To Be Continued...

Not even close...   Photo: © Stan Banos

As y'all (4 of U) may have noticed- things have slowed down just a tad 'round these parts- and it's for good reason, which I will divulge in good time. Major Life BS- the kind no one wants to go through, but life being what it is, comes out and bites ya nonetheless. And this one's chomping down hard...

I'll continue on impulse power as best I can, but there may come a time when I may have to go dark- temporarily. In the meantime, just trying to put up the brave front- and quite honestly, not for anyone's sake other than my own. No, not anywhere near dying, just something I could have really done well, well without- now, and for a long time coming...

Some Of You May Remember...

The Exonerated Five

The Central Park Jogger Case of 1989. Thirty years ago, a young White, career woman was brutally raped, beaten and left for dead in Central Park while jogging one evening in Central Park. It was a vicious crime, and also the same night that by sheer coincidence, a bunch of teens from Harlem decided to go to that nearby park. You get a bunch of male teens together of any race or ethnicity, looking for excitement and god knows what- yeah, bad shit can happen. Bad shit did happen- all around. Several joggers and passers-by were beaten, robbed harassed and threatened, the perpetrators of those crimes rightly arrested and jailed. Unbeknownst to any of the teens in attendance however, there was another crime committed in that park that evening. It was a far more heinous crime, one committed in an area they did not frequent that evening- Central Park is pretty huge for a city park, one that spans several Manhattan neighborhoods.

I was a teacher in Harlem at that time, and I remember crossing my fingers and hoping with my fellow educators that none of our students (who were the same age) were involved- fortunately, none were. And I remember (much to my regret) thinking- sure, it's a big place, sure the time lines may not exactly match, but with all that running around, all that confusion... hey, where there's smoke, there's fire! If they didn't do it... well then, who the hell did? New York detectives are anything but dumb- if they couldn't piece it together, no one could. And piece it together, they did- just not how I, or many others were led to believe.

New York, the whole country, wanted the bad guy(s) caught on this one... the-pressure-was-on! And when they couldn't make the pieces all fit- the NY DA and NYPD  pieced the story together whole cloth, and went with it. Of course, the whole concocted fabrication should have been thrown out of court when no DNA samples from the victim matched any of their chosen perps- in fact, that there was no evidence of any kind linking The Central Park Five to the jogging victim. Videos of their police coerced "confessions" however sealed their fate; they were going down for that vicious, heinous crime- one they not only did not commit, but didn't have any knowledge of until they received their officially approved police scripts, which had to undergo several creative rewrites. They literally became the faces of that crime- all five were quickly imprisoned.

In 2002, the real assailant confessed to the crime- he had previously committed several other rapes, incl one in the same area, using the same MO! Somehow, New York's Finest never considered looking into that most glaring and obvious of leads...

When They See Us is the painful recounting of that woeful tale: before, during, after and present day. And a scary refrain to that which happened some... ninety years ago.

Addendum:  Donald J. Trump saw it necessary to put out a full page ad at the time in New York's major newspapers demanding a return to the death penalty. When all five were later exonerated of the crime, he said that they still deserved to be in prison- of course, one can only speculate as to why innocent people should remain in jail, but I think there's already a rather appropriate name for those who think that anyone of color should be in jail, regardless.

From Subtle, To...

SUBLIME!!!

SEEN Magazine

© Shane Lynam

Last week I discovered and directed you to Fotoroom- this week for your viewing pleasure, I lucked upon (and once again through sheer serendipity)... SEEN magazine, yet another treasure trove of photographic wonders. The site is heavy on landscape, and going from one winning set of images to another at one's whim and leisure is not only a pronounced and prolonged visual joy, it's also a vivid reminder of how one just begins to scratch the surface on one's own visual journey through life...

What You Can't See...

Photo: © Stan Banos

... can most definitely hurt you (particularly when it comes to radiation)- but there's plenty mischief behind closed doors that can cause all manner of irreparable harm. Mark Klein and Edward Snowden can tell you that for sure. This unadorned, fortress like edifice belonging to none other than AT&T at 611 Folsom St. in downtown San Francisco is, to this day, passed by thousands (incl tech savvy hipsters) oblivious to the sanctum within that held the means to spy upon their daily, private lives. It was in a "secret" room on the third floor of this building some two presidents ago that the NSA began spying on the communications of American citizens- something most definitely not within the legal parameters of its very creation, something we still wouldn't know of to this day if it wasn't for the likes of those, unsung patriotic heroes called... Whistleblowers! 

Once again they're in the news- God bless 'em, each and every one!

FotoRoom

So.... I been at this (blogging) thing how many years (since 2005), and incredibly... I just heard about FotoRoom, this week. And, actually, I didn't "hear" about it at all- came up on it quite by accident. But there you have it, an incredible venue for work which, only now, I've been made aware of. 

Just from the most cursory of glances, I've come across Niall McDiarmid's often wondrous portraits (if only that NY human guy had been this good); Clay Maxwell Jordan's insightful views of the contemporary American South; Shaun Pierson's revelatory photos of his own family members. There's a myriad of high quality work to see, enjoy and learn from- indulge your favorite styles and subject matter, and discover your own faves! One can also become a member, something I'm seriously considering...

"We’ve Reached A Turning Point"

Photo: © Stan Banos

Unfortunately, did not make it out to the Area 51 Alien Fest this past Sept. But this article is curious in that it encompasses and gives voice to the whole of the UFOlogy world- from crackpots... to scientists. And it's certainly nice to find a mainstream article on the topic that is, in fact, even handed. Yes, the field no doubt attracts more than its fair share of loony tunes- a-b-s-o-l-u-t-e-l-y! But within it's cracks and crevices you'll also find the openly dead serious: astronauts, military and commercial pilots, radar operators, astrophysicists, police and other trained observers across the globe who have personally witnessed these inexplicable phenomena, and more...

Photo: © Stan Banos

Up Is Down, Down Is...

So it turns out that Joe Biden was carrying out US policy under Obama back in 2015 by calling for the ouster of a corrupt Ukrainian prosecutor general- and by so doing, was actually outing his son's business dealings in Ukraine.... not trying to bury those ties as Trump's Republican spin machine now seeks to claim!

The Bugs Are Dying, The Birds are Dying and The Oceans Are Halfway Dead...

In other words- carry on... nothing to see here folks! There's still plenty of the Amazon left to burn, vast swaths of Africa we have not yet destroyed or deforested, and even when we do manage to kill off just about everything in the deep blue sea... it'll still look pretty much the same from on top!