Piece Of Art

Wesley Neal Higdon, 25, who killed five people and then died by suicide in a "rampage" at the Atlantis Plastics injection molding manufacturing facility in Henderson, Kentucky, called his girlfriend two hours before the shootings to warn her that he was going to kill his boss, police told the media on June 25, 2008. Henderson is a city located in Henderson County, along the Ohio River in Western Kentucky. It was called "Red Banks" by the native Americans who originally lived and hunted there because of the reddish clay soil on the banks of the river. For more than 100 years the city has been home to the Southern Cherokee Nation. Henderson's roots lie in a scheme by a North Carolina judge, Colonel Richard Henderson, and a group of investors who sought to buy much of modern-day Kentucky and Tennessee from 1,200 Cherokee Indians gathered at Sycamore Shoals (located at present day Elizabethton, Tennessee) and later resell these frontier lands to settlers. Henderson...

One of the myths that is quickly overturned in any good suicide prevention program is that "talking about suicide causes suicide." I repeat, that's a myth. Indeed, the suicide individual, whether youth or elderly, is literally dying to have someone talk to them about their pain and their thoughts of suicide. It is already "inside" of them. People want to live, and yet infrequently feel the "only way out" of their pain is by dying. The copycat factor comes into play to reinforce the notion that it is the only option open, when it is presented specifically, repeatedly, and impersonally by the media, without protective factors. Unfortunately, in a new article, "Suicide Sensitivity" by Rob Capriccioso, in Indian Times for June 18, 2008, the wrong message seems to have taken hold among my Rosebud Sioux brothers and sisters - or so seems the case from the reporter's story. First of all, Capriccioso breaks every rule in terms of media guidelin...

Robert Stamps, 58 (his wife said he was 57), one of the 13 students shot on the Kent State University campus by the National Guard on May 4, 1970, died Wednesday, June 11, 2008. Stamps, who passed away in Madison just east of Tallahassee, was an observer sympathetic to the anti-war protests the day of the shootings and was shot in the buttocks while fleeing the tear gas gunfire. Alan Canfora, another of the shot students who now runs Kent's May 4 Center, said Stamps had protested other times and always believed the Guard shooters should be tried for murder. Stamps died of pneumonia, according to an e-mail his wife Teresa Sumrall sent to friends. Canfora said Stamps had contracted Lyme disease years ago at a May 4 event at Mohican State Park and had been bedridden with it the last few years. He was the second of the nine students injured that day to die. James Russell, the oldest of the nine, died at his Oregon home last year at the age of 60. After the shootings, Stamps graduated w...

In three separate incidents in Texas, Pennsylvania, and Colorado, stabbings at or near Wal-Marts have been in the news this week. The timing may be by chance or related to the Akihabara district stabbing spree in downtown Tokyo, which left seven dead last Sunday, June 8th. A Wal-Mart employee was arrested after he allegedly stabbed a teenage customer inside a Pearland, Texas store, Houston's KPRC Local 2 reported. Pearland police said the stabbing happened at the Wal-Mart in the 1700 block of East Broadway in Pearland, Brazoria County, at about 10:15 p.m. Wednesday, June 11, 2008. Investigators said a 16-year-old male customer got into an argument with the employee over a girl. The teen got upset and punched the employee, detectives said. The employee, 18-year-old Ray Canales, became enraged, pulled out a pocketknife and allegedly stabbed the customer five times about the upper back and face. The victim was taken by helicopter to Memorial Hermann Hospital in serious but stable co...

The major graphic events occurring in The Happening are massive waves of suicides. This new film by M. Night Shyamalan is so very obvious in its opening date of Friday the 13th of June. It is, according to a promo release, "a paranormal thriller in which a family must survive a global environmental crisis. The film will portray the earth's vegetation unleashing airborne neurotoxins that cause all those who breathe it to commit violent suicide." Perhaps Mr. Shyamalan should have consulted a few studies on the role of graphic depictions of suicides in the visual media before he considered this motion picture? The Minneapolis Star-Tribune said it well in their headline for June 12, 2008: "'The Happening' should never have happened" . Excerpts from the Minnesota review give a sense of the graphic suicides awaiting theater goers who wish to have a pleasant night out, expecting one of Mr. Shyamalan's psychological brain teasers: In an opening of Hitchc...

There has been a stabbing spree in the Akihabara, a video game and robotics district of downtown Tokyo, on Sunday. CNN/AP is reporting that a man used a rented van to run over a group of people, and then jumped out and stabbed 18, killing at least 7, in this special video game district of Tokyo. This occurred, local Japanese time, on Sunday afternoon, June 8, 2008, according to a Tokyo fire official. The dead included six men, ranging in age from 19 to 74, - one may have died of a heart attack - and a 21-year-old woman, according to a Tokyo metropolitan police officer. Eleven others were wounded, police said, with two critically injured. "The suspect told police that he came to Akihabara to kill people," Jiro Akaogi, a spokesman for the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, told The Associated Press. "He said he was tired of life. He said he was sick of everything," Akaogi added. Japanese media reported that the suspect told investigators he was 25 years old. He wa...

Forty years ago, the world was young and innocent. Then, in 1968, an incredible stretch of assassinations and assassination attempts began in April, and came to an apex during this week in June. The victims were so young. The heart of the youth movement was assaulted. Everyone recalls MLK and RFK, but they were not the only ones. Have you ever noticed the ages of the victims? Martin Luther King, Jr., 39, was assassinated on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee. King was shot on the 4th of April, while standing on the 2nd floor balcony, near his room 306 at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. On April 7, 1968, Black Panther Bobby Hutton, 18, who held the title of the Minister of Defense, was killed by police during a firefight. Eldridge Cleaver was wounded in the shootout. Two policemen were shot in the incident. Rudi Dutschke (born Alfred Willi Rudi Dutschke) was the most prominent spokesperson of the left-wing German student movement of the 1960s. On April 11, 1968, Dutschke, when 28 ...