holiday 

- posted by barbara @ 9/30/2004 07:32:00 AM  0 comments

 
One man's opinion: Evidence indicates that Wellstone crash was no accident
One man's opinion: Evidence indicates that Wellstone crash was no accident: "This is a corrupt administration."
- posted by barbara @ 9/30/2004 05:19:00 AM  0 comments

 
bekah zask 

- posted by barbara @ 9/30/2004 03:05:00 AM  0 comments

 
my big boy john 

- posted by barbara @ 9/30/2004 02:56:00 AM  0 comments

 
bekah with feet 

- posted by barbara @ 9/30/2004 02:50:00 AM  0 comments

 
my sailor son 

- posted by barbara @ 9/29/2004 06:51:00 PM  0 comments

 
COMNAVSUBFOR Welcomes New Force Master Chief
two stories in two days...there may be more. :)
- posted by barbara @ 9/29/2004 06:51:00 PM  0 comments

 
New International Submarine Rescue Coordination Center Opens
By Journalist Seaman Andrew Zask, Commander, Submarine Force, U.S. Atlantic Fleet Public Affairs

another "top story" for my son. andy you make your mother proud.

journalist seaman has got his second promotion...and a top story 

- posted by barbara @ 9/29/2004 06:37:00 PM  0 comments

 
happy 3 year old... 

- posted by barbara @ 9/29/2004 05:33:00 AM  0 comments

 
red/orange 

- posted by barbara @ 9/29/2004 05:22:00 AM  0 comments

 
bekah in WA about a month before her death 

- posted by barbara @ 9/29/2004 04:59:00 AM  0 comments

 
robert, the larger of the two girls. :)
sunset 

- posted by barbara @ 9/29/2004 03:16:00 AM  0 comments

 

the turtle bekah gave us on her 23red birthday, 07-06-03 
- posted by barbara @ 9/22/2004 05:24:00 AM  0 comments

 
barbtries a blog
Help!~someone, please, my blogroll's out of control, the font's too big, it's on the wrong side of the page under instead of next to the blog entries. and i don't know how to fix it godammit. does anyonw?
p.s. i've tried blogger help and even blogger forum, changed my template, and still have the same problem. thanking any kind and knowledgeable soul in advance
- posted by barbara @ 9/22/2004 05:22:00 AM  0 comments

 
about painting and bekah and glory; old text

bekah zask, my girl 

I have been seeing in geometrical shapes lately. I think it's a sign for me to start painting....

So Bekah wrote in her diary on 06-23-01, less than one month before she was murdered. I never painted before Bekah died; i'm a poet, that's where my art, words are my medium, i cannot draw...about a month or so before Bekah's 22nd birthday, my friend Glory talked me into buying some paints and brushes and paper. It is therapeutic.

Glory how did you know? because she said, "oh, you need to paint." she did.

On Bekah's birthday we dedicated her headstone and i delivered a rather long sermon. It basically just covered my personal spiritual beliefs and how it is that i believe i may effect an actual recovery from my loss, live again before i die. at the conclusion i said that when i get out of hell i "will live for bekah, live, as if Bekah is perched on my shoulder living it too...."

About two weeks later furiously painting and sometimes even liking the results, i realized that painting constitutes a fulfillment of that pledge. if any painting i make pleases anyone i thank bekah. because i daresay she does more than perch on my shoulder; she guides my hand. sometimes...when the painting pleases.
- posted by barbara @ 9/22/2004 05:00:00 AM  0 comments

 
my tree

my tree
- posted by barbara @ 9/22/2004 04:59:00 AM  0 comments

 

the girls, robert and simon... 
- posted by barbara @ 9/22/2004 04:31:00 AM  0 comments

 

our chihuahua, chase 
- posted by barbara @ 9/22/2004 04:28:00 AM  0 comments

 
Navy NewsStand - Eye on the Fleet
the great picture andy took to go with his last byline
- posted by barbara @ 9/22/2004 03:59:00 AM  0 comments

 
The Tao of Poetry: interview with the filmmaker
I think the highest use of language is poetry.

i agree; don't you? that must be why it's so damn hard to write a good poem. on this site you will find clips from the movie John Haynes has completed, the tao of poetry, which after reading the interview and watching the clips i am ready to purchase at the entirely reasonable cost of $17.

so - gotta go update paypal, i guess...and write my bio for hislife as art.

the internet is so cool.
- posted by barbara @ 9/22/2004 03:05:00 AM  0 comments

 
The Tao of Poetry preview clips
the tao of poetry
- posted by barbara @ 9/19/2004 05:09:00 AM  0 comments

 
bekah's mom barbara

my portfolio...if the link works.

- posted by barbara @ 9/18/2004 10:34:00 AM  0 comments

 
Art.com - Custom Framed Art Prints, Posters, and Calendars
my paintings will be for sale from this site...look for bekah's mom barbara.

wonder if anything will sell. hmm. not holding my breath over it. :)
- posted by barbara @ 9/16/2004 05:04:00 AM  0 comments

 
Everything is wrong with me
This class, unlike the Russian one, had many adults in it. One of them was actually a lawyer. He/she didn’t make him/herself known, but I’m guessing it was the bitch who echoed every thing the professor said under her breath. It was very annoying…she quietly was finishing his sentences and answering the other students questions. It made me want to stab her in the fucking throat with my pen, but instead I thought about boobies and I calmed down.

yep, that'd be a lawyer. this guy's funny, too, but i got such a shock of recognition reading this part i just had to blog it.
- posted by barbara @ 9/12/2004 05:20:00 AM  0 comments

 
The Zero Boss: Blogging for Books: Official Rules
The Zero Boss: Blogging for Books: Official Rules: " "

so i sifted through my blog and figgered out a post that i thought might fit the subject. there are others, there are probably better, but i entered this in the contest:

http://barbtries.blogspot.com/2002/12/free-stichomancy-readings.html

was introduced to the contest by kelly at baggage carousel...thanks
- posted by barbara @ 9/12/2004 05:10:00 AM  0 comments

 
where were you | september 11th, 2001
i was sleeping, and the phone rang. it was less than two months since my daughter, Bekah, was murdered...i don't remember what time it was although i know it was in the morning.

it was my good friend bobby, saying, "we're under attack. turn on your television." i said, "under attack?" my mind trying to find its way around such a scenario. It is my recollection that i said, "it has to be terrorists, because no country would be stupid enough to try that." visions of coups, martial law, the nation kidnapped, ran through my mind. but i knew it had to be terrorists because any recognized entity in the world would have to know that the United States would not be taken by attack. bobby told me he had woken me up for this because he remembered that i had called him to give him the heads up when the gulf war started.

i got out of bed, made my way to the living room, and horrified, watched the horror of thousands of murders being committed in one day by a small group of people. i continued to watch for days and weeks afterward with increasing dismay as it soon became clear that gw bush would use the attack as a diving board to war.

what is war?

death and destruction.death and destruction.death and destruction.death and destruction.death and destruction.death and destruction.death and destruction.death and destruction.death and destruction.death and destruction.death and destruction.death and destruction.death and destruction.death and destruction.death and destruction.death and destruction.death and destruction.death and destruction.

at the time i was essentially a maniac, writing. my daughter had just been murdered; she was dead, and i scrambled through reams of paper, often sleeplessly, to write some sense to it, to write a recovery from the loss, to acknowledge the grief that consumed me [along with rage, hatred,vengeance, bafflement, disbelief- feelings more profuse and intense than humans were built to cope with], to get her back. not long after bekah's death i found an online writer's community called writtenbyme, or WBM. i wrote this article following the 09-11-01 attack on the United States by terrorists and posted it to WBM with the preface: “We as a country feel like me as a mother – my daughter was murdered on 07-19-01.”

anyhow the answer [to the question posed in the title] was and is no - they weren't listening then and they're not listening now. but i'll still put this on my blog as a remembrance on this terrible anniversary. my heart goes out to those who undoubtedly still grieve, as i still grieve, and also to the families and loved ones of all the innocent civilians and american soldiers [over 1,000 now] who have died since - and to those who died before their time, whose youth and gifts and promises were wasted, whether because of the contemptuous act of an enraged drunk, a terrorist action, or because this so-called civilization is being run by men who disdain civilized behavior.

This is my true opinion and i feel it with all of my heart: People are not supposed to kill people. amen



Can I Be a Voice of Reason?

This is the land where hate should die,
No feuds of faith, no spleen of race,
No darkly-brooding fear should try
Beneath our flag to find a place."
- Denis Aloysius McCarthy


On 9-11-01, terrorists somehow hijacked four commercial flights at roughly the same time and drove the jets full of innocent civilians and jet fuel into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and, apparently prevented from reaching their intended target by the heroic acts of their hostages, into somewhere in PA. I am somewhat ashamed to admit that where that last plane crashed I don't know. Nor do I know where the terrorists planned to crash it. The news I have gotten over the past three days has been so enormous that at some point every few hours or so I switch to a movie. I need to know it all but I hate finding it all out.

I feel burdened, heavy, because of these synchronized acts of murder and terror. Especially burdened, because the horror, the disbelief, the futile attempts to find a why, are feelings that are only too familiar to me, since my daughter was murdered on 7-19-01.

The hatred, indignation, and grief. My daughter's killer is out of jail and has pled innocent in the presence of overwhelming evidence as to her guilt. Likewise surviving terrorists continue to live while so very many people, who were innocently going about their lives, are dead. My daughter was crossing the street when she was taken right out of her shoes by a car speeding without headlights on the wrong side of the road. Unlike the hijackers, my daughter's killer continued driving to her home, parked her car, and went to sleep. Since July 19 my purpose in life is to ensure that justice be served for a 21-year-old innocent who should not be dead.

It may not happen; DUI-related deaths are rarely prosecuted as murders. It is so that in this case the killer's actions transcend the fact of her drunkenness, to absolute depravity. Murder. If justice is not achieved via our courts, I don't know what I might do. I do know that I will not kill her killer, even though I tend to think that such an action would indeed constitute justice. Then why won't I just kill her? Because then I would be a murderer too.

I am hearing calls to war, and it frightens me. I cannot understand the mentality that says, "You took so much of our blood that now we are going to throw more of it after yours." Warmongering not only does not bring back the dead, it diminishes the living. I do not suggest that nothing be done - catch whatever surviving terrorists you can, put them away forever. But to go to war, to put our surviving young in the line of early death, only to avenge the death that has gone before? No, please.

I am reminded that our president's father was once president, and while he was we had a war that raised his popularity to unprecedented levels. Approximately a decade later, terrorists murdered thousands of people in NY, DC, and PA. What in the final analysis was gained? Saddam still rules a country! If we go to war again now, what will be gained? Terrorism and religious fanaticism will not go away. We do not need to become terrorists and fanatics; we should not. Take a deep breath, be reasonable. It may be so that the most positive outcome of sending our young into a war right now would be the boosting of Bush's popularity. He is not popular to me, not at all. Bless all the victims and their grieving families.
- posted by barbara @ 9/11/2004 11:46:00 AM  0 comments

 
my girl...
bekah 

- posted by barbara @ 9/11/2004 05:32:00 AM  0 comments

 
City of Inglewood - News Article
my friend carla's son - if you can help find his killer there could be $25,000 in it for you.
- posted by barbara @ 9/04/2004 05:10:00 AM  0 comments

 
USS Norfolk Returns Home After Overhaul
andy's published another story with picture. beam
- posted by barbara @ 9/04/2004 12:50:00 AM  0 comments

 
John Nichols, Author of "Dick: The Man Who is President" - BuzzFlash Interview
As You Watch Bush Tonight Pretend That God Chose Him to Lead a Mission Against the Heathens, Remember that the REAL President is Dick Cheney, With His Domestic Advisor Being Karl Rove.

if you can stand to watch him at all...i cannot.
- posted by barbara @ 9/02/2004 08:24:00 PM  0 comments