March 25th Celebrating Anninciation Evagelismos

Let me help you understand, why we, as Orthodox Christians celebrate our name days. On March 25th we will be celebrating Annunciation (or Evangelismos in Greek) to the Theotokos. We have Evangelismos names in our family. I have my beloved, sweet, wonderful, son and his name is Evangelos. My beloved, sweet, wonderful Mama her name is Evangelia. My wonderful Ex-Father In Law his name was Evangelos and may God Rest His Soul in Peace. My Grandmother her name was also Evangelia and May God Rest Her Soul In Peace.

It is known to the Greek Orthodox tradition, nearly every day of the year is dedicated to a Christian saint or Martyr. When someone is named after one of the saints, that day becomes their "name day" and, traditionally, is celebrated.

All Orthodox Christians that I know celebrate their name day by inviting family and friends to their home. Since this day is to focus on the saint, his/her icon is prominently displayed. Whoever comes to visit wishes "Happy Name Day" to the celebrant. Favors or token gifts can be part of the day, but with a significant difference, the person whose name day it is gives the gifts rather than receives them. Giving is the best sign of gratitude for Christians.

If you are interested in reading the full story, here is the link for the Annunciation to the Theotokos.

Lets all celebrate and remember The Annunciation to the Theotokos and it is the Great Feast of the Orthodox Church.

Happy name day to my sweet, wonderful son and also to my sweet, wonderful, mama and to all the Evangelismos around the world!

The Annunciation to the Theotokos

The Annunciation (or Evangelismos in Greek) to the Theotokos is one of the Great Feasts of the Orthodox Church, celebrated on March 25. Greeks also celebrate Greek Independence Day this day. This is one of only two days during Lent, the other being Palm Sunday, when fish is permitted.

According to the Gospel of Luke 1:26-38, the Archangel Gabriel appeared to Mary to announce to her that she would conceive and bear a son, even though she "knew no man." According to holy tradition Mary had come home to her parents when she was only fifteen when she was visited by Gabriel.

This date was selected by the Church Fathers to be exactly nine months ahead of Christmas, indicating that Christ was conceived in perfection at that time "of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary," as stated in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed.

Many men and women in Greece are named for this event and celebrate their name day on this date.

Greek: Evangelia (f) and Evangelos (m)

English: Evangeline (f) and Evan and Angelo (m)

In Arabic traditions, the names Bechara, Beshara, or Bashar (all of which mean "good news") are used by men for whom this feast is also their name day.

Celebration of the feast
The feast of the Annunciation normally falls during the season of Great Lent, but it is still a joyous day. Many lessen their fast with fish on this day.

If the feast comes on a weekday of Lent, the Divine Liturgy of the feast is served in the evening with Vespers. When this happens, the fasting rules for the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts are followed. The Divine Liturgy of the Annunciation is the only celebration of the Eucharistic liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom allowed on a weekday of Great Lent.

If the feast falls on the same day as Pascha, the resultant festival is called Kyriopascha and is celebrated with special rubrics.

Greek traditions
Many people make a pilgrimage as a special tribute to the Theotokos on the island of Tinos. Thousands of pilgrims jam the docks and city streets to visit the Church of Evangelistria (Tinos, Greece) that safeguards a miraculous healing icon of the Theotokos. Revealed in a vision, it was found buried in a field in 1823, and the church was built to house it. Pilgrims bring items of precious metals and other gifts to leave at the church. On August 15 (Dormition of the Theotokos) and March 25 the icon is carried through town in a grand procession.

Hymns

Troparion (Tone 4) [1]

Today is the beginning of our salvation,
The revelation of the eternal mystery!
The Son of God becomes the Son of the Virgin
As Gabriel announces the coming of Grace.
Together with him let us cry to the Theotokos:
Rejoice, O Full of Grace,
The Lord is with You!

Kontakion (Tone 8)

O Victorious Leader of Triumphant Hosts!
We, your servants, delivered from evil, sing our grateful thanks to you, O Theotokos!
As you possess invincible might, set us free from every calamity
So that we may sing: Rejoice, O unwedded Bride!

Forefeast hymns

Troparion (Tone 4)

Today is the prelude of joy for the universe!
Let us anticipate the feast and celebrate with exultation:
Gabriel is on his way to announce the glad tidings to the Virgin;
He is ready to cry out in fear and wonder:
Rejoice, O Full of Grace, the Lord is with You!

Kontakion (Tone 8)

You are the beginning of salvation for all of us on earth, Virgin Mother of God.
For the great Archangel Gabriel, God's minister,
Was sent from heaven to stand before you to bring you joy:
Therefore, we all cry to you: Rejoice, O unwedded Bride.

MARCH 25th GREEK INDEPENDENCE DAY

From 2nd Elementary School of Paleo Faliro. Athens. GREECE.

I am proud to be a Greek American!

«Θέλει αρετήν και τόλμην η ελευθερία….Αυτή επτέρωσε τον Ίκαρον»
(Α.Κάλβος – Εις Σάμον)

Greek life did not end when the Ottoman Turks took Constantinople in 1453.

Greeks held administrative roles in the central Ottoman administration itself. Many of them were in the sultan’s interpreters’ service, because muslims were discouraged from learning foreign languages. Greeks therefore became de facto ambassadors and participated in diplomatic negotiations.

The «Phanar» or lighthouse district of Instabul became the center of the Ottoman Greek culture afer the patriach took up residence there and the Greek orthodox clergy had substantial religious, educational, admistrative, and legal power in the Balkans. Greek shipowners in the islands enjoyed similar advantages.

Greeks dominated Balkan commerce by the 1700s. They were permitted commercial contacts with non-believers, an awkward matter for Muslims. Westerners who did business in the region used Greeks as agents for reasons of safety, language and convenience. On the other hand Greek civilization was never completely separated from the rest of Europe. After the fall of Constantinople, some Greeks fled to Italy and played a role in the Renaissance.

There were Greek printing presses at work in Venice and Greek merchants and enterpreneurs found the economic and political concepts of liberalism and the Enlightment attractive. Wealthy Greeks went to France to study and they were heavily influenced by the doctrines of the French Revolution.

In 1814 three Greek businessmen Athanassios Tsakalof, Emanuel Xanthos and Nikolaos Skoufas founded the «Philiki Etairia» (Friendly Society), in the Russian port of Odessa. It was a Greek independence party that held the firm belief that armed force was the only effective means of liberation and made generous monetary contributions to the freedom fighters. Word of the «Philiki Etairia» spread quickly and branches opened all over Greece. Members met in secret and were planning to revolt. Ali Pasha’s private rebellion against the sultan in 1820 gave the Greeks the opportunity they had been waiting for.

On 25th March 1821 the Bishop of Patras, Germanos, raised the Greek flag at the monastery of Aghia Lavra in Peloponese, an act that marked the beginning of the war of Independence. Fighting broke out throughout the Peloponese at first and then in the mainland and many islands as well.

Greek Independence was proclaimed at Epidaurus on the 13th January 1822. The other European countries were reluctant to intervene, fearing the consequences but help came from the Philhellenes. They were young men of classical education who saw themselves as the inheritors of a glorious civilization and were willing to fight to liberate the oppressed descendants of the ancient Greeks. Among them were Shelley, Goethe, Victor Hugo, Schiller, Lord Byron who died of pneumonia in Messolonghi a greek city of major resistance in the Revolution.

At last the western countries intervened , and a combined British, French and Russian fleet destroyed the Turkish-Egyptian navy in the Bay of Navarino (Pylos) in October 1827. The Sultan proclaimed a holy war but was again defeated by the Russian army which arrived at the gates of Constantinople and he had to accept the Greek Independence by the Treaty of Adrianopole. Finally the London Protocol created a small, independent Greek kingdom and appointed Prince Otto of Bavaria as the new King of Greece.

ΕΛΕΥΘΕΡΟΙ ΠΟΛΙΟΡΚΗΜΕΝΟΙ
Άκρα του τάφου σιωπή στον τάφο βασιλεύει
Λαλεί πουλί,παίρνει σπυρί,κι η μάνα το ζηλεύει.
Τα μάτια η πείνα εμαύρισε,στα μάτια η μάνα μνέει,
Στέκει ο Σουλιώτης ο καλός παράμερα και κλαίει.
«Έρμο τουφέκι σκοτεινό,τι σ’έχω γω στο χέρι;
οπού συ μου `γινες βαρύ κι ο Αγαρηνός το ξέρει».
Poem written by Dionissios Solomos after the siege of the town of Messolonghi during the Greek Revolution.

The poet shows us the way things were going. Death silence was everywhere and the atmosphere was heavy.Only a bird can find a seed and a mother of the town of Messolonghi is jealous because she does not have anything to give to her children.There is no food to eat and people are starving. The proud man from the Souli area is humiliated because he cannot use his weapon and thinks that because of this his pistol became unbearably heavy. ( At that time it was very humiliating not to be able to use their weapons to defend their country and their families)
Catherine - 6th grade

ΠΑΤΡΙΔΑ ΕΛΛΑΔΑ

Η καρδιά σου χτυπάει τόσους αιώνες
και ακούραστη, αγέραστη εσύ παραμένεις.
κι αν η μοίρα σου σ’ έριξε μες στους κυκλώνες
«ασφαλής κιβωτός» τους περνάς … κι ανεβαίνεις.
Τον ασύγκριτο, υπέρλαμπρο, μέγα ναό σου
πόσοι, αλίμονο, άφρονα να συλήσουν ζήτησαν.
μάταιη προσπάθεια … δεν πέφτει ο βωμός σου !
τα παιδιά σου με το αίμα τους, χρόνια πριν τον στοίχειωσαν.
Κι αν το χώμα σου κάποτε πάτησαν ξένοι
κι αν ξαπόστασαν έστω για λίγο σιμά σου
από ‘κείνο το χώμα ξεπηδούν οι αντρειωμένοι
που ανεπίστρεπτα – όλους – ξαποστέλλουν μακριά σου.
Λευκογάλανη κόρη, γλυκιά μάνα – πατρίδα
σ’ ακρογιάλια και όρη, από κάθε μεριά
ημιθέων, σοφών, ακριτών η κοιτίδα
τα τραγούδια σε σένα, θάναι για λευτεριά …

Poem by Teacher - Vassiliki

25th March
25th March is a very important day for Greece.On that day the Greeks started the revolution that freed them from the Turks.Greeks were very few and almost unarmed but Turks were a lot and had many weapons.The Greeks' motto was "Liberty or Death" so they fought many battles and a lot of them died, but they finally won.Now we are a free nation because our ancestors died for our freedom.
George - 5th grade

25th March 1821
On the 25th of March we celebrate the revolution against the Turks,after 400 years of slavery. The Greeks fought bravely and died for their freedom.Our ancestors liberated our country after many years of sacrifices.On this day we honour them with celebrations and parades.All the pupils and students dressed in blue and white march in front of many people who admire and applaude them.We have many celebrations in which we dance Greek folk dances dressed in traditional costumes and act theatrical plays about the war of revolution.
Stamatis - 5th grade

CHINA Chinese Security forces Crackdown by Killing Tibetan Protester's

CHINA.....CHINOS......leave the Tibetan monks alone.

One World, One Dream, Free Tibet 2008

Fresh Pictures of Tibetan protesters' dead bodies and crackdown by the Chinese security forces.

http://www.tchrd.org/

http://www.tchrd.org/press/2008/pr20080317c.html

17 March 2008 [Press Release]

On 16 March 2008, around 11.30 AM (Beijing Time), thousands of Tibetan monks of Amdo Ngaba Kirti Monastery, in Ngaba County (Ch: Aba), Ngaba "Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture" ("TAP") Sichuan Province, erupted into spontaneous protest by raising slogans calling for "Tibet independence", "return of the Dalai Lama", "freedom for Tibet" with carrying the banned Tibetan national flag.

They also shouted slogans calling for "Bod Gyalo" (Victory to Tibet), "Long Live the Dalai Lama". In moment's time, the Chinese security police burst into the Monastery campus and lobbed tear gas on the Tibetan protestors. The Chinese security police were currently blocking the protestors from marching out of the Monastery premises.

Following a similar protest by the monks of Taktsang Lhamo Kirti Monastery (a branch of Amdo Ngaba Kirti Monastery), Dzoge County (Ch: Zoige) Ngaba "TAP" Sichuan Province yesterday afternoon, truckloads of troops were sent into the area to disperse the protesting crowd to put the situation under the control. In yesterday's protest at Ngaba, more than ten monks were reportedly arrested and around five others injured following a violent crackdown by People's Armed Police (PAP) on the peaceful protestors. Atleast fifteen dead bodies were brought to the Kirti Monastery when the report last came in.

Drugs in USA Drinking Water

WAKE UP AMERICA! Look what they are doing to us!!!! They are pumping drugs into our USA water system!!!

Probe Finds Drugs in Drinking Water

(March 9) - A vast array of pharmaceuticals — including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones — have been found in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans, an Associated Press investigation shows.

To be sure, the concentrations of these pharmaceuticals are tiny, measured in quantities of parts per billion or trillion, far below the levels of a medical dose. Also, utilities insist their water is safe.

But the presence of so many prescription drugs — and over-the-counter medicines like acetaminophen and ibuprofen — in so much of our drinking water is heightening worries among scientists of long-term consequences to human health.

In the course of a five-month inquiry, the AP discovered that drugs have been detected in the drinking water supplies of 24 major metropolitan areas — from Southern California to Northern New Jersey, from Detroit to Louisville, Ky.

Water providers rarely disclose results of pharmaceutical screenings, unless pressed, the AP found. For example, the head of a group representing major California suppliers said the public "doesn't know how to interpret the information" and might be unduly alarmed.

How do the drugs get into the water?

People take pills. Their bodies absorb some of the medication, but the rest of it passes through and is flushed down the toilet. The wastewater is treated before it is discharged into reservoirs, rivers or lakes. Then, some of the water is cleansed again at drinking water treatment plants and piped to consumers. But most treatments do not remove all drug residue.

And while researchers do not yet understand the exact risks from decades of persistent exposure to random combinations of low levels of pharmaceuticals, recent studies — which have gone virtually unnoticed by the general public — have found alarming effects on human cells and wildlife.

"We recognize it is a growing concern and we're taking it very seriously," said Benjamin H. Grumbles, assistant administrator for water at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Members of the AP National Investigative Team reviewed hundreds of scientific reports, analyzed federal drinking water databases, visited environmental study sites and treatment plants and interviewed more than 230 officials, academics and scientists. They also surveyed the nation's 50 largest cities and a dozen other major water providers, as well as smaller community water providers in all 50 states.

Here are some of the key test results obtained by the AP:

--Officials in Philadelphia said testing there discovered 56 pharmaceuticals or byproducts in treated drinking water, including medicines for pain, infection, high cholesterol, asthma, epilepsy, mental illness and heart problems. Sixty-three pharmaceuticals or byproducts were found in the city's watersheds.

--Anti-epileptic and anti-anxiety medications were detected in a portion of the treated drinking water for 18.5 million people in Southern California.

--Researchers at the U.S. Geological Survey analyzed a Passaic Valley Water Commission drinking water treatment plant, which serves 850,000 people in Northern New Jersey, and found a metabolized angina medicine and the mood-stabilizing carbamazepine in drinking water.

--A sex hormone was detected in San Francisco's drinking water.

--The drinking water for Washington, D.C., and surrounding areas tested positive for six pharmaceuticals.

--Three medications, including an antibiotic, were found in drinking water supplied to Tucson, Ariz.

The situation is undoubtedly worse than suggested by the positive test results in the major population centers documented by the AP.

The federal government doesn't require any testing and hasn't set safety limits for drugs in water. Of the 62 major water providers contacted, the drinking water for only 28 was tested. Among the 34 that haven't: Houston, Chicago, Miami, Baltimore, Phoenix, Boston and New York City's Department of Environmental Protection, which delivers water to 9 million people.

Some providers screen only for one or two pharmaceuticals, leaving open the possibility that others are present.

The AP's investigation also indicates that watersheds, the natural sources of most of the nation's water supply, also are contaminated. Tests were conducted in the watersheds of 35 of the 62 major providers surveyed by the AP, and pharmaceuticals were detected in 28.

Yet officials in six of those 28 metropolitan areas said they did not go on to test their drinking water — Fairfax, Va.; Montgomery County in Maryland; Omaha, Neb.; Oklahoma City; Santa Clara, Calif., and New York City.

The New York state health department and the USGS tested the source of the city's water, upstate. They found trace concentrations of heart medicine, infection fighters, estrogen, anti-convulsants, a mood stabilizer and a tranquilizer.

City water officials declined repeated requests for an interview. In a statement, they insisted that "New York City's drinking water continues to meet all federal and state regulations regarding drinking water quality in the watershed and the distribution system" — regulations that do not address trace pharmaceuticals.

In several cases, officials at municipal or regional water providers told the AP that pharmaceuticals had not been detected, but the AP obtained the results of tests conducted by independent researchers that showed otherwise. For example, water department officials in New Orleans said their water had not been tested for pharmaceuticals, but a Tulane University researcher and his students have published a study that found the pain reliever naproxen, the sex hormone estrone and the anti-cholesterol drug byproduct clofibric acid in treated drinking water.

Of the 28 major metropolitan areas where tests were performed on drinking water supplies, only Albuquerque; Austin, Texas; and Virginia Beach, Va.; said tests were negative. The drinking water in Dallas has been tested, but officials are awaiting results. Arlington, Texas, acknowledged that traces of a pharmaceutical were detected in its drinking water but cited post-9/11 security concerns in refusing to identify the drug.

The AP also contacted 52 small water providers — one in each state, and two each in Missouri and Texas — that serve communities with populations around 25,000. All but one said their drinking water had not been screened for pharmaceuticals; officials in Emporia, Kan., refused to answer AP's questions, also citing post-9/11 issues.

Rural consumers who draw water from their own wells aren't in the clear either, experts say.

The Stroud Water Research Center, in Avondale, Pa., has measured water samples from New York City's upstate watershed for caffeine, a common contaminant that scientists often look for as a possible signal for the presence of other pharmaceuticals. Though more caffeine was detected at suburban sites, researcher Anthony Aufdenkampe was struck by the relatively high levels even in less populated areas.

He suspects it escapes from failed septic tanks, maybe with other drugs. "Septic systems are essentially small treatment plants that are essentially unmanaged and therefore tend to fail," Aufdenkampe said.

Even users of bottled water and home filtration systems don't necessarily avoid exposure. Bottlers, some of which simply repackage tap water, do not typically treat or test for pharmaceuticals, according to the industry's main trade group. The same goes for the makers of home filtration systems.

Contamination is not confined to the United States. More than 100 different pharmaceuticals have been detected in lakes, rivers, reservoirs and streams throughout the world. Studies have detected pharmaceuticals in waters throughout Asia, Australia, Canada and Europe — even in Swiss lakes and the North Sea.

For example, in Canada, a study of 20 Ontario drinking water treatment plants by a national research institute found nine different drugs in water samples. Japanese health officials in December called for human health impact studies after detecting prescription drugs in drinking water at seven different sites.

In the United States, the problem isn't confined to surface waters. Pharmaceuticals also permeate aquifers deep underground, source of 40 percent of the nation's water supply. Federal scientists who drew water in 24 states from aquifers near contaminant sources such as landfills and animal feed lots found minuscule levels of hormones, antibiotics and other drugs.

Perhaps it's because Americans have been taking drugs — and flushing them unmetabolized or unused — in growing amounts. Over the past five years, the number of U.S. prescriptions rose 12 percent to a record 3.7 billion, while nonprescription drug purchases held steady around 3.3 billion, according to IMS Health and The Nielsen Co.

"People think that if they take a medication, their body absorbs it and it disappears, but of course that's not the case," said EPA scientist Christian Daughton, one of the first to draw attention to the issue of pharmaceuticals in water in the United States.

Some drugs, including widely used cholesterol fighters, tranquilizers and anti-epileptic medications, resist modern drinking water and wastewater treatment processes. Plus, the EPA says there are no sewage treatment systems specifically engineered to remove pharmaceuticals.

One technology, reverse osmosis, removes virtually all pharmaceutical contaminants but is very expensive for large-scale use and leaves several gallons of polluted water for every one that is made drinkable.

Another issue: There's evidence that adding chlorine, a common process in conventional drinking water treatment plants, makes some pharmaceuticals more toxic.

Human waste isn't the only source of contamination. Cattle, for example, are given ear implants that provide a slow release of trenbolone, an anabolic steroid used by some bodybuilders, which causes cattle to bulk up. But not all the trenbolone circulating in a steer is metabolized. A German study showed 10 percent of the steroid passed right through the animals.

Water sampled downstream of a Nebraska feedlot had steroid levels four times as high as the water taken upstream. Male fathead minnows living in that downstream area had low testosterone levels and small heads.

Other veterinary drugs also play a role. Pets are now treated for arthritis, cancer, heart disease, diabetes, allergies, dementia, and even obesity — sometimes with the same drugs as humans. The inflation-adjusted value of veterinary drugs rose by 8 percent, to $5.2 billion, over the past five years, according to an analysis of data from the Animal Health Institute.

Ask the pharmaceutical industry whether the contamination of water supplies is a problem, and officials will tell you no. "Based on what we now know, I would say we find there's little or no risk from pharmaceuticals in the environment to human health," said microbiologist Thomas White, a consultant for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.

But at a conference last summer, Mary Buzby — director of environmental technology for drug maker Merck & Co. Inc. — said: "There's no doubt about it, pharmaceuticals are being detected in the environment and there is genuine concern that these compounds, in the small concentrations that they're at, could be causing impacts to human health or to aquatic organisms.

"Recent laboratory research has found that small amounts of medication have affected human embryonic kidney cells, human blood cells and human breast cancer cells. The cancer cells proliferated too quickly; the kidney cells grew too slowly; and the blood cells showed biological activity associated with inflammation.

Also, pharmaceuticals in waterways are damaging wildlife across the nation and around the globe, research shows. Notably, male fish are being feminized, creating egg yolk proteins, a process usually restricted to females. Pharmaceuticals also are affecting sentinel species at the foundation of the pyramid of life — such as earth worms in the wild and zooplankton in the laboratory, studies show.

Some scientists stress that the research is extremely limited, and there are too many unknowns. They say, though, that the documented health problems in wildlife are disconcerting.

"It brings a question to people's minds that if the fish were affected ... might there be a potential problem for humans?" EPA research biologist Vickie Wilson told the AP. "It could be that the fish are just exquisitely sensitive because of their physiology or something. We haven't gotten far enough along.

"With limited research funds, said Shane Snyder, research and development project manager at the Southern Nevada Water Authority, a greater emphasis should be put on studying the effects of drugs in water.

"I think it's a shame that so much money is going into monitoring to figure out if these things are out there, and so little is being spent on human health," said Snyder. "They need to just accept that these things are everywhere — every chemical and pharmaceutical could be there. It's time for the EPA to step up to the plate and make a statement about the need to study effects, both human and environmental."

To the degree that the EPA is focused on the issue, it appears to be looking at detection. Grumbles acknowledged that just late last year the agency developed three new methods to "detect and quantify pharmaceuticals" in wastewater. "We realize that we have a limited amount of data on the concentrations," he said. "We're going to be able to learn a lot more."

While Grumbles said the EPA had analyzed 287 pharmaceuticals for possible inclusion on a draft list of candidates for regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act, he said only one, nitroglycerin, was on the list. Nitroglycerin can be used as a drug for heart problems, but the key reason it's being considered is its widespread use in making explosives.

So much is unknown. Many independent scientists are skeptical that trace concentrations will ultimately prove to be harmful to humans. Confidence about human safety is based largely on studies that poison lab animals with much higher amounts.

There's growing concern in the scientific community, meanwhile, that certain drugs — or combinations of drugs — may harm humans over decades because water, unlike most specific foods, is consumed in sizable amounts every day.

Our bodies may shrug off a relatively big one-time dose, yet suffer from a smaller amount delivered continuously over a half century, perhaps subtly stirring allergies or nerve damage. Pregnant women, the elderly and the very ill might be more sensitive.

Many concerns about chronic low-level exposure focus on certain drug classes: chemotherapy that can act as a powerful poison; hormones that can hamper reproduction or development; medicines for depression and epilepsy that can damage the brain or change behavior; antibiotics that can allow human germs to mutate into more dangerous forms; pain relievers and blood-pressure diuretics.

For several decades, federal environmental officials and nonprofit watchdog environmental groups have focused on regulated contaminants — pesticides, lead, PCBs — which are present in higher concentrations and clearly pose a health risk.

However, some experts say medications may pose a unique danger because, unlike most pollutants, they were crafted to act on the human body.

"These are chemicals that are designed to have very specific effects at very low concentrations. That's what pharmaceuticals do. So when they get out to the environment, it should not be a shock to people that they have effects," says zoologist John Sumpter at Brunel University in London, who has studied trace hormones, heart medicine and other drugs.

And while drugs are tested to be safe for humans, the timeframe is usually over a matter of months, not a lifetime. Pharmaceuticals also can produce side effects and interact with other drugs at normal medical doses. That's why — aside from therapeutic doses of fluoride injected into potable water supplies — pharmaceuticals are prescribed to people who need them, not delivered to everyone in their drinking water.

"We know we are being exposed to other people's drugs through our drinking water, and that can't be good," says Dr. David Carpenter, who directs the Institute for Health and the Environment of the State University of New York at Albany.

http://news.aol.com/health/story/ar/_a/probe-finds-drugs-in-drinking-water/20080309184409990001

Matt Hallstrom.......

"Can a soul cease to exist? Or does our energy go somewhere else? A light bulb burns out. Does its energy go somewhere else or its just expended and ceases? How do we contemplate any soul ceasing to exist?"

I have lost a friend and I am trying to cope with his death. I recently moved back to California from Illinois. I found out through my son that Matt has passed on. I am in total shock. Matt was on my list to give him a call and let him know that I am back. I was very late to let him know. Matt saved my life and I feel like I was not there to save his. Matt was my hero. Did you know that he saved my life when an intruder came into my home? Yes, he is a hero. If it was not for him, I would not be here.

This is how I am going to cope with his passing on. Matt is still living. He is living through energy through his family, friends and his website. As I write this, it's evident that Matt's energy is being passed on to all of his family and friends. We may not know or understand this. But his energy is here. I am stepping out of the box and I am looking from the outside looking in, it's obvious that he had an impact on everyone around him.

I know we are all feeling a deep sense of loss. But remember, celebrate with others the love that he's shared with you. That's where his energy is.

Mattie, God rest your soul in peace my friend and my hero!

Please visit his website at: mattbytes

Soprano Actions

I found this story and it's like it came right from the show. Please read the article it is very interesting.

Activists Bare Teeth Over Foreclosures
AP
Posted: 2008-03-01 12:42:46

CLEVELAND (AP) - Folks on Humphrey Hill Drive were still waking up on the icy Saturday morning the shark hunters came to town. They rounded the suburban traffic circle in a pair of rented school buses after a half-hour ride from far more modest neighborhoods, rumbling to a stop at the Garmone family's driveway. Forty-two caffeinated Clevelanders piled out, their leaders carrying bullhorns.

Their quarry, Mike Garmone - a regional vice president at Countrywide Financial Corp., the nation's largest mortgage lender - didn't answer his door. So they deployed, ringing bells at the big homes with three-car garages, handing out accusatory fliers and lambasting Garmone and his company's loans. Before departing, they left their calling card - thousands of 2 1/2-inch plastic sharks - flung across Garmone's frozen flower beds, up into the gutters, littering the doorstep.

The commotion was the work of an in-your-face activist group called the East Side Organizing Project, with a paid staff then of just two, mobilized to battle Cleveland's mortgage "loan sharks." Years before the rest of the country was rocked by the fallout from aggressive lending, their neighborhoods were already home to the nation's highest concentration of foreclosures - and they were fed up.

ESOP's people are proudly loud and abrasive, and they've long reveled in needling people with pull. But could they get a distant behemoth like Countrywide to the table?

On that morning in February 2006, ESOP executive director Mark Seifert had his doubts. For starters, he wasn't sure his group's research on Garmone even had the family's correct address.

Until two evenings later, when Seifert checked his e-mail and found a message from a top public relations executive at Countrywide's California headquarters.

We need to talk, it said.

Seifert broke into a wide grin.

Now that David had Goliath's ear, he wasn't about to let go.

The foreclosure epidemic that has infected Cleveland's neighborhoods started earlier and has been even more punishing than the crisis much of the rest of the country is enduring. It's a symptom of the lax lending that became widely common, without the run-up in home prices that long camouflaged it.

"The problems that exist everywhere now ... showed themselves earlier here because there was no getting out of them," says Zach Schiller of Policy Matters Ohio, a Cleveland nonprofit focused on the state's economy.

The problem is well documented - Cleveland and the surrounding county saw more than 15,000 foreclosures last year. But to grasp its impact, walk with Nita Gardner down the block of East 113th Street where she raised two boys.

When Gardner, a retired machinist, bought the gray wood-frame house 33 years ago, this part of the Mt. Pleasant neighborhood was filled with families. Their homes on small lots were modest, but maintained with pride.

Have a look at what's left.

The white house on the opposite corner - its front porch ripped away by scavengers - fell to foreclosure last year. The home behind it - blue with plank-covered windows - went soon after.

A few doors down from Gardner, three homes in a row are abandoned. Three of the four across from them are vacant, too. It's not like some manicured suburban neighborhood, where it's a guess if a house is empty. Here, shredded curtains flap from holes where windows used to be. The silver fringes of insulation hang from walls where aluminum siding has been stripped for resale.

In early 2006, Gardner's adult sons - who had bought the house from her - fell behind on their mortgage and the lender, Countrywide, began foreclosure.

Gardner stepped in to fight, although looking at the home's drab exterior and the surrounding neighborhood, it's not immediately clear why.

Until, that is, Gardner opens the front door and light spills over the floor to a mural of an Egyptian pharaoh she painted in gold and azure across the living room wall. Upstairs, a closet door still bears the markings in pen where her sons charted their heights, year after year.

"I just feel like I'm a whole person with this house," says Gardner, explaining her battle to save it. "Because this is not just a house. It's me."

When ESOP held its annual meeting in 1999, organizers were surprised to see empty chairs. They called the missing and found many phones had been disconnected. They knocked on doors and found empty homes.

It was the first sign, Seifert recalls, that people in some of Cleveland's poorest neighborhoods were losing their homes to foreclosure.

ESOP's organizers, until then working with parents on safety around public schools, knew nothing about mortgage lending. But they did know how to raise hell.

That was clear in the mid-1990s, when ESOP demanded that Cleveland officials give money seized in drug busts to struggling city schools.

When Mayor Michael White put them off, ESOP members picketed White's church and ask the pastor to excommunicate him. They set up outside the house of the mayor's father, demanding he talk with his son. To drive the message home, ESOP activists figured out the married mayor had a girlfriend and went to her door with a letter demanding the cash.

The tactics came back to bite them.

"We lost about 90 percent of our funding overnight," Seifert recalls.

The nonprofit staggered. If it was going to be confrontational, it needed to keep the foundations that fed its budget in the loop.

Fighting foreclosures became their new cause. But they brought along old tactics - a brand of confrontation honed by Saul Alinsky, the legendarily radical Chicago organizer.

"Power is not only what you have," Alinsky schooled his followers, "but what the enemy thinks you have."

ESOP was banking on anger. Clevelanders were losing their homes, organizers concluded, because aggressive lenders had put people in mortgages they couldn't possibly afford.

In 2002, the group began going after lenders, servicers and mortgage brokers.

At one protest outside a branch of Charter One Financial Inc., a police officer confronted an ESOP volunteer in a shark suit.

"Are those your sharks?" the officer demanded, scooping plastic predators from the ground.

"No," protester Christine Regula replied. "I had my tubes tied."

They also pressed public officials to stall foreclosures proceedings. One, Steven Bucha, chief magistrate in charge of foreclosures in Cleveland's courts, recalls being invited by ESOP to a public forum. More than 200 people packed a church basement. Bucha was seated as far as possible from the door.

"A woman gave a fiery speech about how the system had done her wrong, how the system was in collusion with the court - and here's the guy responsible! And she pointed at me. I really couldn't get a word out," Bucha says. "It was like nothing else I've ever experienced in my life."

Bucha and others say the "guerrilla warfare" approach was counterproductive.

"Nobody likes our tactics, which is precisely why we use them," Seifert says.

One after another, the group squeezed and cajoled eight companies and their subsidiaries into signing pacts giving it direct access to a single executive with the authority to restructure problem loans. The companies have agreed to cut interest rates and waive penalty fees and past-due balances.

Last year, ESOP - one of four groups that counsel homeowners referred by Cuyahoga County's foreclosure rescue program - says it got mortgages reworked for about 1,500 homeowners, most already in foreclosure.

"You know, there's a fine line," says Rocky Ortiz, the local director of the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, which provides part of ESOP's funding. "Mark and his people have learned to walk it."

Maybe, but in early going, some of ESOP's targets were local or relatively small. Even some of the biggest were vulnerable, or at least open to discussion.

Could ESOP take on the biggest lender in the country?

It was time to find out. It's called a "rank 'em and spank 'em."

Nominally, it's a meeting. But that sounds too polite, longtime ESOP volunteer Barbara Anderson says. It's a venting session, about as calm as a trading pit. At a rank 'em in January 2006, ESOP organizers declared Countrywide their villain of choice.

A month later, they "hit" Garmone's house in suburban Painesville.

"Please call Mike at home ... and tell him to do the right thing: produce his boss to a meeting with ESOP!" the group urged its followers.

ESOP didn't want just any boss. They demanded Angelo Mozilo, Countrywide's chairman and CEO.

They got a meeting with a pair of executives at the Cleveland office of the NAACP, in May 2006. After 20 minutes, ESOP negotiators walked out because Countrywide's representatives would not sign a pledge to negotiate.

Countrywide will not answer questions about its dealings with ESOP.

"We want that relationship (with ESOP) to continue to improve so together we can help more borrowers," Rick Simon, a company spokesman, said. "Going back to the past doesn't help those borrowers."

But letters Countrywide executives sent to ESOP make clear the company's sharp disagreement with the activists' criticism and its irritation with their tactics.

ESOP organizers and Countrywide executives met again in the fall of 2006. The activists also sat down with officials from the federal agencies that oversee housing, trade and banking to voice concerns about Countrywide.

But the group was having trouble convincing local officials that Countrywide was the villain they said it was, Seifert says. The campaign moved to the back burner as ESOP negotiated an agreement with another lending firm.

The standdown, though, was temporary.

ESOP organizers got Mozilo's personal phone number and instructed homeowners to call him in the middle of the night.

They flooded faxes at Countrywide offices with hundreds of copies of identical forms detailing Cleveland homeowners' problem loans.

They posted signs on the front of abandoned homes owned by the lender: "Countrywide's idea of the American Dream! Tell their executives what you think!"

In April 2007, ESOP ferried two dozen volunteers to a Countrywide office in suburban Woodmere. They walked into the tiny office, located on the town's main shopping strip, throwing plastic sharks, handing out mock foreclosure notices and demanding a meeting with Mozilo, then left when local police arrived.

"We strongly believe that confrontational tactics and deliberate misinformation are not the way to build productive relationships that help Cleveland's homeowners," a Countrywide executive wrote afterward.

In June, a pair of Countrywide executives came to ESOP's offices to meet with borrowers, promising to work with individual borrowers but again refusing to sign the memorandum.

Nine days later, ESOP showed up at a Countrywide office in the University Circle neighborhood, sharks in hand.

In late July, an ESOP regiment headed to Hudson, an outlying suburb, and tried to shove their way into the office of the lawyer representing Countrywide in its Cleveland foreclosures. The company that had been selling the group its plastic sharks heard about their tactics and cut off the supply.

Countrywide, too, was taking notice and it was not happy.

"During efforts to physically force your way into the office, one of the firm employees was actually bitten by an ESOP member," Countrywide's chief counsel, Sandor Samuels, wrote afterward. "We will not enter into relationships with organizations that desire to subject our employees, contractors and Chief Executive Officer to harassment."

Countrywide insisted it was cooperating, saying it had restructured dozens of loans ESOP had brought to its attention.

But the activists said that was not nearly enough, that it was seeking more than piecemeal solutions.

Then, in October, a letter on gold-embossed stationery arrived.

"I am hopeful, for the sake of these families, that ESOP and Countrywide will move forward and work together in a constructive manner to find workable solutions to our customers' issues," it said.

It offered a meeting with the lender's senior management. It was signed: "Sincerely, Angelo R. Mozilo."

On a Wednesday in December, Samuels led a Countrywide delegation to Cleveland. ESOP rented a trolley, seated the executives in the front row for a neighborhood tour and filled the rest with homeowners.

Two rows back sat Lisa Pass, who stood to tell the story of her father-in-law's loan and the home it had put in jeopardy. She was surprised to find the executives were much nicer than she'd imagined. And they were listening.

Nita Gardner was there, too, and she laid out the paper trail she'd assembled chronicling her efforts to hold on to the house. The papers, she says, showed she had repeatedly made the payments Countrywide demanded, but the company still rejected her offers to buy back the house.

Afterward, one of the executives asked her how far she was willing to go to keep the house.

"Do you know what obese is?" Gardner says she answered. "Well I'm the medical standard of obese ... and I'm willing to walk the double yellow line of the Shoreway buck naked to get that house back."

When the tour ended and lunch was served, ESOP President Inez Killingsworth turned to Countrywide's Samuels. Would he sign a promise to negotiate? It was the same memorandum the lender had rejected for nearly two years.

Samuels paused. Then he reached for a pen.

Rising from their seats, ESOP's army cheered.

A few days after New Year's, Nita Gardner's phone rang. If she had money, Countrywide was prepared to sell her her house back.

When real estate agent Jeff Swiecicki, dispatched by the lender, arrived soon after, Gardner was still skeptical. But she signed a contract and handed over a check.

"I signed the paper and I cried," she says. "I told him, you can't go back on this."

Countrywide's decision is one of 50 to 60 loan workouts it has agreed to with homeowners represented by ESOP since December, Seifert says.

In December, the activists expected to reach a comprehensive agreement with Countrywide within four months. A few weeks later, Countrywide agreed to a $4 billion deal that will see it bought and merged into Bank of America Corp. But it has continued to negotiate.

That has the activists looking ahead. The foreclosure problem isn't going away anytime soon. They're changing their name to Empowering & Strengthening Ohio's People, to reach beyond the Cleveland area.

And they're already talking about the next lender they want to go after. They've even got the home phone number for a certain CEO.

Now, Seifert says, all they need is a new supply of plastic sharks.