None Maesai Stories

 

Circle 5

The best of us are hellions.  Even if the green Buick did have a screwed tranny it had no right getting the oil all over one’s glasses now did it.

 

John Bath

Funny guy.  Wonder if his beef heart is even tickin still, sorry about your neetsfoot oil mister.

And Randy, I didn’t say  mean, I said, tell her “yaye or naye”.  Oh well, let people steer their hearts on their own, mock them at best.  Then you won’t get hit by shrapnel.

 

 

The Tyranny of Computers

Now that we all had computers the tyranny of computers was becoming on a more personal level, with involvement of everyone, not just big government.

People used to write letters, not any more. They can do email.  But do they? No, they don't.  Becomes a real problem.

On the other hand computers increased creativeness, because now everyone was an author and a publisher, had to be, and the more creative people were the only ones who didn't get deleted.

I wonder how many authors the computer had helped discover?  Least for themselves, pulling the phone line, destroying the email program and just sitting down to write stories that they never dreamed they had coming profusely out of their fingers.

We think in tracks, patterns, attitudes, presumptions, perceived self limitations, all to be torn down with a keyboard, the shortest distance between mind and easy to re read material.

Years ago one had to type it.  On an old metal typewriter which was not so genius, might take a few years to find out which typewriters were good, which ones were Buicks and which ones were Fords.

Make a mystake, start the page over again.  White out was fine but not for the perfectionist that wanted a spotless document.

Late night, loading onion skin paper into the computer, running out, going about town prowling for more.

A messed up ribbon, all details of mechanical failure solved by the computer and lazer printer.

The age of instant and perfectly arrangeable type.

Looking back the closest anyone got to a liquid machine, smoothe, instantly knowing, was the IBM Selectric.

And the email box sat empty, all the friends who didn't write only names in an address book.

 

The Chill Wind

He ran his fingers over the smooth worn boards of the bench that he sat on and thought to himself how many times he had fit himself thus so comfortably to a wooden bench. And in such fond places as he caressed each one in his mind. Why in parks and with lovers dear, alone watching children play or pigeons eat seeds next to some old brass fountain.  Ah yes the benches were an integral part of life. As a child when reprimanded he had been made to sit on a bench in the hall. In church they called them pews but he supposed that to be the fault of the Puritans who insisted on putting some hard name or impression to everything which by right was pleasant in itself.

   He had even made a bench of his own a time or two. Hewn of planks or some such heavy wood. He felt there some connection between the stoutness of the wood and the depth of the reflections one could ponder as one sat there on. Probably burl wood was the best for his way of thinking because as the twist and turns of the brain it reflected the fabric of his thoughts.

   But now he heard a rattle in the hall which caused him to come back to the location of this particular bench on which he sat and the impressive place it held in his life at this very moment. He heard the muffled voices of shoes and a key rattled in a heavy brass lock. The next bench he would have the opportunity of seeing would be before the judgment seat of God, for today, here, in a few moments he was to be hung. Hung by the neck until dead as the more poetic were apt to put it.

   A kindly and portly man with a dark brown coat and cap summoned him to come and without the ceremony of one who had been locked up for years, growing weak with time, he solemnly moved to the door.  This was a process which would not have been difficult had it not been for the fact that he was in heavy shackles. Just the same he knew it was not for long.  He did not have to suffer many seasons of cold in these quarters and so he carried the iron links with some dignity and pose as he stepped out into the hallway.

   Yes, in everything there could be found some respite, even if it were only to glimpse an ant on its way to work as one swung dying. The quiet man led him down the passage which he had mapped out so well in his mind as to what it should be, even though he had not gone this way before. Simple stones. Wooden walls and ceiling.

   Once he came outside into the prison yard the brisk, lung reviving chill of the fall air hit his lungs once again, telling praises of a winter to come which he would have to leave as a story unread, a love unfinished, to another.

   So often he had been lucky enough to see the red maple leaves skittering on their crisp finger tips, as they ran from the chill breeze, across the paving stones.

   There were times when he had been in love to the tune of such God sent little experiences in life. This kind of love was best lived in the country where the winter air brings a chill to the skin, giving all the more cause to find oneself driven into the arms of his lover. Winter snows cast a red upon the cheeks peering out from beneath the covers, jesting about who will jump up to light the fire in the pot belly stove for heating the house and bath water. Or to smell that familiar smell of ones own blankets as they snuggled in the bed, so joyful to hear the singing of the wind among the nearby trees as it bent them to changing tunes much like a piece of cat gut in the hands of some old hillbilly at a mountain jig. Then the wind would come and move the trees not as one instrument but as a great brush of swaying sound like some wonderful symphony of nature, too difficult to describe, so close was it woven into the pattern of the human heart.

    He couldn’t say that he had a good life but he was thankful for what he did live. But too soon the sorrows had overtaken him.  The pleasant years of youth, between the time one hopes to escape from childhood restraints and before the burdens of older age, had been but a moment, a flash of time before his eyes. And then his difficulties had risen like an ocean and the only escape from one was the different feel of the next two. He had been so disappointed in himself, in the results of his own decisions which he had tried to make as best he could. He hadn’t enough to work with and so often the other man was more clever and the time was too short for one to get two chances at everything.

   And water. How he was going to miss water. Resting upon it in a wooden boat. Drifting. Listening as it moved on its way and spoke kind words to the pains of the human heart. He would surely miss water. A warm afternoon, the sun already behind the hill and the edges of the dark lake lapping gently at smooth stones near to his feet as though polishing the favored ones which it wished him to pick up and skip into a dance upon the glassy surface.

   Or meadows. He would miss making love to a woman body deep in buttercups, their dainty yellow blossoms heralds of passion to the stilled forest. Lit up by the sun’s rays filtering down through the leaves of the canopy of aspen’s branches over head.

   Then there were the grasses on some hill, moving as though by themselves each time they were bent by some subtle breeze pushing gently against them and then springing back as in some rhythmic cadence.

   He was consoled that at least the gallows were wooden.  That allowed him to imagine that in more dignified days the boards had been a host tree in which possibly some grand scolding wood pecker had hewn its home, little able to fathom what its towering mansion was going to be converted to later on in such a solemn change of events.

   He padded softly in elk skin boots with fur linings. He had made them himself and there were none warmer. He must now take them off because the guard who led him along had kindly brought him bread from his wife’s fire as the food in the stockade was not so pleasant. He could not hang in them and he wished to give them to this kind man who somehow seemed ill fit to carry out such a hard job.

   He thought of the daughter he was leaving behind, and a tear crept to the corner of his eye when he remembered the love he had felt for her mother with that first touch in what seemed now like so many years ago and worlds away.

   The guard nodded when he handed him the boots, soft to the touch as a baby’s skin, the man’s puffy faced choking up with a stifled smile of gratitude mixed with a plea for forgiveness. From his pocket the big man pulled a pouch and drew out a plug of sweet tobacco.  In what appeared to be a carefully rehearsed ceremony he accepted it and chewed on it thoughtfully, allowing its sweet flavor to seep into his bones in one last toast to both the joys and cruelties of life.  Reverently he spit over the side of the platform onto the frost darkened grass. The sun was just now cracking through the tips of the nearby fir trees, the shadows slowly giving way to another day.

   The wooden door creaked below his weight. He felt like he was standing still in the woods trying to spot that evasive bird which he suspected to be a thrush, crying out its enchanting, undulating warble from within the shadows. He had eaten slowly of some huckleberries growing on a small leafed bush on a nearby stump.  He could not see well enough and would never know the lone soloist who he had so often heard.

   Now he himself must take flight to that shadow land.

 

The Loft

Happiness is a state of mind they say. Too bad it had to be located there, because it seemed at the moment that all the headaches of my past life had resurrected themselves for one big party crashing carnival of their own. That was bad, because right now I needed my brain for work.

The loft was all right. Good view, good atmosphere of raw exposed wood and a fresh breeze moving lightly through. The overstuffed green chair I sat in was cushion enough, if I could just shake this headache.

There were trees clumped around the loft, their upper branches and leaves poking in the open door. A squirrel made use of the tree, and down at the side a great grape arbor grew, great grapes they were.  The weeds were thick, the grass deep.  I could hear the black woman across the street at the pink house talking.  She was a pleasant woman. I really liked her.  I really liked black people, they were so straight up about life and what they had to say.  The house next door was made up like a captain’s light house.  Panes of glass and such.  Someone said it had been somewhere else at one time, one of the old houses down town, and then they moved it.  Sat on a big lot, luxurious all around in space, then they ran out of money and not much got done with it.  An old rotten boat of wood sat to one side of the lot.  Don’t know if that came with the house or not.  Both washed up on the wrong beach it would seem since there was no beach in this town at all, some sixty miles from the coast.

 

The Boathouse Restaurant

I wonder if it is still there, next to the inlet, the greatest atmosphere and salad on the Oregon Coast, and the greatest sweet salad dressing one could hope for in this life.  Small, close together benches and tables were intimate, windows, the lights at night, and the most excellent sea food one could imagine.  Well, next to sushi in Vancouver, but that’s another story.

The road, Hebo Canyon Road, was a long drive to get there, but well worth it, unless you showed up on a night and the lights were out and the door shut fast.  And even so, you’d better get there early any night, cause if no one came they closed too.

I remember the fun in the eyes of a woman I used to go there with.

I don’t know that hurt or pain should ever block you from writing the memories of a friend, when they were your friend.  Write them down, put them on paper, do justice, the hec of life will do enough damage on its own and the joys, however shortlasted should be made into history, not to be defeated by passing time, life and the closing of the door, the dissappearing of the glow of the tungsten bulb, as the heated coils grow dark and cold.

And she was a good woman.  Course the hand gernade fell in our foxhole, we both scrambled for it, going back and forth till it killed us both in the commotion.

But never mind, the words would get locked in time and the smiles and fish were good.  I had halibut, she had salmon, bowls of salad, beer and wine, cheescake and chocolate moose, don’t think life gets any better.  They brought us out small wooden cutting boards, a knife and each our own tiny loaf of bread.  Hey, can’t beat that.  Leaving was the only hard part, driving down a paved road after going back in time like that, wishing that you could hold onto the moment, wishing that moments could be sewn together, that magic between two people that sometimes gets over run by larger moving events.

But memory is beautiful in that you can go back and forgive and go past it all and remember the good things, that are written in eternity of stone, the bad crap, it has to settle for being written in the dirt.  And unless you spend all your time looking down, you won’t always see it for ever.  Whoever made us this way, considering all that was going on, had done a right good job.  So many mixed flavors and events, all tied up in a great fancy way, a full package, not just evil, not just good, all mixed in there somehow.

There were great puddles in the gravel parking lot.  So few cars there since some people walked from homes nearby, that my heart always sunk as I drove up, thinking they might be closed.  You had to walk around the puddles and then there was this nicely trimmed old screen door you had to get open, you could see the thing banging shut like screen doors do, soon as you looked at it.  Boards, creeking boards. Once it flooded, the inlet came way up, I don’t know how a backwater does that, guess a river fed it there, and anyway, the restaurant was half deep in water they said.  Couldn’t tell it now.

It was good nights, those nights were.

Where ever you are out there, bless you with this thought.

Life ain’t like we want it, just is, so don’t let it get you down.

 

The Wailing Wall

The woman was not that old, but over fourty.  Just one of those deals where you are there by yourself, cause you don’t know anyone, and all the people were coming and going, and I was perched up on the stone wall.  There was a painter behind me, but I only watched him for a while, and then I went back to watching all the people come to the western wall to pray as the sun set.  The Dome of the Rock was to the other side.

People often speak of what they would do over in life, and she spoke of it, not from her point of view, but from the point of view of old people she had spoken with.  Reflect more, risk more, invest more.  In people and moments.

No matter how hard life breaks you, leaves you dumped in bed, don’t matter, cause you got all these belly deep in grass memories.  Must of been some where in Kansas.

 

 

Dear Mom:

It has taken me some time to get away from all the madness and write a letter while my brain is up and running. 

I am closing in on the end of the work on an extensive children’s book and reader and that has taken much time but has progressed rapidly to a very nice product here at the end.  The workbook is over a hundred pages long and the reader is 370 pages long.

Lots of bad things happen here. They happen all the time and just keep on happening.  I think I know far too much and there is very little that I can do to intervene in so much of it.  One wonders why they have eyes to see so much and then the power to do so little about what they do see.

The death of Meeh Sah was a real surprise for me and a real jolt.  I had no idea that the hospital would do little to nothing to intervene in a very serious disease and by the time I found out too much time had been lost.  I assured her that everything would be ok, as I think of it now she looked frightened when I left her in the ICU.  Her husband was in the first hospital sixty miles away and I had to go and get his father and take him to be there.  By midnight I was exhausted and then when I got up and got everything together and got back to the Chiangrai Private hospital, Meeh Sah was already dead.  From the records of what happened that night it was no less than horrific for her.  While she was still alive she spontaneously aborted a three month old baby as long as your hand.  She must of known with fear and despair then that she was dying, that this was the end.  And no one was there for her.  I had to find her body.  They took me to a small room outside the hospital and when I uncovered her face it was like this prize fighter had lost her last fight, her eyes were open, her mouth partly and there was this look of being abandoned, of having been left on her own.  She was a pretty girl and it was too bad to see her that way but she had done her best.  I never saw such a look and it shall stay with me for ever, and what made it so bad was that it was true, that no one really did anything for her till I moved her to the second hospital and then it was just too late or they wouldn’t do enough either.  When I become medically involved with someone, taking responsibility for their life, it is like this incredible bond takes place.  She was married for about 7 months.  Just now twenty I think.  I hadn’t ever spent a lot of time talking to her but saw her on regular occasions in this one village.  There were problems in the young marriage and things her young husband said come back to me and I am sure they haunt him now.  But when I picked her up and carried her out of her mother’s hut and she cried in this deep felt pain from somewhere, she became someone who became my trust.  She was in such bad shape that I had to tie her on my back so she wouldn’t fall off the motorcylce and then I sped 30 miles to the first hospital like it mattered and then in the first 24 hours the did just about nothing for her.  That is when I moved her.  I remember as I sped along, she would seem to come to and then would grasp me with her whole body, not like she was only trying to hold on to me but like she was trying to hold on to life, like someone who could feel that it was already slipping.

Then I had to help clean her and embalm her and moved her back to the village and by the time all the things were over that I had to put up with in the day it was past 11.  I rode home from the mountain in a pouring rain, cooling my brain, but I was incredibly sad.  The night before she trusted her life in my hands, I did all I could and I trusted other people and she died of it.  I yet feel very bad, not that it was my fault, but that things get so easily messed up.  She went through my hands like water.  Had I done nothing at all she would have died in the hut where she was laying when they brought me too her.  How the casual can go to the end so easily.

I went up today with her younger sister and we planted roses and violets at her grave and that of the child.  A quiet place facing the west, the afternoon sun filtering down through the trees.  The earth already doing its best to forget what had happened there, what I had entrusted to it.

You ask me if I have known the comfort of God?

I like you because when you do ask questions, which is not very often, you ask ones that someone can answer.  I don’t know what you mean exactly.  Maybe that sounds surprising but it is very honest.  In a day of prefabricated religious experience it might seem that people could mouthe everything.  But not actually.  I don’t have that keen a perception of God, or that well defined.  Again maybe it is surprising to hear me say that, but it is just my being honest.  I don’t know how it should be.  Maybe some people perceive him but I don’t.  I know information about him.  I know ideas about him.  I know that we can say things to him like we think he at least listens and maybe he will do something about it in a very undiscernable undetectible way that we can never really link.  Then sometimes things happen suddenly, not even really because we prayed, they just happen and then we try to remember if we prayed about that, or we are just glad it did and since it was good we tend to think that it was something God did one way or the other.  Intentionally for us or by default while busy just making a whole lot of good things happen all around.  One knows for certain that it was not Satan that did the good thing.  But that is where it rests with me.  I wonder how I would be more plugged in?  I mean I wonder if people know God better than I do, have more interaction, particularly from his end, than I do and if that should be the case for me as well?  What am I doing wrong I wonder, or are we just all really on our own and he will explain it all when it is over?

I find it so unfortunate, that 99% of all the Christians I know are so hung up on having the right experience and mouthing the right words that one can never say, hey gee, that NEVER happens to me.  It is like everyone is afraid to admit that maybe for them, God is just not very outspoken, nor very personally involved with the trivia, even the serious trivia, of their lives.  I mean does God really care WHAT I do with my time?  I mean I do this because I think I make a difference, I know I make a difference and I think it is the right thing to do.  But I don’t know that it is special or that God really cares.  How would I?   Most the people I know can’t get far enough away from my work.  It seriously irritates them. Why THOSE people?  As leading up to the next question, why anyone at all?

I try to be practical.  When there is money I try to deal with some of the small problems.  When there is not I sit.  I don’t know why the money show up when it does.  I have not a clue. 

But it is not that I don’t take God seriously, I just wish interaction with him was a little more apparent.

I remember this one guy, this older missionary I met, was a really nice guy actually.  He said you had to “listen for God’s voice.”  I asked him what that sounded like, how he knew what it was and when?  After much stepping about he finnally said, “well you know, I really don’t know, there are a lot of voices.”  And so there he had it.  I suppose by voices he ment thoughts put to words but in the end he didn’t know any better than I but was just in the habit of quoting nicities about God.  And then he actually admitted it and that was a breath of fresh air.

At any rate.  The conditions here are horrible for these very poor people and I try to do something about it in every way that I can.

I do hope that Dad can write again.

I don’t mind that you don’t write, it isn’t like my right or something, I do wish that you would more often though.  Much needs to be said. Will take some time.

About this computer.  It was never really Blane’s job, but I wish that if more people would have helped just a tiny bit, it would have slowly got done. I wish I could just fix the situation quickly.  But, never the less, it has provided services to a huge number of people, many small infants who are not dead as a result of help I got over the computer conversations with people.  And then there are all the Akha writings, the web site that people learn so much from and on and on it goes, I am on a very tiny island and this is the telephone.

I want you to know, that there are many sad events I feel as a result of proportion.  I mean they were bad, they were unfortunate.  But they pale in comparison to what I see going on here and on such an incredibly large and severe scale.  And now I wish that I had just skipped all the “lesser traumatic events”  but I also realize when I see other people go out in the villages and just totally rationalize what is going on there, that those “lesser events” from my life in the US set something up in my heart and mind that ISN’T in everybody’s thinking.  And as a result I am as much on the inside with the Akha as a person could ever hope to get apart from just more time as I spend it.  The Akha know without any doubt I could be doing something else, because just about everyone else is.

Things are very bad here.  Things I see and know about are not as they should be.  I know about things that leave me feeling unexcused because I can’t do anything about them where in the west I would know that someone would have to.  One way or the other.  You see kids that are working as prostitutes and you know that you should be able to say that there is some place that they could go to get away from it all but there isn’t and you know it, and they didn’t do anything to deserve that and in a couple of years they are almost not human any more, who they were was destroyed it would seem.  And then sometimes you see girls who are twenty five, and still prostitutes, and somehow, don’t ask me how, they have seemed to pull something all back together, some kind of refined dignity, some kind of incredible human understanding and kindness that rises above it all.  And so many friends die.  Young guys get into heroin and are dead by 19.  You got them past some illness years before and they are already dead like an old man a couple years later.

It really leaves your mind no rest.  One side of your brain is being forced to watch videos in Kodachrome and the other side knows that it won’t again be able to sit in church and listen to people sing and think that God is as much in that as you once thought because it would then be out of proportion to all the incredible hopelessness and despair you see all around you.

The stories roll and roll.  I don’t want to put them on paper.  They don’t really belong there any more.  I don’t even like that they are in my mind because they undefine everything that I thought I knew and make my soul heavy like leaden saddness and in some ways when this life is over I won’t miss it one bit.  Not that I don’t enjoy it.  It rained hard this morning and then when the two of us went up into the jungle to plant the roses the sky was brilliant blue with enormous thunderhead clouds and a little wind.

I try to be something, to do things, that would make God proud that I took the time, that I had only to see it once or only to only know it was there by intuition and then I did something about it.  Without being asked.  I look at my life, as I go through villages, as I manage to cheat despair and gloom out of messing up one more life I hope that if you knew what was going on you would be proud, proud that I was getting some small thing done in the highest level of endeavor I could.  But I don’t know.  More than anything else I feel shame that the bulk of my life I could not restle my dreams and hopes and then accomplishments into one pile of meaninful spit.

Anyway, when it comes to God, nothing is very cut and dried.

I just try to see examples of what I understand to be true.

Hope you write again, you were both the best parents anyone could ever want.  Matthew.

Here is an add on.

I am working frantically not only to do all the job here that I have but to market my writing that could bring in some revenue.

It doesn’t need much reminding as to the financial failure side.

Anyway, I am working to try and get some things done, hopefully I can find a way to sell some of it.

I hope that dad will rewrite whatever it was he was working on.

do write, even if just a little.

 

Matthew

 

 

 

 

 

********

 

 

 

End Thailand

 

 

Non Thailand Stories

Army Navy Surplus in Seattle

Under the truck tires mexico

The old typewriter

This was the old folding type I bought from a guy in west Salem

Took it to Africa, Andra has it now I think.

What is the physical connection in between family and eternal life, having kids that is?

 (Stolen toilet tank cover)

The 1982 years in the farming mechanic business, Klamath and to Adin

 

Navy

Hey, more collection of dick heads in the navy than most other places.  People who like to float on water over sex, couldn’t say much hope for them.  Course didn’t slow down First Class Rhodes on my sub.  The fag ship of the fleet they called it.  Anyway, while he was a brig rat, running from the Navy INS, the cook beat the shit out of him.  Hey that was going in a different direction now wasn’t it.  The night groper the new guys called him.  He used to say, “Touch that valve and I’ll slap the dogshit out of you.  Weird guy.  Butt buddies with the Chief. Hey, can I play with your periscope.  I packed a knife, so did a lot of the other guys.  We liked women playing with our flutes.  Then there was that one whose husband was to see.  Two of us guys helped her take care of the baby, rough life, hands off, we had the Jolly Frog to grope nipples.

The store keep.  He was a confessed nipple guy but lousy driver when he was drunk, even if he did have lots of “Heart” cassettes.  Funny, technology. Everybody wants to have the biggest, rattling cassette tape collection but then along comes CD tech.  So much for vanity placed on technology.  Hey someday, if I could think this onto disk it would be faster.

 

 

Totally Unrelated

 

A GUIDE FOR HOME OWNERS GETTING REPAIRS

EXPECTATIONS

   How to avoid Pitfalls:

   Any project can change from what we expect it to come out to and what it actually ends up being.

   This can be disappointing and effect your satisfaction with the job that isn’t directly connected with the quality of the process used but never the less, important.

   Often the mechanical process a job must be taken through, the original condition of the location, the materials available and the money you are willing to spend all can affect how close the end results are in meeting your expectations. 

   So, some points to remember:

1.  all materials and labor being invested are being invested in your home.  So if something costs more to accomplish, this is not a loss, you are still getting the items invested in your home.  This is not a loss.  Some things cost more than expected to accomplish and in the end the products are there in your home, the contractor does not take them home with him.

2. Problems encountered in structure are problems to be resolved not problems the contractor has invented for his profit.  Correcting them is the owners choice and responsibility.

   For instance a change required by code is not a cost the contractor can absorb but is increased materials and labor invested in you job site as imposed by the government.

3.  Unforeseen problems with structure or damage repair also add cost. 

4. Keep it simple.  Do not try too hard to match old styles as many components or processes are no longer readily available at a cost effective price.

5.  Realize that arriving in close proximity is often cheaper than getting it exactly as you wanted.  This is especially true when trying to match color, texture age or style.

   What was originally installed because it was available may not be available at all now and requiring a supplier to set up and produce one of a given item can double or triple the price and take 6 to 12 weeks instead of 2 days.  It is better that something looks good of itself than to end up with a disaster trying to match what is there.

6.  Be realistic.  A neglected house for instance, can’t be fixed with one paint job.

7.  The contractor can only solve as many problems as you are willing to pay him to solve.  Some mechanical problems in construction have an easy inexpensive solution or a complicated expensive one.  Don’t assume that the contractor is going to provide the complicated solution unless you agree to pay for it.  There is no quick cheap fix or free lunch.  By looking realistically at the constraints of time and money one is much less likely to meet disappointment.

 

Assault

NOTICE

                On Sunday the 7th of August 1994 Mr. Matthew McDaniel was in a discussion with his ex-wife outside his place of residence when she was picking up their daughter. During a very brief discussion harsh words were exchanged and his ex-wife proceeded to kick him angrily in the side of his right knee and upper calf three times, breaking the skin and bruising an area some eight inches long on his leg.

                At this time Mr. McDaniel went into the house and called Keizer Police who responded to the scene within a few minutes since city hall is only two blocks away.

                Mr. McDaniel told the two officers that he had been assaulted by his ex-wife and that he would like to press charges. He then asked the white officer if he had a camera in his car. The officer said he did to which Mr. McDaniel replied that he would like a photograph taken of his leg which the officers had asked to see, as evidence. The white officer replied that he “didn’t need to take any pictures for evidence!” and said that he was opposed to arresting the the mother, Lucinda Demee, as it would traumatize the child. Mr. McDaniel said, “Well then, are you holding me hostage to a child? Would you hesitate to arrest me if it had been I who had kicked the woman? Certainly not!”

                Furthermore Mr. McDaniel was not offered any assistance as the victim, nor informed of his rights as a victim. Where is equal funding of a Men’s Crisis Center?

                At this time Mr. McDaniel stated that this had not been the first time that Lucinda Demee had struck him and asked that she be arrested. .

                At this point the white officer began pressuring Mr. McDaniel by saying that had the woman not kicked him he would arrest Mr. McDaniel for harassment hereby implying that Mr. McDaniel’s words were more painful than Ms. Demee’s, giving her right to kick him.

                Lucinda Demee was taken away, came back some minutes later and left for Eastern Oregon.

                Upon inquiring with the district attorney’s  office, Mr. McDaniel found that the DA had decided that no action would be taken on this case due to “lack of evidence!”

                We, the undersigned, believe that this case is proof of sexual discrimination against men my the justice system that repeatedly looks the other way during instances of violence perpetrated by women against men but aggressively prosecutes men under the same circumstances all the while the press presents violence as something that is only done by men against women.

                We believe this to be part of an anti-male sexist agenda that coincides with male bashing political correctness using gross misrepresentation of the facts and fails to hold women accountable for their violent actions.

                We believe that there should be gender based quotas for prosecution such that treatment for breaking the law is equal for both genders. This is presently not now the case with women arguing that everything they do, no  matter how devious, is a man’s fault somehow!

end

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LUCINDA DEMEE:

 

Case # 94-6842

In Marion County

 

I have been advised regarding your assault, that had a series of blows of the severity that left a large 8” bruise and hemotoma on your ex-husbands right leg from repeated kicks from you, been against your daughter AnnaRose it might have been fatal and that it is advisable that a representative of Children’s Services Division interview you regarding your need to settle your differences of opinion with violence.

 

There is some question as to her physical safety in your custody.

Matthew McDaniel

 

 

 

End

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Copyright 2004, by Matthew McDaniel