Coffin Ed & Grave Digger Jones

Go back in time to the Sixties. The Police Action in Korea was over and the Vietnam Conflict was going full bore. Riots raged in the streets of many major U.S. cities, for one reason or another. Political agendas were being pushed by every group that thought they had the solution for everybody else. People believed anything was possible, even while poverty dragged at the lower classes. Change was blowing in the wind but still had a long ways to go.

Now find your way to Harlem, above 110th Street, in Manhattan. This is no longer the glitz, glamour and jazz culture of the Roaring Twenties Harlem when cash and booze flowed freely. This is the afterwards Harlem of decaying tenant buildings, corrupt officials, hard to get money and the erection of instant slums. Booze still flowed in bars, after hours joints and house rent parties, but now weed and H had been added to fuel the mixture. Crime ran rampant and violence became an occupational hazard. In the environment of Harlem Precinct, only a certain breed of cop could enforce the law.

Into this stewpot of pimps, prostitutes, weed heads, junkies, con men, gangsters, numbers bankers, thieves, muggers, and killers, author Chester Himes created two police detectives to keep law and order. The citizens of Harlem nicknamed them Coffin Ed and Grave Digger. They were there to protect the common people, the working stiff, the unwary, the naive square. Yet most times, Ed and Digger found it was all they could do to keep the lid on the city's garbage can.

Chester Himes tells their story better than I, so in his words:

Coffin Ed Johnson & Grave Digger Jones

The car scarcely made a sound; for all its dilapidated appearance the motor was ticking almost silently. It passed along practically unseen, like a ghostly vehicle floating in the dark, its occupants invisible.

This was due in part to the fact that both detectives were almost as dark as the night, and they were wearing lightweight black alpaca suits and black cotton shirts with the collars open....they wore their suit coats to cover their big glinting nickle-plated thirty-eight caliber revolvers they wore in their shoulder slings. They could see in the dark streets like cats, but couldn't be seen, which was just as well because their presence might have discouraged the vice business in Harlem and put countless citizens on relief. (Hot Day Hot Night, 1969, originally Blind Man With a Pistol)

Lieutenant Anderson had been on night duty in Harlem for over a year. During that time he had come to know his ace detectives well, and he depended on them. He knew they had their own personal interpretation of law enforcement. Some people they never touched--such as madams of orderly houses of prostitution, operators of orderly gambling games, people connected with the numbers racket, streetwalkers who stayed in their district. But they were rough on criminals of violence and confidence men. And, he had always thought they were rough on dope peddlers and pimps, too. So Grave Digger's casual explanation of Dummy's pimping surprised him. (The Big Gold Dream, 1960)

Coffin Ed was defiant. "Who's beefing?"
"The Acme Company's lawyers. They cried murder, brutality, anarchy, and everything else you can think of. They've filed charges with the police board of inquiry..."
"What the old man say?"
"Said he'd look into it..."
"Woe is us," Grave Digger said. "Every time we brush a citizen gently with the tip of our knuckles, there's shysters on the sidelines to cry brutality, like a Greek chorus." (Hot Day Hot Night, 1969)

Harlem

On the south side, Harlem is bounded by 110th Street. It extends west to the foot of Morningside Heights on which Columbia University stands. Manhattan Avenue, a block to the east of Morningside Drive, is one of the corner streets that screen the Harlem slums from view. The slum tenants give way suddenly to trees and well-kept apartment buildings where the big cars of the Harlem underworld are parked bumper to bumper. Only crime and vice can pay the high rents charged in such borderline areas. That's where Rufus lived. (The Big Gold Dream, 1960)

The Valley, that flat lowland of Harlem east of Seventh Avenue, was the frying pan of Hell. Heat was coming out of the pavement, bubbling from the asphalt; and the atmospheric pressure was pushing it back to earth like the lid on a pan. (The Heat's On, 1966)

"...The Coroner's report says the victim was killed where he lay. But nobody saw him arrive. Nobody remembers exactly when Chink Charley left the flat. Nobody knows when Dulcy Perry left. Nobody knows for certain if Reverend Short even fell out of the goddamned window. Do you believe that Digger?"
"Why not? This is Harlem where anything can happen."  (The Crazy Kill, 1959)

"Trouble?" Grave Digger echoed. "If trouble was money, everybody in Harlem would be millionaires."  (The Real Cool Killers, 1969)

A Few Notable Citizens

Uncle Saint
Both fired simultaneously.
The soft coughing sound of the silenced derringer was lost in the heavy booming blast of the shotgun.
In his panic, Uncle Saint had squeezed the triggers of both barrels.
The gunman's face disappeared and his thick heavy body was knocked over backward from the impact of the 12-gauge shells.
The rear light of a truck parked beneath the trestle in the middle of the avenue disintegrated for no apparent reason. (The Heat's On, 1966)

Jackson & Imabelle
Assistant DA Lawrence studied Jackson covertly, pretending he was reading his notes. He had heard of gullible people like Jackson, but he had never seen one in the flesh before.

*           *           *           *             *
Suddenly a Judas window opened in the door....
There was a turning of locks and a drawing of bolts, and the door opened outward.
Now Jackson could see the eye and its mate plainly. A high-yellow sensual face was framed in the light of the door. It was Imabelle's face. She was looking steadily into Jackson's eyes. Her mouth formed the words, "Come on in and kill him, Daddy. I'm all yours." Then she stepped back, making space for him to enter. (For Love of Imabelle, 1957, originally A Rage in Harlem)

Casper Holmes (crooked Harlem politician)
Casper Holmes was back in the hospital.
His mouth and eyes were bandaged; he could not see nor talk. There were tubes up his nostrils, and he had been given enough morphine to knock out a junkie.
But he was still conscious and alert. There was nothing wrong with his ears and he could write blind.
He was still playing God. (All Shot Up, 1960)

al fin

Chester Himes was born in 1909 to middle class parents, served time in Ohio for robbery, took up writing while in prison, moved to France to find a better life, won France's La Grand Prix du Roman Policier award for the best detective novel of 1957 (first in his Harlem detectives series), has his original manuscripts in the Yale University Library, and later died in Spain. Three of his detective novels were made into movies, titled: A Rage in Harlem (For Love of Imabelle), Cotton Comes to Harlem and Come Back Charleston Blue (The Heat's On).

A Question of Grammar

by Eve Fisher

In the course of a misspent life, I've noticed that words are tricky things. Slippery. Even though most people think they know exactly what words mean, what a passage means, what this SAYS - well, maybe not. There are two main reasons for this:

(1) We all interpret everything we read, hear, or say through the filter of our own separate minds, and we can never QUITE get across what is in our minds.

EXAMPLE: I taught (briefly) a creative writing class, and the first exercise I did was say words, and have everyone write down the image it conjured in their minds. Then we compared images. "Apple" was represented by Golden Delicious, Red Delicious, Granny Smith, the Apple record logo and, of course, the computer. So much for precision in language - choosing the exact word that everyone will understand the same way...

(2) The actual grammar of language, learned as infants, coded almost into our DNA, leads to far more ambiguity than anyone ever talks about.

I have a lot of examples for the second one, which I personally think is very important. Some of it comes from when I put myself through undergraduate school by teaching ESL classes. I taught Koreans, Chinese, Japanese, Brazilian, Vietnamese, and Puerto Rican students, and in the course of teaching them English, I learned a lot about my language, their languages, language in general.

English has the largest vocabulary on the planet, because we have incorporated, adopted, and stolen words from every culture we've run across. This gives us a huge array of nouns, verbs, adverbs and adjectives to choose from. So many, that foreign students often got fed up. Just take a look at Roget's Thesaurus some time to understand why.

English has an obsession with time. Most languages make do with simple present, simple past, simple future, conditional past/conditional future (woulda/coulda/shoulda), and the imperfect past (the way things USED to be). English laughs at that simplicity, and slices and dices time until we swim like a fish in a multi-dimensional chronology that we take for granted. The prime example is that English (as far as I know) is the only language with three - count them, THREE - present tenses: I do. I do that often. I am doing it right now. I eat. I eat here often. I am eating. Drove students crazy, and they usually just stuck to the simple present, because they could never figure out the others.

But English is sweet when it comes to nouns, because we don't gender them. ALL our nouns are gender-free. The book; the chair; the woman; the man. All European languages, of course, decline nouns (changing the end depending on where it stands in the sentence) and they also gender nouns - they are male, female, and (sometimes) neuter. What this means is that the pronoun you use after you use the noun must match the gender of the noun. This is a piece of cake in English: I took the book to the library, where I gave it to the librarian. But in French, it would be I took the (male) book to the library, where I gave HIM to the librarian. Well, what's the big whoop about that, you might ask? Allow me to provide an example where changing the pronoun changes the meaning:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not. (John 1:1-5, King James Version)

St. Bernard of Clairvaux

Au commencement était la Parole, et la Parole était avec Dieu, et la Parole était Dieu. Elle était au commencement avec Dieu. Toutes choses ont été faites par elle, et rien de ce qui a été fait n'a été fait sans elle. En elle était la vie, et la vie était la lumière des hommes. La lumière luit dans les ténèbres, et les ténèbres ne l'ont point reçue. (John 1:1-5, Louis Segond version)

Or, to translate it literally from French to English [my emphasis added], "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. SHE was in the beginning with God. All things were made by HER, and nothing of what was made was made without HER. In HER was the life and the life was the light of men. The light shone in the darkness, and the darkness did not receive HER."

A slight difference. With implications. For one thing (aside from all questions of faith or Catholic doctrine) I think it helps explain the Cult of the Virgin Mary, and the concept (later doctrine) of Mary as Mediatrix of all the graces.

On a lighter note, my favorite example of differences in translation:

"Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth" (KJV, Matt. 5:5)
"Heureux les débonnaires, car ils hériteront la terre!" (Louis Segon, MAtt. 5:5)
Let me assure you, les debonnaires are not the meek... they are the good-natured, the easy going. THEY will inherit the earth, at least in France!

Pronouns matter; words matter; grammar matters. Think about that the next time you read a Maigret, or a Steig Larsson - or the next time someone tells you, "just do what it says."


PS:  By the way, the fact that all of the quotes above are from the Bible is in no way deliberate - it's just that the Bible has about the only books that I've read both in French & English.  Almost all the other books that I have read in French, I have only read in French.

End of Days

I've been reading Max Hastings' ARMAGEDDON, which is about the last year of WWII in Europe, from D-Day to the German surrender. It's a door-stopper of a book, but he's a very skillful writer, and he lays out the campaign in vivid detail.

He tells the story from the shifting points of view of the four major armies, British, American, German, and Russian, and he makes even as confusing a fight as Arnhem transparent in its folly. (Hastings doesn't suffer fools gladly, and Montgomery comes in for his lumps, but so do quite a few others.) I highly recommend it.

Now, he's got a book out about the origins of the First World War, called CATASTROPHE. You'd think this ground had been pretty thoroughly plowed, but Hastings revisits an earlier argument, that Germany was the primary belligerent, and is most at fault for starting the war.

Many of us, probably, take for granted the received wisdom that Europe's major players in 1914 went over the cliff like lemmings, helpless in the grip of events they couldn't control, both the Entente and the Central Powers caught in a tangle of alliances that didn't allow them any wiggle room.

This is the case Barbara Tuchman makes in THE GUNS OF AUGUST, still the most influential history of events, and her view is backed up by Sir John Keegan and Paul Fussell, among others, but it wasn't always so.

Winston Churchill always held Germany responsible, as did a number of his contemporaries, John Buchan, for one. (Churchill is in fact known to think that both wars were continuous, and that the years from 1918 to 1939 were no more than a static interlude of false hope.) This is why Woodrow Wilson had such a tough sell at Versailles, because Clemenceau and the Brits insisted that the Germans accept full blame, and pay crippling reparations. The humiliation of the peace, and the collapse of the German economy, almost certainly led to Weimar's paralysis, and the rise of Hitler.

So the calamity of 1914 is well worth another look, and Hastings takes a very contrary position. In his reading, Germany is the aggressor, and Russia, France, and Great Britain were forced into the war by necessity. Germany was at this time Britain's chief rival, both in Europe and the world. They challenged Britain's fleet, and British colonial interests, in Africa and elsewhere. Britain's fortunes, politically and economically, rested on a stable international order. German amibitions upset that order.

After the June, 1914, assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, by a Bosnian nationalist, London had every reason to believe Berlin would exploit the Balkan crisis. Leaving aside the fact that Austria-Hungary had its own internal tensions, Germany did indeed turn the situation to their advantage. Their intention, if they could persuade France to remain neutral, was to attack Russia, but avoid a war on two fronts.

In the event, when Germany invaded Belgium that August, beginning their offensive in the West, to eliminate the French threat, everybody's calculations went off the rails. You have to look at the chronology of mobilization, which is complicated, and then decide whether Germany was bluffing, or trying to buy the pot, without in fact going to war, but it seems to me Hastings has got it right. The actions of the British, the French, and the Russians were taken in reaction to German saber-rattling. A general European war might never have happened, if Germany had shown any interest in conciliation, but their air was to dismantle British hegemony, and establish a German one, in central Europe, annexing Poland, and across their colonial empire, particularly in central Africa. The result, in a word, was catastrophe, for all involved.

The sense that nobody in particular caused the war,that it was a slide over the brink, brought on by accident, mutual suspicion, intransigence, or denial---Christopher Clark's book about it is called THE SLEEPWALKERS---is somehow oddly comforting, as if we're not responsible for history, which has its own logic and momentum, and sweeps us away, captive to a fall of the dice. But man makes history, for good or ill. We're captive to our own nature. In the end, nothing is written, and the waters are uncharted.

A Back Story

       My article today is going to be a little on the lite side. Mea culpa, but let me explain.

       Once a year I teach a graduate course at the University of Denver on the history of transportation development and regulation in the United States. My wife refers to this this as my annual “teachapalooza.” What I do is deliver a 7 hour lecture on transportation development in the United States. This means I cover about 38 years and hour. 

       Even though I have done this for five years now, the task is still daunting and preparation consumes a large amount of my time for a week or so prior to the course. This year’s teachapalooza was last Wednesday, and I flew back to Washington D.C. last Thursday. This would normally have provided me with ample time to pull together an article for Tuesday except for one little fact -- my wife and I were scheduled to leave Saturday for a family reunion in Nags Head North Carolina. And our beach cottage there has (believe it or not) no internet. 

Available at news stands!

       Everything, therefore, came down to Friday. And what you, faithful (I hope) readers have is a shorter entry this time around. So, what I thought I would do, within the constraints outlined above, is tell a funny back story about writing pastiches and, specifically, about writing my recent Ellery Queen story, Literally Dead, which appears in the December edition of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. 

        One of the hurdles involved in writing a pastiche -- at least a pastiche concerning a character, such as Ellery, who is still in copyright -- is that each story I write has to be cleared prior to publication by the heirs of Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee.  Luckily for me submitting stories to the Dannay and Lee families is far from a burden -- they have always been accommodating and, more to the point, it has been great fun to get to know, and to exchange emails with, the likes of Richard Dannay and Rand Lee. This is something that, as an Ellery Queen fan for decades, makes my day. 

        But back to today's story.  As I have said on many occasions, I abhor spoilers. Nevertheless I’m going to tell you just a bit about what transpires in Literally Dead since the story that follows only makes sense if you have been forearmed. 

        To begin with, it hardy tells too much to point out that in every Ellery Queen story someone inevitably must bite the dust. No exception with mine. While that crucial (and lamented) central character takes a few pages in my story to be done in, if you have any background at all in reading “fair play” mysteries you will have seen it coming from the very beginning.  The story introduces a famous author, Jennifer Kaye Rothkopf, who has just completed the seventh, and (to the dismay of many) final, volume of a fantasy series that tells the story of a young man who has been educated in a famous sorcery school. As I said, you can easily guess what is going to happen to poor Jennifer. 

        When the story was accepted for publication by Janet Hutchings I sent it off, as usual, to RIchard Dannay, himself an intellectual properties attorney in New York City, so that he could share it with the other Dannay and Lee heirs for their (hoped for!) approval. In due course I received the following email from Richard: 

Dale: Well done! I must say that your description of the murdered victim, author of the seven-book fantasy series involving a young sorcerer, led me to believe that you would be invoking the last two words of "The Adventure of the Seven Black Cats." Anyway, here's the agreement [allowing for the use of Ellery and other Queen-created characters]. If okay, just email back a signed and dated copy. Best. -- rd 

        Okay. Even as someone who is sort of known for his supposed in-depth knowledge of the works of Queen I was completely stumped. I had only the vaguest memory of the story to which Richard referred. I immediately went to my Ellery Queen library and found the story, one of the entries in The Adventures of Ellery Queen, published way back in 1934. My copy of the short story anthology was no spring chicken itself -- the volume still had the receipt in it. I had purchased it for ten cents at a used book fair in St. Louis in 1961, when I was all of 12 years old.  I remembered reading the stories at the time, but not since. No wonder it had faded from memory. 

       I resisted the temptation to turn to the last page in search of the two words to which Richard alluded. Instead I sat down to re-read the story for the first time in 50 years. (Gad, I hate being able to say that!) 

        Suffice it to say this story, sadly, was not Ellery at his best.  It also featured more gore than the reader of a golden age mystery usually anticipates, including the serial demise of those cats. But I persevered, all the way to the last page.  And right up until the bottom of that page I had absolutely no idea what Richard was talking about. And then all became clear. 

        The last two words in The Adventure of the Seven Black Cats are “Harry Potter.”

[Correction Note:  The original version of this article referred to the works of Ellery Queen as being "in the public domain."  The obvious error in that statement is that it should have said "Ellery Queen is NOT in the public domain."  Oops, and sorry about that!  Richard Dannay, in an email, called my attention to this error.  The Queen works are not in the public domain and are, in fact, as Richard points out, protected under copyright laws.  The article has been changed to reflect that fact.  

Also deleted from this version is a reference to Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes works as being in the public domain.  That reference has been omitted in light of the continuing (and very interesting) litigation relating to the literary protections that currently are to be accorded to the Sherlock Holmes stories.  

-- Dale C. Andrews, January 5, 2015]

Thoughts on Writing

Today, I offer some greats thoughts on writing, used with his permission, from the multiple award winning author, Joe R. Lansdale. Joe's new book is The Thicket, recently released.  A story set at the turn of the Century and the East Texas oil boom. Young Jack Parker faces tragedy and catastrophe time and time again as love and vengeance follows him.  Oh, and don't forget to give a listen to Restless, the new album by his daughter, Kasey Lansdale.    — Jan Grape

by Joe R. Lansdale

1. When I write I seldom know where it is going. I discover this every day. Now and again a story drops full blown into my head and it is just a matter of putting it down as quickly as possible, and in some cases novels are like that. Most of my work comes fast but I still work to make it good, and the next day I start all over by rereading what I wrote the day before.
2. I try and do a reasonable amount each day so I'm a hero every day. Three to five pages is what I work for, but I don't fight it if I get more. I rarely get less. I can't remember when I got less, but it happens. This amount of pages is perfect for me, but may not be for you. But I suggest something reasonable. If I try to write a lot of pages day after day I burn out, and I push the story uncomfortably, and past what my subconscious is working on.
3. I write each day until I feel myself starting to fizzle. When I feel that I usually quit, so that when I finish I can put it away in my head and let my subconscious work. I rarely ever work consciously on something, and it's why I don't collaborate much, because you almost have to do that when you work with someone. I like to write and quit and not think about it anymore, other than in the subconscious way. When I get up the next morning and start out again it is there. On the rare occasion when it's not I take a day off. If it's not there two days in a row, then I know I'm just being lazy and I play a word game or tell myself I will write one sentence or one paragraph, and this usually turns into a day's work.
4. I don't prepare for the next day's work when I finish. I let it go and try not to do that. Once in a while something will come through or I'll see something that will cause me to spring up in the middle of the night and start typing. But mostly if I think too much about it, it's like burning a short wick, but if I forget about it until it's time, the wick is lengthened overnight. I try not to think about success or failure but only that I want to make it good and entertain myself. As I have said before I write for me because I'm the only audience I truly know. I don't write for the reader, but when I finish I hope the reader is a lot like me. Frankly, when I write I try to write like everyone I know is dead. This way I'm not worried about what anyone thinks.
5. Another thing that works well for me is to read a little before I write. It can be fifteen minutes or an hour. This makes words feel comfortable. I try to read something different from what I'm writing, but not necessarily. I try to read off and on throughout the day, and have some days where I take the whole day off to read because I know I need it. I have some weeks where I read more than others, but I always read, and I usually manage three or four books a week—novels, or the equal in short stories, not to mention a variety of odds and ends I might read. Reading is the fuel, and you have to fill up the tank constantly.
6. I have had some writers tell me they don't like to read when they write, but since I write a lot, when would I read? I don't think there's anything wrong with reading while you write. For me it would be wrong not to read while I write, or miss out on reading because it's something I love to do, even if I did not write.
7. You should try to write naturally, I think, and what is natural to one may not feel natural to another. You should try to write in such a way that when your writing is examined it seems as if it is written on air and hard to duplicate. What makes writing work really well isn't the subject matter—though that helps. It's the way the writer puts it down and a good writer can make something normally banal seem interesting.
8. Thinking ahead too much gives you time to worry. Let each new day be just that: a new day. Surprise yourself. Somedays the surprises won't be as good as others, but they should still be worth it. And the days it really surprises you, that's great. When you look at it finished you might be amazed to discover that it's all pretty surprising. You hope.
9. Lastly, anyone who takes these thoughts and suggestions as law-of-the-land should be tarred and feathered. Well, made stand in the corner. These suggestions work for me and have worked for many others and might work for you. And they might not. But to find your method you have to experiment. Some of the way I work is advice I got from a writer who I spoke to years ago, and he doesn't still work that way.

Lots of readers have asked if I would do a writing book, and I think about it. But I also think that writing books haven't done much for me. Two have helped, and only for certain things. One had one piece of advice I have used, and the other had advice that helped me when I was starting out, but would probably be worthless to anyone starting out now. The first helped because it had the idea of writing only one page a day. That became three to five for me. The other had a lot of market advice that applied to the era in which it was written. That helped. Not so much now.

So many writing books have charts and arcs and all manner of things that really have nothing to do with the sound of the prose, the voice of a character, attitudes based on their past ... all of which you as a writer should know. I don't chart that past. It becomes too solid then. At some point I know why a character acts a certain way, good or bad. And I know too that whatever character I write about, they have to have both traits. Good and bad. But telling someone that and them doing it is another thing altogether.

Do I write for money? Yes and no. I write because I love to write, but I write with the plan to get paid. I pay bills by writing. I love to do it, but also love to do it for a certain amount of money. But I would write for nothing if I had a story I wanted to write and there wasn't a paying market for it. I would write it and put it away if I had to. Or I would sell it to a lower-paying market. I try not to do that, but I do from time to time.

You should write to be paid and start in the best market possible. Have faith in yourself. If it doesn't place where you like, go down the list. Find a home. Seeing something in print you're proud of spurs more creativity and more checks. You need both in this life. Starving and being paid poorly does not make you an artist.

For me writing is a passion, not an obsession. One is good and fun, the other feels a little like you're stalking yourself. I have to have things in my life other than writing to love the writing. I think if all I had was writing it would consume me. Not the life I want.

William McGonagall– One Really Bad Poet

William McGonagall

Imagine a poet so bad, so awful, so lacking in metaphoric skill and seemly imagery, that he left audiences appalled, unable to absorb the shock of the abuse of the English language. When he recited his works in pubs, patrons pelted him with fish and flour, rotten eggplants and eggs. Unsurprisingly, he died a pauper.

I hasten to add that this poet (and actor, tragedian, and weaver) was not North American or even Australian, but British, Scottish to be precise, known as the poet of Dundee. In 1893, he felt so abused, he wrote a poem threatening to leave his fair town, whereupon a newspaper wrote he'd probably stay for another year once he realised "that Dundee rhymes with '93".

But as bad as this poet was, his works live on and remain in print to this day. Web sites and encyclopedia articles appear in his honour. A few years ago, a collection of his poems sold for £6600, more than $10,000. Nearly a century after his death, fans erected a grave marker in his honour. One of his contemporary admirers wrote without irony "Shakespeare never wrote anything like this." This is William McGonagall.

Marked for Greatness

Hoping to secure a royal patron, he wrote to Queen Victoria with a sample of his work. A clerk for VR returned a polite thank you note, which McGonagall misinterpreted as praise. He trekked on foot to Balmoral Castle in a driving storm, soaked to the skin. Upon arrival, he announced he was the Queen's Poet, which surprised the guards and greeters who well knew Alfred, Lord Tennyson. They sadly turned him away, leaving him to trudge back to Dundee, a 200km round trip.

Author Stephen Pile explains it this way: McGonagall "was so giftedly bad, he backed unwittingly into genius." So like Edward Bulwer-Lytton and William Spooner, William Topaz McGonagall became famous for actions in the breach rather than talent. Or maybe they were all smarter than we.

Before we turn to his most (in)famous poem, I should mention 'Topaz' was not his middle name. Rather, acquaintances constructed an elaborate joke and 'punked' him, so to speak. They sent the poor poet an official looking letter from the Burmese King Thibaw Min, appointing McGonagall Burma's poet laureate and knighting him Topaz McGonagall, Grand Knight of the Holy Order of the White Elephant Burmah. Thereafter, McGonagall referred to himself as "Sir William Topaz McGonagall, Knight of the White Elephant."

Frankly, I'm starting to think McGonagall may have been a mad genius.

Less than Serious Portrayals

I'm grateful to our SleuthSayers fans. Shortly after this went to press, a reader sent a link to a discussion of the poet and a partial reading by the actor Billy Connolly.

That, in turn, led to this comic skit from four decades ago. The web page doesn't elucidate, but Spike Milligan of The Goon Show and Q5-Q9 fame appears to play McGonagall. I'm not 100% certain, but I believe Peter Sellers is playing Queen Victoria.

And now, a reading…

In the following poem, most readers content themselves with the first and last stanzas without further torturing themselves with those in between. Feel free to do the same.

The Tay Bridge Disaster

Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv'ry Tay!
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That ninety lives have been taken away
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember'd for a very long time.

'Twas about seven o'clock at night,
And the wind it blew with all its might,
And the rain came pouring down,
And the dark clouds seem'd to frown,
And the Demon of the air seem'd to say–
"I'll blow down the Bridge of Tay."

When the train left Edinburgh
The passengers' hearts were light and felt no sorrow,
But Boreas blew a terrific gale,
Which made their hearts for to quail,
And many of the passengers with fear did say–
"I hope God will send us safe across the Bridge of Tay."

But when the train came near to Wormit Bay,
Boreas he did loud and angry bray,
And shook the central girders of the Bridge of Tay
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember'd for a very long time.

So the train sped on with all its might,
And Bonnie Dundee soon hove in sight,
And the passengers' hearts felt light,
Thinking they would enjoy themselves on the New Year,
With their friends at home they lov'd most dear,
And wish them all a happy New Year.

So the train mov'd slowly along the Bridge of Tay,
Until it was about midway,
Then the central girders with a crash gave way,
And down went the train and passengers into the Tay!
The Storm Fiend did loudly bray,
Because ninety lives had been taken away,
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember'd for a very long time.

As soon as the catastrophe came to be known
The alarm from mouth to mouth was blown,
And the cry rang out all o'er the town,
Good Heavens! the Tay Bridge is blown down,
And a passenger train from Edinburgh,
Which fill'd all the peoples hearts with sorrow,
And made them for to turn pale,
Because none of the passengers were sav'd to tell the tale
How the disaster happen'd on the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember'd for a very long time.

It must have been an awful sight,
To witness in the dusky moonlight,
While the Storm Fiend did laugh, and angry did bray,
Along the Railway Bridge of the Silv'ry Tay,
Oh! ill-fated Bridge of the Silv'ry Tay,
I must now conclude my lay
By telling the world fearlessly without the least dismay,
That your central girders would not have given way,
At least many sensible men do say,
Had they been supported on each side with buttresses,
At least many sensible men confesses,
For the stronger we our houses do build,
The less chance we have of being killed.

Following the Maybes

by Elizabeth Zelvin

I’m not the kind of novelist who could write a book about how to write a novel. Maybe that’s because my method doesn’t bear too much analysis. In the division between outliners and into-the-mist writers (or pantsers, as some call them, ie those who write by the seat of the pants), I fall definitely—or mistily—into the category of those who don’t or can’t outline. Picking my way through a mist, with light shining only a little way ahead and no idea what lies beyond that bit of illumination, is an excellent description of how I write long. As I’ve said before, writing short—a poem, a story, a song, a blog post, or a letter to an online therapy client—is a whole lot easier than writing in the mist.

Only by talking with a lot of writers did I realize that for some, outlining means not a sheaf of pages that look like a Power Point presentation, but a collection of little notes. Using index cards or Post-its, they write signposts along the path of the story. For example: “The power fails, lights go out, covering up second murder.” “Journalist wrote a story about the developers.” “Protag and friends search boyfriend’s room for victim’s notebook.” “Roommate is bulimic, hears murderer while in bathroom throwing up.”

“Ohhh,” I said. “Is that outlining? I do that—or something very like it.” My examples are all notes I scribbled during the writing of the first draft of Death Will Extend Your Vacation—not before, but during the process, as they occurred to me. Some of the events mentioned made it into the draft, others did not. The story took itself in different directions. But that’s exactly what these little-note outliners say happens to their stories. The outline is not inflexible, and it can’t be allowed to trammel the creative process. On the other hand, it is much harder to write not knowing what’s going to happen next, no less in the end, from moment to moment the whole length of 250 pages.

So what’s the difference between outlining and what I do? Is there a difference? For one thing, these notes by no means tell the story. They cover only those flashes in the mist that happen to catch my inner eye. When I think of a mist with headlights trying to break through and mysterious happenings hidden behind its veil, I think of a drive my husband and I once took along the Blue Ridge Parkway on a day so foggy that the Blue Ridge was invisible. It was very quiet, the damp air a heavy blanket muffling sound and movement. Once or twice we spotted a deer cropping grass by the roadside, undisturbed by the beam of our headlights glancing off it.

The note taking is like that. If the headlights fall to the left, I see a deer—make a note. There may be a bear to the right that I never see. Sometimes the note-thoughts come to me as I write, sometimes as I lie in bed thinking of yesterday’s writing and of today’s to come. Sometimes not just plot ideas but lines of dialogue and even occasional descriptive passages bubble up while I’m out running. That’s one reason I always carry my cell phone with its digital voice recorder: get it down before I can forget it, so I can make the note when I get back to my pen and my Post-its.

But here’s the biggest difference. To me, “outline” means “commitment.” If I say I’m an outliner, I must have sticky notes, and each note must represent a bit of the story that I am committed to tell, even if the rule is that it’s okay to change my mind later. Every single one of my notes (including the true versions of the examples above) start with “Maybe.” “Maybe the power fails…” “Maybe the journalist wrote a story…” “Maybe the roommate is bulimic…” I’m not committed. But I don’t want to throw away what may turn out to be perfectly good plot points, certainly not just because of my lousy aging memory. Writing it down is like taking a quick photo of that deer at the edge of the mist. I’ve got it, and if I want to, I’ll use it later—maybe.

What I Learned While Synopsis Writing

Well, I’m pleased to say I finally managed to complete the synopsis for my novel-length manuscript.

The experience certainly taught me to envy those who write with an outline. If I’d had one, up front, I suspect my synopsis would have been finished much quicker. But … that’s just not the way I do things, because—while I’m sure it would help in synopsis creation—it stymies my story-writing something awful.

I’m one of those idiots who practices what I call Modified Organic Writing: I write without an outline, waiting to see what transpires as my characters interact (the organic part)—though I usually do have a pretty good idea where things might be headed (the modified part). If that seems confusing, don’t sweat it, buddy—I really don’t quite grasp what I’m doing, myself. (I’m sure you’re shocked—SHOCKED!—to hear that.)

One problem this creates, is that I have a hard time wrapping my mind around the entire novel, once I've got it completed. I can grasp several parts of it, at the same time—but my mind can’t quite manage to encompass the entire work at once. I wind up looking like the guy in this photo: Not the guy in the foreground; that guy in the center, behind the painting. You can only see his hands and the top of his head. He’s behind and underneath the thing. If only he could stand out front, he might get a chance to see what the painting is really all about. Then, maybe he could come up, not only with a synopsis, but perhaps with a logline or something, such as John M. Floyd discussed earlier this week.

If that guy in back, could come out from under it and stand in front of the painting, he might be able to tell someone it’s: “An exciting depiction of pirates infiltrating a port town they’re about to raid!” As it is, however, he’s really not in a position to grasp what he’s talking about, if he tries to describe what he’s got his hands on.

Anyway, for the use of anyone searching for a method they can use, to find their way out from behind or beneath an organically created novel, to a workable (perhaps even winning??) synopsis, I offer the following lessons I learned during the process. Will any of this work for you? No idea, buddy. But, I’m tossing it out there just in case you can use something, here.

When I posted, last year, about my trouble writing a synopsis, one of the comments people made really stuck in my mind. It warned me to be careful not to create an outline instead. I didn’t really understand what that meant at the time, but have a much better—though probably still incomplete—feel for it now. In fact, I eventually discovered I was doing just that. Building an outline, instead of a synopsis.

Stymied because I couldn’t wrap my mind around the entire manuscript, I finally opted to work chapter-by-chapter, distilling each chapter to a paragraph or two—not worrying too much about length, because I knew I’d cut later. When I was finished, of course, I realized I’d created the outline I was trying to avoid. It was long, very informative—but utterly lifeless.

That outline wouldn’t sell a book; I knew that. But, the next morning, I began to realize that what I’d constructed might be a very valuable tool, if I could decide how to exploit it to advantage. 

Most importantly, perhaps, I realized that I’d lucked-out by creating a chapter-by-chapter outline, as a first step, because this gave me a distillation of the work, which my mind could encompass. Then, as I worked on the synopsis, I felt my eyes opening to what had really been meant in that comment.

Along the way, I visited a website I found quite useful: LisaGardner.com There is a lot of information out there, about synopsis construction, but somehow I just couldn’t grock what it all shook-out to mean. At this website, however, the author offers tips for successful synopsis writing (under Writer's Toolbox) which I found I could understand.

To me, the pool slide in this photo sort of demonstrates the use for the outline-tool I had created. In the photo, the rectilinear white structure supports a curved blue slide designed to facilitate rapid and exciting movement that concludes with a climactic splash (once the pool is filled, of course). 

I see the chapter-by-chapter outline as serving the purposes of the white structure supporting the slide, which is the exciting path followed by our synopsis.  But, notice how little of the outline structure actually touches the slide story.  To streamline and curve the slide, increasing the ride’s excitement, I concentrated on telling only the central core of the story, deleting all mention of any events or characters that didn’t have to be there. Then, I went over that story again, polishing it to a high sheen, while ensuring I didn’t add something that wasn’t in the novel.

My hope is that the synopsis reader never even senses that the outline support structure is there.  And, that's okay, because whoever reads the synopsis isn't going to climb the stairs on that white tower..  Instead, s/he's going to step from ground-level straight onto the slide, and—WHOOSH!  Off we go to story splash-down.  Hopefully.

My story had to leap several gaps, of course, because so much supporting information was left out. Look at the slide picture again. See the distance between supports? The slide rides right through those gaps, but can’t sag, or the ride will be ruined. In a manner I find it difficult to explain, reinforcing to prevent sag made it possible for me to spot small places in my novel, where I needed to include a one or two sentence explanation, in order to close or tighten a loophole.

Thus, one of the most important discoveries I made was that constructing my synopsis not only created a tool for selling it, it also helped me correct problems within the story itself. I was so bowled over, in fact, that I’ve changed my attitude on story outlines to a degree.

I still don’t plan to outline prior to writing a story or novel, however, I now plan to create an outline, and generate a synopsis, prior to final editing. I’ll probably start by creating the outline and synopsis just after the first full edit, so that I can get a better handle on the entire work—as a whole—which I now believe will help me conduct better-targeted cutting and editing of the manuscript.

So, there you have it. What I learned from writing a synopsis, in a nutshell.

 --Dix

One Last Life Lesson

by Brian Thornton

 I believe in God.

I am deeply suspicious of organized religion.

I do not consider the two notions in any way contradictory.

I have always viewed my believer friends who participate regularly in religious services with admiration. I have also admired the principled stands of any number of nonbeliever friends. Their conviction is also a source of inspiration to me.

I find both of their brands of faith inspiring, if not contagious.

And although I've witnessed first-hand what a comfort both the ritual and the message of their particular creeds can be for them, I'm not sure that I've ever had much insight into the actuality of it. I've never found it particularly tangible, for lack of a better term.

I think this is in no small part due to the fact that I was born in 1965, and am in so many ways typical of my generation (Let's forgo the "x", okay? Doug Coupland never spoke either to or for me.)

I mean, I came of age when religion began to be a factor in the political life of the republic on a scale unseen since believers helped bring about Prohibition, or, on the other side of the coin, the Civil Rights Movement. Words like "Moral Majority" were bandied about during my adolescence, with both sides of any given social/moral issue increasingly intolerant of the views of their opposite numbers.

Is it any wonder folks like me just wanted to be left alone?

Couple the above background with a brief membership in a charismatic nondenominational Christian church (during my teen years) and a foray into the possibility of conversion while an undergrad at a Catholic university  (it ended badly- I was "strongly discouraged" from going through with it by the powers that were who ran the program. Apparently I asked too many questions.). To say that I from that point forward I have always looked askance at organized religion would be an understatement.

And yet there have been moments.

I'd like to lay out the most recent of them.

As I mentioned in my last blog post, a very dear friend of mine was recently diagnosed with inoperable cancer. I said at the time that she would be lucky if she lasted through the week.

She died that Sunday.

Last weekend I attended her funeral.

This wonderful lady, 79 when she passed away, was one of the people I was referencing above when I talked admiringly about belief. She was a decades-long parishioner of a little Episcopal church down in Tacoma's north end. In fact, she was a volunteer who traveled around to members of the church who were shut-ins because of health problems. She'd perform the service with them, pray with them, worship with them.

And when she spoke of the experience, she just glowed.

But my friend Pat did that a lot. She was easily one of the kindest folks I've ever met. She just loved people. And they loved her back.

And at bottom, the reason was her faith. At least that's what she told me.

Repeatedly.

When I went to her funeral I got one of those rare glimpses I mentioned above- a glimmer of what it must have felt like for Pat to be a member of that congregation. To worship in that tiny, freezing little stone church.

The place was packed. Pat had a lot of friends. All of her family were there.

Her daughter gave a moving eulogy. There wasn't a dry eye in the house. It was all the more poignant because she managed to invoke so many memories of her unforgettable mother. And she did so in the same way her mother had lived her life.

With grace, intelligence, and sly wit.

For a moment there, I wasn't on the outside, looking in. For a moment there, I understood what it felt like to belong.

We were, all of us, joined there in a communion of grief.

And for a flash, I saw how it worked. For a bit I got an inkling of what Pat got out of the whole deal.

And I am still gob-smacked by it.

As I said above, I'm deeply suspicious of organized religion.

But now, more than ever, I understand the impulse of so many in trying times and in good times, to seek it out.

And I have the memory of my dear, departed friend Pat, to thank for that.

Thanks for that last life lesson, Old Friend.

Summer Book Review

Yes, I know summer has passed.  But I have been meaning to write about these three mystery novels I read over the summer and I have finally had a chance to do so.  You can give me a low grade if you want.  But all three books are worth reading, and each gives me something to complain about, which I find in late middle age is a very important opportunity.

A Corpse's Nightmare, by Phillip DePoy.  Worldwide Mystery, 2011

My first encounter with DePoy was earlier this year when he wrote a story in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, about Fever Develin, a professor of folklore, laid off from the university and now living in his old family home, deep in the hills of Appalachia.

The professor is the titular corpse in this novel.  (And isn't Fever Develin a lovely name, by the way?)   On the first page we are told that "On the 3rd of December, just before midnight, a total stranger came into my home and shot me as I slept in my bed.  I died before the emergency mdeical team could find their way to my house."

As you might suspect, he doesn't stay dead, thanks to a highly-motivated medical practitioner.  But throughout the book people keep referring to his killing and the murderer, which he finds extremely creepy.  And he has a lot of trouble telling his coma-induced dreams from his somewhat surreal surroundings.

Because there are a lot of eccentrics in the vicinity of Blue Mountain, and some of them are members of his family.  It becomes clear that the attack has something to do with the past and his peculiar collection of relatives.  I especially enjoyed the academic discussions between Fever and fellow professor Winston Andrews, which often seems to be no more than a way of coping with tension.  I know people like that.

My complaint about this one?  DePoy dances on a tightrope here -- is Fever really remembering things from his childhood or is there something supernatural going on?  -- and for the most time he does it well, but at the end he tips too far toward the woo woo side, in my opinion, providing one of those "ooh spooky" situations I strongly disapprove of. 

("Ooh spooky" defined: A story has a possible supernatural element which is cleared up with a materialistic explanation.  Then at the very end a superfluous bit of ghostiness is dragged in for effect.  To make up an example: "But wait, the killer said he only lit the lamp twice and we saw it three times.  There must have been a real ghost!  Ooh, spooky!"  For some reason, TV movies are particularly susceptible to this.)


Spy's Fate, by Arnaldo Correa.  Akashic Press, 2002  

The Soviet Union has just collapsed, taking away Cuba's biggest trade partner and source of foreign aid.  The Cuban economy has gone to hell, resulting in the nation's spy apparatus pulling back its revolutionaries from Africa and Latin America, and the government tacitly permitting many people to flee to the United States in any boat or raft they can find.

Carlos Manuel is one of those spies suddenly in from the cold,  and not getting a warm reception at home.  His wife committed suicide some time before and his grown children want nothing to do with him.  But when he hears that his kids are heading toward America -- and straight into a storm -- he risks everything to save them.

And finds himself in the U.S., very much on the run.  The CIA knows a major Cuban spy is in the US but has no idea what his mission is (in fact, he just wants to get home).   Making it worse, the head of the CIA's Cuban desk is a man Carlos brutally maimed a decade ago in Central America, and he will stop at nothing to get revenge. 

My complaints?  Threefold.  First, you have to accept a Cuban spy who has spent decades training guerillas as your hero.  Some of us may have a hard time with that.  Second, with one exception everyone in the Cuban spy agency is so nice to each other.  I find that hard to believe about any intelligence agency.  And finally, let's admit it, Carlos is a Mary Sue.  He can beat up an armed man much bigger than he is, speak unaccented English, paint sellable landscapes, and learn to scuba dive in a few days.  What's Spanish for sheesh?


The Golden One, by Elizabeth Peters, Morrow, 2002. 

We lost Ms. Peters this year, and I am still working my way through her wonderful series about Egyptologist Amelia Peabody.  They are not for everyone, I am sure.  I expect some people would find them fey and unbearably slow-moving.  (It can take a hundred pages for her to set up her plot and get the first corpse in place.)  But to me this comes off as the confidence of a master.

When this story starts it is 1917 and Peabody and her remarkable family have decided to stay in Egypt for the duration of the war, because U-boats have made travel too dangerous.  They would rather do nothing but dig at a promising ruin, but the British intelligence service is again trying to coax her son Ramses back into harness, and this time they have a remarkable bit of bait: Sethos, the family's foremost frenemy (say that three times fast) is either a prisoner behind enemy lines, or has turned traitor.  If Ramses can't get Sethos out, someone will be sent to kill him. 

And so we have two unrelated mysteries going on here: one archaeological, and one espionage-ical.  Okay, that isn't a word, but which word works? 

When Peters started to write this series I wonder if she noticed the trap she was setting for herself.  Namely: Amelia's husband Emerson is supposedly the greatest Egyptologist in history, but she doesn't want to credit him with true great finds, stealing them from genuine archaeologists (some of whom appear as characters in the novels).  She deals with this, in part, by making Emerson so egotistical, stubborn, and short-tempered that he offends everyone who could give him permission to get near the great tombs.  In this particular book, she finds a different way to frustrate him.

But that is not my complaint.  Here it is.  Like Elmore Leonard and Ed McBain my problem with her is that, as much as I enjoy her books, a month later I can't remember what happened in any of them.  Or more precisely, what happened in which.  Does anyone else feel that way?

Okay, that completes my book report.  Don't grade too harshly.

The Big Moving Sleep Target

by Terence Faherty

This time last year I was serving as the program chair for a great mystery conference we have here in Indiana, Magna Cum Murder.  (This year's conference is being held in Indianapolis on October 25, 26, and 27, and there's still time to register.)  At Magna, they often pick a classic mystery as the conference book.  All attendees are encouraged to read it, at least one panel is devoted to it, and the movie version is shown, if one exists.  I chose The Moving Target, the first Lew Archer novel by Ross Macdonald.  (Yes, it does say "John Macdonald" on the first edition cover.  Macdonald, whose real name was Kenneth Millar, didn't settle on Ross for his pen name until the fifth or six book.)  I selected that early book, rather than one of Macdonald's later classics, because there is a movie version, 1966's Harper, starring Paul Newman.
 
After making my decision, I reread The Moving Target for the first time in perhaps thirty years.  The first few chapters made me glad I'd picked it, the last few less so.  But what struck me most about the novel was its close relationship with another first number in a famous series, The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler's first Philip Marlowe novel.  It's so close, in fact, that I'm convinced Macdonald reread The Big Sleep before laying out The Moving Target, if he didn't have a copy open on his lap as he wrote.

I'm not going to summarize the two plots here.  I'll save that arduous task for when I expand this post into my doctoral dissertation (later to be an Edgar-nominated critical work and, later still, a direct-to-DVD cartoon).  I'll confine myself to citing ten examples to support my contention that, in many ways, The Moving Target (TMT) is a play on and an inversion of The Big Sleep (TBS).

- 1 -

In both books, the PI is called in to straighten out a problem for a wealthy family whose senior representative is an invalid:  General Sternwood in TBS and Elaine Sampson in TMT. Both these characters are heartsick over the loss of a pseudo son, the general's runaway drinking buddy and Elaine's killed-in-action stepson.

- 2 -

The characters of the fathers of these two families and their respective daughters is an example of Macdonald's inversion of Chandler's plot.  In TBS, General Sternwood is wise and his daughter is wild.  In TMT, Ralph Sampson (Elaine's missing husband) is wild and his daughter is wise beyond her years.

- 3 -

Both plots feature rackets complicated by and eventually undone by other crimes.  In TBS, a smut book racket is undone by a blackmail play.  In TMT, a smuggling racket is undone by a kidnapping.

- 4 -

In both books, the initial crime seems vague and phony:  the too polite blackmail of the Sternwoods and the kidnapping of Ralph Sampson that might not be one. 

- 5 -

In both cases, a shadowy underworld figure appears to be pulling the strings.  Each has a last name that's a vague classical allusion, Eddie Mars in TBS and Dwight Troy in TMT.  Both own or have owned a gambling joint, and both are gray-haired.

- 6 - 

Both books feature dens of iniquity:  the house where the wild Sternwood daughter does drugs in TBS becomes the red, zodiac-themed bedroom of the wild father in TMT.

- 7 -

Both the Sternwoods and the Sampsons employ a lovesick young man whose infatuation with a drug user will get him killed (and, again, the names are similar):  Owen Taylor, a chauffeur, in TBS and Alan Taggert, a pilot, in TMT.   Here, Macdonald's inversion of the Chandler model is again apparent.  Taylor chases a Sternwood daughter while Taggert is chased by Sampson's.

- 8 -

The supporting casts have other parallel characters, including two hard luck little men with criminal pasts whose devotion to the wrong women will end them:  Harry Jones in TBS and Eddie Lassiter in TMT.

- 9 -

And in both novels, the PI has a friend with either a current or past connection to the local district attorney's office, and, yet again, the names are similar:  Bernie Ohls (TBS) and Albert "Bertie" Graves (TMT). 

- 10 -

The final link is another name clue, in some respects the most obvious one Macdonald planted.  The wild daughter from TBS is named Carmen.  The not-so-wild daughter from TMT is named Miranda.  Get it? 

Carmen Miranda!

A coincidence?  I think not.  In fact, I rest my case.

A Typewriter?

by Fran Rizer


Note:  This is not the column about words that I wanted to use today, but illness has prevented me from completing it.

My divorce was final when my younger son was five years old.  I admit that freedom from marriage allowed me to do some things I hadn't done while living with a husband.  No, not what you're thinking. I used to say the major changes were that (1) I could spread my clothes out in all the closet space in the master bedroom.  (2) I no longer felt compelled to jump up to clean the kitchen after dinner--sometimes I even left the dishes in the sink until the next morning. (3) I never planned to fry another chicken.  From then on, fried chicken at my house arrived in a KFC bucket and was transferred to a serving tray.

A year or so after the divorce, my sons spent a weekend with their grandmother. When they came home, the younger one told me, "Mom, did you know that people can make fried chicken in their own kitchens?"

I'm sure there are children who would be equally impressed to learn that people used to write without computers.  I'm not talking about way back when everything was written by hand (possibly even in cursive, which is no longer considered a necessary skill for students to learn.)  I'm referring to typewriters.  Some of us remember when most authors didn't have word processors or computers.  Editing and rewriting on typewriters was a pain in the Royal you-know-what.

All of that leads to my story for today, and, yes, it's nonfiction, a true story about a real man.

I picked this as the first drawing because I love trains.  In
fact, I've written several bluegrass train songs.

Once upon a time, actually on September 21, 1921, a baby boy was born.  His parents named him Paul Smith.

The odds were against Paul.  He had severe cerebral palsy, a disability that impeded both speech and mobility.

His challenges meant that Paul spent most of his life in a Nursing Home in Roseburg, Oregon.  He taught himself to become a master chess player even though he had very little formal education.  

Paul also taught himself to type; however, his palsy made it necessary to use his left hand to steady his right hand. This made it impossible for him to strike two keys at the same time. 

I've chosen this drawing because my very first recorded
original song was "Waiting at the Station."

Because he needed both hands to press one typewriter key, Paul almost always locked the shift key and typed using only the symbols at the top of the number keys.
These characters --
@ # $ % ^ & * () _
were the only symbols he could type. 

Note the signature in the lower right corner - Typed by Paul Smith. 

The drawings in this blog were all "Typed by Paul Smith," and

created from those symbols above the numerals on typewriters.  He created hundreds of pictures.  He gave many away but kept copies of some of them.
On the left is Paul's version of the
Mona Lisa.  Below is a close-up from that picture showing how his artwork was made.  

He died June 25, 2007, and his life and work are noteworthy as well as inspiring.

Paul Smith inspires me.  If a man who couldn't speak and had to steady his spastic hands to strike one key at a time could create such works from a typewriter, surely we can accomplish our writing goals with all the bells and whistles we have on today's computers.

A question for SS readers and writers--who inspires you?

Until we meet again, take care of you!

Florida News: Rich in Irony

by Leigh Lundin

I haven't been writing about Florida in recent months, not because weird stuff stopped happening here, but because the news had grown morbid and lost its humor. There's nothing funny about a grown man who ran over a young girl who'd refused him or the poor Tampa girl bullied into suicide.

But remember, this is the home of irony, where our governor, Rick Scott, who originally opposed Obamacare, still refuses to allow Affordable Care 'Navigators' into the state. The irony? Rick Scott engineered the largest Medicare/Medicaid fraud in our nation's history. His fines alone were $1.7-BILLION. But with the billions left over, he purchased a governorship, always for sale in Florida.

Following are a few tidbits from the Sunshine State.

Attack of the Giant Snails

For centuries, ships have brought invasive– and terribly destructive– foreign species to Florida. I personally feud with fire ants, vicious Formicidae that don't simply bite, they use acid to burn holes through the skin and kill a human when attacking en force.

Some of the most destructive plants and animals have come from hobbyists' aquariums– hydrilla, walking catfish, Asian carp, and now, straight out of 1950s scary movies… voracious snails the size of a large man's fist. Miami-Dade decided it was time to call in the dogs.

Bang-Bang, You're Suspended

The very funny Irish comedian, Dave Allen, had his index finger missing since childhood. When he was a child and played cops and robbers with his mates, chasing each other and shouting "Bang, bang!" Some of the boys challenged his stubby index finger, telling him he couldn't shoot with that. "Sure, I can," he said. "Ever hear of a snub-nose .38?"

Now comes the story of an eight-year-old Harmony boy who was playing bang-bang-shoot-em-up with his fully-loaded pretend finger pistol in this great state with the deadly Shoot First / Stand Your Ground proudly on its books.

His Osceola County school suspended him for playing bang-bang with his brother and friends, but threatening no one. As his mother pointed out, he was actually empty-handed.

Bang-bang, You're Arrested

As discussed in this column, Florida has an insane collection of gun laws ranging from the infamous Shoot First / Stand Your Ground to mandatory sentencing. More than one critic have observed that the laws were written by whites for whites and seldom work in favor of black folks.

Take the admittedly murky case of a Jacksonville mother of three, Marissa Alexander, who fired a warning shot to keep clear of her ex-husband. If she'd killed him, she might have defended herself with the Shoot First / Stand Your Ground law, at least if she'd been white. But since she didn't kill him, the state's mandatory sentencing kicked in, subjecting her to a twenty-year prison term, which even non-supporters feel is excessive.

Now, an appeals court has sent the case back for a retrial on a technicality. Let's hope a jury finds a way to make this right. And just in case you think Florida has left its racist roots behind with all the Northerners who've immigrated, let me remind you Florida still honors the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, Civil War criminal, brilliant cavalryman and possibly racially rehabilitated Nathan Bedford Forrest.

Sing-Sing-Singultus

Remember Jennifer Mee, the Florida teenager who appeared on talk shows because she couldn't stop hiccupping? She hit a little hiccup of her own.  She's been sentenced to life imprisonment for masterminding a robbery and murder

iOpening: What the…?

Some people will do anything to get the latest Apple gadget. In this case, a woman walked into the Boca Raton Apple store with a strap-on device… nobody knows quite what it was. My guess it probably violated Apple's warranty, not to mention a possible law or two.

In the meantime, welcome to Florida, folks. No irony deficiency here.