Yours is the laugh that makes me want to say silly things;
To sing your name with pleasant chords;
And kiss my hand while pretending it’s yours.
Yours is the smile that sets me at ease;
A hat for my heart that won’t let it freeze.
I wish I could shrink you and keep you with me;
Get hugs when I need them and scratches for free.
I wish that our snuggles would go on without end;
With no worries and flurries of things to attend.
I’m glad for your birthday we’re going away;
You love to travel and eat good soufflé.
Someday we’ll have time to go back to France;
Drink wine in Bordeaux while learning to dance.
Together we’ll sail down the Chesapeake Bay;
We’ll stop in St. Michaels and buy a cafe.
You’ll make the chili and bake funny cakes;
I’ll smoke the meats and cook all the steaks.
Then we’ll move on to London or maybe to Greece;
Or maybe to Sweden, Tahiti or Nice.
Wherever you want, I’m happy to go;
Whenever you’re leaving, I’ll be in tow.
I don’t need a job, a house or a car;
I don’t need my bongos or my guitar.
I just need your love, your lips and your thighs;
And maybe your hair, your hips and some pies.
I do need those cheeks that draw me so near;
The ones on your face (and the ones on your rear).
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Gang Violence in LA
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/09/massive-raid-in-glassell-park-snags-44-avenues-gang-members.html
Police arrested 44 "Avenues" gang members last night in a sweep of Glassell Park. Our neighborhood of Mt. Washington sits between Glassell Park, Highland Park and Eagle Rock, all turf of the Avenues gangs. I had heard about the Avenues in the past, but never having witnessed much gang violence in our area, I figured they were small time hoodlums. Apparently I was wrong. According to this article, the Avenues are serious drug dealers with connections to the Mexican mafia.
Now, even though we live two minutes away from the streets where these arrests were made, our neighborhood is one of the more peaceful and quiet areas you'll find within the city of Los Angeles. Mt. Washington is essentially a big hill that rises up from the valley where these other neighborhoods are located. It's one of the oldest neighborhoods in the city and it's managed to maintain a few nice open spaces for parks and trails. Moreover, the streets in Mt. Washginton are so steep and winding that there is no foot traffic from the lower area. Because of the views and the relative exclusivity, the houses get nicer the further up the hill you go. The houses on the very top of Mt. Washington are absolutely stunning, with panoramic views of downtown, Hollywood, and the snow-capped mountains to the north. Strange though, that if you look directly down from these multi-million dollar homes, you'll see neighborhoods controlled by Mexican drug dealers. It's a typical example of life in Los Angeles, where the rich people literally live above the poor folks, only a few blocks away.
Police arrested 44 "Avenues" gang members last night in a sweep of Glassell Park. Our neighborhood of Mt. Washington sits between Glassell Park, Highland Park and Eagle Rock, all turf of the Avenues gangs. I had heard about the Avenues in the past, but never having witnessed much gang violence in our area, I figured they were small time hoodlums. Apparently I was wrong. According to this article, the Avenues are serious drug dealers with connections to the Mexican mafia.
Now, even though we live two minutes away from the streets where these arrests were made, our neighborhood is one of the more peaceful and quiet areas you'll find within the city of Los Angeles. Mt. Washington is essentially a big hill that rises up from the valley where these other neighborhoods are located. It's one of the oldest neighborhoods in the city and it's managed to maintain a few nice open spaces for parks and trails. Moreover, the streets in Mt. Washginton are so steep and winding that there is no foot traffic from the lower area. Because of the views and the relative exclusivity, the houses get nicer the further up the hill you go. The houses on the very top of Mt. Washington are absolutely stunning, with panoramic views of downtown, Hollywood, and the snow-capped mountains to the north. Strange though, that if you look directly down from these multi-million dollar homes, you'll see neighborhoods controlled by Mexican drug dealers. It's a typical example of life in Los Angeles, where the rich people literally live above the poor folks, only a few blocks away.
Friday, September 18, 2009
Reflections on The Shore
Part 1
Talbot County features three, picturesque Colonial towns on the Eastern Shore of Maryland—Easton, St. Michaels and Oxford. The area was founded in the 17th Century by a mixture of Quaker, Catholic and Protestant settlers from England, who farmed tobacco and other crops with the help of their African slaves. The towns, all accessible by water, served as ports where the farmers could buy and sell goods with traders from London, Virginia, St. Mary’s City and Annapolis.
Later, the locals took to harvesting the bounties of the Chesapeake Bay, with oysters being the exportable cash crop. It was brutal work, especially in the winter, but there was money in oysters and no one ever had to worry about going hungry with the abundance of wildlife on the Shore. In the warm months, the Bay was full of crabs and striped bass. In the colder months, there were oysters, ducks, and skies full of Canada geese. And in leaner times, there were always deer, rabbits and squirrels, not to mention raccoons, brown bears, muskrats and opossums.
Until the 1950’s when the Chesapeake Bay Bridge was built, few people from other areas had ever visited the Shore, despite its relative proximity to places like Washington, DC and Philadelphia, PA. Moreover, few of the people who were born on the Shore had ever left it. To the “foreigners” from the “Western Shore” there was no reason to visit what they perceived to be a flat, inaccessible swath of farmland. To the people of the Shore, who lived quite, pastoral lives in harmony with the seasons, there was simply no reason to leave.
Thus, for generations the Shore was populated by the hardworking, sometimes rough and tumble, descendents of a few founding families and their slaves. Due to the lack of influence from other areas, the people of the Shore retained the accent they inherited from the first English settlers.
“House” is pronounced “houes.” “Water” is “wuter.” “Wash” is “warsh.”
“You ol’ sum’bitch, go in’arr houes an’ warsh up fer supper.”
Although to outsiders the accent can make the locals sound like cretins, once you get used to it, you realize that the people of the Shore have an unusual talent for speech. There’s an inherent rhythm and humor to the dialect.
Asked about the difference between oysters and clams, an old waterman once said: “An arster makes a clam taste common.”
Once the Bay Bridge was built, however, affluent families began trickling over to the Shore, purchasing up old plantation homes and large waterfront lots to pursue quite lives of leisure, with sailing, hunting and fishing being the main recreational activities. These folks built a few private schools and then tended to themselves at the local yacht club. In the summertime you’ll find these people and their yuppie children “preserving the sailing heritage of the Bay” by racing historic Chesapeake Bay log canoes while getting plastered on rum drinks.
In the last 20 to 30 years, as Talbot County has gained notoriety as a tourist destination, and the DC, Baltimore, Annapolis metropolitan area has expanded east, more wealthy retirees and upper middle class commuters have moved to the Shore, causing property values, especially for waterfront homes, to rise dramatically.
Sadly, this migration of people has coincided with a dwindling commercial fishing industry. Due to overfishing and pollution in the Bay, it is simply no longer profitable to be full-time watermen. As a result, many of the locals have sold their homes to “foreigners” and moved on to other things.
And, so, the old way of life of the watermen, which had been preserved without much influence for hundreds of years, is now disappearing. Visiting the Shore today, you’d be luck to hear a “warsh” or an “arster,” let alone eat seafood that’s actually from the Chesapeake Bay.
Growing up on the Shore in the 1980’s and 90’s, there was an open hostility between developers and the locals who didn’t want the Shore to change. I understood both sides. I didn’t want to see ugly box stores or chain restaurants outside of our Colonial towns. I didn’t want Walmart to put the local shops out of business. But, at the same time, it felt un-American to prevent progress just so certain people could keep things the way they liked it.
While this tension between progress and preserving the older culture has been the backdrop for life on the shore for decades now, there was one particular moment when, for many people, the Shore lost its innocence.
That moment occurred on February 19, 1996.
Part 2
Like me, Michael Fisher was a 16 year-old junior in high school. Unlike me, Michael attended the public school in Easton, where his mother was a well-liked science teacher. His stepfather was also a teacher at a nearby elementary school. Although his stepfather was more than ten years younger than his mother, the family was highly regarded in the community. They went to church together, vacationed together, and generally seemed happy.
Michael was a quiet, honor roll student who enjoyed chess and worked after school at the local Pizza Hut. He was also the editor of Easton’s High’s student magazine, Voices.
At 4:00 a.m. on February 19, 1996, the Easton Sherriff’s Office got a call from Michael Fisher, who reported a “problem” with his family. When the police arrived at the Fisher house, they found three dead bodies. Michael’s parents were found in their bed with “massive wounds to their heads.” Michael’s 14 year-old brother, David, was found on his bedroom floor with numerous stab wounds, including a “gaping hole in his throat.” Michael’s youngest brother had not been harmed.
Michael confessed quickly to the police. He told them that he had woken up in the middle of the night and just “sort of snapped.” He said he remembered standing in his parents’ room for about four minutes with a hammer and knife in his hands. He then bludgeoned his parents to death with the claw end of the hammer.
“I knew it was going to happen,” he told the police. “I tried to stop, but it was like it already happened.”
He then woke up his brother and, after struggling to regain control of himself, cut the boy’s throat. Michael said that he had tried to distract the boy by telling him look out the window.
When the story broke that morning, everyone, including the police, was at a loss to describe what had happened. The police admitted that they were baffled by the act and that there seemed to be no motive.
People in the community continued to support Michael, saying that he was a good student and a churchgoer. Many people refused to accept that Michael had committed the murders. Others, including myself, believed that Michael had had a schizophrenic episode.
We soon found out that Michael’s real dad was a schizophrenic who had been hospitalized in Pennsylvania, and that Michael’s mom had been open in expressing her fears that Michael would inherit his father's disease.
It seemed clear that Michael would plead insanity, be diagnosed as a schizophrenic, and then sent to a psychiatric institution.
But none of that happened.
After a few weeks, the local paper began reporting “rampant rumors” of Satansim as an element in the killings. We learned that in addition to chess, Michael enjoyed fantasy games like Magic and Dungeons and Dragons, which he often played with the stepfather. We also learned that Michael wanted to listen to music that his parents “did not approve of.”
And then there was the short story that Michael had published in Voices called “Last Days of Life.” The local paper published a haunting passage from the story: “Tomorrow will surely be our last day. I say this because I’m confident that the overwhelming number of demons outside the stronghold will no doubt break through . . . . Then we shall perish.”
The strangest rumor was that Michael and some of his Goth friends were dressing up in black clothes, painting black X’s over their eyes, and congregating at what was referred to by teenagers as the “Hanging Tree.” The Hanging Tree was literally an old tree that stood next to a winding country road outside of Easton. People claimed that slaves had been hung from a low branch that protruded from the tree, or something to that effect.
I first heard about the “X people” from a girl who lived near the Hanging Tree. She claimed that one night she and a friend were driving home when she saw someone standing in the middle of the road. As she approached, the person failed to get out of the way. She was forced to stop the car, and when she did, the person climbed onto her hood and stared at her with crossed-out eyes. Then of a number of other people appeared from the side of the road. They surrounded her car and began shaking it. She said that she floored the car, knocking several of them over, and drove home as fast as she could.
This story was repeated over and over in our high school. We had suspicions about who these X people were, if they actually existed. They were just a few “dorks” who didn’t fit in with everyone else and had decided to scare the shit out of some preppy kids.
But the rumors became much more sinister after Michael Fisher. Parents and teachers wanted to know about students who practiced Satanism and listened to Goth music. Most of Michael’s friends kept quiet about everything, and for good reason—they hadn’t done anything sinister. The friends who spoke publically about him just said that he was a nice guy who liked science fiction and fantasy games.
Michael was assigned public defenders who initially stated that Michael would plead insanity. When it came time to enter a plea, however, Michael pleaded guilty to “reduced” charges of second degree murder. He received a sentence of 90 years, 30 for each murder. His attorneys later noted that while they believe Michael suffers from serious mental illness, they “did not want him to undergo a trial.” Apparently, they found it significant that they couldn’t point to a “trigger event” that would have brought out such a severe schizophrenic episode.
No one could understand their reasoning. Michael clearly seemed schizophrenic. Moreover, he was already precluded from getting the death penalty because he was minor, so why not roll the dice and plead insanity? Was the chance for parol at the age of 62 really worth bargaining for?
After the sentencing, the lack of answers was frustrating. Most people came away feeling like Michael was a victim of the system—a strange response from a conservative community that had been without a homicide since the previous decade. In fact, it was reported that locals were sending Michael clothes, food and books at the prison after the sentencing.
To this day, it seems so strange that such a thing could have happened in Easton that I sometimes wonder if it was real.
It’s even stranger to think that Michael Fisher is now thirty years-old, sitting in a jail cell in Jessup, MD.
I wonder if he feels remorse for the murders or if his mind has been lost ever since that evening in 1996.
I wonder if he knows that he shattered an illusion of innocence for a whole community.
Talbot County features three, picturesque Colonial towns on the Eastern Shore of Maryland—Easton, St. Michaels and Oxford. The area was founded in the 17th Century by a mixture of Quaker, Catholic and Protestant settlers from England, who farmed tobacco and other crops with the help of their African slaves. The towns, all accessible by water, served as ports where the farmers could buy and sell goods with traders from London, Virginia, St. Mary’s City and Annapolis.
Later, the locals took to harvesting the bounties of the Chesapeake Bay, with oysters being the exportable cash crop. It was brutal work, especially in the winter, but there was money in oysters and no one ever had to worry about going hungry with the abundance of wildlife on the Shore. In the warm months, the Bay was full of crabs and striped bass. In the colder months, there were oysters, ducks, and skies full of Canada geese. And in leaner times, there were always deer, rabbits and squirrels, not to mention raccoons, brown bears, muskrats and opossums.
Until the 1950’s when the Chesapeake Bay Bridge was built, few people from other areas had ever visited the Shore, despite its relative proximity to places like Washington, DC and Philadelphia, PA. Moreover, few of the people who were born on the Shore had ever left it. To the “foreigners” from the “Western Shore” there was no reason to visit what they perceived to be a flat, inaccessible swath of farmland. To the people of the Shore, who lived quite, pastoral lives in harmony with the seasons, there was simply no reason to leave.
Thus, for generations the Shore was populated by the hardworking, sometimes rough and tumble, descendents of a few founding families and their slaves. Due to the lack of influence from other areas, the people of the Shore retained the accent they inherited from the first English settlers.
“House” is pronounced “houes.” “Water” is “wuter.” “Wash” is “warsh.”
“You ol’ sum’bitch, go in’arr houes an’ warsh up fer supper.”
Although to outsiders the accent can make the locals sound like cretins, once you get used to it, you realize that the people of the Shore have an unusual talent for speech. There’s an inherent rhythm and humor to the dialect.
Asked about the difference between oysters and clams, an old waterman once said: “An arster makes a clam taste common.”
Once the Bay Bridge was built, however, affluent families began trickling over to the Shore, purchasing up old plantation homes and large waterfront lots to pursue quite lives of leisure, with sailing, hunting and fishing being the main recreational activities. These folks built a few private schools and then tended to themselves at the local yacht club. In the summertime you’ll find these people and their yuppie children “preserving the sailing heritage of the Bay” by racing historic Chesapeake Bay log canoes while getting plastered on rum drinks.
In the last 20 to 30 years, as Talbot County has gained notoriety as a tourist destination, and the DC, Baltimore, Annapolis metropolitan area has expanded east, more wealthy retirees and upper middle class commuters have moved to the Shore, causing property values, especially for waterfront homes, to rise dramatically.
Sadly, this migration of people has coincided with a dwindling commercial fishing industry. Due to overfishing and pollution in the Bay, it is simply no longer profitable to be full-time watermen. As a result, many of the locals have sold their homes to “foreigners” and moved on to other things.
And, so, the old way of life of the watermen, which had been preserved without much influence for hundreds of years, is now disappearing. Visiting the Shore today, you’d be luck to hear a “warsh” or an “arster,” let alone eat seafood that’s actually from the Chesapeake Bay.
Growing up on the Shore in the 1980’s and 90’s, there was an open hostility between developers and the locals who didn’t want the Shore to change. I understood both sides. I didn’t want to see ugly box stores or chain restaurants outside of our Colonial towns. I didn’t want Walmart to put the local shops out of business. But, at the same time, it felt un-American to prevent progress just so certain people could keep things the way they liked it.
While this tension between progress and preserving the older culture has been the backdrop for life on the shore for decades now, there was one particular moment when, for many people, the Shore lost its innocence.
That moment occurred on February 19, 1996.
Part 2
Like me, Michael Fisher was a 16 year-old junior in high school. Unlike me, Michael attended the public school in Easton, where his mother was a well-liked science teacher. His stepfather was also a teacher at a nearby elementary school. Although his stepfather was more than ten years younger than his mother, the family was highly regarded in the community. They went to church together, vacationed together, and generally seemed happy.
Michael was a quiet, honor roll student who enjoyed chess and worked after school at the local Pizza Hut. He was also the editor of Easton’s High’s student magazine, Voices.
At 4:00 a.m. on February 19, 1996, the Easton Sherriff’s Office got a call from Michael Fisher, who reported a “problem” with his family. When the police arrived at the Fisher house, they found three dead bodies. Michael’s parents were found in their bed with “massive wounds to their heads.” Michael’s 14 year-old brother, David, was found on his bedroom floor with numerous stab wounds, including a “gaping hole in his throat.” Michael’s youngest brother had not been harmed.
Michael confessed quickly to the police. He told them that he had woken up in the middle of the night and just “sort of snapped.” He said he remembered standing in his parents’ room for about four minutes with a hammer and knife in his hands. He then bludgeoned his parents to death with the claw end of the hammer.
“I knew it was going to happen,” he told the police. “I tried to stop, but it was like it already happened.”
He then woke up his brother and, after struggling to regain control of himself, cut the boy’s throat. Michael said that he had tried to distract the boy by telling him look out the window.
When the story broke that morning, everyone, including the police, was at a loss to describe what had happened. The police admitted that they were baffled by the act and that there seemed to be no motive.
People in the community continued to support Michael, saying that he was a good student and a churchgoer. Many people refused to accept that Michael had committed the murders. Others, including myself, believed that Michael had had a schizophrenic episode.
We soon found out that Michael’s real dad was a schizophrenic who had been hospitalized in Pennsylvania, and that Michael’s mom had been open in expressing her fears that Michael would inherit his father's disease.
It seemed clear that Michael would plead insanity, be diagnosed as a schizophrenic, and then sent to a psychiatric institution.
But none of that happened.
After a few weeks, the local paper began reporting “rampant rumors” of Satansim as an element in the killings. We learned that in addition to chess, Michael enjoyed fantasy games like Magic and Dungeons and Dragons, which he often played with the stepfather. We also learned that Michael wanted to listen to music that his parents “did not approve of.”
And then there was the short story that Michael had published in Voices called “Last Days of Life.” The local paper published a haunting passage from the story: “Tomorrow will surely be our last day. I say this because I’m confident that the overwhelming number of demons outside the stronghold will no doubt break through . . . . Then we shall perish.”
The strangest rumor was that Michael and some of his Goth friends were dressing up in black clothes, painting black X’s over their eyes, and congregating at what was referred to by teenagers as the “Hanging Tree.” The Hanging Tree was literally an old tree that stood next to a winding country road outside of Easton. People claimed that slaves had been hung from a low branch that protruded from the tree, or something to that effect.
I first heard about the “X people” from a girl who lived near the Hanging Tree. She claimed that one night she and a friend were driving home when she saw someone standing in the middle of the road. As she approached, the person failed to get out of the way. She was forced to stop the car, and when she did, the person climbed onto her hood and stared at her with crossed-out eyes. Then of a number of other people appeared from the side of the road. They surrounded her car and began shaking it. She said that she floored the car, knocking several of them over, and drove home as fast as she could.
This story was repeated over and over in our high school. We had suspicions about who these X people were, if they actually existed. They were just a few “dorks” who didn’t fit in with everyone else and had decided to scare the shit out of some preppy kids.
But the rumors became much more sinister after Michael Fisher. Parents and teachers wanted to know about students who practiced Satanism and listened to Goth music. Most of Michael’s friends kept quiet about everything, and for good reason—they hadn’t done anything sinister. The friends who spoke publically about him just said that he was a nice guy who liked science fiction and fantasy games.
Michael was assigned public defenders who initially stated that Michael would plead insanity. When it came time to enter a plea, however, Michael pleaded guilty to “reduced” charges of second degree murder. He received a sentence of 90 years, 30 for each murder. His attorneys later noted that while they believe Michael suffers from serious mental illness, they “did not want him to undergo a trial.” Apparently, they found it significant that they couldn’t point to a “trigger event” that would have brought out such a severe schizophrenic episode.
No one could understand their reasoning. Michael clearly seemed schizophrenic. Moreover, he was already precluded from getting the death penalty because he was minor, so why not roll the dice and plead insanity? Was the chance for parol at the age of 62 really worth bargaining for?
After the sentencing, the lack of answers was frustrating. Most people came away feeling like Michael was a victim of the system—a strange response from a conservative community that had been without a homicide since the previous decade. In fact, it was reported that locals were sending Michael clothes, food and books at the prison after the sentencing.
To this day, it seems so strange that such a thing could have happened in Easton that I sometimes wonder if it was real.
It’s even stranger to think that Michael Fisher is now thirty years-old, sitting in a jail cell in Jessup, MD.
I wonder if he feels remorse for the murders or if his mind has been lost ever since that evening in 1996.
I wonder if he knows that he shattered an illusion of innocence for a whole community.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
