Some may say Shanna was just a typical druggie but her bipolar disease prooves that wrong and in fact, we don't know if she did drugs. She tells the reporter after the accident that she drank an iced tea, a drink laced with the date-rape drug GHB. But remmeber, she had just been jailed 12 hours for drunk driving and released and had never gone to bed yet. Maybe she was just crashing off of mania into the depressed, low side of the cycle adn dead tired too and fell asleep at the wheel. Maybe she told the reporter she was on a drug because she thought people were drugging her , like a paranoid schizophrenic thinks the CIA is tapping her phone. Maybe she thought she was on drugs because her mind was spinning wildly and she could not grasp hold of a thought. The only evidence I think was her "confession"; I don't think she was tested. She probably should have had a trial but she wasn't on medication and during a hearing to dismiss her attorney she appeared and asked to plead guilty. Bob didn't expect it and was stunned when he found out. His ex-wife had assured him it was a hearing Shanna wasn't even suposed to attend. My friend in Madeira Beach read of it over there because it got attention in the ress because the reporters seemed to enjoy having a "character" to display. I remmeber one wrote how Shanna kept trying to light cigarettes with two broken hands. That was meant to portray her as pathetic. I am sue there are many times they get statements from politicians and philanthropists and volunteers and doers and movers who light cigarettes and the reporter says nothing. I it a lot of cigarettes talking to the Times reporter who showcased us when we did a black Jesus window in about 93--he never mentioned it. My character was not being judged. My friend in madiera beach would call me and say "Dede Bob's daughter is a fruitcake, I'm sorry, but i hope she does get prison.." because the press had a new statement from her. Apparently she missed a court date or was late and dismissed it to reporters with some off the wall comment. So when she shows up at a hearing she's not required at, having nothing to do with her crime, she asks to say something and pleads guilty. My friend in madeira beach happens to have been a court recorder for 26 years and she knows this court session is just one of those dry boring routine things and how terribly totally odd it is for Shanna to plead guilty here. Does the judge? Does anyone in a position to save her from herself realize that this self-admitted bipolar kid is not on treatment for the bipolar mood swings or she wouldn't be doing these classic Paris Hilton moves ? Obviously she's manic as hell and not in touch with the ground to plead gulity at the hearing for her attorney like that. Thinking it was her judgement day somehow. Same with when she told the reporter she did GHB and then drove off because she was tired of her boyfriend raping her. This was a girl who needed an attorney present before speaking at all.Instead, they use her own statement in the paper to nail her, along with her "confession." Maybe she thought she did a drug because it said so in the paper. Maybe she didn't realize it was quoting her and thought the paper knew things she didn't. Who knows how her mind was racing, trying to find terra firma? She really should have a retrial. It should be considered that the first judge had no idea she was not under treatment to control bipolar episodes because you assume as soon as a member is in that bad of a pickle the family pulls together and gets her to a psychiatrist and on meds. But nobody did. I don't think there was any money--I know hr dad had none. The judge didn't know she was talking crazy talk , or he couldn't have accepted her plea, right? He didn't know that maybe she didn't have bipolar and just lied to excuse herself from responsibility for driving on dope. He could have suspected that but he couldn't know that. Yet he treated her as if that was indeed the situation. That she drove high on dope , no excuses, it was an irresponsible, concious decision and 20 years would wipe that insolence off her face."Keep her from a life of crime" and "tellingly" "break her spirit." Trouble was, she wasn't bent on a life of crime. Prison was not the solution for her. Medication and supervision or loss of driving privleges was . You can tell he thought he was meting out a sentence for a willful criminal because he gave her 20 years. But, and here we go again, second lady on this website, she didn't wake up and say,"I'd like to kill someone today." or even "I plan to participate in a dangerous crime that could result in death and I don;t give a hoot." It was an accident.She fell asleep at the wheel. People don't usually get 20 years for a fatal car wreck caused by them falling asleep at the wheel. Read the lit. I told Shanna this and instead of taking hope from it she wordlessly went to the judge and asked to close the case by pleading guilty during a routine court procedure.Yes she felt enormously responsible for a lady's death. But was she totally right? Was she as guilty as she found herself? Would we as a nation prefer she get treatment and raise her son? I think those who knew her would. Other families touched by a bipolar child would. I hope we all would although I am afraid our President and governor think all "lesser" people are deliberately scumbags; maybe, one hopes, the mistake in attitude is limited to these two. Although whatever they say Americans seem to think Moses gave them it on a stone. Can you believe that President Bush said Saddam Hussein and nine-eleven in the same sentence hundreds of times? And that 75% of his countrymen thereafter thought Hussein was the guy over there behind 9/11? And that these kind of things can't happen by accident? I have seen a recent addition to my guest book ( actually I have 5 but this is the one on my portal entry page most sign)(others are on my St Mary Academy site, fly-fishing site, Bernice Bowen site, and I forget ). Someone wrote that I don't know Shanna at all to slander her so cruelly and people will do anything for a fast buck, that's what my website prooves, and i'm despicable. Actually, the person said, Shanna is a warm, affectionate good person I've never met and know nothing about so have no right to judge. They said they and Shanna were close friends lifelong. In a way I think this person was just looking for a place on the web she/he could write "I know Shanna." Where he or she did and the website visitors, writers, etc did not. Maybe hoping we'd offer her $500 for insights and information, herself/himself/. He/she certainly didn't read very far, doesn't understand sarcasm, doesn't understand 5 words of English, honestly--I mean I scoured this site and there is nothing that could have been misconstrued. She'll/he'll say I changed it, perhaps, but Homestead records when the last change was made to a page, Google keeps records ("Caches") of your web site as it was months ago and anyone can see it free, so if she/he maintains something like that they are just trying to maintain a writing relationship with Shanna and proving their loyalty and how they came across enemies and slaughtered them for her; let them assure her of all this if that's what they all want of a relationship, I don't care. I usually care passionately about whoever I write about on this site, about 800 pages bear me out, and you can detect after reading fifteen hours of me here that I did not develope this web site to express narrow, judgemental,angry, nasty views and when it did so by nature of the turn my life took , the bad reviews were all of the current government, not of people in the news in one county in the world briefly. n the instances where I wrote of individuals , I let the newspaper articles do the talking and then expressed my feelings on it, their story , which represented issues I am compassionate towards . I mean am I going to really say Bernice Bowan shouldn't get 16 years but Shanna deserved her 20? Remember, Bernice bummed cigarettes off me which means normally that when we see each other again and i say hi she has to say hi. But she didn't. She ignored me like she was too cool for me. Now that word starts with a B. Meanwhile, as I recall here, Shanna got a guy to drive her 45 minutes each way to give me $20 2 days after meeting me BECAUSE I NEEDED IT. And as soon as I needed it. Impulsive gal maybe but was I complaining??? The newspaper says that Shanna said she was manic-depressive since childhood and no one would help her so she did drugs to manage it. I didn't reveal a secret. The person accusing me of malicious slander 1. Didn't read diddly here or she'd know Shanna's dad was my significant other who I lived with and I did too know Shanna, I even mention on the Danielle spot on the Shanna page that there are hundreds more photos of Danielle , her sister,on this site. What does he/she think I did, set up a spy camera in danielle's current home from across the street to get the photos surreptitiously? Every picture of my girls taken had Danielle in it for a few years, as we were all one family, experiencing everything from Christmas and July 4 to California and White Sands National Monument in New Mexico together. You see Danielle at my friend Barbie's house in Arizona ,you see her with us and Weird Al backstage, you see her with us on the 4 day camping trip we took with Shanna's dad and 6 little girls to escape the news cameras parked outside my door after Hank Carr made his scene. You can't get far on this site without realizing I know Shanna's immediate family personally. Furthermore I fail to see what fooled this bright future leader into thinking I was making even a slow penny off this web site. Does he/she understand how web sites work? Do they really think that only people good enough to be paid can make web sites, sort of like the way publishing a book is? have they looked at Homestead's own home page to see if they're paying me? Because if they did , and flipped through my site a spell, counting pages, they could estimate what I pay for the privilege of asking my one reader a year to consider others more thoughtfully. Actually i do get more than one reader a year but Homestead shows me where they come to mine from, too, and it's mostly a Yahoo or Google search for my grandfather or Bernice Bowen, a search for my boarding school or summer camp, or from the Vietnam veterans web ring. In each of those cases they only see the site they come to ( fly-fishing, Bernice, Nam)--in fact you can't get to my main portal and see who I am from some of my sites, like the Johnny G Lyon Band site and the Legget Schol site and the St Mary Academy site. and the Peaceful Creations site. But you can get to all of those from my index page. It's a one-way street, some of this, as i deliberately take anyone looking up peripartum cardiomyopathy to my lost self walking the beach in Los Angeles due to Medicaid not doing heart transplants in Florida, making Suzy Homemaker feel my anguish at our spit-spot health-care system,which dumped me in this city full of healthy tan strangers with their full compliment of teeth, blazing white ones, snubbing me as if (I say, tongue in cheek next to little photos of Weird Al Yankovic and me hugging, and me holding up a dead porcupine and a shotgun) I got my daily coffee from Weird Al's guitar player or picked up dead porcupines or something ). The only things I diss are small letters, not caps. The government, not Shanna West. The medical system, not Shanna West.A terminally ill person--let me clue you in , whoever you are, young person who knew Shanna--- has about two things to improve. Their character and their relationship with God. Very soon, that is all they are going to have. They ferverently, ferverantly hope they get that much, that they don't just end, stop , evaporate, never remember or think or see or feel again. it only takes a few days to realize you are in a whole different world than the world at large is.. When you read in the paper that photos of the Saturn rings will be beamed back in 2 more years. That the governor's seat is up for grabs next year. And you know you'll never know who got it or what secrets they are about to all learn about Saturn. Or even maybe which movie star dies next. Their concerns become jokes--they can never be yours. You see how clearly they count for nothing, all these things people go on about. And what does count. For example, I no longer regret a life of poverty in service of our Lord through the works of art we did for churches that will still be there in a thousand years unless the Bush Bros egg the terroists on . Which the one is, and the other probably looks like a good retalitory target--I wish he'd get out of my state,w hich he was never a resident of but they see government differently , this regime, like Monopoly cards you hold, of states, the Department of Forestry, the Department of the Interior , the EPA-- Anyway, I guess if you were real real real quick to get excited and ready to hate venomously, and in fact seeking soemplace online to scratch this itch, you might be able if your lights were on real real dim that night but nobody was home think that the pyschobabble I put here called "Which came first, the chicken or the road?" was the venomous content that slandered their beloved old buddy enough to chew me out with perverse pleasure. ( "You ought to be more understanding and tolerant of others "..) Alas, it was the only sentence on my whole 55-hour long website that could be construed as a slam of Shanna, that philosophical nod to the very newspaper columnists that WERE putting Shanna down ; and of course, I answered it with a well-written plea to reconsider the worth of our Shanna, showing you all the published letter to the editor her story inspired me to write, and how it made my pyschologist praise me at the pain management clinic I was in for a few weeks after my back was injured by her dad, flipped by a $1000 lawyer's bill for his innocent question "How did my ex get all my mortgage money held by the bank and my mortgage, car payment, and credit card payments bounced ANYWAY, the day AFTER we went to court and gave her seven grand towards my debt for Shanna's child support NOT to do that???" which was just too much for him , all of it , from A to Z, and no it is not slandering Shanna,sorry, if you are upset that I and my boyfriend hurt very very bad from a woman's decision not to ask him for child support for Shanna in 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, and 1999. Shanna's very-adult boyfriend lived with her at Mom's in 95- 96, and Shanna didn't really live with her mother in 97-98-99. Not all year round. There were visits to us by younger sis, griping that Shanna broke in while they were on vacation and moved back in, that he mom had "another" restraining order on Shanna, that Mom was physically attacked by a suddenly enraged Shanna. That's 3.Visits of that nature, at least, where Bob felt it best to keep his blood daughter safer at his house. I agree I should not carelessly say " many " instances if I can only quantify-- so there may have been only -- three. And I can see concern that anyone can reveal details of someone's horrific life as it were . "I heard it through the grapevine" --horrible. The fact one person read any of it in the one point five years its been extant-- the Shanna hit the news bit, I mean-- keeps me considerably calmer than the unfortunate do-gooder on the white steed who does look up Shanna and, after wading through 35 hits from newspapers, comes on mine. I could help her/him, a little. To a little understanding, maybe that breeds compassion. I know Hank Carr's sister made the exact same mistake, when she found my site ---and then read it , and apologized profusely. This is in my guest book at the http://www.homestead.com/fun801/now.html site. Incidentally, reading this guest book might serve this complainer well! First off, I can tell her/him that my Shanna pages got --what is it, Homestead? One hit in the last year and a half or two hits? I forget. You see, dear reader, Homestead keeps tabs on all that and lets me see, too. So when you complained to them, they noted things I don't know if they are really allowed to tell you. Like you're the only one who ever saw it. A hundred or more saw my Bernice part. Here's why: Shanna's not in the news anymore, hasn't been since her sentencing a year and a half ago, was it?-- and won't be. It;s sort of like that guy who got lucky with the tee-shirts for middle-school girls that say "Boys are stuoid--throw rocks at them" , and the one depicting a sillhouette girl with a braid climbing out a window at night saying "I'll sleep when I 'm older" -- he was asked to sell his line to Macy's, Penney's, and a few others and use comic teens he created in a fastfood toy ha ha meal deal and he said no, he's not licensing his characters out yet, he has plans for these suckers. he's dreaming he'll get rich off them. truth is, those shirts are going to be so last year in the fall, and i mean come on. They found the hard way they can't even keep lines of manga -anime tee-shirts here. Inti and the Merlins had to stop selling anime clothing because there was no demand . Animenation , the only Tampa warehouse for online anime merchandise, has only a few: Inuyasha, Evangelion, Hellsing. Waldenbooks has plushies, wall scrolls and manga, no shirts. Suncoast Video has DVDs and manga and pocky.And these are characters that inspire entire graphic novel series, seasons of Japanese animation episodes, were loved in Japan and then translated and imported to us sometimes years later, and spawned magazines that cost $10 each a month like Newtype USA and Animerica ; the characters are drawn by every new art student in my daughter's arts high school, to the despair of the teachers, who try to discourage it; you see a zillion fan sites for the various shows online, and many fans lovingly upload entire episodes to Kazaa for fans to download and watch , in Japanese and English . many kids learn Japanese on their own and in groups, and attend Cos-plays and conventions dressed as favorite characters. And most dress as someone everyone knows, not some character no one has heard of . One more thing--- anime fans are very much the Purist. You cannot interest them in cute little people with big eyes per se, just because you see them loaded up with gifs of such--they know its Hiei or Sailor Mars, and yours are nobodies. Just 4 characters with non-Christian, frankly shocking values for a gang peddled to 11 year old girls. Whereas with anime they get, always-- almost guarenteed stunning visuals, frame after frame, much prettier than real life, from beautiful real looking countryside to haunted brooding young long-haired men of indefinite race and beautifuk feminine face who make dry , acidic, very modern hilarious cuts to the air-headed or uncoordinated or just female co-protagonists. ("Don't you need somewhere to plug your hair dryer in?" He says ascerbically when she seems to be insistent on camping with him. ) 2. They don't have to be realistic--it's funny, cute, and awesome. There are nice solid plots if you want them , or good characters, or good humor, or you might like a guy because you like his voice--he is one of your favorite voice actors, Yamaguchi Kappei 3. They don't stereotype teenage girls as a general profile ( sex-addicted , immature, superior to boys -- does anybody get this--an adult man is behind those disgusting slogans that new teen girls think they are suposed to buy as they are the one slogan-type clothing geared specifically to them , and it is now going beyond "Spoiled" and "No Boys allowed" to "Boys are Dumb" because if these superior , faster-maturing girls think their peers think boys are dumb they'll date men, like men wish little girls would do .But back to my point--with it's much broader, fanatial fan base, anime-manga hardly sells tees in America. You can't find many toys of it. And it is a type of literature-comic, with thousands of variations, from adult-only to lots of robot fights to gay teen lovers . You can find outcast protagonists, which is the antithisis of what these unknown comic characters this guy owns project---they scream, type-casted!In! His time was the day the big giants wanted his characters. Now the only one-office comic publisher in the country just went bankrupt- Cross-Gen, which had its artists, writers, etc all under one roof doing some of the last comics still gasping in America.They did awesome Simpsons comics but nobody was buying them. Nobody's going to care about 4 new characters , I see his star fading. He should have jumped. So too is Shanna's 15 minutes up and gone bye bye. Nobody is looking her up; without her story and name brought back to "news" status again, no one ever will, not even business owners because she won't be applying for any jobs until 18 years after I'm dead. My website will disappear the same year I die, maybe even the same month, if it happens to be August. Nobody is going to pay to keep it up and I don't know if anyone can manage it but me, legally. I've got 1 to 2 years left to live. The reason people come to my Bernice Bowen site is because--read their letters--they see her on Court TV. There is always a fresh round of letters when she goes on. Also the story engages them. They are the most passionate visitors to my web site, evenly divided between those who understand abuse by dad or boyfriend and its damages to a girl ,and those that hold her responsible for Hank's shooting to death her 4-year-old son. No one blames her for the deaths of the 3 police officers or Hank. Except Tampa Florida. I enjoy providing a place for people to leave their feelings because like Shanna, every other hit on a search engine for Bernice is a newspaper article. I think when people leave their feelings it could reach somebody, someone you never know read it, someone important . I think it's better than nothing nowhere where people can stand up for someone else.Look at all the people with thoughts on Bernie from around the world--who would have otherwise known? See how that German tv news show wanted to do a show on Bernice and interview me? They had no one else to ask--no way to reach other people who remember Bernice and Hank. I can reach several-- one just died, I don't want Bernice to read it here first, Roger , but Brian and Tish live in Spring Hill, and Cathy and Nicole and Ryan live off Florida a mile or two from Bernice's old place, which is boarded up.Bobby Phillips is still at the tent place, and I believe Cheran's mom (Victoria?) still works at the strip club, a grandma 3 or 4 times over now. And Hank's sister is dying for someone to interview her for a book. As usual someone who needs compassion and understanding and a sense of humanity tells me to get it. I just wish I could help them read before they write their vituperative emails, to me and to the good people who I pay to let me post my views (not vice versa)-- this accusation of slander reminds me, too clearly, of our president's insistance on slinging "Saddam Hussein" in the same sentence as "9/11" and 75% of Americans accepting it without thinking at all. It's scary, how we are all so busy we accept someone's terribly uninformed, misinforming , short reasoning and eschew bothering with the long, true story.... don't, dear young person Shanna's young age and still in the free world, unlike your buddy, please don't spend the rest of your life, or another minute of it, skipping the details, wearing the tee shirt that says "I'll think when I'm old" . Rather, be like that teen who said , alone to a piece of paper to a world that didn't know her , yet they all, and all their descendants, got to hear her: "Nobody need wait a single moment to start improving the world!" ---- Anne Frank |
Page Title |
Mary Jo Malone doesn't like many criminals --not the school teachers who hit and run or seduce students--but she speaks up on behalf of the bipolar |
"It's A Strange Society That Incarcerates Those Mentally Afflicted" by Mary Jo Malone, St. Petersburg Times columnist, July 5, 2004 (--Mary Jo writes of a 19 -year-old sentenced by a "cruel circuit judge" to 10 years in prison for stealing a 6-pack from a neighbor's garage . Prosecutors privy to his juvenile record reported he'd struck a teacher, gone after his ma with a bat, battered a juvenile home employee, stole from a school cafeteria.) "No doubt about it," Mary Jo writes,"Bollenback was trouble." "But maybe more importantly, he was troubled. According to his mother, he suffered from the wild mental and emotional highs and lows of bipolar disorder. "Having bipolar disorder is not a crime, although it can make you do crazy things. "You do not get bipolar disorder because you have a character flaw or a bad upbringing or have made some lousy, malevolent choice in life. "Didn't any of that matter to Judge Howard? "Even juvenile authorities did not want the judge to go hard on this kid. They recommended lesser punishments, as little as house arrest. "The judge insisted he wanted to keep Bollenbach from a life of crime. "He also said, revealingly, that the sentence would break the young man's spirit. "Bollenback was back in court last Wednesday, seeking a new trial on grounds that his lawyer was incompetent. ...It is remarkable when a politician sticks his neck out on an issue that can't benefit him. Woten is chairman of the Citrus County Commission, and he came to court to stand up for Adam Bollenback. (The mentally ill) .."are not criminal masterminds. But some act out, and break the law, when their illness flares."---"Law-and-order types say that prisons are loaded with the mentally ill, because most of the old state hospitals that once treated them are gone. "So they land behind bars. But the same law-and-order types agree that's the last place the mentally ill belong. "Prisons lack the facilities to treat them. "Nevertheless, prison is where they go, and when they get in trouble again, prison is where they return. ....Wooten:"It's better to divert these young people so they quit going through the system." .."According to his mother, Bollenbach (who was denied a new trial) is getting psychiatric drugs in prison to control his bipolar disorder. But the question remains: Why did the system have to treat him like a criminal for him to get psychiatric help?" |
We'll overlook that this queston just began at the column's end, no mention having been made previously to the boy's inability to get treatment for his disorder . If it is true, why? He was appaerently diagnosed before he stold the beer---why wasn't he on medications? Perhaps the complexities inherent in this disorder make it hard to treat the patient in a non-prison, non-hospital setting. The patient enjoys his euphorias and does not want to drug them away, like shrugging off pleasure in living. Perhaps he or she is right at that age where if they aren't in college they can't be on Mom's Blue Cross as a dependant. So there's no money to keep them on meds and seeing doctors. They can't get there at this age--do you remember being 18? It was Ramen noodles. So they can't get the treatment til they are some institution's problem. There, the treatment becomes desirable to those able to make such decisions about taxpayers' money. Before there, the social worker types all say," I know she's a problem at home, but right now she's just a potential problem to society--we can't get her on disability and Medicaid til she is disabled, she won't be disabled til she's in prison or paralysed ..." I feel adamantly that Shanna is a victim of this society's indifference, selfishness, stupidity and shizophrenia .(75% think Saddam Hussein caused 9/11) As long as it happens to someone else's family, we do nothing to try to understand the relationship between prison ( a mom's death, etc) and mental illness; if this is the better solution, if these deaths and crimes were totally preventable by something as seemingly wildly unrelated as a national health plan. This website began as tributes to a movie, a fisherman, a progressive dentist stricken in his prime years, the photography of a plain, salt-of-the-earth Vietnam vet, a memorial to a stained glass artist who filled over 150 churches with his original art. As things happened it became a blog of sorts. I had to write of mistreatment by Medicaid doctors, unfairly treated poor neighbors. The more years that I added to this, the more pages of it screamed out for a national health plan for all, regardless of income. Nothing else makes sense. And then Shanna came along crying out for another reason for one. Not just to save dying mothers of young children. Not just to keep American families intact. To keep you, and you, and you alive as you drive down the road unworried that some young driver may be self-medicating a hypomania. I mean, duh. |
Because, Mary Jo, There's No National Health Plan , Duh |
Some may say Shanna was just a typical druggie but her bipolar disease prooves that wrong and in fact, we don't know if she did drugs. She tells the reporter after the accident that she drank an iced tea, a drink laced with the date-rape drug GHB. But remmeber, she had just been jailed 12 hours for drunk driving and released and had never gone to bed yet. Maybe she was just crashing off of mania into the depressed, low side of the cycle adn dead tired too and fell asleep at the wheel. Maybe she told the reporter she was on a drug because she thought people were drugging her , like a paranoid schizophrenic thinks the CIA is tapping her phone. Maybe she thought she was on drugs because her mind was spinning wildly and she could not grasp hold of a thought. The only evidence I think was her "confession"; I don't think she was tested. She probably should have had a trial but she wasn't on medication and during a hearing to dismiss her attorney she appeared and asked to plead guilty. Bob didn't expect it and was stunned when he found out. His ex-wife had assured him it was a hearing Shanna wasn't even suposed to attend. My friend in Madeira Beach read of it over there because it got attention in the ress because the reporters seemed to enjoy having a "character" to display. I remmeber one wrote how Shanna kept trying to light cigarettes with two broken hands. That was meant to portray her as pathetic. I am sue there are many times they get statements from politicians and philanthropists and volunteers and doers and movers who light cigarettes and the reporter says nothing. I it a lot of cigarettes talking to the Times reporter who showcased us when we did a black Jesus window in about 93--he never mentioned it. My character was not being judged. My friend in madiera beach would call me and say "Dede Bob's daughter is a fruitcake, I'm sorry, but i hope she does get prison.." because the press had a new statement from her. Apparently she missed a court date or was late and dismissed it to reporters with some off the wall comment. So when she shows up at a hearing she's not required at, having nothing to do with her crime, she asks to say something and pleads guilty. My friend in madeira beach happens to have been a court recorder for 26 years and she knows this court session is just one of those dry boring routine things and how terribly totally odd it is for Shanna to plead guilty here. Does the judge? Does anyone in a position to save her from herself realize that this self-admitted bipolar kid is not on treatment for the bipolar mood swings or she wouldn't be doing these classic Paris Hilton moves ? Obviously she's manic as hell and not in touch with the ground to plead gulity at the hearing for her attorney like that. Thinking it was her judgement day somehow. Same with when she told the reporter she did GHB and then drove off because she was tired of her boyfriend raping her. This was a girl who needed an attorney present before speaking at all.Instead, they use her own statement in the paper to nail her, along with her "confession." Maybe she thought she did a drug because it said so in the paper. Maybe she didn't realize it was quoting her and thought the paper knew things she didn't. Who knows how her mind was racing, trying to find terra firma? She really should have a retrial. It should be considered that the first judge had no idea she was not under treatment to control bipolar episodes because you assume as soon as a member is in that bad of a pickle the family pulls together and gets her to a psychiatrist and on meds. But nobody did. I don't think there was any money--I know hr dad had none. The judge didn't know she was talking crazy talk , or he couldn't have accepted her plea, right? He didn't know that maybe she didn't have bipolar and just lied to excuse herself from responsibility for driving on dope. He could have suspected that but he couldn't know that. Yet he treated her as if that was indeed the situation. That she drove high on dope , no excuses, it was an irresponsible, concious decision and 20 years would wipe that insolence off her face."Keep her from a life of crime" and "tellingly" "break her spirit." Trouble was, she wasn't bent on a life of crime. Prison was not the solution for her. Medication and supervision or loss of driving privleges was . You can tell he thought he was meting out a sentence for a willful criminal because he gave her 20 years. But, and here we go again, second lady on this website, she didn't wake up and say,"I'd like to kill someone today." or even "I plan to participate in a dangerous crime that could result in death and I don;t give a hoot." It was an accident.She fell asleep at the wheel. People don't usually get 20 years for a fatal car wreck caused by them falling asleep at the wheel. Read the lit. I told Shanna this and instead of taking hope from it she wordlessly went to the judge and asked to close the case by pleading guilty during a routine court procedure.Yes she felt enormously responsible for a lady's death. But was she totally right? Was she as guilty as she found herself? Would we as a nation prefer she get treatment and raise her son? I think those who knew her would. Other families touched by a bipolar child would. I hope we all would although I am afraid our President and governor think all "lesser" people are deliberately scumbags; maybe, one hopes, the mistake in attitude is limited to these two. Although whatever they say Americans seem to think Moses gave them it on a stone. Can you believe that President Bush said Saddam Hussein and nine-eleven in the same sentence hundreds of times? And that 75% of his countrymen thereafter thought Hussein was the guy over there behind 9/11? And that these kind of things can't happen by accident? I have seen a recent addition to my guest book ( actually I have 5 but this is the one on my portal entry page most sign)(others are on my St Mary Academy site, fly-fishing site, Bernice Bowen site, and I forget ). Someone wrote that I don't know Shanna at all to slander her so cruelly and people will do anything for a fast buck, that's what my website prooves, and i'm despicable. Actually, the person said, Shanna is a warm, affectionate good person I've never met and know nothing about so have no right to judge. They said they and Shanna were close friends lifelong. In a way I think this person was just looking for a place on the web she/he could write "I know Shanna." Where he or she did and the website visitors, writers, etc did not. Maybe hoping we'd offer her $500 for insights and information, herself/himself/. He/she certainly didn't read very far, doesn't understand sarcasm, doesn't understand 5 words of English, honestly--I mean I scoured this site and there is nothing that could have been misconstrued. She'll/he'll say I changed it, perhaps, but Homestead records when the last change was made to a page, Google keeps records ("Caches") of your web site as it was months ago and anyone can see it free, so if she/he maintains something like that they are just trying to maintain a writing relationship with Shanna and proving their loyalty and how they came across enemies and slaughtered them for her; let them assure her of all this if that's what they all want of a relationship, I don't care. I usually care passionately about whoever I write about on this site, about 800 pages bear me out, and you can detect after reading fifteen hours of me here that I did not develope this web site to express narrow, judgemental,angry, nasty views and when it did so by nature of the turn my life took , the bad reviews were all of the current government, not of people in the news in one county in the world briefly. n the instances where I wrote of individuals , I let the newspaper articles do the talking and then expressed my feelings on it, their story , which represented issues I am compassionate towards . I mean am I going to really say Bernice Bowan shouldn't get 16 years but Shanna deserved her 20? Remember, Bernice bummed cigarettes off me which means normally that when we see each other again and i say hi she has to say hi. But she didn't. She ignored me like she was too cool for me. Now that word starts with a B. Meanwhile, as I recall here, Shanna got a guy to drive her 45 minutes each way to give me $20 2 days after meeting me BECAUSE I NEEDED IT. And as soon as I needed it. Impulsive gal maybe but was I complaining??? The newspaper says that Shanna said she was manic-depressive since childhood and no one would help her so she did drugs to manage it. I didn't reveal a secret. The person accusing me of malicious slander 1. Didn't read diddly here or she'd know Shanna's dad was my significant other who I lived with and I did too know Shanna, I even mention on the Danielle spot on the Shanna page that there are hundreds more photos of Danielle , her sister,on this site. What does he/she think I did, set up a spy camera in danielle's current home from across the street to get the photos surreptitiously? Every picture of my girls taken had Danielle in it for a few years, as we were all one family, experiencing everything from Christmas and July 4 to California and White Sands National Monument in New Mexico together. You see Danielle at my friend Barbie's house in Arizona ,you see her with us and Weird Al backstage, you see her with us on the 4 day camping trip we took with Shanna's dad and 6 little girls to escape the news cameras parked outside my door after Hank Carr made his scene. You can't get far on this site without realizing I know Shanna's immediate family personally. Furthermore I fail to see what fooled this bright future leader into thinking I was making even a slow penny off this web site. Does he/she understand how web sites work? Do they really think that only people good enough to be paid can make web sites, sort of like the way publishing a book is? have they looked at Homestead's own home page to see if they're paying me? Because if they did , and flipped through my site a spell, counting pages, they could estimate what I pay for the privilege of asking my one reader a year to consider others more thoughtfully. Actually i do get more than one reader a year but Homestead shows me where they come to mine from, too, and it's mostly a Yahoo or Google search for my grandfather or Bernice Bowen, a search for my boarding school or summer camp, or from the Vietnam veterans web ring. In each of those cases they only see the site they come to ( fly-fishing, Bernice, Nam)--in fact you can't get to my main portal and see who I am from some of my sites, like the Johnny G Lyon Band site and the Legget Schol site and the St Mary Academy site. and the Peaceful Creations site. But you can get to all of those from my index page. It's a one-way street, some of this, as i deliberately take anyone looking up peripartum cardiomyopathy to my lost self walking the beach in Los Angeles due to Medicaid not doing heart transplants in Florida, making Suzy Homemaker feel my anguish at our spit-spot health-care system,which dumped me in this city full of healthy tan strangers with their full compliment of teeth, blazing white ones, snubbing me as if (I say, tongue in cheek next to little photos of Weird Al Yankovic and me hugging, and me holding up a dead porcupine and a shotgun) I got my daily coffee from Weird Al's guitar player or picked up dead porcupines or something ). The only things I diss are small letters, not caps. The government, not Shanna West. The medical system, not Shanna West.A terminally ill person--let me clue you in , whoever you are, young person who knew Shanna--- has about two things to improve. Their character and their relationship with God. Very soon, that is all they are going to have. They ferverently, ferverantly hope they get that much, that they don't just end, stop , evaporate, never remember or think or see or feel again. it only takes a few days to realize you are in a whole different world than the world at large is.. When you read in the paper that photos of the Saturn rings will be beamed back in 2 more years. That the governor's seat is up for grabs next year. And you know you'll never know who got it or what secrets they are about to all learn about Saturn. Or even maybe which movie star dies next. Their concerns become jokes--they can never be yours. You see how clearly they count for nothing, all these things people go on about. And what does count. For example, I no longer regret a life of poverty in service of our Lord through the works of art we did for churches that will still be there in a thousand years unless the Bush Bros egg the terroists on . Which the one is, and the other probably looks like a good retalitory target--I wish he'd get out of my state,w hich he was never a resident of but they see government differently , this regime, like Monopoly cards you hold, of states, the Department of Forestry, the Department of the Interior , the EPA-- Anyway, I guess if you were real real real quick to get excited and ready to hate venomously, and in fact seeking soemplace online to scratch this itch, you might be able if your lights were on real real dim that night but nobody was home think that the pyschobabble I put here called "Which came first, the chicken or the road?" was the venomous content that slandered their beloved old buddy enough to chew me out with perverse pleasure. ( "You ought to be more understanding and tolerant of others "..) Alas, it was the only sentence on my whole 55-hour long website that could be construed as a slam of Shanna, that philosophical nod to the very newspaper columnists that WERE putting Shanna down ; and of course, I answered it with a well-written plea to reconsider the worth of our Shanna, showing you all the published letter to the editor her story inspired me to write, and how it made my pyschologist praise me at the pain management clinic I was in for a few weeks after my back was injured by her dad, flipped by a $1000 lawyer's bill for his innocent question "How did my ex get all my mortgage money held by the bank and my mortgage, car payment, and credit card payments bounced ANYWAY, the day AFTER we went to court and gave her seven grand towards my debt for Shanna's child support NOT to do that???" which was just too much for him , all of it , from A to Z, and no it is not slandering Shanna,sorry, if you are upset that I and my boyfriend hurt very very bad from a woman's decision not to ask him for child support for Shanna in 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, and 1999. Shanna's very-adult boyfriend lived with her at Mom's in 95- 96, and Shanna didn't really live with her mother in 97-98-99. Not all year round. There were visits to us by younger sis, griping that Shanna broke in while they were on vacation and moved back in, that he mom had "another" restraining order on Shanna, that Mom was physically attacked by a suddenly enraged Shanna. That's 3.Visits of that nature, at least, where Bob felt it best to keep his blood daughter safer at his house. I agree I should not carelessly say " many " instances if I can only quantify-- so there may have been only -- three. And I can see concern that anyone can reveal details of someone's horrific life as it were . "I heard it through the grapevine" --horrible. The fact one person read any of it in the one point five years its been extant-- the Shanna hit the news bit, I mean-- keeps me considerably calmer than the unfortunate do-gooder on the white steed who does look up Shanna and, after wading through 35 hits from newspapers, comes on mine. I could help her/him, a little. To a little understanding, maybe that breeds compassion. I know Hank Carr's sister made the exact same mistake, when she found my site ---and then read it , and apologized profusely. This is in my guest book at the http://www.homestead.com/fun801/now.html site. Incidentally, reading this guest book might serve this complainer well! First off, I can tell her/him that my Shanna pages got --what is it, Homestead? One hit in the last year and a half or two hits? I forget. You see, dear reader, Homestead keeps tabs on all that and lets me see, too. So when you complained to them, they noted things I don't know if they are really allowed to tell you. Like you're the only one who ever saw it. A hundred or more saw my Bernice part. Here's why: Shanna's not in the news anymore, hasn't been since her sentencing a year and a half ago, was it?-- and won't be. It;s sort of like that guy who got lucky with the tee-shirts for middle-school girls that say "Boys are stuoid--throw rocks at them" , and the one depicting a sillhouette girl with a braid climbing out a window at night saying "I'll sleep when I 'm older" -- he was asked to sell his line to Macy's, Penney's, and a few others and use comic teens he created in a fastfood toy ha ha meal deal and he said no, he's not licensing his characters out yet, he has plans for these suckers. he's dreaming he'll get rich off them. truth is, those shirts are going to be so last year in the fall, and i mean come on. They found the hard way they can't even keep lines of manga -anime tee-shirts here. Inti and the Merlins had to stop selling anime clothing because there was no demand . Animenation , the only Tampa warehouse for online anime merchandise, has only a few: Inuyasha, Evangelion, Hellsing. Waldenbooks has plushies, wall scrolls and manga, no shirts. Suncoast Video has DVDs and manga and pocky.And these are characters that inspire entire graphic novel series, seasons of Japanese animation episodes, were loved in Japan and then translated and imported to us sometimes years later, and spawned magazines that cost $10 each a month like Newtype USA and Animerica ; the characters are drawn by every new art student in my daughter's arts high school, to the despair of the teachers, who try to discourage it; you see a zillion fan sites for the various shows online, and many fans lovingly upload entire episodes to Kazaa for fans to download and watch , in Japanese and English . many kids learn Japanese on their own and in groups, and attend Cos-plays and conventions dressed as favorite characters. And most dress as someone everyone knows, not some character no one has heard of . One more thing--- anime fans are very much the Purist. You cannot interest them in cute little people with big eyes per se, just because you see them loaded up with gifs of such--they know its Hiei or Sailor Mars, and yours are nobodies. Just 4 characters with non-Christian, frankly shocking values for a gang peddled to 11 year old girls. Whereas with anime they get, always-- almost guarenteed stunning visuals, frame after frame, much prettier than real life, from beautiful real looking countryside to haunted brooding young long-haired men of indefinite race and beautifuk feminine face who make dry , acidic, very modern hilarious cuts to the air-headed or uncoordinated or just female co-protagonists. ("Don't you need somewhere to plug your hair dryer in?" He says ascerbically when she seems to be insistent on camping with him. ) 2. They don't have to be realistic--it's funny, cute, and awesome. There are nice solid plots if you want them , or good characters, or good humor, or you might like a guy because you like his voice--he is one of your favorite voice actors, Yamaguchi Kappei 3. They don't stereotype teenage girls as a general profile ( sex-addicted , immature, superior to boys -- does anybody get this--an adult man is behind those disgusting slogans that new teen girls think they are suposed to buy as they are the one slogan-type clothing geared specifically to them , and it is now going beyond "Spoiled" and "No Boys allowed" to "Boys are Dumb" because if these superior , faster-maturing girls think their peers think boys are dumb they'll date men, like men wish little girls would do .But back to my point--with it's much broader, fanatial fan base, anime-manga hardly sells tees in America. You can't find many toys of it. And it is a type of literature-comic, with thousands of variations, from adult-only to lots of robot fights to gay teen lovers . You can find outcast protagonists, which is the antithisis of what these unknown comic characters this guy owns project---they scream, type-casted!In! His time was the day the big giants wanted his characters. Now the only one-office comic publisher in the country just went bankrupt- Cross-Gen, which had its artists, writers, etc all under one roof doing some of the last comics still gasping in America.They did awesome Simpsons comics but nobody was buying them. Nobody's going to care about 4 new characters , I see his star fading. He should have jumped. So too is Shanna's 15 minutes up and gone bye bye. Nobody is looking her up; without her story and name brought back to "news" status again, no one ever will, not even business owners because she won't be applying for any jobs until 18 years after I'm dead. My website will disappear the same year I die, maybe even the same month, if it happens to be August. Nobody is going to pay to keep it up and I don't know if anyone can manage it but me, legally. I've got 1 to 2 years left to live. The reason people come to my Bernice Bowen site is because--read their letters--they see her on Court TV. There is always a fresh round of letters when she goes on. Also the story engages them. They are the most passionate visitors to my web site, evenly divided between those who understand abuse by dad or boyfriend and its damages to a girl ,and those that hold her responsible for Hank's shooting to death her 4-year-old son. No one blames her for the deaths of the 3 police officers or Hank. Except Tampa Florida. I enjoy providing a place for people to leave their feelings because like Shanna, every other hit on a search engine for Bernice is a newspaper article. I think when people leave their feelings it could reach somebody, someone you never know read it, someone important . I think it's better than nothing nowhere where people can stand up for someone else.Look at all the people with thoughts on Bernie from around the world--who would have otherwise known? See how that German tv news show wanted to do a show on Bernice and interview me? They had no one else to ask--no way to reach other people who remember Bernice and Hank. I can reach several-- one just died, I don't want Bernice to read it here first, Roger , but Brian and Tish live in Spring Hill, and Cathy and Nicole and Ryan live off Florida a mile or two from Bernice's old place, which is boarded up.Bobby Phillips is still at the tent place, and I believe Cheran's mom (Victoria?) still works at the strip club, a grandma 3 or 4 times over now. And Hank's sister is dying for someone to interview her for a book. As usual someone who needs compassion and understanding and a sense of humanity tells me to get it. I just wish I could help them read before they write their vituperative emails, to me and to the good people who I pay to let me post my views (not vice versa)-- this accusation of slander reminds me, too clearly, of our president's insistance on slinging "Saddam Hussein" in the same sentence as "9/11" and 75% of Americans accepting it without thinking at all. It's scary, how we are all so busy we accept someone's terribly uninformed, misinforming , short reasoning and eschew bothering with the long, true story.... don't, dear young person Shanna's young age and still in the free world, unlike your buddy, please don't spend the rest of your life, or another minute of it, skipping the details, wearing the tee shirt that says "I'll think when I'm old" . Rather, be like that teen who said , alone to a piece of paper to a world that didn't know her , yet they all, and all their descendants, got to hear her: "Nobody need wait a single moment to start improving the world!" ---- Anne Frank |
