Dishing it...

Through The Looking Glass, Darkly

                                
                   Kel-Tec 9mm semi-automatic, the same model used to shoot and kill Trayvon Martin

From the The 2010 Florida Statutes (including Special Session A)                       Chapter 776.012, also known as the Stand Your Ground law:  

776.012  Use of force in defense of person. - A person is justified in using force, except deadly force, against another when and to the extent that the person reasonably believes that such conduct is necessary to defend himself or herself or another against the other’s imminent use of unlawful force. However, a person is justified in the use of deadly force and does not have a duty to retreat if:

(1) He or she reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the imminent commission of a forcible felony;

So far, most of the national conversation has focused on George Zimmerman's (and his defenders') invocation of the Stand Your Ground law as a defense for his having shot and killed Trayvon Martin during an altercation in which the allegation is that Martin was the aggressor. Trayvon started it. He was skulking around in a neighborhood where he didn't belong, probably planning some kind of mischief. He jumped on top of Zimmerman, slammed his head into the ground, broke his nose, and caused Zimmerman to fear for his life. Therefore, the logic follows, Zimmerman had the legal right to pull his gun, aim it at the assailant, and shoot him dead. A person is justified in the use of deadly force and does not have a duty to retreat if ... He or she reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the imminent commission of a forcible felony... It says so right there in the law. George Zimmerman had every justification for using deadly force against an attacker who was viciously beating him.

                                                   

But there's an overlooked element in this chain of events. We know that Zimmerman was in his car tailing Martin, who was walking in Zimmerman's neighborhood, talking to his girlfriend on a cell phone. We know this from the 911 tapes that have been released and dissected ad infinitum in the search to find, depending upon which "side" one takes in the discussion, either signs of racism in Zimmerman's comments or indications of the kind of aggression from Martin that would justify the use of deadly force against him.

The thing is, Zimmerman got out of his car. He got out of his car with a loaded gun. Trayvon hadn't pulled a weapon at that point; according to Zimmerman's own words to the 911 operator, "This guy looks like he’s up to no good. Or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around, looking about." Then he tells the operator that Martin is "staring at me... he's got his hand in his waistband... something's wrong with him... yeah, he's gonna check me out... he's got something in his hands, I don't know what his deal is." Zimmerman never at any time says that he sees a gun or any other weapon, merely that the person he's following has his hand in his waistband and "looks like he's up to no good." Zimmerman was in his car while he was saying all this. Then we hear a car door slam and the unmistakeable sound of wind whistling past a cell phone as Zimmerman says rather enigmatically, "They always get away." At this point the operator asks him if he's following the suspect and Zimmerman replies, "Yes." "We don't need you to do that," the operator tells him. But it's clear from the sounds of the wind blowing past the phone that Zimmerman ignores that instruction and continues to follow Martin on foot.

It's here that I ask myself: if I were walking down the street and saw a car tailing me with a driver who looked somewhat menacing, and then the driver got out and started to approach me, how would I feel? How would I react? How did Trayvon feel as he saw Zimmerman get out of his car? He'd been on the phone with his girlfriend and expressed some concern about a vehicle he said was following him. So we can reasonably infer that he was probably a little scared, at least a little nervous. I don't care if I'm six foot nine and three hundred pounds, if a car tailed me down the street in an unfamiliar neighborhood and the driver got out and approached me, I'd be a bit panicky. I'm not sure how I would respond physically, but I think my heart would be racing. Was Trayvon's heart racing as Zimmerman got out of his car? Was he wondering what Zimmerman wanted? Was he worried that Zimmerman was "up to no good"? We may never know.

What we do know is this: Zimmerman got out of his car. If he truly, reasonably believed that Martin had a gun or a knife on him, as he implies when he says, "...he's got his hand in his waistband," does it make any sense at all that he would then get out of his car? If I were in a car and saw a person who I thought might have a weapon on him, do I get out of my car and confront that person - even if I too have a weapon? Or do I step on the gas and get as far away as possible, as fast as I can, from the person whom I regard as an imminent threat?

                                                                                       

                                                                   

At the moment George Zimmerman got out of his car, he became the aggressor. It was Trayvon who was in fear of some sort of bodily harm from the stranger approaching him, not the other way around. Zimmerman knew he had his loaded gun to "protect" him; Trayvon knew his only "weapons" were a bag of skittles and an iced tea he had just bought at a nearby convenience store. Who was the aggressor, and who was the person who actually believe[d] that such conduct [was] necessary to defend himself or herself or another against the other’s imminent use of unlawful force? Since it was Zimmerman who exited his vehicle, which he could have used instead to remove himself from the danger he insists he thought Trayvon represented; since it was Zimmerman who was packing a loaded weapon, the logical inference is that it was he, not Martin, who was the agressor, and that therefore Martin, not Zimmerman, was the one who by law had the right to use force in defense of his person.

                                     

So even if it turns out to be true that Zimmerman suffered wounds and lacerations from the severe beating he alleges he took at Trayvon's hands - evidence of which is detectable in the form of superficial wounds to his scalp seen in the enhanced police video of Zimmerman being processed after the shooting - it's still much more reasonable, and certainly more logical according to the laws of human nature, to conclude that Trayvon Martin feared for his safety as soon as he saw Zimmerman exit his vehicle, regardless of whether or not he saw a gun pointed at him, and thus by Florida statute it was Martin who had the legal right to use any and all means at his disposal, including deadly force - which would encompass slamming his attacker's head against the pavement - to defend himself from the imminent use of unlawful force against him.

George Zimmerman has his detractors as well as his defenders, like sort-of friend Joe Oliver and occasional no-show lawyer Craig Sonner,** who have been all over the 24-hour television news cycles speaking in defense of the shooter. Zimmerman himself may soon enough be speaking on his own behalf once he's either charged with a crime or exonerated of any legal culpability for what he did. Trayvon Martin, the young man who was shot and killed, is dead and cannot speak for himself, but he is not voiceless.

                                               

** UPDATE: Several days after this posting, George Zimmerman fired attorney Craig Sonner and hired well-known Orlando-area former assistant state attorney general Hal Uhrig. Uhrig has already begun characterizing his client as a "victim" on multiple cable news outlets and programs while invoking such disparate elements as O.J. Simpson and a "rush to judgment" as well as Shaken Baby Syndrome in his comments about Zimmerman's state of mind during the altercation that led to Trayvon Martin's death.

                                        

A Very Presidential Perspective

                                                              

                                                 

In the case of PFC Bradley Manning, who has been incarcerated for almost two years while waiting to be tried for allegedly “aiding the enemy,” President Obama has not only made his opinion unequivocally clear, he has done so in violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which prohibits “undue command influence” on cases to be tried by military tribunal or court martial. Responding to a Manning supporter at a San Francisco fundraiser last year, the president proclaimed: “We’re a nation of laws! We don’t let individuals make their own decisions about how the laws operate. He broke the law.”

Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ)

ART. 37. UNLAWFULLY INFLUENCING ACTION OF COURT

(a) No authority convening a general, special, or summary court-martial, nor any other commanding officer… may attempt to coerce or, by any unauthorized means, influence the action of a court-martial or any other military tribunal…”   

 

In the case of George Zimmerman, who stalked, shot, and killed an unarmed teenager in Florida and then claimed he did so in self-defense, the president has urged restraint and careful examination of all the evidence before judgment is rendered about the guilt or innocence of the shooter.

At a White House press conference yesterday, this is how he weighed in: “I think they are right to expect that all of us as Americans take this with the seriousness that it deserves, and we’re going to get to the bottom of what happened.”

“Every parent in America should be able to understand why it is absolutely imperative that we investigate every aspect of this and everybody pulls together, federal state and local, to figure out exactly how this tragedy happened.”

 

It Happens Every Spring...

 

 

                                     

                                                                     No Soup For You!

 

Behind the plate and occasionally punching 'em out at Port St. Lucie, Florida: Yours Truly, calling 'em as I see 'em during my 27th spring training with the New York Mets. And patrolling the bases, CBUAO head honcho and peerless partner Nick Zibelli of Carver, Massachusetts and Delray Beach, Florida. Click here for live action video courtesy of SNY.tv sports.

 

                                     

                               

Iceberg Ahead

 

                                                  

                                               Turning and turning in the widening gyre
                                             The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
                                             Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
                                             Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
                                             The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
                                             The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
                                             The best lack all conviction, while the worst
                                             Are full of passionate intensity.

                                                  -  The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats

 

As much as it turns my stomach to even look at Jerry Sandusky’s face, I feel compelled to post this interview with him conducted by NBC news back in 1987, twenty-four years ago. It’s a creepy look at the face and mindset of a predator, and there is something important to be learned from watching and understanding its implications beyond Penn State and the young boys Sandusky brutalized with such ease and impunity for so long.

                                                                                                                                              

I know from having witnessed my twin sister’s decades-long descent into the clutches of addiction - multiple addictions to alcohol, downers, uppers, opioids, amphetamines, whatever was available at any given time - that there are certain observable traits manifested almost universally by addicts, including pederasts who crave anal intercourse with boys. One is that they lie - and they'll do it with a soothing smile while looking you right in the eye. Another is that addicts will almost always gravitate to those arenas of business, social, and family life that offer access to the substances they crave, or in the case of sexual predators, to potential victims. Some purposely design and construct channels granting unlimited access; hence, Sandusky’s Second Mile charity for at-risk kids.

 

My sister, as wonderful and giving a person as she was, chose nursing as a vocation, and with the clarity that hindsight so often bestows too late, I’m now convinced her choice emanated as much from a subconscious need to maintain a proximity to drugs as it did from a genuine desire to help the ill and the injured. Human nature compels us to gravitate to the things we crave, the behaviors that comfort us, no matter how destructive those cravings or behaviors actually are, and even though my sister wasn’t actively taking drugs at the time she made her decision to go to nursing school, I believe she still wanted the proximity to pills and pharmaceuticals that her chosen profession grants because she knew the time would come when that proximity would lead to the promised land of unlimited access to whatever drugs she wanted. That is a primary reason she became a Registered Nurse. She never addressed her illness in a sustained, therapeutic setting or ever really committed to sobriety - although she did her best to commit to periods of sobriety, particularly while she was raising her two sons when they were young - so she never completely extricated herself from the devil’s maw of her myriad addictions. There were brief intervals of good health punctuated by the false hope that she would eventually be okay, but they always turned out to be only temporary camouflage for her overriding need to be near the drugs she believed she could not live without.

So we see that Jerry Sandusky, a pillar of the Happy Valley community, founded a charity for vulnerable at-risk youth that gave him unfettered, unrestrained access to the victims who fed his addiction for decades. Mark my words, there are many more boys he has harmed than the eight named in the indictment against him, nor has his behavior towards his own adopted children yet been examined. The full scope of Sandusky’s depravity during the last quarter of a century hasn’t yet come to light. When it does, it will be much, much worse than anything we already know. There's a proverbial iceberg up ahead, and we've barely seen the tip of it so far.

 

                                               

The complete, horrifying picture is just now beginning to emerge, as it did so slowly and painfully from the Catholic Church when the first waves of sexual assault survivors started to come forward with shocking tales of abuse and betrayal by their parish priests. The Penn State scandal will not be limited to one campus, or even two or three; we will learn in the coming months and years that there are athletic coaches everywhere, on every high school and college campus, who have constructed their lives and careers around the access they need to find, identify, and groom their victims. The issue of adults sexually preying upon children won’t go away when Jerry Sandusky is convicted of his crimes in a court of law; it is already spreading and metastasizing like the cancer it is. Witness the disturbing news coming out of the Citadel, the South Carolina military academy, that an alumnus assaulted several young boys on campus and was, like Sandusky, allowed to continue his predations unfettered and unpunished for years until he was finally arrested. As victims become energized and emboldened by the courage of those who take the first steps to identify their rapists, more will come forward. It’s about to become an institutional nightmare for any college, university, or high school with an athletic program, because those are the settings towards which predators like Sandusky naturally gravitate in order to feed their cravings. They’re also, paradoxically, the very settings that imbue predators with the aura of “goodness” and “caring for kids” that so successfully disguises their true intentions and prevents others from recognizing their corrupt motives.

There are many decent, well-intentioned adults on the boards of universities and in positions of power within the scholastic and collegiate athletic arenas, but we are about to witness a raging torrent of victims demanding accountability and punishment for the few liars and betrayers of their trust who prey upon them while relying on the inertia of the institutions and communities around them to protect the predators rather than the victims. If all it takes for the triumph of evil is that good people do nothing, the widening Penn State scandal has to be the poster child for that particular trope, but it definitely and oh, so horribly won’t be the only one.

 

 

Vaccine Nation

 

 A riveting science lesson for us all: how mercury damages brain neurons.

                                        

Mercury is a heavy metal and a known neurotoxin. The introduction of mercury into the human body wreaks all kinds of havoc with our immune systems and brain functions,  destroying existing brain neurons and severely compromising the ability to form new ones, a trait intrinsic to all sentient life forms from the highest level intelligence Nobel prize-winning molecular biologist to the bottom brain-functioning slow and lowly snail. Mercury (or so-called silver) amalgams in teeth are a primary source of mercury toxicity and poisoning in this country, as dentists still routinely use them, particularly in less than affluent patients who cannot afford more expensive, non-mercury fillings. Getting a flu shot at the drugstore - the delivery system chosen by nearly one out of five people vaccinated in this country - is another means by which to pump mercury in the form of thimerosal directly into your system. Flu vaccines are also loaded with aluminum adjuvants which trick the body into an accelerated immune response rather than allowing it to calibrate its own rate of protection against invading microbes. Mounting evidence points to aluminum as a prime culprit in the rising incidence of Alzheimer's in this country; it and other heavy metals like mercury and lead are known to be harmful, even lethal, to humans when ingested or absorbed intravenously, transdermally or  through the air. (I personally do not use CFLs, compact fluorescent lightbulbs, for this very reason: each bulb is a little heavy metal bomb that when shattered, will release mercury vapors into the air, making it extremely dangerous to so much as enter a room where one has been broken for at least twenty-four hours until the vapors dissipate or settle. I don't use commercial antiperspirants anymore either because most of them contain aluminum; check the labels if you don't believe me. They also carry all sorts of warnings about kidney disease, skin rashes, and poisoning. That's right, there's such a thing as antiperspirant poisoning.) What you definitely shouldn't believe are the drug companies' claims that vaccines are now mercury-free: that is a deliberate obfuscation of the truth, invented only after public outcry forced the manufacturers to at least pretend they had changed their evil ways. If you want a vaccine without thimerosal, you have to specifically ask for it in a single dose vial usually reserved for pregnant women and infants, who are at far greater risk for neuronal damage from mercury than healthy adults. Most doctors will not give the single-dose mercury-free flu shot to patients unless specifically requested to do so - and forget about asking your local pharmacist to give you the mercury-free dose instead of the toxic one if you get the shot at one of those walk-in clinics that drugstore chains such as CVS and Walgreen's (and now even supermarket chains with pharmacies inside the store like Albertson's, Publix, and Walmart SuperCenters) host several times a year. THAT ain't gonna happen.

                                       

From the website of Dr. Joseph Mercola, one of the leading alternative health practitioners in the country and a passionate advocate for taking control of our own health as opposed to handing that control over to the government, Big Pharma, and doctors who may be well-intentioned but are still bound by the directives and guidance issued to them from conventional medical sources whose primary object is to make money off of the illnesses of patients, not to heal them:

A typical dose of thimerosal-containing flu vaccine contains 25 micrograms thimerosal. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the safe limit for human exposure to mercury is 0.1 mcg per kilo of weight per day.

Since almost half of the thimerosal is mercury, this means that each flu shot contains just over 12 mcg's of mercury, which would be considered unsafe for anyone weighing less than 120 kilos, or just under 265 pounds. [Boldface type mine.]

There's really no debate about whether or not mercury is a neurotoxin. It's a well-established fact that it is. It's also well understood that mercury is particularly damaging to young, developing brains, and this is one of the core concerns about vaccines. If it's unsafe to breathe or ingest mercury, why would it suddenly become harmless when injected directly into your body, bypassing all of your body's natural detoxification pathways? If anything, the damage is likely to be far more profound!

What clued me in about vaccines and how useless they are was getting a pneumonia shot at a CVS or some similar establishment in 1998, the first one I'd ever had, and feeling the familiar fire in my left lung a few weeks later anyway. I'd been subject to three or four bouts of the infection per year since 1994, and each agonizing episode seemed to take more out of me physically than the one before. I was worried about my overall health and confused about why I would wind up so sick every three or four months; each round of pneumonia would knock me off my feet for a minimum of a week until the antibiotic kicked in and the excruciating, stabbing pain in my lung would go away so I could breathe without exhausting, panting effort. After I got the vaccine and wound up getting pneumonia anyway, I became intensely curious as to why this happened and started to do a lot of research into how vaccines are supposed to work. What I've learned in the intervening decade and a half goes against much of the conventional wisdom about vaccines being "safe" and "effective." They are neither; literally all of them come with a host of dangerous side effects from the additives and adjuvants mixed in with the anti-virus, and as far as efficacy goes, allowing your body to develop its own immune response to invading pathogens fosters a much more effective natural lifetime immunity than the kind triggered by chemical trickery whose protective properties will diminish over time, leaving the vaccinated person at even greater risk for illness as an adult when the immune system is far less capable of mounting the full-throttle response that keeps us healthy while we're young.

Consider the humble chickenpox, a fairly standard childhood illness - at least it used to be. Parents would keep their kids home from school when they got infected, the illness would run its course in a week or two, and the children would go back to school and in most cases, be fine. Nowadays there's a chickenpox vaccine, so kids routinely get the shot, which often results in a temporary and mildly debilitating inflammatory response (fever, lethargy) and doesn't always protect against the virus. So children get the vaccine to protect them from the pox, which means they never develop a natural immunity to the varicella zoster virus that causes it - and then later on in their adult lives they are still at risk for infection from the virus and can wind up developing shingles, an incredibly painful and hard-to-treat condition that's like having chickenpox lesions inside your body instead of on the outside. Adult shingles doesn't go away or get better, either; it gets worse and more painful as the sufferer ages.

Now consider H1N1, the notorious "swine flu" epidemic of 2009 that never materialized but on which our government spent billions (on the vaccine itself as well as  on the propaganda campaign promoting its use) trying to frighten us into believing we should all Get Vaccinated Now! against the inevitable and scientifically vouched-for arrival of the coming worldwide pandemic. Why, there was nothing to be done, no protection to be found except by being vaccinated! In October 2009, President Obama declared H1N1 a "national emergency." Of course, this was after all those billion$ had been paid out to acquire millions of doses of the vaccine that later proved to be completely unnecessary. What else would he do - admit that the swine flu scare wasn't a legitimate health crisis but exactly that, a scare, a concerted program of intimidation designed to manipulate and terrify Americans into believing we were at  unavoidable risk from severe complications of the flu, including death, if we all didn't just complacently line up to be injected with an outrageously overstocked supply of swine flu vaccine?

And please don't get me started on another completely bogus vaccine, Gardasil. You can go to previous posts I've written for this blog to get a more comprehensive picture of how dangerous and useless that particular drug actually is. And now that parents are beginning to wise up and say, "I'm not sure I want my child to get a shot that may not do what it purports to do, and that will put her or him at risk for a number of dangerous and life-threatening responses such as Guillain-Barre syndrome, seizures, and syncope," the government and the medical overlords are waging a full scale assault against this type of anti-newspeak thinking: witness the recent CDC/NIH recommendations that Gardasil should now be given to young boys as well as girls to combat a (falsely?) reported uptic in the numbers of cases of head and neck cancers allegedly caused by engaging in oral sex. ("Syncope" means "fainting"; and if you don't think fainting after receiving the shot is dangerous, go the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, http://vaers.hhs.gov/index, to get a more complete picture of the damage that can result when young girls faint, then fall and hit their heads, resulting in brain injury and neurological disorders. Not to mention which, if you faint while you're driving or walking across the street after you've gotten the shot, this can also result in injury and death, and not just for the vaccinated person.) To make matters worse, one of the most influential people in the country entrusted with making national policy decisions concerning the inoculation of children against otherwise mild illnesses such as flu, Dr. Kimberly Quinlan Lindsey, deputy director for the Laboratory Science Policy and Practice Program Office of the Centers For Disease Control, was recently arrested and charged with multiple counts of child molestation and bestiality. If she is guilty as charged, what does this say about her professional decision-making capabilities or her personal philosophy about keeping children safe? 

                                                                                                                                                            
Vaccines are largely a twentieth century innovation that may have done some good for some people at some point in time, but our understanding of how the human body works and how vaccines actually prevent it from working the way it's supposed to has changed drastically during the twenty-first. Medical advances are wonderful when they save lives and restore health, but when they are remnants of an antiquated paradigm designed more for profit than for patient protection, it's up to us, the patients, the people, to decide what path we want to take to protect our health and that of our children. "Herd immunity" doesn't come from inoculating every member of the group with a poison that hurts more than it helps; it comes from a mass belief in the myth that vaccines are always and unarguably a good thing, and that people who choose not to get them are endangering the rest of the tribe through selfishness and stupidity. "Herd immunity" is actually inoculation against common sense and a growing body of evidence that identifies vaccines as more harmful than helpful. I lost my immunity a long time ago, and now I'm shouting to the rooftops about how the best protection against illness or an invading pathogen is NOT some vaccine, but a healthful lifestyle that includes plenty of fresh air, sunshine, exercise, sound nutrition,  good rest, and lots of love and happiness. Avoid sugar and excesses of just about anything, get a good night's sleep as often as possible, and you won't need a vaccine to avoid getting the flu or genital warts or cancer. Old wives' advice? Maybe so. But those old wives survived for thousands of years without vaccines, and many of them managed to live to a fairly ripe old age... just like I plan to.

 

 

 

Cut, Poison, Burn: How the United States Has Turned Cancer Into a Billion-Dollar Business Model Instead of a Manageable, Curable Disease

 

                            

Cut Poison Burn from Nehst Studios on Vimeo. This video is no longer available for viewing here, but it is available for download on a "personal value pricing" scale, meaning you can download it for as little as $1.99 or whatever you feel is fair to pay, by clicking here: http://bit.ly/lI3Cj8. You can also order it on DVD for $9.99 plus shipping.

 

Got cancer? Want to get cured without drastically downgrading your financial or physical status? Take a look at Cut, Poison, Burn to see how the FDA, the American Medical Association, and the American Cancer Society collude against promising therapies and cures that threaten the conventional standards of care (surgery, chemo, radiation) imposed upon the sick and the scared. Freedom of religion? It’s a constitutional right. But freedom of medical choice? Forget it. Opting out of the surgery/chemo/radiation paradigm will buy a whole world of hurt from government agencies with vested financial interests in keeping us sick, fat, and compliant.

This film is not a paranoid scream against alien invaders; it’s a cold, hard look at why we as a nation have made so little progress in the “war on cancer” during the last forty years, and what we as ordinary citizens, patients, and patient advocates can do to push back and take control of our own healthcare protocols. Cut, Poison, Burn may not change your mind, but unlike the chemo/surgery/radiation paradigm, it won’t hurt you to try it.

 

Memory and Meaning

 

                                              
                                              Warren Barber Kertland: May 20, 1953 - March 10, 2011

It's been six months since my identical twin sister Warren died, and ten years since the 9/11 attacks. Without diminishing the macrocosmic significance of the terrible events of a decade ago, I choose to mourn my sister as a stand-in for those who perished that awful day. The photos here are from her wedding ceremony in 1989 when she was several months pregnant with her second child. Her husband David had promised to marry her when she was one year clean and sober, so their wedding represented a lot more than their commitment to each other and their children; it symbolized the boundless optimism and support offered her during her ongoing struggles by all of us who loved her.

She battled most of our lives, from the time we were eleven years old, to free herself from the shackles of one addiction after another. She fought and won, and fought and won, and fought and won again. At the end, she was worn down by fighting and finally succumbed, but I will never stop being thankful for her courage, her perseverance, and her two beautiful children, my nephews Jesse and Warren, both of whom have become wonderful young men. My love for my twin and her sons sustains me now and always will.     

                                                 
 

Bless the dead and the dying on this day of sorrow and remembrance, and those of us who remain as well.

                                     No man is an island, entire of itself.
                                     Each is a piece of the continent, a part of the main...
                                     Each man's death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind.
                                     Therefore, send not to know for whom the bell tolls;
                                     It tolls for thee.

                                      - John Donne, Meditation 17, from "Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions"

                                                  
                        

                                 

What I Do and Why I Do It

 

 

                                       

 

Sirius/XM satellite radio sports update anchor and producer extraordinaire Diane Roberts serves up an entertaining and edifying look at a day in the life of an umpire whose love for baseball and search for the women who will follow in her plate shoes have taken her all over the world and back home again...

                                                          

                                               

                      When this program aired over the PBS network of affiliates in April, the Time/Warner                                                        onscreen guide listed me in the logline! (Hint: I'm not "The Queen of Swing" :-)

 

                                  

That fiery redhead you’ll see in the video talking about baseball’s stained grass window? She’s more of a sedate silver fox now – as seen in these photos taken one year later, the one at left from a recent University of Bridgeport@Columbia contest with my base partner and erstwhile Atlantic League compadre Joe Bottita, the one at right in the umpires’ dressing room at Richmond County Stadium where the Staten Island Yankees play. (I was there for a cold and damp St. Peters@Wagner College game.) Check out my pink equipment case!

 

They Don't Always Wear a Uniform

 

                                                                                                                         

Today is Veterans' Day, formerly known as Armistice Day, and I remember Airman First Class Dick Stello, who served honorably in the the United States Air Force during the Korean conflict.

Dick was a guest instructor and I, a young student on my third trip to Harry Wendelstedt's Umpire School in 1984. He'd already been a National League umpire for sixteen years, so I was very much in awe of him when we first met. He was the adopted son of hardworking  New England farmers, a Massachusetts transplant with a Bahston accent that wouldn't quit, living in Pinellas Park, Florida at the time, and during the winter months I lived with my aunt Pat McGehee in Clearwater, just north of there, so after school let out in February we became fast friends and devoted country music compadres. Dick was always a lot of fun; he just emitted this great, positive energy, and he had a genuine appreciation for a good joke - in a former life he'd been a stand-up comedian - that was completely contagious. He loved to go to a country music night spot called Joyland not too far from his condo right off of U.S. 19, and he delighted in taking me to see the local bands that played there. He was friends with a lot of musicians, and although he wasn't a very proficient guitar player, he loved strumming away during impromptu jam sessions with me, cheerfully pickin' and grinnin' to the twangs of the country standards we both loved.

Before I knew him he'd been married to an exotic dancer and art house film actress named Chesty Morgan; that was about as much as I knew about her, other than that Dick never spoke of her with anything other than affection and respect. It turns out that Ms. Morgan was, and still is, a completely remarkable woman in her own right; her real name is Lillian Wilckzowski, and she's a survivor of the Warsaw ghetto uprising in 1939 during which her father was shot and killed by the Nazis and her mother was separated from her, never to be seen again. Lillian escaped to America and became wealthy and well-known under the Chesty Morgan burlesque trademark, marrying and divorcing Dick during a fabulous and turbulent performing career that demanded she be on the road at least as much as he was. Lillian still lives in Tampa; she and Dick had planned to celebrate the holidays together the November he was killed even though they'd been divorced for years by then. They still cared about each other and didn't let divorce get in the way of a good relationship long after their marriage had dissolved.

Dick sort of adopted me after I got out of umpire school, and each spring he would lend me a car while I was in Florida. Because I'd grown up in New York City and hadn't even learned to drive until 1980, and definitely didn't own a car, Dick would just let me have one of the vehicles from a St. Petersburg car dealership of which he was part owner so I wouldn't have to rent one. He never asked me to pay anything; he'd just let me have it for two or three months, free of charge, while I was umpiring in Florida until I was ready to go back to New York in April to start working high school and college baseball up there. One time I even brought back one of his loaners with a huge dent in the rear where I'd backed into a pole or something and he never said an unkind word to me, just laughed and told me not to worry, that he'd take care of it. That's the kind of friend he was.

                                                               
In November of 1987, Dick was getting ready to move from his Pinellas Park condo to a more spacious home in an upscale, golf course-style development situated right on Tampa Bay called Feather Sound. He was very excited about the move and looking forward to his upcoming twenty-first season as a National League umpire. He'd worked the All-Star Game in Oakland that past July, his second such assignment, and had two World Series (the great Red Sox/Reds series of 1975, and the not-so-great strike-scarred, split-season Dodgers/Yankees debacle of 1981) under his belt, so he was in line for another post-season job any day now. Life was an adventure to him, and he enjoyed every minute of it.

He and a business associate drove to Lakeland on November 23rd to buy some vehicles for their classic car dealership. Dick would go to this huge auto auction in Lakeland a couple of times a year for this purpose, so he was very experienced at all the little details and logistics that go into trading, purchasing, and transporting multiple vehicles at once. This day he forgot one small detail, and when he remembered and took action to correct it, it proved to be his final, fatal mistake.

He and his friend pulled over to the side of the road somewhere between Lakeland and St. Pete; Dick's vehicle was in front and the friend's behind his, both of them parked on the shoulder. It had occurred to Dick while he was driving that he hadn't put a particular kind of dealer's sticker on the rear of the car he had just purchased, so he and the friend pulled off the road and stopped while Dick walked to the rear of his car and bent over to apply the sticker. A driver approaching in the lane closest to the shoulder suddenly veered to the right, rear-ending the vehicle behind Dick's - he was between the two cars as the one in the rear got propelled forward - and Dick was smashed like a bug in an instant. I'm sure he never knew what hit him, but it's a graphic and gruesome image that has kept me safe lo these many decades, during which I've driven more miles than I care to account for and seen drivers pulled over to the side of the road in so many similar situations, changing a flat tire, or switching seats from driver to passenger, or just taking a break. I say a little prayer for their safety when I do - theirs and that of any other driver on the road whose split second of inattention might cost them their lives, as it did my friend Dick Stello's. Since that day, I don't care if I have to ruin a tire, a wheel rim, or the entire car, I never, never, never  never stop on the side of a road. If I have mechanical trouble or feel sleepy or in immediate need of a bathroom, I do whatever I have to do to get to an exit so I can get off the road to a safe place where cars aren't whizzing by. Getting hit at just ten miles an hour can kill a pedestrian or person on the side of a road, so I don't take any chances. If you think about it, the probability that someone, just one driver, won't be paying attention for the fraction of an instant it takes to cause an accident like the one that killed Dick is so astronomically high, it's ridiculous and downright dangerous to assume you won't get hit if you stop by the side of the road. So anyone who reads this, please take heed and stay safe out there.

Dick Stello served honorably in the uniform of an Air Force pilot during the Korean conflict; perhaps that's one of the reasons why I adored him so much, because my father Larry Barber was also an Air Force pilot in the same war. Dick is buried in the Chapel Hill cemetery in Largo, Florida, not too far from where he lived and died, right next to a serene, palm tree-ringed pond full of ducks and other local fauna. A little stone bench with his name inscribed on it across from his grave invites rest and peaceful reflection about the meaning of life and other mysteries. Dick's ex-wife Lillian was a soldier of a different kind, but I'm giving her a shout-out today too, for her extraordinary courage during wartime and the character and tenacity that led her out of the hell that was the Warsaw ghetto during World War II to become a productive, healthy mother, wife, and United States citizen who still contributes to her community and her adopted country.

On this day and every day, I pay tribute to the service of our veterans past and present, including my father, USAF pilot James Laurance Barber; my mother, Jaqueline Barber Davies, who did not serve but helped recruit American women for the Navy during World War II in her persona as Winnie the Wave; my great-uncle, Army Colonel Marlon Ellison; Marine Sargeant Bobby Wagner, killed in action in Iraq in 2004; my  longtime upstairs neighbor and friend in New York, Dino Cerutti, a pilot in the Army Air Corps during World War II; the men and women of the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, Coast Guard, National Guard, and the Reserves; and any and all other support personnel who put their lives on the line to answer the call their country has sounded.

 

                   

                                                            

The Predictability of Human Nature

Faisal Shahzad, the Connecticut family man turned inept terrorist who planned but failed to detonate an explosives-laden SUV in Times Square last May, has been tried and convicted in open court here in New York City, not in some secret  military tribunal, and was sentenced today to life in a supermax prison. The sentencing judge, Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum, was by all accounts very patient, even gracious, in allowing the unrepentant Mr. Shahzad to express his martyred acceptance of his punishment while he condemned the actions of the United States in the Middle East, offering them as the impetus behind his abiding hatred of all things American.

So the NYPD and the federal government, with a little help from an alert sidewalk vendor, somehow managed to halt an attack, track down and arrest the naturalized Pakistani-American terrorist who planted the bomb, accord him his due process, and put him on trial with all his constitutional rights intact. And the sky didn't fall... Thus do we exercise our freedoms as Americans, by honoring and observing the same laws we apply to the criminals who break them - not by unilaterally declaring which ones are terrorists, then hunting the accused ones down with no oversight or restraint, and certainly not by abducting, torturing, and keeping them locked up even when there is no credible evidence to suggest they're actually terrorists. Not by hypocritically  bleating about how putting terrorists on trial in a major American city will cause all kinds of disruptions, unmanageable stresses on police and security resources, unnecessary revelations of top-secret government secrets, and other assorted ginned-up potential catastrophes. Nor by hiding behind the shield of American Exceptionalism, meaning holding ourselves  to a different standard - if we choose not to apply to suspected terrorists the very laws we say we seek to uphold, it's okay because we're Americans doing it in the name of eradicating terrorism and spreading freedom! - than the one to which we hold non-Americans, thereby conveniently exempting ourselves from compliance with those same constitutional precepts we say we cherish so much even as we circumvent and betray them.

 Shahzad said this before being sentenced to life in prison: "...the past nine years the war with Muslims has achieved nothing for the U.S., except for it has waken up the Muslims for Islam. We are only Muslims trying to defend our religion, people, honor, and land. But if you call us terrorists for doing that, then we are proud terrorists, and we will keep on terrorizing until you leave our land and people at peace."

Is anybody listening? If we don't understand what generates and drives terrorism, how will we ever "defeat" it? Acts of terrorism aren't conceived in a vacuum. Until we stop deliberately cultivating violent retaliation for  our calculated destruction of non-military targets and escalating slaughter of innocent civilians, terrorism will continue to be a nine-headed hydra: cut off one head, and two will grow back. For every terrorist we kill under the guise of Keeping America Safe, many more will rise up like myrmidons from the plague-stricken earth, cursing us for the previous killing and claiming it as the reason for their remorseless rage. That doesn't sound like terrorism to me as much as it does perfectly predictable human nature.