Incident Here

I am marinating a beef brisket and will roast that (inside) in my oven later. I don't know if brisket is popular there? It is a tough piece of meat by when slow roasted a low temperature for 4 hours or so can be a tasty dish. It's a "cheap cut" of meat so often smoked on a barbecue pit. Sigh..I am too lazy to do that today, so it will be cooked in the over instead.
Here is a personal story about a tragedy that happened in my neighborhood. I usually ride my bicycle at night (when it isn't hot) from my home to a radius of a couple of miles into an adjoining section. A few weeks ago I noticed a house with a strange look to it. The lawn was overgrown and a sign hand printed said "Lawn By NSA". There were also two large hand lettered signs in the windows saying "Welcome Home Christy" and something appeared to be written on poster board and nailed by the door. Windows were broken and the house in need of repairs.
I did not stop to read the door signs as I rode by the house each time I biked on my way back to my own house. I wondered what it was all about and what the signs meant. The house looked deserted, as if it was another one that Hurricane Katrina ruined. There are still many unoccupied and ruined houses all about the New Orleans area, so I did not suspect anything other than the owner must have put up the lawn sigh because the company that cared for the yard did not cut it as he or she wished. I thought the sign might be a protest against sloppy work the lawn company did for the owner. And the other signs I thought might be a child' way of welcoming back family members to a house that had been abandoned since the great hurricane. Everything remained the same at that house for the several weeks I continued to bike past it until a news report came on TV Friday night.
Apparently a man inside had shot two police officers who had knocked on the door to serve a commitment order. The man inside, who had been living there all along (without electricity or even water) was mentally unstable- said to be paranoid. His sister had asked a court to have him taken from the house and evaluated psychologically because his family believed he might be a danger to himself or others.
According to the media, the man was paranoid, had previous mental problems and had imagined "government agents" were spying on him and wanted to assassinate him. Neighbors said the man had a mental breakdown a year or so ago and started acting peculiarly. He was once friendly and helpful, but became a recluse, in his house with more than 20 rifles and ammunition (he was a licensed gun collector) ready to defend himself from the imaginary government agents. The news media said a standoff was on-going and the area was sealed.
I rode my bike that night on the same route and was prohibited from getting too close to the house. Police tried for two days to convince him to come out but he continued to fire shots into the neighborhood. Finally a police sniper shot him from a perch, and the man was found dead inside. Last night the police and fire department were still at the house sealing it form outsiders. what appeared to be family members were sitting on the lawn examining contents from the house. Neighbors were milling around the area in a kind of shock that the incident happened and feeling sorry for the deceased who was killed by paranoia.
It seems that the mother of the man died about 2 years ago, leaving the man alone. At that time he began to decline mentally, but because of his reclusive lifestyle no one paid attention to his problems. All the days I rode in front of that house the man was probably looking out of his window for the "agents". I am thankful that he did not imagine I was one of them, for I would have been gunned down on the street as were the police officers who tried to serve the commitment warrant were.
I know my blog is dumb but gunning me down might be an extreme way to give you relief from it...