On August 4th 1989 a person who was very dear to me became an auto accident victim.  If you believe that this statement is about as unemotional as it can get, I wish I could show you the enumerations of opening lines to today's blog entry I crafted.

Although I have never stopped playing the old "what if" games since her passing, I have secretly fantasized that she simply decided to move on, re-invent herself, never to be seen or heard from again.  It may be important to note that there are quite a few people from my past whom have accused me of executing a similar maneuver and I suppose my only response is, "I object." 

About once a month or so, I play the Internet archive detective and I'll spend a couple of hours trying locate a shred of evidence that she ever really existed in the first place.  I often wonder how anyone located friends and loved ones that went missing before the glory of the Internet.  Search engines like Google.com and Live.com have really helped to bring the cold distances of our lives a little closer to familiarity. 

Average individuals are no longer just lost in the annals of time, their blog entries and photo albums and political insights will immortalize them not only through current search indexes but also through the incredible efforts from organizations like The Internet Archive who's banner philosophy is "Universal Access to Human Knowledge."  Amidst the other services they provide, they have been retaining multiple versions of a great deal of Internet information since as early as 1996.  Last I checked they were boasting having some 85 billion pages archived, this is truly a Herculean effort.  The first effort, other than library catalogs, to index the Internet was created in 1989, as Peter Deutsch and his crew at McGill University in Montreal, created an archiver for FTP sites, which they named Archie. 

Bare with me, I have a point...

Sadly, the average person that I lost died long before the Internet began remembering her. Furthermore, when I search for her name there are only two positive hits that come back from Google.com or Live.com and both of these were created by me.  I authored two memorial entries for her at The Virtual Memorial Garden; One from Bill and the other from Dana.  I find it impossible to believe that I am the only person living on this planet who has memories of this person to share.

For a while I took solace while I was tracking press articles relating to her uncle who was the mayor of the town in which she lived.  Recently, he too passed away and now I am left without any connection.  This is a pretty serious indication to me that very soon, there will be no-one living with whom I can relate my connection to her.

I suppose this is a plea, if you had a connection to this person; please contact me and let's help her to have an Internet afterlife. 

Her name was Dove Ann Glass.

Always,

Dana

Swedish researchers announced on Wednesday that they had successfully
carried out womb transplants on four sheep, which subsequently became
pregnant.
They say the success of the operations brings the prospect of human
uterus transplants one step closer.
The sheep were operated by laparotomy, an incision through the
abdominal wall, said Professor Mats Brännström of Gothenburg
University's department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology.
"We took the uterus outside the body, we kept it for a couple of
hours outside the body," he added.
When they put the uterus back in the same body they connected it with
other blood vessels and to the vagina.
"After four to six weeks the sheep went back to the farm and then
they have been put with rams and they have been mating and four of
the five are pregnant," Brännström added.
"I think this is successful, because what it proves is that you can
put the uterus back with a different blood supply and you can do that
in large animal species.
"I think this is one small step forward to human uterus
transplantation."
One of the main difficulties in the operations had been the problem
of reconnecting the blood vessels, he said.
Of the 14 sheep used in the research, some had not survived the
operations, according to a report in the magazine New Scientist.
Brännström said that from next week, they planned to move from
removing and replacing a uterus from the same subject, to
transplanting a uterus from one subject to the other.
But this would bring a fresh complication, he added: the risk of the
recipient rejecting the uterus.

By DIANE STEINLE Editor of Editorials
Published April 1, 2007
When you know only half of the story, you don't know the whole truth.
The Rev. Charlie Martin is senior pastor of First Baptist Church of
Indian Rocks, one of the biggest churches in the county. He said on
television recently that I and the St. Petersburg Times were "in
cahoots" with now-former Largo City Manager Steve Stanton about his
plans for a sex change.
People may have assumed they were hearing the whole truth because the
Rev. Martin is a good speaker with an authoritative delivery.
But the reverend failed to tell the rest of the story and therefore
misled people.
Let me complete the story.
Martin made that speech March 23 at the emotionally charged,
televised public hearing at which Stanton, after 14 years as city
manager, appealed to the City Commission to let him keep his job.
Three weeks earlier, the commission had voted 5-2 to fire him, less
than a week after the news broke that Stanton intended to have gender
reassignment surgery.
Stanton's revelation that he had been cross dressing and intended to
become a woman blindsided most of those who know him. My jaw dropped
when I heard it. I didn't have a clue. Neither did others who work at
this newspaper.
Yet in his March 23 comments before the commission and the television
cameras, the Rev. Martin implied that I and my newspaper were
involved in a secret conspiracy with Stanton.
Martin apparently reached this conclusion because of something
Stanton wrote in an eight-page plan detailing how he would "come out"
to city employees and the public. He was working on the plan with the
help of Mayor Pat Gerard, in whom he confided on Jan. 1.
On Page 1 of that plan, Stanton placed this heading: "Confidential
meeting with editors of SP Times Friday, May 18, 2007." He then wrote:
"I had a brief discussion with Diane (Steinle) eight months ago and
told her I was planning on talking with her in the near future to
discuss a 'personal issue and leadership opportunity.' I am confident
she will meet with you (Mayor Gerard) and me off the record in
exchange for writing a story prior to the release of the information.
It is critical to have the support of the paper in this effort and I
am confident that the Times will be supportive and see this as an
opportunity to demonstrate diversity in the workplace, etc."
Pastor Martin read that section of Stanton's plan aloud at the
meeting and treated it like some kind of smoking gun. He said, "Mr.
Stanton obviously knew by information he had obtained that the Times
would be supportive and make this a very strong case for the cause of
transgender people."
Then the reverend explained that commissioners weren't firing Stanton
because of his sex change plans but because of "other charges"
against Stanton made by a host of residents and city employees.
Martin didn't say what those charges were, but he said that people
surely wouldn't rally behind someone guilty of them.
"So Mr. Stanton and Mayor Gerard, in cahoots with the St. Pete Times,
decided to play the big hand," Martin said. "They dealt the race
card, or as I say, the transgender card, because they knew if they
played that card, they could get their groups together for a
noteworthy rally here tonight. And here you are. You came. But you
have been tricked by those in the know: Mr. Stanton, Mayor Gerard and
the St. Pete Times."
I don't know why the reverend said those things or why he chose not
to tell the rest of the story. But I'll tell you.
Steve Stanton and I did chat on the phone months ago about city
business, as I regularly do with other city managers, too. He hinted
that he was thinking about his future and might have some news about
that down the road. I asked whether he was leaving Largo, but he
wouldn't tell me anything else.
We didn't talk again about his future - until Feb. 20, when a Times
reporter and an editor walked into my office and said they had heard
that Stanton was planning a sex change. They said that when they had
asked Stanton about it, he had refused to talk to anyone but me - and
only off the record.
After I scraped my jaw off the floor, I called Stanton and refused to
grant him an off-the-record interview. I explained that as
journalists, our job is to get important news into the paper for our
readers, not carry it around in our heads. And a public figure's
planning to get a sex change certainly was important news.
But we talked some more, and Stanton said he would tell our news
reporter everything, on the record, if we would hold off a day so
that he could talk to his 13-year-old son first. We agreed, and the
next afternoon, Feb. 21, the first story was posted on the Times Web
site.
I didn't find out until later that Stanton had a written plan and
that he had assumed, incorrectly, that I would talk to him off the
record about such an important story.
The Rev. Martin tried to skewer the newspaper in a public venue by
telling half of the story and making unfounded accusations. I'm more
comfortable giving folks all of the information they need so that
they can make their own judgments.
This newspaper is telling the Stanton story professionally and
sensitively, as it unfolds, because that's our job.
Regarding Stanton's statement that he was "confident" the Times would
be supportive, that was a guess on his part. But I'm proud our
editorials called for Stanton to be judged on his job performance,
not his gender. Isn't that how all of us would want to be treated?
Diane Steinle may be reached by e-mail at steinle@sptimes.com.
© 2007 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times

A man already charged in connection with a 2004 slaying
now stands accused of fatally shooting a transvestite six years
earlier after learning that the victim, with whom he'd had a brief
sexual relationship, was not a woman but a man.
Isaac Fountain, 26, was charged with murder Thursday in connection
with the slaying of 19-year-old Victor Olvera of Fort Worth.
"The motive appeared to be that he had a previous relationship with
the victim, not knowing that the victim was actually a male," said
homicide Sgt. J.D. Thornton. "He later found out from some of his
friends that [Olvera] wasn't a woman and then he basically hunted him
down and killed him."
A man walking behind the Shop & Stop convenience store in the 2600
block of South Riverside Drive on the night of Sept. 8, 1998, found
Olvera's body, dressed in women's clothing, a few feet from a
sidewalk. He had been shot several times with a shotgun, police have
said.
Fountain, who court records also identify as Gerald Walker, remains
in federal prison in Fort Worth in connection with Operation Fish
Bowl, a 20-month local and federal investigation of the southeast
Fort Worth drug trade that led to 40 drug trafficking indictments.
He was charged with capital murder in February in the robbery and
fatal shooting of 24-year-old Keiss Allison. Allison was gunned down
in the 4900 block of Flamingo Road while running from two armed men
who went to his apartment on July 25, 2004, and robbed him of drugs
and money.
A second man, 24-year-old DeMarkcus L. Clark, is also charged with
capital murder in connection with Allison's death.
Thornton said it was during Detective Matt Hardy's investigation of
the Allison case that Fountain also surfaced as a suspect in Olvera's
death.
"He interviewed several persons, one of which indicated that Fountain
was also involved in the murder of a transvestite some years ago,"
Thornton said. "Hardy was able to locate the case matching the
details given by the witness."