Loaves and Fishes

From time to time, mankind is in need of a little redemption. This little story from the New York Times about the Loaves and Fishes Cafe did it for me:

It not only speaks about the kindness of strangers for one another, but about the resiliency of spirit. I gotta tell ya, I'm not sure that I would have stuck around for a New England winter after having my town nearly washed away. I don't know that I have the fortitude that these people did--and do.

Schoharie (pronounced Sko-HAR-ee), is a small hamlet in upstate New York, where friends and neighbors, strangers and passers-by have cobbled together a place of respite for the many residents who were inundated by the once-in-a-lifetime, back-to-back smack-downs the little town took from Mother Nature last year; namely, Tropical Storm Lee in August and then Hurricane Irene in September.

According to the story, the Loaves and Fishes cafe started out as just a group of people using outdoor barbecue grills after the storm. With no power, a community shared what it could. Then, little by slow, more food appeared. A casserole here, a pot of soup there. It's never the same from day to day, and the little group that serve as wait staff and community glue don't know what will come tomorrow. But as the Rev. Sherri Meyer-Veen said, "We just can't keep up with God."

I couldn't agree more.

Now, the Unraveling

Ok, so Jakadrien Turner is now back on US soil in the loving arms of family and friends. Now, the tangle of lies, ineptitude and strange Facebook postings can perhaps be unraveled and revealed to an American public up in arms about how a 14-year-old girl could dupe officials into believing she was 22 and Columbian.

Now, I understand the ineptitude part. I myself had once penned a note bearing my mother's signature to the Monroe County Sheriff's Office requesting that her car, which had been impounded the night before when a friend and I were stopped for careless driving coming out of the Caribbean Club (that's another story altogether), be released to my custody-which they did. I was only 14 at the time, and let's face it, the Monroe County Officials of the 1980s were rather laid back. Stoned, might be a better word - or maybe it was the right combo of rum and coke and sea air. I also understand Jakadien's partying down in Columbia--it's what kids do.

What I don't understand is why this girl kept up the charade so long? And what drove her out of the house is the first place? And would she have kept up the ruse if she hadn't have been found on FB?

That her family is going to sue every agency involved was a given, even before they announced it. We live in a litigious society--and it's always somebody else's fault...

More will be revealed, and I suspect it is not what everyone might expect.

Morning Weirdness

One of the first stories I read today was about a 14-year-old Dallas girl who got herself deported to Columbia after giving police a phony name when she was arrested for shoplifting. The name she gave belonged to a 22-year-old illegal immigrant who was wanted on various charges. Today, she sits in a Columbian detention center awaiting a decision by authorities as to her fate.

The back story is that 15-year-old Jakadrien Turner is a runaway who left her home in late 2010 at the age of 14 in reaction to the divorce of her parents (I can understand this) and the death of a grandparent. She gravitated toward Houston and obviously came into contact with an older and dangerous crowd, hence the shoplifting and illegal name usage. (again, I can relate to this)

Here's the kicker: The girl maintained the lie about her phony name throughout the investigation, even posting herself to Facebook after being dumped in Bogota. Her grandmother is now up in arms after finding her via FB and want to know why Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials sent her to Columbia without verifying her identification.

I am not sure what bothers me most: That something drove this child to leave her home, assume the identity of a criminal, maintain that identity through detention, questioning, booking and finally deportation to a foreign country, or that a child could subvert the legal system with lie upon lie and then blithely go on with her life, including getting a job and maintaining her FB page as if nothing were wrong. Worse, that supposedly trained officials in two countries could be bamboozled by a slip of girl anyway.

By the way, where the hell are this girl's parents?

I mean, though the FB page is no longer available, it would seem that IF she could post a status, a good one might have been "HELP, I'VE BEEN DEPORTED TO COLUMBIA!" At some point she could have called someone--anyone--I mean they have phones in Columbia. I guess this child never heard of an American embassy, either. A testament to the lack of social studies and civics classes missing from our public school system.

Many children run away--for a number of reasons including the divorce of parents. What doesn't happen often is children getting caught in the inner workings of international immigration policies because they won't own up to the truth. Too many kids are caught in the legal system because nobody wants them, and they have nowhere else to go. That this girl has placed herself in a position to be jailed--twice--shows either a complete lack of understanding of how the real world operates (very possible at 14) or complete arrogance and total disregard for how the world works (also very possible at 14). Both issues are education based, and both issues stem from a troubled world where children have about as much worth as they did in the days of Charles Dickens, unless we consider child porn and child labor acceptable measures of worth.

Our children are a precious commodity. We should be nurturing their spirits as well as their minds. But sadly, too often, they are relegated to the drips and drabs of time their parents can scratch out while Mom & Dad either work 2 jobs each to keep a roof over the family's heads and food on the table or pursue their daily drug and alcohol habits. This is a shameful state for a country that boasts superpower status in the 21st century.

I wish Jakadrien well. For a girl who doesn't speak Spanish (one posting says she is now pregnant--no surprise there, either) being jailed in a Spanish-speaking country is no picnic.

Where Does the Time Go?

I posted just a week ago that the bulk of my classwork was behind me, but here I am up to my eyeballs in work that needed to be addressed before the next semester. I've spent the better part of two weeks just updating this and reviewing that; one professor has a reading list of 11--count 'em--11 books. Welcome back to grad school!

Anyway, I'm back in the swing. Resumes are all updated, clips are ready to go, thesis is in the pipeline and we are less than a year from graduation.

Hallelujah!

Can we get some decent Chinese food now?