June 8, 2011
--Yesterday, I passed by a guy on the sidewalk who was holding the hand of his crying, male toddler. The toddler was wearing a t-shirt that said "Kahuna Beach."
A couple of weeks ago, I saw another very young child with his family, wearing a shirt that said "Fishing" on it.
Is it too dramatic to say "It begins"? I don't know that it's dramatic so much as a late mention; I'm pretty sure it's already begun.
@6:00 a.m.
--Al-Anon and AA meetings
One thing that's been too bad is that I've been going to Al-Anon since about 2006, and when I can't go to those meetings, I go to AA meetings. There are a lot more AA meetings than Al-Anon meetings, and they're the same 12 steps in each meeting.
There is supposed to be an "anonymity" rule, obviously, and then there's a rule about keeping anonymity at the level of radio, press, films and TV. However, I stopped being able to go to AA meetings because all year that I've tried to go, it would be several people, mostly men but also women, who would simply use the fact that I was there to fill their "shares" with harassing comments.
It was at one of those meetings, when I objected for what was not the first time of some guy talking about "fishing" that I got ganged up on by several of the men in the group. One of them actually stood over me as they all yelled at me; all I had said was "I'm not here to be abused. You're supposed to leave all other issues at the door, including political issues." Not only did not one person in the room support me, they actually pretended not to know what I was talking about while first laughing in my face and then yelling at me with more and more violence and anger.
That was a small meeting, and there was only one other woman there, who just sat there and didn't say anything.
I know that AA as an organization has been part of the harassment; I saw some of their newsletters. It's nice that maybe now they're figuring out who the bad guys really are, but that doesn't excuse what I've been through in the meetings. Nobody has the right to show up to any 12-step meeting and use his or her time to take out his or her problems on someone else.
I also always respected the time of alcoholics in those meetings. In some meetings, they ask that people who are Al-Anon just listen, and I've respected that. Even if I ever raise my hand to talk in an AA meeting, I always make sure that I'm not taking time from someone else, specifically alcholics in the meetings.
I tried more than once, in meetings to say "I'm not here to be abused," but often all that did was make the people who were there to be harassing more volatile and say more disgusting things. I was actually afraid in the meeting when the men were shouting at me; while they were shouting at me, they were actually telling me that I was being disruptive. They did this after the guy running the meeting had sat down near me with his coffee cup that had mud and pigs on it, I had moved to a seat farther away from him, he followed me to the couch from his chair and sat there, and then gone on to make his "fishing" comment. I objected, saying "I'm not here to be abused," and the meeting escalated from there, ending with several of the men shouting at me, one of them standing over me to shout at me, and me thinking "If I stay here for another minute, either they're going to call the police on me and tell the police that I was being disruptive for no reason, or I'm going to hit one of them and then they'll call the police, or one of them is going to hit me."
I tried one of the Al-Anon meetings and found that at least one of the people there also made harassing comments in her "share." Also, the State Convention in Burlingon is July 15-17 and is called "Catch The Wave: Celebrating 60 Years of Al-Anon Recovery."
I'm not an alcoholic; as I've said many times, I've never even been drunk. That's why I would usually go to Al-Anon meetings unless there wasn't one to go to. However, I don't think that those meetings are a place for people to show up and harass me; I really don't, no matter who's telling people that it's a good thing to do.
I also don't think that the "anonymity" rules should apply to people being abused in those meetings. I've heard other stories of people having bad experiences with 12 step programs. I personally have never had a sponsor, and I also think that in this day and age, when counseling is not perfect but doesn't carry the same stigma that it probably did decades ago, people having sponsors is a bad idea. I can't tell you how many times I've sat in AA meetings and heard someone say "I was a sponsor to someone who killed him/herself." There really is a lot of control given to sponsors by the organization and by people in the meetings; I think it's dangerous. You're taking people who have no counseling experience at all and giving them access to and control over the thoughts and emotions of people who are already very vulnerable. I've even heard stories such as "My sponsor stole money from me."
For anyone who doesn't know anything about the 12-Step programs, sponsors are just people who are also in the program; maybe they've been in the program for a while, but that doesn't matter, they have no business trying to counsel people who are in such emotional need as most people who join one of those programs.
I'm sure that there will be an uproar in the 12-step communities about my having broken anonymity to talk about this, but that's too bad. I tried it the nice way, and that didn't work. I even tried calling and leaving messages at the AA center, and that's moving more slowly than I'd like.
It's not possible to put a number on all of the violations and abuses I've been subjected to over the pat 2 years. I'm not interested in being abused.
If I go to 12-step meetings, or did in the past, it was because I wanted to be there to help myself gain emotional stability. That was my reason for going; I know I'm not perfect, and I showed my knowledge of that by going to those meetings. What right does anyone have to show up at a meeting like that, or write a newsletter for that organization, abusing me and then criticizing me for being upset?
What has happened in those meetings, in my opinion, is a total violation of the principles of all of the 12-step programs.
"When anyone, anywhere, reaches out for help.....I want the hand of the 12-step programs always to be there to try to make the person feel bad, to ignore my own issues while I think of disgusting things to say in meetings and write in newsletters?"
I don't think that's how the saying goes.
Sexism has no place in the 12-step programs, just as it has no place anywhere else in the world.
@ 5:00 p.m.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--I was right about the people who like the idea of pedophilia and most of the other problems, too.
The front page of the Times Argus today showed a little girl and her father eating ice cream; it's a gross picture, with the guy's mouth wide open. There's another "flood cleanup" title with it.
The Ford dealership where I once went in to say that a guy had stopped his car by the side of the road and didn't look like he wanted leave me alone, where I had told the store assistants what happened and asked if I could sit there for a minute and then been harassed by the employees of the store; that dealership now has a red car in the front of its parking lot that has "Find ice cream" written on the back windshielf in green. The red car is attached to a red boat that says "Seabreeze" on it.
The lunch special advertised for on the placard in front of DJ's convenience store says:
"Tator Tot Caserole"
It's written that way on both sides of the sign. As is always the case in these situations, I have accurately reported the spelling on the sign.
Montpelier High School is having an event called "Touch A Truck," for families, students and children. It's $5 for families, I think the sign said it was $3 for students, and $1 for children.
Cumberland Farms has added "New Iced Tea Free on Fridays," since I reported that I was glad I hadn't thrown my iced coffee in the face of a rude cashier there.
The Mobil Short Stop near that Cumberland Farms, which still has signs up saying things such as "Engines Adore Clean," also has a 2-sided placard out in front of the store today. One side says:
"Sandwich special
Egg Salad with Bacon
Great combination!
Made to order on your choice of bread, roll or grilled Panini
We have lots of COLD beverages"
The other side of the sign says:
"We have many COLD beverages. Stop in for a freshmade sandwich, Grilled panini, pizza, mac & cheese, etc. All Homemade."
Here my impatience to get on with my day instead of standing there in the hot sun taking notes while chuckling to myself did get the best of me. I can't continue my joke by saying "As is always the case in these situations, I have accurately reported both spelling AND grammar," because I don't think I got all the punctuation the way it was written on the sign. However, I think that the grammatically correct term is "freshly made sandwich." In my eagerness to get that part of the sign right, I ignored what might have been many other opportunities to make the same sort of point.
There's a deli called "Coffee Corner" in Montpelier. Today, their placard was advertising "Homemaid Soups & Pies."
It was such a great joke I had planned, to write "As is always the case in these situations, I have accurately reported spelling," after every one of these examples which I saw today. Again, in my mirth, I saw only the word "Homemaid" and perhaps missed many other things on the sign that I could now be writing about.
I went in the front door, where on the bulletin board there are many posters. One of the most prominent posters is for music at a place called Higher Ground. Some of the acts featured are, in all capital letters:
"NOVALIMA
FRESHLY GROUND
RUPA AND THE APRIL FISHES
BOMBINO"
That poster is near another ad for "Summer Break Art Camp," which is next to a poster about creatures under the sea for the ECHO/Leahy Center, which is next to an ad for a nursery and kindergarten.
I saw the same ad for the nursery and kindergarten in Barre today, in the window of a store called "Women and Children First." That store is an example of something I said last year, which is that pedophiles often do things that will bring them near children, such as own and work at children's clothing stores.
The store also had the following things in its front windows:
--a picture of a castle with a moat
--an outfit with a pair of shorts and a shirt that said "Lord of the Board," which wouldn't necessarily have meant much to me before the whole pedophilia/male dominance situation started in general
-a red jacket that had "OCEAN" written on it, next to a red sweatshirt with a picture of Minnie Mouse that says "Minnie," next to shorts that have both flames and sharks on them.
--a clothing/toy set featuring Noah's Ark
--a stuffed frog
--Spiderman shorts
--a t-shirt covered with a picture of fish and other sealife, saying "New England Aquarium," saying "Commotion in the Ocean."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--A word about spelling and grammar
I'm not a great speller, and my grammar also often leaves something to be desired. However, I write thousands of words a week, and people such as the ones I've mentioned today only had a few words to get through on a sign. Also, I'm not a pedophile, and I'm not in favor of women being abused and killed.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--Jeanne Collins, the superintendant of Burlington schools whose picture and harassing article in the Burlington community newspaper I documented on my Weebly blog last fall, was recently named "Superintendant of the Year." The issue of the North Avenue News that I took pictures of and wrote about on Weebly also had more than one pedophilic insinuation in it.
The Burlington Free Press announced Ms. Collins's recent award at the top of its front page on June 1, 2011.
I've noticed a trend, that people who I've documented as having been part of the harassment and other issues in Vermont got awards over the past several months. Vermont's a very corrupt place.
I also saw recently on a TV news show that Burlington teachers got a bunch of raises. Were those raises in addition to whatever percentage the Burlington staff got of the $19 million in "Emergency Education Aid" that was paid only to teachers and administrators by the federal government back in September of 2010?
--Gannett news service
I think that it's too bad that newspapers in Vermont that are dominant in terms of circulation such as the Burlington Free Press and the Times Argus are allowed to exist here. There's a big accountability problem; Gannett news service is a big, out-of-state media corporation that owns the Free Press, the Argus, other newspapers like them in other states, and which also publishes papers with national circulation such as USA Today. I almost think that papers such as the Burlington Free Press and the Times Argus are more dangerous to states such as Vermont than more individually respected, bigger newspapers and media sources are, because even though the Free Press and the Times Argus don't have the reading population of newspapers such as the New York Times, Boston Globe and others, what are people in Vermont communities who object to what's going on supposed to do about the campaign to brutalize women and children as it's being perpetuated by Gannett-owned papers in Vermont?
If people who live here want to complain to the reporters, managers, and editors of the Burlington Free Press and Times Argus, who's going to listen? The local management of those newspapers must be getting told by Gannett "Don't worry about the locals; you won't lose your job. Just keep doing what you're doing," not least because the nightmare is probably selling a lot of papers. People who buy the papers who hate what's going on and want to keep track of it are still buying papers.
If people who live in Vermont who hate what's going on contact Gannett directly; Vermont is such a small state and has such a small population compared to even mid-size cities in other states that Gannett is probably writing off the complaints it gets from people here.
I just did a Google search on the term "Vermont population." The top of the first page from the search has a chart and next to the chart is a number from the U.S. Census Bureau, July 2009.
The number is 621,760.
Copyright L,. Kochman June 8, 2011 @ 5:56 p.m.
--Yesterday, I passed by a guy on the sidewalk who was holding the hand of his crying, male toddler. The toddler was wearing a t-shirt that said "Kahuna Beach."
A couple of weeks ago, I saw another very young child with his family, wearing a shirt that said "Fishing" on it.
Is it too dramatic to say "It begins"? I don't know that it's dramatic so much as a late mention; I'm pretty sure it's already begun.
@6:00 a.m.
--Al-Anon and AA meetings
One thing that's been too bad is that I've been going to Al-Anon since about 2006, and when I can't go to those meetings, I go to AA meetings. There are a lot more AA meetings than Al-Anon meetings, and they're the same 12 steps in each meeting.
There is supposed to be an "anonymity" rule, obviously, and then there's a rule about keeping anonymity at the level of radio, press, films and TV. However, I stopped being able to go to AA meetings because all year that I've tried to go, it would be several people, mostly men but also women, who would simply use the fact that I was there to fill their "shares" with harassing comments.
It was at one of those meetings, when I objected for what was not the first time of some guy talking about "fishing" that I got ganged up on by several of the men in the group. One of them actually stood over me as they all yelled at me; all I had said was "I'm not here to be abused. You're supposed to leave all other issues at the door, including political issues." Not only did not one person in the room support me, they actually pretended not to know what I was talking about while first laughing in my face and then yelling at me with more and more violence and anger.
That was a small meeting, and there was only one other woman there, who just sat there and didn't say anything.
I know that AA as an organization has been part of the harassment; I saw some of their newsletters. It's nice that maybe now they're figuring out who the bad guys really are, but that doesn't excuse what I've been through in the meetings. Nobody has the right to show up to any 12-step meeting and use his or her time to take out his or her problems on someone else.
I also always respected the time of alcoholics in those meetings. In some meetings, they ask that people who are Al-Anon just listen, and I've respected that. Even if I ever raise my hand to talk in an AA meeting, I always make sure that I'm not taking time from someone else, specifically alcholics in the meetings.
I tried more than once, in meetings to say "I'm not here to be abused," but often all that did was make the people who were there to be harassing more volatile and say more disgusting things. I was actually afraid in the meeting when the men were shouting at me; while they were shouting at me, they were actually telling me that I was being disruptive. They did this after the guy running the meeting had sat down near me with his coffee cup that had mud and pigs on it, I had moved to a seat farther away from him, he followed me to the couch from his chair and sat there, and then gone on to make his "fishing" comment. I objected, saying "I'm not here to be abused," and the meeting escalated from there, ending with several of the men shouting at me, one of them standing over me to shout at me, and me thinking "If I stay here for another minute, either they're going to call the police on me and tell the police that I was being disruptive for no reason, or I'm going to hit one of them and then they'll call the police, or one of them is going to hit me."
I tried one of the Al-Anon meetings and found that at least one of the people there also made harassing comments in her "share." Also, the State Convention in Burlingon is July 15-17 and is called "Catch The Wave: Celebrating 60 Years of Al-Anon Recovery."
I'm not an alcoholic; as I've said many times, I've never even been drunk. That's why I would usually go to Al-Anon meetings unless there wasn't one to go to. However, I don't think that those meetings are a place for people to show up and harass me; I really don't, no matter who's telling people that it's a good thing to do.
I also don't think that the "anonymity" rules should apply to people being abused in those meetings. I've heard other stories of people having bad experiences with 12 step programs. I personally have never had a sponsor, and I also think that in this day and age, when counseling is not perfect but doesn't carry the same stigma that it probably did decades ago, people having sponsors is a bad idea. I can't tell you how many times I've sat in AA meetings and heard someone say "I was a sponsor to someone who killed him/herself." There really is a lot of control given to sponsors by the organization and by people in the meetings; I think it's dangerous. You're taking people who have no counseling experience at all and giving them access to and control over the thoughts and emotions of people who are already very vulnerable. I've even heard stories such as "My sponsor stole money from me."
For anyone who doesn't know anything about the 12-Step programs, sponsors are just people who are also in the program; maybe they've been in the program for a while, but that doesn't matter, they have no business trying to counsel people who are in such emotional need as most people who join one of those programs.
I'm sure that there will be an uproar in the 12-step communities about my having broken anonymity to talk about this, but that's too bad. I tried it the nice way, and that didn't work. I even tried calling and leaving messages at the AA center, and that's moving more slowly than I'd like.
It's not possible to put a number on all of the violations and abuses I've been subjected to over the pat 2 years. I'm not interested in being abused.
If I go to 12-step meetings, or did in the past, it was because I wanted to be there to help myself gain emotional stability. That was my reason for going; I know I'm not perfect, and I showed my knowledge of that by going to those meetings. What right does anyone have to show up at a meeting like that, or write a newsletter for that organization, abusing me and then criticizing me for being upset?
What has happened in those meetings, in my opinion, is a total violation of the principles of all of the 12-step programs.
"When anyone, anywhere, reaches out for help.....I want the hand of the 12-step programs always to be there to try to make the person feel bad, to ignore my own issues while I think of disgusting things to say in meetings and write in newsletters?"
I don't think that's how the saying goes.
Sexism has no place in the 12-step programs, just as it has no place anywhere else in the world.
@ 5:00 p.m.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--I was right about the people who like the idea of pedophilia and most of the other problems, too.
The front page of the Times Argus today showed a little girl and her father eating ice cream; it's a gross picture, with the guy's mouth wide open. There's another "flood cleanup" title with it.
The Ford dealership where I once went in to say that a guy had stopped his car by the side of the road and didn't look like he wanted leave me alone, where I had told the store assistants what happened and asked if I could sit there for a minute and then been harassed by the employees of the store; that dealership now has a red car in the front of its parking lot that has "Find ice cream" written on the back windshielf in green. The red car is attached to a red boat that says "Seabreeze" on it.
The lunch special advertised for on the placard in front of DJ's convenience store says:
"Tator Tot Caserole"
It's written that way on both sides of the sign. As is always the case in these situations, I have accurately reported the spelling on the sign.
Montpelier High School is having an event called "Touch A Truck," for families, students and children. It's $5 for families, I think the sign said it was $3 for students, and $1 for children.
Cumberland Farms has added "New Iced Tea Free on Fridays," since I reported that I was glad I hadn't thrown my iced coffee in the face of a rude cashier there.
The Mobil Short Stop near that Cumberland Farms, which still has signs up saying things such as "Engines Adore Clean," also has a 2-sided placard out in front of the store today. One side says:
"Sandwich special
Egg Salad with Bacon
Great combination!
Made to order on your choice of bread, roll or grilled Panini
We have lots of COLD beverages"
The other side of the sign says:
"We have many COLD beverages. Stop in for a freshmade sandwich, Grilled panini, pizza, mac & cheese, etc. All Homemade."
Here my impatience to get on with my day instead of standing there in the hot sun taking notes while chuckling to myself did get the best of me. I can't continue my joke by saying "As is always the case in these situations, I have accurately reported both spelling AND grammar," because I don't think I got all the punctuation the way it was written on the sign. However, I think that the grammatically correct term is "freshly made sandwich." In my eagerness to get that part of the sign right, I ignored what might have been many other opportunities to make the same sort of point.
There's a deli called "Coffee Corner" in Montpelier. Today, their placard was advertising "Homemaid Soups & Pies."
It was such a great joke I had planned, to write "As is always the case in these situations, I have accurately reported spelling," after every one of these examples which I saw today. Again, in my mirth, I saw only the word "Homemaid" and perhaps missed many other things on the sign that I could now be writing about.
I went in the front door, where on the bulletin board there are many posters. One of the most prominent posters is for music at a place called Higher Ground. Some of the acts featured are, in all capital letters:
"NOVALIMA
FRESHLY GROUND
RUPA AND THE APRIL FISHES
BOMBINO"
That poster is near another ad for "Summer Break Art Camp," which is next to a poster about creatures under the sea for the ECHO/Leahy Center, which is next to an ad for a nursery and kindergarten.
I saw the same ad for the nursery and kindergarten in Barre today, in the window of a store called "Women and Children First." That store is an example of something I said last year, which is that pedophiles often do things that will bring them near children, such as own and work at children's clothing stores.
The store also had the following things in its front windows:
--a picture of a castle with a moat
--an outfit with a pair of shorts and a shirt that said "Lord of the Board," which wouldn't necessarily have meant much to me before the whole pedophilia/male dominance situation started in general
-a red jacket that had "OCEAN" written on it, next to a red sweatshirt with a picture of Minnie Mouse that says "Minnie," next to shorts that have both flames and sharks on them.
--a clothing/toy set featuring Noah's Ark
--a stuffed frog
--Spiderman shorts
--a t-shirt covered with a picture of fish and other sealife, saying "New England Aquarium," saying "Commotion in the Ocean."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--A word about spelling and grammar
I'm not a great speller, and my grammar also often leaves something to be desired. However, I write thousands of words a week, and people such as the ones I've mentioned today only had a few words to get through on a sign. Also, I'm not a pedophile, and I'm not in favor of women being abused and killed.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--Jeanne Collins, the superintendant of Burlington schools whose picture and harassing article in the Burlington community newspaper I documented on my Weebly blog last fall, was recently named "Superintendant of the Year." The issue of the North Avenue News that I took pictures of and wrote about on Weebly also had more than one pedophilic insinuation in it.
The Burlington Free Press announced Ms. Collins's recent award at the top of its front page on June 1, 2011.
I've noticed a trend, that people who I've documented as having been part of the harassment and other issues in Vermont got awards over the past several months. Vermont's a very corrupt place.
I also saw recently on a TV news show that Burlington teachers got a bunch of raises. Were those raises in addition to whatever percentage the Burlington staff got of the $19 million in "Emergency Education Aid" that was paid only to teachers and administrators by the federal government back in September of 2010?
--Gannett news service
I think that it's too bad that newspapers in Vermont that are dominant in terms of circulation such as the Burlington Free Press and the Times Argus are allowed to exist here. There's a big accountability problem; Gannett news service is a big, out-of-state media corporation that owns the Free Press, the Argus, other newspapers like them in other states, and which also publishes papers with national circulation such as USA Today. I almost think that papers such as the Burlington Free Press and the Times Argus are more dangerous to states such as Vermont than more individually respected, bigger newspapers and media sources are, because even though the Free Press and the Times Argus don't have the reading population of newspapers such as the New York Times, Boston Globe and others, what are people in Vermont communities who object to what's going on supposed to do about the campaign to brutalize women and children as it's being perpetuated by Gannett-owned papers in Vermont?
If people who live here want to complain to the reporters, managers, and editors of the Burlington Free Press and Times Argus, who's going to listen? The local management of those newspapers must be getting told by Gannett "Don't worry about the locals; you won't lose your job. Just keep doing what you're doing," not least because the nightmare is probably selling a lot of papers. People who buy the papers who hate what's going on and want to keep track of it are still buying papers.
If people who live in Vermont who hate what's going on contact Gannett directly; Vermont is such a small state and has such a small population compared to even mid-size cities in other states that Gannett is probably writing off the complaints it gets from people here.
I just did a Google search on the term "Vermont population." The top of the first page from the search has a chart and next to the chart is a number from the U.S. Census Bureau, July 2009.
The number is 621,760.
Copyright L,. Kochman June 8, 2011 @ 5:56 p.m.