Over 16,529,383 people are on fubar.
What are you waiting for?
A flower may die,
The sun may set,
But I wish I had boyfriend like you,
I'll never forget.
Your name is precious,
It will never grow old,
Its engraved in my heart n in my soul,
In letters of gold!
Every morning I wake up to wonder y I'm single,
Every morning I drink coffee by myself,
Every morning I smoke a cigarette by myself,
Every morning I watch tv by myself,
Every morning I wish someone would kiss me
Every morning I wish someone would tell me that they love me,
Every morning I wish I could watch u get ready for work,
Every morning I wish I could see u walk out the door to go to work,
Every morning I wish I could see u come home for lunch,
Every morning I wish I could tlk to u,
Every morning after lunch I wish I could watch u go back to work,
Every morning I wish I could wait for u to come home from work,
Every morning I wish I could see u get home to kiss u and hold u,
Every morning I wish I could have u treat me good,
This would b the happiest thing that would ever happen to me.
I wouldnt care if we have to work our asses off to get the things we need and want.
I wish I could just have someone treat me rite...
But cant a chick have a wish?
Wow....
I finally know wat my fam been tellin me this whole fuckin time....
They all said that new people would actually come into my life....
That i never believed until now....
These new people are great friends now...
At least i know i can trust these friends of mine...
I know that they wont backstab me like all my ex friends...
At least i can say its better then nothin rite??
But who knows until then....
Thanx to my fam that actually said that to me for the longest freakin time.... I LOVE U ALL MY FAM
WIND RIVER INDIAN RESERVATION, Wyo. — At a boys’ basketball game here last month, Wyoming Indian High School, a perennial state power, was trading baskets with a local rival. The players, long-limbed and athletic, are among the area’s undisputed stars, and their games one of its few diversions. On this night, more than 2,500 cheering, stomping people came to watch.
An Indian Reservation Struggles to Reduce Crime
Matthew Staver for The New York Times
“This place has always had the gloom here,” Kim Lambert, a tribal advocate on the reservation, said as she drove by a line of small houses people refer to as “murderers' row” because of its violence. More Photos »
Matthew Staver for The New York Times
Tribal police officers, above, at a checkpoint last month on the Wind River Indian Reservation, a stretch of scrub in Wyoming as big as Rhode Island and Delaware combined. “This place has always had the gloom here,” says Kim Lambert, right, a tribal advocate. More Photos »
Readers’ Comments
Readers shared their thoughts on this article.
Outside the gym, in a glass trophy case, are photographs of players from recent championship teams. Someone peered in and, moving his finger along the line of smiling faces, delivered a cruel counterpoint: killed in a car accident at 19 while intoxicated; murdered in his 20s; struck in the head with an ax not long after graduation.
The Obama administration, which has made reducing crime a priority in its attempt to improve the quality of life at dozens of Indian reservations plagued by violence, recently ended a two-year crime-fighting initiative at Wind River and three other reservations deemed to be among the country’s most dangerous.
Nicknamed “the surge,” it was modeled after the military’s Iraq war strategy, circa 2007, which helped change the course of the conflict. Hundreds of officers from the National Park Service and other federal agencies swarmed the reservations, and crime was reduced at three of the four reservations — including a 68 percent decline at Mescalero Apache in New Mexico, officials said. Wind River, as has been true for much of its turbulent history, bucked the trend: violent crime there increased by 7 percent during the surge, according to the Department of Justice.
Despite its bucolic name, the reservation, nestled among snowcapped peaks and rivers filled with trout, is a place where brutal acts have become banal. A rambling stretch of scrub in central Wyoming the size of Rhode Island and Delaware combined, Wind River has a crime rate five to seven times the national average and a long history of ghastly homicides.
During the initiative, which increased the number of officers on the reservation to 37 from 6, crimes included the murder of a 13-year-old girl who had been missing for four days and whose partly clothed body was found under a tree, and the killing of a 25-year-old man, who the police say had been beaten with a child’s car seat and a dumbbell by two friends after a sexual encounter.
“This place has always had the gloom here,” Kim Lambert, a tribal advocate on the reservation, said as she drove by a line of small houses people refer to as “murderers’ row.” “There has always been the horrendous murder. There has always been the white-Indian tension. It’s always been something.”
Crime may be Wind River’s most pressing problem, but it has plenty of company. Life, even by the grim standards of the typical American Indian reservation, is as bleak and punishing as that of any developing country. On average, residents can expect to live 49 years, 20 years fewer than in Iraq. Unemployment, estimated to be higher than 80 percent, is on a par with Zimbabwe’s, and is approaching the proportionate inverse of Wyoming’s 6 percent jobless rate.
The reservation’s high school dropout rate of 40 percent is more than twice the state average. Teenagers and young adults are twice as likely to kill themselves as their peers elsewhere in Wyoming. Child abuse, teenage pregnancy, sexual assault and domestic violence are endemic, and alcoholism and drug abuse are so common that residents say positive urinalysis results on drug tests are what bar many from working at the state’s booming oil fields.
On one section of the reservation, people must boil drinking water because chemicals, possibly the result of the oil and natural gas drilling method known as hydraulic fracturing, have contaminated the water supply. And fearing that the chemicals might explode in a home, the Environmental Protection Agency ordered residents to run fans and otherwise ensure ventilation while bathing or washing clothes.
The difficulties among Wind River’s population of about 14,000 have become so daunting that many believe that the reservation, shared by the Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone Tribes, is haunted — the ghosts of the innocent killed in an 1864 massacre.
“Anywhere, there are good spirits and bad spirits around,” said Ivan Posey, a member of the Eastern Shoshone Business Council. “But when people are struggling in their lives, those bad spirits come around more often. It’s kind of a yin and yang.”
Why the other reservations were able to curb crime while Wind River was not has been a matter of grave speculation. Some blame Wind River’s geographic isolation and a general apathy on the reservation, while others point to the numerous troubled children being raised by grandparents unable to keep track of them.
During a recent Friday night patrol on the reservation, Michael Shockley, a Wind River police officer whose department lacks even the basic ability to track crimes, said he was surprised to learn that the surge had not reduced violent crime.
Even with 10 fewer officers than it had during the surge, Officer Shockley said, the Police Department responds to all calls, not just the most serious ones. Crime, he said, has appeared to ebb, especially when compared with what he referred to as the bad old days, when on a single night about a year ago, he drove a total of 400 miles, logged 42 calls and arrested 19 people.
Still, signs of disillusionment are ubiquitous: piles of empty Black Velvet whisky and vodka bottles; discarded prescription bottles for painkillers; gang graffiti; burnt-out homes.
As far as criminality, this is the pinnacle,” Officer Shockley said. “You see everything here.”
The Bureau of Indian Affairs, which oversees the Wind River Police Department, says the rise in violent crime was a result of people reporting offenses they might have ignored before — which suggests that the reservation’s crime rate is even higher than previously thought. In fact, the bureau says, crime has fallen since the surge ended in October, although it did not provide statistics.
Joseph Brooks III, the Wind River police chief, said that one resident, shocked that the police response had gone from hours to minutes, told him, “Chief, if I knew you were going to come immediately, I would have called you later.”
One crime the surge was unable to prevent was the death of Marisa Spoonhunter, an eighth grader at Wyoming Indian Middle School who was killed in April 2010. Her parents recognized her body by the coat they had recently bought for her in Denver.
Marisa’s 21-year-old brother, Robert, and 19-year-old stepcousin were arrested and convicted. The three had been drinking in a trailer home when Robert Spoonhunter said he blacked out and awoke to find his sister and cousin having sex. An enraged Mr. Spoonhunter said he choked his sister for about 20 seconds before flinging her away. Marisa’s head hit a weight-lifting bench.
The men fastened a rope to her ankles and dragged her under a tree. Before resuming drinking, they put her clothes in a burn barrel.
At the sentencing, Vern Spoonhunter, the father of Marisa and Robert, said Marisa had been in the third generation of Spoonhunters to be murdered at Wind River — meeting the same end as his father and brother.
“Now we have two rooms in our home that are empty,” he said, referring to his children. “And that’s what we have to deal with.”
The Way of the Samurai is found in death.
Meditation on inevitable death should be performed daily.
Every day, when one's body and mind are at peace.
One should meditate upon being ripped apart by arrows, rifles, spears, and swords.
Being carried away by surging waves.
Being thrown into the midst of a great fire.
Being struck by lightning.
Being shaken to death by a great earthquake, falling from thousand-foot cliffs, dying of disease or committing seppuku at the death of one's master.
And every day, without fail, one should consider himself as dead.
This is the substance of the Way of the Samurai.
Im so high right now.
I could fly right now.
But everythins just passin me by right now.
My friend says she wants to cry right now.
So we hop in the car lets take a ride right now.
I hope she knows i love her.
I hope she knows ill always care.
But right now at the house the cops are already there.
There takin her away.
Tears rollin down my face.
I told her to burn it all put it in the fireplace.
She says what do u mean.
Our friendship just burn it.
If this is how it ends im sorry i didnt earn it.
This wasnt supposed to happen.
It was suppossed to this go far.
But what could i expect all i did was smoke weed and act like a star.
But i guess its all over.
Ill see her again one day.
Even if its in heaven we will see each other ill stay.
Clean for the family yours and mine both.
But until then here read this note.
Sincerely, Kendra
Dear Hate,
I wish I could go back to the beginning when all this started.
When I first meet u everything was great, as they always are.
I wish I could erase all the memories cuz it hurts too bad to think bout them and know things will never be like that again, not only wit u but probably wit no one else either.
I wish I coulda prevented all the things that permanently scared us and our relationship.
I don't think I ever felt so many emotions in the whole time Ive known u.
The good ones were good and the bad ones were horrible.
I wish I didn't have any regrets, but this journey is full of them, along wit a lot of pain and tears from the unfortunate lies and cheating...
I wish I could over look all the negative things and see all the good.
But, the truth is, when I look u in ur eyes all I see is pain and unhappiness staring me right back in the face wondering when I'm still here, why I'm trying to live this impossible life we've dreamt up together.
I wish I woulda known all this before..
I wish I didn't still love u as much as I still do.
I don't wanna think bout u forever, but ur forever locked in my heart and no matter how many times I try to push u out, the harder it is to forget u.
I really wish u woulda respected me, then maybe I would feel the love I needed to from the beginning.
But, I think the number one thing I wish is I didn't waste so much time and effort into us.
I'm not gonna cry any more tears for u..
When God says no to something, he says yes to something better.
So, its time to hold my head up high and know deep down I tried everything I possibly could to make us work.
If it wasn't good enough thats ur problem, not mine.
So, I guess this is good bye..
Good bye to the drama, good bye to the pain, and good bye to the tears..
It's time to let go.
I'm waiting here for that special someone everyday & night
Needing someone to hold me tight
To cheer me up when I'm sad
& make me smile when I'm mad
I need that someone that will always care
Someone that will always be there
Even when I'm right or wrong
& always there to keep me strong
Someone to show me there is no fear
Someone always there & always near
Always helping me to get through
Someone there to say I Love You
Someone to be there when I'm cold
& always there for me to hold
Someone there for me to think of
Someone there to show me Love
Every path leads to the unknown, some paths join others,
and some split off on their own.
We want to know where
they all go, but maybe we shouldn't.
Maybe the more we
insist on knowing, the less we'll be able to learn from life's
twists & turns.
I know what you're thinking, that the unknown
...is scary, but that's okay.
We're human.
Maybe before we feel
free, we're supposed to feel fearful.
Maybe it means more that way.
As we grow up, we learn that even the one person that wasn't supposed to ever let us down, probably will.
You'll have your heart broken and you'll break others' hearts.
You'll fight with your best friend or maybe even fall in love with them, and you'll cry because time is flying by.
So take too many pictures, laugh too much, forgive freely, and love like you've never been hurt. Life comes with no guarantees, no time outs, no second chances.
You just have to live life to the fullest, tell someone what they mean to you and tell someone off, speak out, dance in the pouring rain, hold someone's hand, comfort a friend, fall asleep watching the sun come up, stay up late, be a flirt, and smile until your face hurts.
Don't be afraid to take chances or fall in love and most of all, live in the moment because every second you spend angry or upset is a second of happiness you can never get back...
