BillLindau

Love Through Fire and Ice

Oh, how good it feels to have you hold me
after all these years!
How long we've known each other both in laughter and in tears.

I've known you at your ugliest and at your very best
but soon I learned to bury the bad
and embrace the lovely rest.

At first I didn't like you when you blew into my town
my best friend fell for you and I felt sure you'd cut him down.
But I saw what you did for him that no one else could do
You gave his life such meaning when he fell in love with you.

Together you felt the fires of hell. You fought back to the fold
but something died along the way and soon your love turned cold
It grieved when you left him. You were both my loving friends
But from the ruins came two new lives, for you that can never end

Such time has passed. Now I've returned
to the place where first we met
as beautiful as ever now
with a heart I'll not forget
Time has set the silver on our heads, but forged us hearts anew
new life is running through my veins, now that I know I love you
a fiery blood flows from my heart as I tell you I love you.
--Lyrics by Bill Lindau

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posted by Bill Lindau @ 10:44 AM 1 comments

Blue's singer's career taking off at age 12

Story and photo by Bill Lindau
PEMBROKE -- John Lakota Lockear has already cut an album featuring classic blues numbers, and he has not gone to high school.
That's because he's only 12 years old.
A student at Pembroke Middle School, he plays trombone in the school's marching band. Out of uniform, he has been performing for live audiences for the past two years under the name Lakota John. His CD, entitled "Lakota John, Old Bluez that's Newz to Me," has eight tracks of the blues style associated with B.B. King, Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughn and others. His younger sister, Layla, also performs on one of the tracks, "Women Be Wise". Earlier this month, with slide guitar in hand, he performed a solo act for the Pembroke Cruisin' concert, singing "Hey Hey" and "Dust My Broom", two of the CD's eight numbers written mostly by Elmore James.
The first people to see Locklear at a concert were far away from Pembroke: Seattle, in fact.
He was out there at a blues camp that his uncle had told him about.
"I figured while I was at the camp, I could make a little money," he said.
His performing career is past the budding stage; it has definitely taken off. He has played at a number of other shows, including the American Indian Women of Proud Nations Conference and the Fayetteville area's Local Artist Blues Showcase series.
He was scheduled to perform other times this month, Tuesday morning at Southeside Elementary School. Next week, on Nov. 24, Lakota John is scheduled to perform at Pembroke Middle. He also plays at his church every Sunday.
Locklear, the son of John D. and Tonya Elk Locklear, is blessed with a musical family. His mother plays the piano. Layla sings and plays the fiddle. John Sr. is an accomplished musician with a tremendous collection of blues and classic rock albums. The Locklears are such classic rock and blues fans that they named Layla after the 1971 hit by Eric Clapton's old band Derek and the Dominos.
Besides blues, Lakota John enjoys playing classic rock, covering songs by the Allman Brothers, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Jimi Hendrix and Derek Trucks.
"When I was little, I started listening to my dad's library of CDs," he says. "The first one that I heard was 'Statesboro Blues' (by the Allman Brothers). I really liked the slide guitar and I wanted to pick it up."
"I liked the whole idea about the guitar," he adds. "I liked the sound. When I was little I thought the guitar would be cool."
Lakota John practices his music every day, about 30 to 45 minutes at a time. John Sr. says he tends to practice right before a performance.
Playing the trombone is another different area of music. He says it's harder because the musician has to find the position of each chord, each note.
The entertainment news is full of pop phenoms who attain stardom at an early age. Lakota John remains grounded in his outlook on the scene.
He is considering a career as an architect -- right after he finishes college. Plus, "playing anywhere I can, and making extra money."
"Lakota John, Old Bluez that's Newz to Me" was produced by Rodney Oxendine. Copies are available for $10 apiece and Lakota John T-shirts for $20, or as a combo for $25. For CDs, T-shirts or booking, contact 910.521.9992 or email lakotajohn@bellsouth.net.

posted by Bill Lindau @ 6:17 PM 1 comments

Noted journalist Huffington plasts Bush administration, campaugns, media

From The Robeson Journal, Lumberton, N.C., Oct. 1, 2008
By Bill Lindau
PEMBROKE -- The Givens Performing Arts Center could hardly have picked a more timely guest to open its Distinguished Speaker Series, with the recent financial crisis, a tight presidential campaign with some highly controversial candidates and other issues. High-profile journalist Arianna Huffington had plenty to say about both topics and more Tuesday, Sept. 23, at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke."We're at a real turning point, a real crisis in American politics," said the petite woman in the accents of her native Greece, in her speech entitled "Road to 2008: Presidential Politics Today".The public first heard of Arianna Huffington in 2002, when she spoke out against gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles. Now an successful journalist and rated one of the 100 most influential people in the world, Huffington said nothing about her take on SUVs, but she had a lot of other things to say to 150 local university students and other politically minded members of the audience. She spoke for nearly an hour, concluding her speech by fielding questions from the audience, and signing autographs afterwards."Isn't it amazing what happened?" Huffington said, commenting on woes on Wall Street."Just a day before, we were talking about whether Barack Obama's expression, 'putting lipstick on a pig', was sexist, and we were talking about Sarah Palin and her pregnant. It takes a major collapse to get the people to wake up.""Political campaigns do not make sense," Huffington later commented. "For months (John) McCain has attacked Obama for spending too much time in Washington, but he's only been there for two years."Huffington left her native Greece for England, here she attained a M.A. degree in economics from Cambridge University. At 21, she became president of the Cambridge Union debating society before she emigrated to the United States. She founded The Huffington Post when she came here. She has written 12 books, and in addition to her duties as editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post, she co-hosts the National Public Radio political roundtable program, "Left, Right and Center". "When I was growing up in Greece, while most kids were following sports, I was following the news," Huffington said."Some of my best years of my life were in college in Cambridge, in England," she said. Among the lessons she retained was that people said the thing they feared the most was public speaking."Do you know what the number-two fear is?" she asked. "Death by mutilation."
She mentioned a citizen journalism project by The Huffington Post called "Off The Bus." She said this project was "an effort to get out of the bubble," rather than reporting news "from the bus". It's also designed to promote so-called citizen journalism, getting citizens involved in reporting the news. She said people can participate by e-mailing araianna@huffingtonpost.com.Since the program originated, Huffington has heard from one of its first participants, she said. She said it was a 61-year-old woman who started covering an event in her county, and now she is covering Sarah Palin, Huffington said.She says the media today does not deal with crucial issues as much as it should, focusing more on show business and candidates' peccadilloes instead. She said the media should also stop doing a left- or a right-wing take on issues."If the old media suffers from attention-deficit disorder, the new media suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder," Huffington said."These issues that used to be a left or right position are now solidly mainstream: Health care, global warming, bringing the troops home," Huffington said."Stop looking at everything from left and right and start looking at it from the center." she added, talking about the need to work together. She says both parties in Washington spend too much time debating whether or not one party is speaking the truth, and not enough time working out a plan of action.As an example, Huffington cited the issue of global warming."Instead of spending all these years debating whether or not global warming exists, we could've spent out time debating what to do about it."She also said past presidential elections could have gone the other way if a lot more people had voted. She said the swing vote could determine the outcome this year."The Obama campaign should devote its time to convincing the people who haven't voted," Huffington said. "Eighty-three million did not vote in 2004. They've given up. If we can get 10 percent of these people to vote, it can make a difference."She once against stressed the need to vote, particularly in this election."You may have to close your nose and vote the lesser of two evils," she said. "But there is a vast difference between the two candidates."."The Democratic party needs to come together," said Huffington, a former self-proclaimed conservative. "Then there's the Republican party, with this big soap opera going on."Huffington said skirting more pressing issues by talking about such relatively safe topics as Sarah Pailin's family life does not do any good, either to the public or to McCain's opponents. "My argument is that every minute the campaign is spent talking about Sarah Palin is good for John McCain because it takes people's attention away from the real issues."Meanwhile, "people are losing their homes, they're losing their retirement funds, they're not being able to send their kids to college," Huffington added. "And we have the problems in Iraq,""Iraq is not a mixed bag," she said. "Iraq is an unqualified disaster. It is the worst foreign policy disaster in American history."Calling it a mixed bag is like going to the doctor and he says you have a mixed bag diagnosis. 'On the one hand, you have a brain tumor. On the other hand, your acne's clearing up.'"She said she does not pay much attention to polls, and she cautioned people not to cave in to fearmongering."Most of the people who answer polls are bored and lonely Americans who have nothing better to do than talk to strangers," she said."Fearmongers can make people not rational. It makes people operate from their lizard brains, not their rational brains," Huffington said in the question-and-answer session.

posted by Bill Lindau @ 7:45 PM 0 comments

North Carolina runner seeing the country the old-fashioned way: On foot

From Running Journal, October 2008
By Bill Lindau
ROCKINGHAM, N.C. -- Doug Dawkins of Rockingham, N.C., loves the great outdoors, he loves to travel and he especially loves to run. Since mid-July, he has been doing it all, by running and walking across the United States.
He started out on the southeastern North Carolina coast on July 14 and his been traveling west ever since. Dawkins has gone through the tip of Virginia, into Tennessee by August, and hopes to continue all the way to California, ending this journey run in San Diego by early December.
Kentucky, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado and Arizona are the other states on the route he planned.
Dawkins, 56, had been planning this cross-country trek for more than a year.
"I had hiked the Appalachian Trail and I wanted to try something similar to that," Dawkins said, in a phone interview from middle Tennessee, near Hartsville, on Aug. 17. "Plus, I had read a couple of books on journey runners."
Dawkins has been doing long-distance runs for more than half his life. The longer, the better, as far as he is concerned. Dawkins, a former postal clerk, took up running after he quit smoking. He started doing 5-K runs, and got into longer distances from then on, doing marathons and 50- and 100-mile ultras.
Dawkins is the founder and president of the Mangum Track Club of Richmond County. He served as race director for the Ellerbe Springs Marathon until this year, and he directs the Bethel Hill Moonlight Boogie 50-mile ultra run and its marathon companion race.
In recent years, he made a yearly summer project of hiking the Appalachian Trail, doing portions of it each summer until he was through.
"This is a similar thing to hiking the Appalachian Trail, except on the trail, you meet a lot of hikers. I'm out here a lot by myself, and I meet different people in different places,” Dawkins said. “You move with the same hikers on the trail, but in this case you move with different people."
Don't expect any postcards from St. Louis or Denver. He mapped out his route to go through rural areas of the United States, instead of through large cities.
"I'd get to meet more people and see more sights," he said. "And there'd be less cars and less traffic.”
Dawkins has had a lot of people pulling for him, including his wife Merrie, his daughters Erin and Dana, a good number of friends and other members of the Mangum Track Club. Many of them kept him company as he made his way through the state, and even into the mountains.
Dawkins has been pretty much a lone eagle since passing out of North Carolina. But he still seems to find himself among friends, meeting a lot of people who admire what he’s doing and willing to help him out. That includes providing him with a roof over his head for the night.
"I'm pretty much on my own now," he said during an Aug. 17 conversation from middle Tennessee. "I have been for several days. Four nights, I'd been staying with people I've met along the way."
As of late August, Dawkins was averaging between 28 and 35 miles a day. He figures that pace should get him to the Mississippi River in 12 days, even with four days of rest.
On Aug. 17, he ran and walked from Gainesboro to a place 20 miles east of Hartsville, Tenn. Along the way, he met a local resident, got into a conversation with him, and found himself with a place to take a break.
“I’m taking today off at Charlie’s house,” he wrote in a journal on his Web site, www.dougsrun.wordpress.com. Dawkins has taken his cell phone with him, and he often uses the computers at local libraries to log his running commentary (pun intended).
“It is a restful place and I have the freedom to rest and relax,” he continued. “I slept until 7:30. Charlie had coffee ready and we spent much of the morning talking on his porch. It is the kind of conversation that can occur on journeys. We have known each other but a few hours but we now talk about my trip and share life stories.
“There is always a story with every person you meet when the time is taken to listen and they are willing to talk. I have enjoyed the morning and still have the afternoon and night to look forward to.”
Dawkins told me that day he was 12 miles away from crossing the Mississippi River. That included four days of rest, he said.
Since he began this journey, Dawkins has done a lot more camping.
He didn't take any camping gear along at first, but in short time decided he needed some for the occasional cold or rainy nights. So, when he's had access to a computer, he's ordered equipment online and had it shipped ahead of him.
He now has a tent to add to his load. He carried about 18 pounds on his run/walk.
"That's 14 pounds plus water."
Water is a variable, he says, depending on the temperature, the distance he puts in and the location of the small convenience stores from which he usually buys his food and other supplies.
"Sometimes I carry two liters, sometimes one...I’ve seen places where the stores are 15 miles apart."
At the time of this conversation, Doug said he has been satisfied with his progress. That's because he did not put down a lot of long-range plans. "I don't plan much further than a couple of days ahead."
Merrie, his cousin and his cousin's wife plan to meet him at the end of his run, when he comes to San Diego. Then it's home for Christmas.
Probably by flight, he says.
Dawkins began his trek at Sunset Beach, N.C., continued through Rockingham, N.C., then into Taylorsville.
By Aug. 1, it was “bye-bye, North Carolina.“ Dawkins crossed into Virginia that day, reaching the town of Glenn Cove by the end of the day.
About four days later, Dawkins was in Tennessee, stopping in Johnson City.
“Yesterday (Aug. 4), I completed 3 weeks with a total of 392 miles,” Dawkins wrote. “I have run/walked 218 miles in 10 consecutive days and need a day to rest. My feet are fine now as well as the rest of me. There is no soreness, only fatigue and a desire to eat.”
A few things he has gone through weren’t all that nice, such as summer heat, thunderstorms and one motorist who yelled, “Get a job!” at him just as he was about to leave North Carolina.
The trek has brought enough good experiences to be worth it, Dawkins says. It not only includes the number of miles covered, but also a restoration of his faith in the human race.
Dawkins writes about an encounter with a biker as an example, calling it “one of the coolest things.”
“I was passing a gas station as a Harley pulled up to exit,” he wrote on Aug. 5. “He swept in hand in a very gentlemanly fashion indicating that I should go first. As I went by he gave me the thumbs-up.:”
“I asked where he was going and he replied New Hampshire. I replied that I was going to San Diego. He said, ‘That’s cool. Have a great trip.’
“I was struck by the idea that he considered me a fellow traveler, just by a different means.
“I immediately thought of my brother, Roger, who travels on his Harley and has been across the U.S. twice. I called him to relate the encounter. It was good to hear his voice and understanding.”
In his journal, Dawkins dedicates each day to one person in his life.
“I was not sure of today’s dedication but the biker provided the answer,” he wrote.
He dedicated the day to his brother.
Dawkins is happy to have so much support, from friends from people whom he has met along his route. People interested in helping him out through donations of water, supplies and/or lodging may log onto www.dougsrun.wordpress.com and check the various links.

posted by Bill Lindau @ 7:38 PM 0 comments

Woman beats odds, surviving oft-fatal affliction

Photo by Bill Lindau
Celestina Jones shows the scars from the IVs in her arm during her stay in hospital, where she was treated for ARDS.Celestina Jones and ARDS
Woman beats odds, surviving oft-fatal affliction
From The Robeson Journal, May 28, 2008
By Bill Lindau\
Celestina Jones, her family and friends would make to declare Nov. 13 a national holiday.
That was the day she cheated death. For the second time in a month.
She and her family also had the best New Year’s Eve they ever had. That’s the day she was released from hospital after more than two months.
Jones, of Pembroke, came out of a coma Nov. 13 last year, after being treated for a deadly condition known as Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS). This affliction affects the respiratory system and can affect the functioning of other organs in the body. Thousands of Americans suffer from it. At one time it resulted in the deaths of as many as 60 to 70 percent of those afflicted with it, according to health professionals.
Jones had been in hospital since Oct. 27, 2007, after her older son, Calvin, found her passed out on the bathroom floor. He called her husband, Gregory, at work, and when he could not get her to respond, her parents called 911, Celestina said in a recent interview.
Some months before that, she had hurt her back on the job, she said. Her physician put her on four medicines, and for further treatment, she went to another doctor and he gave her another medicine.
The Saturday morning after her appointment (Oct. 27, 2007), she passed out.
“When I got up, I was throwing up,” Jones said. “I ran to the bathroom and I passed out. Some of the vomit got into my lungs.”
This is when the nightmare began.
Jones said her husband called the home from work and became concerned when there was no answer. That’s when Calvin found his mother, unconscious, and Gregory and her parents arrived at the house and 911 was called.
“They said I would talk to them and go back out, talk to them and go back out,” Celestina said.
When the ambulance arrived, the men could not get the stretcher into the bathroom. They put her into a chair and toted the chair to the stretcher.\
“Once they got me out to the ambulance, they had to shock me,” Celestina said.
Celestina was transported to Southeastern Regional Medical Center. Two days later, she was moved to the intensive care unit. And two days after that, on Oct. 31, she had trouble breathing, went into a coma and was put on life support, because of the vomit she had swallowed.
Her kidneys had quit working. And her lungs stopped functioning. “She couldn’t get anything in or out,” said her mother, Carolyn Hunt.
Celestina remembers very little of her time in hospital; her family kept a journal of that time, chronicling her treatment and condition. Details from the journal are mentioned with permission of Jones and her family, which includes her husband Gregory, her twin sister Celestine Hunt, and their parents, Carolyn and Lathan Hunt.
She was in the intensive care unit most of the time. As part of the treatment for ARDS, she was put on a paralyzing medication that doctors use on most patients, according to information posted on the Web site, www.ards.com. This is where ARDS is explained in better detail than space in this article allows.
The family said on Nov. 4 they asked the attending physician to move Celestina to UNC Hospitals in Chapel Hill.
“They told us that by moving you we could lose you,” her sister Celestine wrote in the journal, addressing it to Celestina. “They told us that by moving you we could lose you. I even called the doctor in Chapel Hill myself and spoke to him personally and he said that as unable as you were to move (sic) would likely kill you.”
Celestina experienced a tremendous amount of weight gain, attributed to the organ failure. She went from 141 pounds when she went in to 216 by Nov. 5, her sister said.
She had a really close call Nov. 5-6, according to the journal. Following a breathing treatment, and the cleaning of her tubes “your machines went crazy and you were sweating bullets.”\
The staff asked the family to leave the room. Later the staff told the family that after a technician cleaned her tubes, a large piece of mucus or other material evidently got hung in the tube and she was not getting any air.
It was hours before she could receive visitors. “We were crying and praying and scared….That was so scary for us,” Celestine Hunt said.
On Nov. 6, Jones’s heart “started going crazy” and the staff had to shock her. The family said the staff cut her leg and ran a line straight to her heart. They also took her off the paralyzing medication and told the family she should be waking up “any time now.”Later that day, hopes began to fade again, however. “The doctors aren’t giving us much hope,” the journal read. The doctors said she should have been awake by this time.
Three days later, the doctors gave her an EEG (electroencephalogram). The family said the doctors said inconclusive. They began giving her kidney dialysis that day, because her kidneys “aren’t working well.”
On Saturday, Nov. 10, “you scared us again,” the journal read. That morning, Jones’s heart rate went up to 225 and the staff had to shock her again.
“I know you are fighting so hard to stay with us,” the journal said. “Don’t give up now.”
On Monday, Nov. 12, another EEG turned out to be inconclusive, the journal said.
To add to the bleakness of the situation, the staff had attempted to waken Jones by inflicting pain, the family said. This included squirting a syringe full of water into hear ears and smashing the cuticles.“
One doctor said, ‘We’ve done everything we could. The rest is up to you,’” said her mother. “They told us to pray to whatever god you could.”
Nov. 13, 2007The next day, the miracle happened.
Jones woke up.
“The doctors’ jaws dropped,” Celestine said. “They couldn’t believe it. The nurses were all cheering.”
“All the doctors said it was a miracle she was still alive,” she added.
Jones moved her head and arm, and stayed awake “a long time”.
“I think every one of us and you, nurses and doctors were drying,” the journal read.
Other family members, including Jones’s sister Anna and Jones’s sons Calvin and Craig, entered the room. When Jones saw them, “she had the biggest grin,” Celestine said.
Anna lives in California and had flown to Raleigh-Durham Airport that morning.
One of the possible reasons for Jones’ survival and ultimate recovery was that the body would send the blood to the organs to live, Carolyn Hunt said.
“Nobody told us to do this, it must’ve been by instinct, but we’d massage her feet to keep the blood going,” Hunt said.
There remained a big question mark for her family. Did the illness affect her brain?
To backtrack a bit, Celestina had been summoned to jury duty for Nov. 5, her sister said. She said the family showed the court a note from the doctor and that was taken care of.
Soon after she came to, Celestina asked about it.
She did not have her voice back; she would not be able to talk again for almost a month afterwards, but she mouthed her communication, Celestine said.
“She mouthed to me, ‘Did you take care of my jury duty?’” Celestine said.
“I knew her brain was good when she asked me about jury duty. I knew in my heart that she had no brain damage.”
“That was the thing I was praying for (after Jones came to), don’t let anything happen that’ll affect her brain,” said her mother.
Jones had a lot of people pulling for her the whole time. Not only were her family members around 24/7, but friends and members of her church came to visit. Members of her husband’s vast family came in as well.
Other journals were kept, including one with blessings from her pastor and their friends, and another with well-wishing comments to her from the hospital staff.
“One time she had five different ministers with her praying,” Carolyn Hunt said.
A lot of people prayed: Family, friends, doctors, nurses, technicians, even total strangers.
“I didn’t refuse nobody who wanted to come in and pray,” Carolyn Hunt said. “We filled up the whole waiting room, just about,” Celestine said. “People from the church were there round the clock. Cards, photos and other things were ordinarily not allowed to be taped onto the walls of the room, but the staff made an exception in Jones’s case, Celestine said.
After Nov. 13
The worst was apparently over for Celestina Jones, but there was still some work to be done. It was almost a month before she could talk again, for one thing.
After she came to, recovery was slow but steady, according to the journal. On Friday, Nov. 16, surgeons removed the ventilator from Jones’s mouth to her throat and put a feeding tube into her stomach.
On Nov. 28, she was transferred to Regency Hospital in Florence , S.C., to be weaned off the ventilator and begin her rehabilitation.
A day later, Jones was sitting in a chair. On Dec. 4, she was off the ventilator.
On Dec. 5, Jones spoke her first words since Oct. 31.
“We cried. It was so sweet to hear your voice,” the journal read.
On Dec. 6, Jones walked without a walker for the first time since she was in hospital.
The staff plugged the trach (tube to Jones’s throat) and soon removed it.
“You came home Dec. 31,” said the last entry in the journal.
The Florence hospital, where she stayed until her release, let her come home for Christmas, but she had to go back that night.
Jones continued her rehabilitation afterwards. These days, she tries to maintain a regular fitness program.
She and the family know that her survival from ARDS was a true team effort. She praised Dr. Charles Beasley, who specializes in lungs and other respiratory afflictions.
“He was the best,” Jones said.
Other physicians, specialists and members of the intensive care unit were named, including Drs. David Allen and Richard Woerndle, among others.
“She beat the odds,” Celestine said.

posted by Bill Lindau @ 6:18 PM 0 comments

Homeless man goes through area on cross-country crusade

By Bill Lindau
These past few weeks many Robeson countians have seen a tan bearded man pulling a trailer piled high with clothes and other items, accompanied by an elderly woman and a dog.
Roy Gleiter says between 500 and 700 people in this county have come to help him, his mother Deborah Cowden and her dog Poofer, as a stop on their journey across the United States to call attention to the plight of the homeless.
“I appreciate the kind of hospitality given me by the people of this county,” Gleiter said. “I hope they can pass this spirit to other communities.”
Gleiter and his mother have gone on this protest march for about a year, following the destruction of their Mississippi home in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
“I’m doing a big old U – from Washington (state) to Washington (D.C.), with a ‘U’ in the middle,” he says. “You gotta have a sense of humor when you’re doing something like this.”
They have traveled through such states as Mississippi, Colorado, Idaho, Washington State, Oklahoma, Kansas, Utah, New Mexico, the northern tip of Texas, Alabama, Georgia, the Carolinas and Virginia. Last fall their protest march took them through Hoke County, where the Raeford News-Journal published a feature on them. Gleiter says he manages one to three miles a day pulling the trailer, which now weighs 6,700 pounds with all their things on it, many of which are donations.
“After Katrina, it only weighed 2,500 pounds,” Gleiter said.
Many people have stopped to give them such things as food and other supplies. Some have pulled the trailer a short way with their vehicles.
The Robeson Journal met Gleiter and Cowden Sunday afternoon on N.C. 710 just outside Pembroke. Local residents Tommy Clark and Leon Jones were hitching Gleiter’s trailer to Clark’s pickup, and they pulled them about a mile up into Harper’s Ferry Road. Gleiter said they were heading down U.S. 74 West toward the mountains. First, he was going to see an area mechanic about fixing the brakes on his trailer. After traveling through the mountains, he plans to head to Washington, D.C., to talk to the nation’s lawmakers.
He sang the praises of local law-enforcement officials for helping him out and not giving him, his mother and their dog a hard time.
Gleiter said people in many other areas have not been so friendly.
“Out of 11,387 encounters I’ve had with police, 1,591 have threatened to put me in jail, put my mom in a mental hospital, put my dog to sleep or shoot him and throw away everything I own,” Gleiter said.
“My crime?” he says. “Sitting around, standing around, vagrancy.”
“People in this county are enormously friendly,” he said. “The county, the sheriff have been exemplary.”
He has had some hairy moments here, however. “Someone threw some big rocks at my trailer last night,” he said on Sunday.
Another time, he heard gunshots around the side of the road where they were resting.
Gleiter does not carry weapons. “I trust my heavenly father,” he said.
“Plus, I’ve got a bad attitude.”
Gleiter, 49, made his living selling DVDs and CDs in traveling shows, before Hurricane Katrina struck the Deep South. The trailer he used was the only piece of property that was not destroyed. He doesn’t have a driver’s license. If he or his mother require major medical attention, the Vietnam-era Army veteran has V.A. benefits.”
Otherwise, “we’ll pray a lot,” Gleiter says.
Gleiter says he does not ask for anything on his protest march across the U.S.; many people who see him, his mother and the dog take it upon themselves to help them out.
“I’ve got the greatest sponsor in the world,” he says. “I’ve got my heavenly father.”
He says he hopes his protest march will not only call attention to the plight of the homeless, but of the indigent in general, especially people who cannot afford health insurance.
“A lot of homeless people ended up on the street because of health issues,” he says. “They were uninsured, they got sick, they couldn’t work, they couldn’t pay for their homes.”

posted by Bill Lindau @ 8:22 PM 0 comments

Old School Reunion Photos

Labels: Blogger's biography

posted by Bill Lindau @ 3:29 PM 0 comments

Dracula photos

"Anybody wot wants my job, sir, can 'ave it," Butterworth the psychiatric attendant (Bill Lindau) says to Van Helsing (Michael Norman, back to camera) and Dr. Seward (Mike Warthen) in the second act of "Dracula". This was my latest role. This Sandhills Theatre Company production ran Oct. 26-Nov. 4 at the Sunrise Theater in Southern Pines, N.C. In the photo below, I attempt to take the fly- and spider-eating patient Renfield (Daniel Samuelson) back to his room as Seward threatens not to give the patient any more sugar to spread out for his flies if he escapes again. Photos by Douglas Fry.

posted by Bill Lindau @ 3:28 PM 0 comments