turtlerescue1
turtlerescue1's JournalThe tragedy began when Zimmerman
decided to leave his vehicle. Surely I am not the only DUer who has knowledge of citizen patrols/neighborhood watch!
Zimmerman KNEW a squad had been dispatched. "911" told him "We don't need you to do that."
Obviously the first rule is not to "patrol" alone. But the bigger rules are you do not engage nor confront. You observe, you get a description. You stay in your vehicle until a uniformed officer arrives. Zimmerman set the scene for what took place, he made a choice, a decision.
He knew he didn't have a badge nor authority. Everything else that took place was due to a choice to be above the parameters of citizen patrol. He wouldn't have had stitches nor head wound had he behaved as he KNOWS he was supposed to. Looks like he felt he was above the law. And a young man wouldn't be dead!
Change never starts with an explosion
but with a deep cry of despair and agony. Its when that pain turns into anger, and the anger into cynical humor- seems the humor keeps the strength for endurance.
Its not the herd cows that seek a different pasture. My fear is before the tipping point arrives, it will get much much worse for we, the 99%. The wheat and the chaff will separate, but there needs be Unity. And the political group I love most has this frustrating history of splintering just when it needs to be united the most.
I too love this democratic republic, but its become a Sodom & Gomorrah.
Vonnegut and Orwell nailed this long ago. Darn it.
"Welcome to the Monkey House"!
In the early seventies the first time Greenhouse effect
was used in classes, mine happened to be Astronomy, the professor was working on his degree, gone through a divorce and tended to donate blood a little to often to get by.
For 30 years I used to inject "What global warming?" at odd and unexpected times, usually resulting in a look like of concern for my mental well being. Took a couple of decades before the majority of people had any idea what I was rambling about.
The topic of AIDS, when was it really discussed in the general public? There was no instant awareness from ESP or psychic predictions.
That's what some don't understand, you have to take step one, before you can get to step two.
Something else that seems to have gotten lost is NO ONE sends in a request to be born and have a life, that begins with a look in someone's eyes. Given my dad was 46 when he learned he was about to be a father again, wanna bet he could have found a different kind of joy? Surprise was likely an understated fact. His personal dreams put on hold another 18 years.
Birth control allowed folks to wait, and hopefully be more able to afford to provide a good childhood for their child, and not have a new child every year or so.
As per all the messes, wish more would have been changed. Utopia will always be stuck being a dream over a reality-still wish we could do better.
Until this thread, until reading it as it grew, being childless I stood up to those around me who called this new group the "Instant gratification generation". BUT after seeing the mean heartedness, not so sure I'll jump to defend these folks again. Thought maybe you should know this.
Wish you well, wish you the wherewithal to stand up and find like-minds to work for CONstructive change.
BUT methinks from now on, am stuck saying to parents, "yeah, I saw what you meant, and apologize for speaking as an advocate."
Humans are imperfect, ALL of us.
BUT
Life IS a becoming aware process, some of us(myself included) can be just walking along a path, and fall over the same log, repeatedly. Until one day as you are lying on your face noticing the weeds and bushes have grown since your last trip over that log, and you wonder what you could have done differently. You are not in that place yet, don't worry it shows up.
My nephew a GenXer came in one day and said...you were this, and we are that.
We weren't born with erasers on our heads. The best any of us can do is follow where our hearts lead us. I was 13 when JFK was killed. A few years prior, the Bay of Pigs, and there we were close to a SAC base, and having bomb drills in school, getting under our desks-like that was going to help. I remember Kent State. I remember a democrat who had gone to Florida to the Primary there, and gotten tear gassed. I remember day after day of Senior Pictures on the front page of the local paper, kids I grew up with, that in the same week they got their diplomas got that letter from Uncle Sam "Greeting and Salutations" now coming home in body bags. I remember Selma, Alabama. I remember race riots. I remember inequality. I remember that first MLK birthday after his murder, standing in the rain, all seven of us trying to keep our candles lit. I remember the big marches in SF, I walked with the guys who had just got back from SE Asia. I remember the Chicano movement. Walking arm in arm with our elbows locked, not thinking for a moment it would do one drop of good, but still it was on our plate, and complacency and apathy were not exactly doing much to change anything. And I remember working for $1.85 an hour at a large business after graduation. AND I wasn't even out of my teens yet!
No one gets handed a bed of roses, an easy life with fair choices. It can make you bitter, but what good is bitter? We sang, we made jokes-because all of us were sick of crying and being angry.
Look for the poetic justice. When Reagan was King in California, he closed all the mental institutions. Two years later I had this IDEA, in order to have a house on the beach near Morro Bay, would take the training and work in the hospital from the criminally insane.
So decided to see if I'ld fit. The first day..."became aware" what Raygun's action really did, the first persons out on the street were the Developmentally Delayed. Homeless.
It took a few decades but when Reagan was diagnosed, pure poetic justice.
I know my generation TRIED to change the world to make it warmer and kinder. We actually only got a few tiny steps. At least with a diploma NOW you don't get your draft number to go fight in a war that the Pentagon never intended to win. At least you don't get sent to a war and have to be 21 to vote. AND just maybe pot will finally be at least as legal as a beer.
Make up your mind to change what you can, find like-minds and pursue what it is your heart and soul and mind believes in.
Let me close this heartfelt rant: The only reason I ever put on that white uniform was a bet with another nephew, a case of Colt 45 tall cans, to last six weeks working in a nursing home. Weakest stomach ever. One morning I was assigned a guy exactly my age, CP or MD, strapped across the chest into his w/c. As I cleared a space on his table so he could eat his breakfast, on his nightstand was this pine cone owl, under it was written:
"Lilfe, No one said it would be easy." If a giant hand had come out of the sky and slapped me across my face, I wouldn't have been more humbled. Oh yeah, ended up spending over 18 years in nursing.
Be Brave. Be Strong. AND find a reason to keep laughing.
The problem with Mr. Zimmerman is
he was told to wait for a police response. Having done years of N-Hood Watch aka Citizen Patrols, you KNOW you do not have a badge, you are not employed as a law enforcement officer, and you damned well KNOW to WAIT for a squad, and you KNOW to STAY in YOUR vehicle while you are waiting. It is NOT your role to engage-period. Observe only!
He should have been charged with impersonating an officer THAT night.
This is so not funny, but am really trying to laugh!
Been doing genealogy for decades now...you know: Who am I, Where do I come from, etc.
Finally went back to Cyndi's List, an hour or so ago....
I had help moving from MN to AR, only the entire file cabinet of all the work in genealogy is....I have no idea! Well the French Huguenots now have quite a website. AHA, finally. And much work has been done, and from experience I know how long any success can take!
So in 1700 Abe Soblet(surname slaughtered in America to Sublett/Sublet/Sublette) and two sons get on the Mary and Ann, and hit the shore here. Later his wife and rest of family arrive via the Peter and Anthony. So am reading the biographies of my branch. So son Will marries Susannah Allen. Susannah has a brother Valentine Allen, father of Nancy Ann...related to John S. McCain, yep THAT McCain. So I figure well, okay some distaste has to be allowed.
EXCEPT Nancy Allen's sister, Mary is related to a Laura Lane Welch in 1977 married George W. Bush.
HOW DARE EITHER OF THEM WHINE ABOUT IMMIGRANTS!!
THE distaste is REALLY overwhelming, then as I'm cussin' like a sailor I realize -WAIT,
someone related to the of both these slimey, pompous, aberrant behaviors ... would NEVER vote for them, even if their's was the ONLY name on the ballot. AND they AIN'T got any better bloodlines than me....
Still-Ya know it would figure. It would JUST !@$#%& figure! Yeah there were good guys too, Jefferson was a nephew, then Lincoln's law partner. Bill was a Mountain Man, he named Jackson Hole, WYO, and I've always wondered WHY, lonely out there? Was it Jackson's turn in the barrel?
DU, help find a funny side to this terrible reality.
I have personal reasons to dislike mr. Pah Lunty.
It goes back to his days in the Mn. House. It goes back to the person who represented my district at the Capitol.
My n-hood had just lived through the "murder-apolis" designation. It had become a war zone, and many left instead of staying and standing up. We had finally gotten a new school rebuilt near where it had stood previously. Feeling safe was a delusion, and shots fired became "normal".
One of my cohorts called me one morning, the State decided it would be okay to give us 30 released Level III sex offenders. Like block leaders and those active in community didn't have enough concerns. She said in the phone call, whatever day of the week we did SecondHarvest at the church parking lot: City Councilperson and County Commissioner were fighting the huge release. SO...it became a topic at SecondHarvest, next thing someone called a local station (WCCO), it was decided they would interview us on my block. Thought I had managed to do what was my role, organize and let others speak. Was standing back behind the reporter and cameraman, and WHAM they put the mic in front of me, and of course calm person that I am I really went off. "IF they are going to make us a toxic dump site, then at least arm the seniors and kids with pepper spray and the rest of us with baseball bats, so we at least have a chance out here." YOU KNOW whose big mouth hit the news!
Same night was our Anti Crime group's meeting. Never heard the comment "Why don't you tell them how you REALLY feel?" repeated so many times. BUT our State Rep. attended the meeting. AND he decided he would try to work on the issue. SO he wrote a bill that would limit the number of Level IIIs per capita/population.
MR. Pawlenty would NOT let him read his bill. MR. PAWLENTY WOULD NOT LET HIM READ HIS BILLl.
Not knowing anything about how things go, I called our State Senator and told her. She did get a bill passed, not about "per capita/population" but schools, daycares, parks, etc.
When Mr. Pawlenty became governor, my State Rep finally told me WHO wouldn't let him read the bill.
Down the road, we had a terrible sex crime case along the Dakota-Mn border. Suddenly the man who had no concerns for adding to the worries of a community, sounded like he gave a damn.
Haven't had an ounce of respect for him since.
Everything in this post can be verified.
engaging in name dropping here
but just emailed Linda about it. Told her what, who and where. What we didn't come up with for solutions, she can.
her St. Paul email:
sen.linda.higgins@senate.mn
She is one of the nicest people I've ever met, truly. Hate that she is not going to run again.
Awww sure, and I'm a stuffy follower
perhaps for long enough to understand, you cannot share, demand, insist, give, mandate or otherwise FORCE your beliefs on anyone else. Most of the time you don't have all the answers to your own questions, how then can you feel what you believe can be of any value to another? Need to find your own answers first.
The one thing at my age that still delights is WONDER.
Be it a mellow pink wine, an Indigo Bunting, the smell of lavender or how many varieties of flowers and trees exist. Its the poetry, the artistry, the scents and tastes. IF it ain't about romance, it'll end up being about control and wars.
We've a very small congregation, in the middle of very dedicated Evangelicals. A few are so hard, they are -well as Joyce Meyers puts it "going to church on Sundays don't make you a Christian, you can sit in your garage for a week, but that won't make you a car." Instead of growing tougher, more brash, you mellow.
If we get down to where our problems arise, it is within each of us, vanity, pride and lust. Its as though civilization can't learn, not from its Past long enough and deeply enough to use the lessons for Today. Read Genesis probably 40 times, then one day, WHOA, I'm just like Eve, a little vain and gullible enough to buy deceit..had no idea.
Its not what separates that worries me, its trying to realize what unites us. DU isn't about the greed, the disregard, the bias and prejudices. It is about caring, about justice being equal value of AND for equal value. Its also about being to able laugh at absurdities. I love that I will read new news, and come to DU, and someone already has a thread about it. It means thinking is going on. What if there choice is between stagnation, where rhetoric is questioned, where "platforms" aren't rigid and incapable of being fresh? Where Society isn't about what you have materially, its what you have within as a collection of individuals. The concern is that what the hard hearts have done is diminish acceptance here where there is Unity.
Aye, there's the rub.
The great irony is that same vehemence can be found in both the Darwinist and the GOP brand of (small "C"
christianity.
Did they never study the levels of literary works? The story level, the symbolic, the metaphoric, and later- finally-that "Spiritually Linguistic" level. Music. Poetry. The Fine ARTS. Art. Theater. The Classical composers, how did they ever write those notes? isn't it all from a place of inspiration within? Frankly isn't all Inspiration divine?
It is easy to see what is ugly, cold, mean, heartless, but isn't it easier and a lot more pleasant to see wonder? The taste of a juicy peach, a lemon, an orange, a grapefruit.
The birds and their birdsong. Humor, the frog, the cat, the giraffe, the hippo. Scents, oh yeah, lavender, cedar, skunk.
and its ELCA. We're an experiment in progress. Our new pastor began as a nun, she completes the work and will be ordained this winter. Our congregation is such a great mix of backgrounds. A few grumble, but then we're Lutherans, we fear change and yet what did Marty bring? Love it.
Profile Information
Gender: FemaleHometown: Calif and MN
Home country: here
Current location: Mo-Ark border
Member since: Tue Jun 5, 2012, 08:55 AM
Number of posts: 1,013
