Goodbye

Last week i found out that i has lost a friend. I hadn't misplaced him, he'd misplaced himself.

In October my friend killed himself. He didn't tell anyone that anything was wrong, he just decided to end his life.

Living on the other side of the world, it wasn't unusual that i didn't hear from him every week. We usually caught up ever 4 months or so. When christmas came and he didn't send me a message, i thought he was busy with the christmas season. When New Years rolled around, i didn't notice his lack of merriment then either.

It was when i visited his myspace page and saw all the condolences remarks, the various thoughts and prayers that went out to his family that i got that sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. I didn't know how he had died. I couldn't believe it! I contact his friends and after several days of waiting, i found out the news.

It is horrible to grieve a death that is 4 months past. It is worse still, not knowing why he did it.

stream of consciousness writing

I haven't had much to say lately, not because my brain malfunctioning, i just don't know where to start. I once had someone tell me to start writing and i'd figure out what needed to be said. So here i am, writing, without much of a purpose other than to get a few things off my chest.

The big thing at the moment is mortality. I have never had a problem with death. Or at least, i have never had a problem with my own death. Not that i'm suicidal, i just don't fear it. Yet, somehow when other people die or it becomes apparent that they could leave my life, i get clingy. How dare they be removed from the land of the living! Like with most of my life, i am terribly selfish. No one should die before me.

Saturday mocked me.

As i sat in church i heard the prayer for Mimi. Mimi is a dear friend of mine. She is my adopted grandmother. She is always so concerned for everyone else. The prayer ended. The pastor got up to speak the sermon. He prefaced his sermon with the announcement that Mimi had suffered a stroke that morning. I left church and called the hospital.

She was "stable" i was told. The rest of the day i spent on the verge of tears wondering what "stable" meant. Could she speak? Was she mobile?

It was that evening i found out that another woman i was close to as a child passed away. Mama K was the stern yet funny old lady who had a day care in her home. She looked like a grandmother. She treated everyone like they were her children and their business was her business. I loved her. I brought her back a spoon from Australia for her collection. She was very excited. I didn't see her again for several years. I wasn't sure she remembered me when i saw her at a friend's wedding. That was the last time i saw her.

The weekend was emotionally exhausting. The week has been numb. But Mimi gets out of hospital today. She is doing well. She has all her movement and a little slurring of her speech, but she's okay. I think i will be too.

The death of JR Simplot

To much of the world the man was synonymous with potatoes. And it was only fair. He did build a great French Fry empire. He had a mind for investment and a great eye for a bargain...and apparently potatoes.

On Sunday JR Simplot died at his home in Boise, Idaho.

His rating on the forbs rich list and being baned from commodities trading for 6 years was not what i remembered him for.

As a girl i remember his house. No, not his house, but the hill in which is house was built on. His hill was perfect for iceblocking. I have many fond memories of that hill and the fun we had on it. Sliding down the hill when it was snow covered, or scooting down on an iceblock in the spring.

The hill will remain.

The man has moved on.

Death for a death

The first excecution in the USA has been carried out since the Supreme Court lifted its temporary hold on excecutions. A mere 20 people showed up to protest the event.

The man convicted of killing his girlfriend by shooting her in the face in 1988 was put to death by leathal injection.

After 20 years, I can not help but wonder if they put to death the same man that committed those crimes. Undoubtedly circumstances would have changed the man. I don't know if he was a nicer or meaner man...but i would find it hard to believe he was exactly the same.

The issue brings up the question of punishment verse rehabilitation. While prison is arguably the worst place for rehabilitation, is our goal as a society to produce balanced members of society? or to punish those who have committed crimes against the society?

If the process is meant simply to punish, execution is one of the better punishments.

If the process is meant to rehabiliate, than the execution of a prisoner is useless.

If the process is meant to serve as a detourant for those who might choose a life of crime, studies suggest that criminals don't believe they will be caught...thus the punishement is not enough of a detourant.

Confusious once said, "Consideration for others is the basic of a good life, a good society". If we are not considering even the lowest in our society, than we have failed to make a good society. After all, "The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons". (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)

Capital punishment might feel like the right course of action when we have been wronged, but to base judgement on a feeling is wrong. We must be willing to provide more than food and water to those who trespass against society...in fact we should be providing these services long before they trespass. Counselling, Psychologists, Educators, financial stablities must all be provided if a society wants to move forward together.

We have already seen the cost of not providing these. The prisons are full and over flowing. Homelessness is rising, the life expectancy is lower for those on the other side of the gap.

Opening more prisons will not solve this problem. Fast tracking the execution line will not keep society safe. We need to move to the heart of the problem.

Bringing more death to Louisiana

To any one who has read a story in the paper, or known a child who was molested or raped, you know how gut wrenching it is to hear the offender get a light sentence. The child may be scared both emotionally and physically for life and the offender gets away with a mere 7 year sentence. What if that changed?

Louisiana is proposing to add child rape to the charges in which perpetrators can face the death penalty.

Now before you jump on-board and start waving flag to push the bill through, lets think about this for a minute.

Most child rapes are committed by family members or family friends of the victim. If the victim or victim's friends know that the offender could be killed for his/her actions, are they more or less likely to turn them in? I would suggest less. Child Advocacy groups agree.

Furthermore, those who trespass on the law, do not often think of the consequences, and if they do, they may decide that the lesser sentence of murder will keep them off death row. So while the harsher sentence would not be a likely factor to deter perpetrators, those who do think about these things are likely to take the next step and kill their victim.

If the death penalty is enacted for child rape, does statutory rape carry the same sentence? There are more than once case of a partner going to jail because his/her lover was 1 or 2 years younger and under the adult age bracket.

All these factors make this is a scary policy and one i don't think i could support.

survived by three cats

Death is a morbid topic. (It's a bit redundant to put it that way, but i was hoping to catch your attention with a clever opening line) No one wants to think that every one they know will eventually end up pushing up daisies, but at some point your mind will go there and if your quick enough to turn it back to something else, you're much more clever than I.

Wikipedia is a fascinating source of information of a vast array of different people, places and things. Today I skipped places and things and went straight to people. I read the biography of Capucine. She was a beautiful girl who was a model and actress from the late 1940s - 1990. She was a bright girl with a B.A. in Foreign Languages. And like all girls, she had a few strange ideas. She was once quoted as saying, " A woman needs to know that the man is her master". She also was a manic-depressive. She was fabulously happy one minute and tragically suicidal the next.

Although Capucine was seen as a sex object to men around the world, and she obviously had some interesting ideas about men's roles, she never had a long term relationship with a man. (and there is no evidence that she was a lesbian either so you can get that thought out of your head!). She had affairs. The longest known was two years with a man who was married and known to have been "in love" with her friend Audrey Hepburn. But none of her affairs really lasted.

After other suicide attempts, Capucine finally jumped from her 8th floor apartment on 17 March 1990. Her obituary read that she was survived by her three cats. Either the columnist didn't like her much, or she lived a very lonely life.

Forgive me for being a bit morbid today...but this was a life glimpse I thought worth telling. Hopefully our obituaries will have more to say than "survived by three cats".

Death

I'm possibly one of the very few liberals who believes in the death sentence. I know its disturbing and gut wrenching, but i believe that in extreme cases a death sentence is appropriate. I do NOT believe it should be handed out like candy, however.

Today I've been researching the death sentence in the united states and I've come across some thing that has made me turn cold. In GW Bush's five years as Governor of Texas, there were 131 executions. The highest number in the united states. During this time there was only 1 prisoner was granted a commuting of sentence (that from death to life in prison). And that came about at the same time he was running for president AND it was proven in the media that even though this man had confessed to the murder he wasn't even in the same state at the time of it.

In his list of conquests, Bush has executed a man who committed a crime when he was 16 (a juvenile and is prohibited under international law), a mentally handicapped man, and a woman who had so clearly changed her jailers requested a commuting of her sentence. All of these people are dead now. and if that isn't enough to cause you to pause, maybe this is.

In the weeks before the execution, Bush says, a number of protesters came to Austin to demand clemency for Karla Faye Tucker. "Did you meet with any of them?" I ask. Bush whips around and stares at me. "No, I didn't meet with any of them", he snaps, as though I've just asked the dumbest, most offensive question ever posed. "I didn't meet with Larry King either when he came down for it. I watched his interview with Tucker, though. He asked her real difficult questions like, 'What would you say to Governor Bush?'" "What was her answer?" I wonder. "'Please,'" Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, "'don't kill me.'" I must look shocked — ridiculing the pleas of a condemned prisoner who has since been executed seems odd and cruel — because he immediately stops smirking.

taken from Talk Magazine (September 1999, p. 106).

Perhaps what makes me the most angry is the article that conducted research into the legal system in Texas. It found that those being tried were not being adequately represented. Out of the 131 people sentenced to death, one third of all defence lawyers were later sacked for being bad lawyers. In 40 cases defence lawyers presented no evidence.

In case your saying that all this sounds sad, but these were criminals and deserved what they got, well, they may not have been criminals. Without adequate lawyers to help defend them, they were railroaded to meet a quota. Is this really the sort of legal system we want to support?

sources:
Anthony Lewis
Karla Faye Tucker- Wikipedia
Death in Texas

The truth is out there

It was two days ago that i learned of my brother's death. He was killed with blunt force trauma to the heart. The killer never knew him, and by all understanding, never wished to know him.

The killer used a weapon that is used in many of these cases. He used words. He used words that went straight to the heart of my brother, causing pain that the killer seemed completely oblivious to. The pain was not caused by the 'truth' of these words but by underlying meaning that was there. The meaning was simply this "you are not good enough now. And you never have been and you never will be. No matter what you do, you will always be a failure in my eyes".

The pain that this caused was so great that my brother's heart broke. I know that he will never be the same man he was.

Rest in peace little brother. Second life is hard but rewarding.