New York

[MoonStar]

NYers are tough. This thread will live on.

[Multani]

Damn straight.

[MoonStar]

well, at least we're getting some rain

[Khairan]

I am no longer a New Yorker.

[MoonStar]

Originally Posted by Khairan

I am no longer a New Yorker.

once a New Yorker always a NYer and don't you forget it!

[MoonStar]

Syphilis Cases on the Increase in New York City
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/12/ny...2syphilis.html

It was a scourge of centuries past, a disease that ravaged the body and brain, drove geniuses to madness and slowly brought its victims to a terrible death.

But syphilis, a sexually transmitted disease that was so rare by 1998 that federal health officials had planned to declare it eliminated by 2005, has made a troubling comeback in New York City and across the nation. In the first three months of this year, more than twice as many syphilis cases were diagnosed than were in the first quarter of 2006, according to the city Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

In recent years, the disease has been most common in men who have sex with men. But now, health officials say they are concerned about an increase in cases among women in New York, following a trend seen nationally beginning in 2005. After a decade with almost no female cases, health officials said the jump among women was possibly fueled by an increase in the number of men having sex with both men and women.

City health officials said they were receiving more reports of bisexual behavior among men. And Dr. Stuart Berman, an epidemiologist at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said that in the last few years, New York men with syphilis had reported engaging in bisexual behavior more often than men with the disease in other cities.

Syphilis is highly contagious and can be hard to detect, but is easily curable with antibiotics. Untreated in pregnant women, it can cause stillbirth, severe birth defects and infant death.

The raw numbers are relatively modest — 260 cases in New York for the first quarter of 2007, including 10 among women — but they also contain a troubling signal: risky behaviors and unsafe sex appear to be on the rise. And many health experts warned that a spike in H.I.V. cases could come on the heels of the syphilis outbreak.

“There is risk going on out there,” said Perry N. Halkitis, a professor of applied psychology at New York University who is studying the connection between the use of highly addictive drugs like methamphetamine and unsafe sex. “Most certainly you are going to see an increase in H.I.V. transmission.”

Federal health officials estimate that those infected with syphilis are two to five times more likely to become infected with H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, because of the open sores caused by syphilis. But doctors said that because syphilis was on the decline until recently — medical providers do not routinely screen for it except in pregnant women — many people do not suspect the sores are a sign of infection.

There is debate over when syphilis, caused by the bacterium Treponema pallidum, first appeared, but historians said it became a global plague in the 16th century. It was called “the great pox,” to distinguish it from smallpox and because of the large, blistered rashes that occur in the late stages.

A pantheon of historic figures and artists, including Al Capone, Manet and Toulouse-Lautrec, are believed to have died of syphilis, and some historians have suspected that others, including Hitler and Lenin, suffered from undiagnosed cases of the disease.

Syphilis cases significantly declined with the advent of penicillin during World War II.

The disease can look and feel like so many other ailments that it is also known as “the great imitator.” In the final stage, as long as 30 years after initial infection, it can cause severe damage to many internal organs, depression, blindness and fits of creativity, and ultimately, death.

It can easily be spread through oral sex, unlike some other sexually transmitted diseases, and is passed through direct contact with a syphilis sore. Symptoms occur an average of 21 days after infection, according to federal health officials, but they can take as long as 90 days to appear.

The first sign is often a small, firm and round lesion at the point of the body where the disease was contracted. The lesion is painless and will heal without treatment, so many people are not aware they are infected.

In 2005, the last year for which comparable federal data was available, the city’s syphilis rate, 7.7 instances per 100,000 people, was more than double the national average of 3.0 per 100,000.

Federal and local health officials said the rising rates of infection could be attributed to several factors: substance abuse that leads to increased sexual activity and unsafe sex; unsafe sex among people already infected with H.I.V.; complacency about the risks of H.I.V. infection and what some call “condom fatigue,” as the vigilance that surrounded the early days of the AIDS epidemic has faded; and less fear of H.I.V. infection as the progress in treatment for AIDS means that a diagnosis is often no longer a death sentence.

The last time city health officials reported a significant syphilis outbreak, in the 1990s, it was linked to unsafe sex that accompanied the crack epidemic. That outbreak was concentrated largely in poor neighborhoods outside Manhattan, whereas the current one is centered in Manhattan, with infected men living in Chelsea accounting for a majority of the cases.

Blacks and Hispanics accounted for most new cases of syphilis, according to the city’s recent survey, but whites experienced faster rates of increase. The 2007 numbers showed the incidence among white men was three times the incidence during the same period in 2006.

A prominent theory nationally is that the methamphetamine epidemic has given rise to the syphilis comeback — and the greater risk for H.I.V. infection — because the highly addictive drug can cause hypersexuality, leading users to have frequent sex with multiple partners, often without taking precautions.

Susan Blank, New York City’s commissioner for sexually transmitted disease prevention and control, said the department had no data to prove that crystal methamphetamine addiction was responsible for higher syphilis rates.

But Professor Halkitis, who is writing a book about methamphetamine, said drug abuse in New York was unquestionably driving rising rates of sexually transmitted diseases.

Dr. Blank said the health department was alerting New Yorkers and their health care providers about the importance of screening for syphilis, offering free and confidential testing at all of its public clinics.

The increase in cases among women also highlights the need to learn the sexual history of partners, health officials say, as some women may not know that their partners have had sex with men.

The department launched a campaign in February to distribute millions of free condoms, and for those with a syphilis infection, it will confidentially notify sexual partners.

[Sea_of_Roses]

Originally Posted by Khairan

I am no longer a New Yorker.

How does it feel?

[MoonStar]

has anyone been to Mystic, Connecticut or Montauk Point? anything interesting to see there? I want to take a road trip.

[psychoteddybear]

so i was on the 2 train going downtown the other day and unfortunately sat right across from a homeless woman. normally i don't care, but there was trash all around her, and she STANK. she had this crappy suitcase and ...one of her legs was really darkened and swollen up like an elephant's...while the other one was normal...i took a pic of it actually...but it's probably too gross to post here...in any case, i felt really bad, but then i couldn't breathe at one point and went to the other side of the subway...that was sad.

in a city like this, what a pity to see these kind of people so often....they just don't care.

in any case...i work in the financial district now and it's not that interesting. any can recommend any good places to eat? i am near wall street, to give an idea. peace out.

[MoonStar]

A Marketing Campaign From One Heart to Another
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/22/nyregion/22adopt.html


Jean, 15, gets a minifacial before having a photo taken for the Heart Gallery, which seeks adoptive homes for older children

Fifteen-year-old Jean strode into the Queens Center mall yesterday ready to make an impression. He had insisted on wearing a navy blue blazer, though it was so oversize it created a three-inch tent on each shoulder. When a camera pointed in his direction, he flashed a profusion of teeth.

He was there, he said, looking for a family. Over the four and a half years he has spent in foster care, he has dreamed that the family might live in Manhattan, where “everywhere you go is a story,” but he could offer no criteria. They would be people who “just treat me like a son,” Jean said. He listed some qualities that might attract a family: He is a good speller, for example.

“I just want to jump into their heart and stay there,” he said.

Jean piled into a van with four other teenagers from group homes yesterday for a day of strange celebrity sponsored by Heart Gallery NYC, a nonprofit group that aims to find homes for foster children who are hard to place because of age or disability. At the mall, in a space between Banana Republic and H & M, all five sat still while beauticians daubed their faces with exfoliating masks and, for the girls, pearlescent eye shadow. Then they posed for Rod Goodman, a photographer who specializes in head shots for actors.

For the next month, their pictures will remain on display at the mall, in the hope that someone will walk by and be moved to adopt them.

“I’ll do what I got to do to get a family,” said Rey, a grave 14-year-old who during 11 years in foster care has been placed in seven homes. By now, it takes him only a few days to tell if the family “just wants the money.” But he isn’t quitting, he said, without a trace of a smile.

“Over time, something eventually will happen,” he said. “I’m going to be there when it happens.”

The Heart Gallery was founded six years ago by New Mexico’s Children, Youth and Families Department, which enlisted 40 portrait photographers to help promote older children whose chances of being adopted were melting away. Agencies in 45 states have now picked up the program, which uses the tools of the marketing business to appeal to potential parents. It is a technique that can compel people, feeding into the “mating dance that goes on between parents and children,” said Al Wasserman, 54, who volunteers with Heart Gallery NYC.

For years, he said, adults interested in adopting would find themselves with glazed eyes poring through the multivolume catalog produced by New York State that displays thousands of children available for adoption. The head shots in the book, he said, “made no effort to bring out the humanity” of the children. “I wouldn’t even say that the people who took them were photographers,” he said.

Heart Gallery strives to offer a vivid alternative, said Laurie Sherman Graff, founder of the organization’s New York City chapter. The photographs are also online at heartgallerynyc.org and will be displayed at the Brooklyn Business Library in Brooklyn Heights and at La Guardia Airport.

“It’s the glamour-of-adoption recruitment,” she said. “If that’s what it takes to get people to notice, who cares?”

Yesterday, after the makeovers were finished, Mr. Goodman arranged a strobe umbrella and reflector and beckoned Starshemia, 16. She was wearing a furry white vest, and her face was all heart-shaped curves. She said she had been separated from her family, then placed in a group home “for a little bit of time, maybe a couple of months.” Asked why she had come to the session, she nearly breathed it: “To find a mom.”

“That would mean everything to me,” she said.

In truth, nothing about the adoption process is impulsive. Adults who walk away interested will have to contact the city’s Administration for Children’s Services, undergo a 10-week training process and submit to a home study, a process that generally takes about a year, Ms. Graff said. And by the time a person contacts the agency, he or she has typically thought about it for two years or so, said Carolyn Rabolt, who does parent recruitment for the agency.

“We’re not trying to force-feed adoption or foster parenting,” she said. “We’re not talking about a soda. We’re talking about a child. There’s something about the pictures that we’re hoping will touch someone.”

[serendipity_000]

Assalamu Alaikum,

If you know anyone who may be interested in this:

Free classes with Sheikh Ismet Akcin (from the 96th street masjid in Manhattan)

Sheikh Ismet will be offering the following classes:

QURAN RECITATION AND FIQH
Every Saturdays at 4pm
Class starts on Saturday, November 3rd 2007
Location: 96th Street and 3rd Ave

QURAN RECITATION AND AQUEEDAH
Every Tuesdays at 4pm
Class starts on Tuesday, October 30th 2007
Location: 1 Riverside Drive (W. 72nd street)

Starting dates may change. No prior knowledge of Arabic is necessary. These FREE classes are open to adult brothers and sisters. To register for any of these classes, please contact sister Janice by email: jaf442@nyu.edu or by phone: (240) 271 7692.

[wheelworks]

Hmmm well I've been to Albany a coupla times and to the Troy Masjid once. I've always wanted to bike in NYC though. That and the snow

[MoonStar]

Vindicated by DNA, but a Lost Man on the Outside

Full article and audio/photos: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/25/us/25jeffrey.html

As a boy, Jeffrey Mark Deskovic could swim the length of a pool underwater without coming up for air. On sultry days at the Elmira state prison, where he spent most of his 16 years behind bars for a rape and murder he did not commit, Mr. Deskovic would close his eyes under a row of outdoor showers and imagine himself swimming.

For months after his release in September 2006, he had been yearning for a chance to dive in, to test his endurance, to feel that familiar sensation of pushing his body through the water, to get to the other side.

...For kinship and protection, Mr. Deskovic — a former altar boy who converted to Islam during his first year in prison — sought out fellow Muslim inmates. “If it weren’t for my religion,” he said, “I would have taken my own life in prison, or I would have lost my mind.”....

[shadha]

I never knew you lived in NY Moonstar.

InshaAllah, I'll be going up to NYC next month with my husbands family.


shadha-

[tinkerbell]

the streets, crowd, noise, people, i miss ny