(I am actually cleaning up my office finally. I found this article I have saved for 15 years. Enjoy. KVC)
She took the law into her own hands
Reprinted from Chicago Tribune, April 29, 1993
Mike Royko
We've had the year of the woman and it is still going on, with females being elected to high office, named to Cabinet posts, and the power of Hillary Rodham Clinton.
But what about Curtescine Lloyd? You never hear of her? Well, she is my choice as one of the most amazing and heroic women of recent years.
Ms. Lloyd is a middle-age nurse who lives with an elderly aunt in the rural hamlet of Edwards, Miss., near Jackson. This is her story, most of it taken from a court transcript.
One night, Ms. Lloyd was awakened by a sound. She thought it was her aunt going to the bathroom. Suddenly a man stepped into her bedroom. Terrified, she sat up. He shoved her back down and said: "Bitch, you better not turn on a light. You holler, you're dead. You better not breathe loud."
He declared his intentions, which were to rob her and commit sexual assault. Of course he phrased it far more luridly. Then he took off most of his clothing and jumped into bed.
Here is what happened next, according to court records:
Ms. Lloyd: "I got it. I grabbed it by my right hand. And when I grabbed it I gave it a yank. And when I yanked it, I twisted all at the same time."
(Need I explain what Ms. Lloyd meant by "it"? I think not.)
"He hit me with his right hand a hard blow beside the head, and when he hit me I grabbed hold to his scrotum with my left hand and I was twisting it the opposite way. He started to yell and we fell to the floor and he hit me a couple of more licks, but they were light licks. He was weakening some then."
With Ms. Lloyd still hanging on with both hands, squeezing and twisting the fellow's pride and joy, they somehow struggled into the hallway.
"He was trying to get out, and I'm hanging on to him; and he was throwing me from one side of the hall wall to the other. I was afraid if I let him go, he was going to kill me.
"So I was determined I was not going to turn it loose. So we were going down the hallway, falling from one side to the other, and we got into the living room and we both fell. He brought me down right in from of the couch and he leaned back against the couch, pleading with me.
"He says, 'You've got me, you've got me, please, you've got me.' I said, 'I know damn well I got you.' He said, 'Please, please, you're killing me, you're killing me. ... I can't do nothing. Call the police, call the police.'
"I said, 'Do you think I'm stupid enough to turn you loose and call the police?' He said, 'Well, what am I gonna do?' I said, 'You're gonna get the hell out of my house.' He said, 'How can I get out of your house if you won't let me go? How can I get out? I can't get out.'
"I said, 'Break out, son-of-a-bitch, you broke in, didn't you?' And I was still holding him.
"He said, 'Oh, you've got me suffering, lady, you've got me suffering.' I said, 'Have you thought about how you were going to have me suffering?' He said, 'Well, I can't do nothing now.' I said, 'Well, that's fine.' "
Ms. Lloyd, still twisting and squeezing, dragged the lout to the front door, which had two locks, and told him to unbolt them.
It was difficult process because he kept collapsing to the floor and she kept hauling him back to his feet.
When he finally unlocked the doors, he screamed: "I'm out, I'm out."
But Ms. Lloyd, now confident that she had the upper hand (or should I say the lower hands?) and a full grasp of the situation, said: "No, damn it, I'm taking your ass to the end of the porch. And when I turn you loose, I'm going to get my gun and I'm going to blow your [obscenity] brains out, you nasty, stinking, low-down dirty piece of [obscenity], you.
"And when I did that, I gave it a twist, and I turned him loose. And he took a couple of steps and fell off the steps and he jumped up and grabbed his private parts and made a couple of jumps across the back of my aunt's car.
"And I ran into my aunt's room, got her pistol from underneath the nightstand, ran back to the screen door, and I fired two shots down the hill the way I saw him go. And then I ran back in the house and dialed 911."
The police came and examined the man's clothing. Inside the trousers was written the name Dwight Coverson. They found Coverson, 29, at home in considerable pain and wondering if he could ever be a daddy.
A one-day jury trial was held. As Coverson's court-appointed lawyer put it: "The jury was out 10 minutes. Long enough for two of them to go to the bathroom."
And the judge gave him 25 years in prison.
The defense lawyer also said that Ms. Lloyd was recently on a local Mississippi TV news show and mentioned that she had been contacted about a possible movie of her story.
That is a film I would pay to see.
As for Coverson, if this column should find its way to his prison, I hope the guys in his cellblock don't giggle too much.
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
RIP Tammy Faye
I wrote Tammy Faye a letter last year when she was getting really ill. I told her we loved her and appreciated that she did not bash people when she was a leading evangelist. I got a great letter back from her and an autographed picture which I have on my wall now.
July 23, 2007, 7:26PMTammy Faye's message: peace, joy awaits in heavenHer life was public, as were the private details of her dying
By HANK STUEVERWashington Post
To heaven, then, for true believer Tammy Faye (nee LaValley, then Bakker and Messner) — the real heaven, the kind you learned about in Sunday school: the tunnel, then the white light, then the pearly gates and streets of gold, the puffy clouds, then taking the microphone for a solo with the choir invisible, where the crying finally stops and the mascara never runs.
Her friendliest media interlocutor, St. Larry King, checked to see if she still believed in all that, in one of the last (but far from the last) of his many on-air conversations with Tammy Faye during her long, cancer-stricken goodbye:
Larry: Are you afraid of dying?
Tammy Faye: No, no. I remember last Christmas ... that was the time I think I was the most afraid of dying.
Larry: Do you believe you're going to go to heaven?
Tammy Faye: Larry, you know I do. And I believe you're going to go to heaven, too.
Larry: I'll see you there.
Tammy Faye: I'll see you there. I will.
— Larry King Live, Dec. 15, 2006
What was she?
What was she under all the maquillage? (In the 2000 documentary The Eyes of Tammy Faye she is seen patiently explaining to a makeup artist at a photo shoot that her lip liner, eyebrows and some of the eyeliner are tattooed on, so stop trying to wipe it all off.) What was she, beamed to the world via PTL Network satellite, singing those synthy hymnal ballads, wearing those mid-1980s Chanel jackets belted so tight around her Munchkin middle that she threatened to burst? What was she, beyond being the woman who, with her first husband, Jim Bakker, had matching Rolls-Royces and built God's own water park, only to see it all come tumbling down in a true American scandal?
In Tammy Faye's telling she was just a simple, small-town Minnesota girl. Just your everyday naif who goes to a revival and starts speaking in tongues at age 10, discovers makeup, and runs off to Bible college, where she finds love (the Rev. Jim) and puppets (Susie Moppet, the kiddie TV show star she created), and, ever so circuitously, works her way into pop-culture immortality.
She was impervious to the academic definition of camp, which made her one of its shrewdest practitioners. Hubris was just a fancy word for reality show. She knew people loved the details, and she wasn't afraid to share any of them. "I think the eyes are so important," she tells the camera in The Eyes of Tammy Faye: "I think you can look in someone's eyes and really tell what kind of a person, what their heart is. And so when my precious friends die, I always ask if I could please have their glasses. When my mom died, I got my mama's glasses, and they're very, very precious to me. I like to put them on sometimes and think, you know, Mama looked through these."
Tammy Faye was simple in a rather complex way. She loved dolls, tiny dogs, and L'Oreal Lash Out. She loved Diet Coke. She loved children. She loved sinners. She loved attention.
She loved nerve-calming Ativan pills, until her husband and church leaders sent her off to the Betty Ford Center. She lasted there one day, she said, because that's all it really took, because she immediately got the point, realized she was addicted, and never succumbed to another drug — not counting the addictive allure of telling the world over and over about one's recovery.
Tammy Faye's drug addiction was merely a hint of the shadowed valley that lay ahead. In 1987 the world would learn of Jessica Hahn, a church secretary who had been paid $265,000 after threatening to go public with her affair with Bakker. Despite the rivers cried by Tammy Faye, prayer could not keep Bakker from going to prison on fraud and conspiracy charges relating to the mismanagement of the PTL Network's millions. Jerry Falwell took over the Bakkers' businesses and riches and promptly banished the couple. Tammy Faye faced the press and sang: "On Christ the solid rock I stand; all other ground is sinking sand."
She divorced Bakker in 1992 and married one of his closest PTL associates, Roe Messner, who, among other things, had overseen the building of Heritage USA, the theme park and hotel compound that once rivaled Disney World and eventually was shuttered. Messner would himself go to prison, in 1996, for bankruptcy fraud, and was released in 1999.
Tammy Faye became a fixture of basic cable, happy to do almost any talk show, reality show or shopping-network guest appearance that came her way. Churches slowly invited her back, to sing and preach the power of positive thinking. Cancer, diagnosed in 1996, recurring in 2004 — she finally succumbed Friday morning at age 65 — would kill Tammy Faye, but it also lent her its one special redemptive quality, in American culture, in that it betters the person who faces it bravely, resolutely, and keeps Larry King informed of its progress.
The Eyes of Tammy Faye, a hit at Sundance, was infused with a gay sensibility, narrated by the drag queen RuPaul. After the film achieved cult status, Tammy Faye was a special guest at gay-pride parades everywhere. It was a Judy Garland-type love. It was tragedy and tarantula eyelashes. "When we lost everything, it was the gay people that came to my rescue," she told Larry King last week, in response to a viewer's e-mail. "And I will always love them for that."
And why did gay men love Tammy Faye so much? To ask is to have skipped the past 25 years of the obvious. It wasn't all about the makeup; more deeply, it was about acceptance. Tammy Faye talked early about AIDS, and to people who had it. She chastised her congregation for their judgment against those who were ill. This won her a lifetime of goodwill from gays. And she took it. It was an easy friendship to have, and profitable PR for both.
The real lesson is forgiveness. Tammy Faye's was a story about letting go, and really meaning it. (It's in the book — hers and the Bible.) She forgave Jim Bakker, right away. She forgave Jessica Hahn, wherever she is. Most impressive, she forgave Jerry Falwell. She forgave the media, including the reporter at the Charlotte Observer who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1988 for exposing the financial shenanigans within PTL.
Last week, near death and looking it, Tammy Faye went on Larry King one more time. She said she weighed 65 pounds. The makeup couldn't hide the fact that the end was near. She could barely talk or breathe, the cancer having spread to her lungs. She was filled with the sorts of Tammy Faye details that endeared her to Americans, and also made us wince with recognition: She craved a cheeseburger, yet "all I eat is chicken soup and rice pudding." She said she was looking forward to meeting Billy Graham, and Larry had to remind her Graham wasn't dead yet, and she suppressed that giggle.
Larry asked her why she wanted to come on television. She said she wanted us all to know something: "I genuinely love you and I genuinely care. And I genuinely want to see you in heaven someday. I want you to find peace, and I want you to find joy."
The more she talked, the less horrifying she looked. She wanted us to see it: Here I am, dying right in front of you. Here I go, leaving behind all this sparkly pretty world. Here I go, and someday you'll go, too. Be not afraid, Tammy Faye was telling us.
By HANK STUEVERWashington Post
To heaven, then, for true believer Tammy Faye (nee LaValley, then Bakker and Messner) — the real heaven, the kind you learned about in Sunday school: the tunnel, then the white light, then the pearly gates and streets of gold, the puffy clouds, then taking the microphone for a solo with the choir invisible, where the crying finally stops and the mascara never runs.
Her friendliest media interlocutor, St. Larry King, checked to see if she still believed in all that, in one of the last (but far from the last) of his many on-air conversations with Tammy Faye during her long, cancer-stricken goodbye:
Larry: Are you afraid of dying?
Tammy Faye: No, no. I remember last Christmas ... that was the time I think I was the most afraid of dying.
Larry: Do you believe you're going to go to heaven?
Tammy Faye: Larry, you know I do. And I believe you're going to go to heaven, too.
Larry: I'll see you there.
Tammy Faye: I'll see you there. I will.
— Larry King Live, Dec. 15, 2006
What was she?
What was she under all the maquillage? (In the 2000 documentary The Eyes of Tammy Faye she is seen patiently explaining to a makeup artist at a photo shoot that her lip liner, eyebrows and some of the eyeliner are tattooed on, so stop trying to wipe it all off.) What was she, beamed to the world via PTL Network satellite, singing those synthy hymnal ballads, wearing those mid-1980s Chanel jackets belted so tight around her Munchkin middle that she threatened to burst? What was she, beyond being the woman who, with her first husband, Jim Bakker, had matching Rolls-Royces and built God's own water park, only to see it all come tumbling down in a true American scandal?
In Tammy Faye's telling she was just a simple, small-town Minnesota girl. Just your everyday naif who goes to a revival and starts speaking in tongues at age 10, discovers makeup, and runs off to Bible college, where she finds love (the Rev. Jim) and puppets (Susie Moppet, the kiddie TV show star she created), and, ever so circuitously, works her way into pop-culture immortality.
She was impervious to the academic definition of camp, which made her one of its shrewdest practitioners. Hubris was just a fancy word for reality show. She knew people loved the details, and she wasn't afraid to share any of them. "I think the eyes are so important," she tells the camera in The Eyes of Tammy Faye: "I think you can look in someone's eyes and really tell what kind of a person, what their heart is. And so when my precious friends die, I always ask if I could please have their glasses. When my mom died, I got my mama's glasses, and they're very, very precious to me. I like to put them on sometimes and think, you know, Mama looked through these."
Tammy Faye was simple in a rather complex way. She loved dolls, tiny dogs, and L'Oreal Lash Out. She loved Diet Coke. She loved children. She loved sinners. She loved attention.
She loved nerve-calming Ativan pills, until her husband and church leaders sent her off to the Betty Ford Center. She lasted there one day, she said, because that's all it really took, because she immediately got the point, realized she was addicted, and never succumbed to another drug — not counting the addictive allure of telling the world over and over about one's recovery.
Tammy Faye's drug addiction was merely a hint of the shadowed valley that lay ahead. In 1987 the world would learn of Jessica Hahn, a church secretary who had been paid $265,000 after threatening to go public with her affair with Bakker. Despite the rivers cried by Tammy Faye, prayer could not keep Bakker from going to prison on fraud and conspiracy charges relating to the mismanagement of the PTL Network's millions. Jerry Falwell took over the Bakkers' businesses and riches and promptly banished the couple. Tammy Faye faced the press and sang: "On Christ the solid rock I stand; all other ground is sinking sand."
She divorced Bakker in 1992 and married one of his closest PTL associates, Roe Messner, who, among other things, had overseen the building of Heritage USA, the theme park and hotel compound that once rivaled Disney World and eventually was shuttered. Messner would himself go to prison, in 1996, for bankruptcy fraud, and was released in 1999.
Tammy Faye became a fixture of basic cable, happy to do almost any talk show, reality show or shopping-network guest appearance that came her way. Churches slowly invited her back, to sing and preach the power of positive thinking. Cancer, diagnosed in 1996, recurring in 2004 — she finally succumbed Friday morning at age 65 — would kill Tammy Faye, but it also lent her its one special redemptive quality, in American culture, in that it betters the person who faces it bravely, resolutely, and keeps Larry King informed of its progress.
The Eyes of Tammy Faye, a hit at Sundance, was infused with a gay sensibility, narrated by the drag queen RuPaul. After the film achieved cult status, Tammy Faye was a special guest at gay-pride parades everywhere. It was a Judy Garland-type love. It was tragedy and tarantula eyelashes. "When we lost everything, it was the gay people that came to my rescue," she told Larry King last week, in response to a viewer's e-mail. "And I will always love them for that."
And why did gay men love Tammy Faye so much? To ask is to have skipped the past 25 years of the obvious. It wasn't all about the makeup; more deeply, it was about acceptance. Tammy Faye talked early about AIDS, and to people who had it. She chastised her congregation for their judgment against those who were ill. This won her a lifetime of goodwill from gays. And she took it. It was an easy friendship to have, and profitable PR for both.
The real lesson is forgiveness. Tammy Faye's was a story about letting go, and really meaning it. (It's in the book — hers and the Bible.) She forgave Jim Bakker, right away. She forgave Jessica Hahn, wherever she is. Most impressive, she forgave Jerry Falwell. She forgave the media, including the reporter at the Charlotte Observer who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1988 for exposing the financial shenanigans within PTL.
Last week, near death and looking it, Tammy Faye went on Larry King one more time. She said she weighed 65 pounds. The makeup couldn't hide the fact that the end was near. She could barely talk or breathe, the cancer having spread to her lungs. She was filled with the sorts of Tammy Faye details that endeared her to Americans, and also made us wince with recognition: She craved a cheeseburger, yet "all I eat is chicken soup and rice pudding." She said she was looking forward to meeting Billy Graham, and Larry had to remind her Graham wasn't dead yet, and she suppressed that giggle.
Larry asked her why she wanted to come on television. She said she wanted us all to know something: "I genuinely love you and I genuinely care. And I genuinely want to see you in heaven someday. I want you to find peace, and I want you to find joy."
The more she talked, the less horrifying she looked. She wanted us to see it: Here I am, dying right in front of you. Here I go, leaving behind all this sparkly pretty world. Here I go, and someday you'll go, too. Be not afraid, Tammy Faye was telling us.
Monday, June 25, 2007
Eternal Reefs for Mom
Firm mixes concrete and ashes to make memorials for dearly departed....
Houston Business Journal - June 22, 2007
by Greg Barr
Houston Business Journal
Growing up in Louisiana, Kay Van Cleave recalls how her mother would ship the kids off to school and head for a nearby lake to fish. When the family moved to Houston in the 1950s, her mom made regular trips to Galveston for offshore fishing.
"She loved to fish and would go every chance she could," recalls Van Cleave.
Houston Business Journal - June 22, 2007
by Greg Barr
Houston Business Journal
Growing up in Louisiana, Kay Van Cleave recalls how her mother would ship the kids off to school and head for a nearby lake to fish. When the family moved to Houston in the 1950s, her mom made regular trips to Galveston for offshore fishing.
"She loved to fish and would go every chance she could," recalls Van Cleave.
After her mother's death in 1989, a Van Cleave scattered half her ashes in the Irish Sea and Kay kept the rest. She later read an article about a company called Eternal Reefs and knew she had found the ideal final resting place for her mother's remaining ashes.
Eternal Reefs mixes concrete with remains to make reef "balls," underwater memorials that provide a habitat for fish.
"That was so cool. The best thing I ever heard of," says Van Cleave.
Her mother's ashes are part of a memorial reef ball placed on the Gulf floor near South Padre Island in 2004.
The combination of angling and environmentalism made a fitting dual tribute, she says.
"She loved fishing, and here was a chance to do something good for the ecology," says Van Cleave. "I thought about how tickled my mother would be about this. And it gave me closure."
Eternal Reefs mixes concrete with remains to make reef "balls," underwater memorials that provide a habitat for fish.
"That was so cool. The best thing I ever heard of," says Van Cleave.
Her mother's ashes are part of a memorial reef ball placed on the Gulf floor near South Padre Island in 2004.
The combination of angling and environmentalism made a fitting dual tribute, she says.
"She loved fishing, and here was a chance to do something good for the ecology," says Van Cleave. "I thought about how tickled my mother would be about this. And it gave me closure."
Reef balls roll off Freeport
George Frankel hopes to hear from others like Van Cleave.
The CEO of Atlanta-based Eternal Reefs is looking for prospects who want to preserve the remains of family members -- even pets -- in the company's first Houston-area reef ball placements off the coast near Freeport.
The balls will become part of the George Vancouver fishing reef created from a sunken World War II Liberty ship about seven miles offshore. The site is under permit and maintained by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.
Frankel says Eternal Reefs has seen growing interest in Texas, especially Galveston, which lacks the reef stuff.
"The area around Galveston doesn't work so well because the bottom is too soft and there are so many oil and gas transmission lines around," Frankel explains. "Freeport has several established reefs."
Six families have signed up to be part of the Freeport memorial. As many as 15 separate commemorative reef balls will be placed in a cluster 50 feet below the surface when the late-October dedication takes place.
Reef balls are available in varying sizes and price ranges, depending on personal preferences.
The Mariner, the largest, weighs nearly 4,000 pounds and can accommodate up to four sets of remains for a cost of $6,495.
George Frankel hopes to hear from others like Van Cleave.
The CEO of Atlanta-based Eternal Reefs is looking for prospects who want to preserve the remains of family members -- even pets -- in the company's first Houston-area reef ball placements off the coast near Freeport.
The balls will become part of the George Vancouver fishing reef created from a sunken World War II Liberty ship about seven miles offshore. The site is under permit and maintained by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.
Frankel says Eternal Reefs has seen growing interest in Texas, especially Galveston, which lacks the reef stuff.
"The area around Galveston doesn't work so well because the bottom is too soft and there are so many oil and gas transmission lines around," Frankel explains. "Freeport has several established reefs."
Six families have signed up to be part of the Freeport memorial. As many as 15 separate commemorative reef balls will be placed in a cluster 50 feet below the surface when the late-October dedication takes place.
Reef balls are available in varying sizes and price ranges, depending on personal preferences.
The Mariner, the largest, weighs nearly 4,000 pounds and can accommodate up to four sets of remains for a cost of $6,495.
The cost for placing remains in a community reef to commingle with ashes of non-family members is $2,495.
Pet owners can consign the remains of a beloved dog or cat to a permanent ocean resting place on the Pearl reef ball for a price of $895.
Pet owners can consign the remains of a beloved dog or cat to a permanent ocean resting place on the Pearl reef ball for a price of $895.
A father's request
Don Brawley founded Eternal Reefs in 1999, a year after he was asked to include his father's remains in a reef ball. Brawley had earlier set up Reef Ball Development Group to produce concrete reef "balls" to help repair ecologically important reef structures.
The memorial castings are done under subcontract by Reef Innovations in Sarasota, Fla.
Eternal Reefs has placed more than 600 memorial reef balls, mainly around Florida and along the East Coast as far north as Maryland and New Jersey. More than 100 memorial reefs are expected to be added this year.
CEO Frankel says the privately held company, which expects to exceed $1 million in revenue in 2008, is eyeing the Pacific Northwest as well as the Caribbean for future reef sites.
He says families like having a permanent marker instead of merely tossing the loved one's ashes into the sea.
Says Frankel: "It's astonishing to us how many people have been interested in this. It's a very positive memorial, and they get to make a contribution to the marine environment that is substantial."
The cremated remains of the deceased are mixed in with the other ingredients to create the concrete reef ball. Surviving family members are given the option of traveling to Florida to assist in the mixing process and pouring the concrete into the reef mold, even adding handprints to the wet concrete form.
Van Cleave recalls that before watching her mother's reef ball lowered into the water, she was allowed to write an inspirational saying on the memorial with concrete chalk.
"You're going to love this," she wrote, as parting words to her mother.
Don Brawley founded Eternal Reefs in 1999, a year after he was asked to include his father's remains in a reef ball. Brawley had earlier set up Reef Ball Development Group to produce concrete reef "balls" to help repair ecologically important reef structures.
The memorial castings are done under subcontract by Reef Innovations in Sarasota, Fla.
Eternal Reefs has placed more than 600 memorial reef balls, mainly around Florida and along the East Coast as far north as Maryland and New Jersey. More than 100 memorial reefs are expected to be added this year.
CEO Frankel says the privately held company, which expects to exceed $1 million in revenue in 2008, is eyeing the Pacific Northwest as well as the Caribbean for future reef sites.
He says families like having a permanent marker instead of merely tossing the loved one's ashes into the sea.
Says Frankel: "It's astonishing to us how many people have been interested in this. It's a very positive memorial, and they get to make a contribution to the marine environment that is substantial."
The cremated remains of the deceased are mixed in with the other ingredients to create the concrete reef ball. Surviving family members are given the option of traveling to Florida to assist in the mixing process and pouring the concrete into the reef mold, even adding handprints to the wet concrete form.
Van Cleave recalls that before watching her mother's reef ball lowered into the water, she was allowed to write an inspirational saying on the memorial with concrete chalk.
"You're going to love this," she wrote, as parting words to her mother.
Frankel says the most interesting mixture of ashes he has seen so far included the remains of a woman, her first and second husbands, and the first wife of her second husband.
He also recalls a memorial that included the remains of an endangered Kemp Ridley turtle chosen by a sea turtle rescue clinic in North Carolina.
Each reef ball contains a bronze plaque bearing the name of the deceased. The GPS coordinates of the reef ball are given to family members who, in some cases, will don diving equipment in future years to visit the underwater site.
The company's Web site also touts products for sale.
A pendant contains the name and GPS coordinates of the deceased. A small desktop reef ball replica includes a sprinkling of the deceased person's remains. Also available are Eternal Reefs T-shirts and ball caps.
Says Frankel: "We're not competing with the funeral industry. It's more of a value-added service."
He also recalls a memorial that included the remains of an endangered Kemp Ridley turtle chosen by a sea turtle rescue clinic in North Carolina.
Each reef ball contains a bronze plaque bearing the name of the deceased. The GPS coordinates of the reef ball are given to family members who, in some cases, will don diving equipment in future years to visit the underwater site.
The company's Web site also touts products for sale.
A pendant contains the name and GPS coordinates of the deceased. A small desktop reef ball replica includes a sprinkling of the deceased person's remains. Also available are Eternal Reefs T-shirts and ball caps.
Says Frankel: "We're not competing with the funeral industry. It's more of a value-added service."
State permits no barrier to Eternal Reefs
Eternal Reefs has the blessing of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. Doug Peter, a natural resource specialist with the artificial reef program, says Eternal Reefs has an open-ended permit that allows the company to place reef balls at approved sites.Peter says the reef balls are a good choice for gradual expansion of existing reefs used to enhance conservation efforts and improve fish stocks.The state monitors 58 artificial reef sites, between six and 100 nautical miles offshore."We've used reef balls ourselves and have placed 132 so far," Peter says. "The dome shape with a hollow center gives fish hiding spots and a hard substrate for invertebrates to attach to, and are maintained pretty well in a storm situation."The state also works with the numerous oil drilling companies in the Gulf under the "Rigs to Reef" program. Eighty-eight offshore structures have been transformed into artificial reefs so far."When the rigs quit producing, they are required to be taken ashore and it's an expensive process," Peter says. "But when they reef those structures it saves them a lot of money, and we get 50 percent of what they would save by not taking it to shore."
gbarr@bizjournals.com , 713-960-5932
Eternal Reefs has the blessing of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. Doug Peter, a natural resource specialist with the artificial reef program, says Eternal Reefs has an open-ended permit that allows the company to place reef balls at approved sites.Peter says the reef balls are a good choice for gradual expansion of existing reefs used to enhance conservation efforts and improve fish stocks.The state monitors 58 artificial reef sites, between six and 100 nautical miles offshore."We've used reef balls ourselves and have placed 132 so far," Peter says. "The dome shape with a hollow center gives fish hiding spots and a hard substrate for invertebrates to attach to, and are maintained pretty well in a storm situation."The state also works with the numerous oil drilling companies in the Gulf under the "Rigs to Reef" program. Eighty-eight offshore structures have been transformed into artificial reefs so far."When the rigs quit producing, they are required to be taken ashore and it's an expensive process," Peter says. "But when they reef those structures it saves them a lot of money, and we get 50 percent of what they would save by not taking it to shore."
gbarr@bizjournals.com , 713-960-5932
Sunday, June 17, 2007
Catzilla, and Other Problems
Tuesday night, my cats looked like this picture. Always they were loving and together.
Wednesday. Georgia Brown had diarrhea which I discovered when getting ready to go to work. My friend Joe drove in from Clear Lake, got Georgia and put her in the travel crate, got her way out Memorial to the Memorial Cat Hospital. Because I was working, I left her in there over night.
I decided to stay home yesterday from work as I was tired (those 12 hour days will kill ya), and went to get Georgia. I brought her home, with medicine, only to discover something I had never run across before. Cats mainly recognize each other by smell, so now Georgia smells different from being in the vet, and Savannah no longer recognizes her. Georgia and I cannot believe that this former loving pet has turned into Catzilla. (Seems I used to go with people like this.)
She hisses, she spits, she has done everything but actively start a fight. I have called Dusty, the Cat Woman of Spring Branch, and June Z, the Cat Woman of Clear Lake, and the Cat Vet to see how to handle this.
I got cloths and rubbed it over both cats and then rubbed it on the other one. I have a large cat cage and one sleeps in there at night so they are not fighting and waking me up, and I can control what they are doing. I have really promised myself that if one of them has to go to the vet again over night, I am paying the $15 for the other one to go as well.
Damn, I had no idea what a mess this could be.
Then our friend, Paula S, from Spring, was driving her VW in the Heights and the streets flooded. The streets very rarely flood in the Heights. I even got in my car and try to reach her and had to turn back until later. I finally saw her as AAA was hauling her and the VW away. She is safe, shocked at how the Heights now floods (it’s called the Heights as it’s the highest part of town, 61 feet above the downtown area), and home. As she said, it could be worse.
Day 3 – yesterday was a fiasco, with Savannah making terrible noises. I did make her sleep in the cage at night so she is much happier when she gets out. Today she is walking around in the open, coming up to me if Georgia is not around, and being nicer – but if Georgia comes in the room, she turns into Catzilla again. Her ears get so flat on her head, she looks like she is wearing a barrette.
Day 4 – everybody is sleeping in separate places. This is a good sign. I just saw a segment of “Bridezilla” with some gay man pitching a fit over things he thinks are wrong at his reception and wedding. This makes Catzilla not look so vicious. At this point, I would not want to fool with either the guy or the cat because the behavior is ludicrous. At least the cat has a right – she is one step from the jungle. I wonder what the guy blames his behavior on, except his mother who did not tell him no, ever. He threw himself in the shower, sobbing, and ended up in a fetal position so everybody could have to come in and make sure he was not drowning. Don’t even bother asking me what I would have done. That queen would be buried, not married if I had anything to do with it.
I guess eventually, Savannah will decide she is not still pissed at this whole situation, the vet smell will have left Georgia (I did damp wipe her off), and we will be sort of back where we were. If I were not working, I could deal with this myself. Oh, well….
Here’s a youtube.com short video of cats talking. Mine sounds like the cat saying, “Oh, Long John.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONmhQJy1ViA
And we’re having the Monsoon Season on top of all of this.
Some days it just pays to stay home and read murder mysteries.
Dr. K
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
There is Southern, and there is Louisiana....
I grew up on Caddo Lake in Shreveport. We did not have much money so we rented somebody's fishing cabin. I was not very fond of the cabin because there were lizards on the screens, and frogs on the ground, and probably a few water moccasins lurking around. Mother loved being there. She went out every morning after we got on the school bus, and she put a fishing line in the water. She did her housework and then went out and pulled in her line, which usually had a fish on it. There was an old boat close to our pier so she got in that also and paddled around. We ate a lot of red beans and rice, salad with the mayonnaise already in it when served, hush puppies, sweet tea, and catfish.
We had to move to Houston when I was about 15, because Daddy got transferred with Gulf Oil. I hated coming to Houston. I missed all the pine trees, the lake, the moss in the trees, even the lizards and frogs that I finally got used to. If we were tall enough to put our hand with money in it over the bar top in Shreveport, we could get alcohol. We could play cajun music and go to the Louisiana Hayride and see Elvis, and Johnny Cash, and whoever else was too outrageous for the Grand Old Opry. What I like most of all were Race Records or the black artists like Little Richard (are we both still alive?), Fats Domino, Sarah Vaughn, Dinah Washington, the Drifters. Daddy and I even went to the old Auditorium there to hear Ray Charles when he was starting out, and we were relegated to the White Section. Served us right, I thought. Daddy also took me to the black churches where we parked outside and listened to the music being piped out to the parking lot. There were also other white folks in their cars listening to the black gospel music. Mother loved Mahalia Jackson especially, as much as I love Shirley Caesar and Yolanda Adams now. I did not mind being a poor Episcopalian in Shreveport, because that had some cache to it, but I missed the beat and emotion of the black gospel music we heard in that parking lot.
Over time, I miss Louisiana like a member of my family that is off somewhere. When I cross the border between Texas and Louisiana going to Coushatta to gamble, I get a whiff of the pine trees, and start to see the water and the moss, and feel like I am home again. When Katrina came through and tore up that beautiful state, I felt like a knife was sticking out of my heart for weeks. I thought of all those outrageous times I spent in New Orleans at Miss Kitty's bar and other nefarious places, all in ruins now. We certainly can't go back and relive any of that now. It's all different, cleaner, scarier, has more crime, and is in ruins.
So, I guess I'll eat some crawfish at Mardi Gras Restaurant in Houston with Jessica Newman from Ponchatoula, Clara Sandel from Florien in mid-state , Marsha Mabry from Ruston, Kit Cutrone, the mad Italian Coonass from all over Louisiana, and the rest of you who know exactly what I mean when I say there just isn't any other place in the States like Our Home State.
When I have time, I think I'll go visit Madame LeVeaux's grave in New Orleans; she was the voodoo queen who ruled that area for some time. Or I'll drive to Avery Island and see the Tabasco Company again, and the wild life. I know once again that I am a displaced person with Golden Handicuffs whose head and money is in one place, and heart is in another. Story of my life.
Laissez Les Bon Temps Roulez!, y'all.
Sunday, May 13, 2007
The Blue Dog Story
I am from Shreveport, Louisiana, and ate often at the original Landry's (before King Fertitta got the restaurants away from the family). There were usually on the walls some rather odd art of people in the swamps, usually dressed in turn of the century clothes, sometimes an alligator, lots of moss, and unappealing to me. I never thought much about the art or the artist, but I knew I didn't want any of it.
I was at a garage sale in Houston some time later, and the seller had some reproductions of the Mardi Gras or Jazz Fest poster, featuring a weird looking blue dog, sometimes more than one, and it had an instant impact on me. I thought, "I have to have one of these blue dogs in my house." Then I found out that the paintings started at $5,000, and the signed prints started at $300. This was certainly out of my league. In my neighborhood, I could see into one house that had some framed prints on the walls and I was even thinking of how I could steal their prints. When I found out a K9 cop lived there, I gave up the idea.
Maria Resendez Hughes, my artist friend, and I went to New Orleans as part of her time-share deal, and stopped in Lafayette. We saw signs saying, "Blue Dog Gallery," so we stopped by. The signed prints were still pricey at $285, so we ate at that downtown famous cafe and went on to New Orleans. When we got there, there was another Blue Dog Gallery in the French Quarter. Everything was about double of what the Lafayette gallery had. So, on the way back, I got my Blue Dog print, had it framed in Houston, and it has been hanging in my house since then.
George Rodrigue is the artist. When he was divorcing wife #1, he gave her some prints and paintings as part of the deal. And cutie pie wife #2, blonde and young, is in the newer paintings and prints. Need I say more?
I thought about buying another print from his company and the signed prints start at $850. Think about this, the dog always looks exactly the same in each print, even if the print background is somewhat different. And people like me just fall all over themselves buying these things. Sometimes I wonder about myself. But ain't nobody going to get my Blue Dog.
I was at a garage sale in Houston some time later, and the seller had some reproductions of the Mardi Gras or Jazz Fest poster, featuring a weird looking blue dog, sometimes more than one, and it had an instant impact on me. I thought, "I have to have one of these blue dogs in my house." Then I found out that the paintings started at $5,000, and the signed prints started at $300. This was certainly out of my league. In my neighborhood, I could see into one house that had some framed prints on the walls and I was even thinking of how I could steal their prints. When I found out a K9 cop lived there, I gave up the idea.
Maria Resendez Hughes, my artist friend, and I went to New Orleans as part of her time-share deal, and stopped in Lafayette. We saw signs saying, "Blue Dog Gallery," so we stopped by. The signed prints were still pricey at $285, so we ate at that downtown famous cafe and went on to New Orleans. When we got there, there was another Blue Dog Gallery in the French Quarter. Everything was about double of what the Lafayette gallery had. So, on the way back, I got my Blue Dog print, had it framed in Houston, and it has been hanging in my house since then.
George Rodrigue is the artist. When he was divorcing wife #1, he gave her some prints and paintings as part of the deal. And cutie pie wife #2, blonde and young, is in the newer paintings and prints. Need I say more?
I thought about buying another print from his company and the signed prints start at $850. Think about this, the dog always looks exactly the same in each print, even if the print background is somewhat different. And people like me just fall all over themselves buying these things. Sometimes I wonder about myself. But ain't nobody going to get my Blue Dog.
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