Piece Of Art

by Loren Coleman ©2012 As soon as the new HBO film, Philip Kaufman's  Hemingway & Gellhorn began, I knew I was visually going to enjoy this experience. Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn, 1940. To view this television movie, which did not seem like a small screen offering, is to travel back in time, in grays, sepias, and midcentury mosaics. The movie manifests itself as a sensory marvel. Today's media are fixated on talking about the blindingly passionate nude scenes between Ernest Hemingway (played by Clive Owen) and Martha Gellhorn (played by Nicole Kidman). Sure, it happens as bombs go off all around them in her Madrid bed, during the Spanish Civil War. Yes, those are great minutes, to view, to take in for their pure energy, irony, and humor. But there was something else that captured my attention from the beginning, which almost sounds like one of the carefully placed  clichés  you hear throughout this film. Hemingway & Gellhorn demonstrates a remarka...

After hearing sports news commentators talk about a subject they are misreading , it is time to revisit the subject of Junior Seau's suicide . Speculation is one thing, and has been wild . But there is no reason to not look at his suicide based upon science. Much decoding occurs when forensically examining suicide after the fact, of course, and no one really knows what a suicidal individual is thinking. Their thought processes are confused, so for relatively normal human beings to try to figure out what caused the suicide is difficult. Nevertheless, from the research, interviews, and decades of suicidology (the formal study of suicide), a few insights can be shared. Junior Seau's SUV, October 2010. Let us look, therefore, first, at one important piece of obvious misinformation being shared about suicide, suicide ideation, and the hidden signs of suicides concerning Junior Seau's suicide. One of the most common items heard from sports newscasters and sports talk radio perso...

Dev Meyers of the Pittsburgh History Examiner has written an item entitled " Another Suicide at Penn State ," on November 17, 2011. Christian Amos Goodall ( July 3, 1981 - November 2, 2010 ) Meyers notes, in part:  The law firm  Goodall and Yurchak  may soon be the next subject of investigation in the Penn State child molestation scandal. This is the firm that Judge Leslie Dutchcot belongs to. [On November 16, 2011] , Judge Dutchcot was removed from the Jerry Sandusky case.   Attorney Amos Goodall recently represented Ray Gricar's daughter in declaring him dead.  This conveneniently happened just several months before the Penn State scandal broke. What has been kept as quiet as a mouse is the suicide of Amos Goodall's son  Christian Amos Goodall .... He was 29 years old. At 29, Christian Goodall would have been the perfect age to have known the  Second Mile  boys, and to have been familiar with many of the details in the scandal. Ray Fran...

The number of shooting incidents has increased dramatically in the USA since the Fort Hood incident. Whether the reasons are the copycat effect, behavior contagion, media reporting increase, or coincidence doesn't matter. It is happening and we are in the midst of a major cluster. Another shooting has occurred. On Tuesday, January 19, 2010, a gunman went on a "rampage" (as the media is terming it) in the Virginia, killing eight people and shooting a police helicopter taking part in a hunt for him, officials said. A 39-year-old man was believed to be surrounded early Wednesday after the shootings in a rural district near Appomattox (where the surrender of Confederate General Robert E. Lee took place, ending the Civil War) in southern Virginia. Police confirmed that there were eight dead. The suspect, named as Christopher Speight, shot a helicopter that was called to the scene at least four times, forcing it to make an emergency landing, officials said. [Some of the first s...

Saipan will forever be remembered as the site of one of World War II's deadliest suicidal melodramas. Now a new incident has unfolded on the island, beginning and ending near those past cliffs of suicide. Saipan is often recalled as the setting where thousands of Japanese soldiers and local civilians jumped to their deaths from the island's cliffs as the American assault drew to a close in July 1944. As the battle of Saipan reached its final days, Japanese soldiers and panicked civilians made their way north to the cliffs. The civilians and soldiers leapt from the island's Marpi Point and other cliffs, dying on the rocks or drowning in the sea. Now a shooting spree that began near one of those points has ended in suicide near another of those same cliffs. A gunman went on a rampage on the Pacific resort island of Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands, on Friday, November 20, 2009, killing four people and wounding six others before fatally shooting himself, officials said. Publ...

There is something strange going on with a seemingly isolated story quietly occurring in Utah-Colorado. It has come to involve suicides, Indian artifacts, and perhaps, most covertly and confusingly, Mormons. On June 10, 2009, two dozen people* were indicted after a sweeping investigation into ancient artifacts allegedly stolen from public and tribal lands. The indicted are accused of stealing, receiving, or trying to sell American Indian bowls, stone pipes, sandals, arrowheads, jars, pendants, and necklaces. More than 100 agents were involved in the arrests of 23 people. Another person was issued a summons. All were part of a tight-knit network of people involved in illegally excavating, dealing, and collecting stolen artifacts, said Timothy Fuhrman, of the FBI office in Salt Lake City. Bureau of Land Management and FBI agents used a confidential source who in 2007 and 2008 paid more than $335,000 for 256 stolen artifacts, according to court documents. The local reaction was swift and...

Edwin S. Shneidman has died. I knew Ed, and he was a kind enough gentleman to praise my "copycat effect" work in print. He also understood the "twilight language," being a scholar of Herman Melville . See, for example, Henry A. Murray, "Dead to the World: The Passions of Herman Melville," in Essays in Self -Destruction , ed. Edwin S. Shneidman (New York: Science House, 1967). Schneidman truly was one of those rare father-figures in the field of suicide prevention. His kind demeanor touched many who were lucky enough to have worked with him. He always passed along encouraging thoughts about my research in his letters. What a good soul he had. I can't say much more about him, as I am in a bit of shock to hear this expected but still sad news. Mark Goulston has written a good remembrance at Huffington Post . Also, allow me to pass along this rather complete obit: "Edwin S. Shneidman dies at 91; pioneer in the field of suicide prevention" By...

Will a rash of copycat suicides occur because of graphic wall-to-wall media coverage of future "celebrity suicides" linked to stock market collapses? Reporter Kyle Martin surveyed this blog, The Copycat Effect, and interviewed me for Sunday's article in Hernando Today , a publication of The Tampa Tribune to attempt to answer this question. Link Is Shaky Between Suicide And Economy by Kyle Martin Hernando Today November 23, 2008 It's the kind of water cooler theory that has just enough credibility to sound plausible. As the economy continues to post record losses, it's generally accepted that more people will commit suicide as their 401ks evaporate and unemployment rises. After all, brokers jumped from windows during the market crash of 1929, right? Well, yes and no. Like many rumors, it's necessary to sift through the fiction to find the nuggets of truth that are often the genesis of these stories. First, take a look at the numbers. Records from the medical ...