Evil Walks Among Us
Look at this face.
She’s beautiful, isn’t she? Nineteen Eighteen years old, her whole life ahead of her. Limitless possibilities.
Someone murdered her. Strangled her, then left her body on a dirt road for a child riding an ATV to find.
God help her family. And the child who found her, and her family.
Not Looking Good for the Teacher….
Previous post here.
Seems the teacher accused of sexually assaulting one of her students is facing additional charges as a third student has come forward. She was out on bond but after recent developments in the case she was taken back into custody on Tuesday.
The title link takes you to the Item’s website, which unfortunately requires you to have a paid subscription to read the whole article. WIS TV’s website is a bit more cooperative.
I have a paid subscription to The Item but my login and password have never worked.
Human Metronome
Choir rehearsal was last night. It’s every Wednesday night, actually, except for July when we take the month off. Might be more now; the new boss has indicated we’ll have June off also. I don’t like that idea. I like singing in the choir, and I think the choir is a very important part of the service. I think giving us two months “off” is a mistake. But I don’t get a vote.
Last night the boss wanted us to work on a Hillsong piece we’re going to sing for a choir special in March. Not sure which Sunday yet, but if last night was any indication, it’ll be late March rather than early. The choir was having counting issues. In no small part because their reliance on the director to tell them what the tempo is and where to come in is sort of hamstringing them.
Because he can’t. He’s a nice fellow, doing a wonderful job as worship pastor, the senior pastor loves him. But when it comes to music, he just doesn’t know what he’s doing.
I may have mentioned that before. *sigh*
The piece we were working on is Hillsong’s Forever Reign. We’re singing it without the tag. There might be an ad at the beginning of the video, sorry about that. Mute your speakers before clicking if that sort of thing annoys you.
There is quite a bit of syncopation in this piece. And we have several strong voices in the choir who were blissfully ignoring it. Thing is, when you’re supposed to come in on the upbeat, you have to come in on the upbeat. Not the downbeat. Because if you’re supposed to come in on the upbeat and you come in on the downbeat you’re doing it wrong.
A few minutes into our working on it, when it was painfully clear to me that the boss wasn’t actually directing or giving guidance to the choir, he was doing his side-to-side combination infinity sign/mobius strip gestures, and realizing that the pianist wasn’t with him, nor were several people in the choir, I decided to do something. I’m certain I annoyed some people. I don’t care. Well, yes, I do care. But something had to be done and in typical goober fashion I volunteered myself.
I started clapping the beat. Loudly. This was somewhat painful, as I have an eczema problem, confined to my hands (thank you God, I really don’t want it anywhere else, although I’m concerned some patches might be showing up on my face and left foot). In the winter months it gets worse. Right now I have a patch on the palm of my right hand that includes four splits in the skin. They hurt. They really hurt when I clap. Especially loudly. Fortunately they’re healed just enough that they didn’t start bleeding. That would have been a real mess. Thank you, God, for that also.
Anyway, there I was, clapping the beat for all I was worth. It seemed to help a little. One of the other altos leaned over and told me she wanted him to cue us (altos) when to come in at a point where the sopranos and basses are singing one rhythm and the altos and tenors are singing something different. I tried to explain to her that he can’t. I’m not sure she understood me. The woman between us (who is a soprano, I’m not sure why she was sitting with the altos) seemed to get it, though.
After rehearsal was over he thanked me for clapping the beat. So there’s that, at least.
*sigh*
I really don’t want to have to do it again. Ever. Even if my hands are healed and it isn’t painful. I felt like an idiot. And it should never have been necessary. Setting the tempo and cuing the choir in and out is what he’s supposed to do.
It’s just… that he can’t.
This afternoon he told me he thinks he has it figured out, how to get the choir to sing the rhythm they’re supposed to. The piece repeats the same rhythm several times, and the choir comes in on the “and” of two. Musicians will understand that. For the rest of you, it’s an upbeat. His solution is to yell “One-two” and thinks the choir will come in when they’re supposed to.
I hope he’s right. But he won’t be able to do that during the service, for reasons that should be obvious.
It would help if they’d listen to their CDs. Everybody’s got one, so they can hear the music and listen to the parts and figure out what they’re supposed to sing and when, even if they can’t read music. Which they also have. Not sure if they’re looking at it, though.
Oy, vey. I hope it turns out all right. It’s a good song. It’d be a real shame if it ended up a train wreck.
Local Teacher Accused of Sexually Assaulting a Student
First, let’s be clear — she hasn’t been found guilty of anything. The investigation continues.
Glenn Reynolds has, among his many recurring themes, the implosion of our public education system. I can’t say whether this is yet another example, because the teacher hasn’t actually been found guilty of anything. Her attorney says the charges are a result of discipline and the student involved is trying to get even.
I don’t know. Neither does anybody else — except the teacher, the student, and God. The truth will come out, I don’t doubt that.
But holy cow. The investigators are saying she sent “inappropriate” Facebook messages to more than one student. I have no idea what their definition of “inappropriate” is.
I have had experience with someone being falsely accused of sexual assault. It happened to a fellow who worked for me in the unit I commanded in Germany. He didn’t work for me directly, there were a couple people in the chain between us, but when the accusation was levied I was immediately involved in the discipline process. The whole thing struck me as outrageous, and so it was. The accuser, his stepdaughter, recanted to her therapist and while she actually had been sexually assaulted some years earlier, the perp turned out to be a friend of her brother’s. She was hurt, no mistake, but she nearly destroyed her stepfather just to get even with him because he wouldn’t let her go to a party.
Evil wears many faces, even innocuous ones. I don’t know what the truth is here. But there’s certainly enough pain being dished out all around.
God help all of them.
Sunday Morning Music
This Sunday the choir is singing “How Deep the Father’s Love for Us.” Well, I think it’s a congregational hymn, so everybody’s singing it. Except the musicians, and that seems to include me now. Last Sunday I played flute and bells (not at the same time). This Sunday the boss decided he wants me to play flute, and on “How Deep the Father’s Love for Us” I’m playing alto flute. So I had to transpose the music, as we don’t have any charts for G instruments.
Here’s the interesting part — it changes meter. From 4/4 to 6/4, then back to 4/4, then back to 6/4. Back and forth and back and forth.
We didn’t have choir rehearsal this week (would have been tonight) because we’re having an ice storm. The weather is very bad, power outages, roads are treacherous. So no activities at the church today, or tomorrow. So Sunday we’re lurching right into it without any rehearsal.
I hope it’s not a disaster, this piece with the switching meters. Because he has more than enough trouble when the music doesn’t change meters on him.
Oy, vey.
Shiloh
One Saturday afternoon in March 2006 while driving to WalMart I came across a dog lying by the side of the road. Big dog. Looked like somebody’s hunting dog. I thought she was injured; she was lying on the shoulder looking at the cars going by, panting. It took me a bit to find a place to turn around and when I got close to where I’d seen her, she had crossed the very-busy road and was on my side, trotting along. I pulled over and she came right to me. Inspection revealed she had a collar on, with a name (Shiloh) and a phone number. I thought “Hallelujah” as it meant I wouldn’t actually be taking her home with me and risking Hubby’s wrath yet again. I put her in the car and called the number.
It had been disconnected. I tried again, thinking I’d gotten a number or two wrong. Same result.
I still needed to go to WalMart, and it being March it wasn’t hot so I figured she’d be okay in the car for the few minutes I needed. I turned the car around and was headed back towards town when I spotted another dog running along the side of the road.
He had a collar also, with a rabies tag from a local vet clinic. It being Saturday afternoon, however, the vet offices were all closed. And while it might be okay to leave one dog in your car while you run into WalMart, leaving two dogs alone in your car while you run into WalMart is asking for catastrophe. So I took them home. Shiloh appeared to have had puppies not long before then, but they weren’t with her and I never did find out anything about them.
I put them in the laundry room, made sure they had food and water. Hubby and I bathed them later and Monday I called the vet clinic on the little dog’s tag. They informed me his name was Bubba, but they were unfamiliar with the other dog (Shiloh). And they gave me the owner’s phone number. It was the same as the number on Shiloh’s collar. I told them it had been disconnected, so they gave me their name and address. I looked them up in the phone book and discovered another number. Which I called. Which was also disconnected.
At the time I was a nosy Realtor® so I looked them up in the online tax records. And discovered they were in arrears on their taxes. I got in the car and drove by their house. It was a mobile home and it looked like everything they owned was in the yard. Years later (I still drive that way occasionally) it still looks that way.
I decided these people weren’t getting their dogs back. I took them to the vet to have them checked out and they both tested positive for heartworms. So, they had to be treated. It’s expensive. The alternative is waiting for them to die, which neither Hubby nor I wanted to do. Once they were healthy we had them neutered and microchipped.
The vet said he figured Shiloh was about 5 years old, and “Bubba” about a year and a half.
Bubba we renamed Seymour, for the road they used to live on. I explained to our vet that there was no way I was going to be going out into the back yard and yelling, “Here, Bubba!” He agreed. No telling who would have shown up.
Shiloh turned out to be an escape artist. We had, at the time, the beginnings of a 6-foot privacy fence but the yard was completely enclosed by a 4-foot chain-link fence. It didn’t even slow her down. So one of our first moves was to install an invisible fence and put the collar on her.
It worked. For awhile. She and Tucker used to escape occasionally (we had an invisible fence collar on him too). On him we had to shave his neck so the prongs would touch his skin. He’s a bit fuzzy.
Tucker had shown up a couple years earlier, in December 2003, right before Christmas. Which I didn’t realize until just now; we’ve had him 10 years.
Anyway, they used to escape and run the neighborhood together. Once they made it as far as Horatio. That was a day I didn’t have my car, it was in the shop. My friend was kind enough to give me a ride in her car when I’d gotten the call from the microchip people about where Tucker was — we didn’t realize Shiloh was out also until we were almost to the location when we spotted her trotting down the highway. Fortunately she was happy to jump into the car.
One day they got out and made it as far as the other side of someone’s cow pasture. When we got the call Hubby and I got in the truck to retrieve them from the people who were kind enough to call the 800 number. Both dogs had had a really fine time in the cow pasture. A really fine time. The stench was amazing. Both got baths when we got home.
She loved climbing up on top of the dog house in the screened porch, too. I think she just liked climbing.
I took her to work with me for Take Your Dog to Work Day, 3 months after I’d found her.
A couple years ago Hubby and I were able to hire someone to finish the privacy fence for us. We thought our problems were solved. And as far as Tucker was concerned, they were. But Shiloh wasn’t so easily deterred. She continued to get out. Hubby caught her at it one day. She’d jump up, wrap her front feet over the top of the 6-foot fence, pull herself up and jump over. So we added the invisible fence wire back onto the fence and put a collar on her. And she learned to ignore the shocks, kept right on getting out. It wasn’t until Hubby added a hot wire to the top of the fence that she stopped jumping over. Then she started trying to chew her way out. I am not making that up — she put two very large holes in our privacy fence trying to get out to run the neighborhood. The only thing that stopped her was the 4-foot chain-link fence on the other side, too close for her to wiggle her way out.
One day in September she started showing signs of arthritis. She was having more and more trouble getting up and walking. The decline was very fast. The vet said he couldn’t see too many signs of arthritis, thought it might be something else. We put her on pain meds and he took xrays, which showed she didn’t have cancer but didn’t answer too many more questions. He suggested taking her to the specialists in Columbia, having an MRI done. He thought there might be a brain lesion or something. My response — “Okay. Who’s going to pay for that?” And even if we had the money for an MRI, what do you do if your dog has a brain lesion?
I know that’s not what you’re supposed to say. I know we’re supposed to do everything we can to find out what’s wrong so we can help her. But if the money’s not there, the money’s not there. We could have wiped out our savings. And then what? And there’s always a “then what.”
If the vet had been correct about her being 5 years old when I found her, then she was about 12 1/2 years old. We did what we could. We took her home, continued with the pain medication, and kept her as comfortable as we could for as long as we could.
Her deterioration continued. Her difficulty in walking got worse. The last month or so we had to carry her outside so she could do what she needed to do. Early on I’d bought a belly band from Walkabout Harnesses and it really helped. Unfortunately as she lost weight it didn’t fit her and she kept sliding out of it. Her ability to keep herself from falling disappeared. A lot of the ending situation happened during the arctic blast and it made her trips outside even more miserable.
Her attitude never changed. She was sad sometimes, and on the occasions when I got home or got up in the morning and discovered she’d had an accident, sometimes being stuck in her own feces, she was humiliated. I tried to tell her it was okay, it wasn’t her fault. I’d clean her up and clean up the floor and/or the bedding. I bought diapers thinking it might ease the problem a bit, but she crawled out of them – and she didn’t like them.
So we did the best we could, feeding her a few times a day, keeping her on the pain meds, carrying her out to the yard and then back in the house. I bought her a heated bed when it seemed she was shivering all the time. It helped.
And then her appetite began failing. We tried different types of dog food trying to find something she’d eat. We’d started buying her this dog food and she loved it. For awhile. At the end the only thing I could get her to eat was canned chicken. Which wasn’t good for her. I didn’t care. I just wanted her to eat something.
Hubby and I finally decided we had to let her go. She wasn’t going to get any better. She couldn’t walk. She couldn’t stand on her own. And for a dog that used to love climbing the fence and running as far and as fast as she could go — it wasn’t fair. She wasn’t in any pain, I don’t think. She was still glad to see us. Her tail was wagging right up until the end.
She had the most expressive eyes of any dog we’ve ever had.
The end was peaceful. The vet gives them a sedative first, then the fatal shot. It’s hard, so hard. But we knew we couldn’t do anything else to make her life better. She’d never run the back yard with the others again, never be able to play with them. Never be able to stand on her own. It was just time. At her heaviest she weighed 90 pounds. When the decline started she was at 70. At the end, 49.
She’s in Heaven now, running as far and as fast as she wants to. She’s young again, and healthy, and playing with all the other critters up there. She’s fine. And I will see her again.
But until then, I will miss her. Goodbye, Shiloh. I love you. We’ll be together again. And there will be no more goodbyes.
Jasper Is Gone
If you’ve read any of James Lileks’ blog posts, you know who Jasper is. Last week, the same day we put Shiloh to sleep (I haven’t posted about that yet) he and his family said goodbye to Jasper.
Go read the whole thing. Have a kleenex handy.
Good dog, Jasper. Good dog. 😥
I Haven’t Watched the Olympics in Decades
And I have no intention of watching now. Stuff like this is why. Warning — Do NOT click on the link if the sight of an innocent animal suffering and dying distresses you. And if the sight of an innocent animal suffering and dying does not distress you, go away and do not come back. Ever.
There’s more here.
Russia has a centuries’ old tradition of having little to no regard for their citizens. It should surprise no one that there is even less regard for the animals. I haven’t been paying attention to the preparation for the Olympics but to find out that perfectly good homes with back yards were destroyed so they could build the Olympic venue, meaning all those people with dogs were moved to apartments where they couldn’t take their dogs with them and so… had to leave them behind…
Jesus wept.
Ronald Reagan was right. Reference, for those of you who don’t remember, here, paragraph 48.
Nothing’s Going to Change — Yet
So, the other day I was talking to somebody at the church and they told me the senior pastor is very happy with his worship pastor, my boss, our music leader. That he’s doing exactly what the senior pastor wants him to do.
Well, that’s great. They’re buddies. It’s a fine thing. He wasn’t buddies with my ex-boss, might be because my ex-boss didn’t let himself get pushed around. Having said that, the senior pastor really should have the final say as to what the service looks like.
Am I being unreasonable that I expect there’s a middle ground here, between not taking suggestions at all and changing course at every whim, that might make things a lot easier?
Anyway, a couple weeks ago we had elections for choir officers. The way it’s been done before is there’s an election to nominate folks, the ballots are counted and the top two contenders for each position run against each other. That’s assuming everybody wants to serve. Some people don’t. The week after we have another election and the winners are… the winners. This time the boss decided we were just going to fill out ballots and the top vote-getters would be elected. The problem with that, of course, is that you have a boatload of people who get one vote each, a few with 2 or 3, and then fewer with more votes than that. It’s a royal pain to count and tally it up.
Guess who got to do that.
I put together a Word document with the results and left it on his desk. Next time we talked about it, he pulled it out and started scribbling on it. It seems he wasn’t happy with who the choir elected for a couple positions and he intended to disregard the votes in favor of people he wanted to serve in those positions. I was flabbergasted, and didn’t say anything. At first.
Last Monday I broached the topic, said I was uncomfortable with his intention to blow off what the choir had voted on. And he said he was just kidding.
No he wasn’t. I was right there, looking him in the eye. He was not joking. He meant it. He backed off when challenged (seems to be a pattern), and the choir’s selections will stand.
This is an integrity issue. And this is not the sort of thing I expect to have to deal with when my boss is a pastor. And because he’s buddies with the senior pastor, there’s no way I could raise the issue without risking my job. If push comes to shove and somebody has to be shown the door to keep the peace, it’ll be me. Never mind that without my help my boss would be flailing, immediately. That won’t matter. Keeping the peace is more important than getting things done correctly. I learned that some years ago.
I realize Christians are people just like everybody else. I’m a Christian too, I’m a people, I get it. We make mistakes, we flub life choices, we wander off the path, and in my case every so often I execute a spiritual face-plant. But I’m not a pastor. The standards are higher for pastors. That may or may not be fair, that’s just the way it is.
I find myself running through the responsibilities of the day with my stomach in a knot. Not my first time, and not a new sensation. But I was spoiled. Boy, howdy, was I spoiled. The ex-boss didn’t have integrity issues. And he said “Thank you” all the time. All the time. Whenever anybody did anything to help. And especially to me. It was a huge relief after my previous job situation, when my boss’ mode of communication was screaming obscenities and calling me stupid.
I’m whining, I know. Things could be so much worse. I’m glad they aren’t. But I really really miss the way things were, only a few months ago. I need to get over it. That’s never coming back.
*sigh*
Oh, well. I have to remember to let God handle it. That’s hard for me, sometimes.
Oh, by the way — I’m back in the choir. I told the boss I wanted to sing in the choir. He was a bit wigged out, said he needed me to come in at 8:30 every Sunday morning. I’m not sure why he thought those two things were mutually exclusive. I explained that I’d still do that, but rather than sit up in the balcony during the service, I wanted to sing in the choir. And he said okay. So. Thank you, God. Now, if You could just get to work on the rest of it….
Well, This Is New
To me, anyway. This turned up in my spam folder. Links have been disabled.
Eubank Funeral Home & Cremation Services
For this unprecedented event, we offer our deepest prayers of condolence and invite to you to be present at the celebration of your friends life service on Wednesday, February 5, 2014 that will take place at Eubank Funeral Home at 11:00 a.m.
Please find invitation and more detailed information about the farewell ceremony here .
Best wishes and prayers,
Funeral home receptionist,
Sebastian BrittCopyright 2014 Funeral Home Website Design By: Frazer Consultants LLC
Wow. Also, pathetic. But it must work on some people. There’s no Eubank Funeral Home anywhere in our area, but I suppose researching names of funeral homes in every area you’re spamming people would be too much like work.
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