Tag: Dixie Chicks

Paradise Lost: West Memphis 3 Released

Paradise Lost On Chimesfreedom, we have often noted the power of movies, and one example of that occurred today when Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley walked out of an Arkansas court today as free men. Known as “the West Memphis 3,” the three were convicted in 1994 of killing three young boys. One of the three victims was mutilated, making some suspect a Satanic ritual killing, which cast suspicion on Echols, Baldwin, and Misskelley, partly because Echols practiced Wicca. When they were convicted in 1993, Echols was eighteen and the other two were under eighteen. The conviction was based in large part on an inconsistent confession that police obtained from the borderline mentally retarded Misskelley after twelve hours of interrogation.

In 1996, directors Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky released the award-winning documentary Paradise Lost – The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills about the case. I remember seeing the film years ago and being intrigued by the disturbing case. The documentary raised serious questions about the guilt of the three youths convicted of the crime.

In 2000, a sequel Paradise Lost 2: Revelations raised further questions about the evidence and focused on continuing efforts to prove Echols and the other two were innocent. Watching the movies, one begins to suspect another person featured in the films may have been involved in the murders. The movies helped gain support for the West Memphis 3 from a number of celebrities, including Eddie Vedder and Natalie Maines (Dixie Chicks), who were at the court hearing in Arkansas this morning. A third movie on the case is scheduled for a January release.

Today, following the discovery that DNA evidence did not connect the three to the crime, prosecutors allowed the three to plead guilty and maintain their innocence. Through the plea deal, the three were released for their time already served in prison.

Are they innocent? It is difficult to tell with a plea deal like this, and there is some evidence against them while there are also serious questions about much of the evidence. Either way, though, they have each spent seventeen years in prison, with Echols having spent part of that time on death row when he initially was sentenced to death. In light of today’s news, it is quite fortunate that he was not executed. Hopefully, some justice was done in the case. But paradise cannot be regained, as their time in prison cannot be returned, and the lives of the murdered boys cannot be brought back.

The release of Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley is due largely to the work of their attorneys and supporters, but it is fair to wonder whether or not they would have gained this attention and received the quality of legal representation they did without the notoriety that came from the films. Movies can make us happy, they can make us cry, they can comfort us, they can make us angry, they can inform us, and maybe they can correct injustices.

  • The Legacy of Bridget Bishop and the “Witches” of Salem
  • Internet Venom, Toby Keith’s Death, . . . and Grace from Willie Nelson
  • Travelin’ Soldier
  • Longing for the Freedom of My Chains: Dobie Gray’s “Loving Arms”
  • “Falling Slowly” by Glen Hansard and . . . Eddie Vedder (Duet of the Day)
  • Chronicling the Struggle for Justice in “True Justice: Bryan Stevenson’s Fight for Equality”

    • (Some Related Chimesfreedom Posts)

    Last Surviving U.S. WWI Veteran Passes

    Dixie Chicks – Travelin’ Soldier Live

    {Travelin’ Soldier (live) – Dixie Chicks }

    Frank Buckles — the last surviving U.S. veteran of the World War I forces — passed away Sunday at the age of 110. He enlisted in 1917 at the age of 16, lying about his age so he could serve his country. He later told a reporter, “I thought, well, ‘I want to get over there and see what it’s about.'”

    The WWI time period is a fascinating time and is not often covered in popular culture these days. Movies and popular culture pay little attention to WWI partly because that war was so long ago and partly because it does not have the heroic triumph over evil theme that World War II has. But there are several lessons to be learned from World War I and its time, and we hope to revisit the topic in the future on Chimesfreedom, especially because I just started reading Robert Graves’s memoir of the time period, Good-Bye to All That. For today, we wanted to make sure to note the death of Frank Buckles so it is not lost in less important news like the Oscars.

    World War I

    Today, we remember Frank Buckles and all of the other soldiers who served in “the Great War.” The above Dixie Chicks song, “Travelin’ Soldier” is off their 2003 Top Of The World Tour Live
    CD. The song was written and originally recorded by Bruce Robison, and The Dixie Chicks’s studio version of the song is on their 2002 Home album. In “Travelin’ Soldier,” the singer tells about “a girl with a bow” meeting a young man off to serve in the Vietnam war who asks her if she will write him because he has nobody else.

    I cried
    Never gonna hold the hand of another guy
    Too young for him they told her
    Waitin’ for the love of a travelin’ soldier
    Our love will never end
    Waitin’ for the soldier to come back again
    Never more to be alone when the letter said
    A soldier’s coming home.

    They exchange letters and she falls in love. But then she attends a football game where they read the names of the fallen. “And one name read but nobody really cared / But a pretty little girl with a bow in her hair.”

    It is ironic that this beautiful song about a woman supporting a man off to war was the victim of a campaign in the name of some sort of “patriotism.” The studio version “Travelin’ Soldier” was number one on the country charts as the U.S. was preparing to invade Iraq eight years ago this month on March 12, 2003. Dixie Chicks lead singer Natalie Maines told an audience in London: “Just so you know, we’re on the good side with y’all. We do not want this war, this violence. And we’re ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas.” A number of country radio stations stopped playing “Travelin’ Soldier,” and the song dropped off the charts.

    Many, like Merle Haggard defended Maines and her right to speak her mind. But as of today, “Travelin’ Soldier” is their last number one country song. The three made one more album together and went on hiatus. The 2006 documentary Dixie Chicks: Shut Up & Sing
    covers the reaction to the Bush quote and the impact on the group.

    Fortunately, unlike the soldier in the song and so many others, Frank Buckles returned home from World War I and lived a long life, outliving the almost five million Americans who served in the war. Only one Australian man and one British woman survive Buckles of all of the 65 million people from around the world who served in the war. Not only did he live through WWI, but he saw more than a century’s worth of history, even serving as a civilian prisoner for 38 months when Japanese soldiers captured him in 1941 while he was traveling around the world. In his later years, he campaigned to get the government to refurbish a neglected World War I monument in D.C. and rededicate it as a national memorial. You may donate to the cause at the World War I Memorial Foundation website.

    The West Virginia Congressional delegation from Buckles’s home state is proposing a plan for his body to lie in the U.S. Capitol. Buckles already had special government approval to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery. It is good that he is so honored, because this honor is really about respecting all of the people who served in World War I, and hopefully the honor will continue to the WWI monument in DC. As for Frank Buckles, he is already home.

  • Coldplay Video Uses Archival World War I Footage
  • War Horse (Short Review)
  • The WWI Christmas Truce: a Beatle, a Beagle, and a Brooks
  • Is it Safe?: Torture American-Style
  • Longing for the Freedom of My Chains: Dobie Gray’s “Loving Arms”
  • Internet Venom, Toby Keith’s Death, . . . and Grace from Willie Nelson

    • (Related Posts)