My Resiliency Bucket Needs a Refill

 

Dog and Denise by candlelight.

My friend Tom, who lives a somewhat eremitical existence in a rural part of our North Carolina mountains, woke the morning after Tropical Storm Helene to find that the gravel road at the end of his property was blocked by downed trees and bisected by two raging gullies of water. He and his neighbors were cut off from civilization. If they didn’t do something to help themselves, they knew it would be days, possibly weeks, before city workers cut them out.

Tom cobbled together a brigade of can-do folks with chainsaws to get the job done. His A-Team consisted of characters I would hesitate to put in a fictional narrative because they would seem too far-fetched. Tom, a wild-eyed building contractor and the scion of a Texas oil family, was assisted in his endeavors by a puppeteer, a falconer, a nonagenarian bison herder, and a guy everyone on that road calls “the friendly hermit.” As the men worked, they were kept happily fed by an 80-year-old neighbor who fried up savory helpings of Spam out of her pandemic pantry. You can’t make this stuff up.

My wife and I were safely out of town at a three-day book event when the storm passed through, so I cannot share any anecdotes of those harrowing days and nights. I only know that since chainsaw-slinging puppeteers are in short supply, most of my neighbors closer to our little city of Asheville, North Carolina, were trapped in their homes as tree after tree fell and utilities gave up the ghost, and were forced to wait for help.

Our friends Jimmy and Heather found their college-aged daughter’s car squashed flat in their driveway under a massive tree. A few other trees dropped on their property, none on the house. They were the lucky ones.

Most of the neighbors on my cul de sac were equally lucky. A few trees down here and there, but their homes high, dry, and intact. Inez, the inveterate gardener at the end of the block, lost a beautiful magnolia, which fell toward the road, damaging nothing but itself. When I asked how she was, she said that after hearing how others in the surrounding region had fared, she felt “Lucky, and heartbroken.”

She did not know it, but she was speaking for many of us in Western North Carolina.

Denise and I had been in Charleston, four hours south. We returned three days after the storms to find a massive tree on our roof, and about a dozen trees down on the property, several of which smashed through the wooden privacy fence that keeps our dog from tearing after squirrels in distant yards.

For a few days I walked around measuring these behemoths. The smallest diameter I encountered was 16 inches. The tree removal estimates alone were close to $20,000, before we entertained the notion of repairing the roof, gutters, and fences, replacing the dog’s invisible fence line and the spoiled food in our fridge. In other words, we too were lucky.

We and the older couple next door have since become the de facto rulers of the street, because as soon as Good Samaritans cut the trees blocking their way out, many of our neighbors fled to places rumored to possess electricity, Internet, mobile phone coverage, and copious hot water. I don’t blame them. Some of those neighbors have kids, some are older, and some simply don’t like to be inconvenienced.

For a few nights we roamed our home with flashlights, cooked on the gas stovetop, listened to news on a hand-cranked radio, and went to bed to the sounds of sirens, chainsaws, Chinook helicopters, and humming natural gas generators. Gasoline was scarce, so we walked a few miles everyday to a guardrail near the highway that for some reason had great cell coverage. From that strange spot, we wrote everyone we could think of to assure them that we were okay.

On those cool fall mornings, when the nabe was silent, nature returned. A flock of wild turkeys traipsed through everyone’s yard. Three deer, tails twitching, skipped along the lawn across from us. And a mother bear arrived one afternoon with two cubs to investigate the trash people had left behind in their haste to bug out. For several nights, successive waves of bears feasted while our dog went nuts.

It is a mistake to think, as humans often do, that we are the masters of all we survey. No—we’re just the ones stupid enough to pay for it.

Family and friends insisted that we too consider fleeing for our own safety as soon as we could procure a full tank of gas. We have been offered guest rooms and cottages in Knoxville, Chapel Hill, Brooklyn, Idaho Falls, D.C., and Sleepy Hollow. And much as I would LOVE to spend Halloween in the reaping grounds of the Headless Horseman, we have chosen to stay.

My brother, in particular, took me to task. Denise and I were safely out of town! Why on earth would we return?

Here’s why. We felt compelled to check on the house, to see just how bad the damage was. And we needed to retrieve our dog, who was staying at the home of a trainer who worked at the kennel we normally use. This wonderful person and her family were safely out of harm’s way, not in a flood zone, but it was too much of an imposition to leave the pooch in their care indefinitely. They had a motorcycle dealership on one of the rivers to muck out. They didn’t need the extra hassle of our dog while doing so. (The grounds of the dealership have since become a staging area for helicopter search and rescue operations.)

The kennel, I should mention, had been evacuated two nights before Helene’s arrival, and is now completely wrecked.

The French Broad River that flows through our mountains is the third oldest on the planet. (Yes, I know that strains credulity. Look it up.) It is 340 million years old, four-and-a-half-times older than than the Nile.

Pardon my French, but when the old Broad gets angry and swollen, she lashes out. Nearly every business on that stretch of road near the dog kennel was erased. The brewery we’d never had a chance to visit. The artisanal tea company that formulated a brew to celebrate the launch of my wife’s Thanksgiving book. The glass company that installed our shower doors. The plumbing supply company that sold me parts for my various DIY jobs around the house. The legions of antique places. The FedEx store where we’ve shipped editorial projects. The restaurants in the historic village outside the Biltmore Estate that we adored and championed. The one-man auto body shop that repaired the dings I keep putting in my fenders. All gone. Washed from the face of the earth. That’s only one stretch of road along a tributary of the French Broad.

The River Arts District, where artists maintained studios and sold to the public, is a moonscape of twisted sheet metal, upended vehicles and trailers, scoured terrain, and toppled trees festooned with fluttering plastic. We used to call this area the RAD, but now the D in that acronym stands for debris. When we drove down to take a look, I felt numb. Tears sprung to my eyes.

The people who lived and worked here, the ones I know and the ones I don’t, are the legions of the unlucky. Their homes and livelihoods were destroyed, and they are in shock. Rescue workers continue to pull the bodies of humans and livestock from waters in the region.

I could go on. There are tons of these stories, and the list will only grow because as I write this, the news tells me that there are still—three weeks after the storms passed—600 impassable roads in the state. In a mountainous region with challenging terrain, that means people are still trapped, hungry, ill, or even dead in or near their homes, and no one will know until the roads that lead to their doors are rebuilt, or someone helicopters in to check on them. The body count keeps climbing. Power restoration efforts will take time because in so many of these areas, workers must rebuild roads or else hike into an area on foot and hand-dig holes before new electrical poles can be erected and strung.

We are proud of these mountains and their history, but they have a distinct disadvantage when dumped with excess water. On flat terrain, rainwater has a whisper of a chance to seep into the earth. When it lands on slopes, rain doesn’t so much seep as it rushes downhill, seeking the lowest point. This process happens with alarming speed. This simple concept had never occurred to me until it was explained to me by a climate scientist I interviewed when I first moved here twenty years ago. As a species, we should cultivate the habit of shutting up and listening to scientists speak more often.

That’s another reason why we remain in our home. We are safe. We have a roof over our heads. Electricity, Internet, and cell coverage work but remain erratic. As long as I can communicate, I will do so. We were trained as journalists. Stories are important to us. Someone’s got to collect them, and share them with others. I don’t own a chainsaw. I don’t keep an excavator on my property like my pal Tom. But I do what I do. They also serve who sit and write.

Now that utilities are less crappy, and gasoline is easier to come by, we have the luxury of moving on to other chores. Every morning, we get up and make a run to grab some non-potable water with which to flush our toilets. On the drive back home, we roll past a gauntlet of friendly strangers who offer us everything from free drinking water, free MREs, free ice, free cereal, free baby supplies, free bananas. It’s the bananas that kill me. Free bananas—seriously? Bananas are part of the reason we’re in this mess.

Saturday we went to the farmer’s market, where growers sell food that was coaxed from local soil, not shipped in from the tropics. Since this was the first market since the storms, the gathering was about so much more than buying groceries. A lot of hugging, a lot of swapping of stories.

My favorite farmer, the dude who always teases me with the term paisan, was not there. He, like me, is an Italian American guy from New Jersey. Earlier this spring, I texted him to ask when was the best time to get my meatball starts in the ground. He reminded me to mulch mine deeply with lasagna noodles. He’s got a beautiful sense of humor, and a smile that lights up hearts.

Why wasn’t he there? As soon as I could get back home and in range of our temperamental Wi-Fi, I dug around the web. I learned that Gaelan and Nicole’s farm was largely destroyed by Helene. Her brother-in-law had a GoFundMe site up to help them rebuild. The photos of their collapsed barn, shredded hoop houses, gullied-out crops, and upended farm equipment were horrifying.

A few days ago, my friend Steve wisely observed that everyone has a small bucket of resiliency that typically serves us in good stead, but it is surprising how quickly that bucket empties. Sitting on my patio Saturday, surrounded by piles of shattered tree limbs, a few feet from my patched roof, I broke down and wept. Can’t even call the guy to say how sorry I am about his farm. He’s out of touch until they erect temporary cell towers in his town, which is about an hour from me.

I turned 60 that weekend, and while I didn’t feel like celebrating, I certainly felt like stewing. I have literally become the old dude who shouts at clouds because they are blocking the tiny solar generator in his driveway.

Because I’m lucky does not mean I am not angry. Angry at climate change deniers. Angry at corporations who refuse to take a temporary hit to their profits to ensure that we live safely on this planet for a few more centuries. Angry at the billion-dollar corporate dickheads who own our severely understaffed local hospital, and whose rapacious greed has invited the scrutiny of our state attorney general and the feds. (This is the same hospital you may have heard about in the news, whose emergency room is so screwed right now that staffers were instructing patients to “go in buckets” that would later be emptied by nurses. The city’s lack of water means surgeons cannot easily scrub in, so please don’t need surgery, folks…)

I am angry at politicians who keep texting me to offer their thoughts and prayers during my hour of need, to tell me that they are “with me,” only to remind me a sentence later that they’re counting on my vote on November 5th.

I am angry at the jerks who jacked our local postal workers in the early days of the recovery to steal Amazon packages. Angry at the narcissists who so badly needed gasoline that they felt it necessary to threaten their neighbors at gunpoint at the pumps, then—as in one instance—run those poor people over as they drove away.

And let’s face it, I am angry because I could really use water in my damn pipes. In recent years I have become a profligate drinker of water. The cancer treatment I had back in 2022 robbed me of fully functioning salivary glands, so even the slightest physical effort leaves me parched. After a day of hauling wood and buckets of water, I am desperate to guzzle whatever is handy.

Okay, true, I sometimes slake my thirst with beer. But my tipple of choice is mostly FEMA’s bottled water. I feel increasingly guilty about the rising tide of plastic in my recycling bin.

My attorney neighbor, who grew up here, tells me that the mayor and city council have fought for seventy-five years about doing something about our rickety and woefully outdated water treatment facility. Successive administrations kept passing the buck on upgrades, because no one had the balls to come clean about the costs and probable property tax hikes, nor did they have the political will to inconvenience citizens and tourists with what could be a months-long process of interruptions at the tap. Well, guess what? The plant flooded, must now be rebuilt from scratch, and our much-vaunted tourism economy is destroyed. Great work, guys.

As the lady says, I am lucky and heartbroken. I have dry mouth and I must scream.

* * *

Apologies for the long post, and the paucity of photos.

I can only share my experience, but I’d remind visitors here that these storms impacted much of the American southeast. If you are moved to donate on the national level, the Red Cross and the Salvation Army are good options.

If you want to help my city specifically, two good organizations are Manna Food Bank and BeLoved Asheville.

Since we’re a literary blog, I’m posting links to bookstores in the region. If you’re contemplating buying books online, I’m sure that they would appreciate your business. (Before you buy, check websites to see if they are able to fulfill orders.)

Malaprop’s - Asheville, NC
Firestorm Co-op - Asheville, NC
Bagatelle Books - Asheville, NC
Plott Hound Books - Burnsville, NC
Blue Moon Books - Canton, NC
Blue Ridge Books - Waynesville, NC
Sassafrass on Sutton - Black Mountain, NC
Sassafrass on Main - Waynesville, NC
City Lights Bookstore - Sylva, NC
Little Switzerland Books & Beans - Little Switzerland, NC

Two wonderful local sources for used and rare books are:
Biblio - Asheville, NC
Irving Book Company  - Asheville, NC

Hopefully, I’ll see you in three weeks!

Joe

josephdagnese.com

Sir Edmund Backhouse, or How to Destroy an Empire

by Eve Fisher

Back when I was first studying Chinese history, I kept running across two men who together wrote books that were almost impossible to obtain (pre-internet days), but were one of the primary references for many, many other books, especially textbooks:  

• J.O.P. Bland and Edmund Backhouse (1910). China Under the Empress Dowager: Being the History of the Life and Times of Tzŭ Hsi
• J.O.P. Bland and Edmund Backhouse  (1914). Annals & memoirs of the court of Peking: (from the 16th to the 20th century
• J.O.P. Bland and Edmund Backhouse  (1913). "Secret Annals of the Manchu Court 1. The Story of the Precious Pearl"

These memorialized the life of the Empress Dowager, Tzu Hsi (now spelled Cixi - 1835-1908), and the Manchu Court during her reign (1861-1908), a life of total power, decadence, curious ceremonies and customs, and fairly constant murder.  Fascinating.  Obsessive to those who read them back in the 1910s, because China was a closed country to almost everyone.  There were very few non-Chinese who could actually speak and read the Chinese language, and of those who could, most were eccentric British.  One of the most eccentric was Sir Edmund Backhouse (1873-1944).

Backhouse was one of those who was a failure at home, but a roaring success in China.  Fleeing to China after a nervous breakdown at Oxford, he learned Chinese and became a translator for (London) Times correspondent George Morrison.  Morrison had been sent to report on a country whose language he didn't know.  (This happened more often than one might think, especially back then.)  This meant that Backhouse could feed Morrison pretty much anything he wanted about the Court and the Dowager Empress, especially if it was negative.   

Dowager Empress Cixi and women of the American Legation

NOTE:  No one in Britain really wanted China to have a strong ruler, for the simple reason that after winning the two Opium Wars, Britain had China in a vise.  The Treaty of Tientsin forced the Chinese government agreed to pay war reparations, open almost all ports to European commerce, legalize the opium trade, and grant foreign traders and missionaries rights to travel within China. It also gave the British the right to preside over the Chinese Customs Office (i.e., taxes and tariffs).  The British got the first slice of all that money, which meant a tidy profit, and no one wanted that to stop.

SECOND NOTE:  The British had long been propagandized about how primitive, barbaric, and decadent the Chinese, with their sophisticated 3,000+ years of culture, language, and civilization, were.  After all, it excused ramming opium down their throats, and taking all the land, power and money they could grab. Some of the other foreign translators contributed to the propaganda, most notably Karl Gutzlaff (See my old SleuthSayers article "The Drug Smuggling Missionary of the Pearl River"), whose writings and later speeches back in London (attended by Karl Marx) showed how desperately the Chinese needed missionaries and help.

Backhouse, who claimed to know many influential people in the Forbidden City, provided the Times with a Dowager Empress who was "a woman and an Oriental... on the one hand... imperious, manipulative, and lascivious" and on the other "ingenuous, politically shrewd, and conscientious."  And a lot of emphasis was put on the imperious.  For example, in The Secret Annals as the Dowager Empress and the Guanxu Emperor fled the palace during the Boxer Rebellion, the Emperor begs to have his favorite concubine, Precious Pearl, come with them, but the Dowager Empress has the eunuchs throw her down a well.  

NOTE:  There is no proof that this ever happened.  In fact, it's much more likely that it was Backhouse's retelling of the classic poem The Song of Everlasting Sorrow about the Tang Dynasty Consort Yang Guifei, forced to commit suicide by the Imperial Guard for her cousin's leadership of the An Lushan Rebellion.  One of the most famous star-crossed lovers stories in Chinese history, Yang Guifei's story has been told over the centuries as poetry, operas, plays, films, television series, and even a video game.

But we cannot forget the lascivious, either.  Backhouse's Empress had plenty of sex, and not just with other Chinese but with supposedly Backhouse.  In China under the Empress Dowager, Backhouse claimed she called him to the Forbidden Palace for sex "between 150 and 200 times.”  You will, I hope, not be surprised that it was thoroughly debunked, and its major source, the Diary of His Excellency Ching-Shan, was proved to be a Backhouse forgery.  Sadly, that did not happen for fifty years, and Cixi's reputation was a muddy swamp in Western eyes and historiography.  

He was also a conman. In 1916 he presented himself as a representative of the Imperial Court and negotiated two fraudulent deals with the American Bank Note Company and John Brown & Company, a British shipbuilder. Neither company received any confirmation from the Imperial Court. When they tried to contact Backhouse, he had left the country. After he returned to Peking in 1922 he refused to speak about the deals, and nothing apparently ever happened to him. (Wikipedia)

By WW2, he'd become actively fascist, collaborated with the  Japanese occupation, and hoped for an Axis victory. Sadly, he died before he could discover how poorly he had chosen sides.

Whew.

Forgery, fraud, fascist:  so why did his name keep coming up in the bibliographies and notes? 

Well, for one thing, by 1923 Backhouse had shipped eight tons of Chinese manuscripts to the Bodleian Library (the main research library of Oxford University). The Library described the gift: "The acquisition of the Backhouse collection, one of the finest and most generous gifts in the Library's history, between 1913 and 1922, greatly enriched the Bodleian's Chinese collections."  And since these ms. were in the Bodleian, they must be true, and so were repeatedly cited by other historians.  It took about twenty years for people to really question them, and it wasn't until 1991 that historian Lo Hui-min proved conclusively that China Under the Empress Dowager and the diary it was based on were Backhouse forgeries.  No wonder Western views of the Dowager Empress and China were so negative for so long.  

There's a long history of various diplomatic corps members sent to foreign lands to represent, negotiate, placate - whether they knew the language or not.  It still happens, leaving the diplomats in the hands of translators.  Who knows how much of the history we think we know was conjured up by translators who had their own views?  After all, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., Ambassador to South Vietnam, did not speak Vietnamese.  He did speak French, which meant he could communicate with the South Vietnamese elite, but did that really give him the true picture of what was going on?  And George H. W. Bush spoke no Chinese when he was appointed Chief of the US Liaison Office in China (1974-75), which made him the de facto Ambassador.  

Oh, there's also the dicey history of missionaries' histories of places they went to convert.  Perhaps the most obvious one to question is that of St. Gregory of Tours (538-594 AD), Bishop of Tours in the Frankish Merovingian world.  He and one other person, Fredogar, are the only sources for Frankish history during that period, and what a period it was:  rampant violence, Arian heresy, regular miracles by true Catholics, constant war, fratricide, and of course, an evil queen, specifically Fredegund, Regent for Clothair II, who gives poisoned daggers to two clerics with which to assassinate Clothair's rivals, Childebert and Brunehild, and orders the successful assassination of Bishop Praetextus of Rouen while he is praying in his church.  She is evil, through and through...  Yes, The History of the Franks holds the attention:  but the question is, is it true?   

Meanwhile, time for some true BSP!

The latest Michael Bracken anthology, Janie Got A Gun, is available for preorder at the publishers HERE.  In my "Round and Round", lifer Cool Papa Bell tells how Mildred, the penitentiary ghost, showed up for the holidays and took care of a lot of people's business... including a particularly nasty corrections officer.  

Happy to share space with Steve Liskow, Joseph S. Walker, John M. Floyd, Jim Winter and many more!

Also, coming soon, my latest story, "Lady With a Past" in Black Cat Mystery Weekly Issue #167!

"We’re back in Laskin, South Dakota, where police officer Grant Tripp is involved with the sexiest, most beautiful woman he’s ever known. But Megan’s a Davison, an ex-con is stalking her, and her ex-boyfriend wants Grant out of the picture. And then there’s the question of where she got so much money…"

Crimes Against Nature: The Anthology

I don't know if you noticed that the world changed on Monday, October 7, but I did. Down and Out Books published Crimes Against Nature: New Stories of Environmental Villainy. It is the first anthology I have edited.  

As I hope the title makes clear, each story relates crime to some ecological issue: climate change, wildfire, environmental justice, invasive species, recycling, overtourism, etc.  The types of stories cover the (polluted) waterfront: noir, police, caper, comic, psychological, even one inspired by comic books!

This book  has been a long time coming.  I remember telling my buddy S.J. Rozan about the idea at the Bouchercon in Raleigh and that was, heaven help us, 2015.  

Why did it take ten years? Because I'm not the most efficient go-getter in the writing trade and because it took a while to find the right publisher.  

Once Down and Out said yes my first move was to go back to S.J. and remind her of her enthusiasm for the project a decade ago.

She replied approximately that she had no time and couldn't possibly do it,so of course she would.  As I have said before, S.J. is a mensch.  She even provided what I had hoped for but did not dare to request: a story about Chin Yong-Yun, the wonderful mother of Lydia Chin, who stars in many of Rozan's novels.  Like all the shorts about Mrs. Chin, this one is a treat.

As for the other authors, some will be very familiar to the SleuthSayers readers: Michael Bracken, Barb Goffman, R.T. Lawton, Janice Law, and (ahem) Robert Lopresti.

Then there is a category of some of the best names in the short mystery field: Josh Pachter, Gary Phillips, and  Kristine Kathryn Rusch,

Some authors I consider newcomers, although that may only be because I suspect I was first published before they were born: Sosan Breen, Sarah M.Chen, Karen Harrington, and David Heska Hanbli Weiden.

Finally we have Jon McGoran and Mark Stevens, whom I chose because their excellent writing has centered on the environment.

It's a stellar cast and I can't wait for you to discover what dirt they have dug up.

Wanderings

    On the day this blog posts, my traveling companion and I will be trekking on what will likely be our last mountain hike of the season. We're seasonal hikers, and the weather will soon shut us down. We'll be far from the internet. I apologize in advance for my failure to reply to any comments.

    We love hiking, particularly in the mountains. Without getting too woo-woo about it all, walking up and down the San Juans or the Sierra Nevadas provides a great way to reset. The Rockies require you to pay attention and to notice things. But they also offer flat meadows and lake trails when your mind can drift. I've blogged previously about how the Alpine Tunnel Trail in Colorado offered the seed for a story that Alfred Hitchcock subsequently published. My story in Murder, Neat also originated on a mountain hike. The trail didn't make it into that story, but the cold beer I was thinking about at the time did.

    A recent visit to nature prompted a few writing guidelines.

1.      1. Persistence is a key. 

We encountered this little tree while walking up Engineer Mountain earlier this year. Looking at it, I wondered how many pinecones fell upon this rock before a seedling found enough dirt to grab hold and take root. The same tree that drops the seeds shields the rock from water and sunlight. The overhanging pine is at once mother and foe to survival. It seems a harsh environment in which to thrive. Yet here we found the little tree chugging along. It would take effort to live on this barren and rocky environment. Maybe a writer could find an inspirational message about sticking to the task by studying this little pine, persevering until the word count is met or the draft is finished, even if she's not feeling particularly profound that day. Or perhaps a hiker would see a flat, shaded spot to rest after chugging up the hill behind you. Whichever one you are, I hope you find value in what this little guy offers.

2.      2. Practice is essential, but clean up after yourself.

It is hard to hit a clay pigeon sailing through the air. Accurate shooting, like good writing, is a craft that needs to be practiced. In this instance, if you look in the background, a careful observer might see a line of small clay targets poised against a log. I’m deducing from the available evidence that someone was teaching their son or daughter the art of shooting here. They began with static targets before advancing their young marksman to hit them in flight.  They left their litter behind, so we knew they’d been practicing.

After I got over my disappointment at having my nature walk despoiled by a responsible/irresponsible gun owner, I considered the lesson. Continual practice is essential to growth in any discipline, including writing or skeet shooting. But writing necessarily includes self-editing. Clean up after yourself. Read your manuscript critically before hitting send. As Michael Bracken and Barb Goffman can attest, I’ve certainly left a few empty shell casings behind on the manuscripts I’ve sent them, but hopefully nothing that looks quite like this.

3.     3. Keep your eye on the weather.

Never open a book with weather, Elmore Leonard famously wrote. But that doesn't mean the elements should be ignored. When hiking, weather can easily be the character that will sneak up and put you at risk or kill you. The elements are an essential character when you’re writing about the out-of-doors. Sometimes, they sneak in on cat’s feet. Other times, the weather heralds its arrival. Smart hikers know that things change when they're outside. Prudent ones study the forecast so that they have some idea about what they might encounter. Hopefully, they will take along some gear to safeguard themselves if the weather doesn't cooperate with the planned schedule. 

Consider the elements when you're writing. They present another obstacle for the protagonist to overcome in pursuit of the goal. More broadly, the weather should remind the hiker/writer about the importance of flexibility. I'm not a big muse guy. I think of writing as a craft practiced with discipline rather than the whisperings of a beautifully voiced Calliope. But I know we've all seen a story go a different direction than the one we originally intended. When immersed in the process, a better-than-the-original idea occasionally emerges. We follow it and end up in a different place than originally planned. To continue the metaphor, with preparation and flexibility, hopefully, we don't end up in a cotton T-shirt huddled under a skinny pine seeking shelter from rain mixed with sleet. Some who wander are lost. 

4.      4. Finally, Be open for secret doors. 

Doors feature prominently in writing tips. Bernard Cornwell says he spends a lot of time putting doors in alleys. Another recommendation is to have your character open a door when a writer is stuck. When you do, something has to happen. The protagonist could go through, a discovery could be observed, or something might emerge. The action occurs at the threshold.

Sometimes, hikers find doors in the wild. You can see this dark maw in the shadows in the center. The planned trek was interrupted when this mine entrance appeared. Seeing it reinforced my thoughts about flexibility. The dramatic tension built. We could go in, or something could emerge.

I'll hasten to add that we didn't enter. We just peeked inside. Unlike fictional characters, we couldn't write our way out of trouble if things went south. An acute case of Hantavirus is not why I go to the mountains.

The lesson I learned from the discovery is that secret doors really do appear. Strange things happen to us in real life. We can tell a credible story about an incredible happening. The challenge is for the writer to sell it.

I hope to see you on the trail with the right gear for the elements, gathering experiences you can spin into stories or, perhaps, seeing the rules for writing stories displayed in the natural surroundings. 

Until next time.

 

The Joys of Reading Aloud

In October I always commemorate Columbus Day/ Indigenous People’s Day with a post that refers in some way to the events of the 1490s that I wove into my Jewish historical adventure/ mystery series the Mendoza Family Saga, which has now been running for almost fifteen years with more stories to come. The key historical events, about which I wrote in the first short story, “The Green Cross,” and the first novel, Voyage of Strangers (2014), were the persecution and expulsion of the Jews from Spain, the Spanish voyages of discovery and conquest to the Caribbean, and the genocide of the Taino people.

This year I had the great pleasure of reading aloud in their entirety both Voyage of Strangers and its sequel, Journey of Strangers (2015). My first-person protagonist is young Jewish sailor Diego Mendoza, who sails with Columbus on the Santa Maria in 1492 in “The Green Cross,” which first appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine in 2010. In Voyage, Diego and his sister Rachel travel through Spain at risk of capture by the Inquisition to join Columbus’s second voyage in 1493. They befriend the local Taino, come to admire their culture with its guiding principle of generosity, and watch in helpless horror as the Christian Spaniards destroy both culture and people. Journey of Strangers follows Diego and Rachel and their friend Hutia, a lone Taino survivor, across war-torn Europe to Istanbul, where the Mendozas have settled in the Jewish community that the Ottoman Sultan has welcomed. Journey also tells the story of Joanna, one of two thousand Jewish children kidnapped by the King of Portugal in 1493 and shipped off to slavery on the pestilential Isle of Crocodiles, São Tomé.

My audience of one was a transplanted Jewish New Yorker who lives in Austin, where she’s active in the local Jewish community through her synagogue. She also does volunteer work for the Minaret Foundation, a Muslim organization that is “making Texas better through multifaith and civic engagement.” She was already a friend when she started losing her vision to rapidly progressing macular degeneration, and I had the bright idea of offering to read to her via Zoom. Our weekly reading sessions have become a high point of the week for both of us.

The theme of cultural relativism pitted against absolutism and intolerance is certainly relevant today. The parallel between fifteenth and twenty-first century anti-Semitism in Europe (and America in the twenty-first) and the contrast between the fifteenth century relationship between Jews and Muslims and that relationship in our own time provide food for thought. When my listener laughed and cried as the story unfolded, I'd say, “That’s exactly what I hoped you’d do. You’re the perfect reader!” She'd say, “Laugh and cry and learn.” Her appreciation made me glad I spent all that time crawling through the stacks of the Columbia University Library to retrieve an unpublished doctoral thesis to get details on the Enderun School that shaped the Ottoman viziers and janissaries and followed the trail from a professor at Brandeis University (my alma mater) to a professor in Tel Aviv to a footnote to find out about the Jewish women called kiras who served as purveyors and personal shoppers to the Sultan’s harem.

In fact, as I reread my own writing aloud, word by word, more than ten years after I wrote it, I could hardly believe I did all that research—into history, into several different cultures and religions, into a dozen languages. I’m still in love with my characters. That’s no surprise, since character is my strong point as a writer. I too cry at certain passages, including but not limited to the parts that made me cry as I wrote them. Not unexpected either. It’s the storytelling, the suspense I somehow manage to sustain for chapter after chapter, that amazes me. That’s the part I was never good at. But as I read my work aloud to someone who is always astonished and excited at each twist and turn of the plot, always wants more when we end a chapter or it’s time to end the session, I realized that with these two novels, by gum, I did it. Not a single chapter sags. If it did, reading it aloud, I would notice and admit it. I wanted more at the end of every chapter too. This experience blew my mind.

Neither of us wanted this exhilarating shared experience to end. So once we finished Journey of Strangers, along with the Afterword explaining what parts of it are historical and the multilingual Glossary, we went on to the rest of the Mendoza Family Saga: short stories, most of them mysteries involving Rachel, still working as a kira to the harem when Suleiman the Magnificent becomes Sultan of the Ottoman Empire in 1520, that first appeared in Black Cat Mystery Magazine. The previously published stories can be found in the e-book Rachel in the Harem, along with a novelette about Rachel’s daughter among the Knights of Rhodes that first appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, a two-timeline story from Jewish Noir II, a time travel story, and the very first Mendoza story, which appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine in 2010. But only my two favorite Texans—my audience in Austin and a certain editor of impeccable taste—know what happens in two stories yet to appear.

If This Was Your Daughter: The Tragedy of #MMIW

Although missing and murdered indigenous women and girls is a heartbreaking problem in Canada, I've always had difficulties knowing how to write about it until I listened to the podcast In Her Defence 50th Street hosted by Jana Pruden. This excellent podcast is the story of how, in 2010, 20-year-old Amber Tuccaro left her home in the Indigenous community of Fort Chipewyan, Alberta, went to Edmonton with her 14-month-old son Jacob and disappeared. 

As a clinician, I've learned there’s truth to be had in each patient case - it brings to light individual suffering and also highlights aspects of how the disease impacts others. This excellent podcast does just that - highlights the suffering of Amber, her family and friends and explains a disease that has caused suffering for thousands of Canadian families. 

The story of Amber has numerous aspects that are similar to many families: a young single mother, devoted to her 14-mont-old baby, Jacob, loving her family, full of laughter and took the ups and downs of family life in her stride. It's the story of so many of us. The trip she took is one that many young single mothers take, an outing with her friend and her baby to a city not too far away from home. There are more details we can certainly pull apart but the foundations of her life are like many young women's lives today -  the way forward is to see the commonality of our shared lives. 

Amber, like any young person, was excited to be close to a new city and decided to hitchhike there the night she went missing, leaving her friend to babysit Jacob. Why hitchhike? Again, it is common that young, single mothers don't have money for expensive taxis. When she didn’t return by the next day, her friend called her mother, Vivian Tuccaro, who then called the RCMP. 

Vivian's interaction with the RCMP is the stuff of a mother's nightmares, beginning with the police telling her, "Well maybe she’s out partying and she will call or whatever."

Vivian explained, "No, Amber doesn’t leave her baby anywhere."

Imagine being a mother with a missing daughter and being dismissed like this. But this was just the beginning of the interaction gone bad with the RCMP. As the days and weeks passed, and Amber's family were increasingly worried - nay, scared - and Amber's mother persisted in insisting Amber's case be taken seriously. Not only was it not taken seriously, but Vivian found out that the RCMP, "took her off the missing persons list after one month despite no one seeing her...it took me one month to get her back on the missing persons list. I got the run around."..."What’s worse, Vivian is left to wonder if any of Amber’s personal property the police collected could have been used as evidence — it was destroyed when she was taken off the missing persons list."

If you think this story can't get worse, it does. It took the RCMP till Aug. 28, 2012, to release a cell phone conversation Amber had while in the company of an unidentified man who might have been responsible for abducting her. On Sept. 1, 2012, just four days after the audio was released, Amber’s remains were found on a rural property near Leduc County by horseback riders."

It took the RCMP another eight years to finally apologize saying in 2020: "Alberta RCMP apologized for how it handled Tuccaro's case. A deputy commissioner said it was "not our best work." 

I submit that apology without comment. 

The tragedy of Amber's abduction and death bring up so many questions. If the RCMP had taken this abduction seriously initially, could they have saved Amber's life? How long after she was abducted did Amber live and how many opportunities to find her were missed? Why, even with this recording of the man who probably abducted Amber, has her killer not been found? 

The podcast discusses how Amber's case has so many similarities with other missing and murdered Indigenous women, that there may well be a serial killer or killers who are still on the loose and continuing to kill. Finding Amber's killer could still save lives.

Amber was unique but the dismal handling of her family's concern and the lack of good police work by the RCMP was not and this explains why there was a 2019 National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. The Native Women's Association of Canada maintains a list of nearly 600 cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and two-spirit people across the country, over the span of 20 years. Indigenous women face murder rates more than ten times the national average and the Native Women’s Association of Canada "has found that only 53% of murder cases involving Aboriginal women and girls have led to charges of homicide. This is dramatically different from the national clearance rate for homicides in Canada, which was last reported as 84%." This is such a pervasive problem that it has its own hashtag: #MMIW. 

So where did the inquiry lead? In 2023, four years after the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls released 231 calls for justice, the CBC did a report card on progress on the issue of taking all necessary measures to prevent, investigate, punish and compensate for violence against Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA people. The report card stated: "Not started".

This should take our breath away. Asking for a diligent investigation of missing women is something we all expect the police to do. This case is one among many that makes it clear this is not being done for missing indigenous women, and this is a travesty.

If your daughter was missing, would this be acceptable? Would you not want more? If someone was allowed to kill your daughter because the police don't take the life of your daughter seriously enough to find her quickly and then, allowed the killer to wander free killing more women, what would you feel? This, in a nutshell is the disease that we live with as more Indigenous women are being adducted and murdered as you read this. 

How does this tragedy get turned around? There are excellent recommendations and they should be acted upon. For those of us - and I include myself in this - who are at times overwhelmed by the complexity of the issues around missing and murdered Indigenous women, it's helpful to not lose sight of the essence of the problem and basis of all the solutions, eloquently elucidated by Amber's mother, Vivian: "have more respect and more compassion. You know, don’t just treat her like she’s nothing. I’m not just speaking for Amber but for all the missing and murdered.” 

If this was your daughter, you would want this for her.

#MMIW

                                                                    

A Monster Hunt (Okay, a Cereal Monster Hunt)

It's October, and our thoughts may turn to monsters. 

Or cereal. Or even monster cereals, since those are a thing each fall. You know the ones: Count Chocula, Franken Berry, Boo-Berry. For decades, these monsters have prowled our cupboards, our store end caps, our commercial breaks. We live in a world chock-full of cereal monster tee shirts, board games, and Funko Pop!. 

But what do we know about them? Who are they besides grinning cartoons and sweet, marshmallow crunch? October is a season for exploring questions.

For answers, we start where such things must. 

With a leprechaun.

AFTER ME LUCKY CHARMS

1963. Golden Valley, Minnesota. The top brass at General Mills had a problem. They were cranking out Wheaties and Cheerios to market demand, but the processing plants still had capacity. The top brass sent a challenge to their design teams: Bring us something new. 

It was ace product developer John Holahan who rose to the moment. Holahan was grocery shopping when he saw Cheerios, and he saw Brach's Circus Peanuts, and he had an idea. Imagine the conference room as Holahan pitched chopped-up candy dumped into oats. The pitch got a green light, and the ad whizzes came up with L.E. Leprechaun to front the box, and by 1964, Lucky Charms was on the shelves--and not selling. General Mills had to sweeten the oats before the cereal blockbuster was born.

The top brass didn't score a primo Minnesota view by misreading their market. In the kid cereal game, characters moved boxes. Quaker had Cap'n Crunch, Kellogg had Tony the Tiger, and now General Mills had their leprechaun. And there was this: If kids would eat unflavored marshmallows and cereal, they sure as hell would eat the stuff flavored. 

General Mills knew the very flavors. Nestlé Quik powder had burst on the scene, chocolate and strawberry both, and kids were slurping it up. If the Swiss could pull off flavored milk, then by God, so could Golden Valley. All they needed were their headliners. 

I VANT TO DRINK YOUR MILK

The Sixties were a horror film heyday. Old hands like Universal and newcomers like Hammer Films had revived the genre, making Gothic mainstays Dracula and Frankenstein back into box office staples. The Munsters and The Addams Family brought kid-friendly versions into the home. The ad whizzes had their bankable craze.

General Mills needed two years to hone playful riffs on Bela Lugosi's Dracula and Boris Karloff's Frankenstein's Monster. This would be a double product launch, and so the top brass wanted chocolate and strawberry characters that played off each other with real on-screen chemistry. Surviving the all-important Saturday morning commercial wars demanded nothing less.

Bringing the monsters to animation life was Bill Melendez, the Disney and Warner Bros. alum and creative force behind the Peanuts specials. Melendez had made his bones on Pinocchio, Bambi, Daffy Duck, and Snoopy. Now he had Count Alfred Chocula and Franken Berry. With Melendez was the Trix Rabbit creative team and the voice talents of James Dukas (Chocula/Legosi) and Bob McFadden (Franken Berry/Karloff). Dukas had done mostly bit acting parts, McFadden cartoons. The stage was set.

In 1971, the top brass pulled the trigger. Lines hummed. Trucks rolled. On Saturday mornings, Chocula and Franken Berry wrangled over flavor superiority until scared witless by the slightest damn thing.  

They were a hit.

IN EVERY HOUSE, A GHOST

No one had seen anything like these new cereals. General Mills unleashed their full souvenir arsenal: stickers, toy rings, miniatures. The monsters sold so well that, when kids' poop started turning up pink, researchers diagnosed Franken Berry as the cause. Adjustments were made, and the boxes kept selling. 

And, as is human nature with possible litigation off the table, the top brass went again to the monster well. Test concepts abounded, but the winning idea was the most obvious. A ghost. 

Problem: Dracula might've differentiated himself among vampires, but no such ghost had managed the trick. Ghosts and ghost lore are everywhere, so the marketing whizzes set about concocting their own. The hook would be America's first blueberry-centric cereal, and hookishly Golden Valley created a front character of Boo-Berry, a stylishly rumpled homage to horror icon Peter Lorre.

The voice job went to a pro's pro, Paul Frees. He'd done Tom and Jerry (Jerry), The Wonderful World of Disney (Ludwig Von Drake), Rocky and Bullwinkle (Boris Badenov), Frosty the Snowman (Santa), and Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town (Burgermeister Meisterburger), among many other roles. One Saturday in 1972, Frees' chill Boo-Berry/Lorre came a-knocking at the Count's and Franken's door and, yes, scared the bejeezus out of them. 

A BRUTE TOO FAR

General Mills was on a cereal-slinging roll. By 1974, they had their next monster: Fruit Brute, a werewolf in striped overalls. The design teams, so meticulous in crafting Chocula and Frank, didn't go the Lon Chaney route. Fruit Brute was basically a friendly German Shepherd. The design team couldn't even land on a flavor blend to market a la Froot Loops. This was just fruit generally. One choice the product team did make was lime marshmallows. 

Surely the ad whizzes knew the magic wasn't happening. Fruit Brute was still on the shelves when in 1979 General Mills released the infamous Monsters Go Disco promo EP. Fruit Brute didn't make the cut and was soon off the market. In 1988, the product folks tried again with Yummy Mummy, re-partnering the omni-fruit taste with vanilla marshmallows. Yummy Mummy wasn't out of the product crypt long.

Ah, the Brute. A star-cross'd cereal. Fruit Brute's highest honor came after its retirement, when Quentin Tarantino used the cereal as an easter egg in both Reservoir Dogs (1992) and Pulp Fiction (1994). 

YEP, UNDEAD

In case you wondered, you read Monsters Go Disco correctly. It's a mini-musical in which a bored Chocula, Frank, and Boo-Berry hit a club and compete in a disco contest. The monsters also went to outer space and Hollywood. They were splashed on yogurt cups, special edition ice cream, cake mixes, fruit roll-ups. They did cross-promotion with the Goosebumps and Scooby-Doo franchises. Things were good.

Time, though, catches up to us all. In 2009, General Mills announced that the monster trio would be available only around Halloween. "To inspire nostalgic joy," the announcement read. One might guess that spreadsheets and focus groups were involved. Nostalgia might be read as saying parents, not their Gen Z kids, were driving sales. 

Smart call, nostalgia, all those snappy commercials and colored-milk memories. And the licensing opportunities abound, Fifty years in, the monsters had gone pop culture, famous for being famous. Monsters Go Disco is running $25 - $30 on Ebay. 

Some years, the release ties in with a collaboration or even resurrects a lost monster. Frute Brute--note the spelling change, likely a signal of the actual fruit content--has returned a few times and having at last found cherry for a flavor. Yummy Mummy has gone orange.

There is even a new monster in the Cerealverse: Carmella Creeper, a goth-girl DJ zombie laying down caramel apple taste and mad beats. Her backstory goes that she is Franken Berry's cousin. How that is supposed to work is best left to mystery. One imagines those focus groups again and the kids asking why all the monsters were dudes. 

THE OCTOBER RITE

There you have it, a half-century cereal tale of tales. Oat surplus, Circus Peanuts-fueled inspiration, Hammer Studios, Snoopy's animator, Burgermeister Meisterburger, medical mysteries, Tarantino, and thousands of sugar-hyped fans. 

And the monsters are back this October. Nostalgically, I scored a box.

Popcorn Proverbs 6

I have done this five times before and, what do you know? I'm doing it again.  All quotes are in alphabetical order by the title of the flick.  All crime movies, all ones I have never used before.  Answers at the end.  Enjoy.

1. “What does your father do?”
“He's the janitor in Browning's bank in Clearwater Street.”
“Browning's doesn't have a bank in Clearwater Street.”
“Poor papa! I wonder if he knows.”

2. “You rob to support a drug habit, I do drugs to support a robbery habit.” 

3. “Daddy has to talk to the murderer.”

4. “He'd kill us if he got the chance.”  

5. “I don't know about Ray, but not everyone in Garrison is a murderer.”
“No, they just keep their eyes closed and their mouths shut, just like me.”

6. "'The world breaks everyone, and afterwards, some are strong at the broken places'-Ernest Hemingway.”
“Wasn't he the one who shot himself?”

7. “If you're thinking of smoking that in here... don't.”
“I find that confusing. Do you mean don't smoke or don't think?”

8. “Where's Jackson?”
“He didn't make it. Neither did you.”

 9. “But Paul, I can't make my boys vote the reform ticket!”
 “Why not? Most of them come from the reform school.”

10.“You would lie for a lie, but you won't lie for the truth.”

11. “Just when I thought I was out... they pull me back in.” 

12.  “You plan a good enough getaway, you could steal Ebbets Field.”
 “Ebbets Field's gone.”
 “What did I tell you?”

13. “I AM Harm’s way.”

14. “Why am I always the cripple?  It’s someone else’s turn now.”

15. “My father always taught me, never desert a lady in trouble. He even carried that as far as marrying Mother.”

16. “In my case, self-absorption is completely justified. I have never discovered any other subject quite so worthy of my attention.”

17. “I was a ghost. I didn't see anyone. No one saw me. I was the barber.”

18. “Mr. Leyden, can I use your paper?”
“Why not? You've used everything else!”

19. “Well, perhaps the laws of physics cease to exist on your stove. Were these magic grits? I mean, did you buy them from the same guy who sold Jack his beanstalk beans?”

20. “I’m not a tailor.  I’m a cutter.”

21. "That's the ski he took in the face and I'm afraid it was all downhill from there."

22. “I'm so tired!”
 “Not surprising. It's tiring to kill a man”

23. “It's my funeral. You're just along for the ride.”

24. “Tony, I have a job for you.”
“Is it a dead girl or under age?”

25. “I always said he should burn in hell. But Chicago will do." 
 

ANSWERS

 1. “What does your father do?”
“He's the janitor in Browning's bank in Clearwater Street.”
“Browning's doesn't have a bank in Clearwater Street.”
“Poor papa! I wonder if he knows.”  -Sigerson Holmes (Gene Wilder) /  Jenny Hill (Madeline Kahn) The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother

2. “You rob to support a drug habit, I do drugs to support a robbery habit.” – Bats (Jamie Foxx) Baby Driver

 3. “Daddy has to talk to the murderer.” – Inspector Monroe (Roy Wood, Jr.) Confess Fletch

4. “He'd kill us if he got the chance.”  - Mark (Frederic Forrest) The Conversation

5. “I don't know about Ray, but not everyone in Garrison is a murderer.”
“No, they just keep their eyes closed and their mouths shut, just like me.”
-Bill Geisler (Noah Emmerich)/ Freddy Heflin (Sylvester Stallone)  Cop Land

6. "The world breaks everyone, and afterwards, some are strong at the broken places"-Ernest Hemingway.”
“Wasn't he the one who shot himself?”
-    Jack / Matt (Clive Owen / Paul Reynolds) The Croupier

7. “If you're thinking of smoking that in here... don't.”
“I find that confusing. Do you mean don't smoke or don't think?”
Ray (Charlie Hunnam) / Fletcher (Hugh Grant) The Gentlemen

8. “Where's Jackson?”
“He didn't make it. Neither did you.”
-Doc McCoy (Steve McQueen) / Rudy Butler (Al Lettieri) The Getaway

 9. “But Paul, I can't make my boys vote the reform ticket!”
 “Why not? Most of them come from the reform school.”
-Politician (Brooks Benedict) / Paul Madvig (Brian Donlevy) The Glass Key

10.“You would lie for a lie, but you won't lie for the truth.”
– Andi Brand (Janelle Monáe) Glass Onion

11. “Just when I thought I was out... they pull me back in.” – Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) The Godfather Part III

12.  “You plan a good enough getaway, you could steal Ebbets Field.”
 “Ebbets Field's gone.”
 “What did I tell you?”
-Joe Moore (Gene Hackman) / Mickey Bergman  (Danny DeVito) Heist

13. “I AM Harm’s way.”
– Darius Kincaid (Samuel L. Jackson) The Hitman’s Bodyguard.

14. “Why am I always the cripple?  It’s someone else’s turn now.”
– Zolika (Zoltán Fenyvesi) Kills on Wheels  

 

15. “My father always taught me, never desert a lady in trouble. He even carried that as far as marrying Mother.”
– Gilbert Redman (Michael Redgrave) The Lady Vanishes

16. “In my case, self-absorption is completely justified. I have never discovered any other subject quite so worthy of my attention.”
– Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb) Laura

17. “I was a ghost. I didn't see anyone. No one saw me. I was the barber.”
-Ed Crane ( Billy Bob Thornton) The Man Who Wasn’t There

18. “Mr. Leyden, can I use your paper?”
“Why not? You've used everything else!”
- Mr. Peters (Sidney Greenstreet) / Cornelius Leyden (Peter Lorre) The Mask of Dimitrios

19. “Well, perhaps the laws of physics cease to exist on your stove. Were these magic grits? I mean, did you buy them from the same guy who sold Jack his beanstalk beans?”
-    Vinny Gambini (Joe Pesci) My Cousin Vinny

20. “I’m not a tailor.  I’m a cutter.”
– Leonard (Mark Rylance) The Outfit

21. "That's the ski he took in the face and I'm afraid it was all downhill from there."
-Constable Stalker ( Saiorise Ronan) See How They Run

22. “I'm so tired!”
 “Not surprising. It's tiring to kill a man”
-Julie/ Sarah (Ludivine Sagnier/Charlotte Rampling) .Swimmiing Pool

23. “It's my funeral. You're just along for the ride.”
– Thomas Crown (Steve McQueen) The Thomas Crown Affair

24. “Tony, I have a job for you.”
“Is it a dead girl or under age?”
(Ralph Turpin (Robert J. Wilke) / Tony Rome (Frank Sinatra) Tony Rome

25. “I always said he should burn in hell. But Chicago will do." 
– Fuller (Michael Harney) Widows