I read this in February 5 issue of Sports Illustrated:
You up for a challenge?
I'm going to tell you about five young Americans at the peak of their athletic lives. Your job is to guess how all five lives came together in the past month.
One. As usual Elizabeth Loncki is acting very unladylike, just the way she likes it. It's 2001, she's 18 and she's challenging her dad to a push-up contest. He just did 50, but now Elizabeth is hitting 51.
He could've done 100, and she would've done 101. That's how she is. A 5' 5" Energizer Bunny, she's the furnace that heats the volleyball team at Padua Academy in Wilmington, Del. She's the darling of the weight room wherever she works out, spotting guys twice her size.
She also reads to shut-ins and runs errands for seniors. And seems like twice a week, she'll get up early so she can get balloons for somebody at school. Just don't try calling her "sweet."
Two. Brian (Cap'n) Freeman is about to become one of the best in the world at something he never thought he'd even try - bobsledding.
A burly brakeman from the virtually snowless town of Temecula, Calif., Freeman digs in, grunts and pushes the U.S. to a bronze medal at the 2002 America's Cup in Lake Placid, N.Y. But Freeman isn't just the piston for his sled team, he's also the soul of it - willing to push for drivers other than his own, just to give them a chance to develop with a few more runs. "A total team guy," says Steven Holcomb, the current World Cup bobsled points leader. "I wouldn't be where I am today without Brian."
Three. If you'd been there when Shawn Falter was a toddler, with those massive braces on both legs, you wouldn't beleve what you're seeing now, as the senior leads his 1998-99 Homer (N.Y.) High basketball team. No longer pigeon-toed, he's blocking shots, rbounding like a man on a caffeine drip, scoring when it's needed and setting up teammates the rest of the time.
That's nothing. You should see him on the football field, scoring TDs at tight end and trying to decapitate receivres at safety. And all while being skinnier than a one-iron.
"All heart," marvels Jeff Tabel, who was his hoops coach. "Born to lead."
Four. Luis Castillo isn't just a good wrestler, he's the captain of the 2003-04 team at Mattawan (Mich.) High. Wait! He's not just the captain, he's the winner of the team's leadership award.
And wrestling is only where it starts. He's a break-dancing, bungee-jumping, joke-telling machine in a crew cut. "The all-American kid," the grown-ups call him. And it makes you wonder: How many people know he was born in Mexico?
Five. It's 2000, and 17-year-old Jason Corbett takes his mark at the ancient Panathenaic Stadium in Athens. The timer is redy and - bang! - Corbett's off. Of course, there's no official time for his run because there's nobody in the stands and it's his buddy holding the watch.
He's not in a track meet, he's on a trip with some Casper, Wyo., high school classmates. But, hey, that's not going to stop Corbett from running or having a good time. Nothing stops Corbett. He swallows life whole - track, snowboarding, fly-fishing and hunting. The kid has all the warning signs of a thrillaholic and loves anything to do with the outdoors. Maybe that's why he ended up in the only place big enough form him: Alaska.
So what do these five athletes have in common? They were all killed in Iraq during a two-week period in January.
Air Force Senior Airman Loncki, 23, was killed by a car bomb near Al-Mahmudiyah.
Army Captain Freeman, 31, was killed by insurgents disguised as American soldiers in Karbala.
Army Private First Class Falter, 25, died as a result of that same ambush.
Marine Lance Corporal Castillo, 20, died from wounds suffered while on patrol in Al Anbar province.
Army Specialist Corbett, 23, died of injuries from small-arms fire suffered while on patrol in Karmah.
Five athletes. Five futures. All gone.
Five of 84 Americans killed from New Year's Day through Sunday. Five of 3,084 Americans killed since the war began.
Athletes love teams, and when they run out of sports teams they sometimes join bigger teams, ones with Humvees for huddles and tombstones for trophies and coaches they've never met sending them into a hell they never imagined.
And they throw their whole selves into it anyway, because they are brave and disciplined and will chew through concrete to win the game.
But what if the game can't be won?
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Obama/Clinton Debate
I've been engaged in a debate about the viability of Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton as presidential candidates on a bulletin board that is frustrating and discouraging. These kinds of arguments, I'm afraid, are much more representative of Americans than the more open-minded views available in the New York area.
Disclaimer: I left out some posts that were straying from the main topic.
Pizzahutstolemylife: If you had to choose one of the two. Would you want the black president or the female president as the history maker?
jmills452: I choose to kill myself if those are the only candidates. Not Hillary because I know her politics and not Barack HUSSIEN Obama, because he has only been in the Senate for two years, and would have no clue how to govern a country. To early to tell, but there will be MANY choices out there I will contenplate voting for, but neither of those two.
pizzahutpunk: Clinton? Are you crazy? A woman president???? We'll be the laughing stock of the free world!
board master: You want Osama?
meangreen92: I wonder if we would have even heard of obama, had 911 not occured.
I think obama is looking to capitalize on all of the "politically correct" fools, who are eager to prove, with their votes, that they don't hate or fear muslims. Though he does sound much less unpalatable than hilarious (Edited out four letter word referring to Clinton).
mogul: It is not the time in this world for the United States to have a woman President. I have no doubt that the proper candidate can do the job very well (read as Condoleeza Rice), but I will explain why it is bad to have ANY woman in the White House at this point in time.
Muslim countries; Iraq, Afghanistan, etc, have poor feelings towards women. Woman are inferior in that religion. Women are weaker to them. When they find out that a woman has been elected President in the most powerful country in the world, I feel that they will have more confidence that they can create and plan more attacks on US soil.
glenntop: But Obama was born in the US, and is Christian so voting him in wouldn't do a thing to prove they don't hate/fear muslims.
meangreen92: Born in the USA, yes. But I'm pretty sure he converted to islam.
blitzjb: I'd rather move to canada if those were the only canidates. Clinton will screw us like a prom date and Obama is only getting votes because he is African American.
ME: Ignorance will be the downfall of our country. I just watched the movie "Idiocracy." I had no idea how realistic it was until I started reading some of the posts here.
Obama is not Muslim (as a couple have already stated). The first Muslim elected to the US Congress took the oath of office this January of 2007. (See http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15613050/ for details. Does anybody really believe he is going to receive extra votes just for being black?
And why can‘t the US have a woman president? The US ranks near the bottom of the industrialized world in terms of number of women in powerful elected offices. The governments of Afghanistan and Iraq both included wording requiring a higher percentage of women in their national legislatures than the US when they rewrote their constitutions. The US is BEHIND these countries in terms of female leadership!
Mogul: We're not saying the US shouldn't have a woman president. Just this isn't the right time in our country for it. Read my previous post for my reasons why.
ME: I did read your previous post and was responding to it directly.
"Muslim countries; Iraq, Afghanistan, etc, have poor feelings towards women. Woman are inferior in that religion. Women are weaker to them. When they find out that a woman has been elected President in the most powerful country in the world, I feel that they will have more confidence that they can create and plan more attacks on US soil."
Those two countries have created more opportunities for women to serve in their national legislatures than in the US Congress. I don't think electing a woman president would make terrorist attacks on US soil any more likely.
pj: Hillary said Obama went to school in a muslim extremist school.Now what?
ME: Stop believing every headline you see and read the whole story. The story broke in Insight Magazine and was supported by Fox News with no cited sources. They referred to people close to Clinton's campaign; Hillary Clinton never made the statements.
ABC News and CNN quickly debunked the story using actual sources from the school.
CNN Story: http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/01/22/obama.madrassa /
Video of CNN story for those that prefer not to read: http://thinkprogress.org/2007/01/22/cnn-obama-debunk/
pj: When I heard about the report there had not YET been a rebuke. I can only comment on things after I here about them not speculate on what may happen tomorrow. I hope that you are also practicing forsight writing...
ME: The news report I quoted aired 4 days before you posted on the topic in support of the debunked story.
jmills: And there's your problem. Both are Hillary leaning networks. And Hillary's people? If they knew and leaked the story, she knew about it. Get ready for much of the same because the Hillary machine will destroy him. He will not win the primary when she is done with him.
pj: This is the last time I will try to explain..ok...I DIDNT HEAR ABOUT THE REBUKE WHEN I POSTED! I work an aweful lot. Sorry I was a few days behind, geez, shoot me?!?
wander: I guess nobody understands. I understand everyones opinion but plz listen up
WE DON'T VOTE THE POLITICIANS IN THE GOVT DOES.
THE ELECTORIAL COLLEGE DOES.
Gulianne might take it. But then again its the govt they decide.
Disclaimer: I left out some posts that were straying from the main topic.
Pizzahutstolemylife: If you had to choose one of the two. Would you want the black president or the female president as the history maker?
jmills452: I choose to kill myself if those are the only candidates. Not Hillary because I know her politics and not Barack HUSSIEN Obama, because he has only been in the Senate for two years, and would have no clue how to govern a country. To early to tell, but there will be MANY choices out there I will contenplate voting for, but neither of those two.
pizzahutpunk: Clinton? Are you crazy? A woman president???? We'll be the laughing stock of the free world!
board master: You want Osama?
meangreen92: I wonder if we would have even heard of obama, had 911 not occured.
I think obama is looking to capitalize on all of the "politically correct" fools, who are eager to prove, with their votes, that they don't hate or fear muslims. Though he does sound much less unpalatable than hilarious (Edited out four letter word referring to Clinton).
mogul: It is not the time in this world for the United States to have a woman President. I have no doubt that the proper candidate can do the job very well (read as Condoleeza Rice), but I will explain why it is bad to have ANY woman in the White House at this point in time.
Muslim countries; Iraq, Afghanistan, etc, have poor feelings towards women. Woman are inferior in that religion. Women are weaker to them. When they find out that a woman has been elected President in the most powerful country in the world, I feel that they will have more confidence that they can create and plan more attacks on US soil.
glenntop: But Obama was born in the US, and is Christian so voting him in wouldn't do a thing to prove they don't hate/fear muslims.
meangreen92: Born in the USA, yes. But I'm pretty sure he converted to islam.
blitzjb: I'd rather move to canada if those were the only canidates. Clinton will screw us like a prom date and Obama is only getting votes because he is African American.
ME: Ignorance will be the downfall of our country. I just watched the movie "Idiocracy." I had no idea how realistic it was until I started reading some of the posts here.
Obama is not Muslim (as a couple have already stated). The first Muslim elected to the US Congress took the oath of office this January of 2007. (See http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15613050/ for details. Does anybody really believe he is going to receive extra votes just for being black?
And why can‘t the US have a woman president? The US ranks near the bottom of the industrialized world in terms of number of women in powerful elected offices. The governments of Afghanistan and Iraq both included wording requiring a higher percentage of women in their national legislatures than the US when they rewrote their constitutions. The US is BEHIND these countries in terms of female leadership!
Mogul: We're not saying the US shouldn't have a woman president. Just this isn't the right time in our country for it. Read my previous post for my reasons why.
ME: I did read your previous post and was responding to it directly.
"Muslim countries; Iraq, Afghanistan, etc, have poor feelings towards women. Woman are inferior in that religion. Women are weaker to them. When they find out that a woman has been elected President in the most powerful country in the world, I feel that they will have more confidence that they can create and plan more attacks on US soil."
Those two countries have created more opportunities for women to serve in their national legislatures than in the US Congress. I don't think electing a woman president would make terrorist attacks on US soil any more likely.
pj: Hillary said Obama went to school in a muslim extremist school.Now what?
ME: Stop believing every headline you see and read the whole story. The story broke in Insight Magazine and was supported by Fox News with no cited sources. They referred to people close to Clinton's campaign; Hillary Clinton never made the statements.
ABC News and CNN quickly debunked the story using actual sources from the school.
CNN Story: http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/01/22/obama.madrassa /
Video of CNN story for those that prefer not to read: http://thinkprogress.org/2007/01/22/cnn-obama-debunk/
pj: When I heard about the report there had not YET been a rebuke. I can only comment on things after I here about them not speculate on what may happen tomorrow. I hope that you are also practicing forsight writing...
ME: The news report I quoted aired 4 days before you posted on the topic in support of the debunked story.
jmills: And there's your problem. Both are Hillary leaning networks. And Hillary's people? If they knew and leaked the story, she knew about it. Get ready for much of the same because the Hillary machine will destroy him. He will not win the primary when she is done with him.
pj: This is the last time I will try to explain..ok...I DIDNT HEAR ABOUT THE REBUKE WHEN I POSTED! I work an aweful lot. Sorry I was a few days behind, geez, shoot me?!?
wander: I guess nobody understands. I understand everyones opinion but plz listen up
WE DON'T VOTE THE POLITICIANS IN THE GOVT DOES.
THE ELECTORIAL COLLEGE DOES.
Gulianne might take it. But then again its the govt they decide.
Japan Presentation
Things went really well. I had nearly 45 minutes to make my presentation and it was received well by the students, parents and delegation leaders. It was nice to share my photos, experiences and some advice. Japanese society believes very strongly in etiquette and formal behavior so it was important to express that to the group of 43 that will be traveling there in July.
The Area Director for NY/NJ got back to me, but he only has delegations heading to Japan from Long Island and Staten Island and I have no interest in traveling that far to make my presentation. There is at least 1 additional delegation nearby in PA so maybe I'll hook up with them.
The Area Director for NY/NJ got back to me, but he only has delegations heading to Japan from Long Island and Staten Island and I have no interest in traveling that far to make my presentation. There is at least 1 additional delegation nearby in PA so maybe I'll hook up with them.
Monday, January 29, 2007
Japan Presentation to P2P
Tonight I'm making a 30-40 minute presentation to 39 high school students from Bucks County, Pennsylvania who are traveling to Japan in July with People to People. I'm really excited about it because, like instructing Spirit of Newark/New Jersey, it allows me to do what I do -- teach.
I put together two PowerPoints. The first will play while students and parents come into the meeting and contains highlights of the hundreds of photos I took during my three weeks in Japan. The second will be the focus of my presentation and covers music, school life, Tokyo highlights, food etiquette, homestay etiquette, teen culture and fashion and a wide range of other social considerations.
I have a feeling that once I start speaking I will have a difficult time limiting myself to the time provided, but I also realize how little time the delegation leaders have with their students before leaving for the trip in July so I'll stick to whatever schedule they have set up.
I e-mailed the Area Coordinator for New York/New Jersey and told him I'd be happy to make this same presentation to any delegations in the area going to Japan. Hopefully I'll get a handful of responses and make the presentation a few more times. I love talking about my experiences in Japan and sharing them with students and, besides, it fulfills some of the post-travel obligations of my participation in the Japan Fulbright Memorial Fund program.
I put together two PowerPoints. The first will play while students and parents come into the meeting and contains highlights of the hundreds of photos I took during my three weeks in Japan. The second will be the focus of my presentation and covers music, school life, Tokyo highlights, food etiquette, homestay etiquette, teen culture and fashion and a wide range of other social considerations.
I have a feeling that once I start speaking I will have a difficult time limiting myself to the time provided, but I also realize how little time the delegation leaders have with their students before leaving for the trip in July so I'll stick to whatever schedule they have set up.
I e-mailed the Area Coordinator for New York/New Jersey and told him I'd be happy to make this same presentation to any delegations in the area going to Japan. Hopefully I'll get a handful of responses and make the presentation a few more times. I love talking about my experiences in Japan and sharing them with students and, besides, it fulfills some of the post-travel obligations of my participation in the Japan Fulbright Memorial Fund program.
Friday, January 26, 2007
Board of Ed continues to ignore the community
I am pretty confident that local boards of education in New Jersey, elected by the voting public, are meant to be representative bodies. The teacher/coach described in the following article is not tenured which means, by law, that her contract must be renewed for next year. The district administration must recommend to the Board whether to renew her contract or not. While no public hearing is required, parents made it clear that they were unhappy with what is happening. I don't advocate a public discourse over every Board decision, but in my opinion the Superintendent's comment bluntly and callously responded to obviously passionate parents and students.
The following article appeared in the January 24 issue of The Bernardsville News.
Ridge Field Hockey controversy: Coach faces ax despite public pleas
By W. JACOB PERRY Staff Writer
"You would ask me to recommend her, and I am not recommending her," Goger told the parents.
That didn't go over well.
"What's the point of having us come here and talk about her?" asked one woman.
"Are you the only person who makes that decision?" asked another woman.
"Yes," replied board member William Koch, who ran the meeting in the absence of Board President Louis Carlucci and Board Vice President Lisa Winter. "That's the law."
Reichard, who is in her third year as a gym teacher at Ridge High, has a teacher's salary of $43,071. Her stipend as girls' field hockey coach last fall paid an additional $7,637.
As coach, Reichard led the Red Devils to records of 18-3-2 in 2004 while winning the conference and county championships; and 19-4-1 in 2005 while winning the conference and taking the team to the state Group 3 Section final. The team advanced to the second round of the state sectional this year, but its final record for 2006 could not be ascertained.
Vouching for the coach were six of her players - Kristen and Julia Povolny, Madison Ingal, Lea Burckley, Emily Kole and Clara Hunt.
"I've never experienced such pain and such fun as having her as a coach," said Ingal, a junior. "She pushed us to the edge. Every girl walked off the practice field sore and ready to collapse, but we outran every team."
'Always Cared'
Junior Lea Burckley said Reichard "always cared about us and pushed us and found ways to motivate us. She always pushed us to the limit."
Ingal, Burckley and other students said Reichard also checked up on their academic progress and would eagerly spend hours helping them out with college contracts and written recommendations.
"She's one of the greatest role models in my life," said Hunt, a senior.
The parents made similar comments.
"The coach we're talking about has made a girls' sport as successful with camaraderie as any boys' team," said Joseph Povolny of Dorchester Drive. "They've become tight on and off the field, and my guess is they'll be friends for life."
Bob Twillmann of Bernard Drive charged that the district was violating the Title 9 statute that requires girls' and boys' sports to be treated equally.
"It's OK to push females as hard," he said. "We do not expect less competitive standards for females."
Also praising Reichard were Catherine Ingal of Bullion Road, Jeff Kole of Patriot Hill Drive, John Burckley of Mountain Road, Dana Bassiacos of Lenape Court and Denise Druce of Hilltop Road.
Several of the parents, such as Joseph and Pamela Povolny, expressed additional criticism of the district in letters to this newspaper.
"What we believe to be most unfortunate, if not cowardly, is the fact that "the powers that be" apparently listened to a small group who, for a variety of reasons, may have an ax to grind," the Povolnys wrote.
"These issues should have been aired publicly, so that those of us who value and have high regard for Ms. Reichard could have had an opportunity to express our opinion," they added.
Phone messages left for Reichard from this newspaper seeking comment was not returned.
Goger declined to comment on the reasons for her recommendation not to rehire the coach.
It was the second time in recent months that parents publicly protested a hiring decision involving a Ridge athletic coach. Last June, Thomas Stead, the varsity basketball coach, resigned following a storm of controversy over his dealings with players. Parents who supported and opposed the coach spoke out at several board meetings.
The following article appeared in the January 24 issue of The Bernardsville News.
Ridge Field Hockey controversy: Coach faces ax despite public pleas
By W. JACOB PERRY Staff Writer
"You would ask me to recommend her, and I am not recommending her," Goger told the parents.
That didn't go over well.
"What's the point of having us come here and talk about her?" asked one woman.
"Are you the only person who makes that decision?" asked another woman.
"Yes," replied board member William Koch, who ran the meeting in the absence of Board President Louis Carlucci and Board Vice President Lisa Winter. "That's the law."
Reichard, who is in her third year as a gym teacher at Ridge High, has a teacher's salary of $43,071. Her stipend as girls' field hockey coach last fall paid an additional $7,637.
As coach, Reichard led the Red Devils to records of 18-3-2 in 2004 while winning the conference and county championships; and 19-4-1 in 2005 while winning the conference and taking the team to the state Group 3 Section final. The team advanced to the second round of the state sectional this year, but its final record for 2006 could not be ascertained.
Vouching for the coach were six of her players - Kristen and Julia Povolny, Madison Ingal, Lea Burckley, Emily Kole and Clara Hunt.
"I've never experienced such pain and such fun as having her as a coach," said Ingal, a junior. "She pushed us to the edge. Every girl walked off the practice field sore and ready to collapse, but we outran every team."
'Always Cared'
Junior Lea Burckley said Reichard "always cared about us and pushed us and found ways to motivate us. She always pushed us to the limit."
Ingal, Burckley and other students said Reichard also checked up on their academic progress and would eagerly spend hours helping them out with college contracts and written recommendations.
"She's one of the greatest role models in my life," said Hunt, a senior.
The parents made similar comments.
"The coach we're talking about has made a girls' sport as successful with camaraderie as any boys' team," said Joseph Povolny of Dorchester Drive. "They've become tight on and off the field, and my guess is they'll be friends for life."
Bob Twillmann of Bernard Drive charged that the district was violating the Title 9 statute that requires girls' and boys' sports to be treated equally.
"It's OK to push females as hard," he said. "We do not expect less competitive standards for females."
Also praising Reichard were Catherine Ingal of Bullion Road, Jeff Kole of Patriot Hill Drive, John Burckley of Mountain Road, Dana Bassiacos of Lenape Court and Denise Druce of Hilltop Road.
Several of the parents, such as Joseph and Pamela Povolny, expressed additional criticism of the district in letters to this newspaper.
"What we believe to be most unfortunate, if not cowardly, is the fact that "the powers that be" apparently listened to a small group who, for a variety of reasons, may have an ax to grind," the Povolnys wrote.
"These issues should have been aired publicly, so that those of us who value and have high regard for Ms. Reichard could have had an opportunity to express our opinion," they added.
Phone messages left for Reichard from this newspaper seeking comment was not returned.
Goger declined to comment on the reasons for her recommendation not to rehire the coach.
It was the second time in recent months that parents publicly protested a hiring decision involving a Ridge athletic coach. Last June, Thomas Stead, the varsity basketball coach, resigned following a storm of controversy over his dealings with players. Parents who supported and opposed the coach spoke out at several board meetings.
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Keri
Keri Sohlman
5/19/81-1/25/00
It's crazy that it's been 7 years already. I found two of the old articles that were published in The Record. I'm not sure that anyone else should read on. I posted them because rereading the articles while typing this ws good for me. The information is honest, blunt and somewhat graphic in detail.
I've thought very hard about whether to click 'publish' knowing that there are some students reading this blog. In the end, I think it's valuable b/c if that statistic in the last article is correct, that 20% of teenagers have thought about suicide in the last 12 months, then being reminded that people care about you and are there to help you is worthwhile.
Did she have to die?
Sunday, June 25, 2000
By Lindy Washburn
Staff Writer
Keri Sohlman left the hospital in early January, six weeks after sinking into a depression so profound that a therapist called an ambulance.
The Saddle Brook teenager's descent had begun six years earlier, with the sudden death of her father. A brother's suicide in April 1999 had pushed her deeper into despondency. After that, she fell apart, drinking and smoking marijuana so much that her friends asked her mother to do something.
Keri spent the weeks at Holy Name Hospital under medication and in therapy. She received electroshock treatments and wrote in her journal.
She also slashed her wrists with a bottle, the first time she had hurt herself to that extent.
Her psychiatrist at Holy Name described her as "extremely fragile." Her "cutting behavior" was a bid to discharge tension and get help, the psychiatrist said.
But now, according to Oxford Health Plans, it was time for Keri to go home.
Hospital care was no longer necessary, the insurer's medical director said. Guided by a combination of length-of-stay criteria, symptom assessments, and the bottom line, the managed-care plan instead decided to pay for a "partial hospital" or day-treatment program.
Keri's psychiatrist argued against the discharge.
Keri's mother argued that her daughter wasn't ready to deal with the outside world and needed the safety of a hospital.
Their pleas made no difference.
Keri went home to her family's house in Saddle Brook. She followed instructions, attended the "partial hospital" program, and took her medication.
And 18 days later, on Jan. 22, she jumped from a bridge onto the Garden State Parkway.
Keri's suicide ended not one, but two troubling stories.
The first was her own painful journey through family loss, grief, and despair.
The second was the story of her treatment in the age of managed care, a tale of fragmentation in the mental-health system, limits on coverage, financial pressure, and disagreement between the insurance company and the professional treating her.
Did these stories have to end on the shoulder of the Garden State Parkway? Could Keri's suicide have been prevented?
Those involved offer different answers. Keri's mother believes her daughter would be alive today if Oxford had not insisted that she be discharged from Holy Name. Her psychiatrist there wonders whether Keri would have done better had she been given a freer hand in treating her. The medical director for Oxford Health Plans believes the company acted appropriately.
Keri's story, though, illustrates a larger tale: It shows how much medical care today depends not on what is available or what is best, but on what insurance will pay for.
In Keri's case, "what insurance will pay for" may have meant the difference between life and death.
Photo albums thick with pictures are stacked in the kitchen as Francine Sohlman and Matthew Mingle, once Keri's best friend, pore through them.
Keri's scruffy, excitable terrier, Taji, barks and bounds around the blue split-level home on a quiet street near Saddle Brook's Smith Elementary School. The dog still plays with the squeeze toy Keri bought her on her last day at home.
Sohlman bought the puppy as a Christmas present for Keri in 1994, the year her 49-year-old husband, Lars, died unexpectedly of pneumonia. Keri was 12 then, the youngest of four children, and the only girl. Daddy's girl.
His death, Sohlman says now, "started everybody's depression."
Keri would later write: "You left us all. I needed you. We all needed you. . . . You meant so much to me and to so many more people. I was so scared."
She worried about how her mother could cope, about who would walk her down the aisle on her wedding day, and about who would take care of her mother when the children grew up and moved out. In poems, she described the days around her father's illness and death as "the end."
Outwardly, though, she seemed an ordinary child.
Keri played the mellophone, similar to the French horn, and Matt the trumpet in the Saddle Brook High School band when the two became friends during freshman year. By senior year, Keri had auditioned and become one of two drum majors.
Each band trip had its own picture album -- Florida, Louisiana, Canada, California. She gazes from the photos with clear blue eyes, ponytailed, strong, and athletic, surrounded by friends.
"She was goofy, silly, always making weird faces for the camera," said Jen Anderson, her "soul mate." One summer when Keri worked the overnight shift at Dunkin' Donuts, she regularly woke Jen up with coffee and rolls.
The two beeped each other back and forth with a secret code for "Hi." They could tell, just by catching a change in expression amid the laughter and fooling around, when the other had dropped into "a sad zone."
"We'd point at each other and say, 'No,' " said Jen. "We brought each other up a lot."
Keri's class elected her to the student council. She was a cheerleader in competitions and at basketball and football games. A Beatles fan. Her locker, No. 1043, was covered with magnets, stickers, and pictures of Mr. Potato Head.
But as senior year was winding down, on a Friday morning, her oldest brother, Eric, killed himself with a shotgun in the basement of their home. His two brothers found him. Keri and her mother were on a band trip. He was 24.
On June 25, two months later, Keri graduated from high school. She took a job grinding lenses at Lenscrafters and thought about college.
"Outwardly, you wouldn't know it was affecting her," Sohlman says of her oldest son's suicide. But "it brought up a lot of memories of her father." Sohlman repeatedly offered to take Keri for counseling, but Keri always refused. She didn't want to talk about it.
Matt, too, said, "It seemed like she was dealing with everything." She never wanted to talk about her brother.
Then she started drinking more and smoking marijuana more. "All of a sudden, she was no longer coping," said her mother. Some of Keri's friends called Sohlman, concerned that Keri's behavior was getting dangerous. Sohlman offered to make an appointment with a therapist, but Keri angrily refused.
"The more confused and depressed I got, the more I smoked," Keri wrote in her journal, looking back from the safety of her hospitalization. "The more I smoked, the more confused and depressed I got."
"She knew it wasn't working," her mother said of her daughter's drinking and drug use.
Finally, Jen persuaded her to see a therapist. She took her personally to the first visit in November, and Keri went on her own the second time.
But as Thanksgiving approached, Keri's depression became desperate.
On the Tuesday before the holiday, Keri didn't go to work. She drove around northern New Jersey all day, considering whether to kill herself. Police ticketed her in Passaic County for speeding, then let her go. Finally, she showed up unannounced and without an appointment as her therapist was closing her Bergen County office.
Startled, the therapist invited her in.
Keri wasn't talking much. "She was very, very quiet," recalled the licensed clinical social worker, who asked that her name not be used. "I felt she was reaching out for help, that she felt safe with me in my office." After an hour of sitting with her, the therapist asked Keri's permission to call a psychiatric hot line.
Three-and-a-half hours later, after an evaluation, Keri left in an ambulance.
"Tears came down her cheeks," said the therapist. "She cried very quietly. She must have been exhausted. She probably thought that she'd be taken care of, that this pain would be taken care of."
Keri was admitted to Bergen Regional Medical Center in Paramus around midnight, and was transferred the next day to Holy Name Hospital in Teaneck. Dr. Gladys Halvorsen was the psychiatrist on call.
Halvorsen diagnosed Keri with "major depression." She tried the full array of standard treatments: individual and group psychotherapy, medication, electroshock therapy. Keri was hard to reach, shrugging and silent in answer to questions.
Depression is considered highly treatable, with a response rate of 80 percent to 90 percent when standard treatments are used, either alone or in combination, mental-health professionals say. Keri's family history and substance abuse made her particularly vulnerable, but not beyond reach.
Psychiatrists consider suicide fundamentally avoidable. They approach each patient with the idea that there's always one more treatment to be tried.
Halvorsen spent an hour each day conducting "intensive, deep" psychotherapy with Keri, trying to open a pathway into the girl's grief. "It was very difficult," she said. "This girl had never mourned her father. . . . She was very private. Only after about 10 days here in the hospital did she begin to open up. We worked through her journal."
The spiral notebook became like a third person in the therapy sessions: Keri wrote in it between sessions, and then the therapist read it. They discussed it.
Halvorsen prescribed medication for anxiety, depression, and psychosis, as well as sleeping pills.
"She really wanted to get better," Sohlman said of her daughter.
Keri agreed to eight sessions of electroconvulsive therapy. This uses a controlled electric shock to induce a brain seizure, altering some of the electrochemical processes thought to be responsible for severe depression.It helped, Halvorsen said: "She began showing feelings of hope and brightness."
But even in the hospital, Keri slit her wrists -- "cutting behavior" to discharge tension and express her distress, said Halvorsen. The wounds were sutured. Another time, she hid in a closet.
Sohlman visited daily, sometimes with Taji, the terrier. After a while, Keri was allowed passes to go out with her mother. She spent Christmas at home. Jen has a photo of Keri and herself with a friend dressed up as Santa Claus that day. Keri's eyes are dull; they no longer shine.
By Christmas, Keri had exhausted her yearly 30-day maximum for an insurance-covered hospital stay for psychiatric care. Halvorsen kept her in, and Sohlman subsequently was billed for $16,400 by the hospital. The doctor says she canceled her own vacation. She knew she would not be paid. Ethically, she said, she could neither refer a non-paying patient to a colleague nor abandon Keri.
They all expected that on Jan. 1, when a new benefit year began and Keri was covered for another 30 days, her continuing treatment would be reimbursed. Keri told Jen that even though she didn't like the hospital, she was going to force herself to stay until she got better.
But Oxford Health Plans surprised them. The average hospital stay for an Oxford patient with a mental-health diagnosis is 6.3 days, said Maria Gordon Shydlo, a spokeswoman. Keri had been "certified" for 30 days, and actually hospitalized for 37.
Further hospital care was medically unnecessary, Oxford's mental-health director, Dr. Satwant Ahluwalia, decided. "The patient's current signs and symptoms do not necessitate a psychiatric inpatient level of care," the case manager, Kathleen Breton, wrote to Keri on Dec. 30.
"She denied it completely," Halvorsen said of Ahluwalia. "She pressured me to discharge the patient." Halvorsen, a psychiatrist for 30 years with a specialty in adolescent psychiatry, disputed Oxford's assessment, saying her patient was "extremely fragile."
Halvorsen is not part of Oxford's network of physicians. She has chosen not to participate in any managed-care plan "because of the way they interfere with patients," she said. She took over Keri's care because she was on call when Keri was admitted.
Oxford's decision was based, in part, on guidelines called "managed care appropriateness protocols," said its chief medical officer, who responded to questions on behalf of the company.
These protocols are purchased from The Oak Group, a Wellesley, Mass., company that specializes in developing length-of-stay criteria for health plans and hospitals.
The guidelines aim to answer a simple question: Do the patient's symptoms require the full services of inpatient hospital care, or can she be treated in another setting? "Everybody pays careful attention to what the symptoms are, and therefore assigns the right level of care," said the chief medical officer, Dr. Alan Muney.
It is more cost-effective, if there's no risk of harm to the patient or others, for the patient to transfer from a hospital that costs about $1,000 a day to a partial-hospital program costing $350 a day.
Decisions like this bring into focus "whether we just go back to the way it was, with uncontrolled utilization," Muney said, "or try to bring some rationality to it." He referred questions about the exact standards to The Oak Group, which declined to discuss specifics, saying they were proprietary.
Keri's case "did get a real careful review and a lot of discussion of symptoms," said Muney. "She was not acutely suicidal, not under constant supervision. Her mood had improved." Her suicide attempt had been earlier in her stay, he said.
Halvorsen called in a second psychiatrist at Holy Name, who evaluated Keri and concurred in the need for further hospitalization. She also alerted Keri's mother.
"The doctor told me that if Oxford refused to pay for it, Keri would feel she was unworthy," Sohlman said. "I felt she was safer in the hospital." Keri was under suicide watch there. She had no access to alcohol or marijuana.
Sohlman says she called Oxford shortly before noon on Friday, Dec. 31, to ask that the decision to discharge her daughter be reconsidered. She was told that the office was closing for the New Year's holiday and that no one in authority could be reached, she said. She explained about her son's suicide, and her deep concerns for Keri's safety, she said. The operator suggested she look for an emergency shelter, Sohlman recalled.
According to Oxford's log of the call, benefits were discussed, but no request for an appeal was made, said spokeswoman Shydlo.
On Monday and Tuesday, Jan. 3 and 4, Halvorsen tried to prepare Keri for her discharge. Oxford had agreed to pay for "partial hospitalization" at the Carrier clinic in Paramus.
Keri wrote about it in her journal: "I am not exactly sure how I am going to handle being home on my own. It is going to be very hard staying away from weed and alcohol, first of all. Very hard. I don't have any idea how I'm gonna keep myself away from either one of those things. And I'm gonna have to go to this program every day. That's probably gonna suck very much."
"She felt very anxious and hopeless," said Halvorsen. "I tried to work with her to make it easier."
On Jan. 4, Keri returned to her family's Saddle Brook home, the house where Eric had committed suicide. The next morning, her mother drove her to Carrier's Paramus clinic.
Partial hospitalization's goal is to give patients more responsibility and autonomy than they can experience in a hospital, within a framework of daily support and supervision.
Because such care is less expensive, it also can extend the patient's insurance coverage. In this case, Oxford considered two days of partial-hospital care equivalent to one of inpatient care. Initially, six days were certified; later, extensions were made.
Although patients occasionally may be readmitted to the hospital, it is assumed that they know how to get help -- through their family, therapist, or a Carrier hot line -- if they feel suicidal, Carrier's medical director said. Readmission, said Lawrence Goldberg, the medical director, would be considered a setback.
Goldberg declined to discuss the specifics of Keri's care, but a lawyer retained by Sohlman made the records available.
As a new patient, Keri was evaluated and assigned to three group-therapy sessions a day, dealing with topics such as coping skills, stress management, appropriate use of medication, and "positive self-talk." She attended each session, where her affect was described as flat, her voice soft, and her mood depressed. She also had one private therapy hour a week.
The psychiatrist at Carrier adjusted Keri's medication to help her sleep better, the records show.
Keri attended the program faithfully. "She never missed," her mother said. In the off hours, she "hung around the house, visited a friend, did normal things." But she told her mother "she wasn't getting that much out of Carrier," Sohlman said.
"It is harder than hard," Keri wrote of the program in her journal after three days. "It's Mon-Fri., 9 to 3, and all groups. As you already know, it's not exactly easy for me to talk. And that's all it is -- talking. It sucks.
"I just sit there, shake my leg a lot and answer stupid questions very quietly or shrug my shoulders and say I don't know. There's a doctor who I don't exactly like very much and a caseworker who asks me daily if I feel like killing myself or if I'm gonna smoke weed or drink.
"I can't really tell her that I actually do want to die, so I just say no to all questions."
But no one was reading the journal anymore. Keri soon stopped writing.
Keri's mother was concerned enough to write a letter to Oxford:
Her "condition warrants hospitalization," she said she wrote in a letter to Oxford's appeals address. Sohlman provided a copy of the letter, dated Jan. 14, to The Record. "She is not ready to deal with the outside and needs the constant supervision and security of a hospital setting.
"Although she desperately wants to get well," Sohlman continued, "she feels she is at the end of her options. If you do not let her have the treatment she needs, I will hold you responsible for whatever may happen. I plead with you on behalf of my daughter to allow her to receive the full treatment she needs and deserves."
Oxford's Muney says the company has no record of this letter.
On Jan. 19, at a session with her mother and her Carrier caseworker, Keri said that she felt no different than she had before Thanksgiving, Sohlman said.
Keri's last talk with her Carrier therapist was on Thursday, Jan. 20.
The therapist noted, as she had at each of the two previous weekly sessions, that Keri was depressed and admitted thinking about suicide, "but denies any plan or intent to act on" these thoughts.
--------------------
On Saturday afternoon, Keri went grocery shopping for the family. Besides food, she came home with Infusium for curly hair, the toy for Taji, and a paperback edition of "The Green Mile."
It was dark and bitterly cold, a little after 6 p.m., when she borrowed her mother's car and said she was going out to visit friends. She was wearing a black jacket, jeans, a pair of gloves.
Keri did not go to a friend's house. She parked the car behind an apartment complex just off Midland Avenue in Saddle Brook, and started walking down the tracks of the Bergen Line.
On the car seat, she left her journal and several letters -- two addressed to her father, one to her brother, Eric, and one to her remaining family and "anyone who cares."
"It is so unfair," she wrote to "Daddy." "I don't understand why it had to be you. You were such a great dad. I loved you. . . . I love you."
Sometime later, Keri reached the railroad overpass across the Garden State Parkway. She jumped, falling 30 feet onto the cement barrier below.
When a state police officer arrived at 8:15, she was conscious but bleeding, coherent enough to tell him that she had jumped and not been pushed.
She died at Hackensack University Medical Center three days later.
Gladys Halvorsen, the Holy Name psychiatrist, is not certain that Keri would have been saved if she had stayed longer in the hospital. But she believes Keri's chances would have improved.
"The key thing for these patients is continuity," she said. "There was no continuity" she added, as Keri was passed from a private therapist to Bergen Regional Medical Center to Holy Name Hospital, and then to Carrier.
Said Halvorsen: "Given the opportunity, I would have continued to see her, so she could have had that one bond, that one very strong bond. The point is, I was pressured tremendously to release her. I treated her two weeks without any pay."
Said Dr. Lawrence Goldberg of the Carrier Clinic: "It sounds like this patient received very serious, quality, state-of-the-art treatment. . . . I think the only conclusion you can draw is that despite the best efforts of contemporary standards of treatment, some patients will commit suicide."
Said Dr. Alan Muney of Oxford Health Plan: "Regardless of diagnosis, some patients are going to have bad outcomes. Do we feel that we interacted appropriately with the physician, and followed criteria? We're comfortable with that. Ultimately, she was under the care of a physician."
At George Washington Memorial Park, the grass has not yet grown over Keri's grave. It lies under a tree, near those of her father and brother.
On May 19, Jen Anderson, Matt Mingle, and some other friends gathered around the freshly raked earth.
They ate some Dunkin' Donuts coffee rolls, Keri's favorite snack, and drank some coffee. Then they lit some candles, sheltering the flames from the wind as they sang "Happy Birthday."
Beneath the vase of flowers and the bouquets they had brought, Keri's friends left the cards and letters they had written.
"I still don't understand it," wrote one, wishing Keri peace on what would have been her 19th birthday.
Quietly, they stepped away.
The wind blew the candles out.
Did she have to die?
By Lindy Washburn
Staff Writer
When four teenagers committed suicide in a Bergenfield garage in 1987, they focused national attention on the escalating rate of teen suicide.
But the rash of copycat suicides in the aftermath of the Bergenfield deaths led to something else: a muting of media coverage for fear of more imitators.
The fact is, suicide is now the third-ranking cause of death among teenagers nationwide. It accounts for more deaths among people ages 15 to 24 than all natural causes combined. From 1980 to 1996, the rate of suicide among people 15 to 19 years old increased by 14 percent. It doubled among 10- to 14-year-olds.
"Twenty percent of teens have thought about suicide in the last 12 months," said Dr. David Shaffer, president of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and chairman of the psychiatry department at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons.
New Jersey students match the national average, according to the most recent survey of risk-taking behavior conducted by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 1999.
But the rate of suicide among young people in New Jersey, as elsewhere, has declined, for reasons that are not understood, said Celeste Andriot Wood, assistant commissioner for family health at the state Department of Health. Some mental health experts credit the use of new anti-depressive drugs with the downward shift.
Although suicide is the No. 3 cause of death among those 15 to 24 years old, they have done so less frequently: from 88 cases in 1995, to 69 in 1996, to 59 in 1997, Wood said.
Overall, New Jersey recorded the second-lowest suicide rate in the nation for 1996 and 1997, the two most recent years for which statistics are available.
Wood could not explain why New Jersey's rate was comparatively low, but said efforts continue nonetheless to reduce it. These include participation in a regional conference funded by the CDC this month in Massachusetts, at which participating state teams are to develop state suicide-prevention plans.
The conference is one outgrowth of an initiative by U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher, who announced shortly after his 1998 appointment that he considered suicide a major public health problem. "We must promote public awareness that suicides are preventable," he said, as he issued a "Call to Action to Prevent Suicide."
Girls are more likely to attempt suicide, but boys more likely to succeed. The most common method is a gun. Keri Sohlman, the Saddle Brook teenager who killed herself in January, was atypical in both her gender and her method -- a jump from a high place.
But many more more teenagers attempt suicide than succeed at it. Some studies say there are 100 to 200 attempts among young people for each suicide. And it is extremely difficult to predict which suicide attempters will actually kill themselves, experts say. A continuing retrospective study interviews therapists and analyzes cases in which a suicide victim had been in treatment.
The teenagers at greatest risk for suicide, according to Shaffer and others at Columbia University, report at least one of the following factors: a record of previous attempts, current thoughts about suicide, depression, or abuse of drugs and alcohol.
Each of the risk factors is something that can be addressed, mental-health experts say. Depression, for example, is considered highly treatable, through medication, psychotherapy, and electroshock treatments, these experts say.
Suicide affects not only those whose lives it claims. Each of the 32,000 suicides a year in the United States leaves a trail of emotionally wounded family members and friends, totaling hundreds of thousands of people. Their care is also an issue.
Researchers have reported a fourfold increased risk for suicidal behavior among immediate relatives of suicide victims. Dr. David A. Brent, who studied suicides among family members in Pittsburgh, also reported a higher risk for substance abuse and depression. One theory suggests that this may result from a possible genetic connection to the metabolism of serotonin, a neurotransmitter in the brain associated with mood.
But Brent stresses that the increased risk does not mean that suicide is inevitable. If anything, it should make professionals more alert to the signs of vulnerability so that they can intervene to prevent suicide, he said.
In other words, the suicide of Keri Sohlman's older brother identified her as a high-risk teenager and should have led professionals to exercise even greater vigilance in her care. Suicide need not have been her destiny.
5/19/81-1/25/00
It's crazy that it's been 7 years already. I found two of the old articles that were published in The Record. I'm not sure that anyone else should read on. I posted them because rereading the articles while typing this ws good for me. The information is honest, blunt and somewhat graphic in detail.
I've thought very hard about whether to click 'publish' knowing that there are some students reading this blog. In the end, I think it's valuable b/c if that statistic in the last article is correct, that 20% of teenagers have thought about suicide in the last 12 months, then being reminded that people care about you and are there to help you is worthwhile.
Did she have to die?
Sunday, June 25, 2000
By Lindy Washburn
Staff Writer
Keri Sohlman left the hospital in early January, six weeks after sinking into a depression so profound that a therapist called an ambulance.
The Saddle Brook teenager's descent had begun six years earlier, with the sudden death of her father. A brother's suicide in April 1999 had pushed her deeper into despondency. After that, she fell apart, drinking and smoking marijuana so much that her friends asked her mother to do something.
Keri spent the weeks at Holy Name Hospital under medication and in therapy. She received electroshock treatments and wrote in her journal.
She also slashed her wrists with a bottle, the first time she had hurt herself to that extent.
Her psychiatrist at Holy Name described her as "extremely fragile." Her "cutting behavior" was a bid to discharge tension and get help, the psychiatrist said.
But now, according to Oxford Health Plans, it was time for Keri to go home.
Hospital care was no longer necessary, the insurer's medical director said. Guided by a combination of length-of-stay criteria, symptom assessments, and the bottom line, the managed-care plan instead decided to pay for a "partial hospital" or day-treatment program.
Keri's psychiatrist argued against the discharge.
Keri's mother argued that her daughter wasn't ready to deal with the outside world and needed the safety of a hospital.
Their pleas made no difference.
Keri went home to her family's house in Saddle Brook. She followed instructions, attended the "partial hospital" program, and took her medication.
And 18 days later, on Jan. 22, she jumped from a bridge onto the Garden State Parkway.
Keri's suicide ended not one, but two troubling stories.
The first was her own painful journey through family loss, grief, and despair.
The second was the story of her treatment in the age of managed care, a tale of fragmentation in the mental-health system, limits on coverage, financial pressure, and disagreement between the insurance company and the professional treating her.
Did these stories have to end on the shoulder of the Garden State Parkway? Could Keri's suicide have been prevented?
Those involved offer different answers. Keri's mother believes her daughter would be alive today if Oxford had not insisted that she be discharged from Holy Name. Her psychiatrist there wonders whether Keri would have done better had she been given a freer hand in treating her. The medical director for Oxford Health Plans believes the company acted appropriately.
Keri's story, though, illustrates a larger tale: It shows how much medical care today depends not on what is available or what is best, but on what insurance will pay for.
In Keri's case, "what insurance will pay for" may have meant the difference between life and death.
Photo albums thick with pictures are stacked in the kitchen as Francine Sohlman and Matthew Mingle, once Keri's best friend, pore through them.
Keri's scruffy, excitable terrier, Taji, barks and bounds around the blue split-level home on a quiet street near Saddle Brook's Smith Elementary School. The dog still plays with the squeeze toy Keri bought her on her last day at home.
Sohlman bought the puppy as a Christmas present for Keri in 1994, the year her 49-year-old husband, Lars, died unexpectedly of pneumonia. Keri was 12 then, the youngest of four children, and the only girl. Daddy's girl.
His death, Sohlman says now, "started everybody's depression."
Keri would later write: "You left us all. I needed you. We all needed you. . . . You meant so much to me and to so many more people. I was so scared."
She worried about how her mother could cope, about who would walk her down the aisle on her wedding day, and about who would take care of her mother when the children grew up and moved out. In poems, she described the days around her father's illness and death as "the end."
Outwardly, though, she seemed an ordinary child.
Keri played the mellophone, similar to the French horn, and Matt the trumpet in the Saddle Brook High School band when the two became friends during freshman year. By senior year, Keri had auditioned and become one of two drum majors.
Each band trip had its own picture album -- Florida, Louisiana, Canada, California. She gazes from the photos with clear blue eyes, ponytailed, strong, and athletic, surrounded by friends.
"She was goofy, silly, always making weird faces for the camera," said Jen Anderson, her "soul mate." One summer when Keri worked the overnight shift at Dunkin' Donuts, she regularly woke Jen up with coffee and rolls.
The two beeped each other back and forth with a secret code for "Hi." They could tell, just by catching a change in expression amid the laughter and fooling around, when the other had dropped into "a sad zone."
"We'd point at each other and say, 'No,' " said Jen. "We brought each other up a lot."
Keri's class elected her to the student council. She was a cheerleader in competitions and at basketball and football games. A Beatles fan. Her locker, No. 1043, was covered with magnets, stickers, and pictures of Mr. Potato Head.
But as senior year was winding down, on a Friday morning, her oldest brother, Eric, killed himself with a shotgun in the basement of their home. His two brothers found him. Keri and her mother were on a band trip. He was 24.
On June 25, two months later, Keri graduated from high school. She took a job grinding lenses at Lenscrafters and thought about college.
"Outwardly, you wouldn't know it was affecting her," Sohlman says of her oldest son's suicide. But "it brought up a lot of memories of her father." Sohlman repeatedly offered to take Keri for counseling, but Keri always refused. She didn't want to talk about it.
Matt, too, said, "It seemed like she was dealing with everything." She never wanted to talk about her brother.
Then she started drinking more and smoking marijuana more. "All of a sudden, she was no longer coping," said her mother. Some of Keri's friends called Sohlman, concerned that Keri's behavior was getting dangerous. Sohlman offered to make an appointment with a therapist, but Keri angrily refused.
"The more confused and depressed I got, the more I smoked," Keri wrote in her journal, looking back from the safety of her hospitalization. "The more I smoked, the more confused and depressed I got."
"She knew it wasn't working," her mother said of her daughter's drinking and drug use.
Finally, Jen persuaded her to see a therapist. She took her personally to the first visit in November, and Keri went on her own the second time.
But as Thanksgiving approached, Keri's depression became desperate.
On the Tuesday before the holiday, Keri didn't go to work. She drove around northern New Jersey all day, considering whether to kill herself. Police ticketed her in Passaic County for speeding, then let her go. Finally, she showed up unannounced and without an appointment as her therapist was closing her Bergen County office.
Startled, the therapist invited her in.
Keri wasn't talking much. "She was very, very quiet," recalled the licensed clinical social worker, who asked that her name not be used. "I felt she was reaching out for help, that she felt safe with me in my office." After an hour of sitting with her, the therapist asked Keri's permission to call a psychiatric hot line.
Three-and-a-half hours later, after an evaluation, Keri left in an ambulance.
"Tears came down her cheeks," said the therapist. "She cried very quietly. She must have been exhausted. She probably thought that she'd be taken care of, that this pain would be taken care of."
Keri was admitted to Bergen Regional Medical Center in Paramus around midnight, and was transferred the next day to Holy Name Hospital in Teaneck. Dr. Gladys Halvorsen was the psychiatrist on call.
Halvorsen diagnosed Keri with "major depression." She tried the full array of standard treatments: individual and group psychotherapy, medication, electroshock therapy. Keri was hard to reach, shrugging and silent in answer to questions.
Depression is considered highly treatable, with a response rate of 80 percent to 90 percent when standard treatments are used, either alone or in combination, mental-health professionals say. Keri's family history and substance abuse made her particularly vulnerable, but not beyond reach.
Psychiatrists consider suicide fundamentally avoidable. They approach each patient with the idea that there's always one more treatment to be tried.
Halvorsen spent an hour each day conducting "intensive, deep" psychotherapy with Keri, trying to open a pathway into the girl's grief. "It was very difficult," she said. "This girl had never mourned her father. . . . She was very private. Only after about 10 days here in the hospital did she begin to open up. We worked through her journal."
The spiral notebook became like a third person in the therapy sessions: Keri wrote in it between sessions, and then the therapist read it. They discussed it.
Halvorsen prescribed medication for anxiety, depression, and psychosis, as well as sleeping pills.
"She really wanted to get better," Sohlman said of her daughter.
Keri agreed to eight sessions of electroconvulsive therapy. This uses a controlled electric shock to induce a brain seizure, altering some of the electrochemical processes thought to be responsible for severe depression.It helped, Halvorsen said: "She began showing feelings of hope and brightness."
But even in the hospital, Keri slit her wrists -- "cutting behavior" to discharge tension and express her distress, said Halvorsen. The wounds were sutured. Another time, she hid in a closet.
Sohlman visited daily, sometimes with Taji, the terrier. After a while, Keri was allowed passes to go out with her mother. She spent Christmas at home. Jen has a photo of Keri and herself with a friend dressed up as Santa Claus that day. Keri's eyes are dull; they no longer shine.
By Christmas, Keri had exhausted her yearly 30-day maximum for an insurance-covered hospital stay for psychiatric care. Halvorsen kept her in, and Sohlman subsequently was billed for $16,400 by the hospital. The doctor says she canceled her own vacation. She knew she would not be paid. Ethically, she said, she could neither refer a non-paying patient to a colleague nor abandon Keri.
They all expected that on Jan. 1, when a new benefit year began and Keri was covered for another 30 days, her continuing treatment would be reimbursed. Keri told Jen that even though she didn't like the hospital, she was going to force herself to stay until she got better.
But Oxford Health Plans surprised them. The average hospital stay for an Oxford patient with a mental-health diagnosis is 6.3 days, said Maria Gordon Shydlo, a spokeswoman. Keri had been "certified" for 30 days, and actually hospitalized for 37.
Further hospital care was medically unnecessary, Oxford's mental-health director, Dr. Satwant Ahluwalia, decided. "The patient's current signs and symptoms do not necessitate a psychiatric inpatient level of care," the case manager, Kathleen Breton, wrote to Keri on Dec. 30.
"She denied it completely," Halvorsen said of Ahluwalia. "She pressured me to discharge the patient." Halvorsen, a psychiatrist for 30 years with a specialty in adolescent psychiatry, disputed Oxford's assessment, saying her patient was "extremely fragile."
Halvorsen is not part of Oxford's network of physicians. She has chosen not to participate in any managed-care plan "because of the way they interfere with patients," she said. She took over Keri's care because she was on call when Keri was admitted.
Oxford's decision was based, in part, on guidelines called "managed care appropriateness protocols," said its chief medical officer, who responded to questions on behalf of the company.
These protocols are purchased from The Oak Group, a Wellesley, Mass., company that specializes in developing length-of-stay criteria for health plans and hospitals.
The guidelines aim to answer a simple question: Do the patient's symptoms require the full services of inpatient hospital care, or can she be treated in another setting? "Everybody pays careful attention to what the symptoms are, and therefore assigns the right level of care," said the chief medical officer, Dr. Alan Muney.
It is more cost-effective, if there's no risk of harm to the patient or others, for the patient to transfer from a hospital that costs about $1,000 a day to a partial-hospital program costing $350 a day.
Decisions like this bring into focus "whether we just go back to the way it was, with uncontrolled utilization," Muney said, "or try to bring some rationality to it." He referred questions about the exact standards to The Oak Group, which declined to discuss specifics, saying they were proprietary.
Keri's case "did get a real careful review and a lot of discussion of symptoms," said Muney. "She was not acutely suicidal, not under constant supervision. Her mood had improved." Her suicide attempt had been earlier in her stay, he said.
Halvorsen called in a second psychiatrist at Holy Name, who evaluated Keri and concurred in the need for further hospitalization. She also alerted Keri's mother.
"The doctor told me that if Oxford refused to pay for it, Keri would feel she was unworthy," Sohlman said. "I felt she was safer in the hospital." Keri was under suicide watch there. She had no access to alcohol or marijuana.
Sohlman says she called Oxford shortly before noon on Friday, Dec. 31, to ask that the decision to discharge her daughter be reconsidered. She was told that the office was closing for the New Year's holiday and that no one in authority could be reached, she said. She explained about her son's suicide, and her deep concerns for Keri's safety, she said. The operator suggested she look for an emergency shelter, Sohlman recalled.
According to Oxford's log of the call, benefits were discussed, but no request for an appeal was made, said spokeswoman Shydlo.
On Monday and Tuesday, Jan. 3 and 4, Halvorsen tried to prepare Keri for her discharge. Oxford had agreed to pay for "partial hospitalization" at the Carrier clinic in Paramus.
Keri wrote about it in her journal: "I am not exactly sure how I am going to handle being home on my own. It is going to be very hard staying away from weed and alcohol, first of all. Very hard. I don't have any idea how I'm gonna keep myself away from either one of those things. And I'm gonna have to go to this program every day. That's probably gonna suck very much."
"She felt very anxious and hopeless," said Halvorsen. "I tried to work with her to make it easier."
On Jan. 4, Keri returned to her family's Saddle Brook home, the house where Eric had committed suicide. The next morning, her mother drove her to Carrier's Paramus clinic.
Partial hospitalization's goal is to give patients more responsibility and autonomy than they can experience in a hospital, within a framework of daily support and supervision.
Because such care is less expensive, it also can extend the patient's insurance coverage. In this case, Oxford considered two days of partial-hospital care equivalent to one of inpatient care. Initially, six days were certified; later, extensions were made.
Although patients occasionally may be readmitted to the hospital, it is assumed that they know how to get help -- through their family, therapist, or a Carrier hot line -- if they feel suicidal, Carrier's medical director said. Readmission, said Lawrence Goldberg, the medical director, would be considered a setback.
Goldberg declined to discuss the specifics of Keri's care, but a lawyer retained by Sohlman made the records available.
As a new patient, Keri was evaluated and assigned to three group-therapy sessions a day, dealing with topics such as coping skills, stress management, appropriate use of medication, and "positive self-talk." She attended each session, where her affect was described as flat, her voice soft, and her mood depressed. She also had one private therapy hour a week.
The psychiatrist at Carrier adjusted Keri's medication to help her sleep better, the records show.
Keri attended the program faithfully. "She never missed," her mother said. In the off hours, she "hung around the house, visited a friend, did normal things." But she told her mother "she wasn't getting that much out of Carrier," Sohlman said.
"It is harder than hard," Keri wrote of the program in her journal after three days. "It's Mon-Fri., 9 to 3, and all groups. As you already know, it's not exactly easy for me to talk. And that's all it is -- talking. It sucks.
"I just sit there, shake my leg a lot and answer stupid questions very quietly or shrug my shoulders and say I don't know. There's a doctor who I don't exactly like very much and a caseworker who asks me daily if I feel like killing myself or if I'm gonna smoke weed or drink.
"I can't really tell her that I actually do want to die, so I just say no to all questions."
But no one was reading the journal anymore. Keri soon stopped writing.
Keri's mother was concerned enough to write a letter to Oxford:
Her "condition warrants hospitalization," she said she wrote in a letter to Oxford's appeals address. Sohlman provided a copy of the letter, dated Jan. 14, to The Record. "She is not ready to deal with the outside and needs the constant supervision and security of a hospital setting.
"Although she desperately wants to get well," Sohlman continued, "she feels she is at the end of her options. If you do not let her have the treatment she needs, I will hold you responsible for whatever may happen. I plead with you on behalf of my daughter to allow her to receive the full treatment she needs and deserves."
Oxford's Muney says the company has no record of this letter.
On Jan. 19, at a session with her mother and her Carrier caseworker, Keri said that she felt no different than she had before Thanksgiving, Sohlman said.
Keri's last talk with her Carrier therapist was on Thursday, Jan. 20.
The therapist noted, as she had at each of the two previous weekly sessions, that Keri was depressed and admitted thinking about suicide, "but denies any plan or intent to act on" these thoughts.
--------------------
On Saturday afternoon, Keri went grocery shopping for the family. Besides food, she came home with Infusium for curly hair, the toy for Taji, and a paperback edition of "The Green Mile."
It was dark and bitterly cold, a little after 6 p.m., when she borrowed her mother's car and said she was going out to visit friends. She was wearing a black jacket, jeans, a pair of gloves.
Keri did not go to a friend's house. She parked the car behind an apartment complex just off Midland Avenue in Saddle Brook, and started walking down the tracks of the Bergen Line.
On the car seat, she left her journal and several letters -- two addressed to her father, one to her brother, Eric, and one to her remaining family and "anyone who cares."
"It is so unfair," she wrote to "Daddy." "I don't understand why it had to be you. You were such a great dad. I loved you. . . . I love you."
Sometime later, Keri reached the railroad overpass across the Garden State Parkway. She jumped, falling 30 feet onto the cement barrier below.
When a state police officer arrived at 8:15, she was conscious but bleeding, coherent enough to tell him that she had jumped and not been pushed.
She died at Hackensack University Medical Center three days later.
Gladys Halvorsen, the Holy Name psychiatrist, is not certain that Keri would have been saved if she had stayed longer in the hospital. But she believes Keri's chances would have improved.
"The key thing for these patients is continuity," she said. "There was no continuity" she added, as Keri was passed from a private therapist to Bergen Regional Medical Center to Holy Name Hospital, and then to Carrier.
Said Halvorsen: "Given the opportunity, I would have continued to see her, so she could have had that one bond, that one very strong bond. The point is, I was pressured tremendously to release her. I treated her two weeks without any pay."
Said Dr. Lawrence Goldberg of the Carrier Clinic: "It sounds like this patient received very serious, quality, state-of-the-art treatment. . . . I think the only conclusion you can draw is that despite the best efforts of contemporary standards of treatment, some patients will commit suicide."
Said Dr. Alan Muney of Oxford Health Plan: "Regardless of diagnosis, some patients are going to have bad outcomes. Do we feel that we interacted appropriately with the physician, and followed criteria? We're comfortable with that. Ultimately, she was under the care of a physician."
At George Washington Memorial Park, the grass has not yet grown over Keri's grave. It lies under a tree, near those of her father and brother.
On May 19, Jen Anderson, Matt Mingle, and some other friends gathered around the freshly raked earth.
They ate some Dunkin' Donuts coffee rolls, Keri's favorite snack, and drank some coffee. Then they lit some candles, sheltering the flames from the wind as they sang "Happy Birthday."
Beneath the vase of flowers and the bouquets they had brought, Keri's friends left the cards and letters they had written.
"I still don't understand it," wrote one, wishing Keri peace on what would have been her 19th birthday.
Quietly, they stepped away.
The wind blew the candles out.
Did she have to die?
By Lindy Washburn
Staff Writer
When four teenagers committed suicide in a Bergenfield garage in 1987, they focused national attention on the escalating rate of teen suicide.
But the rash of copycat suicides in the aftermath of the Bergenfield deaths led to something else: a muting of media coverage for fear of more imitators.
The fact is, suicide is now the third-ranking cause of death among teenagers nationwide. It accounts for more deaths among people ages 15 to 24 than all natural causes combined. From 1980 to 1996, the rate of suicide among people 15 to 19 years old increased by 14 percent. It doubled among 10- to 14-year-olds.
"Twenty percent of teens have thought about suicide in the last 12 months," said Dr. David Shaffer, president of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and chairman of the psychiatry department at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons.
New Jersey students match the national average, according to the most recent survey of risk-taking behavior conducted by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 1999.
But the rate of suicide among young people in New Jersey, as elsewhere, has declined, for reasons that are not understood, said Celeste Andriot Wood, assistant commissioner for family health at the state Department of Health. Some mental health experts credit the use of new anti-depressive drugs with the downward shift.
Although suicide is the No. 3 cause of death among those 15 to 24 years old, they have done so less frequently: from 88 cases in 1995, to 69 in 1996, to 59 in 1997, Wood said.
Overall, New Jersey recorded the second-lowest suicide rate in the nation for 1996 and 1997, the two most recent years for which statistics are available.
Wood could not explain why New Jersey's rate was comparatively low, but said efforts continue nonetheless to reduce it. These include participation in a regional conference funded by the CDC this month in Massachusetts, at which participating state teams are to develop state suicide-prevention plans.
The conference is one outgrowth of an initiative by U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher, who announced shortly after his 1998 appointment that he considered suicide a major public health problem. "We must promote public awareness that suicides are preventable," he said, as he issued a "Call to Action to Prevent Suicide."
Girls are more likely to attempt suicide, but boys more likely to succeed. The most common method is a gun. Keri Sohlman, the Saddle Brook teenager who killed herself in January, was atypical in both her gender and her method -- a jump from a high place.
But many more more teenagers attempt suicide than succeed at it. Some studies say there are 100 to 200 attempts among young people for each suicide. And it is extremely difficult to predict which suicide attempters will actually kill themselves, experts say. A continuing retrospective study interviews therapists and analyzes cases in which a suicide victim had been in treatment.
The teenagers at greatest risk for suicide, according to Shaffer and others at Columbia University, report at least one of the following factors: a record of previous attempts, current thoughts about suicide, depression, or abuse of drugs and alcohol.
Each of the risk factors is something that can be addressed, mental-health experts say. Depression, for example, is considered highly treatable, through medication, psychotherapy, and electroshock treatments, these experts say.
Suicide affects not only those whose lives it claims. Each of the 32,000 suicides a year in the United States leaves a trail of emotionally wounded family members and friends, totaling hundreds of thousands of people. Their care is also an issue.
Researchers have reported a fourfold increased risk for suicidal behavior among immediate relatives of suicide victims. Dr. David A. Brent, who studied suicides among family members in Pittsburgh, also reported a higher risk for substance abuse and depression. One theory suggests that this may result from a possible genetic connection to the metabolism of serotonin, a neurotransmitter in the brain associated with mood.
But Brent stresses that the increased risk does not mean that suicide is inevitable. If anything, it should make professionals more alert to the signs of vulnerability so that they can intervene to prevent suicide, he said.
In other words, the suicide of Keri Sohlman's older brother identified her as a high-risk teenager and should have led professionals to exercise even greater vigilance in her care. Suicide need not have been her destiny.
Ridge Marching Band 2005
I'd really like to get a copy of the DVD from '05. Can anybody help with that?
Bernards Twp BOE Litigation (not me)
It seems the Bernards Township Board of Education has some other legal issues ongoing right now.
From today's Star Ledger:
Education board sued over contract
An engineering company is suing the Bernards Township Board of Education, claiming the board awarded a contract to another cmpany despite knowing about a conflict of interest.
In November 2006, DeSesa Engineering, of Livingston, was among the bidders on a project to install heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems at Ridge High School. According to court papers filed Tuesday, bidders were required to utilize another company, Greenlight Controls of Warren, as a service company.
According to the lawsuit, the lowest bidder on the project was rejected because it did not incorporate Greenlight Controls. The project was awarded to the second-highest bidder, Mechanical Degrees, of Stirling, which is also named in the lawsuit.
What was not revealed during the bidding process, the lawsuit claims, was the president of Mechanical Degrees, Raymond Negele, of Morristown, is also vice president of Greenlight Controls, owning 50 percent of each business.
On Jan. 2, DeSesa wrote to the Bernards school board alerting it to the alleged conflict and requesting the board invalidate its contract with Mechanical Engineering in favor of DeSesa, whose $4.1 million bid was next in line.
In subsequent correspondence, the board "failed to address the substantitve issues," but "for the first time, admit(ted) to the commonality of ownership between Mechanical Degrees and Greenlight Controls," court papers said. On Jan. 12, the board indicated it would not rescind its contract with Mechanical Degrees, the lawsuit said.
In failing to rescind the contract, DeSesa claims, the board violated the Public Schools Contracts Law. The commonality of ownership and failure to disclose it "undermines the bidding process as it presents the opportunity for fraud and dishonesty," the lawsuit claims.
From today's Star Ledger:
Education board sued over contract
An engineering company is suing the Bernards Township Board of Education, claiming the board awarded a contract to another cmpany despite knowing about a conflict of interest.
In November 2006, DeSesa Engineering, of Livingston, was among the bidders on a project to install heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems at Ridge High School. According to court papers filed Tuesday, bidders were required to utilize another company, Greenlight Controls of Warren, as a service company.
According to the lawsuit, the lowest bidder on the project was rejected because it did not incorporate Greenlight Controls. The project was awarded to the second-highest bidder, Mechanical Degrees, of Stirling, which is also named in the lawsuit.
What was not revealed during the bidding process, the lawsuit claims, was the president of Mechanical Degrees, Raymond Negele, of Morristown, is also vice president of Greenlight Controls, owning 50 percent of each business.
On Jan. 2, DeSesa wrote to the Bernards school board alerting it to the alleged conflict and requesting the board invalidate its contract with Mechanical Engineering in favor of DeSesa, whose $4.1 million bid was next in line.
In subsequent correspondence, the board "failed to address the substantitve issues," but "for the first time, admit(ted) to the commonality of ownership between Mechanical Degrees and Greenlight Controls," court papers said. On Jan. 12, the board indicated it would not rescind its contract with Mechanical Degrees, the lawsuit said.
In failing to rescind the contract, DeSesa claims, the board violated the Public Schools Contracts Law. The commonality of ownership and failure to disclose it "undermines the bidding process as it presents the opportunity for fraud and dishonesty," the lawsuit claims.
Quotes from 'The Last Kiss'
Feel free to comment on any of these quotes. It'd be interesting to turn this blog into more of a discussion board...
"What you feel only matters to you. It's what you do to the people you love. That's what matters. That's the only thing that counts."
"The world is moving so fast now that we start freaking long before our parents did because we don't ever stop to breathe anymore."
"I've been thinking about my life lately, and everything feels pretty planned out. There's no more surprises."
"Did you know that the institution of marriage was created when the average person lived to the age of 30?"
"People know the truth. They may not like it or want to know it, but they always know."
"What you feel only matters to you. It's what you do to the people you love. That's what matters. That's the only thing that counts."
"The world is moving so fast now that we start freaking long before our parents did because we don't ever stop to breathe anymore."
"I've been thinking about my life lately, and everything feels pretty planned out. There's no more surprises."
"Did you know that the institution of marriage was created when the average person lived to the age of 30?"
"People know the truth. They may not like it or want to know it, but they always know."
Sunday, January 21, 2007
People to People - European Heritage
This is a rough itinerary for my People to People trip in July/August. I could be traveling in the opposite direction and some of the activities will be changed, but it will be very similar.
Day 1 - Depart for Switzerland
Day 2 - Zurich, Switzerland
Welcome to Switzerland! Upon arrival in Zurich, your PTP delegation manager and coach driver will great you. To get a first impression of Europe, visit this beautiful city with your delegation.
Day 3 - Lucerne, Switzerland
In the morning go up into the majestic Alps of Switzerland, where you will ascend the Pilatus Mountain (6,994 feet) by gondola. At the top, enjoy a picnic with spectacular views of the Swiss Alps. After refreshing yourself, descend to Alpnachstad with the steepest cogwheel railway in the world. Later discover the medieval city of Lucerne, located in the heart of Switzerland. Stroll along the picturesque Kapellbrucke, the wooden bridge spanning Lake Lucerne, and have a look at the Lion Monument, dedicated to the Swiss soldiers who died in the French Revolution (1792).
Day 4 - Freiburg, Germany
Learn about the Swiss tradition of woodcarving. The Living Museum shows the world's largest collection of antique Swiss woodcarvings and an impressive display of antique music boxes and music machines from the last two centuries. A look at the workshiops for woodcarving, musicbox making and harp production gives an authentic impression of traditional arts and crafts. In the afternoon, travel to Berne the capital of Switzerland. Explore this medieval city, which is also a UNESCO World Heritage site, with your delegation manager. Later, continue your journey to Freiburg, on the edge of the legendary Scwarzwald, or Black Forest.
Day 5 - Freiburg, Germany
Today will be spent in the Black Forest, described by the Romans as an impenetrable wilderness. Take part in an official meeting in th town hall of Breitnau. A member of the city council will welcome you in the region of Freiburg and the Black Forest. To make your visit to a traditional German farm unforgettable, you will be competing in our Farm Olympics! Test your skills against your fellow delegates in bowling, cow milking, cream whipping and many other outrageous activities. Attend a cuckoo clock workship and find out about this local craft, perhaps you will learn some of its secrets!
Day 6-8 - Home Stay, Germany
Take part in a community service project - a great People to People opportunity! Lend a hand with an environmental project at a local river. In the afternoon, you will meet your home stay family and get to experience life in Europe. Be ready to try new things!
Day 9 - Heidelberg, Germany
Say goodbye to your home stay family and rejoin your delegation. Explore the beautiful city of Heidelberg, a picturesque old town with its historic streets and buildings. The city is a vibrant mixture of tradition and modernity. In the past, it has been a centre for both science and the arts and today this tradition is carried on with many research centers located in or around the city. Heidelberg not only boasts a medieval castle, but it also is home to one of Europe's oldest educational institutes, the University of Heidelberg.
Day 10 - Koblenz, Germany
Today, depart for Rudesheim, where you will enjoy a cruise on the Rhine River. Linked by several canals and other rivers in western Europe, the Rhine is one of the most important waterways in Germany. Your cruise will lead you past many small castles and the famous Lorelei. After enjoying your dinner on the boat, you'll arrive at Koblenz where you'll spend the night.
Day 11 - Amsterdam, Netherlands
This morning, depart for The Netherlands. On your way, enjoy a city walk with your delegation through the beautiful town of Cologne. The Gothic cathedral St. Peter and Mary with its characteristic spires is Cologne's landmark. Did you know that it is the sepulchral church of the three Magi? After lunch in Cologne, continue your journey to Utrecht.
Day 12 - Amsterdam, Netherlands
Enjoy a full day in Amsterdam and its surroundings! In an educational presentation learn about a grup of eight people forced into hiding and their story portrayed through the diary of Anne Frank. See Anne Frank's house and read how she and her family hid from the Nazis for years during WWII. After lunch take in the views on a canal cruise and explore the city with your delegation. Afterwards, journey to the little town of Amstelveen wher you'll even get to see demonstrations of how cheese and wooden clogs are made! Have a rockin' and rollin' good time at the Hard Rock Cafe, amidst its fascinating collection of music memorabilia.
Day 13 - Bruges, Belgium
Even though Amsterdam is the capital city of The Netherlands, Den Haag (The Hague) is the seat of government and the reidence of the royal family. Enjoy the stately mansions and regal embassies as you stroll down the grand boulevards to the Peace Palace. See the International Court of Justice (only frmo the outside), the main judicial body of the United Nations. Founded in 1946, the World Court is where countries go to settle their disputes. En route to Bruges, view Kinderdijk, a famous 17th century Dutch heritage Windmill Park. There you will experience th Dutch lifestyle up close with a bike ride through the park. Learn how the Dutch have used windmills to pump water off the land.
Day 14 - Paris, France
Today, explore Bruges (Brugge in Flemish), one of Europe's most delightful cities, by horse and carriage! Known as the "Venice of the North," the ornate center of Bruges has changed very little in the last five hundred years. Meet a Belgian chocolate maker for an educational briefing. Perhaps the chocolate maker will let you sample some of the products! Journey on to Ypres (prounounced "eepr"), Belgium. This city was completely demolished during the First World War. In the 1920s, it was carefully and convincingly reconstructed to its original state. First, you will visit the Menin Gate. This memorial is inscribed with the names of the 55,000 soldiers in the memory of those who fought and died in WWI. For a glimpse into the horrors of WWI step into the "In Flanders Fields Museum." Opened in 1998, the museum is as devoted to the promotion of peace as it is to the remembrance of war. In the afternoon head off to Paris the "City of Lights."
Day 15 - Paris, France
Bonjour et bienvenue en France! Set out for an orientation of Paris, the city Ernest Hemingway called "a moveable feast," because "wherever you go for the rest of your life, Paris stays with you." Visit one of the most unforgettable places in Europe, Notre Dame Cathedral, which took two centuries to complete. Poitn Zero, the spot from which all road distances are measured in France, is found int he courtyard in front of Notre Dame. In the afternoon enjoy a guided exploration of one of the most important art collections in the world, the famous Musee du Louvre. Since it would take at least three weeks to see all the wonderful treasures held inside, you will visit only the principal parts of the mueum - including a look at Leonardo's masterpiece, Mona Lisa! Later stop in the historic Montmartre area, a haven for artists and writers before WWI. Marvel at the white Basilique du Sacre Coeur. Did you know that the dome is the second highest point in Paris?
Day 16 - Paris, France
For a dazzling view of the city, there is only one place to go up! Take the elevator to the top of the Eiffel Tower (889 feet), built for the 1889 World's Fair to commemorate the French Revolution. After that, climb aboard a bateaux, or riverboat, for a cruise along the Seine. Notre Dame Cathedral seen from the river is an unforgettable sight, but the impressive size and masterful art inside will leave you in awe. In the afternoon, explore the magnificent Chateau de Versailles. Built during the reign of Louis XIV, the Sun King, it was the seat of the royal court from 1682 to 1789, when the French Revolution put an end to the monarchy.
Day 17 - Overnight Ferry to England
Bid au revoir to Paris. Continue on to Omaha Beach. In the course of an educational meeting you will see the Normandy American Cemetery and the beaches where the Allied troops landed on D-Day in June 1944, bringing liberation of France. Head toward the Memorial Museum in Caen where you will learn about peace after World War II. Finally, leave France and catch the overnight ferry across the English Channel to Portsmouth.
Day 18 - London, England
On your way to London, visit Windsor Castle, one of three official residences of the Queen. The Castle is the largest inhabited castle in the world and the oldest in continuous occupation. The imposing towers and battlements of the Castle loom large from every approach to the town, creating one of the world's most spectacular skylines. Afterwards, attend an educational meeting with a member of the British parliament. This is a unique opportunity and a true honor for student ambassadors. Make sure you come prepared with some questions.
Day 19 - London, England
Set out this morning with your English guide for a discovery of the city's most historic sights. Take a ride on the London Eye, the largest Ferris wheel in the world (443 feet), for a fantastic panoramic view of London. See the colorful and musical Changing of the Guard ceremony at Buckingham Palace, the residence and office of Britain's monarchs since 1837. Visit the Tower of London, which now houses the stunning Crown Jewels. Just try to take your eyes off those dazzling gems! In times past, the Tower was used as a fortress, a royal residence, an armory, a treasury and a prison! This afternoon, look at Lord Nelson's Column, the focal point of famous Trafalgar Square. You'll also visit Leicester Square, and Piccadilly Circus, a central meeting place that is dominated by crowds and glittering neon lights. After dinner, enjoy one of Lond's most popular West End shows.
Day 20 - Depart for the USA
Day 1 - Depart for Switzerland
Day 2 - Zurich, Switzerland
Welcome to Switzerland! Upon arrival in Zurich, your PTP delegation manager and coach driver will great you. To get a first impression of Europe, visit this beautiful city with your delegation.
Day 3 - Lucerne, Switzerland
In the morning go up into the majestic Alps of Switzerland, where you will ascend the Pilatus Mountain (6,994 feet) by gondola. At the top, enjoy a picnic with spectacular views of the Swiss Alps. After refreshing yourself, descend to Alpnachstad with the steepest cogwheel railway in the world. Later discover the medieval city of Lucerne, located in the heart of Switzerland. Stroll along the picturesque Kapellbrucke, the wooden bridge spanning Lake Lucerne, and have a look at the Lion Monument, dedicated to the Swiss soldiers who died in the French Revolution (1792).
Day 4 - Freiburg, Germany
Learn about the Swiss tradition of woodcarving. The Living Museum shows the world's largest collection of antique Swiss woodcarvings and an impressive display of antique music boxes and music machines from the last two centuries. A look at the workshiops for woodcarving, musicbox making and harp production gives an authentic impression of traditional arts and crafts. In the afternoon, travel to Berne the capital of Switzerland. Explore this medieval city, which is also a UNESCO World Heritage site, with your delegation manager. Later, continue your journey to Freiburg, on the edge of the legendary Scwarzwald, or Black Forest.
Day 5 - Freiburg, Germany
Today will be spent in the Black Forest, described by the Romans as an impenetrable wilderness. Take part in an official meeting in th town hall of Breitnau. A member of the city council will welcome you in the region of Freiburg and the Black Forest. To make your visit to a traditional German farm unforgettable, you will be competing in our Farm Olympics! Test your skills against your fellow delegates in bowling, cow milking, cream whipping and many other outrageous activities. Attend a cuckoo clock workship and find out about this local craft, perhaps you will learn some of its secrets!
Day 6-8 - Home Stay, Germany
Take part in a community service project - a great People to People opportunity! Lend a hand with an environmental project at a local river. In the afternoon, you will meet your home stay family and get to experience life in Europe. Be ready to try new things!
Day 9 - Heidelberg, Germany
Say goodbye to your home stay family and rejoin your delegation. Explore the beautiful city of Heidelberg, a picturesque old town with its historic streets and buildings. The city is a vibrant mixture of tradition and modernity. In the past, it has been a centre for both science and the arts and today this tradition is carried on with many research centers located in or around the city. Heidelberg not only boasts a medieval castle, but it also is home to one of Europe's oldest educational institutes, the University of Heidelberg.
Day 10 - Koblenz, Germany
Today, depart for Rudesheim, where you will enjoy a cruise on the Rhine River. Linked by several canals and other rivers in western Europe, the Rhine is one of the most important waterways in Germany. Your cruise will lead you past many small castles and the famous Lorelei. After enjoying your dinner on the boat, you'll arrive at Koblenz where you'll spend the night.
Day 11 - Amsterdam, Netherlands
This morning, depart for The Netherlands. On your way, enjoy a city walk with your delegation through the beautiful town of Cologne. The Gothic cathedral St. Peter and Mary with its characteristic spires is Cologne's landmark. Did you know that it is the sepulchral church of the three Magi? After lunch in Cologne, continue your journey to Utrecht.
Day 12 - Amsterdam, Netherlands
Enjoy a full day in Amsterdam and its surroundings! In an educational presentation learn about a grup of eight people forced into hiding and their story portrayed through the diary of Anne Frank. See Anne Frank's house and read how she and her family hid from the Nazis for years during WWII. After lunch take in the views on a canal cruise and explore the city with your delegation. Afterwards, journey to the little town of Amstelveen wher you'll even get to see demonstrations of how cheese and wooden clogs are made! Have a rockin' and rollin' good time at the Hard Rock Cafe, amidst its fascinating collection of music memorabilia.
Day 13 - Bruges, Belgium
Even though Amsterdam is the capital city of The Netherlands, Den Haag (The Hague) is the seat of government and the reidence of the royal family. Enjoy the stately mansions and regal embassies as you stroll down the grand boulevards to the Peace Palace. See the International Court of Justice (only frmo the outside), the main judicial body of the United Nations. Founded in 1946, the World Court is where countries go to settle their disputes. En route to Bruges, view Kinderdijk, a famous 17th century Dutch heritage Windmill Park. There you will experience th Dutch lifestyle up close with a bike ride through the park. Learn how the Dutch have used windmills to pump water off the land.
Day 14 - Paris, France
Today, explore Bruges (Brugge in Flemish), one of Europe's most delightful cities, by horse and carriage! Known as the "Venice of the North," the ornate center of Bruges has changed very little in the last five hundred years. Meet a Belgian chocolate maker for an educational briefing. Perhaps the chocolate maker will let you sample some of the products! Journey on to Ypres (prounounced "eepr"), Belgium. This city was completely demolished during the First World War. In the 1920s, it was carefully and convincingly reconstructed to its original state. First, you will visit the Menin Gate. This memorial is inscribed with the names of the 55,000 soldiers in the memory of those who fought and died in WWI. For a glimpse into the horrors of WWI step into the "In Flanders Fields Museum." Opened in 1998, the museum is as devoted to the promotion of peace as it is to the remembrance of war. In the afternoon head off to Paris the "City of Lights."
Day 15 - Paris, France
Bonjour et bienvenue en France! Set out for an orientation of Paris, the city Ernest Hemingway called "a moveable feast," because "wherever you go for the rest of your life, Paris stays with you." Visit one of the most unforgettable places in Europe, Notre Dame Cathedral, which took two centuries to complete. Poitn Zero, the spot from which all road distances are measured in France, is found int he courtyard in front of Notre Dame. In the afternoon enjoy a guided exploration of one of the most important art collections in the world, the famous Musee du Louvre. Since it would take at least three weeks to see all the wonderful treasures held inside, you will visit only the principal parts of the mueum - including a look at Leonardo's masterpiece, Mona Lisa! Later stop in the historic Montmartre area, a haven for artists and writers before WWI. Marvel at the white Basilique du Sacre Coeur. Did you know that the dome is the second highest point in Paris?
Day 16 - Paris, France
For a dazzling view of the city, there is only one place to go up! Take the elevator to the top of the Eiffel Tower (889 feet), built for the 1889 World's Fair to commemorate the French Revolution. After that, climb aboard a bateaux, or riverboat, for a cruise along the Seine. Notre Dame Cathedral seen from the river is an unforgettable sight, but the impressive size and masterful art inside will leave you in awe. In the afternoon, explore the magnificent Chateau de Versailles. Built during the reign of Louis XIV, the Sun King, it was the seat of the royal court from 1682 to 1789, when the French Revolution put an end to the monarchy.
Day 17 - Overnight Ferry to England
Bid au revoir to Paris. Continue on to Omaha Beach. In the course of an educational meeting you will see the Normandy American Cemetery and the beaches where the Allied troops landed on D-Day in June 1944, bringing liberation of France. Head toward the Memorial Museum in Caen where you will learn about peace after World War II. Finally, leave France and catch the overnight ferry across the English Channel to Portsmouth.
Day 18 - London, England
On your way to London, visit Windsor Castle, one of three official residences of the Queen. The Castle is the largest inhabited castle in the world and the oldest in continuous occupation. The imposing towers and battlements of the Castle loom large from every approach to the town, creating one of the world's most spectacular skylines. Afterwards, attend an educational meeting with a member of the British parliament. This is a unique opportunity and a true honor for student ambassadors. Make sure you come prepared with some questions.
Day 19 - London, England
Set out this morning with your English guide for a discovery of the city's most historic sights. Take a ride on the London Eye, the largest Ferris wheel in the world (443 feet), for a fantastic panoramic view of London. See the colorful and musical Changing of the Guard ceremony at Buckingham Palace, the residence and office of Britain's monarchs since 1837. Visit the Tower of London, which now houses the stunning Crown Jewels. Just try to take your eyes off those dazzling gems! In times past, the Tower was used as a fortress, a royal residence, an armory, a treasury and a prison! This afternoon, look at Lord Nelson's Column, the focal point of famous Trafalgar Square. You'll also visit Leicester Square, and Piccadilly Circus, a central meeting place that is dominated by crowds and glittering neon lights. After dinner, enjoy one of Lond's most popular West End shows.
Day 20 - Depart for the USA
Friday, January 19, 2007
American School in Japan
I hinted at having sent my resume to a school in Japan in my year-end wrap-up a couple weeks ago. That school, the American School in Japan (ASIJ), seems pretty amazing. Feel free to visit the school's website for more info.
The school is located just outside of the main section of Tokyo, not a bad train ride into the center of the city. Teaching is done entirely in English and students come from 50+ countries around the world. The yearly salary is higher than my current salary in the US and they provide a housing stipend and pay all moving expenses to get there and back at the end of the contract term (two years) so financially, it's a great deal.
I received an e-mail back a week or so ago letting me know they received all my paperwork and would get back to me if they wanted to pursue me for employment. Tonight I checked the job vacancy section and high school social studies is no longer listed so I assume they've filled the position. It's kind of disappointing because it seemed like an exciting opportunity, but I'm glad I took a shot and sent out the resume. I loved Japan and would love to live there for awhile.
The school is located just outside of the main section of Tokyo, not a bad train ride into the center of the city. Teaching is done entirely in English and students come from 50+ countries around the world. The yearly salary is higher than my current salary in the US and they provide a housing stipend and pay all moving expenses to get there and back at the end of the contract term (two years) so financially, it's a great deal.
I received an e-mail back a week or so ago letting me know they received all my paperwork and would get back to me if they wanted to pursue me for employment. Tonight I checked the job vacancy section and high school social studies is no longer listed so I assume they've filled the position. It's kind of disappointing because it seemed like an exciting opportunity, but I'm glad I took a shot and sent out the resume. I loved Japan and would love to live there for awhile.
Article: "Another day has Muslims upset about 24"
The following Associated Press article ran nationally today. My comments are at the bottom.
Two years ago, Muslim groups protested when the plot of the hit Fox drama ’24’ cast Islamic terrorists as the villains who launched a stolen nuclear missile in an attack on America.
Now, after a one-year respite during which Russian separatists played the bad guys on the critically acclaimed series, Muslims are back in the evil spotlight. Unlike last time, when agent Jack Bauer saved the day, the terrorists this time have already succeeded in detonating a nuclear bomb in a Los Angeles suburb.
Being portrayed again as the heartless wrongdoers has drawn renewed protests from Muslim groups, including one that had a meeting with Fox executives two years ago over the issue.
"The overwhelming impression you get is fear and hatred for Muslims,” said Rabiah Ahmed, a spokeswoman for the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations. She said Thursday she was distressed by this season’s premiere. ”After watching that show, I was afraid to go to the grocery store because I wasn’t sure the person next to me would be able to differentiate between fiction and reality.”
She said the group had a conference call Wednesday with Fox executives to protest the current plot line and request more positive portrayals of Muslims on the show, but was not promised anything.
After a January 2005 meeting with CAIR, Fox aired a commercial in which the show’s star, Kiefer Sutherland, urged viewers to keep in mind that the show’s villains are not representative of all Muslims.
In a written statement issued late Wednesday night, the network said it has not singled out any ethnic or religious group for blame in creating its characters.
"24 is a heightened drama about anti-terrorism,” the statement read. ”After five seasons, the audience clearly understands this, and realizes that any individual, family, or group (ethnic or otherwise) that engages in violence is not meant to be typical.
"Over the past several seasons, the villains have included shadowy Anglo businessmen, Baltic Europeans, Germans, Russians, Islamic fundamentalists, and even the (Anglo-American) president of the United States,” the network said. ”The show has made a concerted effort to show ethnic, religious and political groups as multidimensional, and political issues are debated from multiple viewpoints.”
The current season began with Muslim terrorists waging an 11-week campaign of suicide bombings across America, culminating in the detonation of a suitcase-sized nuclear bomb in Valencia, Calif., about 26 miles north of Los Angeles. Estimated death toll: 12,000.
Watching the show’s characters talk about detonating a nuclear weapon a few blocks from where she works unnerved Sireen Sawaf, an official with the Los Angeles-based Muslim Public Affairs Council, and a self-described ”huge ’24’ fan.”
"It’s a great show, and I do realize it’s a multidimensional show that portrays extreme situations,” she said. ”They have gone out of their way to have non-Muslim terror cells.
Sohail Mohammed, a New Jersey immigration lawyer who represented scores of detainees caught up in the post Sept. 11, 2001 dragnet, watched the episode depicting the nuclear attack with an Associated Press reporter.
"I was shocked,” he said. ”Somewhere, some lunatic out there watching this will do something to an innocent American Muslim because he believes what he saw on TV.”
Engy Abdelkader, a member of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee from Howell, N.J., launched a campaign Wednesday to encourage Muslims offended by the program to complain to Fox.
"I found the portrayal of American Muslims to be pretty horrendous,” she said. ”It was denigrating from beginning to end. This is one of the most popular programs on television today. It’s pretty distressing.”
Concerns about Muslims’ civil rights, detention of terror suspects in Guantanamo-like holding centers, and stereotyping are given vastly expanded treatment on ’24’ this year. In one exchange, the show depicts the president’s national security adviser challenging the White House chief of staff over the detention of Muslims without criminal charges.
"Right now the American Muslim community is our greatest asset,” the security adviser says. "They have provided law enforcement with hundreds of tips, and not a single member of that community has been implicated in these attacks.”
"So far,” the chief of staff responds.
Go back and reread the bolded paragraph. This is the sixth season of '24' and only the second season featuring Muslim terrorists. What's the reality of our world? How concerned are we about terrorist attacks from shadowy Anglo businessmen, Russians, Baltic Europeans and Germans?
I actually have an opposite reaction to the one in this article. I think it is a good thing for '24' to tackle these topics. It brings the debate about topics like holding suspected terrorists without charges in detention centers to the general public. People who may not follow this type of issue on their own may think twice about it after seeing the depiction in such a popular television show.
Even if the show was covering the issues irresponsibly, I still would not support any type of censorship of it. Overly sanitized television, radio, movies, books, etc. due to PC does not improve the social and moral lives of Americans, in my opinion. Instead, such actions distract us from meaningful debate and conversation about the underlying problems in society.
Monday, January 15, 2007
Spirit of Newark/New Jersey Drum & Bugle Corps
As mentioned a couple months ago, I accepted the position of Visual Caption Head for the Spirit of Newark/New Jersey Drum and Bugle Corps, a DCI division III corps.
My responsibilities with the corps include developing a marching style, implementing a technique training program, overseeing the instruction of the drill and running visual rehearsals. Two of the other three caption heads are also new to the corps so there is some opportunity for a new direction for this corps, which has never made finals.
We've had two rehearsals, the most recent being this past Saturday. Turnout has been strong with 20-30 guard and 20 percussion. The brass section has been the weakest, both in terms of numbers and ability, so far. That's where the most attention needs to be paid in order for the corps to succeed, in my opinion.
There were two Ridge Marching Band brass players that contacted me in August for information about marching with Jersey Surf. If either of those students happen to be reading this (or any other marching band members interested), it'd be great to have you come check out the next Spirit rehearsal on January 27. It's from 12-8pm at St. Lucy's in Newark. There's no obligation to come to one rehearsal (other than the $20 for food and instruction). Information can be found at www.spiritofnewark.org or by contacting me directly.
For the guard members out there, Rick is going to be instructing Spirit as well, although he won't be at the 1/27 rehearsal due to other obligations.
Woodwind players - ever think about playing a brass instrument? Many of the members of Spirit are from Newark and Newark public schools provide little to no instrumental music education. Therefore, you would be able to pick up an instrument and learn alongside everyone else.
Brass players - You will be one of the top performers in the ensemble at your first rehearsal if you've been studying even just in school for a few years. Your leadership and example would go a long way toward developing the rest of the hornline.
Okay - enough about Spirit. You can reach me through this blog if you want more info.
My responsibilities with the corps include developing a marching style, implementing a technique training program, overseeing the instruction of the drill and running visual rehearsals. Two of the other three caption heads are also new to the corps so there is some opportunity for a new direction for this corps, which has never made finals.
We've had two rehearsals, the most recent being this past Saturday. Turnout has been strong with 20-30 guard and 20 percussion. The brass section has been the weakest, both in terms of numbers and ability, so far. That's where the most attention needs to be paid in order for the corps to succeed, in my opinion.
There were two Ridge Marching Band brass players that contacted me in August for information about marching with Jersey Surf. If either of those students happen to be reading this (or any other marching band members interested), it'd be great to have you come check out the next Spirit rehearsal on January 27. It's from 12-8pm at St. Lucy's in Newark. There's no obligation to come to one rehearsal (other than the $20 for food and instruction). Information can be found at www.spiritofnewark.org or by contacting me directly.
For the guard members out there, Rick is going to be instructing Spirit as well, although he won't be at the 1/27 rehearsal due to other obligations.
Woodwind players - ever think about playing a brass instrument? Many of the members of Spirit are from Newark and Newark public schools provide little to no instrumental music education. Therefore, you would be able to pick up an instrument and learn alongside everyone else.
Brass players - You will be one of the top performers in the ensemble at your first rehearsal if you've been studying even just in school for a few years. Your leadership and example would go a long way toward developing the rest of the hornline.
Okay - enough about Spirit. You can reach me through this blog if you want more info.
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
A Portrait of Insanity
From the January issue of NEA Today:
"After 28 years of teaching, and just as many spectacular reviews, a North Dallas art teacher might be out of a job because she took her fifth-graders on a field trip to, of all places, an art museum! That museum, the Dallas Museum of Art, the host of such events as 'Van Gogh Family Day,' is home to a handful of nude statues, including a 2,300-year-old Greek funerary relief.
"Although Sydney McGee's principal gave formal approval to her plans, and McGee was joined on the outing by four other teachers, a dozen parents, and a museum docent, her principal responded to a parent's complaint about the nude statuary by suspending McGee and immediately interviewing for her replacement. The Texas State Tteachers Association and its legal team sprang into action on McGee's behalf and won a rare buyout for McGee in November, requiring the district to pay her through May 2007."
I don't really know what to say except that education is a crazy world to live in.
"After 28 years of teaching, and just as many spectacular reviews, a North Dallas art teacher might be out of a job because she took her fifth-graders on a field trip to, of all places, an art museum! That museum, the Dallas Museum of Art, the host of such events as 'Van Gogh Family Day,' is home to a handful of nude statues, including a 2,300-year-old Greek funerary relief.
"Although Sydney McGee's principal gave formal approval to her plans, and McGee was joined on the outing by four other teachers, a dozen parents, and a museum docent, her principal responded to a parent's complaint about the nude statuary by suspending McGee and immediately interviewing for her replacement. The Texas State Tteachers Association and its legal team sprang into action on McGee's behalf and won a rare buyout for McGee in November, requiring the district to pay her through May 2007."
I don't really know what to say except that education is a crazy world to live in.
School Update
Something happened at the Board meeting Monday night. My lawyer is waiting for a call from key people to find out the exact details. I don't want to err in my prediction because I really don't know what's going to happen, but my lawyer is angry at the direction things seem to be going, not because it's bad for me but because it shows an odd disregard by the Board for the voice of the community and my record in the district.
Sunday, January 07, 2007
Hot Canned Coffee Coming to the US?
There was an article in today's Star Ledger on the topic of pre-packaged coffee products. I wondered why, when I was in Japan, I could buy good tasting hot coffee in vending machines while in the US vending machine coffee, when available, is terrible.
The pertinent info from the article:
"The companies (Starbucks and Coke) also are preparing to roll out a long-sought hot vending machine, which will dispense nine-ounce cans of Starbucks coffee in recyclable steel cans with insulated labels."
"Officials also point to Japan, where Coke's Georgia Coffee brand dominates a market 12 times larger than in the United States..."
"'The American consumer has become more like the Japanese consumer in that they want to try different things. They like experimenting..."
Info on coffee vending and picture of me enjoying a can while in Japan
Full Article
The pertinent info from the article:
"The companies (Starbucks and Coke) also are preparing to roll out a long-sought hot vending machine, which will dispense nine-ounce cans of Starbucks coffee in recyclable steel cans with insulated labels."
"Officials also point to Japan, where Coke's Georgia Coffee brand dominates a market 12 times larger than in the United States..."
"'The American consumer has become more like the Japanese consumer in that they want to try different things. They like experimenting..."
Info on coffee vending and picture of me enjoying a can while in Japan
Full Article
Friday, January 05, 2007
Diner Dash 19-21
This is it...the final three counties!
The Malibu Diner Restaurant
Tick-Tock Diner
Next we headed toward Bloomfield Avenue for our final diner stop. The first attempt, The White Circle, was a deserted building. Thanks to Juli's step-father, we eventually made it to a good last stop.
This was a large, restaurant style diner with extensive dessert cases, just what we were looking for.
Ali's roommate Juli joined us for Wednesday's adventures. We headed to West New York and found that the diner we were looking for was now a Spanish restaurant. So then we started driving toward Jersey City where Juli knew of the area.
The Malibu Diner Restaurant259 14th Street
Hoboken
County: Hudson
I was very unhappy with the service here. We sat for nearly 10 minutes before even having our drink order taken. Juli's order came with the wrong type of cheese as well.
I had the American panini lunch special ($5.50). This was a grilled panini with bacon, lettuce, tomato and cheese. It came with soup (Yankee bean) and I also had coffee ($0.50). Ali had the Oriental sesame salad with chicken which came with soup (Yankee bean) and she had a diet coke. Alex had the deluxe veggie burger with fries. Juli had disco fries (fries with gravy and cheese).
My Rating: Atmosphere - 6, Food - 6
Ali's Rating: Atmosphere - 6, Food - 6
Alex's Rating: Atmosphere - 6, Food - 7
Juli's Rating: Atmosphere - 7, Food - 6
Next we headed to Clifton's Sports Authority so Ali could buy a basketball. Then we played horse at the courts across from my high school in Saddle Brook. We concluded our inter-diner time with a visit to Juli's stepfather's house in Montclair.
Tick-Tock DinerRoute 3 West
Clifton
County: Passaic
This was the reason Juli joined us today; she was excited to visit Tick-Tock. My sister Allie and brother-in-law Matt joined us for the final two diners as well.
I had spinach ravioli with garlic sauce and a salad. I was unhappy that I had to wait for my salad while everyone else enjoyed their soup and the portion size of the ravioli was pretty small by diner standards as well. Ali had the smoked turkey mango low-carb wrap with mozzarella cheese which was served with tri-colored tortilla chips ($8.25). She and Juli split a cup of matzo ball soup ($1.75). Juli had a French dip sandwich ($8.25). Alex had penne ala vodka ($11.25) which came with soup (chicken noodle). He was very unhappy with the overly creamy and cheesy version of vodka sauce. Allie had a chicken caesar wrap, soup (chicken noodle) and a coke. Matt had the Italian wrap with french fries, soup (matzo ball) and a diet coke.
This was the first diner in a while that served us a basket of rolls. The waiter was a bit slow, in bringing my food and in bringing a spoon for Ali and Juli after they ordered and reminded him they were sharing the soup.
My Rating: Atmosphere - 7, Food - 7
Ali's Rating: Atmosphere - 7, Food - 7
Alex's Rating: Atmosphere - 7, Food - 5
Juli's Rating: Atmosphere - 7, Food - 8
Allie's Rating: Atmosphere - 5, Food - 5
Matt's Rating: Atmosphere - 6, Food - 5
Next we headed toward Bloomfield Avenue for our final diner stop. The first attempt, The White Circle, was a deserted building. Thanks to Juli's step-father, we eventually made it to a good last stop.Pilgrim Restaurant Diner
Route 23
Cedar Grove
County: Essex
This was a large, restaurant style diner with extensive dessert cases, just what we were looking for.I had chocolate layer cake and coffee. Ali had an elephant ear and coffee. Alex had oreo pie with ice cream (they were out of vanilla ice cream so he ended up eating it plain). Juli had German chocolate cake with a diet coke. Allie had chocolate cake with coffee. Matt had an oreo pie with coffee.
My Rating: Atmosphere - 8, Food - 8
Ali's Rating: Atmosphere - 8, Food - 7
Alex's Rating: Atmosphere - 9, Food - 7
Juli's Rating: Atmosphere - 8, Food - 6
Allie's Rating: Atmosphere - 6, Food - 7
Matt's Rating: Atmosphere - 6, Food - 6
Whew! The Diner Dash is officially over. There may be a final wrap-up entry with conclusion thoughts and state-wide ratings. There may be future developments from this project as well. We'll see.
For those that have followed all the way since Diner #1, The Jersey Diner in Somerset County, thanks. I'm not sure that this could have been that interesting for you, but it was fun for us.
Diner Dash 18 & 18.5
On Tuesday, Ali, Alex and I headed up north with a plan to take care of Bergen and Hudson counties.
The Suburban Diner Restaurant
Arlington Diner
The Suburban Diner RestaurantRoute 17 North
Paramus
County: Bergen
This was much more a restaurant than a diner. The specials were not all that special, offering little in addition to the regular meal and the prices were higher than most diners we'd visited.
I ordered the cheeseburger deluxe ($6.50) which came with fries but not even lettuce and tomato for the burger. I also had a diet coke ($1.60). Ali had a portobella wrap ($9.75) which came with an awesome looking Greek salad and coffee ($1.10). Alex had chicken cavatelli dinner ($13.25) which came with soup (chicken noodle).
My Rating: Atmosphere - 8, Food - 6
Ali's Rating: Atmosphere - 6, Food - 9
Alex's Rating: Atmosphere - 7, Food - 9
We then detoured to the Garden State Plaza to show Alex a large American mall. He was excited to see that it was a Westfield mall meaning the management company was Australian. We even found a map that listed all their locations including the many in his area of Sydney. I was pretty surprised by the many changes to the Plaza since the last time I was there including a new movie theater.
Our goal was to find a place in Harrison or Kearny for dessert. That didn't go so well.
We did finally find a diner that was just before a "Welcome to Bergen County" sign and we took a shot that it was on the Hudson County side of that line. It wasn't. We stayed anyway.
Arlington Diner1 River Road
North Arlington
County: Bergen
A very unhappy-looking waiter told us what ever item in the dessert case was; it wasn't until he sat down in our booth to tally up the bill that he seemed like maybe the world wasn't coming to an end.
I had black forest cake ($2.95) and coffee ($1.00). Ali and Alex both had a hot brownie sundae with vanilla ice cream ($4.25 each).
Alex stated that the sundae was "quantity over quality." The serving size was impressive but the food was average.
My Rating: Atmosphere - 7, Food - 7
Ali's Rating: Atmosphere - 7, Food - 7
Alex's Rating: Atmosphere - 6, Food - 7
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