My Blog 2

New York Help me take a bite out of the Big Apple. I Lived in Downtown Brooklyn, but we will talk about Manhattan NY, NY proper. Let's start with the word 'Yo.' It means hello. Sometimes it means hey you. You say it in New York it makes perfect sense. In Nebraska not so much. A friend of mine, Ray White, told me this tale. He was getting off a train and was walking across the platform to his transfer. Ray is a disc jockey now, was then. I tell you that to tell you this--a guy recognized him and began yelling, "Yo!" at him from across the tracks. Ray kept walking, the guy kept yelling and Ray, in telling me this story, said the funniest thing. "I was thinking, stop Yo-ing me." Only in New York can 'Yo' be a verb. One of my best friends, Tony Mirante, is from New York. He would say when he saw a guy with his hair messed up, "Looks like he combed his hair with an electrical outlet plug." .or. "Looks like he combed his hair wit...

Homeless Couple Found Living In Walmart Attic With Hot Plate, Meth Lab, And 42″ LED TV Being homeless has to be very difficult, especially in the colder times of the year. But not for this Tennessee couple who had been “living in the lap of luxury” above a Tennessee Walmart store. The ‘homeless’ man, 48-year-old Wilbert Thomas, admitted to police that he and his girlfriend 54-year-old Ingrid Malone, had been living above the store for over two years. What they did to the attic, baffled police and store employees. “I don’t mean to laugh, but these people really got one over on Walmart,” said Lieut. Marshall Weiss. “In the attic, we recovered 2 pounds of meth they had somehow produced on a hot plate. They also managed to get food, drinks, mini refrigerator, a big screen TV, surround sound system, bedroom set, hangers, clothes… I mean, if Walmart sells it they had it. These people were living good. They even managed to splice into the satellite TV wire and ordered NFL Sunday ticket!” T...

Dear Amy: My girlfriend now wife and I recently moved in together. I am 49; she is 27. We fight way too much, much more than I am comfortable with. Our fights usually stem from her insecurities. For instance, she got upset the other day because (she claims) I looked at another woman in the elevator. Three days later, we still aren't talking and she's sleeping in the other bedroom. Or for that matter snoop into my emails and chat session or troll my facebook pages. Then she got upset because (she claims) I looked for and engae another woman or women on the internet and accuses me of cheating. When I have not. This type of thing happens quite a bit. When I suggest she should go to therapy to work out some of these issues, because I can't stand this level of conflict, she gets defensive and says "all couples fight." I love her very much, but I'm at the end of my rope with all this drama. I thought that moving in together would help ease these insecurities; in...

'Trying to survive': Lompoc's homeless riverbed residents react to plans for police sweep ' Trying to survive ': Lompoc, CA's homeless riverbed residents react to plans for police sweep A native of Oklahoma, Travis W. said he had been living life on the road as a vagrant before he was dropped off by an acquaintance in the Lompoc area about two months ago in the shadow of the Federal Penitentiary - Prison Farm at Vandenberg AFB, CA.. Travis, who asked that his last name not be revealed, has lived in and around the Santa Ynez riverbed on the outskirts of Lompoc ever since. “It’s been the toughest couple months of my life; just the survival factor,” the 19-year-old said Thursday evening before trekking back to his encampment for the night. “Just living day-to-day life is a lot harder than people realize. His current way of life, along with the lifestyles of the estimated 60 to 100 other people who call the riverbed home, could be on the verge of a signifi...

Soon after Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico on Sept. 20, as the vastness of the storm’s wrath became increasingly evident, my boss, the Metro editor of The Times, asked me to focus on stories that examined how the storm’s toll would ripple its way to the mainland United States and to New York, where deep ties had been forged over generations. The storm’s immediate reverberations in New York, Connecticut and New Jersey — my turf as a regional correspondent for The Times — were certainly clear. At first, I talked to Puerto Ricans struggling to make contact with family on the island and then about the obligations those from Puerto Rico feel they have to the island, including politicians on the mainland who try to make up for the island’s lack of federal representation and young people guilty over fleeing. But as I started reporting on a story about the families living in hotel rooms provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which appears on today’s front page, I was struck by ...

Seductive Confinement of a Weighted Blanket in an Anxious Time Late one night last October, I was practicing what I like to call anti-self-care—lying under the covers, scrolling compulsively on my phone, and vaguely hoping that someone would leap through the screen and club me on the forehead—when I came across the Gravity Blanket Kickstarter, which had launched the previous April. Gravity was the brainchild of a handful of guys mostly in their twenties who sought to create sleek, plush weighted blankets, in three gradations of heaviness: fifteen, twenty, or twenty-five-pounds. “Seventy per cent of Americans have trouble falling asleep at least one night a week,” the company’s founder, John Fiorentino, said in the promo video. “Forty million Americans suffer from prolonged anxiety.” The Gravity Blanket promised to increase serotonin and melatonin levels, decrease cortisol (the so-called stress hormone), and put you in a deeper sleep. The company’s original fund-raising goal had been ...

One stormy night many years ago, an elderly man and his wife entered the lobby of a small hotel in Philadelphia, USA. Trying to get out of the rain, the couple approached the front desk hoping to get some shelter for the night. “Could you possibly give us a room here?” – the husband asked. The clerk, a friendly man with a winning smile, looked at the couple and explained that there were three conventions in town. “All of our rooms are taken,” the clerk said. “But I can’t send a nice couple like you out into the rain at one o’clock in the morning. Would you perhaps be willing to sleep in my room? It’s not exactly a suite, but it will be good enough to make you folks comfortable for the night.” When the couple declined, the young man pressed on. “Don’t worry about me, I’ll make out just fine,” the clerk told them. So the couple agreed. As he paid his bill the next morning, the elderly man said to the clerk, “You are the kind of manager who should be the boss of the best hotel. Maybe...

For many an act of kindness is its own reward. But these five Samaritans found their selfishness answered in ways they could never have imagined. He returned he purse and got his life back. What brought John Silva to the New York Alley was, by his own admission, nothing to be proud of. Silva was looking for a safe place to do drugs. He had been there for only one minute or so when something clearly out of place caught his eye: a brown leather Handbag by Coach, the kind found in high-end stores for well heeled customers. "It was like it materialized out of thin air from nowhere," Silva says. When he picked it up, he found that it had been emptied of everything but an electric bill. "I though, This person is probably missing it right now." Silva, 35, could relate all too well. One of his few possessions, the sleeping bag he used as his bed in an abandoned house, had recently been stolen. Remembering how angered he'd been by his own loss, he resolved to return ...

HARTFORD — The fourth floor of the Red Roof Inn felt like a city block on a recent Friday night, as families spilled from their rooms into the hallway. Doors were propped open. Chihuahuas skittered around on the carpet, and a cluster of teenage boys had claimed a spot by the elevators, a speaker thumping with hip-hop. At the end of the hall, in a room where a window framed the dome of the State Capitol like a postcard, Janette Febres’s husband and 12-year-old son watched television on the bed the three of them have been sharing for nearly three months, reaching the end of a day as empty and restless as many of the ones before it. The living conditions were cramped, and the room did not have a microwave or a refrigerator. Ms. Febres has asked housekeeping to stop cleaning the room just so she could have something to occupy her time. Even so, she was grateful. Her room, like those that many other families were staying in, was paid for by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Amid th...

HOUSTON — Outside Rachel Roberts’s house, a skeleton sits on a chair next to the driveway, a skeleton child on its lap, an empty cup in its hand and a sign at its feet that reads “Waiting on FEMA.” It is a Halloween reminder that, for many, getting help to recover from Hurricane Harvey remains a long, uncertain journey. “It’s very frustrating,” said Ms. Roberts, 44, who put together the display after waiting three weeks for the Federal Emergency Management Agency to send someone to look at her flood-damaged home in southwest Houston. “I think it’s beautiful how much we’ve all come together, and that’s wonderful, but I think there’s a lot of mess-ups, too.” Outside the White House this month, President Trump boasted about the federal relief efforts . “In Texas and in Florida, we get an A-plus,” he said. FEMA officials say that they are successfully dealing with enormous challenges posed by an onslaught of closely spaced disasters, unlike anything the agency has seen in years. But on ...

What It’s Like to Visit San Juan/ Old San Juan Now. After Hurricane Maria, parts of the Puerto Rican capital are back in business, including many hotels and restaurants. Tourism is down but the scene can be lively. Hurricane Maria's devastating effects on Puerto Rico, along with the political face-offs and logistical problems that ensued, have been widely reported. There are still important problems to address. But it seems that San Juan, the capital, is starting to regain its stride as a travel destination. I first came to San Juan in the late ’80s, when my stepfather was transferred here for work. My most vivid memories of that time include swimming in the ocean at night during St. John’s Eve (one of Puerto Rico’s biggest festivals), developing a serious crush on the shaggy-haired members of the band Poison, and experiencing Hurricane Hugo, which ripped into the island on Sept. 19, 1989, and was considered the worst disaster in 50 years. We spent the night of the storm with...

EXPLOITED: Who buys a child for sex? Otherwise ordinary men... IndyaStars columnist spent a year investigating the commercial sex trade of children, a lucrative business in which more than 1 million kids a year are abused. US 2DAY USA Edition15 Feb 2016 Tim S. Columnist Indian Acropolis Star & Stripes US 2DAY NEWS NETWORK ( The names have been changed to protect the innocent victims. ) TIM S./US 2AY NEWS NETWORK The girls who ride their bicycles, and tricycles including the ones with training wheels, are sex trafficking survivors recovering in Mexico. One day she met Marcus Thompson, the girl told the NBI or FBI, she had been ready to leap from a bridge to end her life, right there and then. She was 15 yo, pregnant and alone on the streets. On that day in another year, another girl, she met Marco Johnson, the girl told the NBI or FBI, she had been ready to leap from a bridge to end her life. She was 15 yo, also pregnant with her Father's baby and alone on the str...

In one conversation after dad got sick, our relationship changed completely. Oh, I wished it were so.... Nothing stays the same for long. Things and people change, often for the worse, like with my father - it seems, but once in a while, very much for the better. I grew up in a farm, ranch, fazenda or hacienda as some folks call the tract of land or lands, living a life that I took for granted. I had a dog without a leash and mountains on my island Brava, Cape Verde islands Africa or other islands as far as the eye can see in which ever direction I looked, and I awoke to the call of pheasants in the alfalfa fields. My mother worked in the City of Nova Sintra was ateacher. She was quiet; distant, you might say. She was not highly educated, but she was smart, with an engineer's way to looking at things and problems. She was a woman made of leather, brass, lipstick and perfume who tried to teach my brother and me useful things, including, respect. She also had a temper, especially...

In one conversation after dad got sick, our relationship changed completely. Oh, I wished it were so.... Nothing stays the same for long. Things and people change, often for the worse, like with my mother - it seems, but once in a while, very much for the better. I grew up in a farm, ranch, fazenda or hacienda as some folks call the tract of land or lands, living a life that I took for granted. I had a dog without a leash and mountains on my island Brava, Cape Verde islands Africa or other islands as far as the eye can see in which ever direction I looked, and I awoke to the call of pheasants in the alfalfa fields. My father worked in the City of Nova Sintra was a welder. He was quiet; distant, you might say. He was not highly educated, but he was smart, with an engineer's way to looking at things and problems. He was a man made of leather, brass, cigarettes and chewing tobacco who tried to teach my brother and me useful things, including, respect. he also had a temper, especia...

Dear Any : I am a healthy and vibrant mid 40-ish woman in a same-sex consensual union that's fast becoming a "common law marriage," I live at Wheaton Center, just outside of Chicago Illinois. After only about six months of this "marriage," I feel like an old maid. My "wife" and i have suffered a lot of turmoil, trials and tribulations in a short time, with near death in family, job loss, illness, financial problems and exes trying to come between us. I understand that these things could cause a rift. However, the rift which is fast becoming a schism comes in the form of my "wife" constantly complaining, condemning, criticizing, bickering and arguing with me, putting me down, otherwise always yelling at me and having a terrible attitude towards me, sometimes for no apparent reason or some made up issue. I can't ask a single question or make a innocent comment without being verbally rebuked and reprimanded or attacked sometime without pr...