Tag Archives: email

Who’s afraid of the Christian Peacemaker Team?

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Motley crew
Lock up your daughters, it’s the Christian Peacemaker Team delegation!
 
By now the story is out about our visit to Senator Allard’s office today, particularly the effort we encountered to thwart our visit.

I’ll recap. After holding our daily noon vigil for the four CPT hostages being held in Iraq, a delegation of vigil keepers went downtown to visit the offices of three local congress members as part of the national SHINE THE LIGHT campaign. We walked with three yard signs and another sign of similar size held aloft. One among us wore a black hood over his head, to remind onlookers of the Abu Ghraib captives.

After a pleasant walk down Tejon Street, we first visited Congressman Hefley’s office where we received a warm reception. They’d seen the TV news report the night before. They also confirmed having received our emailed press releases.

When we tried to find Senator Allard’s office, our reception was quite a different matter. We nearly didn’t make it to his office.

Senator Allard’s office is located in the Plaza of the Rockies, a mid-sized office building with a large atrium. The building is home to many financial service companies such as Morgan Stanley, RBC Dain Rauscher, Booz Allan and Hamilton, Stewart Title, and Vectra Bank among others.

Finding ourself on the second floor of the atrium, unable to get to the floor above, our group fanned out to find a stairwell or alternative elevator. We were no longer parading with our poster boards, carrying them instead under our arms. But our identity as war malcontents was probably apparent enough and we could tell that a couple of the occupants of those glass offices appeared to grab their phones on seeing us walk by.

After my own fruitless search for Suite 300, I returned to find our group being confronted by two men in suits. We were being asked to leave the building. This was private property they explained and we were not permitted to protest on their property.

We answered that we were not protesting, but were merely trying to reach Senator Allard’s office. Could they tell us which way to Suite 300? They would not, “he’s not there.” They insisted instead that we leave. Private property and all that.

We countered that Senator Allard’s office was a public space, and certainly the conveyance to his office must be considered public. They did not agree. When we asked with whom we were speaking, the first identified himself as “Larry,” the chief security officer, the other was the property manager.

Finally we offered to relinquish the offending signs and take them outside the building. I ran the signs down to Pat and Esther who were waiting outside the front door.

I got back in time to hear the property manager arguing “if you knew your bible, you’d know why we have to be in the Middle East!” I learned afterward that I had missed him accusing the leader of our delegation, CPT member Bill Durland, of being “Taliban.”

Eventually the two building representatives agreed to conduct us to the Senator’s office, but only on the condition that Peter remove his hood. Though again we made our case that the Abu Ghraib hood represented an important message we were trying to communicate, in the end Peter agreed to take it off. He would be able to put it back on in the Senator’s office.

In the Senator’s office we were greeted by his assistant who offered to talk with us. But she insisted that the security official remain in the room, and she insisted that Peter remove his hood.

There followed a polite exchange whereupon members of our group spoke from their hearts about the illegality of the war in Iraq, the immorality of torture and other crimes related to the taking of captives without just cause, etc. Senator Allard’s assistant pulled out an old chestnut that Allard is still using at fund raising speeches. Apparently 9-11 caused more casualties that our fighting in Iraq, and that if we hadn’t fought the war in Iraq, the war would have come to us here.

Throughout this discussion, police officers were arriving. The first two arrived at the heels of another Allard staffer. They walked in the door without saying a thing, walked through the reception area where we were having our exchange, and went to stand in the office just inside the reception area.

The odd thing was that no one was addressing these officers, they were merely shown the inside office where they could hear our discussion and interrupt presumably if they were needed. A third officer arrived shortly, and then a fourth. We could see them waiting unsupervisez in the other room. One of the police officers wore the typical tight black gloves and left them on.

When asked who had called for the police officers, Allard’s assistant repeatedly declared that she did not. Although she also did not question any of the officers as to what was the purpose of their visit, and why there came another and another. Instead she proffered that the police were merely a routine measure of building security.

In the end, our visit felt more fruitless than constructive. I don’t know what we would have expected to communicate to one of the few senators who voted against the anti-torture bill. Allard’s assistant defended her boss by telling us that his opposition to the anti-torture bill was because he wanted a stranger one. We interjected that simultaneously Allard had expressed his approval of President Bush’s signing exemption.

In the end we saw the soft underbelly of the beast. and should have taken greater advantage of it. The Neocons may be formidable adversaries, but their supporters, the underbelly, are about as soft as they come.

Senator Allard’s office help kept insisting that they welcomed our visit, yet they seemed quite in step with the actions taken on the part of building security, actions which were not welcoming in the least.

Had our confidence not been boosted by the knowledge that our lead negotiator was an ACLU lawyer, we might not have been persistent enough to reach Allard’s office.

The routine scrambling of police officers certainly surprised us. Afterward I longed to have questioned one of the police officers in the next room. What was the nature of the disturbance described to them? What trouble were they fearing might errupt from a christian(!) peacemaker(!) team visiting their senator’s office?

Ivy Leaguer accosts car stabs driver 2am

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My attention was grabbed by a recent headline, IVY LEAGUER STABS BOSTON TEEN.
 
But let me tell you another story. In Colorado Springs, April 26, 2002, a friend of mine was driving back from a Thursday night concert in Boulder. Her girlfriend was half asleep, half intoxicated in the passenger seat. It was around 2am as they were driving through the Colorado College campus within a block of their home. Slowly rounding a quiet street corner, the girlfriend remembers something struck out at the car, perhaps a rock.
 
Lest I betray how this tale ends, I must point out that the subsequent events are entirely the recollection of the tired, inebriated passenger. The driver, Jocelyn Sandberg, 41, community activist, KRCC radio station manager and beloved on-air personality, did not survive the encounter.

Suddenly the car window was down and Jocelyn was having a shouted exchange with a youngish man on the street. Before the girlfriend could refrain her, the door was open and Jocelyn was getting out to confront the man. Jocelyn was very confident physically. Stocky, not butch, Jocelyn was back-on-her-heels jocular, the kind of girl it wouldn’t occur to you to offer to see safely to her car after dark. In fact Jocelyn usually worked a second job as a baker, walking there and back in the middle of the night.

The girlfriend remembers yelling for Jocelyn to return to the car. She watched as Jocelyn confronted the man at the curb. The man was in his mid-twenties or thirties. He struck Jocelyn, she fell to the ground face forward and he ran off. The girlfriend got out and ran to Jocelyn, but before she could get to her, Jocelyn had risen and taken after the man, north into the campus. Yelling after Jocelyn, she saw her disappear behind an administration building. Disgusted at Jocelyn’s typical stubbornness, the girlfriend returned to the car, climbed into the driver’s seat, and drove the last block home. While waiting for Jocelyn inside the house, she fell asleep.

When the girlfriend awoke an hour later, Jocelyn had not returned, so she called the police. By the time the officers arrived, Colorado College maintenance and security personnel had already discovered Jocelyn’s body. Jocelyn had bled to death on the SW side of Armstrong Hall, two hundred yards from where her car had been stopped. She suffered stab wounds in the face, neck and chest. The first cut may have been struck at the initial altercation at the curb.

Except for the girlfriend’s foggy description of the man, there were no witnesses. This was neither a robbery nor a premeditated assault. As for leads, Colorado College is a fairly insulated campus, buffeted by upscale neighborhoods, with very tight security. It’s not on the migratory route to anywhere, and the campus grounds present an inhospitable and unlikely hangout for transient males.

The girlfriend was of course considered the main suspect because it seemed improbable that a man could accost a moving car at 2AM in the morning. However other Colorado Springs residents can recall having snowballs thrown at their cars, in that same general area, by Colorado College students who would then dash off, leaving drivers unable to reciprocate their frustration.

When the police failed to produce any leads, the most persistent rumor was that the knife-wielding man had been a Colorado College student who was then perhaps whisked off campus by well-heeled, politically-connected parents. This could also explain the lack of concern shown by the college administrators. There was plenty of DNA evidence at the scene to test against the student population but such tests were not done.

A year later a stabbing in Boston revived that rumor. On April 12, 2003, a Saturday night around closing time, a Colorado College grad, Alexander Pring-Wilson, now studying at Harvard, was stumbling home drunk. On the way home he accosted a stationary car and stabbed the driver. Immediately after the event, still drunk, Pring-Wilson left this message on a friend’s answering machine:

“Hey, Jen. How’s it going? I just, um, I got attacked. I just got attacked by a group. I fended them off. I stabbed him a couple times and, don’t repeat this to police, um, but yeah, I’ve got a fucking killer headache. I just walked a couple of miles home. I think I’ve got a concussion. Anyway, I had a swell time tonight. I hope you guys made it home. Okay, bye-bye.”

Colorado Springs police were alerted to the stabbing death of Michael Colono and noted the similarities of the MO. Colorado Springs Detective David Edmondson inquired about obtaining DNS evidence from Pring-Wilson to test against the Jocelyn Sandberg stabbing case, Pring-Wilson’s lawyers refused.

Much was now made of the fact that Jocelyn’s witness described their assailant as weighing perhaps 150 pounds, not 200. And being 5′ 8″ instead of 6′ tall. But there was enough doubt. In a woman’s world, couldn’t 150 pounds denote a heavier person? And Jocelyn’s passenger was not making her observations from a sober perspective. Otherwise the age, hair and clean-cut description did fit.

When asked to present evidence of Pring-Wilson’s whereabouts on the 2002 date, lawyer Jeffrey Denner produced emails and credit card charges as proof that the suspect had been in Boston. Pring-Wilson had “accessed a Boston server” to send his mom an email. Likewise his credit card was charged on the next day. Naturally Colorado Springs police regarded this evidence as inconclusive.

But circumstantial evidence drawing Pring-Wilson to Colorado Springs grew. Pring-Wilson maintained a long-distance relationship with his girlfriend in Colorado Springs. And friends recall seeing him regularly at his alma mater. A fellow CC rugby forward estimates seeing Pring-Wilson back on campus “maybe 10” times in the two years following their graduation in 2000.
 
On a map showing the locations of Colorado Spring’s downtown bars, including Jose Muldoons which featured a Raggae band that night, and Pring-Wilson’s residence, the most likely route between the two points intersects with the corner where Jocelyn Sandberg’s car was accosted.
 
It should be an easy thing to prove or disprove: flight schedules, cell phone statements, Colorado College alumni events or no. Certainly his girlfriend Janice or his parents should be able to say either way.		   Walking off a drunk

 
Pring-Wilson’s family and friends are petitioning the governor of Massachusetts to reduce his sentence for the Boston stabbing. By their descriptions Pring-Wilson seems like a nice enough guy: accomplished, dedicated, compassionate, gentle -when sober, no doubt. No mention of his drinking. And according to everyone he was unassailably non-violent, notwithstanding having been captain of the Rugby team, playing forward, the offensive position. And how many gentle souls carry around four-inch Spyderco knives? Pring-Wilson’s drinking companions in Boston recall seeing the knife in the bar that evening. Seeing the knife in the bar?! Not everyone is agreed obviously that it’s such a common thing to carry around.

Could it be we’re talking about a sweet guy -with a drinking problem? Friends who haven’t signed the Pring-Wilson petition do attest that he was an obnoxious drunk. So we’re talking about an obnoxious drunk with maybe a chip on his shoulder and certainly a knife in his pocket. Maybe we’re talking about a 200 pound drunkard who cannot be dissuaded to do anything but whatever he wants. A person who parties hard, then wants to walk home, to walk it off, a couple of miles whatever, alone.

In October 2004 Pring-Wilson was convicted of the voluntary manslaughter of American-Puerto-Rican teenager Michael Colono and sentenced to six to eight years. The killing was found not to have been in self defense because the evidence indicated that Pring-Wilson had fisted his knife before the altercation began. Also, if he was jumped by the two teenagers as he claimed, Pring-Wilson came out of it relatively unhurt. Most damning, the knife blows were struck straight into Colono from a position above, not from wild slashing from a defensive position beneath, as Pring-Wilson claimed.

In their petition to Massachusetts Governor Romney urging him to remand their son to home-custody, the Pring-Wilsons threaten: “You must know that if any harm should come to Mr. Pring Wilson during the duration of his sentence you will be held accountable along with the Commonwealth of Mass.”

Strong words from understandably desperate parents, but who then shall be held responsible for the death of the Puerto-Rican teenager? Jose Cuervo? Spyderco knives?

Why do the parents not suggest, at the very least, that their son promise to disavow heavy drinking and knife-wielding? Nothing against gentle 200 pound rugby forward Alexander Pring-Wilson, it’s his knife-carrying drunken alter-ego that might be a danger. (Knives, drinking, middle of the night personas? A combination not unknown to the annals of crime or western literature.)

How often exactly did Pring-Wilson drink and insist on walking home alone, after his friends had taken cabs? Once a year? Spring break? One less aggressive drunk guy on the street with a deadly knife on Saturday nights would be a good thing for everyone.

There are also hundreds of Jocelyn’s friends in Colorado Springs who would like to hold somebody accountable for her death. Maybe Pring-Wilson could step up to the plate so that we could eliminate the possibility it was him. The sooner we can identify the aggressive man who stabbed Jocelyn Sandberg, the sooner we can prevent him from picking a fight with someone else’s car.

The thank-the-soldier-not-the-poet chain email

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Zell Miller resurrected the “THANK THE SOLDIER, NOT THE POET” spiel at the RNC. It had circulated more than a year ago as one of those sappy emails. I dug up the response I used back then.

Hello!
Thank you for your lovely “The Soldier” poem. I have to disagree with your point a little. While it makes sense to be thankful to the soldiers who have served to protect our freedoms, their task is nothing to glorify.

For example, you can thank the 11 year old child laborer in Indonesia for making your running shoes, certainly you should. But do you want to glorify and justify the necessity of her role? Her daily ordeal is as involuntary as what we are requiring of our soldiers.

I don’t believe a soldier has rarely been anything more, throughout history, than the hapless uneducated joe who didn’t know enough to get out of the way.

Whatever has been accomplished through war is to the credit of leaders and politicians. Would you agree perhaps that when leaders and politicians have aspired to moral and humanitarian goals it would have been due to the influence their education? The extent of that education was no doubt courtesy of: the poet, the reporter, the campus organizer, and I could add, the minister.

Supporting our troops does not mean checking your brain at the door.

The Old Colorado City fire of ‘02

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December 5, 2002, a personal account, see Waycott Opera House for media photographs.

7 AM
Early on Tuesday morning in sleepy Old Colorado City, a Channel 13 news crew met with Sue Seabolt in her Hand Carved Candles Shop to do a TV spot about candle safety. After they wrapped up, everyone went to breakfast together.

Fire Inspectors report that a candle was left burning.

9 AM
Bruce Reid, passer-by, was driving to work along Colorado Avenue at about nine and saw dark smoke coming from a vent on the sidewalk in front of the candle shop. He wondered what kind of toxic material they might be burning, did they think no one would notice the smoke before business hours? He pulled over to investigate (and maybe call the EPA.)

As he parked, the window of the adjacent Glass Blowers Shop blew out. Now it was apparent this was a fire and he began alerting people in nearby businesses to call 911.

WAYCOTT BASEMENT
Meanwhile managers at Meadow Muffins had already called 911. They saw smoke coming into their basement from an underground vent the bar shares with the shops next door.

That vent has always been thought to be part of the infamous tunnel system under Colorado Avenue. It dates back to the turn of the century when respectable residents didn’t want to be seen crossing the street to visit the taverns and brothels on the disreputable south side of the street.

2ND FLOOR
Two floors above, Rusty and Steve of PRODUCERS GROUP were being overwelmed by the smoke coming into their video production office. Their main entrance is on the east side of the Waycot Building, above the Glass Blowers Shop, with stairs that descend through the now burning building. They tested the door handle, it was hot. When they opened the door they were pushed back by a surge of heat. The stairway was on fire. They figured out they would have to go out through the back.

On their way out the two ascended to my door at the third floor. They knocked and shouted, hoping I would hear them. Eventually they gave up and wanted to check outside to see what was happening. On the street they ran into Bruce Reid, they told him, yes there was a third person still in the building. Bruce climbed the stairs to try again.

3RD FLOOR
I was asleep, nearly. I’d gone to bed at 6am though I meant to be nursing a flu. Things needed doing and anyway I intended to convalesce until noon.

At 9am I had an unplanned call from a friend. I answered him vaguely, determined to resume my sleep. As I lay into my pillow I heard a very faint sound: banging noises, coming from far away.

“What IS that?” I wondered. Banging, buzzing. A continuous barrage. Was someone BANGING on my door? I listened until it could not have been anything else. I threw on a robe and went to answer. What did they WANT? I made my way to the door, noticing several curious smoky odors.

I opened the door to see a stranger heading back down the stairs. He tripped back as he spun to address me. I noticed quite a bit of smoke in the stairwell.

He shouted to me “Man, you’ve got to get out, the building next door is on fire!”

Probably I said “What?”

He repeated, quite excited “There’s a fire next door, you’ve got to get out!”

“Alright, alright. Calm down” I told him. Who was this stranger in my stairwell, on my side of a supposedly locked street level door?

“No problem” I assured him, “I’ll come down. Don’t worry. I’m the only one up here. ” He ran down as I closed the door.

As I walked around my place looking for something to wear, the smoke became much more pronounced. It was seeping up through the floor. I looked through the east windows but didn’t see anything. I put on the nearest clothes and grabbed a jacket and my camera to go investigate. If there was any kind of a fire wouldn’t I have heard fire trucks already? I descended the stairs, the smoke was getting bad. Hmm.

ON THE STREET
When I got to the street I saw Rusty and Steve standing on the corner next to a fire truck. When I reached them I saw there were four trucks already, maybe more. A crowd had assembled. Across the street I saw the stranger who had helped me.

It looked like a small fire inside the Glass Blowers Shop, smoke, no flames, and the firemen didn’t apear too excited. I took a couple of pictures and then my battery died. I hadn’t brought a spare.

I hadn’t grabbed my phone, my wallet or anything. Suddenly flames emerged from the roof of the small shops. The flames rose high against the east wall of the Waycott Building. Now I could tell the firemen weren’t going to let me back up. As the morning went on it became clear that there were going to be a lot of pictures of this fire.

ANXIETY
The initial inactivity of a number of the firemen, which I dismissed as their knowing-what-they-are-doing, turned out to be closer related to a lack of water. The nearby fire hydrant was found dry. “Why aren’t they spraying water?” my father asked. What began with a candle became a three alarm fire.

Worse than the feeling that not enough was being done, was when the firemen started running around, that’s when you’d begin to worry that the fire was about to pull ahead.

THE FIRE
The worrisome aspect for the Waycott Building was that the second floor entrance was acting much like an oven hood for the fire. We’d find later that the upper floors would serve as a smoke stack for this blaze.

We could see smoke escaping from second story windows left open on the west side of the building. I congratulated myself that the third floor windows were all closed, perhaps reducing the effect of a draft. Later I would lament that as a result all the smoke had nowhere to go. It thickened into every corner and soot simply piled unto itself.

We watched a team of firemen ascend to the second floor to keep the fire out. They had to cross the floor in total darkness. There was a rumor they’d gotten lost. They kept the fire from coming into the building. The water from their hoses accumulated in the Meadow Muffins basement.

I’d like to write more, about the third floor window frame catching fire, how the firemen had to knock it out and then had to probe into the ceiling to assure the fire hadn’t lept there. For now I better jump to the aftermath.

STEWARDSHIP
First a note about the fish.

When you’ve been in a fire, after the fire is out, you get to ask a firefighter to go fetch anything from inside which you might need until you are granted access yourself. Phone, checkbook, a change of clothes, keys. I had to draw a map of the floor plan and try to remember where each item might have last been mislaid. An interesting challenge.

Someone remembered the fish. Two angel fish and a tough little silver guy who’s survived bigger challenges. The tank water would have absorbed a lot of smoke.

The personal-items-retriever came back with everything, including the fish. They looked like they were having trouble but the fireman said the male angel had faught him off. A good sign or a last exertion that might prove fatal. Gianmichele and my father ran the bucket up the street to the aquarium store. But the poor fish didn’t recover.

A friend of mine once described the responsibility of owning a rare book or antique. In the end we are only its steward. A rare possession is ours to keep safe until we pass it on to another. A book is yours to read, to cherish, or resell at a profit if that’s what you’re doing. It’s not yours to destroy.

Looking upon the fire I didn’t feel like I’d been very responsible.

AFTERMATH
Thank you for the emails and calls of support. Yes, the servers were down, due to what Gianmichele labeled our pyrotechnical difficulties, thus emails were bouncing and the websites were not accessible.

I’m fine. I’m sure I would have been just fine, but I’m thankful that I was rousted by Bruce Reid at my door instead of facing firemen in gas masks coming through smoke toward my bed. That might have been too exciting.

The guys on the second floor didn’t fare very well. Their offices were damaged by the heat and smoke. Meadow Muffins will be closed for several weeks to repair the water and smoke damge. The First National Bank building which houses the Michael Garman businesses are facing similar repairs. And of course the building between us which housed four little craft stores is gone.

Comparatively the third floor suffered little damage. There is soot everywhere, whatever was face up is ruined, but the books in the curtained area seem to be unscathed, it appears they were screened from the smoke. Everything’s fine, relatively, just smelly.

How smelly is hard to say, after a while you can’t tell any difference. We’re laundering everything three times, but everywhere I visit I smell like I came back from sitting on the wrong side of a campfire.

Reprinted from Waycott Opera House.

Dear Vivendi

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TOONS 45 sleeve
On behalf of TOONS, a music and video store in Colorado Springs, I’m writing you to ask for your help to obtain the domain TOONS.COM, where many of our customers automatically presume to find us. Even friends try to email me there.

Your company has held the rights to TOONS.COM, although it is currently in expiration. We’ve learned that a cyber-squatter is poised to seize it and that is why you are uniquely capable of helping us.

TOONS has been in business since 1990 and we possess the trademark in Colorado. When in 1995 we sought the domain name we found it was already owned by JAMTV for their TUNES.COM website. As a phonetic surrogate, TOONS.COM was used to redirect surfers to TUNES.COM. Fair enough.

Later we notice that JAMTV has been absorbed into the EMUSIC empire and the TUNES site no longer exists. TUNES.COM now redirects to ROLLINGSTONE.COM, again a logical use, but TOONS.COM, perhaps because it is no longer phonetically relevant, is being abandoned.

Now that EMUSIC.COM, MP3.COM and ROLLINGSTONE.COM are all under the VIVENDI umbrella, we have been unsure as to who we might contact about the discarded domain.

TOONS can be found on the web at TOONSMUSIC.COM where we host a popular film website. We’d be most grateful to have TOONS.COM.