The 3rd Street Beat Mission Statement
The Third Street Beat is a newsletter written by and created for people with substance use disorder. Our mission is to validate that experience so people know that they are not alone, and to emphasize the many unique roads that we take to recovery. This is an opportunity to share our experiences to creatively support each other. We are non-political, non-denominational, multi-racial, and gender neutral. Our mission is one of recovery and harm reduction, and all experiences are welcome. All the viewpoints herein are personal in nature and related specifically to our contributors’ recovery.
The 3rd Street Beat Editorial Team
The 3rd Street Beat is produced byThe Recovery Center community with assistance from the occupational therapy team.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Every Struggle & Lessons by PF pg. 3
Life Motto & Living by PF pg. 4
Should he tell? By JB pg. 5
Charles G. by JB pg. 6
Life Motto by AM pg. 7
Mrs. America by JMK pg. 8-10
Life Soundtrack by KG pg. 11
And I believed him pg. 12
Two Pitbulls by DA pg. 13
My childhood self by AT pg. 14
Two Brothers by JB pg. 15
Everyday Struggle
In the fight we call list sometimes there is no second act. I accept myAngels and my dreams cause they are both who define me. In the game called life sometimes we win sometimes we lose. And I know I am one bad day away from drowning my sorrows.
Life’s Lessons
Been shot at, lost too many friends to bullets, drugs, sickness, old age, and neglect.Yet am still here to carry the torch and bear witness that it’s not where ya from but it’s where ya at. And trust that the lord has a plan for you and me.
Life Motto
My life motto is mind you once cause someone wants your mind. Meaning if you are not careful someone can come along and pull the wool over your eyes. Make you fall for anything.
Someone finding acceptance was me, I accepted bad and the Lord Jesus as my savior, I accepted the fact that I was lost in pills and alcohol, I accepted the fact that I couldn’t do it alone.
I learned the lesson that in life it’s not the destination but the journey and we learn something new everyday, and there’s a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.This quest I make on my own cause no one can make it but me.And it's not when you die…….. But how you live!
Paul F. 08/27/24
My
name is Jack
I want to write a story about what a guy told me about two of his friends.They grew up together went to school together and everything. But unfortunately when they got out of school they went to drinking and drugging. Everything went from good to bad.They start stealing, robbing, breaking the law to support their habit.They started going back and forth to jail. So after so much hardship, one of the group met a girl.And decided to turn his life around to sober up stop using drugs, and got a good job. He married the girl, bought a house, a couple of cars, and they had 2 kids. He really got his life together. One day his friend that he use to run with came over to his house. He wanted to borrow his car. Since he had 2 cars, he let his friend borrow one.The friend left for about a couple hours and brought the car back.After his friend left the police got the tag number that led to him.They locked him up for robbing the bank and shooting somebody.You think he should tell the police who had his car?
My name is Jack
And I decided to write about a person that nobody write about. I decided to write about Charles Guiteau, he was secretary of state, he was in a good position, he had a chance to be the next president of the United States, but he killed President Garfield. He use to call the president on the phone and tell him he wa going to hill him because the didn’t think Garfield was able to be President. So, he finally kill him and went to jail. Somebody sent him two bugs, a girl bug and a boy bug, and said they hope the bugs will multiply in his cell.Alog of people liked President Garfield, but he didn’t. So, when he went to court he told the judge he kill him because he didn’t think he was qualified to be President.The judge said, that was not a motive. He didn't’have motive for kill the President. So the judge was going to send him to an insane asylum. He said he didn’t want to go to no insane asylum and said go ahead and kill him because he would rather die a man than live life as a fool, so they killed him.
What
is your life motto, or what do you live by?
I myself believe in Karma, what come around goes around.
Respect goes a long way. Do unto others as you would like others to you.
My grandmother give me life motto… “If you don't have nothing nice to say about… (open), don’t say nothing at all. Aclosed mouth don’t get fool. If you need help ask, but help yourself first.
Please be mindful of yourself and others. Think, think, think.
MRS. AMERICA
Mini-series on Hulu
By John M. K.
Gloria. Betty. Bella. Shirley.
If this was 1973, you’d know precisely whom I mean by those front names. You might even know who “Phyllis” was (though it’s doubtful you’d recognize “Jill,” and I’ll get to her later). They were, respectively, Steinem, Freidan, Abzug, and Chisholm. Phyllis was Schlafly and Jill was Ruckleshaus. All figured in the movement for women’s liberation and the Equal Rights Amendment through the 1970s. “Mrs.America” is an eight-part miniseries dramatizing that struggle.
Some (really) quick stuff about my relationship to this material: I was born in 1962 and I do recall a great deal of the news coverage of this part of American history. In particular, the debate over the Equal RightsAmendment found its way into junior high and high school social studies classes I was in.
While the feminist movement got the lion’s share of the press coverage during this time, there was also a counter-movement that opposed passage of the Amendment, claiming it was either redundant of protections already in the Bill of Rights or that it created new ones that would, paradoxically, work against women’s best interests.
Schlafly was unquestionably the leader of that counter-movement, and she came in for a ton of vitriol from many women’s organizations and activists. Here she is humanized (thanks largely to a vividly three-dimensional performance by Cate Blanchett), but you can only do so much of that with her. She’s shown to be formidable. (She even went to law school to better prepare herself for debates over constitutional law regarding the ERA.). However, her own case reveals her worst aspects.These included ugly personal slurs against feminists, as well as tolerating segregationist support for her organization.
Friedan is rightly shown as something of a misanthropic jerk, despite her enormous achievements in organizing a movement for women’s rights. Steinem even has a line “Each time I extend a hand to her, I pull back a bloody stump.”
(Full Disclosure: I’ve a personal experience with her boorishness. When I was volunteering as a PressAide at the 1992 Democratic National Convention in NYC, I approached her to thank her for all the great writings and work she had done over the years. She wouldn’t shake my hand. Guess I wasn’t “AList” enough for her.)
The writing team, or someone on it, clearly has sympathies forAbzug as it comes close to a whitewash. She, too, did and said things to hurt the cause. She also had a sharp perception of political maneuvering and is brought to earthy life by Margo Martindale, who won the Emmy for her performance here.
Chisholm is clearly the most endearing of the figures, fighting relentlessly and resourcefully for due consideration of Black women’s concerns in the movement. The scenes where she is given short shrift are subtly powerful.
Gloria is the least three-dimensional of the portraits. It’s pretty much straight-up fan service. Though, any fair-minded person could see the admirable qualities just inherent in the character.
Jill Ruckleshaus is shown to have been in an impossible position as the wife of President Nixon’sAttorney General(!), trying to drag her Republican Party into the enlightened views of the movement for women’s rights..
The series leads up to the 1977 Women’s National Convention in Houston with impressive drama. It was where both NOW and Stop ERAactivists met, alternately conflicting and bonding.
It ends with the Reagan landslide of 1980. Schlafly was dropped from a cabinet post (she’d hoped for UNAmbassador) as she was seen as too polarizing a figure to be in the administration. This was bitingly ironic, considering all the tremendous work she had done. .
The series works best as human drama. Ironically, it’s a fictional, composite character that gets the most thoughtful, nuanced presentation. “Pamela” is a young housewife and member of Schalfly’s “STOPERA” campaign. Played by Kayli Carter, She begins with Schlafly as her mentor and political conscience, an ardent activist in the cause, she finds her beliefs tested by real life experience that conflicts with her doctrine, as well as with a disillusionment with Schlafly who appears more and more a demagogue to her. There’s an especially revealing scene where she bonds with a woman at the Houston convention whom she believes to be a fellow anti-ERAactivist, but then states her membership in NOW (the National Organization for Women, the largest pro-ERAgroup in the country).. Pamela is thrown by how someone she’d grown so quickly fond of could be on “the other side.” It is a genuine inner transition that is believably written and played.
The ERAfailed to pass in 1982, but is still (somewhat) alive in that there are motions in the US House of Representatives to revive it. According to Wikipedia, “In 1983, the ERApassed through House committees with the same text as in 1972; however, it failed by six votes to achieve the necessary two-thirds vote on the House floor.That was the last time that the ERA received a floor vote in either house of Congress…
“The ‘New ERA’introduced in 2013, sponsored by Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, adds an additional sentence to the original text: ‘Women shall have equal rights in the United States and every place subject to its jurisdiction.’"
“MrsAmerica” has the journalistic limitations of the docudrama format, but also vividly puts into dramatic form important historical arguments and will involve you with the characters in the middle of them.
My Life Music Soundtrack By Decades
My name mate at this meeting I go to has moved me and has given me a taste of what is possible in sobriety. Last week I had shared that I was starting from zero again and had very little/dirty clothing left except for a few bloody rags. He asked me after the meeting what size I was and told me he might have a few clothes he could bring them today, then he handed me a metrocard with $17.25 on it. I went back to the meeting and afterwards he handed me a large bag of clothes and told me something to the effect of,
Being good to yourself because you are worth it.
And I believed him.
The story is about my two pitbull dogs girl the mother GG and her sonTyson that live with me in my little room. I try the best I can by feeding them and give them water, wash them, take them out for walk around the park so they can play. But they are very dangerous around other dogs when they seem them.Tyson the boy dog is very horny, if he don’t get what he want from the other dogs he go into attack mode and try to hurt the dogs. God forbid I don’t wantTyson to hurt or kill a dog I will go to jail or get a lawsuit on me so I don’t want that to happen so I got to be on my Ps and Qs and stay on point when I take them out I got to make sure they are in their leash at all times and GG the mother is very sick. I got to get her to the vet/a dog doctor to get medical help. She is breaking out with a rash that is all over her body and she is blind in one eye and has a bump on under her eye so I will tell you the story in Part II about GG andTyson how I got them to live with me so God bless the city the country and world
Thank you
DarrylA.
If I met my childhood self the advice I would give is to be aware to chose the right people to be around, and to take your education serious. Not to try to be accepted by my peers by using alcohol and drugs .To continue to stay committed to playing basketball and baseball instead of choosing to hang on corners and dealing with the lifestyle that came with it.To listen to the advice my mother was telling me and to make her proud of me. I would just tell myself to respect my elders and my teachers, because they were trying to give me a better direction to chose in life.And to never forget to count your blessings, and to keep your eye on the prize!
My name is Jack. I want to write about something that happen in the Bronx.
Aguy went in a store during closing time. When he got in the store he said this is a stick-up. He took all the money that was in the cash register, then he left the store.The cashier had a gun behind the counter, he pick up the gun and went out the store. He shot the man that robbed him in the back, and he closed up the store, and leff.The man shot died. Somebody told the police the shot came from that store. When the police went to the store it was closed.The police stayed there until the store open the next day. When the man open the store, they found the gun and locked him up for murder.The kid couldn’t speak English to well but he tried to tell the police he didn’t do it. But the wouldn’t let him go. He got a chance to go home if he tell the judge. He work in the day time. His brother work at night.
