posted on August 9, 2006 10:04:20 AM new
"My son has a battery powered black light that he uses to go out at night and hunt scorpions. Did you know they glow in the dark?"
Profe-When we were anchored in Na Trang,S.Vietnam we found a scorpion in the back of our ship.I dont know how the damn thing got on.I dont remember it glowing in the dark,but this was 40 years ago.
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If you dont want to hear the truth....dont ask the question.
posted on August 9, 2006 03:34:36 PM new
Maggie, you may want to read this story about another Katrina related depression case. Another story here.
Photographer for 'Times-Pic' Arrested As He Begs Cops to Kill Him
NEW YORK A photographer for the Times-Picayune of New Orleans who has undergone severe personal trauma since Hurricana Katrina hit was arrested Tuesday after trying to get police to shoot him to death. Police said he claimed he was depressed after he found out he didn't have enough insurance money to rebuild his Katrina-damaged home.
They said he was seeking "suicide-by-cop," but police who found him tasered him instead.
Earlier published accounts had revealed that he had recently taken a leave of absence from the paper and was undergoing therapy.
John McCusker, the photographer, was being held under psychiatric observation and faces unspecified charges.
He had been one of the paper's key photographers in the immediate aftermath of Katrina. "Katrina didn't flood New Orleans - government failure did," he told visiting students from Brown University recently.
McCusker is also known locally as a jazz expert who gives guided "Cradle of Jazz" tours in the city in a van on Saturday mornings and speaks on the subject. His photos of the Preservation Hall band and other jazz performers have also gained attention, and he produced a 53-minute DVD called "The Story of Jazz: New Orleans Stomp."
A photo taken by McCusker -- at a minor league baseball Zephyrs game -- appears on the newspaper's Web site today, but it is unclear when it was taken.
Police said they noticed McCusker driving erratically in the city on Tuesday evening, then hit several parked cars when they pulled him over. McCusker rolled the window down and said several times, "Just kill me, get it over with, kill me."
When that didn't happen, he put the car in reverse and pinned one of the officers between the rear bumper of his car and the officer's cruiser, police said, and he suffered minor injuries. McCusker drove away, to fabled St. Charles Avenue, "going out of his way to knock down any signs advertising construction," police told the newspaper.
When he finally stopped, police had to taser him -- as he again begged them to kill him.
The police official said, according to newspapers, that this was only one of many examples of the mental damage that Katrina has caused, "and he sees it all the time now."
Immediately after Katrina struck, numerous Times-Picayune photographers fanned out on their own in the city, but McCusker was the only one who traveled with a key reporting team as they roamed the city. In fact, they stayed at times at McCusker's mother's house.
McCusker is a graduate of local Loyola University and worked on the paper there. He was a staff writer at the Times-Picayune several years ago and often wrote about jazz, including a three-part series in 1993.
A Boston Globe story about his jazz tours in 2002 noted that he had started doing that about five years earlier, feeling that tourists did not really know the background there. To that end he drove them all over the city, playing CDs, and showing off, for example, Jelly Roll Morton's house and a club where Louis Armstrong performed.
The current issue of American Journalism Reviews includes a New Orleans feature that mentions McCusker in several paragraphs. It said he went back to work on June 20 after taking a leave and attending therapy sessions three times a week. He explained that he had essentially become nonfunctional, "a joker who had become humorless, a man who had given up cigarettes 20 years ago who was smoking two packs a day."
Besides losing his house, McCucker had photographed that post-hurricane catastrophe. "You have to understand the depth of the horror that the city was," McCusker says in the article. "Tens of thousands of people on the freeways stranded. The children begging for food and water. The looting at the Wal-Mart. It was of biblical proportions." Devastated, he was not able to help his own family very much, he admits.
posted on August 9, 2006 03:49:47 PM new
Helen, I heard the story this afternoon on the news. How very sad. I think this disaster has impacted peoples lives more than we can imagine. Call it shell shock or PTSD, so many have been effected and it will show itself in many ways for many years to come. I know for myself every time they mention a disturbance heading toward the Gulf, I panic. If another big one hits here, we've decided that will it be the last time for us..we will move.
posted on August 9, 2006 05:39:38 PM newNow whenever he talks about his son I'm going to be picturing Pugsley riding out on the range.
Good one mags
Here's a different image for ya fenix, he's actually 5' 11" and skinny as a rail at only 13. Coal black hair and dark eyes....takes after his momma. Cuts quite the figure in his 3 inch heels and his grandfather's 1930's vintage "Gus" style Stetson. His sisters are always threatening to beat up some girl or other
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Grow your own Dope. Plant a Republican.
posted on August 10, 2006 04:15:19 AM new
I didn't take offense, it was funny.
Classic, they're cowboy boots, probably more like 2 1/2 inch heels anyhow but he calls them 3's.
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Grow your own Dope. Plant a Republican.
posted on August 10, 2006 07:08:21 AM new
That poor child. Tall, good looking kid with not just one but TWO over protective sisters? He's going to get no action till both are in college.
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People put their hand on the bible, and swear to uphold the constitution. They do not put their hand on the constitution, and swear to uphold the bible.
posted on August 10, 2006 02:00:39 PM new
Maggie, I really feel for you. You've been through so much in such a short period of time. It's enough to make anyone shut down. Just keep repeating to yourself that when one door shuts, another one opens. It's always true.
Also, it never hurts to think about the good things you're blessed with like I do... breathtakingly good physical looks, the best sense of humour, and designer jeans.
P.S. Did you know cat pee glows under a black light too? Great if you want to check your carpets for "accidents".
