Men Are Pigs -- I mean, FDNY

Last night, the air conditioner at our workplace backfired and caused a billowing smoke right outside of our office. It prompted someone to dial 911. One of our co-workers rushed to take care of the ailing air conditioner which spewed its last cold breaths.

Suddenly, our heads turned to see the massive red trucks with red flashes rolling in on our street -- "Who called these damned FDNY?!" Char asked. I counted three trucks, Char shook her head and said, "Five." I grinned and rolled my eyes.

These massive, rugged looking, horny men from the local FDNY entered our office to check upon the air conditioner who died in a bang. I stood and cruised these men. I smirked, not because they re gods. I smirked, because they are idiots.

Why?

Since I moved to New York, I kept on hearing a lot of bad things about FDNY guys. Last December 31, 2003 -- one fireman whacked the other fireman with a metal chair in his face, and his team tried to cover it up. One fire truck crashed into a car, the FDNY driver was found to have cocaine in his body. One firehouse was busted for having lots of alcohol and drugs stashed in a locker. A FDNY Captain was busted for drinking during on-duty performance. There were 28 DWIs issued for FDNY firefighters since last year. Not only that, it was reported that more than 30 firefighters divorced their wives and married the widows of 9/11 FDNY firefighters few months after the 9/11 incident. Not a long time ago, there was a FDNY firefighter who beats up on NYPD cop for stopping his car in a traffic incident.

And last, the most recent scandal occured last Saturday when a female person (or dog?) reported to NYPD that she was gang-raped by 4 FDNY guys at Bronx firehouse (fittingly known as Animal House), prompted a confusing investigation that shockingly mentioned that this same female has some kind of obsessive fixatation with NYPD and FDNY guys since 9/11. It was reported that since 9/11, it is possible that she opened her legs for more than 200 FDNY & NYPD men, who were more than willing to insert their dirty, sooty dicks in a misguided, psychotic woman's vagina (or ass, who knows?).

The top FDNY Chief swears there will be many heads rolling right after the investigation is done. Mayor Bloomberg denounced this outrageous behavior. I laughed a little, too little action is being done, too late. Every month, I seem to hear Mayor Bloomberg denouncing a firefighter for doing this, that and there.

Rest assured, since 9/11, the FDNY capitalized on our massive pity and support and ever since, they tried to operate above the law or morality. Now they are falling apart, but how much apart will they finally hit? I'm still waiting.

Actually, I am waiting for the next scandal. It is more exciting this way.

Oh, by the way, FDNY firefighters, thanks for stopping by last night. It was surely candy for our eyes.

R-

Again, Paul Hamm!

Such a drama with Paul Hamm regarding the point-system controversy.

Paul does not have to submit to Celizic's opinion. Paul, keep your medal.

I stumble upon Paul & Morgan Hamm's official website. Plenty of pictures to drool. Check it out at www.hamm-twins.com! Enjoy.

One interesting article that I enjoyed reading last week -- I found this again and I thought I'd share this -- Amy, care to comment on this?

I'm out for the day.

R-

A Weekend of Birthdays

I found out that Paul Hamm has a lisp voice. My hearing friends swear that he has to be gay or "something else"!! That increased the chances for me. Not.

Seeing Lithuania beating the United States Men's Basketball team was disheartening but the USA Team is not out of medal contention. As for USA Girls' Basketball team, they are untouchables. Ripping everyone else in sight, leaving no injuries behind. Just kill and move on.

Last weekend was a weekend of birthday parties -- Katie, Sarah and Donna's parties. Ahh. My $$ goes empty so fast. C'est la vie. It was fun dining at KumGangSan, as per Sarah's commented, "It is easy to remember KumGangSan by "Cum Gang San".

Guess who was in town? Rayni and her husband, Eric. Rayni looked fabulous as usual. We chit-chatted for a while. I was heavily buzzed after leaving the Bowlorama. Damn the Stella Artemis! Rayni seemed to enjoy living in Sioux Falls, middle of nowhere in South Dakota. She filled me in on some tidbits about who's who all over the world. My brain was pretty much filled up.

Hey, I have two bodyguards to take care of my homeland security. Here is the proof.



R-

Quote of the Weekend

Last Saturday at Bowlorama on University Avenue between 12th Street and 13th Street, I mingled with my co-workers who partied and bowled for Donna's 50th Birthday Celebration. That girl is 50, but she looks like 35 or so.

Needless to say, we were pretty crazy on that evening.

However, there were several shelves of pins sitting with many autographs by famous persons. I browsed around while gulping the beer as well as belching some (I had to because the bowling alley is so straight!), I was amused when I saw Richard Jefferson's quote on a pin. Richard is currently playing for the USA Men's Basketball team in Athens, Greece. He also plays for New Jersey (soon to be Brooklyn) Nets. Richard impressed me with his keen thoughts on the game itself.

R-

An Article About My Parents

Hopewell couple named deaf parents of the year

By MARK DORROH
News Staff Writer
August 17, 2004

Members of the Richmond Chapter of the Virginia Association of the Deaf named Billy Taylor Sr., Deaf Father of the Year and his wife Deanna, Deaf Mother of the Year, during a recent ceremony at Dockside restaurant in Prince George. It's the first time in the history of the VAD that a husband and wife team has been named Mother and Father of the Year.

Billy and Deanna live in Hopewell and have been married since 1962. Their award came in recognition of their role model status as parents and deaf Americans, serving the interests of the hearing-impaired community ofVirginia while rearing six children, two hearing, four deaf.

Deanna is retired from her job as a procurement clerk with Defense General Supply and is the current Richmond Chapter VAD Vice President and the newsletter editor for the Richmond Club for the Deaf. She also has spent considerable time and effort establishing a home for deaf senior citizens in the greater Richmond Metro area. In between those volunteer activities, she manages to find time for her hobbies of travel and fishing.

Billy spent most of his working career in printed communications. Upon graduation from the Virginia School for the Deaf in Staunton in 1955, he became the owner of a shoe repair shop in Ashland. After some years, he switched careers, becoming a Linotype operator at The Hopewell News in 1960 and later for the Washington Post. He returned to the greater Richmond Metroarea from Washington after 25 years and spent his last 17 full-time working years as an Optical Character Reader machinist for the Richmond Post Office.

His volunteer activities are many and varied: He is a past president and board member of the Richmond Club for the Deaf, as well as board member of the Virginia School For the Deaf Alumni Association. His leisure time activities include woodworking, photography, computers and collecting old pictures.

At Friday's awards banquet, Chapter President Allen Justice signed the text of the award while the Taylor's son, Billy Jr., performed the voice translation.

Billy Jr. and his wife live in Prince George while daughter Lily Mountjoy lives in Hopewell and daughter Karen Taylor lives in Richmond. Their daughter Hedy lives in Texas but currently is staying in Hopewell and the family's two youngest sons, Ricky and Gary, live in New York and Florida respectively.

Deanna was born deaf and Billy Sr. became deaf at the age of 2 after a bout of spinal meningitis. Billy Jr. said until he was 5, he thought everybody's parents were deaf. "So far as I was concerned, my growing up was normal," he explained. "Everybody I knew was deaf except my sister Karen."

Despite attending special schools, Billy Junior's brothers and sisters managed to remain in more or less constant touch with each other, which was possible because of changes made in how deaf schools are administrated.

"When my father was off at school during World War II, he'd only get home for holidays and summers," said Billy Jr. "But when we were growing up, my siblings came home every weekend."

Asked about developments in restoration of hearing through cochlear implants, Deanna and Billy Sr. come down firmly on the side of deaf culture. "I'm opposed to the implants," signed Billy Sr. "Any operation or implant has the potential for damage to the body."

Deanna signed, "I'm the way God made me, deaf, and I feel I should be proud of what I am."

Billy Jr. simply said he wouldn't change anything about his family. "If you've never heard a bird sing, you can't miss it," he said. "My father had his hearing and lost it, but he's still proud of being deaf."

© 2004 The Hopewell News All Rights Reserved.


Ridor's Note: There are several errors in this article. My parents were chosen by the STATE, not the Richmond Chapter -- the Richmond Chapter sponsored the banquet.

It is true that Mom loves to fish, I absolutely hate it when Mom said, "I'm going fishing, come with me so we can talk and fish." Then we sat on the pier by James River while Mom fished and yakked about this, that and there. Then picked up the fish and tossed it back in the river, then yakked. As for Dad, he does not collect old pictures, he collects old cameras!

Hedy is not in Hopewell, she is in Dallas. I'm bit disappointed that my hearing brother had to interpret. He shouldn't have done that -- he is there to share the parents' moments. *sigh*

Special schools?! Oh, gawd. Somebody give me a whiffle bat to beat up on Mark.

Sigh.

But overall, nice article, though.

R-

Paul Hamm, Marry Me!!

Let it be known that Michael Phelps is boring. His face is everywhere -- I'm sick of him. So fuck off, Phelps!!

But on other hand, Paul & Morgan Hamm, that is completely different story. They just captured my heart and hormones when they mentioned about their life-long goals and adventures in the barn. That was a great All-American story.

When Paul fell off the vault, I freaked out. I really felt for him. I mean, I really felt for Paul. I wanted him to win. I wanted him to. When he fell, I quickly stood up from the couch and walked back and forth -- thinking hard, "What to do? What to do?"

It was cool that Paul came back from 12th place to 1st. I was relieved and happy for him.

You rock, Paul! Marry me!

R-


Face The Adversity

Conquer The Adversity And You Stand On The Top Of The World!

"If you met him once, you knew him for life"

I was pulling some boxes out and clean up -- stumbled upon an old article regarding this deaf, illiterate man who frequented the deaf club -- the same person who introduced me to my favorite character in comic books -- Amethyst. Today, I have the tattoo of Amethyst on my left calf. All of this will not happen if not for Morton Adelanski. Here is the article which occurred right after Morton's death.

"If you met him once, you knew him for life"

By Bill Lohmann, Richmond Times-Dispatch

He was lying in a hospital bed at the Medical College of Virginia, recuperating from a collision with a truck. The truck survived and so did Morton Adelanski, which was no small feat seeing how Morton was 83 years old and on foot when the truck ran into him on West Broad Street three months ago.

So, here he was in the hospital a few weeks later, his left hand bandaged from where doctors had to amputate a finger.

He didn't care much for being in the hospital. He was too much a man of motion to be happy cooped up in one place for so long. But at least he had just about everything he needed right there. His beloved sister, Anne, with whom he lived, slept on a cot nearby. Pretty nurses were forever stopping by. A television flickered within a few feet. A bottle of ketchup sat on the window sill.

Morton lay there intently watching a talk show on the overhead TV.

He wore pajamas.

Black socks.

And black wing-tips.

Ready, apparently, for a quick getaway.

It was pure Morton.

* * *

Morton Adelanski, the deaf man who became one of Richmond's best-loved and most recognizable characters, made his final quick getaway last Wednesday. A massive heart attack took him quickly.

"It's rough," said his sister, Anne Chernack, who lived with Morton practically her entire life. "This house was Morton. When you walked in he'd tap you on the shoulder or kiss you on the head. We just enjoyed each other all the time. He's really missed.

"I've got to learn a new life for myself. At 77, I guess it's just part of growing up."

Richmond Circuit Judge T.J. Markow, whose family owned the florist shop where Morton worked for more than 50 years, delivered the eulogy at the funeral. He regaled the gathered with Morton stories, leaving them crying and laughing.

"It was wonderful," Anne Chernack said.

A point made by Markow was this:

If you met Morton once, you knew him the rest of your life.

A lot of us discovered that.

* * *

Though he couldn't hear, Morton lived a richer life than most. He was sweet and resilient, generous and intrepid. His heart made up for whatever his ears lacked.

He delivered newspapers and flowers, acquiring the nickname "Scooch" for the way he scooted from place to place. He silently sold ice cream and anything else at ballgames, scrawling the price on a sign he tacked onto his hat. Who needs to yell? His former boss said he never had a better salesman.

He traveled most anywhere, usually alone. He made regular jaunts to Las Vegas and even went on a cruise once. He absolutely loved buses.

When he wasn't riding, he was walking. He and his thumb were familiar to Richmond motorists; he hitchhiked everywhere.

He never learned to read or write and he didn't use formal sign language, but he never had trouble communicating. A conversation with Morton was like playing a game of charades. And nobody did it better. If Morton had ever stopped you on a sidewalk, grabbed your hand and kissed it, you would have come to the same assessment.

He loved wearing the wildest assortments of clothes. At the same time.

He hated wearing his false teeth.

Morton didn't worry much about first impressions.

Lasting ones, he knew, are the ones that count.

He was famous for giving presents -- trinkets he collected, somewhat-less-than-perfect flowers that wound up on the cutting-room floor, whatever -- to people he met along the way.

"Morton was one of a kind," said his sister Anne. "God bless him."

In preparing a 1995 article on Morton, I spent an evening with him and his family -- including Anne, another sister, Mary-Ann Ladin, and other relatives who doted on him his entire life. As I was leaving, Morton grabbed my arm and told me to stay on the front porch. He disappeared into the house and came back in a few minutes with a plaid baseball cap. He wanted me to have it, he insisted. It still sits on my computer monitor at the office.

For a man trapped in a world of silence, Morton's life resounded eloquently and loudly with those who knew him. He possessed and exhibited on a daily basis a quiet fearlessness and a simple dignity most of us can only wish for.

And he was a creature of habit, whether it was thumbing down Monument Avenue on weekday mornings at dawn or eating grits at Tony's. But no one -- other than Morton -- knew them all. In an age of cell phones and pagers and instant access to everyone and everything, his life had a delicious sort of mystery about it. Where had he been? Where was he going? How did he get there? Who knew. Morton would never tell.

We don't know what we missed.

But Morton always will.

*************************************

Guys, guys. Why did I talk about this? When I was a kid and attended the deaf club in downtown Richmond, my parents treated Morton like normal ... even if it was obvious that he cannot communicate very well with anyone else in particular but what mattered the most is that he always tried to get his message across, somehow and eventually.

I enjoyed him because he was famous for bringing hundreds of magazines and comic books to the club. How? Nobody knew how, someone said someone saw Morton getting in 7-11 store which is a block away from the deaf club and the manager saw him and told him to go in the back and pick it up. He did the deed and brought it to the club and distribute it to everyone else.

When he died, his sister left Morton's monies to the deaf club. The folks were surprised but again, I was not surprised. The club was the place where Morton can be himself as a Deaf person.

Why didn't he learn ASL nor read and write? He became deaf when he was 8 or 9 on a farm in the Czech Republic and fled the Nazism atrocities -- he never had the time to go to school to learn. He only had the time to survive escape the Nazis.

When he arrived in the United States during the World War II, he just walked into the Markow Florist Shop and picked up the broom and worked there for 50 years. He was not even interviewed, he just hired himself in the florist shop.

These little things will *never* happen again in this modern society.

Some lucky things do happen to good people, I guess.

R-