Friutcakes in a School System

as recounted in radical sapphoq blog:

Brandon Wegner wrote an opinion piece for his public school's newspaper which was against same gender couples adopting children. He was asked to write it and he did. Brandon Wegner is a Christian. He used scripture to explain his viewpoint. If references to scripture were not wanted, that should have been made clear when he was initially asked to write the piece. A member of the faculty serves as advisor to the school newspaper. The faculty member could have forbidden the piece to be published, or at the very least consulted with his or her supervisor if there was any question.



A same gender couple with a child who attends the school called the principal to complain. They were given an apology. The apology referenced the words "bullying" and "disrespect."


Superintendent Carlson then confronted Brandon Wegner directly. The superintendent threatened to expel him.


These are some of the facts of the case as reported by Fox News-- and only by Fox News.


radical sapphoq says:
Brandon Wegner was asked to write an argument against same gendered couples adopting kids. He did so. That I or anyone else agrees or disagrees with his stance is not the issue.


His opinion was published in the school newspaper. There is no mention of the faculty advisor trying to censor or otherwise change the words that Brandon Wegner wrote.


A same gendered couple whose child attends the school was offended. That is the risk that one takes when freedom of speech is allowed to take place, albeit even the limited freedom of speech that is permitted to high school students in the interest of maintaining order in a public school setting. An apology was issued. I don't know the reasoning behind the decision to give the couple an apology.
The apology referenced "bullying" and "disrespect." I read nothing in Brandon Wegner's article that hinted at either. Brandon Wegner did not write "All same gendered couples should be shot/ forced to live in gay ghettos/ denied all freedoms..." or anything like that. He also did not write "Same gendered couples are ignorant and stupid/ smell badly/ suck..." or anything like that.


The Superintendent was wrong in his actions in my opinion. There is no indication in the report that Brandon Wegner had been asked to keep his beliefs out of his writing. There is also no evidence of Brandon Wegner making a ruckus or otherwise acting in a way that indicated that he hated the child of the same gendered couple or intending to do anything like firebomb the child's parents' car or litter his school's football field with Chick Tracts referencing homosexuality as against the beliefs of Christians who take the Bible literally. If Brandon Wegner had threatened violence or acted in a violent manner, then suspension or expulsion would have been warranted.


All reports I found on the internet listed their source as being Fox News. This sort of thing should have been reported by many other news teams who could have sent out their own reporters to cover the story.


This story is about one student who wrote an opinion that he was asked to write. The school newspaper published the opinion. Sorry, but I don't see how Brandon Wegner could be judged as being wrong for doing as he was asked to do.


I don't know what the beliefs of the principal, faculty advisor, or superintendent are in respect to same gender partners adopting a child and I don't care. What happened to Brandon Wegner was wrong. The superintendent, based on the reports that I read, had no reason to threaten Brandon Wegner with suspension.



Disclosure: I have been involved with g.l.b.t.i.q. issues for a number of years.



http://radio.foxnews.com/toddstarnes/top-stories/atty-says-school-threatened-punished-boy-who-opposed-gay-adoption.html
http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/assets/pdf/U0183892114.PDF

The First Frost

The background is a small sample of what I've been creating lately.  It is taken from a photograph that I took with my cheap digital camera while out walking with the dog.  I altered it.  The maudlin verses stuck themselves on there as I was reviewing my day.  I was unable to get out of the house today.  So I worked on textures and wrote bad verses instead.

It has not been easy, this waiting for death.  My dad's Lewey Body Dementia continues its' wayward course.  Some days are clearer than others.  Physically he is weaker now.  My own tears lay just beneath the surface.


Meanwhile, life continues to pass us by.  His ex-wife, financially destitute from condo living, is considering a move to a warmer climate.  My half-sister is traveling around the country with her new job.  Time stands still as Death courts my dad.  Together, we squeeze what joy we can out of whatever time we have left.


                                                                                     spike

So Fair Use is Dead

                                                  Hey DMCA and SOPA and PIPA -- up yours.
I think not going to movies for a very long time sounds pretty good to me.

https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/

This is what I've been doing...

for fun.

I've been taking pictures of scenery and of the dog and two cats.  Most of the time, I use part of the photos I take in creating textures which are like backgrounds that I used to create for e-stats.

This texture is part of a set or fatpack that I made.  Each fatpack has a name that I give it.  Each texture within a fatpack also has a number related to when I took the photograph and some other information.  This texture used to be part of a photo.
I work on things like this almost every day.  Creating textures from my photographs makes me happy.  What I do is that I select part of a photograph in my collection of photos that I've taken and cut it.  Then I modify it, either stretching it to fill a 512 x 512 space or possibly adding an alpha texture if I want some transparency.  Once I get it looking the way I want it to, then I continue to play with settings until I get some different colors and effects that I like.

[As usual, all rights reserved on these two samples of my work.  Please play nice and don't claim them as  yours.  Originals are stored safely on my hard drive and a few other places.  And of course no hot-linking.
 Blah blah blah].

I have a ton of photos that I've taken with my simple point-and-shoot digital camera over the past six years or so.  And even more textures that I've created from pieces of my photos.

So now you know a bit of what I've been doing.

A few pics have been posted on my blogspot blogs and more will be posted there soon.

Love yas, mean it,
Spike aka SAP or sapphoq

Taking the "Fun" Out of Dysfunctional

To my first half-sister, I remember you when you were a baby. You had a little sky blue dress and a head full of brown hair. You were cute. And I loved you. When you were seven and I was seventeen, I was torn from the life I knew with you and our mother and your dad/my step-dad. It was the second beating and far worse than the first one. Our mother and your dad/my step-dad had shown up at the church I'd been attending drunk. Our mother dragged me out of the church on my knees, flung me down the steps. The people in the church began praying, loudly storming the gates of their heaven on my behalf. I could hear the church people as I was being forced into the car. The beating began in the car. Our mother sure could pack a punch. At home the beating continued. I can still hear our mother saying to your dad/my step-dad, "Hit her, T. Hit her." as she handed him the umbrella she had retrieved from the hallway. She was exhausted and needed him to continue the beating for her. The lights went on in the neighbors' house and just as quickly extinguished. My screams were that loud. The next morning, an elder of the church took the only meaningful action that anyone there that night had. He called my father.

My dad called me the next morning. It was a Monday. My dad begged me to come live with him. I said yes. The second beating had been much worse than the first. (I had the scars on my knees for years after). After the first beating, I comforted myself with the mistaken belief that this wouldn't happen again. But it did happen again. And so, right after our mother left for work I began to pack in secret. Over the course of the next three days, I took as much of my stuff out of the house as I could.

During that time, I lost track of you in my memory. In my memory, I cannot bring forth any accounting of your whereabouts. I'm pretty sure that you were left sleeping at home when our mother and my step-dad left the house in a drunken rage. Your grandparents lived upstairs so you would have been safe enough. Were you sleeping downstairs or upstairs? My guess is that you were sleeping downstairs. I was sleeping upstairs in your uncle's bedroom while he was in prison. Did you wake up during any of the commotion? Did you sleep right through it, or pretend to sleep right through it afraid that you would be next? Did you tell yourself that I was bad, that I deserved it?

You told me once-- many years later-- that you have no memories of your own childhood until senior year in high school. You remember being thrown down the cellar steps because you were refusing to practice the piano. You told me that you had thought that was "normal." I don't know what you went through after I left the household. I had to leave for my own safety. Did you become the target that I had been? I had a fantasy about rescuing you for several years after I had to leave. During my visits through the end of your high school years, you didn't seem to want rescuing. You did write me once about going to a concert and taking your first acid trip. I don't remember what I wrote back to you. I do know your letter shook me to the core and that I did write back. I had found recovery from my own addiction at that time. Your letter scared me. You were only fourteen. I was twenty-four.

There was your first wedding. I decided not to attend. I didn't feel that I would be safe there. Years later, there was my wedding. You and my other half-sister met for the first time. You are ten years younger than I am. She is twenty-five years younger-- my dad and his third wife's child. You don't know each other. You aren't related to each other. I don't know what happened at my wedding. Both of you were bridesmaids. You hated each other. Both our mother and my father indicated to me separately that neither of you wanted a copy of the picture that the photographer took of the three of us.

Your dad/my step-dad got older. He had a heart attack. I went to see him at the hospital. He thought he was going to die. In that hospital bed, he made amends to me. He didn't die then but the amends stuck. (Our mother to this day will not admit to our history). Years passed. Your dad/my step-dad had Addison's, developed Parkinson's. Began failing. He died. Our mother called me on the telephone two weeks after he was buried to tell me. (I found out later that she had "allegedly" called my aunt directly after he had died and told my aunt that she had told me). I was left out of the obituary that the on-line volunteers found for me later. I signed the on-line guest-book. I live, dammit. Your dad/my step-dad was important to me and I miss him. He wasn't my dad and can never be my dad. But he was my step-dad. And you are still one of my half-sisters.

You got married again, had a couple of kids, moved far away. Made something of yourself in your community. The last time I saw you was at Gramma's funeral, holding your little boy in your arms. You shunned me, ignored me. I needed my dad, demanded that he come to the funeral. After all, he had known Gramma and had loved her too. Perhaps that was the reason for our mother not telling me about your dad's/my step-dad's death, I don't know. I can only guess.

I talked with our mother on the phone on Monday. It was a polite but nice conversation. I do not need her to acknowledge our history together. Through the years, hope changes and my hope had changed. Our mother and I have been like two women waiting for a bus, seeking some sort of conversation and perhaps a tiny connection. And on Monday, I thought whatever healing was able to happen between us had. I misjudged her sense of vindictiveness, her need for revenge.

On Tuesday your second husband died. On Thursday, our mother called our aunt and asked her to tell me that your second husband had died. By Thursday it was too late to arrange for a plane. I scoured the internet for your address so I could send you a bereavement card. I did not find out the arrangements until last night-- courtesy of the internet once again. I looked up your address on Google Earth, saw your home and your neighborhood. Flew past the place you work, the downtown stores, the bay. It was not by my will that I am absent from the viewing today and the funeral tomorrow. All of those things are not really for the dead. We do those things for the living, for those left behind. I would have liked to have been there for you and for your kids. But we have become strangers. (Our mother sure knows how to take the "fun" out of dysfunctional). I am crying on the inside.

Tomorrow I will send you the card I got for you. It is the proper thing to do. My dad says it is and my husband concurs. I wish for you comfort from your family, friends, community. I hope your children will make it, grow up to be compassionate human beings and without any history of the traumas that you and I have both experienced separately. It is many years later, little half-sister. You are a grown woman with a family of your own and a dead husband. I am much older than seventeen now and you are much older than seven. I was not able to rescue you and for that I am truly sorry. Goodbye little sister.

sapphoq on life