#also poor cody who does not get paid at all which i feel like we don't talk about enough btw

[skltart]

life's hard when your general absolutely refuses to go to the medic. he just slaps a bacta patch on a stab wound and calls it a day

#trans!obi wan babyyy woooohooo!!! #also poor cody who does not get paid at all which i feel like we don't talk about enough btw #anyways #art #my art #fanart #star wars #star wars the clone wars #obi wan kenobi #commander cody #codywan #at least implied #trans artist #tw bruises

[silentstep]

WIP Tag Meme

List all the things you’re currently working on in as much or little detail as you’d like, then tag some friends to see what they’re working on: writing, art, gifsets, whatever.

Tagged by @elsajeni (thank you)!  She split hers into “active” and “abandoned,” which I’m... only sort of going to do, because everything aside from The Fic (y’all know the one by now) gets ruthlessly forced to the eternal backburner to languish the second it starts looking like it’d be enough work that it’d interfere with The Fic.  Work/family life/social life/my goddamn brainweasels all interfere hard enough with the fic as it is.

Active WIPs, or: The Fic, The Magnum Opus, The Giant Sprawling Hobbit Fix-It (that @rakshasi-sue says I am not allowed to call a fix-it despite its happy ending due to all the horrible whumpy nonsense I gleefully pile onto the characters in the meantime)

Chapter Seven is happening!  I have no idea yet what chapter seven will actually be about!  Dunlendings with salt mines!  Stonefoots with massive self-contained chemosynthesis-based cave ecoystems!  My ill-advised tendency to let the fact that I personally think dicks are hilarious influence my actual writing!  (I definitely called my local library and asked the poor librarian how the fuck I was supposed to research methods of salt mining in medieval Europe though!  “Is this for school” she asked!  And I had to stutter my way through “nnooo this is for a... uh... a fantasy novel...”!)

chapter 7 is ~5,600 words so far, bringing the fic’s total up to ~263,500 words.  (FINALLY BEATING ORDER OF THE PHOENIX, HAH.)

Not Abandoned, Hopefully Will Not Take Me Much Longer

@setnet asked “POV” for the fic meme so I’m planning to scribble out the dwarven perspective on the Daeron thing (though @setnet, please feel free to request a POV of something else specifically if you’d prefer)

Probably Abandoned, At Least Until The Hobbit Fic Is Done (In Approximately 50 Years At This Rate, Ugh)

a.) Yoda dies fighting Sidious, Obi-Wan takes Luke & Leia and runs away with Dexter Jettster post-Order 66 to raise them as Jedi as best he can on a merchant freighter (meanwhile, Katooni joins the Ohnaka Gang)  (meanwhile, an injured-but-definitely-alive Mace Windu finds his tiny grandpadawan Caleb Dume and they start searching the galaxy for other surviving Jedi while helping the fledgeling Rebellion)

b.) an even-by-my-standards-stunningly self-indulgent fic where Ned Stark receives a whole slew of prophetic dreams (and a dæmon direwolf) the night Aerys murders his father and brother, successfully convinces Jon and Robert that the rebellion should not be about seating someone new on the Iron Throne but rather breaking the kingdoms back into seven, and then rescues Elia and her children ostensibly as bargaining chips to get Lyanna back from her captors (but also because Ned is Ned and Ned thinks killing children is bad to do because hes not a horrible monster)

c.) ah yes, the Damerons

d.) Obi-Wan Leaves The Jedi Over A Misunderstanding; Jedi Apprentice!verse,  could also be titled Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan Talk Past Each Other: The Fic (don’t worry Qui-Gon manages to straighten things out and bring him back but only after a contrivedly long series of adventures that feature truly ridiculous amounts of Missed Him by That Much)

e.) Obi-Wan/Satine year-on-Mandalore (can I even call myself an Obitine shipper if I don’t have at least one of these I mean honestly)

f.) Obi-Wan/Commander Cody, Fake/Pretend Relationship For Purposes of Undercover Work (doylistically it’s also for the excuse to have Obi-Wan wear pretty skirts & show lots of skin)

g.) When Sidious commands Dooku to kill Ventress to prove his loyalty, Dooku agrees to his face then immediately comms Ventress, orders her home RIGHT NOW YOUNG LADY, reveals the whole plot to the Senate, helps the Jedi overthrow Sidious & de-chip the clones, then looks really smug when the Republic agrees to recognise the Confederacy as an independent body and there’s peace in the galaxy and the Jedi aren’t allowed to hunt him down as a Sith because he’s out of their judisdiction now, and in fact they have to stand there next to Republic dignitaries at diplomatic functions between the two political entities and furiously grind their teeth at his existence (meanwhile he hasn’t noticed how much lighter his and Ventress’ auras are slowly getting oops)  (meanwhile Ventress and Obi-Wan keep meeting at these same diplomatic functions and dancing incredible Force-assisted tangoes together (meanwhile in a 20 mile radius of this event bodices ripping men turning bisexual it was amazing the end))

h.) listen unfortunately I’m probably going to write a “while living in the Blue Mnts the Ereboreans encounter a dark-haired Noldo with a very sad, very beautiful voice who’s just wandering up and down the shoreline spilling haunting laments all over the landscape & they eventually get fed up & just kidnap him underground and use sacred hospitality as an excuse to be very stern about one’s need to eat” because please someone take care of my poor precious kinslaying baby

i.) I’m not realistically planning to write this one but.  Stratford Festival did a production of The Changeling by Thomas Middleton and it was very good and the ending was a good ending, it was perfect and cathartic and I am so glad of it but Have You Considered A Version Where The Bad Guys Win, Sincerely, SilentStep

(it’s so easy, listen, when Alcemero locks Joanna in the room and confronts De Flores with his knowledge of the murders right outside, within earshot, De Flores hears enough and then, breathing heavily, shouts Joanna!  Permission!  and there’s a two-and-a-half-second extremely charged silence before she cries Granted! in a voice that nearly breaks-- and De Flores leaps forward and kills Alcemero.  And then the others come in but the two of them don’t even need to discuss their story to get it straight: O, Lord de Piracquo, here is the body of the man who murdered your brother, we are so sorry you could not kill him yourself but when Joanna found Lord Alonzo’s ring in her husband’s medicine-chest and confronted him he threatened her but she had already told De Flores as insurance so he locked her up and tried to kill De Flores intending to kill her afterward but De Flores killed him in self-defense-- oh, right, sure, he had an alibi for the time of the murder, but that was because he’d paid Antonio to actually do the deed & then disappear.

The innocent Tony is put to death.  Jasperino flees in the night.  Tomazo departs with some closure.  And for his services, Joanna manages to suggest in such a way that her father thinks it was his own idea, De Flores gets her hand in marriage.

She turns up pregnant quick enough that rumors start that her son is actually Alcemero’s-- he does resemble De Flores, but it’s hard for people who won’t look past his father’s birthmark to tell.  eventually the kid goes to his mother and asks her, shaky-voiced, if she’s sure he’s his father’s son, what if he’s not, what if he’s really the son of a murderer--

and Joanna goes to her knees and takes his shoulders in her hands and looks him steadily in the eyes and says, low-voiced and sure, An thou wert the son of two murderers, it could not make thee other than thou art, nor would we love thee less.)

I mean uh..................... I have morals

unfortunately I’m... actually unsure who of you guys are writing stuff!  @ravensrising, @setnet, @edgewitch, @rubyredboots, @sandovers, @notbecauseofvictories, come on anyone who writes stuff pls do this meme & pretend I tagged you I want to know what you’re working on

#ask meme #answered ask #elsajeni #kvetching like a nudnik #my first love #spoilers for the silmarillion #roger roger #(zahn books excepted) #force ascending #ah yes the damerons #the collection of half truths and hyperbole known as obi wan kenobi #extraordinary gaze such as is bent on sunlike majesty #if any pairing in my shipping repertoire is truly starcrossed it's these dutiful fucks #codywan #let's hear it for the 212th! #so hard to know whom to trust these days isn't it #listen I'm sorry but I grew up and got saruman feels and apparently that's just going to extend to dooku now #things are fine #obi wan flirting with every single enemy gives me life #perhaps I killed a jedi and took it from him #*pounds fists on desk* POST ORDER 66 OHNAKA GANG KATOONI #lovely Mace Windu and his gorgeous fucking purple lightsaber #I'm not coming down until Ned and Cat and all the Starks are happy #fucking feanorians #things that make maedhros sad make me sad #within my chest beats the heart of a person who loves Edmund from Lear without reserve

[aleatoryalarmalligator]

Part 21

There was a lot of death in 2001-2002. My uncle Rocky died of an overdose, Doris, my grandma's best friend died of old age, my half sister Roxanne's father died, and then after all of that, my estranged grandpa Roy died. He was my mother's father and he had been a cruel man. My mom spoke to him maybe once every fifteen years. She had nothing to say about him. I had only been around him once. Someone mistakenly invited him to my parent's wedding back in '91 and him and his friend got so drunk that they went into the closet and peed on my baby shoes. He had been physically and mentally abusive to my grandma and my uncles and aunts.

For the last three months that he was alive, my mom tried to take care of him – as she is a nurse who does home health. He was in the final stages of cancer, and I met him once before he died. He wanted to meet his grandchildren whom he hadn't really seen before he died. It remember the ride up to Kellogg, feeling very strange about meeting this man for the first time, who had a lot to do with my own mother's mental problems.  He had been a miner for most of his life. After my grandma divorced him in the late 60's, he had married a few more times, and now he lived alone in a really nice cottage type house in the woods about fifteen miles from a very small little community – barely even a town really – called Kingston. He had never really beat my mom per say too much, but he had a general hatred for women and beat her mom a lot. I think this abuse honestly prevented my mom from growing. My mom in many respects has the maturity of a nine year old child at times. The trauma of her life prevented her from going past that.

It was late summer and I would be starting 8th grade in a week. We drove all the way up to north Idaho in the late summer. It was cooler up there and quite lovely. We listened to CCR all the way up. We drove onto this obscure road, that lead onto another obscure road that went congruent with this small river, and then we turned onto this long drive way that dipped down in the middle and had a field in front of it of long grass. It was really cute house. It had this big front porch with a gazebo. We timidly got out. My mom opened the door and we all entered. He was very sick. The house smelled of death. I had never really smelled that before then. There is a smell the body takes on when it is shutting down, and even if you've never smelled that, it's like your animal mind instinctively understands exactly what it is.

He stood up. He was shaky, and thin and tall. His face was sunken in. He struggled over to us. He had remorseful eyes that were filled with pain. Regardless if some might say that he deserved the lonely and painful death he was getting, I fucking hate cancer. He was in misery. He gave us all hugs. It was definitely one of the strangest hugs I have ever had. He was sunken in and the smell was as I have said, unmistakable. Later,  eight of his surviving twelve brothers and sisters came to the house. They all had names that started with a G'. My grandpa Roy was the only one who didn't. I don't remember all their names, but some of them were Genever and Gwenevere (twins), Grady, Gladys, Gregory, Gretchen. My grandpa Roy had a huge family. They all lived in Utah, with the exception of Grady who had sided with my grandma Marie when she divorced Roy and stayed a family friend who lived in Smelterville a few miles away.  My great grandma and grandfather had been a poor  mountain-folk family from Tennessee. Their first names had been Queen Elizabeth and George Washington which was strange, but I hear was fairly common with Appalachian people. George Washington had killed himself during the depression by stepping into a moving vehicle after he could not provide enough food for his thirteen children and wife (my grandfather had been the youngest) and they were all living in a cave – as the story goes.

Three weeks later he died. He was buried in the same cemetery that my uncle Rocky had been buried. The funeral was very similar to the one my uncle had been in, but I think that they actually sent me back to Roy's place after the funeral to watch my siblings who were all five and six and would have no fun at a function for elderly like that. And because Roxanne had inherited that enormous sum of money from her own father's death, everyone decided to move into his house that year and eventually buy it. Despite all the partying, I loved that house. Roy had been pretty heavily invested in boozing, and he had actually built a bar room off the house. There was also this giant storage room filled with years' worth of preservable foods. He had a Jacuzzi for a bathtub, which was amazing.  The walls were stained with years of tobacco, which I kind of liked for some reason. Behind the house was a giant hill, and I guess sometimes people saw a wolf pack out there. There was this strange area too that you would not have expected to be there out by the river. You would be driving, and about ten miles before you got to Roy's place, out of the blue there was this biker bar, with people pitching tents all over in the front of it. It was definitely a strange place, and one of my family members would come and pick us up every weekend. It was a great escape from my life in Kendrick, and even from my friends to a certain degree.

Also, right before school started, my dad broke up with Jodi for a few weeks. He came to me and apologized for taking things out on me. He really embellished on it, and made promises that he would do better. We went on a small trip in the woods, just us family. I believed him this one last time. And then two weeks later he went back with Jodi, and then turned against me, and I don't think I ever took anything he said one hundred percent at face value ever again. He's always done that. If he sides with one person, it's never just that.  When he sides with someone it is intrinsic with him turning against another. It's the way his mind works I suppose.

I started trying to do stuff with my hair. I pulled some of it back. And of course I immediately began failing my classes. I listened to all the lectures, and I even understood my homework, but I never would do it. Our school gave out several hours of homework each day. It was doable if you spent several hours doing homework, and the unspoken rule in the school was that if you were popular enough you cheated your way through. Each morning, a few of the super smart kids who understood their lessons well would get paid a small fee to sit out in the hallway and give the answers to all the popular kids. So maybe about four or five kids were doing all their homework. The rest were doing small bits and then copying someone else. Samantha was one of these kids. If you were not popular or well liked you were not a part of this group.  The teachers knew about this. It was all in the open. The principal did too. It was low key explained to us that cheating and fitting in were a part of life, so if you weren't popular enough to get the rights to be in these cheating circles, than you were failing in some other unspoken element of life that would mean you made a bad phony adult and deserved the bad grade for not conforming with the group mindset.

I didn't really believe in cheating. It's not that I am of great moral integrity by any means – I have done worse, but if something doesn't satisfy my personal sense of achievement, aesthetic, or personal growth I don't try very hard even if it is for my own good. I have to mean most of the things I do and feel that it makes sense emotionally and has to connect to my own sense of authenticity, and as an adult, I struggle against myself constantly to this day, to the point of internal dysfunction just to talk myself into doing mindless repetitive tasks that mean nothing to me. It's probably one of my greatest character flaws because it makes doing stuff that I need to do that much more difficult. But I never even tried to cheat. I just didn't do the work, and if I had wanted to pass I would have just done my own work to at least get the satisfaction of personal achievement. But since my classes meant nothing to me, it would not have been authentic of me to pretend or base my academics on a lie.

Kyle seemed different in 8th grade. He did his hair differently than he had a year ago. His voice began cracking. He seemed to be starved for attention from other popular kids. It was definitely going to be more of a challenge to get his attention, but the trend on following me around saying my name backwards Eener, putting kick me signs on my back, and buzzing which makes me flinch ( I have kind of this ASMR thing and some sounds cause a really uncomfortable jolt down my back) was also becoming very popular. Very quickly I found myself in a situation where not a day would go by where I didn't find something absurd in my locker that someone would put there. The football players would surround me and wouldn't let me go to class..  People were discovering that I am genuinely very easy to scare or surprise. The teasing wasn't really as harsh or cruel as many people do experience. For one, nobody ever called me fat or ugly. Cody Cooper would make rude comments about my acne, but he was generally alone in that. I am sure people said stuff when I wasn't around.

But to my face, I was getting this other kind of teasing that was like flirting but not. It is hard to explain. It was definitely not respectful or dignified. And I suppose I intentionally brought it on myself once it started to happen. Like, nobody was going to date me, that was obvious – I wasn't the kind of girl they wanted to get connected with socially, sleep with (at least I don't think) or be seen with, but it got to this point where boys in my class and in the class above me would spend a lot of their time focused on me and getting me to react, to shriek, jump, get upset, or walk into some kind of prank, and there was this slightly sexually charged aggression to it.  There were many times where there would be ten guys who would surround me in the hallway and push me around a little bit, push me against the locker, and say strange things to me to see how I would react.

They stared at my chest a lot, but what they liked from me for the most part was their own power. It was kind of gross and a predecessor to rape culture though most of them probably would never do something like that directly, it had this volatile element to it – but as long as Kyle was a part of it – though he was always more on the playful side and less on the aggressive, I didn't flat out snap at anyone or tell them no and I subtly let it happen. I simply reacted the way they all wanted me to.  I felt like some kind of plaything and there was an element of sexuality to it because this would not have happened had I not been a girl.

On one hand, I was the one in power and I liked being the center of attention even though it demeaned me. I was curious to see how far I could drive people to focus on me. I was getting more attention than any one girl in the class  in some ways, but on the other hand, the boys were the ones who were in power and their girlfriends were given a sort of false respect because they were the prizes. The boys were defining me and reducing me somehow to a toy and felt physically comfortable in touching or controlling me on some level. Nobody ever frightened me, or really got too aggressive but looking back I think had there been the right sort of person in these groups it might have been a different story. And I guess this was my first introduction to these kinds of unspoken power things. They would surround me in the hallways, staring at my chest, they would be intentionally ready to spook me around every corner. I was frequently discussed. I grew to expect it. Girls would glare at me jealously, but also feel lucky they weren't me. I am that other kind of girl. And to them I was not a real person. It was a bit of a unique title for me, since the other girls who lacked in popularity were given mostly insults and direct attacks. What was in store for me was stranger. It was like they were putting me in this situation where they passed me around and all the guys had to have some part of getting me to react. It felt like I was being used or passed around the way they might pass around an easy girl in school whom everyone knew too well but nobody took seriously. And yet, it was a different kind of need they got from the situation – sexual, but not quite. I don't know if I can possibly explain it and I think that is where I will give up trying and leave it at that.

My mom had gotten this Chesapeake Bay retriever pup that we named Chester. And Roxanne had gotten this Pitbull named Tasha who had learned all these neat tricks. Someone had taught her to do everything in slow motion. If you said SLOW to her, she would eat in slow motion, walk in slow motion. It was the funniest thing. Tasha was a really cool dog, and the only problem she had was that she tried to kill cats. Since I had lost Pixie, my dad grew weirdly paranoid that my mom was going to 'win' me to live with her because of these dogs.  He was afraid that somehow Roxanne's money would buy me away and then he would no longer have me as a babysitter. So he went out and got me a puppy at a shelter, to compete with the other dogs I guess. They told us that it was a German Shepherd and boxer mix, but everyone who saw this animal believed that she looked like a coyote. She acted like a coyote. I am actually 80% certain they lied about the German Shepherd in her. She almost looked full bred coyote aside from a slightly copper tone to her fur, and something about the way her legs were shaped. I named her Pepsi because of her color.

Of course, I was young and wanted a puppy, but my father buying me Pepsi was one of the worst kinds of dogs he could have started me off with. I wish he had gotten me a smaller more manageable pet. He expected that I would clean up after her and take care of her and train her. I had no experience in doing this. And I really did try. I felt very proud of her, and I took her with me on the weekends up to my mother's. But it was hard. For one thing, she was not as friendly even as a young pup. She behaved much more like a wild dog than she did a domesticated one. She liked being pet somewhat. But I could not control her. She was also obsessed with running away. And I could never catch her. She was loose in Kendrick so many times. I remember her running down the street once, with a semi on her heels and with a wild doggy grin on her face. It got to where the neighbors would complain when they saw her out.

She was difficult to potty train because I was in school for much of the time. There wasn't enough time or room to be had for her.  She didn't care about approval like other dogs. And trying to leash train her became impossible. She would fight me with every bit of strength she had as soon as we began heading down the street, and often times she would break the leash or her collar and then she would bolt. She was full of energy, and was an incredibly sly dog.  Very destructive. I loved her to death, but there was nothing I could do with her.  I remember getting frustrated and crying trying to control her. I guess nobody fully realized that she was part coyote. And from what I have read, coyotes are very difficult pets, not even legal in many states. I think had I been a better animal trainer – like a trained professional, she could have been trained to be somewhat acceptable. But she needed to run. And she was the kind of dog that needed to have her respect earned in some mysterious way and I was far from someone who would be capable of that. You could see that on her face.

My friends and I by this time were very obsessed with boys, and in some ways perfectly typical of 8th grade girls to a degree that is somewhat painful. I had started this weird comic that was basically all centered around a future fifteen years from now, where Kyle and I were married and had children. My thinking was so naive and small at that time that I drew us living in this triangle house, and the comic mostly revolved around corny jokes you could make about us, and the way our children lived there lives. It was hilarious, and bad.

I tried to go to every football game even though to this day I know nothing about football or how it is played. When people ask me what my favorite football team is, I always just say The Penguins – and they always scoff and tell me that that is a Pittsburgh ice hockey team. There was something liberating about football games in the small town. It was the one social event where everyone seemed to be mixed for one.  You were not as confined to your position in the school while you were there. Almost everyone seemed to show up. And there was some really strong social situations that were cemented while the games were going on. There was something in the air that was both liberating and apprehensive, like something was about to happen. I initially went because Kyle was on the football team, but truth be told, after awhile, even Kyle looked like just another strange body with enormous shoulders and tiny legs running around with the ball, and randomly stopping and reforming in ways that I don't understand because of my ignorance of the sport as a whole.  We would go almost every night, even when it got cold. There was this contrast at night that always made me feel giddy and a stranger to myself and seemed to reflect an inner psychological divide between the conscious and organized and the wild Dionysian elements to my subconscious. Beyond the school, the world was enveloped in darkness of the woods, and you could hear the noises of coyotes and the creek running. Being outside for all of this put us all out in the elements. It would get very cold during the end of the season, and I could see my own breath. It was very tribal. Even though I was not partial to our school's team, I still felt that tribal quality.

I had kind of become the baby of my social circle and this used to upset me rather badly. For one, everyone I knew was fascinated with having sex with someone – or multiple people. They would have sex dreams, would think about their crushes without their shirts on and I imagine talk about it more when I wasn't around. And I just didn't want to have sex. I wanted to get to know someone in a very meaningful way and then see what happened. I wanted this terribly. The level in which I felt this desire to be loved didn't come from the same place as most of the girls I knew. It wasn't that I was closed off to those ideas altogether. It just wasn't happening. And to some degree, I might have been a little naive about certain elements of sexual desire. But my friends either thought I was lying to them because of embarrassment, or they thought I was still like a third or forth grader. Samantha, without even trying to sound mean told me people who didn't want to have sex were not capable of being in real love. During one sleepover, I got so upset that I pretended to be sick so I could go home.

That Halloween was the last year I ever properly participated in dressing up in a costume or trick or treat. It remember it being a lot of fun. We made terrible jokes that we all thought were very funny at the time – it seems we thought we were all terribly hilarious and our lame gags were simply the best. I generally never cussed, and my friends were giving me a hard time for this, so that Halloween I intentionally said Fuck. Everyone was shocked at me, but it seemed to go over well, and I was accepted as someone to be taken more seriously henceforth in the social fold. We were all witches – though Katie might have been something else, like a werewolf of some kind. When it was late and we had gone through the whole town, we went home and emptied our candy out on the floor of Sarah's house on the top of the hill. We all laughed and traded our candy. I was always partial to tootsy rolls.

Katie put up for me around this time in a very meaningful way, that I still remember fondly. Sarah-Mae had cut back on saying short negative things towards me over the last few years, but occasionally it still happened. She still said small things in conversation to keep me in check I think. Asking her today about why she said some of the things she did, and she really doesn't remember, other than she felt insecure sometimes. So I am left to assume this was an alpha female move to keep me from feeling too confident in myself or something. One night, Katie, Sarah and I were all sitting around Sarah's kitchen listening to the radio, talking about boys, eating ice cream, and drawing anime. I said something goofy – nothing insulting to anyone at all but a little silly, and Sarah for whatever reason retreated into her former self. She looked at me coldly and said 'Renee, Shut Up.' She said this in front of Katie. And the look on Katie's face was instantly ferocious with no apologies. She got right in Sarah's face.  She told Sarah off immediately in a way I had never seen anyone do before. I think it started off with 'WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU JUST SAY TO RENEE?!?'

Sarah seemed shocked. She looked down at the table, her entire face was red and I don't remember her ever having anything to say in return. The room was pretty awkward. I just looked down too. I inherited this weird smile when I get nervous from my mom so if my memory is correct, I was probably smiling nervously. I had never had a friend who stood up for me before, and I think about that component to Katie and I really do appreciate that element to her personality and this one single instance gave me this strong sense that I was an equal after all who deserved to be treated with respect.  I think we all eventually calmed down. Sarah never told me to shut up ever again. In fact, aside from maybe a few other times, I can't think of a time where she ever seemed to intentionally say anything mean to me.

There was this one situation where I think Katie and the rest of us really overreacted and I wish I could have had the wisdom to handle differently. This girl in our class who wasn't very bright named Megan seemed very confused about herself sexually. I am not sure what was going on in her life that made her do this, but it started in the girl's locker room before gym. Samantha was getting dressed, and Megan came up and grabbed her boob. Samantha told her to stop, and she wouldn't. She then started trying to grab Sarah, and she tried to grab my nipple when we were on the bleachers over the course of week. She had this mindless look on her face as she did this. We all told her to stop. We yelled at her to get away from us. We called her a lesbian. She seemed nervous but would do it again. I really really regret throwing that word out at her like it was some shameful way of being and if I were in that situation today I know I would have handled it a lot better. I had every right to feel violated, but I dealt with it shamefully. I might have gone over and talked to her and explained why what she was doing was inappropriate if it happened today. Obviously she was incredibly confused. I never really liked her as a person, but I called her a lesbian like she was gross, was really gross on my own part. We told the duty teacher, but it seemed to make the gym and duty teachers embarrassed, so nobody wanted to tell her no.

There was this popular girl named Erica who confronted us. She was kind of known for taking unpopular girls under her wing that made her feel more powerful. She had taken to befriending Megan for this reason. She never had any interest in befriending me since I was not really all that entranced by her and had enough dignity to understand what she was doing. Anyway, she came up to us and started saying that we should just take it and stop being mean to Megan. I basically told her 'no way' and Erica walked away pissed since she wasn't accustomed to being told no by girls of lower status than herself.

Katie eventually got tired of hearing about it, so she found Megan in the hallway between classes, grabbed her by her front collar, picked her up off the floor and slammed her against the lockers and told her that if she ever fucking touched one of us ever again she was going to fuck her up.' Megan cried and Katie let go of her, and that seemed to end it. That was above and beyond anything Erica would have felt safe getting involved in. Nobody wanted Katie to fuck them up. She meant it. I don't think there was any situation where Megan bothered me in any way after that. But honestly, even though it all got corrected, I still feel the ugly sounds of me calling Megan a lesbian coming out of my face. And I really wonder if we dealt with any of that the way it should have

Meanwhile, I was more obsessed with Kyle than ever. In a way, this is when the whole thing started veering more towards unhealthy. I was giving more and more up of my self worth just to be accepted. And days when he gave me attention were the only days worth living for. On a day when I was ignored, I would go crazy, like a junkie who needed a fix. I would stop being able to breath throughout the course of the day, hoping for a smile, some eye contact, a joke thrown my way, something. I would feel this lump in my throat growing until I was holding back tears. I would stumble home, and I would feel this self loathing hatred for everything about myself. I might scream and pull out my hair. I felt ugly. I would take my rage out on my little brother and sister, who might have been mildly disobedient but really didn't deserve it. They grew to live in fear of these extreme explosive mood swings I would have. I think they were beginning to really resent me, and I really don't blame them. Whenever anyone did anything slightly wrong, I never gave constructive criticism, If they made a mistake I used aggression and shame to put them down. It's something as I have said previously, that I wish I could go back in time and take back.

What really got to me was that Kyle and this popular sportsy girl named Kayla were really into each other. They sat together, walked together, flirted and chased each other around.  Even their names sounded good together. And who the fuck was I? Someone Kyle would tease when nobody was around. I was good enough to be around when nobody was looking, but not good enough to be taken seriously or dated. I can look back, and I really do understand why I was probably not the lead lady in the situation. I was insecure, and selling your soul for attention is not endearing. It was only that I was kept as some kind of secret friend to Kyle, even when he finally did get popular. He still looked for me when he was alone with warmth, and still flirted with me. I was the other girl on the side that made him feel good about himself that he could act freely around. Surely by this time he must have been aware I liked him. It was incredibly obvious. So what he was doing was wrong. He liked that I was infatuated with him because it made him feel good about himself, so stringing me along was worth it for his own needs. 

And even though I don't even think what I was feeling was what I would consider real love it was consuming my entire existence with obsession and making me suicidally depressed and sort of ruining my life. And it was the closest to love I had ever felt, before him I had never really wanted anything before. So this was everything to me. If I failed at winning his love, it was the equivalent of death. There was no other option I could imagine. And in the very back of my mind, there was this strange and frightening realization that felt like a tug dragging me into blackness that I had no words for that seemed to be emerging behind what I took for granted. Like another me that was wanting to take over, but more like this realization that behind what I really thought was my life that I lived unquestioningly was this deep sense of nothingness that nothing I thought I knew could contend with and something I would have to face alone. This strange abyss that seemed to be sucking me in always right outside the corners of my perception. I was fighting that change by clinging to the hopes that Kyle would eventually fall in love with me. If he fell in love with me, I could fight ever being fully immersed into being whoever it was that I was starting to become. I could live in a safe and loving environment, I could have children, live in a small town and grow old and content with the limited existence I had and an empty sense of certainty.  

If you want to read my life story from the beginning, below are the previous parts i have written so far. 

Also, here is a picture of about 25% of the town i lived in. Quite a boring place.

PART 20 - http://tinyurl.com/y8jskymt

PART 19 - http://tinyurl.com/rfhbms8

PART 18 - http://tinyurl.com/ycrznrwk

PART 17 - http://tinyurl.com/y77unlng

PART 16 - http://tinyurl.com/yadpsv8c

PART 15 - http://tinyurl.com/yb3lt6k5

PART 14 - http://tinyurl.com/yb4cfedq

PART 13 - http://tinyurl.com/yalanq9s

PART 12 - http://tinyurl.com/yc79mw94

PART 11 - http://tinyurl.com/yc9qhj84

PART 10 - http://tinyurl.com/yb734w24

PART 9 - http://tinyurl.com/yc2t6vfw  

PART 8 - http://tinyurl.com/ybl37utq

PART 7 - http://tinyurl.com/ybvo283g

PART 6 - http://tinyurl.com/kbc9dwu

PART 5 - http://tinyurl.com/msnz4am

PART 4 - http://tinyurl.com/k9x8esg

PART 3 - http://tinyurl.com/mwp9atx

PART 2 - http://tinyurl.com/lbt6xq2

PART 1 - http://tinyurl.com/l8xbvg8

#text

[1inawesomewonder]

From Thomas F. Sullivan Arena, St. Anselm College, Goffstown, NH – Friday, February 28, 2020

It’s that time of the year again, when the regular season winds down and teams honor their seniors while jostling to improve their tournament seeding. Friday night was Senior Night for the Grizzlies and they honored the four seniors that will be graduating from the program in a few months. On the ice, Goffstown electrified the home crowd en route to a convincing win, 8-3 over the Admirals.

(Players L-R) Melanie Riendeau, Theo Milianes, Colby Gamache, Drew O’Brien. (Sage Photo)

Not only was it Senior Night for the Grizzlies, but they were also playing for a chance to host a quarter-final playoff game instead of opening the tournament on the road. With their win, and with Merrimack beating Oyster River, 1-0 at the same time, the Grizzlies jumped into the #4 seed. Goffstown will host #5 Oyster River at 4:00 pm on Saturday, March 7th. The teams split a pair of 3-2 decisions against each other during the regular season. Each team earning a win on their home ice. So this quarter-final game should be a dandy.

To be fair, the Alvirne-Milford Admirals were missing several players from their lineup on Friday night due to illness and injuries. Even so, the Grizzlies were the favorites after grabbing a 7-3 win down at Skate 3 in January, and also they had 12 league wins to the Admirals’ 2 wins. So, Goffstown did as they were supposed to do according to the trends following each team. But one of the things that I love about sports is that attitude and effort are both completely up to the participants. Alvirne-Milford did not roll over, they skated hard, and gave effort shift after shift. As they should. The attitude, well that I am not so sure about for a few players on either side of the ice. That’s not necessarily a knock on any of them, more a deep observation, and I have been thinking about this while the game was unfolding on Friday night. And ever since.

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#3, Alternate Captain, Theo Milianes. (Sage Photo)

#22 Drew O’Brien. (Sage Photo)

#24 Melanie Riendeau. (Sage Photo)

#14, Captain, Colby Gamache. (Sage Photo)

This may, or may not, speak directly to this particular game. It may also speak to every single game so I am going to go through my thought process that runs somewhere between me, my iPad, the scoresheet, and my little notebook while I watch live sports play out right in front of my eyes.

First, I speak of attitude. Webster lists a number of definitions of the word, attitude.

Here are some of them:

4a: a mental position with regard to a fact or state

b: a feeling or emotion toward a fact or state

6: an bodily state of readiness to respond in a characteristic way to a stimulus (such as an object, concept, or situation)

7a: a negative or hostile state of mind

b: a cool, cocky, defiant, or arrogant manner 

So, in my words, attitude is more or less being in the frame of mind (predisposition) to be willing to do something when one is presented a situation. Frame of mind is powerful, just think of how we read an innocent message or email we have received when our frame of mind is anything but.

Then there is the whole idea of behavior. Again, I call on Webster for the definition of behavior.

Here are some of them:

1: the way in which someone conducts oneself 

2a: the manner of conducting oneself

b: anything that an organism does involving action and response to stimulation

c: the response of an individual, group, or species to its environment

Again, in my words, behavior is the expression or action chosen in response to the scenarios presented in every moment. Many believe that people are predisposed, or inclined to behave in a certain manner based on examples instilled in our very existence. Simply, behavior is learned.

Imagine a teen-aged athlete shows up to compete in his or her sport with, among other things, the following factors racing through their every fiber. They may not know that they are inclined to act in a certain way because they are in a frame of mind that allows them to be willing to do something based on scenarios that affected their attitude, and will do so based largely on a catalogue of behaviors that have been imparted on them since their life began. Talk about unpredictable. Talk about the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Talk about parenting, coaching, and role models.

Brennan Pierce and Colby Wright defend out in front of Madeline Sage. (Sage Photo)

I feel for the individual youngsters that have so much to overcome simply because we as parents, coaches, or role models inhibited their growth and development by not allowing them to reach for the sky, fall on their face, or get back up again, because our agenda, behaviors, or habits were some weird self-defined protective, stifling bubble of our own insecurities. Our demons pulled us down and we weren’t going to make that trip alone so we brought anyone loosely attached to us down too. Or we went to bat for kids that should have batted for themselves because they are smarter and more able than we think. Perhaps, our career, or our dreams didn’t go the way we wanted them to so we invest a small fortune into something that is a passion of ours, and not necessarily theirs. So before you finish the thought about that guy, or she this, or they do that, I remind us all of the mirrors available to each of us. And if that’s not enough, the reflection we need may just be walking around in our lives every day we’re fortunate enough to open our eyes again. Ironically, in nature, the fittest survive. That is the natural selection.

Alright, folks if you are still here, thanks for hanging on. I see things. I hear things. I am told things. I witness interactions. I sense things. I am haunted at times by the collections of these things, and I write my piece, so that perhaps others, and myself can be at peace.

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Celebrating one of Colby’s goals. (Sage Photo)

Theo is congratulated on his Senior Night goal. (Sage Photo)

High fives with Captain Colby. (Sage Photo)

Grady and the D rewarded. (Sage Photo)

The Captain requests a fly by. (Sage Photo)

Xavier had his first career goal on Senior Night. (Sage Photo)

Oddly, I didn’t really make any notes during the game on Friday night because things were happening so fast. For starters, in a pre-game presentation, the Grizzlies recognized their four senior players and their families, they honored a senior’s dad who is battling poor health as we speak, we all paid respect to another senior’s dad who passed away nearly two years ago, we talked about the meaning of legacy, and told the story of volunteering efforts and fundraising for a cause, and remembered a military hero that was one of New Hampshire’s own. That was all before the National Anthem was sung by a man who holds each of the opponents on Friday night very dear to his heart.

If that sounds like a lot, it felt like a lot, but I wouldn’t trade it for any other place or time. The game started at 7:32 pm and the Grizzlies were ready to go no matter what time the game started. I will say that Cody Rae-Crussland made some sensational saves in this game and the score wouldn’t indicate as much. Goffstown pounded the goalie, the net, and whistled other shots into traffic, over and beside the net in the first period. The home team outshot the visitors 16-2 in the opening period, and the 4-0 lead could have been much more one-sided were it not for Cody’s efforts in net.

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Senior displays in the background, with Theo, Eric D, and Mel on the ice in action. (Sage Photo)

Mel, Colby, and Theo getting ice time together on Senior Night. (Sage Photo)

New band name, CC SageWright. Coming to a venue near you! (Sage Photo)

Isaac continues to show that he will be a force to be reckoned with in coming years. (Sage Photo)

With relentless pressure things tend to crack or break. Once Colby Gamache lifted a one-handed backhand shot past the Admiral goaltender at 6:10 of the period while the Grizzlies were short-handed things started to come apart for the visitors. When Goffstown was afforded consecutive power play opportunities on Admiral double minor penalties, they took full advantage. The Grizzlies scored the next 3 goals in a span of 65 seconds. On the power play Grady Chretien continued his other-worldly season with a goal set up by linemates Drew O’Brien and Colby Gamache at 12:21 which was on the first minor penalty. Then at 13:10, on the second of the double minor penalties, Xavier Bibaud scored his first career goal with assists going to Eric DesRuisseaux and Luc Ouellette. Then, back at even strength, Gamache scored from O’Brien and Colby Wright.

In the second period, the Grizzlies started to cycle the puck even more, working depth players into their lines and trying to create opportunities for them. Even so, sometimes the puck still finds its way into the scoring areas with a first liner on the spot. Such was the case at 2:43 of the period when Grady Chretien slid the puck into the net after a feed from O’Brien. Then Theo Milianes eclipsed his single season high in goals scored on his Senior Night after a nice play from Calvin Sage at 4:25. Alvirne-Milford erupted with a goal of their own on a nice sequence of plays from Zach Greer and Chris Bedard that led to Corey Girouard’s goal at 4:52 of the period. Goffstown added another power play goal at 9:12 when Colby Gamache finished off an offensive zone possession that seemed to last for minutes with a goal from Grady Chretien. On the play, Gamache registered his 123rd career point for the Grizzlies which moved him past Griffin Cook (’19, 48g-74a-122p) as the all-time leading scored in Goffstown High School hockey history. Since I am a nerd for numbers, it also marked Colby’s 99th point scored since the beginning of last season. Hey, my Dad started showing me how to score baseball games when I was about 5-6 years old. Anyways, the second period ended with the Grizzlies holding a 7-1 lead on the scoreboard and a 30-9 advantage in shots on goal.

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The Grizzlies gather together after the seniors have been announced. (Sage Photo)

One of my favorite moments at our hockey games, lined up, facing our flag, to honor our country and the game. (Sage Photo)

The third period was running time. There were 30 minutes in penalties called between the two teams, just 5 shots on goal, and somehow 3 more goals scored. It wasn’t the best looking period of hockey anyone has ever seen by a long shot. Zach Greer made the score 7-2 at 1:57 of the period with a goal set up by Brennan Levesque. Goffstown answered at 4:39 when Sean Hunter scored his first career goal from Theo Milianes and Melanie Riendeau. Somewhere between the 7:00 and 12:00 mark this game almost left the rails completely. At 14:37, on the power play, the Admirals scored when Dylan Jillson rambled in all alone and scored to make the final score, 8-3.

I didn’t mention Maddie Sage much, or at all until now, in this recap because she wasn’t tested a whole lot which can make it hard to get into any kind of rhythm for a goaltender. Though, to her credit, in a stellar career thus far, she notched her 20th career win against only 6 losses to date.

As I said earlier, the win gave Goffstown the #4 seed in the tournament, and they will host #5 seed Oyster River on Saturday, March 7, at 4pm on the campus of St. Anselm College. I will have more on the tournament pairings in the next couple of days.

Thank you for sticking with me here. I routinely prove just how imperfect I am. Despite my many faults, I long to help, teach, or lead anyone I can in ways that would make life better for them, even if it’s just a reason to smile or to construct a sense of belonging. Let us carry ourselves well, not for the look of it, but for the authentic care and kindness towards others because we possess the choice to do so.

Charity of Choice 2020: ALS Association of NNE. $1,122 Raised.

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(Sage Photo)

(Sage Photo)

NHIAA Hockey:

Updated records.

Goffstown (13-8-0) vs. Alvirne-Milford (2-16-0)

Sullivan Arena, Goffstown, NH

Friday, February 28, 2020. 7:32 PM Start:

  Summary:

Goals:

Goffstown: 4-3-1 = 8

Alvirne-Milford: 0-1-2 = 3

Shots:

Goffstown: 16-14-02 = 32

Alvirne-Milford: 02-07-03 = 12

Scoring:

1st Goffstown at 6:10. SHG. Colby Gamache unassisted.

1st Goffstown at 12:21. PPG. Grady Chretien from Colby Gamache and Drew O’Brien.

1st Goffstown at 13:10. PPG. Xavier Bibaud from Eric DesRuisseaux and Luc Ouellette.

1st Goffstown at 13:26. Even. Colby Gamache from Drew O’Brien and Colby Wright.

  2nd Goffstown at 2:43. Even. Grady Chretien from Drew O’Brien.

2nd Goffstown at 4:25. Even. Theo Milianes from Calvin Sage.

2nd Alvirne-Milford at 4:57. Even. Corey Girouard from Zach Greer and Chris Bedard.

2nd Goffstown at 9:12. PPG. Colby Gamache from Grady Chretien.

  3rd Alvirne-Milford at 1:57. Even. Zach Greer from Brennan Levesque.

3rd Goffstown at 4:39. Even. Sean Hunter from Theo Milianes and Melanie Riendeau.

3rd Alvirne-Milford at 14:37. PPG. Dylan Jillson unassisted.

    Special Teams:

Goffstown Power Play: 3 for 4.

Alvirne-Milford Power Play: 1 for 4.

  Saves:

Goffstown: Madeline Sage 9 of 12. (45:00)

Alvirne-Milford: Cody Rae-Crussland 24 of 32. (45:00)

  Standings: Boys Ice Hockey Division II

NOTE: The following are not official NHIAA standings. They are only the accumulation of game results as reported by the athletic directors and coaches.

Click here to view the schedules for all of the teams below.

School W L T Points Rating Keene 12 2 2 54.00 3.3750 Merrimack 13 4 1 55.00 3.0556 St. Thomas Aquinas 13 4 1 54.00 3.0000 Goffstown 13 5 0 53.00 2.9444 Oyster River 12 5 1 50.00 2.7778 Somersworth-Coe-Brown 10 6 1 42.00 2.4706 Dover 10 7 0 40.00 2.3529 Lebanon-Stevens-Mount Royal 7 9 1 30.00 1.7647 Portsmouth-Newmarket 7 11 0 28.00 1.5556 Kingswood 7 11 0 28.00 1.5556 Winnacunnet 3 14 1 14.50 0.8056 Spaulding 2 15 0 8.00 0.4706 Alvirne-Milford 2 16 0 8.00 0.4444

Sage Page

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Theo Milianes and family. (Sage Photo)

Colby Gamache and family. (Sage Photo)

Drew O’Brien and family. (Sage Photo)

Melanie Riendeau and family. (Sage Photo)

~ Thank you Maureen, your photos are fantastic!

Honestly these articles are so much better with your contributions.

Senior jerseys and banners from the penalty box. (1inawesomewonder Photography)

The beginning of every article. (C) 1inawesomewonder 2017.

The thoughts and opinions expressed here are those of the individual contributors, mostly mine, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the schools, coaches, players, or characters listed in any of these blog posts. Or, maybe they do, but you would have to ask them directly. Either way, “It’s a great day for hockey” ~ the late “Badger” Bob Johnson.

Hockey: Goffstown 8 vs. Alvirne-Milford 3 From Thomas F. Sullivan Arena, St. Anselm College, Goffstown, NH - Friday, February 28, 2020 It's that time of the year again, when the regular season winds down and teams honor their seniors while jostling to improve their tournament seeding.

[theconservativebrief]

Thurman Blevins’s last words as he was chased by police were pleas for mercy. “Please don’t shoot me,” he said. “Leave me alone.”

Minneapolis police on Sunday released videos of the June 23 shooting of the 31-year-old black man. The shooting had previously drawn hundreds out to local protests over what many saw as another unnecessary shooting of a black man in America.

According to the video, two police officers found Blevins in a residential area, while they were reportedly responding to a 911 call that someone was firing a gun into the air. The police officers, Justin Schmidt and Ryan Kelly, quickly and vocally identified that Blevins had a firearm. They got out of their car, telling him, “Put your fucking hands up.” Blevins began to run, and police chased him — telling him to put his hands up and that they will shoot him. Blevins claimed he didn’t do anything and didn’t have a gun.

Blevins continued to flee. At one point, he appeared to pull an object — identified as a gun by police — out of his waist, and police officers opened fire, killing him. The video doesn’t make it clear if Blevins fired a weapon.

Warning: graphic footage of a shooting:

[embedded content]

Prior to the shooting, a woman had called in 911 to report that someone appeared to be drunk while firing a gun. The caller said the shooter had a bottle of gin. Schmidt and Kelly verbally identified a bottle of gin and a gun when they found Blevins.

Police released the videos over the weekend, including versions of the videos that were slowed down to highlight the object that Blevins was carrying, which police claim was a gun and certainly looks like a gun in the footage.

Both officers are on paid administrative leave as the shooting is investigated.

With the release of the video, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey struck a sympathetic tone with protesters — noting the reasons why people may be skeptical of a police shooting, even if it does seem legally justified in the end.

“Regardless of the facts and circumstances that took place on the afternoon of June 23, and regardless of how our own life experiences and backgrounds inform the conclusions we draw, let us all recognize one conclusion: a life was lost, and that, in and of itself, is a tragedy,” Frey said at a news conference on Sunday. “While the body camera footage is now released, this is just one part of an effort to bring greater transparency to these processes. In the weeks and months ahead, we will undoubtedly learn more. In this quest to bring about greater transparency, there will be pain.”

Frey, who is white, added, “I did not experience the pain of inequities that continue to exist in areas well beyond policing and public safety. But we all need to understand that this pain is felt acutely by people of color. That must be acknowledged.”

This gets to the key reason why we now see so many protests after just about any police shooting, even those in which the victim really did have a gun: As the Black Lives Matter movement continues bringing attention to racial disparities in police use of force, and as the protests reveal inconsistencies or outright lies in police claims, there is a huge level of distrust toward law enforcement among minority communities.

Prior to the release of the video, there were conflicting reports about the Blevins shooting. Police claimed he had a gun, while some witnesses reportedly said he did not.

This uncertainty helped fuel the protests. But there have also been other shootings in Minneapolis and the surrounding area that have stoked further concerns about local police in the past few years, including the killings of Philando Castile, Jamar Clark, and Justine Damond.

As Minneapolis NAACP President Leslie Badue told MPR News, “Honestly, I don’t know what’s going through the community’s minds, but I do know that we continue to be traumatized one time after another. It’s extremely unfortunate.”

Mayor Frey announced earlier this month that his office would release video of the shooting by the end of July after facing calls to do so from protesters and city council members, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune. He described the video as “traumatic.”

The Minneapolis Police Department said in a statement that Police Chief Medaria Arradondo can’t comment on the shooting while it’s under investigation, but “he will continue to remain engaged, active and listen throughout the community.”

Following the release of the videos, the community remained split. Some argued that the footage showed the shooting was justified, while others said that officers should have worked to deescalate the situation.

A host of issues have created rifts between police and minority communities across the US.

First, there are racial disparities in police shootings. Based on nationwide data collected by the Guardian, black Americans are more than twice as likely as their white counterparts to be killed by police when accounting for population. In 2016, police killed black Americans at a rate of 6.66 per 1 million people, compared to 2.9 per 1 million for white Americans.

Christina Animashaun and Javier Zarracina/Vox

There have also been several high-profile police killings since 2014 involving black suspects. In Baltimore, Freddie Gray died while in police custody — leading to protests and riots. In North Charleston, South Carolina, Michael Slager shot Walter Scott, who was fleeing and unarmed at the time. In Ferguson, Darren Wilson killed unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown. In New York City, NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo killed Eric Garner by putting the unarmed 43-year-old black man in a chokehold.

It’s these statistics and high-profile shootings that drive much of the distrust in minority communities toward the police.

A possible explanation for the racial disparities: Police tend to patrol high-crime neighborhoods, which are disproportionately black. That means they’re going to be generally more likely to initiate a policing action, from traffic stops to more serious arrests, against a black person who lives in these areas. And all of these policing actions carry a chance, however small, to escalate into a violent confrontation.

That’s not to say that higher crime rates in black communities explain the entire racial disparity in police shootings. A 2015 study by researcher Cody Ross found, “There is no relationship between county-level racial bias in police shootings and crime rates (even race-specific crime rates), meaning that the racial bias observed in police shootings in this data set is not explainable as a response to local-level crime rates.” That suggests something else — such as, potentially, racial bias — is going on.

One reason to believe racial bias is a factor: Studies show that officers are quicker to shoot black suspects in video game simulations. Josh Correll, a University of Colorado Boulder psychology professor who conducted the research, said it’s possible the bias could lead to even more skewed outcomes in the field. “In the very situation in which [officers] most need their training,” he previously told me, “we have some reason to believe that their training will be most likely to fail them.”

Beyond police shootings, minority communities often complain that police are harassing them — through frivolous traffic stops, policies like stop and frisk, and the war on drugs in general.

There’s also evidence that police do a poor job protecting black communities from serious crime. Wesley Lowery, Kimbriell Kelly, and Steven Rich recently reported for the Washington Post, based on an analysis of killings over the past decade in 52 of the US’s largest cities: “Black victims, who accounted for the majority of homicides, were the least likely of any racial group to have their killings result in an arrest, The Post found. While police arrested someone in 63 percent of the killings of white victims, they did so in just 47 percent of those with black victims.”

As journalist Jill Leovy explained in her award-winning book Ghettoside, the racial disparity reflects a lack of resources going to solving murders, particularly in minority communities. Community distrust can also play a role, since it makes it harder for police to get cooperating witnesses needed to solve murders; in this way, community distrust and poor murder solve rates feed into each other — people are less likely to cooperate with police when they feel unprotected by the law, and police are less able to protect people without cooperation. All of this together leads to fewer arrests when black people are the victims.

Leovy wrote: “Like the schoolyard bully, our criminal justice system harasses people on small pretexts but is exposed as a coward before murder. It hauls masses of black men through its machinery but fails to protect them from bodily injury and death. It is at once oppressive and inadequate.”

The result is less trust in the police.

To alleviate distrust, experts have put forward a lot of solutions — including a genuine acknowledgment of and apology for past racism, better training to help cops confront potential biases and deescalate situations, and use of better, evidence-based police tactics, such as focused deterrence and hot spot policing, that can bring down crime in minority communities without making the communities feel harassed.

But experts also argue that more accountability could help deter future brutality or excessive use of force, since it would make it clear that there are consequences to the misuse and abuse of police powers. Yet right now, lax legal standards make it difficult to legally punish individual police officers for use of force, even when it might be excessive.

Legally, what most matters in police shootings is whether police officers reasonably believed that their lives were in immediate danger, not whether the shooting victim actually posed a threat.

In the 1980s, a pair of Supreme Court decisions — Tennessee v. Garner and Graham v. Connor — set up a framework for determining when deadly force by cops is reasonable.

Constitutionally, “police officers are allowed to shoot under two circumstances,” David Klinger, a University of Missouri St. Louis professor who studies use of force, previously told Dara Lind for Vox. The first circumstance is “to protect their life or the life of another innocent party” — what departments call the “defense-of-life” standard. The second circumstance is to prevent a suspect from escaping, but only if the officer has probable cause to think the suspect poses a dangerous threat to others.

The logic behind the second circumstance, Klinger said, comes from a Supreme Court decision called Tennessee v. Garner. That case involved a pair of police officers who shot a 15-year-old boy as he fled from a burglary. (He’d stolen $10 and a purse from a house.) The court ruled that cops couldn’t shoot every felon who tried to escape. But, as Klinger said, “they basically say that the job of a cop is to protect people from violence, and if you’ve got a violent person who’s fleeing, you can shoot them to stop their flight.”

The key to both of the legal standards — defense of life and fleeing a violent felony — is that it doesn’t matter whether there is an actual threat when force is used. Instead, what matters is the officer’s “objectively reasonable” belief that there is a threat.

Jewel Samad/AFP via Getty Images

That standard comes from the other Supreme Court case that guides use-of-force decisions: Graham v. Connor. This was a civil lawsuit brought by a man who’d survived his encounter with police officers, but who’d been treated roughly, had his face shoved into the hood of a car, and broken his foot — all while he was suffering a diabetic attack.

The court didn’t rule on whether the officers’ treatment of him had been justified, but it did say that the officers couldn’t justify their conduct just based on whether their intentions were good. They had to demonstrate that their actions were “objectively reasonable,” given the circumstances and compared to what other police officers might do.

What’s “objectively reasonable” changes as the circumstances change. “One can’t just say, ‘Because I could use deadly force 10 seconds ago, that means I can use deadly force again now,’” Walter Katz, a California attorney who specializes in oversight of law enforcement agencies, previously said.

In general, officers are given a lot of legal latitude to use force without fear of punishment. The intention behind these legal standards is to give police officers leeway to make split-second decisions to protect themselves and bystanders. And although critics argue that these legal standards give law enforcement a license to kill innocent or unarmed people, police officers say they are essential to their safety.

For some critics, the question isn’t what’s legally justified but rather what’s preventable. “We have to get beyond what is legal and start focusing on what is preventable. Most are preventable,” Ronald Davis, a former police chief who previously headed the Justice Department’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, told the Washington Post. Police “need to stop chasing down suspects, hopping fences, and landing on top of someone with a gun,” he added. “When they do that, they have no choice but to shoot.”

Police are very rarely prosecuted for shootings — and not just because the law allows them wide latitude to use force on the job. Sometimes the investigations fall onto the same police department the officer is from, which creates major conflicts of interest. Other times the only available evidence comes from eyewitnesses, who may not be as trustworthy in the public eye as a police officer.

“There is a tendency to believe an officer over a civilian, in terms of credibility,” David Rudovsky, a civil rights lawyer who co-wrote Prosecuting Misconduct: Law and Litigation, previously told Amanda Taub for Vox. “And when an officer is on trial, reasonable doubt has a lot of bite. A prosecutor needs a very strong case before a jury will say that somebody who we generally trust to protect us has so seriously crossed the line as to be subject to a conviction.”

If police are charged, they’re very rarely convicted. The National Police Misconduct Reporting Project analyzed 3,238 criminal cases against police officers from April 2009 through December 2010. They found that only 33 percent were convicted, and only 36 percent of officers who were convicted ended up serving prison sentences. Both of those are about half the rate at which members of the public are convicted or incarcerated.

The statistics suggest that it would be a truly rare situation if the officer who shot and killed Blevins were charged and convicted of a crime.

Original Source -> “Please don’t shoot me”: Thurman Blevins’s last words before police did just that

via The Conservative Brief

#IFTTT #The Conservative Brief

[tortuga-aak]

Reporters managed to buy a spine and 2 human heads over the internet while investigating America's lax trade in body parts

REUTERS/Wade Payne

It is possible to buy certain body parts, such as heads or parts of a spine, in the US for as little as $300 with very little vetting involved. 

When the bodies are donated for medical research it isn't always clear what will happen to them.

The companies that handle these body parts can also turn a big profit from the sale of human remains.

Whilst failing to do their due diligence into where the part is going and what it is being used for. 

Families, with often no other choice, can be left in the dark as to what has happened to a loved one's remains. 

  TOWNSEND, Tennessee (Reuters) - Cody Saunders was born in 1992 with failing kidneys and a hole in his heart.

When he died on his 24th birthday, he had endured 66 surgeries and more than 1,700 rounds of dialysis, his parents said. Some days, he hid the pain in upbeat selfies on Facebook. Other days, he shared an excruciating reality, posing in a hospital bed with bandages strapped across his scarred chest.

On his Facebook profile, Cody wrote that he was looking for a girlfriend who will accept "me for me."

"Y am I ugly," he posted on Christmas Day 2015.

Cody lived with his parents in an aged motorhome at an East Tennessee campground. When he was well enough, he worked on a farm with his father, feeding cattle, putting up hay, hauling molasses in a dump truck from one barn to another.

On August 2, 2016, Cody died after a heart attack on his way home from dialysis. Too poor to bury or cremate him, Cody’s parents donated their son’s body to an organization called Restore Life USA. The facility sells donated bodies – in whole or by part – to researchers, universities, medical training facilities and others.

"I couldn’t afford nothin’ else," father Richard explained.

The month after Cody died, Restore Life sold part of the young man’s body: his cervical spine. The transaction required just a few email exchanges and $300, plus shipping.

Whether Restore Life vetted the buyer is unclear. But if workers there had verified their customer’s identity, they would have learned he was a reporter from Reuters. The news agency was seeking to determine how easy it might be to buy human body parts and whether those parts would be useful for medical research. In addition to the spine, Reuters later purchased two human heads from Restore Life, each priced at $300.

The transactions demonstrate the startling ease with which human body parts may be bought and sold in the United States. Neither the sales nor the shipments violated any laws, say lawyers, professors and government officials who follow the issue closely. Although it’s illegal to sell organs used for transplants, it’s perfectly legal in most states to sell body parts that were donated for research or education. Buying wine over the Internet is arguably more tightly controlled, generally requiring at minimum proof of age.

To comply with legal, ethical and safety considerations before the purchases, Reuters consulted with Angela McArthur, who directs the body donation program at the University of Minnesota Medical School. She took immediate custody of the spine and heads for Reuters, inspecting and storing them at the medical school.

REUTERS/Craig Lassig

McArthur said she was troubled by how easily the body parts were acquired and by the failure of Restore Life to perform proper due diligence.

"It’s like the Wild West," McArthur said. "Anybody could have ordered these specimens and had them delivered to their home for whatever purpose they want."

McArthur examined the remains and the documentation included with them to determine how useful the parts would be for medical research. Her review was based on national safety and ethics standards she helped draft for the American Association of Tissue Banks, the American Association of Clinical Anatomists and the University of Minnesota.

She concluded that the medical history Restore Life provided was insufficient, and that the accompanying paperwork was sloppy and inadequate. For those reasons, the specimens did not meet standards for use at her university, she said.

"I haven’t seen anything this egregious before," McArthur said. "I worry about the future of body donation and public trust in body donation when we have situations like this."

"Respect and dignity"

Contacted several months after the sales, Restore Life President James Byrd briefly explained his approach to business.

"Organizations like ours are what I consider accountable because, especially us, we have direct contact with the donor family," he said. "And there’s a certain level of respect and dignity that is involved there because we have that personal relationship with them."

Byrd subsequently declined to be interviewed or answer written questions. But he emailed a statement in which he criticized Reuters for making the purchases.

"It’s obvious your team at Thomson Reuters has no concern for those that seek help from our organization," he wrote. "You only wish to hurt those that need help the most."

Byrd added that Restore Life does good work by supplying body parts to researchers working to cure cancer, dementia and other diseases.

"We help countless people through a wide range of research working with world-renowned researchers," he wrote.

Whatever good Restore Life hoped to achieve by supplying these body parts, McArthur said, its poor handling of the remains "miserably failed" to serve researchers and the three donors: Cody Saunders and the unidentified man and woman whose heads Byrd sold to Reuters.

McArthur said the relatives of donors, whose intentions are noble during a difficult time, deserve better from the industry.

"People think they are doing the right thing, and they want to fulfill their loved ones’ wishes," said McArthur, who formerly chaired Minnesota’s body donation commission and serves on the leadership council of the American Association of Clinical Anatomists. "I know they would feel exploited to know that something like this happened."

Thomas Champney, an anatomy professor at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, also expressed alarm at the ease of the sales.

"Human body parts should not be bought and sold in the same manner as used refrigerators," he said.

The broker

Byrd, 50, has been in the body parts business for two decades. An East Tennessee native, the body broker recently was runner-up in a stand-up comedy contest called The Funniest Person in the Tri-Cities, the region surrounding Kingsport, Johnson City and Bristol.

Before opening Restore Life, Byrd directed a nonprofit tissue bank called American Donor Services, then located near Memphis.

For several years, one of American Donor’s chief orthopedic customers was a Texas firm affiliated with a company that distributed bone grafts made in part from human tissue. In 2005, according to sworn testimony in a civil lawsuit, American Donor shifted to a new chief orthopedic customer. The new buyer paid as much as $10,000 per donor, provided a $200,000 line of credit and began managing American Donor’s financial affairs.

Byrd left American Donor Services a short while later, worked briefly for a vascular tissue bank, and then founded Restore Life in 2008. Based in Elizabethton, Tennessee, Restore Life obtains bodies mostly from people in Tennessee, Virginia and North Carolina. In return for body donations, Restore Life offers to pick up the deceased, cremate the unused remains for free and return them to the family.

In 2011, Byrd spoke publicly about Restore Life in a presentation to the commissioners in nearby Sullivan County. Officials there had grown frustrated by the increasing cost to taxpayers of cremating the indigent. According to a recording of that meeting, Byrd explained that he could help the county. He also noted that many families who donated to Restore Life did so for financial reasons: All expenses were covered, including cremation.

"We have become more a service for those indigent and pauper cases that can’t afford a funeral," Byrd told the commissioners. "It’s a perfect fit for situations where families don’t have the funding or sometimes where it’s left to the county for funding."

Restore Life’s informal arrangement with Sullivan County to take indigent bodies continues today, county officials said. A few times a month, they said, the medical examiner or other officials refer pauper cases to Byrd for possible donation. At the 2011 meeting, County Attorney Dan Street said a formal arrangement with Byrd was unnecessary because officials were merely referring the indigent to him, without any endorsement implied.

"This company is simply going to come and take these bodies," Street told commissioners. "We’re simply getting out of the way and letting them do what private enterprise does best."

Since it opened, Restore Life has grown almost every year, according to the latest available tax records filed with the Internal Revenue Service.

Records show that Restore Life’s annual revenue rose from $49,251 in 2009 to $1.1 million in 2016. Income also increased, the records show. In 2009, expenses exceeded revenue by $1,277. Last year, revenues were $187,884 higher than expenses. The tax records show the charity’s net assets were $354,556 on Aug. 31, 2016, the last date for which records are available.

Byrd lives and works in a Tennessee town where the median household income is $30,000. The nonprofit he operates paid him a salary of $113,000 last year, the tax records show.

The donor

REUTERS/Wade Payne

Angie Saunders recalls that during her pregnancy, there were no signs of trouble in her prenatal check-ups or ultrasound tests. But when Cody was born on August 2, 1992, he arrived in grave distress.

He was moved from the county hospital to the University of Tennessee Medical Center in Knoxville, where he stayed for three months. He was diagnosed with VATER Syndrome, a condition involving multiple birth defects.

Besides the hole in his heart and failing kidneys, Cody was born without a rectum. For the first two years of his life, Cody’s parents said, they fed him through a gastrostomy tube.

Cody had so many dietary restrictions – no milk, no chocolate, no tomatoes, no salt – that he settled on dry Fruit Loops as his go-to meal. For dessert, he took a couple of bites from a stick of butter.

Cody needed dialysis three times a week, four hours per session. Given her son’s needs, his mother couldn’t work much. His father told every employer upfront that his child came first.

"Half of his life, if it wasn’t the hospital, it was dialysis," Richard said. "I went through a lot of jobs."

When Cody was about 9 years old, his parents said, he received a kidney transplant that transformed him. It freed him from constant dialysis. He learned to swim and had more time for school.

"I wouldn’t say he was normal," Richard said, "but at least we wasn’t having to be tied down as much."

The new kidney lasted a little more than five years, and when it failed, Cody was rushed by helicopter to the hospital for a monthlong stay, his parents said. Dialysis began anew.

At 14, Cody won a children’s art contest. The charity, American Kidney Fund, flew him to Washington, D.C. On a contest questionnaire, he listed his favorite things, including gym class, coloring, and riding his bike. His favorite actor was Scooby Doo. His role models: his dad and his mom. When he grew up, Cody wrote, he hoped to work with his father.

Cody left school in the 11th grade. His parents say he was reading at a second-grade level. He worked on farms as often as he could with his dad, and in the winter they sold firewood. He chewed Skoal tobacco and played pool at a local club. To protect his kidneys and heart, he didn’t drink alcohol. But he didn’t always follow doctors’ advice. He could drink a six-pack of Mello Yello soda in a day, his parents said.

In his final years, Cody grew sad and lonely. His parents noticed, and so did his friends on Facebook. He was weary of the pills, the dialysis, the hospitals and the constant reminders of what he could and could not do, his parents said.

"I think not just his body was tired, but his whole mind was done," his father said.

"He wasn’t scared," his mother said. "He was ready."

Cody’s heart stopped on his birthday, August 2, 2016. Not long afterward, Restore Life collected his body.

Ordering a spine

On August 29, 2016, Reuters reporter Brian Grow sent an inquiry via email to Restore Life’s Byrd. At the time, the news agency knew nothing about Cody Saunders.

To contact Byrd, the reporter used his real name and his Thomson Reuters email account.

"We are seeking pricing, including shipping costs, to procure one cervical spine specimen for purposes of a research project involving non-transplant tissue," the query said. The term "non-transplant tissue" refers to body parts, such as heads and spines, which cannot be transplanted into living humans.

The request from the reporter provided a delivery address in Minneapolis, a few miles from the University of Minnesota’s anatomy lab. The query concluded, "We look forward to hearing from you."

Byrd responded about an hour later. "Thank you for your email, I do not believe we have worked with you in the past. How did you hear about our organization?"

"Your firm was referred to us by an industry contact," Grow replied.

Byrd asked if Grow wanted a full cervical spine – the vertebrae and tissue in the neck, just below the skull. When told yes, Byrd replied that the price would be $300, plus $150 shipping. He attached X-rays, which were described as belonging to a 24-year-old male.

Three days later, Grow accepted the offer.

Byrd replied, "Thank you again for allowing us the opportunity to work with you and your organization." He added three questions. One concerned billing, and one asked to confirm that the spine should be sent frozen, not thawed. Byrd’s third question was whether the specimen would be used for "medical research or medical education."

In addition to determining how easy it might be to buy body parts, Reuters sought to assess the quality of the specimens and the documentation that came with them. When the reporter responded simply, "It’s being used for medical research," Byrd closed the deal.

"Thank you again (sic) the opportunity to work with you and your organization," he wrote.

McArthur said the Reuters purchase was legal and ethical. No law prohibits such sales, she said, and the news agency was conducting legitimate research. Byrd, she added, broke no laws by selling the body parts. Still, she said, the three questions he asked in his email demonstrated the broker’s focus on completing the sale, rather than on seeking more details about the buyer’s intentions.

That process can include a request by the seller for details about how the buyer intends to use the body parts for research or education.

McArthur said brokers like Byrd who accept donations have an ethical responsibility – though not a legal one – to ensure that body parts will be used in a medical setting for an appropriate purpose. Reuters turned over the remains to McArthur for analysis and safekeeping. But another buyer could have done anything with the human spine and heads, she said.

The spine arrives

REUTERS/Craig Lassig

On September 27, 2016, a FedEx driver delivered a brown cardboard box to the Minneapolis location where Reuters had leased a mailing address. There, Grow received the package and gave it to a courier who specializes in transporting human remains. The courier drove it directly to McArthur at the medical school.

McArthur immediately noticed problems. She said she found it odd that the outside of the box was not labeled with a customary warning that human remains were inside. McArthur found a pair of one-page documents in the box. One contained the results of a serology test by a reputable company, certifying that the donor was free of infectious disease.

The other page offered a handwritten summary, in layman’s terms, of the donor’s medical history.

"In my experience, I would have expected to see a more robust form," McArthur said, explaining that most brokers provide precise and detailed medical histories. "It’s very superficial."

The medical summary contained neither letterhead nor contact phone number, she noted. McArthur also cited inconsistencies in the specimen identification numbers listed at the top and bottom of one of the pages. And she noticed a small discrepancy between the identification numbers listed on the paperwork and a tag attached to a plastic bag covering the spine.

Precise, legible medical history and consistent donor identification systems are critical information for proper medical research, said University of California anatomical services director Brandi Schmitt. The medical history helps the researcher account for variables such as disease or trauma. Clear paperwork and accurate tagging, she said, allow researchers to track specimens in a scientific manner.

To prevent mishaps that could lead to lost or misidentified body parts, Schmitt said, most hospitals and medical schools use modern tracking techniques, including computer-generated metal discs or barcode tags. A label of some sort should have been directly attached to the spine itself, she said, not merely to the packaging.

"Misidentification is a real problem, for sure," said Schmitt, who coordinates body donation for the University of California’s medical schools statewide. "I don’t think that a handwritten document is your most professional approach. It can lead to human error."

A week after the spine arrived, Byrd responded to a follow-up email from Grow. Byrd said human heads were available for $300 each. He also offered discounts on knee and foot specimens to free up "some freezer space." He wrote that his low prices for body parts reflect the company’s "nonprofit public charity" status, adding: "We are looking to just cover our overhead."

Grief and ashes

REUTERS/Wade Payne

Richard and Angie Saunders said they wanted to bury Cody beside relatives in a nearby cemetery. But Richard, who struggles to read, earns only about $900 a month. Angie, who has long suffered from debilitating anxiety, cannot work or drive. A burial was simply too expensive.

Friends offered to pay for cremation, which typically costs at least $695 in the region. But the Saunders said they felt uneasy about accepting charity from folks they know. So they donated Cody’s body to Restore Life. At the time, Richard said he was grateful for the free cremation the firm promised.

The hardship the family faced is not uncommon among donors, said Martha Thayer, chair of the mortuary science program at Arapahoe Community College in Colorado.

Bereaved families are "vulnerable and are being put in the position of choosing this as an option when they don’t have money," Thayer said. "The only thing that’s more sad than a person who can’t afford to live is a person who can’t afford to die."

In Cody’s case, a relative read a donor consent form aloud to his parents before they signed it.

One paragraph says: "I authorize Restore Life USA to obtain all necessary tissue and organs for research and educational purposes. I understand this gift will be used for scientific research, teaching or other conforming purposes and for use in multiple research or educational venues with for profit and/or non-profit organizations that Restore Life USA, in their sole discretion, deems necessary to facilitate the gift."

The Saunders said they believed this meant that Restore Life would merely remove small skin samples from Cody for medical research, cremate him and then return his ashes. The Restore Life consent form for Cody didn’t disclose that a donated body may be dismembered, as consent forms of most other brokers do.

A few weeks after the donation, a man from Restore Life delivered an urn with Cody’s ashes. Angie can’t recall the man’s name but said he was kind.

"Really nice and understanding," she said.

The toll Cody’s death has taken on Richard worries Angie. He won’t eat more than a few bites of whatever she cooks and usually refuses to talk about their loss. Richard said Angie isn’t wrong, but he noted he has reduced his smoking, from five packs a day to about three.

On the rusted red-and-white pickup he used to ride in with his son, Richard placed a large sticker on the rear window: "In Loving Memory of Cody Saunders."

"He was my buddy. He was my best friend," Richard said. "I keep telling myself I’ll get over it, I’ll get over it."

In a shoebox inside her motorhome, Angie Saunders keeps four photographs of Cody. In each one, he looks directly into the camera, shades perched over his ballcap. She also keeps a silver urn containing his ashes on the dashboard.

"I didn’t get to hold Cody when he came into the world and I didn’t get to hold him when he went out," she said. "But he came back to me, so he’s in here with me."

Two more specimens

In January, Restore Life shipped a second package to Reuters at the same Minneapolis address. This one contained two human heads: one male, one female. As an upcoming story will detail, Reuters purchased the heads as part of its research into a case in Pennsylvania. There, a human head was found in a wooded area near Pittsburgh almost three years ago.

Again, the specialist courier brought the box to McArthur’s university lab, where she donned protective gear and opened it.

The Styrofoam container inside the cardboard box arrived cracked along two of the outside edges, making it vulnerable to leaks and presenting a potential health risk to anyone handling it, from shippers to researchers, McArthur said.

She also found problems with the paperwork for the male head.

"The area where tissue samples are usually listed – usually with client, sample description, sample ID, type of preservation, and the date and time of preservation – is all blank," she said.

Likewise, the paperwork for the female head was unprofessionally prepared, she said. McArthur said the documents were so hard to read that she struggled to understand key information any researcher would require, including the person’s medical history.

After the wrapping and paperwork were removed, McArthur found that neither head had an identification tag. A tag is considered critical, McArthur said, to track identity, especially when working with multiple body parts.

McArthur said that she was familiar with stories of casual sales of body parts by brokers, but the sloppiness of this shipment surprised her.

"I don’t believe what I have just seen here should be allowed or should be legal," McArthur said. "I know that it can be handled in a way that won’t stifle medical education and research. We can do this the right way."

A son's fate

REUTERS/Wade Payne

As is customary in the body broker industry, Restore Life did not include the names of the people who donated the body parts it sold to reporter Grow – just each person’s age and date of death.

Reuters could not identify the individuals whose heads were shipped. But at just 24, Cody Saunders died so young that the news agency was able to identify him after searching through obituaries in southern states.

With his parents’ permission and participation, Reuters hired a forensic lab to perform a DNA test. It confirmed that the cervical spine came from Cody.

In late August, Grow returned to visit Richard and Angie Saunders to tell them what Reuters had learned: Restore Life had dissected their son’s body and sold part of his spine.

For a few moments, Cody’s parents sat silently.

Angie stared into the distance. Richard looked at the ground.

Then Angie spoke. "I thought they was just taking skin samples," she said and began to cry.

Richard tried to comfort her. "It’s over with, honey."

"I didn’t want no more surgeries," she said.

"At that time, we did not have no choice," Richard reminded her. "But you have to look at it this way: Like you kept saying, if it’s going to help somebody else…"

"I know, I know."

The couple said nothing more for nearly half a minute. Finally, Richard turned to Angie. This part of their lives was "done and over," he told her.

Had they known Cody would be dissected, his parents said, they would not have donated his body. Cody, they felt, already had endured too many surgeries during his short life. They didn’t want, or expect, anyone to "cut on him" in death, Richard said.

And yet, he added, "I couldn’t afford to do nothing else, so I felt like that was the best option we had."

Richard asked whether Restore Life used any other parts of Cody’s body. The reporter said he didn’t know. Brokers typically don’t disclose that information. Richard said he doubted he would seek answers from Restore Life. "I don’t blame them," he said. But he appreciated learning what happened to Cody’s remains.

"Because we would have never known," he said.

Angie agreed. "We wouldn’t have had a clue."

Early this month, in keeping with the family’s wishes and at Reuters’ expense, Cody’s spine was cremated in Minnesota. Grow delivered the ashes to the Saunders family at their home in Tennessee.

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[gillsdebate-blog]

OPINIONS: The 3 Departures

It’s been a busy time at Priestfield this summer. Many players have already arrived and put pen to paper on deals at the club but no Gills fan will have missed out on the fact that Billy Knott (to Lincoln), Cody McDonald (to AFC Wimbledon) and Bradley Dack (to Blackburn) have all left the club. We spoke to @DaveGfcMILLER, @Naylor94, @gfcpemble and @TheGatorGood for their thoughts on these 3 high profile departures.

Two high profile departures from the club 

Billy Knott

@DaveGfcMILLER - Knott had a good second half of the season at Lincoln where they got promoted back into the Football League, however it was a very big contrast to the first half of his season with Gills. He struggled for fitness and failed to consolidate his place into the starting eleven under Edinburgh. Then Pennock came in and shipped him out on loan to Lincoln without really giving him a chance, which is why I’m not shocked that Pennock was fast to move him on this summer. It is just a shame that Knott was never really given a fair chance because he was signed to be Dack’s replacement and was one of Bradford’s main men the season previous. So it is rather confusing as to why we let him go on the same day Dack was sold without really giving him a fair chance at the club but it does seem like Pennock is trying to undo pretty much everything Edinburgh did last season and evidently getting rid of Knott was a key factor for him.

@Naylor94 -  Disappointed that Pennock didn't give him a chance. He wasn't really played in a system that worked to his style of play last season under Justin Edinburgh so it feels very much like we're missing out on what could have been. It was obvious that he was brought in to play Bradley Dack's role but with Dacky staying last season, it frustrated Billy to playing a deeper role which didn't suit him. Wish him all the best at Lincoln and just wished Pennock had given him more of a chance.

Letting Billy Knott go, a missed opportunity? 

@gfcpemble - Reasonably hard to have an opinion on this one. Was excited when he signed but was never really given a chance and it does make you wonder whether than was (two) managers faults or his own. Would assume he was one of our highest paid players and so going back to Lincoln would seem to make sense for all parties. 

@TheGatorGood - Billy Knott clearly didn’t get much of a decent shake at playing the position he would have excelled at the Gills. Having said that, on the occasions I saw him start, I also don’t believe he did enough with his opportunities to be played ahead of the likes of Dack or Wright. I probably talked about him as much as any player in the early part of the season – I was excited by his signing and I know I lost count of the number of times I defended his potential, but I don’t think we ever came close to seeing it fulfilled. The irony of his departure now isn’t lost on me either – when Bradley Dack left, Billy would have arguably been our most natural fit to replace him but the timing wasn’t to be. I’ll always be left wondering and will follow his progress at Lincoln carefully. I think he’ll do well there.

@TheGatorGood reckons Knotty will have a good time in the red and white of Lincoln City next season. 

Bradley Dack

@DaveGfcMILLER - With Dack going into the final year of his contract it was important that we cashed in on him this summer and the deal we did get out of him was a very good deal. In comparison to last year where we got offered around £2,000,000, £750,000 doesn’t look that lucrative for the club. After the poor season Dack did have where he failed to really establish any similar form like he did in the 2015/16 season, I was expecting the club to get £500,000 maximum. So for Scally to get that sort of money up front with add ons is brilliant transfer business. Although it was announced a week or so ago that he would spend little of the money made on the transfer is a shame I don’t think many fans can argue it was a great deal for the club. I do agree with the fans who are angered by this announcement as it is obviously frustrating to see your three best players leave and the club effectively state they won’t be replacing them. Again I wish Bradley all the best as he was a great servant for the club and that 2015-16 season will live long in the memory for a lot of supporters including myself and I hope he kicks on with Blackburn over the next few years. 

@Naylor94 -  Probably should have happened 12 months ago but he's finally got his move and I'm glad for him. He's been our best player since the Gang of Four moved him to the Number 10 role in January 2015 and he thoroughly deserves to be playing at a bigger club with the potential of playing a lot higher. Of course I am disappointed he has finally left as you always knew with Bradley Dack on your team, you might just get that one moment of magic to change the game. Last season, however, wasn't his best and you could see he was getting more and more frustrated in playing in a poor team so lets hope he goes onto better things. With regards to the price, I'm reasonably happy with £750,000 seeming as he only had a year left but as I said, he should have left 12 months ago. All the best Dacky and thank you for your thrilling performances each game.

@gfcpemble - One of the inevitabilities of being a lower end of the table league 1 club is that any outstanding players you have do eventually leave and Dack has been genuinely outstanding throughout the last 3 seasons. Yes, he was slightly less good last season as we consistently rushed him back from injury but no one gave more than he did and on his day he still looked like the best player in the league. I actually think he could have gone higher and am a bit disappointed that he didn’t but £750k is a lot of money for us, he should be playing in the championship next year and Blackburn have got a top quality player so probably a good deal for all parties. Again, I hope we re invest the money on someone creative. I’m not holding my breath. 

Blackburn are a big club at this level, but James reckons Dacky could have been plying his trade in the Championship this season. 

@TheGatorGood - As a resident of Blackburn myself, I’m all sorts of discombobulated by Dack’s move this week. I’ve taken countless questions about Bradley from my friends and work colleagues (mostly loyal Rovers fans who usually only talk about my Gills infatuation to mock me!) and I’ve been blunt with them all – I think he’ll become a fan favourite and a star here at Ewood in short time, just as he was at the Gills. The boost to Rovers’ promotion challenge is clearly a huge, huge loss for the Gills. Like Cody, I absolutely don’t begrudge him one bit – in fact, I’d love to get him into my work place to come and meet some of the children who will be singing his name in the future – but the loss to the Gills’ potential creativity this year is huge. Dack’s departure reminds me a lot of how I felt when Matt Jarvis left – Dacky is clearly destined for bigger things. The now club desperately needs someone like Darren Oldaker to bust out of his shadow and see if he can earn that spot if there are no pennies to directly acquire a replacement. A massive ask, I know, but it wasn’t that long ago that Bradley was in the same position…

The departure of Bradley Dack, left @TheGatorGood feeling like he did when this man left. 

Cody McDonald:

@DaveGfcMILLER - This is probably the one departure that’s going to hurt the majority of fans the most, Cody is a modern day legend with this football club and it is going to be hard to replace him and his almost guaranteed 15 goals a season. I wish him all the best and I do hope he recreates the same form he did for Gills at Wimbledon. It appears he has signed for Wimbledon on a two year contract which offers him security and at this stage of any player in the lower leagues career the length of a contract is always a major factor as well as wages. Obviously we don’t know the details and specifics of what the club offered Cody with there being some very contrasting rumours, but Cody’s decision must be respected and I wish him the best at Wimbledon and his future endeavors. 

Cody McDonald - A modern day legend in Dave’s opinion

@Naylor94 -  Controversially the most upsetting departure in my eyes. 81 goals in 223 games. 9th on the all time goalscorers list and only 4 players have ever had a better goal to game ratio, those being Brian Yeo, Brian Gibbs, Tony Cascarino and Steve Lovell. In a time when fewer and fewer players remain loyal to clubs anymore, I can honestly say I'm truly gutted that Cody has left and I'm not convinced we will see a player score as many goals in a Gills shirt ever again. Some people may say he was past it but to score 12 goals last season in a team that created hardly any chances and played to a system that didn't suit Cody at all, I think is a great achievement and I am absolutely devastated that the club didn't do more to keep Cody. Thank you for the memories Cody and all the best at a more ambitious club, you deserve it pal.

Will we ever again see someone score as many goals at the Gills as this man?

@gfcpemble - Lots has been written about this and I find it hard to separate the emotional (I love him) and practical (does he justify the money he’s on?) arguments. What I do know is last season he still looked like our most dangerous striker, he’s got a deal at a league 1 club who comfortably out performed us last season and we don’t seem to have signed anyone approaching his quality. My hope is that his wages have freed up money to bring in a young, hungry goal scorer in which case letting him go will be understandable. However I worry that this won’t be the case…

@TheGatorGood - Count me in the ‘very disappointed’ category with regards to Cody’s departure. At times last year, when I looked at the threadbare quality in our starting eleven, I felt like we’d have a chance in any close game as long as he and Dack were on the pitch. I certainly don’t hold any grudges for him leaving but I’ll admit I feel worried at the dearth of a ‘fox in the box’, natural goal scoring-type left in the current squad. Cody’s tireless work rate always impressed me as much as his finishing did – perhaps that graft can be replaced with good commitment and coaching, but those goal scoring instincts will be missed. I hope he gets a good reception when he returns to Priestfield this year – I wouldn’t put it past him to bang in a hat-trick to make us see what we let slip by!