redneck country club

I’ve been spending more time at the Grub Shack than ever before.

A few weeks ago, after dropping over $100 at the general store in Terlingua for just a modest amount of food and paying for gas on top of that, I had a brainstorm. Why not spend more money at the Grub Shack instead? I figured I would come out ahead financially… plus, this arrangement appeals to my natural distaste for meal preparation and clean-up, and the social experience would slow the steady drift towards eccentricity which accompanies too much isolation.

So I created a “reverse tab” at the Shack, making advance payments that are worked down over the course of each week. So far this arrangement is quite satisfactory, plus my relationship with the establishment just seems so much less transactional, which I prefer. It takes me back to the days when I was a kid and I ate for free at a restaurant our family owned. I feel like “family” again.

Yesterday I made two visits to the Shack, once for breakfast and once for an early supper. I met new people both times (including the cousin of a former US President, who invited me to visit his home to trade yarns) and I reconnected with old friends, as well. You never know who you will run into at the Grub Shack. As its fame grows, people are driving to the Shack from farther and farther away.

When I arrived the second time, Whitebear was there visiting with Cinch. Whitebear is one of my best friends and we talk by phone a couple times a week, but I see him only rarely. Then my hermit friend Val showed up (longtime readers will remember Val from our movie nights, which fell by the wayside long ago). The last time I saw Val was on the Winter Solstice. Val said he is making a greater effort these days to get out among other people. Cinch made Val feel so welcome, I’m hoping Val will become a frequent Shack visitor too.

After Whitebear and Val each departed, a Mercedes SUV pulled up, and a family of three came in. It was George and Anita Goss, and their 2-year-old daughter Kaylee. George is a local musician and songwriter, and after a little while he fetched his guitar from the car.

“What we got here is a redneck country club,” George announced approvingly, and proceeded to entertain us while Kaylee marched around the table demonstrating just how cool it is to wear green sunglasses upside-down.

“Kaylee marches to her own beat,” her mother commented proudly. Yeah, we all do out here, and the Grub Shack is one place where we all get along.

I would have stayed there much longer, but a big storm came up suddenly. I had to get home to shut my windows.

۞

Grooves of the Day 

Listen to George Goss performing “Ain’t No Honky Tonks in Jail”

wanderlust

Twelve years ago Otto and I would have been on the road this weekend.

Every once in a while, I am overcome with nostalgia for my “Forrest Gump” days when I drove aimlessly all over the country (but usually the West) in my BMW M// Roadster.

This yearning for the past is usually brought on by hearing one of many songs on a compilation music tape given to me by Cheri, a woman who worked for me at the time. Her husband had put the tape together to provide a soundtrack for one of their road trips, and it soon provided a soundtrack for my many trips.

To this day, when I hear any song from “Cheri’s travel tape” (3 samples below), I begin salivating like one of Pavlov’s dogs, lusting for the open road and for the power of that magnificent machine.

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Grooves of the Day 

Listen to Dexy’s Midnight Runners performing “Come On Eileen”

Listen to Moxy Fruvous performing “King of Spain”

Listen to Kajagoogoo performing “Too Shy”

technical difficulties

It had to have happened eventually. I am working with such an ancient laptop that a breakdown was inevitable… and of course it would happen on a holiday weekend when the replacement part (in this case a battery) will not arrive until next Wednesday or Thursday.

I know you techies out there are wondering why a dead battery should bring things to a screeching halt when I could just rely on my normal power supply—well, when I start up the computer, I have to switch to battery power momentarily, otherwise my screen remains black. I don’t understand the problem, but this is the workaround I’ve devised to be up-and-running everyday.

Anyway, I’ve figured out I can open my computer and see what I’m doing as long as I’m in “safe mode,” but the available functionality is curtailed and doing my normal work is a pain-in-the-keester.

I’ll do what I can to get out posts, but I am thinking the best thing for me to do under the circumstances is to just concentrate on enjoying the holiday weekend and maybe branch out and use these next few days as an opportunity to become a more versatile human being.

If you don’t see any change in Diary posts, it means I’ve failed to escape from my rut.

۞ 

Groove of the Day 

Listen to Kraftwerk performing “Radioactivity”

 

james prindle update

Here is the latest news from Memphis from our Redemption Project advocate, Stephen Sydebotham:

I have spent the last four days (Sunday thru Thursday) in Memphis, Tennessee, visiting James Prindle and meeting with the attorney we hired for him.

There had been a plan in place for a ride to pick me up at the bus to take me to my motel so I could freshen up and then go down to the jail to see James, who had been awaiting my arrival all day. However, my ride got lost and I ended up waiting several hours before I called a cab. After arriving at the motel, I got cleaned up, fretting all the while that I would let James down because I was so late and might not be able to see him that night.

I called the jail, told them who I was, and they said James was waiting. I said I would be there ASAP, and they said they would relay a message to James. My ride finally arrived at the motel, and we drove down to the jail. After checking in at the jail and pleading with the authorities to let me go upstairs where the glass and phone hookups are, I finally won them over, and they allowed me to go up.

James and I have been communicating with each other by letter and phone for 15 months, and with all the anticipation and buildup to this event, you would think there might have been a let-down, but there wasn’t. James saw me before I saw him, and he had the most enormous smile on his face and held out both arms, as if showing me he wanted to hug me through the glass. He ran over to the chair, picked up the phone and pointed at it like, “let’s talk.”

That was the most special hour-long conversation I have ever had. I was allowed a second visit the following day, which was even more special. At the end of that hour, I put my hand on the glass, he put his hand in the same position on his side of the glass, and he said to me “I love you,” and I said “I love you too, James.” 

James is everything I had hoped he would be, and even more. His spirit is like a breath of fresh air. None of his family ever spent any appreciable time with him or made him feel wanted. He thoroughly lights up when he knows you care about him. 

The meeting with our attorney Claibourne Ferguson went well too, and he answered all the questions I asked. He and his investigator both affirmed their belief that James is absolutely innocent. They even submitted James to a rather brutal test which convinced them of this fact. Claibourne and his investigator spent about 3½ hours with me and encouraged me to make certain we keep James in a positive frame of mind through the whole trial. The way James appears to the jury will have a big impact on the outcome.

Even though the state has no evidence linking James to the sexual assault of his baby sister, the trial is not going to be a slam-dunk for our side. The state requested a delay to collect additional “evidence” and is now coming to court with videotaped testimony from an unreliable witness whom we will be prevented from cross-examining except on appeal. The judge in this trial is a former prosecutor named Bobby Carter, who has a reputation for favoring the prosecution in his rulings on motions presented. The court system in Memphis has a proven track record of being discriminatory against juveniles (see http://www.justice.gov/crt/about/spl/documents/shelbycountyjuv_findingsrpt_4-26-12.pdf). Our best hope is that we will be able to seat a fair jury.

I will end this update with a plea for help. We need approximately 15 people who live in the Memphis area, or who would be willing to travel there for James’ trial, to sit on his side of the courtroom. We need to show that James has a large support group. If the jury sees this, it will help our cause.

Thank you.

~ Stephen Sydebotham

 

۞

Groove of the Day 

Listen to Soul Asylum performing “Stand Up and Be Strong” 

mommy dearest

A hot wind is blowing from the southwest and the temperature—even up here on Estrella Vista’s high perch—measures 102° in the shade. It has to be at least ten degrees hotter down on the desert floor.

Yet even if it were a cool day outdoors, I should still be burning up.

I have been smoldering ever since I visited the Facebook page of the mother of one of our kids where I see her bragging about her six (and soon to be eight) kids, and where she is receiving compliments from oh-so-knowledgeable Facebook friends about what a wonderful mother she is. The truth is, after she pops them out she pretty much treats her kids like used paper cups.

Has our throw-away culture sunk so low that parents like this woman think they can get away with treating their own children as things to be used, neglected, and ultimately disposed of when and how convenient?

Is the idea of self-responsibility so alien in our culture today that a mother can abandon her child to defend himself alone from the misguided and wanton prosecutorial power of the state and from her abusive and crack-addicted ex-husband’s (her description, not mine) intention to see the boy destroyed for something he didn’t do?

The boy of whom I am speaking is, of course, James Prindle. And his mother is Monica Charlene Wilson-Sanders, an unemployed convenience store clerk, waitress, assembly line worker, and former student of the Tennessee Academy of Cosmetology, who lives in Cordoba TN, a poor suburb of Memphis. Thus far Monica has ignored my pleas to stand by her son—something she will not do despite the fact that she told me she “always had doubts” about James’ guilt.

I am not a judgmental person, but I cannot refrain from commenting that it is precisely this kind of parenting that lands good kids in jail. It is precisely this kind of parenting, too, that creates raped, brutalized, and dead kids in prison.

Monica has never taken the time or summoned the will to explain her situation to me, but I can only surmise that she has adopted a course which, perceived from whatever psycho-social corner she has painted herself into, must appear to her to be the line of least resistance. Yet if she lives long enough to ever become unselfish or introspective, she will regret this as possibly the most shameful mistake in her whole life.

When she recognizes her abandonment of James as the sin against creation it is, it will be much too late to do anything about it. The torment and destruction she will have wrought will then be complete and irreversible.

Now is not too late, but the present moment is passing.

James’ trial begins on June 19th.

۞

Groove of the Day 

Listen to The Dixie Cups performing “People Say”

raindrops

Today I was noticing how, all around the property, nearly identical plants in close proximity to one another had fared very differently in last year’s drought. Some had survived, but more had died. I am not a botanist, so their differing fates remain a mystery to me. Yet somehow “survival of the fittest” doesn’t cut it as a satisfying explanation.

The dead plants and the surviving plants had to have received the same amount of rainfall. So what was it about the survivors that made them successful, and what was it about the others that had caused them to fail?

I had a dream last night that I found a large number of silver coins trodden into the ground beneath an ATM kiosk. While the people focused all their attention on worthless, fiat currency as it was being dispensed by a dumb machine, all the while they had been standing on real money which had the intrinsic value that only precious metals contain.

All day long I’ve been working on other people’s problems, and I’ve been dealing with other people’s reactions to their troubles. Some people cannot see through their tears and allow their problems to defeat them, while others use their tears like rainfall to nourish life, growth, and new opportunity.

۞

Groove of the Day 

Listen to Dee Clark performing “Raindrops”

desert women

“Let me do that,” I said. “You’re making me feel like an oaf.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Kelly said as she turned a lug-nut on the flattened truck tire.

“Yeah,” Tyra chimed in as she gave the jack another pump. “We’re desert women.”

“This will only take ten minutes,” Kelly said.

I stepped back and watched along with Cinch.

“If my granddad saw this, he’d be rolling over in his grave,” Cinch said.

“Women’s Lib is a wonderful thing,” I said lamely, and retreated into the shade to sip on my iced tea. Cinch went back into the kitchen where he began preparing our lunch.

Social norms out here are very different.

۞

Groove of the Day 

Listen to Shania Twain performing “Man! I Feel Like a Woman”

forever young

Life is a “total immersion” experience. From our first breath, we must learn to either sink or swim, to grow or die. Old age is a privilege granted only to some. Happy old age is a state achieved by fewer still.

This being my 64^th birthday, a milestone generally regarded as marking the threshold of “old age,” I hope you will please indulge me as I share a few reflections about lessons learned in my own life.

The first is this: my life has not turned out as I’d imagined. In earlier years when I was experiencing episodes of loss, disappointment, self-loathing, and depression, I never imagined that life could turn out to be such a satisfying and happy thing as it is for me today. I think a major turning-point for me was when I realized that every moment of every day is an opportunity for transformative change, an opportunity to remake one’s reality as one wishes it to be. The transformation can be instantaneous. The catalytic key is accepting self-responsibility and understanding that we are free to create the lives we choose. Life is what we make it.

The second is this: we are each born into our particular lives and circumstances to learn specific lessons which were not learned in former lifetimes. Sophocles said that a man growing old becomes a child again. Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning becomes young. The greatest thing in life is to keep our minds young. Learning is the mission and the work of our souls.

The third lesson is this: those who love deeply never grow old; they may die of old age, but they die young. Without love, the most important things can never be learned or experienced. Without love, life and change are meaningless.

۞

Groove of the Day 

Listen to Bob Dylan performing “Forever Young”

highwayman

Today I spent a pleasant afternoon at the Grub Shack talking to a guy who was telling me about his run-ins with cops since he was released from prison ten years ago.

If the police can identify you as someone with a felony or prison record, it is open season on you. You may as well have a target pinned to your back. Even if you are doing nothing wrong, the cops will stop you, search you, provoke you, and try to draw you back into the system.

He gave me some great ideas for how we will help our kids avoid unprovoked encounters with police.

We are the “good guys” and the authorities are not.

۞

Groove of the Day 

Listen to Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash & Kris Kristofferson performing “Highwayman”

kangaroo “justice”

A Kangaroo Court is a sham legal proceeding or court; one that denies due process and fairness in the name of expediency, often times political. (The term got its start in England during the colonial era, when the courts deported people en masse to Australia simply to clear backlogs and meet emigration quotas.) The outcome of such a trial is essentially decided in advance, usually for the purpose of providing a conviction.

The results of today’s hearing in Lawrence County PA were a foregone conclusion. No surprises there.

Judge John Hodge ruled that, pursuant to his April 16^th ruling that Jordan Brown should be held “delinquent” in the murders of Kenzie Houk and her baby, Jordan may be held in a juvenile detention facility until he reaches his 21^st birthday. In the next week or so, Jordan will be transferred from the facility in Erie which has been his home for the last 3⅓ years to a facility in an “undisclosed location.”

Every six months, Jordan’s case will be brought before Judge Hodge to see if Jordan’s progress will warrant his earlier release.

We already know what Judge Hodge’s decisions will be those every six months. No one seriously thinks this kangaroo judge will experience a change of heart, turn honest, or grow some moral backbone. We know that Hodge will punish Jordan and his defense team for pursuing an appeal by claiming that Jordan is not rehabilitating himself. Expect to see a reprise of the same line of illogic that was a centerpiece of the state’s attempt to deprive Jordan of his Fifth Amendment rights: they will claim that because Jordan continues to maintain his innocence, he cannot take the first step of admitting guilt in order to engage in a rehabilitation process.

In the earlier juvenile trial over which Hodge presided, the burden of proof was on the state to show evidence—any evidence—that Jordan committed this crime. It failed miserably. All it succeeded in doing was getting a politically-motivated judge to find in favor of the state’s argument that, because the police failed to develop (or even look for) evidence for a more plausible theory of the crime, “Jordan must have done it.”

Now the burden of proof is on us, and we will have to produce evidence that Jordan could not have committed this crime. No such evidence was presented by the defense in the April trial because the defense attorneys were relying on their belief that any honest judge would look at the lack of evidence and conclude that no evidence exists proving that Jordan was the perpetrator. But the concept of “reasonable doubt,” a cornerstone of American jurisprudence, apparently never occurred to this judge.

There was—and is—such an excess of reasonable doubt. Hell, the state didn’t even prove that Jordan’s shotgun was the murder weapon. The state was never required to explain how a shotgun could have produced physical evidence consistent only with a handgun having been used.

We aren’t giving up. We are holding out hope that not all Pennsylvania courts are as corrupt as those in Lawrence and Luzerne Counties (the latter having been the breeding-ground for the “Kids for Cash” scandal). We are holding out hope that not all judges in Pennsylvania are marsupials.

۞

Groove of the Day 

Listen to Danny & The Juniors performing “At the Hop”