#1627: Re:.. Antoine com : Morse comments

[Robert Corbett <bcorbett@netcom.com>]

From: oloffsonram <oloffsonram@globelsud.net>


i sincerely apologize to mr antoine for his misinterpreting my sense of 
humor or lack of it in reference to michael nortan's article and the 
"woozy" quote...

the last time i participated in carnival(1998) many people were killed 
and injured...the same mr nortan wrote an article stating that my 
carnival float had brake problems...mr nortan never checked with me and 
i was never able to show him the evidence i have that it wasn't a brake 
problem at all that caused the truck to run over so many people, 
killing at least seven, including my head of security...three or four 
hours after the tragedy i got a fax from new york...a friend of mine 
was sending his sympathies having read about the ordeal on the 
wires...the misinformation had gone out globally...my head of security, 
Gerard Laforest, and i had spent the previous few days trying to figure 
out how we were going to try and protect ourselves from an anticipated 
attack...he told me, after informing himself at the national palace, 
the police headquarters and the mayor's office, that the ten armed 
guards i had asked for wouldn't be enough...he said he would put ten 
men on the float and would provide me with additional support on the 
ground...he took the point out in front of the float and died trying to 
help get people out of the way...one of my musicians fractured both 
legs by jumping off of the float before it came to a stop...when the 
float finally wedged itself between a tree and a pick-up truck my wife 
and i lay down and others lay on top of us to hide and protect us... 
these people sensed the danger and felt that we were the targets...i 
had tried to avoid going out for the carnival but received too much 
pressure from the haitian president...i resigned myself...i had been 
through these sorts of ordeals during the three year coup period maybe 
a half a dozen times before, but we had always managed to survive 
without mortality statistics... i find that when these sorts of events 
enter into your life it is necessary to have perspective and at times 
humor, or an attempt at it...i personally enjoy the company of 
journalists but am at times frustrated by what i read in the papers... 
THE PHRASE and its psychological effect on the readership is just a 
small but integral part of the problem....i naively believe that in the 
long run things will get straightened out in haiti and elsewhere... 
justice has to prevail, and if we can steal a laugh here and there 
along the way all the better...

richard morse