Duck Becomes a Symbol of Hope for Anna....

Duck has much to be grateful for. President Martoni from CCAC's  Boyce Campus has awarded Duck with a certificate for his successful completion of the epoch making "Duck Therapy Program". Duck has graduated with a perfect grade point average of 4.0.

While contemplating the next move after release from the Point State Park Prison in Pittsburgh, Duck has already been applying his education and training and providing therapy to a young girl from Dallas, Texas called "Anna".

Like many people in our area and around the world, Anna suffers from health problems. Those of you with lung problems know that even at 80 or 90 Lung Capacity, breathing is diminished and take away from a persons happiness.

When Anna found out about Duck, her eyes lit up and she became full of hope. She must have told her family she was in terrible need of Duck Therapy as her family took her seriously and all boarded a plane for Pittsburgh.

Anna's illness is rare and chronic and leaves her open to many infections according to the Friday October 18th article on page 2 of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. But, this did not deter her from coming to see the Duck.

As it turns out like me, Anna has a thing for ducks and started collecting little rubber ducks when she was five years old.  She owns up to 200 of these bright and cheerful creatures. As stated in the article, "Who can frown and be sad when given a rubber ducky?"

As you can see Duck is helping Anna and others by lifting their spirits and filling them with cheerfulness. With joy and happiness Anna returns to Dallas with fond memories of Duck and the great fun she had with her family in our city of Pittsburgh.

While time is running out, feel free to say good-bye to Duck tonight and tomorrow. Duck has not divulged his future plans upon release, but father Duck is taking him back under his wings as they duck out of our fine city.

Good-bye Duck!

Wish you well Duck!

 

 

 

 

It is already October 17, 2013 and The Giant Rubber Duck, affectionately called, “Duck” will be leaving the waters of Pittsburgh soon.

 

It has been gray and rainy for days, I must go to say farewell before the fowl weather and heavy rains kick in, pardon the pun.

 

 

I always used to say on these days, "Good duck weather". But now that I know Duck, I try to restrain my tongue and consider his feelings. It is the kind thing to do.

 

After a quick peek, Duck turned his back on me when he saw me coming. “Why visit me now?” Quacks Duck.

 

But, when I pulled out the big luscious pear from my pocket that my friend Olga sent for Duck, he perked up a bit.

 

I told him I have been researching new homes for him so he can transition well on October 20^th, when he gets out of jail.

 

One option was Young’s Funny Farm.  He could join up with other Duck Therapists and meet new clients through the farm.

 

http://www.youngsfunnyfarm.org/therapy-ducks

 

They highly value therapy ducks and had this to say on their web site:

 

The ducks have a “magical” touch with people as they stroke the soft feathers.  They bring big smiles to all they visit.  

If that doesn’t appeal to duck, we can have him head up the next annual hospice fundraiser.  He can start planning now.

 

http://www.delmarvanow.com/article/20120816/cb01/208160308/Rubber-ducks-annual-hospice-fundraiser-sale

 

Duck's spirits picked up a bit after our visit.  I was joined by many other visitors that wanted to wish Duck well today.

 

I brought him to pear to symbolize what a good pair of friends we have become and to always remember I am here for him as his counselor and will support his career choices.  I plan to monitor Duck after job placement to help buoy his spirits and to be his career coach. Good-bye for now Duck. We love you!!!

 

 

Rubber Duck desires "Duck Therapy" training program after career assessment....

           Blog 5:  Potential Employment and Career Testing

Poor Rubber Duck is running out of things to think about, so in the meantime the University of Pittsburgh's, Sigma Tau Delta honorary society donated some of the banned books they collected for Duck's reading pleasure.

Thanks to Aziz from Linked In and Louis Chandler, from the Monroeville Historical Society for additional suggestions for employment for the Rubber Duck.

Louis suggested that he sit on the river and catch all of the stinkbugs.

Aziz suggested adding a company logo on Duck as an advertisement. After thinking about this, I thought it would be a nice way to advertise the Kennywood Amusement Park in Pittsburgh.


                           Additional Ideas for Employment

• August Wilson Center                    Fundraiser
• Pittsburgh Audubon Eagles            Scarecrow
• Old Allegheny County Jail             Mentor
• State Unemployment Call Center   Cheerleader
• Pittsburgh Film Office                    Quacking for Stars
• River Rescue Crew Member            Escort - lost ducks

Special thanks to Niana Dightman from CareerLink for kindly setting up assessment testing for Duck.


Although they do various testing, she recommended the Myers Briggs Personality Test. Tests show that the Rubber Duck loves being with people and helping them.  Seems like Duck has an interest in helping others in areas of stress reduction and mental health.

Niana suggested that I use my connection with CCAC to see if they could funnel some of the dislocated worker funds or Trade Act funding to help the Rubber Duck to enroll in a training program.

Since there are currently no Duck Therapy programs on the approved college provider list, we will go together and approach President Martoni from CCAC's Boyce Campus for help to customize a program for the Rubber Duck.

From Counselor Dightman's session the Rubber Duck knows that it would be most successful if it does something it likes and is good at.

Turns out his father Mr. Hofman was pretty smart in exposing Rubber Duck to crowds of people.


Rubber Duck likes making people happy and is good at it.  The only thing is that Rubber Duck is looking for a little more autonomy and is hoping that a quick week long training in Duck Therapy is possible. Duck wants to be more than a pretty face.  Duck wants to contribute to society.

I heard through the grapevine that Daddy Hofman is coming to visit his Duckling and to coach Rubber Duck about future career choices. We wonder what is in store for the Duck.

 

Call to Employers: The Rubber Duck needs a job....

Blog 4:  The Pittsburgh Rubber Duck Seeks Employment


So, far no employers have made job offers to the Rubber Duck whose sentence at Point State Park ends on October 20.

With a loss of esteem it would be nice if  someone from the PA CareerLink could volunteer its services to help. I used to call on Employers in Westmoreland County, but I noticed that the CareerLink has an Allegheny County location with Account Representatives that could volunteer their services:

PA CareerLink® Pittsburgh/Allegheny County
425 6th Avenue, 22nd Floor
Pittsburgh PA 15219

Maybe someone can yell out the window with a megaphone to counsel the poor duck.....

Potential opportunities for Duck:

• Just Ducky Tours - Mascot
• Sandcastle Waterpark - Buoy
• Visit Pittsburgh- Greeter
• Venture Outdoors (North Shore) - Paddleboard and Kayak Instructor

Ducky would also be interested in retraining opportunities...Quack, Quack!!

Rubber Duck Allies with Ex-Prison Counselor

 

Blog Number 3:        The Rubber Duck Exhibits Exemplary 

                                          Behavior – No Bail Needed!    

 

Then newly incarcerated Rubber Duck began to think about

re-employment opportunities now that raising monies for bail is a non-issue. 
 

In a remarkable turn of events, The Rubber Duck bonded on Friday night with an unforeseen ally.  She used to visit the Greensburg State Prison and instructed incarcerated ones with the program called, “Project Reconnect”.  This program enables those inmates with little time left to serve to get counseling on how to reconnect with employers once out of prison.

 

Since incarceration, The Rubber Duck has been a model inmate in the waters at Pittsburgh’s Point State Park. Due to 24 hour security and surveillance we don’t expect The Rubber Duck to swim away anytime soon to nearby Rivers Casino.  Guards are currently documenting daily behavior in the prison log. Besides lacking proper ID to document its age for entry, The Rubber Duck cannot fit through the door since it is 40 feet high.

 

One dark spot against this usually pristine bird is that The Rubber Duck will not release its legal name or social security number and that the Rubber Duck did not obtain proper documentation to navigate through the Ohio River to Pittsburgh.

 

It is thought at this point that it should have obtained an International Visa. The Judge in the case gave The Rubber Duck leeway for instinctively following Daddy to the International Art Show in Pittsburgh. At this point in time, its father, Florentijn Hofman is not fully cooperating with authorities; however he did say that The Rubber Duck was born in Pittsburgh. No name or social security has been disclosed by him.

 

Counselor Hand noted The Rubber Duck’s otherwise squeaky clean background and cheerful demeanor and told the Judge, “Whenever people come in contact with it, they start singing and quacking." Notable too is that her first pet as a child was a young fluffy yellow duck.  This led to the immediate bonding of The Rubber Duck and Counselor Hand. 

 

The counselor is poised to fill out the on-line documents for unemployment and plans to act as a mouthpiece if needed for questioning by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania; State Unemployment Compensation System (SCSC).

 

Lastly, Counselor Hand is working closely with the Three Rivers Workforce Investment Board known as TRWIB for leads about contacting local employers with potential job opportunities for The Rubber Duck upon release from incarceration October 20, 2013.

 

To date, no employers have stepped forward with job offers.  We have opened the discussion to the public for ideas about possible future employment.

 

 

THE RUBBER DUCK LANDS IN JAIL

DAY 2:  The Giant Rubber Duck is in the Pittsburgh Jail!!!!

The Giant Rubber Duck is of interest to people in many lands.
People from my networking site: www.linkedin.com have been commenting how cool this has been for Pittsburgh.  I am learning to say duck in many languages including Hungarian and German.

What an exciting weekend we had in Pittsburgh with the Giant Rubber Duck. Thanks for reading my blog. I am excited that although the majority of my readers are from the United States, that the blog has reached International waters. Readers from the United Kingdom, Russia, Netherlands, France, and India have read my blog.
 
Now that the work week has begun, I smile at my City Paper insert of this fall art event starring the Giant Rubber Duck that still sits on my desk and am enjoying more interesting news articles about it. I read the most amusing thing in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette today.
 
If you get a chance please read it.  The title of the article was, "What does the Rubber Duck think about all day?" You will find it in the first section, second page or A-2.  It is called, "the morning file" by gary rotstein. I paraphrased some of my favorite thoughts that Ducky might be thinking.... 
 
Some of the ones I liked are:

• Ducky thinks about feeling bad about being shrunk a story in height to fit under the bridges here.

                            Ducky also is thinking:

• Who is going to protect me if the government shuts down? And I'm afraid that there are not too many hiding places on the river for a conspicuously large yellow object, in case a trigger-happy rifleman wants to use me for target practice.

• If Pittsburgh Pirate Pedro Alvarez hits a home run outside of PNC Park that hits and deflates me, I'm calling Edgar Snyder, the TV lawyer and getting some money out of this.

There are a number of other cute ones in case you get to read them, you might want to Google that article on-line.

For now our Giant Yellow Rubber Ducky is in jail waiting for release.  Ducky is trying to make the best of it by parking by the Point State Park fountain and enjoying refreshing spritzes of water. Ducky welcomes all fans to come to Pittsburgh as three weeks seems like a long time for confinement.  I think I might start now to raise some bail money so it can leave on October 20th.

If you are planning to visit Ducky, feel free to comment to my blog

 

and I will give you some travel tips.  I'm a native of Pittsburgh and welcome you to visit our cheerful city. Keep posted for more Ducky updates! Quack, Quack!

Blog number 2: The Rubber Duck in Jail

 

The Rubber Duck Blog: Easy tips for travel blogging

 

Day 1: The Giant Rubber Duck is unveiled in Pittsburgh

To start your travel blog, you don't have to go far.  There are many opportunities in your own backyard.  When I read about the Pittsburgh Rubber Duck Project, I just had to get the latest City Paper to read up on it.

One thing about a blog that is different from news is that whether you read various newspapers or you watch the news on TV, it all sounds very similar, with perhaps a little variation.  But, a blog can cover many different angles. You can share your own unique perspective.

So, here is the start of my travel blog. You can write about your own unique experiences too. You can use my very first blog as a sample of how to start one:

My blog is about the Gigantic Rubber Duck that visited Pittsburgh this past weekend. I'm not going to repeat all of the: Who, What, Where, When, and Why's that the news already covered.  But, I am interested in how the Ducky was transported and where it would launch.

I took the inside photo from a recent City Paper of the Rubber Duck Project, with a photograph of the Just Ducky Boat around it and framed it as a cheerful reminder of the upcoming event and set it on my desk at work. The yellow duck picture really brightened up my work area.

This was the first year that I went on a Just Ducky tour from Station Square in Pittsburgh.  I could already envision the people on the Ducky boats quacking at the grand entrance of the Giant Rubber Duck. It was fun to think about this.

As the time got closer I tried to discern which direction the Duck would appear from.

The news reports gave opposing bits of information.  One said that it would come upstream and the other downstream. 

From the Pittsburgh Rubber Duck Facebook page I found places and names of where it would be manufactured and where it might be transported from, but I had to go back to the City Paper to find the best tip.

The writer, Bill O'Driscoll mentioned the Ohio River as a starting point. I know from living here that the Allegheny River is on the northern end of the Point and the Mon River is on the southern end. From my recent trip to Marietta, I knew that the Ohio River stops at the Point. That was the first clue.

But, the bridge party would be right off the 6th Street area, the 6th Street Bridge, otherwise known as the Roberto Clemente Bridge.  So, how can I follow the Duck and get the best photographs from all those areas.  On my bicycle of course!

After parking my car at Station Square's east lot, I biked towards the Just Ducky boats. I asked one of the drivers if they were going to quack at the big duck and escort her in.  He said they were banned from doing that and that the river near that area was closed off for traffic. At first I thought, what was Pittsburgh Cultural Trust thinking?  The Duck and the Ducky boats would have been a smash! But, after watching this YouTube clip, I realized that the entrance was slated to be more of a graceful, serene event than a noisy one. Please refer to: "The Rubber Ducky Comes to Pittsburgh" by Dave Cole of the Pittsburgh Magazine.  You can click on it directly from the Rubber Duck - Pittsburgh, Pa. Facebook.

I was a little disappointed that Just Ducky wasn't part of this event, so in support of Just Ducky Tours I bought a duck hat to wear over my head. It was like wearing this big entire colorful duck with a fluffy tuft, wings, even webbed feet.  Since I was recently promoting the Banana Split in Latrobe, PA, I still had  my recently purchased big chunky yellow jewelry and earrings along with my big yellow hair accessory. So, I dressed for the event.

A funny thing happened.  People started pointing at me and asking me to stop. Many people wanted my picture and snapped their cameras.  Especially the young children would yell, "Duck". I even sang my song, "A Latrobe Hit" (Banana Split) to one table seated outside at Bar Louie as a lady I spoke with was originally from the Latrobe area. (See www.youtube.com to Google the title, "A Latrobe Hit").

When my friend Olga caught up with me she was laughing, but somewhat embarrassed that I was wearing that hat.  So, I wore it as a necklace and from time to time put the cap on.

We biked to the West End Bridge and looked up the river as far as a neck could stretch and even with my binoculars, no duck anywhere.

Duck watchers sitting on rocks that we talked to earlier yelled at us on our way back to Station Square to tell us that the Duck was coming.  That's odd.  I didn't see any Duck.  All the guessing in the world didn't help me figure out how the Duck appeared so suddenly.

At this point, we peddled as fast as we could across the bridge to Point State Park to get some frontal pictures of it coming in.  Although it came loaded upon a giant pontoon boat, it was towed in by a small diesel riverboat with the letter "a" on it.

At the "Point" we ran into Randall Miller the Programming Manager from the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust wearing a duck pin and asked him where the duck came from and where it put in.  He was part of all of it, but was not allowed to disclose this information. It was a big secret.

I guess the planners thought the intrigue would make people more curious and this would add to the excitement of the event.

I'm so glad the fountain was on for this event, it was so refreshing to feel the water drops on our back and to see the rainbow through the mist. The next day I found that someone captured this wonderful picture from the other side of the fountain with the rainbow and the Duck in it. It makes Pittsburgh look so much prettier.  Now, at night there are lights around the fountain and if you were in a boat on the Ohio River at night, it would look like a "Monet" moment. And, the Duck makes Pittsburgh look even more cheerful.

There were gads of people everywhere.  I normally do not like going towards noise and hordes of people, but somehow I managed to bike to the bridge.  I walked the right side down from town with my bike on the bridge, turned around at PNC Park to gaze at the best view of The Rubber Duck. I captured some very nice photographs.  All the while people were eating and dancing and swaying to the music on the bridge.

There were persons with strollers on the bridge, so I strolled my bike along too. The only thing that saved me was my hat from being yelled at was my hat.  People were not too mad at me when they looked at my hat and my smile.  A very nice man took my favorite picture, a shot of me with my duck hat, standing on the bridge with the big Rubber Duck in the backdrop. 

By the way, as you know, it came out on the news, that not far from the West End Bridge, they put the deflated rubber duck in the river near Alcosan and pumped it to life. The pictures in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette the next day showed the lowering of it into the water and a small boat pumping air into it so that it could come to life.

That photograph reminded me of my one and only hot air balloon trip. I guess it is much more exciting to see a balloon being blown to full size and then sailing away on it, then to see the rubber duck blown up.  The timing and the appearance of seeing the 40 foot Rubber Duck on our rivers was crucial to its success. It was an exciting event!

Incidentally, this isn't the same duck that was on International waters, but was specifically designed to be smaller, to fit under the bridges of Pittsburgh.

 Florentijn Hofman, the creator of the Pittsburgh's Big Rubber Duck wanted to bring people out of their houses and into the community to mingle and enjoy art. In case you missed the event, the Duck will be moored until October 20th by the Point State Park on the side of the Allegheny River.

The Giant Rubber Duck has changed the landscape of Pittsburgh and the entire Duck with the color yellow just quacks pure -----
HAPPINESS.