vote

my mom voted this morning despite knowing very few people.

Murder of Jaclyn Dowaliby

Jaclyn Marie Dowaliby was an American girl who disappeared from her bedroom in the middle of the night. Her body was found five days later. Disappearance: On September 10, 1988, seven-year-old Jaclyn was taken from her home in Midlothian, Illinois at some point during the night. The next morning, her mother Cynthia Dowaliby reported her as a missing child, possibly an abduction, and claimed that she "prayed for her return". Police reportedly found a broken window, but it may have been a phony entry area as her adoptive father David Dowaliby later recalled the back door was left open. Search parties were organised, but for five days Jaclyn was nowhere to be found. Death and legacy: On September 14, 1988, Dowaliby's body was found abandoned at a dump site six miles away from her home. Even though an autopsy couldn't reveal when she had been killed, the police suspected that Cynthia and David were involved in the crime. In 1990 they were put on trial for her murder. Cynthia was acquitted but David was convicted on eyewitness testimony which placed him at the scene where her body was found. In October 1991, an appellate court overturned his conviction, ruling that there was no more evidence against him than there had been against Cynthia. On November 13, 1991, David Dowaliby was released from prison. Nobody else has been arrested or convicted for her murder. In popular culture: In 1996, a television film was released, entitled Gone in the Night. It was based on Dowaliby's disappearance and murder, and starred Kevin Dillon and Shannen Doherty as David and Cynthia.

Murder of Alison Parrott

Alison Parrott, was an 11-year-old girl who went missing from her home in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Her remains were found two evenings later in a densely wooded area of Kings Mill Park. Disappearance: At about 11 o'clock on the morning of July 25, 1986, she received a phone call at her Summerhill Avenue home in midtown Toronto. A male caller, claiming to be a photographer, asked her to meet him at the University of Toronto's Varsity Stadium where, he said, he would be taking publicity photos of her and her teammates. Alison, a member of the Tom Longboat Club, was to participate in an international track-and-field meet in Plainfield, New Jersey, on 1 August, exactly a week later. She phoned her mother, Lesley, at work and got permission to attend the session (the same man had called 11 days earlier, while Alison had been at summer camp, asking for her). She then left to keep the appointment, leaving word with the family housekeeper. When she failed to return home by six p.m., Peter and Lesley Parrott inquired among their neighbours, none of whom had seen her; they then called police. Alison was found dead two evenings later in a densely wooded area of Kings Mill Park, on the Humber River just below the Old Mill subway station: she had been raped and strangled. "Stay Alert Stay Safe": In May, 1987, Lesley Parrott, aided by colleagues at the advertising agency where she worked, launched the Canada-wide "Stay Alert Stay Safe" program. Aimed at children aged seven through 10, the program's main objective was to attune children's instincts to dangerous situations, whether at home or elsewhere. Trial: Almost exactly a decade after Parrott's murder, Francis Carl Roy was arrested for the crime on July 31, 1996. Roy, a Native Canadian from Manitoulin Island, was an avid runner with a keen interest in photography. He also had a long criminal record which included such offenses as burglary, petty theft, fraud, assault and rape. At the time of Alison's death, Roy had been on parole after serving only two and a half years of an 11-year sentence for the rapes of two teenaged girls, 19 and 14 years old. DNA evidence found in Alison's body linked him conclusively to Alison's death. Defence: Roy's only explanation for the DNA evidence was that he had discovered Alison's naked body while looking for a place to urinate while on a run in the park. Once discovering the deceased body of Alison Parrott in the brush, he had a sudden urge to stick his finger inside her. Since he was uncircumcised, Roy had to push back the skin on his penis; having masturbated earlier that day, he still had semen on his hands. Verdict: The jury deliberated for six days, and on April 13, 1999, he was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment without possibility of parole for 25 years. He will be eligible in 2024. Burial: Her remains were cremated. She is buried in Mount Pleasant Cemetery, Toronto. Plot: Section A, Lot 281, under a small flowering tree. The "little park" is dedicated to Alison and the children of Summerhill in the neighbourhood where she lived. Cold Case Files: The fourth episode of Cold Case Files titled "Answer in the Box; Maternal Instinct" follows the disappearance of Alison and subsequent investigation of the crime. Killer in a Box (1999) was the second episode of season 3 of Exhibit A: Secrets of Forensic Science, a Canadian documentary television program, hosted by Graham Greene, that revisited criminal cases. Alison Parrot's murder was one of the cases examined in the 2007 documentary Forgiveness: Stories For Our Time.

energy

i've got a ton of energy since i'm pretty sure my energy levels are up and my muscle spasms aren't bad.

tired

i've been dancing and exorcising the last 3 days straight. it's mainly dancing the hoedown throw down and walking the dog.

caffeine fast

on Thursday i had the equivalent of 8.5 cups of coffee. i'm allowed 5. i decided to take it easy on the caffeine for 3 reason: I've got diabetes, I've got a muscle disorder and my back. i went nearly 3/4 of a day without caffeine. that's a long time. at least my body was able to get a break from it, my back pain went down and i lost 1/2 a pound.

out

i was out for a little bit after church. i needed the air and time out. i loved it.

Christopher Wilder

Christopher Bernard Wilder, also known as The Beauty Queen Killer, was a serial killer from Australia who abducted and raped at least twelve women, killing at least eight of them, during a six-week cross-country crime spree in the United States of America in early 1984. His series of murders began in Florida on February 26, 1984, and continued across the country through Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Nevada, California and New York before he was killed during a struggle with police in New Hampshire on April 13, 1984. He is also believed to have raped two girls, aged 10 and 12, in Florida in 1983. Since his death, Wilder has also been considered the prime suspect in the unsolved 1965 murder of two teenage girls in Sydney, Australia, where he had lived from his birth until 1965. Early life: Wilder was born on March 13, 1945, in Sydney, Australia, the son of an American naval officer and an Australian national. He nearly died at birth, but recovered, and almost drowned in a swimming pool at the age of two. In 1962 or 1963, he pleaded guilty to a gang-rape at a beach in Sydney and was sentenced to probation, during which time he also received electroshock therapy. There is evidence that this treatment exacerbated his violent sexual tendencies. A copy of the novel The Collector by John Fowles, in which a man keeps a woman in his cellar against her will until she dies, was found among his possessions after his death. He married in 1968, but his wife left him after one week. Wilder emigrated to the United States in 1969. He lived in Boynton Beach, Florida, in an upscale home, and was successful in real estate, while developing an interest in photography. From about 1971 through 1975, he faced various charges related to sexual misconduct. He eventually raped a young woman he had lured into his truck on the pretense of photographing her for a modeling contract. This was to become part of his modus operandi during his later rape and murder spree. Despite several convictions, Wilder was never jailed for any of these crimes. Murder spree: While visiting his parents in Australia in 1982 Wilder was charged with sexual offenses against two 15-year-old girls whom he had forced to pose nude. His parents posted bail and he was allowed to return to Florida to await trial, but court delays prevented his case from ever being heard, as the eventual initial hearing date of April 1984 came after his death. In early 1984 he began a bloody, six-week, cross-country crime spree in the United States. He would leave in his wake a total of 8-9 female murder victims. Florida and Georgia murders: The first murder attributed to Wilder was that of Rosario Gonzalez, who was last seen on February 26, 1984, at the Miami Grand Prix, where she was employed as a model. Wilder was also at the race, where he raced in the IMSA GTU class in a Porsche 911. On March 5, Wilder's former girlfriend, Miss Florida finalist Elizabeth Kenyon, went missing. Neither woman has ever been found. Police linked Wilder to both women after consulting a private investigator who had been hired by Kenyon's parents to discover information related to her disappearance. When 15-year-old Colleen Orsborn went missing after leaving her Daytona Beach home on March 15, Wilder was staying at a motel in Daytona Beach. Though he checked out on the day Orsborn disappeared, no evidence has been found to connect them. Her body was discovered a few weeks later, partially buried near a lake in Orange County, Florida, although it was initially ruled not to be her, and was not formally identified until 2011. On March 18, he lured 21-year-old Theresa Wait Ferguson away from the Merritt Square Mall in Merritt Island, Florida and murdered her, dumping her body at Canaveral Groves, where it was discovered on March 23. His next victim was 19-year-old Linda Grover from Florida State University, whom he abducted from the Governor's Square Mall in Tallahassee, Florida, and transported to Bainbridge, Georgia, on March 20. She had declined his offer to photograph her for a modeling agency, after which he assaulted her in the mall parking lot, bound her hands, wrapped her in a blanket, and put her in the trunk of his car. That night, in room 30 of the Glen Oaks Motel, he raped her, and then used a blow dryer and super glue to blind her. He tortured her further by applying copper wires to her feet and passing an electric current through them. When she tried to get away, he beat her, but she escaped and locked herself in the bathroom where she began pounding on the walls. Wilder fled in his car, taking all of her belongings with him. Texas and Kansas murders: The next day, March 21, Wilder approached Terry Walden, a 23-year-old wife, mother, and nursing student at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas, about posing as a model. She turned him down, but disappeared on March 23. Wilder stabbed her to death and dumped her body in a canal, where it was found on March 26. After killing Walden, Wilder fled in her rust-colored 1981 Mercury Cougar. On March 25 Wilder abducted 21-year-old Suzanne Logan at the Penn Square Mall in Oklahoma City. Wilder took her 180 miles north to Newton, Kansas, and checked into room 30 of the I-35 Inn. After breakfast the next morning, he drove to Milford Reservoir, 90 miles northeast of Newton near Junction City, Kansas, where he stabbed her to death and dumped her body under a cedar tree. Utah and California murders: Wilder took 18-year-old Sheryl Bonaventura captive in Grand Junction, Colorado, on March 29. They were seen together at a diner in Silverton where they told staff they were heading for Las Vegas with a stop in Durango on the way. The next day they were seen at the Four Corners Monument, after which Wilder checked into the Page Boy Motel in Page, Arizona. Wilder shot and stabbed Bonaventura to death around March 31 near the Kanab River in Utah, but her body was not found until May 3. Wilder also killed 17-year-old Michelle Korfman, an aspiring model, who disappeared from a Seventeen magazine cover model competition at the Meadows Mall in Las Vegas on April 1. A photograph was taken of Wilder stalking her at the competition. Her body remained undiscovered near a southern California roadside rest stop until May 11, and was not identified until mid-June via dental X-rays. Elizabeth Dodge murder (New York): Near Torrance, California, Wilder photographed 16-year-old Tina Marie Risico before abducting her and driving her to El Centro, where he assaulted her. Wilder apparently believed that Risico would be of use in helping him lure other victims, so he kept her alive and took her with him as he traveled back east through Prescott, Arizona, Joplin, Missouri, and Chicago, Illinois. Wilder had been on the FBI's ten most wanted fugitives list since the second week of April. He and Risico went to Merrillville, Indiana, where she helped him abduct 16-year-old Dawnette Wilt at the Southlake Mall. Wilder raped Wilt several times as Risico drove to New York. Near Penn Yan, Wilder took Wilt into the woods and attempted to suffocate her before stabbing her twice and leaving her. Wilt survived and recuperated at Soldiers and Sailors Hospital in Penn Yan; she told Penn Yan police that Wilder was heading for Canada. At the Eastview Mall in Victor, New York, Wilder forced 33-year-old Elizabeth Dodge into his car and had Risico follow him in Dodge's Pontiac Firebird. After a short drive, Wilder shot Dodge and dumped her body behind a high mound of gravel. He and Risico then drove the Firebird to Logan Airport in Boston, where he bought her a ticket to Los Angeles. Survivor: On April 13, 1984, Wilder attempted to abduct 18-year-old Carla Hendry in Beverly, Massachusetts, but she managed to escape. Wilder's vehicle description was broadcast to law enforcement officials. Death: Later that day, April 13, when Wilder stopped at Vic's Getty service station at the corner of Main and Bridge Streets in Colebrook, New Hampshire, he was noticed by two New Hampshire state troopers, Leo Jellison and Wayne Fortier. When the troopers approached Wilder, he retreated to his car to arm himself with a Colt Python .357 Magnum. Trooper Jellison grabbed Wilder from behind. In the scuffle, two shots were fired: the first bullet passed through Wilder's body, exited through his back and into Jellison; the second also went into Wilder's chest. Both bullets pierced Wilder's heart, killing him. Trooper Jellison was seriously wounded, but recovered and returned to full duty. Wilder earned the nickname the "Beauty Queen Killer" as a result of his crimes. Aftermath: Wilder was cremated in Florida, leaving a personal estate worth more than $7 million. In June 1986, a court-appointed arbitrator ruled that the after-tax balance was to be divided between the families of his victims. New Hampshire pathologist Robert Christie took a phone call from a man claiming to be from Harvard, who said that Harvard wanted Wilder's brain for study. He agreed in the interest of science, but wanted a formal written request. It never materialized, and when he phoned Harvard, no one there admitted to having made any such call. The made-for-TV movie Easy Prey (1986) was based on Wilder's story. Other possible victims: -Along with the eight known victims he killed between February and April 1984, Wilder has been suspected in the murders and disappearances of many other women, including some whose remains were found around Florida in areas he was known to frequent. -Wilder is a suspect in Australia's unsolved Wanda Beach Murders – the murders of Marianne Schmidt and Christine Sharrock at Wanda Beach, near Sydney, on January 11, 1965. -In 1981 Mary Opitz, 17, disappeared in Fort Myers, Florida, on January 16, 1981, and was last seen walking towards a parking lot. Another girl who physically resembled Opitz, Mary Hare, disappeared on February 11, 1981, from the same parking lot. Hare's body, which had decomposed, was found in June 1981; she had been stabbed in the back and was the victim of a homicide. Authorities began to suspect foul play was involved in Opitz's case following this; Opitz's case remains unsolved. -During 1982, the skeletal remains of two unidentified women were unearthed near property owned by Wilder in Loxahatchee, Florida. One victim had been dead for one to three years, and apparently had her fingers cut off; police theorize that whoever killed her could be linked to the crime if the body was ever identified. The other woman had been dead for a period of months. -Shari Lynne Ball, a 20-year-old aspiring model, went missing in October 1983 from Boca Raton, Florida. Her badly decomposed body was found by a hunter in Shelby, New York, sometime later, but was not identified until 2014. Her cause of death could not be determined, but foul play was suspected. Wilder is currently being looked at for possible involvement, since it matches his modus operandi, but no evidence links him to the crime. -Tammy Lynn Leppert, 18, was last seen around 11:30 a.m. on July 6, 1983, in Cocoa Beach, Florida, while in a heated argument with a male companion. Leppert's family filed a one-million-dollar lawsuit against Wilder before his death but dropped the suit afterwards. Leppert's mother, modelling agent Linda Curtis, later stated that she never believed Wilder was involved in Tammy's disappearance. Police were never able to link Wilder and Leppert, and it may be coincidence that she disappeared at the same time he was targeting area models. He had a long history of sex crimes but did not begin his killing spree until almost a year after she vanished. -An unidentified young woman, the Broward County Jane Doe, was found floating in a canal on February 18, 1984, in Davie, Florida. She had been strangled to death and was thought to have been dead two days prior to being found. -On March 7, 1984, Melody Marie Gay, 19, was abducted while working the graveyard shift at an all-night store in Collier County, Florida; her body was pulled from a rural canal three days later. Due to the similarities between her murder and Wilder's crimes, they were thought to be connected, but he has since been ruled out as a suspect.

Jean Seberg

Jean Dorothy Seberg was an American actress who lived half her life in France. She appeared in 34 films in Hollywood and in Europe, including Saint Joan, Bonjour Tristesse, Breathless, Lilith, The Mouse That Roared, Moment to Moment, A Fine Madness, Paint Your Wagon, Airport, Macho Callahan, and Gang War in Naples. She was also one of the best-known targets of the FBI COINTELPRO project. Her targeting was a well-documented retaliation for her support of the Black Panther Party in the 1960s. Seberg died at the age of 40 in Paris, with police ruling her death a probable suicide. Early life: Jean Dorothy Seberg was born in Marshalltown, Iowa, the daughter of Dorothy Arline , a substitute teacher, and Edward Waldemar Seberg, a pharmacist. Her family was Lutheran and of Swedish, English, and German ancestry. Her paternal grandfather, Edward Carlson, arrived in the U.S. in 1882 and observed, "there are too many Carlsons in the New World". He decided to change the family's last name to Seberg in memory of the water and mountains of Sweden. Jean had a sister Mary-Ann, a brother Kurt, and a brother David, who was killed in a car accident at the age of eighteen. In Marshalltown, Seberg babysat Mary Supinger, some eight years her junior, who would later become a stage and film actress known as Mary Beth Hurt. After high school, Seberg enrolled at the University of Iowa to study dramatic arts, but took up movie making instead. Film career- Otto Preminger: Seberg made her film debut in 1957 in the title role of Saint Joan, from the George Bernard Shaw play, after being chosen from 18,000 hopefuls by director Otto Preminger in a $150,000 talent search. Her name was entered by a neighbor. When she was cast, on October 21, 1956, her only acting experience had been a single season of summer stock performances. The film was associated with a great deal of publicity about which Seberg commented that she was "embarrassed by all the attention". Despite a big build-up, called in the press a "Pygmalion experiment", both the film and Seberg received poor notices. On the failure, she later told the press: I have two memories of Saint Joan. The first was being burned at the stake in the picture. The second was being burned at the stake by the critics. The latter hurt more. I was scared like a rabbit and it showed on the screen. It was not a good experience at all. I started where most actresses end up. Preminger, though, promised her a second chance, and he cast Seberg in his next film Bonjour Tristesse the following year, which was filmed in France. Regarding his decision, Preminger told the press: "It's quite true that, if I had chosen Audrey Hepburn instead of Jean Seberg, it would have been less of a risk, but I prefer to take the risk. I have faith in her. Sure, she still has things to learn about acting, but so did Kim Novak when she started." Seberg again received atrocious reviews and the film nearly ended her career. She renegotiated her contract with Otto Preminger, and signed a long term contract with Columbia Pictures. Preminger had an option to use her services on another film, but they never worked together again. Her next role was for Columbia, in the successful 1959 comedy The Mouse That Roared, starring Peter Sellers. Breathless and French career: During the filming of Bonjour Tristesse Seberg met François Moreuil, the man who was to be her first husband, and she then based herself in France, achieving success as the free-love heroine of French New Wave films. Most notably, she appeared in 1960 as Patricia in Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless (French title: À bout de souffle), in which she co-starred with Jean-Paul Belmondo. The film became an international success and critics praised Seberg's performance, François Truffaut even hailing her "the best actress in Europe". Despite her achievements in this genre, Seberg did not identify with her characters or the film plots, saying that she was "making films in France about people she's not really interested in." Back in the US, she made another film for Columbia, Let No Man Write My Epitaph (1960). In France she appeared in Time Out for Love then Seberg took on the lead role in her then-husband François Moreuil's directorial debut, La recréation (Love Play). By that time, Seberg had been estranged from Moreuil, and she recollected that production was "pure hell" and that he "would scream at her." She followed it with Five Day Lover (1962) and Congo vivo (1962). In the French Style (1962) was a French-American film with Stanley Baker released through Columbia. Les plus belles escroqueries du monde (1963) was an anthology movie and Backfire (1964) reunited her with Jean-Paul Belmondo. In the United States, she starred opposite Warren Beatty in Lilith (1964) for Columbia, which prompted the critics to acknowledge Seberg as a serious actress. She returned to France to make Diamonds Are Brittle (1965). Return to Hollywood: In the late 1960s, she based herself increasingly in Hollywood. Moment to Moment (1966), shot in France and Los Angeles, was her first movie for a Hollywood studio in a number of years. She returned to France to make Line of Demarcation (1966), then was back in Hollywood for A Fine Madness (1966). After making Pendulum (1969), she appeared in her first and only musical film, Paint Your Wagon, based on Lerner and Loewe's stage musical, and co-starring Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood. Her singing voice was dubbed by Anita Gordon. Seberg also starred in the disaster film Airport (1970). Later career: Seberg was François Truffaut's first choice for the central role of Julie in Day for Night but, after several fruitless attempts to contact her, He gave up and cast British actress Jacqueline Bisset instead. Her last US film appearance was in the TV movie Mousey (1974). Seberg remained active during the 1970s in European films. She appeared in Bianchi cavalli d'Agosto (White Horses of Summer) (1975), Le Grand Délire (Die Große Ekstase) (1975, with husband Dennis Berry) and Die Wildente (1976, based on Ibsen's The Wild Duck). At the time of her death she was working on the French film La Légion saute sur Kolwezi. She had scenes filmed in French Guiana and returned to Paris for additional work in September. After her death, the scenes were reshot with actress Mimsy Farmer. Possible Hollywood blacklisting: At the peak of her career, Seberg suddenly stopped acting in Hollywood films. Reportedly, she was not pleased with the roles she had been offered, some of which, she noted, bordered on pornography. Conversely, she was not offered any great Hollywood roles, regardless of their size. Experts in FBI COINTELPRO activities suggest that Seberg was "effectively blacklisted" from Hollywood films, as was Jane Fonda, for a period of time. No conclusive evidence of a 'blacklisting' exists, yet this is fairly normal, as such blacklists are usually secret. FBI COINTELPRO investigation: During the late 1960s, Seberg provided financial support to various groups supporting civil rights, such as the NAACP as well as Native American school groups such as the Meskwaki Bucks at the Tama settlement near her home town of Marshalltown, for whom she purchased US$500 worth of basketball uniforms. The FBI was upset about several gifts to the Black Panther Party, totaling US$10,500 (estimated) in contributions; these were noted among a list of other celebrities in FBI internal documents later declassified and released to the public under FOIA requests. The financial support and alleged interracial love affairs or friendships are thought to have been triggers to an FBI investigation. The FBI operation against Seberg used COINTELPRO program techniques to harass, intimidate, defame, and discredit Seberg. The FBI's stated goal was an unspecified "neutralization" of Seberg with a subsidiary objective to "cause her embarrassment and serve to cheapen her image with the public", while taking the "usual precautions to avoid identification of the Bureau". FBI strategy and modalities can be found in FBI inter-office memos. In 1970, the FBI created the false story, from a San Francisco-based informant, that the child Seberg was carrying was not fathered by her husband Romain Gary but by Raymond Hewitt, a member of the Black Panther Party. The story was reported by gossip columnist Joyce Haber of the Los Angeles Times, and was also printed by Newsweek magazine. Seberg went into premature labor and, on August 23, 1970, gave birth to a 4 lb (1.8 kg) baby girl. The child died two days later. She held a funeral in her hometown with an open casket that allowed reporters to see the infant's white skin, which disproved the rumors. Seberg and Gary later sued Newsweek for libel and defamation, asking for US$200,000 in damages. She contended she became so upset after reading the story, that she went into premature labor, which resulted in the death of her daughter. A Paris court ordered Newsweek to pay the couple US$10,800 in damages and ordered Newsweek to print the judgment in their publication, plus eight other newspapers. The investigation of Seberg went far beyond the publishing of defamatory articles. According to her friends interviewed after her death, she reportedly experienced years of aggressive in-person surveillance (constant stalking), as well as break-ins and other intimidation-oriented activity. These newspaper reports make clear that Seberg was well aware of the surveillance. FBI files show that she was wiretapped, and in 1980, the Los Angeles Times published logs of her Swiss wiretapped phone calls. U.S. surveillance was deployed while she was residing in France and while travelling in Switzerland and Italy. Per FBI files the FBI cross-contacted the "FBI Legat" (legal attachés) in U.S. Embassies in Paris and Rome and provided files on Seberg to the CIA, U.S. Secret Service and U.S. Military intelligence to assist monitoring while she was abroad. FBI records show that J. Edgar Hoover kept U.S. President Richard Nixon informed of FBI activities related to the Jean Seberg case through President Nixon's domestic affairs chief John Ehrlichman. John Mitchell, then Attorney General, and Deputy Attorney General Richard Kleindienst were also kept informed of FBI activities related to Seberg. Personal life: On September 5, 1958, aged 20, Seberg married François Moreuil, a French lawyer (aged 23) in her native Marshalltown after having met in France 15 months earlier. They divorced in 1960. Moreuil had ambitions in movies and directed his estranged wife in "La récréation". According to Seberg, the marriage was a "violent" one; and she complained that she "got married for all the wrong reasons." On living in France for a period of time, Seberg said in an interview: I'm enjoying it to the fullest extent. I've been tremendously lucky to have gone through this experience at an age where I can still learn. That doesn't mean that I will stay here. I'm in Paris because my work has been here. I'm not an expatriate. I will go where the work is. The French life has its drawbacks. One of them is the formality. The system seems to be based on saving the maximum of yourself for those nearest you. Perhaps that is better than the other extreme in Hollywood, where people give so much of themselves in public life that they have nothing left over for their families. Still, it is hard for an American to get used to. Often I will get excited over a luncheon table only to have the hostess say discreetly that coffee will be served in the other room. I miss that casualness and friendliness of Americans, the kind that makes people smile. I also miss blue jeans, milk shakes, thick steaks and supermarkets. Despite extended stays in the United States, she remained Paris-based for the rest of her life. In 1962, she married French aviator, resistant, novelist and diplomat Romain Gary, who was 24 years her senior and had been married to Lesley Blanch. Gary's divorce took place on September 5, 1962, and he married Seberg on October 6. The marriage in Corsica was secret and used accommodations with the law. Their sole child together, Alexandre Diego Gary, was born in Barcelona on July 24, 1962. The child's birth and first years of life were hidden from even close friends and relatives. Thanks to his contacts in the diplomat services, Gary later "established" Diego's birth at the French village of Charquemont on October 26, 1963, after his parents' marriage. During her marriage to Gary, Seberg lived in Paris, Greece, Southern France and Majorca. Diego married and as of 2009 resides in Spain where he runs a bookstore and oversees his father's literary and real estate holdings. While filming Macho Callahan in Mexico in 1969-70, Seberg became romantically involved with a student revolutionary named Carlos Ornelas Navarra. She gave birth to Navarra's daughter, Nina Hart Gary, on August 23, 1970. The baby died two days later, on August 25, 1970, and is buried at Riverside Cemetery in Marshalltown. Estranged husband Romain Gary had publicly claimed to have been the father during Seberg's pregnancy, but she acknowledged that Navarra was actually the father. In 1972, she was married for the third time, to aspiring film director Dennis Berry. In 1979, while separated from her legally wed husband, Seberg went through "a form of marriage" to an Algerian, Ahmed Hasni. Hasni persuaded her to sell her second apartment on the Rue du Bac, and he kept the proceeds (reportedly 11 million francs in cash), announcing that he would use the money to open a Barcelona restaurant. The couple departed for Spain, but she was soon back in Paris alone and went into hiding from Hasni, who she said had grievously abused her. Death: On the night of August 30, 1979, Seberg disappeared. Hasni told police that they had gone to a movie that night and when he awoke the next morning, Seberg was gone. After Seberg went missing, Hasni told police that he had known she was suicidal for some time. He claimed that she had attempted suicide in July 1979 by jumping in front of a Paris subway train. On September 8, nine days after her disappearance, her decomposing body was found wrapped in a blanket in the back seat of her Renault, parked close to her Paris apartment in the 16th arrondissement. Police found a bottle of barbiturates, an empty mineral water bottle and a note written in French from Seberg addressed to her son. It read, in part, "Forgive me. I can no longer live with my nerves." In 1979, her death was ruled a probable suicide by Paris police, but the following year additional charges were filed against persons unknown for "non-assistance of a person in danger". Romain Gary, Seberg's second husband, called a press conference shortly after her death where he publicly blamed the FBI's campaign against Seberg for her deteriorating mental health. Gary claimed that Seberg "became psychotic" after the media reported a false story that the FBI planted about her becoming pregnant with a Black Panther's child in 1970. Romain Gary stated that Seberg had repeatedly attempted suicide on the anniversary of their child's death, August 25. Seberg is interred in the Cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris. Aftermath: Six days after the discovery of Seberg's body, the FBI released documents under FOIA admitting the defamation of Seberg, while making statements attempting to distance themselves from practices of the Hoover era. The FBI's campaign against Seberg was further explored at this time by Time magazine in a front-page article, "The FBI vs. Jean Seberg". Media attention surrounding the abuse Seberg had undergone at FBI hands led to examination of the case by the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, a.k.a. "the Church Committee", which noted that notwithstanding FBI claims of reform, "COINTELPRO activities may continue today under the rubric of investigation". In his autobiography, Los Angeles Times editor Jim Bellows described events leading up to the Seberg articles, in which he expressed regret that he had not vetted the Seberg articles sufficiently. He echoed this sentiment in subsequent interviews. The Seberg case remains a hallmark case, examined to this day, concerning U.S. intelligence abuses directed towards U.S. citizens. In June 1980, Paris police filed charges against "persons unknown" in connection with Seberg's death. Police stated that Seberg had such a high amount of alcohol in her system at the time of her death, that it would have rendered her comatose and unable to get into her car without assistance. Police noted there was no alcohol in the car where Seberg's body was found. Police theorized that someone was present at the time of her death and failed to get her medical care. In December 1980, Seberg's former husband Romain Gary committed suicide. Gary's suicide note, which was addressed to his publisher, indicated that he had not killed himself over the loss of Seberg but over the fact that he felt he could no longer produce literary works. In popular culture: The Talent Scout by Romain Gary (1961) features a recognizable portrait of Seberg. In 1983 a musical, Jean Seberg, by librettist Julian Barry, composer Marvin Hamlisch, and lyricist Christopher Adler, based on Seberg's life, was presented at the National Theatre in London. In 1986, pop singer Madonna copied Jean Seberg's iconic Breathless look in her music video for "Papa Don't Preach", sporting a pixie blonde haircut, French striped jersey shirt and black capri pants in her interpretation of the New Wave ingenue that Seberg played in Breathless. In 1991, actress Jodie Foster, a fan of Seberg's performance in Breathless, purchased the film rights to Played Out: The Jean Seberg Story, the David Richards' biography about Seberg. Foster was set to produce and star in the film, but the project was cancelled two years later. Mexican author and diplomat Carlos Fuentes mirrored their short-term affair in his 1994 novel Diana o La Cazadora Solitaria (English title: Diana: The Goddess Who Hunts Alone). In 1995, a documentary of her life was made by Mark Rappaport, titled From the Journals of Jean Seberg. Mary Beth Hurt played Seberg in a voice-over. Hurt was born in Marshalltown, Iowa in 1948, attended the same high school as Seberg, and Seberg had been her babysitter. The 2000 short film Je t'aime John Wayne is a tribute parody of Breathless, with Camilla Rutherford playing Seberg's role. In 2004, the French author Alain Absire published Jean S., a fictionalized biography. Seberg's son, Alexandre Diego Gary, brought a lawsuit, unsuccessfully attempting to stop publication. In the title track of the Divine Comedy's 2004 album, Absent Friends, Seberg is mentioned where the singer describes how she "seemed so full of life, but in those eyes, such troubled dreams", an apparent reference to Seberg's death. Since 2011, Seberg's hometown of Marshalltown, Iowa has held an annual "Jean Seberg International Film Festival".

Awesome

So my talk went amazing. My whole family was dragged there and I'm glad. Everyone was excited to hear me talk as well as meet my family.

blue

i'm going to wear a blue outfit tomorrow. i love blue and look awesome in it

excited

i'm super excited for tomorrow. i'm giving a talk in sacrament meeting.

Dupont de Ligonnès murders and disappearance

The Dupont de Ligonnès murders and disappearance involved the murder of five members of the same family in Nantes, in the département of Loire-Atlantique in north-western France, followed by the disappearance of the father of the family. Agnès Dupont de Ligonnès and her four children were murdered in early April 2011. Their bodies were found on 21 April 2011 at their home in Nantes. The father, Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès, disappeared at the same time and is considered the prime suspect in their murders. He is the subject of an international arrest warrant. The family: The Dupont de Ligonnès family is an old French aristocratic family originally from Annonay in the Vivarais region in south-eastern France. Family members include Édouard du Pont de Ligonnès (1797-1877), who married Sophie de Lamartine, sister of the poet Alphonse de Lamartine and whose youngest son, Charles du Pont de Ligonnès, became the Bishop of Rodez. In 2011, Xavier and Agnès lived at 55 boulevard Robert-Schuman in Nantes, in a modest house in the western suburbs of the city. The parents- Xavier, the father: Xavier Pierre Marie Dupont de Ligonnès (born 9 January 1961 in Versailles) the son of Bernard-Hubert Dupont de Ligonnès (7 November 1931 - 20 January 2011). Xavier's father was an engineer with a degree from the École nationale supérieure de mécanique et d'aérotechnique in Poitiers, and his mother was Geneviève Thérèse Maître. Xavier's professional activities were very vague, but he is described as a salesman by a source close to the inquiry. He created several businesses, with limited success: -SELREF, a company with a secretive and ambiguously defined purpose, based in Pornic, where he was employed as a manager. The company's 2006 accounts, accessible through a public commercial website, only show the bare minimum information, and the last data pertaining to the company was filed with the French Register of Commerce on 24 February 2004. He hired six salespeople in 2003 and released them all shortly after. -The Route des Commerciaux ("Salesmen's Road", registered at the same address as SELREF), -a hotel and restaurant guide for travelling salesmen; Carte Crystal ("Crystal Card", registered at the family's home address on boulevard Robert-Schuman), a "project for creating a loyalty system for restaurant guests"; -and Federation française de commerciaux ("Federation of French Salesmen", also registered at the family's home address and whose incorporating documents were filed in April 2004) had a stated purpose of "centralising necessary information for business education professionals, regardless of their status". The authorities consider him the main witness and the prime suspect in the murder of his wife and four children. After their bodies were discovered buried in the garden of the family home, the police set about searching for him, but he has never been found. According to the prosecutor, Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès's relatives say he wrote a letter to them explaining that he and his family would be absent as "he was a sort of United States secret agent and had to return to the U.S. as part of a witness protection programme to work on a drugs case." Agnès, the mother: Agnès Hodanger was born on 9 November 1962 in Neuilly-sur-Seine in the suburbs of Paris. She was an assistant at Blanche-de-Castille Catholic School in Nantes, where part of her duties involved teaching catechism. She was described as being very religious, regularly attending mass with her children. Parishioners described her as being kind but strict with her children. She was 48 years old at the time of her death. In 2004, seven years before the murder, she wrote prolifically on the French online medical forum Doctissimo. Agnès described the difficulties faced by her and her husband and stated that her husband had commented to her that a group death as a family would not be a catastrophe. The children- Arthur: Arthur Nicolas Dupont de Ligonnès was born on 7 July 1990 to another father, but was recognised by Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès as being his son when he married Agnès when Arthur was two years old. He gained a baccaleuréat in Science, Industrial Technology and Sustainable Development at the age of 20. He was studying for a technical diploma in IT at the Saint-Gabriel private college in Saint-Laurent-sur-Sèvre in the Vendée department, an hour's drive from Nantes. He was also employed as a waiter at a pizzeria in Nantes. He was 20 years old at the time of his death. Thomas: Thomas Dupont de Ligonnès was born on 28 August 1992 in Draguignan, in the south of France. He gained a baccalauréat in Literature when he was 17. He was passionate about music and studied it at the Catholic University of the West in Angers. He lived in the Saint-Aubin hall of residence and was described as an "ordinary boy who was often accompanied by his family to drop him off and pick him up", while several of his classmates remember him as "very discreet". He was 18 years old at the time of his death. Anne: Anne Dupont de Ligonnès was born on 2 August 1994 in Draguignan. She was in the 11th grade following an academic curriculum in Science, and was described by her friends and relatives as a girl who shared her mother's religious beliefs and was considerate and approachable. Her friends became concerned when she was regularly offline and did not answer calls. Anne was 16 years old at the time of her death. Benoît: Benoît Dupont de Ligonnès was born on 29 May 1997, Xavier and Agnès's youngest child. According to his friends and secondary-school classmates, he was popular and many girls fancied him. He was an altar server at Saint-Félix Church in Nantes. He was 13 years old at the time of his death. Timeline of events: Hunt for Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès: On 29 April, a search was carried out in Var. On 10 May, an international arrest warrant was issued for Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès. On 23 June, caving experts searched 40 natural caves in a 15-kilometre (10-mile) radius around Roquebrune-sur-Argens. Media coverage and "cyber-investigation": Following the disappearance of Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès, and based on elements of the police investigation reported by the media, "hundreds of French Internet users, fascinated by this curious crime, became improvised cyber-investigators and gained great excitement from recreating every digital trace left by Agnès and Xavier" on Facebook. According to an AFP press release in Le Monde, "administrators of a Catholic website, classified as fundamentalist by the episcopacy, confirmed that Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès was a member of their forum, where in 2010 he asked about the meaning of "sacrifice" and he recently became "aggressive"". Xavier was involved in various theological discussions under several different online identities on the Christian forum La Cité catholique. He was eventually banned from the forum. According to a source close to Xavier, he "never stepped foot inside a church". A study published by Bernard Blandre in Mouvements Religieux ("Religious Movements") and later put online states that if Xavier is the murderer, his motives were not religious. Lines of enquiry: The investigation has been running since 2011 and has led to more than 800 tips, as well as searches that have led to dead ends. His friends: -Before his disappearance, Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès attempted to regain contact with several old friends. The police in Nantes, under the orders of Judge Robert Tchailian, spent more than two years looking for Claudia, a German woman whom Xavier almost married in the early 1980s, and with whom he had kept in contact. -On 27 February 2013, German police had planned to launch an appeal for witnesses on the German programme Aktenzeichen XY ungelöst ("Reference Number XY Unsolved") on the German public channel ZDF. This appeal was abandoned when Xavier's sister and brother-in-law noticed that the file included their email addresses, contrary to Germany's very strict privacy laws. According to French prosecutor Brigitte Lamy, information from Germany was handed to French investigators on 16 April 2013 but "added nothing to the file". American investigation: Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès created Netsurf Concept LLC, a company which was catalogued onto the commercial register in Florida, United States. His advisor was Gérard Corona, a French immigrant and manager of the company Strategy Netcom, which was founded in 1998. Corona specialises in assisting foreigners with administrative and legal procedures in the United States. He also helps his clients to open foreign bank accounts and to obtain anonymous bank cards allowing them to withdraw money anywhere in the world without leaving a trace. It has been theorised that Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès could have used these services in order to disappear. Searches in the Massif des Maures: On 9 April 2013, an operation was conducted to find the body of Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès. This led to a major search effort. Investigators, assisted by cave divers, searched the old Pic Martin lead mines in Cannet-des-Maures in Var. It was here that Jacques Massié and his family were found murdered in 1981. On 2 May 2013, a search was carried out by 50 police officers and firefighters from a unit specialising in searching in dangerous and hard-to-access locations. The search proved fruitless. Investigators' conclusions: Prosecutor Brigitte Lamy has not reconsidered Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès's status as a suspect and leans towards the belief that he committed suicide. If his body is found and there is no other suspect, the investigation will be closed "by default". In June 2013, a body was found 20 kilometres (12 miles) from where Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès was last seen. An autopsy was carried out and did not completely exclude the possibility of the body being that of Xavier. The prosecutor in Draguignan, Danielle Drouy-Ayral, stated "at this moment in time, it is not the body of Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès", without providing any more details to explain this declaration. Bones discovered: On the evening of Tuesday 28 April 2015, a walker discovered bones in a forest in Bagnols-en-Forêt, near Fréjus on the south coast of France, close to where Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès was last seen. The police made a link with Xavier's disappearance and analysed what appeared to be a survival camp where other objects were discovered, including an empty wallet, a lighter, a pair of glasses, a sleeping bag, a magazine and a bill dating from 2011.[109] A medical pin was also allegedly found in the unknown decedent's forearm. However, as far as the police are aware, Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès did not wear a medical pin in his forearm, even though it is not impossible that he may have been operated on after his disappearance. The magazine that was found seems to date from 2010, preceding Xavier's disappearance in 2011. On 1 May 2015, the RTL.fr website reported that "DNA obtained from the personal effects around the body discovered on the evening of 28 April in Bagnols-en-Forêt is not that of Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès, but that of another man whose identity is currently unknown." Note sent to journalist: In mid-July 2015, a Nantes journalist received a photograph, on the back of which is a handwritten note "I'm still alive". The picture shows two of the Dupont de Ligonnès children – Arthur, the oldest and Benoît, the youngest – sitting at a kitchen table. It is not known who took and who sent the picture. Challenges to the official theory- Emigration theory: Even though Christine de Ligonnès initially doubted the authenticity of the letter of 11 April 2011 (while still claiming her brother's innocence), she began stating to the media in March 2012 that "basically, Xavier and his family left for the United States because their safety was threatened in France. The bodies found under the patio can't be those of Agnès and the children." She believes that "the information leaked to the media originates from sources with an interest in making the family disappear". In 2013, in the blog that she created with her husband, Bertram de Verdun, she mentions an email that her brother wrote to two friends in July 2010. He wrote of "accidents" which may befall his family, and ended with the words: "So I hope that, even after a police investigation, my parents, brothers and sisters will never be led to believe that I intentionally caused these accidents (even if the evidence is strong)." The family's lawyer's views on the investigation: According to Mr Goldstein (the lawyer for Geneviève Dupont de Ligonnes, the suspect's mother; Christine, his sister; and Bertram de Verdun, Christine's husband), "we don't even know when the victims were killed. The autopsy points to a death between 10 and 21 days before their discovery. Such imprecision is truly astonishing.In reality, nothing is certain in this affair, other than the fact that some bodies were found at 55 boulevard Schuman. Investigations were carried out, but all that they have allowed us to ascertain is that the bodies share the same DNA. No analysis has compared this common DNA with that of Agnès Hodanger. Furthermore, my client confirms that the bodies' heights and weights do not correspond to the known dimensions of the family members. In my opinion, this constitutes negligence during the autopsy. But the autopsy allows Christine and Geneviève to step into the breach. What I also know is that one man alone cannot dig that hole under the patio, even a man blinded by rage and hatred: 2.5 cubic metres of earth were displaced. The affair is based around the idea that Xavier Dupont killed his family before burying them. No other line of inquiry has been explored. I don't know who killed this family. Nothing about their lives helps me understand what could have led them to this situation. That is the conclusion of my clients. Since no one could have killed them, the fact is that they are not dead." Televised documentaries: At least five documentaries and special reports exploring the case have been aired on French television.

stuffed with ice cream

once i was the ice cream fetcher. my brothers and i got stuffed with ice cream. i was so stuffed i'm like "I've had so much ice cream today i don't think i need more sugar do you?" when i was talking with my mom about the cookies she'd gotten from McDonald's. i only had 1 before calling it a day.

happy

the amazing atheist makes me smile. when i was upset my dad didn't pick me up when he was supposed to i was so upset. i was crying in the middle of the churches lobby and i had the idea to watch the amazing atheist. i was slightly happy when someone said something funny.

work work work

the last month of the semester is all work. it's just work work work. we're trying to get everything finished by early December. this is my favorite time of year since it's a make it or break it moment. my family will hopefully understand since i'm trying to get out of college ASAP and go on a mission (hopefully). i'm in charge of doing a group text, I've got a video call scheduled for tomorrow night at 9:30 so my dance group can finish our dance routine as well as a test next Thursday, I've got to study for, I've got a dance cabaret thing Tuesday night, after a dentist appointment.

Murder of Dwayne Jones

Dwayne Jones was a Jamaican 16-year-old who was killed by a violent mob in Montego Bay in 2013, after he attended a dance party dressed in women's clothing. The incident attracted national and international media attention and brought increased scrutiny to the status of LGBT rights in Jamaica. Perceived as effeminate, Jones was bullied in school and, at the age of 14, was forced out of his family home by his father. He moved into a derelict house in Montego Bay with transgender friends. On the evening of 21 July 2013, they went to the Irwin area of the city and attended a dance party. When some men at the party discovered that the cross-dressing Jones was not a woman, they confronted and attacked him. Jones was beaten, stabbed, shot, and run over with a car; he died in the early hours of the morning. Police investigated the murder but did not arrest or charge anyone for the crime, which remains unsolved. The event made newspaper headlines in Jamaica and was also the subject of reporting in both the United Kingdom and the United States. While voices on social media accused Jones of provoking his killers by cross-dressing in public, the murder was condemned by Jamaican educators and the country's Justice Minister. In the wake of the attack, both domestic and international organisations devoted to LGBT rights and human rights – among them Human Rights Watch, Jamaicans for Justice, and the Jamaica Forum for Lesbians, All-Sexuals & Gays – asked the Jamaican authorities for a proper investigation and legal recognition of LGBT rights on the island. Background- Jones' biography: Raised in an impoverished slum in Montego Bay, a city in northwest Jamaica, Jones faced bullying at high school from students who perceived his behaviour as effeminate. When Jones was 14, his father ejected him from the family home and encouraged neighbours to chase him out of the neighbourhood. After a period sleeping in bushes and on beaches, he began squatting in a derelict house in the hills above Montego Bay with two transgender friends, Keke and Khloe, both 23 at the time of Jones' death. Jones was known among friends as "Gully Queen", a reference to the storm drainage systems in which many homeless LGBT Jamaicans live. Friends noted that Jones desired to become a teacher or to work in the tourist industry. He also wanted to become a performer like the American pop star Lady Gaga, and had won a local dancing competition. Khloe described him as "a diva" who was "always very feisty and joking around". Anti-LGBT sentiment in Jamaica: In 2006, Time magazine said that Jamaica may be the most homophobic country in the world. The country's laws criminalising same-sex activity between males were introduced in 1864, during the British colonial administration. According to the Sexual Offences Act of 2009, any man convicted under these laws must register as a sex offender. These laws have been cited as contributing to wider homophobic attitudes among the Jamaican populace, including the view that gay people are criminals regardless of whether or not they have committed any criminal act. Anti-LGBT perspectives have been furthered by the island's conservative Christian churches. Many reggae and dancehall songs, among them Buju Banton's "Boom Bye Bye", call for the killing of gays. Writing for the International Business Times in the summer of 2013, the journalist Palash Gosh noted that while Jamaica was "awash in crime and violence, gays and lesbians are particularly prominent targets of wanton brutality." In the mid-2000s, two of Jamaica's best-known LGBT rights activists, Brian Williamson and Steve Harvey, were murdered. In the summer of 2013, Human Rights Watch carried out five weeks of fieldwork among Jamaica's LGBT community, reporting that over half of those interviewed had experienced violence as a result of their sexual orientation or gender identity, sometimes on more than one occasion. Murder: On the evening of 21 July 2013 – when Jones was 16 – he dressed in female clothing and attended a dance party with Keke and Khloe called Henessey Sundays, held at a bar in the Irwin area. They arrived by taxi at around 2 am. Jones passed as a girl at the party, and several males danced with him. Although he initially kept his biological sex a secret from others at the party, fearing homophobic persecution, he revealed his identity to a girl with whom he had previously been to church. The girl informed her male friends, who accosted him outside the venue, demanding to know, "Are you a woman or a man?" One of the men used a lantern to examine Jones' feet, claiming that they were too large to be those of a biological woman. Discovering his sex, they started calling him "batty boy" and other homophobic epithets. Khloe tried to get him to avoid confrontation, whispering in his ear, "Walk with me, walk with me", but Jones refused, instead insisting to those assembled that he was female. When someone pulled on Jones' bra strap, he ran away, and the crowd pursued and attacked him further down the road. He was beaten, stabbed, shot and run over by a car. He slipped in and out of consciousness for two hours before another attack finally killed him. There were no reports of anyone trying to help him during the altercation. Khloe was also attacked and almost raped, but escaped by hiding first in a church and then in neighbouring woods. Khloe commented, "When I saw Dwayne's body, I started shaking and crying. It was horrible." Police arrived at the scene at 5 am to find the body dumped in bushes along Orange Main Road. They launched an investigation into the homicide, inviting friends and family of the victim to contact them. Jones' family declined to claim the body, and his father refused to talk to the press about the incident. On 14 August, Deputy Superintendent of Police Steve Brown announced that fourteen statements had been collected and that the investigation was progressing. In October 2013, a group of men set fire to the place in which Jones had lived as a squatter, forcing its four occupants to flee, in what was also believed to be an anti-LGBT hate crime. Everald Morgan, an officer at the St James Public Health Department, requested that police provide protection for the four youths made homeless by the arson attack, but they declined to do so. Meanwhile, a charity named Dwayne's House was set up in Jones' memory to aid homeless LGBT youth in Jamaica. As of May 2014, however, no one had been arrested or charged, and in August 2015 the crime was still considered unsolved. Reaction- In Jamaica: Jones' murder made headline news across Jamaica. Jamaica's Justice Minister, Senator Mark Golding, condemned the killing and called for an end to "depraved acts of violence" in Jamaica. He added that "all well-thinking Jamaicans" should embrace "the principle of respect for the basic human rights of all persons" and express tolerance towards minority groups such as the LGBT community. Annie Paul, the publications officer of the Jamaican campus of the University of the West Indies (UWI), stated that on the basis of comments provided on social media, she thought that most Jamaicans believed that Jones provoked his own murder by cross-dressing within a society that did not tolerate such behaviour. Newton D. Duncan, the UWI Professor of Paediatric Surgery, similarly noted that the "overwhelming majority" of Jamaicans believed that cross-dressers are homosexuals and deserve punishment. He added that this was a common misconception, because the majority of cross-dressers were heterosexual. He condemned the attack and compared it to the lynching of an African-American man in Harper Lee's novel To Kill a Mockingbird, drawing links between the anti-LGBT violence of Jamaica and the anti-black violence of the mid-20th century United States. Writing in the Jamaican broadsheet The Gleaner, Carolyn Cooper, Professor of Literary and Cultural Studies at UWI, condemned the group who committed Jones' murder. She blamed their behaviour on the selective use of the Bible, noting that while many Jamaicans embrace those Biblical passages which condemn same-sex sexual activity and cross-dressing, they are themselves typically guilty of many other Biblical sins, such as adultery and murder. She commented that Jones had been killed just for being himself and expressed the hope that his killers face legal prosecution for their crime. The following week she published a follow-up article in which she responded to several emails that she had received which claimed that the real victims of the scenario were the men whom Jones deceived when he was dancing with them. She reiterated her condemnation of Jones' killers, remarking that rather than retaliating violently, they should have brushed it off with a humorous comment. Jaevion Nelson, an HIV/AIDS campaigner and human rights advocate, also published an article on the subject in The Gleaner. He noted that his initial reaction was to question why Jones had gone to the dance party and why he was not satisfied in attending Jamaica's underground gay parties. He added that he had subsequently realised that adopting this viewpoint was rooted in "the culture of violence" by which a victim is blamed for what happened to them. He called on Jamaicans to be tolerant of LGBT individuals, and to focus on "rebuilding this great nation on the principles of inclusivity, love, equality and respect with no distinctions whatsoever". Also in The Gleaner, Sheila Veléz Martínez, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh, condemned the murder as "alarming evidence" of the high rates of homophobia in Jamaican society. On 25 July, the Jamaica Forum for Lesbians, All-Sexuals & Gays (J-FLAG), an LGBT rights organisation, issued a public statement expressing their "deep concern" regarding the case, and offering their condolences to Jones' friends and family. They encouraged local people to aid the police in locating the perpetrators of the attack, which they asserted was an affront to Jamaica's democracy. J-FLAG's director Dane Lewis later commented that despite an increase in homophobic violence, Jamaican society was becoming more tolerant toward LGBT people; he attributed this to the actions of individuals like Jones, who have helped improve the public visibility of LGBT people in Jamaican society. Another LGBT rights organisation, Quality of Citizenship Jamaica, issued a press release calling for the government and churches to engage with LGBT organisations to establish common ground which could be undergirded by the principle of "true respect for all," found in the nation's National Anthem. Human rights organisation Jamaicans for Justice called on Prime Minister Portia Simpson-Miller and religious leaders to condemn the murder, also commenting on what they saw as a lack of media coverage and public outrage about the incident, adding that "we must ask ourselves what this says about us as a people." Internationally: News of Jones' murder attracted international media attention, resulting in condemnation of the killing by human rights groups. Graeme Reid, the LGBT Rights Program director at Human Rights Watch in New York, issued a statement that the Jamaican government should send an "unequivocal message" that there would be "zero tolerance" of anti-LGBT violence. Reid noted that Jamaica's Prime Minister had vowed to decriminalise same-sex sexual activity in her 2011 election campaign but had yet to implement that promise. He encouraged the Jamaican authorities to take action to investigate Jones' murder and to promote respect for the country's LGBT citizens. In a February 2014 briefing, the U.S. Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, Uzra Zeya, cited Jones' case as well as the torture and murder of Cameroonian HIV/AIDS activist Eric Ohena Lembembe as examples of the "troubling acts of violence" against LGBT individuals that had happened across the globe in the previous year. In the United Kingdom, a black LGBT organisation, the Out and Proud Diamond Group (OPDG), in association with the Peter Tatchell Foundation, organised a protest outside Jamaica's London embassy on 28 August. Talking to press, the OPDG's Marvin Kibuuka condemned Jones' murder and called for supporters to actively oppose the persecution of LGBT people in both Jamaica and elsewhere. Peter Tatchell later asserted that the lack of action by Simpson-Miller and the police was tantamount to colluding with those guilty of an anti-LGBT hate crime. In her introduction to an academic study of "queerness and children's literature", Laura Robinson, an Associate Professor of English at the Royal Military College of Canada, cited Jones' murder alongside the 2013 Russian LGBT propaganda law as an example in which youth issues intersected with LGBT issues. She added that Jones was a "child who did not end up having what Judith Butler calls a 'livable life'." "The story of Dwayne Jones lies at one extreme end of a continuum of violence experienced by Jamaicans who identify as lesbian, gay, transgender, or bisexual. Nevertheless, the circumstances of [Jones'] murder provide a snapshot of the current situation facing many LGBT people in Jamaica: a high risk of violence, vulnerability heightened by poverty and family rejection, and mixed responses from both the authorities and the public."— Human Rights Watch, 2014

Suicide of Randy Potter

On September 12, 2017, police investigating a report of a foul odor emanating from a parked truck at Kansas City International Airport (KCI) discovered a heavily decomposed body under a blanket in the front seat. Its race and gender could not be determined at first, but it was later identified as Randy Potter (born February 13, 1963), who had last been seen leaving his Lenexa, Kansas, home one morning the previous January. He had been reported missing after he failed to arrive at his job that day; his death was ruled as a suicide. Potter's family, who had been searching for him and his truck since his disappearance and keeping the media's attention on the case, were outraged that his body was found at the airport parking lot, an area authorities told them they had searched immediately after they reported him missing. His wife believes that he had purposely taken his life at the airport on the expectation his family would look for him there first. The Kansas City Aviation Department, which runs the airport, apologized to the Potters and promised to investigate how the contractor that manages its parking lots allowed the body to remain undiscovered for almost eight months. Lenexa police said that since they had not found any evidence that Potter had taken a flight from the airport, and no one had expressed any concern that he might be suicidally inclined, they did not investigate further at the airport as they assumed the authorities there were regularly checking for Potter's truck. The Kansas City Star found that there were other instances of apparently abandoned vehicles remaining in the airport lots for months in the face of apparent official indifference. An editorial in the newspaper recalled a similar incident in 1994 where a woman had found the body of her husband, who had also taken his own life, in the trunk of his car, five days after police at the airport had found the car parked there and returned it to her. Disappearance: Potter, originally from Town 'n' Country, Florida, had met his wife, Carolina, in her native Sicily while he was stationed there with the United States Navy. After marrying and starting a family in Sicily, they moved back to the U.S. in the 1990s. From Florida, the Potters had moved to Lenexa, Kansas, where Potter worked as a project engineer at T-Mobile and hunted and fished in his spare time. Carolina was a flight attendant, working flights to the East Coast from Kansas City International Airport. In mid-January 2017, Potter took several days off work to stay at home with his son Matthew, who was sick. Matthew recalls that the two did nothing unusual, mostly staying at home and watching television; he did not see anything atypical in his father's behavior or demeanor. Randy planned to return to work on January 17, and as was his practice, laid out his work clothing the previous evening before retiring. The next morning, Potter awoke at his usual time. Matthew recalls hearing his father feed the family dogs outside. Around 7 a.m. he left for work in his company-issued 2014 white Dodge Ram pickup truck. A few hours later, the family received a call from T-Mobile, asking where Randy was as he had not come to work. Calls to his phone were not answered. Carolina Potter found that he had left his work clothes where he had hung them in the bathroom the night before, but his pajamas and the slippers he had put on after rising were still missing, suggesting he had left the house wearing them. She said this was unlike him. The family reported him missing to Lenexa police later that day. Search: The family began organizing search parties on its own, and set up a Facebook page. Melissa Alderman, a niece of Potter's from Florida who flew up to assist them, suggested that he might have flown somewhere, so they went to the airport, approximately a 45-minute drive from Lenexa, and looked through the parking lots there. They gave police there the license plate number of Randy's truck, and they were told it would be checked for regularly as the police recorded the plate number of every vehicle in the lots. The Lenexa police, however, found no record that Randy had flown anywhere or left the country after checking with federal authorities. They therefore concentrated their search on the greater Kansas City metropolitan area. Joe Underhill, a private investigator hired by the family, looked through lakes and parks in both Kansas and Missouri where Potter might have gone to hunt, fish, or just walk. The Potters' daughter Nichole took fliers and passed them out on trips out of the area, as far away as Denver. Discovery of body: On the morning of September 12, police at the airport received a report of a foul smell coming from a vehicle parked in Economy Lot B, 2 1⁄2 miles (4.0 km) north of the terminal buildings, connected to them by a shuttle bus. Inside they found a body covered in a blanket, so decomposed that neither its race nor its sex were obvious, along with a gun and a parking lot entry ticket dated January 17. The vehicle was Randy Potter's missing truck and the gun was one that belonged to him, one he usually kept at home. The body was soon identified as him, with suicide the likely manner of death, and his family notified the next day. Reaction: Potter's family harshly criticized the airport authorities for having missed the presence of the truck for eight months, especially as the airport police had assured them that if it was there it would be found within the day due to the license-plate identification system, which was claimed to work even when a vehicle with only one plate was parked with that plate at its rear, not visible to passing cars. "How many thousands of people drove by the vehicle?" Alderman asked. "How many people walked by?" The family were particularly disgusted by the realization that Potter's body had been allowed to remain in the truck, with windows and doors closed, not only for the rest of the winter but throughout the summer. During those latter months, they noted, temperatures in the area had exceeded 100 °F (38 °C) on several occasions. "I feel awful for thinking about him inside that truck", Carolina told The Washington Post. At a later memorial service for her husband, Carolina said that while she still did not understand what might have motivated Randy, whom she described as very private with his emotions, to kill himself, she believed he had gone to the airport to do so in order that his body would be found quickly. When she had to go work flights, it was always Randy who would drive her to the airport and return there to pick her up when she was able to get back to Kansas City. "I am beyond mad" about the situation, she told the Kansas City Star. Alderman, too, whose initial theory about where her uncle might have gone turned out to be correct, was angry that instead he "sat there and baked for eight months..." Three days after the body was found, the Potter family and professionals they had hired to assist with the search and the aftermath of the discovery held a news conference to ask why it had taken so long, since they were dissatisfied with the lack of explanation from the city's Aviation Department. "He could have been found a lot sooner if everybody had done their job", Carolina said. "They dropped the ball", said Underhill, the family's private investigator, who drove past the airport almost every day he was searching and believed he could have found the truck if he had gone into the parking lots to search. "It's amazing that he wasn't found in June or July", agreed John Picerno, the family's lawyer. "Our goal is to find out what happened and why". The elected city officials who oversee the Aviation Department agreed. "It's obvious someone dropped the ball here", said City Councilman Dan Fowler, echoing Underhill. Teresa Loar, another council member who, like Fowler, sits on the council's Airport Committee, said she would talk with airport officials to "find out what fell through the cracks here". Investigations: "The City of Kansas City and its Aviation Department express our deepest sympathies to the family and friends of Randy Potter. We wish them peace during this difficult time", a city spokesman said in response to the family's news conference. The city government, he went on to say, was working with the Aviation Department and SP Plus, the contractor that manages the airport's 25,000 parking spaces, to find out what had happened. While the airport was outside its jurisdiction, a spokesman for Lenexa police, the first law enforcement agency the Potters notified after Randy failed to show up for work, said that no information given to it would have led investigators to look for him there. "The airport was never pointed to as a place that he might be, any more than the local mall". Danny Chavez told People. Once the police ruled out Randy's presence on a flight, they, too, saw no reason to ask airport authorities to look closely in their parking lots. Nor was there "any indication that he was endangered or suicidal" when the family reported him missing, he added. It was, in fact, the opinion of "multiple people" police talked to that Randy had simply decided to leave his job and family and thus was still alive, Chavez added. According to the Star, SP Plus, a Chicago-based logistical support company which operates parking lots at 53 other airports around the country in addition to KCI, including Washington Dulles and Chicago O'Hare, is contractually obligated to take an inventory of all the license plates of vehicles in the lots at least once a day. That is done just after midnight, when there are the fewest vehicles parked at any time of day. The intent is to allow motorists who may have lost or mislaid their entry tickets while traveling to nevertheless pay the correct amount for the time they parked, by looking up the vehicle's license plate to see how long it was parked. Local residents who frequently flew for business told the Star that they had seen other instances where cars had been allowed to remain in the lots for months due to apparent indifference from management. One man who passed through the airport almost weekly said he had seen an Audi with a flat tire in the same space near the airport's Terminal B since January; as of the week Potter's body was found, it was still there despite his having reported it twice to airport police in the preceding month. A Lawrence, Kansas, man related how in 2015 an airport shuttle bus driver had pointed out to him cars that had been parked in lots for months. One man from Blue Springs, Missouri, emailed the newspaper to say that several years earlier, he had seen a minivan with all four tires flat slowly gather dust in the Terminal B parking lot at the airport over the course of several months. When he finally reported it, he was told that while police would check on it, it was not unusual for cars to be parked in the airport lots for months at a time. "If KCI doesn't notice a vehicle with four flat tires, you would have to think airport parking would be a great place for a criminal to abandon a stolen vehicle or hide a body", he wrote. "I don't want people thinking they can do this on a regular basis", councilwoman Loar agreed. In a written statement to the Star, SP Plus said it was cooperating fully with the city. It noted that Economy Lot B has nearly 6,000 spaces, and there is no maximum time limit for vehicles parked there. Loar responded that she saw that as "part of the problem ... There's no prohibition—you can park out there as long as you want". In an editorial, the Star agreed. "The fact that there's no limit on the length of time a vehicle can sit in long-term parking is an invitation to dumping cars there, and that does sometimes happen", it wrote. The editors recalled that something similar had happened before. In 1994, airport police had recovered the car of a missing man from another parking lot and returned it to his wife. Five days later, she found his body in the trunk, also a suicide; police had not checked the vehicle's interior when they found it because in that case, too, they believed the man was still alive. An SP Plus spokesman told the newspaper that the company does attempt to contact the registered owner when it finds a vehicle has been in the lot for a long period of time. If letters go unanswered, after a certain additional period of time the vehicle is considered legally abandoned and towed to the police impound lot.

Angel wings

Angel wings are a traditional sweet crisp pastry made out of dough that has been shaped into thin twisted ribbons, deep-fried and sprinkled with powdered sugar. Traditionally present in several European cuisines, angel wings are known by many other names and have been incorporated into other regional cuisines (such as the United States) by immigrant populations. They are most commonly eaten in the period just before Lent, often during Carnival and on Fat Thursday, the last Thursday before Lent – not to be confused with "Fat Tuesday" (Mardi Gras), the day before the start of Lent (Ash Wednesday). There is a tradition in some countries for husbands to give angel wings to their wives on Friday the 13th in order to avoid bad luck. Ingredients: Ingredients used in the preparation of angel wings typically includes flour, water, egg yolk, confectioners' sugar, rectified spirit or rum, vanilla and salt. Alternate names: In the various national cuisines, angel wings are referred to as: -Belarusian: хрушчы (chruščy) or фаворкі (favorki) -Bulgarian: фаворки -Chile: calzones rotos -Czech: boží milosti -Croatian: krostole -Danish: Klejner -French: bugnes -German: Raderkuchen, Mutzenblätter -Hungarian: csöröge fánk -Italian: bugìe, cènci, chiàcchiere, cròstoli, fràppe, galàni, sfràppole -Lithuanian: žagarėliai -Maltese: xkunvat -Polish: faworki, chruścik, chruściki, chrust, chrusty, -Portuguese: orelha de gato, cueca virada, filhós, coscorão, cavaquinho -Romanian: minciunele, regionally: cirighele, scovergi -Russian: хворост (khvorost) -Slovenian: flancati -Slovak: fánka -Spain: pestiños -Swedish: klenäter -Ukrainian: вергуни (verhuny) -Yiddish: חרוסט Variants- France: In France, the fried pastry are made in central-eastern France, including Lyon and Saint-Étienne, and are closely related to beignets. Traditionally, Lyon cold meat shops sold bugnes just before Lent, due to their high fat content. They are also made in the home as a way of using surplus cooking fat, which would be wasted during Lent. More recently, bakeries make them, respecting more or less the tradition of Lent. French bugnes varieties include crunchy bugnes and soft bugnes. The crunchy variety, known as "bugnes lyonnaises" ("Lyon bugnes"), are cooked in very hot oil with the dough spread out thinly and knotted once or twice. The soft variety, sometimes known as "pillows", are made with a thicker dough, which is rarely knotted. Hungary: Hungarian csöröge are made from egg yolk, flour, a leavening agent, sugar, salt and cognac or brandy. They are deep fried and sprinkled with powdered sugar. They are traditional at weddings. Italy: Italian cenci or chiacchiere are eaten at Carnival time. Their various regional names include: frappe (a name shared with similar treats) in Rome and Lazio; sfrappole in Emilia Romagna; bugie in Genoa; and galani or crostoli in Veneto and Friuli-Venezia Giulia, especially in the Triestino capital, Trieste. Fritte and many other regional names exist. Regional variations in the recipe include sprinkling with orange zest or using anisette wine as the alcoholic base. Poland: Chruściki, chrusty, and faworki are the plural forms of the words chruścik, chrust, and faworek, respectively. The Polish word "faworki" was the name reserved for colourful ribbons attached to either female or male clothing, especially ribbons given to medieval knights by their ladies. Etymologically the word "faworki" came to Poland from the French word faveur, meaning "grace" or "favour". The Polish word "chrust" means "dry branches broken off trees" or "brushwood". "Chruścik" is a diminutive of "chrust". Ukraine: Verhuny are sweet cookies, fried in lard, which have the form of oblong strips. Verhuny are a Ukrainian confectionery with non-yeast dough, which includes flour, butter, eggs, sugar and additives such as alcohol (rum, brandy or horilka) or, in extreme cases, vinegar (vinegar sometimes together with alcohol). As substitute for butter, but more often as an additional component in verhuny, milk products (milk, smetana (sour cream) or cream) are added. Traditionally, Ukrainian verhuny should only be fried in lard. United States: In the United States, many ethnic bakeries in the cities of Cleveland, Chicago, and Detroit make angel wings, and they are especially popular during the holidays of Easter and Christmas. During those holidays, some bakeries require people to pre-order their angel wings. Bulgaria: In Bulgaria they are known as Kukurini. They are only in the city of Bansko, in South-East Bulgaria. Recipe: -1 egg per 50gr flour -sugar -pinch of salt -2 tablespoons oil Make a dough and roll it as "thin as a newspaper". Cut in diamond shapes and fold them as you prefer, then fry them in deep oil. Afterwards, you sprinkle them with powdered sugar.

Coffee cabinet

A coffee cabinet is an ice cream-based beverage found almost exclusively in Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts, consisting of coffee ice cream, coffee syrup, and milk. The ingredients are mixed in a drink blender or milkshake blender. In recent years, it has become more difficult to find an authentic cabinet, but many Rhode Island creameries still serve them, including Delekta's Pharmacy in Warren, and the Original Vanilla Bean in South Kingstown. Newport Creamery, a chain of family restaurants found almost exclusively in Rhode Island, serves a variation of cabinets made with ice milk under the brand name "Awful Awful". A cabinet is often referred to elsewhere in New England as a frappe. As with downcity, the etymology of this term is unknown. One common, but unsubstantiated explanation is that the soda jerk or pharmacist kept the coffee syrup in one of the polished wooden cabinets behind the counter. An alternate etymological theory, also unsubstantiated, derives from the distinctive accent local to Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts. Similar to the more famous Boston accent, this accent tends to drop r. For instance, "car" is pronounced "cah" in both Boston and Rhode Island. "Carbonate" (soda water) may be pronounced more like "cabinet", suggesting that a "cabinet" beverage may have originally referred to an ice cream float.