The big red letters inside Andy's Liquor Supermarket leave little doubt about acceptable behavior within the store's plexiglass-sealed enclosure. "No loitering, no drinking, no smoking, no hanging out, no bull," the sign says. In case there is any doubt about the last prohibition, a large, agitated dog named Samson barks and paces behind the transparent floor-to-ceiling ramparts that separate the customers from the alcohol, cash and employees.
      Nathaniel Wilson took a gulp of Night Train, chased it with a drag from his cigarette and then glanced at the sign over his shoulder. He laughed so hard, a bit of liquid dribbled from his mouth. "I guess we're all lawbreakers," he said. His companions, a half-dozen men and women from the surrounding neighborhood, offered amens and then defiantly swigged from their paper-wrapped pints. Rules, perhaps, are meant to be broken.
     Wedged between Fort Greene's million-dollar brownstones and the improved commercial heart of downtown Brooklyn rechristened MetroTech, Andy's and the other unpolished storefronts on Myrtle Avenue remain stubborn holdouts against the sanitizing forces of gentrification. Sure, life has improved since the height of the crack era in the 1980's and early 90's, but the dealers, the hustlers and the desperation persist. "Back in the day, a white guy like you would have been shot for coming down here," Mr. Wilson told a visitor with a wink.
     In rough-and-tumble neighborhoods all across the city, liquor stores like Andy's have long had a conflicted relationship with their surroundings. They are alternately recognized as nodes of desperately needed commerce and cursed as magnets for the drunk and the unruly. "Every 'hood needs a liquor store, but they're also the bane of the ghetto," said Michael Ayuso, 30, an electronics salesman on his way out of Andy's with a bottle of red wine. "It's like seeing terminally ill patients hanging out at the doctor's office waiting for the medicine that will ultimately kill them."
     Andy's has been a neighborhood fixture for at least 40 years, although some old-timers swear the place dates from the 1950's, when the Myrtle Avenue El still rattled overhead on its way from Queens to City Hall. As for Andy, he is either long dead, living in Crown Heights or sipping banana daiquiris on a Florida beach, depending on the memory at hand. "He probably owns half of Disney World," said Jeremiah Jefferson, who first became a customer in 1969 as a 9-year-old buying bottles of vodka for his parents. "Everyone knows a liquor store in a black neighborhood is a gold mine."
     Despite the menacing dog, the inhospitable sign and the store's codependent relationship with a legion of broken souls, Andy's is seemingly beloved by all who step into its large, poorly heated interior. Open from 8 a.m. until midnight, it is a late-night beacon on the desolate streets and something of a community center for the nearby Ingersoll and Walt Whitman Houses, a place where job tips are exchanged, old friends catch up on gossip and spare change flows easily from the pockets of fellow customers. Even the clerks are known for flashes of generosity. "If you're a nickel short, they still give you a play," said Yuseff Jones, who stopped in for a half-pint of Paul Masson brandy while taking a break from hawking woolen caps on the street. "And as long as you're not disrespecting the place, they let you hang out in here when it's cold out there."
     Andy's newest owner, Luis Taberas, whose family runs several other liquor stores in Brooklyn, did not entirely disagree, although he would rather patrons drain their bottles down the block and out of sight. "There's not much I can do about this," he said, gesturing to the lingerers. "If I call the cops, everyone just disappears. There's no point."
     It is said that Eddie Murphy's uncle once worked behind the counter, and the walls are peppered with the signed publicity stills of neighborhood figures. There are pictures of hip-hop artists - Nas-T and Heltah Skeltah - and a poster of the 1998 winner of the Miss Wild Irish Rose pageant. Presiding above them is a community service award from the Christian Fellowship Life Center Youth Ministries. "This is like our Cheers," said Mr. Jefferson, who is a chef and an artist. "When someone dies or during holidays, the place is packed." When it was time to buy Champagne for his wedding, he went to Andy's. And later that day, when he was frantically looking for his best man, he knew where to look. "He was here drunk," he said.
     The lottery tickets are almost as profitable as the alcohol. Everyone talks about the lucky player who won $475,000 last year, but the piles of discarded losing tickets are a stark testament to widespread disappointment. Every day for more than a decade, Frank Cunningham, 72, a retired cook, has been betting on the same four numbers, but the digits - 6140 - have kept him a loser. "They ain't come out straight yet," he complained, pushing another dollar through the slit in the plastic wall. He figures he has forked over $15,000 over the years, but he is nothing if not steadfast. "I know they're going to make me rich one day."
     Newcomers are sometimes put off by the uneven fluorescent lighting and down-market décor, but let it be known that Andy's is not just in the business of selling twist-cap wine. There are $225 bottles of Cristal and an impressive collection of syrahs, merlots and zinfandels. Hennessy is an especially big seller. But the volume leaders are the so-called fortified wines, known to some as "liquid crack" or "bum wines," which sell for as little as $1.75 a pint.
     By the time she wobbled in one recent night, Elizabeth Igartua had already had a few. Ms. Igartua, 39, an animated woman whose home is a shelter on nearby Tillary Street, said she had been up for three days "drinking, hanging out and drinking some more." The man behind the counter refused to sell her another bottle, but salvation came in the form of Paul Williams, a stranger with a sad face and a profound limp, who offered to take her pocketful of change and make the purchase for her.
     Before long, Mr. Williams and Ms. Igartua were in confessional moods, sharing details of their lives and low points in their ruinous affair with alcohol. Ms. Igartua said she started drinking a few years back when social workers took away her only child. "I've had a hard life," she said, quickly followed by, "You got a dollar?" Mr. Williams's downfall began at 14, he said, when he witnessed the suicide of his mother. "She drank a bottle of rubbing alcohol," he said, "and as she lay convulsing, she cried out, 'Nobody loves me, including you.' " He was raised by his grandmother in a rooming house in Park Slope, where all the boarders were alcoholics, he said. There was some early promise as a student at the High School of Art and Design, but drinking and drugs put an end to his aspirations. The limp, he explained, dates to 1996, the year he lost part of a leg; he was on a bender and got stuck in the doors of a subway car, and the leg hit a station column. "Now I've had the harder life," he said. These days, he spends his nights at a local drop-in center, eats his meals at soup kitchens and panhandles for the $10 a day that keeps him adequately anesthetized. He has already beaten his drug habit, he said, and one day soon he will go back into rehab. "But until then," he said, pouring another bottle into his Big Gulp cup, "Andy's going to be my best friend."

LOS ANGELES - Aldous Huxley long ago warned of a future in which love was beside the point and happiness a simple matter of consuming mass-produced goods and plenty of soma, a drug engineered for pleasure. More than 70 years later, Dr. Peter C. Whybrow, the director of the Semel Institute of Neuroscience and Human Behavior at the University of California, Los Angeles, has seen the future, and the society he describes isn't all that distant from Huxley's brave new world, although the soma, it seems, is in ourselves.
      In his new book, "American Mania: When More Is Not Enough" (W. W. Norton & Company), Dr. Whybrow argues that in the age of globalization, Americans are addictively driven by the brain's pleasure centers to live turbocharged lives in pursuit of status and possessions at the expense of the only things that can truly make us happy: relationships with other people. "In our compulsive drive for more," writes Dr. Whybrow, 64, a professor of psychiatry and bio-behavioral science, "we are making ourselves sick."
     His book is part of a new critical genre that likens society to a mental patient. The prognosis is grim. In "American Mania," he argues that the country is on the downswing of a manic episode set off by the Internet bubble of the 1990's. "It's a metaphor that helps guide us," he said, perched on a chair in the study of his rambling high-rise apartment near U.C.L.A. "I think we've shot through happiness as one does in hypomania and come out the other end, and we're not quite sure where we are. "In fact, I think happiness lies somewhere behind us. This frenzy we've adopted in search of what we hope is happiness and perfection is in fact a distraction, like mania is a distraction."
     "American Mania" is his fourth book for the general public about meaty psychiatric matters. An expert in manic depression and the endocrinology of the central nervous system, he has dissected depression and its relatives ("A Mood Apart" and "Mood Disorders") as well as the winter blahs ("The Hibernation Response"). Educating the public has been an abiding concern in a long career that began with training in psychiatry and endocrinology in his native London and in North Carolina. In 1970, Dr. Whybrow became chairman of the psychiatry department at Dartmouth Medical School and at the University of Pennsylvania. He moved to U.C.L.A. in 1997.
     While the Gordon Gekkos of the world have long had their critics, Dr. Whybrow sees the Enrons and the Worldcoms -- the mess left by unfettered capitalism -- not as a moral problem, but as a behavioral one. "The outbreak of greed we've seen, especially in business, is partly a function of the changing contingencies we've given businessmen," he said. "If I say to you, 'You can make yourself extremely rich by holding up the share price until such time that you cash out your shares, which are coming due in another six months,' it takes an incredibly unusual person who'll say: 'The share price is going down? I'm afraid I lost that one.' There is an offer of affluence there which the person cannot refuse. They don't need that extra money, but they want that extra money."
     People are biologically wired to want it, he contends. We seek more than we need because consumption activates the neurotransmitter dopamine, which rewards us with pleasure, traveling along the same brain pathways as do drugs like caffeine and cocaine. Historically, he says, built-in social brakes reined in our acquisitive instincts. In the capitalist utopia envisioned by Adam Smith in the 18th century, self-interest was tempered by the competing demands of the marketplace and community. But with globalization, the idea of doing business with neighbors one must face the next day is a quaint memory, and all bets are off.
     Other countries are prey to the same forces, Dr. Whybrow says, but the problem is worse here because we are a nation of immigrants, genetically self-selected to favor individualism and novelty. Americans are competitive, restless and driven to succeed. And we have succeeded. But the paradox of prosperity is that we are too busy to enjoy it. And the competitiveness that gooses the economy, coupled with the decline of social constraints, has conspired to make the rich much richer, he asserts, leaving most of the country behind while government safety nets get skimpier.
     Dr. Whybrow cites United States government statistics that are sobering. Thirty percent of the population is anxious, double the percentage of a decade ago. Depression is rising too, especially among people born after 1966, with 10 percent more reporting depression than did people born before that year. With the rise of the information age in the 1990's, when the global marketplace began staying open 24 hours a day, American mania reached full flower, Dr. Whybrow said. And now that the nation has retreated from that manic peak, we should stop and survey the damage.
     "Neurobiology teaches us that we're reward-driven creatures on the one side, which is great," he said. "It's a fun part of life. But we also love each other and we want to be tied together in a social context. So if you know that, why aren't we thinking about a civil society that looks at both sides of the balance rather than just fostering individualism? Because fostering individualism will be great for us and it will last a little bit longer, but I believe it's a powerful negative influence upon this country and it's not what was originally intended. Should we be thinking about whether this is the society we had in mind when we started this experiment 200 years ago or are we perhaps moving too fast for our own good?"
     Dr. Whybrow's analysis of the mania afflicting contemporary society has been praised as acute, but he has been faulted for failing to prescribe any political or economic action as an antidote. "Whybrow does offer an interesting version of the social and cultural contradictions of capitalism," Michael Roth, president of the California College of the Arts, wrote in a review last month in The San Francisco Chronicle, "but it is one that leaves us without much sense of how we might reconstruct the social and political system to create more meaningful work and a more equitable distribution of wealth and of hope."
     But for Dr. Whybrow, with globalization here to stay, the solution lies with the individual: It's up to each of us to ruminate on our lives and slow down enough so that we can limit our appetites and find a better balance between work and family. He suggested following the example of a man his friend saw running along the beach: "A high tide washed all the little fish onto the beach where they were all gasping for breath. So here's this fellow scooping up each fish and throwing them back into the sea, and my friend goes up to the fellow and says: 'This is a fruitless task. It's not going to make any difference.' And the fellow picks up a fish, throws it into the sea and says, 'To this one it does.' "

Meth Use Adds to Ravages of AIDS
Judith Graham, Chicago Tribune- 3/13/2005

Keith O'Brien was damaged goods. That's how the former bank executive felt for years after learning he had the AIDS virus. Until, at last, a powerful drug temporarily took the psychic pain away. The drug was methamphetamine, and it erased the heartache of AIDS in a rush of euphoria. But judgment evaporated with memory, sending the Chicago resident into a whirlwind of promiscuous sex without protection, putting scores of sexual partners in danger.
      Today, methamphetamine--or meth as it's commonly called--is threatening long-standing efforts to stem the spread of sexually transmitted diseases in Chicago's gay community. "It's the biggest challenge we've faced in two decades," said Mark Ishaug, executive director of the AIDS Foundation of Chicago.
      The risk is stark: Meth is a highly addictive, sex-enhancing stimulant that dissolves inhibitions. If infected gay men become users and abandon safe sex, cases of HIV/AIDS could multiply with potentially devastating results. "When men with HIV take meth, they're not taking [AIDS] medications as prescribed ... and [are] transmitting the virus to others who are not infected," said Dr. Dan Berger, medical director at North Star Health Care, the largest private HIV treatment center in Chicago. "It's an unprecedented problem."
     The danger was highlighted last month when health authorities in New York City said a gay man who had developed a rare, highly drug-resistant strain of AIDS was a meth user and had sex with more than a hundred partners. In Chicago, the recent arrest of a Howard Brown Health Center fundraiser on charges of dealing meth has helped shock the gay community into action. Groups are speaking out about the drug, holding meetings and planning public education and outreach campaigns for this year.
     Though its popularity is on the upswing, meth isn't a new drug. Its latest resurgence started on the West Coast in the mid-1990s; since then, the stimulant has been moving eastward, finding a home in rural communities and recently making inroads in major cities. Chicago police report 14 meth-related drug raids in Lakeview and Uptown this year, a rate that promises to outpace the 27 raids in those neighborhoods in 2004. "Our primary targets are the dealers," said Town Hall District Cmdr. Gary Yamashiroya. "They're far different than the typical street deals ... professionals, male, white, generally."

Cheap, powerful
Part of meth's allure is its ready availability, relatively cheap price, and highs that last longer and are reputed to be more intense than cocaine or alcohol. The health consequences of meth addiction are severe, even without taking HIV into account. But in the era of AIDS, the drug's escalating use presents novel challenges. "We are very concerned," said Ron Stall, chief of prevention research for HIV/AIDS at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In January, the CDC held its first national forum on meth abuse and HIV; the agency also is testing an intervention to reduce the risk of high-risk sex among meth users in four cities, including Chicago.
     Recent research underscores the connection between the drug and the disease. In San Francisco, researchers found that gay men who use meth--also known as crystal, tina, ice and crank--were more than twice as likely to have HIV than non-users. A separate report showed that 30 percent of people testing newly positive for HIV had taken the drug in the last six months. Twelve percent to 20 percent of gay men report using the stimulant in the previous year. "It's now the drug of choice," said Steven Tierney, director of HIV prevention at San Francisco's Health Department. "What's most needed in all cities, including ours, is more treatment options."
     In Chicago, AIDS and gay-service groups have just begun discussing a potential public education effort modeled after New York City's "Crystal Free and Sexy" ads or San Francisco's "Crystal Mess" campaign--in-your-face ads that bring home the drug's harm. "The best way we can fight the use and abuse of crystal meth is by discussing it with one another open and frankly," said Bill Greaves, Mayor Richard Daley's liaison to Chicago's gay community.

Programs fight use
Meanwhile, a new $150,000 pilot program offering intensive outpatient treatment for gay meth users started in February at Howard Brown Health Center in Lakeview. This week the city also is expected to release a major report on drug and alcohol abuse among gay residents. Among its recommendations: the need for more culturally sensitive treatment options for gay meth users, according to Greg Harris, chief of staff for Ald. Mary Ann Smith (48th). Meth stands out from other commonly abused substances because "it's more powerful, more addictive and more damaging to people more quickly" than other drugs, said Harris, a recovered alcoholic.
     O'Brien, who grew up in Kenilworth and began using drugs as a 13-year-old at New Trier High School, found that out the hard way. As a teenager, O'Brien kept his sexual preferences to himself, pretending to be "normal" and using marijuana and alcohol to take the edge off his social anxiety. By college, he graduated to cocaine, having sex with other men when he got high and putting it out of his mind when he was sober. This was the 1980s, and AIDS was just surfacing as a killer in the gay community. O'Brien became an early victim, learning in 1986 he was HIV-positive in spite of regularly using condoms. Ten years of sobriety followed as O'Brien pulled himself together personally and professionally, rising to become a senior vice president at a Chicago-area bank. During the decade, O'Brien lost more than 60 friends to HIV/AIDS as he struggled to maintain his health. A friend's death sent him over the edge in the mid-1990s as he sought refuge from depression in alcohol and then crystal meth. O'Brien had never had anything like the drug. "You feel like Superman, like you can do anything and nothing can get in your way," O'Brien said.

Taking a quick toll
Within a couple of months, O'Brien was a daily user, taking meth first thing in the morning and then "bumping along through the day until I found people who wanted to party." Never coming off a meth-induced high became a primary goal, made easier by the fact that the drug's effects can last for half a day or more. "The crash on crystal is so intense, so incredibly horrible, you'll do anything to avoid it," said O'Brien, describing the feeling as "I am a worthless piece of garbage and I don't deserve to live."
     When meth users come down from their typically manic highs, "Their personalities change. They can become paranoid and lose their sense of reality," said Berger, who specializes in treating gay men in his North Side practice. "Often, they're flooded with shame and guilt at what they've done." Sex usually is the main issue. On meth, O'Brien said, "all your inhibitions are lost and the sex is unbelievable, psychologically and physically. It gets so that nothing else matters except for this incredible sex and you don't want anything to get in your way."
     Walter Odets, a psychologist in Berkeley, Calif., notes that meth, like other drugs, plays to users' vulnerabilities. "We have a widely depressed gay community living in the midst of a deadly epidemic and a society that's still, for the most part, unapproving," Odets said. Meth "is a drug that can make men who feel socially awkward or unattractive believe they're in the swing of things," he said. "It's a terrific self-esteem enhancer."
     For O'Brien, the meth subculture of non-stop partying and non-stop sex--often occurring at bath houses, bars and circuit parties--became a way to escape the feeling of rejection associated with being HIV-positive. "Everything seems totally fabulous; the HIV issue just seems to disappear," he said. "You get caught up with this idea that everyone in this group is just like you: They're all positive. ... You don't even think about protecting them." Peter Staley, a former addict and founder of the Crystal Meth Working Group in New York City, said: "I don't think there's any drug that leads to more shameful behavior. It's not about immoral people doing bad things. "It's about moral people doing bad things, and feeling terrible about it afterwards."

Effects damaging
The good feelings that meth brings don't last. Many meth users don't eat or sleep for days at a time, leading to numerous health problems. O'Brien had five heart attacks while taking the blood pressure-raising drug; violent behavior also occurs with alarming frequency. "I'm constantly treating people on meth with enlarged hearts and soaring blood pressure," Berger said. Many have depleted their bank accounts and lost their jobs, their friends--even their homes--but still are in denial over their addictions.
      Users can seem to age rapidly in a matter of months, especially people with HIV, who become more susceptible to the virus as they stop taking medications or following even basic health precautions. "I know five people who've died on meth because of overdoses or suicides," said Howard Gelb, 41, a former addict who founded the Chicago branch of Crystal Meth Anonymous in 2002. The 12-step support group hosts daily meetings in the city.
     Last week, Town Hall District police and an informal, recently formed coalition of Chicago-area community groups concerned about meth met for the first time with representatives of bath houses, bars, dance clubs, bookstores and other gay businesses to talk about a coordinated response to the emerging epidemic. "It's time to get the word out: We all need to focus attention on how to stop the use of this drug," said Robbin Burr, executive director at the Center on Halsted, a gay and lesbian community center. "We're really at a pivotal point with this drug in Chicago."

High School Gays Get a Harsh Lesson
Dahleen Glanton, Chicago Tribune- 3/13/2005

CLEVELAND, Ga. -- Kerry Pacer was used to the whispering behind her back, the name-calling and the snickering when she walked down the hall. But when almost the entire student body at White County High School booed as she accepted a rose from a female friend during a Valentine's Day program last month, she knew it was time to do something. Pacer, who said she has never tried to hide the fact that she is a lesbian, did what other gay students in schools across the country have been doing for more than a decade. The 16-year-old junior began trying to organize a chapter of the Gay-Straight Alliance, which promotes tolerance and acceptance of homosexuals.
     But in White County, a hub of Christian conservatism in the north Georgia mountains, the idea of a school-based group backing homosexuality caused an uproar and thrust this quiet haven, where Cabbage Patch dolls originated, into the national gay-rights debate. "There has always been a lot of bullying at school, and there was never anyone to stand up for me," said Pacer, explaining that she and other gay students felt a Gay-Straight Alliance club would promote understanding. "I knew there would be people who disagreed with it, but I had no idea it would grow this big."
     With heightened national attention on family values as championed by Christian conservatives, students such as Pacer said they have felt pressure to keep their sexual orientation hidden, particularly in Bible Belt states where many people believe homosexuality is a sin. Those attitudes were manifested last November when voters in 11 states approved constitutional amendments banning gay marriage.
     Throughout the country, school districts have become a legal battleground for issues that disproportionately affect gay students such as bullying and harassment. Though there are more than 1,300 Gay-Straight Alliance groups in schools nationally, some gay-rights groups report a rise in hostility at schools in communities that are less accepting of such organizations. As a result, courts have intervened to ensure the rights of gay students.

Prom a catalyst
Often, the cases come to light during the spring as students prepare for proms and other social events. Some schools try to bar teenagers from attending the prom as a same-sex couple. Those who do attend often say they feel unwelcome. Meanwhile, gay students increasingly are holding their own proms. "During the election cycle, there was a lot of rhetoric being used about gay people, some of which was not supportive of gay people and their families," said Heather Sawyer, senior counsel for the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, a New York-based gay-rights group that handles cases on behalf of gay students. "When young people hear the message that we as a country want to deny gay families civil protections we provide other families under law, it has a negative boomerang effect on how young people may treat other students they know or perceive to be gay. . . . It sends a message that gay people are not entitled to the same equality and rights as non-gay people."
     Despite the federal Equal Access Act of 1984, which requires public schools to allow all non-curricular clubs the same ability to organize as the traditional chess club or pep squad, some districts have tried to get around the law, often bowing to pressures of the larger religious community. A high school in Salt Lake City recently created a policy requiring students to submit written permission from their parents if they want to take a same-sex date to a school dance. The Alabama Legislature is considering a bill to prohibit the use of public money to purchase textbooks or library materials "that recognize or promote homosexuality as an acceptable lifestyle."
     Here in Cleveland, hundreds of residents turned up recently for a School Board meeting where the Gay-Straight Alliance proposal was expected to be heard. But before the meeting the students withdrew the proposal, opting instead to form a chapter of Peers Rising in Diversity Education, or PRIDE, that would focus on tolerance and diversity. While school officials acknowledge that they likely would lose a court battle to prohibit the club, community members still oppose it. On Monday, dozens of opponents protested at the school, led by anti-gay activist Rev. Fred Phelps of Topeka, Kan. Meanwhile Pacer, a teenager with streaked brown hair and a penchant for red nail polish, has become a well-known gay activist in this town of about 1,900 people.
     Bullying and safety issues are a major problem for gay high school students, according to activists. A national survey conducted in 2003 by the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network found that most gay students feel unsafe at school. Forty-one percent said they had been assaulted because of their sexual orientation. Last year, six gay and lesbian former high school students won a $1.1 million settlement against the school district in Morgan Hill, Calif., for discrimination they suffered while students. They were verbally and physically abused by other students, according to the suit.
     A number of court cases have set a precedent for Gay-Straight Alliances, including a lawsuit filed in 2003 against the Lubbock Independent School District in Texas, which tried to bar students from forming an alliance on campus. Similar cases have gone to court in Orange County, Calif., and Cannonsburg, Ky. The courts ultimately agreed with the students, saying schools that receive federal money could not discriminate.
     Despite the law, such clubs remain a hard sell in places such as Cleveland. "I just don't think it's right to have a club like this. It ain't in the Bible," said Gary Colwell, 18, a brick mason who grew up in the area. "We see them walking around holding hands, and it makes everybody feel uncomfortable." Many of the 1,000 students at the countywide high school feel the same way. Some of them said it would be almost impossible to get straight students to join a club that supports gays. "I don't know anybody who would want to join," said Logan Stewart, a 16-year-old sophomore at the high school. "We used to be known as the redneck school, now everybody is calling us the gay school. I wish the whole thing would just go away." White County School Supt. Paul Shaw has met with religious leaders to try to explain the law and ease the controversy. He said outside pressures have made it more difficult to resolve the issue.

`An emotional issue'
"The religious community has been against it. You try to listen to both sides, but this is an emotional issue because we are a very conservative county," Shaw said. "If this were left up to the kids, it would get resolved very soon. But regardless of what happens, in the end we will still be White County."
     That, too, could cause a problem in the long term. Part of the difficulty, according to Rev. Phil Hoyt, pastor of Cleveland United Methodist Church, is that many newcomers are moving into the area, bringing big-city values that longtime residents are reluctant to accept. "People are moving here from all over, so the climate is changing. It's getting more progressive and changing the culture, and people are afraid of that," said Hoyt, adding that he sees the case as more of a legal issue than a moral one. "We now have to acknowledge that we have gay students in our high school, and people are in an uproar."
     Savannah Pacer, 51, Kerry's mother, is one of those transplants. She and her ex-husband moved with their two daughters to Georgia from Baltimore in 1995. She said she knew things would be different in the Bible Belt South, but she had not expected this. "We have always supported Kerry and taught her to stand up for what she believes in," said Pacer, a real estate agent and a co-director of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, which works with Gay-Straight Alliance clubs in Georgia. "Kerry is lucky to have her family's support. But there are a lot of teenagers out there who don't."

WOBURN, Mass. - What tripped Lisa D'Annolfo Levey's maternal tolerance meter on a recent Tuesday afternoon was not just the toy football her 7-year-old son, Skylar, zinged across the living room, nearly toppling her teacup. Or the karate kick sprung by her 4-year-old, Forrest, which Ms. Levey ducked, barely. The clincher was the full-throttle duel with foam swords, her boys whooping and squealing, flailing their weapons at the blue leather couch, the yellow kidney-shaped rug, and, ultimately, their mother. "Forrest, how about you come up and hug Skylar instead of whacking him in the head?" Ms. Levey implored. "This is stressing me out, guys. You can sword, but I'm feeling compromised here." Soon after, she was on the phone with her personal parent coach. Ms. Levey, 40, who has a job with a nonprofit organization that helps women in business, started her coaching sessions last year because, she said, "I was really just struggling with the intensity of life, feeling like I'm not enjoying my time with my children and why do I feel so down?" 
      Parent coaching, the newest self-help approach for overstretched parents, is catching on for several reasons. It is cheaper than counseling, with many coaches charging $75 an hour and at least one Internet coaching service charging $30 a month. It is usually done by phone, letting parents squeeze in sessions without hiring baby sitters or taking time from work. And it is capitalizing on the parental penchant for seeking secrets from pros -- the tendency to call in the super nanny depicted on reality TV instead of calling your mother. "This is so American," said Dr. Alan E. Kazdin, director of the Child Study Center at Yale University School of Medicine. "We want a quick answer, we want to do it yourself."
     On the sword-fight day, Ms. Levey was full of questions for her coach, Jennifer Mangan of Wheaton, Ill. What should she do when Skylar resists doing chores? Should there be limits on how he spends his allowance? Should Forrest get dessert if he does not eat a healthy dinner? And how should Ms. Levey deal with all that little-boy mayhem? "There's a piece of grieving for me that I don't have girls," she told her coach. "For me, I'd be reading Laura Ingalls Wilder and drinking tea, and that's not what they are going to do."
     Many parent coaches are quick to say -- and to write into their contracts -- that they are not experts in mental health and do not consider themselves therapists. They come from a variety of backgrounds. Many are mothers who in previous careers worked with children or parents, and who like the flexible hours so they can manage their own parental responsibilities. Others draw solely on their experience as parents. Ms. Mangan, 49, a former editor of a parents magazine, has taken parent coaching courses and has been coaching for nearly three years, with some referrals from a psychological clinic and a family court judge.
     While no group tracks the number of parent coaches, a profession that did not appear to exist until a few years ago, coaching schools are reporting a surge in enrollment and advertisements are springing up on the Internet and in parenting magazines. Even some psychologists are taking it up, the American Psychological Association says. Some employee assistance companies, like Magellan Health Services, also make coaches available at large companies, like Turner Broadcasting System.
     Parent coaches say they try to be both chipper cheerleader and straight-talking sage, rather than proponents of a particular parenting philosophy. Several parents said coaches have helped them change their children's behavior, or at least not get so upset or harbor unrealistic expectations. "My children were beating me down," said Jane Sept, 37, of Salem, Ore., the mother of a 6-year-old boy and a 3-year-old girl. "They were winning the war with the whining and just the constant needing me and not being able to do anything themselves." After a parenting class and reading failed to solve the problems, she and her husband, David, 54, sought help from Leslie Mayer, a parent coach in Cambridge, Mass., who previously taught preschool. "Some of the stuff was hard to hear, and sometimes I would actually dread the call," Ms. Sept said. "But she would give me things to work on. One time it was having a frustration with my son hitting me or hitting his sister or hitting something. Leslie said instead of saying, 'Don't do that,' show him what he can do. He was allowed to go outside if he was angry or punch a pillow instead of his sister."
     Parent coaches often tell clients about their own experiences, something therapists rarely do. Responding to Ms. Levey's yearning for a daughter, Ms. Mangan said, "When I had Maggie, my fourth child, I wanted a boy. I said it out loud. It went away, but I still remember feeling like that." Ms. Mangan also told Ms. Levey: "I have a sister-in-law whose first baby was stillborn, and it was a girl and she went on to have three boys. She still gets teary-eyed that she doesn't have a girl. I would be happy to put you in touch with her." Ms. Mayer, coaching an Alaska couple worried that their 4½-year-old daughter slept in diapers, said, "My son is going to be 7 next week and he still wears Pull-Ups at night. We talk about it, that he doesn't need to wear them, but he's concerned."
     There are no prerequisites or licensing for parent coaches. Some are certified by schools like Coach U, a company that provides several months of general coaching courses by computer or telephone, said Daniel Martinage, executive director of the International Coaching Federation, a nonprofit organization that accredits coach training programs and that finds parent coaching to be one of the fastest growing areas. Most of those programs do not teach about child or parental issues, Mr. Martinage said; a parent coach would have to seek other instruction for that. The Parent Coaching Institute, based in Bellevue, Wash., requires prospective coaches to have at least two years of child-related work experience, said the institute's founder, Gloria DeGaetano. In partnership with Seattle Pacific University, the institute provides a 12-to-18-month program with distance-learning classes on working with families, weekend workshops in Seattle and 100 hours of practice coaching.
     A few parent coaches, like Ms. Mangan, who trained at the Parent Coaching Institute, have reached the point where professionals in child-related fields refer clients to them. "If our first impression is maybe the kid needs a therapist, and the parents just need to learn how to work with the kid in a more constructive manner, and maybe there's not a lot of pathology in the family system, we say this is perfect for Jennifer," said Dr. Jeffrey B. Van Meter, a psychologist who runs Legacy Clinical Consultants in Lisle, Ill., specializing in treating adolescents.
     But those relationships are rare. And some psychologists and child development experts are skeptical. "These guys are really risking giving bad advice, even though it may well be well intended," said Dr. Mark W. Roberts, a psychologist and director of clinical training at Idaho State University. He added, " Any time you try to do therapy on the phone it can easily blow up in your face." Dr. Kazdin of Yale said: "If parent coaches are here to comfort and support parents, that's wonderful, as long as they don't think they're doing more. If you really need to change a child in any way, this is not going to do that."
     Mr. Martinage acknowledged that "anyone can hold up a sign and say, 'Hey, I'm a coach.' " But he said: "We really draw a distinction between mental health and coaching. In a lot of ways we're close to what a personal trainer does in a gym: work with you to achieve your personal goals." Ms. Mayer and others said that if they believed clients needed psychological help, they told them so.
     Not all the clients have comfortable incomes, and some have children with serious behavioral problems or special education needs. Marcia, a single mother in Seattle whose 17-year-old daughter has destructive outbursts and trouble staying in school, is getting free coaching from Mary Scribner, a former community health worker. In a recent session, Ms. Scribner helped Marcia's confidence, urging her to "take time for self-care." When Marcia, who did not want her full name used, told Ms. Scribner that heeding her advice to remain calm had helped curb one of her daughter's angry explosions, Ms. Scribner said, "Give yourself a pat on the back, Mom."Among those who have hung out shingles are Rachel Zawidowski, a 36-year-old nanny and former Gymboree teacher in Boston, who said, "Not only do I do the coaching aspect, but if you need somebody to organize your playroom, I do that, too."
     Sharon Teitelbaum, 56, of Watertown, Mass., a former computer systems analyst and amateur folk singer, took courses with Coach U and now charges $350 for three 45-minute sessions a month, mostly helping working parents juggle or change careers to fit family responsibilities. And for $30 a month, there is a Web site, www.aboutmykids.com, that offers coaching via phone or instant messaging, e-mail access to the coach between sessions, and "daily parenting tips and motivational messages from your coach." Sean Slovenski, president of Hummingbird Coaching Services, which runs aboutmykids.com, said their coaches are under contract with employee assistance companies.
     When Judge Elizabeth Sexton of Family Court in DuPage County, Ill., presided over the divorce of Gail Vandon and Steve Zeidler last May, she attached a condition. She ordered them to see Ms. Mangan for help in raising their daughter, then 15. "I was grasping at straws, to be honest with you," Judge Sexton said. "Neither parent had psychological problems, but they didn't know how to parent a teenager." For Ms. Vandon, a 42-year-old substitute teacher, and Mr. Zeidler, a 44-year-old supermarket owner, Ms. Mangan, who coaches each parent separately in her office, is almost a go-between, helping parents who barely communicate with each other navigate issues like discipline, chores and television-watching.
     A watershed for the couple came when Ms. Mangan, a child of divorce, persuaded Ms. Vandon, who has sole custody and rations how often her daughter sees her father, to allow Mr. Zeidler to take their daughter to her oboe lesson one afternoon. Another time, when their daughter resisted going to diving team practice, Ms. Vandon said: "I was so torn, I didn't know what to do. I called Jennifer and she was like 'bam.' In 10 seconds she had the right answer. My daughter had to go." Ms. Mangan's current holy grail is to help the couple grant their daughter's fervent wish that they sit next to each other at her band concerts. "It's a far-off goal," Ms. Vandon said.
     One hallmark of parent coaching is helping parents control their emotions, even if they cannot curb their children's behavior. "My older son is, I would say, off-the-charts physical," Ms. Levey said, "and I needed to find a way to say I really don't enjoy playing football all that much, I don't want to read Captain Underpants, I really don't want to look through your Lego catalog." "My younger son is more fragile emotionally, and before, I might have felt really agitated and stressed," she said. "Now, if he wants to cry, I don't have to make him stop. I just have to be there to be as a support."

MANDAN, N.D. -- Melissa Maeyer moved to North Dakota from the Washington, D.C.-area three years ago and quickly noticed one thing different about young adults around here: their relationship with booze. She said young people in North Dakota consume much more liquor than their East Coast counterparts. And they seem to wear alcohol-related brushes with the law as badges of honor, she said. ``It's like a rite of passage,'' said Maeyer, 24, who works at two bars. ``I have never heard so many people casually talking about how many drunken driving or minor consuming alcohol arrests they've had.''
      A recent study from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health seems to bear out her observation. It found more than 31 percent of North Dakotans age 12 and older said they had five or more drinks in one sitting during the month before the survey, done in 2002 and 2003. The national average for binge drinking was 23 percent. Binge use is defined as having five or more drinks on the same occasion at least once in the last 30 days.
     Bartender Laura Thompson, who owns the Old Town Tavern in Mandan with her husband, Roger, chuckled at that definition. She said nearly everyone in the bar's weekly dart league would easily meet the criteria. ``Younger people come in just to get drunk. They do shots and they don't want to stop,'' said Thompson. ``Older people come in to drink and socialize.''
     Nearly 55 percent of North Dakotans between the ages of 18 and 25 reported binge drinking. About 17 percent who were ages 12 to 17 and about 28 percent in the 26-and-older category said they had five or more drinks in one sitting. North Dakota's 11 percent rate of alcohol dependence and abuse also led the nation in the study. Don Wright, assistant director of the state Division of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services, said studies have shown that North Dakotans have the ``lowest perception of a problem'' when it comes to drinking. ``Historically, the culture has been very accepting of alcohol,'' Wright said. ``It's a generational thing.''
     State legislators are trying to crack down on ``power hour'' binges, blamed for the death of one Fargo-area college student last year and the near death of another on his 21st birthday in 2002. During ``power hour'' binges, people try to down 21 shots of booze between midnight, when they turn 21, and the 1 a.m. bar closing time. Legislators are considering a proposal to make customers wait until 8 a.m. on their 21st birthday to be legally served a drink.
     In addition, Burleigh County Sheriff's Maj. Nick Sevart said it's common in North Dakota for adults to allow their children to drink on holidays and on special occasions, like weddings. ``It's illegal and a problem, and we need to change our attitude here,'' Sevart said. ``Parents need to set examples for their kids. The sooner we expose kids to alcohol, the sooner some of them will be alcoholics.'' Still, Sevart points out that the state ranks as having one of the lowest crime rates in the nation. ``People are probably too drunk to fight,'' Thompson, the bartender.
     Kelby Inmon, a counselor at the Native American Resource Center in Trenton, in the northwestern part of the state, said the alcoholism rate seems higher for American Indians in North Dakota. But Wright said it's a problem off the state's four reservations as well. ``I don't think we can pin it on any one culture,'' Wright said. ``Our results would indicate a problem with or without the reservations.'' Inmon, who has been counseling alcoholics for 25 years, said some people try to medicate their feelings. ``It comes down to people not having hope in life,'' he said. ``Something at the core is missing.'' Inmon earlier worked as an alcohol counselor in Oregon, where the binge-drinking rate is well below the national average. He said alcohol use is more ``culturally accepted'' in North Dakota and many communities' social activities revolve around booze. ``A lot of these little rural towns have nothing -- except for a bar,'' Inmon said.
     First lady Mikey Hoeven has been leading a campaign to stop underage and binge drinking. ``It's a huge problem that unfortunately is not something that is new,'' Hoeven said. ``There is no quick fix to this. I think there is cultural acceptance. It's not an easy problem.'' The campaign, aimed at children, appears on television, billboards and in some class rooms. '`We want to hit the kids on the front end before they become addicted as adults,'' Hoeven said.
     Inmon said addiction starts -- and ends -- with the individual. ``Treatment doesn't work unless the individual is motivated and wants it to work,'' he said. ``They have had to have counted the costs in their life.''
     On the Net: http://www.collegedrinkingprevention.gov

"The Devastating Impact of Crack Cocaine"
Damien Hirst, New York Times- 3/15/2005

'Tarnation' Connects to Disconnected
Stephen Whitty, Newhouse News Service- 3/15/2005

A mosaic is a beautiful thing when viewed from the proper distance. Get too close, though, and you see all the broken things it's made of, all the shattered discards and debris that give it color and depth. "Tarnation" is the mosaic of one man's life. Made for about $200 by New York actor Jonathan Caouette, it's constructed of the sort of things most people never think to save, or even record in the first place: telephone messages, home movies, blurry videos of high school plays.
     Seen from a distance, you see only the bright Kodachrome colors. Seen up close, you see the pain. That's because there's a real story behind this video diary, a compelling narrative that makes this more than mere selfabsorption. There's the story of a fragile teenager, broken further by electroshock therapy. Of a son, drifting through abusive foster homes and suicidal depressions.
And of the saving power of Hollywood.
     Lou Reed once sang about a girl whose life was "saved by rock 'n' roll"; Caouette's life was saved by the Hollywood movies he loved as a child and the underground pictures he was introduced to as a gay teenager. We see snippets of them here -- Saturday-morning adventures, the "Zoom" kids, '70s horror flicks. We see his efforts to recreate them in homemade Super 8 movies and taped, improvised monologues. We even see the high-school show he mounted in a small Texas town: an original musical adaptation of "Blue Velvet," as set to the songs of Marianne Faithfull. (Young Jonathan was nothing if not brave.)
     But mostly we see how, courageously, he now uses movies to document his own demons. To see his own past, in flashback. And to face up, in close-up, to the madness in his mother, and the denial in her parents, and how all of this is also a part of him. It's a hugely moving film, particularly as Caouette coolly recounts the horrors of his mother's young adulthood and his own childhood. It is also at times almost queasily exploitive, with long takes of Caouette's mother giving manic monologues, or unsparing close-ups of his silent, stroke-ravaged grandmother. Mostly, though, it is an amazing and singular experiment, an "Afterschool Special" as filmed by Kenneth Anger. Yet while some early festival audiences have hailed this as a breakthrough in documentary film, it is not a reproducible one.
     Only a story as strong as Caouette's deserves this much attention. Only one as linked to fragments of pop culture could be told in these clips and bits of film. We will not -- or at least, should not -- see a film exactly like this again. But anyone with an appreciation for the avant-garde and a connection to the disconnected should see this now. Caouette has taken the broken pieces of two lives and slowly, painstakingly, pasted them together and created one superb work of art.

MINNEAPOLIS -- Though there's no definitive research showing exercise by itself can cure depression, many mental health experts agree that it has positive mental benefits and can be a useful tool in overall therapy.
      Life changed for Reed Steele five years ago when a series of injuries kept him from competing for his college cross country and track teams. Unable to run, he got depressed. He turned to drugs and alcohol, hoping they could provide the escape that running had. Before long, his depression deepened until he was hospitalized and suicidal. Today the 25-year-old feels better, thanks to a combination of antidepressants, therapy -- and exercise, a combination of swimming, cycling and moderate running. ``Exercise is extremely important for mental health,'' said Steele, of Roseville, a Twin Cities suburb. ``When I was really depressed I wasn't exercising ... I didn't have any desire to do anything.''
     Depression is a serious illness thought to be related to chemical imbalances in the brain, much more severe than an occasional case of ``the blues.'' Depression affects the whole body: energy level, appetite and concentration. ``What we're really finding is that people that are depressed are quite inactive, both in kind of expending energy and in getting things done, working toward goals, taking care of personal business,'' said Matt Kushner, a clinical psychologist and associate professor of psychology at the University of Minnesota. He recommends exercise for his patients as part of therapy that emphasizes routines, habits and goals. In addition, he said, patients who start exercising find they feel better and are less inclined to overeat or abuse drugs and alcohol. ``If I could pick one activity from a long list ... exercise would always be the one I would go to,'' he said. ``Exercise is sort of a gift that keeps on giving.''
     Dr. Douglas G. Jacobs, associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, said it's important to understand that exercise alone doesn't cure depression. ``The general evidence is that the best treatment for depression is a combination of medication and psychotherapy,'' he said. ``I haven't seen anything that says exercise as a sole treatment for depression is effective.'' However, he said people with depression should try to exercise, because it improves their overall health.
     Sue Masemer, an exercise physiologist at the Flagship Athletic Club in Eden Prairie, said there's no definitive research explaining exactly how exercise affects one's mood, but evidence shows a link between exercise and neurotransmitters in the brain. And, she said, there's no doubt there's a connection between the physical body and the mental psyche. ``There are those pieces that are almost somewhat intangible,'' Masemer said. ``As (people) get in better shape, they have more energy, accomplish more ... people are amazed at what they are able to accomplish, physically and emotionally.''
     Diane Strand, a 41-year-old mother of two who was diagnosed with depression about two years ago, said she started running about 10 years ago as a way to get rid of stress after going through a divorce. Running helps her ``think things through'' and let off steam. ``When I feel stressed I go for a run and when I come home I feel like a whole new person,'' said Strand, of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. She said she began running 10K races and half-marathons, and eventually a full marathon, and she found that each one built her self-confidence. ``It is more mental than it is physical,'' she said. She also lost 25 pounds when she first started running -- a big boost to her self-esteem. ``I think when I can be on a steady exercise program, like when I'm training, that's when I find that I really don't need my medications,'' said Strand, who started her own brokerage insurance company and is engaged to be married. ``I definitely can tell a big difference.''
     Steele, the former competitive runner, now is studying psychology at the University of Minnesota. He no longer uses drugs or alcohol, he says. He exercises about five times a week, though not nearly at the intensity of his competitive career. ``I think I still get down, but it's not nearly to the level where I was,'' Steele said. ``Now it's more just what a lot of people go through.''

SAN FRANCISCO -- Every day of his six-month murder trial, Scott Peterson marched into the courtroom with his head held high. He smiled at his family, took his seat and paid close attention, often whispering to his lawyers or taking notes. Given a chance to defend himself in the murders of his pregnant wife Laci and their unborn son, the slick, handsome salesman with the megawatt smile had nothing to say. His demeanor seemed to infuriate jurors and many trial watchers, who came to see Peterson as a manipulative, pathological liar with a grandiose sense of self and an inability to empathize.
      Experts say this absence of emotion is the hallmark of a psychopath. ``They don't have the internal psychological structure to feel and relate to other people,'' forensic psychologist Reid Meloy said. ``Sometimes they can imitate it, so they can fool other people, but there will come a point when they can't maintain it.''
     The times Peterson did display emotion were rare. He winced and put his head down when prosecutors showed autopsy photos of his wife and their fetus. He wiped tears from his eyes as his mother pleaded with jurors to spare his life. He wept softly when his sister-in-law recounted the first time she met his slain wife. But passionate, angry and accusatory outbursts from Laci's family members when he was sentenced to death Wednesday didn't appear to faze him. Meloy said that fits with the inability of psychopaths to form truly intimate bonds with others. Such an absence of heartfelt emotion ``gives the psychopath the ability at times to kill without remorse and to kill for reasons filled with banality,'' he explained. ``Others' emotions of grief and rage and fury are like water off a duck's back.''
     That apparent lack of emotion raised investigators' suspicions in the first place, police and prosecutors said Thursday when they gave their first news conference since the trial began. ``His major concerns weren't Laci at the beginning of this case,'' explained Modesto Detective Al Brocchini. ``He is very calm, cool, nonchalant, polite, arrogant. He thinks he's smarter than everybody.''
     Peterson's half sister, Anne Bird, said she thought his behavior was strange when he lived with her family during the investigation of Laci's disappearance. ``He is the most empty person. Everything he does seems to have been copied from someone else,'' she said. When she last visited Peterson at the San Mateo County Jail in January, he seemed in utter denial as he talked about getting out of prison and leading a quiet, simple life somewhere, she said. ``I was wondering if he really understood the extremity of the whole thing. I think he's very bright, but he's kind of soulless. He's very empty. Somehow he's been lost.''
     The jurors who attended the sentencing Wednesday said they, too, saw something wrong with Peterson from the beginning. ``Scott came in with a great big smile on his face, laughing. It was just another day in paradise for Scott. Another day he had to go through the motions,'' juror Mike Belmessieri said. ``He's on his way home, Scott figures. Well, guess what, Scotty?'' Juror Richelle Nice interjected: ``San Quentin is your new home.''
     Psychopaths need greater stimulation than most other people in order to feel anything, Meloy said. That phenomenon struck Bird as particularly true in Peterson's case, recalling his description of a trip from a jail in Modesto to another in Redwood City, where his trial was held. The trip ``was a really big deal,'' Bird said. ``There were blocked off streets, lights were going, it was really intense. He actually seemed excited about it. I thought, 'This is not something to be proud of. This is your life.''' When Peterson arrived at California's death row at San Quentin State Prison early Thursday morning, he told a guard he was ``too jazzed'' to sleep. ``The most intense emotion he's derived through his whole trial was the excitement he received when he darkened the doors of San Quentin,'' Meloy said.

Drugs Cause Ex-Missouri's Prosecutor's Downfall
Jim Suhr, Associated Press- 3/19/2005

MACON, Mo. -- A former prosecutor and family man once known for a firm grasp of the difference between right and wrong, David Masters arrived at his death bound to a chair, his final stop along a road of poor choices. Two housemates are accused of being his judge and jury, condemning Masters for owing three weeks of rent and making passes at a woman with whom he lived. When the woman pulled out a gun, court papers say, Masters said he'd rather die from drugs -- so the father of seven was injected with syringe after syringe of cocaine.
      The 52-year-old's body was found the next day, March 3, near a river in the Ozarks, a couple hundred miles from this small town where he made his name upholding the law. "No one in their wildest imagination would ever dream he would succumb to an illicit drug problem and associate with the people he did," said James Foley, a former Macon County prosecutor and retired judge. "They try and rationalize it, but you couldn't even make this up in TV fiction. That's what his life became."
     No one will say if Masters might have been using drugs as his life fell apart. Since losing re-election in 1998, he'd abandoned clients, separated from his wife and surrounded himself with drug users, his daughter said. Brad Funk, an assistant prosecutor under Masters for more than five years in the 1990s, said his one-time mentor always "tried to do the right thing. That's why it's so shocking, sickening that David ended up such a lost soul."
     Masters came to Macon in 1990, when then-Gov. John Ashcroft tapped him to be the county's prosecutor. Masters was a sharp, organized litigator who devoted full-time hours to the part-time job, and had a private law practice on the side to make ends meet. Masters often was in the courthouse readying his cases before dawn, then could be seen at his private practice downtown into the wee hours of some mornings. "He was as productive as two or three attorneys put together," says Funk, since 2001 an associate circuit judge in Mercer County. "I never questioned his decency or his integrity or his abilities as an attorney. He was an officer of the court, and he took that very seriously."
     The job took a physical toll on Masters, a Diet Coke-swigging diabetic who didn't seem to make his health a priority. "Some days he just wouldn't look good, his color wouldn't be good or whatever. He just didn't look rested or healthy," said Judy Roberts, who has run the county's circuit clerk's office for the past 11 years. "I just figured he was working too hard, too many hours."
     Masters and his family lived in one of Macon's best-known homes, the 19th century Wardell Mansion, which was on the National Register of Historic Places. But after two terms, Masters lost re-election in 1998. He soon seemed overwhelmed by his work. In late 2003, an ex-client was arrested, suspected of setting Masters' law office ablaze. That month, court records show, Masters' wife filed for divorce; they separated but never officially ended the marriage. The historic house became a money pit. "His life seemed to unravel," Foley says.
     Masters left Macon County for a fresh start around Springfield in southwest Missouri, but he failed to tell dozens of his clients -- some already having paid for his services -- and his law license was suspended in January 2004. Masters fell in with the wrong crowd, by many accounts sinking into a subculture of drugs and depression.
     Today, his housemates -- Crystal Broyles, 27, and Thomas Naumann, 49 -- and Broyles' sister, 23-year-old Brandi Storment are charged with first-degree murder in his slaying. Prosecutors say Storment was at the house and stole some of Masters' possessions but did not inject him with any cocaine. The defendants are scheduled for a preliminary hearing April 1 and are jailed without bail.
     In Macon, gold letters on the glass door of a mostly empty downtown office still read "Law Office of David A. Masters." His once-majestic landmark home is a decaying eyesore of shattered windows, a rotting roof and a rusting weather vane. "He was a wonderful man who made a few wrong choices and it changed his life forever," one of Masters' daughters, Cecily Fliege, told the Springfield News-Leader. "That's all it takes -- is one poor choice. "You don't expect your father to die like this."