The Zblog
The ongoing chronicles of the journalist, novelist and psychologist Michael F.
Zangari.
The Narrative:
Entry for October 02, 2006, (Significant Rewrite) That Old Black Magic Has You
Under It's Spell
Wai’wai’ko’ko’ola.
That’s a crime.
As far as I know it's still on the Hawaiian books somewhere, buried in some dark
archive dust.
Wai'wai'ko'ko'ola, the law, is about sorcery for hire. It’s about the darkest kind of
sorcery. The kind that can often results in someone’s death. It is one of the few
crimes in Hawaii punishable by death. That’s relatively rare in Hawaiian law. Exile
or ostracism is far more common. That in and of itself can be deadly on any
island.
Sorcery is the ability to change reality by using words to bring about a
fundamental shift in perception. It is the ability to mold or shape public opinion
for or against someone by the use of lies and rumors. It is used to create and
replace reality, to create a group ken.
To really appreciate the power in this you have to spent time on an island.
It is a tight, interdependent community. Rumors rage out of control like wildfire.
They passed orally from person to person quickly and have the strength of
winter waves.
Imagine this: The coconut wireless. A near telepathic sharing of information
greatly enhanced by the volcanic magnetism of the islands mixed with the
negative ions of the trade winds and ocean. It is a lush blanket that covers and
condenses things into a real rut hut of intensities and pleasures. Senses are
peaked. Ideas take on sensual texture. All things become magical and real.
Polynesian culture is generally considered group oriented or communal. That
indicates a responsibility to the whole community, not the eradication of
individualism. People of skill are still valued as individuals, whether they fish or
heal or are great warriors.
This is the strength of the culture, a strong interdependence. But that is not what
I'm talking about here. I'm talking about a group mind, minds that fall into sync.
Timothy Leary and later the band of advertisers turned rock stars Devo, talked
about this. They said it was something that inevitably arises when minds begin
to mix in telepathic communion. It is a stage of evolution that returns us to where
we began. It is a return to herd behavior. It is a shared consensus reality so
intimate that it cause the population to herd like animals with the same union of
mind that causes the gazelles to turn as one in synchronicity and beauty. It's the
union that causes fishes to hover in schools and birds to vee and flip at the
same time in perfect formation. It's the force that makes fashion, popular tastes,
politics, religion and culture.
The 70-some year Berkley Study on Negative Ions says specifically, that an
abundance of negative ions amplifies thought.
Does that mean that you can hear thoughts in a high density negative ion
atmosphere?
On board ship it’s that way. Long time sailors talk about telepathy at sea. What
about on an island? The coconut wireless is a real thing.
Imagine this: A communal chat room somewhere on the Internet of the mind. A
place where people freely mixed based on like concerns and things in common,
mostly in dreams. With time, this mixing crosses the thresholds of waking and
dreaming, and becomes part of the mental chatter you hear every day. It's like
hearing your name whispered. When you here something that interests you,
you pay attention. You tune in. You become aware of something happening and
you track it.
I was out with a local friend once. To a local talent show. I was laughing about a
performance, and she nudged me. "Don't talk stink" she said. "You never know
who she might be related to in the audience."
Stink talk. Not wise in a small community with telepathy.
I left the health clinic in 1998 and entered an almost total isolation, sick and
unemployed. I began to tack things together for myself. I began to document
what had happened in a fanciful satire called “Aloha’s End.” This was a cyber-
novel that I sent out as email.
On day I was flipping through the pages of the Hawaiian Dictionary like I often
did, and the page fell open to the word "wai’wai’ko’ko’ola." The pages were filled
with "wai" words, a word that generally means water. Double it to wai wai and it
means money or goods for barter.
I looked at the word and considered it.
In the Judeo-Christian tradition the Ten Commandments are build on
interpersonal boundaries, that is the sacredness of privacy. The "thou shalt
nots" are based on minding to one’s own business. In maintaining an orientation
away from jealousy, envy and comparison, one could keep to the sacred, an
unwavering focus on God. Most of ancient law is the same way. As we moved
away from herd behavior toward individualization the most important thing was to
remain separate from the group mind. Why are these ten laws held sacred
above all other laws? I'd say to maintain a separateness from others.
The sleeping prophet Edgar Casey talked about the same problem in island
Atlantis. In that fabled city, the population had evolved quickly. They had built
brain machines that eliminated interpersonal privacy. They were telepathy
machines, like Patrick Flannigan's nuerophone. You could read the thoughts of
neighbors and put your thoughts into the heads of others. Flannigan's "amazing
little telepathy machine" (as he called it) raised the same questions. The issues
were simple and similar. What if people using the machines began running into
each other on the same frequencies? There was talk of a group etiquette.
People talked about a protocol around having sex and private moments. About
intrusiveness and ease dropping. They also talked about an entity named Zarg.
Someone or something, an entity that had gotten so loud in his telepathy as to
dominate those around him. Zarg had enormous presence and power to create
reality. As we use to say in radio engineering, the strongest signal dominates.
The loudest signal rules.
Casey said that in Atlantis, this was the reality that was quickly forming. When
the interpersonal boundaries went down, so did the island. A single thought
could destroy everything. In my FEMA training one of the aphorisms is "Wide
spread group panic is a myth." It's about rumor control. As Allan Ginsberg use
to say, the antidote to this is to give information. "Candor defeats paranoia" he
said. Still. Rumors can kill.
In 1998, the lawsuit had begun and so had the wai’wai’ko’ko’ola.
There were efforts to discredit me as a witness, of course. That's the name of
the game, but the game was no game. It got rough and tumbly quickly.
I remember what Monica Lewinski went through after her encounter with Bill
Clinton became public. Her computer was thrown open. Her poems and journals
were analyzed. Her health care history was ravaged. Every innuendo in the
books took on a level of reality that was far beyond any normal investigation that
I could remember. The spin doctors swarmed in like bees and buzzed.
It was a lot like Manuel Noriega’s red underwear in Panama.
When he was arrested, similar overkill was employed. He became suspect
because he wore red underwear and had a ready supply of pornography “at
hand.” Never mind his documented crimes.
I remember the military liaison waving his red underwear at the press. Literally.
As for myself, I felt ostracized and dirty. Like I was suddenly outside the
community.
For the first time in the decade I lived on the island I had time on my hands. I had
been working nonstop for 8 years. I did not have a single day of unemployment
the entire time I lived on the island. I was recruited to every job I had in Hawaii.
All of a sudden I couldn't’t get work.
My apartment was broken into and so was my girlfriend’s.
Our homes were bugged. Our medical files were stolen or copied.
Our privacy was a thing of the past. Or maybe it never really existed.
All I know is that in the twinkle of a star, my whole life had changed and the
devolution had begun. There was a linefeed into and out of my life.
I had entered the herd again, greatly amplified, Zarg like in my loudness.
Remember: If a willful act of black magic can destroy you in this tropical mind,
then a willful act of common sense and good will can also save you in the tight
community mind.
Entry for September 30, 2006 Hearts and Minds
Yesterday, September 30, 2006, 2:48:44 AM
I had an ultrasound today.
It was the third one in three months.
My cardiologist wants to know what exactly is going on. The ultrasounds keep
coming back normal. That’s not normal.
He said today that it’s a miraculous recovery story, like I’ve been to Lourdes
instead of his office.
I’ve put a lot of puzzle pieces into the puzzles he has on a table in his waiting
room, big 5,000 piece puzzles, but this one is not so much a puzzle to me. Of all
the things that have happened in the last decade, this one seems to be the most
solid.
I came to Florida in 2001, barely able to breath. I thought I had bronchitis. Over
the years I’ve contracted bronchitis when ever I’ve had to move. It’s predictable. I
imagine it has something to do with stress and the frequent moves I made
growing up in a military family.
I had a congestive heart failure building.
My injection rate was low enough to raise the immediate concern that I would not
survive. I was a heart transplant candidate according to every cardiologist who
dotted my chest with a stethoscope. My heart was enlarged. I could not stand up
to do the dishes and could not lie down without being in pain. I was sleeping like
an Indo-European mummy sitting up cross legged on the couch for minutes at a
time. I was exhausted.
I was hospitalized several times. I survived through good medication
management and constant care. On release I tried to put my life together. My
main problem was my energy level and clarity. I complained to my doctor about
this constantly. It was about quality the of life. It wasn't good enough.
My doctor, who has a very large practice and sees a lot of death, told me to be
glad to be alive. A lot of people weren’t.
I continued to do the research I’ve been doing my whole life, on cognition and
clarity, but now with a new motivation. I wanted to get back to zero. To be where
I was. What role did the heart play in cognition?
I learned that all oxygenation happens in the left ventricle of the heart. That's
where the red blood goes to be pumped to the brain. My best results in
increasing clarity over the years had been with taking stabilized oxygen
products. Increasing oxygen restored clarity. I used a suppliment called ribose
for a while with good results. Cardiologist were flooding the heart with ribose in
experiments. It seemed to get the nuerotransmitter content, particularly acytle
choline back up to normal.
I continued studying neuro-feedback and smart drugs, or nootropics. I met some
people also looking for answers. One was a psychiatrist battling the sudden
onset of a debilitating bipolar disorder. She had been put on Selegiline for her
depressive bouts.
Silegiline is FDA approved for Parkinson’s disease and depression, particularly
among diabetics. It is the first antidepressant to come in a patch form. It is also
used for stopping smoking and for other, nonspecific uses. For years it has been
touted as the best longevity drug on the market. It evidently slows or prevents
dementia, it heals damaged heart, liver and kidney tissue. It basically boosts the
production and retention of dopamine in the body. As a result it also boost sex
drive. In the early days, doctors had patients sign a document that their clients
would not engage in random sex. My friend summed it up this way, “My clit feels
like it weighs ten pounds.” She swears that she did not say this, that I’m hearing
things. It’s possible. My hearing is not as good as it was either.
As a therapist who works with sex I am of the opinion that this has more to do
with personal history then facts. I think most people can monitor and work with a
slight increase in libido. I also believe that normal doses are managable for most
people. I know some people are vulnerable to sex addiction.
Silegiline is not a controlled substance. It is not a narcotic. You can buy it as a
supplement in Europe. It costs about between forty-five and eighty-nine dollars
on the internet. It's easy to get in tablet and liquid form. The rules for importation
set by the United States govement are that you can have no more than a three
months supply in your procession at any one time. The dose is not specified, it is
suggested.
I ordered some. I liked the liquid better. It matabolized quicker. It takes
approximately four hours for the pills to get into the system. The most noticable
effect was a deep relaxation in the spine. I took it and I felt better. I was clearer,
and more energized.
Coincidence? Pacebo? I don’t know.
I gave my doctors all the research I could find, including the research coming out
of the School of Cardiaolgy in Rochester, New York. At the time they were
giving it to rats and the results with congestive heart failure were really good. It
was used for cardio-myopathy and recovery after a congestive heart failure.
The rats were doing well until killed for dissection. Silegiline was not so hot for
them in the long run. It is habit forming. One doctor said that if you start taking it
you will more than likly be on it for the rest of your life. As for me, within three
months I no longer had an enlarged heart, my heart murmur, which I’ve had
since birth, was not detectable, my blood pressure and heart beat were normal
for the first time in my life and I was horny. This last thing was not unusual. My
clarity and balance continued to get better. I was more relaxed overall. It was
about as stimulating as a cup of coffee. It made me a little drowsy initially, but as
it matabolized, things got better.
I started myself off at one milligram of the liquid. I am generally conservative
about drugs. I gradually, over the course of experiment, raised that dose to five
milligrams. I told my doctors what I was doing so they could track changes.
I eventually was given a prescription which has help off set the cost of
importation. I am closer now to a recommended, larger dose.
I continue to do well. My doctor continues to tell me that “it’s unexplainable.”
I know he means that it hasn’t been concretely explained yet.
I don’t care.
The health battles continue. What happens tomorrow happens tomorrow. Today
I’m doing pretty well. I wish everyone in similar circumstances was.
In terms of process, hacking is still a problem. You’ll note the text changes in the
body of these missives. Some items have been deleted, but for the most part
they concentrate on the syntax, punctuation and spelling. This is deadly for a
journalist trying to establish credibility. Today they would not let me online. The
modem was disabled. The power and control games continue. I may have to
start documenting those as well. If I do not post something everyday now, it is a
direct indication of exterior pressure. I’ve made that commitment to myself.
Visibility, and viability remain extremely important. I suggests that if you are really
interested in this site to get a line-feed in case it goes down. You won't miss
anything that way.
Entry for October 01, 2006 Seligiline Heart References
Selegiline attenuates cardiac oxidative stress and apoptosis in heart failure:
association with improvement of ... We have shown recently that selegiline
exerts a cardiac neuroprotective effect in chronic heart failure. ... effect in
chronic heart failure. Since selegiline has an antioxidant antiapoptotic ...
fractional shortening and dP/dt. Selegiline treatment in chronic heart failure
animals reduced ...www.medscape.com/medline/abstract/ 12586210 - 30k -
Cached - More from this site - Save
Selegiline improves cardiac sympathetic terminal function and beta -adrenergic
responsiveness in heart failure -- ... Am J Physiol Heart Circ Physiol 279: H1283-
H1290, 2000; 0363-6135/00 $5.00. This Article. Services. Google Scholar.
PubMed. Vol. ... Selegiline is a centrally acting sympatholytic agent with
neuroprotective properties. It also has been shown ... These actions of selegiline
may be beneficial in heart failure that is ...ajpheart.physiology.org/cgi/
content/full/279/3/H1283 - More from this site - Save
Selegiline improves cardiac sympathetic terminal function and beta -adrenergic
responsiveness in heart failure -- ... Am J Physiol Heart Circ Physiol 279: H1283-
H1290, 2000; 0363-6135/00 $5.00. This Article. Services. Google Scholar.
PubMed. Vol. 279, Issue 3, H1283-H1290, September 2000 ... Selegiline is a
centrally acting sympatholytic agent with neuroprotective properties. It also has
been shown ... These actions of selegiline may be beneficial in heart failure that
is ...ajpheart.physiology.org/cgi/ content/abstract/279/3/H1283 - More from this
site - Save
selegiline of Augusta, Georgia selegiline - University Health Care System of
Augusta, Georgia ... Cancer Caregiver Depression Diabetes Digestive Disorders
Heart Disease Kidney Disease Men's Health Parenting ... What is selegiline?
Selegiline is used to treat Parkinson's disease ...www.universityhealth.org/16907.
cfm - 71k - Cached - More from this site - Save
Sunday October 1, 2006 - 11:19am (EDT)
Previous Post: Entry for September 30, 2006 Hearts and Minds
Entry for September 28, 2006, A Domestic Terrorist Attack To A Federal Building
In Honolulu
Here's a second look at details arising from an unsafe situation at a children's
clinic in the heart of the Hawaiian community. Consider the details and the
speculation.
As I mentioned I was originally put in the office with the strongest smell coming
from the carpets. The room had the least ventilation. The only room that worse
was one closet where the toxins were so bad we were told not to go in it.
There wasn’t exactly a line outside the door. Still, it was kept locked and I never
saw anyone go inside it. The problems downstairs where the children’s clinic was
were twofold. The carpet was put in with the same noxious combination of
chemicals and carpet adhesive that was causing problems upstairs. It was
vaporized and melted by the steam cleaning that was meant to reduce the smell.
It seeped through the ceiling to the rooms below. At the time there were 600
children at the clinic. That number was expected to double in the coming ten
years.
My crisis programs were move upstairs away from the children’s team and my
colleagues on the team as things got crazier at the clinic.
My cognition got worse. People got testier. In the administration wing short term
memory loss, sensitivity to light and headaches were now common complaints.
Incidents of sick leave went up.
As I mentioned, because I was early for a management meeting, I had the
opportunity to read through a safety report on the clinic done by Aina
Environmental. I’m going to name the companies involved here for the purposes
of further research should anyone want to follow-up. As I said, the report had
been rewritten and condensed for the meeting. According to a clerk in
administration, there were as many as five rewrites of the report that he filed
personally. He said he read those reports, having a vested interest.
The dangers were clearly stated. The fumes from the Bigelow adhesive caused
blindness,heart, lung and liver damage and dementia. The course of decay took
about ten years. It ravaged the central nervous system. The combination of
chemicals (the Afta and the Etholglyconal) contributed to this destruction.
Still, we believed that the problem was resolved. Our bosses told us so, and that
was good enough. It was not on my mind when I left the clinic the night before
Thanksgiving in 1997. By the time the federally sponsored mediation rolled
around I was more concerned. It was also apparently very much on the mind of
the clinic. They were prepared to discuss it. The had a hazardous material list
waiting for me.
As I mentioned, the mediator read that list to me over the phone, and confirmed
the dangers during negotiations. The clinic had refused to release the
information to until I signed off on damages. He gave me the name of the
company that did the safety report.
Bigelow Nu Broadlock, the main chemical in question had lawsuits filed against it
in the previous year and was withdrawn from the market on the mainland.
Stockpiles were evidently dumped in Hawaii.
I researched it from there. References to it were already being reduced because
of gag orders on the settlements. The company that produced it sold the
chemical catalog as a result of litigation. If you research Bigelow Nu Broadlock
today, you’ll find a relatively harmless adhesive still on the market. That was not
the case in 1997-1998. At the time there was not much on the net, but there
were still Web sites dedicated to litigation. I educated myself and got mission.
If you dig deep enough you will find references to the chemical in paramilitary
blogs. It was evidently used to control Soviet Dissidents at one time, so great
was the impact on the brain and brain functioning. It must have been similar to
the No Pest Strips, the anti-fly googag that was coated with nerve gas and hung
in your kitchen in the 1970s. Remember? Or is that an oxymoran?
Digging deeper into building records, talking with the architect, Peter White and
Associates I got enough information to identify the company that put the carpet
in. I called Pacific Construction in Honolulu and asked what happened. The
owner was friendly and up front. “Let’s see” he said as he went through the file
cabinet looking for the papers. Pacific Construction is owned by the brother of
the then president of the board of directors at the clinic.
Again he read the Safe Materials and Hazards List to me, confirming the impact
of the chemicals if improperly used. We talked briefly about the construction
crew of temporary workers who did not use safety gear and mixed the chemicals
improperly. As you may recall, there was not enough of anyone chemical to
cover the entire clinic, they were mixed. I am enormously grateful to the
supervisor of the crew. If it were not for his courageous efforts to document what
happened, nobody would know about it at all. He refused to gloss over it in his
reports. As a result, there’s a record of what happened.
That these chemicals were commonly used in the construction of homes in the
Hawaiian Homelands for homesteaders is outrageous to me.
I’m not one to get bogged down by conspiracy theory. I am a bread and butter
kind of journalist. If you don’t have three sources on an investigative article, you
don’t have a story. You better have five independent sources. I’m that way as
well as a court certified expert. It’s not ok to just say so. You have to support
your opinion with the best available statistics and treatment outcomes. Then if
you are asked your opinion, you give it, from a clear point of view and you
cultural and clinical experience.
But there is also this:
The same chemicals were used to put in the carpets at the Federal Building in
Honolulu, with the same results. The source on this is the judge in my case,
Judge David Ezra who reported a decline in functionality and concerns about the
carpets in the judge’s chambers. The FBI office was also noxious when I was
there and I asked about the carpets. It was bad, the agent said.
Question: Does this indicate a domestic terrorist attack in 1997-1998?
Connections of these chemical adhesives to right wing paramilitary groups are
evidently established. It was bought up in great quantities. If I ever get a follow
up investigation I’d encourage the FBI to research in that area as well. It may
very well have been a subtle and long reaching attack on a Federal Building.
There are two other things that concern me. Records relating to my case may
have been destroyed in an apparent bombing of the FBI headquarters in
Honolulu in 1998 or 1999. This is a little known attack. There was a fire that
destroyed files. It was evidently set off by an incendiary device. The window was
blown out and the smoke pattern on the window spangled slightly, then burned in
an upwards direction. You could see the charred window and building for months
afterwards from the street.
And finally, in the last year, the secretary for the FBI in Honolulu was arrested for
being a mole. She evidently worked for organize crime and drug interests.
And still, the questions of the origins and purpose of the anthrax attack on me
in1998 persist.
If we don't ask the questions we will never get the answers.
Entry for September 26, 2006 Sometimes The Poison Choses You
As I debrief myself down from the last decade things fall into different patterns.
As a counseling psychologist who works with trauma I know this is inevitable.
Memories change with understanding. It’s a process.
As I look at recent news stories at National Public Radio and CBS News this week
talking about the five year anniversary of those anthrax attacks, I can’t help think
of the Globe and the people traumatized and killed in those attacks. And I think
of my own eight year anniversary of exposure. I have come across unconfirmed
reports of several other people receiving anthrax in 1997-98 in or connected to
Hawaii’s west side.
My mind spins on this. These attacks appear to be concentrated in one area.
They should be much easier to investigate.
It occurred to me today that the perpetrator or instigator of these crimes might
be connected to the mental health center as a client.
I am remembering the death row interviews with Timothy McVay this week, the
convicted bomber of the Federal Building in Oklahoma. He had quite a bit to say
about the recruitment of terrorists.
I have said in my novel, Aloha’s End that Hawaii is filled with pirates and
scallywags. Wai’ki’ki is filled with con artists. The west side of the island also
continues to collect people leaving all sorts of situations. Hawaii is farther away
geographically from every other place on earth. You can’t get farther away. On
the streets and bars you meet incredible women fleeing domestic violence and
stalking situations. You meet retired people who have lost everything and you
meet combat vets unable to go home. You meet military personnel and foreign
tourists.
It’s a human smorgasbord.
McVay’s statements match some things I’ve been told in passing by people.
One former organized crime hood who retired in Wai’anae told me, that one
thing that crime organizations commonly do is to have their workers diagnosed
as mentally ill. In that manner they get disability and have a visible means of
support. They are then free to accept assignments and to move about freely. In
some cases, he said, the bosses assume guardianship and control the purse
strings as insurance. In this manner, they can extort them into doing jobs.
He also claimed to have Alquida training. (Prior to 9-11 I had never heard of the
terrorist organization.)
He said that the networked offered technology and computer skills training in
exchange for membership. He said people in his community often got Alquida
training. They were in it for the equipment and the technology.
Like everything else that has happened this auras out to be another puzzle
piece on the table. Is it the right piece for the right puzzle?
That’s a very good question.
Tuesday September 26, 2006 - 07:24pm (EDT) Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Entry for September 26, 2006 A Historical Digression
The clinic was build at the base of a volcanic rise on the leeward side of the
island. In the cliffs above, there are caves in which the bones of the ka’i, or
ancestors are said to have been interned. Or, at one time they were. There are
more beer cans then bones up there now.
It is a skinny strip of land that is the only access point to the coast. The trip in
from Honolulu is a long stretch up the west side of the island. It’s dry. Generally
speaking, it looks poor from a rental car crowded along the highway, dense in
terms of old wooden buildings and public housing. The truth is that it is a mixed
community, ethnically and economically.
Your A Triple A tourist guide will tell you not to go there.
They say there is a high crime rate and that the trip is dangerous.
This is the same message that people have been getting for centuries.
In ancient times the west side was known as the poor side of the island. There
was not a lot of water. The people that lived there, at the gateway to the coast
were called Na’na’ku’li, or the dumb people. They did not speak, supposedly
because of shame. They had nothing to offer a visitor. Not even water.
Up the coast was the winter enclave of the A’li’i, the royalty.
This was a secret.
It is more likely that the Na’na’ku’li were the first line of security for intruders. This
is a sacred trust. Hawaiian families have been keepers of secrets for generations
out of necessity, to protect a savaged and endangered culture. Better to say
nothing, then to speak to strangers.
Up the coast is Wai’ana’e, the mentioned bridge of land that the clinic is built on,
a tiny transgression of land that leads to the rest of the coast. The Ma’ka’ha
Valley is where the a’li’I wintered.
Ma’ka’ha was know as “a place of outlaws.”
Not far beyond was the city of refuge where criminals and defeated warriors were
exiled. It was a place of intense military training.
It was not a place one took a rental car.
As true as these things might have been, and the record indicates they are true,
you can see the subtle propaganda line that keeps people away from the coast.
People still do it, and it works. There are those who would prefer to keep the
country the country, to dissuade development and tourists from coming there.
The strip of land that the clinic is built on is a vital piece of land. As mentioned,
there is no other access to the coast unless you go over through the mountains
to get there.
In 1898, the year my grandparent came to the United States seeking freedom,
the monarchy of Hawai’i was overthrown by a contingency of business people
who seized power.
The Queen was captured immediately, choosing not to shed Hawaiian blood in
resistance to an overwhelming force.
Her husband, an Italian man in origin, a kanaka Italia, was at the summer palace
in Makaha at the time. With a small contingent of Hawaiian volunteers he began
the march up the coast to provide resistance and rescue the queen. They were
stopped in Wai’a’nae, at that same tiny strip of land. The army was captured and
imprisoned.
That tiny strip of land, the entrance to the coast, the burial place of kings and
the last battle site was turned into a garbage dump. Later, I am told, the land was
used to bury toxic wastes in an effort to bring money into the community.
I don’t know if that is true or not, but it is not something that is talked about if true.
If not, it certainly is an interesting continuation of the ideal of protection, of
holding the sacred by silence or deception.
On this site, the mental health clinic was built. The land belongs to the Hawaiian
people.
The building belongs to the board of directors and the incorporation they serve.
Attribution for this page: Much of the history on this page comes from my
conversations with people from Wai'anae. I have read a variety of historical
narratives. If you do a search on the history of the Wai'anae Coast you will come
up with similar and solid histories. Not much is written about John Dominus. The
oral tradition is facinating. Much information on the revolution has been trusted
to family members of the people arrested with John Dominus. Not much of it has
been written down. Hawaiian culture has recorded its history in dance and in the
detail of first person stories handed down in families. You have to remember that
the Hawaiian language was outlawed after the revolution. For more than one
reason. You could have your tongue cut out for speaking Hawaiian. It was
against the law to name your child a Hawaiian name. This law was still on the
books in the early 1960s. I know families whose granmothers and great
grandmothers went to prison for naming their children Hawaiian names. These
stories and others have not been documented to the degree they need to be.
The sanitized history of Hawaii gains a lot of depth when you talk to Hawaiian
families and look at archive photos of the time. I prefer conversations in
traditional Hawaiian style to the written sagas for the most part. Queen
Li'li'o'ku'lani wrote a history of Hawaii that is certainly worth reading. I encourage
you to do your own research if interested.
Who do you think is responsible for the stakeout and harassment at this site and
at my home?
The NSA
0 Organized Crime
0 The Mental Health Clinic
0 A Terrorist Organization
0 The FBI
0 The CIA
0 Men'e'hu'ne
1 Sign in to vote Entry for September 25, 2006 A Choice Of Blog Sites
Please Note:
I've added a blog-site narrative page to my Web Site
http://zangarijournalism.com. There is nothing on the page except for the text
portion of this narrative.
It will be much easier to print from there.
In terms of the blog narrative I will be organizing the archive site as to topic and
date as time permits. Right now it is reverse chronological order, like the blog
itself.
To date there have been 452 visits to this blog. I'd like to increase that.
The main Web page has about 1,000 visits for the month. Visibility is extremely
important in terms of safety issues. If you think this project is worth while, please
pass the site on to friends and let them know what I am attempting to do.
What is that?
Document my last three years in Hawaii.
To talk about what happened there.
To document an anthrax attack and a lost federal lawsuit involving a toxic
environment at a children's mental health clinic.
To discuss events that appear to be connected to the terrorist attack known as 9-
11.
This narrative serves as a back-drop to the writing of the cyber novel Aloha's
End. Aloha's End is a fun, romantic satire set in contemporary Hawaii. There is a
lot of local history and religion in the piece. I will be talking more about what
happened around the writing of it as it becomes time to republish and update the
piece. This thing drops like a bomb and explodes into a rollicking time piece in
the next few weeks. It should be very entertaining. It was popular in it's time.
Thank you for Visiting the Site.
Tomorrow I will pick up where I left off as things get increasingly dangerous for
me in Hawaii. I'm nervous about writing it. I tell you the truth. Like a lot of possible
9-11 survivors and other survivors of violent crimes and terrorist attacks I fear
reprisals. I'll continue to talk about lawsuit issues and autobiographical material
in the body of the narrative. The five year anniversary of the attack has hit hard.
I am sharper around issues, as public opinion surfaces. Over 30 per cent of
Americans believe that there is much more to this attack than has been
revealed. There is a real desire for resolve on the resolvable issues. My heart
and mind is with survivors, and other witnesses. I am particularly concerned
about the health, welfare and freedom of primary and secondary witnesses. My
own situation would indicate that the pressures around containing them are
great. And at a great cost on a personal and national scale. If you know of any
witness or survivor sites that you feel need greater visability, please feel free to
post them or contact me at michael_zangari@yahoo.com.
The blog site continues to be hacked, as does the journalism archives. At this
writing the blog site has been hit. I have no control over font color, spelling or
format. Those functions have been deleted.
The countdown to Aloha's End begins now...
Entry for September 25, 2006 A Poison for your thoughts Permanent Link | 0
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Entry
for September 24, 2006 A Poison For Your Thoughts
“Far away in the heavenly abode of the great God Indra, there is a wonderful net
which has been hung by some cunning artificer in such a manner that it
stretches out infinitely in all directions. In accordance with the extravagant tastes
of deities, the artificer has hung a single glittering jewel in each eye of the net,
and since the net itself is infinite in dimension, the jewels are infinite in number.
There hang the jewels, glittering like stars of the first magnitude, a wonderful
sight to behold. If we now arbitrarily select one of these jewels for inspection and
look closely at it, we will discover that in its polished surface there are reflected
all the other jewels in the net, infinite in number. Not only that, but each of the
jewels reflected in this one jewel is also reflecting all the other jewels, so that
there is an infinite reflecting process occurring. The Hua-yen school has been
fond of this image, mentioned many times in its literature, because it symbolizes
a cosmos in which there is an infinitely repeated interrelationship among all the
members of the cosmos. This relationship is said to be one of simultaneous
mutual identity and mutual inter-causality.” Cook, 1977, Princeton.
The Flower Garland Sutra or Lie Sutra is a punctuation mark in a vast,
untranslated and destroyed scripture of Hua-yen Buddhism. It is the foundation
of one of the most intimate psychologies in history. It is the study of the moment
to moment genesis of thoughts, impulses, emotions and actions. Life is so
valued and love so prevalent that it an obligation to be a witness to all, and to
use the information gained, no matter how painful or joyous it might be to relieve
suffering. It is important to come to an understanding, or awareness in our life
time that will aid others in doing the same. You can translate that what ever
religion you are. It is about the interdependence of things. How one thing is
connected to others things, and how this relationship defines who we are. So
interconnected are things that there is no one thing responsible for any event.
The daisy chain of events, the garland of events extends in all directions at all
times in a vast, unknowable unity of form and passing of forms.
In other words, It beats the hell out of me why things happen the way they do. All
I know is there must be a reason for all of it. Everything serves. Live and learn
above all. Or as my Dad told me early on, “Keep your eye on the ball.” My mom’s
most offered advice is the same. “Pick a lane and stay in it.”
It seems that meditation and toxic chemicals have impacted me in the same way.
I am in an eternal present-tense. And so it was in 1998 when the envelope of
anthrax arrived in my mailbox in from Nigeria. I am still feeling the impact of that
gram or so of white powder in my life today, eight years later.
Somewhere in the haze of those months, I remember this:
There was a soft knock on my door.
I had been sleeping. I slept a lot. I got up, dressed and went to the door.
When I opened it, my former boss, the one whose job it was to fire me, stood in
an altogether human stance, small and shaken. He was crying.
“I shouldn’t have done it” he sobbed.
I stood there with him for several seconds, confused.
And then softly, shut the door.
I never saw him again.
It was not out of maliciousness or anger that I shut the door.
It was out of a sense of the purely surreal. I was overwhelmed. I had
experienced similar states at other times in my life, a vestige of autism and ADD,
that when over stimulated, I shut down. And so it was. I was in LuLu land.
I wrote a song about working with him shortly after that and have remembered
him in that song. In part it goes, “I was under his command in LuLu land….”
He had been fired a few months after me.
He was an interesting guy that I unfortunately never got to know. He was a jazz
drummer and knew all the greats of his generation. He knew and played with
Charlie Parker and John Coltrane. He had shared their vices as well. His partner
was my direct supervisor.
At the party that welcomed him I heard this story about him.
He grew up on the streets.
He was not born in the USA.
He was Eastern European. As a young boy he had come over to this country on
a trawler with a cold war spy, as a cover of sorts. They had transited through the
Panama Canal.
At that same party, a board of director member talked about his connections to
radical groups in Palestine. He was a member of the Indigenous Peoples
Committee of the United Nation. The committee was not recognized by the United
States. Though he had no formal charge from the Hawaiian People, he
represented the Hawaiian people in Switzerland at a committee meeting there.
This was a major historical move. He met and became friends with Yassar Arafat.
He was treated like Hawaiian Royalty. He loved the diplomatic circles and
diplomatic life. He found things in common with the struggle of the Palestinian
people and others in attendance as well. He sharpened his awareness of
Hawaiians as a group entity. He did not at that time recognize the right of Israel
to exist.
I sat at their table. Not by invitation, but because I was pulled there like a
magnetic go-cart. I ate my cake and listened.
I had spent a lot of time with his niece. I was a student of his writing and
teaching. I had read everything he had ever written. I had seen some of his
lectures. This information and stance on Israel was new to me. I did not agree. I
had learned about the psychological “Stages of Radicalization” that arose from
the African American community in the 1960s from a Japanese American friend
in grad school, at my internship at Colorado State University. Her friend and her,
who said they were from San Francisco (I knew at the time she was from Hawaii
and her father was a national political figure. She was disguising her identity for
security reasons. )
The board of director member, talked about passing through the same stages.
He said he went through the same stages, and listed them. He said there was a
time period where he favored violent change as an alternative to more traditional
political action. He said he thought about bombing buildings.
This was cocktail party talk.
It was nothing secret or unknown. He had said the same things in public lectures.
The agency had just built a new building and received massive grant money
from the federal government. It was a CASP grant.
CASP money had been siphoned off this grant immediately after receiving it and
socked away to pay for his taxes in the in the event of Federal prosecution. He
had refused, as a Native Hawaiian, to pay taxes, viewing himself, and other
Hawaiians as unwilling citizens in a conquered country. He did not pay his taxes
out of the slush fund.
Later, other monies were dedicated beyond contract requirements.
“For black bag jobs for the CIA,” joked the new director.
Later, his niece went on an extended trip through Polynesia. She told me she
picked up a large sum of money from a Marshal Islands bank account and
transferred it to the Philippines for her uncle.
Me? I filed the information in the back of my mind.
It was several years later after being anathraxed and poisoned that these things
surfaced again.
There was a second and a third attempt on my life.
A large amount of codeine or some other narcotic was place in a can of Coca
Cola in my refrigerator. I took one sip and put it down. The smell was strong. I
got groggy quickly and fell across my bed. 48 hours later I woke up. If I had
taken more than one sip or had drained the can I'd probably be dead. If one of
my step children had taken the Coke they more than likely would not have
survived. More of the drug showed up in a pot of chili I had made for their dinner.
We dumped it. I called the police and turned samples of the drugged Coke over
to them. The investigating officer reluctantly took one of the cans (there were
two) and dusted the condo for prints at my request.
In walking autistic shock, as usual, it was noted Buddha like and filed in my mind.
It passed into memory with everything else that was happening. One thing after
another. Things were moving like an Indiana Jones movie. The big boulder was
rolling towards me and I was running from it. In slow motion.
The terrorist event known as 9-11 was still three years away.
The nightmare for me had just begun.
Sunday September 24, 2006 - 11:43am (EDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0
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Entry for September 23, 2006 The Poison within the Poison
In 1998-1999, the flood of information about the chemicals in the carpet and the
horrific effects on the body washed over my world. Everything that had come
before was swept away in the putrid overload. I was swimming desperately to
stay afloat. The only thing I found to cling to in the deluge was the federal court
process and the novel I was working on. I hung on to my word processor like a
life jacket while computer after computer was hacked and destroyed. One of the
things that was back-pocketed was the envelope of talcum powder from Nigeria.
Without FBI follow-up, I skittered off this bizarre incident into the infinitely crazy
world of litigation. It was in a dimension I had never imagined existed. It was like
some crazy chess game with a dizzying list of rules moderating every thought of
movement. It was a place where you could not talk, even to correct mistakes so
blatant that flashed like neon bozo nose on the face of what was happening. My
lawyer, post stroke, screwed up. My transcripts were stolen. My EEOC file
disappeared. On two occasions my girlfriend and I woke up to a dog being
tortured to death outside our bedroom window at midnight. The apartment was
broken into to.
My mind settled into a narcotic like puddle where everything blended like
pudding mix and oil.
How exactly were these events related?
I was getting sicker.
Was it the anthrax or the chemicals?
Was it the electricity?
The circuits in my girl friends house were clearly crossed.
The house was hot-boxed and under some kind of surveillance.
I kept thinking about what I had learned on the sugar cane plantations, back
when there were sugarcane plantations. The Russian Extraterrestrial (or so they
said) and electrical genius Nikolai Tesla had been hired by the Hawaiian Royalty
to electrify Hawaii. The royal palace was electrified before the White House in the
United States. The literacy rate was also higher than it was in our own country.
That was just prior to the overthrow of the monarchy.
While Tesla was there, the plantations also hired him. You can see the
transformers he designed for the plantations workers homes in plantation
museums there. Usually without explanation.
The second and third generations’ accounts of the plantation workers are that
the houses of the time were wired up in a crude reward/punishment mode. The
positive effects were sexual. The negative effects were aggressive and painful.
The spine would bristle under extreme electrical exposure. We experienced that.
My eight year relationship broke apart under the pressure.
The anthrax issue became just a puzzle piece.
Tomorrow, I’ll talk about the other puzzle pieces. And the terrorist event known
as 9/11.
Saturday September 23, 2006 - 06:33am (EDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link |
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Entry for September 22, 2006, Poison Choices2 No Ask, No Tell
The second red flag ran chills up my spine.
I think it was the grammar.
There was a clause in the termination agreement that said in part: "Employee
shall make no reference, allusion, or allegation of any wrongdoing against
employer in any public media or privately."
Under executive order and my sworn oath as a deputized federal marshal my
obligation to report all illegal activities supersedes all other considerations,
especially when there is a possibility of a clear and present danger. It is clear
how present that possibility of danger is. Failure to report is punishable by at
least a year in jail and a 10,000 dollar fine At least it was the last time I checked.
That’s a hefty time in the can and quite a chunk of change for a spineless,
morally reprobated act like participating in a safety cover-up at a clinic that
services children, families and disabled people. But not hefty enough.
After the Enron scandal, I am of the opinion that public corruption should be
viewed as a form of domestic terrorism. At the government level, that’s treason
of the highest kind. That is betraying office and public trust. The reforms
recommended by George W. Bush via his executive ordered committee on this
issue triples fines and punishments for this kind of thing, as it should. It should
be law instead of ideal.
If anyone at that clinic is directly responsible for any of this, from the cutting of
corners on construction to the covering up of dangerous circumstances arising
from construction. They should be held accountable for their actions and people
should be compensated for the medical problems and life style changes that
have happened as a result.
Two of my friends and coworkers have died since that time. Maybe more. I am
only recently well enough to consider these things in perspective. What has
happened since? I don’t know.
I have done my best to document what happened.
It may very well be up to someone else to update facts.
Friday September 22, 2006 - 01:02am (EDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0
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Entry for September 21, 2006 Poison Choices Con't
I know this is no fun.
It will be.
I promise.
I feel an obligation to my clients and the people I worked with to give a full
accounting of what happened before I left Hawaii. I want them to know about how
I left and what I found out before I went. For all I know the material I left behind
with friends got distributed and people have added their own information to mine.
Maybe were all still in the dark, literally, with the impact of these chemicals on the
eyes.
It is my deepest hope that the survivors are being taken care of.
There was heavy litigation around the Bigelow Nu Broadlock carpet adhesive. As
a result, information on the product line, its legality and its impact on the human
body has been severely limited on the Internet to prevent further litigation.
The mediator read the data sheet on the main chemicals to me over the phone. I
followed up. I don't remember what exactly I found out. I do know that the product
was made by a major chemical company like Du Pont. I also know they sold their
stock in the product after it became a liability. Someone else evidently could
make a profit from it.
I left in the middle of a tsunami after a hurricane after an earthquake after a
flood.
Things were crazy. Like many people forced to leave Hawaii I had to leave
everything behind. That's why the thrift stores are so good there. It's disaster
packing for a lot of people. And it usually happens around the ten year point of
entry. In territorial law (made invalid by statehood in 1949) it was the law that
after ten years in Hawaii, all protection of law stopped. And the newcomer was
game for slaughter. The sexual assaults that happened after that point are
legendary. The horror stories are many. Is this ten year point arbitrary or a
linage remainder or territorial law? I can't tell you anymore than that.
At any rate, thats what happened.
Sick and without income I lost everything I had.
As far as the chemicals and the clinic go, It’s an interesting comment on the
priorities that rule these things.
It’s the same old story.
It’s money before human safety.
The E Pluribus Unum blues. Out of the many, the one, ultimately.
It’s the selfish little pig-glut called profit.
Thursday September 21, 2006 - 10:55am (EDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link |
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Entry for September 20, 2006 A Choice of Poisons3
It takes approximately ten years for the combination of chemicals used to gum
the carpet in at the mental health clinic to impact the human body.
Wednesday September 20, 2006 - 02:16am (EDT) Edit
Entry for September 18, 2006 The Bird Cage (Second Edit)
As distasteful as it is, you learn quickly about disability issues when your world is
limited by physical or psychological barriers.
It’s not about disability. It’s about ability. I had to learn the basic skills I needed to
cope with my situation. Most of that was establishing habit and doing fine
adjustments on things like motor skills, fatigue and focus. The psychological
brick-a-bract, the self esteem issues, the desire to fit in, and the courage to go
after the things I wanted soon followed. For my personality type there’s nothing
quite as motivating as someone telling me that I can’t do something or that I am
not good enough to do something. That really that winds my key.
By far the most difficult things for me to adjust to were the limits that other people
put on me. That had always been the case. But it becomes much more familiar
when you are disabled. Statistically, in the work place, a disabled person will
typically out perform an able person when basic needs are accommodated.
There are millions of disabled people who work and are not accommodated. If
you are disabled you must stay in your place. If you do well, you incur animosity.
Almost certainly your disability will be viewed by some as an advantage. You
become recognizable as different. Social isolation is common. The challenges
that some people face are far greater than what other people face but you must
never, I repeat never compare disabilities. As Cervantes, the man that wrote
“The Man of Lamancha” wrote, “comparisons are odious.”
Every person’s situation is unique, and uniquely painful. I stayed busy. When I
got back from the hospital in San Antonio, I hit the ground running. I was active
in the church choir. I played in bands. I became the president of the Catholic
Youth Organization and became Student Council President. I slept a lot. I’d be in
bed right after dinner on nights when I had nothing to do. My bed was between
two huge speakers from the first stereo built in the 1960s. The dial glowed green
and threw weird shadows against the wall. I listened to KRCB in Council Bluff
Iowa, and had vivid dreams of working there. I occasionally listened to KFMQ in
Lincoln.
I had managed to cope most of my life with my situation. It was a dreamy
existence. Because of the autism, I had developed a keen hyper-focus. I was
very present tense when I was oriented. When I wasn’t it was like being
drugged. It had taken me eight years to get my B.A. The hypersomnia was bad.
I slept all the time. In the mid nineties it became obvious that I would have a
difficult time establishing and maintaining a career with my limits. It had taken me
that long to develop the skill to see my limitations.
I saw a doctor for a consult and was tagged with the diagnosis Attention Deficit
Disorder Residual. I had never had any other psychological diagnosis tagged
onto me before except for PTSD. I was put on cognitive enhancers. The Doc
gave me Ritalin at first which I couldn’t stand. It made me feel high all the time.
The first hour you shit like a duck and smelled like pee. It milks peak
experiences. I was already hyper-present. For the first week I talked fast. It
caused great muscle tension. That’s why kids don’t like it. I developed a strong
compassion for special need kids that I had not fully engaged before. I began
looking for solutions.
I ended up on Dexedrine and Aderil alternatively. In the interim I looked for other
solutions. I applied for a grant to get biofeedback equipment at the clinic and
succeeded. At a very primitive level I began to learn about nuerofeedback.
Nuerofeedback works for me now as does various forms of oxygen
enhancement. It is in fact, nuerofeedback is statistically, more effective than
psycho stimulants alone. In some cases it is even more effective without. I
ditched the speed.
Psycho stimulants played their role. Some people need them. Despite the
liabilities of taking the drugs on a daily basis it worked for me. I woke up. I was
able to maintain wakefulness. My whole world opened up. I ended up in program
management.
I was getting more assertive with what I needed to succeed and more self aware
of my liabilities. My immediate boss offered me two solutions when I got
promoted. I was told I could work at home, when I needed to. This was essential
for curriculum development, and I was allowed to take breaks when I needed
them. This became an issue after about an hour of intensive work. I knew I
assimilated information better verbally than in a written form so I asked to be
briefed on important issues and not over stimulated. These few things provided
a clear road to success for my pilot programs. We stayed on task and successful
for three years. She had enabled me to succeed.
These simple things also provided a road map on how to sabotage my success.
The disabilities contract signed by my supervisor and countersigned by the
director of the clinic was admitted as evidence.
This is how that happened.
The ADA specifies that an older worker must be informed a week in advance
when a termination contract is presented. The over 40 workers is allowed to
review the contract in advance in a situation conducive to understanding it. It is
acknowledged by the federal government that reestablishing a career after the
age of 40 is extremely difficult. In a sense, it is regarded as a disability, and
covered by disability laws. Management is required to inform the worker get a
lawyer and that lawyer needs to be present at any termination meeting. None of
the legal protocol was followed. I was surprised with the contract and asked to
read and sign it on the spot. I was double teamed by two senior management
people who traded rapid fire accusations and threats as I tried to read the
contract. The meeting lasted well over an hour.
Hawaii has an "at will" law, meaning that essentially you can fire anyone at
anytime for any reason. These elaborate maneuvers were not needed. I could
have been fired outright.
It was under these circumstances that I refused to resign. I was fired and left
after signing a contract. I knew it was not binding, but it released my paycheck
and expedited unemployment insurance. With the termination contract tucked
into my pocket I left. It was the night before Thanksgiving, 1997. My girl friend
and I returned that night with a senior management official and we cleaned out
my office. I left everything in order, including the books I had bought out of
pocket for the program.
In a most shameful act I was not allowed to terminate with clients, one of which
committed suicide shortly after I left. Nobody knew what had happened to me.
The foster parents I supervised had asked for a Ho’o’pono’pono ceremony
which is how Native Hawaiians traditionally problem solved difficult family
situations. They were promised this ceremony. It never happened. It was in this
manner I left one of the most important positions in my career. It was a job that
was more than a job. It was a charge by the Hawaiian community to serve there.
Something I took very seriously. Seriously enough to stand my ground as it was
ripped out from under me.
It was the popping of yet another bubble in the bigger picture, a red flag over
something not quite right. My cognition was deteriorating.
Monday September 18, 2006 - 07:44pm (EDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 5
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Entry for September 17, 2006 The elephant again...
In the Kurt Vonnegut novel “Sirens of Titan,” Malachi Constance, the main
character is kidnapped and imprisoned on Titan, one of the moons of Mars. He
is forced to endure mind control and is made to march in the army of Mars. Of
his experience Malachi Constance said “I was a victim of a series of accidents.
As are we all.”
I have been a pinball most of my life. Shot into space in a random trajectory, I
have fallen against electronic bumpers and rebounded into maze tunnels that
spit me out for ten points, or lofted me gently between the flippers into another
blank start against the plunger. There have certainly been contributing factors
along the way. The hip. The number of beers. The song on the jukebox or the
sensitivity to tilt. But to this day, I’ve tried to play it the way it fell. With varying
degrees of success. As have we all.
I was born with a heart murmur which impacted the way the left hemisphere of my
heart pounded. In this case, it beat weakly. The blood picks up oxygen in the left
hemisphere of the heart and pinballs it to the brain, which impacts cognition. The
lower levels of oxygen have made me hypersomnic most of my life. I sleep a lot.
Even when I am awake. It was observed in school early on that I was probably
autistic. Later I was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder. Show me a child
with significant cognitive difficulties and I'll show you a heart murmur. or heart
defect.
I had to teach myself to write. I didn’t learn it in school.
I was basically “in a world of my own,” as my mother is fond of saying, until about
sixth grade when I started watching Johnny Carson and I discovered stand up
comedy. I gave it a shot in class with solid results. I was bofo from the back of the
room and had an indulgent teacher who laughed at my jokes. She rode a pinball
to the Marshall Islands mid term, and the incoming teacher was a tougher
audience. By that time my fate had shifted courses.
I learned my first lesson about success in entertainment industry in the seventh
grade. I was had just come from a successful year run in sixth grade. I was
ready for a bigger venue. Entering seventh grade I discovered I had to do it all
over again. My prior success in a small pond did not transfer. Nobody knew who I
was in the big school. I didn’t look right. I didn’t smell right. I was not accepted
immediately by everyone. I was nobody and not particularly welcome. I was still a
fish in a pond. A very big pond.
Two years later I was diagnosed with scoliosis. This was a rare bone disease in
males that made the spine twist into a “s” curve. I leaned to the right like the
tower in Pisa. Most of my female friends who had the disease had their spines
fused as a mandatory treatment. The males got back braces without the surgery.
I was told that I would have to wear a brace.
In those years, the brace fit like a bird cage with a harmonica rack up under the
chin.
Nobody knew what happened to me.
I was whisked off to a hospital in San Antonio Texas to be fitted in the hardware.
My father was in the Air Force.
I rode a military medical evacuation plane away from home, laying in a stretcher
carried by medics into the airplane. I took the ride flat on my back, suspended
from cables from the roof of the airplane. I was in a state of shock.
Reroute, the snow began to fall. It became a blizzard. Conditions were bleak and
the plane was forced down in Denver where we were to wait the storm out before
continuing on to Texas.
As it happened, the only place for me to stay in Denver was the Fitzsimmons
Army Medical Facility. This was at the peak of the Viet Nam conflict. The
casualties were so heavy that they had to screen in the lanai that circled the
hospital and turn in into one long ward where the amputees arrived from the
battlefields for treatment. I was placed in this ward for several days. I was the
only person in this endless ward who had not lost a limb. The wounds were so
fresh that they were still bleeding. The norm was a bloody bandage over a
severed limb or mangled face. I was 14.
Sunday September 17, 2006 - 07:30am (EDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0
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Entry for September 11, 2006 A Choice Of Poisons2
The safety report from the environmental company was in the tray of the fax
machine. It began to dial. The numbers toned out like the numbers on the keno
machine. I had found the report that the agency refused to release. They were
sending it to me. Then the owner walked in and killed the call. “I have to get
permission from the agency before I can give this to you” he said.
My heart went down with the phone receiver.
There was still time to do research at the city and county buildings permit library.
I had already been to the lieutenant governors office. I had spent time with my
congress people from Hawaii and Florida. I had talked to the police and the FBI. I
had been to OSHA and the Health Department.
At the peak darkness of the valley of the shadow, sick and on my own, I headed
for the bus stop. I no longer had gas money. The two hour ride to Honolulu was
wildly disorienting. A group of ethnically Filipinos recited the rosary in the back
where I was, in the horseshoe of seats where the kids and working people
grouped at the end of the day. Kids with headphones on sang along with their
mp3 players. The scenery slipped by in a haze of colors as the sunlight and
shadows strobed the windows.
Sometimes people would talk around me, to each other, but giving me
information I needed about the clinic and what was going on. Disheveled and
confused I met a group of clients from the adult team who knew who I was and
what I was doing. They too fed me information.
I had come up with the name of the architect and the name of the construction
company that had built the clinic and put in the carpet. I interviewed the key
people. The architect told me that he had only used “green” materials in his
plans. There were no toxins. He said the agency had cut corners to save money.
They had not put in the elevator for the disabled. Upstairs there was a door that
led into an empty shaft. In the darkness you would see the cables loop the
pulleys and drop to the bottom floor. Raw sewage came through the shower
nozzle in the basement of the clinic. Something was wrong with the septic tank.
I talked to the owner of the construction company that built the clinic. He told me
exactly what they had done.
The carpet was never meant to be glued in, he said. It was supposed to be
tacked in. The chemicals in question, Bigelow Nu-Broadlock, Afta P and BM and
Ethoglyconol were mixed to stretch them out. There wasn’t enough of the glue to
cover the clinic. The combination of chemicals ate the backing off the carpet
adding another layer of toxic stink to the swamp gas that inundated the clinic.
The inexperienced crew tried to get rid of the smell. The did the one thing they
should not have done. They attempted to steam clean the carpets. The steam
continued to fuse the chemicals into a toxic bomb. A dangerous situation got
more dangerous.
In talking to my peers on the bus, many of whom were at the clinic in those first
weeks, I found out that the clinic had been a disaster site. One of the people who
I talked with worked in the office at the time. He said his job was to file the safety
reports as they were rewritten. He counted five drafts. He described the office as
a place of total pandemonium. The fumes were so strong that the administrative
staff had to take a breaks every fifteen minutes to keep working. People were
passing out as they worked. Big fans were brought in to keep the air circulating
in the office. People were beginning to have major memory and cognition
problems. Still, the denial was as thick as the fumes. The clinic stayed open and
business ran as usual.
The Afta P and BM were a controlled substance. These chemicals were often
used to make methamphetamine. The information Web Sites on the chemicals
were monitored. The clinic had stockpiled a supply in a closet downstairs.
People were known to drink the green bile for its high, an amphetamine like buzz
that ended in rage and extreme muscle tension as it wore off. It also made you
keenly paranoid.
The Bigelow Nu-Broadlock had been banned in the continental United States,
but as was typical, was available in Hawaii for a reduced price. It was like the
Depo-Provera they were giving local women for birth control at the local clinics. It
was banned everywhere in the United States except Hawaii. It was cheap and
available on the Leeward side of the island.
The federal government had dumped these well intentioned, huge lump sum
grants on the poorest communities. The money was usually channeled into local
people’s hands who had never had any significant money available to them in
their lifetimes. Frequently there were community shenanigans nation wide
around the money, how it was spent and by whom.
It would have been better for everyone if the money had been performance
based instead of pork barreled out. As it was, the large sum of money available
must have tempted even the strong in that small community.
In court I fought for the release of documents to document what had happened.
Later, I fought for the intervention of the attorney generals office in the case to
obtain information.
Nothing worked.
In fact nothing could have worked in those circumstances. My papers weren’t
filed on time. There was no case. Why it dragged on for two years is a mystery to
me. How I kept it alive in the state I was in is even a bigger mystery.
I am grateful to my federal marshal peers for keeping me laughing at the
courthouse and the support of the federal clerks in the courts main office for
keeping me on time and straight with my efforts. I thank the Hawaiian people I
met there, who as individuals and families continue to fight for the land that was
stolen from the over a hundred years ago. There example, as always was very
sustaining for me.
I am thankful to individual plaintiffs, many of whom were women fighting sexual
assault and harassment cases for their company and companionship.
My treks to federal court at dawn to drop papers in the box are an experience I’ll
never forget. Getting there meant going down the coast at sunup, driving or
riding besides the raging pacific ocean as it crashed into the reef line near the
highway. Then, after I made it into town and through Chinatown and outdoor
markets I get to the citadel of the federal building. Winding my way in I’d find the
filing box outside the door of the court. The machine stamped the documents,
took them and dropped them in a box that resembled the crane and pebble
machines with the teddy bears and rings in the supermarkets.
In 2001 my physical condition was at a point where I could no longer work or
sustain myself in Hawaii. I left for Florida in January, where I had a massive
congestive heart failure. I was told I needed a heart transplant. My focus and
orientation shifted from the lawsuit to staying alive.
By the time the Supreme Court had bounced my petition out of court I was no
longer heavily involved with the outcome of the case. I had a narrative that read
like horror and spy fiction. Dutifully I continued to hack the memorandums out
until there was nothing left to say and no recourse to law.
Though I could not stand up to do the dishes or lay down to sleep, my breathing
was so labored, I started to take the steps I needed to take for to survive. And I
did.
Thank God almighty for my family.
And my obstinacy.
And the willful, living spirit of my Buddhism that helped me let go of all of it and
watch the dark until the sun came up.
When the daylight flickered on the horizon I was still there.
Monday September 11, 2006 - 11:19pm (EDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0
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Entry for September 10, 2006 A Choice Of Poisons
Let’s keep it relevant.
In terms of fact there is nothing new here. Everything mentioned in these next
few posts can be found in the text and content of Federal Lawsuit No. 03-15367,
Lower Court No 00-99-0072 DAE-KSC. The information here was filed as
evidence. The lawsuit was filed in Honolulu, Hawaii, in the 9th Circuit Court. It
progressed to the Supreme Court of the 9th Circuit in San Francisco where I
officially lost the case.
It was not a total loss. The decision reaffirmed that I was guilty of “no
misconduct” in terms of how I left my position as a manager in a federally funded
program. I was given unemployment insurance. The defendant admitted in
summary judgment arguments there were toxins in the work environment and
that there was a “possibility” of exposure. This was good. In terms of OSHA
reporting that’s all that’s required for further action. I reported it.
During this time period the OSHA investigators were denied access to the
property to conduct tests.
I had done what I set out to do. I had entered evidence into the public record for
later investigation. I felt an obligation to my clients, my friends, my coworkers and
my clients to do so.
Why did I lose?
In short, my lawyer failed to file on time. As a point of fact no evidence was
heard. As I have mentioned, before, I had an admission from the clinic that there
were toxins in the building. I had gotten this confirmation in mediation and in
court by the opposition. I had a termination contract that was clearly illegal under
the ADA. I had a mandate under executive order to report all crimes. I had
financial discrepancies documented. Some of missing money came directly from
my salary. That amounted to about $10,000 a year. The clinic had no
insurance per Se. They had a million dollar slush fund held in reserve in case of
liability. Insurance had been denied.
Everything was in place.
As my financial resources dwindled, I could no longer justify borrowing money for
a lawyer. After I lost the summary judgment I took on the case myself. I ended
up representing myself. I felt more in control. Over all, the process was more
satisfying. I learned a lot about the courts. I had motivation to do more
investigation while the case dragged on. It was another year before I had
exhausted lower court options.
As stated, my goal was simply to document what happened. I was very sick by
this time. I remember the absolute low point as being after a consult with my
lawyer in Honolulu. On the way back from the meeting I could not find my car in
the parking structure. I was in a state of profound physical and mental
exhaustion. The parking garage looked like a slaughterhouse, a long series of
multi-leveled mazes with stalls. I wandered from floor to floor in confusion. It took
me two and a half hours to find the car.
I was in tears by the time I found it. It was sitting right where I left it. My memory
was shot. My cognition was weak. Breathing was very difficult. I looked terrible. I
had to count pennies from my change bank to pay for parking and gas. It was a
thirty mile drive back home in rush hour traffic. It was like going from one maze
into another.
How the hell did I get there?
Clearly the end of my employment was death-knelled by a visitation of Federal
Monitors in 1997. I worked under CASP grant at a mental health agency. I had
excellent evaluations. I ran two pilot projects on the Leeward coast. One program
was a therapeutic foster care program and the other provided in-home intensive
therapy for families in crisis. I worked with kids. I was not prepared by
management as to what to discuss at this meeting. I was not told what to say or
not to say to the monitors. I was on my own. That’s the way it usually was. So I
put together a culturally appropriate presentation and answered their questions.
I brought clients and employees in to be available for the monitors.
One of my foster parents, a Native Hawaiian women chanted. The prayer was
O’ he'emai. It was a prayer to “be heard,” for the federal monitors to "hear our
cry.”
I viewed this as an opportunity to tweak Federal involvement. I thought that was
what it was all about. The monitors wanted to know about problems. I told them
that I had no access to budget information and little or no supervision. I pretty
much ran the program on my own. I didn’t like the home intensive model. I felt it
was culturally inappropriate and not as effective as a less intensive intervention.
The monitors appreciated our candor.
I got a good mention and write up in the federal monitors report on the Leeward
Coast of O’ahu in 1997. The report is available from the Health Department in
Washington D.C.
It felt good. We felt good. I cared deeply about what I was doing as did the
people who worked for me and the clients we served. I was committed to the
community and to working in Hawaii. After all, I lived in the community I worked in.
Management, however, was livid.
I got my budget and supervision. A casual examination of the budget was
enough to tell me that the figures did not crunch. I had rewritten the RFP for
funding that year for the state. I spent about twenty hours nonstop editing the
thing. I got very familiar with how things were set up. It wasn’t right. Things were
getting increasingly uncomfortable at work. In the lawsuit I made the allegation
that management used every trick in the book to get me to quit from that point
on. Their tactics, according to my affidavit, involved racist jokes, attacks on my
religion and violations of my disabilities contract with the agency.
There were other concrete legal issues.
We were working in a brand new building. It was built on ceded land granted to
the agency by the Office of Hawaiian Affairs. The agency was responsible for the
building. OHA retained control of the land. There were clear care taker issues as
well.
In the previous year, the administrative staff had moved into the building. The
clinical staff soon followed. I was placed in a small office in the Children’s section
of the clinic. It was the room that was the least ventilated in the complex. I of
course had my faithful negative ion generators going at full blast. I spent a lot of
time on the carpet with the kids. I was newly in love and happy with my job.
I was usually the first person to arrive at management meetings on Monday
mornings. On one particular morning, one of the administrators had already
arrived and was setting up equipment. He had with him a safety report on the
building. He told me I could read it. As he fiddled with his laptop and projector, I
did. It stated that the carpet had been installed wrong and there were toxic fumes
in the building. They had run short of the adhesive used to hold it in place and
had mixed chemicals. The resulting fumes were extremely dangerous. It listed
some of the results of exposure to the fumes as blindness, dementia, liver,
kidney, brain, and lung and heart damage.
One of the administrators, the grant writer, had gone to her doctor to get details
on what these chemicals did to the human body and forced the issue in the
management meeting. She was very concerned. She left the agency shortly
afterwards. Administrative staff talked about the impact on the carpet workers
who glued the carpet in. They were temporary workers hired for the job, local
people. They were very sick. In the meeting we were assured that everything
was under control and the situation could be effectively dealt with by “leaving the
windows open” over a couple of weekends, letting the place air out. They
passed the report around.
We accept this information at face value. But it nagged at me. It still does.
Things had gone from good to bad overnight. When I was fired I filed a
complaint with the EEOC. The agency did not cooperate with the EEOC
investigators. They provided none of the requested documents. They did
provide a copy of the termination agreement. The EEOC agent spotted the ADA
problems immediately. We went into a federal mediation sponsored by the
EEOC.
As we entered this phase of the negotiations, I was feeling increasingly sick. I
wondered if my illness was connected to exposure to the toxins in the clinic. I had
also received the anthrax filled letter from Nigeria. Things were going wrong with
my body.
In mediation the management was prepared in advance to talk about toxins.
They had a version of the safety report with them. It was used as a bargaining
chip in negotiations. If I settled, I would get the medical information I needed to
seek treatment. I was offered a small sum of money for settlement and
references. I considered it. In a fit of consciousness, the mediator provided the
names of the chemicals to me on the phone. He also provided the name of the
company that did the safety report. He had a strong ethical base and a federal
obligation under law to do so. It was enough information to keep me going.
I felt like I was being held hostage for medical information. I filed the lawsuit.
The EEOC signed off and promptly lost all records pertaining to the case. They
were obligated to retain them until the legal process had completed. To date, the
whereabouts of those files remains a mystery.
I was truly and completely on my own.
Sunday September 10, 2006 - 03:47pm (EDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0
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Entry for September 09, 2006 A Slight Digression
I went to high school in Bellevue Nebraska. In the summer I did Ag work one
year. I detasseled corn in 110 degree weather. Not for very long though. I came
home exhausted and wrung out. One day I got separated from the rest of the
crew I was working with. Up ahead as far as I could see was the muddy row and
the corn towering above and arcing over my head. In back of me the same
infinite tunnel of corn. I broke into a blind panic and began to run. I tripped, and
tumbled face down into the mud, regaining my senses. It was a satori of sorts, an
awakening of something deep inside of me. A nameless dread. The next summer
I worked as a janitor for the school system. I worked at a little elementary school
with an elderly man who seldom spoke to me. He listened to easy listening radio
station KFOR. I remember the haunting, ascending electric piano of Stevie
Wonder on "You are the sunshine of my life" all summer long, the chills that
tingled up my spine when the piano hit G# and twinged the central nervous
system. I was lost in a dream, pushing my mop bucket down the long empty
hallways. The next year I started selling records and stereos at the Brandies
department store. That's where by chance I met radio announcer Jimmy O'Neill.
Jimmy O'Neill was working at WOW in Omaha. He was famous. He had been the
host of the ground breaking 1960s show Shindig on TV. I use to watch him in
Spanish when I lived in Puerto Rico. I watched him work intensely on the phone
doing a remote for the store. He gestured fanatically as he delivered the
commercial. He enunciated every word. Boxed with the consonants. He literally
shook when he talked he was so intense. He was as kinetic as hell even planted
in the corner of the record shop. Between stop sets I asked him how to get into
radio. I wanted to do what he did. I was already shaking. He told me I should go
to the Columbia School of Broadcasting in Kansas City. I almost went. I got the
catalog. I got some broadcast training in a special program in high school. I had
decided that I wanted to be on the radio. That much I knew. I played guitar in the
church choir. I played in a USO band. I played in a basement band called Queen
Anne's Revenge which morphed into Grunt. I spent all my time playing guitar and
piano. Don Fawn, a friend and guitar player in all those incarnation contacted
me recently. He has a tape of us playing Carl Perkins’s "Honey Don't." I didn’t.
We played the state prison once. We got paid in cake. Another job one night
promised real cash. It was at a church dance somewhere out in the country. We
climbed into the van and did the dance. When it came time to be paid, the
minister scratched his head and shrugged his shoulders. He mumbled bible
words. We didn't get cash. We got a carton of hot dogs and a case of Orange
Crush. We drove the van to the local drive in and watched "Fritz the Cat" from
the back of the open van. All night we gorged ourselves on the best hot dogs
and orange soda I ever had. We had it made. That is my work experience,
summed up in three stories. I was still playing guitar and singing in a weak voice
when I went to college. It was a big part of my self image and identity. The Italian
blues kid. I sought out opportunities to play. At the Centennial education
program, Jeff Table let me sit in with his bands, Crumbhunger and the
Permanent Waves. Ric Marsh, my advisor and friend tolerated my lack of focus,
timing and pitch and jammed with me. At the University one night I went solo. I
played did a night in a little coffee house in the student union. It was big time.
And truly awful. I decided that night that I would never be a great performer.
Music went from 100% of my life to zero overnight. I decided to write instead. I
got hired by the Daily Nebraskan in 1975.Vince Boucher was the editor at that
time. I could write music and art pretty well. I was groomed to replace the star
writer of that time, Dave Wood. My parents moved to Florida that year, leaving
me at school in Lincoln. I started off at the University of Nebraska majoring in
Journalism and Political Science. I was in the School of Broadcasting where I was
told by the head of the department that there was something wrong with my
voice. I didn't sound like anybody else there. I didn't have the pipes. My
instructor sent me off to a doctor to get the vocal nodes sliced off my vocal
chords like deli baloney. After the doctor stuck a mirror down my throat and
noodled around for awhile, I passed on the operation. Despite the alleged
grunge in my throat I carried on. I did OK in broadcast news and photography. I
did good interviews and framed things well. I learned my base radio skills on the
air at KRNU, the University of Nebraska radio station. A friend of my brothers,
Dennis Dorgherty, who was the resident manager at my dorm, knew Doug
Agnew, the station manager at KFMQ. He was the son of Steve Agnew, the
owner of the progressive rock station. Dennis got me an interview. He knew they
were desperate for an overnight personality. They had just lost their night
announcer. Doug was going down to the station with a case of beer and a
couple of friends to keep the station on the air. He usually shut it down by 3 a.m.
They hired me for the midnight shift. I didn't have the pipes, but I was the first
one in my class to get a radio job. Steve Agnew, the extraordinary air personality
and engineer hired me. They told me not to talk. Maybe it was the uncut baloney
on my vocal cords, I don't know. I do know I ended up talking anyway. They let
me. I played good sets and segued records really well. Roger Agnew, who had
the best radio voice I ever heard, got me up to speed. He said they had hired
someone from California to come and take over, but after he got to the station I
could do weekends. He told me to have a good time. I was sad, but exhilarated to
be on the air at all. I was working seven days a week, midnight to six in the
morning. The guy from California finally arrived. He got off a bus in the middle of
the night and came down to the station. It was over just like that. Or so I thought.
It turned out that he had a few problems. He was at the station 24 hours a day
telling people how to cut commercials, how to run the station, and what music to
play and how to be on the air. He had all the signs of someone with a strong
PTSD. He drank all the time. He didn't sleep. He couldn't stand to be alone. He
was locked into his anger. He was a control freak. They fired him and hired me. I
continued to work seven days a week. I'd sleep two hours in the morning and get
up and go write and edit for the Daily Nebraskan. The fired guy called me a
couple times a night. I could not get him off the phone. He said he didn't want me
to get fired like he did. He’d tell me how to survive. He started off friendly and got
increasingly hostile. He broke into the station one night drunk. And stole records.
He threatened to castrate me. I was getting to the point where I was carrying
empty coke bottles into the parking lot in case I needed something to defend
myself. As Senator Dave Landis said, "a coke bottle, now there's the weapon of
choice." Dave did a jazz show on the weekends. David Kappy, Captain Classics,
the guy who did the weekend classical show agreed. I finally told the program
director and the station called the police. It turns out he had just gotten out of
prison for assault and did not want to go back. That was my introduction to radio.
KFMQ was a one hundred and fifty watt station, one of the last in the country.
The big ones were usually a hundred thousand watts. What you would call a
stick station. We covered a tri-state area, and sometime were heard as far away
as Canada and Wyoming. I was there for ten years. That is my fourth and final
telling work tale.
I left ten years later to the day I was hired.
That was my work experience going into grad school. I worked in a library, built a
bridge, washed dishes, managed a gift shop, and was a file clerk and a
telephone operator.
I worked as an audio tech for work study. I sold what I wrote.
That’s what I learned from work.
Nothing could prepare me for the year 1997.
ZBlog
The ongoing chronicles of the journalist, novelist and psychologist Michael F.
Zangari.
Entry for September 08, 2006 How the elephant got into my pajamas
Photo by Fred Rackle
Post card from the condo.
Caption: "Located in scenic Makaha Valley, these 586 luxurious apartments
equipped with central air-conditioning and cable T.V. are immediately adjacent to
two eighteen hole championship golf courses. Swimming and surfing at famous
Makaha Beach are within walking distance."
Despite a somewhat notorious civil rights history in the 1960s, the condos
attracted a variety of people. It is filled with retirees and newlyweds. Built on a
spot sacred to the Hawaiian Royalty. It is said that the buildings are haunted and
cursed by the amakua of those kapuna who came before. The condos have
survived mudslides and shifting real estate prices and still captivate the mind
and spirit. It is a holy spot. Despite the curses. The view is killer. The condos are
surrounded on three sides by Volcanic Mountains that crumble like German
chocolate. About three hundred wild goats live up there. There are waterfalls
that cascade behind the condos in the winter. They are generally followed by
mud. Peacocks parade the idyllic. Down the valley two miles is the ocean.
The cable lanes that ties the condos together is a subject of some speculation.
Exactly how private are these condos? What kind of intrigues fills this place?
The famous have stood at the railing and looked down the valley at the rising
moon. Are there spies lurking about? Did the population of the two entire
buildings narrowly escape eradication in 1998 by an anthrax attack from a
foreign power? Its' a wild tale indeed. "A ripping good tale" as Earnest
Hemmingway wrote. But let’s start here. 1998.
Prelude
Let me review what I know to be true.
In the late summer or early fall of 1998 I received a letter from Nigeria.
The letter was a type-written document. The body of the letter was an attempt to
recruit me to set up a bank account. It offered a base fund of $150,000. I was
not to touch the money in the account but could have the interest accrued on an
interest baring account.
In the folds of the letter was a little more than a gram of white powder.
I called the FBI immediately. In a phone interview with the FBI agent (who did not
identify himself) the agent said that the letter was of a type that he was receiving
reports on. The letter was similar to letters received by others. It was regarded
as a scam. The unidentified white powder was most likely talcum powder. Talcum
powder, he explained, was used to obscure finger prints.
In the previous decade, the first cases of anthrax exposure in 50 years had been
reported in the United States. There had been fatalities. The anthrax was of a
weapons grade, stolen from a secure government facility. The accused
perpetrator was an employee of the facility, who evidently smuggled the anthrax
out of the facility. The first cases were apparently random mailings. One of the
victims, an elderly woman, is perplexing. The victims in Vero Beach, employees
of the Globe Newspaper in Vero Beach, are evidently more explainable. The
Globe is a Pulitzer Prize winning newspaper which does investigative reporting. I
believe it also does stories on tea parties with aliens. It is what my mother would
call a “scandal sheet.” The current issue has the following headlines:
HILLARY ATTACKS BILL’S SECRET LOVER. HE FORCES HILLARY INTO SEX
THERAPY.
JACKO WAS FRAMED
BRAD AND ANGELINA MOVING IN TOGETHER
KENNY CHESNEY’S OTHER WOMAN REVEALED
The magazine describes itself as publishing “true life stories and fun.”
Their Web Site is http://www.globemagazine.com/
It is clear that these individuals were highly traumatized by their experience and
have researched what happened extensively.
The incident itself is more explainable. No one likes journalists.
According to my cardiologist, who was informed on the initial attack, the weapons
grade anthrax was lethal within a couple of seconds.
In short, a typical knowledge of such exposure would indicate that this powder
was not of the same variety of anthrax in those initial attacks. It came from
outside the country. All known cases of anthrax exposure originated in the United
States, with stolen United States government-issue anthrax as a likely source of
contamination.
According to the 70 year old Berkley study on negative ions, as well as standard
operational procedures for medical and research facilities, negative ions contain
or kill anthrax. The following site is by no means definitive, but it is simplified to a
degree that you can quickly absorb the information. It will give you enough
grounding to do further research. http://www.superforce.com/
I lived in a high-density, negative ion infused environment. I had two high density
negative ion generators going full blast for seven years prior to the getting the
letter. I lived in a controlled, air conditioned environment. The floors space was
of a studio type.
It consisted of a single room condo, a hall way, and a two chambered bath and
dressing room. It was inter-connected to nineteen or twenty floors of other
occupied condos.
The FBI agent had me fax a copy of the letter and the envelope to him. I had to
remove the white powder from the envelope in order to do this. No sample of the
white powder was collected.
So what happened to the letter?
I was working at radio station KCCN AM at the time. A newswoman, Mandy
Armstrong, was interested in what had happened. She later became the News
Director on the FM side of the band. I gave the letter to her. I don’t remember if
there was powder in the envelope or not. We can assume that there was some
residue in the envelope. I’ll attempt to call Mandy today to find out if there is
additional information.
I got progressively sicker, culminating in a congestive heart failure. I almost died.
Organ damage was such that a heart transplant was recommended for my
survival. I am currently on 100% disability for toxic exposure and well.
That’s another story.
Is there another explanation for the illness? That’s next.
Alternative speculation as to the nature of the crime:
It is a frequent organized crime and espionage tactic to create the appearance
of a pattern crime with many victims. It is used to mask specific crimes. In this
way the whys of the crime can be covered up. Attacks appear to be part of a
random splattering of violence or criminal aggression. It’s explainable by a wider
pattern of events.
If so, why was I targeted? To what end?
Was I meant to be disabled by a lower quality anthrax exposure?
Was the offer based on truth?
Is there a link to a financial network, or “battle funds” set up for unnamed parties
to pull on while remaining anonymous?
I was out of work. I was engaged in a Federal Lawsuit against my former
employer.
I was economically vulnerable. That vulnerability was increased by an increasing
inability to work and isolation.
The plot, as it is unfolded like the letter from Nigeria.
In the folds of the letter is the unknown white powder of whys, whose and
whereas. Contained in it is the spore of events that set the next seven years in
motion.
These are the known facts of these events as I know them. I do for swear it.
Addendum:
What is anthrax?
Anthrax, named after the Greek word for coal because of the dark skin lesions it
causes, is a caused by the Bacillus anthracis bacterium. Spores can exist in the
soil for years and, herbivores such as cattle, sheep and goats are most likely to
become infected while grazing. Human cases are rare.
How dangerous is it?
The bug can infect humans through a cut on the skin, more rarely by inhalation
of spores or, even more rarely, by eating infected meat. Inhaling spores in
sufficient numbers is likely to lead to death, although early antibiotics can reduce
the risk. Ingested anthrax is similarly deadly, but more than 80 per cent of those
with a skin infection survive.
What are the symptoms?
Generally feeling unwell with a flu-like illness and breathing difficulties are the
early signs of inhaled anthrax. Skin infections cause an itchy, inflamed pimple
that turns into a blister with extensive swelling. Several days later this turns into
an ulcer with the classic black marks.
Can it spread between humans?
Anthrax does not spread person-to-person, although there have been extremely
rare reports of skin infections apparently transferring from one person to
another.
Related topic
· Anthrax
http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=1490
Friday September 8, 2006 - 07:40am (EDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0
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Entry for September 07, 2006 The Confession
I really like hyphens.
Its not AP style.
But I really like hyphens.
I'm going to use them on my Web Site.
The hacking has intensified significantly. I have a few things to do this week for
the site.
I am adding some articles written in Lincoln, Nebraska. They'll be a few more
columns from the Daily Nebraskan and some art reviews. I look at these articles
from the 70s and 80s with awe. They are very dense, free form and
conversational. These are funny, up-beat narratives they were very popular in
their time. I'll also be adding some articles heavily influenced by the time I spent
in the Women's Studies Department. I took a lot of classes over there, nestled in
the bosom of the English Department. I also spent some time with people from
the Women's Resource Center. You can see at least one of the threads that
weave through my work. A strong anti-sexual assault stance.
"Aloha's End" is near.
It will follow a brief narrative from my federal lawsuit. As I've mentioned, this
reads like fast journalism. It's accurate to the t.
I'm amazed I was able to do what I did, as sick as I was.
Its' tangentially connected to everything that follows, through 9-11 and the ashes.
Stay tuned......
I'll do my best to stay on-line., It may be a battle.
Thursday September 7, 2006 - 08:11am (EDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0
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The return Of "Aloha's End"
Because of the interactiveness of the Web, the cyber-novel "Aloha's End"
became more of a place then a piece of fiction for people. It had a lazy Hawaiian
atmosphere with the spazz of danger and romance.
That is always inherent for me in a lull.
Even in mediation, waiting for the pop of the next thought.
It's not unlike the undercurrents in the South, "Aloha's End."
There's a history. In Florida particularly, where calm on the surface can mean
heavy currents below. That's certainly the truth in the Pacific. (A strange name
for a turgid sea. The Pacific.)
"Aloha's End" is a funny, action adventure with topical as well as tropical over-
tones. It's a spy book. Kinda. Romance and Intrigue up the wazoo (he says) plus
the glycerin of the ongoing.
The synopsis? A broadcast journalist, code named TrueWest (based on the
Sam Shepard comment and play title that "there is no such thing as true west")
comes to a lush tropical paradise to investigate the whereabouts of a guy named
"Duck." Whose small radio station can be heard periodically along the psychic
airwaves world-wide. He pops in like intuition.
Unnamed parties are trying to discredit him. And have gone a little over board in
their attempts to tarnish his reputation and keep him from witnessing in a federal
investigation. As a result, a long secret organization of monks has decided that
he might be the Antichrist, and are also hot on his trail...
It's still Gonzo.
Based of the loosest of facts, paranoia and delusion. The base for all great
American fiction and journalism.
As always, the hacking is a problem. This week the focus is on preventing me
from getting work, and continued messing with my prose and spelling. As a result
they've changed my master's degree from psychology to "master in arts." I
haven’t been able to change it back. On line application interference has the
sites and the appropriate career information. Isolation is still the agenda, as is
economic pressure.
It's not unlike the tattle-tale of "Aloha's End..."
Monday September 4, 2006 - 12:07pm (EDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0
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Entry for September 01, 2006: One long, blue blow
It’s 4:30 Friday morning.
I’ve been working all night tacking together the Web Site. I’ve put up some
Florida Today articles. The printed versions are a lot shorter than the ones I
wrote so I edited them and put up the originals. It's interesting to me the kinds of
mistakes I made in these articles and the mistakes my editors made. They are all
errors of detail. Yes detail.
So what’s next for this wheel inside a wheel?
I need to talk a little about the Federal Lawsuit I was involved in. Why? Because
there is one thing left undone. That is simply providing a public record of the
interviews I did while trying to find out what had happened that last year at the
clinic. It needs to be done for those without the ability to track events. It may
make a difference in their health care situation.
I hope to post the narratives from the appeal. It reads fairly well. Not quite what
Earnest Hemmingway would call "a ripping good tale," but interesting. The
chronology of events read like journalism. I'm amazed at what I was able to do
even when I was sick. There must be an autopilot.
I had the same goals in mind when I threw my cyber-novel “Aloha’s End” on line
in 1998. I wanted to try and document the events of that year in a way that made
sense. Sometimes you can say more in fiction than you can in fact. It was gonzo
as hell. So when I tell you this thing I'm going to tell you believe it: Any
resemblence to any person or event living or dead, past or present is purely
coincidental.
I'd be scared poopless to talk about the truth.
Poopless.
The Aloha's End Web Site was the scene of some fierce cyber battles to keep
the site up and untampered with. It was a lot like the air combat over Great
Britain in World War Two. I still don't know who some of the main players were.
But there was a lot of luck and a lot of skill involved. The novel itself was popular
enough to draw in a diverse and regular group of people, each working their
separate agendas. It was a hot bed. Great for synthesis and creativity. It was
interactive. And that made it very edgey. I had an interesting international
following that included strong support in Japan as Japanese tourists stumbled
onto the site looking for Hawaiian travel bargains and places to go.
It must have seemed a lot like King Kong's island at first.
I’m thinking about running the parts of the novel that people have salvaged for
me over the years. My dad’s efforts to save it have been very key in patching it
together. Not for the first or last time I thank him.
Thanks Dad.
I’ll run it as filler between commentary.
I still have a few things to say about Jon Benet Ramsey’s murder.
I wasn’t wrong about things this last go round. I may lay out my scenario on this
as well.
There’s no joy in it for me.
I’ve observed that someone is deleting comments from the blog and possibly my
email before I get a chance to read them. I believe my calls are getting
intercepted and messages blanked. There is no privacy in my current situation. It’
s a free for all. I worry about job offers and other attempts to communicate.
Keeping me isolation has been the main agenda of my stalkers in the last eight
years. Illness has certainly played a role in that.
But I’m apparently back. It's good to be here. Thanks for the support.
=z=
Friday September 1, 2006 - 04:15am (EDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0
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Entry for August 29, 2006 Resume for Michael F. Zangari M.A.
I think I'm posting this for credibility, if nothing else. The story of my anthrax
exposure is in the last posting, directly below this one. It's silliness really. If you
are hit by a car are you more credible in your description of the accident if you
are a lawyer than a homeless person?
*Note the Changing Font. That's the hackers at work.
Michael F. Zangari M.A.
michael_zangari@yahoo.com
(321) 259-9578
(321) 960-3788
Clinical and Management Experience
1999-2001 Ala Ka’i Na Keiki, Honolulu Hawaii: Independent contractor providing
in school and at home outreach therapy for children and families in crisis.
1994-1997 The Waianae Coast Community Mental Health Center, Hale
Na’au Pono, Wai’anae, Hawaii. Outreach therapy for children and families in
crisis. Manager under Federal CASP grants for pilot programs in intensive crisis
management and localized foster homes. Developed biofeedback program for
anger and stress management.
1991-1994 Parents Anonymous of Hawaii (Now P.A.R.E.N.T.S), Kaneohe,
Hawaii. Parenting Group Facilitator and Outreach Crisis Counseling island wide.
1991-19 1991-1994 The Wai’anae Coast Community Health Center, Wai’
anae Hawaii. Counselor and group facilitator for survivors of sexual assault.
Manager, Sex Offender Treatment Program. Pilot project under Hawaii Paroling
Authority to develop community treatment for sex offenders. Group facilitator and
counselor.
1990 222001 Denver Victim Service Center, Denver Colorado. Crisis
counselor for crime victims. Pilot Project Manager under Federal Grant to set up
groups for crime victims citywide.
1989- 1990- -2001 Boulder County Mental Health, Boulder Colorado.
Rape Crisis Team. Certified Rape Crisis Counselor. Dispatcher. Facilitator, Male
Survivor Group.
19198 1988-1989 Colorado State University, University Mental Health
Clinic, Ft. Collins Colorado. Clinical internship. Counselor at the University
Mental Health Clinic.
Other C Certifications:
Court C Court Certified Expert in Sex Abuse and Family Therapy. Deputized
Federal Marshal. FEMA trained in critical incident debriefing and crisis
management. Qualified for the highest reimbursement category for M.A. level
therapists in Hawaii for state sponsored medical insurance. Certified Rape Crisis
Counselor. Hawaii Paroling Authority Trained For Sex Offender Treatment
This resume represents the time I have spent as a counseling psychologist. I am
also a free lance journalist and novelist. I have worked for over thirty years in the
broadcast and print medium. I do seminars on a variety of psychology and health
care issues as well as performance art around my novels. I took a wild shot at
stand up comedy. Newspaper and magazine articles are available on line at http:
//zangarijournalism.com Audio and video tapes are available on request.
ZBlog
The ongoing chronicles of the journalist, novelist and psychologist Michael F.
Zangari.
Entry for August 28, 2006
If you’ve been following this little tag match between the blog and the Web Site
you know that I survived a 1998 attempt on my life. At least I think that’s what it
was. I have theorized that who ever did it may have been trying to disable me.
Why? So I’d be financially strapped and available for wild money making
schemes of a nefarious nature. I’ve been detailing some of the events that led
to that fateful moment when I slit the envelope open with my finger nail and
peered into it. It was as heavy as a dirty diaper and shook like a maraca. The
letter was post marked and stamped in Nigeria. In the folds of the letter was
about a gram of white powder. I left most of it in the envelope as I eased the
letter out.
I opened it and read the manual type writer written page.
It said that if I opened an account for an unnamed person with about $150,000 I
could keep the interest on an interest baring account I was to set up. It would be
a large sum of money and would provide enough income to live on.
I called the FBI.
The agent who answered the phone said that it was a scam letter that was
making the rounds and not to worry.
The powder? Probably talcum powder included to obscure any finger prints.
I lived in a condo with a controlled environment. There were 20 floors of
interconnected condos in the building. There was one central air conditioning
unit for a sister building as well. At least 800 people lived in my building. My life,
and probably theirs was saved by several high density negative ion generators I
had running in my apartment. They had been going full blast for the seven years
prior to the Nigerian letter. What protection did the postal workers have who
processed and delivered the mail? And what of the transportation workers?
These things haunt me.
Several years later as I lay gasping like a beached mackerel in the Holmes
Regional Medical Center; it occurred to me that the FBI had been wrong. Dead
wrong. The cardiologist had come into see me and before even introducing
himself said in an exasperated voice “It’s broke.”
“What?” I asked.
“The heart” he said. “It’s broke. You need a heart transplant.”
I was not a happy camper.
In fact I experienced a high level of anger run through my damaged central
nervous system. This did great things for my heart rate. I was hospitalized twice
more before I stabilized.
Later, my doctor who had been in on the original anthrax alert sent out by the
government told me that most, if not all of the anthrax that was going around in
1998 had come from New England. The weapons grade anthrax from Africa was
rare. It was a mystery why a foreign national would try to kill me specifically. I am
an American that makes me target meat in a crowd. But signaled out for
Nigerian Fairy Dust? Why?
There was no follow up from the FBI despite requests. To date the requests
have not been answered and I have not been interviewed. In that same year a
bomb went off in the FBI headquarters in Honolulu. I hope my file was not among
those that were blown to confetti in the attack. I do have a credible second
witness. I gave her the evidence. She's an investigative journalist and a popular
media figure. There may be a second report.
Somewhere in there the terrorist attack known as 9/11 also happened. There
are some mitigating circumstances that I want to discuss with the FBI in regards
to that event. I felt that way at the time. And I still do.
By 2005 I had pulled off a miraculous recovery. I had good medication
management and a good doctor. I had researched my condition myself and
came up with an FDA approved drug that also repaired heart and other organ
damage and protected against brain degeneration. It healed cardiomyopathy in
rats, why not me? I ordered some from Europe, informed my doctor and
provided research. I had a normal EKG for the first time in a decade. The drug
was Selegiline. My lungs were clear. My heart was no longer enlarged. With
medication, a heart mummer I was born with had calmed. My doctor prescribed
the medication. I was on 100% disability for toxic exposure. But I was better. I felt
the first twinges of wanting to work again. Prior to proper medication, I had
attempted to work. I did five months at the Hometown News as a reporter for the
beachside communities. If I had worked more I would have lost my disability. I
was still tired. I wasn’t quite ready to do that. I was still post traumatic and angry.
The Siligeline came several months later.
There are 20 known cases of anthrax exposure in the United State. Most of
those people did not survive.
A couple of years later now, and I am again trying to reestablish my career. The
federal government acknowledges that this is very hard after age forty. Harder
still with my story line.
“What brings you here?”
“A bio-plague filled envelope.”
I’m about ten years past that challenge. I’m 50. Looking for work has been
painful. Slow. Unproductive. What has happened in the last couple of years? I
never had problems getting work. Every professional job in psychology I've ever
had I got recruited to do. I've run four program and projects under federal and
state grant.
As I struggle to put my feet back on the ground I have a new sense of purpose. I
know that in order to do what I need to do for myself and community I need to
stay visible and active. I know for myself that it is not only essential for my well
being, but a good idea for my general health.
I am basically in the same situation I was in pre-anthrax in Hawaii. It started with
heavy computer interference and intimidation. I threw up a cyber novel to try and
talk about what was going on. That novel was called “Aloha’s End.” I tried to
piece together events and document what had happened just before the attack. I
initiated a federal lawsuit with the goal of documenting what had happed.
It all came crashing down in flames in the fall of nineteen hundred and ninety-
eight.
It was not talcum powder (which would have been bad enough considering the
impact it has on the body) in that African envelope. It was something else all
together different. Something sinister. And nothing would ever be the same
again.
Seven years later, I lost the law suit on a technicality. But the evidence was filed.
I had accomplished my goal of documenting part of what happened. I was also
exonerated from any wrong doing. I had been fired for not participating in a
cover up, "but not for misconduct."
I'm back to pick up where I left off.
Monday August 28, 2006 - 05:01pm (EDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 2
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Entry for August 27, 2006 More On Natasha
Photo: Natasha with police.Mother pleads to see kidnap girl The mother of an
Austrian teenager who was held captive for eight years before her escape last
week has pleaded to be allowed to see her daughter.
Natascha Kampusch, 18, is at a secure location with psychological carers, and
police say she has not asked to see her parents again after a brief reunion.
Her mother Brigitta Sirny asked in a newspaper interview on Sunday: "Why can I
not see my child?"
Ms Kampusch's captor Wolfgang Priklopil killed himself after her escape.
She is reported to have wept inconsolably when she was told the man she had to
call "master" was dead.
Police suspect she may have been suffering from "Stockholm Syndrome" - a
condition where some abductees gradually begin to sympathise with their
captors.
'Sensible and eloquent'
The teenager is said to have asked for a quiet weekend, free from police
questioning and visits from her family.
Her parents, who separated after her abduction, have complained that they have
not been told where she is staying.
It disturbs her that she is often portrayed as a special case.
Lawyer Monica Pinterits
Brigitta Sirny told the Kurier daily newspaper: "Natascha is shut away once
again. It's terrible for me. Psychologists and doctors - that's all good and
important. But my daughter also needs her mother."
Natascha Kampush's father Ludwig Koch was also reported to be upset in
comments made to the Austrian Press Agency (APA)."Isn't it crazy that I don't
even know where she is?" he said.
He said he had received a letter from his daughter asking him for his
understanding that she needed rest this weekend. "We will have all the time in
the world," he said she wrote.
Austrian police officer Gerhard Lang said the police were not banning contact
with Ms Kampusch. "Natascha is an adult, 18-and-a-half years old. She is fully
capable of making decisions for herself," he told the AFP news agency.
He said she had voluntarily gone to a "safe place" to receive psychological care
and protection. He said psychologists warned that care must be taken over her
reintroduction to her past life.
Children's lawyer Monica Pinterits, who has spent several hours with Ms
Kampusch, described the teenager as "sensible and eloquent" who was following
the media coverage with great interest.
"It disturbs her that she is often portrayed as a special case. She [doesn't see
herself as] as a poor victim, but a grown young woman," she told the APA.
Escape
Erich Zwettler of the Federal Criminal Investigations Bureau said they had
agreed to stop the questioning until Monday at the earliest. "She urgently needs
a break," he said. He confirmed reports that she had told a female investigator
that she had "sexual contact" with her kidnapper.
But DNA tests on Priklopil have ruled out the possibility he could have been a
serial stalker of children, Gerhard Lang said.
Ms Kampusch, said to be pale and to weigh less than she did as a 10-year-old,
managed to flee her abductor on Wednesday after he moved away to take a
phone call as she vacuumed his car, it has emerged.
Priklopil threw himself under a train within hours of her escape. Photos released
by police show the underground hiding place in his house, in Strasshof village
outside Vienna, where he had purportedly kept her. The pictures show a small,
cluttered, windowless room with wash basin, toilet, bed and cupboards and
narrow concrete stairs leading up to a trapdoor.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/5290466.stm
Published: 2006/08/27 12:30:02 GMT
© BBC MMVI
August 27, 2006 - 07:29pm (EDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Entry for August 26, 2006 NOVAWRAPDOWN
When I found out that I was going to attend the NOVA conference I attempted to
sell a few personal experience essays to magazines and newspapers. I didn’t get
any nibbles, let alone bites from editors. I’m not sure why that is. I don’t think it’s
because people aren’t interested in crime victims. I do think that the over-kill in
Florida is great. Literally. I remember visiting the state from Hawaii. The murders
and car wrecks were all there was on the news. In Hawaii we drove to people
homes, not into them. Florida was wild-west. Unreal.
From one point of view, the conference for me was about communication skills.
The quality of communication has gone up a notch. Since 9/11 we have
jargonized and educated around symptoms and words. We speak the same
language. We have done what we would have done with any trauma, like
systems involvement. We have normalized intervention. In making things
ordinary, we have empowered a person to talk about their experiences in a way
that has not been done before. The survivors were fantastic.
The only thing we have not done is change the pain. Despite breaking down
isolation and normalizing things, the pain remains the same. Unfathomable.
Deep. Raging river wild.
Working with it is still like bull riding on marbles. When you fall, and the bull lands
on top of you the marbles bruise the muscles in cruel small ways. The tiny
bruises remain the most hurtful kind. The aches and imprints of the incredible.
The poet Charles Bukowsi said in his tussled life time that it is not the big things
that destroy you, “it’s the tiny series of tragedies, like a shoe lace breaking” that
eventually drive you over the edge. And I’m reminded of another poet, Emily
Dickensen who wrote, “A wounded deer leaps highest.”
What would I have written for a magazine or newspaper? I would have probably
wrapped things up in the same way. But gotten there in a tougher way. If there is
frustration with the system, the process and the laws. It’s in process. We are
gaining in increments in crisis response.
And as always, we look for towards prevention like we look over the cliffs of the
grand canyon, at the vistas. And the clouds over the vistas. And the limitless
relentless sky above it all. There is no justice in this world. Only prevention.
And that’s the road were all on, sooner or later.
Thanks to everyone involved with NOVA.
=z=
Saturday August 26, 2006 - 01:27pm (EDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0
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Entry for August 25, 2006 Natasha
This comes from my friend Gracie, who is herself in the middle of a very difficult
sex abuse case involving her disabled daughter.
Thank you Gracie for everything you do.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/5284622.stm?ls
What now for Natascha?
WHO, WHAT, WHY?
The Magazine answers...
Natascha Kampusch, age 10
Inside the cellar
What do psychologists make of the extraordinary case of Natascha Kampusch,
abducted at 10, deprived of her childhood, and now back in the real world after
eight years?
In March 1998, Natascha Kampusch was snatched from a Vienna street as she
walked to school.
For eight long years, she was held in a cellar she believed to be rigged with
explosives. Her only human contact was with her abductor, Wolfgang Priklopil,
who effectively brought her up. He provided her with clothes, food, helped her
with her studies. It is not yet clear if he sexually abused her.
But on Wednesday, Natascha escaped. An elderly neighbour of the man she
had to call "master" found the 18-year-old, pale and in distress, and called the
police. Natascha was soon reunited with her parents.
"Her life has been suspended, and it will take a lot to reconnect," says Dr
Anuradha Sayal-Bennett. "She's obviously a very brave young woman, very
resourceful, to have managed to escape."
WHO, WHAT, WHY? A regular feature in the BBC News Magazine - aiming to
answer some of the questions behind the headlines
That can only stand her in good stead for the long and difficult task of coming to
terms with what she's been through. Natascha's is such a rare case that while
she has undoubtedly suffered enormous trauma, there is no way of saying in
advance what the precise effects will be - or how best to treat her.
Phillip Hodson, a Fellow of the British Association for Counselling and
Psychotherapy, says those treating Natascha will be guided by her, asking her if
she wants to talk about her experiences, and monitoring her for depression and
flashbacks, for which there are a range of therapies.
"Go in with no assumptions, establish a basic rapport. Establish how used she is
to conversation. Always put it as questions - 'they think you should talk about it;
what do you think?'" he says.
Arrested development
It will be important to re-establish as normal a life with her loved ones as
possible. But the life of a 10-year-old, or of an 18-year-old? For her first words
to her father - after "I love you" - was "Is my toy car still there?" It had been her
favourite plaything.
Dr Jack Boyle, a Glasgow psychologist who specialises in treating abused
children, says a bit of both. "She has moved on emotionally from being a 10-
year-old, yet that was the life she had that was abruptly cut off."
STOCKHOLM SYNDROME Psychological response in hostages, in which they
come to identify with their captor Named after 1973 robbery in Stockholm, where
bank employees sympathised with their captors Famous case is heiress Patty
Hearst (above), who helped her captors rob a bank
Another difficulty will be the feeling of abandonment, that no-one came to rescue
her. A 10-year-old believes that adults are to be trusted, that her parents will be
there for her, and these expectations have been shattered, says Mr Hodson.
"At the time of the kidnap, she will have been saying 'why don't my parents come
and get me?' Then she'll have despaired of that happening, and thought 'bugger
them'. That will be a considerable barrier to reunited with her family."
Then there's Stockholm syndrome, the coping mechanism whereby abductees
exhibit loyalty to their kidnapper. Because Priklopil committed suicide after she
escaped, this will further complicate Natascha's reactions.
"She'll have a lot of conflicting reactions - guilt and relief," says Dr Sayal-Bennett.
Phillip Hodson says his death will, in a way, be like losing a family member - even
if she's glad he's dead.
"If somebody has been there through your transition from childhood to
adulthood, it's impossible to not to form some sort of familial feeling. And she set
in train the events that led to his death. That's a lot to come to terms with."
Add your comments on this story, using the form below.
I can only say that I feel total admiration for this resilient young girl who managed
to stay healthy, mentally and physically, despite all the odds against her. The
next hurdle for her now will be to reintegrate society and family life and try to
regain some of the lost years. This will take a lot of time, courage and love but
she can and will make it because she's proven that she is one strong girl! Let's
just leave her alone until she is ready to share her story with us. Good luck,
Natasha! God bless you.
E Greyeyes, Hatley, Quebec, Canada
It might help Natascha to learn that her story - the pre-arranged room, her
captivity, etc - comes straight out of John Fowles' The Collector, although
Miranda does not succeed in escaping in the book. At any rate I think her
psychologists should be aware that someone actually wrote about her fate some
40 years ago as fiction before it became reality. I think it tells us something about
the frame of mind of the kidnapper.
Maria Grech Ganado, Madliena/Malta
Staying with only one human figure for eight years can affect her way of
interaction with people and psychological development. I think she will not have
that bond with anyone, especially male, as she may relate them to her captor.
Rosemary Modise, Molepolole, Botswana
What a terrible time she has had being in that cellar for 8 years, missing her
family's occasions, birthdays Christmases etc she must have thought about that,
missing her family thinking that they abandoned her. All she needs now is
reassurance and love, and hopefully in time she will learn to forget him.
Madeleine Rayner, Lancashire, UK
Of course everyone wants to know how she will recover. However, just like other
big events, only time will tell. Curiosity isn't a bad way to learn, but when it's
about someone else's private life, I believe it should be held back. Let her live in
peace, let's hope there would be a book about her psychological state when
she'll have recovered, only if she authorises it. Let her be.
Lynne Champoux-Williams, Quebec, Canada
Compassion, fortitude and discernment are essential qualities for those who help
Natascha to heal. One hopes that she is able to take the lead in this
extraordinary process, without that there will be unforeseen difficulties. Those
who have been abandoned and incarcerated deserve a lifetime of very special
care and protection.
Jamie, Manaton, Devon
That girl was kept in a cellar for 8 years and didn't see her family once because
of that man. How can you say it must have been like losing a family member?
She must have been glad that he is dead. HE took away most of her life and as
far as she was concerned she might as well have been dead.
Emma-Louise, England
How will she cope going from living in confinement, only seeing her captor, to
having the media trying to film and interview her continuously?
Dan Williams, Reading, UK
How can you just assume that Natasha is going to have all of these feelings and
reactions? Why are so many assumptions being made? Just let the poor women
tell her side of the story when she's ready and forget about this Stockholm
syndrome.
D La Valle, London
Name Your e-mail address Town/city and country Phone number (optional): Your
comment Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/5284622.stm
Published: 2006/08/25 12:00:44 GMT
© BBC MMVI
ZBlog
The ongoing chronicles of the journalist, novelist and psychologist Michael F.
Zangari.
WensNOVA
I was awed today by the efforts of so many survivors to communicate their
experiences and inspired by how well they succeeded. It was as clear as a
rubbed tibetian bell, the hum.
I was thinking as I listened to Coco O'Conner and her husband talk about what
happened to them how good it felt to hear things that I could closely identify
with. Not the details of the stories, which are horrific and uniqe, but in the
impact, after effects and the coping. It's not chowder talk. Its not common. It is
intimate. And appreciated.
Today is my day to focus. Time to twist the lens in and snap away. I'm on
motordrive.
=z=
Thursday August 24, 2006 - 07:12am (EDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0
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Entry for August 23, 2006
NovaTues
Today I'm feeling the pinches of my new shoes. I'm reminded of what Mohamed
Ali said about his head injury. He said that he was not a different peron. That he
thought about the same things in the same way. "I'm slower."
By all accounts I have pulled off a miracle recovery. I've gone from being a heart
transplant candidate who couldn't stand up to do the dishes, to being more or
less normal. Most of my tests are normal. I'm reminded this week that I could
barely talk after the initial exposure to the anthrax. I was mildly autistic at birth.
The first real coming into the world for me was workinging in radio in my twenties.
I was (and still am) hypersensitive to sound and music. The radio job was a
complete peak experience for me. When I was on the air I was awake and aware
for the first time in my life. My kinetics friends and other dancers told me that
they had never seen a more active job, I was moving so much. Getting records
and comecials on, segueing records. Answering phones. Talking. It was six
hours of rapture a night. After the exposure It was like living in slow motion. I
could barely get from one minute to the next. And how I got there was a great
mystry. It was a return to a kind of autism I had forgotten. I still click into it.
Out of the fog I started to construct a radio studio in my home. I don't remember
deciding to do this. I just started to build a studio. Then I started doing a radio
show. Slowly I became oriented again. Oriented enough to talk and persue a
lawsuit.
The POD cast became "The Little Radio Station at the Back of Your Mind." I'm
glad I taped it. As a a reminder.
What has this got to do with NOVA?
I'm not sure. It's sort of like building a radio station.
Today I got myself on the road on time. Was early. I got myself to Orlando. I
tossed my keys on the front seat and started to unload things. I was thinking
about what was coming up when the soft and ominous click of the door behind
me woke me up. I set my backpack on the ground and tugged on the door.
It was locked.
After fencing with the car with a coat hanger for a half hour, I decided to call for
road service. The only phone card phone in the lobby of the hotel (the wrong
one) wasn't working well. I ad to scream, literally to be heard. After several
attempts, spelling my name at the top of my lungs, I finally gave up and called
family to call the road service. So. Day one. Waking to my situation. Second
most vivid moment: Spelling my name out at the top of lungs in the hotel lobby.
"THAT'S Z AS IN ZEBRA. A AS IN APPLE. ....."
Everyone knew my name at the plaza.
The Pop-A-Lock guy couldn't have been nicer.
He was into the car in less than two minutes.
Noted.
It was 11 a.m. by the time I got to the conference.
People were great. I got my NOVA bag and lime green volunteer t-shirts. I got my
frisbee and mug with "RAPE" in big boldface letters on them. The black mug
especially got my attention. In smaller letters was the word "prevent." If that
doesn't sum up the national situation on sexual assualt nothing does. I hope to
move to a time when the words get equal emphesis on my mug. Until that time
I'm trying to imagine drinking from this thing at my local tea. That is not a
complaint. I'm happy to get mugged. I'm enourmously greatful for the effort and
impact of the grass rootts movement in the 1960s and 1970s. And the works of
my grandmother, aunts and their friends through the 1930s and 1940s as they
sequed into the 1950s and 1960s. My mom ad sisters are a big influence. As are
my nieces and girlfriends. Through the 80s into the new century with it then, a
constant balancing of influences as we work with what we have. Communication
has come a long way round. We've got a long way to go to.
I worked the silent auction booth with extrodinairy people.
I enjoyed the contact with professionals. I'm beggining to remember, hey, I use to
do this for a living. Eight years ago. I'd like to do it again. Thre are mostly female
victim advocates in the State of Florida. As a Boulder County Mental Health
Certified Rape Crisis Counselor I remember the conflicts that some people felt
having men on the team. And the conflicts.
Later people started arriving to register.
The table was closed over lunch.
The most vivid moment of the day was when Mark Lunsford came up to the
desk. I recognized him right away, of course.
The wieght of attention in the last year most be incredible for him. I thought
about what it must be like for him. And all the up-front survivors and family
members who have decided to carry the weight of what has happened in a public
manner, and have chosen to cope by taking constructive action. I'm inpired by
that. And a sense of rightness that rides the back like angel wings. Wings are
heavy, I decided. Especially the ones hung on us by other people.
"I don't know how I do what I do," he said. "Almost to himself as he walked away.
"I just do it."
"Thank you Mr. Lunsford" I said, using his name as an after thought, really. A
hand on the ground confirmation of the real people living real lives all around me.
There is no spell check on this thing. In the future I'll hire a monk that works in
'word."
It's time to work. With a net.
=z=
Wednesday August 23, 2006 - 06:05am (EDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 1
Comment
Entry for August 21, 2006
The site hacking continues to be a problem.
Some of the scans are unreadable all of a sudden.
I'm losing control of small things, like line spacing.
These folks are malicious to a high degree. They seem to enjoy thier power and
control trip. I'm off to the NOVA conference. I'll be back next week. We can pick
up then. Hope the site is up when I get here.
Thanks for hanging in.
=z=
Friday August 25, 2006 - 05:25pm (EDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 2
Comments
Entry for August 25, 2006
NOVAThurs I had a great time at the silent auction. It was really good to be busy.
I miss work. I miss the great people we have in this field. I got home around
midnight after a quiet drive down the interstate. Thursday was my day. I had a
late start. It was like a kid’s board game. I took every wrong turn possible. It was
insane. I kept my sense of humor and made it to the conference and parked. As I
was walking in, Mark Lunsford was walking out.
He looked completely refreshed. Gentle and smiling. It was nice to see him
again. And interesting. I came into this conference seeing him. And that's how I
went out too.
As it turned out I got to my anti-terrorism session and got what I needed out of it.
It was good. As was the session on doing groups for sexually abused girls. It was
a good model that is really useable. Possibly for adults as well.
At break I picked up a piece of jewlery I had silver-wrapped at the marketplace.
The jewler's name is Valerie Kay Frayer from Baton Rouge. The pieces she had
on display were silver wrapped chandalier crystals. Leaded glass from the last
two centuries at lest, possibly three. I used to look for these in antique stores in
Honolulu when I lived there. They has a nice quieting quality to them. Something
about the lead in the crystal is very similar to volcanic glass. It has a really nice
resonace. But what really caught my eye was the tremendous silver work she
does.
She uses more than one guage of wire on any given piece. The pieces are
tremendously wrapped in silver or gold wire. Very beautiful. I had a piece
wrapped in silver ($18) and picked it up. It was a piece of rainbow obsideon I had
on. I had wrapped it in red magnetic wire, because that is what I had at the time.
I wear it because it evens out my heart beat. It works really well. As I put on the
newly wrapped piece and walked away, I felt a trendous surge in my central
nervous system, everything balanced and went calm. I am farly sensitive to my
nuerology because I've had to be. The wrapping created a great biocircuit
around the stone. I had to go back and ask her about it. It turns out that she is a
Rieki master as well as a jewler. Her designs are tremendously biophysical as
well as beautiful. These are nice pieces for working balance and stress.. I
imagine they are also great for opening blocked parts of the body. Parts of the
body that lack circulation or feeling. She has my highest recommendations. You
can contact her at Frayer Designs, www.frayerdesigns.com or 225-755-8892.
The necklace is a nice reminder of the conference.
My own situation has gotten more complicated as a result of attending the
conference. The cyber-stalking situation I live with is more intense. The hacking
on the computer more malicious. But I feel stronger and more supported this
week. I also feel more aggressive. It’s amazing how anger and compassion can
go together sometimes. How power can come from facing fear. How strength can
come out of weakness.
Thank you all for allowing me to find these things in myself again. Also for the
support and company.
Best wishes
=z=
The ongoing chronicles of the journalist, novelist and psychologist Michael F.
Zangari.
The Narrative:
Entry for October 02, 2006, (Significant Rewrite) That Old Black Magic Has You
Under It's Spell
Wai’wai’ko’ko’ola.
That’s a crime.
As far as I know it's still on the Hawaiian books somewhere, buried in some dark
archive dust.
Wai'wai'ko'ko'ola, the law, is about sorcery for hire. It’s about the darkest kind of
sorcery. The kind that can often results in someone’s death. It is one of the few
crimes in Hawaii punishable by death. That’s relatively rare in Hawaiian law. Exile
or ostracism is far more common. That in and of itself can be deadly on any
island.
Sorcery is the ability to change reality by using words to bring about a
fundamental shift in perception. It is the ability to mold or shape public opinion
for or against someone by the use of lies and rumors. It is used to create and
replace reality, to create a group ken.
To really appreciate the power in this you have to spent time on an island.
It is a tight, interdependent community. Rumors rage out of control like wildfire.
They passed orally from person to person quickly and have the strength of
winter waves.
Imagine this: The coconut wireless. A near telepathic sharing of information
greatly enhanced by the volcanic magnetism of the islands mixed with the
negative ions of the trade winds and ocean. It is a lush blanket that covers and
condenses things into a real rut hut of intensities and pleasures. Senses are
peaked. Ideas take on sensual texture. All things become magical and real.
Polynesian culture is generally considered group oriented or communal. That
indicates a responsibility to the whole community, not the eradication of
individualism. People of skill are still valued as individuals, whether they fish or
heal or are great warriors.
This is the strength of the culture, a strong interdependence. But that is not what
I'm talking about here. I'm talking about a group mind, minds that fall into sync.
Timothy Leary and later the band of advertisers turned rock stars Devo, talked
about this. They said it was something that inevitably arises when minds begin
to mix in telepathic communion. It is a stage of evolution that returns us to where
we began. It is a return to herd behavior. It is a shared consensus reality so
intimate that it cause the population to herd like animals with the same union of
mind that causes the gazelles to turn as one in synchronicity and beauty. It's the
union that causes fishes to hover in schools and birds to vee and flip at the
same time in perfect formation. It's the force that makes fashion, popular tastes,
politics, religion and culture.
The 70-some year Berkley Study on Negative Ions says specifically, that an
abundance of negative ions amplifies thought.
Does that mean that you can hear thoughts in a high density negative ion
atmosphere?
On board ship it’s that way. Long time sailors talk about telepathy at sea. What
about on an island? The coconut wireless is a real thing.
Imagine this: A communal chat room somewhere on the Internet of the mind. A
place where people freely mixed based on like concerns and things in common,
mostly in dreams. With time, this mixing crosses the thresholds of waking and
dreaming, and becomes part of the mental chatter you hear every day. It's like
hearing your name whispered. When you here something that interests you,
you pay attention. You tune in. You become aware of something happening and
you track it.
I was out with a local friend once. To a local talent show. I was laughing about a
performance, and she nudged me. "Don't talk stink" she said. "You never know
who she might be related to in the audience."
Stink talk. Not wise in a small community with telepathy.
I left the health clinic in 1998 and entered an almost total isolation, sick and
unemployed. I began to tack things together for myself. I began to document
what had happened in a fanciful satire called “Aloha’s End.” This was a cyber-
novel that I sent out as email.
On day I was flipping through the pages of the Hawaiian Dictionary like I often
did, and the page fell open to the word "wai’wai’ko’ko’ola." The pages were filled
with "wai" words, a word that generally means water. Double it to wai wai and it
means money or goods for barter.
I looked at the word and considered it.
In the Judeo-Christian tradition the Ten Commandments are build on
interpersonal boundaries, that is the sacredness of privacy. The "thou shalt
nots" are based on minding to one’s own business. In maintaining an orientation
away from jealousy, envy and comparison, one could keep to the sacred, an
unwavering focus on God. Most of ancient law is the same way. As we moved
away from herd behavior toward individualization the most important thing was to
remain separate from the group mind. Why are these ten laws held sacred
above all other laws? I'd say to maintain a separateness from others.
The sleeping prophet Edgar Casey talked about the same problem in island
Atlantis. In that fabled city, the population had evolved quickly. They had built
brain machines that eliminated interpersonal privacy. They were telepathy
machines, like Patrick Flannigan's nuerophone. You could read the thoughts of
neighbors and put your thoughts into the heads of others. Flannigan's "amazing
little telepathy machine" (as he called it) raised the same questions. The issues
were simple and similar. What if people using the machines began running into
each other on the same frequencies? There was talk of a group etiquette.
People talked about a protocol around having sex and private moments. About
intrusiveness and ease dropping. They also talked about an entity named Zarg.
Someone or something, an entity that had gotten so loud in his telepathy as to
dominate those around him. Zarg had enormous presence and power to create
reality. As we use to say in radio engineering, the strongest signal dominates.
The loudest signal rules.
Casey said that in Atlantis, this was the reality that was quickly forming. When
the interpersonal boundaries went down, so did the island. A single thought
could destroy everything. In my FEMA training one of the aphorisms is "Wide
spread group panic is a myth." It's about rumor control. As Allan Ginsberg use
to say, the antidote to this is to give information. "Candor defeats paranoia" he
said. Still. Rumors can kill.
In 1998, the lawsuit had begun and so had the wai’wai’ko’ko’ola.
There were efforts to discredit me as a witness, of course. That's the name of
the game, but the game was no game. It got rough and tumbly quickly.
I remember what Monica Lewinski went through after her encounter with Bill
Clinton became public. Her computer was thrown open. Her poems and journals
were analyzed. Her health care history was ravaged. Every innuendo in the
books took on a level of reality that was far beyond any normal investigation that
I could remember. The spin doctors swarmed in like bees and buzzed.
It was a lot like Manuel Noriega’s red underwear in Panama.
When he was arrested, similar overkill was employed. He became suspect
because he wore red underwear and had a ready supply of pornography “at
hand.” Never mind his documented crimes.
I remember the military liaison waving his red underwear at the press. Literally.
As for myself, I felt ostracized and dirty. Like I was suddenly outside the
community.
For the first time in the decade I lived on the island I had time on my hands. I had
been working nonstop for 8 years. I did not have a single day of unemployment
the entire time I lived on the island. I was recruited to every job I had in Hawaii.
All of a sudden I couldn't’t get work.
My apartment was broken into and so was my girlfriend’s.
Our homes were bugged. Our medical files were stolen or copied.
Our privacy was a thing of the past. Or maybe it never really existed.
All I know is that in the twinkle of a star, my whole life had changed and the
devolution had begun. There was a linefeed into and out of my life.
I had entered the herd again, greatly amplified, Zarg like in my loudness.
Remember: If a willful act of black magic can destroy you in this tropical mind,
then a willful act of common sense and good will can also save you in the tight
community mind.
Entry for September 30, 2006 Hearts and Minds
Yesterday, September 30, 2006, 2:48:44 AM
I had an ultrasound today.
It was the third one in three months.
My cardiologist wants to know what exactly is going on. The ultrasounds keep
coming back normal. That’s not normal.
He said today that it’s a miraculous recovery story, like I’ve been to Lourdes
instead of his office.
I’ve put a lot of puzzle pieces into the puzzles he has on a table in his waiting
room, big 5,000 piece puzzles, but this one is not so much a puzzle to me. Of all
the things that have happened in the last decade, this one seems to be the most
solid.
I came to Florida in 2001, barely able to breath. I thought I had bronchitis. Over
the years I’ve contracted bronchitis when ever I’ve had to move. It’s predictable. I
imagine it has something to do with stress and the frequent moves I made
growing up in a military family.
I had a congestive heart failure building.
My injection rate was low enough to raise the immediate concern that I would not
survive. I was a heart transplant candidate according to every cardiologist who
dotted my chest with a stethoscope. My heart was enlarged. I could not stand up
to do the dishes and could not lie down without being in pain. I was sleeping like
an Indo-European mummy sitting up cross legged on the couch for minutes at a
time. I was exhausted.
I was hospitalized several times. I survived through good medication
management and constant care. On release I tried to put my life together. My
main problem was my energy level and clarity. I complained to my doctor about
this constantly. It was about quality the of life. It wasn't good enough.
My doctor, who has a very large practice and sees a lot of death, told me to be
glad to be alive. A lot of people weren’t.
I continued to do the research I’ve been doing my whole life, on cognition and
clarity, but now with a new motivation. I wanted to get back to zero. To be where
I was. What role did the heart play in cognition?
I learned that all oxygenation happens in the left ventricle of the heart. That's
where the red blood goes to be pumped to the brain. My best results in
increasing clarity over the years had been with taking stabilized oxygen
products. Increasing oxygen restored clarity. I used a suppliment called ribose
for a while with good results. Cardiologist were flooding the heart with ribose in
experiments. It seemed to get the nuerotransmitter content, particularly acytle
choline back up to normal.
I continued studying neuro-feedback and smart drugs, or nootropics. I met some
people also looking for answers. One was a psychiatrist battling the sudden
onset of a debilitating bipolar disorder. She had been put on Selegiline for her
depressive bouts.
Silegiline is FDA approved for Parkinson’s disease and depression, particularly
among diabetics. It is the first antidepressant to come in a patch form. It is also
used for stopping smoking and for other, nonspecific uses. For years it has been
touted as the best longevity drug on the market. It evidently slows or prevents
dementia, it heals damaged heart, liver and kidney tissue. It basically boosts the
production and retention of dopamine in the body. As a result it also boost sex
drive. In the early days, doctors had patients sign a document that their clients
would not engage in random sex. My friend summed it up this way, “My clit feels
like it weighs ten pounds.” She swears that she did not say this, that I’m hearing
things. It’s possible. My hearing is not as good as it was either.
As a therapist who works with sex I am of the opinion that this has more to do
with personal history then facts. I think most people can monitor and work with a
slight increase in libido. I also believe that normal doses are managable for most
people. I know some people are vulnerable to sex addiction.
Silegiline is not a controlled substance. It is not a narcotic. You can buy it as a
supplement in Europe. It costs about between forty-five and eighty-nine dollars
on the internet. It's easy to get in tablet and liquid form. The rules for importation
set by the United States govement are that you can have no more than a three
months supply in your procession at any one time. The dose is not specified, it is
suggested.
I ordered some. I liked the liquid better. It matabolized quicker. It takes
approximately four hours for the pills to get into the system. The most noticable
effect was a deep relaxation in the spine. I took it and I felt better. I was clearer,
and more energized.
Coincidence? Pacebo? I don’t know.
I gave my doctors all the research I could find, including the research coming out
of the School of Cardiaolgy in Rochester, New York. At the time they were
giving it to rats and the results with congestive heart failure were really good. It
was used for cardio-myopathy and recovery after a congestive heart failure.
The rats were doing well until killed for dissection. Silegiline was not so hot for
them in the long run. It is habit forming. One doctor said that if you start taking it
you will more than likly be on it for the rest of your life. As for me, within three
months I no longer had an enlarged heart, my heart murmur, which I’ve had
since birth, was not detectable, my blood pressure and heart beat were normal
for the first time in my life and I was horny. This last thing was not unusual. My
clarity and balance continued to get better. I was more relaxed overall. It was
about as stimulating as a cup of coffee. It made me a little drowsy initially, but as
it matabolized, things got better.
I started myself off at one milligram of the liquid. I am generally conservative
about drugs. I gradually, over the course of experiment, raised that dose to five
milligrams. I told my doctors what I was doing so they could track changes.
I eventually was given a prescription which has help off set the cost of
importation. I am closer now to a recommended, larger dose.
I continue to do well. My doctor continues to tell me that “it’s unexplainable.”
I know he means that it hasn’t been concretely explained yet.
I don’t care.
The health battles continue. What happens tomorrow happens tomorrow. Today
I’m doing pretty well. I wish everyone in similar circumstances was.
In terms of process, hacking is still a problem. You’ll note the text changes in the
body of these missives. Some items have been deleted, but for the most part
they concentrate on the syntax, punctuation and spelling. This is deadly for a
journalist trying to establish credibility. Today they would not let me online. The
modem was disabled. The power and control games continue. I may have to
start documenting those as well. If I do not post something everyday now, it is a
direct indication of exterior pressure. I’ve made that commitment to myself.
Visibility, and viability remain extremely important. I suggests that if you are really
interested in this site to get a line-feed in case it goes down. You won't miss
anything that way.
Entry for October 01, 2006 Seligiline Heart References
Selegiline attenuates cardiac oxidative stress and apoptosis in heart failure:
association with improvement of ... We have shown recently that selegiline
exerts a cardiac neuroprotective effect in chronic heart failure. ... effect in
chronic heart failure. Since selegiline has an antioxidant antiapoptotic ...
fractional shortening and dP/dt. Selegiline treatment in chronic heart failure
animals reduced ...www.medscape.com/medline/abstract/ 12586210 - 30k -
Cached - More from this site - Save
Selegiline improves cardiac sympathetic terminal function and beta -adrenergic
responsiveness in heart failure -- ... Am J Physiol Heart Circ Physiol 279: H1283-
H1290, 2000; 0363-6135/00 $5.00. This Article. Services. Google Scholar.
PubMed. Vol. ... Selegiline is a centrally acting sympatholytic agent with
neuroprotective properties. It also has been shown ... These actions of selegiline
may be beneficial in heart failure that is ...ajpheart.physiology.org/cgi/
content/full/279/3/H1283 - More from this site - Save
Selegiline improves cardiac sympathetic terminal function and beta -adrenergic
responsiveness in heart failure -- ... Am J Physiol Heart Circ Physiol 279: H1283-
H1290, 2000; 0363-6135/00 $5.00. This Article. Services. Google Scholar.
PubMed. Vol. 279, Issue 3, H1283-H1290, September 2000 ... Selegiline is a
centrally acting sympatholytic agent with neuroprotective properties. It also has
been shown ... These actions of selegiline may be beneficial in heart failure that
is ...ajpheart.physiology.org/cgi/ content/abstract/279/3/H1283 - More from this
site - Save
selegiline of Augusta, Georgia selegiline - University Health Care System of
Augusta, Georgia ... Cancer Caregiver Depression Diabetes Digestive Disorders
Heart Disease Kidney Disease Men's Health Parenting ... What is selegiline?
Selegiline is used to treat Parkinson's disease ...www.universityhealth.org/16907.
cfm - 71k - Cached - More from this site - Save
Sunday October 1, 2006 - 11:19am (EDT)
Previous Post: Entry for September 30, 2006 Hearts and Minds
Entry for September 28, 2006, A Domestic Terrorist Attack To A Federal Building
In Honolulu
Here's a second look at details arising from an unsafe situation at a children's
clinic in the heart of the Hawaiian community. Consider the details and the
speculation.
As I mentioned I was originally put in the office with the strongest smell coming
from the carpets. The room had the least ventilation. The only room that worse
was one closet where the toxins were so bad we were told not to go in it.
There wasn’t exactly a line outside the door. Still, it was kept locked and I never
saw anyone go inside it. The problems downstairs where the children’s clinic was
were twofold. The carpet was put in with the same noxious combination of
chemicals and carpet adhesive that was causing problems upstairs. It was
vaporized and melted by the steam cleaning that was meant to reduce the smell.
It seeped through the ceiling to the rooms below. At the time there were 600
children at the clinic. That number was expected to double in the coming ten
years.
My crisis programs were move upstairs away from the children’s team and my
colleagues on the team as things got crazier at the clinic.
My cognition got worse. People got testier. In the administration wing short term
memory loss, sensitivity to light and headaches were now common complaints.
Incidents of sick leave went up.
As I mentioned, because I was early for a management meeting, I had the
opportunity to read through a safety report on the clinic done by Aina
Environmental. I’m going to name the companies involved here for the purposes
of further research should anyone want to follow-up. As I said, the report had
been rewritten and condensed for the meeting. According to a clerk in
administration, there were as many as five rewrites of the report that he filed
personally. He said he read those reports, having a vested interest.
The dangers were clearly stated. The fumes from the Bigelow adhesive caused
blindness,heart, lung and liver damage and dementia. The course of decay took
about ten years. It ravaged the central nervous system. The combination of
chemicals (the Afta and the Etholglyconal) contributed to this destruction.
Still, we believed that the problem was resolved. Our bosses told us so, and that
was good enough. It was not on my mind when I left the clinic the night before
Thanksgiving in 1997. By the time the federally sponsored mediation rolled
around I was more concerned. It was also apparently very much on the mind of
the clinic. They were prepared to discuss it. The had a hazardous material list
waiting for me.
As I mentioned, the mediator read that list to me over the phone, and confirmed
the dangers during negotiations. The clinic had refused to release the
information to until I signed off on damages. He gave me the name of the
company that did the safety report.
Bigelow Nu Broadlock, the main chemical in question had lawsuits filed against it
in the previous year and was withdrawn from the market on the mainland.
Stockpiles were evidently dumped in Hawaii.
I researched it from there. References to it were already being reduced because
of gag orders on the settlements. The company that produced it sold the
chemical catalog as a result of litigation. If you research Bigelow Nu Broadlock
today, you’ll find a relatively harmless adhesive still on the market. That was not
the case in 1997-1998. At the time there was not much on the net, but there
were still Web sites dedicated to litigation. I educated myself and got mission.
If you dig deep enough you will find references to the chemical in paramilitary
blogs. It was evidently used to control Soviet Dissidents at one time, so great
was the impact on the brain and brain functioning. It must have been similar to
the No Pest Strips, the anti-fly googag that was coated with nerve gas and hung
in your kitchen in the 1970s. Remember? Or is that an oxymoran?
Digging deeper into building records, talking with the architect, Peter White and
Associates I got enough information to identify the company that put the carpet
in. I called Pacific Construction in Honolulu and asked what happened. The
owner was friendly and up front. “Let’s see” he said as he went through the file
cabinet looking for the papers. Pacific Construction is owned by the brother of
the then president of the board of directors at the clinic.
Again he read the Safe Materials and Hazards List to me, confirming the impact
of the chemicals if improperly used. We talked briefly about the construction
crew of temporary workers who did not use safety gear and mixed the chemicals
improperly. As you may recall, there was not enough of anyone chemical to
cover the entire clinic, they were mixed. I am enormously grateful to the
supervisor of the crew. If it were not for his courageous efforts to document what
happened, nobody would know about it at all. He refused to gloss over it in his
reports. As a result, there’s a record of what happened.
That these chemicals were commonly used in the construction of homes in the
Hawaiian Homelands for homesteaders is outrageous to me.
I’m not one to get bogged down by conspiracy theory. I am a bread and butter
kind of journalist. If you don’t have three sources on an investigative article, you
don’t have a story. You better have five independent sources. I’m that way as
well as a court certified expert. It’s not ok to just say so. You have to support
your opinion with the best available statistics and treatment outcomes. Then if
you are asked your opinion, you give it, from a clear point of view and you
cultural and clinical experience.
But there is also this:
The same chemicals were used to put in the carpets at the Federal Building in
Honolulu, with the same results. The source on this is the judge in my case,
Judge David Ezra who reported a decline in functionality and concerns about the
carpets in the judge’s chambers. The FBI office was also noxious when I was
there and I asked about the carpets. It was bad, the agent said.
Question: Does this indicate a domestic terrorist attack in 1997-1998?
Connections of these chemical adhesives to right wing paramilitary groups are
evidently established. It was bought up in great quantities. If I ever get a follow
up investigation I’d encourage the FBI to research in that area as well. It may
very well have been a subtle and long reaching attack on a Federal Building.
There are two other things that concern me. Records relating to my case may
have been destroyed in an apparent bombing of the FBI headquarters in
Honolulu in 1998 or 1999. This is a little known attack. There was a fire that
destroyed files. It was evidently set off by an incendiary device. The window was
blown out and the smoke pattern on the window spangled slightly, then burned in
an upwards direction. You could see the charred window and building for months
afterwards from the street.
And finally, in the last year, the secretary for the FBI in Honolulu was arrested for
being a mole. She evidently worked for organize crime and drug interests.
And still, the questions of the origins and purpose of the anthrax attack on me
in1998 persist.
If we don't ask the questions we will never get the answers.
Entry for September 26, 2006 Sometimes The Poison Choses You
As I debrief myself down from the last decade things fall into different patterns.
As a counseling psychologist who works with trauma I know this is inevitable.
Memories change with understanding. It’s a process.
As I look at recent news stories at National Public Radio and CBS News this week
talking about the five year anniversary of those anthrax attacks, I can’t help think
of the Globe and the people traumatized and killed in those attacks. And I think
of my own eight year anniversary of exposure. I have come across unconfirmed
reports of several other people receiving anthrax in 1997-98 in or connected to
Hawaii’s west side.
My mind spins on this. These attacks appear to be concentrated in one area.
They should be much easier to investigate.
It occurred to me today that the perpetrator or instigator of these crimes might
be connected to the mental health center as a client.
I am remembering the death row interviews with Timothy McVay this week, the
convicted bomber of the Federal Building in Oklahoma. He had quite a bit to say
about the recruitment of terrorists.
I have said in my novel, Aloha’s End that Hawaii is filled with pirates and
scallywags. Wai’ki’ki is filled with con artists. The west side of the island also
continues to collect people leaving all sorts of situations. Hawaii is farther away
geographically from every other place on earth. You can’t get farther away. On
the streets and bars you meet incredible women fleeing domestic violence and
stalking situations. You meet retired people who have lost everything and you
meet combat vets unable to go home. You meet military personnel and foreign
tourists.
It’s a human smorgasbord.
McVay’s statements match some things I’ve been told in passing by people.
One former organized crime hood who retired in Wai’anae told me, that one
thing that crime organizations commonly do is to have their workers diagnosed
as mentally ill. In that manner they get disability and have a visible means of
support. They are then free to accept assignments and to move about freely. In
some cases, he said, the bosses assume guardianship and control the purse
strings as insurance. In this manner, they can extort them into doing jobs.
He also claimed to have Alquida training. (Prior to 9-11 I had never heard of the
terrorist organization.)
He said that the networked offered technology and computer skills training in
exchange for membership. He said people in his community often got Alquida
training. They were in it for the equipment and the technology.
Like everything else that has happened this auras out to be another puzzle
piece on the table. Is it the right piece for the right puzzle?
That’s a very good question.
Tuesday September 26, 2006 - 07:24pm (EDT) Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Entry for September 26, 2006 A Historical Digression
The clinic was build at the base of a volcanic rise on the leeward side of the
island. In the cliffs above, there are caves in which the bones of the ka’i, or
ancestors are said to have been interned. Or, at one time they were. There are
more beer cans then bones up there now.
It is a skinny strip of land that is the only access point to the coast. The trip in
from Honolulu is a long stretch up the west side of the island. It’s dry. Generally
speaking, it looks poor from a rental car crowded along the highway, dense in
terms of old wooden buildings and public housing. The truth is that it is a mixed
community, ethnically and economically.
Your A Triple A tourist guide will tell you not to go there.
They say there is a high crime rate and that the trip is dangerous.
This is the same message that people have been getting for centuries.
In ancient times the west side was known as the poor side of the island. There
was not a lot of water. The people that lived there, at the gateway to the coast
were called Na’na’ku’li, or the dumb people. They did not speak, supposedly
because of shame. They had nothing to offer a visitor. Not even water.
Up the coast was the winter enclave of the A’li’i, the royalty.
This was a secret.
It is more likely that the Na’na’ku’li were the first line of security for intruders. This
is a sacred trust. Hawaiian families have been keepers of secrets for generations
out of necessity, to protect a savaged and endangered culture. Better to say
nothing, then to speak to strangers.
Up the coast is Wai’ana’e, the mentioned bridge of land that the clinic is built on,
a tiny transgression of land that leads to the rest of the coast. The Ma’ka’ha
Valley is where the a’li’I wintered.
Ma’ka’ha was know as “a place of outlaws.”
Not far beyond was the city of refuge where criminals and defeated warriors were
exiled. It was a place of intense military training.
It was not a place one took a rental car.
As true as these things might have been, and the record indicates they are true,
you can see the subtle propaganda line that keeps people away from the coast.
People still do it, and it works. There are those who would prefer to keep the
country the country, to dissuade development and tourists from coming there.
The strip of land that the clinic is built on is a vital piece of land. As mentioned,
there is no other access to the coast unless you go over through the mountains
to get there.
In 1898, the year my grandparent came to the United States seeking freedom,
the monarchy of Hawai’i was overthrown by a contingency of business people
who seized power.
The Queen was captured immediately, choosing not to shed Hawaiian blood in
resistance to an overwhelming force.
Her husband, an Italian man in origin, a kanaka Italia, was at the summer palace
in Makaha at the time. With a small contingent of Hawaiian volunteers he began
the march up the coast to provide resistance and rescue the queen. They were
stopped in Wai’a’nae, at that same tiny strip of land. The army was captured and
imprisoned.
That tiny strip of land, the entrance to the coast, the burial place of kings and
the last battle site was turned into a garbage dump. Later, I am told, the land was
used to bury toxic wastes in an effort to bring money into the community.
I don’t know if that is true or not, but it is not something that is talked about if true.
If not, it certainly is an interesting continuation of the ideal of protection, of
holding the sacred by silence or deception.
On this site, the mental health clinic was built. The land belongs to the Hawaiian
people.
The building belongs to the board of directors and the incorporation they serve.
Attribution for this page: Much of the history on this page comes from my
conversations with people from Wai'anae. I have read a variety of historical
narratives. If you do a search on the history of the Wai'anae Coast you will come
up with similar and solid histories. Not much is written about John Dominus. The
oral tradition is facinating. Much information on the revolution has been trusted
to family members of the people arrested with John Dominus. Not much of it has
been written down. Hawaiian culture has recorded its history in dance and in the
detail of first person stories handed down in families. You have to remember that
the Hawaiian language was outlawed after the revolution. For more than one
reason. You could have your tongue cut out for speaking Hawaiian. It was
against the law to name your child a Hawaiian name. This law was still on the
books in the early 1960s. I know families whose granmothers and great
grandmothers went to prison for naming their children Hawaiian names. These
stories and others have not been documented to the degree they need to be.
The sanitized history of Hawaii gains a lot of depth when you talk to Hawaiian
families and look at archive photos of the time. I prefer conversations in
traditional Hawaiian style to the written sagas for the most part. Queen
Li'li'o'ku'lani wrote a history of Hawaii that is certainly worth reading. I encourage
you to do your own research if interested.
Who do you think is responsible for the stakeout and harassment at this site and
at my home?
The NSA
0 Organized Crime
0 The Mental Health Clinic
0 A Terrorist Organization
0 The FBI
0 The CIA
0 Men'e'hu'ne
1 Sign in to vote Entry for September 25, 2006 A Choice Of Blog Sites
Please Note:
I've added a blog-site narrative page to my Web Site
http://zangarijournalism.com. There is nothing on the page except for the text
portion of this narrative.
It will be much easier to print from there.
In terms of the blog narrative I will be organizing the archive site as to topic and
date as time permits. Right now it is reverse chronological order, like the blog
itself.
To date there have been 452 visits to this blog. I'd like to increase that.
The main Web page has about 1,000 visits for the month. Visibility is extremely
important in terms of safety issues. If you think this project is worth while, please
pass the site on to friends and let them know what I am attempting to do.
What is that?
Document my last three years in Hawaii.
To talk about what happened there.
To document an anthrax attack and a lost federal lawsuit involving a toxic
environment at a children's mental health clinic.
To discuss events that appear to be connected to the terrorist attack known as 9-
11.
This narrative serves as a back-drop to the writing of the cyber novel Aloha's
End. Aloha's End is a fun, romantic satire set in contemporary Hawaii. There is a
lot of local history and religion in the piece. I will be talking more about what
happened around the writing of it as it becomes time to republish and update the
piece. This thing drops like a bomb and explodes into a rollicking time piece in
the next few weeks. It should be very entertaining. It was popular in it's time.
Thank you for Visiting the Site.
Tomorrow I will pick up where I left off as things get increasingly dangerous for
me in Hawaii. I'm nervous about writing it. I tell you the truth. Like a lot of possible
9-11 survivors and other survivors of violent crimes and terrorist attacks I fear
reprisals. I'll continue to talk about lawsuit issues and autobiographical material
in the body of the narrative. The five year anniversary of the attack has hit hard.
I am sharper around issues, as public opinion surfaces. Over 30 per cent of
Americans believe that there is much more to this attack than has been
revealed. There is a real desire for resolve on the resolvable issues. My heart
and mind is with survivors, and other witnesses. I am particularly concerned
about the health, welfare and freedom of primary and secondary witnesses. My
own situation would indicate that the pressures around containing them are
great. And at a great cost on a personal and national scale. If you know of any
witness or survivor sites that you feel need greater visability, please feel free to
post them or contact me at michael_zangari@yahoo.com.
The blog site continues to be hacked, as does the journalism archives. At this
writing the blog site has been hit. I have no control over font color, spelling or
format. Those functions have been deleted.
The countdown to Aloha's End begins now...
Entry for September 25, 2006 A Poison for your thoughts Permanent Link | 0
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Entry
for September 24, 2006 A Poison For Your Thoughts
“Far away in the heavenly abode of the great God Indra, there is a wonderful net
which has been hung by some cunning artificer in such a manner that it
stretches out infinitely in all directions. In accordance with the extravagant tastes
of deities, the artificer has hung a single glittering jewel in each eye of the net,
and since the net itself is infinite in dimension, the jewels are infinite in number.
There hang the jewels, glittering like stars of the first magnitude, a wonderful
sight to behold. If we now arbitrarily select one of these jewels for inspection and
look closely at it, we will discover that in its polished surface there are reflected
all the other jewels in the net, infinite in number. Not only that, but each of the
jewels reflected in this one jewel is also reflecting all the other jewels, so that
there is an infinite reflecting process occurring. The Hua-yen school has been
fond of this image, mentioned many times in its literature, because it symbolizes
a cosmos in which there is an infinitely repeated interrelationship among all the
members of the cosmos. This relationship is said to be one of simultaneous
mutual identity and mutual inter-causality.” Cook, 1977, Princeton.
The Flower Garland Sutra or Lie Sutra is a punctuation mark in a vast,
untranslated and destroyed scripture of Hua-yen Buddhism. It is the foundation
of one of the most intimate psychologies in history. It is the study of the moment
to moment genesis of thoughts, impulses, emotions and actions. Life is so
valued and love so prevalent that it an obligation to be a witness to all, and to
use the information gained, no matter how painful or joyous it might be to relieve
suffering. It is important to come to an understanding, or awareness in our life
time that will aid others in doing the same. You can translate that what ever
religion you are. It is about the interdependence of things. How one thing is
connected to others things, and how this relationship defines who we are. So
interconnected are things that there is no one thing responsible for any event.
The daisy chain of events, the garland of events extends in all directions at all
times in a vast, unknowable unity of form and passing of forms.
In other words, It beats the hell out of me why things happen the way they do. All
I know is there must be a reason for all of it. Everything serves. Live and learn
above all. Or as my Dad told me early on, “Keep your eye on the ball.” My mom’s
most offered advice is the same. “Pick a lane and stay in it.”
It seems that meditation and toxic chemicals have impacted me in the same way.
I am in an eternal present-tense. And so it was in 1998 when the envelope of
anthrax arrived in my mailbox in from Nigeria. I am still feeling the impact of that
gram or so of white powder in my life today, eight years later.
Somewhere in the haze of those months, I remember this:
There was a soft knock on my door.
I had been sleeping. I slept a lot. I got up, dressed and went to the door.
When I opened it, my former boss, the one whose job it was to fire me, stood in
an altogether human stance, small and shaken. He was crying.
“I shouldn’t have done it” he sobbed.
I stood there with him for several seconds, confused.
And then softly, shut the door.
I never saw him again.
It was not out of maliciousness or anger that I shut the door.
It was out of a sense of the purely surreal. I was overwhelmed. I had
experienced similar states at other times in my life, a vestige of autism and ADD,
that when over stimulated, I shut down. And so it was. I was in LuLu land.
I wrote a song about working with him shortly after that and have remembered
him in that song. In part it goes, “I was under his command in LuLu land….”
He had been fired a few months after me.
He was an interesting guy that I unfortunately never got to know. He was a jazz
drummer and knew all the greats of his generation. He knew and played with
Charlie Parker and John Coltrane. He had shared their vices as well. His partner
was my direct supervisor.
At the party that welcomed him I heard this story about him.
He grew up on the streets.
He was not born in the USA.
He was Eastern European. As a young boy he had come over to this country on
a trawler with a cold war spy, as a cover of sorts. They had transited through the
Panama Canal.
At that same party, a board of director member talked about his connections to
radical groups in Palestine. He was a member of the Indigenous Peoples
Committee of the United Nation. The committee was not recognized by the United
States. Though he had no formal charge from the Hawaiian People, he
represented the Hawaiian people in Switzerland at a committee meeting there.
This was a major historical move. He met and became friends with Yassar Arafat.
He was treated like Hawaiian Royalty. He loved the diplomatic circles and
diplomatic life. He found things in common with the struggle of the Palestinian
people and others in attendance as well. He sharpened his awareness of
Hawaiians as a group entity. He did not at that time recognize the right of Israel
to exist.
I sat at their table. Not by invitation, but because I was pulled there like a
magnetic go-cart. I ate my cake and listened.
I had spent a lot of time with his niece. I was a student of his writing and
teaching. I had read everything he had ever written. I had seen some of his
lectures. This information and stance on Israel was new to me. I did not agree. I
had learned about the psychological “Stages of Radicalization” that arose from
the African American community in the 1960s from a Japanese American friend
in grad school, at my internship at Colorado State University. Her friend and her,
who said they were from San Francisco (I knew at the time she was from Hawaii
and her father was a national political figure. She was disguising her identity for
security reasons. )
The board of director member, talked about passing through the same stages.
He said he went through the same stages, and listed them. He said there was a
time period where he favored violent change as an alternative to more traditional
political action. He said he thought about bombing buildings.
This was cocktail party talk.
It was nothing secret or unknown. He had said the same things in public lectures.
The agency had just built a new building and received massive grant money
from the federal government. It was a CASP grant.
CASP money had been siphoned off this grant immediately after receiving it and
socked away to pay for his taxes in the in the event of Federal prosecution. He
had refused, as a Native Hawaiian, to pay taxes, viewing himself, and other
Hawaiians as unwilling citizens in a conquered country. He did not pay his taxes
out of the slush fund.
Later, other monies were dedicated beyond contract requirements.
“For black bag jobs for the CIA,” joked the new director.
Later, his niece went on an extended trip through Polynesia. She told me she
picked up a large sum of money from a Marshal Islands bank account and
transferred it to the Philippines for her uncle.
Me? I filed the information in the back of my mind.
It was several years later after being anathraxed and poisoned that these things
surfaced again.
There was a second and a third attempt on my life.
A large amount of codeine or some other narcotic was place in a can of Coca
Cola in my refrigerator. I took one sip and put it down. The smell was strong. I
got groggy quickly and fell across my bed. 48 hours later I woke up. If I had
taken more than one sip or had drained the can I'd probably be dead. If one of
my step children had taken the Coke they more than likely would not have
survived. More of the drug showed up in a pot of chili I had made for their dinner.
We dumped it. I called the police and turned samples of the drugged Coke over
to them. The investigating officer reluctantly took one of the cans (there were
two) and dusted the condo for prints at my request.
In walking autistic shock, as usual, it was noted Buddha like and filed in my mind.
It passed into memory with everything else that was happening. One thing after
another. Things were moving like an Indiana Jones movie. The big boulder was
rolling towards me and I was running from it. In slow motion.
The terrorist event known as 9-11 was still three years away.
The nightmare for me had just begun.
Sunday September 24, 2006 - 11:43am (EDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0
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Entry for September 23, 2006 The Poison within the Poison
In 1998-1999, the flood of information about the chemicals in the carpet and the
horrific effects on the body washed over my world. Everything that had come
before was swept away in the putrid overload. I was swimming desperately to
stay afloat. The only thing I found to cling to in the deluge was the federal court
process and the novel I was working on. I hung on to my word processor like a
life jacket while computer after computer was hacked and destroyed. One of the
things that was back-pocketed was the envelope of talcum powder from Nigeria.
Without FBI follow-up, I skittered off this bizarre incident into the infinitely crazy
world of litigation. It was in a dimension I had never imagined existed. It was like
some crazy chess game with a dizzying list of rules moderating every thought of
movement. It was a place where you could not talk, even to correct mistakes so
blatant that flashed like neon bozo nose on the face of what was happening. My
lawyer, post stroke, screwed up. My transcripts were stolen. My EEOC file
disappeared. On two occasions my girlfriend and I woke up to a dog being
tortured to death outside our bedroom window at midnight. The apartment was
broken into to.
My mind settled into a narcotic like puddle where everything blended like
pudding mix and oil.
How exactly were these events related?
I was getting sicker.
Was it the anthrax or the chemicals?
Was it the electricity?
The circuits in my girl friends house were clearly crossed.
The house was hot-boxed and under some kind of surveillance.
I kept thinking about what I had learned on the sugar cane plantations, back
when there were sugarcane plantations. The Russian Extraterrestrial (or so they
said) and electrical genius Nikolai Tesla had been hired by the Hawaiian Royalty
to electrify Hawaii. The royal palace was electrified before the White House in the
United States. The literacy rate was also higher than it was in our own country.
That was just prior to the overthrow of the monarchy.
While Tesla was there, the plantations also hired him. You can see the
transformers he designed for the plantations workers homes in plantation
museums there. Usually without explanation.
The second and third generations’ accounts of the plantation workers are that
the houses of the time were wired up in a crude reward/punishment mode. The
positive effects were sexual. The negative effects were aggressive and painful.
The spine would bristle under extreme electrical exposure. We experienced that.
My eight year relationship broke apart under the pressure.
The anthrax issue became just a puzzle piece.
Tomorrow, I’ll talk about the other puzzle pieces. And the terrorist event known
as 9/11.
Saturday September 23, 2006 - 06:33am (EDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link |
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Entry for September 22, 2006, Poison Choices2 No Ask, No Tell
The second red flag ran chills up my spine.
I think it was the grammar.
There was a clause in the termination agreement that said in part: "Employee
shall make no reference, allusion, or allegation of any wrongdoing against
employer in any public media or privately."
Under executive order and my sworn oath as a deputized federal marshal my
obligation to report all illegal activities supersedes all other considerations,
especially when there is a possibility of a clear and present danger. It is clear
how present that possibility of danger is. Failure to report is punishable by at
least a year in jail and a 10,000 dollar fine At least it was the last time I checked.
That’s a hefty time in the can and quite a chunk of change for a spineless,
morally reprobated act like participating in a safety cover-up at a clinic that
services children, families and disabled people. But not hefty enough.
After the Enron scandal, I am of the opinion that public corruption should be
viewed as a form of domestic terrorism. At the government level, that’s treason
of the highest kind. That is betraying office and public trust. The reforms
recommended by George W. Bush via his executive ordered committee on this
issue triples fines and punishments for this kind of thing, as it should. It should
be law instead of ideal.
If anyone at that clinic is directly responsible for any of this, from the cutting of
corners on construction to the covering up of dangerous circumstances arising
from construction. They should be held accountable for their actions and people
should be compensated for the medical problems and life style changes that
have happened as a result.
Two of my friends and coworkers have died since that time. Maybe more. I am
only recently well enough to consider these things in perspective. What has
happened since? I don’t know.
I have done my best to document what happened.
It may very well be up to someone else to update facts.
Friday September 22, 2006 - 01:02am (EDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0
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Entry for September 21, 2006 Poison Choices Con't
I know this is no fun.
It will be.
I promise.
I feel an obligation to my clients and the people I worked with to give a full
accounting of what happened before I left Hawaii. I want them to know about how
I left and what I found out before I went. For all I know the material I left behind
with friends got distributed and people have added their own information to mine.
Maybe were all still in the dark, literally, with the impact of these chemicals on the
eyes.
It is my deepest hope that the survivors are being taken care of.
There was heavy litigation around the Bigelow Nu Broadlock carpet adhesive. As
a result, information on the product line, its legality and its impact on the human
body has been severely limited on the Internet to prevent further litigation.
The mediator read the data sheet on the main chemicals to me over the phone. I
followed up. I don't remember what exactly I found out. I do know that the product
was made by a major chemical company like Du Pont. I also know they sold their
stock in the product after it became a liability. Someone else evidently could
make a profit from it.
I left in the middle of a tsunami after a hurricane after an earthquake after a
flood.
Things were crazy. Like many people forced to leave Hawaii I had to leave
everything behind. That's why the thrift stores are so good there. It's disaster
packing for a lot of people. And it usually happens around the ten year point of
entry. In territorial law (made invalid by statehood in 1949) it was the law that
after ten years in Hawaii, all protection of law stopped. And the newcomer was
game for slaughter. The sexual assaults that happened after that point are
legendary. The horror stories are many. Is this ten year point arbitrary or a
linage remainder or territorial law? I can't tell you anymore than that.
At any rate, thats what happened.
Sick and without income I lost everything I had.
As far as the chemicals and the clinic go, It’s an interesting comment on the
priorities that rule these things.
It’s the same old story.
It’s money before human safety.
The E Pluribus Unum blues. Out of the many, the one, ultimately.
It’s the selfish little pig-glut called profit.
Thursday September 21, 2006 - 10:55am (EDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link |
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Entry for September 20, 2006 A Choice of Poisons3
It takes approximately ten years for the combination of chemicals used to gum
the carpet in at the mental health clinic to impact the human body.
Wednesday September 20, 2006 - 02:16am (EDT) Edit
Entry for September 18, 2006 The Bird Cage (Second Edit)
As distasteful as it is, you learn quickly about disability issues when your world is
limited by physical or psychological barriers.
It’s not about disability. It’s about ability. I had to learn the basic skills I needed to
cope with my situation. Most of that was establishing habit and doing fine
adjustments on things like motor skills, fatigue and focus. The psychological
brick-a-bract, the self esteem issues, the desire to fit in, and the courage to go
after the things I wanted soon followed. For my personality type there’s nothing
quite as motivating as someone telling me that I can’t do something or that I am
not good enough to do something. That really that winds my key.
By far the most difficult things for me to adjust to were the limits that other people
put on me. That had always been the case. But it becomes much more familiar
when you are disabled. Statistically, in the work place, a disabled person will
typically out perform an able person when basic needs are accommodated.
There are millions of disabled people who work and are not accommodated. If
you are disabled you must stay in your place. If you do well, you incur animosity.
Almost certainly your disability will be viewed by some as an advantage. You
become recognizable as different. Social isolation is common. The challenges
that some people face are far greater than what other people face but you must
never, I repeat never compare disabilities. As Cervantes, the man that wrote
“The Man of Lamancha” wrote, “comparisons are odious.”
Every person’s situation is unique, and uniquely painful. I stayed busy. When I
got back from the hospital in San Antonio, I hit the ground running. I was active
in the church choir. I played in bands. I became the president of the Catholic
Youth Organization and became Student Council President. I slept a lot. I’d be in
bed right after dinner on nights when I had nothing to do. My bed was between
two huge speakers from the first stereo built in the 1960s. The dial glowed green
and threw weird shadows against the wall. I listened to KRCB in Council Bluff
Iowa, and had vivid dreams of working there. I occasionally listened to KFMQ in
Lincoln.
I had managed to cope most of my life with my situation. It was a dreamy
existence. Because of the autism, I had developed a keen hyper-focus. I was
very present tense when I was oriented. When I wasn’t it was like being
drugged. It had taken me eight years to get my B.A. The hypersomnia was bad.
I slept all the time. In the mid nineties it became obvious that I would have a
difficult time establishing and maintaining a career with my limits. It had taken me
that long to develop the skill to see my limitations.
I saw a doctor for a consult and was tagged with the diagnosis Attention Deficit
Disorder Residual. I had never had any other psychological diagnosis tagged
onto me before except for PTSD. I was put on cognitive enhancers. The Doc
gave me Ritalin at first which I couldn’t stand. It made me feel high all the time.
The first hour you shit like a duck and smelled like pee. It milks peak
experiences. I was already hyper-present. For the first week I talked fast. It
caused great muscle tension. That’s why kids don’t like it. I developed a strong
compassion for special need kids that I had not fully engaged before. I began
looking for solutions.
I ended up on Dexedrine and Aderil alternatively. In the interim I looked for other
solutions. I applied for a grant to get biofeedback equipment at the clinic and
succeeded. At a very primitive level I began to learn about nuerofeedback.
Nuerofeedback works for me now as does various forms of oxygen
enhancement. It is in fact, nuerofeedback is statistically, more effective than
psycho stimulants alone. In some cases it is even more effective without. I
ditched the speed.
Psycho stimulants played their role. Some people need them. Despite the
liabilities of taking the drugs on a daily basis it worked for me. I woke up. I was
able to maintain wakefulness. My whole world opened up. I ended up in program
management.
I was getting more assertive with what I needed to succeed and more self aware
of my liabilities. My immediate boss offered me two solutions when I got
promoted. I was told I could work at home, when I needed to. This was essential
for curriculum development, and I was allowed to take breaks when I needed
them. This became an issue after about an hour of intensive work. I knew I
assimilated information better verbally than in a written form so I asked to be
briefed on important issues and not over stimulated. These few things provided
a clear road to success for my pilot programs. We stayed on task and successful
for three years. She had enabled me to succeed.
These simple things also provided a road map on how to sabotage my success.
The disabilities contract signed by my supervisor and countersigned by the
director of the clinic was admitted as evidence.
This is how that happened.
The ADA specifies that an older worker must be informed a week in advance
when a termination contract is presented. The over 40 workers is allowed to
review the contract in advance in a situation conducive to understanding it. It is
acknowledged by the federal government that reestablishing a career after the
age of 40 is extremely difficult. In a sense, it is regarded as a disability, and
covered by disability laws. Management is required to inform the worker get a
lawyer and that lawyer needs to be present at any termination meeting. None of
the legal protocol was followed. I was surprised with the contract and asked to
read and sign it on the spot. I was double teamed by two senior management
people who traded rapid fire accusations and threats as I tried to read the
contract. The meeting lasted well over an hour.
Hawaii has an "at will" law, meaning that essentially you can fire anyone at
anytime for any reason. These elaborate maneuvers were not needed. I could
have been fired outright.
It was under these circumstances that I refused to resign. I was fired and left
after signing a contract. I knew it was not binding, but it released my paycheck
and expedited unemployment insurance. With the termination contract tucked
into my pocket I left. It was the night before Thanksgiving, 1997. My girl friend
and I returned that night with a senior management official and we cleaned out
my office. I left everything in order, including the books I had bought out of
pocket for the program.
In a most shameful act I was not allowed to terminate with clients, one of which
committed suicide shortly after I left. Nobody knew what had happened to me.
The foster parents I supervised had asked for a Ho’o’pono’pono ceremony
which is how Native Hawaiians traditionally problem solved difficult family
situations. They were promised this ceremony. It never happened. It was in this
manner I left one of the most important positions in my career. It was a job that
was more than a job. It was a charge by the Hawaiian community to serve there.
Something I took very seriously. Seriously enough to stand my ground as it was
ripped out from under me.
It was the popping of yet another bubble in the bigger picture, a red flag over
something not quite right. My cognition was deteriorating.
Monday September 18, 2006 - 07:44pm (EDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 5
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Entry for September 17, 2006 The elephant again...
In the Kurt Vonnegut novel “Sirens of Titan,” Malachi Constance, the main
character is kidnapped and imprisoned on Titan, one of the moons of Mars. He
is forced to endure mind control and is made to march in the army of Mars. Of
his experience Malachi Constance said “I was a victim of a series of accidents.
As are we all.”
I have been a pinball most of my life. Shot into space in a random trajectory, I
have fallen against electronic bumpers and rebounded into maze tunnels that
spit me out for ten points, or lofted me gently between the flippers into another
blank start against the plunger. There have certainly been contributing factors
along the way. The hip. The number of beers. The song on the jukebox or the
sensitivity to tilt. But to this day, I’ve tried to play it the way it fell. With varying
degrees of success. As have we all.
I was born with a heart murmur which impacted the way the left hemisphere of my
heart pounded. In this case, it beat weakly. The blood picks up oxygen in the left
hemisphere of the heart and pinballs it to the brain, which impacts cognition. The
lower levels of oxygen have made me hypersomnic most of my life. I sleep a lot.
Even when I am awake. It was observed in school early on that I was probably
autistic. Later I was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder. Show me a child
with significant cognitive difficulties and I'll show you a heart murmur. or heart
defect.
I had to teach myself to write. I didn’t learn it in school.
I was basically “in a world of my own,” as my mother is fond of saying, until about
sixth grade when I started watching Johnny Carson and I discovered stand up
comedy. I gave it a shot in class with solid results. I was bofo from the back of the
room and had an indulgent teacher who laughed at my jokes. She rode a pinball
to the Marshall Islands mid term, and the incoming teacher was a tougher
audience. By that time my fate had shifted courses.
I learned my first lesson about success in entertainment industry in the seventh
grade. I was had just come from a successful year run in sixth grade. I was
ready for a bigger venue. Entering seventh grade I discovered I had to do it all
over again. My prior success in a small pond did not transfer. Nobody knew who I
was in the big school. I didn’t look right. I didn’t smell right. I was not accepted
immediately by everyone. I was nobody and not particularly welcome. I was still a
fish in a pond. A very big pond.
Two years later I was diagnosed with scoliosis. This was a rare bone disease in
males that made the spine twist into a “s” curve. I leaned to the right like the
tower in Pisa. Most of my female friends who had the disease had their spines
fused as a mandatory treatment. The males got back braces without the surgery.
I was told that I would have to wear a brace.
In those years, the brace fit like a bird cage with a harmonica rack up under the
chin.
Nobody knew what happened to me.
I was whisked off to a hospital in San Antonio Texas to be fitted in the hardware.
My father was in the Air Force.
I rode a military medical evacuation plane away from home, laying in a stretcher
carried by medics into the airplane. I took the ride flat on my back, suspended
from cables from the roof of the airplane. I was in a state of shock.
Reroute, the snow began to fall. It became a blizzard. Conditions were bleak and
the plane was forced down in Denver where we were to wait the storm out before
continuing on to Texas.
As it happened, the only place for me to stay in Denver was the Fitzsimmons
Army Medical Facility. This was at the peak of the Viet Nam conflict. The
casualties were so heavy that they had to screen in the lanai that circled the
hospital and turn in into one long ward where the amputees arrived from the
battlefields for treatment. I was placed in this ward for several days. I was the
only person in this endless ward who had not lost a limb. The wounds were so
fresh that they were still bleeding. The norm was a bloody bandage over a
severed limb or mangled face. I was 14.
Sunday September 17, 2006 - 07:30am (EDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0
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Entry for September 11, 2006 A Choice Of Poisons2
The safety report from the environmental company was in the tray of the fax
machine. It began to dial. The numbers toned out like the numbers on the keno
machine. I had found the report that the agency refused to release. They were
sending it to me. Then the owner walked in and killed the call. “I have to get
permission from the agency before I can give this to you” he said.
My heart went down with the phone receiver.
There was still time to do research at the city and county buildings permit library.
I had already been to the lieutenant governors office. I had spent time with my
congress people from Hawaii and Florida. I had talked to the police and the FBI. I
had been to OSHA and the Health Department.
At the peak darkness of the valley of the shadow, sick and on my own, I headed
for the bus stop. I no longer had gas money. The two hour ride to Honolulu was
wildly disorienting. A group of ethnically Filipinos recited the rosary in the back
where I was, in the horseshoe of seats where the kids and working people
grouped at the end of the day. Kids with headphones on sang along with their
mp3 players. The scenery slipped by in a haze of colors as the sunlight and
shadows strobed the windows.
Sometimes people would talk around me, to each other, but giving me
information I needed about the clinic and what was going on. Disheveled and
confused I met a group of clients from the adult team who knew who I was and
what I was doing. They too fed me information.
I had come up with the name of the architect and the name of the construction
company that had built the clinic and put in the carpet. I interviewed the key
people. The architect told me that he had only used “green” materials in his
plans. There were no toxins. He said the agency had cut corners to save money.
They had not put in the elevator for the disabled. Upstairs there was a door that
led into an empty shaft. In the darkness you would see the cables loop the
pulleys and drop to the bottom floor. Raw sewage came through the shower
nozzle in the basement of the clinic. Something was wrong with the septic tank.
I talked to the owner of the construction company that built the clinic. He told me
exactly what they had done.
The carpet was never meant to be glued in, he said. It was supposed to be
tacked in. The chemicals in question, Bigelow Nu-Broadlock, Afta P and BM and
Ethoglyconol were mixed to stretch them out. There wasn’t enough of the glue to
cover the clinic. The combination of chemicals ate the backing off the carpet
adding another layer of toxic stink to the swamp gas that inundated the clinic.
The inexperienced crew tried to get rid of the smell. The did the one thing they
should not have done. They attempted to steam clean the carpets. The steam
continued to fuse the chemicals into a toxic bomb. A dangerous situation got
more dangerous.
In talking to my peers on the bus, many of whom were at the clinic in those first
weeks, I found out that the clinic had been a disaster site. One of the people who
I talked with worked in the office at the time. He said his job was to file the safety
reports as they were rewritten. He counted five drafts. He described the office as
a place of total pandemonium. The fumes were so strong that the administrative
staff had to take a breaks every fifteen minutes to keep working. People were
passing out as they worked. Big fans were brought in to keep the air circulating
in the office. People were beginning to have major memory and cognition
problems. Still, the denial was as thick as the fumes. The clinic stayed open and
business ran as usual.
The Afta P and BM were a controlled substance. These chemicals were often
used to make methamphetamine. The information Web Sites on the chemicals
were monitored. The clinic had stockpiled a supply in a closet downstairs.
People were known to drink the green bile for its high, an amphetamine like buzz
that ended in rage and extreme muscle tension as it wore off. It also made you
keenly paranoid.
The Bigelow Nu-Broadlock had been banned in the continental United States,
but as was typical, was available in Hawaii for a reduced price. It was like the
Depo-Provera they were giving local women for birth control at the local clinics. It
was banned everywhere in the United States except Hawaii. It was cheap and
available on the Leeward side of the island.
The federal government had dumped these well intentioned, huge lump sum
grants on the poorest communities. The money was usually channeled into local
people’s hands who had never had any significant money available to them in
their lifetimes. Frequently there were community shenanigans nation wide
around the money, how it was spent and by whom.
It would have been better for everyone if the money had been performance
based instead of pork barreled out. As it was, the large sum of money available
must have tempted even the strong in that small community.
In court I fought for the release of documents to document what had happened.
Later, I fought for the intervention of the attorney generals office in the case to
obtain information.
Nothing worked.
In fact nothing could have worked in those circumstances. My papers weren’t
filed on time. There was no case. Why it dragged on for two years is a mystery to
me. How I kept it alive in the state I was in is even a bigger mystery.
I am grateful to my federal marshal peers for keeping me laughing at the
courthouse and the support of the federal clerks in the courts main office for
keeping me on time and straight with my efforts. I thank the Hawaiian people I
met there, who as individuals and families continue to fight for the land that was
stolen from the over a hundred years ago. There example, as always was very
sustaining for me.
I am thankful to individual plaintiffs, many of whom were women fighting sexual
assault and harassment cases for their company and companionship.
My treks to federal court at dawn to drop papers in the box are an experience I’ll
never forget. Getting there meant going down the coast at sunup, driving or
riding besides the raging pacific ocean as it crashed into the reef line near the
highway. Then, after I made it into town and through Chinatown and outdoor
markets I get to the citadel of the federal building. Winding my way in I’d find the
filing box outside the door of the court. The machine stamped the documents,
took them and dropped them in a box that resembled the crane and pebble
machines with the teddy bears and rings in the supermarkets.
In 2001 my physical condition was at a point where I could no longer work or
sustain myself in Hawaii. I left for Florida in January, where I had a massive
congestive heart failure. I was told I needed a heart transplant. My focus and
orientation shifted from the lawsuit to staying alive.
By the time the Supreme Court had bounced my petition out of court I was no
longer heavily involved with the outcome of the case. I had a narrative that read
like horror and spy fiction. Dutifully I continued to hack the memorandums out
until there was nothing left to say and no recourse to law.
Though I could not stand up to do the dishes or lay down to sleep, my breathing
was so labored, I started to take the steps I needed to take for to survive. And I
did.
Thank God almighty for my family.
And my obstinacy.
And the willful, living spirit of my Buddhism that helped me let go of all of it and
watch the dark until the sun came up.
When the daylight flickered on the horizon I was still there.
Monday September 11, 2006 - 11:19pm (EDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0
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Entry for September 10, 2006 A Choice Of Poisons
Let’s keep it relevant.
In terms of fact there is nothing new here. Everything mentioned in these next
few posts can be found in the text and content of Federal Lawsuit No. 03-15367,
Lower Court No 00-99-0072 DAE-KSC. The information here was filed as
evidence. The lawsuit was filed in Honolulu, Hawaii, in the 9th Circuit Court. It
progressed to the Supreme Court of the 9th Circuit in San Francisco where I
officially lost the case.
It was not a total loss. The decision reaffirmed that I was guilty of “no
misconduct” in terms of how I left my position as a manager in a federally funded
program. I was given unemployment insurance. The defendant admitted in
summary judgment arguments there were toxins in the work environment and
that there was a “possibility” of exposure. This was good. In terms of OSHA
reporting that’s all that’s required for further action. I reported it.
During this time period the OSHA investigators were denied access to the
property to conduct tests.
I had done what I set out to do. I had entered evidence into the public record for
later investigation. I felt an obligation to my clients, my friends, my coworkers and
my clients to do so.
Why did I lose?
In short, my lawyer failed to file on time. As a point of fact no evidence was
heard. As I have mentioned, before, I had an admission from the clinic that there
were toxins in the building. I had gotten this confirmation in mediation and in
court by the opposition. I had a termination contract that was clearly illegal under
the ADA. I had a mandate under executive order to report all crimes. I had
financial discrepancies documented. Some of missing money came directly from
my salary. That amounted to about $10,000 a year. The clinic had no
insurance per Se. They had a million dollar slush fund held in reserve in case of
liability. Insurance had been denied.
Everything was in place.
As my financial resources dwindled, I could no longer justify borrowing money for
a lawyer. After I lost the summary judgment I took on the case myself. I ended
up representing myself. I felt more in control. Over all, the process was more
satisfying. I learned a lot about the courts. I had motivation to do more
investigation while the case dragged on. It was another year before I had
exhausted lower court options.
As stated, my goal was simply to document what happened. I was very sick by
this time. I remember the absolute low point as being after a consult with my
lawyer in Honolulu. On the way back from the meeting I could not find my car in
the parking structure. I was in a state of profound physical and mental
exhaustion. The parking garage looked like a slaughterhouse, a long series of
multi-leveled mazes with stalls. I wandered from floor to floor in confusion. It took
me two and a half hours to find the car.
I was in tears by the time I found it. It was sitting right where I left it. My memory
was shot. My cognition was weak. Breathing was very difficult. I looked terrible. I
had to count pennies from my change bank to pay for parking and gas. It was a
thirty mile drive back home in rush hour traffic. It was like going from one maze
into another.
How the hell did I get there?
Clearly the end of my employment was death-knelled by a visitation of Federal
Monitors in 1997. I worked under CASP grant at a mental health agency. I had
excellent evaluations. I ran two pilot projects on the Leeward coast. One program
was a therapeutic foster care program and the other provided in-home intensive
therapy for families in crisis. I worked with kids. I was not prepared by
management as to what to discuss at this meeting. I was not told what to say or
not to say to the monitors. I was on my own. That’s the way it usually was. So I
put together a culturally appropriate presentation and answered their questions.
I brought clients and employees in to be available for the monitors.
One of my foster parents, a Native Hawaiian women chanted. The prayer was
O’ he'emai. It was a prayer to “be heard,” for the federal monitors to "hear our
cry.”
I viewed this as an opportunity to tweak Federal involvement. I thought that was
what it was all about. The monitors wanted to know about problems. I told them
that I had no access to budget information and little or no supervision. I pretty
much ran the program on my own. I didn’t like the home intensive model. I felt it
was culturally inappropriate and not as effective as a less intensive intervention.
The monitors appreciated our candor.
I got a good mention and write up in the federal monitors report on the Leeward
Coast of O’ahu in 1997. The report is available from the Health Department in
Washington D.C.
It felt good. We felt good. I cared deeply about what I was doing as did the
people who worked for me and the clients we served. I was committed to the
community and to working in Hawaii. After all, I lived in the community I worked in.
Management, however, was livid.
I got my budget and supervision. A casual examination of the budget was
enough to tell me that the figures did not crunch. I had rewritten the RFP for
funding that year for the state. I spent about twenty hours nonstop editing the
thing. I got very familiar with how things were set up. It wasn’t right. Things were
getting increasingly uncomfortable at work. In the lawsuit I made the allegation
that management used every trick in the book to get me to quit from that point
on. Their tactics, according to my affidavit, involved racist jokes, attacks on my
religion and violations of my disabilities contract with the agency.
There were other concrete legal issues.
We were working in a brand new building. It was built on ceded land granted to
the agency by the Office of Hawaiian Affairs. The agency was responsible for the
building. OHA retained control of the land. There were clear care taker issues as
well.
In the previous year, the administrative staff had moved into the building. The
clinical staff soon followed. I was placed in a small office in the Children’s section
of the clinic. It was the room that was the least ventilated in the complex. I of
course had my faithful negative ion generators going at full blast. I spent a lot of
time on the carpet with the kids. I was newly in love and happy with my job.
I was usually the first person to arrive at management meetings on Monday
mornings. On one particular morning, one of the administrators had already
arrived and was setting up equipment. He had with him a safety report on the
building. He told me I could read it. As he fiddled with his laptop and projector, I
did. It stated that the carpet had been installed wrong and there were toxic fumes
in the building. They had run short of the adhesive used to hold it in place and
had mixed chemicals. The resulting fumes were extremely dangerous. It listed
some of the results of exposure to the fumes as blindness, dementia, liver,
kidney, brain, and lung and heart damage.
One of the administrators, the grant writer, had gone to her doctor to get details
on what these chemicals did to the human body and forced the issue in the
management meeting. She was very concerned. She left the agency shortly
afterwards. Administrative staff talked about the impact on the carpet workers
who glued the carpet in. They were temporary workers hired for the job, local
people. They were very sick. In the meeting we were assured that everything
was under control and the situation could be effectively dealt with by “leaving the
windows open” over a couple of weekends, letting the place air out. They
passed the report around.
We accept this information at face value. But it nagged at me. It still does.
Things had gone from good to bad overnight. When I was fired I filed a
complaint with the EEOC. The agency did not cooperate with the EEOC
investigators. They provided none of the requested documents. They did
provide a copy of the termination agreement. The EEOC agent spotted the ADA
problems immediately. We went into a federal mediation sponsored by the
EEOC.
As we entered this phase of the negotiations, I was feeling increasingly sick. I
wondered if my illness was connected to exposure to the toxins in the clinic. I had
also received the anthrax filled letter from Nigeria. Things were going wrong with
my body.
In mediation the management was prepared in advance to talk about toxins.
They had a version of the safety report with them. It was used as a bargaining
chip in negotiations. If I settled, I would get the medical information I needed to
seek treatment. I was offered a small sum of money for settlement and
references. I considered it. In a fit of consciousness, the mediator provided the
names of the chemicals to me on the phone. He also provided the name of the
company that did the safety report. He had a strong ethical base and a federal
obligation under law to do so. It was enough information to keep me going.
I felt like I was being held hostage for medical information. I filed the lawsuit.
The EEOC signed off and promptly lost all records pertaining to the case. They
were obligated to retain them until the legal process had completed. To date, the
whereabouts of those files remains a mystery.
I was truly and completely on my own.
Sunday September 10, 2006 - 03:47pm (EDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0
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Entry for September 09, 2006 A Slight Digression
I went to high school in Bellevue Nebraska. In the summer I did Ag work one
year. I detasseled corn in 110 degree weather. Not for very long though. I came
home exhausted and wrung out. One day I got separated from the rest of the
crew I was working with. Up ahead as far as I could see was the muddy row and
the corn towering above and arcing over my head. In back of me the same
infinite tunnel of corn. I broke into a blind panic and began to run. I tripped, and
tumbled face down into the mud, regaining my senses. It was a satori of sorts, an
awakening of something deep inside of me. A nameless dread. The next summer
I worked as a janitor for the school system. I worked at a little elementary school
with an elderly man who seldom spoke to me. He listened to easy listening radio
station KFOR. I remember the haunting, ascending electric piano of Stevie
Wonder on "You are the sunshine of my life" all summer long, the chills that
tingled up my spine when the piano hit G# and twinged the central nervous
system. I was lost in a dream, pushing my mop bucket down the long empty
hallways. The next year I started selling records and stereos at the Brandies
department store. That's where by chance I met radio announcer Jimmy O'Neill.
Jimmy O'Neill was working at WOW in Omaha. He was famous. He had been the
host of the ground breaking 1960s show Shindig on TV. I use to watch him in
Spanish when I lived in Puerto Rico. I watched him work intensely on the phone
doing a remote for the store. He gestured fanatically as he delivered the
commercial. He enunciated every word. Boxed with the consonants. He literally
shook when he talked he was so intense. He was as kinetic as hell even planted
in the corner of the record shop. Between stop sets I asked him how to get into
radio. I wanted to do what he did. I was already shaking. He told me I should go
to the Columbia School of Broadcasting in Kansas City. I almost went. I got the
catalog. I got some broadcast training in a special program in high school. I had
decided that I wanted to be on the radio. That much I knew. I played guitar in the
church choir. I played in a USO band. I played in a basement band called Queen
Anne's Revenge which morphed into Grunt. I spent all my time playing guitar and
piano. Don Fawn, a friend and guitar player in all those incarnation contacted
me recently. He has a tape of us playing Carl Perkins’s "Honey Don't." I didn’t.
We played the state prison once. We got paid in cake. Another job one night
promised real cash. It was at a church dance somewhere out in the country. We
climbed into the van and did the dance. When it came time to be paid, the
minister scratched his head and shrugged his shoulders. He mumbled bible
words. We didn't get cash. We got a carton of hot dogs and a case of Orange
Crush. We drove the van to the local drive in and watched "Fritz the Cat" from
the back of the open van. All night we gorged ourselves on the best hot dogs
and orange soda I ever had. We had it made. That is my work experience,
summed up in three stories. I was still playing guitar and singing in a weak voice
when I went to college. It was a big part of my self image and identity. The Italian
blues kid. I sought out opportunities to play. At the Centennial education
program, Jeff Table let me sit in with his bands, Crumbhunger and the
Permanent Waves. Ric Marsh, my advisor and friend tolerated my lack of focus,
timing and pitch and jammed with me. At the University one night I went solo. I
played did a night in a little coffee house in the student union. It was big time.
And truly awful. I decided that night that I would never be a great performer.
Music went from 100% of my life to zero overnight. I decided to write instead. I
got hired by the Daily Nebraskan in 1975.Vince Boucher was the editor at that
time. I could write music and art pretty well. I was groomed to replace the star
writer of that time, Dave Wood. My parents moved to Florida that year, leaving
me at school in Lincoln. I started off at the University of Nebraska majoring in
Journalism and Political Science. I was in the School of Broadcasting where I was
told by the head of the department that there was something wrong with my
voice. I didn't sound like anybody else there. I didn't have the pipes. My
instructor sent me off to a doctor to get the vocal nodes sliced off my vocal
chords like deli baloney. After the doctor stuck a mirror down my throat and
noodled around for awhile, I passed on the operation. Despite the alleged
grunge in my throat I carried on. I did OK in broadcast news and photography. I
did good interviews and framed things well. I learned my base radio skills on the
air at KRNU, the University of Nebraska radio station. A friend of my brothers,
Dennis Dorgherty, who was the resident manager at my dorm, knew Doug
Agnew, the station manager at KFMQ. He was the son of Steve Agnew, the
owner of the progressive rock station. Dennis got me an interview. He knew they
were desperate for an overnight personality. They had just lost their night
announcer. Doug was going down to the station with a case of beer and a
couple of friends to keep the station on the air. He usually shut it down by 3 a.m.
They hired me for the midnight shift. I didn't have the pipes, but I was the first
one in my class to get a radio job. Steve Agnew, the extraordinary air personality
and engineer hired me. They told me not to talk. Maybe it was the uncut baloney
on my vocal cords, I don't know. I do know I ended up talking anyway. They let
me. I played good sets and segued records really well. Roger Agnew, who had
the best radio voice I ever heard, got me up to speed. He said they had hired
someone from California to come and take over, but after he got to the station I
could do weekends. He told me to have a good time. I was sad, but exhilarated to
be on the air at all. I was working seven days a week, midnight to six in the
morning. The guy from California finally arrived. He got off a bus in the middle of
the night and came down to the station. It was over just like that. Or so I thought.
It turned out that he had a few problems. He was at the station 24 hours a day
telling people how to cut commercials, how to run the station, and what music to
play and how to be on the air. He had all the signs of someone with a strong
PTSD. He drank all the time. He didn't sleep. He couldn't stand to be alone. He
was locked into his anger. He was a control freak. They fired him and hired me. I
continued to work seven days a week. I'd sleep two hours in the morning and get
up and go write and edit for the Daily Nebraskan. The fired guy called me a
couple times a night. I could not get him off the phone. He said he didn't want me
to get fired like he did. He’d tell me how to survive. He started off friendly and got
increasingly hostile. He broke into the station one night drunk. And stole records.
He threatened to castrate me. I was getting to the point where I was carrying
empty coke bottles into the parking lot in case I needed something to defend
myself. As Senator Dave Landis said, "a coke bottle, now there's the weapon of
choice." Dave did a jazz show on the weekends. David Kappy, Captain Classics,
the guy who did the weekend classical show agreed. I finally told the program
director and the station called the police. It turns out he had just gotten out of
prison for assault and did not want to go back. That was my introduction to radio.
KFMQ was a one hundred and fifty watt station, one of the last in the country.
The big ones were usually a hundred thousand watts. What you would call a
stick station. We covered a tri-state area, and sometime were heard as far away
as Canada and Wyoming. I was there for ten years. That is my fourth and final
telling work tale.
I left ten years later to the day I was hired.
That was my work experience going into grad school. I worked in a library, built a
bridge, washed dishes, managed a gift shop, and was a file clerk and a
telephone operator.
I worked as an audio tech for work study. I sold what I wrote.
That’s what I learned from work.
Nothing could prepare me for the year 1997.
ZBlog
The ongoing chronicles of the journalist, novelist and psychologist Michael F.
Zangari.
Entry for September 08, 2006 How the elephant got into my pajamas
Photo by Fred Rackle
Post card from the condo.
Caption: "Located in scenic Makaha Valley, these 586 luxurious apartments
equipped with central air-conditioning and cable T.V. are immediately adjacent to
two eighteen hole championship golf courses. Swimming and surfing at famous
Makaha Beach are within walking distance."
Despite a somewhat notorious civil rights history in the 1960s, the condos
attracted a variety of people. It is filled with retirees and newlyweds. Built on a
spot sacred to the Hawaiian Royalty. It is said that the buildings are haunted and
cursed by the amakua of those kapuna who came before. The condos have
survived mudslides and shifting real estate prices and still captivate the mind
and spirit. It is a holy spot. Despite the curses. The view is killer. The condos are
surrounded on three sides by Volcanic Mountains that crumble like German
chocolate. About three hundred wild goats live up there. There are waterfalls
that cascade behind the condos in the winter. They are generally followed by
mud. Peacocks parade the idyllic. Down the valley two miles is the ocean.
The cable lanes that ties the condos together is a subject of some speculation.
Exactly how private are these condos? What kind of intrigues fills this place?
The famous have stood at the railing and looked down the valley at the rising
moon. Are there spies lurking about? Did the population of the two entire
buildings narrowly escape eradication in 1998 by an anthrax attack from a
foreign power? Its' a wild tale indeed. "A ripping good tale" as Earnest
Hemmingway wrote. But let’s start here. 1998.
Prelude
Let me review what I know to be true.
In the late summer or early fall of 1998 I received a letter from Nigeria.
The letter was a type-written document. The body of the letter was an attempt to
recruit me to set up a bank account. It offered a base fund of $150,000. I was
not to touch the money in the account but could have the interest accrued on an
interest baring account.
In the folds of the letter was a little more than a gram of white powder.
I called the FBI immediately. In a phone interview with the FBI agent (who did not
identify himself) the agent said that the letter was of a type that he was receiving
reports on. The letter was similar to letters received by others. It was regarded
as a scam. The unidentified white powder was most likely talcum powder. Talcum
powder, he explained, was used to obscure finger prints.
In the previous decade, the first cases of anthrax exposure in 50 years had been
reported in the United States. There had been fatalities. The anthrax was of a
weapons grade, stolen from a secure government facility. The accused
perpetrator was an employee of the facility, who evidently smuggled the anthrax
out of the facility. The first cases were apparently random mailings. One of the
victims, an elderly woman, is perplexing. The victims in Vero Beach, employees
of the Globe Newspaper in Vero Beach, are evidently more explainable. The
Globe is a Pulitzer Prize winning newspaper which does investigative reporting. I
believe it also does stories on tea parties with aliens. It is what my mother would
call a “scandal sheet.” The current issue has the following headlines:
HILLARY ATTACKS BILL’S SECRET LOVER. HE FORCES HILLARY INTO SEX
THERAPY.
JACKO WAS FRAMED
BRAD AND ANGELINA MOVING IN TOGETHER
KENNY CHESNEY’S OTHER WOMAN REVEALED
The magazine describes itself as publishing “true life stories and fun.”
Their Web Site is http://www.globemagazine.com/
It is clear that these individuals were highly traumatized by their experience and
have researched what happened extensively.
The incident itself is more explainable. No one likes journalists.
According to my cardiologist, who was informed on the initial attack, the weapons
grade anthrax was lethal within a couple of seconds.
In short, a typical knowledge of such exposure would indicate that this powder
was not of the same variety of anthrax in those initial attacks. It came from
outside the country. All known cases of anthrax exposure originated in the United
States, with stolen United States government-issue anthrax as a likely source of
contamination.
According to the 70 year old Berkley study on negative ions, as well as standard
operational procedures for medical and research facilities, negative ions contain
or kill anthrax. The following site is by no means definitive, but it is simplified to a
degree that you can quickly absorb the information. It will give you enough
grounding to do further research. http://www.superforce.com/
I lived in a high-density, negative ion infused environment. I had two high density
negative ion generators going full blast for seven years prior to the getting the
letter. I lived in a controlled, air conditioned environment. The floors space was
of a studio type.
It consisted of a single room condo, a hall way, and a two chambered bath and
dressing room. It was inter-connected to nineteen or twenty floors of other
occupied condos.
The FBI agent had me fax a copy of the letter and the envelope to him. I had to
remove the white powder from the envelope in order to do this. No sample of the
white powder was collected.
So what happened to the letter?
I was working at radio station KCCN AM at the time. A newswoman, Mandy
Armstrong, was interested in what had happened. She later became the News
Director on the FM side of the band. I gave the letter to her. I don’t remember if
there was powder in the envelope or not. We can assume that there was some
residue in the envelope. I’ll attempt to call Mandy today to find out if there is
additional information.
I got progressively sicker, culminating in a congestive heart failure. I almost died.
Organ damage was such that a heart transplant was recommended for my
survival. I am currently on 100% disability for toxic exposure and well.
That’s another story.
Is there another explanation for the illness? That’s next.
Alternative speculation as to the nature of the crime:
It is a frequent organized crime and espionage tactic to create the appearance
of a pattern crime with many victims. It is used to mask specific crimes. In this
way the whys of the crime can be covered up. Attacks appear to be part of a
random splattering of violence or criminal aggression. It’s explainable by a wider
pattern of events.
If so, why was I targeted? To what end?
Was I meant to be disabled by a lower quality anthrax exposure?
Was the offer based on truth?
Is there a link to a financial network, or “battle funds” set up for unnamed parties
to pull on while remaining anonymous?
I was out of work. I was engaged in a Federal Lawsuit against my former
employer.
I was economically vulnerable. That vulnerability was increased by an increasing
inability to work and isolation.
The plot, as it is unfolded like the letter from Nigeria.
In the folds of the letter is the unknown white powder of whys, whose and
whereas. Contained in it is the spore of events that set the next seven years in
motion.
These are the known facts of these events as I know them. I do for swear it.
Addendum:
What is anthrax?
Anthrax, named after the Greek word for coal because of the dark skin lesions it
causes, is a caused by the Bacillus anthracis bacterium. Spores can exist in the
soil for years and, herbivores such as cattle, sheep and goats are most likely to
become infected while grazing. Human cases are rare.
How dangerous is it?
The bug can infect humans through a cut on the skin, more rarely by inhalation
of spores or, even more rarely, by eating infected meat. Inhaling spores in
sufficient numbers is likely to lead to death, although early antibiotics can reduce
the risk. Ingested anthrax is similarly deadly, but more than 80 per cent of those
with a skin infection survive.
What are the symptoms?
Generally feeling unwell with a flu-like illness and breathing difficulties are the
early signs of inhaled anthrax. Skin infections cause an itchy, inflamed pimple
that turns into a blister with extensive swelling. Several days later this turns into
an ulcer with the classic black marks.
Can it spread between humans?
Anthrax does not spread person-to-person, although there have been extremely
rare reports of skin infections apparently transferring from one person to
another.
Related topic
· Anthrax
http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=1490
Friday September 8, 2006 - 07:40am (EDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0
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Entry for September 07, 2006 The Confession
I really like hyphens.
Its not AP style.
But I really like hyphens.
I'm going to use them on my Web Site.
The hacking has intensified significantly. I have a few things to do this week for
the site.
I am adding some articles written in Lincoln, Nebraska. They'll be a few more
columns from the Daily Nebraskan and some art reviews. I look at these articles
from the 70s and 80s with awe. They are very dense, free form and
conversational. These are funny, up-beat narratives they were very popular in
their time. I'll also be adding some articles heavily influenced by the time I spent
in the Women's Studies Department. I took a lot of classes over there, nestled in
the bosom of the English Department. I also spent some time with people from
the Women's Resource Center. You can see at least one of the threads that
weave through my work. A strong anti-sexual assault stance.
"Aloha's End" is near.
It will follow a brief narrative from my federal lawsuit. As I've mentioned, this
reads like fast journalism. It's accurate to the t.
I'm amazed I was able to do what I did, as sick as I was.
Its' tangentially connected to everything that follows, through 9-11 and the ashes.
Stay tuned......
I'll do my best to stay on-line., It may be a battle.
Thursday September 7, 2006 - 08:11am (EDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0
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The return Of "Aloha's End"
Because of the interactiveness of the Web, the cyber-novel "Aloha's End"
became more of a place then a piece of fiction for people. It had a lazy Hawaiian
atmosphere with the spazz of danger and romance.
That is always inherent for me in a lull.
Even in mediation, waiting for the pop of the next thought.
It's not unlike the undercurrents in the South, "Aloha's End."
There's a history. In Florida particularly, where calm on the surface can mean
heavy currents below. That's certainly the truth in the Pacific. (A strange name
for a turgid sea. The Pacific.)
"Aloha's End" is a funny, action adventure with topical as well as tropical over-
tones. It's a spy book. Kinda. Romance and Intrigue up the wazoo (he says) plus
the glycerin of the ongoing.
The synopsis? A broadcast journalist, code named TrueWest (based on the
Sam Shepard comment and play title that "there is no such thing as true west")
comes to a lush tropical paradise to investigate the whereabouts of a guy named
"Duck." Whose small radio station can be heard periodically along the psychic
airwaves world-wide. He pops in like intuition.
Unnamed parties are trying to discredit him. And have gone a little over board in
their attempts to tarnish his reputation and keep him from witnessing in a federal
investigation. As a result, a long secret organization of monks has decided that
he might be the Antichrist, and are also hot on his trail...
It's still Gonzo.
Based of the loosest of facts, paranoia and delusion. The base for all great
American fiction and journalism.
As always, the hacking is a problem. This week the focus is on preventing me
from getting work, and continued messing with my prose and spelling. As a result
they've changed my master's degree from psychology to "master in arts." I
haven’t been able to change it back. On line application interference has the
sites and the appropriate career information. Isolation is still the agenda, as is
economic pressure.
It's not unlike the tattle-tale of "Aloha's End..."
Monday September 4, 2006 - 12:07pm (EDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0
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Entry for September 01, 2006: One long, blue blow
It’s 4:30 Friday morning.
I’ve been working all night tacking together the Web Site. I’ve put up some
Florida Today articles. The printed versions are a lot shorter than the ones I
wrote so I edited them and put up the originals. It's interesting to me the kinds of
mistakes I made in these articles and the mistakes my editors made. They are all
errors of detail. Yes detail.
So what’s next for this wheel inside a wheel?
I need to talk a little about the Federal Lawsuit I was involved in. Why? Because
there is one thing left undone. That is simply providing a public record of the
interviews I did while trying to find out what had happened that last year at the
clinic. It needs to be done for those without the ability to track events. It may
make a difference in their health care situation.
I hope to post the narratives from the appeal. It reads fairly well. Not quite what
Earnest Hemmingway would call "a ripping good tale," but interesting. The
chronology of events read like journalism. I'm amazed at what I was able to do
even when I was sick. There must be an autopilot.
I had the same goals in mind when I threw my cyber-novel “Aloha’s End” on line
in 1998. I wanted to try and document the events of that year in a way that made
sense. Sometimes you can say more in fiction than you can in fact. It was gonzo
as hell. So when I tell you this thing I'm going to tell you believe it: Any
resemblence to any person or event living or dead, past or present is purely
coincidental.
I'd be scared poopless to talk about the truth.
Poopless.
The Aloha's End Web Site was the scene of some fierce cyber battles to keep
the site up and untampered with. It was a lot like the air combat over Great
Britain in World War Two. I still don't know who some of the main players were.
But there was a lot of luck and a lot of skill involved. The novel itself was popular
enough to draw in a diverse and regular group of people, each working their
separate agendas. It was a hot bed. Great for synthesis and creativity. It was
interactive. And that made it very edgey. I had an interesting international
following that included strong support in Japan as Japanese tourists stumbled
onto the site looking for Hawaiian travel bargains and places to go.
It must have seemed a lot like King Kong's island at first.
I’m thinking about running the parts of the novel that people have salvaged for
me over the years. My dad’s efforts to save it have been very key in patching it
together. Not for the first or last time I thank him.
Thanks Dad.
I’ll run it as filler between commentary.
I still have a few things to say about Jon Benet Ramsey’s murder.
I wasn’t wrong about things this last go round. I may lay out my scenario on this
as well.
There’s no joy in it for me.
I’ve observed that someone is deleting comments from the blog and possibly my
email before I get a chance to read them. I believe my calls are getting
intercepted and messages blanked. There is no privacy in my current situation. It’
s a free for all. I worry about job offers and other attempts to communicate.
Keeping me isolation has been the main agenda of my stalkers in the last eight
years. Illness has certainly played a role in that.
But I’m apparently back. It's good to be here. Thanks for the support.
=z=
Friday September 1, 2006 - 04:15am (EDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0
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Entry for August 29, 2006 Resume for Michael F. Zangari M.A.
I think I'm posting this for credibility, if nothing else. The story of my anthrax
exposure is in the last posting, directly below this one. It's silliness really. If you
are hit by a car are you more credible in your description of the accident if you
are a lawyer than a homeless person?
*Note the Changing Font. That's the hackers at work.
Michael F. Zangari M.A.
michael_zangari@yahoo.com
(321) 259-9578
(321) 960-3788
Clinical and Management Experience
1999-2001 Ala Ka’i Na Keiki, Honolulu Hawaii: Independent contractor providing
in school and at home outreach therapy for children and families in crisis.
1994-1997 The Waianae Coast Community Mental Health Center, Hale
Na’au Pono, Wai’anae, Hawaii. Outreach therapy for children and families in
crisis. Manager under Federal CASP grants for pilot programs in intensive crisis
management and localized foster homes. Developed biofeedback program for
anger and stress management.
1991-1994 Parents Anonymous of Hawaii (Now P.A.R.E.N.T.S), Kaneohe,
Hawaii. Parenting Group Facilitator and Outreach Crisis Counseling island wide.
1991-19 1991-1994 The Wai’anae Coast Community Health Center, Wai’
anae Hawaii. Counselor and group facilitator for survivors of sexual assault.
Manager, Sex Offender Treatment Program. Pilot project under Hawaii Paroling
Authority to develop community treatment for sex offenders. Group facilitator and
counselor.
1990 222001 Denver Victim Service Center, Denver Colorado. Crisis
counselor for crime victims. Pilot Project Manager under Federal Grant to set up
groups for crime victims citywide.
1989- 1990- -2001 Boulder County Mental Health, Boulder Colorado.
Rape Crisis Team. Certified Rape Crisis Counselor. Dispatcher. Facilitator, Male
Survivor Group.
19198 1988-1989 Colorado State University, University Mental Health
Clinic, Ft. Collins Colorado. Clinical internship. Counselor at the University
Mental Health Clinic.
Other C Certifications:
Court C Court Certified Expert in Sex Abuse and Family Therapy. Deputized
Federal Marshal. FEMA trained in critical incident debriefing and crisis
management. Qualified for the highest reimbursement category for M.A. level
therapists in Hawaii for state sponsored medical insurance. Certified Rape Crisis
Counselor. Hawaii Paroling Authority Trained For Sex Offender Treatment
This resume represents the time I have spent as a counseling psychologist. I am
also a free lance journalist and novelist. I have worked for over thirty years in the
broadcast and print medium. I do seminars on a variety of psychology and health
care issues as well as performance art around my novels. I took a wild shot at
stand up comedy. Newspaper and magazine articles are available on line at http:
//zangarijournalism.com Audio and video tapes are available on request.
ZBlog
The ongoing chronicles of the journalist, novelist and psychologist Michael F.
Zangari.
Entry for August 28, 2006
If you’ve been following this little tag match between the blog and the Web Site
you know that I survived a 1998 attempt on my life. At least I think that’s what it
was. I have theorized that who ever did it may have been trying to disable me.
Why? So I’d be financially strapped and available for wild money making
schemes of a nefarious nature. I’ve been detailing some of the events that led
to that fateful moment when I slit the envelope open with my finger nail and
peered into it. It was as heavy as a dirty diaper and shook like a maraca. The
letter was post marked and stamped in Nigeria. In the folds of the letter was
about a gram of white powder. I left most of it in the envelope as I eased the
letter out.
I opened it and read the manual type writer written page.
It said that if I opened an account for an unnamed person with about $150,000 I
could keep the interest on an interest baring account I was to set up. It would be
a large sum of money and would provide enough income to live on.
I called the FBI.
The agent who answered the phone said that it was a scam letter that was
making the rounds and not to worry.
The powder? Probably talcum powder included to obscure any finger prints.
I lived in a condo with a controlled environment. There were 20 floors of
interconnected condos in the building. There was one central air conditioning
unit for a sister building as well. At least 800 people lived in my building. My life,
and probably theirs was saved by several high density negative ion generators I
had running in my apartment. They had been going full blast for the seven years
prior to the Nigerian letter. What protection did the postal workers have who
processed and delivered the mail? And what of the transportation workers?
These things haunt me.
Several years later as I lay gasping like a beached mackerel in the Holmes
Regional Medical Center; it occurred to me that the FBI had been wrong. Dead
wrong. The cardiologist had come into see me and before even introducing
himself said in an exasperated voice “It’s broke.”
“What?” I asked.
“The heart” he said. “It’s broke. You need a heart transplant.”
I was not a happy camper.
In fact I experienced a high level of anger run through my damaged central
nervous system. This did great things for my heart rate. I was hospitalized twice
more before I stabilized.
Later, my doctor who had been in on the original anthrax alert sent out by the
government told me that most, if not all of the anthrax that was going around in
1998 had come from New England. The weapons grade anthrax from Africa was
rare. It was a mystery why a foreign national would try to kill me specifically. I am
an American that makes me target meat in a crowd. But signaled out for
Nigerian Fairy Dust? Why?
There was no follow up from the FBI despite requests. To date the requests
have not been answered and I have not been interviewed. In that same year a
bomb went off in the FBI headquarters in Honolulu. I hope my file was not among
those that were blown to confetti in the attack. I do have a credible second
witness. I gave her the evidence. She's an investigative journalist and a popular
media figure. There may be a second report.
Somewhere in there the terrorist attack known as 9/11 also happened. There
are some mitigating circumstances that I want to discuss with the FBI in regards
to that event. I felt that way at the time. And I still do.
By 2005 I had pulled off a miraculous recovery. I had good medication
management and a good doctor. I had researched my condition myself and
came up with an FDA approved drug that also repaired heart and other organ
damage and protected against brain degeneration. It healed cardiomyopathy in
rats, why not me? I ordered some from Europe, informed my doctor and
provided research. I had a normal EKG for the first time in a decade. The drug
was Selegiline. My lungs were clear. My heart was no longer enlarged. With
medication, a heart mummer I was born with had calmed. My doctor prescribed
the medication. I was on 100% disability for toxic exposure. But I was better. I felt
the first twinges of wanting to work again. Prior to proper medication, I had
attempted to work. I did five months at the Hometown News as a reporter for the
beachside communities. If I had worked more I would have lost my disability. I
was still tired. I wasn’t quite ready to do that. I was still post traumatic and angry.
The Siligeline came several months later.
There are 20 known cases of anthrax exposure in the United State. Most of
those people did not survive.
A couple of years later now, and I am again trying to reestablish my career. The
federal government acknowledges that this is very hard after age forty. Harder
still with my story line.
“What brings you here?”
“A bio-plague filled envelope.”
I’m about ten years past that challenge. I’m 50. Looking for work has been
painful. Slow. Unproductive. What has happened in the last couple of years? I
never had problems getting work. Every professional job in psychology I've ever
had I got recruited to do. I've run four program and projects under federal and
state grant.
As I struggle to put my feet back on the ground I have a new sense of purpose. I
know that in order to do what I need to do for myself and community I need to
stay visible and active. I know for myself that it is not only essential for my well
being, but a good idea for my general health.
I am basically in the same situation I was in pre-anthrax in Hawaii. It started with
heavy computer interference and intimidation. I threw up a cyber novel to try and
talk about what was going on. That novel was called “Aloha’s End.” I tried to
piece together events and document what had happened just before the attack. I
initiated a federal lawsuit with the goal of documenting what had happed.
It all came crashing down in flames in the fall of nineteen hundred and ninety-
eight.
It was not talcum powder (which would have been bad enough considering the
impact it has on the body) in that African envelope. It was something else all
together different. Something sinister. And nothing would ever be the same
again.
Seven years later, I lost the law suit on a technicality. But the evidence was filed.
I had accomplished my goal of documenting part of what happened. I was also
exonerated from any wrong doing. I had been fired for not participating in a
cover up, "but not for misconduct."
I'm back to pick up where I left off.
Monday August 28, 2006 - 05:01pm (EDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 2
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Entry for August 27, 2006 More On Natasha
Photo: Natasha with police.Mother pleads to see kidnap girl The mother of an
Austrian teenager who was held captive for eight years before her escape last
week has pleaded to be allowed to see her daughter.
Natascha Kampusch, 18, is at a secure location with psychological carers, and
police say she has not asked to see her parents again after a brief reunion.
Her mother Brigitta Sirny asked in a newspaper interview on Sunday: "Why can I
not see my child?"
Ms Kampusch's captor Wolfgang Priklopil killed himself after her escape.
She is reported to have wept inconsolably when she was told the man she had to
call "master" was dead.
Police suspect she may have been suffering from "Stockholm Syndrome" - a
condition where some abductees gradually begin to sympathise with their
captors.
'Sensible and eloquent'
The teenager is said to have asked for a quiet weekend, free from police
questioning and visits from her family.
Her parents, who separated after her abduction, have complained that they have
not been told where she is staying.
It disturbs her that she is often portrayed as a special case.
Lawyer Monica Pinterits
Brigitta Sirny told the Kurier daily newspaper: "Natascha is shut away once
again. It's terrible for me. Psychologists and doctors - that's all good and
important. But my daughter also needs her mother."
Natascha Kampush's father Ludwig Koch was also reported to be upset in
comments made to the Austrian Press Agency (APA)."Isn't it crazy that I don't
even know where she is?" he said.
He said he had received a letter from his daughter asking him for his
understanding that she needed rest this weekend. "We will have all the time in
the world," he said she wrote.
Austrian police officer Gerhard Lang said the police were not banning contact
with Ms Kampusch. "Natascha is an adult, 18-and-a-half years old. She is fully
capable of making decisions for herself," he told the AFP news agency.
He said she had voluntarily gone to a "safe place" to receive psychological care
and protection. He said psychologists warned that care must be taken over her
reintroduction to her past life.
Children's lawyer Monica Pinterits, who has spent several hours with Ms
Kampusch, described the teenager as "sensible and eloquent" who was following
the media coverage with great interest.
"It disturbs her that she is often portrayed as a special case. She [doesn't see
herself as] as a poor victim, but a grown young woman," she told the APA.
Escape
Erich Zwettler of the Federal Criminal Investigations Bureau said they had
agreed to stop the questioning until Monday at the earliest. "She urgently needs
a break," he said. He confirmed reports that she had told a female investigator
that she had "sexual contact" with her kidnapper.
But DNA tests on Priklopil have ruled out the possibility he could have been a
serial stalker of children, Gerhard Lang said.
Ms Kampusch, said to be pale and to weigh less than she did as a 10-year-old,
managed to flee her abductor on Wednesday after he moved away to take a
phone call as she vacuumed his car, it has emerged.
Priklopil threw himself under a train within hours of her escape. Photos released
by police show the underground hiding place in his house, in Strasshof village
outside Vienna, where he had purportedly kept her. The pictures show a small,
cluttered, windowless room with wash basin, toilet, bed and cupboards and
narrow concrete stairs leading up to a trapdoor.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/5290466.stm
Published: 2006/08/27 12:30:02 GMT
© BBC MMVI
August 27, 2006 - 07:29pm (EDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Entry for August 26, 2006 NOVAWRAPDOWN
When I found out that I was going to attend the NOVA conference I attempted to
sell a few personal experience essays to magazines and newspapers. I didn’t get
any nibbles, let alone bites from editors. I’m not sure why that is. I don’t think it’s
because people aren’t interested in crime victims. I do think that the over-kill in
Florida is great. Literally. I remember visiting the state from Hawaii. The murders
and car wrecks were all there was on the news. In Hawaii we drove to people
homes, not into them. Florida was wild-west. Unreal.
From one point of view, the conference for me was about communication skills.
The quality of communication has gone up a notch. Since 9/11 we have
jargonized and educated around symptoms and words. We speak the same
language. We have done what we would have done with any trauma, like
systems involvement. We have normalized intervention. In making things
ordinary, we have empowered a person to talk about their experiences in a way
that has not been done before. The survivors were fantastic.
The only thing we have not done is change the pain. Despite breaking down
isolation and normalizing things, the pain remains the same. Unfathomable.
Deep. Raging river wild.
Working with it is still like bull riding on marbles. When you fall, and the bull lands
on top of you the marbles bruise the muscles in cruel small ways. The tiny
bruises remain the most hurtful kind. The aches and imprints of the incredible.
The poet Charles Bukowsi said in his tussled life time that it is not the big things
that destroy you, “it’s the tiny series of tragedies, like a shoe lace breaking” that
eventually drive you over the edge. And I’m reminded of another poet, Emily
Dickensen who wrote, “A wounded deer leaps highest.”
What would I have written for a magazine or newspaper? I would have probably
wrapped things up in the same way. But gotten there in a tougher way. If there is
frustration with the system, the process and the laws. It’s in process. We are
gaining in increments in crisis response.
And as always, we look for towards prevention like we look over the cliffs of the
grand canyon, at the vistas. And the clouds over the vistas. And the limitless
relentless sky above it all. There is no justice in this world. Only prevention.
And that’s the road were all on, sooner or later.
Thanks to everyone involved with NOVA.
=z=
Saturday August 26, 2006 - 01:27pm (EDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0
Comments
Entry for August 25, 2006 Natasha
This comes from my friend Gracie, who is herself in the middle of a very difficult
sex abuse case involving her disabled daughter.
Thank you Gracie for everything you do.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/5284622.stm?ls
What now for Natascha?
WHO, WHAT, WHY?
The Magazine answers...
Natascha Kampusch, age 10
Inside the cellar
What do psychologists make of the extraordinary case of Natascha Kampusch,
abducted at 10, deprived of her childhood, and now back in the real world after
eight years?
In March 1998, Natascha Kampusch was snatched from a Vienna street as she
walked to school.
For eight long years, she was held in a cellar she believed to be rigged with
explosives. Her only human contact was with her abductor, Wolfgang Priklopil,
who effectively brought her up. He provided her with clothes, food, helped her
with her studies. It is not yet clear if he sexually abused her.
But on Wednesday, Natascha escaped. An elderly neighbour of the man she
had to call "master" found the 18-year-old, pale and in distress, and called the
police. Natascha was soon reunited with her parents.
"Her life has been suspended, and it will take a lot to reconnect," says Dr
Anuradha Sayal-Bennett. "She's obviously a very brave young woman, very
resourceful, to have managed to escape."
WHO, WHAT, WHY? A regular feature in the BBC News Magazine - aiming to
answer some of the questions behind the headlines
That can only stand her in good stead for the long and difficult task of coming to
terms with what she's been through. Natascha's is such a rare case that while
she has undoubtedly suffered enormous trauma, there is no way of saying in
advance what the precise effects will be - or how best to treat her.
Phillip Hodson, a Fellow of the British Association for Counselling and
Psychotherapy, says those treating Natascha will be guided by her, asking her if
she wants to talk about her experiences, and monitoring her for depression and
flashbacks, for which there are a range of therapies.
"Go in with no assumptions, establish a basic rapport. Establish how used she is
to conversation. Always put it as questions - 'they think you should talk about it;
what do you think?'" he says.
Arrested development
It will be important to re-establish as normal a life with her loved ones as
possible. But the life of a 10-year-old, or of an 18-year-old? For her first words
to her father - after "I love you" - was "Is my toy car still there?" It had been her
favourite plaything.
Dr Jack Boyle, a Glasgow psychologist who specialises in treating abused
children, says a bit of both. "She has moved on emotionally from being a 10-
year-old, yet that was the life she had that was abruptly cut off."
STOCKHOLM SYNDROME Psychological response in hostages, in which they
come to identify with their captor Named after 1973 robbery in Stockholm, where
bank employees sympathised with their captors Famous case is heiress Patty
Hearst (above), who helped her captors rob a bank
Another difficulty will be the feeling of abandonment, that no-one came to rescue
her. A 10-year-old believes that adults are to be trusted, that her parents will be
there for her, and these expectations have been shattered, says Mr Hodson.
"At the time of the kidnap, she will have been saying 'why don't my parents come
and get me?' Then she'll have despaired of that happening, and thought 'bugger
them'. That will be a considerable barrier to reunited with her family."
Then there's Stockholm syndrome, the coping mechanism whereby abductees
exhibit loyalty to their kidnapper. Because Priklopil committed suicide after she
escaped, this will further complicate Natascha's reactions.
"She'll have a lot of conflicting reactions - guilt and relief," says Dr Sayal-Bennett.
Phillip Hodson says his death will, in a way, be like losing a family member - even
if she's glad he's dead.
"If somebody has been there through your transition from childhood to
adulthood, it's impossible to not to form some sort of familial feeling. And she set
in train the events that led to his death. That's a lot to come to terms with."
Add your comments on this story, using the form below.
I can only say that I feel total admiration for this resilient young girl who managed
to stay healthy, mentally and physically, despite all the odds against her. The
next hurdle for her now will be to reintegrate society and family life and try to
regain some of the lost years. This will take a lot of time, courage and love but
she can and will make it because she's proven that she is one strong girl! Let's
just leave her alone until she is ready to share her story with us. Good luck,
Natasha! God bless you.
E Greyeyes, Hatley, Quebec, Canada
It might help Natascha to learn that her story - the pre-arranged room, her
captivity, etc - comes straight out of John Fowles' The Collector, although
Miranda does not succeed in escaping in the book. At any rate I think her
psychologists should be aware that someone actually wrote about her fate some
40 years ago as fiction before it became reality. I think it tells us something about
the frame of mind of the kidnapper.
Maria Grech Ganado, Madliena/Malta
Staying with only one human figure for eight years can affect her way of
interaction with people and psychological development. I think she will not have
that bond with anyone, especially male, as she may relate them to her captor.
Rosemary Modise, Molepolole, Botswana
What a terrible time she has had being in that cellar for 8 years, missing her
family's occasions, birthdays Christmases etc she must have thought about that,
missing her family thinking that they abandoned her. All she needs now is
reassurance and love, and hopefully in time she will learn to forget him.
Madeleine Rayner, Lancashire, UK
Of course everyone wants to know how she will recover. However, just like other
big events, only time will tell. Curiosity isn't a bad way to learn, but when it's
about someone else's private life, I believe it should be held back. Let her live in
peace, let's hope there would be a book about her psychological state when
she'll have recovered, only if she authorises it. Let her be.
Lynne Champoux-Williams, Quebec, Canada
Compassion, fortitude and discernment are essential qualities for those who help
Natascha to heal. One hopes that she is able to take the lead in this
extraordinary process, without that there will be unforeseen difficulties. Those
who have been abandoned and incarcerated deserve a lifetime of very special
care and protection.
Jamie, Manaton, Devon
That girl was kept in a cellar for 8 years and didn't see her family once because
of that man. How can you say it must have been like losing a family member?
She must have been glad that he is dead. HE took away most of her life and as
far as she was concerned she might as well have been dead.
Emma-Louise, England
How will she cope going from living in confinement, only seeing her captor, to
having the media trying to film and interview her continuously?
Dan Williams, Reading, UK
How can you just assume that Natasha is going to have all of these feelings and
reactions? Why are so many assumptions being made? Just let the poor women
tell her side of the story when she's ready and forget about this Stockholm
syndrome.
D La Valle, London
Name Your e-mail address Town/city and country Phone number (optional): Your
comment Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/5284622.stm
Published: 2006/08/25 12:00:44 GMT
© BBC MMVI
ZBlog
The ongoing chronicles of the journalist, novelist and psychologist Michael F.
Zangari.
WensNOVA
I was awed today by the efforts of so many survivors to communicate their
experiences and inspired by how well they succeeded. It was as clear as a
rubbed tibetian bell, the hum.
I was thinking as I listened to Coco O'Conner and her husband talk about what
happened to them how good it felt to hear things that I could closely identify
with. Not the details of the stories, which are horrific and uniqe, but in the
impact, after effects and the coping. It's not chowder talk. Its not common. It is
intimate. And appreciated.
Today is my day to focus. Time to twist the lens in and snap away. I'm on
motordrive.
=z=
Thursday August 24, 2006 - 07:12am (EDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0
Comments
Entry for August 23, 2006
NovaTues
Today I'm feeling the pinches of my new shoes. I'm reminded of what Mohamed
Ali said about his head injury. He said that he was not a different peron. That he
thought about the same things in the same way. "I'm slower."
By all accounts I have pulled off a miracle recovery. I've gone from being a heart
transplant candidate who couldn't stand up to do the dishes, to being more or
less normal. Most of my tests are normal. I'm reminded this week that I could
barely talk after the initial exposure to the anthrax. I was mildly autistic at birth.
The first real coming into the world for me was workinging in radio in my twenties.
I was (and still am) hypersensitive to sound and music. The radio job was a
complete peak experience for me. When I was on the air I was awake and aware
for the first time in my life. My kinetics friends and other dancers told me that
they had never seen a more active job, I was moving so much. Getting records
and comecials on, segueing records. Answering phones. Talking. It was six
hours of rapture a night. After the exposure It was like living in slow motion. I
could barely get from one minute to the next. And how I got there was a great
mystry. It was a return to a kind of autism I had forgotten. I still click into it.
Out of the fog I started to construct a radio studio in my home. I don't remember
deciding to do this. I just started to build a studio. Then I started doing a radio
show. Slowly I became oriented again. Oriented enough to talk and persue a
lawsuit.
The POD cast became "The Little Radio Station at the Back of Your Mind." I'm
glad I taped it. As a a reminder.
What has this got to do with NOVA?
I'm not sure. It's sort of like building a radio station.
Today I got myself on the road on time. Was early. I got myself to Orlando. I
tossed my keys on the front seat and started to unload things. I was thinking
about what was coming up when the soft and ominous click of the door behind
me woke me up. I set my backpack on the ground and tugged on the door.
It was locked.
After fencing with the car with a coat hanger for a half hour, I decided to call for
road service. The only phone card phone in the lobby of the hotel (the wrong
one) wasn't working well. I ad to scream, literally to be heard. After several
attempts, spelling my name at the top of my lungs, I finally gave up and called
family to call the road service. So. Day one. Waking to my situation. Second
most vivid moment: Spelling my name out at the top of lungs in the hotel lobby.
"THAT'S Z AS IN ZEBRA. A AS IN APPLE. ....."
Everyone knew my name at the plaza.
The Pop-A-Lock guy couldn't have been nicer.
He was into the car in less than two minutes.
Noted.
It was 11 a.m. by the time I got to the conference.
People were great. I got my NOVA bag and lime green volunteer t-shirts. I got my
frisbee and mug with "RAPE" in big boldface letters on them. The black mug
especially got my attention. In smaller letters was the word "prevent." If that
doesn't sum up the national situation on sexual assualt nothing does. I hope to
move to a time when the words get equal emphesis on my mug. Until that time
I'm trying to imagine drinking from this thing at my local tea. That is not a
complaint. I'm happy to get mugged. I'm enourmously greatful for the effort and
impact of the grass rootts movement in the 1960s and 1970s. And the works of
my grandmother, aunts and their friends through the 1930s and 1940s as they
sequed into the 1950s and 1960s. My mom ad sisters are a big influence. As are
my nieces and girlfriends. Through the 80s into the new century with it then, a
constant balancing of influences as we work with what we have. Communication
has come a long way round. We've got a long way to go to.
I worked the silent auction booth with extrodinairy people.
I enjoyed the contact with professionals. I'm beggining to remember, hey, I use to
do this for a living. Eight years ago. I'd like to do it again. Thre are mostly female
victim advocates in the State of Florida. As a Boulder County Mental Health
Certified Rape Crisis Counselor I remember the conflicts that some people felt
having men on the team. And the conflicts.
Later people started arriving to register.
The table was closed over lunch.
The most vivid moment of the day was when Mark Lunsford came up to the
desk. I recognized him right away, of course.
The wieght of attention in the last year most be incredible for him. I thought
about what it must be like for him. And all the up-front survivors and family
members who have decided to carry the weight of what has happened in a public
manner, and have chosen to cope by taking constructive action. I'm inpired by
that. And a sense of rightness that rides the back like angel wings. Wings are
heavy, I decided. Especially the ones hung on us by other people.
"I don't know how I do what I do," he said. "Almost to himself as he walked away.
"I just do it."
"Thank you Mr. Lunsford" I said, using his name as an after thought, really. A
hand on the ground confirmation of the real people living real lives all around me.
There is no spell check on this thing. In the future I'll hire a monk that works in
'word."
It's time to work. With a net.
=z=
Wednesday August 23, 2006 - 06:05am (EDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 1
Comment
Entry for August 21, 2006
The site hacking continues to be a problem.
Some of the scans are unreadable all of a sudden.
I'm losing control of small things, like line spacing.
These folks are malicious to a high degree. They seem to enjoy thier power and
control trip. I'm off to the NOVA conference. I'll be back next week. We can pick
up then. Hope the site is up when I get here.
Thanks for hanging in.
=z=
Friday August 25, 2006 - 05:25pm (EDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 2
Comments
Entry for August 25, 2006
NOVAThurs I had a great time at the silent auction. It was really good to be busy.
I miss work. I miss the great people we have in this field. I got home around
midnight after a quiet drive down the interstate. Thursday was my day. I had a
late start. It was like a kid’s board game. I took every wrong turn possible. It was
insane. I kept my sense of humor and made it to the conference and parked. As I
was walking in, Mark Lunsford was walking out.
He looked completely refreshed. Gentle and smiling. It was nice to see him
again. And interesting. I came into this conference seeing him. And that's how I
went out too.
As it turned out I got to my anti-terrorism session and got what I needed out of it.
It was good. As was the session on doing groups for sexually abused girls. It was
a good model that is really useable. Possibly for adults as well.
At break I picked up a piece of jewlery I had silver-wrapped at the marketplace.
The jewler's name is Valerie Kay Frayer from Baton Rouge. The pieces she had
on display were silver wrapped chandalier crystals. Leaded glass from the last
two centuries at lest, possibly three. I used to look for these in antique stores in
Honolulu when I lived there. They has a nice quieting quality to them. Something
about the lead in the crystal is very similar to volcanic glass. It has a really nice
resonace. But what really caught my eye was the tremendous silver work she
does.
She uses more than one guage of wire on any given piece. The pieces are
tremendously wrapped in silver or gold wire. Very beautiful. I had a piece
wrapped in silver ($18) and picked it up. It was a piece of rainbow obsideon I had
on. I had wrapped it in red magnetic wire, because that is what I had at the time.
I wear it because it evens out my heart beat. It works really well. As I put on the
newly wrapped piece and walked away, I felt a trendous surge in my central
nervous system, everything balanced and went calm. I am farly sensitive to my
nuerology because I've had to be. The wrapping created a great biocircuit
around the stone. I had to go back and ask her about it. It turns out that she is a
Rieki master as well as a jewler. Her designs are tremendously biophysical as
well as beautiful. These are nice pieces for working balance and stress.. I
imagine they are also great for opening blocked parts of the body. Parts of the
body that lack circulation or feeling. She has my highest recommendations. You
can contact her at Frayer Designs, www.frayerdesigns.com or 225-755-8892.
The necklace is a nice reminder of the conference.
My own situation has gotten more complicated as a result of attending the
conference. The cyber-stalking situation I live with is more intense. The hacking
on the computer more malicious. But I feel stronger and more supported this
week. I also feel more aggressive. It’s amazing how anger and compassion can
go together sometimes. How power can come from facing fear. How strength can
come out of weakness.
Thank you all for allowing me to find these things in myself again. Also for the
support and company.
Best wishes
=z=
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