Greetings once again to the Astute Reader, which sitemeter assures me doesn't actually exist, unless I care to presume that somehow the world's approximately 250 search-engine crawlers have both acquire consciousness and furthermore are shrewd as well as well-informed. Thus, hello again Dear Diary.
Monday late was Equinox, of course. And so of course I was out there around midnight doing my seasonal Pagan Rite, which to the uninformed observer rather resembles some drunk guy wandering around in circles in the backyard throwing bread, sloshing beer, and smoking a cigarette while muttering. I'll spare you my guess as to how the uninformed observer would view the formal religious practices of the Big Three religions, to-wit Judaeism, Christianity, and Islam. It's funny, but we all give our worship to that which created the stars themselves, all of the space to contain them, the time through which they move, and the laws by which all are governed. Yet we all have different names, but generally speaking, we're all thanking what created us, by whichever formal ritual we see fit. I suppose that if there are 10 billion minds, there might be 10 billion ways to approach this task. Yet in the end, when it comes to the First Cause in the universe we inhabit, isn't there only One?
As part of my ongoing project to document Aspen Hill, I am doing a little bit of very amateur archeology, mostly with photodocumentation of the remaining landmarks which still exist from elder days. Due to the pace of development, both historic and proposed, I figure this is a task that really can't wait.
Anyone interested may see the most-recent photos, with reasonable sized thumbnails linking to very large (~5Mbytes) high-resolution images, in the Landmarks -- September 21, 2009 directory.
Included are two closely-sited candidates for marker stones for the 1st Line of Bradford's Rest. Whichever turns out to be the right one -- personally I think it's this one -- it's also the end of the "West line of Hermitage and also the Beginning stone for Milly's Dislike, another large land grant from the Colonial period.
I should mention that walking the lot lines south from that Marker Stone, there are lots of mosquitos. North of that stone, there's a huge and generally unused swath of hilltops in the Rock Creek Park, probably unused mostly from the mosquitos. One of the images above shows where a WSSC right of way sends unfiltered and unimpounded stormwaters from much of the Rock Creek Manor subdivision into the park, where the waters are semi-impounded into a semi-permanent swamp which may be the mosquito capital of Aspen Hill.
Tuesday afternoon, I was sitting on the porch around 5PM or so, and police cars suddenly swarmed the neighborhood, some clearly doing a fast patrol looking for something, and then lots of them went zooming past, down the hill, towards Oakvale Street and Heathfield Road. By "lots" I mean that eventually about 12 marked and several unmarked cars were on the short block of Oakvale Street between Heathfield Road and Southend Road. Once the mad rush appeared to have passed, I decided to saunter on down.
The first officer that noticed me was a short dark man in the all-black "ninja suit" uniform of the County police, and he gave me a look of something between hatred or disgust or suspicion or something like that -- remember, I can't read faces very well -- and I asked him as politely as I knew how, "Hi, I live up the street, saw all of the cars coming down here, thought I'd come and ask what happened". The officer sort of scowls and gives me the "you are a criminal and I will hunt you down" look (that is one I can recognize) and he says "someone tried to run from us".
There was one black guy in handcuffs sitting on the hood of one car. I said, "thank you" to the officers and left.
About 15 minutes later, three officers and an Alsatian (German Shepard) dog came wandering up the street. Evidently the suspect had led the officers on a merry chase through all of the back yards in the surrounding blocks, and the officers and the dog were checking out everyone's back yards looking for possible dropped contraband.
Officer in the Yard. It's okay, I invited them onto the Grounds. You must click to see the full width of the image and the nice policeman.At one time, this might have been thought to be possibly illegal, unConstitutional, unless they were in very immediate hot-pursuit. However, since the rapid enactment of the USA Patriot Act after the tragedies of September 11 2001, what is or isn't Constitutional is all pretty fuzzy until and unless court cases settle the fuzziness into solid boundaries. Since 9/11, for example, no warrants are needed for wiretaps, computer hacking, trespassing, and even black-bag jobs where people without warrants can "legally" burglarize homes, offices, and real-estate.
Personally, yesterday, I felt like cooperating with the officers and their dog, so I waved them on into the yard and talked with them.
Updated: I should mention that the Courts have generally found that anything discovered as a "windfall", new grounds for reasonable suspicion pursuant to a pre-existing set of grounds, is admissible. Thus, when having the dogs sniff out a possible contraband drop after a hot-pursuit chase, have the dogs sniff out everything as well, and use the "legitimate" presence in areas ordinarily out of bounds, to gather as much evidence as possible for potential future criminal cases. end Updated.
I'm fairly certain that whether or not it's on the official police databases -- the "red flags" database that dispatches "special situation" warnings to dispatched officers with information about who owns handguns, is a "known police fighter", or "should be on medications but frequently is not" -- at least some elements or factions of the Fourth Police District probably have seen a picture of me with annotations ranging from "cop wannabee" through "neighborhood upper class twit".
Doubtless there is a lot of truth to the rumor circulating that since Aspen Hill, in my part of it, is officially a "Latino"barrio since 2003 when more than twice as many "latino" students than any others were enrolled at most of the local Elementary Schools, therefor all police officers should regard all non-geriatric whites as "never anything other than criminal poor white trash who need to be convinced to move away, ideally after being locked up a few times".
And considering that for some years, I have been doing my best to fight rampant Home Overcrowding and County Code Violation in this part of Aspen Hill, my picture is probably on the top of the pile. This might tend to go hand-in-hand with the outrageous racism that has been seen in a lot of the local stores, many of which seem to be pretty blatantly sending the message "if you're not an elder or a yuppie, get the fuck out, White Boy".
In my humble opinion, I got that exact look from an officer not a block from the house where I have lived (on and off) since 1963. Whether he gave me that look because I'm white, because I'm not an elder, and/or because I'm not a yuppie, I don't care. Racism from uniformed police officers is odious and intolerable.
I hope I'm reading this wrong. But if someone has the attitude "I hate that man because he has been fighting against my people", it's essential for them to understand that I have been fighting against rampant lawbreaking. It's illegal for some people to be here in this country, and we can't excuse their lawbreaking because they are of certain or specific ethnic origins. That's clear and definitive Racism. It's illegal, regardless of people's "traditions" or ethnicity, to overcrowd houses or convert them into worker barracks and flophouses.
To ignore lawbreaking on the basis of ethnicity or national/cultural origins, how is that not Racism?
To have the legal system, or a significant proportion of the elements of it, ignore mass lawbreaking on the basis of ethnicity or national/cultural origins, how is that not Institutionalized Racism?
To have men with guns and badges -- and an immense and potentially violent hair-trigger system of friends and associates -- assuming positions of potentially eliminating (on plausible pretext) honest and law-abiding political opposition for reasons of ethnic hatred and Racism, how is that not unAmerican As Fuck?
As for today? Not much to report, other than wondering why my house -- which has never had a dog in it -- smells of dog.
Hopefully No More to Come
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