Scott’s Neighborhood

Scott Peterson

Scott Peterson was photographed by the California Department of Corrections in June 2007. Housed on death row at San Quentin State Prison, Peterson was found guilty in 2005 of killing his wife, Laci and their unborn son, Conner.  Notice "CONDEMNED" on his placard.

How long do you take in the shower?
Submitted by Strive2Be.

Gosh, I'm rather embarrassed now.  I'm the person who posted this question, and I did so because my friend was SHOCKED at how long I took.  Lol.  He wanted to know *exactly* what I could possibly be doing in the shower....take him step by step.  I thought he was being silly, but after reading the answers to this question.....wow, I must transform into a turtle or some such slow critter when the water hits me.  I spend about an hour....yes, you heard me world....one whole hour....sixty minutes.....in the rectangle of spraying water.  That includes wash/rinse hair, wash/rinse body (lol), and shaving BOTH my legs (don't forget that there are TWO of them), plus maybe a touch-up shave between................shhhhhhhhhh.  AND....this doesn't even include getting into the song, "Good, good, good...good vibrations!"  Lol.  You really don't want to know how long I'm in the shower if I get that song into my head!!  So......I'm a turtle......or a slug......or some primordial sludge.  And then don't even get me into what I do AFTER the shower...lotion on the legs and (shhhhhhh area) so the skin doesn't dry out, clip the nails (and remember, we have finger AND toe nails!  Lol), dry myself, pat my hair dry and then let it dry on its own after I've combed it, and get dressed.  I also, at some point during all this time, am cleaning out the shower and drying it.  And guess what, guess what??  I'm one of those people who doesn't use all those creams and lotions and make-up and gobbly gook.  Can you imagine how long I'd be in the bathroom????  Just bodywash, shampoo, conditioner, deodorant, and lotion for the shaved areas.  How come I feel like I'm on the witness stand, defending myself desperately so as not to received the death penalty??  *smile*  I'll have to go into hyperactive speed next time and let you know the results.  Probably shampoo in the eye, legs with hair still visible in areas, a nick in a sensitive spot, and a major slip getting out of the shower as my feet are still slimy with bodywash.  Well...at least I can yell to the world...I'M UNIQUE!!!!!  WooHoo!!!!  Not so sure if I like this uniqueness, though.  It's more like "Super freak, she's a super freak!"  Lol.

Underground Railroad 1840-1860

A one-minute video recreation of a time in Canada's past, followed by a short synopsis.

Synopsis

Between 1840 and 1860, more than 30,000 American slaves came secretly to Canada and freedom

"When my feet first touched the Canadian shore, I threw myself on the ground, rolled in the sand, seized handfuls of it and kissed them." These were the words of Josiah Henson recalling his first moments as a free man. Henson had escaped to Canada along the "underground railroad," a network of secret paths, hiding places and safe houses that stretched from southern states to the borders of Canada. Like countless other immigrants, Henson came to Canada as a refugee escaping brutality and oppression.

The slaves fled the inhuman treatment they suffered in the southern United States, where they were - by law - the property of their owners. Beaten and whipped and forced to obey, many worked up to eighteen hours a day in the fields, returning at night to squalid shacks for meagre rations of corn meal and bacon scraps.

Among the many tragic stories of slavery were tales of husbands taken from wives and of children torn from their mothers to be sold like animals. Captured runaway slaves were often tortured. Professional slave catchers, notorious for their cruelty, tracked runaway slaves all the way from the deep South to the Canadian border. It took enormous courage to escape.

But thanks to the "agents" on the underground railroad [men and women, white and black, Canadian and American], many slaves found freedom in Canada. Some of these agents have become legends. The great Harriet Tubman, an escaped slave herself, returned south again and again to lead others north. A Canadian, Alexander Ross, travelled to southern plantations in the guise of a gentleman bird fancier. His real mission, however, was to direct slaves to the escape routes.

 

 

 

Harriet Tubman was a worker on the Underground Railroad.  She made 19 trips from Canada back to the South, and helped free approximately 300 people.

 

 

 Dr. Martin Luther King said that in the history of black America, "Canada was the north star." The old spiritual, "Follow the Drinking Gourd," gave slaves the hidden advice to keep their eyes on the Gourd [the Big Dipper], which pointed the way north to "heaven," in this case Canada.

So, have you ever sat in the pleasant sun and felt the wisps of breeze as it touches your face, just so you don't have to sit in a stuffy home office to perform boring statistical analysis drudgery?  Then you make a little trip into the kitchen to get a nice sweet glass of ice-cold juice to take back out with you to quinch your thirst while you wrestle with those infuriating numerals?  Hmmm......your spreadsheet seems to have changed.  Could the sun hitting the screen somehow have caused that?  And what's this?  Pinecone seeds on the keyboard??  And then, ever so slowly, you look back up at the spreadsheet.....and find it has been wiped clean of all your hard work....only to be replaced by coquettish little squirrels.  You jump up and quickly look around for the jerk who dared to touch your laptop....only to be greeted by the twittering of little birds and the chattering of squirrels within the surrounding trees.  As you peer through the trees and don't see nor hear anything that allows you to know that one of your pals is in hiding, playing a prank, your legs buckle a little and you sit back down by your pinecone-seed coated keyboard and listen to the continuous chattering of the squirrels around you.  Could it be that we have allowed the animals too much access to our technology by taking our laptops with us to the beach, on camping trips, even into the backyard?  As you look back up at the smiling and wiggling little girlish squirrels on your screen, you hear a voice in your head that you haven't heard since 2002:  "The Truth Is Out There."

BOOKS BOUGHT:

• McSweeney's #27--Dave Eggers (editor)
• The Bostonians--Henry James
• The Baron in the Trees--Italo Calvino
• Invisible Cities--Italo Calvino
• Civilwarland in Bad Decline--George Saunders
• When You Are Engulfed in Flames--David Sedaris
• Swann's Way--Marcel Proust
• Slapstick--Kurt Vonnegut
• God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater--Kurt Vonnegut

BOOKS READ:

Hotel California--Barney Hoskyns

The full title of this book is Hotel California: The True-Life Adventures of Crosby, Stills, Nash, Young, Mitchell, Taylor, Browne, Ronstadt, Geffen, the Eagles, and Their Many Friends.  That's a mouthful right there.  Although I don't care even one tiny bit about David Geffen stories, I like most of the other musicians mentioned in that run-on title.  In a fit of boredom, I actually counted up the albums I had by the musicians mentioned in the title.  I came up with 94, so this book was right up my musical alley.

Hotel California examines the Southern California music scene from about 1965-75 with a close look at the rise of the singer-songwriter movement and the country-rock genre popularized by the Eagles.  It was actually a pretty good book.  My only complaint was that parts of the book paid too much attention to Joni Mitchell's voracious sexual appetites.  I don't remember exactly, but I think she had sex with everyone in the title with the possible exception of Linda Ronstadt and Neil Young.  David Geffen was gay, but I'm pretty sure she tried to get with him anyway.  When the author wasn't keeping track of bedpost notches, he was telling interesting anecdotes about all my favorites.  He also gave Gene Clark his due respect and credit.  That right there is enough for me to recommend this book to anyone with similar musical tastes.   

The Adventures of Augie March--Saul Bellow

Augie March was a great book for the first 300+ pages.  It followed the titular character's boyhood and young adulthood in Depression-era Chicago.  Special emphasis was given to Augie's relationship with his family and his many employers.  Then Augie went down to Mexico to train an eagle to catch lizards, and it seemed like all the characters suddenly stepped into a Malcolm Lowry novel.  It was strange.

Augie eventually finished up the Mexican chapter in his life and went back to Chicago.  Then it seemed like Saul Bellow didn't know what to do with the story so he just had Augie marry somebody he met down in Mexico.  It was a disappointing ending to what started off as a very interesting, well-written book.

Augie March is considered a classic in many circles.  In my mind, it's half classic/half disappointment.  I liked the author's Henderson the Rain King much more. 

One Picture for Every Page of Thomas Pynchon's Novel Gravity's Rainbow--Zak Smith

Zak Smith got the idea of making a drawing or painting that represented what took place on each page of Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow.  It was a great idea, but the final result was surprisingly dull.  After about 50 pages, it became glaringly obvious that Zak Smith's art wasn't consistently interesting enough to pull off the project.  Illustrated became very repetitive.  How many pages can he represent with a black and white scribble?!  He was always sure to draw the sex parts, though.  I guess that's what happens when you let a pornographer make a book.  A much better idea would've been to commission a different artist for each page. 

I read Gravity's Rainbow about seven or eight years ago.  I didn't reread it when I read Zak Smith's book.  Maybe it would've been more interesting had I tackled both books simultaneously.  Maybe not.   

CURRENTLY READING:

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman--Lawrence Sterne
Swann's Way--Marcel Proust
The Book of Yoga--Christina Brown

A quotation from the 2003 novel, "The Wife", written by Meg Wolitzer.

"Because as you get older, life sort of eats away at you like battery acid, and all the things you once loved are suddenly harder to find.  And when you do find them, you don't have time to enjoy them anymore."

Natasha Bedingfield from the United Kingdom.  This song, "Unwritten", was released in 2005.

Lyrics:

I am unwritten
You can't read my mind
I'm undefined
I'm just beginning
The pen's in my hand
Ending untold

Staring at the blank page before you
Open up the dirty window
Let the sun illuminate the words that you could not find
Reaching for something in the distance
So close you can almost taste it
Release your inhibitions
Feel the rain on your skin
No one else can feel it for you
Only you can let it in
No one else can speak the words on your lips
Put yourself in words not spoken
Live your life with arms wide open
Today is where your book begins
The rest is still unwritten

I break traditions
Sometimes my tries
Are outside the line
Within condition
To not make mistakes
But I can't live that way

Chorus

Feel the rain on your skin
No one else can feel it for you
Only you can let it in
No one else can speak the words on your lips
Put yourself in words not spoken
Live your life with arms wide open
Today is where your book begins
The rest is still unwritten

I don't know about you, but after a little adventure like this one having just been utilized on ME (because it's always the case that improbable events occur to ME!  Lol), I'd be paddling so fast back to shore that you'd think I had a little motor hidden in my kayak.  Just like when the movie "Jaws" first came out....do you dare return to the water?

Just one of the many unsavory duties of being a police officer.