Invoicentory

How long have I been saying it? Four years almost? Dr. Joyce deJong, who is the Medical Examiner of Kalamazoo County and also the Chief Pathologist of Western Michigan University's (nonprofit!) Homer Stryker School of Medicine, is too expensive for us poor wee town folk... And We can't have nice things, either.

It's not just her salary, which is much, much higher than the area's median income. The same can be said of WMed Dean Hal Jenson, whose whopping $400,000 annual windfall places him among the top-paid Administrators in all of Michigan.

It's the hidden costs of the Medical Examiner's Office that quietly seep through the banks of this shabby (and yet likeable) little rust-belt river town, which never quite recovered from losing Gibson Guitars all those decades ago.

Hidden costs like this, which we are paying for and so are you, if you live anywhere near us... Here's a big, fat, juicy, public sausage for your consumption, the dollar value that my hometown puts on my family's pain:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QBKHssrWVkiNUGjfZVLdBcqklYCp3qRZ/view?usp=drivesdk

If you add that up, it's +/- $26,000 in cold taxpayer cash that has been spent by our government against us, just in the requested 16-month window. The horrifying whole is the sum of those parts.

What for?

You can assume, for rounding purposes, that a like amount was spent in the several years leading up to this invoice batch and in the 5 months since. Pure waste.


***


Here, stand in my sister's shoes, if you like.

1. Your child dies in your front yard, even though you attempted CPR.

2. The little guy's tragic death is declared a suicide based on non-factual reasons (as stated in official reports).

3. You point out the gross inaccuracies, which may or may not have led to the on-scene investigator being fired.

4. The County acknowledges its mistakes, in writing, through one of its attorneys, but still won't change the determination on the Death Certificate.

Do you sue them? Of course she did... Well, it's an Administrative Appeal, so I'm not sure about that. (Not really my wheelhouse.)

With this information, we can see how deep their-- well, how deep your pockets are, Kalamazoo. Getting toward six figures now; salud. It's an extra large pizza with sh*t and double cheese on it, and every resident in the county gets a little slice.


***


You're walking past a long wooden fence. You notice a knot hole in one of the rough-sawn boards. You put your eye to the knot hole. You can't see everything that's going on in there. But what you can see should tell you enough.

Enough.

pH 2.19.2o

***

Punked

I am wearing my PUNK T-shirt today. That stands for, "Professional Uncle, No Kids". (I have another one that says GRUNCLE, as in, I'm a Grand-Uncle now, too.)

Yep. Lots of nieces and nephews running around on Planet Earth. Just not as many as there used to be.

How they have enjoyed the Uncle Paul Stories over the years... This story excepted, the Book of Charlie, which is a story about the tunnel at the end of the light.

What have they learned here? They are all witnesses, these little pitchers with big ears, these adorable crumb-snatchers that my siblings have so bravely brought into this strange world. What did they see?

They saw us endure a cascade of horror shows perpetrated by our unfeeling public servants, among others.

They watched us play by the rules, follow the proscribed protocols, and get blown out like prayer candles at every turn.

They witnessed us get knocked down, and get back up, clear our nostrils and get back to it. That's what parents do. That's what aunts and uncles do. Win or lose, the good example has already been set, as it would have to be in juxtaposition to the bad examples and sorry excuses that I have chronicled here.

Charlie would give me major PUNK points for that. No matter what it may say on the last page.

pH 2.o8.2o

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