Bill Cammack

For once, some GOOD NEWS out of NYC! :D

Every so often you hear about someone falling, being pushed or even jumping down onto the subway tracks in New York City. Most of the time they get hit, and usually killed, but sometimes “only” severely injured or maimed. Not this time! :D

Wesley Autrey (above) happend to be in the right place at the right time.

According to news reports, Cameron Hollopeter (above) had a seizure and fell onto the tracks. Unfortunately for Cameron, the train was on its way towards him. FORTUNATELY for Cameron, Wesley Autrey A) WAS THERE, B) KNEW WHAT TO DO, and C) WAS WILLING TO DO IT! :D …

There are actually safe spaces if the train’s approaching you while you’re on the tracks. One of them is under the platform (depending on how slim you are! :D) the other is right down the middle, since the tracks are elevated. Depending on how Cameron fell onto the tracks, he would have been killed or maimed. It’s completely unlikely that he fell in anywhere near a safe position. Wesley apparently hopped down and placed Cameron where he needed to be and then got in position himself, and several subway cars rolled over both of them with neither of them getting hurt. Of course, Cameron got hurt falling several feet down onto the tracks, but he didn’t sustain any MORE injuries from the train.

I think it’s fantastic what Wesley Autrey did for someone he didn’t even know. I’m glad they both came out of it unharmed. Wesley definitely deserves all the credit he’s being given. He also deserves to be called a hero, because there are way too many people that would have just left Cameron “to his fate” instead of writing him a NEW fate.

Props Awarded!

Cameron’s father with Autrey.

Article Link: Click Here.

Penelope Trunk: “For example, sixty percent of women with MBAs are working at home, and an epidemic number of women are leaving corporate life when their children come. Women approaching age thirty face these statistics.”

Children are incredibly influential on women… biologically… This was used a lot in passing over women for promotions because the company didn’t want to lose a manager to maternity leave. That’s probably been changed now, by law, but there’s a tremendous effect on women simply when they realize that they’re pregnant. Their focus and priorities change immediately, as they well should. I think a lot of women underestimate their ability to handle the situation differently from men. Obviously, since men don’t get pregnant, there are no internal biological changes tugging their lives in a different direction than “career”.

Work and Family by 30 is a pretty lofty goal to begin with. Work should be pretty easy, since the average person who doesn’t get left back in school graduates @ 21, that leaves nine years to get it together….. assuming that the person is content NOW with the career they have because of what they took in college, which they decided on when they were 17 years old. Family, on its own, is easy as well by 30… at least getting INTO family is. I don’t know about age/divorce correlation, so I’m not aware of how many couples married before 30 are still married by 40.

Doing both together is a longshot unless the woman knows ahead of time what her plan is and is able to focus on and be effective in starting/maintaining a satisfying, progressive career while looking for and corralling “Mr. Right”, who happens to A) want to get married to her and B) have kids with her. This is why it makes sense that women would leave the workforce entirely or work at home, because it’s much tougher to work on Family after 35. They can get back to Career when their family life stabilizes….

… hehe assuming they’re not already pregnant again. :)

~ response to Penelope Trunk’s post ~

PT: “For example, The Economist reports that men overestimate how attracted women are to them, and women underestimate how interested men are. This research comes from an article in Evolution and Human Behavior, and the conclusion is that the poor estimating is actually good for evolution, because men don’t miss opportunities to spread their DNA, and women make sure to mate with someone who will stick around.”

hahaha Biology aside, in most cases, I find both situations to be true as far as men overestimating and women underestimating. IMO that’s because of what men and women (stereotypically) approach “relationships” for in the first place. I’m not sure who said this, but I read somewhere that “men give relationships to get sex and women give sex to get relationships”. :D That pretty much sums it up.

Not that this never happens, but I don’t know ANY guys (who had a choice, that is) that chose their SO without being sexually attracted to her. ‘Matter of fact, I don’t know ANY guys that have ever even dated women that they weren’t sexually attracted to for one reason or another. I’m not saying these women were “hot”, but just that there was something about them that made that guy interested in having sex with her, and that’s what made her a candidate for dating, a relationship, becoming a girlfriend or a wife.

OTOH, women date men all the time that they’re not sexually attracted to. Women date men that they’re not even sure are attracted to women. Again, “stereotypically”, that’s not what they’re ‘in it’ for. They’re in it for the way they relate to him and how it is to spend time with him.

I think the over- and under-estimation is based on projection. Guys know that the main reason they would talk to a woman is that they’re attracted to her, so they project that onto her and figure she’s attracted to them BECAUSE she’s talking to them, or accepting their rap. Meanwhile, women talk to guys they like because they like their personalities and ways of being, so they project that onto the guy, and think he has a platonic interest in her… or, perhaps that he chose her based on what she said or has accomplished in life vs how she looks and how turned on he is by her.

PT: “Here’s another relationship study that makes me think of work: A good relationship hinges more on expressing joy from someone else’s good news than about how you react to their bad news. Benedict Carey writes in The New York Times that a slew of studies find that your reaction to someone’s good news is an opportunity to strengthen the relationship. So don’t brush off your spouse when she has a good day at work, and the same goes for your co-worker’s good news — express enthusisam. (Thanks, Mercedes)”

hmm. I don’t know that the two are different… responding to good news or bad news. I would think the important part would be the quality and value of the response instead of which format the information was received in.

Let’s say the good news was “I got a promotion” and the bad news was “you look fat in that dress” :D The quality of her response to either one can strengthen or weaken a relationship. As far as “how the day was @ work”… Women are notorious for telling men things they never asked about. :D It’s tough to fake interest in and enthusiasm for something you didn’t want to hear in the first place. OTOH, your advice is on-point. FAKING that interest and enthusiasm is better for your relationship than telling her to get out from in front of the television because they’re about to kick off for the second half! :D

Roxanne Darling of beachwalks.tv was in town today. I had a great time this afternoon. :D

Here’s the “BeachWalk” we did together: Beach Walk #258 OTR

initially, we were going to meet up with Jan… another videoblogger, but it turned out that she had to work alllllllllllll day, so Rox and I decided to meet up @ 3pm. I had had a bunch of ideas where we could have gone to shoot near water, but it was raining AND foggy, so we decided on South Street Seaport, since it’s by the water, but the upper levels provide cover from the rain. Rox ended up taking a cab instead of the subway, so I headed west to meet her @ the West Side Highway. It would have taken her A LONG TIME to get to the east side with mid-day traffic, so I passed the WTC and checked out Battery Park City for potential locations.

When the cab showed up, I noticed that Rox was filming the driver. It turns out that he’s a musician and makes CDs that are right up beachwalks.tv’s alley. From there, we headed west to the Hudson river, but it was really too foggy to see Jersey on the other side, and I thought I could BARELY make out the Statue of Liberty. We found a spot and did our BeachWalks episode.

Since we were running out of daylight, I suggested that we walk the two blocks over to the WTC. We were coming from the west, where there isn’t any public transportation, except cabs, and maybe one bus line if it runs down the W.S.H. Everyone else approaches from the east (unless they live in Battery Park City). Because of that, the tourist-y information booth and photo gallery is set up to accommodate people coming from the east, and it was completely on the other side of the site from where we were. We stopped at a section where you can see in without fanfare, lights, colors, tourists or pictures. I was in NYC on the day-of, but Rox had mentioned that she probably hadn’t been here in eight years, so I figured she hadn’t seen the location with her own eyes… Actually, probably more important than SEEING is BEING so close to where the towers used to stand and seeing how far down it is to the construction from ground level, and seeing how wide the missing area is, compared to the buildings that surround that area…. as well as understanding that so many people died right.over.there. I could tell Rox was having a moment… she decided not to tape…….

From there, we checked out the tourist setup, complete with bright colors, poignant pictures and captions that said something like “time to move on”, which was REALLY funny/interesting, because after experiencing the site, when we started walking, Rox was talking about people’s reactions to things and how people try to say how someone should or should not react. It was as if someone rushed up and painted that AFTER listening to what we were talking about on the way there. :D

After that, we found a cafe and had a really interesting conversation, mostly about videoblogging, with a minor in psychology. Eventually, it was time for Rox to head out, so we hopped on the train and got out of dodge.

I had a great afternoon. Rox is a really fun and intelligent person, and as a ‘hardcore’ New Yorker, I got to enjoy a non-New-Yorker’s reactions to things like the WTC and crowded sidewalks. :D

The Saga Continues……..

In “Beach Walk #175 – People talkin’? Who cares!”, we get to hear about someone so caught up in her own idea of what’s important in life that she tries to project this onto someone else. She’s so busy thinking about what SHE perceives to be the right way to live life that she totally ignores what the leader told the new paddler and gives contradictory instructions.

First of all, she’s not authorized to tell the new paddler what to do. Nobody put her in charge. The leader was IN THE BOAT, giving the orders, so there was no “lack of leadership”.

When asked why she said what she said, her reply was that if the new paddler stopped paddling, the other paddlers would talk about her behind her back, to the effect of “I can’t believe she stopped paddling! :O”. Now we have a reference point to weigh the values of this advice being given. On the one hand, the paddler could keep paddling, though she feels that her body needs a break, and she could avoid being gossiped about over lunch. OTOH, she could stop paddling, NOT risk her physical health, and perhaps be talked about behind her back by people that probably wouldn’t say anything to her face in the first place. If the tree falls in the woods… and you’re in the city, you don’t hear the sound… so… if people are going to gossip behind your back…..

WHO CARES?

What difference does it make? None, because you never hear about it, so, effectively, it doesn’t exist to you. Let’s say you actually hear about this gossip or they tell you to your face that they think less of you as a paddler because you didn’t keep paddling…..

WHO CARES?

What difference does it make? Do they pay your bills? Do they decide whether you get to come out paddling tomorrow morning? :D Do they decide where you sit in the boat?

The ‘advice-giver’ was saying more about herself than she was about the new paddler. She was letting people know what fantasies dictate her actions in life. She won’t do something if she perceives that she might be talked about for it. She won’t do something if she thinks she’ll “look bad”, even perhaps at the cost of her own physical health. That has nothing to do with the new paddler at all. ALSO, the ‘advice-giver’ informs us that she’s willing to attempt to override statements of the person in charge to forward the agenda of her own personal brainwashing. “Don’t do what the leader said, because we’ll talk about you”. What’s that?

Unfortunately, peer pressure is an incredible influence. Without the proper grounding, the new paddler might think the advice is good for her to follow, without having the ability to actually assess it properly, according to what SHE thinks is important in life. Often, people come into a new situation or it could even be a situation they’ve been in for a long time and they don’t have concrete ideas about what’s good for them and what isn’t. Those people are often susceptible to accepting and adapting other people’s ideas. Just because that way of being works for one person doesn’t mean it works for YOU. A lot of people have taken the wrong path following suggestions from people with their own personal agendas.

How about if the advice-giver channeled her energy into STOPPING the other paddlers from talking behind the new paddler’s back? How about THAT? How about praising the new paddler for being a part of keeping their heavier, 5-man boat alongside the lighter 6-man boat? How about THAT? How about if she focuses on what she can do that’s positive instead of “helping the new paddler avoid the negative”… the negative that she’s DEFINITELY going to be a part of if the newjack doesn’t take her advice and get back to work.

Rox says “gossip’s never killed anyone”. While that’s not actually true, :D I see her point. It’s not the ACTUAL gossip that has ever killed anyone. OTOH, people HAVE died from pushing their bodies past limits that they feel they have approached.

What’s it worth to you? What’s it worth to keep people from talking about you? Your health? Your money? Your family? Who ARE these people, anyway?

Who cares?

It’s interesting to read a blog in reverse…. at least a blog where the person is revealing (admittedly few) ways of thinking or being. You experience their personalities AFTER an event, then you get to see the event, then you get to see them BEFORE the event.

It’s also interesting to comment on a blog that’s not happening in real-time. I mean, the blog happenED in real-time, but that time is now the past, and we’re in what was then considered to be the future. After this post, either something happened or nothing happened. It’s still interesting to consider the possible effects of a prior episode that may linger inside a person you’ve already experienced in their own future……

anywayyyy…..

Beach Walk #192 asks the question “to act, or not to act”. I think the real question is whether the outcome will be the same for the person making it happen IF they MAKE it happen. The actual physical outcome may be the same, but sometimes, the means are as important, if not much more so, than the ends…

I was walking with someone… somewhere… one time… in New York City, and she saw a flower vendor on the corner we were approaching. She got all happy and exclaimed “BUY ME SOME FLOWERS!!! :D”… I figured she was kidding, so I just looked at her. She wasn’t kidding, and she repeated her request. That’s when I had to tell her what time it was.

“It doesn’t work like that. You don’t REQUEST flowers. The point of the flowers is that the guy WANTED to give them to you. If you ask for the flowers, and THEN the guy buys them for you, he’s just the one handing the vendor the money. The flowers don’t MEAN anything at all.”

She thought about it and finally understood what I was saying. The point of flowers isn’t flowers. The point of flowers is expression of something. It could be an emotion… It could be “I think you’re lovely”… It could be “I was wrong in our argument last night (even though I wasn’t, but that’s a different topic)”. Requesting flowers and receiving them defeats the purpose of the flowers. It only proves that the guy knows how to follow orders! :D

Similarly (and here comes the outdated, or perhaps post-dated information), there could be a difference in perception between A) waiting to see if a relationship progresses and B) making that progression happen. That gets into the realm of “Destiny? Fate? Meaningless Coincidence?”. CAN you make a relationship progress? Is the right thing going to happen for you, regardless of what you do? If so, why do anything at all? Do you have any influence in the creation of your own destiny?

Meanwhile, it also depends on the actions/reactions of the other person. How are they going to respond to your either “making it happen” or “letting it flow”? hehehe one never knows, so sometimes, you just have to choose a direction and go for the ride…..