Trick-or-Treat (Not)

This is what the school website looked for much of the incident.

On Monday November 4th, Lynn called me at 12:09 p.m. while I was at the office. She informed me that she and Richard were safe and no longer on campus but something weird was going on. She had arrived to pick him up and was going to meet him at the Student Center.

She parked the car nearby and as she walked toward the building, a loud siren started to sound and there was an announcement to get inside immediately and stay away from windows. Lynn retreated to her nearby car just as Richard arrived. He hopped in and they got out of there. She called me to let me know they were safe so I wouldn't worry if I heard/saw anything on the news. But she had no idea what was going on.

My initial thought was that someone screwed up and a drill had inadvertently gone live. However, when I went to the school website, it was gone and had been replaced by a stark white screen with blood red letter screaming "Campus Emergency" (see picture above).

The whole thing lasted about three (3) hours. The information didn't change much for essentially the first hour and half. Something about a suspicious person on campus that looked to be carrying a sword and may have a gun.  The next update indicated that a suspect had been "contained" in a dormitory, James Hall. (see map above),  For a while, there was the implication that there might be hostages.

The police were reported to be onsite only they looked more like the military (see pictures above). Ironically, an active shooter training workshop was being conducted a few miles away.

After a couple hours, a number of students got bored and started leaving the buildings. Finally, it was announced that three (3) people of "student-age" were in custody.  Later, it was announced that the suspicious person was actually a student returning from a weekend at another campus.  He was still dressed in his Halloween costume (a ninja fighter) and had gone to his dorm to drop off his stuff and change clothes. For the first hour or so, he was unaware that he was the center of attention.  They eventually charged him with breach of peace.

The suspicious person taking elevator to his dorm room.

The next day, the university released security pictures of the student.  They were quickly able to pinpoint point his location because of his security swipe card needed to enter the building.  The Huffington Post had a pretty good summary (but inaccurately indicated a BB gun was present).

As you can see from the picture, the student is wearing a hoodie. What may not be apparent is that he is the same race as Trayvon Martin. So far the race card has not been played even though there are some striking similarities (although no one was killed at CCSU).

Links:
http://www.ct.gov/demhs/ical/eventDetail_page.asp?date_ID=C9CECBCFCD83CDCACC
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/06/ccsu-lockdown-ninja-costume_n_4222689.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trayvon_Martin

Fr Hattie Email Letter

The above letter arrived today via email. Fr. Hattie's last letter arrived in the mail and was printed on a half sheet of paper with text on the opposite side about the terrorist attack on the mall in Nairobi, Kenya in September. Since Father lived in Nairobi for a while (after Uganda) I emailed him about it.

As you can see from the picture of the letter, Father still types his letters and then has them scanned as a jpeg file.  I did a bit of basic tweaking to improve the readability of the file-I think I did a pretty good job so I am not going to transcribe the text in this post. If you want a larger image, click on the picture above (you can also right click to save a copy to your computer). Call me if you need help doing this.

As you will notice as you read Father's letter, a bit of ingenuity is required in order to decipher some of the typos. But you should be able to figure it out based on context.

Links:
http://ricketwrite.blogspot.com/2013/10/back-from-africa-uganda.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westgate_shopping_mall_attack

DVD Viewing

Here (below) is a quick overview of some of the DVDs I have watched recently. All were borrowed from the public library. These are not necessarily in chronological order.

"The Wages of Fear" was a DVD I picked up by chance. I had been thinking of another movie, which was a remake of this 1953 B&W film. It was pretty long and deep. Dialogue in French. Very arty. No happy ending.

 

I like to have some comedy to ease the tensions of life and clear my brain.  Watching Season 1 and Season 2 of the old TV series, Get Smart definitely clears out your head. Would you believe that our library only has seasons 1 and 2 but not the other 3? I watched these back-to-back (that turned out to be something of a challenge).

One Day on Earth was another one that I found in the library. I remember hearing about it and it looked interesting so I took it home.  It is a documentary, a series of events happening around the world to document 10-10-10 (October 10, 2010). I watched it on 10-10 (2013), another reason I got it.  I liked it so much that I watched it a second time and tracked down a similar movie ("Life in a Day" - which I have yet to watch).  "One Day on Earth" made me feel so connected to all the people around the world. It was awesome because it showed so many different kinds of people doing different things, showed birth, death, weddings, music, etc. Highly recommended!!

Another, sort of light, TV series I watched was Jackie Gleason's The Honeymooners. Because it was from the 1950s, it is in B&W. No problem for me. Ralph Kramden (Jackie Gleason) is always getting himself in trouble. I love his wife's character, Alice. She doesn't let him push her around but loves him nonetheless because she knows he's only trying to get ahead (but he can't win). For some reason, Disc 4 is missing from the Library-hopefully it will be returned soon so I can actually see all 39 episodes.  The set is pretty beat up and I have suggested they invest in a replacement copy. "Bang! Zoom! To the moon...."

Lost in Translation is sort of a meditation on mid-life crisis, marriage, and the meaning of life. The movie is set in Tokyo. Because of the age difference between the Bill Murray character and Scarlett Johannson, it reminded me of the Pygmalion story. I also think there were some similarities with Michael Caine's Educating Rita.  I liked that despite the flirtations between the two leads, their relationship remained chaste as they struggled to make sense of their individual roles as spouse in their own marriage. I liked the ambiguous ending because you can contemplate the different potential futures depending on how the relationship impacted them.

I almost forgot this film: Drive. It was pretty weird and violent. I didn't really care for it. To me, it seemed like a long, bad modern TV plot. I'm not sure why I got it.

Links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wages_of_Fear
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Get_Smart
http://www.onedayonearth.org/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1687247/?ref_=nv_sr_1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Honeymooners
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_in_Translation_(film)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmalion_(play)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educating_Rita_(film)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive_(2011_film)