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THE PAUL GIRARD HATE CRIME: STILL OPEN...

2011-04-28T10:03:00.005-04:00

“If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us.”

-- Herman Hesse 1877-1962: “Demian” (1919)

Randall Tessier

C.: Did you know Paul Girard from Gwinn H.S. (or Marquette)? He was a good friend of mine. His parents were also my neighbors. His murder, 22 years ago, has never been solved.

Randall Tessier

Dear C.: I'm 60. I attended Gwinn and lived on the base from 1966 - 69. I say this because he may have occupied a time period apart from my days in Gwinn. Given this thread, I have to ask if he was gay. Further, if he was, do you think his sexual orientation and something to do with his demise? I'm going to see if I can find out some background on this on google.

Best - Randy

Randall Tessier

20th anniversary of the Paul Girard killing
September 30, 2008 - By KIM HOYUM

MARQUETTE - During the early morning hours of a fall day 20 years ago, Paul Girard was stabbed to death on Presque Isle in Marquette. Today, his brutal murder remains unsolved.

After 20 years, there's not much in the way of physical evidence that could be found. Instead, police hope for one more person to tell what they know about the events of Sept. 30, 1988. The Marquette City Police Department gets tips and leads regularly about Girard's murder, but detectives are still waiting for the one that can break the case open.

"We interviewed dozens of people and have a suspect developed. We still receive calls about it; in fact, we got one last week," said Detective Capt. Gordon Warchock of the Marquette police. "We're still looking for that one piece of evidence to take it to the prosecutor's office. You never know when it could come, in a week or in a year."

What is known is that sometime in the early morning hours of Friday, Sept. 30, 1988, Girard was stabbed dozens of times near Charlie Kawbawgam's grave on Presque Isle, his body left for passersby to find when the sun rose. He was 34.

At 10:14 a.m., police were dispatched to the murder scene, after two people out for a morning walk around the island came upon Girard's body.

Sal Sarvello, retired chief of police, was then captain of detectives with the department and remembers it was a busy morning, with detectives already working on arrests in a drug theft case. A patrol officer and Detective Lt. Hank Steede were the first to arrive at Presque Isle, and Sarvello followed shortly afterward.

Current city police Chief Mike Angeli had been a detective for a year and a half then, and said the investigators are confident Girard was killed in the same place his body was found.

"We immediately started to retrace his tracks for the previous 24 hours," Angeli said.

Details began to emerge; Girard lived in south Marquette and worked at D&D Rental, close to home. He was originally from Gwinn.

He had been seen at a few local bars and restaurants the evening before, so detectives began to examine the hours just prior to the killing.

Police were looking for someone who knew Girard; the manner of his death was not typical of a murder committed by a stranger.

"The number of stab wounds were obviously overkill. Some were post-mortem, which indicates anger," Angeli explained.

Sarvello said the department requested suspect profiles from the FBI and regional profiling centers, which bore out investigators' conclusions about the killer.

"We don't believe it was a random act of violence," Warchock said. "We believe he knew his assailant and had met his assailant. The length of time of that acquaintance is hard to say, but we don't believe it was a stranger."

Angeli said detectives began to investigate Girard's personal life, and - then and now - believe the motive for the killing was at least in part animosity toward gays.

"I don't think it was any secret that he was gay," Angeli said. "We feel there was some type of relationship to his lifestyle, so in today's world, it's fair to say it could be classified as a hate crime."

It wasn't until the next April that the investigation began to focus on one main suspect, Sarvello said. A Michigan State Police detective heard about the suspect while working on an unrelated case, and tipped the city police.

Although the person suspected of the murder was interviewed at length, no evidence came of it.

"We've chased down lots of leads and other suspects have been suggested to us, with none of them panning out with any credibility," Angeli said.

The main suspect was never arrested or charged, with not enough evidence to support either. Warchock said the man has since moved out of the area.

Sarvello said one of the evidence problems inherent in the case was the location of the murder.

"It occurred in a city park, in the middle of the night, so there's less witnesses, less physical evidence," he said.

Angeli added the six-month gap between the murder and pinpointing the suspect also was plenty of time for physical evidence to disappear or become useless to investigators.

Sarvello noted Girard's case is one of only two unsolved murders in Marquette. The other case is that of Erin Taylor, a 24-year-old Marquette woman who was killed in August 2000.

"I would have given anything to have those two unsolved murders closed before I left, just for the sake of the families involved," he said.

Police aren't calling the case impossible, though.

Angeli and Sarvello said they believe others had direct knowledge of the Girard murder that night.

"We believe one person actually did the killing, but that he may have had contact with other people in the aftermath," Angeli said.

Sarvello said the case is still viable for that reason. "There's still a viable suspect and to this day, I believe it is that person and it just never came around to him," he said. "I believe there are at least one or two people in this area that still have knowledge of this murder. It hasn't been put away and forgotten. It's still here, right in front of us."

Angeli agreed the case is far from forgotten.

"Even though it's 20 years old, we think about it regularly," he said. "Maybe someone will want to tell us something now that they didn't want to tell us then."

Information about the murder can be directed to the Marquette City Police Department at 228-0400.

PAUL GIRARD

C.: He would have been in his late 50's, had reddish-blond hair, big guy, very nice-looking, friendly... too friendly. Grew up between Carlshend and Little Lake, on a farm at the corner of 545 S. and 456. Yes he was gay.

Angeli said, "I don't think it was any secret that he was gay." But, his parents didn't know until the day after his murder, when it was splashed in huge type all across the front page of the Mining Journal that "Marquette's Gay Community"... was alarmed by his slaying. Oddly, the reporter hadn't even bothered to interview anyone other than police. His dad died just weeks after Paul was killed, and his mother quietly sold the farm and moved away. We, in the neighborhood, thought he just couldn't take the shock of having his only son hacked to death, and the added shame of how the paper treated the murder, like some lurid tabloid, just trying to make a few extra bucks off the victim's sexual orientation.

Randall Tessier February 5 at 10:37am

Dear C.:

Paul was brutally murdered by Billy Fontaine and a guy, first name, Jamie. They were both prison guards at the time. Fontaine was an out of control follower when he was drunk, and the guy, Jamie, was, according to my source, a creepy sicko you didn't want to have anything to do with. A car, I think Fontaine's, was impounded and searched for evidence, but apparently there was not enough. His ex-girlfriend told other people he came home bloody that night. I don't know if the cops knew this. Shortly after this, both Fontaine and this guy, Jamie, were transferred to the Kincheloe prison facility.

Best - Randy

C. February 5 at 8:04pm

Hey. I heard something like this myself soon after the murder. I was working at NMU with a woman whose husband worked at the prison and heard from her that someone they knew was a suspect fairly early on. She too said he had a nasty temper and a drinking problem. A black blazer had been seen that night on Presque Isle by 2 girls, and he drove one. A few weeks after the murder she said he had taken a stress leave. We all expected an arrest to follow soon, but it never happened. Several years later, I did talk about it with Paul's brother-in-law, who was a Marquette County Sheriff deputy. He said the murderer was well known to and being watched by law enforcement, but there simply was not enough evidence to convict him.

I wonder if DNA tests have ever been done on the evidence. I would imagine so, but this does have me curious.
C.

C. February 5 at 11:41pm

Another thing that might have been relevant to the successful prosecution of his murder was Paul's reputation in Marquette. He had a propensity to get drunk and hit on straight men. There had been times this behavior resulted in a fight, and I heard from more than one person that they were pretty fed up with him filing assault complaints at the police station, when, often, it appeared he had been the person who started the altercation with some inappropriate touching. Paul was a big guy, and I imagine he could have held his own in a fight, but probably not against 2 prison guards with knives. I was pretty surprised to find out after his death that he was seen by many as kind of a troublemaker.

I didn't ever see him in public. My kids and I would visit him at his trailer, and hang out on weekends watching videos. He had a huge collection of Disney movies, and he loved having people to cook for. I guess we were kind of like his honorary family.

Dear C.: Ah yes! The old “he/she was asking for it” canard/saw.

Randall Tessier February 5 at 10:37am

Dear C:

ME: Dear Walker:

You know how lefties like me hate hate crimes.
I figure you know more than anyone else I could ask.
Here's a couple of names: Billy Fontaine and a guy named Jamie...something.

Best - Randy

Walker: February 7 at 11:25am

Off the record: You got Fontaine (prime suspect) right, I do not know about Jamie, but that name may have been developed after 2003. The last info I have, again pre 2003, he confessed to doing it but those people will not testify.

re: The case. So a confession is only credible when accompanied by testimony apart from the accused's? I heard he came home quite bloody (the girlfriend) and that his vehicle was impounded and inspected.

Walk: February 8 at 10:12am

Yes, you need the person who heard the confession/admission to testify. If I remember right, the Dick's got that info long after the crime so things had a chance to get cleaned up.

Randall Tessier February 7 at 5:25pm

Dear Walker: Yes, off the record. I heard the guy was a big dude, and could be a bit of a nuisance when drunk. This is according to a woman in Skandia that knew him (he went to Gwinn HS). The question is, could one guy have subdued and killed him alone.

Walker:: February 8 at 10:04am

Yes, he was at the time and still may be a prison guard.

S: February 9, 2011 at 2:18pm

Re: Randy Bothering You, Fishkiller.

No, I was on the fringe of the investigation, as being uniform. Again if my memory is correct, they both had been drinking and were last seen at Big Boy after the bars had closed, and left in their own vehicles. I feel no new evidence will show up, baring his missing wallet and ID, the department put alot of pressure on him but he did not crack, maybe a death bed confession sometime in the future?????

Randall Tessier February 9 at 4:02pm

Two last questions, Walker. Was Mike Angelli the lead investigator? Is he an approachable guy to talk to on this?

Best - Randy

Walker: February 10 at 10:09am

No, Sal Sarvello was lead. I would say Gordon Warchock, who is now the Det. Capt., would have the most up to date info that can be released.....

Hi Randy, A. here. Billy was my neighbor growing up. I hung out with his sisters. Billy was a little younger and hung out with my sister Mary. Billy was fine in the neighborhood but when playing hockey he was crazy. If he got in a fight, he didn't know how to stop. He would just continue beating the guy until someone pulled him off. Similar to the way Girard died.

I'm curious as to your statement "why there was never a prosecution". I also hung out with many of the cops at this time and they all wanted to get Billy - badly. We would all talk about this for hours. I can't remember a guy named Jamie. The only Jamie I know around Billy’s age was played hockey with him but I don't think he ever hung out with him. Billy hung out with a tough crowd. The person you really want to talk to is one of the Tulip boys, I think his name was Tom. He talked one night to B. and I saying Jim confessed to him.

It was such an interesting case. Still is. I always thought it should be on one of those Cold Case file shows on TV. I remember not long after it happened his sister, who I worked with, decided to leave town. She was a real sweet girl and very emotional and one day just got up and moved to Green Bay. I always figured it was because she thought her brother would get caught and she didn't want to be in town when it happened.

Girard was a piece of work. Yes, he was gay, but also a predator. He was a predator of young boys - many young boys. He was a pretty scummy piece of work. There were many fathers, uncles, grand-fathers in town who would have liked to get their hands on Girard. I'm not so sure that he was murdered because he was gay, but because he was such a predator. Whatever the case, he did not deserve to die the way he did.

They almost got Billy when his wife was going to testify against him. She backed down. Then they moved I think to the prison near the Soo where they both worked.

Let me know what else you dig up.
A.

RANDY: Thank you. Regarding your "Cold Case" mention, this seems like a tragic, but sadly fascinating story. I mean it's really about a hate crime (I don't think they used the term then). D. also grew up by the Fontaines (the dad was Lucky?) and said they were a nice family. I'm jumping around here a bit, but a woman named C. got me thinking about this (she new Girard and his family in Skandia/Gwinn). I said "why there was never a prosecution" because there never was one, right? I also heard that Girard could be a nuisance, which may be true, but it's also true that a general homophobic sentiment, much as in the case when a women gets raped, can easily evolve into a "blame the victim" mentality - not that that's what happened. Maybe Fontaine thought he was avenging Girard's victims, who knows. I'm slowly gathering stuff on this, and I'll let you in on everything I have soon.

A.: I am not homophobic but I would definitely call Girard more than a nuisance and I'm not trying to say blame the victim. Girard was a scumbag. If (I say this loosely) Billy did this, so was he. If Billy did this because he was avenging Girard's victims, I would still consider it a hate crime, however, I still consider Girard a scumbag. He should have been put in prison long before his death.

The Fontaine’s were a nice family and yes, the dad was called Lucky. I think they had seven kids.

No there never was a prosecution. From what I remember hearing they could not get enough evidence or anyone to come forward. I remember being questioned by the cops a lot about this. Not in a professional setting but personal. They wanted to hang Billy. They were really working on getting his wife to come forward. I think maybe that is why Billy got them out of town.

Dear A.:

I'm not defending Girard. "More than a nuisance," yes, I also heard there were many complaints. Yeah, it's a hate crime. If I decide to keep at this, I'd like to find out more about the criminality of Girard's history (in reference to your saying Girard belonged in prison). The Tulip family, Tom? I wonder if Jimmy Tulip was a relative?? I'm glad you're interested. Something to do when it's freezing cold outside. Treatment's been surprisingly tolerable.

Best - Randall

Hi Randal, B. here......Yes, Jimmy Tulip is Tom Tulip’s brother. A. and I gave Tom a ride home from the bar right after the murder. He was very drunk and seemed in need to "spill his guts" to someone. Tommy said that he was with Fontaine the night of the murder. He said they were in Big Bay at someone’s camp drinking many beers. Tommy said that Girards name came up and lafave went into a rage about how someone needed to do him in. tommy kept saying "I know he did it". I belive that Fontaine was very capable of doing this crime. I saw the crime scene photos, and they were truly gruesome. The perp who did this crime was not your average guy. As Girard was crawling on his belly,he was stabbed so viciously that the knife went through him and dug up dirt as he crawled away. Billy was known for his uncontrollable temper. Those of us who worked with Billy at the prison knew was capable of this. He was quite normal at work.

Randall:
On the Girard thing, your story here is pretty chilling. Your description of what the crime scene photos suggest sounds horrifying. You suspect he did it alone? I would think this is the only way the case could stay unsolved (an accomplice would have cracked). Any idea what happened to Fontaine?

Walker has been helpful on this. I don't know where I'm going with this, but I am starting to get a critical mass of material. All who remember it seem eager to talk about it, why do you think that is?

Best - Randall

B.: Hey RANDALL: I believe people are interested because of how gruesome and unbelievable this was. When Fontaine worked for me at the prison he was efficient and quiet. I knew his reputation when he was younger and had no problem believing he could be the perp. His alibi for that night was that he was with his wife. She almost flipped on him, but he talked her out of it. They both left the area to work downstate. I know the Marq. detectives continued to work on her but she clammed up and that was that.The rest of us at the prison were hoping he would be found out,he was spooky.

Dear Chuck:

Did you know him? anything about his murder? or have any recollections of the time or memories of the conversations surrounding his murder?

Best - Randy

Chuck: February 11 at 4:51pm

I met him a couple of times in the bars I guess but never liked him much. Apparently he had a habit of trolling for drunk college guys when the bars closed and just took the wrong one into the woods one night... not that it excuses anything, but I don't think anybody was overly surprised.

Randall Tessier February 11 at 5:19pm

C.’ who I didn't know prior to FB, mentioned his name, fate, and that he was from Skandia. I googled the Mining Journal article, and became curious about how such a vicious hate crime could not only slip under the radar but never be solved, I should say prosecuted. I'm considering writing a book on the case. I've talked to Marquette folks, cops and prison guards (the perp was a prison guard) that I know, and have assembled a whole bunch of material. One thread that runs through most people's recollections of him are like yours (a scumbag, one person wrote). He was always on the make and unscrupulous in his pursuits. Perhaps this is why no one cared much when it happened. Talked to a guy that saw the post-mortem photos, and yea, Chuck, he did take "the wrong one into the woods."

Best - Randy

Chuck: February 11 at 5:43pm

Sometimes people who are remembered as "...always on the make and unscrupulous in his pursuits" are pretty much just that?

Randall Tessier February 11 at 6:00pm

sometimes

Randall Tessier February 11 at 5:52pm

I'm thinking.......free associating...."studying people"....at first I sort of dismissed your "guess," but then I got to thinking it makes some sense. Why, because of certain facts of the case. To whit: the guy who did it was creepy, brutal, and obsessed (prison guard I talked to). Then I think, hey, the "sucking his dick" angle would explain the self-loathing required to do this. My question is this: Why do you assume the guy who killed him wanted his dick sucked? Couldn't he have been your garden variety homophobe out to rid the world of one more queer?

Chuck: February 11 at 6:06pm

fuck man, it could have been his 6th grade girlfriend who held a grudge... I have no idea, and simply can't muster up enough sympathy to care.

Randall Tessier February 11 at 6:09pm

Dear Chuck:

It's no big deal. As I said, I'm interested in this case, I like to write, and, like yourself, I like to keep busy. I will say this, the more I'm finding out from various sources, the more it intrigues me.

Best - Randy

Chuck: February 12, 2011 at 4:18am

Re: Paul Girard Case

that's cool, good luck in your queries. But frankly the guy wasn't in any of my social circles and about all I know about him was from serving him an occasional beer.

DISCUSS HYPER SEXUAL Stereotypes surrounding male homo/gay sexuality/ would promiscouos heterosexual female be discussed this way?

Randall Tessier February 19 at 11:20am

Dear Dave:

I'm getting the DVD back to you.

I'm interested in writing a book on the Paul Girard case. What can you & your bros. tell me about him, the family, school experience etc.

Best - Randy

Dave: February 19 at 4:52pm

There's a lot. I hung around with a bunch of guys in High School and Paul was a good friend of some of them. I knew him pretty well. If you remember the Carlson's who lived on Bluff St - Kurt, was one of Paul's best friends. I'll have to write it in another format (Word) and e-mail it to you. I think that case is still open in the Police Dept. Interesting. I'll get back to you in this one. Dave

Dear Detective Warchock:

My name is Randy Tessier. I now teach at UM in Ann arbor, but I grew
up in the Marquette/Gwinn area. As for my character, I know Walker, Richard Goad, Paul Kinville, Blake Riebolt etc. and I think
they will vouch for me. I saw a Mining Journal article from 2008 on
the Girard case, and became intrigued about what happened. As I
started asking around, I noticed people were interested in talking
about it. It struck some kind of nerve. I'm thinking about writing a
book on the case. So I've compiled some anecdotal evidence surrounding
what happened. The name BF was the thread that ran through these
stories. You probably have heard everything I have. My question is how
can I find out more about this.

Best - Randy Tessier

Randy, I don't believe I responded to your email and appologize for taking so long. The case is still classified as an open investigation. I would be willing to talk to you about the case I am not sure what I can answer. My phone number is 906-228-0400. Give me a call late in the week.

Detective Captain
Gordon J. Warchock

At this point I call Warchock, and once he knows I’m on the level, he tells me about Professor S. and a class in progress at Northern Michigan University.

Hi Randy,

It sounds like we do need to talk. I have a busy week, at least the first
half. I don't know how much Gordie told you, but as a matter of back ground
on me, I have been a police officer for 28 years, with the last 23 with the
Marquette Police Department. I began teach as an adjunct in 2007 and last
year I was offered and accepted a one year term appointment with NMU to
teach full time in their Criminal Justice Department. The Marquette Police
Department granted me a one year leave of absence to pursue my teaching
career. I love the world of academia and I gain much satisfaction knowing I
am giving back to my profession and hope I am able to give my students
something to take into the profession.

As a member of the Marquette Police Department (currently a Detective
Sergeant) there are certain unsolved case that stick in your mind. For me,
we have two unsolved murders, Paul Girard in 1988 and Erin Taylor in 2000.
Working with the University and MPD was able to develop a "Cold Case Class".
In falls under a Special Topic Class. I handpicked the best student (20)
and divided them up into 2 Cold Case Teams. Our goal is to solve these two
cases. We have access to police reports and evidence, because I am still a
member of the Police Department.

I would be happy to talk with you, again maybe toward the end of the week.

I know all of your character reference. I worked with Walker and Blake. Knew
Rich for many years and Have known Paul since I was about 10 years old. He
was my neighbor in Paw Paw and worked with my dad.

Look forward to talking.

Steve

Steven J. Snowaert
Instructor
Northern Michigan Univeristy
Marquette, Michigan 49855

106 Gries Hall
906-227-2630
ssnowaer@nmu.edu

Hi Randy...again.

I am giving your name to Tara Brin, who is my Teaching Assistant and is on
my "Cold Case" Team and is very familiar with this case. I have ask her to
contact you for me. Feel free to talk to her as if you are talking to me.
I will be contacting you, myself, but lately I have not had the time, and
information you may have may help us.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me.

Thanks.

P.S. I saw Blake and he said you're OK!

Steve

Steven J. Snowaert
Instructor
Northern Michigan Univeristy
Marquette, Michigan 49855

Dear Professor Tessier,

My name is Tara and I am Professor Snowaert's Teaching Assistant. I
understand that you are interested in the Paul Girard Case and heard that
Northern is currently conducting a Cold Case Class involving this case. As
you also know, since the case is open, we are limited on the amount of
information that we can give you. However, if you could please share the
information that you have compiled with us, we can go from there and see
if we can go more in depth based on what you already know.

Thanks!

Sincerely,
Tara Brin

SEE INFO SHARED ABOVE

Dear Professor Tessier,

First of all thank you for sharing all of the information that you have
shared with us. To answer your questions: Yes this murder happened before
the Federal Hate Crime Designation; It is hard to say if the FBI would
have gotten involved, however Professor Snowaert and I believe that they
would have helped out with case. As for the lie detector test, Billy Fontaine did not take a lie detector test for the department, but he did
take a private lie detector test in which the results are unknown to us
for obvious reasons.

Some questions for you, if you are able to answer them: 1) Do you know or
can you share with us A and B real names? 2) Do you know the last name of
the Jamie that is referred to?

Thanks and hope to hear from you soon.

Tara

Dear Ms. Brin (Tara):

You’re welcome. A fun read for you, I'm sure.

I think one of your colleagues/classmates, Lindsay, friended me on facebook. Cool, now she can friend Zack Novak, Denard Robinson, and Carl Hagelin.

My point. Journalistic, and more importantly, the obligations of friendship, ...blah, blah, blah...

Here's the deal. Whatever may be on a FB thread is public domain anyway. I'm not removing any posts, so whatever.

The conversations with the prison guard, "scumbag," "Tommy Tulip," and Jamie references won't be there (they're not on FB, but you've got what I got).

I think the Jamie angle may be just an unrelated psycho thing. I'll try to find out more.

Lastly, you know many of the cops I know. THINK, ladies. Might they know a prison guard Randy Tessier knows?

WHERE IS FONTAINE?

Best - Randy

Dear Professor Tessier,

Yes you are correct it was a fun and interesting read. ANd I will
defiantly keep thinking. As to where Billy Fontaine, he is as far away from
Marquette as you can get without leaving the United States. He is in
Honolulu, Hawaii.

Please keep me posted if you dig up anything else as will I.

Thanks again!

Tara

Hi Randy,

Thank you for your help so far. I wanted to let you know that this is more
than an "interesting study" to me. Paul Girard was killed while I was
working as a patrolman with the Marquette Police. In a lot of ways I look
at myself and that night and "I didn't do my job." Yes, as a police officer
you cannot be everywhere, but still it bothers me. I am now a Det. Sgt and
when my leave of absence is up, I will be going back to the department and
it is my intent to official re-open these cases. Information that this
"class" obtains will assist me in solving these cases.

There are people up here that do care, and I am one.

We do appreciate your help. Thank You.

Keep in touch.

Steve

Dear Det. Snowaert( Steve):

I don't know if you looked at the entire message I sent Tara. The point of asking if this was going to be more than an academic exercise was to ask WHAT IT WOULD TAKE TO move this forward. Who has to testify? The ex-wife? are those people being periodically questioned. As I said, if you look at the last e-mail, I'm wondering how the guy can be brought to justice.

Best - Randy

Great Questions Randy.

We need witnesses to come forth. More than one. I don't know what it would
take, but the more the better. Many people have not been talked to in years
and some....never at all. That is a main reason I started this. It is
truly been a "cold case". So, I am taking it all in right now and you have
been a help and I thank you for that. Anything you can provide will be
helpful and I will keep you in the loop as much as I can. If any of the
ones that are talking to you would be willing to talk to me (face to face)
that would be very helpful. That would allow us to evacuate what they are
saying. Someone knows something that would be very valuable to this
case....We just need to find that person.

Steve

Steven J. Snowaert
Instructor
Northern Michigan Univeristy
Marquette, Michigan 49855

Paul Girard, Me, Egypt and Socialism

2011-02-04T09:00:00.013-05:00

"Bigotry may be roughly defined as the anger of men who have no opinions."
-- G.K. Chesterton 1874-1936 "Heretics" (1905)

Randall Tessier

HEROES: DAVID KATO
NYTimes: Ugandan Who Spoke Up for Gays Is Beaten to Death
NAIROBI, Kenya — David Kato knew he was a marked man.
As the most outspoken gay rights advocate in Uganda, a country where homophobia is so severe that Parliament is considering a bill to execute gay people, Mr. Kato had received a stream of death threats. On Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Kato was beaten to death with a hammer.See More

A few months ago, a Ugandan newspaper ran an antigay diatribe with Mr. Kato’s picture on the front page under a banner urging, “Hang Them.”
“David’s death is a result of the hatred planted in Uganda by U.S. evangelicals in 2009,” Val Kalende..., the chairwoman of one of Uganda’s gay rights groups, said in a statement. “The Ugandan government and the so-called U.S. evangelicals must take responsibility for David’s blood.”

C.: Did you know Paul Girard from Gwinn H.S. (or Marquette)? He was a good friend of mine. His parents were also my neighbors. His murder, 22 years ago, has never been solved.

Randall Tessier

The main reason I left Marquette in 1971 was because I felt there was no future there for a musician who wanted to get somewhere. Culturally, Ann Arbor seemed the logical choice. What made it a no-brainer is that the prosecutor advised me t...o leave town or else. I had been in court trying to overturn my expulsion (and lost) for my underground newspaper at Gwinn, "The Liberal Student Dispatch." I was also a political counter-culture figure who was set up for a pot-bust. They gave me 60 days, 54 of which were in solitary. Upon my release our whole band (Walrus) moved to Ann Arbor. I've been here ever since. Your back story on how the paper and police handled it is too sad for words.

C.: That sounds like a really horrible experience. I'd be really curious to know what Gwinn H.S. considered unacceptable enough to expel a student in 1971. (That is, if it's fit to print here. lol)

Randall Tessier

Dear C.:

1969 was the time. I had started the debate (forensics) team at GHS with the special ed. teacher, Marilyn Kocsis. She was subsequently fired. Since I lived on the base, and had passed out 25 badly mimeographed copies of the L...SD, the Air Force got involved, kicked the family off the base, and banished me from all military installations from that time hence. Marilyn's husband, a legal aid lawyer, took my case and we lost.

M.: If the culprit will kill someone for sexual orientation, he will certainly kill in order to avoid life in the 'Carp River College,' won't he. Witnesses have survival instincts too.

My bandmate is the head of the Oakland Crime Lab.* Aside fr...om extreme budget problems, their biggest problem is witness silence. Open your mouth, close the book! The risk of harm to the witness and/or loved ones is too great. They WANT to help, but they can't.

* She would like one of those magic blue lights and would also appreciate DNA turnaround within twenty minutes. She doubts that will happen. She is also never first on scene with a sidearm drawn; she doesn't HAVE a sidearm. She does, however, play a helluva guitar and sings and writes very well.

C.: Randall, I'm going to have to tell that story to my youngest son, who recently transferred to MSHS after being unable to start a forensics team last year at Gwinn. (He'd been a state finalist in multiples during 10th grade, when he attended Birmingham Seaholm.)

It's amazing that the Air Force would penalize your entire family for something a child wrote! But, that was wartime, and I remember our country being riven by extremes, a bit like now (and in probably quite the opposite of your experience, since I grew up in Ann Arbor). Interesting acronym, somewhat subversive-sounding... hmmm...

Randall Tessier I so wish I had a copy. After the Walrus moved to Ann Arbor in 1972, a grad student at UM doing her dissertation on subversive media (underground newspapers) contacted me about getting a copy. I'm guessing she found some of the stuff in the Mining Journal about the case's disposition in circuit court. I can tell you that the L,S,and D where in tacky block letters with the flags's stars and bars as an interior pattern. The principal at the time was Henry Sherry.

C.: I wonder if the school would still have a copy. That belongs in an archive! My exhusband did some volunteer work for the historical society, and he said Gwinn's social history was a bit sanitized, so I doubt they'd have one. Might be one in your court file... which I may go pull...

Randall Tessier I would love to see those old headlines. A word about the base. The locals who were there when the base was in full cold war bloom, Suardinis et.al., will never forget it. It brought a certain worldliness to Gwinn that's now a remnant of another time.

EGYPT

Keith The U.S. once again has been in bed with another oppressive regime.

Randall Tessier In bed, more like flagrante delicto. Everyone's focusing on Obama's comment that Mubarak should "refrain from any violence against peaceful protesters." But when these riots first started the rhetoric included the caveat that the PROTESTERS should be restrained in their methods, which I read as a coded message meant to contain the riots to the extent that political control by our puppet-stooge, Mubarak, would be maintained.

Mike I hope so, too, but if the Muslim Brotherhood gains power, it is like going from the frying pan to the skillet.

Randall Tessier That's funny, Mike. "the frying pan to the skillet." Whether you intended it or not, that's the catch-22. To quote Huck Finn (actually Twain) on the value of moral pragmatism: "do whichever come handiest at the time." Meaning, when there's no difference between Mubarak's "frying pan" and the Muslim Brotherhood's "skillet," you've got nothing to lose and everything to gain by taking it to the street.

Pat

Benjamin, refering to the pundit statement above...I guess that all depends on whether you're talkin tier 1 reality, (that which we can readily see and try to understand, although we the populace may disagree on problems and solutions), in ...which they, the pundits are reasonably accurate to the extent that variations in possibilities do exist; or tier 2 reality, in which they (the pundits) are dually effective and perhaps most importantly keeping us distracted from that which is really going on.//Randall, whats equally funny is the other catch-22 you/Mike mention. Mubarak's frying pan and Brotherhood Skillet, sounds an awful lot like the same posture we resemble.//Benjamin, (tier 2) IS undoubtley delivering, perhaps 'Who is in power?' is more appropriate. {puppet-stooge, that's good, I'll have to remember that one}

SOCIALISM

Dave: Democracy has always been a Socialistic democracy since its inception. To think otherwise is to put your head in the sand.

A quick example:
...Private insurance companies/all insurance companies are no more than a form of Socialism, yet nobody says a word about that. People that don't, or have not gotten sick yet, are paying for those that do. The bigger the pool, the cheaper the premium. Period.
So saying---I believe healthcare is a right and not a privilege.
Your family or mine is no better than the guy busting his ass for minimum wage providing services the rest of us need.
Problem is, he/she is living check to check, and can no more afford healthcare than the man in the moon.
He should be able to have the same health insurance as the rest of us!
1 in every 7 Americans earns below the poverty level.
Health insurance isn't even a gleam in their collective eyes!
Yes, the government has an obligation to see to the welfare of its citizens health. We're the only industrialized nation in the world that doesn't.
Our infant mortality rate ranks us about 25-30, somewhere in there, if memory serves. worse than 3rd world countries. Our life expectancy is way down, too, and yet we spend almost twice as much per capita as any other country that provides its citizens with healthcare. Private insurance ripoff and greed!
If taking pop machines and junk food machines out of schools is mandated by the government---all I can say is-----FINALLY!
Bring it on!

The list of Socialistically enhanced programs, grants, and otherwise in this country is long....very long, and yet, I guess all THAT kind of Socialistic stuff is OK with you?

Tom:. Socialists get so defensive so quickly. I was only talking about burgers and desserts. You took it way off topic. I'm gonna have some ice cream now.

Dave: From a discussion of the definition of a hero to you inserting how government wants to regulate subversive food choices?

You were on topic?

Nice try, but quite laughable... -:)

Tom:

To bring it back on topic, my friend, you are a hero of the socialist revolution. My hat is off to you.

I think it was first our friendly host who commented that he occasionally succumbs when confronted with the temptation of a burger at Hardee's. Not sure what that has to do with heroism, but I merely commented that his opportunities may be short lived, which you then defended by articulating why it is in fact best for the government to restrict what we eat, among other things.

I was merely stating that Randy's opportunities to be a hero and eat a burger once in a while might be endangered. So, while I am unclear as to who took us off topic, I willingly plead to guilty to that crime if it makes you feel better, my friend.

Meanwhile, I will have Buffalo Wild Wings, Cheese and crackers, more than one glass of wine with a meal, and a rare (in terms of frequency and cooking severity) burger while I still can, until you win.

God help us all when you do.

I retract that last statement, since that would take us off topic, a crime which I do not want to be guilty of more than once!

Randall Tessier

ATTN: NOTHING IS EVER OFF TOPIC!!!

Every human being deserves to be cared for when they are sick.

The argument is this: the government shouldn't mandate that a person MUST have health care. Ok, so that same poor, misguided patriot (the rich ...have no need of medical coverage) who is against "socialism" then goes to the emergency room. Here, we do the right thing morally (so far), which is to care for the sick (Jesus' idea). Which, facts have shown, is much MORE expensive than universal health care.

Yesterday the Republicans said they wanted to pass deficit reductions. Fine, a worthy idea, BUT, they offered NO CUTS in the military or homeland security budgets. Is this right? So my question is this: does it bother us more to provide medical care for the poor and needy than it does to produce weapons -- many of which are used to kill young American men and women?

So we give Hamid Karzai the money while one of the victims (Randy Gardner) injured in the Tuscon shootings has to pay a $10.000.00 deductible?

As to "what's good for us" and "who should decide": are we saying that cancers and other horrible diseases might be good for us, depending on one's subjective view (would this apply to their children). This smacks of the kind of cultural relativism (good, bad, right, wrong are all subjective assessments) at the heart of both the right and the left's irreconcilable differences.

Caring for our sick brothers and sisters is a GOOD thing. And this agenda should be a top priority. First CAT and PET scanners, THEN airport body scanners.

Love - Randy

Day 3 ???

2011-01-30T12:43:00.010-05:00

"I guess -- what may happen is what keeps us alive. We want to see tomorrow"
-- John Steinbeck 1902-68: Letter to Carlton Shefield, 16 October 1952

Top to bottom - Cartier Bresson, Arbus Twins, Aaron Huey, Taryn Wilson, Matt Eich

Day 1: About Interferon & Ribavirin

2011-01-29T09:55:00.010-05:00

"The best sentence in the English language is not 'I love you' but 'It's benign'."
-- Woody Allen 1935-- : "Deconstructing Harry" (1998 film)

Took the shot last night, pills this morning, and I feel fine. Cool

INTERFERON

The interferons have been synthesized using recombinant DNA technology.

The goal of interferon therapy is to eradicate a virus from an infected person. Using interferon, for example, to eradicate the hepatitis B or C virus will, it is hoped, prevent the future development of cirrhosis and cancer of the liver. This may require months and even years of interferon treatment and may not be effective in many patients.

In therapeutic doses, interferon can be hard to tolerate because of the side-effects, with flu-like symptoms such as fatigue, headache and aches and, less regularly, low thyroid activity, arthritis, low platelet count and depression which can attain suicidal proportions.

Interferon was discovered in 1957 by the Alick Isaacs and Jean Lindenmann (who did not receive the Nobel Prize for their discovery). Interferon is so named because of its ability to interfere with virus reproduction.

Ribavirin

Ribavirin is used with another medication called an interferon to treat hepatitis C. Ribavirin is in a class of antiviral medications called nucleoside analogues. It works by stopping the virus that causes hepatitis C from spreading inside the body. Ribavirin is also sometimes used to treat viral hemorrhagic fevers (viruses that can cause bleeding inside and outside of the body, problems with many organs, and death). In the event of biological warfare, ribavirin may be used to treat viral hemorrhagic fever that has been spread deliberately. Ribavirin is also sometimes used to treat severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS; a virus that may cause breathing problems, pneumonia, and death).

A naturally occurring substance that interferes with the ability of viruses to reproduce. Interferon also boosts the immune system.

There are a number of different interferons. They fall into three main classes : alpha, beta, and gamma. All are proteins (lymphokines) normally produced by the body in response to infection. The interferons have been synthesized using recombinant DNA technology.

Best - Randy Tessier

(peginterferon alfa-2a) & COPEGUS® (ribavirin, USP) for Hepatitis C Treatment

2011-01-28T08:40:00.007-05:00

“An illness in stages, a very long flight of steps that led assuredly to death, but whose every step represented a unique apprenticeship. It was a disease that gave death time to live and its victims time to die, time to discover time, and in the end to discover life.”

-- Herve Guibert 1955-91: “To the Friend who did not Save my Life” (1991)

DAY 1

HEPATITIS C

“Current treatment is a combination of pegylated interferon-alpha-2a or pegylated interferon-alpha-2b (brand names Pegasys or PEG-Intron) and the antiviral drug ribavirin for a period of 24 or 48 weeks, depending on the hepatitis C virus genotype.”

Journey or adventure? We shall see. Tonight I begin the treatment for the Hep C I’ve carried since the 70s.

I started this blog in 2007 when I was diagnosed with non-hodgkins lymphoma. Then, as now, I had no idea what to expect. Rather than certainty -- a persistent myth of being we are both hard-wired and culturally trained to buy into -- there were only questions. What would the chemo be like? Would it work? Was I going to die?

Realistically speaking, I suppose one’s fate is less a journey or adventure than simply what is. But we live rather than simply exist via narratives: the stories we tell ourselves and others that make life make sense. Then, as now, I can only adopt that cavalier attitude which belies the fear and insecurity at the heart of our mortality.

“The treatment may be physically demanding, particularly for those with a prior history of drug or alcohol abuse. It can qualify for temporary disability in some cases. A substantial proportion of patients will experience a panoply of side effects ranging from a 'flu-like' syndrome (the most common, experienced for a few days after the weekly injection of interferon) to severe adverse events including anemia, cardiovascular events and psychiatric problems such as suicide or suicidal ideation. The latter are exacerbated by the general physiological stress experienced by the patient.”

Then, as now, I will keep you posted.

Love - Randy

IMAGES: Top painting: Dana Schutz "Death Comes To All"; Lower right, Wangechi Mutu

aMeRiKa

2011-01-26T09:50:00.013-05:00

"The organization of American society is an interlocking system of semi-monopolies notoriously venal, an electorate notoriously unenlightened, misled by mass media notoriously phony."
-- Paul Goodman "The Community of Scholars" (1962)

Bravo to the The New York Times for publishing Adam Hochschild's January 17 op-ed, An Assassination's Long Shadow. The piece marked the 50th anniversary of an event long forgotten in the United States: the U.S.-sponsored removal and murder of a democratically elected leader in Africa. Three days after the murder, our own democratically elected leader--one who would meet a similar fate--was sworn in as the 35th President of the United States.

Sarah Louise Palin; née Heath; born February 11, 1964) i

s an American politician, author, speaker, and political news commentator who was the youngest person and the first woman elected Governor of Alask a.

Julia Margaret Cameron (11 June 1815 – 26 January 1879) was a British photographer. She became known for her portraits of celebrities of the time, and for photographs with Arthurian and other legendary themes.

Helene Bertha Amalie "Leni" Riefenstahl ( August 1902 – 8 September 2003) was a German film director, actress and dancer widely noted for her aesthetics and innovations as a filmmaker. Her most famous film was Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the Will), a propaganda film made at the 1934 Nuremberg congress of the Nazi Party. In the 1970s Riefenstahl published her still photography of the Nuba tribes in Sudan in several books such as The Last of the Nuba.

George Condo (b. 1957 in Concord, New Hampshire, USA) is an American contemporary visual artist.

Winter Threads

2011-01-23T12:04:00.005-05:00

“I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.”

-- Blaise Pascal 1623-62 “Lettres Provincials” (1657)

We're of like minds on the liability of being the world policeman. As for Obama being a dove, not so. As is becoming more and more apparent, he is a politician whose number one priority is getting reelected. Also, why defer to him?... Privy to what? For better or for worse, Assange has wikileaked much of the "detailed analysis" you speak of, which offers no good reasons for O.'s insane troop surge. His reasoning had nothing to do with strategic or tactical success, and everything to do with the fact no Dove has ever one a second term. Finally, yes, the "misery here at home" is on its way. But the "cuts in virtually all other areas," which I assume means social services" are what will hasten it, not forestall it. The repressed hostility of a middle and working class bound for the bottom (we're already seeing this with the Tea Party and various Libertarian movements) aren't going to passively suffer and bear while the corporate fat cats feast and debauch. Something will give.

The issue in all of this should be about Gun Control. It wouldn't hurt any of us to revisit Michael Moore's Oscar winning documentary, "Bowling For Columbine." As I write this (my desk is next to my closet), my trusty Remington 300, 12 gauge, semi-automatic, 5 shot (one slug, one buckshot, one birdshot and two goose loads) shotgun stands loaded next to me, as it has for the last 35 years. My point is not that I'm against guns, but who needs a 30 shot banana clip Glock? What hunter needs this, and what homeowner wouldn't favor his 12 gauge over a pistol in a confrontation with an intruder. Lastly, think about the human beings, with all of their foibles, that we meet as we walk through life. Would we really want everyone to be walking around with a loaded weapon on them. I, for one, think not.

Given the Machiavellian notions of war cycles being inevitable, as you say Mr. X, "the destiny of things," what country would possibly say we'll give up on developing nuclear weapons, especially to a country (us) that has tens-of-thou...sands of them. Also, the nonchalant tone that we're "long overdue" for some "bad stuff" belies a certain assumption that America always comes out on top. The worm is turning, my friend, and every empire has its twilight. As Marx noted long ago, and as a look at history affirms, commerce and market forces always dictate who wins and who loses. There is a New World Order coalescing, a bad storm on the horizon, a new paradigm. What Bush failed to do was put us in a global position where the forces that are now displacing the United States as the ultimate world power might look kindly on us, where the countries we're at the mercy of won't hate us and our high tech cruelties (unmanned drones) and our low tech immoralities (human torture). But he didn't, and our children will reap the whirlwind.

The 2nd amendment, hmmmm? That's the one by the FOUNDING FATHERS, right? Aren't they the ones who wrote "We hold these truths to be self evident , that all men are created equal." Damn, they forgot to put the word "white" between the "all" and "men" (forget women). after all, the reason they could party in Philly, and attend the Constitutional Congress, is because their slaves were back home tending to their plantations. Sincerely - Sally Hemmings

I think you folks are around my age, 50-60ish -- old enough to remember the most boring topics when we were younger. I'm talking about those stories when the dude relates a long-winded tale about how high he got (snore). Also sex stories (snore). Don't get me wrong, I like to get high, and fuck, sometimes together. But talking about these subjects is downright BORING. I see discussions about gun types and kill ratios as fitting the category of just do it don't talk about it: The politics of gun ownership and its social ramifications, yes; but my guns bigger than your gun, no. I noticed not a peep about my FOUNDING FATHERS post. Chikinshitz!

Irrelevant? Sounds like a Tea Bagger. I agree the Founder's ideas must be taken in context. What's scary is when you have people in influential positions, like Supreme Court Justice's Antonio Scalia and Clarence white, that see the Constitution as something to be taken literally. Nothing wrong with being rich, Bob, there are just some things money can' buy, like talent. In that regard, it's really too bad that some rich folks, like Rush, Palin, and Glenn can't use their money to buy a personality. Now get to work.

True. But time should in no way inform our aesthetic judgment. Whether it takes a second or a decade has nothing to do with beauty or sublimity (the difference between those concepts has a long tradition). Some would say painting is less mi...metic than photography. One of the assumptions made about photography is that it is less subjective than painting. I disagree with this for the very reason you mention: the camera is directed by the hand, just as the brush is. To me, being a good painter requires more skill than being a good photographer, although they can both be artistically beautiful.

re: the ideology/science dichotomy. I too grappled with this in my response. The big question here is how do we define IDEOLOGY? I see them (science & religion) as polarities, also. The conundrum that pops up, then, is how d...o we explain the aspects of consciousness and human experience that science can't explain? In ruminating on this, consider my positions: I AM AN AVOWED AND UNAPOLOGETIC ATHEIST!!! The godz and god-systems man has constructed have inevitably been used to justify the very worst atrocities the human race has historically perpetrated on itself (the Crusades, Inquisitions, early European Missionaries, Irish Catholics and Protestants, and fanatic Jihadists). SO! Please provide your definition of an ideology, does it have to do with the suffix, ...ism, does it have to do with all isms?
Peace, brother.

Science requires imagination; religion requires faith. I suppose faith could be defined as a kind of imagination, but, unlike science, it is an imagination derived from received concepts that require absolutely NO ORIGINAL THOUGHT. We accept religious beliefs and take them as faith, or gospel, if you prefer, because we have been told to.

Images, Top to Bottom: Schorr, Picasso, Bendickson, and Meyer

Religion & Literature

2010-12-29T11:41:00.002-05:00

"Every winter Fox News, seeking to stir up anger through the land, uncovers evidence of a war on Christmas. Secular humanists ignorant of religion and hostile to its traditions, someone in the studio will declare, want us to say “Happy Holiday” or give Kwanzaa equal standing. But Christmas, as its name suggests, is about Christ. These enemies of Christianity will stop at nothing to get their way. Not even Santa Claus is sacred to them.

Actually, as the brilliant French social scientist Olivier Roy points out in “Holy Ignorance,” it is those defending Christmas who are not being true to their traditions and teachings. There are no Christmas dinners in the Bible, which is why America’s Puritans, strict adherents of what that venerated text offers, never sat down by the raging fire awaiting St. Nick; indeed, they briefly banned Christmas in Massachusetts.

Yule as we celebrate it today owes more to Charles Dickens than to Thomas Aquinas. Our major solstice holiday is what Roy calls a “cultural construct” rather than a sectarian ceremony, which explains why Muslims buy halal turkeys and Jews transformed Hanukkah into a gift-giving occasion. Mistakenly believing that Christmas is sacred, those who defend it find themselves propping up the profane. The Christ they want in Christmas is a product not of Nazareth but of Madison Avenue."

-- From Alan Wolfe's review of Oliver Roy's "Holy Ignorance"

"Broadly speaking, Western literature — the poems, plays and stories told from Moscow to Buenos Aires, from the “Iliad” and the “Odyssey” to “The Corrections” and “Freedom,” with postcolonial contributions from India and South Africa and even more far-flung parts of the conquered globe — can be divided into two traditions. The first, what we might call the canonical or public or, more generously, the democratic tradition, finds its roots in ancient Greece, and traces a fairly straightforward line through Rome and the Renaissance and the European colonization of the Americas and other parts of the world. This is a literature that measures itself in successive aesthetic innovations, in language that, however manipulated, finds its idiom in the vernacular rather than the orthodox, and in an increasingly representative cast of characters and behaviors, from early ecumenical existentialism (the acts of the gods and their consequences for kings and heroes) to the domestic dramas of Tolstoy and García Márquez and Toni Morrison and Salman Rushdie. In other words, it encompasses about 99 percent of all books.

In contrast to this is a tradition that begins more or less with the novel itself, i.e., “Don Quixote” (although the case can be made that it also starts with Homer, albeit with the brooding Achilles, whose actions are motivated by nothing beyond the immediate satisfaction or alleviation of some need, rather than the equally selfish Odysseus, whose every deed is calculated to secure fame after death), and wends its way through various misfits, misanthropes and criminals constitutionally incapable of resigning themselves to the social contract: Cervantes’s Don Quixote, Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, Dostoyevsky’s underground man, Knut Hamsun’s self-starving doppelgänger in “Hunger.” In lieu of offering a rational critique of the world they inhabit, the antiheroes of the second tradition simply hate or reject it, just as their creators, far from seeing literature as a tool for cultural or even individual salvation, write only to give voice to a sense of alienation from oneself, one’s peers and one’s place in history.

On the one hand, the writers of the alienating tradition can be said to keep the writers of the democratic tradition honest, deflating the hyperbolic claims to which writers and critics have grown increasingly prone in the absence of a teleological basis for literature; but, more concretely, these writers are also responsible for articulating the ennui/anxiety/weltschmerz that we now regard as the core of postmodern existential identity. From Hamsun we get Kafka, from Kafka we get Beckett, from Beckett we get Bernhard; as yet there is no worthy successor to the line — Roberto Bolaño maybe, or maybe Dennis Cooper, although Bolaño might have died too soon and Cooper lived too long to secure that place.

It was Cooper, in his introduction to Brad Gooch’s fine 1984 collection, “Jailbait,” who talked about a “widespread disbelief in a future and refusal to learn from the past,” a sensibility that he called Punk and that produced “luminous texts” filled with “inordinately real (as opposed to literary) experience.” This, as neatly as anything else, sums up the difference between the traditions I’ve just outlined, and the need for both. If the democratic tradition continually updates the individual’s relationship to society, enabling the peaceful coexistence of private psyches with public consciousness, the alienating tradition reminds us that such constructs and relationships are necessary conveniences, and that no amount of clothing or culture can enable us to escape man’s nature — and man’s fate — as just another animal subject to the gross processes of lust and hunger, micturition and egestion, the permanent nothing of death. If the first tradition is ego and superego, the second is pure id; or, to borrow another Freudian metaphor, if the first is civilization, the second is its discontents. Freud taught us that the consequence of ignoring our “cultural uneasiness” is, on the individual level, neurosis, and, on the social, world war. Freud’s world war was the first, but Bernhard’s was the second, which is to say, Freud was writing to explain what had happened in the hopes of forestalling another such conflagration, whereas Bernhard, having seen the unthinkable happen again, could only lament."

-- From "The Alienator" Dale Peck's review of Thomas Bernhard's work

Me and Timmy Mcgee

2010-12-17T08:10:00.009-05:00

“Life is a great surprise. I do not

see why death should not be an even greater one.”

-- Vladimir Nabokov 1899-1977: “Pale Fire” (1962)

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

I first met Tim Mcgee around 1960. Our family, the Tessiers, had moved from what was then French Morocco in North Africa to Marquette, Michigan. We lived in the Elizabeth Apartments on 123 West Ridge Street (that space is now the parking lot just west of the Peter White Public Library). Right below and behind our house was St. John’s elementary school, where my brothers, sister, Nancy, and I, attended grades 1 – 8.

One of my first friends, Gary Martin, lived right next to SJS on Bluff Street. And so it was the Martin and Tessier boys would play guns together in the woods behind the Northland Hotel, and Gary and myself, Randy, became fast friends. At the time, I thought Hoot Martin, Gary’s dad, was just about the biggest, strongest, hardest working guy (he delivered coal) in the world. He was like a real life “Big Bad John.” Never drank or swore, although he did have a stash of “Argosy,” “True,” and “Stag” magazines hidden away above his workshop.

Both of us being Catholics, you might think Gary also attended St. John’s, after all the school was right next door to his house. Not so, for you see, Gary went to St. Peter’s, which, while not far away, landed him with an entirely different cohort of pals, one of which was Timothy Mcgee.

It was at the Bishop Baraga Roller Rink that Gary introduced Tim and I, and that began a life long friendship that saw us move from our boyhood days of peanut butter/mustard sandwiches and Suicides (a Coke, 7 Up, and Orange pop mix); to our 20s and 30s, those headier times of entrepreneurial schemes, sports, and music, bachelor basketball and golf; into our 40s and beyond, a time of family and watching our children grow up; and finally to this.

From the beginning, Tim and I had a special, but simple, unspoken bond: we were always each other’s biggest fans. Whenever I lost confidence in the world, or myself, Mcgee was there with support and encouragement. Our mutual admiration society never faltered, and it served us well. While I have always had a passion for music, it has taken many years to achieve even moderate skills at playing and singing. I say this because in those early days, Mcgee was always supportive and genuinely interested in what I was doing, no matter how bad it sucked. But it wasn’t just about me. It was about our group, “Walrus,” as well. I remember one time we had a gig at “Uncle Otto’s Ballroom” in Rhinelander, Wisconsin. Mcgee volunteered to chauffer some of us in his Corvair. Right after leaving Marquette the gas line sprung a leak. No problem, Tim took a piece of chewing gum and plugged the hole. That patch job got us all the way there and back. When we moved to Ann Arbor in 1972, Tim came along. He was part roadie, songwriter (Rosie Palm Blues), and overall group mentor.

I always marveled at Tim’s athleticism, innovative ideas, and devotion to his friends. His skill at cards, magic, pool, and working with his hands in general, never failed to fascinate and intrigue me and whoever else was around. One time we walked into the pool hall in the Michigan Union and staged a scene right out of “The Hustler.” He was Fast Eddie and I was his money-man. I pulled out a wad of ones wrapped in a $50 bill and challenged all comers to play some 9 Ball with my man. We won. In fact, turns out he beat a dude that - unbeknownst to us at the time - was a highly ranked amateur in Michigan. Like many who crossed the Bridge before him -- but lasting longer than most -- he finally succumbed to the call of the north and returned to the Queen City.

For a time he had a store in the old Monkey Wards on Washington Street, where he offered up beautifully crafted original pieces. Whether it involved wax, wood, or glass, Tim was always making things. The Birdseye maple pool cues, driftwood sand candles, and Redwood tables he made at various stages of his life stand as physical symbols of the unique person he was. His capacity to adapt to whatever circumstance confronted him; his commitment to family and friends; his willingness to help a stranger; his upbeat attitude in the face of the worst; these qualities are emblematic of the indefatigable spirit he’s engendered in all of us who knew him.

Had I the skills to write a poem like Auden’s, I wouldn’t have to fumble with such a wholly inadequate prose narrative as above to convey my deep, and now anguished, affection for Mcgee.

Love & Peace, Mcgee -- Randy

POLITICAL BLOG: FACEBOOK THREADS 1

2010-11-23T08:21:00.009-05:00

FACEBOOK THREADS
"The wish to hurt, the momentary intoxication with pain, is the loophole through which the pervert climbs into the mind of ordinary men.
- Jacob Bronowski 1908-74: The Face of Violence (1954)

"The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell."
- Bertrand Russell 1872-1970 Sceptical Essays (1928)

ON TORTURE

· Dan W. Cook So army rangers can be waterboarded during train but the people at war with us are out of bounds?

November 18 at 3:05pm

·Randall Tessier

Dear Danny:

Would we want our enemies to torture our soldiers? Also, in their mind, doesn't our torturing them legitimate their torturing us. Lastly, I suspect that enduring waterboarding when you know it is a training exercise is a bit different than being tormented at the hands of a real enemy.

Best - Randy

November 18 at 3:09pm

·Marilyn Tallio Duran Under torture you'd say anything...wouldn't hold up in court. Duh!

November 18 at 9:01pm

Tom S. Quite true... some would rather allow our enemies to slaughter our innocents than bring them to justice, if it makes them uncomfortable in the process. God help us all (I realize that means nothing to most reading this comment) if we fall to this line of thinking. Oooops, correction - we already have. This mass murderer is found innocent of murder.

November 18 at 11:07pm

Randall Tessier

Dear Tom: My objection to torture doesn't make me any less patriotic than you. In fact, this terrorist gangster, Ghailani, is guilty and would have been found as such had the charges not been thrown out BECAUSE he was tortured. We do agree ...on one thing, the worst thing we do is to slaughter one another (Thou shalt not kill). It's no accident that you use the word "innocent," a part of my pride in being an American has to do with our justice system and the fact that you or I, should we be charged with a crime, like murder, would stand trial under the presumption that we are innocent until proven guilty. what that means is that should we be tortured before a verdict is rendered, our prosecutors would essentially be torturing a potentially innocent person. As for Ghailani's future, he will do twenty to life in a "supermax" federal prison where he will spend more time in solitary and enjoy fewer privileges that those under the most restrictive measures at Guantanamo. Lastly, we Americans pride ourselves on love of country AND our foundational Christian principles, one of which says, "do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

November 19 at 7:39am

Tom S.

Randy, Just to clarify, I don't feel that your opinion makes you any less patriotic. The beauty of our democracy is that we are all allowed to have opinions, express them, and vote for for those who favor them. In my opinion, the guilty mas...s murderer wasn't excused because of the interrogation techniques, but because a weak-minded government administration lacked the intestinal fortitude to treat him for what he was. I also believe those techniques saved lives. I realize that some would equate America with Al Qaeda but to my mind, there is a huge difference. However, I respect your opinion and appreciate your passion. As an independent, I personally prefer to see the pendulum somewhere around the center of its swing, rather than at either end. I think that is the story of the last two elections. It's now the independents that control the outcome, much to the chagrin of the left and right. I like to think of us as "Equal Opportunity Offenders". Take care, hope to see you sometime soon.See More

13 hours ago

Randall Tessier

OK, so we treat (torture) a person "for what he [is]." The moral question then becomes, should we pursue these "interrogation techniques" knowing that there will inevitably be a few innocents tortured? Is that acceptable to you? Also, I ass...ume your stance on this implies a tacit approval that our enemies exercise the same "intestinal fortitude" in inflicting torture techniques on our sons and daughters. I don't "equate America with Al Qaeda," but it makes no difference whether one is a Frenchman, Englishman, Iraqi, or Yooper, we are all equal as human beings in the eyes of God. Finally, should there be any rules of war? Perhaps the whole issue is an antiquated idea anchored in some romantic notion that rules of civility can be applied to immoral violence of the highest order. But wait a minute, isn't that the way our enemies think in indiscriminately flying jets into skyscrapers and randomly blowing up innocent men, women, and children? Best - Randy

15 minutes ago

ON GEORGE W. BUSH’S LEGACY

· David Andrew Speer Isnt it about time to stop picking on Bush?

Saturday at 5:25pm

Sunday at 5:40am

Robert Ojala Glantz To quote Kim French: "Lots of not, tons of none." I'll quit picking on the Chimp when he's behind bars for war crimes and we've repaired the immense damage he did to our nation.

Sunday at 9:10am

David Andrew Speer Well I guess its true that people still pick on Clinton and Kennedy and Nixon: it never stops on either side.

Sunday at 9:14am

Gerald Kippola How about the 100,000 wounded out of iraq-is it time for them to
forget 'the' dubya? How about the civilian wounded?

Sunday at 9:59am

David Andrew Speer I didnt say forget, I said grow up! the presidents are not that different from each other, hasnt Obama expanded the war in Afganistan? how many people has he killed in the last 2 years? Is he a war criminal?

Sunday at 10:04am

Gerald Kippola Don't take your fox news glasses off if you are not ready for a reality burst

Sunday at 10:42am

Randall Tessier Grow up? That's your answer to the friends and relatives of the hundreds and thousands of dead human beings who have been murdered. And for what? Considering the cost and consequence of the war, would it be worth the life of your son or daughter. This thread is about one man's decisions, and his responsibility in making those choices. If you would like to talk about Lincoln, Hoover, or Obama, that's another conversation. Go tell Pat Tilman's parents to "grow up."

Sunday at 10:48am

David Andrew Speer I'm saying it is silly to attack Bush, he didnt do anything different war wise than any other President did, has done and will do -- I think its a lot of artificial anger over the victims because people dont like Bush's other programs, the evidense of that is the liberals dont attack (often or with as much vehemence) the Democratic presidents that are in office while people die, as for example Obama.

Sunday at 11:26am

Gerald Kippola Keep believing your pile of stinkin horseshit. Your delusion suits you.

Sunday at 11:45am

· Brigitte

‎"Silly to attack?" "Artificial anger over victims?"

How sad.

When we, as a country, have lost the capacity to question the motives and actions of the government -- regardless of party affiliation -- or criticize those who do, then we are ...neglecting to engage in the type of discourse that is necessary for the function of a healthy democracy.See More

Sunday at 12:34pm

Randall Tessier

Dear David: What's imperative is that we listen to each other with mutual respect, even though we might disagree. I could launch an attack on Obama's policies that might surprise you, but that's not the issue here. Just forget the partisans...hip for a minute and imagine this: heavily armed soldiers in full battle armor, essentially foreign invaders, have occupied your town. Some of your friends and neighbors, perhaps even family, have been killed in the crossfire during the occupation. My point is this: when you speak of "people dying" under democrats or republicans, you treat death as an abstraction, as something disconnected from the world you and I live in. Death and dying are serious matters, even when the innocent child murdered doesn't happen to be an American like us. I don't think God meant his commandment, "thou shalt not kill" to apply only to Western Christians.See More

Sunday at 1:31pm

David Andrew Speer well said Randy. I'm happy to be in a place and time where we can agree and just as a final notion, its the lack of respect (towards Bush, who btw I did not vote for) that I was originally complaining about.

Sunday at 4:26pm

ALL CARTOONS BY STEVE BELL UK GUARDIAN

Top to Bottom: James Montgomery Flagg (1917), 2 by Steve Bell, 2 By Pat Oliphant, and 2 by Ralph Steadman

2010-11-16T15:18:00.010-05:00

"High on the agenda for the 21st century will be the need to restore some kind of tragic consciousness."

-- Carlos Fuentes

Some Sculpture

2010-10-26T16:52:00.017-04:00

"The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places"
-- Ernest Hemingway
"For Whom The Bell Tolls"

Above: Paul Thek "Arm"

Right: Greek Sculpture

Above: Paul Thek: "Rainbow Dwarf"

Hellenistic Period "Aphrodite"

Above: Andrew Sinclair "When Night Falls"

Below: "Janus" JoanaMorais

Below: Bernini "Prosperina"

A Pleasant Containment - Don Metke

When Nothing Matters

2010-10-21T16:46:00.006-04:00

“Death must be distinguished from dying, with which it is often confused.”

-- Sydney smith 1771-1845: H. Pearson The Smith of Smiths (1934)

“Suffering is permanent, obscure and dark,

And shares the nature of infinity.”

-- William Wordsworth 1770-1850: The Borderers (1842)

Seeing Mcgee like this breaks my heart, as it also confirms my terrible suspicion that our romantic perceptions and his grim reality can never be reconciled. His is a truth we can’t bear to face. The pain, discomfort, agony, and fatigue have tired and distracted him to the point that our kindly attempts to engage him from the land of the living seem more nuisance than blessing.

Why? At the end of the day, I suspect the physical and psychological anguish slowly become one, eventually obliterating any chance of escaping the demands of dying; and as this happens, room for other perceptions diminish in value: “The person sees himself; he remembers how he used to be; he wonders how far downhill he will have to go before he dies. He loses all dignity and autonomy when he loses the ability to care for himself.”

In temporary sickness we crave solitude and privacy, even with chronic conditions, but terminal illness changes the context – I think. How can I know? Perhaps social interaction becomes so freighted with the ignorance and patronization of the un-despairing, non-terminal, that contact with well-wishers is reduced to a matter of endurance and perseverance.

At some point one’s attitude while dying takes a turn the rest of us can only fearfully anticipate. When healthy, we live by ignoring the finiteness of the future. We know what’s coming, but we deny or distract ourselves from the existential dread that finally reveals itself with our acceptance that there is no postponing the inevitable.

I surmise that a point comes when nothing matters. Life, loved ones, friends and world become a distraction and curse; and as we pass from this world, the value of things that once served as roadside attractions loses all purchase; consciousness is reduced to a reminder that time and acquaintances will live on -- even with our end. Faith and philosophy pale in their utility at a time when their service would seem crucial. Life loses its meaning to the point that all concerns and desires become, ironically, a waste of time. One ceases to live, and merely exists.

What point in living when its joy is gone?

-- Randy

Quote is Dr. Jerome Sobel’s, from Harpers, November 2010

Where was I?

2010-10-14T09:33:00.009-04:00

Hello All:

It’s been awhile. My vision has been restored and my eye is fine. For those of you concerned with my overall health. No, Shadow did not really eat my toe, and my glucose level is normal.

I’m going north this weekend to see Mcgee. I think crying is often helpful; Regardless of the reason one cries. So driving solo should provide ample time to reflect on the tearful beauties of life.

Reasons to be cheerful, #39: I don’t have a camera on my cell phone from whence to disseminate the glories of my penile gift (or lack thereof).

Where was I?

Love - Randy

As Always, some images for you.

Top: Lynd ward

Photo: Ulla Lohmann

Bad Toe Day

2010-09-21T09:52:00.005-04:00

It was a dark and stormy night.

Who says I can’t write fiction. Except this is no story. Shadow ate my toe and I’m glad. That’s right, folks -- glad! Why? Only because that pooch saved my life, that’s all.

I’ve told no one about this until now. Call it embarrassment, vanity, a self esteem problem, it doesn’t matter. It is what it was, and I’m disclosing forthwith.

It happened this way. The lightning, the thunder, a miserable day at the Art Fair, me feeling like dog shit -- which is what I turn out to be by the end of this story – my age was catching up with me.

So what’s Shadow got to do with anything? Only this. It was Shadow’s actions that helped uncover an undiagnosed diabetic condition and led to the treatment that saved my life.

I knew for a while I had a foot problem, but I laughed it off as a persistent case of gout related to my adult onset George the Third Diet. Being an amateur guitar player and fallen scientologist I pooh-poohed my devoted companion’s every remonstration that I should seek care. Finally, about a month ago I reluctantly consented to keep the next day’s appointment, which I had doggedly vowed to skip.

Knowing I had no intention of going was still no reason to dispense with my usual pre-medical appointment ritual of smoking and drinking like a fiend, the hard wired lie in my head justifying this with the thought that tomorrow would be the last of my profligate ways, and that, further, from now on I would mend my habits and God would tune up my liver for a final Methusalan run. Where was I?

Oh yeah. So I passed out. When I awoke, my faithful hound was beside me, licking at the gangrenous stump that was once my big toe.

B. rushed me to University of Michigan Emergency, where the doctors found a bone infection and amputated the rest of my toe.

The End

Attitude #38: Disgust

2010-08-12T13:15:00.008-04:00

What to do?

2010-08-11T14:02:00.003-04:00

“Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door.”

-- William Blake 1757 – 1827: “Holy Thursday” (1789)

It’s been awhile.

How beautiful the UP was over the month we spent up there. At the heart of our stay was, of course, Mcgoo’s Birthday Bash. I would give the social component an A+ and the musical assessment an A-/B+. Friday was fun, and Mr. Bill Etten was in full throat on Saturday.

Myself, after two failed attempts to remedy my sight (see a previous blog on this) I’m scheduled for major eye surgery (retinal detachment) on Friday.

How’s Tim?

I don’t like to see my brother suffer, but suffer he does. His last post mentioned euthanasia. The problem for me, and those closest to Mcgoo, is that out political and religious views – our moral beliefs -- melt in the face of seeing his pain and anguish. Now, it matters little what form his relief and our compassion take. We want for his happiness.

Love - Randy

image by Polly Becker

Jakub Julian Ziolkowski

2010-07-09T11:10:00.011-04:00

Dear Friends:

An artist I like. Born in 1980.

Love - Randy

2010-07-03T10:45:00.000-04:00

2010-07-01T12:28:00.001-04:00

“Life’s not just being alive, but being well.”

-- Martial AD c.40-c.104: Epigrammata

I’m feeling healthy as I write this. The cat just crept up behind me. I’m sitting next to some “Cowboys of the Silver Screen” stamps. Tom Mix, Roy Rogers, William S. Hart and Gene Autry. The images are of strong, sure, men, handsome and with purpose.

What prompted me to write is rather vague but important, at least for me. We’re heading north soon, and I’ll be seeing my close bud. He’s not healthy as I write this.

A recurring theme in all illness involves what kinds of assumptions we should make about the afflicted. I suppose a loose analogy might see a connection between perceptions on disability versus illness, and in some cases the two are coexistent. For instance, we imply a degree of unhappiness to the physically handicapped that oftentimes has no basis in reality. Why dangerous? Because cultural perceptions shape public policies on issues having to do with medical ethics, like euthanasia.

Perhaps the same might be said of health and sickness. We assume illness and diminishing health precludes the possibility of happiness, and maybe it does. And why wouldn’t we think to be unhealthy is to be unhappy?

The catch 22 in all of this is that there are degrees of pain, disability, and suffering. And that the extent to which each of us encounters the breadth of these dire calculations delimits our ability to define that threshold where happiness no longer applies, if indeed it exists, and I fear it does, dear friends. Maybe.

We may have attended different schools back in the day (St. Pete and St. John), but the message was the same: suck it up and offer it to Jesus.

Jesus changed nature. He provided an alternative to the nature of things. He said, build me a cathedral and you’ll go to a better place. Sweat it here and you’ll relax in paradise.

Trouble is, nature was here before God. They never told us to render onto God what is god’s, and onto Nature what is nature’s.

As the story goes, man is the pinnacle of God’s creation.

If this is so, it may be that man’s most self-damning invention, beyond all earth fouling gushers, is the concept of god.

Can you have grace without religion?

What is the connection between grace and happiness?

What is the point in suffering gracefully?

Do our families appreciate it?

Should we do it for them?

Do they want us to?

Who knows?

I’m not sure how he’s going to feel.

Should it matter?

Certainly.

The Crawling Eye! (Mine!)

2010-06-23T15:02:00.011-04:00

First Serv. O! I am slain. My lord, you have one eye left

To see some mischief on him. O! [Dies.]

Corn. Lest it see more, prevent it. Out, vile jelly! Where is thy lustre now?

King Lear

Act III. Scene VII.

It was one of those days. Sunny, a pleasant temperature, and the birds were singing. Just like 9/11. I had an appointment at the UM’s Kellog Eye Center. A stock intro, you say. Let me try another. The least painful procedure that day was the three novocain injections in my right eyeball near the end of my appointment.

Having undergone cataract surgery 3 years ago, I was convinced a plaque had once again built up on my right eye. This is not unusual, and requires a relatively simple procedure whereby the plaque is simply lasered away from the artificial lens. It wasn’t that.

The diagnostic required to know this can cause varying degrees of pain. Everyone knows dentistry can require sadistic procedures, but not as many are aware that so too can eye exams.

“IS IT SAFE?”

Per usual, the dilation drops were applied and the doc pulled up a blinding light and began to inspect the poor orb. The patient’s task is to systematically scan the perimeter of their vision as the eye is examined. The next step is to administer numbing drops topically and probe the eyeball in the socket with a cotton swab. Oh boy.

The vitreous humor -- the equivalent of the fluidic mass within the grape’s skin -- is gelatinous, and within limits, can be squeezed without bursting the soft tissue of the outer eyeball. Probing and manipulating the eyeball allows a close inspection of the back of the eye – the retina. What they were looking for were tears in the retina.

What it feels like is a scraping of the eye with spoon or butter knife. The strain of fixing one’s gaze on a particular point in the room while the eye is squeezed and perused is both tiring and painful. “Do you need a break?” “No.”

Imagine the terra cotta color of the desert as a background. Then think of dried cracks in that parched landscape. Arid arroyos with burnt orange beds. Very surrealistic, an abstract landscape of pain, all so Daliesque. “That’s what it looks like, doc.”

This wasn’t the Retina Clinic (third floor), mind you. Not yet. The doc sees something, but he can’t be sure, so he brings in a bigger doc. Funny how the big docs relegate the torturous procedures to their underlings. The big doc affixes an adjustable lens that holds the eye open while he dials in a macroscopic view. From a patient’s perspective it looks like those telescopic shots of the sun experiencing solar storms. Wow!

He confirms the medium doc’s conclusion that I should be seen in the Retina Clinic. So it’s up the elevator I go. The exam is the same except for an excruciating twist, my eye is held open with metal retractors ala A Clockwork Orange. I ask him about the dry riverbed frescoes I’m seeing. “Oh, you’re seeing the blood vessels that cover the outer eyeball. Nice.

My over-stressed, rigid, contorted body and face are now ready for the big doc. I know he’ll be gentle. This guys wearing a suit sans a jacket, and I immediately recognize him from the banners hanging in the atrium of this brand spanking new facility. He’s world famous (don’t we all say this about our doctors? It’s comforting). Like the first big doc, he attaches the super lens and looks long and hard. He announces that he’s found some suspect weak spots (potential tears), and that cryogenic ablation (cryopexy) is required. I ask when this might be scheduled, and he says, “right now, we have the cropexy room prepared.”

UN CHIEN ANDALOU

To return from whence I started, the preliminary to the website description that follows was the administration of three novocain shots to the eyeball.

Usually, retinal cryopexy is administered under local anesthesia. The procedure involves placing a metal probe against the eye. When a foot pedal is depressed, the tip of the cryopexy probe becomes very cold as a result of the rapid expansion of very cold gases (usually nitrous oxide) within the probe tip. When the probe is placed on the eye the formation of water crystals followed by rapid thawing results in tissue destruction. This is followed by healing and scar tissue formation.

In the case of retinal detachment, treatment calls for irritating the tissue around each of the retinal tears. Cryopexy stimulates scar formation, sealing the edges of the tear. This is typically done by looking into the eye using the indirect ophthalmoscope while pushing gently on the outside of the eye using the cryopexy probe, producing a small area of freezing that involves the retina and the tissues immediately underneath it. Using multiple small freezes like this, each of the tears is surrounded. Irritated tissue forms a scar, which brings the retina back into contact with the tissue underneath it.

How did it feel? Ever had an ice cream headache, or what I call “brain freeze?” Each time the tip was applied to my eyeball it was like a laser brain freeze that extended from the eye deep into my brain. After multiple applications, I stood up, reeling from the chair to the door. Teary-eyed and feeling like Frazier after round 14 in his Manila fight with Ali, I’m told I can leave and they’ll see me Friday.

Best - Randy

MCGOO'S BIRTHDAY BASH: Poster by Tim's friend, Rick Jacobi

2010-06-18T12:43:00.001-04:00

Mcgoo's Birthday Bash 7/30-31 Weekend

2010-06-11T09:33:00.016-04:00

Dear All:

The plan is this. On Friday and Saturday, July 30-31 8:30PM,

an assortment of entertainers will descend on Big Bay Michigan and play some music.

As a nod to our friend, Tim M., the theme of our gathering will be to celebrate his Birthday. The boy is a Leo, and indeed a lion of a guy.

Friday Night will see “The Lumberjack Five,” (Andy Adamson, Dave Cavender, Kim French, Don “Cashmere Phunck” Kuhli, and Myself) hold forth. Our plan is to have a variety of special guests sit in as the night moves to a climax.

(no, we’re not doing Precious and Few)

At present, I am contacting some of those guests for permission to use their name on the promo.

Saturday will feature Mr. Bill Etten (see singer in photo at top of page) as the main event, he will be accompanied by Andy, French, Don, Dave, and myself, as well as other local musicians of note.

As the night wanes, jamming will follow.

Many thanks to Beamer for letting us organize and execute this event in his venerable establishment as we see fit.

There will be more on this. A poster and facebook event site is in the works.

Any photos that might help would be a welcome addition to our promotional efforts.

Best - Randy

Beyond 9/11

2010-05-26T15:41:00.010-04:00

“The sea is the universal sewer.”

-- Jacques Cousteau 1910-97: Testimony before the House Committee on Science and Astronautics, 28 January 1971

Can catastrophes and disasters be measured? I suppose they can be quantified statistically, but can they be described in language? Certainly, hurricanes, earthquakes, and tsunamis are so blindingly awesome as to present a horrifying sublimity that defies representation. Words fail and images pale.

But what of those disasters of our own doing: like Chernynobyl, Bophal, and the current oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico (what will we call it?).

Chernyobyl was a level 7 Event on the International Nuclear Event Scale (INES), the worst nuclear power plant accident in history -- the only accident to ever achieve this rating. The meltdown began on April 26, 1986, and quickly subjected 600,000 people to high exposure radiation.

The Bhopal tragedy has to do with a Union Carbide pesticide plant that spewed lethal methyl isocyanate into the atmosphere, resulting in the exposure of over 500,000 people. Estimates vary on the death toll. A mixture of poisonous gases flooded the city of Bhopal, causing great panic as people woke up with a burning sensation in their lungs. Thousands died immediately from the effects of the gas and many were trampled in the panic. The official immediate death toll was 2,259 and the government of Madhya Pradesh has confirmed a total of 3,787 deaths related to the gas release. Other government agencies estimate 15,000 deaths. Others estimate that 8,000 died within the first weeks and that another 8,000 have since died from gas-related diseases. Some 25 years after the gas leak, 390 tons of toxic chemicals abandoned at the UCIL plant continue to leak and pollute the groundwater in the region and affect thousands of Bhopal residents who depend on it.

And what has seen us through our wonton pollution of the biosphere? Why nature itself. Writing in the april, 2010 National Geographic, Barbara Kingsolver notes that, “Water is the gold standard of biological currency. Unlike petroleum, water will always be with us. Our trust in Earth’s infinite generosity was half right, as every raindrop will run to the ocean, and the ocean will rise into the firmament. And half wrong, because we are not important to water. It’s the other way around”(49).

This notion that the human species’ continuance of a parasitic rather than symbiotic relationship with mother earth has a shelf life was long a concern of American philosopher and natural science writer, Loren Eiseley. In his introduction to Marston Bates’, The Forest and the Sea (1960), he forecasts what we have now come to 50 years later: “Man has lived within nature until now, and taken her for granted. He has lived with nature like an unquestioning child. This is no longer enough. Man must now face the prospect of destroying nature and, in turn, being destroyed.”

The wanton spew of oil and unholy mix of petroleum and dispersant should give we Yoopers great pause in so cavalierly consenting to the degradation of the Yellow Dog watershed by Rio Tinto. Phillippe Cousteau Jr.s images and descriptions of the toxic brew beg the question of how much havoc nature can withstand before it turns our worst B-movie science fiction films into today’s reality show. Ironically, Bates’ work appeared in the heyday of just these kinds of movies, as well as Rachel Carson’s bestseller, Silent Spring (1962), which predicted the consequences of using toxic chemicals to alter the rhythm of nature. Bates sees humankind’s disregard for the importance of renewable natural resources as a breach of reciprocity between ourselves and the environment that sustains us: “It looks as though, as a part of nature, we have become a disease of nature – perhaps a fatal disease. And when the host dies, so does the pathogen”(247).

Technology has outstripped us. As greed has displaced caution in our need for more, so too have we rejected our higher calling as stewarts rather than plunderers of the environment. It is as if the drill has punched a whole in the Godhead, and no one can save us. Hubris defines us. In, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1961), C. J. Jung wrote: “It seems to me that the high mountains, the rivers, lakes, trees, flowers, and animals far better exemplify the essence of God than men with their meanness, vanity, mendacity, and abhorrent egotism”(45). By separating ourselves from nature we forsake the divine. We betray our best selves. And we neglect the idea of a covenant between our children and the future. Bates’ warning has been unheeded: “In defying nature, in destroying nature, in building an arrogantly selfish, man-centered, artificial world, I do not see how man can gain peace or freedom or joy”(255).

New York Times’ Science reporter, Carl Zimmer reports

that “Researchers studying the migration of bar-tailed godwits surgically implanted nine of the birds with battery-powered satellite transmitter, and found that the birds flew nonstop for distances of up to 7,100 miles from Alaska to their winter grounds in the South Pacific”(NYT 5/25/10).

The migratory and indigenous birds and fishes that inhabit the Gulf of Mexico and environs should be so lucky.

- Randy

Letters to a Friend

2010-05-19T16:06:00.008-04:00

“Hear the other side.”

St. Augustine of Hippo AD 354-430: “De Duabus Animabis Manicheos”

What follows is a discussion thread between some U.P. poicas on the topic of immigration. The source of this interchange was a Youtube link posted on GF’s facebook ridiculing John McCain’s idea that more focus on building a fence between the southwest states and Mexico is a critical element in controlling illegal immigration.

Per usual, there are no edits.

AR: “Illegals have taken virtually all the farming jobs in the southwest, virtually all of the construction jobs, most of the line work in factories and a good portion of trucking. They have also taken over virtually all of the gang operations, the murders, rapes, robberies, drug dealing and methamphetamine production, and they make up approximately 40... See More% of the prison population here in California. They love liberal states with generous social benefits, and many are talking about Michigan as the next land of opportunity. I’m sure you guys will be welcoming them with open arms.”

GF: ”Actually, hard-working 'illegals' will do work that others won't do if you want to generalize. Building a fence will not work, nor will it stem the tide of the open border. I also find your posts mean-spirited and personally insulting. Don't bother voicing your internet wisdom here anymore dude.”

RT: "Bigotry may be roughly defined as the anger of men who have no opinions."

G.K. Chesterton 1874-1936: "Heretics" (1905)

PS: AR, perhaps we might put these illegals to work promoting a scam whereby we put them to work putting up phony TV satellite dishes by which we might bilk our unsuspecting friends and neighbors out of their hard earned money. It's the American way, dude!

GF: ”Randy, I think I may need to take one of your classes to gestate this.”

RT: ”The point of Chesterton's quote is that the teabagger's rely on a rhetoric of fear and xenophobia rather than logic and tolerance, on negative reaction rather than reasoned opinion. As for the PS:, there's a backstory here, young man.”

Peace - Randy.

AR: "Randall, I live in a mixed neighborhood, work with diverse ethnic groups, live in a city that is primarily Mexican/Mexican-American, in a state whose largest ethnic group is Latino. I have worked elbow to elbow with Mexicans, legal and illegal. Mexican-Americans and illegal Mexicans were at my house yesterday. Today there will be party here with a significant Mexican-American presence. You live in city and state that is overwhelmingly white. You work in a cloistered, rarified atmosphere with other white people, far from the realities and problems of illegal immigration, the southwest or working-class Americans. Your assertion that my opposition to illegal immigration is based on bigotry is patently absurd. My opposition is based on a number of things, here are the top four: 1) Illegal immigration drives down wages and restricts opportunities for the poorest of America’s citizens; 2) A country that does not defend its borders will soon cease to be a country; 3) Allowing unfettered illegal immigration is unfair to the millions of immigrants who go thorough legal channels to get here; and 4) Illegal immigrants cost taxpayers in border states billions in social services and in the housing violent felons in prisons.

Last, if the facts were on your side, I’m sure you’d argue facts. But since they aren’t, you’ve chosen name-calling instead. That’s disappointing coming from an old friend."

AR: “GF, words have meanings. If you look up the word “generalize you’ll find that it doesn’t fit my comments. I was quite specific. You’re right about one thing though, illegals do many jobs that others don’t want to do, field work in particular. But they also take jobs that many other DO want to do, such as construction, trucking and factory work. It’s too bad your sympathies do not extend to unemployed American citizens of all ethnic groups who would like to be working at these jobs right now . . . dude. I find your attitude mean-spirited and insulting.”

GF: “ the reality is 'they' don't 'take' jobs...someone is illegally hiring them. I will not be baited into an argument of non-rational thought. I know from observing family members who wants to work and who sits on their ass waiting for their check. If someone leaves their hometown, walks through a desert, pays a coyote $5000 to get them into a slave wage job to send money home to feed their family it reminds me how strong and fearless people can be.

Again-JOHN MCCAIN is a two-faced laffing stock spineless jellyfish who will latch onto any sordid idea to win...WIN WIN WIN. Sarah Palin?? That's who he picks to help run our country?!! Build a fence?? HAHAHAHA...whatta putz!

The point of me posting this video is for my friends to see this and LAUGH AT JOHN MCCAIN the ignoramus.

RT: “In your first post, AR, you used the phrase, "they love liberal states with generous social benefits." Yes, Al, "words have meanings." And oftentimes those meanings are simply code for a not-so-subtle ultra-conservative agenda. You suggest that things are somehow better for we out-of-touch liberals who live "in a cloistered, rarified atmosphere with other white people." As if Detroit is made up of white people," and that the realities of crime would go away in an all white world. Your "white people" reference is telling, since it suggests that the real problem is a deep-seated white, middle-class fear of a changing demographic where citizens of color will soon be the majority in this country. Note the way you easily elide the terms "they" and "liberal," setting up a convenient rhetorical polarity between an "us" and "them" in which the poor (those who crave generous social benefits), who are by extension of color, and those progressives (liberals of every stripe) who seek a color-blind social justice for all, comprise the "THEM," and you, who see socialism as an not only an invitation to illegals but an insidious government conspiracy and grave threat to the American way, as the "US." And that's what it's really about - us against them.

Best - Randy

Dear Bored: "Tempest in a Tea Pot":

2010-05-10T08:52:00.007-04:00

“I hate things all fiction…there should always be some foundation of fact for the most airy fabric and pure invention is but the talent of a liar.”

-- Lord Byron 1788-1824: “Letter to John Murray,” 2 April 1817

What follows is a true story.

In the late nineties I decided that buying some land would be a good investment. And so it I was somehow introduced to one Charles Heineken, who subsequently sold me on an inexpensive parcel in a beautiful tract of land with some upscale homes already in place, and available pieces for the heady future that was sure to unfold post 2000.

The homeowners in place, of course, had a covenant forbidding trailers, livestock, shooting ranges, and such. Agreeing to this covenant, which I was required to do as a part of the purchase agreement, meant that I was responsible for paying yearly dues that covered plowing the road, garbage pick up, and a number of other services enjoyed by the association homeowners.

Since I signed on, the dues have gradually escalated, as would be expected; but what haven’t escalated are the economic fortunes of those that live there, including my own.

Needless to say, I have struggled to keep up with my taxes and the association fees.

Understandably, then, upon paying my last installment my frustration got the best of me.

Let me preface this by saying that about a year ago a certain member of the association used the association’s group e-mail as a platform for his political agenda. I might also add that the board immediately made it clear that this was inappropriate behavior.

Here then is a discussion thread I hope you find amusing.

Dear Board:

Just a note about the small gift I recently sent your way.

As I recall, about a year or so ago some of the Tea Bagging Patriots in your sad little neighborhood held a meeting to discuss the socialist threat presented by the incoming administration. Since you all commute from your nouveau-riche McMansions (no doubt you also approve of expanded drilling in the gulf. Who cares about a few shrimp and seagulls) you need your Hummers!

Which brings me to clearing the snow for your gas-guzzlers, as well as the disposition of the amount of garbage (I’m sure quite ample) you generate holing up your rural enclave. Have you contributed to the Hutaree yet? After all, they do share your same values.

I’m sure a pillar of these values has to do with not wanting to spend your hard earned money on government assistance programs that benefit you not in the least. I mean it only makes sense that you wouldn’t want to carry the shiftless masses unwilling to work and make their own way.

Which is why I’m hoping you’ll see the wisdom of exempting me from paying for YOUR SERVICES, when they provide absolutely NO BENEFIT to me. I don’t live there. I don’t use the road. And I try to avoid visiting uncivilized rural areas like yours as much as possible.

In closing, let me reiterate that I hope you’ll see the injustice of your socialist association’s ways, and quit hounding me for money that subsidizes your burden on the carrying capacity of the planet.

Best – Randall L. Tessier

Dear Mr. Tessier,

1. You bought land in this neighborhood knowing there was an association fee. Next time, read your contract before you buy land in an 'uncivilized area' then make sure you understand the contract before signing.

2. Your drunken rant does nothing to help the wildlife or the people in Lousiana. Twenty families, not all of whom are teabaggers, did not cause the oil spill with thier hummers, their Fords, their VW bugs, or any other such thing.

My friend in Louisiana whose husband is currently working 24/7 trying to stop that catastophe from spreading says your rant did not help him in the least. In fact, if you really want to help, get your boots on and go down there and participate in the cleanup, like he is!

3. Thanks for making the left wing look as bad and as annoyingly brainless as the teabaggers look. For your information, there are many people in this neighborhood who voted for Obama; who support single payer health care; who are anti-oil drilling, pro-regulation, pro-union, pro-environmental protection, and who felt that Mr. **** (the teabagger) should not have used this list for his fundraising purpose and who said so to the board

respectfully at the time.

So maybe next time before you get drunk and send out spiteful emails, you can think before you act. Your words did nothing to help, unless your intent was to make you look foolish. You succeeded at that quite well. Mission accomplished!

-- Faith

And this rant originates from an employee of the University of Michigan, a taxpayer funded institution that prides itself on the intelligence and open mindedness of its staff. I would suggest that the Board bring the contents of this

email to the attention of the UM administration. Using public resources, like email accounts, to spew such vitriol needs to be exposed.

-- Hope and Charity Blaze

I would suggest we, as an Association, stay out of the emotional vitriol altogether and simply put a lien on the property.

When Mr. Tessier purchased the property, he became a part of the association and responsible to abide by the bylaws, one of which is obviously paying dues. The Association bylaws run with the land and were necessarily part of the closing on the property when Mr. Tessier bought it. If he chooses to disown his property and eventually let it default to others, that's his issue.

I think there is clear recourse for the Association to simply put a lien on the property if he refuses to pay.

I would also strongly suggest that the Association stay OUT of politics altogether in the future.

Regards,

Barbara Ann

Dear All:

While I don’t always have time to address every consideration that crosses my desk, let me attempt to patiently answer your concerns. First off, for those of you who may lack the intellectual savvy to recognize more nuanced forms of rhetoric, like irony and satire, I have no problem contributing to the welfare of others, including yours. This is what an enlightened society is all about. I know some of you voted for Obama, and I applaud you for that.

While I heartily agree that, as Ms. Ann suggests, the Association stay OUT of politics, as I recall, it was a group e-mail from your association, and a strong political statement against Obama’s policies, that landed in my mailbox last year. As for my, refusal to pay, the money was, of course, sent two days ago (why else would I send this?).

Lastly, I’d like to address Hope and Charity’s missive. As a university writing instructor, I am sorely disappointed in your response to my argument. Rather than address my claim: that some of you are benefiting from an act of socialism where I pay for your services while gaining nothing for it; you instead fall into a predictable rhetorical trap: the fallacy commonly known as the ad hominen argument (attack the man). It’s much easier to imply that I’m drunk, or vitriolic, or whatever, than to admit I PAY FOR YOUR SERVICES, and address that argument.

Best - Randy

Dear Mr Tessier,

I would like to address some of the concerns you raise in your email as well as a few of the responses. It is not my policy to begin a note in this manner, but since you don't know me personally, I will start by writing that I am classically liberal and very progressive. Furthermore, the residents of Manwich, in general, and Hilfigerlake Road, in particular, are a pretty even split of progressives and conservatives. In fact, Mancwich has become a bedroom community for UM professionals and I count as my local friends a number of physicists, conservationists, doctors, nurses, writers, and artists.

I empathize with your frustration with the fact that the official association mailing list was used as a conduit for a very contentious and provocative political advertisement. However, Mr. **** had never intended for this to happen and has told us personally that he regrets that it did. While I pretty much disagree with everything Mr. **** stands for politically, I can say that he is a decent person, like most people (excluding the Hutaree, of course). And like most conservatives, he does what he believes is best for the community, even if I believe he is seriously misguided.

Which brings me to the rhetorical style of your original post. I am not surprised you received some emotional responses. Frankly, I found your note insulting. While you claim to be writing irony or satire, this was neither. It is clear your intention was not to entertain through wit and irony, but rather to demean the members of this community and make a jagged point about the right wing's hypocritical despising of any social program. This is the difference between satire and a mean-spirited attack. In much the same way, Rush Limbaugh using the term "retard" is not satire, notwithstanding Ms. Palin claims.

Unfortunately, this style of rhetoric does nothing to alleviate the bad feelings between an already deeply divided polity. Furthermore, coming from a "university writing instructor" only affirms the ridiculous notion that intellectuals are out-of-touch, elitist prigs who disdain regular folk.

Concerning your critique of **** reply, I would advise reading up on your informal debate terminology. For his statement to be an ad hominem fallacy, he would have to be actively refuting your claim by using an attack on your character. In fact, he doesn't address your claim at all. Instead he avoids it completely and chooses to point out the fact that you are using a public service (the umich email service) to make a personal political statement. Simply stating that your email contained vitriol does not qualify as an ad hominem fallacy. If it is a rhetorical fallacy at all, it is a tu quoque fallacy. That is, pointing out that you have made a mistake justifies his making of a mistake; Or, the two wrongs don't make a right fallacy, as I like to call it. Personally, it looks more like a childish "nanny-nanny-boo-boo" kind of response to me.

Finally, regarding your argument concerning the association dues: I would point out that the dues are not for the purpose of paying for community services, per se, although recurring maintenance is part of the deal. The dues are primarily intended for maintaining the road for the long term. All garbage pick up is handled by individual homeowners on a parcel-by-parcel basis and does not come out of the association dues. Contrary to your assertion, this benefits you directly, assuming that your intention is to eventually sell your parcel(s) and make a profit. We have had to make a number of repairs to the road in the past decade due to normal wear and tear, although the wear on the road is much less than on a public road, thank goodness. When you get to the point of cashing in on your investment, you will get much more of a return if the road is paved and passable. For a real life example, take a look at the road directly across Austin, also developed by Chuck Heineken. It has not been maintained, nor even properly finished in the first place. The property is worth substantially less, if they can sell at all. The road is a disaster. I would not advise investing in some of the many properties for sale in that development. However, they don't pay association dues either.

I am not trying to start an argument here. Honestly, I believe you and I have a lot in common philosophically. I would, however, caution against sending emotion-laden emails to a broad audience and I hope you will take this message in that context.

Respectfully,

David Ann
Manwich, MI

Dear David:

Allow me to ramble a bit over your concerns.

Firstly, I've vented sufficiently, I don't mind paying, and 'll try to keep up.

What prompted my letter was the very cold notice I received informing me that your kindly group would be placing a lien on my property should I not pay up now, even in the face of some hardships I won't cry about here (I'm not surprised there are some bad feelings in your deeply divided polity).

Regarding Mr. ****.s comments: the implication that I was drunk when I wrote this most certainly does qualify as an ad hominen response to my argument (unfortunately, it's the strategy du jour of the negative campaigning now in vogue). The lack of refutation is exactly why it's a fallacy.

My gripe is this, given that your association is a good example of a socialist model of governance -- which is a good thing -- why is it so hard to admit that your benefit from my dues far out weights mine?

As for finding my post insulting, thicken your skin. Do you find Mark Twain's prose insulting? I'm sure all of you have larger concerns than this tempest in a teapot.

On the topic of elitist intellectual prigs -- of which there are many at UM -- even a minimal investigation of my current position and background would disqualify me from that status. The majority of my students are minorities who come from lesser socioeconomic circumstances (please google the Comprehensive Studies Program CSP). Do you have and minority owners in your neighborhood demographic?

Finally, please send an e-mail to the group assuring them I have every intention of paying my dues, and that I've had my say and will heretofore confine myself to that cozy little socialist enclave, Ann Arbor. However, should any on you like to meet me, I'll be playing with George Bedard & the Kingpins at the Manwich River Festival in August.

Best - Randy Tessier

Mr. Tessier,

Sorry Mr. Tessier for not responding to you sooner but my frequent trips in my gas guzzling Hummer with my Hutaree buddies to attend all the tea bagger rallies has kept me pretty busy. I think I can only speak as one board member of the Timberlake Homeowners Association when I say that we will not be hounding you for money in the future. Really, what would be the point? It is obvious to me from the content of your response that whatever medicine you are taking is not working. I am going to encourage the other “tea baggers” on the board to just proceed with the lien process so we can be standing somewhere in the line when Washtenaw County seizes your

property for back taxes in 2012.

I was going to point out that your argument was flawed when you so skillfully alluded to the fact that you don’t use our roads so why should you have to pay for them. Don’t many of us pay for services that we don’t use, such as school taxes or taxes assessed for Washtenaw Community College? I was going to say that to you but then I realized you don’t pay your County taxes do you?

Also while I am thinking about it, I don’t know what “little gift” you have in mind for us collectively but please don’t hesitate in personally delivering mine. You wouldn’t the first person that has tried to give me a little gift. Sometimes it is better to give than receive, isn’t it?

Best regards. ****

Mr. Tessier,

Since sending this email, I have been advised that your “little gift” was a cashier’s check for $600. From the tone of your letter, that was not what I was anticipating. I wish to apologize to you for the sarcastic and derogatory statements I made to you. I perceived your response to be an underserved attack on our collective intentions and potentially a veiled threat to us all. I have a tendency to become “assertive” whenever I feel I or someone I am associated with is threatened. I let my emotions dictate what I wrote to you and that was unprofessional and just plain wrong. I know that you are under financial duress and I am hoping that you will be able to make things right with Washtenaw County soon.

Hoping for your success -- ****

Dear ****:

Don't worry about it. My letter was off base.

Best - Randy

IMAGE: Mikel Jaso

Eagle Rock S.O.S.

2010-05-05T13:56:00.011-04:00

“Man has been endowed with reason, with the power to create, so that he can add to what he’s been given. But up to now he hasn’t been a creator, only a destroyer. Forests keep disappearing, rivers dry up, wild life’s become extinct, the climate’s ruined and the land grows poorer and uglier every day.”

-- Anton Chekhov 1860-1904: “Uncle Vanya” (1897)

“What have they done to the earth?

What have they done to our fair sister?

Ravaged and plundered and ripped

Her and did her,

Stuck her with knives in the side of

The dawn,

And tied her with fences and dragged

Her down.

Jim Morrison 1943-71: “When the Music’s Over” (1967 song)

I had a list of things to talk about, let’s see.

Ok….my review.

Today, I

will attend a lunch to honor my passing of the

periodical review visited on we lecturers every three years. Three cheers for me! But seriously, negotiating this scrutiny can be nerve wracking. And why shouldn’t it be? I mean, it’s only one’s life we’re talking about here. Just the small things: health benefits, a salary, the modicum of dignity afforded one in a system set up to spend you like one more commodity, and a cheap one at that.

Ok…Mcgee's Birthday Bash.

70's today, 80's tomorrow. It’s spring, baby, and if you’re a native Michiganian, here comes the easy part of enjoying the four seasons. Commencement is upon us, and Shadow and I will be walking down to observe the hoopla surrounding the Prez’s speech. It’s also the time when the summer musical season arrives, festivals (the Blueberry and Medieval), concerts (Top of The Park and the Manchester River Fest), and special events (weddings and wakes) abound.

But first and foremost, it’s that time when our thoughts turn to Lake Superior, Marquette, and Big Bay. The plan is to repair to Squaw Beach for a month of R&R. As is our habit, during that time some music will be made. And it seems to me there is no better time to do that

than the weekend of Mcgee’s birthday, July 29, 30, and 31.

Ok…My last blog.

It’s the saddest scene I’ve ever witnessed

Ok…The Gulf Tragedy.

This is bad, really bad.

Consider these excerpts from letters concerning the catastrophe on the Gulf:

To the Editor:

Re “In Gulf Spill, Marshes Face a New Threat” (front page, May 2):

“Birds have always had an extraordinary capacity to fire the human imagination. Their beauty and variety are remarkable, but it is the power of flight that humans have always found magical — and enviable. That is why oil spills that devastate large bird populations are the most heartbreaking of all environmental catastrophes.

To see creatures suddenly robbed of the freedom to fly is both an assault on the natural order and an assault on our most primal fantasies. If negligence and greed are found to be contributing factors to the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, our sadness and shame should be all the greater.

David Hayden
Wilton, Conn., May 2, 2010”

“To the Editor:

Recent coal mine accidents and the explosion on BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico deliver a message. It is the need to recognize modern society’s insatiable demand for energy.

Accidents in ever-deeper coal mines and oil wells bored three miles into a seabed beneath a mile of Gulf water show how demand for energy pushes energy companies toward, and sometimes beyond, the frontiers of technical feasibility.”

John J. Kohout III
Alexandria, Va., May 2, 2010

And why this push?

John Hofmeister, president of Shell’s U.S. operations, had these reassuring words for homeowners who live in coastal states like Florida and California, who fear that their views and property values would be hurt: "Those numbers of people are large, and influential, and politically active," he said. But he also believes that data and reason will bring them around. "The phenomenon of the roundness of the earth means that at a certain point away from the shoreline you can't see operations offshore." he said. He believes the industry's safety record—there hasn't been a devastating spill since the 1969 Santa Barbara debacle—should inspire confidence. "You'd have to say the industry has performed very well."

How does this apply to what’s happening in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula?

Simple, Kennecott, and their parent company, Rio Tinto, like BP, are ruthless corporate gangsters that can’t be trusted with our environment.

Consider the testimony of a BP employee on the rig that exploded and caught fire: “At least one worker who was on the rig when it exploded April 20 and who handled company records for BP said the rig was drilling deeper than 22,000 feet, even though the company's federal permit allowed it to go only to 18,000 to 20,000 feet.” (May 3, 2010 NYTimes)

Kennecott isn’t BP, you say?

Think about Alder Falls, Eagles on the Salmon Trout, and Bears on Squaw Beach. Don’t kid yourself brothers and sisters, it can happen here.

Also think about the irrevocable damage that liars can wreak. And what about the question of whom would benefit from the degradation of the Yellow Dog Plains -- China.

“China sentence Rio Tinto Employees in Bribe Case

By DAVID BARBOZA

SHANGHAI — Four employees of the British-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto, including an Australian citizen, were found guilty Monday of accepting millions of dollars in bribes and stealing commercial secrets.

They were given sentences of 7 years to 14 years in prison.

Rio Tinto, which until Monday had defended its employees, said court evidence showing that in recent years the employees had accepted about $13.5 million in bribes was ‘beyond doubt.’ Stern Hu, the Australian citizen who served as Rio Tinto’s general manager in Shanghai, was sentenced to seven years in prison for bribery and five years for stealing business secrets.

Although the court reduced his sentence to 10 years in prison, it is still one of the stiffest sentences ever handed down against a high-ranking executive working for a multinational company here.

From 2003 to 2009, the court said, the four defendants used “improper means” to gain information that allowed Rio Tinto to “jack up the price that China paid for its iron ore imports.” The Shanghai No. 1 Intermediate People’s Court said that it would soon charge at least two Chinese steel industry officials with passing trade secrets to Rio Tinto.

Rio Tinto is one of the biggest suppliers of iron ore to China, which imports tens of billions of dollars’ worth of iron ore every year — a vital component for steel that is fueling this booming economy.”

The grim point: China’s economy -- Rio Tinto’s consumer focus -- is being fueled by the mortgaging of our children’s environment. Following the pillaging of the plains, the polluters simply move on to foul the earth where someone else eats and breathes.

There are those of us, however, who choose to do something, however futile.

Environmentalist charged with trespassing at site of contested nickel sulfide mine

Kennecott has begun mine construction without a water permit from EPA

By Eartha Jane Melzer 4/23/10 7:14 AM

Cynthia Pryor, a prominent opponent of a nickel sulfide mine planned for state land on the Yellow Dog plain northwest of Marquette, spent two days in jail this week after being arrested for trespassing on land where Kennecott Eagle Minerals has begun clearing trees for the first phase of construction for the mine.

Pryor, 58, the director of the non-profit Yellow Dog Watershed Preserve said that she was arrested midday Tuesday after she sat down on an uprooted tree on state land and refused to leave the area.

According to Pryor and other environmentalists and groups in the area, Kennecott’s construction activities are illegal because the company has not obtained a federal permit for its waste water disposal system.

On Wednesday Pryor was arraigned in Marquette County District Court and entered a plea of not guilty to the misdemeanor charge. Her bail was set at $1,000 but she refused to pay the $100 bond and spent another night in jail.

Pryor said that on Thursday afternoon she was re-arraigned and dismissed from the jail without bond.

“I think they were concerned about all the attention this was getting,” she said.

“I think the big question in everyone’s mind is who is really guilty here,“ said Kristi Mills, director of Save the Wild UP. “We are from the camp of believing that they do not have all of the legal permits needed to do what they are doing.”

Mills said that according to the land lease agreement between the mining company and the state all permits have to be in place before any work can begin on the site. This condition that has not yet been met, she said, because federal officials have yet to decide on a permit matter relating to wastewater.

“It was a bold move on [Kennecott’s] part,” she said. “It was pretty gutsy. They are pushing this forward as fast as they can.”

“No one is holding Rio Tinto accountable for this at all. Media has been so slanted here it is disgusting.”

Since 2007 Pryor’s organization, together with the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community (KBIC), the National Wildlife Federation, and the Huron Mountain Club, have challenged state permits for the mine through administrative appeals and action in court. They argue that the planned mine will devastate the area.

Following a years long contested case hearing an administrative law judge determined that the rock outcropping known as Eagle Rock held religious significance for members of the KBIC. State officials were in the process of considering that finding when, in January, Granholm appointee Frank Ruswick intervened and determined that the permits for Kennecott should be finalized without further judicial review.

The state determined that because Eagle Rock was not a building it was not subject to protections as a place of religious worship.

That move left Kennecott with one final permit hurdle for the mine — it still required a permit from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to discharge treated wastewater into the ground.

But in a March 22 letter, Kennecott notified state and federal regulators that it had changed its design for a wastewater treatment system and determined that it no longer required an Underground Injection Control (UIC) permit from EPA.

That same day Dept. of Natural Resources and Environment Forest Management Division Chief Lynne Boyd responded that based on the company’s certifications, the state was giving the go ahead to begin work on the mine.

Mine opponents argue that Kennecott’s design modification — covering their discharge pipes with Styrofoam rather than a man-made mound of soil — does not change the fact that the company will be releasing 500,000 gallons of treated wastewater into the soil and and ultimately the drinking water.

They say that nothing in Kennecott’s design alteration changes the fact that EPA is responsible for regulating the mine discharge under the Safe Drinking Water Act, and they’ve urged the agency to insist that the company obtain a permit.

EPA spokeswoman Karen Thompson said Wednesday that the agency has not yet reached a decision on the matter.

MDNRE spokesman Bob McMann said that the state only requires the company to certify that it has all the necessary permits before beginning work on the site.

“If that turns out to be wrong (in other words, if EPA were to come back and decide they DID need a permit from them), that would put them in violation of their agreement with us which could result in penalties against them,” McCann said via email.

“Kennecott’s work on public land right now is illegal activity,” local activist Teresa Bertossi said in an e-mailed statement. “I don’t know what we’ve come to when a citizen can sit on a tree stump, with her dog next to her, and get arrested for being on public property while Kennecott blatantly breaks the law. Do foreign-owned companies now decide what we can do on our own land in the Upper Peninsula?”

I want to focus on a particular issue arising out of the "religious significance” issue: “The state determined that because Eagle Rock was not a building it was not subject to protections as a place of religious worship.” To do that, I’m simply going to provide some excerpts from an essay I had our Argumentative Writing Class (225) read in 2008.

If Nature Had Rights

What would people need to give up?

by Cormac Cullinan

“’SO WHAT WOULD A RADICALLY DIFFERENT law-driven consciousness look like?’ The question was posed over three decades ago by a University of Southern California law professor as his lecture drew to a close. “One in which Nature had rights,” he continued. “Yes, rivers, lakes, trees. . . . How could such a posture in law affect a community’s view of itself?” Professor Christopher Stone may as well have announced that he was an alien life form. Rivers and trees are objects, not subjects, in the eyes of the law and are by definition incapable of holding rights. His speculations created an uproar.”

“Stone stepped away from that lecture a little dazed by the response from the class but determined to back up his argument. He realized that for nature to have rights the law would have to be changed so that, first, a suit could be brought in the name of an aspect of nature, such as a river; second, a polluter could be held liable for harming a river; and third, judgments could be made that would benefit a river.”

"Stone’s seminal ‘Should Trees Have Standing? Toward Legal Rights for Natural Objects’ (‘Trees’) argues that courts should grant legal standing to guardians to represent the rights of nature, in much the same way as guardians are appointed to represent the rights of infants. In order to do so, the law would have to recognize that nature was not just a conglomeration of objects that could be owned, but was a subject that itself had legal rights and the standing to be represented in the courts to enforce those rights.”

“Throughout legal history, as he pointed out, each extension of legal rights had previously been unthinkable. The emancipation of slaves and the extension of civil rights to African Americans, women, and children were once rejected as absurd or dangerous by authorities. The Founding Fathers, after all, were hardly conscious of the hypocrisy inherent in proclaiming the inalienable rights of all men while simultaneously denying basic rights to children, women, and to African and Native Americans.”

“In the eyes of American law today, most of the community of life on Earth remains mere property, natural “resources” to be exploited, bought, and sold just as slaves were. This means that environmentalists are seldom seen as activists fighting to uphold fundamental rights, but rather as criminals who infringe upon the property rights of others. It also means that actions that damage the ecosystems and the natural processes on which life depends, such as Earth’s climate, are poorly regulated. Climate change is an obvious and dramatic symptom of the failure of human government to regulate human behavior in a manner that takes account of the fact that human welfare is directly dependent on the health of our planet and cannot be achieved at its expense.”

Best - Randy

What does one do upon encountering a horrible tragedy?

2010-04-24T09:21:00.010-04:00

"State a moral case to a ploughman

and a professor. The former will

decide it as well, and often better than

the latter, because he has not been led

astray by artificial rules.”

-- Thomas Jefferson 1743-1826: “Letter to Peter Carr, 10 August 1787”

My intent is to use what amounts to a small sampling of opinions (via the interactive comment thread on a small dot.com newspaper) as a way of showing just how contingent and subjective our moral values are.

Why this? Please consider the short posts contained herein as evidence of my connection to this otherwise sad and obscure local story.

What follows then is a blog surveying a variety of perspectives on something that happened to me two nights ago in the mundane heat of a 6 o’clock rush hour.

STAFF

By: Amalie Nash
AnnArbor.com News Director

Updated: Man dies after jumping from overpass onto M-14 in Ann Arbor, police say

Topics: Ann Arbor West, News

43 Comments. Comment Now

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Posted: Apr 22, 2010 at 9:05 AM [Apr 22, 2010]

A 31-year-old man died Wednesday evening after police say he jumped off an overpass from Newport Road onto M-14 in Ann Arbor.

The man walked from his parents' home to the expressway, where witnesses told police they saw him jump over the the rail onto the expressway at about 6 p.m., Ann Arbor Detective Sgt. Brian Jatczak said.

The railing there is about a 4-foot concrete barrier, Jatczak said.

A car stopped and blocked traffic around the man's body on eastbound M-14, Jatczak said. He was later pronounced dead at the hospital.

The man's name was not released today. Jatczak said he had been living with his parents and did not have a history of suicide attempts. No note was found.

Tags: Ann Arbor police, M-14, Michigan State Police

DISCUSSION THREAD (Pasted as written)

“My comments in the earlier story about a crash on M-14 at Newport... this person jumped/fell from the overpass estimated to be about 30 feet and landed headfirst in the lanes of travel. They were not struck by a vehicle, but still sustained massive injuries and bloodloss from the fall. They left the scene alive but in very critical condition and personally I would be surprised if they survive.”

“AA.com please follow up on this story; not necessarily the gory details but simply some background. There were scores of kids playing at Wines, and coming to Wines for practices, who witnessed something. Some heard it happen as the baseball / soccer field is just over the fence. Others stopped to look over the bridge on their way and got an eyeful. It would be helpful to be able to talk to them truthfully about the background of this tragic event.”

“I came up on this scene driving up Newport a few moments after it happened. The most striking thing was that cars on M-14 were just driving around the victim, until one driver blocked traffic in front of the body.”

“what is the protocol when someone jumps off an overpass in front of your vehicle? is it considered disrespectful to carefully drive around the scene? do we all stop until all lanes of travel are clear? please advise.”

“I was the guy that stopped and put my car in front of him and directed traffic. I couldn't understand why people were going around him as if it was an inconvenience to their day. First I want to say "Thank You" to the lady in the Astro van who was the nurse heading west-bound who stopped and attended to the young man. Also I want to thank the young man in the Dodge truck who helped me block the other lane with his truck. Too the rest of you who went around the scene and did not bother to help, look in the mirror and ask yourself what you REALLY should have done. You should be ashamed.”

“why should the people who did not stop feel ashamed? why has having stopped left you feeling empowered?”

“Thanks for your willingness to stop and do what you could.
In cases where someone is in need of help it can be hard to know what to do. If someone can offer help they certainly should. In cases where they would just end up being gawkers or in the way, it might be best to respectfully continue on. Some that went on through no doubt felt inconvenienced others probably did not know what to do and did not know what was going on until it was too late. Hopefully this family can find peace at some point.”

“Re: "The protocol when someone jumps off of an overpass." Yesterday, as I was entering onto eastbound M14 at the Maple rotary I saw cars veering to each side of the road and a cloud of dust as a semi careened into the grass. It was at a significantly reduced speed, then, 5 - 10 mph that I slowly rolled up to a sight that made me hope against hope that I wasn't seeing what I thought I was. It was a young man's body lying fully prone, arms beneath him as in a yoga position, exactly horizontal to the white lines at the middle, and sheet white. My mind raced, trying to bring some context to something horribly foreign to my world. A man was on a cell standing at the side of the road. It had just happened. In shock and disbelief, I slowly rolled around him and continued on to my girlfriend's daughter's lacrosse game in Plymouth. What did I think? Two things: 1) My heart sickened at imagining what sad circumstances might have led him to this; 2) here was a fit young man my son's age that made a decision none of us can fathom. As for driving around him, were I a doctor I would have stopped. As it was, I made an instant decision that my stopping would only add to the chaos. Best - Randy Tessier”

“Thanks to fxdwgi and the others for stopping and helping. You'd be amazed at the kinds of accidents that people don't stop for ... I recall one early morning on EB M-14 to SB US-23 where there was a crash and the disabled cars were scattered across the four lanes and the shoulder at the split; before traffic was controlled, people were threading that needle at nearly full speed, not bothering to slow down or stop, just swerving left and right and continuing on... unbelievable. This is why the fire department usually blocks several or even all lanes often even at the protest of the police.”

“On one hand I can sometimes understand someone not stopping; in their head, "I know nothing about first aid, I faint at the sight of blood, there's already someone there helping, my kids are in the car and I don't want them to see this..." etc... but still... on the other hand, calls come in for serious crashes, people ejected, etc. and when you get there, there's not a bystander to be found - the caller(s) didn't even bother to stop to see if anyone was hurt. Again, unbelievable.”

“Dont judge others for driving around the scene, I have no medical experience, I could not have helped, the best thing I could do is get out of the way. If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem...”

“@fxdwgi - While you should be commended and heralded for stopping and lending a hand, I see no logic in stopping the other lane of traffic, and no reason to judge others who did not stop. As others have said, there would be nothing I (or probably the majority of drivers) could do to help that had not already been done. Should everyone have just stopped and gawked with their mouths open? If I were there and saw that the situation was already being dealt with, I would have driven away and looked in the mirror later content with the fact that I GOT OUT OF THE WAY to let the professions do their job.”

“Several comments that violated our conversation guidelines were removed for being off-topic, containing personal attacks and not furthering the conversation.”

“To not stop and help appalls me. I was going westbound when I saw this person lying in the road. It looked like it perhaps was a minute or two after it happened. If you stop and offer, and the folks there say "we got it handled", then drive on. But don't NOT STOP. This young man was the age of my son. My prayers to his family.”

“@fxdwgi- I was one of the people that apparently needs to "look in the mirror and ask yourself what you REALLY should have done", however when I drove past there were already 2 cars stopped and one police car coming up the shoulder. I'm sure if you talk to the police department they would prefer that most people slowly and safely continue on their way rather than turn this tragic event into a spectacle. Although I applaud you for stopping and helping, its not right for you to call out everyone that kept driving. It appears as if you are just looking for a pat on the back or a "job well done".”

“I guess the main point of this argument is, did people who were the first to see the man on the road drive by without stopping to call 911? That seems to be the rub to me. If I came upon the scene and there were already cars stopped and helping I would drive by. But I would never ever not stop if it appears I am the first upon the scene or saw it happen. It is implied that people who were there first did not stop. That is shameful. Even without a phone, you can flag someone down, or try to stop bleeding.”

“Something for those who are offended by people who 'swerved' around the body to consider: You're diving along at 45, 50 - 60 - miles per hour. The LAST thing someone would ever think they would encounter is a human laying in the road. In our area we do encounter deer - sometimes in the road. I'd have to think that the shock of driving up at that speed and seeing 'something' in the road - a first thought is that it's NOT human. Seeing something like that is shocking, I believe it would probably take most people a few seconds - or even minutes after coming upon it for their mind to even grasp what they just saw. Especially when they are on their way someplace - their mind is absorbed in thought.”

“So really - give those people a break, even if it did occur to them to go back - they may have thought they'd only be in the way. I can tell you that when I have gone by accidents and the police have us all slowed up and shifting into one lane - I will not look at the accident. I feel so bad for the people, I also feel that my gawking at them at such a vulnerable and horrific time borders on morbid cruelty. I guess if it were me out there - injured and crumpled om the road - I wouldn't want people staring at me. That's just me tho...”

“My two cents: I have deep compassion and empathy for those struggling with depression or other mental illnesses, but, @Alan Benard - this man chose to end his life publicly. It was done on public property at a high-volume [traffic] time of day, so I feel that YES we as the general public have a right to know the story. It's not as though annarbor.com is posting images or something equally grotesque, they are just informing us on what happened, aka, the news.”

“I was one of the first cars to drive around. Virtually all traffic stopped for the body. Some of the commentary regarding those who did not stop can not pass without comment or explanation. The implication of the commentary seems to be that people who failed to stopped are likened to the lack of reaction by the Kitty Genovese incident in New York some years back. As a person who carefully drove far out and around shoulder to proceed please understand, at the time I had my four-year-old son in the car on my way to pick up my five year old daughter, was able to quickly divert his attention and hold his head looking the opposite direction while we drove around the scene. I noted that virtually all vehicles (traveling an average of 70 mph) did stop upon recognizing what was lying in the road. I did also note that upon recognition folks took extra care to avoid the body. I don't consider myself a nihilist for protecting my family first. Death is hard enough for an adult to deal with much less trying to explain to your young child 'why' an otherwise healthy looking young man is laying facedown on the highway. I wasn't about to stop and expose my son to that. However, in light of the number of others who did stop I don't consider it the same as those who witnessed Kitty Geenovese's murder and did nothing. That was the sense of the comments about those who drove on.”

” I don't think it is appropriate to have open comments in an article about a suicide. This is precisely the sort of thread that makes me unhappy that AnnArbor.com exists in its current format. There is a huge difference between the two paragraphs on an inside page of the news section this story would merit in a normal newspaper and what we see here now. And had this been a suicide confined to private property with no disruption of the public way, it would be in terrible taste and a serious lapse in editorial judgment to report on a suicide at all. What we have here -- beyond the brief, edited content reporting on the facts of the disruption to traffic -- sourced by a public official's quotes -- is bickering over split-second reactions to coming upon the scene, veiled personal attacks approved of by the moderators and remaining published, and other inappropriate commentary. None of it is necessary, and all of it serves to generate revenue for AnnArbor.com by turning this inappropriate commentary about a personal tragedy into page views. I know you will dump this into the Memory Hole with the rest of the criticism of your journalistic standards regarding reader comments. But maybe if enough people explain their unhappiness to you folks over at the second-rate blog, you'll improve your editorial standards, or find management with better judgment."

"Thank you, Alan Benard, for saying EXACTLY what I was thinking. I don't know why most news sites believe they need to have comments for each and every article (or any at all, for that matter). It just devolves into a forum for hate speech, wild speculation, and disrespectful treatment of sensitive matters such as this. The only news site I can think of that does not have comments is MSNBC.com and I like it that way because I an read the news and move on without getting upset about all the stupid and rude things people are putting in the comments."

HERE'S THE LAST POST (4/16/10):

"I am really disappointed by what I am reading here. This is a sad and tragic event made more so by being played out in a public setting. Even more unfortunate is that the public setting included young children, in the vehicles, at the school, and on the bridge. For me this event made me stop and think about the fragility of life and how someone who can appear to be ‘normal’ or even ‘happy’ may very well be tormented and miserable. It is a reminder to me that the many things we surround ourselves with, friends, family, objects, can be taken away suddenly.

What I read above is so filled with blame and scorn and most of it is self-centered and, in my opinion, wrong. The person who came upon this scene first, stopped; as I would guess everyone else would have done had they been the first car down the road; whether they had kids in the car or not. Once there were people on site others chose to continue; and probably with good reason; those that drove on could not help this man. I would guess that many of those that kept going did what they could and called 911 reporting the incident to the police even though they would have suspected that others had already done that too. I strongly doubt that even one medically trained individual kept driving.

It was clear with one brief look that only trained medical professionals could help in this instance if help was even possible at that point. Even the police and firemen first on the scene could do little for this man. Had a different accident occurred on this site that needed many hands I have little doubt that all of you would have stopped and lent a hand as you could; say an accident that needed help evacuating people and escorting them to safety, or something similar. This man’s life essentially ended as soon as he hit the pavement and I suspect any doctor would agree that the damage was far too great for anyone to save him, no matter who was there.

Casting aspersions on your neighbors over this tragedy is just adding more tragedy. Do I have the moral high ground if I cried? Am I lesser if I did not? How long should I mourn, simply because I was there? Am I required to mourn at all for someone I did not know, whose death I happened upon? I suspect that those who have commented have had other experiences with tragedy and then also know that there is quite a wide range of human reactions to events such as these."

Dear All:

For better or for worse, the interactive nature of the media is the news paradigm of the future. What's somewhat disturbing to me is that a certain segment of the readership, and this is an assumption, is more interested in commenting on whatever stories they might come across rather than something that affects them particularly. While it's true that I'm guilty of this by virtue of this very post, the question of what's right to do seems appropriate to address because my witness to this horrifying scene actually happened. In other words, for me, the moral question of what to do was suddenly less an abstract question than something I had to quickly consider because I was there.

The person that surfs the news simply to enter into these kinds of discussions is, in a sense, a cyber-gawker (I miss the hard copy A2 News where this thread couldn't happen). It was a bit of a rag; but it was our rag. I looked up this story because I was so traumatized by what happened that I felt knowing more about it might somehow ease my mind.

Finally, this is my first time entering into a discussion thread like this, and I found it both interesting and disturbing. Why disturbing? Because yesterday, when I was on line for a while following this, there were some cruel and callous comments that I couldn't believe popped up. I assume the reason for this is the lack of a delay, or filter, to stop them before they are posted. It is extremely unfortunate that the readers see totally inappropriate material at the same time the monitor does. Yes, it's only up there briefly, but it’s up there, and that is something that needs to be addressed as a matter of journalistic ethics.

Best – Randy Tessier

Why We Fight

2010-04-03T13:21:00.008-04:00

“Over there, over there, Send the word, send the word over there. That the yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming…We’ll be over, we’re coming over. And we won’t come back till it’s over, over there.”

George M. Cohan 1878-1942: “Over There” (1917 song)

Dear Parents:

cc: Barack Obama

Would you be willing to sacrifice your child so that Hamid Karzai might stay in power?

Peace – Randy

Images by Ed Paschke

"People Make the World Go Round" -- Stylistics

2010-03-25T08:48:00.015-04:00

"It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the problem."

-- G. K. Chesterton 1874-1936: "Scandal of Father Brown" (1935)

"While some of the more outlandish rumors may dissipate, it is likely that misperceptions will linger for years, hindering substantive debate over the merits of the country’s new health care system. The reasons are rooted in human psychology.

Studies have shown that people tend to seek out information that is consistent with their views; think of liberal fans of MSNBC and conservative devotees of Fox News. Liberals and conservatives also tend to process the information that they receive with a bias toward their pre-existing opinions, accepting claims that are consistent with their point of view and rejecting those that are not. As a result, information that contradicts their prior attitudes or beliefs is often disregarded, especially if those beliefs are strongly held."

-- Brendan Nyhan (NYTimes 3/25/10) Photos below: Sharrett/Marshall/Bickford

Thank You President Obama!

2010-03-22T08:46:00.002-04:00

Dear All!

There is a God (see image at right)!

The health care legislation has passed.

We are our brother's keeper -- both born and unborn.

Peace - Randy

Painting by Rick Jacobi

What is art?

2010-03-14T09:55:00.013-04:00

"We all know that art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth."

-- Pablo Picasso 1881-1973: Dore Ashton Picasso on Art (1972)

"Art is the objectification of feeling, and the subjectification of nature."

-- Suzanne Langer 1895-1985: in Mind (1967)

"Porn is altogether pragmatic. It exists to stimulate and satisfy an appetite just the way cookery books do, except the porn reader always has his ingredients to hand."

-- Irma Kurtz: Malespeak (1986)

Artists: Top to bottom, left to right:

Wagenbreth
Brunetti
Currin
Carravagio
Dix
Photo
Zappa ?
Roman Vase
McGrath

What is "Politically Motivated Torture"?

2010-03-12T08:45:00.014-05:00

"It is better that ten guilty persons escape than one innocent suffer."
-- William Blackstone 1723-80: "Commentaries in the Laws of England" (1765)

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
-- Martin Luther King 1929-68 "Letter From Birmingham Jail" (1963)

March 11, 2010

Outraged by Glenn Beck’s Salvo, Christians Fire Back

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

Last week, the conservative broadcaster Glenn Beck called on Christians to leave their churches if they hear preaching about social or economic justice, saying they were code words for Communism and Nazism.

This week the remarks prompted outrage from several Christian bloggers. The Rev. Jim Wallis, who leads the liberal Christian anti-poverty group Sojourners, in Washington, called on Christians to leave Glenn Beck.

Mr. Beck said on his radio show on March 2, “I beg you, look for the words ‘social justice’ or ‘economic justice’ on your church Web site. If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words.”

March 11, 2010

U.S. Report

Describes Worsening Human Rights in Iran and China

By BRIAN KNOWLTON and NAZILA FATHI

WASHINGTON — At a time of heavy international pressure on Iran, the State Department said on Thursday that the human rights situation therehad “degenerated” since the disputed presidential election last year. In a toughly worded analysis, the department cited killings of election protesters and acts of politically motivated torture, beatings and rape.

A Letter to My Big Brother: Dear Janet

2010-03-07T12:47:00.011-05:00

“What is a rebel? A man who says no.”

-- Albert Camus 1913-60: L’Homme Revolte (1951)

Sometimes it’s lonely in cyberspace,

especially on Sundays. That’s why I was pleasantly surprised at seeing a hefty 19 hits on my blog’s stat-counter. What I found made me both less lonely and more secure in my status as an American citizen. I’m proud to say that no one, not even a patriotic chap like myself, is above scrutiny by our stalwart protectors at Homeland Security. So thank you, Ms. Napolitano, for keeping your eye on me.

“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.”

-- George Orwell

LOVE - Randy

For My German BIID Friends: Strictly Qualitative

2010-03-02T16:59:00.020-05:00

“In spite of my best and severest endeavors, the wound kept getting worse and worse; the truth was, sir, it was as ugly gaping wound as surgeon ever saw; more than two feet and several inches long. In short, it grew black; I knew what was threatened, and off it came”( Moby Dick 367). (Painting, Otto Dix)

Having learned that my posts on BIID (Body Integrity Identity Disorder) are included on a number of German websites devoted to this condition, I thought it might be time for another essay on the topic.

This is dedicated to Sean, that it might bring him relief from his obsession.

“We support the idea that BIID can be considered as a culture-bound syndrome, a contemporary frame for psychological suffering. We think that BIID does not have neither intrinsic nor unequivocal psychopathological meaning. It is a ‘new way to be mad’ (Elliott), a common pathway for the expression of very different kinds of psychological suffering.”

Baubet T, Gal B, Dendoncker-Viry S, Masquelet AC, Gatt MT, Moro MR.

Service de Psychopathologie, CHU Avicenne (AP-HP) et EA 3413, Université Paris 13, Bobigny, France.

Let’s begin with the notion that BIID is a “Culture-bound syndrome.” Is it really, as Carl Elliott suggests, a “new way to be mad”? Cultural expressions, like literature and painting (the Cubist aesthetic), suggest otherwise. Consider the character of Ahab from Herman Melville’s, Moby Dick (1851). He is both a metaphor for the inscrutability of human nature, and the concretization of a character questing for non-existence, erasure, and addition by subtraction.

“The White Whale swam before him as the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies which some deep men feel eating in them, till they are left living on with half a heart and half a lung. That intangible malignity which has been from the beginning; to whose dominion even the modern Christians ascribe one-half of the worlds; which the ancient Ophites of the east reverenced in their statue devil; -- Ahab did not fall down and worship it like them; but deliriously transferring its idea to the abhorred white whale, he pitted himself, all mutilated, against it. All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby-Dick. He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart's shell upon it”(160).

Ahab’s is no “new way to get mad.” The compulsion to rid oneself of a body part or function, as in the case of blindness, deafness, and paralysis is characterized by a feeling of mismatch between the internal feeling of how one’s body should be and the physical reality of how it actually is. This condition is marked by an obsessive longing for the amputation of a limb -- tailored to very specific dimensions. While neither psychotic nor delusional, they manifest a profound detestation of the offending limb.

Note that Ahab rails against “those malicious agencies which some deep men feel eating in them, till they are left living on with half a heart and half a lung,” and, “transferring its idea [intangible malignity] to the abhorred white whale, he pitted himself, all mutilated, against it,” a leviathan he considers to be the embodiment of what we can’t know. Ahab’s lesson is that our failure to understand the machinations of the human heart and psyche was no less evident then than it is now.

That romance is culturally ascribed to emotional rather than logical ruminations lessens it not a whit in terms of its affect on our contentment. And so what if BIID is a “neuropsychological disturbance,” as Sabine Muller suggests (American Journal of Bioethics Vol. 9, #1 1/09). Should this lead to a policy where all amputations are “contraindicated and must be evaluated as bodily injuries of mentally disordered patients.” As if this assessment isn’t sterile enough, Muller goes on to say that, “instead of only curing the symptom, a causal therapy should be developed to integrate the alien limb into the body image.” Muller’s point lies at the crux of the dilemma for medical ethicists. When the cornerstone of democratic government, individual autonomy (in terms of BIID, the right to choose one’s body modifications), conflicts with the idea that BIID is the result of a brain disorder, we have a situation where the physician is ethically bound to dismiss the autonomy argument on the grounds that the patient is incapable of having “insight into the illness,” thus demonstrating a “specific lack of autonomy”(Muller 2009).

While the common example BIID advocate’s cite is the comparison with transsexuals who surgically alter their sexual identity, I would submit a better analogy. If we note that Muller’s symptom/cause model assumes a discrete binary of biology and culture that has increasingly come into question, it seems clear that the BIID cohort cannot be reduced to a group of “mentally disordered patients.” In other words, just as culture can be as much a cause as a symptom in one’s choice of sexual identity; and homosexuality was found to be neither a choice nor a disease; so too, is it a mistake to think that “causal approaches” to BIID can affect any symptomatic change. Just as knowing the biological reasons for homosexuality has no affect on the dynamics of gay desire, defining BIID as a condition marked by dysfunction in the superior parietal lobe of the brain, leading to a “deranged representation of the body concerned with ownership and deficits of multi-sensory integration, (Vallar G, Ronchi R.Department of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca)” offers little solace to those who experience the demands of BIID.

I use the word “demands” very pointedly here. Hence the following quotes, one fictional and one testimonial. The first is from Ahab:

“What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing it is; what cozening, hidden lord and master, and cruel emperor commands me; that against all natural lovings and longings, I so keep pushing, and crowding and jamming myself on all the time; recklessly making me ready to do what in my own proper, natural heart, I durst not so much dare? “(Moby Dick 445)

Now a post on a BIID blog:

Written by Sean on Monday, August 18, 2008

“I’ve been having a really rough time over the last couple months. Depression hitting harder than usual, and BIID being its usual fierce self. I was not hardy enough, I was not able to duck under cover and let this storm pass. I crashed. Hard. I went to my GP and asked for help. We discussed things and I agreed to try a course of anti-depressants and to go see a psychiatrist.”

Note Melville’s description of an “unearthly” desire that “commands him against all natural lovings and longings,” and Sean’s personification of BIID as a “fierce self.” It may be that the dawn of the modern world Ahab represents, and the now of the postmodern culture Sean occupies, share the common conceit that the unified self is a myth, and that a de-centered, fragmented existence is the closest approximation of that illusory wholeness we so desire. So it may be that the absence Sean longs for, that “fierce self,” provides a sign of identity in the one-dimensional and faceless crowd. Paraplegia is the marker of difference in an uncaring world. The cultural underpinnings of BIID, then, should be of no less consideration than the biological factors (disturbances in the right parietal cortex) that make up the BIID conundrum.

Nicholas Wade writes, “A new force is now coming into focus. It is one with a surprising implication — that for the last 20,000 years or so, people have inadvertently been shaping their own evolution. The force is human culture, broadly defined as any learned behavior….Culture itself seems to be a powerful force of natural selection. People adapt genetically to sustained cultural changes….This raises the possibility that human evolution has been accelerating in the recent past under the impact of rapid shifts in culture…. human evolution may be accelerating as people adapt to pressures of their own creation”(NYTimes 3/2/10).

The acceleration of change and its philosophical counter that the more things change the more they stay the same offer the paradoxical conclusion that the “rapidly shifting” culture has brought about “pressures of our own creation” that are not entirely new.

Regarding these “pressure of our own creation,” what Ahab and Sean have in common is an existential despair about not only who, but what, they are. And this has to do with the psychic disconnect between the fluidity of cultural change and the stasis of “pressures of our own creation.” While the historical context of Ahab’s and Sean’s stories may be different, the psychic pressure of being-in-the-world is the same for both of them. Ahab’s monomaniacal quest for an unattainable goal is analogous to Sean’s so-called “monothematic delusion” that paralysis will make him whole. Their seemingly absurd strivings and psychic anguish, however unavoidable they may be as adversities that are part and parcel of everyday life, differ in degree if not in kind from the psychological suffering we all experience in various ways. As Oze Parrot points out, “When an individual is confronted with the condition [psychological suffering] he must be mindful of the fact that dwelling on the event may lead to a permanent mental disorder.”

I agree that BIID is a symptom of modern life, but that also, as Dr. Chris Ryan argues in, “Out on a Limb”(2008): “Amputation of a healthy limb is an ethically defensible treatment option in BIID and should be offered in some circumstances, but only after clarification of the diagnosis and consideration of other treatment options.” What these options might be is uncertain, but Ryan shows a rare moral courage in advising amputations “in some circumstances.”

As Sean puts it, ‘Fuck ethics, I say. In this case, the ethics are there to protect the medical people more than the patient. We know what the solution is. It is not to take more medication that only give nasty side-effects, not results.”

Sean’s story also flies in the face of the idea that there is a left-sided bias at work in BIID cases. He writes:

“There are other needs than the need for an amputation that fall under that term: some people need to be paralysed, others blind. Others yet need to be deaf….It is far from the majority of people with BIID who get their impairment. It is difficult and dangerous to get an amputation, Even more so to cause a spinal cord injury. Because the medical community is unwilling to accept surgery as a viable treatment option for BIID, we are left to having to resort to self-injury, which doesn’t always end well.”

You’ll recall I’ve written before about dry ice, shotguns, and railroad tracks.

“There is no instruction manual for those who want to remove their own limbs, but I always knew I would do it….First I needed to freeze and kill the leg so that surgeons would amputate it afterwards. I ordered dry ice pellets from a company near Edinburgh….I bought 40kg – it evaporates very quickly, so you have to buy a great deal. I put on layers of pantyhose, because you do not want it sticking to you, spread it in the back of the car and sat with my leg immersed in it for one hour. The pain was indescribable: it hurt so much I passed out a few times…. I had not damaged the leg enough to have it amputated in hospital, so the following September I made a second attempt, and this time I stayed in the dry ice for four hours. I was sat with my legs across the back seat of the car, the windows wide open and the footwell filled with dry ice, covering the leg and topping it up as it evaporated… The leg was hard as stone. I had third-degree burns and the pain was horrible. But it wasn’t enough: I now know you need a minimum of six hours to kill a leg completely….My husband drove me to hospital, but they refused to amputate. Incredibly, they said the wounds were superficial and that I would be walking within a few months. I really thought this time that the surgeon would give me the amputation I needed, but they seemed resolute… I thought I was going to have to make a third attempt. But this time I would have to do it differently, perhaps put my leg under a train so they would have nothing more than a stump to stitch up… After nine months of agony, I told my General Practitioner that if I didn’t see someone fast, I would take off the leg myself. Within two days I had an appointment with a different surgeon.The amputation, last June, went without a problem, and my left leg was removed from just above the knee. I felt better as soon as I came round. In fact, I felt so good in hospital that I was ready to go home straight away had they let me. My bag was packed and I was ready to leave. The Tuesday after the operation I drove myself home in an automatic car, and the next day I was almost back to my normal life.”

-- Susan Smith – pseudonym – as told to John Cantlie, “The Guardian 2007

But what about when the desire is for paralysis, what then?

Here’s another excerpt from Sean’s blog:

“In the end, he [the doctor]said that he didn’t think psychiatry could help BIID. I was not surprised to hear that. He asked if the ultimate solution would be for me to get a spinal cord transection. I said yes. I further said that I’d be happy with an injection of alcohol, which would be a semi-permanent thing. That is, after 8 months to a year, function would come (mostly?) back. He seemed intrigued at the idea, thinking that if anything had a chance to get through an ethics committee approval, this would probably be it, within the constraints of a study. He was prompt to say that he had no idea who would give such approval though.”

On 19 August, 2008, Gordo said:

“The alcohol thing sounds interesting. If it was available, I’d definitely go for that. Even if some function eventually returned (ie. 50% of the function I had before), I’d still welcome it. 50% towards where I need to be is better than 0%.”

And what about the “alcohol thing”?

“In 1994, Heiss et al reported two patients with spinal cordcompression who improved appreciably after direct percutaneousinjection of alcohol into vertebral body hemangiomas [hemangioma is a benign tumor that can involve the body of the vertebra]…. An important caveat….A treated vertebral body underwent collapse subsequentto ethanol ablation….This is likely attributable to the osteonecrosisthat can occur with injection of alcohol. It may be that those patients treated with larger volumes of alcohol may be more prone todeveloping this complication, as osteonecrosis may be more likelyto develop in those situations.”(Peter L. Munk, M.D^a and Tom R. Marotta, M.D., University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC)

And finally this from by Marc E, Agronin M.D., regarding the easy propensity physicians often have to misread their patients wishes and intentions: “As she spoke, I realized why my instincts were completely off. In my misguided empathy I had committed what William James called the psychologist’s fallacy, assuming incorrectly that one knows what someone else is experiencing” (The New York Times, 3/2/10).

Conclusion: The time has come to take BIID seriously, and to consider a more holistic approach in terms of integrating biology, psychology, philosophy, and yes, even the arts, into the conversation surrounding the conflict between BIID and the bio-medical ethics community.

Best – Randall L. Tessier

A Poem for My Mom: all apologies to Blake

2010-03-02T09:36:00.005-05:00

The Cougar

Cougar, Cougar, burning bright

In the tumbles of the night

What frightful gimmickry.

Might tame thy joyful symmetry?

Love - Randall

A Snowman in the Heart

2010-02-27T11:33:00.010-05:00

Definition of a Cynic:

“A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”

-- Oscar Wilde 1854-1900: “Lady

Windermere’s Fan” (1892)

It was a kind of old snow man built in his heart. And yes, he may have thought he wanted to melt it, but that was about it -- a thought. It wasn’t something others don’t experience, but his outcome was different.

Introspection is tough when you keep seeing a mirror. That’s what we do, and it can’t be helped. You see what you know and know what you see. And there’s the rub. The real question is, given that we’re trapped within the limits of our own knowledge and experience, how does change happen? For some it doesn’t. Miserable dispositions see unhappiness as the norm. They rue healthy companionship, dog the manger, and rain on every parade. So why doesn’t it matter how others perceive them? Does creating an atmosphere of confused unease and mutual trepidation provide them their favorite kind of attention? Were those times they experienced feelings of kindness, compassion, and empathy insufficient to their spiritual growth?

He probably got glimpses of these qualities in women he had known; but just as probably wondered why they had left. At least he wasn’t public in his misanthropy. He lived in solitude, his cynicism directed at a past no one could remember. The hermetic life will do that: make time a frozen synchrony where memory locks into a particular period or moment un-moored from all chronology and context. When you live in a vacuum, the way it was is the way it is. Reality is a tableau of how you last remember it, not a dynamic condition of change and flux. The person, place, or atmosphere in or of a situation you experienced, say, five years ago, remains the same in your mind. In some ways – contrary to the idea that having no access to a computer or the internet should spark creativity – the recluse suffers from a profound lack of imagination. They can’t fathom change. They live on a road with unmarked signs, having no way to know where others have been or are going. Still, better they stay to themselves than infect others with their ill will and negativity.

It’s understandable, then, that someone like this can’t understand when something greater stands before them. The degradation of time blinds the recluse to their mortality. And thus they can’t imagine the characters in their drama as finite entities. For instance, the idea that a certain endeavor might have nothing to do with the implementation or display of certain skills or talents is beyond their ken. They are incapable of sacrificing their principles to a higher purpose aside from their own concerns. Reclusion from social contact is really nothing more than selfishness in isolation, which is arguably a good thing. But even the highest principles, when applied to a morally flawed decision, are worthless at best, and tragic at worst.

At present, our circle of musical friends has been contemplating a reunion of sorts to bolster a sick friend’s spirits. Which is a good thing. There is a fundamental communication problem, however, that may nix this idea: one of five of us can’t digest the idea that this is NOT, I repeat, NOT, a musical project.

Odd, you say. Not really. Our performance would be about the teary gleam in an old friend’s eye at knowing he got the boys back together one last time; about watching Bill DeBroux work the crowd into a salubrious lather, sure to carry Mcgee into the realm of the cancer free; about seeing Mingay, the ultimate transplant man, smile knowingly at seeing the awe and wonder of the crowd as they marvel at the Olympian costumes he’s provided the Walrus dancers; about seeing Davey Perkins regaling Floyd Maki with Left Banke stories of Blue Cheer and chocolate mescaline; about seeing that zany Cathy dancing the middle of the floor; about Lunker, and Dunker, and Billy Mallette; about the Base and Gwinner’s coming in to share memories of Mr. Sherry, Hare Pye, and the Modeltowners; about Robin Labby’s excitement at helping us; about Cashmere Funk showing off for Julie, Cathy, Kay, and Bonni; about Roger, Screech, Jose, and Joe coming off a roof and heading for the soiree; about spear-fishing for Pike and Suckers with Mr. Skip; and last but not least, hearing all the loyal Walri fans singing “Murder in My Heart for the Judge” while Hogan fights off those nay-sayers who said it couldn’t be done. Who cares about second-hand smoke, volume, and other small concerns, in the face of performing a task conducive to the material, physical and spiritual benefit of those we hold near and dear to us?

While past Walrus projects have put music at their center, this performance would not be about the music; it would, rather, be about the social conditions that made Walrus happen: the people in and around the historical context our group arose from.

Love - Randy

Kristine Moran (2), dAli, Kandinsky, Wax Lips, & Mapplethorpe

2010-02-25T07:48:00.011-05:00

I like Images.

Love - RT

Rear Admiral Frances Penis-Gunn

2010-02-24T11:01:00.014-05:00

“I have never yet seen anyone whose desire to build up his moral power was as strong as sexual desire.”

-- Confucius 571-479 BC: “Analects”

Poor Tiger, he’s suffering from “hypersexual disorder.”

“Mavis Humes Baird, another therapist familiar with Gentle Path, said Woods would have been separated from family contact for weeks and forbidden masturbation, pornography, contact with female fans or anything else that might engage his sex drive….Treatment 'is in its infancy,' Dr. Krueger said. 'Chemical castration' with testosterone blockers, as has been used on some pedophiles, is inappropriate in such cases.'” (NYT – McNeil – 02/23/10)

Trust me folks, I know what Tiger is going through. A popular myth surrounding this affliction has to do with the idea that it’s harder on the wife or girlfriend than the sufferer. Nothing could be further from the truth. Until you’ve felt that unholy compulsion to have sex with whomever will have you, you couldn’t possibly know the meaning of misery. And for what: A big stinky pile of guilt that gnaws at you like a bagged badger. Who needs it? With all this crying about the one cheated on, everyone forgets the poor cheater. He’s the one slighted. We can only admire Tiger’s courage, and enter him into that pantheon of Sainted Sex addicts who, like John Edwards, that intrepid, stalwart of a mate who confined his infidelity to seminal emissions during only remissions; and President Clinton, whose profoundly unconscious love for his wife, and tormenting guilt at his actions, thwarted his every attempt to come in The Big Lewinski’s mouth, or is it, Lewinski’s big mouth. Shame on you, indeed, who cannot feel Tiger’s pain!

Think of the people you come in contact with in the course of a day and consider this:

“Arizona and Wyoming lawmakers are considering nearly a half dozen pro-gun measures, including one that would allow residents to carry concealed weapons without a permit.” (NYT – Urbina – 02/24/10)

Imagine, if you will, everyone having a gun when they have anything to do with attending vehicular matters that involve going to a Michigan Department of State Office. How about parking? The common reference is road rage, but I say parking rage is much worse. You’ve got to teach at 10AM. You’re circling the block like a frozen Pelican, a bunch of hung-over students driving dinged up Lexus’ and SAAB SUV’s are surrounding you. Would that their fuel injectors stick and their unpaid parking tickets bring tow trolls, these UGG wearing text-twits who don’t know the difference between an epigraph and an epigram. It’s 9:57 and you can’t find a place. And then there he is behind you, the kim-chee dude from VA Tech, driving a focus with an “Imagine Whirled Peas” bumpersticker. Yikes! Yeah, so imagine that. Or, how about sport’s bars at the peak of the NFL season? The drunk guy with the Rae Carruth sweatshirt isn’t happy about the Guy with the Ray Lewis cap, who is intermittently hurling into an empty pitcher and screaming “Go Ravens, Panthers Suck.” And, of course, there’s nothing like a gun-toting academic at a tenure decision meeting. Add to this, the candidate has a progressive mental condition, and you have a cozy place for a concealed weapon. Another situation in which a gun in the robe might come in handy is the arena of family conflict. After all, what better way to guarantee mutual assurance that no one will get out of line. If you can’t trust your own son or daughter with a gun, then who can you trust? Face it. It’s simple. Guns equal peace.

“The demilitarization of Europe — where large swaths of the general public and political class are averse to military force and the risks that go with it — has gone from a blessing in the 20th century to an impediment to achieving real security and lasting peace in the 21^st.”

Robert Gates, as quoted in the 02/24/20 NYT)

God-damned, chicken shit Euro-trash can’t even get it up when it comes to killing for peace. Why can’t these cowards understand what it takes to win? “Averse to military force.” What the hell’s the matter with them? Why the hang-up about killing? You kill dudes and there’s peace in the valley. It ain’t rocket science. Sure, the first one might make you feel a little bad, but after that. It’s easy. Ya killed one, ya killed a million. You see, what they don’t understand is that peace right now is just a big illusion, it’s “lasting peace” we’re looking for. Ya see, it may seem peaceful right now, right this minute, but now, ask yourself, do I feel real secure, I mean real secure? See what I mean. You don’t? You’ve got deep seeded insecurities, get it, insecure. You could have a heart attack. How about a stroke? You could even have a lethal, incurable cancer inexorably shortening your meager days of existence! See. No “lasting peace” and no “real security.” And that’s why we need “military force,” and, of course, more guns. There are, however, moral imperatives that are far more important than fostering militarism, there’s the ever-present homosexual menace looming over this great land.

“WASHINGTON — The top generals from the Army and the Air Force expressed deep concern on Tuesday about moving rapidly to lift the ban on openly gay service members, saying it could make it harder for their forces to do their jobs while fighting two wars….’We just don’t know the impacts on readiness and military effectiveness.’”

The only thing worse than yellow frogs are pussy-assed queers you can’t trust in a foxhole. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve had homosexual relations before; but I knew it was wrong. I just enjoyed it way to damn much. And that’s the problem, we start allowing people of the same sex to spread their fornicating ways to the rest us and we’re all gonna end up like Tiger Woods. Sure, it left a funny taste in my mouth, and the KY jelly was hard to get out of my undies, but that wasn’t the real problem. All of a sudden it hit me like a medium sized twig, no one gets pregnant when you do this. Then that blood curdling word just sorta jumped out of my cerebrum right into my mouth – ABOMINATION! No way I’m basing my sexual orientation on not having babies. No way! So, just when I thought the generals got it right, some fag Navy General, Admiral, whatever, piped in this crap:

“’No matter how I look at the issue, I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens.”

“That’s all Folks” -- Randy