Back in the Saddle Again

It's nearly a year since I posted, but I'm going to be back in full swing soon.

I've spent the past two years immersed in environmental work related to coal, including stream testing, and reclamation of abandoned mine lands using a technique known as the forestry reclamation approach. Now I'm going to be putting that new knowledge and experience to work in writing.

Keep watching this spot, and others to be announced, for posts about energy technology, green jobs, and how we in the rural U.S. can learn from other countries. Plans are in the works for an environmental tour of a nation that is 100 percent energy independent, and I'll be blogging about the trip.

Stay tuned.

Funeral services to be held for Gish

Funeral services will be held at 1 p.m. Monday, November 24, for Thomas E. Gish, the longtime editor of The Mountain Eagle in Whitesburg.

Tom and Pat Gish bought The Mountain Eagle in 1956, and took control of the paper in January 1957. Over the years, they endured harassment, boycotts and a fire bombing after taking on corrupt county and city governments, and mining interests.

Tom Gish died Friday after a long illness. He suffered heart failure on Tuesday, and had been in a coma ever since. Visitation will be at the Letcher Funeral Home in Whitesburg beginning at 5 p.m. Sunday. Funeral will be the following day at Graham Memorial Presbyterian Church in Whitesburg.

In addition to his wife, he is survived by two sons, Ben Gish of Whitesburg and Ray Gish of Brooklyn, N.Y.; three daughters: Ann Gish of Virginia, Sarah Oakes of Thornton, and Dr. Katherine Gish of Bottom Fork; four grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

Crusading publisher who took on mining interests dead at 82

Tom Gish, the crusading editor and publisher of The Mountain Eagle and my first boss in the newspaper business, died today. He was 82.

Gish was Frankfort Bureau Chief for United Press International and his wife Pat was a reporter for the Lexington Leader when they bought The Mountain Eagle and moved back to Tom's native Letcher County. Leaving his pregnant wife in Central Kentucky until the baby was born, Tom took over the operations of the paper in January 1957, just in time for the worst flood in 30 years. Hundreds of homes and businesses were damaged or destroyed, and much of the paper's history was lost to the flood waters. Tom put the paper out by himself as water rushed by the foundations of the building, appealing for help for the county.

Under his leadership, The Mountain Eagle gained a reputation for taking on entrenched interests in Letcher County. Both Gishes were tireless advocates for the poor, for the environment, for education, and for ethics in public office. In the 1960s, the paper became one of the first to decry the abuses of strip mining and it was burned to the ground for its trouble in 1974. A Whitesburg police officer was convicted of procuring arson in the crime, but a local judge probated his sentence.

Over the years, reporters for the paper have been threatened, harassed, prosecuted and even beaten. When I went to work there in 1986, right out of college, Pat's advice was: "If anyone doesn't like what you've written, just smile, tell them you're sorry they feel that way and walk away." Tom's advice: "Tell them to go to hell."

He was among the members of the first state school board to be installed following the landmark KentuckyEducation Reform Act of 1990, and spent many days traveling to Frankfort and around Kentucky, helping to implement the reforms.

Gish has been in ill health for years, and suffered heart failure Tuesday night. He had been in a coma ever since.

His leadership will be missed.

A Spectator Crime

Sometimes a community buries a murder so deep that the people who live there forget what really happened, or even that anything happened at all.

Like Leonard Wood’s mutilated body, the facts surrounding his murder are buried so deeply that few people in Letcher County, Kentucky, know the atrocity took place. Even his name is not sure, with some reports calling him Leonard Wood and some calling him Leonard Woods. But Wood’s murder was so outrageous and his subsequent mutilation so horrendous that it made national news in a time when there was no television and precious little radio.

To find out more about Leonard Wood's murder, read my post on today's In Cold Blog.

Effects of Baze Case beginning to show

The effects of the Supreme Court decision to hear the case of Kentucky murderer Ralph Baze are beginning to show. For more information, read my post today on In Cold Blog.

When is an apology not an apology?

When it comes from Sam Adams The Beer. The Boston Beer Company, maker of Samuel Adams Beer, has issued a statement regarding its cease and desist letter to the Portland, Ore., D.J.s who bought the domain names samadamsformayor.com and mayorsamadams.com. Unfortunately for The Beer, there really is a candidate for mayor of Portland named Sam Adams, and the D.J.s bought the names with the promise of giving them to Sam Adams The Candidate if he would appear on their show.

Those two web sites have been temporarily pulled because of the legal action. Not much word yet on what other Sam Adamses are doing about it. Sam Adams The Author (me) is still blissfully using his own name

The statement issued later by Sam Adams The Beer actually uses the words "for that we apologize" in regard to the incident involving Sam Adams The Candidate, but that's about as far as the mea culpa goes. In fact, the apology isn't for threatening to sue, or even for saying the company was willing to "discuss" allowing Sam Adams The Candidate to use his name "probably for the length of time the election is being held." No, Sam Adams The Beer apologized for not researching the matter more fully before sending the letter.

In other words, Sam Adams The Beer is sorry its bullying tactics blew up in its face.

No one should really be surprised by a nonapology from the Boston Beer Company. President Jim Koch has been issueing pseudo sorries for quite a while. In 2002, Koch apologized for appearing on a radio show during which couples had sex in public places. The fact that one couple ... well ... coupled in Saint Patrick's Cathedral in New York caused a major uproar. Koch claimed he didn't intend to be part of a program that "crossed the line." He neglected to note that his company sponsored the event, and it was his second year to provide the commentary. According to Fortune magazine, each couple received a list of sites to be used for sex, with Saint Patricks listed at 25 points.

A beer by any other name

Sam Adams has a problem. Oh, not me -- at least not yet. I mean the other Sam Adams. One of the other Sam Adamses. Actually two of the other Sam Adamses.

I happen to live in Kentucky. But Sam Adams who lives in Portland, Oregon, is running for mayor, and in doing so he's drawn the unwanted attention of a lawyer working for a third Sam Adams -- namely Sam Adams The Beer.

Mark Mason and Dave Anderson, hosts of a KEX-Radio show bought two web domains -- http://www.samadamsformayor.com/ and http://www.mayorsamadams.com/, and Sam Adams The Beer has had its lawyer send a nasty letter to Mason and Anderson demanding that they surrender the domains. The problem is, Sam Adams The Beer has been using the trademark since 1984 while Sam Adams The Candidate has been using his own name since 1963. Coincidentally, Sam Adams The Author (me) has also been using the name since 1963. On learning this, Sam Adams The Beer's attorney has hinted that she might allow Sam Adams The Candidate to go on using his own name as his web address until the election, but not after that.

So far, I haven't gotten a letter demanding that I surrender http://www.samadams.org/ or http://www.samadamsbooks.blogspot.com/. I'm not sure whether Sam Adams The Rocky Mountain News Columnist, Sam Adams The Philadelphia City Paper Film Critic, Sam Adams The NFL Tackle, or Sam Adams The KEZI Sports Anchor have had any contact from Sam Adams The Beer, but I'm sure we're all waiting breathlessly.

Some people are calling for a boycott of Sam Adams The Beer, but since Sam Adams The Beer is demanding that Sam Adams The Candidate give them his web addresses, I would suggest he at least give them something.

How about the finger?

Hoaxilla

Back in May, I and about a thousand others reported on the giant pig that 11-year-old Jamison Stone killed in Alabama. It weighed in at 1,051 pounds, was photographed by a newspaper and was reportedly a wild boar.

The first reaction by everyone was that it was a hoax. Of course that was also the first reaction to Hogzilla, a giant hog killed in Georgia, but when investigators dug up the carcass they discovered it was indeed an outlandishly oversize hog. It wasn't quite as big as first claimed, but it was indeed humongous.

Turns out that the Alabama pig really was as big as claimed, but that's where the truth in the story ended. Field & Stream, the venerable hunting and fishing magazine, reports that the 11-year-old really did kill the pig, but there were several key facts that the "hunting guide" failed to tell anyone. Number one, the hog was killed on a fenced hunting preserve, and number two, it was so tame its previous owner had named it. The owner of the preserve bought Fred the pig from a farm four days before the hunt, invited the local newspaper to tag along, and took the little boy and his father straight to the giant pig. In other words, the "hunt" was roughly akin to what farm boys experience every November at hog-killin' time. They walk out to the hog lot, pull out the .22 and start the process of converting pig to pork.

Now the boy and his dad apparently didn't know the pig was a farm animal when they hunted it, but they certainly knew it was a game preserve because it charged by the pound for pigs killed.

This once again points out the unsavory practice of canned hunts, in which animals are confined on fenced farms and "hunters" pay big bucks to go out and take target practice on tame animals. The most notorious of these in recent memory was the case of Troy Gentry of the country music group Montgomery-Gentry, who pleaded guilty to shooting a tame bear with a bow and arrow, and then tagging it as though he had killed it in the wild. Presumably Gentry, the pretty-boy half of the music duo, was trying to improve his redneck credentials by pretending to be a brave hunter who tracked down a dangerous bear in the wilderness with only his trusty bow. Too bad the wilderness in this case was a three-acre woodlot surrounded by an electric fence, and the bear had the suspicously cuddly name of "Cubby."

(You're a real macho man, Troy. Maybe you should dump Eddie Montgomery and join The Village People. )

While Gentry's action was illegal, what the Alabama game farm did was perfectly legal. However, it was about at unethical as anything I can think of. Canned hunts not only take away the dignity of the animals, they damage the reputations of all hunters. The owner of the preserve should have to pay not only cruelty to animals, but cruelty to that little boy for the ridicule he's had to suffer for his prize pig.

As a side note, Field & Stream has a quiz this month to see whether you can tell the difference between a wild boar and a farm pig. If you plan to hunt in Alabama, it might come in handy.

Monster stalks the unfriendly skies

Somewhere in the bowels of the U.S. Department for Homeland Security, a mad scientist is laughing maniacally as his creation rises from its slab. Its boots clump-clump across the floor and it roars its displeasure at the lightning bolt called September 11 that breathed life into its dead body. Small children flee from its withering glare. Women scream and men tremble with fear. The monster sees, and is satisfied.


Dr. Frankenstein is alive and well, and his monster is terrorizing airline passengers everywhere. Only the monster that the Frankensteins in government created isn't wearing its signature black t-shirt and suit coat: she's wearing a flight attendant's uniform.

Since Congress passed new laws making it a crime to interfere with a flight crew, stories just keep cropping up about grouchy flight attendants who have decided that annoying passengers are a threat to national security. More and more, the targets of the flight attendants seem to be children. A three year old and her family were kicked off an AirTran flight in South Florida earlier this year. Last year, a woman was removed from her flight for breast-feeding her infant. In 2003, a Northwest Airlines flight attendant finally pleaded guilty to assault after spiking the drink of an unruly 19-month-old with a prescription depressant.

Last week, an Express Jet Airlines flight attendant kicked Kate Penland and her 19-month-old son Garren off a plane in Houston, telling the pilot that the mother threatened her. The mother and other passengers say there was no threat; the flight attendant was simply annoyed because the child kept talking while she did her pre-flight safety instructions. After Penland refused to use "baby Benadryl" to quiet the child, the flight attendant invented the threat and had the pilot return to the gate to eject the mother and her son.

Sara Nelson, a spokeswoman for the Association of Flight Attendants, was interviewed about the situation on CNN Friday morning, but apparently failed to grasp the concept that this was a child. Nelson rambled on about the government's failure to provide security training to flight attendants, who she described as our "first line of defense" against terrorism.

Personally, I think Nelson is being unfair to the U.S. government. Our nation's flight attendants are doing a bang-up job at defending us, and we should be proud of their successes. Thanks to the billions of tax dollars spent and the coordinated efforts of brave stewardi like those mentioned above, we have absolutely nothing to fear from babies.

Profiled in Owensboro, Ky., newspaper

Suzi Bartholomy plans to feature Precious Blood in her column in The Owensboro Messenger-Inquirer tomorrow. (The paper costs a dollar per day to view on line, so be prepared if you attempt to read the column. The Google link to Suzi's name is the best I could do because of the accessibility of the web site.)

Suzi is an editorial assistant, columnist and avid reader, whose husband, a literature professor, runs a popular poetry reading series. Her regular column and her News and Notes column are widely read in Owensboro and the surrounding area. I worked with her when I was assistant city editor at the M-I.

Perhaps Kentucky, better than any other place, proves the adage, "East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet." And perhaps no towns in the state but Whitesburg, where the crime detailed in Precious Blood occurred, and Owensboro are more illustrative of that fact. Whitesburg is in the far southeastern reaches of Kentucky, and Owensboro is in the northwest. Whitesburg lives and dies by coal, but corn is coin of the realm in Owensboro. Whereas Whitesburg is a mountain town, Owensboro is a river port. And while Whitesburg has a mere 1,600 residents, Owensboro is the third largest city in the state with a population of 55,000 and a metro population of 111,000. Despite those differences, Owensboro residents should identify with the folks in Whitesburg.

Letcher County, where Whitesburg is located, is on the Virginia border, but Pike County residents like to point out that their county, not Letcher County, is the eastern-most in the state. Owensboro is in the western third of the state, on the Indiana border, but people in Paducah scoff at the idea that Owensboro is western Kentucky. But more than anything, the two are similar in the closeness of their residents. Owensboro is a small town masquerading as a city. Its longtime residents are every bit as intimate at those in Whitesburg. I hope Owensboro residents enjoy Precious Blood, and find some common ground with their neighbors 300 miles to the east.

Back in action

With a new baby and two crashed computers, I've been limping along on the Internet lately. One of my machines (my older, slower one) is back up and running now, so I should be posting more again.

For those of you who may have missed the earlier post, In Cold Blog is in full swing now. That blog is a joint effort by 30 true-crime authors, police officers, prosecutors, crime victims, and editors. It is the brain child of Corey Mitchell, author of Strangler, Evil Eyes, Hollywood Death Scenes and others. I've kept up with my once-a-month duties on that blog. You can find my latest post updating the case I wrote about in Precious Blood at that site.

Judge releases Genarlow Wilson

A judge has overturned the sentence of Genarlow Wilson, a 17-year-old convicted of aggravated child molestation for having sex with a 15-year-old classmate.

Wilson, an honor student and football star, was sentenced to 10 years in prison and a lifetime of being registered as a sex offender. His case had become a rallying point for people who believe he was wrongly convicted. A Monroe County, Ga., judge today (Monday) reduced that sentence to 12 months -- time Wilson has already served. He also voided the requirement that Wilson register as a sex offender.

The judge's ruling basically mirrors a Georgia state law passed earlier this year in response to Wilson's case. The legislature approved the law because of the outcry over Wilson's sentence, but did not make it retroactive.

Wilson, now 21, was one of six high school boys who rented a motel room, stocked it with liquor and marijuana, and invited female classmates to join them for a New Years party. The party came to light after a 17-year-old girl awoke the next morning naked except for socks. She called her mother saying she could remember nothing about the night before and thought she had been raped.

When police investigated, they found the motel room littered with condoms and a videotape showing the 17-year-old girl having sex with several of the boys, including Wilson, and a 15-year-old girl performing oral sex on Wilson and some of the others. The 15-year-old said she did not drink or smoke pot, and performed the acts willingly. All of the boys except Wilson pleaded guilty. Wilson stood trial, was convicted and received a mandatory 10-year sentence.

UPDATE 6/12/07 8:20 a.m.
Attorney General appeals; Wilson still in prison

Georgia Attorney General Thurbert Baker has appealed the judge's decision to release Wilson. Rather than being released, Wilson remains in jail pending the appeal. Wilson has turned down an alternative plea bargain offered by Baker because it would require him to plead guilty to a felony. Though the proposed plea would remove the charge from his record and take him off the sex offender list once a post-release rehabilitation program was completed, it would also subject him to a 15-year sentence if he was found to have violated the conditions of his early release.

Wheelchair off to the races

How fast can a wheelchair go? It depends on whether it's being pushed by an 18-wheeler.

Ben Carpenter, a 21-year-old man with muscular dystrophy, was crossing the street in Paw Paw, Mich., when the light turned green and a semi pulled slowly away from the stop line. The driver didn't see Carpenter, who was apparently so close to the truck that he was hidden behind the high hood.

The handles of the chair got caught in the truck's grill, and Carpenter was off to the races. The truck drove two miles down a two-lane highway before it turned into the parking lot of the trucking company, and a police officer stopped the driver. Carpenter wasn't hurt, but his wheelchair was a little worse for wear. It seems wheelchairs really weren't designed to hit 50 miles per hour on asphalt.

Book signings were fun, successful

I'd like to thank the folks at Waldenbooks in Ashland, Ky., and Borders Books and Music in Huntington, W.Va., for making Saturday such a great day. I'm including employees and the people who stopped to buy Precious Blood or just to chat. I hope and be back in the tri-state area soon.

While I was in Ashland, my old friends and fellow writers G. Sam Piatt and George Wolfford stopped by. The three of us were reporters together at The Daily Independent, but I haven't seen much of them lately. That's George Sam, Sam and George in the picture at the right. I saw a lot of old friends from my days in Ashland, and I made some new friends while I was there.

Paul at Waldenbooks has invited me back again, and the people who work at Borders were super, super nice. Both stores have signed copies of my book in stock, as does the Barnes & Noble in Lexington, Ky., where I signed books on May 18.

I also had the pleasure of meeting an 11-year-old New Yorker who has written his first book and is looking for a publisher, and a young man who has written a book of poetry to help him get through the death of his mother. It's good to see kids and teens who are interested in writing, and actually write without being told to by their teachers.

True crime has a new home on the web

I wrote last week that our new true crime blog was about to launch. I'm happy to report that the launch was successful.

Last Friday (June 1) marked the first day for In Cold Blog, a blog devoted specifically to true crime. I had the honor of being the first to blog.

The new blog features 30 true crime experts. The lineup includes 22 true crime authors and eight others., including a police officer, a prosecutor, crime victims, forensic artists, editors, and television and Internet reporters. Each blogger will be featured one day a month, but may also post at other times.

In Cold Blog is the brainchild of best-selling true crime author Corey Mitchell, who recruited the other bloggers to join him in the venture. Bloggers will write about cold cases, current crimes, and other subjects related to true crime. Readers are welcome to comment, and we'll try our best to answer.

The complete roster of bloggers is as follows:

Sam Adams, author of Precious Blood

Pat Brown, criminal profiler & author of Killing for Sport

Andrea Campbell, forensic artist and aspiring true crime author

Kathryn Casey, author of Die My Love, The Rapist’s Wife, A Warrant to Kill, She Wanted it AllCarol Anne Davis, author of Sadistic Killers, Women Who Kill, Couples Who Kill, Children Who Kill

John Ditmars, Travis County Sheriffs’ Deputy and Senior Corrections officer and aspiring true crime author of The Candy Man

Joseph Foy, witness who put serial killer Coral Watts behind bars for life

Ron Franscell, author of Fall

Michaela Hamilton, Executive Editor of Kensington True Crime

Steve Huff, true crime blogger

Laura James, Editor of CLEWS Historic True Crime Blog

Aphrodite Jones, author of The FBI Killer, Cruel Sacrifice, A Perfect Husband, Red Zone, All She Wanted and more

Andy Kahan, Director of the Crime Victims Assistance of the Mayor’s Office of Houston and leading voice against murderabilia

Joyce King, author of Hate Crime, Forgotten Hurricane, Growing Up Southern: White Men I Met Along the Way

Paul LaRosa, author of Tacoma Confidential & Nightmare in Napa and producer of CBS' 48 Hours

Gary Lavergne, author of A Sniper in the Tower, Bad Boy from Rosebud, Worse Than Death, Lives of Quiet Desperation

David Lohr, featured true crime writer for CourtTV’s Crime Library

Steven Long, author of Out of Control, Every Woman’s Nightmare, Death Without Dignity

Dennis McDougal, author of Blood Cold, Angel of Darkness, In the Best of Families, Mother’s Day, The Yosemite Murders and more

Corey Mitchell, author of Strangler, Evil Eyes, Murdered Innocents, Dead and Buried, Hollywood Death Scenes + more ***Editor of In Cold Blog***

Gregg Olsen, author of Starvation Heights, Cruel Deception, Mockingbird, If Loving You is Wrong, Bitter Almonds and many more

Donna Pendergast, Michigan Assistant Attorney General

M. William Phelps, author of Murder in the Heartland, Every Move You Make, Lethal Guardian, Sleep in Heavenly Peace, Perfect Poison

Dr. Katherine Ramsland, author of The Science of Cold Case Files, Inside the Minds of Serial Killers, Inside the Minds of Mass Murderers, The Human Predator, The C.S.I. Effect and many more

Simon Read, Author of In the Dark, On the House, The Killing Skies

Fred Rosen, author of Lobster Boy, Body Dump, Needle Work, Did They Really Do It?, The Historical Atlas of American Crime and many more

Harriett & John Semander, mother and brother of Elena Semander, a victim of serial killer Coral Watts (Harriett was instrumental in keeping Watts from being released from a Texas prison. John is a freelance writer and film producer living in Los Angeles)

Suzy Spencer, author of Wages of Sin, The Fortune Hunter, Wasted, Breaking Point

Mike "Necrolagnia" Stinski, Drummer/lyricist for death metal band Divine Pustulence and hardcore true crime fan

Carlton Stowers, author of Open Secrets, Innocence Lost, Scream at the Sky, Sins of the Son, Careless Whispers and many more.

True crime blog starts June 1

A few weeks ago I wrote that I was working on another project, and that I would have an announcement soon. Here it is.

Tomorrow, June 1, I'll be the first to post on a new true-crime blog called In Cold Blog. The blog is the brainchild of best-selling author Cory Mitchell. He's invited me and 28 other true-crime authors and experts to join him in the effort.

This should be a big deal for fans of true crime. To read the blog, just go to www.incoldblogger.blogspot.com. You'll find nothing more than an an announcement there today, but the blogging starts tomorrow.

I hope you enjoy it.

Move over, Hogzilla

Hogzilla, an eight-foot, 800-pound wild hog killed in Georgia, is no longer the biggest beast on the block.

An 11-year-old Alabama boy has killed its granddaddy.

The Associated Press is reporting that Jamison Stone of Pickensville, Ala., killed a hog weighing 1,051 pounds. This isn't some farmer's overweight Poland White. This was a wild boar with five-inch tusks. The boy, his father, and two guides found the dinosaur-sized pig while hunting in eastern Alabama. Stone shot it eight times with a .50-caliber revolver before the hog finally gave up the ghost.

So what do you do with a half-ton hog? Eat it, of course. And how do you do that? One sausage patty at a time. The Stone family is having the hog ground up at a meat packing plant -- all except the head, that is. They're having a taxidermist mount that. No word yet on where they'll find a wall big enough to hang it.

Newspaper features story on Precious Blood

The Independent of Ashland, Ky., has a feature story about PRECIOUS BLOOD this weekend. The story is written by Lee Ward, Lifestyles editor at the paper.

I'll be in town for a signing June 2, and Lee wrote the story in advance of that appearance. Thanks, Lee.

I worked at The Independent, known by staffers at the ADI, in the 1990s. It'll be strange to be in the old hometown. I haven't been there in about 10 years and most of the people I knew at the paper have moved on. I hope I get to visit with some of the ones that are still in the area anyway.

Interview with the Santa man

I had a very pleasant interview this morning with Jack Pattie on WVLK-AM 590 in Lexington, Ky., about PRECIOUS BLOOD. Jack's a great guy and a fantastic interviewer.

I'll be at Barnes & Noble at Hamburg Pavilion from 5 to 7 tonight to sign copies and meet with readers.

New link added

I've added a link on the right to a schedule of author events. Clicking will take you to samadams.org, but naming it as I have might make it easier to find.

The next events are on May 18 in Lexington, Ky., and on June 2 in Ashland, Ky., and Huntington, W.Va. You can click the link for more information.