Drug Policy Alliance:
What's Wrong With the Drug War? . "The war on drugs has become
a war on families, a war on public health and a war on our
constitutional rights."
- posted by barbara @ 9/30/2002 08:45:00 AM

 
AlterNet: The Hospice Raid and the War on Drugs

SO the idiot president wants to have a war on the homeland
too. war, war, war.

i have much to write about...spent a couple hours in the
lawyer's office checking out the file on the civil case.
already it's close to two feet high. i only had enough
time to review three of five or so file folders containing
the voluminous stack...and i have some questions for the
attorney, one deposition to read. based on just the documents
i reviewed today, i am requesting upwards of 26 million dollars
as compensation for the loss of the priceless.

i'd rather have bekah. always. and this civil suit does not,
even if i end up collecting millions of dollars, make up for
the travesty of justice that was the result of bekah's killer's
criminal case. having said that, i'll admit this: i want
to break her, and her husband [who walked outside, turned
the dome light off in the wrecked car that sported bits
and pieces of my daughter all over it, went back in the
house, gave his wife a pill and went to sleep with her].
want them to be as broken as my life...i cannot erase them
the way she erased bekah. i recognize that if the suit is
successful bekah will still be dead and i will still be
mourning her loss.

but that's what i want anyway. as i told my lawyers, "what
i want is for her to move out of prison into a cardboard
box." she does not deserve an ocean-view home, not when
bekah's underground, boxed, shrouded, and probably nothing
but bones by now...

no that body is not bekah. those bones are not my little
girl. but i still like going to the cemetery to be close
to the bones of my little girl. and i still lament the loss
of her life. the money is for the living and i suppose
it makes living easier [having been so poor for so long
i cannot say that with authority].

but my true riches were and remain my children, my love. and i can still write. so there :)
- posted by barbara @ 9/26/2002 11:57:00 PM

 
Council targets surfers’ feud

we'll see if it improves the situation...or not. John's got a boat now and i think he loves to skate even more than he loves to surf...
- posted by barbara @ 9/26/2002 01:13:00 PM  0 comments

 

- posted by barbara @ 9/26/2002 04:39:00 AM

 
joseph_kearney

here's a cool little violent little piece of fiction from one of the most read and respected writers at WrittenByMe, my first online writers' community [not counting tribalsouls]...

on a happier note, i found a bunch of photos i had not known or had forgotten i had, pictures that gabe took of bekah. here's one of them...


Yahoo! News - Man Rescued at Sea Back in Calif.

he was going to CATALINA????? John and Denise went to Catalina on their boat! mmmmm. hmmmmm.

wonder if he needs a ghostwriter....


- posted by barbara @ 9/25/2002 09:58:00 PM  0 comments

 
PVE weighs measure to stamp out localism at surf beaches

Man, they've gotta do something. my 53-year-old brother put up with it, my 48-year-old brother too, and my 26-year-old son was nearly arrested after he left Hagerty's [maybe hagerty's, maybe the spot further up the road which the name escapes me at the moment] so frustrated by the locals he grabbed the backpack of one and kept it...this was maybe ten years ago.

john was well enough known from manhattan to PV to be identified by the "victim" who tried to have charges pressed...but the police backed down when i told them why john did what he did: he'd been harassed out of the water by the punk locals.

that obnoxious attitude really pisses me off. it is the PACIFIC OCEAN. largest body of water on the face of the earth. and it is MINE, not all MINE, but MINE, and my son's, and so on, and so on, and so on.

John surfing, Manhattan Beach, approx. 1990

when John was born i lived in a one-room subterranean apartment adjacent to the RB fire dept in south Redondo beach. On easter after his birth - he was about 4 months old - i walked him down to the beach at Pearl Street. I said to him, "This is the Pacific Ocean, Johnny, and it's yours."

Screw anyone who says otherwise.
- posted by barbara @ 9/24/2002 05:53:00 PM  0 comments

 
Deputy crashes into Hawthorne police car

i thought i might come up with something else to blog...this story explains how a lennox sheriff rushing to the aid of a hawthorne policeman almost killed the cop instead. sigh.

in Indio today four members of a family were killed when they were ejected from the car the husband/father was driving recklessly. he reportedly walked away from the crash and the bodies of his wife, his ten-year-old, and his two-year-old twins.

i'll look for more information about that crash. that tragedy. early reports indicated that none of the deceased were in any kind of safety restraints.

oh, man. i can hardly believe how fucking radical i feel sometimes. like, do we REALLY need cars? It is simply understood in our society that somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty to sixty THOUSAND of us will be massacred on the road every year. Most by accident; many accidents caused by or exacerbated by the impairment of the driver; but that still leaves thousands of dead by pure accident.

how did that get to be acceptable?!

recently i heard a blurb on the radio about how some cars are going to be wired to dial 911 when a crash occurs...why not have sensors on the OUTSIDE of the cars, so that they avoid each other like opposing magnets, instead of drifting toward each other like attracting magnets?

i mean shit they put a man on the moon. they built a weapon capable of wiping out the whole planet. is it really that important to get so far so fast every day of our lives? and the respect for life, the appreciation, is it diminished when we live and die in a society that takes for granted and accepts that forty to sixty thousand of its citizens will die early this year, and every year?

don't even get me started on the warmonger in the white house. later on that. but it seems i just keep getting more hippie-ish, more radical; it seems john lennon wrote a song that went right from my ears into my soul, and it seems that my daughter was murdered and should still be alive, and her killer is alive, remorseless, and will be out of prison much too soon, making my daughter chopped liver.

and, well, it's true: we are all human beans. more alike than different. that's another topic too, and hopefully you're a little intrigued...lemme know, and i will expound sooner than i might otherwise.

PEACE.
- posted by barbara @ 9/24/2002 02:39:00 AM  0 comments

 

andy in coaster art...i will blog more later i think...but i cleaned up my room a lot tonight, i was singing along to my Sonique MP3's, i opened up a drawer...then it was 1995, and my life was all exploding in my face in a thousand ways.

Then some hours passed, and i got to thinking...about lonely. I am lonely. I think I am better at being alone than about 99% of the people on this planet. But tonight, I am lonely - and not just for my precious girl Bekah, for whom I will be lonely as long as I breathe.

jeez i copied this from someone's website on Robert Lowell and the number of errors is scandalous...so i will correct from my own copy of Life Studies. The following is one of my favorite poems and also explicates depression so, so well, i think. i wrote a paper on it when i was in school so am very attached to it now. plus how it could be me, at the end! and believe it or not that was true even before my daughter was killed. oh, well, go figger. right? right.

PEACE.

Eye and Tooth

My whole eye was sunset red,
the old cut cornea throbbed,
I saw things darkly,
as through an unwashed goldfish globe.

I lay all day on my bed.
I chain-smoked through the night,
learning to flinch
at the flash of the matchlight.

Outside, the summer rain,
a simmer of rot and renewal,
fell in pinpricks.
Even new life is fuel.

My eyes throb.
Nothing can dislodge
the house with my first tooth
noosed in a knot to the doorknob.

Nothing can dislodge
the triangular blotch
of rot on the red roof,
a cedar hedge, or the shade of a hedge.

No ease from the eye
of the sharp-skinned hawk in the birdbook there,
with reddish-brown buffalo hair
on its shanks, one ascetic talon

clasping the abstract imperial sky.
It says:
an eye for an eye,
a tooth for a tooth.

No ease for the boy at the keyhole,
his telescope,
when the women's bodies flashed
in the bathroom. Young, my eyes began to fail.

Nothing! No oil
for the eye, nothing to pour
on those waters or flames.
I am tired. Everyone's tired of my turmoil.

By Robert Lowell



Blue, navy blue, i'm as blue as i can be, cause my steady boy set ship ahoy and joined the Na- aa- vee.....awwwwww, oooohhhhh,

:) He's leaving on 02-18-03. In the meantime he is harder to reach than ever. Andy, please call home. MOM's home. love, mom
- posted by barbara @ 9/24/2002 12:57:00 AM  0 comments

 
Justice for Woody
a young man enters a church requesting sanctuary. he is perhaps mentally unbalanced...jabbering, maybe? about requiring protection from the police? he says he is a marked man...says his life is in danger...pleads for the parishioners to listen to him, please listen to him.

someone calls 911. three police officers storm the place and within minutes this person has been killed by the police.

scary, scary, scary. will the true story ever be known? i doubt it. but i can speculate until i die about what happened to woody, and i have a feeling that i will.

please read his story.

Print On Demand Online Book & Manuscript Self Publishing Services - Xlibris Publishing
What I wonder about this place is how they got my street address. among other things. they want me to publish with them, but not for free, i'll wager...
i call this one "freeway" - any thoughts to share i will appreciate...:)

An extension of my realm...
found this dude through "next blog" on my toolbar in neoplanet. such an interesting way. as if english not first language perhaps? intrigued, plus, he says, if ever there may be a god, any old kind of god you or any old kind of people might believe in, surely that entity would not want people to go around killing each other.

and i could not agree more. amen
- posted by barbara @ 9/23/2002 12:15:00 AM  0 comments

 
CNN.com - Hit-and-run driver kills mom, 3 kids - Sep. 19, 2002

Deja vu times four.
I hear his blood alcohol level was more than twice the legal limit. This story says he crashed the van into a tree after killing four members of one family and was caught by witnesses after trying to flee on foot.

On tonight's local news it was reported that he was charged with vehicular manslaughter.

Murder. Four people, gone. Just like that. Bekah place their justice on them like warm blankies and teach them how to get back to their husband/father, and help him keep his mind. amen

Quick poll: How many believe they could maintain their mind in the face of a loss like this? My hand is not raised.

Bekah on channel 9, 07-20-01
- posted by barbara @ 9/19/2002 11:37:00 PM  0 comments

 

Bekah's eye color.
- posted by barbara @ 9/17/2002 04:27:00 AM  0 comments

 
Indie Journal

Check out Indie Journal, edited by Fred Wheeler, who was savvy enough to print some of my poetry in his initial issue way back in 1997 or 1998, and continues to make his zine a harbor for my words. Thank you Fred Wheeler...

Look at "Hot New Stuff" and there you will see among that list, my poetry! :)


- posted by barbara @ 9/15/2002 01:13:00 PM  0 comments

 
Real Joe Affirmation Bullshit Generator
Today i will maximize my spiritual being, no I will facilitate my synergistic potential, no I'm going to empower my interdependent goodness...lol

love that generator. did someone say once, "it's all good"?

they were wrong in a way, right in a way. depends on the day and where you sit, i suppose

Courtesy of the IMDB, a memorable quote from "THE PARALLAX VIEW":

Cocktail waitress: A martini is like a woman's breast. One ain't enough and three is too many.


- posted by barbara @ 9/15/2002 08:11:00 AM  0 comments

 
watch your back...

www.thoughtcafe.com - the Ice Queen
After you read this personal account of grief for a young man, who died at the hands of another - but was it murder? i feel it may very well have been murder, but i must delve further and my eyes feel as though i dropped grains of rock off the beach instead of drops into them...after you read it, answer if you can.

Does anybody recall The Parallax View(1974)?

Am i understanding what may have happened here, and isn't it strange that earlier today i was orating in my mind about evolving to a point in time where we will not need to die violently at the hands of other humans? Maybe not so strange; i think about that all the time and today [actually yesterday, saturday the 14th sept 2002], we'd been to grief counseling.

Then check out Justice for Woody.org. I have much more reading to do there. i just want to share, since it is approaching 1 am and i'm going OUT [rory at a sleepover - i never get this chance], that on some level reading about woody made me feel approximately the same as i felt hearing on the radio that a recent poll suggests that Americans are ready to give up their first amendment rights.

Thomas Jefferson, we need you...NEED you ...
oh. my. bekah, woody, thousands en masse on 09-11-01, 4 at Kent State, hell, i am rambling. nearly delirious maybe. but i find this man's story just chilling. The Valley Advocate | News&Commentary more about Woody


- posted by barbara @ 9/15/2002 12:24:00 AM  0 comments

 
WinMX - The best way to share your media

absolutely
- posted by barbara @ 9/14/2002 10:59:00 PM  0 comments

 
Real Joe Affirmation Bullshit Generator

Today i will grow my magical self, no, synergize my spiritual capacities, no, repurpose my cyclical potential

oh, yeah, all of that. lata.
- posted by barbara @ 9/14/2002 10:18:00 PM  0 comments

 
Bekah's favorite picture of herself. While sharing this photo, she would instruct whoever was looking at it to, "Notice how it shows the color of my eyes."

On my Yahoo Group, "bekah," i ran a poll asking the color of bekah's eyes...there was no clear consensus as i recall. The color of Bekah's eyes, as clearly demonstrated in this wonderful picture taken by her friend Gabe, was weird.

Bekah had weird-colored eyes. love her. love her so much
- posted by barbara @ 9/14/2002 06:55:00 PM  0 comments

 
NFIP Personality Type

It's not so much that i want to blog it but i don't want to lose it, because this reading rings a bell in my unconscious so that presently i'd have to say that jung was quite brilliant.
- posted by barbara @ 9/13/2002 07:22:00 AM  0 comments

 
South Bay residents relive the moment every day, in different ways

I am feeling this day, these thousands of murder victims, and remembering my own daughter, a murder victim. I will go to her grave today, stand silent for one minute, cry. Then i will gather up my boys, my little 10-year-old son and my 5 and 4-year-old grandsons, pile them into the car, and go on with this life.

Bless all of the victims and their grieving loved ones. amen


....later

i took the boys as promised but, as I stood there preparing Rory, Micah, and myself for one minute of silence, i could not HELP but notice that a workman or workwoman had left a clear imprint of his or her workboot on Bekah's face.

So much for silence. I've not been entirely happy with Green Hills, where Bekah is buried. For one thing they sold both of the plots next to Bekah. I had dibbs on the east plot but only one person knew it, and now another person lies at rest in what i had come to consider "my grave." So then i thought i might go ahead and be placed to the west of Bekah, though it was not my desire to swamp her view of the bridge [i know! i know! we'll be dead, we really won't even be there. i never knew til Bekah died that i would be so devoted to the cemetery, but i am]. They sold that plot too. I may get it anyway, but not without at least $50/month...

so basically, when i die they're going to have to dig Bekah's bones up, put mine under her, and put her bones on top of mine. I must be on the bottom.

part of me knows this is all pretty gratuitous. I've never even seen my father's grave, in a veteran's cemetery in Oregon. My mom is cremated and her ashes long since given to the Pacific...but when my little girl died I found that being near her bones was more important to me than my bones will be after i die. I don't doubt that my visits to the cemetery mean more to me than to Bekah, even, but at any rate. It is a source of comfort for me.

So the next complaint: someone has apparently decided that because it makes mowing the lawn simpler for the groundspeople, vases will be placed as close to the headstone as possible. the result of this ill-advised policy in Bekah's case is that if she has flowers, visitors are unable to view her headstone. TOTALLY unacceptable.

I made a work order to have it moved back, but the salesman subsequently informed me that rather than place bekah's vase a reasonable distance from her headstone, the plan was to move every vase in the cemetery to within an inch or two of every headstone. So they would not do it....I took my little shovel to the cemetery last week and moved her vase myself.
- posted by barbara @ 9/11/2002 01:13:00 PM  0 comments

 
San Pedro’s end-of-summer sail begins

We drove up there after the cemetery, Rory, Micah, Tyler, and me. We drove the bridges again and all three boys whooped exuberantly. The sky...has anyone been checking out the sky the last few days? Incredible. Fills me with wonder. Makes me cry, too...

just a little pic of a cool woman in her shades

Brigantines Tall Ship EventsLA Maritime Museum
- posted by barbara @ 9/06/2002 07:24:00 PM  0 comments

 
Webshots Community - Edit (Paintings)
Another option for a graphics server - and so far, i think i may like this place the best.
- posted by barbara @ 9/05/2002 07:07:00 PM  0 comments

 

- posted by barbara @ 9/05/2002 06:58:00 PM  0 comments

 
I WAS A GIFTED CHILD
i had my niche.
intelligent. creative. or artistic.
what kind of child were you?
(brought you by april)

- posted by barbara @ 9/05/2002 01:26:00 PM  0 comments

 
SONGYou'

this was the poem i was thinking of:

SONG

You're wondering if I'm lonely:

OK then, yes, I'm lonely

as a plane rides lonely and level
on its radio beam, aiming
across the Rockies
for the blue-strung aisles
of an airfield on the ocean.

You want to ask, am I lonely?
Well, of course, lonely
as a woman driving across country
day after day, leaving behind
mile after mile
little towns she might have stopped
and lived and died in, lonely

If I'm lonely
it must be the loneliness
of waking first, of breathing
dawns' first cold breath on the city
of being the one awake
in a house wrapped in sleep

If I'm lonely
it's with the rowboat ice-fast on the shore
in the last red light of the year
that knows what it is, that knows it's neither
ice nor mud nor winter light
but wood, with a gift for burning

Adrienne Rich
---------

- posted by barbara @ 9/03/2002 08:35:00 PM  0 comments

 
Ezrael: America, you will be rounded up and shot

i commented,

i hope a lot of people get to reading this and really really thinking on what is going on. i hear on the radio that bush's approval/popularity rating is something like 90%, which i cannot believe, because almost everyone i talk to can tell he's a stupid ass who has no business being president of this country. so i put a poll on my blog, and over 60% of respondents agree that he is a moron who should not be president. I hear a poll on the radio that says something like 70% of americans think he's doing a good job in the middle east. it seems to me that this administration is just too brazen about releasing false numbers, warmongering, etc., to stay in office after the next election. but the way he got into office is so smelly who knows?
- posted by barbara @ 9/03/2002 07:04:00 AM  0 comments

 

death valley for jacques

i had opened my diary and copied a post from 1998, written to the last man to break my heart. it was one of the pages Bekah had stolen before she died. A day or two after her death her ex-boyfriend Joe and I were going through the trunk of her car and knock me over with a feather, there's a big sheaf of my diary.

one letter from january 1998:

(all names are changed)
Jan 1998

Hi Dick,
You wrote to me from prison. You were sad and angry and they were treating you like a dog all the time and you are worried that your children will not love you. Your children will always love you. Maybe Daughter is not sure that you love her. Do not stop writing to her. Put your own hurt and rejection aside and send letter after letter after letter even if she does not write back. She will be there for you when you get out. SEE HER.

And stay out of prison for the rest of your life. The pain of seeing a loved one go away, the way Son and Daughter have seen you go away, is not just the pain of your absence. The loss of your counsel and support as they grow up. It is the pain of empathy. They know you suffer, and that knowledge increases their own suffering.

There is one thing you cannot change, Dick. Your children love you. It is immutable. Their anger and hurt may stop them from expressing it right now, but if you let them know, and keep on letting them know, that you love and need them, they will be there when you are out. I know this to be true. I cannot say that it will hold true if you insist on going back again. Though they will still love you, they may choose not to spend their time in that pain. So they will try to forget it.

The best and probably only way for you to keep your children near you is to keep yourself in a place where they can see you, talk to you, etc. Stay out of prison for the rest of your life. You have so many talents, skills, abilities, etc. DICK! you do not have to be a criminal. So don't be. I really believe strongly that this is the best way for you to achieve happiness for yourself as well, but if it is so that your babies' love is paramount to your survival, that is just as important to that.

You wrote an incredibly expressive essay about life inside. Then said, "I can't fucking WRITE!" But you can write, and you can write very well. In fact writing is what will get you through this hell. You know that as well as I do. You also know about astral projection. You know how to concentrate. Stop listening to all the noise around you and within you, and concentrate on the calm core of you. Breath deeply, in through nose, out through mouth. (we just watched "The Karate Kid')

relax. isn't that better? I impart love to you. I do enough crying for you and me, and Son and Daughter, too. I can't see my babies either, now, and it is tearing me apart. I cried and laid around in my underwear all day long today. Without a car I am dead in the water and the judge is going to throw me into the slammer. I am scared. But I am brave. Fuck, what choice do I have? what choice indeed….

You said I must be tired of you. But that was only the second letter I got from you. The rest were postcards sent to some bitch you call "Ms. B" and don't give a rat's ass about. I doubt that I will ever, ever be tired of you, Dick. I know that some of what I have written is harsh. Maybe you needed to hear it anyway. Read every word, and don't just focus on the negative. You have something to look forward to and you have what you need within you to accomplish a LOT OF GOOD. It is knowing that so very certainly that has made it so difficult for me to cope with losing you, Dick, don't you know that? If I thought you were just a loser, I could not pretend to myself that losing you was actually a LOSS. I would have to admit that I would be better off without you. But I always knew better than that. I am not better off without you, I am worse off, and so my pain.

Love.


incidentally, i was wrong. i am better off without him

that's how i spent much of the afternoon, reading the pages bekah read. i found them enlightening. in retrospect of course i have to say that i have a flair for melodrama and hyperbole. but shit, my heart was broke. i just had not had the experience of losing my daughter to murder then. just did not know then, that my broken heart would be forced to endure much, much more.

and still i have it. my heart, i mean...still i have the wonder the will to live. where it comes from i cannot quite say, but i did make another painting this afternoon, after having a long nap with Bekah in my dream, which i cannot recall at all besides that detail.

and adrienne rich is on my mind - that poem, i'll try to find it but anyway she writes, well yes, i'm lonely...and goes on to say but i am okay. that the tree is lonely, the water is lonely, the sun is lonely and so, okay, i'm lonely.
- posted by barbara @ 9/02/2002 11:47:00 PM  0 comments

 
Cat Fanciers' Association: Breed Profile: Tonkinese
Cats for sale, cats for free...a woman who rescues tonks and siamese from the shelters was here this evening. she's going to help me get this fiasco over with. as of right now [after selling 4 kittens last week] i have eleven cats, four of which are only 4 months old, all of which are beautiful, and three of which i plan on keeping until they bury me.

email other1955@yahoo.com if you'd like a siamese/tonkinese cat. i have minkpoints, siamese bluepoint, tonkinese platinum or champagne, and koala bob. Koala Bob is a hybrid; here's a picture of him. Actually here's a picture of one of the kitties who looks like koala bob, because my scanner's out of commission...:)
sorry 'bout that...
- posted by barbara @ 9/01/2002 08:52:00 PM