Imagine your fragile body fighting for life after a major car accident.  The EMS helicopter comes to your rescue.  Upon lift off to the hospital, the helicopter crashes.  Even worse, it crashes before reaching you due to poor visibility.  If you come from the camp that all accidents are preventable, then something like this just makes you scratch your head in bewilderment.  I’m watching the Situation Room on CNN this eve, and one of the topics tonight is ‘medical helicopter safety.’ I recall hearing about one of these stories sometime over the past few days.  Most recently in Calvert County, Maryland (in Waldorf).

Don’t ask me why I’m on a Maryland news kick.  Maybe I’m homesick a bit or just tuned in to the mini surge of MD area stories making national news headlines.

excerpt from CNN.com, full article HERE….

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Two Maryland State Police personnel, a medical technician and a teenager were killed when a medical evacuation helicopter crashed Sunday in suburban Maryland, police said.

The Maryland State Police helicopter crashed early Sunday morning, killing four of the five people on board, said Col. Terrence Sheridan, superintendent of the Maryland State Police.

The state police identified those killed as: pilot Stephen Bunker, a retired trooper; Trooper 1st Class Mickey Lippy, who was acting as flight paramedic; Tanya Mallard, an emergency medical technician with the Waldorf, Maryland, Rescue Squad; and patient Ashley Younger, 17.

Patient Jordan Wells, 18, survived the crash, according to state police. She was at a hospital in critical condition, Sheridan said…

Jordan Wells must have a guardian angel to have survived both incidents.

Read also CNN’s Situation Room related article HERE.

UPDATE TUES 9/30/08: I’m watching CNN now and they’re telling the story.  What a brave girl that escaped from that home through the window, and thank God…really…for neighbor Phillip Garrett who found this little girl walking alongside the road- bloody and beaten.  I am fighting tears as I type and think about how it must have felt for her to learn that her sisters were actually dead.  She just knew that she hadn’t seen them.  How crazy is that?!?

How the hell did this Renee woman move these 2 dead children being hidden in a chest freezer from her prior home in  Rockville out to Lusby, MD?  Why????

I hope this courageous little girl gets into a GREAT foster home and even better permanent adoption situation.

I’m sure there’s more to this story that will unfold…

———–

Maryland is my home state so this news naturally caught my attention.

How odd is this story?  I cannot relate in the least to what must go through the minds of psychopaths like this when they do this kind of crazy shit.

I’m still searching for more details, but there’s not a lot of info out there right now other than the below press release from Associated Press.

LUSBY, Md – Calvert County sheriff’s deputies have discovered the bodies of two small children in a freezer in a Lusby home.

Authorities say they found them Saturday as they were investigating a report of an injured child. A woman who says the girls were her adopted daughters has been arrested, according to The Washington Post. Forty-three-year-old Renee Bowman told deputies that the remains had been frozen since at least February.

The sheriff’s office says a third girl was found by investigators Saturday after escaping from a locked bedroom by jumping out the window. Officials say Bowman told investigators she beat the 7-year-old.

She is charged with child abuse in connection with that girl. Bowman has been ordered held without bond.

We are not affected by this here in Columbus, OH so it’s like watching y’all in the southeast through a fishbowl.  Bring it home for me, peeps.  Tell me your stories.  How is this gas shortage affecting you?

from peakoil.com…

HOUSTON — Some gasoline stations in parts of the Southeast are out of fuel and shortages could persist for days as refiners continue to recover from the one-two punch of hurricanes Ike and Gustav.

The storm, which struck the Texas coast 10 days ago, caused less damage to the region’s energy infrastructure than feared. In most cases, the biggest issue for refiners has been getting electricity restored and their equipment restarted — a process that can take several days because of the size and complexity of the plants.

“We’re capable of running full operations, but we don’t have the supply to maintain that kind of flow rate,” said Steve Baker, a spokesman for Colonial Pipeline, which delivers gasoline and other fuel from Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama to major cities in the Southeast and along the East Coast.

Baker said Monday the pipeline, which was not damaged in the storms, was beginning to get barrels from affected refineries, but he couldn’t say when Colonial would be back at full capacity.

That all depends on how soon the refineries themselves return to normal operations.

excerpt from usatoday.com…

The pipelines that supply the region are operating at less than normal capacity, due largely to storm-related power outages at Texas refineries, said Kenneth Medlock, energy fellow at the Baker Institute, a non-partisan public policy think tank at Rice University in Houston.

The Southeast, the only region of the nation that has no oil refining or major gasoline storage capacity, pumps all of its gasoline in by pipeline, he said.

“In isolation, neither of these storms would have been that big a deal, because there’s enough inventory (at stations) to make up the shortfall,” said Medlock. “But there was a three- to four-week period of refinery capacity not operating. That’s basically a month when nothing’s being produced.”

Panic buying — drivers topping off every time they happen across a station that actually has gas — made the problem worse, said Marylee Booth, executive director of the Tennessee Oil Marketers Association.

“If people saw a tanker drive up to a station, they’d start lining up. The panic has died down. It’s getting a little better every day.”

I am hearing and reading that Nashville has the worst of this situation.

Anita Williams, mother to Terrence Howard and five other children, lost her battle with colon cancer this past Thursday, September 25, 2008.  Obituary excerpt from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette below.

Anita Williams got her talent the old-fashioned way.

She inherited it.

Her mother was a singer in Cleveland. Her grandmother, Minnie Gentry, was an actress who appeared on Broadway, television and the big screen.

Although Mrs. Williams spent a few years in Los Angeles and New York seeking to use her talents in the entertainment industry, she was content to become a devoted wife, mother and friend who lived and worked in Pittsburgh.

Mrs. Williams, of Monroeville, died Thursday after a long battle with colon cancer. She was 56…

…Mrs. Williams also is survived by her sons Tyrone Howard Jr. and Terrell Howard, both of Atlanta; Antonio Howard of Philadelphia; and Darnell Williams of Monroeville; her daughter, Ariana Williams of Monroeville; her mother, Marjorie Hawkins of Monroeville; her brother, Nathan Hawkins of Wilkinsburg; and 10 grandchildren.

Visitation will be from 2 to 4 and 7 to 9 p.m. Monday at the Gene H. Corl Funeral Center of Monroeville and from 10 to 11 a.m. Tuesday at Covenant Church of Pittsburgh in Wilkinsburg. Services will begin there at 11 a.m.

read the full obituary by clicking HERE

excerpt from starpulse.com…

“Terrence will take some time to privately grieve with his family. He appreciates everyone’s support during this difficult time.”

Howard, a father of three, is known to be close to his family, telling reporters earlier this year how he gives large amounts of money to his relatives.

You have to see it yourself to believe it.  It’s always nice to see my alma mater make the national spotlight.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiog29PrnlA]

As yahoo sports reports…

Unlike Sports Illustrated or Chris Mottram, I’m not willing to put Morgan State’s Edwin Baptiste alongside Tyrone Prothro or Chris Moore in the category of “greatest catch ever,” but Baptiste’s effort in the Bears’ win over Winston-Salem State Saturday isn’t too far down the list…

Whatever Baptiste was doing before he vaulted backward off an invisible trampoline at the 35-yard line was terrible form, since ideally you’d want your receiver running under the ball, towards the other team’s end zone, not facing your own. Maybe that’s why he’s not I-A. Baptise should still carve out a little window one day in the hopefully very distant future and embed this video on his tombstone.

Controversial in technique or not, I will soak in any noteriety the national press gives to my not often recognized HBCU.

Thanks, aw, for this lead.  I’m reposting this article from the LA Times.

article title:  “Palin Talks to Couric — and if she’s lucky, few are listening”

The economic crisis and John McCain’s surprising response have drawn attention away from the Republican vice presidential nominee just as she has started to answer more pointed questions from the media.

Her third nationally televised interview, with CBS anchor Katie Couric, found Palin rambling, marginally responsive and even more adrift than during her network debut with ABC’s Charles Gibson.

In a 40-minute session with Couric that aired Wednesday and Thursday nights, the Alaska governor defended her puzzling claim that geographic proximity makes her some sort of expert on Russia; went nearly blank when queried about McCain’s achievements as a big-business regulator; agreed America “may find itself” on the road to another Great Depression; and, promoting a troop surge in Afghanistan, casually suggested that it “will lead us to victory there, as it has proven to have done in Iraq.”

The last statement couldn’t help but conjure an image from 2003 — President Bush beaming in that green flight suit before the infamous “Mission Accomplished” banner.

Palin’s unblinking certitude gave way at other times in the interview to a striking imprecision, as when she struggled to respond to Couric’s suggestion that the $700-billion bailout might be better funneled through middle-class families instead of Wall Street firms.

“That’s why I say I, like every American I’m speaking with, we’re ill about this position that we have been put in . . .” Palin began, before meandering off in fruitless pursuit of coherence.

But I’ll let the governor speak for herself:

” . . . where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the healthcare reform that is needed to help shore up our economy. Um, helping, oh — it’s got to be all about job creation too. Shoring up our economy, and putting it back on the right track. So healthcare reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions, and tax relief for Americans, and trade, we’ve got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive, um, scary thing, but 1 in 5 jobs being created in the trade sector today. We’ve got to look at that as more opportunity. All of those things under the umbrella of job creation. This bailout is a part of that.”

That mind-bender prompted Couric to muse, almost charitably, on “The Early Show” that Palin is “not always responsive when asked questions, and sometimes does slip back to her talking points.”

It didn’t go much better for Palin when she tried to clarify the mystery of what her state’s proximity to Russia has taught her about that nation. Anyone south of the Arctic Circle would have seen this question coming and had a ready answer. But seemingly not the governor.

“We have trade missions back and forth,” Palin told Couric. “We, we do, it’s very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the airspace of the United States of America, where, where do they go? It’s Alaska. It’s just right over the border. It is from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there. They are right next to, to our state.”

Certainly, Russia’s prime minister, Vladimir Putin, has demonstrated his willingness to invade its small neighbors. But have I missed news of recent provocations by Russian bombers over Kiwalik or Aleknagik? And if Palin has been intensely interested in her neighbor across the Bering Strait, that also has escaped the reporters who follow her most closely.

In fact, a veteran reporter from her home state, Hal Bernton, reported in the Seattle Times this month how Russian politicians had sought more contact with Palin, but in vain. The governor cut funding and her office’s participation, it seems, in the Northern Forum, which promotes relations between regional governments in the Northern Hemisphere.

A Palin spokeswoman e-mailed that she would provide more detail about Palin’s trade activities with the Russkies. No word by deadline.

But wait. Certainly the issue dominating the news would provide the governor with a respite from these maddening demands for, you know, facts.

With McCain now depicting himself as the doctor ready to deliver tough medicine to Wall Street, Couric asked Palin to explain what measures he had pushed in the past.

Palin raised McCain’s support of revamped oversight for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two mortgage giants that are on life support. Fine.

But when the network anchor pressed for other examples, given that the Republican has been in Congress for nearly three decades, Palin came up blank.

“I’ll try to find some” — Palin smiled at Couric — “and bring them to you.”

Palin at least kept her answers shorter during a Q&A with reporters Thursday morning, her first such session since McCain unleashed her on the national scene four weeks ago.

Although she didn’t really answer two of the four questions, many Americans won’t hold that against her. They see someone who understands what it’s like in a small town.

Common sense has its value, and commentaries like this one, suggesting Palin’s shortcomings, will only confirm to her fans that she is not a pet of the media elite. But it seems only sensible to wonder whether charm and pluck will be enough the next time Putin rears his head.

I’m slowly catching up on writing after 5 days with no power.  Sit tight, responses and new posts to come over the next few days.

Yesterday, I landed on the planet Durham, NC where I’ll hang my hat for the next few days.  While running around town yesterday (Friday), I was listening to the Michael Baisden show on the radio (107.1) talk about the Jena 6 “anniversary” (sounds like the wrong word in this context) and his role in organizing the demonstrations a year ago, what it did for his show, etc.  I also saw a small group gather in downtown Durham, NC last night to remember the events from the year before.

In my adult years, I have not participated, kind of surprising to even myself, in such major historical protests so it was interesting to hear the lasting affect it had on people.  That’s good news.  My mom is very much an activist type and I remember her excusing me for school one day to participate in the rally at The Mall in DC to get Martin Luther King’s birthday recognized as a national holiday.  That’s the day that Stevie Wonder sang his infamous “Happy Birthday” song.  Thanks, Mom, for allowing me to participate in history.

Did any of you participate in the Jena 6 protests last year?  What’s your feelings a year later?  Do you think we have moved on to the next shiny thing, especially with the current elections underway?

Here are some links to read more about Jena 6 a year later…

BLACK SPIN- JENA SIX ANNIVERSARY:  HOW THINGS HAVE CHANGED

BLOG: EVERYONE NEEDS THERAPY- THE JENA 6 OVER A YEAR LATER

some older articles of interest…

COLOR OF CHANGE- FALSE ALLEGATIONS ON MICHAEL BAISDEN SHOW

WASHINGTON POST- DRIVE TIME FOR ‘JENA 6′

* * * * *

NEW YORK, Sept 15 (Reuters) – The remnants of Hurricane Ike caused massive power outages across Ohio and Kentucky and into western Pennsylvania, with more than 1.6 million customers still without service early Monday, local utilities said. click HERE for the full story

Wyclef Jean has partnered with the Yele Haiti Foundation to start The Haiti Storm Relief Fund.

Read more about it through these links.

YELE HAITI’S HOMEPAGE- YELE.ORG

CARIBWORLDNEWS.COM- WYCLEF JEAN PITCHES IN TO HELP HURRICANE BATTERED HAITI

E! ONLINE- WYCLEF JEAN RALLIES FOR HURRICANE RELIEF IN HAITI

Got this in an email and thought I’d post it… (source:  unknown)

i am a pig who likes lipstick...and kermie! (Affrodite original quote for today)

LOL!!!

I feel like I’m at an NBA basketball game when the monitor starts flashing stuff like “Stand On Your Feet!”, “Make Some Noise!”, “Rise Up!”.

Or in Mystikal’s song “Bouncing Back (Bumping Me Against The Wall)”

You keep bumping me against the wall
Yeah I know I let you slide before
But until you seen me…trust me

You ain’t seen bouncin’ back!

Obama, don’t let them nail you with that “lipstick on a pig” comment.  I’m just waiting for your great comeback.  The one that will renew the faith of any Doubting Thomases (adding link because i am often reminded by my hubby that sometimes i use phrases that are unfamiliar to some) out there.

I ran across this post this morning that I thought was a good read.

from blog The Real Barack Obama , article BATCHELOR: “LIPSTICK” (UPDATED)

Damnit!  Obama, you betta…

enuff said. 

thanks aw for forwarding…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpniuotfpR8]

Ok, here me out because my blog post title could throw you off.  I found this article on the International Herald Tribune and it’s called Hurricane Recovery Confronts Low Literacy Rate.

Here’s an excerpt…

Three years after Hurricane Katrina, residents of New Orleans are still buried in a blizzard of government paperwork. But for thousands of storm victims seeking federal aid, the challenge is made more difficult by a little-known obstacle: More than 40 percent of the city’s adults lack the literacy skills to comprehend basic government forms. And recovery programs have done little to ease the burden.

This is an aspect that never even occurred to me, but is a really issue.  I mean I could totally get lost and frustrated in a sea of paperwork that has been the government’s bureaucratic claim to fame.

Ran across an article on cincinnati.com called

Black Women Returning to Natural “Nappy” Roots

thought you might be interested in reading it, too.  Here’s an excerpt…

From dreadlocks to Afros, braids and twists, the natural hair movement is growing all over the country, particularly in places such as Detroit, New York, Chicago, Atlanta and Dallas.

More and more black women on TV are being shown with natural hair, and their decisions to forgo chemical relaxers that straighten hair have inspired an entire cottage industry of hair-care products, books and events.

Twenty to 25 percent of black women have natural tendrils not altered by perms, according to Pantene, an international hair-care brand owned by Procter & Gamble. The same study revealed that 60 to 65 percent have relaxers and 8 to 10 percent have braid extensions.

It includes a mention of a salon in Detroit called “Textures by Nefertiti”.  Here’s an excerpt about the salon from the article…

Textures by Nefertiti, a natural hair gallery located in Detroit, specializes in natural hairstyles for black customers in Detroit.  Owner/stylist Nefertiti prefers to be called a “master locktician”