Spruce Street Park in Wilkes-Barre seriously needs sprucing up!

Tracks and Tapes and Thoughts and Things. » Blog Archive » And you expect us to let our kids to play here?
We pay through the nose on property tax, and we pay through the nose on City Income tax. They are always looking for ways to tax us further, but what do we get in the way of parks?
I give you the Spruce street park.

WARNING: Photos of the park include defacement of park property with foul language.

I thought the "NO GOLFING" sign was interesting. Why would anybody bother golfing in that park when there's a dozen pristinely manicured golf courses in the area?
Which just goes to show where priorities are in the community among those in power.

posted by Chloe | Friday 13 May 2005 6:29 PM
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Lyric Consort Flower Songs Concert

The Lyric Consort

The perfect musical welcome to the beauties of summer!

When: Saturday, April 16th @ 8:00p.m.
Where: St. Stephen's Episcopal Pro Cathedral, South Franklin St. in Wilkes-Barre
Cost: $10

When: Sunday, April 17th, 2005 @ 3:00p.m.
Where: St. Luke's Episcopal Church, Wyoming Ave. in Scranton
Cost: $10

Song cycles-including Morten Lauridsen's Les Chansons de Roses, Gerald Finzi's Seven Poems of Robert Bridges, and the Flower Songs of Benjamin Britten and Eric Whitacre artfully mix with a variety of smaller art song perennials to create a musical bouquet worthy of the finest table.

posted by Chloe | Tuesday 12 April 2005 1:08 AM
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The City Paper of Philly cites NEPA case of gay domestic violence

NEPA's Rainbow Alliance board member Stacy Hawkins was interviewed for this story that was the cover story for the Philadelphia City Paper. Michael Pierson, the late activist from Northeastern Pennsylvania, is mentioned, along with the organization founded in his memory.

The City Paper (Philadelphia) - Uncivil Unions
"It defies all the stereotypes"
What does same-sex abuse look like? It's a question primarily for law enforcement, expected to recognize what's happening on arrival at a domestic dispute. And without the traditional assumption that the man present is the aggressor, things get confused.
Mike Pierson was a star. A passionate outreach activist in Wilkes-Barre, he would tirelessly duck into bars to talk to men about HIV infection rates. Two years after his death, his friends in Luzerne County still talk affectionately about the impact of his work. Stacy Hawkins, a former chair of the Pennsylvania Lesbian Caucus, knew Pierson socially, in Northeastern Pennsylvania's gay scene, which she says "isn't what you'd call happening."
In January 2003, police responded to a call from Kenneth Stephens Jr., Pierson's partner. They found Stephens with a minor stab wound, which he claimed to have suffered in a domestic dispute. The night of the incident, he and Pierson had been driving home during a heavy blizzard. There had been a tussle, he said; he had been stabbed and Pierson had run off. Stephens was young — 21 to Pierson's 40 — and slightly built. Police followed his advice to search for Pierson outside Pennsylvania.
However, Hawkins remembers that "Mike's friends knew something was just wrong." They called on the police to search the area of road where the altercation had occurred, at the edge of Glenmaura National Golf Course in Moosic. But the snowdrifts were thick and, as Hawkins puts it, police "believed they already had the victim." It wasn't until the snow melted two months later that Pierson's body, bearing a fatal stab wound, was discovered near the 16th hole.
"It defies all the stereotypes, you know?" Hawkins says. Police "are used to assuming that the stronger partner has the power, and that's not always the case. Even in lesbian couples, the idea of butch partners as stronger than femme isn't true."
In Pierson's case, the judgment call made by the police, based on a traditional reading of the situation, didn't fit.

Photo of Michael Pierson at the 2001 AIDS Walk in Wilkes-Barre:
Watermelon Punch - Photo Album - 23 Sep 2001 - Mike Pierson at AIDS Walk picnic in Wilkes-Barre
Photo of Michael Pierson's 'place setting' at a Domestic Violence Awareness Vigil:
Watermelon Punch - Photo Album - 16 Oct 2003 - Mike Pierson's 'Empty Place at the Table' @ Domestic Violence Awareness Vigil
Photo of Stacy Hawkins speaking at a Domestic Violence Awareness Vigil:
Watermelon Punch - Photo Album - 16 Oct 2003 - Stacy Hawkins speaks @ Domestic Violence Awareness Vigil

posted by Chloe | Thursday 24 March 2005 5:24 PM
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Lyric Consort concert


The Lyric Consort
"The Lyric Consort is a professional a cappella vocal ensemble based in Northeast Pennsylvania."

I highly recommend attending their concerts. Their music is beautiful. The first time I heard them I actually was brought to tears!

They have another concert in Scranton on Saturday:

A Musical Meditation for Lent
From Palestrina's first mass setting on the Gregorian Chant, Ecce Sacerdos Magnus and J. S. Bach's monumental motet on the Lutheran chorale, Jesu, meine Freude, to the echo of medieval chant and polyphony in Arvo Pärt's Berliner Messe, Cantate Domino, and Bogoróditse Djévo, western composers have regularly drawn upon the ancient to build the new. The Consort will be joined in this program by guest artist Mark Laubach, accompanying Pärt's Messe and sharing solo organ works by the contemporary Estonian master.

Saturday Evening, March 19, 2005 at 8:00 p.m. @ St. Peter's Cathedral, Scranton

Their concert schedule including April's concerts:
The Lyric Consort - Concerts

Photos taken for their 10th Anniversary:
NEPAphotoBlog - 05 Jun 2004 | The Lyric Consort in Scranton
NEPAphotoBlog - 22 May 2004 | The Lyric Consort

And some videos (poor sound quality unfortunately):
Watermelon Punch - 22 May 2004 - The Lyric Consort 10th Anniversary
Watermelon Punch - 03 Jul 2004 - The Lyric Consort @ Barnes & Noble

posted by Chloe | Monday 14 March 2005 2:35 PM
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Parents of Murdered Children, NEPA Chapter

Northeastern Pennsylvania Chapter of the National Organization of Parents of Murdered Children holds meetings every first Tuesday of the month at the former Nesbitt Hospital on Wyoming Avenue in Kingston. (Excluding holidays and snow days)

POMC.com - The National Organization of Parents Of Murdered Children
For the families and friends of those who have died by violence. (POMC)
POMC Chapters hold monthly meetings, provide support, advocacy, and court accompaniment. Many POMC Chapters publish their own newsletters and have designed and implemented special programs to meet the needs of survivors in their area.

The local chapter can be reached by:
Phone: 570 255 POMC (570 255 7662)
E-mail: jamie1115@aol.com

The local chapter was started by the mother of Jamie Walling who, at age 22, died of homicide in the Poconos in 2000.

posted by Chloe | Thursday 03 March 2005 3:22 AM
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Tales from the Triple Crown: Misadventures in America's Backcountry

a talk by Mike Benedetti

Drug addiction in Pennsylvania is NOT 'news'


My mother saw this in her local newspaper in Oregon:

The Oregonian - East Coast's horror stories reflect new map of meth
"I think in a few years, it will be all across the state of Pennsylvania," Evans said. "I know of nothing that will keep it from being all across the Northeast."
A decade after methamphetamine began tearing through Oregon and Western states, the cheap and powerful drug has exploded across the Midwest, its inexorable march finally reaching the Atlantic. Police who didn't know what the drug was just a few years ago are painfully aware of its devastating presence now.

This reminds me of the stories lately about the doctors who've been busted this past autumn:

Scranton Times Tribune - Doctor Facing More Charges
The state filed additional charges Wednesday against West Pittston physician Dr. Harry Alexanderian and there may be more coming. The state attorney general's office still is looking into whether there is a connection between Dr. Alexanderian and some of the drug overdose deaths that have occurred in the region, Attorney General spokesman Nils Frederiksen said.

And the used music store owner who was busted this past summer:

xradiograph - interference patterns - I'm presuming it will be closed for a while
Peter Kameroski, 51, of 11032 Valley View Drive, Clarks Summit, was charged Tuesday with multiple drug counts stemming from the seizure above the Electric Mindshaft record store at 227 Lackawanna Ave.

I can't help but wonder if people are really this clueless???
As far back in 1991 I knew at least a couple of people who had been in drug & alcohol rehabs because of addiction to crystal meth anphetimines. And I heard about Doctor Alexandarian selling controlled addictive prescription drugs to people willy-nilly since the 1980s, and I know people who heard of him being a drug doctor back in the 1970s. And I heard rumours about the Electric Mindshaft since the late 1980s.
And I've never bought or used meth (I've never even seen it), and the only time I've ever used prescription narcotics is when I've had surgery, and I only ever bought music from the Electric Mindshaft shop.
So if I know about this stuff, why don't the so-called experts?

posted by Chloe | Friday 31 December 2004 1:16 PM
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