Citizen Mom

Autumn is gone, the jackals are on the scene

"THIS IS NOT A SALES CALL!"

The ink was hardly dry on Autumn Pasquale's alleged killers' fingerprints when the robocall interrupted my dinner.

"THERE HAS BEEN AN INCREASE IN CRIME IN YOUR AREA!"

My house is about 8 miles from the street in neighboring Clayton where Autumn lived, and where she died too young and too horribly. Out here on the rural edges of Gloucester County, that's practically around the block.

The recorded message -- which came from (425) 658-8850, a Washington-based telemarketing outfit called Pacific Telecom --  then went on to encourage me to sign up for a home security plan, with a monitoring system. 

Remember, it wasn't a sales call.

I listened to their pitch, general enough to be used to play on the fears of any community facing the unaccustomed trauma of a violent crime. Then I pressed the number meant, I thought, to connect me to one of their operators, so I could tell them what a bunch of parasitic vermin they are, but the call disconnected.

It's probably better that way. The psychic energy is surely better spent praying for the two families whose lives have been rent by unimaginable, unknowable evil.

Cassie and Kelsey: How two little girls tell the story of our sick healthcare system

Since the Affordable Care Act went into effect on Aug. 1, I've heard a lot about how it will affect my ladyparts, providing coverage for things like Pap tests, prenatal care and mammograms. And while all of my parts are appropriately grateful, I've been thinking about how Obamacare is really about these two little girls I know. 

One is Cassidy Freeman, whose picture you may have seen on Facebook. The 8-year-old is one of three gorgeous daughters of a hardworking couple who, when I met them over a decade ago, were in ministry in the Church of Christ.

Scott was a preacher, and Tracy had worked for Republican politicans before becoming a full-time mom. It would be fair to describe their politics then as socially conservative, though to me they were always more interested in following Jesus than any political party. 

At age four, Cassie was diagnosed with juvenile arthritis, and since then she's been denied medical coverage four times due to her pre-existing condition. Obamacare can't fix her arthritis, but it's already cured some of the family's anxiety. 

The other girl on my mind is Kelsey Fuller, whose family lives in my South Jersey town. Now 15, Kelsey was born with a rare condition called Juvenile Neuronal Ceroid Lipofuscinosis, or Batten Disease.

Batten is a neurological disorder that results in worsening seizures, mental impairment, loss of speech and motor function. It is always fatal. The form of the disease Kelsey has usually results in death before age 30. 

Her family, which includes two other children, cares for Kelsey the best they can and tries to make her life as fulfilling as possible. She goes to school each day, at the Archbishop Damiano School at St. John of God in Westville Grove. With both parents working full time, Kelsey's aging grandparents also help out when they can.

But her condition is getting worse -- she's now legally blind, struggles to speak, struggles to walk and wakes several times a night. The family has tried to get in-home skilled nursing services to help with Kelsey's care. Their insurance company refused, Kelsey's mother said, because her condition isn't advanced enough yet -- Kelsey can still do some things, like feed herself, with assistance.

That will change. 

"This disease is absolutely horrible. The brain basically shuts down and the rest of the body deteriorates because of this, leaving them bedridden until death," her mother, Kim, told me. "These kids are dying a slow, painful death and there's not a damn thing we can do. Most of these kids are so heavily medicated, they become like zombies.  Research continues, but because this is a rare 'orphan' disease, funding is extremely hard to get."

With repeated denials from their insurance company, the family's next step is applying for Medicaid, but first they'll have to burn through nearly all of their retirement savings to meet the asset threshhold -- sacrificing the rest of the family's future security to care for Kelsey in the present. 

For me, Kelsey's case is an illustration of how Obamacare likely doesn't go far enough. It's an example of how medical insurance companies turn sick children into a series of little boxes to be clicked off, categories to be satisfied, benchmarks to be met. 

But Kelsey's story will only end one way. Everything else, all that comes before, is what her family will have to hold on to at the end. Fighting with an insurance company for help shouldn't eat up another minute of that precious time.

 

SHORE THING: Oh, Those Wildwood Days

If you haven't yet picked up a copy of my dear friend and Jersey Shore defender Jen A. Miller's latest book, put it
on your list of essentials. The Jersey Shore: Atlantic City to Cape May isn't just an updated version of the one she wrote a few years back, it's a total overhaul, stuffed nearly to bursting with planning tips, reviews and Shore secrets that only she could pull together.

It's not only a good read (and it is), the book is a must-have if you're planning a trip to the South Jersey Shore. I'm proud of her, and was flattered to be asked to write an essay about the Wildwoods for it, which I'll share with Citizen Mom readers here. Enjoy my essay, then buy the whole book!

My Wildwoods

 By Amy Z. Quinn

If a resort city’s streets could talk, you’d hear Wildwood’s sassy mouth a mile away.  

If you’re about to get in a bar fight, North Wildwood is the chick you want at your back, because she always brings friends. West Wildwood’s the quiet type, not so much ignored as she is happy to be left alone.

In fact, if we’re imagining the Wildwoods as a quartet of sisters, the Crest is the one who left Senior Week behind and settled down with a family. But every now and again, even a grown-up lady likes to party.

For me, it’s impossible to think of that clutch of towns along the 5-mile island near New Jersey’s southern tip as anything but members of a family, with similar features -- the broad, ever-growing beaches connected by that great spine of a Boardwalk -- yet each a somehow distinct, unique version of the other. It’s a collection of flirts and matriarchs, of immigrants and visionaries, living in a world of both grit and luxury.

And always, of possibility.

In the early 1970s, my parents, an industrious blue-collar couple from Philly, saw possibility in a rambling, Depression-era Dutch colonial up the block from the Firehouse Tavern on Pine Avenue. Behind this big house, ringing a cement courtyard, stood three small cottages, which my parents -- their creativity tapped out after selecting names for their six children -- dubbed A, B and C.

For nearly 30 years, they rented the cottages to a rotating cast of characters, usually young people, some looking for a vacation place and others who stayed the summer, working on the boardwalk spinning prize wheels or twisting custard cones. My older sisters, already teenagers in the ‘70s and ‘80s, each took their turn living and working in Wildwood, tasting independence for the first time even as my Dad hovered protectively nearby.

For part of each year, my mother would install herself in the Big House, her cooking sending the smell of spaghetti sauce wafting through the wrought-iron air vents. She’d spend her days sprucing up the cottages or shopping along Pacific Avenue, leaving my brother and I just enough freedom to roam the neighborhood, which forever smelled of burnt toast owing to the bakery a few blocks away.

In the evenings, we’d all sit on the front porch, bodies sunken into aged red-painted wicker rockers, beholding a predictable yet ever-changing parade of people making their way along Pine Avenue toward the beach and Boardwalk.  

As dusk fell, it would be parents pushing strollers or holding the hands of little ones impatient for that moment when the Tilt-a-Whirl makes its first furious spin. Next would come teenagers, hair-sprayed girls dressed to impress the boys in gold chains who’d have to be home by curfew. Still later, the strollers came back bearing toddlers overtired and cranky or already sound asleep, and young adults would head out for the night, bound for Kelly’s Cafe or the Stardust or the old Penalty Box, where the bartenders wore striped shirts and whistles like NHL linesmen.

Of course, everyone knows the island’s more recent story, how through a mixture of poor planning, mismanagement and changing tastes, the good times waned in the Wildwoods. Like an aging party girl, things along the Boardwalk became less fun and more tawdry, and Pacific Avenue’s charms fell away like flakes of sunburned skin.

These days, I’m happy to say, the things are coming around again in the Wildwoods. Simple economics have led many people back to the island, though of course keeping them there is always the trick.

It surely sounds overly simplistic to say things just feel good again in Wildwood, but there it is. I catch the expectant, excited look on my son’s face each time we cross that bridge into town and the giant Ferris wheel comes into view, and I know. I see the young couples touring condos for sale, and families pouring out of minivans into neon-lit hotels, and I feel it.

Like I said, possibility.

Farewell, my summer love

THE SANDS ARE lonely in the fall. On those broad New Jersey beaches, where the rollers sprawl inward in ridges of crumbling snow, the ocean looks almost wistfully for its former playmates. The children are gone, the small brown legs, the toy shovels and the red tin pails. The familiar figures of the summer season have vanished: the stout ladies who sat in awninged chairs and wrestled desperately to unfurl their newspapers in the wind; the handsome mahogany-tanned lifesavers, the vamperinoes incessantly drying their tawny hair, the corpulent males of dark complexion wearing ladies' bathing caps, the young men playing a degenerate baseball with a rubber sphere and a bit of shingle. All that life and excitement, fed upon hot dogs and vanilla cones, anointed with cold cream and citronella, has vanished for another year.

Christopher Morley's Philadelphia

From "The Shore In September," by Christopher Morley. From Travels in Philadelphia, 1920

Bringing Local Produce to Lunch Lady Land

... there's growing support for the project from New Jersey farmers, who consider it another market for their fruits and vegetables. They consider turning their wares into wholesome processed foods with an extended shelf life as a new business worth trying, she said.

"When kids are in school, it's not the main harvest time," Holtaway said. "It extends the seasonality by a value added operation."

"It's basically almost like extending the season," state Department of Agriculture Secretary Douglas Fisher said of the Food to School program. "We have this (produce) glut in the summer when the kids aren't in school. As we move into the school year, (schools) start looking for other sources of food. Anything we can grow in our state that can be turned into something kid friendly and nutritionally appealing is good."

Rutgers and the state Department of Agriculture will fund the program with a $51,000 federal grant. New Jersey is one of 18 states to get the grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture as part of the federal government's National School Lunch Program.

via www.nj.com

N.J., Rutgers to develop a plan to bring more locally-grown produce into the state's school cafeterias.
Look out, Pizza Dippers.

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JERSEY SNORE: Snooki's Not Even A Ham Worth Fighting For

Sub-plot of last week's Mad Men episode: Peggy and Pete cook up a scheme to build publicity for Sugarberry hams by hiring two broads to get in a fight over one in a store. The subsequent buzz results in a new slogan: "Our hams are worth fighting for."

My biggest criticism of Snooki and her ham-glazed friends isn't about what they've (allegedly) done to our media culture, or their insult-by-example adherence to some notion of what it means to be "Italian," or the astounding vapidity of GTL as a lifestyle ethos. 

What kills me is how shockingly unoriginal the whole thing is.

It's as if bimbettes with a day drunk on don't annoy beach patrons every day somewhere along the Shore. Or as if some of those dumb skanks don't then sassmouth the cops to the point that they get tossed into the back of the car. It's called Senior Week, people, and it's been wasting police resources at the Shore for decades, only those girls usually come away with it with a "walking ticket" court summons and a hangover. For the Snookis of this world, it's a career highlight.

Our response to it all -- round after round of phony shock and indignation, followed by hilariously unironic examinations of our collective cultural conscience -- are re-runs of a re-run at this point, "scandals" that once may have really revealed something about ourselves but are now just on endless repeat in syndication. Even the "Free Snooki" T-shirt that magically appeared on the other cast member who went to fetch Snooki from the police station seemed like a cheap Boardwalk knockoff of a joke that was sort-of funny a decade ago.

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When I'm Out On The Springstreets Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh

via youngjerks.com

A big hat tip to my Twitter pals at the Rowan U. Bio Geospatial Research Lab (aka @RowanGeoLab) for today's Jersey Moment.

Take a gander at Springstreets, "A map of New Jersey based solely on Bruce Springsteen lyrics."

Like woah, Boss.

Careful, though, it comes with a warning: 

SPRINGSTREETS IS NOT TO SCALE AND SHOULD NOT BE USED ON A DRIVE, LAST CHANCE POWER OR OTHERWISE. THE ONLY THING YOU CAN REALLY USE THIS MAP TO FIND IS YOURSELF.

Obviously, I must have this like right this very minute. I shall frame it and hang it right next to my oversized "Family Tree of Rock" print.

Peaches, and peaches

Two wildly unrelated things about the velveteen fruit today:

First, the New Jersey peaches are in full flush now, and with more than 100 varieties grown here, there's plenty to keep you cooking, canning and cobblering for weeks. This tree was picked this afternoon, a few hours after I snapped this.

 

This Sunday, you can feast on some peaches in their own neighborhood, at blueplate's Dinner in the Orchard event at Holtzhauser's farm here in Mullica Hill. Chef Jim's peach-centric menu will feature Flaming Fury and white donut varieties. Can I get a Yum? Yes, yes I can.

Regarding a peach of a very different kind: After much consideration, I've decided that the evolutionary point at which Lady Gaga went from Stefani Germanotta, dark-haired piano songstress, to platinum blond art freak had to come sometime during Peaches' 2006 tour.

Here's my report on Peaches' Nov. 25, 2006 show, from Phawker:

It warmed the cockles of me heart to see the way Peaches worked the Troc crowd into a sweaty horndog mess. It’s good for the kids to try new things.

She’s got a guitar stance like Gene Simmons, wide-legged and cocky, setting forth on the “Teaches of Peaches,” scaling the speakers and lap-dancing a few stoners up in the balcony. That was cool, but nothing I haven’t seen before. Where Peaches made me her bitch was when they brought out the bike — one of those ’70s chumpies with the banana seat and the big U-shaped handlebars. So hot.

Sounds a lot like a Lady Gaga thing, no? Well, it looked a lot like one, too, right down to the spewing blood. I'm not hating, I just think it's important to remember that before GaGa was bluffin' with her muffin, we were impeaching someone's bush. Like the song says, the girls wanna be her. (Video probably NSFW)

Peaches, "Boys Wanna Be Her"

When You Know You've Made It

You all know by now how much I love the Wendy Williams TV show, right? Not only does she have the best audience around -- and by "best" I mean a big ol' bowl of crazyflakes drenched in awesomesauce -- but Wendy is even more fun, likable and authentic on TV than on the radio. OK the hair's not authentic, but the wigs are half the fun.

One of these days I'm going to get up there to visit the show and write about it, but for now, enjoy what has to be the highlight of anybody's life: A song from Elmo.

We can retire the AutoTune now, Elmo done broke it.

(How you doin' Shakeitha?)

How long, to sing this song?

Jeremy Kane graduated from Cherry Hill High School East in 2006 and studied criminal justice at Rutgers. He planned to return to the university to finish his senior year.

"He was an avid reader," his mother said. "He read books most adults would never read. He listened to classical music and hung out with friends, playing video games."

Kane's father, Bruce, was a pathologist at Cooper University Hospital in Camden and had served as a major in the Army. He died in June 2008 while his son was undergoing Marine Corps training.

Kane "thought it was his duty as an American to serve his country," his mother said. "His grandfather had also been in the Marines."

He "chose the Marines because it was the most difficult and most respected," she said. "He was in communications and told me he wouldn't leave the base, but I think he said that to placate me."

Kane had two brothers: Benjamin, 16, a junior at Cherry Hill East, and Daniel, 19, a sophomore at Virginia Tech.

via www.philly.com

The lead of Ed Colimore's obituary on Lance Cpl. Jeremy Kane, notes how as a tween, Kane was affected by 9/11 and how it led him to military service.

Of course I think about the kids the same age who sat in my college class a few hours earlier. How like Kane, their entire adolescence had the specter of "terror," and the shadow of war, hanging over it. How their generation is earning its adulthood in the most painful way possible. I respect them.

(Yes, children. The Edge had hair.)