http://thenewstalkers.com/perrie-halpern Mon, 09 Nov 2026 15:15:23 -0500 http://thenewstalkers.com/perrie-halpern/blog/2788/about-the-blogs http://thenewstalkers.com/perrie-halpern/blog/2788 Thank you.]]> Mon, 08 Jan 2024 14:28:57 -0500 http://thenewstalkers.com/perrie-halpern/blog/1746/heroes http://thenewstalkers.com/perrie-halpern/blog/1746
Most people think of heroes as people who do amazing selfless acts to aid those or act on behalf of those they do not know. And while this is true, most heroes are just everyday people facing everyday trials and tribulations. 
Tonight I lost a friend. She was one of the bravest people I have ever known and she was a hero to those of us who face chronic illness. Seven years ago, my friend Sue, was diagnosed with stage 4 ovarian cancer. Against all odds, she fought it and she did it with a smile and with a joke to spare to lighten any tough moment. She was actually pronounced cancer free after 4 years, but her joy was short lived. About a month later the cancer had returned and she underwent the same grueling treatment that she did the first time around. She never complained. She never wanted to talk about it. She was too busy living life and enjoying her sons and her hubby. 
I went to see her about 2 weeks ago. She was was weak but her mind was sharp. She joked with me and asked me if she looked good enough to go dancing. I laughed as I tried not to cry. I told her I loved her and she told me she knew and she loved me, too. We had some time together and I am grateful for that, since that would be the last time I saw or spoke to her. She would not see anyone after that visit. 
Sue will forever be my hero. She taught me how to face adversity with grace and bravery. She was a wonderful woman who never deserved this kind of ending... but then again, no good person does. I will never forget her but I chose to remember her as the tiny girl who could take on the world and make it look easy.  










]]> Wed, 15 Aug 2018 23:54:47 -0400 http://thenewstalkers.com/perrie-halpern/blog/1418/souvenirs-moments-that-make-the-person http://thenewstalkers.com/perrie-halpern/blog/1418







Souvenir
A picture postcard
A folded stub
A program of the play
File away your photographs
Of your holiday
And your mementos
Will turn to dust
But that's the price you pay
For every year's a souvenir
That slowly fades away
Every year's a souvenir
That slowly fades away
Words and lyrics, B. Joel
Souvenir. From the French word meaning to remember. We collect souvenirs throughout our lives. Occasionally we take them out from their dusty boxes, the scrap books we carefully constructed, or the photo albums we put them in, and look at them and remember. But the real souvenirs are the ones that are not physical, not the ones that we can actually see, but the ones that made us who we are. They are the defining moment or moments of our lives. Yet, those we rarely look at.
I have come to the conclusion that the reason for this is that for most of us, these defining moments are not pleasant. They are times that brought us some pain. Humans are odd creatures in that, the events that make us who we are, were rarely welcomed events. With the exception of having a child or a grandchild, most of these moments that defined us as people were also the ones that brought us a level of discomfort or grief. They were thrust upon us, and the choices we made at those moments, changed us forever in some way. The human condition is such that we tend not to change by our own volition, but by circumstances beyond our control.
Tolstoy said that, "Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself." He also said,"Without knowing what I am and why I am here, life is impossible." For me, these are absolute truths. Yet very few of us, take a moment to look at the events of our lives and see, why we are who we are. Introspection is a skill that many of us lack. Why is that? Does it hurt too much to look back and see how the choices we made were either right or wrong? Do we not really like the person that we are? Is it too hard to question the values and principals today, which were based on these pivotal moments? Or is it just that these moments in themselves are just like opening up an old scar? If every year is a souvenir that slowly fades away....will we open the box that contain the souvenirs of the events in our lives and look in? Can you do that, and see how they made you who you are? And if we don't like who we are, can we change ourselves. Something to ponder.
]]> Wed, 29 Nov 2017 12:59:04 -0500 http://thenewstalkers.com/perrie-halpern/blog/832/what-is-the-nature-of-internet-friendships http://thenewstalkers.com/perrie-halpern/blog/832
What is the nature of internet friendships?  Recent events in my life have me pondering this question. I have come to the conclusion that there are differing perceptions of what a internet friendship is.  Looking back on my experience I have had to ask myself some serious questions that I am sure many of us here have encountered. I think it comes down to several questions. 
What does it mean to you when you befriend someone on the internet?  Is it as real as any other friendship and therefore should we have the same expectations from it, or is it something less? Do we ever really know the person, or are they like a character in a play?
Are there different degrees of friendship as we have in real life, or should we regard anyone we take on as a internet friend with the same respect we give other members? 
Shouldn't we avoid confrontation on articles with friends, if there can only be a poor outcome or do we engage our friends even if your points of views are so different that the outcome can only be damaging and deemed a transgression?
There are many who would say, that friends, especially internet friends, should engage in dialog, because that is the purpose of this site.  I am not totally convinced that this is true because our community has very diverse views and therefore this is not always possible.  There are just certain hot button topics that make all of us lose it.  So then, the question becomes, does an internet friend leave those articles alone for the sake of the friendship or do they engage, for the sake of the topic? That is the bigger question. That goes back to the degree of friendship and the expectations one has about that friendship.  I have always been on the side of caution, and didn't engage people who I had a very differing point of view, once I had excepted their friendship, out of respect to that acceptance.  Call it a social contract on the site.  But I think you can divide the nature of internet friendships into three groups.
The first group is those who befriend people carefully on the site.  They go to the potential friend and look into their bio's and their other social connections.  They are careful whom they befriend, because their expectation is to value the friendship as if it was one in the real world.  
The second group is those who feel that the site is here for debate, and therefore, the friendship is a loose social association, one that is casual, and that the name of the game is debate. To them, an internet friendship is easily broken, with little mind of who is on their friend list.  They give little or no thought to whom they befriend, and therefore don't think twice about whether or not to engage a friend in a heated discussion, even if the outcome will be poor.
The third group are those who make distinctions between close internet friends and casual internet friends and vary their behavior accordingly when deciding to enter a conversation with a friend, especially if their points of views are to divergent to engage in a productive dialog or debate.  They may engage in a heated debate with some friends, while with others, they will avoid a dialog that could potentially end the friendship, valuing the friendship over the debate.
Some would say that true friends could always forgive each other if things get out of hand.  But this isn't true in real life.  How many of us have had a falling out with a long time personal friend, and have felt terrible about it for years to come.  On this site, most of our friendships are not that personal, and therefore, easily damaged.  Words pile up and get in the way, and all that is left behind are ruminations and bitterness, for words left in the public domain for all to see. 
I personally don't enter into a friend's article if I know that our points of view are too different to find a common ground and it will damage a friendship. As I said earlier, I regard it as part of the social contract with the internet.  I am all too aware that once the words I write are out there in the public domain for all to see and it's hard to erase the damage they have done. If there is something to learn from my recent experience is that all should be clear what they expect from their friendships when we engage each other in debate, because once the words are pounded out on our respective keyboards, there is no taking them back.  And there's the rub....
]]> Thu, 29 Sep 2016 11:14:05 -0400 http://thenewstalkers.com/perrie-halpern/blog/403/life-is-the-sound-of-distant-thunder-at-a-graduation http://thenewstalkers.com/perrie-halpern/blog/403
I wrote this almost 4 years ago and I can't believe that my daughters will be graduating from college this May. I thought it was worth the reprint, since we all get caught up in the trivial things in life, that we don't even notice it going by... and life is but a dream. 
So it's the day my daughters graduation. A moment I had been both looking forward to and feeling a bit blue about. My little shrews had finally gotten their wings. Did I say shrews out loud? .. I meant loving daughters... sorry, that must have been the wine talking. But even though they can be shrews.. they are my shrews and the thought of them leaving us,l eaves me with a flood of emotions. But I digress...
It was supposed to be a lovely first day of summer here on Long Island... translate that to mean 93 degrees and 90 percent humidity. I have all my hair weapons on hand to prevent the frizz that will happen as I walk outside the door. But after I have done my magic in the bathroom, and I look as good as a girl who just turn 52 is going to look without a trip to the plastic surgeon, I step out of the bathroom to hear what I think is distant thunder...
I thought of author W. H. Auden's quote: "Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic." When I first read that line in one of Auden's poems many years ago, the meaning eluded me, but suddenly on graduation day, it had such clarity. For what is a graduation, but a big picnic of a sort... So I looked at the sky and it just looks hazy... yet again.. I think I hear thunder...
So I yell down to Matt to check the local weather channel and see if we are expecting a storm. He reports up, "No, that's later today. 5 min later, the skies are black and Matt and I are yelling up to the girls, who are glued to their respective mirrors quaffing, to move the arses out the door before the rain. Just as we made the car, the sky opened and sheets of rain started to come down, along with lighting hitting things that we could actually see. The girls, sophisticated woman of the world that they are, started to scream like 5 year olds, and I'm thinking as I tell them to cool it... this isn't good. We drive very slowly through the rivers that were just streets a few minutes ago, to the college campus where the graduation is taking place. The storm that wasn't supposed to be, has gotten even worse, and now I can see lightning hitting in the parking lot. Of course, this paralyzes all of the families stuck in their cars. All these people had to get into the building come hell or high water... in this case both, and so we all started to wade through the ankle high water, I in my brand new shoes. Matt goes to park the car.
Now Matt is a different animal to moi. His parents should have named him Felix Unger. He got out of the car and seeing the river before him that he had to cross to get into the building bends down to roll up his pants, making him invisible due to the sheets of rain. The obvious question remains why his soaking wet back doesn't bother him, but wet pant bottoms would, but hey why ask questions? He bent over to take off his shoes, when a car just barely missed hitting him...
The horrified driver jumps out of the car, to see if he had actually hit Matt, and who is it? Jeff Sunshine. Now that name might sound vaguely familiar here to some of our vegan friends, since Debby Sunshine is his wife, is a member of this group, and oh yeah, my close friend. Jeff is visibly shaken, but the weather has made it an imperative to get in, and so Matt is totally unaware of how close he had come to getting hit.
Again, death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic.
So we all start to find our seats now running over a half hour late, due to the weather, when we hear a bang, and suddenly... black. The auditorium's power has just gone out. No lights, no amps for the PA and NO AIR CONDITIONING! A few minutes later, the emergency generator kicks in and we have dim lights and some power for the PA, but no AC. Decisions must be made about what to do, to carry on or not. The powers that be decide to do away with all the speeches, (thank the heavens for that, literally), and to just go ahead with the graduation. I sit there in my soaking wet shoes, listening to the girls best friend, Danny, who is also class president and Valedictorian, give a beautiful speech to the class. He tells them, that after 13 years of being together, that this will be the last time in their lives that they will all be together in one place. He tells them that this event is another thing that they will be able to cross off the "Bucket List of Life". I choke up, as this observation is both profound as it is true. The class of 2012 is announced to the audience and we go back out to our car, and bump into Jeff and have him recount how close he came to whacking Matt. We make light of it, with Jeff promising to leave his business card on Matt's body next time. After all, he is a lawyer. Then we're off to dinner.
We are all sitting in the restaurant. We're all having a wonderful time toasting and eating and suddenly there is a lull in the conversation. I look at my mother in law, who is in treatment for pancreatic cancer and at my dad, who ended up in hospital with pancreatitis, and I wonder is "Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic" or is life one long "Bucket List" or are they all really the same thing? Or am I getting way to intense, due to this big life transition?
But in any case, as I squish around in my shoes and clothes in a now very cold air conditioned room and the one thing I am sure of is if there is a god, I must be his punch line. Seriously. I have given this much contemplation and I'm pretty sure he looks at me and laughs. But hey, I am sure he does the same thing to most of you from time to time. At least we're all at this picnic together.
]]> Mon, 30 Nov 2015 14:09:32 -0500 http://thenewstalkers.com/perrie-halpern/blog/248/tuesdays-with-morrie-and-mondays-with-herman http://thenewstalkers.com/perrie-halpern/blog/248 Six years ago at Thanksgiving, I looked across the table at my Uncle Herman. His mouth seemed a little droopy, his speech a little slurred. "Hey Uncle Herman", I said. "Did you notice that your mouth is kind of drooping? My Aunt Phyllis, Herman's wife, interjected, "It is, isn't it. And he's slurring his words, too. I told him to go to the doctor, but he keeps saying it's nothing." "She worries too much, it's nothing", he replied in his very Brooklyn/Bronx accent. To my uncle, this was a nothing. He was very stoic, a trait found on my father's side of the family. Besides, a few months earlier, my Aunt and Uncle had lost their only child, my cousin Paul to a lung infection at the age of 41. He was unmarried and had no children. Paul was their singular joy in their life. A little droop in the corner of his mouth was the last thing on his mind.
But a month went by, and he wasn't getting better, so my aunt and I convinced my uncle that he needed to go to his doctor to rule out a stroke. After undergoing routine tests that all were negative, his doctor sent him to a neurologist. After another battery of tests, the neurologist called my Uncle and Aunt into his office. He said, "Herman, you have Bulbar ALS. I suggest, you get your life in order and spend some time with your family". That was that. My aunt couldn't get over the coldness of his tone as he told my uncle his death sentence. Having a neurological problem of my own, I knew that getting a proper diagnosis in neurology was very hit and miss, so I suggested going to Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center to get a second opinion.
After careful testing, with multiple teams of doctors coming and going from the examination room, the diagnosis came back. My uncle Herman had Bulbar ALS. This was the worst of all possible outcomes. Bulbar ALS starts in the throat and kills the quickest. The doctors at the hospital told us that their job was to his extend his life, and to make him as comfortable as possible. And so came the routine of taking my Uncle and Aunt to and from the hospital on Mondays and Thursdays, which were clinic days. With each visit my Uncle was a little bit worse. He became harder and harder to understand as his tongue and mouth became paralyzed. This affected his swallowing, so a feeding tube had to be put into his stomach so that he wouldn't choke to death. The muscles in his arms developed twitching, known as fasciculations, which is always present in ALS and then began the muscle wasting, first his arms, then his legs. But whenever I asked him how he felt, when he could speak, he would say fine and smile and when he lost his speech, he would give me thumbs up.
But as the Mondays and Thursdays passed, he quickly deteriorated. And I began to notice that the doctors seemed very laissez faire about my uncle's condition. They never volunteered any information without us prompting them to do so. We had to ask about the drug riluzole (Rilutek), to which they replied that they could put him on the drug, but it would only help prolong his life about 3 months. Then my aunt and I asked about any drug trials that my uncle qualified for. They told us about various drug studies that used existing drugs, so I started to do my own research into other trials. During my research, I learned much about ALS, more than most.
It has been 134 years since Dr. Charcot's discovery of ALS, yet we are no closer to understanding the disease. What we do know is that ALS is a motor neuron disease. For unknown reasons, ALS causes the death of the motor neurons, the nerves that make muscles move. A person with ALS will progressively lose the use of their limbs, throat and lungs. Most people will die of suffocation. According to the Baylor Institute of Medicine, approximately 150,000 people will get ALS every year. It is estimated that as many as 30,000 Americans have the disease at any given time. The rate of ALS is 2 out of 100,000 people, or about 15 new cases a day or 6,000 new case a year. Gulf war veterans have a rate double that of the civilian population. No one has identified the reason why. There are increasing numbers of ALS clusters in the United States. For instance, according to Christine Wallgrenin of the Boston Globe, the rate is 9.5 per 100,000 in Plymouth County and across the Southeastern part of the state of Massachusetts. The number of ALS clusters is growing. No one knows why. The average life span of someone with ALS is 2 to 5 years. Because of this short life span and the quick progression of the disease, there is little patient advocacy. The patients and their families are consumed by the day-to-day challenges of living with the disease. So there is little in the way of ALS awareness, walk-a-thons, or spokespeople. The disease just fades into the background. Also there have been no large endowments for ALS and minimal government funding for research. The two biggest advocacy groups are the Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Association (ALSA) and Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA), both of which fight over the scant funding they get.
According to Ken O'Donnell, in his article "Advocate for a Cure for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis" and a member of Patients Like Me, which tracks ALS patients, there's an additional reason for the lack of progress in finding a cure. "The drug companies want more profits; their motivation is greed. Since it is estimated that there are 30,000 ALS sufferers alive at any one time, they consider ALS to be an orphan disease (defined as fewer than 200,000 sufferers). The drug companies focus their research primarily on the major killers of the US population, which are heart disease, cancer, and AIDS. As a result, much progress has been made with all of these diseases. The difference is that there is major profit potential in curing AIDS, heart disease, and cancer. Unfortunately for ALS sufferers, drug companies find it hard to calculate a return on their investment in finding an effective treatment for ALS. This is the main reason that we only have one drug approved for ALS (Rilutek) in the last ten years. The drug companies will not be investing in research for ALS unless they uncover something that occurs in other major neurological diseases that would have a common use for ALS. Thus, we cannot count on these drug companies to change their research programs to focus on ALS." This leaves the financial burden of ALS research on the federal government.
On the Federal level there has been some movement made by the ALSA. According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the National ALS Registry Act, which had already passed the House last year, would have appropriated $5 million to fund the collection of data on every person diagnosed with ALS each year and an additional $5 million to continue studying why armed service veterans contract ALS more often than the general population, which the ALSA hopes will help find environmental causes for the disease. So ALS will receive $10 million annually as opposed to AIDS, which gets 1.4 billion dollars annually, according to the Nationl Center for Political Analysis.
This past July 4 will mark the 75th anniversary of Lou Gehrig's famous farewell speech at Yankee Stadium, and since then more than 600,000 Americans have shared Gehrig's fate. There have been no significant developments toward finding a cure, yet the rate of ALS is slowly growing. The ALSA will be starting a PSA featuring Angela Lansbury, whose sister died of the disease and is working to increase government funding for research, for this soon may no longer be an "orphan disease". Though this is a beginning, it is not enough. ALS knows no gender, race, creed, or age. It robs people of their bodies, and their dignity, while leaving their brains fully intact to witness their own demise. It robs families of their loved ones, and often their finances, while giving them no hope and it's been going on for too long.
I loved my Uncle Herman. He was a kind and decent man, who loved mankind, loved animals, loved pretty girls and most of all, loved his family. He never called me his niece, but his nice. And on that early spring day that we buried my beloved Uncle, I walked with my Aunt Phyllis over to my cousin's grave. I heard her say in a whisper, "Paul, I brought your daddy to keep you company". I could barely contain the tears. It was then I promised myself that I would do my part to make my Uncle's death count. Please donate to this very important under-funded disease. The life you save may be someone you love. ]]> Mon, 28 Jul 2014 02:31:29 -0400 http://thenewstalkers.com/perrie-halpern/blog/245/souvenirs http://thenewstalkers.com/perrie-halpern/blog/245 Thu, 03 Jul 2014 02:07:21 -0400 http://thenewstalkers.com/perrie-halpern/blog/244/things-left-unsaid http://thenewstalkers.com/perrie-halpern/blog/244 Fri, 13 Jun 2014 00:24:23 -0400 http://thenewstalkers.com/perrie-halpern/blog/242/in-good-company-aspergers-and-autism http://thenewstalkers.com/perrie-halpern/blog/242 Mon, 12 May 2014 02:10:43 -0400 http://thenewstalkers.com/perrie-halpern/blog/241/in-the-living-years http://thenewstalkers.com/perrie-halpern/blog/241 Wed, 23 Apr 2014 02:10:12 -0400 http://thenewstalkers.com/perrie-halpern/blog/219/gays-in-america-and-gays-in-russia http://thenewstalkers.com/perrie-halpern/blog/219 Sat, 24 Aug 2013 14:36:10 -0400 http://thenewstalkers.com/perrie-halpern/blog/11/nypd-and-the-muslim-spying-issue http://thenewstalkers.com/perrie-halpern/blog/11 Mon, 12 Mar 2012 19:29:35 -0400 http://thenewstalkers.com/perrie-halpern/blog/4/my-thoughts-on-politics-from-an-independents-perspective http://thenewstalkers.com/perrie-halpern/blog/4 Tue, 08 Nov 2011 15:35:11 -0500