Latest news with #Presnell
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Climate
- Yahoo
Bumpus Cove residents want answers for ongoing flooding issue
WASHINGTON COUNTY, Tenn. (WJHL) – Tina Presnell said her land in Bumpus Cove has been owned by her family for generations. However, she is looking for answers on how to deal with an ongoing flooding issue. 'The county highway department years ago, they put a culvert in that comes out behind over there on the other lot, and the water comes down on the people,' said Presnell. 'I've called them numerous times and asked them for help, and they say they can't help.' Presnell says flooding on her family's property has gotten worse after Hurricane Helene due to a culvert behind the property. 'There's just nothing to hold anything back,' she said. 'We don't have underbrush. We have high-up trees, but it just won't hold the water.' William Emery is a neighbor to the Presnell family and lives in front of the culvert. He says the flooding he experiences has been the same even before Hurricane Helene. 'I noticed it started flooding five, six years ago,' said Emery. 'It's underwater every time it comes the rain. But it don't never quit running. Since that ditch line hadn't been cleaned out, it's got worse.' Emery said he, too, has contacted the Washington County Highway Department about the culvert, but nothing has been done. 'Somebody is gonna do something, somewhere,' said Presnell. 'It's just got to be fixed.' 'I'd like to get some help,' said Emery. 'It'd be much appreciated.' News Channel 11 did reach out to the Washington County Mayor's Office and the Washington County Highway Department. We did not hear back from the mayor's office before airtime. The highway department previously said the culvert was installed over 40 years ago, and they are not able to work on private property. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
02-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
PTSD expert discusses Vietnam veterans' struggles decades after the war
MOUNTAIN HOME, Tenn. (WJHL) — More than 50 years after returning home from Vietnam, the veterans who served still struggle with what they saw and did and how they were treated when they came back to the U.S. 'They struggle with the idea that, on the bigger scale, it didn't accomplish the change that they were told they were going to accomplish,' said Andrew Presnell, the program manager for the PTSD Clinical Team at the James H. Quillen VA Medical Center. 'We try to focus them on, you know, it did mean a lot to the person next to you that you were faithful in your service because you doing your job meant that maybe they got to come home too.' Vietnam veterans share thoughts on Fall of Saigon on its 50th anniversary Being in a war zone is an unthinkable experience to many, with tough assignments and difficult situations. 'Oftentimes hard to tell if they were a friend or foe. Which makes it very difficult when you come back to, to trust your evaluation of what's going on around you,' Presnell said. 'And it's the same kind of situation we saw in more recent conflicts, where ill defined enemy makes it much harder to deal with that anxiety.' A great number of those who served in Vietnam were drafted, which adds a different element to that particular group's struggles. 'They weren't choosing to go to Vietnam, and they have been told to go,' said Presnell. 'And it's not infrequent that people volunteered when they felt like their number was coming soon. So it's kind of like somewhere in between being drafted and sent and choosing to go.' More than 58,000 of those who went didn't get to come home. 'The ones who did make it home, they really come home with a burden,' Presnell said. 'They saw friends with serious injuries or who lost their life. And they question a lot of times, why them? Why did they make it back? You know, that's an unanswerable question… They feel like they owe something or that somehow that the choice was wrong. They should have been the one who stayed, and someone else should have made their way back. But it adds a lot of weight and difficulty to moving forward with life, because you feel like somehow you were lucky enough to get this when you don't feel like you deserved it.' Vietnam War era veterans not only fought a war overseas but also back home with the American people. 'Where the issue comes is that when you come back to people telling you that you've done the wrong thing, telling you horrible things about yourself because you've gone when you didn't really make the choice to go, you know, I'm doing what my country asked me to do. And now, when I come back, people are not accepting that. I was just doing what I had to,' he said of veterans. Presnell said he's also noticed a difference in the way Vietnam veterans react to being thanked for their service. 'Their initial reaction sometimes to ['Thank you for your service'] is one of kind of irritation, anger. Because what are you saying? You know, why are you bringing this up?' he said. 'Then they kind of readjust the idea that, okay, these people don't necessarily hold the same thoughts and beliefs that I came home to, but it impacts how they accept those kinds of recognitions and in some ways makes recognition now more meaningful to them, because it's about these people actually have a positive feeling about my service.' Many of them suppressed those feelings and avoided them. 'The treatment is going to be helping them come to terms with that avoidance,' he said. 'And how do we overcome that avoidance and deal with these memories, deal with these events, deal with these things in our daily life that seem to prompt these sorts of symptoms to come up.' Presnell is a veteran himself and can relate to those he works with. 'I understand PTSD. I don't understand what every single person's ever gone through, but I can bring what I know. My team can bring what they know to help you kind of work through that stuff,' he said. 'We are here. We do respect what you've gone through, and we want to help you deal with that in a way that doesn't continue to be a barrier to living a life moving forward.' News Channel 11's final segment of The Vietnam War: 50 Years Later airs Friday, May 2 at 5 p.m. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Age
24-04-2025
- Sport
- The Age
Two-up: a ‘fair dinkum' tradition or a devilish game of skill?
The central bet involves the spinner, who is trying to throw heads (tails means they lose the kip to another spinner, and odds means a re-throw), and someone in the crowd matches their bet. Side-bets are made by onlookers for heads or tails, which are equally likely outcomes, each occurring 25 per cent of the time (some venues allow bets on odds, and a three-coin version is also played). The person who bets tails holds the cash so it is clear in the crowd who has bet what. The 'boxer' or ringmaster organises the betting, making sure money is exchanged fairly, and takes a 10 per cent cut of the spinner's winnings. They also initiate the throw – 'Come in, spinner!' So is it really 'fair dinkum'? 'Everybody thought they had a technique,' says Presnell, 'a long throw, a short throw, a different sort of throw.' He recalls seeing a spinner throw heads as many as 10 times consecutively in Kalgoorlie in WA, one of two places where two-up is legal year round. Stephen Woodcock, a mathematics professor at UTS, says recent studies have found a coin toss may not be as clear-cut as 50-50. One used 350,000 coin flips to find there was strong support for the idea that a coin lands slightly more often on the side it started – the coins in two-up are placed on the kip tails up, or odds up in casino versions – around 51 per cent of the time. Another, in which participants were told to try and flip for heads, found that some people may be able to positively influence the toss of a coin. But Woodcock believes the controlled conditions created by the kip, and the height coins must be tossed in two-up (at least three metres, without hitting the roof) means 50-50 is the likely split. Whether or not there's skill involved for the spinner, for those betting on the side, Woodcock says the attraction of two-up is precisely those even odds, compared to games such as roulette, which have the illusion of being fair, but favour the house more and more over multiple spins. 'I'm not really a gambler, but I would happily bet on two-up of any day of the week rather than roulette.' Why is it illegal during the rest of the year? Two-up has been legal without a permit on Anzac Day in most states and territories over the last 30 years, but it once had a reputation as a wild, unregulated game, often played at illegal 'schools'. Gambling reform campaigner and Baptist minister Tim Costello says Anzac Day two-up is harmless compared with the $31.5 billion Australians now lose to the gambling industry each year. But he says its association with the Anzacs' heroic sacrifice is evidence of the industry's success in pushing gambling as 'quintessentially an Aussie activity, that we're baptised at birth into eucalyptus oil and a punt'. 'In some ways, [Anzac Day two-up] is a parallel to the offering plate going around after a religious service.' The game's darker side was explored in cult Ozploitation film Wake in Fright (1971), where a young schoolteacher loses his money playing two-up and gets stranded in an outback town loosely modelled on Broken Hill, NSW. The town is the only place in the state where games are legally played year round, following a special dispensation lobbied for in 1992. Presnell says before illegal, then legal, casinos took over in the '70s and '80s, fortunes were made and lost in two-up schools, although mostly by the organisers: 'I've seen thousands gambled'. He often went to the legendary Thommo's School, run by ex-boxer and rugby league player Joe Taylor until 1979 at various locations in Surry Hills. 'Mastercoach' Jack Gibson spent time running the door at what was one of Australia's first major illegal gambling operations, but Presnell says Thommo's was 'fair dinkum', and a great leveller: 'a cross-section of Sydney society'. 'If you had a bad night, which were pretty constant, they'd give you 10 bob to get home, which was a courtesy of the house.' Loading Where can I play? Although this masthead revealed old favourite North Bondi RSL has moved to scrap the game this year, your local RSL or Diggers Club is still a good bet – just follow the crowds after 12pm. And while Surry Hills has changed since the days of Thommo's, two-up has found new life in an innovation combining the suburb's old and new characters: drag two-up, hosted by drag queens at several pubs and bars in the area.
