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? & The Mysterians |
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The 13th Floor Elevators, Tom Hall on Jug... |
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Young Bob Seger |
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? & The Mysterians |
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The 13th Floor Elevators, Tom Hall on Jug... |
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Young Bob Seger |
In the waning days of my stint at Data Corp, a bank-owned subsidiary in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, security auditors visited the company. These stern-faced men and women differed from bank and financial auditors. They studied physical facilities, detectors, alarms, and personnel. They reminded employees that banking is serious business.
Thus it came to pass, they paid particular attention to me, rogue hired-gun, expert in multiple languages and knowledgeable in the intricate arts of operating systems and the mysterious software void. I had delved deep into the labyrinth of the sacred OS and lo, I not only survived the puzzles of the Minotaur, but my reputation grew, a mark of my shadowy powers and the peril I represented.
Sandman, Matt… how different could we be? Birds of a feather, cut from the same cloth, tarred with the same brush. The auditors were determined to unmask… Danger Man.
Caught between the security professionals and Data Corp’s need to keep me around, the company assigned their top programmer to watch me, to make certain no Harry Potter magical enchantment passed my fingertips to the detriment of the Eastern Seaboard banking community. My transition from legendary hero to potentially a bad, bad boy had the spectacular effect of enhancing my dark reputation amongst the fair sex of the Shenandoah Valley. That’s a story improper for a scholarly work such as this.
“It’s nothing personal,” said the vice president.
“It seems personal,” I said. After the fiascos with Sandman and then Matt, I felt peeved, petulant and perhaps a little petty, those p-offed adjectives. Later, I would become better known for guarding my tongue, but I childishly couldn’t resist showing off. “The auditors are looking in the wrong place. They shouldn’t be suspicious of talent, but of simple vulnerabilities. I bet I can have money out of the bank and on your desk in 24 hours.”
“I don’t believe in gambling.”
“Neither do I. I prefer certainties. Wanna wager?”
“You’re serious?” He sighed. “We have to tell them.” He started to beep the chief auditor but stopped himself. Cogs visibly turned in his head. On the off chance I was right, why reveal weaknesses to the auditors? “How?” he asked.
“The obvious everyone overlooks.”
“It’s obvious you’re presumptuous.” He didn’t say it unkindly. The vice president leaned forward on the edge of his chair, hands braced on his desk. I could see his mind churning, thinking over the computer rooms, an entire floor of programmers’ offices, the banking terminals scattered around the counties. “It doesn’t mean you can’t be right.”
Neither of us believed in gambling, but for different reasons. The VP was a pious man. He said, “I don’t bet, but I will pay you five bucks if you can pull it off.”
I said, “Fair enough. One thing though– keep things as they are– no extra security just because of this, okay?”
He muttered under his breath. If he hadn’t been a religious man, it would probably have sounded something like, “arrogant sodding bastard.”
A Draft In The House
A few hours remained before my self-imposed night shift, so I visited the banking center off the lobby. I bought a money order to pay my phone bill, watching every move the teller made. Afterwards, I went back to my rooms to sleep a few hours.
The vice president fibbed about not stacking the deck against me. That evening for the first time, a guard searched my flight case as I entered the computer facility. The VP also ordered the data vault closed, a concrete and steel room with a blast-proof door. If I needed a data cartridge, I’d have to ask Nagle, the watchdog programmer they’d hung around my neck, to fetch it.
Like a personal albatross, he watched every move, my every keystroke. As I rolled my chair between consoles, he followed, straining to see if I attempted anything unusual. I simply did my job, asking him to give me breathing space as I studied program code.
We ordered Chinese food. Nagle consumed his with coffee rather than tea, striving to stay alert. I asked what his instructions were and he said he’d been directed to keep a special eye on me. “They think you’re up to something.”
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green-bar, fanfold paper |
“I am. I’ve got to debug this by morning.”
From time to time I pulled ‘green-bar’ stacks of paper off the big high-speed printers. I had a well-known propensity for leafing through paper listings, giving my eyes a rest from luminescent computer screens. Nagle had wearied from working all day, but occasional requests for tapes or discs kept him awake.
Taking great precautions but overlooking a small, seemingly insignificant but crucial details is only human. Long ago, I’d remarked upon one of these details to the computer room operators who’d forgotten by the next morning. They had stuffed a box of Christmas Club checks on a panel of the control unit next to the printer, handy if they had to make a quick check run. Nothing sinister about printers, right?
I asked Nagle to fetch a data cartridge from the vault as I gathered a listing from the printer, I simply tore off a sheet of three checks and slipped it among the pages of my printout.
An hour after midnight, I dragged manuals and listings into what tellers called the ‘back room’, and spread them out on work tables. To enter the computer room, operators and officials had to pass through a couple of electronically locked anterooms into the data center.
It was also possible to pass from the lobby into the customer area of the banking center where lexan barriers protected the teller area. Behind the glass, trusted employees could pass through the back room to the computer room itself– and vice versa. The computer room contained a photo lab at the back, which the security auditors didn’t like since it gave non-computer people access to the servers.
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MICR check imprinter |
The back room was of special interest to me because it contained a small machine I needed, a MICR imprinter, a shoebox-size device with a simple keyboard used to encode the special magnetic ink numbers along the bottom of a check.
During the day, the back room was used by clerks to spread out reports and by tellers to imprint deposit slips and checks as needed. During the evening, operations bundled and unbundled stacks of checks and imprinted the occasional ‘carrier’, a glassine envelope for damaged checks. By night, I used the same room when I needed an expanded work area. Nagle stopped paying attention to me when I left the main room because the tellers’ back room contained no computers.
I’d never used the imprinter before, but I’d watched the operators. My plan was to key in the account number the bank used to pay me and that’s when I discovered the bank had made my task easier– and an easier crime for anyone else to carry out. When I filched the checks, my famed 007 powers of observation had been running low because I hadn’t inspected them closely. Rather than print individual account numbers on Christmas Club checks, the bank used one general account thoughtfully pre-printed on the checks along with the routing and serial numbers. The check numbers linked a given check to a customer. I didn’t need the MICR imprinter after all.
I discovered something else. Next to the MICR machine were open boxes of bank drafts and money orders accessible not only to tellers, but any person who strolled in from the computer room. They were sequentially numbered and I had no idea if anyone took note of the number in the mornings. I took samples out of the middle.
Back in the computer room, Nagle was nodding off. He headed for the coffee machine.
Green-bar program listings from large computers were printed on continuous ‘tractor-feed’ fan-fold paper stock that were packed and stacked in a zig-zag fashion. The printer prints one accordion-pleated side only– the back is almost never used and, when fastened in a binder, the back is never seen. In other words, a page was actually two sheets back-to-back attached at the leading edge and bound at the back. It formed a pocket, perfect for nefarious smuggling.
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Visit Bob
Lemke's vintage cheques |
Cue Mission Impossible theme.
Uncapping a glue stick, I dabbed the drafts and the Christmas Club checks and tucked them within the multi-fold pages. James Bond had nothing on me.
Binder in hand, I told Nagle, “I’m going upstairs for an hour. I’ll be back.” He gratefully closed his eyes in the operations office. The security guard, mystified by the runes of technology, only cursorily glanced at the listings.
I needed time and privacy to duplicate the same type of printing on the draft and the Christmas Club check. From the tractor feed paper and proximity to the printer, it was easy to deduce the Christmas Club checks were printed on the high speed impact printer, a device the size of a roll-top desk capable of churning out hundreds of pages in seconds. I needed to duplicate its distinctive type face, so on one page of the program I had been working in, I’d printed a sample: my name, ‘FIVE AND ***’, and $5.00. All I needed was a way to emulate the printer’s font.
Beating the Draft
The bank draft presented a different problem. The name on the draft I purchased in the afternoon was printed using a monospace sans-serif font, and it wasn’t similar to any I could find on the PCs commonly used in the office. I was surprised– They had almost everything.
I expanded my search. Nothing. I didn’t have access to Illustrator or Photoshop. I couldn’t log onto the Adobe site for a matching font, and it didn’t seem sensible to pay them more than I was going to collect.
But wait; I was overthinking. The vice president expected me to engineer a hi-tech crime, but I’d gone lo-tech. Where had I seen an IBM Selectric? Chase’s secretary’s desk. The office kept a couple of typewriter balls in a junk drawer. I picked the most computerish style and dropped the font ball into the typewriter.
I tweaked the positioning and ran a test copy on plain paper. When I held it up to the light in front of the blank draft, it looked close. I adjusted the margins until I was satisfied and printed one of the drafts made out to me with several zeros in the amount. I repeated the process with one of the Christmas Club checks made out for five dollars.
Leaving the draft in my desk, I set the Christmas Club checks aside. No sense taking them back into the computer center.
I wrapped up early for which Nagle was grateful. The guard glanced in my briefcase. Seeing no wads of bills or bullion, he let us go.
After sleeping until noon, I drove through a branch drive-thru and cashed the $5 Christmas Club check. Back at the office, the security guards perked up. They gave my briefcase a thorough going over. Finding nothing incriminating, they let me pass.
When I casually strolled toward the vice president’s office, he glanced up and waved me in. “Any luck? You’ve just a couple of hours left.”
“Oh, yes. Here’s a bank draft made out to me, all legitimate looking. I didn’t cash it so I wouldn’t screw up the bank’s accounting.”
His lips thinned when he saw the number of zeroes. Pinching it between two fingers, he looked it over carefully with narrowed eyes. He set it aside as if I had handed him a used tissue. “You said you could get money out which I took to be cash.”
I pulled $5 from my pocket and put it on his desk.
“You’re conceding?” he asked.
“No.”
“What’s special about this?”
I put the receipt on top of it. “It’s from the bank’s Christmas Club account.”
Never before had I witnessed a ‘basilisk stare’. For a moment, I worried I’d crossed the line. However, he prided himself being a fair and rational man, and he went from personal offence to realizing I could help plug a hole or two the auditors hadn’t yet spotted.
“How much?”
“How much what?”
He sighed. “How much is this going to cost me?”
“Lunch.” I reconsidered, thinking about his tightwad reputation. “A good lunch.”
In fairness, he made it a very good lunch.
Loose Ends
Management instructed their tellers to lock away the blank drafts at night. The Christmas Club checks they moved into the vault as they should have from the beginning.
Nagle told me he’d been yelled at, but the shouting was only half-hearted. The vice president had merely instructed him to ensure their in-house Robin Hood didn’t attempt a Mission Impossible hi-tech transfer. Instead I had come in under their radar with an old-school lo-tech crime, which made it worse. They found it sobering, but they took comfort the security auditors hadn’t detected the gaffe and the price of one lunch was right.
How hard can it be, nonwriters often say, to name your characters?
Well, I can think of easier tasks. It's one thing to name them, but it's another to do it well.
As all of you know, the choice of appropriate names can be vitally important, and at the very least can make any story better. I think The Silence of the Lambs would've been a great novel and movie regardless of the characters' names, but making the bad guys Buffalo Bill and Hannibal Lecter sure didn't hurt. And sometimes "appropriate" can have a wide range. I think part of Stephen King's success is due to the fact that he often writes about ordinary characters that everyone can relate to, and the names of his protagonists usually reflect that: Bill Hodges, Luke Ellis, Fran Goldsmith, Tom Cullen, Larry Underwood, Annie Wilkes, Robert Anderson, Paul Sheldon, Carrie White. One of his main characters (the novel was The Dead Zone) was named John Smith. Having said that, King can also get pretty creative with character-naming when it's needed: Roland Deschain, Gordie Lachance, Randall Flagg, Percy Wetmore, etc.
Looking back on the novels I've read and the movies and TV shows I've seen, I can recall character names that seem absolutely perfect for their stories. We all know some of those--Atticus Finch, James Bond, Ebenezer Scrooge, Luke Skywalker, Ichabod Crane, Indiana Jones, Rocky Balboa, Sherlock Holmes, Harry Potter, and so on. A few have become better known than the stories in which they appeared.
Lighthearted:
Barney Fife, Stephanie Plum, Forrest Gump, Hedley Lamarr, Buzz Lightyear, Milo Minderbinder, Jack Sparrow, Ace Ventura, Hawkeye Pierce, Walter Mitty, Holly Golightly, Arthur Fonzarelli, Ron Burgundy, Mary Poppins, Gaylord Focker, Hoss Cartwright, Jack Tripper, Buford T. Justice, Maynard G. Krebs, Marty McFly, Ferris Bueller, Bilbo Baggins
Strong:
Frank Bullitt, Sam Spade, Woodrow Call, Will Kane, Ellen Ripley, Jesse Stone, Rick Deckard, Han Solo, Sansa Stark, Thomas Magnum, Dana Scully, Jack Shepherd, Joe Mannix, Philip Marlowe, Nero Wolfe, Peter Gunn, Dan Roman, Rudi Matt, Remington Steele, Thomas Crown, Miranda Priestly, Judah Ben-Hur, Ethan Hunt, Mike Hammer
Mysterious:
Keyser Soze, Victor Laszlo, Axel Foley, Vito Corleone, Imperator Furiosa, Boo Radley, Tony Soprano, Daenerys Targaryen, Jonathan Hemlock, Inigo Montoya, Thorin Oakenshield, Wednesday Addams, Lando Calrissian, V. I. Warschawski, Optimus Prime, Dave Robischeaux, Tyler Durden, Jay Gatsby, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Arkady Renko, Tyrion Lannister
Evil:
Hans Gruber, Gordon Gekko, Francis Dollarhyde, Darth Vader, Uriah Heep, Lord Voldemort, Nurse Ratched, Joffrey Baratheon, Jason Voorhees, Anton Chigurh, Bellatrix Lestrange, Draco Malfoy, Simon Legree, Freddy Krueger, Hector Barbossa, Gyp Rosetti, Black Jack Randall, Amon Goeth, Hannibal Lecter, Kylo Ren, Biff Tannen, Al Swearengen, Lex Luthor
Some of the most interesting names, I think, came from Ian Fleming--
Auric Goldfinger, Hugo Drax, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, Emilio Largo, Francisco Scaramanga, Julius No, Rosa Klebb, Irma Bunt, Felix Leiter, Vesper Lynd, Honeychile Ryder, Tatiana Romanova, Tiffany Case, Mary Goodnight, Kissy Suzuki, Contessa Teresa di Vicenzo, Pussy Galore, Gala Brand, Solitaire Latrelle, Domino Vitali, Caractacus Potts
--and Quentin Tarantino:
Vincent Vega, Beatrix Kiddo, Marcellus Wallace, Elle Driver, Bridgette von Hammersmark, King Schultz, Hattori Hanzo, Esmeralda Villa Lobos, Perrier LaPadite, Hugo Stiglitz, Broomhilda von Shaft, Drexl Spivey, Santanico Pandemonium
For anyone still with me on this, here are several more, in no particular category. Remember these?
Randle McMurphy, Tom Wingo, Humbert Humbert, Ignatius Reilly, Yuri Zhivago, Sebastian Flyte, Shug Avery, Omar Little, Fast Eddie Felson, Owen Meany, Holden Caulfield, Hester Prynne, Jake Spoon, Lisbeth Salander, Clarice Starling, John Boy Walton, Norman Bates, Chili Palmer
In closing (and in the "I wish I had come up with that one" department), here are my five all-time favorite character names:
Snake Plissken
Apollo Creed
Primrose Everdeen
Cullen Bohannon
Napoleon Solo
For what it's worth, here are some character names from my own stories: Ferguson Quillar, Pinto Bishop, Ward Grummond, Lou Mingo, Spencer E. Spencer, Bitsy Hamilton, Monique LaBont, Jabbo Harris, Gary Ironwood, Karim Valik, Madame Zoufou (Queen of Voodoo), Rufe Dewberry, Delbert Wooten, Ham Grogan, Cole "Shooter" Parrish, Abe Callendar, Solomon Wade, CollieBaby Johnson, Forrest DeWeller, Della Bloodworth, Punk Harris, Jasper Luckett, Panama Joe LaPinto, Woodrow Temple, Twelve Becker, Randolph Goodwynter, "Ducky" Duckworth, Doogie Sistrunk, Ophelia Reardon, Chunky Jones, Henrietta Allgood, Nicodemo Ross, Dexter Holtzhagen. I remember trying to tailor each of these to fit his or her character; whether that was effective or not is another matter.
Now, back to trying to figure out what to call the folks in this latest story of mine.
Any suggestions?
A new year, and perhaps the world is righting itself. Let’s try a chuckle from Future Thought channel of YouTube. Check it out.
Once again, we visit Shifty, a none-too-bright crook who looks like a Minion in zebra stripes. This time poor Shifty finds himself on the hot seat.
© www.FutureThought.tv |
That’s today’s crime cinema. Hope you enjoyed the show. Be sure to visit the Future Thought channel on YouTube.
𝙸'𝚖 𝚊𝚠𝚊𝚛𝚎 __________ 𝚒𝚜 𝚢𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝚙𝚊𝚜𝚜 𝚠𝚘𝚛𝚍.𝙸 𝚗𝚎𝚎𝚍 𝚢𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝚏𝚞𝚕𝚕 𝚊𝚝𝚝𝚎𝚗𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗 𝚏𝚘𝚛 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚗𝚎𝚡𝚝 𝟸𝟺 𝚑𝚘𝚞𝚛𝚜, 𝚘𝚛 𝙸 𝚖𝚊𝚢 𝚖𝚊𝚔𝚎 𝚜𝚞𝚛𝚎 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚕𝚒𝚟𝚎 𝚘𝚞𝚝 𝚘𝚏 𝚎𝚖𝚋𝚊𝚛𝚛𝚊𝚜𝚜𝚖𝚎𝚗𝚝 𝚏𝚘𝚛 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚛𝚎𝚜𝚝 𝚘𝚏 𝚢𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝚎𝚡𝚒𝚜𝚝𝚎𝚗𝚌𝚎.
𝙷𝚎𝚕𝚕𝚘, 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚍𝚘 𝚗𝚘𝚝 𝚔𝚗𝚘𝚠 𝚖𝚎 𝚙𝚎𝚛𝚜𝚘𝚗𝚊𝚕𝚕𝚢. 𝙷𝚘𝚠𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚛 𝙸 𝚔𝚗𝚘𝚠 𝚙𝚛𝚎𝚝𝚝𝚢 𝚖𝚞𝚌𝚑 𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚢𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚊𝚋𝚘𝚞𝚝 𝚢𝚘𝚞. 𝚈𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝚏𝚋 𝚌𝚘𝚗𝚝𝚊𝚌𝚝 𝚕𝚒𝚜𝚝, 𝚖𝚘𝚋𝚒𝚕𝚎 𝚙𝚑𝚘𝚗𝚎 𝚌𝚘𝚗𝚝𝚊𝚌𝚝𝚜 𝚊𝚕𝚘𝚗𝚐 𝚠𝚒𝚝𝚑 𝚊𝚕𝚕 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚘𝚗𝚕𝚒𝚗𝚎 𝚊𝚌𝚝𝚒𝚟𝚒𝚝𝚢 𝚘𝚗 𝚢𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝚌𝚘𝚖𝚙𝚞𝚝𝚎𝚛 𝚏𝚛𝚘𝚖 𝚙𝚛𝚎𝚟𝚒𝚘𝚞𝚜 𝟷𝟸𝟽 𝚍𝚊𝚢𝚜.
𝚆𝚑𝚒𝚌𝚑 𝚒𝚗𝚌𝚕𝚞𝚍𝚎𝚜, 𝚢𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝚜𝚎𝚕𝚏 𝚙𝚕𝚎𝚊𝚜𝚞𝚛𝚎 𝚟𝚒𝚍𝚎𝚘 𝚏𝚘𝚘𝚝𝚊𝚐𝚎, 𝚠𝚑𝚒𝚌𝚑 𝚋𝚛𝚒𝚗𝚐𝚜 𝚖𝚎 𝚝𝚘 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚖𝚊𝚒𝚗 𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚜𝚘𝚗 𝚠𝚑𝚢 𝙸 '𝚖 𝚠𝚛𝚒𝚝𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚜𝚙𝚎𝚌𝚒𝚏𝚒𝚌 𝚎-𝚖𝚊𝚒𝚕 𝚝𝚘 𝚢𝚘𝚞.
𝚆𝚎𝚕𝚕 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚕𝚊𝚜𝚝 𝚝𝚒𝚖𝚎 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚟𝚒𝚜𝚒𝚝𝚎𝚍 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚜𝚎𝚡𝚞𝚊𝚕𝚕𝚢 𝚐𝚛𝚊𝚙𝚑𝚒𝚌 𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚙𝚊𝚐𝚎𝚜, 𝚖𝚢 𝚖𝚊𝚕𝚠𝚊𝚛𝚎 𝚎𝚗𝚍𝚎𝚍 𝚞𝚙 𝚋𝚎𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚊𝚌𝚝𝚒𝚟𝚊𝚝𝚎𝚍 𝚒𝚗 𝚢𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝚙𝚎𝚛𝚜𝚘𝚗𝚊𝚕 𝚌𝚘𝚖𝚙𝚞𝚝𝚎𝚛 𝚠𝚑𝚒𝚌𝚑 𝚎𝚗𝚍𝚎𝚍 𝚞𝚙 𝚕𝚘𝚐𝚐𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚊 𝚋𝚎𝚊𝚞𝚝𝚒𝚏𝚞𝚕 𝚟𝚒𝚍𝚎𝚘 𝚌𝚕𝚒𝚙 𝚘𝚏 𝚢𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝚖𝚊𝚜𝚝𝚞𝚛𝚋𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗 𝚙𝚕𝚊𝚢 𝚋𝚢 𝚊𝚌𝚝𝚒𝚟𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚢𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚌𝚊𝚖.
(𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚐𝚘𝚝 𝚊 𝚒𝚗𝚌𝚛𝚎𝚍𝚒𝚋𝚕𝚢 𝚘𝚍𝚍 𝚝𝚊𝚜𝚝𝚎 𝚋𝚝𝚠 𝚑𝚊𝚑𝚊)
𝙸 𝚘𝚠𝚗 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚎𝚗𝚝𝚒𝚛𝚎 𝚛𝚎𝚌𝚘𝚛𝚍𝚒𝚗𝚐. 𝙸𝚏 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚔 𝙸 '𝚖 𝚖𝚎𝚜𝚜𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚊𝚛𝚘𝚞𝚗𝚍, 𝚜𝚒𝚖𝚙𝚕𝚢 𝚛𝚎𝚙𝚕𝚢 𝚙𝚛𝚘𝚘𝚏 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝙸 𝚠𝚒𝚕𝚕 𝚋𝚎 𝚏𝚘𝚛𝚠𝚊𝚛𝚍𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚙𝚊𝚛𝚝𝚒𝚌𝚞𝚕𝚊𝚛 𝚛𝚎𝚌𝚘𝚛𝚍𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚛𝚊𝚗𝚍𝚘𝚖𝚕𝚢 𝚝𝚘 𝟾 𝚙𝚎𝚘𝚙𝚕𝚎 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚛𝚎𝚌𝚘𝚐𝚗𝚒𝚣𝚎.
𝙸𝚝 𝚌𝚘𝚞𝚕𝚍 𝚎𝚗𝚍 𝚞𝚙 𝚋𝚎𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚢𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝚏𝚛𝚒𝚎𝚗𝚍𝚜, 𝚌𝚘 𝚠𝚘𝚛𝚔𝚎𝚛𝚜, 𝚋𝚘𝚜𝚜, 𝚙𝚊𝚛𝚎𝚗𝚝𝚜 (𝙸 𝚍𝚘𝚗'𝚝 𝚔𝚗𝚘𝚠! 𝙼𝚢 𝚜𝚢𝚜𝚝𝚎𝚖 𝚠𝚒𝚕𝚕 𝚛𝚊𝚗𝚍𝚘𝚖𝚕𝚢 𝚜𝚎𝚕𝚎𝚌𝚝 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚌𝚘𝚗𝚝𝚊𝚌𝚝𝚜).
𝚆𝚘𝚞𝚕𝚍 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚋𝚎 𝚊𝚋𝚕𝚎 𝚝𝚘 𝚐𝚊𝚣𝚎 𝚒𝚗𝚝𝚘 𝚊𝚗𝚢𝚘𝚗𝚎'𝚜 𝚎𝚢𝚎𝚜 𝚊𝚐𝚊𝚒𝚗 𝚊𝚏𝚝𝚎𝚛 𝚒𝚝? 𝙸 𝚚𝚞𝚎𝚜𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗 𝚒𝚝…
𝙱𝚞𝚝, 𝚒𝚝 𝚍𝚘𝚎𝚜 𝚗𝚘𝚝 𝚑𝚊𝚟𝚎 𝚝𝚘 𝚋𝚎 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚛𝚘𝚞𝚝𝚎.
𝙸'𝚖 𝚐𝚘𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚝𝚘 𝚖𝚊𝚔𝚎 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚊 𝟷 𝚝𝚒𝚖𝚎, 𝚗𝚘 𝚗𝚎𝚐𝚘𝚝𝚒𝚊𝚋𝚕𝚎 𝚘𝚏𝚏𝚎𝚛.
𝙿𝚞𝚛𝚌𝚑𝚊𝚜𝚎 $ 𝟸𝟶𝟶𝟶 𝚒𝚗 𝚋𝚒𝚝𝚌𝚘𝚒𝚗 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚜𝚎𝚗𝚍 𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚖 𝚝𝚘 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚍𝚘𝚠𝚗 𝚋𝚎𝚕𝚘𝚠 𝚊𝚍𝚍𝚛𝚎𝚜𝚜:
________________
[𝚌𝚊𝚜𝚎-𝚜𝚎𝚗𝚜𝚒𝚝𝚒𝚟𝚎 𝚜𝚘 𝚌𝚘𝚙𝚢 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚙𝚊𝚜𝚝𝚎 𝚒𝚝, 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚛𝚎𝚖𝚘𝚟𝚎 * 𝚏𝚛𝚘𝚖 𝚒𝚝]
(𝙸𝚏 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚍𝚘 𝚗𝚘𝚝 𝚔𝚗𝚘𝚠 𝚑𝚘𝚠, 𝚐𝚘𝚘𝚐𝚕𝚎 𝚑𝚘𝚠 𝚝𝚘 𝚊𝚌𝚚𝚞𝚒𝚛𝚎 𝚋𝚒𝚝𝚌𝚘𝚒𝚗. 𝙳𝚘 𝚗𝚘𝚝 𝚠𝚊𝚜𝚝𝚎 𝚖𝚢 𝚙𝚛𝚎𝚌𝚒𝚘𝚞𝚜 𝚝𝚒𝚖𝚎)
𝙸𝚏 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚜𝚎𝚗𝚍 𝚘𝚞𝚝 𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚙𝚊𝚛𝚝𝚒𝚌𝚞𝚕𝚊𝚛 '𝚍𝚘𝚗𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗' (𝚕𝚎𝚝 𝚞𝚜 𝚌𝚊𝚕𝚕 𝚒𝚝 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝?). 𝙰𝚏𝚝𝚎𝚛 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝, 𝙸 𝚠𝚒𝚕𝚕 𝚐𝚘 𝚊𝚠𝚊𝚢 𝚏𝚘𝚛 𝚐𝚘𝚘𝚍 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚗𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚛 𝚖𝚊𝚔𝚎 𝚌𝚘𝚗𝚝𝚊𝚌𝚝 𝚠𝚒𝚝𝚑 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚊𝚐𝚊𝚒𝚗. 𝙸 𝚠𝚒𝚕𝚕 𝚛𝚎𝚖𝚘𝚟𝚎 𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚢𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝙸 𝚑𝚊𝚟𝚎 𝚐𝚘𝚝 𝚒𝚗 𝚛𝚎𝚕𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗 𝚝𝚘 𝚢𝚘𝚞. 𝚈𝚘𝚞 𝚖𝚊𝚢 𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚢 𝚠𝚎𝚕𝚕 𝚔𝚎𝚎𝚙 𝚘𝚗 𝚕𝚒𝚟𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚢𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝚗𝚘𝚛𝚖𝚊𝚕 𝚍𝚊𝚢 𝚝𝚘 𝚍𝚊𝚢 𝚕𝚒𝚏𝚎𝚜𝚝𝚢𝚕𝚎 𝚠𝚒𝚝𝚑 𝚊𝚋𝚜𝚘𝚕𝚞𝚝𝚎𝚕𝚢 𝚗𝚘 𝚏𝚎𝚊𝚛.
𝚈𝚘𝚞'𝚟𝚎 𝚐𝚘𝚝 𝟸𝟺 𝚑𝚘𝚞𝚛𝚜 𝚒𝚗 𝚘𝚛𝚍𝚎𝚛 𝚝𝚘 𝚍𝚘 𝚜𝚘. 𝚈𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝚝𝚒𝚖𝚎 𝚜𝚝𝚊𝚛𝚝𝚜 𝚘𝚏𝚏 𝚊𝚜 𝚚𝚞𝚒𝚌𝚔𝚕𝚢 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚍 𝚝𝚑𝚛𝚘𝚞𝚐𝚑 𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚎-𝚖𝚊𝚒𝚕. 𝙸 𝚑𝚊𝚟𝚎 𝚐𝚘𝚝 𝚊𝚗 𝚘𝚗𝚎 𝚘𝚏 𝚊 𝚔𝚒𝚗𝚍 𝚌𝚘𝚍𝚎 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚠𝚒𝚕𝚕 𝚒𝚗𝚏𝚘𝚛𝚖 𝚖𝚎 𝚘𝚗𝚌𝚎 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚜𝚎𝚎 𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚎𝚖𝚊𝚒𝚕 𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚛𝚎𝚏𝚘𝚛𝚎 𝚍𝚘𝚗'𝚝 𝚝𝚛𝚢 𝚝𝚘 𝚙𝚕𝚊𝚢 𝚜𝚖𝚊𝚛𝚝.
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bitcoin cryptocurrency |
"But there is one thing I should like you to tell me," I said. "I shouldn't like you to think me cynical, but I had a notion that women on the whole take the maxim, 'It is more blessed to give than to receive,' as applicable exclusively to our sex. How did you persuade these respectable, and no doubt thrifty, women to entrust you so confidently with all their savings?"An amused smile spread over his undistinguished features.
"Well, sir, you know what Shakespeare said about ambition o'erleaping itself. That's the explanation. Tell a woman you'll double her capital in six months if she'll give it you to handle and she won't be able to give you the money quick enough. Greed, that's what it is. Just greed."
- pay for a plane ticket or other travel expenses.
- pay for surgery or other medical expenses.
- pay customs fees to retrieve something.
- pay off gambling debts.
- pay for a visa or other official travel documents. (FTC)
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bitcoin cryptocurrency |
I was
thirteen, if memory serves, when my dad bought me a record player, and bought
me some LP’s to go with it. Dave
Brubeck’s Jazz Impressions of Eurasia,
Benny Goodman with the Boston Symphony (Benny playing classical), and Dvorak’s
I wonder about his choices, but the Brubeck’s stayed with me sixty years. I don’t think I would have appreciated Shelly Manne or the other West Coast guys without it, or Henry Mancini. The theme from Peter Gunn got a lot of airplay, dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-da-DUM-da-dum, but the score I went nuts for was Mr. Lucky. And that organ, backed up with big-band arrangements, led me straight to Jimmy Smith. Walk on the Wide Side, charts by Oliver Nelson, was huge. I’m guessing the biggest R&B hit on AM radio after What’d I Say?
I’m
skipping through some of the personal chart-toppers, of course. Coltrane’s My Favorite Things and Olé, with
McCoy Tyner’s amazing left hand. I spent
a couple of years in
I spent the 1970’s in a haze of Van Morrison, and I don’t regret it. Tupelo Honey, Saint Dominic’s Preview, Hard Nose the Highway, Veedon Fleece. (I can listen to “Tupelo Honey” or “Snow in San Anselmo,” and conjure up the very place I was. “Linden Arden,” “Streets of Arklow,” and “You Don’t Pull No Punches,” as a suite; it never gets old.)
I don’t know that I’ve quite embraced the more recent. I love Sarah McLachlan. I wonder how much of that is due to Joni
Mitchell’s Blue, or Hejira.
Bonnie Raitt. Maria Muldaur. It isn’t that the new music isn’t any good,
or it’s derivative, but I think a certain template is set. You listen to Ray LaMontagne, and you hear
Jackson Browne, or even, God help us, Dave Van Ronk. (Boy, that
was an anthem, the summer I was seventeen, driving a load of mattresses from
Probably, a subset of the above. We associate the music very specifically. It’s apparently second only to our sense of smell, as a trigger, of memory, of emotion, and of deeper psychic energies. Is it regret? I can’t listen to James Taylor and “Sweet Baby James” without tearing up. It wrecked me the first time I heard it. So there.
Yes, it’s association. And it conjures up youth. But we suspect something larger. I think the playlist is a lot more than background music. I don’t think it’s accidental, or incidental, however much is left to chance. Something gets our feet tapping. We might not consciously choose the score, but it’s got a good beat, and you can dance to it.
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Includes my story “Final Reunion” |
Quadrant. Check.
Charts. Check.
Quills and ink. Check.
Before setting sail on his voyage of discovery in 1492, Columbus had to make sure he and his ships were well equipped.
EVA suit. Check.
Pistol grip tool. Check.
Safety tethers. Check.
As you can see, the equipment of a 21st-century astronaut differed greatly from that of a 15th- century navigator. But the purpose of explorers across history is always the same: not only to go out and see, but to report back to the rest of us who can't go and see for themselves.
I found a list of the "ten best" real-life adventure books, nominated by a panel of explorers, in esquire.com. The five written by the explorers themselves were:
The Kon-Tiki Expedition (1950) by Thor Heyerdahl
The Worst Journey in the World (1922) by Apsley Cherry-Garrard
Lost In the Jungle (2005) by Yossi Ghinsberg
Touching the Void (1988) by Joe Simpson
Into the Heart of Borneo (1987) by Redmond O'Hanlon
And how about literary figures like the 19th-century explorer Sir Richard Francis Burton? This fascinating man was a soldier, a diplomat, a spy, a translator of the classic Indian and Arabian erotic texts, and more, tarnished only by anti-Semitic beliefs. (Honestly, Sir Richard!) Isabella Bird, the first woman admitted to the Royal Geographical Society? T.E. Lawrence, better known as Lawrence of Arabia, not an explorer but an articulate participant in a culture not his own? In fact, a vast body of travel literature appeared in the 19th century, when exploring became a fever and publishing one's journals and observations a goal for those who made it back. Since then, we've been able to read all about the world beyond our own experience.
But what about explorers who have no gift for describing what they see? What use are their travels to the rest of us?
This is not merely a modern problem.
Samuel Eliot Morison, the hallowed biographer of Columbus, won a Pulitzer for Admiral of the Ocean Sea. Morison, who replicated all the Admiral's voyages in his own sailboat, raves about Columbus's skill as a navigator and creator of charts a modern sailor could still use. Morison doesn't mind that Columbus was no naturalist nor complain that there was no naturalist aboard to describe the abundance of unfamiliar flora and fauna the Europeans saw.
But Kirkpatrick Sale, in Christopher Columbus and the Conquest of Paradise, complains: "To convey the lush density and stately grandeur of those tropical forests, he had little more than the modifiers 'green' and 'very.'" He goes on to quote from the Admiral's journals and letters back to Spain in late 1492: "'very green trees,' 'trees very green,' 'trees so green and with leaves like those of Castile,' 'large groves very green,' 'trees beautiful and green'..."; as well as his inarticulate expression of diversity: "'trees of a thousand kinds,' 'a thousand sorts of trees,' 'trees different from ours,' 'trees of a thousand kinds'...".
It wasn't only Columbus. Sale quotes Oxford scholar J.H. Elliott as saying that in general, "'the physical appearance of the New World is either totally ignored or else described in the flattest and most conventional phraseology [by 16th-century European explorers].'" Sale says: "This lack of interest was reflected in the lack of vocabulary, the lack of that facility common to nature-based peoples whose cultures are steeped in nature imagery."
It makes perfect sense, right? But it wouldn't happen now, we think. Twenty-first century exploration, whether to the few wild places left on Planet Earth or into space, has or will have all sorts of experts and the equipment to measure minutely and report accurately what they observe.
But who will receive this information? Our spacegoing scientists report the details to NASA, which, depending on the details, usually means the government and/or the military. The rest of us get the media-grabbing highlights. And what are those, these days?
In 1969, when Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, we got a few words to inspire:
"One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind."
On May 12, 2017, the way I heard it, when astronaut Jack Fisher was asked for his impression of space on his first spacewalk, he said, "It was awesomesauce."
When I checked, it turned out what he actually replied to, "What's it like?" was "A ginormous fondue pot, bubbling over with piping hot awesomesauce.” Let that be a lesson to me and all you writers out there. Always check your sources! But that's beside the point.
If all we, the people, learn from our explorers is that what's out there is "green" or "awesomesauce," will exploration eventually be deemed not worth the effort? More likely, our culture will conclude that since pictures do the job and words do not, words have no value whatsoever.
We don't want that, do we?
Liz's Jewish historical adventure novel, Voyage of Strangers, offers an alternative perspective on Columbus's explorations. The sequel is Journey of Strangers, set partly in São Tomé off the coast of West Africa and partly in the Ottoman Empire.As we are bombarded with news of COVID-19 deaths, the rising unemployment and the latest attack on Capital Hill - many of us wonder how this can happen and why do some people not care?
More and more we are hearing stories from the frontline, from the unemployment line, from lines at food-banks and, from homes where seniors live. We are hearing about policies that thoughtlessly harm others and we ask - didn’t they even think about these people’s lives?
After living through 2020 – and face it, 2020 might just be a prologue to the book “The Horrors of 2021” - we will never be the same and I suspect that what we want to read is forever changed. Literature changes because readers change.
When I was a child, I would often rummage through my father’s extensive library. I remember some old books, where the room would be meticulously described, from the sun dappled curtains to the chair with slightly worn arms. These descriptions would often be a page long. I remember wondering if I was simply less observant than most people or if these descriptions were simply overdone. Being a curious child, I watched my friends and family carefully. I decided that none of them spent enough time observing to be able to write a page of details and that the people in these books had a different life, were different people or the author just made up stuff. I would still read some of those books but with a stern skim over the sun dappled this, the intricate patterns of that and any other such useless info.
There are many takes on the immense suffering we have seen in 2020, but I suspect many readers will be drawn to different writers. Just as none of us have patience for a page long descriptions as characters enter a room, I believe we will have less patience for characters who wander the world doing things, noticing things but failing to empathize with people. Let’s face it, Sherlock Holmes was delightful, but who is going to write a book today where the characters notice the hair, that came from a rare species of cat, owned by only two families in the city, coupled with a smudge of brown dust from a particular type of stone, found in the statues of lions that sit by the doorway of one of those families? Yep. No one. Most of us read it, but we don’t write like that anymore. I think that many readers who have lived through this year - and the worse year that is coming - will demand characters with empathy. Not sympathy, but empathy.
The definition of empathy is: the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner.
This stands in contrast to sympathy defined as: sympathy implies sharing (or having the capacity to share) the feelings of another, while empathy tends to be used to mean imagining, or having the capacity to imagine, feelings that one does not actually have.
If 2020 has made many of us yearn for anything, it is for people who have empathy and can imagine and feel what someone else is feeling - without having to be explicitly told and without having to have felt it themselves. Why? Because we are not all 90-year-old women, living alone in a care home, unable to see anyone. We are not all a single mother, with children to feed but with no money to feed them after we lost our job. We are not all ICU doctors, struggling to cope with losing patient after patient nor are we those who have to transport body after body to refrigerated trucks. We are not any of these people but we want someone, any one, to care about these people and tell us about them.
What about sympathy – understanding the feelings that we actually have? This feels a little self-centred and, these days more than ever, the self-centred are at best unpopular and at worst, the villains of 2020: from anti-maskers to those who care only about staying in power.
I suspect many of us, who read voraciously, and who have lived through this time , will want books with more characters who understand and feel what others are feeling and put us in their shoes. Detective novels highlighting not merely action but also empathy might become much more popular. I suspect this is true for all types of writing, from news stories to medical writing. I suspect we might have had our fill of self-centred characters, and I also suspect that they will often be cast as villains because, goodness knows, it feels ugly now. I have found that news stories, articles and - one could argue - political choices seem to already incorporate empathy more than before this dreadful year.
One could argue that good writing has always put us in the shoes of others, immersing us in their worlds. Somewhat true - but it is about the weight one gives to certain things. Do we devote pages to describe a room when a character enters it? Not anymore. So writing may have many elements in common but weight given differs. Weighting empathy heavily would change what we read.
This may just be my new perspective but I doubt it. However, from a personal point of view, I am eager to read the new types of articles, books and characters born from 2020. I also look forward to new ways of telling the news, writing medical articles - any type of writing that tries to reach people who have lived this terrible year and await, with some trepidation, the unveiling of 2021.
Whatever happens with various forms of writing, I believe that there will be fundamental changes in what writers write and readers read because we will never be the same after 2020.
Years from now, when the good movie versions and bad movie versions are made, when the true crime shows have examined witnesses and motives, we’ll have a fuller picture of Nashville’s Christmas Day bombing. As your man in Nashville, I’ll reflect on the incident now. I think I should.
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credit: © Forbes.com |
No apartment residents died, no cops or other first responders. The injured will heal. That’s a blessing. The bomber died, and I don’t cheer that. I don’t cheer what haunts anyone struggling with behavioral health issues. But I won’t be working up unconditional sympathy for bombers any time soon.
Full disclosure: I live in Franklin, twenty-ish minutes south with no traffic. I was nowhere near the explosion. You’ll hear people say they heard it a county away. They didn’t. I didn’t. Not one friend who lives downtown suffered more than a boom and a scare. No damage to me or mine. Nashville's damage, though, is real. It could’ve been horrific.
Early news reports called the bombing site “a residential block off downtown” or “on the fringe of the entertainment district.” The hell it is. Second Avenue--Market Street before 1904--has always been at Nashville’s core. That Cumberland riverport vibe still hangs in the air. The old warehouses and trader shops are today’s clubs and restaurants and tourist traps stores. At a peak time, hundreds of people would’ve jammed that block. If this stretch is “quiet,” as the national news said, it’s because just to the south begins Lower Broadway’s Nashvegas honky tonks lately of the boom years.
We’ve seen what truck bombs can do, as with Oklahoma City. That was what we locals talked and texted about in those first few days. Why pick a block largely shuttered for the pandemic? On a holiday at the least crowded time possible? Why blare that weird recording to force cop attention and an evacuation? If you really wanted to avoid casualties, why not go another block north? It’s mostly parking.
As I write this, we still have only a sketch what the bomber wanted. Politics, of its warped kind. In letters mailed shortly before his suicide, the bomber raved conspiracy theories and crackpot ideas about lizard people and aliens taking over Earth. He’d even been fingered as big trouble brewing by his then-girlfriend, though the FBI and local law enforcement missed the signals.
His possible target feels a little clearer. That block has a hidden something special. You wouldn’t even notice the telecom hub if you walked past. Its tasteful brick is well-designed camouflage against the nightspots across the street. Nashville tip, y’all: Honky tonks are loud, inside and out.
Wait, you say, Nashville has a major telecom hub smack in your commercial district?
Let’s rewind to those riverport days. Nashville’s importance was real– ask the Union Army and many a railroad baron– but as a regional transport crossroads and state capital. This place was no one’s metropolis. For proof: You don’t find many Nashvillians of a certain age who were actually born in Nashville. In 1950, the MSA notched 322,000 folks. Any day now, Nashville passes 2,000,000 souls. When you boom like that, a lot of things are stuck where they used to be, including infrastructure. Where could you move them when the center city is piling up with gentrified housing?
It was weird in that aftermath. Frustrating. Much cell service was out for days. People couldn’t get a hold of each other. They couldn’t call 911. Air traffic was grounded. Residents for blocks can't get into their homes, maybe ever. These old buildings could collapse. Friends mention bad dreams and psychological impact. That’s more than understandable. It’s natural. Second Avenue is a place many of us fight the bachelorette parties and conventioneers to take in riverfront concerts, or we embrace the throngs and relish some truly spectacular people-watching. We’ve eaten in those bombed-out restaurants. And where there’s one bomber, there could’ve been more bombs and the inevitable lame copycat.
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credit: © WKRN.com |
Nobody had a great 2020, and COVID-19 initially hit many regions much harder. Still, Nashville had us a year. In the bleak March days of the early shutdown, an EF-3 tornado ripped a swathe just north of downtown. The storm system leveled neighborhoods as it moved east. In May, a derecho made it double the wind damage and left an extended power outage. A few weeks later, those Nashvegas bars self-inflicted a wound by opening up too soon and with token enforcement of social distancing restrictions. A reckless house party of the super-entitled made national news. Then came the case spikes and hospitalizations, and those boot-scootin’ bars ended up with a black eye and deeper money hole. Folks who work or gig in those bars are getting crushed financially.
Then a downtown bomb on Christmas morning.
But Nashville is already stronger for it. That’s been true everywhere a bomb goes off. The fever-dreamed among us get so caught up in their own noise that they lose a simple fact: The world is full of good people. Resilient people. Years from now, that’s what the best movie versions will show: We won what they started. We pushed forward just fine.
I opened the book with no realization that I stood—rather, I sat—on the brink of my fate. I had no inkling, no premonition, that in another minute my life’s work would be born…The rest, of course, was history. “Ellery” reads the book in a single night, wakes the next morning, drags himself to the library with a throbbing ear, and begs a librarian to let him have more Holmes, even though he does not yet have a library card. He leaves with The Memoirs, A Study in Scarlet, and The Hound, and devours them each in turn. Well, this was promising, I thought, diving into the very first adventure myself.
***
I started on the first page of “A Scandal in Bohemia” and truly the game was afoot. The unbearable pain in my ear…vanished! The abyss of melancholy into with a twelve-year-old can sink…forgotten!
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In these pandemic times, two of the three volumes in my Annotated Sherlock Holmes (Klinger edition) serve as Denise's laptop stand in her Zoom corner (seen through her ring light). |