Is Smart Gun Technology Smart Enough? by AWR Hawkins
Columbus, Georgia-based Safe Gun Technologies (SGT) is pushing new smart gun technology. But the new looks a lot like the old, and the same basic problems that have haunted the idea of a smart gun for decades haunt this version as well.
Columbus' WTVM 9 reports that SGT is "working on a finger-print ready security device to be implanted inside guns, enabling the gun owner to be the only one able to fire the weapon."
The SGT device reads the thumb print of the person holding the gun as he or she wraps her hand around it to pull the trigger. This is fundamental smart gun technology, in that it will only fire if the security device recognizes the finger print of the gun owner. But for every problem such a device solves, it opens the door to two or three others.
For example, SGT's device is battery-operated--so what happens if the batteries are low on the night someone breaks into a gun owners' home? Will low battery power render a gun owner defenseless?
Also, what happens if the registered owner is killed by home invaders and another family member picks up the gun to try to defend the home, only to find it will not fire because their finger prints do not match the device? In that situation, the second family member might as well be holding a hammer.
Another issue is cost. SGT is estimating the cost of their device will be $150. But how much will it cost to install it? Moreover, what happens when Democrats in Congress pass legislation forcing such devices to be retrofitted on all guns throughout the country? At that point, the cost of the device becomes a new fee that our government can place on the backs of every gun owner in America.
WTVM 9 asked some of the questions of SGT and also asked what happens if the actual gun owner picks up the weapon in an emergency but can't fire it because his or her fingers are dirty or covered in blood? SGT replied: "Keep in mind that nothing is perfect. We have to start somewhere, and if we don't put in a good effort, then how can we expect to see changes for the better?"
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These demons from my past that haunt me every night and I just can't get through it. If I could forgive them on my own I'd move on and just be done but heaven knows I am only human.
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hey guys... missd u all... :)
confessions r waiting fr u.. :D
ho jaye fir thodi "posting shosting".... ;)
#Rhea <3
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An old man and a woman were married for many years. Whenever there
was a confrontation, yelling could be heard deep into the night. The old
man would shout, "when I die, I will dig my way up and out of the grave and
come back and haunt you for the rest of your life!"
... Neighbours feared him. The old man liked the fact that he was feared.
To everyone's relief, he died of a heart attack when he was 98. His wife
had a closed casket at the funeral.
After the burial, her neighbors, concerned for her safety, asked "Aren't
you afraid that he may indeed be able to dig his way out of the grave and
haunt you for the rest of your life?" The wife said, "Let him dig. I had
him buried upside down. And I know he won't ask for directions.
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August 2001 - I write on Fnord-l about Kit Carson and Eagle Pennell
L. M. Kit Carson married Karen Black and begat
Hunter Carson who stole the show in Wim Wenders'
wunnerful movie, "Paris, Texas". Later, Hunter
appeared with his mommy in this fairly fun
movie about invaders from Mars, the title of
which I done forgot. It wasn't "Mars Attacks"
(which was damned funny!).
Long before all this happened I drove Kit Carson
to Houston in an Alfa Romeo sedan. He asked me
to drive as fast as the car would go and that he
would pay the ticket and I fell for it. We didn't
get a ticket, but it was all for nought because
of a puncture, for which we done had to stop the
car anyhow. He was living in Austin at the time
and working for the guvmint giving away money to
artists. I done forgot the name of the outfit,
but that was back in the days before that Nazi Germany
mentality was so dang apparent here in the U. S. of A.
and people was giving away money for art projects.
I done told Kit I wanted to do a movie about Americans
and automobiles, but didn't follow up on it due to
my drunken behavior. Anyhow, Kit Carson had this
Morgan parked in his driveway and it wasn't running
at all. You know about what a Morgan is, I guess.
It's a little two-seater foreign car. Anyhow, he said
I could drive it around if I could get it to run.
I didn't know exactly what to do with it and neither
did he, but I didn't follow up on it due to my
drunken behavior. He was a nice feller anyhow.
It's a shame, too, because it didn't appear that
much was wrong with that little car and my friend
Eagle and me would have had a lot of fun driving
it. But it's maybe a good thing too because we
might of just wrapped it around a telephone pole
or something because of our drunken behavior.
One night I saw Eagle in one of the bars we used
to haunt and we were generally broke as hell,
but this night I had lots of money which happened
some times despite my... you know. Anyhow Eagle
asked me if I had any money so I whipped out a
mad dog dollar (that would be the one with Lincoln)
and tore it in half. I gave him half and said,
"Here's two-fifty!" He was sort of appalled at
seeing that five destroyed and but I assured him
there was a lot more mad dogs in my pocket that night.
Another time Eagle had this photograph that I had
printed and he wanted it autographed by me. I forget
which bar we were in, but I remeber taking the photo
and giving the lower right corner of it a full impression
of my teeth. I handed it back to him and said
"There ya go, sport." But Kit Carson wasn't there.
Kit Carson had long, blonde hair and I saw this picture
of him getting married to that Black woman. He was wearing
cowboy boots and a Stetson. I don't believe he was from
around here though. Like I said, he was a nice feller.
That was the last I saw of the boy.
the end, or *is* it? ha ha
E. J. Bond
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overcast today but still burnt even though i had a top and leggings on went with Billy
Natasha and
Derek plus Cain and Ruby along the Marina was lovely looking at all the boats *wow how the other half live * the kids fed the fish which i found were called Mullet the kids then went on some fun rides while we sat and had a cool beer then we went to the Jolly Pirates for food Yummy now we are in our local haunt the Lounge best bar in Bell Madena the company and staff our brill was in CJ's last night Karaoke was so proud of Ruby who is 5 sitting on stage singing her little hearts out loads of pics to put up whebn i get home speak tomorrow xxx
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I graduated five years ago and last night I had a dream that it was my turn to work in Trovo's class and I didn't know my lines. Ensue panic stricken angst. Definitely the ultimate actor nightmare.
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I just need to say on this a sad sad day that I'm sorry I couldn't be there to say goodbye to the most loving, caring, funny and special cousin there was. I know she will be laughing at me up there but it's got to be said. I miss our talks in the middle of the night.. Stupid o'clock you used to say lol you would give me advise on how to do things that helped my confidence or give me shit for not doing as you said hahaha. Emma babes you have gone, Gone and left me with no one to call in the middle of the night. You made me laugh you made me cry but most of all you and only you knew how it felt to be all swelled up and stuck in bed. Who now do I call to ask for advise. I remember the words that you said one night and that makes me laugh but that's all I'm saying about that hahaha. Jokes aside now babes get up there and rest you left all your pain in that hospital bed. Feel free to haunt me and do me a special favour please tell a young man called Shaun Anthony Farrell that I will always love him forever. Good night god bless Emma miss you already xxxxx R.I.P xxxxxx
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Life and Times of The Bodie Cemetery
By Cecile Page Vargo
Bodie Standard 1879 Over at Bodie the burial ground is so wet that they have to bail out the freshly dug graves to get the coffin in, and then they pile rocks on it to keep it from floating until the funeral is over, when the grave is filled with more rocks and with wet earth. At one Place in the cemetery there is a coffin which is partly proturuding from the ground, it having floated up from below. As the occupant was a Chinaman no notice can be taken of it. At the funeral services for these burials the preacher is at a loss to know whether to read the baptismal or the burial service. ..
Daily Free Press December 3, 1879 Keep The Gate Closed! Someone left the gate of the cemetery open last night and let in a terrible draft of cold air. It was so cold that Bill Bodey got up and shut the gate with such a slam that both hinges were taken off. The residents of that section state that his language on the occasion was frightful.
Daily Free Press December 9, 1879 A Grave Question: Pat Brown suing H. Ward, undertaker, for $146 due for services rendered digging graves. During the trial it came out that it cost more to bury a rich man than a poor man – comment causing merriment among the spectators. It was explained that a rich man’s coffin was placed in a big box but a poor man was buried in a box just the size of the body. Jury returned verdict in favor or plaintiff for the sum of $124.
As the early pioneers of the mining camp of Bodie met their maker, bodies were taken to early cemeteries in neighboring towns of Aurora and Bridgeport. The trek to these cemeteries must have been sad and lonely, over rugged terrain, for 13 miles or more. The swampy flat at the southern end of the mining camp, provided a much more convenient location for the dearly departed, and became the site of the first Boot Hill. Here the water table was so high, graves often flooded with water. In the year 1877, graves with markers intact were moved 880 feet to the present day location that greets modern visitors as they enter the boundaries of Bodie State Historic Park. It’s unknown how many graves remain hidden in the original spot of the cemetery.
By 1880 as Bodie’s population boomed and death tolls inevitably rose, the cemetery grew to three discrete burial areas. The Freemason, or Masonic at the south end, was final home for eight people. The 43 graves at the Miners’ Union, also at the south end, were particularly noted for constant upkeep and replacement of worn headstones and picket fences. At the north end of the cemetery, The People’s, or Ward’s section, was final resting to place to 109, with a grand total of 160 graves in all three sections.
The boundaries of the Bodie cemeteries were separated by fence. Social status of those within could be determined by which side of the fence one was buried. Only respectable citizens could be buried inside the fence. “Outside the Pale of Decency”, the badmen and women who earned the title of gunman or prostitute were buried. Reformed prostitutes, the likes of Lottie Johl, who married the town butcher, were allowed to be buried just inside the fence in an almost forgotten corner. Illegitimate children, and Chinese were also forced to be buried outside the cemetery limits.
Near the entrance to the cemetery, the brick Heilschorn Morgue was built, and still stands today. Better known as the Dead House, bodies were stored here during Bodie’s harsh winters when the ground was so frozen that funerals had to be delayed for several days. Blasting powder was sometimes deployed to loosen ice and snow so graves could be dug. During epidemics when large numbers of people took their final breath due to illness, it was said the ground trembled and town windows rattled from the continual blasting which struck foreboding and terror into the hearts of snowbound and isolated residents. During these fierce winters, wooden sleds were drawn through the snow instead of the ornate horsedrawn hearses that can be seen in the Bodie museum in town.
Before the bodies were buried, of course, a mortician was needed. More often than not, a furniture store owner or cabinetmaker would be hired to make coffins, and take on the duties of undertaker. Mr. H. C. Ward and Mr. A.C. Friend are mentioned the most often in the history books as taking on the grim task. Business was so brisk at one point, for Mr. Friend and his wife, ( who apparently took over many of the chores) that a $3,000 hearse was ordered one year, and sold out to the competition of Kelly and Carder the next, as dying played out.
The Bad men of Bodie may not have been allowed to lay to rest within the gates of the cemetery, but Cornish undertaker Johnnie Heilshorn, was their advocate in death. At the close of a funeral, “Shotgun” Johnnie would announce “Come ye forth, all ye wee Nickies and ye big Nickies, come forth and take a geek at the he before I screw ‘im down”. An undertaker by trade, a rounder by profession a thief by inclination, a dope fiend by choice, and a scalawag by association, Johnnie and friend, “Big Bill” Monahan also apparently ran a little side business which involved second hand coffins, freshly stolen from the graveyard.
Time and weather, as well as thievery, have all tested the Bodie cemetery, but it still stands today with 140 known graves. The last burial occurred on June 18, 2003, when Robert “Bobby” Bell was laid to rest with a marker announcing “Hello God, I’ve just arrived from Bodie. I am the last of the old time miners” On Memorial Day 2010, several souls will rise again, and Mrs. Friend and Mr. Ward will gladly take you to hear their stories.
Tis said before he died his good wife sorrowfully and affectionately asked him “Don’t you think you could eat a bit of something, John?” With a wane smile he said” I do think I could eat a bit of the ham I smelled cooking.” “Oh No! John dear,” said his wife, you can’t eat that! I’m saving it for the wake!” Lying Jim Townsend – last of the Bodie newspaper editors
Can I Undo The Damage
by Cecile Page Vargo
Can I undo the damage
Of a century or more in time
Snow, wind, and ravage
Ore no longer worth a dime
I wander down the dusty road
And hear the voices cry
I see the humble wood abode
Where a lonely miner die
The lady beside his bed
She held his weakened hand
She had no respect, they said
But she met the man’s demand
And in the end the town
Is all that's left to remain
Tattered and torn around
And rusting with the rain
The sun rises in the night
The moon sets in the day
A topsy turvy world of miner's blight
What else is left to say?
Bury my weary bone
Beneath the sagebrush land
Pick and shovel all alone
Leave me to the sand
As the coyotes howl
The winds will blow
Bury the silenced jowel
In a land refused to grow
Its a lonely life in the mining town
With ghosts the only life
But the story that remains around
Is worth all the strife
The children run around
Laughing on a warm summer day
Playing on the hallowed ground
Where the lonely miner and lady lay
Their voices haunt the very hill
Where the ore was pulled out of the hole
But none are quite aware of the will
Of the depths of the buried soul
The tourists come from countries
Far and wide around the earth's globe
Staring at leftover sundries
And a lady's abandoned robe
But few can really feel
What the miner and lady did
And they go home with a lost ideal
That time and history often hid
It's my job to preserve it
For some morbid sense of past
I've got to keep the candle lit
Before the last shadow is finally cast
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"And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.
Read more at" Good night
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WARNING! CARRY ON READING OR ELSE YOU WILL DIE, even if you only looked at the word warning! Once there was a little girl named Clarissa. She was ten-years-old and she lived in a mental hospital because she killed her mom and dad. She got so bad that she went to kill all the staff in the hospital, so the More-government decided that the best idea was to get rid of her so they set up a special room to kill her as humane as possible, but it went wrong the machine they were using went wrong. And she sat there in agony for hours until she died. Now every week on the day of her death, she returns to the person that reads this letter, on a Monday night at 12:00a.m. She creeps into your room and kills you slowly, by cutting you and watching you bleed to death. Now send this to ten other pictures on this one site, and she will haunt someone else who doesn't. This isn't fake. Apparently, if you copy and paste this to ten comments in the next ten minutes, u will have the best day of ur life tomorrow. U will either get kissed or asked out. If u break this chain, u will see a little dead girl in your room. In 53 mins someone will say I love you or I'm sorry
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As the papist thought hard about burning this woman> there was no doubt that he and God had decided that she must die>in the bonfire that would not cleanse her soul but approve his accession>to Bishop and from there to the position he believed was his pre-disposition and described calling>that of Pope>the Bishop of Rome and with it the freedom from fallibility>which was to him an experience he was always familiar>from there he could wage holy war>he could submit to the pleasures that to his annoyance seemed to haunt him>most importantly he could dissolve to his satisfaction the very notion of God>to him his logic was sublime>God was a construct of the Jews>Christ was a Jew>his disciples were Jews>the first Pope was a Jew>he could understand how any good Catholic could worship this God and this Christ>he was glad they did and he was glad he did not>but for him what was important were the constructions and ceremonies that were made he believed to and for himself>It didn't take him too long and too many deaths before he was Pope and his first good and holy deed was to plunge Europe into war>and every night and religiously he thanked a burning woman for his red shoes>and the fit was so good and right.......
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In this life I know what I have been, in your arms I know what I am.
My mistakes no longer haunt me at night. The weight of the past I no longer have to carry. Regret does not consume my days any longer.
The enemy is forever busy trying to place reminders in your path. Growth is when you no longer stop to reflect on those reminders. Those doors have been closed.
Fiery darts, yeah they will continue to come.
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Well...it is going to be a looooong day at this house today. Our night was rough......it was full of screaming 'Mommy HEEEEEELP!!'....finally I opted to sleep on the floor in Ella Graces room, so that Grady and Elvis could get some rest. It seems like she was perhaps in pain and possibly just having bad dreams. I say bad dreams because she kept crying, for me to help, or she would yell don't leave me. Finally got her to sleep about 730 only to have to wake her up at 845 to take Grady to get his root canal finished up. I am hoping that soon we will be able to figure out what is happening in that pretty little head.....but I can only imagine how scarey it must feel to be alone for her at times. I have a REALLY hard time some days, and I am in my 30's and can understand what happened, and nights are very hard for us all. It often takes testing the smoke detectors, and feeling all the outlets in the bedrooms to make sure they are not warm, to not only calm Grady and Ellas fears, but to make me feel better about going to bed too. Grady struggles too some nights, he often thinks hard about the fire trying to figure stuff out or make think make sence.....and when he does this he wakes up sad. The worst thing in the world to hear is your 7 year old telling you how sorry he is he didn't try harder to help his sister.....or if he would have thought to tip the crib over , she wouldn't be hurt like she is today. Ohhhh my it is heart breaking for these kiddos. Elvis and I have our moments, I am not ashamed to say that every time I hear a fire truck leave my heart jumps ito my throat, or when the kids wake up crying, I RUN not walk upstairs to make sure there is nothing wrong...and I always find myself looking for smoke, or the ever popular phantom smoke I think I smell at all hours of the night. Elvis also has dreams...much like Gradys.....if he would have driven just a little faster home from work, if he would have been able to get up the steps to Ella, if he would have not been working the night shift......stupid what-ifs. While we are trying to put our past where it belongs, and while we are a normal family 99.9999999% on the time....sometimes......the ugly sadness creeps back in and you cannot help to put your sweatpants on, snuggle up with the kids, and watch movies........last night I am sad to say I think it was fear that kept us up late into the night......so today the kiddos and I will make the best of our sleepy day........and hope and pray that whatever triggered the sadness and fear in little Ella is long gone....the Dr's were not kidding when they said this recovery may take years!
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Comment "RANDOM LETTERS" Whoever Likes It, ADD THEM! {; <3
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Wheres good on a tuesday in glasgow for laters?
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So I just learned that shellack is made from the resin excrement of the Lack bug. Guess what else shellack is used for! The hard coating on jelly beans! mmmmmmmmmmmm Lol
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Here Read this |
\/
There once was a kid who hated his Parents but never came out to say it so for 17 years he kept it inside but then his dad came into his room with a knife and tried to kill the boy but the boy wasnt scared he jumped up and stabbed his dad in the head with a sharp cleaver. The boys mom came in and cried and screamed at the boy so she took a knife and stabbed him 6 times in the chest he died June 25 1996 at about 11:30 pm so on this night at that time anyone who reads this he will haunt and kill you.
The end!
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Second parent charged in connection to toddler's death after Love Truck Stop accident.
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How Doctors Die
by Ken Murray|November 30, 2011
http://think.usc.edu/2012/03/08/how-doctors-die/
Years ago, Charlie, a highly respected orthopedist and a mentor of mine, found a lump in his stomach. He had a surgeon explore the area, and the diagnosis was pancreatic cancer. This surgeon was one of the best in the country. He had even invented a new procedure for this exact cancer that could triple a patient’s five-year-survival odds–from 5 percent to 15 percent–albeit with a poor quality of life. Charlie was uninterested. He went home the next day, closed his practice, and never set foot in a hospital again. He focused on spending time with family and feeling as good as possible. Several months later, he died at home. He got no chemotherapy, radiation, or surgical treatment. Medicare didn’t spend much on him.
It’s not a frequent topic of discussion, but doctors die, too. And they don’t die like the rest of us. What’s unusual about them is not how much treatment they get compared to most Americans, but how little. For all the time they spend fending off the deaths of others, they tend to be fairly serene when faced with death themselves. They know exactly what is going to happen, they know the choices, and they generally have access to any sort of medical care they could want. But they go gently.
Of course, doctors don’t want to die; they want to live. But they know enough about modern medicine to know its limits. And they know enough about death to know what all people fear most: dying in pain, and dying alone. They’ve talked about this with their families. They want to be sure, when the time comes, that no heroic measures will happen–that they will never experience, during their last moments on earth, someone breaking their ribs in an attempt to resuscitate them with CPR (that’s what happens if CPR is done right).
Almost all medical professionals have seen what we call “futile care” being performed on people. That’s when doctors bring the cutting edge of technology to bear on a grievously ill person near the end of life. The patient will get cut open, perforated with tubes, hooked up to machines, and assaulted with drugs. All of this occurs in the Intensive Care Unit at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars a day. What it buys is misery we would not inflict on a terrorist. I cannot count the number of times fellow physicians have told me, in words that vary only slightly, “Promise me if you find me like this that you’ll kill me.” They mean it. Some medical personnel wear medallions stamped “NO CODE” to tell physicians not to perform CPR on them. I have even seen it as a tattoo.
To administer medical care that makes people suffer is anguishing. Physicians are trained to gather information without revealing any of their own feelings, but in private, among fellow doctors, they’ll vent. “How can anyone do that to their family members?” they’ll ask. I suspect it’s one reason physicians have higher rates of alcohol abuse and depression than professionals in most other fields. I know it’s one reason I stopped participating in hospital care for the last 10 years of my practice.
How has it come to this–that doctors administer so much care that they wouldn’t want for themselves? The simple, or not-so-simple, answer is this: patients, doctors, and the system.
To see how patients play a role, imagine a scenario in which someone has lost consciousness and been admitted to an emergency room. As is so often the case, no one has made a plan for this situation, and shocked and scared family members find themselves caught up in a maze of choices. They’re overwhelmed. When doctors ask if they want “everything” done, they answer yes. Then the nightmare begins. Sometimes, a family really means “do everything,” but often they just mean “do everything that’s reasonable.” The problem is that they may not know what’s reasonable, nor, in their confusion and sorrow, will they ask about it or hear what a physician may be telling them. For their part, doctors told to do “everything” will do it, whether it is reasonable or not.
The above scenario is a common one. Feeding into the problem are unrealistic expectations of what doctors can accomplish. Many people think of CPR as a reliable lifesaver when, in fact, the results are usually poor. I’ve had hundreds of people brought to me in the emergency room after getting CPR. Exactly one, a healthy man who’d had no heart troubles (for those who want specifics, he had a “tension pneumothorax”), walked out of the hospital. If a patient suffers from severe illness, old age, or a terminal disease, the odds of a good outcome from CPR are infinitesimal, while the odds of suffering are overwhelming. Poor knowledge and misguided expectations lead to a lot of bad decisions.
But of course it’s not just patients making these things happen. Doctors play an enabling role, too. The trouble is that even doctors who hate to administer futile care must find a way to address the wishes of patients and families. Imagine, once again, the emergency room with those grieving, possibly hysterical, family members. They do not know the doctor. Establishing trust and confidence under such circumstances is a very delicate thing. People are prepared to think the doctor is acting out of base motives, trying to save time, or money, or effort, especially if the doctor is advising against further treatment.
Some doctors are stronger communicators than others, and some doctors are more adamant, but the pressures they all face are similar. When I faced circumstances involving end-of-life choices, I adopted the approach of laying out only the options that I thought were reasonable (as I would in any situation) as early in the process as possible. When patients or families brought up unreasonable choices, I would discuss the issue in layman’s terms that portrayed the downsides clearly. If patients or families still insisted on treatments I considered pointless or harmful, I would offer to transfer their care to another doctor or hospital.
Should I have been more forceful at times? I know that some of those transfers still haunt me. One of the patients of whom I was most fond was an attorney from a famous political family. She had severe diabetes and terrible circulation, and, at one point, she developed a painful sore on her foot. Knowing the hazards of hospitals, I did everything I could to keep her from resorting to surgery. Still, she sought out outside experts with whom I had no relationship. Not knowing as much about her as I did, they decided to perform bypass surgery on her chronically clogged blood vessels in both legs. This didn’t restore her circulation, and the surgical wounds wouldn’t heal. Her feet became gangrenous, and she endured bilateral leg amputations. Two weeks later, in the famous medical center in which all this had occurred, she died.
It’s easy to find fault with both doctors and patients in such stories, but in many ways all the parties are simply victims of a larger system that encourages excessive treatment. In some unfortunate cases, doctors use the fee-for-service model to do everything they can, no matter how pointless, to make money. More commonly, though, doctors are fearful of litigation and do whatever they’re asked, with little feedback, to avoid getting in trouble.
Even when the right preparations have been made, the system can still swallow people up. One of my patients was a man named Jack, a 78-year-old who had been ill for years and undergone about 15 major surgical procedures. He explained to me that he never, under any circumstances, wanted to be placed on life support machines again. One Saturday, however, Jack suffered a massive stroke and got admitted to the emergency room unconscious, without his wife. Doctors did everything possible to resuscitate him and put him on life support in the ICU. This was Jack’s worst nightmare. When I arrived at the hospital and took over Jack’s care, I spoke to his wife and to hospital staff, bringing in my office notes with his care preferences. Then I turned off the life support machines and sat with him. He died two hours later.
Even with all his wishes documented, Jack hadn’t died as he’d hoped. The system had intervened. One of the nurses, I later found out, even reported my unplugging of Jack to the authorities as a possible homicide. Nothing came of it, of course; Jack’s wishes had been spelled out explicitly, and he’d left the paperwork to prove it. But the prospect of a police investigation is terrifying for any physician. I could far more easily have left Jack on life support against his stated wishes, prolonging his life, and his suffering, a few more weeks. I would even have made a little more money, and Medicare would have ended up with an additional $500,000 bill. It’s no wonder many doctors err on the side of overtreatment.
But doctors still don’t over-treat themselves. They see the consequences of this constantly. Almost anyone can find a way to die in peace at home, and pain can be managed better than ever. Hospice care, which focuses on providing terminally ill patients with comfort and dignity rather than on futile cures, provides most people with much better final days. Amazingly, studies have found that people placed in hospice care often live longer than people with the same disease who are seeking active cures. I was struck to hear on the radio recently that the famous reporter Tom Wicker had “died peacefully at home, surrounded by his family.” Such stories are, thankfully, increasingly common.
Several years ago, my older cousin Torch (born at home by the light of a flashlight–or torch) had a seizure that turned out to be the result of lung cancer that had gone to his brain. I arranged for him to see various specialists, and we learned that with aggressive treatment of his condition, including three to five hospital visits a week for chemotherapy, he would live perhaps four months. Ultimately, Torch decided against any treatment and simply took pills for brain swelling. He moved in with me.
We spent the next eight months doing a bunch of things that he enjoyed, having fun together like we hadn’t had in decades. We went to Disneyland, his first time. We’d hang out at home. Torch was a sports nut, and he was very happy to watch sports and eat my cooking. He even gained a bit of weight, eating his favorite foods rather than hospital foods. He had no serious pain, and he remained high-spirited. One day, he didn’t wake up. He spent the next three days in a coma-like sleep and then died. The cost of his medical care for those eight months, for the one drug he was taking, was about $20.
Torch was no doctor, but he knew he wanted a life of quality, not just quantity. Don’t most of us? If there is a state of the art of end-of-life care, it is this: death with dignity. As for me, my physician has my choices. They were easy to make, as they are for most physicians. There will be no heroics, and I will go gentle into that good night. Like my mentor Charlie. Like my cousin Torch. Like my fellow doctors.
Ken Murray, MD, is Clinical Assistant Professor of Family Medicine at USC.
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I know the season's over, the Heat have won and celebrated. The Spurs have struggled and lost. Most people have already moved on with it. But last night, I saw this photo again being flashed in front of my eyes. A picture of a man, known not to show his emotions inside the court, wearing a look of devastation in his face. His name is Tim Duncan. 4 time NBA champion, 14-time NBA All-Star, and the only player in NBA history to be selected to both All-NBA and All-Defensive Teams during each of his first 13 seasons. Surely an impressive track record. And to still be playing at his age of 37, one can only have respect for dear old Timmy. He wasn't a basketball player right from the start. He was a swimmer. But he shifted sports after some major changes in his early life. One of the things I respect about Timmy is the fact that he refused to leave college even when the NBA was already offering him a rookie salary cap. He stayed in school and finished with an honors degree in Psychology. When a young LBJ and his Cavs lost the 2007 championship to Duncan's Spurs, Tim sought out LBJ after the game to tell him that he would someday be great and the league would be his. There was a man, a champion, seeking out his opponent to tell him that someday, he will do great things. That's what makes Tim greater in my eyes. But what broke my heart more than Tim's miss on the crucial seconds left in Game 7 was finding out that while Tim was giving his all out in the court, there was a divorce battle waiting for him at home. And as the moments of Game 7 will forever haunt him, he goes back home to deal with something else, a divorce and the allegations that his wife was cheating on him. Dear old Timmy, you may have lost a ring, another chance to become an MVP, and a wife but you have never lost the respect of those who have always believed in you and those who respect the greatness that is you The Big Fundamental. Props to such a quiet and unassuming guy like you Tim Duncan.
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Am i the only one who thinks this Paula Deen thing has been blown way out of proportion.......I think she was just being honest about her past. People do that when they want to make things better. She grew up in Georgia...I grew up in rural eastern NC where it was perfectly acceptable to use the N word to help describe someone when I was a little kid. It was what I exposed to, they was very little available to contradict that to me. It was TOTALLY Messed up to grow up in that environment, but the point is Ive grown in many many ways and ABHOR that sentiment which further divides people into classes in any way. If you know me, you already know this about me. The only excuse I could possibly come up with is that was what I knew. Until 1974 in Smithfield NC on Hgwy 70 coming into the county seat of Johnston CO. there was a billboard that stated..."Welcome to Smithfield, NC Home of the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan"...In retrospect Im happy that I find this utterly unbelievable ,disgusting and ridiculous
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I have been watching this george zimmerman trial live on ustream and i must say even i am growing tiredof the defenses shinnaingans! Make a valid point or MOVE ON! The states opening statement was 30 minutes! the defenses "opening statement was a 2 hour drawn out buncvh of rambling that started with a horrible knock knock joke! i guess that was an indication of just how horrific the defens actually is! and if they think for one second that a juror of six women are unaware of the trayvon martin case they are CRAZY! they would have to go south of the border to find someone who knows nothing of this case and has not already prejudged the situation! Although it may not be a "race" issue it definitely is a racial profiling issue! Because a young black man was walking in a gated community with his hood on might i add in the rain he was suspicious?! even when he enetered 7eleven he had his hood on and the clerk didnt call 911 because he thought he was about to get robbed. *sigh* sad thing is i truly believe he might just get away with it. :(
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#BENEDICTION - EVERY SECOND FRIDAY OF THE MONTH AT AQUUM CLAPHAM SW4 -
#BENEDICTION "A BLESSING TO ALL "
After the massive launch of this Brand/Night at Aquum SW4 on friday the 7th june for trio's birthday. We are back to bring you another 5 star party which falls on the same weekend as the wireless festival. We have already got 4 tables booked in for this one so get in touch asap as they will sell out.
This is monthly event on the second friday of every month. Quality is the key word for so expect a beautiful collective of party people. This isn't a club night this is a #PARTY. Get ready for a wild night
AQUUM IS A 5 STAR VENUE LOCATED IN THE HEART OF CLAPHAM HIGH STREET.
A 5 STAR VENUE FOR A 5 STAR PARTY.
ENTERTAINMENT : ★★★
➨ Music from @playent DJ's
➨ Live saxophone from Richie Garrison
➨ Live angle grinders and fire breathers at 11.30 and1.30
➨ And a few surprises.
ROOM 1 : chart bangers // club classics // commercial //
ROOM 2 VIP : HOUSE // OLD SCHOOL // RnB //
G-LIST: ★★★
Everybody is welcome but this is a G-list only event so you need to send the names in via text 07854478686 or send names to one of the team.
ADMISSION: ★★★
£10 For everybody (you must be on the g-list)
Send the names in via text 07854478686
TABLES : ★★★
All tabels booked through Trio or one of the team will be priority in the vip area Once the vip tabels are sold out then they will spill into room 1 and the basement of room 1
The VIP is where the main party will be at although the venue will be busy throughout.
Tables are £300 min spend + service charge. Includes £300 worth of drink. (These are advised especially for groups of guys) discounted entry of £5 for anybody on a table (must arrive together)
Call trio on 07854478686
DRESS CODE : ★★★
There will be no acceptions at this venue No ID = No Entry.
Gents must wear a shirt or smart fitted t-shirt no trainers.
ladies must wear heels there will be no acception at all.
BIRTHDAYS ★★★
If anybody is celebrating a birthday then get in touch so we can discus the options.
free cake // free entry for birthday boy/girl
Call trio on 07854478686
VENUE : ★★★
After a successful opening in March 2009, AQUUM has quickly established itself not only as the place to see and be seen in SW4 but one of London premier bars, already boasting three London Bar Awards. Offering a cool and chic feel, this interchangeable South London haunt is spread over three floors, spoiling you with plenty of room to relax throughout the week over a bite to eat with friends and ample space to get your groove on at the weekends.
This luxurious venue really does offer something for everyone, be it sampling the Pan Asian food menu, strutting your stuff in the large main bar, getting down to the beat on the basement floor, getting close and personal in the VIP mezzanine or simply watching the world go by on the sun drenched terrace.
Aquum is a cool 50,000 sq ft, holding a capacity of 450 split over three floors: a large main bar at the front opening up onto a terrace, a ‘basement’ bar on a lower level at the back and a ‘VIP’ mezzanine bar overlooking the main bar area. A giant window above the main bar allows for plenty of natural light during the day, whilst the chic white, minimal interior throughout and a state of the art lighting system can create any mood as soon as night falls. Designed to be a flexible space, every floor within Aquum is the same; you can eat, drink and dance on every level.
AFTER PARTY :
THE LAST ONE WAS CRAZY !! SO WE ARE DOING IT AGAIN !!
We have made arrangements for a secret location mansion after party very close to the venue. going on until 6.00am - invite only ....
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Bible Study ToolsOnline Bible Study – New Testament and Old Testament Studies, GuidesTopical Studies
Topical Studies
10 Essential Truths about Christian Giving
Ligon Duncan
10 Essential Truths about Christian Giving The Lord never asks us to give what we do not have, or contribute beyond our means. Yet Christ's self-giving is the standard for our giving.
Beyond Sunday: The Appearance of What's Right
Beyond Sunday: The Appearance of What's Right If it looks and feels right, it must be right ... right?
Studying Mark's Gospel: Beyond All Hope, Part 2
Thomas Klock
Studying Mark's Gospel: Beyond All Hope, Part 2 In the second half of Mark 5 find Jesus ministering to those who seemed beyond all hope. Let’s see what we can learn as we examine these peoples’ experiences as well as our own.
Lessons from the Fog
The Good Book Blog
Lessons from the Fog The connection between the intensity of my focus on that car in front of me and the idea of fixing our eyes on Jesus struck me immediately.
Our Salvation: A Study In Jonah
James Boice
Our Salvation: A Study In Jonah The book of Jonah may be studied for many reasons, but a chief reason is for what it teaches about God's sovereignty. Sovereignty is a problem for some Christians in certain areas.
Stay Motivated in Your Relationship with Christ
Randy Alcorn
Stay Motivated in Your Relationship with Christ When you come to know Christ and put your faith in Him, Jesus changes your life. You’re excited about Him. But over the long haul, how do you keep that motivation going? How do you sustain a Christ-centered life?
Beyond Sunday: Looking at Dreams
Beyond Sunday: Looking at Dreams When Pharaoh asked Joseph for an answer, he quickly pointed to the source of the answer. How about you?
Studying Mark's Gospel: Beyond All Hope
Thomas Klock
Studying Mark's Gospel: Beyond All Hope Satan’s minions had turned this human being into a psychotic superhuman wild man, and no doubt the demons enjoyed tormenting and driving him toward self-destruction. But he wasn't beyond the reach of Jesus.
Living by Faith in an Uncertain World
Dr. Ray Pritchard
Living by Faith in an Uncertain World So what does it mean to live by faith in an uncertain world? The life of Abraham can provide some key points to remember.
The Rise of the Antichrist
Ron Rhodes
The Rise of the Antichrist Revelation pictures the antichrist as a beast 32 times. The image points to the brutal, bloody, uncontrolled, and wild character of this diabolical dictator.
Philippians: The Affection of Christ Jesus
Matthew Harmon
Philippians: The Affection of Christ Jesus The power of the gospel is shown in the supernatural affection that it produces not only for Jesus Christ himself, but also for those who belong to Jesus Christ.
Beyond Sunday: The Wedding Supper
Beyond Sunday: The Wedding Supper Only the chosen ones come to faith in Christ and actually attend the feast.
Studying Mark's Gospel: Growth and the Kingdom
Thomas Klock
Studying Mark's Gospel: Growth and the Kingdom After we examine the parables in Mark 4:26-41 during the first part of this study, we'll focusing on how these things relate to our own personal growth in Christ.
Trusting an Unchanging God
Kay Arthur
Trusting an Unchanging God As I teach through the Old Testament, I am awed at what we can learn about God's character and how He deals with us if we only study this portion of Scripture
The Old Testament is Filled with Fulfilled Prophecy
Jim Wallace
The Old Testament is Filled with Fulfilled Prophecy There are many ways to verify the reliability of scripture -- perhaps the most persuasive argument can be found in the area of prophecy.
We’re Talking Power Here. Real. Life-changing. Power.
Mark Altrogge
We’re Talking Power Here. Real. Life-changing. Power. Christianity isn’t about how to be spiritual, achieve your goals or have your best life now. Christianity isn’t about philosophy. It’s not about talk. Christianity is about power.
Beyond Sunday: The Weight of God's Hand
Beyond Sunday: The Weight of God's Hand Under terrors of conscience, men have little rest by night, for the grim thoughts of the day dog them to their rooms and haunt their dreams, or else they lie awake in a cold sweat of dread.
Studying Mark's Gospel: Preparing Our Heart’s Soil
Thomas Klock
Studying Mark's Gospel: Preparing Our Heart’s Soil How will you proactively seek to make the soil of your heart more receptive to His Word, beginning today?
People Are Messy
Rick Whitter
People Are Messy We were put on this earth to do life with one another. We are better together than we are apart – even with all of the complications of relationships.
From Glory to Glory
John MacArthur
From Glory to Glory Perfection is the goal of God’s sanctifying work in us. He’s not merely making us better than we are; he is conforming us to the image of his Son.
www.victorytheatre.co.za
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Zimmerman trial, live, right now on HLN.
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When the sun peeks such time i would be yawning,
Fare thee the night hence here comes the morning,
With the dry dew on the leaves of the neem tree,
And all human kind shall due live and to seem free.
I forgot where forth last time how ended the night,
How that sweet kiss shadowed the ultimate light,
Girl i am but amazed that its deep in my own heart,
And thank God for this is that part of the very start.
When i longed to just stare into your milky eyes i did,
And such i yearned so to tell the real story in deed,
You were just there all that very time smiling in bliss,
And i just had to lean over for the goodnight kiss.
The smiling on my very face had somehow me wake,
Wondering what what else could you sure did take,
Am just this broken i am so very weak in your front,
And your vivid image in mine mind its me you haunt.
Its been since i left to recall the times of moments,
And you smothered the bits of all those comments,
Am done dying with this heap of missing i harbour,
And when only you can really make me do feel sober.
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A Friend of Mine sent this to me:
Great Article, thought I would share it, Thanks Joel
What is a firefighter worth?
There has been so much talk recently about things like containing costs, lowering taxes, and those who work in public safety being overpaid - particularly firefighters - that it could make your head spin. We've all done the "simple math," crunched the numbers, and it all seems to boil down to a simple question. What are firefighters worth?
I guess that depends. We live in a country that seems to have forgotten what our priorities are. A man can be a skilled athlete who happens to throw and catch a football well, and make millions and millions of dollars to do so. And we as a society are not only OK with that, but we gather in front of our televisions and cheer that man on. Meanwhile, a firefighter kisses his children goodbye before every shift knowing the harsh reality that it very well could be the last time he will see them, and he is fighting tooth and nail for decent health coverage and substantial pay to support those children.
He is the man that you call when your elderly father has a stroke. He is the person that will extract your 16-year-old son from a mangled vehicle on the highway in the middle of the night. He is the person that will be there in a heartbeat when your newborn infant stops breathing. He is the person who is exposed to countless dangerous scenarios and has seen horrific things during his career that would psychologically haunt most of us for the rest of our lives. We trust him to save our homes and belongings in the event of a disastrous fire, and we trust him to keep us breathing and our hearts beating when we face our most critical moments. What is he worth to you?
He sometimes will go days without sleep, and make life altering decisions on every call he shows up to. He has missed family meals, bedtime stories, Christmas mornings, school plays, anniversaries, Thanksgiving dinners, and his own children's birthdays. We all know that life is so very short, and firefighters sacrifice precious time with the most important people in their lives to save the lives of the most important people in yours. And now they have to defend and protect their pensions, well deserved health benefits, and their paychecks. It has been proposed by some that they lose many of their benefits, and work extra shifts that they will not be compensated for. There seems to be a serious misconception that firefighters are in it for the monetary gain, and more and more often have been portrayed in a negative light for actually expecting to be compensated for the sacrifices that they make to do their job. For an individual that has chosen this selfless career, it begs the question: Is it worth it?
Most of us are willing to pay a little extra for something if it is important to us, whether it be the shoes we wear, the doctor we choose to treat us, or even the cup of coffee we drink. It is something that we value, therefore it is worth the cost. Most would agree that our safety and protection is of unmeasurable value. Those of us that are skilled in math may look at the numbers and think that stripping those who serve our public of their way to earn a decent living is an answer to a financial equation. But firefighters and their families are not numbers on a piece of paper. They are human beings that are doing their jobs every day to the best of their ability, and possibly sacrificing their own lives for the life of a stranger. Not many of us in our right mind would do that for free, and no one should have to.
So before making our minds up that firefighters are the financial problem, sit down with a local firefighter and ask him about his job. Ask him about his wife and his sons or daughters, what kind of house he lives in, and what type of car he drives. And then ask yourself, if you were to take on such a career, what would you expect in return?
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Paula Deen's sons defended her on CNN's "New Day" this morning. What do you think of their response?
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Live life without regrets... otherwise it'll haunt you forever... and on that note:
you would have stayed the night of the fire
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Another teaser video from the Belvoir Winery episode of Ghost Hunters! You'll see in the comments section of this post that Jason Hawes said "The location that airs this week is a crazy place".
One day to go until the premiere! The wait is almost over!!!!
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I everyone who attended this awesome school should jot down some of there best memories that happened in this great building....she's getting torn down this week....just makes me so sad. Why not make it even more melancholy by reading everyones posts!
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Remember when New York parties were fun and not pretentious, lacking a brood of #stankandblanks, and people actually danced brought fruit
(#oldschool) or drinks from the bar? I'm starting to forget as I go out nowadays. #lemmestayhome
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http://tccwrite.blogspot.com/2013/06/i-have-just-found-out-that-i-am.html
I beg indulgence and forgiveness of anyone who may find the following class lesson and assignment to be unsettling. This is NOT for anyone with a delicate sense of composure. Jesse Hall, Sarah Wade, Angela Wade Williams, and Jesse Hyde, this is dedicated to all y'all.
I have just found out that I am required to teach a narrative story as an example of writing in college--and this is offered as a sample for those who require something with more substance. Delighted to do so! and I hope you can--pardon the subtle pun that will be explained in more detail regarding in the short story example provided at the very end--be able to--"digest this material."
The art of teaching literature to show the scope of human emotions and actions is a challenge, especially when my students have been overloaded with exposure to computerized enhancements done with today's movies. Yet the opportunity exists to open doors that some would not know simply by using the most powerful computer we have available for personal use: our brain and its capacity to expand the imagination.
Students MUST be encouraged early in life to read a variety of material in order to develop the qualities of cause-and-effect and consequence, creativity, and responsibility.
Computer games and movies alone can not supply this. And no:
my experience as an avid and enthusiastic young reader made me a better writer. It matters WHAT I know and how to use it alongside what I studied in college. Psychology is as much a part of literature as the writing process itself--or all the course work in a "specialized" degree.
Again, this is why I say "teach the heart of the lesson versus the
letter of the lesson"!
For this reason, one of the ways I showed the transition and development of the horror story in literature was to continue my lectures after Poe with the work of Lovecraft.
Edgar Allan Poe was the first to develop the art of the horror story, giving inspiration and fuel to the minds of Ambrose Bierce, and later, Stephen King. Ray Bradbury took facets of this type of subtle-but-effective method of unveiling the dark side of potentials in his stories within The Illustrated Man. However, I credit H.P. Lovecraft with one story alone to be a frightening movie that was almost too much for the audience of Rod Serling's 1972 series Night Gallery.
It has stayed in my memory--not comfortably--after only one viewing.
In his short story "Pickman's Model," Lovecraft spins a tale of steadily mounting dread that builds to a predictable ending implicit in the title. The story unfolds as a long monologue designed to climax in a moment of shocked revelation. Lovecraft's first person technique gives the narrative a certain immediacy and believability. It's as if the character were talking directly to the reader, giving testimony. At the same time this approach weakens the story in two ways: first, we know from the start that the speaker has survived whatever menace he may have encountered, and second, the first person point of view diminishes narrative possibilities by reducing the story into a kind of report. The result is a psychic distancing that safely removes the reader from the events of the narrative.
SUMMARY OF THE SHORT STORY
Thurber (the narrator) tells Eliot (the listener and by proxy the reader), why he has terminated his friendship with the brilliant painter, Richard Upton Pickman. Thurber explains that he was the last of Pickman's friends to drop him. By articulating his motive, Thurber hopes to justify his general nervousness and his terror of subways and cellars.
The problem isn't Pickman's disturbing subject matter, though his horrific paintings are "... enough to get him ostracized in nine-tenths of the homes and clubs of Boston." Artistically, Thurber has nothing but praise for Pickman's unique talent. He theorizes that only artists of a certain greatness can capture the essence of true horror: a nightmare, a witches Sabbath, a portrait of the devil, whatever. "There's something those fellows catch -- beyond life -- that they're able to make us catch for a second." He then references several modern artists by name (Francisco Goya, Gustav Dore). Pickman is such an artist, and his specialty is facial portraits.
Thurber recalls the time Pickman invited him to his studio, an ancient and decrepit building hidden among the twisted labyrinthine streets of Boston's old north end. Pickman sought such a place because there he "can catch the night spirit of antique horror and paint things that I couldn't even think of in Newbury Street." He rented a specific building because of the "queer old brick well in the cellar" which he believes is a link to a bygone system of tunnels below the city, most of which are caved in or bricked over.
Our narrator must brace himself with alcohol before he can go on to describe the studio itself and the subjects of the paintings there: "demonic portraiture," more specifically ghouls. "They were usually feeding," Thurber tells Eliot, "I won't say on what."
In one room Pickman has displayed "pictures which turned colonial New England into a kind of hell." Particularly upsetting is one called The Lesson:
Heaven pity me, that I ever saw it! Listen--can you fancy a
squatting circle of nameless dog-like things in a churchyard
teaching a small child how to feed like themselves? The price of a changeling, I suppose--you know the old myth about how the
weird people leave their spawn in cradles in exchange for the
human babes they steal. Pickman was showing what happens to those stolen babes--how they grow up--and then I began to see a hideous relationship in the faces of the human and non-human
figures. He was, in all his gradations of morbidity between the
frankly non-human and the degradedly human, establishing a
sardonic linkage and evolution. The dog-things were developed from mortals!
Another canvas shows the child's ghoulish counterpart among a human family. "...in the supreme irony Pickman had given the [changling's]) features a very perceptible resemblance to his own."
The next room contains more ghouls painted against modern backdrops: subways, contemporary streets, recognizable skylines.
Thurber marvels more and more about the quality of the artistic achievement, realizing Pickman is not "a fantasist or romanticist at all...." He is "... a thorough, painstaking and almost scientific realist..."
However, there is more alarming circumstances to Pickman's work that terrifies Thurber:
There was something very disturbing about the nauseous sketches lf-finished monstrosities that leered round from every side
of the room, and when Pickman suddenly unveiled a huge canvas on the side away from the light I could not for my life keep back a loud scream--the second I had emitted that night. It echoed and echoed through the dim vaultings of that ancient and nitrous cellar, and I had to choke back a flood of reaction that threatened to burst out as hysterical laughter.
Merciful Creator! Eliot, but I don't know how much was real and how much was feverish fancy. It doesn't seem to me that earth can hold a dream like that!
It was a colossal and nameless blasphemy with glaring red eyes, and it held in bony claws a thing that had been a man, gnawing at the head as a child nibbles at a stick of candy. Its position was a kind of crouch, and as one looked one felt that at any moment it might drop its present prey and seek a juicier morsel. But damn it all, it wasn't even the fiendish subject that made it such an immortal fountain-head of all panic--not that, nor the dog face with its pointed ears, bloodshot eyes, flat nose, and drooling lips.
It wasn't the scaly claws nor the mould-caked body nor the
half-hooved feet--none of these, though any one of them might well have driven an excitable man to madness.
It was the technique, Eliot--the cursed, the impious, the unnatural technique! As I am a living being, I never elsewhere saw the actual breath of life so fused into a canvas. The monster was there- it glared and gnawed and gnawed and glared--and I knew that only a suspension of Nature's laws could ever let a man paint a thing like that without a model--without some glimpse of the nether world which no mortal unsold to the Fiend has ever had!
Now Pickman leads Thurber to the cellar and, after skirting the mysterious covered well, into his actual work area. There Thurber sees unfinished paintings, art supplies, and a camera used, Pickman explains, for photographing backgrounds. Thurber cries out when Pickman unveils an especially large, grotesque and lifelike painting of a ghoul. Strangely, his cry disturbs Pickman. Pinned to the painting is a curled-at-the-edges worn photograph. After adjusting to the shock of the subject, Thurber's curiousity gets the better of him, and he reaches out to the photograph, but...
Odd noises erupt from the next room: hideous screams. During the excitement, Pickman exits, and six shots from a revolver are heard. He eventually returns "...cursing the bloated rats that infested the ancient well." At the end of the evening, Thurber leaves Pickman and resolves never to see him again.
Thurber's monologue concludes when he shows Eliot the photograph he had unknowingly pocketed in the studio during the turmoil. It does not show a backdrop, as Pickman had said. Instead it depicts a hideous ghoul.
Lovecraft's tale ends predictably, melodramatically, and as is so often the case, in italics: "...by God, Eliot, it was a photograph from life!"
And for your reading pleasure and as an example of narrative writing for those who prefer something different:
Pickman’s Model
By H. P. Lovecraft
You needn’t think I’m crazy, Eliot—plenty of others have queerer prejudices than this. Why don’t you laugh at Oliver’s grandfather, who won’t ride in a motor? If I don’t like that damned subway, it’s my own business; and we got here more quickly anyhow in the taxi. We’d have had to walk up the hill from Park Street if we’d taken the car.
I know I’m more nervous than I was when you saw me last year, but you don’t need to hold a clinic over it. There’s plenty of reason, God knows, and I fancy I’m lucky to be sane at all. Why the third degree? You didn’t use to be so inquisitive.
Well, if you must hear it, I don’t know why you shouldn’t. Maybe you ought to, anyhow, for you kept writing me like a grieved parent when you heard I’d begun to cut the Art Club and keep away from Pickman. Now that he’s disappeared I go around to the club once in a while, but my nerves aren’t what they were.
No, I don’t know what’s become of Pickman, and I don’t like to guess. You might have surmised I had some inside information when I dropped him—and that’s why I don’t want to think where he’s gone. Let the police find what they can—it won’t be much, judging from the fact that they don’t know yet of the old North End place he hired under the name of Peters. I’m not sure that I could find it again myself—not that I’d ever try, even in broad daylight! Yes, I do know, or am afraid I know, why he maintained it. I’m coming to that. And I think you’ll understand before I’m through why I don’t tell the police. They would ask me to guide them, but I couldn’t go back there even if I knew the way. There was something there—and now I can’t use the subway or (and you may as well have your laugh at this, too) go down into cellars any more.
I should think you’d have known I didn’t drop Pickman for the same silly reasons that fussy old women like Dr. Reid or Joe Minot or Bosworth did. Morbid art doesn’t shock me, and when a man has the genius Pickman had I feel it an honour to know him, no matter what direction his work takes. Boston never had a greater painter than Richard Upton Pickman. I said it at first and I say it still, and I never swerved an inch, either, when he shewed that “Ghoul Feeding”. That, you remember, was when Minot cut him.
You know, it takes profound art and profound insight into Nature to turn out stuff like Pickman’s. Any magazine-cover hack can splash paint around wildly and call it a nightmare or a Witches’ Sabbath or a portrait of the devil, but only a great painter can make such a thing really scare or ring true. That’s because only a real artist knows the actual anatomy of the terrible or the physiology of fear—the exact sort of lines and proportions that connect up with latent instincts or hereditary memories of fright, and the proper colour contrasts and lighting effects to stir the dormant sense of strangeness. I don’t have to tell you why a Fuseli really brings a shiver while a cheap ghost-story frontispiece merely makes us laugh. There’s something those fellows catch—beyond life—that they’re able to make us catch for a second. Doré had it. Sime has it. Angarola of Chicago has it. And Pickman had it as no man ever had it before or—I hope to heaven—ever will again.
Don’t ask me what it is they see. You know, in ordinary art, there’s all the difference in the world between the vital, breathing things drawn from Nature or models and the artificial truck that commercial small fry reel off in a bare studio by rule. Well, I should say that the really weird artist has a kind of vision which makes models, or summons up what amounts to actual scenes from the spectral world he lives in. Anyhow, he manages to turn out results that differ from the pretender’s mince-pie dreams in just about the same way that the life painter’s results differ from the concoctions of a correspondence-school cartoonist. If I had ever seen what Pickman saw—but no! Here, let’s have a drink before we get any deeper. Gad, I wouldn’t be alive if I’d ever seen what that man—if he was a man—saw!
You recall that Pickman’s forte was faces. I don’t believe anybody since Goya could put so much of sheer hell into a set of features or a twist of expression. And before Goya you have to go back to the mediaeval chaps who did the gargoyles and chimaeras on Notre Dame and Mont Saint-Michel. They believed all sorts of things—and maybe they saw all sorts of things, too, for the Middle Ages had some curious phases. I remember your asking Pickman yourself once, the year before you went away, wherever in thunder he got such ideas and visions. Wasn’t that a nasty laugh he gave you? It was partly because of that laugh that Reid dropped him. Reid, you know, had just taken up comparative pathology, and was full of pompous “inside stuff” about the biological or evolutionary significance of this or that mental or physical symptom. He said Pickman repelled him more and more every day, and almost frightened him toward the last—that the fellow’s features and expression were slowly developing in a way he didn’t like; in a way that wasn’t human. He had a lot of talk about diet, and said Pickman must be abnormal and eccentric to the last degree. I suppose you told Reid, if you and he had any correspondence over it, that he’d let Pickman’s paintings get on his nerves or harrow up his imagination. I know I told him that myself—then.
But keep in mind that I didn’t drop Pickman for anything like this. On the contrary, my admiration for him kept growing; for that “Ghoul Feeding” was a tremendous achievement. As you know, the club wouldn’t exhibit it, and the Museum of Fine Arts wouldn’t accept it as a gift; and I can add that nobody would buy it, so Pickman had it right in his house till he went. Now his father has it in Salem—you know Pickman comes of old Salem stock, and had a witch ancestor hanged in 1692.
I got into the habit of calling on Pickman quite often, especially after I began making notes for a monograph on weird art. Probably it was his work which put the idea into my head, and anyhow, I found him a mine of data and suggestions when I came to develop it. He shewed me all the paintings and drawings he had about; including some pen-and-ink sketches that would, I verily believe, have got him kicked out of the club if many of the members had seen them. Before long I was pretty nearly a devotee, and would listen for hours like a schoolboy to art theories and philosophic speculations wild enough to qualify him for the Danvers asylum. My hero-worship, coupled with the fact that people generally were commencing to have less and less to do with him, made him get very confidential with me; and one evening he hinted that if I were fairly close-mouthed and none too squeamish, he might shew me something rather unusual—something a bit stronger than anything he had in the house.
“You know,” he said, “there are things that won’t do for Newbury Street—things that are out of place here, and that can’t be conceived here, anyhow. It’s my business to catch the overtones of the soul, and you won’t find those in a parvenu set of artificial streets on made land. Back Bay isn’t Boston—it isn’t anything yet, because it’s had no time to pick up memories and attract local spirits. If there are any ghosts here, they’re the tame ghosts of a salt marsh and a shallow cove; and I want human ghosts—the ghosts of beings highly organised enough to have looked on hell and known the meaning of what they saw.
“The place for an artist to live is the North End. If any aesthete were sincere, he’d put up with the slums for the sake of the massed traditions. God, man! Don’t you realise that places like that weren’t merely made, but actually grew? Generation after generation lived and felt and died there, and in days when people weren’t afraid to live and feel and die. Don’t you know there was a mill on Copp’s Hill in 1632, and that half the present streets were laid out by 1650? I can show you houses that have stood two centuries and a half and more; houses that have witnessed what would make a modern house crumble into powder. What do moderns know of life and the forces behind it? You call the Salem witchcraft a delusion, but I’ll wage my four-times-great-grandmother could have told you things. They hanged her on Gallows Hill, with Cotton Mather looking sanctimoniously on. Mather, damn him, was afraid somebody might succeed in kicking free of this accursed cage of monotony—I wish someone had laid a spell on him or sucked his blood in the night!
“I can show you a house he lived in, and I can show you another one he was afraid to enter in spite of all his fine bold talk. He knew things he didn’t dare put into that stupid Magnalia or that puerile Wonders of the Invisible World. Look here, do you know the whole North End once had a set of tunnels that kept certain people in touch with each other’s houses, and the burying-ground, and the sea? Let them prosecute and persecute above ground—things went on every day that they couldn’t reach, and voices laughed at night that they couldn’t place!
“Why, man, out of ten surviving houses built before 1700 and not moved since I’ll wager that in eight I can shew you something queer in the cellar. There’s hardly a month that you don’t read of workmen finding bricked-up arches and wells leading nowhere in this or that old place as it comes down—you could see one near Henchman Street from the elevated last year. There were witches and what their spells summoned; pirates and what they brought in from the sea; smugglers; privateers—and I tell you, people knew how to live, and how to enlarge the bounds of life, in the old times! This wasn’t the only world a bold and wise man could know—faugh! And to think of today in contrast, with such pale-pink brains that even a club of supposed artists gets shudders and convulsions if a picture goes beyond the feelings of a Beacon Street tea-table!
“The only saving grace of the present is that it’s too damned stupid to question the past very closely. What do maps and records and guide-books really tell of the North End? Bah! At a guess I’ll guarantee to lead you to thirty or forty alleys and networks of alleys north of Prince Street that aren’t suspected by ten living beings outside of the foreigners that swarm them. And what do those Dagoes know of their meaning? No, Thurber, these ancient places are dreaming gorgeously and overflowing with wonder and terror and escapes from the commonplace, and yet there’s not a living soul to understand or profit by them. Or rather, there’s only one living soul—for I haven’t been digging around in the past for nothing!
“See here, you’re interested in this sort of thing. What if I told you that I’ve got another studio up there, where I can catch the night-spirit of antique horror and paint things that I couldn’t even think of in Newbury Street? Naturally I don’t tell those cursed old maids at the club—with Reid, damn him, whispering even as it is that I’m a sort of monster bound down the toboggan of reverse evolution. Yes, Thurber, I decided long ago that one must paint terror as well as beauty from life, so I did some exploring in places where I had reason to know terror lives.
“I’ve got a place that I don’t believe three living Nordic men besides myself have ever seen. It isn’t so very far from the elevated as distance goes, but it’s centuries away as the soul goes. I took it because of the queer old brick well in the cellar—one of the sort I told you about. The shack’s almost tumbling down, so that nobody else would live there, and I’d hate to tell you how little I pay for it. The windows are boarded up, but I like that all the better, since I don’t want daylight for what I do. I paint in the cellar, where the inspiration is thickest, but I’ve other rooms furnished on the ground floor. A Sicilian owns it, and I’ve hired it under the name of Peters.
“Now if you’re game, I’ll take you there tonight. I think you’d enjoy the pictures, for as I said, I’ve let myself go a bit there. It’s no vast tour—I sometimes do it on foot, for I don’t want to attract attention with a taxi in such a place. We can take the shuttle at the South Station for Battery Street, and after that the walk isn’t much.”
Well, Eliot, there wasn’t much for me to do after that harangue but to keep myself from running instead of walking for the first vacant cab we could sight. We changed to the elevated at the South Station, and at about twelve o’clock had climbed down the steps at Battery Street and struck along the old waterfront past Constitution Wharf. I didn’t keep track of the cross streets, and can’t tell you yet which it was we turned up, but I know it wasn’t Greenough Lane.
When we did turn, it was to climb through the deserted length of the oldest and dirtiest alley I ever saw in my life, with crumbling-looking gables, broken small-paned windows, and archaic chimneys that stood out half-disintegrated against the moonlit sky. I don’t believe there were three houses in sight that hadn’t been standing in Cotton Mather’s time—certainly I glimpsed at least two with an overhang, and once I thought I saw a peaked roof-line of the almost forgotten pre-gambrel type, though antiquarians tell us there are none left in Boston.
From that alley, which had a dim light, we turned to the left into an equally silent and still narrower alley with no light at all; and in a minute made what I think was an obtuse-angled bend toward the right in the dark. Not long after this Pickman produced a flashlight and revealed an antediluvian ten-panelled door that looked damnably worm-eaten. Unlocking it, he ushered me into a barren hallway with what was once splendid dark-oak panelling—simple, of course, but thrillingly suggestive of the times of Andros and Phipps and the Witchcraft. Then he took me through a door on the left, lighted an oil lamp, and told me to make myself at home.
Now, Eliot, I’m what the man in the street would call fairly “hard-boiled”, but I’ll confess that what I saw on the walls of that room gave me a bad turn. They were his pictures, you know—the ones he couldn’t paint or even shew in Newbury Street—and he was right when he said he had “let himself go”. Here—have another drink—I need one anyhow!
There’s no use in my trying to tell you what they were like, because the awful, the blasphemous horror, and the unbelievable loathsomeness and moral foetor came from simple touches quite beyond the power of words to classify. There was none of the exotic technique you see in Sidney Sime, none of the trans-Saturnian landscapes and lunar fungi that Clark Ashton Smith uses to freeze the blood. The backgrounds were mostly old churchyards, deep woods, cliffs by the sea, brick tunnels, ancient panelled rooms, or simple vaults of masonry. Copp’s Hill Burying Ground, which could not be many blocks away from this very house, was a favourite scene.
The madness and monstrosity lay in the figures in the foreground—for Pickman’s morbid art was preëminently one of daemoniac portraiture. These figures were seldom completely human, but often approached humanity in varying degree. Most of the bodies, while roughly bipedal, had a forward slumping, and a vaguely canine cast. The texture of the majority was a kind of unpleasant rubberiness. Ugh! I can see them now! Their occupations—well, don’t ask me to be too precise. They were usually feeding—I won’t say on what. They were sometimes shewn in groups in cemeteries or underground passages, and often appeared to be in battle over their prey—or rather, their treasure-trove. And what damnable expressiveness Pickman sometimes gave the sightless faces of this charnel booty! Occasionally the things were shewn leaping through open windows at night, or squatting on the chests of sleepers, worrying at their throats. One canvas shewed a ring of them baying about a hanged witch on Gallows Hill, whose dead face held a close kinship to theirs.
But don’t get the idea that it was all this hideous business of theme and setting which struck me faint. I’m not a three-year-old kid, and I’d seen much like this before. It was the faces, Eliot, those accursed faces, that leered and slavered out of the canvas with the very breath of life! By God, man, I verily believe they were alive! That nauseous wizard had waked the fires of hell in pigment, and his brush had been a nightmare-spawning wand. Give me that decanter, Eliot!
There was one thing called “The Lesson”—heaven pity me, that I ever saw it! Listen—can you fancy a squatting circle of nameless dog-like things in a churchyard teaching a small child how to feed like themselves? The price of a changeling, I suppose—you know the old myth about how the weird people leave their spawn in cradles in exchange for the human babes they steal. Pickman was showing what happens to those stolen babes—how they grow up—and then I began to see a hideous relationship in the faces of the human and non-human figures. He was, in all his gradations of morbidity between the frankly non-human and the degradedly human, establishing a sardonic linkage and evolution. The dog-things were developed from mortals!
And no sooner had I wondered what he made of their own young as left with mankind in the form of changelings, than my eye caught a picture embodying that very thought. It was that of an ancient Puritan interior—a heavily beamed room with lattice windows, a settle, and clumsy seventeenth-century furniture, with the family sitting about while the father read from the Scriptures. Every face but one shewed nobility and reverence, but that one reflected the mockery of the pit. It was that of a young man in years, and no doubt belonged to a supposed son of that pious father, but in essence it was the kin of the unclean things. It was their changeling—and in a spirit of supreme irony Pickman had given the features a very perceptible resemblance to his own.
By this time Pickman had lighted a lamp in an adjoining room and was politely holding open the door for me; asking me if I would care to see his “modern studies”. I hadn’t been able to give him much of my opinions—I was too speechless with fright and loathing—but I think he fully understood and felt highly complimented. And now I want to assure you again, Eliot, that I’m no mollycoddle to scream at anything which shews a bit of departure from the usual. I’m middle-aged and decently sophisticated, and I guess you saw enough of me in France to know I’m not easily knocked out. Remember, too, that I’d just about recovered my wind and gotten used to those frightful pictures which turned colonial New England into a kind of annex of hell. Well, in spite of all this, that next room forced a real scream out of me, and I had to clutch at the doorway to keep from keeling over. The other chamber had shewn a pack of ghouls and witches overrunning the world of our forefathers, but this one brought the horror right into our own daily life!
Gad, how that man could paint! There was a study called “Subway Accident”, in which a flock of the vile things were clambering up from some unknown catacomb through a crack in the floor of the Boylston Street subway and attacking a crowd of people on the platform. Another shewed a dance on Copp’s Hill among the tombs with the background of today. Then there were any number of cellar views, with monsters creeping in through holes and rifts in the masonry and grinning as they squatted behind barrels or furnaces and waited for their first victim to descend the stairs.
One disgusting canvas seemed to depict a vast cross-section of Beacon Hill, with ant-like armies of the mephitic monsters squeezing themselves through burrows that honeycombed the ground. Dances in the modern cemeteries were freely pictured, and another conception somehow shocked me more than all the rest—a scene in an unknown vault, where scores of the beasts crowded about one who held a well-known Boston guide-book and was evidently reading aloud. All were pointing to a certain passage, and every face seemed so distorted with epileptic and reverberant laughter that I almost thought I heard the fiendish echoes. The title of the picture was, “Holmes, Lowell, and Longfellow Lie Buried in Mount Auburn”.
As I gradually steadied myself and got readjusted to this second room of deviltry and morbidity, I began to analyse some of the points in my sickening loathing. In the first place, I said to myself, these things repelled because of the utter inhumanity and callous cruelty they shewed in Pickman. The fellow must be a relentless enemy of all mankind to take such glee in the torture of brain and flesh and the degradation of the mortal tenement. In the second place, they terrified because of their very greatness. Their art was the art that convinced—when we saw the pictures we saw the daemons themselves and were afraid of them. And the queer part was, that Pickman got none of his power from the use of selectiveness or bizarrerie. Nothing was blurred, distorted, or conventionalised; outlines were sharp and life-like, and details were almost painfully defined. And the faces!
It was not any mere artist’s interpretation that we saw; it was pandemonium itself, crystal clear in stark objectivity. That was it, by heaven! The man was not a fantaisiste or romanticist at all—he did not even try to give us the churning, prismatic ephemera of dreams, but coldly and sardonically reflected some stable, mechanistic, and well-established horror-world which he saw fully, brilliantly, squarely, and unfalteringly. God knows what that world can have been, or where he ever glimpsed the blasphemous shapes that loped and trotted and crawled through it; but whatever the baffling source of his images, one thing was plain. Pickman was in every sense—in conception and in execution—a thorough, painstaking, and almost scientific realist.
My host was now leading the way down cellar to his actual studio, and I braced myself for some hellish effects among the unfinished canvases. As we reached the bottom of the damp stairs he turned his flashlight to a corner of the large open space at hand, revealing the circular brick curb of what was evidently a great well in the earthen floor. We walked nearer, and I saw that it must be five feet across, with walls a good foot thick and some six inches above the ground level—solid work of the seventeenth century, or I was much mistaken. That, Pickman said, was the kind of thing he had been talking about—an aperture of the network of tunnels that used to undermine the hill. I noticed idly that it did not seem to be bricked up, and that a heavy disc of wood formed the apparent cover. Thinking of the things this well must have been connected with if Pickman’s wild hints had not been mere rhetoric, I shivered slightly; then turned to follow him up a step and through a narrow door into a room of fair size, provided with a wooden floor and furnished as a studio. An acetylene gas outfit gave the light necessary for work.
The unfinished pictures on easels or propped against the walls were as ghastly as the finished ones upstairs, and shewed the painstaking methods of the artist. Scenes were blocked out with extreme care, and pencilled guide lines told of the minute exactitude which Pickman used in getting the right perspective and proportions. The man was great—I say it even now, knowing as much as I do. A large camera on a table excited my notice, and Pickman told me that he used it in taking scenes for backgrounds, so that he might paint them from photographs in the studio instead of carting his outfit around the town for this or that view. He thought a photograph quite as good as an actual scene or model for sustained work, and declared he employed them regularly.
There was something very disturbing about the nauseous sketches and half-finished monstrosities that leered around from every side of the room, and when Pickman suddenly unveiled a huge canvas on the side away from the light I could not for my life keep back a loud scream—the second I had emitted that night. It echoed and echoed through the dim vaultings of that ancient and nitrous cellar, and I had to choke back a flood of reaction that threatened to burst out as hysterical laughter. Merciful Creator! Eliot, but I don’t know how much was real and how much was feverish fancy. It doesn’t seem to me that earth can hold a dream like that!
It was a colossal and nameless blasphemy with glaring red eyes, and it held in bony claws a thing that had been a man, gnawing at the head as a child nibbles at a stick of candy. Its position was a kind of crouch, and as one looked one felt that at any moment it might drop its present prey and seek a juicier morsel. But damn it all, it wasn’t even the fiendish subject that made it such an immortal fountain-head of all panic—not that, nor the dog face with its pointed ears, bloodshot eyes, flat nose, and drooling lips. It wasn’t the scaly claws nor the mould-caked body nor the half-hooved feet—none of these, though any one of them might well have driven an excitable man to madness.
It was the technique, Eliot—the cursed, the impious, the unnatural technique! As I am a living being, I never elsewhere saw the actual breath of life so fused into a canvas. The monster was there—it glared and gnawed and gnawed and glared—and I knew that only a suspension of Nature’s laws could ever let a man paint a thing like that without a model—without some glimpse of the nether world which no mortal unsold to the Fiend has ever had.
Pinned with a thumb-tack to a vacant part of the canvas was a piece of paper now badly curled up—probably, I thought, a photograph from which Pickman meant to paint a background as hideous as the nightmare it was to enhance. I reached out to uncurl and look at it, when suddenly I saw Pickman start as if shot. He had been listening with peculiar intensity ever since my shocked scream had waked unaccustomed echoes in the dark cellar, and now he seemed struck with a fright which, though not comparable to my own, had in it more of the physical than of the spiritual. He drew a revolver and motioned me to silence, then stepped out into the main cellar and closed the door behind him.
I think I was paralyzed for an instant. Imitating Pickman’s listening, I fancied I heard a faint scurrying sound somewhere, and a series of squeals or bleats in a direction I couldn’t determine. I thought of huge rats and shuddered. Then there came a subdued sort of clatter which somehow set me all in gooseflesh—a furtive, groping kind of clatter, though I can’t attempt to convey what I mean in words. It was like heavy wood falling on stone or brick—wood on brick—what did that make me think of?
It came again, and louder. There was a vibration as if the wood had fallen farther than it had fallen before. After that followed a sharp grating noise, a shouted gibberish from Pickman, and the deafening discharge of all six chambers of a revolver, fired spectacularly as a lion-tamer might fire in the air for effect. A muffled squeal or squawk, and a thud. Then more wood and brick grating, a pause, and the opening of the door—at which I’ll confess I started violently. Pickman reappeared with his smoking weapon, cursing the bloated rats that infested the ancient well.
“The deuce knows what they eat, Thurber,” he grinned, “for those archaic tunnels touched graveyard and witch-den and sea-coast. But whatever it is, they must have run short, for they were devilish anxious to get out. Your yelling stirred them up, I fancy. Better be cautious in these old places—our rodent friends are the one drawback, though I sometimes think they’re a positive asset by way of atmosphere and color.”
Well, Eliot, that was the end of the night’s adventure. Pickman had promised to shew me the place, and heaven knows he had done it. He led me out of that tangle of alleys in another direction, it seems, for when we sighted a lamp post we were in a half-familiar street with monotonous rows of mingled tenement blocks and old houses. Charter Street, it turned out to be, but I was too flustered to notice just where we hit it. We were too late for the elevated, and walked back downtown through Hanover Street. I remember that walk. We switched from Tremont up Beacon, and Pickman left me at the corner of Joy, where I turned off. I never spoke to him again.
Why did I drop him? Don’t be impatient. Wait till I ring for coffee. We’ve had enough of the other stuff, but I for one need something. No—it wasn’t the paintings I saw in that place; though I’ll swear they were enough to get him ostracised in nine-tenths of the homes and clubs of Boston, and I guess you won’t wonder now why I have to steer clear of subways and cellars. It was—something I found in my coat the next morning. You know, the curled-up paper tacked to that frightful canvas in the cellar; the thing I thought was a photograph of some scene he meant to use as a background for that monster. That last scare had come while I was reaching to uncurl it, and it seems I had vacantly crumpled it into my pocket. But here’s the coffee—take it black, Eliot, if you’re wise.
Yes, that paper was the reason I dropped Pickman; Richard Upton Pickman, the greatest artist I have ever known—and the foulest being that ever leaped the bounds of life into the pits of myth and madness. Eliot—old Reid was right. He wasn’t strictly human. Either he was born in strange shadow, or he’d found a way to unlock the forbidden gate. It’s all the same now, for he’s gone—back into the fabulous darkness he loved to haunt. Here, let’s have the chandelier going.
Don’t ask me to explain or even conjecture about what I burned. Don’t ask me, either, what lay behind that mole-like scrambling Pickman was so keen to pass off as rats. There are secrets, you know, which might have come down from old Salem times, and Cotton Mather tells even stranger things. You know how damned life-like Pickman’s paintings were—how we all wondered where he got those faces.
Well—that paper wasn’t a photograph of any background, after all. What it showed was simply the monstrous being he was painting on that awful canvas. It was the model he was using—and its background was merely the wall of the cellar studio in minute detail.
But by God, Eliot, it was a photograph from life!
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Wash me clean from my guilt purify me from my sin for I recognize my shameful deeds they haunt mr day and night,guilt is one area from which u can't lift yourself by your own efforts you need the blood of jesus AMEN
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Hide my name plz and inform me when u post...m a 28 yrs old lady and a mother of 1,i was raped by my neighbour between d age of 7 and 8.although i ddnt knw what d guy is doing 2 me dat tym but nw what He dd 2 me haunt me everydae in a way dat no dae goes by without me shedding a tear.My parents were staying in The city and i was staying @ home with my aunt.He wl alwys wait 4 my aunt 2 leave home maybe she visit her friends and he would then come 2 me and maybe ask 4 something in the house and the minute i wl go in the house He wl follow me take me down and remove my panty and put his thing inside me.He alwys ddnt get caught and sometimes when i comes home from school i wl find him waiting 4 me,takes me 2 d unfinished big house rooms and help himself in Me.We use to use bushveld as toilet and sometimes He wl come and tel me 2 go there and no one ever notices that He follows me and rape me.Sometimes He will find me playing with other kids and ask me 2 go and buy him something and when i come back he will send me to a place where He will b able to rape me.He was so addicted to me in a way that maybe He can just skip a day and rape me.He was an adult who was almost 20 yrs older than me and evrytime He dd this to me it was painfully but i had no 1 2 talk 2 coz i feared my aunt so much coz evrytimes He dd this He will offer me money or biscuits and plead with me not 2 ever tel anybody.One day i was playing with her little sister(their fadas r brothers),there was no body in his place and He called us in and send us to his bedroom and tel us to remove our panties and opens our legs.He then help himself on both of us and when he is done he tel us not to tel anybody and give us sweet as he alwys do.This ended when my parents find their own stands far from where He is staying.I sometimes visit my aunt and the guy is stil there and not married.I heard There is a young girl He raped but no case was ever opened and my fear is dat he mighty b doing this 2 so many other girls.As an adult nw i want to knw if i can b able to open d case for him coz what He dd to me was total wrong,in my teens yrs i use to sleep with evry boy coz i thot dat thats hw it should be sleeping with everybody whenever u want 2.I lost my mother at age 10 and hve never told anybody what i went through but nw that i have a girl child i feel dat d same might happen to her and to b honest i got my child through 1 night stand and nw m struggling 2 find true luv and i alwys think dat it is because i was raped.I really need to go and open d case but im not sure if d police will trust my story but i can even shows all d places where d rapes took place.I hve never been a vry confident girl in growing up and i hve alwys been alone without my mother.The relationships i had only lasted 4 a week or a months please hlp me hlp what can i do,IS IT POSSIBLE TO REPORT A CRIME THAT HAPPENED ALMOST 2O YEARS AGO???
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Think vaccines today are good? Think again and read this article. The developer has to confess so she can sleep at night. People die, get disabilities, become paralyzed from vaccines. It's not about the greater good, it's not about the needs of many outweigh the needs of the few that are affected and harmed in a negative way by vaccines. Every person matters. I say you either make something that is 100% good or you don't make it at all. Modern medicine is all about money. It needs to come back to caring for the person and doing what is best for them. It should be healthcare, not sickcare.
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That night we went down to the river...now those memories come back to haunt me like a curse...
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So you guys want to here something spooky that happened here? I was watching one of those ghost hunter shows...I never watch them so it was odd in its self. But anyhow I went into the kitchen and every cabinet was opened! I shut them all and one sprung right back open..the one above the stove luckily otherwise it would have hit me (I am 5 ft tall so the doors are over my head)!! Has anyone else ever had anything like that happen?
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i'd rather be blown than stroked
watch online Haunted Nights
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