Rising Tides, is a documentary film that explores. the terrible toll climate change is taking on the Atlantic seaboard’s commercial fishing, the baymen their families and the local economies.

It’s been only eight years since the 2016 Paris climate accords and seven since Trump pulled the United States out of it, and then Biden put us back in. A lot has changed in that time. 2023 was the hottest year on record and it was marked by a staggering number of extreme weather events. The effect of this is a public awareness of the need to deal with climate change now. Unfortunately, we are drastically behind where we need to be to prevent the worst of what science tells us is coming.

Climate change is having a major impact on the major shell fishing industries on the Mid and Northern Atlantic coast. We will be going in depth to examine the effects on three groups of shell fishing communities tied to.

The Peconic Bay Scallops on Long Island New York

The Blue Crabs in Baltimore Maryland

This crisis is a larger issue than just the dying of the Peconic Bay Scallops, or the Blue Crabs in Maryland , but they are all indicators that Climate Change and Global Warming are the new reality, despite a large part of the population who still don’t believe it. That needs to change, and I hope this documentary will in some small way help that cause.

I grew up on Eastern Long Island and spent my youth at the beach, so this story is extremely personal to me. I know these people. I want to try and give something back.

It’s time for all of us, , to look at the immediate future and this coming election year. We need to get beyond partisan politics; climate change is THE global issue, and we need to start electing members of congress who will fight for climate change legislation right now, and not bow down to money from the Fossil Fuel Industry!.

2024… The year it all changes. Let’s make it change for the better.

The Story

2020 was a year few of us will ever forget. Covid-19, an election year and a petulant bully in the White House who denied both. For many reasons that need to be explored, this man, his presidency, and Trumpism has taken a huge toll on the American Jewish community. Yes! There was a pandemic. Over four hundred thousand Americans died, mostly on “his watch”. Yes, Donald Trump lost the election by over seven million legal votes and seventy four electoral votes.

For those of us who experienced this turmoil unfolding, it was particularly disturbing to learn that a large number of American Jews voted for him. Reporting and surveys seem to indicate that the religious right wing of the Jewish Community as well as the “1%ers” stood firmly behind Trump. In 2016 more than 25% of the Jewish community (according to the Pew Research center) voted for Trump.

It didn’t take very long after the election for Trump’s true colors to be displayed. Charlottesville in 2017 was a defining moment for the world to see and hear who Donald Trump was and what he believed. It’s impossible to forget his words that day: “there were very fine people on both sides.” It was clear, at that moment, when he defended the behavior of Neo-Nazis and white supremacists what was to come. We were not dealing with a man who had the main – stream humanitarian values we expect from Presidents of these United States. That statement opened the flood gates for the Nazis, white supremacists and fascists to step up their game and leave the shadows they had been lurking in for years. The former Commander and Chief actually encouraged it and going forward, HE gave them a platform.

After four years of hate speech, immigration atrocities, countless incidences of violent anti-Semitic behavior, discrediting of the Black Lives Matter movement, casting doubt on free and fair elections, and inciting a mob to take over the Michigan statehouse. One would expect that all this would-be sufficient cause to break the ties with the President. It didn’t. Why? How could this be?

2020 saw a rise in in the Jewish community’s support for Trump. More than 30% of the Jewish community (according to AP) voted for Trump. Many in this large segment of the American Jewish Community, mostly the Ultra Orthodox and Chasidic Communities believed all of the lies.

Then there was the January sixth insurrection. It was the coming out party for the racist, white supremacists, and truly Anti-Semitic fringe, who stormed the capital in the name of Trump at his personal invitation.

Then to make matters worse, he was acquitted by his faithful base of senators who were so afraid of the fringe base that they chose party politics over justice and honor

Let me be clear. The Jewish Trump supporters are not the only ones responsible for our four-year national nightmare. There is plenty of blame to go around and it will be written about and studied by historians and political scientists for years to come.

However.

I honestly don’t understand the undying allegiance and fascination with Trump. A man who literally fiddled (played golf) while the country burned. He lied about the pandemic, he lied about the election, and his open support of white supremacist groups has fueled the fires of anti-Semitism. Just between 2016 and 2018 there was a 60% rise in anti-semitic incidence according to the Anti-Defamation League, going from 942 in 2015 up to 1267 in 2016. Those statistics more than double by 2019 going up to 2107, the highest number since 1979. The direct cause and effect is plain as day.

The Jewish people have been persecuted, killed, expelled from countries all over Europe, for centuries for just being Jewish. I find it inconceivable how any Jewish person could support a man who has complete contempt for the values we hold most dear. The Jewish people are supposed oppose racism, oppression, discrimination, because we as a people understand what that means in the most severe and dire of instances

The hard truth is that Liberal and Conservative Jews must put aside their differences to fight Trumpism. Trump is gone but Trumpism is just getting started. New right-wing media outlets, spewing lies and propaganda, will continue to empower hate groups. Only standing together can overcome this hate.

The aftershocks of the Trump administration and of Trump himself will be felt for years, possibly decades to come. We need to be better. We must hold the moral high ground, because when we don’t, the anti-Semites know just where to find us. It is extremely naïve for us as a community to be assured of our place in America.

My hope for this film will be to document a direct line from Trump’s election in 2016 to a deadly rise in anti-semitic events and behavior as a result of his four years in office. I will do that through interviews with community leaders, scholars, Jewish political associations and legitimate news sources. My intent is to get answers to the questions of: “How did we (the Jewish community) get here” and “How can we fight against anti-Semitism in 2021.” I will also make sure that the countless anti-Semitic events of the past four years are documented for all to see and not swept under the proverbial rug.

It’s imperative that we find some common ground where we as the Jewish community can stand together against racists and fascists of all stripes, because at the end of the day we are all Jews.

Jack Hardy, was the Bard of the Village.

One of the most prolific Folk Musicians of our time.

Jack Hardy was a unique man with a unique voice. While his own music ranged from Celtic folk to roots-inspired Country folk in his later years, the voices that came out of his collective of songwriters and musicians are dynamic, diverse and famously eclectic. Some are names well known to the public and include Suzanne Vega, Shawn Colvin, John Gorka and Christine Lavin. Many others are less well known, but are equally exciting. They all gathered in Jack’s living room to eat pasta and hold their latest creations up to peer scrutiny. In his later years Jack teamed up with long time friend David Massengill and the two became the Folk Brothers, playing and recording until Jack's untimely death in 2011.

Jack knew how to get himself noticed from an early age. In 1969, while a student at the University of Hartford and serving as the editor of its “The News-Liberated Press” , he was arrested and convicted of libel after publishing a lewd cartoon of then-President Nixon.

In the mid-1970s Jack began hosting a Monday night songwriter's circle in his apartment on Houston Street, open to both seasoned veterans as well as beginners. At the same time he began what would become the songwriter's night at the Cornelia Street Cafe. That songwriter's group eventually became the Songwriter's Exchange which released its first album on Stash records in 1980. In 1982 Jack founded, and became the editor of the Fast Folk Musical Magazine.

Jack Hardy was a mover and shaker in his own way. He touched the lives of many talented songwriters with his ear, his voice and his infectious spirit. Never one to shy away from telling the truth or letting people know what he thought, Jack’s songs are a mirror of who he was. His understanding of the human condition and what was important made his music relevant on the most visceral level. He had something to say and he said it.

“Bard of the Village” will explore Jack's world, his influences and legacy in the downtown folk scene. Through interviews with the musicians and songwriters who he called friends, his family and contemporaries, I hope to paint a picture of a man who was less well known than he should have been, and whose voice and heart are still out there performing, writing and sending out the message every night where his influence is still felt. As a testament to Jack, friends and colleagues, will perform their favorite Jack songs in an intimate studio setting.

My ultimate goal for the documentary is to celebrate the man, the world he helped create and shape, and to shine a light on the folk movement that still exists and thrives here in NYC.

This is the story of Sean Casey and the Sean Casey Animal Rescue (SCAR) organization, a Brooklyn, New York-based shelter with an emphasis on caring for even the most unusual of nature's creatures.

Now available on Amazon Prime