Happy New Years

2008 hasn't been that great and I doubt 2009 will be much of a change.

An Austalian woman has been constantly attacked and harassed for the past 18 months. Her, her 13 year old daughter, and a friend have been moving around constantly after "Alice" (not her real name) was first attacked.

...when she was walking along the esplanade at Golden Beach with her daughter last week she was verbally abused by a young man aged 18-21 who yelled abuse such as, “You fucking AIDS-carrying tranny fag”.

Alice said when she held her phone up to record the abuse the young man proceeded to attack her.

“I ran across the road leaving my daughter unprotected, he chased me into a playground threatening to get me,” she said.

“I screamed to units above to call the police, I screamed at the families in the park to help me. Several men who are strangers to me came to my assistance, they tried to hold the offender back.

“Then a car pulled up and two blokes jumped out of the car, one with a metal baseball bat who then started to chase me. A family in a four-wheel-drive let me in and drove me to the police station.”

Helen has the full article up.

Eclexia has up an update about the trans* woman shot in the face (she's still in critical condition). And a new murder.

It looks like Angie may get justice; the prosecution plans to add habitual criminal charges (which would multiply the sentences of other charges by 4) if he is not convicted of 1st degree murder.

As I said in my last post, Gaza is covered in blood (and Israel says this is just the beginning).

This summer, my grandpa was diagnosed with lung cancer. He went on chemo (I stayed with him and my grandma a lot because the chemo was really hard on him), the chemo did nothing but make him feel worse and weaken him. A week before he was diagnosed, he was at his "farm" (an old farm he bought a long time ago that is now a lake and a lot of forest and swamp) chopping wood; he can barely walk now.
He'll be going into hospice now.
He taught me how to fish, how to make maple syrup, how to drive (automatic and stick)... We made applesauce and apple pies during Autumn (as a kid, I'd get in the bucket of his tractor and he'd raise me up with some buckets and I'd pick apples off the top of the big apple tree). Until a few years ago, he and my grandma would drive down to Arizona to go rock-hounding and camping with their relatives there. When I was a kid, we'd sometimes go with them--one winter, we visited Mexico and it snowed.
I am not close to any of my relatives. I left for all of last year and never called--and I didn't care.
But I've always liked my grandpa; I think its impossible not to like him.
He served in WW2, was a police officer and a detective, drove a bus... He visited nearly every state over the years; usually to search for rocks. He's got everything from Herkimer diamonds to Mozarkite, to Star Garnets. He learned how to cut and polish these stones; my family all have jewelry he had made out of his stones. When I learned how to make wire-wrapped jewelry, he gave me my first stones (the very first was rainbow obsidian).