Mr. Jurgus,

My offer to assist you was sincere. However, since you refuse to provide me with any details as to your claim and instead resort to a personal attack on me, I will consider this case closed.

If I learn that you have had direct contact with my faculty member or the student, I will initiate legal actions.

As you are not a student with this college, I am also banning you from the campus. If you have a legitimate reason to be on campus, you must first seek approval from me. Failure to do so will result in legal action.

Sincerely,

Dr. Rick Pearce

(My only hope, it seemed to me, was for me to convince Amber Baer to come clean about what she had done.)

• charles jurgus <cfjurgus@yahoo.com>

  To:Pearce, Rick,rvaessen@my.heartland.edu,donald.gibb@heartland.edu,Gregg Chadwick,janet.hood@heartland.edu,jflessner@beneplanning.com,mary.campbell@heartland.edu,pat.hardesty@heartland.edu,rebecca.ropp@heartland.edu,rob.widmer@heartland.edu,Sarah DielHunt,abaer@my.heartland.edu,Cristina Prestin-Latham,smonagha@my.heartland.edu

  Nov 13 at 1:24 PM

  Rick Pearce,

  You merely confirm your lack of concern for reaching the truth of this matter from the get go. You never had any intention of admitting that your student engaged in any wrongdoing because you fear the repercussions which would redound upon your institution. And the impact upon your position and career. You haven’t the regard to finish reading this email. But that is ok, others will and I will give them good reason to. You see it is beyond your imagination the stakes involved and the amount of skin I have vested in this issue… Let me start with an anecdote:

  I was working a job once, I was picking up thirty double sheets of 5/8″ drywall. It was the beginning of the day and there was plenty to do after delivering this load to the jobsite. I jumped from the driver’s seat at the loading zone of the Home Depot and slammed the door rushing to begin loading when I was stopped short… My thumb was lodged in the car door. I had to preform the difficult task of removing my car keys from opposite pocket and crossing past my own body awkwardly to unlock and release myself. I loaded the drywall and got to the site where I, myself now, carried much of the load up to the second floor. I worked the rest of the day unaware of my thumb… until that night. I didn’t sleep a wink, I took aspirin, but lay awake all night in bed every moment focused upon the throbbing pain in my thumb. I feared the cost of a visit to the emergency room and kept thinking that in one more moment I would fall asleep. But I never did. The next morning the sun came up and I had to call in to work that I was utterly exhausted and simply couldn’t go. I took the dog to the dog park where I met an emergency room nurse… to whom I excitedly explained my condition. She responded brightly, ‘Oh, we get that all the time in the ER, we puncture the nail with a cauterizing iron and it relieves the pressure and the pain immediately. As soon as she said this I could feel the truth of it. I thanked her and ran nearly the entire way back home. I heated a safety pin up on the stove till it was glowing red and eagerly plunged it into the back of my nail… the relief was so profound and instantaneous that I immediately plunged the pin into the nail twice more for good measure. I could hardly make it to the couch where I collapsed for a good 18 hours. Have you ever felt that kind of rest? Have you ever needed that kind of rest? It is the kind of rest from which it just isn’t pleasant to wake.

  I want to tell you something else, though I have little doubt you will believe it, but at this point I am no longer writing for your benefit alone. We are not in a court of law, so your burdens of proof don’t apply. I have no doubt that Amber has every capability of admitting to what she has done. After all, she had enough vision to recognize the value of the idea in the first place. It is my sense that she is not unlike anyone entering into adulthood. She plays at dalliance with those last vestiges of her juvenile self. It is my sense that she is worried about entering the marketplace for a job, where workers are showed the valuelessness and the ease with which they may be replaced as a matter of constant course. Even the Unions have devolved into a guild-like protectionist stance… guarding the best jobs jealously through campaigns of exclusion rather than pooling clout to ensure a fair shake for everyone entering the marketplace with an honest desire to exchange the wealth of their labors for a chance at a life worth living. Instead, there is a constant culling which takes place excluding anyone with enough back-bone to speak up from having a place on the job. The result is a slow genocide which favors the compliant and stupified. There is a science fiction book, Hyperion, which casts this pattern in stark relief. It takes place on a grassland planet where ships sail brown seas of waiving grain, and a mythical creature that moves too quickly for the eye to see, called the Shrike, appears out of nowhere and for no apparent reason to embrace any trespassers approaching a protect community of humans who have devolved into a toiling senseless colony of mongoloids.

  In Englewood, I witnessed a pattern in various forms of manifestation. I had a bicycle which I locked up in a way that wasn’t readily apparent in the courtyard beneath my apartment window. I was testing to see if I could leave it chained up outside because it was difficult to find a safe place inside to leave it. When I heard the chain link fence rattling I looked out to see two older men, older members of the gang in there 60’s, and a young child trying to pull the bike loose from the fence. I started yelling down to the child, who couldn’t have been older than 6 or 7, “Hey, what are you doing there?” He looked up wide eyed and innocent… “I want this bike,” he replied simply, honestly. I laugh even now at the absurdity of it, “but that’s my bike!” And the child gestures at the two men who were at that moment ambling away, “but they told me I could have it.” I said, “don’t you believe them when they tell you you can take other people’s things… now go home before I decide to go tell your mother what you’ve been up to!” To this he went wide eyed and ran off.

  Now I have little doubt that Amber can recognize the truth when she hears it… and I have little doubt that she has regard for your authority, thus far… and I am sure she has the strength of character to weather the shame of admitting what she has done… and deciding how she wants to take those next steps into her adult life. If you were truly concerned with the truth, she would confide it to you. If you truly had her best interests at heart, you would not usher her into her adult life upon a theft of this sort from someone who… well if this issue continues to escalate… which I assure you I have every interest in seeing that it does and every ability to see that it does–in fact, you are moving further and further into my guard with every hack-juvenile response to my concerns–when this story reaches enough ears… those whom I have met over the years, those whom I have spoken to and helped as perfect strangers never to be seen again… will come out of the woodwork and testify to my deeds and character. Even those who’ve attacked me and done me wrong–I assure you.

  There was a fellow, Calhoun (I guess a last name), from Virginia, I think… at the Goldstar Bar in Wicker Park–at Damen and Division, in Chicago–didn’t like me voicing my opinion on some matter or other… so he took a swing at me. Now I am sure the guy was capable of laying me out, but his heart wasn’t in it and I swept his attempt aside easily. Others stepped in and pulled him back and sat him down. Later, he came up to me to apologize and but descended into a snarling, “but just keep your f***ing mouth shut!” To which I took to my feet and to back him off and from which he took another swing at me… this time much more easily brushed aside as I saw it coming. Despite this, I found that I had an affection for this guy. I could understand his rage. I learned later that he worked as a coach driver near Water Tower Place… Can you imagine driving rich @**holes around all day in the freezing Chicago winter for barely enough to survive?! Being stuck in that job because it simply robs every ounce of energy from you?! I understood this guy’s rage, and I also understood that he simply couldn’t muster the conviction to take a clean shot at me. The next week, a couple of @**holes came into the bar and put their names up on the board where we were playing pool. I think they had just come from the casino and they were pissed. They were showing their contempt for everyone around them with almost every move, every gesture and who is the first to step up to ’em and call ’em on it? Calhoun. I sat by watching and smiling at thought of jumping into the fight on Calhoun’s behalf if these idiots developed the nerve to really get into it. They didn’t at that moment, but it wasn’t long before they tried to push a couple of girls, physically push them, off the table when their turn came up. The smaller of the two immediately began throwing punches when the barkeep interceded and was tossed to the ground at one end of the table where there were now two barkeeps trying to sit on him. The bigger of the two guy’s began to move around the table and I stepped into his path with my hands spread low, palms up in a gesture of resolve and pleading, offering him the first unguarded blow. He rolled his eyes at the indignity of his situation and complied with our desire they cool out and leave. He walked willingly through the front door and his buddy was tossed out ignominiously out the back where he found himself locked out in the alley.

  I am sure all Amber wants is some assurance of a future for herself. She wants the good attention of those role model’s charged with her education and indoctrination into the adult world of the marketplace. She cares much less about public service than as a demonstration of her desire to do good, or at least of her willingness. I will even give her a business idea she could make money off of almost immediately. It came to me when I worked for Van Gogh Studios doing child and family portraiture in the home–based in Westchester. I was given the southside as my territory, and more than a couple of times i came across the same request… that I use computer imaging to merge a lost child into the family portrait. People were willing to spend hundreds of dollars for this service… I simply couldn’t bring myself to commit myself to an activity so requiring of personal application without being personally inspired to do so. I simply wasn’t capable of it… I am too soft for such work. I am sure that a national business could be set up to this end which would bring in big bucks… Memorial Portraiture might be a good name for the website. She could schedule sittings in communities all over the country and travel as she liked. But she should do it, not some unknown national organization she has no idea about the running or agenda being pursued! Pretty names do not make an organization benevolent… look up the origins of the Joy Division in the ’30’s and ’40’s German army… there is little joyous about it. Or look into the origins of the characters, Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson in the persons of Roger Casement and E D Morel and King Leopold II’s International Association for the Congo. I will not allow my ideas to be used to push agendas counter to those values for which they were intended.

  I can take one on the chin… and much more. I’m tired, and this issue has robbed me of my sleep… and no mere cauterizing of my thumbnail will resolve my suffering. I don’t have any illusions about your interests in this matter, you are proving that Amber’s conduct isn’t merely aberrant… that she has rightfully intuited the values of her role model’s at your school. This issue is not going away… and you are over-matched. It hasn’t even occurred to you who might come out of the woodwork to confirm Amber is the one behind the ad should this issue continue to escalate. And until I have satisfaction that this issue has been addressed with seriousness and sincerity… I will see that it continues to escalate. I never have to visit your campus to see to it… I could merely take up a seat next to my brass buddy, Lincoln, in downtown Bloomington… I can find someone else to take the pictures. And these communications will stand as my witness. So go ahead and ignore them all you like, others will not and you will answer for them one way or the other.

  Sincerely,

  Charles F Jurgus

  (At this point, the Normal police,Sergeant Jeff Longfellow and Officer Melissa Zabukovec, arrived at my door just as I was finishing the next email… They told me that they had been told that I was harassing a student… that I was intimidating her. I wonder now, who intimidates her more, me or the person with power over her through the school, Rick Pearce. I told the police that I had given her no reason to feel intimidated and meant her no harm, but that I wanted her to confess that she had stolen my ideas. When I looked her up… I saw that she had won a statewide award for a paper she had written… I am curious about the contents of that paper. As soon as the police left, I sent my next email.)

  charles jurgus <cfjurgus@yahoo.com>

  To:rvaessen@my.heartland.edu,rebecca.ropp@heartland.edu,donald.gibb@heartland.edu,Gregg Chadwick,janet.hood@heartland.eduand 9 more…

  Nov 14 at 1:33 PM

  In the 140 years before Christ, there had been three major slave uprisings. Between 10 and 80 thousand slaves brought to the brink of what they were willing to suffer in life decided that a death on the battlefield was preferable to a life enslaved. What was it that they faced? A life where the sanctity of marriage did not apply to the slave… where ones children were toys for the perversions of their overlords… where one toiled to increase the power and standing of their own oppressors. These slaves rose up and made soldiers of themselves and armed with the intimate knowledge of a fate worse than death vanquished the Roman legions from their soil. However, their victory was short lived. Within a single generation the Roman legions reasserted their dominion over these people. You see, the Roman military regime was central to Roman culture, where as to these subject peoples, this militancy simply wasn’t central to their cultural identity. They could not beat the Romans at their own game because they refused to make Romans of themselves. When the Romans returned they found those among the next generation who had no direct memory of what slavery was. The Romans played upon the naivete and ambition of these children born free of the Roman yoke. The men of importance, the weapons caches, the feast days and grain stores, the internal squabbling… all of these secrets played to the Roman agenda and once again these peoples were returned to a status of slavery with every tenth man pinned to a cross to line the roads for good measure.

  Carlyle said that, [all wisdom derives from love]. (Forgive me for not looking up the precise quote, I am more of a ‘spirit’ than the ‘letter’ guy.) Carlyle also said, [bury your knowledge in a cave and you will find its root in hell].

  Jesus–whether the literal son of a celestial on a golden throne in a gated community in the clouds, or not–saw clearly the forces at play within his own society, no doubt because of the clarity and simplicity of his heart. He recognized that Caesar’s power rested upon the premise that Caesar was right because he could deliver his legions to your shores and borders. He also recognized that his own elders propped up their own “divine” authority though a meticulously attended tradition. But Jesus recognized that to show one’s desire to honor God, one must recognize the inherent dignity of his creation–whether Jew or not. And I believe he recognized the dialectic of a worship of power, embodied in the capitulation of the followers of Caesar, and the worship of God, in recognizing the inherent dignity in his creation.

  Armed with this, Jesus found a way of drawing the battle lines in the fight against earthly power and the slavery of man and the pursuit of God’s Vision… and… without engaging the Roman legions on their terms.

  As of 1850, there had only been 1 billion human beings to walk the earth throughout all of human history.

  There are some interesting things we can derive from this simple fact. First, all of the situations from history which have come down to us in our telling of the past are more likely to be archetypal in their nature. That is, they tend to reveal the essence of patterns recurring in our own day. Recurring patterns which sometimes become obscured by the sensational embellishments of details which distract from these more pressing central truths.

  I grew up believing myself to be an atheist n the post-punk culture of the Reagan-era. But I was fortunate, my father who had been orphaned at a young age, became well assimilated into our society at a time when the world was beholden to the US not only for having won WWII, but being the only modern nation on earth with its industrial capacity and infrastructure not only unmarred by the war, but polished into a finely honed state of refinement, the likes of which the world had never seen. It is said that there were no reliable estimates of how many engineers were required from the colleges and universities because the need for them kept expanding seemingly without end. The wealth flowing into the country through commercial contracts and the extension of reconstruction loans was such that the Great Depression, which had still been raging before America’s entrance into the war, had been decisively ended by the post war boon. There was so much wealth floating around, that the modern middle class as we once knew it, was born. Unfortunately, along with that modern middle class… and an investor class leveraged by a new marketplace elite, as a political constituency to guard its seizing of an inordinate amount of that boon. Eisenhower oversaw an explosion of infrastructural works that employed tens of thousands. But by the late sixties, these investments and the quality of the kind of work going on had already begun to falter. One sector of the society had grown used to a cadence of increased share taking while the other felt the tightening of the belt as the amount of share available for the taking, dwindled. from 1970 till about 1999, with the growth in the economy and the cost of living and the relative stagnation of wages… the average worker had lost 30% of earnings. Meanwhile, by 2002, the average CEO was making 400 times that of the average worker. This is while the cry from the right that, [welfare is a drain upon the national budget] … was in deliberate obfuscation of the fact that social welfare comprised only about 1% of what corporate welfare levied from our collective coffers–that is not hyperbole!

  It would be instructive to watch the documentary… The Brainwashing of my Dad… The Brainwashing of My Dad (2015)  About the rise of the right wing media and its effect on a non-political democrat and WWII vet. Blood on the Mountain might be another title worth your time if you have the stomach for keeping yourself informed of the social issues facing working people and  to see the way an industry, through a constant campaign of oppression and attrition was able to create compliant pool of workers willing to enrich the worst kind of commercial actors at the expense of their own lives and the lives of their family and neighbors… Blood on the Mountain (2016)

  The Brainwashing of My Dad (2015) Directed by Jen Senko. With Eric Boehlert, David Brock, Noam Chomsky, Jeff Cohen. Jen Senko, a documentary film…

  Blood on the Mountain (2016) Directed by Mari-Lynn C. Evans, Jordan Freeman. ‘Blood on the Mountain’ focuses on the environmental and economi…

  If you aren’t willing to watch these documentaries… you have no business posing as social activists, especially if it is to leverage oneself or one’s students into a career in a profession apart from social work… especially if these efforts are made through the theft of another person’s ideas and organizational plan. That simple.

  Once again, at no time have any of you suggested that this matter would be looked into with anything other than vague threats toward me that assumed that I had no righteous claim. Instead you were willing to take the side of a child over that of a veteran who has served honorably and a citizen who has given of his labor back to the community with such consistency that it will take a great shaking to render forth all of the witnesses waiting to speak up. This is not over. I have plenty more to say and plenty more to do and you have already demonstrated through your lack of action

  Charles F Jurgus