One autumn afternoon in the mid 90s, I ran into Spike Lee on the Lower East Side of New York. He's not very tall, not very intimidating. He looks exactly like what he is; a contemplative artist who cares deeply about issues affecting his world.
I was with a friend of a friend's boyfriend at the time — the German artist, HN Semjon — hanging out while my friend was buying make-up or shoes or something that didn't interest me. At least not interested enough to stop my conversation with Semjon. We were discussing the different meanings of the word "art" in reference to his work and mine. As a writer I've always felt like my work was art of a lesser sort than that of visual artists. Semjon, a sculptor at the time, was very attentive and very kind in encouraging me. He insisted the debate between art genres was meaningless.
It was just about then that I literally bumped into Lee. If it weren't for the fact that the night before I'd seen "Do the Right Thing" (for the second time), I probably wouldn't have recognized him. He was wearing his signature black framed glasses, fuzzy beard and a giant coat to protect him from the wind that was already beginning to bight.
So shocked to see him, all I did was say 'excuse me' and move around him. Semjon didn't recognize him until the filmmaker had moved down the street. It was as if Semjon had conjured up the diminutive filmmaker to illustrate his point that art can't be defined by genres let alone ordered by rank.
Years later, I'm not so sure that Semjon was right. I just don't see myself as an artist. Lee certainly is.
Given my relief at the arrival of the Katrina anniversary, I tuned into Lee's documentary about New Orleans on HBO last night. I was hoping the story would exorcise my dreams or at least ease the pain of them — as if viewing the film were a passage to healing.
But the dreams were worse than ever last night, filled with water, helplessness and drowning. At one point I dreamt that I was trapped in a flooded house trying to hack my way through the ceiling to the floor above me even as the rising water filled the room. Fighting to hold my breath, I swam through the front window of the house and was picked up by a boat seconds later. As I was lifted over the gunwale, I saw Spike Lee — dressed just as he had been that day in New York — at the tiller. There was another refugee in the boat, bundled in a wool blanket. I remember thinking how hot it was and wondered at the figure in the blanket. Somehow, in that infinitesimal time between the dream bubble popping and me waking, I realized George W. Bush was the man in the blanket.
I sat up on the edge of the bed for quite a while wondering if my dream was a result of too much curry or too much curiosity.
I finally settled on the idea that GWB is a refugee from the truth of his failure to assist victims of the storm. Spike Lee was steering him into understanding the truth. And I was a witness to the capricious whims of weather and survival.
It was only a dream for me, but for millions of Americans — mostly poor, generally unemployed — it is an ongoing nightmare. No movie, no artist, no debate, no denial can change that truth.
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
Guilty Pleasures
In the late 80s I developed a habit of listening to talk radio in the morning. A girl I was seeing was a fan of Howard Stern and I started listening to his programs. Many times I was shocked and upset by his vitriol, but most often it was juvenile or bathroom humor that made me simultaneously squirm and snicker.
In the mid 90s I graduated to NPR's morning radio. Although they didn't interview women the morning after first lesbian experiences, NPR titillated, angered and outraged me as much as the hairy fella in New York.
I still listen to NPR, rotating in the morning between Chicago and DeKalb stations. Generally they run the same programming before 9 a.m. but their signal strength in the suburbs varies for a random number of reasons.
The past two weeks it has been tough to listen to NPR. Every other story is about New Orleans or Hurricane Katrina. Memories of the people and places that I saw during my time in the Gulf have been overwhelming. I've found myself feeling guilty at only doing a little, at abandoning the people down there. I've found myself crying at stories of people who barely made it and having nightmares about the people who didn't. For the first time since Christmas the awful smell of river bottom mixed with sewage and dead things has returned to me when they report on the thick mud found in most homes weeks after the storm. When they talk about the president flying over the damaged area a year later, I recall the anger and frustration of people whenever a helicopter flew past us.
So it's been an amazingly difficult two weeks. I confess that I'm glad that today is the last day of anniversary stories. There may be a few others in the next few days but we've got a midterm election coming. Republicans aren't going to let the media dwell on tragedy much longer, especially when the president's approval rating for handling the hurricanes is actually lower now than in those pathetic days after the storm. Heck, in a couple of weeks, we've got a five-year anniversary of another tragic government failure. The news reports of what happened can't last much longer.
I feel both pleasure and guilt that the anniversary has arrived. I hope the dreams at night recede soon too.
In the mid 90s I graduated to NPR's morning radio. Although they didn't interview women the morning after first lesbian experiences, NPR titillated, angered and outraged me as much as the hairy fella in New York.
I still listen to NPR, rotating in the morning between Chicago and DeKalb stations. Generally they run the same programming before 9 a.m. but their signal strength in the suburbs varies for a random number of reasons.
The past two weeks it has been tough to listen to NPR. Every other story is about New Orleans or Hurricane Katrina. Memories of the people and places that I saw during my time in the Gulf have been overwhelming. I've found myself feeling guilty at only doing a little, at abandoning the people down there. I've found myself crying at stories of people who barely made it and having nightmares about the people who didn't. For the first time since Christmas the awful smell of river bottom mixed with sewage and dead things has returned to me when they report on the thick mud found in most homes weeks after the storm. When they talk about the president flying over the damaged area a year later, I recall the anger and frustration of people whenever a helicopter flew past us.
So it's been an amazingly difficult two weeks. I confess that I'm glad that today is the last day of anniversary stories. There may be a few others in the next few days but we've got a midterm election coming. Republicans aren't going to let the media dwell on tragedy much longer, especially when the president's approval rating for handling the hurricanes is actually lower now than in those pathetic days after the storm. Heck, in a couple of weeks, we've got a five-year anniversary of another tragic government failure. The news reports of what happened can't last much longer.
I feel both pleasure and guilt that the anniversary has arrived. I hope the dreams at night recede soon too.
Monday, August 28, 2006
The real me.
This is a hard one to write. I'm not all that good at being real about anything least of all about myself. Friends and family expect a quip for every query, an irreverent aside for every serious conversation.
But the past few weeks have found me short-tempered and angry. I've snapped at supervisors and subordinates. I've been surly at home and sour with friends. Some might say I haven't been myself lately. But it's just not true.
This is me, the real me.
I'm angry beyond words and on the verge of tears almost constantly. I can hardly wait for Sept. 11 to roll around so the media will go back to pretending Hurricane Katrina is old news.
I don't know if I ever posted on this before taking the stuff down in February. I don't think I did. It's just too personal.
I spent several weeks in Southern Mississippi last fall. I was supposed to be there as a reporter, but spent most of my days doing relief work and wrote about it at night. My editors were upset with me and I almost lost my job because of it. (Truth be told, my attitude then left an impression on my bosses that I was insubordinate and didn't respect their authority. They mentioned this during the unemployment hearings that followed my dismissal in February.) It was one of the saddest experiences of my life, watching the poorest people in the country thank people for the smallest of kindness.
Fortunately, I was too busy to dwell on it, too overworked to cry about it, too drained to think about it. The act of filing a story each morning at 6 a.m. somehow put a period on the previous day, closed my memory from remembering.
One night while sitting around drinking lukewarm beer with some relief workers, I heard a scream from nearby. I dropped the beer and ran toward the sound. Another relief worker, a Mexican guy, had been adjusting the hitch for his equipment trailer when the cement block it was resting on gave way. The heavy trailer, complete with a portable cutting torch and several dozen gas tanks, had tipped onto the man's right foot.
We managed to raise the trailer using a two-ton hydraulic jack that we had brought along from Illinois. I asked — OK, I told — one of the people standing around watching to go get someone from the medical clinic set up in the compound. There was considerable blood, but no bones seemed to be broken.
One of the doctors and a med student came and examined the Mexican's foot. The doctor closed the wound with some butterfly bandages and told me to take the guy to the hospital in Waveland — a town 18 miles east of us.
The Mexican, Juan Something, didn't want to go but I made him get into the truck. Thinking his reluctance came from a lack of medical insurance, I explained that the hospital was providing emergency care for free. (A lie that turned out to be true.)
What really troubled Juan were the National Guard checkpoints along U.S. 90 between Pearlington and Gulfport. Every ten miles or so, a roadblock was set-up every night from 8 p.m. until 5 a.m. From midnight until 4 a.m., non-government vehicles were prohibited from travel along the highway. Juan was worried that some soldier might ask for documentation from him. They might have otherwise, but by then the Guardsmen were used to seeing my truck. My press pass gave me extraordinary access.
(With the exception of NASA Stennis Space Center, I was never denied entrance anywhere. For several months after the hurricane, the NASA base was closed to non-governmental employees-- FEMA was staging out of there, as were several security and firefighting units. But a doctor at one of the volunteer clinics told me that if I flipped a stethoscope behind my neck like an ER doc, they'd let me through. A trick that worked, it was as close to playing doctor as I ever got down there.)
Juan was lucky. The hospital -- a circus like tent set-up in a parking lot of a destroyed K-Mart -- found no broken bones. They cleaned the wound, put a couple of stitches in to close it, and told the guy that God had been looking out for him because the cheap boots he wore had miraculously saved his foot.
I haven't thought of Juan since then, but he and other people I met down there are now like a cast of characters in a play that only I can see.
I'm angry because I feel like I've abandoned these people.
I went along with the rest of my profession. My next big story was on Dennis Hastert's ties to Abramoff. Then I co-wrote a series about an Illinois judge allegedly trading sexual favors from jail inmates for reduced sentences in court.
(I wrote a scathing criticism here about the newspaper's support of all things Reagan and Republican. ((If you check out the Web site for my old papers you can buy a limited edition bronze of Reagan riding a horse.)) This of course was the catalyst to my being fired.)
I moved on. I let my words from then speak for me and I let it all go. And now all I see and hear is New Orleans, New Orleans, New Orleans. The media and administration have either colluded to ignore or just plain forgotten the poor people outside of New Orleans affected by the hurricane. It makes for a much neater story when the only poor people are black folks from the Big Easy. Given all that we've heard about the murder rates in black neighborhoods there before, during and after the storm, it's not hard for Americans to harden their hearts and ignore them. They're the Willie Horton's of modern politics. They represent all that racism and conservatism rely on to reinforce the notion that success for Black people is available for those who aren't too lazy or too dangerous to take it.
"It's not my fault those Blacks can't get ahead. Even Juan Williams from Fox News knows they're killing each other."
I met plenty of minorities in Mississippi. There were the volunteers from Philadelphia (Penn.) who ran the shelter in Pearlington until white people from the Red Cross showed up in late October. (The Red Cross took over the shelter, put up a sign claiming ownership of the services that had been provided by volunteers not in any way affiliated with the group, and then proceeded to kick everyone out of the shelter. The folks of Pearlington were moved from the only building left standing in the tiny village and plopped down in a FEMA park 20 miles away where many still live.) (The Red Cross "volunteer" who ran the shelter for less than a week before it closed later got in trouble for using relief funds for his own benefit.)
[I CAN'T BELIEVE HOW MUCH I'M REMEMBERING AND RAMBLING. I THINK MAYBE I NEED TO STOP NOW AND FIGURE OUT HOW TO TELL THIS STORY IN A LINEAR WAY. IT HASN'T HELPED WITH MY EMOTIONS, ONLY GIVEN ME MORE MEMORIES TO MAKE ME ANGRY.]
But the past few weeks have found me short-tempered and angry. I've snapped at supervisors and subordinates. I've been surly at home and sour with friends. Some might say I haven't been myself lately. But it's just not true.
This is me, the real me.
I'm angry beyond words and on the verge of tears almost constantly. I can hardly wait for Sept. 11 to roll around so the media will go back to pretending Hurricane Katrina is old news.
I don't know if I ever posted on this before taking the stuff down in February. I don't think I did. It's just too personal.
I spent several weeks in Southern Mississippi last fall. I was supposed to be there as a reporter, but spent most of my days doing relief work and wrote about it at night. My editors were upset with me and I almost lost my job because of it. (Truth be told, my attitude then left an impression on my bosses that I was insubordinate and didn't respect their authority. They mentioned this during the unemployment hearings that followed my dismissal in February.) It was one of the saddest experiences of my life, watching the poorest people in the country thank people for the smallest of kindness.
Fortunately, I was too busy to dwell on it, too overworked to cry about it, too drained to think about it. The act of filing a story each morning at 6 a.m. somehow put a period on the previous day, closed my memory from remembering.
One night while sitting around drinking lukewarm beer with some relief workers, I heard a scream from nearby. I dropped the beer and ran toward the sound. Another relief worker, a Mexican guy, had been adjusting the hitch for his equipment trailer when the cement block it was resting on gave way. The heavy trailer, complete with a portable cutting torch and several dozen gas tanks, had tipped onto the man's right foot.
We managed to raise the trailer using a two-ton hydraulic jack that we had brought along from Illinois. I asked — OK, I told — one of the people standing around watching to go get someone from the medical clinic set up in the compound. There was considerable blood, but no bones seemed to be broken.
One of the doctors and a med student came and examined the Mexican's foot. The doctor closed the wound with some butterfly bandages and told me to take the guy to the hospital in Waveland — a town 18 miles east of us.
The Mexican, Juan Something, didn't want to go but I made him get into the truck. Thinking his reluctance came from a lack of medical insurance, I explained that the hospital was providing emergency care for free. (A lie that turned out to be true.)
What really troubled Juan were the National Guard checkpoints along U.S. 90 between Pearlington and Gulfport. Every ten miles or so, a roadblock was set-up every night from 8 p.m. until 5 a.m. From midnight until 4 a.m., non-government vehicles were prohibited from travel along the highway. Juan was worried that some soldier might ask for documentation from him. They might have otherwise, but by then the Guardsmen were used to seeing my truck. My press pass gave me extraordinary access.
(With the exception of NASA Stennis Space Center, I was never denied entrance anywhere. For several months after the hurricane, the NASA base was closed to non-governmental employees-- FEMA was staging out of there, as were several security and firefighting units. But a doctor at one of the volunteer clinics told me that if I flipped a stethoscope behind my neck like an ER doc, they'd let me through. A trick that worked, it was as close to playing doctor as I ever got down there.)
Juan was lucky. The hospital -- a circus like tent set-up in a parking lot of a destroyed K-Mart -- found no broken bones. They cleaned the wound, put a couple of stitches in to close it, and told the guy that God had been looking out for him because the cheap boots he wore had miraculously saved his foot.
I haven't thought of Juan since then, but he and other people I met down there are now like a cast of characters in a play that only I can see.
I'm angry because I feel like I've abandoned these people.
I went along with the rest of my profession. My next big story was on Dennis Hastert's ties to Abramoff. Then I co-wrote a series about an Illinois judge allegedly trading sexual favors from jail inmates for reduced sentences in court.
(I wrote a scathing criticism here about the newspaper's support of all things Reagan and Republican. ((If you check out the Web site for my old papers you can buy a limited edition bronze of Reagan riding a horse.)) This of course was the catalyst to my being fired.)
I moved on. I let my words from then speak for me and I let it all go. And now all I see and hear is New Orleans, New Orleans, New Orleans. The media and administration have either colluded to ignore or just plain forgotten the poor people outside of New Orleans affected by the hurricane. It makes for a much neater story when the only poor people are black folks from the Big Easy. Given all that we've heard about the murder rates in black neighborhoods there before, during and after the storm, it's not hard for Americans to harden their hearts and ignore them. They're the Willie Horton's of modern politics. They represent all that racism and conservatism rely on to reinforce the notion that success for Black people is available for those who aren't too lazy or too dangerous to take it.
"It's not my fault those Blacks can't get ahead. Even Juan Williams from Fox News knows they're killing each other."
I met plenty of minorities in Mississippi. There were the volunteers from Philadelphia (Penn.) who ran the shelter in Pearlington until white people from the Red Cross showed up in late October. (The Red Cross took over the shelter, put up a sign claiming ownership of the services that had been provided by volunteers not in any way affiliated with the group, and then proceeded to kick everyone out of the shelter. The folks of Pearlington were moved from the only building left standing in the tiny village and plopped down in a FEMA park 20 miles away where many still live.) (The Red Cross "volunteer" who ran the shelter for less than a week before it closed later got in trouble for using relief funds for his own benefit.)
[I CAN'T BELIEVE HOW MUCH I'M REMEMBERING AND RAMBLING. I THINK MAYBE I NEED TO STOP NOW AND FIGURE OUT HOW TO TELL THIS STORY IN A LINEAR WAY. IT HASN'T HELPED WITH MY EMOTIONS, ONLY GIVEN ME MORE MEMORIES TO MAKE ME ANGRY.]
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
How do you spell hypocrite? C—O—N—S—E—R—V—A—T—I—V—E
Conservative groups are calling for the head of a federal judge in Michigan who ruled against the NSA's warrantless wire-tap program because she serves as a trustee of a group that has given grants to the American Civil Liberties Union.
The conservative group, Judicial Watch, said that Judge Anna Diggs Taylor had a possible conflict of interest in the case ACLU v. National Security Agency because she is a member of the Community Foundation for Southeastern Michigan in Detroit's board of trustees, the New York Times reported. According to Judicial Watch, the organization gave grants totaling $125,000 since 1999.
Federal law requires judges to disqualify themselves from hearing a case if their impartiality "might reasonably be questioned" based on factors like a financial or personal relationship with a party in the case. Conservatives point out that by this standard Taylor should have recused herself from the case.
Conservatives don't hold all judges to the same standard. Justice Antonin Scalia went duck hunting with Vice President Dick Cheney after the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case where Cheney was a named defendant. Scalia heard the case that gave President George W. Bush the White House just weeks after his son, John, was offered a partnership in a law firm representing Bush in the case. In the same case, Justice Clarence Thomas remained on the bench even while his wife, Virginia, was soliciting resumes for the Bush transition team.
Conservatives accepted that Thomas and Scalia would be fair and impartial not given to political prejudice. It's only "liberal activist" judges who won't be.
The fact that fourth amendment to the Constitution specifically requires warrants "upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation" is lost in the din. Spun no matter what way, the judge's ruling is based on the Constitution and the law, not on her political beliefs or personal passions.
The conservative blogs and talking heads will, of course, carry the day and the rest of America will once again be reminded of the dangers of "liberal" judges. The mainstream media will give credence to the right by asking those on the left to defend the judges hearing the case in spite of a conflict of interest.
Once again the left is left with answering the proverbial when-did-you-stop-beating- your-wife question. The stranglehold of Republican hypocrisy continues.
The conservative group, Judicial Watch, said that Judge Anna Diggs Taylor had a possible conflict of interest in the case ACLU v. National Security Agency because she is a member of the Community Foundation for Southeastern Michigan in Detroit's board of trustees, the New York Times reported. According to Judicial Watch, the organization gave grants totaling $125,000 since 1999.
Federal law requires judges to disqualify themselves from hearing a case if their impartiality "might reasonably be questioned" based on factors like a financial or personal relationship with a party in the case. Conservatives point out that by this standard Taylor should have recused herself from the case.
Conservatives don't hold all judges to the same standard. Justice Antonin Scalia went duck hunting with Vice President Dick Cheney after the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case where Cheney was a named defendant. Scalia heard the case that gave President George W. Bush the White House just weeks after his son, John, was offered a partnership in a law firm representing Bush in the case. In the same case, Justice Clarence Thomas remained on the bench even while his wife, Virginia, was soliciting resumes for the Bush transition team.
Conservatives accepted that Thomas and Scalia would be fair and impartial not given to political prejudice. It's only "liberal activist" judges who won't be.
The fact that fourth amendment to the Constitution specifically requires warrants "upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation" is lost in the din. Spun no matter what way, the judge's ruling is based on the Constitution and the law, not on her political beliefs or personal passions.
The conservative blogs and talking heads will, of course, carry the day and the rest of America will once again be reminded of the dangers of "liberal" judges. The mainstream media will give credence to the right by asking those on the left to defend the judges hearing the case in spite of a conflict of interest.
Once again the left is left with answering the proverbial when-did-you-stop-beating- your-wife question. The stranglehold of Republican hypocrisy continues.
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
Defining victory
Yesterday, President Bush criticized Democrats who are calling for either a date to bring the troops home from Iraq or for the immediate withdrawal of all forces. He said the Democrats want to leave "before the job is done."
"I can't tell you exactly when it's going to be done," Bush said according to the AP. "If we ever give up the desire to help people who live in freedom, we will have lost our soul as a nation, as far as I'm concerned."
Apparently now the mission in Iraq is to help people who live in freedom and to save the soul of the nation.
"War is not a time of joy," he said. "These are challenging times, and they're difficult times, and they're straining the psyche of our country. I understand that. You know, nobody likes to see innocent people die. Nobody wants to turn on their TV on a daily basis and see havoc wrought by terrorists."
The terrorists of whom Bush speaks weren’t killing Iraqis when the war on terror began in 2001. Although none would argue that the Iraqis were living in freedom, they had less to fear under the brutal dictatorship of Saddam Hussein.
The problem isn’t that Democrats are calling for a "date-certain withdrawal" or even an immediate withdrawal. The problem is the Democrats who are calling for these things.
The Sunday morning news programs featured Sens. John Kerry and Joe Lieberman. Sen. Hilary Clinton was used in a sound bite on one of the networks as well.
This is why the Republicans have so much hope for November. As long as Democrats keep parading failed national candidates or candidates who are as vilified as Clinton, the ruling party can distract voters from the issues. There is just no way to rehabilitate these characters. Even Democrats can’t stand them.
There need to be alternative voices with alternative messages in the debate. Democrats need to address Iraq without accepting the dualism of cut-and-run versus stay-the-course. Democrats need to offer real diplomacy in the region and look beyond the notion of Israel to create a lasting peace.
For years, the United States and much of the West have been adamant in their support of Israel’s right to exist without ever once recognizing that the government of that country has created an apartheid system at least as bad as South Africa. It’s not anti-Semitic to say that the Israeli government is wrong. It’s not anti-Semitic to recognize the plight of the Palestinians, the wrongs done to the Lebanese.
What should be recognized isn’t the threats of extremists, but the fears of the common folk both here and abroad.
When the Democrats start addressing the 300 percent rise in income for the top one-percent of the Americans, when Democrats begin speaking about the inequities of wage earners in developing countries that draw jobs from the US, they’ll begin to ease the grip of fear that this administration has created in the world.
Or they can continue on their present course and drive Republicans to victory in the fall.
"I can't tell you exactly when it's going to be done," Bush said according to the AP. "If we ever give up the desire to help people who live in freedom, we will have lost our soul as a nation, as far as I'm concerned."
Apparently now the mission in Iraq is to help people who live in freedom and to save the soul of the nation.
"War is not a time of joy," he said. "These are challenging times, and they're difficult times, and they're straining the psyche of our country. I understand that. You know, nobody likes to see innocent people die. Nobody wants to turn on their TV on a daily basis and see havoc wrought by terrorists."
The terrorists of whom Bush speaks weren’t killing Iraqis when the war on terror began in 2001. Although none would argue that the Iraqis were living in freedom, they had less to fear under the brutal dictatorship of Saddam Hussein.
The problem isn’t that Democrats are calling for a "date-certain withdrawal" or even an immediate withdrawal. The problem is the Democrats who are calling for these things.
The Sunday morning news programs featured Sens. John Kerry and Joe Lieberman. Sen. Hilary Clinton was used in a sound bite on one of the networks as well.
This is why the Republicans have so much hope for November. As long as Democrats keep parading failed national candidates or candidates who are as vilified as Clinton, the ruling party can distract voters from the issues. There is just no way to rehabilitate these characters. Even Democrats can’t stand them.
There need to be alternative voices with alternative messages in the debate. Democrats need to address Iraq without accepting the dualism of cut-and-run versus stay-the-course. Democrats need to offer real diplomacy in the region and look beyond the notion of Israel to create a lasting peace.
For years, the United States and much of the West have been adamant in their support of Israel’s right to exist without ever once recognizing that the government of that country has created an apartheid system at least as bad as South Africa. It’s not anti-Semitic to say that the Israeli government is wrong. It’s not anti-Semitic to recognize the plight of the Palestinians, the wrongs done to the Lebanese.
What should be recognized isn’t the threats of extremists, but the fears of the common folk both here and abroad.
When the Democrats start addressing the 300 percent rise in income for the top one-percent of the Americans, when Democrats begin speaking about the inequities of wage earners in developing countries that draw jobs from the US, they’ll begin to ease the grip of fear that this administration has created in the world.
Or they can continue on their present course and drive Republicans to victory in the fall.
Monday, August 21, 2006
A lesson in baseball and integrity
The late Roger Tremaine was indisputably a baseball lover. One of the founders of the Continental Amateur Baseball Association and its first national executive director, Tremaine worked year round to make the amateur baseball experience something that participants woud remember forever. He wanted to celebrate the purity of the sport, played for the joy of the game without the interference of winning at any cost. Tremaine embodied the joke about baseball lovers; when he wasn't watching or talking about baseball, he was in bed dreaming about it.
Treamine passed away in October nine months before a nearly legendary on-the-field performance by a group of 9-year-olds from Woodstock, Ill. There can be little doubt that this team embodied all that he imagined when CABA was just a fledgling organization in the Cincinnati suburbs of the late 80s.
This year's CABA tournament in Crystal Lake, Ill. featured teams from the US, Japan and Peurto Rico. It was truly a world series.
The tournament represented the pinnacle of summer baseball for 15, 11 and 9-year-old players from all over the globe. The Woodstock team of 9-year-olds — the city's first ever entry into the tournament — drank in all of the splendor of the event.
For some, it will be as close to sports fame as they ever come; for others it will be the first in a long string of life's successes. But for those who saw the team play, for those who agonized over each loss, reveled in each win, the team will forever be lionized for what they did on the field. They may not have been major leaguers, but for a brief week in Woodstock they were just as admired, just as important.
They were four outs away from advancing to the championship round after playing as a team for only two weeks. An amazing accomplishment.
But one thing that most people don't know, something most never heard is that had the team's manager been a less honorable man, the team might have won what turned out to be their last game.
One of the rules of CABA is that pitchers may pitch for only so many innings during the tournament. The rule protects young arms from permanent injury. After each game, tournament directors generate a list of all the players and how many innings each has left to pitch. On that Friday afternoon, Steve Otten, the Woodstock manager, was given a list that said two of his best pitchers were eligible to pitch. Otten knew these boys had pitched their maximum innings.
Instead of taking advantage of the mistake, Otten reported the error to the tournament director.
The director checked the database and said as far as the tournament was concerned both boys were eligible to pitch. But Otten refused to use them, playing fair were less honest managers would have pitched the two boys and ignored the rules.
Arguably, Otten's honesty cost the team a victory and a spot in the championship. But he taught a lesson to each of those young men about honor and integrity. It was the best part of the tournament and the least known.
Perhaps somewhere Tremaine is telling this story to another baseball lover. If not, let's hope that he dreams of it in his long sleep.
Treamine passed away in October nine months before a nearly legendary on-the-field performance by a group of 9-year-olds from Woodstock, Ill. There can be little doubt that this team embodied all that he imagined when CABA was just a fledgling organization in the Cincinnati suburbs of the late 80s.
This year's CABA tournament in Crystal Lake, Ill. featured teams from the US, Japan and Peurto Rico. It was truly a world series.
The tournament represented the pinnacle of summer baseball for 15, 11 and 9-year-old players from all over the globe. The Woodstock team of 9-year-olds — the city's first ever entry into the tournament — drank in all of the splendor of the event.
For some, it will be as close to sports fame as they ever come; for others it will be the first in a long string of life's successes. But for those who saw the team play, for those who agonized over each loss, reveled in each win, the team will forever be lionized for what they did on the field. They may not have been major leaguers, but for a brief week in Woodstock they were just as admired, just as important.
They were four outs away from advancing to the championship round after playing as a team for only two weeks. An amazing accomplishment.
But one thing that most people don't know, something most never heard is that had the team's manager been a less honorable man, the team might have won what turned out to be their last game.
One of the rules of CABA is that pitchers may pitch for only so many innings during the tournament. The rule protects young arms from permanent injury. After each game, tournament directors generate a list of all the players and how many innings each has left to pitch. On that Friday afternoon, Steve Otten, the Woodstock manager, was given a list that said two of his best pitchers were eligible to pitch. Otten knew these boys had pitched their maximum innings.
Instead of taking advantage of the mistake, Otten reported the error to the tournament director.
The director checked the database and said as far as the tournament was concerned both boys were eligible to pitch. But Otten refused to use them, playing fair were less honest managers would have pitched the two boys and ignored the rules.
Arguably, Otten's honesty cost the team a victory and a spot in the championship. But he taught a lesson to each of those young men about honor and integrity. It was the best part of the tournament and the least known.
Perhaps somewhere Tremaine is telling this story to another baseball lover. If not, let's hope that he dreams of it in his long sleep.
Sacrificing liberty, wanting safety, getting neither
Most Americans apparently care little or nothing for the Constitution. After all, the United States has been run without it since 9/11 and — with the exception of a few civil libertarians and progressive writers — no one seems to miss it.
Within months of the 9/11 attacks people were already being held without charges or hearings.
On the morning of the attack, Abdallah Higazy, the son of a former Egyptian diplomat, was in his room on the 51st floor of the Millennium Hilton Hotel, across the street from the twin towers. Along with everyone else Higazy fled the hotel after the attack. He would never have come to the attention of authorities except for a lie — either malicious or misinformed — told to authorities.
A hotel security guard told police that he found a radio that could be used to communicate with airborne pilots in the safe in Higazy’s room. They investigated, but they could find nothing to link Higazy to the attack.
Higazy returned to the hotel three months later to pick up his belongings and he was arrested by the FBI as a material witness and placed into solitary confinement. Federal investigators were understandably suspicious, but had nothing that could be called evidence that Higazy was involved in the attack.
In the United States, law enforcement officials are not supposed to lock people up without at least some evidence of wrongdoing.
Higazy could not be linked to the attack, but he was in a jail cell, with no chance of proving that he was innocent.
This was an abuse of the material witness statute by any standard. People arrested as material witnesses are supposed to be witnesses, not suspects. The statute was created for cases where there is a significant belief that the witness will flee the jurisdiction before testifying. There is no crime and the witness is supposed to be treated differently from an accused criminal.
In a criminal arrest, the government has an obligation to provide an arraignment where they must show probable cause that the suspect had committed the offense. The FBI didn't have evidence to prove his involvement, so Higazy was held as a material witness while investigators searched for something to pin on him.
News reports say that an FBI agent eventually coerced Higazy into saying that the radio was his. The agent knew that if there wasn't some kind of admission of involvement the law required Higazy be set free.
That Higazy’s admission was not the truth didn’t matter. The authorities were happy to finally be able to accuse him of a crime. Ironically, they charged him with lying to federal agents when he said the radio wasn’t his.
Then a pilot, an American citizen, walked into the same hotel, looking for the aviation radio he had left behind on Sept. 11. Higazy’s original story — which he had clung to as long as he felt he could — had been the truth. Higazy was set free.
What might have happened if the pilot hadn’t shown up to claim his radio? It's a frightening thought, once again proving nonsense the notion that if you've done nothing wrong, you've got nothing to worry about.
This case isn't the most egregious either. People have been sent offshore to be tortured, been condemned to secret prisons run by the CIA, been put away at Guantanamo Bay and other American military prisons. That's not to mention the people who have died at the hands of American military and civilian interrogators.
Since 9/11, people have been forced to surrender previously guaranteed rights and most time without so much as a nod at the balance of powers. We're herded like sheep through metal detectors, patted down to watch football, under scrutiny by cameras as we shop, drive, eat and live. The left is called unpatriotic for objecting to anything and those who protest are marked for further study by the government.
Meanwhile there is little evidence that all of these measures are doing anything. We're not any safer nor will we ever be. The Republicans who called themselves the party of small government sponsored the creation of Big Brother.
"Those who are willing to sacrifice liberty for safety deserve neither," Benjamin Franklin said. Maybe he really knew that those who sacrifice liberty for safety receive neither.
Within months of the 9/11 attacks people were already being held without charges or hearings.
On the morning of the attack, Abdallah Higazy, the son of a former Egyptian diplomat, was in his room on the 51st floor of the Millennium Hilton Hotel, across the street from the twin towers. Along with everyone else Higazy fled the hotel after the attack. He would never have come to the attention of authorities except for a lie — either malicious or misinformed — told to authorities.
A hotel security guard told police that he found a radio that could be used to communicate with airborne pilots in the safe in Higazy’s room. They investigated, but they could find nothing to link Higazy to the attack.
Higazy returned to the hotel three months later to pick up his belongings and he was arrested by the FBI as a material witness and placed into solitary confinement. Federal investigators were understandably suspicious, but had nothing that could be called evidence that Higazy was involved in the attack.
In the United States, law enforcement officials are not supposed to lock people up without at least some evidence of wrongdoing.
Higazy could not be linked to the attack, but he was in a jail cell, with no chance of proving that he was innocent.
This was an abuse of the material witness statute by any standard. People arrested as material witnesses are supposed to be witnesses, not suspects. The statute was created for cases where there is a significant belief that the witness will flee the jurisdiction before testifying. There is no crime and the witness is supposed to be treated differently from an accused criminal.
In a criminal arrest, the government has an obligation to provide an arraignment where they must show probable cause that the suspect had committed the offense. The FBI didn't have evidence to prove his involvement, so Higazy was held as a material witness while investigators searched for something to pin on him.
News reports say that an FBI agent eventually coerced Higazy into saying that the radio was his. The agent knew that if there wasn't some kind of admission of involvement the law required Higazy be set free.
That Higazy’s admission was not the truth didn’t matter. The authorities were happy to finally be able to accuse him of a crime. Ironically, they charged him with lying to federal agents when he said the radio wasn’t his.
Then a pilot, an American citizen, walked into the same hotel, looking for the aviation radio he had left behind on Sept. 11. Higazy’s original story — which he had clung to as long as he felt he could — had been the truth. Higazy was set free.
What might have happened if the pilot hadn’t shown up to claim his radio? It's a frightening thought, once again proving nonsense the notion that if you've done nothing wrong, you've got nothing to worry about.
This case isn't the most egregious either. People have been sent offshore to be tortured, been condemned to secret prisons run by the CIA, been put away at Guantanamo Bay and other American military prisons. That's not to mention the people who have died at the hands of American military and civilian interrogators.
Since 9/11, people have been forced to surrender previously guaranteed rights and most time without so much as a nod at the balance of powers. We're herded like sheep through metal detectors, patted down to watch football, under scrutiny by cameras as we shop, drive, eat and live. The left is called unpatriotic for objecting to anything and those who protest are marked for further study by the government.
Meanwhile there is little evidence that all of these measures are doing anything. We're not any safer nor will we ever be. The Republicans who called themselves the party of small government sponsored the creation of Big Brother.
"Those who are willing to sacrifice liberty for safety deserve neither," Benjamin Franklin said. Maybe he really knew that those who sacrifice liberty for safety receive neither.
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