The neighborhood is getting ready early for Halloween.
Steve takes Lilly for a walk to the vet. It’s in the neighborhood and he wanted to re-familiarize her for the shots she’s getting next week and to weigh her.
She lost a pound and walked in like she owned the place.
A minute or so after they left, they encountered this structure on the front lawn of somebody’s abode.
Lilly at first didn’t see it. But when she finally did, Steve said she did a double-take and nearly jumped a foot in the air, startled by this strange creature.
He laughed and laughed and after he told me we both laughed and laughed.
Crisp lines mark the point of juncture superseding parallel forms enveloping new space, playing the role of incubator needed to grow new life within the empty but fertile space, opening briefly to accommodate that which acts as the last connection prior to that birth – the birth of the seed.
If the seed comes first, before the plant, then something else created the original seed. That ‘something else’ I call God.
That concept emerged as new with the virgin birth of Jesus.
It’s not so much that Mary needed a virgin birth to keep from being stoned to death for her out of wedlock baby, but that a greater God than her own God, needed someone to work through to introduce the world to the concept that our human seeds originated from a source greater than the plant and the seed combined.
Can insects communicate with humans, so the human knows what they’re communicating?
I open the blinds and there clings an insect to the screen. Big as far as insects I’ve seen go.
I stared and the insect stared back. I could sense the insect strategizing as it attempted to slowly move it’s legs. Maybe it was injured and couldn’t let go of the screen and live.
Maybe it wanted in and was trying to figure how.
Seven floors up is high for most flying insects I’ve seen. I’ve never seen a bee or hornet fly that high up. Nor a butterfly. Palmetto bugs fly high – this wasn’t one of those. Flies, yes. But flies figure out quickly how to get in. They don’t hang around staring at who’s staring at them. This insect was too big for most small openings.
In my mind I thought, ‘you’re not going to make it here’. As I turned to look away, I startled ever so slightly as I thought absent words, ‘does that mean me or the insect?’.
I still wonder. Finally the insect as if on cue veered to the left, or my right, and took off like a helicopter turning abruptly away from a fire as it approached too close.
Insects are intricately designed. It’s like they’re all armored up. That’s a major feat by the universe to create something so small so intricate. This one looks like a one-insect-army with all the bells and whistles.
They probably could take over the planet if they wanted to.
What if it’s a drone gone rogue? Or worse, a drone following orders.
It looks like there’s some metal on that bird.
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– no tickets for me – already sold out – the cost was probably beyond my means anyway – would’a been nice though – I often thought that’s the way I’d want my art displayed (something like it) – next thing I know, somebody’s doin’ it – SL
Yes, it’s a fine beer, and made locally, which is extra nice!
So what if it’s not October. Fond memories abound. Germany 1968. Tour of Europe. Why October? It was cheaper. Most tourists were gone.
Rows of picnic tables outside the backs of restaurants with patrons wanting to eat outside. Sounds like us. Mom and Dad took advantage of any fine weathered day to eat outside, either at home or after a ride to a picnic stop. It just seemed so nice, so natural. Worries seem to disappear in the out of doors.
Drinking beer. At lunch. So natural. So new – to me. I was eighteen.
Everybody so casual, minding their own tables. Thank you all for that beautiful, peaceful memory.
Also found in: Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Czechia, Denmark, France, Hungary, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Slovakia, Slovenia
You know, it wasn’t only the Jews who changed their names when relocating to America. The Germans did it too, not necessarily because they or someone in their family belonged to the Nazi party, but because all Germans were targets for abuse and discrimination post WWII, because of Adolph Hitler’s massive forced labor camps/factories instituted throughout Europe.
All Germans were blamed for what one German and a political party designed. And they still are in many ways.
The day before Thanksgiving on 25 November 2020 we we’re scheduled for a yearly inspection. It’s always the day before Thanksgiving. Don’t ask me why, except to disrupt poor people the day before a holiday. Make life miserable for the tenants, so they’ll get a job and get out from under the thumb of the government.
The yearly inspection is different from all the others throughout the year, the others being done mostly by banking institutions, but other entities inspect too; we never really know for sure who they are, plus pest inspections and treatments. They enter whether you’re home or not and spray everything. They claim it’s organic, like organically grown produce, so it’s safe. No it isn’t. Biological weapons, even when used in small amounts are not safe.
Complete strangers entering and going through the apartment, looking more at what’s in it than structural features. Breathing on and touching whatever they want.
In eleven years, not once has any inspection resulted in an actual repair or change in anything. I don’t know who passed the laws stating that if I live in affordable housing I have to give up my privacy and civil rights by allowing inspections by people I don’t know and who never, even when asked, show identification or wear a name tag with their institution’s name on it. I still don’t know who they are. That’s the way they want it – everybody in public or senior housing under their control.
I pay full rent because I was here before the building went public and Steve has a job. But even if I didn’t, what right does any landlord have to impose inspections? Inspections of what? One leasing agent said they were housekeeping inspections. What?? You mean when I rent an apartment the landlord/lady can enter at will and inspect the premises to check if I’m cleaning my apartment? What constitutes clean? Who passes these laws and why aren’t all renters, no matter if they get government assistance or not, subject to the same inspections?
It’s dictatorial, controlling, treating tenants as if the landowners, property owners, property management companies and the government own them. Like slaves. They know what’s best for us? No they don’t.
When you accept public assistance, meaning low rent housing for seniors, then you relinquish your rights to a bunch of leasing agents. It needs to stop.
With all those inspections (and some people count them and the number is high) there still was a massive bedbug problem, a massive cockroach and mice problem. So how do those inspections violating my privacy rights make anybody more safe, more clean or better control the pests? They don’t.
The bankers always say the same thing, that they choose random apartments to be inspected, but after being here so long I know that’s a flat out lie. They want to see who the new tenants are. Yet even so, that has not deterred drug dealers, prostitution and sex and child trafficking from profiting within this building.
What do they do in buildings that are not public housing? Drugs prostitution, and sex slaves are okay?
If no one inspects for that, then why all the inspections?
Why should I have my privacy rights infringed upon just because I’m poor? All these inspections say to me is that the government thinks I’m a criminal and they are within their rights to deny me my civil rights. If they don’t think I’m a criminal, then why check my apartment several times a year? For housekeeping?? Their inspections don’t stop the hoarders. So what’s the point?
There is no point. Where are democrats on this? I thought they supported people’s civil rights? Who writes the laws that suspend the civil rights of tenants when they rent an apartment in a building where some tenants’ get rent subsidies?
Because it has always been that way is no excuse, nor a valid reason. Just like that I get my rights swiped away, because I can’t afford more expensive housing, and even then this apartment isn’t cheap. But that’s not the point is it?
Let it be known that I am always here for an inspection. Always. And I’m always prepared. Always. They always say the same thing; we’re entering whether you’re home or not.
We’ve gone through many leasing agents, assistant managers, and maintenance personnel. My husband and I always make it clear to a new person that no one enters unless one of us is here. They always argue that they have the right to enter. We argue back that we have a dog who is a member of our family and no one is to enter the apartment when Lilly Belle is home alone.
They still argue and I personally have gone to lengths for eleven years to assure that didn’t happen. It still did on occasion and the leasing agent who bragged about it was quickly gone.
However, because we couldn’t trust management to stay out of our apartment when we are not there and Lilly is home alone, we had an alarm system installed.
So the day before Thanksgiving I’m all set for the inspection. I call the office the day before and the leasing agent confirmed the inspection. It was between 10:30 AM and 12:00 PM. Frankly I was surprised that they were going ahead with inspections given that Ohio was in a semi-lockdown status for 21 days because of severe spikes in corona/covid-19 virus in the state. Governor Mike DeWine is incessantly telling the people of Ohio to take personal responsibility and measures to stay safe. So why would I want anyone trapesing through every room I inhabit, spilling their respiratory droplets everywhere?
Who would care about inspections under those circumstances? What could they possibly find?
We all have access to an outside maintenance line should we need a repair. The office has continually told us not to contact them for repairs or anything else. In fact, they tell us not to contact authorities outside the building either, unless it involves FIRE, FLOOD or BLOOD.
I waited and waited, even waited till 3:00 PM, thinking they arrived late as they sometimes do. Finally Steve called the office and asked if they had come and gone, even though this inspection wasn’t random and they were supposed to inspect everybody. They said no, they never showed up. I have no idea who she meant by ‘they’, since I thought this was an in-house inspection.
Fine. What can you do? She said it was cancelled and they would reschedule later after the holiday.
My day is already shot. This is how they operate. Many times they’ll begin an inspection and it will last till 5 PM or longer and if you don’t want strangers going through your apartment while you’re not there, then you need to take the day off and stay home and wait for them. I do that, every time.
Thanksgiving is over.
Management is required by law to give a 24 hour notice before entering the apartment. They rarely do; it’s more like 15 hours, and sometimes not that. They didn’t show up on 25 November as scheduled.
On Monday 30 November I get up early, Steve goes to work, and I decide to rearrange the furniture, some of it in each room, for wheelchair access. I often think about safety and now that we’re all going to die from this virus or get very sick with side effects that can affect the nervous system and because we’re old I figure one of us might end up in a wheelchair as a result.
I’m thinking ahead. Better to prepare the apartment now while we both can still walk, than to wait and not have that access and not be able to move furniture at will to gain that access.
So I begin the process, slowly, methodically, trying to arrange a lot of furniture in a small space in rooms that are not typically sized or shaped, since the original building was all efficiency apartments that were remade into one and two bedrooms from the existing structure, so nothing looks like you might expect. We have an air-circulating system that takes up almost the length of an entire wall half way up.
I’ve got the entire place turned upside down, huffing and puffing to the movement of all of it, still doing it though, committed to the process for the desired result, when I hear what sounds like a small tap on the door. I’m also cleaning behind everything once again as I expose new surfaces as well as ‘spackling’ the blemishes on the wall where I once taped something and it removed the paint when I took it off.
I go to the door. Look through the hole, see the maintenance guy.
I walk over a few items, push a few others out of the way, open the door slightly and say, “I didn’t call for a repair” (even so, when maintenance has you on the schedule for a repair that they got from the maintenance hot line recording, they’re supposed to call you before showing up). I could have been in the shower. If I didn’t answer he would assume no one was home and enter at will. If I had a gun and he startled me in my own home, I could have shot his fuckin’ head off.
Remember, this is my home as long as I pay rent.
What’s with the tiny tap on the door? If I hadn’t been in the area or had the television on I never would have heard it and he would have entered. Most seniors are hard of hearing and I’m no exception, so it makes no sense to tiny-tap a door.
He mumbles something that I could barely hear, so I told him I couldn’t hear what he said, and something came out like, ‘I’m here for the inspection’. I’m immediately wondering why no 24 hour notice. I ask and he says you already got a notice last time, and he just stayed there, so I told him to wait while I made a path for him and he came in and did the inspection. Alone.
Note that there is always supposed to be a member from the staff with the inspector, so why is he alone?
Before he left he told me I’d have to remove “all that” as he made a sweeping gesture at the window where I built a cityscape as a piece of art. He said I can’t have anything in front of the window, the same in the bedroom. I have a treadmill upright in front of the windows where there is an outlet. He said I’d have to move it. The inspector won’t allow it and he’ll yell at you for it.
He left.
I don’t know when these other outside inspectors are coming in, but if the way it was handled with the in-house inspector is any indication, they might just show up unannounced and force their way into my apartment whether I’m home or not.
The last time there were 7 people at one time in my apartment getting ready for the big inspection, but nothing was ever done. No repairs made. All they did was look around. One guy from Michigan said they were having several layers of inspectors to make sure no one missed anything.
When the big day came, the main inspector came in with a computer and began taking pictures. I was livid. Didn’t ask, didn’t warn me in advance, just did it. Steve was sleeping in the bedroom because he was working nights at the time. The inspector opened the door without knocking, looked around, walked around the bed, then left, shutting the door. Then after doing another room suddenly bolted back to Steve’s room, flew open the door and none of us could get there quick enough to see what he was photographing – something he forgot. So what? They know in advance what to photograph, that they forget and then remember? I was livid again. I still am.
During the corona/covid-19 virus outbreak I think it should be my decision if and who I allow in my living space. Steve has heart failure. He was hospitalized 7 times for 3-4 days each time over 3 months and just recently returned to work. I don’t want any humans besides us in this apartment. Yet, I don’t have that right. Why? The governor tells the citizens of Ohio to self-protect, yet when they try to, someone who has the authority to evict you – 3 months to vacate – barges into my living space without notice to do an inspection.
A few days later I received another notice saying that a resident was diagnosed with COVID-19. It was addressed 11/30/20. It is supposedly the first in the building.
In reading it I could not tell if it was a form letter issued by the parent company or by the management staff of this building. It stated clearly that:
Management is requiring impacted staff to self-quarantine for 14 days.
Due to the fact that a staff member was in my apartment inspecting it on or about the day the notice was typed or copied, I wanted to know if he was one of the staff under self-quarantine.
In the print-out it states that 15 minutes of close contact is required to catch the virus. THAT I did not know. Why?
With all that’s out there in the media why did I not see that 15 minute rule?
That’s a serious claim.
The office denied that any staff member was under self-quarantine. She didn’t know why that was in the letter and said that they had done 13 versions of it.
Why are leasing agents, a social worker and 2 maintenance people drawing up policy regarding COVID-19?
My concern was whether I had come in contact with this mystery person, who evidently has privacy rights that I don’t, because the office said they would not release the name for privacy reasons.
How about taking pictures against my will inside my apartment, even in my closets? To me that’s in violation of search and seizure rules protected under the Constitution or Bill of Rights.
Cameras can be and should be considered instruments of search and seizure, no matter what the offending parties claim the information is being used for, or what third parties it is being transmitted to. Write it down, take notes. Keep your cameras out of my living space.
They’re protected by law. Why?
Why is no one trying to trace the exposure history of this resident? Maybe they never leave the apartment. Maybe the health care aides are passing it to whomever they come in close contact with. On the elevator? Mask down from nose as most of them do.
Why do I have to let possibly infected inspectors into my space when it is not essential, but this known infected person can infect the whole building and all they say to us is to self-quarantine. Everybody? Two hundred maybe people?
There are too many gaffes and too little facts being disseminated.
So, I made our apartment wheelchair accessible, at least the smaller chairs, not the huge motorized ones. I also took down our famous cityscape – famous to us.
We live on the lake side of the building, facing north, which means we don’t get direct sunlight in any room.
I formed an art piece of colored water in bottles and built what we later called ‘the cityscape’. I made it secure so it would be difficult to knock it over, even when opening the windows, which we often do to get fresh air into the dwelling. Though we didn’t have sun, we had light that passed through the colored glass making a beautiful sight – like a perpetual rainbow. It became a sun substitute. It made us happy whenever we looked at it.
Now it’s gone. The government must claim to own my windows and own me and own the floor and window plans to my apartment – that I pay to live in.
The inspector also told me I could have nothing in front of the breaker panel box. I explained that nothing was in the way of opening fully the box – I made sure of that. There was no obstruction. It’s right inside the door with a little table under it for COVID-19 sanitizer supplies. We use it as we enter from the outside. But the inspector says, according to this maintenance guy, that he wants nothing in front of it.
So this inspector aka government approved person has power over my furniture arrangement. The government regards my windows on the seventh floor as exits that firefighters need unfettered access to when they come in.
What are they going to do, jump out the window? What that means is on one entire side of my apartment in every room except the bathroom I can have no furniture. That’s impossible without dumping my furniture.
Nothing that happened here in this short article was for my own good, as management always claims. I decide what’s for my own good, not a bunch of leasing agents, maintenance people and banking representatives who all claim their actions are sanctioned by the USA government. Who made them my power of attorney?
I protest. Yes, a protest of one. Every person needs to count. Stop treating us like inanimate objects and standardizing us with statistics.
CITYSCAPE. ALL GONE. SAD.
Our sun and rainbow that made us happy is gone.
The government took it from us. Now it looks like a funeral parlor. That’s what they all want – for poor people to just die. They keep telling us we’re dying, and to protect ourselves, then they allow strangers into our apartments. Potentially carrying the virus in every apartment they enter. I wonder how many other apartments were inspected by the same person?
Instead of living in a place full of life and light, I live in a funeral parlor per order of the USA government who wants unfettered access to the windows on the 7th floor. Next step, the grave.
SUPPORTING DOCUMENTS:
UPDATE: February 2001
I had second thoughts about complying with management when a leasing agent, events planner, maintenance and an assistant manager kept me from getting vaccinated because I wouldn’t get a doctor to write a letter to say I didn’t have “COVID”.
A flyer was sent around stating that everyone could have it, after Steve called the main office and complained about elder abuse and leasing agents and maintenance personnel deciding who could and who couldn’t get vaccinated. Both our doctors, even though I had COVID at the time, said to get them.
By the time they’d be issued I’d be beyond the contagious stage. My start date was estimated by the Cleveland Clinic to be 1 January 2021. Vaccinations wouldn’t be given until 24 February. The doctor wanted me 3 days without fever and use of fever reducing meds. Steve’s COVID started on 25 December 2020. He was well out of the infectious stage.
Even so, many people in this large building probably had COVID and all of them – as well as everyone else in the building had the option to accept or not. It was available to all. Period. The flyer indicated a hope that everyone would get vaccinated.
After the day of vaccinating was over, a notice was sent out that read everybody who wanted one got one.
That just isn’t true. Even when Steve finally told Brenda the event planner that Teeya the manager said we couldn’t get it, so we’d have to figure out another way, the office still demanded a note from the doctor saying we didn’t have COVID.
My own doctor said leasing agents [maintenance and event planners] have no right to your private medical records. The respiratory therapist said the same.
It’s now March 8th and neither of us have been vaccinated.
TO GET BACK TO THE TOPIC OF LEASING AGENTS INTERFERING WITH APARTMENT DECOR AND ARRANGEMENT OF FURNITURE:
Although I threw away some of the structure of the CITYSCAPE when dismantling it per instruction of maintenance who was inspecting the apartment, I now put it back up.
Then I returned the treadmill in front of the window so I can look out when I exercise – in opposition to their instruction to move it. Well, I moved it – but now I moved it back.
I know they’re two simple protests, but they benefit me and Steve and they harm no one else.
The vaccination issue however could have been and may continue to be a life-threatening situation that a leasing agent and her hit squad (I now feel comfortable calling them) forced upon us and then lied about it in two separate notices that went out.
1- Everyone was welcome and encouraged to be vaccinated.
2- Everyone who wanted one got one.
It is my opinion that no one else in the building was required to give a doctor’s note saying they did not have COVID in order to get vaccinated, otherwise it would have been in the flyer. In fact, I believe I would have had a quicker recovery had I been vaccinated earlier.
National Church Residences and Kirby Manor personnel put so much doubt into our minds over several abusive phone calls in addition to stressful calls we needed to make to report them on four separate occasions that met with resistance with no call back as promised, that we don’t even know if we should get vaccinated now.
Dedicated To Selling Fine Wine @ Reasonable Prices.
ALCOHOL BY VOLUME – Clifton Blvd. Cleveland Ohio
• ON THE EDGE •
So what did Steve end up buying?
And how did it taste? It being a Muscadet, it brought back some pleasant memories of our youth. Muscadet was the first non-bubbly serious wine that initiated us into the world of fine wine.
Back in the early 70s, French wines were a lot less expensive than they are today, so we’re glad we partook of them not knowing the future of prices.
“It tastes French” was my first declaration of authenticity. Steve agreed. “Yes, this is a Muscadet”. Nice, wow, so good to be back.
Most often our evolution means forward-thinking which means, or should, less suffering in the present, not the past because the past is gone except for postjudice purposes.
But what about our evolutionary present, where we are at any given moment, how we present ourselves to ourselves and then to the world?
Advancing oneself in the present requires knowledge of the past, not exploitation of something that no longer exists, plus your status now and a future you know to be possible given your animal limitations.
How do you present your evolutionary self to the world – past present future?
Pull from your evolutionary gut that which you can control and leave the rest to wither.
