Happy new year: Once again, authorities in the Hillbrow district of Johannesburg, South Africa, were unable to stop the traditional midnight celebrations in which residents of high-rises toss refrigerators, ovens, beds, trash cans and other furniture off their balconies, while police, wearing crash helmets, try to dodge the fusillade. And People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals pressured Brasstown, N.C., officials out of the traditional New Year’s Eve “Possum Drop” (lowering a caged opossum at the stroke of midnight, a la Times Square), causing the town to substitute roadkill instead.
Djà vu all over again: In January, in Florida’s first election using all touch-screen balloting (following the state’s 2000 presidential fiasco), Ellyn Bogdanoff won a special election for a state House seat from Broward County by 12 votes out of about 10,000 cast. But the losing candidate was considering a challenge over the 134 “voters” who had apparently gone into the booths but for whom no votes were registered. (By the way, in January in San Antonio, Texas, Chad Allen Tolleson was arrested for burglarizing a store by climbing in through a ventilation duct. He got stuck, however, and early arriving employees who found him dangling from the ceiling now refer to him as “Hanging Chad.”)
Cultural diversity: Over a two-month period in the American Indian Miskito community of northern Nicaragua, about 150 people contracted a hysteria with symptoms that included wandering naked in public, becoming severely violent, fighting imaginary enemies, and, later, lapsing into comalike states. Nicaraguan officials regard the illness, grisi siknis, as culture-bound, with traditional healers more effective at treating it than medical doctors (in contrast to affluent societies’ culture-bound illnesses, such as anorexia nervosa, which are often treated medically).
As an example of the stunning heritage of honesty among the Japanese, the Tokyo police’s Lost and Found Center reported that in 2002, the equivalent of U.S. $23 million in cash found by strangers was turned in — and almost $17 million eventually made it back to the rightful owners. Also, the New York Times reported in January, 330,000 umbrellas were turned in (but fewer than 1,000 were claimed).
Latest religious messages: Televangelist Joyce Meyer has risen from the pack of TV ministers (and from the ordinariness of her pre-preaching life) by her uninhibited pursuit of donations ($95 million in 2003), according to a December St. Louis Post-Dispatch profile. “Make your checks payable to Joyce Meyer Ministries,” she shouted, “and “million’ is spelled m-i-l-l-i-o-n.” Of once receiving $1 million in stocks from a worshipper, she said, “I didn’t have that [gift] for five minutes and I said, “OK, God, next I’ll take $5 million.” “Fear,” she reminds her parishioners, as in their fear of making sacrifices in order to have more money to give her, “is the work of the devil.”
Recurring themes: In Clearwater, Fla., Mary Denise Flowers was arrested for stealing a $20,000 ring from Littman Jewelers, with the key prosecution evidence emerging several days later when Flowers, whose modus operandi was to swallow the ring at the scene of the crime, finally “passed” it at a local hospital where it was mined from her feces (December). And a home at 3715 Euclid Ave. in San Diego was completely demolished when a pilot light ignited 19 bug bombs the homeowner had set; one canister would have been plenty lethal for the small area, but 19 yielded a bomb 28 times more powerful than necessary (December).
Also in the last month: New York City (Port Authority) police Officer Russell Bass pleaded guilty to having illegally videotaped an 11-year-old girl in a shower two years ago and blamed it on the stress he was under for helping with the 9-11 rescue. And North Little Rock, Ark., police arrested two alleged Internet-trolling pedophiles, one of whom had flown in from Arizona and the other all the way from South Korea, to meet teenyboppers, who were, of course, police officers running a sting. 2004 CHUCK SHEPHERD
This article appears in Jan 28 – Feb 3, 2004.
