The Good And The Bad

Second try! I accidentally erased today's musings!!! Perhaps they were not fit for today's post and some little blog bug (ger) tripped my fingers up so that I would hit the wrong button while trying to post, resulting in hitting the discard tab instead! Happy Wednesday!!!

I am currently looking into information of photo programs. I have purchased one but am thinking of taking it back. I bought Printshop 22 Deluxe. But, it does not look like it does what I am looking for. I was wanting to restore some of the old photos I am putting on the family discs. This does not do that. I also want to improve on the clarity of blurry and dark photos so that they do not need to be discarded. I know there are programs out there that do that because my recent Epson Photo Printer program did just this. But, not having that printer any longer (it malfunctioned and I had to return it only to find that they did not have any other ones in stock to trade for), I have to find an outside program.

It has been suggested to me to download an Elements photo program and use it for free for 30days and see if this would work. If it does, the program is very pricey and I am cheap and do not want to fork out a lot for this. The other program is the GIMP. Apparently, they both have learning curves to overcome and I am a little uneasy with 'learning curves' since I do not speak computereze very well. If any of you use either of these programs, I would love to have your feedback! (Aaron, you have already shared your opinion. Ha!!! Whichever one I go with, you will probably have to come and bail me out of something with them or show me how to work 'em!!! Lucky you!).

At any rate, I plan to work on the photos today, continuing to work through the lists and getting them separated into understandable groupings. I am 2/3's finished with this. It is slow, because I have to have a time where it is quiet and I won't be interrupted. When I get going on them, if I have to walk away from the task, I get easily confused and forget where I was. I am now keeping notes as to what was copied and what was not. And I had to start all over with everything because I messed up and had to rescan some photos. I know that I am way over-due in getting these out. I hope to have them out by Christmas. I thought it would be sooner...we will see. And don't forget, the original photos are up for grabs. If no one wants them, I will gladly preserve them in scrapbooks.

This week has been harder than normal. Life is not fair and we have experienced a few samples of this. We got to walk through the emotional and illogical ramifications of a court case involving our pastor's young daughter. She was accused of assaulting a teacher with the intent to cause bodily harm. The fact is, she had no involvement in what took place! This is what happened.

A substitute teacher left a class of 8th graders by themselves for twenty minutes without supervision. Where the teacher was, no one knows. While gone, a portion of the class started taking straight pins and using straws, were trying to blow them into the ceiling tiles. Vickie and a few other students were not participating and working on their school assignment, instead.
In fact, Vickie said that she was not really aware of what the others were doing because she was concentrating on her own stuff. (she is a straight-A student and has no history of causing trouble). When the teacher came back into the class room, he took a drink from a soda glass he has on his desk and began choking on a straight pin. After asking who put a pin in his glass, a girl pointed in Vickie's direction and said that she had done it!

The teacher immediately grabbed Vickie by the arm and escorted her to the principal's office. There, the vice-principal and the teacher then began to try to force Vickie into confessing that she had done this 'crime'. (the principal was gone for the day). When Vickie repeatedly refused to sign a document admitting her guilt, the police were called in. Vickie was then taken to the police head quaters, fingerprinted, and written up for assault on the teacher!!! All this without the benefit of a phone call, legal representation, or the knowledge of her parents. Then she was taken back to school and expelled.

The school did not follow their own protocol in handling this situation! Vickie should have been given an opportunity to call her folks and the school was supposed to have provided a representative for her to help work through the accusation before being the police were called. The kicker to all of this is that Vickie was only 14 years old when this happened. Mom and Dad did not find out about her being expelled until she went home after school! They were never notified, even though the teacher and VP kept telling Vickie they had called them and they were on their way to pick her up.

The next day, the girl who had initially accused Vickie of the pin incident, went to the vice-principal and confessed that she had lied and that Vickie had not done anything wrong. The principal told the girl that she could not retract her testimony and then within three days of the situation, that girl had been transfered to a different school.

The school presented this situation to their lawyers for the school district, (six lawyers to be exact, who all gave opinions on the case, independent from each other). The lawyers said that the situation did not warrant any further involvement from the school and that it could not be proven that Vickie did what she was accused of and they all approved in letting Vickie back into school and suggested that everything be dropped.

The Vice Principal and the teacher decided that they were going forward with this and officially accused her with 'attempted murder' which was translated to an assault charge.

This happened last school year. Monday, the court date finally came up and I went to be with the family while they attended the proceedings. Vickie's case was heavily weighed in her favor with testimonies from the kids and people directly involved with what took place. The prosecution had no eye-witness accounts for testimony only character witnesses.

When the verdict came down from the judge she ruled in favor of the teacher. This was her reasoning.... (during a portion of the trial, Vickie had been asked if she ever lied and she said, 'Yes.") Because Vickie admitted to telling lies, the teacher was the more credible person in the case since the teacher had a 40 year tenure with the school system and was a good teacher. And the judge said that the character witness of the vice-principal in support of the teacher was very trustworthy because he, too, had a long and respected tenure with the school and could be trusted to tell the truth!!!!! The judge was ruling in his favor.!!!!! This after the teacher had admittedly lied four times while on the stand!

We were all stunned and broken hearted to say the least. Now for most of you who will read this you need to know a few things. Pastor and his family are from Africa; they are black. They are not Mormon but, Lutherans, and they are Christians. We had been told that the judge was biased against Christians and will do whatever she can get away with to rule against them. This was shared by a lawyer who knows her and has had to work on cases with her. The other fact is that the vice-principal hates blacks. Unknown to the court, he actually body-slammed Simba, Vickie's brother against a school wall, last week, yelling at him for being in the school hallway. (He had been a student at this school the year before. And this particular day, pastor had driven to the school to pick up Vickie and asked Simba to go into the school to get her, which he then did. He and Vickie were walking down the hall to leave when the Vice-Principal saw them and proceeded to body-slam Simba against the wall and then told him that he was not allowed on school property and was asked what he thought he was doing inside the school. Simba, told him that he was getting his sister. Then Simba asked why he was body-slammed and treated that way for doing nothing wrong. And why could he not be on school property when some of his friends, who were across the hall way from him, were talking to other kids, too, when they were also no longer students there, ? Simba asked the VP why he was not treating them this way, too? And then Simba pointed out those students. The VP got really mad and yelled at Vickie at which Vickie told him that he was not allowed to talk to her and she took Simba by the hand and walked out of the school to their dad.) So, the VP is to be trusted? Even his own principal was on Vickie's side and he wrote a letter in her defense for the judge.

This is an example of Utah justice, especially for the blacks who live here. It is very sad. At this point, the judge is going to be written up and Vickie's lawyer is reporting her before the appellate court, her superior. And we are encouraging pastor to appeal Vickie's case. He is defeated and wants to give up plus, they have no money with which to fight this injustice. So, I am hoping that those who surround him and his family will help to provide funds so that he can follow the law of the land, so to speak and, and take this further in the court system. It is a travesty of justice when rulings are made, not on fact, but speculation of character and biases. Very sad.

And this is not an isolated case, here in Utah. We had other friends who lost their business to a false accusation that was also easily proven in their favor because of good records of business documentations of all transactions but the judge ruled in favor of the accuser. And prior to their court case their lawyer told them they would not win in this state because the person bringing suit against them, that person's lawyer, and the judge all attended the same Stake (church) and that the Mormons support each other first, if at all possible, when brought into conflict with 'Gentiles'...nonMormons. Our friends, thought that was insane counsel and confidently went to court only to find that their lawyer had been correct in his pre-court assessment. They lost their suit and also lost their business.

This is law in Utah. And this is one reason, this is the 'whitest' state in the nation. Blacks are not welcome here by the ruling Church authority even though they 'changed' their doctrines to include blacks back in 1976 or so. During this time, their prophet just happened to have a 'revelation' that blacks could now be Mormons. If you want to know the history of the blacks in the Mormon church, check out a web site called, The Heart of The Matter . It is a program lead by a man who had been in the Mormon church for forty years and was involved as a bishop and person of leadership. He has since started a program where Mormons and anyone else, can call and ask questions about their church and get an honest and factual answer. (Mormons are not allowed to ask many questions or read or listen to anything that is not first approved by the church. If they indulge in unapproved materials and ask too many inquiring ?'s they are taken before their bishop and reprimanded for a 'lack of faith'. If these questioners persists in their search for answers, they are excommunicated from the church AND their families.) So Shawn's program provides marvelous information in a manner in which no one can be accused of going against the church's strong oversight. Anyway, this is a fascinating local program. I also know Shawn and he is an honest, loving, very intelligent, person. He is now a pastor affilliated with Calvary Chapel. I highly recommend this site. You can watch via pod casts previous programs. If you watch, let me know what you think.

In all of this, I had just been accepted to the University of Utah's Pain Care Management program. It is very strict. It has a 'no excuse' policy for missed appointments. This is because there are so many who want to be part of this cutting-edge program. Well, in all the court stuff, my first appointment was during the trial time. Later that day, when I was on the phone to pre-register for this clinic, I realized that my appointment had been that morning! I was devastated and cried for a bit. When I called and briefly told them why I had missed, I was simply dropped and denied access to them...forever. I felt very uncertain where I could get the medical oversight that I now need. Fortunately, my internist is willing to pitch-hit for me until we can find another pain clinic. So, this was my second emotional blow on Monday.

You know, life is just plain hard, sometimes! And it is not fair. However, how we choose to react to unfairness dictates who we really are. In Vickie's case, she takes comfort that she knows that she is innocent and she an sleep at night. She is now determined to become a lawyer so that she can try to keep this from happening to others. The girls who initially lied, the hateful and lying VP both, will have this lay heavy in their hearts and will not be able to have a peacefull inner being. So, justice does really get served...just not in the way we would like to see it happen.

In the case of the missed appointment and medical opportunity, perhaps this was God's way of protecting me from something would have been harmful or just not workable in my case. And being a teaching hospital, I would have had to put up with being poked and prodded by all the interns and 'not-quite-doctors'. THAT can be really frustrating and unnecessarily painful, too!
So, everything will work out, with time, I am sure.

In the meantime, for those of you who pray, please keep Vickie and her family in your prayers. Pray as God would prompt you. You don't always need to know the facts in a situation. God is fully capable of guiding you to pray as needed!

Now, to catch up on more pleasant things....

Josh and I went fishing again on Saturday. We spent all day at the lake. Josh caught and released four 7-9 inch trout. I caught three 17 inch to 15 inch fish, outfishing him!! Hee Hee!
That was FUN! Now we have a fishing 'war' going on! We plan to go fishing again on Thursday.

Being spawning time, the fish are full of eggs...the female ones. We have saved the eggs and placed them into an aquarium after we took the sperm of the male fish that we caught, and mixed them all together. We have photographed each step so that Caleb can use this as a school science project. Hopefully, in a month or two we will have wee-little fishies swimming in our tank! If that happens, we will then take them to the lake and release them back where their parent fish has been. It is amazing to see the little egg sacs forming inside the fish eggs.

I bid you all goodbye for the day. I will be babysitting here, in a few minutes, so time is getting short for being on the 'puter. Talk to you all soon!

Judy