Willful Ignorance

The Earthquake in Syria and Turkey has now led to at least 20K dead. I am not sure what to say but with Syria perpetually in a Civil War and the sanctions that have been a part of the US relations for decades for their support in Terrorism will mean that they will have to be temporarily removed and in turn coordination or efforts to assist a challenge. Turkey, a country we have had a very challenged relationship and largely strategic in nature has been tested with the war in the Ukraine and the NATO sanctions placed upon Russia, which Turkey has largely ignored and in turn Russia despite it all has managed to circumvent them to maintain their economy and war effort. All of this is part of our International news coverage which as I suspect few follow or actually read about. Putting Sunflowers on clothes or flying flags in windows is great and all but what actually do you know about the boots on the ground, the Americans and Europeans who have gone there to help, and in turn what is happening with regards to Russian misinformation, European reliance on them for power and in turn the overall costs that again are not new. We have had a myriad of problems with Russia for decades, Putin has fucked over five Presidents in our country, he has interfered in US elections through the use of bots to flood social media and in turn stir racial unrest. All of this AGAIN is well presented in varying media outlets but AGAIN most people simply refuse or at least even commit to reading, listening to or watching news for even 30 minutes. There are the 24/7 MSNBC, CNN and Fox watchers perpetuating the horseshoe effect that has individuals on either end of the spectrum spout the talking points sure they are getting truths and facts. And with that I move on.

I read three papers and currently flip through the Daily Memphian to read about Memphis and the reports on the Police Violence situation as the investigation is still ongoing. Since his funeral one other Police officer has been fired and the story that circulated aka “rumor” that Tyre was seeing one of the Officer’s ex’s of course has been dismissed but there was a Woman one of the Officers was pursuing or was acquainted with whom he sent the photos he took at the crime scene as Tyre lay dying. The New York Times wrote an extensive update on what transpired that night and the suppression evidence and lying that continued to cover up what really happened. Again, who will know the truth or will it ever get its day in court? Let’s hope.

This now brings me to the role of AI and how it too can be used to create a false narrative and it appear real. The story from the New York Times confirms how convincing it can be to create a newscast using bots aka DEEPFAKE and create a script, now thanks to CHAT AI to make it appear genuine. I will spend some time in another post discussing what I believe will end many writers careers and freelancing efforts with the creation of CHAT AI. The cuts across the white collar industries will only contribute to that with copy writers, content creators and the like being dismissed. There may be only one or two left on a team to do clean up and editing but I suspect more will follow across the board when it comes to this and the role of AI in production.

And with that I did have a “conversation” with a White Man in Manhattan who commented about me reading the NY Times in hand and I responded that I still subscribe to the print edition I like the feel of paper, the ability to spread it out and read story in succession as reading on the phone for me is challenging. He was reading his NYT on his phone and immediately informed me that Turkey/Syria was now at 20K. I knew immediately recognized that as a passive aggressive way of informing me that reading online was superior as it is in real time. I said I had heard on the radio coming over to the city that the death toll had risen and that this tragedy was again a sign of politics and war and the inability of country’s to maintain their labor and work force to promote stability to enact growth and change. It parallels our own country’s brain drains in red vs blue states and in turn also in the Latin countries. When people leave there is no imperative to grow but to maintain power and all at a sacrifice to a country’s own growth. He immediately did what I call the standard white person response – NO YOU ARE WRONG. I put that to the equivalent to the invite, “Hey let’s meet for coffee” and the response is, “I don’t drink coffee.” When you begin a dialogue in the negative you end something before it begins. So in this case I simply tried to explain what I have seen in Nashville and the South with people who want to stay but they eventually cannot as jobs and opportunities dry up, even basic services like grocery stores are lacking, so they leave and these great towns are dying. And then he launched into his story about Religion, working in upstate Pennsylvania and a watch maker he hired, to hiring workers to do things for him and telling me one negative story after another about all the people he knew including former College classmates he encountered at his reunion with their reliance upon religion. I wonder if it was less about them and more about him and he being an utter asshole. After about 5 minutes of this lecture (as that it was it was not a conversation) he jumped up and said, “Enjoy your roll and have a good day.” I looked at my plate which was down to scraps, as I had just sat there shoving it into my mouth to avoid speaking, ignoring my newspaper which is why I stopped in the first place. And I go, “I will and you too.” All I could think was how was this man whom I thought Gay, and usually they are not quite that angry or rude, confirms why I have to stop these random encounters, they are not productive, they are not healthy for me. This was just very New Yorker typical (they are either amazing or utter shit, no grey there) yet although during his rant I gathered he was from Maryland; with that I am not sure if he lives here but he had a white shi zu who seems to be his only friend (he was clutching that do like a child does a stuffed animal) so he had to actually live here or why the dog? And frankly why he felt the need to talk to me another. Don’t initiate a conversation when you have no intent of having one. I was relieved to see them both take a leave and while I too left shortly thereafter my morning not ruined but certainly not one I wished to extend. A bad taste remained, from neither the coffee nor the pain a raisin but from his vitriol.

I truly exhaust myself trying to be “nice” and with that I want to move onto the subject about the shooting in Virginia with the six year old. After spending a day in an Autism classroom with four amazing young men on varying degrees on the spectrum I was looking forward to a couple of days of just being alone and keeping busy with things that matter. People not so much. As the Teacher of that room contracted Covid, meaning all them including the IA was exposed, I did not want to push my luck and I will test on Saturday to see how I am passing the 72 hour mark from exposure to contraction. So these next two days are not only necessary they put me less at risk. I think the IA was shocked that I was not planning to alter my schedule to be there Thursday and Friday as I told her that I already had obligations, she seemed to think that they were flexible and I would of course step in. Again, I have no obligation, no responsibility and am a GIG WORKER who works on my schedule not yours. But later during the day the VP was there for the afternoon and in an exchange with her the IA informed her that with all the Teachers out sick, on leave or for emergency reasons she was being placed in a place that led her to do more work that she was not paid for. I laughed to myself as I feel the same way. You want me to work, pay me, enable me with access to computers, a password, a locker to store my stuff and of course sick leave, health care and the rest. That.Will.Not.Happen. I cobbled together lessons for the boys, they really need constant reiteration and consistency, none that I have actually witnessed in my time in those rooms. So again lack of leadership and direction is evident. And my past exchanges on this subject I am more than aware of how incalcitrant Teachers are to change. This goes with my last post regarding the Doctor who admitted that many of the problems Doctor’s face are due to the lobbying by the AMA to keep the status quo. And it is always about money. Even the comment by the Doctor who said there is an ER that is no safe and that they will travel rather than go there. What does that say about those who don’t have said option?

And this goes not only with regards to medical care but to education and to the judicial system. Those safety nets that are designed to provide equity to those in need or demand are not treated equally. Access and availability are not parsed out fairly but in fact that is what is defined as systemic racism, they are designed to treat the poor, the less well off financially and in turn less educated in how the system works to be treated disparagingly, as if it was a type of intrinsic failure that led them there. And since most of those are faces of color the reality is that yes it is a form of Racism. I was a white woman when I was abused and mistreated by the hospital I was brought to be cared for. It is a public hospital in charge of treating the poor and has a history of issues and problems and it was only sheer fucking luck I survived. They threw me in the street sick and deranged and I sued them on my own. Why? Why not. The Police and the EMT who rescued me, did not help me but in fact went out of their ways to ensure I was further punished as if being in coma and not knowing or caring if I was to come out of it, decided to make sure if I did I would be punished. And I was. The numerous Judges, the Attorneys I hired and fired and the City Attorneys went out of their way to do little to nothing despite my pleas and the checks that cleared. NOT ONE. I was on my own so anyone who thinks I will ever lend a hand anymore is mistaken. I have nothing more to say on this subject but I will say that anyone who thinks that Politicians will change these broken systems are mistaken. Unless people band together to become a Citizen Lobbyist and take charge of their workplace, their community and organize to bring money, yes money, to the varying assholes who run for office and in turn demand and pay for their candidacy, then drive to get them elected and more George Santos’ will take office without shame or guilt.

And with that we should be able to have our children go to local schools, to not have to commute in which to find a basic education. I get that special programs may have to be divided up for financial reasons, that said a child needs to be in the community he/she lives in which to make friends, to build a history and establish roots. And what it says that when you don’t have an opportunity for education and in turn can drop out of school and be left alone to scrub together an existence allows one to remain ignorant. Lessons learned less about fact and more on lies, misinformation, and it opens the door to January 6th. Another Insurrectionist who was sentenced this week seemed to believe his ignorance was an excuse. Funny how hid did not understand anything about history and Democracy yet seemed to think that this was okay. He is married with a family, has a job and he seemed to know enough to get there and carry a Confederate Flag into the Capitol. To quote his Attorney: “He was taught that the flag was a symbol of an idealized view of southern life and southern heritage,” “Lacking an education beyond the ninth grade and lacking even average intellectual capacity, Mr. Seefried did not appreciate the complex and, for many, painful, history behind the Confederate battle flag.”” Really he didn’t know this as he never heard it ever? None of his family had? Yeah it is what I call “willful ignorance.”

And that same type of ignorance is what happened in Virginia at Richneck Elementary School on the day a six year old shot his Teacher. None of it makes sense and yet all of seems to be one of willful intent. He planned it, he discussed it, he demonstrated prior acts of violence and with that he waited until a moment arrived to KILL HER. Did I mention he was Six? When he was Five he strangled a Teacher. Again this is all odd as if he was trained to do this. As few six year olds I have met have that amazing skill set to find guns, unlock them, carry them and in turn use them. To strangle someone with that much force to render a Teacher near unconsciousness. He told classmates and with that his need for attention led him to share it with other Students, threaten them and in turn be dismissed without recourse. And his Parents brought him to school and after a brief period felt it was not necessary to accompany him any further. Really? There is so much missing from this story but what isn’t is that take a look at the School, the lack of training, the lack of doors, the entire inability to respond to a crisis. The Principal not in the loop and the VP running the show. I have seen this many many times. A young Teacher with no support system in which to help her and a class of 24 or more which is WAY TOO BIG for children that age and no IA’s to assist. This district sucks but hey the Governor has made sure no CRT is being taught! And all following a pandemic when this Boy was 4 he had no oversight nor care to diagnose what is happening and enters Kindergarten already in a state and progressed what appears to be a new school for First grade. Where were his history or file? This is not exclusive to this school, this is EVERYWHERE. And what is the solution? Vouchers for Private Schools or more Charters. Yeah that is the solution or in other words kick the can down the road. This is a child not a can of pop. And the affect of this on all the other children will only exacerbate what I have come to believe a loss of a generation interrupted due to the pandemic. Ages 2-20 will fucked up for years to come. And it is why I will not spend more than three days in a school as the adage goes: Company like fish stink after three days. And why I quit doing both Elementary and Middle school as they are not easy in the best of times and these are not the best of times.

How Richneck Elementary failed to stop a 6-year-old from shooting his teacher

By Hannah Natanson and  Justin Jouvenal February 10, 2023 The Washington Post

Abigail Zwerner was frustrated.

It was Jan. 4. A 6-year-old in her first-grade class at Richneck Elementary School had stolen her phone and slammed it to the floor, apparently upset over a schedule change, according to text messages Zwerner sent to a friend.

Administrators, she wrote, were faulting her for the situation.

The 6-year-old “took my phone and smashed it on the ground,” Zwerner wrote in a text message obtained by The Washington Post, “and admin is blaming me.”

Two days later, the 6-year-old told classmates at recess he was going to shoot Zwerner, showed them a gun and its clip tucked into his jacket pocket, and threatened to kill them if they told anyone, according to an attorney for the family of a student who witnessed the threat, offering the first account of events leading to the shooting from someone in Zwerner’s class.

That afternoon, the 6-year-old did as he promised, authorities said — firing a bullet through Zwerner’s upraised hand and into her chest as she was midway through teaching a lesson.

Zwerner’s lawyer and other educators at the Newport News, Va., school have alleged the shooting came after school administrators downplayed repeated warnings from Zwerner and other teachers about the boy. The incident sparked a staffing shake-up at Richneck and the ouster of Superintendent George Parker III.

The Washington Post interviewed 34 people — including teachers, parents and children at Richneck — and obtained dozens of text messages, school emails and documents to reconstruct what happened inside Richneck that day and in the days and weeks before the shooting, revealing new details about the administration’s failure to manage the 6-year-old’s disciplinary issues and to respond to other reports of troubling student behavior.

The Post learned that the 6-year-old was moved to a half-day schedule due to poor conduct in early September,and was suspended for a day after slamming Zwerner’s phone. But educators had long been vexed by the student, who previously attempted to strangle his kindergarten teacher, according to two school employees and records obtained by The Post.

Diane Toscano, Zwerner’s lawyer, has said teachers relayed several warnings to administrators on the morning of the shooting, including at least three reports that the boy had a gun. The Post interviewed a kindergartner who said the boy threatened to punch her at lunch that day and that she informed a staffer — but that the staffer did little more than give the boy a verbal warning.

In the direct aftermath of the shooting, two second-grade classes were left briefly wandering the hallways in search of a safe place to hide because their classroom was not equipped with doors and they had not rehearsed safety drills, according to one second-grade teacher, one fifth-grade teacher and a parent of a second-grade student, as well as text messages obtained by The Post. A second-grade teacher told The Post she had asked to have doors installed but administrators refused, saying the doors would be too expensive.

Many people interviewed spoke on the condition of anonymity because the district has asked teachers not to talk with reporters or because they wanted to protect their families’ privacy.

James Ellenson, an attorney for the family of the 6-year-old boy, declined to comment directly on the new reporting but said in a statement that Newport News schools “had a duty to protect all the parties involved, especially the child who needed to be protected from himself.”

Newport News school district spokeswoman Michelle Price declined to comment for this story, as did Parker, the former superintendent, and Toscano, Zwerner’s attorney.

‘We were scared’

Teachers’ fears about the 6-year-old date backto his kindergarten year, when he tried to strangle his teacher, according to a letter Zwerner’s attorney sent to the school system Jan. 24 announcing her intent to sue. The letter was first reported by the Daily Press.

“The shooter had been removed from the school a year prior after he chokedhis teacher until she couldn’t breathe,” says the letter, obtained by The Post through a public records request. It was not immediately clear how a boy so young could have choked an adult. The Post was not able to learn other details of the incident and authorities have not released information about the boy.

Early this fall, as Richneck teachers sought to settle their new crop of students inside the low-slung red-brick building nestled amid trees, news of the 6-year-old’s troubled history circulated swiftly among the staff, according to text messages between teachers.

Less than a week into September, officials switched the 6-year-old to a half-day schedule due to misbehavior — but administrators were already lagging in efforts to accommodate the student, according to Toscano’s letter and to text messages sent between Zwerner and a friend of hers who teaches at the school.

It was not clear what specific incident triggered the schedule change.Toscano wrote in her letter that the 6-year-old “constantly cursed at the staff and teachers and then one day took off his belt on the playground and chased kids trying to whip them.”

On Sept. 5, Zwerner wrote in a text message to her friend that officials were being slow to offer updates on how to handle the child.

“I still haven’t gotten any info about [the student’s] half day schedule,” Zwerner wrote.

The friend wrote back that the 6-year-old “needs to be half days … They better stick to that for your sake.” The friend added that administrators’ “communication and accountability aren’t good again this year.”

As the year progressed, concerns did, too.

Though the 6-year-old was a particular challenge, teachers alleged that administrators’ response to discipline issues was generally lackluster, both for Zwerner’s class of roughly two dozen students and elsewhere in the building.

Harold Belkowitz, an attorney for Richneck parents with a child in Zwerner’s class, said his clients’ child was physically and verbally bullied by classmates during the current school year.He said his clients raised concerns with Richneck and Newport News school officials “numerous times” but that administrators took no action to stop the behavior.

Text messages and a photo shared between teachers show that a student in Zwerner’s class reportedly hit a teacher so hard with a chair that her legs became dotted with green and purple bruises — and that, at another point, a kindergartner was accused of pushing a pregnant teacher to the ground and kicking her in the stomach so hard that she feared for her unborn child, two weeks shy of giving birth. It was not immediately clear how administrators responded to those episodes, although one educator wrote in a text this fall that the bruised teacher had “heard nothing from admin.”

On Nov. 9, the second-grade teacher wrote in a text message to a colleague that she was applying to work in another district because of “how bad the first graders are right now put together with the fact we don’t have doors.”

The second-grade teacher added, referencing administrative failures, “It’s only gonna get worse.”

‘Again nothing was done’

About two months later, on the morning of Jan. 6, the 6-year-old slipped his mother’s gun into his backpack before heading to school, Newport News police have said. Ellenson, the lawyer for the boy’s family, has said the weapon was kept in the mother’s closet under a gun lock. It remains unclear how the boy was able to obtain the weapon.

The boy arrived on campus around 11 a.m., passing a school sign that still wished students “Happy New Year” in capital letters. He was accompanied by his mother, according to a second-grade teacher who said she spoke with the mother in the hallway.

Before that day, due to an unspecified disability, the boy followed a special schedule in which his parents shadowed him to and during class, the family said in a statement last month. On Jan. 6, for unknown reasons, the parents discontinued that plan: “The week of the shooting was the first week when we were not in class with him,” the statement said.

Around 11:05 a.m., the boy was slated to leave Zwerner’s classroom and head along the gray-tiled hallway to lunch, which is held jointly for kindergartners and first-graders, according to a copy of a Richneck schedule obtained by The Post.

Inside the lunchroom, which a Richneck teacher said has white walls lined with posters advising students how to behave respectfully, a kindergarten student was sitting at her lunch table when she spotted the boy, she said in a video call with The Post this month. The girl was interviewed beside her mother; both spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect their privacy.

The kindergarten student said she had long wanted to become friends with the 6-year-old. When she saw him that day, she said, she looked steadily in his direction to attract his attention.

Noticing her gaze, she said, the boy walked close to her table and asked, “What are you looking at, little girl?” before jumping forward and shoving himself close to her. He raised his fist to eye level and said, “I’m going to punch you in the face,” she recalled. Scared and sad, the girl raced from her table to grab the nearest school staffer, she said.

The school staffer warned the 6-year-old that punching another student could force a visit to the principal’s office, according to the kindergartner and her mother. The girl’s mother said the staffer spoke on the phone with her about a week after the shooting to try to explain the decision-making process in that moment — and to confess that the boy with the raised fist was the same one who, hours later, shot his teacher.

“They felt that they did the best they could by addressing it to the child,” the kindergartner’s mother said, declining to identify the staffer. “But I disagree.”

By 11:30 a.m., reports that the boy had threatened another child reached Zwerner, according to Toscano, Zwerner’s attorney. Toscano wrote in her letter to the school district that Zwerner took theinformation directly to Assistant Principal EbonyParker,who is not related to the former superintendent with the same last name.

Zwerner visited the assistant principal’s office and told her about the threat, reporting “that the shooter was in a violent mood,” Toscano wrote. “Yet … absolutely nothing is done.”

At 12:20 p.m., after the first-graders finished lunch and sat through a brief “Reading” period, they were supposed to head outside for recess, according to the Richneck daily schedule.

By this point, rumorswere spreading that the boy had brought a weapon to school, according to Toscano. One teacher searched the 6-year-old’s backpack at around 12:30 p.m., Toscano wrote, but found nothing.

Zwerner told a colleague she had glimpsed “the shooter take something out of his backpack and put it in his pocket” and feared it might be a gun, spurring that colleague to bring concerns to Assistant Principal Parker, Toscano wrote in her letter. But Parker ignored the teacher, Toscano wrote, suggesting the boy’s pockets were too small to contain a gun: “Assistant Principal Parker was made aware at the beginning of recess that Ms. Zwerner was afraid the shooter had a gun in his pocket. And again nothing was done.”

Meanwhile, outside at recess, the 6-year-old approached three other students and told them he intended to shoot Zwerner, according to Emily Mapp Brannon, an attorney who is representing the parents of four Richneck families. Brannon provided a statement that details an account of that day given by a boy enrolled in Zwerner’s class.

The 6-year-old showed his fellow students the gun, which he had concealed in the pocket of his jacket, revealing the clip, according to the statement.

“The shooter also threatened the other classmates that if they told on him, he would shoot them,” the statement says.

Two students immediately ran away terrified, according to the statement.

The statement said the boy told the shooter that he wanted to go play in another area of the playground and left for the monkey bars. Not long after, the boy told a teacher about the gun, Brannon said.

Toscano described a similar incident in her letter to the district, writing that a teacher alerted to the recess gun threat by a student told another teacher, who told Assistant Principal Parker. But Parker “responded that she was aware of the threat and the shooter’s backpack had already been searched,” according to Toscano’s letter.

Around the same time, a school guidance counselor also approached the assistant principal to warn her the student might have a gun — marking at least the third warning about a gun Parker received that day.

The guidance counselor “asked Assistant Principal Parker if he could search the shooter’s person for the weapon,” Toscano wrote. “Assistant Principal Parker’s response was no, because the shooter’s mother would be arriving soon to pick up the shooter.”

Parker did not respond to requests for comment for this story. An attorney for Briana Foster Newton, who was Richneck principal at the time, said in a statement that “it would be imprudent to comment on discussions that Mrs. Newton was not a part of.” She has said Newton, who has since been reassigned, was not told the boy might have had a gun that day.

At 12:50 p.m., first-grade recess wrapped up, per the school schedule. The first-graders filed back into Zwerner’s classroom for what was listed on the schedule as math class.

Shortly before 2 p.m., Toscano wrote in her letter, Zwerner “was sitting at her reading table when the shooter, who was sitting at his desk, pulled the gun out of his pocket.” He squeezed the trigger.

‘We all went under the teacher’s table’

Several things happened almost at once after the shot was fired, according to Newport News police. Surveillance video shows between 16 and 20 students fleeing the classroom to seek shelter across the hall. Another school employee ran into Zwerner’s room to restrain the student and continued holding him until police officers arrived on campus. The 6-year-old was ultimately taken to a hospital for a mental health evaluation.

Zwerner was the last to leave her classroom, police have said. She made a right turn and traveled down the hallway before looking back “to make sure every one of those students was safe,” Newport News Police Chief Steve Drew has said.

The rest of the school was plunged into confusion and terror. Alyssa Dooley, who is 8 and in third grade, said a lockdown was announced over her classroom’s loudspeaker shortly after the shot was fired.

“We all went under the teacher’s table,” Alyssa said. “There was crying, and we were scared.”

Down the hall from Zwerner’s classroom, two classes of second-graders had no idea where to go, according to one of the second-grade teachers. Not only did their shared classroom lack doors, but the school had failed to hold a lockdown drill that school year, two Richneck teachers said, leaving the second-grade teachers without a plan.

The second-grade teachers began trying classroom doors until they found the computer lab unlocked, one said. They hustled students inside and sought to keep them calm for about an hour, according to the teacher and a parent of a second-grader, before the principal and police began circulating the building unlocking classroom doors. The adults led the children to the gym to await reunion with their parents.

At the same time, parents began learning of the shooting from news reports — frustrating some, who said they wanted to hear directly from the school.

Mark Anthony Garcia, a parent of a second-grade boy, said he learned of the shooting when his wife called him, herself having gleaned the news from local station WAVY-TV.

“My wife told me to get to the school because there was a shooter at Richneck Elementary,” Garcia said.

Garcia said he jumped in his car and sped to Richneck. He got about a mile and a half away before hitting a police roadblock. A woman said he could park his car in her driveway. He left the vehicle and hurried to the school, where hundreds of parents stood waiting in an area cordoned off by yellow police tape.

As the minutes ticked on, parents paced nervously. Others cried. Some were irate. By 2:45 p.m., Garcia said, police began reuniting anxious mothers and fathers with their children.

Garcia captured the moment on video.

“Everybody have their ID in their hand,” an officer shouted through a megaphone. She told the crowd to form a single line.

Parents burst through the yellow tape toward the school. One woman shouted, “Go! Go!”

Garcia said he met his son in the gym. He gave the boy a big hug and told him he was a hero.

Garcia and his son then drove to a gas station, where they met up with Garcia’s wife, who had been stranded on a different side of the school. The family spilled out of their cars and gathered in a group hug.

Then, together, the boy and his parents said a prayer.

Horses and Apples

One bad apple doesn’t spoil the bunch. This is an idiom. In that a bad apple as “someone who creates problems or causes trouble for others; specifically, a member of a group whose behavior negatively affects the remainder of the group.” And it comes from the proverb that actually states, “one bad apple spoils the whole barrel.” And that misuse has been applied repeatedly when in cones to Police. So now we have cleared that up, it shows that in fact that the acts of one affect many. Cannot say that one enough as we have repeatedly again seen Police Officers kill and abuse those in custody and those not yet placed in as such. The SCORPION unit that was comprised of many Police Officers in Memphis and were not just the 5 who killed him nor the one who stopped him and has since been fired, it was an entire unit, a Goon Squad. The unit was devised to be a largely traffic force that looked for minor violations including seat belts, running lights, speeding and the like as a deterrent. In other words, “stop and frisk” and the concept of broken windows. And we know already that most of these arbitrary stops enable Police to search the vehicle, seize the vehicle and in turn fine the Driver excessive fees as well as Jail them. Sandra Bland was an example of such. and with that we also know they are highly fraught exchanges. I keep thinking of the band Big Bad Voodoo Daddy when it comes to these squads. The band great, the thugs of Officers not so great. This is from the NY Times today on said SCORPION unit which has now been disbanded. Don’t worry it will be back with no less a dickwad acronym that is all about the men who use tasers and guns as extensions of their manhood.

The idea that there are good Cops is in fact the EXCEPTION not the rule. Sorry, not sorry. But there is something that needs to be understood that in the case of Memphis that despite the fact that the Police and the Victim were/are Black it is less about the color of skin and more the color of the uniform. The Military has similar dogmas and the reality is that many who try to join exclusive units in their respective branch have found themselves abused and often end up dead or seriously disabled in some type of hazing process that has gone on for decades. If they complain or are not able to complete the course, they are assigned dead end jobs. The sexual abuse includes not just Women of the Military but Men. And even the ROTC units in the public schools have come under fire as they too are using their authority and inference of power to assault and victimize many potential recruits. The reality is that we have a Badge obsession like we do a gun one and they have both. And the badge of honor is to keep one’s mouth shut.

When you think of these organizations of defense you think very much a tribal mentality that permeates the core and you become like them rather that try to go against them. Those that have have faced serious repercussions and their careers have been ended as a result. And we all are members of one tribe or another. We use that membership to declare moral superiority, intellect, a coolness or whatever other adjective or moniker you wish in order to add to your identity. The hyphenate world in which we live places us in the need for more apparently. He/She/Her/Him/Mx/Ms and so forth. Fuck it I don’t care anymore frankly as it just again lends to the divisions and more ire than it is worth. And with that I found this editorial today and I share it to see why I am a loner. I cannot handle the endless need to validate or prove worth. I find each conversation fraught with challenges that are exhausting and I spend my days already exhausted from sitting and doing nothing and watching children do nothing. It is not how I saw my life pan out in the least. And again it is why I write, words that no one reads or maybe they do but they don’t care as they are seize on one word, one thought, remove it from context and decide if the rest is worth reading or not. It is all judgement and assessment and none of it productive or good for anyone.

The most salient point the Author makes is the endless cycle of Good vs Bad and the tales of who has it better/worse and does largely the same to defend and support their beliefs. It is called the Horseshoe Effect. Just that theory alone sets off alarm bells. And if this does not resonate with anyone, think book banning. The right are running amok with books about Slavery, Sexuality and other issues of culture. The Left too is doing the same, removing books like To Kill and Mockingbird for Atticus as a White Savior or Huckleberry Finn and other books like Mice and Men that were written in the 1920s and used the word “Nigger” in the text. Even me writing the word is highly fraught as it should not be spoken or written. I am to use the phrase the “N word” Really? I am not using to level a name or affix a negative abusive moniker and am discussing the word in a literary critical context. Nope can’t do that. Then please only Women can use the word, “Bitch.” Gays I am talking to you here!

But here is the NAACP position and they feel that it should NEVER be used ever, under any circumstance. And once again I refer to John McWhorter and his thoughts on the issue. And he concludes with this:

The N-word euphemism was an organic outcome, as was an increasing consensus that “nigger” itself is forbidden not only in use as a slur but even when referred to. Our spontaneous sense is that profanity consists of the classic four-letter words, while slurs are something separate. However, anthropological reality is that today, slurs have become our profanity: repellent to our senses, rendering even words that sound like them suspicious and eliciting not only censure but also punishment.

For a person who uses the word Fuck all the time I have had my moments where I was scolded and reprimanded usually by white men who are obviously deeply offended by my lack of lady like speech. To that I say, “Fuck yeah Asshole.” I don’t care anymore but in context of a discussion we should be able to use words, even those most repellent to bring about discussion. It is critical in all kinds of theory, race included. We must use words powerfully and we do so in ways to do harm and do well. Again the use of “Bro” or “Boy” or even “Man” taken out of context and broken apart to see evil where there is none is again a part of the process of moral superiority. I was talking about “lunch ladies” regarding School Cafeteria workers which is an old nickname, harmless and I was informed that there are Men now in the kitchens. Really there are? When were you last in a public school lunchroom? There are none and of course the good Liberal scold continued as they cannot be wrong; “Thanks for the reminder that gender enforcement and stereotyping are critical functions of education.” And my response: “Hey it is what I live for.” We are talking about Lunchroom workers and that the term is not pejorative in the least but this is where we are nitpicking, bullying and fighting over words and terms. It will not get better. Why? Its all we have. We have no interests, no hobbies, no work that is meaningful. So we misdirect and channel our anger and frustrations to those on the interwebs. Social media is anything but social nor is it media.

‘Bad Apples’ or Systemic Issues?

By David French Opinion Columnist The New York Times Feb 5, 2023

On Wednesday, the city of Memphis remembered the life of Tyre Nichols, a young man who was beaten by at least five Memphis police officers and died three days later. Stories like this are terrible, they’re relentless, and they renew one of the most contentious debates in the nation: Are there deep and systemic problems with the American police?

How we answer that question isn’t based solely on personal experience or even available data. It often reflects a massive partisan divide, one that reveals how we understand our relationships with the institutions we prize the most — and the least.

Every year Gallup releases a survey that measures public confidence in a variety of American institutions, including the police. In 2022, no institution (aside from the presidency) reflected a greater partisan trust gap than the police. A full 67 percent of Republicans expressed confidence in the police, versus only 28 percent of Democrats.

Why is that gap so large? While I try to avoid simple explanations for complex social phenomena, there is one part of the answer that I believe receives insufficient attention: Our partisanship tends to affect our reasoning, influencing our assessments of institutions regardless of the specifics of any particular case.

Here’s what I mean. The instant that a person or an institution becomes closely identified with one political “tribe,” members of that tribe become reflexively protective and are inclined to write off scandals as “isolated” or the work of “a few bad apples.”

Conversely, the instant an institution is perceived as part of an opposing political tribe, the opposite instinct kicks in: We’re far more likely to see each individual scandal as evidence of systemic malice or corruption, further proof that the other side is just as bad as we already believed.

Before I go further, let me put my own partisan cards on the table. I’m a conservative independent. I left the Republican Party in 2016, not because I abandoned my conservatism but rather because I applied it. A party helmed by Donald Trump no longer reflected either the character or the ideology of the conservatism I believed in, and when push came to shove, I was more conservative than I was Republican.

But my declaration of independence wasn’t just about Trump. In 2007 I deployed, relatively late in life, to Iraq as a U.S. Army judge advocate general, or JAG. Ever since I returned from my deployment, I’ve been gradually shedding my partisanship.

The savagery of the sectarian infighting I saw in Iraq shocked me. I witnessed where mutual hatred leads, and when I came home I saw that the seeds of political violence were being planted here at home — seeds that started to sprout in the riots of summer 2020 and in the Trump insurrection of 2021.

As American polarization deepens, I’ve noticed unmistakable ways in which committed partisans mirror one another, especially at the far edges. There’s even a term for the phenomenon: horseshoe theory, the idea that as left and right grow more extreme they grow more alike. When it comes to the partisan reflex — the defense of “my people” and “my institutions” — extreme partisans behave very much like their polar opposites.

And make no mistake, respect for police officers has long been vital to the very identity of conservative Americans. Men and women in uniform are ours. They’re part of our community, and — as the Blue Lives Matter flags in my suburban Nashville neighborhood demonstrate — we’ve got their backs. (Mostly, anyway. Lately, the Capitol Police and the F.B.I. do not feel that same support.)

There are good reasons for respecting and admiring police officers. A functioning police force is an indispensable element of civil society. Crime can deprive citizens of property, hope and even life. It is necessary to protect people from predation, and a lack of policing creates its own forms of injustice.

But our admiration has darker elements. It causes too many of us — again, particularly in my tribe — to reflexively question, for example, the testimony of our Black friends and neighbors who can tell very different stories about their encounters with police officers. Sometimes citizens don’t really care if other communities routinely experience no-knock raids and other manifestations of aggression as long as they consider their own communities to be safe.

At this point you might be asking: When is the left reflexively defensive? What institutions does it guard as jealously as conservatives guard the police?

Consider academia. Just as there is a massive partisan gap in views of the police, there is a similar gap in views of higher education. According to a 2022 New America Survey, 73 percent of Democrats believe universities have a “positive effect” on the country, while only 37 percent of Republicans have the same view.

Yes, this is in part a consequence of anti-intellectual strains on the right and among right-wing media. And this conservative mistrust of higher education (and secondary education) is causing it to turn its back on free speech and instead resort to punitive legislation, such as Florida’s recently passed “Stop Woke Act,” which a federal court called “positively dystopian” and unconstitutionally “bans professors from expressing disfavored viewpoints in university classrooms while permitting unfettered expression of the opposite viewpoints.”

But that’s not the whole story. The nonpartisan Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression — of which, full disclosure, I was once president — has tracked over 900 incidents since 2001 where scholars were targeted for termination or other penalties for speech that was protected by the First Amendment or by conventional principles of academic freedom. In 2021 alone there were 111 attempts to penalize professors for their speech, and almost 70 percent of those attacks came from the left.

I spent years litigating campus free speech in court. It was frustrating to file successful case after successful case — often challenging policies that existed in campuses across the country — only to be told time and again that there was no systemic problem with free expression on campus, that these were merely isolated incidents or a product of youthful overenthusiasm, of kids being kids.

No one should pretend for a moment that there is any kind of moral equivalence between university censorship and fatal police violence. The stakes on the streets are infinitely higher than the stakes in the classroom. But there is still a common problem: Our repeated assumptions that those on our team might make mistakes or overstep, but those on the other team are deliberately malevolent.

I should know. I used to fit that partisan mold. As a conservative, I could clearly see the problems in American universities. After all, it was my tribe that disproportionately faced penalties and discipline. When it came to the police, however, I was skeptical. I knew there were some bad apples. But was there a systemic problem? I was doubtful.

I have since changed my mind, but it took shedding my partisanship and applying my principles to allow me to see more clearly. Fundamental to my worldview is the belief that human beings possess incalculable worth, but that we are also deeply flawed. No person or institution can be completely trusted.

Thus powerful people and powerful institutions must be held accountable. If you combine authority with impunity, then corruption and injustice will be the inevitable result. If I could see this reality clearly in institutions on the left, why couldn’t I see it on the right?

The police, after all, possess immense power in American streets, often wielded at the point of a gun. Yet the law systematically shields them from accountability. Collective bargaining agreements and state statutes provide police officers with greater protections from discipline than almost any other class of civil servant — despite the fact that the consequences of misconduct can be unimaginably worse. A judge-made doctrine called qualified immunity provides powerful protections against liability, even when officers violate citizens’ civil rights. Systemic police corruption and systemic abuse should not have been a surprise.

How do we fight past our partisanship to become truly curious about the truth? For me, the answer started with the first principle of my conservatism: Human beings possess incalculable worth. If that is true, and my neighbors and fellow citizens are crying out about injustice, I should hear their voices and carefully consider their claims.

My initial inability to see the truth is related to the second principle, that human beings are deeply flawed. I had no trouble applying that principle to my opponents. But it also applies to those I generally admire. It applies to police officers. It applies to me.

The lesson I’ve taken has been clear: Any time my tribe or my allies are under fire, before I yield to the temptation of a reflexive defense, I should apply my principles and carefully consider the most uncomfortable of thoughts: My opponents might be right, my allies might be wrong and justice may require that I change my mind. And it may, in all likelihood, require that I do this again and again.

Truth Hurts. Get over it

The forum of public discourse follows two paths: Outrage and indignation, followed by preoccupation and denial about the world and its events.

Looking over Social Media the landscape is a familiar terrain of political shouting, my personal favorite as that the Memphis Police Video (highly edited btw) and the Paul Pelosi assault were released on the same day. In those we see Police Officers beat a man to death barking senseless orders and then the long wait for medical care. The second we see an elderly white man in sleeping garments, the other a younger white man with a hammer holding the older mans wrist. He is asked what is going on here and asked to put the hammer down and with that he refuses managing to beat Mr. Pelosi into unconsciousness. The parallels on that are not lost. Club, hammer, or fists damage to the brain and body takes a matter of moments. The parallels are not lost that it was Police in both cases that chose how to respond, with the black man it was kill him. KILL HIM. With the White Man it was tackle him. …………………. like a football game. Paul Pelosi was cared for in moments and is recovering. Tyre is dead. Okay.

Then I read about this story in LA. An amputated man was chased and shot by Police. What? He was “running” away on his stumps. What the flying fuck? Oh and how he got that way? Police incident years prior. I have no words on this but again, WHAT THE FLYING FUCK?

Meanwhile there are still shootings, at a private home in Los Angeles and that follows the two others in Monterey Park and Half Moon Bay, both committed by Asian Men in their 60-70’s. The motives on the Half Moon Bay as that suspect is alive seems to be about bullying and well the secondary cause is about his work environment. Low pay, substandard housing, segregation by employees with the Chinese and Latin workers unable to simply communicate due to language barriers and of course a world of hurt being Immigrant labor that often ties that bind are ties that shame. The other is less clear as again it was a man who is dead and cannot explain his actions. Death by suicide not by Cop. Asian Hate? Racism? Well that was discussed in debate over the Memphis killing but in a way Race plays a part as it always does.

We are a divided nation by Race, by Gender, by Religion, by Culture, by Sexuality and by the big kahuna – Politics. So with that every encounter and exchange beyond Hello has the potential to be a highly charged one. I finally after years of loving random encounters have simply stopped even trying. Colin Quinn’s show, Small Talk, which I have discussed in another post explains that loss is affecting our overall American persona and in turn the culture of what defines America, you know the melting pot. Well we have melted like the M&M’s and when a candy and a fictional personification of a candy has people up in arms, I can see why assaults, mass shootings and other acts of violence, and of course George Santos, goes ignored or passed over in the daily trending list of which we then move on to discuss the more salient issues of the day, such as the Real Housewives.

The other day before I left for my gig at the local “best” High School, I chatted with our Concierge and her friend a Nanny for two learning disabled children. Both boys are on the Autism spectrum, each at different levels and their Mother is abjectly against sending her kids to Jersey City Schools. I get it. I really do. That said busing them an hour each way to a nearby district is not the solution nor really something anyone with children should be doing, regardless. I think you should be able to go to your neighborhood school and it should offer the same programs and opportunities for learning as the other. They don’t. Again, when a supposed acclaimed school threw out, yes threw out, their Library Books to have a room that is just charging stations that should tell you all you need to know. They are no different than many of the schools other than the dress code, but it is like the others, with a large turn and burn of staff, the entire PE department is new, missing Math Teachers and some clearly new or on the way out Temp teachers. How I know this, you can tell by the room. There are no pens, pencils, nothing in the desks to show ownership or actual engagement and connection to the school. I can tell by the Students behaviors how they are not managing this and they are focused solely on testing as a tool of learning and measurement of learning. It is an abomination and it defines learning. And in turn promotes segregation.

So as I was leaving we were discussing how truth seems to be a problem with most people and again it has gotten worse, the pandemic, the politics and the Ostrich affect as I call it, meaning head in the sand, denying knowledge or actually seeking it out, relying on social media as their primary source. Now these two women are true examples of that, as they rely on conspiracy theories and other misinformation to fuel their beliefs but they are not bad women, just poorly informed so I try to at least offer the counterpoint or just go along. It is exhausting and troublesome for me as frankly I am over that. It goes against my mantra: NO MORE COMPROMISES but again I do live in the building and this is one battle not worth taking on; however, once out I am out. And this convo was about the use of the word “Trans” in which to explain or define an individual. On this one, I agree, anyone who has transitioned into a new sexual identity or gender they are now “Trans” as the “T” part of LGBQT. But even that now has become some type of navigation akin to the Titanic when it comes to having a conversation; there were fewer land mines in the movie All Quiet on the Western Front. And like the discussion on race, critical race theory and the like that has become another hot bed and this murder in Memphis only fuels that debate regarding Systemic Racism (for another post) it includes many Gay folks, as Andrew Sullivan calls them – the Alphabet people. I believe that was “appropriated” from Dave Chapelle, so it goes always back there. Or not. Anyway I being the “Teacher” like to point out that we use Trans equally as a word in flux as it is both a noun and adjective. Trans comes from the word Transsexual, as defined by the Oxford Dictionary.

adjective

1. denoting or relating to a transgender person, especially one who has undergone gender reassignment.”transsexual women”

noun

1. a transgender person, especially one who has undergone gender reassignment.”a male-to-female transsexual”

Now with that in mind, when introduced to someone who presents themselves as a Man or as a Woman I will go by their introduction and make a grand assumption here that they are in fact either one or the other. Meet “Jo” which can be Joe as in Joseph or Jo as in Joanne. Either/or I am fine with, I don’t care about their pronoun as I have no reason to refer to them by one, they are standing right there and I will call them by their name.

1. a word that can function by itself as a noun phrase and that refers either to the participants in the discourse (e.g., I, you ) or to someone or something mentioned elsewhere in the discourse (e.g., she, it, this ).
   • a third-person pronoun by which an individual wishes to be referred to in order to indicate their gender identity.noun: preferred pronoun; plural noun: preferred pronouns“he then publicly announced in September that he is changing his pronouns to “they/them””

So why you need to introduce yourself with your pronoun means you actually think I am going to go speak about you to someone else who knows you and knows whom I am speaking about. Say the conversation goes like this: “Hey Allison, did you get a load of him/her/she/he/they/them?” And Allison goes “Who the fuck are you talking about?” If Allison does know whom I am speaking I doubt unless she/her/they/them feels compelled to go right over there and spill the tea on the gossip/dish/remark I just said, is going to inform you that I did not actually call you by name but by the wrong pronoun BEFORE I then trashed talked you. So in other words what the fuck and why does it matter unless you work together and perhaps just use one’s proper name in those situations. I find pronouns to be utterly rude and again as a person who is often just called no name or “Sub” I get it. I really do. My favorite is after I say my name, they promptly mispronounce it or go “What?” with a screwed up face. I have given up explaining and say call me by my initials. This further marginalizes me and makes me feel even more invisible. It never ends and the reason I came to New York was to be a melted M&M in a large pot and yet I don’t feel that way at all. I feel very much alone and very exhausted and at times relieved as a Libra often does. But in all honesty my Mother used to say, “The less said the less mended.” I get it. I really do. I don’t want to say anything to anyone, nothing. If you cannot keep it to the pleasantries then it is better to say nothing.

And that is when I do go to the best school, as I will be in the next hour, I want to say as little as possible to anyone and everyone. When I used to Teach I loved to talk to the kids and it was always a mixed bag but now again since the pandemic it has become a bag of mixed nuts and none I want to eat. I used to believe in Seattle that it was possible and with that I had made a shitty job work for me and then after awhile I finally realized what a shitty job it was and I just wanted to leave. My health following my Assault enabled me to have the excuse I needed to get what I needed and I picked Nashville. I went there for Vanderbilt and I will say the work I had done there was outstanding and there was a second reason that also contributed to why I picked Tennessee. I figured I could make it work and it would work for me. I was wrong on both counts, neither were good for each other; however, I did get what I came for and that was enough and I left. I came to Jersey City with fewer expectations and then a pandemic changed all of that and for me it was for the better. It stopped me having to feel compelled or forced to have random encounters, to worry about only myself and my well being and I went inward and realized that I had spent the better part of my life compromising with people who did not give one flying fuck about me but expected my cooperation and capitulation as a requisite for staying employed, staying in a relationship, volunteering, just doing some job, for being, yes, just being myself which was not tolerated it was to be managed. I feel that it is largely related to gender and yes it is my personality but I am out of my way nice, and always polite, but my honesty has been given more negative euphemisms than I have had hot dinners. The names and monikers include: “Unfiltered” “Loud” “Negative” “Rough around the edges” “Funny.” Those are among the top 10, few have offered constructive advice, suggestions or ideas on how to be less of those. And all of them are with the impression that I am clueless and have no ability to self moderate or control, but rather inform me of how I am perceived. Again, this is not helpful, it is bullying, it is intimidating and yes harassment. Just ask my neighbor “Karen” (another moniker in which we define bitch white controlling women) about her abuse of me those several minutes over my being a loud neighbor. All of which was about two incidents, one a year ago being up early and working out and the other coming home late one night where I admit I was in both cases. The other times she seemed to not mention but again, inferred, exaggerated and explained that I stomp around, do construction and endlessly move furniture and clean. I do all of that, and what would you like me to do with that info you raging bitch? But I also knew this was about her, her unhappiness and her own rage. I see her now in the building and the look of fear and embarassment is there; however, I will never hear that raging cunt or her threatening Cop husband of her apologize and I in turn do so for my disruption which was not deserving of threats, harassment or bullying. White people don’t do that and that defines privilege and entitlement. So name call away you pieces of shit it doesn’t change my view of the truth, you are an asshole. Nothing more nothing less.

And with that, there are two takeways I get when I hear abusive names being levied : 1. You are infringing on me and I cannot figure out how to compromise and get along so you fix it. 2. You are informing that it is clear that you believe I am unable to compromise or understand that my personality and behavior is an affront so shut up or get out.

It explains much of what we see today, do it my way or don’t and then leave, the exit door is there. It is how I learned to quit so many jobs, move so many places and never establish close relationships with others. I hated myself and hated conflict so I ran. Does it make sense to see how a Black person stopped by Police does the same. Fight or Flight, neither ends well but you have a chance if you get the fuck out.

So whoever is in charge sees the world through their glasses and the culture and policies that propelled them there seem to be working for them, so why not you, why do you challenge them? Think about this when you watch the Memphis videos, compliance or death, for the Black man. The white man in San Francisco gets 49’d.. aka tackled but taken alive. He nearly murdered a man and was a greater threat, had a weapon in hand, but no shots were fired, no tasers used no clubs, just a body slam AFTER he nearly killed a man. How many of the white male shooters were arrested after a traffic stop was done as the vehicle was already flagged as a potential suspect. Hmm, Idaho anyone?

When Men are loud, unfiltered, aggressive, rough around the edges or funny, they are applauded and made President. Well there you go folks. Had Obama had any of those qualities he would still be a Community Organizer, if that.

So as I go up to the best school will today be like the other day when a Teacher walked into the Lounge to use the rest room, as he leaves turns of the light to the room while I was sitting there and then leave the faucet running, which as I got up to turn the light on, turned that off too. Or the Teacher interrupting me reading my NYT Sunday Magazine and asking me what I was reading, and dismissing each article I mentioned that was leading me to read three simultaneously as “that is everywhere” regarding the story of Kofta India. It is? Or the one on Elon Musk as he is mentally ill. Really how so? Nope, what she wanted to talk about her best school and me to affirm to her that it is. Bad news it is not. But after about a few minutes of circle jerking I finally said, “I am sorry but I have had this same conversation numerous times and it goes nowhere. I respect your job and what you do, we disagree on my job but I know you respect my job for what it is and with that I would like to get back to finishing at least one of these articles before class starts.” She was taken aback and I put my pods back in my ear and went back to reading. For the record I do that in class while Students are there it is my only coping skill I have found works. I did sit in the hall the other day which I had not done at that school before, but had in many here and in Nashville. I have news for that Teacher the schools across America are segregated, shitty and pathetic – that is EVERYWHERE.

So where do we go from here – NOWHERE. Nothing will change we will hate one another, reprimand one another and bully one another just like we did as kids. Nothing changes and it stays the same. The sequel to Everything Everywhere All At Once.

Here we go again….

Yesterday the videos of the beating and ultimate death of Tyre Nichols of Memphis, TN was released. Of course the death loop and endless watching of this will accomplish little to nothing but will be used as evidence in the criminal trials of the four Officers who individually at some level contributed to his death, including clubbing him in the skull, tasing him, kicking him repeatedly and punching him then dragging his unconscious body to sit against the police vehicle and waited over 20 minutes for Medics to arrive. Ah those first responders that we so idolize right?

I write often about Nashville and my negative views of the State and that city in particular. I do want to say that Memphis is not a perfect city and there is immense poverty and of course there have been some hideous crimes that made the news, a serial shooter and the abduction, rape and murder of a Teacher on an early morning jog, but the reality is it is a city like many I have visited, both in the South, the North and the Midwest. And with that I have met amazing people and difficult people and come away with stories and a sense of a place that often is maligned and misrepresented in the media. And Memphis is one. It is a place of SOUL and much like the city down the river in Louisiana, New Orleans, it is complex polynomial. And I have found that in almost all my travels of said cities… Louisville, Cleveland, Baltimore. For the record Detroit has often been portrayed as such, but for the wrong reasons. I will never return there as there is nothing there.

I just returned from a day trip to Philadelphia and with that visited the Barnes Foundation and their Museum of Art to see two exhibits at each; Modigliani at the Barnes and Matisse in the 30s at PMA. Amazing venues, packed to the rafters with lovers of art and amazing individuals who were working the crowds that again lean to largely old white folks with varying ailments, disabilities and overall angst about being in public. A fun crowd. Okay but there were some younger and people of color at the PMA and they were expressing deep curiosity and interest at the art and the stories Matisse was telling in his work. The Barnes.. no. I am not sure that Modigliani was an artist that spoke to them in the way Matisse does in the popular culture. Sad really as he died at age 30 and his work is much more lush and complex than a simple viewing allows. The Barnes had taken X-Rays, Thermal Imagining and used other technologies to uncover a wealth of info and material on the artist. He reused other Artists canvas and painted over their work, he used cardboard and was also a painter who sketched and painted directly on the work only to revise it. Amazing exhibit and brilliant curation. My love of Matisse was only expanded by this exhibit at the PMA but it did not change my adoration that the MOMA accomplished with their amazing exhibit of the Red Studio last year. That will always be my most treasured exhibit as it was a “Where’s Waldo” moment to spot the art and the way the artist used a signature in all his works that at times is obvious and others less so. I learned a great deal so that knowledge came to use when someone asked what a yellow blob was in one work, and I said: “Flowers, Matisse loved flowers and they are in almost all his work these are just an Impressionist view.” And sure enough there were photos of the scene in the studio that showed the vase of flowers in their natural state. I owe that to MOMA.

The day in Philly was cold and I wandered the city and like many metro centers it was dead and many shops and businesses closed. I rode a largely empty subway to familiarize myself with their transit but basically it was an easy walk back to the Station after lunch at a recommended pub in the area. As always the people I met were charming and friendly and the food was well as most – average and expensive. I am becoming disappointed of late with the options of food and the lack of quality with regards to price. I see why the restaurants at the two Museums were packed and required reservations, as again options were few. But walking through Philly I saw charming blocks with restaurants and shops, not yet open but were there giving an indication that there are as always, pockets of activity tucked into corners worth exploring. I look forward to returning.

And I truly did not want to ruin that day with the images in that video, so this morning with my coffee I did and all I really did was focus on the sounds. The young man crying for his Mother, the Cops ranting and breathing heavily, their rage and ramblings and of course the last breaths of Tyre as he begged them to stop and they kept on beating him until there was nothing but silence. You see the red lights and hear the conversations between the Officers debate the condition of the man they have beaten to near death and with that you see others standing around watching, for who or what I am not sure but again it is very reminiscent of the Floyd killing only this is by five men of color repeatedly assaulting a man of color. They use every tool in their arsenal other than a gun, their feet, their hands, their clubs and their tasers. Did they think it was less severe or that a gun shot would be the final nail in THEIR coffin?

I leave it at that. I have little more to add and my rage, anger and sheer confusion about why this continues is not surprising. The protests will be less intense and fewer and we will go back to our homes, to our places of business, our places of congregation and we will do what we always do. Rage and rant and offer thoughts and prayers and nothing will change. Why? We simply cannot get guns out of the equation. No guns were found, nor shots fired and yet here we are, another death by the hands of the Police. They constantly complain they were in fear. I see none of that on display in that video, I see a man being yanked from the car, he being pushed to the ground, him managing to get up and run and they pursue him determined to find him and in turn determined to bring him to his knees. I saw the same video last week with the young Black Teacher on Wilshire in Los Angeles. And I will see it again in another city with another young Black man in the future. America we are a violent dangerous nation, obsessed with crime, obsessed with guns and in turn we see anyone as the enemy. I see the Police as mine but I have for years. I have been the victim of lies by Cops, their pursuit of lies and a Medic who enabled and assisted them in doing so. First Responders are the agents of death not of saviors. They can all go fuck themselves.

Mix and Match

Well the weather here is frightening, but not as bad as elsewhere. In Tennessee home of the deniers of science, climate included, has had flooding that has led to over 20 dead. But hey don’t ask the Legislature to do anything about infrastructure as well they will take that Government check and promptly build some monument to a White Supremacist over doing needed repairs to roads, bridges and flood controls on the rivers despite the 200 year old floods that now are Decade new ones. Hey they have mask mandates to overturn, civil rights to oppress and open carry laws to pass. Priorities people! (Yes folks I hated every waking minute living in Tennessee and that will not change, no absence and heart not in the least fond)

That said Memphis was a cover story in The Washington Post with regards to the issues of hiring and how it is affecting small businesses, mostly those owned by people of color. Memphis is largely a chocolate city and perhaps unlike most of the other racist cities in the State it is the one that truly reflects the concept of Southern Hospitality. I loved it there and cannot wait to return but this issue is one I am seeing everywhere. From Bridgeport to Newport the swath of Help Wanted signs is why many of the businesses have permanently closed, from small business, to major ones you see CLOSED on many doors or limited days and hours. And no folks it is not the extended UI benefits as again as a study has shown that employment in states that ended in earlier versus those still in the plan have a slight difference in that trajectory, the irony is that the states which have elected to keep the extended benefits hiring is up and most notably the workforce has changed, to one of teenagers; a group that has found in the past few decades the lowest employment, go figure. What this says to me is that is what these jobs truly are, low wage entry level which for years have been the jobs that were the ones that we have neglected with regards to paying a living wage and filled by Immigrants and Women. As for those other jobs, such as child care and home care health workers, we pay them poorly as well but those cannot be held by teens and much like the ongoing Nursing and Teaching shortage, little will change until they stop paying in change.

Then we have another Tennessee tale, Phil Valentine, the Covid denier is dead, from Covid. Irony much? May Governor Greg Abbott of Texas join him soon. He has a colleague from a Texas town who thought it was all bullshit too, waiting to greet him. Not so much bullshit now is it? Well can’t suppress voting rights from six feet under! Okay, I have zero problem wishing the deaths of men who are largely enabling people to die from something preventable. Sorry folks pity for the ones who did not do anything wrong and died or became seriously ill thanks to the bullshit peddled by assholes like these. Hey but in Florida it is a new way to defund the Police, kill them with Covid.

Next up on the hit parade is the riots and mayhem in the streets of Kabul. What? You mean Portland. Oh yes same difference, angry men fighting to prove who are the bigger meaner men. One is about religion and the other about religion. Christianity vs Islam when it comes to that issue it is literally a race as in a color of skin and gender. Men swinging dicks with guns as the condom. Oh wait these shitholes won’t wear masks so would they wear condoms? No love no glove or mask. Wow you know this mask thing is kinda sexy folks, and the Proud Boys do love some cosplay costumes there. Funny that at least the women in Afghanistan are more than masked. Yes we women are the problem.

And Trump had a rally in Alabama. Was Jeff Sessions invited? Guess not. Odd, he promoted vaccines. Well he has to as he needs his Trumptards alive. They are going old school Japanese and doing it Kamikaze style. Just say NO. Wow we are back in the Reagan years!

And lastly in this the Country of Old Men, great movie btw, we have my beloved Joe Biden doing the right thing and upholding the deal Trump made and getting eviscerated for it. Again this war was useless and we knew this and The Washsington Post had long uncovered how the Military had obfuscated this fact for decades.. yes all two of them we were there. The link is to the NYT and it in turn has the link to the Post and they are a must read, so anyone who truly believes we are handling this wrong, needs a dose of Fox News and a recall back to another decade of my life that was all GOP all the time, the Nixon years and Cambodia. Kissinger is still, well, alive and I am sure railing that we should have stayed there too. War kills all living things.

And then we have the R. Kelly trial (number one)going on in Brooklyn. There is so much luggage there to unpack I am not sure what to make of this. But the Doctor who diagnosed Kelly’s Herpes but never took a payment from him in exchange for free tickets and comped show travel seems to have some problems with being a licensed Physician. As stated in the trial: Dr. McGrath said that he had first believed that Mr. Kelly could have had herpes in 2000. He had first begun to serve as the singer’s doctor around 1994, but did not charge him for his services, he said. (Instead, he testified, Mr. Kelly invited him to about a dozen concerts, sometimes flying him across the country and paying for his accommodations.)

And to hear one former employee describe working for R Kelly as being in the Twilight Zone you realize how money and access to fame color our vision when it comes to men doing harm to young women. And in turn enabling toxic workplaces such as former Governor Cuomo (who assured all of us or reassured us that he would still be leaving office today as scheduled, despite the weather. Yeah a bitch to move during a Hurricane) or Scott Rudin who did not sexually harass anyone (and apparently Gay and married which makes this one a glass ceiling breaker and steadfastly unusual) who did discriminate in his abuse, women and especially those of color the targets of his abuse; however it seems that regardless he was a Grade A asshole across the boards, literally across the boards as he became one of Broadway’s most notorious or most voracious, either/or, none of it good. What we tolerate in the search of money and fame – herpes, death, rape and beatings by a computer keyboard. When does it stop Mommy?

To demonstrate my quest to prove equality when it comes to abuse can we discuss Naomi Campbell? Yes folks, phones were thrown but the Guardian is right, someone has to work with these people. Welcome to the Twilight Zone.

Memphis Bound

This last weekend I escaped Nashville and their endless self promotion coupled with the modern day slave auction, the NFL Draft.  An appalling spectacle that already has found one draftee shot and his teammate killed. This on the heels of other prospects having serious domestic violence issues in their history, an issue not new to the NFL the sport that exploits young men, abuse their bodies and further degrade their minds without any admission that the increased emphasis on violence in the sport itself is like a self feeding tool to further take it off the field as on.

It is not lost on me living in Nashville and just returning from Memphis and while the two cities could not be more different in personality, culture and history they share a trait when it comes to crime and violence.  Nashville buries it and covers up that on the same weekend that saw over 300K visitors just an hour away a young man killed his entire family; that a shooting on street within minutes of the main action seven people were shot or another nearby killed.  Then in a neighboring county two Elementary students were charged with planning a shooting.

Memphis has equally a significant problem with crime and violence and the weekend I was there a woman was killed in front of her apartment in the downtown area.  But Memphis is working and aware of the problem and are not in denial as they are in Nashville and seemingly that was acknowledged several times over the weekend with reports on violence. 

The culture and character of Memphis is literally night and day and the faces of the residents when you pass on the street reflect that, there are often random encounters with locals who introduce yourself or with service workers who are more than engaged with those whom they come into contact. I met more people and had more engaging if not highly amusing conversations with the locals in Memphis in a 72 hour time frame than I had living in Nashville coming on to three years in June. 

Memphis is a Chocolate City and that may explain why it has resisted gentrification despite the fact that the city is more interesting, demographically laid out well and has a striking waterfront that is well utilized and appreciated, unlike the filthy Cumberland which the city tolerates but tries its best to ignore as a pest that nearly brought the city to its knees a few years ago.  And like Nashville the division between the have and have not’s has been well preserved over the last few years.  While Nashville has found itself outing the first Black Director of Schools under the belief it was racism versus overall incompetence, Memphis has had several. Their schools are no better but they have fewer options that the old money of Nashville have found with their numerous private academies that dot the landscape.   Memphis has its Beale Street like Nashville has its Broadway, it has the Rock and Soul Museum, the Civil Rights Museum, the Cotton Exchange and many others with of course the King of Rock n’Roll’s land of Grace and all things Elvis within a 20 minute drive out of town and yet once through those gates is as if entering another world.   Nashville aspires to be any city it is not, Seattle is a coveted choice, Vegas another and it may explain its endless nicknames that they seem to affix with each passing fad.  My God Nashville is a shithole, they should try that one.

Memphis makes no apologies and no excuses they seem to be fine with who they are and the city has a flavor much like its sister City – New Orleans.   The high spirit, the energy and the sense of place perhaps has enabled it to just stay as it is despite the flows of the river and the riches that run through or past it. NOLA turned 300 this year and Memphis is turning 250 and she is not showing her age but is like a fine wine that needs to be opened and savored.  Nashville is yesterday’s beer, flat and tasteless and has it self congratulates and humble brags about its varying “it” status they neglect the people that made it so and the arrogance and idiocy that line the streets only further demonstrates how clueless they are.    I sense that while Seattle the real city on the “rise” (which they say here endlessly) shows the risk with the crane collapsing yesterday and killing four is something again Nashville aspires to have. They want a mass shooting, they want a disaster, they need something to prove to themselves that they are worthy of all the lies they spout and bullshit they spread.

Before I left for Memphis the adjacent developer to my apartment (now going condo whatever)  was planning on building more condos and units that were “affordable” and while most of his have sold many are still on the market or going back on the market.  The store that opened as a mini bodega closed abruptly leaving the owners bankrupt as the promised business and traffic never happened and may not despite the endless commercial structures now replacing the promised dwellings.  The neighborhood like many in Nashville has been designated an opportunity zone and that enables investors to build with little to no risk secured by tax breaks and write offs that residential building does not – an irony not lost that affordable housing should be the real development as it is needed but again does anything make sense here?  And this continues with another massive real estate deal that again changes the tune here in Music City.

What the federal Opportunity Zone program does it defers, reduces and, potentially, eliminates taxes on capital gains tied to development within such designated areas.   Gosh its good to be rich and most of it is tied to out of state investors with little to no skin in the game and no interest in what is good for Nashville or the people who live within.  Another absurd development is planned in a area that put in a branch of a coffee shop I go to and it too struggles to keep its roof but more are coming, with more and more money pouring it the cup its all too good to say no to a refill.

But the cup is not bottomless and the reality is that the growth and projections for the city to be some Class A metro may be ending.  The current Government is moving forward on School Vouchers, Anti Voting bills and anti LGBQT laws.  Then you have the move to destroy choice as we know it this states red colors will fly proudly as the Nathan Bedford Statue does off I-65. Memphis had the common decency to simply sell the public park its statue sat upon and the new owner promptly removed it.   This too led the state to completely adjust laws to prevent any other municipalities from doing the same as they do in pretty much every scenario here.  Self rule is sole rule and two cities have two different dynamics but much like the Slave Overseer they have little freedom to run to their own rules.  And the reality that race drives this cannot be overlooked but it is not the primary factor, it is and will always be money.  Then it is the Church which dictates the rules that govern the laws and then the tribe one belongs to and the family from whom one comes from.  I have been questioned in Nashville more times than I can count: Why did you come here?  More an accusation than an inquiry versus Memphis: Where are you originally from?  It takes a five minute encounter with me with a local to figure out I am not from here but in Memphis it was seen as welcoming and inviting, here in Nashville is like pointing to the zombies from the Night of the Living Dead.  It is a warning that another “outsider” a “carpetbagger” here is to take, take something that from what I could tell before I did get here was a shithole.  So don’t worry I used to think that I should leave it better than I found it ruled, I have now found the exception. Nashville you will always be a shithole no matter how many fancy buildings or restaurants or conventions you bring as the source of shit is from within. What comes in must come out as they say

Go to Memphis and find soul, literally and figuratively. 

Myths, not Greek ones

I have long said that there is one thing the South does better than most is reconstruct the truths or facts to fit their version of the same.  One of us might say that defines the South the ability to lie while talking better than most.

There is a current exhibit at the Frist that has just become a Museum so in turn that means it has a permanent collection, of what I am not sure, but they have an exhibit now with photos taken by the local rag, The Tennessean, regarding the desegregation of Nashville in the 1960s.  And they have just honored the first children who integrated the public schools here 50 years ago.   Irony that those smalll feet took big steps and today the same schools are at risk of being closed or at least merged with equally small and failing schools as a way to save money.  History is a good as the story teller and is as preserved by those willing to fund them.   And in the South all of that is controlled by White Men   White men are in every story ever told.

I have read the book Making the Unequal Metropolis about the schools and this past year the eponymous marking of Brown vs the Board of Education, the death of  Linda Brown this past month and in turn the 50th year marking Martin Luther King’s assassination means that the reckoning regarding Civil Rights has come full circle and that circle means we are back to to the beginning but which beginning.

There was a point prior to the move to desegregate when despite it all there was as a strong vital Black community. There were thriving Black Universities, neighborhoods and businesses but with that there were dilapidated schools, libraries and other institutions that were negligent when it came to parity.   A few things have changed, the libraries and access to public institutions are equitable but the schools are still junk buckets.  But that is consistent and the access to the decent ones is based on merit but that playing field is full of holes.

Society across the board is a pecking system and we are more than aware of it as the rise of the #MeToo/TimesUp movement has brought to lite.  Then we have Black Lives Matter and the issues that it addresses regarding how specifically Black men are perceived by law enforcement. The loathing of Immigrants and the targeting of Muslims as a particular group whose religion is seen as dangerous.  And the issues regarding equal pay and discrepancies regarding how those are compensated in many fields.   There is the fight for 15 and the current state size walkouts by Teachers over wages and benefits and funding for education that transcends an awakening.

We have pecking orders inside our own cohorts and women are no less guilty of this when it comes to everything from Motherhood to the workplace. Watch a Real Housewife show to see how that plays out.   We list and define and divide everything by using the most extrinsic of factors from skin color to job title to where one lives.  We are a nasty group us humans we are only animals and we are struggling to be the fittest who survive.

I read the article below today and I felt it accurately describes the truth about Nashville then and now.  Oddly the reality is that it is easier to deny the truth than make a law.  The laws that were set into place are ones that the right wings flaunt as reasons to deny Government overreach and in turn elect a crazy man as President rather than acknowledge their own racism and rage about those who are not like you.  So you place blame and accuse the Government of repression while amassing guns, taking opioids and defending the wealthy as they are the ones you believe will rescue you from your own self loathing.

Mythology has a long history from the creation of Gods to the legends of heroes and of nations. They are stories that provide a backdrop, a perspective and of course the ability in which to align oneself, find identity and bonding.  That is what we are seeing across the Globe with the concept of the Nativist that has emerged to somehow defend or define who has this shared history and deserve to bestow upon those they deem worthy.   I find that fascinating as the entire world is composed of raiders and this is a place made up of mutts.  The reality is to find the oldest DNA in existence and in turn link that to every member of every citizen across the world, and that would be one hell of a CSI episode.

As I compose this I am watching the tributes to Dr. Martin Luther King and the issues that began over 50 years earlier still go on today.  I wonder what would be the situation of this issue had he not been assassinated?  That would be difficult to know as when we rely upon people to do the right thing they elect to do the right for themselves and anyone who is benefit or is duly punished is often a result of that action depending upon the scale and scope of that choice.    And as CBS finished that story about the activities in Memphis it was followed by the story of the Clark shooting in Sacramento.  Two lives, guns and deaths it was the choice of who had said guns and bullets and how they elected to use them.   Ah the myths created to defend said action led men to act upon them.

And with this I live a couple hour drive north of Memphis.  And while I spend most of my days trying to understand and reconcile my issues that surround poverty and the affects of racism, Memphis is no better than it was that day when Dr. King spoke about the wages of jobs which also included those prophetic words that marked his last speech.     Ah yes the myths of lives and deaths and history intertwine on a daily basis. How we recall them and how embedded they are into the culture creates the culture which choose to embrace or reject as it fits their needs. 

Nashville and the Myth of Peaceful Integration

The truth is messier, and more frightening, than the story we tell ourselves
Betsy Phillips The Nashville Scene
Apr 3, 2018 9 AM

The Frist Art Museum has a new exhibit of pictures from The Tennessean and the Nashville Banner of the Civil Rights Era in Nashville. Because of my day job, I’ve gotten to see some of the pictures the Frist is displaying, some of which never ran in the papers.

That got me thinking of the ways in which the local media shaped Nashville’s perception and therefore our memory of the integration era.

In my research on the bombings from that era, I came across what I think is the moment when the story The Tennessean told Nashville began to diverge from the whole truth — August 28, 1957.

This was right as the first black school children to go to formerly all-white public schools were registering for the first grade. Segregationists had been exerting enormous pressure on the families — both black and white — of first graders who would attend those integrated schools.

The Tennessean did report that black families had received threats that their children would be beaten or have acid tossed on them (which makes the throwing of bottles on the first day of school doubly terrifying).

But John Kasper, the leader of the racist segregationists, made a more explicit threat. The Murfreesboro Daily News Journal ran two stories about it, one on August 28 and the other on August 29.

Kasper told a crowd of his supporters in Nashville, “We’re going to talk to the niggers and tell them if they want to avoid the shotgun, dynamite and rope they had better get out of the white schools.”

That’s a pretty clear death threat, given with the support of a large, angry crowd.

Neither The Tennessean nor the Banner ran that quote. And without that quote, the tribulations of the black families seem like they’re caused by individuals working independently, not because of a concerted effort directed by Kasper and put into motion by his followers.

It also left the black families who would integrate our schools without a vital piece of information they might have wanted to know.

But I still can’t blame The Tennessean completely. It was kind of a relief to see that someone in a position to do something recognized that we were sitting on a powder keg, metaphorically, and tried to do something to keep folks calm.

As I’ve said before, integration wasn’t peaceful here, we just got very lucky no one was killed. The pictures at the Frist make that clear.

If you care about Nashville’s history — the truth of it — it’s worth going and looking at those photos and, in some cases, wondering why you’ve never seen them before.

Judge Joe Brown Cancelled

Well the people in Memphis have spoken and they like their jailhouse to rock apparently.

Former TV Judge Brown Stumbles in Tenn. DA Bid

The Associated Press

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Former TV judge Joe Brown has lost his bid to become the district attorney for the Tennessee county that includes Memphis.

Brown, a Democrat, challenged Republican Amy Weirich, the incumbent district attorney for Shelby County. She claimed victory late Thursday.< With 96 percent of precincts reporting, Weirich had 65 percent of the vote compared with 35 percent for Brown. Brown was a Criminal Court judge in Memphis before stepping down in 2000 to dedicate himself to the TV show. The show is no longer on the air. 

He was arrested and briefly jailed in March after a Shelby County Juvenile Court magistrate found him in contempt of court during a contentious hearing. He is appealing the charges.

What is interesting is that he lost to this bitch. And no I am no longer couching language when it comes to the system of Justice. Civility is not part of their arena it will no longer be part of mine.

Here  have a dog running for Prosecuting Attorney here in Whatcom County in the north of the State. Why as this dude has had no opponents for decades.   The dog is no bitch that is for sure.

But this woman in Memphis runs about as tight a ship as the Titanic. What is tragic is that Memphis is troubled city and needs good leaders but clearly here has to be where voter suppression or ignorance is why this woman was re-elected. The article below is from the Memphis Flyer and is about one this “Captain’s Lieutenants” He sounds like a real winner too!

The Prosecution Rests
A controversial censure of Assistant District Attorney Thomas Henderson has the legal community abuzz and D.A. Amy Weirich on the defensive.

By Toby Sells
Memphis Flyer
January 30, 2014

Two clear and vastly different story lines exist in the recent censure of Assistant District Attorney Thomas Henderson for misconduct in a capital murder case.

In the end, those differing opinions may be all that remain of Henderson’s part of a case that began 16 years ago and ended late last year. But maybe not. Some details of the case can’t yet be disclosed publicly. If they are brought to the surface, they may shed a new light on the entire saga.

Henderson was censured by the Tennessee Supreme Court’s Office of Professional Responsibility over the holidays. The office oversees attorneys in Tennessee and punishes them if they break ethical rules that govern the profession, as they did with Henderson.

The punishment the office handed down to Henderson is a “public rebuke and a warning to the attorney, but does not affect the attorney’s ability to practice law.” Henderson also had to pay the court costs that lead to the censure, which totaled $1,745.07.

He and his boss, Shelby County District Attorney Amy Weirich, said he simply forgot about a piece of evidence in the capital murder case, that not disclosing it correctly was a “human error,” and his crime amounts to a clerical mistake. He pleaded guilty to the error, is enduring the public punishment, has to pay the fine, and the matter is closed.

Others, including judges and attorneys who spoke to the Flyer, said Henderson suppressed the evidence on purpose to win his case, and many doubted it was the first time he’d done it in his career. This kind of discipline against him has been a long time coming, some said. He got a slap on the wrist with a plea deal to probably save himself from being disbarred, attorneys said. Some criminal justice insiders said the matter has shaken faith in Weirich’s leadership, faith in the Shelby County District Attorney’s office, and even faith in the county’s justice system.

Henderson will keep his job in the Shelby County D.A.’s office, and Weirich said no further punishment is planned for the veteran attorney. She punished him, she said, by pulling him from the case associated with the censure.

“Those outside of this office may not understand what a punishment that is, but it was a huge step, and it was a tough conversation to have,” Weirich said. “We, as prosecutors, when we’re assigned a murder case — particularly a capital murder case — they become a part of us: the case, the family, and the victim.”

Thomas Henderson likely knows this like few others. He’s been a prosecutor in the Shelby County D.A.’s office since 1976. In that time, he’s overseen some of the county’s “most heinous and atrocious criminal cases,” a description often repeated by Weirich. He’s prosecuted hundreds of jury trials, at least 50 of them were capital murder cases. He now holds one of the top positions in the D.A.’s office, supervising some 50 prosecutors in Shelby County’s criminal courts. Weirich has called him a “dedicated public servant.”

The Flyer interviewed a number of Memphis attorneys who have had dealings with Henderson, many of whom were only willing to talk off the record. Some described him as having a prickly personality. Others had stronger words to describe a man, who they said, tries to (and does) get under the skin of his opponents with a stinging wit that seems intended to demean and humiliate. But all of the attorneys agreed that Henderson is razor-sharp, and it’s been said that if his critics needed a prosecutor for their family, they’d want him.

But Henderson keeps a low profile, despite his high-profile job. Google searches of his name turn up just a handful of news stories, most dealing with cases he’s prosecuted. Those searches yield only a couple of photos of the veteran prosecutor; they show a slightly balding, white-haired man with wire-frame glasses who sometimes wears a white mustache. The only direct contact the Flyer had with Henderson was in an email from him saying he could not comment on this story. He did not appear with Weirich in her press conference two weeks ago and was not made available for a photograph.

Beyond enduring news coverage of his public censure, there’s almost nothing more that could legally happen to Henderson. He was censured by the board that oversees his profession. Weirich, his boss and a duly elected official, has said repeatedly that she’ll stand behind him, and his job security rests with her.

To many outside the legal community, a censure may not sound like much. But it is. It’s but two steps away from disbarment (losing your license to practice) in Tennessee. “Enduring” a censure, as Weirich put it, surely means having everyone know that you — someone duty-bound and honor-bound to play by the rules — broke the rules.

“This one involves honesty to a tribunal, the courts, in a capital murder case,” said Memphis defense attorney Marty B. McAfee. “A defense attorney caught in dishonesty in a courtroom might well face jail for contempt of court and would surely be sanctioned by the Board of Professional Responsibility.”

The road to Henderson’s censure began about 16 years ago. It has spanned two highly publicized court trials, and Henderson argued them both. Paper files on the case would fill a room full of cabinets. The list of appeals and motions in the case are long and have occupied countless hours of time and thought in county and state courts for nearly all of those 16 years. But it all begins, of course, with a crime.

It was not an ordinary crime. It was a murder case in which the victim’s body has never been found. That’s one reason Henderson decided to take it on, according to a letter he wrote in his defense to the Board of Professional Responsibility.

“Since I was the only one in the office who had ever tried such a case before, I agreed to take it on in addition to my regular caseload,” Henderson wrote.

A manager with CSX Transportation called the Memphis Inn early on February 8, 1997, to wake a work crew that was staying there. He was unable to get anyone on the phone at the front desk, so a railroad yardmaster then drove to the motel, located near the corner of I-40 and Sycamore View. When he got there, he found the office empty and signs of a violent struggle, including a blood trail leading out of the office door. The yardmaster called police.

Officers from the Shelby County Sheriff’s Department and the Memphis Police Department found large amounts of blood in the employee bathroom, a cracked sink, bloody towels, and the seat had been torn off the toilet. Sheets were taken, as well as $600 from the register. Ricci Ellsworth, the motel night clerk, was gone. Her 1989 Dodge Dynasty was still in the parking lot. Her body has not been found. She disappeared, but not without a trace.

An eyewitness, James Darnell, told police he saw two white men with blood on their hands in the motel around the time Ellsworth went missing. Darnell thought one of them was a motel clerk because he was behind the office window and was handing what he thought was change to the other man. Their knuckles were bloody, he said, and he thought they had been fighting.

He saw one of the men in the parking lot putting something “rolled up” in a motel comforter in the trunk of a car, something heavy enough that the car “dropped a little bit.”

Darnell described the men to a police sketch artist and the photos ran on television and in The Commercial Appeal. Billy Wayne Voyles and Raymond Cecil were identified by one of their friends in Arkansas. Police added a photo of Voyles (but not Cecil) to a photo spread and he was identified by the eyewitness, Darnell.

Voyles was brought to Tennessee on Henderson’s order, and he told police he hadn’t been in Tennessee for two years because he was running from a violation of parole warrant. He told police eight people (including Cecil) could verify his alibi.

Henderson said he was told Voyles had a good alibi and was excluded from his investigation. But Kelly Gleason, a post-conviction attorney who reviewed the case, concluded that none of the eight people were ever interviewed and that no D.A. or police document showed that his alibi checked out. Henderson said he chalked up Voyles as one of the “hundreds of false leads, crime-stopper tips, and false sightings of the victim that were checked out by police.”

But jurors in the 1998 trial never heard the name of Billy Wayne Voyles. They never knew an eyewitness claimed to have seen other suspects at the Memphis Inn that night.

Instead, they heard a story about a man named Michael Dale Rimmer. The eyewitness, Darnell, did not pick Rimmer out of the photo spread shown to him by police. Rimmer became the prime suspect for police and prosecutors, but their suspicions of him did not come out of thin air.

Rimmer had a sporadic romantic relationship with Ricci Ellsworth and was convicted of raping her in 1989. For that, he spent eight years at Tiptonville’s Northwest Correctional Facility (now called Northwest Correctional Complex). He got out just a few months before Ellsworth went missing. And on that day, February 8, 1997, Rimmer showed up early at his brother’s house, filthy with mud on his boots and asking his brother, a carpet cleaner, if he knew how to get blood out of carpet. He cleaned his muddy boots in the shower and was asked to leave.

He left Tennessee driving a stolen car. Receipts show he wound his way through Mississippi and Florida, then out west to California, Arizona, and Texas. About a month after he left Memphis, he was pulled over in Johnson County, Indiana. The cops ran the tag, which matched a stolen, maroon, 1988 Honda Accord that belonged to one of Rimmer’s acquaintances. Its driver was wanted for questioning in Tennessee.

Rimmer was locked up, and Indiana law enforcement officials ran tests on what looked like blood in the backseat of the car. Initial DNA results showed the blood “was consistent with the offspring of the victim’s mother,” according to court documents. More testing proved the blood belonged to Ricci Ellsworth, the only trace left of the missing woman, and all that police would ever find.

While in the Indiana jail, Rimmer told inmates he had killed his wife in a Memphis motel. He said she was responsible for his prior incarceration on the rape charge and that she owed him money. He described the murder scene as “very bloody,” described the place he dumped the body, and said he was surprised no one had found it yet. Back in Memphis, he told police he’d been to a topless club that night. An officer told him that Ellsworth might be dead and he said “you can’t have a murder, because you don’t have a body.” No one had told Rimmer that police had not found her body. It was damning evidence for sure.

Before the November 1998 trial, Rimmer’s team of six attorneys asked Henderson and the Shelby County prosecutors if there was any exculpatory evidence, or evidence that could help prove their client’s innocence. They specifically requested information “relating to any witness’ description of a perpetrator which did not match that of Mr. Rimmer,” according to the Board of Responsibility’s petition of discipline for Henderson. Henderson did not mention Billy Wayne Voyles. He said he was “unaware” of any such evidence.

Henderson said he did not suppress any evidence. In his defense letter to the board, he said he gave defense attorneys the names and addresses of all the questioned witnesses and told them the photo spread (which contained Rimmer and Voyles) and all reports of identification were available to them in the evidence room at 201 Poplar.

“It makes no sense that someone would try to hide such information and then furnish defense attorneys with names, addresses, descriptions, and notations of photo spreads,” Henderson wrote in the 2012 letter. “It was also my expectation that any defense attorney would examine the evidence in preparation for a trial. Sadly, that was not the case here.”

The Rimmer case file contained about 6,000 pages, Henderson said. So, when he was asked about any other eyewitness identification, he simply couldn’t recall Darnell’s identification of Voyles, especially since he wasn’t a person of interest in his investigation. “In short, my failure was one of recollection and not purposeful.”

But Kelly Gleason, a Nashville attorney who worked for Rimmer, disagreed that Henderson simply forgot. She pointed to the fact that Henderson specifically asked for Darnell in his lineup of potential witnesses, according to a letter to the Board of Professional Responsibility answering Henderson’s defense.

Also, she said the witness list Henderson prepared for his personal use included the remarks “saw 2 mw ID Voyles” by James Darnell’s name, meaning Darnell said he saw two white men at the motel that night and identified one of them as Voyles. The witness list given to Rimmer’s attorneys “contained no such description,” Gleason wrote.

“Mr. Henderson did not forget that James Darnell identified Billy Wayne Voyles,” Gleason said in her letter. “He chose not to disclose that fact to defense counsel before, during, and after Mr. Rimmer’s November 1998 trial.”

If the defense had known of an eyewitness at the time and place of Ricci Ellsworth’s disappearance, they could have formed a whole new trial strategy working from a completely different theory, all ideas and arguments that could have spared Rimmer from death row. But they didn’t, and Rimmer was convicted and sentenced to death.

Rimmer won an appeal, and the Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the convictions against him but overturned his death sentence. But the case was not overturned because of anything done by Henderson. It was overturned because the judge on the case gave incorrect instructions to the jury. In 2004, Rimmer got a new trial for sentencing that could keep him from the death chamber.

Henderson argued the new trial for the state against Rimmer. He used the same 1998 file to prepare for the case, Gleason said, and had the same witness list with his notes. Rimmer’s attorneys asked if Henderson had any exculpatory evidence regarding identification of witnesses. He said that “the identification witnesses in this case are friends, co-workers, and other acquaintances of the defendant,” according to the board’s discipline petition, which also noted that “Mr. Darnell was not a friend, co-worker, or other acquaintance with Mr. Rimmer.” Henderson later testified that he did not call Darnell to the re-sentencing hearing because the state was just presenting an outline of the evidence presented at the guilt phase of the initial trial.

“When the issue of Darnell’s review of a photo spread came up during the trial, Mr. Henderson stated that he reviewed the entire file and that James Darnell did not identify anyone in the photo spread,” Gleason wrote.

Henderson said in his defense that the allegation that he committed perjury “is perhaps the most offensive.” He testified at the post-conviction hearing that “I would not do such a thing” and that the court found that he had not “proven that false testimony had been purposely presented.” He said it was an “unsupported allegation” and pointed to the fact that “I am still practicing and have 40 years of honorable service. All of those years of service are to be held for naught because of an allegation of an adversary?”

Weirich backed up Henderson’s 2012 claim last week, pointing to the fact that Rimmer’s attorneys brought up James Darnell in their arguments without being explicitly told about him as a witness by Henderson.

The jury in the 2004 trial gave Rimmer the death sentence, primarily based on the evidence that he had a previous felony for raping Ellsworth. The appeals court and the Supreme Court affirmed the sentence.

In 2008, Rimmer filed motions for new lawyers to look at his case and to stay his execution. In 2009, he filed to have the Shelby County D.A.’s office disqualified from any new trial. It was denied twice. The Supreme Court held a hearing to see if the D.A.’s office should be disqualified from the case and said it shouldn’t be. Rimmer appealed the decision and was denied. But he won a chance for new hearings for new evidence in his case, which were heard in January and March 2012. Those hearings revealed that Rimmer’s attorneys in 2004 failed to bring forward the evidence about Darnell’s eyewitness identifications and failed to interview him before the trial. So, the resentencing jury never heard that he had seen two people at the Memphis Inn that night and that neither one was Michael Dale Rimmer.

For this, Judge James Beasley of the Division 10 of the Shelby County Criminal Court, found their counsel to be “ineffective,” and without that evidence, the 2004’s jury was “not reliable.” So, in his October 2012 court order, Beasley reversed Rimmer’s conviction and death sentence and said he was entitled to a new trial.

Weirich said again last week that the new case was granted not because of anything Henderson did but because Rimmer’s attorneys failed to use evidence that some say Henderson suppressed. “Mr. Henderson made a human error,” she said. “That’s it. End of story. Period.”

But Beasley found the exact opposite to be true. He wrote in his order that Henderson “purposefully misled counsel with regard to the evidence obtained in this case.” He said Henderson’s assertions in the 1998 and 2004 cases that “he knew of no evidence exonerating or exculpating (Rimmer) were blatantly false, inappropriate, and ethically questionable,” but it was not enough to reverse Rimmer’s conviction or sentence.

Rimmer’s new trial is scheduled for July. But that date is fluid now, after Weirich announced recently that she decided to recuse her office from the trial. She had pulled Henderson from the trial last year and put two other prosecutors on the case, but she said media coverage of Henderson’s censure had complicated the matter and further involvement by her office would be a “distraction.”

A judge and a new jury will again hear all of the details of the Rimmer case. But one thing will be different this time around. Thomas Henderson won’t argue for the state. Weirich requested and got a special prosecutor to handle the case. That means new prosecutors will need to learn all the facts of the Rimmer case and try to keep him behind bars — or worse. The speed of their learning curve will likely determine the trial date.

Rimmer maintains his innocence in the disappearance and apparent murder of Ricci Ellsworth even after two juries have agreed that he is to blame.

Henderson claimed his innocence in his defense letter last year, denying that he purposefully withheld evidence as he tried to prove Rimmer’s guilt. He maintains that innocence, even after a criminal court judge ruled his infractions were intentional, he was charged by the Board of Professional Responsibility, and he pled guilty to the charges.

Henderson will continue to work at the D.A.’s office, as he has since 1976. Weirich faces an election this year, and she was unyielding when asked what she would say to an opponent who brings up her decisions on Henderson.

“I’m going to say I made the right decision from the very beginning of even becoming the District Attorney General,” she said.

Maybe her confidence comes from details of the case that neither she nor anyone in her office can discuss. The case is now pending (for the third time) and Weirich said she’s having to defend Henderson and her decisions with “one hand and one leg tied behind my back.”

“I don’t condone these actions, but there’s also more to this than the public knows right now,” Weirich said. “When the case is over, we’ll be able to talk a lot more freely about it.”