Out in it, Lost

This is the thirty-fifth post on this blog about missing child Lindsey Baum.  Now 13, she was 10-years-old when she went missing the evening of June 26, 2009 while walking the short distance home from a friend's house in McCleary, Washington, a small town west of Olympia.

It's probably only a slight exaggeration to say there have been no leads in the case.  Most of the press about Lindsey has come in the form of reward announcements (now $35,000) and commemorative events -- her birthdays, anniversaries of her disappearance.

There is no new information about her case except for the occasional weirdness contributed by internet "sleuths" -- like the forensic astrologists and the disturbing number of psychic crime fighters who don't seem to have a clue as to the damage they might cause.  I've lost serious sleep over some of their contributions, as they've been known to call/write in tips to law enforcement without including the elucidating tidbit that their information was obtained in a backwater séance conducted by a wannabe Miss Marple whose cusped ass is ascending in venetian retrograde.

One of the worst offenders is a warlock named Ren.  (Now that's a sentence I never thought I'd write!) Ren claims residence in Japan, or Seattle, whichever suits his warlocky mood.

Please note, I've nothing against Wicca, and a great deal for paganism, in fact.  (My Beloved self-indentified, once upon a time, as a Druid.  One of our first dates had for purpose my introduction to a certain tree he knew.)

In 2009, I'd never followed a missing child case before, not with any sense of personal commitment, and I tended to believe in the integrity of anyone I "met" who shared my interest in this lost little girl.  Yes -- even online. Call it an exaggerated extension of my own sense of virtue. This tendency has caused me a whole host of difficulties and despite being made to attend workshops like How Not To Be (Quite Such) An Idiot and So They Say You're Gullible! -- I've not made much headway into becoming Savvy.  You know, Perceptive.  Shrewd.

What is making me squirm right at this very moment is my desire to Show-and-Tell, to sit with my Respected and Respectful Readership and vent, saying, "See!  Would you just look at this crap?" It might make me feel less alone in this big warehouse crammed to the rafters with carefully folded, rolled, bagged, and labelled Remnants of Insanity.

[With the help of psychotherapy, I've traced my Insanity Imagery back to the traumas of my youth. When I was but a child of five, I participated in a three-day forced search for the perfect rug to furnish my grandparents' living room.  Dragged from one textile outlet center to another, pushed through a frenzy of opium-drenched bazaars, insidiously trained -- against my will -- to prefer antique silk or wool colored by natural vegetable dye, by the third day of my carpet enslavement, I distinguished Turkish Ladiks from Iranian Kashans, but did so without enjoyment and in near catatonia.  I learned, above all, that the purportedly loving and discerning adults of my sphere had been rendered completely daft, dotty, buggy, batty, bonkers by a bunch of carpet.]

Give me a moment.
I try to remember that these sordid events of my childhood are also the experiences that shaped me into the perfect Caretaker for the Haddock family ancestral manor -- my knowledge of textiles, no matter how horribly obtained, is matched only by my grasp of the history of ductile iron development.

Okay, let's move on, or return, rather, to the online underbelly of internet cause célèbres -- cases that are not confused by truth value or hampered by much reality.

What matters is that folks like Ren not have their nonsense repeated, especially in a forum designed for the sole furtherance of mine own ridiculousness. There are, also, responsible members of his "community" who have begun to take him to task, as thankless an endeavor as I can imagine:

I think you are just using her as a vehicle to promote your non-existent psychic abilities.
I don't believe a single word you have posted about your supposed involvement in the matter, mainly because you have not posted any evidence indicating it is anything but another one of your fantasies.

Suffice it to say that Ren sometimes asserts findings from his Remote Viewings that could ruin a person.  He dreams, intuits, and magicks lists of potential child kidnappers;  He publishes small facts about real people with real names, with addresses, with jobs and telephone numbers, with shoe sizes and religious affiliations, and, sometimes, with tender children of their own.  He dribbles someone's reality all over his virtual pages and then illustrates them with, say, a helpful Google satellite view of their neighborhood.

You pray that it ends there, but it never does.

In short order, some poor fool, a Gullible, if you like, stumbles upon Ren's assertions through a search for "Lindsey Baum." To Our Bewildered One, not privy to the post-upon-post and site-by-site build-up of Ren's psychic babbling, it might well seem that here was someone with an insider's access to information.  Finally, some details about this innocent child's disappearance;  Finally, someone to blame!  How very exciting, how easily repeated, how effortlessly transformed from Pure Detritus into Semblances of Truth.

It's a fascinating but ugly process, watching inanity be teased from such threads, slowly divorced from the original conning murky source.  A name catches on, an idea takes hold, fevered brains go to work... and within days there's been so much cutting-and-pasting, citing-and-conniving, that you could find a housebound home-schooling Mom in Tucson blogging in red-faced exasperation about Ren's "suspects" and how these Walking Moral Turpitudes have repeatedly lied to the police and totally escaped justice... Though when they find time for police interviews is hard to figure, given that the pediatric sex orgies in the half-finished basements of their double-wides cannot long be left unattended.

It's a wacky world, and Lindsey, in one form or another, is out in it, lost.

If you have any information regarding Lindsey Baum,

please call the Grays Harbor County Sheriff's Office

at 866-915-8299 [Tip Hotline].

NATIONAL CENTER FOR MISSING & EXPLOITED CHILDREN

1-800-843-5678 (1-800-THE-LOST)

McCleary Police Department (Washington) 1-360-533-8765

Or simply call 911.