WP Magazine: After Dad shot Mom, a family deals with the haunting legacy of gun violence

WP Magazine: After Dad shot Mom, a family deals with the haunting legacy of gun violence
Posted by Neely Tucker on February 28, 2013 at 11:51 am


The Vessels family on Easter Sunday, 1964, three years before Ken shot Fran. From left, the boys are Ken, Joseph and Kris; the girls are Mary, Judy and Lynnie. 
 Courtesy of Lynnie Vessels)
Edward Kenneth Vessels married his bride, Fran, in the stone- and-stained-glass embrace of St. Dominic’s Church in Southwest Washington in the summer of 1952. They were a handsome couple in their mid-20s, and in many ways were the embodiment of the postwar middle-class American dream.
Ken, the son of a railroad man, was a former Marine who became an insurance agent in his native Louisville. The family owned some 200 acres outside town. He had prospects.
Frannie, the only child of German and Lithuanian immigrants, was raised in the District and Northern Virginia. She was a registered nurse.
They met as students in a biology class at Catholic University and eventually settled in a little house on the outskirts of Louisville. They had three boys and three girls.
In 1960s family photographs, the eight of them — Dad in narrow tie, Mom in cat-eye glasses, the boys in buzz cuts, the girls in hats and summer dresses — appear as if lifted from a Norman Rockwell painting: The Family After Church.
Behind closed doors, they lived the American Nightmare.

Ken Vessels, a pleasant man at the office, was a raging alcoholic at home.
He beat their children, particularly the boys, with little provocation and less mercy. “Pops” was a man of modest physical proportions — about 5-foot-9 and 165 pounds — but, his children say, was possessed of a monstrous gift for cruelty.
He lined them up single file and lashed them with switches or a belt. He once knocked out Joseph, the youngest boy, with the butt of a gun. To this day, neighbors remember being kept awake after midnight by the boys’ plaintive cries when Ken forced them to sit on a wooded hill behind the house: “Sir, may I come in?”

There is a lot more to read and to ponder. Most of it is what happened to the children and the surviving mother - and also to the drunken brute of a gun toting husband and father.
here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/liveblog/wp/2013/02/28/magazine-after-dad-shot-mom-a-family-deals-with-the-haunting-legacy-of-gun-violence/#comments

Jay Thomas tells his Lone Ranger Story on Letterman's show

It had me howling at my laptop, hope you get a kick out of it too.

http://stg.do/0N3c

Another one from last winter's snow

Are you going to flame me for having laughed out loud? Logic with merit about many gay people.

Blue Lights at my Kitchen Window

Here's another one I won't enter in the contest but want you to see

What is it again one should not do with yellow snow?

*****HERE'S HOW WE'LL DO IT***** Submissions and time line info March contest

The winter contest is going to move through very quickly and will be over by the 10th of March.
By that time I will have hopefully received some submissions in my inbox (the first one has arrived already and I will post them in a batch and hope they will round out and fill up by the 15th when I want to start the preliminary threads.

By the time the 21st rolls around the preliminaries will have run their course, and we'll have had a few days rest til the finals, which I want to start on that day.

The winner will be announced on Sunday the 24th, leaving time to start the April contest and a search for or the revelation of the new theme.

HERE'S HOW TO PROCEED:
Send me the photo in a private message then I'm holding them til the 12th and post the submission thread.

A RECAP of a previous post of mine, for those newcomers who may not have seen it:

Gov. Rick Snyder of Michigan Declares Fiscal Emergency in Detroit

Source: New York Times

BREAKING NEWS Friday, March 1, 2013 12:24 PM EST

Gov. Rick Snyder of Michigan Declares Fiscal Emergency in Detroit

Gov. Rick Snyder of Michigan announced on Friday that the city of Detroit is so snarled in financial woes that the state must appoint an emergency manager to lead it out of disaster.
“It’s time to say we should stop going downhill,” Mr. Snyder told Detroiters in a town-hall-style meeting that was broadcast live on local television stations across the city.
He later added, “Today is a day to call all hands on deck.”
The state-appointed manager, who could be selected later this month, would ultimately wield powers aimed at swiftly turning around the municipal government’s dire circumstances — powers to cut city spending, change contracts with labor unions, merge or eliminate city departments, urge the sale of city assets and even, if all else failed, to recommend bankruptcy proceedings.




Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/02/us/michigan-appoints-emergency-manager-for-detroit.html?emc=na

So you like photos of grandchildren?

This is mine, he dragged in like this after what he calls "crew" at his college UNCSA.
He is studying theater design and production, and his goal is to work with Cirque du Soleil in Europe.

*****The die is cast***** Theme announcement for March

I just unhinged the thread from the top that asked for votes on 5 theme suggestions.
The top vote getter was

"A photographer's favorite"

The idea behind it is a photo that has been a favorite of yours, or chrystalizes to be the favorite of a current photo shoot, something you love and want to show.
I came to the idea because my photo that won for "I see Music" has been such a favorite ever since I took it, and it occurred to me we all have a few of those tucked away in our files, or our minds.

Since the chance of this photo coming from your files is quite high, maybe the 2 full weeks shooting schedule is not necessary, but I want to announce the theme here tonight, and when I know the schedule of the Winter Seasonal that will be announced tomorrow I will follow up with an exact schedule for the March contest.

Photos will be the size of 800 for the longest side, and no more than 300 kb overall.
Other than that there are no restrictions of any kind.
I will even accept frames, and not balk on photo shopping or manipulation of any kind.
The idea is for you to show us something you find beautiful, or love, for whatever reason.

Give it a title of your choosing, I think it would be fine if it is personal in description or history or why you like it.

This will be a blind submission - you send the photo to me in the proper size in a pm, and I will post it in the contest. I will be the only person who knows whose photos they are, and I will, when it is all over, reveal every single originator in a separate thread in the photo forum.

So without further ado, remember your favorite and find it, or create it.