I am back after a long hiatus and there is so much to talk about. So much, in fact, that it is hard to know where to start. What follows will be interesting but it will, by no means, be exhaustive...
Firstly, it is the silly season and the politicians who are all vying for our votes this year are offering everything to everyone while condemning their opponents for doing the same. I did get to go to the Republican National Convention (RNC) in Tampa and, after drying out from the first day's Hurricane Isaac remnants, I had a great time. For me, politics is the only game that counts so conventions are like the Super Bowl, World Series, NBA Championship and Stanley Cup all rolled into one. But by Day-4 I was so sleep-deprived (maybe 10 hours for the whole four days) that I still can't remember everything that happened. For those of you who thing the GOP is full of stuffy old White people who can't let loose, you could not be any more wrong. The beer, wine and food flowed, the music blared and tongues loosened as folks let their hair down and got very real. It was refreshing to see people you only ever see in a professional context be honest and really enjoy themselves in their own element. I have to thank everyone for not treating me as the outside enemy-mainstream media guy and welcoming me into the fold, if only for a week. Once home, people settle back into old patterns and the business of politics resumes as winning once again becomes everything and the unbridled optimism of the convention evolves into a pragmatism that recognizes the very real possibility that losing is a real option. While it remains to be seen just who will win, it is clear that it will be a close race and it's doubtful that anyone will emerge with an unmitigated mandate.
Secondly, I have begun to ease back into family-focused travel with trips to Tubac AZ and Albuquerque NM over the summer. Both trips were very different yet both were very restorative. In Tubac, the old-world charm of this Spanish colonial town is pervasive and overwhelming, leaving you with a sense of longing for an older, simpler time. The Tubac Golf Resort is amazing with spectacular rooms that are affordable and a restaurant that is on the high end of of the budget but the flavor and quality justify the price. The area is like Sedona, only better because it is easier to get to, more affordable and just as beautiful, in it's own agrarian way. This does not even factor in the centuries of history that are available to visitors to the Presidio, an old Spanish fort that was the launching point of the Spanish expedition that founded San Francisco. Old Spanish missions are within easy driving distance and are a reminder of the the best and the worst in the colonization of the New World. And Albuquerque is, of course, Albuquerque. Visiting there was more about feeding relationships than it was about seeing the sights of the city. Staying with cherished friends and catching up with other equally cherished friends made that trip a very special one. I am looking forward to the return trip soon. As for Tubac, the Book Club retreat that is now in the planning stages for 2013 is going to both fun and challenging as I've never been a part of anything like it before. My wife is really organized, though, and already has a very full schedule set up for attendees, though I am sure it will change more than a few times before it is finalized. With her reaching out to authors with invitations to attend, and her already getting positive feedback, it's looking like the retreat will be well attended and informative for everyone.
Thirdly, and finally (for now), I am diving into this social media thing with abandon, having revved up my presence on Blogger, Twitter, Facebook and Linked-In (all two-syllable titles...interesting...) in an effort to increase my exposure and name recognition. In this ever-expanding universe of social media and networking, one must lead or fall behind into obscurity and, as someone who's business it is to inform people in ways that make them want to hear it from me, I cannot afford to be left behind. So, in that vein, I will be prolifically posting across the social media spectrum and will be paying close attention to views, responses and re-tweets. I will also be sharing a little more of my own opinion on my Blogger page. Please, do not take offense and remember that the views expressed are my own and do not necessarily represent those of my employer, family, friends, colleagues or even passing acquaintances. I look forward to your attention and your input. feel free to chime-in, criticize, praise, pan, forward, re-tweet, etc...(just be nice, Ok?)
So if you are new to my blog, welcome. If you are returning to my blog, welcome back. If you are leaving my blog, I hope to see you here again soon as I think you will like what you read and even have a thought or two provoked. Until next time...
Warmest regards,
John
Thursday, September 27, 2012
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Little Girl Gone
Emotions are seldom more pronouced than when a child disapears. Depending on the news cycle, word that a baby, toddler or even a pre-teen is missing can rally a nation in the hope that all will be well and the fear that it won't. Five-year old Jahessye (Jessie) Shockley is one such case.
The smiling, bright-eyed, little girl with a smile as wide as bright as the future she deserves was last seen at her Glendale, Arizona, apartment on a beautiful Tuesday afternoon. Her mother, Jerice Hunter, tearfully told police she had only left Jahessye for a few minutes in the care of her 13-year old sister. Police responded with a mobile command center, hundreds of officers and volunteers working a three-mile radius search of the area, canvassing homes and parking lots, asking neighbors and strangers in the area if they had seen this beautiful little girl. Their only lead, so far, is a witness report that a child matching Jahessye's description was seen that afternoon getting into a late-model dark chevy sedan, maybe a Malibu.
But the news cycle ground on and this was just not enough to keep this story going so enterprising reporters started digging, asking police about Jahessye's parents, Jerice in Arizona and George Shockley, in California. What they found would fuel another day or two of stories and speculation. Jerice was convicted, and sent to prison, in 2006, for beating her other children with extension cords and sticks. George Shockley is a registered sex offender and is currently doing time in prison. While police admit they are aware of these facts, they continue to say neither parent is a suspect in Jahessye's disappearance.
What police are saying is that they now believe Jahessye was kidnapped by a person or persons yet unknown and a $11,000 reward is now being offered. Jahessye's grandmother, Jerice's mother, is leading neighbors in vigils and is raising her voice to police and community leaders, asking why more is not being done to find her beautiful grandaughter. She's even marching on the state capitol to call even more attention to the fact that, after more than a week, no one has any idea where her Jahessye is.
It remains to be seen just how this case will be resolved. Will Jahessye be found alive? Will she be discovered to be the victim of a kidnapping? Will she be discovered dead, killed by a friend, family or a stranger as is all too often the case? One thing is crystal clear: this little girl did nothing to deserve her fate and it is tragic in the extreme that she is still missing. Someone out there knows what has happened to her and police need to redouble their efforts to find her.
The smiling, bright-eyed, little girl with a smile as wide as bright as the future she deserves was last seen at her Glendale, Arizona, apartment on a beautiful Tuesday afternoon. Her mother, Jerice Hunter, tearfully told police she had only left Jahessye for a few minutes in the care of her 13-year old sister. Police responded with a mobile command center, hundreds of officers and volunteers working a three-mile radius search of the area, canvassing homes and parking lots, asking neighbors and strangers in the area if they had seen this beautiful little girl. Their only lead, so far, is a witness report that a child matching Jahessye's description was seen that afternoon getting into a late-model dark chevy sedan, maybe a Malibu.
But the news cycle ground on and this was just not enough to keep this story going so enterprising reporters started digging, asking police about Jahessye's parents, Jerice in Arizona and George Shockley, in California. What they found would fuel another day or two of stories and speculation. Jerice was convicted, and sent to prison, in 2006, for beating her other children with extension cords and sticks. George Shockley is a registered sex offender and is currently doing time in prison. While police admit they are aware of these facts, they continue to say neither parent is a suspect in Jahessye's disappearance.
What police are saying is that they now believe Jahessye was kidnapped by a person or persons yet unknown and a $11,000 reward is now being offered. Jahessye's grandmother, Jerice's mother, is leading neighbors in vigils and is raising her voice to police and community leaders, asking why more is not being done to find her beautiful grandaughter. She's even marching on the state capitol to call even more attention to the fact that, after more than a week, no one has any idea where her Jahessye is.
It remains to be seen just how this case will be resolved. Will Jahessye be found alive? Will she be discovered to be the victim of a kidnapping? Will she be discovered dead, killed by a friend, family or a stranger as is all too often the case? One thing is crystal clear: this little girl did nothing to deserve her fate and it is tragic in the extreme that she is still missing. Someone out there knows what has happened to her and police need to redouble their efforts to find her.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Susan Brock Sentenced but Society is Still at Large
Sitting in the Maricopa County Superior Courtroom, I could think of little but my own 12-year old son as I heard the Pinal County Prosecutor reel off in graphic detail the sexual atrocities committed against a 14-year old boy by Susan Brock, the wife of Maricopa County Supervisor Fulton Brock sentenced this month to 13 years in prison for her admitted crimes. I watched her as she sat at the Defense counsel's table, in her zebra-striped couty jail garb, flanked on the right by mounds of expensive toys and electronics that she had given to the victim to buy his submission to her own depraved and deviant sexual desires. The methodical and patient manipulation of this boy into sex acts with a woman old enough to be his mother and then her ability to make him feel in some way responsible for them made my stomach turn even as I struggled to keep an objective view as I was reporting this for my day job.
But there's more. Revealed in the evidence at sentencing was audio of jailhouse phone calls between Susan and her husband Fulton Brock, a prominent resident of my own city of Chandler, laughing and joking, talking about trying for a pardon from the Governor, disparaging the character of the victim, even as he put out press releases about how terrible his wife's crimes were, how he had to divorce her and about how sick she must be as a human being for hurting this boy in such a heinous and immoral manner.
Wait, there's even more. Revealed in those same calls was information that prominent leaders in the Mormon Church, the faith folllowed by the Brock's and the victim, knew of the crimes and they did nothing to inform law enforcement, instead trying to handle it between the Brock's and the victim's family.
Hold on, there's even more. Fulton and Susan Brock's daughter, Rachel, who is attending college is also charged with molesting the same victim but pleads "not guilty." It's hard to say where the evil and disgust of this "family affair" begins, ends or is most eggregious but what is certain is that it points out the ongoing and endemic problem we have in this society: that of valuing the lives of our innocent children less than we do the lives of the adults who victimize them.
This devaluation begins in utero as we continue the neverending debate about the ethics and morality of abortion. While not arguing one side or the other, it does give us the reductio ad absurdum argument that belies the fundamental truth behind the coarsening of our artitudes toward children: where do the rights of children equal or exceed those of adults (if ever) and do those rights diminish or increase proportionally with age? It is obvious that a child's rights do increase with age as the baby about to emerge from the birth canal has almost no rights as s/he is still considered to be "unborn" while the moment the child is born, s/he is a baby and enjoys the full protection of the law. As a society, we have chosen an arbitrary, if definitive, boundary. That span of seconds between unborn and born makes all the difference and if society can draw so sharp a distinction then it can blur the lines just as easily.
Some states have passed laws to protect the lives of the unborn, such as those that count the killing of a fetus in the killing or attempted killing of a pregnant woman as murder, but that same child is still nothing but tissue to be discarded if that pregnant woman herself decides that it is so. So we must ask ourselves, in that instance, if the law is really protecting the rights of the child or of the mother.
Once the child is born and s/he enjoys the protection of the law, that protection still is predominantly enjoyed by the parents or other adults far more than by said child. Some would argue this is nnecessary to allow parents and elders the authority they need to protect, guide, and exercise responsibility over their children, but that very authority is all too often turned against the children and used by adults to further injure them. One need only remember the Catholic Priest Pedophile Scandal, or watch the news to see teachers, preachers. politicians and entertainers sexually or physically abuse the children who trusted them and who were comdemned to subordination to them by the law.
Of course, in some cases the pendulum has swung far to the other side with over-zealous adults who, in a search for their own empowerment, see molesters and violent abusers where there are none and innocent people are forever tarred and feathered, but those are rare cases and are overwhelmed by the number of real cases of abuse that are reported to authorities. But what of those that are not reported? In the Susan Brock case, the abuse lasted for years because it was not violent, there were no obviious outward signs and the boy was made to feel as though it were his idea and any physical pleasure he may have felt in the acts merely served to further ensnare him in her web of guilt and sin. How many movies or TV shows have we seen where the younger man is "schooled" in the ways of love by the experienced older woman? How many stories have we heard of "Lolitias" luring older men into sex? Society sexualizes these children and then wonders why these things happen.
Susan Brock could to this because society not only allows it, it encourages it. We sexualize our children at a very young age and we celebrate said sexuality through toddler beauty pageants and sexed-up TV shows depicting high school kides getting pregnant ot losing their virginity in bouts of underaged drinking. We have reality shows, like Toddlers and Tiaras and 16 and Pregnant and dramas like Skins and The Secret Life of the American Teenager that glamorize the sexualization and sexuality of minors. Millions of dollars are made in the entertainment industry showing us that kids are sexual objects and perhaps billions of dollars are made through the merchandising and marketing that results from that media onslaught pushing kids across America to buy the products (clothes, makeup, etc...) they believe they need to help them achieve that themselves. It is a vicious cycle, powered by money and abetted by a voracious appetite for sex.
None of this is to absolve Susan Brock, Fulton Brock, Rachel Brock or the Mormon Church of any guilt they may share in the destruction of this boy's life. Each is answering, or will have to answer, for the roles they played in this tragedy. The victim is forever scarred, forever wounded by this theft of his innocence. Children abused like this often become sexually confused, socially inept and even suicidal.
But there is another side to this tragedy and that is the self-immolation of the Brock family. They had everything we are told a family needs in order to be successful: money, careers, faith, values, fellowship and all kept within a beautiful home and surrounded by a white picket fence. but like all facades, theirs was thin and brittle and what little there was that was solid was eaten through by their own decadence. And it all came crumbling down.
But there's more. Revealed in the evidence at sentencing was audio of jailhouse phone calls between Susan and her husband Fulton Brock, a prominent resident of my own city of Chandler, laughing and joking, talking about trying for a pardon from the Governor, disparaging the character of the victim, even as he put out press releases about how terrible his wife's crimes were, how he had to divorce her and about how sick she must be as a human being for hurting this boy in such a heinous and immoral manner.
Wait, there's even more. Revealed in those same calls was information that prominent leaders in the Mormon Church, the faith folllowed by the Brock's and the victim, knew of the crimes and they did nothing to inform law enforcement, instead trying to handle it between the Brock's and the victim's family.
Hold on, there's even more. Fulton and Susan Brock's daughter, Rachel, who is attending college is also charged with molesting the same victim but pleads "not guilty." It's hard to say where the evil and disgust of this "family affair" begins, ends or is most eggregious but what is certain is that it points out the ongoing and endemic problem we have in this society: that of valuing the lives of our innocent children less than we do the lives of the adults who victimize them.
This devaluation begins in utero as we continue the neverending debate about the ethics and morality of abortion. While not arguing one side or the other, it does give us the reductio ad absurdum argument that belies the fundamental truth behind the coarsening of our artitudes toward children: where do the rights of children equal or exceed those of adults (if ever) and do those rights diminish or increase proportionally with age? It is obvious that a child's rights do increase with age as the baby about to emerge from the birth canal has almost no rights as s/he is still considered to be "unborn" while the moment the child is born, s/he is a baby and enjoys the full protection of the law. As a society, we have chosen an arbitrary, if definitive, boundary. That span of seconds between unborn and born makes all the difference and if society can draw so sharp a distinction then it can blur the lines just as easily.
Some states have passed laws to protect the lives of the unborn, such as those that count the killing of a fetus in the killing or attempted killing of a pregnant woman as murder, but that same child is still nothing but tissue to be discarded if that pregnant woman herself decides that it is so. So we must ask ourselves, in that instance, if the law is really protecting the rights of the child or of the mother.
Once the child is born and s/he enjoys the protection of the law, that protection still is predominantly enjoyed by the parents or other adults far more than by said child. Some would argue this is nnecessary to allow parents and elders the authority they need to protect, guide, and exercise responsibility over their children, but that very authority is all too often turned against the children and used by adults to further injure them. One need only remember the Catholic Priest Pedophile Scandal, or watch the news to see teachers, preachers. politicians and entertainers sexually or physically abuse the children who trusted them and who were comdemned to subordination to them by the law.
Of course, in some cases the pendulum has swung far to the other side with over-zealous adults who, in a search for their own empowerment, see molesters and violent abusers where there are none and innocent people are forever tarred and feathered, but those are rare cases and are overwhelmed by the number of real cases of abuse that are reported to authorities. But what of those that are not reported? In the Susan Brock case, the abuse lasted for years because it was not violent, there were no obviious outward signs and the boy was made to feel as though it were his idea and any physical pleasure he may have felt in the acts merely served to further ensnare him in her web of guilt and sin. How many movies or TV shows have we seen where the younger man is "schooled" in the ways of love by the experienced older woman? How many stories have we heard of "Lolitias" luring older men into sex? Society sexualizes these children and then wonders why these things happen.
Susan Brock could to this because society not only allows it, it encourages it. We sexualize our children at a very young age and we celebrate said sexuality through toddler beauty pageants and sexed-up TV shows depicting high school kides getting pregnant ot losing their virginity in bouts of underaged drinking. We have reality shows, like Toddlers and Tiaras and 16 and Pregnant and dramas like Skins and The Secret Life of the American Teenager that glamorize the sexualization and sexuality of minors. Millions of dollars are made in the entertainment industry showing us that kids are sexual objects and perhaps billions of dollars are made through the merchandising and marketing that results from that media onslaught pushing kids across America to buy the products (clothes, makeup, etc...) they believe they need to help them achieve that themselves. It is a vicious cycle, powered by money and abetted by a voracious appetite for sex.
None of this is to absolve Susan Brock, Fulton Brock, Rachel Brock or the Mormon Church of any guilt they may share in the destruction of this boy's life. Each is answering, or will have to answer, for the roles they played in this tragedy. The victim is forever scarred, forever wounded by this theft of his innocence. Children abused like this often become sexually confused, socially inept and even suicidal.
But there is another side to this tragedy and that is the self-immolation of the Brock family. They had everything we are told a family needs in order to be successful: money, careers, faith, values, fellowship and all kept within a beautiful home and surrounded by a white picket fence. but like all facades, theirs was thin and brittle and what little there was that was solid was eaten through by their own decadence. And it all came crumbling down.
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