People who have known me for many years ask me what this website is about and I am never entirely sure. On the one hand, it is work toward a book on the odd intersection of class and gender when a middle class woman games domestic violence law against a working-class man. At another level, it is a way for me to address the pro-feminist shame I felt at being accused of malice where I felt none, and the Kafka-esque turns I found once cast as a stereotypical villain. At a third level, it is my own meditation on what it is like to have a former friend go a bit off,  hoping  they will get better, when they don’t. At a fourth level, it is just me being honest about what a fool I have been over a conceited person with an over-developed sense of entitlement.

Will this web page embarrass me? Of course. But not more than I deserve for my stupidity. Do I risk further accusations of malice? Of course. But none worse than seemed likely to arrive anyway. When I’ve reached the point of a police detective calling me to ask about multiple felonies I’ve been accused of, then arranging a mediation (at his suggestion) where my accuser won’t even show, it’s not a good place. Was she crazy? This wasn’t my concern. Were her accusations escalating? Clearly. Was I naively chivalrous to have let things deteriorate do far? Certainly. I am, after all, a man: And men are stupid.

As I believe an objective reading of these materials show, Catherine Lynne Carter is not well. That she failed back in 1998 to contact me as promised (or to pick up various things she had left at my house) is not important. That she chose a foolish lawyer to intervene with threats was more important, but blah blah blah. Counselor Martitia Dell is a withered never-was and failure at levels that are not even worth cataloging. What I think interesting and worthy of thought is how, once certain accusations were made, there was very little effort expended to verify simple things. The law has certain scripts that lawyers and judges want played out, facts be damned, and the system is set up to allow this. One judge fell down and played lazy in a way that cost me many years of aggravation and thousands upon thousands of dollars. Although I am very glad I could scrape that money together, had I been of another race or otherwise disadvantaged, similar inflated accusations and lazy errors like could have easily cost me my life through unjust conviction.

The court system is imperfect, and more often produces drama that matches prejudices rather than facts, especially when the idle entitled have the time and temperament to press their class advantage. The moneyed have lawyers, whose lack of scruples is a great advantage. The advantage of the poor is that they have less to lose, and violence is simple stuff. But what of the poor who do not want violence? What of the poor who want justice, instead? What is the system designed to give them? Pitifully little, from what little I have seen.

This page is about a stupid man and a self-centered daughter of privilege who once loved each other, before something small but important in her broke. What exactly that was, I doubt I shall ever know, but misjudgment years ago has cost me dearly. I once over-estimated Catherine Lynne Carter. These pages tell some of where such an error led.

About the Moon Hare

There are a few cultures in the world where the “man in the moon” is seen instead as a rabbit, sometimes called “the moon hare.”  This was the subject of Kate Carter’s first tattoo, a small “tramp stamp” on her lower back, and “Moon Hare Creations” was twice used as a business name, registered once under State of Oregon registry 092973-91 in 2002 and then again with number 258188-99, both of which are inactive as of 2009.

I invoke the moon hare because rabbits or hares are often a symbolic of panic or fear, the moon is associated with madness or the irrational. Artistic representations of the moon hare are usually sympathetic, and in one Buddhist story the hare is honored with placement on the moon for offering itself up as a food sacrifice.

My use of the phrase is intended to be evocative and poetic, a nudge for meditation.