Monthly Archives: June 2011

major unfinished family business

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Today's Vulcanite

This response to yesterday’s brother’s keeper post. Click on the link to see that post.
 
Sloan,
You may recall, I too early on  sensed Major’s departure was suicide–that opinion reached before law enforcement investigation turned up evidence.  On the stipling matter.  gunshot wounds can contain both burn signs and stipling.  Burn marks would indicate closeness causing muzzle flash to burn skin. The stipling, which is particles of unburned powderand other particles from the bullet and perhaps barrell may be present at greater distances.  Forensic pathologists usely give an opinion on how far the muzzle was from the entry wound. Of course, this varies based on type of firearm and ammunition used.  Witnesses never give a precise distance–it is always a range of inches which might vary considerably.
Hawkman
 
Before entering the private practice of law, Hawkman was the senior trial lawyer in the Tuscaloosa Public Defender Office. As such, he defended the more serious cases, including the capital cases. As in, the murder cases. Here is what I wrote back to him yesterday, but slept on last night. I felt it was accurate, but I like to get clearance from my Senior Law Partners before I publish .
 
_________________________________
 
 
Yes, I remember you felt it was suicide. We had some discussion about it, as pandemonium (all hell) was breaking loose in some quarters over what I was posting back then. I joined the Birmingham News blog, and then they blocked me out of it. After that, a woman living in Mississippi, as I recall, who had lived in Bham, offered to join the Bham News blog and post what I was writing, and they blocked her out, too. Maybe I don’t remember correctly, but I think I recall another woman made the same offer and had the same result.
 
As you probably also recall, just a few days after Major went missing, I published that I had received an email from a fellow with the Birmingham News, whose name I don’t now recall, wanting to know if he could interview me. I found out later he was referred to me by a Bham friend, who even later told me this fellow was an award-winning business journalist. As I recall, what had gotten him interested was the Golden Flake threat letter, which I described again in today’s post.
 
Anyway, I sent him my phone number and he called me back pretty quick. After about ten minutes, I told him it had only just occurred to me before he called that perhaps Major had killed himself and had tried to make it look like someone else had done it. This was some days before Major’s body was found in the golf course pond. The fellow said chills were running up his spine, he’d had the same thought before he called me. He sent me two or three drafts of his article, to make sure we had right what I had said during the interview. He said it would run the next day, but it didn’t and I didn’t hear from him. So I emailed him, and he said it had been decided higher up to wait.
 
I felt then that somebody had gotten to the News. I had emailed the family lawyer that I had been interviewed and an article would be forthcoming. Perhaps that somehow was in play. I ain’t exactly the welcome prodigal in my family, as you well know. I had already been in touch with the family lawyer before the interview, we had gone through law school and tax law school together, and I’d had quite a few conversations with him over the years about my relationship with my father, mostly. I had told him about the threat letter and it needing to be gotten to the company board of directors, who apparently didn’t know about it, as one of them I called had not heard of it.
 
Later, I learned from Major’s first wife, as I recall, the family lawyer already had the threat letter, my sister had taken him the one left in her mailbox. It didn’t seem he had taken it seriously, as it was only later, after I raise the need to alert the directors, that he told me they had been given copies of the letter. Imagine the News contacting them about the letter and they knew nothing about it?
 
By the time I wound down writing about Major going missing, I was pretty well convinced somebody had gotten to the news and killed the article. My friend, who had sent the award-winning journalist to me, got pretty wound up over my allegation, said it was not possible the News was gotten to. I, having had mucho dealings with newspapers down here, was not persuaded, especially given the News had blocked me out of its blog.
 
A television station up there, however, seemed to view me as a news source, and they did some interviews and ran parts of them. Then, they did a lengthy interview, which was audio-taped, and the put a link for the entire interview on their website. I reminisced during that interview, stayed away from hot topics. People up there got to see the older brother who had deeply cared for his younger brother despite their estrangement.
 
It was an assignment from hell, if ever there was one, but if I didn’t do it, it never would have gotten done. Along the way, Major’s son Brooks called me and urged that I come up there and help him found out what happened to his father. I was told in a dream not to go up there, so I took a pass.
 
My sister’s daughter emailed me, demanding I stop writing about Major, I didn’t live up there and didn’t have to live with all the tongue-wagging. I thanked her for writing and letting me know how she felt, and said, if she was reading what I was writing, she knew I was not running the show, and if her mother wanted to tell me how she felt, she needed to contact me herself. I never heard from Sis the entire time, but our first cousin Bubba Major wrote to me frequently.
 
Bubba could not accept Major killing himself, but he never got onto me about what I was writing. Hell, Mike, I knew Major better than anyone in the family, except perhaps his first wife. It was interesting, getting a good bit of flack from people up there, who could not have known him like I knew him. You’d have thought they would have stopped and thought more about what I was writing, but they were closed down all the way.
 
I knew it had to be horrible for Major’s wife and their two small children. And for his wife’s family. But to this day, I am not convinced his wife was taken totally by surprise. I watched a video interview of her done by a Bham TV station. I saw, heard and felt no emotion, no sense of loss, no grieving. She never once called Major by name, only “my husband.” It was surreal. I knew her only somewhat from before the estrangement. I knew her mother and father better from before the estrangement.
 
I remain convinced what I got early on, it was Major’s time to go because he could not be allowed to live vicariously though his second son in sports the way he had lived through Brooks in sports, overrode everything else. On Major’s law firm website, as you probably recall, was a page devoted to his younger son’s sports achievements. When I read it, I saw Major and Brooks all over again. The cause of the estrangement, because I tried to intervene for Brooks, who truly was gifted in sports, and later would reject sports and have a truly rough row to hoe in life. As if his rudder was lost, his soul aimless, according to what Major and Gayle both told me separately. And there was a  very bad beating when Brooks was about twelve, which I learned from Gayle.
 
With all of that in my thoughts, I wrote, if ever there was anyone who had reason to want Major dead, it was Brooks. I did not mean it literally, but in the soul sense. After learning from Dothan investigative journalist Lori Moore many months later that Brooks had met with Major at the Five Points Starbucks on the fated afternoon (Lori went to the Starbucks and was told this by employees there, who knew Major, who was a regular customer), I became very concerned Brooks would be blamed for Major’s death, and he would blame himself.
 
Brooks had told me the FBI had talked with him and had told him he was not a suspect, but you send out text messages that you are thinking about killing yourself, and then you talk with your father about it, and then your father disappears same day, and then his body is found a week or more later in the golf course pond, and then the Coronor and Bham PD say it was suicide - well, how could Brooks not blame himself for his father’s death? If not consciously, then subconsciously.
 
I always viewed my role in this, to a great deal, as trying to protect Brooks. But after his mother spoke with him and he said (she told me this) he did not see Major that day, I figured some day I would write about this again, to air it all out. Looks like I figured right.
 
I didn’t like the Bham News’ reporting of the autopsy report and the Bham PD investigation. Outrageous, given how much front-page coverage the News had provided about Major’s case until and just after his body was found in the pond. It was as if, yeah, the News had been gotten to. I sent the award-winning investigative journalist an email, expressing my sentiments, and asked him to pass it along to his bosses. I heard nothing back. And the FBI, which had gotten very heavily involved, was totally silent.
 
Perhaps the Freedom of Information Act request I made this past March with the FBI on all and everything it has re Thomas  Major Bashinsky will shed some light. I hope the FBI is forthcoming. If they aren’t, the angels will tell me and that will become another saga. If it goes that way, I would wager some coins Judge Allgood will work that one behind the scenes. He presided over all federal criminal trials in the Northern District of Alabama. FBI agents testified in many of the criminal cases he presided over. It won’t surprise me if the FBI is sitting on something they want to keep sitting on, but I don’t imagine it will change the cause of death, which I have rehashed again today. It might change some understanding of the cause of death, though. And it might cause some people to squirm.
 
I still cannot see someone killing Major somewhere, then taking his body in a vehicle to the golf course, hauling the body out of the car, all trussed up and decorated like it was later found, dragging the body over a fence to the pond edge, in plain fiew of passing traffic, then walking the body out into the middle of the pond. Nor can I see someone trussing and decorating the living Major like that, and forcing him at gun point to walk out into the middle of the pond, and shooting him there, unless it was co-created. And even that is tenuous, for the accomplice would be at serious risk to the shot being heard and getting caught before making a get-away.
 
Simply not a credible murder scene and surely that occurred to the Coroner and Bham PD. That, and the theater at the scene. Theater it was, and perhaps the full meaning will never be known, although the notion that came to me when I wrote to Lori Moore, that it was a grand skit designed to divert attention away from suicide, makes more sense to me right now than anything else.
 
Sloan

brother’s keeper

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Today's Vulcanite

Recent email back and forth with Lori Moore (bamanewsgirl@gmail.com), an investigative journalist in Dothan, about my brother Major, who went missing in March 2010, then his body was found in the Higland Park Golf Course pond near Highland Avenue in Birmingham. The Coroner and Birmingham Police Department ruled it suicide, made to look like someone else had killed Major. That was my sense of it even before the coroner and BPD issued their opinion. Lori never accepted the suicide opinion. We had many email back and forths over it last year. Then, it came around again.
 
Hi Sloan…I contacted the medical examiners office to talk about the autopsy regarding the stippling. Wanted to make sure it wasnt a typo. He hasnt returned my call. give me your thoughts on it.
 
Hi, Lori.
 
I suppose stippling is what lay people call powder burns? I wondered all along if there were powder burns, and even wrote to you that I wondered about that, and only recently have you raised this question.
 
I also have wondered if Major had an accomplice, who helped him do it at the pond, which could explain no powder burns.

And I have wondered about fingerprints on the pistol found in the pond, and wrote about that to you, and heard nothing back.
 
You have been helpful in my own thoughts organizing, especially with news of Brooks and Major meeting that afternoon at Starbucks, which Brooks denied to his mother after I told her what you had been told by the Starbucks employees. You never did tell me what the hardware store owner told you; cat and mouse on your part that made no sense to me, since I was Major’s brother and only relative trying to leave no stone unturned. [Brooks is Major's son by his first marriage.]

I have wondered why Don Siegelman, your friend, told you he would not talk with you about Major. Surely, you have wondered what Don didn’t want to tell you? Did you tell Legal Schnauzer about that? And how that might play into my “theory” Major was bisexual and killed himself because someone was about to out him and he could not stop it?
 
The FBI finally put a caseworker on my FOIA request on June 14, as I recall; said it might take a while, they get many such requests. I’m surprised you and Legal Schnauzer did not already make an FOIA FBI request, since the FBI was involved in the investigation. I am curious to see if the FBI had any prior dealings with Major as a person of interest or an informer. [I made the Freedom of Information Act request in March 2011, after being pushed in dreams to do so.]
 
My forensic problem with murder remains.

The open public golf course pond next to a well-traveled public road even at night is a highly unlikely crime scene, which you and Legal Schnauzer keep not dealing with in any way I have seen.

The day Major disappeared was seriously hetic for him, after he learned that morning of Brooks’ suicide threats. Major’s schedule was thrown off. Higly unlikely a hit planned for that afternoon would have worked, since Major was where he never was that time of day.
 
The Golden Flake threat letter was found on a flash drive in Major’s abandoned car, indicating pretty much he was the author. [The letter, typed in CAPS, was articulate, accused Golden Flake management and the Bashinskys of sucking dividends out of the company, which the company needed, and suggested further action might be taken, if the problem wasn't remedied. The letter was delivered to Golden Flake, to Major and my sister's home mail box a couple of days before Major went missing, and to Major and his wife's home mail box on the day he went missing (my recollection of the timing)].

The symbolism, hands tide, mouth taped, Golden Flake label in his mouth, Golden Flake threat letter in bottle tied by string to Major’s body was peculiar to Major. As was the location, below the Highland Racket Club, where Major had met both of his tennis pro wives to be.
 
Looks to me like Legal Schnauzer [legalschnauzer.blogspot.com] is so tangled up in his own personal stuff – actual, perceived or fanaticized – with Bob Riley [former Governor of Alabama] and his circle, that he is incapable of clear thought re anything he perceives remotely related to them.
 
Legal Schnauzer repeatedly wrote Chip Hazelrig came to Key West to find me the week after Major went missing. This is preposterous. If Chip was involved in killing Major, the very last thing he does is make a special trip to Key West to look up someone he has never even met. [Schnauzer kept trying to implicate Chip in Major being murdered because, according to Schnauzer, Chip is chummy with Bob Riley.]
 
Chip told me he had a friend living somewhere around Ft. Lauderdale, as I recall, who loved to fish. So they came to Key West together. His friend was a fishing freak, I know the type, I used to be one. Chip said he wore out and took a day off from fishing. He remembered he had heard I lived in Key West, so he decided to try to find me. I had only a cell phone, so he could not find me through ordinary methods. He went into a Duval Street bar and asked the first person he saw if he knew me. Yep, and the person with him knew me, too, and had my cell phone number. So Chip called me.
 
We met fifteen minutes later and talked for maybe an hour, mostly about his and my father’s business relationship and only a little while about Major. I explained what I felt probably had happened to Major. Chip clearly loved my father, and just as clearly my father liked and enjoyed doing business with Chip. Some of the stories Chip told were so my father that no way they could have been invented. Chip explained the lawsuit my father’s widow and his lackeys filed suit against Chip and his partner, about which I had not heard. Chip said the suit finally was settled and the estate got nothing, but the lackeys got paid well for their efforts. Chip’s unkind depiction of the lackeys fit them to a T, as I knew them far better than he knew them.
 
Legal Schnauzer’s repeated columns about suspicious circumstances surrounding my stepsister’s death (from a virulent cancer, which Schnauzer never mentions), and my first cousin’s suicide (accompanied by a suicide note in his own handwriting, the tone and contents of which were known to his friends, relatives and estranged wife, which Schnauzer never mentions) caused Schnauzer to look to me like he is psychotic, probably bipolar, with paranoid affect.

Major’s first wife, Gayle, has cancer, also. It was stage 4, when discovered some time before Major went missing. Medical treatment has kept her alive and functioning. When she dies, I anticipate seeing Legal Schnauzer make something mysterious out of that, without doing any investigative research, as is his custom.
 
Ditto, when I die. Schnauzer will dream up some twisted theory to fit this state mental perspective of the universe. I wonder what he will do with my stepmother dying?

I can’t imagine how you allowed yourself to collaborate with Schnauzer in one, perhaps more, of his columns about Major. I have an amiga in the Birmingham area who follows Schnauzer and lots of other stuff, and she sends me everything he writes about my family.
 
That’s where I am with this right now. Perhaps more will come to me later.
 
Sloan

I am driving so more later but if he had assistance wouldnt that be murder? Why would Major pick up his prescription the morning of his death if he had so elaborately planned this out? the guy at the hardware store wouldnt say anything other than the FBI told him case closed and not to talk about it. He was rude. Lori

Hi again, Lori.
 
What prescription did Major pick up? I heard something of that before, but don’t remember now what it was.
 
If Major had help, it would be suicide and murder, spiritually, if not also forensically.
 
It still looks to me that Major learning of Brooks’ suicide threats (he was texting), and then the big fight he got into with Sloan over her and not her mother calling him about it, became some sort of trigger for something else already in the wind. Major met with Brooks that afternoon, as I surely would have done, if Brooks were my son. Only Brooks knows what was discussed, unless he told someone.
 
Apparently, Major was seen in the nearby hardware store, on the store video, buying duct tape and rope. This was not reported well by the Birmingham News, which interviewed an employee instead of looking at the video, or trying to look at it. Based on this from you now, the hardware store owner did not tell you Major did not come into the store and buy duct tape and rope. You told me last year the hardware store owner was not complimentary of law enforcement investigators who came to his store, but declined to elaborate, which is what I meant by cat and mouse.
 
I have wondered if Major used the opportunity to dissuade Brooks from his own suicide thoughts. Or to punish Brooks, to make him feel like he was the cause of his father’s suicide. And to punish Sloan and Gayle. Major was peculiar, capable of truly mean (unbelievably mean) behavior. And plenty tough enough to kill himself, if it was the only way he saw to protect his all-important image. Sad commentary, but so.
 
I also have wondered, because of the symbolism at the pond, if Major was onto something at Golden Flake he felt he could not directly reveal – his hands were tied, his mouth taped shut, Golden Flake label inside, Golden Flake threat letter attached in bottle. Or, the threat letter and all the rest were an elaborate skit, a diversion, to throw the scent away from suicide. I do not rule out Major had help. Nor do I rule out that a jealous mistress was involved, and I do not mean the law. [Major was a tax lawyer, specializing in Elder Law. I used to be a tax lawyer, specializing in whatever tax issue cross the threshold of my law office.]
 
Sloan

Cholesterol medication for plaque in his arteries. Lori
 

Lori’s last email was dated 6/22/2011, the end of the Summer Solstice, aka, the coming of the dark – indeed. Somehow, I figure The Blacksmith [click the link to meet The Blacksmith] has a hand in this. He tends to promote digging around in dark corners most people don’t want dug around in. Jesus said somewhere in the Gospels something like, If you bring forth that which is in you, it will save you, but if you do not bring it forth, it will destroy you.
 
The angels who ride herd on me consistently hold me to the view Major killed himself and tried to make it look like someone else did it. I suppose there will be more to report after I receive the information requested from the FBI, and perhaps information will come from other sources. If anyone reading this thinks I like writing about this topic, think again. I write about it because I am told to write about it. I follow orders, if I know what’s good for me.
 
Ciao
 

Blacksmith echo

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Today's Vulcanite

This informative link in yesterday from Morticia, Locust Fork:
 
 
This in yesterday from Bama Earl, whose comment to the goodmorningbirmingham.com home page catalyzed yesterday’s The Blacksmith
post (click the link to see it):
 
Sloan – Dad really enjoyed reading about Judge Allgood. He also said Mike Atchison was also one of his clerks… Thank you.
 
Jim’s father is a Birmingham defense lawyer of note. I used to try to keep up with him and another Birmingham lawyer on the indoor wooden running track in the old downtown YMCA. I didn’t keep up, even though I was considerably younger.
 
My rely:
 
Hi, James. Thanks.
 
Tell your dad I said “Hi” – he looks pretty good behind that plow. My recollection, Mike Atchison was the second law clerk with Judge Allgood after me. My successor was George McMillan.
 
When George came to see Judge about the position, Judge talked with him a while, then sent him in to see me. I asked George what did want to do in life? He said he wanted to go into politics. I said he had come to the right place.
 
When later George ran for the first time, state legislature, it was for George Lewis Bailes’ incumbent seat, or he was running against George Lewis for someone else’s seat. Judge told me, when George Lewis came to him for support, they were buddies, Judge told him his hands were tied. McMillan won, as I recall.
 
Sloan 
 
Judge Allood’s is the first portrait “painted” in  A Few Remarkable (Birmingham) People I Have Known (click the link to see it). As you will see by reading about him, at age 15, the young Clarence Allgood met The Blacksmith.
 
From a Tuscaloosa lawyer buddy responding to yesterday’s The Blacksmith post:
 
Sloan,
 
I enjoyed again hearing of your Himalayan Trek and the Blacksmith Experience. I failed to recently share something with you that I shared with you years ago. For several years,I had the recurring dream about seeing and being near tornadoes. The dream was always such that the tornado(es) were very close and threatening but I was somewhat captivated and excited by their presence and danger(I had a sense that they would not harm me).  The recurrent dream continued for a number of years, but ceased several years ago. Then on April 27, I lived the dream. What’s your view of this–attraction to a dangerous woman?
 
Hawkman
 
Hi, Michael.
 
The Himalaya trek started about two or three weeks after you and I had lunch at that riverside restaurant in Tuscaloosa, after I had driven to Alabama from Arizona, trying to reset my compass after Betty and I broke up in Boulder. It was a very rough time up in those world-top mountains. Wish I had been okay in my soul, it would have been a lot more enjoyable.
 
Incredible scenery. Met lots of interesting people, locals and travelers, but was really wrapped up inside of me, and what all I was experiencing was pretty far out to everyone else. Ironic, I bump into The Christ across a giant mountain range from the Dalai Lama’s old hangout – Tibet.
 
I foggily recall you telling me about the tornadoes. Yes, I’d say they represent female, very powerful female. You describe more than one tornado. You had your time with wemins, as did I. Spirit tornadoes. Great teachers, hated most of it, although some of it was pretty wonderful.
 
The dream tornadoes might have been about more than a human woman, or women, though. I met some tornadoes in spirit ways. What I wonder is, what was happening in your life leading up to when you stopped dreaming about the tornadoes? Did something significant happen back then?
 
Although I don’t recall dreaming of natural disasters that came about, people have done that, and perhaps your dreams were about the tornadoes that clobbered Tuscaloosa this year, and you were not harmed. As I recall your telling of it, your home had some roof but otherwise not serious damage. You lost the big oak trees in your yard. Really old trees.
 
Sloan
 
I met Hawkman on the Hiwassee River in southeastern Tennessee, at a Birmingham Canoe Club beginning white water paddling clinic. Mike was an instructor, I, a student. Eventually, I became an instructor, and even later Mike and I started paddling his C-2 (decked canoe) together. He was the only paddler I ever padded from the bow with him in the stern, whom I felt had my back covered. We had some wonderful adventures on the Ocoee and Chattooga Rivers in that C-2, which looks like a big kayak, except you kneel instead of sit with your legs extended out in front of you, and you use canoe instead of kayak paddles. Typically, when a C-2 shows up on a river, all the other paddlers stop and watch, as the exquisite teamwork waltz required for a C-2 is critical, especially in heavy white water. Hawkman and I both paddled plenty of heavy white water in the spirit. I figure The Blacksmith had a wee hand in that.
 
Ciao
 

The Blacksmith

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Today's VulcaniteComment sent yesterday to goodmorningbirmingham.com from a fellow I met in the late 1990s, when lived in Birmingham for a while.
 

That Vulcan… Is it an Idol?
Is our use of gasoline idolatrous?
i·dol·a·trous/īˈdälətrəs/Adjective
1. Worshiping idols: “the idolatrous peasantry”.
2. Treating someone or something as an idol: “America’s idolatrous worship of the auto”.
Dictionary.com
Bama Earl
 
My reply:
 
Thanks for your comment. I never once heard of anyone in Birmingham worshipping Vulcan, the statue or the god, but perhaps it happened. The statue, of a blacksmith, which was named Vulcan, as I heard the story from my parents, was given to Birmingham (named after Birmingham, England, an iron and steep producing city) because of its iron and steel production. My parents said when they were kids, Vulcan lay disassembled in Avondale Park, and only later was it erected where it now stands on Red Mountain, which is a bump compared to mountains I have seen, including the Colorado Rockies, the Tetons, the Alps, and the Himalaya. I had serious spirit dealings with a blacksmith in a prior life, so to speak, and in one of those experiences he took the form of Vulcan on Red Mountain, to show me something I needed to see. Maybe I will tell some about that in a post, so readers will see how I relate to Vulcan today, as opposed to how I related to him as a boy, which was that he was simply a blacksmith; I did not even then yet know there was a god named Vulcan. I will say now that the blacksmith who worked me over in spirit ways, seriously worked me over, still underway, is The Christ. I relate that to Jesus saying in the Gospels that his baptism was in fire, not in water, and he was anxious to get on with it. My recollection is, in the Gospels John the Baptist also said Jesus’ baptism was in fire. Maybe more on this later. As for our use of gasoline being idolatrous, I suppose that can be argued. Add in autos. And trucks. And trains. And ships. And airplanes. And what about money? What about the American flag? What about religious symbols? Right now, it’s all I can say grace over just getting up in the morning and being as true as I can manage during the day and ensuing evening, while doing the least harm possible. If I quit using gasoline and gave up my car, I would be unable to do a great deal of what it seems God gives me to do. I suppose everything is relative, at some level.
 
Later yesterday, some thoughts came to me about the blacksmith. He first appeared a day or so after I dreamt of a huge, black storm headed my way. I was moved to jot down a poem, which began thusly:
 
I am the blacksmith
this storm is my forge,
You are the carbon gemsteel
I hammer into my black diamond lasersword …
 
I felt and saw myself lying under a huge blacksmith, on his anvil in his fiery forge, being pounded by his great black hammer held in his right hand …
 
The next time he showed up was almost a year later, when I saw my beloved black mammy Cha in a vision; then beside her stood the Blacksmith, and I understood I was being given a choice of staying with her, or going with the Blacksmith, whom I then believed represented God the Father. I wept, chose to go with the Blacksmith.
 
Not much time passed, before my entire life collapsed and I was in Nepal trekking the Himalaya, trying to get a grip on myself. I had been very sick for four years, which had only just lifted somewhat. I was seriously out of shape, the trek from Pokarah up to Anapurna Base Camp at 15,000 feet was slow and exhausting. I didn’t have warm enough clothing.
 
I got wet one day, when rain caught me before I reached the next hamlet where there was lodging. I was very cold, discouraged, decided to stop the ascent and head back down the next day. That night, I dreamt of riding my bicycle from Diaper Road above Homewood up toward Vulcan, and I got tired and turned around and lost control and nearly had a serious wreck. I awoke, knowing I had to keep climbing toward Anapurna Base Camp.
 
On reaching the base camp three days later, I found it socked in with fog. It stayed like that three days. I hung out in the lodge hall, talking and playing spades with foreign travelers, sherpas, porters and the lodge owner and his employees. I was the only American.
 
On the third morning dawn, the fog had lifted. I walked up on a ridge above the lodge and waited for the sun to crest Fishtail Mountain behind me and hit the rim of the towering Anapurna peaks in front of me. These mountains were in the 26,000 foot range. Made the Colorado Rockies look like bumps. The sun crested Fishtail, named so because the peak is fork-shaped like a fish tail. The Nepalis believe the gods live on Fishtail and it is off-limits to trekkers and mountain climbers.
 
As the sun hit the rim of peaks, I felt something and dropped to one knee, looked at the rim with the bright sun on them. Superimposed over the peaks was the Blacksmith – enormous. I thought, and selfishly hoped, I was going to hear, “The Father and I are one.” Instead, I heard, “The Son and I are one.”  I’m embarrassed to say I had no clue what that meant. About two years later, when I was in a serious pickle, the Blacksmith came to me again, and I suddenly realized he was The Christ.
 
I then understood I needed to alter my behavior in the pickle, to be more Jesus-like. After that, things started changing and I was liberated from that horrific situation, only to fall into another that became even worse. As if the Blacksmith had hit me in the head with his hammer and I had lost half of my mind for almost a year and a half. I prayed to die and was too chicken to do it myself.
 
I came to understand my way was indeed steep and the gate narrow, and I was being burned alive and pounded with that great black hammer and pounded with it. The arrival of the Blacksmith in the fall of 1994, and the poem and being put on the anvil, was only the beginning, a forecast of coming attractions. Attractions that would cause me many times to wish I never was born.
 
I might have told Bama Earl about some of that when we got together a few times in Birmingham. That, and the initiation into the Priesthood Melchizedek somewhat described in the Letter to the Hebrews. It’s one thing to hear it told, or to read about it; it’s quite another thing to have it happen to you. Unimaginable, until it happens to you.
 
This the Blacksmith I think of when I see Vulcan. The same Blacksmith I imagine Martin Luther King had dealings with. He doesn’t mess around. No prisoners does he take. He kills them, then tries to make something from them.
 
Ciao   
 
sloanbashinsky@hotmail.com

seeing with the spirit eye

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Today's Vulcanite

Yesterday’s notes from friends, mostly post introduced three Birmingham area women who corresponded with me since my brother Major’s death last year. Today’s post features email dialogue with two of them, Patti, who now lives near Charlotte, North Carolina, and Morticia, who lives in Locust Fork. Patti first, correcting my statement yesterday that her father had pastored the white Methodist church in downtown Birmingham during the time of the troubles.

Patti & Sloan

She said:

“We hear the call of truth, of righteousness, of justice, but we are not men enough to heed its challenge.”

Sloan, my dad was the minister of Sixth Avenue Presbyterian which later became Mountain Brook Presbyterian.  

I am in the process of writing about our experience.
-PT

He said:
 
yikes, I’m slipping

She said:
 
Nope, don’t think so. Just giving me the opportunity to make the correction and provide the Mountain Brook Presbyterian history link.
 

He said:
 
The same thought occurred to me, so maybe it was a “Freudian” slip, but still it looks to me like a flub you saw with a spirit eye I’m glad for the opportunity to report and furnish the link as part of Birmingham’s important history. Perhaps not too odd, maybe ten days ago, as I pondered photos to use with this new website, I found several photos of the troubles online that I copied to my gallery and most of the attention so far as been on Cha, who was very involved in that behind the scenes.
 
 
Morticia & Basher
 
She said:
 
You have angels. I have ghosts. I bet if they got together in the same room there would be a fight!!! 
 
He said:
 
depends on what kind of ghosts, meybe you ought to write me a story about your ghosts and send it to me to publish at GMB.com, maybe you call it “The Covered Bridge Ghosts of Locust Fork, Alabama.”
 
She said:
 
I will write up the stories and send to you but here is just a small version for you to read and see if you do think they follow me. I cant think much about it or I will get afraid of them and so far I am not I just have lived with them for so long they are like normal to me.
 
Well when I was in the 10th grade I was very sick. Dad had just changed jobs and the doctor said…I have to go to hospital if I am not better in a day or so ins or not.
 
That next morning my dad was sitting at the table drinking coffee reading his bible before he went to work. My sister and I had twin beds she woke up and this woman was over my bed bent down with her mouth to my ear. She thought it was mother.  She asked if I was ok and the lady turned and looked at her..  She screamed and my dad heard it and looked up and the lady was standing at the table looking at him.. She walked in the living room and he jumped up to go see if somebody had broken in our little house which was about the size of my living room now and she disappeared.
 
He died not talking about it. It shook him and my sister up really bad. I got better the next day and went to school the next week.
 
Then at mothers house across the street from that house my dad had died and mother had married again and I went home that weekend and I was in bed and she said I am sleeping in here with you and we will talk..  We talked until we went to sleep and during the night about 200 lbs was laying on me.. I thought her husband had gotten up and got in the wrong bed. But he was only about 160lbs  I woke her up and she could not move either it was on her. Then she finally reached to turn on the light, something hit the floor really hard and we both jumped up. NOTHING.. NO one in the house.  NO WHERE and her husband was in the room next to us sound asleep.
 
She told him at breakfast to tell what happened the day before. He was asleep and somebody or something was jumping on his bed.
 
And my house..  Lord help all the activity that goes on.
 
Voices talking like a TV on in another room and sometimes it is like somebody is smoking next to me.. Really strong.  I did know when we moved here the man and woman that was building the house in the beginning late 70′s got into an argument and he got in the car and drove down my big hill and pulled out in front of a car and killed the mother, father and injured the 9 month old baby and he was killed also.
 
The voices seem like the are arguing and the cigarette smell. I just found out from his son that was 3 months old when the man died that he has a picture of his daddy and he has a cigarette in his hand. So I figure the smoking ghost is Jeff Camp.  I told him to leave a few weeks ago and so far nothing.
 
But seriously I think they follow me.. So does my family. For some reason I am in tune with them.. If I really tried..No telling who would show up but I AM NOT TRYING!!!
 
I have a hard time sleeping and I lay in bed at night figuring things out…and I saw a black figure walk down the hall past our bedroom. I said something to Gary about a shadow person and he said “You saw it also?” Seem like he saw someone walking down the hall also but he was not going to say anything because he thought maybe he was just seeing things.
 
I need to burn some sage!!!
 
Let me write up all my stories and I will send to you.  My cousin has my mothers home now and he does not believe in ghosts but he also cant explain all the going ons in the house.    I live on a hill. HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL!! Wasn’t that a Vincent Price Movie?
 
I am going to absolutely love your new BLOG..  I like those kind of stories you tell.. Especially about your childhood and Charlotte..
 
THANKS.
 
Morticia
 
He said:
 
Okay, Morticia. Don’t want to get in no big fight over it, but I ain’t too sure all of this you describe is about ghosts or poltergeists. Looks and sounds to me like the lady bent down over you was, yep, an angel. You got well, after that, didn’t you? The heavy weight on you and your mother sort of looks and sounds like an angel, too. Maybe an angel trying to show you and your mom her second husband was weighing her down more than was good for her. Was jumping on his bed to finger the subject, yes?
 
The other experiences you describe seem different, although angels can talk through televisions, radios and even computers. I remember once when I was all cranked up writing a tell-somebody-off email at an internet cafe and onto the rented monitor screen, like out of nowhere, appeared TESTOSTERONE. It wasn’t in the text but was over the text, like a holographic projection from somewhere - I had a pretty good idea where. Stopped me dead in my tracks, it did. I toned the email way down, before pressing SEND. You tell me, how did TESTOSTERONE get onto the monitor screen. I probably can guess where – THE EDITORIAL BOARD.
 
In my dreams, someone smoking is up to no good in waking life. I also have smelled cigarette smoke in dreams, and took that on waking to mean the dream was showing me something no good is underway in waking life. I also have smelled sulfer in dreams, which is more serious; it means the devil is nearby and I need to be really extra careful in waking life over what was in that dream.
 
About two years after I wuz abducted in early 1987 by what I didn’t yet know were Jesus and Michael (the archangel), I sometimes held forth God is like a radio and speaks to us on whatever channel we have the radio set. The quilting channel. The golf channel. The ghost channel. The gossip channel. The blog channel. The college football channel. The Oprah channel. The Tea Party channel. The tornado channel. The broken heart channel. The dream channel. Like God can’t use any way God wants to use to speak to people.
 
Of course, I really mean an angel of the Lord tells us, as I seriously doubt God has time to fool with my little dramas, or yours, or anybody’s, so angels are used. The other kind of angels are about the premises, too, especially when angels of the Lord are working you over. Sometimes it’s a bit troublesome discerning the two different kinds of angels. The ones from God tend to tell us things about ourself and sometimes about other people we don’t especially want to hear, and they seem to delight in nudging us to do things we don’t especially want to do, like tell people stuff we know they don’t want to hear, or run for office in the Keys, which I detest.
 
Don’t imagine I need to say, in your shoes, I wouldn’t tell this stuff you experience to a psychiatrist, but I don’t discount any of it. You are open to other realms than the one most human beings see, hear, smell. Perhaps the angels have in mind using you because of that. Not something, in your shoes, I would look forward to with great joy, but I say it just in case you need to recall this conversation later to help you understand something happening that otherwise you can’t understand. Maybe I should say you have my sincere condolences. Look forward to hearing more tales from the crypt.
 
Basher
 
She said:
 
You absolutely may be correct about the angel bending over me.  I did  get well and Yes my mothers husband was NOT GOOD FOR HER IN LIFE and he tried to do us in , after she passed.
 
I am going to have to study this one over some..  You got me to thinking..Which sometimes in my case can be dangerous.
 
I never have smelled cigarette smoke in dreams. IN REAL LIFE sitting here at home.
 
I wont go to a psychiatrist. HECK most are nuttier than I am.. You’d have to be to sit and listen to crap all the time. 
 
I just asked my Internist did he think I was nuts because I was an introvert and did not want to be cured. Once I found it was normal I am happy.
m
 
He said:
 
The shadow person you and your husband both saw, how long ago was that?
 
Shadow has different meanings, but in this case, I’m wondering if what you both saw foretold someone coming more visible into your lives?
 
Next time you smell cigarette smoke, ponder what’s going on in your waking life, maybe someone you are dealing with is up to no good, but you have not yet seen it.
 
Basher
 

notes from friends, mostly

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Today's VulcaniteResponses to A Few Remarkable (Birmingham) People I Have Known from three women who started corresponding with me after my brother Major went missing in March 2010.
 
From Morticia:
  
You and my Aunt are the only ones that call me Morticia. I used to collect post mortem photo’s.. ones of the folks laying in the coffins. I showed her two yesterday and her response.. WELL MORTICIA!!!!
 
I do hope to see more of your stories like the people that have influenced you. 
 
Your story about Charlotte was about the best I have read anywhere. I could just see you with her. Those times are totally different from today but I don’t know whether we were not better off then than we are now in some ways. I hold back writing a lot about my parents. You can read it in my Pure White Trash Book when I finish it!!
 
I guess sometimes I think I need to let it go and forget it.
 
They both are gone . But there is still scars inside.
 
I laughed my amigos and amigas. You must have not read my Introvert post!! http://welovequilting.com/doctor-i-have-and-i-dont-want-to-be-cured/
 
Ok here is the post.. I did not want to sound to gushy.. and give folks the wrong idea!!! Just kidding. I am in a silly mood tonight.
 
 
I really enjoyed your post about your lady that took care of you.. Charlotte. I could feel the love between you two. You know it is funny to me..sometimes I love people more that are not related to me than the ones that are.
 
keep up the good stories. I loved all of them..
 
You have angels. I have ghosts. I bet if they got together in the same room there would be a fight!!! 
 
I thought this house was haunted but I have figured out since I was a small child they have followed me everywhere.  My husband has even witnessed some things.  I am used to it now except for the one that smokes and I cant stand that one but I know who it is and when he starts smoking I fuss and run him off..
 
Morticia
 
Note: This cheeky lady lives in Locust Fork. You might enjoy her website and stories. People smoking in my dreams are up to no good. I get told all sorts of stuff in my dreams that ain’t always welcome news when I tell it to the people I dreamt about.
 
From Lisa:
 
Oh Sloan,
 
What a beautiful story you wrote about Cha. Your writing brought tears to my eyes. You really are a talented author and I am so lucky to have discovered your works. Can’t wait to read more. It reminded me so much of a book I just read called THE HELP.
 
Lisa
 
Note: This spunky gal used to babysit my daughters, when we lived on West Montcrest Drive in Crestline Heights. After Lisa started corresponding with me last year, she finally got around to saying back in the day she didn’t like me because I would come home on weekends from dove hunts and pick doves and cook them on my outdoor grill while I got drunk. She thought I was a barbarian. I told her I got over shooting doves and other creatures, and I can’t drink any more, my body is allergic to booze, but I’m still a barbarian and many people (including a string of wives) gladly would attest.

  
From Patti:

  
Sloan, just emailed http://www.goodmorningbirmingham.com/ link to my dad. Told him probably best for him to read from his ipad in a comfy chair. All my time has been spent moving my daughter into Orientation Leader dorm but look forward to reading all of it.. would be nice if you could provide Cha’s recipes too. Didn’t have time to read but her cooking jumped out at me. Told my dad you thought he might enjoy the Lee portion.. but to definitely check out what at a glance looked to be a mouth watering chapter. Sloan, I might be wrong.. but this site feels strong to me. Patti
  
Note: Patti’s family lived in Birmingham during the time of the troubles. Her father pastored the Methodist church downtown and had the experience of the congregation turning away black people when they came to worship on Sunday. He wasn’t there that day, but after he found out about it, he got it straightened out. Left a rift in the congregation that did not resolve while he was there. The Lee chapter is about a man cut from much the same cloth, who pastored St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Crestline and left a similar rift in that church over the same issue. My mother caught living hell for switching to St. Luke’s from the Baptist church some years before Lee chose God over the church he and God had started from scratch.
 
The Cha (Charlotte) chapter is about a minister from a different cut of cloth, ordained by God, who barely read or wrote, but she sure didn’t let that get in her way. Actually, Cha’s chapter is filled with her mouth-watering recipes, in the soul sense. As for the tummy sense, Cha took those recipes with her, when she passed over. Recipes she kept in her soul and didn’t want anyone else to know because she didn’t want anyone else to replace her in our home. No way anyone could replace Cha in our home. She was the glue that held it together, as became evident after she left live out her short remaining time with her other family.
 
As I wrote that paragraph, it came to me for the very first time that the six portraits of remarkable people in this little book are portraits of ministers. One was ordained in the church sense, and in the God sense. The other five were ordained in the God sense. Not sure how church people will take to that, but read the stories and make up your own mind. You can get there by double-clicking this link: A Few Remarkable (Birmingham) People I Have Known. If for some reason, the link above does not work, click on this link – goodmorningbirmingham.com – and then click on the link above in the right-hand menu of that page.
 
My last dream this morning around dawn was about Billy Church, a fellow law student at Alabama. Billy had been a Baptist (I think was the congregation) preacher before he enrolled in law school. After graduating and going into private practice, and having a few ups and downs, as life seems designed to toss our way, Billy moved to Pell City and took up golf and developed a pretty fair reputation as a county lawyer. I always figured he would do okay as a lawyer, but when he comes to me in dreams, it is as a messenger from God, still a minister in other words.
 
Looks like that dream was the tip-off I was to write about ministers today. And, as I was eating a vegetarian meal with Billy, that was the tip-off I was to walk softly and not be a barbarian today. At least not on my hometown website. Down here in the Keys, I’m behaving like a barbarian, as many will attest, if you come down here and ask them. Or, you can read all about it for today at goodmorningkeywest.com.
 
Yeah, I sort of imagine some of Morticia’s ghosts wouldn’t care all that much for my angels, her angels, too. Your angels, also.

A Few Remarkable (Birmingham) People I Have Known

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Today's VulcaniteAlthough I expect the heat to rise in daily Vulcanites as time passes, we are still in the honeymoon stage with the bloom perhaps still on the rose, or perhaps not after yesterday’s pretty frisky warm-up Vulcanite. Whatever, today’s offering is a little book, double click this link to see it -  A Few Remarkable (Birmingham) People I Have Known – which fell out of me in the fall of 2004, and is about as deep and down home as I know how to write. It tells about six people, five of Birmingham, one of Troy, who seriously impacted me in a prior life. As you get to know them, you will get to know me, and perhaps that will help explain what otherwise might not be explainable.

Ciao,

Sloan

sloanbashinsky@hotmail.com

blue news – Dennis Reeves Cooper vs. Sloan

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From Dennis Reeves Cooper (photo), Publisher of Key West the Newspaper (kwtn.com), replying to yesterday’s jealous mistress post.
 
SLOAN:

A MUTUAL FRIEND SENT ME A COPY OF YOUR “JEALOUS MISTRESS” PIECE THIS MORNING. AND I AM GLAD HE DID. I AM ON YOUR EMAIL LIST BUT I AM OFTEN TOO BUSY TO READ YOUR POSTS. INITIALLY, I DID NOT KNOW WHY OUR FRIEND SENT ME A COPY– ALTHOUGH I ASSUMED THAT IT WAS BECAUSE YOU MAY HAVE WRITTEN SOMETHING ABOUT ME. SO I STARTED READING. AND I READ AND READ AND READ– AND FINALLY, TOWARD THE END, YOU WRITE (AS IT IT WERE FACT) THAT YOU SORT OF RECALL THAT MAYBE, BACK IN 2002, OR ABOUT THEN, MAYBE, THAT I WROTE SOMETHING THAT MAY HAVE SORT OF INSINUATED THAT YOU NEVER PRACTICED LAW IN ALABAMA.
 
IT NEVER HAPPENED, SLOAN! YOU MAY HAVE ME MIXED UP WITH SOMEBODY ELSE OR MAYBE YOU DREAMED IT– BUT I CAN ASSURE YOU THAT I ABSOLUTELY NEVER WROTE ANYTHING ABOUT YOUR LEGAL EDUCATION OR EXPERIENCE. BUT IF I HAD, I WOULD HAVE CHECKED OUT THE FACTS. I MAY NOT REMEMBER EVERYTHING I HAVE WRITTEN IN MY NEWSPAPER OVER THE LAST 17 YEARS– BUT I WOULD REMEMBER THAT. I NEVER– NEVER, NEVER, NEVER– WROTE ANYTHING LIKE THAT. SO, IF YOU SEEM TO RECALL THAT I DID, YOU ARE RECALLING WRONG. DEAD WRONG.
 
BUT YOU SEEM TO DO THAT A LOT, SLOAN. YOU WRITE, AS FACT, ABOUT THINGS YOU VAGUELY RECALL WITHOUT, APPARENTLY, MAKING ANY EFFORT AT ALL TO RESEARCH THE TRUTH OF WHAT YOU WRITE. AND OCCASIONALLY, YOU GET CALLED ON IT AND, THEN YOU ADMIT THAT YOU MADE A MISTAKE AND SORT OF HALF-APOLOGIZE. MY SKIN IS PRETTY THICK AND I DO NOT NEED A HALF-APOLOGY. BUT YOU HAVE ALSO DONE IT TO OTHERS.
 
IS THERE ANY CHANCE AT ALL THAT YOU MIGHT TRY TO BE MORE CAREFUL IN THE FUTURE?
 
DENNIS
 
Well, Dennis, no mutual friend. My friends would copy to me what they sent to you.

I sort of vaguely recall lots of things about which I write and cannot possibly prove today, as no record was made when those things happened. When I write from recollection, I say that is what I’m doing. When I see on my own or am shown by someone else I have made a mistake in fact, I publish a correction.
 
My vague recollection of this particular falsehood you say I published about you yesterday was you wrote that I claimed to have been a lawyer, which insinuated I might or might not be a lawyer. You use lots of insinuation in what you publish, Dennis. As do I. Birds of a feather, yes?
 
You published stuff about me, which was so  one-sided and out of context, that I wrote to you and asked you to publish my reply, or I would publish it in another way. Maybe you don’t recall, so I will refresh your recollection using my vague recollection.

This was during the formation of the Citizens (Police) Review Board in the fall of 2002. The CRB had been passed in a referendum. A public meeting was held at Old City Hall to discuss the next step. You had been very active and instrumental in getting the CRB hatched. As had your girlfriend, whose name I don’t recall. She was redheaded, as I vaguely recall, and had moved to Key West fairly recently from the east coast, perhaps Washington, D.C. area, as I vaguely recall. She considered herself a mentor to young women – she told me this at the Green Parrot, as I vaguely recall. She also told me she hoped to be able to heal you, but she wasn’t sure it was going to happen, as I vaguely recall.
 
Earlier the day of the public meeting on the CRB, it dawned on me I needed not to have anything to do with the next step because I was prejudiced against the Key West police over the way they were treating homeless people, of whom I had been one and would be one again. At the start of the meeting later that afternoon, or evening, I said what had only dawned on me earlier that day: I had a conflict of interest and had to disengage from the CRB process. Then, I said to you and your girlfriend that you both had been important to getting the CRB this far, but now you both should pull out for the same reason – prejudice against the Key West City Police because Police Chief Buz Dillon had had you arrested and jailed for breaking an Internal Affairs investigation before it was finished. As I also vaguely recall, by then you had filed suit against Buz and the city.
 
I left the meeting and you followed me out giving me a hard time. Then, you wrote about it, without quoting accurately what I had said about why I pulled out of the CRB process, and nothing did you report about what I had told you and your girlfriend that you and she should do. I sent you an email asking for equal time/reply and said if you did not provide it, I would publish it in another way. You did not even respond. Some journalist you were, I saw. I published my reply to my growing email list, which included the mayor, city commissioners, city attorney, the police chief and others in the city government, the press, and private individuals. Or so I vaguely recall. I was thanked by city officials for that reply, or so I also vaguely recall.
 
I also vaguely recall when I filed to run for mayor in 2003, and someone suggested I go to see you about it. I told this person, who managed the Birkenstock store on Duval Street, it was not a good idea, you didn’t like me, and I explained why, as I vaguely recall. He insisted it would go fine, he said he knew you, as I vaguely recall. So I went to your office and knocked on the door and you came to the door, saw who was there and said something like, “You fuck! Get the hell out of here! I’m calling the police!” If I’d had my wits about me, I’d have sat down and waited on the police, just to see if they would come to rescue you from me. But I didn’t have my wits about me, and I left, or so I vaguely recall.
 
I also vaguely recall reading in The Citizen some years later of you ramming a palm tree – or was it a fire plug? – in you car one evening, and you left the scene and weaved home, where you were apprehended by the city police and booked for D.U.I. I vaguely recall you didn’t write about that, although you should as hell should have! I wonder if you even remember any of that, as you were three-sheets driving what had become a deadly weapon in your hands, the jihad banger of the KWPD. I didn’t read that you had your license revoked, or that you did time, or maybe my memory lapsed and you did lose your license and did time.
 
I hear lots about you going three-sheets, it seems to be your habit, and I can’t help but wonder how that might affect your memory. Don’t fuck with me, Dennis. Just do good reporting. And not just on people you don’t like, such as Buz Dillon. Do it on yourself and people you like, as well. Be a real investigative journalist, in other words. Write about me, if you wish. I will give you all the time, information and references you request. Might prove to be the biggest tongue-wagger you ever published.
 
Here’s what I vaguely remember Buz Dillon, who became my close friend, told me just before he and his family moved away from Key West, about why he had you arrested and jailed. He said he had become unhappy with The Citizen and The Keynoter and was feeding you cop shop stories for you to break and scoop the other two newspapers. You and Buz were buddies. After you broke the IA story before he gave you the go ahead, he said it was a dumb thing to do, putting you in jail, but he was really pissed off. I was not amused to learn you had not published Buz’s side of it, which you knew very well. Or so is my vague recollection.

I was trying to be your buddy, Dennis, when I told you and your girlfriend to pull out of the CRB process. If you’d had half a brain, you would have seen that. If you had half a brain, you would see I’m still trying to be your buddy, on this the day following the death of the United States of America at the hands of Barack Hussein Obama on television last night. Afterward, the news pundits said he made George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld proud, and they wondered how the Democratic Party was going to deal with that, after their el jefe had promised hope and change?
 
I vaguely remember a city commission meeting some while after 911. G.W. War, Inc. was chomping at the bit to invade Iraq, which everyone knew had nothing to do with 911. A resolution came before the Key West City Commission that the city opposed the U.S. invading Iraq without UN approval and participation. It was an acrid evening. The ones of us who spoke in favor of the resolution were villified as traitors by other citizens. Then, Mayor Jimmy Weekley said he could not support another American war over oil, and, as I vaguley recall, Jimmy cast the tie-breaking vote in favor of the resolution. 4-3, the resolution passed. It should have passed 7-0 with no sweat.
 
I vaguely recall you beat Jimmy up in the next issue of your blue rag, for what he had said and how he had voted. Yet I did not see you say you were enlisting. I did not see you say you were going over there and fight. I saw you continue to write about your trivial pursuits, while you gloated over having dressed Jimmy Weekley down. You, Dennis, and all who supported the invasion of Iraq and the Gang of Three in the White House who orchestrated it with lies, are traitors. As are those who support Barack Hussein Obama. The lot of you should be hanged.
 
You owe Jimmy Weekly an apology, Dennis. Perhaps you publish it and your email to me and this my reply in next week’s Key West the Newspaper. You have my permission, but I don’t see much chance of it happening.

Sloan
keysmyhome@hotmail.com