It’s about mental health

Right after thoughts and prayers, comes the denial about access and availability of guns, followed by a demand for mental health and better treatment and diagnosis prior to the maniac LEGALLY buying the guns and the ammo, the camo/body armor gear and the rest needed to carry out their plan. This plan is loosely defined but often spelled out or ruminated on social media as a type of acknowledgement and of course elegy as I presume that in many of these cases the maniac believes that he will be killed during his onslaught of rage, if they don’t commit suicide first as the Cops come barricading through the door, or sauntering through after about an hour or so of debate and discussion on the maniac and his fire power capabilities.

In the last few active shooting cases few have died at their own hand. Las Vegas and Walmart are the two that chose to kill themselves prior to capture or despite of it. Do we ever really know what prompted the Vegas shooter? Yeah I don’t either. There was the Naval Yard shooter, remember him? Yeah I don’t either. But this was written in 2013 after the attack and there has little changed with regards to stats. But the AK 15 is the weapon of choice and has been used to kill at this point 36 people but the year is not over folks!

As for the remaining shooters, many are taken into custody in a routine traffic stop, in Buffalo, Highland Park, or walking home as in the case of the North Carolina shooter (remember that one? No me either) or the Stoneman Douglas shooter or the Michigan Shooter who was going home to parents who had fled the scene and a manhunt took place to find them, so there you go. Many parents were killed prior to the onslaught and the problem with parental supervision and of course their own role in purchasing the weapon does little to stop the violence. Some parents were notified regarding the mental health of their child and some had contacted authorities regarding their child – Santa Barbara and Colorado Springs shooter are examples of such. Michigan shooter’s parents literally ignored the signs and we know that the Mother of Sandy Hook shooter purchased the gun but was aware of her son’s struggles and it was all too little to late. The Buffalo shooter hid the signs and it appears that the Grandmother of the Uvalde shooter took in her Grandson as he had problems with his Mother as well. Who doesn’t have a problem with their Mother but killing her or anyone else does not solve it in the least. But guns are often used to resolve disputes. This is a list of all the mass shootings in the US in 2022. All of them are mental health issues?

I reprint the article below from The Washington Post about a Mental Health Nurse who tried to end her own life and after release from care she returned the job that led her down her own path to struggle with mental health. I know that this year after being abused by the Neighbor in 946 and the endless bullshit at Ferris High School by a sole Administrator I debated on ending my life. I had survived attempted murder and rape being drugged and left for dead and with that sustained Traumatic Brain Injury which one of the many side effects is Suicide Ideation. I am not sure it was the injury itself that contributed to it but the endless conflict and issues that came thereafter, from the supposed Justice System to the Medical Industrial Complex, but they did little to help resolve my endless spiral downwards into Depression. I left for perhaps the worst place in America to seek help, Nashville Tennessee, but in spite of it I did get out and in some ways better than I arrived. It took a pandemic to finally heal me, irony no lost. But the reality is that I did it with my own methods and plans and since that time I rely on them as I have the last six years in recovering from perhaps the worst thing that happened to me and inevitably led me here today. When I say I want to be alone I do mean it; however, I do not object to some human contact but it must be on my terms – No compromise.

The story of this Nurse is telling it also explains the drain you see on many who work in the Medical Industrial Complex and why frankly it is so fucking shitty. She is not capable of handling the demands and the resources available lack in which to provide assistance. Shocking that in all places the liberal mecca of Seattle does not have it figured out. Been to San Francisco, the bookend of that? Not any better. Read San Francsicko to understand how often Liberal policies do more harm than good with regards to the crisis that lives in their streets. But alas good Liberals like good Conservatives don’t do well with criticism.

I grew up in Seattle where being Liberal was expected and accordingly accommodated with the idea that like a uniform, their is a code, a speech, a manner of being that is conformity in unity. In other words: Being different like everyone else. With that there is little tolerance for dissension among the ranks and you will be ostracized and demonized the same way Liberals are in Nashville. They are tolerated as long as the check clears but like Seattle is a city of shiny keys and they dangle them to attract the migrants and the money and with that you too must conform or you will be an outsider looking in. Nashville is still the Bible Belt it is in Tennessee where the red coats are not just the uniform of the chosen it is a way of living. It is zealotry at its finest and with that many of the laws and rules you are seeing appear in other red states began as a lab experiment there first. It is a nightmare of which I am glad this time I am awake. The South woke me to the real problem in America, sinister poverty and religion, which are the true twins of America’s endless Civil and Cultural wars.

Mental health is too broad and too complicated to say that it is a single issue behind gun violence. We don’t have enough medical care providers to adequately treat and diagnose issues that emerge and we have become a nation dependent upon pharmacopia to fix that what ails you. We are truly fucked here without dinner. I can count the two Therapists I found useful in my time and one Suicide Hotline woman who just last month talked me off the ledge of desperation. Too few and too far in between frankly. And this woman’s story explains why.

Fixing the broken lovelies

As American cities deteriorate, a psychiatric nurse reckons with the high price of compassion

By Eli Saslow The Washington Post November 20, 2022

SEATTLE — She’d been released from the psychiatric ward with advice on the best ways to limit additional trauma and stress, so Naomi Morris, 46, walked back into her nursing job carrying a notebook of reminders. “You are not Atlas,” she’d written. “The city’s suffering does not fall on your shoulders.” She paused in the hallway to do a deep-breathing exercise and then sat down in a conference room with a half-dozen of her co-workers at a nonprofit program that served people who were homeless or formerly homeless.

“So, what all did I miss?” she asked.

“Pretty much more of the same,” one of her co-workers said, as he turned on a projector screen and pulled up a complete list of their clients, 84 of the sickest and most vulnerable people in Seattle. Most of them had been chronically homeless before getting placed into subsidized apartment buildings downtown. Many suffered from severe psychiatric disorders, at least half were addicted to methamphetamine or opioids, several were homicidal and suicidal, and ever since the pandemic began altering the character of American cities, almost every one of them had been getting progressively worse.

“He assaulted his neighbor and started a fire in his room last night,” read a caseworker’s daily report about one of Naomi’s patients, as she took out a pen and began to write notes. “Delusional. Paranoid. Police and fire called to the scene.”

“Spotted walking through traffic wearing bizarre attire,” read another daily report, on her next patient. “Menacing, disheveled, open wounds to face and ear.”

“Using a bucket as a toilet,” read another.

“Lonely. Sent texts asking how to hold a gun in case she decides to shoot herself.”

For the last two and a half years, this was how Naomi and her team of caseworkers, clinicians and addiction specialists at the nonprofit Downtown Emergency Service Center had started each morning: by making a day-by-day accounting of the rising mental health crisis that had overwhelmed and transformed Seattle and so many other places in the country. Just like most major metropolitan areas, from New York to Denver to Los Angeles, the greater King County area had experienced a historic spike in homelessness, suicides, homicides and drug overdoses in the last few years, overwhelming its already under-resourced mental health systems. The average wait time for inpatient psychiatric treatment had risen to a record 44 days. The Seattle Police Department had lost 27 percent of its force in the last two years and was increasingly reluctant to intervene in any situation involving a mental health crisis because of new laws limiting use of force. The government-run crisis team that had once responded within hours to evaluate and detain people who were considered an imminent danger to themselves or to others was now backlogged by weeks or sometimes months.

“So many parts of the system are breaking down,” one King County politician had said, and that meant it was increasingly Naomi alone who responded to each of her patients’ medical emergencies, who tried to administer their monthly antipsychotic medications, who tested their drugs for deadly traces of fentanyl, who treated them for lice, who coaxed them into appropriate clothing, who counseled them through violent delusions, who was herself often threatened and sometimes assaulted, and who occasionally went to conduct routine welfare checks and found her patients dead.

And it had been Naomi again whom King County chose to represent all of its front-line health-care workers in August and September, when she stood alongside local leaders as they declared a citywide mental health emergency and proposed a $1.25 billion tax levy in part to fund five new mental health crisis centers. “We need to fix what’s broken, and I’m part of what’s broken,” she’d said from the lectern in August, and then two months later she’d taken the day off from work, sent a few goodbye messages, and tried to poison herself by overdosing on insulin. She’d spent three days in the hospital and five more in the psych ward processing all of her recent trauma, and now she’d come back to work to find out if what had happened to her and to her city over the last few years was in fact still fixable.

“Attacked his oven and other appliances last night in what he says was self-defense,” went the next daily report, and Naomi closed her eyes and counted her breaths.

“Refusing meds and making disturbing comments about children — concerning given his history.”

“Oh no. Not again,” Naomi said. She’d been visiting that patient in his downtown apartment throughout the pandemic, and when he was taking his antipsychotic medication, he could be charming and polite. But whenever he stopped taking his medication, he acted out in frightening ways around the city. He’d been arrested and briefly jailed for trespassing, use of a weapon, harassment, indecent exposure and at least a half-dozen assaults.

“I don’t want this to turn into the next major incident,” she said. “He’s really talking about kids?”

“Yeah. It’s not headed in a good direction,” her co-worker said.

“Do we have a plan?” she asked, and she looked around the table for a moment even as she realized she already knew the plan, because it was the same for every patient on her list. At least nine people were spiraling into full-fledged crisis, and she was the only nurse on her shift.

“I’ll go see what I can do to help him,” she said.

She’d spent the last decade working as a psychiatric nurse in the most destitute parts of the city because she thought every crisis could be overcome. She’d dealt with mental illness in her own family. She’d bounced through foster care systems and abusive relationships, and she’d been homeless in Seattle herself in the late 1990s before going back to school. Her life had convinced her that anyone was capable of getting better, but lately that belief was being challenged, because each time she went to see a patient she found herself preparing for the worst.

She put up her hair so nobody could yank it. She took out her earrings so they wouldn’t get pulled. She packed a bag of antipsychotic drugs and overdose-reversal medications and then drove downtown to a subsidized apartment building called the Morrison, with 200 units reserved mostly for people with severe and persistent psychiatric disorders. Outside the entrance, six people were huddled together smoking methamphetamine. A middle-aged man in the lobby was banging his head against a trash can. A woman wearing no pants stepped off the elevator, spotted Naomi, and started throwing punches at the air. “You African,” she shouted. “You filthy Nigerian.”

“Good morning, lovelies,” Naomi said, smiling and greeting each person by name. She walked deeper into the lobby and saw the patient she’d come looking for, the man who had been refusing his medication and having delusions about children. He was mumbling to himself, pacing and spooning yogurt into his mouth with his fingers. Naomi walked over and put her hand on his shoulder.

“Okay, my friend. What arm are we doing today?” she asked, hoping to catch him off guard and administer his shot of medication quickly, so there was no time for indecision or debate.

“Huh?” he asked. “Who sent you?”

“Nobody. It’s just time again for your monthly dose,” she said, as she pulled out a vial of the long-acting medication that helped to keep him stable and limit his delusions. “Right arm or left?”

He tucked his arms behind his back. “No way,” he said. “There’s bad stuff in there.”

“It’s the same medication you’ve been taking for years,” she said. “It’s been good for you.”

“You don’t understand. People are trying to kill me!” he shouted, and he slammed his yogurt into a trash can and hurried past her. Naomi put his medication back into her bag, walked into the office of the building’s clinical director and shook her head.

“No luck, huh?” Tim Clark said. He pulled up a file on his computer and showed Naomi the patient’s latest incident report, from a few days earlier: “He said, ‘Someone is poisoning me and wants me to hurt a boy. I don’t hurt children. I don’t want to. But she said that’s the only way she would stop poisoning me.’”

“He’s decompensating,” Naomi said. “It’s probably going to get worse.”

“What the hell do we do?” Clark asked. Before the pandemic, the plan would have been fairly straightforward. Whenever people became an imminent threat to themselves or to others, the staff at the Morrison would call for one of the designated crisis responders (DCRs), the only people in King County with the legal power to evaluate and then commit someone to mandatory mental health treatment. Usually, within a few days, the person in crisis would be evaluated and then probably hospitalized for weeks or often months, until they’d stabilized enough to return to the community. But now hundreds more people were in crisis all across King County, those crises were becoming ever more urgent, and the understaffed DCR teams couldn’t keep up with a record number of requests.

Their average wait time to evaluate someone exhibiting homicidal or suicidal tendencies in King County had tripled during the pandemic, to an average of 277 hours. The staff at the Morrison had been waiting two months for a crisis evaluation on a resident who often ran through the hallways naked and compulsively flooded her apartment with so much water and human waste that it ran down the hallway, into the elevator shaft, and through the ceiling in the main lobby, causing more than $60,000 in damage to the building. They’d been waiting several weeks for crisis response on a resident who kept threatening people with a pocket knife; and on another, who had spent four weeks walking around with a dislocated arm, his condition worsening as he remained too disoriented to accept treatment; and on another, who was hoarding garbage in his apartment and defecating on the floor.

It increasingly felt to Clark like many of his residents were being neglected by the system, left to suffer and unravel in any variety of horrific ways. Thirty residents had died inside the building since the beginning of the pandemic, more than four times the normal rate. Overdoses had doubled, and assaults were up.

“I hate that he keeps talking about kids,” Clark said. “I’d sleep a lot easier if he’d just take his medication. He’s capable of some pretty scary stuff.”

“We can’t force him to take it, but I’ll keep trying,” Naomi said. “I’ll come back every day. I’ll be here tomorrow.”

“But what about between now and then?” Clark asked.

“I’m going to try not to think about it,” she said.

Her therapist had told her she was suffering from post-traumatic stress and work-induced anxiety. Innocuous sounds startled her several times each day. Her hands sometimes shook involuntarily. “Clear evidence of both personal trauma and secondary trauma,” her therapist had called it. She’d suggested that Naomi consider changing jobs, but Naomi wasn’t ready to abandon her patients, so each morning she kept going into work with a list of people who required urgent care.

The next morning, she was back at the Morrison, hoping to try again with the patient who was talking about children. She knocked on his door and called out his name. “I’ve got your medicine,” she said, but he didn’t respond. She took out her notebook, put a question mark next to his name, and moved on to the next patient on her list.

It was a man lying shirtless in his apartment and compulsively rubbing his head. There was a dead mouse in his kitchen and a plate of rotting food in the microwave. “Why are you here? Did I start killing people or something?” the patient asked, genuinely confused, and then he started to cry. “No. You haven’t killed anybody,” Naomi assured him. “You’re doing just fine.” He refused to take his medication, so she picked up some of his trash and left the pills next to his bed.

Next on her list was a man who took off his shirt and kept trying to hug her as she gently pushed him away. Next was a woman who had overdosed two days earlier at a nearby public fountain. Next was a woman who refused to acknowledge that she had cancer and instead believed she was pregnant with 100 snake babies. Next were three more patients, who needed monthly antipsychotic injections, and then finally there was only one name left on her list — a patient suffering from paranoid schizophrenia who was five days overdue for his medication and had started harassing neighbors and punching walls.

“Can you come down to the lobby for your shot?” she asked him, over the phone, and to her surprise a few minutes later he was striding off the elevator, smiling at her, flashing a thumbs up. He followed her to a small room in the apartment lobby and rolled up his sleeves as he watched her prepare the shot. She showed him the label on his medication and explained all the likely side effects: drooling, vomiting, restlessness, headaches.

“I don’t like being scared,” he said.

“You’re safe,” she reassured him. “I’m here to help.”

“Just don’t poison me, okay?” he said, and as he watched her put on her gloves, he began to fidget and whisper to himself.

“Go away,” he said. “Shut up. … No, stop that.”

“Are you all right?” Naomi asked. “Do you still want to do this?”

He nodded at her and then clenched his fist and banged his thigh. “Get out of my head, idiot,” he said to himself. “Go away! … I won’t do that. … I refuse.”

“It’s just me here,” Naomi said, gently massaging his arm, as she looked out the doorway to see if anyone else was nearby in case he became more agitated. The lobby was empty. The person who usually sat at the front desk was outside smoking a cigarette. She tried to focus on giving the injection instead of thinking of all the ways during the pandemic that patient interactions had sometimes gone horribly wrong: The 14 times in the last year when she’d been pushed, grabbed, slapped, sexually harassed or verbally assaulted. The nurse in a similar job who had recently torn tendons in her shoulder while fighting off an attempted rape in a patient’s room. The Seattle social worker who had been meeting with a mental health client in her office in 2021 when he stabbed her 12 times, killing her.

And then there was the last time Naomi had been alone with this same patient sitting across from her now, just a few months earlier, when he’d looked at her with wild eyes and started growling and saying something she couldn’t quite understand. “What was that?” she’d asked him. “Are you a martyr?” he’d said, and she was confused. “What?” she’d asked again. “Are you a martyr?” he’d screamed, and then he’d gotten out of his chair, grabbed her shoulders and ripped off her N95 mask. He’d pinned her against the wall and pressed his hands against her face, repeating something about blood and sacrifice until someone in the lobby overheard the assault and pulled him away. “Oh, Naomi. I’m so sorry,” he’d said, a few moments later, once the delusion had passed. “Please don’t call the police. I’m sick. I need to take my medicine.” She’d accepted his apology and given him the shot, because that was her job, and now she’d come back to administer his medication again.

“Try to relax your shoulder,” she told him.

“To all the Gods and all the saints, please forgive me,” he said to himself, as he nodded and stared up at the ceiling. Naomi took a deep breath and raised the needle.

“No!” he shouted. He jumped out of his chair and stared down at her. She raised her hands and backed away. “It’s me. It’s Naomi,” she said.

He banged his fist against his knee. “Someone will pay,” he said, and then he turned around and ran out of the room.

A few nights later, she sat down for tea with her newest colleague on the nonprofit team, a nurse whom she’d started calling “White Jesus.” Josh Potter arrived from Tennessee a few months earlier with long hair, a deeply religious background and a pious selflessness when it came to caring for their patients.

“How are you feeling about this crazy job?” Naomi asked him.

“We get to care for some really broken people,” he said. “It’s about total nonjudgment and seeing the value in every human life.”

“Compassion. Harm reduction,” she said, nodding, because they believed in the same things. She drank her tea and looked at him again.

“But doesn’t it make you exhausted?” she asked

He shrugged. “Some days, but it’s something I believe in. We’re making a difference.”

“That’s how I used to feel,” she said, and then she started to tell him about the ways that both the city and her perspective had begun to shift during the pandemic, after commuters, tourists and even most other social workers stopped going downtown and many of her patients were left increasingly on their own without the adequate medical care or societal guardrails to keep their illnesses in check. She’d put on a mask, suffered through three rounds of covid and continued to visit her patients each day. Her team’s goal was to help people improve and then graduate to less-intensive levels of care, but in the last three years she could only think of a half-dozen patients who had graduated. “No wins and so many brutal losses,” she said, and she told him about the 19-year-old who had been found dead inside her tent, the patient who had jumped out a seventh-story window, and the 56-year-old whom she’d discovered in his apartment a few days after his death.

She had yet to tell her all of her co-workers about what had been happening to her during those months, even as she’d started talking to a therapist about the hardships of her work. She’d taken up crochet. She’d booked a vacation to Belize. She’d rallied her co-workers to fight for better working conditions. And when none of that seemed to alleviate her anxiety, she’d moved out of Seattle to a quiet condo in the suburbs with a view of a lake, where it turned out she still couldn’t get away from her fears, her depression or her rising sense of anger and hopelessness for both her patients and herself, until one morning in early October when she decided to call in sick. She stayed on her couch and watched birds fly over the lake. She ignored a phone call from work. She took out the insulin she used to treat her diabetes and decided in that moment to give herself several times the normal dose, which made her start to feel dreamy and numb. She texted a co-worker to please take care of her cat. She texted her sister goodbye. She took another massive dose of insulin, which made her blood pressure drop as she slipped in and out of consciousness, and the next thing she remembered she was riding in the back of an ambulance with paramedics who explained that her sister had probably saved her life by calling 911.

“Sorry you ended up with a nursing partner who’s such a hot dumpster fire,” she told Josh, and his smile seemed so kind and understanding that she told him what she’d been thinking about over the last several days. The doctors in the psych ward had recommended a partial hospitalization program to help her deal with trauma, which would require her to leave work for at least a few months. Maybe she’d come back after that, or maybe she’d look for a different nursing job where she could see more evidence of healing.

“I have nothing left,” she said. “I need to go away for a while.”

“Get yourself right,” he said. “Take some time.”

“I know it’s what I need, but I’m not sure how I’m going to do it,” she said. “I’m a psychiatric nurse. That’s who I am. We have all these people suffering, and I’m just going to leave them behind?”

“You can’t help anyone by running yourself into the ground,” he said, and she nodded and then thanked him.

“I have a few things I still need to do,” she said.

Early the next morning, she drove back to the Morrison and saw an ambulance and a police car parked outside. “Oh, no,” she said. She hurried to the elevator and took it up to the room of the patient who had been having delusions about children and then knocked on his door.

“Hello? It’s Naomi,” she called out. She waited a few seconds and then knocked again. She leaned into the door to listen, and she heard the sound of shuffling feet and then footsteps coming closer in the hallway behind her. She swung around and braced herself.

“Good morning, Naomi,” said one of the building’s employees, smiling and carrying a cup of coffee.

“Oh, God. You scared me,” Naomi said. She pointed toward the apartment door. “Have you seen him? I noticed the police outside.”

“Oh, that was for someone else — a fight in the elevator,” the employee said. “But I did see him a while ago wandering around upstairs. He needs that shot bad.”

She thanked him and went upstairs to another apartment where her patient sometimes went to use heroin, and where he’d overdosed and been revived by a friend a few months earlier. The door was partway open. She called out, but nobody answered. “God, I hate this,” she said. She reached into her bag to locate her overdose-reversal medication and then peered through the door, half-expecting to find her patient on the floor. She could see four used syringes on the kitchen table and dozens of fast-food wrappers scattered across the ground. A handwritten sign had been taped to the wall: “Home of the forgetful and the forgotten.”

“Anyone here?” she asked, and she was about to step into the room when her cellphone rang. It was one of her co-workers, calling to tell Naomi about another patient who said she was being held captive in her apartment by a man who wanted to hurt her. “Is it real or a delusion?” Naomi asked, and the co-worker said she wasn’t sure. “I’ll go check,” Naomi said, but before she could hang up, the co-worker started telling her about another patient, who was running naked in a public stairwell. The woman’s landlord had notified the county’s designated crisis responders, but they said they wouldn’t be able to come for at least another week.

Naomi hung up and tried to decide which emergency to respond to first, but before she could make up her mind, she heard a door open behind her and saw the patient she’d been searching for step out into the hall. He was shaking his head erratically and mumbling to himself.

“Hey!” she said, trying her best to sound cheerful.

“Get lost,” he told her.

“I just want —”

“Get the hell away from me! I’m on a mission,” he said, as he clapped his hands and rushed by.

“I’m trying to help you,” Naomi called out, but all she could do was watch as he went out the doors and into the city. She stood alone in the hallway.

“How am I supposed to fix all of this?” she said.

Thoughts, Prayers, what.ever

Another shooting on a campus, this one a College at UVA. Meanwhile across the country in Idaho outside the campus four were found dead believed to be a homicide.

I wrote about the school I used to teach at and where I began my career in Teaching in 1996. It was the students who kept me going and I believed in them and with that I no longer do. I have come to fear and dislike them. The lack of any dignity for themselves and others is most apparent. It was happening long before Covid and I saw that in Nashville and now in Jersey City that is only further exacerbated by the pandemic and distinction between those who managed to attend private or charter schools that remained open or had access to better online learning tools that also allowed them to forge forward on the path of academia. But with that I have already written about the challenges and adjustments made by those who went onto higher learning and have struggled, often blaming others and leading to Professors being terminated as their work was too challenging, they were unavailable or many other factors that seemingly have little to do with their actual skills or abilities that lend to achievement. That is our current state of affairs and again has been happening for quite some time – lay blame, point fingers and deny any personal responsibility or have any accountability.

Now we have 99 problems that have come from the pandemic and the magnifying glass that was finally placed upon the social inequity of our country and its heavy systemic and broken systems that are racist and elitist enabled those who for whatever reason seemingly knew nothing about it did. They read the right books, attended the right protests and then went back home to post their endless diatribes on social media to validate and confirm their wokeness. And with that the pendulum swung from left to right and with that we now have curriculum banning, book banning, conversations and word banning and a divisiveness that is now entrenched with the words”crime” as the dog whistle to remind everyone that the others are dangerous and could do harm. What “they” do harm with is of course guns but that is okay as now we are opening the flood gates and allowing anyone within arms reach of a gun to have one. It is working out great as the age of shooters are declining as access to guns is increasing. Coincidence much?

The political divisiveness was always a problem but we are back to serious racial ones. For those who were citing George Floyd as their moment to defund the Police, I suggest they turn back the clock to Michael Brown, or earlier to Eric Garner (2014) or earlier to Amadou Diallo. Or to any number of Police Brutality cases that may or may not have ended with death but serious harm and long term damage. There are no shortage of them but until Michael Brown there was what? Little accountability or information with regards to the number of cases thanks to no single source of record keeping. There are so many different agencies that are under the umbrella of law enforcement it is why many did not know and with that so many Police who were ultimately let go for said behavior simply transferred to another agency and continued to act in the manner that was less about serving and protecting the public, but of their own needs and beliefs. Think about the amount of law enforcement in your community, the City Police, the State Patrol, the County Police, the Transit Enforcement, the Port Authority are just some that all work or have business here in New Jersey. Then you have the Federal Agencies and their distinct Police – the FDA, the FBI, the CIA, the ATF and all of them have jurisdictions that supersede the State and Municipal ones. Yeah you can run but you can never hide.

But the reality is that despite it all Guns are the most significant tool and weapon we carry. The ATF is the single largest organization in which to regulate and enforce gun legislation but we have little to NO federal laws over guns and with that the piecemeal of laws that States and Cities try to enact are now being taken to the largest Federal Court in the land to overturn them. One minute it is State’s rights to create and enforce laws regarding Abortion but not when it comes thanks to the pesky 2nd Amendment. So with that it is Check and Mate on gun control. And yet when it comes to ATF they are being played well by Chess Masters that defy game play.

The constant refrain is that it is a Mental Health issue , and with that the idea that anyone who is nuts will not be able to get a gun. Sure that is a belief, but despite it all few if any of the most recent shooters had a mental health “red flag” that would have prevented them from doing so. I point to the Michigan shooter as his Parents are awaiting trial for their role in enabling if not encouraging their fucked up son from having a gun despite the school sharing with them their concerns. Great parents there. And the same goes for the Parade kid whose Dad bought him his gun. More shooters, more guns and more dead. Thoughts and prayers.

And so now with the crime bullshit being the least mentioned factor in the midterm and abortion as the reason many went to the polls will anything change? In a word? Fuck no. Okay that is two but in reality we are a Nation of Karen’s and Ken’s (their male equivalent) who are sure they are right about their indignant feelings of entitlement and rightness. That is the new “wokeness” as the aggrieved state of it all is about their inconveniences, their accommodations and their betterness about being white and yet no one is accommodating them? But they read White Privilege isn’t that enough? No, for anyone who is not like you, just like you, if not in actual color but in belief and demeanor, you are not white enough, so no clearly no. But a gun can solve that. If you fail to kill yourself with it try killing your own. It will work out well. Or not.

Crashing and Burning

Currently the state of the world now seems as if it is crashing and burning into a wall of Covid. There are few havens of safety and in turn places that seem to have handled this crisis well.  Well, not true as many countries have been successful in stomping Covid transmissions but this walk in the woods is not over yet and the sun is setting and its not getting brighter anytime sooner.

A great deal of success seems to center on Women leaderships and how they approached their response to this in both political and social ways.  Those two issues are essential for a buy in to gain the cooperation and more importantly the collaboration of those in communities to uphold the demands placed upon them.   We can look at each approach and realize that to compare New Zealand to Taiwan is a relative easy one as they are small in size and have a smaller populations to manage.  Then we have Sweden the outlier in the idea they did nothing but ask those to be careful with the idea of herd immunity as the ultimate goal. It did not work as planned, and they faced serious deaths but in the process I have never heard from one single person in Sweden with regards to how they felt about it.  We here in America have never stopped opining on that. Well funny there was a survey on that and it was the cohort more at risk and older who responded favorably to the Government’s plan.   And if you recall when Texas’s Lt. Governor said that old people would be willing to be sacrificed to get the economy going he may have well been right with regards to Swedish people but  I am 60 and no, no I’m not.  But in turn Sweden’s populace has greater respect and trust in Government which few Americans do and given the dopey Grandpa in office that is not surprising.

But in reality that is why he was elected, to drain the swamp and of course he was the greatest swamp dweller of them all in his private life so why would that change in the present.  The Federal Government became a divisive mess of partisan politics with the arrival of the swamp king from Louisiana, Newt Gingrich.  Now given that Newt was from Pennsylvania originally, it seems fitting that he found his tribe in the place where marshes and swamps dwell.  He is the one man who turned Congress into a blood sport and that is being carried on with another Southerner, Mitch McConnell.  Between those two enablers of Trump (for the record Newt in the early days was Trumps back up surrogate) it explains much of the bizarre contradictory behavior.  I have often thought Trump was from the South, given his idiocy, his pretentiousness and his overwhelming raging temper and racist leanings.   Again, I cannot stress enough that racism is not a Southern “thing” but the arrogance, the moral superiority, is built in the DNA and in turn racism is just a part of that but it is not mutually inclusive.  Racism is fear of the outsider and with the current state of America that has now been turned towards the Immigrant.  This is largely directed to those of Latin origins but this includes anyone not white.  And yes this means Africans, Indians, Middle Easterners and anyone not Christian.  The South really loathes those not Christian, so Jews, Russians or Greek Orthodox, Hindus, etc.  are not going to be any more welcome.  However they may be more tolerated as they are again not of a color that that is black or brown.  For the record folks from India, the founders of Caste system are often respected as they are ultra conservative in politics and attitudes.  Funny how that works out. I have said had anyone talked to any Latinx family they too would be surprised, they are conservative and religious but it is Catholic and again I have met many Evangelicals who suspect Catholicism as a faux religion. Again religion and money rule in that region over race.

Right now in Tennessee they are a hot mess, they are in Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Texas and the rest of the alignment that defines the South. It appears that for all show and tell, Tennessee is expecting a rash of financial failures.  For all the lists they loved to claim they were on, the failed to mention the most in debt.   And look at the bankruptcy filings by State and reconcile them as per capita as New York makes sense given the size and scale of businesses/people here, but that top ten list is regarding Commercial lending. What is interesting is that States much smaller in scope and size,   the amount of debt on the personal level and the South is right up there in both. Surprised? No. I have never lived anywhere where I have seen means and ends not meet and denial is the river that runs smack through Nashville its just called the Cumberland.

As for Southern men, they  are a unique breed. I have repeatedly given the women the moniker of cum dumpsters, and that is largely a way they are raised as worth comes from the vagina, to attract the right kind of man an in turn breed.  But again, here is the conundrum,  men are not raised by men, they are usually raised by their Grandmother, the Matriarch in the family.  It is she who instills in them the whole notion of heritage and manliness all while not facing the truth that their own children have dumped them with another generation to raise, so they toughen their children to match their skin, rough, worn and scarred from the abuse, physical and mental, they endured themselves over their years.  It is a cycle that is very much the beauty parlor philosophy – lather, rinse, repeat.

And when you look at the leadership of this area, all white, and all male they are children in search of a  Mother and of course the resentment that in fact that is what they want – Mama.  One’s Grandmother is not the same as a Mother and it instills the Misogyny and distrust of women that dominates the Southern mentality.  Obsessed with sex they fear Homosexuality as that is the ultimate in male power,  the ability to fuck without recourse or that women can be happy without men.  As for Transgender folks that just is too much, it simply confuses them and frightens them more. If you can be a man then how can they be their own man?  Competition is the rule and the honor code is the game.  Almost all violence centers on sex and money. That is the twinset of Southern rules. And it explains that for the last decade the same states have gravitated to the businessman as leader or retaining it in family dynasties, which is another Southern thing.  We have that here right now with Cuomo,  but the cities and states across the country are largely helmed by professional legislators/career politicians or as Trump calls them “swamp dwellers.”  Ask Ohio about Mike DeWine.

Again folks I don’t hate the South, I just get it.  It wants to be someone else, anyone else but it also wants to be loved as it is.   Think of a 10 year old child who just wants you to love them as they are but they are angry, stubborn and selfish and just won’t play nice. That is the South.   Who else does it sound like?   That is the only difference between Trump and some of the other Southern elite, he was raised WASP and spoiled by a Scottish mother and abused by a Teutonic father.  But the end results were the same, childish, abusive, spoiled, stubborn and retaliatory.  Welcome to the South!

As I watch what happens in Tennessee it makes sense as you see it throughout the rest of the region, a businessman elected Governor (a Trumpolyte) , a lack of communication, an agenda, blurred lines about personal and professional obligations, an obsession with the Church (real or imagined), focus on money while eschewing the reality that most of the state and its constituents are laden with debt while professing fiscal responsibility.  The best part is the overwhelming cases in Alabama with a woman Governor whom Trump has not vilified despite her own issues and failures but hey its the South and they want women to fail too!  You can see the constant contradictions that I call the reality of the South, the wishing to be one thing while being that which you hate.  And all the Covid idiocy has been from the Governors of the region, its a dumb off down there clearly.  Ah the conundrum that plagues all of the area and that crosses color lines. I read today about the meltdown of Andrew Gillum of Florida and thought, “Where have I heard and seen this before?”  Oh yes Ray Nagin, the former Mayor of Orleans who was complicit in some of the most horrific racist bullshit during Katrina and well documented in the book with the same name.  Ah the white power brokers never stop marginalizing the black man and that time in that place in history is an utter atrocity that shows how money can do more damage than even a hurricane could.

And while South Carolina and Louisiana have both elected Governors of Indian heritage, Nikki  Haley has tried desperately to remain relevant even after leaving a job in the Administration of which she was vastly under qualified for and Bobby Jindal, is well nowhere to be found after his own idiocy was  revealed, only continues to prove to me that when you are a face of color in the South you are a convenient shield from which to hide behind. For it is the faces behind the door who are controlling it all  and they are anything but of color, and of any gender other than male.

I have seen this repeated throughout history, by putting faces of color in jobs that are high profile, Clarence Thomas comes to mind, and enabling them to do little more than simply protect that job and using boring tropes and myths to somehow justify how they earned their way with the whole bootstraps bullshit.   I have not seen nor heard of Thomas helping young faces of color excel nor move forward in the legal field or mentor anyone of import.  I am aware the Obama’s are doing so but at this time I can  understand why that is not as active as it should be, but Thomas has been in his gig a long time.   And his wife is another Trumpian who has no interest in mentoring anyone nor doing anything but putting forward policy that is to say racist and elitist.  I would also mention Ben Carson, who for a brain surgeon neglects to have a functioning one. Again the caste system is alive and well in America.

And there is no irony that in the most liberal bastions of Seattle and Portland that black vans and unmarked cars, conveniently rented from Enterprise Car Rental are sweeping young and largely white protestors up and dumped later with little information as to where they were taken and held during that time.  Are these the same facilities used by ICE? I suspect so.  And again this is not new behavior but like the Moms who marched, they too have a role in history over Civil Rights. But when white folks do it its as if its a new shiny toy in which to play with.

As for my new home State, New Jersey, well its New Jersey, and we swing in more directions that a Trump golf club, from Christie the fatty swampiest one to the business elite Murphy, we just have no clue and this is a State where  we are even more corrupt and sexist than the South and no one seems to care.  And with that I suspect Murphy is history come next election as many in most States will find themselves at the end of the line.  Irony that it appears New York State is going to be the most liberal political state in America.  Once again proving that I was right to come here when I did and not one day goes by where I thank myself for that decision. God, not so much, as I have never thought he was real other than being a good invisible friend to talk to.  As for Jersey,  we seem to be outliers and I love it here for that very reason, no one gives a flying fuck about anything here.  We may do it first, we may do it worse, we may do it better, but hey it’s New Jersey so fuck it.    But one thing is that none of our streets burned during all of this and those that did were quickly put out.  No black vans, no massive press coverage, just handled without histrionics.

 Just one PATH stop away is Newark, the other Manhattan, and both saw protests and unrest. It was non existent in Newark as their Mayor was front and center, while in Manhattan it was a week of unrest but the protests have been ongoing.  However right now is the summer of violence and  we have a new plan, as the Cops who have decided to give us a preview of what it will be like when the Police are defunded.  Apparently they will not be there when children are gunned down in the streets in broad daylight, or are shot crossin the street, at a  BBQ, or in a playground.  But a murder of a wealthy tech entrepreneur is solved within a week. Well money talks.  And to add more mystery to irony the tech dude was Indian, the alleged killer, a young black male who used to work for him.  Or did he? Again there will be a story as all crimes have history and a past. We live in the past now in the present.

As for us here on the East Coast the reason why there are no black vans here – MONEY. We are the financial center of the world and Trump’s family still have interests here.  The adage goes, follow the money and so I do. That and Fox news is in Manhattan and they can’t be having shit in front of their studio so guess where they target? The West Coast.

And that is why in the South, the riots in Kentucky continue but without interference as that is home to Mitch McConnell.  Where Covid is running rampant there is no Governor screaming on TV daily as ours did to demand accountability and in turn try to do something versus nothing.  And the Governors of Washington and Oregon are of course not as vocal and posturing in their demeanor as Cuomo is and that has a lot to do with also what is happening.   Cuomo is a bully and that is well known among anyone in the area and I suspect that throw down would do nothing for Trump so pick on the easy targets, as Oregon’s Governor is a woman and Inslee of Washington State is well, Inslee.  Seattle’s Mayor a woman and Portland’s Mayor who tried to join protests, Trump gleefully proclaimed he “got his ass beat.”  This is Trump, he is the Southern President right down to racism, elitism, sexism, and of course the bullying tied to the honor code.  And yet perhaps one of the most dignified and beautiful memorials occurred this weekend, with the late John Lewis, making the last trip home.  Again if this was about those whose faces are Black, the issue is not about color but about race and again about poverty.  It is always about money first in the South and when you have fame, success, and recognition then color is not an issue unless it serves to be one.  It is a complicated dynamic.

The critical element here is allowing if not forgiving the South for slowly realizing Confederate flags, Statues and other memorabilia dedicated to the Civil War is less about heritage and more about racism and suppression than recognition of what amounts to loss and ostensibly war crimes but hey one thing at a time!  The New York Times did this piece on a town that centers almost solely on Civil War icons and how does and can it change? The idea that you can erase this history and who these people are is perhaps the worst idea ever.  If that was the case why do we teach about Hitler? Stalin or any other despot or individual capable of hideous acts?  To perhaps not repeat history?  I do think that there should be a Civil War Museum dedicated to the Confederacy, to contain the statutes, the letters and other items that enable a teaching moment to put context and understanding to the complicated issues that surround the Civil War.  In the same vein that Tom Cotton is in histrionics about the 1619 Project, it is just another tool in which to use to offer perspective. Again I recall the People’s History of the United States being controversial at some point, and today I wonder if anyone has ever heard of it or if it is still used?   If all curriculum was left to the ed reformers it will strictly be STEM and that would remove any of the icky sticky shit like English, History and PE that nerds never did wellin anyway. Right Bill Gates?  And that is why subjects like Music and Philosophy and Civics are barely taught if at all as they cannot be tested to a metric that takes away the objective versus the subjective. Yes I can ask you names and dates but the nuance, the actual long term affects and effects of an act or deed that went beyond the moment in time is in fact interpretational.  We can say Columbus was a man who destroyed a peoples but in turn he is a respected individual in history and a man of respect in the Italian community.  Who wants to wrestle with that one? Not me.  Just keep it basic, simple and allow those to take from it a full and realized portrait, warts and all.   You can sill look at a Picasso and see the beauty beyond the artist and yet there is no beauty without the artist.  It’s never going to be easy and that is why we don’t want to teach it or do we? Or more importantly how?  No one will like it regardless and yes someone will be offended and that is how life is. But not today, we cannot have that today. Grow the fuck up, we are not perfect, not ever will be and that is what makes us all better for it.  We crash and burn and we get up and heal. And yes you do heal, you are not the same but maybe that is the point.  Times change and we can be persuaded to do the right thing in the right way.

A Liberal Town Built Around Confederate Generals Rethinks Its Identity

In Lexington, Va., where Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson are buried, people are reassessing the town’s ties to a legacy that symbolizes slavery and oppression.

By Reid J. Epstein
The New York Times
July 26, 2020

LEXINGTON, Va. — It’s a short drive in Lexington from a home on Confederate Circle past the Stonewall Jackson Memorial Cemetery and over to the Robert E. Lee Hotel, where locals like to stop for a drink.

There may be tourists there looking for directions to the Lee Chapel, or one of the two Stonewall Jackson statues in town. They might see a Washington and Lee University student paddling a canoe down the Maury River, named for the Confederate oceanographer Matthew Fontaine Maury.

If medical treatment is needed, residents can head to the Stonewall Jackson Hospital. For groceries, there’s a Food Lion at Stonewall Square, which isn’t far from Rebel Ridge Road, just up the way from Stonewall Street and Jackson Avenue.

For 150 years Lexington, a picturesque city nestled in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains, has been known to the outside world as the final resting place of Lee, the Confederacy’s commanding general during the Civil War, and Jackson, whom Lee referred to as his “right arm.” They form the basis of a daily existence here that has long been tethered to the iconography of the Civil War and its two most famous Confederate generals, whose legacy has seeped into the town’s culture like the July humidity.

But Lexington is no longer a bastion of conservatism. It is a liberal college town of about 7,000 people that voted 60 percent for Hillary Clinton four years ago, and in 2018 gave 70 percent of its vote to the Democratic Senate candidate, Tim Kaine. Black Lives Matter signs dot the windows of downtown stores, and residents haven’t backed a Republican for president since Ronald Reagan.

These dueling sensibilities place Lexington at particularly delicate intersection of the national debate over Confederate monuments and emblems. As Americans protesting racial injustice have torn down statues and memorials to Confederates, the town finds itself reassessing its identity, divided between the growing imperative to eradicate symbols of slavery and decades of cultural and economic ties to the Confederates who fought to preserve it.

“When you’re surrounded by all of the symbols, it just is a way of life,” said Marilyn Alexander, 67, the lone Black member of the City Council. “It was not until recently that there was a realization for me that there was such an outcry from the community, that felt these symbols and signs needed to come down or be changed.”

City Council meetings in July have been almost entirely devoted to the question of the city-owned cemetery named for Jackson; one session lasted five hours, ending with a unanimous after-midnight vote to remove signs bearing Jackson’s name. A second meeting began with pleas from residents to put the signs back up. The council plans a session on Friday to discuss new names, with a vote possible in September.

“I long for the days of people complaining about potholes and not heritage,” said Lexington’s mayor, Frank Friedman.

Ms. Alexander said it had never occurred to her to propose taking Jackson’s name off the cemetery, believing that it would have no support from white Lexingtonians. “Most of my life I have come to realize that these are things that have just been, this is the way it is and this is the way it’s always going to be,” she said.

For decades, the names of Lexington’s Confederate forebears have mostly gone unchallenged. A 2011 City Council vote to forbid flying the Confederate flag on municipal flagpoles drew a lawsuit, eventually dismissed by a federal appeals court, from the local chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans; until this spring no one had proposed removing Jackson’s name from the cemetery, where a towering statue of the general rises above his family plot.

At Washington and Lee, students’ degrees still come with portraits of its two namesakes, and at the Virginia Military Institute, where Jackson taught before the war, first-year students are required to re-enact the 1864 Battle of New Market as Confederate soldiers.

Still, attitudes have started to change in recent years. Grace Episcopal Church downtown dropped Robert E. Lee from its name in 2017, and last year the local Boy Scout council changed its name from the Stonewall Jackson Area Council to the Virginia Headwaters Council.

Bigger changes are now afoot in town, which has a Black population of just under 9 percent. Carilion, the Roanoke, Va.-based health care conglomerate that owns the Stonewall Jackson Hospital, said Thursday that it would change the name to Rockbridge Community Hospital. Francesco Benincasa, whose family owns the Robert E. Lee Hotel, said Friday that it would be renamed “The Gin” starting next month.

“It’s a little hard to brand hospitality after generals,” Mr. Benincasa said in an interview.

Adama Kamara grew up in Lexington, attending preschool in a church named for Stonewall Jackson. A 2020 graduate of Emory University, in Atlanta, she had never protested the city’s Confederate memorials, but when the City Council met on July 2 to debate the cemetery’s name she called in via video conference.

“It’s not just the history that’s shameful, it’s the way the people are so committed to preserving it in this town,” she told city officials. “This preservation has caused me deep pain.”

Almost instantly, Ms. Kamara, 22, began receiving supportive text messages and emails from former classmates, teachers and longtime friends in town, people with whom she’d never before discussed the city’s Confederate forefathers. She and other young people, Lexington natives who’d gone away to college but returned during the coronavirus pandemic, began organizing to protest the city’s street names, statues and the local public school curriculum, which they said focused too much on lionizing local Confederate history at the expense of America’s Black experience.

“I don’t think we have ever been given the space to say we as Black people feel very uncomfortable about this,” Ms. Kamara said. “We have been silently thinking these things and silently compartmentalized this, but until we started hearing each other we had no idea that we all felt this way.”

It did not take long for resistance to removing Jackson’s name from the cemetery to grow.

Representative Ben Cline, a Republican who represents Lexington in Congress, wrote on Facebook: “I suppose they’ll rename it something like ‘Lexington Cemetery: Now with Surprise Inside!’ Or if they want to be more accurate, something like ‘Future Democrat Voter Quarry.’” His office did not respond to phone calls, emails or text messages seeking an interview.

Heather Hopkins Barone, a local marketer, wrote to the City Council that she had more than 2,000 names on a petition opposing the change.

“You cannot erase history because a few people are offended,” she wrote in the letter that she also shared on a Facebook page devoted to local affairs. “The affect that it will also have on the tourism industry and the Alumni will destroy this town.”

Tourism is the biggest component of the city’s revenues after property taxes, and the biggest economic drivers are the two universities, which are inextricably linked to Lee and Jackson.

In a house two blocks from a downtown shopping strip that includes the Red Hen — a restaurant briefly famous for refusing to serve then-White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders in 2018 — Ellen Darlene Bane, 64, flies three flags: The Confederate battle flag, a flag that combines the Confederate emblem with the Virginia state seal and the yellow Gadsden flag that’s become associated with the Tea Party.

Ms. Bane, who lives across the street from a Black church, the Gospel Way Church of God in Christ, said she began flying the flags six years ago and has never received a complaint. She called the movement to remove Lee and Jackson’s names “crap” and predicted escalating racial tensions in Lexington.

“Everybody’s getting racist,” she said. “It’s going to be the Blacks against the whites.”

Lexington’s universities are facing their own reckoning. At Washington and Lee, 79 percent of the faculty voted on July 6 to strip Lee’s name from the school, prompting the board of trustees to announce “a thoughtful and deliberative process” to examine Lee’s legacy.

One of the leading proponents of keeping the Lee name is Lucas E. Morel, an Abraham Lincoln scholar who is chairman of the politics department. He argued that the name honors Lee’s contributions to the school — he led its revival after the war — without making a judgment about his leadership of the Confederate army.

“We can separate Lee’s generalship of the Confederacy and his symbolism as patron saint of the Lost Cause from his laudable contribution to the university,” Professor Morel said. “To remove Lee’s name is to say, ‘Thank you for the gift of saving this college, but we don’t appreciate that contribution to such an extent that we think we should continue to honor you.’’’

At the Virginia Military Institute, until 2015 all students were required to salute the statue of Jackson when passing it. A public university, the school has retained its conservative politics, well after the Supreme Court ordered it to admit women in 1996.

But Virginia’s state politics, which govern the school, have changed. Democrats control the state legislature. Gov. Ralph Northam, a 1981 V.M.I. graduate who is working to take down state-owned Confederate monuments, “has confidence that V.M.I.’s Board of Visitors will do the right thing,” said his spokesman, Grant Neely.

Jennifer Carroll Foy, a member of the Virginia House of Delegates who in 2003 was among the first group of Black women to graduate from V.M.I., said the Jackson statue should be moved to a museum.

“We can’t say in Virginia that we’re open for business but we’re closed to diversity and inclusion,” said Ms. Foy, who is now running for governor. “No child looks at a Confederate monument and feels inspired.”

David Sigler, a City Council member who graduated from Washington and Lee and works as the financial aid director at V.M.I., said renaming the Stonewall Jackson Cemetery ought to be the first move to pivot the town’s identity away from its Confederate past.

“Our small business owners, they have products to sell, meals to prepare, they want their tables filled in their restaurants,” he said. “I will feel bad if they lose one customer because we renamed the cemetery. But I think we might gain two customers for every one we might lose in the long run if we’re not so one-dimensional.”

Come to Jesus

This phrase has often meant different things over time. This from the Urban Dictionary:

Originally an emotional experience that is life changing, it has evolved to mean a serious argument, one that better result in a change of action or else.

I have certainly used it in both its connotations and in turn this last year I have had several sit downs with myself to try to reconcile my issues regarding specifically race and religion living here in the center of the Bible Belt in the South which had one asked me a decade ago would I ever live in either or both I would have said: HELL TO THE NO.

This last week I spent another few days trying to search for name under the varying data collection services, MyLife, Spokeo, just to name a few.   I thought a year ago I had cleared up many sites but alas no they still exist and once again I have begun the exorcism to rid the negative energy that is out in the universe which is often beyond one’s control.   True I have changed my name and moved and possess some semblance of privacy but we all know that we can never ever rid ourselves of the demons of our past.  Just ask the Governor of Virginia on that one or maybe ask Ryan Adams, R. Kelly, or anyone else of late who have found themselves a part of a microscope of life that apparently show that once a crime always a crime.    As for R. Kelly and Ryan Adams they have serious issues that seem to demand an intervention that may or may not include some time in the slammer. But again these are issues going back decades and no one did anything then so how will it change now?   But then again Bryan Singer whose name is still on the credits of Bohemian Rhapsody is now going to helm a camera again, the irony that it is Red Sonja a story about a survivor of sexual assault is not lost.   But the boys he harmed some did not survive and others are struggling to.  Maybe  Liam Neeson needs to go out and find confused drug addled Gay individuals or some Catholic Priests to wreck to even the score.  Imagine had Neeson confessed about a Priest raping him and his search to kill a Priest would have been received? Just a thought and a prayer.

Ah yes the thoughts and prayers that marked the commemoration of Parkland ended the week with another action of gun violence in Illinois.  That is another good way to do it, shoot and kill people. There is your National Emergency.

The other day on Public Radio I heard a discussion about the issues on how white people reconcile their feelings about race by apologizing and asking for forgiveness and with that it somehow means that we are acknowledging our racism and in turn avoiding what that means with regards to the bigger picture.  Then in turn I watched Bill Maher with John Legend and the outgoing Mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emmanuel, talk about gun violence and prison reform. Here is what should have happened the two should be the only guests on the panel and then discuss how race and police and gun violence are hand in hand and that Chicago has a real problem with that all and what is the plan to resolve it.  Not.Going.To.Happen.

It is easy to be rich, to be famous and to have security in every sense of the word.  I could not believe what I saw on the show was Mr. Legend’s video that depicted school scenes of gun violence and I was not sure that territory had already been marked by Childish Gambino’s amazing , This is America, in a much better and deeper way.

I live in Nashville where I am afraid to take my garbage out at night as the violence perpetuated by teenagers, all faces of color, who are terrorizing our streets. They are threatening and killing people over car keys, over garbage, over sleights and drugs and whatever kids think when they are full of rage and have no outlet in which to direct in a healthy productive way.  Clearly the adults in their lives are already pulled tight and one parent had taken a her son to the Juvenile Center only to be released and a few days later he committed murder.  That says it all when it comes to handling the problems of the poor and black here in Nashville. For the record many of the kids who commit crimes are Latino and Kurdish they just don’t get the play here as they are minorities within a minority but look into your own communities and ask yourself who are the poors and see if you know the faces that look like yours or not.

I can assure you I have talked all I plan to about race and my own issues and if that makes me a racist okay then, now what.  Here is where it all goes haywire and watching Bill Maher last night I realized that we just pick and pick apart anyone until we have no one left.  We never end the endless drama over mistakes made, apologies proffered and promises to never do it again until we do something again and it confirms that we we were right all along, you are a racist, a criminal, a dead beat or what have you.   One of the guests Maher made a point that all Black people go into every relationship with a white person distrusting them until they do what they promise.  Really?  Wow that must make it worse.  Imagine entering every single relationship where someone is different than you be that race, religion, gender or ethnicity where you do not trust them and when they do something that fails you and proves you right you do what? Kill them? Yourself?  Is Liam Neeson available for hire?

I then realized I do that when I walk into every single school here, I wait to be proved wrong. I see every kid and think here is another dangerous kid who is useless and just horrible.  I managed yesterday to see kids for a whopping 45 minutes and I was so happy to leave that I could not believe how lucky I was to end my week on that note.  Most of the kids did nothing and the few that did did not bother me or speak to me and I only spoke to them to tell them the instructions and then read the paper.  It was a perfect end to the week.   I had already forgotten where I was earlier in the week so I must be doing something right.

But again every day the news is filled with story after story about the state of Nashville Public Schools and lines are drawn, race cards tossed and the reality is that one blogger, Dad Gone Wild, finally changed his blog to be one that no longer takes comments and he simply writes his essays from a point of someone clearly exhausted that he has to continue to do as a such.  In Seattle we had the same and the one lone blogger who has remained doing so despite no longer living the city and having students in the schools feels compelled to write about them.  Since that time many other groups and activists have come and gone but the scandals and issues have not but at one point this should be an issue for the conventional mainstream press but alas no.  It does appear however that even in Nashville the shit and the fan are too much to ignore here and almost every network managed to cover some issue or another about the schools.  Yep its bad times here but did you know Amazon is coming?

No I have never done blackface, never raped anyone but I have been harmed by a boy of Muslim descent.  Do I hate Muslims no?  I have no energy to direct that much anger to a single group or faith.  But here in Nashville I do find myself looking at every Christian with either pity or dismissal, I look at faces of color and see nothing.  I don’t see color I see nothing.  To be invisible is something I am familiar with as a woman over 50 I am pretty invisible.  I heard the endless discussion on Valentines Day with one of the experts, Dr. Pepper Schwartz, who was my Sociology Professor at the University of Washington in 1980, talking about intimacy and dating and how that is critical and my first thought: Wow I am old she must be a 100!    The stories about how people in my age are seeking intimacy and relationships was one I was familiar and as one nearly killed by such a quest I had decided that taking myself out of that loop was  a good plan.   The reality is that regardless of age that is one shared by many women and men as well.  I am so over MeToo I don’t want to open another paper and hear about another man who has harmed someone while masking his drug addiction, fame addiction, and power that enabled this for decades.  So am I enabling and ignoring my sisters? Yes. Does that make me Misogynist?  No, no more in the way I dismiss the students as me being a Racist. Here is the deal,  did Liam actually just kill or beat up anyone of color?  No he expressed a time in his life that he allowed himself to be a racist and he did not act on it and he shared that he moved on but he understood race and rage.  Again imagine if it had been  Priest or a Gay Man?  We can do idiot things and be thought of as an idiot but then we learn to not be.  Or so we hope.  Did the Governor of Virginia show up at his Inauguration in a KKK hood with Blackface underneath?  No. But now is the time and the moment to make amends and what an opportunity to do so by actively engaging the Black community in which to do so.  Keep on keeping on there folks this is one opportunity that should not be lost. 

And then we could go deeper we could look at every single narrator and ask the same questions that consistently find fault. We have seen that of late with the new faces of Congress who have much to learn and in turn much to bring to the table. True when you arrive you are hopeful and you are scared and you turn to those whose experience and knowledge to guide and teach you.  And guess what you still fuck up.  But no we cannot forgive them and they must not be allowed to learn.  Wow how does that work exactly?  

The Mayor of Chicago is leaving but what has he done to change that dynamic. Nothing.  Proving that once again you do nothing you prove them right.  Chicago remains violent and divided.  The same for the public schools here what could have been truly a teachable moment has turned into a move the chairs on the Titanic and the only hope is that this Director leaves on his own record.  I doubt it as here in the Bible belt there are no Come to Jesus moments and we have learned that even when you do ask for support or forgiveness you will nor receive them.   Ask and you shall receive is a point of faith but apparently when it comes to having faith in those not like us we have none. Good to know.

Funny that I wanted to teach and love to learn and what I have learned is that I cannot teach not because I am unable but unwilling. There is the difference but at least I know that as I had my come to Jesus moment.  We all need some of those.

Thank a Teacher

When I read the article below and saw the Teacher interviewed I was relieved.  Too many post trauma interviews have individuals denying any knowledge or suspicion regarding the suspects crazed up behavior.  Sorry but having worked in Education (on and off, hopefully off sooner than later) for decades I can say with certainty BULLSHIT.

As I have said since moving to Nashville, I might be racist.  And why is because the young Black students I have been exposed to on average (again on average) are the most disturbing, violent, and troubling children I have ever met.  I have encountered some White kids, some Latino and one Asian kid (who was hauled out by a Cop) and yes Middle Eastern kids who have fallen into the spectrum of troubled and troubling kids and some, less so that were not.  But there is cold comfort to know that the rich fucks who attend the private academies, such as Brentwood, that espouse Christianity but then tolerate rape, are not much better than their public school counterparts.  And then I remind myself I live in the South.   The South is more racist?  No.

Most if not all of the “protesters” that were there to protest a removal of a Statue from a park in a campus where they neither lived nor attended speaks loud and clear that the problem with race extends well beyond the Mississippi. 

And what happened next is a 20 year old white boy from Ohio who drove there to engage in hate decided to take that hate to a whole new level and go Euro Terrorist and drive that car into the crowd killing one amazing young woman who did not just talk the talk but walked it with regards to being an Activist(And this was her first and sadly last time to do so)..  And when they interviewed this piece of shits Vagina, as calling her Mother is definitely not appropriate, she expressed amazement and thought her son was at a Trump Rally.  And to say that is to say SAME DIFFERENCE.

So thank the Baby Jesus, God or whomever you appreciate for a Teacher willing to call this shit bag out for acknowledging the truth.  Here in the South a dish served with Sweet Tea, oppressively sweet and tastes horrible. 

Alleged driver of car that plowed into Charlottesville crowd was a Nazi sympathizer, former teacher says
The Washington Post
By T. Rees Shapiro, Alice Crites, Laura Vozzella and John Woodrow Cox
August 13 2017

CHARLOTTESVILLE — A man accused of plowing a car into a crowd of activists here — killing one person and injuring 19 — long sympathized with Nazi views and had stood with a group of white supremacists hours before Saturday’s bloody crash.

The alleged driver, James Alex Fields Jr., a 20-year-old who traveled to Virginia from Ohio, had espoused extremist ideals at least since high school, according to Derek Weimer, a history teacher.

Weimer said he taught Fields during his junior and senior years at Randall K. Cooper High School in Kentucky. For a class called “America’s Modern Wars,” Fields wrote a deeply researched paper about the Nazi military during World War II, Weimer recalled.

“It was obvious that he had this fascination with Nazism and a big idolatry of Adolf Hitler,” the teacher said. “He had white supremacist views. He really believed in that stuff.”

Fields’s research project into the Nazi military was well written, Weimer said, but it appeared to be a “big lovefest for the German military and the Waffen-SS.”

As a teacher, he said, he highlighted historical facts and used academic reasoning in an attempt to steer Fields away from his infatuation with the Nazis.

“This was something that was growing in him,” Weimer said. “I admit I failed. I tried my best. But this is definitely a teachable moment and something we need to be vigilant about, because this stuff is tearing up our country.”

By the weekend’s finish, Fields had become the face of one of the ugliest days in recent U.S. history. After marching through the University of Virginia’s campus carrying torches and spewing hate Friday night, hundreds of white supremacists, neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan members gathered Saturday in downtown Charlottesville to protest the planned removal of a statue memorializing Robert E. Lee. As they waved Confederate flags and screamed racist, homophobic and anti-Semitic slurs, the protesters — almost all white and male — were met with fierce resistance from activists who had come to stop them.

“No Trump! No KKK! No fascist USA!” the counterprotesters chanted, holding “Black Lives Matter” signs and placards calling for equality and love.

Who threw the first punch or launched the first rock was, it seemed, impossible to say, but by midmorning, fists and faces had been bloodied. Members of both sides wielded sticks and shields. In one of the most intense confrontations, a group of white supremacists charged into a line of activists, swinging clubs and bashing bodies. The activists fought back, tossing balloons filled with paint and spraying stinging chemicals into the faces of their adversaries.

When the chaos subsided late Saturday, a young woman and two state police officers, who had crashed in a helicopter, were dead, and many more were hurt. Saturday evening, five people were in critical condition and 14 others were being treated for lesser injuries received when the car struck the crowd. By Sunday, 10 were in good condition and nine had been discharged from the University of Virginia Medical Center.

At least a dozen other people were treated after they were injured in street brawls.

On Sunday, President Trump continued to receive sharp criticism, even from members of his own party, for failing to directly condemn white supremacists — who, in turn, praised him for not doing so. Meanwhile, thousands of people were expected to gather at vigils in Charlottesville, Washington and beyond Sunday night.

Their messages focused largely on healing, but many people who had witnessed Saturday’s most terrifying moment, either in person or on video, were struggling to move on.

A recording that went viral captured the scene: A sedan and a minivan rolled to a stop in a road packed with activists. Suddenly, a 2010 Dodge Challenger smashed into the back of the sedan, shoving tons of metal into the crowd and launching bodies through the air. The Dodge then rapidly went into reverse, hitting more people.

Fields, now the subject of a federal civil rights investigation, was arrested shortly after and charged with one count of second-degree murder, three counts of malicious wounding and another count related to the hit-and-run, police said. He is being held without bail and is scheduled for an arraignment Monday.

Brian Moran, Virginia’s secretary of public safety, said, “He was a terrorist to do what he did.”

Fields lived in Maumee, Ohio, about 15 miles southwest of Toledo, records show. Family members and acquaintances described him as quiet and often solitary.

His father was killed by a drunk driver five months before the boy’s birth, according to an uncle who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. Fields’s dad left him money that the uncle kept in a trust until Fields reached adulthood.

“When he turned 18, he demanded his money, and that was the last I had any contact with him,” the uncle said.

Fields, he said, grew up mostly in Northern Kentucky, where he had been raised by a single mother, Samantha Bloom, who is a paraplegic. The uncle, who saw Fields mostly at family gatherings, described his nephew as “not really friendly, more subdued.”

Fields joined the Army in late in the summer of 2015 but was on active duty for less than four months, according to online records from the Defense Department. It was unclear why he served so briefly.

“The what-ifs,” the uncle said. “What could’ve been — you can’t answer questions like that. There’s no way of knowing if his life would have been different if his father had been around.”

Fields’s mother told the Associated Press on Saturday that she didn’t talk to him about his political views. He had mentioned to her that he was going to a rally, but Bloom said they never discussed the details.

“I didn’t know it was white supremacists,” she said. “I thought it had something to do with Trump. Trump’s not a supremacist.”

Saturday’s horror was just the latest for her family. Aside from losing Fields’s father in a crash, Bloom’s parents died in a murder-suicide — 33 years ago this month — according to a pair of 1984 newspaper articles. After an argument, Marvin Bloom, a self-employed contractor, killed his ex-wife, Judy, with a 12-gauge shotgun, then put the gun to his head. He was 42, and she was 37. Their daughter, Samantha, was 16.

Richard B. Spencer, a leader in the white supremacist movement who coined the term “alt-right,” said he didn’t know Fields but had been told he was a member of Vanguard America, which bills itself as the “Face of American Fascism.” In a statement tweeted Saturday night, the group denied any connection to Fields.

In several photographs that circulated online, Fields was seen with the group while sporting its unofficial uniform. He wore a white polo shirt, baggy khakis and sunglasses, while holding a black shield that features a common Vanguard symbol.

“The shields seen do not denote membership, nor does the white shirt,” the group said in its statement. “The shields were freely handed out to anyone in attendance.”

Vanguard members did not respond to requests for comment Sunday.

Fields has been accused of killing Heather D. Heyer, 32, of Charlottesville. Her mother and friends said Heyer went to Saturday’s protest to stand against bigotry and hatred.

“She died for a reason,” said Felicia Correa, a longtime friend. “I don’t see any difference in her or a soldier who died in war. She, in a sense, died for her country. She was there standing up for what was right.”

Killed in the helicopter crash on the outskirts of town were State Police Trooper Berke M.M. Bates of Quinton, Va., the pilot, and Lt. H. Jay Cullen of Midlothian, Va., a passenger who was also a pilot, according to officials. State police said their Bell 407 chopper was assisting with the unrest in Charlottesville. Bates died one day before his 41st birthday; Cullen was 48.

“Jay Cullen had been flying me around for 3½ years,” Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) said. “Berke was part of my executive protection unit. He was part of my family. The man lived with me 24-7.”

Bates had called the governor Friday, the day before his death, to ask about sending a care package to McAuliffe’s son, a Marine stationed overseas.

On Sunday morning, one day after McAuliffe declared a state of emergency in Charlottesville, he and Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam (D) attended a service at Mount Zion First African Baptist Church. The governor brought the congregation to its feet as he stood at the pulpit and condemned “the white supremacists and neo-Nazis who came to our state yesterday.”

“You pretend you’re patriots. You are not patriots,” he said. “You are dividers.”

Later Sunday, Jason Kessler, who had helped organized Saturday’s “Unite the Right” rally, held a news conference near Charlottesville City Hall.

Police snipers stood on the roofs of the two adjacent buildings as they peered through binoculars and steadied their bolt-action rifles on tripods. Police officers dressed in riot gear waited nearby.

Before Kessler could talk, about 100 counterprotesters shouted him down.

“Murderer,” they screamed.

[Video: White nationalist rally organizer chased away by protesters at news conference]

Kessler, dressed in a blazer, tried to speak into the TV microphones, but reporters huddled close by couldn’t hear him. The noise from the crowd of about 100 demonstrators was overwhelming.