Strength Made Perfect in Weakness

CINCINNATI March 31 Judge Charles J. Kubicki, Jr. pronounced sentence this morning on Anthony W. Kirkland in the capital offense case involving the murder of Esme Louise Kenney and three other women. As recommended March 17th by the jury who convicted him on all counts March 12th, Kirkland received from the court at 9:33 a.m. two death sentences, one for aggravated circumstances involving the death of thirteen year old Esme and the other for same involving the death of fourteen year old Casonya Crawford. He also received two 70 years to life sentences for counts that included the murders of the two other women, along with Tier III Sex Offender status. The trial started on the 1st, so the month of March, 2010 resolves this horrific story, at least in the legal sense. Since the news of Esme’s death a year ago, I have sensed tremendous power in the story’s unfolding.

It began with a conviction about the power of Esme to astonish people when she was alive, based on the many reports and pictures taken of her that testify to her kind, gentle, and all-loving embrace of everyone near her. Esme’s beloved nieces and nephew “delighted” in her. Her older siblings “adored” her. Teachers, friends, and strangers gravitated to her. She gave everyone a hug. No longer is it any wonder to me that she is being remembered in event after event, so many, in fact, that members of her family are hoping for a break.

“I think sometimes we hear of another tribute being put together, and we just think, 'I can't take another memorial service,’" says a family member. "’I just need to let it be, or even ignore it all for a little while.’”

Something else has struck me lately, however, something about Esme that is no less astonishing and which keeps me from being able to "ignore it all for a little while"…until it is said. And that is the transcendent power of Esme’s spirit during the passion of her excruciating ordeal at the hands of her assailant, a power that continued to influence events with far reaching consequences after her death.

Even as Anthony Kirkland was attempting to rape her, she did not resist. "That's what was surprising about it,” Kirkland told detectives. “She was calm. I don’t know. She didn't fight me.” In one of the most dramatic displays of the Christian ideal of turning the other cheek that I have ever heard, she instead quietly asked him, “Do you have any children?” She thus appealed to his conscience, his sense of fatherhood. And it made an indelible impression on her killer. "What did you tell her?" asked the detective. He replied, "I looked at her, and I told her, 'yeah.' Then I stopped." As it turns out, Anthony Kirkland had a three year old son, Anthony Kirkland, Jr.

Kirkland left the scene of Esme's murder, but returned right afterward, because he felt an unusual compulsion to do so. "I was actually called there to go back," he said. "Don't misunderstand me, it was like ... a thought that came into my mind that said...that said 'go back to her, go back to where she is.’ When I got there, I sat up under a tree, and something told me to, just to relax, sleep.”

Kirkland was apprehended because they found him asleep under that tree just a short distance from Esme's body, her possessions on his person, presented as if on a platter to the authorities for indictment.

I agree with those who say Esme's spirit was responsible for the instruction that Kirkland return to her, which he obeyed. He obeyed despite the lack of lighter fluid he had intended to procure that was necessary to render the evidence untraceable. Not only did he come back without it, he came back bearing on his body all the DNA evidence required to tie him to the crime. During past investigations, police had asked him about shaving his body hair and bathing in bleach in order to obliterate evidence. During this investigation, however, even his usual denials, lies, and crafty games to elude the detectives failed him. He broke, giving a full, detailed confession.

Kind, gentle, even in the face of death, Esme’s power proved greater than Kirkland’s, so much greater that it apparently began to trouble him and take from him the desire to live. In the realization of what he had done to her, he tried to induce his captors to pull their guns on him. “I need to keep my word to her,” he told the detectives. “What was your word to her?” a detective asked. “That, uh, well, hell, my word was that I’d be joining her. That was what my word was.”

The result of all these things is that Kirkland, with this sentence, will never kill again. Esme's sacrifice, and the strength of her spirit during her ordeal and afterward, save future lives, and bring justice to three other women who Kirkland is convicted of killing.

Where does such a powerful spirit like Esme’s come from? I believe it comes from God. Perhaps there is a higher purpose for her to which we ought to give our assent. Perhaps Esme is an example of the paradoxical power of God’s love, best exemplified, not in lordly pomp and circumstance that elevates the beloved to some lofty station and status befitting God; rather, in lamb-like weakness, such as the gentle love of a young girl, even in the lonely and terrifying face of her death.

I can’t help but see a message in Esme's life and death, the message with which she herself was “smitten,” so her mother says, and that is the message of Christianity, that God reveals himself through suffering love. I believe that this is her life and legacy, God’s love extending way beyond her immediate world, reaching out to many, many people. My desire is that Esme’s example of hope and love spreads ever farther afield to those who needn’t have known her when she was alive.

A friend of hers remarked at a memorial, “It can’t be her. Esme was going to save the world.” To all who have eyes to see, it is her; it’s Esme, a saint in my eyes, who is indeed going to save the world.

Unsung Achievements

This past Friday, I attended a talk sponsored by Fermilab National Laboratory in Aurora, IL. Speaking that evening was a 2008 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, Martin Chalfie.

Chalfie’s demonstration of the use of Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP) from the jellyfish Aequorea victoria earned him the prize, shared by Osamu Shimomura and Roger Tsien.

A model of Green Fluorescent Protein

Normally proteins in cells are not visible, but they can be visualized by means of GFP. Blue light shined on proteins of interest to researchers that are linked to GFP absorb the light and reradiate it as green light. They fluoresce, becoming visible. This allows researchers to observe how these proteins function and where they go in cells. As a biological marker, GFP is quickly becoming the microscope of the twenty-first century.

Proteins marked with GFP glow green under blue light.

Noticeably absent at the podium at this talk was a man named Douglas Prasher. It was Prasher who was first to isolate the gene for the glowing jellyfish protein. Dr. Prasher, at the time of the Nobel prize announcement, was driving  courtesy vans for a car dealership in Huntsville, Alabama.

Trained as a biochemist, Dr. Prasher was interested in the chemistry of how certain animals are able to glow. In the late 1980s, he applied for a five-year grant to track down the gene. Dr. Prasher said his proposal included investigations on how the fluorescent protein might be used as a beacon to light up structures in cells. But the application was turned down. An application put elsewhere proved successful, but it gave Prasher only two years of financing, enough time to isolate the gene, but not enough time to pursue any applications. When time was up, he went looking for another job. Before he left, Dr. Chalfie and Dr. Tsien independently contacted him, asking about the jellyfish gene. Prasher generously shared the gene with both of them.

Experiencing dissatisfaction with employers to whom he transferred his work, he eventually landed in Huntsville, where he worked for a NASA subcontractor that was developing mini-chemistry laboratories, used during potential human flight to Mars. Dr. Prasher loved that job, but NASA eliminated the financing for the project. For family reasons, he stayed in Huntsville, which restricted his opportunities. After a year of unemployment he went to work for the car dealership.

In a self-effacing and generous gesture, Prasher gave tribute to the three Nobel winners, saying that their harder work over their entire work lives made them more deserving of the prize. (Rules stipulate that no more than three persons can share a single prize.)

I think I understand Dr. Prasher’s attitude. I have found over the years that those in my line of work, high school science teaching, regularly give away discoveries of innovative methods for conducting traditional lab experiments and the like. We are more than happy to share “shop secrets” with interested colleagues in school departments or at conferences. The reward for us is not professional recognition by our peers, job promotions, or more money. It’s usually just the thrill of finding better ways for students to better understand science concepts. The “aha” light turning on in student’s eyes is my reward.

A special thanks to Bryan Bacon and The Huntsville Times

On the One Year Anniversary of Esme’s Passing

The man who killed Esme Kenney precisely one year ago this hour is on trial for his life. Meanwhile, there is a memorial service in the Quaker manner this evening at her old church in Cincinnati.

Bereavement is ambiguous and unique to each carrier of grief. Powerlessness and the sense of loss are usually constant companions. Esme’s absence will forever mark the passage of time. She will live forever in the consciousness of her loved ones. The living telling their dead how much they are loved is a communion of the highest spiritual form.

The only question is will her killer get the death penalty? Past deaths cannot be rescinded. Future deaths would be prevented.

I did not know Esme when she was alive. My knowing her now cannot pass for possessing empirical accuracy. But I will say the following. From my distant perspective, you could not pick Esme out in a lineup. There was nothing particularly special at first appearance. She tried rather garish shades of nail polish, for sure, and various types of dangling earrings, but she wore little makeup and let the hair dye of 2007 grow out. She was unpretentious. Hollister and Abercrombie sold little by way of Esme. Simple hoodies and sweatshirts seemed to suffice. She wore the same purple pajamas for years as well as the same white-striped, gray running pants, even on the last day of her life. Though her style of dress was unique and informal, printed tops over t-shirts and jeans and the like, Esme blended right in.

She YouTubed, blogged, skyped, and rocked with ear phones behind outdated styles of sunglasses. Though she didn’t have a cell phone, she certainly knew how to program one. She was known, as most tweens and teens are, as a “tech head.” Through this modern consumer technology, Esme entertained the interests of tween American culture along with her friends. On her YouTube account were Carrie Underwood, Jordin Sparks, Denni Lavato, Taylor Swift, Jonas Brothers, a Twilight trailer spoof, and lots of Ali and AJ. Esme swore by tart and sassy Avril Lavigne. It is said she listened also to JoJo and Fall Out Boy. She was listening to Hilary Duff on her IPod when she ran into her killer. If she had entertained a secret crush on Robert Pattinson or Daniel Radcliffe, then I wouldn’t be surprised.

But what would you say about her after even one conversation with her, one shared moment? Would you say that here is someone special, maybe even a Saint, seamlessly and unconsciously integrating God’s business into her daily interactions with people? Not having met her myself, I still have good reason to wonder.

I can be certain, however, of one thing, the juxtaposition of extremes. This extraordinary young person, lit like an alter candle by the testimonies of others and the stories her pictures and videos tell, makes a claim on me when I think of the improbable and extreme circumstances of her leave-taking from this world. The jury this week will hear every word of her killer’s confession of what happened on that fateful day exactly one year ago. How many vulnerable young women lived in her neighborhood, and what were the chances of them leaving the security of their homes that afternoon? What was said at the time was, “that she did an unusual thing for her: she went for a jog…” What were the chances of anyone being there, let alone him? Never should a violent predator be randomly lurking in the woods near a child's home. "This is a once-in-a-career experience,” Cincinnati Police Chief Tom Streicher had said. “This is not the rule. This is the rare exception to the rule."

This is also shock therapy as higher calling. I am wide awake. Like her namesake in the story by J. D. Salinger, For Esmé – with Love and Squalor, Esme has restored my faculties to keen receptors of what goes on around me and distilleries of precision in separating the important things in life from those that are not.

The dead claim the living and tell us how to live. The loss of her corporeal love teaches us to love on a higher level. It is imperative that we listen and adhere to her sanctions. We are required to work as though this lost loved one is still here with us. It is a call to duty that proves efficacious over time. We send messages to a spirit and get no material answer. There is, however, the compelling assumption that she is there, and we are here, and we must not falter at our task. There is no human horror that the persistent application of love and devotional consciousness cannot transcend.

Esme Kenney will not return to Earth as a 13-year-old girl. Her role now is to impart courage in her invisibility. The brilliant light of her fragile, ephemeral spark so quickly doused must become the enduring afterglow of community love she built with everyone she met. Esme offers us a survival manual, written in her own blood. We are urgently charged to honor her and seek the perpetuation of her gentle kindness.

Special Thanks to James Ellroy

Tracing the History of Civilization to a Pair of Bumps on a Bone

The plan for a lesson is often written in the heat of the moment right before delivering it. I’m a science teacher who teaches in a high school that specializes in the creative and performing arts. This year I have four different classes, including a freshman science course that I developed only last year, Biology, AP Biology, and Anatomy and Physiology of the Human Body. There are days when prep time just runs out. All I knew was that it was Musculature of the Arm Day for the Anatomy class. Students had seen the muscles in the dissecting tray of the white rat. Today they would turn in the coloring page based on the chart of names, origins, insertions, and actions of these muscles. And today I was going to work up a quiz. As students stumbled into class, I noticed that two bone markings were listed three times each, the medial and lateral epicondyles of the humerus or upper arm bone. Aha. It occurred to me right then and there that these two places were the key to my impromptu lesson plan.

“Yes, Mr. DePrez, I see the flared end to the upper arm bone. So?”

“It’s called the humerus, remember?” I retorted.

“Oh, yea.”

“Now think about it, people. You dancers can’t do pirouettes without the solid floor underneath your feet. The Olympic figure skaters this week can’t do those fancy axel jumps without leverage. They need the ice to launch those spin jumps, don’t they? In other words, dancers and skaters need a foundation against which to push off.”

“Yeah, yeah,” came a response from the back of the room.

“Now consider flexion and extension of the wrist and fingers. If you’re going to curl these bones and bring them back to their original position, don’t you need a similar launching pad? Look down the list of muscle origins where the forearm muscles are anchored by their tendons. How many times do you see epicondyle of the humerus? Lisa, read them for us, please.”

“Origin of the flexor carpi ulnaris: the medial epicondyle of the humerus. Origin of the flexor carpi radialis: the medial epicondyle of the humerus. Origin of the flexor digitorum: the medial epicondyle of the humerus. Origin of the extensor carpi ulnaris: the lateral epicondyle of the humerus. Origin of the extensor carpi radialis: the lateral epicondyle of the humerus. Origin of the extensor digitorum: the lateral epicondyle of the humerus.”

“Well! Just one pair of sites provides the origins for the muscles that work the hands, huh? Humans are tool makers. Ever since the Neolithic Revolution, during which they domesticated plants and animals for a steady food source, humans have grasped and manipulated their world with their hands. The one anatomical feature that provides the foundation for grasping and manipulating, and thus has enabled our fine minds to work their magic in making things with tools, is a pair of epicondyles on the humerus. The means of empire-building boils down to a pair of bumps on a bone. Now what I want you to do is pull out a sheet of paper, number it one to six for listing the six flexion and extension muscles of the wrists and fingers, and, oh, skip a space so I can ask you what bone markings provide the leverage for these actions.”

Not one student failed to state every time the epicondyles of the humerus.