Look at Those Melons!

Posted on by Thor

By Thomas Thorspecken

My Friend Stella P. Arbelaéz Tascon and I were seated on a wooden bench at the entry to this covered stall area at Webster’s Market. This vendor was selling corn on the cob and watermelon. Stella said that his thick southern accent was for show, in that vendors are showmen as well as salesmen. On watermelon was cut open with a machete and free samples were offered to any passer by.

Parked in the parking lot was a Trump and Vance American flag painted car.

Stella had t use the bank machine to get some cash outside the market office. The person getting cash before use stood staring at the screen forever. It turned out the machine had not given him his cash, Had to go into the office to report that the machine had failed him. Stella decided to try the machine herself despite the risk. The machine refused to work. In the market office she was guaranteed a refund at her bank. There was no other bank machine on property but there was one at a gas station down the street. We walked with Boo Boo down the street to find the machine. There was a sign on the gas station door that said no dogs were allowed inside but service dogs. Boo Boo panicked when Stella went into the gas station. I kept reassuring him that she would return. Each person that filed inside smiled. They came back out with there lottery tickets secured.

Each watermelon was $7. I decided I had to have one. I picked up the biggest one I could find and it was as heavy as a cinder block. Stella’s little granny cart strained under the weight. We also picked up so many fruits and vegetables that the bags overflowed from the top of the cart. I ha to hold the handles of the top bag to keep it from tipping over and spilling out.

I am not a great shopper. Some of the vendors spoke Spanish. Stella spoke fluently to them. My 60 or so days of Duolingo only allowed me to pick up a few words of the conversations. When I picked up some tamarind from one vendor I started taking to Stella and walked away. He shouted out, “You haven’t paid me!” I am such a space cadet sometimes.

Meanwhile in Gaza, starving Palestinians are being shot to death as they rush towards food relief truck in the hope of getting some food.

On July 4th, I finally cut the watermelon in half. I put the two halves on a table with spoons. Stella and I raced one another in eating the watermelon. Hers looked like a strange smiling beast with a snaggle tooth. She took a photo of her creation and used it as her profile picture on Facebook.

Alligator Alcatraz: Protestors

Posted on by Thor

By Thomas Thorspecken

The scene at the entrance of Alligator Alcatraz was chaotic with protestors who want the facility removed lining both sides of the street. Florida State Troopers and National Guard Troops were on hand to be sure the entrance to the concentration camp remained open. A helicopter hoovered over head. I am not sure if the helicopter was for media or the camp security.

There was a bit of a circus atmosphere around the entrance.  was one pro Trump protestor who had a sign that said, “Send more Gators.” A family showed up later with a father waving a 1776 American flag and his daughter held a Trump, MAGA election flag. They were quickly surrounded by media like a swarm of mosquitos. The little girl spread her arms to unfurl the blue flag, then she wore it like a shawl over her shoulders to protest from the intense sun.

Protestors against the facility far outnumbered the people celebrating cruelty. The number of reporters far out numbered all the protestors on hand. My friend Stella P. Arbelaéz Tascón and I walked around on cameraman standing on the shoulder who was looking through his camera with his back to traffic. A blue jeep veered towards us at maybe 5 MPH. Stella and I jumped aside but the cameraman was blindsided and struck from behind. He fell forward twisting his body to look back as he fell. His left foot got caught under the front tire and then the car ran over his leg up to his knee. I was right beside him as it happened.

Though political opinions were divisive, people pulled together to help the man who was run down. The driver was panicked and clueless as she slowly backed up off his leg, off the shoulder and into the road. A thin white line separated where it as safe to walk and the traffic on the road. All traffic was stopped by state troopers after the accident. A national guardsman talked to the injured man and kept him still until EMTs could arrive. The shoe was taken off the man’s injured leg. If he was in extreme pain then he knew how to mask the pain. Thousands of photos must have been taken as he lay on the shoulder of the road. The ambulance arrived from inside Alligator Alcatraz and he was loaded on a gurney and taken inside. Legislators and representatives who toured the facility that day complained that they could not see the medical facilities. This one cameraman got to see the medical facilities first hand.

Stella had been interviewed by a Univision reporter in Spanish. Stella’s interview kicked ass since she was well versed in how development was encroaching on the natural beauty of the Everglades. Stella is from Colombia and speaks Spanish fluently, so her opinions carried weight as she spoke of Latino detainees with no criminal records being held in the facility. We looked t the comments with the now viral video and strangely few people addressed what Stella had said. Instead people seemed fixated on Boo Boo, her tiny dog who sat in her lap as she was sketching. People wanted to jump to the conclusion that Boo was suffering in the Florida heat even though his fur had recently been trimmed and he was in the shade of a golf umbrella. I can vouch for the fact that he is very well taken care of. People are instantly more concerned with the well being of a pet instead of having any compassion for humans being held under atrocious conditions in the detention camp. Steve, a National guardsman came over in his camouflage uniform and asked to pet Boo Boo. He explained that he had a small pup named Josephine Coco Pebbles. Josephine had her own social media page.

Any concern about the views of police, or National Guard, regarding the detention camp, melted away in part because people had to pull together to help an injured reporter. Boo Boo also helped bridge the political divide, allowing people to unite, or express concern about Boo’s well being, as he stood against injustice. The tiniest of pets can ignite concern while people celebrate cruelty to humans.

Alligator Alcatraz: Reporter run down

Posted on by Thor

By Thomas Thorpecken

I did three  sketches of the protest at Alligator Alcatraz. I am posting the third sketch first because it portrays the most horrific incident of the protest. A news cameraman is sitting up shortly after having been hit by a blue Jeep and having his left leg run over.

After completing a sketch,  Stella P. Arbelaéz Tascón and I were walking along the main road on the shoulder. The many parked cars on the grass and dirt, forced people into the shoulder of the road to walk. There were probably more reporters at than protestors. Most protestors were against the fence in front of the entrance to the detention facility. The detention center was thrown up in the dead of night on an abandoned airstrip. A few protestors were pro-Trump. One little girl wrapped herself in a Trump, MAGA election flag. 

I was walking behind Stella on the shoulder of the road when I noticed a blue jeep drifting towards  us. It was coasting at maybe 5 miles per hour. It moved straight for Stella, who slapped the front wheel of the jeep and stepped aside. There was a parked car to Stella’s left limiting her movement. I also stepped aside into the grass between two parked vehicles. A reporter, who worked for EFE, was looking through a camera. He had his back to the oncoming traffic. The front bumper of the blue jeep hit his hips causing his back to arch and then he fell forward. He must have turned as he he fell, trying t look back at what had hit him. I then saw the thick knobby front tire of the jeep run over his leg. The jeep kept rolling forward until it had his entire lower leg pinned down up to his knee. I was right next to him as he fell and had his leg crushed. I just shouted out, “Jesus Christ!” The woman behind the wheel, stopped, then slowly backed up. She was horrified and clueless. a young woman was seated beside her in the passenger seat. Part of me thought back to a comment Florida Governor Ron DeSantis had said “If you hit one of these people, that is their fault” I don’t think the woman ran the reporter over intentionally. She was rubbernecking, and not looking at where she was going. She drove off the road into the shoulder.

Stella was interviewed by police as an eye witness. The image of his leg being pinned under the tire will forever live in my mind. Had Stella and I not stepped aside fast enough, we too would have been hit. After talking to the police officer, Stella then went to the passenger window of the jeep and told the woman behind the wheel, that “We are all human and we all make mistakes”. Stella knew it was not intentional, and she reassured the woman that it would all be OK.

I had been less forgiving. I heard the driver say to the passenger that the man had been in the road. I shouted to her that she had run off the road into the shoulder. He was clearly in the shoulder of the road. The fact is, the woman never saw him. Se was probably reading protestor sign on the opposite side of the road rather than looking at where she was going. Once the cameraman fell, she could not see over the hood of her jeep. When the woman hit him, her wheel was on the shoulder of the road and when she backed up the tire went back on the road but still on the white line.

The reporter could not get up. An ambulance eventually came from inside Alligator Alcatraz. Paramedics helped lift him up on a gurney and roll him into the ambulance. He was then driven into Mosquito Alcatraz.

DeathSantis Bullies Special Olympics

Posted on by Thor

The T4 Program, also called T4 Euthanasia Program, was a Nazi German effort,   framed as a euthanasia program, to kill incurably ill, physically or mentally disabled, emotionally distraught, and elderly people. Adolf Hitler initiated the program in 1939, and, while it was officially discontinued in 1941, killings continued covertly until the military defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945.

At first the disabled and inform were killed by by starvation and lethal injection, they later chose asphyxiation by poison gas as the preferred killing technique. Physicians oversaw gassing in chambers disguised as showers, using lethal gas provided by chemists.

On a related note, Florida Governor Ron DeathSantis ripped a page out of the Trump playbook by threatened the Special Olympics with a 27.5 million dollar fine if they insisted on a vaccine mandate to keep participating athletes safe.

The New England Journal of Medacine stated that, “If diagnosed with Covid-19, patients with intellectual disabilities were more likely to be admitted to the hospital, and…were more likely to experience mortality due to Covid-19 following an admission.” A page on the Special Olympic’s website reported that vaccination is especially urgent for people with intellectual disabilities, including Down syndrome, Fragile X syndrome and autism. These are the core of the organization’s community of participants, who are especially vulnerable to COVID-19.

The Special Olympics caved and chose cow-tow to Florida State governor’s insanity rather than protect each and every athlete. DeathSantis has realized that his best chance of being a presidential contender in 2024 is if he is as anti vax and conspiracy minded as Trump.  The cruelty is the point.