Suicide, lawsuits and rancor....

This NY Times Magazine article about the nine miners, rescued from a flooded Pennsylvania mine one year ago, paints a bleak picture of stress created by traumatic events and sudden celebrity on ordinary people.

...For the nine men who were the beneficiaries of those prayers, however, it has been a tough year. When they were lifted out of the mine in that yellow rescue capsule, they were reborn into a different world. For a few days, they were the most famous men in the country, expected to speak in sound bites and show up on time for photo shoots with Annie Leibovitz. (None of the miners had any idea who she was.) To President Bush, they were symbols of ''the American spirit''; to blue-collar America, they were forgotten men who labored in the darkness for our daily light and heat; to the church faithful, they were living testimony to God's grace. ''After the rescue, people would literally come up to me on the street and ask if they could touch me,'' Mark Popernack recalls.

Tragically (and predictably), for several miners and rescuers, the story goes downhill from there.

Long, but interesting, because I can't help but wonder how I'd handle a second chance at life after staring death in the face, and fame and sudden fortune to boot. Complete story here.