Category Archives: Chase Palmer

Blake Dykes, Chase Palmer, Columns, Forum

Experience with suicide opens columnist’s eyes

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By Blake Dykes

Graphic by Chase Palmer

Names of the people in this story has been changed for privacy reasons.

You hear about people dying because of car accidents, shootings, and fires. It never occurred to me until this incident that someone would actually take their own life.

It all happened Sept. 17, 2007.

I start the day off waking up bright and early, even before I need to get ready for school. That is typical for me, waking up so I can get dressed in time to watch an episode of Spongebob before heading off to school. However, today is different.

I stumble into the kitchen, wiping the sleep out of my eyes, waiting for my mom to give me my cheerful morning greeting.

Not today. Instead, mom gazes out the window into the neighbors house. I decide to break the silence.

“Good morning, Mom.”

Mom draws her head away from the window just long enough to give me an emotionless glance.

A feeling of dread boils up in my stomach.

I tiptoe to the window at which my mom is staring out of. That is when I know something horrible has happened.

Multiple cars are parked up the driveway of the house next door. A fire truck, ambulance, and two police cars are also entangled in the chaos. People gather in clusters by the double door garage.

“Mom, what’s going on?” I hear myself ask in a hushed whisper.

“It’s Kelly,” she says flatly.

My brain instantly rushes with a hundred scenarios.

Kelly is the woman next door, in her late 30’s. She also has a husband and son. Kelly is suffering from depression and is very socially withdrawn. At all the neighborhood get-togethers everyone in her family comes, except her.

“Did something bad happen?”

I frown at myself for asking such a stupid question.

Mom nods and takes a breath, “Kelly…passed away.”

My heart speeds up to an explosive rate, a rage of panic and unexplained anger wash over me.

“How? What do you mean? She was so… young,” my voice fades off.

Mom is silent.

I begin my questioning,

“A car accident? Fire? Was she…murdered?”

Mom shakes her head to all of my proposals.

I feel very confused.

“Kelly hung herself.”

She seems to think about what she is going to say before she continues.

“This morning around five.”

The remaining time before catching the bus seems to drag by in a blur.

This morning, mom walks me and my younger brother to the bus.

As we are walking up the road, to the bus stop, I hear something that will scar me for the rest of my life. Max’s, Kelly’s teenage son, shrill sobs coming from his cracked bedroom window. My heart aches for him.

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Hours turn into days, days into weeks, and weeks into months. As the time passes the grass next door continues to grow into a jungle. Kelly’s husband and son up and left the house. They left everything in it, the only thing they took was the clothes on their backs.

There is an eerie quietness throughout the neighborhood. It seems as though everyone is afraid to move on with their lives, afraid to even laugh.

As for me, I have been affected by this tragedy in a drastic way. I dread sleeping, my dreams have turned into nightmares. Suicide has poisoned my dreams, making me have the same nightmare every night, reliving that September 17 morning. These horrifying thoughts lead me into seeing a counselor to learn to let it go. It took me two years to recover from that horrific day.

I guess, the most important thing I hope for people to gain from this story, is to realize suicide is the most selfish act someone can commit. Kelly left this earth leaving her family devastated, confused, and angry.

Next time you are kidding around and say,“Ugh, I hate homework, I’m gonna shoot myself.”

Realize what you are saying really does happen and is not something to kid about.

Chase Palmer, Eli Bolus, News

Websites protest SOPA by going offline

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By Eli Bolus and Chase Gosman

Today hundreds of websites will go down and be unusable for the remainder of the day.  This is not a technical error but a unified act of defiance to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) that will be going through Congress this February.

The SOPA will allow the government to block any website that violates the rules they will set.  For example if a person claims a site is infringing on copyright laws the government can block anyone using an American I.P. from accessing it.  This means user-generated sites like YouTube and Flickr would be affected greatly.

As expected much of the internet has responded in outrage.  Among the websites going black for the remainder of today are all of Wikipedia’s pages, barring the SOPA page, greenpeace.com and reddit.com.  By going black a website blocks all material.

Websites hope that by doing this more people will become informed of the bill and attempt to contact their congressmen.  Those who would like to learn more about SOPA can read about it on wikipedia.com.

A&E, Chase Palmer

‘J. Edgar’ flawed but enjoyable to history buffs

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By Chase Palmer

In this new movie, Leonardo DiCaprio plays J. Edgar Hoover, who was the head of the FBI from its inception to his death in 1972. J. Edgar chronicles this man’s life during this time period and also dabbles in some rumors over his supposed cross-dressing habit and sexuality; however, the film rarely exploits these themes. They focus more on his role in the Palmer Raids, Gangster Wars, and such. This makes the film have plenty of historical elements to it. If you are a history buff then I would recommend “J. Edgar” to you. However, if you usually fall asleep in AP European History, then you might as well skip this film.

This film is not perfect, nevertheless. The 37-year-old DiCaprio plays Hoover even as an old man, meaning that this movie contains a heavy use of facial prosthetics and CGI, required to make DiCaprio and other main actors in the film appear older. The makeup guy’s approach to this technique makes the characters look like unrealistic wax figures. At first it seemed funny, but after a while it took away from the film’s believability aspect. Although the makeup makes DiCaprio’s and other actor’s parts in the movie look like caricatures rather than characters, I thought that the film’s cast was pretty strong, not anything Oscar worthy, but still pretty strong.

The reason why I said J. Edgar ‘rarely’ explores the rumors aimed at Hoover is because I felt that the writer was trying to persuade to us that J Edgar Hoover was gay, a rumor that surfaced after his death. One scene in the film shows Hoover making out with Associate FBI Director Clyde Tolson, played by Armie Hammer. I later learned that his film was written by Dustin Lance Black. I noticed that all of Black’s movies leading up to this one were about homosexuality, the most well-known of these being “Milk“, another biographical film about gay rights activist Harvey Milk. Think what you want about these scenes in “J. Edgar” and Black’s intentions behind them. I personally think that the gay rumors over Hoover served as Black’s original intentions to write the screenplay to “J. Edgar”.

The worst quality of the film is the color. The color is poorly lit and gives the whole movie a bland effect throughout. I believe that “J. Edgar“ is worth seeing, but if you are interested in J. Edgar Hoover’s life and the times in which he lived, I recommend this film only as an entry point.