Last week I was blessed with three days of pure heaven!
Don and I finally got to go on our long-awaited camping trip to Cumberland Island, Georgia, down on the Florida border. Let me give you an idea of what this place is like. 18 miles long. 300 people a day allowed there, and most of them are day-trippers. Only reachable by boat. No electric, no hot water, no lights, no clocks, no phones, no shops, nothing but what God put there!
So what did we do? Whatever we felt like doing! We hiked on Friday and Saturday, and hung out on the beach the ENTIRE day on Sunday. We watched the lightning bugs and wild horses and armadillos and shooting stars. We ate the food we carried in and enjoyed every bite. We didn't have showers and didn't even care. We experienced God's love through the peaceful songs of the birds, the funny scurrying of the crabs, and the warmth of the sun on our skin. And we fell more in love with each other. :)
Thursday, April 27, 2006
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
Long time
It's been 2 weeks since I've been here... *sigh*... myblog.com's getting on my nerves. Sometimes the site's not even up. Perhaps I should move. We'll see.
I'm tired, but well. Getting ready to go camping at the beach, but first I have to put in a long day's work tomorrow. I can't wait to write of the adventures I'm sure we'll have this week!
More soon, hopefully.
I'm tired, but well. Getting ready to go camping at the beach, but first I have to put in a long day's work tomorrow. I can't wait to write of the adventures I'm sure we'll have this week!
More soon, hopefully.
Tuesday, April 4, 2006
Resolution
I finally heard on the news today about what happened with the woman we convicted when I served on jury duty last month...
From the Knoxville News-Sentinel...
Woman gets jail time for trying to hit boy
Judge says reckless endangerment case was racially motivated
By JAMIE SATTERFIELD, satterfield@knews.com April 4, 2006
She called them stupid.
She said they weren't welcome in her West Knox County neighborhood. She labeled them with a word the young boys, ages 6 and 9, had never before heard.
Harold A. Hall confronted her. She rebuffed him. He turned the other cheek.
She sped toward the youngest as if to strike him with her Jeep Cherokee, veering away at the last second.
Hall wanted revenge. He sought justice instead.
On Monday, Hall came to Knox County Criminal Court with his sons in tow and asked Judge Richard Baumgartner to prove the lesson he had tried to instill in his boys: People of character seek help from the law. They do not take it into their own hands.
"I could have responded and did evil to her, but that was not what I wanted to do," Hall told the judge.
Baumgartner answered Hall's plea by ordering 58-year-old Sharon Kay Martin jailed for 90 days for a reckless endangerment conviction in a case the judge said was racially motivated.
"I remember this case very well," Baumgartner said. "It was a troubling case. There certainly was raised an issue of whether this act by Mrs. Martin was a racially motivated act. She denied that.
"I'm convinced ... that there were racial overtones," Baumgartner said. "I think the fact that (the Halls) were African-Americans and they were in her neighborhood was an issue in this case."
A jury convicted Martin last month of endangering Hall's 6-year-old son, Terrell Hall, in July 2004 in an incident on Tyrone Drive near Carlton Circle that came after a series of encounters between Martin and the Hall sons.
Assistant District Attorney General Takisha Fitzgerald said Martin, who is white, was upset that the Halls had moved into the neighborhood.
"That's the driving force in this case," Fitzgerald argued at Martin's sentencing hearing Monday. "She was mad because this black family has enough money to live in her neighborhood."
She said trial testimony showed that Martin twice confronted Terrell and his 9-year-old brother, Terrance, while the boys rode their bicycles on the street near her Tyrone Drive home in June 2004.
The boys' mother, Te'Retta Hall, testified at the trial that Martin called the boys stupid in one encounter and later used the n-word to describe them, a term she said the boys were unfamiliar with.
On July 19, 2004, testimony showed, Martin drove past the boys as they played outside, turned the vehicle around, revved the engine, swerved toward Terrell and then veered away.
Martin admitted warning the boys to stay out of the road near her home but insisted her words had been "twisted," according to a pre-sentence report. She denied at trial using a racial slur. She blamed medication for her faulty driving, according to defense attorney Jake Werner.
Martin said nothing at Monday's hearing.
Baumgartner is allowing Martin to remain free on bond pending an appeal.
From the Knoxville News-Sentinel...
Woman gets jail time for trying to hit boy
Judge says reckless endangerment case was racially motivated
By JAMIE SATTERFIELD, satterfield@knews.com April 4, 2006
She called them stupid.
She said they weren't welcome in her West Knox County neighborhood. She labeled them with a word the young boys, ages 6 and 9, had never before heard.
Harold A. Hall confronted her. She rebuffed him. He turned the other cheek.
She sped toward the youngest as if to strike him with her Jeep Cherokee, veering away at the last second.
Hall wanted revenge. He sought justice instead.
On Monday, Hall came to Knox County Criminal Court with his sons in tow and asked Judge Richard Baumgartner to prove the lesson he had tried to instill in his boys: People of character seek help from the law. They do not take it into their own hands.
"I could have responded and did evil to her, but that was not what I wanted to do," Hall told the judge.
Baumgartner answered Hall's plea by ordering 58-year-old Sharon Kay Martin jailed for 90 days for a reckless endangerment conviction in a case the judge said was racially motivated.
"I remember this case very well," Baumgartner said. "It was a troubling case. There certainly was raised an issue of whether this act by Mrs. Martin was a racially motivated act. She denied that.
"I'm convinced ... that there were racial overtones," Baumgartner said. "I think the fact that (the Halls) were African-Americans and they were in her neighborhood was an issue in this case."
A jury convicted Martin last month of endangering Hall's 6-year-old son, Terrell Hall, in July 2004 in an incident on Tyrone Drive near Carlton Circle that came after a series of encounters between Martin and the Hall sons.
Assistant District Attorney General Takisha Fitzgerald said Martin, who is white, was upset that the Halls had moved into the neighborhood.
"That's the driving force in this case," Fitzgerald argued at Martin's sentencing hearing Monday. "She was mad because this black family has enough money to live in her neighborhood."
She said trial testimony showed that Martin twice confronted Terrell and his 9-year-old brother, Terrance, while the boys rode their bicycles on the street near her Tyrone Drive home in June 2004.
The boys' mother, Te'Retta Hall, testified at the trial that Martin called the boys stupid in one encounter and later used the n-word to describe them, a term she said the boys were unfamiliar with.
On July 19, 2004, testimony showed, Martin drove past the boys as they played outside, turned the vehicle around, revved the engine, swerved toward Terrell and then veered away.
Martin admitted warning the boys to stay out of the road near her home but insisted her words had been "twisted," according to a pre-sentence report. She denied at trial using a racial slur. She blamed medication for her faulty driving, according to defense attorney Jake Werner.
Martin said nothing at Monday's hearing.
Baumgartner is allowing Martin to remain free on bond pending an appeal.
Monday, April 3, 2006
Murder hits home... again
It's hard to believe that only a few nights ago I was musing about murderers and the death penalty.
I know two people who have been murdered, both were domestic violence situations. The first while I was in college, and it happened to Eric Sparks, a popular guy from high school who I worked with on the yearbook staff. He went to his (female) youth minister's house to help her after receiving a call that her angry ex-boyfriend had shown up and she was afraid. The ex wounded her, killed Eric, then committed suicide.
The second case was last year, about my friend Mark Newton who was our nurse practitioner at Briarcliff. He and I were work buddies, the kind of person I didn't socialize with outside of work but whose company I always sought when I was there. He was separated from his wife, and had a girlfriend who was estranged from her abusive husband. His girlfriend's husband showed up at her apartment one day and killed both her and Mark. What really gets me about Mark is that I know how tormented he was by his own demons in the months prior to his death. The week before he died, we had another long conversation about his situation, how he wanted to make things right and heal his family, but he didn't know how to change things. The Christian marriage counselor he and his wife went to actually told them to just get a divorce. Unfortunately, Mark never got a chance to try again. I miss him so much, still. He pops into my thoughts at the strangest times, and it always takes my breath.
Today, I learned of yet ANOTHER situation, only this time the plot's a little different. Ben e-mailed me about a friend of ours from home, Megan, who shot her husband 15 times and now she's held under 2.5 million bond. Megan and I were both leaders in our youth group and were nearly inseparable at church until she moved to Ohio with her family. When she turned 18, she married this ugly goofy guy who was in his 40's. Apparently she had her family's blessing on this, which nobody could figure out. They had 2 kids and that's the last I heard of her until, according to the news, they were estranged, she'd been in domestic violence shelters, all sorts of bad stuff. Then she went to his house and emptied 2 guns into him.
I just don't get it. Her mom used to be my Sunday School teacher! Megan is beautiful and smart and apparently more unstable than either Ben or I realized, and we were both close to her. Who knows what has happened in the years since I've last seen her?
God, help me to understand!
I know two people who have been murdered, both were domestic violence situations. The first while I was in college, and it happened to Eric Sparks, a popular guy from high school who I worked with on the yearbook staff. He went to his (female) youth minister's house to help her after receiving a call that her angry ex-boyfriend had shown up and she was afraid. The ex wounded her, killed Eric, then committed suicide.
The second case was last year, about my friend Mark Newton who was our nurse practitioner at Briarcliff. He and I were work buddies, the kind of person I didn't socialize with outside of work but whose company I always sought when I was there. He was separated from his wife, and had a girlfriend who was estranged from her abusive husband. His girlfriend's husband showed up at her apartment one day and killed both her and Mark. What really gets me about Mark is that I know how tormented he was by his own demons in the months prior to his death. The week before he died, we had another long conversation about his situation, how he wanted to make things right and heal his family, but he didn't know how to change things. The Christian marriage counselor he and his wife went to actually told them to just get a divorce. Unfortunately, Mark never got a chance to try again. I miss him so much, still. He pops into my thoughts at the strangest times, and it always takes my breath.
Today, I learned of yet ANOTHER situation, only this time the plot's a little different. Ben e-mailed me about a friend of ours from home, Megan, who shot her husband 15 times and now she's held under 2.5 million bond. Megan and I were both leaders in our youth group and were nearly inseparable at church until she moved to Ohio with her family. When she turned 18, she married this ugly goofy guy who was in his 40's. Apparently she had her family's blessing on this, which nobody could figure out. They had 2 kids and that's the last I heard of her until, according to the news, they were estranged, she'd been in domestic violence shelters, all sorts of bad stuff. Then she went to his house and emptied 2 guns into him.
I just don't get it. Her mom used to be my Sunday School teacher! Megan is beautiful and smart and apparently more unstable than either Ben or I realized, and we were both close to her. Who knows what has happened in the years since I've last seen her?
God, help me to understand!
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