Odd Bits - The Rabble-Rousing Edition

Today, I went from having zero to write about and wondering what I was going fill tonight's post, to having 5 different things occur to me on the 12-minute drive home.  So that means another glorious Odd Bits posting!

Man of Letters

First, the big news.  The Baltimore Sun ran my letter in their online Readers Response section.  Most of the letters that appear in print start out online, so maybe it will show up tomorrow or Saturday.  You can see it here, if you wish.

This is going to be interesting because this will be my first real experience with posting something controversial online that will be read by those not already predisposed to agree with me, like YOU.  As of this writing, it’s drawn 3 comments… 2 short ones supporting me, and one guy saying that Thomas Jefferson was religious and wrote the Constitution to reflect that.  Of course, I’m planning on countering with some of Jefferson’s numerous quotes stating the need for separation of church and state.  I may even include my all-time favorite Jefferson quote: “Hey, we left this England place because it was bogus.  But if we don’t get some cool rules pronto, we’ll just be bogus too."  

"Yea?"

I’m kind of in a quandary because it’s my nature to defend the argument, but in reading other letters and comments, I don’t see other authors getting in there and mixing it up.  I’m going to have to pick my spots, for sure.  I certainly can’t answer every comment the way I do here.

Welcome to the A/V Club, Here’s Your Pocket Protector

I got a new job responsibility this month.  I was tapped to replace the guy that did our A/V setups for large meetings and town halls.

I was not asked to do this; it was assigned to me.  My only recollection of A/V equipment is the geeks from high school that pushed these things around the halls on carts and set them up in classrooms:

Luckily, the technology has come a long way since then.  Our company cafeteria has been wired up with all kinds of cool meeting-facilitating gizmos.  So my job is hook up a portable touch screen, which controls the podium mic, hand-held and clip-on mics, the conference call operator and a laptop from which to display PowerPoint slides onto a projection screen that drops down out of the ceiling.

It’s all really quite simple, as long as it works.

Ahh, that’s the rub.  When does anything ever just “work?”

I’ll tell you… never.  My trainer’s last day was Wednesday.  We just so happened to have a meeting to prepare on that day, so we had a chance to go through a live drill together before he left for good.  A day earlier, we tested all the equipment.  Everything was fine, except the laptop couldn’t connect to the network.  He troubleshot that, we fiddled with the laptop Wednesday morning, and all was fine.  So then, an hour before the meeting, we hooked everything up again and it was back to not working.

It ended up getting fixed about 10 minutes before showtime, but it did not do anything for my confidence in the system.  And next time, it’ll be ME running around trying to get someone to fix network.  Gah!

I just have to keep telling myself, “at least I’m making some extra money for this!”  And then I remember that I’m actually not.  This is the second new “job” I’ve been assigned in addition to the job I was hired to do, without any change in pay.

But listen, I’m not complaining.  It’s a good job and I’m going to hang onto it until they carry my ass out the door.  You can have my ID Badge when you tear it from my cold, dead fingers!

Geese is the Word

I got goosed at the subway station on the way home tonight.  It happened right there in the parking lot.

I see these two characters with some regularity and they always crack me up.  I mean, why here?  Why do they always come to the same little patch of grass in an urban subway parking lot?  There are grassy areas throughout the lot, but I always see them here, right were I park.  Are the insects especially good in that patch?

Maybe different areas of grass are as different to geese as wine areas are to us.  Maybe there’s something in the soil right that makes the grubs just a little sweeter.  Or maybe that area is like a rest stop on the goose aerial highway.  Or maybe it’s a sentimental place, like a spot where those two geese first hooked up.

Or maybe they’re just stupid birds that don’t know anywhere else to go.

Honk if you love dead grass.

My Kind of Spiritual

Then on the way home, I heard one of my old favorite songs.  In fact, it’s one of my earliest “favorite songs.”

Obviously, this is not a song that you would link with the likes of ME, not after all the shit I talk about organized religion.  But I tell you, I was 8 years old when it came out and it reached straight through the AM car radio and grabbed me by the throat.  It had nothing to do with the lyrics… it was that guitar.

Even as a little kid, the sound of that nasty, greasy, fuzzbox guitar lick just went straight to my “groove” center and took over.  Great hook, great groove, great sound! 

Oddly, I never actually owned a copy of the song until I was able to get my hands on a promo copy of soundtrack CD to the movie “Michael.”  (The one where John Travolta is a fat, horny, chain-smoking angel.)   Funny thing was that it wasn’t even in the movie.  They only used it in the trailers.

Grandfathered In

When I got home tonight, I saw that my dad sent me a new picture.  Remember my cousin Angela, who last week had her first baby?  This little one makes, (by my rough count) Grandpa’s 9^th great-grandchild.  I’m always thrilled when he gets to see in a new one.  Grandpa just turned 95 in February and the way he’s going, I’m sure he’s going to see 100, at least.

But it won’t be long now before yet another baby will be perched on his lap at dinner, gnawing on biscotti dunked in red wine… Just like I did 40-odd years ago, along with the rest of his 10 grandchildren and 8 other great-grandchildren.  That was always the place of honor when we all got together for dinner.  Unfortunately, due to the age of the Honoree, the only thing they remember is when a new, younger model baby is sitting there instead of them.  Luckily, there are pictures, 8mm movies, videos, smart phone pics and whatever comes next.

So, here we are at the end of the line… from no ideas to a whole fistful fighting for space.  Such are the wonders of the Creative Process.

Maybe I can come up with something more coherent this weekend.

Same Sex Marriage Pt. 2

I had no intention of doing another post on this subject but sometimes life intervenes.

There was another letter in this morning’s Baltimore Sun that just made my blood boil.  As you know, I usually vent my steam by pounding out a post right here, but this one bothered me enough that I felt the need to submit a counter-argument to the paper.

Here’s a summary of the letter that pissed me off:

“Bible Bible Bible.  Everyone needs to be as holy as me.  Also, the gays have diseases.”

You can see the offending letter, in all its religious froth, by clicking here.

My response is as follows:

The letter by Robert Greene on 3/1/2011 (Gay Marriage Contradicts God’s Word) demonstrates several of the inherent weaknesses of the anti-same-sex marriage arguments.

The most glaring is the notion that the Bible is supposed to be the basis of our state and nation’s laws, despite the intended separation of church and state. 

It’s not.

But for argument’s sake, say the Bible should be a source for our laws.  One must then ask, ‘why is the issue of same-sex relationships dragged into public debate when so many of the other things the Bible espouses are not?’

The Bible also speaks against eating particular foods like pork, bacon, shrimp and rare beef.  Is anyone protesting outside restaurants?  Is one person enjoying a seafood buffet an affront to those that prefer chicken?

The Bible speaks against wearing clothes made of two different kinds of thread.  Shall we now picket at the mall?  Drive Under Armor out of Maryland?

There are Biblical restrictions against tattoos and horoscopes and lending for profit.  Is The Sun now supposed to turn down tattoo shop advertising?  Kill the business and horoscope sections? 

The conclusion here is that people like this writer continue to cherry-pick parts of the Bible that support their personal viewpoints.  And that’s all fine until they want the rest of the Maryland to snap to their point of view at the expense of our own beliefs.

The other argument mentioned is the threat of disease. 

Perhaps someone can explain how the monogamist restraints of marriage promote the spread of disease to the population at large?  Is not a base foundation of marriage to keep sexual relations within the married couple?

Married or not, there are STDs rampant in society, from which everyone is at risk.  The best prevention, short of sealing one’s self in shrink-wrap, is to maintain a relationship with one person.  What better way is there to accomplish that than to get married… formally, legally married? 

The bottom line is that people are free to believe anything they want, whether line-items from the Bible or hysteria over disease.  And they are perfectly within their rights to be the arbiter of morality within their own family.  But they must afford everyone else that same right to live and love as they choose.  Public policy must work for all Marylanders, not just a select group of religious dogmatists.

*****

I submitted the letter tonight.  I strongly doubt it will appear in the print version of The Sun, but I expect it will make the online Reader’s Response section.  I’ll let you know how it turns out.

And I promise that I’ll post about something else next time.  Unless I don’t.  Life’s all about the unknown.

A Chance to Get it Right

In the last couple weeks, Maryland’s state government began working on legislation to legalize gay marriage.  Last week, it passed in the State Senate and has now moved to the House of Delegates.

As a long-standing advocate for gay marriage and all manner of equality, I should be thrilled.  I spelled out my take on this issue with a post from November of 2009, when the state of Maine repealed its gay marriage law, via referendum. 

It is a good sign that Maryland’s bill is at least making progress.  They had a sober and respectful debate in the State Senate and it narrowly passed.  The reason why I’m keeping my hopes low is that conservative forces were not prepared for the speed with which the bill went through the Senate so there was not a lot of legislative pressure brought to bear.  The House of Delegates is shaping up to be another story.  This debate is going to get messy.

Religious conservatives are already popping up in the newspaper and online, spreading the usual fear mongering, half-truths, irrational assertions and Bible, Bible, Bible.

They’re doing so because they know that even if the bill passes the Assembly, 55,376 signatures can still put the law to a referendum vote in 2012 and get it overturned just like they did in Maine.  So the right wing noise machine is honing in on the unwashed masses.

Maryland may be a “deep blue” state, but that won’t help on this issue.  A great deal of the “blueness” comes from the African-American community, where there is still great resistance to gay marriage, based on the Southern Baptist influence.  If the issue indeed comes out on the 2012 ballot, it will also be a presidential election, which will be sure to bring out the vote.

Last week there was some schmo in a “Letter to the Editor” of the Baltimore Sun claiming the “time is not right” and “there are more important priorities right now.”

The thing is, when is there NOT some kind of crisis going on?  I’ll tell you… “Never.”  There’s always something that someone can point to and claim that it’s more important.  That’s no reason to continue oppressing an entire class of people.  I say, let’s clear up this little matter that has zero direct effect on 90% of the population, so that we CAN turn to other matters.  For that 10%, it’s a huge issue.  Fixing it takes no skin off the backs of the other 90%. 

Today, there was another letter that has this to say: “If you ask the smallest child about marriage, they will answer marriage is between a man and a woman.  All logic, not to mention the Bible, proves this.”

There is so much wrong with that statement.  First of all, if you ask the smallest child why they want the light on at night, they’ll tell you it’s to keep away the monsters in the closet.  (Or the alligators under the bed.)  What children say does not make for a good source of public law. It’s not even remotely relevant.  When people start bringing “the children” into an argument, it’s a sure sign that they can’t win on merit.

Secondly, “the Bible proves this”???  I’m sorry; the Bible doesn’t prove jack shit.  The Bible contains no proof, no evidence, and no hard data on practically anything, let alone on this issue.  That’s why the whole thing is called “faith.”  And it takes a great deal of that faith to put more stock in a book of 2000 year old stories than in centuries of physical and biological evidence.

It also contains a great deal of material that we disregard out of hand, from, say, how to treat your slaves to why eating shrimp is a sin.  I’m sick to fucking death of people cherry-picking the Bible in order to uphold their biases.  Sure, one part is and sacrosanct and never to be violated and other parts are expendable because, hell, we like shrimp.

Bullshit. 

The letter writer goes on to try to disassociate the link between the civil rights movement of the 60s with gay rights because blacks were deprived of far more rights then than gays are now.

What it fails to acknowledge is that even though the finishing details are different, the nut of the problem is the same: depriving select rights from some people for no other reason than the way they were born.  It’s wrong in big doses and it’s wrong in small doses.  Period.

Another weak argument brought to bear is the whole slippery slope case, like from this Letter to the Editor: “And let the politicians who support it be honest and profess their support of incest and bigamy as the measure will lead to incest and bigamy to be recognized as forms of marriage as well. Why not rename the law as the Gay, Incest and Bigamy Marriage Act and see how many people support it?”

Yes, the inevitable boogeymen, incest and bigamy, mentioned three times in two sentences.  This letter doesn’t mention bestiality, but that often comes up as well.  These issues get roped into the gay marriage for one reason: to equate gay marriage with something detestable.  None have anything specifically to do with homosexuality, nor is there any sort of movement to make them conventional.  This entire argument, if you can call it that, is designed to scare people.  That’s it.

The unfortunate thing is how often it works.

In a page one story in The Sun today, Del. Don Dwyer seems to be spearheading the scare tactics.

“Dwyer is gearing up for a shock-and-awe House debate – he says he has been sharing with colleagues a pamphlet that includes explicit descriptions of sex acts.  Such pamphlets, he says, have been passed out to children in Massachusetts where same-sex marriage is legal.”

Right… pamphlets of sex acts being handed to school children.  What planet is he talking about?  I know Massachusetts is a blue state, but come on.  What possible rationale would there be for such activities?  I’m telling you, if that happened at all, and I highly doubt it, it’s the conservative nutjobs that did it, to highlight the “ick factor” of the entire subject matter.  It sounds like one of their ACORN or Planned Parenthood “stings.”

My dream is that one day, cooler heads will prevail and we might possibly have a rational discussion about matters that divide us.  Ultimately, I’ll sleep much easier once people stop looking for things to get offended about and just mind their own goddamned business.

Yo, if you’re worried about the institution of marriage, work on your own.  Leave your neighbors out of it.  And perhaps, one day, once your precious children come into contact with other kids that have two mommies or two daddies, they’re see that all the commotion was for nothing.  Instead of learning all they know about homosexuality from film clips of Pride parades featuring streams of flamboyant bare-chested Freddy Mercury clones, they’ll take their cues from real people living their lives the best they can.

Then maybe when they grow up, we’ll have a lot fewer judgmental pricks running around polluting society with their own intolerance and prejudice.

The Night Terrors

The most recent post on Hyperbole and a Half, aka the Funniest Blog of All Time, gave me the idea for this one.  The “Hyperbole” post was about the author when she was a 6-year old girl and her nightly battles with her demons; in this case a Fire Monster living in her closet.  She resents her 3-year old sister for sleeping so obliviously to the danger at hand so her solution it to tell her sister the scariest story she could think of.

It got me thinking about the years I spent sharing a room with my younger brother.  We cohabitated from the time he was born until the time I was a sophomore in high school.  Until then, I didn’t even remember a time when we didn’t share a room.

First of all, we really didn’t have much in the way of night terrors.  Dad wouldn’t allow them, I suspect.  Mom used to tell us when we were sick, that we could come and get them if we needed them in the night.  But I knew that I would have to be bleeding from my eyes before I’d go in there and wake up my parents at night.

Our biggest quarrel was how much light to allow in the room.  I always wanted the door closed tight, making the room all black and cave-like.  Ed always wanted the door cracked a bit so there was a little bit of light.  The hall light was always on for my sister.

They usually left the door cracked… it was the least disruptive.  And Dad always said, “You can’t see the light if you close your damned eyes and go to sleep!”

So I made do.

Often times, Ed and I were too punchy to just go to sleep.  We didn’t dare to actually get out of bed… that invariably invited a visit to our room from Dad… a visit we definitely didn’t want, thankyouverymuch.

Instead, we’d try to make each other laugh.  It wasn’t anything elaborate… just fart noises and stuff.  But it passed the time until we actually got sleepy.

But while we weren’t necessarily afraid of the boogeyman in the closet, the alligators under the bed were another story.  I NEVER let anything hang out from under the covers and over the edge of the bed.  I figured that alligators were a much more realistic threat because they’d fit very nicely under the bed.  There was no room in our closets for any boogeymen. 

In fact, there was only one imaginary being that ever came around and my brother was the only one that ever saw him.  His name was Boo-Man.

According to Ed, Boo-Man wore a hooded mask and cape.  It didn’t take too much investigation to figure out where he got such a notion. 

Budweiser used to have a cartoon character called Bud Man.  My dad used to have a poster of him or something.  It might have even been this one:

You can imagine a little kid looking at that, seeing the capital UD and mistaking it for OO; hence BUD MAN becomes BOO-MAN.

According to Ed, Boo-Man’s chief occupation was hiding in the bushes and farting on people that came by.  He used to regale my mother with detailed stories of Boo-Man’s adventures… the places he went, the people he farted on, etc.  She must have been very proud.

I tell you, every time Ed’s son Sammy talks about his NNNNNUTS, or drops a fart on his older brother, I realize that it’s inevitable given his lineage.  He is his daddy’s doppelganger.  I wonder if they have any Bud Man costumes for kids any more.

OK, I’m wandering…

The only night terrors were experienced by my sister at the hands of my brother, during those rare occasions when we all had to share a room, like on trips to Grandma’s house.

Ed and I would be in a double bed and my sister would be on a cot, across the room.  He used to be a master at slithering out of bed, snaking across the floor, then popping up by our sister’s bedside, scaring the shit out of her.

It was a dangerous process because there was always the risk that she’d cry too loud, or worse, go downstairs and tell.  Ed used to roll the dice on that one.  Luckily the parents were usually carousing downstairs with the rest of the extended family, so unless it was a real meltdown, it passed unnoticed.  Although, not by my sister, mind you.

I remember once, when I first moved to Baltimore (in my late 30s), I stayed over her place one Halloween and we played scary movies all night.  I know we watched “Halloween” and I think we also saw “The Exorcist” and “Aliens.” 

I remember the next morning telling my sister that she should be thankful that I didn’t creep out of bed, sneak under her bed and start shaking it.  I’d considered it, but couldn’t be sure she didn’t bring any kitchen knives in there with her.

You know, my brother and I really should have offered to chip in on therapy for her.

There was only one thing that ever shook me up at night.  It happened twice.

The first time, I was in Jr High and was old enough to “baby-sit” while my parents went out to dinner or a party or something.  So one night, after we were all in bed, but before the folks came home, I heard noises.

Creak-creak-creak-creak…

Just like that… in sequence.  It sounded exactly like someone walking up the hallway to our bedrooms.  Our room was right over the garage, so I knew it wasn’t Mom and Dad.

Creak-creak-creak-creak…

Holy shit, I was petrified.  Ed was sound asleep, but I was stiff as a board, too scared to move, too scared to even breathe.  You know what it’s like… you figure if you don’t move, the Bad Guy might go away. 

I must have laid there motionless for a solid hour… it seemed like an eternity… senses on full alert, straining to hear any clue as to if there’s really someone out there or not.

Finally, I heard the greatest sound in the whole world… my parents’ car pulling into the garage.  Whew, my Longest Night Ever was finally over.

We chalked it up to the house settling.  Whatever… all I know is that was the first and last time it did that.

Then a couple years later, after we’d moved up to the old farmhouse in Toledo, the same thing happened.  The folks were out, we were all in bed, all in our own rooms now, and I started hearing all kinds of strange creaks and thumps.

While I wasn’t nearly as terrified as I had been the first time, I was still concerned and more than a little bit alarmed.  It really sounded like someone or some thing was messing around downstairs.  And I thought to myself, “If someone came up here, what do I have in my room that I could use to defend myself?” 

I concluded that the most dangerous thing could put my hands on was a steel-toed work boot.  That did not give me much comfort.  To this day, I’ve never heard of someone beating back an intruder using nothing but footwear.

Once again, the folks came home and all was well.  But the very next morning, I went out to find something that I could take back to my room to give me piece of mind.  This is what I came back with:

A croquet mallet.

“Don’t come fuckin’ near me or I’ll blast you right in the wickets!”

I know it would look silly, me standing there wielding a red croquet mallet like a samurai sword, but I certainly wouldn’t want to risk getting the business end of that thing smacked upside my head.  So I knew that I’d never again lack a plan for dealing with spooky, creaky night invaders.

And you know what?  In the subsequent 35 years, I’ve never once had that situation arise again.  And do you know where that mallet is?  It’s still right beside my bed.

I’ve taken it with me to every house or apartment I’ve lived in and have always kept in within reach of my bed.

I must admit though, it’s more for the mojo now than a real weapon.  I upgraded back in the 90s:

Meet ‘Louie.’

I keep him right beside the mallet.  Anything that comes in my door unexpectedly at night is liable to see me swinging for the fences.

I just have to remember to keep the label facing away.  I’d hate to crack the bat.

Odd Bits - The Catching Up Edition

Since the trial started, for which I was an alternate juror (see previous 5 posts), I’ve been putting some things on hold, as to not interrupt the flow of the court posts.  Today, I get to catch up!

Family Business

As you may recall from prior posts, my nephew Sammy is fond of a certain euphemism for male anatomy.  Last week, my brother Ed sent us the following story:

“We were at Daniel’s hockey practice last night with all the Christian Athletic League parents and as Sammy was watching the goalie put on his “protective” gear, he said, ‘Those are for his NUTS, Dad!!!’  Classic 5-year old stuff.”

Classic Sammy, anyway.  I’m sure my brother was proud.  I know I was… anything to shake up the Christian Athletic League parents is all right with me.

In other family news, as I tagged on the end of one of the Trial posts, my cousin Angela gave birth to her first baby last week.  Boy was 9 lb 9 oz. and 22” long.  Now before you pass out, ladies, he was a C-Section baby.  I’m sure he’ll be perfectly normal, but whenever he leaves a house he’ll feel compelled to go out the window.

Angela, baby EJ, and the proud Grandma!

If you were with me back in 2009, you might have seen some of Angela’s work.  She’s the one that wrote the poem about Troy Polamalu, “Humble Number 43,” that I featured in this post.  She was also with us in Miami for the “Hurricane Game,” in other words, the Steelers/Dolphins game we attended in 2004, which took place the day after Hurricane Jeanne ripped through the neighborhood.  I mentioned her and her football throwing prowess in that post.

I have no doubt that Angela will be amazing at whatever she chooses.  After all, she is a bona fide “Fear Factor” winner.  Honest!  Back in 2005, her and her roommate competed as a team on the season premiere of Fear Factor. 

Angela and her friend Zack, poised to kick some butt.

The competition had them A) crawling out onto a cargo net hung from a speeding helicopter, B) crawling through an air duct filled with foul water, huge spiders, cobwebs and flame jets, and C) retrieving gold bars and coins from a armored truck that was sunk at the bottom of a pool. 

(Yes, I was very relieved that they didn’t have to eat anything gross.)

Anyway, they whipped their large, muscle-bound competition with flair, class and humility.  I was so proud I almost couldn’t see straight.  I don’t know when I was happier… watching this or the Pens win the Stanley Cup in 2009.

So congratulations to Angela and Dennis.  This is going to be quite an adventure!

Random Thought

Last week, we had temperatures in the 60s and sunshine.  I went to lunch without a coat.  Last night… snowstorm.  5” of snow fell overnight.

Excuse me, Mother Nature?  WTF??  It it’s going to be cold, be cold.  If you want to warm it up, warm it up.  But this back and forth shit messes with your head!

That is all.

As If We Didn’t Have Enough To Worry About

I saw a new medical study and unless you did too, you’ll never guess what causes cancer now: oral sex.

Now men, before you look for a bridge to jump off, it’s giving it that causes the cancer, not receiving it. 

The study says that in the US, oral cancer from HPV infection is now more common than oral cancer from tobacco use.  To further quote from the article:

“Researchers have found a 225% increase in oral cancer cases in the US from 1974 to 2007, mainly among white men, said Maura Gillison of the Ohio State University.”  (Go Buckeyes!) 

“When you compare people that have an oral infection or not… the single greatest factor is the number of partners on whom the person has performed oral sex.”

Wow.  What are you ladies keeping in there, asbestos?  I guess from now on, you’re just going to have to start without us, then signal us in from the bullpen to close.

Personally, I think it’s a plot coming from the religious conservatives.

Hit Parade

You all know I’m a freak about tracking web traffic hits.  And today I did something to reduce the number of hits I get here.  On purpose.

I know, I must be crazy, but hear me out.  It’s not YOU I’m worried about.  If you’re reading this, I love you and I want you here.  But ever since I posted that picture of the Mercedes logo in my 4^th post about my jury duty, (to illustrate the 3-pronged pattern of one of the skull fractures), I’ve been getting picture search hits out the wazoo, from all over the world. 

When I searched it myself, I saw that my blog was the first listing on Google Images.

Normally, I’d be thrilled.  But this just isn’t right.  While it may be boffo for my Hits-By-Country tracker, I didn’t DO anything to earn the hits.  I just copied a picture that was already out there.

You know I obsessively track my traffic.  Maybe you do too, if you have a blog.  I know when I look at my bar graphs and they’re all high and stuff, I’m just tickled pink! 

Hits = Attention = Self Worth.

“Everyone loves me!  I’m fabulous!”

But now, there’s guilt involved.  I see the bar graphs bearing good news but deep down, I know I don’t deserve the hits.  They’re not coming to see me, they’re coming to grab an image… and not even one of mine, but one I grabbed elsewhere.  It fouls the data.  I can’t enjoy that…  

So, my solution was to photoshop out the ring around the 3-pronged center.  If I alter the actual logo, fewer people will want to use it because it’s not really accurate.  And if they DO still want it, at least it was something I worked on myself.  You can see the new picture here, or if you’re on the main page, just scroll down.

Am I crazy here?  Am I spending too much time fussing about a ridiculous problem?

Or did I just blow your minds?

Toons

To close, I thought I’d put my favorite editorial cartoon from the weekend, courtesy of First Door on the Left.

Eye, the Jury Pt. 5 - The Verdict

As I mentioned in “Comments” from the previous post last night, I heard from my juror friend, as he promised.  

 

1^st Degree Assault: Not guilty

2^nd Degree Assault: Guilty

1^st Degree Child Abuse: Guilty

2^nd Degree Child Abuse: Guilty

Again, I wish I could have kept my notes, but as I recall, the 1^st Degree Assault charge required intent to do bodily harm.  That was the one charge I would have voted Not Guilty.  So basically, the jury found exactly the way I would have made the case, going into deliberations.

“Defendant will apparently get about 25 years.  Found out afterward that the defense lawyer tried to get her to take a plea deal to reduce the sentence by 7 years, but she wouldn’t do it.”

I asked when that deal was discussed; before the trial or afterwards.  (As yet, he hasn’t returned the email.)  Remember, the defense attorney asked me and Alternate #2 what we thought.  I said guilty, she was on the fence.  Maybe after talking to us, he realized that it might go badly for his client.

“The 3-year old (now 5) is doing well, being raised by his aunt, and is actually described as being very small and very sweet and kind.”

There goes the theory of the hulking 3-year old tossing the baby around like a sack of potatoes. 

“The baby is not doing well.  Needs medication to prevent as many as 30 seizures a day, is fully blind, and operates at the level of a 1 or 2-month old (at 2 years).  Also, she nearly died again this past winter due to inability to regulate her body temperature.

The baby’s mother is missing and cannot be found.  She was a drug user as well.”

That explains why she wasn’t at the trial.  I thought at the time she’d want a front row seat.  So sad about the baby.  Poor kid never had a chance to have a normal life.

“The jury started out fairly divided, but soon moved toward the guilty verdicts you see above.  There was one holdout.  I believe she eventually just gave up.  She was never really eager to share her own thoughts or feelings or reasoning during the process.”

That would have bugged the hell out of me… a lone holdout that won’t discuss her reasoning.  That’s a cop-out and a failure to do one’s job as a jury.  The whole process is about talking out differences and coming to a united decision. 

He didn’t say how long it took them to deliberate.  I asked, but as I said, he hasn’t responded as yet.

So that’s that.  A trial in the books, another person in the jail and one more tragic crime victim is struggling to survive.  Onward, we roll.

I promise the in my next post, I’ll be back to my customary level of mirth and whimsy.

Eye, the Jury Pt. 4 - The Case

These are the facts in the case, which are not disputed by either side:

In April of 2009, the defendant was babysitting 2 of her good friend’s children, an 18-day old infant and an 18-month old toddler.   The defendant had a 3-year old boy of her own, so she was watching all three children.  Her 19-year old daughter also lived there, along with the elderly owner of the house.  (He was unrelated to the defendant and her family and was letting them live there with him.)

The defendant’s daughter was out of the house for a night or two prior to the incident, with her boyfriend.  The homeowner was also out of the house on the day in question.

On that day, the defendant was having trouble with her wisdom teeth.  As she couldn’t afford to have them pulled, she was taking OTC pain medication.  She put the baby to sleep in the middle of her double bed.  She made dinner for the toddler and her son and had them sit at the table to eat.  She was out of her pain medication so she called her daughter to see if she had anything.  The daughter said she could have her last Oxycodone pill.  The defendant took the pill and went to the couch in the living room to sit down.  At some point fell asleep.

Around 9:30 PM, the daughter came in the door.  When her mother didn’t respond to her, she saw she was sleeping.  (Later, the defendant said she heard her daughter come in, but didn’t respond.)  The daughter went up to her room, where she found the baby on the floor, unresponsive.  The baby was limp when she picked her up and there was blood on her mouth and bib, and she had a knot on her head.

The other two kids were in the room, but unusually quiet and still.  Normally they were quite boisterous when she’d come in.

She ran downstairs with the baby, screaming and asking her mother what happened.  The daughter called 9-1-1 and asked for the police to come.  Five minutes later, the mother called 9-1-1 again.  Shortly after, the police and paramedics arrived.

The paramedic noticed a large lump on the baby’s head.  The baby’s vitals were not normal… slow heartbeat, breathing shallow.  They rushed the baby to a (prestigious nearby) hospital. 

Later X-rays, CT scans and MRIs showed severe injuries.  There were 7 separate skull fractures on opposite sides of the head plus the back, and a sub-dural hematoma, (bleeding between the brain and its outer casing.)  There was also evidence of retinal bleeding, which typically comes from violent shaking, as opposed to blunt-force trauma.  Further, there was evidence of brain swelling damage to the brain tissue itself.

The defendant was charged with 2^nd degree assault, 1^st degree assault, 2^nd degree child abuse and 1^st degree child abuse.  (And I really wish they let me keep my notes because I had more details on the difference between all of these, but the main difference between 1^st and 2^nd degrees is intent to harm or injure.)

The Prosecution’s Case 

The supervising physician (and medical expert in the field) testified that these injuries were so severe that no child under 5 could have inflicted them.  He likened the damage to what would happen if the baby were to have been ejected from a high-speed car crash, or fell from a 3 or 4-story building.  The baby falling from a bed, a child’s arms or an adult’s arms, even onto a hardwood floor, would be insufficient to cause this much damage.

Plus, the retinal bleeding does not come from an impact, but from a violent shaking.

The prosecutor maintained that there was only one person in the house when the incident occurred that could have physically done this kind of damage and that was the defendant.  The daughter was out.  The owner was out.  The kids were too small.  The defendant said she heard her daughter come in, so it follows that she would have heard someone else come in as well.

A homicide detective was also called to testify.  He had been notified at 2:30 am on the night in question, that there had been an incident with a newborn, and she was not expected to live.  As there were other detectives on the case, he did not take action until the following afternoon.  He went to the house, surveyed the scene, and asked the defendant, her daughter and her son to come to the station to be interviewed.  That’s where the tape was made.

The interview lasted about 10 minutes.  The defendant sounded calm and cooperative.  She maintained that she went to sleep with the child up in the bed and the other kids eating, and didn’t wake up until her daughter found the baby bleeding.

The daughter was similarly interviewed but the prosecutor did not ask to have it put into evidence.  A social worker interviewed the 3-year old.  This interview was not put forth for evidence either.

The detective said there was no need to Mirandize the defendant or her daughter because they were not under arrest.  They were being interviewed willingly.  In fact, at that time, he could not yet surmise that a crime had taken place.  All he had was an injured baby.  It wasn’t until he was able to speak with the supervising physician and learn the extent of the injuries, and the force necessary to cause them, that he could conclude that the child had been abused and a crime had taken place.

The Defense’s Case 

The defense counsel maintained that there were other ways the baby could have gotten hurt besides via the defendant.  Namely,

*  The homeowner could have come in and done it.  He had a key and lived in the house.

*  The child could have done it.  He was an active kid and fully capable of getting up and down the stairs.  He always wanted to hold the baby but was not allowed to.  (Testimony was that the kid weighed 45 pounds and stood three quarters up his mommy’s thigh.)

*  Someone else could have come in the door and done it because the defendant was asleep.

Other points: the defendant had no history of abuse or deceit.  Her daughter testified that her mother never hit them and was in general, a good mother.  If the case was that serious, why didn’t the detective get up at 2:30 AM and start his investigation then?  Why did the daughter and the paramedic see a knot on the head, but not the supervising physician?  How can the doctor equate the impact to that of a crash ejection or 3-4 story fall when he can't explain the physics involved from the witness stand?  Isn’t it true that there are some doctors that don’t believe Shaken Baby Syndrome is a real thing?  Why did the detective arrest the defendant only after “the doctor told him it was a crime?”  Why wasn’t the homeowner brought in and more seriously questioned?

One of the main items was the daughter’s testimony that when she went upstairs and found the baby, the 3-year old said, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”  She also said that the boy had “picked her up and dropped her, then picked her up again and dropped her again.”  She didn’t elaborate further, nor explain how she learned that, and neither the prosecution nor defense asked any direct questions about what else the boy may have said or done.  As I mentioned earlier, they never offered his interview into evidence.  (I learned later that it was disallowed before trial.  More on how I learned that, later.)

Without coming out and directly stating it, the defense attorney seemed to be latching onto this option as most likely… that the boy was playing with the baby and dropped her, more than once.

My Take

After I was dismissed, I was waiting at the elevator with Alternate #2, when the defense attorney walked up.  He asked me if I would mind telling him what I thought about the case… “If you were up there in the back row, what would you think when you went back to that jury room?” 

I said, “I’d think, ‘I really hope the bathrooms in here are working!’”

No, I didn’t say that, but only because I didn’t think of it until now.

I told him I was leaning toward guilty.  I really wanted to sum up what I’d been thinking about, but naturally, all thoughts flew out of my head the moment I needed them.  I did tell him I thought a lot of the things he was putting out there were red herrings and didn’t affect the crux of the matter.  I told him, “I really would have liked to hear from the Social Worker that interviewed the boy.”

It was then he told me it was inadmissible. 

Right off the bat, from the first day, one of my thoughts was, “What did the boy say about it?”  At three, he knows what’s going on in there.  And I don’t think he’d be savvy enough to pull off a lie to a grownup trained to find them. 

Anyway, to me, the whole case comes down to this:  The medical expert said the injuries couldn’t have been caused by a child, or by a fall from several feet or even by a fall down the stairs.  You should have seen those scans.  There were huge cracks in the skull, pushed wider from the brain swelling.  One of them looked like a Mercedes logo:

There were fractures all around the head… there must have been several impacts.  Also, no child could have shaken that baby enough to produce the retinal bleeding; they just don’t have the upper body strength.

I found the medical expert credible and he had no reason to lie or exaggerate.  He was not being paid for his testimony.

So if the kids didn’t do it, who is left?  I believe that if anyone else had come in the door, the defendant would have heard it, just like she heard her daughter come in.

When you strip away all that it can’t be, the only thing left is what can.  That’s the defendant.

While it’s true that no one ever saw what exactly happened, there’s nothing wrong with deductive reasoning.  Say I have 3 shells and one pea.  Without you seeing, I put a pea under one shell.  Then I pick up a shell and there’s no pea.  I pick up another shell and there’s no pea.  At that point, you can conclude that the pea is under the third shell.  You didn’t see me put it there, but beyond a reasonable doubt, you know it’s there. 

Anyway, I found that the defense attorney’s other strategies to be mostly distraction, wordplay and red herrings.  The one that bugged me the most was how he kept saying that the “detective didn't think it was a crime until the Doctor told him it was.”  This was a major point to which he frequently returned. 

But that’s not really what happened; that’s just a skewing of the words.  The doctor did not tell him it was a crime, he told him of the severity of the injuries.  That information MADE it a crime, by the detective’s standards and guidelines.  That’s not a real issue.

Nor is what time the detective began the investigation.  The defense attorney made a big deal about the detective waiting until the next afternoon to investigate.  But the thing is, it was already being investigated by other cops; just not by him.  When he came in, they handed off the notes and he took over.  That is also not an issue.

Regarding the Doctor “not knowing the physics” behind the impact reference, I wouldn’t think he needed to know that.  After all, he’s personally seen what happens to a body in those falls and crashes.  And saying "this damage is like that damage" does not require expertise in physics, but merely experience in observation of the results. 

And while it may be true that there are “some doctors” that don’t think “Shaken Baby” is a real thing, I might also point out that there are doctors that don’t think smoking causes cancer either.  I’d bet you can’t get a roomful of doctors to agree on anything unanimously.  So that’s another red herring.

So at the end of it all, after the “he said/she said,” to me it came down to the only relevant point:  The kids were physically incapable of doing it.  The notion of someone coming in, the homeowner included, beating up an infant and then leaving without being noticed, is remote. 

I found the testimony of the doctor and detective to be credible.  They were experienced, knowledgeable, and really didn’t have any reason to lie.  Their “I’s” were dotted and “T’s” were crossed when it came to the evidence.

And it’s not like the defendant was a bad witness.  She was calm and composed, and stuck to her story.  She seemed like a nice lady.  The worst thing I can say about her is that during jury selection, she had her stretch pants on inside-out.  I could see a big white spot in the middle of her ass and at first I thought her underwear was showing through a rip.  I later realize it was not the same color that was exposed over the top of her pants… a good 7-8 inches worth.  On my way back from bench, during voir dire, I saw that it was the tag.  I almost voted guilty right there.  My rule is: if you can’t even dress yourself, for your own trial, how can I trust your word?

But seriously… she’s the only one there with a motive to lie.  Her daughter… she wasn’t there, so she doesn’t really know what went on.  Obviously, she’ll want to back her mother. 

So again: The kids couldn’t do it, it couldn’t have been an accident or a fall off the bed, and no one else was home. 

Guilty.

Signed, Alternate Juror #3.

Note: My apologies for the length of this post, but I didn’t feel like this was a good one to split up.


Late Update: I heard from my juror friend and they found the defendant guilty on 3 of the 4 counts.  (Which is exactly the way I would have pitched it, walking in.)  Tomorrow morning, I'll have a full rundown of the end-game and what happened to the principals.