Bathrooms and Changing Perceptions

The recent controversy over the “right” of transvestites to use women’s restrooms has understandably made me recall the changing perceptions regarding my own masculinity. I grew up in the 1950’s. The most admired children on our block had fathers who owned Lugers and Mausers from German officers they had killed and ID’d. If I had a time machine I would have joined 14 year old Johnny Tremaine and the Sons of Liberty dumping British tea into Boston harbor. Davy Crockett was another of my heroes. My father was a strong male figure who had kept his own while having to deal with organized crime to make a living since he was 14. I was quite secure in my maleness. But at the same time I was raised by three feminists, my mother and both grandmothers.

My mother’s mother was a suffragette and had traveled around the country before the First World War as the secretary to a leading suffragette. Her picture may even be in some history books. She raised my mother to be a trailblazing female journalist. In college my mother was in freshman Introduction to Journalism with Mike Wallace who she said grilled the instructor in the same style he used years later on 60 Minutes. But my mother was not allowed to continue. The scene with her advisor sounded just like the scene in the Autobiography of Malcolm X when his 8^th grade guidance counselor asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up. Malcolm said a lawyer and his guidance counselor answered by asking if he had ever considered a carpentry apprenticeship.

I went out into the world during the women’s movement in the 1960’s. Many women I met assumed that I had a sister and were shocked when I answered no. Later when I had my first professional job all the female assistants were assigned to me because most of the other men there had treated the women as if their wife had burnt the morning toast. It was disgusting. But much of the women’s movement for equality and freedom degenerated into a man hating radical feminism. In today’s news we see a parallel with Black Lives Matter and the New Black Panther Party. When I listen to them I remember the desegregation sit ins and hearing the arrested sing: “Black and white together, we shall not be moved.”

A type of woman has emerged that Rush Limbaugh as aptly called feminazi. They always sense a 1950’s maleness in me, and hate me immediately. This even happened in my own congregation in LA. Once some chit chat while waiting in line at a chain store turned into a glare so hateful that I swear she would have killed me given the opportunity. When my bank account got transferred to another branch the female manager’s instant dislike was so intense I had to threaten violence in a subtle way to conclude a transaction. That was the only time in my life I ever had to act like that in a commercial transaction and the memory still unsettles me.

But I still believed in the American Way. I was hired as a part time instructor at ITT Tech in Lathrop. I worked hard, won every award they gave, and got promoted to full time instructor followed by a promotion to chair of two academic departments.  Then the accrediting association visited and I was interrogated by a feminazi with a definite political agenda. She asked me to lie and I refused. As a result I lost my position. Aside from the financial loss and the ending of career advancement, others suffered. I was counseling a student working three jobs to pay her tuition along with a crippling math anxiety. We got her finances straightened out and weekly meeting began to conquer her math anxiety. But that ended when I lost my academic chair position. She responded by dropping out.  Obviously this feminazi didn’t care about what she did to people, her political agenda was far too important. This seems standard today. Once upon a time liberal meant liberal minded. Then it became Liberal which transformed itself into Progressive. That means it’s acceptable and perhaps even noble to sacrifice the individual to the collective.

Recently a women interested in me told me that she liked my shirt. I answered by saying I always wear green because it lights up my eyes.  Her countenance changed with a certain realization of who I was. I have never hidden my “feminine side” or my 1950’s maleness. I’ve not changed, but the attitudes of the world around me have been in maelstrom mode.

Copyright 2016, Mark L. Bennett

Gone, or Rebirth Possible?

Every day when I taught economics I would first write on the whiteboard: Market Rules! While markets are subject to distortion and manipulation, in the end they always tell the truth. Gold is soaring around the world. Analysts I trust are saying that it’s a response to the Clinton Crime Family exoneration. While we all know this a watershed event, the whole world is seeing it that way, too. Here is what one foreign news media now says about us: http://www.xyz.net.au/clinton-cleared-end-of-rule-of-law-in-america/

If we become weaker internationally, we must depend upon our internal strength more. The economy, while seemingly slow but steady from most government numbers, has endured deteriorating internals. Politically, we are in a pre-civil war like polarization.

In a recent Facebook discussion, Katherine Evatt built a case to preserve certain former PG&E land along the Mokelumne River, prompted by my statements about the Mother Lode Land Trust. But do we want this land to be governed by an unelected body? And do we need another organization to manage public or semi public land? We now have a service economy based upon borrowing money from often hostile foreign powers. We produce less and less of what we consume. We don’t use our own resources. How many Saudi oil presidents have we had? I see in the Mother Lode Land Trust existence both the internal economic decline and the political attitudes that defend self destruction.

PS: Does anyone know of a county with lots of unmined gold?

Copyright 2016, Mark L. Bennett

Land Grab becomes Word Grab

Yesterday I posted here and linked to Facebook a commentary entitled “Today’s Wild West Land Grab” about the expansion of the Mother Lode Land Trust. This engendered an endless discussion about the PG&E land deal and its constrained and complex circumstances. While I don’t question the legality of the decision, I question the system that preordained that outcome. Since my Facebook introduction referenced the Homestead Act, is not surprising that one response noted that most land in the USA was a transfer from government to people or businesses. While this is generally true, there is more to the story.

Many of the Colonial period people who settled the Appalachian Mountains weren’t proper enough people to enter through Charlestown or other ports. They landed in the more tolerant Philadelphia, traveled inland and then south into the hills of the Carolinas, etc. The far west was settled extensively by escaped slaves. In the 1850’s some feared that Colorado was to become the first black state. What these two groups have in common is that they were both squatters and both loved freedom. What title did the Oregon Trail pioneers have to the land they settled considering that Oregon wasn’t US territory then? Not all land rights come from the government. Although despised by the globalist and globalist environmental elite, there is a long American tradition based on freedom and private property. As I’ve noted before, this country was originally settled by people who had lost their grazing rights under the Enclosure Acts and understood this relationship.

When the British said no more settlement beyond the Appalachians we fought a war for the right to move west. These were not Eric Winslow’s hobgoblins, but people who dreamed of a homestead instead of a city factory job. A century later immigrants would give up education to work and save money to buy land. This country has always followed the policy of maximum land and home ownership. From FDR setting up national mortgage pools to Richard Nixon authorizing additional cutting in National Forests to reduce the price of lumber and therefore housing, this has always been our national policy. But in recent years the globalists and environmentalists have found common ground in schemes to tie up land ownership and use. The rich get richer and many environmentalists glorify saving the earth from its inhabitants.

Copyright 2016, Mark L. Bennett

Today’s Wild West Land Grab

The Mother Lode Land Trust is now hiring a full time director and a half time assistant to that director. According to their website the impetus for this is: “MLLT is posed to assume a total of eight additional conservation easements (8,000 acres) from the Stewardship Council as part of the PG&E bankruptcy settlement.” Whose land and, therefore, whose money does this really belong to? The stockholders? The bond holders? The ratepayers? The taxpayers? Isn’t this environmental theft of our private property rights a far greater scandal that the worst case scenario of the Human & Health Services Building vividly and biasedly portrayed by Eric Winslow in his latest editorial disguised as a Ledger Dispatch news article?

The land tenure system of the United States is increasingly regressing to the Middle Ages. The super rich are sheltering their wealth through a system of conservation easements, land banks, tax credits and carbon capture forests. These environmental aristocrats will increasingly determine our future. I can’t help but recall Bob Dylan’s song about the outlaw Pretty Boy Floyd: “…through this world I’ve rambled, I’ve seen lots of funny men, Some will rob you with a six-gun, And some with a fountain pen.”

Do we have the will to fight powerful outside forces with seemingly endless funds? Do we want to remain free in Amador County?

Copyright 2016, Mark L. Bennett

The (Im)Possibilities of Planning

I just read all the responses to all my submitted comments, most of which were posted here on Amador Community News, to the General Plan Draft Environmental Impact Report. The planners are correct in saying that many of my comments don’t directly relate to “the adequacy of the General Plan”. My comments were critiques of the General Plan itself and its new restrictions on freedom. My primary intent was to inform County residents about ‘what is coming down’. With other of my comments they responded by citing wording that I had read as if I didn’t understand it. But I did and my thrust was lack of trust in how certain wordings of intent and rules would work in the real world along with the broader implications of over regulation. But most of my comments were relegated to their personal opinion category. It seems like what was once commonly called the American way of life is now personal opinion and no longer national consensus.

This entire costly process ignores the uncertain difficulty of knowing the future and committing resources to projections that aren’t yet realities.  I once attended a meeting of long range planners for the Grant Line Road corridor. This narrow rural road without safe shoulders and no turn pocket intersections had become an Elk Grove-Folsom rush hour nightmare. So based on a problem area that emerged almost a decade before, an expensive body of planners and engineers were assembled to design a solution 20 or more years into the future. This included an express bus system with origin and final destination shuttles on each trip end. They did not know what they were doing.  Americans only transfer once. People transfer far more when they don’t have other choices as in Third World countries. Is that what we are becoming as the “expert” class thrives and the road remains dangerous? While I don’t have hard figures handy, common sense would dictate fixing those intersections with frequent high speed collusions first, before the long range studies are financed. Our resources are being misappropriated, ironically creating a long range problem as the misappropriation mistakes cumulatively snowball. But the planning profession has been successful in convincing the politicians that they are the answer and the more the better.

In geology there is the concept of multiple working hypothesizes but in planning all too often the plans and projections take on a life of their own. About 25 years ago I redesigned the Modesto bus system, and as required, used the official plans. They included a significant residential development to the northeast. This happened and went bust in the housing crisis. But even if it hadn’t, there would be no transit potential until a teen age population emerged there in another 15 to 20 years.  However, the bus system’s form was altered to easily plug in a future service from the development area giving one transfer access to most of the city. As common sense awareness dictated no ridership demand has emerged from those developments and there is presently no bus service there. While I solved the problem I’d been given, I often wonder if those changes in the system had become just an inconvenience for most riders. So here the plan became the new reality, but only with a ghostly presence.

So the projections become plans and then morph into prescriptions. These then take on a life of their own and have entered the General Plan discussions here in Amador County. Some people imagine that an alleged exodus of software writers will choose Amador County out of a whole world of possibilities and make us the new beacon of prosperity. While believing in possibilities is basic and essential, it is now a prescription requiring adherence. The belief of these people is so strong that the survival of our railroad which is here and now could be sacrificed to an unlikely vision. A vision based on an activity cauldron that almost always occurs in big cities but in their way of thinking will preserve our rural way of life. This muddled mindset allows our General Plan to have adherents. But its far more than a strict prescription, it is an edict to goosestep into Agenda 21 and the new world order.

What will this new prescriptive planning produce? Many years ago in Amsterdam I took several of their light rail lines from Central Station to their far terminal and back.  When I saw the first few stations in new development areas they seemed like good planning. One got off their train at a plaza with dry cleaning, day care, retail food, etc right there. Americans often run their errands driving home from work and therefore find that a transit trip often necessitates an inefficient second auto trip. However my delight faded rapidly as all the new station areas looked alike. Finally I wanted to scream at the banality. But now these are emerging all across America, with financial backing from Obama, including Sacramento. I worked with those planners on TOD’s (Transit Oriented Developments) and asked this question: a new development at current costs would attract only, for example, a corporate chain dry cleaner over an owner/operator. The convenience would draw customers from the independent dry cleaner a few blocks away who would probably go out of business. Is this what you want? They never answered. But we all know that most unique businesses grow from a small business that is the vision of a single individual. Trader Joe’s, which many locals desired for the Pine Grove Dollar General site, started that way.

Are we talking about ignored factors, unintended consequences or a globalist/Agenda 21 plan? Ultimately it doesn’t matter since the outcome is the same and that outcome is the globalist/Agenda 21 plan. We now have prescription, not freedom. While the individual expressions may seem like clutter to those with overly compulsive desires, the hodge podge can develop its own distinct character. Built environments that succeed and delight are fine grained. This is vastly different that deciding between a rustic or alpine look for the Buckhorn Town Center. Is uniformity safer than freedom now?  Along with general planning morphing into prescriptive planning, the basic assumptions have changed.  Large public parks have always been considered land banks. This can provide a needed site without having to eminent domain someone out of their home or business. Gene Autry’s Museum of the American West endured a herculean struggle to occupy its site in Los Angeles’s Griffith Park in 1988. Just recently George Lucas’s Star Wars Museum got rejected for Chicago’s lakefront collection of public buildings because its site, a parking lot, was deemed critical open space. So we have moved completely from planning that provided for the future to one that contains it. When I got my master’s in planning it was essential to understand that the goal of planning was to create opportunity and zone enough land for affordable choice knowing that future demand will probably change. The context was freedom. That was a democratic attitude I endorsed. But planning has been usurped for very different outcomes.

Certainly, it is common sense to plan for the future. Big problems and bad decisions can be avoided.  Underneath the skyscrapers of downtown Buffalo, NY lies what was judged in the 1960’s as the world’s largest deposit of high grade construction gravel. Apparently the founding French fur traders of the 1750’s didn’t file their EIR. That won’t happen today. But we have situations like Galt allowing new homes too close to our only rail link and inhibiting or constraining current and future use. Not surprisingly the planning establishment’s answer to this is more planners and more regional planning powers. The regional agencies are run by “experts” who know what’s best for us and governed by appointed officials not elected for their specific posts. This is often a new tyranny and the implementation means of the new world order/Agenda 21. These are the people that see our future changing the bed linen of Bay Area tourists and living in service worker ghettos. More regional planning is obviously not the answer. It most likely would not preserve our railroad’s future, but rather endorse its destruction as part of their utopian deindustrialization. The ideological beliefs of the participants are paramount, whatever form the decision making process takes.

The beliefs enshrined in our General Plan and its prescriptions to achieve them are simply people removal. That means you and I. Not all at once, because that would engender public protest, but one by one we will be picked off. Wait until your septic fails or some similar circumstance. Yet some in our community are alarmed over the handful of unmitigatable impacts. Preventing any change, essential if we are to prosper, for a future that is unknown (excepting unforeseen events) reveals a belief in stasis. But that doesn’t exist and only leads to stagnation. Planning should not, and in reality can’t, proscribe a future. But it should, and can, prepare for the future. That is why the General Plan is called general.

Copyright 2016, Mark L. Bennett

Elections and Other Thoughts

Not long after I moved into Amador County I discovered that local politics was the biggest intramural sport here. This year is no exception. A candidate question and answer was in last Friday’s Ledger Dispatch. Amber Hoiska stated that “my desire (is) to restore a sense of altruism, civility and democracy to Amador County.” When did it ever leave? Or does she mean that if Amador doesn’t meet her preconceived point of view than it lacks altruism and is uncivil and undemocratic? She continues with: “We need to better use our transportation taxes.” But she has provided no formation to substantiate this assertion. She appears to be trying to sell an excuse while at the same time opposing tax revenue generators such as Newman Ridge which she feels is “unnecessary”. That statement also assumes that some authority other than the marketplace should decide what is necessary.

Regarding the General Plan Ms. Hoiska states: “We have to make some compromises.” Who compromises what with whom? We already have an anti rural living Agenda 21 style draft General Plan rather expensively written by a consulting firm selected by a stacked process. The situation in Calaveras County is sensible with room for compromise, but ours is not since our basic way of life and freedoms are being threatened. But she somehow sees herself as: “I uniquely understand the needs of working families and young families.” And while I have no reason to doubt her understanding, I fail to see what uniqueness she possesses. In my both professional and citizen experience, I have seen people in positions of decision making run the gauntlet from real understanding to utter disdain for those they were supposed to serve.

The invented election issue of Pine Grove being in three supervisorial districts was clarified by incumbent Richard Forster when he discussed the related issue of Pine Grove incorporation by saying: “I have not heard a massive outcry from voters for change.” However, Frank Axe stated: “I support forming a citizen redistricting commission to start work on this problem so we’re ready for the next census.” What is the point of projecting numbers and testing hypothesizes which will only waste people’s time and some public resources before the official figures? It’s hardly a secret that developments in Plymouth and Ione will shift population eastward and most likely solve this perceived problem.

Mr. Axe went on to cite: “…excessive county supervisor compensation.” Considering what they put up with, I consider the supervisors underpaid. Did Mr. Axe consider his salary in prior positions to be excessive? He goes on to say: “I support adding policies to the county general plan to conserve viewsheds, provided the county also develops ways to pay landowners for easements.” Based on this statement, he either hasn’t read the draft General Plan or doesn’t understand it. Scenic viewsheds, in the plan, have governing authority over other decisions. Paying to preserve them means either more public expenditure (taxes) and/or a developer fee that makes housing more expensive. This entails, just like his proposal about a pre-census commission did, more government involvement and expense.

Mr. Axe also wants the General Plan to make sure the plan reflects what the citizens said they wanted which includes keep development in towns. Looking at the way people now live in Amador County it’s blatantly obvious that people want to live on or near the land. However, environmental activists with voices louder than their numbers appear to have his ear. The draft General Plan is an Agenda 21 cookie cutter plan that slowly forces us formerly free Americans off the land, except for the affluent few, into strategic hamlets. I can only support a candidate that supports our traditional rights to live where we want to live.

Mr. Axe continues with: “I will listen to and work with everyone, regardless of … how long they’ve been here.” Apparently, he is referring to his own experience and attitude and those of his like minded associates with their limited Utopian and primarily tourist vision for Amador County. I moved here a total stranger and had no problem being listened to, nor did anyone else I know. He believes we need: “…a countywide, long term economic plan.” This must assume that government and committees are the answer (because that has worked so well elsewhere?), rather than individual initiative. Certainly an economic plan can create an infrastructure that enables individual initiative, but we already have that. We also have a climate here where something as simple as a chain store proposal or a new quarry in a quarrying area becomes open warfare.

In sharp contrast, Louis Boitano was a breath of fresh air and common sense. He said: “I think we should relax the sign ordinance to help promote businesses in these challenging times (and) Our local long-term economic plan needs to include natural resources.” Regarding the complaints of some about the delayed General Plan he said: “We are working…to carefully address the 1,840 comments…Most of those comments are from the same environmental group.”

That issue of the endless comments was rebuffed, in that same issue of the Ledger, by the Foothill Conservancy’s executive director Cecily Smith. She felt that all those comments were necessary because the plan was “…vague, weak, legally inadequate…” What that remark tells us is that the draft General Plan does not meet the desires of the Foothill Conservancy and little else of value or truth. That Ledger also had a letter to our planning director about the General Plan and fire safety from Edith Hannigan, a board consultant to the State Responsibility Area. She states that we are in danger: “…given the growth pressure faced by Amador County.” Considering that we are losing population along with a declining economy, there is no substance to her fear inducing tactic.

This election season, both locally and nationally, reminds me of that common paraphrase of a Winston Churchill remark: “…democracy is the worst possible way to make decisions, except that it is better than any other way.”

Copyright 2016, Mark L. Bennett

Who Is Racist?

The Presidential election is heating up, and some are maligning Donald Trump as a racist. At the same time, those on the far left are leveling charges of racism that seem rather far out to most people. It seems appropriate to now critically examine who is racist.

New York’s far left mayor, Bill de Blasio, charged that Congress hasn’t bailed out Puerto Rico because Puerto Ricans are people of color. There is, of course, no proof of this. My 11/9/15 post, Free Puerto Rico!, documents how Puerto Rico which could have been the Hong Kong or Singapore of the Caribbean got into its current mess. It was chosen by the Roosevelt’s New Deal as a socialist experiment. Was it chosen because Puerto Ricans are “people of color” and the New Dealers figured they could get away with this experiment there, rather than the white mainland? If that were the case, then the white liberals were the racists, not the current, anti-bail out Republicans, who want the Puerto Rican dependency to stand on its own two feet, just like any parent would teach their children.

Recently “Mickey Fearn, the National Park Service Deputy Director for Communications and Community Assistance, made headlines when he claimed that black people don’t visit national parks because they associate them with slaves being lynched by their masters…Carolyn Finney…a diversity advisor to the U.S. National Parks Advisory Board. .. claims that oppression and violence against black people in forests and other green spaces can translate into contemporary understandings that constrain African-American environmental understandings’…the tree is a racist symbol to black people.” While this seems like a nonsensical extreme position to most people, Ms. Finney goes on to say: “Theodore Roosevelt’s vision of preserving beautiful natural landscapes was rooted in ‘privilege’. This contains some truth, as I have previously implied that the conservation movement started as an elitist movement of upper class white Anglo-Saxon Protestants against the then new immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe (i.e., Catholics and Jews). It also attacked poor whites, as I documented in a post a few years ago about Roosevelt’s Civil Conservation Corp goons burning down the homes of people in the Shenandoah Mountains, who stood in the way of a park for Washington’s liberal environmental elite. So while what Ms. Finney said was not untrue, it was not white versus black, but clearly we the people against upper class environmental liberalism.

For more years than I can remember, I have read white liberal writers extol the success of a black person making the assumption that they rose from poverty. This is a racist assumption. While relatively small on a percent basis, large numbers of black people come from well-to-do families that sometimes go back to Reconstruction. Many white farmers divided their land among their former slaves. Miles Davis was the son of a dentist whose family were also large landowners. Chuck Berry grew up in a comfortable, suburban single family home. And, of course, we have affirmative action that insults black people by saying that they aren’t capable of competing on their own merits. So again, we have the liberals apparently both expressing and repressing their own racism by calling everyone else a racist when, in fact, they are the racists.

Currently, we have many in politics, and especially in the Hillary Clinton campaign, dividing and subdividing the American people into demographic slices to manipulate them into voting a certain way, often by exploiting racial differences. But reality shows - and Donald Trump knows - that an unemployed black steel worker is more likely to vote the same way as an unemployed white steel worker, rather than on the basis of some hyped-up media driven, racial divide. While this strategy may help liberal Democrats win elections, it is not good for our nation as a whole, as it breeds racism instead of diminishing those sick attitudes.

When the Rodney King riots broke out in Los Angeles, the state legislator, and now Congresswomen Maxine Waters, grabbed the microphone and repeated tired talking points about racism. What she refused to acknowledge was that her headquarters - along with businesses-owned by wealthy blacks - were also burned down. The Rodney King riots were also class riots. I have seen that which holds black people down is the same as that which holds white people down: too much regulation. Often, the first thing one notices in black neighborhoods is the amount of entrepreneurial activity. Unfortunately, much of it is illegal: selling stolen merchandise, drugs, pimping, etc. But street kids often make good business people, and this can be channeled productively. When I suggested this in a local online discussion a few years ago, I was put down by a left winger for not being an “expert”.

A case study tells the story of a black man on the south side of Chicago who dropped out of high school at the age of 16, and started painting houses. He discovered a talent for this, and after a few years, had thousands of happy customers and about 100 employees. But he conducted his business in cash from his pockets, not being the type to have a MBA in finance. Fortunately, conservative economists - affiliated with Milton Friedman - found him, and properly reorganized his enterprise. Otherwise, the liberal Democrats running Chicago would have treated him as a criminal to fine, or worse. If someone is skilled, hard working, honest and providing a needed, legitimate service or product...by what right does society have to expect much more of them?  I have witnessed black and other so-called minority people driven out of business in Central Los Angeles through down-zoning. This was brought about by left-wing Leninists wanting to create a housing shortage to bring about government control of housing (heightening the contradictions in their terms). They didn’t care about black people, or anyone else; just achieving their perverted, Utopian totalitarian dream.  

Many leaders in the black community have urged getting off the liberal Democrat plantation of fatherless homes, welfare dependency and victimization. When you have decided in advance to fail, it becomes hard to succeed. It wasn’t always that way. In my former business life, my lead carpenter was a black man who had grown up in dire poverty in rural Indiana. His healthcare was a folk healer/herb doctor who lived hidden away in the woods. Because his folks couldn’t afford to feed him at 14 years of age, he was given to a white family. That enabled him to finish high school followed by several army years in Europe during and after World War Two. He believed in the American Dream, and that, if you did the right thing, you would get ahead. So he began employment at McDonnell Douglas in Los Angeles, bought a suburban home (although the area was still pretty segregated back then), regularly attended and was active in his church, maintained a stable marriage and raised two wonderful children. While his youngest son was attending UC Santa Cruz, the older sister married into one of the wealthiest black families in America, and was interviewed on 60 Minutes. When he spoke about that, his face lit up like a portrait of a Medieval saint. It was a long way from that “witch woman” in the woods.

His retirement was now looming ahead. He understood that his years of freelance work had created a sound business with established clients, an intimate knowledge of sourcing materials in the complex LA market and his own skill. Since his own children did not need or want the business, he decided to give it to a deserving young black man. One day, he arrived at my door with such a person, introduced us and asked if I would hire him in the future. I said, "Absolutely." We all shook hands. About a year later I asked what had happened. He said that the man worked a few weeks, spent his pay on drugs, disappeared into the streets, and that two more similar prospects had done the same. He wanted to give away his business, but all the candidates had decided that victimhood beat responsibility. His face was despairing and vacant at the same time. I have seen that look only once before, and that was on holocaust survivors.

Copyright 2016, Mark L. Bennett