I wasn't sure if this should go in Artist forum, Media forum so I'm playing it safe and putting it here. This is such a beautiful and intriguing video. I had to share it. I ADORE it...

Hero

♥♥♥ Jody ♥♥♥

Wow. What an amzing video. Thanks for sharing She-ra. My friend here with me liked it as well.

I think this place is just fine, Jody.

An old fireman recently sent that to me.
The man is amazing...and the message is moving. One of the finest gestures of respect I have seen.

cool video, cool find

That was awsome Jody.

That was just so beautiful and sad...thanks for a great find.....goalie

Yes, to be honest, I had tears the last few moments of the video. How beautiful and what a statement!! I hope Fluffybunny gets to see this! He is one of the ones who needs to be recognized as well as all the men and women he works with. ♥ Jody

Send a link to him via IM, Jody, I'm sure he'll be very appreciative.

Thank you so much for posting it!!!! Awesome video!!

Okay I did. Thanks sweetie Jody

That is neat ...... Thnx for sharing it Jody

That was so incredibly beautiful Jody! I,ve seen a few of his video,s and think he,s amazingly talented, but this one really was the most heart touching of his work! Thanks so much for sharing it!

I have to admit I found his sporadic jumping a tad humorous.

It's called intense emotion doll face♥... humorous getting there, maybe... end result... BEAUTIFUL! ♥♥♥ Jody

Great video!!!

What an amazing artist! I also clicked on another link that was there that showed some other painting of his, truly remarkable!

Wow.

That was incredible and touching. Moving.

I(We) still have a soft spot, an open wound that never seems to heal for the 343 firefighters that died of 9/11. I still choke up thinking about it. I know to the average person it doesnt mean much of anything. just a number of dead people, with firefighters in the mix.

When you walk into most firehouses there is a sign somewhere prominant that says "Duty, Honor, Courage- So That Others May Live..." A lot of us have that as a tattoo. That concept is important to me and many others. I can only pray that some day I can prove myself worthy enough to shine the boots of guys like the 343 that willingly ran up dozens of flights of stairs never knowing if they could make it back down. Against thousands of people coming down, they did everything in their power to get to places where people were trapped and could not get out. To help people that physically could not make it. Overwhelmed and undersupplied, out of air and exhausted, they continued to help those that could not help themselves, knowing the risk to themselves.

I visited the 10th Ladder in Manhatten a few weeks after 9/11. They were across the street from the towers and their building was tore up. They lost 6 Brother firefighters that day. They never stopped searching through the rubble. Not for weeks and weeks...A bunch of firefighters were standing there from all over the country bringing department patches to leave, and offering words of support. So here are a bunch of grown men standing there. Some guy from the midwest is standing by me and he breaks into tears and just starts apologizing again and again for not being there to help that day...It was eating him up inside that he did not help on 9/11 even though he was so far away. But the truth is that every single one of us felt the same way. We were all tore up. Just standing there staring at the floor crying for these guys that we didnt even know, but we knew what kind of men they were and they had our complete respect. Good men, all of them. At that point and time we were a family like no other...We have flaws no doubt, but firefighters are a family.

Much love to you and your brethren. Just know there are people out here who acknowledge, love and respect what you all do. Blessings on all of you. xo, Jody♥♥

This isn't related to the OP but i was thinking about this today and wondered if you clear this up for me Fluffybunny. Do you have retained firefighters in the states, my dad was 20 odd years in the job (UK) before an accident forced him to leave, when he was in the job there was always a lot of strain (to put it mildly) between retained and full-time, is it the same in the states?

The speed he works in is amazing.

great video, now that is art I can love and appreciate. Very moving

Indeed, it's beautiful

If by retained you mean folks that volunteer their time, then yes. This will come as a surprise, but about 75% of the firefighters in our country our volunteers. Most people assume that every firefighter that goes by is well paid to do what they do. 3/4 arent paid a dime. Most Big cities are paid firefighters with maybe a few volunteers, but as soon as you get outside of a big city, volunteers outnumber paid staff most of the time.

In some places yes there is a divide between paid and volunteer. it depends on the leadership. In some places the full time staff consider themselves superior...more dedicated...which I always though funny. It is tough to be more dedicated that to risk your life on a regular basis, and not even get paid for it. Or get insurance, retirement...to do it just because you feel it is the right thing to do. When I was volunteering I got 3.00 per call to cover the gas to get to the station, that was it. If I died on the call my wife would get a $20,000 life insurance policy, barely enough to get me into the ground. Thats it. Volunteers do not get paid. They do it because they love it.

Any time you have some guy who works a full time job and has the regular stress of life, and then on top of that volunteers to risk his life to help other human beings, he has my full respect. That is an honorable person. That shows more dedication than the guy that shows up for his paycheck and retirement in my opinion.

Fire doesnt care one lick whether a firefighter is paid or not when it is trying to kill you. We all have to train to the same level, volunteer or not.

If you want a realization of how much firefighters(even paid ones) have to love their job let me give a brief story about something that happened to me last summer that was a wakeup call for me.

We had a mobile home fire not too far from the station. We were able to get there in time(they burn very fast) to make entry as one end was completely engulfed in flames. It was night and we knew that there was at least one person at home in a back bedroom. We sent in a team to fight the fire. I went in with the team to find hopefully the patient(and not the victim/body). It was really smokey, the house was a mess and there was junk on the floor everywhere we had to fight and push stuff around to get to the bedrooms to search, but we found an elderly man in bed barely breathing. He was a big guy(375+) and there was no way the two of us could have gotten him out and the fire was on our ass by this point and we were 10 minutes away from the next engine being able to get to us to help. We dont have that much time.

So we could have gotten out the window, but we couldnt have gotten HIM out the window. We were not going to leave him. In fires you do not break windows unless you are getting out as that lets in fresh air and stokes the fire and leaves you in the midst of a blow torch. The medic was outside with 2 guys. We radio'd for a saw to cut the wall down with. We basically took out a 6 foot square area around his winow in about 30 seconds so we could get him out. At that point I was about out of air, so was my partner. We get the guy on the stretcher and start working on him. I let everyone else go fight fire because at the time I have more medical training. We head off to the hospital with this guy who is not in good shape.

We get to the hospital emergency room area. We are rushing to get to the trauma rooms...The receptionist waves, the guy running the floor buffer gets out of our way, the maintenance man goes by with a ladder, the nurse points to the room we are to go to and we take him there.

Out of all of the people above, the guy running the floor buffer makes 4.00 an hour more than I did, the receptionist 6.00 an hour more, Maintanence guy nearly twice as much as me, and the nurse makes 3 times what I do.

So firefighters dont do what they do to get rich. We love it. Look at the quote from the former NYFD Fire Chief just below this; it is true to many of us.

... and now even more LOVE and ADORATION. ... I did NOT know a lot of that. Incredible. So, if someone wants to "help" their local unit or USA units in general what is the best thing to do? I already perticipate in the "boot" yearly drives; throwing in whatever cash I may have at the time. What else?

Thanks for the reply Fluffybunny. The set-up sounds more or less as it is over here, i.e a mixture of full and part-time for the cities and large towns, and mainly part-time for the small rural areas. I certainly know they don't do the job for money, like i said my dad was in the job for about 20 yrs and my grandad was in it for 32 yrs, reaching the position of ADO (Assistant Divisional Officer) i think the ranking system has been changed now though, my dad was always border-line broke when he was in the job. As you'll know there's a certain amount of 'luck of the draw' when your in the job, when it comes to the calls you get. He never had any problem dealing with them when he was in the job (that's what your mates are for) the REAL trouble starts when you leave, he was written out the job in 87', through a drill that he volunteered to do and lead that went horrendously wrong, 20 years later he still has the nightmares and cold sweats, he still hears the screams and he can still feel the heat. They don't teach you that in the training programme.

I take my hat off to you, and wish you well with any future calls.

Well a good example is to help when it comes to having safe equipment. If your department needs equipment, help them get it...We just had our recent local elections and part of those elections were different fire districts asking for an increase in the rate they get. We had 3 local fire districts ask for an increase in funding, and 3 were voted down. To me the worst part that the amount the average family would have seen would have been about 35.00 per year. The reason that they were asking for this money? An increase in pay? nope. A brand new TV? no. Hiring full time firefighters instead of volunteers? nope...

One department wanted to buy a used ambulance so they could transport patients; they are very rural and the response time was about a half an hour to get help from the nearest transporting agency at the slowest of times. So many of the critically ill were not making it because of the long wait time to get medical care they wanted to speed up the process. They wanted to try and save more lives.

One department wanted to buy new Turnout gear(the fireproof gear we wear into fires) for their guys as they has the gear they had was so old and worn with holes in it that it had lost its ability to insulate well and firefighters were getting burned because of it. The gear costs about 1800.00 per firefighter and the budgets are so tight they can only afford a new pair or two a year. They wanted to get extra money for new gear for the volunteers.

On department wanted to buy a Rescue vehicle and equipment. They are on a busy highway and deal with many many bad vehicle accidents. They wanted a pickup truck with some equipment that would allow them to get patients out of cars quickly when they were hurt badly and needed to get to the hospital...Jaws of life, things that you see on TV...They had often had to wait for our departments rescue vehicle to go all the way to them to start extriation; we are a half an hour away. That is a long time to wait when you have a critical patient.

All three departments made it clear what they wanted to their customers and went door to door asking for a yes vote as best they could, they made signs to put up in the businesses windows in town. Articles in the local paper...

I think everyone assumes that "Fire department = government agency = government waste" therefore they do not want to give us a dime. Of the 3 departments I mentioned each department has 2 paid positions; the Chief and the administrative assistant. The admin makes just above minimum wage. The chief(in this case-a very small town) makes about as much as the manager of your local Taco Bell does. Everyone else donates their time to do everything.

When the votes came through everyone was just crushed. So much work was done to try and help the citizens of the respective districts. It was for them; it wasnt like the department was asking for a jacuzzi and a timeshare in the bahamas.

I know 35 dollars a year isnt 0 dollars a year and it adds up. I pay taxes too. I understand that part. We dont waste a dime of the money given to us and I think most departments are pretty good that way too; when they ask for something it is for good reason, and they are always open to explaining why in detail if you ask. So at least be open to hearing about their side of what they need.

The fundraisers-pancake breakfasts, fill the boots, car washes and those types of things are usually to help out some other entity. We do a pancake breakfast for the widows and orphans fund and the firefighters burn foundation. We do a "Fill the boot" to get money to buy Christmas presents for the kids in foster care in our town. We do car washes to help send the high school kids to the Washington DC field trip. They all help. And just so you know; anytime we do any of the fundraisers we are never on duty; we are never getting paid-it is our own time.

Do whatever you can, even if it is just a wave and a smile so that we know that we are appreciated

Rolf Harris does something very similar, but without all that cheesey music.