Tamara Lush

February 19, 2013

RIP Mindy McCready

A little more than a year ago I spoke with Mindy McCready about her life. Then seven months pregnant, she was locked in a custody battle with her own mother over her son and was on the run from authorities who wanted to return the child to Florida.

In researching that story, all I could think about was how complicated McCready’s life had become. Fame had not brought her happiness or peace. Her life seemed so sad.

I thought about that again last night, when I received a message that McCready had killed herself. Years of bad choices, addiction and mental illness had finally pushed her over the edge, and all of the talent and beauty is now gone. My heart breaks for her and her children.

Speaking to The Associated Press in 2010, McCready smiled wryly while talking about the string of issues she’d dealt with over the last half-decade.

“It is a giant whirlwind of chaos all the time,” she said of her life. “I call my life a beautiful mess and organized chaos. It’s just always been like that. My entire life things have been attracted to me and vice versa that turn into chaotic nightmares or I create the chaos myself. I think that’s really the life of a celebrity, of a big, huge, giant personality.”

I think that one of the reasons why this story has struck a chord with so many people is that McCready seemed so down-to-earth despite having immense talent. We were hoping that she would push past her problems, and if not reclaim her stardom, then find peace.

February 16, 2013

I am so sorry.

Le sigh. I am a bad blogger. Maybe wire service reporters make bad bloggers because there’s just so few hours in the day after writing stories. I promise to do better in 2013 and check this site! I know that some people find this and try to comment or reach out to me during breaking news stories. If this is you — and I haven’t updated this in a while — email me at tlush@ap.org.

In the meantime, here’s an interesting story I wrote about this week. Music legend Chubby Checker is suing Hewlett Packard over a now-defunct, very racy, app.

Chubby Checker and his Florida attorney, Willie Gary.

Link here.

January 28, 2012

Hi.

I’ve neglected this blog for the last several months.
I’m hoping to make a better effort at updating it with my articles, videos and photos soon — but I’m trying to figure out the best way to post links to stories that won’t expire. If anyone has any thoughts on this, please let me know. For more up-to-date links to my work, follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/tamaralush.
Hope your 2012 is going well so far.

2 comments

September 12, 2011

Good things on a bad day

It seems somehow fitting to end this summer’s assignment in Nashville, at a honky tonk bar with a preacher playing gospel music and songs of hope.

For the past four months, I’ve been writing about how the Sept. 11 terror attacks have changed America. I’ve tried to write about the people outside of New York and Washington, D.C. — mainly, the people who, like myself, watched TV in horror on that day and tried to make sense of it all.

I started today early at a volunteer event for Habitat for Humanity. More than 200 people had gathered to build seven homes for seven families, an attempt to recapture the spirit of unity that people felt after the attacks.

Then, my editors wanted some quotes from downtown Nashville. I went to Robert’s Western World, where Ron Blakley — an evangelical Episcopalian pastor and country and western musician — sang traditional Christian gospels.

It was moving, uplifting and wonderful.

After his morning show, he told me this:

“We can’t avoid the suffering that life brings,” he said. “But good things can happen on a bad day.”

September 11, 2011

Sept. 11 Heroes

COLUMBUS, Ga.—When volunteer John House shows people around the National Infantry Museum, he pauses next to an exhibit in the Vietnam-era section and points to one of the lifelike mannequins posed in a combat stance.
A hero fought in this battle, House tells the visitors. His name was Rick Rescorla, an Army platoon leader who saved many of his men in Vietnam.
A bronze statue of Rescorla looms just outside the National Infantry Museum. The bronze monument depicts Rescorla fighting in Vietnam—but the pedestal describes Rescorla’s final battle on Sept. 11, 2001.
As the head of security for Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, Rescorla evacuated 2,700 of his company’s employees from the World Trade Center. After everyone in his company got out safely, he rushed back inside to help more people. He died when the south tower collapsed.
“He was a patriot,” House tells people, “a hero, until the end.”

Story here.

September 9, 2011

Some Sept. 11 links

I wanted to pass along a couple of links for Sept. 11 coverage.

Here’s the Twitter list of AP journalists covering 9/11 this weekend (including me). We will be posting photos, videos and stories all weekend, plus links to other coverage on other sites.

Yahoo has created a great page filled with Sept. 11 coverage, including many of my stories and accounts of the day by survivors.

And here is wonderfully written and poignant story by Sherri Day of the St. Petersburg Times. She was a young reporter at the New York Times on 9/11, and covered the attacks.

September 3, 2011

Florida news

It’s been a busy week in Florida news. In the past few days, I’ve written about an alligator that attacked a 90-year-old woman, a presidential candidate and a bug that transmits bacteria by vomiting:

1. The alligator: be really careful when walking near canals or freshwater ponds. There are monsters in Florida, and they can be very dangerous.

2. The presidential candidate: Tampa is the location of the 2012 GOP national convention. So the candidates are coming to town often and some, like Mitt Romney, are opening their Florida headquarters in Tampa as well.

3. The vomiting bug: I actually cover Florida agriculture, and it’s always fun to explain what’s going on with our trees, plants and crops.

August 30, 2011

Video games and addiction

Earlier this year, I met and interviewed a very interesting guy. His name is Ryan Van Cleave and he lives here in Florida. He’s written a memoir about playing video games, and how he became addicted to playing these games, specifically World of Warcraft.

“Playing World of Warcraft makes me feel godlike,” Van Cleave wrote in his book, titled “Unplugged.” “I have ultimate control and can do what I want with few real repercussions. The real world makes me feel impotent … a computer malfunction, a sobbing child, a suddenly dead [mobile] phone battery — the littlest hitch in daily living feels profoundly disempowering.”

Here’s the story I wrote about Ryan. Some experts don’t believe that people can be addicted to video games, while people like Ryan and others say they can be addictive, much like gambling.

I’ve never really played video games — I did for a few hours for this story — but I sometimes wonder whether I spend too much time on the internet. When does something become an addiction?

August 26, 2011

Bomb-sniffing dogs at the mall

Most everyone knows that air travel has changed dramatically since 9/11/2001. But what about security in other places?

Here’s a story I reported from the Mall of America in Minnesota.

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August 19, 2011

A couple of other stories

It’s almost Sept. 11, which means my summer-long assignment of writing about how the US has changed since 2001 is coming to an end. Soon, I’ll be covering more Florida stories like these:

Aug. 3: Fla. Gov. Rick Scott visits a Tampa doughnut shop.

Story here.

Aug. 18: Tampa teenager arrested in school bomb plot.

Story here.

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