Yard Angels?
October 05, 2015(original post date)
Ive been getting more refreshing sleep lately thanks to another Ashland resident letting us sleep in their yard! Thank you so much to Beth, Mitchell and Alex for taking the initiative to solve homelessness themselves by giving a homeless person a “home” to sleep for the night! A “home” is anywhere you feel safe to lay your head down to sleep. These 3 “yard angels” are not even religious! This is not surprising to me because in my more than 10 years of traveling as a homeless man i have been “adopted” for the night by far more non-religious people than i have been helped by people claiming to be spiritual. I have tried to make it easier and more fun to help citizens in houses actually act spiritual by creating something called “Sleep Slip Dollars”. These new Sleep Slip Dollars can be printed out for free and then issued to a homeless person for even just 1 night, giving them permission to simply “be” in your yard or behind your business between your designated time-frame. If even just some citizens did this and twitted about it then we could start a new trend of individuals working independently to collectively solve the world-wide homelessness problem! If i could get these printed on a carbon-copy pad like the ones that police use to write tickets, then the citizens who issue the Sleep Slip Dollars would have a carbon-copy to carry in their wallet so that they could show their friends how humane and spiritual they are the next time they pull out their wallet to pay for their group’s dining bill. These carbon-copies seem to be absolutely necessary to make these work and provide the incentive for citizens to issue them because then they can show it to their friendssince people seem to be most interested in just making it look like they care. So carbon-copy Sleep Slip Dollars would be able to help not only the homeless become better people with sleep, but they would also make it easier for citizens to become better, spiritual people too! By the way, the home owners here also think of the sheep and I as “yard angels” because we maintain the plant growth and subsequent potential fire hazard.
My yard angels also insisted that i accept this gift(pictured) of blanket, ground blanket and pillow from them.. pillows are a HUGE upgrade to a homeless person’s quality of sleep, but we can never carry such volumn in our backpacks! This is the only way that i know of that homeless people ever get to sleep with a pillow..is when someone who has the space to store such an item helps us for the night. I have tried to invent a new portable DIY pillow. I used an empty wine bag for a few months by just blowing it up at night and then deflating it each morning so that it would fit in my backpack, but they aren’t stable and you end up unconsciously using your micro-neck-muscles all night to stay balanced! If we could find a way for homeless people to easily tote around their own pillow it would change the life of many homeless people.
Carpenter tickets us for the 6th time!?
October 04, 2015
Yeah, now officer Carpenter has given me 6 tickets in the past 5-6 months? I usually get only one in a year period, maybe? This time he ticketed me for supposedly “leaving animals unattended” because I tied my sheep to the tree right next to a bench where i stopped to talk with another traveler who had an aggressive dog. So i set the girls down with a pile of kale and then sat down myself to rest with the traveler when officer Carpenter came walking up the stairs, past a travelers dog who was tied up to the railing on the other side of the stairs with nobody around it. He approached me to tell me he was writing me a ticket and I asked him to call his supervisor to the site before he writes any ticket because i don’t feel comfortable with his judgement, which he is then legally obligated to call and then wait for the supervisor to arrive! Then, officer Carpenter broke his sworn legal protocols when he just simply called his supervisor there but then quickly wrote out the ticket anyway, handed it to me and left the scene after assuring me that his supervisor would be there shortly!? Officer Carpenter’s “leaving animal unattended” ticket is $110, and he gave it to me for what you see below..i was sitting on the bench and my pet sheep were laying on the ground next to me.
On the bright side, the girls and i got to catch the tail-end of the Saturday Farmers’ Market downtown and get a bunch of donated kale from Happy Dirt Farm! I darn near split the entire bushel with the girls because i was so thirsty for greens since all the wild edibles have been becoming woodier with the fall season. Then Zach from the Pop Cakes booth gave me his leftover samples of quinoa/rice cakes and i was just gonna eat them straight cause they are that good but as i was leaving Maria from Higher-Power Raw Foods gave me a new package of her spinach dip, which i just had for dinner! My new friends Beth, Mitchell and Alex are letting us sleep in their backyard until they move out at the end of the month!! It’s so frickin wonderful to actually sleep deeply, safely and legally for an extended period..Thank Goodness.
Potlucks in the park are back!
October 01, 2015(original post date, reposted after website was hacked and had to be rebuilt)
Comak Tapp and his mother have been feeding soups and stews to the Ashland homeless at Lithia Park gazebo for the past 10 years, solely on donated produce with zero funding! He recently took his first sabbatical down to his cultural homeland of Mexico and is now back to feed the needy! The Potluck is on now on Sundays 4pm at the Lithia Park Gazebo(just past the childrens’ playground). Feel free to bring your own plate, cup and utensil to help minimize work and waste! He also sometimes plays his classical guitar for us and invites anyone to bring their musical instruments for us all to enjoy too! Thank God for Comak, one of the best souls in Ashland!!
Carpenter tickets me again!?
September 27, 2015(I’ve had to repost blogs after the website got hacked) Yesterday i went into Ashland to buy a felting tool that I wanted to try at Webster’s, a downtown wool store. I tied my 2 sheep up to the pole in front and rushed into the store. I quickly purchased close to $40 in merchandise and when i came out literally 2 minutes later officer Carpenter who patrols the area was standing next to my sheep telling me that it was against the law to leave animals unnattended in Ashland! I told him that I was sorry but i just needed to buy something real quick and that there are ALWAYS dogs tied up outside downtown businesses like Louis’ and Martoli’s while their owners go in to dine and that he and the other officers never even stop to say anything to them!? Officer Carpenter then gave me another one of his tickets, this time for only $110!
Here’s the history; Carpenter has given me 4 tickets now in the last 6 months. The first ticket was a bogus “keeping of animals”, the second was a bogus “scattering rubbish”(couple pellets shook out of poopcup onto sidewalk and i threw them in the bush?), the third was another bogus “keeping of animals” which caused a newspaper article to be written about it(read it here) resulting in the police chief filing motion to drop the illegitimate charges..but the chief didn’t file motion to drop the first “keeping of animals” charge because that case was already done with and my fine had already been sent to collections!
Here’s the problem; If the Judge finds me “guilty” of the fourth ticket of “leaving animal unattended” then she and officer Carpenter will likely try to say that i am BANNED from the entire downtown area for 6 months under their new and already questionable “exclusionary zone policy” which states that anyone who receives 3 tickets downtown within 3 months will be banned from coming withing the downtown boundry for 6 months! I already unrighfully suffered for the first ticket by having to stress over the initial injustice, waiting in town for the court dates, stressing over separation from my animals while i had to sit through a actual trial over this, the stress from the judge saying that im guilty and then ignoring me when i repeatedly asked her what specific law did i break, then i suffered by having that fine sent to a collections agency and finally i suffered by having my credit further damaged by not being capable of paying the fine! If those 2 people are able to unrightfully exclude me from the downtown area that i have been a patron of for over seven years(btw Carpenter doesnt even live in our town but lives in Medford) then God help the rest of you Ashland folk in the future cause one-by-one, neighborhood-by-neighborhood the rich and powerful are trying to push the lower income out of Ashland using their rule of law..its call gentrification! Ask any Ashland elder and they’ll tell you that rich people have been coming up from California to buy property, pushing their weight around legally to tighten neighborhood association type regulations which drive the locals out..all to raise their(4th home’s) property value? Well, that’s what Carpenter and the judge are trying to do with me; push me out of sight to raise the perceived “quality” in that area, all for the purpose of price hiking and profit making? It seems that their profit blinders don’t enable them to see the fun and amusement their tourist are having from the eco-lawn trimming sheep and the honest enrichment that results from having such a diverse yet behaved populace. United we stand, divided we fall..so if this actually goes down and the first citizen in Ashland is illegitimately excluded without the rest coming to the rescue then i’m not sticking around Ashland to witness the increasing abuse and mistreatment of others. If so, I will continue to journey for a new community that i can help stand “when the shit hits the fan”! Please help support the security of our community by supporting me..
Journalism and justice are alive!
September 13, 2015(I have had to repost blogs after this site was hacked)
I was interviewed by an Ashland Mail Tribune reporter last month to cover just some of the legal bs that I’ve had to deal with for having a couple dairy sheep for pets instead of dogs!? You can read the article here. In a nutshell, the editors at the Mail Tribune took out 2 very important parts of the reporter’s originally written article, and it ends up making me sound less responsible than I am? They took out the part of his article that describes how I have specially designed poop cups on my sheep to catch their valuable compost-ready pellets and that i was given a scattering rubbish ticket because one of my sheep “shook-off” and a couple of her poop pellets rattled out of her cup onto the sidewalk and i responsibly picked them up and threw the few peices into the bushes as fertilizer! The other important part edited out of the article was where police chief O’Meara was interviewed by the reporter and said that he didnt know how or why i was given a “keeping of animals” ticket since those laws only apply to peoples’ backyards!
Dispite the newspaper editors making me look less responsible than i am, the article still brought justice to my case! After the article was published, Police Chief O’Meara filed a motion with the court to have them drop the officer Carpenter’s illegitimate charges, and they did! This proves that all the other charges that Carpenter gave me are also bogus and that I should be justified for them!!..but i obviously dont have any money fir a lawyer to sue and Carpenter and Judge Judy knew that i wouldnt and thats why they decided to treat me like that! “The last will become the first and the first will become the last.”
(Journalist/photographer Alexandar Mesadieu)
Police try to bully us out of town..
From July 23, 2015(i have had to repost blogs after the website was hacked)
Officer Carpenter has been harrassing my pet dairy sheep and I with bogus tickets for supposedly breaking one of the the “Keeping of Animals” ordinances but the crazy thing is he refused to tell me which specific rule it is that ive broken under the “Keeping of Animals” ordinances!? Those ordinances are actually a set of rules for governing how people can use their backyards for keeping urban livestock. The “Keeping of Animals” ordinance does not say anything about walking horses and other livestock in town which has always been legal here in Ashland. So I was shocked, not as much so when the Judge said she found me guilty on the first ticket, but when i questioned her as to which specific rule it was that i had broken she responded with “we’re through here..” as she quickly signed my paperwork and proceeded to leave the courtroom as i continued to ask her and she continued to ignore me!? Since then, officer Carpenter has told all of his new cadet trainees that if they see me in any one location for more than an hour to tell me to move along or give me another bogus “Keeping of Animals” tickets! Since then I have been harrassed while in-town for simply trying to take rest under trees during the heat of day! Then, the next day, i simply stopped for a few minutes to talk with a friend on the sidewalk when officer Carpenter came up and just gave me another ticket, this time without warning and again without being able to explain the law that was broken! He also happily informed me that when found guilty that i’ll be banned from downtown for 6 months under Ashlands new “Exclusionary Zone” policy where they ban people from the entire downtown area for 6 months if they get 3 tickets around there within 6 months. My next court date is August 18th at 9am if anybody wants to help give me some support..till then i am literally being bullied out of town by an unprofessional police man named Matthew Carpenter and Miss “judge” Turner who herself has been sticking me with her biased verdicts every since i refused to stand/salute/pledge to her before court one day years back because i told her that it was against my religious beliefs to treat people unequally. When I pleaded with her that I meant no disrespect but that i respected everyone equally she threw me out for “contempt of court”! Ahh, the good ol’ justice shitstem..
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=905ykD7Fp5I