Personal

Wednesday, October 30, 2013: Mt. Pleasant, NY, USA Eric Pearson took three lunging steps backwards, his stomach still clenched tight, threatening more dry heaves if he didn’t find some fresh air in the next 30 seconds. Clear of the puddle of blood, gore and half-digested sliders, he turned and stepped back out of the door he’d entered through, gasping for air to clear his nostrils and lungs. There was a foul stench in the air that reminded him of his time in Iraq, bringing back flashes of memories he’d spent years trying to bury. PFC David Johnson’s torso, separated from…

Thursday, October 31, 2013: Bronx, NY, USA Liberty Sou was what the kids in her neighborhood referred to as “the crazy cat lady.” And, oddly enough, they were actually right. An up and coming folk singer at the turn of the century, she’d become politically active during the pivotal Presidential election of 2004 and had quickly worked her way on to the Department of Homeland Security’s Domestic Terrorism watch list. She spoke out against the President, harshly, at each of her concerts, not an unusual thing in those days, but it was a random quote in a Rolling Stone interview…

Thursday, October 31, 2013: Mt. Pleasant, NY, USA The Mayor of Mt. Pleasant, NY, Jacob Harrison, could trace his family’s lineage back to the original Wampanoag tribes of Massachusetts Bay, all the way to within one generation of Chief Metacom and the vicious slaughter of his people by the immigrant Puritans. Looking around at the gathering of various levels of law enforcement – local, state and federal – that had invaded his sleepy little town, their pale white faces reflecting the morning sun, he felt a fleeting wave of revulsion at his place in the world. As if he’d somehow…