Credentials

In 2002 I was the victim of a home invasion at the Stoddart Apartments in Columbus Ohio.  I was teaching art in the Columbus School System at the time of the crime.  The Stoddart Apartments on Main and 4th had a unique problem.  During the normal daytime hours staff was in the building.  After 5 staff left the building.  So on Friday night (after 5) the drug lords took possession of each of the floors throughout the building.  They moved from apartment to apartment often enough that no one could predict their location from day to day.  There was no surveillance.  My apartment was the first apartment on the 4th floor.  It was prime real estate for drug dealers as their customers could jump on the elevator, and get what they wanted within a few minutes.
I knew of their operation as everyone in the whole apartment building knew of it.  Staff remained willfully myopic as it would cost them lots of money to address the problem.  The criminals busted through my door, beat me, took my debit card and went shopping that weekend.  They left a person watching me of course.  What they really wanted was cash, and in spite of beating me throughout the weekend, I managed to continue to give them passwords that would not access my account.  They were able to purchase several things without my password, but eventually the bank machine not only denied them cash, but kept the card.  On Monday morning when staff came back to the building the home invaders were long gone.
I post this story and my credentials at the time for a couple reasons.  One, criminals do not care whether their victims are an art teacher or not.  Two, in spite of my fleeing from the Licking County Cult who criminalized me, I went on to get my teaching license.  If I were to post a 3rd reason for putting this up here, it would to tell my enemies that I have earned my stripes!  Perhaps it is the Germanic resoluteness I have in my genetics.  It would be a very gross miscalculation on anyone's part to assume that I am just going to let someone shit on me, and then let them go.  Pay attention Nesley, Lori, Dee, and cult.  I am not going to go away.  I am not going to just let you continue operating business as usual.
I sold my blood in a Columbus blood bank to pay for this certificate!  I would love to be able to use it to teach art someday.  If you didn't get the message last time I gave it, GET OUT OF MY LIGHT!  You may not like my spirituality, my preference, my politics, or even my racial linage, but I have earned the right to teach art.
I can see how my teaching art would be a threatening thing for the same cult that worries about the occult bleeding into the textbooks in the public school system.  The occult has been in art throughout time, and the religious fundamentalists are not going to be able to do much about that.  Likewise, they are not going to be able to prevent their children from making snakes out of clay in an art class as "the coil" is the most fundamental of even simple pottery.  And yes dear readership I have been blamed for the "abominations" that Christian children have created in my clay class!  I didn't tell them to make snakes!  They made them because it is a basic instinct to make a coil, and then try to make something from the coil.  I am not going to tell a student what she or he can or can not make!  I imagine though, that the fundies would.  That is their ignorance, not mine.  I didn't go to art school in order to pass judgement on anyone for their creation, in spite of a religious dogma.  The bible forbids the making of graven images.  It is very specific about that.  I won't bother to quote the scripture from the old testament...but it specifically forbids the making of any creature that would crawl etc.  Yes, I read it, and I understand it.  I also read the new testiment and it doesn't have the same forbids in it that the old testament did!  Let me remind you, you fundamentalist busy bodies,  in the new testament Christ gives a new commandment of Love.  This does not give you the right to hunt down abortionists and murder them, or gays, or witches...or art teachers I might add.  I am not going away, and I will not be silent about all that I know that you have done and are doing.  It is my friends, family and their kids you are blackmailing and putting on your heinous lists.  If you need to think of me symbolically in your old testament sort of way...think of me as the unicorn swimming around outside your arc.  I probably survived the flood.  I may survive the fire you are kindling for your apocalyptic vision.  I have survived even your best attempts at snaring me.

Post Script:  Just in case you are wondering, the following Monday after the home invasion, my friend Yvonne who worked for a bank at the time, took me to the police to file a report, and then we took the report to my bank and my account was restored.  The bruises on my face and body healed.  I lived to fight another day.  It is hard to keep a good woman down!