Poor poor Al Gore . . . .
Alma Holl
Assistant to the Associate Vice President & Dean of Academic Services
Otterbein University
Academic Affairs, Roush Hall 316, 27 South Grove Street
Westerville, Ohio 43081
Phone: 614 823-1573 Fax: 614 823-1335
“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life . . . It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home,
a stranger into a friend.” (Melody Beattie)
Subject: Fw: Carbon emissions
This is certainly true, but the underlying logical argument isn't sound. This is like each of us saying that because there is so much crime it doesn't matter if we steal a little too.
Volcanoes are the real historical climate changers (besides Bacteria inventing photosynthesis). However, unlike bacteria we can choose to reduce our emissions, just in case we do manage to last 50 or 100 million years. The professor's argument is really only sound if the human race only lasts another 100,000 years, in which case we can do whatever we want, and it won't make much difference.
On Jul 31, 2011, at 5:55 PM, Anne Dawson wrote:
Just thought you might enjoy this little piece of reality:
Professor Ian Plimer (a member of the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Adelaide . He is also a joint member of the School of Civil, Environmental and Mining Engineering) could not have said it better!
The volcanic eruption in Iceland, since its first spewing of volcanic ash has, in just FOUR DAYS, NEGATED EVERY SINGLE EFFORT you have made
in the past five years to control CO2 emissions on our planet, all of you.
Of course you know about this evil carbon dioxide that we are trying to suppress, that vital chemical compound that every plant requires to live
and grow, and to synthesize into oxygen for us humans, and all animal life.
I know, it's very disheartening to realise that all of the carbon emission savings you have accomplished while suffering the inconvenience and expense of: driving Prius hybrids, buying fabric grocery bags, sitting up till midnight to finish your kid's "The Green Revolution" science project, throwing out all of your non-green cleaning supplies, using only two squares of toilet paper, putting a brick in your toilet tank reservoir, selling
your SUV and speedboat, holidaying at home instead of abroad, nearly getting hit every day on your bicycle, replacing all of your 50 pence light bulbs with £5.00 light bulbs...well, all of those things you have done have all gone down the tubes in just four days.
The volcanic ash emitted into the Earth's atmosphere in just four days - yes - FOUR DAYS ONLY by that volcano in Iceland, has totally erased
every single effort you have made to reduce the evil beast, carbon. And there are around 200 active volcanoes on the planet spewing out this
crud any one time - EVERY DAY.
I don't really want to rain on your parade too much, but I should mention that when the volcano Mt Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines in 1991,
it spewed out more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than the entire human race had emitted in its entire YEARS on earth. Yes folks, Mt Pinatubo was active for over one year, think about it.
Of course I shouldn't spoil this touchy-feely tree-hugging moment and mention the effect of solar and cosmic activity and the well-recognized
800-year global heating and cooling cycle, which keep happening, despite our completely insignificant efforts to affect climate change.
And I do wish I had a silver lining to this volcanic ash cloud but the fact of the matter is that the bush fire season across the western USA and Australia this year alone will negate your efforts to reduce carbon in our world for the next two to three years. And it happens every year.
Just remember that your government just tried to impose a whopping carbon tax on you on the basis of the bogus ''human-caused'' climate
change scenario.
Hey, isn't it interesting how they don't mention ''Global Warming'' any more, but just ''Climate Change'' - you know why? It's because the planet has COOLED by 0.7 degrees in the past century and these global warming bull artists got caught with their pants down.
And just keep in mind that you might yet have an Emissions Trading Scheme (that whopping new tax) imposed on you, that will achieve
absolutely nothing except make you poorer. It won't stop any volcanoes from erupting, that's for sure.
But hey, relax, give the world a hug and have a nice day!
Monday, August 1, 2011
Shot and killed in Columbus- Desmond Allison- (Long)
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Last week, Desmond Allison, former Robinson High School basketball star and local legend in Tampa, kissed two of his children goodbye in Columbus, Ohio.
He had spent six weeks with them, playing and wrestling and snuggling, making up for lost time. It was the longest he had ever had them on his own.
When their mother, 31-year-old Carolyn Holloway, showed up with her sister to take her babies back to Lexington, Ky., the kids and Desmond were laughing about something.
Desmond was wearing denim shorts, a green polo shirt and Jordans on his feet. He had been in the hospital recently because his liver had failed due to an infection, Holloway was told, but he hardly looked it.
Everyone said their good-byes, 9-year-old Desmond Jr. and 8-year-old daughter Deja hugging their dad tightly, as if to hold all the sadness in.
“Don’t worry,’’ Holloway told them, “we’ll bring you back next spring break.”
“Next spring break? I can’t wait that long, how about Christmas?” Desmond said.
“How about not.”
“Then how about Thanksgiving,’’ he said.
Holloway thought about it for a second, and said “Fine, we’ll do Thanksgiving.”
Desmond was pleased.
Then mother and sister and son and daughter squeezed into a black Ford Focus and drove back to Kentucky.
• • •
Three days later, on Monday afternoon, Desmond Allison was dead at age 31, the victim of a senseless shooting.
According to the Columbus Dispatch, police reports and longtime friend Malcolm Goff, he was sitting outside with friends at the Nelson Park Apartments when an ex-girlfriend took a cap off his head, setting off an argument with his current girlfriend, who had bought him the hat.
One of the women yelled at Desmond during the argument, and Desmond yelled back, but mostly he continued a phone conversation and walked away.
Moments later, three men showed up, one accusing Desmond of messing with his cousin. There was a punch, a fight, then more than a dozen gunshots.
Goff was hit twice, in the legs. Desmond was hit once, in the chest. Both were rushed to Grant Medical Center.
At 3:54 p.m., Desmond was pronounced dead of a single gunshot wound to the chest.
“It’s ridiculous,’’ his despondent dad, Esmond Flood Sr., muttered into his phone after leaving the coroner’s office the next day. “I don’t understand it.’’
No one did.
Back in Kentucky, the news scrolled across Holloway’s TV.
• • •
Kentucky, home of the Wildcats.
Is it fair to say that’s the place where Desmond Allison’s story begins? Or maybe where the story, as many expected it to be written, ends?
By now, everyone knows the tale, of how Desmond, a wonderfully gifted and silky-smooth sophomore starter on the Wildcats’ NCAA-bound basketball team, was pulled over on March 12, 2000, and arrested for DUI and drug possession.
He blew a 0.113, just over the legal limit of 0.10. He later pleaded guilty to the DUI, and the drug charge was dropped.
But his scholarship was gone, despite his pleas. He had begged coach Tubby Smith for a second chance. He cried, and Desmond never cried and may never have cried since.
Had the school not adopted a zero-tolerance policy in 1998 — after football player Jason Watts, whose blood alcohol level was 0.15 when he lost control of his truck, which overturned and killed a teammate and another football player from Eastern Kentucky University — Desmond might have gotten a second chance.
And had the zero-tolerance policy not been softened shortly after he transferred to NAIA Martin Methodist in Tennessee, causing him to wonder what if, maybe he could have moved on.
“He might be in the (NBA) right now,’’ said Manhattan basketball coach Steve Masiello, a teammate of Desmond’s at Kentucky. “You’re talking about a 19-, 20-year-old kid and the thing he loved most was taken away from him. That put him down a different path that really hurt him. That doesn’t give him an excuse for all of his decisions. But who knows what could have happened.’’
His mother, Detria Allison, said Desmond didn’t care where he shot his hoops.
“I just wanna play, Momma,” he told her.
Moving away was easy. Moving on wasn’t.
“Oh, he was mad at Tubby,’’ Holloway said. “He couldn’t believe this had happened. I wouldn’t say he ever got over it, but I do know after a year or so he wasn’t mad at Tubby anymore.’’
Smith declined to be interviewed, sending a short, generic prepared statement instead.
At the end of the day, Holloway said, Desmond knew it was his fault. And he tried to move on, convinced he had disappointed his family and friends.
But how do you move on, from Kentucky, from a dream?
It makes Masiello angry that to his last day, Desmond never shook the label of failed Wildcat.
“I don’t know what might have happened if Kentucky didn’t happen the way it did,” he said, “but I’m pretty sure Desmond wouldn’t have been in Columbus.”
• • •
Holloway, who met Desmond at a party in Lexington and became one of his best friends before they ever dated, followed him to Martin Methodist.
He turned down an offer from the ABA’s Tampa Bay ThunderDawgs after his first season. He worked out for a handful of NBA scouts after his second, but nothing materialized.
He returned to Florida with Holloway and the kids, living in Orlando for a while.
When things soured in the relationship, she returned to Lexington and he went back to Tampa, working here and there, still lighting up whatever basketball court he took his talents to.
But he couldn’t escape trouble. In 2004, he was in and out of jail four times on drug-related charges. He was slipping away.
He attended the funeral of friend and former Robinson and Vanderbilt football star Kwane Doster, who was shot in the chest the day after Christmas in 2004.
A Robinson assistant coach, Vaughn Volpi, asked Desmond if he was next. The words were like a slap across his face.
Volpi offered to help, and it mattered little that Desmond's third chance would come in a town more than 1,500 miles away for a Division II football team in Vermillion, S.D.
“I’ll go anywhere,’’ he said.
• • •
At the University of South Dakota, where Desmond still had two years of college athletic eligibility remaining, he left his mark. He was 25 when he got there, and his teammates called him grandpa. It had been eight years since he starred as a high school receiver, but he was the best athlete just about any of them had ever seen.
He lived with Jevon Bowman, a hard-nosed middle linebacker from Rapid City and a former walk-on at Nebraska.
Desmond did the cooking, earning the nickname Chef Boy R Dez. Bowman says he can still taste the refried bean burritos with Louisiana hot sauce Desmond would cook up for them to eat while playing NCAA and NBA games on the PlayStation 3 or watching SportsCenter on ESPN.
“He opened my eyes up to a whole new world,’’ Bowman said. “I had a dream to play pro football, and he was like why not do it? We trained together, for the same thing. We were inseparable. They called us Smokey and the Bandit.’’
Desmond, who beefed up to 6-foot-5, 240 pounds and became a tight end, decorated his room with pictures of his kids — Jasmine, who is now 14, DJ and Deja. He talked about them so much that when Holloway brought DJ and Deja up for a surprise visit, the Coyote players immediately yelled out, “It’s Booger and Buster!” Desmond’s nicknames for the kids.
“It was fun to watch him around the kids, it was a side you didn’t hear or read about,’’ Bowman said. “He was never anything like you might have expected.’’
Desmond was determined to do something with this chance. But not everything.
After his senior football season in 2006, after 30 catches, almost half for touchdowns, he returned to Lexington with Holloway to work out for South Dakota’s Pro Day in March 2007.
Bowman, now the team’s head strength and conditioning coach, begged him to stay. He told Desmond he would get him into shape around the few classes he had remaining to get his degree in sports recreation.
"It broke my heart when he left,'' Bowman said.
Coach Ed Meierkort thought Desmond could have had a future in coaching had he gotten a degree. But he’s not sure if Desmond was still chasing those moments he had in Kentucky, that single-minded quest for a pro sports career.
“He got a taste of it there,’’ Meierkort said. “I think he gave the Kentucky thing up, but what he didn’t give up was the hope of being what the Kentucky guys ended up being. He still thought, ‘I can do that.’ But he just missed his window. And there wasn’t a Plan B.’’
Holloway drove him back to South Dakota two months later for Pro Day. More than 20 teams looked him over. He was a basketball player turned tight end, like Tony Gonzalez and Antonio Gates.
They were intrigued, but the phone call never came.
• • •
Desmond tried to settle down in Atlanta, but he violated probation, which stemmed from a 2004 cocaine charge, and was extradited to Tampa where he was in jail for most of 2008.
He begged his mom not to visit, but she did. He was MVP of the prison basketball team, his father said.
He returned to Atlanta in 2009, fathering youngest son Dynym with a longtime on-again, off-again girlfriend, and went back to Tampa in the summer to play tournaments with his childhood friends.
“He was still doing the playing, pick-up games, he just really wanted to do something with himself,” his mother said. “He thought about coaching, telling his side of the story about what happened to him to kids. He talked about the little stuff he had been thinking about.”
But Desmond was never much of a talker. He never dropped his problems in anyone’s lap, he never asked for help or direction.
He went to play in a basketball tournament in Columbus last year, and decided to hang around, living with an uncle, Julius Allison, and friends.
Another uncle, Brock Allison, said he tried to get him a job, but was never sure of Desmond’s plans. “We talked,” he said, “but we didn’t talk.”
Desmond had talked recently of moving back to Tampa, and his mother said he had an interview somewhere on Thursday, but she wasn’t sure where.
“I talked to him about a week ago, he seemed pretty happy,” she said.
But his father was concerned.
“He wasn’t doing anything,” Flood said. “I tried to tell him it was time to get out of Columbus. I was trying to get him back up to Akron with me. I told him I’d come down and pick him up, we’d have a cookout, we’d hang out. But it’s like he was stuck. He was in a rut.”
• • •
When news of the shooting broke, the TV station in Lexington opened its report with his mug shot from the 2000 arrest. Holloway was disgusted a basketball photo wasn’t used instead.
Then she read stories online, and soon the picture was painted: Former Kentucky basketball player kicked out of school for a DUI shot in front of a Columbus apartment complex in a poor part of town over a hat.
“I just thought, that’s how he’s going to be remembered?’ ” Holloway said.
But those who know Desmond say he was so much more than what appears to be a down-on-his-luck, adrift ex-jock who couldn’t move on from his superstar days.
“It’s a shame all the stuff that’s put out there,” said Scott Wagers, his coach at Robinson and now an assistant at East Tennessee State. “He made mistakes, but I’m telling you, man, he was a good guy. Always smiling. Always making people laugh.”
Tuesday night in Port Tampa, friends and family gathered at a candlelight vigil to celebrate Desmond Allison. His mother said more than 100 were there. Wagers thought at the highest swell, 500, maybe 1,000.
Everyone had a story. A memory. At the end of the night, they gathered in a circle, held hands and someone sang Amazing Grace.
Wagers finally left at 4:30 a.m. He called his wife on the way home and said he wanted to cry.
• • •
Before Deja got into her mother’s car for the trip back to Lexington, she gave her Daddy one last big hug and kiss.
“Watch, Daddy,’’ she said, and when he looked at her, she said through the world’s biggest grin, “I was born to be somebody.’’
Holloway will always remember the look on Desmond’s face, how he smiled back, how he beamed.
Deja remembers, too. She asked if she could say something at his funeral, which will be held Aug. 6 in Tampa at First Baptist Church of Port Tampa.
Scribbling on a piece of paper, she wrote:
“My daddy was very funny.
I’m glad me and DJ got to see him for spring break and our summer vacation in Columbus when my daddy said he loved me and he would see me soon.
He would always pick me and DJ up and wrestle and play.
I’m so sad my daddy died.
But like my mommy said, I got to spend six fun weeks with him that I will always remember.
The last words I got to say to him were I love you and I’m going to miss you.
Watch me, Daddy, I told you I’m going to grow up to be somebody and I know you will watch me.
See you later, Daddy.”
Maybe the story of Desmond Allison doesn’t begin or end in Lexington.
Maybe it just continues.
News researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report. John C. Cotey can be reached at cotey@sptimes.com.
HomeNewsPhotosScoreboardScheduleTeamsVideoRecruitingStandingsLeadersFeedback
Things to DoA life defined, for better or worse, by basketball Search
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Last week, Desmond Allison, former Robinson High School basketball star and local legend in Tampa, kissed two of his children goodbye in Columbus, Ohio.
He had spent six weeks with them, playing and wrestling and snuggling, making up for lost time. It was the longest he had ever had them on his own.
When their mother, 31-year-old Carolyn Holloway, showed up with her sister to take her babies back to Lexington, Ky., the kids and Desmond were laughing about something.
Desmond was wearing denim shorts, a green polo shirt and Jordans on his feet. He had been in the hospital recently because his liver had failed due to an infection, Holloway was told, but he hardly looked it.
Everyone said their good-byes, 9-year-old Desmond Jr. and 8-year-old daughter Deja hugging their dad tightly, as if to hold all the sadness in.
“Don’t worry,’’ Holloway told them, “we’ll bring you back next spring break.”
“Next spring break? I can’t wait that long, how about Christmas?” Desmond said.
“How about not.”
“Then how about Thanksgiving,’’ he said.
Holloway thought about it for a second, and said “Fine, we’ll do Thanksgiving.”
Desmond was pleased.
Then mother and sister and son and daughter squeezed into a black Ford Focus and drove back to Kentucky.
• • •
Three days later, on Monday afternoon, Desmond Allison was dead at age 31, the victim of a senseless shooting.
According to the Columbus Dispatch, police reports and longtime friend Malcolm Goff, he was sitting outside with friends at the Nelson Park Apartments when an ex-girlfriend took a cap off his head, setting off an argument with his current girlfriend, who had bought him the hat.
One of the women yelled at Desmond during the argument, and Desmond yelled back, but mostly he continued a phone conversation and walked away.
Moments later, three men showed up, one accusing Desmond of messing with his cousin. There was a punch, a fight, then more than a dozen gunshots.
Goff was hit twice, in the legs. Desmond was hit once, in the chest. Both were rushed to Grant Medical Center.
At 3:54 p.m., Desmond was pronounced dead of a single gunshot wound to the chest.
“It’s ridiculous,’’ his despondent dad, Esmond Flood Sr., muttered into his phone after leaving the coroner’s office the next day. “I don’t understand it.’’
No one did.
Back in Kentucky, the news scrolled across Holloway’s TV.
• • •
Kentucky, home of the Wildcats.
Is it fair to say that’s the place where Desmond Allison’s story begins? Or maybe where the story, as many expected it to be written, ends?
By now, everyone knows the tale, of how Desmond, a wonderfully gifted and silky-smooth sophomore starter on the Wildcats’ NCAA-bound basketball team, was pulled over on March 12, 2000, and arrested for DUI and drug possession.
He blew a 0.113, just over the legal limit of 0.10. He later pleaded guilty to the DUI, and the drug charge was dropped.
But his scholarship was gone, despite his pleas. He had begged coach Tubby Smith for a second chance. He cried, and Desmond never cried and may never have cried since.
Had the school not adopted a zero-tolerance policy in 1998 — after football player Jason Watts, whose blood alcohol level was 0.15 when he lost control of his truck, which overturned and killed a teammate and another football player from Eastern Kentucky University — Desmond might have gotten a second chance.
And had the zero-tolerance policy not been softened shortly after he transferred to NAIA Martin Methodist in Tennessee, causing him to wonder what if, maybe he could have moved on.
“He might be in the (NBA) right now,’’ said Manhattan basketball coach Steve Masiello, a teammate of Desmond’s at Kentucky. “You’re talking about a 19-, 20-year-old kid and the thing he loved most was taken away from him. That put him down a different path that really hurt him. That doesn’t give him an excuse for all of his decisions. But who knows what could have happened.’’
His mother, Detria Allison, said Desmond didn’t care where he shot his hoops.
“I just wanna play, Momma,” he told her.
Moving away was easy. Moving on wasn’t.
“Oh, he was mad at Tubby,’’ Holloway said. “He couldn’t believe this had happened. I wouldn’t say he ever got over it, but I do know after a year or so he wasn’t mad at Tubby anymore.’’
Smith declined to be interviewed, sending a short, generic prepared statement instead.
At the end of the day, Holloway said, Desmond knew it was his fault. And he tried to move on, convinced he had disappointed his family and friends.
But how do you move on, from Kentucky, from a dream?
It makes Masiello angry that to his last day, Desmond never shook the label of failed Wildcat.
“I don’t know what might have happened if Kentucky didn’t happen the way it did,” he said, “but I’m pretty sure Desmond wouldn’t have been in Columbus.”
• • •
Holloway, who met Desmond at a party in Lexington and became one of his best friends before they ever dated, followed him to Martin Methodist.
He turned down an offer from the ABA’s Tampa Bay ThunderDawgs after his first season. He worked out for a handful of NBA scouts after his second, but nothing materialized.
He returned to Florida with Holloway and the kids, living in Orlando for a while.
When things soured in the relationship, she returned to Lexington and he went back to Tampa, working here and there, still lighting up whatever basketball court he took his talents to.
But he couldn’t escape trouble. In 2004, he was in and out of jail four times on drug-related charges. He was slipping away.
He attended the funeral of friend and former Robinson and Vanderbilt football star Kwane Doster, who was shot in the chest the day after Christmas in 2004.
A Robinson assistant coach, Vaughn Volpi, asked Desmond if he was next. The words were like a slap across his face.
Volpi offered to help, and it mattered little that Desmond's third chance would come in a town more than 1,500 miles away for a Division II football team in Vermillion, S.D.
“I’ll go anywhere,’’ he said.
• • •
At the University of South Dakota, where Desmond still had two years of college athletic eligibility remaining, he left his mark. He was 25 when he got there, and his teammates called him grandpa. It had been eight years since he starred as a high school receiver, but he was the best athlete just about any of them had ever seen.
He lived with Jevon Bowman, a hard-nosed middle linebacker from Rapid City and a former walk-on at Nebraska.
Desmond did the cooking, earning the nickname Chef Boy R Dez. Bowman says he can still taste the refried bean burritos with Louisiana hot sauce Desmond would cook up for them to eat while playing NCAA and NBA games on the PlayStation 3 or watching SportsCenter on ESPN.
“He opened my eyes up to a whole new world,’’ Bowman said. “I had a dream to play pro football, and he was like why not do it? We trained together, for the same thing. We were inseparable. They called us Smokey and the Bandit.’’
Desmond, who beefed up to 6-foot-5, 240 pounds and became a tight end, decorated his room with pictures of his kids — Jasmine, who is now 14, DJ and Deja. He talked about them so much that when Holloway brought DJ and Deja up for a surprise visit, the Coyote players immediately yelled out, “It’s Booger and Buster!” Desmond’s nicknames for the kids.
“It was fun to watch him around the kids, it was a side you didn’t hear or read about,’’ Bowman said. “He was never anything like you might have expected.’’
Desmond was determined to do something with this chance. But not everything.
After his senior football season in 2006, after 30 catches, almost half for touchdowns, he returned to Lexington with Holloway to work out for South Dakota’s Pro Day in March 2007.
Bowman, now the team’s head strength and conditioning coach, begged him to stay. He told Desmond he would get him into shape around the few classes he had remaining to get his degree in sports recreation.
"It broke my heart when he left,'' Bowman said.
Coach Ed Meierkort thought Desmond could have had a future in coaching had he gotten a degree. But he’s not sure if Desmond was still chasing those moments he had in Kentucky, that single-minded quest for a pro sports career.
“He got a taste of it there,’’ Meierkort said. “I think he gave the Kentucky thing up, but what he didn’t give up was the hope of being what the Kentucky guys ended up being. He still thought, ‘I can do that.’ But he just missed his window. And there wasn’t a Plan B.’’
Holloway drove him back to South Dakota two months later for Pro Day. More than 20 teams looked him over. He was a basketball player turned tight end, like Tony Gonzalez and Antonio Gates.
They were intrigued, but the phone call never came.
• • •
Desmond tried to settle down in Atlanta, but he violated probation, which stemmed from a 2004 cocaine charge, and was extradited to Tampa where he was in jail for most of 2008.
He begged his mom not to visit, but she did. He was MVP of the prison basketball team, his father said.
He returned to Atlanta in 2009, fathering youngest son Dynym with a longtime on-again, off-again girlfriend, and went back to Tampa in the summer to play tournaments with his childhood friends.
“He was still doing the playing, pick-up games, he just really wanted to do something with himself,” his mother said. “He thought about coaching, telling his side of the story about what happened to him to kids. He talked about the little stuff he had been thinking about.”
But Desmond was never much of a talker. He never dropped his problems in anyone’s lap, he never asked for help or direction.
He went to play in a basketball tournament in Columbus last year, and decided to hang around, living with an uncle, Julius Allison, and friends.
Another uncle, Brock Allison, said he tried to get him a job, but was never sure of Desmond’s plans. “We talked,” he said, “but we didn’t talk.”
Desmond had talked recently of moving back to Tampa, and his mother said he had an interview somewhere on Thursday, but she wasn’t sure where.
“I talked to him about a week ago, he seemed pretty happy,” she said.
But his father was concerned.
“He wasn’t doing anything,” Flood said. “I tried to tell him it was time to get out of Columbus. I was trying to get him back up to Akron with me. I told him I’d come down and pick him up, we’d have a cookout, we’d hang out. But it’s like he was stuck. He was in a rut.”
• • •
When news of the shooting broke, the TV station in Lexington opened its report with his mug shot from the 2000 arrest. Holloway was disgusted a basketball photo wasn’t used instead.
Then she read stories online, and soon the picture was painted: Former Kentucky basketball player kicked out of school for a DUI shot in front of a Columbus apartment complex in a poor part of town over a hat.
“I just thought, that’s how he’s going to be remembered?’ ” Holloway said.
But those who know Desmond say he was so much more than what appears to be a down-on-his-luck, adrift ex-jock who couldn’t move on from his superstar days.
“It’s a shame all the stuff that’s put out there,” said Scott Wagers, his coach at Robinson and now an assistant at East Tennessee State. “He made mistakes, but I’m telling you, man, he was a good guy. Always smiling. Always making people laugh.”
Tuesday night in Port Tampa, friends and family gathered at a candlelight vigil to celebrate Desmond Allison. His mother said more than 100 were there. Wagers thought at the highest swell, 500, maybe 1,000.
Everyone had a story. A memory. At the end of the night, they gathered in a circle, held hands and someone sang Amazing Grace.
Wagers finally left at 4:30 a.m. He called his wife on the way home and said he wanted to cry.
• • •
Before Deja got into her mother’s car for the trip back to Lexington, she gave her Daddy one last big hug and kiss.
“Watch, Daddy,’’ she said, and when he looked at her, she said through the world’s biggest grin, “I was born to be somebody.’’
Holloway will always remember the look on Desmond’s face, how he smiled back, how he beamed.
Deja remembers, too. She asked if she could say something at his funeral, which will be held Aug. 6 in Tampa at First Baptist Church of Port Tampa.
Scribbling on a piece of paper, she wrote:
“My daddy was very funny.
I’m glad me and DJ got to see him for spring break and our summer vacation in Columbus when my daddy said he loved me and he would see me soon.
He would always pick me and DJ up and wrestle and play.
I’m so sad my daddy died.
But like my mommy said, I got to spend six fun weeks with him that I will always remember.
The last words I got to say to him were I love you and I’m going to miss you.
Watch me, Daddy, I told you I’m going to grow up to be somebody and I know you will watch me.
See you later, Daddy.”
Maybe the story of Desmond Allison doesn’t begin or end in Lexington.
Maybe it just continues.
News researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report. John C. Cotey can be reached at cotey@sptimes.com.
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Obama GOP, Obama Reach $2 Trillion Debt Deal to Avert Default
Sunday, 31 Jul 2011 09:00 PM
Forward Article Republicans and Democrats in Congress reached agreement with President Barack Obama to raise the limit on U.S. borrowing and forestall an unprecedented American default, marking the start in the final chapter of one of the nastiest and divisive episodes in recent American political history.
Shortly after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and his Republican counterpart, minority leader Mitchell McConnell, endorsed the plan on the Senate floor, Obama went to the White House press room to add his support for the deal. It meets one of his key demands, raising borrowing power sufficiently to keep the partisan poison pill from returning to the national agenda until after the 2012 election. It does not include any tax increases that Obama had pressed hard for to include.
House Speaker John Boehner, in a conference call with Republican members of the lower chamber, said the deal was a good one that met the demands of all Republicans.
Bowing to the still unknown outcome of congressional action, Obama said important votes remained to be taken but that leaders of both parties in both houses of Congress were agreed to a plan that would initially cut about $1 trillion from U.S. spending, "the lowest level of domestic spending since Dwight Eisenhower was president" in the 1950s.
"Is this the deal I would have preferred," Obama asked, answering his own question with one word. "No."
But he said: "Most importantly it will allow us to avoid default and end the crisis that Washington imposed on the rest of American. An it will allow us to lift the cloud of debt and uncertainty" that has hung above the United States for weeks.
No votes were expected in either house of Congress until Monday at the earliest, to give rank and file lawmakers to review the package. Tuesday is the deadline to avoid a U.S. default on payments to investors in Treasury bonds, recipients of Social Security pension checks, those relying on military veterans benefits and businesses that do work for the government.
Obama and many economists and financial experts predicted global chaos and plunging stock markets had no deal been reached by midnight Tuesday.
If approved in Monday votes, the compromise would presumably preserve America's sterling credit rating, reassure investors in financial markets across the globe and possibly reverse the losses that spread across Wall Street in recent days as the threat of a default grew.
The broadest outlines of the emerging plan, a deal that involved deep negotiations between McConnell and Vice President Joe Biden, would raise the federal debt limit in two stages by at least $2.2 trillion, enough to tide the Treasury over until after the 2012 elections.
Big cuts in government spending would be phased in over a decade. Thousands of programs — the Park Service, Internal Revenue Service and Labor Department accounts among them — could be trimmed to levels last seen years ago.
No benefit cuts were envisioned for the Social Security pension system or Medicare, the federal program that provides health care payments to the elderly. But other programs would be scoured for savings. Taxes would be unlikely to rise.
The first step would take place immediately, raising the debt limit by nearly $1 trillion and cutting spending by a slightly larger amount over a decade.
That would be followed by creation of a new congressional committee that would have until the end of November to recommend $1.8 trillion or more in deficit cuts, targeting benefit programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, or overhauling the tax code. Those deficit cuts would allow a second increase in the debt limit, which would be needed by early next year.
If the committee failed to reach its $1.8 trillion target, or Congress failed to approve its recommendations by the end of 2011, lawmakers would then have to vote on a proposed constitutional balanced-budget amendment.
If that failed to pass, automatic spending cuts totaling $1.2 trillion would automatically take effect, and the debt limit would rise by an identical amount.
Social Security, Medicaid and food stamps would be exempt from the automatic cuts, but payments to doctors, nursing homes and other Medicare providers could be trimmed, as could subsidies to insurance companies that offer an alternative to government-run Medicare.
Any agreement will have to be passed by the Democratic-controlled Senate, which was seen as assured, and Republican-controlled House, which still could face a major tussle, before going to the White House for Obama's signature. With precious little time remaining, both chambers had been on standby throughout the day Sunday.
Some Republicans were said to still be balking over proposed cuts in defense spending. It also was unclear how the 87 new House members, voted in with support from the low-tax, small-government tea party wing of the Republican Party, would vote. But it was believed that both Boehner, the Republican House speaker, and Reid, leader of majority Democrats in the Senate, felt certain they could garner sufficient votes.
The coming days will be clogged with statements from both Republicans, especially the tea party caucus, and Democrats as they try to convince their constituencies that they held firm and won the day in the bitter divide over how the government operates and what it owes to its citizens.
© Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Read more on Newsmax.com: GOP, Obama Reach $2 Trillion Debt Deal to Avert Default
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Newsfront Tags: Debt Showdown
Obama GOP, Obama Reach $2 Trillion Debt Deal to Avert Default
Sunday, 31 Jul 2011 09:00 PM
Forward Article Republicans and Democrats in Congress reached agreement with President Barack Obama to raise the limit on U.S. borrowing and forestall an unprecedented American default, marking the start in the final chapter of one of the nastiest and divisive episodes in recent American political history.
Shortly after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and his Republican counterpart, minority leader Mitchell McConnell, endorsed the plan on the Senate floor, Obama went to the White House press room to add his support for the deal. It meets one of his key demands, raising borrowing power sufficiently to keep the partisan poison pill from returning to the national agenda until after the 2012 election. It does not include any tax increases that Obama had pressed hard for to include.
House Speaker John Boehner, in a conference call with Republican members of the lower chamber, said the deal was a good one that met the demands of all Republicans.
Bowing to the still unknown outcome of congressional action, Obama said important votes remained to be taken but that leaders of both parties in both houses of Congress were agreed to a plan that would initially cut about $1 trillion from U.S. spending, "the lowest level of domestic spending since Dwight Eisenhower was president" in the 1950s.
"Is this the deal I would have preferred," Obama asked, answering his own question with one word. "No."
But he said: "Most importantly it will allow us to avoid default and end the crisis that Washington imposed on the rest of American. An it will allow us to lift the cloud of debt and uncertainty" that has hung above the United States for weeks.
No votes were expected in either house of Congress until Monday at the earliest, to give rank and file lawmakers to review the package. Tuesday is the deadline to avoid a U.S. default on payments to investors in Treasury bonds, recipients of Social Security pension checks, those relying on military veterans benefits and businesses that do work for the government.
Obama and many economists and financial experts predicted global chaos and plunging stock markets had no deal been reached by midnight Tuesday.
If approved in Monday votes, the compromise would presumably preserve America's sterling credit rating, reassure investors in financial markets across the globe and possibly reverse the losses that spread across Wall Street in recent days as the threat of a default grew.
The broadest outlines of the emerging plan, a deal that involved deep negotiations between McConnell and Vice President Joe Biden, would raise the federal debt limit in two stages by at least $2.2 trillion, enough to tide the Treasury over until after the 2012 elections.
Big cuts in government spending would be phased in over a decade. Thousands of programs — the Park Service, Internal Revenue Service and Labor Department accounts among them — could be trimmed to levels last seen years ago.
No benefit cuts were envisioned for the Social Security pension system or Medicare, the federal program that provides health care payments to the elderly. But other programs would be scoured for savings. Taxes would be unlikely to rise.
The first step would take place immediately, raising the debt limit by nearly $1 trillion and cutting spending by a slightly larger amount over a decade.
That would be followed by creation of a new congressional committee that would have until the end of November to recommend $1.8 trillion or more in deficit cuts, targeting benefit programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, or overhauling the tax code. Those deficit cuts would allow a second increase in the debt limit, which would be needed by early next year.
If the committee failed to reach its $1.8 trillion target, or Congress failed to approve its recommendations by the end of 2011, lawmakers would then have to vote on a proposed constitutional balanced-budget amendment.
If that failed to pass, automatic spending cuts totaling $1.2 trillion would automatically take effect, and the debt limit would rise by an identical amount.
Social Security, Medicaid and food stamps would be exempt from the automatic cuts, but payments to doctors, nursing homes and other Medicare providers could be trimmed, as could subsidies to insurance companies that offer an alternative to government-run Medicare.
Any agreement will have to be passed by the Democratic-controlled Senate, which was seen as assured, and Republican-controlled House, which still could face a major tussle, before going to the White House for Obama's signature. With precious little time remaining, both chambers had been on standby throughout the day Sunday.
Some Republicans were said to still be balking over proposed cuts in defense spending. It also was unclear how the 87 new House members, voted in with support from the low-tax, small-government tea party wing of the Republican Party, would vote. But it was believed that both Boehner, the Republican House speaker, and Reid, leader of majority Democrats in the Senate, felt certain they could garner sufficient votes.
The coming days will be clogged with statements from both Republicans, especially the tea party caucus, and Democrats as they try to convince their constituencies that they held firm and won the day in the bitter divide over how the government operates and what it owes to its citizens.
© Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Read more on Newsmax.com: GOP, Obama Reach $2 Trillion Debt Deal to Avert Default
Blessed Re-Cycle ... Thanks friend, Clay Vice!
92 YEAR OLD PREACHER
While watching a little TV on Sunday instead of going to church, I watched a church in Atlanta honoring one of its senior pastors who had been retired many years. He was 92 at that time and I wondered why the church even bothered to ask the old gentleman to preach at that age. After a warm welcome, introduction of this speaker, and as the applause quieted down, he rose from his high back chair and walked slowly, with great effort and a sliding gait to the podium. Without a note or written paper of any kind he placed both hands on the pulpit to steady himself and then quietly and slowly he began to speak....
"When I was asked to come here today and talk to you, your pastor asked me to tell you what was the greatest lesson ever learned in my 50-odd years of preaching. I thought about it for a few days and boiled it down to just one thing that made the most difference in my life and sustained me through all my trials.. The one thing that I could always rely on when tears and heartbreak and pain and fear and sorrow paralyzed me...
the only thing that would comfort was this verse......... .....
"Jesus loves me this I know.
For the Bible tells me so.
Little ones to Him belong,
we are weak but He is strong.....
Yes, Jesus loves me....
The Bible tells me so."
The old pastor stated, "I always noticed that it was the adults who chose the children's hymn 'Jesus Loves Me' (for the children of course) during a hymn sing, and it was the adults who sang the loudest because I could see they knew it the best."
"Here for you now is a Senior version of Jesus Loves Me":
JESUS LOVES ME
Jesus loves me, this I know,
Though my hair is white as snow
Though my sight is growing dim,
Still He bids me trust in Him.
(CHORUS)
YES, JESUS LOVES ME.. YES, JESUS LOVES ME..
YES, JESUS LOVES ME, FOR THE BIBLE TELLS ME SO.
Though my steps are oh, so slow,
With my hand in His I'll go
On through life, let come what may,
He'll be there to lead the way.
(CHORUS)
When the nights are dark and long,
In my heart He puts a song..
Telling me in words so clear,
"Have no fear, for I am near."
(CHORUS)
When my work on earth is done,
And life's victories have been won.
He will take me home above,
Then I'll understand His love.
(CHORUS)
I love Jesus, does He know?
Have I ever told Him so?
Jesus loves to hear me say,
That I love Him every day.
(CHORUS)
If you think this is neat, please pass it on to your friends. If you do not pass it on, nothing bad will happen, but you will have missed an opportunity to "reach out and touch" a friend or a loved one.
God Bless Us All!!!
While watching a little TV on Sunday instead of going to church, I watched a church in Atlanta honoring one of its senior pastors who had been retired many years. He was 92 at that time and I wondered why the church even bothered to ask the old gentleman to preach at that age. After a warm welcome, introduction of this speaker, and as the applause quieted down, he rose from his high back chair and walked slowly, with great effort and a sliding gait to the podium. Without a note or written paper of any kind he placed both hands on the pulpit to steady himself and then quietly and slowly he began to speak....
"When I was asked to come here today and talk to you, your pastor asked me to tell you what was the greatest lesson ever learned in my 50-odd years of preaching. I thought about it for a few days and boiled it down to just one thing that made the most difference in my life and sustained me through all my trials.. The one thing that I could always rely on when tears and heartbreak and pain and fear and sorrow paralyzed me...
the only thing that would comfort was this verse......... .....
"Jesus loves me this I know.
For the Bible tells me so.
Little ones to Him belong,
we are weak but He is strong.....
Yes, Jesus loves me....
The Bible tells me so."
The old pastor stated, "I always noticed that it was the adults who chose the children's hymn 'Jesus Loves Me' (for the children of course) during a hymn sing, and it was the adults who sang the loudest because I could see they knew it the best."
"Here for you now is a Senior version of Jesus Loves Me":
JESUS LOVES ME
Jesus loves me, this I know,
Though my hair is white as snow
Though my sight is growing dim,
Still He bids me trust in Him.
(CHORUS)
YES, JESUS LOVES ME.. YES, JESUS LOVES ME..
YES, JESUS LOVES ME, FOR THE BIBLE TELLS ME SO.
Though my steps are oh, so slow,
With my hand in His I'll go
On through life, let come what may,
He'll be there to lead the way.
(CHORUS)
When the nights are dark and long,
In my heart He puts a song..
Telling me in words so clear,
"Have no fear, for I am near."
(CHORUS)
When my work on earth is done,
And life's victories have been won.
He will take me home above,
Then I'll understand His love.
(CHORUS)
I love Jesus, does He know?
Have I ever told Him so?
Jesus loves to hear me say,
That I love Him every day.
(CHORUS)
If you think this is neat, please pass it on to your friends. If you do not pass it on, nothing bad will happen, but you will have missed an opportunity to "reach out and touch" a friend or a loved one.
God Bless Us All!!!
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