Autumn, 2008
After the sweltering of August it has cooled down to something more normal. Locals think it is
cool when 75F is the high. The swimming pool, which we finally found by the Audubon Tea House, said they were closing due to the weather. I think it is just right. The N.O. Recreation Department has free swimming pools. Seems to be free classes as well. It was impossible to discern from their web site where these pools were located, however.
Roxanne started first grade at Lusher School, the highest rated public school in la ville. She is having problems with reading and writing, much to my surprise and chagrin. I got a second ferret in Needles; a two month old. The first Zoe died after being snapped at by Jacques the Terrier. Jacques is gone to petfinders and the new Zoe was a lot of fun, but she ran off somehow in late October. This is getting too expensive; I won't be getting another ferret.
Sept, 2007
Kindergarten time for Roxanne. At
Trinidad School in Humboldt, California. Nice little school for this population 300 town. We are trying to get a spot in the Trinidad Bay Trailer Court so that Lucienne can walk Roxie to school and I can go drive a truck. I got my Class A CDL in February but all the jobs here are 70 hour a week log or chip jobs. I don't wanna do that, but have to start getting some miles in, and some Social Security earnings in.
July 2007
You may wish to read
Blog to learn about our nightmare Greyhound bus ride from California to Toronto.
With Lucienne having an immigration card (I-551) and a social security card, and EmileX finally getting a passport, it is time to leave the country. I got flight miles to pay for two tickets from Toronto to PauP, and the Bubba is free, having fewer than two years.
The Bubba's passport arrived in seven (7) weeks, after paying an extra sixty bux for expedited service. The guy at the post office said five months would be the wait without. Good grief, those republicans sure can run an efficient government!
March 2007
We finally had an interview in San Francisco. Their letter told me to bring tax forms for the previous three years, due to my not working for the past seven years and being a poverty level applicant. In the event, our interviewer did not ask to see tax forms, he asked to see photographs of us together. To prove that we actually are married. After 5 years and two kids? huh. I did not have one, and looking on our web pages here to see us would not suffice. He eventually approved us, but we got a call two months later asking for copies of Roxie and Emile-Alex's birth certificates. I know that they were in my application, but hey.
Immigration nightmares have abounded for almost two years. After almost a year of trying to get the United States Immigration and Citizenship Service to acknowledge, then find, our the I-130 petition which was approved in Port-au-Prince (or Mexico City, maybe) we were told to file a new petition here in the USA.
It is starting to get a little difficult to be sympathetic about illegal/undocumented workers when they make it so difficult to get MY WIFE legal.
Starting pre-school again. Ti emile-Alex is crawling all over the place. But not really crawling; he sort of worms around, like a soldier. Likes to stand. Perhaps he will walk without crawling on his knees? They say that happens. No job after actually searching for six months. It actually is difficult for a 57 year old who hasn't worked for 6 years to get a job.
A summer ends. August, 2006. We made it to Santa Cruz for the first time in two years. Picked up my big Taylor guitar which I bought new in 1985. Not big, just bigger than my baby and big baby Taylors. We took the Silver Streak. The price of Kalifornya gasoline makes such expeditions rather expensive. Roxanne says 'actually' a lot. Where did she learn that? She will not speak kreyol/french any more. She understands, but refuses to respond. The school kids trained her out of that.
We have been in Kalifornya since August 2005. It being June 2006 now, we are approaching a year in America, without an immigrant visa for Madam. No prospect of one either. They keep rejecting the application, saying 'send evidence of approval of a form I-130'. A letter from the Consulate in Port au Prince testifying to such approval has always been included, but I cannot get anyone at the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service to read it, or tell me why it is not acceptable. Waiting on Congressmember Mike Thompsons' office to give me an answer. Been waiting four months on that. Listening to a lot of Haitian Radyo on the net.
I've discovered since I've been back in the usa, as well as internet radio. Emusic has unprotected MP3's for sale, legally.
Roxanne spent a year in pre-school, two days a week. She learned English and now refuses to speak Kreyol. Time to take her back to Hayti for French school.
Ti R. Emile Alex came along on Feb 25. He is turning into a person now too.
In the spring of 2005, being tired of the renewed dechoukaj by the remaining supporters of Aristide we applied for an immigrant visa for Lucienne, Madam mwen. Since October 2004 the usa immigration office in Port au Price had told us that no officers were in residence to submit an application to. Finally in April 2005 they said that an officer was there and we could apply. We applied. After a month of being told not to call them, that they would call me, I was told that in fact there was no immigration officer working there, that our application had been sent to Mexico City. After 6 weeks they called with the news that a box was not filled out. I am afraid that I screamed at the woman. Finally in June 2005 they called back with approval. Then we had to make an appointment at the consulate. Good news. But there is not one working at the consulate anymore. Almost everyone has been evacuated due to the assassination attempts against embassy employees. So, we got another tourist visa for Lulu. This one is for only three months, single entry. Hm. Because we have a petition for residence in process. So, we have to contact immigration in the usa and ask for the paperwork to be transferred from the consulate in Port au Prince.
In mid september 2003 we moved up the mountain to Kenscoff, Hayti. Kenscoff is 15 kilometers by road (according to the sign) from PetionVille. Those 15 klicks climb by 1100 meters elevation at the same time. The trip is 45 to 60 minutes depending on the direction. More if there is traffic or a gravel truck blocking the road with wheels off. Sometimes the locals chop down trees and burn tires in the road to protest the gravel trucks killing people as well. That is just heavy weather en Hayti.
Kenscoff has been a good place of refuge during the uprising against the Aristide/Lavalas government in Hayti. During the Lavalas counter offensive of February 25 thru 29 we heard gunfire thru the hills but other than that it was mostly peaceful during the uprising. The counter uprising of Lavalas, beginning in september 2004 was a bit more worrying. This has lasted up to the summer of 2005 at varying intensities. Frequently automatic weapons fire could be heard over the mountains during the spring. A number of houses in Fermathe had home invasions with assassinations and mass rapes. The militants are like that.
I discovered during our sojourn in Hayti that there has been a Lyall family here before me. They talk of a Tonton Lyall who came from Ireland and settled here, leaving two children. Some large house in the Turgeau zone of Port au Prince is known as the Tonton Lyall house.
The remainder of this section consists of previous revision notes, maintained for revision history.
Hokay. It is May 2003. Lyalls {dot} Net is Web Hosted by WEBMASTERS.COM We have had a bad 10 months looking for web providers. The webmaster Soy Devoid moved Lyalls Net from Cruzio, its home since the inception of the World Wide Web.
First we went to Yahoos' web hosting service, Geocities. Geocities did not have cgi-bin so we moved to Freehostingweb. FreeHostingweb worked fine, albeit with only a 25 megabyte website storage limit but they sold off all my email address's, so my secret registration address was rendered useless, with scores of junk mail messages every day. That was bad enuf, but at a price of $45 per year to their in house domain registrar it seemed worth it. Until their registry got hosed and visitors to lyalls.net found "Church on the Web" or "healthychicks.com" in their browser. Two weeks of bounced or unanswered email to their support line made it clear what "free" was worth. Strangely, email kept working.
Since I discovered Webmasters I've been a happy webber. Czech it owt.
In November 1997 I realized that the actual personal home page of Soy Devoid, had become impersonal. The Devoid Zone had started out as somewhat personal, but with a lot of trade union information. So, I put up this About Soy Devoid page.
After putting up Local23.org, I put Lyalls Net up on January 4, 2000. I wanted a permanent but portable net address. Someone had already registered lyall.net but no one is using it. Hm, I should mail info@lyall.net and see who is there.
So....
This is my personal page. The page of J. David Lyall. I've even put in a picture of myself. As of January 31, 2000 The Lyalls have a page. The Coles, my Mothers family, have a page as of July 2000.
On April 30, 2001 I bought a Silver Streak trailer. It is a 1975 model, 26 feet long. The original owner took it on 
one long trip to Canada behind a Chrysler Newport and a few other short trips. The rest of the time it has been in storage. If you do not know about American streamline trailers, Silver Streak was one of the few remaining competitors to Airstream that lasted past the late 70's. The streak was built in El Monte, California up until those late 70's. After that the Silver Streak was assembled in small numbers in Chico. Apparently they were built to order up until 1996; this according to the Silver Streak history at Tom Patterson's site, and Randall Reynolds.
Avion continued on into the late 80's and still exists today, as a unit of Holiday Rambler, but they are no longer of aluminum aircraft style construction. They are fifth wheel trailers. Airstream now stands alone as a conventional pull along, aircraft construction trailer.
The Streak was a very expensive unit to build. They have more interior room than Airstreams, having a flatter roof and more squared off corners, as you can see.
Tom Patterson has a web site with pages about the aircraft construction trailers. He covers the Airstream, Silver Streak and Streamline trailers. The Silver Streak and Streamline look basically identical to me at this point.
The initial J. of my name is pronounced jay period or jay only in the military tradition. My given birth first name was a traditional northern european bible name, but in an old mid-american traditional fashion I was called by my middle name.
My father and my mothers brothers were called by their middle names until the Anglo military dictatorships forced the first, middle initial, last convention upon them. The computer world has regrettably followed that military regimentation style, probably brainwashed by the juvenile school of science fiction stories upon which programming geeks were weaned.
I have played the banjo since my teens and am currently assembling a kit of the first electronic musical instrument. The Theremin was invented shortly after the radio and is lovingly analogue. It is played with the whole body interacting with the magnetic fields generated by the wands of the instrument. Totally cool.
Recently the J. has come to represent the more challenging biblical name Jedidiah.
Jedidiah Daudi is the full Swahili version of my given names. The family name Lyall is the nom of a minor Scottish clan, pledged to the major clan Sinclair, which is itself derived from the Viking princes of Saint Clare of Normandy.
In 1998 I met a Punjabi family at a political event, a campaign ( for Calif assembly member Fred Keely ) gathering. One of the gentlemen told me that the county in Punjab where he grew up was named Lyallpur. In India the county is no longer named that, but his high school retains the name. Some Scottish agent for the Empire had a county named after himself.
Later I heard ( via Email ) from a woman in South Africa whose step father was a Lyall. She told me that he had a very old ring with a Latin inscription, saying that the Lyalls were protectors of kings.
Jedidiah Daudi Lyall, aka Soy Devoid has lived in Santa Cruz California since arriving here in a hippy migration 
of the late 1960's school. In 1970, on Thanksgiving weekend, I relocated to Brookdale, in the Santa Cruz mountains, with a like minded group of Peace, Love and Patchouli Oil folks.
I moved to Pleasure Point in 1974 and bought a run down beach shack two blocks from the shore of Monterey Bay.
When I bought this shack I was collecting unemployment insurance. R.Rex Walters and I borrowed half of the $1800 down payment and moved into a $20,000 house. Shortly afterwards, luckily, I got a job driving a bus, first with the school district, then with the local transit agency.
I never intended for driving a transit bus to be a career, but hey, life happens.
Update! I sold my house in July of the year 2000, six months after retiring from my job of 26 years as a Metro Transit Bus Driver.
I am now wandering trailer trash. Kul!
Oh, what does Soy Devoid mean? It is a Buddhist joke, in spanish. It should parse as I am empty. Soy Devoid was a stage name I adopted. Rather a joke in itself, having a stage name.
Access?
J.David Lyall
2019 Lowerline St
New Orleans, Louisiana
70118
USA
Land Line number (504) 861.1868
Cell Phone (504) 287.9286
AIM instant messenger: jdlyall
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On this new site, Lyalls Net , I have a lot of space. I am recycling old pages from previous incarnations of the web sites which I maintained. Skandha Services previously was/were the intro pages on my commercial pages at Cruzio's commercial site. Since Local 23 got its own domain these Skandha Services pages were sitting idle. They are recycled here, awaiting actual customers for web site creation/design/maintenance/etc/whatever.
