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The house, on a quiet street near Humboldt State University, is owned by Mesa Vernell, 82 years old, who has wanted to return there to live with family. But, thanks to her daughter Trilby’s "testimoney," Mesa is held captive in a hospice-nursing home, although she is not terminally ill and is not too disabled. Mesa’s dream to live again in freedom, and start saving money after a long forced stay in "$anta" Barbara, California, have been perhaps dashed. Even if Trilby were not in the picture henceforth, what has been put in motion is a money-sucking scam by professionals who really know how to "take care of" an elderly person no matter what the elder or family members think or want. The team of opportunists that prey upon any "conservatee" or patient are only in place—as they themselves and the judge would admit—due to lack of family solidarity. The Sustainable Energy Institute, Culture Change’s nonprofit tax-deductible charity umbrella, was based in Mesa’s house at her pleasure. Now, being evicted, we are moving into a downtown Arcata office with some disorganization. (click here to support our new office) That inconvenience and the extra costs and hassles are the least of it. We are more interested in the eviction’s illustration on sustainable living: It is only through solidarity that sustainable living has a chance. Homo Sapiens evolved in cooperative family/tribal behavior, to survive. "Sustainable solidarity" begins at home, in the heart, and flows outward. Some traditions still around today can help, but "using nature as if we don’t own it" is a concept and world view that needs reviving and application universally, now! A Home Remained After $30 Million Loss A judge in Eureka decided on February 5th that we had not answered the eviction suit with a defense, despite voluminous pleadings we had submitted. A hearing may still occur to resolve the matter of a default judgment against us. The judge presided over my jury trial in 1996 when I was charged for riding my bicycle in a protest—taking over Highway 101, the Redwood Highway, in a Critical Mass bike ride of over a hundred protesters; our action highlighted the police brutality perpetrated on nonviolent protesters who were slowing down the clear cutting of the last of the tallest trees in the world. Humboldt elected a new District Attorney in 2002 in large part because of the backlash against the prior DA who had approved of the aforementioned pepper-spray torture. The new DA, Paul Gallegos, has pledged to deal with violent crimes against protesters, and, of importance to my family, address elder abuse and white collar crime. An example of the latter is his new lawsuit against Pacific Lumber for falsifying data on logging's effects on unstable slopes. My mother was kidnapped from her home in Arcata in 2000, and taken to Santa Barbara where her health was thereby seriously jeopardized. Though recovered, she languishes in the hospice, and she since lost almost half a million dollars, most of her estate. But law enforcement does not always appreciate as criminal certain activity, when a family is involved. The violating of criminal statutes against this elderly patient along with the kidnapping have not seen as anything but civil-law family squabbling (or sibling rivalry), by certain officers, officials and members of news media locally and nationally. That kind of denial is much like the Humboldt County government’s and the Times-Standard (Eureka) newspaper’s insistence that the pepper-spray lawsuit is about determining the legality of excessive force—when the federal courts have settled that issue. Similarly, the fleecing of my mother’s estate and robbing her of liberty and happiness is dismissed by many, even family members, as a feud between a brother and sister who once vied for control of Lundberg Survey Incorporated. One can expect sensationalizing by news media when it is time-consuming to confirm a record of abuse and financial fraud. But even more crucial is that when a family does not come together and enforce ethical conduct and love between its members, the unraveling of society has begun. Neighbors were generally not "there" for us the morning of eviction, although ninety-five-year-old Mrs. W. was there with us in spirit, nearby, taking it easy as she should. Another neighbor saw the situation, but just ignored what was happening to me, my family and the nurse. When we don’t support each other when one person or one family is wronged, we trade long-term survival as a community (and perhaps even as a species) for the momentary peace-and-quiet of noninvolvement. If you let down your family, do you still have one? Is a neighbor just someone to say hello to and no more? We ultimately support domestic terror or fascism, or random theft, amongst ourselves as The Holy Dollar increasingly determines today’s choices and allegiances. Mesa's case has had the benefit of a non-family member who has served heroically and selflessly in a key, professional capacity: Barbara Shults. She is a Registered Nurse and, most fortunately for Mesa, a Legal Nurse Consultant. With Barbara on the premises, and having visited Mesa and appeared in court, the professional opportunists profiting off Mesa's captivity are more clearly on thinner ice than they usually might be in elder-care cases that they routinely enjoy. Mesa Vernell is healthy, sane and fun, despite being increasingly depressed over her plight in an institutional care situation depriving her of dignity and a more therapeutic environment at home. The Humboldt County Court Investigator concluded last summer that Mesa needs to return to her home to live. Yet, Santa Barbara Judge J. William McLafferty ordered that Mesa remain in a super costly minimum-therapeutic hospice and have her home sold to pay for the facility’s over $6,000-a-month cost. Mesa’s clear wishes to the contrary, as a conservatee, were ignored utterly—despite a doctor’s court-ordered analysis that she be involved in all court proceedings affecting her. Bogus excuses of her house containing excessive "mold and cold" were the highest ranking factors cited by Mesa’s captors that the judge went on. The Court Investigator, knowing the kinds of professional and legal fees made off Mesa, and knowing Trilby Lundberg’s oil industry clout, later observed, "Money talks." Could Mesa’s judge really have been impressed by the pathetic accusation that the nurse was my girlfriend? Or that Trilby’s friend, Conservator Mary Lou Parks, of Lompoc, and Park’s Santa Barbara attorney David Turpin, should be believed when my investigator-approved care-giving plan for my mother is treated instead as simply my self-interest at play? Joining the mold-and-cold and Jan's-an-opportunist chorus was my hapless brother, who got caught trying to sell Mesa's possessions and is prevented by the Arcata Police from staying in her home. His mentor is Tim Such, who packed off the old woman and her son so he could have the place to himself. My brother and I used to have more in common than pushing for a legal reversal of a stock sale whereby our mother lost to her daughter around $30 million worth of ownership in the family business that I used to run. The very biosphere is threatened, mainly by energy use for questionable climate-changing ways of living. Excessive driving, for example, by too many consumers, promotes war for oil. A U.S. family is no longer one- or two-car, but three- and four-car. This fits the solo economic unitization of family members, who most likely have their own TVs in their rooms. North Americans don’t share very well. Each household, which in the U.S. is mostly one person nowadays, has its own stove, refrigerator, computer, etc. This kind of wealth yields a kind of poverty that destroys from within (as well as destroying nature). There is another way, but not for too many billions, especially when they are "units." When we must begin sharing, perhaps only due to the arrival of the imminent global petroleum supply crisis (as reserves fail to accommodate more growth), we will begin the return to sustainable, solidarity-based living. Energy waste has contributed to family dissolution, and our selfishness has not escaped the notice of the world. The members of the U.S. family share less and less their dreams or struggles. Pre$$ures prevent us from seeing how solidarity enables triumph over adversity. Threats are posed by scheming rogue individuals who are both within our families and without as they prey from outside. The rogues have taken over completely, in families, towns, our nation, and—maybe after an Iraq War—the world. Dissolution of human relations and of peace starts in our families, although the fragmentation of the family is mainly due to outside pressures from "$ociety." Get together now. Don't be a unit. *** Mesa's plight as "Prisoner of Oil": Below: Mesa Vernell Lundberg in captivity, early 2002, southern California. To express your support for her freedom and rights, email her family at jan@culturechange.org. Thank you. For more information read: Family cohesion challenged by sprawl and greed. Back to Home Page Jan Lundberg's columns are protected by copyright; however, non-commercial use of the material is permitted as long as full attribution is given with a link to this website, and he is informed of the re-publishing: info@culturechange.org |
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