CALLAHANTICS

I have been an American Red Cross volunteer since the early 2000s. Why? Well, to be honest, I was looking for a mission to care about. Between contracts as a graphic designer and content writer; I was going slightly stir crazy, and it was a slow period in New York at the time. So I briefly thought through areas that I wanted to support, and randomly chose American Red Cross.    I walked in the door of the Greater New York Chapter which was at 150 Amsterdam Avenue . I went directly to HR/Volunteer Resources where I met Curt. He looked at my resume, asked me to sit down and called the disaster health and mental health director who invited me to come on board to assist them in re-configuring and updating their roster and have better track of their people. About two months after I took on that role, the lead, Lauren came by my cubicle and stated, “You know media; Right”?”   I was deep in writing, so I answered flippantly, “Yes, like you know medicine and there are so ...

When I was a child, my brother and I regularly watched The Jetsons on whatever channel producers William Hanna and Jos eph Barbera had currently syndicated it. At the end of the introduction, George Jetson always kicked back and put his feet on the desk of his classic office desk right after his flying car compacted into a briefcase and he allegedly began whatever   his “work” happened to be for Mr. Spacely creating whatever a Spacely’s Sprocket happened to be. As with most entertainment shows in the 1960s, it attempted to entertain while inspiring as many questions as answers. When I was becoming an adult and beginning to work my way from an adolescent to a college student and then a professional; I started looking at multiple generations of Gene Roddenberry’s slightly more concrete visions of future communication, transportation and everyday living from food to breathing to medical solutions. Ironically, the basic philosophical choices looked intuitive at the time, but today a...

In a career that experienced many enigmatic ups and downs over the past 20 years, I had numerous discussions with my parents, friends, contemporaries, leaders (and yes, even my spouse); about what should be considered doing too much, just enough, not enough, or too little? When I began high school, my parents recognized fairly early on that I had good survival instincts and was quite responsible; so I was not given excessive hand holding regarding dating, forming relationships, etc. In fact, other than the mandatory parochial message in school, I never had to sit through the "birds and the bees talk" either. Generally my parents and extended family had a more pragmatic approach than an idealistic one. Rather than stating, “It is best to wait until you’re married!” their general advice was; “ You do anything that stupid, you’re on your own, I’m not taking care of him/her/them for you! ” By the time I began college, I had pretty much eliminated (or at least tentatively allevi...

I have always had a very strange relationship with the Americans with Disabilities Act. I grew up what appeared to be completely healthy. I played, went to school, watched TV and lived a relatively normal life. Periodically issues would arise. I was acting up in class, not paying attention, saying and or doing weird things, (or so I was told). I thought it was strange, but at first I worked around it.  Some teachers loved me, one literally hated me, and several others were simply confused by me. On several occasions, I was told I had said or done something that had me scratching my head thinking they were crazy or simply cruel. Several times I was accused of taking actions that I honestly had no memory of doing.  After several of these occurred, my mother took me to multiple doctors and psychiatrists and we ran through the whole circuit of diagnostics including multiple Electroencephalographic (EEG) exams and computerized axial tomography (CAT) scans & all of t...

Perhaps it is just that this year has been especially stressful; or that the news has been rampant with killings and mass murders and beheadings and speculation. But I have been more preoccupied during the last couple weeks than I have in a very long time, and it came to a climax today, September 11, 2014. Last night I was watching a movie on cable and my husband and dog were on the floor of our family room sleeping soundly and blissfully resting. I was staring at both and beginning to feel the personal ritual that plays in my head every year feeling more and more intense. In 2001, I awoke in my Midtown apartment near the United Nations on Manhattan's East Side to a phone call from a lovely woman named Michelle who worked with my husband at the time. “Hello?” I said. “Turn on your TV!” she replied. I found the remote and did just that and found MSNBC just in time to see the second plane hit the World Trade Center (WTC). “Hello?” I said again; however the line had gone dead. At ...

I have spent the last ten years living two professional lives simultaneously. The first is working for a federal agency and being branded a pariah. The agency leaders and contemporaries outside of my immediate department valued and appreciated my work and who I was. My immediate department’s fundamental nature was hostile. No matter how much effort I made or how much I created  or  produced, middle management made deliberate choices to devalue the work I did and consciously undermine me professionally to peers, clients and management. Fortunately, the second life I lived concurrently was through voluntarily supporting an agency that has continuously mentored me and trained me and trusted me to develop into the leader, spokesperson and advocate I now am. That may sound like an unlikely combination, but it is primarily caused by the anomaly that effective management implies controlling your team rather than cultivating your team. When a few months ago, I finally got my courag...

Today was going to be a slightly weird day no matter what, but as I headed out with my Aunt and my husband to go visit my cousin in hospice, I was completely disengaged somehow. I’m not sure if it’s due to my visiting so many people in the last year in assisted living communities that I have somehow psychologically checked out, but I guess it’s a basic defense mechanism.   People at the end of their lives due to cancer all look remarkably similar to one another. The two most recent experiences were the most different men before their ailments got the best of them.  One of them, an egocentric, academic philosopher musician who approached the world as a way to assist in the growth of knowledge and critical thinking; the other, a loving philosophic socially self-sustaining man who was battling to reach a goal imposed by others and ultimately who later stopped trying to meet standards that were impossible and did not keep himself from realizing who he was and that he deserved ba...