It's my hometown

Where I'm from, the small forests are still dense and filled with entangled trees. The ocean, the rivers and creeks are still blue and clear, and still far removed from the smokestacks and the Snookis that have long defined what's "Jersey."

It's always a good time to take a 5-mile run around Twilight Lake, because the view is serene and timeless. The sun rays lay like sparkling rods of orange across the water, and behind it, a slow-moving train occasionally pulls in and out of the Bay Head station, a well-preserved reminder of the area's past and present.

Whenever I see it all, I'm always reminded: Point Pleasant is a great place to live; not just to visit.

In some ways, Point Pleasant, like its surrounding towns of the Jersey Shore, has more beauty than it had 17 years ago, when I last lived there. There are more parks for kids to play in. The run-down stores, and the beaten-down woods at the end of my old block, now have life.

My house is gone, leveled by a wrecking ball in 2003, soon after my mother died. But the block is better, and the houses that once looked like they were falling down are now solid and stately.

If only we had a Dairy Queen just a few houses away while I was growing up in the 1970s ad 1980s; now, the people of Barton Avenue do. Now, sitting on what was a vacant lot, where the kids once threw rocks and broke windows at the vacant stores at the corner, there's something else for the kids and their families to do.

With every community, however, there's always some attempt to taint it, and change what's there for what they say is better, but it's actually worse. Even Point Pleasant isn't immune to having a Mr. Potter-like political boss - like the one from "It's a Wonderful Life" - whose obsessive control ultimately threatens to drain the community of its spirit.

Even Point Pleasant has been threatened time and again by developers who want to come to town, build a big box store and pull away the small businesses that have kept the downtowns of Bridge and Arnold avenues afloat, and unique.

But even amid the name-calling and the potential lies of a political campaign, an ugly partisan battle that has dominated the local dialogue lately, Point Pleasant remains rich in splendor, and not so much because of its natural charm. It's the people, and they remain the glue that keeps everything together.

Now, in an ugly election year, they are fighting back against deception and fear. They are showing the strength that's helped keep the town the way it is, even as corruptive forces have, for years, tried to turn it into something else.

They have been tainted by the campaign signs, slogans and sayings of a campaign that's been marred by a candidate who serves as council president and, according to many learned observers, has taken control of the town.

Susan Rogers now wants to be mayor, and she's claiming to have roots in the community that likely never existed. She says she graduated from Point Pleasant Borough High School in 1985, though many of us from that class don't recall anyone named Susan Rogers - let alone Rogers - walking up to get her diploma on that hot day in June 1985.

Complaints have been filed against Rogers, the Republican mayoral candidate, that she misused her power as an elected official to launch a police investigation after two supporters posted comments about her son on a Facebook campaign page.

The whole thing would be puzzling, damning and even laughable if it weren't for the fact that Rogers is the product of a political machine that, in my hometown area, has become the dominant controlling force for decades.

Yes, that machine is Republican, but party-affiliation has little to do with it. It has to do with a one-party machine that's controlled the county I'm from for most of my life. This is a machine that has become unstoppable, and has even taken pride in flaunting it, as Rogers' political backers have wrestled control of nearly 90 percent of the towns in Ocean County, N.J.

In the neighboring towns, this machine has allowed growth and development to turn wide-open spaces into suburban sprawl, with filthy roads that are filled with traffic. The dirt paths of my youth are now four-lane highways littered with Home Depots and IHOPs.

There are a few exceptions to that rule, of course, and one of them is Point Pleasant. The people fought back against those who once wanted to tear down a swath of forest known as "Red Desert," a place where I picked leaves for my Biology project in the 12th grade, and played war games with sticks and cap guns when I was 8.

The developers that feed the coffers of those in power tried, and tried hard, to get their way. But it was the people who stopped it, and they banded to together to halt the bulldozers that would have flattened a thick patch of oak, cedar and maple trees that stretch for more than a mile.

In the end, the developers caved, as did the politicians, and the only thing they did build was a park.

Those same people tried to do it again, along Bridge Avenue, down by the road's intersection with Beaver Dam, where I used to get my hair butchered by Sam the barber, and where I bought records and cassette tapes at Boro Stereo. Across the street from the stores, another thick patch of woods was doomed by a developer who wanted to put up a supermarket, among other things, that threatened to finally extend the sprawl to Point Pleasant.

Yet again, the people fought it. Again, they won. Some trees were chopped down, but not to make way for another boxed store. This time, it was for another park.

Now, with Rogers seemingly trying to strengthen her grip on the town, they're fighting again. And it's not just the things she says that has them worried. It's not just the incredible resume that she's put forward.

As I've written on http://www.jerseyshorenews.org, my Jersey Shore news site for Patch.com, Rogers has sided herself with the same people who are siphoning money away from these towns, the same money that could keep property taxes low and educational programs functional.

My friend Bill, who just recently moved back to the town, has banded together with many others on Facebook, asking people to say whether they remember Rogers not just as a politician, but as their classmate. They hope to present a survey that will prove that Rogers didn't walk the aisle in June 1985, even as she continues to insist that she did.

Others have passed notes, emails and anything else around, saying Rogers must be stopped. They've enlisted the help of the local paper, which has probed into Rogers background and has revealed even more about her that's inconsistent and troubling.

Rogers has had it good, and given the political history of the town, one could easily say she'll survive. But I've gotten to know the people lately, reacquainting with them on Facebook. I recently became the Jersey Shore regional editor for AOL's Patch division, and I'm looking forward to delivering Jersey Shore news to Point Pleasant, as well the neighboring communities of Brick Township, Howell Township, Wall Township, Long Branch, Berkeley Township and Toms River, that's been sorely missed.

Now I look at the people, and I'm reminded about who they are. This is a town that once promoted the slogan "Only the Tough Survive" for its high-school wrestlers, when they could have been saying it about anybody with a Point Pleasant address.

For once, I think it's safe to bet against the machine.

My Hometown/Bruce Springsteen

I was eight years old and running with a dime in my hand
Into the bus stop to pick up a paper for my old man
I'd sit on his lap in that big old Buick and steer as we drove through town
He'd tousle my hair and say son take a good look around this is your hometown
This is your hometown
This is your hometown
This is your hometown

In '65 tension was running high at my high school
There was a lot of fights between the black and white
There was nothing you could do
Two cars at a light on a Saturday night in the back seat there was a gun
Words were passed in a shotgun blast
Troubled times had come to my hometown
My hometown
My hometown
My hometown

Now Main Street's whitewashed windows and vacant stores
Seems like there ain't nobody wants to come down here no more
They're closing down the textile mill across the railroad tracks
Foreman says these jobs are going boys and they ain't coming back to your hometown
Your hometown
Your hometown
Your hometown

Last night me and Kate we laid in bed
talking about getting out
Packing up our bags maybe heading south
I'm thirty-five we got a boy of our own now
Last night I sat him up behind the wheel and said son take a good look around
This is your hometown

Coping with the greatest tragedy

As I wind down to my last day at The Bergen Record, I think there's something fitting about the fact that my last assignments have all dealt with Sept. 11, the World Trade Center and the news event that may never go away.

Two days ago, I watched a memorial service in Demarest, N.J., watching men and women, young and old, cry at the thought of this tragedy. I saw police and firefighters in full uniform, saluting as "Taps" was played on a trumpet.

I listened to the mayor, a man around 60 years old, barely able to voice his prepared remarks. He was a big man, the size of a linebacker who could have crushed Walter Payton in his day. But he rushed away from the lectern just after he finished, covering his face so no one could see his red eyes and the tears running down his cheeks.

Several weeks ago, I toured the site where the memorial and One World World Trade Center are going up, and I saw it again - emotion, raw emotion coming by people who never would have displayed it before the attacks. They were hardcore construction workers who were proud, and even tearful, as they helped make Ground Zero alive again.

Every time I go there, and after every annual memorial service, and after every controversy regarding Muslims and mosques and what have you, I think: How are we going to get over this? Are we going to get over this? How are we going to heal ourselves?

I think about what a friend mine, Michelle Parisi, said the other day, and she nailed it, because it speaks to the genesis of this website, as well as the "Coping" column I did for The Bergen Record from 2003 to 2008.

"I think when you are faced with a great tragedy, you are forced to deal with it, and you find ways to cope," she wrote on my Facebook page. "The best case is you find healthy ways to cope."

I started writing about mental health because of my family, but I also felt an obligation as a journalist to talk about "coping" with all forms of stress and tragedy after the terrorist attacks. Sept. 11 was not just a physical loss, but also a mental disaster for so many people.

It's so easy to say, "We just need to cope." But how? And how do you do it so it's "healthy," which is an important distinction to make?

That's what we need to figure out, as Michelle said, and I think the nation is, though slowly.

I hope someday we get past the anger I see on cable news channels. I hope we can someday forget about political parties and labels, and keep doing what we've been doing: saluting, playing, remembering, crying and rebuilding.

We just need to cope, as Michelle said, and find a healthy way of doing it.

I hope we can become one again, just as we did on Sept. 11, and in the months after, and as we do every Sept. 11, when people of every race and political stripe forget about labels.

We all cry, but we can all feel a sense of goodness, too, because we are finding ways to deal with families without fathers and mothers. We're dealing with people who lost their jobs, and lost their livelihoods, but somehow managed to keep going, nine years later.

We have come so far. I was nine months into my tenure at The Record when I saw the North Tower fall from my car window while driving on the New Jersey Turnpike. The next day, I was there, taking a PATH train to midtown because they didn't go any farther south.

I took a subway as far downtown as I could go and walked about 10 or so blocks. I had to write about something that dealt with transportation, but I never did write it.

The paper didn't need it, which was good, because it gave me time - time to look at something I never saw before, and may never see again. I saw and smelled a pile of burning, twisted metal, with a smoldering fire that gave it a glow.

I saw people wearing surgical masks, and somebody gave me an extra one so I wouldn't have to breathe it all in, too.

The wind blew slightly, and the air was stuffed with clouds of dust that made it all still hard to see.

A man saw me looking a little lost. He pulled down his surgical mask and said to me, "Smell that?"

"Yeah....it's bad."

"What do you think that smell is?" he said, hunkering down a bit as the smog filled the streets, like it was a snowstorm.

"That ain't metal," I said, just as I wrapped the mask around my mouth.

That was about as close as I ever got to it, and it was one of the most intense feelings I've ever had. I've always felt like I had some connection to it, even if I did live in New Jersey and I wasn't there on the day, running away as the skyscrapers crumbled.

Michelle is from Delaware, and she noted feeling a connection but also a sense of distance. I felt a distance, too, but we all seemed to know somebody who was in there. You still feel a connection and a sense of loss.

When I saw the North Tower fall, and I thought a friend of mine was in there, and I nearly drove off the road, thinking, that's it. He's gone. When I found out he was alive, I was relieved.

But he wasn't the same afterward, so I still feel a sense of loss.

In many ways, I think we all felt powerless, and I think we still do, in a lot ways. We never caught the people who really masterminded this, and the ones who executed it died. I feel like much of this country has been in a collective funk since then because we still don't know what to do.

We shouldn't take for granted, however, what we've accomplished.

Every year, we have our memorial services, we cry and we remember. Every day, construction workers are working to add one more level to One World Trade, and working to get the water pools that will mark the footprints of the Twin Towers finished.

Every year, as we move farther away from that day, we can feel a sense of relief that many of us are still healthy, getting up every day and battling against a bad economy. We're still working hard to earn a paycheck.

We move on, because that's what people do whenever tragedy strikes. It happened after the Vietnam War, though slowly; it can happen now.

Every day, we find new, better ways to cope.

9/11, mental health and infamy

Nearly 3,000 people died on Sept. 11, 2001. But the mind was one of the most significant, and lingering casualties.

On the ninth anniversary of the attacks, it's important to remember that there are resources for people still suffering.

From Columbia University and it's book, "9/11: Mental Health in the Wake of Terrorist Attacks:"

Does terrorism have a unique and significant emotional and behavioral impact among adults and children? In what way does the impact of terrorism exceed the individual level and affect communities and specific professional groups as well as test different leadership styles?

How were professional communities of mental health clinicians, policy makers and researchers mobilized to respond to the emerging needs post-disaster? What are the lessons learned from the work conducted after 9/11 and the implications for future disaster mental health work and preparedness efforts?

Yuval Neria and his team are uniquely placed to answer these questions having been involved in modifying ongoing trials and setting up new ones in New York to address these issues straight after the attacks.

No psychiatrist, mental health professional or policy maker should be without this book.

Another chance

I don't need an economic indicator or an interest calculator, a talking head from a 24-hour news channel or a radio pontificator, to say what's going on around me.

I got a clear reading last week as soon as I announced that I'm leaving The Bergen Record, as of Sept. 20, to become the regional editor for an AOL venture called Patch.com.

The last time I changed jobs - back 10 years ago - I got a hundred "farewells." Now, with the help of Facebook and the rest of cyberspace, I got hundreds more of these:

"Help me."

Anyone who knows me understands that I've always put a life of good deeds ahead of a life of material gains. But the economy has had such a the devastating impact that too many people appear to be, as David Crosby once sang, "too far gone."

In many ways, I'm sorry for what's happened to others, but thankful for some of the choices I've made. I've worked hard to get to a point where I can see a bright light in a dark world.

I'm also grateful, and damn lucky, because I know how easily I could be like so many others.

I've been there, too, where I've had to turn to a food bank for help because the salary I got was too small to feed me. Twenty years later, I can say I'm lucky to be alive, a survivor with a family that feeds me with strength and affection.

Twenty years later, I can say I've had bosses with the guts and the brains to guide me, and shape me into a journalist who's earned trust and respect. They've helped me become, in many ways, a person who's above the many fears that once consumed me.

I wish I could do more, and in my new position, I hope I can. I'll continue to do this blog, because I think it's provided the kind of guidance to others that's helped me through the highs and lows of life.

I'll help to hire people with the kind of experience that's necessary to work as local editors in Point Pleasant, Brick Township and other communities in the Jersey Shore (and, no, not the Jersey Shore T.V. show), because news - good, informative and unbiased news - is what those towns need.

But, again, I feel lucky, because I've managed to avoid the suffering and desperation of others that has had hit depths I never thought I'd see. The stories of breadlines and bankruptcy that were the stuff of the Great Depression now look more inevitable than merely possible.

Newspapers such as The Star-Ledger are offering buyouts, and the whispers in the industry are that the buyouts are just delaying the inevitable end.

At least so far, I've managed to avoid this kind of crisis - with more luck than pluck on my side - as I've watched an industry fall apart, and the Internet take away what was left of the content that once made newspapers look and read like miniature books and magazines.

I've seen people in my industry, and out of it, getting into trouble with foreclosure, bankruptcy and eviction. Ironically, they've turned social networking and cyberspace into virtual breadlines, pleading for another chance.

These are good people who ran into a wall. In the past, they always had a little more credit, another job opportunity or a bank to give them a little longer grace period to fall back on.

Now, all that's gone. The banks no longer show mercy, because they supposedly don't have any money. The credit card companies are no longer so "generous," because they no longer have the patience.

Getting a better job is something, I believe, I've deserved for a long time. I went to Columbia's graduate school to learn digital media, and now I'll manage a series of editors as each of them try to churn out as many as three stories a day in the towns where I grew up.

Sure, I was picked because of my resume of 21 years of hard work, covering the suburban and urban cultures of Dover, Del., Hackensack, N.J. and Easton, Pa. I was picked because of what I did after 9-11, convincing The Bergen Record that somebody should be covering the military as the United States waged war in Afghanistan.

But I often think of how I could be like many others who didn't have an employer that trusted them, and didn't give them the respect to build something on their own.

I got that from The Bergen Record, where they let me call the "military beat" my own, and travel to the Fresh Kills Landfill with the National Guard, and see how the ruins of the World Trade Center were being recovered.

They let me fly with troops en route from Afghanistan, and hear their stories of missiles flying by the cockpits of their planes in early days of the war with the Taliban.

I think about Columbia University, where my father encouraged me to accept their offer to go, and I learned from the best in the digital media world. I was told by others - usually people who went there, and got good jobs as a result - that I shouldn't go, that I was wasting my time.

Boy, were they wrong.

I think of the others who didn't get that chance, even if they were just as smart, or even smarter than me. Some of them grew up with me, and they didn't have the family, the guidance and the support that could wrap around them, and nurture them along.

Again, I think of my friend, John. I often thought John was smarter than me, not because of the grades he got, which were almost always worse. I always thought that anybody who is funny has to be smart, because the hardest thing to do is to make people laugh.

I often hung around with John, especially in middle school, and engaged in some of the silly pranks that were the stuff of innocent childhood. Only John kept it going, well into adulthood, long past it all being tolerable.

Last I heard, John was in jail, with bail set at more than $100,000. He was charged with theft and a host of related offenses. He let down his family, and he had no money. All he had was denial and defiance, and a body wrecked by years of hard living.

I often think, am I smarter? Or am I just lucky? I often wonder...

Helping those who are near and far

The New Jersey Mental Health Institute, Inc. may seem like it has a limited reach because it's specified as a "New Jersey" group.

But the NJMHI does so much more in so many places that are much farther away.

Just to name a few:

* Delivery of keynote presentations and trainings for a total of more than 50,000 individuals. Three statewide conferences focused on cultural competence to improve treatment quality for diverse populations - not only ethnic groups, but also elderly immigrants and gay and lesbian clients. NJMHI also coordinated training for more than 23,000 mental health providers in New Jersey's Children's System of Care.

* Establishment of the Tsunami Mental Health Relief Project. More than 100 individuals in Sri Lanka were trained to help nearly 20,000 children and adults cope with the devastating effects of the tsunami in December 2004.

* Awarding of scholarships to 20 bilingual, bicultural students pursuing Master's degrees in social work.

* Developing and supporting policies that have increased access to non-emergency mental health services and decreased utilization of emergency and inpatient services among Hispanics in New Jersey. An additional 13,532 Hispanics received outpatient care in 2006, compared to 2000. Furthermore, 33 percent more Hispanics received screening services and 25 percent fewer Hispanics used emergency services between 2005 and 2006.

* Collaboration with other state and national organizations to battle stigma and discrimination; support families whose loved ones have mental illness; and influence the development of policies to support providers in delivering the most effective mental health services.

Chances are you have a friend or family member with mental illness, as it affects one in every five Americans. Imagine if your loved ones could not receive the care they need because of stigma, lack culturally competent providers or lack awareness of available services, the organization says.

Like many children and adults across the country, they would miss the vital opportunity to receive treatment that would change their lives. The New Jersey Mental Health Institute, Inc. (NJMHI) has made great strides toward solving this problem. With your support, NJMHI can have an increasingly significant impact on the lives of thousands of individuals.

Clearly, NJMHI is well poised to achieve so much more, especially with your support. That's why the group is asking for a tax-deductible donations to maintain its success.

The NJMI thanks everybody for their commitment in helping the group improve the lives of adults and children with mental illness.