The Protocol: A Death Down by the River

"There’s a raccoon in my
foundation - glares out at me
With anger or maybe fear –
I can’t quite tell the difference.
And I can’t quite get near
Enough to really tell.

"It may be having babies.
The animal hunter came by
And crawled under the house.
The critter seemed to be gone.
So we got new, sturdier
Grates. The old ones were clawed

"Through, discarded raccoon
portals. I wonder if someone
Can crawl through the basement
In my brain, the foundation
Holding my heart, the tunnel
To my soul, to find the

"Raccoon with the x-ray eyes
Hiding inside me, the
Joker in my dark hour
Shrieking for my ancestors,
The lurking space cowboy,
Bet you weren't ready for that."
(photo by Donna Copeland-Fuller)

This is true.

Danny Hughes had been a musician since his early teens - playing drums, guitar, and almost any other instrument in rock bands, some eventually becoming famous (always after he had left, like The Steve Miller Band) and some not. When he wasn't playing in a band, he was playing by himself, whatever he could do to feel the joy of the music and try to make some money at it. He'd had his ups and downs but thru the forty years of false starts, high hopes and low collapses, he
had been more successful than not. He'd paid off his house, not a fancy place by any means, but it was his, free and clear. He had a studio in the back and he was happy to record and mentor other, younger musicians. His house was the last on a block that stopped at a levee, over which was a bike trail, some industrial business, and the river.

Danny was one of those poor souls who discovered he had diabetes later in life. Of course, it didn't help that he'd had his share of booze and drugs, mostly meth, thru his years in the biz. But most of that was in the past and nowadays it was a rare occasion indeed when he would give in to that temptation. At 56 he looked 66, with long gray hair and an even longer gray beard, but his soul was that of a youngster and he was generous, some might say, to a fault. Not far from his house, and also over the levee, lived a fair number of homeless people, but Danny was always kind to them and recognized that but for a few lucky twists and turns, he could very well be one of them.

Maybe it was the August heat on that afternoon in 2007 that caused Tommy Duke to become more and more belligerent as he kept drinking, the godawful Sacramento heat and the booze. Danny was starting to get worried. He had accepted Tommy's request for music lessons but didn't realize what kind of young man he would be teaching. They were acquaintances from several prior meetings, but no one told Danny that Tommy had a mean streak that showed up and got worse in fairly unpredictable ways.

Danny had two drum kits on his property - one in his detached studio out back and one in his kitchen. He usually gave lessons in his kitchen and recorded in his studio. His kitchen was at the front of the house, facing Basler Street. Tommy had showed up a coupla hours earlier, red shirt, shorts, goatee and shaved head in the current manner of the hard-assed hipster. He was a stocky 30-something with a swagger and an attitude. Danny had accepted him as a possible student based on mutual friends and Danny's belief in the basic goodness of all people. But things were getting ugly.

To Be Continued

Dirty Deeds

(or, Old News Dept.)

"Shame is officially dead in public life."

- Mark Shields, PBS News Hour, 6/10/11, in reference to the Weiner scandal

"I feel entitled to classify myself with the martyrs; for I
confess to a grateful sense of satisfaction as I contemplate my approach-
ing political demise."

- Albert B. Fall, reflecting on Teapot Dome in 1923

“The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government of the U.S. since the days of Andrew Jackson.”

- Franklin D. Roosevelt 

"You have to walk out on a limb to the far end - for that's where the fruit is. If it breaks you learn how far to go next time."

- Billie Sol Estes, mid-1950's

"But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought."

–George Orwell

"I pledge to you tonight, from this office, that I will do everything in my power to ensure that the guilty are brought to justice and that such abuses are purged from our political processes in the years to come, long after I have left this office."

- Richard M. Nixon, 4/30/1973

"I apologize for lying to you. I promise I won't deceive you except in matters of this sort."

- Spiro T. Agnew, 1973

"Corrupt politicians make the other ten percent look bad."

–Henry A. Kissinger

"I was provided with additional input that was radically different from the truth. I assisted in furthering that version."

- Oliver North, 1985, IranContra testimony

"Power attracts the corruptible. Absolute power attracts the absolutely corruptible."

- Frank Herbert

"...one of [Jack Abramoff's] great gifts was being able to tell people what they wanted to hear, and this was how he was able to sell things and get them into trouble."

- Alex Gibney, director and writer of the 2010 film Casino Jack and the United States of Money 

The Reluctant Juror II

Maybe it was when I said we were at a tipping point in this country, with bankers and politicians seemingly impervious to prosecution for any perceived crimes. Or perhaps it was when I said our two-tiered legal system was becoming too blatant, with certain people "too big to be prosecuted"; even the pretense of parity was being laughingly ignored, while the rest of us were going through the usual motions of the justice machine. No, probably it was when I looked the prosecuting attorney in the eyes and told her I thought the defendant was innocent until she proved to me he wasn't, just as the judge had admonished us in the beginning, and she said, "Well, PRESUMED innocent", and I wondered out loud if things weren't a bit, shall we say, "unbalanced" in terms of our current level of justice and if maybe, just maybe, we weren't in a period of taking a coupla steps back for each step forward. I was in the row in front of the actual jury box and a gentleman behind me had said that even after several hundred years we were still wrestling with this justice thing and I agreed with him, but couldn't help wondering if we were in a period of slippage.

I was astonished as I sat in the courtroom waiting to be brought up on the panel when another panelist who was up there before me said he felt our current jury system was unfair to the average working person. I couldn't remember ever hearing anyone say something like that, and as I said in my last post, I've been in this situation at least a dozen times. Everyone is usually so concerned about being "polite" and/or getting out of jury duty with some personal excuse. I have not agreed with trying to evade jury duty. I don't know about you, but in my life I've done very few things "for my community", and jury duty is at least one thing I can do. But the times they are a-changin'. I know there are those in this country who refuse to serve on a jury for various "political" reasons, but I had never personally heard anyone say it in an actual courtroom setting. And at least as long as I was there, I heard three people (including myself) touch on this.

At no point did I say I would not serve on that jury, and of course would have if chosen. When it came time for the prosecuting attorney to ask people to leave, her first pick was someone else behind me in the actual jury box. The judge, as is the procedure, then asked me to get up and take that person's seat. As I rose, the prosecuting attorney interrupted and said, "That's okay, your honor, Mr. Fuller is excused". I left and as I passed her she smiled. We separated on good terms.

There were three more panels that day but I was not chosen for any of them. My duty had ended, at least for another 18 months.

Wind and Wuthering

Last Tuesday, returning to work after a long weekend, I took a fleeting look at the weather online at around ten to see what might be happening an hour later when I went for my daily walk. At the beginning of the day there was a low percentage chance of rain and a fleeting sprinkle, and at ten it was cloudy outside. On weather.com's hourly view, 11 a.m. and later showed a 10% chance of rain, and the doppler animation showed a typical northeastern-moving system decaying on its westerly edge. I went on about my work business.

Around 45 minutes later, coming back from the bathroom, a guy with a sardonic style said "ready for your walk?" - meaning, I discovered as I looked out the window, "ready to get wet?" A steady rain was falling, and when I checked weather.com again, noon showed a 25% chance of rain, and the doppler showed what was a former decay area backfilling with green. I thought immediately of the book I was finishing, Last King of Scotland author Giles Foden's book called Turbulence.

About this date in 1944, the top weather wonks in four countries were frantically crunching numbers on the weather data gathered over the prior week. All were trying to get a read on what the weather might be like on a likely major invasion date, a time propitious due to a combination of abundant war material in the vicinity of France, a full moon, and a low tide. Though the predictions for early June two weeks before called for moderate weather, late May's forecast had a big downturn, and Operation Overlord faced a major, sustained storm during that otherwise preferred period. Turbulence is a novel, based on that couple of weeks, which describes the tensions of the relationship between General Eisenhower and the fractious team of forecasters reporting to him hailing from England, the U.S., and Denmark.

Then, as now, weather balloons and toaster-sized transmitters called radiosondes were used for upper-atmosphere readings, and buoys and land-based stations were used for surface data. Reconaissance flights filled in some data gaps in between, but the risks inherent in that gathering mechanism left plenty of holes. After the 1920's, there was much knowledge of how to create formulas relating to the turbulence of storms to at least theoretically increase accuracy, thanks to the research of a mathematician named Lewis Richardson, however,

Richardson’s estimated number of human calculators needed to keep

pace with weather developments was 64,000, all located in one very large room. 1

Even given the number-crunching limitations, however, forecasters had bad enough news for Ike on the third that the planned date of the fifth was scrapped; a storm like that would have resulted in several times the casualties that actually occurred. However, on the fourth of June, all the forecasters came to a rare agreement that there was roughly a day of calm in the action, a day of calm, moreover, which the German forecasters did not see, or perhaps even look for - and that day was the sixth of June. And even though the day featured far from perfect weather, the relative calm made for what all acknowledge as a successful invasion.

Ironically, the satellite data, profusion of ground stations, and especially computers, would not have changed that decision significantly, other than to supply the data slightly more quickly, given the volatility of the system. Of course, the Germans in that case would have had the same data, and would have been much better prepared.

In my case, I went out an hour later and got slightly less wet.

The Reluctant Juror

Matt Taibbi: “The amount of money investors lost in this fraud scheme is probably gigantic. The ill-gotten money the banks made off that same fraud is probably similarly huge. And the damage to society, in the form of mass foreclosures and other losses, is incalculable.”

New York Times: “Eric T. Schneiderman, the New York attorney general, has requested information and documents in recent weeks from three major Wall Street banks about their mortgage securities operations during the credit boom, indicating the existence of a new investigation into practices that contributed to billions in mortgage losses.”

A couple weeks ago I got another jury summons. Over the years, I've been summoned many times and have served on four juries. I have little recollection of the first experience beyond some vague images from the deliberation. The second case was a burglary: we found the defendant guilty. When I found out after the trial that this was his third strike, something they don't tell you during the proceedings, I was sick to my stomach. Yes, he was guilty, but did he deserve the third strike “punishment”? Hardly. The third case was a few years ago, a civil case for damages being brought against a doctor. I was the only one on the jury who found in favor of the defendant. Unfortunately for him, since it was a civil case, the jury didn't have to be unanimous, and the doctor won. My last jury was about a year ago. I guess they can call you now every year or so. I was an alternate. It was a murder trial. The two defendants were accused of killing a homeless man. The defendants were found guilty. I disagreed (on the basis of self-defense and other factors), but of course, since I was an alternate, I had no say in the matter. The whole experience was a bit disturbing: they took us out to the scene of the crime, the family of both parties were in the courtroom during the case, many witnesses were homeless, etc. I journaled the experience for personal purposes and perhaps I'll post it later.

These last two cases reinforced something I've known most of my life, i.e., I have a bit of a different perspective on things than most folks. But that's not the point of this post. The fact of the matter is, since I've received that summons, I've pretty much decided that I cannot serve on another jury. In the last year or so, as I've learned more about this country's financial “collapse” and what actually happened, how we were originally “told” this whole thing was a bunch of “circumstances” that just happened to result in horrible financial misfortune for thousands of people, how the bankers/Wall Streeters HAD to be saved, how they were “penalized” with a slap on the wrist, and yet, how now we realize these people were in fact CRIMINALS with knowledge aforethought about the whole thing and who were MANIPULATING the system and the suckers so they could further expand what they seem to feel is their birthright for yet more wealth and power at the expense of everyone else. And that so far NO CRIMINAL CHARGES have been brought against them, except that, God help him, New York's Attorney General (see above) MAY be doing something about it. Good luck on that, sir. Remember Elliot Spitzer?

On June 6, which just happens to be my father's 87^th birthday, I will probably (I have to call first) show up at the courthouse and wait to be questioned to see if I end up on a jury. Only this time, if I do get questioned, I don't think I will be able to say, with a clear conscience, that I can be impartial. I'm repulsed by the blatant two-tiered justice system in this country. Of course I know this has been the case forever, but to my mind, it's becoming too much the norm and too many members of the revolving door ivy league banker/legislator/lobbyist club are NOT EVEN BEING clandestine about it anymore and not a one of them is having to pay for anything. So when I look at that defendant in that courtroom, I will be partial towards their “situation” - I will not be able to look at anything in that courtroom with an open mind. And I suppose I will have to tell them how I feel.

TO BE CONTINUED

Pandora's Crawler

This recent cartoon got me thinking about the preservation of "web stuff" and the peculiarity of what really is a new era of preservation of all manner of data statistical, textual, visual, and aural. My first thought was a variation on a theme of some years ago, a new era of its kind, the subpoena of presidential guards somewhat over ten years ago. At that time, there was history from both Kennedy's and Nixon's presidency which related to the secret recording of presidential meetings, but none relating to forcing revelations from White House security insiders from the Secret Service or elsewhere. I wondered, could literally anything that had ever been posted on the web be grist for some legal mill? Party A posts a video of Party B picking her nose, and twenty years on it's used as part of a character assassination of Party B as a high office candidate.

As expected, the answer to the question involves quite a bit of complexity, and yet is fairly well-defined, perhaps. Courtesy the Solid Forensics blog, for instance:

Although there are a few ISP companies that offer a web interface to subpoena data (Sprint is one of them), there is no excitement in the ISP world for setting up a national system to handle this type of data. There are too many security and privacy issues to overcome. This is exacerbated by a recent Justice Department’s 289 page report that claimed the 'FBI obtained Americans’ telephone records by citing nonexistent emergencies and simply asking for the data or writing phone numbers on a sticky note rather than following procedures required by law.'


That implies, however, a potential for a fiduciary requirement, which would then imply something like the Ken Starr scenario writ large. The thing that's pretty fascinating, though, is how much is really preserved, as in the case of the Wayback Machine (whose name has a Rocky and Bullwinkle legacy), which allows the casual user the ability to poke around in a historical web-in-amber which is the Internet Archive, where everything that was there in 1994 (and later) is preserved. As it happens, a news story today highlights that era; Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, whose DNA is sought now in connection with the earlier Tylenol poisonings, coerced the New York Times into publishing his manifesto about then. Now it would be a simpler matter both to publish and to retrieve his ravings.

Having finished my brief investigation of web forensics, though, I noticed that the Internet Archive had a drop down called "All Media Types", and when I dropped it down, well below Wayback Machine itself, in the Audio subsection, there was a Grateful Dead selection. I decided to pick it, then put in "Cosmic" as the search term, and the first of a whopping 270 entries was a late 1970 "Grateful Dead Live at Sargent Gym, Boston University" recording of - you might well have guessed it - "Cosmic Charlie". It had been downloaded over two thousand times, but reviewed but once, by someone noting "Bobby very high-----strung on vocals."

And today, the aural rock historian site Wolfgang's Vault put voluminous video archives online. And neither these nor my ramblings will ever quite go away...

Whistling Past

On one of my rare trips to the supermarket near work recently, I chanced to hear someone whistling in the parking lot. I didn't bother to see who it was, and it was some days later before I thought about the fact that it had been months since I had at least noticed someone whistling, and I wished then that I could think about who it was who did it. I'm the only person I have ever heard whistling at work, for instance, and it may not be an accident that I'm also about the oldest person at my workplace. I'm beginning to think that there are few young people in our country who do it, or are even capable.

The general history of whistling from my point of view is one with fairly corny associations. I've written disparagingly earlier about Roger Whittaker, who however is a phenomenal whistler, very good at what he's done. I sort of think of the canonical whistled melody as being like the theme to "M. Hulot's Holiday", carefree, sentimental, stuck in the forties or fifties, technically as solid as Whittaker's delivery. A measure of how ingrained the taste for things like that was in that era was Guy Mitchell's hit "Singing the Blues", a nominal woe-is-me tune delivered in a suspiciously chirpy style.

The sixties probably were reckoned to be fairly daring just because the whistle was deployed for suspense in contexts like Ennio Morricone's "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly", not to mention Otis Redding's wan whistle which was the ultimate selling point for the lugubriousness of "Sitting On the Dock of the Bay." But since then, a dearth of whistling in popular music, and really popular anything, is observable - this list is probably a pretty good indicator of how rare it is. You could probably cut a swath in hipsterland by even including some whistling in some otherwise alt-like musical effort.

But then, someone would have to show you, and it's not particularly straightforward. The mouth-puckered type of whistle may be easier than either the tucked-lip or two-finger "hey!" whistle - the latter being, for the time being, beyond me - but I found it hard to describe to my daughter, and I suspect she's made little headway based on my attempts at instruction.

But then, I'm not particularly good at it, and if it makes me happy sometimes to whistle some of the up-and-downs of Debussy's "Arabesque", I'm going to make a point of avoiding public places.