A Bold Preposition(al Phrase)

If sentence construction is a story's tactics, then grammar is the rules of engagement. I'm no grammarian, mind you. I just want my words to count. That brings me to this particular sound-off and sometimes my almighty struggle: the prepositional phrase.

For the grammatical record, a prepositional phrase is:

• The preposition (about, before, down, except, for, in, near, on, off, under, with, etc.);
• Its object -- a noun, pronoun, or something functioning as such; 
• Any modifiers to the object.

No prepositional phrase exists in a vacuum. They modify something higher up the grammatical food chain, either a noun or a verb. Preferably, an important one. This is nerdy but essential. Too often, no small amount of my editing dwells on fixing my prepositional phrases--including whether I needed them at all.

But I'm also talking about more than grammar. When I'm moving those prepositions around, I'm calculating punch, timing, mood, and sentence variety. I'm fine-tuning the action and thus the characters. Not surprisingly, I've developed a few guidelines to help minimize editing blood pressure spikes.

Guideline: Stay Active

"The sound of laughter" is a complete grammatical phrase. "Sound" is the subject, "laughter" the modifying prepositional object. A complete thought, but indirect enough to invite the passive voice. "Was heard by all" feels almost inevitable to follow. 

What's more important here? The "sound" or the "laughter?" It could be either. "Laughter" is more specific and more powerful than "sound." If laughter is the key action and heaviest hitter, then it should be the sentence subject with an equally powerful verb. "Sound of" seems unnecessary. 

Guideline: Drunk and Disorderly

If you read a fair few legal documents, it's not uncommon to encounter mass pile-ups of prepositional phrases. A lawyer on a roll can chain four, five, eight prepositional phrases together in a single, sprawling clause. Boring, but it's doing its job. Those prepositions stack needed qualifiers to the core provision. 

Well, we're not writing legal documents here. A traffic jam of prepositions makes things blocky and turns reading comprehension into a slog. An example:

Conversation ground to a halt when McGillicuddy shot me the stink-eye that he usually did before breaking tough news in his office on the penthouse floor with the full view of the city behind him.

To avoid things getting out of hand, I self-imposed a cap of two in a row max. Two keeps me focused on key actors and actions. Any further details can be worked into a later sentence.

Conversation ground to a halt. McGillicuddy shot me the stink-eye that he usually did before breaking tough news. We were drinking Old Sasquatch in his penthouse office, the city below spreading to the horizon.

Not great, but at least these sentences behave. Once I cap the pile-up, the next problem is ordering the survivors. 

Guideline: First Things First

The English language has developed many ordering rules for modifiers--except for prepositional phrases. We writers are largely left to our wits. But there are two north stars to guide us.

• A phrase functioning as an adjective follows the noun (sentence subject). Think: Her photo on the wall stood watch over the parlor.

• A phrase functioning as an adverb follows the verb. Same sentence: Her photo on the wall stood watch over the parlor.

Easy enough. My headache comes with ordering my chains of two or (shudder) three. Flipping them--and maybe flipping them back--bites me more often than I care to admit.

• WRONG: Dave shoved the evidence in the drawer ahead of the cops under his socks.

• RIGHT: Dave shoved the evidence in his sock drawer ahead of the cops.

The first example fails its adverbial duty. The cops are not under the socks. Also, shoving is the important action, so the modifier belongs where the socks were shoved. The second example lands the sentence on that small matter of the cops.

Let's get more complicated.

• WRONG: The pirates debated their heading in the galley for raiding Port Arghh with the captain.

• RIGHT: The pirates debated the Port Arghh raid over rum with the captain. 

The first example is all over the place. Is the captain connected to Port Arghh or the pirate crew? The second example won't win any awards, but it keeps the thought line straight. The construction immediately cuts to the central rum-soaked debate and Port Arghh, giving both more primacy. Ending on "with the captain" sets the blackguard up to decide the next move. 

Guideline: Proper Introductions

In fiction, some sentences just work better with an opening preposition. Take that last sentence. The opening "In fiction" grounds the reader, and there isn't a better fit later on. This is a flow thing, phrase by phrase and sentence by sentence. I know it when it works--and I pick up on it when reading a manuscript aloud. 

I default to opening sentences with the subject. English is designed that way, and I'm not going to fight that. But guidelines are just that.. Inverting prepositional phrases to open things can change the feel in critical ways:

• Traditional: "The truth looked a lot different under the streetlamps." That's effective in showing the narrator shifting as they have time to think, with "streetlamps" as a stark and atmospheric closer.

• Inverted: "Under the streetlamps, the truth looked a lot different." This time, we get the mood before we get the truth. Ending on "different" sets up an emotional or revealing next sentence. 

Done judiciously and well, the humble prepositional phrase is powerful, flexible--or ruinous fluff leading to blood pressure checks.

A Library of One's Own

 

Books I have not read.

In the beginning they were all library books, and they were manageable. At the library across the street from the public school, a kid could borrow up to five books, max, which was good, because those early selections were short picture books that I breezed through quickly, often in the car on the way home. Typically, I chose books our teacher had read to us in class. Now I wanted to turn the pages myself and take as much time as possible to digest them.

After I absorbed the story, I’d start over again, this time studying every single image and imagining how the illustrators had done their work. Think about the crosshatching in books by Maurice Sendak. You could get lost in those lines.

One of the books from those days—Stupid Marco by Jay Williams, about a moronic prince who cannot tell his right hand from his left—was beautifully illustrated by a Dutch illustrator named Friso Henstra. Scritchy-scratchy lines galore. Can you imagine anyone permitting a kid to read a book today whose protagonist is labeled stupid on the front cover?

Eventually, I’d bring the books back and get a whole new stack. I could do this as many times as I wanted, and no one ever gave me guff about it. It cost nothing, and in the end the books went back where they belonged.

Neat. Tidy.

When I started buying paperbacks at the local bookstore, I bought to fill in the gaps in the library’s collection. But I still followed the same logical process: buy, read, buy another.

Neat. Tidy.

In other words, books were borrowed or purchased in order to be read now. They never came home and stayed untouched. This was the greatest of all rules. I read what I bought, and I read what I borrowed.

There was no such thing as unread books.

I continued this practice well into college and slightly beyond. Then, for some reason, the Neat-Tidy system broke down. Books entered my apartment and stayed unread for a good long time. They stacked up on the bookshelf. Or in piles near the couch. On my bedside table. On my desk. I rationalized their acquisition because I knew I would get to them in time, because I always had.

Soon books entered the dwelling unread and stayed that way for years. For some reason, I was okay with this. I did what anyone in my position would do: I blamed Otto Penzler.

When I was fresh out of college, somehow I learned of the Crime Collector’s Club (CCC) that Penzler operated out of his Mysterious Bookshop in Manhattan, the location with the charming spiral staircase. You signed up, you sent him money, and every month he mailed you a new hardcover book.

These were special. They were autographed by the author. I had never heard of such a thing. It was the most marvelous thing ever. When I finally got around to reading the book, it didn’t matter that there were no pictures; I could ogle the writer’s handwriting on the title page as I read. Wow.

Sometimes you could opt for a second book on Otto’s monthly offer! Holy smokes. More books to paw over and stack up for future reading.

Thank you, authors. Thank you, publishers. Thank you, Otto.

A friend once asked about Otto’s CCC and marveled that I was willing to spend a princely $17.95 a month on hardcover books. “That’s expensive!” she spluttered. She was right. We were journalists living on crappy incomes. In my defense, I wasn’t yet married, nor did I have the mouths of babes to feed. What was I going to do with my meager earnings anyway? Eat? Pay rent?

The Japanese have a word for this bookish behavior: tsundoku. It means piling up reading materials that go unread. Apparently no judgment is implied when a case of tsundoku is diagnosed. The situation just is.

I have developed coping mechanisms over the years. I had to. I am not an animal. Pound for pound, unless you have taken up a side hobby like blacksmithing, welding, or the letterpress arts, books are apt to be the heaviest things you will ever own. A single move will impart a critical lesson: you are, in effect, paying twice for all the books you have and haven’t read. From time to time, I painfully pick my way through the stacks and decide: Am I ever really going to read this? If the answer is no, out the door it goes.

I have given away books, lent them, donated them. The piles still grow. Nowadays, when I pick them up, they come with stories their makers never intended. This copy of Irish short stories is the one I bought for my Irish lit class in college. I remember how charming the professor was when he read Yeats aloud in a pleasing Irish brogue. By chance is he still alive, I wonder? Here, also, are countless copies of signed books by friends. Looking back, I should not have been so impressed by the signed books Mr. Penzler sold. If you write, in time you amass friends who also write. You amass their books as well. Now, fully a third of my living room bookshelves are devoted to signed copies. And yes, I have to admit, many of those are unread too.

Once, while walking the dog, I happened upon one of those Little Free Libraries, and discovered a first edition of Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities and nearly wept. Ages ago, while living in Hoboken, I once had my own first of that book. I’d bought it when it first came out. (Tom and I go way back. In journalism school, we were taught that he was a god, and for a while I subscribed to this notion.) I had enjoyed the book the first time around, but I had donated it after some years and always regretted it. Here it was, in North Carolina, in a perfectly fine dust jacket. What was I supposed to do, not take it home and stick it on a pile?

For a while there, my wife and I eagerly consumed Marie Kondo’s classic, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, and dutifully followed its prescribed steps. We decluttered our kitchen! We decluttered our clothing closets, our garage, the outdoor shed. Kondo’s system was brilliant. Pick up an item and ask yourself, “Does this spark joy?” If the answer is no, you know what to do.

She instructed you to carefully purge your way from objects of little sentimental value to the most. (Family heirlooms and photographs are the last thing you purge.) We never applied her principle to books. My wife refused to. She insisted that Kondo, a Japanese author who had once worked at a shinto shrine before becoming a professional organizer, didn’t actually understand books. It seemed as if tsundoku, in her personal cosmology, came loaded with judgment. At that stage in our process, we donated Kondo’s book and never looked back.

I have learned over time to not gratuitously add to the pile. I feel a helpful wave of shame when I attend bookstore events. Such lovely authors! (But I simply cannot buy another book, can I? No! You have too many! More than you will ever read in the time remaining!) Then comes the other voice: You can’t support another writer? What kind of writer are you?

I used to be appalled when I saw how many people departed bookstores, empty-handed, after a reading. Now I understand.

In 2022, when my father died in California, my brother asked if I wanted Dad’s multi-volume set of Popular Mechanics guides for the practical handyman. If I Venmoed him some money, my brother would pack all sixteen volumes in a box—

“Absolutely not!” I shouted into the phone.

I was outvoted by my wife, who thought it might be hilarious to have such books.

Great. I squeezed them in among the cookbooks in the den, and flip through them when I need to repair a faucet or refurbish a crappy cabinet, as I did last weekend. Why would I use the internet to research how to remove decrepit hardware, and to sand, buff and carefully pound in finishing nails when I had a perfectly good book on my shelf—which predated the internet and possibly the invention of television—that demonstrated the precise steps necessary to turn another inherited piece of crap into an exquisite, eye-catching piece upon which to store more piles of unread books?

There is a moment in many of those country house mysteries where the inspector interviews an insomniac suspect who says he came downstairs in his bathrobe at 3 a.m. to get a book out of his host’s library, and encountered another suspect who was descending the servant’s staircase to fetch a sandwich.

Bull, I used to think, when I encountered such characters. Who wakes up at 3 a.m.? And who goes into someone else’s private library to borrow a book? And while we’re at it, Inspector, do you not find it at all odd that Lord Squidgecombe packed a bathrobe to visit someone’s country house for the weekend? How convenient! Almost as if he were expecting to need an alibi!

But you know what? Decades later, I get it. Not the bathrobe part, but the reading of new, enticing, strange books in the middle of the night. It certainly beats tossing and turning. If you have a sandwich handy, so much the better.

Five decades after I entered my first library, the one across the street from the public school, I have built my own. Amid the occasional duds and tripe, it’s filled with wonders, most of them forgotten or unappreciated by me. When I happen upon one of these, I’m a kid again and feel as if I’ve just picked out another gem. Please say you understand.

* * * 

See you in three weeks!

Joe

josephdagnese.com

The Unintended Benefits of Reading Nonfiction

As readers of this blog may recall, my recent posts here at Sleuthsayers have carried a heaviness to them: my recent discussion of my father’s experience of Alzheimer’s, and how it is impacting his loved ones, and the one about plagiarism down through the centuries, fine, fine times, for sure.

So I felt the need to change things up this go-round, and here’s what I did. I queried several writer friends and posed them the following question:

"I’m writing a blog post about 'How It’s the Non-Fiction You Wouldn’t Expect to Help Make You a Better Fiction Writer That Does In Fact Make You a Better Fiction Writer,' and so would LOVE your input. So maybe your pen name, title of the book and why it so helped your fiction writing?"

First, here are a few of my own favorites:

1. William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

The gold standard. Shirer served as CBS Radio’s “Man in Berlin” during the 1930s, getting out of town one step ahead of an SS arrest warrant in December of 1940. And after the war he pointed out who did what, where the bodies were buried, and brought receipts. And he did it all in a way that spoke directly to an American audience predisposed to disregard “just more European politics.”

2. Harold Bloom, How to Read and Why

Bloom, a well-respected literary critic, was a master prose stylist in his own right. Reading this slim volume helped remind me that language can be so much fun to play with.

3. Barbara W. Tuchman, Stillwell and the American Experience in China

Much better known for her two Pulitzer Prize winning works (The Guns of August, about World War I, and A Distant Mirror, about “the Calamitous Fourteenth Century,” Tuchman cut her teeth working for the Associated Press in Japan before World War II. As such she was deeply steeped in the goings on in China, and the perspective she brought to the conflict there was decades ahead of its time.

4. Diana Cooper, Darling Monster: the Letters of Lady Diana Cooper to Her Son John Julius Norwich (1939-1952)

Lady Diana Cooper knew everyone from the Mitford sisters to the most respected clerics in the nation, to Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson. Her candid, incisive, funny character sketches addressed to her son, historian J.J. Norwich (see below) are not to be missed.

5. John Julius Norwich, Byzantium (3 vols.)

Three volumes, eleven hundred years. Norwich is a master of the narrative voice. Each volume is a graduate course in writing compelling narrative while not losing sight of the larger stories

6. Patrick Leigh Fermor, A Time of Gifts

Once called a cross between James Bond, Indiana Jones and Graham Greene, Fermor lived a restless, adventurous life, and documented it entertainingly. At 18 he trekked from Dover to Constantinople. It was 1933, and A Time of Gifts documents the first one-third of that trip through a world that was already beginning to vanish under the pressures of Nazism, modernism, socialism, etc.

7. William Dalrymple, White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India

I picked this one about the role romance played in the cultural syncretism ongoing during the early years of the British Raj, but honestly, anything by Dalrymple, the greatest travel writer of this or any age, is worth your time.

8. Josephine Tey, The Daughter of Time

Tey was a terrific novelist. And she was also a passionate defender of the reputation of King Richard III. As such, her panegyric raising the question of whether or Richard Crouchback bore any culpability in the disappearance of his nephew the so-called “Princes in the Tower.” She says no. The historical record is far more damning. Tey is so good she almost convinced me!

9. Ross King, Brunelleschi's Dome

Turns out the greatest Renaissance genius might not have been a Leonardo or a Michelangelo, but rather an irascible builder who studied the interior dome of Rome’s Pantheon to unlock the secret of constructing an apparently unsupported dome. Short, quick and riveting.

10. Steven Greenblatt, The Swerve: How the World Became Modern

The ancient Roman poet Lucretius theorized the existence of the atom in a poem written two thousand years ago. But that’s only half the story. How Lucretius’ poem was lost for centuries and then found again, and preserved for modern audiences, now THAT is quite a story!

And on that note, on to the thoughts of my writer friends!

Writer and Editor Extraordinaire Jim Thomsen:

Top of mind is Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers, by Caroline Fraser, the recent true-crime Edgar winner, about the possible links between serial killers and being raised in the shadow of lead smelters (like the one in Tacoma). While I’m not sure I buy all her arguments, and I might have wished for less Ted Bundy and BTK rehash, I find myself rereading this book over and over because of the audacity of its originality — a wild mashup of science, true crime and memoir. Fraser, who was raised on Mercer Island, plays with the rules and breaks them all in dizzying but energizing fashion, veering page to page from wonky exposition to irreverent editorializing, and not being afraid to sound silly or sophomoric. Consider this quote: “During his five years on McNeil Island, virtually everything Charles Manson eats and drinks comes out of the earth, where particulates from the Ruston plume have been drifting down to the ground since 1890. He’ll live on McNeil Island longer than he’s lived in any place in his life. Later studies on McNeil find lead in soil ranging from a low of 19 parts per million (ppm) to a high of 190. Helter smelter.”

Murderland is such a wild original that I found myself pleasantly helter-skelter with the possibilities of widening the aperture of narrative in ways I’d never imagined. And with the idea that it’s OK to look a little silly in doing so in the service of a strong writing voice.

Fellow Sleuthsayer Eve Fisher:

Barbara Tuchman, A Distant Mirror, the Calamitous 14th Century - impeccable research, amazing stories (truth really is stranger than fiction), and a prose style to die for.  

Alfred W. Crosby, The Columbian Exchange - The book that made me see ecosystems in a whole new way. And how they affect(ed) our daily lives today. Very important. And very applicable to us on the micro as well as macrosystem.

Steven Mithen, After the Ice: A Global Human History, 20,000-5000 BC.  - Humans are humans, no matter how far you go back. The emotional / mental / spiritual ideas are always there.  But it sure is interesting what we do with them!  

I guess what I'm saying is that all of these showed me the important fact that no matter where you are, or what time you're in, the styles will change, but the stories remain the same.

As far as the language - oooh, I grew up reading Shakespeare, all kinds of poetry, and I discovered Bruce Chatwin (supposedly non-fiction but he did make some stuff up) and Peter Matthiessen and Henry Thoreau, who could describe a place and a feel and a spiritual experience with such beauty...  

So yeah, reading non-fiction has great rewards!

Kat Richardson:

I started out as a journalist, so non-fiction has had a big impact on my fiction writing. There were a lot of books and lectures within that study and my early career that made an impact, not to mention the journalists dictum "write tight."  Prof. Lawrence Meyer, my Course Advisor at CSULB, compiled a collection of historically significant journalism, from 17th century British authors Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, to the "new journalists" of the 1970s, including Wolfe, Hunter S. Thompson, Dunn, and Joan Didion's Slouching Toward Bethlehem. For copyright reasons it was never published, but we used it as our primary study text in his "Journalism as Literature" course. I learned a lot about writing with style and impact while keeping fact intact and prose tight

I also read a lot of narrative non-fiction, and the work of writers like Erik Larson (whom I do not care for, but owe respect for his ground-breaking approach), Deborah Blum's The Poisoner's Handbook, and Mary Roach's book Stiff. While these authors' narrative style is occasionally flawed in terms of absolute fact and completeness, they taught me a lot about drawing the reader into a longer, realistic story while maintaining an accessible and engaging tone. They also reminded me to check my sources and not rely on the veracity of any one source or author, if I'm writing about anything outside of my personal experience, be it fiction or non-fiction.

*    *    *

What about you, dear readers? Let us know what you think, or add your own favorites in the comments. And on that note, that’s it for this go-round.

See you in two weeks!

Emptying Pockets

My MMPB mysteries

The news may have slipped past you but last year the media was announcing the death of a familiar part of publishing.  It isn't exactly that the mass-market paperback is dead but that ReaderLink, the major distributor of paperbacks, has decided to stop dealing with them.  Which is not so much a killing blow as  a recognition that the format is fading away.

The mass-market paperback (MMPB) has been a staple since the 1930s.  I am putting up pictures of the  oldest ones I own.  One of the major publishers of them was Pocket Books, which tells you exactly what they were designed for: to fit into a man's pocket.  (Women were very lucky if their clothes had any suitable spaces.)  These were the books GIs took to the front. (My copy of Pocket Mystery Reader belonged to Sergeant Lawrence E. Hough in 1943.)

By the way, you may notice that three of the books I include here say Complete and/or Unabridged on the cover because in those early days  an MMPB often was a shortened version.  When I worked at a public library in the 1970s I had a hard time convincing an older patron that the paperback I had found her was complete.

MMPBs were so-called because they were sold in mass markets: grocery stores, drug stores, and so on.  Their competition was the trade paperback, typically the same size as a hardback, and only found in the trade, that is to say, bookstores.  Trade books are still around although ebooks continue to eat into their sales.

I have a special fondness for MMPBs, and here's why.

When I want to buy a new book, hardcover or trade, I go to my favorite independent bookstore.  But when I am going on a trip I go to my favorite used bookstore which has an amazing selection of thousands of MMPB mysteries.

So when I went to Egypt and Greece in January I headed to used-book-land with a special list of authors in my hand.  Take a look at the picture below and I am  sure you can see the factor that connected them.  And the beauty was, when I finished one I could leave it in a hotel or train and not worry about the cost.

I suspect the used book store will have old MMPBs long enough to last me out, but  you young whippersnappers may not be as lucky.

Change of Direction

     My turn to blog has circled around again. Originally, I had planned to use this space to talk about Malice Domestic. I'd rhapsodize about the forums I attended, impart the things I'd learned, congratulate the award winners, and, naturally, laud the high-level conversation conducted at the panel in which I participated. 

    The rough draft turned out to be a pretty boring read. Consequently, I've switched directions. 

    The longer I work at writing, the harder it is to find value in the planned events at a conference. Occasionally, I glean a nugget. And I still believe there is merit to an occasional refresher course on the lessons I should already know. But the thunderclaps of insight are becoming increasingly rare. 

    That's not to say that I didn't benefit from attending Malice Domestic. Rather, at this stage, the value I gained was subtle and harder to articulate. I renewed many old friendships, established several new ones, and plotted some future opportunities. None of the details fit well to a column like this.     

    Some months back, Michael Bracken modestly proposed in a SleuthSayers blog post that writing conferences should schedule less time for panels and more time for standing in the hall. The hallway, outside the meeting rooms, he noted, was where the real business got done. 

    More than ever, I found that I concur. But it is hard to talk about afterward. 

    And perhaps, it should be so. 

    The word "hall," according to Etymology Online, comes from the Old English heall, meaning a large space covered by a roof--think Beowulf's great hall or a market hall. The word later morphed into a term for a passageway as a castle's private rooms became separated from the common areas by doors. 

National Archives College Park Public Domain

    The heart of the word heall seems to be the roof. It protected the space from the elements. In some explanations, the roof concealed or shielded the room's occupants. The hall, in its oldest form, was a place of cover, protection, and concealment; it's only fitting that what happens in the hall, therefore, stays in the hall. 

    Fully geeking on the etymology of conference words, I spent a little time researching "panel." 

    Seamstresses and fans of craft cozies shouldn't be surprised to learn that the word panel comes from a French term meaning a piece of cloth, generally a rectangular one. The same root word is used for a glass pane. 

    Sometime around the 15th Century, panel made the jump to refer to those summoned by French authorities to serve as jurors. Once called, jurors' names were inscribed upon a rectangular piece of parchment (cloth). By the late 16th Century, this notion of panel had been diluted to include any group of people who gathered together to advise and consider. 

    And now, a distinguished foursome sitting on a dais behind a cloth-covered table holding forth and sharing their insights has become a panel. But the word remains particularly apt for Malice Domestic, Bouchercon, or any of the other mystery conferences. 

    Remember the original meaning of panel as a rectangular square of cloth? Heavy fabric made a great wall covering. The word panels also developed in that direction. Panels became the term for specific wall or door sections. And it's here that things started to take a dark and nefarious turn. 

    Bordellos and other disreputable places would be outfitted with panels. In these seedy establishments, at least one could be slid back and allow for customers to be robbed, beaten, or possibly killed. By the 19th Century, a panel-house had become slang for a bordello. 

    Panel, therefore, has the twin traditions of an erudite gathering combined with a dash of thievery and bodily harm. 

    Halls and Panels--two words with suggestions of secrecy. Perfect words for a mystery conference. 

    Until next time. 

  
 BSP: Panels do provide a great time to tout new works. Thanks to all who helped me release The Firefall by attending one of the launch events. I appreciate your support. 

Straight-laced hobgoblins.

             I’ve been tying my own shoes for about 70 years, give or take.  In that time, I’ve always preferred to include a double knot following the basic bow for added security.  When my son was a little boy, he called this extra precaution a “daddy knot”.  I’d do the honors, since it took a while for him to master it. 

In all that time untying my laces, I’ve pulled a loose end, which released the whole knot, quickly and simply.  Though it often didn’t, instead, tightening the knot further.  This led me to use fingernails and grit to complete the task, in a much more laborious operation.  I frequently wondered why sometimes the free lace untied the knot, and sometimes it didn’t.  I began to believe that I must have been tying the laces in different ways at different times, and in the back of my mind, promised myself to delve more deeply into this mystery when I had a ridiculous amount of spare time.

Then the other day, on my 75^th birthday, I pulled at one of the loose ends, which tightened the knot, then chose to pull the other one, which released it.  I thought, huh.  Is that the answer?  I realized I’ve tied my laces exactly the same way since early childhood.  The difference is that one end works great at freeing the knot when you pull it, and the other works at cross purposes.  It only took most of my years on earth to figure this out.  Discounting a few occasions when I went barefoot or wore flip flops, or loafers, I’ve probably had the opportunity to discover this simple truth about 24 thousand times (rough estimate by a non-mathematician.)

This was sobering.  I wondered what other solutions to common problems have been lurking there, staring me in the face for my entire life.  What else did I miss? 

I’ve written a lot of stuff since I learned how to do it.  I feel in some ways, I’ve gotten better at it, and in other ways, continue to fall short.  I’ve read masterful writers and think, how do they do it?  What do they know that I don’t?  Do I need to learn how to pull the right shoelace instead of the wrong one I’ve been pulling for my entire life?

I like to study brain science, because who doesn’t?  One of the things I’ve learned is that the brain prefers to follow pathways that it’s already established when assembling a thought or initiating a behavior.  This is because the brain consumes a disproportionate percentage of the resources we require to exist, so it’s always looking for more efficient ways to accomplish day-to-day responsibilities. Carving out new routes is harder than trekking along familiar highways, thus more energy conserving.  They call it habituation, and there’s no shame in it.  It’s just how we’re wired.

When you’re 75 years old, simple activities take on greater significance, since there are fewer important enterprises to focus on.  As a good German/Anglo-Saxon, I strive to make each of these more efficient, or less onerous, or more engaging, depending on the task.  Nobody but me cares about this, and neither should they. 

One of my favorite books from my early reading years was John Barth’s The Floating Opera.  He published it when he was in his early twenties, remarkable enough.  One of the protagonist’s practices was to intentionally make or break a habit as a matter of regular pratice.  This is the sort of wisdom that should be reserved for people far older than 20-something Barth.  He proposed that we should stop every once in a while and ask ourselves if we’re thinking something or doing something because it’s a good idea, or because our neural pathways are forcing us into lazy mental processing.

             Keeping an open mind is a whole lot harder than it sounds.  It’s almost impossible, no matter how much we revere the disposition.  Aside from the tyranny of our brain’s energy conservation there are social pressures to conform to certain established norms.  We like keeping the goodwill of our friends and family, so adventurous deviations, just for the hell of it, have their costs.

Family members in particular are threatened by sudden changes in course.  Their first thought is, “Uh-oh, Dad is getting wifty.”  But unless these loved ones are also your editors, changing up your approach to writing shouldn’t fire up any alarms.  Your family hasn’t paid enough attention along the way to notice anyway.  You’re just the granddad, or grandmother, huddled over the keyboard in your little corner of the house like you always do.

Following John Barth’s advice, I’ve been dabbling in habit making and breaking.  One of the most salubrious outcomes is realizing that some habits are very valuable and hard won.  You get a chance to recommit to certain things, because you’ve given them a fair appraisal.  You feel more secure in certain beliefs after they’ve been stress-tested and found to be worthy. 

You begin to realize that “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds”, but so is a promiscuous sampling of all the less beneficial options available. 

 

Spam and Scam • part 2

Last time, we shared real life scam stories. In the interem, an acquaintance was conned out of $38,000 as part of a marriage scam. Fortunately, once he discovered his mistake, he acted quickly and was able to recover all but $2000. He was lucky.

This month, I’ll offer basic suggestions to protect yourself.

Red Flags

• Unsolicited contact (call, text, email, or social media) demanding action right now.
• Unwarranted sense of urgency: Your bank won’t collapse. Super amazing investment deals can wait. The Nigerian prince is dead or he isn't. The IRS doesn’t keep local police on speed-dial. They also don’t phone you at home.
• Pressure to pay with untraceable methods: wire transfers, gift cards, payment apps, or that dark mystery of cryptocurrency.
• Requests for personal or financial information.
• Requests for you to help catch a bank swindler.
• Offers that sound too good to be true.
• Stories that tug hard at your emotions.
• Poor grammar in ‘official’ messages.
• Discouragement toward verifying their story with a trusted source.
• URL links that may or may not look slightly off. For example,
• YoürBank.com instead of YourBank.com or
• YourBankHelp.com instead of YourBank.com.
• Be aware that emails and web pages may display a web site name with a clickable link that hides a sinister URL within the HTML. In other words, text on the web page may display YourBank.com, while the hidden web address might be www.NastyScams.com.

Practical Protection

• Pause and verify. If someone claims to be calling from your bank or the government, hang up and call back using the number on your bank statement or official web site, never one scammers provide.
• Think before you click. Hover over links to check the real address. Better yet, type in your bank’s address. Don’t trust conveniently provided URLs.
• Block and filter. Use your phone’s built-in tools to enable spam-text filtering and silence unknown callers.
• Register with the national Do Not Call list. It’s imperfect, but it helps.
• Secure your accounts. Use strong, unique passwords and monitor statements weekly.
• Better yet, use lengthy passphrases. For example: ‘Judges12:5-6SayNowShibboleth’ is much, much stronger than Shibboleth42k (or Sibboleth).
• Do not provide real answers to so-called security questions. I may be the only consultant who argues against security questions, but I’m convinced it’s critical. Never ever select your favorite color question. Lie to protect yourself. Make up a nonsense alternative:
• Favorite pet name? “Forget it, buddy.”
• Your first car? “Forget it, buddy.”
• Who’s buried in Grant’s tomb? “Forget it, buddy.”
• Most experts recommend using multi-factor authentication everywhere possible. I confess reluctance, having witnessed users losing access because of a forgotten passphrase. Nevertheless, pros urge using 2FA until something better comes along. You decide.
• Never urgently send money to ‘help’ a ‘family member’ without independent confirmation. Call them on a known number first. For example:
• You receive a call from a Mexican jail claiming your grandchild is locked up but needs bail money. That can seem funny when your young relative is safely sitting on the sofa beside you, but it’s not funny in the middle of night when the caller sounds and acts exactly like your young relative and you have no idea where they are.
• Consider creating a family ‘safe word’ for emergencies.
• Do not download attachments from unknown sources.
• Be very cautious before downloading programs outside your app store.
• Help protect your family, especially trusting older relatives who are frequent targets.
• Don’t be concerned you'll hurt suspect callers’ feelings. They’ll survive. Scammers have screamed and cursed me. I survived.
• Know that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issues monthly advisories and alerts.

What to Do If You Suspect a Scam

• Act fast, but don’t be stampeded into recklessness before you can verify a caller’s story.
• Contact your bank or credit-card issuer immediately to freeze or reverse transactions.
• Report incidents at ReportFraud.ftc.gov . The FTC uses reports to track patterns and pursue criminals.
• If you shared personal data, place a fraud alert with credit bureaus and monitor your credit report.
• For tech-support or investment scams, additional help is available through the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (www.IC3.gov).

Scammers count on fear, greed, kindness, and time crunches to cloud judgment. They operate by script, intent of fooling a profitable percentage of ‘suckers’. Don’t be a sucker. Slowing down, asking questions, and trusting instincts breaks their playbook. Every report you file helps shut down operations and protects others. Stay vigilant, talk openly about scams with friends and family, and remember: legitimate organizations will never rush you into sending money or sharing sensitive information.

For more resources, visit consumer.ftc.gov or consumer.gov. Awareness is the best defense. Spread the word and stay safe.