On November 1, 1871, Stephen Crane was born in Newark, New Jersey. Crane is the famous author of the poem “Content,” among other works, which begins:
A youth in apparel that glittered
Went to walk in a grim forest.
There he met an assassin . . .
And it’s downhill for the rest.
I’ve had better days than today.
I took a half vacation day, because I’d made an appointment with a plumber to look at a water pressure problem in my shower. His diagnosis was that I need my entire pipe system rebuilt.
That wasn’t the answer I was looking for. I’ll put that one off. For years, God willing.
As I left work to meet the plumber, I exchanged a few words with a co-worker. As he turned away from me to go inside, he walked straight into a column in the entryway and gave himself a bloody nose.
I know in my heart it was my fault.
I also noticed a couple deaths in the news. One was Robert Goulet. Goulet has become a sort of a joke in recent decades, but when I was a kid I thought he was the coolest guy in the world. I wanted to grow up to look like him and sing like him. I also wanted to be married to Carol Lawrence, his wife at the time. (They were slim, dark-haired people. When I was a kid I never understood all the excitement about blondes. I lived in one of the most Norwegian towns in America. Blondes were a dime a dozen in Kenyon. Dark-haired people were exotic and beautiful in my eyes.)
I did not succeed in growing up to be Goulet, but I’ve learned to live with it.
Also Hank Reinhardt died Tuesday. You’ve probably never heard of him, but he was the founder of Museum Replicas, Ltd., one of the foremost purveyors of replica swords to reenactors like me. I have several pieces of equipment from his company. He was also, as it happened, married to a senior editor at Baen Books, who is now Managing Editor, so I had one degree of separation from his acquaintance.
But there is one piece of good news. Fred Phelps’ Westboro Baptist Church, the egregious “God Hates Fags” people, lost a big case in federal court (thanks to Blue Crab Boulevard). They’ll have to pay the family of an Iraq War veteran whose funeral they disrupted.
I can imagine ways in which this judgment might lead to bad precedents, but if anybody has it coming it’s the WBC crowd.
God hates ‘em.
Martin Luther posted these comments: “This unbridled preaching of indulgences makes it difficult for learned men to guard the respect due to the pope against false accusations, or at least from the keen criticisms of the laity.
They ask, e.g.: Why does not the pope liberate everyone from purgatory for the sake of love (a most holy thing) and because of the supreme necessity of their souls? This would be morally the best of all reasons. Meanwhile he redeems innumerable souls for money, a most perishable thing, with which to build St. Peter’s church, a very minor purpose.” Continue reading Today in History
First of all, I have to thank our reader and occasional commenter Aitchmark. I chat with him on AIM now and then, and the other night he tentatively diagnosed (sight unseen) the malady that’s been bugging me for weeks. I’d been fading in the afternoons, just feeling leaden. He asked me if I’d been breathing anything that might be bad, and it suddenly occurred to me that the moldy old books I’ve been cataloging for the archive might not be the best thing for me. I took an antihistamine, bought some paper breathing masks, and I feel better already.
The title of Robert Crais’ The Two Minute Rule refers to a guideline well known to both policemen and bank robbers—if you want to knock off a bank, you need to be in and out in two minutes, or you’re likely to be caught.
Which was what happened to Max Holman ten years ago. Back then he was an alcoholic and a drug addict, addicted to the thrill of danger. In his time in prison he’s dried out, and he intends to make a genuine effort to live a straight life now that he’s being released. He also wants to make amends to his former girlfriend, and to the son they had together, whom he neglected even before his arrest.
But on the day of his release, he gets bad news. His son (who had become a policeman) has been murdered, along with three other officers.
Even the cops treat him with consideration at first, in spite of his ex-con status. But Holman is puzzled by the official story of the ambush that killed his son. The attack happened in the concrete channel of the Los Angeles River. How did anyone sneak up on them in such an open location? And why, when he visits his son’s widow, does he find a police file on a desk, concerning a recent series of robberies by two now-dead felons? What business was that case of a uniformed policeman’s? Was his son a corrupt cop? If so, was that Holman’s own fault?
When he asks more questions, the police become hostile, and finally they threaten him. That’s when Holman turns for help to the only law enforcement figure he knows he can trust.
Katherine Pollard, the FBI agent who put him away ten years ago.
Pollard is out of the agency now, trying to make it as a single mother. She joins Holman in investigating the matter mostly because she’s bored and misses police work. But as the questions get harder, and the violence escalates, she begins to alternate between frustration with the police, anger at Holman, and… other feelings for Holman. She begins to fear that she’s “going Indian”—getting too closely involved with a criminal and his world.
The Two Minute Rule is notable for a remarkable risk (for popular fiction) taken by the author. He doesn’t make his main characters look like movie stars. Holman, we’re told, has put on weight in prison. He’s flabby and pale. Katherine too has put on weight since she left the FBI. She’s always worrying about the size of her bottom. This is a nice touch of realism that (for me) made the whole thing ring much truer.
I won’t spoil the ending for you, but it involves a genuine concern for maturity and responsibility that’s been sadly lacking, I believe, in books and movies for a long time. I was very pleased with the ending, and recommend The Two Minute Rule to most readers. The usual cautions about language and violence that generally go with mainstream novels nowadays apply here, it goes without saying.
I like the direction Robert Crais (author of the Elvis Cole books, in which the main character is also maturing) is taking in his novels. Kudos to him.
The docks are on dry land in Lake Lanier. Why does God withhold the rain? Why does he send the wildfire? It’s for the same reason my car doesn’t start sometimes. The Lord calls us to trust him.
Sure, there are responsible things we can do to help sometimes. I don’t know what we could do about the drought other than conserve water now that we’re in the middle of it, but proper forest management can cut back on wildfires, and if a mechanic could discern my car trouble, we could fix that too. But in all trouble, especially the natural disaster type, God’s message is to trust him.
Even the sparrow finds a home,
and the swallow a nest for herself,
where she may lay her young,
at your altars, O LORD of hosts,
my King and my God. (Psalm 84:3 ESV)
How often does the Lord tell his people not to fear, and how much fear do we, Christians in America, struggle with? I speak for myself here. Why am I afraid of nothing? And here I claim to trust the Lord with my life.
Mitt Romney in an interview with Sean Hannity tonight:
But I fundamentally think the people will not vote based upon someone’s gender or their race, or their religion, for that matter. I think they’re going to look at what their vision is for the future of the country, where they would take it, and whether they had the experience and skills to actually lead a nation of our scale in such a critical time.
And I think the greatest drawback beyond the direction [Mrs. Clinton would] take us is that she’s never run anything. She’s never had the occasion of being in the private sector, running a business, or, for that matter, running a state or a city. She hasn’t run anything, and the government of the United States is not a place for a president to be an intern. You need to have experience actually leading and running things.
Maud Newton is giving away both volumes of the Paris Review writer interview today.
Outsiders are calling on Amazon.com (which has a nice, new design) to make a category for alternative literature. You can see the categories on the side of their Literature & Fiction section now. What do you think? Do you care about Indie Lit? Have you read anything good there?
I’m late, and this post will be short, assuming I get it posted at all.
I’ve been in Wireless Router Purgatory all evening, and Earthlink phone support is down due to “technical problems” (no doubt they’re on hold with their own phone support). Then, after a couple hours, my connection light came on again all on its own. And then off again. And now it’s on again. So I’m hoping I can get this posted before it falls off the wagon once more.
Blue Crab Boulevard provides this post about the world’s oldest clam–we’re talking a 400-year-old mollusk here. Found in one of my favorite places, no less. Iceland.
What the article doesn’t tell is whether it was found in a month with an “R” in it.
And Theodore Dalrymple (himself not a believer) makes some excellent arguments against recent atheist books in City Journal. (Hat tip to Freedom Dogs.)
Speaking of Colbert and H.S. Key, the latter points out an interview with the former in Vanity Fair. “His getup,” says Seth Mnookin in the article, “combined with the swagger he affects onstage, made him seem like Clark Kent, if Clark Kent acted more like Superman in his everyday life.” As I suspected, Colbert appears to be a normal, admirable man. I’m going to have to read his book now.