I heard your daughter tell Larry King that you feel you've wasted your life.
I heard the gossip -slash- commentary, as you left the courtroom. They said you appeared unremorseful, with a hint of a smile.
I saw your face. That was no smile. That was the set jaw of a mortified woman, refusing to give the gathered jackels the satisfaction of seeing you cry. Your eyes looked haunted, grieving, determined to maintain dignity.
I burst into tears, remembering when the paramedics put me in an ambulance, as police officers stifled tears and whispered, "go with them, Rogi. Don't resist."
Some man, in civilian clothes, had entered my home without my permission, shoved me around, threatened to have me arrested, screamed obscenities at me. He said he was a fire marshal, but I never saw any I.D.
When I told him I'd have to ask him to leave, he called UNM Mental Health and had a doctor order a psychiatric evaluation on me.
Everybody else present -- Adult Protective Services, the police, a minister, Animal Control -- knew I was in my right mind and trying to do the right thing.
But this man wanted me punished for trying to defend my rights and my home.
I still don't know who he was. I think I saw him on the local news once, about a possible arson fire.
The cops were supposed to help me with my yard, so the War Zone kids had a safe place to play, study, eat. My home was a refuge from abuse, neglect and overwhelm.
Instead, they tore out my fruit trees and filled their ditches. They threw away garlic, growing in planters in my yard, which I'd planned to sell. They threw away all my bottle neck gourds, which I'd just begun to carve and paint into bird houses to sell. They threw out a hundred dollars' worth of bulbs, herbs, flowers and vegetables.
They threw away my bicycle: my only transportation. They threw out the kids' toys in the yard. They threw away my tools and my security lights, my only defense -- besides my dogs -- against drug addicts.
They even threw away my clean laundry, hanging to dry on the porch.
They blocked the gate, so I couldn't close it, by moving a storage building in its way. They threw out the side panel of my motor home, so I couldn't lock or secure it.
I'd been removed, by a fireman, from my home while they did this. He said he was taking me to buy groceries. He was really keeping me from protecting my property, so I wouldn't "interfere."
By the time I returned, my lush garden was reduced to rocks and dirt.
But it didn't stop there.
When this "fire marshal" came, he condemned my home for water damage from a bad roof. I pointed to roofing materials, delivered that week, up on the roof. I was to repair the roof for reduced rent.
He wouldn't listen. That's when Animal Control was called.
As I was being placed in the ambulance, I saw my cats and dogs, frantic, in cages, in a van, in the hot, July sun.
Every kid in the 'hood stood silently, safely away from this Ground Zero, witnessing. And I thought, what a bad example I've set: "if you TRY to make a difference, this is what we'll do to you."
I watched them string yellow "caution" ribbon around the property and duct tape a "condemned: substandard housing" poster to my front door.
The paramedic took my vitals as we drove to the hospital. She remarked that, except for slightly-elevated respiration, she was surprised that my blood pressure and pulse were normal, given the circumstances.
So, Martha, I know how you felt when you left that courtroom.
They burned another witch.
The longest I was at the hospital was waiting for the local minister to give me a ride back to what was left of my home.
When I returned, some neighbors were rounding up my ducks, chickens and geese. A couple I barely knew persuaded Animal Control that my animals and I could stay with them, in Moriarty.
I was evicted on the spot. I could only return, during daylight hours, for the next fifteen days, to retrieve whatever I could. I had no vehicle and would be staying with strangers, over twenty miles away.
It was Friday before a three-day, July 4th weekend, 4:00 pm. I couldn't contact a lawyer nor anybody else. After all, it was the Albuquerque Police and Fire Departments and Bernallilo County Adult Protection Services who'd done this to me. To whom would I complain?
That weekend, my neighbors broke in and robbed me. They found my check book and emptied out my Social Security Disability check.
I was homeless and penniless, and at the mercy of strangers who had an agenda I won't discuss here. Let's just leave it at: they didn't take me in out of the goodness of their hearts.
All my animals, except one cat and one dog, died or disappeared. I even had a little Hymalaian Siamese I'd rescued from a dumpster outside an abandoned apartment building. I'd named her, "Martha," after your cats.
I don't know if it was coyotes, feral dogs, or the couple's son, whom I'd caught dangling a hangman's noose over my dog's head once.
I do know that my things began disappearing, and that I caught that kid with them.
I was sick, when they put me in that ambulance. I hadn't eaten all day. I'd been up late, the night before, working in my yard.
I'd been beaten by a mentally ill man who was stalking me, climbing on my roof, opening windows, tearing up my fence. He stole my dog several times, to bait me.
I'd gone to his house to get my dog. He was crouched behind his wall, waiting for me. He grabbed my wrist, tried to pull off my dress, beat me in the head.
I'd called the police several times about him. They wouldn't take reports. But they had me down as a "nuisance," for calling so often.
Even as I stood in the street, dress torn, blood streaming from my head, they said the wouldn't report it because they hadn't witnessed it. And a restraining order would cost me $50.
I was issued a citation for having my dog running loose, even though the stalker stole him, and for not having dog tages, even though the stalker stole the dog collar. I had the dog's paperwork in the house, but who knows what happened to it.
I didn't get the citation, because I was homeless. The court issued a "failure to appear" warrant, when I didn't show up for the court date.
I tried to clear it up, but the court clerk said I'd have to pay $340, just to see a judge.
I said, "I can't afford that; I live on Social Security. What should I do?"
She said, "get the hell out of here, before I have you booked!"
So, I have a warrant, eight years later, for my arrest.
His beating, it seems, broke a tooth. Now, all my teeth are rotting and falling out.
I went to UNM Hospital, complaining of head pain; I explained I'd been beaten. They brushed it off as depression and sent me away unexamined and untreated.
My belly, that day in the ambulance, still hurt from losing my daughter, the previous year. Her death nearly killed me. I can't tell you the pain.
The father left me to fend for myself, keep the lights on, get new roommates. I almost lost the house then, because I was too sick from surgery to get everything done.
I dedicated my garden to my daughter. Every year, on the Vernal Equinox -- which would have been her approxemate birth date, had she survived -- I planted something special in the garden for her.
The police threw out that year's tulips.
I opened my home to the neighbor kids as a memorial to her. I taught them everything you teach on your programs, Martha: how to do things for yourself, how to be creative, interested, resourceful.
One of my best memories was a day, right before Christmas.
A flock of preteen girls, bespangled in plastic jewelry, giga pets and sparkle lip balm, cussed like sailors in the Crafts Room, putting up shelving with hammers and drills.
In the kitchen, gang banger wannabe boys, in baggies and do rags, slaved over hot pots of candy on the stove.
We were cooking a gingerbread tree, covered in candies and cookies, so we could all have something for Christmas. The boys were making truffles and lollipops.
I heard one say, "That ain't softball stage, foo'! Shoot, man, you gotta read the damn thermometer!"
I was standing in the hallway, between the girls and the boys, and just laughed 'til I cried.
The last time I was in that house, police were looking for narcotics. They thought I was running a gang out of my home.
They thought I was a Satanist. They'd come out, the previous summer, to investigate our Pow Wow.
The kids and I had dug, with permission from the local fire station, a small fire pit in the front yard for a pow wow fire.
We made fry bread and Navajo tacos. We sold sodas and candy.
We made ceremonial clothing. We decorated "drums," made of five gallon paint buckets.
We called the Four Directions, burned juniper, because we had no cedar, and prayed.
We danced and sang. Neighbor men brought their "old ladies," kids, dogs and drums to help us celebrate.
We'd built a fence around the front yard, to keep poultry in and crack heads out. Each kid painted his or her own boards, all different colors, and painted their prayers and pictures on them. We called it our "prayer fence."
We had memorial boards for the dead, the wounded, the missing. The boards were decorated with happy faces, stars, flowers.
"Why," said a member of the all-white, English-only Gang Unit, "is that fire pit in a circle?"
"'cause it's hard to dig a triangle, I guess," I replied.
"How come you've got five-pointed stars, painted on this fence?"
"How come there are five-pointed stars on the flag," I replied.
"What are you and the kids doing with these chickens?"
"Oh, no, you think I'm a Satanist, don't you?"
"Well, you seem to know an awful lot about it!"
His police report stated falsely that I was a paranoid schizophrenic and a self-proclaimed witch. No other police officer in this town would ever take me seriously again, while I was being stalked.
Now, Martha, I could have laid down, right then, in that ambulance, and died.
I was useless. I was a failure as a mother. I was a failure as a community activist. I was a failure as a home maker. I was a failure as a woman.
Talk about feeling like your life is wasted!
It has taken me almost ten years to recover, and I know I never will.
But I walk three miles round trip, two days a week, to get to this radio station to volunteer.
I operate eight news blogs at my domain, rriverstone.com.
I eat and wear what I find in dumpsters, when necessary. I still grow my own food.
I'm going to try to raise some duck pond eggs for chicks.
If your life is wasted, what does that say about mine?
Your daughter LIVES! You have family! You have friends!
You have money and connections! You built an empire!
When they put me in that ambulance that day, I had nothing. I had no one. My daughter was dead; I was homeless; I was penniless.
If you believe you're defeated, they've won, Martha!
Never stop. Never quit. Never give them the satisfaction!
Sincerely,
Rogi Riverstone
Happy Birthday, Viri Diana
Love,
Mommy
