Greg Mitchell's Blog, page 129
February 19, 2014
Search for Body Today--Meanwhile, Some Free Pizza
Will Bunch at Philly.com and many others have posted a copy of the letter sent by the Chevron Community Outreach Team to Bobtown residents, assuring them Chevron will strive for "incident-free operations" and enclosing a certificate for free pizza and a 2-liter soda from Bobtown Pizza. Meanwhile today, well-control experts at the site will attempt to remove a charred crane near a well that burned out of control for five days last week before they begin capping two wells. And so now the search for a worker missing since the explosion can begin in earnest, as the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports:
Removing the crane may also allow investigators a chance to get the best view yet of an area where they believe they may find the body of a contractor who was working on the well Feb. 11 when it exploded into roaring flames.--Barbara Bedway
The contractor, who was reported missing immediately after the fire, was identified Tuesday by his family as Ian McKee, 27, originally of Warren. His identify was first reported by The Times Observer of Warren County after it covered a vigil family and friends organized for Mr. McKee. A friend told the paper he was most recently living in Morgantown, W.Va.
Mr. McKee and 19 co-workers -- who were preparing to put in piping to bring the well into production -- were attending a safety meeting, standing near the wells at 6:45 a.m. on Feb. 11, when something apparently went wrong with the well and it exploded. A second employee suffered minor injuries.
Feeling Spacey
Rep. Frank Underwood meets Jon Stewart. Did he "kill"?
February 18, 2014
Nun Gets 35 Months in Prison
I've covered this case of the peace activists who broke into part of the Oak Ridge nuclear facility in the past and you can catch up here, including history and commentary from William O'Rourke. Sister Megan Rice, the elderly nun, was sentenced to nearly three years in the pen today and her two comrades nearly twice that. No need to point out the sentences handed down to criminals ranging from mass murdering soldiers in Iraq to Wall Street crooks.
Mavis Gallant Dies at 91
Let's take a moment and say good-bye to the incomparable short story writer Mavis Gallant, who died in Paris at age 91. Her postwar Paris was not the romantic landscape of so many American writers, but the haunted gathering place of survivors of mid-twentieth-century Europe's catastrophes--displaced persons, prisoners of war, impoverished ex-pats. "There was also a joint past that lay all around us in heaps or charred stone," she wrote in her short story, "An Alien Flower." The streets "still smelled of terror and ashes, particularly after rain. Every stone still held down a ghost, or a frozen life, or a dreadful secret."
The Globe and Mail of her native Canada (she emigrated to Paris in 1950) well describes her particular gifts:
Ms. Gallant had a journalist’s nose, a cinematographer’s eye and a novelist’s imagination. She combined her technical skills and sensory perceptions in the shrewdly observed and multi-layered short story, a form she made her own. A specialist in writing about outsiders trying to insinuate themselves into alien situations and cultures, her narratives move in waves of dialogue, observation and lashing tension. Reading her stories gives one a sense of a clock ticking, a door creaking open, or of an emotional wound about to be inflicted.Seek out her Collected Stories, and be prepared for a sensory and emotional immersion. My favorite has remained "In the Tunnel," with its enigmatic closing lines: "some summer or other would always be walking on her grave." -- Barbara Bedway
From Kiev
Clashes cost at least 13 lives today in renewed protests. Here's amazing livestream still ongoing.
Robin Hood Rides Again!
Fab new video from the UK where, as you may have heard, there has been much debate for some time over a proposed "Robin Hood" tax to benefit the jobless and fight climate change and more. This vid, a newscast set in 2024, looks back at the positive effects of the tax, supposedly enacted in 2014. It stars the great Bill Nighy (who has done at least one earlier video on this), plus Andrew Lincoln of "The Walking Dead" and a "Harry Potter" star and more. Read more here.
Devo Loses Another
Bob Casale of the original Devo has died at just 62. Report here by brother Gerald, a Devo founder. Drummer died not long ago. Classic on Merv Griffin show...
Poisoned Penn
Supposedly great doc on PBS tonight on the tragic destruction of one of the world's great structures, the old Penn Station in New York. Replaced by a horror but now plans for nicer replacement. The original at left. Reynolds Wrapped (Again)
Perhaps you have long forgotten about the notorious former Illinois congressman Melvin Reynolds, who got the boot back in the 1990s after facing 12 statutory rape charges, went to prison and then faced corruption charges as well. Now he's been arrested, in Zimbadwe of all places, and charged with pornography offenses. Something about filming "models" in his hotel room. Wild story.
This is the latest of several legal problems for Reynolds, an Illinois Democrat, who once was a Rhodes scholar. Reynolds resigned from his congressional seat in 1995 after he was convicted of 12 counts of statutory rape, obstruction of justice and solicitation of child pornography. While in prison he was also convicted of bank and campaign fraud. He was in jail until his sentence was commuted by President Bill Clinton in Jan. 2001.
