The Crime Writers' Chronicle

Aspirations

2012-02-24T07:30:00.000-05:00

Erma Bombeck

When I was young and giddy I used to aspire to be a writer like Erma Bombeck or Peg Bracken. I'm sure you remember hearing of Erma Bombeck. If you're too young to have followed her columns, your mother probably did. She wrote riotously funny pieces about mundane housewife stuff, day in, day out, in good times and bad. She died too young.

Peg Bracken

Peg Bracken penned such classics as The I Hate to Cook Book, The I Hate to Housekeep Book (my bible for many years), I Didn't Come Here to Argue, and I Try to Behave Myself: Peg Bracken's Etiquette Book. In the old days there was such a thing as etiquette. Hey, did I ever tell you I knew Judith Martin (Miss Manners to you) socially, when we were both young and giddy and working for the Washington Post? Yes. I have a past. I go back a long way. Once I knew The Great Ones.

But I never could be as consistently funny as Erma Bombeck or Peg Bracken (although I can be pretty funny on a good day), or as certain of what was right and good as Miss Manners, or as light-hearted and innocent as they all used to seem. Few can. The world has changed for woman writers. Nobody wants to hear about etiquette anymore, or about women who do nothing more than rattle around the house and try to keep it together. The women who don't want to hear about politics and world problems – topics I don't have the chops to write about – want to hear about body building, exercise, and grooming, which if you think about it are even more narrow and self-absorbed than etiquette and housekeeping. Or they want to hear about who is sleeping with whom and who is having or has had whose baby. And who is divorcing. Who are these Kardashians that you speak of? Are we to emulate them? Why would I want Kim Kardashian's skin?

As you can see, I've been spending too many hours standing in line at the supermarket, perusing the tabloids. Sorry about Whitney Houston. Sorry for all the dead ones. But, I tell you what, I like good fluffy froth. Not dumb gossip about stupid people, not, gawdhelpus, advice, how to lose weight, how to have Kim Kadashian's skin, but writing that skates lightly over the brutalities of real life with grace and humor. This is what I still try to do. Sometimes it works.

Kate Gallison

Over-the-hill Revolutionaries (Encore)

2012-02-22T23:14:00.000-05:00

I am on two deadlines. Forgive me for repeating myself. Here is my post from November 30 of last year. I promise something new soon!

I am no fan of "Madmen." Glamorizing the sexist attitudes of the fifties and sixties seems to me the last thing the world needs at this moment. I admit that I have seen only one episode, the first, and about twenty-three minutes of the second, but that was enough to turn me off from the series for good.

My favorite "good times" of the second half of the twentieth century involve the antidote to the culture of Madmen – the international effort that is still spreading known in those days as The Women's Movement.

Betty Friedan and Friends

If you are fifty-five or over and worked for a living during the 1960's, 70's, and 80's, in the US, Canada, or Western Europe, you participated in this revolution that profoundly and forever changed the entire world.

If you are younger than fifty-five and came of age or were born into a world where working women’s rights were protected, stick around find out a bit about how we got to where we are today.

Bella Abzug

There were, in those early days a few widespread influences: books like "The Feminine Mystique" by Betty Friedan and "The Female Eunuch," by Germaine Greer; "MS. Magazine"; the marvelous New York Congresswoman, Bella Abzug. The National Organization for Women emerged eventually. We did have a well-publicized march for equality – down Fifth Avenue. My father, the World War Two combat Marine, pushed my daughter in her stroller in that demonstration, while I carried a sign that said, "THREE GENERATIONS FOR EQUAL RIGHTS FOR WOMEN." But none of these publications, societies, or events can be credited with the Movement’s widespread success.

Rosie the Riveter

Of course, the demand for equal rights did not come out of nowhere. A wonderful example was set by the Civil Rights Movement. The employment of women in war-time manufacturing during the "Rosie the Riveter" era had changed women’s self-image. The demographics of the country – a growing economy and a lower birth rate pointing to a need for more entrants into the workforce also had an impact. All of that history and more. Yes. But.

Whatever the historical factors, I doubt the revolution would have gotten off the ground it were it not for thousands and thousands of ordinary women on the line who fought the battles on the job, who showed up every day and got the work done, and thought up imaginative ways to thwart the status quo when it stood in the way of progress.

I know a lot of stories from the pink collar wars. Here's one of my favorites. It is a perfect example of what made the Movement move:

In the state of Nevada in the 1970's, there was a thriving printing business. Big firms stamped out mail order catalogs, magazines, Sunday supplements for newspapers, all kinds of color work on shiny paper. The jobs were divided into heavy printing and light printing. Those who did heavy printing were all men and made near twice the hourly rate of those doing light printing, who were all women. The women wanted into the higher paying positions, but a state law stood in their way. Nevada’s books said that if the job required employees to lift more than twenty pounds, the work had to be done by men. Women protested, testifying that females in everyday life regularly lifted more than twenty pounds. Any mother of a toddler or housewife who did laundry and grocery shopping for a family of four could have told you that. Nevada women took their case right up to the State Supreme Court. But the justices held their ground and upheld Nevada's right to "protect" women in the printing industry from getting a sixty percent increase in their wages.

Not ready to be frustrated once and for all, the ladies looked for another way.

Printing was the second biggest industry in the state. The first biggest was gambling. And that's where our “light” printers found their answer. The big-time casinos employed hundreds of women who waited tables at the headliner dinner theaters. They preferred ladies with long legs and pretty faces. The statuesque, scantily clad members of the "weaker sex" hefted huge trays piled with dishes, glasses, cutlery.

Casino Waitress

The printing women did a little study. One Saturday evening, when the restaurants were packed, they got the waitresses to weigh their trays. About a third of them were over twenty pounds.

Nevada had two choices. Either force the casino owners to put men in the place of the waitresses in stiletto heels, or change the law and let women do jobs that required them to lift more than twenty pounds. The casino owners, with their enormous political clout, weighed in, as it were, on the side of the women printers. The law changed and so did the take home pay of hundreds of women workers.

It happened that way over and over, a little triumph here and rule changed there. Progress.

Things are not perfect yet. But they have gotten better. And will continue to do so. Because of the revolutionaries in pantyhose who made it work those decades ago.

Annamaria Alfieri

What to Read (or not) While Writing

2012-02-20T07:30:00.000-05:00

Recently I was writing away at a nice clip. The book was going well. I was turning out chapters at a good pace. Suddenly, one morning, I realized I had slowed down; instead of scampering across the page I felt as if I were slogging through deep mud. My sentences were long and contorted. The right words were escaping me. I had to grope for them, and often consult a Thesaurus. What was wrong?

That night I picked up my bedtime reading, Wings of a Dove, by Henry James, and had my answer. Subconsciously I’d been trying to imitate James all day. Not only had I failed to equal James, I’d lost touch with my own voice. I remembered another time, long ago, as I was writing a Dr. Fenimore mystery, suddenly the doctor began to sound like Sam Spade. Why? I’d been reading The Big Sleep, by Dashiell Hammett.

I’m not alone with this affliction. A writer-friend, Stephanie Patterson, was working on a novel and had the same problem. She was writing along at a merry pace until one day she slowed down to a crawl. The cause? Villette, by Charlotte Bronte – a wonderful novel, but not Stephanie’s natural style. She put it aside and all was well once more.

You can’t be too careful what you read while writing. To be on the safe side, stick to non-fiction – articles and light essays, or even poetry. Otherwise your mystery may turn into a poor imitation of Swann’s Way or The Brothers Karamazov.

Robin Hathaway

The War of 1812 Is Heating Up

2012-02-17T07:30:00.000-05:00

There's a new book out on the War of 1812: Gillum Ferguson's Illinois in the War of 1812. Probably one among many, but this one looks like a corker. Full disclosure: I haven't read it yet, because it's going to take me a while to scrape thirty-five dollars together. So this isn't a review. More of a heads-up for my fellow War of 1812 buffs.

One thing I can tell you about this book, without even reading it, is that the account of the Fort Dearborn Massacre will raise your hair. Metaphorically speaking.

James Madison and the U.S. legislative branch gave little thought to reinforcing (or even warning) the outlying forts when they declared war on Britain, in a fit of spleen, on June 18, 1812. No navy? No army? No problem. The first they knew in the fur-trading fort on the island of Michilimackinac that war had been declared was on July 17, when they were surrounded and captured. And so it went, fort by western fort.

On August 15, 1812, Fort Dearborn, on the site of what is now Chicago, was evacuated by the Americans, who went off into the woods with an escort of "friendly" Potawatomi, headed, as they thought, for Fort Wayne and thence to Detroit (being surrendered even then to the British). They hadn't gone but a couple of miles when the Indians turned on them, killing eighty of them, men, women, and a wagonload of children, and enslaving most of the others. Potawatomi chieftain Black Partridge helped a few to escape. But most of the Indians, let's face it, behaved very badly.

So that was the sort of thing that went on during the War of 1812. The outcome of the war meant a lot to Illinois, as you can discover from Gillum Ferguson's Illinois in the War of 1812.

Kate Gallison

Life-Long Love

2012-02-15T07:30:00.000-05:00

This is going to be hokey. If you can’t stand the idea of romance after sixty, come back in a couple of days. I am sure you’ll find something really cool to read here. If you are in your forties or younger, however, you might stick around and see that romance can get you through a lot of the tough spots that life doles out more or less indiscriminately.

Our Wedding

Members of the generation after mine that I know, or know about, report being lonely and longing for a “relationship” but can’t manage to find one. Parents of people in their late teens and early twenties tell me their kids are lovelorn under their veneer of jaded carelessness. Younger people today are willing to bungee jump off old railroad trestles, but they can’t allow themselves to fall in love.

My generation was not so constricted.

Halfway Between Then
and Now

My favorite party of the year, thrown by my best friend of over fifty years and her husband of nearly 45 of those years, celebrates the love affairs of five couples, four of which have been to together for decades and one that fell in love after they started collecting Social Security. The bonds we have with our spouses, and now with one another after about ten years of meeting every Valentine’s week, are gorgeous to behold. Each year, our hostess asks us to read something about love. This year the theme was love over sixty. We had quotes from famous writers, a sonnet by Shakespeare; one couple had us sing along with The Beatles to “When I’m Sixty-Four.” I admit that I liked the song long before it described my demographic cohort.

OLD!

The highlight this year was a reading of personal ads from “The Villages,” a Florida newspaper. I reproduce them here for your amusement and inspiration:

FOXY LADY: Sexy, fashion-conscious blue-haired beauty, 80’s, slim, 5’ 4” (used to be 5’6”), searching for sharp-looking, sharp-dressing companion. Matching white shoes and a belt is a plus.

SERENITY NOW: I am into solitude, long walks, sunrises, the ocean, yoga and meditation. If you are the silent type, let’s get together, take our hearing aids out and enjoy quiet times.

WINNING SMILE: Active grandmother with original teeth seeking a dedicated flosser to share rare steaks, corn on the cob and caramel candy.

BEATLES OR STONES? I still like to rock, still like to cruise in my Camaro on Saturday nights and still like to play the guitar. If you were a groovy chick, or are now a groovy hen, let’s get together and listen to my eight-track tapes.

MEMORIES: I can still usually remember Monday through Thursday. If you can remember Friday, Saturday and Sunday, let’s put our heads together.

MINT CONDITION: Male, 1926, high mileage, good condition, some hair, many new parts including hip, knee, cornea, valves. Isn’t in running condition, but walks well.

LONG-TERM COMMITMENT: Recent widow who has just buried fourth husband, and am looking for someone to round out a six-unit plot. Dizziness, fainting, shortness of breath not a problem.

If these folks can still contemplate romance, come on you young folks out there. Take the plunge. Fall in love. If you power through the inevitable rough spots, it could last your whole life long. And even if it doesn’t, in the long run, it will have been worth it. ‘Tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.

Now sing along with this:

Annamaria Alfieri

Valentines Are Not Always Chocolates and Flowers!

2012-02-13T07:30:00.000-05:00

It was 10:30 on a bitter cold morning in Chicago. The date was February 14, 1929.

While children happily tore open their valentines in classrooms across the city, lovesick twenty-somethings waited impatiently for the postman, and middle-aged housewives wondered if their spouses would even remember what day it was, a very different scene was unfolding in a warehouse on North Clark Street.

But first, some background. It was during prohibition in the United States. At this time the bootlegging territory in Chicago was divided pretty evenly between two gangsters — George ‘Bugs’ Moran and Al Capone. But Capone wanted it all. He decided to take Bugs down. This was the plan. Capone knew that Bugs and his clan were meeting at their headquarters (a warehouse on North Clark Street), the date, and the time. Capone’s gang stole a police car and two police uniforms, and hired some gangsters from out of town, who would not be recognized, to play the roles of policemen. They arrived at the warehouse and pretended to perform a normal, everyday, police raid. Moran’s seven gangsters amiably complied, agreeing to stand facing the garage wall while being searched and relieved of their weapons. But instead of being taken to jail, the usual procedure, they were ruthlessly mowed down by machine guns and other lethal weapons.

The neighbors, hearing the gunshots, ran to their windows and saw two men in street clothes being escorted by two policemen to a police car. Assuming that everything was under control, they didn’t call the police, but went about their business. It was several hours later before the bodies were discovered. Only one gangster was still alive and he was unconscious. When he, the only witness to the carnage, came to and was asked, “Who shot you?” he said, “Nobody shot me,” and promptly died from his fourteen bullet wounds.

Although everyone in Chicago knew Capone was behind this heinous crime, no one could prove it. He had an airtight alibi; at 10:30 that morning he was being questioned by police in another part of town, on some misdemeanor. Bugs, on the other hand, was late for the meeting, and seeing the police car parked at the garage, decided (wisely) to skip the meeting, which ever after was known as the “St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.” It wasn’t until many years later that Al Capone went to prison on a charge of tax evasion.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Robin Hathaway

Love Story, U.S.A.

2012-02-12T07:30:00.000-05:00

We watched with bated breath, as Gabby climbed, cumbersomely, up to hand her resignation to the Speaker.

Then the long, long, long applause, that never seemed to end. . .

Not a dry eye in the House.

Or my house.

We'd thrilled to see the Leader of the Free World embrace this frail woman at the State of the Union, to the sound of thunderous applause.

Assisted by her Washington "sisters," Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Arizona Representative Gabrielle Giffords showed the whole world the meaning of courage, clarity of purpose, sense of duty.

Downright American pluck and guts!

She looked like a model in her red jacket, tasteful jewelry and charming smile.

We wanted to stand in front of the TV, join all those pillars of government, clap 'til our own hands were red, join Joe and Hillary and Nancy and John — even Eric Cantor — and Barack in saying — "We haven't seen the last of this extraordinary woman!"

I never met Gabby Giffords. But I'd heard of the Washington triumvirate, the trio of rising leaders of our government - Kirsten, Debbie and Gabby. And decided to follow their careers, an unknown, unseen devotee.

When Gabby was shot, that fateful day last year, I wanted to yell... "Don't go, Gabby!!! We need you!!!"

Through the days of complex surgery, the induced coma, the horrors of skull removal, the agony of rehab, the twilight zone of — would she make it...

Would she walk, talk, smile, laugh, cry again???

We stood arm in arm with Mark Kelly, as the former astronaut kept vigil by his wife's side.

Days became weeks.

Then months.

And now, years.

Into what is still an unknown, uncertain future.

The Olympian climb back — the naked badge of courage — the strength to climb out of hell to the land of the living. . .

Then, as we watched her struggle to walk, ever so slowly, in that historic hall, we knew Gabby had her mojo back!!!

God bless you, Congresswoman Gabby!

We - luv - ya, kid!

T.J. Straw

P.S. The Navy has named its newest combat ship after Gabby. The 3,000 ton ship, an Indepdendence Variant Littoral, will be the USS Gabrielle Giffords, named after someone "who has become synonymous with courage."

What if They Won the War on Women?

2012-02-10T06:47:00.000-05:00

I received yet another email today warning me that my personal donation of $5 was all that stood between the women of this country and the relentless war being waged against us by the evil forces of the Republican Party. Gosh, I said to myself. What are these people going to do if they defeat us? What, for instance, are they going to do for consortium? (I was going to write "nookie," but this is a family blog.)

We take you now to the offices of Senator Bigbooger, who is wrestling with this very problem in a hypothetical future. Enter Toady, his aide.

Toady: Good news, Senator! Kate Gallison failed to send in her donation to the liberal left. We won the War on Women this morning. Homeland Security surrounded the last holdouts in a Planned Parenthood clinic in Boise, Idaho. Those who weren't killed have surrendered.

Bigbooger: Excellent. This calls for a celebration. Get my mistress on the phone.

Toady: Oh, I neglected to tell you, sir. She died yesterday.

Bigbooger: Died? What did she die of?

Toady: An illegal abortion. Don't you remember? You gave her the money for it.

Bigbooger: Oh, yes. And an outrageous sum of money it was, too. Call my wife, then.

Toady: I'm sorry sir, but she's gone to Canada.

Bigbooger: What for?

Toady: Her feet.

Bigbooger: Her feet?

Toady: Yes, sir. The puncture wounds from the tacks you strewed in the yard were becoming infected. Since we abolished Obamacare she has no health insurance in this country.

Bigbooger: There must be someone around who wants to party. What about those attractive interns?

Toady: Gone, sir. As I said, we won the War on Women. All the females have either left the country or died from inadequate healthcare.

Bigbooger: I did not foresee this. We have a problem, Toady.

Toady: Possibly, Senator. On the other hand, there's a lobbyist in your outer office who may offer a solution.

Bigbooger: And what might that be?

Toady: Insourcing Asians. This man owns a trillion-dollar shipping company. It seems that with just a few minor changes in the law, which he will happily help you draft, enough Asian women can be brought to our shores to fulfill every need, at very little cost to the taxpayers.

Bigbooger: Excellent. Show him in.

Kate Gallison

Surprises in Buenos Aires

2012-02-08T09:15:00.000-05:00

Whenever friends go to a new place or a relative comes to New York for the first time, my favorite question to ask is "What surprised you about what you saw?"

I’ve decided to ask this of myself about my recent trip to Buenos Aires. First, I should say that I took this trip to get a better sense of the setting for my next book. I had not been to BA, as everyone there calls it, for over twenty years. The trip fulfilled all my hopes and more. And gave me some really pleasant surprises to boot:

In the “Paris of the South,” corner restaurants that look like tourist joints from the outside very often turn out to be lovely, with white tablecloths and excellent food. You could have fooled me. The buildings are almost always curved at the entrance and often have huge Coca-Cola signs over the front doors — nothing at all like the charming little mid-block bistros and trattorias I was seeking and would have easily found in the real Paris or Rome or even London, for that matter. There were none of those little places that I ever discovered. What we did find when looking for a good lunch were huge eateries that seemed as if they belonged in Times Square. But — we ate very well at most of the ones we visited and in one, near the subway stop for Plaza Italia, we had Brochette de Lomo (filet mignon en brochette) that was spectacularly good and would have cost $34 all by itself for one person in NYC. In BA, it was $30 for two and included good salads, desserts, and two glasses of very nice wine.

Almost as delightful was the male pulchritude that was on display almost everywhere. There are more good-looking men by percentage of the population in BA than in any other city I have visited, except for Reggio di Calabria. (ALL the men in my next book are going to be handsome—maybe even the murderer.) I spent a little while trying to figure out why this might be, but then I realized it was way too much of distraction from the task at hand. I went back to looking at the buildings, the statuary, and the trees. Except for the occasional sidelong glance.

My biggest surprise actually began in New York. During the week between Christmas and New Year’s, we walked out of our building onto 11th Street and saw a woman looking at a map. She was accompanied by a girl in her late teens. As is our wont when we encounter lost tourists, we asked if we could help her. During the ensuing conversation, we found out that she was from BA, told her we were going to visit there in a few weeks, and exchanged email addresses so we might have a coffee together while when we arrived.

After a warm correspondence in the intervening weeks, she offered to pick us up in her car at 8 one evening. (Eight PM is way too early for dinner in BA.) She came for us and showed us the university where she is a professor of hydrology. We then had dinner together on the Costanera, and then she took us for a midnight drive through the city all lit up and looking absolutely gorgeous.

Upon hearing of my interest in seeing the villas miserias — the slum towns where Perón’s descamisados lived, she arranged to pick us up on Sunday morning and take us through them. The hovels are still there and still occupied by the poor. The factories are abandoned shells for the most part. I cannot imagine that I would have gone there on my own. What a gift! Now I can say, not only that I have seen Buenos Aires, but that I have a dear friend who lives there!

Annamaria Alfieri

HOOT! (It's sheer poetry)

2012-02-06T07:30:00.000-05:00

Today Robin is yielding the floor to Amanda Vacharat, who edits a unique magazine called HOOT. We will let her tell you all about it.

HOOT is a magazine...on a postcard!

We work like a traditional literary magazine, in that we accept rolling submissions from authors worldwide. Each month, we select one piece of poetry or prose to be designed, with complimentary artwork, onto the front of a 4x6" postcard. Our authors range from first-time writers to experienced, published novelists and poets. Occasionally, we accept submissions from artists as well.

The idea behind HOOT is that quality, contemporary writing should not just be available to capital-L Literary types — we wanted to make something that everyone from casual readers to serious writers could enjoy and participate in. Our issues are short (<150 words), and small enough to be hung as art on fridges or passed to friends. They are sort of like, in a loose way, a tangible form of a Tweet or a Facebook post — something that can be shared. In line with making the literary world maximally accessible, HOOT also publishes an online-only issue each month, and runs free online feedback sessions for short work every Wednesday evening. In March, we will also be running free, in-person workshops at the Moonstone Arts Center in Philadelphia. Subscriptions are also priced minimally, compared to other literary magazines.

For a look at the online issues, click here. The postcards look like this:

And here are two pieces I'm especially fond of from the online magazine:

From Issue 4, HOOT Online

JESUS SAVES
by Marcy Campbell

I was under pressure from management to boost weeknight attendance. We’d given haircuts in the outfield. We’d trained a goat as bat boy. I’d worked with the talent agency before, hiring clowns, jugglers, strolling magicians, but this Jesus they sent me was a problem.

He was standing in the dugout in his sandals and robe, along with our sponsor’s mascot, a soft pretzel. When I explained my plan for the race around the bases, he said, “It’s undignified.”

“I already paid for you!” I replied, yet he refused to run.

“I’ve always wanted to pitch,” he suggested.

So with the fans primed for 7th inning stretch shenanigans, I sent Jesus to the mound. I realize it’s no feat to pitch to a pretzel. Yet, when that wad of twisted dough went down swinging after three strikes from the Almighty, I tell you, there wasn’t a soul left in his seat.

From Issue 2, HOOT Online

HARD FEELINGS
by Stewart Lindh

Could be the name of a town
Out in the Mojave,
A place to gas up,
Buy a cold drink and look around;
Telling yourself,
“I sure wouldn’t want to live here.”
But someone
Overhears your thoughts,
And your troubles begin.
Years later, an Eagle Scout ducking behind
A boulder to piss, finds your skull
Emptied of everything.

Writer's Guidelines can be found in detail on our website (http://hootreview.com/submissions). Basically, we like zest (!) — and things that follow the Refrigerator Rule (i.e. you could hang the piece on a fridge for all your friends to see, and you wouldn't mind looking at it for a month). All work must contain fewer than 150 words. We do pay the authors we publish on postcards.

Amanda Vacharat has interned at The Potomac Review, worked as an editorial assistant for a fiction/nonfiction editing company, and has studied fiction in classes through the Johns Hopkins Creative Writing MA program. Dorian Geisler (co-editor/co-founder) recently received his MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, has work published in The Believer and The Berkeley Poetry Review, and currently teaches English in Philadelphia.

The Russian Fan Club

2012-02-05T07:30:00.000-05:00

The guy didn't look like any plumber I'd ever met. Stylish tee shirt, pressed slacks, gold chain on his neck as big as a Cartier window display, a fist-sized diamond on his pinkie, he smelled like an ad for Bergdorf for Men!

The gentle giant moved with grace and spoke with such a heavy accent I had to concentrate hard.

After he finished the work in my shower, he glided on his buttery-soft loafers into the hall and studied the book-cover posters I'd taped on the walls. For a launch party in honor of Bob Knightly's debut novel, I'd made photo-copies of the cover and stuck them on the walls and never taken them down.

Bodies in Winter by Robert Knightly.

The plumber, whose name was Boris, told me he was an emigre from Russia and lived now in Little Odessa (Brighton Beach) with what sounded like half the population of the Motherland, all of whom were his close kin.

After close scrutiny of one poster his face lit up. "Ha! Miss Sllubtaw - (Straw does not translate well in Cyrillic) your very fine president! We love Mr. Kennedy. Most great man, yes?"

Plumbers' fees being what they are in New York City, I did not argue, question or correct him.

I quickly realized he saw the capital K and his mind read the familiar K-word to him - Kennedy not Knightly!

"Uh, no, this is a picture of a book by my friend Mr. Knightly," I stammered, trying to steer him toward the front door.

But he stood his ground and waved his arm toward the wall. "Ah, yes, Kennedy – your friend?"

Clearly we were on different mind-tracks.

"Your friend, Robert Kennedy!" he exclaimed, with devotion all over his wide smile.

"You worship the Kennedys in your house," he said, glaring at me with a beatific smile.

"No, my friend's name is Robert. But his last name is Knightly, not Kennedy," I repeated, trying to dig in my memory what you called names in correct Russian grammar.

"Oh, we are being kindred souls," he said, sounding like a Russian orthodox priest pronouncing a benediction, "My family is liking your President Kennedy and his family. My wife she have pictures on house wall of man. We live in Kennedy country now. We are leaving our country many months to live your American dream, now."

I pulled out my purse and fished for my wallet.

He touched my hand gently.

"No charge," he said proudly. "All in the Kennedy family!"

Out of my dim past I found the word. "Spacibo," I said quietly.

How do you follow that act?

Thelma J. Straw

Getting Up with the Chickens

2012-02-03T07:30:00.000-05:00

Sometime in the recent past a truck carrying live chickens turned over on U.S. 90 where it runs through Ocean Springs, Mississippi. Crying, "We're free! We're free!" (or possibly, "Kut! Kadawkit!") the birds fled the scene of the accident and settled all over town.

Like many another civilized municipality, Ocean Springs has an ordinance against keeping farm animals, so the animals were forced to keep themselves. Some ran in traffic, putting an end to their struggles. Some took to hanging out on Government Street, begging for handouts from the merchants, living on crumbs from the donut shop, ignoring people's complaints about their droppings. Others penetrated deep into the residential neighborhoods and found homes in bushes, under porches, anywhere there was shelter and protection from the cats and the zealous city government, there to increase and multiply as best they could.

I first became aware of the chicken phenomenon last week on a visit to my mother-in-law. I woke up before dawn the way one does sometimes and noticed that Harold's breathing sounded funny. "That's strange," I thought. "He seems to be wheezing. He never did that before." But as time went on the wheezes increased in number and direction. At last they could clearly be heard to be coming in through several different windows. Not Harold, then. Roosters. "Erka-erka-wheeze." Pretty close to "cock-a-doodle-doo."

Feral chickens are roaming Ocean Springs! What does this mean? Some say it's good for the tourist trade, making the town more like Key West. Some say it reminds them of their grandmothers, who always kept chickens. Those folks reminisce fondly about the ways their grandmothers used to kill their chickens, sometimes by wringing their necks with a casual flick of the wrist, sometimes by cutting their feathery heads off and letting them run around the yard till they dropped.

I like that the roosters crow just before dawn. That way I know to get up if I'm not asleep.

There are those in Ocean Springs who abhor the chickens, emblems of hated rusticity, spoilers of the polished, upscale, artistic image of the new Ocean Springs. One of them is a city alderman, pledged to get rid of the chickens. But most of the townsfolk view the chickens philosophically. Because that's what the Gulf Coast is all about. They take what comes, chickens, tourists, hurricanes, aldermen, and they make the best of it. Let the good times roll.

Here in the Northeast, maybe even here in Lambertville, if a truckload of chickens got loose you could hear the screams all the way to Ocean Springs, and they wouldn't be coming from the chickens. Call my lawyer! Sue! Sue!

Kate Gallison

This Just In - Winners of Lois Winston's Book Annouced

2012-02-01T19:19:00.001-05:00

With the aid of a random number generator, Lois Winston has selected the five winners of signed copies of Death By Killer Mop Doll from everyone who posted comments during her blog tour. She’ll also be posting the winners on the sidebar of the Killer Crafts & Crafty Killers blog at http://www.anastasiapollack.blogspot.com and on her website at http://www.loiswinston.com/more.html under the Contests section. The winners will need to send their mailing addresses to Lois at lois@loiswinston.com.

The winners, and the blogs they commented on:

Holli Castillo — Marilyn’s Musings
Lynn Demsky — Suspense Your Disbelief
Rita Horiguchi — Lesa’s Book Critiques
Pat Gulley — Cindy Sample Books
Jane R. — Killer Characters

Truth is Stranger than Fiction

2012-01-31T07:30:00.000-05:00

by Lois Winston

We authors are often asked where we get our ideas. “Write What You Know” is such a well-known maxim that even non-writers have heard of it and assume that all authors must have some personal experience in regard to their characters and plots.

Disclaimer: No, my husband didn’t gamble away our life’s savings, max out our credit cards, and borrow fifty grand from a loan shark before dropping dead at a casino in Las Vegas. He’s very much alive and a nice guy.

Disclaimer: No, I have never stumbled across a dead body in my office or anywhere else.

Disclaimer: No, my mother is not descended (nor did she believe she was) from Russian royalty.

Disclaimer: Yes, I have worked as a crafts editor but for a book publisher, not a women’s magazine.

Disclaimer: Yes, my mother-in-law was a communist.

Sometimes authors do mine their own backgrounds and the people they know for source material, but most often we make things up. That’s because we’re writing fiction. And fiction by definition is stuff that isn’t true.

So where do I get most of my ideas?

I’m a news junkie. I read the newspaper every morning while I’m getting my first of many caffeine fixes throughout the day. The daily news is an author’s best friend. Why? Because the old adage TRUTH IS STRANGER THAN FICTION really is true. That belief is reaffirmed every time I pick up a newspaper or turn on the evening news. And from all that truth I glean a wealth of ideas for my books.

For me the daily news becomes a wonderful source for plots, subplots, main characters, and secondary characters. Newspapers are incredibly cheap resources. They’re also a tax deduction if you’re using them for research. The reason I like the newspaper over the nightly news is because the newspaper has the luxury of going into greater detail about a story. Ninety second news bites can only give the broad picture of a newsworthy event. Often it’s the nuances not told on the evening news that will trigger a brainstorm.

I don’t always take the news story at face value, though. I brainstorm from them. Many news stories on the surface seem like they’d only be the catalyst for a suspense, thriller, or mystery, most – if not all – can actually be used as a spring board for all fiction genres.

Here’s an example:

The sidebar headline in the morning newspaper awhile back was “7 SOLDIERS DIE IN IRAQ AS SURGE CONTINUES.” This could certainly be used as the basis of a thriller plot about a group of soldiers fighting in Iraq. But how else could this story be used to generate plot for other genres? Here are a few I came up with off the top of my head:

– As a soldier lies dying after a roadside bombing, he makes his friend promise to take care of his pregnant wife. Because the dying soldier saved his friend’s life on an earlier expedition, the surviving soldier feels honor bound to carry out his friend’s last request. There’s one not so minor hitch, though – he hates kids, and she’s pregnant with triplets. – romantic comedy or woman’s fiction

– A roadside bombing in Iraq leaves three survivors who are captured and held by terrorists demanding the release of a leader they don’t know has been murdered by a rogue officer. – thriller

– After a roadside bombing in Iraq that leaves all but three members of a squad dead, one is captured, one is injured, and one is missing. Soon after, the region is struck by the same plagues visited upon Egypt during the time of Moses. – horror

– When a roadside bomb goes off during a foot patrol in Iraq, seven soldiers are killed. One survives, but he wakes up in ancient Mesopotamia to find a very beautiful woman tending his wounds. – time travel or erotica

– After surviving a roadside bombing that killed the other members of his squad, a young soldier is nursed back to health by a local woman. There’s only one problem: In order to save his life, she’s had to turn him into a werewolf. – paranormal

– Same premise as above with a slight twist: She’s turned him into a werewolf, and he’s allergic to animals. – humorous paranormal

Other sections of the newspaper as well as magazines can be used to generate ideas. Don’t overlook the human interest stories, editorials, advice columns, and op-ed columns. You can find a wealth of plot and characters in every section of the newspaper and between the covers of any magazine, including the ads, especially those found in the backs of magazines.

Here are two ads I came across that just might make their way into one of my mysteries some day:

– Did you know that imaginary girlfriends and boyfriends are up for sale on eBay? For the right amount of money you can pay to have someone send you emails, letters, and photos from pretend lovers.

– You can purchase panties with a hidden computer chip that will keep tabs on a girlfriend, wife, or daughter 24 hours a day via satellite transmissions to your computer, cell phone or PDA.

Even the most unlikely reading material can produce idea gold.

Bio: Lois Winston is the author of the critically acclaimed Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries published by Midnight Ink. Assault With a Deadly Glue Gun, the first book in the series, received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Booklist and was recently nominated for a Readers Choice Award by the Salt Lake City Library System. The new year brings with it the release of Death By Killer Mop Doll, the second book in the series. Read an excerpt at http://www.loiswinston.com/excerptap2.html. Visit Lois at her website: http://www.loiswinston.com and Anastasia at the Killer Crafts & Crafty Killers blog: http://www.anastasiapollack.blogspot.com. You can also follow Lois and Anastasia on Twitter @anasleuth.

Lois is currently winding up a month-long blog tour where she’s giving away five signed copies of Death By Killer Mop Doll. To enter the drawing, post a comment to this blog or any of the others on the tour. You can find the complete schedule at her website and Anastasia’s blog. In addition, she’s giving away 3 copies of Death By Killer Mop Doll on Goodreads, http://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/15173-death-by-killer-mop-doll

“In small measure, life may perfect be.”

2012-01-30T11:29:00.000-05:00

This quote from Ben Jonson had special meaning for me this week. Three small, perfect things happened and I was reminded that the big events in life like marriage, births, publishing books, etc., occur only once in awhile. It’s important to appreciate those smaller things that happen in between, such as:

1. A Good Joke:

My daughter, Anne, called and told me my two-year-old grandson, Nate’s latest antic. My son-in-law couldn’t find the flip-flops he liked to wear around the house. He searched everywhere. He asked Anne if she’d seen them. She hadn’t. Finally, in desperation, he asked Nate, my two-year-old grandson, “Have you seen my flip-flops?”

Grinning, he ran into his room, opened the cupboard under his changing table, and came running back clutching the flip-flops. He threw them at his father’s feet and gave a big, belly laugh.

His first joke was a big success!

2. A Nice Surprise:

Bob and I arrived home at midnight after a long, grueling train ride. We were exhausted and starving. And I knew the refrigerator was empty. “I’m afraid water is all we have,” I said, and opened the freezer to get some ice cubes. Lo and behold, there were two strawberry sundaes from MacDonald’s that I’d bought the week before and forgotten all about — the perfect answer to our plight. We went to bed happy and satisfied.

3. A Kind Deed:

Recently I took some packages and a half- dozen thank you notes to the post office. When I got there, the notes were gone! I must have dropped them. I retraced my steps, to no avail. They were nowhere to be found. Thank-you notes are a pain to write the first time; to write them twice is unthinkable. I sent a brief e-mail to those friends and relatives explaining what had happened. Soon, I received six replies that went something like this, “Don’t worry, Robin. We got your note. It arrived a few days ago.”

So, some kind soul must have picked up those notes from the sidewalk and taken the trouble to put them in a mailbox. What could be more perfect than that?

Robin Hathaway

Robert Knightly's The Cold Room

2012-01-29T07:30:00.000-05:00

In this book we are drawn at once into a story with themes of human love, the struggles of a decent NYPD cop, the sale, slavery and violent abuse of Eastern European illegal immigrants - young women bought, sold and destroyed in a global business that portrays the worst in human barbarism.

THE COLD ROOM is a tale that might jump out at us in the pages of today's Times or the Post. The horror and sadness are paired exquisitely with the timeless story of human relationships, both sexual and platonic. We are absorbed in a delicate dance between Detective Harry Corbin and his former partner, Adele Bentibi. Vivid, passionate, yet sincere and tender, these people get inside our heads and challenge our own skills in interpersonal relationships. We walk along the streets of New York in an unfolding drama that is raw, poetic, gentle as a flower unfolding, solid as stone.

The beginning of the book is not for the faint-hearted. The early scenes set the stage for the development of the intricately woven plot and the revelations of multi-textured characters on an unforgettable stage that seduces you and locks you into its breathless embrace.

Few novels promise so profoundly — "In the beginning is the end..." Knightly succeeds in what every serious novelist tries to do — he makes you laugh. He makes you cry.

Change the setting from the boroughs of New York City to Helsinki or Stockholm, Berlin or Lisbon. Any global urban melting pot — and the novel still soars as a well-constructed art form. And work that entertains. Human love and respect share dazzling levels of insight into the psyches of the main characters. The mutual respect of the cop for the nun; the professional religious woman for the dedication of the cop.

The author's ubiquitous desciptions of both majestic nature and seedy urban environments soar like verbal eagles! The author weaves nature constantly in and out of the exposed live wires of human emotion and psychological tensions. At times the reader has to stop to catch his breath at the blatant cruelty of nature that is somehow translated into sheer poetry.

Intricacies of sexual tension are woven into the pages seamlessly, with both the delicacy of a spring violet and the force of a summer thunderbolt.

The author has the good sense to infuse many key scenes with humor — in several minor characters who appear on stage for their unforgettable fifteen minutes!

This story is a model for how to write a gripping suspense novel — with ascending steps that ratchet up the tension. Just when you think you've got the answer to the intricate plot puzzle, you get another shock — unexpected — yet completely plausible!

Through both poetic flights and gruelling action scenes, the author pummels you with the raw sides of real life, til you think he's led you — at last — to the top of the mountain — once more — then — WHAM — he knocks you off your feet! Again.

When you close the last page you realize no neophyte could write this story!

On the levels where the author demonstrates skill and knowledge - the cop psyche, knowledge of legal procedures , organizational structure of the intricate world of the NYPD, the inexplicable blending of human and animal nature, this author taps into your veins as deftly as a Euripides, a Shakespeare, a Hemingway.

P.S. I have purposely avoided plot description here — since an attempt to do so would weaken your enjoyment of the book.

Thelma Straw

Young Adult Books of Bygone Times

2012-01-27T07:30:00.000-05:00

My favorite book when I was a young teenager was Bab, a Sub-Deb, by Mary Roberts Rinehart, a book my mother liked to read when she was a teenager, indeed the very same copy. I found it on a bookshelf in Granny's house, along with many other delightful books to beguile the long, quiet summers in Canada. What Katy Did. A number of light romances by P. G. Wodehouse. Sherlock Holmes. Some Kipling. And a profusion of mysterious and exotic fairy books.

These days Bab would be considered a Young Adult book, in that the protagonist was a girl of seventeen. When I told my third-year high school English teacher that Bab, a Sub-Deb, was my favorite book, she was convulsed with scorn, possibly because it had been written to entertain and was not Deep. She gave us Arrowsmith to read, and I really did try to like it, but (spoiler alert!) when the doctor's wife died from not getting vaccinated for the disease whose epidemic the doctor had gone to East Djabip to study, I threw it against the wall. Metaphorically, of course. The book belonged to the school; I would never deface public property.

Books by sorrowful Deep Men were considered more worthy when I was in school than books by merry women. Perhaps they still are. I was going to review Bab for you, point out its charm and grace, how funny it is, how prettily it paints the era just before the U.S. entered World War I. Issues deeper than Babs' goofy adolescent concerns are not addressed. Should we be going to war? Is it really our fight? What are these labor agitators carrying on about? Nobody asks these questions. But you couldn't, back in 1917, not without going to jail, and such questions would never have occurred to Mary Roberts Rinehart in any case.

As I think about it I find that instead of reviewing that book, I want to talk about the books that bore our high school English teacher's stamp of approval. Literary men's books. As I remember those tomes they all had messages in them. If you were a manly male writer you could present the wretched neuroses and failures of your protagonist without grace or humor, and everyone would say it was Honest and call it Art. Any well-balanced woman could have seen from afar what the consequences of the protagonist's behavior would be. But, no. Go ahead! Take your wife to the epidemic! Fail to vaccinate her!

And so we conclude that putting your work before your personal life is a bad idea, as if no one could have figured that out without reading a whole book. Spare me your life insights. Entertain me. Give me Bab, a Sub-Deb, every time.

Read it yourself if you like. Here's a copy from Harold's online library:

If you're sick enough to want to read Arrowsmith you'll have to find your own copy.

Kate Gallison

Buenos Aires Through Their Eyes

2012-01-25T07:30:00.000-05:00

I am working on my third historical mystery — one that takes place in Buenos Aires. I came on this trip to get the feel of the city that is the backdrop for my story. After spending the past year reading deeply into the history of Argentina and especially of the Peróns and their times, I want to experience first hand the places I have been writing about. I have been here before, but not with such a story in mind.

On Day One of this research excursion, we took a tour of the Casa Rosada — the seat of the Argentine government. The palace is magnificent. It is pink because President Domingo Sarmiento (1811-1888) proposed they combine the Federalist red with the Unitarist white — to appease whichever of the violently opposing factions took precedence at any given moment during in the country's tumultuous 19th century history. The interior rooms are grand in the ornate style of that era.

My story does not go back that far; it takes place during October of 1945, a period when the Casa Rosada and the stately Plaza de Mayo in front of it were the focus of street demonstrations and popular uprisings. Chaos that ended on October 17th when Perón stepped out on the balcony of the Casa Rosada to address an estimated 300,000 low-level workers who had rallied to support him.

Perón called those men his descamisados — shirtless ones. In that era, men in Buenos Aires were required to wear jackets in public. They could not enter a restaurant or a movie theater without "proper attire." So the poorest laborers were not really shirtless, but jacketless. They did the dirtiest jobs in the country.

As elsewhere in the New World, the skilled laborers were European immigrants — mostly from Italy and Spain —Basques, largely — and some Irish and Germans who poured into the country during the tsunami of migration at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. They built buildings, made shoes, played music, all manner of work that required training. Argentina was rich then, off cattle, which were shipped live to England and the Continent. Once refrigeration was perfected, the meat was butchered in Buenos Aires and then shipped, rather than sending it on the hoof.

During the Great Depression, thousands of Indians and mestizos from the vast plains of the Pampas came to Buenos Aires looking for work just in time to man the slaughterhouses and the meat packing plants then springing up. These were Perón's descamisados. To secure them as his power base, from his position as Minister of Labor, he had raised their wages and gotten them health insurance and paid vacations. During the week before October 17th, his superior officers in the military government had forced him to resign. Now the descamisados wanted him back.

On that fateful day, they flooded into the center of the city from their villas miserias, slum towns, down across the Riachuelo to the south of the capital. They had never seen the city of Buenos Aires before. The "Paris of the South" must have seemed like a fairyland to them. They massed in the Plaza de Mayo and demanded their man.

I have walked some of the streets the men from the desolate interior walked on that day and tried to see through their eyes, buildings, wonderful even to me, who has seen the real Paris, Rome, Venice. Awestruck would be the word to describe it. To get the same feeling I have to imagine what it would be like to look at the earth from the moon.

Annamaria Alfieri

Great Books on War

2012-01-23T07:30:00.000-05:00

All the discussion of “Downton Abbey” and WWI reminded me of some war books I have — ”enjoyed,” is the wrong word. Read with interest. Here are a few of them:

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
I was in my teens when I read this. WWII had been over for several years and none of my family had taken part in it, because of age or disabilities. My only knowledge of war was from the newspapers and newsreels and Lowell Thomas’s radio accounts. This book had a tremendous impact on me. It was weeks before I could get it out of my mind.

Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell
The Civil War was just two words to me. I was a Northerner, a native of Pennsylvania. I had no relatives from the South and the only Southerner I had ever known was my Second Grade teacher, who was from Baltimore. This book was a revelation to me. And the thing that fascinated me most was not the war itself, but its aftermath, and the long-term effect it had on the losers — Scarlett and Ashley.

The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
I remember this one mainly for its shock value. My mother wouldn’t let me read it when it came out. The first book she had ever denied me. (I think I was ten or twelve at the time) so, of course, I found it in the library and was duly shocked — mainly by the f-word. Seeing it in print for the first time was an earth-shaking event!

The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk
What a fantastic yarn. Wouk is a master writer who whisks you along like a brisk wind. I knew that from reading Marjorie Morning Star, which I loved. Captain Queeg is an iconic character I will never forget. (And not just because Bogart played him.) And Wouk’s rendition of sailors trapped at sea under the rule of a psychopath is unforgettable.

The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
O’Brien had a new way of looking at war — through the personal effects of the soldiers. This original angle brought fresh insight to an old subject. I read this book in a book club. During our discussion, one of the members confessed he had served in the Army in VietNam and his job had been to collect the bodies from the field and bring them back for burial. Among his duties was to empty the dead soldier's pockets and make sure what he found there was sent to the man's parents or his wife. He described how an unknown body was gradually transformed into an individual as he examined his wallet, the pictures inside, his letters from family or sweetheart, his talismans — such as a rabbit’s foot or a religious medal. By the time he had finished, he always felt grief for the loss of this total stranger.

The Moon is Down by John Steinbeck
This book is not well known in America, but it was a bestseller in Europe during and after WWII — especially among people who were active in the resistance. Somehow, Steinbeck, a native New Englander who lived most of his life in California, was able to get inside the minds of people living under Nazi occupation in a small, unnamed town in Scandinavia. He imagined the situation so well that thousands of Scandinavians and Europeans bought the book from underground booksellers, sometimes risking their lives to do so. This is an example of creative imagination at its height.

Now That April’s Here, by ______________?
I loved this book and have not been able to find it. It was written in the ‘40s, I believe, but I don’t know the author. It was about two British war refugees who were sent to stay with an American family during WWII for their safety. It described how they were changed by this experience and their difficulties readapting to life in Britain when they returned. If anyone can locate this book for me, I would be very grateful.

Robin Hathaway

On Joining Things

2012-01-22T08:52:00.000-05:00

There’s probably a multi-syllabic, scientific name for my affliction, but the fellows with whom I rubbed shoulders at school, in the Army, and in the NYPD, untutored as they were, put it more bluntly: “Quitter! Fuck-Up! Fool!”

I was okay if I signed on for something that would not let me out if I changed my mind, say, before nightfall: for example, the U.S. Army. I “pushed up” my draft in August, 1961, since if your draft status was “1-A” (meaning you had your ticket and it was about to be punched), then you could volunteer for the Draft and know your Day of Departure. This was desirable mainly because no employer would hire you with so uncertain a future. In 1961, the cry on the streets was: “The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming!” Draftees could look forward to wintering in the German forests or bivouacking on a hill in Korea. At least, I figured, I’d summer at Fort Dix, New Jersey. So on August 22, 1961, I reported to the Army Induction Depot on Whitehall Street at Battery Park and climbed on the bus for Ft. Dix and eight-weeks of Basic Training.

The most trauma I suffered at Basic was being roused from sleep daily while the sky was still dark and advised to “fall out” in the Muster Yard for PT — that is,“Jumping Jacks” and “Squat Thrusts” (aptly named, self-inflicted forms of violence to the body) — and lest I forget: the Run. True, I thought it would be better to train in balmy weather but had not envisioned the endless running up hills and full-tilt on straightaways in 100-degree heat. Yet, I never personally threw in the towel. My sergeant did that for me when I’d fall out of formation from heat stroke as he tossed me his canteen and said: “Take five!” To my credit, the thought never crossed my mind to resign from the Army. (Luckily, too, because that year the Army, in its unfathomable wisdom, sent me and every other graduate of Basic Training who also had a college degree to San Juan, Puerto Rico to teach English to Puerto Ricans so the Army could draft them.)

I was reminded not too long ago of a very ignominious incident from my grammar school past. There was a track meet between my school, St Anthony of Padua, and Sts. Cyril and Methodius in McCarran’s Park in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. I can’t recall how it came to pass (probably, trauma has blocked memory) but I remember running as anchor on a relay team (I was fast) and I remember wearing dungarees while the other boys wore shorts, and I remember being in the lead all the way around the track till I stopped ten yards short of the finish line. That’s what this ghost from my past reminded me about when we crossed paths at the wake of a boyhood friend. Half-a-century later, he didn’t recognize me but remembered my name. I didn’t know him then and certainly don’t want to know him now (Best to let sleeping dogs lie). Although, it is a kind of immortality, I suppose.

When I joined the NYPD as a Patrolman in 1967, it was the pre-Knapp Police Department — that is, the world as it existed before the Whitman Knapp Commission’s Investigation into Police Corruption in the New York City Police Department made the City inhospitable to gamblers, drug dealers, whorehouse operators, and understanding plainclothesmen. Yet, the Commission’s good work left untouched, never made the slightest dent in the tipping habits of the beat cop. The Knapp Commission Hearings may well have been on the TVs above the grand mahogany bar in Luchow’s Restaurant on East 14th Street. It was 1970. I was a rookie assigned to the 9th Precinct on East 5th Street. That day, the Precinct RollCallMan had slipped up and assigned me the foot post covering Luchow’s (a coveted assignment, spelled five dollars). Custom was for foot cops to eat in the kitchen at a big table, served by the busboys. There I sat with four older cops (known as “hairbags,” don’t ask me why): the radio car team that patrolled the Sector, and two traffic cops, one from Traffic Safety B and one from the 9th. Having eaten, it was the custom to leave a tip for the busboy. As we rose and I made to lay down a dollar bill at my place, the Traffic B cop touched my arm to stay my hand. “Don’t ruin it, kid,“ he said with a baleful stare. I left the dollar, after he turned away.

Robert Knightly

Tales from the Great War

2012-01-20T07:30:00.000-05:00

Attention, Downton fans: You will recall from the ghost story I told about my grandmother's midnight visitation in the tower room of Fritwell that my grandfather served in France during World War I as an officer in the Canadian army. While Granny and her sisters and my five-year-old mother were frolicking on the grounds of Fritwell Manor, Grandaddy was in the trenches, battling the Hun.

The unpleasantness of trench warfare is well known. My understanding is that it was much worse than what they show on Downton Abbey. In the beginning when the troops went over the top of the trenches to attack the enemy the British forces still kept to the old model of marching in perfectly disciplined formation. Effective against the French at Waterloo, maybe, but against German machine guns not so much. The 'three on a match' superstition arose in the trenches; by the time the third soldier got his cigarette lit the German snipers had a bead on him.

Most folks who have spent any time on a battlefield are reluctant to talk about it afterwards. Nevertheless Granddaddy told a story to my mother, who told it to me.

My grandfather and a fellow officer, a close friend, were occupying a trench together. It was springtime. The friend was moved to climb out and roam the countryside, which was somehow possible just then. He found a rosebush, or a number of them, all in bloom. He cut the roses and brought them back to the trench with him. It was a moment of beauty, a rare thing in that time and place.

Suddenly a shell came screaming into the trench and my grandfather's friend was killed. There he lay surrounded by roses. It was an image that my grandfather carried in his memory to the end of his life.

Were they in Picardy? I don't know. It would take me a month to research it. Anyway here's the famous song of that era.

Kate Gallison

Mohandas 'n Andy

2012-01-18T10:40:00.000-05:00

Their statutes face each other over the west side of Union Square. Given where I live, I pass these guys several times each week. Mohandas Gandhi's image stands at the southwest corner in a lovely triangular garden. He's been there for many years. Andy Warhol's image was placed just off the northwest corner of the square within the last year or so. Seeing the two of them standing there week after week, month after month, looking in each other's direction has set me to thinking about how different they were in almost every way.

Gandhi was the first son of a high official in a small Indian princely state and eventually travelled to London to study law at University College. Warhol was born in Pittsburgh, the fourth child of Slovakian immigrants. His father was a coal miner. The rich child became the savior of the oppressed. The working class boy grew up to be the darling of the rich and famous.

Gandhi's statue shows him as he looked on his famous march to the sea to make salt — after he had given up all privilege and devoted himself to a life of simplicity. He was midway in his historic nonviolent campaign to free his country from British domination. His image in the square is classic bronze.

Warhol's statue couldn't be more different. It is silver and so shiny it's impossible to take a decent picture of it on a sunny day. While Gandhi appears wrapped in plain homespun cloth, carrying a staff, Andy's in a suit and carries a shopping bag. Their clothes are perfect symbols of the men. Gandhi eschewed any trappings of wealth and power. Andy was a major conspicuous consumer. (David and I went to the exhibition when his estate auctioned off his possessions at Sotheby's. The goods on offer were a riot of one man's acquisition mania. The curator of the sale told us that when Andy died, his Upper Eastside townhouse had a room full of shopping bags that had been carried home but never emptied of their contents.)

The only thing the two statues have in common is that they are of men wearing glasses.

Both Andy and Mohandas were revolutionaries. Gandhi profoundly so. Warhol in the world of art and the place of the artist in society. I salute them when I pass. Every time I walk by Gandhi-ji, I put my palms together and whisper namaste. I revere him as an archangel. One day last summer, David and I took an empty Campbell's tomato soup can filled with purple flowers and left it at Andy's feet.

The two statues face each other across the part of Union Square where our fabulous greenmarket takes place. There is some logic to that. The mahatma would approve of a place where local vegetable and fruit growers and makers of bread sell their wares directly to consumers. And Andy liked any place where he could buy stuff.

And in a deep and important way, they seem at home here downtown where artists and lovers of peace and freedom have always hung out.

Annamaria Alfieri

Writing Loves Company

2012-01-16T07:30:00.000-05:00

Some writers need music, others need silence; I need company. Last week I spent four days in a remote part of south Jersey with a fellow writer, Elena Santangelo. We had no TV, no Internet, no distractions, whatsoever. Even the birds were quiet, or had vanished to warmer climes.

Elena adopted the front room. I took over the middle room. The kitchen was the common room where we met for meals, and we were allowed to talk. Somehow the presence of another writer working in close proximity spurs me on like nothing else. Maybe it’s my competitive spirit, or maybe the fever of industry is contagious. I’m not sure. All I know is – it works for me. I get twice as much writing done, when I have another writer’s company.

Of course, there were other incentives. I knew I would be interrogated at the next meal about how much I’d accomplished. Fear and guilt played a part. Also, the silence and absence of distractions, didn’t hurt. South Jersey in winter is even quieter than in summer. The traffic passing the house is minimal. No farm equipment rattles or clanks, no bikers zoom, no tourists troll on bicycles or stroll on foot. An occasional pick-up or mail truck are the only moving objects. Even the bands of wild turkeys have disappeared.

Nature itself has conspired to keep distractions to a minimum. The trees, whose leaves in the fall and blossoms in the spring cry out for attention, are gone. Bare trunks and branches are the only decoration in sight. An occasional silver sycamore – may catch the eye. They are more beautiful in winter than in summer. But that’s about it. Everything else – woods, fields, creeks, are some blah shade of grey, black or brown. Except the sky. The sunrise and sunset in winter seem even more vivid than the rest of the year. To remind us that the vigor of nature is still around, lying dormant temporarily, near the surface – resting up – ready to burst forth in a month or two in all its glory!

Meanwhile, Elena and I will keep writing.

Robin Hathaway

MWA-NY Election 2012 . . . and the Winner Is — Patricia King — President!

2012-01-15T07:30:00.000-05:00

Madame President, congratulations on your election as 2012 President of the Mystery Writers of America, New York Chapter. This chapter includes a wide geographic area – New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Delaware and West Virginia. Currently, it has about 635 members with a national membership of about 3,000 members. You are now in a line with some of the world's most distinguished writers of mystery/crime fiction.

Q: What are some of your plans for MWA-NY for the coming year?

PK: My approach is always more toward evolution than revolution. And participative. The club provided me with moral support and information that helped me succeed. I want to foster an inclusive atmosphere that will do the same for all of our chapter's members, wherever in our broad territory they reside.

Q: You write under the name of Annamaria Alfieri. Do you prefer to be called Patricia or Annamaria? How does your Italian heritage influence your crime writing?

PK: I prefer Patricia in my ordinary dealings and Annamaria for author presentations. I chose to have a pseudonym for my fiction because Patricia King is such a common name and I didn't want to be confused with others when it came to my novels. My heritage strongly influences my everyday life. Ethnic identity tends to be very intense among Italian Americans, and I grew up with the values of the Italian culture: unbreakable family ties, duty, aesthetic sensitivity. But since my novels are set in South America, the Italian in me comes out in, I think, less obvious ways. Being Italian, I was raised a Catholic and went to Catholic school, so I am prepared to understand pretty well the influence of the Catholic Church in Latin America. I think the family relationships in my stories must be more Italian than anything else, since that is built into my bloodstream. I hope I also have an Italian sense of romance. There are a lot of love relationships in my stories.

I have always loved reading mysteries, but I have to confess that I first joined MWA because a novelist friend advised me to hang around with other novelists and told me MWA-NY was the most convivial group of fiction authors in NYC. He sure was right about that!

Q: You recently published a delightful, insightful picture of the Greenwich Village area of Manhattan on your blog. Do you plan to use this setting in your future mystery novels?

PK: I haven't any plans to do so. But who knows. You never know when an idea will grab you and force you to develop it.

Q: You have a distinguished track record as a writer on non-fiction. What influenced you to turn your talents from that to the world of crime and mystery?

PK: I wanted to be a novelist when I was nine years old. But a working class kid from Patterson, New Jersey, didn't turn to the arts in those days. Though I studied literature in college, to earn a living, I got a job and wound up in the management development field. And being a compulsive writer, began to write nonfiction books in that area. But I continued to think up stories all my life and once my daughter was grown and my business established, I had time to develop my fiction writing skills.

Q: What writers have influenced your style and philosophy of crime writing? What mystery novels did you read in high school or college?

PK: Yikes, I could not begin to list them all. I am a voracious reader. As a little kid I went through all the Nancy Drew books in the Patterson Public Library Riverside Branch. I was an English Lit Major in college, and that left little time for nonacademic reading, but in summers I got into political thrillers and spy stories. Eric Ambler and John Le Carre come to mind. And of course Dame Agatha and Conan Doyle. With the kind of convent school education I had, it was inevitable that I would be drawn to the classics.

Q: In your writing what is most important to you - setting, plot, character?

PK: I wish I could say. By the time I produce a finished (if you could call it that) work, I cannot tease these issues apart. I begin with setting, because I begin by choosing a period of South American history that I find intriguing. Then I develop the plot elements that will help me reveal the history. But once the characters begin to walk around in my mind, they just take over and move everything else around.

Q: You have worked in professional fields other than publishing. How does this experience contribute to your crime writing?

PK: My business career (and my convent school education) gave me self-discipline. I need a lot of that. Also, I know a bit about book contracts and the publishing process. That is always useful.

Q: What is your advice to new members of MWA-NY who want to get published?

PK: Write every day. Hone your skills in every way you can. And never give up. It took me a couple of decades. But it was worth it. Boy, was it worth it!

* * *

Our thanks to Patricia for these words of wisdom and we wish her the best of success as she manages the New York Chapter of Mystery Writers of America the coming year!!!

T. J. Straw

If you Like Downton Abbey, You'll Love Rupert Brooke

2012-01-13T07:30:00.000-05:00

I was a fan of Rupert Brooke. What impressionable young girl wouldn't be? So beautiful, so gifted, so doomed. He wrote deathless poetry and then was killed in The Great War. In the old family cottage at The Ledge — a wide place in the St. Croix River near St. Stephen, New Brunswick, Canada, where once there was a seaport and now there are cottages — one of the books was a volume of Rupert Brooke's poetry. Possibly a first edition. It had a blue cloth cover and used to belong to my great-aunt Kathleen, after whom I was named.

When I was fourteen I used to lie around on the moldy-smelling day bed at the cottage at The Ledge when the tide was out reading Rupert Brooke, listening to recorded Strauss waltzes, and wrecking my teeth with MacIntosh's Taffy. What bliss.

After I was grown my mother and I were visiting one of my other great aunts, the one who was then in possession of the cottage and all that it contained. I came across the book on a low shelf, covered with dust, unread, unloved. "Oh, look," I said to my mother. "Rupert Brooke's book of poetry."

"Take it. Steal it," my mother said. It was the only thing she ever advised me to steal. I had a friend once whose mother used to take her to the supermarket, where they would both slip expensive cuts of meat into their pockets and underwear, but my mother was not that sort of person.

So I took it. When I got it home a dead moth fell out of the back cover, a miller, one of those big things. Someone must have squooshed it there on purpose. But the book was still full of deathless poetry. Here's one of my favorites:

V. The Soldier

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

Kate Gallison

RIP Cesária Évora

2012-01-11T09:19:00.000-05:00

If there is a heavenly choir, it welcomed a new star member this past 17th of December.

Cesária was born in Mindelo, São Vicente, Cape Verde on the 27th of August 1941. Her father died when she was seven and after the age of ten, she was raised in orphanage. She started singing in a sailors’ tavern at the age of sixteen and became something of local hit in her twenties and thirties, but at one point had to give up music because she could not make a living at it. Then, in 1988, a French producer “discovered” her and released her first album in France, which began an international career that eventually led to many awards, including a Grammy for best contemporary world music album. Once she hit the world music scene, her concert tours sold out.

Her music was in the Cape Verdean style called morna, her singing suffused with sodade—a Cape Verde creole word that means nostalgic longing. If the deep, beautiful waters around her native island had a voice of their own, it would have been Cesária’s. Listen to her song called “Sodade”:

She performed barefoot to show her solidarity with poor women. Her first studio album was called “La Diva aux Pieds Nus” (The Barefoot Diva). It was not until 1995, that her international career took off and her repertory took on new sounds and combinations of styles from Cuba, Brazil, and Egypt. Here’s a song from my favorite of her albums, Cabo Verde:

And before we leave her, if I were in the Big Boss of that heavenly choir, here is the number I would request for the finale of her first concert in the great beyond.

Cesária Évora is gone. But her music is immortal.

Annamaria Alfieri

Vaclav Havel…

2012-01-09T07:30:00.000-05:00

…had the misfortune to die the same weekend as North Korean leader, Kim, and Havel's death was overshadowed by that dictator’s. But I doubt if Mr. Havel would have cared. He was not one to seek the limelight. On the contrary, The New York Times describes him as “a shy yet resilient, unfailingly polite but dogged man who articulated the power of the powerless.”

Unlike the politicians we hear so much about and from, today, he quietly followed his beliefs, landing in prison several times, living under police surveillance for many years, and having his plays and essays banned in his own country. When the Communists were finally routed in the Velvet Revolution, which he played a large part in bringing about, he reluctantly became president of the new Czech Republic. Reluctantly, because seats of power were not where he felt comfortable. He was required to wear a business suit and sit behind a desk in the Hrad (castle), when he would have preferred to be in a café with his friends, wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, downing coffee or a Pilsner.

Vaclav Havel was the epitome of a true statesman. He began as a dissident, working against a powerful, despotic regime, risking his life for his ideals. Gradually, with the help of others who shared his beliefs, he accomplished his goal of freeing his country from tyranny. Then, he accepted the reins of leader, despite his dislike for such a role, and guided his people back to a life of freedom with all its responsibilities and demands.

To me, Vaclav Havel is one of the great heroes of the Twentieth Century. Our present leaders should look to his example for achieving their goals.

Robin Hathaway

Diary of a ‘Corrupt’ Cop: or, It Was the Custom

2012-01-08T07:30:00.000-05:00

If you are past sixty and were a Patrolman in the New York City Police Department in the 1960s and 1970s as I was (not to mention the 80s), then the name KNAPP divides your memories, like Moses parting the Red Sea, into the nostalgia-drenched PRE- KNAPP Days and the paranoid POST-KNAPP World.

Sure, I took money; everybody did. It was the custom. But not with both hands like Patrolman William Phillips, nor with the princely touch of Detective Robert Leuci, nor stupidly like my buddy, Patrolman Edward F. Droge, Jr. It was more a Gentlemen’s Agreement: that the “gratuity” (a Knapp word) be offered, and bad manners to refuse. At least, that was the way things were when fellow-Brooklynite Eddie Droge and I joined the Finest on May 15, 1967, and that’s the way things stayed until KNAPP fell upon us like a pack of wolves on a herd of nodding sheep.

I refer to the Knapp Commission Investigation Into Allegations of Police Corruption in the New York City Police Department, anointed by Mayor John V. Lindsay on May 21, 1970, in the wake of a story in the New York Times on April 25, 1970 by muck-raking journalist David Burnham. It revealed the graft being paid by gamblers and whorehouse madams to every swinging plainclothesman in every Division in every Borough of the City. Well, not quite every plainclothesman. If Diogenes had still been abroad with his lantern, his quest for an honest man could have ended with Plainclothes Patrolman Frank Serpico. Serpico was reporter Burnham’s Deep Throat, who took a bullet in the face for his principles, but survived to become an international figure, the subject of a biography by Peter Maas and a movie starring Al Pacino.

The ‘pads’ (a cop word) guaranteed each plainclothesman $500 in an envelope each month if he worked in the Fifteenth Division in Queens, $800 if assigned to the Thirteenth Division in Brooklyn, $800 in the First and Third Divisions in Manhattan, and $1,500 in Harlem (the Dream Posting). It was all news to me; with three years on The Job I was still regarded as a rookie. Plainclothesmen worked out-of-uniform, were not dispatched on calls over the police radio. Worked in teams, focusing on their own pre-determined targets by surveilling them on stakeouts and illegally wiretapping their phones. They answered only to the Plainclothes Sergeant. Even a rookie knew that much. But if you were “in clothes,” you didn’t talk shop with outsiders.

The KNAPP Commission, headed by the Wall Street lawyer Whittman Knapp, invented the word corrupt and tagged the NYPD with it during its first public hearings in October, 1971. I know this because when Eddie Droge and I were appointed Probationary Patrolmen in May, 1967, nobody in the New York Police Department was corrupt. From 1967 till the coming of KNAPP in 1970, I don’t recall ever hearing corrupt or corruption applied to New York City policemen. Not because we didn’t take money or didn’t do what KNAPP exposed that we were doing, but simply because those terms weren’t in general currency then. It took Commissions like KNAPP and MOLLEN (the latter also named after its head, former Judge Milton Mollen, appointed by New York City Mayor David Dinkens in 1992 “to investigate Police Corruption, etc”) – to give corrupt, corruption and corrupt policemen the currency that has long outlived memory of the bodies that coined them.

I know this because New York City cops in 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970 (and probably since time immemorial) — with as few exceptions as there are genuine saints in heaven, or wherever they reside — all of us took gratuities (another KNAPP word) of one sort or another. There were cops like me who, at end of tour, might end up with a little extra in his pocket or been fed “on the arm” (no charge) by a restauranteur. And then there were the Phillips, Leucis and Droges who shook down every gambler or drug dealer who crossed their paths. I never knew personally any Phillips or Leuci – whose raison d’etre was to score (a cop word) every gambler, prostitute, pimp, whoever had an illegal dollar in his or her pocket that they could get a hand on. Most cops were like me and, I suppose, Eddie Droge, at least at the beginning.

It’s the late morning or early afternoon of October 21, 1971, and I wake up in my apartment in Greenpoint, Brooklyn alone, hung-over after a four-to-twelve tour the night before, which always extends to 4 a.m., the last four hours of which we spend in Cal’s Bar on East 5th Street adjacent to the 9th Precinct where I’m permanently assigned. I wake up and punch on the TV for the news and weather and there is my Police Academy classmate, my buddy Eddie Droge, in the witness stand testifying before the KNAPP Commission. Eddie has the youthful appearance of a 24-year-old. I can still see the kid-cop who, during breaks in the Police Academy gym, would bend our ears about the Beetles and joys of smoking pot. The only addition to the baby face is a pencil-thin moustache above his lip.
Aside from that, it’s the old Eddie Droge except that what he’s saying is not how I remembered the old Eddie.

He was describing to the KNAPP Commission, and the world, how he and his partner — and, it was implied, all the other cops of Brooklyn’s 80th Precinct, in Bedford-Stuyvesant — would routinely score any gambler they came across while on patrol. In fact, they hunted gamblers like deer in season. Gamblers apparently were always in season in the old Eight-O. And when Eddie and his partner were fortunate enough to snare their prey, they’d take the gambler indoors or strike the bargain in the back of the radio car. The gambler ransomed himself by agreeing to a ‘Monthly Pad’ for Eddie and his partner and the two other radio car crews in that sector — I forget the amounts mentioned, but it was per man per month, depending upon the size of the gambler’s action. I remember thinking if there were a lot of gamblers in the old Eight-O, it would add up.

Eddie was testifying under a promise of immunity because he had arrested a ‘mope’ (cop term) for selling narcotics in the 80 Precinct sometime earlier that year, but had been persuaded to accept $300 in the men’s room at Brooklyn Criminal Court at 120 Schermerhorn Street in lieu of giving truthful testimony at a Suppression Hearing on the arrest he had made. He sold the case for a $300 bribe. What Eddie didn’t know in the men’s room, however, was that he had been shopped by his arrestee, who had been fitted out with an electronic recording device by KNAPP investigators.

Eddie’s deal with the KNAPP Commission was his testimony, painting a picture of the routine, bottom-feeder corruption practiced by the ordinary cops of the Eight-O. And the 80th was meant to stand in for all seventy-five police precincts in the city at the time.

Eddie did what he had to do to avoid jail. He had been on a one-year leave-of-absence from the Department attending college in Los Angeles. I’m sure he intended to never return, to put the Job and the old life behind him. Yet, the Knapp investigators had coerced his return to testify, and the anecdotes he recounted rang true. Afterward, he was allowed to resign and return to California. At the time and still, from the vantage point of forty-plus years, I don’t fault Eddie for what he did. Cops don’t jail well. Once, I googled Edward F. Droge, Jr. He’d published two books in the 1970s about his police days: an autobiography, “A Patrolman’s Story,” and a novel; I’d read both. I didn’t know that he’d gotten a PhD in Education from Harvard, taught there, and over the past twenty-five years been headmaster at various private academies. Eddie had turned it around.

Maybe I’ll give him a shout, talk about the good times.

Robert Knightly

Embracing the New Year

2012-01-06T07:30:00.001-05:00

Yes, folks, 2012 is here, probably not the year the world will end. I think we were a lot closer in 1953. Remember the doomsday clock? Remember how the authorities told us to duck under our desks and cover our heads? As if that would save us when the ICBMs came raining down. Remember the house the government built out in the desert somewhere, a nice split-level like the ones we all lived in, so that they could blow it up with an atomic bomb and show us the footage on TV? I particularly recall the venetian blinds, how they flew off the windows and sliced the dummies all up. Don't use venetian blinds, the voice-over guy told us. They'll cut you to ribbons before you have a chance to burn to death when the bombs come.

So I ain't scared of a bunch of dead Mayans. Our government has them way outclassed in the way of spreading the fear of the End. No, I'm looking forward to 2012, and the two-hundredth anniversary of the War of 1812, one of my favorites, where Canada and the US fought to a draw and later on decided to be friends. Or earlier on, in the case of the St. Croix River Valley. In honor of the new year, and in the confident hope that I'll survive to see the end of it, I'm overhauling my web site yet again.

Check it out. Harold says I should get a focus group to look at it and tell me what they think. I started out by tinkering with the author photo, where I thought my face might be a tad too red. Nice photo, by the way; it was taken by photographer Maureen A. Vacarro, who likes a credit when I can fit one in. But I tinkered with it until I looked about three days dead, and I sort of liked it. Harold didn't, though. Of course he was right as usual and I put it back.

You'll notice that the page has a big white space in the middle. There I mean to post little YouTubes from time to time, new trailers and items of interest. You'll notice also that the links lead to the same old inner pages, which need work. I'll get to that. Also I have to post the press photos. Right now the press is not beating down my door for photos and interviews, but it never hurts to be ready.

And so, Happy New Year! Onward and upward!

Kate Gallison

A Vine in the Blood, Leighton Gage's Latest

2012-01-04T07:30:00.000-05:00

Today, I have invited my friend and splendid writer Leighton Gage to drop by and tell us about his latest, A Vine in the Blood, which launched last week in the United States and Canada. Leighton lives in a small town in Brazil and writes fascinating police procedurals set in that country. I already have my copy. Once you’ve read the reviews, you’ll want one, too!

Annamaria Alfieri

A Vine in the Blood, the fifth in the Chief Inspector Mario Silva series, is set against the background of the soccer World Cup.

But you don’t have to like the sport to enjoy the book.

Glenn Harper, writing in International Noir Fiction, put it best:

I'm not a fan of football/soccer, and the (subject matter) gave me a little pause – but I needn't have worried. The book is in part about the social phenomenon of football, but not really about the game.

A Vine in the Blood begins with the kidnapping of Juraci Santos, the mother of Tico Santos, Brazil’s greatest striker. And the timing of her abduction couldn’t be worse: only days remain before the beginning of the tournament.

Tico is distraught, and completely off his game. If Silva and his team can’t recover the lady in time, the team may have to play without him.

And that would put them in grave danger of suffering a humiliating defeat by their greatest rival.

Suspects abound, and they run the gamut from Tico’s gold-digging girlfriend, to his team’s manager, to a big-time gangster, to a cabal of Argentineans.

There are twists and turns, there’s not a little humor, and I think you’re going to like it.

But I’m not good at blowing my own horn.

Fortunately, a few folks have already stepped-up to speak on my behalf:

Gage knows Brazil well and has a cast of characters so amusing and so skillfully constructed that this novel is irresistible. — Toronto Globe and Mail.

Coincidence, that. The Globe and Mail used exactly the same word (irresistible) that the New York Times used to describe Every Bitter Thing, my last book.

The trade press was also very complimentary:

Rising above Brazilian brutality, corruption, and bribery with uncommon wit and the help of his colorful, appealing colleagues, (Silva) scores a winning goal in an enormously complex kidnap payoff scheme. — Publisher’s Weekly (starred review)

And Dana King, writing in the New Mystery Reader, had this to say:

Let’s take a moment to celebrate excellence…(“A Vine in the Blood” is) a great story, well told.

Dana’s review is a brilliant piece of writing, from a guy who knows the mystery genre inside out. If you have a moment, I suggest you go there and read what he had to say in its entirety:

http://www.newmysteryreader.com/November_and_December_Hardcover_Mystery.htm#vine in the blood

At the end, you’ll find a link to an interview he did with me.

Another fine piece of journalism is the lengthy, well-written and well-researched review James Thompson published in the New York Journal of Books:

http://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/review/vine-blood

Here’s an extract:

Mr. Gage is a master of the procedural who paints with a fine brush, using the tools he needs to craft a fine novel — and no more.

Want to sample the book? You can do so on the book’s Barnes and Noble page, where they’ve included an entire first chapter:

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/a-vine-in-the-blood-gage-leighton/1103377816?ean=9781616950040&itm=5&usri=leighton%252bgage
(Scroll down and click on “Read More”.)

Finally, for those of you who are into first lines, here it is:

Less than an hour after Juraci Santos was unceremoniously dumped into the back seat of her kidnappers’ getaway car, Luca Vaz crept through her front gate and poisoned her bougainvilleas.

Thanks, Annamaria, for inviting me.

Love this blog!

Leighton Gage

Post-Holiday Letdown…

2012-01-02T08:25:00.000-05:00

…is what I’m suffering from right now. It happens every year as the night follows day. But this year it seems worse than usual. I have sought advice. One friend suggested a brisk walk. I tried that and all I saw were rows of naked, abandoned fir trees lining the curb. And, in the stores, signs for Christmas decorations at half-price. Then, to top it off, one clerk was arranging valentines on the shelves. Valentines on January first!

Another friend suggested I go to a movie. A good thought, but when you come out from that dark refuge, you are struck all over again by the grim realities of life. Bills, thank you notes, returning unwanted gifts, etc. My husband thinks he has the perfect solution. He says, “Don’t enjoy the holidays, then you won’t feel letdown afterward.” In other words, stay down all the time. Not for me. I’d rather have the ups and downs, even though the downs are painful.

I have compiled a small collection of quotes to share with anyone out there who is suffering from the same malady as I am. Here they are:

“Christmas isn’t a season. It’s a feeling.” Edna Ferber

“Christmas, children, is not a date. It is a state of mind.” Mary Ellen Chase

“I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.” Charles Dickens

Happy New Year!

Robin Hathaway

Happy New Year and a Blessed 20CMB12 to You!

2012-01-01T07:30:00.000-05:00

January, named after Janus the Roman god of doorways and begnnings, looking to the past and the future.

On January 6 many people will celebrate Twelfth Night, a festival concluding the Twelve Days of Christmas. The last day of the Christmas festivities, a time of merrymaking with a wassail punch - bowls of "lamb's wool" made of sugar, nutmeg, ginger and ale. A time to consume fruits and nuts and eat the King Cake.

January 6 is also known as the visit of the three wise men, the tres magi reges or los tres reyes magos – Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar, who went to Bethlehem at a time based, not only on the light of a star (or comet) but on the Jewish Feast of Lights.

Many Eastern Orthodox churches treat January 6 as the day marking the birth of Christ.

Caspar was thought to be a Persian scholar, Melchior, Babylonian, and Balthasar, Arab. Some Chinese Christians believe one of the Magi came from China.

Various traditions teach that the remains of the Magi are buried at the Shrine of The Three Kings at Cologne Cathedral.

A tradition in Central Europe involves writing the initials of the three kings with the year number split – as in – 20 * C * M * B * 12 – above the main door of the home in chalk, to confer blessings on the occupants for the New Year.

The initials C, M, B also represent "Christus mansionem benedicat," Christ this abode bless.

Most traditions assume there were three Magi, but some eastern authorities believe in twelve Magi. That the men were Kings may have come from Psalm 72:11 – " All kings shall fall down before thee. "

The Gospel of St. Matthew classes them as "Wise men from the east."

Matthew also mentions the gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. Tradition has it that gold was a symbol of kingship on earth or virtue, frankincense a symbol of priesthood or prayer, and myrrh a symbol of death or suffering.

In my play, The Birth of Christ, which was presented for ten years by my students at Saint Mary's School, Sewanee, Tennessee, the three kings play a key role, with slightly different interpretations of their gifts.

The old Magi are sensitive and prescient in this drama. They speak of the stars in this land as almost black, except for the one that leads them. King Two says, "Never have I seen any star glow with such fire."

King Three: "There is something touching mankind this night that I have never seen before."

They are fairly specific about the gifts they bring. "My greatest treasure, a babe's weight in pure gold. My gold will buy the finest horses in Arabia, outfit such a king with armor wrought by the finest smiths of Persia and a sword of the new metal I have seen in my travel."

"I bear in my hands the magic of all the east, the perfumes and spices of my people, and a light from the fire that has burned in my city for ages long... Our friend can call himself the light of the world – and such a palace he will have... "

King Three brings "a bit of myrrh for suffering. And a rose - for love... this rose will rise above the dust and snow of men's cold hearts to bring springtime ... and when he has touched it, it shall never wither..."

* * * * * * *
In 2012 we can build our own futures on the past, add on the gifts of the present and create our own traditions, if we wish. . .

May each of us, whatever our faiths, both give and receive our own personal gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh in 20 *C * M * B * 12.

Thelma J. Straw

A Sad Day for Lambertville's Dogs

2011-12-30T07:30:00.000-05:00

A neighbor of mine, Mary P. Martin, died this week. A quiet woman with white hair and large, beautiful eyes, she was the dog treat lady. Her front stoop always held a bag of dog treats; every dog in town would tug at the lead to get to Mary's. How happily they frisked. On those rare occasions when the treats ran out Mary would post a note, sorry, no treats today, come back tomorrow.

I always thought it remarkable that Mary would volunteer daily treats for all the dogs in town, rather like holding Halloween for all the children every night. I always wondered whether anyone else contributed to her stash of treats. She lived alone, very bravely. She wore a brace on her leg and had trouble walking. She told me she had MS, or lupus, something grim. I used to see her walking downtown, hanging onto railings and parking meters for balance. I asked her if she needed a hand once and she said, no, she would just take her time.

On Monday a friend invited me to go walking with a bunch of other women and all their dogs. We did not go past Mary's but north into the woods and back again along the canal. Although it was pleasant, I thought it would have been even more fun if I had treats to offer the dogs. All the ladies were passing treats around. So as soon as I got to the supermarket I bought a box of dog treats for next time.

I don't know how long Mary was in the hospital. The day I bought the box of Liva-Snaps was the day after she died, as it happened. I had no idea. Someone was still putting treats out on her doorstep. Maybe I'll go put my dog treats on her doorstep. I don't have a dog of my own; I don't need dog treats. Maybe everyone in town will continue to see that Mary's doorstep is perpetually stocked with treats, the Mary P. Martin memorial dog treat station.

Hope the next tenant likes dogs.

Kate Gallison

"Liberry" Redux

2011-12-28T09:32:00.001-05:00

For my last entry of the year, I am rerunning my post from last January on my lifelong love affair with Free Public Libraries. There are only a few days left of 2011 in which to heed my plea in the last paragraph. You will end your year with a great feeling if you do. Happy New Year! Drink a toast to free knowledge and entertainment for all!

My Brother and Me

The Paterson (NJ) Public Library saved my life. I would have grown up somehow if I could not have read its books as a child, but I would not have grown up to be me. Even before my brother and I learned to pronounce it, we loved to go. We went at least once a week in the summer. Our mother took us to our local branch, about a twenty minute walk from home, a simple storefront filled with hundreds of books and staffed by two of the nicest ladies ever. Mommy got books for herself and my brother and I chose from the children’s section. He had a weird taste for books about snakes, guns, and tanks—a bother since we were allowed only three books at a time. When I finished reading mine, I was stuck with his questionable selections until the next trip. As long as we were still in elementary school, the rules allowed us only children’s books, but since I was voracious, there was soon nothing left for children that I hadn’t read. So as a seventh grader, the librarians allowed me to select biographies (but never fiction) from the adult section.

Paterson Public Library

During the summer, between grades seven and eight, I took to going with my friend Dolores to the main branch, a bus ride away. It was much grander than our local storefront. Here is a picture of it—a building designed by Henry Bacon, who subsequently designed the Lincoln Memorial. It’s now on the National Register of Historic Places.

It was one of the most elegant places we ever saw. Only churches and the Paterson City Hall compared with it. Even in the big library, however, we were not allowed grown-up books, except for biographies. Why the librarians thought that the lives of real people would be more edifying than those of fictional characters is beyond me now, but in those days we just took what we could get. Consequently, I read the lives of Fred Allen, William Randolph Hearst, and Lunt and Fontaine, among many others—lives of people who lived large, an idea one could hardly get a whiff of in our working class neighborhood.

New York Public Library

Now I am privileged to do my research at the Main Branch—the Stephen Schwarzman Building—of the New York Public Library, a marble temple of knowledge that can tell you anything you want to know and will tell it to you no matter who you are. That’s the thing about free public libraries—we have them here in US, but they do not exist everywhere.

Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale
di Firennze

An Italian friend who was living here in New York was amazed when she found out how egalitarian our library is. We went together to do research one day. She is from Florence, home to one of great libraries of the world: The Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze. It is massive and beautiful. And like libraries everywhere has on staff some of the most devoted employees anywhere. When the floodwaters were rising in 1966, one of them, a woman, stayed until the last possible moment, moving priceless treasures from the lower floors to the upper ones. When it was too late to continue, she escaped over the rooftops, carrying Galileo’s telescope. That library is fabulous, but unlike ours, you can’t just walk in. You have to have credentials to get through the door.

Map Division

Not so at the New York Public Library. My friend and I walked into the Main Branch one day along with scores of others seeking all kinds of information. She wanted to know the New York City and New York State laws governing the manufacture of foods containing dairy products. I wanted a map of Paraguay in 1868. We both found what we wanted: she in the main reading room, and I in the Map Division. Where else in the world can you do that? And get the help of kind and knowledgeable people to do it efficiently. It’s amazing.

Main Reading Room

And it is gorgeous, is it not?

Your library needs you. You may not even go there yourself, but the library deserves your support. PLEASE, give a donation to your local public library. You can probably give online in a couple of minutes. There are kids in your town who need the library, for whom it will open vistas that will change their lives.

—Annamaria Alfieri

I Was the Best...

2011-12-25T07:00:00.000-05:00

How do you rate such a thing? Is it by the fallible memory of witnesses? After attending the recent Biannual 83rd Precinct Reunion and observing the old cops (my contemporaries) wander around the K of C hall with halting step, I think maybe not. I’m not too sure they all remembered where they were after awhile. But pictures don’t lie, they say.

In 1975, I assumed my alternate identity (although, truth is, it was assigned me). I was new to the Precinct (Brooklyn’s 83rd in Bushwick), having just been booted out of a soft touch as a writer on ‘Spring 3100’, the Police Department’s Magazine. I’d been swept up in ‘Operation All Out’: with the City on the brink of financial default, about 10,000 cops were being laid off and ‘bodies’ were needed to fill in out there. I was one of the bodies.

The Annual Precinct Christmas Party – for the children of the cops, local firemen, and any neighborhood kids in need of a Christmas Party – was just around the corner. Based on my body type, I was asked by the Precinct Union Delegate to ‘volunteer’ to be Santa Claus (that’s how he politely put it: my “body type” and “volunteer”), since their regular Santa had recently fallen down a flight of stairs “in the line of duty”. Of course. I recognized this was a Command Performance. The PBA delegate assured me that they had just the suit for me, white beard, gloves, and red cap with tinkle bells on the end.

The day of the Party, the Department spared no horses. The Mounted Unit was on hand to give the kids a ride around the track in Bushwick Park, adjacent to the Church Hall, the locale of the event. Also, an ESU (Emergency Service Unit) truck equipped with ‘the Jaws of Life’ that ESU cops use to cut people out of car wrecks, and the ‘Heavy Weapons’ employed at Hostage Scenes; kids could touch. But the piece de resistance was Santa Claus as He was flown in on a Department Bell helicopter, which then hovered over the park as He descended an eight-foot rope ladder to the ground, in Santa gear, bag full of toys tied to His back like a green cloak, amidst a horde of squealing children in numbers to incite envy in the Pied Piper. Santa then hot-footed out of the Park, His followers in tow, across the street to the appropriately named St. Nicholas’s Parish Hall.

I know I did good because I had encores over the next six years (until I was promoted to Sergeant and transferred out). In fact, one Christmas the New York Daily News did a feature on notable Santas around town. They called me “The ‘Copter Santa”. Doesn’t get any better than that.

Robert Knightly

Rejoice!

2011-12-23T07:30:00.000-05:00

It's Christmas Eve Eve, friends, and time to work up some spirit. At our house the tree is all alight, having been generously decorated by son John, who is home for a couple of weeks. The two of us went out and got a skinny tree this year while Harold was at work.

I like skinny trees, although we often get fat bushy ones that take up half the living room and demand special hooks to fasten the ornaments on. Something about a slim tree reminds me of the old days in Corwin C at Douglass, and my first Christmas-tide in college. We put up a skinny tree in the dorm living room and hung our junk jewelry on it. Half of us called it a Hanukkah bush. We sang each other's songs, Silent Night and Dreidel Dreidel Dreidel, dressed in pajamas and bathrobes with our hair in pink rollers and Dippity-Doo because we could, since it was after eleven o'clock curfew and the men weren't allowed in.

Christmas for me has always been about music as much as anything else. I was walking across campus that year shortly before Christmas break, in the dark, past the lighted windows of, oh, I forget the name of the building, it's gone now, replaced by a much fancier gymnasium. Back in the day it was a big wood frame building painted dark green. There the modern dance club, Orchesis, practiced their art. As I passed, all alone out there, I heard them dancing to the most astounding music. My memory plays the sound of their bare feet striking the hardwood floor, but I probably didn't hear that. What I did hear was my first experience of medieval music. It might have been a recording by the New York Pro Musica Antiqua. I was riveted. I stood there listening until I got too cold to stand there anymore.

Ever since then, Christmas hasn't been complete for me without old music. We usually sing one or two old pieces at St. Andrews. This year we're singing Gaudete.

Rejoice!

And a merry Christmas to you. Or a happy Hanukkah.

Kate Gallison

Merry Christmas from Greenwich Village

2011-12-21T07:30:00.000-05:00

“City Sidewalks, busy sidewalks, dressed in holiday style,
In the air there’s a spirit of Christmas!” ♫

Our neighborhood is decked out for Christmas. We’ve been around photographing how lovely it looks at this time of year.

In human history, the Village began as a camping site for the Carnarsee Indians. They fished in a local stream they called Manetta or “devil water.” (A lot of devil water is still being served up in local watering holes.)

The Dutch grew tobacco hereabouts in the seventeenth century, and the hamlet remained a northern suburb of New York after the British conquest and through the Revolutionary War. As the city grew up around it with its grid pattern and numbered streets, the Village retained much of its colonial town charm and layout. Folks from outside the neighborhood are still flummoxed by the crooked streets with names like Bleecker and Morton and Grove. And they often wander around, map in hand, disbelieving the fact that West 4th Street intersects with West 10th, West 11th, and West 12th. We even have a street sign marking the corner of Waverly Place and Waverly Place.

As the centuries passed, the character of the village evolved from a quaint and picturesque backwater, to the preferred address of the Golden Age upper classes (who lived around Washington Square with its arch designed by Stanford White), to a magnet for German, Irish, and Italian immigrants, to a shabby bohemian hangout. It became the cradle of the Beat Generation of the 50’s and the capital of New York’s gay community and hippies of all sexual persuasions in the 60’s and 70’s. Remember: “I met a man named Frank Mills on September 1st right here in front of the Waverly…” from “Hair?”

The Village is world famous for many reasons, including its literary history. A remarkable number of writers have lived and worked here. The Wikipedia entry on our neighborhood mentions:

Robert Louis Stevenson, Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, Anaïs Nin, Thomas Wolf, Robert Lowell, Horton Foote, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, James Baldwin, Truman Capote, Marianne Moore, Maya Angelou, and Dylan Thomas.

The brilliant Willa Cather is not included, but she was also one ours. She first lived at 82 Washington Place and later at 35 Fifth Avenue. I used to live down the block from her house at 5 Bank Street. I would imagine that many, many others haven’t made the list.

Edna St. Vincent Millay was actually named after our local hospital. While her mother was pregnant for her, her older brother, then twelve years old, became dangerously ill. After the nursing Sisters of St. Vincent’s saved the boy’s life, the grateful mother named her new baby Edna St. Vincent.

Though today, the Village townhouses are often owned by hedge fund managers and big time lawyers, there are still enough rent stabilized apartments and tenement flats to keep the Village’s diversity intact, at least for the nonce. The charm endures thanks to historic architecture, lovely neighborhood pubs and restaurants, and independent bookstores. And writers. Lots and lots of writers. Including yours truly, who wishes you a beautiful Christmas Day.

Annamaria Alfieri

A Christmas Cat-astrophe!

2011-12-19T08:41:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago I received the glad tidings that my two daughters and their families wished to spend Christmas at our house this year. My husband and I were thrilled.We thought those days were over when they married and had children of their own.

However, I was also reminded of the last time we held Christmas at our house, about four years ago, and the memory was—shall we say—mixed. My eldest daughter, Julie, had just acquired two cats. Their names were Cinders and Ashes, drawn from swear words in a Harry Potter tome. That December, it was about time for the cats to be neutered and Julie looked into the cost of this operation. It was astronomical! She strongly suspected that the vets in suburban Northern Virginia had a higher overhead than those in urban Philadelphia. Their waiting rooms attested to this, providing piped-in music, wall-to-wall carpeting, and soft furnishings for both the animals and their owners. She decided a trip to her old family vet in Philadelphia would save a few bucks. His office was more down to earth, with no music, wooden chairs, and a cement floor that was hosed down every night after the last patient left. So Cinders and Ashes were packed into the van along with the presents.

The cats arrived in fine fettle. When released from their carry-alls, they prowled the house, examining every nook and cranny, as cats do, and then settled down for a nap. It was the day before Christmas and the rest of the family rushed around, attending to all the last minute chores – tree-trimming, cooking, present wrapping, etc. The number of bedrooms was limited and every one was occupied. I ended up on the living-room couch. Miraculously, we managed to finish everything by eleven pm and by midnight I was fast asleep. But not for long.

I woke with a start to the sound of running feet and strangled cries. What the h---? I sat up, and, by a shaft of moonlight, caught sight of two black bodies hurling up the front stairs. Seconds later, I heard feet pounding down the backstairs. I went to the bottom of the front stairs and looking up. Various sleepy-eyed family members stared down at me.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

With one accord, they shook their heads, their eyes wide with wonder. They couldn’t have been more astonished if St. Nick himself had showed up. Then my husband’s reasonable voice spoke in the darkness. “I think they’re in heat,” he said.

Sure enough, although brother and sister, and from the same litter, such distinctions mean little to cats. It seems, overnight, Cinders had developed a grand passion for Ashes. What to do? Christmas would be ruined if my family got no sleep. Something had to be done. And being the current hostess, the solution naturally fell to me. While everyone else went back to bed, I, flashlight in hand, girded myself for the hunt. I corralled Ashes first and deposited her in the only empty room left – the kitchen. Several long minutes later, I caught Cinders, and put him in the kitchen, too, and slammed the door. Peace at last. Hazily, I realized that it would have been better to place them in separate rooms, but such accommodations were not available. Besides, I was too sleepy. I found my way back to the couch. All was quiet upstairs. Surrounded by the smell of pine needles and the sound of church bells tolling a distant carol, I drifted back to sleep.

My alarm went off at six o’clock. I had set it early so I could make coffee and heat up some coffee cake for the early risers. No one sleeps late on Christmas morning if there are children in the house. Having forgotten the cats completely, I wondered briefly why the kitchen door was closed. I opened it.

Oh, my god!

If a dozen of Hell’s Angels had trashed the kitchen in an act of vengeance, it couldn’t have looked worse. Everything that could fall, had fallen; everything that could break, had broken. Canisters, boxes, bottles and jars were tumbled in a great gluey mess of cheerios, flour, honey, jam and coffee beans. The two miscreants made a bee-line for the open door, and disappeared in the upper reaches of the house.

I would have cried, if another impulse hadn’t been stronger. And that’s how my family found me that Christmas morning, collapsed on a kitchen chair laughing hysterically.

Robin Hathaway

A Gentle Christmas Memory

2011-12-18T07:30:00.000-05:00

Many writers have several arrows in their quiver or pencils in their book bag. When I'm not writing about ricin murder, spies in disguise or narcissistic psychopaths, I let my gentler creatures jump on the page.

One day several Decembers ago I was sun-bathing on Seven Mile Beach at Grand Cayman, when a tiny, alabaster-colored sand crab came out of his hole and batted sand at me!

When I didn't respond, he threw more sand.

He wanted to play!

So we tossed sand back and forth, both of us smiling, til he got tired and burrowed back into his hole.

I never forgot him - I called him Sammy - and want to share him with you.

Sammy the Sand Crab and the Christmas Tree
(For children ages 2 - 102)

Sammy the sand crab was feeling lonely. The storm had washed away his hole in the sand and he had no one to play with.

Then the grey clouds blew out to sea and the sky changed back to blue. The sun came out and the people from the big hotel came back on his beach. Their huge feet made holes in the sand and he scurried into one for safety.

At noon he crept sideways up to the top of his hole and peered out at a little girl. Maybe she would play with him.

He scooped up some sand in his claw and tossed it at her.

"Please play with me," he said. "I'm Sammy the sand crab."

"I'm Carla," the girl said, as she threw back a pinch of sand, lightly, so she wouldn't hurt the little creature.

All afternoon Sammy and Carla played hide and seek in the sand. Finally Carla said, " I've got to go eat supper. Will you be here tomorrow?"

Sammy cocked his head to one side and smiled. "Sure."

It was fun to have a playmate again.

The next day Carla went back to the same spot on the beach and looked for her new friend.

But Sammy didn't show up.

That night at six o'clock, after the sun crept over the edge of the dark blue ocean, Carla stood in the lobby of the hotel with her father, listening to the carols near the Christmas tree.

A tear rolled down her cheek. She wished Sammy could see the beautiful tree.

Just then the tiny crab snuck inside the big door of the lobby, careful not to get under the feet of the people.

Moving sideways with his claws, he finally reached the foot of the tree. It was as tall as the palm tree on his beach.

But this tree was decorated with the most beautiful toys and stars and ribbons he had ever seen!

He scurried over to the lowest branch and carefully climbed past the bells and shiny ornaments until he reached the diamond star at the very top.

"Look, Daddy, there's my new friend, Sammy!" the little girl cried.

The tall man with the kind face looked up. Sure enough, tiny but beaming, a little white sand crab was perched on the star at the very top!

"I knew he'd come back," Carla said, her eyes sparkling. " Now the tree belongs to Sammy!"

"Merry Christmas, Carla," shouted Sammy.

"Merry Christmas, Sammy," she replied.

The little sand crab's ebony eyes were as shiny as the lights on the tree.

He knew he wouldn't be lonely any more.

He had a new friend and his very own Christmas tree.

Thelma J. Straw

That First Paycheck: Where did it Go?

2011-12-16T07:30:00.000-05:00

Robin's post on Monday about the shoes took me back to the days when I was just out of college. The first full-time grownup job I ever had was as a library assistant for the world-renowned Washington Post. Nobody believes how stupid I was in those days, because with the glasses and the sober expression I impress people as being intelligent, and did even then, but the fact is I was so dumb I didn't know the publisher's name. Some woman called and wanted me to look something up for her. Said she was Phil Graham's secretary. I told her to call the public library.

Somehow I kept my job, in spite of that and other similar gaffes. I think the boss of the library liked me. Anyway the day came when I received my first paycheck. My mom wanted ten dollars out of it for room and board, and of course I needed bus fare and lunch money, but the rest went for a fantasy garment.

My first trench coat.

In this coat, as I skulked about the streets of D.C., I could pretend to be anything, a newspaper reporter, a foreigner, a spy, a woman of mystery generally. Anybody but me. Later paychecks went for record albums, shoes – the shoes I wore in those days! They don't make them like that any more – even a matching fedora. But that trench coat I wore for years and years, long after I lost my job at the Post, even long after the waterproofing wore off, shortening it as hemlines rose during the sixties. I forget what finally happened to it. I guess it disintegrated completely at last and went into the ragbag.

What did you buy with your first grownup paycheck?

Kate Gallison

Limericks for Mental Health

2011-12-14T09:39:00.001-05:00

I write limericks to let off steam. Perhaps the rigidity of the form forces me into a more logical place in brain that is helpful when I am about to go over an emotional cliff. Limericks have been a source of glee and groans and, I think, sanity in our house since my husband and I got together. Though he is a classy and often hilarious man at the high level, there runs beneath his quick wit an indomitable sophomoric streak, often fueled by the limericks he memorized in his youth. Those include many I cannot publish here. According to the awesome Wikipedia:

“A limerick is a kind of a witty, humorous, or nonsense poem, especially one in five-line anapestic or amphibrachic meter with a strict rhyme scheme (AABBA), which is sometimes obscene with humorous intent. The form can be found in England as of the early years of the 18th century. It was popularized by Edward Lear in the 19th century, although he did not use the term.

The following example of a limerick is of unknown origin.

The limerick* packs laughs anatomical *(pronounced "lim'rick" to preserve meter)
In space that is quite economical,
But the good ones I've seen
So seldom are clean,
And the clean ones so seldom are comical.”

Here is one of David’s unclean favorites that (with two small changes) I think I can safely include here. He recites it whenever anyone mentions the woman’s name:

There once was a woman named Harriet,
Who dreamed she made love in a chariot
With seventeen sailors
A monk and two tailors
Dick Cheney and Judas Iscariot

David and I once won a limerick contest. We were traveling in Wales and stayed at a hotel that had once been a castle. The hotel staged a fake medieval dinner each evening in which, in addition to eating lamb stew with one’s fingers, the guests were invited to submit a limerick to a contest. The first line was given. “A Squire with a hole in his shoe.”

The wittiest Brit wrote took second place with:

A Squire with a hole in his shoe
Invented a substance called glue
The source was horse
He boiled it, of course,
And the smell killed a family in Crewe

But to the great surprise of all, David and I – two Yanks, no less – took first place with this little ditty:

A Squire with a hole in his shoe
Was badly in need of a screw.
With his tool in his hand,
He scoured the land,
But decided a small nail would do.

A few years ago, while renovating our apartment, an architect appointed by the building management was delaying our simple project for months and running up his bill, which we were required to pay. It was costing me sleep as well as lucre. While I lay awake at night, I preserved my sanity by writing a cycle of twelve limericks describing how an architect by his name destroyed every great building project in history. (I named the victim in my next book after him too.) I give you one stanza of my poem, concealing his name by substituting the words “Sir Note:”

To span an English river of renown,
“Let’s build London Bridge,” decreed the Crown.
But then enter Sir Note,
Who declared and I quote,
“If we never put it up, it can’t fall down.”

I will stop now. I promise. But not until I put in my proudest limerick achievement:

In the subways of Paris, his home
This elf forever will roam.
So if you hear “Tick tock.”
Don’t think it’s a clock
Undoubtedly, it’s Metro Gnome.

Annamaria Alfieri

One, Two, Buckle My Shoe…

2011-12-12T07:30:00.000-05:00

Do you ever become obsessed with one subject or object and you can’t stop thinking about it? Recently I’ve become obsessed with shoes. It all started when my feet began to hurt while shopping and that drew my attention to my shoes.

Why aren’t they more comfortable? Have my feet grown as well as the rest of me? Or have my shoes shrunk from being out in that rainstorm last week? Whatever, I must purchase some new shoes, which means another shopping expedition, this time to Payless.

Then my mind wandered to other shoes I have known. Shoes with special powers such as Dorothy’s ruby slippers that could carry her back to Kansas. (Who wants to go back to Kansas?)

And “The Red Shoes” that wouldn’t let Moira Shearer stop dancing.

And the shoes that St. Nicholas fills with toys in some countries at Christmastime. And who can forget the excitement of buying their first pair of school shoes at the Buster Brown store?

I had a hard decision when I received my first paycheck. Should I put it in my savings account or buy an exquisite pair of red high heels? The heels won.

And finally – the book called, “Italian Shoes,” by Henning Mankell. This book is a departure for Mankell from his usual crime novels. It is just a novel. But it is a haunting novel that tends to stay with you. I highly recommend it, even if you have no particular interest in shoes. The Italian shoes play a minor part in the story, although it is the title.

“There was an old woman who lived in a shoe…” I better quit before I go completely barmy.

Robin Hathaway

Reunion II: Old Men Packing Heat

2011-12-11T07:30:00.000-05:00

That night – three or four biannual-reunions ago – Louie, our ex-partner, showed his face after being let out of the Federal Correctional Institution in Otisville, New York, having served nine years for Drug Conspiracy. I was talking to my other partner, John ‘Super Cop’, when I spotted Louie. I was delighted; I hadn’t seen him for awhile for obvious reasons. “Hey, there’s Louie!” I said. “I won’t talk to the fuck,” John responded, in that old familiar tone – cold and dead as a tombstone – the one he’d used on the ‘perps’ in the street in the good old days.

I look across the cavernous hall, past the line of aluminum chafing pans full of the usual steaming Ziti Parmigian, Chicken Fransesse, fish-in-a-white-sauce, limp iceberg lettuce salad with flagons of creamy Italian, next to mounds of fresh Italian loaves – lined end to end on the long Bingo folding tables like silver birds in single file about to take flight. I see Louie is surrounded by old cops pumping his hand, touching, laying hands on him in that way men, genuinely moved by emotion, will do, while ever alert to the dangers of losing control.

The glad-handing cops know of the drugs and Louie’s bit in federal jail, but it doesn’t matter. All that matters is our shared past on the streets where it counted. Louie had your back; testified to the truth of any cover-your-ass story events required you to tell in Court or to the Bosses; and never, ever ratted you out to the IAB Secret Police (except in John Super Cop’s case, of course, but we’re a forgiving lot). Race never mattered. It was You, the Cops, black or white, against Them, the Criminals, always black or Hispanic, on the streets and in the houses of Bushwick, where some of us died by ambush.

On July 13, 1977, the lights went out, plunging all of New York City into darkness. The worst of the subsequent riots, looting, arson occurred that night and the following day. Bushwick and adjacent Bedford-Stuyvesant bore its brunt. Many of the stores, on both sides of Broadway, the main commercial artery that divided the 83rd and 81st Precincts, were looted, then set afire, over a two-mile-long swath. I was there as was John and Louie and the rest of us. For the first 12 hours, we were ordered by Police Headquarters to make no arrests for fear the station houses would be overwhelmed by the numbers. Every cop in the City had been ordered to report to his Command. Many neglected to put on the uniform; instead, commandeering buses to ride to the scene, armed with nightsticks and baseball bats. We had orders to stop the looters, the arsonists. And we did. We struck them down on the spot, laid them out at the scene of their crimes.

All that night, the flickering flames put me in mind of that scene in ‘Gone With the Wind’, the Burning of Atlanta. Only cops, firemen and looters were abroad on the streets. By dawn, we were allowed to make arrests. The riot had lasted a night and a day. By its end, the 133 prisoners who wouldn’t fit in the 83 Precinct’s cellblock were penned in a gated courtyard outside the station house. Later, the Borough Chief in charge of Brooklyn North boasted that no cop had fired his weapon during the riot. Willie ‘S’ of the Eight-Three demurred, “Where the fuck was he, Hawaii?” Perhaps. the Chief was misled by the presence on Brooklyn Streets for days after of men with bandaged heads suggestive of an invasion of turbaned Sikhs. The final tally for the Blackout Riots throughout the City: 1,037 fires, 1616 looted stores, 3,776 arrests, the worst riot in the City’s history.

In 2003, the journalist, Jonathan Mahler, came to our Reunion to research his non-fiction book, “Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx Is Burning” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2005), A Profile of the Year 1977. He included our stories of that Night and a Day. I forget if Louie was there to tell his, or John. I like to think that next Reunion – if Louie shows up again and John, who never misses – they will forget the bad old past, sit down to break Italian bread together and remember the Good Times.

Robert Knightly

Part one of this story

Hallelujah

2011-12-09T07:30:00.000-05:00

I used to work in one of the great software houses of central Jersey, all during the eighties. Actually I worked in two of the great software houses. The first one, in a fit of wild prosperity, built a palatial corporate headquarters where everyone had an office with a door and all the best computer equipment. In the middle of the software palace was a huge atrium with gardens and trees, tended by a gardening service. Young women in gardening service uniforms used to come in to feed and water the trees, murmuring to them lovingly. I played opera tapes in my office with the door closed while I worked. No one could hear them but me.

I sold a couple of novels. At home I had an adorable young child with whom I wanted to spend more time. And so I left the software house for a year or so to try to make a living writing mysteries. When the money ran out I went back.

In my absence, the prosperous software house had fallen on hard times – overextended, perhaps – and another software house had bought it. New people were in charge, ruthless people, creatures from Mordor almost. The trees were gone. Three-quarters of the old employees were gone. A new crowd had joined the remnants of the old crowd, the survivors of another brutal corporate takeover. Walking the halls, wandering in the atrium, I saw shock and despair on the faces of everyone I met. If I ran into one of my old colleagues, we would greet each other like survivors of a disaster. You! You're alive!

People continued to be fired. Supervisors were forced to rank their staff and let the lowest go. Two thugs from security together with the Human Resources director in his funeral suit would appear at the door to your brand-new cubicle (the offices with doors had been torn out) and escort you to the parking lot. That was so you wouldn't trigger the virus you were presumed to have installed to bring down the company. Because of course you hated the company. Everybody hated the company.

And now Christmas was coming.

We still had an hour for lunch, and we had a large space on the ground floor off the atrium where the fitness equipment used to be before the new management got rid of it as a frivolous waste of time, a space where we could meet and sing together. A bunch of us decided to give a Christmas, or should I say holiday, concert. We rehearsed, among other things, the Hallelujah Chorus. Every lunch hour we would get together, Jews, Muslims, Christians, and sing the Hallelujah Chorus, one of the noblest expressions of human hope and joy in Western culture. We delighted in the beauty of one another's voices. It was sublime.

The day of the so-called Christmas party, or holiday party, arrived. Possibly there were company-supplied refreshments, I can't recall. Our choir assembled on the floor of the atrium, among the stumps of dead trees and ruined gardens, and sang a few secular numbers, Jingle Bells, Frosty the Snowman, Winter Wonderland. Peering down at us, impatient for everyone to get back to work, was the boss. He was not the uber-boss, for Sauron himself was squatting in his lair in the main corporate headquarters in another state. But he was the boss of that particular facility. And he was looking down on us in disapproval, because we were not at work serving the software house.

We sang the Hallelujah Chorus, as loud as we could. The sound penetrated to the farthest reaches of the building, maybe even to the Human Resources office. People came out of their cubicles and looked over the railing. You can't sit down during the Hallelujah Chorus.

I think about that event sometimes, when the state of the country looks dark. You may think you have us under your heel now, but the kingdom of our God is at hand. Everybody sing.

Kate Gallison

(reposted from kategallison.blogspot.com)

1941

2011-12-07T18:59:00.001-05:00

Today is the 70th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Nobody much seems to be taking notice. It occurred to me to remind everyone of the significance of this date. But there is certainly enough gloom to go around right now and I will not add to it if I can help it. I want, instead, to call to your attention a little discussed fact about 1941, the year of my birth.

For many years now I have taken notice that a tremendous number of musicians were born in my year. I probably focus on this because the musical talent that must have been in the air that year was totally absent from the room where I took my first breath. However, there must have been a LOT of it around. Here is only a fractional list of the musical talents born in 1941. I picked out ones I admire:

Paul Anka, Joan Baez, Judith Blegen, Chick Corea, Sergio Mendez, Aaron Neville, Richie Valens, Bob Dylan, Harry Nilsson, Art Garfunkel, Mama Cass, Chubby Checker, Placido Domingo, Otis Redding, Helen Reddy, Neil Diamond, Buffy Sainte-Marie, and Paul Simon.

If you include the few months before and after 1941, you can include John Lennon and Carole King and heaven knows how many others.

I often feel cheated about this. The people I envy are musicians. I would like to know what it feels like to play an instrument well or even creditably sing on key. Just for five minutes, I would to sing like Judith Blegen or play piano like Sergio Mendes. If such musical talent was on offer when I was born, how come I got so completely left out? Did Paul Anka get my share?

The only way to console myself is to remind myself that Dick Cheney was also born in 1941. Whatever he was breathing in at birth, I’m really glad I didn’t get it.

Annamaria Alfieri

Some Words and Phrases I could Live Without

2011-12-05T07:30:00.000-05:00

Parenting:

What a blah word for the most thrilling, painful, exhilarating, difficult, satisfying, frustrating, rewarding job in the world! Can’t someone think up a better word?

Wrongdoing:

A euphemism for evil acts committed by criminals, such as fleecing the elderly of their pensions and retirement funds, gouging the poor by giving them mortgages they can’t afford, and burdening the young with debts it will take them a lifetime to pay off – all for their own greedy gain. “Crime” is the correct word for these deeds.

At The End of The Day:

What exactly does this mean? Tonight? Tomorrow? A week from now? Next year? Or at the Armageddon? I wish someone would please tell me.

I also wish some of you out there would submit your pet verbal peeves. I’m making a list. Unless, of course, you’re too busy parenting or wrongdoing at the end of the day. (Just kidding.)

Robin Hathaway

Why Belong to Writers' Organizations?

2011-12-04T08:00:00.000-05:00

Not just because the art/job/calling of being a writer is a lonely place.

Most of us like company. We relish our solitude, but we are also pack animals. It's what runs countries, schools, celebrations, companies - all the rites of life on this blessed planet.

Joining a group of fellow writers does give episodes of relief from aloneness.

Membership in an organized tribe that promotes the craft and business, far above the limits one's selfdom could plug into.

We get gemutlichkeit, that congeniality and warm cordiality not found at a solitary machine, that no matter how many bells and whistles it boasts of, can't give us a smile, a hug, or a warm greeting – "Great to see you here tonight!"

Not only the human bonding, both collegial and competitive, but the prestige. "I'm a member of ... MWA... SinC... ITW... "or many others... That lift of the head, inner pride. You rub shoulders with the great -- who are often as plain and unassuming and scared of the blank page as you are!

You get to meet and greet and share table space with giants of the industry, including agents, editors, reviewers, new readers.

You get mind expansion - knowledge of and exposure to other styles and trends of your genre.

You get to help others in their climb up the ladder.

You read your colleagues' works, root for your group, find reasons to expand your horizons.

You learn humility, appreciate your own talents more, firm up your sanity, expand
your sense of humor and balance. Get a Ph.D in human behavior! You augment your commitment, discipline, stewardship, volunteerism. Organizational support gives you freedom, a writing family, fellow celebrants of your talents and gifts. And long ambitions.

A framework of invaluable contacts. Helps keep your fluttering ego in check! You join your fellow members in meetings, meals, events, important gatherings. You find your strength by serving on a committee, helping man a sign-in table, innumerable ways of volunteering where you meet new writers up and down the craft ladder.

Now make your own list...

T. J. Straw

P.S. As an MWA member since 1988, I treasure the hours I've labored at innumerable "grunt work" tasks – just as much as serving on the Board or rubbing elbows with the High and Mighty at an Edgars Winners' table!

It's Even Worse Than We Thought

2011-12-02T07:00:00.000-05:00

Carrier IQ is a mysterious application that collects everything you do on your smartphone and transmits it to some central location for use by unknown entities for unknown purposes. Trevor Eckhart, a soft-spoken computer researcher, cracks open the machine code and displays it on his computer screen for your amusement and instruction in a seventeen-minute YouTube video, attached herewith.

If you don't have seventeen minutes to follow his demonstration, I'll tell you what you would see. First he demonstrates that the application is nowhere listed among the legitimate applications on his Android. Then he demonstrates that in spite of its invisibility the program is running at all times. Then he accesses the button that ought to turn the application off, and presses it. Nothing happens. It continues to run.

Then he shows you on his computer screen, which his Android is plugged into, every machine instruction that the Carrier IQ program executes. Nearly every keystroke is coded for transmission to the shadowy central location. All your text messages, whether they are actually delivered or not. All of your secret billet-doux to your lover. Every Google search you execute. Every website you visit. Every userid, every password you enter, even on https sites, before encryption takes place. Want to do online banking now?

And not just your Android. Your Blackberry, your IPhone, all of them have this application embedded un-removeably for the purpose of collecting data. Who is behind this? Rupert Murdoch? Homeland Security? An evil ring of identity thieves?

This is not a spy novel, folks. It is not science-fiction. Senator Al Franken plans to look into it. So should everyone else.

Kate Gallison

Over-the-hill Revolutionaries

2011-11-30T08:47:00.001-05:00

I am no fan of "Madmen." Glamorizing the sexist attitudes of the fifties and sixties seems to me the last thing the world needs at this moment. I admit that I have seen only one episode, the first, and about twenty-three minutes of the second, but that was enough to turn me off from the series for good.

Betty Friedan and Friends

Bella Abzug

Rosie the Riveter

Casino Waitress

Left-overs

2011-11-28T08:00:00.000-05:00

Why do left-overs sometimes taste better than the original? My mother used to buy an extra big turkey for our Thanksgiving dinners so she would have an abundance of left-overs to last through the following week. My brother and I, from an early age, would begin the ritual by sneaking into the kitchen after dinner and picking at the carcass which always had ample meat left on it. After that came the turkey sandwiches, turkey hash, turkey salad, and ultimately – the soup. By that time even my brother and I were a bit tired of the turkey taste and I suspect much of that dish went down the drain.

At some point during my teenage years my grandmother (on my father's side) decided to take charge of Thanksgiving dinner. "To save my mother work," was the excuse. But my grandmother lived in a small apartment and didn't know how to cook, so taking charge meant eating Thanksgiving dinner at a restaurant and she would pay for it. The nearest restaurant was on the first floor of her apartment house. A cold, cavernous room at the best of times, on Thanksgiving it was almost empty, except for a few lonely widows or widowers or others who lacked family ties. The waiters were stiff, the menus were stiff, the napkins were stiff, and as a result the conversation was stiff. Actually, we were afraid to raise our voices for fear an echo would come roaring back at us, like a Bush man's boomerang and knock us dead. And of course there were no left-overs. (The custom of taking home what you couldn't eat in a baggie had not been invented yet.)

Nowadays when my brother and I have families of our own, and we are together on Thanksgiving, I wait for him to give me the high sign, and while others linger over their coffee and pumpkin pie, we sneak into the kitchen to enjoy our ritual of picking at the carcass.

Robin Hathaway

Puppy Love, Pink Bats and Armageddon

2011-11-27T08:00:00.000-05:00

It wasn't Jill Abramson's elegant elevation to the top of the tree at the Times that grabbed me. (Though I have total respect for any woman who could do that!)

It was the cover of her book, The Puppy Diaries.

That face !

Her golden retriever Scout, the highly acclaimed addition to the "dogoir genre", that grabbed my heart!

My own thriller series features a golden retriever named Honey. Though her coat is a bit darker than Jill's puppy, now I will always see her as a grown-up Scout!

The courage of Leon Panetta captures me at another level. That guy really loves his country!

Enough to leave his cherished walnut farm to fight as our SecDef in our "blizzard war."

A true blue wise man who leads us on multiple fronts, as needed, even in a possible unspeakable face of an Armageddon.

A rara avis who got all 100 votes from those folks in the Senate.

They say he "calls it as he sees it" – with a Midas touch of negotiating skills, who with little experience in spycraft won over that whole building of Langley spooks.

I'm a pushover for unique creativity.

I give a gold star to a woman named Alexandra Meyn, who has built herself a treehouse up against an old mulberry tree in Brooklyn, in the Bedford-Stuyvesant
section.

Talk about a childhood dream come true!

Her treehouse even has lights, a record player.

Pink bats on the wall!

Plus glass windows "that dangle on the ground floor level like earrings."

What a retreat!

What a writer's sanctuary!

If I had a treehouse with pink bats and those earrings, I bet I could win an Edgar or two.

Maybe a whole Nobel!!!

T.J. Straw

Made Ya Look

2011-11-25T08:00:00.000-05:00

Phishermen and spambots are getting cleverer and cleverer about getting people to click on their toxic links. For example, someone called Helen Wotzername sent me an email with a convincing Facebook look to it, blue logo, everything, claiming to have posted a comment to my wall: "You're full of $&^%." That, of course, would be perfectly true about a lot of what I post on my wall, but most of my friends are too polite to say so. Furthermore I don't know anybody named Helen Wotzername.

Viewing my mail was the first thing I did this morning. I was not yet wide awake. The email offered me a link to click to view the comment thread, and, Lord help me, I clicked it.

Luckily the site had been somehow dismantled before I clicked the link. In any case I saw at once that it was bogus, and clicked right off again. But it could have been bad. And you could be offered stuff like that. "Look at this picture of you. LOL." That's another good one, tough to resist.

So what if I click on this link, you ask? Well, if it's a Facebook hacker, you could be made to look like a complete horse's patoot in front of all your friends, acquaintances, and Facebook frenemies. Posts signed by you will begin to appear on Facebook: "Ooo! Ooo! I'm having so much fun playing (fill in the game of your choice). Won't you come and play with me?" "I just won a free IPad! Clik here and u can win one 2!" And that's the best that can happen. Worst case, they'll steal your identity and clean out your bank account.

I suppose you're expecting me, as a self-declared left-leaning tax-and-spend Democrat liberal, to demand that the government do something about these sleazy intrusions into our cyberspace. Well, I'm not. The government has no place in our cyberspace or anyone else's. Let the government get its own house in order.

What I am going to say is, watch out. There is no law west of the Pecos, and it's all west of the Pecos out here.

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.

Kate Gallison

I Am Grateful For...

2011-11-23T08:27:00.001-05:00

The New York City Subway, the medicines my husband takes, my iPad, white linen, Netflix, fountain pens, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, my Francis Francis espresso machine, Di Palo Italian grocery, my little red sports car, digital photography, sapone al melograno from the Farmacia of Santa Maria Novella, white Burgundy, pants with elastic waists, the moon, my electric stapler, a two-book contract, the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, Scrabble, curly hair, Faicco's sausage, the speed of light, steam heat, hot showers, the Chrysler Building, the weeping beech, lionesses, air travel, Wikipedia, red leather gloves, foie gras, comfortable shoes, spell check, the Ponte Sant' Angelo, reading glasses, peonies, the eastern box turtle, Don Giovanni, Tintagel,........

And these are just some of the THINGS.

I won't even try to list the people I'm grateful for. One of them is you.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Annamaria Alfieri

My Cousin, the Carlyle Hotel Barkeeper or It's All Relative, Relatively Speaking . . .

2011-11-20T08:00:00.002-05:00

"Why do you write a scene at Bemelman's Bar in every book?" my agent asked. "You got stock in the joint ?"

"Well, relatively speaking, it's sort of a signature, like Stuart Woods and his scenes at Elaine's."

Truth be told, I've felt like kin to the place ever since the Carlyle Hotel became part of the Rosewood Hotels and Resorts, of which group Caroline Rose Hunt is the elegant Chairperson. Yes, THAT Caroline, with the rose-red lipstick and HER signature, double strand of pearls. The lovely but tough grande dame of the Dallas Hunt clan. One of the richest ladies on the planet, but a frugal boss, who has been known to press used pieces of soap together for re-use.

I never met her, but we're kind of related. My great uncle's daughter, Rose Mary, married Caroline's brother, Lamar Hunt. ( Before they split and he married Norma.) I met Rose Mary once, a few years ago, but figured it was not kosher to ask, "Say, Cuz, why'd you split with the golden boy?"

I've always figured Caroline and I are kin, she being the blood sister of my second cousin's Ex. Kind of like all in the family.

So, since she took over the Carlyle and its famous Bemelman's Bar, thus becoming, so to speak, the head barkeeper, I feel duty-bound loyalty to said bar. Like it became part of me too.

This all started with my maternal great-grandfather, Ransom D. Whittle, of Knoxville and his pretty bride, Sarah Elizabeth of Byington, TN, who loved pretty things and cats. They owned the famous Whittle Trunk and Bag Co., that made trunks for people and early automobiles. Alas, the trunks went the way of the Carolina hosiery mills – but Ransom, Sarah and their family of ten did okay.

Their youngest, Ralph, was a whiz at building things. Big things – like bridges and tunnels and army camps. He moved to Dallas and built spillways - Iron Bridge, Forney Dam, Cedar Creek and Lake Livingston.

He met up with a rich guy named Huntington Lafayette Hunt, better known as ole H.L., the Texas oil tycoon who they say built a fortune by trading poker winnings for oil rights. H.L. had two wives, one mistress and about 14 children.

Gossip has it the TV series DALLAS was inspired by his familia!

Meanwhile, I guess Uncle Ralph and H.L. must have shared a drink or two, a game of cards and maybe a pew at the University Park Methodist Church. Maybe Sunday dinners. Maybe that's how Rose Mary and Lamar got together.

Lamar was no slouch either. He created the American Football League and was known as a big sportsman. After attending Culver Military Academy, he graduated from the Hill School in Pennsylvania, then became a geologist with a B.A. from Southern Methodist University. Owner of the Dallas Texans, connected with the Dallas Cowboys and sports teams in Kansas City and Chicago, he is credited with inventing the term "Super Bowl." He was a triple inductee – the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the National Soccer Hall of Fame, and the International Tennis Hall of Fame. (Maybe Rose Mary wasn't into sports!)

That and a few billion silver dollars entitles you to a long OBIT whe you leave the planet!

One of the few business ideas Lamar had that did NOT materialize was to buy the island of Alcatraz and develop it into a tourist park.

H. L's kids did pretty well in carrying on the family name, wealth and fame. His youngest, Swanee Hunt, served as Bill Clinton's Ambassador to Austria and founded the Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.

But back to the Caroline-cousin-Bemelman's-connection. By the way, she wrote a book on Pumpkins – so we have one thing in common, being fellow writers!

I haven't picked up her soap habit yet, but I also wear pearls and rose-red lipstick!

I sometimes think what fun it would be to sashay up to the bartender at "my" bar on Madison and 76th and order a double dry martini, and say, "Just charge it to Ms. Caroline Hunt. We're distant cousins, you see!"

Thelma Jacqueline Straw ( who also writes as Ransom D. Whittle )

At Large in the Groves of Academe

2011-11-18T08:00:00.002-05:00

As I probably mentioned to you about four thousand times, I won a prize, or The Edge of Ruin did, from the New Jersey Studies Academic Alliance, for the best historical novel of 2010 about New Jersey. A few weeks ago I went to New Brunswick to accept the prize and appear on a panel along with the other award winners, all real historians, in the Pane room of the Alexander Library at Rutgers.

Harold and I showed up at the Alexander Library a little early. I asked the information lady where the Pain room was. She thought for a moment and said, "Ah. The Pah-Nay room. It's that way." And so it was. I posed with a bust of Dante while we waited for the others.

The panel went well. Librarian Chad Leinaweaver introduced us, and we spoke for awhile about our work, Michael Adelberg, Joseph G. Bilby and me. The audience consisted almost entirely of members of the Alliance, all of them real historians, many of them distinguished college professors. In the middle of the first row sat a stern-looking man who fixed me with a gimlet eye as I rambled on about what a pill Thomas Edison was considered to be by the independent film makers of the early twentieth century. Turned out he was the foremost Edison scholar in the universe, Professor Paul Israel. He is the keeper of Edison's papers, a huge hoard.

Yikes. When I was first working on that book and folks in the publishing world urged me to say nasty things about the god-like Edison as a way to get attention, I had a sneaking feeling that i might run into one of his adherents somewhere down the line. I little knew how soon, or how great an adherent.

He came and spoke with me after the talk. I'm happy to say he didn't bawl me out for being mean to Edison, but mildly disagreed with my assertion that the early peep-shows were men's entertainment, and then tried to excuse the elephant. I hadn't mentioned the elephant, actually, although it's often on people's minds. Edison had the creature electrocuted on camera. The elephant was a rogue elephant; it had killed a guy; the demonstration had nothing to do with the struggle with George Westinghouse over alternating vs direct current, because by the time they juiced the elephant that fight had been settled.

That's what he said. I have no reason to doubt him. And, hey, he bought my book. I thought he was charming.

Kate Gallison

Writer’s Block: Symptoms and Cure

2011-11-14T08:00:00.001-05:00

Writer’s paralysis, more commonly known as “Writer’s Block” is an insidious disease
that can come on suddenly and take many forms. Mild cases may be called procrastination.

More serious attacks are referred to as – sloth. And the most severe cases as – paralysis.

How does a writer cure this disease in its early stages? First, recognize the symptoms.

Symptoms

You put off writing by doing miscellaneous chores such as dishwashing, bed-making, vacuuming, or minor home repairs such as fixing the toaster, replacing burnt-out light bulbs, paying bills, (you know the kind of thing).
You finally make it to the computer, but the first thing you do is check your email, Facebook and Twitter, and answer all communications found there.
You respond to all physical demands such as hunger pangs, caffeine and/or (heaven forbid) nicotine cravings instantly.
Nap-time.
Dinner with a little wine.
TV, party, movie, whatever…
Bedtime. Restless night due to bad conscience, guilt, feelings of worthlessness, followed by nightmares: taking a math test unprepared, giving a party with no refreshments in the house, appearing on a panel and getting tongue-tied.
Waking tired, unrefreshed, ready to begin a new day, repeating all of the above.

Cure

Set alarm for six AM.
Rise, shower, dress, have breakfast with a heavy shot of caffeine.
Turn off cell phone.
Go to computer. Do not check email. Do not check Face book. Do not check Twitter.
Go directly to Word or its equivalent.
Bring up a blank page.
After some serious thinking (no more than ten minutes) start typing. Continue typing until noon.
Break for lunch. (Optional: Do dishes. Make bed)
Back to computer. Print out what you wrote in morning. Read it. Edit it. Revise it, if necessary.
Dinner
Exercise: Walk, jog, bike or visit gym. Recreate: TV, read, fraternize with family or friends.
Bed. Sleep dreamless, guilt-free sleep. Awake rested, refreshed, ready to repeat all of the above.

Note: Those who work fulltime or care for small children must adjust their schedules accordingly. Try to set aside two or three hours in the early morning or late evening for writing on a regular basis. For you, the challenge is greater, but it can be done.

P.S. Please know, I have suffered all these symptoms and have come close to becoming a terminal case. I also know that this disease has a habit of recurring. No cure is permanent. There is no telling when the dread symptoms may appear again.

Be on guard!

Robin Hathaway

Reunion: Where All the Old Men Pack Heat

2011-11-13T12:27:00.000-05:00

There is one place where once every two years I feel at home: the Biannual Reunion of Former Members of the 83rd Precinct, NYPD. Of course, among the several hundred men (and a smattering of women) who packed the Knights of Columbus Hall on the night of September 16, 2011, a Friday, in Valley Stream, Long Island, there were also in attendance current members of the Command –young enough to be my children (if I had any). But being retired cops, we don’t go to see them (we don’t know them); we go to see each other, familiar faces, comrades – we go to see who’s left. And everyone who is, is carrying a concealed weapon.

Well, not quite everyone. Joey ‘G’ doesn’t have his – scruffy, his clothes as disheveled as I remember (could be the same leisure suit); the curly, unkempt blonde hair going to grey as you’d expect of a man in his mid-sixties. In the 1970’s, Joey ‘G’ was our go-to guy: a cop needed a ‘junker’ to get to and from work, see Joey. What else? Drive the Family Car in, park in and around the Precinct? With the neon light flashing; “COP’s CAR! COP’S CAR!” Definitely NOT – not in Bushwick, the car-theft capital of Brooklyn, not to mention the army of home-grown arsonists who were busy reducing streets of wood two-and-three-story homes to vast vacant lots.

Of course, this is not the Joey ‘G’ we remember: the hand you shake is no longer heavily callused with thin lines of grease in the cracked skin of the palms, and the soiled uniform shirt is gone – gone years ago with the Job and the pension, after his arrest. On the bright side, no one knew more about the Chop-Shops of Bushwick than Joey, or handed out more free ‘intel’ on the locations to the big ‘collar men’ in the Precinct. Joey ‘G’ has not aged well. (Naturally, I don’t use last names to shield the identities of the Indicted and Unindicted.)

I mingle, keep moving: no choice in a ballroom full of steely-eyed suspicious men; they might think I was wearing a wire (although the Statute of Limitations expired decades ago). I scan the faces, most of which are as familiar to me as family. I’m looking for Louie ‘R’, one of my former partners who hasn’t showed his face here for several reunions, the last time being shortly after his release from Federal prison. He’d served nine years for being part of a Drug Conspiracy selling heroin in Bushwick and neighboring Bedford-Stuyvesant.

In the late 1970s, Louie and I had been two of the four cops assigned to a special patrol unit called the 83 Pct. Conditions Car. Under the supervision of a gung-ho Patrol Sergeant, Freddie ‘S’, we patrolled in uniform in an ‘unmarked’ brown Plymouth – three normal-sized cops stuffed in the back seat, John ‘M’, our own Super-Cop, the driver and Sgt. Freddie, the Navigator. Our task? To stop all crime, arrest every bad guy the Sector ‘RMP’ (Radio Motor Patrol) cars could not manage because assigned to specified geographic areas, having to respond to an endless stream of assignments in their sectors from the Police Radio Dispatcher.

So we did the drugs, the gangs, the guns, the counterfeiters, chop shop garages, disorderly premises and who or whatever else needed Special Attention, within the two square miles comprising the 83rd Precinct. We executed Search Warrants which, being a lawyer (but not yet admitted to practice, my application having stalled in the Character Committee) I drafted, based on information provided by our stable of a dozen Registered Confidential Informants (‘CIs’). CIs were criminals we’d caught in the act and, with the acquiescence of the Brooklyn District Attorney and the Courts, we allowed to remain at liberty in order to ‘work off their cases’ on the streets. It was all according to Hoyle, strictly on the up-and-up, according to the customs of the day. The CI’s real names were recorded, their pictures taken, and a code name assigned to each man and woman, and they were duly warned that they must not commit any new crimes themselves while spying on their colleagues (theoretically). We rode herd on our CIs, of course, but after awhile it became unnecessary, almost counter-productive. Despite the obvious danger, they really got into their new roles, as if they were cops themselves (and in a sense that was true: they were our Deputized Agents, we told them).

One not-so-young female drug user whom we’d christened ‘BlueEyes’ had missed her calling. She’d developed a repertoire of tics – pacing back and forth, circling, twirling her hands, throwing her head back in loud laughter – to indicate the seller was holding. She’d let us know before she went on the set just what moves she’d be employing that day. Watching BlueEyes do her routines was like watching good opera (Violetta’s boudoir death scene in La Traviata comes to mind). Nothing as unremarkable as scratching her head or removing sunglasses for Ms. BlueEyes. It helped that she already had a reputation in the neighborhood as ‘loco’ before she hooked up with us. And, truth is, we felt affection for BlueEyes and responsible for all our CIs, careful never to put them into a situation we couldn’t control. Likewise, we cops were a tight band of brothers – until Louie retired and afterward did the unthinkable.

Louie was caught by the DEA in possession of a large quantity of heroin. After he’d retired in 1978, he’d worked as a courier for an Hispanic Drug gang. He was Puerto Rican and Bushwick, since the 1970s, was predominantly Puerto Rican and Dominican, and Louie was a street-smart ex-cop. When a big-time dealer or his lieutenant is caught (and Louie was so regarded by then), he looks to make a deal: give the cops a bigger fish or a more exotic catch. He chose the latter, implicating our former partner, John ‘Super Cop’ in drug dealing in Bushwick. This was in the late 1980s. I was retired a few years already and John was a Detective Second Grade, the best investigator I’d ever seen, with more eyes and ears in the street than any cop in Brooklyn. His name was on the lips of every junkie and law-abiding citizen in Bushwick, and he was one of them, a Puerto Rican. For all those reasons, the Feds liked him for a dirty cop, and initiated a year-long investigation that ultimately came up with nothing. Yet he’d had to endure the endless questions from the Internal Affairs Bureau within and the DEA without.

So when Louie showed up a few reunions ago, the stage was set for a violent confrontation (which cops who’ve been drinking have been known to do).

TO BE CONTINUED –

Robert Knightly

Processing Food, Processing Words

2011-11-11T08:22:00.000-05:00

Modern life offers many annoyances, ranging from the fact that I have to take off my shoes in the airport to the fact that many of my friends and relatives are dead. However, the twenty-first century does have its upside. I finally got a food processor.

Twenty or thirty years ago I was in a friend's kitchen (she's still alive, btw, for those of you who might be worrying) where a friend of hers was explaining a recipe to me. "You put it in the food processor," she said.

"I don't have a food processor," I said.

This lady looked at me with naked pity. You'd have thought I just admitted to not having indoor plumbing. My friend frantically attempted to save my face. "But she has a word processor," she said.

Still, those were my priorities, back in the day. I'm a good cook, but I'm never going to be a professional chef, and for all this time I've been content to process my food using a bowl, a spoon, and a good sharp chef's knife. And yet last month when some online emporium offered a 12-cup Kitchenaid food processor in cinnamon red for 30% off full price I was there.

That baby is now in my kitchen. You should see how fast and how thin it cuts up a cucumber. You should see how easy it is to make pie crust. If you keep the ingredients good and cold it's as flaky as anything you could mix by hand. Just brrt! brrt! and there you have it, a perfect ball of dough.

And how is my Work in Progress coming, you ask? Well, I'll tell you. Words are a lot harder to process than food.

Kate Gallison

Song Lyrics

2011-11-09T09:16:00.000-05:00

The days of runny noses,
Got an achin' head, want to stay in bed,
Taking Benadryl and drinking orange juice,
Nothing I do is of the slightest use

My breathing passage closes,
Got a hacking cough, now my brain turned off,
Supposed to write a blog but haven't got a clue.
The days of runny noses are blue.

Addabaria Alfieri

3 Literary Anniversaries Worth Celebrating in 2011

2011-11-07T08:00:00.009-05:00

The 400th Anniversary of the King James Bible
The 200th Anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens
The 100th Anniversary of the publication of Peter Pan

The KJV
In 1611 King James appointed a committee of 54 scholars to prepare an English translation of the Bible. They worked in teams for 7 years, translating from Greek, Hebrew and older English texts. The result was a massive tome of nearly 1500 pages, 10 ½ inches wide, 16 ½ inches high, printed in beautiful black Gothic type. It is probably the single most influential book in the English language. At present there is an interesting exhibit about the KJV at the American Bible Society, 1865 Broadway, in Manhattan.

Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens was a writer whose stature has never been surpassed. His novels are as rich and lively today as when they first appeared. Many of his characters have become fixtures in the minds of readers all over the world. And his depictions of the workhouse, debtors prison, and orphanages served to bring about major reform in these institutions. The Morgan Museum in New York City has an exhibit about him until February 12, 2012.

Peter Pan
Although Peter swore he would never grow up, he has reached the age of 100 years in 2011. James M. Barrie’s character has appeared in book, theater and film, delighting children and adults alike. In honor of his centennial, an annotated version of the original Peter Pan has been released by The Annotated Books, edited by Maria Tatar.

As we all clapped at Tinker Bell’s request in Barrie’s famous play, let’s applaud these three anniversaries before 2011 comes to a close.

Robin Hathaway

L'Envoi at Prout's Neck, Maine

2011-11-06T08:00:00.026-05:00

by Thelma Jacqueline Straw

The woman stood on the cliff that rose above the Atlantic Ocean and let the rain mingle with her tears.

If she dropped the man's ashes into the water the tides might take them as far as Cape Finisterre on the northwest tip of the coast of Spain.

Unless they drifted south and hit the beaches of the Azores.

You never knew with ocean tides.

The grey ashes might end up at Baffin Bay or even drift among the Hebrides.

The rain came down harder now.

The rocks were cold and hard beneath her thin-soled sandals , as she held the silver box tightly to her chest.

She felt like an ancient Trojan woman, pouring the remains of a warrior into the wine-dark waters, or a Celtic princess, poised above the Irish Sea, performing rites that had begun way back in the mists of time.

She felt guilty at her mixed feelings.

Had the English prince been torn in his heart as he cast a spadeful of earth over his former wife under the trees of her private island in the lake at Althorp Park?

She could still hear the song, the sad, poignant lyrics that had echoed the lament of millions of mourners.

"Now you belong to heaven, and the stars spell out your name... like a candle in the wind."

The man had come from an old New England family, but not twenty generations.

Two hundred years was not a long time when you compared it to royal centuries.

But did the man belong to any heaven?

Would his name be in any star?

He had taken so much from her life and given her back so little in return.

He had grown dark, then darker, until it took all her strength to recall that he had ever borne any light at all.

She had tried to honor her sacred vows, covered over with so many layers that no one ever knew what lay at the bottom of her emotions.

Let the dead bury the dead.

But she was not dead.

He was, reduced to a small silver container that fit in the palm of her hand.

She opened the box and held it upside down and watched the ashes and bits of bone mingle with the rain as they fell down to the water below.

"Go with God," she whispered, as the tiny particles disappeared from her sight.

Then she turned to walk toward the rain-spattered Jeep at the edge of the road.

Lights Out!

2011-11-04T08:00:00.094-04:00

The storm on Saturday knocked the power out again, three hours in the dark for us, longer for others. Some folks in North Jersey and Connecticut are still in the dark. Last month – I think it was last month – the power went out in Lambertville for three days after hurricane Irene. I haven't even restocked the freezer from that. Seems like this sort of thing just keeps happening. The worst part is not knowing how long it will be off.

But I didn't come here to complain. If we're going to lose the electricity all the time we'll just have to figure out how to get along without it gracefully, right? My great-grandmother didn't need electricity to keep house.

Well, okay, my great-grandmother had a cook and a maid. And gaslights. And a wood stove. Furthermore, if you want to know, she was sick in bed all the time, so she probably didn't care whether the lights were on or off.

As for me, I intend to fix myself up with the necessary stuff to withstand the next onslaught in comfort. I laugh at the electric company. Ha, ha. Do your worst. Here's what we'll need:

Oil for the oil lamps. Yes, we have enough oil lamps to light much of the house. Not very brightly, but hey.

A gasoline camp stove. We have a little propane camp stove, and a couple of cans of propane, but it isn't big enough to cook a decent-sized pot of pea soup.

One of those crankhandle radios. I almost got one at Radio Shack right before Irene but they only had one left and the handle was lost.

Shelf milk, sardines and vienna sausage. My mother-in-law keeps shelf milk against any eventuality. It saw her through Hurricane Katrina when thousands were starving. And drowning.

And okay, a high-end smartphone. The only people in Lambertville who seemed to know what was going on during Irene were finding it all out on their smartphones.

So there's my shopping list. Probably I'll add some more stuff to it. Next time Mother Nature rolls over the power company Harold and I will be ready. Drop by and see us. We'll be lounged up in comfort, trying to read by the light of the oil lamps. We'll share our vienna sausage with you.

Kate Gallison

My Namesake

2011-11-02T10:53:00.000-04:00

Regular readers of the Crime Writers Chronicle may recall how I chose my pen name: it is my mother's first name and her mother's maiden name, chosen to honor two very bright women who never had my educational opportunities. I have since learned that my great-grandmother's name actually was Annamaria Alfieri. I honor her, too.

Today, I want introduce you to another writer named Alfieri, who is probably no relation at all, but I will brag about him anyway. I had never heard of him when I took his/our name. When my dear Florentine friend Nicoletta Pini told me that Alfieri was a great literary name, I took an interest.

Count Vittorio Alfieri (16 January 1749 – 8 October 1803) was a playwright and is considered Italy’s greatest writer of the eighteenth century and founder of modern Italian drama.

Alfieri was born in the beautiful small city of Asti in Piedmont. His father died when he was very young, and after his mother’s remarriage, he was sent away to the Academy of Turin. His greatest interests were literature, especially ancient Greek plays, and horses. His enthusiasm for equestrian exercise lasted the rest of his life.

After a year in boarding school he went to live with an uncle, who took charge of his education, but who also died within a few years. At age fourteen, having inherited great wealth from his father and uncle, he was free to focus on his third great pursuit: travel – he wandered all over continental Europe and England, looking for an ideal place to live and falling in love with married women. His peccadilloes caused at least one aristocratic divorce. His greatest love was Princess Louise of Stolberg-Gerdern, the wife of Bonnie Prince Charlie. Their love affair began in Rome in 1778 and continued there and in Florence for the rest of his life. He had a Byronic persona, which shows in this portrait painted by David’s pupil François-Xavier Fabre in Florence in 1793. Fabre also painted this portrait of Louise, also known as the Countess of Albany.

Once Alfieri’s first play “Cleopatra” was performed, in Turin in 1775, he was hooked on writing for the theater and continued to produce his verse plays until he died. In the process he transformed Italian drama from stilted set pieces to naturalistic, gripping portrayals of life.

He is buried in Florence’s magnificent Church of Santa Croce, resting place of some of the greatest Italian intellectual lights including Galileo, Ghiberti, and Rossini. I took this picture of his tomb. On either side of him on the south wall of the church are the tombs of Michelangelo and Machiavelli.

The tomb of Princess Louise is also nearby!

Annamaria Alfieri

The Halloween I Was Kilroy

2011-10-31T08:00:00.018-04:00

Not Robin, exactly,
but you get the idea

My twelfth Halloween started out like every other Halloween. My friends and I dressed up to go trick-and-treating. My friends were a Pirate, a Princess, and a Prize Fighter—all dolled up in homemade costumes put together from odds and ends from their attics, that nobody wanted to wear anymore. That year I opted to wear my father’s tuxedo and derby hat. (He was quite the swell in those days.) So we set out on our usual neighborhood rounds, full of anticipation.

Our bags were only half full when we decided to take a short cut down a back alley, behind a string of row houses. As we trotted along in high spirits, laughing and shouting, a man came out the back door of his house and yelled, “Any of you Kilroy?”

Being a wise guy in those days, I yelled back, “Yeah, I’m Kilroy!”

The man strode up to me and began pummeling me on the shoulders with his fists and bashed my derby down over my nose. “That’ll teach you to turn over my trash cans,” he said.

My fair-weather friends had long vanished, leaving me holding the bag, literally. I was still clutching my bag of treats. Dizzy and disoriented, I tried to piece together this amazing event. Suddenly it hit me. Some prankster had tipped over this bozo’s trashcans the night before—Mischief Night—and left the message: “Kilroy was here!” scrawled in chalk on his sidewalk. The chump didn’t know that slogan was invented during the war, to be left as a calling card by anyone who wanted to do some anonymous mischief.

Slowly, I trudged after my so-called friends, wondering how I was going to replace my father’s ruined derby. Would the haberdasher accept candy in place of coin? Fat chance. One lesson I learned that memorable Halloween-- to keep my mouth shut.

Robin Hathaway

If I Were a Rich Man...

2011-10-30T08:00:00.036-04:00

I'd build a big tall house with rooms by the dozen
Right in the middle of the town...

The 1964 words by Sheldon Hamick and Jerry Bock, inspired by Sholem Aleichem's 1899 short story "Ven ich bin Rothschild", have spawned countless literary works. And memories for each of us.

Recently a stranger at a 92Y concert told me that if she won the lottery she'd hire a private car service and chauffeur. It ignited a volume of reflections in my criminal mind.

Actually, I've been lucky to have had some very lively encounters with the rich over time. One friend (and former colleague) in Manhattan actually has her own car and driver. We met for tea one afternoon at the Mark Hotel on East 77th St. When we were ready to leave, she called her driver on her cell phone and drove me home in style. Yes, I could get used to that myself!

When I was in the 5th Grade, in Burlington, NC, I had a friend whose family owned the biggest mill in town. Burlington was the hub of hosiery mills then, like in Burlington Industries. She had a doll house in the backyard that was as big as my whole home! And her mother had a private masseuse who came weekly for her and her daughter. I'd never heard the word - it was as exotic a concept to me at age ten as Arabian Nights!

Some rich people really do watch their pennies! I once visited the mother of a friend who had pots of dough, and she presided over every penny. Generous in other ways, she was a miser about her phone bills. She made me pay her 77 cents once for a call I'd made, not 75 or 80 but 77 exactly!

The same gentlewoman let me use her membership at the Park Avenue Colony Club to swim in their elegant indoor pool one summer. I'll never forget the first time I stepped out of the pool, dripping wet of course, and a maid in a starched grey uniform followed me back to the dressing area, wiping up the gleaming floor after me with a white cloth!

When I worked in Newport, RI, I belonged to the English Speaking Union, which was big in that town of swells, castles, real-life Upstairs-Downstairs and fancy balls with imported orchestras, just like Grace Kelly's movies.

I'll never forget one reception for some British Big Wig. I was so thrilled I drove up to Boston and bought a gorgeous gown at the original Filene's Basement. I knew the food would be out of this world, so I skipped lunch to save room.

At the most elegant castle I'd ever been to on these shores, out on a promontory high above the Atlantic Ocean, this was what they served: On trays like the kind in public school lunchrooms, the liveried servants passed out saltines topped with a dab of Velveeta Cheese Spread!

That was it!

Where was the paté, the gourmet cheese, the stuffed squab and whateverthehell they munch on at QE2's house in Scotland???

I recall going home, yanking off the wretched dress, and dashing to the nearest Newport Creamery where I ordered hot dogs and a hot fudge sundae!!!

Once I had an ultra rich student in my Latin class at a prep school on Lake Michigan. Her father owned most of Chicago and its ball teams, and sent his private plane to take her down to the Kentucky Derby.

When I first called on her to translate some Caesar, she replied, "I don't want to. You do it, Miss Straw. You do it so much better than I do!!" Little rich kid...

To end this trip down memory lane on a humorous note, once at a hoity-toity horse show in rural Connecticut, I was in the charity bazaar sale tent, buying some old pieces of initialed silver that would go nicely with my hodge-podge collection of old silver. As I handed over my money, I overheard the blue-haired matron say to her fellow volunteer, "Oh, my dear, what SOME people will do to buy an ancestor!"

You can't make up these things!

Thelma Jacqueline Straw

Ghost Story

2011-10-28T08:00:00.004-04:00

It's Halloween again, and time for one of the spooky stories passed down in my mother's family, where many on the Moore side had "the sight." Today we will recount the tale of the Haunting of Fritwell.

My grandmother was one of four sisters. When World War I broke out, the three eldest found themselves married to officers in the Canadian army, all of whom were sent to France to fight the Hun. The officers got leave from time to time to go to England, and the sisters eventually hit upon a plan to go there and rent a large country house so that they and their husbands might be together. Fritwell Manor became available. The lord of the Manor was Sir John Simon, a widower and a highly-placed English politician.

Fritwell Manor

Ethel, Billie and Hylda settled in. Irene, my grandmother, was the last to arrive, bringing my six-year-old mother with her. Ethel put my grandmother (who had "the sight") all by herself in the tower room. She snuggled down and went to sleep.

She hadn't been asleep but an hour or two when the sound of footsteps issued from the hall outside. Approaching. Slowly. Then, the sound in the pitch-dark room of the door creaking open. More footsteps, closer and closer to the bed, until at last...

The sensation of a cold hand laid upon her forehead.

When my grandmother appeared at the breakfast table the following morning, pale and trembling, her sisters seemed very merry. "Well, Irene, how did you like the tower room?" said Ethel. Everyone knew it was haunted. They had put her there as a (rather mean, I think) prank.

Kate Gallison

Bologna and Arezzo

2011-10-26T09:11:00.006-04:00

Florence is incomparable. No doubt about that.

But.

Taking nothing away from the greatest art treasury in the world, there are also great pleasures to be had in two small cities that are very nearby. My favorite thing about Bologna and Arezzo is that unlike the international tourist mecca that is Florence, these two seem one hundred percent Italian. Not that they are lacking in artistic wonders, to be sure, but their vibe is local, focused.

Bologna is red. From the brick and paint on its stately buildings, to the liberality of its democratic politics, to the mouthwatering tomato-y richness of its Tagliatelle alla Bolognese. Only half an hour by fast train from Florence one finds delights for the eye, the taste buds, the soul. In the heart of the city are two adjoining piazzas often thronged with students at its famous university—along with Paris, one of the two oldest in Europe. In the center of Piazza del Nettuno, is a fountain graced with a wonderful muscular Neptune by Giambologna.

On this recent visit, we were privileged to attend an opening at our friend Tiziana Sassoli’s Galleria Fondantico. Tiziana is a world-class expert in the paintings of her region of Italy from the fourteenth to the eighteenth century. For the launch of her latest exhibition, she recreated a still life. Amazing.

Take a look at the full exhibition by visiting the gallery at www.seleart.com/fondantico. Don’t miss the painting I wanted to take home (if only!), Donato Creti’s splendid Minerva. When you get to the website click on “Galleria” to see the show.

Arezzo is a totally different sort of town: as peaceful as Bologna is bustling, as Tuscan restrained as Bologna is voluptuous. In the church of San Francesco is one of the greatest masterpieces of the Renaissance: Piero della Francesca’s “Legend of the True Cross.” Here is a self-portrait he placed in one of the panels of the fresco. Read the legend in Piero’s pictures at http://www.casasantapia.com/art/pierodellafrancesca2.htm.

Arezzo has a long and glorious artistic and literary history that includes Guido of Arezzo who invented the system of musical notation, Petrarch (who was born there in 1304), and the painter and art historian Giorgio Vasari. The modern-day genius Roberto Benigni the writer/director of “Life is Beautiful” is also an Aretine and you may recognize his native city’s Piazza Grande from the scenes of the movie shot there.

On the train back to Florence from Arezzo, I got to thinking about going home to New York this coming Saturday. As we sped through the Tuscan countryside of acres of vineyards and olive groves, villas surrounded by midnight green cypresses, and hills topped by castles and monasteries, I wondered how I could leave all this beauty. Nor can I stay here and do without my dear ones in New York any longer. I have long said that when I am in Italy, the people here consider me American. When I am in the States, people think of me as Italian. Whether I am here or there, a part of me is far away from home.

An Ode to the Cliché*

2011-10-24T08:00:00.011-04:00

Once upon a time I was up the creek and it never rained but it poured. I was dressed to kill and therefore down in the mouth. Not one to cry over spilt milk, I became busy as a bee and rode out the storm. Knowing there is more than one way to skin a cat, I paddled my own canoe, minded my P’s and Q’s, and let sleeping dogs lie.

Until some wise guy said, “Here’s mud in your eye!” and suggested I take off my wet clothes. Naked as a jay bird, I got drunk as a skunk, sang my swan song, and took a powder.

On the way to my home sweet home, I told myself, “You can’t win ‘em all,” but, “The show must go on!”

Robin Hathaway

*Inspired by The Dictionary of Clichés by James Rogers

Daddy's Goofy Gas

2011-10-23T08:00:00.012-04:00

As you've no doubt guessed by now, I simply love getting news from reading the daily papers!

Recently I saw a headline I'd normally have ignored: A Way to Make Motor Fuel Out of Wood.

B-o-r-i-n-g??? Yup. Ordinary folks might think so, in this super-advanced world of hi-tech and instant UFOs and unheard of quakes-explosions-germs-out of mind earth antics.

But not to me. . .

If plain folks can spin car gas from wood, then I might have become a next-door sugar-borrowing neighbor of Warren Buffett, the Rockefellers or our guy Mike Bloomberg. Had history come out differently.

I peered at the small print to find out who-in-hell had finally cracked the secret. . .

It seems a Georgia company, Renmatix, has a process that puts plain ole wood chips, they call cellulosic biomass, into a small pressurized chamber. The material that remains is pumped into a second pressurized vessel. This company uses only pressurized water. Their plant in Kennesaw, GA, has a pilot-scale plant that processes three tons of mixed wood chips a day.

A bigwig in energy and the environment boasted that they would succeed in producing tons of gallons of what could be motor fuels!

Aw, shucks!

Mercy me!

My father, who fancied himself an amateur inventor, was way ahead of these little ole Georgia boys.

I was too young to know the particulars, but I know that Daddy invented his own gas – or motor fuel – during the war when we lived in Norfolk, VA. Not out of wood chips, but a whole garage filled to the ceiling with mountains of sawdust!

Whatever he added to the piles of sawdust, that he bought somewhere on the VA-NC border, he was able to run the family Ford for a couple of years on his invention of gas.

Granted, when we started out on the weekly family outing, the whole car would LURCH forward in one VIOLENT motion. Scary now, but then I found it thrilling, like a roller-coaster ride! I was too young to wonder what it all was made of, or even to be scared. All I knew was there was a real big gas shortage and my Daddy had invented a way so we could go out for a drive!

I never knew what he added to the sawdust or what made the stuff run the car engine. All I recall was that after a couple of years I heard him say that the car engine had turned to mush!

We never knew what made it work.

All we knew was it was Daddy's Goofy Gas.

And, by golly, it worked!!!

Thelma Straw

Never Mind the Cat

2011-10-21T08:00:00.009-04:00

I have been forced once again to rethink my writing technique. Outlining the Work in Progress using the techniques described in Save the Cat doesn't work for me.

You will recall my boasting a couple of months ago of how I put up a board divided into three acts, as recommended by Blake Snyder, and how slickly all the events of my thriller fell into place once I started sticking 3x5 cards up on the board. You will recall how smoothly I thought everything was going.

That was before I hit fifty thousand words of the first draft and saw how everything I thought about this book was wrong, how it needed a complete overhaul. Actually that's okay. That's what second and third drafts are for. But the thing is, a novel is not a screenplay. I am not a natural plotter. The intricate wacky plots of the books I've written in the past resulted not from forethought but from getting my characters into situations that required Rube Goldberg methods to get them out. Not a plotter. What I am is a pantser.

So for all you other pantsers out there, here's the method that works best for me: Begin at the beginning, go on until you come to the end, and then stop.

Kate Gallison

Adoring David in Florence

2011-10-19T08:00:00.042-04:00

Caveat: Some of you may know that I am married to a man named David. “City of Silver” is dedicated to him. But this is not about my love for my husband.

Michelangelo’s David is one of the most iconic works of art on the planet: so pervasive an image that a person could be forgiven for thinking it trite at this point. Forgiven, but VERY wrong. True, tourists here can buy pictures of it on postcards and reproduced in statuettes of thirty different sizes. There are Davids on jewelry boxes, aprons, pens, key chains, refrigerator magnets, tissues, change purses, and boxer shorts. (I leave it to your imagination to work out which part of his anatomy appears on men’s underclothing.) Want a David umbrella or tote bag? No problem.

Yes, there is all that.

But then in the Accademia stands the original whose presence inspires awe and worship. Its perfection defies description. The ideal of human being at a moment in an archetypal story. The sling over his left shoulder, the rock in his right hand, he contemplates facing the monster Goliath. He is Everyman (and every woman) who must battle an insurmountable foe.

Michelangelo wrote the whole story in marble. The position of David’s limbs, the tension in his hands and neck, and especially his face. Fear. Determination. Strategizing. You can read his mind in those eyes, the furrows in his forehead, the set of his jaw.

I looked in the museum bookstore for a postcard of that face and discovered another reason to be amazed. There were several. Depending on the camera angle, David’s expression emphasizes one emotion or another. In some pictures, he looks more afraid, some more determined, the profile is almost serene. These are photos of a stone man. His expression does not change, but he shows you different aspects of himself as you move around him. How did Michelangelo do that?

We marvel at David because as we view him he comes alive.

Annamaria Alfieri

3 Tips to Put the Joy into Research

2011-10-17T08:00:00.004-04:00

Research can be a drag or a joy. It becomes a drag, an exercise in drudgery, if you do all your research sitting down — on the Internet or in libraries. You have to come up for air and get off your duff now and then, which brings me to my first tip.

1. Don’t Be Afraid to Ask . . .

When I first started writing I never dared bother an expert with my dumb little questions. How wrong I was. Experts love to talk about their work. Don’t you like to talk about mysteries, writing, and how you got published? If a fledgling writer comes up to you—all starry-eyed and asks, “How did you become a writer?” do you snap, “None of your business. Leave me alone.” Of course not. You wax eloquently about how you became a writer and bathe happily in her admiration and awe. Policemen, geologists, chemists, FBI agents, doctors, and fire-fighters are no different. As long as you are polite, listen intently, and ask intelligent questions, you will often find you are the one who has to end the interview.

2. Head for the Children’s Library

Have you ever been faced with the need to know how a rifle works? Or which mushrooms are poisonous? Or the intricacies of a pacemaker? Don’t reach for those heavy tomes with the small print and few illustrations. You won’t understand them and you’ll waste a lot of time trying to. Children’s non-fiction authors are experts
at explaining things clearly, briefly, and accurately with lots of pictures and simple diagrams – that even a child can understand. Give them a try.

3. Don’t just look and listen; touch, smell and taste, too.

We have five senses, but when we write we tend to rely on only two – sight and hearing. The other three are equally important, but often get neglected. The feel of the nape of a baby’s neck, rough bark, or a silk stocking (with a leg in it?) The smell of a school lunchroom – who can forget it? The odor of a badly run nursing home. Or the scent of a crushed mint leaf. The taste of that first cup of coffee. Ice cream on a hot day. Or milk that’s turned sour overnight. Such details can reveal character, enhance settings, even further a plot.

Research can be a drag or a joy. Maybe these tips will help it be the latter.

Robin Hathaway

Why Do You Write Crime Novels?

2011-10-16T08:00:00.000-04:00

After " Where do you get your ideas?" this is probably the next question readers, audiences, fans, kinfolk, acquaintances, book-store-on-line-shoppers ask you.

The next one, usually with a wink or a knowing nod or smirk, is " How can a nice guy/girl like you write about such weird/scary/awful stuff?"

Just between us friends, I finally pulled out of my checkered past an answer that is more true than some erudite sound bite I'd give to a reporter from the Times, the Washington Post, Vanity Fair or GQ.

I used to travel a lot to bring home the bacon. Back in the day when travel was really fun. You got all dolled up, ate real food, checked your bags free, and revelled in the royal attention from the gorgeous guys and dolls who worked as stewardesses/stewards. Leand back in comfort to watch Cary or Sean or Clark or Ingrid or Marilyn in sexy low-lighting and listened eagerly to every announcement from the pilot's lair.

Once I even went by Greyhound from Chicago to Suffolk, VA., dressed in a pristine white silk suit and heels and silk stockings! Then, when I worked for a Fortune 500 HQ, I flew more than I stayed at home! My digs on the road ranged from Hilton, Starwood, Marriott to Super 8 to Ma and Pa Hick's Cozy Cabins.

Then there were other sides to the equation. More introvert than pushy broad by nature, I learned to operate as an in-your-face-dame, who could dish with the best of them. Stomping in heels to the check-in desk to demand a room closer to the lobby than at the end of a five-mile hike. Plus little perks like working light bulbs, two clean towels, an extra blanket or pillow. AC that breathed air not dust. Coffee machines that boiled the water. You know the drill...

So many of those nights on the road, or super-highway, or urban center, whether on a high-end Hilton bed or a Cozee Motel cot, often with no working TV, I was pressed to get to sleep. Usually I was stuck, alone, exhausted and drained from a hard day's work, running some kind of program or workshop, talking out of both ears and eyes, and the outside world was either a den of iniquity, not fit for a nice female, or the deathly silence of the sticks, where everything closed down with the sunset, and all the locals were in bed or snuggled in their own private compounds. Even the bars closed at dusk.

So, I learned to entertain myself, often falling asleep with the latest mystery book I'd bought at the airport in Chicago, St. Louis, Wilmington, L.A., Dallas, Nashville, Phoenix, Miami – you name it, I probably slept there.

So many nights!

So many books!

Names like John le Carre, Peter Lovesey, Ruth Rendell, P.D. James, Dorothy Sayers, Arthur Haley, David Hagberg, Nelson DeMille, Ellery Queen, John Dickson Carr, Phyllis Whitney, Thomas Chastain, the MacDonalds, John Creasey, Georges Simenon – to name a few – my thousand and one nights. My sleeping aids of choice...

I vowed then to those faceless but oh-so-valuable friends that some day I'd pay back my debt to them. And try to give other travelers what they had given me.

So, here's to you – countless men and women writers – on both sides of the pond, writers of that world of make-believe that is actually more truthful than what we call the real world!

Wherever you are, still on this planet or on the next level...

Bless you all, my dears!

Thelma Jacqueline Straw

Unacceptable Sacrifice

2011-10-14T08:00:00.019-04:00

I tell you what, I'm almost cranky enough to give you a recipe today instead of a post. If it isn't one thing it's another. First I discovered that the secret desire of my agent was that I write like two famous best-selling guys who are known for their gritty urban fiction. I ask you, does that sound like me?

Then, as I endeavored to insert a little urban grit into my Work in Progress (after expunging all references to the cat), The AARP bulletin came in my mailbox and insisted that saving the country from the coming fiscal disaster was my personal responsibility, and that I could accomplish this task only by forswearing cookies. The rationale for this is that cookies will make me fatter and give me diabetes, which will cause me to get sick and demand payments from Medicare for my doctors, which will sink the economy.

I didn't get us into this mess, George #$%&* Bush got us into this mess, and you can bet he isn't giving up his #$%&* cookies. I have few enough pleasures in life at my age without giving up cookies. Like my cookies are causing a multi-trillion-dollar national deficit. Get real, AARP, before I go all gritty and urban on you. #$%&.

Kate Gallison

Talking Murder in Florence

2011-10-12T08:00:00.024-04:00

Leighton Gage and Annamaria

This past weekend, we got a wonderful visit from the gifted mystery novelist and generous crime-writing colleague, Leighton Gage. Leighton is literally an international man of mystery. (Yes, I know, I should find a more original way to say so, but I cannot resist my only opportunity to write this sentence and mean it.) Having lived in several countries and visited many more, Leighton now lives in and writes about Brazil. You can read about him and his fascinating books at www.leightongage.com.

We talked murder at the dinner table, walking in the piazza, and sitting on the terrace. We also covered a lot of South American history and territory of which he has an encyclopedic knowledge.

On Saturday, we witnessed a parade that seemed to be the investiture of a new group of rookies for the Polizia Municipale di Firenze. It included a Renaissance Band in costume, lots of flags, and handsome modern day citizens portraying Dante and Beatrice and Savonarola (presumably at some point in his life between the Bonfire of the Vanities and point where he himself was burned at the stake in the Piazza Della Signoria).

The newly-minted cops looked great in their full dress uniforms. I dare any other municipality to show us a chicer police force.

This got me to thinking about effect all this pomp and circumstance might have on the success of law enforcement. In New York, after all, our young police officers, as far as I know, get what amounts to a High School graduation ceremony with uniforms. If they are lucky, they hear a speech by the mayor and have an opportunity to get their picture taken with their mother. To my knowledge, a guy wearing red and white stockings and carrying sword has never attended.

So what of the crime rate in these parts? A brief Google search produced the following paragraphs from Wikipedia:

“At 0.013 per 1,000 people, Italy has the 47th highest murder rate in the world. This makes the murder rate in Italy less than 1/3 that of the United States. Italy is also safer than Finland, France, Iceland, Australia, Canada and the U.K. and only marginally less safe than Spain, Germany and Holland.

Italy is also a country with lower rates of rape than most other nations of the Western world. It has the 46th highest per-capita rate of rape in the world meaning that Italian women are 7 times safer than American women. Similarly, Italy has a lower per capita rate of rape than most of the advanced Western countries in the European Union.”

Do you think this gift of safety for the Italian people has anything to do with the ghost of Savonarola showing up when the municipal police recruits receive their badges?

Annamaria Alfieri

PS: I scanned the crowd at the parade and saw no trace of Hannibal Lecter. Perhaps he was off somewhere having lunch.

Owls in the Attic

2011-10-10T08:00:00.031-04:00

Reading about Kate’s attic made me think of my own — and its contents.

Ten boxes of owls. It all began with my grandmother. When she was a young girl.

Her parents took a trip to New York City and brought back gifts for their three daughters – beautiful dresses for my grandmother’s two sisters, and for my grandmother — a plaster owl.

It was good-sized owl, over a foot high, and bore a remarkable resemblance to the real thing. It had been designed to decorate a mantel, a piano, or a bookshelf, in the typical Victorian manner.

For some reason my grandmother hung on to the gift, probably to remind her of the injustices of life, and when my grandfather died and she moved in with us, she brought the owl with her. But she refused to have it in her room, and my mother didn’t want it in our living room, and so eventually it ended up in my father’s studio, where he sometimes used it in a still-life, surrounded by fruit or flowers. But most of the time it collected dust.

And that’s where I think the trouble started. At one of my parents’ studio parties someone got a little tipsy and misheard my father say, “That owl collects dust,” and thought he said, ”I collect owls.” Because shortly thereafter, people began showing up with owls in their pockets, their purses, tucked under their arms, some even arrived by mail at Christmas and on his birthday. They were all sizes and shapes, made of wood, pottery, metal, straw, cotton and plastic. There were drawings and photographs, collages and needlepoints of owls. The question was, where to put them?

We had a recreation room when I was growing up, but it had gradually become the room-where-we-put-anything-we-didn’t-know-what-to-do-with-but-couldn’t-quite-bring-ourselves-to-throw-out. The ping-pong table was still there, and that’s where the owls ended up. It soon came to be known as, “The Owl Room.”

Time passed, And so did my grandmother, and my parents. The house was sold and its contents divided between my brother and me. I got the owls. So there they are, neatly wrapped in newspaper, packed in boxes, waiting — for what? To be rescued and returned to the light of day? Or to be carted off to the Salvation Army? Or – the nearest land-fill? Maybe the next time I have house guests and am forced to clean the attic, I will decide their fate. But not now. Not today. Tomorrow – as Scarlet would say.

Robin Hathaway

Out of the Mouth of the Gray Lady. . .

2011-10-09T17:21:00.000-04:00

I opened the Times for my daily fix and was perplexed by the items on A2. First, the box by Chanel. Not the usual picture of a ladies' purse for $4,500, a tad more than I pay at K-Mart, a price that could get me to and fro to Shanghai, including tips and drinks. But what looked like one of those rings they throw at you when you're falling off the yacht. "Cruise 2011/12 Collection Preview." Was this another name for a handbag? It was above my paygrade to translate.

Then "Inside the Times." It seems that Russian President Mister Dmitri A. Medvedev had fired Russia's longtime finance minister, Mister Aleksei L. Kudris, who'd had the nerve to question said D.A.M's skill in economic affairs. Told the top guy he'd rather quit than work for him. I happened to know already that A.L.K. KNEW D.A.M. was slotted to swap with Mister V.V. Putin at the next election. Was Mister K. just itching to get a transfer to Outer Siberia? Or worse? Like that little dungeon we happen to know about? (Wink. Wink!)

If that wasn't enough to give me a headache, the Turkish P.M., Mister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, had the GALL to try to enter the wrong way at the U.N. and was PUSHED by a guard!!!

This started the kerfuffle shuffle and a fracas that could be heard FOUR floors below!!! So awful it sent the lord high commish, Mister Ban Ki-Moon, scurrying (their word, not mine) (I thought only mice scurried) over to the Turkish Mission to make nice with an apology. Well, thank goodness someone has manners in that place!

As if that wasn't enough to curdle my coffee, some kids at Berkeley/CAL had a bake sale where they made students pay different prices for their pastries, according to their sex and race. You can't make up this stuff. It was called "Increase Diversity Bake Sale."

Price List:
- Whites- $2
- Asians - $1.50
- Latinos - $1
- African-Americans - 75 cents
- Native Americans - 25 cents
- All Women - a 25 cent discount
( Enough to start WW3 ! )

I turned to A 16 and learned about Rat Island, a small vacant parcel of land off City Island in Long Island Sound, a property on the market if I wanted to leave Carnegie Hill. Rat Island has no electricity or sewer lines. It is under water at high tide. ( Oh, wow!) But it has birds...

I could buy it for a mere $426,000. No traffic, no garbage trucks at 5 A.M. No yelling neighbors, no ringing phones at 3 A.M.

Rat Island was originally part of Thomas Pell's land bought from the Siwannoy Indians - like in Westchester Country Club, School, or Bronx Trail. It got its name from prisoners on nearby Hart Island, who escaped by swimming with cardboard boxes over their heads to look like bobbng trash. The place has served as a fisherman's landing, campground, kayak launching site and a viewing place for fireworks. Any takers???

The owner pitches the sale as a conversation piece at cocktail parties at the Yale Club , the Colony Club or even the New York Athletic Club – "I own an island!" (Hey, that works for moi!)

By the way, what's with these New Yorky islands up for grabs??? The Gray Lady also reported that the Feds hope to sell Plum Island, off the end of Long Island, that verrry weird, dangerous federal Animal Disease Center, where our own MWA Nelson DeMille revealed the real deal in his enthralling novel PLUM ISLAND with hero John Corey. "Sandy shoreline, beautiful views and a harbor!" says the NYT.

R-E-A-L-L-Y???

John Corey, help!!!

All the News That's Fit to Print??? I ponder on that . . .

Thelma J. Straw

P.S. Update on the sale of Rat Island: Buyer Alex Schibli bought the island recently at auction for a mere $160,000, which sounds like a real bargain. So, there goes the dream. Of course, there's always Plum Island - but I question if we could ever get rid of all those germs and worse. Now that place gives me the creeps...

Letting Go of the Stuff

2011-10-07T08:00:00.066-04:00

(Not my pile of clothes. I found it on the internet.)

This is my second day of cleaning the attic. The occasion is to turn it back into a guest room, since we're having company this weekend. It's really quite a nice room, finished, air conditioned when necessary (unlike the rest of the house), furnished with a big soft comfy bed. The problem is that it's full of my dead projects.

You may or may not know that I knit. I like to do this in the summertime, when the weather is unbearably hot, as an expression of the hope that the autumn will eventually come.

You may or may not know that I like to sew sometimes, that I used to be good at it, that when I was broke I used to make my own clothes. I have a 1963 Kenmore cabinet sewing machine in pickled blond wood, sort of bogus Swedish-loooking, that I bought second-hand from another state worker back when I was a clerk for the Department of Youth and Family Services. Shortly after she sold me the sewing machine her life fell apart completely and she went on the street. I would run into her on State Street sometimes. She would beg cigarette money from me and advise me to oil the sewing machine frequently. She became the prototype for Ruth Ann, the bag lady in Unbalanced Accounts, my first published book.

For a long time now I have had the notion that I could still sew, that I could rock those home-made clothes the way I used to when I was young and svelte. I pore over the fashion magazines avidly, seeking the latest styles. But there's less and less to the clothes, and more and more showing of the little models wearing them. I could sew those dresses, no problem. But I couldn't look like that in them. Most of the work would have to be done on my person.

It's time to pack it in as a Project Runway contestant. Five bags of half-finished crappy projects, knitting, sewing, embroidery, you name it, went out on the curb yesterday. Two bags of old clothes went to the thrift shop. I'm thinking maybe I'll put the sewing machine out too. These days my favorite household appliances are the refrigerator, the stove, the ice cream maker, the red Kitchenaid stand mixer, and the brand new food processor. Food processor! How cool is that! I never had one before.

Farewell to the old projects, hello to the new. I'm going down to the kitchen now and just go ahead and finish getting fat.

Kate Gallison

Watching The Clock at the Biennale in Venice

2011-10-05T20:00:00.000-04:00

This year’s was Venice’s 54th International Exhibition. Artists from all of the world are chosen by their countries or by curators to show their contemporary works. As you would imagine, some of the paintings, sculptures, installations, video art, etc. etc. etc., you name it, moves some visitors, but not everyone. Some grabbed me; some went right over my head.Over the course of four days, we took in most of it. This year David and I had the privilege of attending with our friends Jean-Claude and Francoise, French collectors who study the international art scene in-depth and with a passion for finding young artists who have something to say. With those discerning and informed guides, we found fascination and insight into the human condition, and lots of enjoyment.

Some of the works were amusing. Here’s a mural. How many of these people do you recognize?

One, at the US Pavilion is profound, but not at first glance. Here is Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla’s piece outside the American exhibit in the Giardini. The upside down tank symbolizes the obsolete nature of traditional war; the woman running on the treadmill shows us that once you take your tanks into a place like Iraq or Afghanistan, you are stuck, moving and moving and moving but getting nowhere.

Sometimes the full of effect of the exhibition spaces, especially in the Arsenale, was more enjoyable than seeing the works themselves.

But by far, my absolute favorite of any I saw was “The Clock,” by Christian Marclay — a twenty-four hour long video project that splices together snippets of film all of which contain clocks. The montage is timed so that the clocks and watches on the screen tell the actual time in the place where the video is being shown. We only got to see about 45 minutes of it, but I could have stayed all day—literally. I want MOMA to show it so I can see the whole thing. PLEASE take a few minutes to see this British TV report and the three-minute clip of the work, and watch (pun intended) how mesmerizing it can be.

Annamaria Alfieri

Don’t Throw Away Your First Draft!

2011-10-03T08:00:00.000-04:00

Botticelli – Study for "The Allegory of Abundance"

My writing methods are old-fashioned. I write my first draft by hand on yellow legal pads. It is illegible to anyone but myself and sometimes, even to me. However, I never throw it away, at least not until the book is in print. Why?

Because, with all its misspellings, grammatical errors, clichés and structural problems, it also has the energy, the spark, the originality that belongs to the first telling of every story.

My father was an artist — a painter, a print-maker, and a teacher. He taught History of Art and Studio Art at a college in Pennsylvania. Whenever there was an exhibit of preliminary drawings and sketches by great painters, in Manhattan, Philadelphia, or Washington, DC, he urged his students to go see it. “These early drawings will have a vibrancy, an energy, and a freshness that is sometimes lost in the finished masterpiece — after all the refining and polishing takes place,” he said.

The same applies to writing, I think. So hang onto that first draft, turn to it once in awhile when you are revising and polishing your manuscript. Make sure you haven’t polished away something important such as that electric charge that compelled you to tell the story in the first place!

Robin Hathaway

The Crime Writers' Chronicle

Aspirations

Over-the-hill Revolutionaries (Encore)

What to Read (or not) While Writing

The War of 1812 Is Heating Up

Life-Long Love

Valentines Are Not Always Chocolates and Flowers!

Love Story, U.S.A.

What if They Won the War on Women?

Surprises in Buenos Aires

HOOT! (It's sheer poetry)

The Russian Fan Club

Getting Up with the Chickens

This Just In - Winners of Lois Winston's Book Annouced

Truth is Stranger than Fiction

“In small measure, life may perfect be.”

Robert Knightly's The Cold Room

Young Adult Books of Bygone Times

Buenos Aires Through Their Eyes

Great Books on War

On Joining Things

Tales from the Great War

Mohandas 'n Andy

Writing Loves Company

MWA-NY Election 2012 . . . and the Winner Is — Patricia King — President!

If you Like Downton Abbey, You'll Love Rupert Brooke

RIP Cesária Évora

Vaclav Havel…

Diary of a ‘Corrupt’ Cop: or, It Was the Custom

Embracing the New Year

A Vine in the Blood, Leighton Gage's Latest

Post-Holiday Letdown…

Happy New Year and a Blessed 20*C*M*B*12 to You!

A Sad Day for Lambertville's Dogs

"Liberry" Redux

I Was the Best...

Rejoice!

Merry Christmas from Greenwich Village

A Christmas Cat-astrophe!

A Gentle Christmas Memory

That First Paycheck: Where did it Go?

Limericks for Mental Health

One, Two, Buckle My Shoe…

Reunion II: Old Men Packing Heat

Hallelujah

1941

Some Words and Phrases I could Live Without

Why Belong to Writers' Organizations?

It's Even Worse Than We Thought

Over-the-hill Revolutionaries

Left-overs

Puppy Love, Pink Bats and Armageddon

Made Ya Look

I Am Grateful For...

My Cousin, the Carlyle Hotel Barkeeper or It's All Relative, Relatively Speaking . . .

At Large in the Groves of Academe

Writer’s Block: Symptoms and Cure

Reunion: Where All the Old Men Pack Heat

Processing Food, Processing Words

Song Lyrics

3 Literary Anniversaries Worth Celebrating in 2011

L'Envoi at Prout's Neck, Maine

Lights Out!

My Namesake

The Halloween I Was Kilroy

If I Were a Rich Man...

Ghost Story

Bologna and Arezzo

An Ode to the Cliché*

Daddy's Goofy Gas

Never Mind the Cat

Adoring David in Florence

3 Tips to Put the Joy into Research

Why Do You Write Crime Novels?

Unacceptable Sacrifice

Talking Murder in Florence

Owls in the Attic

Out of the Mouth of the Gray Lady. . .

Letting Go of the Stuff

Watching The Clock at the Biennale in Venice

Happy New Year and a Blessed 20CMB12 to You!