I am sick and will not be posting for a while.

have not participated in American holiday season now for years. Finally it is not something that makes me sad anymore. I am an observer, not really from here, and these weeks each year make that so obvious to me. So, a time to get packed, ready for next move, wait for hotels to empty out after Jan 1, then outta here. But it is a Major Breakthrough that I am not sad to not be doing the holidays, in fact I'm kinda proud not to be celebrating... how Jesus was born so you could go shopping.

Kay Ebeling

3 hrs · 

I knew him, so I opened the door and he put his foot in the way like a salesman then kept shouting this loopy story about his woman stealing 19 hundred dollars from him "the Pipe" caused it, "and now I'm homeless." I kept saying, I have to work tomorrow, and he looped his story out again through a scraggly beard, holding a burning cigarette in the wind but still bringing a stale tobacco smell. Finally he got around to asking for bus fare, I poured my quarters into his hand, and he was gone. That's life in low income USA. Hope it's better where I'm going next, or I'll go somewhere else. And somewhere else. And somewhere else

Kay Ebeling

10 mins · 

*****

Raped Age 5 by Father Rucker, Her Life Was Chaotic and Reckless, Just like Mine

St. Anthony's, El Segundo 

By Kay Ebeling
Examiner
April 17, 2009

(Reprinted after I found it at Bishop Accountability, thank god, as Ebeling columns at Examiner disappeared after they fired me in 2010)

There was so much pedophilia in L.A. Catholic parishes that when Fr. Rucker got to St. Anthony’s, he would walk into a first grade class, pick out a student, take her off into the rectory or even on the altar and rape her. A 6 year old girl, often with "giving of Communion wine." A legal brief on George Neville Rucker states that over and over he fondled her on her genitals, under her clothes, massaged her breasts and nipples, licked her, and penetrated her vagina with his penis. A six year old girl. Worse yet, he did the same to at least 23 other children, as 23 were able to come back as adults and file lawsuits in the Clergy Cases, during the one year window that opened in the statute of limitations in 2003 in California. A profligate sexual predator like George Neville Rucker likely had hundreds more victims, standard wisdom is that for every child sex victim who comes forward later as an adult there are 10 others whose stories we never hear. 

Cindy Falter, the Rucker victim in the above case file, and I have become pretty good friends in the last two years, as we were both raped by Catholic priests at that age, 4-6, and today we share weird personality quirks as adults. I called her to tell her that in a hearing April 20th, the transcript of a deposition Rucker did with someone in Law Enforcement will likely be the last document from LA Clergy Cases 2007 to be ordered to remain sealed, which could bring the cases finally to an end. I asked Cindy about how she is doing today:

From interview with Cindy:

Most of us are so f---ed up. I think there’s even a couple of Rucker victims that only remotely function. He would scratch crosses in my chest with something like a needle, like a sewing needle. 

ME: You said he would come in the classroom and pick you out

Cindy: He’d call down usually, and would have me go up. But yeah, sometimes he’d go in there and he’d pick me out but usually he’d then go back to his rectory and call for me to come up from there. 

****************************

He used to take me down these stairs in a St. Anthony’s church and school property building.

***************************************************

Cindy: When he did what he did, when he penetrated me, after that I had this repeated dream of being naked scared in a forest, blood between my legs. And the god Pegasus comes forward and brings light and he picks me up out of the forest and takes me up in the sky with his wings and I'm safe and warm. 

I ran away one time when I was in kindergarten, and I realize now it was after Rucker had already started raping me. I was five years old and I ran away all the way to the airport. I tried to get on an airplane. When they asked me why I ran away, I said I was going to find love. 

Cindy remembered the rapes at age five but there was no way to document them, so her civil lawsuit case files begin with the incidents when Cindy was in first grade at St. Anthony’s Elementary School in El Segundo.

Then after the settlements in 2007, Cardinal Roger Mahony announced he’d be glad to meet with the victims to apologize. 

Her mom was there, and in tears she told Mahony about the times Fr. Rucker was holding Cindy age 4 or 5. Her mom saw he was touching her inappropriately, and the first time she ever mentioned it was at that meeting with Mahony.

So the first time Cindy had confirmation that indeed Rucker was even raping her at age 4 and 5 was in that meeting with Mahony. 

************************

I ran away all the way to the airport. I tried to get on an airplane. When they asked me why I ran away, I said I was going to find love

**************************************************

Cindy says:

I took my mother with me to the apology meeting with Mahony, and she talked about Rucker coming over to bless the house and touching me with his hands in appropriate places.

Rucker said to my mom, She’ll be fine, and I remember him carrying him off. I remember I was reaching for her. He said, I'm used to little children and walked away with me in his arms. 

My mom at the meeting was crying and crying, and she said to Mahony, I was so stupid because I believed in the church and I believed in the priest and I didn't believe my own eyes. 

But at the time of filing the lawsuit up to potential trial my mom still hadn’t dealt with it.

He was coming to see me at my parents’ house for blessings of the house, and he got to me then. 

I went with Cindy to her “apology meeting with Mahony and covered it here in Cardboard Carnival Meets With Plaintiff

One personality fluke Cindy and I share is running away. She talks more about her experiences:

Cindy:  Oh God. [LAUGHS] God I don't even know how many times I ran away, so many. First time was at age five but I didn't actually get anywhere until I was 12 or 13 about 1970, 1971. I hitchhiked up to Northern California. I had a sister there up past Sacramento, I wanted to go live with her, but I got raped along the way. 

Well, what happened was, the guy that picked me up held a knife to me and asked me to give him head. After it was over, I was afraid he was going to kill me so I rolled out of the car onto the freeway. I landed in the medium and then I got up stunned and ran across the freeway to the offramp. At the crosswalk up at the top, I passed out, because I had pneumonia. These two Navy guys took me to a clinic and got me medicine, then they took me to an apartment to take care of me. Then one day when I was feeling better, I went for a walk, it was a sunny day. I saw a guy watering his lawn with a Cheshire cat nearby like in Alice in Wonderland. I talked to him, he asked me in to smoke a joint, then he raped me. He tied my legs to the axle of his car in the basement, and when it was all over, I said, that was fun, let’s do it again, because I was scared he would kill me. I thought if I acted like his friend he would leave me alone. I went to get something to drink, he untied me, and he went to get me some milk, and I ran out of there butt naked down the street and ran into these people’s house and they called the cops. They arrested me for being a runaway. Turned out the guy was the Chief of Police’s relative

ARE YOU SHITTING ME? I ask,

And then I realize

I HAVE THE SAME EXPERIENCE

My story as I start to tell it is so unbelievable, I see it in people’s faces, hear it in their voices, they start to not believe me. That's another characteristic Cindy and I share.

In fact we are probably friends for life now, though we come from different backgrounds and even different periods of time, we share weird personality quirks that we both think probably have to do with the PTSD reaction we both have. 

Sexual trauma on a child implants itself in the brain and central nervous system, and affects the way you react to things. Just like all kids develop personalities based on the influences in their lives as they grow up. Cindy and I were both handled sexually by a priest at age 4 5 and 6 and we both lived chaotic lives, for her it meant always running away, for me it was always landing in situations where I ended up having lots of sex with lots of different men and experiencing the reality that gang bangs and prostitution is not as clean or as much fun as Lifetime and Showtime movies crack it up to be.

Movies that depict promiscuity never include the pain, the smells, the mysterious infections, the disrespect. But I'm digressing.

Cindy and I both have physical and mental weirdnesses, we both have trouble functioning, holding jobs, staying in one place. We both can tell you several escapades where we're not sure how we even came out alive. 

Me, I went through life like Little Annie Fanny with brains. . . .

Why it takes decades for child sex crime victims to report,

Why sometimes they never report the crime at all

A lot of child sex crime victims are so screwed up growing up they don’t make it to adulthood, due to alcoholism, drug addiction, suicide. Others never remember what happened as children, all the way to the day they die. Repressed memory comes up often in sex crimes against children. Because we find ways to fantasize through the incident, and often the perpetrator scares us into covering up the memory. “If you tell anyone I’ll kill your parents,” that kind of pressure. 

Fr. George N. Rucker

In my case I went through life thinking I had been visited by Michael the Archangel at age five in the woods, I still to this day see the silhouetted image, but I know now it’s Father Horne on our property on Lake Street in what was a rural region outside Chicago in 1953. All the way up to age 45, I thought I’d been visited by an angel, implanted with some special sexual thing, and I then took that sexual thing with me everywhere I went. I broke up marriages, left behind confused men and children, sexed my way across America, getting several venereal diseases, damaging my insides so bad I had to get it all cut out because the female body is not really meant to take in hundreds of different sized and shaped penises. To this day I have pubic pain that cripples me. . . .

So I got off on a rant there, this is supposed to be a story about Cindy:

The crimes of George Neville Rucker are phenomenal and he is just one priest in one parish, well actually he was in lots of LA parishes, one priest out of hundreds who were uncovered by that window of opportunity to file lawsuits in 2003 in California. 

I asked, how are you doing today, Cindy:

Cindy:

I'm just now getting some kind of control of my life. I’d like to say it was the settlement, maybe it made things easier, I don't have to worry about homelessness or where my next meal is. The money provides some mental health improvement, gives me a little more confidence, but it’s not the settlement, that didn't fix me by any means. 

What's helped me heal more than anything was going through the lawsuit and being vindicated, that I was heard. I was heard. Someone listened, and there is some legal recourse. I think sometimes that's why I drag it out the way I do, because I am not going to shut up until the right thing happens, which is these bastards need to be brought to justice. 

Onward. . . 


Reprint: Originally published at site that has since been taken down: 
http://www.examiner.com/x-1960-LA-City-Buzz-Examiner~y2009m4d17-Raped-age-5-by-Fr-Rucker-her-life-was-chaotic-confused-reckless-just-like-mine

Posted by Kay Ebeling
Producer, City of Angels Blog 
Not just L.A., the city of angels is everywhere 

Hmm, I may just go look for more articles that were taken down from Examiner, as they are still in the Bishop Accountability database, if you search.  After I take a walk along the lake, a few times... 

Some things you never get over and it's foolish to try. So I'm trying to compartmentalize those memories, like Windows on a computer screen, let them go on in a little box down on the bottom. They'll always be there as the rest of your life goes on

Kay Ebeling

Just now · 

Purposeful Amnesia or Controlled PTSD

I arrived in Tahoe with amnesia. I don't remember anything in my life from before March 2016. I have this job, work shows up in my email, and when I complete it they send me a check once a month. That keeps the rent paid. To get the jobs, I email back and forth with a woman in Burbank, but I don't know who she is, I've never met her.
Pictures keep popping up on my screen of a beautiful young girl who looks a lot like me, her name is apparently Lizzie or Elizabeth, but I don't know who she is. Right after moving here to town, I had an ugly argument with a female that might have been her over FB messages, I don't know. The argument seemed to be the end of a long series of arguments that were very-very ugly.
I don't remember anything from before March 2016.
I also get email and items from friends on Facebook about the Catholic Church and pedophile priests. Those articles must have something to do with me, but I'm not sure what.
I don't remember anything from before March 2016. That's my way of dealing with the trauma, I call it controlled PTSD, manipulated and managed PTSD, purposeful amnesia to stop thinking about the horrible shit all the time.
Maybe that will help.

sigh 

Carried over from CofA25

Mr. Good Bible update

I tried to go to Bible studies but files for my job keep coming in making me work those hours.  Since I was age six, the first time they tried to kill me in the dump truck incident*, everything in my life has been guided by angels.  So I figure, if I've got to work, I’m better off making a little more money than I am going to classes where I may be exposed to dogma that, even though I look at it objectively, could taint my truth.

Anyway. The problem is, I was also going to use those Bible studies as a way to meet people. So not giving up on them, still going to try the 12 week series on the Sermon that starts next week, just blocks from here.  Just accepting that this is happening at a much slower pace for me than it would for someone else. I have to keep canceling potential meeting situations because of this screwy job that I do in a room at home by myself communicating with no one.

I guess that's god’s will for me.

It's also true that if too many people find out who I am and about my blog, things will get really uncomfortable for me, like they did in the last two places where I lived.

I guess I should gleefully embrace this isolation

Which includes every member of my family even my daughter

I spend the free hours I have wandering around and am grateful I've moved to a town where there is a tourist-y area, called "Heavenly" no less, the area around the Gondola, where people who are total strangers all walk about in a crowd.

I fit right in. 

*Dump truck incident http://cityofangels15.blogspot.com/2014/01/they-tried-to-kill-me.html 

happy labor 

Looking for Mr. Good Bible update

the Presbyterian church half mile from where I live is starting a class "Sermon on the Mount" in mid-September through November, and I am going to go from the first Sunday to as long as I can...

I'm not going into the church itself for service after classes as they wear the same robes Catholics do, way too similar, but-

Doing Bible studies around town  so far has allowed me to meet people who think "Zionists run Hollywood" and who give way too much power to a book full of pages pressed out by old monks with an agenda. . . 

Looking forward to digging into the Sermon, but I'm pretty convinced Christ already came back, saw the abomination people are making of his word in his name and said, forget this place and left for another planet to try the experiment again. 

we are on our own

good morning 

-----

Since I was age six, the first time they tried to kill me in the dump truck incident*, everything in my life has been guided by angels.  So I'm going to these Bible studies even though I may be exposed to dogma that, even though I look at it objectively, could taint my truth.

I am also going to use those Bible studies as a way to meet people. So not giving up on the classes around town, still going to try the 12 week series on the Sermon that starts next week, just blocks from here.  Just accepting that this is happening at a much slower pace for me than it would for someone else. I have to keep canceling potential meeting situations because of this screwy job that I do in a room at home by myself communicating with no one.

I guess that's god’s will for me.

It's also true that if too many people find out who I am and about my blog, things will get really uncomfortable for me, like they did in the last two places where I lived.

I guess I should gleefully embrace this isolation

Which includes every member of my family even my daughter

I spend the free hours I have wandering around and am grateful I've moved to a town where there is a tourist-y area, called "Heavenly" no less, the area around the Gondola, where people who are total strangers all walk about in a crowd.

I fit right in. 

*Dump truck incident http://cityofangels15.blogspot.com/2014/01/they-tried-to-kill-me.html 

happy labor day weekend 

Triggers from Mr. Good Bible

Glad I kick started this project under a new name as it is triggering all kinds of up-all-night thoughts such as;

This is the thought that is waking me up: God went to all that trouble to send his son and put him through all that, to get humans to straighten up. And it did not work. I think Christ already came back, saw the way humans turned everything he said ass-backwards and how we not only returned to hate greed and deviousness but are doing it in His Name. So Jesus said, "Forget this place" and went on to try it again with his own son at another planet. We Are On Our Own now.

AND

all you have to do is put Christian in your name and a cross in your logo and you have instant customers and profits, not what Christ was sent here to set up.

The post that I'm writing now is LOOONG and involves the Bible chapter John 20

stay tuned

Just ran into a local Church of Christ guy I met doing Looking for Mr. Good Bible. He insisted to me that Hollywood is run by the Zionists, and I said, funniest thing, I've been working on TV shows and film pres kits since 1998 and have never seen any sign of that. He says it's true, it's all over the internet. Not going back to that church... onward 

Preview

Posts related to story coming soon;

MONDAY, JANUARY 18, 2010

Watching the film 'Taken' brings up the time I got kidnapped in Paris and they almost sold me to the Arabs. But I escaped thanks to a genuine miracle

.
I watched "Taken" and got sick for a week, then dug up this story from City of Angels 1

An Extended version first appeared here: 

SUNDAY, JANUARY 14, 2007

A Miracle I made it through my teens - literally

I think I wrote it somewhere else.  It's all related to a post I'm working on now, titled "Looking for Mr. Good Bible."

-ke

Looking for Mr. Good Bible

Kay Ebeling added a new video.

5 mins · 

bizarre morning where i watched Spotlight, finally, for the first time, while waiting for a ride to a church bk I am writing a story for this blog, CofA15, "Looking for Jesus in South Lake Tahoe," which covers my journey to find a church I can stand in this town. Mostly for Bible study, as I feel a need to study the source of all this stuff right now. But for those who know my story, it is weird to do all this in one AM and to be honest, I could not sit through the service. will be writing a lot more soon both on what it was like for this very public and vocal pedophile priest survivor to finally watch Spotlight, and this project, Looking for Mr. Good Bible - still working on the title.

Posted by Kay Ebeling

Producer, City of Angels Blog

Not just L.A., the City of Angels is Everywhere

Kay Ebeling

Just now · 

As a person who does believe in something, not sure what, I almost laugh out loud though, when I hear people do prayer requests, I have to admit. I mean, if God is omnipotent, doesn't He already know Grandma is about to have gallbladder surgery?

Timothy Leary was alive and well and living in Laguna in 1969

Background, story coming shortly

Chapter One First Light
Chapter Two The Thud and a Nipple Dress
Chapter Three Considering Who We Are 

ALSO THIS: 

MONDAY, JANUARY 15, 2007

Timothy Leary was alive and well and living in Laguna in 1969

Timothy Leary was alive and well in Laguna in 1969

http://cityofangels1.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2007-01-21T10:13:00-08:00&max-results=1 

The story will continue here shortly

Coming Soon

I kept finding this note to myself around my office so finally opened that file and found a good way to get back into this story. So a post titled "One of the Last Times I had Sex was with Three Drunk Hungarians" is coming soon. It will hearken back to this May 29 2012 post about Marilyn Monroe and me

-ke

My Short Liaison with a CIA Guy

By Kay Ebeling

Men sniff out women like me.  I've always wondered if my encounter with Dave (I don't remember his real name) had somehow been arranged. 

Dave had an office at NASA in Houston in Building One, a ten story structure where the Administrator of the space center occupied the top floor. Dave was on six or seven. You got off the elevator and walked down bare walled hallways until you got to his office, where he sat at a government gray desk. There was nothing on the walls, nothing on the top of the desk, maybe a pen holder and calendar, but the room was barren.  With windows looking out at a panoramic view.

From here Dave was an “accountant” I think he said. 

From here Dave left on trips to mysterious places and then came back and called me and we’d spend more time together.

The way I lived my life, that was a long term relationship. 

At one point Dave was going to be gone for several weeks, so he made special arrangements for us to call each other.  By then it was obvious Dave was doing something secret for a living.  While he was gone this time, we held Looooong conversations, sometimes I would call him back, I can't remember the phone arrangements, but it was an unusual way to make a phone call. 

A few weeks after Dave returned, I got my phone bill and all the calls I’d made to him were listed on the bill, with no charge, and the number called just said 000 000 0000

All zeroes.

By that time I was not dating Dave anymore as he’d identified me as a risk to his cover.  When he came home from one of his trips, I was in his air tight bedroom naked between his brand new high thread count sheets, and he was in the shower.  So just for the heck of it, I looked in his closet and on the floor was this heavy woolen military uniform with foreign writing on the sleeves and ribbons.

Dave emerged as I was staring at the uniform on the closet floor.  I asked him what it was.  He spit out the words, “It’s a Syrian officer’s uniform.”

I did not know for sure where Syria was at the time, but I knew it was in the Middle East, so I said, isn’t Syria too hot for a uniform like that.  The coat was thick and wool.  He looked down at me and said, It’s for going into the cold parts of Syria.

I cogitated on that, dressed, and went in to work, but it really bothered me.  So as I waited in the tour guide office to go to my next assignment, I casually mentioned the uniform on the closet floor to my boss.  She had served at an enlisted level in the Air Force, I think she even had some intelligence experience.  She ran the tour guide office with the tyranny of a boss who was a smart high school graduate, and I submitted to her authority. 

She noticed something was on my mind so I spilled it out, without even thinking.  I told her about the uniform on his closet floor and him saying it was a Syrian officer’s coat, and just what strange a person Dave was.

Within seconds, SECONDS, the phone rang in the tour guide office.  The boss answered, and handed it over to me. It was Dave calling from his office that was almost in my view there in the building across the walkway. His voice came stern and cold over the line.

“You weren’t able to keep that secret for five minutes. I can't trust you with anything.”

And he slammed down the phone. 

Any time I tried to call him after that, he did not answer, he would not return messages, he vacated me from his life in that moment, and I don't think I ever saw him on the LBJ Space Center campus again after that.

Although I did not last real long there after that myself.

But to this day I've wondered, how did he know.  Did he put some kind of listening device on my clothes, in my hair, was he just guessing? Is there a "cold part of Syria"? The whole experience remains a mystery to me to this day nearly forty years later.

*****

I was so lost by the time I met Dave.

I was working as a tour guide then at NASA Houston for minimum wage.  Three years earlier I had graduated from The University of Texas and been hired as a public affairs writer- editor with all kinds of responsible assignments and now I was still working at NASA, but for minimum wage as a tour guide. It was around 1980, I had started my climb down the career ladder but still had parking privileges in the lot that connected Building One with Building Two, so parking for the main administrative offices and our section, the Public Affairs department, which housed the news room, the room where they mailed out photos of the Moon to anyone who asked for them, and tours for VIPs and the general public. 

That parking lot is where I initially met Dave.  I was getting out of the Karmann Ghia I had driven from Austin.

I was this oblique bubble headed character in the public affairs department who had been a civil servant for three years, then blew it, but could not leave NASA, so stayed around as a contractor for minimum wage conducting tours. I was so lost, so lost. And as I got out of my car on the way to work that day, Dave emerged from his car very close by and struck up a conversation.  He was handsome tall and fit, and me being who I was, I soon was spending nights in his apartment in Clear Lake City.

A sterile place it was where he lived, a brand new apartment complex where you had everything you needed, a terrace, pool, workout center, all new appliances, all new paint air conditioned from the moment you got up to the moment you slept again, as that is how people survive in Houston, all the amenities at just a little higher price and quality than average.  Here David lived in a one bedroom apartment that was furnished by Rent A Center or some other anonymous provider.

I think often about Dave for a number of reasons, especially in 2016 when Syria has become the focal point of several battlegrounds across the Middle East.

“Some who had been fighting in various wars since the 1960s, told us this was their fiercest combat ever. According to both Isis media and to leaders of the coalition forces, there has been a notable increase in Isis suicide attacks in recent battles. In September 2014 the US president, Barack Obama, endorsed the declaration of his national intelligence director: “We underestimated Isil [Isis] and overestimated the fighting capability of the Iraqi army … It boils down to predicting the will to fight, which is an imponderable.”https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/28/isis-hate-jihadis-recruits

Wonder what Dave was doing in Syria back in 1979-80 when I encountered him. Wish I had been more alert and trustworthy, I could have found out more. Instead that was my Little Annie Fanny period, the years when I conflated my sexuality with my brains to the point where I was at top level meetings in directorates at NASA with my nipples pointing out and didn't even realize it, thought the men wanted me around for my brains. Some of them did. . . 

*****

There is one other reason I remember Dave.  He had this enormous hard long … penis. In fact, my boss knew about him from the week I had to take off because his penis was so long I had damage, had to rest in bed to recover from one of our nights of sex. 
When I figured it out that he was working for the CIA or some organization like them, and I considered that with the outrageous size of his penis, I figured he must have been taking some kind of steroid for the job, and an enormous penis was a side effect.  That's why I wondered if our initial meeting had been a setup to begin with, because by that time people at NASA knew I was having a lot of sex, and troglodytes like farm boy engineers who never left Texas often mistake women who have lots of sex for women who like large penises.  Or maybe my cavern had become so cavernous that the farm boys engineers were discussing it by that time, so they'd lined me up with Captain Dave as I could accommodate him.

You can see I still have little self esteem even after all these celibate years.  I missed out on so much in my personal and career life because of my compulsion and the distraction it caused.  It did not matter how good a job I did, no one promotes a whore, especially not in 1970s and 80s.  I'm pretty sure if I had just not been so screwed up, I would have ended up with a top administrative job at NASA, as they originally hired me straight out of UT school of Communications, in a program where you were guaranteed promotions and entry into mid level management after just three years. 

I screwed that job up, literally.

On another occasion during that same time period, there was a guy actually recruiting me, or testing me, for a CIA job.  They told me after a few encounters that my sexual behavior would make me a security risk, it gave me a vulnerability that the enemy would be able to use against me and I could be easily compromised.

So like I said, my sexual behavior interfered with my ability to have any success in life. 

In today’s world, as soon as someone saw my behavior, they would recognize the cause of it and investigate where the sexual molestation must have happened in my youth, because I was so text book- so was my sister- of the sexual dysfunction that results from childhood sexual abuse.

The guy who got to us back in the 1950s was a popular handsome Catholic priest a celebrity in our small town outside Chicago.  Of course it screwed up my sister and me for life to have been sexualized when we were preschool aged by him.

A situation that has not yet been reconciled.

Posted by Kay Ebeling, Producer, City of Angels Blog

Not just L.A., the city of angels is everywhere 

Serendipity

After Lana almost burned down the building, I was about the only friend she had in the senior complex.  From the time the tenants gathered outside watching them fight the blaze, the ladies were whispering that Lana (not her real name) was at fault because she had been drunk at the time of the fire, drunk the entire week before, in fact. 

I wasn’t critical of Lana's drinking, I just wished I could keep up with her.  Now she sat on top of an unpacked box in my living room office admitting that because of the fire, she'd probably have to move.  She was worried about where she'd go, rents being so high in Los Angeles, even as far into the desert as we lived.   

Taking on the persona of friend, I said that even after her apartment was refurbished, if she continued to live there, the gossip would make her so uncomfortable she'd still want to move. I had barely been able to go to the mail room myself since word got out among the mainly fundamentalist Christian aparment dwellers that I'm a pedophile priest victim who wrote as a journalist on the topic. Now almost no one in the building spoke to me anymore except Lana.

I suggested: "You should move to a place where people won't mind that you like to drink," being my usual blunt self.

She shook a bit and said, Yes, I do like to drink.

I said, there must be a town in California where drinking and partying are part of the culture, someplace like Lake Tahoe. 

I was sitting at my desk at the time, as I always am, the laptop having become an extension of my hands that I'm attached to nearly twenty four hours a day, disconnecting only when I pry myself out into town.

So I said to her, you should move to Tahoe, and we turned to my laptop and went to Craigslist, where I discovered that apartments in Tahoe were about the same price as in Lancaster where we were living. 

I had said to her, You should move to Lake Tahoe. But after reading the Craigslist ads, I said, "Better yet, I should move to Tahoe."

And that was that- Lana started the fire in January, I was moved out in March. She still lives there, drinking enough to not notice the gossiping neighbors 

I've lived in South Lake Tahoe a little over a year now and lucky for me it's the kind of town where you can live in a state of serendipity, like the one I've been in all my life. I finish  work in this living room at the same desk as in Lancaster, walk out the door, catch the bus, and from there on it's Serendipity what I'll do with my day.

I've lived my whole life in a state of Serendipity.  For example when I found out in 1994 that there are others who were raped by priests as children, and somewhere in the Bay Area was a support group that does activism about the topic, what did I do? I packed up Lizzie and me from a wonderful two bedroom apartment in Eureka where we were almost putting down roots, and shipped us to San Francisco in search of SNAP. 

Chaos and anarchy replaced serenity from then on in my daughter's life and I am forever sorry for that.

However, I go to Lost Coast Outpost now and then to read the headlines, though, and do not miss living in Eureka at all.

South Lake Tahoe is a great place to live if you are, like me, a little old lady who wants to be in a metropolis, but does not like the way cities have developed in America. 

I go out every day- except when I'm too wiped out and exhausted which happens about twice a week- and because of my job, I never know what time of day I'm going to be able to get out the door.

Chaos and instability are written into my life. When I wake up around midnight every night, I go to my email. Often it is not until then that I know what my schedule is going to be the next day.

Now I've arranged it so I live less than a block from a bus stop near the boulevard.  I'm surrounded by trees and recreational vibes here in an apartment in South Lake Tahoe, but I can catch a city bus that goes up and down the boulevard a block from home and get anywhere in town. 

Of course the bus does end up in the traffic and boy is there a lot of traffic on Lake Tahoe Boulevard.  I may get a bike soon so I can even avoid the bus, take the back roads, even venture onto the trails.

Yes, a bike, I need to get a bike next.

Serendipity 
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-ke