Roy over at Writing, Clear and Simple identifies a word commonly misused, especially by journalists, in our day.
It seemed to me a matter of some importance.
A crisis, as a matter of fact.
Scientists Find Universe Origin
“It is 1 billion light years across of nothing,” they say. A Hawaiian astronomer notes, “It looks like something to be taken seriously.”
Anne Rice Endorses Clinton, Takes Flak
Author Anne Rice apparently has stirred up her readers by posting a letter of endorsement for Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign on her website. I heard her talk about it with Alan Colmes, giving her reasons for making this political statement when she had sworn off those statements before. You can hear that conversation on her site. She also talks about her books, how she wouldn’t have used the word vampire had she to write them over again, and her Christian faith.
On the political matter, Rice said many people were telling her they would not vote for a president this time around. I hope that isn’t you. I understand being disappointed in our choices and in the sorry discourse we call debate, but we are a government of the people who are responsible for our own representation. We need to access the men and women who have stepped forward to serve or abuse political office and vote for the best one. The government will not respect your freedoms if you ignore it. So stop whining that Reagan or George Washington isn’t running and plan to vote in your primary and general elections.
Lawn blogging… the absolute bottom
What do I have to write about tonight? Can’t think of much. Did the usual thing at work. Came home and mowed the lawn.
The weeks of rainy weather we’ve had have turned my lawn around in a way that amazes me. Very few bald spots now, and the grass is thick—thick, I say! Like hair on an Airedale. OK, granted it’s not all the kind of grass you want, in an ideal world. When I reseeded some bare spots last year, it appears I’d bought an entirely different species of grass, one which now sits ghettoed in minority patches, agitating for equal rights and reparations. And I’ve got some crab grass, and some Creeping Charlie (I actually kind of like Creeping Charlie. And since concrete walls separate my yard from both my neighbors’, so I can’t infect their lawns, I see no reason not to indulge it).
But it’s thick! It covers the ground. Back when I lived in Florida, I used to think back on a lawn almost precisely like this (my aunt’s in St. Paul, which I’d often mowed). For all its departures from canonical orthodox lawndom, folks in Florida would have paid big money to have this kind of thick, green grass. And often did.
What I wrote above is deeply disturbing to me. All my life I’ve been a guy who’s “not into lawns.” I used to say, “Show me a guy who keeps a perfect lawn, and I’ll show you a guy with a lousy marriage.” My dislike for golf springs mostly from my distaste for broad expanses of mown grass. My original intention in buying a house was to get a townhouse, so somebody else would do the lawn.
And here I am now, taking an interest in my lawn.
I must be evolving into a better, finer soul.
I hate it when that happens.
If I ever start talking about aerating and water features, somebody do an intervention.
Spook, by Bill Pronzini
There are a million injustices in the mean streets of Publishing Town. The greatest of all, it goes without saying, is my own failure to find a new publisher. But not far behind is the tragic fact that Bill Pronzini is not a major, bestselling mystery writer.
He’s published and respected and he wins awards, but he’s never broken out as I think he should. He has everything I want in a mystery writer. He sets out a good puzzle, but he also paints a good character, which is what I really want.
I realized years ago, reading Science Fiction, why I don’t care for most Science Fiction. It’s because the authors treat their characters like specimens on a dissection tray. “Let’s poke the subject here, and see what its reaction is.” They had no compassion for their characters, and I put down their books with relief.
There are mystery writers like that too, but Bill Pronzini isn’t one of them. His characters are 98.6 F warm. They act like real people, for real motives, and Pronzini has compassion on them—even the bad ones.
His continuing character is known as “The Nameless Detective,” not because he’s a man of mystery, but because Pronzini started writing about him in short stories without giving him a name, and once he’d established him that way it would detract from the stories to suddenly drop a name on him (although he did let us know, some years back, that Nameless’ first name is Bill).
Nameless has grown over the years. He started out as a young San Francisco private eye who consciously modeled himself on the hard-boiled sleuths of the old pulp magazines, of which he is a collector. He was also a heavy smoker at the start, which gave Pronzini the chance to kill him off from cancer in one memorable short story. But (like Conan Doyle) he succumbed to the temptation to bring his detective back. Nameless had a remission, and has taken care of himself since then.
He’s middle-aged now, and married to a woman named Kerry. They’ve adopted a little girl. He’s planning to semi-retire soon, and has taken on a partner, a young black woman named Tamara whom he mentored. In this book they also hire an operative, a former cop named Jake Runyon. Runyon has many personal demons, which helps him fit right in.
In Spook, the agency is hired by a San Francisco film company to discover the identity of a homeless man whom everyone called “Spook,” a gentle, mentally disturbed man who was shot to death in an alley behind their studio. It’s not supposed to be a Whodunnit. It’s just that the filmmakers liked the man, and would like to notify his family, or arrange for burial themselves.
Following the clues they turn up, the detectives send their new operative, Runyon, out to a small town in the Sierras to discover the tragic story behind “Spook’s” decline. Runyon doesn’t mind. He has absolutely nothing in his life anymore except for his work, and he provides an empathetic eye as he turns over the old log he finds, to see what worms writhe underneath.
But there’s more than just worms there. There’s a wasp—someone very angry and very crazy, with a brainful of hate and resentment. And a gun.
Pronzini is a fine, professional storyteller who draws you in and makes you care. Profanity and sexual situations are on the low side for the genre. I recommend Spook, and all Pronzini’s novels.
Who Will Miss You?
I found this site through the PC World Under-the-Radar sites, Copyblogger. In this post, Ryan Imel asks, “If your blog disappeared, who would miss it?” What do you think of his ideas?
PC World Recommended Sites
PC World has listed 100 sites which they call “new or under-the-radar sites of 2007.” Ninja Words, “a really fast dictionary,” is one of them. I just tried it–gives results almost instantly. The magazine also lists sites in a reading section. Looks interesting.
The real Josey Wales: my theory
Had a very pleasant TV evening last night. One of our PBS stations was doing one of its increasingly frequent telethons, and they broadcast the “Celtic Woman: The New Journey” concert.
I avoided “Celtic Woman” the first few times they broadcast it (I’ve never actually seen the original concert). The simple pairing of adjective and noun in the title somehow communicated an image of aggressive, ugly feminism. Betty Friedan with a harp. Gloria Steinem burning some randomly selected male in a wicker man… er, person.
What was my amazement, then, to discover that the production is actually a marvelously staged concert featuring lovely women in pretty gowns, singing their little hearts out in voices right up there in the Sissel class. And the cutest little blonde you ever saw (who obviously knows how cute she is, and works it) dances and fiddles simultaneously, to the wonderment of all.
That’s entertainment. If you haven’t seen it yet, watch it the next time your PBS station begs for money (any minute now, probably).
Just don’t make a pledge.
After writing about Forrest Carter the other day, and getting my TV picture back, I decided to watch my DVD of The Outlaw Josey Wales.
Brought back memories, it did. No movie has ever invaded and inhabited my life like that one did. I saw it thirteen times, back when you actually had to go to a theater and buy a ticket if you wanted to see a movie.
It resonated with things going on in my own life at the time (including a temporary move to Missouri, which I may tell you about someday if you’re good).
And I was deeply fascinated with the Wild West, particularly the Missouri border war, at the time. I even bought a couple replica cap and ball Colts, which I practiced with a lot (the folks were still on the farm back then, and I could drive down and shoot without paying any range fees).
I much appreciated the pistols in the movie. I was constantly aware, as I watched, of how many bullets Josey had fired. Because with cap and ball, you’ve got to be aware. Those old charcoal burners can’t be speed loaded. It involves a rather painstaking process of measuring in powder, jamming the ball home, and capping the nipple, one round at a time (you also cover the chamber opening with grease, to prevent chain firing). Which is why Josey Wales carries so much iron. It’s not an exaggeration in the movie. For a man in his situation, to carry one pistol would be suicidal, and two would be barely adequate. There’s not only the issue of being unable to re-load under fire. Those caps also have a way of jumping inside the cocked hammer, getting down into the mechanism, and jamming the whole pistol for you.
Thinking about the story, and about Forrest Carter’s life story (which remains in large part a mystery), I came up with a theory about this white supremacist and speechwriter for George Wallace who turned himself into a renowned New Age Cherokee wise man.
I think Gone To Texas (the novel on which The Outlaw Josey Wales is based) is to a large degree autobiographical.
The story of Josey Wales (if you haven’t seen the movie) is of a man who has been on the losing side in a war. He has lost his family, and the entire way of life he has known has been taken away by the government. He flees to Texas, robbing a bank on the way to pay his expenses (this is a difference between the book and the movie. In the movie Josey’s young friend is wounded by nasty Union soldiers who treacherously offered the guerrillas amnesty, then ambushed them when they’d given up their weapons. In the book, he’s shot while they’re robbing a carpetbagger bank). Along the way, Josey joins up with two Indians, and then with other whites, and they all make a new life in Texas thanks to Josey’s shootin’ skills and personal integrity. In the end Josey finds peace, living under a new name.
Asa Carter was on the losing side of the Civil Rights conflict. Politically ruined, he fled to Texas too, assuming the identity of a Cherokee along the way and taking a new name. He also robbed the “carpetbaggers,” not with a pistol, but with a “big con.” A huge, beautiful con that worked like a charm almost to the end.
I could wish he were a more sympathetic character, because he played the American left like a country fiddle.
He knew that in the new, post-segregation world, he could never be a big, important man as a white man obsessed with race.
But he figured out that he could become a big, important man as a Native American obsessed with race.
We hate white racists. But we love Indian racists.
He knew that he’d never get a book published and made into a movie writing as a white man who hates the government.
But he figured out he could write an anti-government book, and get a movie deal, if he moved the story back to the Civil War, when the government was Republican (Hollywood hates Republicans even a century ago, when the Republicans were the liberals. Check it out. Find me a recent movie set in the 19th Century that has a single good thing to say about Republicans, even though they were the party of abolition and rights for black people).
(As a parenthetical note, the scaly senator in the ambush scene in the movie is an actual historical character, Sen. Jim Lane (R) of Kansas, one of the slimier specimens to ever slither through American politics, which is saying a lot. He went to Kansas as a pro-slavery man, but quickly realized that prospects were better on the abolitionist side, and so “flip-flopped.” He used to make it a point to attend revival meetings on his campaign trips, and would go weeping to the altar rail, over and over again, after which he would allow himself to be baptized by the preacher. One farmer is said to have told his son, “Don’t water the cows downstream from where they baptized Jim Lane.”
Remember Mary Surratt, the woman convicted of participating in the Lincoln assassination, the first woman legally hanged in the United States? Nobody expected her to be hanged. Everyone figured President Johnson would pardon her. President Johnson expected to pardon her. But the pardon didn’t get to him, because Jim Lane and a friend physically barred the way, keeping Mrs. Surratt’s daughter, weeping, outside the door.
Jim Lane eventually committed suicide when a financial scandal caught up with him.)
Racism is a stupid philosophy, but that doesn’t mean all racists are stupid people. Asa/Forrest Carter found a way to siphon off liberal money and get his victims to thank him for taking it from them.
It must have felt sweet. When he was sober.
The Picture of Evolution
The Pixel Viking has a beautiful photo which could illustrate evolution wonderfully, if only it were the result of mindless forces or some kind of accident.
Grant Me the Grace to Desire Humility
A Litany of Humility. “From the desire of being esteemed, Deliver me, Jesus.”