Watts Tower Art

Here is a public art piece known as the Watts Tower. It has been made by recycling many items into art.

Below is some art from my daughter Emily's class. It was inspired by the Watts Tower. The children used paper mache and various odd items to simulate the art form. This is just one example of project learning at the Central Park School for Children here in Durham, North Carolina. 

Her tower is near the center. Below it is shown by itself after we brought it home.

Letter to Dianne Feinstein

I wrote the following letter to try and gain some clarity about the final draft of the NDAA bill. I will post an answer when I receive one.


Dear Senator Feinstein,

I am writing from North Carolina because I am worried about the NDAA bill. I wrote my own Senators for clarity but didn't get any. I specifically asked if the final draft still allowed for the detainment of American citizens, without charges or representation, indefinitely. Senator Hagan alluded to your refinements and suggested that the government must still operate within normal laws. This could be interpreted a number of ways but when I asked more pointed questions I was sent the same response--I was disappointed to say the least.

Even though you do not represent my state I get the impression you have a real interest in our freedoms and welfare. I do not want to live in a police state and I do not want to worry that a mistake could one day result in the disappearance of myself or a family member.

Can you please sum up the final draft for me and specifically let me know whether we are "still" guaranteed due process? I've already been concerned to see our privacy eroding (NSA monitoring email and phone calls, tracking devices in our cars and phones, cameras everywhere, etc.) and believe our 4th Amendment "guarantees" have been mostly eliminated. I do not believe our governments increasing heavy-handedness has much to do with our welfare anymore.

Please give me a clear picture of where we stand as I am tired of dealing with vague communications from our supposedly transparent government. Thank you for your time and attention.

Have a nice day, Otto Ladensack

PLEASE CALL THE CAPITOL SWITCHBOARD AT: 1-877 851-6437. Connect with office of your senators and representatives and register your disdain regarding this bill. Regardless of the final draft which will be forthcoming they that would consider locking us up with no outside contact, indefinitely, are treasonous.

(Sources: Otto Ladensack, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-z1J1gkVOfM; http://hagan.senate.gov/contact/)

Despite Payment, Water Terminated, City Indifferent!

REGARDING THE DURHAM, NC WATER DEPARTMENT & THE WRONGFUL TERMINATION OF OUR WATER SERVICE ON OCTOBER 5^TH AND FAILURE TO REACTIVATE IT THAT DAY AS PROMISED.

Here is an email correspondence I had with the deputy city manager today regarding the wrongful termination of our water service yesterday. He tries to downplay the city’s incompetence while side-stepping the issue of our ludicrous bills ($708+ for 563 gallons/day). Notice the absolute lack of compassion or interest for what’s been/being done to our family. Unfortunately this is typical here and none of the city council members seem interested in the matter.

Thanks for nothing to: Mayor Bill Bell, Farad Ali, Eugene Brown, Diane Catotti, Howard Clement, Cora Cole McFadden, Mike Woodard and Tom Bonfield.
________________________________________________________________




________________________________________________________________

Mr. Ladensack:

In your email of last Wednesday, you assert a chain of events in which the City discontinued your water despite your having paid your current bill and despite having made payment arrangements for your prior outstanding balance.

The City’s records indicate that at the time of the disconnection, you did not have a payment plan on file. To avoid disconnection, you would have either had a payment plan on file, or you would have had to pay the entire outstanding balance of your account.

Do you wish to dispute the City’s version of events?

Theodore L. Voorhees

Deputy City Manager

City of Durham

101 City Hall Plaza

Durham, NC 27701

919-560-4222

City of Medicine

E-mail correspondence to and from this sender may be subject to the North Carolina Public Records Law and can be disclosed to third parties.
________________________________________________________________

From: OTTOJR68@aol.com [mailto:OTTOJR68@aol.com]
Sent: Monday, October 10, 2011 02:09 PM
To: Voorhees, Ted
Cc: trish8698@aol.com
Subject: Re: Water Bill

Theodore L. Voorhees

My wife had spoke to someone other than Rosa when she was not available. She had an agreement in place which has since been altered and solidified by talking to Rosa. We also paid $300 a few days earlier as per that original agreement. I also dispute the bill we are paying from last year. There is no way we used 563 gallons a day for a 2-month cycle. My previous meter and/or fittings were bad. Also we were given no warning the water would be shut off. If that is your normal practice it is inconsiderate--a simple phone call could have cleared up the matter. Also, when I called the billing department around noon I was told our water would be back on by 8PM and nobody came at all after waiting all day, Wednesday.

A little consideration--not to mention accuracy, would be nice.

________________________________________________________________

Mr. Ladensack:

Thank you for the clarification.

It is customary to send a reminder letter about past due accounts that precedes disconnection. Did you not receive the reminder letter?


Was the 300 dollars in addition to the 300 paid on Monday, or are we talking about the same 300 dollars paid on October 3rd?

Theodore L. Voorhees
Deputy City Manager
City of Durham

Sent from my Blackberry device

________________________________________________________________

From: OTTOJR68@aol.com [mailto:OTTOJR68@aol.com]
Sent: Monday, October 10, 2011 02:39 PM
To: Voorhees, Ted
Subject: Re: Water Bill


Mr. Voorhees,

The $300 was paid on the 3rd and cleared the bank the on the 4th. There was an agreement in place to pay another $200 this week until Rosa Williams worked out a more agreeable arrangement with my wife, last week. And we did not receive any shut-off notice this time nor last year when we were out of town (and had been told to hold payment while Al Nelson was looking into the usage problem).

Otto Ladensack

________________________________________________________________

Thanks for the clarification.

Theodore L. Voorhees
Deputy City Manager
City of Durham
_________________________________________________________________________________

In a message dated 10/11/2011 1:41:24 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, Theodore.Voorhees@durhamnc.gov writes:

Mr. Ladensack:

I really was trying to understand the specific circumstances around your water service disconnection.

Theodore L. Voorhees

Deputy City Manager - Operations

_________________________________________________________________________________

FINAL SAY:

Maybe you could help me understand how your department could in good conscience say I owe you 708.14 for supposedly using 563 gallons a day based on a meter that gave very different and erratic readings from my current one.

Otto Ladensack

Being For Rather Than Against.

Being for a cause is a stronger position than being against one.

Our country's administration fights violence with violence. We proport to be against tyranny, claiming to be concerned with bringing freedom to other peoples by bombing their citizens. All this does is spread the hate and promote more violence; violence begets violence.


I think the world would be a much more peaceful and happy place if we were to promote peace rather than fight tyranny. If we worried about our own affairs and were not historically and consistently at conflict with other countries we would not be "in a giant hole," financially speaking.


We could take better care of our own citizens and be a power of example. If other countries saw us transformed, taking care of our disadvantaged, promoting peace through policies that were not designed to force others to comply with our values, furthering our own interests while being reasonably available to help others, then perhaps others would follow suit.


If we were truly a peaceful people we would be happier, wealthier and healthier. It may sound like pie in the sky but I think that if we were for peace, rather than against supposed tyranny, I believe others might see what we had and want that for themselves.

(Source: Otto Ladensack)

Get Money Out of Politics

From my husband's site...

I have been saying what Dylan Ratigan is saying all along. Congress people spend more time raising "campaign" funds than they do pretending to work for us. The excuse is that they can't compete with other campaigns without the funding but this is nonsense. If they enacted an amendment that banned special interest, PAC and lobbyist "contributions" and allotted an equal amount of subsidized money to each candidate then the playing field would be level and fair, and our law makers' only motivation would be to please the majority of the population.





PLEASE pass this along to everyone you know. We cannot turn the tide toward our own best interests unless enough people care.


Sign the petition:

http://www.getmoneyout.com/?recruiter_id=149469

It's quick and vital to our country's wellbeing.

Canada Geese

Canada Geese

These beautiful birds were video taped by my husband at Dinsmore Golf Course in Staatsburg (near Hyde Park) which is in upstate New York.





Shot by Otto Ladensack
Provided by Patricia Ladensack

Something Fun

 Here are some vultures my hubby found near our yard.

(Sources: Photos: Otto Ladensack 2010; vulture link: http://readreidread.wordpress.com/2011/03/10/vultures-of-st-victor/)

Duke Hospital: Lazy About Billing, Quick to Mar Credit. Also "Clinics" are a Shameless Rip-off!

I've recently become aware of some black marks on my credit record that should never have been made. One is a delinquency of $400-plus for an MRI. It was fully covered except for the part where a doctor interprets it. Ridiculous! I had no clue I owed anything and was never billed! Another time my insurance coverage fell short by $30 on one procedure. Again, I never heard from Duke at all.

Also, I've learned to avoid their "clinics." These are for normal doctor's office visits but are located inside the hospital. The insurance company agrees it's just like any other doctor's visit, but Duke bills it as an outpatient procedure and tries to collect a few extra hundred dollars for the simplest of exams. Their methods make no sense. They send bills directly to collections, and if they fail to find you, it quickly goes on your credit history for seven years!

They have tarnished my credit history, made it so anything I do that involves credits costs much more than it should, and for what?! They have all of my contact information. Is it a staffing issue? Would they rather write it off than go after relatively small amounts of money at their patients' expense?! I avoid that place like the plague. Durham Regional doesn't play such games and they are also much nicer there. I just hope their takeover by Duke doesn't lead to their degeneration into such illogical behavior, as well.

Patricia Ladensack
Durham

Inflated Water Bills in Durham, North Carolina

We have been at our address for 6+ years and our water bills have been inaccurate. There are 2 adults and 2 young girls here. We don't water the lawns or maintain a garden and we use bottled water for cooking and drinking. Despite this our water bills are excessive. 3 times in the past 6 years we received bills that claimed we used over 4500 cubic feet of water. The last time was a few months ago and the bill was for over $700.00! During better months we are billed $250.00-$300.00. It's almost like paying a second housing rent some months.

My neighbors report that their bills are usually a little over $100.00. My husband had Al Nelson from the Durham water conservation department look into it. He had our meter changed, then had it upgraded to an electronic meter to track usage better. He could find no leaks and no real explanation but says something isn't right. He said our usage was showing 6 times what is average for a family of our size--it's not like we are running a bottled water business out of our kitchen. He said billing should have got him involved a long time ago and he's stumped by the numbers.

I was further upset after doing the math. They are claiming we used 4500+ cubic feet, that's 33,000 gallons in 61 days. That's 550+ gallons every day! That would mean we were using 20+ gallons of water every hour, every day, for 2 months.

This is ridiculous.The bureaucracy here is a barrier to justice and fair treatment. No NC state senators or representatives have acknowledged my complaints. The billing department acts like we're just whining about our bill, the County Commissioners ignored our phone calls and subsequent emails, and the city manager Tom Bonfield referred me back to the water department. I feel sure that either our fittings have been incorrect or our meter has been malfunctioning. Either way we don't use hundreds of gallons of water daily, Durham doesn't care, and we've been overcharged by thousands over the past six years. This issue is widespread according to the news (including Atlanta, Charlotte and Philadelphia) and it is wrong that there is no oversight agency that can check for inaccuracies--if something is awry with a bill you typically have no recourse. When the city council (such as in Durham, NC) won't intervene there is no recourse--our state lawmakers owe it to us to create an oversight agency or to provide some other way of dealing with false bills!

If anyone else in Durham is experiencing inflated usage claims please post a comment or email us at trish8698@aol.com

Thanks, Patricia Ladensack