This is what has been going on

 If a picture is worth a thousand words, this should be worth a million.  These signs showed up in my township the last few days:

The entire text of the proposed ordinance changes are here:  

https://www.raytwp.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Proposed-Zoning-Amendments.pdf

All that is missing from the text is the ordinance requiring all those without an approved income, lifestyle, or house value to be removed from the township.  

Perhaps I would be less upset if the eejits hadn't tried to raise my taxes on my garden lot 90%.  Or if they hadn't, oh, told me I didn't really live in the township.   As the old billboard on Featherstone Road in Pontiac read, "A bullet in the head would be more merciful than 20 years of political torture and..." 

EDIT:  I spoke with the township supervisor.  He had the ordinance removed from the proposal at the last meeting and he was not in favor of it.  Unfortunately, this points out another issue in the township -- communication.  Zoom meetings work when you have decent internet, but there are those of us who don't.  I am so grateful that I don't have to fight this battle that I can live with the rest of it.

 

There is no United States of America

 There is nothing quite like being slapped into reality.   Silly me, I believed that it was still possible for a nobody like Abraham Lincoln to be elected president.  I believed that the so-called Land of Opportunity was still that.   If I am self-depreciating enough, I will admit that I actually believed, oh, that there was still justice in this country, even a little bit.

Yeah, I'm dumb.

The court update with my parents, about their grandson (my half-nephew) who has abused them and threatened to kill them is this:  my parents were coerced into signing papers they didn't understand so they are at fault.  MDHHS -- that brilliant bastion of complete stupidity who answers to no one -- claims my dad has early onset dementia, because the nephew's psychiatrist says so -- because the 11 year old boy said so.  If my dad does, then how can they coerce him into an admission that isn't true?

Oh, and the overall goal, besides taking all the money CPS can from my parents, is to put the grandson back in.  Yes, the same one who threatened to kill them, and who held my dad hostage while my mom almost died in the hospital.

The referee, the lawyers, CPS and MDHHS, are all more concerned with making money and getting on the golf course than solving the problem of a child so horribly abused that he never should have been placed with his grandparents.  Except the State of Michigan was more concerned with getting the kids out of the system, and so their facilitator lied -- and was paid a $10,000 bonus.  $5,000 per child.  The Brockitt case was worth $20,000.

As some of you know, my mom almost died in January.  She is not able to walk very well, and frankly, I have been in the middle ground of my parents, as my mom is in denial about what she is and isn't able to do.  She is unable to do very little, and I can't see how she will be able to stay on her own once my dad dies of the stress of this situation.  (No one seems to recall his heart problems, or that his grandson attempted to kill him.)   There are days I don't understand how she can be home at all. 

But hey, there's a lot of people who need to make their money and hurry up to get out onto the golf course.   Maybe we should hang the lawyers, judges, social workers and others who can't be bothered with their jobs.....  but they make too much money.   Must be nice to consistently replace an abuser into the same home, and not be held liable for breaking the law, eh Samantha?  The law says an abuser cannot be placed back into the home.  Must be nice to be able to watch elder abuse occur and not be named as accessory when you refused to stop it, eh Keith? 

"Cut the telephone line and the story's the same."

Defending the important things...

My backyard view, December 28, 2017

There is a story about the karate master, Matsumura Sokon, who was challenged once and won a match simply by looking at his opponent.  It wasn't that the opponent had no skill;  Matsumura himself acknowledged that he might easily have lost the match to the skilled engraver, who continued to argue that Matsumura was the greater.  Matsumura explained it this way to his opponent:  “But I know this: you were determined to win and I was just as determined to die if I lost. That was the difference between us.”  (Karate-do, My way of Life by Gichin Funakoshi)

Those words come back to me now as I face another challenge in my life.  "You were determined to win and I was just as determined to die if I lost."  I recall the words one of my sensei used in class one night, the saying of the samurai, who each day would say, "Today is a good day to die."  It wasn't that they were suicidal, as our society assumes immediately.  It meant that if they should go into battle they would fight as if each battle was to the death.  In other words, one was fighting to win, the other was fighting for his life.

Today is a good day to die.  

Gas War 2018 has begun.  It isn't my old friends across the road this time, but the one that blew up 3 miles south of us 4 years ago along the Vector Pipeline (just to mention one incident.)  It hit our house hard, from 3 miles away.  It cracked plaster next door (we don't have plaster).  Now this company wants to build a compressor station 1/2 mile south of my house.  Already the downplaying begins:  "oh, it only blew up because of the pipeline getting hit a few days before..."  "oh, it was only compressed air, not gas...."  It is funny to me how a bunch of people, who have never done a FOIA request on an incident involving natural gas, know so much about the safety of gas.  

Fear has that effect on people.  When we are afraid, we downplay the seriousness of whatever it is so that we feel like we are in control of the fear.  We all do it at times.  I'm guilty of it myself, and I've done it with some pretty stupid and silly things (yoko geri -- side kick -- still gets me.) However, after almost 19 years of living in the shadow of the natural gas industry, and after the night of August 10, 2016, downplaying the fear is no longer an option.  Either I leave and get far away, or I stay and fight.  If I stay and remain silent, then I lose all rights to redress when something happens.  (Not "if" something happens, "when.")  

Leaving is an option we have looked at, but forces outside of our control have pretty well taken that away from us.  (Insert rant about the housing market being destroyed, Macomb Twp and their warped politics, and side rant about agribusiness vs agriculture and who is turning Macomb County into Wayne County Junior.)  Yes, the option of leaving has been taken away when it will mean between $70,000 and $100,000 mortgage, with selling a house without a mortgage on it, for one not any better than what we have.

The fight has already begun on my end.  I will be honest.  I do not know if it is possible to stop another compressor station from going in.  (Kelo v. City of New London, perhaps?)  However, I do know this:  Said company is fighting for money; I am fighting for my home.  

Today is a good day to die.