country – very small, about the size of New Jersey. And both of them are right. Both of them have no other homeland as peoples. As individuals, maybe, but not as a people. – Amos Oz • The President’s biggest problem right now is he’s gotta tell the truth. And we’ve seen this in New Jersey. I’ve told lots of hard truths in New Jersey that people didn’t necessarily agree with, but they give you credit for looking them in the eye and telling them the truth. – Chris Christie • The results of a new study are out this week saying that New Jersey is one of the most livable states in the country. The study has a margin of error of 100 percent. – Conan O’Brien • The state of New Jersey is really two places – terrible cities and wonderful suburbs. I live in the suburbs, the final battleground of the American dream, where people get married and have kids and try to scratch out a happy life for themselves. It’s very romantic in that way, but a bit naive. I like to play with that in my work. – Harlan Coben • The way I see it, living in New Jersey is a challenge, what with the toxic waste and the eighteen wheelers and the armed schizophrenics.” Connie Rosolli. – Janet Evanovich • The way that house music has become so white and so sanitized over the decades and the fact it’s still going on, well I think it’s sad really, but at the time I really loved it. I loved all the black house music that was coming out of Chicago and New Jersey, which I just thought was really soulful. – Paul Weller • Then I was working in a store in Newark, New Jersey, and I saw an actor in person, and I got so excited. My whole day changed. That’s when I decided to challenge myself to make my dreams become a reality. – Derek Luke • There are a great number of people from New Jersey who go on to have pretty successful careers. – Kerry Bishe • There are American citizens who have been inspired to commit acts of terror on American soil, the latest incident, of course, the bombings we just saw in New York and New Jersey, the knife attack at a mall in Minnesota, in the last year, deadly attacks in San Bernardino and Orlando. – Lester Holt • There’s a high school in Camden, New Jersey, I call the Jill Scott School. It’s the Camden Creative Arts High School. Those teachers and kids are so passionate about what they do, and 98 percent of the senior class went on to college. – Jill Scott • These are days you’ll remember. If you recall nothing else from your graduation ceremony, remember you heard the New Jersey Governor quote from 10,000 Maniacs. – Bill Vaughan • These esoteric, intellectual debates-I want them to come to New Jersey and sit across from the widows and the orphans and have that conversation. – Chris Christie • This decision was something I have thought about for a long time going back to the lockout and spending the year in Russia. Though I decided to return this past season, Lou was aware of my desire to go back home and have my family there with me. The most difficult thing for me is to leave the New Jersey Devils, a great organization that I have a lot of respect for, and our fans that have been great to me. – Ilya Kovalchuk • This is a difference between being a governor and being in a legislature. Because when something doesn’t work in New Jersey, they look at me, say: “Why didn’t it get done? Why didn’t you do it?” You have to be responsible and accountable. – Chris Christie • Those magazine dieting stories always have the testimonial of a woman who wore a dress that could slipcover New Jersey in one photo and thirty days later looked like a well-dressed thermometer. – Erma Bombeck • Today New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie announced that he’s endorsing Mitt Romney for president. It’s good news for Romney. I mean, you always want Chris Christie on your side. Unless you’re in a canoe. – Jimmy Fallon • Two records put me over the top with hip-hop. One of them was ‘Planet Rock,’ and the other had no lyrics – it was called ‘Numbers,’ from a group called Kraftwerk. Every kid in the ‘hood in New York and New Jersey was popping, locking, and breaking to that record. It was the hottest track on the street at the time. – Queen Latifah • Wait.” Clary was suddenly nervous. “The melted metal-it could be, like, toxic or something.” Maia snorted. “I’m from New Jersey. I born in toxic sludge. – Cassandra Clare • We are very excited with the roster of skaters that are coming. It’s the first time New Jersey has been awarded an event of this caliber in the skating world. It’s definitely important to the area because we hear all the time that there are not enough major sporting events in South Jersey. It’s a great opportunity to have such an event. – Susan Ward • We need to have an education system in New Jersey and all over the country that makes all of our kids, either college or career ready. It should be their choice. I mean, every kid doesn’t want to go to college. But I think we should aspire to let every child reach his maximum or her maximum potential. – Chris Christie • We owe every student in every neighborhood in New Jersey an equal opportunity to succeed. We know that more money, alone, is not the answer. We need to redefine success, and how we pursue that success, by the outcomes obtained by students. – Thomas Kean, Jr. • We prosecuted two of the biggest terrorism cases in the world and stopped Fort Dix from being attacked by six American radicalized Muslims from a Mosque in New Jersey because we worked with the Muslim American community to get intelligence and we used the Patriot Act to get other intelligence to make sure we did those cases. This is the difference between actually been a federal prosecutor, actually doing something, and not just spending your life as one of hundred debating it. – Chris Christie • Well, let’s put in this way, I grew up in West New York, New Jersey. – Jason Alexander • We’re called New Jersey but we’re actually the suburbs of New York. – Harlan Coben • We’ve gotta dispense with calling guys who are effeminate or who throw like girls “sissies.” You know why? Because that diminishes women, and that can lead to such things as you decking your woman in a hotel elevator in New Jersey with your fist. – Rush Limbaugh • What else can you expect from a town thats shut off from the world by the ocean on one side and New Jersey on the other? – O. Henry • What I’d like to see is a private [healthcare] system without the artificial lines around every state. I have a big company with thousands and thousands of employees. And if I’m negotiating in New York or in New Jersey or in California, I have like one bidder. Nobody can bid.Because the insurance companies are making a fortune because they have control of the politicians. – Donald Trump • When a new writer defends his “style,” the teacher smiles (or cringes) because real style isn’t an artifice. Real style – voice – arrives on its own, as an extension of a writer’s character. When style is done self-consciously and purposefully it becomes affectation, and as transparent as any affectation – an English accent on an old college chum from New Jersey, for example. – Bill Roorbach • When giving directions to Joe Garagiola to his New Jersey home, which is accessible by two routes: “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” – Yogi Berra • When I get to the White House, there will be no hesitation from me to make the tough decisions that need to be made because I’ve been doing it for the last 13 years as a former federal prosecutor and now as the governor of New Jersey. – Chris Christie • When I was 12, we moved from New Jersey to Florida. The Gulf of Mexico was literally my backyard. Every day, I could see the ocean. At low tide I went out and played in seagrass meadows that used to come right up to the shore, filled with tiny seahorses, pipefish and soft corals. There was so much life! But then I witnessed the change, the loss of the shoreline, the loss of the mangrove trees, the loss of the seagrass meadows. Shallow bay areas were turned into parking lots. – Sylvia Earle • When I was 13, I moved from New Jersey to Germany with my family. The high school was so supportive of my dream to continue with my theater training; instead of taking PE, I would get credit for dance lessons. – Nina Arianda • When I was about 8 or 9, I lived in New Jersey with my mother and we were seven deep in one bedroom and sometimes we didn’t have electricity. – Floyd Mayweather, Jr. • When I was in – at Vassar, and I came from a public high school in New Jersey, there was – that class still existed. I think it’s pretty much gone, but there was a way of talking that the private school girls had that was different than the way I talked from New Jersey. – Meryl Streep • When you say, ‘I spent my summers at the Jersey Shore,’ people always say, ‘Oh, really?’ They think of the TV show. So I just say, ‘A cute little harbor town in New Jersey.’ – Taylor Swift • Whenever I stumble over my own feet, or blurt out a thought that makes no sense at all, or leave the house wearing one pattern too many, I always think, ‘It’s okay, I’m from New Jersey.’ I love New Jersey, because it’s not just an all-purpose punch line, but probably a handy legal defense, as in ‘Yes, I shot my wife because I thought she was Bigfoot, but I’m from New Jersey.’ – Paul Rudnick • Whenever spring comes to New York I can’t stand the suggestion of the land that come blowing over the river from New Jersey and I’ve got to go. So I went. – Jack Kerouac • With our last album (“No Time To Bleed”), we recorded most of it in New Jersey. And with being on the road 9 months a year, recording an album on the other side of the country- it just wasn’t a good experience for us. All I wanted to do was go home and see my daughter, so for us to only be a couple hours away was huge- I could go home if I needed to. – Mitch Lucker • Working on an essay versus a novel is like the difference between seeing to that curtain and seeing to New Jersey. – Sloane Crosley • Yes, I shot my wife because I thought she was Bigfoot, but I’m from New Jersey. – Paul Rudnick • You want to be the first to do something. You want to create something. You want to innovate something…I often think of Edison inventing the light bulb. That’s what I want to do. I want to drive over the bridge coming out of New York there and look down on that sea of lights that is New Jersey and say, `Hey, I did that!’ – David Keirsey • You’d think New York people was all wise; but no, they can’t get a chance to learn. Every thing’s too compressed. Even the hayseeds are bailed hayseeds. But what else can you expect from a town that’s shut off from the world by the ocean on one side and New Jersey on the other? – O. Henry

[equitiesstocks]

New Jersey State Quotes

Official Website: New Jersey State Quotes

  • A new report reveals that New Jersey Governor Chris Christie spent over $82,000 on food at NFL games. Christie said, ‘Hey, both of those games went into overtime.’ – Conan O’Brien • A new survey indicates that Obama supporters love iPhones. So if you have an iPhone, chances are you are going to be supporting President Obama. In a related story, if you support Governor Chris Christie from New Jersey, chances are you love IHOP. – David Letterman • A New York doctor has finished a five year study on what smells have the biggest effect on New Yorkers. The smell New Yorkers like the most: vanilla. The smell New Yorkers like the least: New Jersey. – Jay Leno • A poet is a poet, whether he rides in a Ford or on a donkey; a sage is a sage, whether he plays golf in New Jersey or bathes in the Ganges, or prays in the desert; and a fool is a fool, whether he be a maharaja or a president of a post-war republic. – Ameen Rihani • After I returned to New Jersey, I thought I was safe, because I did not think Kenny G could leave the bad place, which I realize is silly now – because Kenny G is extremely talented and resourceful and a powerful force to be reckoned with. – Matthew Quick • All I’m saying is we got plenty of Texans, and people from Montana, and New Jersey, and Wyoming, or Kansas City. We got plenty of actors. So we don’t need some cat from Cardiff-upon-Rosemary-upon-Thyme, or whatever the hell it is, playing people from Montana. And in the reverse, they got plenty of people from Cardiff-upon-Rosemary-upon-Thyme that they don’t need our asses coming over there trying to do British accents. – Billy Bob Thornton • All music is based on country music. And that’s why so many different kinds of people relate to it. There are more country music fans in New Jersey than there are down South. – Loretta Lynn • All my life I’ve been involved with racial politics. I was a Freedom Rider in the South. I was the author of books on gang violence, I was a community organizer in Newark, New Jersey, and when I spoke to the Black Caucus, congressional and state, I realized they were going all the way for Hillary [Clinton] and so was the Latino caucus in Sacramento and I asked myself this question: “Do I really want to cast my vote against these people who have been central to my life and to the soul of the country?” And so I went with them. Period. – Tom Hayden • All of my favourite actors are American and I grew up watching American movies. It’s weird, but I used to do a New Jersey accent in every audition in the States just because I liked to do it, really. It’s completely bizarre. Everybody would ask: ‘Where are you from?’ And I would say, ‘Oh, I’m from London.’ – Robert Pattinson • All things start in California and spread to New Jersey, then to London and then throughout Europe. – Stelios Haji-Ioannou • Although the governor strongly disagrees with the court substituting its judgment for the constitutional process of the elected branches or a vote of the people, the court has now spoken clearly as to their view of the New Jersey Constitution, and, therefore, same-sex marriage is the law. – Chris Christie • And I think what people in New Jersey have gotten to know about me over the last decade that I’ve been in public life is what you see is what you get. And I’m no different when I’m sitting with you than I am when I’m at home or anyplace else. – Chris Christie • And I’m sure than in Poland, or somewhere, it is considered cool to drive a Porsche and wear necklaces and black silk, but at least back in Brooklyn if you did those things you were either a drug dealer or from – New Jersey. • And then we moved to New Jersey and I went to the Art Students League. – Donald Judd • Any intelligent woman would have made a dignified retreat, but this was New Jersey, where dignity always runs a poor second to the pleasure of getting in someone’s face. – Janet Evanovich • Artificial Intelligence leaves no doubt that it wants its audiences to enter a realm of pure fantasy when it identifies one of the last remaining islands of civilization as New Jersey. – Godfried Danneels • As I climbed the electoral ladder – from state assemblyman to mayor of Woodbridge and finally to governor of New Jersey – political compromises came easy to me because I’d learned how to keep a part of myself innocent of them. – James McGreevey

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'New+Jersey', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '68', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_new-jersey').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_new-jersey img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • Based on the number that they found, The New York Times reported that Hillary [Clinton] had basically clinched the primary ’cause you added the superdelegates to the number of delegates you’d already gotten. But this was on the eve of the California and New Jersey primary. – Terry Gross • Because I can’t seem to escape it. It’s a way for me to address and counter my questions about what it means to be human, or, in my case a Dominican human who grew up in New Jersey. – Junot Diaz • Block Watch, Crime Watch, we have hundreds of thousands of Americans, every day and night, risking their lives, going out for no pay as volunteers, protecting Americans like all of you and not asking anything in return. And the other day I’m speaking in a high school in New Jersey and the youngsters go, oh, you’re just like Zimmerman. – Curtis Sliwa • Brooklyn Heights itself is a window on the port. Here, where the perspective is fixed by the towers of Manhattan and the hills of New Jersey and Staten Island, the channels running between seem fingers of the world ocean. Here one can easily embrace the suggestion, which Whitman felt so easily, that the whole American world opens out from here, north and west. – Alfred Kazin • By failing to keep their end of the bargain, the Bush administration would allow New Jersey projects to deteriorate and make New Jersey highways and bridges less safe. – Bob Menendez • Chris Christie is New Jersey’s concern, not America’s. – Henry Rollins • Chris Christie’s rise in politics in New Jersey, in many ways, was built on his takedown of Charles Kushner. He got national headlines for that prosecution. – Steve Kornacki • Christine Todd Whitman had to resign as the head of the EPA. You know, when the governor of New Jersey decides the environment is hopeless, you gotta really think that one through. – Greg Giraldo • Cities are gentrified by the following types of people in sequence: first the risk-oblivious (artists), then the risk-aware (developers), finally the risk adverse (dentists from New Jersey). – Bill Kraus • Come with me.” “Come with you? To Pandemonium? To the Void? And here I thought that my invitation to summer in New Jersey was the worst I had ever received. – Cassandra Clare • Common Core has been eliminated in New Jersey. – Chris Christie • Conscious of our many problems, I seek today to lay a foundation to our public policy. My fundamental purpose is to devote my term of office to raising the standard of public service in New Jersey. – Charles Edison • Donald Trump didn’t know the [Democratic] vice presidential candidate he was running against: Tim Kaine [Senator] of Virginia, Donald! Not Thomas Kean, Republican [former Governor] of New Jersey, you moron! And his answer to absolutely every question is so simplistic and grand: “Oh, I’ll fix it. Trust me. I’m the best fixer. I love to fix!!! Look at everything I’ve fixed before!!!!”. – Chrissy Teigen • During Prohibition, Atlantic City created the idea of the speakeasy, which turned into nightclubs and that extraordinary political complexity and corruption coming out of New Jersey at the time. The long hand that they had-and maybe still do-even had to do with presidential elections. – Martin Scorsese • Each summer, for example, nitrogen and phosphate washing from farmlands in the Mississippi Valley enter the Gulf of Mexico, creating a massive algal bloom covering some 16,000 square kilometers. As the blooms die off, this area-roughly the size of New Jersey-is so deprived of oxygen that no fish survive. – Lester R. Brown • Ed Grimley lives in a retirement home in New Jersey. It’s called the Retirement Home in New Jersey for Characters Who Were Interesting in the ’80s for About an Hour. He’s there with the Whiners, Gumby and Jon Lovitz’s ‘That’s the ticket’ guy. – Martin Short • Feasting is also closely related to memory. We eat certain things in a particular way in order to remember who we are. Why else would you eat grits in Madison, New Jersey? – Jeff Smith • First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried letters from a girl named Martha, a junior at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey. They were not love letters, but Lieutenant Cross was hoping, so he kept them folded in plastic at the bottom of his rusack. In the late afternoon, after a day’s march, he would dig his foxhole, wash his hands under a canteen, unwrap the letters, hold them with the tips of his fingers, and spend the last hour of light pretending. – Tim O’Brien • From the look on your face, I’d say you know him.” I nodded. “Sold him a cannoli when I was in high school.” Connie grunted. “Honey, half of all the women in New Jersey have sold him their cannoli – Janet Evanovich • From the top of the quarry cliffs, one could see the New Jersey suburbs bordered by the New York City skyline. – Robert Smithson • Given my last position, that I was the first U.S attorney post 9/11 in New Jersey, I understand acutely the pain and sorrow and upset of the family members who lost loved ones that day at the hands of radical Muslim extremists. And their sensitivities and concerns have to be taken into account. – Chris Christie • Global warming has melted the polar ice caps, raised the levels of the oceans and flooded the earth’s great cities. Despite its evident prosperity, New Jersey is scarcely Utopia. – Godfried Danneels • Gov. Christie says ‘New Jersey First.’ State-based Isolationism! – Jonah • Growing up as a kid, we moved all over the country on a fairly frequent basis, from New Jersey to Texas, California, Illinois… we moved 21 times in my first 17 years. – J. Michael Straczynski • Growing up in a New Jersey suburb, my Catholic faith was an important part of my young life, shaping the way I approached the world. – James Lecesne • Heaven looks a lot like New Jersey. – Jon Bon Jovi • Hillary Clinton’s younger brother Tony is facing criticism for using the Clintons’ political connections to help his career. So on the down side, she has a sketchy brother named Tony. On the up side, she just locked up every vote in New Jersey. – Jimmy Fallon • his hair was permed and gelled like a New Jersey girl’s on homecoming night. Percy Jackson. – Rick Riordan • Hollywood is Newark, New Jersey with palm trees. – Weegee • Homeland Security Chief Tom Ridge made that critical leap from ‘be afraid’ to ‘be very afraid,’ raising the terrorist threat level to orange for financial sectors in New York, Washington, D.C., and northern New Jersey. … Ridge’s announcement comes amidst reports he will step down as head of homeland security after the election. Ridge himself has refused to comment on the story, though colleagues say he has often expressed a desire to spend more time at home, scaring his family. – Jon Stewart • I absolutely believe that, come November 2012, I’m going to be governor of New Jersey and not in any other office. But the fact of the matter is, if Gov. Romney, who’s going to be our nominee, picked up the phone and called me to talk about this, I love my country enough and I love my party enough to listen. – Chris Christie • I actually like south Florida. I never lived in a more interesting place than this. I’ve never met a wider range of people. I guess when I came here I thought there were Cubans and then there were people from New York and that was Miami. Now I know that it’s Cubans, people from New York, and some people from New Jersey. – Dave Barry • I also love horseback riding in New Jersey. – Eva Herzigova • I am obsessed with trash TV. I watch all reality shows. I watch all the “Housewives.” I am a huge fan of “New Jersey.” – NeNe Leakes • I believed passionately that Communists were a race of horned men who divided their time equally between the burning of Nancy Drew books and the devising of a plan of nuclear attack that would land the largest and most lethal bomb squarely upon the third-grade class of Thomas Jefferson School in Morristown, New Jersey. – Fran Lebowitz • I did a show in New Jersey in the auditorium of a technical high school … Technical high school, that’s where dreams are narrowed down. We tell our children, “You can do anything you want.” Their whole lives. “You can do anything!” But this place, we take kids – they’re 15, they’re young – and we tell them, “You can do eight things. We got it down to eight for you.” – Louis C. K. • I don’t get into politics, general or musical, but just call me if you get jury duty. Even in New Jersey I was able to help somebody. – Eugene Ormandy • I don’t have time for lie-on-the-beach vacations. I’m a zoo person. There’s one in New Jersey where animals actually come up to your car. I love the monkeys – I used to give them bubblegum to chew. – Missy Elliot • I feel like if you’re in Jersey, you have to be a Jersey Devils fan. Anybody born within the confines of the border of the state of New Jersey, I feel, should be a Jersey Devils fan. – Kevin Smith • I go to a church here in New Jersey that is just a very exciting place, and I just love to be there on Sunday morning – I just sit there in a pew with my wife, that’s all I do, but I’m very much a part of that congregation. We’ve got a fantastic rector,she brings in people from places like the United Theological Seminary in New Brighton, Minnesota, where you’ve got good teaching, and our people are being introduced to great material and they really respond. They’re able to believe without crossing their fingers. And I think that’s a real step forward. – John Shelby Spong • I grew up in New Jersey and my father was a golf pro, so I was groomed for sports, but I wasn’t very good, so my interests lay elsewhere. – Joe Dante • I grew up in New Jersey and never went up the Statue of Liberty. – Buzz Aldrin • I grew up in New Jersey in the ’80s. That means one thing: Big hair. … I had big hair, my boyfriends had big hair, we all had big hair. Our prom looked like the poodle division of the Westminster dog show. – Jancee Dunn • I grew up in northern New Jersey – the banlieue of New York – and I now live in Brooklyn. I am separated from my parents by about 50 miles, but really there is almost no distance between us. I speak to them nearly every day. – Jonathan Ames • I grew up in Queens and New Jersey. I started doing children’s theater when I was seven to get out of school because I didn’t fit in. – Jesse Eisenberg • I had just done what she does in the story just about a year earlier – I moved from New Jersey and came to New York and was working at a bar, and you know, trying to make it. – Piper Perabo • I have a very powerful sense of place, but I have a very powerful sense of being a migrant, so it’s both. It seems like I’m always leaving my home. That’s part of the formula. I love the Dominican Republic. I go back all the time. I love New Jersey. Go back all the time. – Junot Diaz • I have some Russian friends. But probably only 10 percent. I don’t hang out usually in the big Russian communities in Brooklyn and New Jersey. – Mikhail Baryshnikov • I just know what it’s like being an East Coast person, being from New Jersey. – Ray Liotta • I just want everybody to know my music and get to know my squad, Remy Boyz; just to show people New Jersey. New Jersey got talent, too. I mean, everybody sleeps on us, and they put us as the underdog. – Fetty Wap • I knew from a young age that I wanted to perform. I went to an arts camp called Brookdale Arts Camp, in New Jersey, from the time I was 6, and then I was a counselor there through high school. – Melissa Rauch • I know California isn’t a real destination. You can’t get there from New Jersey, not simply by following a line drawn on a map. The process of arrival is more subtle and complex. It involves acts of contrition. You must appease the gods. You must find novel forms of penance. You must tattoo your children and look at the wonder. It’s about conjuring and awakening and intuitions you wish you never had. – Kate Braverman • I later spent… five to eight months in hospitals in New Jersey, always on an involuntary basis, and always attempting a legal argument for release. – John Forbes Nash • I like Chris Christie also. I like him a lot as a person. He didn’t do anything to help me when I thinking of running for senate in New Jersey. But I give him a little slack. – Geraldo Rivera • I live in New Jersey now, which always gets a bad rap here and there, but I must say, I enjoy living here too – Paul Muldoon • I love music. I’ve just been putting studios together, here and at my house in New Jersey and so I can always make music and express my ideas and work with people to fine tune them to where they need to be. – Queen Latifah • I loved New Jersey. I thought it was the greatest place in the world because on Halloween kids could start trick or treating right after school. Isn’t that great? – Joel McHale • I may look like a nice Jewish girl from New Jersey, but inside I’m a 50-year-old, heavyset black man with a big thumb, like Wes Montgomery. – Emily Remler • I said we are going to balance an $11 billion budget deficit in a $29 billion budget, so by percentage, the largest budget deficit in America, by percentage, larger than California, larger than New York, larger than Illinois. And we’re going to balance that without raising taxes on the people of the state of New Jersey. – Chris Christie • I should call myself four market Norton. I’m great in Boston and Cleveland. I do good in Phillie, New Jersey. – Jim Norton • I still remember the first gig where I got people going, it was Rascals in New Jersey, and the place was packed. I was scared. People were expecting me to be funny. I gotta be honest, every time I walk into a club, it’s that same fear. – Bill Burr • I think Frankie Valli did everything right. He kept singing. And you also have to remember, he was confined to a certain society, which was this sort of like – the wrong side of the law kind of society of Italian guys from the streets of Belleville, New Jersey. So he found his way. – John Lloyd Young • I used to rent a house in Princeton, New Jersey, and whenever people came to visit me, I would drive them past Albert Einstein’s house, which is the most ordinary house in Princeton – a house, let me assure you, that now a salesman wouldn’t live in. I’d always say, “That was Albert Einstein’s house.” And they’d say, “What do you mean? Why would Albert Einstein live in a little house like that?” And I’d always say to people, “Because he didn’t care!” – Fran Lebowitz • I want them to believe I have a vision for the state of New Jersey. – Jon Corzine • I was a garbage man in New Jersey in summers during college at Yale. Everybody else got to go to Switzerland and I got to go to the dump. – Tom Perrotta • I was all-state in four sports in New Jersey, but sometimes I couldn’t get served at a restaurant two blocks from my high school. There were no job opportunities then… the only thing a black youth could aspire to be was a bellboy or a pullman or an elevator operator, or, maybe, a teacher. There was a time when all we had was black baseball. – Monte Irvin • I was born in Bayonne, New Jersey. I grew up in the projects. I never went anywhere. But I have lived a thousand lives and I’ve loved a thousand loves. I’ve walked on distant worlds and seen the end of time. Because I read. – George R. R. Martin • I was born in Havana, Cuba and raised in Madrid, Spain. Then I moved to New Jersey. – Daisy Fuentes • I was born in Long Branch, New Jersey, and no one had ever taught anybody that young, back in those days. – Bernie Worrell • I was born in New York City, but I was raised in New Jersey, part of the great Jewish emigration of 1963. – Jon Stewart • I was born in Newark, New Jersey, and grew up in Summit, an upscale town in north Jersey. There was this tiny area of Summit where most of the black families lived. My parents and I lived in a duplex house on Williams Street. – Ice T • I was born in Patterson, New Jersey, and raised pretty much all around the country. My family tended to move from place to place following economic prospects and jobs and looking for new opportunities, so we changed schools, colleges, grade schools, high schools every 6 months to a year – depending on the breaks. – J. Michael Straczynski • I was born just after the end of World War II, and with my friends in our little suburban backyards in New Jersey, we used to play war a lot. I don’t know if boys still play war, they probably do, but we were thrusting ourselves into recent history and we were always fighting either the Nazis or the Japanese. – Paul Auster • I was born on May 17, 1979, in Newark, New Jersey. – Joe Tex • I was the chief sponsor of the Business Employment Incentive Program bill, which resulted in hundreds of thousands of direct and indirect jobs here in New Jersey. – Joe Kyrillos • I was the Secretary of State of New Jersey in November 2000. I paid careful attention to the challenges that stemmed from inadequate voting systems in various places. – DeForest Soaries • I went home every night to New Jersey – or most nights – and to help with the six-grade math homework or to make breakfast in the morning, just to make sure that that was there. When I was single and didn’t have children, I used to laugh at this notion of quality time. – Kellyanne Conway • I went to a dialect coach and she told me that I had five problems; two were my Israeli accent and three were my New Jersey accent. I don’t even want to know what I sounded like back then! – Odeya Rush • I went to my last three years of high school in New Jersey. I just wanted to act, you know? – Stacey Dash • I worked as a teacher in the public school system in New York City for several years, and I was a victim of the layoffs, you know, in the mid-’70s. And then I worked as a sales engineer for a company in New Jersey that was selling industrial filtration equipment. – Feisal Abdul Rauf • I’m from New Jersey. I was born in toxic sludge. – Cassandra Clare • I’d literally rather hang out at the T.G.I. Friday’s in New Jersey than tool around at a place that sells $40 cheeseburgers. – Patrick Carney • If I had the choice now, I’d make New Jersey a state where you can have a shall issue on conceal and carry. Now our legislature won’t do that, but I have done recently is to make sure that we’re making it easier for folks to be able to get a permit in New Jersey because they deserve the right to do that as law-abiding citizens. – Chris Christie • If I use the media, even with tricks, to publicize a black youth being shot in the back in Teaneck, New Jersey… then I should be praised for it, and it’s more of a comment on them than me that it would take tricks to make them cover the loss of life. – Al Sharpton • If some unemployed punk in New Jersey, can get a cassette to make love to Elle McPherson for $19.95, this virtual reality stuff is going to make crack look like Sanka. – Dennis Miller • If you look at suburban education in New Jersey and New York, it’s pretty strong, intact, doing a pretty good job. You cap taxes for those communities, can we reasonably predict it’s going to be as strong 20 years from now? – Dannel Malloy • If you were back in the Cretaceous Period – the last of the time of the dinosaurs – and you were driving from New York to Philadelphia on the New Jersey Turnpike, you would be driving across water. – Kenneth Lacovara • If you’re Chris Christie, who is governor of New Jersey, a state that obviously was impacted by 9/11, this gives you an opportunity to talk about how, as governor, you had to deal with terrorism and security issues. – Amy Walter • If you’re from New Jersey, let people make all those bad jokes about our state. Don’t let anyone know how great it is here. It’s the best kept secret. – Jon Bon Jovi • If you’re in the contracting business in this country, you’re suspect. If you’re in the contracting business in New Jersey, you’re indictable. If you’re in the contracting business in New Jersey and are Italian, you’re convicted. – Raymond J. Donovan • I’m a conservative, pro-life governor in a state where it is really tough to be both. A state like New Jersey, with lots of Democrats, but still we cut taxes, we balanced budgets. We fought the teacher’s union. – Chris Christie • I’m a partner in a company called Helicopter Services and Instruction out of New Jersey. – Treat Williams • I’m from New Jersey / I don’t expect too much / If the world ended today / I would adjust. – John Gorka • I’m from the dirty depths of New Jersey. – Ezra Miller • I’m here helping Doug Forrester become the next governor of New Jersey. – George Pataki • I’m just this Dominican kid from New Jersey. – Junot Diaz • I’m Palestinian, I’m disabled, I’m female and I live in New Jersey. – Maysoon Zayid • Immigrating didn’t burn out my desire to travel, though that can happen. There’s nothing like immigration to make you want to just stay put. But what I think of as home is this life between Santo Domingo and the parts of New Jersey and New York City that were my childhood, so in my mind it’s like home is all those things combined. – Junot Diaz • In 1938, when I had decided that the only way to see the country was in a trailer, and I built the trailer which I still have and lived in it for eighteen months, and learned America from San Diego to the Canadian border, from Miami to New Jersey, and east to west in between. – Leslie Charteris • In dealing with Syria’s dictator…only force counts. No cease-fire was attainable in Lebanon until the 16-inch guns of the battleship New Jersey started shelling Syria’s proxies; suddenly, sweet reason prevailed in Damascus. – William Safire • In the eight years before I became governor, there was zero net private sector job growth in New Jersey. Zero. For eight years. – Chris Christie • In the end, all worlds, whether they’re set in the future or in New Jersey of today, are fictions. Sure, you don’t got to do too much work to build a mundane world, but don’t get it twisted: you still got to do some work. – Junot Diaz • It ended suddenly for Brenda, more slowly for me. My runs began getting shorter and less pleasurable. I’d feel bad after only one day, or only a few hours, instead of four or five days. And I began to want to stop. One of the proudest moments of my life was at a rock-‘n’-roll theater in New Jersey. A guy actually put some coke under my nose and I was able to say, “No, thanks,” and turn my head away. – George Carlin • It was around that time, early 60s. There were like three kindred spirits in New Jersey. I had two friends who played folk music, old-time music and bluegrass and we started a little band called the Garret Mountain Boys. – David Grisman • It was tough doing ‘Underneath the Lintel’ in New Jersey in the wintertime, but rewarding. Those audiences were lively and interactive. On-stage was great, but off-stage was difficult. – Richard Schiff • It’s about time that we create first class citizenship for every American plain and simple. Every New Jersey-ian. This should not be a popular vote. This is something we should do now. – Cory Booker • It’s great having Bruce Springsteen on my show. We have so much in common! We’re both from New Jersey, just from different neighborhoods. Sort of like how Martin Luther King and Margaret Mitchell both came from Atlanta. But from different neighborhoods. – Jon Stewart • I’ve been trained in dancing and I used to be quite good, though I am a bit rusty right now. But I could probably brush up in a couple of months. The funny thing is that I actually took classes from Savion Glover, who worked in Happy Feet, when I was a kid. Isn’t that wild? I was part of a selected group that was brought into New York from New Jersey (which is where I’m from) to study, every Saturday: ballet, jazz and tap. It was a musical comedy group. – Brittany Murphy • I’ve loved car racing all my life. I watch NASCAR regularly, and drag racing because we have Raceway Park in New Jersey. I think I got it from my father. – Queen Latifah • I’ve never been one for sitting on beaches. Let me tell you who I am: I’m a girl from New Jersey who moved to New York and worked in a bar while trying to make a living at what I really wanted to do, which was act. – Piper Perabo • I’ve travelled to many states and seen the suffering in people’s eyes I’ve visited communities in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Indiana and Ohio whose manufacturing jobs have literally disappeared. An embarrassment to our country and it’s horrible. – Donald Trump • Jason Oliver C. Smith, a big dumb guy who was tan, died March 30 of lung cancer and old age. He was 13 years old and lived in New Jersey, Pennsylvania. At the time of his death, his license was current and he had had all of his shots. He is survived by two adults, three children, a cat named Daisy who drove him nuts, and his lifelong companion, Pudgy, whose spaying he always regretted, as well as a host of fleas who have gone elsewhere, probably to Pudgy. He will be missed by all, except Daisy. He never bit anyone, which is more than you can say for most of us. – Anna Quindlen • Judge Samuel Alito was born and raised in the great state of New Jersey. Our state has a legacy of producing outstanding jurists, most notably the late William J. Brennan, who ushered in our nation’s recommitment to civil rights in the latter half of the 20th century. – Frank Lautenberg • Last week, I approved a mission over New York. I take responsibility for that decision. While federal authorities took the proper steps to notify state and local authorities in New York and New Jersey, it’s clear that the mission created confusion and disruption. I apologize and take responsibility for any distress that flight caused. – Louis Caldera • Like, a lot of people I know are wanting to get back to the Earth in some way and not raise their kids in this world of Apps and Internet all the time. I grew up on a river in New Jersey and I was in fantasy land. I could do anything. – Kirsten Dunst • Lordy, lordy, lordy do I love money. It is a character flaw, no doubt, one that springs from a panicked childhood in which I always felt as if our family was only a couple missed child support payments from being tossed onto the pitiless streets of our suburban New Jersey town. – Michael Ian Black • Madonna is my role model shes such a powerful woman. I love Gwenyth Paltrow, shes an actress I aspire to be like. And, of course, my mom. She drove me from New Jersey to New York every day for commercials so I could get where I am today. – Kirsten Dunst • Manchester United could have any goalkeeper in the world. I was a 23-year-old kid from New Jersey who, from an early age, had to cope with Tourettes Syndrome, a brain disorder that can trigger speech and facial tics, vocal outbursts and obsessive compulsive behavior. – Tim Howard • Manhattan is a narrow island off the coast of New Jersey devoted to the pursuit of lunch. – Raymond Sokolov • Maybe because I’m from New Jersey, I just have this kind of plain language hangup. But I would make very clear – I would not talk to Vladimir Putin. In fact, I would talk to Vladimir Putin a lot. But I’d say to him, “Listen, Mr. President, there’s a no-fly zone in Syria; you fly in, it applies to you.” And yes, we would shoot down the planes of Russian pilots if in fact they were stupid enough to think that this president was the same feckless weakling that the president we have in the Oval Office is right now. – Chris Christie • Michael Sanchez and I grew up in New Jersey, not far from here, playing soccer together. When I was in high school, I worked to start an organization to help senior citizens, which I learned a great deal from. – Andrew Shue • Mom put dense cheddar bread into a bag for a man who said this was his wife’s favorite – he’d driven all the way from New Jersey to buy it because today was their anniversary. Several women in the store jabbed their husbands on hearing this. I hung my head – Peter Terris wouldn’t cross the street to buy me a Twinkie. – Joan Bauer • My boyfriend is Italian and from New Jersey, so naturally he was thrilled to meet Joe Pesci. – Diablo Cody • My early childhood was spent in Newark, New Jersey, but my family moved to Denver when I was 12. – Anita Diament • My feeling about growing up in New Jersey was, ‘How come I’m not in New York?’ That being said, I’m older and I have a better worldview now, and so I think I grew up in an incredibly privileged position. The town I grew up in is beautiful. I got a great education, and I’m very grateful for it. – Anne Hathaway • My first waitress job was at Johnny Rockets in New Jersey, and then I waited tables at a sports bar. – Melissa Rauch • My goal was to make New Jersey’s state government a model for all other states to emulate, hopefully thereby to stem, or at least slow down, the flow of power to the federal government. – Charles Edison • My mother is a first generation American. Her father worked in the Roebling Steel Mill in Trenton, New Jersey.And yet my mother became the first person in her family to get a college degree. – Samuel Alito • My mother took care of us until my father scrammed, and then she ended up working in the small-factory sector of New Jersey with a lot of other immigrants. – Junot Diaz • My writing is really intuitive. As a kid, I went to school in New Jersey and hung out in New York, so the way kids used to talk got into our earlier songs. – Donald Fagen • New Jersey boasts the highest percentage of passport holders (68%); Delaware (67%), Alaska (65%), Massachusetts (63%), New York (62%), and California (60%) are close behind. At the opposite end of the spectrum, less than one in five residents of Mississippi are passport holders, and just one in four residents of West Virginia, Kentucky, Alabama, and Arkansas. – Richard Florida • New Jersey for me is so alive with history. It’s old, dynamic, African-American, Latino. – Junot Diaz • New Jersey gives us glue. – Howard Dietz • New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is going to Israel. He’s going to be pretty disappointed when he finds out the Gaza Strip isn’t a steak. – Jimmy Fallon • New Jersey is a great place to live. And we have given some of the best talent to the world, from Jack Nicholson, John Travolta, to Jerry Lewis to Bon Jovi to Frank Sinatra. – Queen Latifah • New Jersey is to New York what Santo Domingo is to the United States. I always felt that those two landscapes, not only just the landscapes themselves but their relationships to what we would call ‘a center’ or ‘the center of the universe,’ has in some ways defined my artistic and critical vision. – Junot Diaz • New Jersey Mayor Corey Booker last night personally rescued a woman from a burning building. Or as Fox News reported it, ‘black man loots house, steals white woman.’ – Bill Maher • New Jersey shaped who and what I am. Growing up in Jersey gave you all the advantages of New York, but you were in its shadow. Anyone who’s come from here will tell you that same story. – Jon Bon Jovi • New Jersey was actually a very cold place. There was such an intense concentration of wealth, and such a low concentration of any actual human happiness. A lot of people seem to be similar to the kid in school, which is doing a lot of things with no direct consequence to their joy, or their lives. – Ezra Miller • New Jersey was threatened like no other region in this country and what we did was we took action within the constitution to make sure that law enforcement had all the information they needed. – Chris Christie • New York and New Jersey are probably two of my favorite places to get really good surf in the summertime. – Brandon Cruz • New York City is filled with the same kind of people I left New Jersey to get away from. – Fran Lebowitz • Nike used to be known as Blue Ribbon Sports. What’s now Sara Lee used to be Consolidated Foods. And Exxon was once Standard Oil Company of New Jersey. These were name changes that worked. But for all the ones that do, there are 10 or 20 that don’t. – James Surowiecki • No, I live in New Jersey because I like living in New Jersey. – Jon Stewart • Not a good night for President Obama. He lost elections in Virginia, New Jersey, and he’s not doing good in Afghanistan either. – Jay Leno • Now, in New Jersey, we have more government workers per square mile than any state in America. But since I’ve been governor we now have fewer people on the state payroll at any time since Christie Whitman left office in January 2001. That’s the right direction, Mr. President, not the wrong direction. – Chris Christie • One of my biggest inspirations growing up was Whitney Houston, so I was devastated to hear about her passing. I’m from East Orange, New Jersey, and started singing at New Hope Baptist Church, so she was like my fellow Jersey girl. – Naturi Naughton • One of the things I like about my job is that it draws on the entire person: not just your knowledge of grammar and punctuation and usage and foreign languages and literature but also your experience of travel, gardening, shipping, singing, plumbing, Catholicism, midwesternism, mozzarella, the A train, New Jersey. And in turn it feeds you more experience. – Mary Norris • One thing he misses about New Jersey: One thing they don’t have out here in California is Rita’s Italian Ices. We used to have one right next to our house and it was so good! – Joe Jonas • Otherwise, I spend a lot of time at my boyfriend’s home in the country, in New Jersey. – Eva Herzigova • Our conversation with the supermarket manager had been about as helpful as a New Jersey road sign, and if you’ve ever been there, you know the signs don’t tell you the exit you’re coming up to, they only point out the exits you’ve just missed. – Neal Shusterman • Over 6 million people were evacuated from New Jersey ahead of the hurricane. And now, three of them have gone back. – Jay Leno • People cited violation of the First Amendment when a New Jersey schoolteacher asserted that evolution and the Big Bang are not scientific and that Noah’s ark carried dinosaurs. This case is not about the need to separate church and state; it’s about the need to separate ignorant, scientifically illiterate people from the ranks of teachers. – Neil deGrasse Tyson • Philadelphia merely seems dull because it’s next to exciting Camden, New Jersey. – Robert Anton Wilson • Philly is more East Coast than Pittsburgh. It’s closer to New Jersey and New York, so the vibe is way more fast-paced. – Wiz Khalifa • Prince Harry this week toured the Jersey Shore with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. It was the first meeting between the Prince, of the House of Windsor, and the Governor, of the House of Pancake. – Amy Poehler • Quick, name some towns in New Jersey – James Thurber • Reading a book, for me at least, is like traveling in someone else’s world. If it’s a good book, then you feel comfortable and yet anxious to see what’s going to happen to you there, what’ll be around the next corner. But if it’s a lousy book, then it’s like going through Secaucus, New Jersey — it smells and you wish you weren’t there, but since you’ve started the trip, you roll up the windows and breathe through your mouth until you’re done. – Jonathan Carroll • School is where children spend most of their time, and it is where we lay the foundation for healthy habits. That’s why New Jersey is the first state to adopt a comprehensive school nutrition policy that bans candy, soda, and other junk food. – Richard Codey • Six out of seven times we landed successfully [on the Moon]. I wanted to be a part of that and I was a part of that, so my personal feeling is of great gratefulness for having somehow been in a position to have been given the opportunity to be on that first landing. That’s a marvelous experience for a little kid that grew up in New Jersey. So I’m very thankful, and I asked the whole world to give thanks once we successfully landed. – Buzz Aldrin • Sixty one percent of Donald Trump`s supporters believe that President [Barack] Obama was not born in the United States.They believe Donald Trump`s lie about where President Obama was born, the lie he started telling four years ago and has since replaced with other hate-driven lies like the thousands of Muslims Donald Trump lies about having seen celebrating in New Jersey on 9/11. – Lawrence O’Donnell • Some of Buddhist texts say that, in the moment after you die, you think of New Jersey and you go to New Jersey or you think of 1820 and you go to 1820. Also, all your sort of inner-symbology gets writ large. So, if you’re a Christian, you see Christian iconography. – George Saunders • St. Patrick’s Day is a holy day for Roman Catholics in Ireland to pray and a day for drunk people to vomit with their pants down in New Jersey. – Margot Leitman • The British invasion was the most important event of my life. I was in New Jersey and the night I saw the Beatles changed everything. I had seen Elvis before and he had done nothing for me, but these guys were in a band. – Steven Van Zandt • The curtain rises on a vast primitive wasteland, not unlike certain parts of New jersey. – Woody Allen • The Democrats can’t lose, so they got rid of Bob Torricelli, way beyond when it was permissible. The time for a replacement had passed, but the New Jersey Supreme Court made up of Democrat hacks said, “Hey, if our candidate can’t go, sure you can put in a replacement.” – Rush Limbaugh • The first thing we should be concerned about the BLM movement should be the issues that the Black Lives Matter movement is bringing forward. There’s no fundamental platform being brought by activists in Oakland, Baltimore, or New Jersey. The main issues that you see, the commonality between activists all around the country, are trying to deal with the challenges in the criminal justice system, something that is very much central to my work. So my hope is that people stay focused on the urgency to create justice here at home. – Cory Booker • The great thing about New Jersey is that it’s close to New York. – Fran Lebowitz • The mosquito is the state bird of New Jersey. – Andy Warhol • The most difficult thing for me is to leave the New Jersey Devils, a great organization that I have a lot of respect for, and our fans that have been great to me. – Ilya Kovalchuk • The only time I’ve ever been mistaken for someone else is – and this arguable still – when a person came up to me on the boardwalk of Ocean City, New Jersey and said, “You look a lot like that guy from computer ads” and I said, “There is a reason because I am that guy,” and the guy looked at me for a minute, laughed and said, “That’s a funny joke, but you really do look like him.” He thought I was not me. – John Hodgman • The Palestinians have no other land. They are absolutely right about this. The Israeli Jews also have no other land and they are absolutely right about this. It is a tragedy of two peoples claiming the same very small country – very small, about the size of New Jersey. And both of them are right. Both of them have no other homeland as peoples. As individuals, maybe, but not as a people. – Amos Oz • The President’s biggest problem right now is he’s gotta tell the truth. And we’ve seen this in New Jersey. I’ve told lots of hard truths in New Jersey that people didn’t necessarily agree with, but they give you credit for looking them in the eye and telling them the truth. – Chris Christie • The results of a new study are out this week saying that New Jersey is one of the most livable states in the country. The study has a margin of error of 100 percent. – Conan O’Brien • The state of New Jersey is really two places – terrible cities and wonderful suburbs. I live in the suburbs, the final battleground of the American dream, where people get married and have kids and try to scratch out a happy life for themselves. It’s very romantic in that way, but a bit naive. I like to play with that in my work. – Harlan Coben • The way I see it, living in New Jersey is a challenge, what with the toxic waste and the eighteen wheelers and the armed schizophrenics.” Connie Rosolli. – Janet Evanovich • The way that house music has become so white and so sanitized over the decades and the fact it’s still going on, well I think it’s sad really, but at the time I really loved it. I loved all the black house music that was coming out of Chicago and New Jersey, which I just thought was really soulful. – Paul Weller • Then I was working in a store in Newark, New Jersey, and I saw an actor in person, and I got so excited. My whole day changed. That’s when I decided to challenge myself to make my dreams become a reality. – Derek Luke • There are a great number of people from New Jersey who go on to have pretty successful careers. – Kerry Bishe • There are American citizens who have been inspired to commit acts of terror on American soil, the latest incident, of course, the bombings we just saw in New York and New Jersey, the knife attack at a mall in Minnesota, in the last year, deadly attacks in San Bernardino and Orlando. – Lester Holt • There’s a high school in Camden, New Jersey, I call the Jill Scott School. It’s the Camden Creative Arts High School. Those teachers and kids are so passionate about what they do, and 98 percent of the senior class went on to college. – Jill Scott • These are days you’ll remember. If you recall nothing else from your graduation ceremony, remember you heard the New Jersey Governor quote from 10,000 Maniacs. – Bill Vaughan • These esoteric, intellectual debates-I want them to come to New Jersey and sit across from the widows and the orphans and have that conversation. – Chris Christie • This decision was something I have thought about for a long time going back to the lockout and spending the year in Russia. Though I decided to return this past season, Lou was aware of my desire to go back home and have my family there with me. The most difficult thing for me is to leave the New Jersey Devils, a great organization that I have a lot of respect for, and our fans that have been great to me. – Ilya Kovalchuk • This is a difference between being a governor and being in a legislature. Because when something doesn’t work in New Jersey, they look at me, say: “Why didn’t it get done? Why didn’t you do it?” You have to be responsible and accountable. – Chris Christie • Those magazine dieting stories always have the testimonial of a woman who wore a dress that could slipcover New Jersey in one photo and thirty days later looked like a well-dressed thermometer. – Erma Bombeck • Today New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie announced that he’s endorsing Mitt Romney for president. It’s good news for Romney. I mean, you always want Chris Christie on your side. Unless you’re in a canoe. – Jimmy Fallon • Two records put me over the top with hip-hop. One of them was ‘Planet Rock,’ and the other had no lyrics – it was called ‘Numbers,’ from a group called Kraftwerk. Every kid in the ‘hood in New York and New Jersey was popping, locking, and breaking to that record. It was the hottest track on the street at the time. – Queen Latifah • Wait.” Clary was suddenly nervous. “The melted metal-it could be, like, toxic or something.” Maia snorted. “I’m from New Jersey. I born in toxic sludge. – Cassandra Clare • We are very excited with the roster of skaters that are coming. It’s the first time New Jersey has been awarded an event of this caliber in the skating world. It’s definitely important to the area because we hear all the time that there are not enough major sporting events in South Jersey. It’s a great opportunity to have such an event. – Susan Ward • We need to have an education system in New Jersey and all over the country that makes all of our kids, either college or career ready. It should be their choice. I mean, every kid doesn’t want to go to college. But I think we should aspire to let every child reach his maximum or her maximum potential. – Chris Christie • We owe every student in every neighborhood in New Jersey an equal opportunity to succeed. We know that more money, alone, is not the answer. We need to redefine success, and how we pursue that success, by the outcomes obtained by students. – Thomas Kean, Jr. • We prosecuted two of the biggest terrorism cases in the world and stopped Fort Dix from being attacked by six American radicalized Muslims from a Mosque in New Jersey because we worked with the Muslim American community to get intelligence and we used the Patriot Act to get other intelligence to make sure we did those cases. This is the difference between actually been a federal prosecutor, actually doing something, and not just spending your life as one of hundred debating it. – Chris Christie • Well, let’s put in this way, I grew up in West New York, New Jersey. – Jason Alexander • We’re called New Jersey but we’re actually the suburbs of New York. – Harlan Coben • We’ve gotta dispense with calling guys who are effeminate or who throw like girls “sissies.” You know why? Because that diminishes women, and that can lead to such things as you decking your woman in a hotel elevator in New Jersey with your fist. – Rush Limbaugh • What else can you expect from a town thats shut off from the world by the ocean on one side and New Jersey on the other? – O. Henry • What I’d like to see is a private [healthcare] system without the artificial lines around every state. I have a big company with thousands and thousands of employees. And if I’m negotiating in New York or in New Jersey or in California, I have like one bidder. Nobody can bid.Because the insurance companies are making a fortune because they have control of the politicians. – Donald Trump • When a new writer defends his “style,” the teacher smiles (or cringes) because real style isn’t an artifice. Real style – voice – arrives on its own, as an extension of a writer’s character. When style is done self-consciously and purposefully it becomes affectation, and as transparent as any affectation – an English accent on an old college chum from New Jersey, for example. – Bill Roorbach • When giving directions to Joe Garagiola to his New Jersey home, which is accessible by two routes: “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” – Yogi Berra • When I get to the White House, there will be no hesitation from me to make the tough decisions that need to be made because I’ve been doing it for the last 13 years as a former federal prosecutor and now as the governor of New Jersey. – Chris Christie • When I was 12, we moved from New Jersey to Florida. The Gulf of Mexico was literally my backyard. Every day, I could see the ocean. At low tide I went out and played in seagrass meadows that used to come right up to the shore, filled with tiny seahorses, pipefish and soft corals. There was so much life! But then I witnessed the change, the loss of the shoreline, the loss of the mangrove trees, the loss of the seagrass meadows. Shallow bay areas were turned into parking lots. – Sylvia Earle • When I was 13, I moved from New Jersey to Germany with my family. The high school was so supportive of my dream to continue with my theater training; instead of taking PE, I would get credit for dance lessons. – Nina Arianda • When I was about 8 or 9, I lived in New Jersey with my mother and we were seven deep in one bedroom and sometimes we didn’t have electricity. – Floyd Mayweather, Jr. • When I was in – at Vassar, and I came from a public high school in New Jersey, there was – that class still existed. I think it’s pretty much gone, but there was a way of talking that the private school girls had that was different than the way I talked from New Jersey. – Meryl Streep • When you say, ‘I spent my summers at the Jersey Shore,’ people always say, ‘Oh, really?’ They think of the TV show. So I just say, ‘A cute little harbor town in New Jersey.’ – Taylor Swift • Whenever I stumble over my own feet, or blurt out a thought that makes no sense at all, or leave the house wearing one pattern too many, I always think, ‘It’s okay, I’m from New Jersey.’ I love New Jersey, because it’s not just an all-purpose punch line, but probably a handy legal defense, as in ‘Yes, I shot my wife because I thought she was Bigfoot, but I’m from New Jersey.’ – Paul Rudnick • Whenever spring comes to New York I can’t stand the suggestion of the land that come blowing over the river from New Jersey and I’ve got to go. So I went. – Jack Kerouac • With our last album (“No Time To Bleed”), we recorded most of it in New Jersey. And with being on the road 9 months a year, recording an album on the other side of the country- it just wasn’t a good experience for us. All I wanted to do was go home and see my daughter, so for us to only be a couple hours away was huge- I could go home if I needed to. – Mitch Lucker • Working on an essay versus a novel is like the difference between seeing to that curtain and seeing to New Jersey. – Sloane Crosley • Yes, I shot my wife because I thought she was Bigfoot, but I’m from New Jersey. – Paul Rudnick • You want to be the first to do something. You want to create something. You want to innovate something…I often think of Edison inventing the light bulb. That’s what I want to do. I want to drive over the bridge coming out of New York there and look down on that sea of lights that is New Jersey and say, `Hey, I did that!��� – David Keirsey • You’d think New York people was all wise; but no, they can’t get a chance to learn. Every thing’s too compressed. Even the hayseeds are bailed hayseeds. But what else can you expect from a town that’s shut off from the world by the ocean on one side and New Jersey on the other? – O. Henry

[kansascityhappenings]

Parkland survivors vote for 1st time, months after massacre

PARKLAND, Fla. — Nine months after 17 classmates and teachers were gunned down at their Florida school, Parkland students are finally facing the moment they’ve been leading up to with marches, school walkouts and voter-registration events throughout the country: their first Election Day.

The Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student activists set their sights on the 4 million U.S. citizens turning 18 this year. They’re hoping to counteract the voter apathy that’s especially prevalent among the youth during midterm elections. Many of the activists, now household names like David Hogg, postponed college plans to mobilize young voters. Many of them support gun reform, in the name of their fallen classmates.

“It is kind of the culmination of everything we’ve been working for,” said senior Jaclyn Corin, one of the founders of the March For Our Lives group. “This is truly the moment that young people are going to make the difference in this country.”

Corin, who voted along with her dad at an early polling site on her 18th birthday, visited a half-dozen cities in just a handful of days last week, getting up at 3 a.m. to board planes.

It has been a whirlwind for the students, with celebrity support from Oprah to Kim Kardashian, a Time magazine cover, late night TV spots and book deals — but all of it misses their main target unless it motivates students to cast ballots by the end of Tuesday.

At a University of Central Florida event during the final week of election campaigning, Stoneman Douglas graduate and current UCF student Bradley Thornton escorted fellow students to the campus’ early voting site. UCF student Tiffany McKelton said she wouldn’t have voted if the Parkland activists hadn’t shown up on campus.

“I’ve never voted in a primary election. I actually did it because of them,” said McKelton, a psychology major from West Palm Beach.

In the past months they’ve boarded countless buses and planes, passed out T shirts, and hosted BBQs and dance parties on college campuses around the U.S.

Thornton said talking things through often does the trick.

“I can’t tell you how many conversations I’ve had that were like, ‘Ah, I’m not interested’ … and through just a simple, really nice cordial conversation, they get this magical inspiration to vote,” Thornton said.

Corin said she’s encountered plenty of voter apathy along the way. The students often note that voter turnout in the last midterm elections was the lowest since World War II.

“It’s really about tying it back to gun violence or tying it back to immigration or whatever that person is passionate about,” Corin said. “I’ve used that tactic so many times and it has actually worked.”

It remains to be seen what role the youth vote will play in this year’s midterms.

The 30-and-under crowd is more likely to vote in this year’s midterms than in the past. Forty percent say they’ll vote, compared to just 26 percent in 2014, according to a new poll by Institute of Politics at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. They’re being pushed, in part, by a strong disapproval of President Donald Trump.

Trends in Florida’s early voting suggest a surge in young voters.

Of the 124,000 people aged 18 to 29 who had voted in person at early polling stations as of Thursday, nearly a third did not vote in the presidential election in 2016, according to analysis by University of Florida political science professor Daniel Smith. About half of those new voters were newly registered.

“There are newly energized voters who sat out in 2016, or have registered since then, who are turning out. There’s no question about that,” Smith said.

In contrast, for people 65 and older who had voted early and in person, about 7 percent didn’t vote in 2016.

Matt Deitsch dropped out of college after the Feb. 14 shooting at Stoneman Douglas to help start March For Our Lives alongside his younger siblings, Parkland survivors Ryan Deitsch and Samantha Deitsch.

He said this year’s election will be a starting point, “not a culmination.”

“It’s where we really get to see what kind of push we really made to the needle,” Deitsch said in between passing out fliers to UCF students. “We’re running a really good race but there’s really so much work to do.”

Corin said the young activists will continue with their mission regardless of the election outcome.

“The fact that we’ve engaged a new generation of voters, that’s a win,” Corin said.

from FOX 4 Kansas City WDAF-TV | News, Weather, Sports https://fox4kc.com/2018/11/03/parkland-survivors-vote-for-1st-time-months-after-massacre/

from Kansas City Happenings https://kansascityhappenings.wordpress.com/2018/11/03/parkland-survivors-vote-for-1st-time-months-after-massacre/

[westpennanthillsbiz-blog]

EVERYTHING YOU HAD TO UNDERSTAND ABOUT WEST PENNANT HILLS

Geographical location West Pennant Hills is located in the Shire of Baulkham Hills, about 25 Kilometres Northwest of Sydney's CBD.

History West Pennant Hills was initially occupied by the Darug tribe, who were the custodians of exactly what is today known as the Greater Sydney. This tribe was divided into a number of clans, each living in different areas across Sydney. When the first European inhabitants arrived, the clans 'died', and this has actually made it difficult for contemporary anthropologists to find more info about them. It is not also clear how this land called West Pennant Hills was used throughout the colonial duration.

When a railway line was developed, the location around it was named pennant Hills East. After some time, a school was built in this location, and it was named Pennant Hills West. Eventually, the entire area around Thompsons Corner gained the name West Pennant Hills. It is believed that this suburban area was named after Sir Thomas Pennant who was a prominent biologist and lived in this location up until his death in 1798.

West Pennant Hills Commercial location Being a suburban area like other in Sydney, West Pennant Hills is simply a residential area, but it has a hectic industrial centre located at Thompsons Corner, which is also the location that plays host a popular school in the residential area; West Pennant Hills Public School.

There is also a small shopping area located north of West Pennant Hills located near to Castle Hill Roadway where dining establishments, shops, Woolworths Supermarket, and a news agency are found.

Transport in west Pennant Hills This suburban area boasts of two functional railway stations-- Pennant Hills and Beecroft, and is also serviced by M2 link buses. Traffic in this Suburb flows smoothly; hence making it an efficient place to drive your automobile to work. Recreation areas West Pennant Hills is one location that brings in thousands of tourists (both regional and international), thanks to the number of parks and leisure facilities found in this place. The significant tourist destinations in this suburb are the Koala Park Sanctuary and the Cumberland State Forest. Other entertainment facilities include; The Campbell Park Pennant Hills Park George Thornton Reserve Wollundry Park Mount Wilberforce Lookout reserve

Schools Education is a crucial secret that determines the future of a society. West Pennant Hills is the home of a few of the most distinguished schools in Sydney, providing primary, secondary, and tertiary education. They include; • West Pennant Hills Public School • Bird House Early Learning Centre • Pennant Hills High School • Clement Art School West Pennant Hills • Little Flippers Mobile Swim School • Hills Montessori Pre School • St. Agatha's Catholic Primary School ... and much more.

Population During a census performed in 2016, the population of West Pennant Hills stood at 16, 374, with about 17 people per hectare.

Last take

West Pennant Hills has a fantastic history, and is one location that has friendly and generous people. Its close distance to Sydney's CBD and neighbouring suburbs, reputable transportation system, security, and proximity to numerous social facilities makes it a terrific location to live in, whether you are a professional, senior citizen, or you have a family with or without kids.

West Pennant Hills Biz is leading in utilizing digital marketing strategies apart from the traditional ones to promote what local businesses West Pennant Hills offers. These strategies allow better business opportunities for those who intend to make better profit and work with other local business owners. If you need more clients in the area as a blocked drains plumber, we will find them for you.

Location: https://goo.gl/maps/HnCDvru3BqS2

https://goo.gl/maps/s9LxHVFRCDn

[photosbymills-blog]

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Campaign 2018: Kemp visit set for Tuesday; checking on Cagle: Republican gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp will be in Rome on Tuesday at 7:30 a.m. at Steak ‘N Shake on Turner McCall. The event is open to all. (We’re checking on any local, public visits by GOP rival Casey Cagle before the runoff and will update as soon as we hear more).

Democratic state school superintendent candidates due in Rome Thursday: The Floyd Democratic Party meets Thursday, July 12, at 7 p.m. in the community room of Northwest Georgia Housing Authority, 560 N. Division St. Scheduled speakers include Democratic state School Superintendent candidates Otha Thornton  and Sid Chapman. The runoff election is July 24 and advance voting is under way. Both candidates speak will take questions pertaining to education in Georgia. The meeting is open to all.

Campaign 2020: The Floyd sheriff’s race: We’ll have updates later this week on continuing changes in the Floyd County Sheriff’s race. We’re expected updates on Tom Caldwell’s dismissal from the sheriff’s office and how it might change  his campaign strategy for the Republican nomination in May 2020 vs. Dave Roberson and Ronnie Kilgo. We also expect another candidate or two to enter the race later this summer or early fall.

Advance voting continues today-Friday in Floyd; only Bartow County to offer Saturday voting (July 14).  How the votes stack up so far and what’s ahead. Note: Precincts open Tuesday, July 24, from 7 a.m.-7 p.m.

Floyd County: 232 early voters last week — 150 at the elections office and 82 at Garden Lakes Baptist Church. Voting resumes today through July 20, on weekdays from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at both Floyd County Administration building downtown and Garden Lakes Baptist Church. There will be no Saturday voting this period. Also, the Civic Center location will not be used for advance voting during the runoff.

Bartow County: 259 Republican voters and 9 Democratic so far. Advance voting now-July 13 on Monday-Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Bartow County Board of Elections and Voter Registration office, 1300 Joe Frank Harris Parkway, Cartersville. Saturday voting will be held July 14 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. The week of July 16-20, advance voting will be held at the Bartow Elections office from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. and at the Cartersville Civic Center from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sample ballot

Gordon County: 248 early voters last week. Advance voting will be now-July 20, Monday-Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Gordon County Board of Elections office located in the Gordon County Government Plaza, at 215 N. Wall St., Calhoun. There will not be Saturday voting for this runoff election.

Polk County: Advance voting will be now-July 20, Monday-Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Polk County Board of Elections office at 144 West Avenue, Suite D, in Cedartown.

What to know about the general primary runoff on July 24: 

Three statewide races on the Republican ballot:

Governor: Casey Cagle vs. Brian Kemp

Lt. Governor: David Shafter vs. Geoff Duncan

Secretary of State: Brad Raffensperger vs. David Belle-Isle

One statewide race on the Democratic ballot:

School Superintendent: Otha Thornton vs. Sid Chapman

Who is eligible to vote in the General Primary Runoff Election?:

If you did not cast a ballot in general primary on May 22, you are still​ eligible​ to vote in the primary runoff and choose either a Democratic or Republican ballot.

If you ​cast ​a ​Republican​ ballot​ in May 22 primary, you must vote GOP in the runoff.

If you ​cast​ ​a ​Democratic ​ballot in May 22 primary, you vote Democrat in the runoff.

If you ​cast​ a Nonpartisan Ballot on May 22, you will be eligible​ to cast a ballot for either GOP or Democratic party.

To confirm voter registration, view sample ballots, or find your polling place, visit My Voter Page.

Previous report on primary runoff. 

Politics: Updates on the GOP governor’s runoff, Democratic school superintendent’s race and the 2020 sheriff’s race. Plus: Week two of advance voting for the July 24 primary under way; Saturday voting in Bartow only. Campaign 2018: Kemp visit set for Tuesday; checking on Cagle: Republican gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp will be in Rome on Tuesday at 7:30 a.m.

[paxtonmatters-blog]

Helen Hayes MP meets with EFA on our behalf

Last week, Helen Hayes, MP for Dulwich and West Norwood, met with the Educational Funding Agency (EFA), which is responsible for funding new free schools. It's the EFA's job to assess the viability of Paxton as a site for Gipsy Hill School, which it will do in the coming days. Helen's purpose was to directly represent our community and communicate our concerns in advance of that assessment.

Her next step is to meet urgently with the Free Schools Group Director before a "Gateway Decision" is made. This decision will determine the free schools that are ready to open in September 2017.

Ms Hayes sent an email to us on the 3rd of November 2016 in regards to the meeting with the EFA. It is as follows:

Dear Parents: I wanted to update you on the meeting that local councillors and I had last week with the Education Funding Agency and about the Gipsy Hill Federation proposal to locate the new Gipsy Hill Secondary School on the Paxton Primary School site while the permanent site for the secondary school is developed.  We raised the following serious concerns with the EFA: 1.    That Paxton parents were not consulted about this proposal, and many are deeply unhappy about the proposal which potentially results in a loss of available facilities and play space for primary pupils as well as the loss of SEND facilities. 2.    That the local community has recently been through the very difficult process of the planning application for the redevelopment of Paxton Primary and a very intrusive programme of building works, and that the further disruption and impact associated with secondary pupils attending the site would not be acceptable. 3.    That we are concerned about agreement being reached that the school can open on a temporary site when a permanent site has not yet been fully agreed or secured. 4.    That the GHF is currently in a governance vacuum, having stood down the governing body of the Federation pending the formation of the multi-academy trust which was due to take place at the beginning of October but which has been delayed. 5.    That local councillors representing College and Gipsy Hill wards have not been contacted by the Federation in relation to the proposals for the Paxton site despite representing the residents most affected, and that the engagement with ward councillors in Thornton ward where Glenbrook School (the Federation's preferred permanent site for the secondary school) is located has also been poor. We expressed our grave concerns on behalf of local parents and residents, that the current plans as proposed are simply not workable and that the Education Funding Agency needs to do much more, both in terms of requiring the Federation to undertake much better engagement with the local community and assist with the identification of workable locations for the temporary and permanent school sites. We understand that the EFA is due to take a 'gateway' decision on whether the wave of free schools which includes the Gipsy Hill Secondary School have progressed sufficiently to be approved to open in September 2017, and we are currently seeking an urgent further meeting with the Free Schools Group director who is responsible for this process. We remain fully supportive of a new Gipsy Hill Federation Secondary School and want to see the new school open as soon as possible, but it must open on both temporary and permanent sites which work to provide a high quality school environment and are acceptable to the wider community. I would be very happy for you to post this update on your website and/or circulate it to your email list. I will provide a further update following my next meeting with the Free Schools Group. With best wishes Helen Helen Hayes MP Member of Parliament for Dulwich and West Norwood

[yes-dal456]

Black Women Face Devastating Losses If Obamacare Is Repealed

Bianca Adams worked part-time jobs as a spa professional, sometimes juggling two or three at a time, for years. But none of them offered her insurance, which meant that the 47-year-old with diabetes often went to the emergency room for care.

“I was one of those people that had to go to the emergency when my blood sugar got too high and I needed fluids,” Adams told The Huffington Post. “There was really no one managing my health at that point.”

When her Medicaid coverage through the Affordable Care Act began in 2014, Adams, who has been disabled with severe knee problems for 25 years, underwent three major surgeries in six months: a partial hysterectomy to remove a large tumor in June, a total right knee replacement in September and a left knee replacement in November.

“It was brutal, but everything needed to be done. I was very, very sick — and had I not done it then, I’d probably be on a walker right now,” she said.

But that wasn’t her only concern. “I felt like once Republicans got back into office, it would be repealed,” she said. “That was literally the first thing on my mind — to get everything done as soon as possible.”

Black women stand to lose the most if the Affordable Care Act is repealed. This demographic is more susceptible to diabetes, uterine fibroids, obesity, high-blood pressure, domestic abuse and sexual assault than any other. Many black women also have children who depend on them for their health care, since black women are more likely to be sole providers for their household. 

Obamacare reduced coverage disparities for a number of black women, allowing them to access routine health care treatment and check-ups with a primary care physician. The preventive care clause in the ACA has been life-changing for many black women: It gives them better access to early cancer screenings. Black women are twice as likely as white women to die of cervical cancer and twice as likely to be diagnosed in the later stages of breast cancer.

Historically, the government has paid attention to black women’s health only when it’s convenient, said Joan Faber McAlister, an associate professor at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa.

“Black women’s health has been pretty much the lowest priority, almost has been completely invisible,” McAlister said. “The only time we see a lot of attention to black women’s health is when it’s being misrepresented to undermine social programs that don’t even primarily benefit black women.”

As of Jan. 1, 32 states had expanded Medicaid to include most low-income Americans. If President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans move forward with their plans to repeal Obamacare, that coverage will go away. So will the tax credits that help lower- and middle-class families afford insurance. Many of the people hit hardest will be black women.

Here are some of their stories.

Karla Baptiste, 43, DeSoto, Texas

After moving to the San Francisco Bay Area for a new job in late September 2007, Karla Baptiste was diagnosed with stage 2 breast cancer at age 34. A mastectomy that October determined that Baptiste’s cancer was worse than doctors had thought ― it was present in 14 of her lymph nodes and had progressed to stage 3.

She began chemotherapy that November. She would later have three reconstructive surgeries on her breast, six weeks of daily radiation and take regular doses of Tamoxifen, a cancer treatment drug, for four years.

Baptiste was declared cancer free in 2008. But in July 2014, a lesion was found on her vertebrae. The cancer had metastasized to her spine. After another round of treatments, the lesion was gone by February 2015.

Baptiste shows no cancer activity in her body now but is still considered to be a high cancer risk. “I’m cancer free now, but I have stage 4 cancer, and there is no stage 5. I don’t want to go back to a time when insurance companies can deny me just because they decide they don’t want to pay for something.”

“And then I die,” she continued. “It’s that serious for me.”

Baptiste won’t be able to pay for the medicine she needs to survive without the ACA. Her insurance was billed $426,702 last year for her care. She paid $2,500 of that.

“If the ACA is repealed and not replaced with something that has guardrails for insurance companies, patients like me with pre-existing conditions are the ones they will drop or deny coverage for,” she said. “We cost them too much. The ACA gives me peace of mind that I will receive the care that I need.”

“I’m in a situation where I’m going to be treated indefinitely,” she added. “It’s not something like I get chemo and I’m done ― having my medication is that important to me. It’s keeping me alive.”

Aitza Burgess Reynolds, 22, Chapel Hill, North Carolina

When Aitza Burgess Reynolds’ mom started receiving disability payments in 2015, the 22-year-old college senior was no longer covered under her mother’s plan. She signed up for health care through the ACA marketplace based on her stepfather’s experiences with the program. When he was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, the insurance he obtained through the ACA helped the family financially by covering most of his treatments before he died.

The health insurance offered by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which is just over $1,100 a semester, was too expensive for Burgess Reynolds. It didn’t include dental or eye care. She has to have her eyes checked every six months and needs prescription glasses and contacts costing over $500 to keep from being legally blind.

If the law is repealed and her mom loses disability, Burgess Reynolds would become the sole provider for her household, having to insure herself and her mother. She’d also have to delay going back to graduate school to obtain her doctorate.  

“It’s a great injustice to us, and it’s a failure of our system ― maybe not even a failure because, from what I’ve learned, it was systematically designed to be that way,” she said, with the cards stacked against black women.

Akosua, 37, Dallas 

Akosua, who did not want her real name published, owns a photography business with her husband. The ACA helps them remain covered since they are self-employed. Akosua and her husband also have pre-existing conditions (she is overweight and he has diabetes).

“The Obama administration really seemed to think about people’s lives and really have compassion for the choices people want to make to be better,” she said.

Akousa was a teacher before opening her own business ― and she was miserable. Obamacare gave her a chance to pursue her dream job. But, she says, politicians want to create an underclass in which people don’t have access to health care and can’t be healthy physically or emotionally.

“We’re moving from the Obama administration to one where people have open disdain for their own citizens ― and that is a major issue to me,” she said. “There’s a great deal of cruelty, and I believe that the repeal of the ACA is not really to [balance the] budget. It’s deliberate social destruction.”

Sandra Thornton, 60, West Point, Georgia

Sandra Thornton is a divorced mom with three kids. She worked for a company called Wide Open West for 37 years before being diagnosed with severe carpal tunnel syndrome. She worked for seven more years after a surgery on her wrist in 2007, then was laid off in August 2014 after a short medical leave.

The following April, Thornton was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer. “Without the health care, I wouldn’t be talking to you today,” she said.

Thornton, who is now cancer free, underwent a mastectomy, reconstructive surgery, 38 rounds of radiation and six rounds of chemotherapy. Sickness from the chemotherapy landed her in the hospital after each treatment.

Chemo cost more than $6,000 each time, Thornton said. “Who can afford this? No one.”  

“You’ve got to have quality health care. Some of the people wouldn’t even take the insurance because it was affordable health care.” Thornton said that initially she couldn’t find a doctor within 100 miles who would take her insurance, until the insurer helped her find a physician.

“You’re already fighting to get well, but then you got to fight the insurance company? It’s pitiful,” she said. 

Aisha Crossley, 38, Las Vegas

Aisha Crossley is the head of her household. The 38-year-old casualty specialist for AAA doesn’t qualify for any public assistance and, while she’s covered through her employer, her four children are insured through the Affordable Care Act.

Crossley’s oldest son, 21, has severe asthma. He’s been seeing a pulmonary specialist regularly since he was 2 and is on four medications that need to be refilled each month. Crossley said it’s a blessing to be able to pay an $80 quarterly premium and take him to the doctor on a regular basis.  

Without insurance, Crossley says, her oldest son would be in the hospital with pneumonia and probably close to dying. “I also have to be concerned if my child is going to have access to the medication that has allowed him to be alive and control his asthma on a daily basis.”

Crossley herself needs monthly medications, her other son sees a dermatologist regularly for a skin condition and her 7-year-old daughter had surgery in October.

This is why a potential repeal of the ACA scares her. She could put her children on her employer’s insurance, but it would cost at least $500 a month, leaving Crossley with a maddening decision.

“I’d have to decide on if I want to go with the employer-driven insurance or have my kids be uninsured so we can still eat,” she said.  

Faber likened such choices to those that women face in third-world countries.

“You’re facing a choice of which child is going to live in the United States. In a country this wealthy and advanced, we can have a space program but we can’t help women keep their children alive?”

If you're always angry about politics, sign up for bruh., a sporadic newsletter by Julia Craven.

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[keywestlou]

TRUMP'S CRAZIES OUT TO DESTROY FAUCI.....CLAIM HE'S TREASONOUS

Far right  and conservative Republicans are thought to be one week from commencing personal attacks on Dr. Fauci.

An article in Vanity Fair by Bess Levin 6/4/21 an interesting expose. Its title: Lock Her Up Chant for Anthony Fauci. If successful, the attack would be followed up with calls for Fauci to be charged with treason.

The anti-Fauci forces are gearing up for an attack that he’s the second coming of Benghazi/Hillary Clinton/Pol Pot.

The primary attack issue is Fauci’s belief that coronavirus originated with bats and not the Wuhan laboratory.

Why Fauci? Because he represents “everything conservatives hate: An educated man of science with not one but two degrees, he committed what Republicans believe was a capital offense when he failed to back up everything Donald Trump said about the disease, including the part about breaking it by freebasing bleach.”

Many of the anti-Fauci group believe “he invented coronavirus and is ‘part of a secret cabal with Bill Gates and George Soros to profit from the vaccines.'”

Levin’s article claims QAnon, Republicans, Trump, and FOX News believe they have found some kind of smoking gun showing Fauci is responsible for the virus.

There are those that want Fauci to “basically be tried for war crimes.” The very same people who have expressed next to no interest in any investigation whatsoever into the events of January 6.

Beware!

Step by step there is an increasing attack upon the democracy on which the U.S. is built.

Reminds me of Nazi Germany in the 1930’s.

Yesterday was June 6. A special day in American history. One reminding all that many Americans died to protect the American way of life.

It was June 6, 1944. Allies landed on Normandy shores. The Battle for Europe began. Within a very few days, 150,000 Allied troops were delivered to Normandy beaches.

In 1965, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Griswold v. Connecticut. A landmark decision.

The Supreme Court legalized the use of contraceptives by married couples without governmental restriction. “Marital privacy” was protected. The Supreme Court said in effect stay out of a married couple’s bed!

There is humor in the decision. Few Americans were paying attention to the prohibition against the use of contraceptives by married couples.

I take you back 16 years to 1949. I was a freshman in high school. I worked after school in a chain drug store. I was used where needed. Sometimes behind the cigar/cigarette counter.

Condoms were sold. They wee kept out of sight behind the cigar/cigarette counter. Men would stand around looking here and there till they were the only ones who wanted to buy condoms. They would approach the counter and in a nervous fashion ask for condoms. Sold in packages of three to a gross.

I was 14. Had no idea condoms were illegal. I thought they merely were an item men were embarrassed to buy. It was like sanitary napkins. Though legal, they were minimally visible behind the perfume counter. A woman would ask for a box when no one was standing around her.

Time changes things.

Several years ago, I wrote about what was perceived to be a coming California drought. California’s water supply was being rapidly depleted. California needed huge amounts of water especially for its fruit growing.

There was a water war at the time. Some big company came in and bought the water rights to thousands of acres. The company may have been Nestles. I do not recall for sure.

The company planned to sell the water as bottled water in super markets.

There was an added thorn in the side of farmers. Besides Nestles coming in and buying needed water, they were also able to buy it cheaper. Do not recall why. The companies were not stopped.

One of the reasons why today California is suffering from drought. The drought is 100 percent at this time. Nevada suffering similarly.

Scientist say the present California/Nevada drought is equal to or greater than the droughts experienced in Great Depression and Dust Bowl days. Scientist’s warn “the drought isn’t coming, it’s HERE.”

The scientists add another warning. A famine could be next. Historically, droughts are followed by famine.

Jon Rahm was disqualified from the final 18 holes of the Memorial golf tournament over the weekend. He tested positive during the saturday round. At the time, he was ahead by 6 strokes. It was anticipated Rahm would win the $1.7 million first place prize.

Rahm did not come down with coronavirus. He merely was in contact with a person who was so diagnosed.

Turns out Rahm failed to get vaccinated. For whatever reason, he is lucky he did not actually come down with the virus. He is unlucky he blew $1.7 million. Doctors reported that had he been vaccinated, he would not have been tested.

I missed Jean Thornton’s birthday party last night on the Truman waterfront. My goiter acted up. Could not even put a shoe on the foot.

I called Jean in the afternoon and made my apologies.

Jean is the best. She was all excited by the party which was scheduled for 7.

I spoke with several this morning who attended. Two described the crowd as in “the millions.”

Jean would be deserving of no less.

Now for the best news of all. Word is the Chart Room will open in two weeks! Hallelujah!

Enjoy your day!

TRUMP’S CRAZIES OUT TO DESTROY FAUCI…..CLAIM HE’S TREASONOUS was originally published on Key West Lou

[imreviewblog]

Black Women Face Devastating Losses If Obamacare Is Repealed

Bianca Adams worked part-time jobs as a spa professional, sometimes juggling two or three at a time, for years. But none of them offered her insurance, which meant that the 47-year-old with diabetes often went to the emergency room for care.

“I was one of those people that had to go to the emergency when my blood sugar got too high and I needed fluids,” Adams told The Huffington Post. “There was really no one managing my health at that point.”

When her Medicaid coverage through the Affordable Care Act began in 2014, Adams, who has been disabled with severe knee problems for 25 years, underwent three major surgeries in six months: a partial hysterectomy to remove a large tumor in June, a total right knee replacement in September and a left knee replacement in November.

“It was brutal, but everything needed to be done. I was very, very sick — and had I not done it then, I’d probably be on a walker right now,” she said.

But that wasn’t her only concern. “I felt like once Republicans got back into office, it would be repealed,” she said. “That was literally the first thing on my mind — to get everything done as soon as possible.”

Black women stand to lose the most if the Affordable Care Act is repealed. This demographic is more susceptible to diabetes, uterine fibroids, obesity, high-blood pressure, domestic abuse and sexual assault than any other. Many black women also have children who depend on them for their health care, since black women are more likely to be sole providers for their household. 

Obamacare reduced coverage disparities for a number of black women, allowing them to access routine health care treatment and check-ups with a primary care physician. The preventive care clause in the ACA has been life-changing for many black women: It gives them better access to early cancer screenings. Black women are twice as likely as white women to die of cervical cancer and twice as likely to be diagnosed in the later stages of breast cancer.

Historically, the government has paid attention to black women’s health only when it’s convenient, said Joan Faber McAlister, an associate professor at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa.

“Black women’s health has been pretty much the lowest priority, almost has been completely invisible,” McAlister said. “The only time we see a lot of attention to black women’s health is when it’s being misrepresented to undermine social programs that don’t even primarily benefit black women.”

As of Jan. 1, 32 states had expanded Medicaid to include most low-income Americans. If President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans move forward with their plans to repeal Obamacare, that coverage will go away. So will the tax credits that help lower- and middle-class families afford insurance. Many of the people hit hardest will be black women.

Here are some of their stories.

Karla Baptiste, 43, DeSoto, Texas

After moving to the San Francisco Bay Area for a new job in late September 2007, Karla Baptiste was diagnosed with stage 2 breast cancer at age 34. A mastectomy that October determined that Baptiste’s cancer was worse than doctors had thought ― it was present in 14 of her lymph nodes and had progressed to stage 3.

She began chemotherapy that November. She would later have three reconstructive surgeries on her breast, six weeks of daily radiation and take regular doses of Tamoxifen, a cancer treatment drug, for four years.

Baptiste was declared cancer free in 2008. But in July 2014, a lesion was found on her vertebrae. The cancer had metastasized to her spine. After another round of treatments, the lesion was gone by February 2015.

Baptiste shows no cancer activity in her body now but is still considered to be a high cancer risk. “I’m cancer free now, but I have stage 4 cancer, and there is no stage 5. I don’t want to go back to a time when insurance companies can deny me just because they decide they don’t want to pay for something.”

“And then I die,” she continued. “It’s that serious for me.”

Baptiste won’t be able to pay for the medicine she needs to survive without the ACA. Her insurance was billed $426,702 last year for her care. She paid $2,500 of that.

“If the ACA is repealed and not replaced with something that has guardrails for insurance companies, patients like me with pre-existing conditions are the ones they will drop or deny coverage for,” she said. “We cost them too much. The ACA gives me peace of mind that I will receive the care that I need.”

“I’m in a situation where I’m going to be treated indefinitely,” she added. “It’s not something like I get chemo and I’m done ― having my medication is that important to me. It’s keeping me alive.”

Aitza Burgess Reynolds, 22, Chapel Hill, North Carolina

When Aitza Burgess Reynolds’ mom started receiving disability payments in 2015, the 22-year-old college senior was no longer covered under her mother’s plan. She signed up for health care through the ACA marketplace based on her stepfather’s experiences with the program. When he was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, the insurance he obtained through the ACA helped the family financially by covering most of his treatments before he died.

The health insurance offered by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which is just over $1,100 a semester, was too expensive for Burgess Reynolds. It didn’t include dental or eye care. She has to have her eyes checked every six months and needs prescription glasses and contacts costing over $500 to keep from being legally blind.

If the law is repealed and her mom loses disability, Burgess Reynolds would become the sole provider for her household, having to insure herself and her mother. She’d also have to delay going back to graduate school to obtain her doctorate.  

“It’s a great injustice to us, and it’s a failure of our system ― maybe not even a failure because, from what I’ve learned, it was systematically designed to be that way,” she said, with the cards stacked against black women.

Akosua, 37, Dallas 

Akosua, who did not want her real name published, owns a photography business with her husband. The ACA helps them remain covered since they are self-employed. Akosua and her husband also have pre-existing conditions (she is overweight and he has diabetes).

“The Obama administration really seemed to think about people’s lives and really have compassion for the choices people want to make to be better,” she said.

Akousa was a teacher before opening her own business ― and she was miserable. Obamacare gave her a chance to pursue her dream job. But, she says, politicians want to create an underclass in which people don’t have access to health care and can’t be healthy physically or emotionally.

“We’re moving from the Obama administration to one where people have open disdain for their own citizens ― and that is a major issue to me,” she said. “There’s a great deal of cruelty, and I believe that the repeal of the ACA is not really to [balance the] budget. It’s deliberate social destruction.”

Sandra Thornton, 60, West Point, Georgia

Sandra Thornton is a divorced mom with three kids. She worked for a company called Wide Open West for 37 years before being diagnosed with severe carpal tunnel syndrome. She worked for seven more years after a surgery on her wrist in 2007, then was laid off in August 2014 after a short medical leave.

The following April, Thornton was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer. “Without the health care, I wouldn’t be talking to you today,” she said.

Thornton, who is now cancer free, underwent a mastectomy, reconstructive surgery, 38 rounds of radiation and six rounds of chemotherapy. Sickness from the chemotherapy landed her in the hospital after each treatment.

Chemo cost more than $6,000 each time, Thornton said. “Who can afford this? No one.”  

“You’ve got to have quality health care. Some of the people wouldn’t even take the insurance because it was affordable health care.” Thornton said that initially she couldn’t find a doctor within 100 miles who would take her insurance, until the insurer helped her find a physician.

“You’re already fighting to get well, but then you got to fight the insurance company? It’s pitiful,” she said. 

Aisha Crossley, 38, Las Vegas

Aisha Crossley is the head of her household. The 38-year-old casualty specialist for AAA doesn’t qualify for any public assistance and, while she’s covered through her employer, her four children are insured through the Affordable Care Act.

Crossley’s oldest son, 21, has severe asthma. He’s been seeing a pulmonary specialist regularly since he was 2 and is on four medications that need to be refilled each month. Crossley said it’s a blessing to be able to pay an $80 quarterly premium and take him to the doctor on a regular basis.  

Without insurance, Crossley says, her oldest son would be in the hospital with pneumonia and probably close to dying. “I also have to be concerned if my child is going to have access to the medication that has allowed him to be alive and control his asthma on a daily basis.”

Crossley herself needs monthly medications, her other son sees a dermatologist regularly for a skin condition and her 7-year-old daughter had surgery in October.

This is why a potential repeal of the ACA scares her. She could put her children on her employer’s insurance, but it would cost at least $500 a month, leaving Crossley with a maddening decision.

“I’d have to decide on if I want to go with the employer-driven insurance or have my kids be uninsured so we can still eat,” she said.  

Faber likened such choices to those that women face in third-world countries.

“You’re facing a choice of which child is going to live in the United States. In a country this wealthy and advanced, we can have a space program but we can’t help women keep their children alive?”

If you're always angry about politics, sign up for bruh., a sporadic newsletter by Julia Craven.

powered by TinyLetter

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from Healthy Living - The Huffington Post http://huff.to/2kDNWX5

[keywestlou]

KEY WEST.....WE'RE COOKING

  It’s hot! No question about it. The hottest July ever. August will probably be hotter. Followed by historically the hottest of the hot…..September.

Yesterday, the weatherman said relief would be available. It was going to be breezy. It was. Learned something. Hot and no breeze,  hot. Hot with breeze, still hot. Perhaps worse.

As I was walking yesterday with the hot air blowing in my face, I was reminded of the 1940’s when our house was heated by a coal furnace. My job to keep the coal fire burning. Replace the burned out coal.

Every time I opened the furnace door, a blast of hot air hit me in the face. Yesterday, the same sensation.

Spent part of the afternoon reading. Still with Madeleine Albright’s Fascism. The primary fascists of almost a 100 years ago were Mussolini and Hitler. Trump so much like them.

Aqua for Dueling Bartenders at 6. Tom Luna and Rick Dery doing the entertaining.

Tom has not been present for 3 weeks. He was diagnosed with diverticulitis. Treated for it. Not diverticulitis. Kidney stones. Had surgery for the kidney stones a few days ago.

Liz and Josefina at the bar when I arrived. Liz looked lovely. She was happy to be there.

Jean Thornton came in. We sat together. She looked good and smelled good. Told her so. Love the lady!

Jean complained about the heat. Said she has begun staying in during the day to avoid it. Sounded familiar.

Normally, Jean and I would have had dinner together. I had to beg off. My podcast is tonight and I had to work on the show last night.

Join me at 9 tonight for the podcast. Tuesday Talk with Key West Lou. A fast moving, interesting, and eye opening account of how I see things. You do not have to agree with me. It is good however to hear what might be a different set of thoughts. www.blogtalkradio.com/key-west-lou.

I am a poor sleeper. Leave the TV in the bedroom on all night so I can watch something during the hours sleep escapes me. The bedroom TV went kaput about 2 monday morning.

I called Comcast. Had to wait 30 minutes for a live person. We had a communication problem. I could not understand her. Probably from east Istanbul.

After another hour of her directing me to do this and that, TV still not working. Comcast needs to send a repair person over. No one available till thursday morning.

Can’t win!

The battle between the 2 Sandy Cafes has been resolved. Settled. Details of the settlement unavailable.

A significant election in Ohio today. A special election in Ohio’s 12th Congressional district. Takes in Columbus and a wide suburban swath surrounding it.

Republican country. Thirty five years since a Democrat has held the seat. Trump won the district by 11 points.

Today’s election has become a testing ground for November. The Democratic candidate was far behind at the beginning. Today, a dead heat. Trump was in the area over the weekend campaigning for the Republican candidate.

Politicos believe suburban wives will decide the election. Most are Republicans. However, most are upset with Trump’s child separation policy.

If the Democrat wins, it foretells a blue November. If the Democrat loses by 3 points or less, the same.

We will know tonight.

A new national poll indicates Trump’s largest bloc of supporters are white persons without college degrees. Fifty four percent.

I believe the group supports Trump because they feel the country has left them behind. They believe they need governmental programs that will help them. Most are middle aged and older. They are disappointed with how life has treated them. There has been no American dream.

Dorothy Downs is an interesting woman. Among other things, an author. An expert regarding certain Indian tribes. She and her husband lived in Miami and had a second home in Key West. He has passed on.

Dorothy continues to inhabit the homes in both locales. A frequent Key West visitor.

Dorothy has a political streak in her. She is supporting Gwen Graham in the Democratic primary for Governor. Personal friends for years.

She recently wrote and asked how the race looked in Key West. I replied I did not know who was running, except for a fellow by the name of Green. His TV ads were excellent.

Dorothy made me feel ashamed that I was not paying attention and did not know of her friend.

Let me share with you what I have learned about Gwen Graham.

She is way ahead in the polls. Burying her opponents. Her father is former Florida Governor and U.S. Senator Bob Graham. A distinguished statesman of the old school. Knew how to negotiate with the opposition and was not afraid to do so.

Dorothy wrote, “Being a public servant is born in Gwen’s DNA.”

Gwen is an attorney, was a stay at home Mom for 13 years, a PTA president, a school administrator, and a one term Congresswoman.

I will be paying close attention to Gwen. The primary is August 28.

They say this is the Year of the Woman. Probably so. I for one would like to see all women elected to every post. Men have done enough damage.

I close with a recent Trump tweet.

California is being devastated with fires. Trump indicated that the fires were ongoing due to a shortage of water. He claimed water that could be used to fight fires was “foolishly being diverted into the Pacific Ocean.”

No one understands the statement. Water supply has been sufficient. No one has complained of a lack of water causing the fires to spread, etc.

Many believe climate change is the cause of more severe and destructive fires. This has been the hottest summer across the U.S.

Perhaps Trump does not wish to acknowledge climate change. He has consistently been on the side of those who deny it.

Enjoy your day!

  KEY WEST…..WE’RE COOKING was originally published on Key West Lou

[keywestlou]

TRUMP A BULLY

When Trump had a successful TV show for years, I thought his facial images and You’re Fired! outbursts were acting.

Then came the Republican primaries. Trump was not the gentleman. Disrespectful of his opponents. He mocked and embarrassed them.

I realized during the debates Trump was a bully. A typical school yard bully. Mocking, threats, attempts to scare another. As written in Macbeth…..Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Trump is not the only bully out there. North Korea’s Jung Un another. One challenging the United States with his limited supply of nuclear weapons. The other wanting to increase the United States nuclear weapon supply ten fold.

They are not engaging in diplomatic talk. No, they are standing face to face throwing serious barbs at each other. Nuclear war a possibility.

October is National Bullying Prevention Month. The purpose is to promote kindness, acceptance, and inclusion. Perhaps Trump and Jung Un should look into the Month and what it stands for.  They might temper down. Become gentlemen considerate of others.

The Chart Room first last night. Met up with Jean Thornton. Good to see her again. My savior during Irma when I evacuated to her Birmingham home for 12 days.

We went over to the Hot Tin Roof for dinner. Ann and Joanne joined us. Two more Irma evacuees who ended up at Jean’s home.

A reunion of sorts.

Ann is a manager at Coach. Joanne a manager at the Audubon House.

It was good to see the ladies again.

The Hot Tin Roof is located in the Ocean Key House. Parts of Ocean Key took a beating. The long dock into the ocean where people ate and drank. Tables last night were crowded around the tiki bar and also around the pool. A no no previously.

It was 9:45 and I was driving by Publix. The refrigerator empty again. Zip. Nothing. Publix closes at 10.

I made a quick trip up and down the aisles. Threw only necessities in the cart. Made it time wise. Spent only $31. Enough to get me into the weekend.

Another test at the hospital today. No big deal.

Post Irma help comes from varied places. Not help one might expect.

The Florida Keys Community College took a bit of an Irma beating. three sides of the College sit on open water. The school was closed for three weeks. Reopened October 2.

Broward College students and employees were concerned for their brethren at FKCC. They sent 50 lap top computers, 35 bicycles, academic supplies, and personal items.

God is good! Broward College is good!

Moving my ass on Irma and Me. Assembling photographs for the book. Everyone has many. Selection the issue. If you have any, send them to me. All of them. I will pick and choose.

Send now. To louispetrone@gmail.com. Provide me with your full name, also.

I thought the Key West Citizen had renewed daily publication from Monday through friday. Published monday, tuesday and wednesday this week. Nothing today. Hope whatever the problem, it can be corrected. As I repeatedly have stated, a community needs a daily newspaper.

Syracuse plays Clemson tomorrow night (friday) at 7. A David/Goliath battle. Except, I doubt Syracuse (David) will win. Clemson is #2 in the country at 6-0. Syracuse unranked at 3-3.

Clemson a 21 point favorite.

Hope springs eternal, however. One never knows.

Sometime in the 1980s or 1990s, Syracuse was playing Nebraska. Nebraska #1 in the country. Syracuse unranked. Syracuse won!

Enjoy your day!

      TRUMP A BULLY was originally published on Key West Lou