Carnegie Teacher Gets Wallet Stolen

Early this week, Carnegie Learning Center teacher, Betsy Alkenbrack, had her wallet stolen. She had apparently stepped out of her office, located just off the Learning Center classroom, when a man slipped in and grabbed the wallet.

When the man first walked into the Learning Center, a volunteer monitor, Rick, spotted him and asked if he could help him. The man responded that he was just looking around. That is not unusual as people are free to walk in and out of the Learning Center, which attempts to create an open, minimal barriers, environment to make residents of the Downtown Eastside underclass feel comfortable. Rick saw the man stepping into Alkenbrack's office and then coming out, but he thought she was in there.

After discovering her wallet stolen, Betsy got on the phone to cancel her credit card numbers.

Generally, Alkenbrack and the other teacher in the Learning Center, Lucy Alderson, keep the office door locked. "Every time Lucy came out of that office, I would see her with her keys in her hand locking up," says one past Learning Center student. "I didn't see Betsy around as much; I don't think she works there every day."

The wallet got stolen just before welfare Wednesday, a time when many Downtown Eastside residents are flat broke.

This is not the first theft in the Learning Center. About six or eight months ago, a young man working for Vancouver Community Net was temporarily posted at the Carnegie Learning Center which has three VCN computers, along with three Vancouver Public Library computers. He had a nice laptop. But he wasn't street smart at all. He would leave his laptop on the table and walk across the classroom and sit helping somebody at a computer -- with his backed turned. Suddenly it was gone. The young man was traumatized. He never returned.

A couple of years ago, a new computer printer was delivered and before staff had a chance to bolt it down, some body walked out the door with it.

On the positive side, the taxpayer is not being ripped off at the Carnegie Learning Center as often as they used to be. Learning Center staff who had been criticized for too often locking the doors of the Learning Center, using the excuse that a volunteer didn't show up, have been earning better marks recently. They kept the Center open every day welfare week, generally one of the worst weeks for closures.

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Read more school news on the DTES Enquirer:
International Boycott of Vancouver High School Diplomas Concealed by School Board

Man Asks Woman For Date At Carnegie, Gets Barred 1 1/2 Years Later

John, a member of the Music Program at Carnegie, was recently barred for something he claims he had done a year and a half ago. He had asked Sindi, the Assistant Volunteer Co-ordinator, for a date.

Sindia apparently told the Volunteer Co-ordinator, Colleen Gorrie, and then others got involved and John got barred.

Board member Rachel Davis, a.k.a. Rosetta, who is also a member of the Music Program, started asking questions -- just as she had asked questions when Bill Simpson was barred for allegedly blogging. John was reinstated.

One question raised here is: Why the double standard? When a female worker at Carnegie was accused of serial sexual relationships with vulnerable clients, she was never genuinely investigated. Witnesses weren't contacted. In fact, Director Ethel Whitty acted as though the people who spoke up were the problem.

Another question: Since Sindi and Colleen lock the doors of the computer room on a semi-regular basis, claiming that they couldn't manage to get a volunteer, couldn't their labour time have been put to better use?

Shigella Outbreak Not Helped By Carnegie Cafeteria Filth

There is an outbreak of Shigella, a rare food-borne bacteria, amongst people using Carnegie Center. Center staff are aware of this and have posters up in the washrooms and cafeteria reminding people who have diarreahea, stomach cramps, or fever to wash their hands thoroughly. The posters specifically mention diarreahea with blood in it -- that is a key sign of Shigella.

A Carnegie staff person has also given a handout on Shigella to members who are sick or know someone who is. It is mentioned on the handout that Shigella is highly contagious. It is so contagious in fact that it is recommended that people avoid sharing the same toilet with a person with diarreahea from Shigella.

But Carnegie is failing where it counts. Last evening, they didn't even have clean trays in the cafeteria. If a person needed a tray to carry their dinner and dessert and drink to their table, they had to use a tray that somebody else had eaten off of. When people put their food on a tray and walk to a table in the Carnegie cafeteria, they often leave it on the tray as they eat, as it is common for the tables to have remnants of other people's food on them.

One individual who was diagnosed with Shigella last month, after eating regularly at Carnegie Center -- although this person cannot be certain they got it at Carnegie -- was shocked to learn that people are being expected to use other people's dirty food trays. "I was really sick for two weeks but it's been five weeks now and I'm still not totally over it," this person says. "They need to clean that cafeteria up." Carnegie just got an expensive new dishwasher, another concerned member pointed out.

At least one staff person does make an effort to keep the cafeteria tables clean. Members report seeing Jacquie wiping down tables, but many of her fellow CUPE members seem reluctant to do this job, claiming that it should be done by "volunteers".

A Carnegie member reported seeing a food server wearing rubber gloves, and operating the cash register as well, pick up a piece of food and put it in her mouth with her fingers. Then a customer ordered a piece of banana bread and she picked it up with the same hand that had just been in her mouth. Generally, cake at Carnegie is wrapped in cellophane but on this occasion the member says, the server "reached into a bag to get it." The member knows this food server -- who "volunteers" and is paid in food vouchers -- and says she is a drug abuser.

Public Health officials are tracking Shigella in the Vancouver. Time for them to swoop down on the Carnegie Center cafeteria and enforce stricter health standards.

The problem of the Carnegie cafeteria being unclean is an ongoing one under the administration of Director Ethel Whitty. The Downtown Eastside Enquirer has mentioned this and other inadequate provision of services previously, and drew the ire of Whitty who at one point was involved in a "witch hunt" at Carnegie to find tattle-tale bloggers.

Paul McCartney - "Maybe I'm Tazed"

by Dag

Maybe I been tazed by the way you love me all the time,
and maybe I'm afraid of the way I believe you.

Maybe I'm tazed at the way you pulled me out of time,
you hung me on the line.
maybe I'm tazed at the way I really flee you.

Baby, I'm a man, maybe I'm a lonely man
who's in the middle of something
that he doesn't really understand.

Maybe I'm tazed at the way you're with me all the time,
Maybe I'm afraid of you.

Maybe I'm tazed at the way you help me sing my song,
Right me when I'm wrong-
Maybe I'm tazed at the way I really need you.

RCMP Taser Elderly Stroke Survivor

Did you hear the one about the RCMP shooting the stroke survivor with a taser gun? It's true.

John Peters, 68, suffered a stroke in 1990. He is blind in one eye, hard of hearing, and has neurological problems which affect his speech. But the RCMP added to his problems last Monday by shooting him with a Taser gun in Kelowna, B.C. Like Robert Dziekanski, the Polish immigrant who died at Vancouver airport, Peters was tasered twice.

But unlike Dziekanski, Peters survived to talk about it. In fact, seeing Dziekanski dying on video after being tasered prompted Peters and his wife Ann to speak to CHBC Television in Kelowna (the interview aired on Nov. 16, 2007 on the Vancouver sister station, Global TV) about their experience. The 5'6", 145 lbs. Peters still has nightmares about the tasering and doesn't ever expect to entirely get over it. "This is probably going to haunt me for the rest of my life", he said.

Guess what Peters had done to deserve to get tased twice? He and his wife, Ann Peters, had just finished their paper route -- they deliver a Kelowna newspaper three mornings a week -- and he was picking her up at a coffee shop in downtown Kelowna when he double parked. An RCMP officer was writing him a ticket when Peters objected and drove off. Less than a block away, Peters realized he had made a mistake and stopped his car.

But the Mounties know how to deal with a double parking bandit. An RCMP officer approached Peters in his car and punched him on the side of the head. "I felt a punch...and then the next thing I knew, I was staring at a Taser. And then I got tased."

Ann Peters recalled seeing the officer "with his Taser out" and hearing him say, "I'm going to Taser him."

ZZZZZZZZZZZ

It happened quick, she says, "Just like that, I mean, there was no hesitation." Her husband had not even gotten out of the car yet, she pointed out.

To add insult to injury, literally, the RCMP charged Peters with assaulting a police officer, obstructing justice, and resisting arrest. But Peters says he never hit the officer. The couple doubt they will ever regain their trust in the RCMP

John Peters believes that what these officers need to develop is "people skills". Ann Peters agrees, "Not Taser first, ask questions later."

Think John Peters experience is unusual? Think again. Canadian Press reviewed 563 cases of taser use by the RCMP over a 3 year period and found that in 3 out of 4 cases, the suspects tasered had been unarmed. Canadian Press obtained the data, according to CTV News on Nov. 18, 2007, from reviewing partially censored documents from the RCMP. Their conclusion was that tasers are being used by the RCMP as a weapon of choice and that they are quick to use them on low risk suspects.

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http://downtowneastsideenquirer.blogspot.com/2007/10/fraudulent-evidence-found-in-united-way.html

For Better Or For Worse Cartoonist to Divorce

It wasn't for better or for worse after all. Lynn Johnston whose "For Better Or For Worse" comic strip is based on life with her husband, Rod Johnston, and their two children, intends to divorce.

"He fell in love with somebody else," the cartoonist known to a hundred million newspaper readers across North America, told the Chicago Tribune. "It had been over a long period of time," she said, pausing and adding that it had come as a surprise to her. In fact, she had been planning her retirement to spend more time with her retired dentist husband. Instead he left in April 2007 and she expects to be divorced by April of next year.

In an interview with CBC on Nov. 2, 2007, Johnston was asked about the separation. "I can't believe it happened, but it did," she said, holding back tears, not entirely successfully. "People change...feelings change," said Johnston who is now roughly sixty years old, and all you can do is wish them well. She added, straining to keep her voice stable, that the separation was being handled with "graciousness" and "care".

Johnston's children have not disappointed her though. "I'm just thrilled with my children, the fact that they are adults and they're not in jail," she said laughing. The fact that Kate and Aaron are both "my best friends" makes her feel as though she succeeded as a parent. She describes them as "happy, mature, strong, wonderful people." Kate is an art student, a potter, and Aaron works in television. She raised both her children with Rod Johnston, although Aaron was a product of her first marriage.

Johnston, who was raised in North Vancouver, lives in Corbeil in Northern Ontario, Canada. She moved there with her children and husband who became a flying dentist with his own plane.

In recent years, Johnston has developed a neurological disorder which at times causes a tremor in her arm. For that reason she has an assistant to help with drawings for her comic strip. But she told George Stroumboulopoulos on the CBC's, "The Hour", on Dec. 5 that the disorder is now in remission, which "is wonderful".

Johnston is winding down her comic strip for which she had a 20 year contract. She feels out of touch with "the new electronic age and all the new vocabulary...and the way kids dress and talk." She fears she would begin to come across like a 60 year old who didn't know what she was talking about.

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