After Pulse: Nichole Elinoff

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Advisory: Please note that this post is about the Pulse nightclub massacre on June 12, 2016. It contains sensitive and difficult to read content.

Nichole Elinoff is the sexual minority coordinator at the Florida Department of Health, working in HIV prevention within the GLBT community. At the time of the Pulse Nightclub massacre she served at the GLBT Center as director of clinical services.

The entire state of Florida does not have sex education. Each county handles the subject differently. Central Florida, is 6th in the country for HIV infections. Florida as a whole is number 1 in the country for new HIV cases. All of the top 10 highest HIV infection rates are from counties in the the south. Miami Dade, Florida is Number 1 and Baton Rouge, Louisiana is number 2.

Nichole was in South Florida when the Pulse Nightclub shooting happened. Sunday morning June 16, 2016 at 8am she got a call from the board president of the Center. Since she was asleep, she didn’t immediately pick up. She kept getting calls and texts. The first text she read was “are you OK?” Someone else knew she was in South Florida and said she was safe. On Facebook she saw the black Pulse logo and the rainbow.  She couldn’t believe what she was reading. She called the Center and made arrangements to get back to Orlando.

She drove back to Orlando that day in record time. She went to the Center for the press conference. Her husband brought donuts. The Center was packed with board members, community members. She hugged everyone. The mental health counseling effort was already being coordinated. The HIV testing program had to be shut down that week since there was so much going on.

A dear friend was the lead HIV test counselor that she worked with at the center. She was trying to call him constantly throughout that day. The week before he had been at Latin night at Pulse. She couldn’t reach him.  He finally called back while she was at the Center and she broke down and cried. He wasn’t at Pulse on the night of the massacre.

Monday morning she helped coordinate the media response. She updated the Facebook pages. She looked at the Go Fund Me that the Center created and helped maintain that site. She coordinated her staff of volunteers to bring water to the blood donation sites. Lines of people were standing in the sun and they needed water.

When the Orlando United Assistance Center opened at Camping World Stadium,  she set up a table with two other staff members. They interacted with the families of victims and survivors. They found out what their needs were and they passed out gift cards. She brought gift cards and supplies to her team.

Testing returned to the Center after that first week. It was a challenging couple of months after Pulse. One of her staff decided he needed to go into victim advocacy. He was hired at the Orlando Assistance Center. After he left she needed to do his job as lead tester, as well as her own until she could find someone to fill his position. She organized some training with the Red Cross for her volunteer staff to talk about dealing with grief, and how to look for trauma.

People they were testing mentioned that they were taking more chances like sex without condoms, more drinking and more substance use because they may have lost friends or someone they knew. They were trying to cope. After a tragedy people tend to take more chances. They want to feel safe and unprotected sex can become a problem.

There was no HIV support group for Spanish speakers so she wrote a grant to help get one started.

After Pulse: Macy’s Response

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Advisory: Please note that this post is about the Pulse nightclub massacre on June 12, 2016. It contains sensitive and difficult to read content.

Macy’s was involved in a variety of ways after the Pulse Nightclub shooting on June 12 2016.

Lee O’Rourke who is the district vice president for Macy’s in North Florida found out through an individual who works for the Metropolitan Business Association, which is an LGBT chamber, that Macy’s was not involved with the Orlando Come Out with Pride Parade. Macy’s is involved in Pride parades across the country so it made sense to become involved in Orlando. Starting in 2009 Macy’s became a participating sponsor.

Kevin Tweed is the district director of visual merchandising and he became involved in creating visuals for Pride. Since June 12, the company has become even more involved with the LGBT community. Macy’s does give back to the community, it is one of their core values.  $25,000 was donated to Gay Pride.

Gay days happened the weekend before the Pulse Nightclub shooting. Macy’s had been at the many events at hotels and theme parks. It was an amazing fun week leading up to June 12. From the high of that week they were hit like a freight train with the massacre.

Lee woke up about 5:30am and turned on the news. The Pulse shooting dominated the news. The count at that time was about 10. She immediately texted Kevin. He will never forget that text he got at 7:08am, it changed everything. They started texting back and forth wondering what to do. Then they wondered if somebody they knew might be there. After the initial shock they went into battle mode and started calling and texting to find out if everyone was OK.

That first day was an emotional roller coaster. A Macy’s manager was at Pulse that night and left at 11:20pm and saw another staff member enter as he left. They could not find this one person for most of the first day.

At first there is shock and then the need to get busy and do something. On Monday morning Kevin started calling food banks and blood banks and the local centers to see if there was anything that Macy’s could do to help out. The company immediately started doing matching funds.

Lee got permission from the company to do whatever they needed to do. A volunteer at the Center reached out and explained that a victim did not live in Orlando, so they did not have any proper outfit to bury him in. His family arrived from Puerto Rico with no notice and had nothing with them, so Macy’s arranged for a personal shopper to dress them prior to the funeral.

The ubiquitous Macy’s blue tee shirts could be seen at the vigils and events all of that first week as staff handed out water and fans to anyone who wanted them.

After Pulse: Bishop Noonan

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Advisory: Please note that this post is about the Pulse nightclub massacre on June 12, 2016. It contains sensitive and difficult to read content.

Bishop Noonan is the Catholic Bishop of the Orlando Diocese. The day before the Pulse Nightclub massacre he was on a trip to Los Angeles for a meeting. When he arrived he saw what had happened back in Orlando and he realized he had to get back. He got back to Orlando on Monday morning June 17, 2016.

Once a year priests gather in September right after Labor Day. A priest came from Connecticut who is a native of Florida and he was the priest at Sandy Hook. He spoke about his experiences at Sandy Hook. It was frightening. He said that when a crisis happens you have to deal with the people who are suffering and hurting, and the public. He spoke about the families. He needed to take care of the families. He said the president had to come, the governor had to come it was like re-victimizing people over and over again. The public display of support and grief has to come right away.

When Bishop Noonan got back to Orlando on Monday night the cathedral was opened for prayer and solidarity. Then individual families needed assistance. A number of the Pulse victims were catholic. Arrangements had to be made for funerals for the next 10 to 12 days. The press wanted to invade the privacy and mourning of families. Four or five priests went to the Marriot hotel where families had gathered to find out what had happened to their loved ones.

Bishop Noonan spoke at the vigil on Monday night. Growing up in Ireland he realized that hatred breeds violence. Families wanted answers about where they needed to go and what they needed to do. When you loose a son or daughter there are no feelings, you are just numb. The answer is in the scriptures. Christ suffered an died for us that we might have life eternal. The only way to console someone is through faith and trust in god.

He had never had to experience what it was like to hold funerals for victims of a mass shooting. Pulse was diverse, there were 4 or 5 parishes who were involved. Families didn’t know what to do. Some didn’t want any publicity. They didn’t want anyone to know. Some families came from overseas. Some families discovered their son or daughter was gay and they didn’t want to claim the body.  If bodies had to be flown back home that had to be set up. Families grief needed to be addressed. They were not able to deal with all the logistics.

Trying to keep the press away from the families was a challenge. Families wanted peace and calm. People are still hurting.

Phantasmagoria presents: A Christmas Carol & The Canterville Ghost

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If you are looking to kick off the Holiday season with a taste for the macabre, then join Phantasmagoria as they present  “Ghost Stories” this Christmas season. They will bring to life and the bitter sweet taste of death to not one but TWO whimsical classics. The well-loved A Christmas Carol, A Ghost Story of Christmas by Charles Dickens, followed by Oscar Wilde’s rollicking The Canterville Ghost.

I sat in on a dress rehearsal for the show at the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts. The set felt like an abandoned attic with carousel horses flanking the stage. Projections on a large screen behind the set changed the settings with ease. I fell in love with the faint flickering candle light that illuminated the various corners of the stage.  That meant I needed to keep the scene dark so the candles could shine.

A Christmas Carol is a well loved and very familiar classic. Phantasmagoria added its dark and vaudevillian steampunk styled flair to the story. John DiDonna as Scrooge lived in the old man’s skin. I have seen him perform this roll many times over the years. Daniel Cooksley as Marley, draped in chains did an amazing job filling the stage with his his twisted and agonized self. Of the three ghosts, the ghost of Christmas future was magnificently designed. Much larger that life, the dark draped figure gestured with gnarly black branches for hands.

The Canterville Ghost offered a much lighter tale full of light hearted dance. It was the yin to Dickens dark and foreboding Yang. There are two more performances December 3–4, 2022 at the Alexis & Jim Pugh Theater, in the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts, 8 p.m. and 2 p.m. Tickets are about $35.

After Pulse: Candice Crawford

Posted on by Thor

Advisory: Please note that this post is about the Pulse nightclub massacre on June 12, 2016. It contains sensitive and difficult to read content.

Candice Crawford is the CEO of the Mental Health Association of Central Florida. She is a member of the board of the Plaza Live as well. The night before there was a shooting of singer Christina Grimmie at the Plaza Live. The board came to this board room to try and deal with the repercussions of that tragedy. They were pretty shaken up about it. That board meeting happened all afternoon on the Saturday before the Pulse massacre. An 8am conference call was scheduled for 8AM Sunday morning 12 June 2016.

She got up just before 8AM and got a cup of coffee. When the conference call began the conversation was about the mass shooting. At first she thought the mass shooting might have happened at the Plaza, but no, they were talking about the Pulse Nightclub. What in the world is happening?  It was quite the weekend. She called several members of her staff after the conference call ended. They needed to have someone at the Mental Health Association to answer the phones. Phone call could be forwarded to one of the staff members in case anyone called looking for help. There were lots of calls.

The next day they needed several counselors in the offices. On the first day one person came in and the next day 4 or 5 came in. She decided that a Pulse directed counseling program would be needed. She realized there would be a lot of young people at that club who did not have insurance and they would need counseling. Fundraising began to get the program up and running.

Orlando United Assistance Center (OUAC) gave referrals and others sough help on their own. Everyone who has sought help has gotten help. At the time of the interview 118 people had participated in the counseling program. Confidentiality was of the utmost importance.

Town Square

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Under Musk‘s ownership, Twitter stopped taking action against tweets breaching its Covid rules, as of Wednesday, 23 Nov 2022. Twitter had previously suspended more than 11,000 accounts for Covid misinformation as of September 2022.

The former president who promoted and supported an attack on the Capitol to stop the certification of the presidential election was also invited back. His account was permanently suspended after the insurrection. Apparently 62,000 suspended accounts have been re-instated. Twitter also reinstated the personal account of US congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, banned in January 2022. Now that accounts that spread misinformation have been given amnesty, it is unclear if they will return, or new ones will be emboldened to share incorrect information, that could influence the decisions people make about their health.

I have used Twitter extensively throughout the pandemic to learn about the latest research and trends as the virus spread. I have been seeing these Twitter feeds report that they are loosing thousands of followers after Musk took control of the company. Republican politicians on the other hand are gaining thousands of followers. Notably Senator Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.; Representative Adam B. Schiff, D-Calif.; and Senator Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., lost about 100,000 Twitter followers since Musk bought Twitter, while Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, gained more than 300,000. Exactly what is causing these trends is not yet known.

Musk fired thousands of employees which will clearly result in far less moderation of hate speech and the resulting violence. He was forced to pause the initial launch of an $8 per month Twitter Blue service after users abused the system by purchasing blue check marks to impersonate brands and famous people. Drug company Eli Lilly, who manufactures Insulin, had to apologized for a misleading tweet in which someone pretending to be the company wrote, “We are excited to announce insulin is free now.”  After that debacle, the drug company suspended advertising on Twitter worth millions of dollars. Musk banned some impersonators before he shut the service down, raising questions about his definition of free speech.

Experts have argued that there has been an exponential increase in hate speech, harassment and misinformation on the platform since the billionaire purchased the social media site. Barbara F. Walter, has written about the potential for social media to fuel a decentralized civil war. She studied civil wars and insurrections in foreign countries for the CIA and realized that eh United States is backsliding towards armed conflict as well thanks in part to social media promoting extremism. Extremism generates more clicks.

 

 

 

Multi System Cluster Bomb

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Research led by Monash University has highlighted the need for General practitioners and physicians to know the COVID history of patients they treat. The study published in MJA looked at hospitalizations that had causes other than respiratory complications. COVID-19 is not a simple respiratory disease. CODID is not a cold or the flu.

Data from laboratory confirmed COVID-19 cases prior to the vaccine rollout were compared to hospital admission data prior to Omicron. “The incidence of hospitalization within 89 days of onset of COVID-19 was higher than during the baseline period for several conditions, including myocarditis and pericarditis, thrombocytopenia, pulmonary embolism, acute myocardial infarction, and cerebral infarction.” Simply stated “there are considerable risks associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection beyond the initial COVID-19 illness”, said epidemiologist and PhD candidate Stacey Rowe.

“You are 15 times more likely to acquire myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle) requiring hospitalizations following COVID-19 compared with beforehand,” she said. “Things like heart attacks, or acute myocardial infarction occur quite proximally to getting COVID infection, but other conditions such as the clotting conditions – pulmonary embolism, for example — that risk was highest later in the course of COVID illness, highest around 14 to 60 days following COVID illness.”

COVID-19 is a multi-organ disease, it’s not just a respiratory infection. Rowe and colleagues recommend vaccination and “other mitigation strategies”. You are better off not getting COVID. The problem of course is that Americans are done with mitigation strategies of any type. In a pandemic, 15% of people make decisions that help, 15% make decisions that hinder their survival, the rest just follow the herd. The herd has decided to let the virus rip.

Crealde 5 minute pandemic sketches

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At Crealde School of Art for one of my Urban Sketching Classes I pose for the students and then students pose in turn for 5 minutes each. My quick sketches serve as demo to show how to get the figure on the page and start to think about the environment around the student pose. In this sketch one figure is isolated and the second sketch I added a student sketching in the foreground and a background with a hint of a table and windows. This is a rare case where I didn’t throw some watercolors washes on the sketch. I also never touched a pen and only worked in pencil which is how many beginning students work since they fear they may have to erase mistakes. In the short duration of 5 minutes there is never time to erase.

Edwina Andrews

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Dr. Edwana Andrews is the director of Social Justice and Advocacy at the University of Central Florida. Early in life she realized that not everyone appreciates or accepts or values individuals who identify in the LGBTQ Community. The church that a friend grew up in was not inclined to host a funeral when he died. She had been taught that you should love your neighbor. Why would the church not allow the funeral?

This became the catalyst for her to do her doctorate and dissertation on the gay, lesbian and bisexual experience in the black church. She interviewed individuals who had a religious experience in a black church. She defined a religious experience as the person attending church at least twice a month. None of the individuals she interviewed continue to attend the black church. None of them identify as religious, but they do identify as spiritual. They experienced a lot of hurt and homo negativity in the black church.

While in their parents roof, they had to attend church. When they went to college, they took that opportunity to take a step back from the church and re-evaluate to find perspective as they tried to rationalize their own sexual identity.

She interviewed individuals from Florida, Texas, Atlanta Philadelphia, and California there were no geographic restrictions.

The oral history was cut short by a fire alarm. The line work was finished in the 30 minutes we had, and I added a few washes afterwards from memory.

Foxconn

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Protests erupted at Foxconn the huge iPhone manufacturing plant in Zhenvgzhou China.Police in hazmat suits clubbed the factory workers protesting.

Last month, the factory was locked down due to rising COVID cases. Some workers scaled the fences to break out and go home. Former workers estimate that thousands have fled the factory campus. The company then recruited new workers with the promise of generous bonuses.

Rumors circulated that new recruits were being asked to share dormitories with workers who were Covid-positive. When new workers arrived they were told they would not get the bonuses promised until they had worked at the much lower pay for several weeks. One protestor via a live stream said, “They changed the contract so that we could not get the subsidy as they had promised. They quarantine us but don’t provide food.”

Foxconn has established closed loop operations at the plant, keeping it isolated from the wider city of Zhengzhou. Workers are not supposed to leave. The Zhengzhou plant employs more than 200,000 people. It is not known how many are infected with COVID. “It’s now evident that closed-loop production in Foxconn only helps in preventing COVID from spreading to the city, but does nothing (if not make it even worse) for the workers in the factory,” Aiden Chau of China Labour Bulletin, a Hong Kong-based advocacy group, said in an email.

Foxconn has apologized for a “technical error” in its payment systems, a day after its iPhone factory in China was rocked by angry protests. The iPhone factory apologized for the violence against employees. One new employee was paid 8,000 yuan ($1,120) and was set to receive another 2,000 yuan ($280).

China has recorded its highest number of daily Covid cases since the pandemic began,