Shortly after midnight today John Poucher, 89, shot his wife Barbara, 86, who was suffering from Alzheimer’s, then shot himself. The killings will be logged inaccurately as a murder-suicide. The crime is that we live in a society still too barbaric to give assisted suicide and mercy killing its due.
pierre tristam
Double-Killing in Ormond Beach:
Farewell To Bookstores:
Why I Won’t Miss Books-A-Million
The closure of Books-A-Million is not as bad as it sounds: the chain bookstore was not living up to its billing as a cultural hub, and bookstores these days are becoming irrelevant thanks to Amazon, audio books and Google, which make the world’s libraries immediately accessible at a click.
Flagler Kills Together:
Bill O’Reilly’s Re-Assassination of JFK
Bill O’Reilly’s “Killing Kennedy,” this year’s choice for the annual Flagler Reads Together event, is not the usual O’Reilly polemic and provides in parts a fair summary of Kennedy’s presidency and the assassination, but it also has many flaws, writes Pierre Tristam.
Denying Service to Gays and Lesbians: Right of Conscience Vigilantism Meets Stand Your Ground
Bills in four states that would let businesses deny service to gays and lesbians on religious-freedom grounds are based on the same faulty justification of Stand Your Ground laws on self-defense grounds. In both cases, the 1st and 2nd Amendments are perverted into defenses of vigilantism rather than protection of rights.
Global Warning Olympics: Closing Ceremonies for Winter
Watching the Olympics requires too much of a suspension of disbelief to make the effort worth the time or the self-deception. There was an added and quite massive invention to these games: faking winter in a warming world, though in that regard we’re all self-deluded Russians.
A Heartfelt Thank You To Brian McMillan and Flagler County
Palm Coast Observer Editor Brian McMillan surprised FlaglerLive Editor Pierre Tristam with a moving, supportive column this week, illustrating the contrast between the two competitors, and the true meaning of community.
The Diagnosis
FlaglerLive Editor Pierre Tristam learned he had cancer over the holidays. He describes the experience and his travels since, mostly down and up the abyss that becomes a premier tourist spot for many of those coming to grips with the diagnosis, even though death row appears, in his case, a very long way off.
Tea Party’s Allure Dims. Its Zealots Shout On.
Just 64 diehard Republicans opposed the recent budget bill, among them, sadly but unsurprisingly, our own Ron DeSantis, who thinks being a Congressman is a game of grandstanding and TV time rather than dealing with the more prosaic business of compromising in Washington and constituent services in his own district.
Before Florida Made an Ass of Christmas, Philadelphia Gave Us a Founding Nativity Scene
The Rick Scott administration’s illiterate interpretation of the Bible and the first amendment turned the Florida Capitol rotunda into a comedy of absurd Christmas displays and discrimination, all of which could have been avoided with a reason and respect–for the holidays and the Constitution.
Holding a Candle to a Citizenship Oath
Twenty-seven ago today I was one among a few hundred Technicolor-skinned and Babel-tongued immigrants who jammed into an enormous hall in Federal District Court in Brooklyn and recited the oath of citizenship. A candle-lighting has marked the occasion every year since.