Why Lawyers Rock

I've heard the bad lawyer jokes, and so have you. People--some people-- love to hate lawyers. But lawyers do a lot of good in the world and in this post, I'm gonna tell you why...

Read a previous post titled Working Class Blues (swimming with the sharks) and you'll learn about another kind of lawyer--the kind who works for collection agencies, scouring the bottom of the ocean for debts big and small that long ago sunk to the floor, weighted down by the poverty of their owners.

I didn't know much about this debt collection game, since I permanently retired and chopped up all my plastic in 1997, after a consumer credit counseling service told me straight up that I had such a pathetically low income, (working full time, by the way) they could not put me on a budget and there was no help available to me until I found a much better paying job. There's no debt diet for a starving worker. If I had a better paying job, I commented at the time, I wouldn't need a debt counselor because I'd be able to make my credit card payments and keep the lights on.

In all my years in the sunshine state, I never saw a living wage. With each job change I made a dollar or two more, but the rents rose faster than my pay. And so did the auto insurance, the phone bill, utilities, food prices...you get the picture.

In 1999 I got a union job. It didn't pay much more than my other crappy jobs, but I believe in unions generally, and I wanted to check this out. The union offered workers a chance to build good credit with the "Union Plus" secured credit card. I decided to take a chance on this one. You can read the whole sad story in Working Class Blues (swimming with the sharks)

In December 2005, I was awakened from my afternoon sleep of the dead after working the graveyard shift all night in Target stocking the store --without air conditioning-- in Florida. The process server was at my door, to hand me a summons. A company called Asset Acceptance that I'd never heard of was suing me for $3,000 + for this secured credit card that I'd canceled back in June 2001. I called the Federal Trade Commmission.

The FTC agent told me the statute of limitations ( four years) had expired in Florida for credit cards. I decided I'd just go to court and tell the judge my side, and this lawsuit would be dismissed as frivolous. I showed up one day late because I'd misread the handwritten summons date, and because of that the collection agency got a default against me, but when I showed up at the courthouse only one day late and filed a motion to vacate, explaining my error and the legal reason for my dispute, the motion was granted and the judgment was set aside.

Next, the case was referred to mediation, and for that I showed up on the right date. I repeated my earlier assertion---that I owe this collection agency nothing, and the secured credit card debt was past the statute of limitations when the collection agency decided to sue me. The mediator, who did not seem to be "impartial" at all, declared an impasse. I asked when I'd get a chance to present my argument and evidence to the judge, and the mediator gave me no answer. I called the clerk's office every week or so, looking for an update, and was told nothing new had happened in the case.

In August, I moved back to the big apple--yeah that's right-- NYC, Lady Liberty's back yard. While I was staying in a Manhattan homeless women's shelter, the judge ( a different one) granted a default judgment for the plaintiff, Asset Acceptance. The reason cited: because I failed to appear at the pre trial hearing dated the same day as the mediation. The only problem is, I was there on that date.

When I came back to Florida for a visit to the family and found out about this, it was too late for me to file a motion for free, and I didn't have the money to pay the court filing fee.
What this meant was, in theory Asset Acceptance could garnish my wages for years to come, could seize my property (if I had any) and freeze my Swiss Bank accounts. (Yes, that was sarcasm) With interest added every year. All this misery for a secured credit card with a credit limit of $250. Secured by my $250 deposit--a deposit that was never returned to me-- in whole or in part.

I found justice in October, in the person of a lawyer named Mark Tischhauser, who has a picture of a bulldog on his business card, with the caption: A CLIENT'S BEST FRIEND." He called the collection agency, asked them a few questions, and got them to admit they made a mistake, and the default judgment against me was vacated in November. By the plaintiff's request.

So NYC landlords, If you see this default judgment on my credit report be aware it's WRONG! (and it will be removed)

I might not use credit cards, but I paid my rent on time (even if I starved) and this can be verified.

Somebody once said this is a nation of laws. Lawyers are the only ones who seem to understand these laws. Ignorance about their rights under these laws can mess up the lives of innocent people, whose only "crime" is being poor, and lawyers who take their cases pro bono or for a contingency fee can make things right. Lawyers like these level the playing field, opening up access to justice for people who don't have the deep pockets of a collection agency.

When the playing field gets even, the game becomes tougher for some players, and that's why they snipe at trial lawyers, urging their (usually Republican) legislators to pass laws that limit contingency fees. (See red states)

Lawyers who fight for the wrongly convicted and wrongly incarcerated, http://www.innocenceproject.org/ and http://www.floridainnocence.org/ and the good hearted but not well connected (see http://www.aclu.org/) make prosecutors and judges work harder. Lawyers like these comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Maybe that's why some people hate lawyers so much.

Not me.

From Siberia With Love (Oprah, Read This!)

This story is brought to you from Siberia, USA, otherwise known as Florida. It's also known as the Sunshine State, the chain gang state, and the boot camp state where a 14 year-old inmate's death by beating brought down the wrath of New York's Reverend Al Sharpton. This would not be the first time New Yorkers came to the aid of a Florida inmate. In 2002, a couple of idealistic NYC lawyers took up the cause of a wrongfully convicted inmate named Alan Crotzer serving 130 years. In 2006, they won Mr. Crotzer's freedom.

They should build shrines to people like Alan Crotzer, a man who spent more than twenty-four years behind bars for crimes he didn't commit: armed robbery, rape, kidnapping. For nearly twenty-five years, in the state of Florida, he was innocent yet incarcerated, and he continued to assert his innocence from his arrest in 1981 through his trial, and on through all those years in prison. Even his co-defendants stated Mr. Crotzer had nothing to do with them or the crime.

On January 23, 2006, after living more than half his 45 years in the joint, he walked out a free man and declared, "I'm not bitter."

Mr. Crotzer's better-late-than-never release from prison was brought to him by "two Jewish guys from New York City." One was Sam Roberts, then a law student, who learned about Alan Crotzer's case while volunteering at the Innocence Project and showed Mr. Crotzer's letter to David Menschel, who was then a recent Yale law graduate with the Innocence Project in New York City. www.innocenceproject.org

"I wrote everybody asking for help," says Crotzer. "The ACLU, Uhuru movement, Innocence Project..." Finally these two guys felt my pain and helped me. I love both these guys." When the Innocence Project sent Crotzer a letter declining to take his case, Roberts and Menschel left and continued to fight for him, for three and a half years, joined by attorneys Jennifer Greenberg, and Martin McClain, and Jeff Walsh, a private investigator. At the request of Barry Scheck at the New York IP, the Florida Innocence Intitiative was opened, the only IP in the state.

"Sam Roberts is very persistent," says Crotzer from his home in St Petersburg, where this Thursday he'll be interviewed by the St. Petersburg Times.

The story of Alan Crotzer's 130-year sentence began in 1981 with a series of miscarriages of justice that would do a banana republic proud. The judge who sentenced him to 130 years in 1982 was convicted of four counts of judicial misconduct in 1987, including accepting a bribe. See Merckle vs State of Florida 512 So 2d 948,951 Fla. 2d DCA 1987. A jury sentenced Arden Mays Merckle to five years, and unlike Mr. Crotzer, he did the crime and deserved the time.

The victims of the 1981 robbery described the ringleader as being very tall and thin. Mr. Crotzer is 5'5" tall. He had numerous witnesses, including his girlfriend, who testified he was with her and members of her family on the night the crimes were committed. At the request of Florida Innocence Initiative's lawyers the serologist, now in private practice, reviewed forensic work done at trial. He found that he'd made a mistake by signing off on the work of an analyst under his supervision. "The analyst was in error," and according to Jennifer Greenberg, director of the Innocence Intitiative, "they do not know if the error was intentional, but they believe the supervisor did not act maliciously."

The actual leader of the crime spree was a smoker who left a bunch of butts at the crime scene says Mr. Crotzer. He was also a "non-secretor," meaning he leaves no blood typing in saliva or body secretions for evidence. In the words of David Menschel:

"Prior to trial, the FDLE issued a report saying that the biological material on a piece of evidence was consistent with the serological characteristics of a nonsecretor(that is, someone who does not secrete their blood group substances into their saliva and other bodily fluids). The FDLE got the exact same results on another piece of evidence--a cigarette butt smoked by
the ringleader of the crime--and concluded that the results were "inconclusive" rather than concluding that the results suggested the cigarette butt was smoked by a nonsecretor. The inconsistent way that the FDLE characterized the exact same result on two different pieces of evidence is a problem.
More troubling is that HAD (emphasis added)the FDLE characterized the result on the cigarette butt in the same way that it characterized the result on the other piece of evidence, Alan would have been "excluded" as the smoker of the cigarette because he is a secretor, NOT a nonsecretor. This would have been very useful to Alan's defense at trial."

Alan Crotzer calls it the hand of God at work that "FDLE just happened to have a file cabinet with five slides of biological evidence stapled to the back of some papers."

Crotzer's DNA was sent first to Germantown, MD, then to the U.K., where Scotland Yard did a LCN (low carbon number) DNA test on it. Finally it landed in the hands of Edward Blake, director of Forensic Science Associates in California, who gave a partial report to the state of Florida. According to Mr. Crotzer, that report got the case reopened.

The hardest thing for him to bear about his twenty-five years behind bars is the fact that his mother died while he was locked up, and he was not able to attend her funeral. His biggest problems today are "emotional" in nature, he says. "My mother died. She was my staunch supporter through all this. She didn't live to see her son exonerated."

While in prison, he says his main focus was "to keep my sanity...you see so many people die in there." Now that he's free, his struggles continue, in a different vein.

It's a strange new world Alan Crotzer has stepped into. He says his old neighborhood has undergone profound changes, and not always for the better. He decries the young lives wasted on drugs and says: "I'm not used to seeing old people living in fear in their own neighborhoods.
Crack cocaine wasn't around. Computers weren't around. They dropped so many drugs on the ground, grass won't grow. Now, nobody seems to care."

It's hard to wrap your mind around an injustice as gut wrenching as this one. Your mind goes back and back and back, trying to comprehend how this could happen. Back--to the trial where it took an all white jury just an hour to decide he was guilty. Back--to the sound of his anguished mother in that courtroom, watching her son get railroaded; a scene any mother can visualize. Equally hard to fathom is the sheer force of will that must have pushed his lawyers forward through the three and a half years it took to get him out. Digging for the evidence that would free him, like terriers digging up a yard: fearless and relentless. And then you realize: one was a law student, and these guys were all volunteers.

For a man who did hard time, Mr. Crotzer expresses a lot of empathy and compassion for those still inside who like him, were wrongfully convicted. He lavishly praises the legal team that won his freedom, especially Jenny Greenberg of Florida Innocence Initiative. www.floridainnocence.org
He worries about funding for the Innocence Initiative, and says there are others in prison for crimes they didn't commit who need help proving their innocence. Jennifer says the Florida Innocence Initiative, funded in part by the Florida Bar Foundation and private donations, will need to raise $100,000 just to keep going another 12 months.

If ever there was a worthy cause that needs some serious media coverage, it's this one. Oprah: are you reading this? (Please read this!)

Reparations are in order here. Serious compensation is due. Now forty-five years old, Alan Crotzer has lost more than half his life to the Florida state prison system. He is free, but still struggles financially. He is grateful to the woman who provides him with an apartment, for reasonable rent. He is still searching for the job that will pay him a liveable wage and afford him some dignity. He is articulate, intelligent, and compassionate. Who knows what he could have done with his life if he'd been outside the prison walls for the past twenty-five years?

Incredibly, he still has to fight to get his voting rights restored. State officials have the nerve to debate whether Mr. Crotzer should lose his claim to damages because he was arrested as a juvenile-- for which he served his sentence, by the way. What has one crime to do with the other? And why does the state want to punish him twice for the same crime? Like Florida's convicted felons who have done their time, and are forever barred from voting. What part of "double jeopardy" does the state of Florida not understand?

Earlier this year, after speaking to a gathering at the Enoch Davis Community Center where he mentioned his new voter registration card, Mr. Crotzer was contacted by a state official and told to turn in his voting card. To restore his voting rights, he has to apply for clemency from the governor, a process that can be lengthy, although it's more streamlined than it used to be. In Florida, even one felony-- for which all restitution has been made--can take away your right to vote for life.

Even if you can conclude, by some extraordinary mental gymnastic, that what Florida did to Alan Crotzer was an "honest" mistake, thus exonerating the state from compensating him for false imprisonment, he is still owed money. If for nothing else, for his labor. One way or another, prison inmates work, either for the prison itself or for outside corporations contracting inmate labor. Mr. Crotzer worked in a variety of jobs, including in the prison kitchen--and for the last five years as an "impaired assistant"--that is, he helped the inmates who have physical disabilities. Twenty four years of unpaid labor is a lot of back pay, and the interest clock is ticking. How much is a man's life worth in Florida? Twenty-five years of it.

As of this story, Alan Crotzer has a civil case pending and is being represented pro bono by Carlton Fields law firm.

Time, Money, Gatorade. (this is not an ad)

Time. It's all we really have. Money comes and money goes. Fame or infamy can fade with time. And often do. Today's notoriety is tomorrow's old news. Tomorrow's headlines will be replaced. Nothing is permanent, but everything is always here, all the time.

While packing up my stuff, I found two calendars from the year 2002. They are wall calendars. One is a collection of vintage black and white New York City images: Central Park, the flat iron building, Lady Liberty, Grand Central Station. It retailed for $11.95, but the price sticker on it says $.50. I must have bought it after the first of the year, when it was past its prime, and marked down. At that time in 2002, I was still homeless in Tampa, Florida.

The other one is a 2002 Deluxe Calendar. On its pages are black and white photos of various New York City landmarks. The Empire State Building, where my son's godmother worked the last time I saw her, and St. Patrick's Cathedral, the Brooklyn Bridge. Oddly, along with these famous landmarks, there's also an aerial photo of a brownstone on West 76th Street, three blocks north of where I once lived. On this calendar there is no markdown sticker. I must have bought it for the full retail price, at or near the end of 2001, when I lost my job, and when I--already living close to the edge--became homeless.

I guess it means something that twice I chose to buy calendars with New York City scenes. Even after ten years in Florida, it's never occurred to me to buy a Florida calendar. I've been living here, but never did I belong here. I've worked here, rented apartments here, even completed my college degree here in another part of the state, but I've always felt disconnected from the strange culture here. Fiercely clannish at one extreme, to the exclusion of any outsiders--and eternally transient at the other. When I first moved here I found--by accident-- in the telephone directory's white pages, a listing for the Ku Klux Klan, complete with street address and local phone number. I wish I had saved it-- a relic of recent history to show the disbelievers-- but it's true, and it can be checked.

Fox News takes a lot of flak for being the mainstream media the liberals hate. I don't like labels much, and never have. Liberal, conservative, whatever. It's how you treat your fellow beings that matters. One of my favorite supervisors was a republican who taught me how to crochet.

Last night Fox reported that the local county commission, with a budget surplus in the millions, voted against using any of it to help the 11,000 homeless persons who try to live here, 40% of whom include families with children. Instead, the budget surplus will be used to build a noise blocking wall, and a dog park.

Dog park. That brings back memories. When I had to leave my apartment, my dog became homeless with me. I called my friends, my dog's vet, business associates, and a couple of agencies that advertise as animal rescue operations. I even called the local Humane Society. Twice. Left messages that were never returned. I told every one of them that if they would take my dog and give him shelter until I found a job and an apartment, I'd pay for his food, and vet bills. And I meant it. But I got no response.

For about a week, my dog spent his days in the car with me, and afternoons, when the sun was strong, we went to local parks, got out of the car, played frisbee in the shade. One day in November, I parked the car under a large tree, all four windows rolled down as far as they'd go, a bowl of water on the seat next to my dog. It was morning, still a slight chill in the air. I went inside the apartment to use my son's computer to type my resume and send it. By noon, I was done, and I'd brought my dog inside the apartment, where I could referee him and the four cats living there. He barks incessantly around cats. The neighbors had been watching me as I went about my life, and one of them called animal control officers about the dog in my car that morning. When they banged on the door, my dog was inside with me.

They wrote me a citation. For animal cruelty. Because my dog was homeless. And nobody would give him shelter until the police were banging on the door, and I frantically called my son's fiance at work, terrified the dog police would take Butch and euthanize him at the pound. Then my in-laws took him in.

For a total of 17 months I was homeless, and I paid for my dog's food, paid for his vet bills, drove to my in-laws house at least once a week to visit him, play with him, bring him the treats he liked: bagels and pizza.

So back to the calendars that never hung on anyone's wall. I don't even remember buying them. At Christmastime I gave calendars to people, but not these. They are still wrapped in cellophane. Because I had no wall to hang them on. Maybe they rode around in the car with me all day, all through the year 2002. It wasn't until almost March, 2003 that I found an apartment I could afford-- nine months after I'd found another job.

In the new apartment I still felt homeless, and I never did buy any furniture. I sat on the floor to eat my rice, that now finally, I could cook myself. My dog, living with me again, sat beside me. I sat on the floor to write my briefs, on legal pads.

The apartment building changed owners a year later. The people living there moved out--rapidly. They were people who worked in restaurants, struggling artists, musicians; one was a student. They saw the handwriting on the wall. The new landlord raised the rent $200--all at once, and charged tenants for water, for gas, for electric, for trash pickup.

I too, saw the handwriting on the wall, but I had my dog to consider. The only places that would rent to a person with a dog wanted a lot of rent money, money I didn't make. I stayed awhile, until all my savings were gone. And once again, my in-laws stepped up, took my dog into their home. This time he was older, and one month shy of age twelve, he died. We'll never share an apartment again.

When I hear about a $12 million surplus, I can think of some good uses for it. In a city with no compassion for its homeless, but plenty of resources to punish. Plenty of money to build walls. Plenty of money to build dog parks for dogs with homes. If this city won't spend money to help homeless people, what about their dogs that are involuntarily homeless? Couldn't a park be built for them--with a temporary shelter staffed by volunteers to keep them alive until life gets better for their owners?

Or how about this--spend some of that $12 million on Gatorade, for the schoolchildren of this county who play sports, and run in the heat. Two of them have died this year, playing football outdoors. Is $12 million enough to make free Gatorade available at all times to every kid in the school system? Today, four more kids were sickened by the extreme heat and humidity. These kids were indoors, in a school gym with broken air conditioning. They were playing volleyball, running. Two were taken to the hospital. Two were treated at the scene. $12 million buys a hell of a lot of Gatorade. And this is not an ad.

Mayor Shoots Mouth Off, Shoots Self in Foot

My grandma would've been in trouble had she lived in Avon Park, Florida. Until the day she died, in her seventies, she spoke only Italian. Her nine kids, raised in New York, USA, spoke both Italian and English.

She got along fine, by all accounts, coming to America in the early 2oth Century. She didn't learn the language, but somehow her children did. Four sons served in the armed forces. Four owned their own businesses. One son graduated from Yale. All spoke fluent English. Some things just take time. Time and patience. And tolerance.

Tolerance is in short supply in Avon Park, Florida these days. Mayor Tom Macklin put through an ordinance that outlaws speaking any language other than English. It would fine any landlord renting to "illegals" and any businesses that hire the undocumented. City attorney Mike Disler called it "unconstitutional," and was fired soon after.

While city commissioners might have gone along with Macklin's draconian ordinance, the citizens do not. According to Blanca Gonzalez of Immigrants United For Freedom, roughly 100 people demonstrated in Avon Park when word of the new English-only law got out. On Sunday July 23, there will be a vigil at 6 PM in Donaldson Park on Main Street in Avon Park.

If you miss that one, there will be a protest Monday, July 24 at 1:00 PM, 300 Main Street, Avon Park.

All persons of conscience and common sense are encouraged to attend, whatever language they speak.
For more information call: Blanca Gonzalez of Immigrants United for Freedom 813-763-2309, 0r 763-0150.

If Macklin succeeds in running off all the Spanish speaking immigrants, it begs the question: who will pick the oranges in this citrus farming community? Oranges are rotting on the trees now, and recent news headlines quote farm owners decrying the shortage of workers to bring in the harvest. Macklin and vigilante groups attempt to "solve" this country's immigration woes by putting up "Stop the Invasion" signs at airports and city limits, attacking the people who feed us all.

The beautiful thing about fruits and vegetables is they'll let anyone pick them. Anyone willing to do the hard work, for the insultingly low pay. So, maybe the mayor and his family will step up, after he runs off all the Spanish speaking workers.

And you carnivores aren't safe either. That's right, meat eaters. Even if you never eat fruits or vegetables, chances are a Latino immigrant works in that hellish meat factory your pork chops came from.

Melissa Gonzalez, Blanca's daughter says she "almost hit a cop who did a u-turn in the middle of the street" in pursuit of a car full of Latinos. She said it's become common for people who "look Mexican" to be stopped while driving and deported. Many of those who participated in the national Day Without an Immigrant boycott and march have quietly "disappeared."

Meanwhile, unpicked citrus rots and Florida's most famous export threatens to become political posturing and bigotry. And when the price of orange juice blasts through the roof, it will be the innocent consumers who pay.

Oil Hostage: Will Work For Justice

I don't know how much gas is today. The last time I filled up the tank, it was just under $3/gallon. It's an older car I drive--1989 to be specific, so of course the mileage isn't great. But it was cheap, and I paid cash. That's the only way I'll buy a car. I'm through with credit, and have been--since 1997. That was the year I made my last credit card payment.

When I moved here, to the South, I had excellent credit. Fresh from a year as a VISTA volunteer in New York, and a recent college grad, I had a couple of credit cards that I kept up with, and kept paid off. Back then, I could charge anything--a rental truck, a car, a hotel room. My credit rating was excellent. Until disaster after disaster struck.

The car started falling to pieces--literally. First, the brakes sank to the floor, then the other brakes failed. The rack and pinion rusted out, the muffler fell off, and other parts whose names I don't understand or remember, disintegrated. The culprit was rust, from the salt in the streets up north. So I put the repairs on credit cards. Maxed out one, then another. Said goodbye to my flawless credit rating. Finally, I sold the car to a salvage yard. You have to know when to walk away.

The jobs I found here were horrible. Delivering magazines--to people with no numbers on their houses-- and delivering phone books. Damn! They get heavy. Telemarketing: trying to get people to give up their credit card numbers so they could take advantage of "free" vacation packages just didn't work out for me, and I was terminated from telemarketing. Then there was the job sweeping the parking garage at the airport, which to me was preferable to being a cashier, because after eight hours standing in one place and being verbally abused by steroid monsters, and scammed by teenagers trying to buy beer with fake ID's, and gambling addicts scratching off thirty Lotto tickets, I never wanted to set foot inside another convenience store. And I don't. I avoid them completely. Like the plague.

The airport job was bad enough that I got inspired to do something about it. Tried to start a union. I got some of my co-workers to sign union cards, but management got rid of me before I could sign up the rest, and I was fired. The official reason was "insubordination." Because I'd left my area against management's orders to help an elderly customer get to the car rental office after he told me he was sick and felt like he was going to collapse. I didn't consider that "insubordinate." I considered that being human, and the "insubordinate" tag a pretext for getting rid of a union organizer.

The Labor Board agreed with me that I was actually fired for trying to unionize the place. Meanwhile, I'd moved on to another job. This one had a union. Unfortunately, it didn't have a happy ending either. Someday maybe, you'll read all about it in my book "Diary of a Wage Slave." If it's ever published. Because I need to be paid. We all do. The only people who've read it for free are my lawyer and my family.

So getting back to the oil hostage thing. It was 1996 or maybe early '97 when I was working in a convenience store, waiting for the health benefits that were "promised" to me after six months. (Lesson #1: Don't take the boss's word for anything: get it in writing!) I had in my hand two bills. One from the electric company, and the other for one of my maxed out credit cards. My paycheck would cover only one, so I had to choose. I decided to make a credit card payment because the electric company would wait another week, I thought.

I thought wrong. I came home from work that week to find my teenage son sitting alone in the dark. He had no lights, no TV, no microwave to cook his food, no stereo to listen to. My elderly neighbor told me when she saw him earlier he had looked so sad. He didn't know what had happened. I was making maybe $5 or $6 an hour then; I don't remember. Working full time, I could barely cover the bills. Right before the sixth month, I was "laid off" from my job with no explanation given, but I know why. It was to avoid giving me any benefits. A couple of jobs like that one is why I ended up needing two root canals.

I never made another credit card payment after that. It's been ten years since I've used any of those cards. When I get credit card offers in the mail I rip them into tiny pieces. Savagely, like it's personal. Because it is personal. I despise credit cards.

So back to the oil thing. Here in this medium sized Florida city, there actually is a bus system, though it's essentially worthless-- like health insurance that won't pay for a chiropractor for a person with a bad back. It would have taken three buses for me to get to my former job. It would probably have taken about two hours for a one way commute by bus. Move closer to the job? I live where I can afford to live. We all do. As a night shift worker, there was no bus service when I went to work, so to get to work, a car was necessary.

With car ownership, comes responsibility: insurance, oil changes, repairs. And gas. I had the fill ups down to a science. One gas fillup would cover exactly four trips back and forth to work. At 2005 prices. I was on a reduced schedule due to back problems and worked four nights a week, so I combined all shopping, family visits, and other trips within my travel to and from work. At the end of the week, the tank would be empty and I'd fill it up again, for four trips and four trips only. It wasn't quite freedom car ownership gave me--more like house arrest.

Sooner or later, a house built of cards must tumble down. Gas prices are up, again. There were some major repairs to be done, as you'd expect with a car this old. So I'm done. I'm through with the hostage situation. I want to be free. I'm seeking other opportunities. In a city with a real mass transit system. You know who you are. Read this blog, and you'll know who I am. Consider it my resume. Because you have to know when to walk away. I can't lift heavy things anymore, but I will work for justice. I always have. Fortunately, I'm not the only one. Another link to an organization that works for justice is www.aclu.org.

The local newsrags I've sent resumes more times than I can count say: nothin' doin'-- you don't have no stinkin' experience. I've only been writing since sixth grade, but yeah, I know what they mean. No experience writing for a daily newspaper such as theirs. Except for the letters to the editor I write when I get fired up enough to care, and which they always seem to publish. For free.

I Wanna Have a Snowball Fight

Sometimes people think I'm not listening to them, because I act distracted, but I hear them, and I remember a lot more of what people say than they might think...

I remember what a family friend said one night when we sat around his kitchen table. He said things would "get worse before they get better." That was just a couple of months before his wife unexpectedly died of cancer no one knew she had. After the funeral, the family friend fled to New York. And here, in the sunshine state, things did get worse. They got much worse, every year. That was ten years ago, and still things are getting worse. I want to know: when are things going to get better? Do I have to flee before they get better?

It's only June, and I'm already sick of it. The heat, the sweat, the humidity, the electric bill. I like my porch garden--the Chinese peppers, the jalapenos, the lavender, rosemary and Aloe Vera. But I'm sick of looking at the horizon and seeing...traffic, and strip malls, billboards, and a pale, washed out sky. Where's the mountain? Where the #*!! are the greenspaces? Where's the seasons? There are two here: hot and warm.

Call me crazy, if you must. I like shoveling snow. I like jumping in piles of dead leaves. I like the sound of rain drumming on the roof that doesn't unleash a sauna after the storm. Today's headline in this tropical paradise: "Rents Are on the Rise." (like we haven't noticed) No word yet on when pay's going up. Florida doesn't want renters any more, and I don't need or want to buy a house, so I want to move. I'm outa here. The only question is: where to?

I wanna have a snowball fight. Want to find another way to live. Want to wear a big bulky jacket with a hood for six months straight. Want to leave my gas guzzler behind and jump on public transit. Or walk; yeah--walk to the store---imagine that!

I want to do God's work. That doesn't have anything thing to do with working in a church, or a religious denomination, by the way. Read my blogs and you'll understand what I mean by doing God's work, right away---or you never will.

If you're reading this, and you feel me, and you got some real advice, I want to hear from you. Because I'm not just melting here, like a snowman in the sun. I'm drowning, and I'm reaching for a lifeboat.