"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle."

-- Philo of Alexandria

Read those words again, "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle."

These are words from the beginning of time and civilization and we still need to hear them; we still need to pay attention. I hear church people saying, "You're not one of ours!" Just what is "one of ours?" Dr. Karpowitz said, "All children are our children." If I'm not mistaken, isn't acceptance and inclusion what religion is supposed to be about? So maybe right now I'm not following my own advice and I'm not being kind toward religion, and maybe religion's great battle is tolerance. So if you're listening out there, he/she who opens their arms and portals to the most people wins the prize. Why don't we strive to be the most accepting instead of the most discriminating? And I am using the word discriminating as in discrimination.

We are part of a block party being held today and we are struggling mightily. We would like to bring the testing mobile vehicle over from Albany to do private testing (if requested; and only on adults) but even though this is a federally funded party, some people want no testing and no distribution of condoms. But a mobile van is discreet and private and Schenectady has a serious problem with HIV/AIDS and STDs, not to mention teen pregnancies. Part of the reason QUEST has been so successful with youth pregnancies has been outreach and education. Schenectady does not even do an AIDS walk or really mention (in public, that is) that these are serious problems in this city. This is not even mentioning teen prostitution, of which we have more than our fair share. So, what's a CEO to do? Go with my conscience or go with the flow?

I have since spoken to many people and found support in unexpected places, and we are going with CONSCIENCE (with just a little fudging). Jiminy Cricket would be proud and my nose is already too big.

While I am in my bully pulpit, let me change the subject or redirect your line of thinking slightly. How many of you have waited in line behind someone using food stamps? How many of you have ever found that the food stamp user was not making the best possible choices with his/her options? How many of you left the store disgruntled, feeling personally robbed and affronted? Probably all or most of us (including myself) thought, "Steak! Pork Chops! Roast Beef! Potato Chips! Sub Sandwiches! (Everyone, hands on hips now) All together now -- WELL! If that don't beat all, and poor me stuck with this scrawny, bony, two-bit chicken. My, my my.

Now read this:

George Orwell took up similar questions in 1937. In "The Road to WIgan Pier," he explains why under- or unemployed folk reject the sort of frugality we mean-spirited folk would wish on them, a wholesome, inexpensive diet in favor of junk food and cholesterol-laden meats.

Writes Orwell: "When you are unemployed, which is to say when you are underfed, harassed, bored and miserable, you don't want to eat dull, wholesome food. You want something a little bit 'tasty.' There is always some cheaply pleasant thing to tempt you (or some ridiculously overpriced roast). Let's have three pennorth of chips! Run out and buy us a twopenny ice cream! Put the kettle on and we'll all have tea, with honey and a biscuit or two or three... Unemployment is an endless misery that has got to be constantly palliated, and especially with tea, the Englishman's opium."

Remember and chew on this (no pun intended); a lack of economy is not a lack of ethics.

It is never possible to walk in someone else's shoes. All of these experiments i.e. being blind for a day. No matter how difficult that day becomes, we know it will be over in an hour or two and blind we will no more be.

Someone recently wrote a play incorporating Ann Frank and Emmett Till and comparing their miseries. Emmett, referring to being black, "Why my skin color could let you, a white girl, have me strung up." Ann, responding about being Jewish and female which, for her, is a double whammy. The thing was, they both died too young and pretty much for the same reasons. They fell into a morass of pointless and stupid hatred. Any one of us, if the circumstances are right, can wind up being set up on by ignorance and intolerance. There's a reason why the statue of justice is blindfolded. The scales must not be tipped by what we see or think we see, justice must be impartial. And yet, hatred also is blind, but instead of fairness, hatred is full of ignorance. We all hate what we don't know or don't understand because we fear the unknown.

Remember all those sailors who feared sailing off the ends of the world? We may laugh at their foolishness but that same foolishness provides each and all with unknown perimeters. And so to the Inquisition, "believe in our strictures or die." The ignorance these torturers pulled around themselves in their own defense helped them to believe that they were doing God's work and saving those they killed from eternal hellfire.

And so we come again to the crux of this blog. There are actual people prominent in Hamilton Hill and holding offices in community endeavors who feel there should be no block parties, no celebrations of any kind. "Too much crime," they say. "Too many drugs!" Do they have an alternate solution? Not really. More isolation, more police, and more arrests. Where is the joy? Where is the reason for going on? If we cannot come together as a people, we will exist as factions of have- and have-nots. Kids will continue to feel hopeless and helpless, with good reason I might add. Jobs and education and an occasional block party and we'll all feel better. Schenectady brought in Dr. Macy after the suicides and Dr. Macy said we must come together as a community. So this party is a first step, hopefully the start of many, many steps.

And while I'm spouting off, here's some news that's really no news by now, payoffs and financial aid to agencies who misuse moneys, keep doors closed to anyone who wants to enter and offers no cooperation or shows any inclination to join with other groups of peoples for the good of all. Isolationism is not a good thing in this troubled world, but to be rewarded for bad and secretive behavior scars both the giver and the receiver and makes the rest of us question the value of open hands and hearts. Money is tight for all of us; maybe it's time to put stricter controls on use of funds. People like to complain about the United Way and its use of checks and balances, but I find them fair and logical and willing to help whenever called on. I know their paper trail well, having only a sometime grant writer and a part-time assistant. I am the person who gets the written work done (I get by, with a little help from my friends). This is not onerous work; you do, get it done and move on. This gathering of my thoughts for final forms helps me to remember each child and think about which way they traveled and lets me see clearly if we had an effect on the child's life (hopefully a good one). They have all, every single one, had an effect on mine.