THERE IS NO CODE INTENDED BY ME IN ANYTHING I WRITE ON THIS PAGE.
May 12, 2011
--Typo from Blog Page May 7, 2011: Phoebe Prince
On the night of May 7, 2011, after I'd written about the Boston Globe's disrespectful attitude toward Phoebe Prince, I got the feeling that I should go back to the page I'd written about it and check for typos. I often get that feeling even when I haven't made any mistakes, so I didn't go back and check.
I did make a typo. The last sentence of that essay wasn't supposed to be "How anyone can look at something like page B3 of the May 6, 2011 Boston Globe and say anything but pure evil is beyond me," it was supposed to be "How anyone can look at something like page B3 of the May 6, 2011 Boston Globe and see anything but pure evil is beyond me." I've fixed that mistake on the original page of my blog, May 7, 2011.
Some typos are more important than others; that one was important. I'm sorry.
--The Department of Labor
Yesterday, I was driven out of the Department of Labor again. First, in the morning, a male client of the office sitting at the table behind me decided to make his presence known to me by saying loudly to a male, DOL staff member "If the water level weren't so high, I'd go fishing!" I had been doing absolutely nothing but minding my own business; I was in the middle of a conversation with a female staff member who was answering questions for me about a work training program that I had applied for.
He was so loud that it made it impossible for me to continue my conversation with the woman who was trying to help me. I looked over in his direction and saw that the male, DOL staff member to whom the client had addressed his comment was grinning and about to continue the conversation with the client. I said to the client "I'm sure that the water level is fine, and I'm also sure that you can find something else to talk about."
The male staff member is someone who has hassled me and other clients before. He walks around to people and says "So, are you finding lots of good jobs?" but he doesn't say it in a nice way. It seems as if he's mostly trying to catch people using the resource center for unproductive things. It's not as if he walks up to anyone and says "How's the job search going? Can I help you with anything?"
Was the male client's comment about the water level and fishing considered by that male staff member to be related to a work search? The client was just sitting there at that table that doesn't even have a computer on it. Was his comment somehow more work-related than my attempts to protect myself from exactly that kind of onslaught?
Today, May 12, 2011, on page B10 of the Wall Street Journal, there's a 1/2 page ad from the Salvation Army. The ad says "We Combat Natural Disasters With Acts of G-d." (I was taught in Hebrew school not to spell out the word "G-d;" it's one of the few out of the many rules of Judaism that I felt was easy enough to follow that I almost always do follow it. The word is spelled completely in the ad.) The ad goes on to say "This spring, when devastating tornadoes struck our country, they impacted thousands of lives. Now, the Salvation Army is doing the same. Thanks to your generosity, we have been there, helping affected communities from the beginning. And we will remain there long after the healing is complete, providing the victims with food, supplies, shelter and most important, with hope. Thank you for your help, and for your continued giving at 1-800-SAL-ARMY or salvationarmyusa.org."
I applied at the local Salvation Army Thrift Store when I first got to town, and didn't get hired. They still have a "Help Wanted" sign in their window.
Maybe people who haven't watched this situation since about this time of last year, 2010, don't realize that there's a young, female celebrity who seemed to have believed that I had deliberately ended up within a circle of men. She also seemed to have set out not only to copy that situation, which was NOT deliberately planned or created by me and which is still a situation that causes me distress, she meant to obtain one of the men as a boyfriend if she could. She made a major, media-and-corporate endorsed campaign out of pursuing one of the men, even though at that time he was still with his girlfriend of several years.
It seemed to me then, and still seems to me, that the bullies in the media, corporate world and the government used the young, female celebrity in order to try to upset and intimidate me. It didn't work on me because I try not to treat men as trophies in personal competitions with other women. I don't like being in personal competitions with anybody, but I especially dislike being in personal competitions with other women, and most of all, I hate being in personal competitions with other women over men.
There's no excuse for me to be getting compared to flooding, whether it's in Vermont or anywhere else. Certainly as far as Vermont goes; there's a big river that runs through the town I'm living in now, and it is nowhere near being flooded. If anything, it seems to be in some places at half or less than half of its normal height. Since that's the case, I wonder if all reports of flooding everywhere have been distorted by the bullying faction of the media in order to continue the harassment.
Whether or not I end up dating the now-apparently-single man that this woman wants, there's no reason at all for me or for her or for any other woman to be the object of degradation by ugly news stories, coded or not, that are meant to reference genitals and genital functions. There's also no reason that any business should be afraid or reluctant to hire me or that any business or organization should use me as a way to make money off of an evil political situation.
The male client at the DOL who'd talked about water levels and fishing left after I told him that he could find something else to talk about. That was just the first incident of the day. Later, I was finally driven out of the office by the same female DOL staff member who'd driven me out the last time. I hadn't been in that office for days, since the last time that she'd interrupted her own work day to do nothing but try to upset me.
She was the same woman who was in the meeting with the DOL supervisor on May 5, 2011, when I had tried to assert my rights as a human being and he had told me "As long as you're looking for work, we're good." On that day, as I wrote on my blog page from May 5, 2011, she spent the rest of the day until I left walking back and forth out of the office and coughing whenever she was close enough for me to hear it. I finally said to her on that day "I'm doing nothing but strictly job-related work search here." She said "I didn't ask," and I told her "I know you didn't." Then I left, and I didn't go back until yesterday, when she stalked me again.
How can I look for work in that office if there are staff members who don't even do their own work while I'm there, who do nothing but walk in and out of the room that I'm in so that they can make comments, encourage others to make comments, or come up behind me and cough every few minutes? She got to me yesterday; she provoked me until I coughed back at her. It was unfortunate that I let her provoke me because she's the only female staff member there who's still trying to upset me, and she got me to cough in front of the other women there with whom I've established good terms. She was walking down the hall close behind me, following me, and just as I was about to go back into the office, she coughed again. I lost my temper and I coughed, too, just as I walked through the open door of the office where other female staff were; because her cough had been out in the hall while she was following me in to the office, and my cough was just as I walked into the office, they might not have heard her cough first, at me. They might have thought I was coughing at them, but I wasn't, I was reacting to Ms. "Can't Stay In My Own Office and Do Anything Productive Because I Now Live To Harass Lena Kochman All Day."
It wasn't as if Ms. "Can't Stay In Her Own Office" needed to be where I was going. There were no other clients in the office at that time besides me.
She really does stalk me. She walks into the room, she walks out of the room, she walks by me every time and coughs. If I'm not sitting at a computer that's close to the door that she walks into, she swerves on her way out and coughs at me then. This happens several times in a few minutes and she just isn't doing anything when she does that except getting within a few feet of me and coughing.
She's been doing it for weeks; I doubt very much that it's the result of a cold, because it's the same pattern every time. She's completely silent until she gets within range of me and then she coughs. Then she walks on, completely silent.
I have been getting over my own cold; my worst coughing with my cold only lasted for a few days. Yesterday, without alluding to the overall situation, I had apologized to one of the other female staff members for the fact that I was still coughing a little bit and we'd had a completely fine conversation. That was a few hours before Ms. "Can't Stay In Her Own Office" provoked me into coughing on purpose. Soon after she provoked me, I left the building. I didn't want her to succeed in provoking me more.
--Men being harassed
When I said recently that men aren't being harassed with references to male genitals and functions anywhere near as much as women are being harassed with references to female genitals and functions, I didn't mean that men should be getting harassed in any way. Nobody should be getting harassed.
--The Price Chopper
I was at the Price Chopper recently, and the loudspeaker was playing recorded ads for the store. The first of these was nothing more than an introductory sentence about their fresh commodities and then a list of nouns, with each noun preceded by the word "fresh."
Does the Price Chopper sell a lot of things that AREN'T fresh? Is that why the supermarket feels it imperative to make special announcements describing the things that it sells that ARE, according to their ads, fresh?
--The fire alarm at the shelter
The fire alarm at the shelter went off twice last night, once at 12:00 a.m. and once at 3:00 a.m.. Both times, as is the case every time the fire alarm goes off, all of the residents and the volunteer had to leave the house and stand on the other side of the street to wait for the fire department to show up. So far, that has every time involved two, full-size firetrucks and a group of firefighters wearing uniforms and wielding hatchets.
How much does it cost every time that the firefighters show up to shut off a false fire alarm?
--Hope it helps
When I first got to the hospital, I met a woman with whom I often ended up playing cards. Within a few days of meeting me, she showed some signs of having heard of me before I got there. She was perfectly nice to me.
I had talked to almost nobody about what was going on, and it was difficult for me to talk about it with her even in veiled terms. I didn't even really talk about it with her, but I did say that it might be helpful to me if she told some staff about what my situation outside the hospital had been.
Unfortunately, it's such a terrible hospital that even though it became obvious to me later that a lot of staff DID already know who I was, the next thing I saw was what looked like staff outside of the woman's door, holding extra medication to give to her.
I'm sorry to her if she made an attempt to help me and got hurt from it. I hope that wherever she is now, if she's being made to take extra medication because of an attempt to help me, that she can show this section of my blog to her doctor and/or a lawyer and get some freedom.
@ 5:53 p.m.
--Another reason why the harassment is bad
Just as I'm sure that, because of what's happened to me, a lot of other women and girls and the men and boys who don't want to abuse women and girls are being harassed and abused all over Vermont, if not all over the country and the world, I'm sure that for most of those people, the bullying has no mitigating factors. My situation has some glamor to it. Even the death threats ranging from those given by the occasional, local inhabitant to those made by the government make for something of a glamorous situation, although it is dangerous and somewhat frightening glamor.
Also, I know that in the midst of all of this, even a lot of the people who are harassing me recognize that I have talent and intelligence, and that if the issues can resolve I have a lot to contribute. I have received a lot of attention for being smart, even for being gifted. That's MORE glamor.
What do all of the people who are the objects of torment just because of the low standard that's being set in regard to me have to mitigate what they're going through every day? Although they may be just as smart as I am, they're not famous for it, or anything near being personally identified by famous and/or powerful people. They get NOTHING along with being abused; nothing at all.
Copyright L. Kochman May 12, 2011 @ 6:19 p.m.
May 12, 2011
--Typo from Blog Page May 7, 2011: Phoebe Prince
On the night of May 7, 2011, after I'd written about the Boston Globe's disrespectful attitude toward Phoebe Prince, I got the feeling that I should go back to the page I'd written about it and check for typos. I often get that feeling even when I haven't made any mistakes, so I didn't go back and check.
I did make a typo. The last sentence of that essay wasn't supposed to be "How anyone can look at something like page B3 of the May 6, 2011 Boston Globe and say anything but pure evil is beyond me," it was supposed to be "How anyone can look at something like page B3 of the May 6, 2011 Boston Globe and see anything but pure evil is beyond me." I've fixed that mistake on the original page of my blog, May 7, 2011.
Some typos are more important than others; that one was important. I'm sorry.
--The Department of Labor
Yesterday, I was driven out of the Department of Labor again. First, in the morning, a male client of the office sitting at the table behind me decided to make his presence known to me by saying loudly to a male, DOL staff member "If the water level weren't so high, I'd go fishing!" I had been doing absolutely nothing but minding my own business; I was in the middle of a conversation with a female staff member who was answering questions for me about a work training program that I had applied for.
He was so loud that it made it impossible for me to continue my conversation with the woman who was trying to help me. I looked over in his direction and saw that the male, DOL staff member to whom the client had addressed his comment was grinning and about to continue the conversation with the client. I said to the client "I'm sure that the water level is fine, and I'm also sure that you can find something else to talk about."
The male staff member is someone who has hassled me and other clients before. He walks around to people and says "So, are you finding lots of good jobs?" but he doesn't say it in a nice way. It seems as if he's mostly trying to catch people using the resource center for unproductive things. It's not as if he walks up to anyone and says "How's the job search going? Can I help you with anything?"
Was the male client's comment about the water level and fishing considered by that male staff member to be related to a work search? The client was just sitting there at that table that doesn't even have a computer on it. Was his comment somehow more work-related than my attempts to protect myself from exactly that kind of onslaught?
Today, May 12, 2011, on page B10 of the Wall Street Journal, there's a 1/2 page ad from the Salvation Army. The ad says "We Combat Natural Disasters With Acts of G-d." (I was taught in Hebrew school not to spell out the word "G-d;" it's one of the few out of the many rules of Judaism that I felt was easy enough to follow that I almost always do follow it. The word is spelled completely in the ad.) The ad goes on to say "This spring, when devastating tornadoes struck our country, they impacted thousands of lives. Now, the Salvation Army is doing the same. Thanks to your generosity, we have been there, helping affected communities from the beginning. And we will remain there long after the healing is complete, providing the victims with food, supplies, shelter and most important, with hope. Thank you for your help, and for your continued giving at 1-800-SAL-ARMY or salvationarmyusa.org."
I applied at the local Salvation Army Thrift Store when I first got to town, and didn't get hired. They still have a "Help Wanted" sign in their window.
Maybe people who haven't watched this situation since about this time of last year, 2010, don't realize that there's a young, female celebrity who seemed to have believed that I had deliberately ended up within a circle of men. She also seemed to have set out not only to copy that situation, which was NOT deliberately planned or created by me and which is still a situation that causes me distress, she meant to obtain one of the men as a boyfriend if she could. She made a major, media-and-corporate endorsed campaign out of pursuing one of the men, even though at that time he was still with his girlfriend of several years.
It seemed to me then, and still seems to me, that the bullies in the media, corporate world and the government used the young, female celebrity in order to try to upset and intimidate me. It didn't work on me because I try not to treat men as trophies in personal competitions with other women. I don't like being in personal competitions with anybody, but I especially dislike being in personal competitions with other women, and most of all, I hate being in personal competitions with other women over men.
There's no excuse for me to be getting compared to flooding, whether it's in Vermont or anywhere else. Certainly as far as Vermont goes; there's a big river that runs through the town I'm living in now, and it is nowhere near being flooded. If anything, it seems to be in some places at half or less than half of its normal height. Since that's the case, I wonder if all reports of flooding everywhere have been distorted by the bullying faction of the media in order to continue the harassment.
Whether or not I end up dating the now-apparently-single man that this woman wants, there's no reason at all for me or for her or for any other woman to be the object of degradation by ugly news stories, coded or not, that are meant to reference genitals and genital functions. There's also no reason that any business should be afraid or reluctant to hire me or that any business or organization should use me as a way to make money off of an evil political situation.
The male client at the DOL who'd talked about water levels and fishing left after I told him that he could find something else to talk about. That was just the first incident of the day. Later, I was finally driven out of the office by the same female DOL staff member who'd driven me out the last time. I hadn't been in that office for days, since the last time that she'd interrupted her own work day to do nothing but try to upset me.
She was the same woman who was in the meeting with the DOL supervisor on May 5, 2011, when I had tried to assert my rights as a human being and he had told me "As long as you're looking for work, we're good." On that day, as I wrote on my blog page from May 5, 2011, she spent the rest of the day until I left walking back and forth out of the office and coughing whenever she was close enough for me to hear it. I finally said to her on that day "I'm doing nothing but strictly job-related work search here." She said "I didn't ask," and I told her "I know you didn't." Then I left, and I didn't go back until yesterday, when she stalked me again.
How can I look for work in that office if there are staff members who don't even do their own work while I'm there, who do nothing but walk in and out of the room that I'm in so that they can make comments, encourage others to make comments, or come up behind me and cough every few minutes? She got to me yesterday; she provoked me until I coughed back at her. It was unfortunate that I let her provoke me because she's the only female staff member there who's still trying to upset me, and she got me to cough in front of the other women there with whom I've established good terms. She was walking down the hall close behind me, following me, and just as I was about to go back into the office, she coughed again. I lost my temper and I coughed, too, just as I walked through the open door of the office where other female staff were; because her cough had been out in the hall while she was following me in to the office, and my cough was just as I walked into the office, they might not have heard her cough first, at me. They might have thought I was coughing at them, but I wasn't, I was reacting to Ms. "Can't Stay In My Own Office and Do Anything Productive Because I Now Live To Harass Lena Kochman All Day."
It wasn't as if Ms. "Can't Stay In Her Own Office" needed to be where I was going. There were no other clients in the office at that time besides me.
She really does stalk me. She walks into the room, she walks out of the room, she walks by me every time and coughs. If I'm not sitting at a computer that's close to the door that she walks into, she swerves on her way out and coughs at me then. This happens several times in a few minutes and she just isn't doing anything when she does that except getting within a few feet of me and coughing.
She's been doing it for weeks; I doubt very much that it's the result of a cold, because it's the same pattern every time. She's completely silent until she gets within range of me and then she coughs. Then she walks on, completely silent.
I have been getting over my own cold; my worst coughing with my cold only lasted for a few days. Yesterday, without alluding to the overall situation, I had apologized to one of the other female staff members for the fact that I was still coughing a little bit and we'd had a completely fine conversation. That was a few hours before Ms. "Can't Stay In Her Own Office" provoked me into coughing on purpose. Soon after she provoked me, I left the building. I didn't want her to succeed in provoking me more.
--Men being harassed
When I said recently that men aren't being harassed with references to male genitals and functions anywhere near as much as women are being harassed with references to female genitals and functions, I didn't mean that men should be getting harassed in any way. Nobody should be getting harassed.
--The Price Chopper
I was at the Price Chopper recently, and the loudspeaker was playing recorded ads for the store. The first of these was nothing more than an introductory sentence about their fresh commodities and then a list of nouns, with each noun preceded by the word "fresh."
Does the Price Chopper sell a lot of things that AREN'T fresh? Is that why the supermarket feels it imperative to make special announcements describing the things that it sells that ARE, according to their ads, fresh?
--The fire alarm at the shelter
The fire alarm at the shelter went off twice last night, once at 12:00 a.m. and once at 3:00 a.m.. Both times, as is the case every time the fire alarm goes off, all of the residents and the volunteer had to leave the house and stand on the other side of the street to wait for the fire department to show up. So far, that has every time involved two, full-size firetrucks and a group of firefighters wearing uniforms and wielding hatchets.
How much does it cost every time that the firefighters show up to shut off a false fire alarm?
--Hope it helps
When I first got to the hospital, I met a woman with whom I often ended up playing cards. Within a few days of meeting me, she showed some signs of having heard of me before I got there. She was perfectly nice to me.
I had talked to almost nobody about what was going on, and it was difficult for me to talk about it with her even in veiled terms. I didn't even really talk about it with her, but I did say that it might be helpful to me if she told some staff about what my situation outside the hospital had been.
Unfortunately, it's such a terrible hospital that even though it became obvious to me later that a lot of staff DID already know who I was, the next thing I saw was what looked like staff outside of the woman's door, holding extra medication to give to her.
I'm sorry to her if she made an attempt to help me and got hurt from it. I hope that wherever she is now, if she's being made to take extra medication because of an attempt to help me, that she can show this section of my blog to her doctor and/or a lawyer and get some freedom.
@ 5:53 p.m.
--Another reason why the harassment is bad
Just as I'm sure that, because of what's happened to me, a lot of other women and girls and the men and boys who don't want to abuse women and girls are being harassed and abused all over Vermont, if not all over the country and the world, I'm sure that for most of those people, the bullying has no mitigating factors. My situation has some glamor to it. Even the death threats ranging from those given by the occasional, local inhabitant to those made by the government make for something of a glamorous situation, although it is dangerous and somewhat frightening glamor.
Also, I know that in the midst of all of this, even a lot of the people who are harassing me recognize that I have talent and intelligence, and that if the issues can resolve I have a lot to contribute. I have received a lot of attention for being smart, even for being gifted. That's MORE glamor.
What do all of the people who are the objects of torment just because of the low standard that's being set in regard to me have to mitigate what they're going through every day? Although they may be just as smart as I am, they're not famous for it, or anything near being personally identified by famous and/or powerful people. They get NOTHING along with being abused; nothing at all.
Copyright L. Kochman May 12, 2011 @ 6:19 p.m.