The Daily

Sam Mullet, an Amish sect leader from Bergholz, Ohio, was convicted of hate crimes for his role in an odd string of beard-cutting attacks last year, and was accused of sexually preying on women and tormenting men in his community. What led up to the attacks?

“According to Mullet, the violent beard-clipping spree against outsiders began with an incident at a large Amish-run machine sale in Geauga County, Ohio. One of Mullet’s nephews, who lived at Bergholz and was part of the community, was mocked by his own parents — Mullet’s sister and brother-in-law, both defectors from Bergholz — for being, essentially, a beardless sissy.

“‘If God was with you, your beard would not have been cut,’ the father, Martin Miller, told his son, Allen Miller. ‘If God is with me, my beard will not be cut.’

“‘You said a mouthful,’ Allen said. ‘And if that ever happens, you know it’s true.’

“Mullet recalled hearing about the heated exchange when the Miller kids returned home that night. ‘We talked about it,’ he said.

“Perhaps the father’s boast was too enticing — within a matter of weeks, Allen and several of his siblings and their spouses went to the home of Martin and Barbara Miller and cut his beard and her hair. ‘God is not with you! God is not with you!’ Allen shouted at his parents after the attack.”

On Gil Scott-Heron’s memoir, The Last Holiday, and a family connection to the poet and musician:

“Later, in 2005, when Scott-Heron was sent to prison upstate for violating parole, Fred mailed him a leather-bound book — a journal, I guess — with a picture of Scott-Heron from their high school days secreted in the spine. In the photo, Fred told me, Scott-Heron ‘looked like an angel. At this point, because he was doing crack, he resembled my grandfather. His hair was all white and wizened and his teeth were bad. I stuffed the picture in the binding of the book so they wouldn’t find it. And when he got out I saw him and he said, “Man, you really nailed my ass.” I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “Well, it was late one night, and I couldn’t sleep, and I had this book and I started flipping through it. And all of a sudden this picture fell right on my chest. And it really hit me, all the places I’ve been, you know?” ‘ “

You will have been wondering about the drugs. Did we do them? Did I find myself on Fremont Street, cowering under an awning as a digital projection of Jim Morrison mounted the roof of the pedestrian mall’s 90-foot-tall barrel-vault canopy? Did I walk with many gaits, dragging first one leg and then the other, zig-zagging past blackjack tables and wolfish packs of Midwesterners? Was Caesars Palace where Fleur found her spirit animal, a puffer fish? Did she pet at it through the swank aquarium glass? Did it all end with me on my knees on the plush carpet that cradles the Bellagio Las Vegas, tears streaming down my face as I genuflected to the casino’s super-sized Liberty Bell, surmounted by a mighty eagle that clutched lightning bolts in its talons, the sign under which I grew up in faraway Philadelphia?

Of course not.