… that occurred to me in a completely unexpected moment of “standing outside myself”, taking me totally by surprise:
Were I a religious person in the commonly accepted sense, and more particularly were I a Christian religious person I suspect the most earnest prayer for and of my life would be “O Lord, protect me from myself!”
This is a strange time of year. A strange one and a confusing one. I’ve always found it so at least. Confusing that is. For as long as I can remember. And you’d have thought, given my Pagan leanings, that I wouldn’t. Wouldn’t you? Find it confusing that is.
Lemme explain.
21st June today. Or it will be, once daylight breaks (there’s my Pagan leanings peeking out again!).
And I love June, for all sorts of reasons. Not least of which is cos its Summertime. Right bang in the middle of Summer in fact.
Or is it?
For this is where the confusion begins.
In the tradition I follow (and have done for much of my adult life) 21st June has marked the Summer Solstice, and celebrated as Midsummer’s Eve.
A tradition borne out in fact by such an august body as the Royal Botanic Garden of Edinburgh.
Midsummer’s Eve you’ll note. Midsummer. Which says to me “the middle of Summer”. Not the end; not the beginning; the middle. Hence the “mid” part of the word.
And that seems to make perfect sense to me. For its also the longest day; from hereon in the days start to get shorter. And the nights, by some strange coincidence, start to get longer.
But that middle of Summer business… that’s precisely where the confusion starts to creep in.
For some people insist that June 21st is actually the beginning of Summer! How totally bizarre. And confusing.
And if that’s the case why isn’t it called Begsummer rather than Midsummer? Just doesn’t make any sense.
So much so that this year I decided to try to pin this down once and for all by doing a little bit of research… dunno why it had never occurred to me before. But now I’m rather sorry I did for if anything its left me even more confused.
Here’s one answer:
June 21 marks the beginning of summer in the northern hemisphere and simultaneously heralds the beginning of winter in the southern hemisphere. In 2009, the solstice occurs and summer begins in the Northern Hemisphere summer begins early on June 21, at 1:45 a.m. EDT (5:45 UTC).
And here’s another:
Astronomically, the summer solstice is 21st June, but tradition throughout Europe reckons 24 June as Midsummer Day, and calls the night of 23/4 Midsummer Eve, Midsummer Night, or St John’s Eve, since 24 June is the feast of St John the Baptist.
which source also describes it as:
1. The middle of the summer.
2. The summer solstice, about June 21.
See why I’m confused? And this is to say nothing of that 24th June business beginning to creep into things and muddy the waters even more.
As I say, confusing.
That’s not the end of the matter though. Oh no!
Having said that I love June, and this particular part of June, I must now say that I also find it incredibly depressing (told you its confusing!).
For its not just the middle of Summer (yep, that’s my interpretation, and that’s what I’m sticking to); its also, as I said, when the days start getting shorter.
And that, to me, is an incredibly depressing prospect. It seems to take so long to move out of Winter (as you may by now have guessed, I really don’t like the cold, or the short days… which is also weird given that I’m very much a night creature) and then, suddenly, bingo! We’ve begun the all-too-rapid slide back into Winter again. Nasty!
So yeah. A confusing time. A lovely time. And a depressing time.
As I said at the start, a strange time of year.
For reasons totally irrelevant to the point of this post (so I won’t go into them) I decided to create a Twitter account for myself.
Well, ok, I will go into the reasons…
All to do with my recent posts about Madeleine McCann. The initial two articles I’d written about the subject seemingly attracted a fair bit of interest, with a few people claiming they’d be interested in keeping track of my progress. So I thought it might be a good idea to have a Twitter account so that, if they wished, they could “follow me” thereby and thus be notified on the (rare) occasions when I may add something new to my writings about the McCann affair. Seemed like a good idea at least.
Now, I’m not a particular fan of Twitter. My reaction to it is a bit like my reaction to social networking sites… tried ‘em, don’t like ‘em, ditched ‘em. About the only one I’ve retained (if it can be called a social networking site) is the photo-sharing site Flickr (which is really good, incidentally). As for the rest. Pah! All a waste of time.
However, a couple of the communities I associate with use Twitter, as do one or two of my personal contacts, and it began to dawn on me that maybe this relative newcomer to the scene is a bit different.
So initially I set up a Twitter account with the nick “tawnews” for use on my… er… “alternative news”-related sites and stuff. Just to keep a few folk informed but, more importantly, enabling me to keep abreast of what some of my contacts were doing. All well and good. No problems.
Back to the present time then. So, finally deciding to set up a second “personal” Twitter account as it were, what do I find when I try to do it? I can’t! Cos my “nick’s” already in use!
Some toerag has already set up an account there using the nick “fotdmike”! Ok, I know there’s no copyright on nicknames… but I’m fairly widely known by that particular nick around the circles in which I move and, it has to be said, its not an “obvious” one. Not one I’d have thought that would occur to someone to use just off the top of their head sorta thing.
So, a little bit irritating, but not overly concerning. Not straight away at least.
But then I did a little bit of digging, and discovered that this mysterious “fotdmike” on Twitter has (with just one exception) followers that are identical to some of my own contacts. And that is worrying! For it suggests that someone at some point has tried to pretend they’re me!
Bloody cheek! (Bit daft as well, cos no-one in their right mind would really want to be me.)
Anyway, cutting a long story short, I haven’t a clue who this other “fotdmike” character on Twitter is. It certainly ain’t me, that’s for sure. So if any of my contacts are following them or whatever I’d… er… block them or something.
And just for the record, I now have two Twitter accounts… one under “tawnews“, and the second (and newest) under “fotdmike1“. And they’re definitely both me.
And if anyone’s got any doubts about any site or ‘net tool they come across that appears to be mine but may not be there are various ways of checking back with me personally, the best method probably being to use one of the webmail forms to be found either on my Flickr account or on my main site at Tilting at Windmills (on which domain this blog’s hosted incidentally).
And incidentally, should anyone manage to track this mysterious (and extremely suspect) second “fotdmike” down, see if he knows what “fotd” actually stands for! That’ll be a good test for the little bugger… find out if he’s done his homework properly or not. Heh heh.
Amazes me sometimes just how much I don’t know. Occasionally it’d be nice just to know something… anything in fact.
Case in point… given my Pagan predilection you’d think that I’d know a bit about nature, and wildlife, and be able to – for example – differentiate and name various species of plants, trees and stuff.
Wouldn’t you?
Wrong!
I can just about manage to identify the really common stuff like poppies, daffodils, oak trees, willow trees and… um… maybe holly trees.
Shameful, isn’t it? But I seem to manage all right normally – until suddenly I encounter something where I really do wish I weren’t quite so ignorant.
Wednesday last (23rd May) a couple of friends and I were walking along Cardington Road in Bedford, passing this really long line of trees, bushes, shrubs and stuff.
Friend A draws our attention to the fact that lots of the flora are festooned with cobweb-type cocoons or something. Far more in fact than she’s ever seen before in any one place.
Now here’s a really strange item. Reposted from a MySpace bulletin. Any basis in fact? I dunno – whilst the references to Schoedinger’s lawsuits appear to check out (though with very little documentation publicly available) the link through to the boardhost site appears not to work now.
The Strange Death of the Woman Who Filed a Rape Lawsuit Against Bush
By Jackson Thoreau
opednews.com
Early one Saturday afternoon in July 2003, I made a simple phone call to Margie Schoedinger, a Texas woman who filed a rape lawsuit against George W. Bush in December 2002. I expected to leave a message on a machine, so I was caught a little offguard when Schoedinger answered.
She, too, sounded somewhat surprised I had called, saying she hadn’t heard from many other reporters. But she talked to me for a few minutes about the legal action.
“I am still trying to prosecute [the lawsuit],” said Schoedinger, a 38-year-old African-American woman who lived in the Houston suburb of Missouri City. “I want to get this matter settled and go on with my life.”
Well, Schoedinger hasn’t gone on with her life. In fact, three months after I spoke to her, she died in an apparent suicide. And this matter remains unsettled.
When I asked her in July 2003 about the lack of media coverage, Schoedinger said she wasn’t seeking publicity. She said she did not even know about a December 2002 article in the Fort Bend Star, the only U.S. mainstream media outlet that covered this story, to my knowledge. The Fort Bend reporter, LeaAnne Klentzman, said she even went to Schoedinger’s home and talked to a man there, who said she could not come to door. While I reached and spoke to Schoedinger on my first attempt, maybe she wasn’t ready to talk back in December.
Anyways, Schoedinger said she was surprised the case wasn’t covered more because “it is true……People have to be accountable for what they do, and that’s why I’m pursuing it.”
To be sure, Schoedinger’s accusations – which include being drugged and sexually assaulted numerous times by Bush and other men purporting to be FBI agents – are bizarre and hard for most people to believe. But her story fits in with those told by a growing number of people who say they were used as guinea pigs or whatever by members of the CIA or another U.S. agency who wanted to test out the latest mind-controlling drug or just have a strange form of release. And her death – let’s just say government agents have made murders look like suicides before.
In her court petition, Schoedinger said police in Sugar Land, another Houston suburb where she said some assailants linked to Bush attempted to unsuccessfully abduct her from her car shortly before the 2000 election, refused to take a report or do anything about that incident. She filed a lawsuit against the Sugar Land department and said that in preparing its defense, Sugar Land police found out that she dated Bush as a minor. I didn’t get a chance to ask Schoedinger about that tie and didn’t meet her in person, but her driver’s license listed her as being 5-foot-8 and weighing 125 pounds, for what that’s worth.
The Fort Bend Star story quoted a Sugar Land police captain saying his department had no record of any complaints by Schoedinger. All he had to do was what I did – go to the Fort Bend County Internet site and do a simple search on Schoedinger’s name in the area of civil court records. I found the lawsuit Schoedinger filed in December 2000 against Sugar Land police, and it even had numerous responses by the department’s attorneys in that case.
Just wait. This story gets stranger.
When I started asking Schoedinger about certain details of the case, such as alleged surveillance at her home and if she was still legally representing herself, she politely ended our conversation. “I need to see what has been written,” Schoedinger said. “I feel like it’s best for me to end our conversation.”
Obviously, she had learned to be careful about what she said and to whom she said it. I could understand her being leery about talking about her situation with a stranger over the phone.
But I remember being puzzled by Schoedinger’s attitude after hanging up the phone. I wondered that if she had made up such a wild story, why she didn’t come up with something a little less outlandish, in which people couldn’t necessarily dismiss her as a kook. I wondered why she didn’t seek publicity to at least provide some form of protection. I’ve long learned that being as public as possible is one of your best defenses against rogue intelligence agents. But she didn’t even seem to want any media to cover her story. I told several writers I knew, some of whom tried to contact Schoedinger. None succeeded, as far as I know.
I remember thinking, “I hope she doesn’t wind up on the wrong side of a gun.” And sure enough, in late September, Schoedinger did.
The Houston Chronicle wrote a bare-bones obituary that stated only that Schoedinger “expired” on Sept. 22, 2003, and her burial was at Houston Memorial Gardens.
I called the Harris County Medical Examiner’s office, and a clerk told me the cause of death: a “suicide” by a “gunshot wound to the head.” I hung up amid bombs going off in my mind.
For one, using a gun to commit suicide is predominantly executed by males, according to psychiatrists and other sources like pharmaceutical firm Merck & Co. Women are more likely to overdose on drugs, although the number of gunshot suicides among women has increased in recent years.
Besides Pravda and Internet ezines – one of whom referred to Schoedinger as “deranged” – I haven’t seen stories on this strange death of a woman who filed a rape lawsuit against the U.S. president and wound up dead nine months later. I can’t say I’m surprised. Or even angry. I don’t know what the hell to think. All I know is I was one of the last – if not the last – reporters to speak to Schoedinger, and she didn’t sound “deranged” to me in July 2003. She sounded like someone who had gone through something weird and was trying to sort it out. She sounded like someone who wanted the truth to come out. And now she’s dead.
If this had happened to Clinton when he was in the White House, do you think the story would have been covered non-stop on FOX, CNN and the right-wing talk shows? Do you think we’d have reporters asking Clinton and his people about this death in press conferences? Is FOX unfair and imbalanced to the point of being “deranged?”
There are some more odd twists to this case. I also found a 2002 criminal case related to Schoedinger in which Christopher Schoedinger, her husband, allegedly struck her. He pleaded no contest and was sentenced to a year in jail. Christopher Schoedinger had also filed for divorce. Then since 1997, Margie Schoedinger had filed for at least five assumed business names for various ventures – including a communications firm, health and beauty business, travel agency and publishing company. Could a “deranged” person start all those businesses or even know how to file a lawsuit?
Schoedinger’s lawsuit can still be viewed on the Fort Bend County site at ccweb.co.fort-bend.tx.us/ – then go down to the bottom and click on civil court. Then type “schoedinger” in the plaintiff box and click search. You should find another lawsuit she filed against Sugar Land police, as well.
I can really understand media members being intimidated, even frightened, of the Bush administration. As I’ve detailed before, these are not Boy Scouts running the show. The Schoedinger death is just the latest in a string of strange ones surrounding the Bush family – Bush biographer J.H. Hatfield, Sen. Paul Wellstone, Sen. Mel Carnahan, and others that are detailed on various sites, including at members.boardhost.com.
For the record, I contacted Bush’s media office about Schoedinger and have yet to hear back. Now that I live in the Washington, D.C., area, I can go down to the White House in person and try to get someone to speak to me about this case. As expected, I haven’t had much luck with the Fort Bend County and other Texas authorities. So maybe I’ll stand outside the White House, holding a sign saying, “Who killed Margie Schoedinger?” and passing out copies of my column on the case. It would make about as much sense as anything else in this matter.
For all I know, maybe Schoedinger did kill herself. Maybe she dreamed up a lot of this stuff. But I don’t know, am I “deranged” to think it’s weird that in this mass-media, detailed-information age, so few people are even asking any questions about how a woman who filed a rape lawsuit against the president could be dead less than a year later?
Jackson Thoreau is an American writer and co-author of We Will Not Get Over It: Restoring a Legitimate White House. The updated, 120,000-word electronic book can be downloaded on his Internet site at www.geocities.com. Citizens for Legitimate Government has the earlier version at www.legitgov.org. He can be contacted at jacksonthor(at)yahoo.com or jacksonthor(at)justice.com .
A different take on the News... stuff like cards and posters and things. To hang on your walls or send to people or something...
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