under the wire

I would be remiss if I did not remind you, on this final day of the year, that the Redemption Project needs your support if you are in a position to make any end-of-year gifts.

If you are in the United States, gifts made through our fiscal agent, the Juvenile Law Society of Denver CO, are fully tax deductible. If you are from anywhere else in the world, I honestly don’t have a clue about tax deductibility. But saving on taxes is not why you give, anyway.

Asking for money is never a desired task, but it is necessary. The needs of our sponsored youth may seem endless, as is your generosity. For your past support, I thank you. But I by no means wish to appear thankless as I ask, once again, for you to open your purse strings and hearts to these kids who rely on the constancy of your help.

I heard this last weekend from Chris Brown, Jordan’s dad, asking for us to step up our support for his son. Jordan is still languishing in prison, despite the fact that he has won every legal appeal and, in the eyes of Pennsylvania law, is innocent. Yet the state refuses to admit that it has held him in confinement for five formative years while it has been playing its game of official C.Y.A. and the politics of avoiding a public admission that it has stolen the youth of an innocent boy. And the final insult of the situation is this: Chris has been compelled to pay Pennsylvania $500 per month in “child support” for the privilege of being legally abused. Chris is dog-tired and is sick of being perpetually broke. He is asking for our help in seeing to the needs of his son and I, of course, agreed. Stay tuned.

I heard a few days ago from Austin Eversole who told me that his family has further curtailed his support. With less money being put onto his books, he must forgo the small pleasures that make his life behind bars bearable: soap, toothpaste, extra food, postage stamps, etc. I learned that just $50 per month could make all the difference. And though he didn’t ask, I offered. He gratefully accepted. So his monthly support commences in January.

Alex King was just sprung loose from state confinement yesterday, but his needs have by no means come to an end. Over the holidays, a well-known attorney on the national scene contacted me to learn how he could help financially with Alex’s education. Alex is a natural-born student and very intelligent, so this man knows a good investment when he sees it. There are many other people standing in line, too, who have offered to help Alex in some way. We need to get it organized when the dust settles after his prison release.

I could go on, but I won’t. The needs of every young person are different, but their satisfaction depends on you.

Thank you for everything you have—and will—make possible.

To make a contribution to the Redemption Project, please visit the link at the top of this page or click here.

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Groove of the Day

Listen to Livingston Taylor performing “The Thank You Song”

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PS:  Party hearty tonight, but please consider making a gift before the year is out. Think about it. By giving up the cost of just one drink, you can make a big difference in a kid’s life.

at last

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FREE at last!

He called last night, one last call from captivity. He borrowed a digital watch, he has his MP3 player, a cup of coffee, and the longest night of his life commenced.

At 7:20 am central time this morning, the state of Florida relinquished its hooks in Alex King and released him from Holmes Correctional Institution in Bonifay FL. His ever-loyal friend and foster-mother Kathryn Medico was present for Alex’s liberation, the first moment he has been truly free since the age of 12. He will spend his first moments and days of freedom with the Medico family in Jacksonville FL, after which he will decide what comes next.

This is only the conclusion of but one chapter in his life; now it is the beginning of a new life of opportunities, which are only going to gradually unfold now that he is free to pursue anything he may wish to choose.

Nobody is under the illusion that life will be perfect for Alex from here on out. But at least it will be his to live from now on.

Congratulations to Alex on this happy day!

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Groove of the Day

Listen to The Traveling Wilburys performing “Congratulations”

bad dad

Is there any doubt that some people shouldn’t be allowed within 100 feet of children, let alone parent them? Is there any question that parricide is frequently deserved? Is there any justice in the fact that it is the children who suffer most in these situations, and the parents are allowed to get off easy?

This morning one of my readers sent me this link to an episode of The Oprah Show which illustrates these questions.

Imagine what it would be like to be locked inside a closet 2 feet square, your body wrapped in a wire fence and bound by chains like an animal for hours—even days—at a time. You aren’t given any food. You’re 6 years old, and your parents have done this to you.

The father, Joseph Moss, served only 2 years’ jail time. He should have served more. Where he is now and whether he has been held accountable by society is not reported on the Internet (or at least I was unable to find it). Nor is whatever has happened to the evil step-mother, Carmen, who probably had more to do with the abuse of the little boy than has been explained. She, too, was let off by the Indiana courts with a mere slap on the wrist.

The boy, Clayton Moss, appears to have done a better job of forgiveness and moving on than can be expected of those of us who are just hearing this story now. I applaud his resiliency and example. He has much to teach us about our human potential and deriving strength from misfortune.

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Groove of the Day

Listen to Tanya Tucker performing “Strong Enough To Bend”

boogie woogie

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Groove of the Day

Listen to the King Oliver Orchestra performing “Boogie Woogie”

dry well

It is now the time for patience, for waiting for the demise of 2013—the hardest year in recent memory, not only for me but for many of the people I know. The next year promises to be better, if only that it is unimaginable that the next year could be any harder than the year which is drawing to a close.

I am hemorrhaging money on fuel right now because this is the coldest and darkest time of the year. Propane and gasoline, the essentials for warmth and electricity, are the most expensive items in my monthly budget.

Now the attorney for Carlos Lundy, Colt’s dad, has finally legally served me with a summons in his bogus lawsuit. The sheriff’s deputy has just left the property. What Carlos is attempting to accomplish through his suit is anybody’s guess. I own absolutely nothing he can attach, so he is already pumping a dry well.

He is claiming that he has suffered “loss to his reputation, shame, mortification, and injury to his feelings,”  as well as “hatred, contempt, ridicule, and obloquy” by my “negligently, recklessly, and maliciously” publishing a criminal record which in good faith I believed (and still believe) to be true. Carlos is claiming that the Indiana State Police denied him renewal of a gun permit because I published this information—as if my post should matter to the police, who presumably have all sorts of official sources for information upon which to base their decisions. He is asking for a judgment of one million dollars in the same jurisdiction that sentenced a 12-year-old to thirty years in adult prison.

Dream on.

If Carlos is held in low regard, it is because he raised a murderer who bullied two other little kids into participating in his foul deed so the kids could run off to Arizona where Carlos was supposedly living at the time. If Carlos is seeking to silence me and anything I should say about him, this is the wrong way to go about it. A lawsuit is a very public method of filing his grievances against me and opening up a can of worms he may never be able to reseal again.

I have nothing to lose. I have trouble enough staying warm and generating the power to run my computer. Paying Carlos anything is out of the question now and in the future. Does he really think I will remain quiet about this matter if he persists in seeking alleged damages or reprisals?

Bullying may have worked for his son, but it won’t work on me.

We will have to remain patient and see how this little drama plays out in the coming year. I have absolutely nothing to fear.

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Groove of the Day

Listen to the Warblers performing “Echoes from the Bottom of a Dry Well”

dining with the dahmers

It had just been a joke, I thought, that my new local friends had jested (like Hannibal Lector) that they were pleased to be “having Dan for Christmas dinner.” I had said upon my arrival that the arm was here, ready for the frying pan, but the hostess said she would prefer a thigh.

I had thought it was purely a joke until, at dinner, the hostess’ son told me he had freaked out some of the younger guys at work by convincing them he was, indeed, a cannibal. It was believable, I suppose. He was big and scarey, and he did work weekends as one of the most feared bouncers in a hardscrabble Navy town. When his old refrigerator turned off, it did sound like someone was inside trying to kick their way out.

I still thought it was a joke until the end of dinner and I saw that a .22 caliber pistol had been sitting on the table next to my friend though the whole meal.

You meet the strangest people out here on the desert to make your friends.

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Groove of the Day

Listen to Sarah Vaughn performing “All Of Me”

merry christmas

There is a purely astronomical explanation of the nativity story (Zeitgeist – The Movie), and some historians have asserted that the Biblical story of Christ is a piece of Roman propaganda (Caesar’s Messiah: The Roman Conspiracy to Invent Jesus by Joseph Atwill) that was published as a contemporaneous companion to Flavius Josephus’ history The War of the Jews (ca. 75 c.e.).

However, I choose to honor the Christ story because it presents an ideal for living that would make this world a better place if only more people lived up to the Christian model. I myself am not a literal believer, but as I explained to a young person who was attempting to convert me to his Christian faith in a late-night session at Estrella Vista, my beliefs do not prevent me from living a more Christ-like life. I can adopt Christian ideals without believing in Christ as an historical figure.

Isn’t that the bottom-line anyway? The alternative is hypocrisy. Christ’s teachings can be most briefly summarized as the love of God and love of one’s neighbor. If one does not act in a consistently loving way towards others, the term “Christian” is merely a label, and one that lacks basic integrity.

So whatever your beliefs, I wish you a Merry Christmas.

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Groove of the Day

Listen to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir performing “The First Noel”

fondest wish

What do you want for Christmas?

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Groove of the Day

Listen to Olivia Olson performing “All I Want for Christmas Is You”

analogy

by Daryl Watton

Star Trek fans from the 1990s will remember such science-fiction television shows as The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager. Among the villains the Starfleet heroes faced was an alien race of cybernetic humanoids called the Borg. Feared above all others, these aliens, advanced technologically, were known for their destructive habits of pillaging entire civilized worlds for their technology, resources, and people.

Those poor souls who were abducted in these raids were genetically altered and fitted with cybernetic implants to serve the collective hive of drones, all sense of individuality erased from their minds. In the Voyager series, the heroes encountered a derelict space vessel rescuing several Borg children who were the only survivors. This was unusual because the Borg don’t really have children. Immature life forms scooped up by the Borg were locked up into “maturation chambers” where their altered bodies were stored and fast-grown into adult drones. The only reason these children survived at all and were rescued was because their malfunctioning equipment released them prematurely.

It occurred to me that American juvenile offenders sentenced to long adult sentences are very much like these Borg children. In most instances, once convicted and incarcerated, they are typically warehoused in segregated cells empty of everything except for a paper gown and a sleeping platform (no linens), presumably for their own protection. There they languish in isolation for months, even years, until they are mature enough to join the regular inmate population for the rest of their long sentences.

Borg children, by comparison, are the luckier ones. American juvenile inmates in segregation are given only one hour a day to make a phone call, read their mail and interact with the world in only limited ways, again in isolation from any other inmates, only to return to their cells for the other 23 hours without books, television, or any other mental stimulation or distraction. Borg children, on the contrary, stay mentally connected to the hive-mind, learning and interacting with the entire population of adults in preparation for a harmonious recruitment into the collective workforce once freed from their “maturation chambers”.

American juvenile offenders can only dream of such luxury.

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Daryl Watton is a reader of the Diary from Canada who asked to submit this post for the edification of the entire readership. The post was so insightful and well-written, I could scarcely deny him a spot on the soap box. Except for a brief time at college when my fraternity brothers and I watched the original Star Trek series, I never developed a taste for this franchise. But I do understand how science fiction has become a powerful vehicle for commentary on reality, and I welcome Daryl’s take on the “protective segregation” of minors as practiced by our prison system.

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Groove of the Day

Listen to the Astral Symphony performing the “Star Trek Theme”

bullying

Outsiders tend to look at the stately houses in my old neighborhood and think that life must be perfect for the people that live in them. They drive good cars, send their kids to schools that cost $20,000 a year, shop at the smartest stores, vacation in warm places at the dead of winter, go to prestigious jobs at companies and institutions that are household names. Like I said, perfect.

But yesterday I heard from an old friend that the 22-year-old son of another old friend who occupies one of these homes had committed suicide. No one, of course, knows why, but the word on the street is that the trouble began in 2007 when the son was the victim of bullying at one of those “finest schools” by the offspring of some of the “finest families” in our town.

“The house,” according to The New York Times, “was festooned in toilet paper. It was bombarded with eggs. Pumpkins were smashed. Human waste was deposited on the front stoop, grease was smeared on a car, tampons were left behind.” All the while, taunting notes and phone calls arrived. These “pranks” continued for two years, and only came to an end when a lawsuit was filed against the bullies and their parents for $154,000+ in physical damages and “substantial nervousness, anxiety, humiliation, apprehension, indignity and sleep disturbance.”

What began, no doubt, as an innocent “prank” (all in good fun) had escalated into a tragedy that no one could foresee or had intended. It is an outcome that will now haunt not only the boy’s family, but those families of everyone involved in such youthful callousness. It will lead to questions being asked within the families, schools, and social circles of everyone involved just what values are being taught to the children of the city’s finest families.

According to bullying statistics for 2010, there are about 2.7 million students being bullied each year by about 2.1 students taking on the role of the bully. About one in seven students in grades kindergarten through 12th grade is either a bully or has been a victim of bullying. Every day, there are about 160,000 children who miss school out of fear of being bullied. Sometimes a teen or child who has been bullied eventually becomes the bully as a way to retaliate. In fact, revenge for bullying is one of the strongest motivations for school shootings.

It is noteworthy that my own son escaped a similar fate at the same school. As an Asperger’s kid, Henry had always remained apart from the society of young people who hatched this scheme of torment. You would have thought that being truly different from the others, he would have been a more natural target. But instead, the boy who killed himself had apparently been targeted for his benign traits including that he was a redhead. He was, by all accounts, a smart, personable, sweet kid. He was singled out because he had received every advantage, because he was descended from one of the city’s wealthiest and most powerful families. What we all envy was why he was bullied. Henry, who had none of these traits, was ignored by his classmates and is even today.

This is why bullying makes no sense at all. It is almost as if the bully, seeing something or someone who is so much better than he/she could be, create, or even understand, feels an impulse to destroy it rather than embrace it. Envy and incomprehension are at the heart of bullying.

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Groove of the Day

Listen to Morgan Frazier performing “Hey Bully”