May 10, 2018

Hi Carole, May 10 must have been a Mother's Day during our years together because I dreamed of your flouncing, presenting a bouquet of flowers the way you used to do, an outstretched arm full of colors, your  smile beatific and broad across your face. Along with your ebullient rich brown eyes, radiant.

I hit the 70-year-old mark without you, who could have ever imagined either?

Still in my older computer, have a nice image of Curt and I at South Pointe Park on Miami Beach ... not sure how to transfer it.

OK, I emailed it, can't drag from email into blog so dragged to desk top and will import ... we shall see ... it worked!

Will add pic of Danny taken 2 days ago, he' s back from filming in Houston. TX.  He rode an electric / battery like over. I was so happy to see him! Danny is off to Europe next week with gf Elena, Josh, and Giselle, a graduation present to her.  Unsure of their exact plans, not sure if they know!

Can't add captions to Danny's images taken May 3. 2018.

The family is coming over Saturday,  May 12. Maybe more pictures then.

May 12 also our mother's yahrzeit, perhaps five years after your passing.

And so it goes.

March 2018

Students Lead Huge Rallies for Gun Control Across U.S.

Hi Carole, header above from NYT ... received my replacement computer from Apple a few month ago and will attempt to do this blog and Pinecrest Floods,  https://pinecrestfloods.blogspot.com/ from the newer one .... I get confused accessing different blogs, so had used this older one, circa 2009,  for us and the other for Pinecrest Floods ...

Students Lead Huge Rallies for Gun Control Across U.S.

By THE NEW YORK TIMES 28 minutes ago

• Hundreds of thousands of protesters, outraged by a recent school shooting and energized by the student survivors, gathered in Washington to call for an end to gun violence.
• More than 800 protests are planned in every American state and on every continent except for Antarctica. Follow our live coverage.

A side note ±

Carole ...

PS: I took 7-yr-old grandson, William,  to Toy R Us yesterday for Skylanders creatures ... a video interactive game he plays on Miguel's old Xbox.

Historic because Toy R Us is liquidating, all stores going out of business, bankrupt. Sad.

I filed the receipt and some toy packaging in my hope chest — a time capsule.

PPS: Craig's tree spirit is still fastened on the sea grape tree ... hung perhaps 15 years ago, a year or 18 months after you died, a spirit to you, from him and to Curt and I.  Carole, you are with me everyday day ...

PPSS:  Seemingly our last bit of cold weather ending ... will be heating up and then into another storm / hurricane/ flooding / hurricane season ... am scared beyond. 

February 14, 2018 — Valentine's Day School Massacre

 Light and love and warmth ... how I miss you.

BUT WAIT ... the air has changed ... love and warmth to massacre —

—————

LOCAL: Gunfire has just been reported at a high school in Broward County ... Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School ... there are 3,208 children in grades 9 - 12 enrolled there ...

BREAKING NEWSA shooting was reported at a high school in South Florida. “There are reports of victims,” the police said, and an armed suspect was at large. 3:40 PM 


OMG, Celeste was here last night, with son, my Miguel, 13 year-old grandson. She left early for work schedule today, an ER nurse working in Broward Medical Center where the injured and dying are being transported.

Pavane for a Dead Princes

Maurice Ravel into my living room while I hunchbacked on the couch, stare at your picture on the mantle, tears streaming, you 19 -years-old, Mediterranean almond eyes downward. And I see you through those tears, years ago, time and its disparity — you chirpily telling me that you'd been an Egyptian princess once and I never disbelieved.


********

Was it you with your reach divining into a dentist appointment for me tomorrow ... my aching tooth scheduled two weeks ahead?

Oh Carole, how I miss you.

Two days later, Wednesday January 24, 2018.

Carole, could you imagine a Divining Dentist Appointment would make so so happy? First getting, then the results???? NO extraction, or root canal! I'd had a buncle ... "it was a buncle," I'd cried, and he finally surmised I meant carbuncle, an abscess, dumb me.  Outdated Ampicillin given for another tooth still viable.

After that good news, went to class and one upped. May be going to AWP conference in Tampa in March, a classmate booked herself, we'll share a room and she'll drive.  More to follow. Am reading Atwood's The Heart Goes Last, a dystopian madcap. Zany-plus.

Also reading Glick's Time Travel. Between the two, our Three Attention Deficit Sisters and the Mafia. 

January 3, 2018

Hi Carole,

Were you here, we'd be a year apart in ages, whatever those numbers confer ...

Hanukkah, 2017

Love you so much and so sweet of you to to send me the billfold, it is just what I wanted, only you would know ... pictures to follow,  boys were here, Little Genie is spending the night, Doug Jones won In Alabama ... superb

Carole Barrel Sortie Two

HI Carole,

Two days ago we were gleefully hunting for and finding  doggie ornaments together in our favorite Ross store nearby, and today I awoke in tears, searching my cell phone for you, your name.

A contact with the first letters of CA came up, not uncommon, and in my dream and I called it explaining I was looking for my sister whom I had not seen.

A woman's voice came from behind what looked like a library check out counter, a large window or glass door behind it, and after thinking, recalling she said, "Oh, I  remember her, your sister with your mother."

And I gulped: But my my mother is dead.

Necause she, you, too ...

Carole Barrel Sortie One

Hiya Miss Carole Barrel,

I'd forgotten that silly name for you .... either you intend to stretch my time,  or our manuscript will remain undone ... received a new Mac from Apple but the time machine backup HD failed.

Luckily, also made a CD copy of what was on the desktop before returning the other. Am writing this in way older workhorse 2009 computer ... won't know what is missing until I need it.

Had mounds of files saved in text edit, mostly research to build place: time/history; they are gone.

So hoping recent rewrites were saved.  Haven't quite looked because also needed to update Word to work with OS 13. 10. 1  ...  it looks different and am waiting for new HD to arrive before resuming.

Images blicked away too, into the ether.  Had a very few on my phone, technology after your time here.  Same with cloud storage, or not.

Relating to, yesterday went to our favorite Ross specifically wanting doggie ornaments for holiday mantle.  Had a few nebbishy things in basket, but no doggies.  Then, after three loops around the same section, there they were ... right on top where they had not been.

In plain sight.

Doggies was all it took.

Gaiety and mirth.

They, you and I came home. Thanks, schwestie.

Chocolate Truffles 2017

Hello my love,

A fresh box of Russel Stover's for you ... on the mantle under the picture of you at nineteen years old, at college, you'd said, snapped by a former beau, Bob Someone. I was giggly driving home from Publix with it, they only had a few, my yearly to you, the least I could do, our laughter and glee as we chomped and gulped.

November 17, 2017

The next day.

Truffles for you on the fireplace mantel. Assorted for me: raspberry cream.

Our lips are not smacking together in revere.

Who'd ever have perceived the loneliness of chocolates? The old thumbprints and their wane?

***

Remind Josh:

Ø

Guinea Pig Install

Well, Carole, you must want me to live a very long time because another delay— a clean computer install on my MAC as I write ; the tech at Apple Store is doing... and I just hope all our backups are good.

Will take Curt the weekend to put stuff back, hope it is there to retrieve.

Have a hard copy of  the last revision, is incomplete, was searching through older files, pulling copying and pasting ..... oh Carole!

Have had more problems with Apple than they'd ever own up to .... am writing this from older 2009 machine before complications of the cloud  with its humongous storage, and nebulous blameful third party providers — the technology evolving and idiots like me paying the company's learning curve... we the guinea pigs —one blip and poof, all gone, done in. Bye-bye.

PS: Of note, just happen to find, coincidentally,  the week of  ....

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Monday, September 25, 2017

Federal Agent, Colombian Narcotics Kingpin and Colombian National Indicted for Conspiracy, Corruption and Obstruction

A Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Special Agent and two Colombian nationals were charged today by a federal grand jury in the Southern District of Florida with conspiracy, corruption and obstruction of justice charges stemming from their participation in a bribery scheme that resulted in the dismissal of an indictment filed against one of the Colombian nationals in exchange for cash and other things of value, announced Acting Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Blanco of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division; Special Agent in Charge Michael T. Moreland of the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Southeast Region; and Special Agent in Charge Jay Donly of the Office of Inspector General (OIG), HSI.

According to the indictment, Special Agent Christopher V. Ciccione, II, 52, Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, was the case agent for Operation Cornerstone, a large-scale Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Task Force case that resulted in indictments of Colombia-based cocaine traffickers from the Cali Cartel, including Jose Piedrahita Ceballos, a Colombian national.  The indictment alleges that Piedrahita gave benefits to Ciccione in exchange for official acts that resulted in the dismissal of the indictment against Piedrahita.  Juan Carlos Velasco, also a Colombian national, served as the intermediary between Ciccione and Piedrahita.  Ciccione ultimately succeeded in getting the Cornerstone indictment dismissed against Piedrahita in exchange for approximately $20,000 in cash, dinner, drinks and prostitution.  

The indictment further alleges that while maintaining contact with Piedrahita, Ciccione misled the U.S. Attorney’s Office and HSI management and altered DHS records to represent to decision makers that Piedrahita was “unidentified” and that his case should be dismissed because “all investigative efforts” were “exhausted.”  In addition, Ciccone falsified the concurrence of several other federal agents and even attempted to parole Piedrahita into the U.S.         

The U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control designated Piedrahita as a Specially Designated Narcotics Trafficker pursuant to the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act on May 3, 2016. 

ICE-OPR, Department of Homeland Security’s OIG and the FBI investigated the case.  The Department of Justice’s Office of International Affairs and Office of the Judicial Attaché in Colombia, and the Drug Enforcement Administration provided valuable assistance to the investigation.  Trial Attorneys Luke Cass and Jennifer A. Clarke of the Criminal Division’s Public Integrity Section are prosecuting the case.

Attachment(s): 

Download Ciccione Indictment

Component(s): 

Criminal Division

Press Release Number: 

17-1052

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/federal-agent-colombian-narcotics-kingpin-and-colombian-national-indicted-conspiracy