Mondo Lizzie Borden

From the Honolulu Weekly, 21 January 2009.

DAYLE SCHEAR / Internationally-acclaimed psychic Dayle Schear is credited with solving numerous criminal cases including murders, missing persons and stolen property. Her resumé includes working with the U.S. government to hone her psychic abilities, authoring a book and multiple television appearances. She’s wowed audiences in Hawai‘i and around the world with her insights. This Saturday, she takes her act to Turtle Bay Resort, but first she took some time to chat with the Weekly.

How do your skills manifest themselves? Do you get a feeling, see visions, sense presences?

It’s a feeling.

Describe what it’s like.

If I could describe it, we’d be worth millions, doll. It’s just that I start getting obsessed with something and there is no explanation or reason for it. It’s like if there’s a horrible storm coming, I will get obsessed with buying groceries. And I don’t know why I am obsessed but three days later there’ll be a storm. I’ll just be spacing out and I get the urge that I have to do this particular thing.

How else besides groceries?

I’ve done TV and I was working on the show Sightings, and we went to Boston to do the Lizzie Borden case in Fall River, Massachusetts.

Oh, Lizzie Borden. That is scary stuff.

Never again. I’m telling you, never again. Anyway, what had happened [was that] I had a miscarriage 30 years prior. And at the time, the doctor would not give me a blood transfusion. I begged him and he wouldn’t do it. He said there was bad blood going around. It turned out that it was the beginnings of AIDS and that’s why he didn’t give me the blood. He saved my life. I was always looking for this guy subconsciously. So 30 years later, in Fall River, I mentioned to the lady at the inn where I was staying that I was from [Lake] Tahoe and there was this doctor there and she said he was also from Tahoe. It turned out, he was the exact same doctor who saved my life. Thirty years later and I’d been looking for him all along. Stuff like that happens to me all the time. All the time. Synchronicity. Wild things.

Read the entire interview here.

Here is Dayle on Sightings.

UPDATE: George Delaney posted his photographs of the event on Flikr. Don’t miss it!

The event held today in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service was a huge success!

1000 Valentines for the Troops was organized to create valentines and banners to send to the men and women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It snowed all day yesterday, but when the day broke this morning, it was clear and bright. A beautiful day!

Thanks to Save Our Neighborhoods, the City of Fall River, CD REC, BOLD, and Arts United.

We had 20 student volunteers sent by Curry College in Milton, MA. They drove all this way on roads not yet fully plowed to join us and help out. What great people!

Thanks also to Jeff Carpenter for his great artistic vision and Al Lima for his incredible contributions and immense moral support.

Enjoy the slideshow!

UPDATE: The event is now listed with the Providence Journal.

UPDATE 2: the event has been covered on a fuller basis in the Providence Journal!

1000 VALENTINES FOR THE TROOPS

Sign Up to Volunteer or Attend here!

FALL RIVER, Massachusetts—Save Our Neighborhoods, the City of Fall River, B.O.L.D., and Arts United has teamed together to sponsor a magical event in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, which Congress has designated as a national day of service and reflection.

The organizations and the city are inviting children and folks of all ages to attend the 1000 Valentines for the Troops event, to be held at the CD Rec/Bank Street Armory, at 72 Bank Street in Fall River, MA, from 9 am until noon, on Monday, January 19, 2009.

All interested parties will be provided with materials (paper, markers, paint, hearts, etc.) to assist them in creating the groups’ goal of 1000 hand-made Valentines for the men and women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. Additionally, four large 3’X10′ blank banners will be available for decoration and well wishes.

The Valentines and banners will be shipped overseas to the troops serving in America’s two war zones, arriving in time for Valentines Day.

Save Our Neighborhood member Stefani Koorey was tapped by President Elect Barack Obama’s Inauguration Committee to organize a Fall River event. The call came late last week and Koorey has been hard at work putting to practice the grassroots organizing training she received at Camp Obama during the presidential campaign.

“I was trained in Boston at Camp Obama,” says Koorey, “on the nuts and bolts of grassroots organization. It is the most important aspect of any cause—meeting people and getting them as excited as you are about someone or an issue. You can’t do that by email or on the phone. You have to talk to folks face to face. Meet as many people as you can, and keep track of who they are so you can then phone them for their commitment. It’s all about people to people. And how we are really so very much alike in all the most important ways.”

“Everyone I meet to talk about this event is excited by the idea. It is wonderful to see how this effort can bring us all together on this very important day. The only thing I couldn’t arrange,” says Koorey, “is a donation of coffee and hot chocolate. So if anyone out there owns a coffee shop and would like to help, we would welcome your donation. Just call me!”

1000 Valentines for the Troops still needs volunteers to put up posters in local business and to assist at the event. Anyone who is interested in creating Valentines or messages of support for our troops is invited to attend.

For information, please contact Stefani Koorey at V4Troops@gmail.com or at 508-672-0099 for further information.

The Preliminary Hearing phase of the Commonwealth vs. Lizzie A. Borden began on August 25 and lasted until September 1, 1892. The copy given to Lizzie’s lawyer, Andrew Jennings, is the only one known to have survived. It has recently been discovered that this copy is, in fact, both incomplete and inaccurate, having been altered and edited for some long-forgotten reason. This new edition of the Preliminary Hearing combines a number of transcriptions from various sources in an effort to reproduce, as accurately and authentically as possible, the day-by-day proceedings of this all-important legal event in the history of the Borden murders of 1892. This new edition, for the first time, reads in the order in which the witnesses were called, includes the closing statements of the defense and prosecution and the judge’s summation and verdict, and contains the entirety of Lizzie’s own Inquest testimony which was read into the official record but not reproduced in the original transcription.

A new edition is now available for sale for only $29.99. Published by PearTree Press. B&W interior. 7″ x 10″ format. 526 pages.

Fall River Herald News columnist Marc Dion has penned a lovely piece about the new Fall River History Club. It appears on the paper on Monday, January 12th. It is a must read!

Of course, Lizzie Borden is mentioned. It is Fall River history! And yes, I am in it too.

Read the full text here.

This crossed my desk this morning. A new film about the Borden case is currently being filmed in Amish country in Pennsylvania.

Titled “Bordenia,” the film is written and directed by 18-year-old Cameron Munson.

Munson’s work has received very good reviews, as evidenced by this on on his movie Stalked from 2008. His YouTube bio reads,

Cameron Munson is the director of the award winning short “Explicit”, and many other shorts in various genres. In 2007, Munson directed the 30 minute horror comedy short “Stalked”, and was also accepted to the The New York Film Academy. Since then, Cameron has been studying at the New York Film Academy in Union Square, Manhattan for directing.

From NewsBlaze, by Carson Grant:

The clopping of the horse hooves on the cold winter pavement outside my Rt. 340 Bed and Breakfast room this 5 am morning, offers a gentle awaking to a full day of shooting on “Bordenia” directed and written by Cameron Munson. A retelling of an American legend, the Fall River story of the Borden family, and Lizzie Borden’s part she played in the ax murders of her father and stepmother.

Our film location, Intercourse, Pennsylvania offers a quiet Lancaster township, off-season to the warm weather tourists who flock here to enjoy the pastoral surrounding of Amish farming, dining, crafts and culture. Quilting, needlepoint, wood furniture making, tin, metal and pottery wares are some of the handwork one will find on a stroll along the main street markets and restaurants.

Promised religious freedom by William Penn in 1730, from the Rhine region, the Amish (plain), Lutheran (worldly) and other Germanic Dutch settlers have developed these farmlands to be one of the most productive areas in the Unites States today. A respectful visitor can enjoy the Amish lifestyle in daily routines as a traditionally costumed woman serving food at a local eatery, a young man riding a scooter through town, a gathering of bearded married men in conversation, or the horse draw black buggy carriages and wagons transporting.

The American custom of Hexen, hanging drawn and hand painted signs at the peak of a barn to promote fertility and protection for a Pennsylvania German Dutch farm originated from this countryside.

Examples of Early American farming and building technology can be explored with a walking visit to many local buildings, as the ‘Old Woodshed’ with the vintage sawmill tables still in place, a scenic ride through the miles of fertile agricultural fields, and the tasting of many local preserved food specialties. Along historical ‘Old Philadelphia Pike’ a variety of commerce and the Amish Mennonite information center offer products, literature and exhibits of the cultural heritage of the area.

The house we are shooting the murder scenes has a similar design to the original Borden’s home, which now is a B & B in Fall River. As a native to RI, the Massachusetts Bordens’ 1892 crime had always captured my imagination and director Munson’s casting of each role was right on point. Today’s first shots are of Andrew Borden (my character) chopping logs with an ax, a skill rekindled from my Rhode Island childhood. Then I meet some of my family in makeup for the death scene with my wife (Gloria Buccino), my daughter Lizzie (Sarah Ann Corkum), and my son Bill (Michael Mattera).

With a 2009 release into the international festival circuit, ‘Bordenia’ will be a twisting of a children’s rhyme to an audience of new listeners, creating an innocent shadow around Lizzie.

I can’t wait! How exciting!

The proof has finally been approved and the print copy of the November issue of The Hatchet is now available for sale.

You will note that the price has been GREATLY reduced from what was available on our previous print on demand partner. Instead of a price close to $28, we are offering this issue for ONLY $14.99!

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