On the Damascus Road

Why do a few multiple news items appear to play name game tricks of their own?

On Saturday, May 18, 2013, a powerful car explosion hit the Ruken al-Deen neighborhood in Damascus, killing at least three people in the latest blast to strike the Syrian capital (population 1.7 million). The SANA news agency reported that an explosive device was planted under a car parked on Rukneddin highway near Ibn al-Nafis Hospital in Damascus, Syria. The initial death toll was put at three, and the number of injured at five.

Also on Saturday, May 18th, around 2:10 p.m. during the Hikers Parade at the Trail Days festival in Damascus, Viriginia, an annual celebration of the Appalachian Trail,  was interrupted by tragedy. 

Read more here: http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/2013/05/19/3494077/medical-emergency-eyed-in-va-parade.html#storylink=cpy

An elderly driver in a 1997 Cadillac plowed into the parade, injuring at least 60 people, sending a dozen to the hospital.

"In 27 years of this, we've never had anything of this magnitude, and is it our job to make sure it doesn't happen again," Damacus Mayor Jack McCrady said.

Damascus is a small town of less than 1000 people in Washington County, Virginia, United States. Damascus is the home of the annual Trail Days festival (with reportedly 20,000 people visiting). The community is known as Trail Town USA due to the convergence of four scenic trails in the town, including the Appalachian Trail, U.S. Bicycle Route 76, The Iron Mountain Trail, and the Virginia Creeper Trail.

The word Damascus means "a well-watered place."

Conversion of Saint Paul, 1542 by Michelangelo Buonarroti

At top, The Conversion of St. Paul, 1767 by Nicolas-Bernard Lepicie

In the West, Damascus is most frequently associated with the conversion incident mentioned in the New Testament of the Bible. Saint Paul was on the road to Damascus (present day Syria) when he received a vision of Jesus, and as a result accepted The Christ as the Messiah. (Some Fortean theories for what really happened have been developed in recent years.)

Ten years ago, it is intriguingly how Palestine popped up in the context of the first Israeli astronaut being killed.

On February 1, 2003, the Space Shuttle Columbia on mission STS-107 disintegrated during reentry into the Earth's atmosphere, killing all seven astronauts aboard. 

One who died was Ilan Ramon, the first Israeli astronaut. His first name, Ilan, means "tree" in Hebrew. Ilan changed his last name from Wolferman when he joined the Israeli Air Force. On June 7, 1981, he was the youngest pilot taking part in Operation Opera, Israel's strike against Iraq's unfinished Osiraq nuclear reactor, 10 miles southeast of Baghdad.

A location often mentioned ten years ago for where the parts of the Columbia fell was Palestine, Texas. The irony of that location was not lost on many at the time, considering the fact the Columbia carried an Israeli aboard. 

Even this remarkable "coincidence" is apparent in this Wikipedia mention:

Palestine entered the news in February 2003, as one of the East Texas towns that received much of the debris from the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, where seven astronauts were killed, including the first Israeli astronaut. Palestine is also home to the NASA Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility (renamed after the shuttle crash), which has flown 1700 high-altitude balloons for universities and research agencies. Source.

An FBI agent and a Texas Department of Public Safety officer looked over a 4-foot by 6-foot piece of the Space Shuttle Columbia that was found in the median along State Highway 155 north of Palestine, Texas on Sunday, February 2, 2003.

 

Synchrocinema Galore: Dallas in Wonderland

The 50th anniversary of the JFK hit is fast approaching. November 22, 1963, is a day burned into the memory of anyone who was conscious back then. It will be recalled for most of November, I predict. Expect the television specials, new books, and release of films.

The movie that's getting most of the mainstream buzz is Tom Hanks' production of Parkland, which has a cast including Paul Giamatti, Zac Efron, Marcia Gay Harden, Jacki Weaver, and Billy Bob Thornton.

It may get all the mass media notice, but there's a gem of a movie coming out of this wave that is worthy of your attention.

Dallas in Wonderland is the one that I want to see. 13th Sign Pictures will produce and finance the synchromystic movie, which will include a cameo appearance, perhaps, by the character James Shelby Downard (see "Synchromysticism's Godfather.")

There is a good deal of mystery surrounding some of the actors who will be appearing in Dallas in Wonderland. Stay tuned.

Back in January, here are the good things that Variety said about Dallas in Wonderland:

Maybe it’s because the 50th anniversary of that event is fast approaching, but now there’s another film based around the assassination on its way from Queens of Country writer-director Ryan Page.
Page will write (alongside Adam Parfrey) and direct a conspiracy thriller going by the name of Dallas In Wonderland, which will center around a documentary filmmaker and his producer who are hired by a TV network to do a puff piece for their planned motorcade reenactment that will take place during a televised memorial ceremony. Finding themselves “wrapped up in the network’s plot” to prove that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman, the pair close in on the central narrative surrounding JFK’s assassination, leading to the climax of the event playing out once more on the nation’s television screens.
Page believes that he and Parfrey have come up with “an altogether new kind of thriller, featuring the very latest research done in the JFK assassination case.”

 Adam Parfrey (also the coauthor of Ritual America)

“Adam Parfrey and I [have] crafted what feels to us like an altogether new kind of thriller, featuring the very latest research done in the JFK assassination case,” said Page, who will produce with Alastra and Mundo. “This story has not fully been told. It continues to evolve and is rife with the most interesting storylines and fascinating real-life personalities I worked with Joe and Tommy on previous films and when it came time to select our production partner for Dallas in Wonderland, there was never even a debate.” ~ Ryan Page

In the realm of unfortunate title timing, on May 1, 2013, the online publisher eXtasy released a new gay love novel entitled Dallas in Wonderland by Julie Lynn Hayes.

It apparently (?) is part two of 2012's earlier Hayes book of the same name.

Like I say often, each to their own, as they pursue their dreams and passions.

But in the case of the two current Dallas in Wonderland choices, I'm looking forward to critiquing the film Dallas in Wonderland for the 50th anniversary of the assassination.

More Red Dawns in a Dark Summer?

Bruce Willis brought us a bloody Valentine's Day gift on February 14, 2013.

Did that open a hint of a spring and a summer of red dawns and dark movies?

Are we now Into Darkness?

What selections have opened and remain on the horizon in USA?

What others would you suggest?

Iron Man 3 (May 3, 2013)

Star Trek Into Darkness (May 17, 2013)

The Lone Ranger (July 3, 2013)

Man of Steel, producer Christopher Nolan's dark film (June 14, 2013)

Thor: The Dark World (November 8, 2013)

Dutch Clown Stabs Russian Boy On Crete: UPDATED

On the island of Crete in Hersonissos, a violent fierce attack by a Dutch hotel clown was made against a Russian family's child.

As you may recall, earlier in 2013, three Dutch clowns beat a boy at the Dutch city of Volendam's clown festivities (which involves over 200 clowns) in January.

In Crete, according to the forensic findings the child, aged 11 years, was stabbed 20 times in the chest, back and left arm. No sexual abuse was found.

Police authorities have arrested a 20-year-old Dutch hotel employee, who allegedly has confessed that he is the perpetrator of the attack on the minor. He was the hotel's clown.

Here are some of the photographs of the suspect from European newspapers. On his back is a tattoo with the words, "Vatos Locos."

Vatos Locos (in English, Crazy Dudes) is a widely used name for a street gang. Gangs using this name are active in several American states. The film Blood in, Blood out (1993) about the life of poet Jimmy Santiago Baca in 1972, was based on the experiences of gang members of Vatos Locos. The video game Call of Juarez: The Cartel features a fictional Vatos Locos gang.

The 11 year-old lost his cellphone and laptop, went searching for them, and then was lost. His parents, who had been looking for their child, did not find him until 3:00 AM in the hotel parking garage.

After a lengthy police interrogation, the young Dutch hotel clown reportedly confessed he stabbed the kid and directed the police to where the knife could be found.

The child is of Russian origin and is with his family in Crete for a holiday. 

Hersonissos (Greek: Χερσόνησος, pronounced [xerˈsonisos] - Chersónisos), also transliterated as Chersonisos and Hersónisos, is a town and a municipality in the north of Crete, bordering the Mediterranean/Aegean Sea. The vicinity of Hersonissos is noted for its prehistoric archaeological finds. On the coast approximately one kilometer to the east of Hersonissos was an ancient temple dedicated to the goddess Britomartis.

Britomartis (Βριτόμαρτις) was the Minoan goddess of mountains and hunting. She is among the Minoan goddess figures that passed through the Mycenaeans' culture into classical Greek mythology, with transformations that are unclear in both transferrals. For the Greeks Britomartis (Cretan dialect for "sweet maiden", "sweet virgin") or Diktynna (derived by Hellenistic writers as from diktya, "hunting nets") was a mountain nymph (an oread) whom Greeks recognized also in Artemis and in Aphaea, the "invisible" patroness of Aegina.
Britomartis ("sweet maid") is an epithet that does not reveal the goddess's name, nor her character, for it has the ring of an apotropaic euphemism. The goddess addressed as "Britomartis" was worshipped in Crete as an aspect of Potnia, the "Mistress." The oldest aspect of the Cretan goddess was as Mother of Mountains, who appears on Minoan seals with the demonic features of a Gorgon, accompanied by the double-axes of power and gripping divine snakes. Her terror-inspiring aspect was softened by calling her Britomartis, the "good virgin," a euphemism to allay her dangerous aspect.
Britomart figures in Edmund Spenser's knightly epic The Faerie Queene, where she is an allegorical figure of the virgin Knight of Chastity, representing English virtue—in particular, English military power—through a folk etymology that associated Brit-, as in Briton, with Martis, here thought of as "of Mars," the Roman war god. In Spenser's allegory, Britomart connotes the Virgin Queen, Elizabeth I of England.
In his retelling of the King Arthur legends, Arthur Rex, author Thomas Berger suggests that Queen Guinevere may have become a powerful female knight known as Britomart after the death of the King.
Source.

BTW, media sources are also reporting the attack occurred in the "seaside town of Anissaras" and "in Iraklio, Crete." 

"Anissaras" is a hilly area in east Crete just outside of Hersonissos. "Iraklio" is another spelling for Heraklion, or Heraclion, where the famed ruins of Knossos were excavated and restored by Arthur Evans. English usage formerly preferred the classicizing transliterations "Heraklion" or "Heraclion," but the form "Iraklion" is becoming more common.

(Thanks to Thanassis V. for the news account information on this breaking story.)

Dark Knight of Gotham: Sports Illustrated Curse?

Making the cover of Sports Illustrated is sometimes called a curse. How do you think it might feel to be on the cover and be called The Dark Knight of Gotham? Major League Baseball pitcher for the Mets, Matt Harvey, may be pondering that very fate. He's on the cover of the May 20th issue.

Matthew Edward Harvey was born (March 27, 1989) in New London, Connecticut and grew up in Mystic, Connecticut. He played during his youth for Fitch Senior High School in Groton, Connecticut and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Harvey is an National League MLB right-handed pitcher for the New York Mets, debuting with them on July 26, 2012.

The Staten Island Advocate even published Harvey and Batman next to each other so the comparison would not be lost on its readership. And by doing that, all could clearly see that Harvey's jersey number is 33.

Also, don't forget, Harvey Dent was a major character in the second Dark Knight film.

The name Harvey is of Old English and Old French origin, and derived from the Breton name Haerviu, rooted in the elements haer "battle" and vy "worthy," literally "battle worthy," or in some views, "eager for battle; strong and worthy."

The Sports Illustrated cover curse or jinx is an urban legend that states that individuals or teams who appear on the cover of the Sports Illustrated magazine will subsequently be jinxed or experience bad luck. See here for a long list of incidents causing some to feel the curse has been confirmed.

.

Hadfield's Space Oddity

This is the revised version of David Bowie's Space Oddity, recorded by Commander Chris Hadfield on board the International Space Station. (Video below.)

Chris Hadfield OOnt MSC CD (born August 29, 1959, Sarnia, Ontario) is a Canadian astronaut who was the first Canadian to walk in space.

"Hadfield was raised on a corn farm in southern Ontario and became interested in flying at a young age — he came to the idea of being an astronaut when he was nine on the day of Apollo moon landing, which he had seen on TV then," noted Janet Davidson, CBC News, December 7, 2012.

Chris means "servant of Christ."

The name Hadfield, most simply, is a habitational name from a place in Derbyshire, taken from Old English haeð "heathland," "heather" + feld "pasture," "open country."

More elaborately, Hadfield is a

...long-established surname is of Anglo-Saxon origin, and is a dialectal variant of the locational name Hatfield, from various places so called in, for example, Essex, recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086 as "Hadfelda"; Hertfordshire, also recorded in the Domesday Book as "Hetfelle"; Nottinghamshire, found as "Haytfeld" in the Hundred Rolls of 1275; and in Hereford, recorded as "Hetfelde" in the Domesday Book. The derivation of the placename is from the Olde English pre 7th Century "harth," heather, or other similar plants, with the second element "feld," pasture, except the places in Nottinghamshire and in Yorkshire, whose first element show an influence of the Old Scandinavian "heithr," heath. Source.

Enjoy the gift that Chris Hadfield has sent us all from space, a video revision of David Bowie's Space Oddity.

Waynesville Murders

Followers of the Dark Knight/Batman might think of "Bruce Wayne," but other associations come to mind when the name "Wayne" is heard.

Within the "weird news" field, it has been a well-known truism that if a criminal has a middle name of "Wayne," no one in the newsroom is surprised he is being charged with murder. The examples are multiple. The most famous case, of course, is John Wayne Gacy.

My old buddy, correspondent Chuck Shepherd, has been a student of this "name game" for years. Here's what Chuck says about it, in an introduction to the topic:

The Classic Middle Name

It only occurred to me in the early 1990s that "Wayne" was a popular middle name among a few of the most heinous murderers of our time, e.g., the clown John Wayne Gacy (who killed almost three dozen boys and young men in the late 1970s and buried most of them beneath the floorboards of his Des Plaines, Ill., home) and Elmer Wayne Henley (sentenced to six consecutive life terms in 1974 in Houston for his role, with ringleader Dean Allen Corll, in the murders of 27 young men). I began to publish periodic lists in 1996, and soon readers made sure I never missed a one that made the news. Source, plus his impressively long list of names.

Now, today, Mother's Day, May 12, 2013, there is a breaking story out of Waynesville, Indiana, in Bartholomew County.

Police are reporting that Saturday night, four dead bodies were discovered in a residence there. The three deceased men (in the front room) and one dead woman (in the bedroom) had been shot.

The victims have been identified as 53-year-old Katherine Burton, 39-year-old Thomas Smith, 41-year-old Aaron Cross and 41-year old Shawn Burton. No suspect is in custody.

Authorities identified the others who were killed as Katheryn Burton's longtime boyfriend, 39-year-old Thomas Smith, who also lived at the home, and two 41-year-old Columbus men, Aaron Cross and Shawn Burton. The coroner said the Columbus men were friends of the couple, but were not related to them. Waynesville is a few miles south of Columbus. Source.

Wayne is an Old English name that means "wagon-wright," "wagon builder," and/or "wagon-driver."

Bartholomew was one of the 12 apostles, sometimes called Nathanael (Mark 3:18). It is a male name, from the Hebrew, meaning "son of Talmai."

Bartholomew County was formed on February 12, 1821 and was named for Lt. Col. Joseph Bartholomew, wounded at the Battle of Tippecanoe. Bartholomew joined the Revolutionary War at the age of 10, and he served as a scout for General “Mad” Anthony Wayne.  Bartholomew married Christiana Pickenpaugh in 1788. His daughter Martha and several of his grandchildren were some of the earliest converts to Mormonism and several were baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Of course, it is only a coincidence to note that the town directly south of Waynesville, Indiana, only 11 miles away, is Seymour, Indiana. Fifty-seven miles west of Seymour is Aurora, Indiana.