"We Hold These Truths To Be Self-Evident"...

Some things never change...  

I clearly remember the assassination of JFK in 1963, especially the shock and the tears, the flags at half mast, and the endless television coverage, so that we all got to see quite clearly when Jack Ruby ran up to and shot Lee Harvey Oswald to death and the two detectives escorting Oswald simply made a lot of faces while it happened.  Nobody stopped Ruby or even tried.  Even as a child, it occurred to me that someone might not have wanted all the evidence to come out.

Things got worse.  Vietnam was going on, nightly on TV.  The My Lai massacre:

Võ Suu's photo of the Saigon execution of a Viet Cong leader.  

Buddhist monks burning themselves to death in protest, and the nightly battles and death counts on TV. 

1968, the Battle of Bến Tre, "We had to destroy the village in order to save it."  

The 1970s, the little Vietnamese girl running naked and screaming down the road because the napalm had burned all her clothing off of her.  

Vietnam had the 4th highest death toll in US war history.  Not to mention the troops who came back with PTSD, permanent mental and physical wounds, and addictions like you wouldn't believe.  Nightmares every night…

Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) 

demonstration during the 1976 US Bicentennial 

celebration in Philadelphia

And back at home, Birmingham's Bull Connor unleashing firehoses and police dogs on protesters: 

http://apushcanvas.pbworks.com/w/page/125950658/Birmingham%201963

And the pictures of the aftermath the Birmingham 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, in which these 4 little black girls were killed. 

 https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-birmingham-news-6000-mourners-jam-r/138782787

BTW, the FBI did do an investigation into that bombing, and came up with the names of four white KKK men who committed the crime.  J. Edgar Hoover  promptly blocked any impending federal prosecutions against the suspects, refused to disclose any evidence his agents had obtained with state or federal prosecutors, and then sealed the records in 1968.  The files weren't reopened until 1977, when the first conviction was made by Alabama AG Bill Baxley.  The other three were tried by Federal Attorney Doug Jones in 2001 and 2002.  Justice can take a long, long time.*

1968 was a hard year.  Besides Vietnam, Robert F. Kennedy Sr. and Martin Luther King, Jr. were both assassinated, followed by the incredible amount of police violence at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.  And it wasn't just the police:  Mayor Robert Daly, who ran Chicago with a strangulating hand, had 12,000 police, 5,000 National Guardsmen, and 7,500 regular army troops out in the streets, and he unleashed them to do anything they wanted. And they did. There were protesters rioting, but even the news said the police were rioting, too. A very young Dan Rather got sucker punched and dragged by security guards on the floor of the Convention.  (Link)  To which Walter Cronkite tersely replied, "I think we've got a bunch of thugs here, Dan."

And then on May 4, 1970, when the National Guard shot 4 students dead at Kent State in Ohio.  Four unarmed students, two of whom were walking to class, nine wounded, all unarmed…

"I survived the Kent State shootings. 

Why use force against college protests?"

The lies:  

• The chief military officer of the National Guard claimed that there had been a sniper firing on them, which is why they retaliated. 
• The guardsmen claimed they feared for their lives, but none of the students had weapons, and none of them were closer to the guardsmen than 71 feet. 
• Someone gave the order to fire.
• Initial newspaper reports had inaccurately stated that several National Guard members had been killed or seriously injured. 

A subsequent FBI investigation concluded that the Guard was not under fire and that the guardsmen fired the first shots. And while many guardsmen claimed to have been hit by stones that were pelted at them by protesters, only one Guardsman, Sgt. Lawrence Shafer, was injured enough to require medical treatment (he received a sling for his badly bruised arm and was given pain medication). In 1986, Shafer identified the person that he shot as student Joseph Lewis, and Shafer nailed Lewis in his gut and in his leg.  

Kent State Victims

• Allison Beth Krause: A 19-year-old freshman from Pittsburgh, PA, she was participating in the protest and was shot in the chest.
• Jeffrey Glenn Miller: A 20-year-old sophomore from Plainview, NY, he was participating in the protest and was shot in the mouth.
• Sandra Lee Scheuer: A 20-year-old honors junior from Youngstown, OH, she was walking to class and was shot in the neck.
• William Knox Schroeder: A 19-year-old sophomore from Lorain, OH, he was an ROTC student walking to class and was shot in the chest/back.

Nine other students were wounded during the shooting. They were:

• Alan Michael Canfora: A junior who was hit in the right wrist.
• John R. Cleary: A freshman who was hit in the upper left chest.
• Thomas Mark Grace: A sophomore who was hit in his left ankle.
• Dean R. Kahler: A freshman who was shot in the back and permanently paralyzed from the waist down.
• Joseph Lewis Jr.: A freshman who was hit twice, in the right abdomen and lower left leg.
• Donald Scott MacKenzie: A student who received a neck wound.
• Matthew J. McManus: A student (listed in one snippet, but specific wound details are limited).
• James Dennis Russell: A senior who was hit in his right thigh and grazed on his right forehead.
• Robert Follis Stamps: A sophomore who was hit in his right buttock.

"Gotta get down to it, soldiers are cutting us down

Should have been gone long ago

What if you knew her and found her dead on the ground

How can you run when you know?"

- "Four Dead In Ohio", Neil Young

"Afterwards a Gallup Poll showed that 58 percent of respondents blamed the students, 11 percent blamed the National Guard, and 31 percent expressed no opinion."  (LINK)  

None of this stopped me from joining in a couple of anti-Vietnam War protests.  But I knew what the risks were.  I still know what the risks are.  I just have too much arthritis to get out there.  

Meanwhile:  On social media, and this is a direct quote:  "Well, yeah, you can assemble peacefully but you can't protest!  Protest is unconstitutional!"  

Oh, p*** off.  Protest is not only constitutional, but it's the foundation of this country.  What do they think the Boston Tea Party was?  And I'll bet they never heard of the Boston Massacre, the Pine Tree Riot or the First Continental Congress which basically told the British Crown to go stuff itself.  

And the Declaration of Independence is a supremely radical manifesto saying:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,—That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."  READ THAT CAREFULLY.

BTW, also in the Declaration of Independence is summary from "The Crimes of the King":

• "He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws of Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
• He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
• He has made judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
• He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our People, and eat out their substance.
• He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
• He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.
• He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended legislation:
• For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
• For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from Punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
• For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
• For imposing taxes on us without our Consent:
• For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
• For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:"

Read the whole Declaration of Independence HERE.  It's worth a careful read.  Our Founding Fathers were, by the standards of their day and apparently ours, radical.  

Meanwhile:

 

The (hopefully) good thing that's happened out of this is that ICE Agents have received updates on what is and what is NOT legal procedure  (LINK):

 

******************NEWS ALERT UPDATE*********************

"ICE memo allows agents to enter homes 

without judge’s warrant, legal group says"

"The memo, allegedly signed by Todd M. Lyons, acting director of ICE, tells personnel that they only require a Form I-205 to force entry into a private residence. A Form I-205 is signed by an immigration enforcement official and authorizes an arrest following a final order of removal, which is typically issued by an immigration judge...  

The whistleblowers believe new ICE recruits have been directed to follow this policy “while disregarding written course material instructing the opposite,” the disclosure says.  

They were aware of multiple DHS employees who had faced retaliation for expressing concerns about the memo and one instructor who resigned rather than teach it, it says." (LINK)  

*Doug Jones is currently running for Governor of Alabama. God bless you, Mr. Jones.

Circle of Treason

Aldrich Ames died the week before last, and I hope he’s rotting in Hell. For those of you who don’t know who Ames was, he was a career CIA guy who sold out to the Russians late in his tenure, and the dozen or more assets he gave up to KGB were executed. He did it for the money.

I wrote about him, and CIA’s internal manhunt, in a recent Substack column, linked below.

A chronology of what he did and how they caught him, and the poisonous legacy he left.

https://gatesd.substack.com/p/rock-paper-scissors

The story of the counterintelligence team’s mole hunt is very well told by Sandy Grimes and Jeanne Vertefeuille in their book, Circle of Treason.

Grimes and Vertefeuille were the lead investigators on the case, having worked together in the Soviet/Eastern Europe Division. They were well aware Moscow was rolling up CIA assets at a blistering pace, and their job was to plug the leak.

This, in itself, is fascinating inside baseball, at least for a spy groupie like me, but a couple of things stand out particularly.

One is that Ames was so careless. He was profligate with money, and tracking the cash is how Grimes eventually put him in the headlights. He was tripped up by his own arrogance. Another detail that caught my eye is that, at one point, Ames suggested to KGB that they could frame Jeanne Vertefeuille as the double agent. They’d given up Edward Lee Howard, a couple of years before, to protect Ames, but in that instance, Howard had already been burned.

What was attractive in making Vertefeuille the patsy was that because she worked in counterintelligence, she had access to secure, compartmentalized materials, and there was a certain circular logic to pinning it on her, the spy-hunter being the spy. At the least, it would sow doubts, and compromise her investigation. If later on, she accused Ames, it would look like sour grapes.

L. to R: Sandy Grimes, Paul Redmond,
Jeanne Vertefeuille, Diana Worthen, Dan Payne

If you remember, in le Carré’s novel Tinker, Tailor – spoiler alert - one the central narrative conceits is that Karla has instructed Bill Haydon to beguile George Smiley’s wife Ann into the sack (not that it takes much), so that George’s credibility is fatally weakened.

Karla knows Smiley is the chief threat to his mole inside the Circus, the canniest, most deliberate, and least assuming of Control’s senior deputies. But if Smiley were to suspect Haydon, and pursue it, he’d be accused of nursing a grudge, his suspicions dismissed as personal enmity.

This, to me, is an interesting meta synchronicity.

Not so much life imitating art, as that it’s so oddly private a gesture. It’s a recurring theme, in all of le Carré’s books, that the most personal, secret undercurrents are a malleable resource, to be manipulated, and put to use. Charlie, in The Little Drummer Girl, is an empty vessel, a mirror of desire, but she’s not allowed her own privacy, she can’t keep anything hidden from her handlers. Karla, in the end, gives himself up to Smiley – spoiler alert, again – but the leverage Smiley uses is the safety of the guy’s crazy daughter, whose life in a state facility would be unspeakable. (And in a twist of the knife, when they meet, Karla drops a cigarette lighter inscribed, from Ann, at Smiley’s feet, the same lighter George had handed him in a cell, twenty years before.) The most directly personal of the novels, from le Carré’s own point of view, and by his own admission, is A Perfect Spy, a brutal portrait of his dad, Ronnie. The hero of the book, Magnus, is a trickster, a shape-shifter, who can’t accommodate all the different shapes and faces and suits he’s worn, the only way he can represent himself to the world, all of them convincing, none of them authentic. Magnus is, perhaps, an avatar of the author, who was known to disguise himself.

I’m not suggesting Aldrich Ames was in any way interesting enough, or had the depth of character, to be reflective, or self-aware.

I just don’t credit him with the imagination. But like many narcissists, he would have thought he was the hero of his own movie. Trying to shift the blame for his criminal delinquency to Jeanne Vertefeuille has elements of dramatic irony, and maybe he saw it as a cute plot twist, but I don’t think he gave it all that much thought. It was just another throw of the dice.

We want, sometimes, to imbue these people with more class or grace than they deserve. Billy the Kid was morally vacant, and probably a mental defective. The romance is all in the telling. Ames is a generic cheap date, his soul for sale, and the Devil already has buyer’s remorse.

Playing Defense

The American legal system had an anniversary last week. The case merits a moment's reflection.

On the night of June 3rd, 1961, someone forced the front door of the Bay Harbor Pool Room in Panama City, Florida. The assailant entered the closed establishment, smashed a cigarette machine and a record player, and stole money from the cash register.

The local police investigated the burglary. An eyewitness, Henry Cook, reported seeing Clarence Earl Gideon at 5:30 am on the morning of the burglary, leaving the pool hall with change in his pocket and a wine bottle and a Coca-Cola in his hands. The police arrested Gideon and charged him with breaking and entering with intent to commit petty larceny. The burglary was a felony under Florida law.

Appearing before the judge without funds or an attorney, Gideon asked the court to appoint counsel for him. The judge ruled:

“Mr. Gideon, I am sorry, but I cannot appoint Counsel to represent you in this case. Under the laws of the State of Florida, the only time the Court can appoint Counsel to represent a Defendant is when that person is charged with a capital offense. I am sorry, but I will have to deny your request to appoint Counsel to defend you in this case.”

Clarence Gideon had an eighth-grade education. He ran away from home while he was in middle school. Drifting through life, Gideon spent time in and out of jail. Forced to represent himself at trial, Gideon did the best he could. He made an opening statement, cross-examined the government’s witnesses, presented witnesses on his own behalf, declined to testify in his own defense, and made a short final argument. Despite his efforts, the jury convicted Gideon. He was sentenced to five years in the state penitentiary. He petitioned the Florida Supreme Court for relief, claiming that his Sixth Amendment rights had been violated. The court denied his habeas corpus plea. Later, from his cell at Raiford State Prison, Clarence Gideon appealed to the United States Supreme Court. The petition, handwritten in pencil on prison stationery, again argued that he had been denied his Sixth Amendment rights and that those rights applied to Florida under the Fourteenth Amendment.

Petitioners flood the US Supreme Court with requests for relief. Rejection is the norm. From the stacks of petitions, however, the Court accepted Clarence Gideon’s crude plea. The justices appointed Abe Fortas, a future member of the US Supreme Court, to argue the case on Gideon’s behalf. On January 15th, 1963, he appeared. (Yep, there’s our anniversary.)

Among other points, Fortas stated the common understanding within the legal community. The first thing a lawyer does when accused of wrongdoing is hire an attorney. If licensed members of the bar need an attorney to represent them in legal proceedings, he argued, how much greater the need for a man without a legal education, or any education?

Eight weeks after the January arguments, the Supreme Court returned its decision. On March 18th, 1963, the court unanimously ruled that an indigent defendant’s right to the assistance of counsel is essential to a fair trial.  They overturned Gideon’s conviction as a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Florida retried Gideon in August 1963. Gideon appeared with his appointed counsel. His lawyer undermined Henry Cook's testimony, suggesting that he had been the lookout for the actual burglars. He also located the cab driver who had driven Gideon from the area that morning. His testimony established that Gideon carried neither a wine bottle nor a Coca-Cola. The second jury acquitted Clarence Earl Gideon.

In the Supreme Court decision, Justice Hugo Black wrote, “reason and reflection, require us to recognize that, in our adversary system of criminal justice, any person haled into court, who is too poor to hire a lawyer, cannot be assured a fair trial unless counsel is provided for him. This seems to us to be an obvious truth.” Sixty years later, we take the right to counsel as automatic. Inside the courthouse, we tend to look a little strangely at defendants who do not exercise their right to counsel.  

The Gideon decision only extended to felony offenses. In 1979, the Supreme Court ruled that a defendant was entitled to counsel whenever incarceration was an authorized penalty. Scott v. Illinois extended the right to misdemeanors above the level of citations.

The case altered the legal and literary landscape. Among other changes, the public defender has become a writing and cinematic trope. The lawyers may be portrayed as heroes, villains, plea-machines, or crusaders. They may be lazy, overburdened, cynical, naive, or zealous. Henry Fonda played Clarence Gideon in the movie, Gideon’s Trumpet. 

From the standpoint of public policy, every taxpayer should be aware of the impact of the Gideon decision on criminal court budgets. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is. He criticized Gideon in a 2018 decision, Garza v. Idaho, noting in part the budgetary impact of providing defense counsel. Line-item budget analysis, however, may not account for the full social impact of court appointed attorneys. Humanity suffers if defendants lack representation when accused of a crime. One Clarence might explain those costs to the other.

Until next time. 

Bill Crider Rides Again

Bill Crider

Having a few health issues in recent months like throwing arterial fibrillations aka AFibs and finally had ablation surgery to get my heart back to more normal, I've been rereading some favorite authors. One of my all time favs was Bill Crider, and not just because Bill and his wife, Judy were Texans who also became close friends to both Elmer Grape and I for many years, but I personally am in love with Blacklin County, Sherrif Dan Rhodes. Growing up in Post, Texas where the Garza County Sheriff was our major law enforcement officer I could definitely relate to Rhodes. When Elmer and I opened our bookstore, Mysteries & More in Austin, Bill was our Grand Opening Event Signing Author. Then every time he had a new book come out, we invited to him come up fron their home in nearby Houston for a signing. July always came, too.

Bill also wrote everything from PIs to Westerns and Sci-fi to a College prof series and even a kid's book. He also wrote a jillion words in short stories published in countless magazines and anthologies. Bill once suggested he and I change our name to Minny Moore because we invaribly were both in the anthologies with big Name Authors, "Bill Doe or Jan Doe" would be named on the book's all impoetand FRONT cover then that next line always stating "with Many More." Then Crider and Grape were named on the back cover.

Angela Crider Neary

The Criders had two children, now adult, Angela and Allen, I'd briefly met them but not until Judy's death did I begin a friendship with, daughter Angela, who came to Texas fairly often, looking in on Bill.

Since Bill's passing, my friendship with Angela has grown. I also claim her hubby, Tom Neary as one of my sons by another mother.

Angela had recently written to me that Bill's Sheriff books were being repackaged and I said "This is something I must learn more about and need to publicize. SleuthSayers is the perfect vehicle for me to do that.

JG: First Angela, please tell me about you and your family and writing background:

ACN: Angela Crider Neary was born in Texas to Bill and Judy Crider and currently lives in the California Wine Country with her husband, Tom Neary, and their extremely spoiled cat, Roxie.

I've been an attorney for 30+ years was inspired to write my first mystery novella about a cat detective who fancies himself to be the Sam Spade of cats, LI’L TOM AND THE PUSSYFOOT DETECTIVE BUREAU (THE CASE OF THE PARROTS DESAPARECIDOS), set in one of my favorite areas in San Francisco, Telegraph Hill (and, of course, inspired by having a dad for a writer!) The second book in the series is LI’L TOM AND THE PUSSYFOOT DETECTIVE BUREAU (THE CASE OF THE NEW YEAR'S DRAGON). The books can be enjoyed by ages ranging from 10 to100.

JG: Angela's also written short stories appearing in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Bouchercon Anthology, and in Down & Out Books. See her Amazon Author Page for more information.

Angela and Tom are focusing on maintaining her father, Bill Crider’s, literary legacy by ensuring that his works are updated and available for both new and old readers to enjoy.

JG: Explain what you mean that's new about Bill's books?

ACN: In updating the Sheriff Dan Rhodes series, which includes 25 novels about a laid-back lawman in a small Texas town who solves crimes with humor and insight into human nature they've begun refreshing the series with a "mobile-first design" that features new covers, ebooks, and audio books, with a new release planned for every 4-6 weeks. https://www.sheriffdanrhodes.com/. You can find out more about the refresh here: https://www.sheriffdanrhodes.com/new

Additionally, the eBooks now have individual detail pages with links to all the places where they are available.

For example:

TOO LATE TO DIE (book 1 of 25)

https://www.sheriffdanrhodes.com/read/1

To change the link to another book, just change the number on the end of the link. Above the number is 1 for book 1.

SHOTGUN SATURDAY NIGHT (book 2 of 25)

https://www.sheriffdanrhodes.com/read/2

For book 2, just replace the 1 with a 2.

These web pages have sub-links to all the available places to find the eBooks: Apple, Amazon, Kobo, B&N, etc. Web pages for the entire series also feature:

• Book-Links to All Available Retailers
• Concise “1-line” Book Summaries
• Book Summaries
• Editorial Reviews (praise for Bill Crider)

This project is close to their hearts and they hope readers will continue to enjoy the series for many years to come.

JG: As a kid did you realize what Bill did? Teacher and writer?? Did either one determine your path?

Growing up, Angela was always surrounded by books due to her dad’s collecting addiction and she has been an avid fiction reader all her life. Some of her most indelible memories are of spending hours upon end in used bookstores with dad while he browsed the shelves. From a young age, I was aware my father was an English professor. My brother, Allen and I would sometimes accompany him to his office in the “Old Main” building at Howard Payne University that seemed to our young minds more like a haunted house than a university campus administration building, with its Romanesque architecture, rounded arches, towers, and stonework. Her father would take Allen and I swimming in the university dorm swimming pool and to HPU Yellowjacket football games.

Regarding his writing career, Bill said in the Acknowledgements for his last Sheriff Dan Rhodes book that his daughter and son, Allen, “had to put up with a father who often sat behind closed doors in the evening instead of watching TV or playing board games with the family. They never complained maybe they were just glad to get rid of me for a while. But I like to think they understood what I was doing and forgave my absence.”

While Angela remembers him sequestering himself in his office to write, she never felt as if he was gone for too long or that he didn’t spend enough time with his wife and kids. He managed to carefully balance and accomplish both writing and time with friends and family.

JG: I mean this as a compliment, but know I'm not the only one to sense this Texas sheriff's character being this, "Aw shucks ma'am. It weren't nothin'," as Rhodes kinda digs his boot toe into the dirt. I think Bill even says those words in his first book. Was that part of Bill's actual nature or did he deliberately create this persona?

ACN: I never asked Dad about the inspiration for the Sheriff Dan Rhodes or his persona. I believe this is because when I read the books, I really do always pictures Rhodes as having a personality and nature similar to my father. Bill may not have intended to base the Sheriff Dan Rhodes character on his own characteristics, but it may have been a natural outgrowth of his disposition and how he viewed the world. Dad grew up in a small town and raised his kids in one, too, so I always pictures these locales while reading the Sheriff Dan Rhodes books, although Clearview Texas, where Rhodes is the sheriff, is a fictional town.

JG note: I hope all y'all enjoyed reading this update but must remind you I have about the same cyber smarts as a west texas horned toad or perhaps an armadillo. If you have technology how-to questions, don't ask me.

Whites, Birds, and White Birds

Wings upon the Bird

I used to travel a lot, departing my home in a Minnesota state forest. Prior to a business trip to France, I picked out wallpaper for my main bedroom, a delicate print of small birds, vines, and flowers, understated and tasteful. I left my house key with a couple of businesswomen who painted and papered.

Months later, I returned. Everyone admired their work, perfect trim, invisible seams. Next evening my girlfriend showed up bearing food and wine. We adjourned to the bedroom. She glanced at the walls and asked one question.

Why is the wallpaper upside down?

Two professional paperhangers, three employees, four visitors, and *me*— Not one of us noticed what one girlfriend saw: Every tiny pear tree partridge was not perched, but clung desperately to little upside down twigs.

The paperhanging ladies couldn’t believe it. Hell, I couldn’t believe it. They begged me not to pass out their business cards. That was my first and last attempt to paper a room. I sometimes wonder what succeeding residents thought.

Birds upon the Wing

Not long ago, a Vietnamese-American woman (AKA @CorndogCalamari) advanced a curious hypothesis:

All white people have one thing in common: Birds in their homes.

Bird décor, that is… statuettes, ceramics, metal sculptures, paintings, etc. Not the Relationship Bird Theory advanced by Cosmo’s Science Department last year.

Valentine (goffin cockatoo, 30+yo)

‘All white people’ is a pretty broad generalization, even on Tik Tok. The funny thing is… she pretty much nailed it. It’s particularly funny for folks convinced of their exceptionalism to abruptly realize they have a picture of a peace dove, an American eagle, or perhaps a pink flamingo on Emphysema Uncle Joe’s 1950s souvenir ashtray.

Thinking *I* had no decorative items, I felt pretty smug. Valentine agreed. Valentine, er, my white, very white goffin cockatoo… a big unmistakeable bird… Wait, hold on, he is decorative but not exactly décor.

Then I realized, the girlfriend who discovered the inverted birds-of-a-bedroom in long ago Minnesota had hung two painted macaws high on my Florida walls. Not something I’d pick out, but who knows where birds come home to roost.

Even Alcatraz prisoners found birds to cheer their dreadful cells. Thus our observant ceramics birdwatcher seems to have stumbled upon somewhat of a truism.

Will my fellow crime writers seize upon this phenomenon as a mystery clue? Curious creatures want to know.

Christmas Movie Night

 

Around this time last month, we did the same thing we've done every Christmas for years: Our whole family--my wife and I and our three children and their three spouses and seven kiddos--moved into our younger son David's home for two weeks. From December 20 to January 3, all fifteen of us were together, eating and playing board games and shooting pool and walking and jogging (the outside temperature was in the 70s most of the time) and visiting to our hearts' content. It was the one time in the year that I took a long break from writing.

We also watched a LOT of movies. Some of them were shown in David's home movie theater, whose screen is the entire west wall of the room, and some were watched in our own house, ten miles from his. Our house, since it's the one where he and our other two children were raised, is always the place, every year, where the whole family has our Christmas dinner, family photo, the opening of presents, etc. But whichever location we happen to be in, we spend some time re-watching movies that either (1) we already know and like or (2) are new to at least some of us. Our strictest rule about these little movie sessions is that those who choose to sit and watch the movie have to stay silent. The main audience is usually me and the seven grandkids, who are now all teenagers except the youngest two, and--believe it or not--those seven are the best at following the rules. It's the adults, who sometimes wander in and out and chat about about other things, who are noisy. One year the kiddos got fed up with this, and passed out little cards to the offenders that said MANAGEMENT REQUESTS THAT YOU LEAVE QUIETLY. (Although I think "requests" was spelled wrong.)

Our most recent two-week gathering included the screening of more than a dozen DVD movies, some of them watched by me and the kids and some by just the kids--I gave up a few years ago on superhero movies, after soldiering through the likes of Loki and Justice League, so I leave those to the younger generations. (I'm so old my favorite comic-book-hero movie is still the first Superman, with Christopher Reeve.) Everything else, though, I happily sit and watch with my grandchildren, with a reasonable number of snacks at my side.

If you're at all interested, and I don't know why you would be, here are some of the movies we've viewed together over the past several Christmases (for obvious reasons, a few of them were watched after the two youngest grandkids had gone to bed):

- Airplane! -- This was a first for our Christmas group, and the audience was appropriately pleased.

- Somewhere in Time -- A time-travel romance movie. Afterward I received many congratulations for suggesting this one. Even the boys and the younger kids liked it.

- Die Hard -- My wife rolls her eyes and usually avoids it entirely, but it's a favorite for me and the older kiddos. Who says it's not a Christmas movie? (So is Lethal Weapon, by the way.)

- Raising Arizona -- I bet I've seen this one two dozen times, and the kids love it.

- The Dish -- A truly fantastic, little-known gem about the Apollo 11 moon landing. Everybody likes it.

- The Gods Must Be Crazy, I and II -- Two new ones this year, for some of us. The group was so-so on the first but liked the second.

- Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier -- Mostly for the younger viewers in the bunch, who seem to appreciate it as much as I did at age 10. (My folks even bought me a coonskin cap.)

- Davy Crockett and the River Pirates -- Ditto. The two little ones always walk around singing the Mike Fink keelboat song for the next few days.

- Chitty Chitty Bang Bang -- A bit of a misfire. I recall that some of the audience liked the first half of the movie and not the last half. Overall, my budding movie critics were unimpressed.

- Lonesome Dove -- A huge favorite, with everyone.

- The Usual Suspects -- Mostly for the older kids. They said they especially liked the ending. 

- The three original Star Wars movies, the first three Indiana Joneses, the three Back to the Futures, the three Lord of the Rings movies, the three Men in Blacks, the three Knives Outs -- Strangely enough, for all six trilogies, the consensus is: The first one's the best, the third comes next, the second is the worst.

- Hatari -- John Wayne in Africa, capturing animals for the zoo. The older kids endured it, the younger ones were spellbound.

- Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief -- Another misfire. It got a unanimous thumbs-down, and its sequel fared even worse. 

- O Brother Where Art Thou? -- Big favorite. The fact that much of the movie was filmed here was a bonus.

- Other favorites: Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Jaws, 12 Angry Men, Ocean's Eleven, Signs, The Princess Bride, Crocodile Dundee, Jurassic Park, Jurassic World, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Man from Snowy River, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Clue, Aliens, Groundhog Day.

- Biggest favorite, by far: It's a Wonderful Life. We watch it every year, and even I get a little teary when the bell rings and Clarence gets his wings.

- Coming in second, even though it has nothing to do with Christmas, is Galaxy Quest, the all-time thought-it-would-be-terrible-but-turned-out-great movie. All of us, even the adults, love love love everything about this one.

NOTE: A few we haven't seen yet as a group, but they're on our future list: The Rocketeer, Top Gun, Romancing the Stone, Always, Shane, Rocky, The Right Stuff, the second and third Jumanji movies, High Noon, Gladiator, Spartacus, Apocalypto, Dances with Wolves, the five Mad Maxes, The Big Country, Twister, Speed, Holes, A Shot in the Dark, Liar Liar, City Slickers, Casablanca, Medicine Man, Secondhand Lions, the first three James Bonds, North by Northwest, Bullitt, The Magnificent Seven, Wait Until Dark, The Village, The Sting, To Kill a Mockingbird, Sleepless in Seattle, Father Goose, Rudy, Cat Ballou, The Black Stallion.

Now that I have the upcoming features planned and ready, all I need is a TV screen the size of our son's. Honey, are you listening? Hint, hint, hint. (My definition of acceptable size is when you have to turn your head from side to side in order to see the whole screen.)

Question: Do any of you ever play movie host to your kids/grandkids? Are any of you as obsessed with this foolishness as I am? (God help you, if you are.) IF you are, what movies or what kinds of movies do you mostly watch, as a group? Any suggestions for us, for future holidays? Are there any that you suggest we avoid? Do any of you not like family movie sessions? If you don't, I certainly understand. But in that case . . .

Management requests that you leave quietly.

Is Accuracy Overrated?

Filling in for me today is Mark Bergin, a retired police lieutenant, talented writer, and dear friend. Mark generously helped me with research for my short story, "Zebras." I am not the only writer who has benefited from his wisdom and experience. Mark has helped countless others with their stories. He truly embodies what it means to be a good literary citizen, supporting and encouraging us all. He is a remarkable human being, and I'm delighted he's joining us today.

— Stacy Woodson

Is Accuracy Overrated? 

by Mark Bergin

    I am the luckiest man in America. I have been saying that since 2013 after I survived two heart attacks that actually killed me, made me retire from the police force after twenty-eight years—a twist of fate that pushed me to write my first book, published in 2019. Now, I have a four-book contract. And one of the luckiest things about this new writer gig is, I get to talk with people about being a cop all the time.

      I am a big mouth, always have been. When I was a police officer, and a reporter before that, I was communicating with the public about safety and crime and baby seats and all kinds of stuff. Now, I am on panels at conferences, meet new friends, and give out dozens of business cards to writers who want to talk about police procedure—to get it right.

       And I wonder if that is important.

       After all, we are fiction writers. We lie and make up stuff for a living. There is no such person as my detective hero John Kelly (though he sounds a little like me) nor his foil, public defender girlfriend Rachel Cohen (though I married my public defender girlfriend Ruth, who hates the Rachel character).

    I strove hard to make my first book, APPREHENSION, accurate enough that a cop would read it and not find fault, that officers could give it to their families and say, “This is what it’s like out there.” It is about stress and suicide as much as police investigation and trial preparation. Maybe, too much. Maybe, I lost some readers’ interest by so densely packing police factoids— radio codes and case numbers and evidence procedures. I was a first-time author. Four years as a newspaper reporter means nothing in prose.

        But I was proud of my book’s accuracy until about two years after I wrote it, when I drove across a bridge from my Virginia home into Washington, DC. I remembered my description of a fictional pursuit and discovered I had misplaced the Jefferson Memorial, describing it at the end of the I-395 bridge, and not the real spot, a different bridge at Fourteenth Street. The Jefferson Memorial—it’s not little. And nobody ever caught it. Maybe because I had so few readers. 

          Despite that error, I remain committed to working with authors for the sake of their own authenticity. I talk with Sisters in Crime chapters and my local writers group (Royal Writers Secret Society, if you must know). A typical conversation might begin, “Would a police chief be involved in the interview of a murder suspect?” And my answer will start with, “Do you want him to be?” Because in the real world, no. Police chiefs approve budgets and hirings and firings and talk to politicians and kiss babies. They don’t do day-to-day police work. But you, clever writer you are, have a chief who is a main character in your book (instead of a distant loud sound bellowing from a high floor in the police station). So, let’s get him or her into that interrogation room. Is this in a small department where everyone does everything? Is there a blizzard, and she is the only brass available? Is the victim his sister-in-law (which presents its own conflict-of-interest-unlikeliness). But remember, IT’S FICTION. We’re making it up. Do it well enough, no one will question it. 

        Well, okay, maybe some will. 

    I just read a novel with an airplane mistake. (Note from Ed: Don’t make mistakes with airplanes, guns, or cars.) In the novel, a C-130 takes off to the sound of jet engines. No, it doesn’t, the C-130 is a turboprop, not a jet. Do I care?  I love this author, and I forgave him this one, but other times, a mistake like this can take me out of the story and weaken my faith in the storyteller. 

    We read to visit and inhabit new worlds or see ours from new angles with new facts. Mistakes make us doubt information in the story. I gave up on a spy novel recently in which agents playing husband and wife on a train are stopped at a border. “Wife” is taken away, “husband,” placidly, goes on to his destination and later, his headquarters where he reports, “Oh, they took her. I don’t know who.” NO! You’re a spy playing her husband. You fume and fight and make a scene because if you don’t, you’re suspect. Even I know what a real spy would do. So, the rest of this writer’s work became suspect. (Could we make this real? What if the train is in a violently repressive county where the agents are trained not to make waves. There. Done.)

        Would a detective investigate her sister’s murder? Do police encrypt their radios, or switch to cell phones for sensitive communications? Would they drive their own cars on the job? Do cops marry defense attorneys? I’ll answer anything, and very often, the answer becomes the start of a long, exciting back and forth on story and plot and character. I have made so many good friends this way, keeping contact after Left Coast Crime or Bouchercon or Creatures, Crime and Creativity. That’s the best. That’s why I am so lucky. (BTW, the answers to these questions are: no, yes, never, big-time yes.)

Unless that’s not what you want.

      There are some big, common mistakes in fictional police work: 

• Nobody does paperwork (unless you’re in a novel by Michael McGarrity, an ex-cop who gets it right). 

• Everybody loads their gun at the last minute, racking the slide to put a bullet in the chamber as they get out of the car or go through the door. NO. That gun was loaded the moment the cop woke up, maybe even loaded for weeks and locked in a personal safe at night. 

• Cops shoot somebody and go right back out. NO. NO. There is always an investigation during which the cop is on administrative leave, to give her a cooling off period and cover the department’s a—administration against claims of improper supervision. 

• Cops, well everybody, can tuck guns in their belt at the small of the back. NO. NO. NO. Try it. Come to my house. I’ll hand you an unloaded gun. You tuck it under your waistline. In five minutes, the gun is in your buttcrack. In ten, it has already slid down your pants and out your ankle. An easy fix? “Detective Callahan tucked the gun into the holster at the small of his back. There. Done. 

• A cop’s death makes your heroes mad, and they go out and solve things, and  then all is well. NO. NO. NO. NO. It’s so much more than that. It makes them furious, and they go out and rough people up. The death of an officer is a major blow to a department that lasts days and weeks and maybe forever. He or she was a friend and a coworker and a neighbor and a godparent and a boss, and their death reminds you, and your own family, how dangerous and capricious police work can be. Don’t get me wrong. It’s fun, too. Driving fast with lights and sirens, pointing guns at bad guys, making arrests, saving people. But it’s serious business, even if we don’t talk to the public or our kids about it. We should. 

      Writers research, ask questions, observe. Police departments let you go on ride-alongs and have public information officers. And you can always write to me (mbergin01@aol.com). Don’t let research be your enemy. Remember you are a fiction writer.  

      In APPREHENSION, a major scene keyed on the burial of an indigent jail prisoner. I needed that scene to go the way I envisioned—a small crane, a wet and muddy hole, gravediggers who left, cops who stood by. I didn’t know how the city or the sheriff’s office, who runs the jail, handled that, so I never asked. I made it up along reasonable lines of what I knew of city and law enforcement bureaucracies. Did I get it wrong? In six years, I still don’t know.

       Just write. Write it how you want. If your fans nitpick, do it better next time. At least now you know they’re reading you.

***

Mark Bergin spent four years as a newspaper reporter, winning the Virginia Press Association Award for news reporting, before joining the Alexandria, Virginia, Police Department. Twice named Police Officer of the Year for narcotics and robbery investigations, he served in most of the posts described in APPREHENSION, his debut novel. APPREHENSION is being reprinted by Level Best Books as the first in a four-book series called The John Kelly Cases. Book two in the series, SAINT MICHAEL’S DAY will be published this year and was a finalist for the Killer Nashville Claymore Award. His short stories appear in three Anthony Award-nominated anthologies: PARANOIA BLUES, LAND OF 10,000 THRILLS, and SCATTERED, SMOTHERED, COVERED AND CHUNKED. He lives in Alexandria, Virginia and Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

Ptolemy VIII Eurgetes: What Your Subjects Call You Behind Your Back Is a Lot More Important Than What They Call You to Your Face (CA. 182–116 B.C.)

The Alexandrians owe me one thing; they have seen their king walk!

—Scipio Aemilianus, Roman politician and general 

That’s right, another Ptolemy. But where the first of our Ptolemaic bastards (Ptolemy I Soter [“Savior”]) was ruthless and shrewd, and the second (Ptolemy Keraunos [“Thunderbolt”]) was brave, intemperate, and violent, our third was a gluttonous monster who celebrated one of his marriages by having his new stepson assassinated in the middle of the wedding feast, and later murdered his own son by this same woman (his sister!) in a brutal and sadistic fashion. 

When he took the throne of Egypt in 145 B.C., our Ptolemy took the reign name “Eurgetes” (Greek for “Benefactor”). In truth he was anything but. Quickly tiring of his lying, his murderous rages, and his rampant gluttony, his subjects began to refer to him as “Physcon” (“Potbelly”) because he was so fat. The quote that leads off this chapter references that physical characteristic as well as his laziness. Beholden to the Roman Republic for its support, Ptolemy VIII was forced to actually walk through the city of Alexandria (as opposed to being carted about in a litter) while playing tour guide to a visiting collection of Roman V.I.P.s, including Scipio Aemilianus, the author of the quote.

Ptolemy "happily" giving Scipio Aemilianus the aforementioned guided tour

A younger son of Ptolemy V who didn’t do the Ptolemaic dynasty any favors, this Ptolemy bounced around from Egypt to Cyprus to Cyrenaica (Libya) until his older brother (also a Ptolemy) died in 145 B.C. The dead Ptolemy’s young son was crowned shortly after his father’s death (taking the regnal name of Ptolemy VII) with his mother, Cleopatra II—no, not that Cleopatra—as co-ruler. In short order, our Ptolemy manipulated the common people into supporting him as king in place of his nephew, and managed to work out a compromise with his sister-also-his-brother’s-widow wherein he married her and the three of them became co-rulers of Egypt. 

Alexandria in the first century B.C.

Not only did Ptolemy then promptly have his nephew (and now stepson) killed at the aforementioned wedding feast, he seduced and married as his second wife the boy’s sister, who also happened to be his own niece, and his wife’s daughter (confused yet?), also named Cleopatra. (No, still not that Cleopatra.) This after knocking up the sister/wife/widow of his dead predecessor herself, siring a son named Ptolemy (again) Memphitis. 

When the people of Alexandria eventually rebelled and sent Ptolemy VIII, the younger Cleopatra, and their children packing to Cyprus, Cleopatra II (the sister/widow/first wife) set up their son Ptolemy Memphitis as co-ruler and herself (once more) as regent. Within a year, our Ptolemy (Ptolemy VIII, if you’re trying to keep track) had the boy, his own son, murdered. Pretty awful, right? Unspeakable? 

No, that’s what came next. Once he’d had the child (no older than twelve) killed, Ptolemy VIII had him dismembered and (according to such ancient sources as Diodorus Siculus and Justin, but treated by modern historians with a healthy dose of skepticism) sent to his mother as a birthday present! As if this wasn’t enough, Ptolemy went on to retake his throne and share power with his first wife (yes, the sister/wife/widow whose sons he’d killed) until he died of natural causes after a long life in 116 B.C. 

At least, as she had done with their elder brother Ptolemy VI, Cleopatra II managed to outlive Physcon, place another of her sons (Ptolemy IX) on the throne as co-ruler, and serve as regent to yet another underage princeling.

Unspeakable bastard.