Piece Of Art

Today, April 19th, in Massachusetts and Maine, is Patriots' Day. Patriots' Day (sometimes incorrectly punctuated Patriot's Day or Patriots Day) is a civic holiday commemorating the anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, the first battles of the American Revolutionary War. It is observed in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and State of Maine (once part of Massachusetts), and is a public school observance day in Wisconsin. Observances and re-enactments of these first battles of the American Revolution occur annually at Lexington Green in Lexington, Massachusetts, (around 6 am) and The Old North Bridge in Concord, Massachusetts (around 9 am). In the morning, a mounted reenactor with State Police escort retraces Paul Revere's ride, calling out warnings the whole way. Since 1969, the holiday has been observed on the third Monday in April, providing a three-day long weekend. In 2010, the date of April 19th falls on the celebrated Patriots' Day holiday on ...

The Canadian media continue their balanced and insightful approach to examining various factors in multiple homicidal-suicidal events. School Shootings Killers often pick special dates for their attack They 'compete' for high body count, expert says Apr 17, 2009 04:30 AM by Trish Crawford, Toronto Star This year, April 20 – Hitler's birthday – will mark the 10th anniversary of the Columbine school killings. And, psychiatric social worker Loren Coleman is worried, because mass killers often choose special dates and anniversaries for their carnage. The killers at Columbine did, by picking the birthday of one of history's monsters. The author of The Copycat Effect (Simon & Schuster) says the amount of attention this anniversary gets may determine whether any other disaffected males bent on vengeance pick April 20 for their act of destruction. "Anniversaries can be dangerous," Coleman says. "These individuals compete with each other." From the 14 de...

Two years ago, NBC News got a package in the mail from the VA Tech killer, Seung-Hui Cho, a South Korean immigrant. The impact of that style of "self-marketing" of mass killings lives on today. We saw it as recently as the self-marketing of 2009's Birmingham killer in his alleged letter to TV channel NY1. The letter, in broken English was from Jiverly Wong, an ethnically Chinese immigrant, who was born in Vietnam. It was mailed, along with his driver's license, his gun permit, and several photos of himself, to News 10 Now in Syracuse, New York. The envelope was twilight languaged in how it was mailed by using three specific stamps: two Purple Hearts and a Liberty Bell. It was sent hours before Wong walked into the American Civic Association and opened fire in one of the worst massacres in the state's history, (13 killed + his own suicide). Wong copycatted other recent mass killers, such as the Bailey, Colorado & Amish schoolhouse (2006) killers and Seung-Hu...

I predicted an increasing build-up in copycat activity as the calendar ticks off days moving towards April 20, 2009, the tenth anniversary of Columbine. Here's the week that just was (click on the dates for full details): Saturday, March 27. A 23-year-old beheads his younger sister Bianca, 5, and kills Samantha Revelus, 17, at their home in Milton, Massachusetts. The killer is killed by police officers. Sunday, March 29. Seven patients and a nurse were killed during a Sunday morning shooting at a Carthage, North Carolina, nursing home. The 45-year-old man accused of carrying out the attack was shot by a police officer, and his condition "is currently unknown." Friday, April 3. A 41-year-old gunman barricaded the back door of a community center with his car and then opened fire on a room full of immigrants taking a citizenship class Friday, killing 13 people before dying by suicide, in Binghamton, New York. Saturday, April 4. The bodies of five children between the ages o...