Don Quixote at heart

 But most good writers are Don Quixote at heart, and unreasonableness is often a condition of art. Ha Jin, The Writer as Migrant

The problems of Nauru

There’s a country, the world smallest (eight square miles) and most isolated nation, named Nauru, (pronounced NAH-roo) which is literally in the middle of nowhere, in the Central Pacific about one thousand and four hundred miles off the coast of Fiji. It’s a coral island just eight square miles, roughly the same size as LAX with a population of about 10,000.

Nauru was, for hundreds of years, one of the poorest countries in the world. Then in 1980, it was the wealthiest country in the entire world. Then, in 2017, it was one of the five poorest nations in the world.

So how’d the get rich?

Bird poop, AKA guano. 

For perhaps several million years seagulls on their way to somewhere else in the world, used the island as a rest stop, leaving behind miles of calcified guano filled with rich phosphates are used to produce high-grade fertilizer and other commodities. Once the outside world realized how rich Naura was, that was about 1900, the Germans, the Australians, and the Japanese ran and robbed the place. The Germans were, as usual, no joy. They controlled the island from 1888 until 1916 and banned native dancing as pagan. Today only a handful of elderly Nauruans have even the barest recollection of how the sacred dances are performed. Naura declared its independence in 1968.

Naurains started selling the guano themselves and by the late 1960’s they were rich, really, really rich. By 1975 the country earned the equivalent of $2.5 billion — divided into a population of 7,200. The Naurains spent money like there was no tomorrow. They brought in contracts that built enormous homes for them, they imported luxury cars. The government built an airport and a hotel.

By 1990, Nauru’s phosphate resources became depleted.

Frantic, the country’s ministers wrote up brand banking laws that said anyone with $20,000 could open a bank on the island. The Russian mobs couldn’t get there fast enough and laundered over $70 billion dollars there. The problem was the scheme absolutely nothing to help the Nauru Republic. Nothing except to permanently place it on the UN’s watchlist of slimy nations.

                                 US Army bombing Japanese positions on Nauru in WW2

Next, Nauru invested in a doomed musical called Leonardo the Musical: A Portrait of Love, a highly fictionalized account of Leonardo da Vinci's creation of the Mona Lisa. The production was plagued by problems with sets, costumes, and the depressing script throughout its development opened at the Strand Theatre on June 3, 1993. By the time the performance ended, nearly four hours after the curtain first rose, most of the audience had left. The show closed five weeks late costing Nauru about $7,000,000.The incredibly bad investment was the brainchild of Duke Minks, an advisor to the Republic of Nauru and former road manager for an obscure 1960s pop group, Unit 4 + 2. Minks co-wrote and co-produced the play.

Immigration is and always has been a divisive issue in Australia. In 2001, a small boat filled with 434 Afghan, Sri Lankan and Pakistani refugees board got stranded in the Indian Ocean. A Norwegian cargo ship rescued the passengers, but when the ship tried to enter Australian waters to deliver the refugees to shore, they were refused entry. The incident became known as the Tampa Crisis and ended after Australia agreed to pay Nauru and Papua New Guinea to temporarily house the refugees.

It was called Pacific Solution and on paper anyway, it made sense. Asylum seekers arriving in Australia by boat would be sent off to detention centers in Nauru or Papua New Guinea. But Nauru was overwhelmed by future asylum seekers and soon the detention centers stated to look like prison camps and the refugees were treated like criminals. In 2007, the Nauru camp shut down due to overcrowding and a lack of available water which forced Australia to spend hundreds of millions to redevelop the camps.

An asylum camp in Nauru

Although the facilities were reopened in 2012 and despite the new additions, conditions at the camps didn’t improve. The detention centers remained, essentially, prisons. But this time, to keep the camps out of the press, Nauru’s, which is extremely difficult and very expensive to reach, now charges journalist $8,000 to apply for a media visa. Taking pictures inside the detention center is forbidden; so is carrying a smartphone with a camera.

So what’s next for Nauru?

Well, the future looks grim. More than 70% of Nauru is now uninhabitable due to overdevelopment phosphate mining and the interior section of the island is stripped of all forestry and covered in trash. Because of those factors, island unsuitable for farming and virtually all food is had from an expensive imported can which increased heart disease, obesity and diabetes among the tiny population. 

Generally, 90% and the country’s school system has almost completely collapsed, and unemployment is at a steady 30%.

Rev. James Aingimea, 84, the minister of the Nauru Congregational Church, said "I wish we'd never discovered that phosphate. I wish Nauru could be like it was before. When I was a boy, it was so beautiful. There were trees. It was green everywhere, and we could eat the fresh coconuts and breadfruit. Now I see what has happened here, and I want to cry."

A very viable but sad option is to uproot the population and move to another island. In 1970, the Australians offered an island off the coast of Queensland, but Nauru's leaders rejected the proposal because they would not have been given complete sovereignty. Now they are reconsidering.

Kids who age out of the foster care system more than likely will end up on the junk pile of life...we can change that

For Youth In Foster Care in New York City, Anxieties Over College, Aging Out Remain

By Clarissa Sosin and Daryl Khan

NEW YORK — They had it all planned out. Christina Young and her roommate would share an Uber together and make sure they got to the graduation ceremony on time. They were graduating from John Jay College in Manhattan. It was the Big Day, the day they had been waiting for, working toward, and it had finally arrived.

Young remembers the buzz among her classmates and friends. As a foster youth who came tantalizingly close to dropping out of high school, the day held a special significance. But unlike her other classmates, Young’s mind was elsewhere.

Young remembers the front she put on that day. She didn’t want to let down the people who came to support her. Young joined in on group photographs and flashed her wide, infectious smile for the cameras. But on the inside she was anxious, consumed by one fear. As everyone else was wondering which graduation party they would be attending she was worried about whether she’d have a place to live.

 Reaching this day was a milestone. Young is one of a fraction of foster youth that make it all the way through to college graduation with a bachelor’s degree. Only 50% of foster youth graduate high school by the time they turn 18. Those that do graduate often do not fare well in college. Only 20% go on to post-secondary education. The numbers vary, but experts say that 1 to 11% finish their degree.

As a foster youth over 21, Young had been part of a pilot program called the Dorm Project. It offered a solution to one of the biggest problems facing foster youth: stable housing. It allowed Young and a few dozen other students to live in their dorm rooms all year. When other students went home for break or holidays, Young could stay in her room without having to navigate the complicated foster care system and worry about finding a new temporary home to live in until the semester went back into session.

But when graduation day finally arrived, the room she had called home — the first room she had ever had all to herself — would be gone. She felt betrayed.

“I felt like I didn’t deserve that,” she said. “I was diligent about my education. I was a good student. I felt at that moment that the system kind of failed me. I figured if I did what I was supposed to do and thrived that they’d have my back.”

The day that was supposed to be a celebration was marked by anxiety.

“I was alone and I had to figure it out on my own,” she said.

HUGE CHANGES BUT …

The changes in New York’s foster care system have been staggering over the last 25 years, according to the Administration for Children’s Services (ACS), the agency that oversees the foster care system in New York City. By the end of 2017 there were fewer than 9,000 children in the system. That is a fraction of the more than 50,000 children who were in the system 25 years ago.

An emphasis on prevention saw a 44% decline in the number of children coming into the foster care system between 2006 and 2016. The caseload for caseworkers assigned to foster youth lightened. The number of children leaving the system and achieving what is known as “permanency through kinship guardianship” — when a family member takes over as legal guardian of a foster child — and adoption steadily rose as well. ACS opened the Office of Training and Workforce Development, which developed a variety of programs that, among other goals, help foster youth find employment.

Young, now a foster care advocate, and other advocates worry that the average person is lulled into a false sense of complacency when they see the numbers improve as they have over the last several decades. There are a lot of little things she doesn’t want people to forget. The biggest misunderstanding that the average person has about foster youth, Young said, is that they’re taken care of and all their problems are squared away.

“Technically we are called the ward of the court; the government is supposed to be overseeing us and that everything will be OK,” she said. “That doesn’t mean the youth are getting the proper services they need and the resources that they actually deserve.”

Young wasn’t even formally introduced to her first foster mother. The day they met, she gathered her stuff up in a few garbage bags, was medically cleared, debriefed by her case worker and then dropped off in a cab in front of a stranger’s house.

“My social worker gave me a prep talk,” she remembers. “She told me, ‘They’re really nice, if you’re good and follow the rules you should be fine.’ I didn’t know how to feel.”

Most kids can put a request in for dinner. Maybe quesadillas, one of Young’s favorites for instance, or pasta. Not in a foster home. If you want to watch cartoons, too bad. You don’t have any say about what you watch on the television. Small but meaningful interactions between a parent and a child, the in-between moments, are denied to a foster child.

“You can’t ever weigh in. What you think doesn’t matter. You always feel like a guest,” she said.

Young didn’t see a movie at a theater until after she left the system because she had to choose between budgeting her small allowance for essentials and hanging out with her friends. So she often found herself getting bullied since she was never joining in after-school activities. Or she was jumping from school to school across the city. Parent-teacher nights were always rough. She’d have to come up with some excuse for why her real parents weren’t there.

Moving from borough to borough, always being the new face, took a toll on her.

“‘Oh, that’s my aunt, that’s my uncle.’ There was always a lie, a little tale to tell,” she said. “Or simply hope they wouldn’t notice.”

STOIC TO SURVIVE

Foster kids grow up obsessed with not losing their temporary home. They don’t want to speak up or articulate their desires for fear of losing a place to sleep.

“You do what you gotta do to keep your bed,” she said. “It felt lonely. You don’t know who to turn to. You don’t feel supported at all. You feel if you do cry out for help you don’t have anyone to turn to, because it’s always this thing of you have to have somewhere to sleep, you have to preserve your placement, you have to preserve your bed.”

So, she said, foster kids always feel like they have to deal with whatever comes their way.

After a mad scramble she managed to find housing after graduation. The security deposit was a struggle but she has a home she calls her own.

Young now works as a program specialist at iFoster. She helps foster children like herself navigate the foster care system and transition out of it. She connects them to programs like the Dorm Project, which helped her successfully do what so many foster youth never get to do — graduate from college. She wants them to be self-sufficient when they leave the system — and that means encouraging bigger ambitions than just holding down a job. However, she sympathizes with that feeling. She remembers her goal used to be to get out of the system and work. She never considered pursuing higher education.

She remembered looking up how much college costs and thinking her foster parent would never pay the high price tag. She didn’t realize there were programs out there to help people like herself.

 “The light at the end of the tunnel for me was just getting out,” she said.

She grew up feeling embarrassed about being a foster kid. But that all changed when she entered college. When she realized her status as a foster youth gave her access to grants, housing, laptops and other essential supplies for excelling at school, along with other support systems, her outlook changed.

“That made me feel empowered,” she said.

Now, the light at the end of the tunnel is law school.

I believe the police are a fantastic choice for this; they see the results of poverty first hand, on a street level.

Maricopa County sheriff, HUD partner to help young adults transition out of foster care

Christopher Roth

Maricopa County Sheriff Paul Penzone and Chris Patterson, a HUD regional administrator, speak Wednesday. (Photo: Christopher Roth/The Republic)

The Maricopa County Sheriff's Office and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development on Wednesday said they will begin working together to help young adults who age out of the Arizona foster care system when they turn 18.

The agencies will partner on a program called the Foster Youth to Independence Initiative designed to help those transitioning out of the system find housing to avoid homelessness and other issues that can accompany that, said Sheriff Paul Penzone, during a press conference to announce the effort.

Under the program, HUD will work to provide housing vouchers for the young adults that will help supplement the cost of renting an apartment.

"We are thrilled to have the support of the government, supporting a program that helps foster children, who are aging out of the system, get them into homes they can call their own. Not having stable living conditions leads to the probability that they end in the criminal justice system,'' Penzone said.

Chris Patterson, a HUD regional administrator, said the effort is a first step in what he sees as an expanding effort to help keep young adults coming out of foster care off the streets.

"I was in the foster system as a youth, and I know how important it is to find places for foster kids to find stable ground once they become adults,'' Patterson said.

"These vouchers demonstrate HUD'S commitment to making sure these young people will have homes to invite people into, and it gives them a sense of identity,'' he said.

The Sheriff's Office will work with HUD in advancing the ongoing effort, though details on how the partnership will work were limited at Wednesday's press conference.

Angel Peterson was among the young adults making the transition who attended the event.

"Growing up in foster care, my group home was more like family than friends. I hope the younger people without families can look up to me and see that I was a product of the success of this program,'' Peterson said.

Jillian Clark entered the system at age 15.

"It was different for me because growing up you think about what you want to do, and who you want to be, and for me it was about who I was, and who I want to be. This program will help me answer those questions."

Penzone said an estimated 15% to 20% of young adults who age out of foster care will experience homelessness.

On writing

“If you’re going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don’t even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery—isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you’ll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you’re going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It’s the only good fight there is.”

—    Charles Bukowski (Factotum)

Let's rewrite the news and then complain that American's aren't buying newspapers anymore......

Dumb people now run print media. The industry is so broke they can’t afford editors anymore. Here’s an example. I’ve followed this case below. There is absolutely no mention anywhere, by anyone, connected to the case, that have dubbed this a hate crime. That is to say, the lunatic murdered this child because he didn’t like his race, religion etc. But the AP service just couldn’t let the case pass without at least trying to turn this into a hate crime “Man who murdered black…...” and then later in the piece “…white inmate”. Only at the very end of the piece does the AP mention that the killer wasn’t charged with a hate crime.

Man who murdered black West Virginia teen dies in custody

 GRAYSON, Ky. (AP) - Authorities in Kentucky say foul play isn't suspected in the death of a white inmate convicted of killing a black West Virginia teenager he had called a "piece

of trash."

U.S. Marshal Service Deputy Fred Lamey confirms 65-year-old William Ronald Pulliam died Thursday at the Carter County Detention Center. News outlets report that authorities haven't released his cause of death, pending an autopsy.

Pulliam pleaded guilty in August to second-degree murder for shooting 15-year-old James Means in 2016. Prosecutors had recommended a 20-year sentence, but a sentencing hearing hadn't been held.

In the criminal complaint, Charleston, West Virginia, police wrote that Pulliam described Means' death as "another piece of trash off the street." Pulliam wasn't charged with a hate crime.

Relatives to dig up Gangster John Dillinger’s body

Relatives to dig up Gangster John Dillinger’s body

Gangster John Dillinger's relatives have been granted a permit dig up the bad guy's corpse and have a coroner conduct a DNA exam on the remains of the corpse from a cemetery in Indianapolis where he was buried there almost 70 years ago. The family and many others believe that an imposter was buried in Dillinger’s grave and that Dillinger escaped captured and lived for decades under another name.

It won’t be an easy dig. The body was is buried under five feet of concrete and steel on orders of Dillinger’s father who was certain that someone would steal his body to sell for a hefty profit. Old man Dillinger himself had been offered $10,000 to place John Dillinger’s body on display. (Roughly $200,000 today)

The conspiracy theory

According to the conspiracy theorists, a petty thug named Jimmy Lawrence, who was said to have a resemblance to Dillinger, was set up to take Dillinger’s place and that it Lawrence who was shot in killed in an alley just to the right of the Biograph theater. Of course the problem with that theory is that once Lawrence was closed in on by the FBI, it would take the agents only seconds to realize that Lawrence wasn’t Dillinger…..unless, of course, the entire plot involved having the FBI knowingly murder Lawrence instead of Dillinger because the Bureau had a deal that would allow Dillinger to escape and disappear forever. Although Melvin Purvis, the special agent in charge was a flawed fellow in many ways, it’s extremely unlikely Purvis would have opened himself to charge of premeditated murder. Besides, Purvis wasn’t really in charge at that point. After a spectacular and bloody goofed up raid to get Dillinger and the Little Bohemia Lodge, FBI Director Hoover virtually lost all faith in Purvis and a hard-nosed FBI Special Agent named Sam Crowley to oversee Dillinger’s capture. Crowley worked alone on the case and only brought Purvis, who was in deep trouble with Washington and on his way out of the agency when needed.

The prolific Chicago author Jay Robert Nash has been the primary advocate of the “Dillinger’s not dead” school of thought. Nash and others contend that Dillinger escaped being arrested at the Biograph Theater where the FBI, led by the diminutive legendary agent Melvin Purvis, was waiting for him.

According to Nash, he has or had fingerprints and photos of Dillinger as he would appear in 1960 that were allegedly sent to Melvin Purvis just prior to his 1960 alleged suicide at his home in South Carolina. According to Nash (more probably an accident). Nash alleged Dillinger was living and working in California as a machinist, under what would have been an early form of the witness protection program

(Purvis was reported to be depressed just before his death, which was the result of the misfiring of a gun he was cleaning. His death is not officially listed as suicide. If he did kill himself, it was more certainly over the unsubstantiated story that he was being blackmailed for certain behaviors more than being confronted with yet more allegations of Dillinger not being dead.)

The actual events in Dillinger’s death

The facts are that on July 21, 1934, the madam of a brothel in Gary, Indiana, who called herself Anna Sage (Ana Cumpanas) called a local cop she knew ad asked him to contact the FBI on her behalf because she had information they wanted on Dillinger. Her terms for handing over the information were simple. She wanted a cash reward as well as the Bureau’s help in keeping her from being deported back to her native Rumania. Deportation proceedings had started against her at that point.

A meeting was arranged between Sage and Special Agent Cowley. Crowley said that if her information led to Dillinger’s arrest, she would certainly get the reward money ($5,000 cash, in or about $100,000 today) and as for her deportation, he said that all he could do was to inform the Department of Labor (which at that time handled deportation matters) about her help in capturing Dillinger.

                                                                          Agent Crowley

                                                                        Agent Purvis 

Sage agreed and told Crowley that a girlfriend of hers, Polly Hamilton, a waitress, had dropped by a for a visit with Dillinger, whom she recognized from a newspaper photograph and then she offered this plan; she had arranged to take in a film with Polly Hamilton, and Dillinger, but the theater wasn’t settled. They would either attend the Biograph or the Marbro Theaters. Sage said she would be wearing an orange skirt and white blouse, so that she would be easy to recognize. (In poplar legend that later morphed into a red dress)

On Sunday, July 22, Anna Sage called Agent Crowley to confirm plans about going to the theater, but she still did not know which theater they would attend so Crowley sent full teams to both the Biograph or the Marbro Theaters. On a gamble, Crowley went with the team that was covering the Biograph.

Polly Hamilton and Anna Sage

At 8:30 p.m., Anna Sage, John Dillinger, and Polly Hamilton walked into the Biograph Theater to see Clark Gable in "Manhattan Melodrama."

Cowley ordered the squad sent to the Marbro to rush over the Biograph and then phoned Hoover for instructions. Since the theater was crowded, it was agreed that the agent would wait

(Theaters offered air condition which very few homes had at that time and as a result, they were almost always filled to capacity in the warmer months.)until Dillinger was outside on the street to take him. Hoover also gave a specific order that if Dillinger, a cop killer, offered any resistance, the agent would do whatever they had to do to save themselves.

At 10:30 p.m., Dillinger, with his two female companions on either side, walked out of the theater and turned to his left. As they walked past the doorway in which Purvis was standing, Purvis lit a cigar as a signal for the other men to close in.

Dillinger quickly realized what was happening and a pistol from his right pant pocket as he ran toward a nearby alley. Five shots were fired from the guns of three FBI agents. Three of the shots hit Dillinger, and he fell face down on the pavement. 

He was taken to the Alexian Brothers Hospital and pronounced dead at 10:50 p.m. on July 22, 1934. ( 14 years later gangster Roger Touhy was pronounced dead in the same room, murdered by the mafia)

Exactly who killed Dillinger isn’t known. What is known is that FBI agent Charles B. Winstead, Clarence O. Hurt, and Herman E. Hollis fired their weapons, on command from Crowley, at Dillinger.

Agent Crowley was later murdered by gangster Baby Face Nelson in a wild shootout on November 27, 1934. Also killed was agent Herman Hollis, one of the sharpshooters who stationed on the roof of the Biograph Theater and the man who more than probably killed Dillinger.

Anna Sage (Above) returned to her apartment after the shooting and dumped Dillinger’s ample supply of ammunition left at her house into a nearby canal. The girlfriend, Polly Hamilton, ran away from the theater after the shooting started. She fled Chicago, but returned a short time later, married and lived as a housewife on the North Side until her death in 1969. Anna was paid the $5,000 reward money as promised (She said Crowley offered her double that amount but that appears to be an out and out lie) and Crowley did address the court on her deportation as promised but to no avail. She was deported back to Rumania before the end of the year. She died there, of liver disease in 1947.

Back to the conspiracy.

The fingerprints

The fingerprints on the corpse supposedly didn't match Dillinger’s. Would someone in the Chicago Coroner’s office make off with Dillinger’s prints? Sure they would. The coroner himself admitted to stealing large parts of Dillinger’s brain to study as specimens. Adding to this, the story was that, reportedly, while he was on the run, Dillinger was said to have had a Doctor burn off his fingerprints with acid in May of 1934. There is absolutely no evidence to back that story up. However, the legend grew that the acid had little effect and Dillinger’s prints were basically unchanged.

The reality is that Special Agents M. Chaffetz and Earle Richmond took two sets of fingerprints from Dillinger’s body minutes after he was gunned down outside the Biograph. Both sets of prints matched Dillinger’s. A third set of prints was taken during the autopsy and those prints matched Dillinger as well.

The eye coloring

A story spread that the corpse had brown eyes and Dillinger probably had blue eyes.

The main source of all of this mix up falls back on the coroner’s autopsy report which went missing for 50 years until it was found by an Administrative assistant in a brown paper shopping bag in a room adjoining the office of Dr. Robert Stein, the Cook County Medical Examiner. The autopsy report says Dillinger's eyes were brown. Author Jay Robert Nash said a 1923 Navy physical exam described Dillinger's eyes as blue and the wanted poster issued by J. Edgar Hoover in March 1934 said his eyes were gray. Adding to this is the fact that after death, there can be some clouding of the cornea which would make identifying the actual eye color difficult. brown. Author Jay Robert Nash said a 1923 Navy physical exam described Dillinger's eyes as blue and the wanted poster issued by J. Edgar Hoover in March 1934 said his eyes were gray. Adding to this is the fact that after death, there can be some clouding of the cornea which would make identifying the actual eye color difficult.

Heart problems

The conspiracy crown also points out that the corpse was too tall to be Dillinger and the eye color was wrong and the corpse possessed a rheumatic heart. and that Dillinger didn’t have any history of heart troubles. But in fact, he did.

A Dr. Patrick H. Weeks, a physician and psychiatrist at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City during the time of Dillinger's incarceration at the facility in 1938 wrote that "During his term at the Indiana prison I was well acquainted with Dillinger but came rarely into contact with him in my professional capacity. The lad from Mooresville was not a hospital pest; that is, he was not one of those prisoners who need medical treatment upon the slightest provocation whatsoever. I examined him two or three times, however, and discovered something about his physical condition, which is quite surprising and which, incidentally, was never revealed in the press. John Dillinger suffered from heart disease. He had a distinct heart lesion. The disease was organic. I told Dillinger that he should never subject himself to great mental or physical strain because it might hasten his death. I was confident that he would follow my advice."

Much was made out of the fact that neither Dillinger’s long-suffering father nor Dillinger’s sister Audrey believed the corpse was John Dillinger. In fact, the newspapers made a lot of hay out of Dillinger's father's only words upon identifying the body "That's not my boy."

There were three reasons he may not have been able to identify his son. One was that the corpse was bloated because it had been exposed to severe summer temperatures and rough handling inside the overcrowded morgue. Secondly, when Dillinger ran for it down an alley when the FBI closed in, two FBI agents who were stationed on the roof of the theater and a nearby garage (Since town down and replaced) fired downward, piercing Dillinger’s face causing the blood clotted open wounds on this face that the press (Without a trace of truth) described as "scars resulting from inept plastic surgery".

Audrey changed her mind when she and E.F. Harvey of the Harvey Funeral Home located the scar on the back of Dillinger's thigh which he suffered jumping over a barbed-wire fence as a boy.

The disinterment of whoever the hell is in the grave is planned for December 31, 2019.