The Meaning of Crashite Hunting: Real World War II Legends

In the second e-mail I got from Roland Domanig two years ago, September 9, 2012 – after my terse reply to the first one asking that he verify his identity, he wrote:

I assure that all is OK with me. One

Identity you see on my mentor’s homepage Keith Bullock

http://www.bullock.at/

. . . .

For third:

In short sentences: but more to follow

We visited your father’s crashite.

 

The first photo Roland sent of the location of dad’s P-51 crash site on Übeltal Glacier

 

I looked up, turned my head to the window, and said, “What the hell is a crashite?” The e-mail continued:

 

We/I assume you are his daughter, as you delivered all info in your blog “Spittin Grits”, we had either [earlier?]. So there was 100% correspondence.

Could Lt. John T. Cravey be STILL WITH US? Was our question on tour when

Talking about this pilot.

Again I looked up and said, “Does he mean ‘crash site’? That’s impossible.”

 

Yet here we were. Here to see dad’s crash site, but driving back to Innsbruck, wasting a day, to pick up the infernal Hertz car. I used the time to ask questions.

 

“Roland, tell me again what motivated you to get so involved in finding and researching crash sites?” I was madly writing in my journal as we drove.

 

Roland laughed. I had asked this questions several times over the past two years of being in constant communication. It was clear that he spent a lot of time and energy (and probably money) on this “hobby.” A toll booth was coming up. He kept his eyes on the road. While talking and asking questions, I tried to look at the surroundings as we drove the Brenner Pass on a sunny day. A tunnel was coming up.

 

“For our or all ancestors we do this research as hobby. And we are happy if we find interested living -- and loving -- people to talk with them about this crash,” explained Roland. “Sometime we find crash survivor.”

 

I turned back to the scenery. There’s no way to get a clean sense of going through this pass, I thought to myself. Autobahn traffic. Speeds. Toll booths and 18-wheelers, four lanes on both the north- and south-bound sides. It’s about all your eyes can send to your brain.

 

“How did you get started?” I asked.

 

Then I thought to myself, you’re crossing over the Alps, dummy. Pay attention. My mind flashed with the memory of driving downward out of Glacier National Park in 1958 on our reassignment trip to Alaska. Winding downward at such a steep angle scared me. Living in Alaska for three years cured that. This brain flash directed me to dad, who was driving that downward spiral Glacier road: What would he think of this trip to see his crash site? How would he feel? How would he have felt when first getting the news it had been found? By Anton Volgger, of all people?  (Anton’s connection with dad’s story will come later.)

 

Anton (l) and a colleague at the debris field on of dad’s P-51 on Übeltal Glacier

 

“There,” said Roland, bringing me back to the Pass. “Mountain of dolomite. That is.” My sister Susan and I had wanted to visit The Dolomites, wherever exactly they are.

 

Off to the right, as if iced with white glitter-glue, the entire mountain glistened in the sun. What a sight, I thought. I guessed that it was some kind of marble or mineral. Suddenly this morning’s vision of Zuckerhutl in the unimpeded sunshine raced through my mind. I’ve got to practice remembering that sight, I thought.

 

Now I saw that there were many mountains of dolomite, all glistening, but it must be different from The Dolomites dad and mom talked about, and how beautiful they were. Yes, they’re different, I discovered. The Dolomites are located south of Roland’s hometown of Lienz, Austria, into Italy toward Bolzano.

 

Roland broke the reverie. “You see, interest happened when my aunt once told me about her experience with a going down bomber aiming at her house and almost making a victim of that crash. That bomber crashed near my town Lienz,” he explained. “That was 1999. I started research then after talking to mentor Keith Bullock. Anton knows about six crash sites; I do about 20.”

We were nearing Innsbruck. We were to meet Jakob Mayer, whom we had met at the Innsbruck train station. Jakob is, with Roland, in the inner circle of the crash site archaeologists, researchers, and historians who mentored under Keith Bullock.

 

After coffee, again at the Europa Hotel and after I picked up the car, we drove west to the outskirts of town to visit the crash site of B-17 “Priority Gal.” Jakob had been the moving force behind establishing a bronze plaque at the site in honor of the Flying Fortress’s pilot. The site was located on a slope of the mountain where events at the Innsbruck 2002 Winter Olympics were held. Jakob gave me a copy of the astonishing 2006 story published in a New Jersey newspaper.

 

Below: Jakob Mayer and myself at the Priority Gal crashsite

 

This B-17 Flying Fortress had taken flak over Munich. Two engines (out of only four) were on fire. Pilot Lt. Henry Supchak decided to aim for Switzerland rather than go down in Nazi territory. Over Innsbruck, still a long way from Switzerland, the plane took more flak. The crew couldn’t put out the fire in one engine, and flames were aiming for a fuel tank. Supchak ordered everyone to bail. Right then! The Priority Gal went into a nose dive. Centrifugal force pinned him down, keeping him from bailing. Then a sudden updraft righted the plane momentarily. He looked out and saw that Priority Gal was aimed directly at the town. In a split second he decided to trim the plane to far left, then jump. Priority Gal crashed on the outskirts, thereby saving the town and inhabitants, but wounding a small boy and his aunt as it crashed.

 

Supchak’s quick decision had also saved his crew members, but their ordeal was not over. They all spent the remainder of the war in two Nazi POW camps, including dad’s at Moosburg near Munich, where they and 80,000 other POWs would be liberated by George Patton’s troops April 29, 1945.

 

The story of the pilot of Priority Gal was legend in Innsbruck. His story didn’t end there either, thanks to Jakob Mayer.

 

At last, during the mid- to late 1990s and early 2000s, locked gates opened wide on the Internet. Quickly evolving technology sent unimaginable quantities of data to flow to the World Wide Web, allowing the internet to begin doing what it does best: opening new knowledge to the World. For so many researchers like Roland and Jakob and for many families like Henry Supchak’s, that accumulation of information could bring into the light some unknown corners and unanswered questions of World War II. Some stories would bring families and friends sadness, but closure; for others, joy at finally learning the real events and real roles played by their loved one, still living or dead, who helped bring an end to Hitler’s unspeakable ideas and actions.

 

Legends could become real.

 

Mayer was scouring the Internet about 2002, looking for the pilot of Priority Gal. About the same time across the Atlantic in New Jersey, Supchak’s daughter, Liz S. Hoban, had begun research on her father. Touchdown. Hoban and Mayer found each other in 2006.

 

At age 90, Supchak welcomed Jakob Mayer into his home in New Jersey and learned of the plaque and his legendary status. He reportedly said to Mayer, “You’ve added a new dimension to my life. Your communication with me has done more for me than you know.”

 

A year later Supchak traveled to Innsbruck to rededicate the plaque with his name on it. At that time he learned the rest of the story of the wounded little boy, Ander Haas: He grew up to be a successful hotelier, and he erected a plaque in Supchak’s honor at the foot of his hotel near the crash site.

 

Priority Gal, an American Flying Fortress, on the outskirts of Innsbruck

 

 

After returning home to New Jersey, Supchak, with his daughter Elizabeth Hoban, wrote a book, “The Final Mission: A Boy, a Pilot, and a World at War” available on line and in public libraries.

 

Roland had met Jakob in 2002 after reading in a news account about his research of a crash site; then he guided Jakob to mentor and researcher Keith Bullock. Jakob already knew about Anton Volgger and his trip to the crash site of dad’s P-51 Mustang in 1995, after which documents were lost for about six years. After Jakob introduced Roland to Anton; together they went to dad’s crash site on Übeltal Glacier. Then it took six or eight more years of researching the internet to find me at Spittin’ Grits.

 

Much earlier, in 1965 or so, an Italian man heard rumors of a crash site where he was living; then he heard a second rumor about a “war tragedy” having occurred as well. These rumors stuck in the “item of interest” area of his brain for more than thirty years. Then in 1999 he, Giorgio Pietrobon, found a record of the disaster in a Parish book. His “activity as an aeronautical researcher” had begun, he says in his book, “B-24 Sandman.”

 

 

 

Next: The story of the B-24 Sandman, one of the most iconic USAAF planes in World War II. See more images here.

 

Technorati Tags: World War II aircraft crash sites,B-17 Priority Gal,B-24 Sandman

A Fifty-Year Memory: The Day of JFK’s Assassination

 

I sat at my desk on November 23, 2013, listening to Johannes Brahms’s A German Requiem on satellite radio’s Symphony Hall, writing about something I could not the day before: the 50^th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas.

 

Eugene Ormandy conducted this soulful piece on CBS television 50 years ago that evening in honor of President Kennedy, as most of the nation sat for the second day in what would be a span of four days, transformed and transfixed before their television sets.

 

Friday, November 22, 1963, began as a silly, reckless day for me and a group of my college friends. For whatever immature and fun reasons we gave ourselves, we gathered at the Tide bar in downtown Tuscaloosa, Alabama, at 8 a.m. for beer and competitive games on the bar’s bowling and pinball machines, which provided most of the light in the place. Well, you know, we were just starting the weekend early. Furthermore, the next week would be Thanksgiving week when a lot of students didn’t go to classes anyway. Some reasons, huh?

 

We shoved quarters – or maybe it was dimes – into the jukebox as fast as it would eat them: Louie Louie, He’s So Fine, It’s My Party, Surfin’ U.S.A., My Boyfriend’s Back, Heat Wave, Up on the Roof, Da Doo Ron Ron. The jukebox put out the rest of all the light the Tide needed at 8 a.m. on a school day.

 

You can hear and buy any of these tracks on lots of Web sites; they still make money. Even my granddaughter loves It’s My Party and Da Doo Ron Ron. Long live Rock ‘n Roll!

 

Faux Fifties

Those days of the early sixties in the South were socially and mentally still the Fifties for most of us. The Sixties wouldn’t start getting real until that day and the next four days mercifully ended.

 

For some unfathomable reason, some of us at the Tide – after drinking beer all morning – decided that we needed to make our 1 p.m. class. I started asking around if anyone was headed to campus. Winston Groom and his girlfriend, Baba Golden, who would later become his wife, said they were going to class and I could ride with them. In Winston’s Austin Healy. Or maybe it was an MG. Whatever. I didn’t really know it until we left the Tide about 12:45 central time that it was a sunny, warm, clear November day in Alabama.

 

We stuffed ourselves into the car, Winston fired up the engine, and Baba turned on the radio. I clung to the door handle to give Baba room. Off we zoomed.

 

About halfway to campus we realized in a kind of dazed, slow motion way what we were hearing on the radio. My memory says it was Walter Cronkite, even though it was radio and not TV, but I could not bet money on it. Memories are at least fallible and too often gauzy tricksters.

 

The President had been shot in Dallas. If Winston or Baba or I said anything, I simply cannot remember it. We got to campus just as classes were changing; those coming out into the sun knew nothing.

 

I got out at Morgan Hall. I don’t remember where Winston or Baba were going or what class I was trying to get to. I floated up the stairs in a kind of gaseous state of consciousness surrounded by this horrific knowledge. Suddenly a moment hit me that was like toxic dirt being thrown into your face and eyes.

 

I heard someone say out loud, “Kennedy’s been shot. He’s dead.” I looked over to see this blonde-headed co-ed respond, “It’s about time someone shot him.”

 

My memory has held this girl in my mind’s vision for 50 years, and this memory is dead-on. I almost believe I would recognize her on a street.

 

I’ve lived through 49 other of these, but this 50^th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy has been the hardest so far. Fifty years is but a gazillionth of a neutrino in space and time, but a 50^th anniversary of most events beyond your own birth date is a long time in human years. JFK never saw 50 years of anything.

 

After November 22, 1963, reality would throw the dead bones of the Fifties into the fire to smolder. All of us would watch the Civil Rights movement that JFK made a priority in his administration play out in our front yard and down the roads, in Birmingham, Selma, Montgomery, and other southern locations. We would soon be watching the Viet Nam war in our living rooms.

 

Winston left for Viet Nam a year or two after the November 22 event, survived and came home, and eventually wrote his Viet Nam novel Better Times Than These. We stayed in touch for a while, until Forrest Gump, played by Tom Hanks in the movie, entered the public’s collective memory. He and Baba divorced, but he told me she had a successful import business somewhere near Washington, D.C.

 

My brother would leave for Viet Nam and not come back. His name is etched on the Viet Nam Wall on the Mall in Washington D.C.

Mental Sewage

And a friend told me a day or so ago that on this anniversary some girl said to her in a low voice so others wouldn’t hear, “I wish someone would assassinate Obama.”

 

Repulsive unflushed mental wastewater unleashed through the mouth. It’s sickening.

 

Has the South progressed? That is really not a good question, since the progress so many would point to is forced progress. The claws of reactionary beliefs and policies are still embedded in the skin of the South, and the untreated wastewater of racism still poisons real progress.

 

If that girl were forced to sit and watch those awful four days in November -- of the blood from JFK’s head all down the front of Mrs. Kennedy’s pink suit, of her standing glassy eyed next to Johnson being sworn in on Air Force One, of the black veil covering Mrs. Kennedy’s face as the caisson and black riderless horse passed by her, of little John John saluting as the body of his father rode by him; if she had to watch the hoses shoving children down on the street and dogs jumping for the throats of non-violent Civil Rights activists in Birmingham, of young people being beaten up in South Carolina, Anniston, Birmingham, and Selma, Alabama; if she had to watch the horrors of the Viet Nam war play out in her own living room; if she had to watch a black body bag from Viet Nam being rolled down the ramp of a military airplane at her airport; if she had to live real, maybe this sewage would not so easily spew from her mouth.

 

Maybe next year, the anniversary will be easier.

 

Note: Winston Groom’s newest book, published by National Geographic press, is The Aviators. Critics are pointing to Winston’s inimitable story-telling skills to present biographies of Charles Lindberg, Eddie Rickenbacker, and James Doolittle, particularly their careers in World War II, rather than their better known exploits in World War I. A Mobile writer had a casual one-on-one with Winston in early summer.

 

Technorati Tags: 50th anniversary,November 22 1963,assassination of JFK,Johannes Brahms,A German Requiem,Winston Groom,The Aviators,Better Times Than These

Drop Dead Denial

My daughter has just been transported from the county jail, where she has been for nearly a year, to Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women in Wetumpka, Alabama, to begin her 20-year sentence imposed for her drug-related crimes.

The Norwegian right-wing Christian extremist who killed nearly 70 young people at a Youth Camp near Oslo is looking at a 21-year sentence.

Tutwiler is a hell hole by anyone’s standards. Julia Tutwiler, an Alabama heroine, would be horrified and repulsed by what Alabamians have allowed to happen and by what Americans have allowed to happen in today’s prisons, while believing they aren’t paying for it.

How do I feel about my daughter’s imprisonment, regardless of how warped the sentencing is?

Relieved.

Why? How could I be relieved? Amy Winehouse. I know what dead is.

I also know that drug addiction is a fatal disease. Americans – huge numbers of them – continue their denial of this fact, despite a huge body of evidence to the contrary. Medical and biological evidence is clear: addition is a disease.

This fact is NOT the same thing as saying, “Calling addition a disease gives addicts a free ride. They don’t have to take responsibility for what they do.”

Addicts don’t have a free ride. Look at Amy Winehouse, the most recent celebrity to die from addiction.

Weird Denial
Denial is a hard, hard concept, one that is difficult to get your mind around. How can you be in denial if you know you’re in denial? Denial is believing you are NOT in denial, that what you think or feel or choose to believe is real, true, correct, accurate. Whatever evidence to the contrary is presented, denial will insist on denying the evidence. How totally weird.

To get out of denial is tantamount to confronting difficult truths, admitting you are wrong. Humans don’t want to do this confronting thing. It is embarrassing; it hurts too bad; it’s a life changer. And it reveals the denier as the worst, most hurtful kind of liar – one who lies to oneself, usually for self-protection, to avoid hurt. Who can fault them?

I can.

Denial works on an individual level and on a societal level. The worst part about denial is that it doesn’t work – not for the short term and not for the long term. There is way too much collateral damage.

Americans are in denial about America’s and its citizens' roles in the current Drug War and how we are enabling the Mexican cartels to do their unspeakable crimes. America supplies the guns. Americans are the highest users of drugs.

Not to believe this, despite all the evidence, is to be in denial.

Dr. Drew Pinsky, who has been a medical director for rehab clinics and who has become a television face, now has a program on Headline News at 9 p.m. (eastern time); he recently reacted to an English policeman’s cautioning people not to speculate on the causes of Amy Winehouse’s death. He took issue with that stance.

He calls the addiction the real cause of death, whether she died of an overdose, alcohol withdrawal, a heart attack or whatever might be reported as the “primary cause.” “Twenty-seven-year-olds don’t just die,” he says.

Too few people know that withdrawing from most drugs won’t kill you, although addicts often wish they were dead during withdrawal. Alcohol withdrawal is different. It can kill. Alcoholics in treatment are withdrawn (detoxed) slowly. Long-term alcoholics who quit drinking abruptly and are not under a doctor’s care can die from the physical effects of the withdrawal when it turns into delirium, tremors, and seizures. The body’s vital functions can simply quit.

So if Amy Winehouse died from abrupt withdrawal from alcohol, as her family appears to think happened, then the addiction to alcohol was the bottom-line cause.

Biology 101
In his 2003 book Cracked: Putting Broken Lives Together Again, Dr. Drew (as he is known) explains the biology to a group of addicts in treatment:
“Why are you addicted? The simple answer is that some people are configured biologically in such a way to respond very positively to substances. . . . What makes you an addict is primarily a change in a tiny region of the brain called the nucleus accumbens.
“This region of your brain has started to mistake the chemical message of survival with the message delivered by drugs. The drive to use becomes confused with the drive to survive. . . . These drives demand gratification with the same life-or-death intensity as taking a breath.”
Neurobiology and brain research more than supports these statements. Not to accept Dr. Drew’s information is to be in denial.

If I want my daughter to live, then I want her in prison. If she were to get back out on the streets, she would die. There’s no denial of death.

Technorati Tags: Julia Tutwiler,Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women,denial,Amy Winehouse,addictions,addict,drug withdrawal,Dr. Drew Pinsky,Cracked: Putting Lives Together Again

Krakatoa: Cataclysm Heard Around the World

We become glued to images of cataclysmic events, some natural, some man-made, and their aftermaths for days and days at a time, and we often wonder why we do this.

It’s really no wonder why we do this. The cataclysms we have endured since 2000 have not only destroyed, killed, and disrupted any sense of order we cling to, some have caused the Earth to skip heartbeats and lose memory, literally shifting the Earth on its axis and shortening the day by a nano-second. The Earth shuddered on Dec. 26, 2004, and on March 11, 2011, each as a result of 9.0 earthquakes and the huge tsunamis that followed.

The images and sounds are frightening and hypnotic. Then somehow, life returns and keeps going.

The first cataclysmic natural disaster that became part of the World’s nightmare through communication networks – the telegraph, newspapers, and first-hand accounts from survivors – was the volcanic Krakatoa’s final days in 1883.

Most of what I know about Krakatoa I learned from reading Simon Winchester’s 2003 Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883 (ISBN0-06-621285-5), from which I have quoted and paraphrased for this post, as well as from book reviews and news stories that followed the publication.

The End’s Beginning

In May 1883, earth tremors were noticed, logged in by the lighthouse keeper at the Sunda strait between Java and Sumatra, and recorded in a telegraph sent by a Dutch controller, Willem Beyernick, to his superior. A few days later, a German ship captain reported a white cumulus cloud rising out of Krakatoa upwards of seven miles high. Beyernick’s wife kept a detailed journal that eventually became one of the rare eye-witness accounts of the beginnings of the end and of the end itself. After the May trembling, the Earth quieted down for June and July.

On August 11 a Dutch army captain landed on Krakatoa to prepare a topographic map; he found ominous signs, which sent him back with only a quick map that would have to do for the time being. He was the last human to touch Krakatoa.

On Sunday, August 26, a telegraph master was lounging on a porch, watching ships, when suddenly he heard an extremely loud explosion, looked to his left, and saw a tremendous eruption. He ran down to the sea where he saw very strange rising and falling disturbances. A surge of water roared toward the beach. He ran. At the time he got to the telegraph office, he saw a terrible and dark dust cloud beginning to envelope them. At 2 p.m., he tapped out his message that a major eruption was taking place, “vomiting fire and smoke.” Telegraph lines that weren’t destroyed became flooded with messages for the next 24 hours.

Frederic Edwin Church’s 1883 Sunset over the Ice on Chaumont Bay, Lake Ontario may have been inspired by Krakatoa’s resulting worldwide and extraordinary sunsets.

The End

From midnight to dawn on August 27, Capt. W. J. Watson on the Charles Bal, which was trapped about 10 miles from Krakatoa and trying desperately to reach the Java shore, wrote a terrifying first-hand account that has survived. He described “impenetrable darkness,” “roaring of Krakatoa,” and a “peculiar pink flame” coming from clouds. Explosions and eruptions continued through the morning.

Four gigantic explosions occurred, starting at 5:30 a.m. The last one, at 10:02 a.m., is said to be one of the biggest explosions ever recorded. It was heard 3,000 miles away, about the distance from Miami to San Francisco.

Capt. Watson reported at 11:30 a.m. that “we were enclosed in a darkness that might almost be felt, and then commenced a downpour of mud, sand, and I know not what. . . .” “At noon the darkness was so intense that we had to grope our way about the decks. . .” unable to see each other. These hellish conditions continued all day and into the final night.

The four tsunamis that followed the four massive explosions are almost beyond comprehension. They killed 36,000 people, submerged about 300 towns and villages, and ranged in height from 72 to 135 feet high – mountains of water.

Most of those who survived these events were horribly burned by the flaming hot ash, dust, pumice, and other matter that rained from the sky all day and night.

The eruptions also produced two kinds of shock waves – air waves and sea-borne waves. The air waves traveled the globe seven times. Nine hours after the last explosion, boats were sunk or swamped in Calcutta, India; unusual waves were noticed in Port Elizabeth, South Africa.

It was later revealed that the 2,600-foot mountain of Krakatoa had blown itself out of existence and left a hole in the ocean floor 1,000 feet deep. The ash and debris affected the climate and atmosphere around the world. Winchester suggests that the atmospheric effects in Europe and North America influenced artists and poets. For example, Frederic Edwin Church’s Sunset over the Ice on Chaumont Bay, Lake Ontario, painted in December 1883, captures the incredible sunsets that followed Krakatoa’s explosion for the next several years. It has also been suggested that the background for Edvard Munch’s The Scream, painted in 1893, represents the artist’s rendering of the volcanic sunsets.

Edvard Munch’s 1893 The Scream

 

Winchester also argues that the disaster of Krakatoa and the communication of those events ushered in what we now call the Global Village, a world created by communication and technology. Perhaps our rage for order compels us to describe cataclysms, communicate about them, study them, and watch as life returns and the human spirit not only endures, as William Faulkner said, but prevails.

A Birth

As we watch the Japanese survivors’ determination to rebuild their lives, I think again of Krakatoa. It wasn’t too long before the site drew curious fishermen, mariners, and the scientists of the day. Krakatoa’s fate certainly informed the nascent sciences of meteorology and geology.

Then an amazing thing happened. In June 1927, the sea around the site of Krakatoa’s disappearance began roiling, bubbling, and spurting. Surely it must have scared those who knew it was happening. On January 26, 1928, land broke the surface and Anak (Child of) Krakatoa was born. Since then, the child-mountain has grown 20 or so inches each month. As Winchester reminds us, geology says the mountain will again explode, but geological time is a long, long time.

In 2006 the BBC aired a docudrama of the Krakatoa cataclysm using Willem Beyernick and his wife as the central figures. Clips of the production can be seen from the World News portal here. Below is the first clip.

From the BBC docudrama of the Krakatoa cataclysm

San Diego State University’s site, How Volcanoes Work, offers an interesting look at Krakatoa. NOAA’s Center for Tsunami Research provides information and videos of the power of tsunamis.

Technorati Tags: Krakatoa,Simon Winchester,Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded,Willem Beyernick,Capt. W. J. Watson,the Charles Bal,Frederick Edwin Church,Sunset over the Ice on Chaumont Bay Lake Ontario,Edvard Munch,The Scream,Anak Krakatoa,BBC Krakatoa The Last Days,NOAA Center for Tsunami Research,SDSU How Volcanoes Work

Grief Front and Center

Grief is on our minds. On our hearts.

I guess I was lucky that the first time I felt grief for the loss of a human, instead of a pet, I was 20-years-old. I was a junior in college and in the midst of having a great time. Then in November 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Along with all kinds of other unfamiliar emotions, I felt grief and I cried. And, yes, I remember exactly where I was and, yes, the memory stuck.

Public Grief

It would be another seven years before I faced a personal grief for the loss of a family member. After that, it felt as though life was only grief of some kind, personal or public. I have posted more than several pieces on grief. Samples include: here, here, here, and here.

So many attempted assassinations and killings of public figures later, public grief has become all too familiar. Remembering is like watching a documentary of your own life fly by, getting faster and faster and faster until it stops in Tucson, Arizona almost a month ago now. How can a month feel so NOW, or years feel so close?

The victims of the University of Texas sniper (1966), Robert Kennedy (1968), Martin Luther King, Jr. (1968), the Vietnam war being play out nightly on television, Kent State students (1970), Alabama’s governor George Wallace (1972), Israeli Olympians in Munich (1972), Jim Jones’s cult members’ suicides (1978), John Lennon (1980), and Ronald Reagan assassination attempt (1981).

All kinds of terrorist acts worldwide involving Americans took up the 1980s and 1990s: Beruit (1983), TWA hijacking (1985), Italian Achille Lauro cruise ship hijacking and murder of an American (1985), Lockerbie, Scotland, Pan Am flight (1988), World Trade Center garage bombing (1993), Oklahoma City bombing of a Federal building (1995), U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania (1998), the U.S.S. Cole bombing (2000).

Then the 9/11/01 tragedies.

In between, killings at home occupied televisions: Columbine High School students killed (1998), Virginia Tech students killed (2007), Dr. George Tiller ambushed and killed in Wichita (2009), the Ft. Hood, Texas, rampage where a psychiatrist killed 12 and wounded 31 (2009), the Austin, TX, IRS building attacked by man in a small plane (2010), eight employees killed in their Connecticut office by a fellow employee (2010), University of Alabama (Huntsville) faculty members shot by Dr. Amy Bishop (2010).

It won’t stop. It goes faster and faster, until the horrendous events in Tucson stop us cold.

No Stages

A recent Time magazine article asked, How do we cope with grief? And suggested that the answer may be “Good News.”

For three decades, our beliefs about coping with grief have been influenced by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s 1969 On Death and Dying and on her 2005 On Grief and Grieving; in the last decade or so, academia and more scientific data collection has revealed new insights. The findings are the subject of both the Time article and Ruth Davis Konigsberg’s new book, The Truth About Grief.

According to Konigsberg, the new research overturns the five major myths: We grieve in stages; we must express our grief; grief is harder on women than on men; grief never ends; and counseling helps. It may be that these myths have restricted our ability to be as resilient as we can be when confronted with grief – public or private.

Personally, I think a parody of Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court Potter Stuart’s comment about pornography – knowing it when he sees it – fits my thinking: I won’t attempt to define the kinds of feelings that make up grief, but I know it when I feel it.

Technorati Tags: public grief,personal grief,Tucson shooting,Elisabeth Kübler-Ross,On Death and Dying,Ruth Davis Konigsberg,The Truth about Grief

Anti-Drug Cookbook Available

A new cookbook, which Spittin’ Grits introduced last fall and which can foster discussions about methamphetamines and other drugs while around the dinner table, is now available to purchase. Back Around the Table: Celebrating Food, Family and Recovery is for good eating and for good talk.

Its goal is to support bringing families back together around the table and to encourage communication, awareness, and prevention of drug abuse.

Part of the proceeds of the sale of Back Around the Table will support Alabama’s ZEROMETH ad campaign.

Back Around the Table’s availability it also timely.

“Smurfing”

This word that used to denote silly cartoon characters is the current nickname of the activity of buyers’ going around to stores to get as many cold tablets as possible to use in cooking meth, a dangerous and toxic activity. Yesterday the AP Wire service released a story, “Meth flourishing despite tracking laws, say feds” by Jim Salter, which ran in many U.S. newspapers and which you can read here.

According to the AP story, meth-related activity in general is on the rise again, including “smurfing”: “up 34 percent in 2009.” These numbers comprise arrests, seizures of the drug, and the discovery of abandoned production sites, and three states lead the way: Arkansas, Kentucky, and Oklahoma. Alabama is also high on the list. According to the DEA, meth is the one of biggest threats in our state.

The DEA’s U.S. map of meth lab incidents, shown below, rates the states’ meth activity.

 

An Anti-Drug Campaign

Anti-drug campaigns have come and gone. Mostly gone. Drugs have kept on coming and haven’t gone. The ZEROMETH campaign is different: it is specific to methamphetamines; it is targeted at young people instead of parents (Parents – The Anti-Drug) or no one in particular (Just Say No) or at users in general, but with no force behind it (This is your brain on drugs); it is based on what is known from users and from science; and it is tough.

One Alabama District Attorney who was involved with the campaign from the ground up, Jimmie Harp, Jr., Etowah County, describes the ZEROMETH campaign this way:

ZEROMETH is a hard hitting and gritty campaign. . . .The television ads, print ads, and other supporting media are designed to create a dialog between our youth and their parents, teachers, coaches about the life-threatening and dangerous consequences of trying meth even one time.

Order Back Around the Table here:

http://www.backaroundthetable.com/Orderforum.html

 

Technorati Tags: Back Around the Table,methamphetamines,drug addiction,Smurfing,DEA,ZEROMETH ad campaign,anti-drug campaign

Butterflies Free-for-All

Butterflies of Alabama, a new book from the Gosse Nature Guides series of The University of Alabama Press will be of interest way beyond the borders of Alabama -- to butterfly lovers, nature aficionados, conservationists and environmentalists, photographers, and outdoors people.

All photos copy-righted by Sara Bright

 

 

 

 

 

For added sweetness, the book’s scrumptious beauty will make it a wonderful gift in most places on the globe for most ages.

The butterflies of this state, all 84 known species, migrate, some far and wide, like the magnificent Monarch; some are highly localized and seen infrequently out of their area, like the West Virginia White.

West Virginia White ©

As luck would have it, it flutters into the northeast part of Alabama. One species has only recently been documented anywhere – the Appalachian Tiger Swallowtail – but like the West Virginia White, was spotted (in 2008) in Alabama’s Appalachian foothills.

Appalachian Tiger Swallowtail ©

To see several localized species, you’ll have to go to the beach – in Alabama, to Baldwin and Mobile counties – including the Great Southern White, Queen, and the Eastern Pygmy-Blue.

These creatures are all beautiful enough to lure you to their sites.

Butterflies of Alabama is not, however, just another pretty book. It’s an education, thanks to the fastidious work of photographer Sara Bright and writer Paulette Haywood Ogard. Each species entry includes photos and text (in non-technical language) revealing the whole life cycle in its natural habitat, from larva to caterpillar to beautiful adult.

Zebra Longwing ©

 

Nature Journal

The first in the Gosse series (published earlier this year), Nature Journal, by L. J. Davenport, also goes beyond its intended use as a nature study guide for observing Alabama’s flora and fauna species in their habitat. Each chapter begins with a photograph, some lovely, some silly (like the ocellated flounder flatfish), and some gross (like the yukky Cedar apple rust galls).

The photos are followed by an always witty and detailed essay about the species in the photo:

One drizzly spring day, while wriggling through a thicket in Franklin County, Alabama, I came face-to-face with a most horrible sight: an entire cedar tree “eat up” with orange oozes, dripping dew like a thousand noisome noses. But – intrepid biologist that I am – I felt no fear, for I only faced the teliohorns of cedar apple rust (CAR).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cedar Apple Rust galls © L. J. Davenport

The refreshing voice and style of the essays are followed by several lined pages for your own creative observations and descriptions. Or poems. Or character studies. Or personal essays. Or whatever you’d like to write. Davenport’s essays have also, by the way, instructed you as to how to observe and detail your subject.

The Naturalist’s Art

The Gosse Nature Guides series pays homage to Philip Henry Gosse, English naturalist, watercolorist, and inventor of the marine aquarium who spent nearly a year on what was then, in 1838, the Alabama frontier teaching planters’ children in Dallas County. His original watercolors of Alabama insects are housed in the British Library in London. but can be seen and admired in the UA Press book that rounds out this trio of value-added natural history publications: Philip Henry Gosse: Science and Art in Letters from Alabama and Entomologia Alabamensis, by Gary R. Mullen and Taylor D. Littleton.

The book presents, for the first time, Gosse’s full-color art, as well as a concise biography of Gosse.

The Gosse series will continue with publications by naturalists and experts. The book on Alabama ferns is almost ready for publication, and books on mammals, birds, wildflowers, and mushrooms are in the works.

These books have made a promise: that each succeeding work in the Gosse Field Guides series will continue to offer high quality art and expertise for the general reader.

Technorati Tags: Butterflies of Alabama,University of Alabama Press,nature field guide,Gosse Nature Guides,Philip Henry Gosse,Nature Journal,Letters from Alabama,Entomologia Alabamensis

Cooking up Discussion and Education

Traditionally, the dinner table is a place for community, debates, discussion, sharing information, even arguments – among family, friends, opponents, neighbors, and near strangers.

A new cookbook that can foster discussions about methamphetamines and other drugs while around the dinner table is available for ordering. Back Around the Table is for good eating and for good talk.

Notable Alabamians, like U.S. Senator Richard Shelby, and citizens involved in drug abuse treatment, education, and prevention from around the state are offering their best recipes in a variety of categories. Senator Shelby offers Dove on the Grill, an old family recipe that he and his wife, Annette, still use:

Dove (allow at least 2 per person)

Worcestershire Sauce to taste

Salt and pepper to taste

Bacon (1/2 slice per bird)

Sprinkle dove with salt, pepper and Worcestershire sauce. Wrap each dove with bacon. Secure with toothpick if necessary. Cook over a medium fire until done, about 20-30 minutes. Turn occasionally. **Variation: Wrap ½ strip bacon around a water chestnut and a boneless dove breast. Season lemon butter with Worcestershire sauce and baste frequently. Cook on grill.

Part of the proceeds of the sale of Back Around the Table will support Alabama’s ZEROMETH ad campaign.

Anti-drug campaigns have come and gone. Mostly gone. Drugs have kept on coming and haven’t gone. The ZEROMETH campaign is different: it is specific to methamphetamines; it is targeted at young people instead of parents (Parents – The Anti-Drug) or no one in particular (Just Say No) or at users in general, but with no force behind it (This is your brain on drugs); it is based on what is known from users and from science; and it is tough.

Here's some science behind how meth words, from National Geographic:

One Alabama District Attorney who was involved with the campaign from the ground up, Jimmie Harp, Jr., Etowah County, describes the ZEROMETH campaign this way:

ZEROMETH is a hard hitting and gritty campaign. . . .The television ads, print ads, and other supporting media are designed to create a dialog between our youth and their parents, teachers, coaches about the life-threatening and dangerous consequences of trying meth even one time.

Here is Part 1 of the campaign:

He had the idea for Back Around the Table. “The book’s purpose is to create awareness, but in this instance also celebrate those who have been addicted to illegal drugs, been alienated from their families, sought help, and have recovered or are fighting to recover ever day.”

He approached Dr. Barbara Bryant, a retired college administrator and professor, consultant, cookbook publisher, and business owner in Gadsden, Alabama, who agreed to publish it and oversee sales.

To order Back Around the Table:

Mail Check or Money Order to:

“Back Around the Table”

Post Office Box 1603

Gadsden, AL 35902

• Include number of books requested @ $25.00 ea
• The amount enclosed
• Your name and address including the Zip
• Phone including area code
• E-mail address

If you encounter problems ordering online, please e-mail me at: jchutt@gmail.com. I will forward your e-mail address to the appropriate contact who will send a PDF attachment.

I published a post to Spittin’ Grits last year that recounted my experience with my daughter’s meth addiction here.

More videos from the ZEROMETH campaign:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Technorati Tags: Back Around the Table,cookbook,Senator Richard Shelby,ZEROMETH ad campaign,methamphetamines,anit-drug campaign,Jimmie Harp,Jr.,meth addiction

Celebrate with Grits

This July 4^th, celebrate by including America’s “First Food,” grits.

For 401 years, Americans have been eating corn. It stands to reason that grits came into the culinary repertoire soon after that.

Thomas Jefferson served grits, according to Craig Claiborne, one of culinary America’s Founding Fathers and long-time food editor for The New York Times. So, serving grits on July 4^th is really, well, kind of, the patriotic thing to do.

But soon after Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, a cultural event occurred that probably sealed grits’ becoming America’s First Food.

Twenty years after the American Revolution, in 1796, a young orphan lady named Amelia Simmons published a cookbook, America’s first one. Until then no cookbook dealt with the indigenous food ingredients available in America.

It took another 214 years for grits to leap from Southern comfort food to a central ingredient in some hifalutin recipes.

 

Glorious Grits, a recent book by Susan McEwen McIntosh and presented by Southern Living, marks the turning point.

That publication took America from from Miss Amelia’s Indian Pudding to Asparagus-Grits Strata, Huevos Rancheros on Cilantro-Grits Cakes, French Onion Soup with Gruyère Grits Croutons, Blueberry Muffins with Streusel Topping (made with blue cornmeal), Burgundy Beef Stew with Cornmeal-Thyme Dumplings, Chutney Salmon with Almond-Raisin Grits, Anson Mills’ Black Truffle Grits, and many more.

But be aware that the Glorious Grits's recipes almost demand using sure enough stone ground grits. What's a cook to do?

Go here!

 

Now, celebrate and

“Bon Appetit, Y'all.”

Technorati Tags: Glorious Grits,Southern Living,Susan McEwen McIntosh,stone-ground grits,stone-ground cornmeal,Amelia Simmons,American Cookery,Virginia Willis,BonAppetit Y'all,Wilsonville,Alabama,Coosa River,McEwen & Sons,grist mill,Coosa Valley Milling and Hardware Company

Mother’s Day Once Removed

Today I got two Sam’s Club-sized bags of mulch and one Sam’s Club-sized bags of potting soil. My son knows me! I was glad to see his face this morning.

From my daughter, I got a letter from jail, and I’m choosing not to read it today. She is in jail yet again on drug-related charges, very serious ones this time; she is in jail yet again on Mother’s Day. (See the April 29 post “Wednesday, April 21, 2010, 2:50 p.m. Part I.” Part II will be posted this week.)

Meanwhile, I’m continuing to check Katie Granju’s updates at http://mamapundit.com/ on her son’s progress from entering the hospital in critical condition last week to his beginning therapy in the last couple of days. (See the previous post “Living Addictions.)

Today on Mother’s Day, I’m thinking about being a grandparent and a parenting grandmother. Tomorrow, Monday, would be a good time to get Eye of My Heart: 27 Writers Reveal the Hidden Pleasures and Perils of Being a Grandmother, just issued in paperback by HarperCollins.

For a review and summary of contributing authors and grandmothers, see the Nov. 14, 2009, Post “At Home, Not Alone.”

A New York Times bestseller, Eye of My Heart is edited by Barbara Graham with an introduction by Mary Pipher. Some prescient compliments follow:

“Truth telling with dollops of love.”--O, The Oprah Magazine

“In illuminating, unsentimental essays, 27 writers offer up insights on the tricky art of grandmothering.” --People

“So many different perspectives and vantage points are woven seamlessly that no matter what their personal relationship to the word ‘grandmother’ is, readers will find much to make them laugh out loud—and also to break their hearts.” --Christian Science Monitor

“Realistic and gutsy, these essays offer encouragement and instruction to those of us who have stepped into new roles as elders. They are as rich with laughter as with sobering insights about the way we live now.” --LiteraryMama.com

“These stories are so fresh and fundamental, wrenching and joyful, that one is left feeling that the subject has never been cracked open before.”--Harriet Lerner, Ph.D., author of The Dance of Anger and The Mother Dance.

“Finally, a look at grandmothering that is decidedly unsentimental. These clear-eyed essays, written by some of the country's foremost writers, offer humor and insight as they take on the multigenerational lives many of us now lead.”--Cokie Roberts, author of We Are Our Mothers’ Daughters

This new paperback edition, as well as the hardcover edition, is available online book sites like Amazon and Barnes and Noble, and at local book retailers.

 

Technorati Tags: Mother's Day,Katie Granju,mamapundit,Eye of My Heart,grandparent parenting,grandmothers,Barbara Graham,Spittin' Grits

Living Addictions

Families used to hide their mentally ill relatives in attics or cellars. And in unregulated and often abysmal asylums. Admitting this all too common remedy for misunderstood conditions can be prelude to how we deal with drug addiction today.

Learning where diseases like diabetes, leukemia and other cancers, AIDS, heart conditions, hepatitis, pneumonia, and, yes, mental illnesses live in our bodies has lessened the life threatening potential for these conditions to kill those whom we love and to reduce the exorbitantly high costs to society in general. This historical lesson can be prelude to understanding and treating drug and alcohol addictions.

The pancreas, the blood, the heart, the liver, the lungs, the body chemistry, and, yes, the brain: diseases live in these organs.

And now science knows where addictions live: the brain. This scientific knowledge should silence the debate over whether addiction is a disease. But it hasn’t.

This week I began following the terrible ordeal of Katie Granju on her blog, mamapundit, which I discovered on The New York Times blog, Motherlode, by Lisa Belkin. Granju’s son H was in critical condition, likely from a drug overdose and brutal beating in what was probably a drug deal gone bad, which she had written about in her April 28 post.

My most recent ordeal with my daughter’s drug overdose began on April 18, which I learned about as I was co-hosting a bridal tea.

Talking Real

Granju made the really hard decision to “go public” with this awful “family secret” on May 1 in a babble.com blog post, this way: “But I am saying it now, out loud, in public, for the first time: I am the mother of a drug addict. In today’s post (May 6), she listed three of the major criticisms of her writing about this very real problem:

1. She has no right to write about her son’s addictions.

2. Experimentation does not lead to addiction.

3. Drug addiction is not a disease.

Writing Real

Going public with any personal or family “secret” is terrifying in itself. I began slowly with going public, maybe some eight years ago, with my writing group. They were sympathetic and encouraging, to say the least. I owe them a debt of gratitude.

Then I took it a step further in my group at a creative non-fiction writing workshop in Baltimore, led by the wonderful and best selling writer, Marita Golden, by submitting a piece about my experience with “bounty hunters” beating on my door one night. I owe her a debt of gratitude for her encouragement.

Continuing problems with my drug addicted daughter stopped me in my tracks several times. I would try to start over. Then after we got custody of her daughter, our granddaughter, I knew I did not want to take all this to my grave, and I started this blog. I’ve had more than one moment of thinking I would shut it down, but here I am, public and writing real.

Morality of Real

I addressed the question of the morality of writing about someone else’s addiction in the Sept. 9, 2009, post “Memoir Morality,” prompted by the publication of Julie Myerson’s book The Lost Child. In that post (archived in the category Drug Addiction), I said:

Truth does not betray, in this case the drug addict. Truth may be harsh, it may be unpleasant, it may be ugly, it may intrude, but truth doesn’t betray. We betray ourselves when we can’t accept the truth and its reality. That is called denial.

I haven’t changed or modified my stance at all.

Experimenting Real

Experimentation?

Well, experimenting with dangerous chemicals can often lead to fires, explosions, catastrophes. Experimenting with sex often leads to babies. Experimenting with alcohol can often lead to alcohol-related accidents.

Experimenting with anything always carries big risks. And taking risks often leads to huge mistakes with extremely high costs.

Coming Out Real

Secrets eat up people from the inside out, showing up in your face, your eyes, your stance. Then depression sets in. Then, and then, and then. Stuffing secrets just doesn’t work.

Clinging to ignorance in the face of scientific evidence and knowledge is folly. It’s gambling with the lives of hapless drug addicts.

I applaud Katie Granju. I think her ordeal and writing real will help keep me on track. And who knows, our experiences and coming forth with them could help the family members of even the harshest critics.

And my heart is with her and with H.

 

Technorati Tags: drug addiciton,drug overdose,addiction a disease,Katie Granju,mamapundit,Motherlode,Marita Golden,Spittin' Grits

From First to Hifalutin

 

It has finally happened. The South’s sometimes famous, sometimes notorious, always dependable, comfort food has gone upscale. I suppose it was bound to happen. After all, grits probably saved our country.

Glorious Grits, a new book by Susan McEwen McIntosh and presented by Southern Living, raises our comfort food to a new level for a new generation, with the gorgeous and scrumptious recipes from enlightened and creative American chefs. 

It took more than 200 years to go from Indian Pudding to Asparagus-Grits Strata, Huevos Rancheros on Cilantro-Grits Cakes, French Onion Soup with Gruyère Grits Croutons, Blueberry Muffins with Streusel Topping (made with blue cornmeal), Burgundy Beef Stew with Cornmeal-Thyme Dumplings, Chutney Salmon with Almond-Raisin Grits, Anson Mills’ Black Truffle Grits, and many more. 

above, Asparagus-Grits Strata

But here we are. Just in time for Thanksgiving.

 

First Food

You may recall from Spittin’ Grits’ May 4 post, America probably owes its historical existence to Capt. John Smith, who knew enough about wilderness survival to be saved by Pocahontas and then to save that original handful of people who settled in Jamestown. In the fall of 1608, only 45 people of the original 144 who set sail for Virginia were alive. By the following spring and summer 1609, everyone would likely have been dead if Smith had not bargained with the native Indians for corn. Americans are nothing if not ingenious, so with corn in hand, could meal, hominy, and grits be far behind?

The July 2 post reminded readers that Thomas Jefferson served grits, according to Craig Claiborne. Even before that, however, only twenty years after the American Revolution, a culinary cultural event took place in 1796, when a young orphan lady named Amelia Simmons published a cookbook, America’s first one.

 

AMERICAN COOKERY or the Art of Dressing Viands, Fish, Poultry and Vegetables, and the Best Modes of Making Pastes, Puffs, Pies, Tarts, Puddings, Custards, and Preserves, and all Kinds of Cakes from the Imperial Plumb to Plain Cake Adapted to the Country and All Grades of Life – the first cookbook aimed democratically at the masses and slanted towards women; it is the first cookbook to show corn meal as a primary ingredient.  It includes the first recipes for Indian Slapjacks and Johnny Cake, as well as “A Nice Indian Pudding,” all of which became staples in the following centuries.

 Uptown Food

McInstosh, born and raised in the South, a registered dietitian and author of Southern Living magazine’s Cooking Light Cookbook, traveled and interviewed far and wide to bring these glorious grits, meal, and polenta recipes together. As a bonus, she also reawakens awareness for using real, stone-ground grits. Glorious Grits includes a grits trail map and addresses for gristmills from where stone-ground meal, grits and polenta may be ordered, as well as tips for cooking stone-ground grits.

above,  Lime –Marinated Shrimp with Bean and Mango Salsa over Grilled Grits Cakes

Book chapters run the culinary gamut from a good old bowl of grits, quick polenta, and cornbread to breakfast, appetizers, breads, main courses, and desserts. Yes, desserts, including Pecan Grits Pie, Cornbread Pudding with Whiskey Sauce, and Coconut-Crusted Polenta Cakes with Triple Berry Sauce.

above, appetizer Grits Bruschetta with Tomato Salsa

below, Cornmeal Focaccia with Rosemary

My neighbor and friend Nancy is going to Chicago for Thanksgiving and wants to take a Southern dish. I’m going to suggest the Grits Bruschetta with Tomato Salsa as an appetizer, the Cornmeal Focaccia with Rosemary, Lime-Marinated Shrimp with Bean and Mango Salsa over Grilled Grits Cakes, and the Pecan Grits Pie (shown below).

Bon appétit, grits!

Technorati Tags: Spittin' Grits,Glorious Grits,Southern Livingm,Susan McEwen McIntosh,stone-ground grits,stone-ground cornmeal,Amelia Simmons,American Cookery