October 25, 2008

  • Suicide on Rise - Baby Boomers


    Teen suicide gets plenty of airtime, but a new US study finds
    that middle-aged whites are emerging as a high-risk group.
    Could this be due to the
    recession?

    Before 1999, white middle-aged men were the least likely to
    kill themselves. However, for the period from 1999 to 2005,
    the rate for African-Americans, Asian-Americans and Native
    Americans declined or stayed stable while middle-aged whites
    experienced a significant increase in suicides.

    Researcher Holly Wilcox says, "Adolescent, young adult and
    elderly populations are on our radar, because completed
    suicides have traditionally been higher in elderly white men
    and because of high suicide attempt rates and potential
    years of life lost in young people. We have some school-
    based and primary care prevention efforts in place to
    carefully monitor both ends of the age spectrum. I don't
    usually worry about the middle-aged group. It's alarming to
    me."

    Despite the fact that labor unions have become powerless
    and both middle class and
    manufacturing jobs have fled overseas, the
    government insisted everything was fine economically until
    now—when it can no longer deny we have problems. But the
    folks being affected by these problems
    sure knew
    it
    —and tragically, some of them may have given up trying.

  • If you could set a future post for after your death, what would it say?

    I would say "see I told you I was sick " -

       

    I just answered this Featured Question; you can answer it too!

October 19, 2008

  • Hauntings


    A Room with a BOO

    The Martha Washington Inn, in Abingdon, Virginia, hosts a number
    of ghosts left over from the Civil War.  Built in 1832 by Congressman
    General Francis Preston, the house passed into the hands of the Methodist
    Church upon his death two years later.  The church then founded the
    Martha Washington College for young ladies on its premises.  

    When the war reached their doorsteps in the mid 1860s, the college
    doubled as a hospital for the war wounded.  One soldier, John Stoves,
    had been badly wounded and lay dying in what was to become room 403. 
    Beth, a student of the college, tended to him and fell in love.  As
    he passed from this life, she played the violin to ease his pain. 
    Beth herself died a few weeks afterwards from complications of typhoid
    fever.  Her music can now be heard faintly caressing the night, playing
    to her dead lover and sometimes accompanying her solitary visits to the
    room.

    A phantom horse waits for his master outside the front steps, a Union
    soldier that was shot in front of the house in 1864.  On moonless
    nights, the horse has been seen roaming the grounds searching for his owner
    and awaiting the call to ride home.

    The basement holds the spirits of black slaves, they were kept in
    an underground chamber and some were buried within its stone walls.

    Before being killed by enemy soldiers, a young confederate entered
    the house and ran up the stairs to warn of encroaching Union troops. 
    Shot upstairs, his blood still stains the floorboards outside the Governor’s
    Room.  A bellhop, who’s been with the establishment for over 30 years,
    tells that carpets that lay over the area develop holes over the spot where
    the soldier lay dying.  Cold spots, apparitions and self-turning doorknobs
    have also been reported.

    My favorite ghost is still looking for half of his head.  Numerous
    accounts of a soldier hobbling with help from a crutch and leaving a trail
    of mud in his wake have been reported from a hallway of the Inn. 
    Long past medical help, there is only speculation why he is here at the
    old hospital, a ball leaving only a hideous mangle of bone and sparse flesh
    had split his head.  Perhaps he’s trying to turn off the damn violin…


    by

October 18, 2008

October 12, 2008

October 11, 2008

  • This very famous, historical landmark
    which remains a prideful part of Texas history, is said to be truly haunted. 
    Not a suprise, due to what has conspiring here in 1836.  The Alamo
    was orginally a small chapel built by Franciscan monks here in 1718. 
    Later it was expanded as a mission and a fortress, used by Texas as a stronghold
    against the mexicans over land rights.  In March, 1836, the president
    of Mexico General Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana and 4000 troops laid siege
    to the Alamo.  The 11-day battle resulted in the deaths of most of
    the 188 defenders of the Alamo.  The Loses for the Mexicans were over
    1600.  General Lopez de Santa Ana ordered the bodies of the slain
    Texans dumped in a large grave and the Alamo torn to the ground. 
    But when the men started tearing down the walls, ghostly hands protruded
    to stop them and they fled in fear.   The Alamo has not forgoten
    the cries of those that perished on that day.  Today the Alamo still
    stands in the heart of San Antonio.  Tourists staying in a nearby
    hotel have reported seing grotesque apparitions coming from the wall of
    the old Alamo.  There are also other reports of a ghost on top of
    the Alamo, walking back and forth trying to find an escape.  Other
    reports of screaming and yelling coming from the Alamo after hours are
    also heard.  I feel that most of the hauntings are actually residual
    hauntings, meaning that they are actually playbacks of past events somehow
    traped within time.

October 10, 2008

  • White House is Haunted

    It is not well known that Abraham Lincoln was very interested
    in 


    parapsychology and seances in his later years. Another person in
    the White 


    House was fond of seances as well, Eleanor Roosevelt. She has reported
    to 


    have become friends with Abraham Lincoln through her many seances
    over the 


    years.

         Harry Truman once wrote about the maids
    in the White House were very 


    disturbed at seeing what they thought was Lincoln's ghost. On one
    occasion 


    Truman was trying to work, but was repeatedly disturbed by constant
    knocking 


    at his office door. He commented to a friend "I think it must have
    been 


    Lincoln's ghost walking down the hall."

         When a reporter asked Roslyn Carter about
    the Lincoln ghost, she refused 


    to comment. But, when Jacqueline Kennedy was asked she stated she
    felt 


    Lincoln's presence many times, and "took great comfort in it".

          Lincoln's son Willie has also been
    seen in the Grant and Taft 


    administrations. He died in the White House when Lincoln was President.

          Many speculate that Lincoln's spirit
    stays on in the White House 


    because of the trauma he indured while in office. Others feel Lincoln
    appears 


    in times of crisis in America.

October 9, 2008

  • The ice shelves in Canada have lost a huge amount of ice
    this year—ice which had been in place for thousands of
    years. Now almost one-fourth of it is gone. BBC News quotes
    researcher Derek Mueller as saying, "These changes are
    irreversible under the present climate."

    Northern Greenland was so far north in the Arctic that
    scientists thought it might not experience global warming, but
    now satellites show a giant crack—7 miles long and half a mile
    wide in a glacier there that seems to be spreading. Also, an
    11-square-mile chunk has fallen off another large glacier in
    the area. This could raise the sea level,
    drowning
    the country. It could also be dangerous
    in other
    ways
    .

    In Yahoo News, Seth Borenstein quotes researcher Waleed
    Abdalati as saying, "[The crack] could go back for miles and
    miles and there's no real mechanism to stop it."

    As the weather changes, birds are moving north. A variety of
    bird
    species
    are extending their breeding ranges to the north, a
    pattern that adds to concerns about climate change. We may
    soon not hear the birdsongs we're so familiar with.

    When researchers studied 83 species of birds that have
    traditionally bred in New York State and compared their data
    with data collected in the early 1980s, they discovered that
    many species have moved North—some by almost 40 miles.

    Researcher Benjamin Zuckerberg says, "What you begin to
    see is a systematic pattern of these species moving
    northward as we would predict with regional warming."

    Ecologist William Porter says, "There are a wide spectrum of
    changes that are occurring and those changes are occurring
    in a relatively short amount of time. We’re not talking
    centuries, we’re talking decades…Whether [these changes]
    are good or bad, whether they should be addressed, whether
    we should adapt to them, whether we should try to mitigate
    some of this, those are questions that really, rightfully,
    belong in the political arena."