Here is a thoughtful and interesting blog post. It's about what to do when people who you think should be on your side fail you - and who hasn't had that happen, on a national-politician scale, right on down to close family members - but also there is a list of ways to act when you've hurt someone's feelings through unthinking racism, sexism, whateverism. It's actually just a list of ways to act when you're having a conversation with someone whose experiences you don't share, starting with opening your ears and closing your mouth.

Frequently I read blogs written by people with whose politics I don't agree. I run across posts that have me rolling my eyes, of course, and I run across posts that cause me to think new thoughts, which is a major reason why I read those. I also run across posts that I think make excellent points, independently of any political content.

I think that in some ways white women make a bridge for privilege/non-privilege. Perhaps especially white women who were raised in the south and expected to be ladylike and not make waves. You can achieve, but you aren't supposed to make a big show or a spectacle of yourself. But in the workplace, achieving frequently isn't enough. You have to put yourself forward, even if it feels immodest or audacious or inappropriate or uncomfortable, and it's probably hard for certain segments of the population to understand that somebody could ever feel that way, let alone anticipate it, empathize, or know what to do about it.

I remember when we terminated the coworker I've written about before. He left a spot in the chemist rank, which we wanted to fill by promoting a black female technician named Libby. I'd worked with her while we were trying to save his job, and had discovered that she had chemist potential. Like most of our techs, she had a science degree, but more than that, she was very smart and curious and cared a lot about getting the job done right. But when I told Libby that the boss and I wanted her to apply for that job, she kept saying that she didn't want to do it. She didn't think she could do it, I thought, and I knew better. I kept encouraging her to put in for it, she kept not wanting to, and I finally told her - "you're doing the work, you might as well get the pay." That made sense, she applied, and we promoted her. (She turned out to be one of the most productive chemists we ever had, besides personality-wise being a pure delight to work with.)

All of the techs shared an office, sharing desks as people came and went on their shifts, but the chemists shared separate offices, two by two. The desk left by the man we terminated was in an office that he shared with another white male chemist, Randy. I told Libby to get her stuff and move into that desk, and once again, she held back. She would just stay with the techs - she would be more comfortable.

Now let me stop here and say that in a situation like this you have to be really almost a mind-reader. You can't bully people into leaving their comfort zone so far that they are stressed out and actually fail at what you're pushing them to do. On the other hand, some people have been trained to hold themselves back and if you care about them, you have to bust them out of that. One clue that I had was that Libby had told me that her mother had said she must major in education or social work - that "they" would never let her get anywhere with a degree in biology. She was surprised when we hired Libby on as a tech, and very surprised when we promoted her. "You be nice to those white folks," she told Libby, "they've been good to you." We aren't being nice, I told her, we promoted you because we thought you could do the job.

So I told her: "You have a chemist job. You get a chemist paycheck. You go to chemist meetings. You sit at a chemist desk. Get your stuff." She still didn't want to.

"Why not, for pete's sake?"

"Because Randy won't want me in there," she finally said.

"Why don't you think Randy will want you in there?" I asked.

Silence.

"Is it because Randy's white? You're prejudiced against Randy because he's white?"

"I'm not prejudiced!" Libby protested.

"Then get your stuff!"

So Libby moved into that office, and of course she and Randy got on like a house afire. He's a very nice person, easy to get along with. I wouldn't have put her in an office where anyone would have been ugly to her.

Was I bullying her? Probably. I don't know what to do in situations like that except to think with my head, and feel with my heart, and act, and hope for the best. And, as the writer of the linked blog post says, educate myself as much as possible as to how other people's experiences affect them, not expecting other people to be like me. Ignore the buzzwords that tell me I've left my comfort zone of political thought that I agree with, and have an open mind about stuff. It's not easy but you have to do it to be a righteous person, I reckon.

So what do we think about the new breast cancer screening guidelines?

I've had a few false positives. In 2005, when we were in Memphis, I had to get a diagnostic mammogram b/c the screen appeared to show "something" in both breasts. The report from the diagnostic mammogram + ultrasound was that there were "somethings" but that they were not cancer.

(BTW, there's normally a lot of stuff in there, so they do have to be read by experienced radiologists. And the tech told me that the reason women don't get mammograms before 40 is that the tissue typically isn't fatty enough to get a good picture before then. She said that mine hadn't turned to fat yet, but give them time, ha ha.)

The next year the screen was positive again, but this time when I went for the diagnostic, the radiologist said that she didn't see the need; she saw the stuff but it hadn't changed in the years I'd been having mammograms.

After we moved to Florida I delayed getting a mammogram, which was stupid given my mom's history of breast cancer, b/c I didn't want to deal with that again. I did have a screen last month, and of course, had to follow up with more views. Got the films from Memphis to compare but had to do it anyway. Once again, a clear report.

It's a pain in the butt (well, not the butt,) to have to repeat these things, but a screen needs to err on the false-positive side if it's to do any good at all. If the concern is that women are made anxious when they have a positive screen, then that concern is easily addressed if they are told at the time of the screening mammogram that X% have to get a second look, most of these don't turn up anything, so if it happens to be you, don't freak out. If the concern is that women are being irradiated and the data show that lives aren't being saved, that's probably a valid argument. If the concern is that it would save money to not do the mammograms, that ticks me off. And no one need argue with me that delaying mammograms until age 50 is only a guideline - it's a guideline today, a mandate tomorrow.

They don't start pap smears in the UK until age 25. Here, it's 21 or at onset of sexual activity, whichever is earlier. So is it that pap smears don't save the lives of young women under 25, or is it that the NHS can't afford to spend the money? Hello, government-run healthcare.

Willie Herenton picks up petition to run for Memphis mayor -- again

Less than two weeks after retiring as Memphis mayor, Herenton walked into the offices of the Shelby County Election Commission this morning and picked up a petition to run for the office again, election commission officials have just confirmed.

...

A special election is set for Oct. 15 for the mayoral vacancy created by Herenton's retirement July 30.

“I think it’s shocking for everyone to know that we’re about to spend a million dollars on a special election to replace a man who intends to run in that special election,” said Bill Giannini, chairman of the Shelby County Election Commission.

Words fail me.

Memphis has undergone yet another change. This one almost has to be for the better.

Myron Lowery is sworn in as 66th mayor of Memphis

Thus ending the long reign of King Willie.

This is a plus:

Before his first official day in the mayor's office began at 12:01 a.m. Friday, Myron Lowery had already surveyed damage from Thursday's severe storms.

This is a minus:

Lowery has been using a city-issued vehicle and security staff provided by the Memphis Police Department. The mayor pro tem said he was pleasantly surprised when he encountered a traffic jam Friday afternoon, and his bodyguard flipped the police lights on and cleared traffic.

"He said, 'We do this all the time and we're going to get you there,'" said Lowery with a laugh.

Chicagoboyz has a post up: Blinded By His Narrow Focus. It's about an article the blog author read, that seems to extrapolate conditions in a county in California to the rest of the country.

I started to comment on it and then realized that my comments were running too long, so I decided to park them here.

I lived in Memphis, TN from 1982 until last year. When my daughter was in first grade - that would have been in 1993 or so - there weren't very many Hispanics in Memphis. Her class studied Mexico during multicultural week. One of my coworkers, a Mexican-American, was kind enough to speak to her class and answer questions about Mexico because no one in the school had any direct experience. By the time she finished elementary school, there were a few Hispanic children in some of the classes. Not long after, a third to a half of the school was Hispanic. (This was a parochial school.) Memphis experienced a big demographic shift, during which we saw some things we were not used to seeing, including Hispanic-looking people standing around outside Home Depot. (I never inquired as to their immigration status.) Billboards, flyers, newspapers in Spanish appeared and then increased in number too. No one planned this or decided it should happen, it just happened

My point(s)?
1 - Nothing, NOTHING is static. It never was. Memphis was never frozen in time. The Hispanic demographic shift was visible because of the Spanish-language stuff, and the schools suddenly had to add a lot of ESL classes, sure. But busing for desegregation happened, white flight happened, etc., long before this. Also waves of immigrants from countries where they were fleeing oppression, so that certain parts of town began to see Vietnamese restaurants and grocery stores, and various things of that nature. You can't really pick a moment in the past and say "this is the real Memphis". The only constant is change, right? Xenophobes and other people who can't handle change are going to have heartburn but they can't stop the process.

2 - Nothing stays put, either. Today Marin County, CA, tomorrow Podunk, OH. I should say "nothing people-related". El Ninos aren't going to suddenly start causing drought in Texas and flooding in California. But there's not a wall up between California and Ohio so even though the article might not speak to conditions today, the blog post author might re-read it two or three years from now in a different light.

But I keep thinking about cells. Cells have membranes, not walls, so that things can move in and out of the cells as needed for the cells to survive. [Edited to add: some non-animal cells have walls, of course.] The movement in and out is strictly controlled. If a cell membrane is destroyed, the cell no longer has integrity and it can't function any longer. I think eventually the world will be like one big cell. This process started happening with pre-Roman Empire trade routes and really started accelerating with steam ships and railroads and trans-continental air travel, and the internet by which we can read newspapers in other countries and have conversation with their inhabitants; and NAFTA and free trade and all that other stuff. But we're not there yet, and I wonder what kind of cell membrane the USA really needs. Maybe I'm a xenophobe but I wonder if we've let our membrane weaken prematurely.*

When I think about all the illegal immigrants who come here to find work, and why it is that they can find it (because employers can sidestep OSHA regs and labor laws if they know their employees won't complain) I wonder about capitalism. I wonder if it's true, as Marx(?) said, that capitalism requires an underclass. First the US had slaves, then black people without civil rights, then when black people got the same rights that white people had, suddenly we needed a new class of people without rights. Is that it? Or is it not necessary except for those capitalists who want too much profit and are willing to break the law to get it? I bet Fred Smith and people of his ilk aren't hiring illegals, and they're not hurting. I've had to show proof of eligibility to work at every job that I remember filling out paperwork for.

Still, it seems that we must somehow want these people here, and in the status they have. If we truly didn't want them, we'd send them out and close our borders, right? Instead of discussing whether, for instance, they should get driver licenses and pay in-state tuition. But since they are here, why is it so hard for those who are self-supporting and law-abiding (as far as they can be) to be regularized? Is it just the usual lumbering monster of bureaucracy, or an inherent flaw in our political system? I wish I knew.

*To continue the membrane analogy - one could look at immigration or at occupation, as a kind of endosymbiosis. The idea of endosymbiosis is that some of the organelles in eukaryotic cells - mitochondria, chloroplasts in plant cells - started out as prokaryotes that moved into other cells either as parasites or as food, and because the larger cell offered some protection and the smaller cell offered energy, it stayed around and reproduced with the larger cell. There's some evidence to support this (mitochondria have their own ribosomes, which are like bacterial ribosomes, and they have their own DNA, which is configured like bacterial DNA, not the X and Y of eukaryotes' nuclear DNA). These things have evolved so that you can't independently culture the mitochondria or the chloroplasts; they can only function as part of the eukaryotic cell. The point is that it doesn't matter now whether the prokaryotes that gave rise to these organelles started out as food or as parasites; they are a vital part of the eukaryotes either way. In the same way, it hopefully doesn't matter whether an American's ancestors came here for a better life, or fleeing famine or oppression, or were brought here in chains - they should be able to both contribute to the "cell" and enjoy the "cell's" benefits, and see themselves and be seen as part of the larger whole. This is hopefully true of our Hispanic immigrants as well. They change us, we change them, and we all benefit.

Adapt or die, right?

Here is an article inviting Memphians to remember where they were and what happened 40 years ago when MLK was assassinated. There are more than 90 comments. It's fascinating to read how people's observations agree and disagree.

I have two rules about discussing racial matters. One is that no one is allowed to read someone else's mind, i.e., assume wrong attitudes and opinions in people he or she doesn't like. The other is that no one is allowed to tell anyone that he didn't see what he saw, hear what he heard, experience what he experienced, etc. Usually the second rule applies to white people who try to tell black people that they are imagining the effects of racism and discrimination - NOT that they are imagining other people's attitudes, because they very well may be, but actual experiences that they have had. But both of those rules cut both ways, really. So in this comment thread you see people saying "I saw X" and other people saying "I doubt X really happened". Did X happen or not? I wonder if it's possible to know, now.

The stories of police brutality are upsetting. I offer this story from Saturday about a black woman and a white policeman as a very uplifting antidote. Some people say nothing has changed in 40 years. Not true.

Today while I admired the pretty lakes I drive past on my way to/from work I remembered Patriot Lake in Memphis. This is part of Shelby Farms, a large urban park between Memphis and Cordova. We have a lot of family memories of that place, because we spent a lot of time there.

There's a paved path that goes around the lake, and R and I used to walk around it with F, or following her on her roller skates or her bicycle. After she had gone off to college I could still go there (and did by myself a few times just to get some alone time) and envision her little self skating or biking or hopping up that path.

For a while there was a boat rental there, and F and I would rent a canoe and paddle around.

And she loved to go down to the water's edge and look for tiny mussels and other creatures. She spent a lot of time doing that, with me sitting on a bench catching a breeze.

Sometime when we were in the midst of running errands, if the day was pretty we would drop everything and go to Patriot Lake. For a few years I kept a picnic blanket and a kite in the trunk of the car for just this purpose. There's a kite-flying hill that always has convection breezes from the lake.

Here are some pix from 2004.

Where we moved from

Where we are now

I happened to look at Madison, WI today ... you know I turned down that job last November ... at 10:30 AM our time it was -5°F.

Monnie has a post about Bill Cosby's new book. The statistics about black people and violence bother her, as they do every right-thinking person.

When I was still in Memphis, my last job was in a very bad part of town. (Actually, the one before that had razor wire around the parking lot, and the one before that ... well, anyway.) The lab was down in the plant, with the parking lot a short distance away. If I left work at or after sundown and any of the operators saw me come out of the building, he would drop what he was doing to walk me to my car. All of the plant operators were black. Once another operator was just coming into the plant when we got to the parking lot, and he said, "How come you don't ever walk me to my truck?" "Cause ain't nothing gonna get you!" my escort replied, laughing. But that reminded me that statistically, those guys were at greater risk than I was. I started telling them when I thanked them that I appreciated their care and concern, and that they actually needed to employ the buddy system among themselves after hours. They didn't take me seriously, though. I think those statistics aren't generally known and understood.

One of the things that bothered the crap out of me, when I was in Memphis, was the amount of focus and effort and attention on things like sports arenas and fancy boat docks, and how much money the city needed to spend on those things (money we didn't have; besides there were always, always cost overruns and the inevitable discovery of somebody's hand in the cookie jar later on.) I wanted so badly to run across Mayor Herenton out on the sidewalk somewhere and to grab some random black kid - preferably a teenage boy with the khaki pants dragged down so that the crotch was between his knees and he had to duck-walk, you know how that is - and say "Look at this, Mayor Herenton - THIS is Memphis! This is the future of Memphis! Not the FedEx Forum, not Beale Street Landing - but this kid right here! How are we investing in this kid?" And to turn to the kid and ask him in what way the City of Memphis expresses to him that it cares whether he lives or dies. The park program is underfunded - public swimming pools not kept up - summer jobs programs cut - no community centers - nothing that is not privately funded or run by the churches. But by golly, we will have plenty of public funding for entertaining rich folks.

So the kids are neglected and have nothing to do, they see all the attention given to things that are and will forever be out of their reach, then we wonder why they feel disaffected and why they drop out of school and why the crime rate is so high. And it beats heck out of me why the politicians with those entertain-the-rich-folks attitudes and the hand in the cookie jar have so much popular support.

Things are looking up, maybe, or maybe I'm just kind of a delusional idiot.

The sale of the business is still being held up. In the meantime, the owners, who had decided to shut us right down, found that they still needed some money coming in, so they are running a portion of the plant with a skeleton crew. On that crew is me. (And some other folks.) My pay is less, but so are my hours. I'm spending virtually all my work time in the lab, which is where all the fun is anyway. And supposedly this keeps the health insurance in place, and so forth. The hypothetical buyers relayed a request for me to be working on the quality program during my truncated workweek. I find that very encouraging.

R and I decided to go through with selling the house in Memphis. It closed yesterday. We got a little money out of it, not a whole bunch, but I'm thrilled to get that done because ...

... yesterday the Memphis newspaper, the Commercial Appeal, reported that the Memphis metro area now leads the nation in violent crime. I can just imagine everybody's property values plummeting in the wake of that report. I called my former boss in Memphis this afternoon and told him I was not coming back. It feels a little strange to do that with my job in question here and R between jobs himself, but I actually have a sense of freedom now. If this thing in Florida doesn't work out there is an entire continent for me to look for a job in. I will always wish Memphis the best and look for every hopeful sign, but it's going to take some time for that city to turn around and it will have to do it without me and my family.

What else. Ummm ... Bonnie (cat) found a chameleon in the yard the other day. I've never seen one change colors before and wasn't totally sure that they really do. But I saw it.

Way, waaay overdue for an update.

I have internet access at home now, finally.

BUT.

The home office in Boston has decided to shut down the plant where I work. Yes, really. Really. Why? I've heard several explanations, none of which make a lick of sense. We found out about all this last Tuesday.

They had an offer to buy. The hypothetical new owners came down and let us all re-apply for our jobs. My interview was Thursday. I am the only person who has been told that I definitely have a job with them ... IF the sale goes through. There have been some last-minute problems and the sale looks like not going through. Hopefully I'll know something by the end of the week.

In the meantime, my former employers in Memphis want me back. They have been so sweet about it. I don't want to go back there, but I need a paycheck, y'all.

Also, in preparation for my re-interview I had called a person I worked with before I went to this last job in Memphis ... the place I left b/c I didn't want to relocate to Kalamazoo. Got an email from her this evening to call someone I know very well at that business. May be something doing in K after all, or possibly Iowa.

We did get an offer on our house, were supposed to close last Friday; R and I talked about that in view of this sudden news and we decided to go through with it. But the sellers had some problem and so we're supposed to close next Friday.

I cannot stand the suspense.

Okay, so Thursday my group had a little cake and ice cream for me, and a $25 gift certificate, which I thought was really nice. I told them I'd buy a nice blouse with it and think of them when I wore it. (And for those who wonder how you can buy a "nice" blouse with $25, in the context of what you would wear to work in a laboratory, you wouldn't spend more than that, and most of the time a lot less.) Some of the plant people partook of the cake and ice cream, of course, and my boss, and the owners. I will say that I've been very disappointed in the way the owners have acted about me leaving. People always have the right to better their circumstances if they can. It's up to the employer who realizes he has a valuable employee, to see to it that she will want to stay. And that's all I'm going to say about that.

But they did tell me that I can still change my mind, and even come back if I don't like Florida.

So I'm unemployed for the next couple of weeks. Weird feeling. I have a LOT to do during this time. Finish getting the house sorted out, find a place to live in Florida - F and I are going there later this week to do that - and work out the logistics of me moving now and R following after he gets F off to college and the house sold.

We took a walk in our pretty historic-district neighborhood after dinner the other day. We've lived here 17 years and have a lot of memories of those walks after dinner, F on her tricycle and then her skates, and so forth. But on one of the gaslight-inspired lamposts we found, for the first time, gang graffiti. If I'd had any lingering doubt about the rightness of moving away, it's gone.

I have a little catching up to do.

Yesterday was R's and my 25th wedding anniversary. Yes, 25th. We have coexisted in close proximity for a quarter of a century without killing one another, and in fact actually still liking each other, which is something.

To celebrate, we and F had dinner at Paulette's. This is a Memphis landmark I will miss, even though I can't afford to go very often. The popovers alone are to die for.

My parents sent flowers.



They're lovely and they smell very nice, hence their being put on the mantel because the cats wanted to eat them.

And F gave us some very nice Godiva chocolate, which she ordered several weeks ago to be delivered for the occasion.

Today we were going to visit family in Mississippi but F elected to get a virus instead (kidding, I'm sorry she was sick) and I actually needed to be doing some stuff here in the house instead anyway. Got through a lot of cleaning, sorting, and readying to be packed. I continue to discover that cabinets and closets I'm going through were actually gone through not too long ago so doing this stuff is not as hair-raising as I had feared.

Friday they are having a final farewell lunch at my previous workplace (although the division I was in won't be leaving till the end of August) and I've been invited. But that's also my last day where I am, my coworkers may want to take me to lunch or something, and it would be churlish of me to go to the previous place for lunch if that's the case.

F and I will probably go to Florida next week to look at some places to live. We found some nice-looking rental property on the net and will line up appointments.

So that's it. I hope everybody had a nice 4th.

I have an informal list of things I won't miss about Memphis. Wendi Thomas is muscling her way onto it with her dang column today, which I won't even link to, in which she bemoans the SC decision to end the assignment of kids to school by race. Even though she admits that in Memphis, where white kids make up 9% of the student population and many schools have fewer than 3 white students or no white students at all, it can't make any difference. Even though she admits that when Bush was elected she predicted that she'd be picking cotton on a plantation by the time he's out of office and now realizes that won't happen - does she realize how extremely offensive that is to those of us who voted for Bush? Does she realize what she's calling us?

From the article: "But there's got to be some mixing for the black student not to buy into the stereotypes he'll hear about white kids, and vice versa. Especially vice versa."

Why "especially", Wendi? Why?

I am SO READY to be out of here.

Job search, again. I've talked to people in various places ... Florida ... Kansas ... elsewhere in Tennessee.

Why can't I stay where I am? Well, when you want to take X material and turn it into Y, and sell it, you pretty much have to have a supply of X material. If you expect to sell vast quantities of Y, so that you must run your process nonstop at a high rate, then you need a steady stream of X coming in. That is not happening. I don't see any prospect of it happening. Apparently it isn't just us, either, it's others in the industry. And I needs my paycheck.

Leaving Memphis is definitely a consideration. I like my house but I can't pick it up and plunk it elsewhere. Yes, we could move out to Cordova or somewhere, but crime is increasing there too; and my job would still be in a notoriously high-crime area.

So there it is.

I have not dropped off the face of the Earth.

Been working hard of course, that's a given. Had a very nice visit with the Class Factotum again. It's funny to feel like you've known somebody forever when you've only met F2F twice - I guess that's what reading blogs gets you.

Then a little virus, not too bad but enough to keep me home a day or two, resting, which I clearly needed. And now we are embarking upon home improvement projects, again, because we need to and because we may be pulling up stakes before too long. Because I don't have much confidence in my job continuing, or in finding anything else in Memphis, and I'm not sure we want to stay here anyway. I feel funny leaving F at home during the day, with the doors locked and all, and that's just wrong. Can't live that way.

It seems that Lemoyne-Owen, the historically-black college here in Memphis, will get 3 million dollars from the city over the next 3 years.

I'm cool with that, really.

What I'm not cool with is this from Councilman Rickey Peete:

"I hope that my colleagues will look beyond race and petty politics and vote for this resolution," he said.

If his colleagues were truly "looking beyond race" then a HBCU would be no different from any other school. That's not what he meant. He meant, stop being the racist and the petty politician you are every single day, for a few seconds, so you can vote for this resolution. I swear, some of the verbiage that I read about the white council people having to take would give me a stroke. Like Edmund Ford saying "sometimes you just have to bring out the sheet." I would have gotten up and walked out. Don't know how they do it.

Record breakers, according to NOAA:

MEMPHIS IN MARCH

TYPE RECORD DATE PREVIOUS RECORD/DATE
-------------------------------------------------------
HIGH MAXIMUM 80(TIE) 3/14 80 IN 1967
HIGH MAXIMUM 86 3/29 84 IN 1963



MEMPHIS IN APRIL

TYPE RECORD DATE PREVIOUS RECORD/DATE
-------------------------------------------------------
LOW MAXIMUM 45 4/07 47 IN 1939
LOW MINIMUM 30 4/07 31 IN 1990
LOW MINIMUM 28 4/08 33 IN 1990

So, global warming or new ice age: which is it to be? Can't decide ....

OK, in the Mickey Wright case, the DA has drawn us a picture, and I have to say I'm not impressed.

It seems that Mardis had told county employees that they were not to send a black code enforcer to his place of business. The DA's office thought they had a hate crime. Then at the last minute couple of black people showed up and said they and Mardis were friends; so, no hate crime. The case wasn't so juicy now, I guess, so they lost interest and let him plead no contest to 2nd degree murder.

OK, we need to drop this nonsense that because a person has black friends, or white friends, or whatever, then that proves he is not a racist. I've known terrible racists who made an exception for So-and-so. Then again, whether a person is a racist or not isn't anybody else's business unless he acts on it. It's the acting that's the problem.

That's where I think the whole hate-crime thing is counterproductive. This case should have been approached like the earlier case I mentioned, with the black teenagers who killed the white woman: they were murderous thugs. Period. So is Mardis. Lock him up forever. What's so hard about that?

Thaddeus Matthews has more to say about this issue, including some very disturbing information about the judge. I vaguely remember that but didn't realize that he was still on the bench, and that he was the judge in this case. It's at times like this that I suspect I need to be on blood pressure medication.

This sucks. More here but you may have to register (it's free).

Back in 2001, a Shelby County code enforcer named Mickey Wright disappeared.

As I recall, he had phoned his wife to make a lunch date and then never showed up. She reported him missing sometime that afternoon, and a search was begun right away. Mr. Wright was an insulin-dependent diabetic, and that was an extra concern, of course. Days and weeks went by. Posters were put up. His family begged and pleaded for anyone who knew anything to come forward.

Eventually his burned-out truck was found (IIRC) and it was determined that he had been killed but his killer was not caught. Last year, I think, a new-broom sheriff's deputy reopened that case and kept on it until he found the killer: Dale Mardis, who owned some kind of business that Mr. Wright was in the act of applying county code to. From the article:

Mardis, 53, who was sentenced for second-degree murder, was required to tell prosecutors what he did with Wright’s body.

He said in a statement that Wright’s body was mostly burned and that any portions remaining were put into junked automobiles that were eventually crushed.

So he killed the man, which, because he was enforcing the law, was just as much a blow to law-and-order as killing a policeman is; did that to his body; and let his family suffer a very long time not knowing where he was or what had happened or was happening to him. He looked at those posters every day and never said a word. And he was allowed to plead no contest and sentenced to 15 years.

The family apparently acted out in the courtroom and I don't blame them.

I don't understand. I really don't. I would love to say this is not a race issue but it's really hard to explain otherwise, although in a city that's 2/3 black you'd think this kind of crap wouldn't be happening anymore. Because a few years ago when a white woman was carjacked at a Sonic in Collierville and driven away somewhere and killed, her black teenage killers got life without parole. That sentence was appropriate for them and it would have been even more so in this case. I Do Not Understand. I hope somebody with the DA's office draws us a picture.