Recovering skinhead tries to open eyes of closed minds

Over the last two decades, Frank Meeink, 35, has undergone quite a metamorphosis. In 1997, he spent a year having a five-inch swastika tattoo removed from his neck and the words "skin" and "head" lasered off his knuckles. Other racist and offensive tattoos, including a portrait of Nazi leader Joseph Goebbels that was on his chest, gradually were colored over and incorporated into more benign images.

Why this former skinhead gang leader decided to disavow the white supremacy ideology of hate and violence and preach racial harmony (to children, no less) is a tale of transformation that goes way deeper than Meeink's physical appearance and into territory even he couldn't have imagined when he was terrorizing non-whites and gays.

It's a long haul that would take him from his south Philadelphia neighborhood to the Illinois prison system, where he would share some of the most intimate details of his life with black and Hispanic inmates.

"I talked to these guys about my daughter being born and about things I would never tell my Aryan or biker friends (who were also in prison)," Meeink told me while in Chicago last week speaking at events for the Anti-Defamation League. "I cried when my cousin was killed, and it was my friend, a Latin King (gang member) who came over and comforted me. I think about those days now and we were all just kids. I was 17 in an adult prison."

Meeink (pronounced MINK) was introduced to the world of white supremacy when he was 14 and spending a weekend at a cousin's house in rural Pennsylvania. It was a time in his life when he was at his most vulnerable. Having survived beatings from his mother's boyfriend, he was sent to live with his father, whose house was in a white enclave in a neighborhood that was predominately black and poor.

That meant the high school Meeink attended was overwhelmingly black.

"There was just a handful of us white guys, and we would get off the trolley and run as fast as we could through the neighborhood," Meeink said. "I hated going to school. You never knew what was going to happen. It was always, ‘God, I hope somebody doesn't jump me.'"

By the time Meeink was recruited into the skinhead movement, he said he was susceptible to anybody who would take an interest in him and make him feel empowered.

"I was a soda bottle that had been shaken and was ready to explode," he said. "I was just waiting for somebody to take the cap off and direct the explosion. I could have gone in any direction. It just happened I went with skinheads."

For sport, Meeink and his band of brothers got drunk and "did missions," spray-painting synagogues, beating up homeless people, blacks and gays. Once a month, they would attend Klan rallies to reaffirm their separatist beliefs.

He said that when he was 16 he left Philadelphia, because the police were after him, and moved to Springfield, Ill., where he was the host of his own public access talk show, "The Reich." He appeared on national television shows, becoming the face of the young skinhead movement.

Then one evening in Springfield, he and his roommate kidnapped a skinhead adversary and beat him for hours while they videotaped it. Meeink, 17 at the time, was arrested and later sentenced to three years in prison.

While there, he made alliances with black and Hispanic inmates through studying the Bible and playing basketball and football.

"I was good at sports, and they saw that even though I still had the swastika tattoos," Meeink said. "Yes, there were intentional fouls all the time. But I would keep on playing and they respected that."

After a game, it was commonplace for him and fellow players to walk back to their cells, discussing whether their girlfriends would remain faithful without them, or whether their public defenders were capable stewards of their cases.

"At the time, I knew I probably wouldn't want to have anything to do with them on the outside," he said. And, indeed, when he was released from prison, he tried to realign himself with the skinheads.

But by then, his life had changed.

"You begin to look at people as individuals," he said. "And I began to learn about how there was so little difference in DNA between the races. (And yet,) for the longest I said, ‘Blacks, Hispanics and Asians are OK, but there was something different about Jews.'"

Even that sentiment changed when a Jewish antique furniture store owner gave Meeink a job and the two spent long car trips across New Jersey talking and eventually becoming friends.

Now Meeink lives in Iowa and runs a multiracial youth group, Harmony through Hockey (www.harmonyhockey.org). He travels the country speaking about diversity and tolerance, and has a new memoir, "Autobiography of a Recovering Skinhead."

"Young skinheads come to my talks and ask me whether I betrayed the family," he said. "I might have been in that gang when I was younger, but now I'm in a gang with my wife and children and setting a much better example."

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New Bionic Eye Could Restore Sight

Researchers working for the Boston Retinal Implant Project have been developing a bionic eye implant that could restore the eye sight of people who suffer from age-related blindness. Although the bionic eye will only help individuals that were born with functional eyesight, the implant is expected to considerably improve their lives.

The implant is based on a small chip that is surgically implanted behind the retina, at the back of the eyeball. An ultra-thin wire strengthens the damaged optic nerve; its purpose is to transmit light and images to the brain's vision system, where it is normally processed. Other than the implanted chip and wire, most of the device sits outside the eye. The users would need to wear special eye glasses containing a tiny battery-powered camera and a transmitter, which would send images to the chip implanted behind the retina. The new device is expected to be quite durable, since the chip is enclosed in a titanium casing, making it both water-proof and corrosion-proof. The researchers estimate that the device will last for at least 10 years inside the eye.

The scientists explain that the bionic eye will be affective for individuals who once had sight, since their brain knows how to process visual information. The unfortunate people who were born blind do not have the neurological capability to process the data received via the wire. Furthermore, the optic nerve must be at least partly functional. Otherwise, the data will not be fully processed. For many individuals that were born blind, this is a problem as well, since their optic nerve has never been used. However, most of these individuals have a natural compensation mechanism, in the form of enhanced senses, such as hearing and touch. 

Although the device will not be able to restore the eye sight of the entire blind community, researchers  are certain many people will benefit from the technology. For instance, age-related macular generation is the leading cause of blindness in the industrialized world, with about 2 million Americans currently suffering from the condition. The new technology will hopefully assist people suffering from this condition, and individuals suffering from retinitis pigmentosa (a genetic condition), but will not help glaucoma patients.

The researchers note the device has some limitations, and it will not restore perfect vision. However, they are sure it will give people the advantage of having a general sense of their surroundings. Hopefully, the technology may enable people to recognize faces and facial expressions. "The thing is to significantly improve the quality of life for blind patients," said Joseph Rizzo of the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, who has co-directed the project with MIT's John Wyatt since 1988. 

This summer, the researchers plan to test the implants on animals. Within the next few years, they hope to start performing human trails. Wyatt says: "What level of achievement that would actually be is hard to know; but the idea is of not having to use the white cane - to walk around, find the sidewalk, avoiding a telephone pole. Being able to navigate safely in an unfamiliar environment, that's the big topic."

TFOT has covered the discovery of the last retinal movement-detecting cell and the latest stem-cell research that has improved our understanding of blindness. Another article recently published by TFOT deals with mind controlled bionic limbs, which were designed to assist disabled people in their daily lives.

Thirty six researchers joined collaborated on The Boston Retinal Implant Project, including scientists from MIT, the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, and the V.A. Medical Center in Boston. For more information about the project, see the Boston Retinal Implant Project website.


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Drink up girls: wine isn’t fattening

Jonathan Leake

WOMEN who like a glass of wine after work can relax: they are likely to gain less weight than those who stick to mineral water.

Moderate female drinkers also have a lower risk of obesity than teetotallers, according to new research. The findings, from a study of more than 19,000 women, is at odds with most dietary advice: that alcohol consumption leads to weight gain.

The research suggests that a calorie from alcohol has less impact on weight than a calorie from other foods and that the way the body deals with alcohol is more complex than realised. One theory is that in regular drinkers the liver develops a separate metabolic pathway to break down alcohol, with surplus energy turned mainly into heat, not fat.

In the study, Lu Wang, a medical instructor at Brigham and Women’s hospital, Boston, and colleagues asked 19,220 American women aged 39 or older with a healthy body weight to describe their drinking habits in a questionnaire. About 38% drank no alcohol.

Over the next 13 years the researchers found that all the women tended to gain weight but the non-drinkers gained the most. The women’s overall weight gain decreased as alcohol intake increased.

There was also a difference according to the type of alcohol: red wine was associated with the lowest weight gain; beer and spirits were linked to the highest weight gain.

The report, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, seems to confirm that there is no clear connection between alcohol consumption and weight gain.

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‘Gribble’ marine pest may be key to biofuel breakthrough, say scientists

A marine pest could be the key to a biofuel breakthrough, say scientists. Gribble, which resemble pink woodlice, plagued seafarers for centuries by boring through the planks of ships and destroying wooden piers.

But now environmental scientists are taking a keen interest in the crustaceans.

A team of British researchers has learnt that gribble have a gift for digesting wood not seen in any other animal.

Enzymes produced by the tiny creatures are able to break down woody cellulose and turn it into energy-rich sugars meaning that gribble could convert wood and straw into liquid biofuel.

A gribble-like processing plant could make sugars from woody raw material that can be fermented into alcohol-based fuels for vehicle engines.

Researchers at the universities of York and Portsmouth made the discovery after carrying out an extensive study of digestive genes from the gribble species Limnoria quadripunctata.

They found the crustacean’s long digestive tract is dominated by enzymes that attack cellulose and lignin, the normally indigestible material in woody plant tissue.

The results of the study were published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The research was made possible by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) Sustainable Bioenergy Centre, a £26 million network of expert groups looking at bioenergy.

Duncan Eggar, the BBSRC’s Bioenergy Champion, said: “The world needs to quickly reduce its dependence on fossil fuels and sustainably produced bioenergy offers the potential to rapidly introduce liquid transport fuels into our current energy mix.”

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Art briefly helps patients draw themselves out of mental illness

Awakenings Project believes art boosts recovery

A week into his hospitalization at the Elgin Mental Health Center, Jeffrey Eppard was given pencils and paper and invited to draw anything he wanted. The subject he chose was his left arm.

He outlined it in a blur of charcoal, then filled in the details: the lines crisscrossing his palm; the bracelet spelling out "Angel"; and the still-fresh scar that began at his wrist and slashed toward the crook of his elbow.

The wound was a remnant of the suicide attempt that had landed him in the hospital. He said evoking it with a sketch was, to his surprise, a comfort.

"It brings back some of the anxieties, but it's not entirely bad," said Eppard, 24, who suffers from bipolar disorder. "Just visually seeing it (on paper) tells me it's OK. I'm sick, but it's going to be all right."

Though he used the language of recovery, it was no therapy session. It was a simple afternoon of drawing put together by some who had battled their own demons that they believed could be quieted, at least for a moment, with a swirl of graphite.

The organizers were from the Awakenings Project, a collective of people with mental illnesses who have found strength in art. They meet weekly in a suburban studio to draw and paint, and, on occasion, they travel to mental health centers to share their materials and enthusiasm with those still emerging from crisis.

"My hope is to unleash the joy," said Irene O'Neill, one of the group's founders. "I just want people to get into it and have fun."

Psychologists long have believed that art provides a window into troubled minds, but what once was mainly a diagnostic tool — Draw a tree that represents your feelings — has become an instrument of healing.

Randy Vick, a therapist who teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, said making art brings a precious sense of control to those suffering from schizophrenia and other mental disorders. When the mind, body and emotions unite in the act of creation, a person can feel he has regained power over his life, Vick said

The Awakenings Project doesn't offer formal therapy, but it follows similar principles. It was founded in 1996 to showcase the artistic abilities of people with mental illness, allowing them to earn self-respect.

"Most people with a mental illness don't work, so they don't have a work identity," said co-founder Robert Lundin. Exhibiting their art "gives them a kind of identity in the community. They can legitimately call themselves an artist."

In time, the group began to seek out and cultivate that talent. It rents a downtown Elgin studio, where its members produce oil paintings, watercolors and collages. It spreads the word at national mental health conferences. For the last five years, it has reached out to institutions where people with severe mental illnesses are treated.

That is what led O'Neill and four fellow Awakenings volunteers to the Elgin Mental Health Center one recent Saturday. They passed out pencils, paper and a few art books to a dozen patients, and after they made a few introductory remarks, the sketching began.

Francis Chereck, 29, had an elegant, polished style. He had taken plenty of art classes when he was younger, he said, and even now, despite the bipolar disorder shaking his life, he liked to draw video game characters to give away as gifts.

He drew a human eye, its pupil dabbled with points of light, its lid heavy with charcoal. He shaded the corner over and over again until it appeared to be weeping black tears.

Art teachers "always told me not to overshadow," he said. "I tend to like things dark. That's just me."

John Miller, 30, worked in a lighter vein, reproducing simple likenesses of a rabbit and bird he had found in a book. Then he tried a freehand portrait of his childhood home. It was a place of sad memories, he said, yet he smiled as he drew its crooked stairs and wind-whipped flag.

"I think art's a good getaway," he said. "When we're sitting here doing this, it takes us away from our troubles. It's like we're kids again."

Other sketches were difficult to grasp. They were patchworks of runes, figures and phrases that remained impenetrable, even after their creators tried to explain them.

One young man stricken by schizophrenia drew symbols in the chunky, 3-D style of a graffiti tagger. The man, who asked to be called "Pi," said he was obsessed with numbers and formulas. Reproducing them gave him a feeling of tranquility.

His drawing was striking and skillful, but he dismissed it, telling a visitor to take it away.

"It's frivolous," he said. "I'll reproduce it another way, another time. I could burn this right now and it wouldn't mean anything to me."

A moment later, though, he asked to look at an image of his sketch that had been captured by a Tribune photographer.

"Oh, that's beautiful," he said.

He went back to the visitor with two clean sheets of paper, urging him to sandwich the drawing between them so the lines wouldn't smudge.

Such small moments of pride were evident throughout the three-hour session. But when it ended, it was hard to say whether it had produced any lasting effects. Most of the patients left their work behind when they headed back to their rooms.

Packing up the materials, O'Neill said she was optimistic. Her bipolar disorder brought her plenty of misery after she was diagnosed in 1976, when she was 20. She had been hospitalized against her will, clapped into straitjackets and shot up with debilitating medications.

But she never lost her childhood love of art. And when she helped found the Awakenings Project, she said, she learned that her painting and collage-making — and most important, her relationships with other artists — could give her stability.

She had a new identity, one in which her mental disorder was only a single shard in a larger mosaic. Maybe, she said, art could help a few more reach the same place.

"Some of them will re-identify as artists," she predicted. "Some will start to see themselves in a different light. People get back in touch with themselves and know that they are more than just their illness."

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