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artistjojo1228 · 5 years

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Rock and Roll Storytime #9: The Decline and Early Death of Brian Jones (including details I’ve found through personal research)

It was a cool spring morning when, while I was goofing off in art class, I got the bright idea to try writing about the 27 Club for one of those YouTube documentaries. The plan was simple: I was going to talk about Robert Johnson, Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Mia Zapata, Kurt Cobain, Kristen Pfaff, Amy Winehouse, and Anton Yelchin, seven because of being the “Tragic Seven” and the other three because I found their stories interesting (I actually first heard of the club not long after Anton’s death).

And then, in about as much time as it took for me to come up with that idea, I went from being obsessed with Kurt Cobain to being obsessed with Brian Jones. Most likely, in my opinion, because of the mysterious circumstances surrounding his early death. I guess, in a way, all it took was me hearing that there were conspiracies saying he’d been murdered to convince me to look into his story. After all, very early on in my Nirvana obsession, I went through a regretful phase where I believed Kurt had been murdered. I didn’t want to make a similar assumption again.

What I’m trying to say, is that this will be about Brian’s ousting from the band he created, his death on the night of July 2, 1969, and the steps I took to figure out what the hell happened.

By mid-May, I’d already come up with my first theory: that Brian had an asthma attack and drowned as the result of that. Around this time, I learned that Brian: a, had a sister, Pamela, who’d died at the age of two from leukemia (he was just three), and b, within the next year, he suffered a severe bout of croup that left him with lifelong asthma. While I was researching in the usual way I do, I’d also heard that chlorine can trigger asthma attacks or allergic reactions, especially when there is organic material in the pool (e.g. sweat). However, it wasn’t until September that I stumbled upon Brian’s autopsy report, so until that point, I’d had little to no idea that the coroner ruled out an asthma attack. Even then, I’d already been hearing my fair share of complaints that the autopsy report was perfunctory, so I’d just made the assumption that the coroner had somehow missed that if it had happened that way.

I don’t know why my early perspective started changing. I just know that the one constant was that I refused to believe that Brian was murdered (sitting through Stoned on May 31, 2019, certainly didn’t help matters).

Throughout, I began to learn of Brian’s life story, and how he eventually found himself kicked out of the very band he brought to life.

In short, Brian used to play in jazz clubs, and it was on April 7, 1962, that Mick Jagger and Keith Richards saw the young blonde calling himself “Elmo Lewis” play slide guitar on stage for the first time (one of the first Britons to master it, through no small amount of effort). In May 1962, Brian placed an ad for musicians in a local newspaper, and was shortly thereafter joined by Ian Stewart, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Dick Taylor, and Tony Chapman. In December 1962, Taylor was replaced by Bill Wyman, and in January 1963, Charlie Watts replaced Tony Chapman. There’s also how the band got their name, but I’d prefer to save that for another storytime.

What I should probably talk about instead, is where the first cracks started to form in this partnership.

See, when the Rolling Stones were on tour in October 1963, it was revealed that Brian had an arrangement with the financial advisor, Eric Easton, which basically stated that Brian, as leader of the group, would receive five pounds more than everyone else (this equates to $137.30 today). Everyone else, who was under the impression that they were all earning the same amount of money from each gig, was kind of pissed about it, and maybe rightfully so. However, I don’t see why this should be enough for Mick and Keith to uphold a fifty-six-year-long grudge that includes what is essentially damnatio memoriae, but I guess that’s their business. But keep in mind, Bill Wyman has since stated that, at that time, they were earning 193 pounds per week at this point (roughly $1,963.75 in today’s money). That’s only seven percent of the band’s total income at that point. It still seems like a stupid reason to me for Mick and Keith to still be getting on Brian’s case for something like that fifty-six years later (and before anyone says anything, yes, I know there’s more to it than that, but it’s stupid that it all started with five pounds).

Going back to my personal search for answers for a moment or two, it was now June 2019, and I was also starting to look into the murder theory, if only for posterity. I remember vividly being on a trip to France and accidentally convincing one of the girls on the trip that Brian had been murdered when I was telling her about him.

Erm... whoops.

Even so, in that one brief moment, I allowed myself to entertain that possibility. After all, most of the sources I was reading at that point were all saying that Brian’s death had probably been manslaughter, if not murder, and what was definitely consistent was that the witness reports weren’t consistent, and it just seemed easier to believe that. After all, Brian’s death was suspicious enough, so why not?

Easier...

It only took a day or two for me to remind myself why I had refused to believe it for this long: because of my regrets in believing Kurt had been murdered, and because I no longer wanted to take the easy route.

If I was going to say Brian was murdered, without a shred of doubt, I had to do more research.

And now for part two of Brian’s Jones’ slow decline: his relationship with Anita Pallenberg and the subsequent fallout from it. Now, Brian and Anita met on September 14, 1965 (my grandmother’s seventh birthday) after a Rolling Stones concert in Munich. The two apparently found an instant connection, thanks to Brian’s ability to speak German (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5N-O8_eB34). However, the relationship afterwards was very much mutually abusive. Keith said in his autobiography that he would sometimes see Brian with a black eye, and in September 1966, Brian broke his wrist. The “official” story was that Brian broke his wrist in a climbing accident, but other stories suggested that he instead broke his hand during an argument with her when he hit his hand against a metal window frame (though in one more salacious telling I heard, he broke his hand on her face, which doesn’t sound entirely possible to me).

Meanwhile, he did write and perform the soundtrack for her movie, Mord Und Totschlag (A Degree of Murder), which gives us a rare glimpse into Brian’s extraordinary musical talent and genius. That was probably the only good thing that came out of all this.

youtube

Then of course, in 1967, Keith’s home, Redlands, was busted, and the Glimmer Twins were charged with various drug offenses. Their lawyers recommended they should get out of the country for a while, so Mick, Keith, Brian, and Anita traveled down to Morocco for a little while. However, in Toulouse, France, Brian became ill with pneumonia, and spent the next few days in the hospital.

Meanwhile, as Brian was celebrating his 25th birthday in the hospital, Anita and Keith went on ahead of him, and they began seeing each other behind Brian’s back. When Brian was finally able to join the group, he surely noticed the newfound chemistry between Keith and Anita, especially considering Keith wasn’t very confident around the ladies at this point in time. He knew he was losing Anita, and apparently, he welcomed the confrontation. In mid-March, 1967, he paid for the services of two “Berber whores,” and when Anita returned to the hotel room, he told her to join them in a foursome. Stories vary as to what happened next, what is typically a constant in this story is that she refused. According to Keith, Brian started throwing food at her (apparently, in a fight sometime around then, Anita had broken two of Brian’s ribs and one of his fingers), and she fled out of fear and humiliation. Bill, in his book Stone Alone, alleged that Brian beat her savagely, to the point where she was in fear of her own life. The abysmal movie Stoned just claimed he sexually assaulted her (which, yeah, I don’t believe happened). Whatever happened that night (lord knows, Brian can’t speak for himself), Anita fled to Keith’s room, where he convinced her to leave with him, basically giving her the “You deserve better” speech and saying that Brian might try to kill her if she stayed with him (which also doesn’t seem likely to me, even being fully aware of Brian’s violent streak).

In either case, the next day, Mick, Keith, and Anita all left Morocco, leaving Brian stranded there for the next two days. Several years after his death, his own father would claim that Anita was the one who broke Brian’s heart and sent him into a fatal downward spiral, but in Paul Trynka’s book, those who knew Brian like Linda Lawrence (mother of Brian’s fourth child) and Stanislaus “Stash” Klossowski (friend of the Stones’) were of the opinion that it had rather been Mick and Keith’s betrayal that had sent Brian into that deadly spiral.

Personally, I’d say it’s a toss-up

In either case, Brian’s drug and alcohol abuse worsened.

Meanwhile, some fifty-two years later, it was July 2019. The fiftieth anniversary of Brian’s death had come and gone, and as my first (emotionally abusive) relationship was reaching a long-overdue close, I decided to get Stone Alone in the mail. Naturally, I had a few reasons for being a bit skeptical, not the least of which included the fact that Bill had dated a thirteen-year-old when he was forty-seven (EW), but still, I had to know what he said about Brian, so I decided to get it anyway. As I was flipping through the pages once it’d arrived, I found the account of Brian’s second child, a daughter whom Bill called “Carol.”

I’d probably heard about how she’d been diagnosed with temporal lobe epilepsy once or twice in the past, but for some reason, I’d refused to consider it. Reading about it this night, something clicked. Thanks to the way Bill explained, it, it seemed plausible enough that, somehow, Brian had never been diagnosed with epilepsy. After all, it can be hereditary, and mental health wasn’t understood very well back then.

That brings me to major theory #2: Brian had a seizure in the pool the night he drowned, and given that he was alone when he died, this seemed the most likely explanation.

After all, Brian had punctate hemorrhages in his brain when he drowned. It made sense to me, as Brian must’ve been thrashing around quite a bit in his last few moments alive (punctate hemorrhages are typically found in shaken baby syndrome)

It seemed to me at that time that I finally had an explanation for what happened to Brian Jones, but naturally, I wasn’t done with the search yet.

Naturally, with everything I read, the search for answers continued on, even though I thought I’d had it all figured out.

I was trying to write about it for a post I made on Amino, and as I was trying to provide some facts, I remembered that I’d found Brian’s toxicology report not long before then. Looking at it now, I observed the fact that the coroner said that the 1720 micro gms of an amphetamine-like substance found in Brian’s body was likely because of prescription Mandrax.

Mandrax was the brand name for quaaludes.

This brings me into major reason #3 for Brian’s decline: his own drug arrests and convictions. I explained this more in another post (https://artistjojo1228.tumblr.com/post/188166689760/rock-and-roll-storytime-6-the-rolling-stones), but I’ll give the skivvy anyway. On May 10, 1967, just as Mick and Keith were being formally charged with drug possession, Brian’s home was raided by police. Although he’d cleaned the place up, police still managed to find a bit of cannabis, and Brian and Stash were arrested. On October 30, 1967, Brian was convicted of cannabis possession and allowing his home to be used for the smoking of cannabis, and was sentenced to a grand total of 12 months in prison and a fine. Apparently, during his night at Wormwood Scrubs, the guards taunted Brian, threatening to cut off his long, blonde locks, which left him quite shaken. He appealed his case, and on December 12, Brian’s sentence was reduced to three years’ probation.

However, not long after, on May 21, 1968, Brian’s home was raided again, and once more, police found drugs, even though some sources state that Brian was so paranoid about drugs by now, that he wouldn’t even allow friends over if they had so much as prescription pills on them. Brian was found guilty for the second time, but the judge took pity on him, and only fined him, also giving him a stern warning to not end up in court again.

Once again, in the year 2019, it was September now. I was just starting college, and trying to survive my first semester (not easy when you’re a chronic procrastinator), and one night, while I was browsing the internet, I found Brian’s autopsy report.

Morbid fact about me, this was far from my first time reading through death certificates and autopsy reports of celebrities. Also, I’d developed a sort of obsession with medicine after Anton Yelchin’s death (to the point where I was considering being a nurse for a while), so I was familiar with the medical jargon used by now.

So, here we are, major theory #3 and the most likely scenario in this case: Brian, trying to get clean, had relapsed on the sleeping pills he’d been prescribed, and had become incapacitated at some point during the night.

This wasn’t the catalyst for me believing this, but it most certainly reinforced my theories.

As I stated earlier, quaaludes were once sold under the brand name Mandrax, and had been prescribed for such things as insomnia and anxiety, both of which Brian likely would’ve had after facing the threat of prison twice. This was also before anyone realized just how addictive quaaludes can be, so there is no doubt that Brian probably relapsed, and took one or several too many sleeping pills that night.

And now, reason #4 for Brian’s firing from the Stones: his increasingly lacking contributions to their music.

As time passed, Brian stopped showing up to recording sessions, and when he did show up, he was usually intoxicated to the point where he was unable to contribute. In an interview years later, Mick said that one of Brian’s last major contributions to the Stones’ music was the slide guitar on “No Expectations” from Beggars’ Banquet. It got to the point where, on Let It Bleed, Brian only played on two songs: congas on “Midnight Rambler” and autoharp on “You’ve Got the Silver”.

On neither of those songs does he contain the enormous presence he once had over the Stones’ music.

I can’t really say why Brian stopped contributing.

What I can say is what the final nail in the coffin was: Brian’s inability to get a work visa in the United States.

See, by the summer of 1969, the Stones were planning on going on tour again, but as time passed, it became increasingly obvious that Brian would be unlikely to get a work visa in the United States due to his past drug convictions.

Even then, Brian just hadn’t been in the studio long enough or sober enough to learn any of the new songs.

At the suggestion of Ian Stewart (himself demoted unfairly from the Rolling Stones by Andrew Oldham in 1963), Mick and Keith decided they needed a new guitarist (Bill and Charlie had no part in the decision itself). By May 31, 1969, 20-year-old Mick Taylor, formerly of John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, was starting to record with the band. That just left it up to Mick and Keith to resolve the issue with Brian. On June 8, they went over to Brian’s home at Cotchford Farm in Hartfield, Sussex, and told him that he was being fired, bringing Charlie along in case a fight broke out.

According to some sources, Brian had been expecting this would happen, and agreed to leave the band in either a temporary or permanent split. Mick and Keith left the press statement up to Brian, and possibly to save face, he made it appear as if he’d left the band on his own terms.

I shared the statement in my post about the Altamont fiasco (https://artistjojo1228.tumblr.com/post/188181237510/rock-and-roll-storytime-8-motherfing-altamont), but I’ll write it out again for those of you who don’t want to go post-hunting: “I no longer see eye to eye with the others over the discs we are cutting. We no longer communicate musically. The Stones’ music is not to my taste any more. The work of Mick and Keith has progressed at a tangent, at least to my way of thinking. I have a desire to play my own brand of music rather than that of others, no matter how much I appreciate their musical concepts. We had a friendly meeting and agreed that an amicable termination, temporary or permanent, was the only answer. The only solution was to go our separate ways, but we shall still remain friends. I love those fellows.”

At the same time, Mick and Keith also released a press statement on the matter, also saying that Brian had left the band, not that he was fired.

There are so many questions in my mind surrounding what Brian was doing in the last month of his life. Would he really have started another band, or was he, according some who saw him at that time, musically spent? Did Mick and Keith really agree to give Brian a sort of retirement pension, or was that just to tide him over? (Sadly I wouldn’t put it past them). Was he taking a break from music or was he going into an early retirement?

And most important to me, was he really trying to kick the drugs, like so many have said?

So many questions that we’ll never have a proper answer for.

The only thing that is certain, is that at around midnight on July 3, 1969, Brian Jones was found motionless at the bottom of his swimming pool.

I guess I’d better back up a bit, and explain the chain of events leading up to that moment.

Wednesday, July 2, 1969, featured hot, humid air full of pollen, which affected Brian severely, given his asthma. Throughout the day, he was with Anna Wohlin, his Swedish girlfriend, Janet Lawson, a nurse, and Frank Thorogood, a builder who’d been doing work on Brian’s property. It is worth noting that there are many discrepancies between the witness accounts of what happened, up to and including whether or not the parties involved had been drinking (and if so, how much), whether or not the parties involved watched TV, and even who found Brian, lifeless in the pool, and who pulled him out. The most commonly agreed upon version of events was that Brian and Frank decided to go swimming. Anna was reluctant, but was somehow persuaded. Janet, meanwhile, decided to stay out of the pool. After a while, Anna left Brian and Frank there. When Janet last saw Brian, he asked her to grab one of his inhalers, as he was apparently having difficulty breathing. At some point, Frank also left the pool. When Janet returned some time later, she found him at the bottom of the pool, facedown and motionless. Apparently, she ran off to get help (despite being a registered nurse), and eventually, Anna, Frank, and Janet (or at least two of them) managed to pull Brian out of the pool and began resuscitative efforts. Anna later claimed that she felt Brian’s hand briefly grip hers, but to Janet and Frank, he was very clearly dead. Paramedics arrived soon after, and Brian was pronounced dead after midnight on July 3, 1969.

Based on the small amounts of drugs and alcohol found in Brian’s system at the time of his death, as well as the fact that his heart and liver had been enlarged by substance abuse, his death was ruled as misadventure.

Naturally, as it would seem whenever someone dies young, conspiracy theories also began to circulate not long after. To make this somewhat easier on myself, I’m just going to start listing some of the theories that have popped up in regards to Brian’s death (note: much of this will be taken from Brian Jones: The Making of the Rolling Stones).

The most popular of the conspiracy theories states that Brian (who was noted as having mistrusted Frank Thorogood) fired the builder at some point in the 48 hours preceding his death (though, if that were the case, why would he invite him back for a pool party?). After Janet ran off to get Brian’s inhaler, Frank, either in a purposeful act or a bout of horseplay gone wrong, drowned Brian. Not helping Frank’s case is that Tom Keylock alleged that he heard Frank confess to the murder on his deathbed (his daughter has since denied this). Frank’s daughter, Jan Bell, did also claim that her father witnessed an argument between Brian, Mick, and Keith over ownership of the name “Rolling Stones”, during which Keith pulled a knife on Brian (if this did happen, it was likely earlier in the year). Also not helping matters is that after Frank’s death in 1994, Janet and Anna also made their beliefs that Frank was responsible for Brian’s death known (though one of Anna’s friends has since stated that she didn’t start believing Brian had been murdered until later in life). In 2005, this version of events was turned into the movie Stoned, and for those of you who may not have seen my other posts on the subject, I found this movie quite abysmal (”So, I guess you could say this movie... DROWNED on arrival?”)

In 1983, the notion that Brian was murdered first became popularized with Nicholas Fitzgerald’s book Brian Jones: The Inside Story of the Original Rolling Stone. In it, Fitzgerald claimed that Brian had been intending on starting a band with the likes of John Lennon and Jimi Hendrix (those close to Jimi at the time have since dismissed this), and that he and another friend witnessed three men participating in Brian’s murder, and that he had been threatened by someone (likely Keylock) into silence. Most likely, these allegations were used to promote his book, because, you know, there was a real chance for a while that he could’ve been charged with being an accessory to murder after the fact.

A. E. Hotchner in his book Blown Away: The Rolling Stones and the Death of the Sixties claimed that another two witnesses had seen Brian murdered at a party. It is notable that this story claims that Linda Lawrence had been a witness, and that in the years since, one of the witnesses recanted his testimony as “nonsense.”

Another man, David Gibson, claimed that he had been fitting carpets at Cotchford Farm, and that on the day of the murder, Brian and Anna had been away for most of the day, and when they returned, Brian begged him not to leave. He alleged that Tom Keylock had Brian murdered, and that Princess Margaret had been at Cotchford Farm. Those who believe this will likely also believe that Gibson never came forward because of threats and murder attempts.

Laura Jackson’s book, Brian Jones, The Untold Life and Mysterious Death of a Rock Legend, also claimed that Brian had been murdered, and this time added the detail that Frank had drugged Brian with a mysterious substance that stumped even seasoned toxicologists, thereby allowing him to hold Brian’s head under the water with no visible signs of a struggle. I don’t know, if it weren’t for those last couple chapters, I’d probably have an easier time recommending this to Brian Jones fans, because I thought it was pretty enjoyable otherwise.

Geoffrey Giuliano’s book, Paint It Black, alleged that a random guy named “Joe” held Brian’s head underwater for shits and giggles. Last time I checked, that’s not really something people do for shits and giggles. Also, the book claimed that Frank had fled the scene shortly after Brian’s death, despite Frank being noted at the scene when police and paramedics arrived at the scene at 12:10 AM the morning of Brian’s death.

In 2009, Sam Cutler claimed that private detectives hired by Allen Klein found that Tom Keylock was responsible, citing his attempts to blame Frank, his theft of some of Brian’s belongings, and the fact that he apparently told Janet to conceal the fact that she was his girlfriend at the time. However, in 2013, he expressed doubts as to whether it existed. Seems safe for me to say that this was all a big hoax.

In general, several conspiracies center around Tom Keylock. The big problem with this though, is that Tom was in London at Olympic Studios on the night Brian died. Still, I think it is safe to say that he probably stole some of Brian’s belongings after he died, at the very least.

I guess it’s high time I explain one of the big reasons why I always stopped myself from going down that road of believing Brian was murdered (without proper evidence). If Brian was really murdered, and if people did, indeed, witness it, then why the hell didn’t anyone say anything before 1983? I know, I know, some of the theories outright say that the people involved were threatened into silence (Anna claims she was spirited back to Sweden soon after Brian’s death), but even so, I don’t think the people making such threats would’ve had enough sway or power to actually pull off this sort of conspiracy.

With that in mind, I believe that Brian had an overdose on sleeping pills the night he died, maybe suffering a seizure as well, either from his possible epilepsy and/or as a side-effect of taking Mandrax. Of course, unless Brian is exhumed and a second toxicology report is drawn up that can maybe confirm what was in his system on that fateful night (which is unlikely, due to both the length of time and lack of interest in the case beyond occasional murder theories), there is no way for me to confirm this theory for sure. Besides, either way, there is no way to prove whether he had epilepsy or not. Whilst it is what I believe happened, and does line up with the original verdict of misadventure, I have to keep in mind at the end of the day that this is just me speculating.

Even so, the story of Brian Jones is one that is fraught with betrayal, hubris, and a path filled with perfectly preventable errors. It’s haunting to think what might have happened if Mick and Keith had been nicer to Brian (or at the very least spoke a bit more praise about him after his death rather than just shit-talk him all the time), or if the effects of drugs had been better understood, or if Brian hadn’t stopped contributing to the Stones’ music, or if someone had been with Brian in the pool when he became incapacitated.

I’ll be honest, I think the reason I keep coming back to Brian’s story is because of how conflicting his life as a whole was. I’ve seen his life inspire equal parts idolization and vilification, even within myself.

Because even if Mick and Keith would rather forget, it is my honest belief that more people will continue to find out about Brian, and my hope that they actually take the time to learn about him.

Sources/Further Readings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tFfzTzOwQ8&t=4s https://asthma.net/living/swimming-pools-triggers/ Stone Alone by Bill Wyman Life by Keith Richards Brian Jones: The Making of the Rolling Stones by Paul Trynka Up and Down With the Rolling Stones by Tony Sanchez https://clearcomfort.com/why-asthma-allergy-sufferers-should-avoid-chlorine-pools/ http://timeisonourside.com/chron1967.html http://timeisonourside.com/chron1969.html Brian Jones, The Untold Life and Mysterious Death of a Rock Legend by Laura Jackson https://people.com/music/anita-pallenberg-rolling-stones-keith-richards-brian-jones-love-triangle/ https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-lists/the-27-club-a-brief-history-17853/ https://ultimateclassicrock.com/brian-jones-found-dead/ https://ultimateclassicrock.com/brian-jones-murdered/ https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/just-why-was-brian-jones-so-important-to-the-rolling-stones/ https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/obituary-brian-jones-189861/ https://www.denofgeek.com/us/culture/music/281978/the-rolling-stones-and-the-mystery-of-brian-jones-death https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/brian-jones-sympathy-for-the-devil-182761/ https://www.mojo4music.com/articles/15989/brian-jones-it-was-murder http://davidcomfort.org/brian-jones/

#brian jones #the rolling stones #mick jagger #keith richards #charlie watts #bill wyman #ian stewart #this got long #but i felt like getting this all out of my system

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auskultu · 7 years

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The Case of a Runaway Flower Child

J. Anthony Lukas, The New York Times, 19 October 1967

Last Friday Pamela Rae Koeppel painted a blue flower on her right cheek. The next day the 14-year-old schoolgirl left home. Last night she was found in a hotel on the edge of Greenwich Village.

After two policemen had staked out her room there, Pamela called her parents and said, “You found my hideout. You’ll get my friend in trouble. I’m coming right home.”

Pamela's four-day sojourn in and around Greenwich Village illustrates the growing problem created by thousands of young runaways, particularly girls, who are flooding the Village area to live as hippies.

Yesterday, several hours before she was found, Pamela’s father, Adolph, called The New York Times in hopes that publicity would not only help find her, but also warn other parents of the difficulties in finding runaway girls.

Interviewed as he paced the white marble corridors of Federal Court in Brooklyn, where he had just finished summing up in a complicated condemnation case, he said: “I’ve got a twitch in my eye, a belt in my stomach, a jury out with my case and a daughter somewhere over there in that jungle.”

Mr. Koeppel and his wife, Rhoda, who live in a 560,000 ranch house in Lake Success, a Long Island suburban community, had reason to believe that Pamela was in Greenwich Village living as a “flower child."

"I asked her about that flower on her cheek when she got into the car for me to drive her to school Friday,” said Mr, Koeppel, who practices law in Mineola, “She said, ‘Oh, daddy, I’m a flower child.’ Where else do these flower children go around here but Greenwich Village?”

Mr. Koeppel also had discovered that his daughter was secretly seeing a youth known as “Chichi,” who lived on West 14th Street and frequented the Village. "I thought she might be with him,” he said yesterday, Four days after Pamela left home, the combined efforts of Mr. Koeppel, his family and friends, the Nassau County Juvenile Aid Bureau and the New York Police Department had failed to trace her.

“We heard from Pamela twice by telephone on Sunday, but nothing after that,” Mr. Koeppel said between nervous puffs on his fourth cigarette since lunch. “I had visions of her lying dead somewhere like that Linda what’s-her-name.”

Linda Fitzpatrick, an 18-year-old girl from Greenwich, Conn., was found murdered on a boiler-room floor in the East Village on Oct. 8. Dead beside her was her 21-year-old hippie friend, James L. (Groovy) Hutchinson.

Since Linda’s death, the Police Department’s Missing Persons Bureau and police stations in Greenwich Village have been deluged with calls from worried parents trying to trace their children.

The police said yesterday that for the first time in the city’s history runaway girls were outnumbering runaway boys, and officials say this trend is apparently accelerating.

Pamela Koeppel’s case may be representative from another point of view. Her parents say she was a "disturbed child” who had been seeing a psychiatrist once a week for almost a year.

Some social workers and psychologists who have studied the hippie movement believe that many hippies have emotional or psychological problems and use the hippie scene as camouflage.

Until a few months ago Mr. and Mrs. Koeppel thought they had Pamela’s problems well under control. Her. psychiatrist apparently thought so, too—she let Pamela take the summer off from her therapy sessions.

“As far as we could tell she went through the summer very well,” Mr. Koeppel said. "She found some new girl friends—I guess there must have been seven or eight in and out of the house during the summer on Long Island—swimming, drive-in movies, dates at the malt shop.’

But Mr. Koeppel said the family, which includes a “very happy and normal” 18-year-old daughter who is a college freshman in New York, began to notice a return of Pamela’s troubles as school approached this fall.

“There were too many highs, too many lows, and at times she was getting to be really low,” he recalls.

In mid-September she started seeing the psychiatrist again, and after a couple of visits, the psychiatrist recommended that she see Pamela twice a week instead of once.

“Naturally we were deeply concerned,” said Mrs. Koeppel, who was interviewed later. “We asked the psychiatrist whether there was any identifiable illness. She said no, but that Pamela was disturbed and needed increased attention. At one point the psychiatrist even suggested a brief hospitalization for a series of tests.”

Meanwhile Pamela was becoming more argumentative at home. "She began telling us that we were watching her too closely, that we weren’t giving her enough freedom.”

At the same time Pamela began showing interest in the hippies and the flower children. She started wearing what her father calls "hippie clothes” and expressed admiration for the “new scene.”

Only after her flight from! home did the family discover just how deep that admiration was. This week they picked up a pile of her compositions for an English class at Great Neck south Junior High School. One of them read in part:

“What is a flower child? A flower child is a young person belonging to a new generation which is very idealistic and thoughtful. They believe in love, beauty, peace, understanding, freedom, sharing and helping each other. Flower children are trying to change the world with these ideas.

“They love to express themselves by wearing rings, beads and flowers. Flowers are beautiful because they are part of nature. Flowers are lovely, beautiful, peaceful and don’t do anybody any harm but be beautiful. The flower child is the same way.”

C-Plus on Flower Essay She got a C-plus on the com position, with no comment from the teacher.

The family had several long discussions with Pamela about her attitude. "We tried to point out to her that the flower children and the hippies are not creative persons, not really doing anything useful,” Mrs. Koeppel said.

"Sometimes I felt we were getting through to her,” the mother said, “but I guess we never really did. As hard as we tried, I guess we never really knew Pamela.”

Several times in the last few weeks Pamela told her father she was going to run away.

“What would you do?” she would ask. He replied. “I’d send the police after you.” “Think they could find me?" she would say. "Certainly,” he answered. "Want to bet?” she would say with a little smile.

On Thursday night father and daughter held the last of their discussions.

The following morning Pamla painted the flower on her cheek and went to school. On Saturday morning, Mr. Koeppel wanted her to go shopping with her mother, but the girl said he planned to meet some friends in Great Neck.

“It was the same old double-talk she’d been giving us when he went to meet Chichi,” he said. “I don’t know why we fell for it. We probably should have put her under lock and key.”

Instead, he drove her into own in the family Cadillac they also own a Rambler). At 11 A.M., Pamela got out of the car.

Her long, lustrous brown hair rose a little in the breeze as she said good-by to her father and promised to call him at about 7 P.M., so he could pick her jp for dinner.

From then on her movements were unclear. The father later learned that she railed a friend on the South shore that night and asked whether she could stay at his place overnight. He was not enthusiastic, but about 2 A.M. she apparently arrived by train to the South Shore town, got somebody to drive her to the friend’s house and demanded a bed. She got one.

At precisely the same time—with her phone call now, seven hours overdue—her father called the Great Neck police and formally reported her missing.

The Juvenile Aid Bureau of the Nassau County police said yesterday it got the notification four hours later, at 6 A.M., but apparently the full search did not begin until the following day.

Early Sunday morning, however, Mr. Koeppel called a former law partner who happened to live in Greenwich Village and together with two other friends, they scoured the Village and the East Village by car and on foot, covering Tompkins Square and Avenues A and B.

At 11:30 A.M. Mr. Koeppel called home and discovered that Pamela had called a half hour before. She told Mrs. Koeppel “the mother is making me make this call,” apparently a reference to the mother in whose home she had spent the night. After a 10-minute conversation—in which she said only that she was all right and 'was not coming home—Pamela hung up.

The call was traced to Oceanside, a town on Long Island’s South Shore.

‘Pulled the Troops Out’ “We immediately pulled our troops out of the Village, and all Sunday afternoon we searched the South Shore, again with no success,” Mr. Koeppel recalled. But he did not know then just how close he had come.

For at 7:30 P.M., Pamela called home again and talked with her father for half an hour. She told him she had been in a restaurant in Long Beach, adjacent to Oceanside, that afternoon at 4 P.M. when she saw him enter. “She said she ducked into the ladies room and stayed there until I left,” he said. “I felt like a fool.”

The evening conversation, as the father described it yesterday afternoon, was “a kind of bargaining session” during which Pamela demanded that her parents agree to give her more freedom before she would return home and her father hinted at certain concessions but refused to commit himself.

At one point the father thought he was making some progress. “Look, honey,” he said. “Come home. I’m sure we can work all this out.” Pamela said she would think about it. She promised to call by midnight to let her father know if she was returning home that right or Monday. She never railed.

However, Mr. Koeppel had the phone call traced 10 Long Beach, so Jack Fitzgerald, a detective from the Juvenile Aid Bureau, and an associate spent Monday and Tuesday in the Long Beach area 'checking hotels.

But Detective Fitzgerald und nothing, and yesterday and his associate carried their search again to Greenwich Village.

Meanwhile Mr. Koeppel continued his search. On Tuesday afternoon he, his wife and a couple of friends drove to the Sixth Precinct police station, where they picked up several detectives for a tour of the West Village.

“The cops were so bored by the whole thing,” Mr. Koeppel said, “and when I got out to Washington Square, I realized why. There were more than a thousand people out there, all those crowds coming out of N.Y.U., and I realized we were facing a massive search.”

Later in the evening Mr. Koeppel and a friend made a more intensive two-hour search through the East Village on their own, checking such well-known hippie hangouts as The Cave, the Psychedelicatessen and the Something, on Avenue A, and the Dom on St. Mark’s Place.

“It was then I realized just how hopeless a search it was,” he recalled yesterday.

However, yesterday the Koeppel’s luck changed. In midafternoon. the mother found a scrap of paper with Chichi's name and a number on it. She alerted Detective Fitzgerald, who passed the information on to the Sixth Precinct.

The number was traced to the Alton Hotel at 64 Seventh Avenue, between 15th and 16th Streets. Detective John Stratford and Detective Sgt. Alfred J. LaPerch went to the hotel at 4 P.M. yesterday. They found that a Pamela Jones, who answered Pamela’s description, was registered there.

The detectives waited until 6 P.M., but Pamela did not show up. So they left, leaving word with the desk clerk that if she came in, he should call the Sixth Precinct. Shortly after they left, Pamela came in. Apparently convinced that her flight was now useless, she called her mother and said she would be coming home. Pamela took the Long Island Rail Road home alone, arriving t at the Koeppel residence shortly after 9 P.M.

Last night Mr. Koeppel said: “Naturally we're glad we’ve got our girl home. But it was really just blind luck that we found her. If she’d been really down in the heart of hippieland, it would have been goodbye.”

#hippies #counterculture #new york #runaways #teenagers #greenwich village #1967 #1960s #sixties #60s

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The Chase Files Daily Newscap 1/29/2019

Good MORNING #realdreamchasers! Here is The Chase Files Daily News Cap for Tuesday 29th January 2019. Remember you can read full articles for FREE via Barbados Today (BT) or Barbados Government Information Services (BGIS) OR by purchasing by purchasing a Daily Nation Newspaper (DN).

PUZZLING MOVE – Prime Minister Mia Mottley’s recent appointment of former Commissioner of Police Darwin Dottin as a crime consultant to the current Commissioner Tyrone Griffith has raised a red flag from ex-Attorney General Adriel Brathwaite. Last Friday Mottley told a press conference at Parliament Buildings that Dottin was being brought back to the Royal Barbados Police Force (RBPF) to lend “his skills” to the crime fight. While the Prime Minister did not elaborate, her Attorney General Dale Marshall later explained that Dottin, who was sent on administrative leave during the previous Democratic Labour Party administration’s tenure amid allegations of illegal wiretapping being carried out by the Force, would be advising Griffith on crime matters. Dottin had denied the wiretapping allegations. Two members of the Special Branch had given sworn affidavits to the Police Service Commission that they had carried out the wiretappings under instructions. Those officers have recently been transferred from the Special Branch. “I believe that this will be an opportunity, first to welcome the former commissioner back in the area of lending his skills in helping us deal with the issue. The current commissioner has welcomed him and has welcomed the advice of the former commissioner because he recognizes that many of these issues have presented themselves in Barbados society in the past,” Marshall said on Friday. However, former Attorney General Brathwaite is not buying that. “I find it difficult to support such an appointment. What does it say about the deputy and other Gazetted officers,” Brathwaite told Barbados TODAY this afternoon. He also saw the return of Dottin as having an adverse impact on the morale of the constabulary. “I can only see such an appointment undermining the confidence that the rank and file and the ordinary man in the street have in the [present] commissioner who in my opinion has been doing an excellent job in tackling crime in this country, [while] repairing a fractured police force which he inherited,” Brathwaite warned. This development comes on the heels of a frightening spike in gun violence which is responsible for five of the eight murders so far and a decision by the Prime Minister to relieve Home Affairs Minister Edmund Hinkson of those duties related to law and order and reassign them to AG Marshall. Meanwhile, the former Attorney General has hit back at Government accusations that the police force was starved of resources under his watch, resulting in the present crime situation. “It is not true. Yes, we had certain measures in place that all ministries were impacted. But over the last three years, if my memory serves me correctly, the [then] Minister of Finance made it quite clear, that when it comes to law and order that we would not be compromising this society by [being] forced to cut back within the ministries [the AG’s Office and Barbados Defence Force (BDF)],” he added. He recalled that the former Minister of Finance had told the commissioner during the time of the last Democratic Labour Party Estimates he would get what he requested. “The police were given the resources that they required. They didn’t get everything that they would have liked. No ministry gets everything that they would like. But it is untrue to say that they were starved of resources and that impacted on their ability to solve crime because they were solving crimes all along,” the ex-Attorney General told Barbados TODAY. Brathwaite also conceded that he would have liked to see more police officers on the streets and an increase in community policing. In further defending his stewardship as Minister in charge of the police, he said he had discussed with the commissioner removing officers from doing clerical duties to undertaking actual crime-fighting. “Certainly as Attorney General and certainly as an administration, we didn’t put our hands up in the air and said we could not do anything to arrest the issue of gun violence in this country. We identified what was required,” contended the former legal advisor to the DLP Government. He insisted that his administration did more training for officers during the tenure of the present commissioner than was done in the three years previous. Barbados TODAY reached out to former commissioner Dottin for comment, but he declined to speak at this time. Another former commissioner Grantley Watson said he was not in a position to comment as yet, while his predecessor Orville Durant said he was not touching the issue of Dottin’s appointment. “You are dragging me into the political thing and all of that . . . I don’t want that. I have had enough of that in my life,” declared the ex-top cop. Barbados TODAY also sought to hear from Sir Elliott Belgrave, who, as then Governor General, was called upon by the Police Service Commission (PSC) to sanction its recommendation that Dottin be sent on administrative leave. However, Sir Elliott refused to be drawn into any discussion on the Dottin issue, insisting that he was retired. When contacted, president of the Barbados Police Association (BPA) Mervin Grace made it clear that Dottin’s appointment was not an issue for its members. “He is there to consult to the commissioner of police on the matters in relation to the crime situation, not the other internal running of the force,” Grace said. This would mark the first occasion in modern Barbados’ history that a retired police commissioner has been brought back to serve as a consultant/advisor to a sitting commissioner of police and/or Government. (BT)

UPP WANTS ANSWERS ABOUT EX- COP’S ROLE – The United Progressive Party is demanding Government provides greater details on the consultative function to be performed by former Commissioner of Police Darwin Dottin. As a matter of fact, head of the UPP Lynette Eastmond says she is puzzled as to what unique services the retired lawman could bring to the table, suggesting that the move could be construed as questioning the competence of current Police Commissioner Tyrone Griffith. She also called on the Prime Minister to state how much, if any, was Dottin’s consultancy going to cost the taxpayers. “I don’t have any idea what former Police Commissioner Dottin’s role is meant to be. I don’t think that was outlined. I have had no reason to believe our current Commissioner of Police [Tyrone Griffith] isn’t up to the task,” said Eastmond During Mottley’s press conference on Friday, Attorney General Dale Marshall provided rationalization for leaning on the expertise of Dottin, noting that the current Commissioner of Police has welcomed the input. “I believe that this will be an opportunity for us to welcome former Commissioner back into the area of lending his skills to helping us to deal with this issue. The current Commissioner has welcomed him and has welcomed the advice of the former Commissioner because we recognize that many of these issues have presented themselves to the Barbadian society in the past,” he explained. Griffith also spoke at the media briefing on Friday but he did not address Dottin’s return Marshall further pointed out that “these kinds of spikes are not unknown to Barbados, but perhaps more importantly [the move to bring in Dottin] is a demonstration of the fact that every single Barbadian, former police officers, have an opportunity and a role to play in dealing with these issues.” However, this morning Eastmond revealed that she was far from satisfied with the Attorney General’s explanation. She pointed out that based on her knowledge as an officer of the court, the police are in desperate need of forensic resources and suggested that area should receive first priority. “The police force itself needs additional resources in terms of their crime detection, gathering of evidence and maintenance of evidence. I don’t know if the former Commissioner is going to bring any of those services. Maybe he is going to do research to see how we could improve the current force, but we need to know what his role is,” said Eastmond, who called on either the Prime Minister or Attorney General to spare the country the guessing game. Eastmond made it clear that she was not impressed with the rest of the Prime Minister’s plan to combat the worrying issue of gun violence. Describing it as a public relations exercise, Eastmond charged that Mottley’s remedy for the gun violence scourge, which has claimed five lives and injured 13 persons, was essentially a mop-up exercise rather than an actual fix. “We do not believe that the measures go far enough to get to the root of the issue, especially as it relates to guns. As a friend once told me, you don’t get a mop and bucket to fix a leak. So, to have additional soldiers to deal with a situation that currently exists does not stop the rot at the core. Having soldiers and police officers walk through communities is just optics, it is PR, we really want to get to the root of the problem,” said Eastmond, who was speaking at a press conference this morning held at the Courtyard Marriot Hotel. The UPP leader contended that the Barbados Labour Party (BLP) was in power for almost a year and therefore had no excuse for coming with a strategy that only scratched the surface of the issue. “We should have received something that was better structured. Any structure that is put in place to deal with this issue has to take into account, not just police officers whose mandate it is to deal with crime when it occurs, but it must also involve personnel who deal with prevention of crime and community issues and early intervention,” she stressed. (BT)

DRAWDOWN – Government has received another US$49 million from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as representatives from the finance institution prepare to visit Barbados next month to ensure the country is meeting its agreed targets. But having received US$98 million of its US$290 million IMF loan, in addition to US$175 million from the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) and Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the authorities stressed Barbados’ “underlying international reserves position . . . remains fragile”. Despite this concern, which partly relates to the unresolved foreign commercial debts issue, the Mia Mottley administration said “the roll-out of the various fiscal reforms contemplated under the Barbados Economic Reform and Transformation (BERT) plan and the Extended Fund Facility (EFF) with the IMF have been progressing as planned”. That’s what Government outlined in its latest “creditors update” dated January 23, 2019, released ahead of tomorrow’s 2018 economic review and 2019 outlook by the Central Bank. It came as the IMF’s Western Hemisphere Department predicted Barbados’ economy would decline by 0.5 per cent this year, with consumer prices forecast to increase by 4.2 per cent. (DN)

PM AND CARICOM MEET WITH UN GENERAL SECRETARY – Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley is part of the CARICOM delegation which is meeting today with Secretary General of the United Nations (UN), António Guterres, to discuss the political crisis in Venezuela, and request assistance in resolving the issue. Ms. Mottley has been invited to participate in the meeting by Chairman of the Conference of Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), Dr. Timothy Harris, who is also Prime Minister of St. Kitts and Nevis. Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, Dr. Keith Rowley, and CARICOM Secretary-General, Ambassador Irwin LaRocque, are also part of the discussions. Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade, Senator Dr. Jerome Walcott, and Chair of the CARICOM Caucus at the UN, Ambassador Elizabeth Thompson, are also part of the delegation. Several Heads of Government of CARICOM and Foreign Ministers met in a special emergency session last Thursday to discuss the current situation in Venezuela. They agreed that the long-standing political crisis, which has been exacerbated by recent events, could only be resolved peacefully through meaningful dialogue and diplomacy. In this regard, the Heads of Government offered their good offices to facilitate dialogue among all parties to resolve the deepening crisis. The Heads of Government have already called on external forces to refrain from doing anything to destabilize the situation in Venezuela, and called on all actors, internal and external, to avoid actions which would escalate an already explosive situation to the detriment of Venezuelans. (BGIS)

GOVT TO TACKLE CLIMATE CONCERNS – Locating utilities underground has been identified by Government among a list of priorities requiring urgent attention to address climate change and protect communities and the economy from natural disasters. The point was raised by Minister in the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Investment Marsha Caddle, at a round table with senior Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) executives yesterday to identify priority areas on climate change and resilience. “Compared to larger countries, the Caribbean is now seven times more likely to be hit by a natural disaster, with the average estimated damage six times higher,” Caddle said. In addition to highlighting the target of a fossil fuel-free economy by 2030, Caddle noted the importance of supporting the early resumption of essential services, “such as through undergrounding of cables or enabling water to be delivered without the grid”. Upgrading of the island’s network of climate resilient shelters and identifying new approaches for financing and insurance were among matters the minister identified needed urgent action. (DN)

BWA DOING THE DIRTY WORK – The ongoing work on sewage lines running to and from the Graeme Hall sewage treatment plant truly give weight to the saying: “It’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it”. From early Saturday morning to yesterday evening, Barbados Water Authority (BWA) workers were on the job, in shifts, repairing a 24-inch gravity line which handles sewage going to the plant, work the men assured would be completed yesterday. Alongside United States-based subcontractors, the workers were replacing the lining of the sewage line from the entrance to the Graeme Hall Nature Sanctuary in Worthing, Christ Church, to near the old Scotia bank, and flushing the system. The men said there was a lot of criticism being levelled at them but the public failed to understand how difficult the job was. “We work in tight spaces surrounded with faeces. We’ve come across condoms, pampers, towels and even US money. People just don’t know the things that you can find down here. “We work through the elements and what people don’t know is [that] there are a lot of springs which feed into the sewage line as well as seawater, so we sometimes end up in waist-high water,” said supervisor of joining, Sheridan Grosvenor. The senior BWA worker said the job was not for the faint-hearted and assured the men were not slacking. “We do this because we love our jobs. It’s a challenge but my team likes challenges,” he said. As for the next step, the men said it was best to speak to consultant Dr John Mwansa, who once was the BWA general manager. However, efforts to reach Mwansa were futile. (DN)

BWA STILL WORKING ON PUMPS AT APPLEWHAITES – Barbados Water Authority (BWA) crews continue emergency repair work tonight, to replace pumps affected by a power outage at its Applewhaites Pumping Station. Thus far, one pump has successfully been replaced and is working once again. Work is currently underway on the second. Once both of these pumps are back in operation, the BWA will regain fifty per cent of the production from this facility. This will allow more water to be put back into the distribution network which will in turn reduce the number of districts experiencing water outages or low pressure. While residents in some districts may continue to be affected overnight, the BWA remains committed to assisting the remaining affected areas via water tanker while the emergency repair work continues. The Barbados Water Authority sincerely apologises for the inconvenience these outages have caused its valued customers. (DN)

DANGER GONE – The controversial structure which once served as the entrance to the Villages in Coverley, Christ Church, is gone. And while the African Heritage Foundation (AHF), which had lobbied for its removal is pleased it is no longer there, they now want the charges against a mother who was hauled before the courts after her son was killed when her vehicle collided with the structure, dropped. President of the AHF Paul Simba Rock told Barbados TODAY he was glad motorists traversing the Adams section of the ABC Highway no longer had to worry about the dangers of the protrusion, however, he said the organization was still very peeved that Felisha Osula Holder continued to face a charge of causing death by dangerous driving, following the death of her son on June 26, 2015. Almost three years after the accident in which 11-year-old Abijah Holder Phillips lost his life, Felisha Osula Holder was charged with the offence. He said the organization had sent a petition to the office of the Director of Public Prosecution calling for the matter which has now been moved to the High Court to be dismissed. “I am glad it has been removed and that a safer structure has been built so that it is no more a danger to others. But I don’t want people to forget that a young man’s life was lost,” Rock said. “We are still very peeved and bewildered that the only person brought into account for the accident is the mother and not the developer.” Rock said what was especially worrying was that then Opposition Leader Mia Mottley had joined in the call for action to be taken against developer Mark Maloney but since her election as Prime Minister he had not heard her voice on the matter. “Before this accident occurred, based on what the Town and Country Planning Department had said, that structure was illegal and it remained there and a young man lost his life. A mother is now paying for something she should not be,” Rock said. “This is unfair and since winning the election Mark Maloney has not been called into account for what happened.” Meanwhile, president of the Barbados Road Safety Association (BRSA) Charmaine Roland-Bowen is over the moon that Maloney has finally come good on his promise to remove the contentious protrusion. While that area has now been completely blocked off, a roundabout has been constructed to ensure a safe exit and entrance to persons entering the residential area, as well as those traversing that stretch of the highway. In an interview with Barbados TODAY, Bowen said she was happy to see alternative arrangements had been made. “That posed a serious threat as there were a number of collisions, including a death which would have happened there. By moving it, it increases the measure of safety for persons using that area of the road. The roundabout is a good move. We believe it is a lot safer and you’re at less risk because it is a safety measure which will allow persons to slow down and it is a good improvement for what has happened there,” Roland-Bowen said. She said the improvements were particularly timely, following the relocation of hundreds of students from the Ross University School of Medicine to Coverley, which meant there would be increased traffic in the area. However, Roland-Bowen said there were still some areas which needed to be upgraded for the safety of motorists. She pointed to stretch of road leading from the Henry Forde roundabout at Newton, Christ Church, that she said needed “some remedial work done”. The BRSA president also called for the government to replace a number of streetlights on the highway which were not functional and posed a serious threat to drivers. (BT)

‘VIOLENT ATTACKS DEEP-ROOTED’ - The National Organization of Women (NOW) is calling on authorities to take a closer look at the circumstances surrounding the bizarre string of violent events which last week claimed the lives of three women in less than 48 hours. In an interview with Barbados TODAY, Marsha Hinds, the outspoken public relations officer of the National Organization of Women (NOW), drew a comparison between the country’s onslaught of violence, the economic situation and dysfunctional families. She argued that with the triad of problems all present in Barbados, an increase in violence against women was likely to follow. “It’s not really strange when you understand the trajectory of Barbados’ crime situation and the relationship that I at least think there is between the crime situation and things like unaddressed family situations and of course the economic situation overall. “When you get those three things together, the crime trajectory, the economic situation and the family dysfunction that is still very closely linked, it is not very surprising that women are caught up in the statistics with the respect to death,” she said. Last Monday the body of a woman suspected to be that of Dr Sarah Sutrina, a University of the West Indies lecturer was found near River Bay, St Lucy, and another woman identified only as “Joanne” was discovered within hours at Northumberland, also in St Lucy. Following that incident, 69-year-old Martha Agatha Doyle was killed while at the Vauxhall Senior Citizens home. The deaths make up three of Barbados’ eight murders, which occurred within the first three weeks of 2019. However Hinds, in her analysis said she believed many of the brazen killers are “problematic” individuals, whose inclination to violence was not only directed toward those regarded as their enemies. “So really you’re talking about unaddressed issues that people have and take account for softer crimes. Intimate partner crimes, violence toward children and animals, so in that context I am not at all surprised that women would make up some of the victims because all types of crime are related and those are the kinds of discussions I think that we have to have and the linkages that we have to understand if we are serious about addressing the situation,” she said, adding that, “violence doesn’t only start with a man going out there and murdering another man. The individuals who perpetrate crime are not just problematic when they go out and shoot somebody. They are problematic full stop.” Hinds argued that interventions are needed from a young age before the ‘problematic’ individuals develop into more menacing societal figures. “We see them, for instance, coming through the school system and causing disruption there. Many of them are known to the court before they before they get into these serious crimes,” she said. While acknowledging that she respected the ongoing police investigations and did not wish to cast definite judgments on the cases, Hinds added that “generally the cases point to some of the overarching concerns that we continue to try to educate people about with respect to culture, value of women and the way that we interact with each other in the society. I think that we have to pay attention to that . . . we have to understand the very deep-rooted challenges that really drive the crime situation in Barbados,” she stressed. The issue of violence against women was also raised repeatedly over the weekend at the Miss Big and Beautiful Barbados Pageant. Tonia Husbands, Director of the pageant said in addition to the many challenges facing plus-sized women, the issue of violence is one which women of all backgrounds needed to have addressed. “Violence against women is unacceptable, regardless of whatever the situation. I am so glad that at least one of my contestants highlighted it tonight,” said Husbands. (BT)

MAN TO BE CHARGED WITH THREE MURDERS – Police might have a suspected serial killer on their hands. Barbados TODAY understands that a man is presently in police custody in connection with the brutal killings of at least two females and one male. He is expected to be charged for these murders soon. The man is being held in relation to the deaths of two women whose battered bodies were found in St Lucy within the space of 24 hours last week. One body was discovered at River Bay with significant injuries to her head on January 22, while the body of the other woman was found lying on her back next to an abandoned car in a bushy area at Northumberland on January 21. The suspect is also being questioned in connection with the 2018 murder of 68-year-old Tyrone Austin of Free Hill, St Michael, whose body was discovered in a track near the Errol Barrow Centre for Creative Imagination, Cave Hill, St Michael on December 18. Austin’s head was also said to have been bashed in. (BT)

FIRE WARNING – For the first 25 days of the year, the Barbados Fire Service has responded to 173 incidents, 134 of which were fires. Of those fires, 105 were grass or rubbish. This has led the fire service to again appeal to Barbadians to stop burning rubbish and find other ways to get rid of it. Speaking on the sidelines of the relaunch of the SAFE programme at the St Ambrose Primary School, Cypress Street, The City, yesterday, fire officer Andrew Taylor, from the Research and Planning Unit, said the fire service was becoming more concerned about the numbers being reported. “We want to encourage persons to desist from indiscriminate burning. Sometimes when our officers go to the scene, some people would say to them that they were trying to get rid of rubbish and the pests. “Between 2015 and 2016, we had three to four houses being damaged due to persons burning rubbish or grass. Only last year, a house was lost in St Lucy due to someone burning rubbish and [it] got out of control,” he said. (DN)

TEEN ACCUSED REMANDED – An 18-year-old accused of having sex with a 13-year-old girl has been remanded to Her Majesty’s Prison, Dodds, St Philip and will return to court next month. He is Tristan Nathaniel Leacock, of Flint Hall, Welches, St Michael, who appeared before acting Magistrate Anika Jackson in the District ‘A Magistrates’ Court. He was not required to plead to the indictable charge of having sex between November 1 and 30, last year with the teen. Prosecutor, PC Kenmore Phillips in asking the court not to grant bail, noted the nature and seriousness of the offence. Defence counsel Lennox Miller however spoke of Leacock’s previously clean record, adding that he was not a danger to anyone. (BT)

‘QUIT WHILE YOU CAN’, MAGISTRATE TELLS BOWEN – It was a one-off situation which won’t happen again! So said 27-year-old Shaniko Bowen, of Clarke’s Road My Lord”s Hill, St Michael before Magistrate Graveney Bannister in the Traffic Court as he pleaded guilty to having cannabis and for not wearing a helmet, on January 27, 2019. Bowen said he was running late for work and asked a family member to give him a ride. According to prosecutor, Kevin Forde, when police officers were on patrol on Government Hill, St Michael, they saw Bowen, a pillion rider without a helmet. They stopped him and told him about it. When they searched him, they found 1.77 grams of vegetable matter suspected to be cannabis in the form of two rolled cigarettes in his pants pocket. Bowen said he was sorry. The magistrate told him since he said he didn’t have a drug problem, “Quit while you can and don’t let it go deeper.” He was convicted, reprimanded and discharged. “Don’t let it happen again,” Magistrate Bannister warned him. (BT)

‘DABBLING IN DRUGS’ – A Bridgetown magistrate yesterday warned a young man that he was going down the wrong path, and urged him to “never let greed or success encourage you”. Magistrate Graveney Bannister, presiding in the Traffic Court also told Chad Roosevelt Eljai Chase, “You have to be more responsible. This time you’re getting an opportunity to pull your socks up.” The 23-year-old shopkeeper of 137, 6th Avenue West Terrace, St James, had pleaded guilty to having cannabis on January 27, 2019, as well as various traffic offences including not being the holder of a driver’s licence; not having a driver’s licence; and failing to comply with traffic signs. According to prosecutor, PC Kevin Forde, police officers were on patrol on Tudor Street, Bridgetown, when they saw a motorcar with two male occupants approaching them and one of the occupants was Chase. He said when Chase was searched two quantities of vegetable matter suspected to be cannabis were found. The police officers also found out that Chase had no driver’s licence, no insurance and the registration plates were not affixed correctly on the vehicle. Chase, who was represented by attorney-at-law Harry Husbands admitted that he never had a driver’s licence adding that he had a permit but missed the date last September. His counsel, in urging the court to be lenient, said that Chase, a national footballer, was currently seeking to have that matter regularized. The court also learnt that Chase, a recreational user of the drug, is the holder of seven CXC’s and is a graduate of the Barbados Communiuty College. The magistrate told him “You have a job that can expand to its full potential, why are you dabbling in drugs?” Urging him to watch the company he keeps, the magistrate said,” Don’t put a damper on your life.” Chase apologized to the court saying he was sorry. The magistrate fined the first offender $1,000 for having no insurance or 100 days in jail and convicted, reprimanded and discharged (CRD) him on the other matters. (BT)

HAYNES WARNED TO STAY AWAY FROM STORE – At 59, Karen Ann Haynes admitted to a court that she is a recovering drug addict and is looking for a job. She made the confession when she appeared before Magistrate Graveney Bannister in the Traffic Court and pleaded guilty to stealing powder and eyeliner worth $16 from No. 1 Beauty Supplies, on January 26, 2019. Haynes, of Garden Land, Country Road, St Michael, also admitted that marijuana was her drug of choice, adding “I don’t have a drug problem anymore. I have been off for about a year.” In reprimanding and discharging her, Magistrate Bannister warned: “Stay away from No 1 Beauty Supplies. Do not venture there. Go and find honest work.” (BT)

DEADLINE FOR INTERIM COACH – Richard Pybus will be gone by October. Cricket West Indies (CWI) CEO Johnny Grave said the interim head coach probably won’t be under consideration for the full-time post after reaffirming the board’s position of hiring someone from within the region. Grave made the comments after CWI received heavy criticism for giving the English-born Pybus his third high-ranking job in just over five years. “At this stage, I don’t think Richard is thinking longer than September. India are coming directly after September, so I believe Richard will be our head coach for the remainder of this tour, the pre-World Cup tour to Ireland, the World Cup and then the visit by India,” said Grave. “After that point, I don’t think he would be considered as head coach. It’s been clear, certainly for me, considering the discussions I’ve been privy to, that he is interim coach until September. “There’s a strong feeling on the board, and I wouldn’t say it’s been formally discussed, but everyone is aware of the fact that West Indies have had real success at that level with a Caribbean coach, but I don’t think that’s a philosophy just for the head coach as there’s a desire to get Caribbean people working in cricket at all levels and not just within the CWI headquarters,” he added. (DN)

LIONS MAUL WARRIORS – Saturday night’s “Big Rematch” T20 cricket clash at the Weymouth Sports Complex turned out to be a mismatch as Starcom Network/Nation Publishing Conquering Lions inflicted a crushing defeat by 66 runs on the Vincy Warriors Caribbean Connection. It was sweet revenge for the defeat suffered when the teams met last October. The Lions’ blitzkrieg was built around electrifying half-centuries from experienced power hitters Alcindo Holder and Dwayne Smith before captain Derick Bishop snapped up three early wickets to disarm the Warriors whose innings never got out of the trenches. Starcom’s programme manager Ronnie Clarke completed the demolition in spectacular fashion, grabbing the last two wickets, both bowled, in three balls. Holder and Smith entertained the bumper crowd of over 5 000 with pugnacious knocks that saw them pummel a combined total of eight fours and ten sixes as the Lions, invited to bat, sprinted to 173 for seven off 20 overs and Warriors hobbled to 107 in 17.3 overs. Summarised scores: Starcom Network/Nation Publishing Conquering Lions 173-7 in 20 overs (Alcindo Holder 59, Dwayne Smith 59, Jamal Smith 20; Gonzalo Hooper 2-15, Devon Dabson 2-39). Vincy Warriors Caribbean Connection 107 17.3 overs (Jamal Yearwood 17, Jamal Harewood 12; Derick Bishop 3-15, Ronnie Clarke 2-6). Conquering Lions won by 66 runs. (DN)

COLERIDGE AND PARRY CLOSED FOR THE REST OF THE WEEK – The Ministry of Education, Technological and Vocational Training has advised that the Coleridge and Parry School, at Ashton Hall, St Peter, will be closed from tomorrow, Tuesday, January 29. It will remain closed for the rest of the week to allow authorities to address an environmental problem there. The Ministry regrets any inconvenience this closure may cause. (BGIS)

TEACHERS IN HAITI REMAIN OFF THE JOB – Teachers at a secondary school in Haiti have vowed to remain off the job until the authorities make good on the promise to pay outstanding arrears and appoint new teachers dating back to several years. The teachers at the Faustin Soulouque High School, who began their industrial action on January 14, vowed to continue even though students have been staging street demonstration demanding that the teachers return to the classrooms. The teachers are demanding the payment of outstanding salaries for the period 2013-2015, the appointment of teachers to who work in the classrooms and payment for teachers who have not been paid for many months. In addition, they are calling on the authorities to respect the rights of students who have clashed with police during their street demonstrations. The teachers, who held a sit-in at the prosecutor’s office of Petit-Goâve, on Monday, in protest at the threat made by the Commissioner of the Government, Fourjy Pierre, that any teacher who incite students to participate in any form of violence would be arrested. The teachers have also denounced statements and threats as well as the smear campaign they claim being orchestrated by the local authorities. (DN)

BEACHES ANNOUNCES CLOSURE OF FACILITIES IN TURKS AND CAICOS ISLANDS – The Sandals Resorts International (SRI)-owned Beaches Resort Villages and Spa has confirmed the “indefinite” closure of its facilities in the Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI) from January 2021. Media reports here had indicated that shut down is linked to a multi-million dollar tax bill which is in dispute, with the TCI government. “Beaches Turks & Caicos Resort Villages & Spa will be closed from September 3rd to October15th in 2019 and from September 7th to October 22, 2020, and then for an indefinite period from January 2021,” the resort said in a statement. “Guests travelling between now and January 2021 that are not impacted by these closures will receive the vacation experience that we have become known for. All features and facilities of the resort will be open and operating per usual. “For impacted guests, we are committed to making this as seamless as possible by allowing them to change their travel dates to Beaches Turks & Caicos or travel on their original travel dates to one of our other locations in Jamaica …at no additional cost, including airfare change fees. Guests may also choose to travel to any of our 16 Sandals Resorts,” it added. Media reports said that the government taxes owed by the hotel are in the vicinity of US$60 million and that discussions to settle the matter have been ongoing for some time. In the statement, the resort noted “the upcoming closures of Beaches Turks & Caicos are the result of several critical and long-standing issues which have impacted our operations over the past several years. We apologise for any inconvenience caused to our customers and look forward to welcoming them back soon.” (DN)

BEAMING BEAUTY – Hadiya Marshall is the winner of the 2019 Miss Big and Beautiful competition. The attractive 26-year-old medical doctor won the contest from eight other entrants at the Sea Rocks Dome, Maxwell, Christ Church last night. The contestants were judged in the categories of talent, formal wear, lingerie and casual wear. Marshall performed a dance in the talent segment. Here, she is crowned by last year’s winner Gale Ann Williams. (BT)

MARZVILLE ONLY BAJAN IN SEMIS – For the third consecutive year, Barbadian soca artiste Marzville will be vying for the 2019 Fantastic Friday International Soca Monarch. The Give It To You singer has made it to the semifinals of the extremely competitive soca competition. Known locally for his versatility and sweet and bashment soca hits, Marzville whose real name is Omar McQuilkin, is the only Barbadian contending for the competition. With 2019 marking the return of the power and groovy soca categories, he will be vying for the groovy soca title with his 2018 single Wuk produced by Dj Spider and Sir Fingaz. The song has been well received on the Trinidadian airwaves. He will be going up against 22 semifinalists. Speaking to Barbados TODAY, Marzville said he was excited to make it to the semifinals and wave the Barbadian flag high. “It feels really good because this is another year making it. . . I’m the only Bajan to be in the semifinals out of all the contestants in both competitions. “It means now I have to show that no matter how much numbers are in the competition from Barbados that we are still powerful . . . I have to show the strength of Barbados,” the Gas It Up singer said. “I’m going to put on a good show,” he added He will be departing for the twin-island republic on February 2 for the semi-finals which will be held February 10 at the Arima Velodrome, Arima, Trinidad and Tobago. Fifteen contestants from the semi-finals will compete in the finals on Fantastic Friday, March 1. (BT)

BISHOP MAXWELL ENTHRONED – The final episode in the extended process of appointing a new Bishop was finally concluded with the enthronement of the Right Reverend Michael Bruce St John Maxwell this evening. The 14th Bishop to hold the position, Reverend Maxwell’s enthronement service at the St Michael’s Cathedral, symbolically started with the Bishop standing outside of the door with his Chaplain and knocking three times. “Open for me the gates of righteousness; I will enter and give thanks to the Lord,” he said to Dean of St Michael Cathedral, the Reverend Jeffrey Gibson, who, standing on the inside, unlocked the door after the third knock. The symbolic gesture introduced the large congregation at St Michael’s row to their new Bishop who was welcomed into the fanfare of trumpets. “I, Michael Bruce St John Maxwell, by divine permission Bishop of Barbados, having been duly appointed and confirmed, make my request to you, Very Reverend brother, that I be conducted to the Bishop’s Seat in the Cathedral Church of Barbados, there to be inducted, installed and enthroned according to ancient usage and prescriptive right,” said Maxwell as he offered himself for service. To which Reverend Gibson replied: “Michael, our Right Reverend Father in God, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, we, the chapter of your cathedral church, together with the people of this diocese, bid you welcome to your cathedral church of St Michael and All Angels.” The symbolic Anglican service continued with a number of prayers, the Reading of the mandate, the examination conducted by the Canons, the Archdeacon and the Dean and finally the oath. During the final step, the new Bishop swore to observe and defend the rights of the church and the diocese. He also promised to lead, “with truth, justice and charity, not lording it over God’s heritage, but in all things endeavoring to show myself a servant and an example to the flock.” The new bishop was then introduced to his ‘flock.’ On Saturday evening, scores of people gathered at the Garfield Sobers Sports Complex to witness the ordination of Reverend Michael Bruce St John Maxwell following his appointment last November by the regional House of Bishops. It occurred after elections between with the Dean of the Cathedral of St Michael and All Angels, the Very Rev. Jeffrey Gibson and the rector of St George Parish Church, the Rev. John Rogers ended in a deadlock several times. (BT)

MA CARMEN REACHES 100 – Lilian Carmen Batson, affectionately known as Ma Carmen, celebrated her 100th birthday today with family, friends and the Governor General of Barbados Dame Sandra Mason. The retired labourer, mother to six children – two boys and four girls – is also grandmother to 21, great-grandmother to 17 and great-great-grandmother to four. A former employee of Kendal Plantation in St. John, Ma Carmen was born and bred in that same neighborhood until she moved to Montrose, Christ Church. The matriarch of the Batson family told the media she “worked hard, hard” in her heyday and even at 100 years old she maintains an active lifestyle. There wasn’t a job Ma Carmen wasn’t willing to do. During the day she worked the cane fields and in the late evenings she grew produce to sell on weekends at the Cheapside Market. Her daughter Mavis Batson was overcome with emotion as she recalled how her mother singlehandedly raised and sent all of her children to school. Two of them received vocational training and four proceeded to secondary school and later tertiary-level educational institutions. “My mother was so little and the baskets [for the cane] were so big – she was so strong. Even though she would work seven to seven she would leave and come out, plant canes and in the hard times when there was little field work, she would come out at night and plant cabbage and lettuce so she could take it to the market whenever,” her daughter recalled. Batson, who is her mother’s fifth child, described her mother as “a loving, gentle, caring and giving person”. Overwhelmed as she talked about the sacrifices her mother made for her family, Batson shared that she always prayed that her mother would make it to a century. She revealed that they often cruised and vacationed together. Despite suffering a heart attack, the centenarian continues to be very independent and lively. Batson revealed that her mother remained a devoted member of the Christ Church Parish Church where she was active in the Mothers’ Union and the church army. She instilled in all her children and their offspring the value of pray and belief in God. Her steadfast faith was evident as she erupted in a chorus of Ketch A Fire with the Governor General. “She made sure that we had a good education and we went to church. We didn’t ask if we could go to church, we had to go to church,” Batson emphasized. “On Old Year’s night, she prays from 12 o clock to 6 o clock in the morning . . . all night long.” The centenarian’s eldest grandchild Waveney Rouse said that Ma Carmen was “a praying grandmother”. Rouse pointed out that her grandmother’s teachings and unyielding faith were embedded in her family. “I would always pray to God that she would make 100. I wanted that and I asked God for it,” Rouse stated. (BT)

For daily or breaking news reports follow us on Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter & Facebook. That’s all for today folks. There are 336 days left in the year. Shalom! #thechasefilesdailynewscap #thechasefiles# dailynewscapsbythechasefiles

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chibinekochan · 8 years

Text

HC MC showering and fainting in their apartment

well that happened to me like a few days ago I had a fever came out the shower got dizzy tried to go the bed but fainted on the way being naked. I hit my head on the door frame too. I was alone but I somehow thought it be a interesting hc and I also wished they would be their lol.

Im a unicorn now

So For this MC is not with anyone yet but their some feels. Somehow the water was not working in that apartment so seven was saying you can go to one of the members to take a shower.

In the guys case Jaehee was way too busy to be in the chat where it was desired where to shower.

If anyone wants they can write that chat.

Let´s just pretend it makes sense

if anyone wants i can add unknown and v too

Zen

so you thought it would be good idea since zen has probably no interest in you and he said he was going to practice his lines anyway so no big deal

you stared to feel a bit sick but brushed it off

zen was really nice showing you how to set the temperature while flirting with you

you didn't took him serious I mean he is an actor and he must be flirting with anyone

so you thought at least

so you started feeling dizzy in the shower getting out setting the water off wrapping a towel around yourself

the bathroom was so small you couldn't risk fainting in here you thought you would made it to the couch but you didn't

you fainted right in front of the bathroom door

Zen just heard a loud noise ~knight mode activated~ thinking you might dropped something so he checked on you

but then he saw you and panicked right away. Lucky their you woke up still hazy grasping on what happened

your towel meanwhile moved a bit to south you where to out to notice it and Zen was way to worried

you said it happens sometimes no big deal you felt feverish anyway so a bit laying would help

Zen was still super worried and despite you saying its not so bad he carried you to the bed

He noticed the towel had moved but tried his best to not look too much ~ ignore the beast Zen~

so you ended up in Zens bed but different then you ever imaged he was super worried still and refused to let you go home

Zen cooked for you and was really relived that you where pretty okay by the evening

could not get halfnaked you out of his head never mentioned what he saw but it seemt he became more serious towards you

Yoosung

He was a good friend and he thought it would be no issue at all to let a girl take a shower in his apartment ~naive Yoosung~

so you took his offer

he was more flustered then he thought as you arrived tried his best to not let it show kinda regretted his decision already

but then again it was nice to have you around

he prepared everything for you

you felt really dizzy in the shower turning it off wrapping yourself also the bath was way to small to faint in it so you stepped out

Yoosung seemly confused ~did she needed something why was she in a towel +insert panic-blush here+ ~

but then bamm you where on the ground instant super panic attack by Yoosung.

He has none of this calling the ambulance despite you telling him you okay you just fainted you be okay

Yoosung was not listening he would not risk to loose you

at least he agreed to you dressing something while waiting

After the medics said its probably no big deal but took you just in case anyway he was relived

He refused to let you drive alone and he stayed on your side the entire time after it was clear that it was nothing he finally passed out on a chair right next to you

he figured that you where more then his friend but it took him a bit to confess it

Jaehee

This made the most sense anyway you both are girls despite your feelings for her

you knew it was one sided so it was all okay

so you set everything up since she was so busy

and you started feeling dizzy you forgot the towel too -darn

you had no choice but go out naked

Jaehee just heard a sound she came to look what you broke ~she was super worried but wouldn't say that~

she was panicking but stayed calm enough on the outside checked your vitals ignoring the fact that you are naked on the floor

you woke fast back up hazy trying to grasp what happened Jaehee calmly explained you fainted

well you knew that already but thank you Jaehee she helped you to the couch so you could rest covered you up asap

you told her that fainting just happens sometimes to you so no need for a ambulance she is okay with it

letting you stay till you better and then over night

not really wanting to let you go the next morning was not saying anything over that to you

letting later hints drop of you moving in with her so she can make sure you are ok ~really smooth~

Jumin

His penthouse is huge with two bathrooms and all that.

Much better then his offer to let you stay in a hotel you would feel awful to make him pay for that anyway.

So you arrived he was different then normal but you just thought he was uneasy around you

Jumin had someone prepare the bathroom for you

He fast excused himself to his home office you thought you annoy him

So you took a shower got dizzy and left the shower bathroom was huge but everything looked so expensive you don't wanted to break Jumins stuff

You wrapped yourself in a towel and stepped out you managed to go in the living room before you fainted on his carpet

Jumin thought it was his cat but it was you

He was the calmest on the outside but we all know that was a lie inside he crumbled he felt your vitals a bit embarrassed at your quite naked state

Jumins was relived as you woke up quite fast.

You where hazy but you could tell him what happened

Jumin called a doctor to check on you anyway their was no option to refuse him.

Made sure you dressed proper

The doctor was agreeing to what you said but recommended you to take it easy

So you did in Jumins penthouse he refused to let you go back for the next 3 days

just to make sure you are okay ~because he would use all excuses to keep you their as long as possible~

After everyone telling him they call the police on him he finally gave in

Making sure you know how he feels about you by kissing you before you leave

well damm now you cant go ~plan succeeded~

Seven

you where sure it was not a good idea but you liked him so you thought it be nice to spend time with him ~i feel sorry for you already~

after he opened the door ~you had to beg him to open it since you don't know Arabic~

You had to prepare the shower yourself since he was busy ~and you distract him enough as it is~

So you take the shower and you get dizzy his bathroom is small so you have to open the door you wrap yourself in a towel and step out

Seven does not hear you falling but he does see it

wants to Run over in a instant but then he is relived as you move being really hazy and wobbly

Seven has no clue what to do so he freezes up somehow finds himself going over to you as you lay on the couch

he is acting like he has no clue what just happened you explain that you need to lay after you just fainted

you don't need a doctor but he lets you rest you

Seven leaves the headphones down just in case you need something

brings you whatever you need. Seems annoyed but you see right threw him

Seven is embarrassed over your towel only outfit lets you dress in his room after you feel a bit more clear

lets you sleep in his sine you still wobbly by the evening

trys not to think on you sleeping in his bed on his pillow under his blanket ~fails hard~

somehow thinks its his fault

drives you back in the early morning from now on he will keep an close eye to the cctv out of security reasons

he is not worried about you at all ~lies~

will ignore his feelings for like 3 days and pretend its nothing

#mm #mm headcanons #mystic messenger #mysme #707 #saeyoung choi #seven #mc #rfa #mc x rfa #zen #yoosung #jaehee kang #jumin

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travelworldnetwork · 6 years

Link

By Andrew Evans

20 March 2019

Lord Byron’s grandfather was having a bad day.

Scurvy had taken down his crew on the HMS Dolphin, forcing them into their hammocks where they swayed in the sticky heat of the tropics as their ship listed slowly across the Pacific.

Eager to control the South Atlantic, the British Navy had tasked Admiral Byron with settling an island off the South American coast where ships could resupply, and then finding an alternative route to the East Indies. By the time he finally returned to England, he had set a record for circumnavigating the globe in less than two years; claimed the western Falkland Islands for the Crown; and nearly started a war between Great Britain and Spain in the process.

Byron sailed away, marking his frustration onto a new map of the world by naming these atolls the ‘Islands of Disappointment’

But after rounding the tip of South America, the explorer confronted the world’s largest body of water: the endless Pacific Ocean. After a month of empty blue horizon, a tiny island appeared. Byron noted the date (Friday 7 June 1765), and joyously described the island’s “beautiful appearance – surrounded by a beach of the finest white sand – and covered with tall trees, which… formed the most delightful groves”.

View image of Tall coconut groves fill the interior of Tepoto, in French Polynesia (Credit: Credit: Andrew Evans)

The naval officer watched as his crew crawled onto the deck, “gazing at this little paradise” that was green with abundant young coconuts whose vitamin-rich meat and milk could heal their bleeding gums. Alas, Byron quickly ascertained that it was impossible to land. “I could not forbear standing close round the island with the ship,” he wrote in his daily log. With the high surf and a shallow coral shoreline that dropped starkly into the bottomless blue, there was no safe anchorage.

Then there were the natives, noted Byron, who showed up on the beach brandishing 5m-long spears. The islanders set massive signal fires to warn a neighbouring island of the impromptu invaders. “The natives ran along the shore abreast of the ship, shouting and dancing,” Byron recalled, waving their long spears as a warning.

“They would kill us… if we ventured to go on shore,” wrote Byron, who attempted one more landing in a longboat before giving up. “[They] set up one of the most hideous yells I had ever heard, pointing at the same time to their spears, and poising in their hands large stones which they took up from the beach.” The British made a go at frantic diplomacy by throwing old bread at the islanders, who refused to touch the stale food but instead waded into the water and tried to swamp the longboat.

Byron backed off and instead set sail towards the larger neighbouring island, but he again failed to anchor along the ringed coral atoll. Meanwhile, natives armed with spears and clubs followed the longboat in the surf, using “threatening gestures to prevent their landing”. Byron only convinced the islanders to back off when he shot a 9lb cannonball over their heads. Less than 20 hours after arriving, Byron sailed away, marking his frustration onto a new map of the world by naming these atolls the ‘Islands of Disappointment’. The map was published following his round-the-world journey, and the moniker has stuck ever since.

Rediscovery

I laughed out loud when I first spotted the name in Byron’s sea log during a bout of insomnia, and was instantly hooked, reading line by line through the night until dawn. The name, now commonly listed as ‘Disappointment Islands’, sounded more like the title of some back-shelf Tintin comic than a real place on Earth. But the name checked out online, pointing to Napuka and Tepoto, a pair of far-flung dots in the South Pacific, etched upon the blue surface of the Tuamotu Archipelago, the largest group of coral atolls on the planet.

Peering down on Google Earth, the smaller of the two Disappointment Islands resembled a single-cell organism floating alone in the ocean. Measuring just 4 sq km, Tepoto is one of the smallest of the 118 islands and atolls that comprise French Polynesia. This green teardrop banded by sandy beach upon a deep blue ribbon is also the tiny island where Byron failed to land. Could I get there, and would I be disappointed, too?

No hotels, no restaurants, no tourist industry – it sounded like paradise to me

And yet, 254 years after Byron’s attempt, the Disappointment Islands still proved difficult to access. Flights to the larger atoll of Napuka are not even listed on Air Tahiti’s international website. I spent three weeks making cold calls before I got hold of an agent.

“You can fly to Napuka in February,” she explained in French, “but then you have to stay a full month.” And so I travelled in the better weather of May, when scheduled flights still gave me a minimum eight-day stay. Located nearly 1,000km from Tahiti’s capital, Papeete, Napuka is one of the most isolated islands in French Polynesia, and a quick stop on a larger circular air route. Once I stepped off the plane, I would have to stay.

“You should arrange a place to stay beforehand,” my friend Celeste Brash recommended. She had never been to Napuka, but as the author of Lonely Planet’s Tahiti & French Polynesia guidebook, she spoke from personal experience: “Those really remote atolls in the Tuamotus don’t really know what to do when visitors show up.”

No hotels, no restaurants, no tourist industry – it sounded like paradise to me. This was my ultimate desire as a traveller: to show up unannounced like those ailing British sailors, open to the naked fate of true exploration. I opted out of scurvy and long months at sea in favour of the 18-hour flight to Tahiti from Washington DC, measured out in cups of fresh pineapple juice poured by flight attendants wearing floral prints. After a night in Papeete, I boarded a two-hour prop plane to Napuka.

Journey

For the first hour, I watched the empty ocean far below me. The blue intensity astonished me as much as the immensity of the water. Polynesia is believed to be one of the last areas on Earth settled by humans, and that ancient people sailed across this void in narrow canoes from places like Indonesia and the Philippines seemed nearly impossible. Resting my forehead against the vibrating window, I studied the leathery surface of the mid-morning Pacific, basking in that rare moment when stark geographic truths confront you: Polynesia is more ocean than anything else.

View image of The Disappointment Islands are part of the Tuamoto Archipelago, a chain of nearly 80 islands (Credit: Credit: Andrew Evans)

Faint white rings of coral atolls appeared – les îles basses, or ‘low islands’ of the Tuamotus. We dropped in tight circles and landed on the atoll of Fakarava, where at least half the 20 passengers departed. Ten minutes later we were back in the air, hovering over an even longer stretch of blue.

Another hour passed before I recognised tiny Tepoto – alone in the ocean, single and miniscule, exactly like on my computer screen back home. The plane veered right and the larger atoll of Napuka filled my oval window view, like a turquoise boomerang encircling a long necklace of white coral islets. Right before we landed, I saw a flash of metal rooftops and green palm groves, a few dirt roads and a pointed church steeple.

As the doors opened, thick, hot air saturated the plane and I dashed across the tarmac and into the shade of the Napuka Airport – a small, open-air shelter just off the runway, stacked with luggage and cargo. It seemed as if the whole island had come to meet the plane – the first flight to land in weeks. Families rushed towards us and flung fragrant flower leis around the necks of loved ones. As the lone foreigner, I stood apart, awkwardly watching the ritual of welcome, already feeling invasive and uncomfortable. Though I had travelled 12,000km, a great divide remained. I did not belong in this scene, and everybody there knew it.

“Are you here on holiday?” a younger man asked me in French, heaving a duffle bag into the shade.

I smiled and shrugged. “Oui.” It was easier than explaining how late-night Googling and reading the diary of an 18th-Century sea captain had led me to embark on this indulgent quest.

We chatted. His name was Jack, and he and his colleague Evarii were electronic technicians from Tahiti, servicing all the tsunami warning sirens in French Polynesia. They had come to repair the siren on Tepoto, which is only accessible by boat from Napuka, and like me, they would have to stay eight days before the next flight back. But why had I come? Jack asked me. Where would I stay? Did I understand that there were no ‘services’ on Napuka?

Evarii seemed annoyed by my presence.

“Do you do this often?” he asked. “Just show up in a place without any plans?” Before I could tell him yes, in fact, this was my favourite way to travel, Jack intervened.

“I’ll talk to la mairesse. We’ll figure something out.”

View image of The only way to Napuka is aboard an irregular two-hour prop plane from Tahiti's capital, Papeete (Credit: Credit: Andrew Evans)

As if stepping out of a Gauguin painting, a woman soon approached me with a flowing bright skirt and a wide straw hat pinned with flowers that shaded her face. Her name was Marina and as tavana (‘mayor’, in Tahitian) of the 300-person atoll, she oversees everything that happens on Napuka, including every flight that lands at the airport.

“Why did you not contact us to let us know you were coming?” tavana Marina asked me. “We have made no arrangements!” I fumbled an unconvincing response, saying that I didn’t want to be a burden.

“Do you want to visit Tepoto?” tavana Marina asked, because a boat had already been organised for the technicians. Yes, I wanted to visit Tepoto. That was Byron’s first elusive island, and aside from the once-a-month supply boat, there was no way to reach it. I jumped at the chance.

“Come with us,” said Jack, smiling. Evarii huffed.

“You know there’s no water over there!” Evarii mentioned as he looked over my meagre luggage. I knew. I had practically memorised the Wikipedia entry: ‘These islands are arid, and are not especially conducive to human habitation’. I had a few litres of water in my bag, but it was barely enough for one day, let alone a week.

“We can share,” Jack said. We drove in the back of tavana Marina’s pickup truck to the short cement dock, where a small metal skiff was hanging by steel cables from a front-loading tractor. I helped load the tiny boat with supplies, including a massive cooler of drinking water the technicians had checked as cargo from Tahiti. In a flash, the front loader dropped the skiff into the water, and two drivers jerked the outboard motors to life. The three of us hopped inside, and with a burst of engine, broke through the surf.

Arrival

Out past the reef, the sea was calm with a light swell that rapidly pushed us north-west from Napuka towards the vague horizon. Aside from the wind, the only sound was the buzzing of twin outboard motors that carried our tiny party out into the heart of the ocean. In all my travels and ocean crossings, I had never felt this vulnerable on the water. I was seated on a boat the size of a kitchen table, floating atop the bluest and emptiest part of the globe without a speck of land in sight. The fringe of palms on Napuka had disappeared behind us, and for a solid 10 minutes, the blank horizon met my gaze from every direction, blue upon blue.

And yet I felt an inherent trust towards my Polynesian crewmates. I had dropped my life into their hands and watched as they read the changing currents like road signs. Their eyes focused on the horizon and their fingers twitched the angle of the motor by half an inch, this way and that, steering us towards the invisible target of an island so tiny you could miss it and not even know.

View image of A front-loading tractor must use steel cables to raise and lower boats into the surf (Credit: Credit: Andrew Evans)

“No GPS!” cried Evarii, shouting over the engine. He nodded to the drivers and tapped the side of his head. “They just know where to go.”

Twenty minutes and 10km later, a thin green stripe of land pushed up from the water, followed by the white coral beach against the blue-green surf. After another 20 minutes, the island came into full view: coconut palms waving left and right, just as Byron had seen so long ago.

Unlike the admiral, I landed successfully on Tepoto. In time with the rising and falling waves, I hopped onto the short dock and watched another front loader pluck the boat right out from the sea. It made perfect sense that an 18th-Century British tall ship would fail to find harbour here. The island was nothing more than a sharp and shallow reef that dropped off starkly into the dark blue depths, just as Byron had described.

“Welcome to Tepoto,” a man in his late 30s said as he shook my salty hand and introduced himself as Severo, the island’s one and only policeman and the son of tavana Marina back on Napuka. She had called to tell him that I was arriving, and now a party of islanders was coming out to greet us. At the helm was a woman wrapped in a purple muumuu who dropped a string of white Tahitian gardenias around my neck, dousing me in a honey-vanilla perfume.

“Bienvenue,” she said, kissing me on both cheeks and introducing herself as Louana.

“Maururu,” I replied in Tahitian. Thank you.

View image of There is only one road on Tepoto and it's paved with crushed coral stone (Credit: Credit: Andrew Evans)

Louana was the tavana of Tepoto, and she led us up from the beach, past the leaning palms to the single row of pastel bungalows that lined the island’s only street, paved with crushed coral stone.

“Have you ever seen a four-headed coconut tree?” a young boy asked me in French, running alongside me.

“No, I have not,” I answered.

Have you ever seen a four-headed coconut tree?

“We have one,” an older boy piped in. “It’s a coconut tree… with four heads!”

I struggled to follow the excited rush of voices that came at me, each one a weird puzzle piece of information concerning this remarkable four-headed coconut tree – how nature made it comme ça – and how originally the trunk was split into seven heads, but those extra three broke off in a typhoon long ago. Several islanders offered to show me the arboreal wonder.

Two hours after dropping into the Disappointment Islands without water or plans, I had a place to stay with the visiting technicians in a peeling-pink shack with plywood walls and cut-out squares for windows. Red-orange curtains printed with white hibiscus flowers flapped in the breeze as I sat sweating on the bed, adjusting to the 38C heat. Not only had I landed in Tepoto, but I had been welcomed.

Tepoto

Minutes later, Severo buzzed by on his scooter with lunch cooked by his wife Tutapu: pan-fried snapper with rice, peas and coconut bread. The fish had been caught that morning and was more delicious than any I had ever eaten in a restaurant.

While we ate, Severo sussed me out. As the island policeman, his job was to keep the peace and look after the welfare of the few dozen inhabitants, he explained.

View image of Most of the homes on Tepoto are wooden bungalows with cut-out windows (Credit: Credit: Andrew Evans)

“It’s very tranquil here,” he said. “No real problems.” But now I had shown up and he kept looking into my eyes, as if trying to read my intentions. “I can’t remember the last time we had a visitor. Not for as long as I’ve been here – over 20 years now.”

In fact, Severo said that no-one could recall the last time a non-Polynesian had come to Tepoto – certainly not in their lifetimes. Then, he told me that what I had read on Wikipedia was wrong: there weren’t 62 residents on the island, but closer to 40 now, 13 of which were children under the age of 12.

“Young people leave,” he explained. Once they turn 12, the French government sends them to boarding school in Hao, another atoll in the Tuamotu Archipelago 390km away. For high school, teenagers go to the main island of Tahiti. Severo had grown up on Napuka and returned there after high school, then married a girl from Tepoto and moved here.

“What will you do while you’re here?” Severo asked.

“Explore,” I answered, though I had made no real plans. I had not really thought past the possibility of getting here. Now that I had actually made it, the coming days confronted me. “Wait until it’s cooler,” he advised.

View image of Tepoto's residents are predominantly Catholic and often attend mass in the island's one church every day (Credit: Credit: Andrew Evans)

I dozed through the hot, humid afternoon and heard no other sounds except my own slow breathing that seemed to follow the rhythm of the whispering surf and listing palms. At 16:00, I followed the sound of a tinkling bell across the road, where most of the islanders sat on outdoor benches facing a shrine covered in garlands of flowers and chains of seashells. A musician played a guitar in one corner while the island’s nurse stood up and led the congregation in a strong and harmonious hymn.

Still singing, a woman moved to one side, offering to share her bench with me. The Catholic mass lasted a full hour, rotating through chants and readings and hymns – all in Tahitian. Afterwards, the lady explained that this was the holy week of pilgrimage when islanders gathered twice a day before the Virgin Mary, the angelic figurine at the centre of the elaborate floral decor.

“We are lucky here on Tepoto,” she said. “There is no war. No crime.” There were no real problems at all, she mused, lighting a hand-rolled cigarette. She also told me there was no running water or internet, and very limited electricity. Tepoto received its first solar panels and electric power in 1995, and a mobile phone tower within the last five years.

“Have you ever seen a four-headed coconut tree?” she asked me, point blank.

“No, I have not.”

“We have one here, maybe the only one in the world,” she said with an air of mystery before saying goodbye and returning to her bungalow to untangle a hairy pig tied by one leg to a palm tree.

Night fell fast and the stars blew me away. I gawked upwards from the empty beach as if catching the night sky for the first time, the Milky Way scrawled like a diagonal swath of pink gauze.

The bell woke me before dawn, calling believers to another Catholic mass. This time I opted out and walked to the end of the one road, past the fanning palms and out to the coral shoreline. The sun rose behind me and lit up the sea like silver. I continued southwards, walking the length of the 2.6km island and admiring the tidal pools that housed tiny worlds of maroon-speckled crabs and green fish. Blue-eyed clams lay cemented in the rust-coloured coral and seabirds soared overhead.

Massive white-stone crosses marked the cardinal points of the island, while the windward stretch of beach showed a collage of remnants that had floated in from the outside world: a whisky bottle; Chinese pharmaceuticals; a cracked CD case; a bottle of Japanese salad dressing; and a barnacled tennis shoe. I considered the long journey of the driftwood that now rested on this bit of shore. Where had it come from – Asia, the Americas or New Zealand? Tepoto was like some forgotten punctuation mark between all three.

View image of Massive white, stone crosses mark the four cardinal points of Tepoto (Credit: Credit: Andrew Evans)

In three decades of travelling, I had never encountered such a raw and solitary place. The empty beaches and silent palm groves seemed timeless, as though a mirage of Byron’s ship still hovered somewhere off in the warm, salty breeze. I had seen this island depicted on old atlases and my grandfather’s globe and had somehow transported myself here – and yet, even my own footprints seemed implausible, as if I had stepped from my own reality into some far-flung dream state.

Within days, I fell into the forced simplicity of the island: sleeping under a single cotton sheet; sipping instant coffee made using rainwater drained from the roof; eating raw clams; and then exploring every short footpath on the island. I bathed with a dipper of water from the rain barrel. Under the shade of trees and front porch roofs, I talked with the islanders and listened to their stories. At times I grew painfully thirsty, but kept silent, never asking for a drink. Yet somehow, the islanders always knew, sending their kids to gather fresh coconuts and then chopping them open and urging me to hydrate. I offered to pay and was always refused. In fact, I only handled money once, to pay Severo for my room and board.

News that a foreigner had landed and was staying in the pink bungalow near the dock drifted across the tiny island. Occasionally, a few people stopped by in the evening to say hello, offer me a tour of the island or to ask me earnest questions. “How many houses do you have you in your town?”. “Are you a Christian?”. At times when I went off to explore, I caught glimpses of watchful eyes, peering at me through the palm fronds. They knew I was under the policeman’s care but remained on alert. I reacted by living with total transparency, down to my underwear drying on the clothesline.

When it grew too warm, I swam in the ocean, the islanders watching from shore. Wearing goggles, I caught the flash of colour and life that swam beneath the waves – pastel fish whose scales matched the row of humble houses on Tepoto. Mounds of spiky coral glowed neon-like, healthy and unbroken, spared from the careless destruction of men.

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Perhaps Byron’s disappointment had sheltered this place from the rest of the world, preserving it to this day. I’d seen the bleached and broken coral reefs of Bora Bora and Tahiti, where too much love has ruined the natural paradise that first put Polynesia on the tourist map. But here, halfway between the Marquesas and the main Tuamotu island groups, Tepoto has remained comparatively unblemished. I felt lucky to glimpse the vibrant and teeming underwater life, knowing that millions of tourists would visit the rest of Polynesia and never see this kind of virgin reef.

Nor would they ever see the four-headed coconut tree. After days of anticipation, I received a personal invitation from three schoolboys – Tuata, Tearoha and Sylvain – who escorted me to the mayor’s office where the technicians were finishing up their work on the tsunami warning signal.

A stumpy tractor with a wide shovel (the island’s only vehicle) had been dispatched for our adventure. Sylvain’s father André drove, while I rode inside the shovel with the technicians. In all, there were eight of us clinging to the tractor as we manoeuvred and bumped our way into the dense coconut grove at the island’s centre.

Coconuts are the only cash crop on Tepoto, and as we pushed through the forest, I noticed small piles of halved coconuts, thick with hairy husks, drying in the sun. The oily white flesh, called copra, earns a fixed rate of 140 local francs (about £1) per kilogram, and is carried away once a month aboard a supply ship. Every islander has the right to collect and sell copra for cash, but André explained that the coconut trees had begun to die. A small invasive beetle was killing them, he said, making the leaves fall off and leaving bare, toothpick trunks poking into the air.

After 20 minutes driving through the grove, the tractor stopped and the engine cut. I looked up and there it was, skinny and circumspect, barely noticeable except for the four branches that spun out from its base. The long fronds waved back in the wind.

View image of The residents of Tepoto are incredibly proud of their four-headed coconut tree (Credit: Credit: Andrew Evans)

“It’s the four-headed coconut tree!” Tearoha shouted like a carnival barker. I stood in awe at the oddity before us and wondered how it came to be. By now I had heard the story from nearly every human on the island, how there had been seven branches, but three had broken off in the last major typhoon. The men began to recall different storms that had flattened the forest of trees in hours, and how the old people could predict a typhoon just from watching the birds. In the past, the islanders latched themselves to coconut palms to keep from being blown away by the gale-force winds. Now they had a siren triggered automatically from hundreds of kilometres away and the stone church to protect them.

We took the long way back to the village, continuing first to the southern tip of the island. André pointed towards Napuka in the east, and standing on land instead of crouching in a boat, I could barely see it over the waves. A baby black-tipped reef shark hunted in the shallows, zipping after the schools of smaller fish.

We followed the beach around towards the pink sunset, and I caught sight of my own footprints from days before – the only footprints on that side of the island. Just like Byron had marked his disappointment on a map of the world, I had left my own impressions in the sand of Tepoto. Another tide and my trail would be erased and redrawn with the winding trails of seabirds and coconut crabs.

André stopped the tractor in front of his turquoise bungalow and leaned against a palm trunk. With a few swift chops of his machete, he hacked down fresh coconuts for all of us and handed me a whole litre of coconut water.

View image of Coconuts are the only cash crop on Tepoto and are hauled away once a month on a supply ship (Credit: Credit: Andrew Evans)

“We may not have water,” said André, “but we can always drink coconuts.”

That night, André, Severo and some of the other men of Tepoto gathered outside our pink house to drink beer and talk fishing. They spoke a mix of French, Tahitian and the local Tuamotuan language of Paumotu. I strained to fully understand their epic tales of catching bonito by the hundreds – the same bonito I had been served that day for lunch, raw, but with chopped onions and coconut milk.

“Here, a gift,” said Joseph, a fisherman who handed me a handmade lure that he used to catch bonito. The sharpened metal hook was decorated with a carved mother-of-pearl spinner and a wild pig’s tail. In return, I gave him my goggles.

This was a tiny solar-powered island without internet, cars or Starbucks. The technicians and I were the only outside influence, and I tried to make it count. During my last two days on Tepoto I taught Tuata and Tearoha how to play chess. The elementary school had a chessboard, but none of the children knew how to play. After hours of instruction, I had them play against one another. That night, Evarii challenged me to a game and we played into the evening. One by one, the Tahitian technician killed my pieces until only my tall white king remained, chased in circles by the black king and bishop.

“Checkmate,” Evarii said.

“No, wait,” Jack intervened in French. “C’est la nulle.” It was a draw. Neither of us had won. My plastic king was destined to wander the board aimlessly, and Evarii would never have the satisfaction of killing me. He went off to sulk in the last sunset I saw on Tepoto, when the sky lit up blue and green, then peach, rose and orange. Wood smoke scented the air and shooting stars lit the night. Jack played the ukulele, singing lovelorn Polynesian songs along with our hosts until well past midnight.

View image of Sunsets on Tepoto light the sky in blue, green, and then peach, rose and orange (Credit: Credit: Andrew Evans)

Napuka

The next morning, the men launched the boat into the surf, lowering it with the tractor and plopping it into the turquoise shallow at just the right moment. Severo’s in-laws came with us. From time to time, they liked to visit family on Napuka.

“You are welcome anytime,” said tavana Louana, dropping a string of polished cowrie shells around my neck.

“Yes, come stay with us again,” said Severo, adding another necklace. André and the other islanders came and added their own hand-strung necklaces. By the time I climbed into the wobbling boat, my head bowed forward with the weight of shells around my neck. Five minutes later, Tepoto was nothing more than a whisper of green on the blue ocean.

I spent three more days on Napuka, adjusting to the sudden noise and crowds of this 200-person metropolis. Severo’s mother-in-law had warned me, “On Tepoto, we don’t lock our doors, but on Napuka, we lock them.” Two hundred people were too many to trust, and unlike Tepoto, there were cars and at least three streets including the road to the airport.

View image of Fishing on Napuka with Evarii, Jack and Marama (Credit: Credit: Andrew Evans)

Whether he was assigned or volunteered, the island’s fireman became my escort on Napuka. His name was tattooed across his muscled chest – Marama – and within an hour of landing, he had me knee-deep in the lagoon while he cracked open a live clam.

“Eat it,” he said. “You need to taste how good our clams are.”

I reached into the shell and pulled at the cool, gelatinous animal. Then I plopped it in my mouth, squishing down and biting through the salty and slimy flesh.

“More. You left the best part,” Marama said. I cleaned out the shell and then slurped the juice like an oyster. Marama beamed. Was this some kind of test?

“Most foreigners would never agree to eat a raw clam like you did,” Marama said. “But this is our culture. This is how we survive out here. You showed that you respect us.”

I did respect them, but on Tepoto, I had also been eating clams for every meal – raw, pickled, cooked and curried. I never foraged on my own; to take anything from the island would be stealing, I thought. The islanders enforced their own quotas, but shared whatever they pulled from the sea with me.

Marama told me he was on the Napuka island council that regulated the gathering of clams and coconuts. When there was no other food to be had, there would always be clams, and it was his job to maintain a sustainable population of both clams and coconuts.

View image of Frangipani grows wild on Napuka; the smaller, star-shaped Tahitian gardenia is a symbol of Tahiti (Credit: Credit: Andrew Evans)

“How did you hear about Napuka?” Marama asked me, as we walked back towards town. I told him that I had read about the islands in a very old book.

“Byron?” asked Marama with a smirk.

“Yes,” I answered. “Byron came here in 1765.”

“You know,” said Marama, “the people here are not very happy with Byron. He called us ‘The Islands of Disappointment’, right?” He laughed, “I wish people knew the truth about this place. You really have to know the people to understand.”

“I know,” I said. “And now that I’ve been here, I know that Byron was wrong.”

Indeed, it seemed impossible to feel disappointed in the scene that enveloped me at that moment. The sky seemed Photoshopped with evenly-spaced clouds, and the lagoon glowed the colour of California swimming pools. Twenty metre-high coconut palms danced slowly, and I had just made a new friend who would take me fishing the next day and then swimming at his favourite beach. He would introduce me to dozens of new friends, including Maoake Tuhoe, one of the oldest men on the island, who claimed I was the first foreigner he remembers coming to Napuka since, “those Peruvians passed by in that boat.”

Upon further questioning, I discovered ‘those Peruvians’ were, in fact, a group of explorers aboard a raft led by Norwegian Thor Heyerdahl in 1947 that washed up in the Tuamotus 72 years ago.

Marama would be there on the day I left, gifting me a necklace he had strung with large, fragrant flowers and kissing me on both cheeks like a brother. And I would leave him my favourite cowboy hat, the one that kept me from getting burned in the scorching South Pacific sun. He wore it as he waved to me on the plane.

Back

It took a day of island hopping to get back to Tahiti, where I felt overwhelmed by everything: the traffic, the streetlights, the tourists and even the hot running water in my hotel bathtub. I had filled notebooks and hard drives with words and images from Napuka to Tepoto and back again, but I wanted a more professional opinion.

“The Byron story is the only recorded account we have in which the Europeans arrived, yet failed to make contact with the natives,” said Jean Kapé, who grew up on Napuka and now serves as director of Tahiti’s l’Académie Paumotu, which is dedicated to preserving the language, culture and environment of the Tuamotu Islands. I had met Kapé’s brother in Napuka, and he had connected the two of us.

Responding to Byron’s sense of disappointment, Kapé said: “If someone from somewhere else gives their opinion about a place, it’s already false, because that opinion is only based on what they know.”

Byron’s unsuccessful landing represents the ultimate missed connection – a spark of static that failed to ignite. And yet, his failure may have spared Napuka the same fate as many islands in the South Pacific.

View image of Measuring just 4 sq km, Tepoto is one of the smallest and most remote of French Polynesia's 118 islands (Credit: Credit: Andrew Evans)

“Napuka [and Tepoto] are the last places where you can witness the original vegetation of the Tuamotu islands,” Kapé said. The Paumotu language, which is only still spoken by an estimated 6,000 people, is also alive there, along with their customs – one of which is unbridled hospitality towards the rare visitors they receive from nearby islands.

“[Welcoming others] is sacred to Polynesians. It is the soul of all humanity,” Kapé said. “But too often with history, foreigners are the ones holding the pen, hence a name like ‘The Disappointment Islands.’ But even Napuka and Tepoto are just nicknames. The islands’ real names tell a much fuller story of the place you just visited.”

I cannot pretend to fully understand, or worse, attempt to convey such a beautiful and complex history

We talked for hours, Kapé and I. Over and over, he tried to explain the islands’ many Polynesian names, like Te Puka Runga, “The Tree Where the Sun Rises” (Napuka); and Te Puka Raro, “The Tree Where the Sun Sets” (Tepoto), deciphering the complex dialect and the multiple hidden meanings behind each name. It encompassed centuries of stories that stretch back to the original inhabitants and their worldview when their universe was nothing more than the two islands, the surrounding ocean and the big sun that moved overhead.

I listened carefully and took notes, but I cannot pretend to fully understand, or worse, attempt to convey such a beautiful and complex history with my own words. Rather than repeat Byron’s mistake of trying to name them from my limited understanding, I will keep silent – not from disappointment or neglect or laziness, but out of respect for this little piece of the world, unknown to so many, even in French Polynesia.

I thanked Kapé for his generous time and shook his hand. Then he gave me a lift back into the centre of Papeete, where throngs of French and American tourists dug through racks of floral print shirts and souvenir tribal tattoos.

“I forgot to ask,” Kapé said as I opened the door of his car. “On Tepoto, did they show you the four-headed coconut tree?”

Travel Journeys is a BBC Travel series exploring travellers’ inner journeys of transformation and growth as they experience the world.

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samanthasroberts · 7 years

Text

The Great Dying: Happiness Comes on Day Five

My family has come to Hawaii.

Hawaii, like an aging model, is still gorgeousjust sometimes in a fragile, wasted way.

My parents were here a long time ago; they came on their honeymoon, back in the Old World times. They bought a hotel-and-airfare package to Honolulu. They went scuba diving in the coral reefs and touched real rays and even one dolphin, they said.

Of course thats not an option anymore, but you can snorkel all you like in fiberglass reefs stocked with colorful farmed parrotfish and now and then a robot shark.

I love the parrotfishs bulgy, fat lips.

Lydia Millet

About

Lydia Millet is an American novelist and conservationist. Her third novel, My Happy Life, won the 2003 PEN Center USA Award for fiction, and she has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize as well as a Guggenheim fellow. Her newest novel for young readers, The Bodies of the Ancients, comes out in January. The Great Dying is adapted from her YA book Pills and Starships, published by Akashic.

Back then, they ate at restaurants with views of sparkling aqua-blue bays; they went to luaus and drank fancy drinks with paper umbrellas. (We still have those; some of them have my parents names printed on them, from a honeymoon party that was held for them. robert & sara, says the faded writing, hawaii, may 2068.) They took small trips to the other islands, even the one that used to be a leper colony.

These days Honolulu and most of Oahu are seawall and salty aquifers and long, long blocks of abandoned buildings.

But they wanted Hawaii anyway. They were nostalgic. So this time we came to the Big Island, where were staying in a hotel with a view of Mauna Kea. Ive seen pictures of it from way back when, white at the top and majestic. Theres never snow anymore, even at 14,000 feet, but the volcano still looms.

Its just the four of us: my mother and my father, my little brother, and me. Its the four of us here for our last week.

A week is the period the companies usually suggest, once you finalize dates. Any longer and customers can get morbid, or even, if they decide to refuse their pharma, hysterical. And then the whole thing collapses. Any shorter and theres not enough time for good-byes.

My parents arent even that old. My mother had me in her late sixties, and two years later she had Samand though theyre vigorous and healthy on a physical level, on an emotional level theyve decided theyre done.

This would be harder without the training we did at home, without the pharma regimen they have us on. Even with those tools its still intense and vibrant, and everything seems inflected with meaning. Cursed with meaning, almost. Meaning attaches itself to everyday objectstoothbrushes, swimsuits, dangly earrings. Here in the hotel suite, I look at these normal items and everything seems like it portends something.

We just got here and already were on the brink of tears at times, or at least my mother and I are. My father and Sam are trying to act stoic, though now and then I catch one of their hands or a bottom lip trembling.

Meanwhile the edges of objects glow, blur, and fade as I look at them. They all seem permeable or aliveas though the aliveness of objects is there to compensate for my parents being ready to die.

I dont think its the pharma thats doing it, either. Sam and I arent even on a full pill regimen yet. On Day Four well have the option of a powerful tranquilizing blend: Thats Good-Bye Day. They like the contract holders to have their memories intact to say good-bye, because the fifth days pharmathe last pharmacauses forgetfulness. It brings on a long-term memory loss that wipes all memories associated with trauma, so they go out happy.

Happiness comes on Day Five.

Its early afternoon. My parents and my brother have gone out for a walk, and from the balcony of our suite I can see them strolling, their light clothes flapping in the breeze off the ocean, on a trail along the high jagged bluffs.

They carry umbrellas that protect them from the sun but also hide their faces from me. They could be anyone.

The bluffs were well engineered and have been planted to look wild, in a fake way. There are scrubby bushes from the desert, South American cacti and Chinese beach roses (according to the brochure) and even, now and then, dune grasses and sand. They hide the concrete seawall beneath the artificial bluffs so that you dont have to remember where you are or whenso you can almost forget youre not in Old Hawaii. Forget, in other words, that youre living at the tiny tail end of the fire-breathing dragon of our history.

The company my parents chose is a midsize outfit that likes to boast how it hires locals. So our rep, when it came down to it, was a lady my mother had once played golf with.

My mother isnt the golf type at all, by the way. She barely knows how to play, but one time she competed in a small-golf game for charityits mostly small golf these days, unless you have huge money to throw away on travel to one of the big courses, plus water-use finesand because she had a good sense of humor, at least till recently, she was basically the comic relief, I think.

But that one day was when she first met the rep, Jean.

Jean showed up at our apartment a couple of months ago, in the hour before dinnertime when we usually hang out together and talk about our day and stuff. The four of us were drinking cocktails in the living room. Being 15, Sam doesnt drink that much yet, but my mother had offered him a junior can of wheat beer.

And there she was at the doora compact, middle-aged woman from the 10th floor, frosted hair, braided wedge heels. Id seen her in the elevator once or twice.

This is Jean, said my mother softly. Jean, these are our children, Nat and Sam.

My name is Natalie, but I go by Nat.

The woman smiled and sat down and looked at us with a gentle but still oddly businesslike expression.

Your parents thought it might be good to have me here is how she started in.

Sam looked up right away. Hed been reading off his device.

Youre service, he said flatly.

I do work with a service company, said Jean.

She didnt miss a beat and didnt seem awkward; she had a forthright attitude without being domineering.

Youre the counselor, or whatever they call them, said Sam.

Im coordinating the personal aspect of outreach, conceded Jean.

On the contract we purchased recently, put in my mother, soft-voiced. Mine and your fathers.

Sam picked up his beer and drank most of the rest of it, a flush rising on his skin.

I had been sitting at the bay window, looking out over the garden. Our apartment complex was nice, with trees and water features and little striped chipmunks, because chipmunks always poll higher than squirrels.

Anyway, I liked to drink and take in the view.

But then, without really noticing my own movement, I turned so I was facing the room, my back against the view of the trees. In the pit of my stomach was a heavy new stone. At the same time my arms and legs felt light and liquid, like the bones in them had softened.

Why didnt you tell me? was the thing I said.

Were telling you now, sweetheart, said my mother, coming to sit beside me on the ledge. She put one arm around my shoulders. Its all according to schedule. The timing is what they recommend.

They encourage the parents not to get emotive when theyre disclosing. It only makes things worse. So my mother sat there next to me, her arm on my shoulders light, keeping a kind of professional attitude. With her free hand, she shook the cubes in her glass and raised it to drink.

My father stood facing us all with his tumbler of whiskey. His face bore a kind, bemused expression, as it used to when Sam or I would cry and he had no idea how to stop it.

You can still take it back, said Sam, with a kind of hurt urgency. Please, MomDad! Take it back!

Honey, said my mother, we dont want to. Or maybe a better way to say it is that we weve lived for you two ever since the tipping point, sweetheart. Youve been whats kept us going.

The tipping point was when we couldnt do anything more to stop the planets runaway warming. There were feedback loops in the climate system, like the albedo effect and water vapor increase in the atmosphere and plankton die-off in the oceans. So even though wed stopped emitting so much carbon and methane, we couldnt stop the seas or the temperature from rising. At least for a few centuries.

Both of you are practically grown up, said my mother. And when it comes right down to it, you dont really need usnot in the day-to-day sense. You think you do, maybe. But we know deep down that you can take care of yourselves. And you will.

You cant say what were feeling, said Sam, shaking his head. Only what you are.

It helps, for peace of mind, said Jean to Sam, if you keep argumentation for later. During this encounter, this time of disclosure, weve found that what allows for peacefulness is just listening.

Fuck listening! said Sam.

He was bright redlike someone had dealt him two slaps, one on each cheek.

And really, went on Jean calmly, as though he hadnt said anything, theres no rush here. Theres plenty of time. Remember, all contracts are voidable right up until the end. So theres absolutely nothing to make you nervous.

She didnt mention what we all knew: that theres a stiff financial penalty for last-minute cancellations. She didnt need to. My parents knew a couple whod canceled just five hours before their contract was about to start, but at that point it cost like 90 percent of the full price. And they ended up buying a new contract a couple of months later. That meant less money for the survivorsa tainted legacy.

But youre doing so well, begged Sam, turning to my mother.

I felt frozen.

Youre doing really well, youve got your moods well stabilized lately, he added.

No, yeah, son, said my father. Well were not too bad off. Were not personally complaining. We feel so lucky, compared to lots of people. No question. And you knowits not any one big thing. You know? Its not a dramatic situation, theres no particular, exact catalyst here. But we feel like, for one, heywhy not quit while were still ahead? You know, leave while weve got our health. And theres still no impairment. We all saw how Mamie got after she passed 100.

Youll be all right. You have such great resilience, added my mother. Wewe think youre very strong.

Oh please, said Sam.

Try to see it from our point of view, my father said. When we were young, there were still big animals swimming all over the oceans. The rivers and the forests had all this life in them, not just the squirrels and pigeons. You could go anywhere in the worldwe drove a gas-burning car when we were young. We flew on huge airplanes. Whenever we wanted to!

My parents keep thinking, somehow, that one day well hear about how different the world used to be and for the first time well understand them.

But isnt the world always different for the kids than it was for the parents? Sure, maybe its more different now. We get it.

But this is the only world we ever knew.

For Old World people like us, you know, said my mother, weve had as much as we can take of seeing everything go away. And we dont think we can bear towhat happens if, if it keeps going how we think it will.

Of course, we hope and pray it wont, said my father staunchly, tossing back the last of his whiskey. We figure, go early, while everythingswhile theres still hope. You know.

But I knew what he wasnt saying: They couldnt stand to see our future. They couldnt stand to watch us struggle.

Its never an easy decision, put in Jean.

Not helpful, I thought.

But then, the companies put the counselors in the room partly to deflect the family members feelings. Or fears and tears, as they say.

Your mother is so tired, Sam, said my father. He was fiddling with a pile of black and green olives on a tray. The olives were stacked in a pyramid, like in a picture Id once seen of ancient cannonballs. They should have been a tipoff that this was a special occasion, so to speak, because olives arent the kind of food we get every day. We both are, if Im perfectly honest, he added.

We sat there for a while, not knowing what to say.

Eventually Jean suggested we take a walk outside, through the courtyards of the complex. Walks are popular with service companies. Low-cost momentum, I guess, and a natural mood boost.

So we prepared ourselves fresh drinks, mostly in awkward silence, and took them with us into the elevator. We gazed outside as the car descended.

The elevators in our complex are external and made of a shaded glass, so you can see the sky and then the buildings below it, and as you drop, the trees in the courtyard come up to meet you.

Down through the green canopy, down along the tree trunks. Finally we landed facing the rock gardens, the fountains and splashing waterfalls of perfectly reclaimed sewage.

What a nice evening, said my mother, and we looked up dutifully at the fading bands of red and yellow in the western sky.

One thing we do have, in the New World, is beautiful sunsets.

I think what put my parents over the edge was a trip they took a few months ago, a light-rail weekender to the place where my father grew up. It wasnt a coastal town in the strict senseit wasnt right on the beachbut it was on a river delta, maybe 20 miles from where the true coast used to be. When the first storm surges came that couldnt be stopped by seawalls, the town got an influx of coastal refugees. Wave after wave followed, though most of the people didnt stay. Back then they were migrating to places like Ogallala, with fertile land or thick forests. If you look at an old map animation, you can see the masses moving away from the coasts, inward and upward from New York and Florida, from Southern California and the dying cities of the desertLas Vegas and Phoenix, say. The animations look like storms or vast, sky-darkening flocks of birds.

Sometimes, at home, I take a mild mood softener, sit at my screen, and gaze at the animations dreamily. You can customize them to show whatever details you wantthe continent shrinking as the oceans rise plus the massive migrations. I also like to watch the building of the seawalls. You see the swamping of Cape Cod, the swallowing up of the Florida Keys. Islands all over the oceans contract to the size of pinheads, then vanish. You can zoom way out and watch the planet rotate, see the surges of ocean that followed the melting of the ice.

Theres something lovely about it, lovely like Eno or Mozart, thoughespecially without pharmait can be sad.

Anyway, my fathers hometown had been leveled by the waves of refugee camps. Nothing was left of the houses and gardens of his leafy street, the school he walked to holding his younger brothers hand, the swing sets and climbing gyms at the park where he played. All that was gonethe whole town had turned to tent cities and landfills and fields of composting toilets.

My dads baby brother died a while back, a do-it-yourself deal. He hated the service companies. So other than us, my dad has no family left.

For a while after that weekend trip, he and my mother were so quiet that sometimes we forgot they were there.

Before we left for Hawaii, my parents helped Sam and me move to a group facility for survivors who arent old enough to live alone. The two of us will go back there after the trip, to live for a few months till I turn 18.

Then, the morning we left, Sam and I picked them up to catch the boat that brought us here. That was the worst. The apartment where we had lived was bare. Their luggage stood in a neat row against the wall, small cases packed with only bedrolls, some toiletries, and a few clothes. It was a shock to see the sterile whiteness of what used to be home.

Well, said my mother, turning back to cast a glance at the empty living room as we were filing out the front door, good-bye, everything.

Sams coming up the path again toward the hotel building, so close hes almost beneath meI see the circle of his shiny white umbrella. My parents arent with him. I squint: I can still see the two of them, out at the edge of the cliff.

The oceans turning anoxic, scientists say. Its what happened 250 million years ago in the Great Dying, otherwise known as the P-T extinction eventthe biggest mass die-off in Earths history. And now its happening again. The seawaters turned more acid from the carbon its storing, so the ocean food chain has mostly collapsed. Big burps of methane are bubbling out of the water along the continental shelves.

Where there used to be corals and whales and sea lions and seahorses, now theres mostly bacteria and archaea and viruses. The odd school of mutated jellyfish. Plus the garbage vortex and the chemical streams.

But still, Mom and Dad stand at the edge of the bluff, their arms around each others waists, and look out over the faraway waves like anything could be therelike those waves might still be the glittering roof of a marvelous underwater country.

The Fiction Issue

Tales From an Uncertain Future

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Source: http://allofbeer.com/2017/11/14/the-great-dying-happiness-comes-on-day-five/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2017/11/14/the-great-dying-happiness-comes-on-day-five/

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