Harbor College professor responds to Fritz Coleman article: 'I want my side of the story to be told'
This arrived tonight from Dr. Melanie Renfrew, the Harbor College geography professor convicted of violating an order not to harass TV weatherman Fritz Coleman. It is exactly as it came in as I promised her. Renfrew provided the photos on the jump.
9/3/09 "I want my side of the story to be told": Dr. Renfrew responds.
Editors, Daily Breeze
Cc: L.A. Harbor College Faculty and Staff
Dear Editors and Harbor Colleagues and Friends,
I'm already getting fan mail: at least some people have a brain.
In your front page article in today's paper, "Professor convicted of harassing weatherman," "Professor convicted of harassing weatherman," the first sentence is a lie: I only wrote Mr. Fritz Coleman in 2007, not "for 2 years." You are expanding the damages against me from this
poor man's confusion.
I did not call the media because I was trying to protect both of our reputations because it was a misunderstanding, and I went to court 7 times declaring, "NOT GUILTY" to his bogus charges that I was "stalking" and "harassing" him: that is the real story. It is a "celebrity meltdown," and I feel bad for him, and the others at NBC whom I wrote trying to help them see obvious things they were not seeing. That is what I finally pled "no contest to," writing to others at NBC trying to help them understand the L.A. weather so they could help their paranoid colleague. Burbank is over the hill. I will never agree that I "harassed" him, only that he perceived it that way. I was trying to make him laugh in a loving, sisterly way, and he confused me with someone who was "stalking him for years," and he told everyone it was me. That does not make it fact.
Communication is the "call" of an educator, and especially of a Geographer Professor, because geographic ignorance is so widespread. NBC viewers have a right to correct information, but they forbid it.
Our constitution guarantees that people are innocent until proven guilty, but everyone has treated me as "guilty until proven innocent," and that's what has caused me so much pain. I only conceded to an abbreviated plea on the 8th trip to the Burbank courthouse because I was diagnosed with a cancerous tumor, and do not have time to keep addressing this idiocy. I believe the pain of being falsely accused and slandered wore down my immune system, and I could no longer fight off the cancerous cells.
I believe the whole thing is a huge gender crime against me. Men can joke around with men with impunity, but if a woman sends in humor and correct facts, the fastest way to discredit her is call her a sexual predator. The Daily Breeze choice of headlines and wording reveals your gender bias as well. I'm as innocent as they come. Men side with men, and even in your article, you were happy to call Dr. Hensel with his title, but never mentioned that I'm Dr. Renfrew. It's prejudice against women and prejudice against professors.
9/3/09 "I want my side of the story to be told": Dr. Renfrew responds.
Editors, Daily Breeze
Cc: L.A. Harbor College Faculty and Staff
Dear Editors and Harbor Colleagues and Friends,
I'm already getting fan mail: at least some people have a brain.
In your front page article in today's paper, "Professor convicted of harassing weatherman," "Professor convicted of harassing weatherman," the first sentence is a lie: I only wrote Mr. Fritz Coleman in 2007, not "for 2 years." You are expanding the damages against me from this
poor man's confusion. I did not call the media because I was trying to protect both of our reputations because it was a misunderstanding, and I went to court 7 times declaring, "NOT GUILTY" to his bogus charges that I was "stalking" and "harassing" him: that is the real story. It is a "celebrity meltdown," and I feel bad for him, and the others at NBC whom I wrote trying to help them see obvious things they were not seeing. That is what I finally pled "no contest to," writing to others at NBC trying to help them understand the L.A. weather so they could help their paranoid colleague. Burbank is over the hill. I will never agree that I "harassed" him, only that he perceived it that way. I was trying to make him laugh in a loving, sisterly way, and he confused me with someone who was "stalking him for years," and he told everyone it was me. That does not make it fact.
Communication is the "call" of an educator, and especially of a Geographer Professor, because geographic ignorance is so widespread. NBC viewers have a right to correct information, but they forbid it.Our constitution guarantees that people are innocent until proven guilty, but everyone has treated me as "guilty until proven innocent," and that's what has caused me so much pain. I only conceded to an abbreviated plea on the 8th trip to the Burbank courthouse because I was diagnosed with a cancerous tumor, and do not have time to keep addressing this idiocy. I believe the pain of being falsely accused and slandered wore down my immune system, and I could no longer fight off the cancerous cells.
I believe the whole thing is a huge gender crime against me. Men can joke around with men with impunity, but if a woman sends in humor and correct facts, the fastest way to discredit her is call her a sexual predator. The Daily Breeze choice of headlines and wording reveals your gender bias as well. I'm as innocent as they come. Men side with men, and even in your article, you were happy to call Dr. Hensel with his title, but never mentioned that I'm Dr. Renfrew. It's prejudice against women and prejudice against professors.
For a whole generation, no one at NBC L.A. or NBC Universal noticed
that their station was reporting East winds ("offshore") when the winds
in L.A. Basin were repeatedly coming from the West. Accuweather's
meteorologists didn't, either. The Weather Central meteorologists who
write for the L.A. Times finally agreed to eliminate the word
"offshore" when I sent them records repeatedly that showed the onshore
winds are stronger in the afternoon than offshore ones at night.
I am a servant of the people of L.A.: I've had 4-5000 students at
Harbor College, and since 1997, I've led 330+ nature walks and field
trips to teach geography outdoors in beautiful locations, including
200+ in our Harbor wetlands around Machado Lake. I train teachers in
geography for UCLA, CSUDH and CSULB, L.A. and Orange County Departments
of Education. I taught teachers 3 summers in Egypt and Palau. I do
not harangue people about environmental problems: I want them to fall
in love with Earth's beauty, and want to take care of it. I see faces
all the time outdoors, and when it is hot and dry, people feel sick.
When I've urged them to drink water to combat it, they return with joy
and tell me their pain went away when they began drinking water. I
stopped needing ibuprofen when I realized I could drink more water.
At the original hearing in March 2008, with Mr. Coleman's "request to stop harassment," I worked >100 hours on my response to explain the wind and health issues, and that both perceptually and factually, "offshore" is never a good term for a land audience. It is a marine term, and we are not in a boat. Around the world, winds are named from their source, not their destination. It takes more "synaptic zigzags" in the spatial brain for people to backtrack and understand the desert characteristics of our High-pressure weather, and remember to prepare with water. People faint from dizziness and are rushed to E.R.'s, and get better when hooked to an I.V. It is not necessary if they are educated.
Sharp changes in air pressure, temperature, and humidity make people's cells swell in and out, and if we become dehydrated, there is no "pillow" of watery cells to cushion the nerves. It is the gradient, or change from ocean to desert air (and currently, to tropical humidity), that affects our cells at the microscopic level. "Try drinking more water and you'll see." "Learn the weather, and you'll see."
At the original hearing, the Burbank Court bailiff never called my name, the last on a very long list, to sign to agree to a pro tem judge. Thinking they go in order and we wouldn't be called before lunch, I stepped out shortly, and Mr. Coleman's lawyer made it go through when I was in the next room. They saw me come with fat documents in my defense, including data from all my research to explain, and my colorful jacket and backpack in the front court seat, intending to return. Anyone with an ounce of a conscience would have thought, "Maybe she's in the next room, and we should hear what she has to say."
By silencing and slandering me as a criminal, Fritz Coleman and NBC are not friends of education, nor friends of people in L.A. Basin or any of the beach communities: if they were, just one NBC employee could have come to the beach even one time, and watched the way our West winds pick up between 11 and 1 on sunny days, when he was predicting "offshore winds." Your paper is named after this "daily breeze." I was trying to help. Flags and trees start blowing West to East, not East to West. Satellite photos show progressive evaporation
of
high-altitude cirrus clouds and advection from East to West, but on the
ground where people live, we have West to East winds.
In today's article, your sequence makes it sound that I approached Mr. Coleman at Knott's and kept writing him in violation of the restraining order: I did not. He is phobic: the order and court papers have many lies in them. It is not my fault if he's so paranoid, or if someone else was stalking him and he thought it was me.
Also, your reporter asked me which channel I now watch. I said, "I still like Channel 4," but your article made it like a soap opera that I was still watching "him." The truth is, I like Colleen Williams and the reporters as if they are my brothers and sisters, often skip the weather segment, and can't respect a station that treats viewers like this, or has moronic "Locals Only" commercials. It's dramatic to use criminal language and paint me as the obsessed one, but isn't it Mr. Coleman's obsession to silence me from writing to his colleagues?
Can't NBC see that if they're in 4th place, that their "Locals Only" campaign is rejecting of viewers, not welcoming?
One plea the Burbank city attorney first offered me was to agree to a "year of psychological counseling," as if that would convince me the winds were coming from the East. My efforts to communicate are 100% innocent and for public health and good cheer, and he is 100% guilty for lying about me in the court records and slandering my reputation like this. They don't check their facts or flags over at NBC, and your article today perpetuates his prejudice against me. I call the NBC Burbank studio, "The Haunted Mansion." (See photo.)
Dr. Melanie Renfrew
Melanie Patton Renfrew, Ph.D.
Professor of Geography
Los Angeles Harbor College
1111 Figueroa Place
Wilmington, CA 90744
www.lahc.edu/earthscience/geography/
Slide shows: http://picasaweb.google.com/Dr.MelanieRenfrew/
Dr. Renfrew's Geography Blog: http://www.lahc.edu/rss/geog.xml (Readable on Firefox, a new "Geography Field Trip" website on Google is in the works.)
I am a servant of the people of L.A.: I've had 4-5000 students at
Harbor College, and since 1997, I've led 330+ nature walks and field
trips to teach geography outdoors in beautiful locations, including
200+ in our Harbor wetlands around Machado Lake. I train teachers in
geography for UCLA, CSUDH and CSULB, L.A. and Orange County Departments
of Education. I taught teachers 3 summers in Egypt and Palau. I do
not harangue people about environmental problems: I want them to fall
in love with Earth's beauty, and want to take care of it. I see faces
all the time outdoors, and when it is hot and dry, people feel sick.
When I've urged them to drink water to combat it, they return with joy
and tell me their pain went away when they began drinking water. I
stopped needing ibuprofen when I realized I could drink more water.At the original hearing in March 2008, with Mr. Coleman's "request to stop harassment," I worked >100 hours on my response to explain the wind and health issues, and that both perceptually and factually, "offshore" is never a good term for a land audience. It is a marine term, and we are not in a boat. Around the world, winds are named from their source, not their destination. It takes more "synaptic zigzags" in the spatial brain for people to backtrack and understand the desert characteristics of our High-pressure weather, and remember to prepare with water. People faint from dizziness and are rushed to E.R.'s, and get better when hooked to an I.V. It is not necessary if they are educated.
Sharp changes in air pressure, temperature, and humidity make people's cells swell in and out, and if we become dehydrated, there is no "pillow" of watery cells to cushion the nerves. It is the gradient, or change from ocean to desert air (and currently, to tropical humidity), that affects our cells at the microscopic level. "Try drinking more water and you'll see." "Learn the weather, and you'll see."
At the original hearing, the Burbank Court bailiff never called my name, the last on a very long list, to sign to agree to a pro tem judge. Thinking they go in order and we wouldn't be called before lunch, I stepped out shortly, and Mr. Coleman's lawyer made it go through when I was in the next room. They saw me come with fat documents in my defense, including data from all my research to explain, and my colorful jacket and backpack in the front court seat, intending to return. Anyone with an ounce of a conscience would have thought, "Maybe she's in the next room, and we should hear what she has to say."
By silencing and slandering me as a criminal, Fritz Coleman and NBC are not friends of education, nor friends of people in L.A. Basin or any of the beach communities: if they were, just one NBC employee could have come to the beach even one time, and watched the way our West winds pick up between 11 and 1 on sunny days, when he was predicting "offshore winds." Your paper is named after this "daily breeze." I was trying to help. Flags and trees start blowing West to East, not East to West. Satellite photos show progressive evaporation
of
high-altitude cirrus clouds and advection from East to West, but on the
ground where people live, we have West to East winds. In today's article, your sequence makes it sound that I approached Mr. Coleman at Knott's and kept writing him in violation of the restraining order: I did not. He is phobic: the order and court papers have many lies in them. It is not my fault if he's so paranoid, or if someone else was stalking him and he thought it was me.
Also, your reporter asked me which channel I now watch. I said, "I still like Channel 4," but your article made it like a soap opera that I was still watching "him." The truth is, I like Colleen Williams and the reporters as if they are my brothers and sisters, often skip the weather segment, and can't respect a station that treats viewers like this, or has moronic "Locals Only" commercials. It's dramatic to use criminal language and paint me as the obsessed one, but isn't it Mr. Coleman's obsession to silence me from writing to his colleagues?
Can't NBC see that if they're in 4th place, that their "Locals Only" campaign is rejecting of viewers, not welcoming?
One plea the Burbank city attorney first offered me was to agree to a "year of psychological counseling," as if that would convince me the winds were coming from the East. My efforts to communicate are 100% innocent and for public health and good cheer, and he is 100% guilty for lying about me in the court records and slandering my reputation like this. They don't check their facts or flags over at NBC, and your article today perpetuates his prejudice against me. I call the NBC Burbank studio, "The Haunted Mansion." (See photo.)
Dr. Melanie Renfrew
Melanie Patton Renfrew, Ph.D.
Professor of Geography
Los Angeles Harbor College
1111 Figueroa Place
Wilmington, CA 90744
www.lahc.edu/earthscience/geography/
Slide shows: http://picasaweb.google.com/Dr.MelanieRenfrew/
Dr. Renfrew's Geography Blog: http://www.lahc.edu/rss/geog.xml (Readable on Firefox, a new "Geography Field Trip" website on Google is in the works.)
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Larry Altman has covered crime in the South Bay since 1990. He's seen it all - the missing model who turned up dead in the desert, the wives found dead in trunks, the high-school coaches who get a little too close to their players. He drives his young colleagues nuts with his "I remember when" stories. He welcomes your tips and observations about the present, and you can mix in a little Lakers basketball talk if you like.
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Written like someone with a few screws loose.
I sympathize with Dr. R.'s battle with clarity. But she has fallen into a process that has, in effect, raised the issue and brought the terminology into public view. It has become a "you're crazy!" "no, you're crazy!" name-calling public pissing match (with the Daily Breeze twiddling its thumbs to the side, wearing a "who...me?" expression).
It's clear (there's that word again) that she's factually correct. Deeply so. And that is her crime. Caring about the facts and being an educated female with a mouth. I wish her luck with her health (and her book).
If there are loose screws, they are in prose style and not so much in content.Everything is true, e.g. Winds are named for their point of origin, people become dangerously dehydrated when these kinds of atmospheric conditions exist, and men treat insistent women with mockery and condescension. Dr. Melanie can correspond with me anytime; I understand what she's saying very readily.
She's no screwier than most professors. The judge should have thrown Fritz out; she's nonviolent and is scientifically right. This proves most TV watchers don't know the difference between phobias and photons.
I feel the Daily Breeze has broken some laws here.
If you read her side and court documents it will show that the story was a total misrepresentation of the facts. I surely hope the new owners of this once stellar rag see the truth and fire the editors that let this story get published. As for truth in newspapers, there has been very little of it for quite awhile. I hope there is a lawyer out there who will bankrupt this paper, this will take care of the non firing of the current editor.
If a retraction is not put on the front page soon, I will be another non-subscriber, we have enough biased news already, please just tell us the facts, not what the corporate giants want you to say, give us news, not slander
This lady is psycho... nobody cares about her crusade to "educate" Fritz Coleman.
All Fritz wanted was this woman to stop bothering him with her crusade, right or wrong. She not only refused, but started contacting all of his colleagues as well. That's pretty obsessive... and if I were Fritz, who has probably had to contend with plenty of crazies through the years (trust me, local TV personalities get a lot of nutty mail -- and several have been killed through the years by deranged viewers), I would have been a little freaked out to. Especially when he asked her to stop contacting him, and she refused. This has nothing to do with her being right or wrong -- it sounds like she's right -- but she needed to let it go, and she didn't.
...but she was only trying to be SISTERLY and LOVING...
She went too far, and got herself a restraining order. She violated that restraining order, and they have given her a second chance. Regardless of scientific terminology, she was wrong. I think she should have taken their offer of counselling, it sounds like she has a problem with perspective, if nothing else.
God was calling her? Skype?
This woman is obviously a nut. Just look at her rant: "Whahhhhhhhh. Poor me." Makes you feel bad for her. I wonder how many cats she has.
I feel sorry for this woman's students.
What a whack job…. How many students she has or the number of walks she’s been on has no relevance at all to her state of mind. Drink water? Daah! At least 64oz a day!
Good god! What are we teaching are kids with teachers like this?
For your own sake lady, LET IT GO!! Not only does no one care, your crusade to "educate" the world violated poor Fritz's rights to not feel threatened. If he is wrong with his terminology change the channel & watch Dallas Raines & his George Hamilton tan or Jackie Johnson & her tight sweaters (always a much better option!). It is easy- leave him alone & change the channel. You deserve everything that you got for harassing Fritz. And anyone who doesn't think so should be stalked by someone who has obvious mental issues & tell me how comfortable it makes you. Professor or not, this woman has no right to harass anyone. Period.
Dr. Melanie Renfrew is one of the most dedicated instructors I have ever met. I believe what she is saying is true. It's too bad she didn't have the right lawyers to defend her properly. She could probably sue them for character assaination. This case should have been thrown out. Perhaps the best thing for her to do, is to write a book about her (theory) ideas and explain it properly.
Someone needs to help her write that book. Her writing skills are not much to be desired.
Trurth...said? Do you have a spelling problem or an identity problem. How is it possible that a few scientific letters from a Ph.D can be translated into someone was stalking that ugly grey haired old man????