It has been 12 months since my last blog post. In a way, that blog post was the exposition and summation of an experiment perpetrated upon an unwitting society through this very blog. If there is one truth about humanity that I have gleaned from that experiment, it is that we are extraordinarily self interested and perhaps rightly so in terms of our need for survival. However, yet another truth that was revealed is that we have a tendency to perceive those things that are completely tactile as having more of an effect upon us than those issues that are more complex and harder to pin down. That makes sense.
Late last year, I took a dreadful tumble down the stairs that rendered me both incapable of driving and a whole slew of physical activity. I'm not good at being unproductive and disability, well, makes a person feel pretty useless. In fact, feeling useless has been my number one nemesis over the last year. I have to be doing something productive for society or else, I'll quite potentially implode. What can one do, though, when, as I so often put it, the only useful thing left in a person is the fact that they have a brain. Well, in my case, I accepted that personal truth and decided to try to glean whatever I could at all that is currently going on to get to the heart of all those matters.
Research, listening, observing, and examining history for correlation. Pouring over patents, scholarly articles and more. Some days, it literally felt like I was the Eye of Sauron but instead of being eyes of corruption, I willfully chose to become the eyes of objectivity. Considering how much there is a prevalence of a sort of "us v. them" mentality when it comes to just about everything that gets churned out in the media, the thing that I perceived the greatest need for was a voice of objectivity and reason. After all, an effective democracy inherently requires that its electoral base is informed.
For some who read this, they may find that to be incredibly arrogant to think that I can try to be a voice of reason and objectivity. To those, I say that you couldn't be further from the truth. I do have my own set of biases. I am more prone towards living in an environmental conscientious way. Although I do not belong to any political party, I do have a tendency to lean towards the left. Due to what occurred to my own family's business and its demise, I do have a prejudice against very large corporations and well, like many, I really don't like Walmart. However, I do not let myself get carried away with those biases to the extent of closing my eyes to the opposition's arguments.
There's a tendency to want to simplify a variety of matters into an almost black and white thinking. Just because I do have an environmentalist concern, that does not equate that I do not support business. Just because I am not fond of very large corporations, that does not mean that I do not hold some appreciation for them. Even Walmart has its function and positivity within our society as what other entity, throughout these troubled economic times, have made it so that so many people could afford to eat (though perhaps not their own employees). In other words, I do actively set aside my personal biases on a regular basis to acknowledge that each one of those oppositional views has value. In fact, I'd argue that if something did not have value within our society, then it would not exist. To me, that hits on yet another truth: it is very rare that anything is truly evil or good. In reality, there is very little that is black and white. Most things are shades of gray.
I have had people ask me why it is that I haven't written anything new on my blog over the last year. The truth of that matter is that so much of what I have uncovered in this last year has been sometimes so startling and so disturbing that words literally left me. I simply did not know what to say or even how to say it. I'm not sure if I am, in fact, capable of expressing what it is that I have seen or uncovered even now. The only thing that I know is that I have to try because to do otherwise simply renders this last year as meaningless and without point. Zero productivity. I'm not going to lie though and pretend that I'm absolutely confident that I can do adequate justice to report some of what I see as the key problems within our society today, the sources of those problems and why they exist. If anything, I feel pretty small, insignificant and uncertain and that's on a good day. On the bad days, I simply am terrified.
Friday, December 6, 2013
Saturday, January 19, 2013
The Fallacy of Being Human
Nothing fascinates me more than going ahead and seeing what is getting views on my blog and what isn't. I aced both the midterm and final of my statistics class so it's a no brainer that I'm a stats junky. Give me the stats tab for a blog and I can, fairly naturally, see so much. The stats of a blog and popularity of a blog post (or comparative unpopularity) tells me not just what people are willing to read but also tells me what people are interested in. After one year of reasonably active blogging, there are two posts that account for almost half of all my blog's views. The first one is my market breakdown of why jeans may be tearing at the thighs (2244 views). The second is my breakdown of Congress' discretionary spending (1010 views). In comparison, the third highest viewed post is on free speech (The Symbolism of Tents with 408 views).
In general, most of my posts are involving what I call "social dynamics", whether they be in a specific market, economy, media, legislation, or society, itself. They are all, at least through my eyes as the writer, involving societal interactions. Out of all of my posts, I would say that the jeans post is the least important and yet, the number of views it has is double that of even the more important breakdown of discretionary spending. The natural question that arises in me is "why is that?". Why these three posts?
As the writer, I find it very plain to see that what interests people are those things that they perceive as having the most direct affect on them. This plays out as very true when I look at the specific subject matter of these top three posts. Jeans are something that many people wear on a daily basis. Congress' spending, especially due to the media driven debates and fiscal cliff talks, also has been a subject that people can see as having a possible direct effect on their lives. And the tents? Well, that had a very specific affect on the lives of Occupy protestors and was the chief complaint of detractors from the movement. Hence, the premise that people are interested in what they perceive as affecting their daily lives turns out to be true, at least according to the stats of my blog. However, they also watch the news on a daily basis (media). They share images on Facebook that expand a generational divide (society). They worry about the safety of their children in schools and so on. Yet, the further away the subject gets from what they perceive as their own personal lives, the less interested they are. Is it that individuals within a society are self-serving or is it simply harder to comprehend how more complex subjects may affect them?
One of the things that I see come up so often as of late is the discussion of "free will". We, myself included, have a tendency of disengaging ourselves from society by perceiving ourselves as individuals who may or may not be affected by the movement of societal interactions through the process of free will. Nevermind the fact that society is, in fact, comprised of individuals interacting and influencing each other on a constant basis. When I explain to my children how it is that I view people within a society, I compare it to being rather like water molecules in a pond. Each individual water molecule is separate and may bump into each other from time to time but, when taken as a whole, we see a pond,(a city) a lake (a state) or an ocean (global humanity).
Some may balk at seeing themselves, with all their free will, as being relegated to the status of a water molecule. However, the comparison does stand up. Is not a law like a dam to prevent water from flowing into a specific area and if there should be holes or failures within that dam, doesn't some of the water escape past it? And do we not flow like water, at times, following down certain streams of affiliation that could represent the flow of a river or a current within the ocean? Or some idea or invention, such as the internet, may have the same effect as a child tossing a pebble into a pond, causing a ripple of change amongst the whole. And as water molecules, our perception of the world around us would be those other individual water molecules that are the closest to us of all and not necessarily the scenery through which we traverse or that our course may have changed entirely. Our scenery would be those other close by molecules, not the forest that we cut through or the mountain from which we descend. To us, the change of scenery would not be felt until it touches our lives in the most direct of ways. Like the ripping of jeans at the thigh.
In general, most of my posts are involving what I call "social dynamics", whether they be in a specific market, economy, media, legislation, or society, itself. They are all, at least through my eyes as the writer, involving societal interactions. Out of all of my posts, I would say that the jeans post is the least important and yet, the number of views it has is double that of even the more important breakdown of discretionary spending. The natural question that arises in me is "why is that?". Why these three posts?
As the writer, I find it very plain to see that what interests people are those things that they perceive as having the most direct affect on them. This plays out as very true when I look at the specific subject matter of these top three posts. Jeans are something that many people wear on a daily basis. Congress' spending, especially due to the media driven debates and fiscal cliff talks, also has been a subject that people can see as having a possible direct effect on their lives. And the tents? Well, that had a very specific affect on the lives of Occupy protestors and was the chief complaint of detractors from the movement. Hence, the premise that people are interested in what they perceive as affecting their daily lives turns out to be true, at least according to the stats of my blog. However, they also watch the news on a daily basis (media). They share images on Facebook that expand a generational divide (society). They worry about the safety of their children in schools and so on. Yet, the further away the subject gets from what they perceive as their own personal lives, the less interested they are. Is it that individuals within a society are self-serving or is it simply harder to comprehend how more complex subjects may affect them?
One of the things that I see come up so often as of late is the discussion of "free will". We, myself included, have a tendency of disengaging ourselves from society by perceiving ourselves as individuals who may or may not be affected by the movement of societal interactions through the process of free will. Nevermind the fact that society is, in fact, comprised of individuals interacting and influencing each other on a constant basis. When I explain to my children how it is that I view people within a society, I compare it to being rather like water molecules in a pond. Each individual water molecule is separate and may bump into each other from time to time but, when taken as a whole, we see a pond,(a city) a lake (a state) or an ocean (global humanity).
Some may balk at seeing themselves, with all their free will, as being relegated to the status of a water molecule. However, the comparison does stand up. Is not a law like a dam to prevent water from flowing into a specific area and if there should be holes or failures within that dam, doesn't some of the water escape past it? And do we not flow like water, at times, following down certain streams of affiliation that could represent the flow of a river or a current within the ocean? Or some idea or invention, such as the internet, may have the same effect as a child tossing a pebble into a pond, causing a ripple of change amongst the whole. And as water molecules, our perception of the world around us would be those other individual water molecules that are the closest to us of all and not necessarily the scenery through which we traverse or that our course may have changed entirely. Our scenery would be those other close by molecules, not the forest that we cut through or the mountain from which we descend. To us, the change of scenery would not be felt until it touches our lives in the most direct of ways. Like the ripping of jeans at the thigh.
Friday, January 11, 2013
The Rise of Conspiracy
On his namesake show on January 8th, Jon Stewart made the claim that he understood what was happening in the US in regards to gun control and stated that "their paranoid fear of a possible dystopic future prevents us from addressing our actual dystopic present." After Alex Jones' volatile appearance on the Piers Morgan Show, it is quite easy to dismiss the clear fears that Jones presented as mere paranoia yet, I found it riveting to hear Mr. Stewart's claim that our present is actually dystopian in itself. Of course, his definition of dystopian was the number of gun related homicides per annum, but what he failed to see was that these people who he is dismissive of are not truly responding in paranoid fear about a possible dystopian future but are instead, responding to fears of a very much current dystopian present.
The very idea of what makes a society dystopian is subjective in nature. For some, it could be presented in an over-reaching regime with intense personal intrusions, for others it could be one in which sloth, decadence and perversion are the mainstream. In Jones' appearance on Piers Morgan, he makes it quite clear that he is afraid of a variety of things from chemtrails to pharmaceutical drugs--fears that are very much rooted in the here and now, not the future as Stewart chose to focus on. Unfortunately, what Stewart later calls "a few" is actually more than just a few Americans. Whereas Alex Jones tends to be the right wing conspiracy theory reporter, the left wing also has its share of conspiracy theorists that are also growing in both prevalence and presence. The interesting thing about the growing capacity for people to accept or consider conspiracy theory is that, where it was once confined to an isolated corner, it is now becoming more accepted by the mainstream. Whereas most of us would most likely balk at Alex Jones' behavior and statements, I would like to see the portion that thought that Jones may have hit upon a subject that they were themselves concerned about. What the hell happened?
First of all, I am not going to voice my opinion on any particular conspiracy theory. What I am instead going to look at are those things that are rooted in the rise of conspiracy theory within society, itself. What things within the fabric of society have changed that have led more people to listen and pay attention to conspiracy theories to the point where Alex Jones is present on a CNN show? Oddly enough, my most immediate thought would be mainstream media, itself, for three reasons. First of all, one cannot argue that there are a great deal of shows gaining in popularity over the last several years that would embody what would be the fringe of science, pseudoscience, or even conspiracy, itself. Once upon a time, a show like the The X-Files was rather unique. Today we have shows such as Fringe, Alphas, Touch, Supernatural, and more bombarding our televisions with their novelty. Or, on the more "serious" documentary side, we have shows like Ancient Aliens or Dark Matters, or,, worse yet, mockumentaries that overlap into reality in an ARG like manner such as the mermaid mockumentary earlier this year that also included two websites purported to have been taken down by the Department of Homeland Security. If we're a society who believes that video game violence can lead to real life violence, then what does the bombardment of pseudoscience and conspiracy theory lead us to? Why, pseudoscience and conspiracy theory, of course. What we watch affects us and, considering the increasing prevalence of these kind of shows, they are clearly appealing to the television viewing public. Mainstream media has been doing a bang up job of shredding the box that generally encapsulates most people's thinking. While that's not necessarily a bad thing, it also opens the door to possibly formulating ideas that may have no foundation in actual science or history or perhaps a little foundation in either but are spun in such a way as to be wholly wrong.
Even more interesting, however, is the fact that viewership of mainstream media news has actually been declining and the way that it is presented has altered entirely quite possibly in response. Whereas previously, news articles would be written by a journalist writing through either AP, Reuters or on behalf of a news agency, now they may have tweets from perhaps relevant or rrelevant Twitter users on the subject matter on the same page as the news article, itself. Or, they may grab a blogger's article and present it as an article, itself, instead of as it should be--an op-ed piece of dubious origin (ironic, considering that's what I am, I know). I was really very humoured when a blogger whose post went viral was put on television to talk about Invisible Children. I can very well imagine that they were slightly horrified to find that who they had brought forward as an expert was a teenaged boy, who seemed slightly horrified at what they had done, himself. The inclusion of what would be basically heavily truncated and sometimes the anonymous textual equivalent of soundbites and op-ed from anonymous source actually further contaminates our journalism and allows the inclusion of potentially improperly sourced material as evidenced by the string of misreports in regards to the Sandy Hook shooting.
The other issue, that I have mentioned previously in this blog, is that mainstream media has allowed itself to become increasingly polarized and sometimes, pushing more radical material in order to increase viewership. Just last week, I came across an article on Fox News that discussed the possibility of an upcoming Civil War. In fact, when Jon Stewart also jokingly stated on his show that "a few of us must remain vigilant against the rise of imaginary Hitler", he obviously wasn't paying attention to where that Hitler may have come from, which is relatively surprising--Fox News. It's been a pretty consistently reported comparison that has been repeated multiple times by the news agency and this truly highlights the issue of the polarization of the press. We have a nasty tendency of being a reactive society as opposed to being a reflective one and both sides of the party-polarized media are terribly guilty of it. You'd think that Jon Stewart could have made the connection of who their imaginary Hitler was but he didn't, did he? Doing so would've posed a problem about him stating that they were in fear of a possible dystopian future.
The liberal media has been just as bad in regards to cultivating conspiratorial leanings and worries. The Huffington Post is always very quick to post articles that are worded in such a way as to promote fear of a conspiracy or a totalitarian style regime even. Even more ironic is the frequent usage of RT as a news source. RT tends to use fear tactics in an almost anti-government frenzy which then gets shared over and over again by a variety of more liberal groups. The reason why it is ironic is that, some of the conspiracy claims are that Communists are attempting to take over the US. Considering that RT stands for Russia Times and was initially started by the KGB, it doesn't take long to figure out how that idea came to be. Regardless, most news agencies are very quick to report the indiscretions and corruption of the government and its agencies. Earlier today, there was an article on CNN about a DEA agent who had procured prostitutes for a Secret Service agent. Clearly, we're in corruption hell though there is no word on the majority of other agents working in the field and whether they deal with prostitutes as well.
Regardless of which lens one views the mainstream media through, the end result is oddly consistent: a corrupt, frequently over-reaching government with a Congress that seems to be better at making gaffes than actual pertinent legislation and who are not properly representing their constituents anymore. A very dystopian present. What we do not see are the more moderate representatives and senators being written about or aired on television--what we are seeing are the provocative and inflaming members of Congress, a relatively small portion. In the end, the mixture of the media presentation and their own failed and questionably successful endeavors ended up creating the most hated Congress in history. And if you can't trust our government to protect and represent you and if you can't trust the mainstream media for reporting things properly, then who do you trust? Apparently, conspiracy theorists, bloggers and tweets--and that's dangerous. I don't know how many times I have seen someone say something on facebook that I was able to trace back to a conspiracy theory and generally one of highly dubious source. The issue is that, once anonymity reigns the day, and many of the sources of this kind of thing are just that--fairly anonymous--, then nearly all accountability is lost. I could declare that I have a phd in Sociology from Cambridge and, whereas those of my readers who know me personally would know that I was full of it, the majority of my readers wouldn't be any of the wiser. (I have a B.S. in accounting and an associates of science: biology, for the record--true, I swear! lol).
At the end of the day, the primary reason why we are in this mess here in the US isn't because of some all conspiring entity or even entities. The reason is you. Until we can start becoming a public that can read or view something through a critical lens instead of a reactive one, we'll continue to be in this mess. It's not to say that we have to lose the shows that we love or anything like that but we have to maintain a level head. Question the hell out of everything but when you're throwing out the slants, skews and spins of media--don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater opens the door to more dangerous territories that could ignite this country like a powder keg because that's precisely what was seen on Piers Morgan's show. In its March 2011 issue, Rolling Stone reported that Alex Jones had more viewers than both Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck combined and that his youtube channel has had over 80 million views. As of today, January 11, 2013, his videos have had over 264 million views. Zeitgeist, a movie under a similar type of genre, has had incalculable views and has even made it to Netflix. It's not to say that conspiracies have never occurred or do not exist for conspiring is within human nature. However, spin doctors also exist and, through the internet, are gaining a greater prevalence and influence than ever before. This, Jon Stewart, is MY dystopian present.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/talk-radios-alex-jones-the-most-paranoid-man-in-america-20110302
The very idea of what makes a society dystopian is subjective in nature. For some, it could be presented in an over-reaching regime with intense personal intrusions, for others it could be one in which sloth, decadence and perversion are the mainstream. In Jones' appearance on Piers Morgan, he makes it quite clear that he is afraid of a variety of things from chemtrails to pharmaceutical drugs--fears that are very much rooted in the here and now, not the future as Stewart chose to focus on. Unfortunately, what Stewart later calls "a few" is actually more than just a few Americans. Whereas Alex Jones tends to be the right wing conspiracy theory reporter, the left wing also has its share of conspiracy theorists that are also growing in both prevalence and presence. The interesting thing about the growing capacity for people to accept or consider conspiracy theory is that, where it was once confined to an isolated corner, it is now becoming more accepted by the mainstream. Whereas most of us would most likely balk at Alex Jones' behavior and statements, I would like to see the portion that thought that Jones may have hit upon a subject that they were themselves concerned about. What the hell happened?
First of all, I am not going to voice my opinion on any particular conspiracy theory. What I am instead going to look at are those things that are rooted in the rise of conspiracy theory within society, itself. What things within the fabric of society have changed that have led more people to listen and pay attention to conspiracy theories to the point where Alex Jones is present on a CNN show? Oddly enough, my most immediate thought would be mainstream media, itself, for three reasons. First of all, one cannot argue that there are a great deal of shows gaining in popularity over the last several years that would embody what would be the fringe of science, pseudoscience, or even conspiracy, itself. Once upon a time, a show like the The X-Files was rather unique. Today we have shows such as Fringe, Alphas, Touch, Supernatural, and more bombarding our televisions with their novelty. Or, on the more "serious" documentary side, we have shows like Ancient Aliens or Dark Matters, or,, worse yet, mockumentaries that overlap into reality in an ARG like manner such as the mermaid mockumentary earlier this year that also included two websites purported to have been taken down by the Department of Homeland Security. If we're a society who believes that video game violence can lead to real life violence, then what does the bombardment of pseudoscience and conspiracy theory lead us to? Why, pseudoscience and conspiracy theory, of course. What we watch affects us and, considering the increasing prevalence of these kind of shows, they are clearly appealing to the television viewing public. Mainstream media has been doing a bang up job of shredding the box that generally encapsulates most people's thinking. While that's not necessarily a bad thing, it also opens the door to possibly formulating ideas that may have no foundation in actual science or history or perhaps a little foundation in either but are spun in such a way as to be wholly wrong.
Even more interesting, however, is the fact that viewership of mainstream media news has actually been declining and the way that it is presented has altered entirely quite possibly in response. Whereas previously, news articles would be written by a journalist writing through either AP, Reuters or on behalf of a news agency, now they may have tweets from perhaps relevant or rrelevant Twitter users on the subject matter on the same page as the news article, itself. Or, they may grab a blogger's article and present it as an article, itself, instead of as it should be--an op-ed piece of dubious origin (ironic, considering that's what I am, I know). I was really very humoured when a blogger whose post went viral was put on television to talk about Invisible Children. I can very well imagine that they were slightly horrified to find that who they had brought forward as an expert was a teenaged boy, who seemed slightly horrified at what they had done, himself. The inclusion of what would be basically heavily truncated and sometimes the anonymous textual equivalent of soundbites and op-ed from anonymous source actually further contaminates our journalism and allows the inclusion of potentially improperly sourced material as evidenced by the string of misreports in regards to the Sandy Hook shooting.
The other issue, that I have mentioned previously in this blog, is that mainstream media has allowed itself to become increasingly polarized and sometimes, pushing more radical material in order to increase viewership. Just last week, I came across an article on Fox News that discussed the possibility of an upcoming Civil War. In fact, when Jon Stewart also jokingly stated on his show that "a few of us must remain vigilant against the rise of imaginary Hitler", he obviously wasn't paying attention to where that Hitler may have come from, which is relatively surprising--Fox News. It's been a pretty consistently reported comparison that has been repeated multiple times by the news agency and this truly highlights the issue of the polarization of the press. We have a nasty tendency of being a reactive society as opposed to being a reflective one and both sides of the party-polarized media are terribly guilty of it. You'd think that Jon Stewart could have made the connection of who their imaginary Hitler was but he didn't, did he? Doing so would've posed a problem about him stating that they were in fear of a possible dystopian future.
The liberal media has been just as bad in regards to cultivating conspiratorial leanings and worries. The Huffington Post is always very quick to post articles that are worded in such a way as to promote fear of a conspiracy or a totalitarian style regime even. Even more ironic is the frequent usage of RT as a news source. RT tends to use fear tactics in an almost anti-government frenzy which then gets shared over and over again by a variety of more liberal groups. The reason why it is ironic is that, some of the conspiracy claims are that Communists are attempting to take over the US. Considering that RT stands for Russia Times and was initially started by the KGB, it doesn't take long to figure out how that idea came to be. Regardless, most news agencies are very quick to report the indiscretions and corruption of the government and its agencies. Earlier today, there was an article on CNN about a DEA agent who had procured prostitutes for a Secret Service agent. Clearly, we're in corruption hell though there is no word on the majority of other agents working in the field and whether they deal with prostitutes as well.
Regardless of which lens one views the mainstream media through, the end result is oddly consistent: a corrupt, frequently over-reaching government with a Congress that seems to be better at making gaffes than actual pertinent legislation and who are not properly representing their constituents anymore. A very dystopian present. What we do not see are the more moderate representatives and senators being written about or aired on television--what we are seeing are the provocative and inflaming members of Congress, a relatively small portion. In the end, the mixture of the media presentation and their own failed and questionably successful endeavors ended up creating the most hated Congress in history. And if you can't trust our government to protect and represent you and if you can't trust the mainstream media for reporting things properly, then who do you trust? Apparently, conspiracy theorists, bloggers and tweets--and that's dangerous. I don't know how many times I have seen someone say something on facebook that I was able to trace back to a conspiracy theory and generally one of highly dubious source. The issue is that, once anonymity reigns the day, and many of the sources of this kind of thing are just that--fairly anonymous--, then nearly all accountability is lost. I could declare that I have a phd in Sociology from Cambridge and, whereas those of my readers who know me personally would know that I was full of it, the majority of my readers wouldn't be any of the wiser. (I have a B.S. in accounting and an associates of science: biology, for the record--true, I swear! lol).
At the end of the day, the primary reason why we are in this mess here in the US isn't because of some all conspiring entity or even entities. The reason is you. Until we can start becoming a public that can read or view something through a critical lens instead of a reactive one, we'll continue to be in this mess. It's not to say that we have to lose the shows that we love or anything like that but we have to maintain a level head. Question the hell out of everything but when you're throwing out the slants, skews and spins of media--don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater opens the door to more dangerous territories that could ignite this country like a powder keg because that's precisely what was seen on Piers Morgan's show. In its March 2011 issue, Rolling Stone reported that Alex Jones had more viewers than both Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck combined and that his youtube channel has had over 80 million views. As of today, January 11, 2013, his videos have had over 264 million views. Zeitgeist, a movie under a similar type of genre, has had incalculable views and has even made it to Netflix. It's not to say that conspiracies have never occurred or do not exist for conspiring is within human nature. However, spin doctors also exist and, through the internet, are gaining a greater prevalence and influence than ever before. This, Jon Stewart, is MY dystopian present.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/talk-radios-alex-jones-the-most-paranoid-man-in-america-20110302
Tuesday, January 8, 2013
Another Nail in the Coffin for the American Dream
"Location, location, location" is one of the most important rules when it comes to owning and operating a retail business. When opening a store, regardless of type, you want a location that has a high amount of traffic, has appealing neighboring stores that may bring in new customers to your own store, is recognizable and convenient to a large number of customers. Finding a premium location to open a store is incredibly important as the costs of opening a store can be sizable. Open a "dog"--a store that fares terribly-- and it can end up operating at a loss, adding to the financial injury of the initial capital outlay. My father was generally the master at finding what he called a "primo" location. His very first gas station was one of the busiest in the Pacific NW and its sales volume constituted roughly 50% of all of Texaco's gasoline sales for the region west of the Willamette River. Once upon a time, however, he forgot the importance of location and thought the success of his businesses were due to him having a Midas touch. He could turn any dog into a golden goose. I'll never forget when he drove me out to look at his latest location acquisition out in Sandy. It took me just a second to glance at how the traffic flowed in the area and, knowing my dad did value my opinion, I blurted out "you just opened a dog". Sure enough, when Equilon started to squeeze my father out of the retail gasoline market, his Sandy location, which had been barely profitable, sank to running at a monthly operating loss of up to $250,000 a month.
For a small to mid-sized business owner, because there are fewer locations that one is operating at, a loss of a single store can have significant financial impact. Worse yet, if the store that closed was in a "primo" location, the loss of that particular location can be fairly devastating. My dad was slowly pressured out by Equilon, a joint venture between Texaco and Shell, after being invited to attend a meeting where he was informed that every one of their franchised locations in the Portland market would become a "company-owned" store. Essentially, the individual dealers would be weeded out and Equilon would instead operate all of the locations under the banner of Texaco or Shell. It was basically a case of the big guy obliterating the little guy for years afterwards and, locally, Chevron engaged in the same activities. It eventually came under the notice of Sen. Ron Wyden, who attempted valiantly to protect the "Mom and Pop's", but even he couldn't stop the wrecking ball of large corporate progress. It was literally the death of small gasoline dealers in the Pacific Northwest. My dad finally closed his doors permanently in 2008 after years of struggling.
That was ten years ago. Today, the same thing is occurring but this time, it isn't with gas stations. This time, it is occurring with just about any other retail store in large shopping malls. If you go to a store in Phoenix, you're going to most likely see the same stores as you'd see in Portland or Seattle or even Philadelphia--all large national chains with significant financial might. One of my dreams was to open a specialty store that specialized in technology and gaming because I saw a niche open. One only has to walk past the Apple store in Washington Square and see all the men in there, basking with an almost desperation to avoid the majority of the female dominated mall. I wanted to open a gamer's boutique that would give them a place to cut loose a little, relax, and admire the latest and greatest gaming gadgetry while their wives had their noses buried in shoes and handbags. However, that dream is definitely dead for, as of today, I now know that Washington Square is not interested in offering any of its lease locations to any small business. That message is infinitely clear as they have given Excalibur, a locally owned and operated business who had been a loyal resident of their mall for 30 years, the boot in favor of large national chains. Worse yet, although the mall had made arrangements for a replacement store 6 months in advance, they gave Excalibur only one month's notice. That's perfectly legal on their part but still pretty distasteful to do to a business owner that has been a part of their mall since nearly the mall's opening. That hurts Excalibur and its employees. It gives them too little time to respond to the change and loss of what was probably one of their primo locations. What next? Is Made in Oregon going to get the boot soon, too?
The funny thing is that it may have been a poor move on Washington Square's part. The reason being is that, if your mall offers exactly the same things as another mall does with no variety, then what reason is there to go to that mall when another mall has something different to throw into the mix? Washington Square is going to simply house the same staid big national chains. I'll know exactly what I'll be getting--that's for certain. Yet, just a few minutes further away, I can go to Bridgeport Village that has both a mix of big chain and true independent boutique. I actually have a lot more fun going to Bridgeport Village as the variety is really very inviting. I like spotting a store and wandering into it to see what it has to offer. I have found some of the coolest, inconsequential things in those kind of stores. I'll wander at Bridgeport Village when, compared to Washington Square, I have no interest in wandering. Historically, I've walked into Washington Square, gone to where I need to be and walked right back out again without stopping along the way. It's boring. That's one of the reasons why I had a dream about opening something different there. It was a primo location for something different but they don't want different. They want to be a cookie cutter, who caters to national chains and shuts the doors on variety. After seeing what occurred to the local gas dealers 10 years ago, Washington Square's dealings with Excalibur deeply worries me for small business in America. It is just one more nail in the coffin for the American dream.
For a small to mid-sized business owner, because there are fewer locations that one is operating at, a loss of a single store can have significant financial impact. Worse yet, if the store that closed was in a "primo" location, the loss of that particular location can be fairly devastating. My dad was slowly pressured out by Equilon, a joint venture between Texaco and Shell, after being invited to attend a meeting where he was informed that every one of their franchised locations in the Portland market would become a "company-owned" store. Essentially, the individual dealers would be weeded out and Equilon would instead operate all of the locations under the banner of Texaco or Shell. It was basically a case of the big guy obliterating the little guy for years afterwards and, locally, Chevron engaged in the same activities. It eventually came under the notice of Sen. Ron Wyden, who attempted valiantly to protect the "Mom and Pop's", but even he couldn't stop the wrecking ball of large corporate progress. It was literally the death of small gasoline dealers in the Pacific Northwest. My dad finally closed his doors permanently in 2008 after years of struggling.
That was ten years ago. Today, the same thing is occurring but this time, it isn't with gas stations. This time, it is occurring with just about any other retail store in large shopping malls. If you go to a store in Phoenix, you're going to most likely see the same stores as you'd see in Portland or Seattle or even Philadelphia--all large national chains with significant financial might. One of my dreams was to open a specialty store that specialized in technology and gaming because I saw a niche open. One only has to walk past the Apple store in Washington Square and see all the men in there, basking with an almost desperation to avoid the majority of the female dominated mall. I wanted to open a gamer's boutique that would give them a place to cut loose a little, relax, and admire the latest and greatest gaming gadgetry while their wives had their noses buried in shoes and handbags. However, that dream is definitely dead for, as of today, I now know that Washington Square is not interested in offering any of its lease locations to any small business. That message is infinitely clear as they have given Excalibur, a locally owned and operated business who had been a loyal resident of their mall for 30 years, the boot in favor of large national chains. Worse yet, although the mall had made arrangements for a replacement store 6 months in advance, they gave Excalibur only one month's notice. That's perfectly legal on their part but still pretty distasteful to do to a business owner that has been a part of their mall since nearly the mall's opening. That hurts Excalibur and its employees. It gives them too little time to respond to the change and loss of what was probably one of their primo locations. What next? Is Made in Oregon going to get the boot soon, too?
The funny thing is that it may have been a poor move on Washington Square's part. The reason being is that, if your mall offers exactly the same things as another mall does with no variety, then what reason is there to go to that mall when another mall has something different to throw into the mix? Washington Square is going to simply house the same staid big national chains. I'll know exactly what I'll be getting--that's for certain. Yet, just a few minutes further away, I can go to Bridgeport Village that has both a mix of big chain and true independent boutique. I actually have a lot more fun going to Bridgeport Village as the variety is really very inviting. I like spotting a store and wandering into it to see what it has to offer. I have found some of the coolest, inconsequential things in those kind of stores. I'll wander at Bridgeport Village when, compared to Washington Square, I have no interest in wandering. Historically, I've walked into Washington Square, gone to where I need to be and walked right back out again without stopping along the way. It's boring. That's one of the reasons why I had a dream about opening something different there. It was a primo location for something different but they don't want different. They want to be a cookie cutter, who caters to national chains and shuts the doors on variety. After seeing what occurred to the local gas dealers 10 years ago, Washington Square's dealings with Excalibur deeply worries me for small business in America. It is just one more nail in the coffin for the American dream.
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
Out of the Box: Protecting Our Schools
Thinking outside of the box requires a discarding of the status quo presumptions that we normally frame our solution and decision making in. Currently, our public education system is struggling financially to educate our children--let alone having more than nominal funding to adequately protect those most vulnerable in our society's, our children's, presence within a frequently highly notable and scheduled establishment. In other words, everyone knows where a school is located, that children will most likely be present there somewhere between the hours of 8 am to 4 pm every Monday through Friday. This is the kind of information that, for the average person, can precipitate very little harm. For someone like Adam Lanza, although very rare, it's all they need to know should they be looking for easy targets. At my daughter's elementary school, the sole precaution for preventing unwarranted entry to the school is the windowed front office overlooking the front entry. In other words, the front office staff would not know who was entering the building until they were already within the building. Sandy Hook Elementary had a step higher in that entrants into the building had to be "buzzed" in. However, even this additional precaution failed as Adam Lanza simply shattered the glass to gain entry to the building and proceed with his murderous rampage. These simple security faults were based on the failing of society as a whole to consider that someone could, in fact, be so sick an individual as to enter an elementary school for the purpose of slaughtering children. Despite a long history of having the "unthinkable" occur within our schools, we, as we are so prone to do, tend to forget the lessons of history and continue on with the status quo. Worse yet, now that Adam Lanza has so successfully assaulted society to its very core, then there is a slightly increased risk of copy cat behavior. The flaw within our rationale and our public education has been exposed. It must be repaired.
One of the largest talking points within the media has been the ongoing discussion of mental health treatments, how they have failed, and what should be done in the future to prevent the formation of another Adam Lanza. Such thinking is not so far off the mark but, regrettably, any changes in the mental health system now will not do anything for someone who may already be firmly established within their own form of psychosis. It also would require society's growing nature of moving away from community thinking and sharing towards individualization and privatization of "family matters" to restore itself back to community thinking and sharing. We are always loathe to share the personal trials that may exist within our families. We'd rather be the Joneses than be the ones on the receiving end of assistance and pity. Adam Lanza was 20 years old and an adult. His mother, despite having a good deal of money and presumably more than adequate access to quality mental health assistance, was really "on her own" through perhaps her own mind and society, itself. She didn't offer more than bits of information from a variety of reports of those who knew her and the subject of her son seemed to be a highly private matter. If this is, presumably, the default response of a parent of a troubled child or adult child, then we can presume that this is what most likely occurs with the majority of families of deeply troubled children. It is not necessarily a fault within the parent. We all hope that our children turn out to be wonderful human beings--not cold blooded monsters. Hence, whereas all the discourse about changes to the mental health system are still appropriate, it is still unlikely to prevent the formation of another Adam Lanza. In this light, we must look to ourselves to think outside of the box to protect our children in a more immediate sense rather than take steps that would not take any notable effect for a generation.
Teachers should be armed with guns.
One of the suggestions that I have seen has been to arm teachers and staff with guns. Unfortunately, that is a suggestion that overlooks the examples that history has to offer us. A number of school shootings, historically, have been at the hands of school staff with guns. Guns shouldn't be allowed in schools for two primary reasons: 1. human error may allow unwarranted access to the gun and 2. the authorized holder of the gun can become the culprit. Although we can safely presume that an extremely high majority of staff would never do such a thing, if we are looking to provide the greatest assurance of safety for our children within the schools, bringing a gun in is not a tenable solution. It is basically bringing a weapon into the school that could be turned against the holder and the children themselves. Even bringing in a stun gun still presents the same untenable issues. Although the number of children that could be injured by the unauthorized use of a stun gun would be minimal compared to the same circumstance with a gun, it is unlikely that such a weapon would be calibrated to a child's body. That is still an unsafe scenario.
Preventing unwarranted access through front door entry.
How well schools are funded tend to be a localized matter. Sandy Hook Elementary, located within an upscale neighborhood, had a security feature that my daughter's decidedly middle class elementary school did not--a buzzer and, most likely, a security camera with adequate resolution to assist in identifying the potential entrant to the school. This is excellent for schools of upscale neighborhoods but horrific for the majority of schools within the United States. This indicates a significant funding failure on a federal level in regards to promoting school safety within our public education system. Worse yet, I can recollect several schools in even less financially secure areas that resorted to the usage of portables away from the main building of the school that would be of even higher risk than my daughter sitting in her 5th grade classroom in the main building of her own. We will spend billions of dollars annually on national defense but apparently national defense does not apply to within our own national border in providing defense on a national level at our schools. If some of that national defense spending were applied towards our schools, we would be seeing systems of even higher quality protection than simply a buzzer that can still be dependent on human error. Every parent of a child knows that, at the beginning of each year, they must fill out a form that lists all individuals authorized to pick up their child. How difficult would it be, considering that these children will most likely remain within the public education system from K-12, a total of 13 years, to establish a biometric database for those parents and family members authorized to pick up their child. A simple iris scan can nearly reduce human error down to null in assuring that unauthorized entry to a school does not occur without traipsing on concerns about fingerprinting (although many of the 24/7 health clubs utilize biometric fingerprint systems for access) or any RFID chipping.
Why not unbreakable glass? Despite the additional security at the front door of Sandy Hook Elementary, it did not stop Adam Lanza from gaining entry to the school. All he had to do was break the glass. One of the simplest ways of still preventing access would've been the placement of bars across the windows. However, these are schools. They are not prisons and, in our high tech society, we can certainly do far better than that. Glass types exist that are both unbreakable and bullet stopping. Why do we not have these types of glass installed within every school in the United States? These are our children, after all--the loss of which is generally the worst thing that a parent could ever imagine. Having unbreakable glass does not increase the risk to fire death as windows can be made to open from the interior to allow safe and fast exit from each classroom during the new windows installation. Now that we know that someone could do such a thing as Adam Lanza, it makes sense that we should, as a society, correct that loophole.
Metal detectors...the sad fact of our growing population.
Nearly every adult recollects the events of Columbine. Not every adult recollects that there were, within a 10 year span in the 90's both preceding and following Columbine, a total of 240 homicides within our schools between 1992 to 1999. The number of deaths and school shootings was so unprecedented that the U.S. Secret Service became involved in an attempt to form a profile for school shooters and during the 1998-1999 school year, over 3500 students were expelled for bringing a gun to school. Although this figure is still a minute portion of the student population as a whole, that would still be a high number of schools as having a student that brought a gun to school. Although elementary school shootings and gun presence is at the lowest frequency, it is not without historical providence. The youngest school shooter was only 6 years old at Buell Elementary School. Also, from as far as I can glean, discussed very little on any national level, has been the detainment or arrest of three different high school students since Friday for making statements or outright planning a school shooting of their own. We find ourselves at the cusp of possibly entering yet another cycle of school shootings as copy cat behavior may again begin to arise. As my daughter will be entering into junior high next year and, therefore, into a higher frequency of school shooting (by students themselves), I would rather the inconvenience of her walking through a metal detector than the risk of having the unthinkable as a parent happen. As our population grows, so does the population of those who have the potential of doing the atrocious as it will remain a relatively static percentage of the total population. This is a sad and grim fact that we must acknowledge as a society. In a sense, we should be grateful for the fact that those who made these threats made them on the internet and were reported so quickly. However, not every shooter is going to give such warnings.
Hot or "Panic" buttons.
When I was in college years ago, I worked for a bank. One of the things that was installed within the bank at every teller's station was a hot button to notify the authorities of a robbery. We have had this capacity in our banking system for decades. Do we have this kind of system established within every classroom in the US? It is quite possible, considering the fast response to Sandy Hook Elementary, that they may have had a panic button installed somewhere within the school but Sandy Hook also had features not found within other elementary schools in the United States. Those buttons could provide even faster notification of an issue within a school and should be installed in every school and every classroom to provide the quickest notification to authorities that there is a problem. Out of all of the above suggestions, considering how long this technology has been out there, it would most likely be the least expensive option for our schools. It will, however, not prevent another Sandy Hook.
For some time now, our discourse has been on how expensive our school system is and arguments about how much staff is being paid and educational performance. This directly impacts the kind of funding that our schools receive and school safety should not be dependent on the economic status of a community or school performance. As I said earlier, if we can spend billions or even trillions annually on national defense, then part of those proceeds should reasonably go to low key changes for the defense of our schools. We have so much technology that could be used if we wished it to be. We are simply too distracted and too cheap a society to actually do it. School safety should be the one subject that we all can agree on as the lives of our children are priceless.
One of the largest talking points within the media has been the ongoing discussion of mental health treatments, how they have failed, and what should be done in the future to prevent the formation of another Adam Lanza. Such thinking is not so far off the mark but, regrettably, any changes in the mental health system now will not do anything for someone who may already be firmly established within their own form of psychosis. It also would require society's growing nature of moving away from community thinking and sharing towards individualization and privatization of "family matters" to restore itself back to community thinking and sharing. We are always loathe to share the personal trials that may exist within our families. We'd rather be the Joneses than be the ones on the receiving end of assistance and pity. Adam Lanza was 20 years old and an adult. His mother, despite having a good deal of money and presumably more than adequate access to quality mental health assistance, was really "on her own" through perhaps her own mind and society, itself. She didn't offer more than bits of information from a variety of reports of those who knew her and the subject of her son seemed to be a highly private matter. If this is, presumably, the default response of a parent of a troubled child or adult child, then we can presume that this is what most likely occurs with the majority of families of deeply troubled children. It is not necessarily a fault within the parent. We all hope that our children turn out to be wonderful human beings--not cold blooded monsters. Hence, whereas all the discourse about changes to the mental health system are still appropriate, it is still unlikely to prevent the formation of another Adam Lanza. In this light, we must look to ourselves to think outside of the box to protect our children in a more immediate sense rather than take steps that would not take any notable effect for a generation.
Teachers should be armed with guns.
One of the suggestions that I have seen has been to arm teachers and staff with guns. Unfortunately, that is a suggestion that overlooks the examples that history has to offer us. A number of school shootings, historically, have been at the hands of school staff with guns. Guns shouldn't be allowed in schools for two primary reasons: 1. human error may allow unwarranted access to the gun and 2. the authorized holder of the gun can become the culprit. Although we can safely presume that an extremely high majority of staff would never do such a thing, if we are looking to provide the greatest assurance of safety for our children within the schools, bringing a gun in is not a tenable solution. It is basically bringing a weapon into the school that could be turned against the holder and the children themselves. Even bringing in a stun gun still presents the same untenable issues. Although the number of children that could be injured by the unauthorized use of a stun gun would be minimal compared to the same circumstance with a gun, it is unlikely that such a weapon would be calibrated to a child's body. That is still an unsafe scenario.
Preventing unwarranted access through front door entry.
How well schools are funded tend to be a localized matter. Sandy Hook Elementary, located within an upscale neighborhood, had a security feature that my daughter's decidedly middle class elementary school did not--a buzzer and, most likely, a security camera with adequate resolution to assist in identifying the potential entrant to the school. This is excellent for schools of upscale neighborhoods but horrific for the majority of schools within the United States. This indicates a significant funding failure on a federal level in regards to promoting school safety within our public education system. Worse yet, I can recollect several schools in even less financially secure areas that resorted to the usage of portables away from the main building of the school that would be of even higher risk than my daughter sitting in her 5th grade classroom in the main building of her own. We will spend billions of dollars annually on national defense but apparently national defense does not apply to within our own national border in providing defense on a national level at our schools. If some of that national defense spending were applied towards our schools, we would be seeing systems of even higher quality protection than simply a buzzer that can still be dependent on human error. Every parent of a child knows that, at the beginning of each year, they must fill out a form that lists all individuals authorized to pick up their child. How difficult would it be, considering that these children will most likely remain within the public education system from K-12, a total of 13 years, to establish a biometric database for those parents and family members authorized to pick up their child. A simple iris scan can nearly reduce human error down to null in assuring that unauthorized entry to a school does not occur without traipsing on concerns about fingerprinting (although many of the 24/7 health clubs utilize biometric fingerprint systems for access) or any RFID chipping.
Why not unbreakable glass? Despite the additional security at the front door of Sandy Hook Elementary, it did not stop Adam Lanza from gaining entry to the school. All he had to do was break the glass. One of the simplest ways of still preventing access would've been the placement of bars across the windows. However, these are schools. They are not prisons and, in our high tech society, we can certainly do far better than that. Glass types exist that are both unbreakable and bullet stopping. Why do we not have these types of glass installed within every school in the United States? These are our children, after all--the loss of which is generally the worst thing that a parent could ever imagine. Having unbreakable glass does not increase the risk to fire death as windows can be made to open from the interior to allow safe and fast exit from each classroom during the new windows installation. Now that we know that someone could do such a thing as Adam Lanza, it makes sense that we should, as a society, correct that loophole.
Metal detectors...the sad fact of our growing population.
Nearly every adult recollects the events of Columbine. Not every adult recollects that there were, within a 10 year span in the 90's both preceding and following Columbine, a total of 240 homicides within our schools between 1992 to 1999. The number of deaths and school shootings was so unprecedented that the U.S. Secret Service became involved in an attempt to form a profile for school shooters and during the 1998-1999 school year, over 3500 students were expelled for bringing a gun to school. Although this figure is still a minute portion of the student population as a whole, that would still be a high number of schools as having a student that brought a gun to school. Although elementary school shootings and gun presence is at the lowest frequency, it is not without historical providence. The youngest school shooter was only 6 years old at Buell Elementary School. Also, from as far as I can glean, discussed very little on any national level, has been the detainment or arrest of three different high school students since Friday for making statements or outright planning a school shooting of their own. We find ourselves at the cusp of possibly entering yet another cycle of school shootings as copy cat behavior may again begin to arise. As my daughter will be entering into junior high next year and, therefore, into a higher frequency of school shooting (by students themselves), I would rather the inconvenience of her walking through a metal detector than the risk of having the unthinkable as a parent happen. As our population grows, so does the population of those who have the potential of doing the atrocious as it will remain a relatively static percentage of the total population. This is a sad and grim fact that we must acknowledge as a society. In a sense, we should be grateful for the fact that those who made these threats made them on the internet and were reported so quickly. However, not every shooter is going to give such warnings.
Hot or "Panic" buttons.
When I was in college years ago, I worked for a bank. One of the things that was installed within the bank at every teller's station was a hot button to notify the authorities of a robbery. We have had this capacity in our banking system for decades. Do we have this kind of system established within every classroom in the US? It is quite possible, considering the fast response to Sandy Hook Elementary, that they may have had a panic button installed somewhere within the school but Sandy Hook also had features not found within other elementary schools in the United States. Those buttons could provide even faster notification of an issue within a school and should be installed in every school and every classroom to provide the quickest notification to authorities that there is a problem. Out of all of the above suggestions, considering how long this technology has been out there, it would most likely be the least expensive option for our schools. It will, however, not prevent another Sandy Hook.
For some time now, our discourse has been on how expensive our school system is and arguments about how much staff is being paid and educational performance. This directly impacts the kind of funding that our schools receive and school safety should not be dependent on the economic status of a community or school performance. As I said earlier, if we can spend billions or even trillions annually on national defense, then part of those proceeds should reasonably go to low key changes for the defense of our schools. We have so much technology that could be used if we wished it to be. We are simply too distracted and too cheap a society to actually do it. School safety should be the one subject that we all can agree on as the lives of our children are priceless.
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Lanza and Asperger's
The Newtown, Connecticut school shooting is one of those events that tend to grip the psyche in a stranglehold of questioning and a demanding of answers as to how such a thing could occur or how an individual can do something that the majority of society finds so utterly heinous. It's frequently at these times that news agencies will grasp at whatever abnormality may have existed with the killer in order to be the first one to provide a simple answer to those questions. In the case of Adam Lanza, the disorder that became the focus of potentially creating killers was Asperger's. Many do not understand what Asperger's or autism is and, with the tendency towards what I call having a blank face, it's all too easy to view someone with autism as being totally deadened emotionally, rather like a sociopath. However, the key difference between someone who is a sociopath and someone who is autistic is that there is a world of difference in feeling. A sociopath may have little care or feelings. An autistic child is deeply sensitive to all their feelings and senses.
I am a mother of a teenaged son with Asperger's. He permanently dislocated my jaw when he was just 2 years old and slightly damaged the tendons of my right knee when he was 11. Now these injuries would immediately cause people to be concerned that there is a relationship between violence and autism that would readily explain Adam Lanza's gruesome act. However, as the person who was injured in both of these events, I can readily say that that is still the wrong impression. My son dislocated my jaw by repeatedly rocking while sitting on my lap. All it took was his head forcefully snapping backward one time to crack it into my jawline. He didn't even know what he had done. The injury to my knee was the result of an argument about school and whether or not he was doing his homework. He and I had been going round and round and, out of pure frustration and overload, my son kicked out at me, striking my right knee. He was nearly inconsolable and horrified at his response. He has never done anything similar again.
It's easy to assume that, if a violent response to an argument can occur, it can very easily recur. Again, that would be a mistaken assumption as it does not take into consideration what it is like to have Asperger's. Probably the most notable thing about Asperger's that I have witnessed with my son is his extraordinarily rigid adherence to society's rules and laws. We lived on the Navajo Nation for 7 years, where the possession of alcohol on reservation lands was strictly illegal. When my son's former stepfather was prescribed a glass of red wine each day to help control a cardiac issue, he was, every evening, confronted with my son, verbally recriminating him for engaging in an illegal activity and lecturing him, by rote, the dangers and evils of alcohol as instructed to him by his school. My son could not perceive of any exception, not even the the prescription of an authority figure also living on the reservation, that would allow for the ownership and consumption of alcohol. Most of us do not actively think of what society's rules and laws are. For my son and many others with Asperger's, those rules and laws are the rigid frame of their existence. Although my son broke one of society's rules when he kicked out at me in frustration, his shame at the act and the rule breaking was such that he is likely never to repeat it. Furthermore, even his response at striking out is not an uncommon one with non-autistic boys who are going through the throes of hormonal changes. I just had the misfortune of not being a wall.
My son is 16 now and, no different from Adam Lanza as a highly intelligent kid, he just started college. One of the major reasons why I allowed my son to start college early was that I saw potential dangers growing at his high school should he continue to attend there. It was not fear for the other students that I felt. On the contrary, my rigid 6 ft tall built-like-a-barn son had taken society's rules and laws in regard to assault to such a strict adherence that he was walking into fights that were occurring at the school and pulling them apart. Once he had pulled them apart, he was lecturing the two "law breaking" classmates with all the decorum of a professor, calmly berating them for "behaving like children". From my maternal eyes and my awareness of what society can be like, it was only a matter of time that the unthinkable, for a mom, could happen--my son was going to get punched in the face. Worse yet, his view of society was getting abysmal as he was coming home frustrated and likening his peers at the school as being like "animals in a zoo". I never once was worried that my son would somehow come to loathe society so much that he would lash out at it. My concern was that instead, with his habit of forming rigid opinions on a variety of matters, he would form a rigid opinion of society as a whole that would leave him permanently isolated from the whole of humanity.
An individual with Asperger's already has a hard enough time not feeling isolated from others. A highly intelligent individual with Asperger's can so easily regard society, between their deep thinking, calm demeanor, and deep sensitivities, as being morally repugnant for we do things that defy reason, rationality, and explanation. We break rules all the time whether it's going 60 mph on the highway or pushing it a little too far at a stop light. We disregard human suffering as we walk by the homeless and hungry on the street. We get excited over inanimate objects like the latest iPhone when, for my son, he gets excited over learning something new that inspires him to see the world in a completely different way. Although those with Asperger's may not always be able to express either visually or verbally what it is that they feel, I would hazard that they are feeling and thinking on such a deep level as to deaden the expression. It is not until you give my son pen and paper that you can see how deeply his humanity lies. For these reasons, I do not see Asperger's as any sort of mental defect or disorder or something that could, on its own, produce a potential killer. On the contrary, I see Asperger's as nature's doing for society requires that we have some individuals that can witness and describe our behaviors as a society in a manner that brings us to reflect on those aspects of ourselves that are irrational, law breaking and logic defying.
As a mother of a highly intelligent son with Asperger's, I find it deeply confusing as to how Adam Lanza came to be if he did, in fact, have Asperger's. It is not to say that it is impossible that, given a series of faults along the lines of his development, that Asperger's couldn't have potentially played a role. His actions, however, absolutely contradict the severe tendency towards rigid rule adherence so common with Asperger's. The only way that I could see it as possibly occurring is if Adam Lanza was, through society or perhaps through his mother, given an altered set of rules that do no exist within normal society. However, attempting to change or adapt the rules of society is one of the most difficult things to do with someone who has Asperger's--even if it's as harmless as drinking red wine to save a life. If Adam Lanza was, in fact, diagnosed as having Asperger's, then, contrary to all the news agencies who wish to point a finger at Asperger's and autism as being the simple answer, there is no simple answer. If it did, in fact, play any role, then the circumstances to create Adam Lanza had to be so severe and profuse as to contradict Asperger's very nature and tendencies.
I am a mother of a teenaged son with Asperger's. He permanently dislocated my jaw when he was just 2 years old and slightly damaged the tendons of my right knee when he was 11. Now these injuries would immediately cause people to be concerned that there is a relationship between violence and autism that would readily explain Adam Lanza's gruesome act. However, as the person who was injured in both of these events, I can readily say that that is still the wrong impression. My son dislocated my jaw by repeatedly rocking while sitting on my lap. All it took was his head forcefully snapping backward one time to crack it into my jawline. He didn't even know what he had done. The injury to my knee was the result of an argument about school and whether or not he was doing his homework. He and I had been going round and round and, out of pure frustration and overload, my son kicked out at me, striking my right knee. He was nearly inconsolable and horrified at his response. He has never done anything similar again.
It's easy to assume that, if a violent response to an argument can occur, it can very easily recur. Again, that would be a mistaken assumption as it does not take into consideration what it is like to have Asperger's. Probably the most notable thing about Asperger's that I have witnessed with my son is his extraordinarily rigid adherence to society's rules and laws. We lived on the Navajo Nation for 7 years, where the possession of alcohol on reservation lands was strictly illegal. When my son's former stepfather was prescribed a glass of red wine each day to help control a cardiac issue, he was, every evening, confronted with my son, verbally recriminating him for engaging in an illegal activity and lecturing him, by rote, the dangers and evils of alcohol as instructed to him by his school. My son could not perceive of any exception, not even the the prescription of an authority figure also living on the reservation, that would allow for the ownership and consumption of alcohol. Most of us do not actively think of what society's rules and laws are. For my son and many others with Asperger's, those rules and laws are the rigid frame of their existence. Although my son broke one of society's rules when he kicked out at me in frustration, his shame at the act and the rule breaking was such that he is likely never to repeat it. Furthermore, even his response at striking out is not an uncommon one with non-autistic boys who are going through the throes of hormonal changes. I just had the misfortune of not being a wall.
My son is 16 now and, no different from Adam Lanza as a highly intelligent kid, he just started college. One of the major reasons why I allowed my son to start college early was that I saw potential dangers growing at his high school should he continue to attend there. It was not fear for the other students that I felt. On the contrary, my rigid 6 ft tall built-like-a-barn son had taken society's rules and laws in regard to assault to such a strict adherence that he was walking into fights that were occurring at the school and pulling them apart. Once he had pulled them apart, he was lecturing the two "law breaking" classmates with all the decorum of a professor, calmly berating them for "behaving like children". From my maternal eyes and my awareness of what society can be like, it was only a matter of time that the unthinkable, for a mom, could happen--my son was going to get punched in the face. Worse yet, his view of society was getting abysmal as he was coming home frustrated and likening his peers at the school as being like "animals in a zoo". I never once was worried that my son would somehow come to loathe society so much that he would lash out at it. My concern was that instead, with his habit of forming rigid opinions on a variety of matters, he would form a rigid opinion of society as a whole that would leave him permanently isolated from the whole of humanity.
An individual with Asperger's already has a hard enough time not feeling isolated from others. A highly intelligent individual with Asperger's can so easily regard society, between their deep thinking, calm demeanor, and deep sensitivities, as being morally repugnant for we do things that defy reason, rationality, and explanation. We break rules all the time whether it's going 60 mph on the highway or pushing it a little too far at a stop light. We disregard human suffering as we walk by the homeless and hungry on the street. We get excited over inanimate objects like the latest iPhone when, for my son, he gets excited over learning something new that inspires him to see the world in a completely different way. Although those with Asperger's may not always be able to express either visually or verbally what it is that they feel, I would hazard that they are feeling and thinking on such a deep level as to deaden the expression. It is not until you give my son pen and paper that you can see how deeply his humanity lies. For these reasons, I do not see Asperger's as any sort of mental defect or disorder or something that could, on its own, produce a potential killer. On the contrary, I see Asperger's as nature's doing for society requires that we have some individuals that can witness and describe our behaviors as a society in a manner that brings us to reflect on those aspects of ourselves that are irrational, law breaking and logic defying.
As a mother of a highly intelligent son with Asperger's, I find it deeply confusing as to how Adam Lanza came to be if he did, in fact, have Asperger's. It is not to say that it is impossible that, given a series of faults along the lines of his development, that Asperger's couldn't have potentially played a role. His actions, however, absolutely contradict the severe tendency towards rigid rule adherence so common with Asperger's. The only way that I could see it as possibly occurring is if Adam Lanza was, through society or perhaps through his mother, given an altered set of rules that do no exist within normal society. However, attempting to change or adapt the rules of society is one of the most difficult things to do with someone who has Asperger's--even if it's as harmless as drinking red wine to save a life. If Adam Lanza was, in fact, diagnosed as having Asperger's, then, contrary to all the news agencies who wish to point a finger at Asperger's and autism as being the simple answer, there is no simple answer. If it did, in fact, play any role, then the circumstances to create Adam Lanza had to be so severe and profuse as to contradict Asperger's very nature and tendencies.
Friday, August 10, 2012
A Life in Hiding
Once upon a time, I was just a girl going to college. As a double science major in biology and botany, my days were generally spent going to class, labs, and then, home again, reeking of formaldehyde. I was living downtown in student housing and, on the weekends, would go out dancing with my friends. Pretty typical college student lifestyle but somewhere along the way, Raul A. Diaz found me and turned my life upside down. By the year's end, post-Diaz, I was in fear for my life, had changed my hair color three times, had moved, been forced to drop out of college and disappear forever.
I'll never forget the evening that Diaz first made his presence in my life known to me. I was in my small studio apartment busy making dinner while my cat was watching tv when the phone rang. When I answered the phone with the typical hello, I was greeted with a raspy low voice asking me "what kind of panties do you have on?". I was chilled for a second but then, figured it was one of my male friends playing a prank on me. I started laughing and asked, "Pippet, is that you?", fully expecting my friend to come clean. Instead, the same voice said "I'm not Pippet". After several minutes of back and forth, I realized that it really wasn't my friend playing a prank and quickly hung up the phone. That was the first time I spoke to Diaz. For the next few days, the same person kept calling and asking that same question, over and over again. I hung up the phone, every time, sometimes after shouting "leave me alone!" or "stop calling me!" over the receiver. I was getting about 5 or 6 phone calls a day and the strain of it was starting to show. Still trying to make light of the whole thing, one evening when I had friends over, he called again and one of them took the phone from my hands to say in falsetto, "why do you want to know what kind of panties I have on?". Diaz promptly hung up on them. Although I half heartedly laughed at the exchange, something inside me was sinking. My grades were already starting to slide just after the first week. It felt like there was something terribly discordant in my world. There were nights where I stopped answering the phone entirely. It seemed to me that whenever I answered the phone, it was always the same voice on the other end asking the same inevitable question.
In December of 1992, after two weeks of these phone calls, I knew that I had to do something. I couldn't concentrate in class anymore and worse yet, I was falling asleep during some of the lectures for sleeping at night was becoming difficult. That afternoon after coming home from the lab, I called my phone company to report the problem. The customer service representative was unsettled by what I told him and offered me two options. The first was that I could simply change my number and eliminate receiving the calls entirely. The second was where I filed a police report, which would allow Qwest to put a phone trap on my phone that would log every incoming call to my number. I mulled my options over for a second. It was so very tempting to just change my number and end it right there yet something inside me was screaming that that was a very bad idea. I told the Qwest representative that I was going to file a police report. Even he said he was relieved that I chose to do that, too, feeling that same dread that I was feeling, too. That dread turned out to be universal for something about the incidents were disturbing to the Portland police officer who took my report. Working together to resolve the situation quickly, by the next day, the phone trap was on my phone. For one month, it would log every call coming into my home in the hopes of catching the caller's identification. Every time I got one of these calls, I was to record the time and date of the call. In the end, they would compare my notes to the calls recorded on the trap and hope to catch the caller.
For a month, I took each call and dutifully recorded the time and date. To cheer me up during a rare snowfall, my friends brought over makeshift sleds one night and we spent the evening, sledding down one of the steep streets near my apartment building. It was a great night and I remember laughing and feeling relaxed. At one point, a man had stopped underneath a streetlight to watch us sledding. I remember noting him in his long black leather trench and long dark hair pulled back into a low, tight ponytail and for a moment, he and I locked eyes as my friends and I slid past. He smiled at me and I beamed back, thinking that he was just a random person who stumbled across us and was enjoying our merry making in the snow. We were acting like little kids. What wasn't there to like? By the time Christmas arrived, I was so grateful to finally be free of it and spent the weekend at my grandparents' home in Tacoma where I felt safe. I was so tired that I curled up at the bottom of one of their immense chairs and fell asleep like a cat. I slept that entire Christmas, only to awake for Christmas dinner. The month of having to take every call was nearly over though. I steeled myself for the time remaining until the caller would be caught. Just a few more days and it would all be over. That's what I thought.
The month ended and I handed my notes over to the police. Within an hour, they called me back with the report that they had possibly identified the man calling me. To make sure that my case against him stuck, though, they asked me to take one more call. This one, they said, would be the last but I would need to actually talk to him and try to get him to talk for as long as possible while recording the entire conversation on my answering machine. They would be sending a police officer over to wait for the call so that I would feel safe during the conversation. God knows I did not want to have that conversation but when the police officer arrived, he affirmed that it was very important. Keep him talking as long as possible. Find out all that he knows. It didn't take long for that conversation to take place. He was calling so much by that point that it was maddening. I'll never forget that conversation for as long as I live. It started out with the same raspy voice asking me what kind of panties I had on and I responded with a question myself--"Why do you want to know? You don't even know who I am." My blood ran cold when he told me that my name was Stephanie and then told me my full name. My thoughts were racing wildly for I didn't understand how he knew my whole name. I was only listed in the phone book by my first initial, surname and phone number. I challenged him as to still not knowing who I was or what I even looked like but he described me perfectly. Then started telling me where precisely I lived, what car I drove, which window on the 15th floor of my apartment building was mine and what door in the hallway was mine, too. He knew when I had classes, when I came home. It became very clear why he was asking me every day what kind of panties I had on--that was the only thing he couldn't possibly know. I cannot possibly describe what I was feeling as this went on. If fear was a wind, then I was a wild whirlwind. I was absolutely terrified. After he was done, I couldn't take it any longer and blurted out, "You're trapped" just before slamming down the phone. I must have been wild eyed when I handed the tape over to the officer who had been standing nearby throughout.
Everything changed. He never left my side and instead, a second police officer--a female, soon arrived at my apartment, too. They told me that they would stay by me until he was apprehended. A friend made the mistake of coming over during this period and it was terrifying to watch both officers ready their gun before demanding that he identify himself. It's almost laughable because my friend was also carrying a gun at the time. He heard their guns click on the other side of my door and readied his own. After a brief stand off and my intervention, soon my friend and I both were stuck waiting with the two officers, so plainly ready for anything to go down. It all felt so surreal. People say that just the smallest amount of this story sounds like it came from a movie. Well, that's what it felt like to me at the time, too. I was so dissociated, I couldn't even feel anymore. Everything was just happening around me like a movie though with a keen awareness that this was my life.
Diaz had left his home on foot soon after the phone call with me had ended. According to the Portland police, they entered his home with a warrant for his arrest and searched the premises. It was during this search that they went into his basement and found that Diaz had built a shrine to me there. A homicide detective was called in on the spot to examine the shrine and more police officers were called to start hunting for Diaz. He was finally apprehended after two hours on the middle of the Burnside bridge. I was told by the police that they blocked off both sides of the bridge to arrest him. This was no simple prankster. Raul A. Diaz was someone that had long been known to them since he was just a kid. He was a diagnosed sociopath with a violent criminal record stretching from the time he had turned 18, who had had a juvenile record stretching even before that. He was considered to be very dangerous but had always just skirted the system so that his jail terms were always short. Mostly assaults. Diaz had no record of ever doing anything like he had done with me. The homicide detective said that, with me, Diaz had stepped from violent offender to a violent sex offender. The shrine, he said, indicated that the situation for me was escalating dangerously and that eventually, I would be murdered by Diaz. They showed me his mugshot and I realized that the man under the streetlight on that snowy night had been Diaz. Sometimes danger can be right before you with a light shining down on it and you can still be blissfully unaware that your life is in peril. He had taken that step into the light so that I would acknowledge him, just one step closer to death.
I was told in no uncertain terms that my life was forever changed by one sick, violent sociopath's obsession. I had to hide and hide for the rest of my life. Because of the level of information that Diaz knew about me as per the recorded conversation,, nothing was safe--not even the DMV. My life would be filled, out of necessity, with vigilance. Never be found. Always change my driver's license the day that I was to move and never have it be my current location. Always leave it one behind in a cold trail for him to follow. Avoid as much connection to the address of my residence as possible including bills being put in other names. A lifetime of lost friends and missed reunions who fell out of contact and could never find me again for even my family would not part with any information about me because of Diaz. That's been my life and for years, it was painful but easy. Over the past few years, it's been a constant fight. As privacy rights declined, the risk to my children and I inversely increased. It's become harder and harder to keep my children and I safe. Some people don't care and, frequently, it seems that many people out there don't care much for their privacy. They give it away freely and this allows for an ever more pervasive intrusion and release of information for everyone including those whose lives depend on privacy.
Today, I am happy to report that, according to the Portland Police, Diaz is likely to be dead. Although I will remain vigilant for it is not absolute, I feel free enough to share this whole story publicly without fear that Diaz will read it himself and only feel empowered over the impact he had on me. The incident with Diaz happened in a time where there were no stalking laws. The judge presiding over the case called me, himself during his deliberation and voiced his absolute distress and apology for not being able to protect me better. Diaz, this man whose apprehension required the blocking off of a major bridge in Portland, served three days in jail for the crime of telephonic harassment, two years of mandatory psychiatric care, a two year no-contact restraining order, and was ordered to do 14,000 hours of community service for the total crime of what he had done. There was no limitation on community service. It was the least that the judge could do. Even though now there are jail sentences and some greater protections of victims of dangerous stalkers like myself, I am keenly aware that somewhere out there, there are women whose lives have been led just like mine was for 19 years, living in constant fear and struggling to hide their current location in defense of their lives.
Three days ago, for the first time in 19 years, I discovered that my current location, despite all of my efforts to hide, was publicly released. It took three full days to get that information removed from one single website. It took calling the CEO of the website at his home and more. It was three days of sheer terror and lock down for my children and I. In a way, I am oddly grateful for the incident for, thanks to the efforts of another homicide detective for the Portland Police Bureau, she searched through the records to come to the conclusion that Diaz was most likely dead. Yet it's important to know that these things don't just happen in movies. They happen in reality and for those who think that privacy isn't that important, well, before Diaz, I had taken care in keeping myself protected and this is my story. Sometimes danger can be right before you, standing in the light, and you can still be unaware. You'll never know how dreadfully important privacy is until it's too late. Be careful, be vigilant, and most of all, be safe.
I'll never forget the evening that Diaz first made his presence in my life known to me. I was in my small studio apartment busy making dinner while my cat was watching tv when the phone rang. When I answered the phone with the typical hello, I was greeted with a raspy low voice asking me "what kind of panties do you have on?". I was chilled for a second but then, figured it was one of my male friends playing a prank on me. I started laughing and asked, "Pippet, is that you?", fully expecting my friend to come clean. Instead, the same voice said "I'm not Pippet". After several minutes of back and forth, I realized that it really wasn't my friend playing a prank and quickly hung up the phone. That was the first time I spoke to Diaz. For the next few days, the same person kept calling and asking that same question, over and over again. I hung up the phone, every time, sometimes after shouting "leave me alone!" or "stop calling me!" over the receiver. I was getting about 5 or 6 phone calls a day and the strain of it was starting to show. Still trying to make light of the whole thing, one evening when I had friends over, he called again and one of them took the phone from my hands to say in falsetto, "why do you want to know what kind of panties I have on?". Diaz promptly hung up on them. Although I half heartedly laughed at the exchange, something inside me was sinking. My grades were already starting to slide just after the first week. It felt like there was something terribly discordant in my world. There were nights where I stopped answering the phone entirely. It seemed to me that whenever I answered the phone, it was always the same voice on the other end asking the same inevitable question.
In December of 1992, after two weeks of these phone calls, I knew that I had to do something. I couldn't concentrate in class anymore and worse yet, I was falling asleep during some of the lectures for sleeping at night was becoming difficult. That afternoon after coming home from the lab, I called my phone company to report the problem. The customer service representative was unsettled by what I told him and offered me two options. The first was that I could simply change my number and eliminate receiving the calls entirely. The second was where I filed a police report, which would allow Qwest to put a phone trap on my phone that would log every incoming call to my number. I mulled my options over for a second. It was so very tempting to just change my number and end it right there yet something inside me was screaming that that was a very bad idea. I told the Qwest representative that I was going to file a police report. Even he said he was relieved that I chose to do that, too, feeling that same dread that I was feeling, too. That dread turned out to be universal for something about the incidents were disturbing to the Portland police officer who took my report. Working together to resolve the situation quickly, by the next day, the phone trap was on my phone. For one month, it would log every call coming into my home in the hopes of catching the caller's identification. Every time I got one of these calls, I was to record the time and date of the call. In the end, they would compare my notes to the calls recorded on the trap and hope to catch the caller.
For a month, I took each call and dutifully recorded the time and date. To cheer me up during a rare snowfall, my friends brought over makeshift sleds one night and we spent the evening, sledding down one of the steep streets near my apartment building. It was a great night and I remember laughing and feeling relaxed. At one point, a man had stopped underneath a streetlight to watch us sledding. I remember noting him in his long black leather trench and long dark hair pulled back into a low, tight ponytail and for a moment, he and I locked eyes as my friends and I slid past. He smiled at me and I beamed back, thinking that he was just a random person who stumbled across us and was enjoying our merry making in the snow. We were acting like little kids. What wasn't there to like? By the time Christmas arrived, I was so grateful to finally be free of it and spent the weekend at my grandparents' home in Tacoma where I felt safe. I was so tired that I curled up at the bottom of one of their immense chairs and fell asleep like a cat. I slept that entire Christmas, only to awake for Christmas dinner. The month of having to take every call was nearly over though. I steeled myself for the time remaining until the caller would be caught. Just a few more days and it would all be over. That's what I thought.
The month ended and I handed my notes over to the police. Within an hour, they called me back with the report that they had possibly identified the man calling me. To make sure that my case against him stuck, though, they asked me to take one more call. This one, they said, would be the last but I would need to actually talk to him and try to get him to talk for as long as possible while recording the entire conversation on my answering machine. They would be sending a police officer over to wait for the call so that I would feel safe during the conversation. God knows I did not want to have that conversation but when the police officer arrived, he affirmed that it was very important. Keep him talking as long as possible. Find out all that he knows. It didn't take long for that conversation to take place. He was calling so much by that point that it was maddening. I'll never forget that conversation for as long as I live. It started out with the same raspy voice asking me what kind of panties I had on and I responded with a question myself--"Why do you want to know? You don't even know who I am." My blood ran cold when he told me that my name was Stephanie and then told me my full name. My thoughts were racing wildly for I didn't understand how he knew my whole name. I was only listed in the phone book by my first initial, surname and phone number. I challenged him as to still not knowing who I was or what I even looked like but he described me perfectly. Then started telling me where precisely I lived, what car I drove, which window on the 15th floor of my apartment building was mine and what door in the hallway was mine, too. He knew when I had classes, when I came home. It became very clear why he was asking me every day what kind of panties I had on--that was the only thing he couldn't possibly know. I cannot possibly describe what I was feeling as this went on. If fear was a wind, then I was a wild whirlwind. I was absolutely terrified. After he was done, I couldn't take it any longer and blurted out, "You're trapped" just before slamming down the phone. I must have been wild eyed when I handed the tape over to the officer who had been standing nearby throughout.
Everything changed. He never left my side and instead, a second police officer--a female, soon arrived at my apartment, too. They told me that they would stay by me until he was apprehended. A friend made the mistake of coming over during this period and it was terrifying to watch both officers ready their gun before demanding that he identify himself. It's almost laughable because my friend was also carrying a gun at the time. He heard their guns click on the other side of my door and readied his own. After a brief stand off and my intervention, soon my friend and I both were stuck waiting with the two officers, so plainly ready for anything to go down. It all felt so surreal. People say that just the smallest amount of this story sounds like it came from a movie. Well, that's what it felt like to me at the time, too. I was so dissociated, I couldn't even feel anymore. Everything was just happening around me like a movie though with a keen awareness that this was my life.
Diaz had left his home on foot soon after the phone call with me had ended. According to the Portland police, they entered his home with a warrant for his arrest and searched the premises. It was during this search that they went into his basement and found that Diaz had built a shrine to me there. A homicide detective was called in on the spot to examine the shrine and more police officers were called to start hunting for Diaz. He was finally apprehended after two hours on the middle of the Burnside bridge. I was told by the police that they blocked off both sides of the bridge to arrest him. This was no simple prankster. Raul A. Diaz was someone that had long been known to them since he was just a kid. He was a diagnosed sociopath with a violent criminal record stretching from the time he had turned 18, who had had a juvenile record stretching even before that. He was considered to be very dangerous but had always just skirted the system so that his jail terms were always short. Mostly assaults. Diaz had no record of ever doing anything like he had done with me. The homicide detective said that, with me, Diaz had stepped from violent offender to a violent sex offender. The shrine, he said, indicated that the situation for me was escalating dangerously and that eventually, I would be murdered by Diaz. They showed me his mugshot and I realized that the man under the streetlight on that snowy night had been Diaz. Sometimes danger can be right before you with a light shining down on it and you can still be blissfully unaware that your life is in peril. He had taken that step into the light so that I would acknowledge him, just one step closer to death.
I was told in no uncertain terms that my life was forever changed by one sick, violent sociopath's obsession. I had to hide and hide for the rest of my life. Because of the level of information that Diaz knew about me as per the recorded conversation,, nothing was safe--not even the DMV. My life would be filled, out of necessity, with vigilance. Never be found. Always change my driver's license the day that I was to move and never have it be my current location. Always leave it one behind in a cold trail for him to follow. Avoid as much connection to the address of my residence as possible including bills being put in other names. A lifetime of lost friends and missed reunions who fell out of contact and could never find me again for even my family would not part with any information about me because of Diaz. That's been my life and for years, it was painful but easy. Over the past few years, it's been a constant fight. As privacy rights declined, the risk to my children and I inversely increased. It's become harder and harder to keep my children and I safe. Some people don't care and, frequently, it seems that many people out there don't care much for their privacy. They give it away freely and this allows for an ever more pervasive intrusion and release of information for everyone including those whose lives depend on privacy.
Today, I am happy to report that, according to the Portland Police, Diaz is likely to be dead. Although I will remain vigilant for it is not absolute, I feel free enough to share this whole story publicly without fear that Diaz will read it himself and only feel empowered over the impact he had on me. The incident with Diaz happened in a time where there were no stalking laws. The judge presiding over the case called me, himself during his deliberation and voiced his absolute distress and apology for not being able to protect me better. Diaz, this man whose apprehension required the blocking off of a major bridge in Portland, served three days in jail for the crime of telephonic harassment, two years of mandatory psychiatric care, a two year no-contact restraining order, and was ordered to do 14,000 hours of community service for the total crime of what he had done. There was no limitation on community service. It was the least that the judge could do. Even though now there are jail sentences and some greater protections of victims of dangerous stalkers like myself, I am keenly aware that somewhere out there, there are women whose lives have been led just like mine was for 19 years, living in constant fear and struggling to hide their current location in defense of their lives.
Three days ago, for the first time in 19 years, I discovered that my current location, despite all of my efforts to hide, was publicly released. It took three full days to get that information removed from one single website. It took calling the CEO of the website at his home and more. It was three days of sheer terror and lock down for my children and I. In a way, I am oddly grateful for the incident for, thanks to the efforts of another homicide detective for the Portland Police Bureau, she searched through the records to come to the conclusion that Diaz was most likely dead. Yet it's important to know that these things don't just happen in movies. They happen in reality and for those who think that privacy isn't that important, well, before Diaz, I had taken care in keeping myself protected and this is my story. Sometimes danger can be right before you, standing in the light, and you can still be unaware. You'll never know how dreadfully important privacy is until it's too late. Be careful, be vigilant, and most of all, be safe.
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