snd the Pontiff says the orthodox church should be treated with respect . The Cardinal does nor care about ny const art 1 sec 3. which allows people to do as they please
ny pml sec109 can burn in hell or be stuffed in a cave by the likes of sndrew cuomo who purports to make his calendar your calendar
Thursday, July 12, 2018
Claude Solnik
Long Island Business News
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Home > LI Confidential > Stop scratching on holidays
Stop scratching on holidays
Published: June 1, 2012
Off Track Betting in New York State has been racing into a crisis called shrinking revenue. Some people have spitballed a solution: Don’t close on holidays.
New York State Racing Law bars racing on Christmas, Easter and Palm Sunday, and the state has ruled OTBs can’t handle action on those days, even though they could easily broadcast races from out of state.
“You should be able to bet whenever you want,” said Jackson Leeds, a Nassau OTB employee who makes an occasional bet. He added some irrefutable logic: “How is the business going to make money if you’re not open to take people’s bets?”
Elias Tsekerides, president of the Federation of Hellenic Societies of Greater New York, said OTB is open on Greek Orthodox Easter and Palm Sunday.
“I don’t want discrimination,” Tsekerides said. “They close for the Catholics, but open for the Greek Orthodox? It’s either open for all or not open.”
OTB officials have said they lose millions by closing on Palm Sunday alone, with tracks such as Gulfstream, Santa Anita, Turf Paradise and Hawthorne running.
One option: OTBs could just stay open and face the consequences. New York City OTB did just that back in 2003. The handle was about $1.5 million – and OTB was fined $5,000.
Easy money.
What we can all learn from the trapped Thailand soccer kids
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Thai officers supervise the rescue mission inside Tham Luang Nang Non cave on June 28.Getty Images
This week, the world watched with bated breath as 12 boys, members of The Wild Boars soccer team, and their coach were rescued from deep inside an underwater cave in Thailand.
It was a situation that had seemed beyond hope and yet, the boys’ steely determination and preternatural calm stand as a lesson to Americans letting every political fight further tear society at the seams.
The boys, ages 11 to 16, went missing on June 23 after deciding to explore a cave near Mae Sai, on the Thailand-Myanmar border. Torrential rain fell unexpectedly, and the waters rose, forcing them deeper inside.
For nine full days, the boys and their coach survived, together, in near total darkness, on a ledge surrounded by water, with no sustenance or contact with the world, before their location was discovered by an international team of rescue divers. Their trial wasn’t over yet; it would be another nine days until the last four and their coach were rescued on Tuesday.
British, American, Chinese, Belgian and other volunteer divers assisted the Thai Navy SEALs, forming teams that pushed forward 200 meters at a time, passing oxygen in a “daisy chain” through sharp, labyrinthine passages that claimed the life of Saman Gunan, one heroic Navy SEAL who died in the effort to rescue the boys.
Israeli entrepreneurs provided the video and voice linkage to the boys, and the radio system that helped enable the rescue operation. And Ruengrit Changkwanyuen, a Thai diving enthusiast, reportedly briefed and trained the Thai SEALS in cave-diving, which is different from the combat and rescue they had been trained for.
Of course, the practical skills of engineers, technology experts, divers and military top the list of what enabled this rescue effort. But there’s another story here — one of quiet emotional fortitude, solidarity and spiritual strength.
Surely if the boys or their coach had panicked or turned on one another in the darkness, they couldn’t have survived. The boys’ coach, 25-year-old Ekapol Chanthawong, had worked with them — even choosing the name “Wild Boars” (“Moo Ba” in Thai) — to build their self-esteem. Mostly poor children who, in a soccer-obsessed country, had been rejected by their school teams, the boys found camaraderie on the Boars.
A Buddhist monk as well as soccer coach, Chanthawong instructed the boys to meditateto help them through the nightmare. According to some reports, the boys and their coach assembled a list of who would be rescued first.
The maturity and spiritual selflessness of their behavior is truly staggering.
At a time when most Americans, though comparatively comfortable, struggle to remain positive, work together and problem-solve, the Wild Boars stand as a reproach.
“As time went by, my belief is these boys didn’t get weaker and more disconsolate, they became the Wild Boars they came together to be,” said Bob Trask, a Unity Church minister from Bellingham, Wash. “They got that strong sense of community from their coach.”
Timothy Cardinal Dolan of New York agreed: “At a time when we seem to be wallowing in a sense of fracture and disunity in the United States and the world, to see the world act as one on behalf of these kids in distress — Hallelujah!”
Buddhism, according to Kadem Morton, principal teacher at Kadafa Meditation Center of New York City, preaches just this type of inner calm in the face of life’s difficulties. It also stresses kindness and interdependence.
The rescue shows that “everyone is longing to do something good and meaningful, and if you give people the opportunity to put themselves on the line to be of benefit to others, people will do it,” he said.
“America is in a lot of trouble,” said Trask. “We are way back in a cave. Now the water has come and we’re stuck. We have to come together in trust.”
He added: “If we become fragmented, stuck in, ‘I hate Trump, I hate the liberals,’ we’ll stay stuck. We must stop this … so we can come back out of this cave.”
Heather Robinson is a New York-based journalist.
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