This article says it all for me.....
___________________________________________________________________
Study: Life without the Net is unbearable
CBS MarketWatch
NewsTeam CBS [MarketWatch] POSTED: 09.22.04 @08:51
WASHINGTON -- Researchers investigating how people would react to not having access to the Internet had a tough time getting started. "It was incredibly difficult to recruit participants as people weren't willing to be without the Internet for two weeks," explained Wenda Harris Millard, chief sales officer of Yahoo, and a sponsor of the study.
All participants found living without the Net more difficult than expected, and in some cases impossible, the researchers reported. Nearly half of those in one of the surveys said they couldn't go without the Internet for more than two weeks. Sending e-mail, looking up phone numbers, getting directions for a trip, and checking sports scores online, have become a part of daily life.
Conifer Research worked with several dozen people who kept a diary of their activities. Regardless of age, income or ethnicity, all said they had withdrawal symptoms and a sense of loss, frustration and "discontentedness."
"The study is indicative of how the Internet has irrevocably changing the daily lives of consumers," Yahoo's Millard said
____________________________________________________________
And to this I add......I know I could not do without my daily "fix".
Oh....one last thing. I will be sending out a seperate email, but I am changing ISPs in a few days. Yes...Roadrunner is going the way of the dinasour for me and I will be changing over to my phone companie's ISP in a few days. (TDS Metrocom). I will forword my new email once everything with the DSL installation is complete.
Good night and sleep well.
Tuesday, September 28, 2004
What if?
Unless you have been living under a rock (and alot of us have been, I am sure...with all the news about Iraq and the upcoming presidential elections taking up the airwaves-and the streets in the latter instance) you may have heard about the impending flyby of a pretty "Massive" astroid heading close to Earth on Wed September 29, 2004 (Tommorow in our world).
That astroid named "TOUTALIS" is supposed to come close enough to our planet to possibly even impact (the internet has been abuzz for months about this "mountian size planetoid" possibly dropping into one of our oceans and causing a massive tidal surge-think Deep Impact the movie or Armagedden the movie-that would surly cause massive loss of life on this planet) us, but most scientests feel that it will pass by without any cause for alarm.
See the following story......
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mystery_monday_040503.html
I for one, am still planning on taking my vacation next week and planning for christmas and my 39th birthday in Feb of 2005.
But.....WHAT IF FORECASTS of imminent doom are, as techno-paranoids call them, "psy-ops"?
That is, psychological operations designed to redirect popular thinking in certain ways? What if we are being conditioned to live in fear of some world-ending super-menace—from outer space or wherever—that could be simulated and then seemingly averted at the last moment by a "miraculous" rescue? Whoever "saved" the world through such global stagecraft would acquire unprecedented influence. Dictators have risen to power and even claimed divinity for themselves using much more modest ruses.
Fantastic though such a scenario sounds, something like it probably could be done with technologies of the very near future, if not the present. One easily can imagine a tyrant(Bush anyone??) with worldwide ambitions and high-tech capabilities scheming even now to pull off the greatest hoax of all time, after years of conditioning the public to anticipate precisely such a crisis. This may sound like the ultimate techno-paranoid nightmare, yet it's consistent with the high volume of current warnings that the end is near. Quite a large number of people around the globe believe that the world is in its sunset years.
After 911, I remember my stepmother saying that she felt this was the beginning of the end. That was a scary thought coming from a pretty level headed person that I have known for a long time.
I also remember reading an article a few years ago about "psychological conditioning of the masses" through "Mass Media". The movies we watch being a major aspect of this.
Take the movies"Independence Day, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Alien movies, and the latest movie from Stephen King called Dreamcatcher".......are we being conditioned to "know and think" what the aliens look like, why they are coming and what can be done to survive such an event??
The article that I read, relates that because of this...when our goverment "claims to have initiated 1st contact with an alien intelligence" and then try to bring the population under a very strict "martial law" (Dept of HomeLand Security..hmmm) type of situation, we won't hesitate to follow their orders for fear of what may happen otherwise.
Hoaxes or not, on both the secular and religious levels, someone is successfully inciting fears about "the end" arriving very soon. Is it all the buildup to some contrived mega-fright?
Proof is lacking for the most part. Mike Moore's movie "Farenheit 911" gives some inkling to such notions and a few "non mainstream media sources" have mentioned different scenarios, but you won't hear or see any of this from the likes of CBS,NBC or CNN.
But, now so many people are screaming at once about a planetary upheaval within the next several years, that anyone can be persuaded that the world has only a few months left or that we will be "invaded" by a hostile species from outerspace.
Are we being Duped??? Dig a little, read a little and come to your own conclusion. We all must make up our own minds......mine says that something is ALREADY going on...but that that most of us will probably really never know....or at least not for a while......
(Remember how no one believed that the "Holocaust" never really happened.....that is until alot of people started talking, others started digging and getting information to the masses).
I for one...plan to keep digging and searching and learning all that I can.
As "Moulder from the XFiles tv show says......."The truth is out there".
Until my next installement......take care and love one another with all of your hearts.
Just me......
That astroid named "TOUTALIS" is supposed to come close enough to our planet to possibly even impact (the internet has been abuzz for months about this "mountian size planetoid" possibly dropping into one of our oceans and causing a massive tidal surge-think Deep Impact the movie or Armagedden the movie-that would surly cause massive loss of life on this planet) us, but most scientests feel that it will pass by without any cause for alarm.
See the following story......
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mystery_monday_040503.html
I for one, am still planning on taking my vacation next week and planning for christmas and my 39th birthday in Feb of 2005.
But.....WHAT IF FORECASTS of imminent doom are, as techno-paranoids call them, "psy-ops"?
That is, psychological operations designed to redirect popular thinking in certain ways? What if we are being conditioned to live in fear of some world-ending super-menace—from outer space or wherever—that could be simulated and then seemingly averted at the last moment by a "miraculous" rescue? Whoever "saved" the world through such global stagecraft would acquire unprecedented influence. Dictators have risen to power and even claimed divinity for themselves using much more modest ruses.
Fantastic though such a scenario sounds, something like it probably could be done with technologies of the very near future, if not the present. One easily can imagine a tyrant(Bush anyone??) with worldwide ambitions and high-tech capabilities scheming even now to pull off the greatest hoax of all time, after years of conditioning the public to anticipate precisely such a crisis. This may sound like the ultimate techno-paranoid nightmare, yet it's consistent with the high volume of current warnings that the end is near. Quite a large number of people around the globe believe that the world is in its sunset years.
After 911, I remember my stepmother saying that she felt this was the beginning of the end. That was a scary thought coming from a pretty level headed person that I have known for a long time.
I also remember reading an article a few years ago about "psychological conditioning of the masses" through "Mass Media". The movies we watch being a major aspect of this.
Take the movies"Independence Day, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Alien movies, and the latest movie from Stephen King called Dreamcatcher".......are we being conditioned to "know and think" what the aliens look like, why they are coming and what can be done to survive such an event??
The article that I read, relates that because of this...when our goverment "claims to have initiated 1st contact with an alien intelligence" and then try to bring the population under a very strict "martial law" (Dept of HomeLand Security..hmmm) type of situation, we won't hesitate to follow their orders for fear of what may happen otherwise.
Hoaxes or not, on both the secular and religious levels, someone is successfully inciting fears about "the end" arriving very soon. Is it all the buildup to some contrived mega-fright?
Proof is lacking for the most part. Mike Moore's movie "Farenheit 911" gives some inkling to such notions and a few "non mainstream media sources" have mentioned different scenarios, but you won't hear or see any of this from the likes of CBS,NBC or CNN.
But, now so many people are screaming at once about a planetary upheaval within the next several years, that anyone can be persuaded that the world has only a few months left or that we will be "invaded" by a hostile species from outerspace.
Are we being Duped??? Dig a little, read a little and come to your own conclusion. We all must make up our own minds......mine says that something is ALREADY going on...but that that most of us will probably really never know....or at least not for a while......
(Remember how no one believed that the "Holocaust" never really happened.....that is until alot of people started talking, others started digging and getting information to the masses).
I for one...plan to keep digging and searching and learning all that I can.
As "Moulder from the XFiles tv show says......."The truth is out there".
Until my next installement......take care and love one another with all of your hearts.
Just me......
Monday, September 27, 2004
Anyone Remember 1984??
No....not the year 1984 (or my friend Charlie's band 1984), though it was a great year....I graduated from High School in that wonderful year (yes I am dating myself now...).
I am talking about the book by George Orwell. The sypnosis of that great literary work was the "all seeing eyes of Big Brother-Our Goverment" and their intrusion into the privacy of our daily lifes.
Well, just tonight, as I was looking at things on the web, I came across two different stories that make me think that this concept is indeed becoming reality (alibit a little later than Orwell envisioned) and you know what?? It scares me. The story that I have included does mention that this city (which is an hour south of me) doesnt intend to peek into the privacy of our homes, but with the ability to "zoom in 400 times normal", you dont think that it will be possible to gaze right through our mini blinds and into our living rooms...(Doug...dont walk out of the bathroom without your towel on!!!)
Hmmmm.......
Also a link to a real nice overview of the fine novel by Mr. Orwel along with a pretty complete online version of the entire novel you can read via the Web (I have a copy in my library if anyone wants to borrow it...just email me or call me).
http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/1984/
________________________________________________________________
Chicago moving to 'smart' surveillance cameras
By Scott Kirsner
The New York Times -->http://news.com.com/Chicago+moving+to+smart+surveillance+cameras/2100-7348_3-5375074.html
Story last modified September 21, 2004, 5:59 AM PDT
A highly advanced system of video surveillance that Chicago officials plan to install by 2006 will make people here some of the most closely observed in the world. Mayor Richard M. Daley says it will also make them much safer.
"Cameras are the equivalent of hundreds of sets of eyes," Daley said when he unveiled the new project this month. "They're the next best thing to having police officers stationed at every potential trouble spot."
Police specialists here can already monitor live footage from about 2,000 surveillance cameras around the city, so the addition of 250 cameras under the mayor's new plan is not a great jump. The way these cameras will be used, however, is an extraordinary technological leap.
Sophisticated new computer programs will immediately alert the police whenever anyone viewed by any of the cameras placed at buildings and other structures considered terrorist targets wanders aimlessly in circles, lingers outside a public building, pulls a car onto the shoulder of a highway, or leaves a package and walks away from it. Images of those people will be highlighted in color at the city's central monitoring station, allowing dispatchers to send police officers to the scene immediately.
Officials here designed the system after studying the video surveillance network in London, which became a world leader in this technology during the period when Irish terrorists were active. The Chicago officials also studied systems used in Las Vegas casinos, as well as those used by Army combat units. The system they have devised, they say, will be the most sophisticated in the United States and perhaps the world.
"What we're doing is a totally new concept," said Ron Huberman, executive director of the city's office of emergency management and communications. "This is a very innovative way to harness the power of cameras. It's going to take us to a whole new level."
Many cities have installed large numbers of surveillance cameras along streets and near important buildings, but as the number of these cameras has grown, it has become impossible to monitor all of them. The software that will be central to Chicago's surveillance system is designed to direct specialists to screens that show anything unusual happening.
Huberman, a 32-year-old former police officer who is also what one aide called a "techno geek," said this new system "should produce a significant decrease in crime, and from a homeland security standpoint it should be able to make our city safer."
When the system is in place, Huberman said, video images will be instantly available to dispatchers at the city's 911 emergency center, which receives about 18,000 calls each day. Dispatchers will be able to tilt or zoom the cameras, some of which magnify images up to 400 times, in order to watch suspicious people and follow them from one camera's range to another's.
A spokesman for the Illinois chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, Edwin C. Yohnka, said the new system was "really a huge expansion of the city's surveillance program."
Tracking employees using Nextel phones
"With the aggressive way these types of surveillance equipment are being marketed and implemented," Yohnka said, "it really does raise questions about what kind of society do we ultimately want, and how intrusive we want law enforcement officials to be in all of our lives."
The surveillance network will embrace cameras placed not only by the police department, but also by a variety of city agencies including the transit, housing and aviation authorities. Private companies that maintain their own surveillance of areas around their buildings will also be able to send their video feeds to the central control room that is being built at a fortified city building.
The 250 new cameras, along with the new system that dispatchers will use to monitor them, are to be in place by the spring of 2006. A $5.1 million federal grant will be used to pay for the cameras, and the city will add $3.5 million to pay for the computer network that will connect them.
This project is a central part of Chicago's response to the threat of terrorism, as well as an effort to reduce the city's crime rate. It also subjects people here to extraordinary levels of surveillance. Anyone walking in public is liable to be almost constantly watched.
"The value we gain in public safety far outweighs any perception by the community that this is Big Brother who's watching," Huberman said. "The feedback we're getting is that people welcome this. It makes them feel safer."
One community organizer who works in a high-crime neighborhood, Ernest R. Jenkins, chairman of the West Side Association for Community Action, said the 2,000 cameras now in place had reduced crime and were "having an impact, no if's, and's or but's about it." Nonetheless, Jenkins said, some people in Chicago believed the city was trying to "infiltrate people's privacy in the name of terrorist attacks."
"I just personally think that it's an invasion of people's privacy," Jenkins said of the new video surveillance project. "A large increase in the utilization of these cameras would oversaturate the market."
City officials counter that the cameras will monitor only public spaces. Rather than curb the system's future expansion, they have raised the possibility of placing cameras in commuter and rapid transit cars and on the city's street-sweeping vehicles.
"We're not inside your home or your business," Mayor Daley said. "The city owns the sidewalks. We own the streets and we own the alleys."
Entire contents, Copyright © 2004 The New York Times. All rights reserved.
I am talking about the book by George Orwell. The sypnosis of that great literary work was the "all seeing eyes of Big Brother-Our Goverment" and their intrusion into the privacy of our daily lifes.
Well, just tonight, as I was looking at things on the web, I came across two different stories that make me think that this concept is indeed becoming reality (alibit a little later than Orwell envisioned) and you know what?? It scares me. The story that I have included does mention that this city (which is an hour south of me) doesnt intend to peek into the privacy of our homes, but with the ability to "zoom in 400 times normal", you dont think that it will be possible to gaze right through our mini blinds and into our living rooms...(Doug...dont walk out of the bathroom without your towel on!!!)
Hmmmm.......
Also a link to a real nice overview of the fine novel by Mr. Orwel along with a pretty complete online version of the entire novel you can read via the Web (I have a copy in my library if anyone wants to borrow it...just email me or call me).
http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/1984/
________________________________________________________________
Chicago moving to 'smart' surveillance cameras
By Scott Kirsner
The New York Times -->http://news.com.com/Chicago+moving+to+smart+surveillance+cameras/2100-7348_3-5375074.html
Story last modified September 21, 2004, 5:59 AM PDT
A highly advanced system of video surveillance that Chicago officials plan to install by 2006 will make people here some of the most closely observed in the world. Mayor Richard M. Daley says it will also make them much safer.
"Cameras are the equivalent of hundreds of sets of eyes," Daley said when he unveiled the new project this month. "They're the next best thing to having police officers stationed at every potential trouble spot."
Police specialists here can already monitor live footage from about 2,000 surveillance cameras around the city, so the addition of 250 cameras under the mayor's new plan is not a great jump. The way these cameras will be used, however, is an extraordinary technological leap.
Sophisticated new computer programs will immediately alert the police whenever anyone viewed by any of the cameras placed at buildings and other structures considered terrorist targets wanders aimlessly in circles, lingers outside a public building, pulls a car onto the shoulder of a highway, or leaves a package and walks away from it. Images of those people will be highlighted in color at the city's central monitoring station, allowing dispatchers to send police officers to the scene immediately.
Officials here designed the system after studying the video surveillance network in London, which became a world leader in this technology during the period when Irish terrorists were active. The Chicago officials also studied systems used in Las Vegas casinos, as well as those used by Army combat units. The system they have devised, they say, will be the most sophisticated in the United States and perhaps the world.
"What we're doing is a totally new concept," said Ron Huberman, executive director of the city's office of emergency management and communications. "This is a very innovative way to harness the power of cameras. It's going to take us to a whole new level."
Many cities have installed large numbers of surveillance cameras along streets and near important buildings, but as the number of these cameras has grown, it has become impossible to monitor all of them. The software that will be central to Chicago's surveillance system is designed to direct specialists to screens that show anything unusual happening.
Huberman, a 32-year-old former police officer who is also what one aide called a "techno geek," said this new system "should produce a significant decrease in crime, and from a homeland security standpoint it should be able to make our city safer."
When the system is in place, Huberman said, video images will be instantly available to dispatchers at the city's 911 emergency center, which receives about 18,000 calls each day. Dispatchers will be able to tilt or zoom the cameras, some of which magnify images up to 400 times, in order to watch suspicious people and follow them from one camera's range to another's.
A spokesman for the Illinois chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, Edwin C. Yohnka, said the new system was "really a huge expansion of the city's surveillance program."
Tracking employees using Nextel phones
"With the aggressive way these types of surveillance equipment are being marketed and implemented," Yohnka said, "it really does raise questions about what kind of society do we ultimately want, and how intrusive we want law enforcement officials to be in all of our lives."
The surveillance network will embrace cameras placed not only by the police department, but also by a variety of city agencies including the transit, housing and aviation authorities. Private companies that maintain their own surveillance of areas around their buildings will also be able to send their video feeds to the central control room that is being built at a fortified city building.
The 250 new cameras, along with the new system that dispatchers will use to monitor them, are to be in place by the spring of 2006. A $5.1 million federal grant will be used to pay for the cameras, and the city will add $3.5 million to pay for the computer network that will connect them.
This project is a central part of Chicago's response to the threat of terrorism, as well as an effort to reduce the city's crime rate. It also subjects people here to extraordinary levels of surveillance. Anyone walking in public is liable to be almost constantly watched.
"The value we gain in public safety far outweighs any perception by the community that this is Big Brother who's watching," Huberman said. "The feedback we're getting is that people welcome this. It makes them feel safer."
One community organizer who works in a high-crime neighborhood, Ernest R. Jenkins, chairman of the West Side Association for Community Action, said the 2,000 cameras now in place had reduced crime and were "having an impact, no if's, and's or but's about it." Nonetheless, Jenkins said, some people in Chicago believed the city was trying to "infiltrate people's privacy in the name of terrorist attacks."
"I just personally think that it's an invasion of people's privacy," Jenkins said of the new video surveillance project. "A large increase in the utilization of these cameras would oversaturate the market."
City officials counter that the cameras will monitor only public spaces. Rather than curb the system's future expansion, they have raised the possibility of placing cameras in commuter and rapid transit cars and on the city's street-sweeping vehicles.
"We're not inside your home or your business," Mayor Daley said. "The city owns the sidewalks. We own the streets and we own the alleys."
Entire contents, Copyright © 2004 The New York Times. All rights reserved.
Sunday, September 26, 2004
I joined the campaign to reelect Bush????
You see....I decided to join the campaign to reelect Bush in hopes that I could learn more about (and taunt) those who want to reelect this "monster" for another four years. I have been getting emails from the campaign for a few weeks.....I finally had to respond to one of the emails as time is getting short.
Letter I recveivd and the reply I sent this man who is a campaign manager for Bushy
___________________________________________________________________
Dear John,
The election is rapidly approaching. The phones here at headquarters are ringing off the hook with people calling to see how they can help. Since you have signed up to be a member of our e-Campaign team and have chosen to stay involved and stay informed, you're well on your way to making the difference in this election.
Would you like to take the next step? Here are four things that will put us over the top in November and they all involve votes and voters - the most important part of any election.
1. Make sure you are registered to vote. In Wisconsin, just 3 1/2 weeks remain before voter registration by mail closes. Are you registered? Be sure. All projections indicate this election will be a close race decided by a small margin. Your vote could make the difference. Take a moment, to complete or update your voter registration at www.GeorgeWBush.com/Vote. It only takes a moment.
2. Make sure your family members are registered to vote. If you have a small family, use the form at the bottom of this page to e-mail this note and encourage them to register. Have a bigger family? Need more space? You can access or create your own Virtual Precinct and send a message to family members across the country encouraging them to register or update their information. Once they register, you can use the same tool to send them updates from the campaign and directions to their polling place.
3. Think creatively about other people who may not be registered. Do you have a Christmas card list? Or sing in a church choir? Are you a member of a Veterans group? What about the other parents on your child's soccer team? Have you touched base with your old friends from school lately? Odds are a lot of those people aren't registered to vote, but they may support the President. In the words of the phone company, "reach out and touch someone." Send them a link to our registration tool. Get them registered and turn them out.
4. Make sure your friends know the best way to help. Use your Virtual Precinct to send this message to everyone you know who may want to help our campaign. If everyone who receives this message registers a few voters and passes the message on, we'll have the votes we need to win. To access or create your Virtual Precinct, visit www.GeorgeWBush.com/VirtualPrecinct.
Every four years, people tell you this election is the most important of our lives. This time, it's true. The choice we make on November 2nd will determine the way we fight the War on Terror; whether doctors and patients or government bureaucrats will make our health care decisions; and whether we keep our economy on the right track or let higher taxes derail our recovery.
I hope you will take the time this weekend to complete these four simple steps to make the difference.
Sincerely, Ken Mehlman
P.S. Completing these four actions will only take you a few minutes, but the outcome will be amazing. These small tasks will push us over the top. Please take a few moments and do all you can.
Not Sent at Taxpayers' Expense
Paid for by Bush-Cheney '04 Inc.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Ken,
This story, I have had in my collection since about mid 2001 after Bush was first elected....the 4th paragraph (last sentence is pretty remarkable if you ask me..) And we want to re elect him why.......?
BUSH TAKES THE OATH: ANOTHER SHAPESHIFTER IN THE WHITE HOUSE.by David Icke
Saturday, January 20th, 2001, will be remembered as a dark day for human freedom - the day that George W. Bush took the oath on the same Freemasonic Bible used by George Washington and became the 43rd President of the United States.It is not George W. Bush that is truly the problem, it is all that he represents. Bush ("Shrub") is president in name only, of course. The real power is with others behind the scenes, like his father George Bush and those of even greater authority than he, like Henry Kissinger and other leg-men for the Illuminati. We can see this clearly in the people the Shrub has appointed to "his" cabinet. It is like a roll call of Illuminati placemen that served under his father and other child abusers, rapists, and serial killers like Gerald Ford. Alongside them are a stream of Illuminati operatives from corporate America, including ALCOA, the Aluminum cartel controlled by the infamous Mellon family, those close friends of the British royal family. It is ALCOA and the Mellons who gave us fluoride, a poison and mind suppressant, in public drinking water.Shrub's vice-president, Dick Cheney, was his father's Defence Secretary and together they launched the "NATO" (British-American) war on Iraq in 1991. Cheney, as exposed by Cathy O'Brien in Trance-Formation of America, is yet another mind controller, child abuser, and serial killer. Colin Powell, the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was America's highest military commander during the Gulf War and you do not get to that level unless you know what people like Father George and Cheney are involved in. Powell, like the Bushes and Cheney, is bloodline and that's why he is to be the new Secretary of State. Given that line-up and their mentality and agenda, don't be at all surprised if the United States finds itself in another manipulated war during this administration. You will see "monsters" being created in the public mind to justify such action.The Bush inauguration marks the start of the massive push by the Illuminati to further their agenda for a global fascist state. You will see this clearly unfolding in the next 24 months and, as usual, watch what they do, not what they say. The Bush administration will be a cold, calculating, vicious, period of human history. I know people who have met the Shrub during his period as Governor of Texas and cold, calculating, and vicious, as well as staggeringly unintelligent, are words they chose to describe him. But those who will be dictating the actions of his presidency make him look like a puppy dog. Or maybe lapdog would be more appropriate.Even many of those who still deny any evidence of a global fascist state emerging before our eyes will be shocked out of their comatose state by the time the Shrub leaves office. Indeed, probably long before.
Warm regards,
John Repinski
PS: You may now take me off of your shitass mailing list now. I have had my say.
Thank you.......
___________________________________________________________________
Now mind you, I am not political....but I feel everyone needs to do whatever it takes to make sure this man does not get another four years to wage his "war" on terrorism, and posibley kill more innocent americans.
Time to sleep........
Letter I recveivd and the reply I sent this man who is a campaign manager for Bushy
___________________________________________________________________
Dear John,
The election is rapidly approaching. The phones here at headquarters are ringing off the hook with people calling to see how they can help. Since you have signed up to be a member of our e-Campaign team and have chosen to stay involved and stay informed, you're well on your way to making the difference in this election.
Would you like to take the next step? Here are four things that will put us over the top in November and they all involve votes and voters - the most important part of any election.
1. Make sure you are registered to vote. In Wisconsin, just 3 1/2 weeks remain before voter registration by mail closes. Are you registered? Be sure. All projections indicate this election will be a close race decided by a small margin. Your vote could make the difference. Take a moment, to complete or update your voter registration at www.GeorgeWBush.com/Vote. It only takes a moment.
2. Make sure your family members are registered to vote. If you have a small family, use the form at the bottom of this page to e-mail this note and encourage them to register. Have a bigger family? Need more space? You can access or create your own Virtual Precinct and send a message to family members across the country encouraging them to register or update their information. Once they register, you can use the same tool to send them updates from the campaign and directions to their polling place.
3. Think creatively about other people who may not be registered. Do you have a Christmas card list? Or sing in a church choir? Are you a member of a Veterans group? What about the other parents on your child's soccer team? Have you touched base with your old friends from school lately? Odds are a lot of those people aren't registered to vote, but they may support the President. In the words of the phone company, "reach out and touch someone." Send them a link to our registration tool. Get them registered and turn them out.
4. Make sure your friends know the best way to help. Use your Virtual Precinct to send this message to everyone you know who may want to help our campaign. If everyone who receives this message registers a few voters and passes the message on, we'll have the votes we need to win. To access or create your Virtual Precinct, visit www.GeorgeWBush.com/VirtualPrecinct.
Every four years, people tell you this election is the most important of our lives. This time, it's true. The choice we make on November 2nd will determine the way we fight the War on Terror; whether doctors and patients or government bureaucrats will make our health care decisions; and whether we keep our economy on the right track or let higher taxes derail our recovery.
I hope you will take the time this weekend to complete these four simple steps to make the difference.
Sincerely, Ken Mehlman
P.S. Completing these four actions will only take you a few minutes, but the outcome will be amazing. These small tasks will push us over the top. Please take a few moments and do all you can.
Not Sent at Taxpayers' Expense
Paid for by Bush-Cheney '04 Inc.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Ken,
This story, I have had in my collection since about mid 2001 after Bush was first elected....the 4th paragraph (last sentence is pretty remarkable if you ask me..) And we want to re elect him why.......?
BUSH TAKES THE OATH: ANOTHER SHAPESHIFTER IN THE WHITE HOUSE.by David Icke
Saturday, January 20th, 2001, will be remembered as a dark day for human freedom - the day that George W. Bush took the oath on the same Freemasonic Bible used by George Washington and became the 43rd President of the United States.It is not George W. Bush that is truly the problem, it is all that he represents. Bush ("Shrub") is president in name only, of course. The real power is with others behind the scenes, like his father George Bush and those of even greater authority than he, like Henry Kissinger and other leg-men for the Illuminati. We can see this clearly in the people the Shrub has appointed to "his" cabinet. It is like a roll call of Illuminati placemen that served under his father and other child abusers, rapists, and serial killers like Gerald Ford. Alongside them are a stream of Illuminati operatives from corporate America, including ALCOA, the Aluminum cartel controlled by the infamous Mellon family, those close friends of the British royal family. It is ALCOA and the Mellons who gave us fluoride, a poison and mind suppressant, in public drinking water.Shrub's vice-president, Dick Cheney, was his father's Defence Secretary and together they launched the "NATO" (British-American) war on Iraq in 1991. Cheney, as exposed by Cathy O'Brien in Trance-Formation of America, is yet another mind controller, child abuser, and serial killer. Colin Powell, the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was America's highest military commander during the Gulf War and you do not get to that level unless you know what people like Father George and Cheney are involved in. Powell, like the Bushes and Cheney, is bloodline and that's why he is to be the new Secretary of State. Given that line-up and their mentality and agenda, don't be at all surprised if the United States finds itself in another manipulated war during this administration. You will see "monsters" being created in the public mind to justify such action.The Bush inauguration marks the start of the massive push by the Illuminati to further their agenda for a global fascist state. You will see this clearly unfolding in the next 24 months and, as usual, watch what they do, not what they say. The Bush administration will be a cold, calculating, vicious, period of human history. I know people who have met the Shrub during his period as Governor of Texas and cold, calculating, and vicious, as well as staggeringly unintelligent, are words they chose to describe him. But those who will be dictating the actions of his presidency make him look like a puppy dog. Or maybe lapdog would be more appropriate.Even many of those who still deny any evidence of a global fascist state emerging before our eyes will be shocked out of their comatose state by the time the Shrub leaves office. Indeed, probably long before.
Warm regards,
John Repinski
Not sent at Taxpayer's Expense
Paid for by Concerned Citizens for a Better World '04 inc.
PS: You may now take me off of your shitass mailing list now. I have had my say.
Thank you.......
___________________________________________________________________
Now mind you, I am not political....but I feel everyone needs to do whatever it takes to make sure this man does not get another four years to wage his "war" on terrorism, and posibley kill more innocent americans.
Time to sleep........
Saturday, September 25, 2004
Follow up to my previous post about our President...
I received an email from one of my friends yesterday in response to my blog. I wanted to spread the "gospel" so to speak, in reference to some of the things I have learned in the past few years....by reading "alternative media"...the media NOT controlled by our world goverments.
The following story is one of one of the aritcles that I have saved over the years. Make your own judgements.
This story, I have had in my collection since about mid 2001 after Bush was first elected....the 4th paragraph (last sentence is pretty remarkable if you ask me..)
__________________________________________________________________
BUSH TAKES THE OATH:
ANOTHER "FREEMASON MEMBER" IN THE WHITE HOUSE.
by David Icke
Saturday, January 20th, 2001, will be remembered as a dark day for human freedom - the day that George W. Bush took the oath on the same Freemasonic Bible used by George Washington and became the 43rd President of the United States.It is not George W. Bush that is truly the problem, it is all that he represents. Bush ("Shrub") is president in name only, of course.
The real power is with others behind the scenes, like his father George Bush and those of even greater authority than he, like Henry Kissinger and other leg-men for the Illuminati. We can see this clearly in the people the Shrub has appointed to "his" cabinet. It is like a roll call of Illuminati placemen that served under his father and other child abusers, rapists, and serial killers like Gerald Ford. Alongside them are a stream of Illuminati operatives from corporate America, including ALCOA, the Aluminum cartel controlled by the infamous Mellon family, those close friends of the British royal family.
It is ALCOA and the Mellons who gave us fluoride, a poison and mind suppressant, in public drinking water.Shrub's vice-president, Dick Cheney, was his father's Defence Secretary and together they launched the "NATO" (British-American) war on Iraq in 1991. Cheney, as exposed by Cathy O'Brien in Trance-Formation of America, is yet another mind controller, child abuser, and serial killer. Colin Powell, the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was America's highest military commander during the Gulf War and you do not get to that level unless you know what people like Father George and Cheney are involved in. Powell, like the Bushes and Cheney, is bloodline and that's why he is to be the new Secretary of State. Given that line-up and their mentality and agenda, don't be at all surprised if the United States finds itself in another manipulated war during this administration.
You will see "monsters" being created in the public mind to justify such action.The Bush inauguration marks the start of the massive push by the Illuminati to further their agenda for a global fascist state.
You will see this clearly unfolding in the next 24 months and, as usual, watch what they do, not what they say. The Bush administration will be a cold, calculating, vicious, period of human history.
I know people who have met the Shrub during his period as Governor of Texas and cold, calculating, and vicious, as well as staggeringly unintelligent, are words they chose to describe him. But those who will be dictating the actions of his presidency make him look like a puppy dog. Or maybe lapdog would be more appropriate.
Even many of those who still deny any evidence of a global fascist state emerging before our eyes will be shocked out of their comatose state by the time the Shrub leaves office. Indeed, probably long before.
__________________________________________________________________
The following story is one of one of the aritcles that I have saved over the years. Make your own judgements.
This story, I have had in my collection since about mid 2001 after Bush was first elected....the 4th paragraph (last sentence is pretty remarkable if you ask me..)
__________________________________________________________________
BUSH TAKES THE OATH:
ANOTHER "FREEMASON MEMBER" IN THE WHITE HOUSE.
by David Icke
Saturday, January 20th, 2001, will be remembered as a dark day for human freedom - the day that George W. Bush took the oath on the same Freemasonic Bible used by George Washington and became the 43rd President of the United States.It is not George W. Bush that is truly the problem, it is all that he represents. Bush ("Shrub") is president in name only, of course.
The real power is with others behind the scenes, like his father George Bush and those of even greater authority than he, like Henry Kissinger and other leg-men for the Illuminati. We can see this clearly in the people the Shrub has appointed to "his" cabinet. It is like a roll call of Illuminati placemen that served under his father and other child abusers, rapists, and serial killers like Gerald Ford. Alongside them are a stream of Illuminati operatives from corporate America, including ALCOA, the Aluminum cartel controlled by the infamous Mellon family, those close friends of the British royal family.
It is ALCOA and the Mellons who gave us fluoride, a poison and mind suppressant, in public drinking water.Shrub's vice-president, Dick Cheney, was his father's Defence Secretary and together they launched the "NATO" (British-American) war on Iraq in 1991. Cheney, as exposed by Cathy O'Brien in Trance-Formation of America, is yet another mind controller, child abuser, and serial killer. Colin Powell, the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was America's highest military commander during the Gulf War and you do not get to that level unless you know what people like Father George and Cheney are involved in. Powell, like the Bushes and Cheney, is bloodline and that's why he is to be the new Secretary of State. Given that line-up and their mentality and agenda, don't be at all surprised if the United States finds itself in another manipulated war during this administration.
You will see "monsters" being created in the public mind to justify such action.The Bush inauguration marks the start of the massive push by the Illuminati to further their agenda for a global fascist state.
You will see this clearly unfolding in the next 24 months and, as usual, watch what they do, not what they say. The Bush administration will be a cold, calculating, vicious, period of human history.
I know people who have met the Shrub during his period as Governor of Texas and cold, calculating, and vicious, as well as staggeringly unintelligent, are words they chose to describe him. But those who will be dictating the actions of his presidency make him look like a puppy dog. Or maybe lapdog would be more appropriate.
Even many of those who still deny any evidence of a global fascist state emerging before our eyes will be shocked out of their comatose state by the time the Shrub leaves office. Indeed, probably long before.
__________________________________________________________________
Friday, September 24, 2004
The Head Alien Visiting Racine???
It seems that the "alien" in charge of our goverment is making a stop in my city today.
http://www.jsonline.com/news/racine/sep04/261385.asp
I have known about this for quite some time, as his advance team has been staying at the hotel for a week or so...getting ready for the event.
I am sincerely hoping that he does NOT get another Four years as the head of our goverment. It will only give him Four MORE years to instill his (and other's) vision of the "ONE WORLD ORDER..aka...NEW WORLD ORDER....which he has already begun.
(More on this in a later post)
Another hurricane heading towords Florida?? Geez...how much more can those people take? I would have snapped ages ago. Maybe it is the OJ that is keeping them all strong??
That is all for today.....
http://www.jsonline.com/news/racine/sep04/261385.asp
I have known about this for quite some time, as his advance team has been staying at the hotel for a week or so...getting ready for the event.
I am sincerely hoping that he does NOT get another Four years as the head of our goverment. It will only give him Four MORE years to instill his (and other's) vision of the "ONE WORLD ORDER..aka...NEW WORLD ORDER....which he has already begun.
(More on this in a later post)
Another hurricane heading towords Florida?? Geez...how much more can those people take? I would have snapped ages ago. Maybe it is the OJ that is keeping them all strong??
That is all for today.....
Monday, September 20, 2004
Arrrg.......
Monday, September 20, 2004
Good morning,
What a wonderful week. The sun is up, the coffee is on, Scrappy is up and around and so is her master.
It looks to be a very nice day ahead. Would be nicer if I had offf but that, I do not know yet.......
It seems that the supervisor who I HAD to work for yesterday (and thus missed visiting with my aunts and uncles) who I was so looking forword to seeing, has not gotten back to me yet to let me know if he is going to work for ME today. So I may only have one day off this week (Tommorow) and I tell you...I really need that other day...esp after this weekend. Have you ever heard the word "POSTAL"??
That is what I feel I will become very shortly, if I do not get a break from work. So....if you see any "Repinski's" in the local news...it will probably be me...having gone crazy and on a shooting rampage.
I can see the headlines:
"MARRIOTT MANAGER SNAPS AND TURNS LOUNGE SUPERVISOR INTO UNEXPECTED SPECIAL OF THE DAY"
What else. Yesterday was Doris' daughter birthday...and I also missed her BBQ which Doris (My only ray of light) had invited me to but which of course I missed too. They were over at her sister Diane's who is also like a part of an extended family to me..and who I was also looking forword to seeing. Hmmm.
I have requested this saturday coming up off, to traverse up to the Brown "Homestead" for my neice's birthday party...but have yet to hear back if I will be allowed to go...work again. It depends on the ability to have our lounge staffed this weekend. We are suffering a serious shortage of bartenders right now. (Makes a good reason for self service alchohol) We will see.
If I do end up coming up, it wil probably be in a "snazzy Grand Am or a Camaro" as Millie (Doris' Daughter) will be borrowing my truck to move. (Yes...Doris' youngest is "flying" out of the nest and finding her own place...What a milestone...and to think that she was just a little kid snuggled in the backseat of her monther's car, sleeping and waiting for her mom to get done with work at Annie's on Layton in Milwaukee, when I first met her. My..how time flies. And of course I can not refuse Doris (or her Daughters) anything.....so my pride and joy (my little green truck) will be loaned out to a loved one.
I am trying to make the weekend in Nekoosa a possibilty and I will know more towords the middle of the week.
Hope everyone has a good couple days, and hopefully there will be more posts soon......(If I do not check myself into the local loony bin first!!)
Your's truly....
John
Good morning,
What a wonderful week. The sun is up, the coffee is on, Scrappy is up and around and so is her master.
It looks to be a very nice day ahead. Would be nicer if I had offf but that, I do not know yet.......
It seems that the supervisor who I HAD to work for yesterday (and thus missed visiting with my aunts and uncles) who I was so looking forword to seeing, has not gotten back to me yet to let me know if he is going to work for ME today. So I may only have one day off this week (Tommorow) and I tell you...I really need that other day...esp after this weekend. Have you ever heard the word "POSTAL"??
That is what I feel I will become very shortly, if I do not get a break from work. So....if you see any "Repinski's" in the local news...it will probably be me...having gone crazy and on a shooting rampage.
I can see the headlines:
"MARRIOTT MANAGER SNAPS AND TURNS LOUNGE SUPERVISOR INTO UNEXPECTED SPECIAL OF THE DAY"
What else. Yesterday was Doris' daughter birthday...and I also missed her BBQ which Doris (My only ray of light) had invited me to but which of course I missed too. They were over at her sister Diane's who is also like a part of an extended family to me..and who I was also looking forword to seeing. Hmmm.
I have requested this saturday coming up off, to traverse up to the Brown "Homestead" for my neice's birthday party...but have yet to hear back if I will be allowed to go...work again. It depends on the ability to have our lounge staffed this weekend. We are suffering a serious shortage of bartenders right now. (Makes a good reason for self service alchohol) We will see.
If I do end up coming up, it wil probably be in a "snazzy Grand Am or a Camaro" as Millie (Doris' Daughter) will be borrowing my truck to move. (Yes...Doris' youngest is "flying" out of the nest and finding her own place...What a milestone...and to think that she was just a little kid snuggled in the backseat of her monther's car, sleeping and waiting for her mom to get done with work at Annie's on Layton in Milwaukee, when I first met her. My..how time flies. And of course I can not refuse Doris (or her Daughters) anything.....so my pride and joy (my little green truck) will be loaned out to a loved one.
I am trying to make the weekend in Nekoosa a possibilty and I will know more towords the middle of the week.
Hope everyone has a good couple days, and hopefully there will be more posts soon......(If I do not check myself into the local loony bin first!!)
Your's truly....
John
Wednesday, September 15, 2004
Some people just drive me crazy!!!
Have any of you ever read an article that just rubs you the wrong way??
I just did and you know what? I just had to send this "journalist" a letter letting him know how I felt about his "story".
Not everyone may agree with me after reading the article, and that is ok.....but I feel that when someone is reporting on something, they should be beyond reproach and put a bit of thinking into their "thinking.
This is the email that I sent to the Journal Times addressed to this "journalist":
__________________________________________________________________
To Mike Moore:
Regarding your article in the newspaper that dealt with the woman who was sentenced in court for the death of the baby she was sitting:
http://www.journaltimes.com/articles/2004/09/15/local/columns/iq_3099079.txt
I found your article interesting. But it did seem (at least in my opinion) that you not only totally "ripped this woman to shreds", but you also cast YOURSELF as the subject of the story and much more than that, it seems like you made it seem that YOUR "Holier than though-Goody Two Shoes" lifestyle was something that was so totally different and unimaginable than this young woman's lifestyle (and thoughts and actions) .
How do you know that one of your friends isn't a "crack dealer or user" or that your fiancée may in secret may be taking "Prozac" because she cant handle the reality of her life with you. Or that someone close to you may not ever be involved in a "criminal proceeding" in court...or that, God forbid", one of your own family members may have a secret hiding in their closet that you are unaware of.
I am sure this woman (and the mother) both have tremendous regrets over what happened as well as both of their families. And even though a life was lost (and a friendship in the process) as well as seven years for this woman to be locked up, for something that could have been better dealt with probation and counseling (in my humble opinion). Does anyone think that she will do something like this again??? Come on....she was probably "cracked out", the baby was screaming, she couldn't take the screaming, she decided (unwisely) to try to figure out a way to quiet it and then after coming down from her "high" realized the "tragedy" that had occurred. I can imagine this and I don't think it is too far fetched a "scenario" to have happened. I hope to god that none of your friends or family ever go down this "road"...because if they do, I dont think there would be much support or hand holding from you...that is for sure.
You come across sounding very "pretentious" and for an associate editor of a newspaper, I find that very irritating. You should leave the reporting to facts and not your feelings....and that article made me feel you did just the opposite. I for one am GLAD that I am not one of your FRIENDS, as I would probably be driven crazy by your "self righteous" ways.
A regular Reader
__________________________________________________________________
Time for bed....Ive been up way too long!!
I just did and you know what? I just had to send this "journalist" a letter letting him know how I felt about his "story".
Not everyone may agree with me after reading the article, and that is ok.....but I feel that when someone is reporting on something, they should be beyond reproach and put a bit of thinking into their "thinking.
This is the email that I sent to the Journal Times addressed to this "journalist":
__________________________________________________________________
To Mike Moore:
Regarding your article in the newspaper that dealt with the woman who was sentenced in court for the death of the baby she was sitting:
http://www.journaltimes.com/articles/2004/09/15/local/columns/iq_3099079.txt
I found your article interesting. But it did seem (at least in my opinion) that you not only totally "ripped this woman to shreds", but you also cast YOURSELF as the subject of the story and much more than that, it seems like you made it seem that YOUR "Holier than though-Goody Two Shoes" lifestyle was something that was so totally different and unimaginable than this young woman's lifestyle (and thoughts and actions) .
How do you know that one of your friends isn't a "crack dealer or user" or that your fiancée may in secret may be taking "Prozac" because she cant handle the reality of her life with you. Or that someone close to you may not ever be involved in a "criminal proceeding" in court...or that, God forbid", one of your own family members may have a secret hiding in their closet that you are unaware of.
I am sure this woman (and the mother) both have tremendous regrets over what happened as well as both of their families. And even though a life was lost (and a friendship in the process) as well as seven years for this woman to be locked up, for something that could have been better dealt with probation and counseling (in my humble opinion). Does anyone think that she will do something like this again??? Come on....she was probably "cracked out", the baby was screaming, she couldn't take the screaming, she decided (unwisely) to try to figure out a way to quiet it and then after coming down from her "high" realized the "tragedy" that had occurred. I can imagine this and I don't think it is too far fetched a "scenario" to have happened. I hope to god that none of your friends or family ever go down this "road"...because if they do, I dont think there would be much support or hand holding from you...that is for sure.
You come across sounding very "pretentious" and for an associate editor of a newspaper, I find that very irritating. You should leave the reporting to facts and not your feelings....and that article made me feel you did just the opposite. I for one am GLAD that I am not one of your FRIENDS, as I would probably be driven crazy by your "self righteous" ways.
A regular Reader
__________________________________________________________________
Time for bed....Ive been up way too long!!
Da Ja Vu
I (and I am sure many others) have had a sense of Dajavu many many times through out my life.
What is Dajuvu?
The way I always understood it was a sense of when something is happening to you, a feeling of famaliarity that this "something" has happened before.
I remember the first time that I had this "weird sensation". I was probably not more than 10 years old and I was walking down the street in my hometown of Wisconsin Rapids with a friend. I think we were either walking to the mall or walking back home from the mall. One of our teachers had just driven by...and I remember thinking to myself what my friend was going to say in a few seconds and how the whole experience was feeling like it had happened before and that I knew exactly what was going to happen in the next few minutes.....which by the way, it did! My friend said "Hey...that was Mrs. BuckBurger...our math teacher and that wasnt her husband in the drivers seat of her car!!" and though I was going to say that exact thing because I KNEW he WAS going to say it just then, I didnt...because I felt that I would sound stupid.
I have had that weird sensation many times and have always wondered what caused it. Well.....now I am a little closer to understanding it, thanks to an article I just read in the "Online New York Times". The article follows:
_________________________________________________________________
September 14, 2004
Déjà Vu: If It All Seems Familiar, There May Be a Reason
By BENEDICT CAREY
Watching the summer's events unfold - war protests, an Olympics scoring scandal, numerous terror scares - some people may have felt that it was all very familiar, that they had somehow been through this before.
Yet psychologists say it is usually life's more mundane details - the click of a radiator, the play of the shadows on a tablecloth - that prompt that sudden and sometimes breathtaking sense of familiarity.
"The way the coffee cups were lined up on the table," said Gretchen Purcell, 24, a business consultant in the Washington area who felt this so strongly during a conference-call meeting last month that it made her laugh out loud. "The whole scene was so familiar I thought I knew what people were going to say before they said it. It was like I was in a movie I'd already seen."
French for just that ("already seen"), déjà vu is the sort of fleeting, intimate experience that reveals itself more readily to novelists than to researchers. As recently as the 1990's, social scientists doing population surveys asked about it in the same breath as they inquired about poltergeists and contact with the dead.
But new research on memory has opened a promising window on the phenomenon, providing both possible explanations for the sensation and novel ways to create and measure it.
"It has been either ignored or considered too spooky or flaky for many scientists to touch," said Dr. Alan Brown, a psychologist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, who reviews the history of the field in a new book, "The Déjà Vu Experience: Essays in Cognitive Psychology.''
"But it is real, and by bringing it into the lab we can at least begin to understand it."
In surveys, about two-thirds of adults report having had at least one déjà vu experience, and the odd sensation seems to occur most often in people with lively, frequently stimulated imaginations. People who travel a lot are more likely to report the experiences than homebodies, for instance, and those with college or advanced degrees report having it more often than others, perhaps because they have encountered its sweet strangeness in the literary accounts of Proust and Tolstoy - or are more likely to rent the movie "Groundhog Day." Rates seem to peak in young adulthood and to fall off gradually through retirement age, when, Dr. Brown suggests, many people live daily routines that really are familiar.
A century ago, when Freud's theories dominated the field of psychiatry, analysts cast déjà vu as evidence of unconscious conflict, the ego defending itself against upsetting erotic urges for a mother figure or other hidden desires. And for decades, doctors have reported that sensations of déjà vu occasionally precede the seizures suffered by people with epilepsy. Overactive circuits in the temporal lobe, which can cause seizures, may inappropriately stimulate regions of the brain involved in detecting familiarity, some doctors say.
But Dr. Brown and others argue that it is not necessary to invoke hidden conflicts or unusual brain conditions to explain many cases of déjà vu. Normal, healthy brain function suffices. For one thing, déjà vu appears to be more common when people are exhausted or stressed, conditions that are known to cloud short- and long-term memory (and that may also accompany jamais vu, the opposite experience of staring at familiar words or objects and having no recollection of them).
Psychologists have long known, too, that people register impressions and images well before they are aware of what they have seen. The brain sends visual signals through at least two circuits, which move from the retina through the brain to the visual cortex via different routes.
It is an exquisitely tuned system, but common experience suggests many ways its functioning might be thrown off. The classic example, from Dr. Edward Bradford Titchener, a founder of the field, is when a person is about to cross a busy street, glances both ways and then is distracted by a shop window display: "As you cross then, you think, 'Why, I crossed this street just now'; your nervous system has severed two phases of a single experience, and the latter appears as a repetition of the earlier."
But the point, psychologists who study memory say, is that people take in a rich banquet of information without noticing it, or noticing and simply forgetting where it came from. It is entirely possible to read an Anne Rice novel and years later, after having forgotten the book, find that a first visit to New Orleans seems like a glimpse into a former life. Or to see one of the bar scenes from the movie "L.A. Confidential" and later walk into the Formosa Cafe for the first time and catch your breath.
The familiarity can come from a variety of sources, some real and some not, said Dr. Kathleen McDermott, a colleague of Dr. Jacoby's at Washington University who studies memory.
"It's well known that even if you imagine something now that may not have happened in the past, it can create a feeling of familiarity if it does happen later on," she said, adding, "You don't need objective outside information to create these situations; you can do so internally, on your own."
Dr. Brown and Dr. Elizabeth Marsh, a psychologist at Duke University, are taking this principle a step further, trying to produce in the laboratory a feeling that is closer to the kind of unexplained familiarity people know in life - that of arriving in a place for the first time and finding it surreally familiar.
"The most likely thing we'll find is that déjà vu occurs for a variety of reasons, perhaps different in each person, or in different situations," he said. "We are just getting started, to work toward an understanding gradually."
Several people in e-mail contact with Dr. Brown say they experience déjà vu frequently, many times in a year. One of them, Suketu Naik, 26, a graduate student in Utah, has kept a diary of the sensations.
In one entry, Mr. Naik writes of attending a birthday party for a friend at a restaurant: "Everything, the conversation, the position of people, position of tables, plates were extraordinarily 'in place.' Most remarkable of all events. Very intense. Lasted for a long time. Which is odd - usually intensity and time are reciprocal. I could predict every single future event in this time period to utmost precision. Felt extraordinarily weird after this one. I sat there for the next minute to come back to reality."
But the evolving understanding of memory suggests he never really left.
___________________________________________________________________
So now I understand a little more about this weird, often "spine tingling" experience. Hope everyone else who has ever had this sensation has learned a little more also.
That is it for tonight. Time for bed.
What is Dajuvu?
The way I always understood it was a sense of when something is happening to you, a feeling of famaliarity that this "something" has happened before.
I remember the first time that I had this "weird sensation". I was probably not more than 10 years old and I was walking down the street in my hometown of Wisconsin Rapids with a friend. I think we were either walking to the mall or walking back home from the mall. One of our teachers had just driven by...and I remember thinking to myself what my friend was going to say in a few seconds and how the whole experience was feeling like it had happened before and that I knew exactly what was going to happen in the next few minutes.....which by the way, it did! My friend said "Hey...that was Mrs. BuckBurger...our math teacher and that wasnt her husband in the drivers seat of her car!!" and though I was going to say that exact thing because I KNEW he WAS going to say it just then, I didnt...because I felt that I would sound stupid.
I have had that weird sensation many times and have always wondered what caused it. Well.....now I am a little closer to understanding it, thanks to an article I just read in the "Online New York Times". The article follows:
_________________________________________________________________
September 14, 2004
Déjà Vu: If It All Seems Familiar, There May Be a Reason
By BENEDICT CAREY
Watching the summer's events unfold - war protests, an Olympics scoring scandal, numerous terror scares - some people may have felt that it was all very familiar, that they had somehow been through this before.
Yet psychologists say it is usually life's more mundane details - the click of a radiator, the play of the shadows on a tablecloth - that prompt that sudden and sometimes breathtaking sense of familiarity.
"The way the coffee cups were lined up on the table," said Gretchen Purcell, 24, a business consultant in the Washington area who felt this so strongly during a conference-call meeting last month that it made her laugh out loud. "The whole scene was so familiar I thought I knew what people were going to say before they said it. It was like I was in a movie I'd already seen."
French for just that ("already seen"), déjà vu is the sort of fleeting, intimate experience that reveals itself more readily to novelists than to researchers. As recently as the 1990's, social scientists doing population surveys asked about it in the same breath as they inquired about poltergeists and contact with the dead.
But new research on memory has opened a promising window on the phenomenon, providing both possible explanations for the sensation and novel ways to create and measure it.
"It has been either ignored or considered too spooky or flaky for many scientists to touch," said Dr. Alan Brown, a psychologist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, who reviews the history of the field in a new book, "The Déjà Vu Experience: Essays in Cognitive Psychology.''
"But it is real, and by bringing it into the lab we can at least begin to understand it."
In surveys, about two-thirds of adults report having had at least one déjà vu experience, and the odd sensation seems to occur most often in people with lively, frequently stimulated imaginations. People who travel a lot are more likely to report the experiences than homebodies, for instance, and those with college or advanced degrees report having it more often than others, perhaps because they have encountered its sweet strangeness in the literary accounts of Proust and Tolstoy - or are more likely to rent the movie "Groundhog Day." Rates seem to peak in young adulthood and to fall off gradually through retirement age, when, Dr. Brown suggests, many people live daily routines that really are familiar.
A century ago, when Freud's theories dominated the field of psychiatry, analysts cast déjà vu as evidence of unconscious conflict, the ego defending itself against upsetting erotic urges for a mother figure or other hidden desires. And for decades, doctors have reported that sensations of déjà vu occasionally precede the seizures suffered by people with epilepsy. Overactive circuits in the temporal lobe, which can cause seizures, may inappropriately stimulate regions of the brain involved in detecting familiarity, some doctors say.
But Dr. Brown and others argue that it is not necessary to invoke hidden conflicts or unusual brain conditions to explain many cases of déjà vu. Normal, healthy brain function suffices. For one thing, déjà vu appears to be more common when people are exhausted or stressed, conditions that are known to cloud short- and long-term memory (and that may also accompany jamais vu, the opposite experience of staring at familiar words or objects and having no recollection of them).
Psychologists have long known, too, that people register impressions and images well before they are aware of what they have seen. The brain sends visual signals through at least two circuits, which move from the retina through the brain to the visual cortex via different routes.
It is an exquisitely tuned system, but common experience suggests many ways its functioning might be thrown off. The classic example, from Dr. Edward Bradford Titchener, a founder of the field, is when a person is about to cross a busy street, glances both ways and then is distracted by a shop window display: "As you cross then, you think, 'Why, I crossed this street just now'; your nervous system has severed two phases of a single experience, and the latter appears as a repetition of the earlier."
But the point, psychologists who study memory say, is that people take in a rich banquet of information without noticing it, or noticing and simply forgetting where it came from. It is entirely possible to read an Anne Rice novel and years later, after having forgotten the book, find that a first visit to New Orleans seems like a glimpse into a former life. Or to see one of the bar scenes from the movie "L.A. Confidential" and later walk into the Formosa Cafe for the first time and catch your breath.
The familiarity can come from a variety of sources, some real and some not, said Dr. Kathleen McDermott, a colleague of Dr. Jacoby's at Washington University who studies memory.
"It's well known that even if you imagine something now that may not have happened in the past, it can create a feeling of familiarity if it does happen later on," she said, adding, "You don't need objective outside information to create these situations; you can do so internally, on your own."
Dr. Brown and Dr. Elizabeth Marsh, a psychologist at Duke University, are taking this principle a step further, trying to produce in the laboratory a feeling that is closer to the kind of unexplained familiarity people know in life - that of arriving in a place for the first time and finding it surreally familiar.
"The most likely thing we'll find is that déjà vu occurs for a variety of reasons, perhaps different in each person, or in different situations," he said. "We are just getting started, to work toward an understanding gradually."
Several people in e-mail contact with Dr. Brown say they experience déjà vu frequently, many times in a year. One of them, Suketu Naik, 26, a graduate student in Utah, has kept a diary of the sensations.
In one entry, Mr. Naik writes of attending a birthday party for a friend at a restaurant: "Everything, the conversation, the position of people, position of tables, plates were extraordinarily 'in place.' Most remarkable of all events. Very intense. Lasted for a long time. Which is odd - usually intensity and time are reciprocal. I could predict every single future event in this time period to utmost precision. Felt extraordinarily weird after this one. I sat there for the next minute to come back to reality."
But the evolving understanding of memory suggests he never really left.
___________________________________________________________________
So now I understand a little more about this weird, often "spine tingling" experience. Hope everyone else who has ever had this sensation has learned a little more also.
That is it for tonight. Time for bed.
Tuesday, September 14, 2004
My My...All those Florida Hurricanes...My Poor Cousins!
I am sure at this point (unless you have been living under a rock....which I know some people are), that everyone has been keeping an eye on all the hurricanes that have been hitting the Florida coast these last two months of summer. That whole state has been getting pounded left and right and now another one (Ivan) is on the way but thankfully heading more north and west then the past two.
I have extended family that lives in Florida and have been concerned about them with all of this going on. I received an email from my cousin Danielle today and it must pretty much sum up what all the other people down in that area are going through:
__________________________________________________________________
Hey, John-Just running around before work and I know that thebaby will wake up any second (!!),,,so this will bebrief (short but sweet!)...yes, Hurrican Ivan washeading directly for us...so last weekend we were allanxious and scurrying around being sure we wereprepared. We (Marco and I) were actually consideringdriving north if it stayed the course, w/ the baby andall...but boarded up the house, bought supplies andtook a wait and see attitude w/ the rest of our familyand now it's going elsewhere, thankfully (sad forothers though). This area, esp north and south of us,has been hit so hard this year, you begin to wonderwhy you live here!! The air has been very tense, andnow it's funny--so many people, including us, caughtcolds/flu---I bet it's totally stress related!
__________________________________________________________________
Well...thankgoodness they are all ok.
Not much going on around here in Wisconsin, though we are getting some summer weather (finally) with sunshine and warmer temperatures. This has to be one of the strangest summers I recall. The last 3 months (except for the past two weeks) have felt like an extended spring. Global warming?? Who knows. It is just all very strange.
Time to go do something and make the most of the rest of my day off.
I have extended family that lives in Florida and have been concerned about them with all of this going on. I received an email from my cousin Danielle today and it must pretty much sum up what all the other people down in that area are going through:
__________________________________________________________________
Hey, John-Just running around before work and I know that thebaby will wake up any second (!!),,,so this will bebrief (short but sweet!)...yes, Hurrican Ivan washeading directly for us...so last weekend we were allanxious and scurrying around being sure we wereprepared. We (Marco and I) were actually consideringdriving north if it stayed the course, w/ the baby andall...but boarded up the house, bought supplies andtook a wait and see attitude w/ the rest of our familyand now it's going elsewhere, thankfully (sad forothers though). This area, esp north and south of us,has been hit so hard this year, you begin to wonderwhy you live here!! The air has been very tense, andnow it's funny--so many people, including us, caughtcolds/flu---I bet it's totally stress related!
__________________________________________________________________
Well...thankgoodness they are all ok.
Not much going on around here in Wisconsin, though we are getting some summer weather (finally) with sunshine and warmer temperatures. This has to be one of the strangest summers I recall. The last 3 months (except for the past two weeks) have felt like an extended spring. Global warming?? Who knows. It is just all very strange.
Time to go do something and make the most of the rest of my day off.
Sunday, September 12, 2004
Just Imagine
Just imagine the following:
http://www.sonypictures.com/movies/theforgotten/
(For those not on "Broadband"..the link will take a few minutes to load. And make sure you have Windows Media player installed. Otherwise it probably wont play correctly.
Now....I don't have kids...but if I did and I was "brainwashed" into beleiving something like the premise of this new upcoming movie suggests....my mind would probably snap!
What else? I don't know if anyone remembers the StarTrek TV series "The Next Generation", but there was a character on the series named Wesley Crusher. He was a young teenager who, I felt, added some excitement to the series. It seems he also has a "BLOG", and I came across it the other day while browsing the web. Interesting to read about an "actor" who doesnt fit the profile of "spoiled rich millionare movie star". Nice to know that even people who are in show business have some of the same problems and issues that us MERE MORTALS deal with each and every day. By the way his name is Wil Wheaton. His blog (website) can be reached by clicking the following link:
http://wilwheaton.net/
That is about it for today. Have to go to work in a bit.
http://www.sonypictures.com/movies/theforgotten/
(For those not on "Broadband"..the link will take a few minutes to load. And make sure you have Windows Media player installed. Otherwise it probably wont play correctly.
Now....I don't have kids...but if I did and I was "brainwashed" into beleiving something like the premise of this new upcoming movie suggests....my mind would probably snap!
What else? I don't know if anyone remembers the StarTrek TV series "The Next Generation", but there was a character on the series named Wesley Crusher. He was a young teenager who, I felt, added some excitement to the series. It seems he also has a "BLOG", and I came across it the other day while browsing the web. Interesting to read about an "actor" who doesnt fit the profile of "spoiled rich millionare movie star". Nice to know that even people who are in show business have some of the same problems and issues that us MERE MORTALS deal with each and every day. By the way his name is Wil Wheaton. His blog (website) can be reached by clicking the following link:
http://wilwheaton.net/
That is about it for today. Have to go to work in a bit.
Monday, September 6, 2004
Another "enigma" from Space?
I came across this today in the online edition of "NewScientest Magazine". Interesting.......
Mysterious signals from 1000 light years away
19:00 01 September 04 Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition
In February 2003, astronomers involved in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) pointed the massive radio telescope in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, at around 200 sections of the sky.
The same telescope had previously detected unexplained radio signals at least twice from each of these regions, and the astronomers were trying to reconfirm the findings. The team has now finished analysing the data, and all the signals seem to have disappeared. Except one, which has got stronger.
This radio signal, now seen on three separate occasions, is an enigma. It could be generated by a previously unknown astronomical phenomenon. Or it could be something much more mundane, maybe an artefact of the telescope itself.
But it also happens to be the best candidate yet for a contact by intelligent aliens in the nearly six-year history of the SETI@home project, which uses programs running as screensavers on millions of personal computers worldwide to sift through signals picked up by the Arecibo telescope.
Absorb and emit
“It’s the most interesting signal from SETI@home,” says Dan Werthimer, a radio astronomer at the University of California, Berkeley (UCB) and the chief scientist for SETI@home. “We’re not jumping up and down, but we are continuing to observe it.”
Named SHGb02+14a, the signal has a frequency of about 1420 megahertz. This happens to be one of the main frequencies at which hydrogen, the most common element in the universe, readily absorbs and emits energy.
Some astronomers have argued that extraterrestrials trying to advertise their presence would be likely to transmit at this frequency, and SETI researchers conventionally scan this part of the radio spectrum.
SHGb02+14a seems to be coming from a point between the constellations Pisces and Aries, where there is no obvious star or planetary system within 1000 light years. And the transmission is very weak.
“We are looking for something that screams out ‘artificial’,” says UCB researcher Eric Korpela, who completed the analysis of the signal in April. “This just doesn’t do that, but it could be because it is distant.”
To read the rest of this story go to the following web page: http://www.newscientist.com/news/nographic.jsp?id=ns99996341
For the record....I use the SETI@HOME software to scan for signals. I think I have logged in excess of 250 hours of computer time trying to help find an "Extraterrestrial Signal" from somewhere out there. It is a worthwile effort of unused computer time, if a person leaves their computer on alot of the time like I do. The link for the software (which is free) is:
http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/download.html
My personal opinion on all of this?
I beleive that the Human Race has already had (and maintains in top goverment secrecy) contact with alien intelligence and that the Goverments are trying to figure out a way to inform the population at mass, without causing total chaos and panic. Imagine the implications of contact from another world. It would undoubtedly send all of our religious institutions into a total tailspin, not to mention the "perceived" ability of our goverments to NOT be in total control of our world'......
I have read quite a few articles that mentioned what would "likely happen" if it were revealed to the general public, that contact had been acheived. Interesting hyposisis of different things that are talked about.
One of the articles that may shed a little more light on my rambling:
http://www.123infinity.com/extraterrestrial_life.html
Happy Labor Day!!
Mysterious signals from 1000 light years away
19:00 01 September 04 Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition
In February 2003, astronomers involved in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) pointed the massive radio telescope in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, at around 200 sections of the sky.
The same telescope had previously detected unexplained radio signals at least twice from each of these regions, and the astronomers were trying to reconfirm the findings. The team has now finished analysing the data, and all the signals seem to have disappeared. Except one, which has got stronger.
This radio signal, now seen on three separate occasions, is an enigma. It could be generated by a previously unknown astronomical phenomenon. Or it could be something much more mundane, maybe an artefact of the telescope itself.
But it also happens to be the best candidate yet for a contact by intelligent aliens in the nearly six-year history of the SETI@home project, which uses programs running as screensavers on millions of personal computers worldwide to sift through signals picked up by the Arecibo telescope.
Absorb and emit
“It’s the most interesting signal from SETI@home,” says Dan Werthimer, a radio astronomer at the University of California, Berkeley (UCB) and the chief scientist for SETI@home. “We’re not jumping up and down, but we are continuing to observe it.”
Named SHGb02+14a, the signal has a frequency of about 1420 megahertz. This happens to be one of the main frequencies at which hydrogen, the most common element in the universe, readily absorbs and emits energy.
Some astronomers have argued that extraterrestrials trying to advertise their presence would be likely to transmit at this frequency, and SETI researchers conventionally scan this part of the radio spectrum.
SHGb02+14a seems to be coming from a point between the constellations Pisces and Aries, where there is no obvious star or planetary system within 1000 light years. And the transmission is very weak.
“We are looking for something that screams out ‘artificial’,” says UCB researcher Eric Korpela, who completed the analysis of the signal in April. “This just doesn’t do that, but it could be because it is distant.”
To read the rest of this story go to the following web page: http://www.newscientist.com/news/nographic.jsp?id=ns99996341
For the record....I use the SETI@HOME software to scan for signals. I think I have logged in excess of 250 hours of computer time trying to help find an "Extraterrestrial Signal" from somewhere out there. It is a worthwile effort of unused computer time, if a person leaves their computer on alot of the time like I do. The link for the software (which is free) is:
http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/download.html
My personal opinion on all of this?
I beleive that the Human Race has already had (and maintains in top goverment secrecy) contact with alien intelligence and that the Goverments are trying to figure out a way to inform the population at mass, without causing total chaos and panic. Imagine the implications of contact from another world. It would undoubtedly send all of our religious institutions into a total tailspin, not to mention the "perceived" ability of our goverments to NOT be in total control of our world'......
I have read quite a few articles that mentioned what would "likely happen" if it were revealed to the general public, that contact had been acheived. Interesting hyposisis of different things that are talked about.
One of the articles that may shed a little more light on my rambling:
http://www.123infinity.com/extraterrestrial_life.html
Happy Labor Day!!
Sunday, September 5, 2004
In Memory of Ryan Dageneffe
Today is September 5th. And Labor Day weekend is here. Every year at this time, I remember the terrible accident (more like murder) that I witnessed of this weekend in 2000, while I was on my way home after visiting my friend Doug in Green Bay.
It was close to Bar time( around 2AM I think) and I was driving down Walnut Street, heading south through downtown Green Bay. It was raining hard and thundering and lightning, but was also very warm and muggy. I was sitting at a stoplight on Wallnut and Washington, waiting for the light to turn green.
As I was sitting there, with my window open-enjoying the rain pelting me on the arm and waiting for the light to turn green, I saw and heard three young people (a woman and two men) to my left, walking towards my truck as they were crossing the street.
I remembered thinking how fun they sounded and how much of a good time they must have been having. It sounded like they had just come from a night of having fun at one of the local bars by the mall.
I remember hearing one of the people ( I think it was the girl) say something like "Come on...we can make it across if we run" as the light was just about to turn green for me to go. At that point I am thinking "Stupid kids"......and then the light turned green for me to go...but they were running across the walk (hands joined) so I stayed stopped to let them pass in front of me. The light was green for me to go but I figured they weren't going to stop and just waited for them to get past me before going on through the intersection.
And then the unspeakable happened......
Just as the three of them passed the right side of the front of my truck....I heard a loud unexplainable noise from my right, tires squealing, and then screams like out of a "horror movie" and I looked up and saw three bodies literally flying up and across the roadway, right in front of my eyes, and in what seemed like "slow motion", all three landing in the intersection in three different spots of the street!! One of the guys to the left and across from the intersection, the lady a few feet ahead of him and the other guy to the right, the farthest away, in the middle of the roadway.
I quickly looked to my right, saw a car stopped in then middle of the intersection...and then it took off at high speed...again squealing it's tires. I was in shock and dumbfounded as to what had just happened....I couldn't believe it.
I jumped out of my truck -I don't even remember putting my truck in park or shutting it off or anything- and ran to where the two people were laying on the left side of the intersection.
(The whole time people were screaming and yelling on all sides of the street as it was close to bar time and there was lots of people spilling out of the bars just as the accident happened.) They were both laying there and other people were also running over to them and they looked like they were both semi-conscious.......
..........And then I ran over to where the other guy was thrown
(-I would later find out that this was Ryan- )
and he was laying on his stomach, breathing very hard and I bent down to see what I could do-(God..at this point I am in utter shock and shaking and I think crying...I don't remember) I put my hand on his shoulder and told him to "hold on...your gonna be ok...help is coming"...and then I heard the sirens and saw the ambulance (it seemed like forever, but iI guess it was less then 5 minutes from the time of the accident to the arrival of the ambulance and police). I just sat there in the pouring rain talking to him and trying to comfort and reassure him that he was going to be ok. I saw the first paramedic and police officers over by the other two and I yelled over at them that this guy was seriously hurt and needed someone to look at him right away. The paramedic (or was it a police officer..I don't remember) yelled back at me and told me to just sit close and talk to him and they would be right over. I just kept saying "Hold on buddy...your gonna be ok" and kept my hand lightly on his back. A few minutes and the paramedic were there and they told me to back up and to go over by the police officer just behind me.
The rain kept coming down, it was thundering and lightning and I was standing there in the middle of the street soaked, telling the police officer what had just happened. Shortly after, the ambulance left..the police cordoned off the area with yellow tape and all the onlookers dispersed and went on their way home. I was still in shock, so once the officer took my statement and let me go.
I drove back over to Doug's house...it was close to 3am by this time, if not after. I ring Doug's doorbell....and start to tell him what had just happened....and start crying and.....he is like "well get in here!!!" is all I remember him saying. I sat for a while, he told me to stay over night..I contemplated...but then thought it would be better for me to just get back to Racine and sleep in my own bed.
I think I left Green Bay around 345AM....and drove three long hours, crying and shaking the whole way, reliving every second of those poor young people being hit and thrown like ragdolls, putting up with bad thunderstorms, driving rain and wind (I43 had flooded out in one section along the way) and I think I made it into Racine around 630Am. I know I needed to stop at the hotel to talk to Doris and let her know of what happened. I broke down (again) as I was recounting what had happened to her..and then went home to try and get some sleep. I was exhausted.
I got home around 730AM. I couldn't sleep and when I did manage to doze off, I kept remembering the accident in vivid detail..and the phone rang midmorning and it was Green Bay Police wanting more information about the incident....so I recounted what happened yet again.I asked the officer how the three were and he said he really couldn't say much but that they were all alive but that one of the young men was in a coma. I asked him if he could please tell me which person this was in relation to the accident and he did say it was the young man who I had been sitting with.
I didn't go to work that night.....and kept wondering how those three were doing. I tried calling the Green Bay hospitals but they wouldn't give me any info as I wasn't family. I did call Doug and told him to keep me informed of any news on tv or anywhere else.
I kept looking on the internet for info but nothing other than the accident reports. And then on Monday I got a call from Doug. Ryan had passed away after surgery. He had never regained consciences. I was crushed....and I didn't even know this guy.
I tried to keep up with all the information on the accident, the ongoing investigation, and found out a lot about Ryan and his life ( and the other two....Josh and Lisa I think)through various stories. I contemplated going to the funeral but then thought that it might me awkward, and though I didn't personally know him, my life was touched by him. I drove back up a few weeks later to give a deposition to the police for the trial of the accused (Florez- I remember his name)
I also went through some tough emotions, thinking that I was partially responsible for the accident in a way.
How you might ask? Ok...stay with me here for a minute...........
I am sitting at the light....
three people are running across the road and before they even get to my truck...
the light is green for me to go....
and if I wouldn't have waited for them to cross and went through before they crossed my path....
maybe they would have had a chance to see the car that ended up hitting them (basically, I was their blind spot so to speak).
But everyone I have ever talked to has told me that I shouldn't think that way and that what happened...happened....I should never feel that I was anything other than an innocent bystander.
The sad ending of this story is that the guy who hit and killed Ryan (and who seriously injured the other two) got like 10 stinking years....for murder, not having a license, leaving the scene of the accident, being intoxicated........
There was another good Samaritan who if it had not been for her, he probably would have gotten away. She was behind his car and followed him long enough to get his plate number. The cops later found him "having sex with some woman" on the east side of Green Bay in the early hours of the morning. Go figure.....get drunk...kill a guy....go have nookie!!! Isn't life strange???
A final note: As this weekend was approaching, I was looking through the internet and I found (after a little googling) a letter that had been written by Ryan's mom to a "best friend" of his. I am still kind of in "awe" of it's contents. A wonderful letter. I then dug a little deeper and found this "friend's" diary journal on line....and started reading her entries. I was transfixed. There are numerous entries about Ryan...each of them a little different..all of them telling of a friend grieving for another friend. I feel so much for this person...and the only thing I know about her is that her name is Julie, I think she lives in Boston....and she sounds like someone who Ryan was lucky to have as a friend.
I hope to make it up to Green Bay on Monday to at last pay my respects to this young man whose life was cut so terribly short by another person's unthoughtful and awful actions and to see the "memorial tree" that his mom put in that park in memory of him. Maybe I can finally get a little closure also.
I have copied the contents of the letter that Ryan's mom wrote to this woman and also her first entry in her diary where she talks about Ryan and the accident.
Some day maybe she will read my blog here and realize that there was ANOTHER Samaritan that was with Ryan in his final awful hours....yours truly.
____________________________________________________________________
Letter from Ryan's mom to his friend Julie, and following a DIARY ENTRY that Julie wrote, talking about the accident:
25 June 2001 - An e-mail from Ryan's mom
This is an e-mail that I got from Ryan's mom (again, the close friend of mine that was killed by a drunk driver in September of 2000). This e-mail really made me smile. I can't wait to visit the spot...
Hi Julie. Yes I did have a tree planted in Ryan's Memory at Voyager Park. Initially I wanted to have it planted at the Botanical Gardens in Green Bay. But I was informed that they didn't do that anymore. Then J told me about the Botanical Gardens in Milwaukee. But what they had to offer was, kind of like "rent a tree" that was already there and you could have a plaque placed and pay so much a year. I wanted a new young tree to grow in Ryan's Memory. I kept the info at the foot of my big chair upstairs in the living room forever looking, debating.. Then one day when I walking at Voyager Park along the path I saw a tree with a plaque at the base of it and I called the Deeper City Forrester the next day and said I want to do that. He was awesome and I told him that I wanted a tree that flowers in the spring and continues with its fruit into the winter. He said he knew what I was talking about. He said he would find me a tree. He called me and said "M I have the Tree for you". It is a Prairifire Crabapple" It has a rose-pink mass of flowers. When they are done blooming the tree continues with foliage in purple vein the rest of the season. In the fall the tree leaves turn to orange red and maroon crabapples continue into winter. And they stay on the tree. It will grow 25 feet tall and wide. I met with Him to find a place to plant it. At first he suggested to plant it near where the new deeper Library will be planted. When I saw where that was ( up near the street) it didn't feel right. I asked him if it were possible that the tree could be planted along the river. ( now I am going to go back a few days before this meeting_ My friend B and I were walking the trail along the river and I had said to her. If Ryan's Tree could be planted anywhere I would want it here.) Right on the bank along the walkway looking over the River. OK so the guy said come with me. And the closer we got to the River and the closer we got to where I had just said to B this is where I want the tree planted, my heart was pounding and he stopped right where I had just said to B. I am not exaggerating right there. So there it is and yes it is now planted. I saw it in bloom. (even such a young tree was filled with blossoms) Wait till you see Julie. I was waiting and waiting for the plaque that I had made to be placed. ( They couldn't place it forever because of all rain we had. And the Forrester said he couldn't give me a "date" due to weather. So I would go down every few days to see. And this past Wednesday my Brother J was in town and I took him down to the park to see the Tree and low and behold the Plaque was placed. The Sun was setting and right in line with the tree. I was so glad J was with me. It is beautiful. The plaque says "In Loving Memory of Ryan E. Degeneffe 1977-2000. It is a place to go and not a "GRAVE YARD" a beautiful place filled with life and activity. I am glad I was patient and waited. I feel I was guided. I think of you all the time and I hope you are well. Ryan loved you so much, from day one. Love, M
I know that Ryan would have loved this, I know he is smiling down on his mom for doing this for him...he would have HATED being in a grave yard, he would have hated people visiting a grave to remember him, this is perfect, his mom did the perfect thing. It makes me feel good inside to know that his mom did what he would have wanted. And I am happy that I can go visit this spot to remember him, but I don't have to be in a depressing place to do that. I want to get up there to see it as soon as possible. Maybe I could do that this week.
I am feeling much better. I have to get to the dr. again, they have to run some tests at the hospital on me - just outpatient though. My stomach still keeps getting a little upset, but I have eaten and kept everything down pretty well. I went for a mile walk last night and was okay, just tired. I was thinking about trying to jog a mile either tonight or tomorrow. Probably tomorrow, I don't know if I have the energy yet, I don't want to overdo it.
Well, I have a lot to do, a ton of laundry...ohhhh, tooo...sick....to....do ....laundry. Nuts, I was hoping that would work, I guess I still have to do it ;)
And this woman's diary entry talking about the accident that ultimately took Ryan's life:
13 Apr 2001 - still grieving the death of Ryan
So, as I talked about earlier, my very good friend was killed by a drunk driver. Ryan stood up in my wedding almost exactly 1 month before he was murdered. I am so happy to have all the pictures that we have of him, the video that we have of him. The videographer only caught one of the toasts, it thankfully happened to be Ryan's. Ryan was standing up in another friend of his wedding, the rehearsal was Friday night, the wedding party went out after the dinner. Ryan was walking arm in arm with two of his close friends across the street at 2 am. A car ran a red light, hit the three of them, slowed down for a second and then sped off. Ryan's angels were sitting at the stop light in their car, saw the accident and had the presence of mind to leave the accident and chase the car to get the license plate number. If it weren't for those 2 girls, that loser would still be free. Ryan's two friends have undergone several surgeries and are okay, however will probably forever have pain and problems with their legs. All three of them only 23 years old. Ryan took the brunt of the hit, his head took the brunt of the hit. He was still alive at the scene, still breathing anyway. The neandrothal that hit them, went to a bar afterwards, picked up a lady and slept with her before the police showed up to arrest him 3 hours after the incident. He had alcohol on his breath, but there was no way to prove that he did at the time of the accident. Ryan was unconscious...the took him to surgery thinking that if they removed a blood clot from his brain that he might pull through. The surgery went well, but Ryan was brain dead, there was nothing they could do. He died. Many of Ryan's friends showed up at the araignment (don't know how to spell that one). The criminal is here from Puerto Rico, no driver's license, doesn't speak a lick of English. Asked the judge for work release, happily, the judge laughed in his face and said no way. He has just recently been sentenced finally, 10 years in jail. Hardly fair...he took a life, left the scene, had sex. He didn't care that he had just changed the lives directly of three young people, not to mention all the family and friends of all of them, particularly of my dear Ryan. He was so full of life and happiness. I still dream of him at least two nights of the week. In those dreams, he tells me that he is okay and gives me the hug and kiss that I wish I could have given to him before he took his final breath. It might sound odd, but I still feel that I don't have closure. I was out of town at the time of the accident, so I didn't get to say goodbye to my dear friend. It was a closed casket - he was pretty beat up and he was such a goodlooking person, he would never have wanted people to see him that way. I was at the funeral, but still feel like someday I will see him walking down the street. I even dreamt that he called me to meet him for lunch. He told me that he had faked the whole death thing just so he could change his name and move to CA!! It has been since sept, yet I still just ache when I think of him. I want my hatred for the man who is sitting in jail to subside, but it almost seems like it gets worse as the weeks/months pass. Ryan was my roommate for a year in college, and every day, I thank the Lord that I had that time to spend with him. Memories that I had forgotten about often seep back into my mind when I see something to remind me or when I hear a certain song. I miss him so much....I hate his killer so much. I feel that he got off far tooooooooo easily. When will the healing begin????? I don't want to go to my aunt's funeral this weekend...it will be twice as hard to go because not only will I be grieving the loss of her, but I know that it will bring back the memories of Ryan's funeral. It's like I want to pull the daggars from my stomach, but if I do, I will surely bleed to death.
___________________________________________________________________
There are so many more of her entries talking about Ryan. I can only imagine what she must be going through still to this day. Not having "closure" for something like loosing a close friend or family member is one of the worst feelings in the world...I know.......I didnt get a chance to properly say goodbye to my mom before she passed away. (I will write about that someday possibly....)
Maybe I will try contacting her via email to let her know of how I was by his side through the short time he was laying in the road and possibly see about finally getting in touch with Ryan's mom to just say hi and also let her know of who I am and where I was in relation to that awful night. I could use some "closure" on that part of things also.
I have never talked to any of the people involved in the accident or his mom. Though I did learn that all three were attending secondary school in the Milwaukee area at that time. Kind of weird when you think about our locations at that time. Three people attending school in Milwaukee and up in Green Bay on Labor day weekend......me living in Racine (which is 30 minutes south of Milwaukee) up in Green Bay on the Labor Day weekend. I have thought about that often.
That is all for today.......
John
It was close to Bar time( around 2AM I think) and I was driving down Walnut Street, heading south through downtown Green Bay. It was raining hard and thundering and lightning, but was also very warm and muggy. I was sitting at a stoplight on Wallnut and Washington, waiting for the light to turn green.
As I was sitting there, with my window open-enjoying the rain pelting me on the arm and waiting for the light to turn green, I saw and heard three young people (a woman and two men) to my left, walking towards my truck as they were crossing the street.
I remembered thinking how fun they sounded and how much of a good time they must have been having. It sounded like they had just come from a night of having fun at one of the local bars by the mall.
I remember hearing one of the people ( I think it was the girl) say something like "Come on...we can make it across if we run" as the light was just about to turn green for me to go. At that point I am thinking "Stupid kids"......and then the light turned green for me to go...but they were running across the walk (hands joined) so I stayed stopped to let them pass in front of me. The light was green for me to go but I figured they weren't going to stop and just waited for them to get past me before going on through the intersection.
And then the unspeakable happened......
Just as the three of them passed the right side of the front of my truck....I heard a loud unexplainable noise from my right, tires squealing, and then screams like out of a "horror movie" and I looked up and saw three bodies literally flying up and across the roadway, right in front of my eyes, and in what seemed like "slow motion", all three landing in the intersection in three different spots of the street!! One of the guys to the left and across from the intersection, the lady a few feet ahead of him and the other guy to the right, the farthest away, in the middle of the roadway.
I quickly looked to my right, saw a car stopped in then middle of the intersection...and then it took off at high speed...again squealing it's tires. I was in shock and dumbfounded as to what had just happened....I couldn't believe it.
I jumped out of my truck -I don't even remember putting my truck in park or shutting it off or anything- and ran to where the two people were laying on the left side of the intersection.
(The whole time people were screaming and yelling on all sides of the street as it was close to bar time and there was lots of people spilling out of the bars just as the accident happened.) They were both laying there and other people were also running over to them and they looked like they were both semi-conscious.......
..........And then I ran over to where the other guy was thrown
(-I would later find out that this was Ryan- )
and he was laying on his stomach, breathing very hard and I bent down to see what I could do-(God..at this point I am in utter shock and shaking and I think crying...I don't remember) I put my hand on his shoulder and told him to "hold on...your gonna be ok...help is coming"...and then I heard the sirens and saw the ambulance (it seemed like forever, but iI guess it was less then 5 minutes from the time of the accident to the arrival of the ambulance and police). I just sat there in the pouring rain talking to him and trying to comfort and reassure him that he was going to be ok. I saw the first paramedic and police officers over by the other two and I yelled over at them that this guy was seriously hurt and needed someone to look at him right away. The paramedic (or was it a police officer..I don't remember) yelled back at me and told me to just sit close and talk to him and they would be right over. I just kept saying "Hold on buddy...your gonna be ok" and kept my hand lightly on his back. A few minutes and the paramedic were there and they told me to back up and to go over by the police officer just behind me.
The rain kept coming down, it was thundering and lightning and I was standing there in the middle of the street soaked, telling the police officer what had just happened. Shortly after, the ambulance left..the police cordoned off the area with yellow tape and all the onlookers dispersed and went on their way home. I was still in shock, so once the officer took my statement and let me go.
I drove back over to Doug's house...it was close to 3am by this time, if not after. I ring Doug's doorbell....and start to tell him what had just happened....and start crying and.....he is like "well get in here!!!" is all I remember him saying. I sat for a while, he told me to stay over night..I contemplated...but then thought it would be better for me to just get back to Racine and sleep in my own bed.
I think I left Green Bay around 345AM....and drove three long hours, crying and shaking the whole way, reliving every second of those poor young people being hit and thrown like ragdolls, putting up with bad thunderstorms, driving rain and wind (I43 had flooded out in one section along the way) and I think I made it into Racine around 630Am. I know I needed to stop at the hotel to talk to Doris and let her know of what happened. I broke down (again) as I was recounting what had happened to her..and then went home to try and get some sleep. I was exhausted.
I got home around 730AM. I couldn't sleep and when I did manage to doze off, I kept remembering the accident in vivid detail..and the phone rang midmorning and it was Green Bay Police wanting more information about the incident....so I recounted what happened yet again.I asked the officer how the three were and he said he really couldn't say much but that they were all alive but that one of the young men was in a coma. I asked him if he could please tell me which person this was in relation to the accident and he did say it was the young man who I had been sitting with.
I didn't go to work that night.....and kept wondering how those three were doing. I tried calling the Green Bay hospitals but they wouldn't give me any info as I wasn't family. I did call Doug and told him to keep me informed of any news on tv or anywhere else.
I kept looking on the internet for info but nothing other than the accident reports. And then on Monday I got a call from Doug. Ryan had passed away after surgery. He had never regained consciences. I was crushed....and I didn't even know this guy.
I tried to keep up with all the information on the accident, the ongoing investigation, and found out a lot about Ryan and his life ( and the other two....Josh and Lisa I think)through various stories. I contemplated going to the funeral but then thought that it might me awkward, and though I didn't personally know him, my life was touched by him. I drove back up a few weeks later to give a deposition to the police for the trial of the accused (Florez- I remember his name)
I also went through some tough emotions, thinking that I was partially responsible for the accident in a way.
How you might ask? Ok...stay with me here for a minute...........
I am sitting at the light....
three people are running across the road and before they even get to my truck...
the light is green for me to go....
and if I wouldn't have waited for them to cross and went through before they crossed my path....
maybe they would have had a chance to see the car that ended up hitting them (basically, I was their blind spot so to speak).
But everyone I have ever talked to has told me that I shouldn't think that way and that what happened...happened....I should never feel that I was anything other than an innocent bystander.
The sad ending of this story is that the guy who hit and killed Ryan (and who seriously injured the other two) got like 10 stinking years....for murder, not having a license, leaving the scene of the accident, being intoxicated........
There was another good Samaritan who if it had not been for her, he probably would have gotten away. She was behind his car and followed him long enough to get his plate number. The cops later found him "having sex with some woman" on the east side of Green Bay in the early hours of the morning. Go figure.....get drunk...kill a guy....go have nookie!!! Isn't life strange???
A final note: As this weekend was approaching, I was looking through the internet and I found (after a little googling) a letter that had been written by Ryan's mom to a "best friend" of his. I am still kind of in "awe" of it's contents. A wonderful letter. I then dug a little deeper and found this "friend's" diary journal on line....and started reading her entries. I was transfixed. There are numerous entries about Ryan...each of them a little different..all of them telling of a friend grieving for another friend. I feel so much for this person...and the only thing I know about her is that her name is Julie, I think she lives in Boston....and she sounds like someone who Ryan was lucky to have as a friend.
I hope to make it up to Green Bay on Monday to at last pay my respects to this young man whose life was cut so terribly short by another person's unthoughtful and awful actions and to see the "memorial tree" that his mom put in that park in memory of him. Maybe I can finally get a little closure also.
I have copied the contents of the letter that Ryan's mom wrote to this woman and also her first entry in her diary where she talks about Ryan and the accident.
Some day maybe she will read my blog here and realize that there was ANOTHER Samaritan that was with Ryan in his final awful hours....yours truly.
____________________________________________________________________
Letter from Ryan's mom to his friend Julie, and following a DIARY ENTRY that Julie wrote, talking about the accident:
25 June 2001 - An e-mail from Ryan's mom
This is an e-mail that I got from Ryan's mom (again, the close friend of mine that was killed by a drunk driver in September of 2000). This e-mail really made me smile. I can't wait to visit the spot...
Hi Julie. Yes I did have a tree planted in Ryan's Memory at Voyager Park. Initially I wanted to have it planted at the Botanical Gardens in Green Bay. But I was informed that they didn't do that anymore. Then J told me about the Botanical Gardens in Milwaukee. But what they had to offer was, kind of like "rent a tree" that was already there and you could have a plaque placed and pay so much a year. I wanted a new young tree to grow in Ryan's Memory. I kept the info at the foot of my big chair upstairs in the living room forever looking, debating.. Then one day when I walking at Voyager Park along the path I saw a tree with a plaque at the base of it and I called the Deeper City Forrester the next day and said I want to do that. He was awesome and I told him that I wanted a tree that flowers in the spring and continues with its fruit into the winter. He said he knew what I was talking about. He said he would find me a tree. He called me and said "M I have the Tree for you". It is a Prairifire Crabapple" It has a rose-pink mass of flowers. When they are done blooming the tree continues with foliage in purple vein the rest of the season. In the fall the tree leaves turn to orange red and maroon crabapples continue into winter. And they stay on the tree. It will grow 25 feet tall and wide. I met with Him to find a place to plant it. At first he suggested to plant it near where the new deeper Library will be planted. When I saw where that was ( up near the street) it didn't feel right. I asked him if it were possible that the tree could be planted along the river. ( now I am going to go back a few days before this meeting_ My friend B and I were walking the trail along the river and I had said to her. If Ryan's Tree could be planted anywhere I would want it here.) Right on the bank along the walkway looking over the River. OK so the guy said come with me. And the closer we got to the River and the closer we got to where I had just said to B this is where I want the tree planted, my heart was pounding and he stopped right where I had just said to B. I am not exaggerating right there. So there it is and yes it is now planted. I saw it in bloom. (even such a young tree was filled with blossoms) Wait till you see Julie. I was waiting and waiting for the plaque that I had made to be placed. ( They couldn't place it forever because of all rain we had. And the Forrester said he couldn't give me a "date" due to weather. So I would go down every few days to see. And this past Wednesday my Brother J was in town and I took him down to the park to see the Tree and low and behold the Plaque was placed. The Sun was setting and right in line with the tree. I was so glad J was with me. It is beautiful. The plaque says "In Loving Memory of Ryan E. Degeneffe 1977-2000. It is a place to go and not a "GRAVE YARD" a beautiful place filled with life and activity. I am glad I was patient and waited. I feel I was guided. I think of you all the time and I hope you are well. Ryan loved you so much, from day one. Love, M
I know that Ryan would have loved this, I know he is smiling down on his mom for doing this for him...he would have HATED being in a grave yard, he would have hated people visiting a grave to remember him, this is perfect, his mom did the perfect thing. It makes me feel good inside to know that his mom did what he would have wanted. And I am happy that I can go visit this spot to remember him, but I don't have to be in a depressing place to do that. I want to get up there to see it as soon as possible. Maybe I could do that this week.
I am feeling much better. I have to get to the dr. again, they have to run some tests at the hospital on me - just outpatient though. My stomach still keeps getting a little upset, but I have eaten and kept everything down pretty well. I went for a mile walk last night and was okay, just tired. I was thinking about trying to jog a mile either tonight or tomorrow. Probably tomorrow, I don't know if I have the energy yet, I don't want to overdo it.
Well, I have a lot to do, a ton of laundry...ohhhh, tooo...sick....to....do ....laundry. Nuts, I was hoping that would work, I guess I still have to do it ;)
And this woman's diary entry talking about the accident that ultimately took Ryan's life:
13 Apr 2001 - still grieving the death of Ryan
So, as I talked about earlier, my very good friend was killed by a drunk driver. Ryan stood up in my wedding almost exactly 1 month before he was murdered. I am so happy to have all the pictures that we have of him, the video that we have of him. The videographer only caught one of the toasts, it thankfully happened to be Ryan's. Ryan was standing up in another friend of his wedding, the rehearsal was Friday night, the wedding party went out after the dinner. Ryan was walking arm in arm with two of his close friends across the street at 2 am. A car ran a red light, hit the three of them, slowed down for a second and then sped off. Ryan's angels were sitting at the stop light in their car, saw the accident and had the presence of mind to leave the accident and chase the car to get the license plate number. If it weren't for those 2 girls, that loser would still be free. Ryan's two friends have undergone several surgeries and are okay, however will probably forever have pain and problems with their legs. All three of them only 23 years old. Ryan took the brunt of the hit, his head took the brunt of the hit. He was still alive at the scene, still breathing anyway. The neandrothal that hit them, went to a bar afterwards, picked up a lady and slept with her before the police showed up to arrest him 3 hours after the incident. He had alcohol on his breath, but there was no way to prove that he did at the time of the accident. Ryan was unconscious...the took him to surgery thinking that if they removed a blood clot from his brain that he might pull through. The surgery went well, but Ryan was brain dead, there was nothing they could do. He died. Many of Ryan's friends showed up at the araignment (don't know how to spell that one). The criminal is here from Puerto Rico, no driver's license, doesn't speak a lick of English. Asked the judge for work release, happily, the judge laughed in his face and said no way. He has just recently been sentenced finally, 10 years in jail. Hardly fair...he took a life, left the scene, had sex. He didn't care that he had just changed the lives directly of three young people, not to mention all the family and friends of all of them, particularly of my dear Ryan. He was so full of life and happiness. I still dream of him at least two nights of the week. In those dreams, he tells me that he is okay and gives me the hug and kiss that I wish I could have given to him before he took his final breath. It might sound odd, but I still feel that I don't have closure. I was out of town at the time of the accident, so I didn't get to say goodbye to my dear friend. It was a closed casket - he was pretty beat up and he was such a goodlooking person, he would never have wanted people to see him that way. I was at the funeral, but still feel like someday I will see him walking down the street. I even dreamt that he called me to meet him for lunch. He told me that he had faked the whole death thing just so he could change his name and move to CA!! It has been since sept, yet I still just ache when I think of him. I want my hatred for the man who is sitting in jail to subside, but it almost seems like it gets worse as the weeks/months pass. Ryan was my roommate for a year in college, and every day, I thank the Lord that I had that time to spend with him. Memories that I had forgotten about often seep back into my mind when I see something to remind me or when I hear a certain song. I miss him so much....I hate his killer so much. I feel that he got off far tooooooooo easily. When will the healing begin????? I don't want to go to my aunt's funeral this weekend...it will be twice as hard to go because not only will I be grieving the loss of her, but I know that it will bring back the memories of Ryan's funeral. It's like I want to pull the daggars from my stomach, but if I do, I will surely bleed to death.
___________________________________________________________________
There are so many more of her entries talking about Ryan. I can only imagine what she must be going through still to this day. Not having "closure" for something like loosing a close friend or family member is one of the worst feelings in the world...I know.......I didnt get a chance to properly say goodbye to my mom before she passed away. (I will write about that someday possibly....)
Maybe I will try contacting her via email to let her know of how I was by his side through the short time he was laying in the road and possibly see about finally getting in touch with Ryan's mom to just say hi and also let her know of who I am and where I was in relation to that awful night. I could use some "closure" on that part of things also.
I have never talked to any of the people involved in the accident or his mom. Though I did learn that all three were attending secondary school in the Milwaukee area at that time. Kind of weird when you think about our locations at that time. Three people attending school in Milwaukee and up in Green Bay on Labor day weekend......me living in Racine (which is 30 minutes south of Milwaukee) up in Green Bay on the Labor Day weekend. I have thought about that often.
That is all for today.......
John
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