Red-naped sapsucker ~Sphyrapicus!

The trip I had planned trip in fall of 2007 to California in order to confront "Doug" was postponed as I tended to other more immediate professional matters. I was in the midst of launching several pressing projects that WILL naturally ensure our paths will cross, if not in the near future, then certainly in the next few years. And not necessarily in California, either. So there was and is no hurry. By Christmas 2007, I had solved the puzzle of who had called himself, Doug Reynolds, and taken me on what had amounted to a three year goose-chase.

I KNEW the true identity of the man, or should I say the coward, that had engaged in what was a systematic scheme to deceive me once again, while he professed to his wife that he was busy at Florida State University in Tallahasee for the oral review of his dissertation on Red-headed Woodpeckers in late February 2004. I was in the process of removing and disposing of company records after the wind up that was precipitated by a dispute with the local freight railroad in 2005. Before sending our computer equipment to the local Goodwill, I had engaged a computer technician to remove any proprietary or pertinent data and was presented with a stack of CDs. I was rather surpised to thumb through them and stumble upon 4 that were labelled "chat logs, Yahoo" between "Doug" and me dating back to our first encounter on January 2004 and until our last chat before he disappeare.

This was the first opportunity I had had to review the more than 600 hours of discourse between us, as "Doug" had asked me early in our relationship not to save our chats. He used his position and wealth as a reason, and naturally I was willing to honor that. Now, some 3 years later I waded through each line of text looking for clues as to his identity. Serendipty or fate? For me the "gift" of chat logs was serendipty. For him, well perhaps it will turn out to be a well-deserved fate.

Yes, the individual that I had honoured, respected and protected and who had proclaimed was my friend, was now holed away at Hastings Biological Field Station, pursuing his research on woodpeckers, and naturally with an unlisted phone, presumably to avoid confrontation from me, and who knows how many others. Safely retreated within a cavity-nest, like the creatures he studies, and confident that he had escaped any public humiliation that he had so obviously enjoyed watching me endure.

He wasn't a successful self-made professional, nor a millionaire's son. He wasn't a single bachelor who'd waited years to meet an honest, hard-working woman with similar interests and goals, as he had so often declared. Although the photographs of the striking tall and lean man he had shared with me were indeed his, they had been taken when he was between 25 and 28, more than 15 years prior at various stages in his Post Doctoral research. He wasn't related to the Reynolds family of Reynolds, Smith & Hills in Tallahassee; nor was the photograph of the yacht he had named "Folie a Deux" his either. Snatched from the Internet, in another of his ploys to lure me to pack and be prepared for an unannounced sailing weekend in the Gulf Coast. He wasn't an America born man, who had lived in upstate New York, although that is the location where he married. He is a naturalised Canadian. He wasn't an engineer, working in the aerospace industry and being called to Department of Defense high-security locations in San Diego. No, he was a post doc fellow, doing research on woodpeckers and sapsuckers in the California chapparal. And he was MARRIED.

Below is the evolution of my online friend's identity!

Irritated ---> Clark Reynolds ---> "Doug Reynolds" ---> Sphyrapicus ---> Eric L. Walters.

Eric Walters, this prematurely aged, portly individual that lacked the conscience and the integrity to even acknowledge, let alone take ownership, of his wrong doings.

Woodpeckers ~ will hammer and drill through wood to find their prey!

Yellow-bellied sapsucker...

e've often heard the popular expression 'yellow-bellied'. In fact, the term represents an individual that is ignobly lacking in courage. There are quite a range of synonyms. Cowardly, chickenhearted, craven, dastardly, faint-hearted, pusillanimous or unmanly, to name a few. But yellow-bellied originated from the term 'lily-livered' and made reference to the state of an unhealthy liver. Instead of being blood-engorged and red in colour, the liver of a fat, unmotivated animal, is often a paler colour.

He is a dog--and the pup of a dog--red, yellow-bellied, lairless,

and haired between every toe ~ Rudyard Kipling

Nonetheless, my trip out west in early fall of 2007 would demonstrate whether yellow-bellied was an apt term for someone for whom I had afforded the utmost of respect.

It was time to confront Doug to see why he had played me.

Battle at Hastings.........

nd so, just as in 1066, and the battle between William and Harold, Hastings would become a battle ground where I would right the injustices that "Doug" had thrust upon me.

Hastings. Not the town north of Senlac Hill in East Sussex, England, but rather at the 2,000 acre Hastings Reserve ~ a Biological Field Station of the University of California, Museum of Vertebrate Zoology and Natural Reserve System located in the Santa Lucia mountain range in Monterey County, California.

And just as the Bayeux tapestry depicts the events leading up to the Battle of Hstings, so this blog, in its images tells the story leading up to the confrontation and will in next few posts reveal the identity of those that preyed upon me.

"Truth is truth,

Until the end of reckoning" ~ William Shakespeare

What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?

nce "Doug" took up his position in California, I learned very quickly that I'd lost opportunity to call him. Astonishingly, yes, now he announced on his research website that he had an unlisted telephone number. Oh, a very poignant message, indeed!

Seeing that, I instantly recalled one conversation we'd had in the winter of 2004, when he explained that some female had driven throughout Tallahassee, cruising the streets on a lookout for his truck to find his home, and then found reason to call him to inform him that the air in his tyre was low. At the time, when I queried if he'd any idea why someone would do such a thing, he shrugged it off, saying she was an ex-girlfriend that wanted to maintain control over him. I found it odd at the time that she'd do such a thing, after being the one to choose to end their relationship, but trumped it up to having something to do with his socio-economic status as the son of a succesful company founder. By this time in 2006, I knew the story of his Reynolds family association had been false.

While I'd never attempted to contact him by telephone, although I'd had his number for more than 18 months, was it quite possible that I had not been the only person with whom he'd played a charade? I'd been more than patient for an answer to my inquiries as to the disposition of the summer positions, for which I'd applied. No answer, of course, and by fall of 2006 I knew the status, and that I had not been selected, but was curious why I'd not even been acknowledged or informed. Was that his typical modus operandi, or was I being personally singled out?

I then concluded that I'd once again been subjected to the same consideration that my ex-husband had offered me. Yes, indeed, I'd been shown now by "Doug" that I was nothing more than an "inanimate object", cast aside when no longer of any use or interest. The two men with whom I'd become at all close in more than a decade, both dealt with me in the same manner ~ with no justification and BOTH purporting to be keenly interested in my welfare and best interests. My ex-husband had a motive, but what was "Doug's"? Could it be that he had found intense pleasure in thrusting me once again into the depths of despair?

The barrage of threats continued from the member on ILW that had taken offense over my defense of "Doug". All alone, and with no support structure, whatsoever, I would simply forward copies of the emails to "Doug" with the hope that he'd at least be aware of the unsafe and unsettling position I had been placed in. I felt I could no longer participate on ILW, a forum that had been a form of pleasant entertainment for me in 2004, and even after the Famous Five disbanded following "Doug's" abrupt departure in 2005, something to help to while away the time and break the monotony of my solitary existence. 2006 ended bleak, in terms of any type of response to my "SOS" contact with "Doug", just like the environment outside my lonely workplace.

The Court of Appeals reviewed the pleadings I'd submitted following the lower court's decision to dismiss the civil suit that I'd been forced to bring against DF and KMC, and in 42 days from the date filed, a decision was rendered. I was stunned as I logged onto the online docket to open the per curiam. The Court of Appeals decision noted that all causes of action that I'd attempted to bring in the counter-claim for annulment, that the lower court had steadfastly refused to hear, and instead had recommended be plead in a second action, should indeed have been dealt with in the divorce action. The Court of Appeals offered case citations to support its position, yet now 24-months after the divorce was final res judicata would prohibit reopening the case and protect the Plaintiff DF.

In one fell swoop, I would learn that I had been bounced from venue to venue, like a ping pong ball, only to find that the lower court had erred and my original posture to annul the marriage and present proofs of fraud in the dissolution of the marriage was correct. The apparent refusal of either court to hear the case and adjudicate the claims on merit would be manifest injustice, indeed. Additionally, the Immigration Service was performing an anti-fraud investigation into the circumstances that surrounded my marriage, triggered by a returned piece of mail that had been directed to DF at my home long after he had disappeared and we had divorced, yet despite that, the local courts would not hear my case.

To add more insult to injury, a new case, in Pennsylvania, reported that an alien brought suit against a former US citizen spouse for support pursuant to the terms of the Immigration Affidavit of Support. The Federal Court affirmed a decision that the former US citizen spouse would be responsible to pay damages to the alien, subject to the terms of the mandated Affidavit of Support ~ a case of strict liability, it seems. This news flash occurred just 60 days after DF and KMC had given up ownership of the competing operation that had impacted the venture DF and I had jointly owned while we were married. Now DF was, for all practical purposes, unemployed, as far as I could determine. Would he be savvy enough to find out about this precedential case? And how, without the annulment that would have permitted me absolution of the obligation of the Affidavit of Support, could I now protect myself from future liability? Liability that could continue for another 7 years, to boot.

My only option ~ to bring the case before the Supreme Court, knowing that any appeal would be through leave. I questioned if justice could ever be served, since circumstances of the past three years had caused my respect for the judicial system to wane. I'd have 42 days to make my decision.

What loneliness is more lonely than distrust? ~ George Eliot

Sph-Eric Aberration

fter many attempts to create a carefully-worded email to send to "Doug" were scrapped before sending, I settled down to write in advance of the beginning of the academic term of fall 2006. I was aware that Doug would be leaving the East Coast at about this time in order to relocate to the West Coast permanently to take up a research fellowship position in California. While I knew that I did not have the luxury of an extended period of time to make contact, I wished to ensure that my email would encourage some sort of response that would help me and I wanted to address the suggestion he'd made in an earlier email that I might have confused him for someone else.

The thought that he could think me so foolish was unsettling, to be sure. I'd never jump to a conclusion without checking facts closely before communicating that I'd discovered his real identity. In my typical fashion, rather than be annoyed, I concluded that this was his way of implying that I was suffering from Sph-eric aberration. No way, indeed! Well, not on my part anyway.

The dictionary defines aberration as a deviation from its proper or expected course; a defect or blurring of focus; an imperfect image caused by a physical defect in an optical element, as in a lens, or an abnormal alteration of one's mental state.

Spheric aberration (SA) is image imperfection that results from a lens that is spherical in shape. Without getting too technical, light rays which are parallel to the optic axis but at different distances from the optic axis, fail to converge to the same point. This creates an aberration and the defect that is most noticeable for light striking the outer edges of the source. The result is that the images of objects are often blurry and unclear.

Of course spheric aberration can be reduced or eliminated by alteration in the shape of the lens or mirror, as well. For example, a parabolic lens or mirror will bring all reflected rays into a common focus. However, when a small screen is placed at the paraxial focal plane and then moved toward the mirror or lens, a point is reached where the image size is focused to a minimum. The precise location of this point is termed the "circle of least confusion" and that is precisely the reason for contacting him ...to approach a point of least confusion.

I carefully composed an email that simply projected friendly contact. No mention of anything unpleasant, and I inserted a joke that would be especially pertinent, given that I was now absolutely certain that he was of Canadian origin. I hoped that this benign and friendly correspondence would be received in the spirit in which it was offered and would reopen the line of mutual contact.