RIP Caleb Schaber: Another war casualty?

[elfismiles]

With the proliferation of RIP threads I figured I might as well add another for someone I didn't even really know...

Caleb Schaber: Another war casualty?

Last week I discovered that someone I'd met a handful of times and whom I'd emailed a couple of times (ending in the usual, "dude - we should get together and talk over some brewskies.") apparently committed suicide about a year ago.

I knew of him because he was routinely coming to the Austin Mufon meetings and had helped my friend and I at one of those meetings when we had trouble with some slides / power-point or something.

He was always quietly attentive and very helpful. Because of his age and certain personal characteristics he seemed exactly like the kind of cool dude I would have enjoyed hanging out with. He apparently frequented Burning Man / FlipSide and was very well liked by folks across the country.

He was a war-photojournalist, artist, musician, traveler and undoubtedly more than all of those things.

Here is some info on him...

May-03-2009 16:05
Combat Photojournalist Suicide: The Price of Conflict is Too High
Tim King Salem-News.com

Sometimes the chickens come home to roost; my friend, an incredibly talented war photographer, is another war statistic.


Caleb "Shooter" Schaber

(SALEM, Ore.) - My friend Caleb Schaber killed himself April 17th. He was an amazing, far-reaching, eclectic artist, archaeologist and war photojournalist and I suspect that his time covering the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan are what led to this.

I suspect that, but I don't know and possibly never will. I just know that some people have tremendous strength and endurance and general survivability even in the worst conditions. This is Caleb's story, and he was one of the strongest and most daring human beings I ever knew. It does not make sense that he shot himself in a remote location in Nevada.

Apparently his girlfriend at the time is the only witness to his gunshot "suicide". She has taken his laptop that contains all of his manuscripts and war images to Canada. It is the rightful property of his father, Professor Kenneth Schaber, who became the executor of Caleb's estate when he went to Iraq.

The love of Caleb's life was not this woman.

I know who he was in love with; it is one sad story on top of another.


Caleb Schaber and Tim King in the summer of 2007

She was someone who wanted nothing to do with a significant other who spent his time on the battlefield covering man's most desperate moments, regardless of how much she actually cared about him.

When Caleb was covering the action overseas he did crazy stuff like working as a bartender in Kabul. (Afghanistan is technically a dry country) When he went to Iraq he caught a ride and landed in-country without permission to have entered the combat zone.

That takes guts. I know some people won't understand, but when you work in news, particularly television news, you tend to live by the code that "It's better to seek forgiveness than permission" and I know of no individual who tops Caleb when it comes to using that code at the most extreme level.

There is so much to say about Caleb "Shooter" Schaber; I resolve to never letting his memory die. There are so few of us who have spent time covering the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan! If you make it back you should be good, at least until the next time you go in-country.

I will write more about him after I have been able to reach his dad and get the latest information. I am sad and sorry. I spend my life studying the lives of combat photojournalists from past wars, which are often but not always tragic stories.

We know that the war in Iraq has claimed the lives of more reporters and photographers than any war in the past, and it just took another one. This is a sad accompaniment to the endless stories about veterans committing suicide.

Caleb, we were going back over there man, remember? What happened? I'm mad at you but I'm not sure you are even responsible for this. I've known far too many deputies in rural places who quickly deem homicides to be suicides. I promise I will look into it. You had far too much to offer the world to see it end like this...

Only respectful comments will be approved on this story.

Here is one of Caleb's casual and cool video pieces shot from a gunship flying near Mosul, Iraq:

Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwgOZmBNBGw

Tim King is a former U.S. Marine with twenty years of experience on the west coast as a television news producer, photojournalist, reporter and assignment editor. In addition to his role as a war correspondent, this Los Angeles native serves as Salem-News.com's Executive News Editor.

Tim spent the winter of 2006/07 covering the war in Afghanistan, and he was in Iraq over the summer of 2008, reporting from the war while embedded with both the U.S. Army and the Marines. Tim holds numerous awards for reporting, photography, writing and editing, including the Oregon AP Award for Spot News Photographer of the Year (2004), the first place Electronic Media Award in Spot News, Las Vegas, (1998), Oregon AP Cooperation Award (1991); and several other awards including the 2005 Red Cross Good Neighborhood Award for reporting. Serving the community in very real terms, Salem-News.com is the nation's only truly independent high traffic news Website, affiliated with Google News and several other major search engines and news aggregators.

You can send Tim an email at this address: newsroom@salem-news.com

http://www.salem-news.com/articles/may0 ... 5-3-09.php

In Loving Memory of Shooter

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3MVJGRuPX4

Global Outcast Art Theory (GOAT): Caleb Schaber, 2007 Keynote and Inaugural Address

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7-HTC0vu9c

Caleb Schaber: Six Stories (Facetnation 001) (part 1 of 6)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rk6qz5acTZs

Part one - Caleb "Shooter" Schaber: WAR Correspondent

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUP0bGvkvd4

#2 - Caleb “Shooter” Schaber: WAR Correspondent

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lFuMxpJ-hI

Part 3 - Caleb "Shooter" Schaber: WAR Correspondent

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=St_QpAywpSk

Part 4 - Caleb 'Shooter' Schaber: WAR Correspondent

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGhxSoGHxO0

RIP Caleb Schaber- Friend, Freak, War Reporter, Prankster ...
http://www.musicalfamilytree.net/profil ... iend-freak

RIP Caleb Schaber
http://novbm.wordpress.com/2009/04/18/r ... b-schaber/

The sad mystery of Caleb Schaber | Oregon at War - OregonLive.com
http://blog.oregonlive.com/oregonatwar/ ... schab.html

His websites were:

http://www.CalebSchaber.com
http://www.nvnewswire.com
http://www.mkultra.bz

[elfismiles]

http://www.google.com/images?q=caleb%20schaber


"Alien" by Caleb Schaber and Jason Henrickson

Caleb Schaber on Open Studio
[googlevideo]-2231011455118988549[/googlevideo]
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 5118988549

Oh... My... God... !!!

He's the one who put up the MONOLITH in Seattle!!!

Mysterious monolith materializes in Seattle's Magnuson Park on January 1, 2001.


On the morning of January 1, 2001, Magnuson Park visitors discover a metalic monolith atop Kite Hill. The oblong object measures approximately three feet wide by nine feet tall and appears to be hollow. There is no indication of the identity of its creators or their planet of origin.

Magnuson Park is located on the grounds of the former Sand Point Naval Air Station in northeast Seattle. The millennial monolith bore a striking resemblance to an alien artifact depicted in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, witnesses said.

Once news of the monolith reached the airwaves, it attracted droves of visitors. Many came to the park to delicately touch the structure, possibly in the hopes of raising their consciousness, and of obtaining a higher plane of thought.

Although no one of this earth obtained permits to install the monolith, park officials' only concern was that of the safety risk. They pushed against the structure, but it would not give. They decided to let it stand, pending further investigation.

A Migratory Monolith?

It didn't stand for long. Sometime during the wee hours of January 3, the monolith disappeared as mysteriously as it had arrived. All that remained was a hole containing a concrete platform, used to anchor the obelisk. In place of the monolith lay a single red rose, its stem snapped in two.

The "2001 Space Oddity" (as the Seattle P-I dubbed it) was discovered on Green Lake's Duck Island the next morning. At the same time, artist and Blue Moon Tavern regular Caleb Schaber revealed that he and a band of anonymous collaborators calling themselves "Some People" had fabricated the device and several smaller versions placed around Seattle.

Schaber also said that his group had nothing to do with the monolith hijack. Magnuson Park manager C. David Hughbanks arranged for the "art work" to return to Sand Point at least temporarily. In the latest twist, someone installed a rocket-like aviation fuel tank nose-down on the monolith's original site during the night of January 6-7, 2001. The mystery continues...

Sources:
Mark Higgins, "Anonymous Sculpture Brings One Landmark Movie to Mind," The Seattle Times, p. A-1; Ibid., January 2, 2001; Ibid., January 3, 2001; Susan Paynter, Mike Lewis, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, January 4, 5, and 6, 2001.

By Walt Crowley, January 02, 2001

http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?Di ... le_id=2923

Seattle Press on Line - The Man Behind the Monolith
http://archive.seattlepressonline.com/article-8966.html

Caleb Schaber
BORN: March 23, 1973
DIED: April 17, 2009
LOCATION: MI



Caleb David Schaber was born March 23, 1973 in Niles, Michigan, and he passed away in Gerlach, Nevada April 17, 2009.

Caleb lived in Benton Harbor until 1985; he attended school at the Gifted and Talented Academy in Fairplain. After attending the Buchanan School System through 1989, Caleb enrolled at Lake Michigan College when he was sixteen years old. Caleb graduated Lake Michigan College in 1991 and, he then transferred to the University of Washington in Seattle. Caleb graduated from the University of Washington in 2003, with an anthropology major and a minor in art. January 1, 2001 Caleb became known as "the monolith man" when he created a copy Kubrick's monolith in the film "Space Odyssey 2001" and Caleb's monolith suddenly appeared in a Seattle Public Park in 2001; articles and photos were internationally published of Caleb and his monolith. Most recently, Caleb was working on finalizing a book that he was writing about the previous two years that he had spent in Afghanistan and the Iraq war. Part of the past two years, Caleb had been embedded with the Nevada National Guard. All during this time, Caleb continued with his passion for painting portrait studies, writing blogs, and creating videos. Over the past ten years Caleb was an active member of the "Burning Man" group of international artists that gather annually at the end of August, in the Black Rock Desert, Nevada to celebrate a ritual of renewal through artistic expression.

Caleb is survived by his father Ken Schaber, his mother Julie Hurst, his Aunt Wanda Middlebrook, and his Uncle Charles. An informal gathering to remember Caleb's life will be held on May 16, 2009 at 1:00 pm at the Swem Funeral Home, Buchanan. A Scholarship in Caleb's name for study in the Visual Arts is being established at Lake Michigan College. Donations for this LMC scholarship in art may be sent to Mr. Ken Schaber, 3457 Little Glendora Rd., Buchanan, MI, 49107. Friends may visit the online guestbook at www.swemfuneralhome.com.

http://www.tributes.com/show/Caleb-Schaber-87766125

[Simulist]

I'm terribly sorry to hear about Caleb. What a talented man. And what a loss.

[elfismiles]

Indeed. I wish I had tried harder to befriend him.

[elfismiles]

Sunday, April 18, 2010
Caleb's flame lives on...



A silent time is coming to a close. Having spent the last few weeks in a mostly meditative state shutting out the electronic world with minimal exception, I feel that I have come to the anniversary of Caleb’s death with an open heart, open ears and a deeply felt sombre respect for the man that captured my heart and mind.

Caleb Schaber was in touch with his self in a way that few of us ever reach or even dare to seek. The path he walked was of his choosing. He knew who he was and what he wanted to communicate. Caleb had crystal clear vision of injustice and railed against it in words, art and action. This did not make him popular in all circles and although he cared not for popularity sometimes he found himself lonely for human companionship. His social graces were occasionally hidden under the crush of post traumatic stress yet he was one of the most sensitive and caring individuals I’ve ever met.

Read the rest here:
http://seeingredinthesouthwest.blogspot ... es-on.html