Vegas: Well-Spring of Story Ideas

 

A room with a view-photo by the author.

So as it turns out the Most Wonderful Woman in the World is both lucky at love and at cards. And the Luckiest Man in the World– that’s me by the way– got to do a ride-along when the aforementioned Most Wonderful Woman in the World went to Vegas for a couple of days last week.

We had one heck of a time. My lady love has mad skills in the casino, and I wrote a bunch. Plus the Bellagio’s atrium is currently decorated for Christmas. If you happen to find yourself in Vegas, it would be a shame to miss it.

Longtime readers of this blog (Both of you!) will no doubt remember that l lived and worked in Vegas for a couple of years back when the world was young. It was the beginning of my public school teaching career, and I could not have asked for a better baptism of fire than teaching in one of the Clark County School District’s schools.

Because I worked with some of the best teachers in the world. Because they were generous with their time and their advice, and they were overwhelmingly effective in their example. I learned tricks of the trade that I use every day to this day.

Stuff like learning a kid‘s name. Using it. Making sure to pronounce it correctly. Letting them see you do that. It’s a great way to show you care enough to say their name right, and that means that you care about them. You build a relationship with these kids– and this is true anywhere in the world– and your work gets monumentally easier. My heroes, the Vegas teachers, taught me that.

So anyway, it’s always nice to visit Vegas, and when I go, I try to get out to places that tend to be far away from the strip (like Red Rock Canyon. Not to be missed!), and the best thing about it, is I always return home with ideas for stories. Because Vegas is full of characters. Let me give you just one example.

The Calico Hills, Red Rock Canyon-author’s photo

More shots of Red Rock- all author’s photos.

Robyn and I were headed to the airport to catch our flight home. We had eaten at an Italian place I knew of away from the Strip, so rather than cab it, we called for a Lyft. And that was how we met Mark.

Mark’s SUV make & model

Nice guy. Early 60s, so a few years older than me. Drove a sweet Mercedes SUV. Spotlessly clean. Told us all about how he was working on getting his CDL, because the money was so much better than driving for either Lyft or Uber.

Not Mark-but definitely his fleece.

Now, this was a guy whose entire appearance practically screamed “MONEY.” Manicure. $200 haircut. Expensive base layer fleece that retails starting at firm $150. So I was somewhat surprised to hear him complaining (however mildly) about money.

Then came the segue. While talking about money, Mark made an oblique reference to the recent election (full disclosure: I think Mark would have been surprised to learn that in this election I backed the accomplished brown-skinned lady with the foreign-sounding first name.). He said, “Yeah, I was tired of seeing all of the money leave the country, instead of coming into it, and felt like we needed a change.”

Bear in mind that my origin story includes being born in, raised in, and taking frequent sojourns in what the chattering class have lazily begun to refer to as “Trump Country.” I call this “lazy,” because I am well aware that aside from campaign stops and photo ops, Donnie Dollhands wouldn’t be caught dead in places that bear such a moniker.

But I’m from there. I still have friends and family there, and I have learned how to either talk with the people I care about whose opinions differ from mine, or even more importantly, how NOT to talk to them about things like politics. It is definitely a skill.

I used that skill to evade being drawn into just such a discussion with Mark. But as it turns out, he wasn’t done trying.

When I mentioned I used to work in Vegas, he asked what line of work I was in. I told him I was a history teacher and a writer. 

He immediately seized on the “teacher” part. Asked about whether I had any exposure to students categorized as “ESL” (“English as a Second Language”- an outdated term outside of Vegas. Several years back the state changed the acronym to “ELL” - “English Language Learners”, and more recently to “MLE” - “Multilingual Education,” but I wasn’t about to tell him this.).

I replied that I did. In fact I worked very closely with kids in that program. 

And then he said it.

“I bet they’re a real drag on your resources, huh.?”

Well.

No.

Far from it.

And I made a decision that I wasn’t going to avoid this conversation after all. I mean why not? I kinda liked the guy. And all he was really doing was the all-too human move of seeking confirmation/support for his biases. We’ve all been there.

So I told him no. I told him my hardest working group of students tended to contain high numbers of “ESL” kids. I further explained that I teach in one of the most diverse districts in the nation (we are situated cheek by jowl with a huge refugee resettlement center.) and something like 240 different languages are spoken in my district.

And that’s the thing: I explained. I didn’t lecture. I didn’t proselytize. I kept my tone light, breezy, conversational. My very first response to his question about “those kids“ being a “drag“ was to say: “On no, far from it. Some of the hardest-working kids I have are ‘newcomers.’ I teach in a very diverse district with a ton of different languages being spoken there. And I invite anybody to come on into my school. Come on into my classroom. Mark, if you ever find yourself anywhere near my patch, get in touch with me. Come visit. It will blow your mind.” 

To his credit, Mark listened. Or he at least seemed to. Our conversation stayed pleasant. And then we moved on to him telling Robyn and I a cool story about him watching a semi truck practically blow up during a training exercise gone horribly wrong (no one was hurt) on a part of the freeway one of his CDL classes was using for training. 

I told him I was going to use his description in this other story I’ve been thinking about. This is one I’ve told before about a former student of mine who teamed up with a friend to steal cinderblocks from a construction site and spend a lot of time trying to drop them on cars from the loca I-15 overpass back when I  still taught down there. 

I think I’m gonna put those two together and I think I just might have something. I’ll keep you guys posted.

And I already promised Mark I would use his name.

So yeah, Vegas well-spring of stories! And as it turns out, civilized political discourse.

Who knew?

(Same view as above, only at night, and a panorama shot. Video by the author’s better half.)

And on that note, my time here draws to a close with this, my final blog entry of the year. I wish you all the finest of holidays, and a blessed new year. See you in January 2025!

“You Wanted to See Me?”: A Lazy Writing Drinking Game

Fifteen years since our first date, and my beautiful, intelligent, talented wife continues to amaze and 

The aforementioned much-loved wife

delight me. Most recently when she came up with "The Lazy Writing Drinking Game."

Robyn (the aforementioned beautiful, intelligent, talented wife) first hatched the idea while we were bingeing the USA Network stalwart Suits this summer. A touchstone of the tail end of a different era in televised entertainment, Suits has morphed into an unlikely money-making giant in the waning days of the Age of Streaming.

This in spite of the fact that Suits is not built for streaming. It's weekly episodic television, as evidenced by the recaps at the beginning of every episode. Which is a big part of what makes weekly episodic television fundamentally different from streaming television: time between episodes.

As such "Time" can be both a blessing and a curse. To the good: it affords the viewer an opportunity to ruminate on the plot as it unfolds, building it up in their imagination, filling in holes, and enriching their viewing experience. To the bad: it opens up the narrative to the temptation of relying on lazy writing. "Time" allows writers to paper over cracks in the foundation, and to use linguistic crutches and shortcuts over and over and over again.

And nowhere is this more apparent than in a show like Suits.

Back in the day this show was a staple of the USA Network lineup, alongside such other USA originals as White Collar, and Royal Pains. As such it had a lot to recommend it: solid production values, great soundtrack music, terrific dialogue and dynamite acting.

Plus, conflict, conflict, conflict, the thing on which plot thrives the most.

But watch episodes of a show like Suits in succession one after another, and the cracks start to appear. For one thing a telenovela feel often pervades the succession of emotional conflicts, blow ups, confrontations and nearly dizzying reversals of allegiances, alliances, feuds and vendettas that litter the show's season arcs. And since Suits, against all odds, leveraged a thin premise (a guy with a photographic memory who never graduated college, let alone law school, fakes his way into getting an entry-level associate attorney position at a big time New York corporate law firm) into NINE successful seasons, that's a lot of litter.

And for another, there's the lazy writing. See below for a few examples. And then watch Suits armed with this foreknowledge, and make sure to take a drink at the appropriate time!

The Fantastic Gina Torres as the Indomitable Jessica Pearson

FIRST: "You Wanted to See Me?"

For most of its nine-season run Suits would begin at least one scene per episode by having one character stroll into the office of another (whether a superior or subordinate, no matter), and intone exactly the same opening line: "You wanted to see me?"

Make sure you have your beverage of choice ready and waiting. This line will cause you to drink deep should you play the Lazy Writing Drinking Game here. In fact, your liver may never forgive you.

Rick Hoffman stealing every scene he's in as the one-of-a-kind Louis Litt

Second: "We Have a Problem."

Second only to the oft-repeated trope of "You wanted to see me?" comes "We have a problem." And it occurs in exactly the same manner: as the opening of a scene wherein one character walks into another's office.

Another perfect opportunity to get your Lazy Writing drink on!

Gabriel Macht as the trickster hero Harvey Specter

Third: "Whatever It Is, It's Gonna Have to Wait."

Third but no means last, comes this little gem, also dropped as the beginning of any given scene, wherein one character has just learned something that needs telling to another character, usually in the scene immediately previous to this this phrase opens. Only to have a second character, invariably the person who needs to be given the above-mentioned information, cut off the first character with the words: "Whatever it is, it's gonna have to wait, because...." followed up by a shocking revelation about their currently dilemma coming out of left field to smack them all down.

And there you have it: the foundations of a potentially hilarious drinking game.

Lastly, I'd like to point out that none of these flaws stopped Suits, which wrapped production in 2019, from KILLING it when it dropped on both Netflix and Peacock's streaming services in mid-2023. It topped the Neilsen ratings for twelve straight weeks, thereby allowing series creator Aaron Korsch to shop a spin-off series, entitled Suits LA. NBC bit, and the series is currently in production.

Can't wait to see whether any of Mike Ross, Harvey Specter, Donna Paulson or Louis Litt pop up as guest stars.

But hey, in the meantime, one can hope.

And drink!

See you in two weeks!

When Writing Historical Fiction: It's Better to Travel

(A repost from a while back. Still useful. Hope you enjoy! - B.T.)

[Elmore] Leonard was originally no more a man of the West than was the Ohio-born dentist Zane Grey. While a kid in Detroit, Westerns enthralled him as they did most people in the 1930s and 40s. When he grew interested in writing during college Western fiction seemed a promising genre he could work in part-time. Unlike many writers then selling Western tales to pulps, though, Leonard insisted on accuracy, and kept a ledger of his research over the years, later crediting his longtime subscription to Arizona Highways magazine for many of his authentic descriptions. All had to be genuine: the guns, Apache terms and clothing; the frontier knives, card games, liquor, and especially the horses.

 — Nathan Ward, from "Elmore Leonard's Gritty Westerns," in Crime Reads

It's certainly never a bad idea to follow the writing advice of the great Elmore Leonard. His Ten Rules For Writing are rightly famous as terrific advice for any writer of fiction.

 

The Great Elmore Leonard

In those instances where Leonard's advice isn't readily available, it never hurts to follow his example, if at all possible. Take the one in the quote above from Nathan Ward's Crime Reads article on Leonard. For years Leonard apparently leaned heavily on the content of Arizona Highways magazine.

It's a fine notion. Now, don't get me wrong: it's always better to travel. There is no substitute for actually going to and spending time in the place you're writing about. But, if you're writing about someplace and you can't afford to go, read travel writers. For that matter, even if you can afford the investment in both time and treasure to visit the region where your work is set, read travel writers. No one can help you get a feel for a certain place like people who make their livings helping their readers get a feel for a certain place.

 

Take William Dalrymple. The British-born-and-raised son of a Scottish baronet, Dalrymple these days is best known for his recent run of riveting books on the history of the subcontinent: India, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Dalrymple is a terrific writer and a first-rate historian who splits his time between a farm just outside Delhi, in India and a summer home in London.

William Dalrymple

But before he began to make a name for himself with books such as White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India, The Last Mughal: the Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi 1857, The Return of a King: the Battle for Afghanistan, 1839-1842, and The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence and the Pillage of An Empire, Dalrymple began his writing career as a travel writer, taking readers on a tour through the Eastern Mediterranean and the Holy Land (From the Holy Mountain: a Journey Among the Christians of the Middle East), and of course, chronicling the early days of his life-long love affair with India. With his first book In Xanadu: a Quest, published in 1989, Dalrymple chronicles his modern retracing of the journey of Marco Polo from Jerusalem in the summer palace of Kublai Khan in China. But it was with his second book, 1994's City of Djinns: a Year in Delhi, a memoir of his first visit to the city which has had such a tremendous impact on his adult life, that Dalrymple really began to make his mark.

And there is so much to this memoir which can be of use to the writer reading about the city. Here's an early excerpt laying out his introduction to Delhi and to India:

I was only seventeen. After ten years at school in a remote valley in the moors of North Yorkshire, I had quite suddenly found myself in India, in Delhi. From the very beginning I was mesmerized by the great capital, so totally unlike anything I had ever seen before. Delhi, it seemed at first, was full of riches and horrors: it was a labyrinth, a city of palaces, an open gutter, filtered light through a filigree lattice, a landscape of domes, an anarchy, a press of people, a choke of fumes, a whiff of spices. Moreover the city—so I soon discovered—possessed a bottomless seam of stories: tales receding far beyond history, deep into the cavernous chambers of myth and legend. Friends would moan about the touts on Janpath and head off to the beaches in Goa, but for me Delhi always exerted a stronger spell. I lingered on, and soon found a job in a home for destitutes in the far north of the city. The nuns gave me a room overlooking a municipal rubbish dump. In the morning I would look out to see the sad regiment of rag-pickers trawling the stinking berms of refuse; overhead, under a copper sky, vultures circled the thermals forming patterns like fragments of glass in a kaleidoscope. In the afternoons, after I had swept the compound and the inmates were safely asleep, I used to slip out and explore. I would take a rickshaw into the innards of the Old City and pass through the narrowing funnel of gullies and lanes, alleys and cul de sacs, feeling the houses close in around me.

Now, I ask you. Can this guy set a scene, or what? Really helpful for drinking in the flavors, colors, scents and sounds of what on the face of it comes across as a truly unforgettable place. Really not a bad guide if you're interested in writing about modern-day India.

But what if, like me, you're a writer of historical fiction?

In Leonard's case, as stated above, he exploited a modern magazine to help give him local flavor not just for another region of the country, but for that region in another era. No mean feat. It's a testament to Leonard's talent, coupled with his singular vision that he was able to "world build" (to borrow a phrase from our friends who write speculative fiction) using these building blocks for his foundation.

So sure, you can (and should) definitely use your imagination to fill in the cracks. There is certainly no substitute for imagination in the fiction writer's tool kit. That said, you need more than one tool in order to get the job of writing fiction done. I've often felt like our "tool kit" as fiction writers should be more aptly called a "tool warehouse." And of course, another way to use travel writing as one of those tools, to help get the feel for a city or street, or region or state or county or what-have-you during a bygone time is to go and find travel writing from the time in which your work-in-progress is set.

I have a writer friend whose current work-in-progress is set during World War II. One of his major characters has a back-story in which he lived in Germany during the 1930s, in the run-up to the war. I referred him to A Time of Gifts: On Foot to Constantinople: From the Hook of Holland to the Middle Danube, the first volume in a superb three-volume memoir of a trip on foot across Europe, from Holland all the way to Turkey by travel writer, war-time British commando (the account of his part in a successful kidnapping of a German general in Crete is not to be missed), bon vivant, and (some say) one of Ian Fleming's models for his literary creation James Bond, Patrick Leigh Fermor.

Leigh Fermor set out for Constantinople (Istanbul) in December of 1933, less than a year after Adolf Hitler and the Nazis had come to power. His narrative is replete with rich details about German life during that period, laying out how the Nazis had both a heavy and in some ways, a negligible impact on the country they would eventually drive to absolute ruin. Here is Leigh Fermor's initial impression of Cologne, the first major German city he visited:

After a first faraway glimpse, the two famous steeples grew taller and taller as the miles that separated us fell away. At last they commanded the cloudy plain as the spires of a cathedral should, vanishing when the outskirts of the city interposed themselves, and then, as I gazed at the crowding saints of the three Gothic doorways, sailing up into the evening again at close range. Beyond them indoors, although it was already too dark to see the colours of the glass, I knew I was inside the largest Gothic cathedral in Northern Europe. Except for the little constellation of tapers in the shadows of a side-chapel, everything was dim. Women knelt interspersed with nuns and the murmured second half of the Gegrüsset seist Du, Maria rose in answering chorus to the priest’s initial solo; a discreet clatter of beads kept tally of the accumulating prayers. In churches with open spires like Cologne, one could understand how congregations thought their orisons had a better start than prayers under a dome where the syllables might flutter round for hours. With steeples they follow the uprush of lancets and make an immediate break for it. Tinsel and stars flashed in all the shops and banners saying Fröhliche Weihnacht! were suspended across the streets. Clogged villagers and women in fleece-lined rubber boots slipped about the icy pavements with exclamatory greetings and small screams, spilling their armfuls of parcels. The snow heaped up wherever it could and the sharp air and the lights gave the town an authentic Christmas card feeling. It was the real thing at last! Christmas was only five days away. Renaissance doors pierced walls of ancient brick, upper storeys jutted in salients of carved timber and glass, triangles of crow-steps outlined the steep gables, and eagles and lions and swans swung from convoluted iron brackets along a maze of lanes. As each quarter struck, the saint-encrusted towers challenged each other through the snow and the rivalry of those heavy bells left the air shaking. Beyond the Cathedral and directly beneath the flying-buttresses of the apse, a street dropped sharply to the quays. Tramp steamers and tugs and barges and fair-sized ships lay at anchor under the spans of the bridges, and cafés and bars were raucous with music. I had been toying with the idea, if I could make the right friends, of cadging a lift on a barge and sailing upstream in style for a bit.

Again, this is quite a scene the writer is setting! So much good material, such a solid feel for the place. Leigh Fermor wrote the memoir some forty years after the trip, based on large part on the deep and thorough entries he made in his journal as an eighteen year-old looking for adventure in a rapidly changing world. And then he goes on to talk about his attempt to "make friends" in that timeless way young people have from time immemorial: he went to a bar:

I made friends all right. It was impossible not to. The first place was a haunt of seamen and bargees shod in tall sea-boots rolled down to the knee, with felt linings and thick wooden soles. They were throwing schnapps down their throats at a brisk rate. Each swig was followed by a chaser of beer, and I started doing the same. The girls who drifted in and out were pretty but a rough lot and there was one bulky terror, bursting out of a sailor’s jersey and wearing a bargeman’s cap askew on a nest of candy-floss hair, called Maggi—which was short for Magda—who greeted every newcomer with a cry of “Hallo, Bubi!” and a sharp, cunningly twisted and very painful pinch on the cheek. I liked the place, especially after several schnapps, and I was soon firm friends with two beaming bargemen whose Low German speech, even sober, would have been blurred beyond the most expert linguist’s grasp. They were called Uli and Peter. “Don’t keep on saying Sie,” Uli insisted, with a troubled brow and an unsteadily admonishing forefinger: “Say Du.” This advance from the plural to the greater intimacy of the singular was then celebrated by drinking Brüderschaft. Glasses in hand, with our right arms crooked through the other two with the complexity of the three Graces on a Parisian public fountain, we drank in unison. Then we reversed the process with our left arms, preparatory to ending with a triune embrace on both cheeks, a manoeuvre as elaborate as being knighted or invested with the Golden Fleece. The first half of the ceremony went without a hitch, but a loss of balance in the second, while our forearms were still interlocked, landed the three of us in the sawdust in a sottish heap. Later, in the fickle fashion of the very drunk, they lurched away into the night, leaving their newly-created brother dancing with a girl who had joined our unsteady group: my hobnail boots could do no more damage to her shiny dancing shoes, I thought, than the seaboots that were clumping all round us. She was very pretty except for two missing front teeth. They had been knocked out in a brawl the week before, she told me.

And that's just a taste. Leigh Fermor's three volumes here truly form a treasure trove: a window into a long-vanished world, and a feel for both the time itself and the timeless humanity of its cast of thousands. Well worth a read whether you're writing something set in Middle Europe during the 1930s, are a student of human nature, history, great writing, or (most likely) some combination of all of the above. 

Patrick Leigh Fermor (Right) in Crete, 1943

And that's all for now. Tune in next time when I break out the work of a Flemish diplomat and show how his long letters home from his posting in the court of the Turkish sultan helped inform the writing of a couple of my published works.

See you in two weeks!

Biden Cincinnatus: the Egalitarian Virtue of Restraint

"You have often heard [Washington] compared to Cincinnatus. The comparison is doubtless just. The celebrated General is nothing more at present than a good farmer, constantly occupied in the care of his farm and the improvement of cultivation."

                – French traveller Jacques-Pierre Brissot de Warville after visiting Mount Vernon in 1788

Washington and Lafayette at Mount Vernon, circa 1784

“Tis a Conduct so novel, so inconceivable to People, who, far from giving up powers they possess, are willing to convulse the Empire to acquire more.”

– American painter and former Washington military aide-de-camp John Trumbull, on Washington's resignation of his command, 1784

General Washington resigning his commission before Congress in December, 1783, by John Trumbull

"There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen." 

                                                                                                                     –Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (attr.)

Good Morning Fellow Sleuthsayers, and Happy August!

And I say this with a July for the Ages just barely in the record books. You hear this sort of thing all the time: "One for the record books." "This is unprecedented," etc., especially in this era of big media covering something as consequential as the election of the most powerful person on the planet as if were the fifth race at the dog track. Usually it's hyperbole.

Not this time, my friends.

Now, no matter your political persuasion, this ought to interest you, especially if you're any of the following:

1. A human being.
2. A lover of history.
3. Concerned about the world you might be leaving for your kids/grandkids, etc.
4. Just love a good story.

So with the assistance of Axios and NBC News, let's timeline this past month and a bit:

June 27, 2024

Debate between President Biden and former president Trump. Biden does poorly.

July 2, 2024

Rep. Lloyd Doggett of Texas becomes the first Democratic congressman to publicly call for President Biden to withdraw from the presidential race.

July 3, 2024

Big Democratic donors including Reed Hastings call on Biden to step aside.

July 5, 2024

George Stephanopoulos interviews President Biden.

July 10, 2024

Senator Peter Welch of Vermont becomes the first Democratic senator to publicly call for President Biden's withdrawl from the presidential race.

July 11, 2024

President Biden accidentally calls Ukrainian President Zelensky "President Putin" and Vice President Harris "Vice President Trump" ahead of a NATO presser.

July 13, 2024

Assassination attempt on former president Trump's life at Pennsylvania rally.

July 15, 2024

Former president Trump announces Senator JD Vance of Ohio as his vice presidential running mate.

July 17, 2024

President Biden tests positive for COVID. Rep. Adam Schiff of California publicly calls for President Biden to withdraw from the presidential race.

July 18, 2024

Rambling, and at times barely coherent, former president Trump formally accepts the Republican nomination for president, with a record length 90-plus minute speech. 

July 19, 2024

President Biden reiterates that he will stay in the race as at least 25 additional lawmakers call for him to step aside. NBC News breaks the story that members of President Biden's family have discussed what an exit from his campaign might look like.

July 20, 2024

Former speaker of the House of Representative Nancy Pelosi meets privately with President Biden, and informs him that in her opinion and based on available polling data, he cannot defeat former president Trump in the coming election, and and risks killing the Democrats' chances of holding the Senate and re-taking the House. Biden is defiant in response.

July 21, 2024

President Biden announces he will leave the presidential race and immediately endorses Vice President Harris to be the party's nominee. All but a few of his closest aides have no idea he will leave the race until mere minutes before he posts a press release on Twitter announcing his withdrawal.

*    *    *

Twenty-four days? Feels like twenty-four years! Which is why I included the Lenin quote (something he may or may not have actually said. Historians differ on this point.). And I'll skip the following ten days, with the rise of Kamala Harris as the party's nominee, the excitement it has generated, the party and many previously disaffected supporters energized and heartened by the quick coalescing of support around Vice President Harris, and the concomitant floundering of former president Trump's candidacy.

That story has yet to play out, and nothing is certain. So I'll write about that at some point after a certain Tuesday in the coming November.

After all, it's really beside the point of this post.

That point? The "Cincinnatus" factor.

Yes, that's right, not "Cincinnati." "Cincinnatus." Don't get me wrong. Cincinnati's a great city. It's the home of so many terrific things: the Reds, its own namesake variant on traditional chili, goetta, Graeter's Ice Cream, Play-Doh, Preparation-H, Aspercreme, the first truly German-descended beers brewed in America, and of course, long-time friend and fellow Sleuthsayer, Jim Winter (Hi Jim!).

But for the purposes of this conversation, "Cincinnati" will refer to a fellowship aligning itself with tradition of a "Cincinnatus," rather than to the city named in honor of one such worthy.

So what is this "factor" I have dubbed the "Cincinnatus" factor?

Simple: it's the notion that one of the highest of all civic virtues is such respect for great power as to be willing to surrender it, thereby placing the best interests of one's country above one's own selfish desires.

The word comes from the name of an ancient Roman politician and soldier named Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus (fl. 5th century B.C.). As the story comes down to us from the Roman historian Livy, Cincinnatus earned the respect of his colleagues as both a politician and as a general. Eventually, after a long career serving Rome, he retired from public life to farm a few acres (Livy says it was four acres) he owned outside the city.

Not too far into Cincinnatus' retirement, Rome found itself threatened by a powerful invasion force, with its army surrounded and all but beaten. The current consuls (officials charged with running the city and executing the laws passed by the Roman Senate) were apparently not up the task of saving either the city or its army, and so they followed Roman law which dictated (no pun intended, see next) that in time of emergency the Senate could vote to suspend the Roman constitution and place all power in the hands of a "dictator" for a term of six months.

The Senate voted and the official they chose to serve as dictator was none other than the now-retired Cincinnatus. When the members of that worthy body caught up with the man they had voted absolute power to, he was in the middle of plowing his field. Once the situation had been explained to him, Cincinnatus left his plow standing in the midst of said field, said goodbye to his wife and set off to save Rome and its army.

He was successful in both endeavors.

And it took him just over two weeks (sixteen days) to do it.

And what did he do next? Did he serve out his term and enjoy the perks of absolute power for the next five and a half months?

Nope. Once the danger had passed, Cincinnatus resigned his position and returned to his plow. 

A rare move, rare among Roman dictators (see Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix and Gaius Julius Caesar, just to name a couple who, for their own reasons, did not follow Cincinnatus' shining example), rarer still among rulers throughout the ages since the fall of Rome. 

You KNOW that rod is not just for show

One need look no further than 17th century English history and the "Protectorate" government of Oliver Cromwell, which while officially a "commonwealth," was in fact nothing short of a military dictatorship. Having fought on the side of the Parliamentary forces against the king's supporters in England's recent civil war, placed at the head of Parliament's military forces, Cromwell took to being an unaccountable autocrat just as quickly as Charles I, the "divine right" king Cromwell helped defeat, depose and eventually see executed. If anything Cromwell was worse than Charles. He was a competent administrator and a shrewd judge of people, where the foppish dullard Charles Stuart was neither of these things.

And that is just one example. History is replete with stories of princes, pashas, caliphs, kings and all other sorts of rulers who, once attaining power, clung to it like grim death.

And our own modern history has its own Pinochets, its Stalins, its Hitlers (I know, too easy, but hey, if the swastika armband fits...), its Castros, its Chavezes, Its Perons, its Duvaliers, its Somozas, its Putins, its Ceaușescus, and so many more.

Which makes the example of America's own "Father of his Country" all the more remarkable.

Yes, none other than George Washington is known in many quarters as the "American Cincinnatus," and the Society of the Cincinnati is named in his honor. Why? Simple. When given the opportunity to seize and hold absolute power at the end of the American Revolution, Washington resigned his commission mere months after the ratification of the Treaty of Paris in 1783.

And then he went home to his farm.

Of course the story doesn't end there. Of course Washington was so highly regarded that he was summoned back into his country's service, first to preside over the constitutional convention intended to codify itself existence as a democratic republic, and then as the first president of that same democratic republic.

And then he did it again. 

After two terms served as president, Washington willingly gave up power again, retiring from public life and refusing to serve a third term.

Instead he went home to Virginia to farm.

Is it any wonder that some of the more poetic among us refer to Washington as "the American Cincinnatus"?

It is just this example that our own current chief executive, haltingly, some would say tardily,  certainly imperfectly, has so recently followed.

Joseph Robinette Biden Jr., easily already the most consequential president of my lifetime (I was born in 1965), when faced with a race he was sure he could win, combined with the failing faith of his erstwhile supporters, did a surprising thing. When his own people told him they thought it best for the nation that he serve out his single term, but step down as his party's nominee for the presidential election this year, he caviled, he argued, I'm sure he stewed and fumed and perhaps even privately raged.

And then he listened to them. And once again, Joe Biden answered his country's call.

I'm not here today to talk about the existential threat this country faces, or how President Biden's action may well have helped rescue it from said threat. I'm not here to talk politics. I'll leave it for others to do that.

I'm just here to point out that without the occasional selfless action of a Cincinnatus, any republic, any democracy, is doomed.

The Cincinnati. May our country continue to produce them.

See you in two weeks!

Dog Days of Summer

Happy Mid-July! Hot enough for ya?

Funny story- I grew up in a literal suburban cul-de-sac. But Instead of a couple of split-level ranch houses at the endpoint where our little slice of suburbia eventually expanded into the inevitable dead-end circle, there was a large corral that served as a home for several llamas.

The cloven-hooved, Inca-pack-animal-kind. Not the robe-sporting, enlightenment-spewing kind.

This kind.

So of course the residents of our court (it wasn't a "street," or a "place,' or a "drive," but a "court.") had to accustom themselves to a seemingly never-ending, slow rolling procession of people out for their daily walks, who liked to come down and look at the llamas. It could make our quiet side street pretty busy, especially in the summertime.

Now, this was the late-‘70s/early ‘80s. The time of the After School Special, Kool-Aid commercials, and Bert Convey hosting Match Game. To say, “It was a different time,” would be a massive understatement. 

And not least because we never ever locked our front door.

Ever.

Well, okay. Maybe when we were going out of town.

Because it was the ‘70s?

Nah.

Because three of our neighbors on our cul-de-sac were cops.

Yep. The guy to our right, and the guy to our left, and the guy across the street.

One patrol officer. One detective. One long-time undercover operative.

Lived next to all three of them for a couple of decades. I guess that this experience has helped hone both my tastes as a reader and my writing style when it comes to crime fiction.

I’ve said it before elsewhere and it certainly bears repeating: Ubervillains BORE me. Unrealistic. Usually a crutch fir laaaaaaaazzzzzzyyyyyy writing, and just not at all my thing.

Turns out the same holds true for me when it comes to cops. Or for all law enforcement types, for that matter. Superheroes BORE me!

Is this because the neighbor who worked undercover as a fake biker, sitting in biker bars and eavesdropping on biker gang members doing drug buys looked an awful lot like a young Wilford Brimley unless he had a week’s worth of beard going? Or that the beat cop on the other side was a lousy gardener who took inordinate pride in the hedges he mutilated? And that his son was a stiff-necked jock who barely tolerated his dad, his wife detested him and his elder daughter was kinda messed up? Or that the detective across the way never touched either coffee or cigarettes? Or that all three o them were certainly scofflaws when it came to the 4th of July, and the county-wide ban on fireworks such as M-80s?

Maybe. Or maybe, like my Vietnam War hero helicopter pilot father, I just have a hard time suspending disbelief when seeing something in a story, fiction or otherwise, that directly contradicts my own lived experiences? (For my dad it was stuff like seeing Jan-Michael Vincent turn on “whisper mode” in his stealth helicopter in the 80s TV action-adventure show Airwolf. Boy did that crack him up!).

I like to think that my lived experience has helped make me a more discerning reader and a better writer. For me, the character has to be believable. The guys who lived around me were hardly Dirty Harry. But they also weren’t cops from the “Files of Police Squad,” either.

And I guess that’s how I like my characters. Realistic.

Anyway, that’s it or me this go-round. Happy Dog Days to you!

Happy 4th! (Now with Jokes!)

Another turn in the rotation, another Summer holiday! Happy July 4^th to SleuthSayers near and far!

And of course, me being me, I have some thoughts about this most American of holidays, and I fully intend to let 'er rip.

You know, some current events. Laced with a fair bit of (hopefully) relevant historical analysis. Some snark. Some "getting real."

So, the usual.

But first, some writer-adjacent humor!

❦

A writer and his agent were stranded in the Sahara Desert, the only two survivors of a plane crash. After wandering for several days without food or water, they climbed the top of yet another sand dune, only to see an oasis, with a lagoon and a bubbling spring of fresh water beckoning them.

The two of them stumble/tumble/run down the dune to the oasis, and just as the writer is kneeling down to take a drink from the lagoon, out of the corner of his eye, he sees a stream of yellow liquid arcing from behind him into the lagoon.

The writer looks over his shoulder, and to his horror, sees that the agent is PEEING in the pool!

”What the HELL are you doing?” the writer yells.

The agent beams back at him. “I’m improving it.”

❦

Q: What has twenty-seven actors, three settings, two writers, and one plot?

A: Six hundred and seventy-one Hallmark movies!

❦

Q: How many mystery writers does it take to change a light bulb?

A: Two. One to change the bulb, and the other to give it an unexpected twist at the end!

❦

He is not wrong.

❦

Q: What do you call an immaterial fantasy writer?

A: A non-fungible Tolkien.

❦

Q: What's the difference between a 19^th-century shipwright and a 21^st-century writer of fan fiction?

A: One tries to fit as many cannons as they can onto a ship. The other tries to fit as many ships as they can into canon.

❦

Q: Why don't escaped convicts make good writers?

A: Because they never finish their sentences!

❦

❦

And on that note, let me come clean.

This year I have no moral to impart. No examples from history to share. No pithy remarks about the state of our Republic, other than to express my continuing pride in it and abiding faith in its foundation: the People.

Nothing I say here is going to change who anyone reading it plans to vote for. So let's take the day and grill, and watch fireworks, and listen to that one uncle tell that same story about the time he met Ed Begley, Jr. in an airport one July 4^th many, many years ago, and hold our loved ones close and make the best sorts of memories.

Happy Birthday America. I love ya!

See you in two weeks!

Happy Juneteenth (Plus One)!

You have heard the saying about how a seventh son of a seventh son is a lucky man indeed, right? Special, and possibly imbued with magical powers to heal and ward off evil? No? Well, it's mostly an Irish thing, so is it any wonder that with a name like "Brian Thornton," I practically grew up on stuff like this?

The connection between fathers and sons, the things they carry in common beyond the genetic, is part of what I'm writing about today. You see, I was born on a holiday. So was my son. Not the same holiday, but a holiday, nonetheless.

The holiday with which I share my birthday? April 1. Yep, April Fool's Day (Spare me the jokes. Trust me. I've already heard them!). My son? Well....

Here's a niiiiice subtle hint for ya!

On June 19th, 1865, Major General Gordon Granger, new commander of all U.S Army troops in Texas, issued General Order Number 3, and directed that it be read out as a proclamation on the main street corners and in the public squares of the newly captured city of Galveston, Texas:

The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor.

This proclamation officially brought to an end the institution of slavery within the borders of the United States in fact as well as in legal code. With the Trans-Mississippi section of the states rebelling against the government of the United States having been surrendered to Union troops by Confederate General Edmund Kirby Smith a mere seventeen days earlier, it was close to a sure thing that many enslaved residents of the area had no idea that President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863 had already (legally and technically) set them, and every other slave in the states then in rebellion against the Union, free.

So of course it goes without saying that as of 1865, June 19th has been viewed by many in this country as being a real mile marker in the history of our imperfect, flawed, lumbering, plodding, inefficient, frequently unfair, and yet still-the-best-option-we-have-going republic.

Think about it. 159 years ago this incredibly important event signifying the end of nearly 350 years of legalized slavery took place, and today, 159 years later, we as a nation commemorate it with a federal holiday, and what I am given to understand is a whole lotta barbecue.

Which means that not only did slavery on this continent have an official ending date, but one that none of the following could erase from collective memory:

• Racially motivated violence.
• The failure of Reconstruction.
• Racially motivated violence.
• Black codes.
• Racially motivated violence.
• Jim Crow laws.
• Racially motivated violence.
• Hundreds upon hundreds of racially motivated lynchings.
• Racially motivated violence.
• The presidential administration of Woodrow Wilson.
• Racially motivated violence.
• "Sundown laws."
• Racially motivated violence.
• Racial segregation.
• Racially motivated violence.
• The Klan.
• Racially motivated violence.
• The United Daughters of the Confederacy.
• Racially motivated violence.
• Steppin Fetchit.
• Racially motivated violence.
• Ex-Confederate post-bellum revisionism (See Germany, June of 1945 onward over several decades: "Yes, Hitler was terrible. I never liked him and I never voted for him and I was never a Nazi and I didn't know what they did to the Jews until the Allies freed the concentration camps..." etc., etc., etc. Now tweak it a bit: "The war was never about slavery. It was about states' rights..." Un-huh. Sure.).
• Racially motivated violence.
• Douglas Southall Freeman.
• Racially motivated violence.
• All those cheap bronze statues of ex-Confederate military leaders popping up all over the country in the 1920s (thanks largely to groups like the above-mentioned United Daughters of the Confederacy).
• Racially motivated violence.
• The United Daughters of the Confederacy (Again).
• Racially motivated violence.
• The "Lost Cause" hogwash.
• Racially motivated violence.
• The Birth of a Nation ("Hey! President Wilson! Look! The Klan are the GOOD GUYS!").
• Racially motivated violence.
• The Civil Rights backlash (in so many ways still ongoing).
• Racially motivated violence.
• Racial profiling.
• Racially motivated violence.
• Keeping Harriet Tubman off the $20 bill.
• Racially motivated violence.
• And did I mention....
• Racially motivated violence?
• I'm sure I'm leaving plenty out.

Bear in mind that I'm an historian with an advanced degree and a specialization in 19th century America, and yet I never once heard of Juneteenth in any way, shape, manner or form until just about ten years ago. Now I know what you're thinking: "What does that say about your skills/education as an historian?" I'll tell you what it says about them. It says, "I was born white and male, raised and educated on the West Coast, and didn't hear about it until I actually did."

Now to tie it all together with a bow.

My son is 12 years old. I first heard about Juneteenth if the context of its coincidental sharing the date with his birthday. That's right. At 11:55 AM on June 19th, 2012, James Andrew Thornton came in to this world. That's 147 years after General Granger's proclamation of General Order Number 3.

The part that gets me? James is older than our collective national recognition of the importance of Juneteenth by 8 years and 364 days. President Joe Biden, the most consequential president of my lifetime (Yes, I said it, and I MEANT it. And what's more, I'm bringing receipts.), signed "Juneteenth National Independence Day" into existence the day before James' 9th birthday, on June 18th, 2021.

As i said above, our creaking, inefficient, sluggish, slow-to-change republic has been tardy on the recognition of this so very important holiday, this hallmark moment, this mile marker, this signifying that we as a nation finally get that it is WRONG to enslave fellow human beings.

The United States. Nearly always late to the party. But still the best option we've got.

So Happy Juneteenth! And Happy Birthday to James, who, at 12, is older than the holiday!

(Yes, I am aware that this won't post until the 20th. My celebration of this important day stands!)

Forget "Time to Write" – What About Headspace?

 Hello fellow Sleuthsayer Faithful!

Feels like forever since I jumped into the swirling maelstrom of thought and discussion which is our beloved Sleuthsayers blog!

Anyway, let's get to it.

I was thinking just today about this passage I read a long time ago, I'm not sure where:

"On the 49th day there under the fig tree, the Buddha finally silenced his mind."

I'm certain the quotation isn't exact, but "mindfulness" and the benefits Buddhists believe accrue from protracted periods of silence really aren't the point I hope to address today.

I'm talking, of course, about headspace.

Heh.... I wish.

I once took just eight weeks to write 80,000 words. I had a two-book contract on which I was past deadline: word count for each? 40,000 words. The only reason I was able to pull it off is that both books were nonfiction.

I currently find myself close to missing another deadline. The reason?

How long have you got? Excuses? I have none.

Reasons? I'm positively lousy with 'em.

I probably ought to add that when I wrote two books in two months, I was single, between girlfriends, no mortgage, and aside from a serious falling out with the editor originally assigned to me by publisher (new to the business. I was her first "project." Talk about GREEN!), I was pretty much the definition of "care-free." Just me, the day-gig (For those of you playing at home, I teach history), and my writing time. Oh, and my crippling student loans. That's what I wrote all that nonfiction for. To supplement my paltry day-gig income and help stay on top of my student loans. So, still mostly "care-free."

That was then.

Next week I turn 59. And although I have never been happier in my life than right now, this moment, I am no longer "free from care."

I'm happily married to one of the best people I know. I'm the father of an 11-year-old boy who by turns both delights and confounds me.

And because I'm a parent now, and a husband, and a devoted son to parents staring down the onset of their 80s, and brother to a great guy currently living and working out of state, I worry.

I know some guys feel it somehow unmanly to admit to worry, or even to talk about things like anxiety, but the older I get the more I've come to think that's hogwash. If you're a private person, that's one thing. Keeping a lid on what's going on with you emotionally is just a recipe for a stroke.

Anyway, the worst part?

I used to be able to silence my mind. Not like the Buddha. Forty-nine days to get it done and find enlightenment? That guy was a boss for that alone. Mad respect.

But I could shut everything out when I had to and just do, as the late G.M. Ford so often put it: "Ass. Chair. Write."

It's all laid out there, just waiting for us, right?..... RIGHT?

Not anymore. I have more and more trouble shutting out the things that worry me. Plus, I have a lot going on: family members with a variety of ailments, concerns that arise at the day gig, the thousand course corrections required of a responsible "middle school parent" these days.

Don't get me wrong, I still have my good writing days. And my wife, who knows me better than anyone (which is as it should be), has said many times that I "thrive with a deadline."

Which reminds me....that deadline....yeah.

If you read this far hoping that I'd reveal my discovery of some magic bullet that could help grant instant, deep, abiding and never-ending headspace, sorry to disappoint you. In fact I wrote this post hoping to crowdsource my dilemma.

So how about it, friends? Got any semi-secret tips on getting into and remaining in a writing headspace? Or not-so-secret ones, for that matter? 

If so, please feel free to drop a suggestion into the comments. And failing that, if you're a fellow traveler on this perplexing road of perpetual distraction, feel free to come to the comments if only just to commiserate!

And that's it for me this go-round. 

See you in two weeks!