Phoenix Ashes

Monument Garden


The moon-beams filtered through the trees as they swayed in the gentle night breeze. The black and gray tones they cast shimmered across the darkened garden. At 10pm, the automatic sprinklers started their cycle and a cool mist drifted across the markers.

Brizza Bonell
10/18/1974 - 9/27/1992
shivering skin
warm sun
The coolness of the water
I miss it

There was silence as the sprinklers continued their chit-chit-chit of water across the lawn.

Ethel Wolf Quinn
Wife of J.R. Quinn
1888 - 1919
Something happened
another mistake
another ending

The sprinklers ceased their artificial rain and fell silent. Only the gentle rustling of the leaves overhead could be heard until morning.

Not long after sunrise, with the morning rays still casting long shadows from the taller stones, the weekend procession started to trickle in. Older cars in need of paint and wax slowly meandered down the narrow drives. Like old horses that instinctively know their way back to the barn, the occupants of these cars had been to the same spot many times before. Store bought flowers, purchased at a discount, replaced the withered ones left the previous weekend. Prayers were whispered, tears were shed. The stones looked back in silence.

Beatrice M. Regaldo
2/21/1912 - 8/26/1983
my daughter
is she lost
forgotten
is she happy

Nick Prohoroff
9/6/1922 - 9/6/1990
The world is for living
They all come
In some way

Jenny left her car and walked slowly toward her husband. There was no hurry. There was no need to rush. She stopped before the stone, her head lowered, tears running down her cheeks.

Fernando Jacabo
6/5/1950 - 2/14/1996
Jenny Jacabo
11/28/1955 –
My Love
My Life
Why tears
Why sadness

Jenny fell to her knees, leaned against her husband and quietly sobbed. "I have nothing....nothing left to remember you by. Everything we made is gone Fernando....everything...."

Her aged body trembled against the cold stone as a gentle breeze made the flowers on the nearby graves shiver. Jenny stood up, leaving her tears running down the granite face of the stone. She walked past her husband toward the mortuary building at the corner of the garden.

Two days later the cemetery backhoe rumbled to life and inched its way down the narrow paths to Fernando's tombstone. The groundskeeper drove the aging tractor as his helper stood on its trailer hitch. As the tractor came to a stop the helper jumped down and stood before the grave. "Yup, this is it; Jacabo". The groundskeeper was looking at a diagram that he had pulled from his back pocket. "Says 3 feet to the left, standard plot."

The helper looked at the marker and responded, "To the left? Isn't this Jenny?".

"Nope, Isabella.....it was his daughter."

Corina Beatrice Brejea & Claudia Betty Brejea
3/3/1977 - 10/8/1994 & 3/3/1977 - 10/8/1994
Too short the days
no blush
the scent gone
the diary unfinished

As the sun set, the six foot by four foot hole appeared as a gapping wound. It was marked with orange cones at each corner. Down through the rich top soil, past to the hard creosote and into the shale, it was 6 feet deep. The excavated earth lay across the path, covered with a green blanket. Robins and sparrows bobbed over the mound of rich earth searching the earthworms within the soil.

Frank Livengood
2/9/1908 - 9/23/1991
Roy Livengood
11/11/1913 - 10/10/1917
Just like us
Just like all of us
Together
yet far apart

The heat of summer slowly faded with the setting sun. As the clouds turned yellow and then became a dark crimson two white cranes circled overhead and slowly descended. At the center of the cemetery, all paths lead to a large fountain. Its bubbling waters filled the reflecting pool. The cranes landed and surveyed the garden. They moved cautiously, silently. With each step they froze and scanned the horizon. The night was still and so was the mated pair.

David Soo Fong
11/2/1902 - 3/15/1979
Quan Oy Fong
8/15/1906 - 5/21/2000
Together forever
As it should be
Silently knowing
Trusting no one

From a distance, the cranes stood as statues in the fountain. They became one with the night and watched over the memories of those that had past. As the air cooled and the stars slowly awoke, a squirrel appeared from its knot hole in the oak that overlooked Fernando's grave. He smelled the air and surveyed the ground. He sensed no one else was near. Cautiously, he scampered down the tree and onto the grass. Every few feet he stopped, stood on his hind legs, and sniffed. Summer grass and pine needles were all he perceived.

He scurried about the open grave, trying to figure out why this portion of his world had changed. He sensed no opportunity here. He leaped onward to where the garbage cans were. They usually contained some sort of bounty for the taking, if he was cautious.

He scampered past the Jacabo tombstone and stopped again to survey his surroundings. The rush of air over a wing and the passing shadow came too late as a warning. The stealthy talon closed around him as the owl lifted him from the lawn.

Eva-Marie Knox Hansen
12/9/1982 - 11/22/1983
Do not dwell
on things unseen
it comes quickly
there is no fear

The owl landed on a marker several yards away and pecked the last breath from the squirrel. The cranes watched silently from the fountain, unmoving, unmoved.

As dawn broke the next morning, the funeral preparations began. Two rows of chairs were lined up neatly next to the open pit. Brass bars were placed around the grave site and the lowering mechanism was assembled and lowered into the earth. At 1pm the slow procession of cars entered from the south gate and made their way to the grave site. The white hearse pulled up first. With solemn ceremony, the mourners exited their vehicles. The pallbearers removed the casket from the hearse and placed it over the pit. There was silence mixed with muffled sobs and whispers. Sermons and testimonials were read, mourners embraced. The pain of loss shrouded friends and family.

After the service the crowd slowly departed to return to the world of the living. They had helped close this chapter, and it was time for them to continue writing their own.

Isabella's best friend confided to her father, "They still haven't found Hector, have they?"

Her father shook his head.

"He loved her so much." she added in a soft voice.

"Then why did her run from the accident?" he replied. "What kind of love is that?

The father paused. Holding back his anger, but wanting to impress this lesson onto his young daughter.

“Just because a man says he loves you Gabriele....does not make it so. Isabella found that out at the end."

Beatrice M. Regaldo
2/21/1912 - 8/26/1983
Was it fear
too much pain
It cuts both ways
love and loss

As the shadows in the garden grew long, the remains of the ceremony were removed. Everything looked the same as before with the exception of the small temporary marker. It was one among many. The grass was reseeded over the fresh earth, and balloons were tied to the stone to keep the birds from steeling the seed.

As an evening thundercloud gathered on the horizon, lightening was visible in the distance. A light rain began to fall in advance of the pending storm. Unaware of the weather, the sprinklers popped from the ground and mingled their streams with the falling mist.

As the breeze pushed the balloons to the ground, a solitary figured walked across the lawn. Hunched over, hands in pockets, head bowed, he stopped at the newly filled grave. In the gentle rain and the flashes of light he lingered.

The wind began to whip the balloons from side to side and the rain increased as the storm drew near.

He raised his hand to his head and the sound it made matched the crack of lightning. He fell forward onto the fresh earth. His lifeless body slumped to the ground and released the balloons. They skirted long the ground like frightened animals in the storm.

Michael Charles Guida Sr.
12/9/1934 - 1/22/1996
Mary Jacquelin Guida
7/29/1934 -
True Love
Knows no end
True Love
Needs no sacrifice

Isabella Jacabo
3/8/1990 - 6/20/2007
Hector, My Love
Why,
did you follow me

Summing It All Up

Fight The Plague

This is an interactive blog. Please read through it and then add your observations in the comments section. This blog is posted in two different places Blogger and MySpace Please leave your comments on the MySpace page (it gets more traffic).

I have often times made reference to a term I call 'compression'. It refers to the concept that the world is getting smaller. Not just in the number of people on the planet, but the way that we all interact with one another. When I was a child growing up, India and China were a world away. It would take weeks to get there and cost thousands of dollars. Today, an e-mail or a picture can be sent to India in 5 seconds and cost nothing. This has a global way of affecting how we think, act and perceive things. Like it or not, we are moving toward one global consciousness, to the horror of most of our governments.

With this in mind, there are some of us that are lagging behind the rest. I don't' expect us all to be brainiacs and figure out all the minutia in a complex world, but come on folks, open your eyes. The world is changing, either get on board or get out of the way.

Like most folks, there are things that just tick me off on a regular basis. Simple things that just don't need to happen. They happen through ignorance, and with each passing day I come closer to purchasing a cattle prod to jab into the ribs of some of these people:


Conversations in hallways

You are walking down a hallway, or exiting an elevator or entering a building and low and behold, there are two people blocking the flow of foot traffic because they just HAVE to stop and discuss something really important. The fact that they could take 3 steps to the side and be out of every one's way never crosses their mind. They are in their own little important world and the rest of us don't exist.

Life in the slow / fast lane (see the Material Wealth blog)

In the desert southwest where I live, it is still the 'wild west'. We have pretty big freeways around here to handle the huge number of people that keep moving here, but folks still drive on them like they were dirt roads. The left lane is just another lane. It isn't used for passing or any other such nonsense. If the speed limit is 75mph, and you want to sit your butt down in the left hand lane and do 85mph, then there can't be anyone else on the planet that wants to do 90mph. That just wouldn't be conceivable in their pea-sized brain. Sadly, people going faster do exist and I am one of them. I have car that will do 110mph without even breathing hard, and you are just annoying me whenever I drive it. Try looking in your rear view mirror sometimes you jerk! (and don't give me a hard time about speeding....at 85mph we are both speeding....everyone speeds around here, we don't fund the state infrastructure enough to hire adequate police and all the drivers know it).

The 'group' conversation on your Cell phone

There is nothing better than to go grocery shopping or browse through the local Barnes and Noble while listing to someone on their cell phone (or worse yet, Bluetooth Headset) talk about their most recent medical procedure or discuss what their offspring are going to do now that they have been released from prison. Just because the person you are talking to is hard of hearing or has a crappy phone, doesn't mean we all have to hear about it. Try and look up the meaning of the word politeness as I lock you in your car with the windows rolled as you talk on the phone to your girlfriend about your hemorrhoids.

Dealing with other's mistakes (see retribution blog)

I can't recall how many times (I really can't) that I have been given a task to perform, that first involves trying to figure out how the last person assigned to the job screwed it up. If someone didn't do their job right and got fired (or worse yet, got promoted), why does it fall on the next person climbing the ladder to fix their mistakes. If they got fired, their supervisor should be fixing these problems. Because they weren't.......supervising. If they got promoted, yank their ass back down to their old desk and tell them that their job is on hold until they finish their last one. This passing the buck mentality is starting to really become a drag on my work ethic. I think I need to take my cattle prod for a walk in the Human Resource Department.

Taking risks (it's OK, hit the reset button)

Daily, I am bombarded by people asking me how to do things. As if I walked around with a Jack-Of-All-Trades PhD stapled to my forehead. I don't know how to do that much. I am just not afraid of taking risks. If I yank out a bolt and the whole machine comes apart and falls to pieces, it just means that the project will take longer, it doesn't mean you are a failure. And honestly, most things these days have built in obsolescence anyway, so you are going to have to buy a new one sooner or later. Might as well figure it out while you got it. Life is full of risks. If you don't take them, you really won't advance very far. When all else fails, unplug the sucker and plug it back in.....it usually solves a world of problems.

Marketing your life away, you NEED that Hummer (see the Urban Assault Vehicle blog)

Restless Leg Syndrome.......when the hell did this become a disease that you can talk to your doctor about AND get medication for? Are we to believe that our ancestors that came across the ocean in clipper ships and crossed the prairie in covered wagons died by the thousands because they didn't have Claritan and Requipe? Can I get a drug for my terminal stupidity? I am sure someone is working on it right now. When did marketing stuff that is so over the top become such a norm? There have always been Dusenbergs and Rolls Royces, but since when did we all have to drive Hummers and Ford Super Duty Pickup trucks with 400hp? What floors me is the fact that what we see on television is considered normalcy. Is grown men driving as fast as they can around a circle really considered a sport? Why is it that a 7 foot tall man can put a ball through a metal hop and make 40 million dollars a year, but a man that goes through 8 years of college and internship to become a brain surgeon is only paid $200,000 a year? One saves lives in anonymity, the other puts balls through hops to the cheers of millions. Do Brittany Spears and Lindsay Lohan have agents that promote bidding wars to see which tabloid will pay the most for pictures of the 'client' passed out on a park bench with a bottle of Jack Daniels? You bet they do. The media is a circus and we keep paying money to laugh at the same clown jokes over and over. I should probably stick a cattle prod in the television....if not Rupert Murddock.

The space around you affects others, be aware of it.

In the compressed society, you might think you have space, but you don't. In the city, almost everything you do has an affect on others, you just don't perceive it. I used to walk to work. It is a 45 minute stroll and I took my iPod with me to give the world an edgy if not surreal soundtrack. I quickly learned that you have to constantly look around to makes sure there aren't bicycles coming up behind you, drunks passing out at the wheel and running up on the sidewalk, stray barking dogs chasing after you and police helicopters flying overhead. This thing we call human society is a dangerous place,. If you are going walk / drive around in it, be aware of what is going on. I don't want to be the one that has to haul your ass out of flaming overturned vehicle because you didn't see the train coming.

If you have a problem, be clear and concise about it. (FIX IT, doesn't do it for me)

I don't care who you are. If you have exhausted all your brain power and still can't get the car to start, the television to come on, or the door to unlock, then ask someone else to solve your problem. But if you do be clear and concise about what the problem is. If I get one more e-mail or phone message saying "May application doesn't work, what wrong?", I am going to go postal. If I could solve your problem(s) with that little tidbit of information, I sure wouldn't be working where I am. I would creating new and perfect worlds with my omnipotent abilities. There is an art to error reporting....sadly, the public school system hasn't added it to their curriculum, thereby assuring me job security till I die.

Talking in the bathroom / Sauna (see the Steam blog)

In the compressed world, there are few places of refuge. My garage is one. But outside of my tool shed, there are few others. Places that I can seek refuge to try and sweep up my sanity in the dustpan of life are the men's room stall and the sauna at the YMCA. So when I am in them, dreaming of that Polynesian beach with me and my topless wife, PLEASE don't come in and start talking to your buddy about your stock portfolio or your hot new girlfriend. These are hallowed places, holy places....they aren't bars with Jukeboxes. Come in, shut up and do your business and then leave. I don't want to be an unwilling participant to your most recent trip trip to the doctor to get some Requipe or your weekend at the Hummer dealer.

Ordering fast food by number (not by item), that is why it is fast food....otherwise go to Denny's.

Here is a little prank you can play. I do it all the time. Go into a fast food restaurant (go inside, not the drive thru) and ask for one of the combo meals by number and ask for it 'here'. As in, "I want a large #2 for here." The pimply-faced cashier behind the counter will give you a total, and then ask you, "Is that for here or to go?". It happens every time. These folks aren't paid to think or know what they are doing. They only go through the motions. They are automatons, little fleshy robots. Fast food is just that, Solyent Green, served in Styrofoam and cardboard. It isn't supposed to be good for you and it doesn't taste good (although the media tells you it does). If you go into one of these places, give them a number, pay your cash, tell them for 'here' or to 'go' (after they ask you) and move on so the next hog in line can step up to the trough. These aren't places where you can have your food 'prepared' for you. These are unskilled, illegal workers for the most part that only know how to make 2 or 3 items......if you want something special....go to Dennys, or Cracker Barrel and eat off some real plates with silverware.

Don't assume people aren't busy......not all 'work' requires movement.

I spend a lot of time staring at my computer monitor. It looks like I am not doing anything, but you would be wrong. I am usually trying to figure out why the data on my screen is total garbage. Either I don't have a table linked correctly in the query, or I haven't created a formula right, or the data has been input by monkeys and I have to figure out which monkey did it. Even though I am not dancing around my office like a Mohamed Ali, I am still working, and it often times gives me a headache. So when my coworkers hop skip and jump into my office and interrupt me to solve one of their little problems, it totally disconnects my train of thought. They don't see that, because they assume that since my arms aren't moving, I am not really working on anything important. So think of it this way....the next time a brain surgeon is operating on your daughter and you don't see his hand moving around, just walk right into the operating room and asking him how the coke machine in the lobby works.....I am sure it won't affect your daughter in the least.

A straight line is not always the fastest route

I used to work in the insurance business. I adjusted accident claims. Which means I argued with lawyers and documented guilt or innocence a lot. If you want to avoid half of the accidents you will be involved in during your life, here is a simple tip. Don't make left turns. If you are pulling out across traffic and making a left turn across oncoming traffic, you are going to get hit. It is the law of averages. Make a right turn with the flow of traffic and go around the block. It only takes about an extra 20 seconds of your time, and will save you a world of hurt and money. This concept is thinking outside the box. Many people have the illusion that the quickest way to get someplace is a straight line to it. If that were the case, then nature would make all rivers straight and all trees would look like pencils. A roundabout route, following the path of least resistance is often times the fastest and safest route. Think outside the box, much of what you have been trained to think is false, chart your own course. The media doesn't like you to think this way. They want you to get in your Hummer, drive to McDonald's, stand in line while talking on your cell phone and then order it 'your way' while everyone you have almost run into or walked over waits for you to get out of the way.

That is all the things that I can come up with today, but I am sure there are others. I encourage you to write yours in the comments section below. If I ever write a book or leave a long rambling suicide note, I will be sure to give you credit for your input.

Scoot.....

Urban Flyer


Humming down a sidewalk.
Emissions free
Bobbing
Weaving

Tree lined streets
with rough pavement
Barking dogs
and the smell of wet grass

Wind at my back
An extra 3 mph
With a watchful eye
for cross traffic

Up and over
Pedestrian bridge
Vaulting the freeway
Where thousands wait
Idling

Skirting past the sleeping drunk.
Hindered by the traffic light
My own little third world
Isn't such a bad place



(a homage to my $70 electric scooter salvaged from the thrift store. With only a mile and half to my office, it is the best commuter vehicle I have ever owned.)

Trouble

Its All The Same


One of the problems with the human experience, is that we tend to have tunnel vision. We see and experience things in our own time and fail to see how things were done in the past (which got us here) or how the things we do now will be perceived by future generations.

We don't 'live' across time, we only exist in the hear and now. Our lives span history but we don't tend to think of it that way. Hence, the famous saying; "Those that forget the past are doomed to repeat it."

We see the angry old man yelling at the children on his lawn and think, "What a jerk". We don't think of what got him there, or what experiences made him that way. We see the cute and cuddly baby crawling across the grass, giving chase to a puppy and don't wonder if his parents are doctors or drug addicts. So much of our perception is based on hope, expectation and instantaneous reaction to what we see. As a society, we don't tend to scratch the surface much.

I have been doing a lot of cataloging recently. Scanning old film, video (in various formats), pictures, slides, etc....trying to organize them and make sense of it all. I have a lot to scan. I have taken literally thousands of pictures in the past 20 years. There are also the pictures and film that my parents took and the pictures from my wife's family as well. I have been scanning all of them.

One particular album had me fascinated. It was a book of black and white prints that were taken by my father when he was a young man. Before he was married, before he met my mother, before he was 'dad'. I scanned these pictures at a very high resolution. When they appeared on the computer monitor they were huge, sharp and clear. Not the little two inch by three inch photo in the album. Suddenly they burst forth with detail that I had never noticed. For the first time I saw the slight smile, the glint in the eyes, little things in the background, the texture of a leather jacket.

As I scanned them a mosaic emerged. A picture that I had never seen. There in black and white is my father as a young man. A rebel, carefree, optimistic. He was good looking and he looked cocky. He was probably a trouble maker. Terms that I would never have used to describe him when I was growing up. When I was a child he was always DAD. Stable, dependable, fair, compassionate, a good provider and a mentor. But that wasn't the man in these pictures. As a teen he looked rebellious, a go-getter, ready to take on the world. He had no worries and not many things scared him. He was at the beginning.

Looking at those pictures, I realized that life is the same for all of us. I had lived the same life growing up. I had gone through the same things. Once I was cocky, carefree, and a rebel. But I didn't see it at the time and I probably don't appear that way now. I didn't know that those experiences would get me where I am today. That the choices made back then would set my course. My father didn't know it either. He was just like me, and I am just like him. I got into a lot of trouble to, but I made it.

For a glimpse back at the way life was (and how much it has and hasn't changed) I have uploaded all of my fathers pictures onto a web-page. These are all black and white photos taken between 1935 and 1945. They offer a rare glimpse into the time just prior to and during World War II. My father was a flying instructor in the Army Air Corp and there are many pictures of him both in the service and as acivilian. Many of the photos have comments written on the back and these were scanned as well.

To view the pictures, just click the picture at the top of the blog, or go here.

STEAM

Roaring,
like an angry dragon
fire breathing
primordial

Refuge and solitude
Senses muffled
Vision blurred

Echo from the walls
The door opens
Shuffling
Groaning
The heavy sigh

Dim light struggles
through thick mist.
Things left outside
Fade, fade away

Nothing in the dark
Except the heat
and the peace

In the womb
No worries
Just embracing warmth.

Murder / Puppy Dog / Car Wash

Info-tainment


Unless you see it happen with your own eyes, everything is editorialized. If you see a car wreck, tell your mother, she tells her neighbor and they tell a co-worker, chances are that theco-worker's vision of the carnage is much different than what you saw. Each successive interpreter of the story puts a slant on it or leaves something out. This is editorial-ism. Sometimes it is unintentional, but most times it isn't. At least where the media is concerned.

If it bleeds it leads - The 'Breaking News'

Some of you may live in pretty rural areas (lucky bastards), but most of us live in the cities. If you do, and you happen to get your daily information fix from the local TV news channel this should come as no surprise. Without fail, every time I tune in the 6pm Evening News, there is always a bold graphic with an urgent sounding voice-over, "Breaking News ONLY on Channel 12: Pickup Truck Stuck In A Dry Creek Bed.....News-Copter 12 is on the scene...come in Captain Dave."

There has to be a breaking news story to get your attention. It has be to urgent, and if it is bleeding or on fire....ALL THE BETTER. Lets face it, our inner demons love looking at the things we aren't supposed to see. Do all those Nascar fans go to see who wins or who hits the wall hardest? Since producers and editors know this, and since producers and editors jobs are on the line if the advertisers don't show up to cover their paychecks....Captain Dave is kept pretty busy hovering near overturned vehicles and house fires. Not that this is News by the way....it is just good entertaining carnage and destruction. If they were still sacrificing Christians in the Colosseum in Rome, you know the news blimps would be fighting for the airspace above it.

This sort of media manipulation has been going on since scribes put pen to parchment. What concerns me at this point is the saturation level. There is a growing segment of the population that is feeding off this like hungry piranha.

When I was a young man in college I had one of those moments that made me stop and think. I was working in the college media center. This is back in the day when most of us still had black & white televisions, and there was no cable, much less the Internet. You had three channels (ABC / NBC / CBS) and that was it. One evening I was alone in the media center and had all three of the networks up on different studio monitors and watched all three nightly news casts at the same time. It was eye opening to say the least.

The lead story on ABC and NBC was the same, but it was the 3rd story on CBS. Likewise all the other stories deemed newsworthy by the network gods were jumbled in random order, and some were missing entirely from various stations. This puzzled me. Who was making the decision on what I should and shouldn't know about?

Later that evening, I walked back to my college apartment and turned on my shortwave radio (yes I used to have one, Radio Moscow was a hoot to listen to). I tuned in the hourly BBC shortwave broadcast (which always started out with the chiming of Big Ben and the intro "This Is London") and got the 'world' prospective. I was amazed that almost none of the stories on the BBC were even mentioned on the American nightly newscasts. Especially the 47 Ugandans that had been murdered that afternoon. Africans dying back then wasn't considered real news-worthy I suppose.

This is what started the seed in my mind about who was telling me what and for what reason. That seed has since grown into a redwood.

Media outlets lean more and more toward hype and our base voyeur instincts and less and less toward the knowledge that we really need to make an informed decision.

As in school or any training class, repetition is the key to retention. You memorize things until they become second nature. That includes what you see as well. Repeated images of Paris Hilton /IEDs in Iraq / and college gunman reinforce the 'image' not the message.

You can tell teenage girls not to act like Paris Hilton, but the more they see her, the more they want to be like her.

You can tell folks that we are winning the war in Iraq, but if all you show are Improvised Explosive Devices (IED) blowing up American soldiers, that isn't the perception.

You can report on the missed opportunities to help a troubled student before they go postal, but the resultant images and media blitz only reinforces a troubled youth's belief that violence is a valid option.

Media has always manipulated the masses that watch it. William Randolph Hearst knew that, so does Rupert Murdoch, but I don't think anyone is questioning what the digital revolution and global compression are doing regarding the effect on society's mental health not to mention its ability to make an informed decision.

Which brings me to the title of this Blog. I suspect that there is actual a psychology to the evening news format that goes beyond our thirst for voyeurism. I have noticed this pattern in local news coverage. I call it the Murder / Puppy Dog / Car Wash scenario.

The lead off story, is usually some grisly murder or death (preferably with pictures). This imagery is sad and depressing, but holds our 'thriller' interest.

The next news story is warm and cuddly. Usually involving a furry animal or baby or an elderly person riding a unicycle or knitting the worlds largest pot-holder. This calms our fears and anxiety and softens or erases the images of grisly death from the first story.

Then comes the story of redemption. The car wash, which is usually being held by high school students to raise money for the funeral of their classmate who was killed in the previous days grisly murder. Thereby leaving the viewer with some sense that there is hope in a really wacky and screwed up world.

Then they go to commercial.

You may laugh at this and think I am stretching it a bit. But seriously, watch your local news and keep in mind that those stories are not put there in random order. There is a producer / news editor behind the scenes pulling strings and determining what you need to see and what you need to know (and what you need to think).

Hand me the remote....I want to see what is on Cartoon Network.

Retribution

Is Lynching Really A Bad Thing?


I am going to rant for a while....

There is something that has been really bugging me. It has been growing and not diminishing over time. It just keeps getting worse.

It is the concept that no one is accountable for their actions. You can make a mistake and be forgiven. No foul, no harm done. I understand that this had a certain logic in the past. Forgiveness was divine, tolerance and patience were a virtue . But like so many things in our lives, this concept has been corrupted over time. The lack of accountablility has become so ridiculous that it has direct adverse consequences on all of us.

I first started thinking about this when the whole illegal immigration debate started heating up last year. I live in the American Southwest where illegal immigrants from Mexico are a daily way of life. They are ingrained into the economy and we couldn't live without them. The folks that don't want them here endlessly debate how to 'get rid of them' or how the laws need to be changed.

This raised a question in my mind. Instead of how to deal with the problem, why aren't we looking at what caused it in the first place. Where was the proper funding for the border patrol back in the 1970s? Who was in charge of the INS at the time, how much money did they request from Congress and was it approved? Were there reports documenting the increase in illegal crossings? If so, where did they go and who made the decision NOT to act on them?

Many will say that it does little good to look for the lack of management or leadership in past and to deal with the problems as of today. To that statement I say, "bullshit". If there is no accountability in the past, what motivation do the current people in charge have to make the correct decisions. They know that if they fail, they won't be held accountable for the failure that the public entrusted them to prevent.

This same scenario is repeated in the news on a daily basis with people arguing over how to fix a problem that should never have been allowed to fester in the first place.

Corporate CEOs at Enron, Home Depot and Cessna are making millions of dollars a year in compensation while running their companies into the ground. Where are the federal regulators and Board of Directors 'before' the companies collapse?

Several years ago, in the Arizona legislature, a state senator put forth a bill that was approved by the house, the senate and signed by the governor. This bill allowed Arizona citizens to receive a tax break on vehicles that were converted to propane power. Only problem was, everyone wanted the tax break, everyone started converting to propane and the state went bankrupt. The next election year the senator was booted from office and promptly went to work for a propane distributor. Where was the oversight in state government that allowed all these senators, representatives and even the Governor to allow this debacle to happen? No one served any jail time and the senator that pushed the bill through was 'investigated' by the Attorney General who found nothing improper. The end result is that our elected government threw away almost 800 million dollars of taxpayer money. Those legislators are all retired now and living on state pensions. Does this seem right?

My wife and I are fixing up an old house in an historic neighborhood. Needless to say, there isn't much standard on our house (it is 70 years old) and finding a competent contractor to do work on the home has been next to impossible. There is a housing boom in the desert southwest, but most of the homes are built by unskilled labor from cookie-cutter parts found at Home Depot. Contractors are more than willing to take your time to meet with you, but when they find out that they will actually have to do some 'work' and not just plug something in, they quickly back out the door. If I take off 10 hours of work, at $20 an hour, only to find out that the contractor can't do didly for me (even though he said he could), should HE be paying me for my lost wages?

Some of the other scenerios that have stocked my fire recently are:

-Contractors make appointments to give estimates and never show up.

-Retailers sold us furniture, promising deliver in 3 weeks. After 3 months we call to find out they sold the stock to someone else instead and never told us.

-A car dealership takes 4 weeks to do simple maintenance on a vehicle, fails to correct any of the problems and then forgets to reinstall engine components.

-I have uncovered massive failure to collect required data at my job, and when pointed out, no one is tasked to clean it up or reprimanded for not doing their job (albeit, this is government work, not the private sector).

The overriding issue here appears to be a 'push' toward mediocrity where no one is held accountable and if they are, it is generally done in committee where nothing is really accomplished.

The rights of the individual to cover up their bad mistakes, declare bankruptcy, drop their 'failed' jobs from their resume has undermined us all. We have forgotten that living in a society means that certain individual rights are forgone for the good of the group as a whole. In order to reap the benefits of health care, police protection, sewage removal, and well lighted streets, we have to give up our individual rights to start fires where ever we want, disobey laws, throw litter everywhere and fail to yield to ambulances.

If you want to live a life free of responsibility, move to Wyoming or Alaska and live in the wilderness where you are the master of all you survey. If you choose to live within a society, set forth laws that promote the good of the whole (not the individual), tax the populace to fund the infrastructure for them and then ENFORCE them. Living within a society means the loss of some individuality. That is the price we all pay for the benefits of society.

This concept has been lost with the advent of not holding those accountable for the mistakes that they have made. Those that aspire to rise to public office or law enforcement need to be made aware, that if they fail because of their own stupidity (and not by circumstance) they will be brutally held accountable. They are given a public trust to do what is best for all of us and the generations that follow. I do not understand why they can be allowed to walk away while our children suffer because of their actions (or inactions)

Is it just me, or shouldn't we all be mad as hell? I know I get more angry every day.