03 July 2009
Written by
mdconnelly (
)
Published on July 3rd, 2009 @ 07:34:07 pm, using 341 words, 1 view
One of the biggest problems that reality/science writers have competing with the nonreality/propagandists for public education in this warped time is the scientists’ general inability to make the science into a bumper sticker slogan or “just-so” stories. The effect has been the debilitating dumbing down of our culture at precisely the time when wisdom is needed more than ever. Which means science writers need to figure it out quickly.
Maybe they’re getting there. This review of Why Evolution Is True by Jerry Coyne sounds promising. Check out this part of the review, go be impressed by the rest of it, then tell your friends and their dumba** neighbors:
In each chapter, Coyne lays out evolutionary predictions, and then uses well-chosen examples to show how those predictions are confirmed.
Coyne then takes the argument one step further. Evolution generates clear expectations of what we should find in nature, while creationism can only explain nature by appealing to arbitrary, inscrutable decisions made by an inaccessible designer. Certainly an omnipotent designer could have chosen to make the world this way, but creationists have no testable explanation for why the designer chose to do it one way, instead of another. Thus, intelligent design advocate Michael Behe ascribes a peacock’s tail to a designer’s whimsy, while biologists say the tail is the result of sexual selection. Behe’s idea is arbitrary; biologists’ claims flow naturally from evolutionary theory. Behe’s idea can’t be tested; biologists have tested theirs.
While underscoring the intellectual bankruptcy of a design explanation, Coyne wisely steers clear of an outright attack on religion, and in fact he hardly spends any time at all refuting specific arguments of creationists. This book is not a take-down of creationism; it’s a primer on evolution intended for a broad audience. Coyne is interested in science, and leaves readers free to draw their own religious conclusions, which is exactly how this issue is also treated in professional science circles. Scientists agree on the science, and differ with each other over religion.
Written by
mdconnelly (
)
Published on July 3rd, 2009 @ 07:26:01 pm, using 1209 words, No views
[As we’ve noted earlier, we’re trying an experiment with posting some original work to see what kind of interest the blog can draw in others sending us works to post as well. As stated, keep them from being porn, racist, or hateful and we’ll be glad to try to get this started. And, if you haven’t read the previous sections of this first, go here and catch up (actually start at the bottom first) before you dive in below. Thanks.]
Evan and Max showed up at Ben’s house in late afternoon that Saturday. He had managed to get in before sunrise. Granny had been on the sofa since two o’clock when she got up to go to the bathroom and realized Ben was still gone. When he appeared at the back door after four o’clock, she had had to rouse Caroline to help her with him since his feet were as bloody as his face from a cut on the corner of his left eyebrow. He was so tired and defeated that the care of his little sister did not shame him. They were able to wipe the oil and dirt from him pretty thoroughly, and they washed his remaining hair in a roasting pan before shaving it off to leave him his preferred bald. Then he sat in the bathtub and showered. After he dressed, they tended his feet and bandaged his eye tightly. There would be a scar. Monday, he would have to get a tetanus shot, but today they would call Murray and tell him what happened. And they would let him sleep until his friends got there a dozen hours later.
He was sitting on the couch with Caroline replacing the large bandage on his eye when Granny let them in.
“Oh, man,” Evan said, wincing. Ben’s left eye and jaw were swollen badly and red and purple.
“You look like three months of shit,” Max critiqued.
Evan agreed. “Death eating a cheeseburger.”
“Thanks.”
Caroline looked at them. “The bitch is mine.”
“Caroline,” Ben said wearily.
Evan sat in his usual chair. “Max and I both still have our copies of that tape,” he told Ben. “We’d be willing to go with you to press charges. . . .”
“No,” he replied firmly with half a mouth, shaking his head. “This stops here. I got them, they got me. It’s over. Nobody else gets hurt.” He stared with one good eye into Caroline. “You understand me? If I hear you’ve even looked wrong at Abby, I’ll kick your ass. It’s over. Okay?” He squinted at her. “Okay?”
“Yes, all right,” she agreed spitefully.
“Thank you.”
Max brought in a chair from the dining room. “What did they do?” he asked as they sat.
“Well, they didn’t paint my tits.”
“Bastards,” Max muttered.
“They gave him a Mohawk, but we shaved it off,” Caroline told them tersely.
“I really don’t want to talk about it right now,” Ben said. “There’s nothing about last night I want to remember, actually. Not anymore.”
A silence fell. Evan looked across at Max, then to Ben. “There’s something we probably ought to tell you,” he slowly said.
Max nodded. “We disobeyed your orders last night.”
Ben eyed them, literally. “What?”
“We were up there,” Evan revealed. “On Soldier’s Point. Scared shitless and completely worthless to you.”
Ben laughed once. “You think you could have stopped them?”
“We could have screamed like babies,” Max told him. “Might have had an effect.”
“You two might as well have boobs,” Caroline disdained them.
“Point taken,” Max agreed.
Ben shook his head. “Those guys are freaks of nature,” he told them. “They must sprinkle steroids on their cereal every morning. You wouldn’t believe how strong they are.”
“Try me,” Max disagreed.
“Point taken,” Ben replied. “Anyway, I’m glad you didn’t try anything.”
Evan looked at Max again before speaking. “We also saw everything that happened after they took you away,” he told Ben.
“Abby was really upset,” Max interrupted. “Crying and screaming.”
“Yeah,” Evan agreed, nodding, “it sounds like she really didn’t think they were going to do much to you. And when Allison got there and told her they’d told you she had really been in on everything, she freaked. Started saying how could they do that and she was going to try to find them and stop them.”
“And then Allison said that David thought that Abby loved you and she asked her if she did,” Max added.
Evan looked at Ben. “And she said yes, man.”
Ben looked at each of them, then let out a breath and shook his head. “Doesn’t matter,” he said wearily. “Didn’t matter, did it? She got me up there for them. She knew they were coming. I’d hate to see what she’d do if she worshipped me.” He shook his head again. “Nothing matters now. Like I said. It’s over.”
Marianne Jordan knocked on her daughter’s door for the tenth time that Saturday. This time she had company. “Abby?” she called out with what she thought was sweetness. “Sweetheart? I’ve got something to cheer you up. Ally and Wendy are here.”
Allison stepped up to the locked door. “Abby? Sweetie? Let us in, okay?”
Wendy did her part. “Yeah, Abby, come on. It’s really warm tonight. We could drive around all night.” Allison shot her a vicious look. “. . . or not. Whatever you want, Abby.”
Marianne’s reputation for patience was poor. She knocked harder on the door. “Abigail Renae Jordan!” she said firmly this time. “You can’t stay locked in that room for a whole weekend. You come out and be with your friends this instant.” No sound. Marianne looked at them. “We should never have let her have her own bathroom.”
Allison inhaled deeply and knocked again. “Abby, please,” she begged. “I’m worried. . . we’re all worried about you. We need to be sure you’re okay.”
“Go away,” came an infinitely tired voice.
“Abby, don’t do this,” Allison pleaded.
“Ally,” the voice said, “I called Murray’s. He called in sick. I went to his house, and Caroline said she’d called the police. She screens every call I make. I don’t know how he is, and he won’t talk to me. He’s already cut me out of his life. But you don’t have to worry. I’m not going to do anything stupid. I’ve filled my quota on that. That’s all you need to know. Now get the fuck away from my door.” Pause. “You, too, Mother.”
Marianne sighed disgustedly. “She must have learned that talk down in Mississippi.”
–Hello?
–Ally?
–. . . how are you?
–What am I going to do, Ally?
–I don’t know.
–He’ll never forgive me.
–Probably not.
–I love him, Ally.
–I know.
–. . . I’m sorry I told you to fuck off.
–I know.
–Not my mom, though.
–She loves you, Abby.
–I think Ben did, too.
–Maybe he still will.
–Would you?
–Try to sleep, Abby.
–I’ll try. I’ll see you at school tomorrow.
–Okay. Goodnight.
–Goodnight.
01 July 2009
Written by
mdconnelly (
)
Published on July 1st, 2009 @ 01:12:17 pm, using 723 words, 4 views
[We’ve started another story here for your diversion. Go here to catch the Prologue and other chapters if you missed them.]
10b
His attention had left her and focused on some younger kids playing football in the leaves in the park that they were passing. There were about ten of them, running and tackling, nine boys and one girl. With a long ponytail stretched down her back.
It was his own fault. Last fall he and some of his friends had gotten a pick-up game going, and they had had an odd number so the teams didn’t work out evenly. Anne had come along to watch, as she usually would if Paula weren’t around. Paula wasn’t her type of person. While the others argued about how to set up the sides, it dawned on him to use her as the evening player. The other guys on his side were dumbfounded, especially when he agreed to play the other team with no point advantage even though his had a girl. She had shyly gone along although her crooked smile at him acknowledged what they both secretly knew—that she could catch and run as well as anyone out there and better than most. By the time they called halftime, the other team was wanting to exchange teams and have her on their side. Davy was adamantly opposed, and his side won by five touchdowns. Within a week she had become a legend in her own time.
Ever since, she was in great demand every time a game was proposed. Guys who were calling her “Joe Stalin’s daughter” two years before were now calling her to be on their team. Practically every evening in the fall she could be found in the park or in someone’s front yard dazzling the crowd with her speed and moves.
He didn’t like it. He didn’t know why exactly. It was feeling, not thought. He just knew he didn’t like the attention they gave, the way they tackled her and touched her, especially the way they tackled her and touched her.
He stood there watching her run a play and eluding her would-be tacklers until two of them gang-tackled her into some leaves. He could feel his blood flowing up and his frown curling around his entire face. Paula had a frown of her own. She knew what he was looking at. “Come on, Davy,” she said, lightly pulling on his arm. “I need to be getting home.”
“She shouldn’t be letting them do that to her,” he told her low, angrily.
“Oh, please, Davy,” she went on, anxiously sighing. “Leave her alone.”
Anne was laughing as she rose and brushing the leaves from her flannel shirt and dungarees. The guys who had tackled her were also laughing, just a little too knowingly, he felt. “She shouldn’t be letting them do that to her,” he repeated.
“Don’t worry about her,” Paula complained testily now. “She likes it. She likes doing boys’ stuff. Everybody thinks she’s one of those people they won’t tell us about in biology class. Just leave her alone.”
He turned to her. “Oh, come on, Paula,” he said, exasperated. “She’s not a lesbian.”
The word made her blush. “Oh? And just how do you know?” she asked firmly but poutily.
He scowled at her. “Be serious, Paula,” he said. “She’s my friend. I’ve explained before.” His eyes went back to Anne, who was getting set to run another play.
“Please, Davy,” she begged with urgency. “Let’s go to my house. I’ll fix us something to drink. Mama has some cider I could heat up. Please?”
This time she didn’t get far before being tackled by, it seemed like, every guy on the other team. He thought even some of her own teammates may have jumped in on her. “I gotta talk to her,” he said softly, more to himself. “I gotta put a stop to this.” He turned back to Paula and kissed her lightly on the forehead. “I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”
“Okay,” she whispered and frowned. She wasn’t appeased. She watched him start walking across the grass toward the players for a moment and then sadly and angrily headed home by herself.
29 June 2009
Written by
mdconnelly (
)
Published on June 29th, 2009 @ 06:09:57 pm, using 369 words, 4 views
[As we’ve noted earlier, we’re trying an experiment with posting some original work to see what kind of interest the blog can draw in others sending us works to post as well. As stated, keep them from being porn, racist, or hateful and we’ll be glad to try to get this started. And, if you haven’t read the previous sections of this first, go here and catch up (actually start at the bottom first) before you dive in below. Thanks.]
–Abby.
–Where is he?
–I don’t know. Joey can’t find his ass with both hands when he’s sober.
–Omigod, omigod, what did they do to him?
–Oh, it’s bad, Abby.
–. . . tell me.
–Apparently David beat on him some, and then they shaved his head into a Mohawk.
–Shit.
–Abby, that’s not all.
–. . . what else?
–They . . . stripped him naked and poured motor oil all over him and rolled him in dirt and . . .they left him up there on Soldier’s Point to walk home. . . . Abby . . . . Abby, talk to me, sweetie. Please.
–I have to find him.
–Abby, we don’t know where he is.
–I don’t care. I can’t sit here. He’s out there somewhere. He needs me. I have to find him.
–It’s three o’clock, Abby. You can’t be driving in those woods at three o’clock.
–I have to go now.
–Well, at least come get me first.
–No, I have to be with him. He needs me.
–Abby, come get me. Abby . . . .
bzzzzzzzzz
–Shit.
Dink.
–“I’m sorry but the person you have called is unavailable . . . .”
–Shit.
Abby Jordan may have passed Ben Baxter at some point in the hours she spent driving Soldier’s Point that Saturday morning until dawn came and her body failed her and she drove all but unseeing home. But each time he heard a car coming or saw lights ahead or behind, he moved on splintered and torn feet into the bushes to avoid being seen. It was even possible that he could have recognized her car, but, if he did, at that point in time, hers was the car he would have hidden from most.
Written by
mdconnelly (
)
Published on June 29th, 2009 @ 06:01:13 pm, using 267 words, 3 views
Looking for a different take on biographies of famous Americans? How about considering how each of them learned to read, would that be good? Here’s your book, not just about how Abe learned to read but other types ranging from Ben Franklin to Sojourner Truth, Rosa Parks to Elvis. Want an idea of how Elvis learned? Try this interview with the author, with this excerpt to tempt you:
Q: And for readers who think they know Elvis every which way, you want them to realize what about the man?
A: I want them to learn how he learned. I want them to get a sense that his success wasn’t inevitable, that he paid attention to some things and ignored others, that it wasn’t the myth of rags-to-riches but a kid growing up in the midst of the Depression. What it meant for his parents to get out of the cotton fields and finally own a refrigerator. I’d like readers to ask how his family managed to live in a black neighborhood and not end up stereotypical racists. To wonder what it felt like for Elvis to see another sharecropper’s son turn into Hank Williams. I tried to provide readers with the information to reconsider who the guy was.
Let me put it this way: Who said: “At one time, when I got out of school, I thought I wanted to be a doctor or something in the medical profession … but I didn’t have money to go to college"?
Answer: the same guy who sang “If I Can Dream.” A guy we still have lots to learn about.
28 June 2009
Written by
mdconnelly (
)
Published on June 28th, 2009 @ 10:53:21 am, using 1523 words, 13 views
[We’ve started another story here for your diversion. Go here to catch the Prologue and other chapters if you missed them.]
10a
Walks with Paula Harper grew more common over the next two years, despite his desertion of her to rescue Anne from Timmy Kolack. In that time, Paula, if possible, had grown even prettier, even shapelier, even richer, and, incredibly, even more set on him. He had long since stopped trying to figure out why. Every other guy in the school would have died twice for her, but she wanted him.
It was strange. He didn’t chase her, didn’t call her much, didn’t really even miss her that much on those occasions when they had briefly broken up. He would miss various parts of her that he had grown fond of on nights at the Center and, later, on Summit Hill, but not her really, and he doubted if they were all the same thing. He didn’t like being this person, this guy who held back from someone who obviously cared so much for him, so most of the time he talked himself into it, into their going together. He’d heard that, if you were with someone long enough, the feelings would grow. That was going to happen, was happening sometimes, he thought. Don’t be stupid. Go ahead and just accept the status accorded the beau of the belle of the decade in their town.
It did have its advantages. Summer employment at her family’s bank, learning that business instead of groceries. Invitations to weekends on the lake with her family at their personal cabin, in their personal boat. Formal dinners and parties where he got to hear the latest tirades about Czar Roosevelt and how Father Coughlin might just be right and how bad times brought out the kooks like Townsend and Long. Even Long’s death last September hadn’t stopped the talk. “Always the chance of another one, you know.” And, “Didn’t he have a son?” He took care not to let it be known that he still hoped somehow that Roosevelt would keep running for reelection until he got the chance to vote for him. Rumbles of war in Europe, meanwhile, scarcely bothered anyone in that social stratum. Surely Jesse Owens had put to rest Hitler’s superiority talk. Some, in fact, privately expressed admiration for the German system and how well it worked, Walter Lippmann be damned.
One fall afternoon found him waiting for the lovely Miss Harper at the school fence after his football practice. She was with the cheerleading squad, working on those inspiring cheers. It was a pretty day, brisk but not cold yet. The foliage was turning. It was his favorite time of the year—the colors, the weather, the way the world looked. She sneaked up on him while he was surveying the trees.
She slapped her hands over his eyes and said, “Guess who?”
“Uh . . . Jean Harlow.”
She laughed and came around in front of him. “How did you know?” she said, giggling, her hands to her waist.
He smiled. His feelings for her may have been ambivalent, but his feelings for that body were not. She was wearing the red school sweater, filling it admirably, and a matching plaid skirt that came halfway up her knee, revealing better legs than Ginger Rogers’, at least halfway down. It was rumored that half of the male attendance at home football games was only there to watch Paula. Which was probably true since the team hadn’t won in a year and a half. Some of the male cheerleaders might have played football and helped the team if they hadn’t decided it was better to be on the sidelines with Paula.
She cocked her head and gave him the smile. “Sometimes you smile like you know something I don’t know,” she teased.
He nodded. “The capital of British Guinea.”
She wrinkled her nose. “What’s that?” Unfortunately she was serious.
“Our forty-ninth state,” he told her and put his arm around her slim waist. They moved away from the fence and toward her street.
“You think I’m pretty dumb some of the time,” she told him, smiling, her eyes perpetually flirting with him.
“Nah,” he denied it, grinning. He thought she was pretty dumb most of the time.
“Uh-huh,” she countered. She laid her head against his shoulder as they walked, which really took an effort to do. Her hair always smelled impossibly clean, even after cheerleading practice. “Well, I don’t care,” she was saying. “You can have the brains for both of us. I’ll just depend on you.”
She was always saying things like that, making him uncomfortable rather than happy. She clearly saw a future he hadn’t seen yet. And, he basically preferred girls who were smart and could take care of themselves, who weren’t dependent types. Like Carole Lombard or Bette Davis or, well, like Anne, for example.
She kept chattering while the thoughts ran through his head. “I can hardly wait for the Homecoming Dance,” she said. “They got a swing band to play. They say they sound just like Benny Goodman.” He wasn’t impressed with swing. He liked slow dances, especially with Paula and her body. “I think I’ll wear my new blue chiffon,” she continued. She turned her eyes on him. “It’s the one that goes with my eyes that I told you about. It’s real pretty.”
He smiled. “Paula, any dress on you looks pretty.” He said it more as fact than compliment, but he knew she would take it as the latter.
Which she did. For once she looked serious and maybe the slight blush was real. She stopped and caught his eyes. “You know, people say things like that to me all the time, guys and my mom and relatives and stuff,” she told him, “but you hardly ever do. It means a lot to me when you do. It’s like you mean it and aren’t just saying it.”
There were times when his affection for her was more than physical and social, and this was one of those times. He smiled at her sincere and infrequent humility and pulled her close to him as they began to walk again. If only there were anything more important to her in life than blue chiffon dresses . . . .
They had walked past several houses before she started talking again. Her attention span on a romantic moment seemed to be about half a minute, he had already learned. “You know what Daddy said this morning?” she asked.
“’Good morning, dear, what’s for breakfast?’” he offered.
She punched him lightly on the chest. “No, silly,” she said. “Well, he did say that, but that’s not what I meant.”
He shook his head to himself and smiled. “What did he say?”
“He said,” she answered, inhaling, “that things at the bank were looking pretty good going into the next year or two and that he might be hiring some people from our class after graduation if they were bright and the kind of people he wanted. And you know what?”
He had an inkling. “What?”
“He mentioned you specifically,” she replied, sticking an index finger where she had just punched him.
“Well,” he responded, feeling an odd kind of dread welling up inside him, “that’s nice of him.”
“Won’t that be great?” she mixed exclamation with sigh. “You’d have a good job and a good future right here in town and we could see each other every day.”
“Well, Paula, you know I’ve kinda been thinking about going to college after graduation,” he told her slowly. He had almost decided on engineering if his dad could help him with the costs and would let him out of the grocery.
“Well, that’s be all right, too,” she allowed after just a moment of thought. “State’s not that far from here really. You could come home on weekends, and Daddy could help you pay for it since you’d be coming back to the bank.”
He hated himself for being so wishy-washy with her, for still not being able to talk to her frankly and honestly, the way he could with Anne. Why couldn’t he just say that his idea of the future and hers were not the same? Why was he letting her think they were? Was it just because she was so . . . valuable? Because so many other guys wanted her? God, that was so unfair to her. But what would he have if he did let her go? What kind of reason was that to stay with her? What kind of person was he if that was all there was to it?
Paula took his silence as approval, as she always did. “Daddy’s always said you had a good head on your shoulders,” she was going on. “He’s usually right about people. He was right about you and baseball, wasn’t he?” That drew no response. “Davy?”
Written by
mdconnelly (
)
Published on June 28th, 2009 @ 10:49:19 am, using 77 words, 4 views
Folks who know Nick Hornby’s work in a general way are probably most familiar with his novels, but he’s done a lot more than that. He’s also one of the best reviewers and essayists out there. If you are a fan or might want to be, try out some of the other books he’s done. How? Well, My Mind on Books has made it convenient for you. Click here and get the links to everything you need.
27 June 2009
Written by
mdconnelly (
)
Published on June 27th, 2009 @ 08:54:40 am, using 1145 words, 15 views
[As we’ve noted earlier, we’re trying an experiment with posting some original work to see what kind of interest the blog can draw in others sending us works to post as well. As stated, keep them from being porn, racist, or hateful and we’ll be glad to try to get this started. And, if you haven’t read the previous sections of this first, go here and catch up (actually start at the bottom first) before you dive in below. Thanks.]
If Ben had thought about it long enough, he probably would have realized how counterproductive it was for him to tell Evan and Max not to follow them to Soldier’s Point that night. What they would do having found Abby’s car was never clear. It was the chase. When Abby pulled off the dirt road to begin what they could not even fantasize, they pulled off immediately as well several yards back. That was clearly not close enough for their purposes. They stealthily closed their doors and, using techniques learned from eight viewings of “Lord of the Rings,” crept quietly along the edge of the trees, staying out of view, around to the front of Abby’s car. They could hear talking and make out the two shadowy figures inside. When the talking stopped, however, and the shadows merged on the driver’s side, they again utilized their surveillance talents to move to the front of the car unnoticed.
Slowly Evan raised up over the hood, an inch at a time. Ben and Abby were clear to his view now, but he might as well have been on the moon for them. He had never seen a kiss with that intensity, and then, to his further shock, there was Ben’s hand, coming up her side and spectacularly squeezing and caressing an Abby Jordan breast. He dropped back to his knees, eyes wide, mouth open. “What?” Max mouthed at him, but got no response. So he slowly, but more quickly than Evan, raised up, just in time to see Ben’s hand dropping down past the steering wheel and clearly between Abby’s legs. Transfixed, he watched as Abby arched and cried out. He was still transfixed as Evan jerked him back down.
“He . . . he . . . ,” Max whispered.
“Screw that,” Evan was telling him. “We have to get out of here. Fast.”
Abby had parked in the arc of a curve of the road, and around the curve, approaching on foot, were three hulking figures. They were not hard to recognize, even in the clouded moonlight. “Shit,” Max whispered and joined Evan in scampering quickly back into the protection of the trees. And from there they got to watch everything that happened as Ben was abducted and Abby went berserk with tears, including Allison’s appearance with Abby’s keys about fifteen minutes after the Jeep had vanished.
Allison could not get the door open before Abby was there, crying, screaming, “Where did they take him?! Where are they taking him?!!!” She managed to get out and try to subdue Abby’s flailing arms and hands. “Abby, calm down,” she kept repeating. “Please, sweetie, just calm down.”
Abby stopped flailing as Allison mastered her elbows. “Where is he?”
Allison sighed. “I don’t know,” she answered. “When they said they’d be here at eleven-fifteen, I told them to meet me at the turnoff before they came up. I wanted to make sure that they didn’t get too crazy. Instead, they just met me coming down, tossed me your keys, and told me which forks to take up here.” She shook her head and, had Abby been rational, she would have seen Allison’s eyes welling. “God, Abby, I’m so sorry.”
Abby gripped Allison’s forearms. “They promised me, Ally,” she cried. “They promised me they wouldn’t do anything really bad.”
“They’re drunk, Abby, and they kicked ass tonight,” Allison tried to explain. “And they’re still really pissed at him.”
Abby’s eyes were wilder, even in the dim moonlight, than Allison had ever seen them. “They thanked me, Ally,” she wailed. “He heard them. They said he wouldn’t know. He heard them.”
Allison grimaced. “Abby, it gets worse,” she said. “When they gave me your keys, they told me to tell you that . . . they couldn’t have done it without you and they’d show you the pictures on Monday.”
Abby’s mouth dropped, and her eyes froze. The air seemed to drain from her. “. . . no,” she whispered. “. . . no.” She released Allison’s arms and turned, walking toward her car. “. . . no . . . no . . . .”
“Abby . . . .”
She whirled around. “Why!?!” she screamed. “Why did they do this?!!!” She rushed back to Allison. “They promised me he wouldn’t be hurt. They promised me he wouldn’t know. Why did they do this to me?! Why, Ally? Why?!!”
Allison sighed again. “You know why, Abby. They were never going to let him get away with what he did to them. It was stupid for us to believe they would. Plus, . . . ,” she stared into Abby’s eyes, now so filled with pain, “David thinks you’re in love with Ben . . . .” She paused. “You are, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
Had their attention been better focused, they would have heard a shuffle in the underbrush on the other side of Abby’s car.
Abby’s expression suddenly became resolute. “I have to go find them,” she told Allison. “I have to stop them.” She turned toward her car.
Allison grabbed her arm. “Abby, there are forty jillion ways off this hill,” she pleaded. “You’ll never catch them.”
She looked at Allison, crying. “I have to,” she said. “I love him, Ally. I love him.”
Allison took the other arm and stared up into her friend’s eyes, trying to capture her mind. “Sweetie, go home.”
“No.”
“Listen to me,” she said softly, reasonably. “Go home. I’ll keep calling Joey until he answers his goddam phone. He’s stupid enough and drunk enough to tell me what they did with Ben. Maybe I can find out where they took him.”
Abby was in a self-induced trance. “I have to find him,” she was chanting. “Tell him that I love him.”
Allison shook her head. “Abby,” she said, sternly now. “Go . . . home. Please.”
Abby stared at her best friend, and gradually her breathing slowed, her crying lessened. Finally, she nodded.
“Good girl,” Allison told her, leading her back to her car. “I’ll follow you back. Leave your phone on. If you start driving weird and don’t pullover, I’ll be calling.” She handed Abby her keys and sat her inside the car.
Abby looked up at her. “They said they wouldn’t hurt him. They said they wouldn’t tell. They promised.”
“I know.” Allison sighed. “I know.”
26 June 2009
Written by
billconnelly1 (
)
Published on June 26th, 2009 @ 06:50:21 am, using 890 words, 14 views
I have no idea whether Michael abused the children he “adopted.” It is possible those relationships were without sex; he seemed frozen at a time before puberty. Whether he touched them criminally or not, it is easy to see what he sought: To create, with and for these Lost Boys, a Neverland where they could imagine together the childhood he never had.
Mixed with that was perhaps a lifelong feeling of inadequacy, burned in by the cruelty of his father. That might help explain the compulsive plastic surgery, the relentless rehearsal, the exhausting tours, the purchase of expensive toys, the giving of gifts.
The scene everyone remembers from “The Wiz” is Dorothy and the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion dancing and singing down the Yellow Brick Road. They were off to see the Wizard, and a wonderful Wizard he was, because of the wonderful things he does.
In the story, the Wizard is a lonely little man hiding behind a curtain, using his power to create a wonderland. Now Michael Jackson will never be able to tell us what he was hiding behind his curtain. But because of his music, we danced and sang.
– Roger Ebert
When Michael released “Thriller,” it seemed to speak yet again to my sub-generation, 20-somethings still grasping for a common identity in the bitter aftertaste of the Pepsi generation, sandwiched in between the grumpy elders and cleancut teens who were both trying to herd us into the Age of Reagan. Michael Jackson truly was, for that brief moment, our “man in the mirror” for a confusing new decade: Someone whose weird clothes spoke of rebellion yet made no coherent statement, not a radical but a careerist and a perfectionist who was moonwalking his way to the bank, totally apolitical and racially ambiguous, an artist who understood “new media” (remember when that meant MTV?) and thus was going to reign forever as the King of Pop.
Then we grew up – and Michael Jackson didn’t. Hot summer nights with “Billie Jean” on the turntable inevitably led to babies, and now that we were parents we rightfully recoiled from the horror stories coming out of the Neverland Ranch. In reality, Michael Jackson was never really what was so neatly packaged and gift-wrapped under the Christmas tree in 1970. We learned that he was the child of a physically abusive father, a celebrity who felt that he’d been robbed of his childhood.
Those things didn’t give him the license to act in the irresponsible ways that he did, but it did make him a different kind of metaphor for my fellow tail-end Boomers, as so many of learned that even middle age doesn’t always vanquish the demons that were set loose so many years ago. Some defeat those demons, and some don’t. Michael Jackson epitomized our greatest fear of all – he simply ran out of time. Maybe that’s why we cut him so much slack in spite of it all – the love you save.
– Will Bunch
The only thing I have to add to these two great columns is that I was 4 when Thriller came out, I didn’t own it, I had no specific taste in music at that age (but was still a bit of a music nerd, having learned to read by looking at album covers)…and yet I knew every word to about two-thirds of the songs on Thriller. In my lifetime (which clearly, hasn’t been as long as others’), Thriller was really the single, most dominant, most universal album. Yeah yeah, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, 1992, etc. But Thriller was every “grunge” album wrapped into one. He was a one-man musical movement despite the fact that his music was in no specific way different than anything that came before. He wasn’t tremendously innovative, at least musically (his dancing was a different story, I would say)–he was just better at his craft than anybody else, and the image that he crafted (and was crafted for him) was inescapable. In the end, he couldn’t escape it either, and when pent-up childhood issues started releasing themselves in odd ways in the 1990s and 2000s (as they usually do), the magnifying glass wreaked havoc with his life…and so did he, since he really had no concept whatsoever of what other people would see as right or wrong.
And for the most part, I’ve been impressed with the coverage of his death. I was worried that things would be focused too much on either his late-life creepiness or, on the flipside, everything from the last 15 years would be ignored and he would be hailed as music’s greatest hero. The media assume people can’t handle shades of gray, so they usually take one specific narrative and drive it into our skulls, but so far there’s been a pretty good balance between the two sides of Jackson’s life, at least in the things I’ve read. But I read mostly blogs, so maybe I’m not a very good judge.
UPDATE: This is a fascinating video (via >Daily Swarm), not because it shows his greatness, creepiness, or any other ‘ness’ associated with him. It’s just rare to see moments of him when he wasn’t performing or appearing creepy–it’s like he was an actual human being, even though he was still an odd guy ("What’s a point guard?").
25 June 2009
Written by
mdconnelly (
)
Published on June 25th, 2009 @ 06:03:25 pm, using 1902 words, 13 views
[We’ve started another story here for your diversion. Go here to catch the Prologue and other chapters if you missed them.]
9
Catherine had come to change his head bandage. He sat quietly on the cot as she snipped the linen with tiny scissors. “Perhaps this is the last we will need, do you think?” she asked cheerily.
“Maybe,” he answered. He had been feeling much better the last day or so. “You do good work. I’m just lucky I was taken in by a nurse and not a butcher or something.”
She lifted the cloth away from his head. “Yes, yes,” she said to herself as she studied the uncovered wound. She raised her fingers to the right side of his head. “How tender is that?”
He winced slightly, but it was manageable. “Could be worse,” he replied.
“Typical American answer,” she laughed once. “You’ll probably have a scar. It was quite a gash. A war wound to impress your bride.”
“My wife’s not real impressed with wounds,” he told her. “Especially war wounds.”
“Anne-Marie told me that you said she reminded you of your wife,” she responded with a smile.
“She did?” His surprise was real.
“Yes,” she answered, nodding. “She just mentioned it in passing, but she seemed pleased.”
He raised his eyebrows and inhaled. “Well, you sure couldn’t have told it. She’s seemed very unimpressed with anything about me to me.”
Catherine’s smile turned wise. “She is that way,” she said. “She doesn’t speak her feelings much. Especially since she came here.”
He shrugged. “I’d hoped maybe she just didn’t understand English well,” he commented. “But that didn’t really seem to be it.”
“No, no,” she agreed. “She understands very well. She’s studied in school and from her parents, and now from me. She’s very brilliant, very. I wish I had half her brains. I think perhaps that has made it more difficult for her, though.”
“What do you mean?”
Catherine pointed an index finger at her head and smiled. “She thinks too much, you know? She isolates herself from the world, like coming down here to hide away sometimes. She’s not really a child in a lot of ways. She’s older than me sometimes.” She shook her head. “It’s taken me longer to know her than any of the other children. And I suppose she’s the one that I worry about the most. I don’t know what a war like this does to a mind like hers.”
“She seems like she can take care of herself.”
“In many ways, yes,” she said, nodding. “Better than us in some ways. But in all ways?” She shrugged and then laughed. “Freud would love us, don’t you think? Doing his work?”
“Beats groceries,” he told her. “That’s what I did before the war.”
She checked the wound on his head one more time. “Bruise is still there,” she said, “but the swelling is gone, I think. The skin is healing. I think we will leave the bandage off. You should be able to move upstairs for a while shortly. Get some sun.” She gathered the old linen and her scissors. “You say Anne-Marie looks like your wife?”
He nodded. “Yeah. Hey, wait. I can show you.” He reached under his thin pillow and withdrew a wrinkled white envelope. He gestured at his uniform on a crate behind him. “Had this in my flight jacket. My last letter from her . . . before the mission.” He opened the envelope and pulled out a photograph. “This is her with our little girl,” he said, handing her the picture. “That’s my first picture of her. She wasn’t born when I left. She’s only three months old now. Her name’s Deborah. Deborah Anne, after her grandmother and mother.”
The woman looked at the picture for several moments, and her expression softened noticeably. “She’s very lovely,” she told him, returning the photograph. “Very lovely. Both of them. You’re very lucky. Perhaps you should show that to Anne-Marie. The resemblance is striking. It might help her imagine a better future.”
He put the picture in the envelope and replaced it under his pillow. “I might,” he replied, “next time we get into an extended conversation.”
Catherine smiled indulgently. “She will warm to you,” she told him. “She’s at an age, you know. She doesn’t know how to deal with handsome young men yet. It confounds her. You’ve made an impression, even if you don’t know. Just be careful with her.”
He stared at her. “Catherine, I’m not . . . .”
She smiled again. “I know. But she is at an age.”
He shrugged and nodded. “I don’t think it will be a problem,” he assured her, “no longer than I’ll be here.”
“You plan to leave?”
“I can’t stay,” he told her with a slight laugh. “I’d like to, but I can’t.”
She shook her head. “Exactly how do you plan on leaving? Just walk back to England?”
He pursed his lips. “Well, no. But I can’t stay here. God knows I’d like to. If I could be sure the Germans wouldn’t find me or you or the children. But I can’t ask you to take that risk. I know there’s an underground here, that helps with downed fliers. If I can get to them . . . .”
“What if I could help you meet with them?”
He straightened sharply. “You can take me to them?”
She shook her head again. “Not ‘take.’ I can show you how to get to them.”
“Really?” God, this was great. He really hadn’t had hope.
She nodded. “In the desk upstairs, taped to the bottom of a drawer, is a map,” she told him. “It gives the directions to a farmhouse about . . . oh, not kilometers, how many miles? . . . Thirty. To a farmhouse about thirty miles from here, if you go pretty straight. There is no real road. The farm is a rendezvous point for the maquis, the resistance. It is where they take the downed pilots and crews.”
“That’s what our officers have been telling us.”
Another nod. “They have helped many. It is very dangerous, but they have been very successful. They are well organized. The most dangerous part is usually getting to them.”
“Where did you get the map?”
“Early in the war,” she explained. “One of them fled up here during a German raid. We helped him, and he drew us the map, the directions. He thought we should flee, leave the country ourselves. It was his way to repay us.”
“You didn’t go.”
She smiled. “This is our home. There is nowhere else to go for us. Besides, my father is old. I know it is not really so far, but you must go through the forest and the hills, creeks. The road is unsafe. The Germans patrol the area between here and there fairly regularly. Speed is important.” She shrugged. “My father would never go even if I decided to. I am too old now anyway. The map is really not much use to us then. You will be better able to use it.”
He raised his shoulders. “I don’t know what to say, Catherine,” he said. “Of course, I’ll use it. Thank you. I really didn’t . . . it’s more than I can ever repay.”
She smiled again, but it didn’t have the same brightness. “Actually, there is one thing you can do to repay us.”
“What?”
“I . . . ,” she hesitated, eyes going down, then coming up again, “I want you to take the children with you.”
He felt his heart thump. “What?”
Her expression immediately moved to pleading. “You may be our only chance to get out of here safely. You have to get them to England.”
“But you just said how dangerous it’ll be,” he responded. “Thirty miles is too far for kids. It could take days.”
“With a soldier, someone trained, someone to protect them, to drive them on,” she argued, her tone more urgent, “they have a chance. This war could be more years. The Germans are more likely to come.”
“What about the maquis? They could get them out of here.”
She shook her head. “I told you. They avoid this area now. The only people who will come up here will be the Germans.”
He took in a breath. “Catherine, you’re asking me to place all of us in more jeopardy than they’re in right here.”
She was silent.
He let the breath out harshly. “If I refuse, you won’t give me the map.”
“Of course I will give you the map,” she answered softly with a wave of her hand. “It would serve no good purpose to keep it from you. I will copy it in case someday someone else will take them.” Her eyes dropped to her lap.
He stared at her and then rose from the cot. He walked slowly to the stairs and turned to face her. She hadn’t moved. Her back was bowed. His shoulders slumped. “Catherine,” he pleaded, “don’t you see? How can I take them with me? The chances that I’ll make it on my own aren’t that great out there. If I take them, it will be that much riskier, for all of us.”
She didn’t look up. “They are in danger here,” she told him, low, evenly. “There will always be the chance they will be discovered and sent away. To be killed or turned into work slaves. They will not be truly safe unless they are in England.”
“You don’t know that,” he responded. “Taking them across thirty miles of patrolled territory? You really think that’s safer than here?” He returned to the cot and sat in front of her. “Listen, Catherine. I have to get back. I don’t mean to the war. I mean to her. I promised. You saw their picture. How can I . . . how can I risk being a sitting duck out there with four kids? How?” He took her hands. “Catherine, they’re safer here. They really are. You know they are. And I . . . I can’t be dragging them across that space. I can’t.”
She slowly removed her hands from his, along with the linen and the scissors. She stood without looking at him and headed for the stairs. “You should do what you feel is right,” she said softly.
He watched, helpless, as she climbed the steps. “I’ll send people back for them . . . ,” he told her. “The maquis could come back through here . . . .” She said nothing. “You don’t know they won’t. I’m not their best chance, Catherine.” She disappeared through the closing door. “I’m not . . . .” She was gone.
He lay back on the cot and shook his head. From miracle to hell in less than five minutes. How could she stick that on him? Taking four kids, one, what, four, across countryside with Germans crawling all over it? How could she think that was a good idea? Why couldn’t he get her to understand? He was always horrible at getting people to understand how crazy they were being. They always made him feel like this.
24 June 2009
Written by
mdconnelly (
)
Published on June 24th, 2009 @ 04:50:22 pm, using 268 words, 19 views
When we were hailing Abe’s 200th birthday anniversary a while back, we failed to pay much attention to a similar occasion for Charles Darwin, also a notable. So, in the “Year of Evolution” (you know, that theory, just as goofy as the theory of, oh, gravity), several books on Chuck have come out, and Darwin’s Sacred Cause: How a Hatred of Slavery Shaped Darwin’s View of Human Evolution is one of the most remarked. Here is a very nice and quick review of the book along with some of its continuing relevance. And here is a brief excerpt to tempt you to look into it and the whole book:
Questions of human evolution and the common ancestry of all races were on Darwin’s mind almost constantly, but it was such a complex (and loaded) topic that he held back until he had collected enough information to more fully make his case. Darwin had collected a lot of material for his large (and ultimately unpublished) manuscript, Natural Selection, but the rush to publish On the Origin of Species caused him to shift focus and excise everything he had written about humans. This was probably just as well. If On the Origin of Species had considered race and human evolution critics surely would have seized on those passages for the prospect that humans had evolved has always been central to the controversy surrounding evolution. (It didn’t matter that Darwin was cautious; his critics acted as if he had written about human evolution in On the Origin of Species anyway.)
Imagine that . . . Darwin abused. Good thing we live in smarter times.
Written by
mdconnelly (
)
Published on June 24th, 2009 @ 04:39:06 pm, using 1785 words, 15 views
[As we’ve noted earlier, we’re trying an experiment with posting some original work to see what kind of interest the blog can draw in others sending us works to post as well. As stated, keep them from being porn, racist, or hateful and we’ll be glad to try to get this started. And, if you haven’t read the previous sections of this first, go here and catch up (actually start at the bottom first) before you dive in below. Thanks.]
The George Marshall Panthers destroyed long-time rival, the Tyler Wolverines, 31-8, to clinch a playoff spot for the umpteenth consecutive year, led by the play of their All-State quarterback, David Anderson, who seemed particularly inspired that evening. Because Evan and Max were now officially on strike as audience participants at Panther games, they listened on the radio of the car Ben was tending at Murray’s until the garage closed at nine. They planned to proceed to Ben’s for the conclusion, but he said they could not. Refusing to accept mystery, they badgered him into both explaining why and forbidding them from following him and Abby at any point that evening. Satisfied with their assurances, Ben hurried through the closing down of the garage, rushed home, showered, and shaved very closely before Abby arrived a little before 10:30. Blushing, he offered to take his pickup, with the bench seat, but she was curiously adamant about taking her car.
Twenty minutes later they were pulled snugly into an off-road hollow in the trees and hills near Wilson Cove, known as Soldier’s Point for some role it had played in some battle at some time in the past. Ben was smiling at her.
“What?” she asked, smiling back, but her eyes were clearly on edge.
“What’s wrong with you tonight?” he asked back.
“Nothing,” she insisted. “Why do you think anything’s wrong?”
He raised his shoulders. “Well, I asked you how the game went as we were pulling out of my driveway,” he answered, “and you just now finished the play-by-play. My dad used to talk about people you’d ask what time it was and they’d tell you how to make a watch.”
This pushed her annoyance button. “Well, I’m sorry. I thought your question meant you were interested in it.” She stared out the windshield.
He stroked her slim, toned arm from shoulder to elbow and got the desired bumps from her. “Are you nervous about this? Us, I mean. Up here?”
Her watch said 10:55. They’d be there at 11:15, they said. Her chest deflated with her breath, and she faced him, a weary, sad look on her face. “Ben,” she said softly, “there’s something you need to know.”
He pulled his hand back. “You’re breaking up with me.”
Her eyes widened. “No,” she exclaimed, “god, no.”
He swung around in his seat, unbuckling the belt, as she had hers. “Then what is it?” he asked. “You acted differently all day. Have I done something? Are you getting trouble for showing people you’re with me now?”
The sad smile again. “A little like that, yeah.”
“Your mom.”
Her eyes firmed. “My mom’s not going to count when it comes to you,” she told him.
He cupped her cheek in his hand and pulled her closer. “Abby,” he said low, “this last week, two weeks, whatever, they’ve been the best time of my life. Being with you has been so . . . I just want to make you as happy as you’ve made me. I obviously can’t do it with money, but I can in other ways, and . . . .”
He did not finish the sentence because his mouth was covered by hers, as it had been in the parking lot, hungry, demanding, needy, consuming. This time, he responded in kind, holding nothing back, all his feelings, all his desire. In an instant he was over the car console, pressing her into the corner made by the back of her seat and the door. Her arms were around his shoulders, hands caressing his upper back, while he had one arm behind her and one running a hand along her side, overcoming the obstacle of the steering wheel in its paths with ease. Their tongues entwined and probed and wrestled, and his fingers found her full breast, his thumb the nipple so firm now that it made its presence known through her sports bra and lycra cheerleading top. She moaned as he stroked her and arched her back to meet his hand, her kiss becoming rough and uncontrolled.
His lips left hers as she gasped for breath and found their way to her neck, to that spot where neck becomes shoulder. Again she gasped as the touch made her jerk with pleasure and the heat filled her body. His hand had managed to get past the steering wheel again and down the side of her thigh, bare in the short skirt that had ridden up. Without thought, as his fingers slid up, then down the top of her thigh, she separated her legs, and the fingers found the impossibly lush inner skin of the other thigh. He ran his tongue along her neck and shoulder to the cloth of the top and then back up to behind her ear. She had lost the capacity for thought in an incredibly short time. And when his hand ran over the outside of her panties between her legs, then touched her just right, she emitted a loud, low cry and arched her back again.
His mind was gone long before as well. Any woman’s breasts and thighs would have felt wonderful in the state he was in, but this was Abby, beautiful Abby, wonderful Abby, his Abby. And her neck was so lovely, her thighs firm, warm satin. The heat on his fingers as they moved up to the juncture between her legs, ran over the cotton panties, was intense. He turned his wrist slightly and slid the side of his index finger directly over the middle of the cloth, making a warm, wet crease along the groove, then moved it up and down, his knuckle pressing each time at the top. Abby cried out in pleasure, and he raised up from her neck to look at her face. He had never seen anything so erotic and sensual in his life. His feelings overwhelmed him. He needed her so much. He loved her. So much.
“Abby,” he said hoarsely.
Her eyes opened, as if entranced, and then became terrified. “Omigod,” she cried out, but not in pleasure. “I can’t do this.” She started to push him away and to struggle upright. They still had ten minutes.
He quickly sat up straight. “Oh, god, Abby, I’m sorry,” he apologized. “I won’t do it anymore.”
It was not clear if she was about to laugh or cry. “No, no, that was wonderful,” she told him, straightening. “I mean, we have to get out of here now.”
“Why?”
She shook her head and started the car. “I’ll explain later,” she answered anxiously. “We just have to get out of here. Now.”
But before she could put the car in gear, the passenger door jerked open, and there was David’s smiling, sneering face. “So,” he said loudly, “what do we have here?”
Abby could see Mark and Joey on each side of him. She opened her door and quickly got out, saying, “No, you guys, don’t.”
Ben’s mind had not reengaged in time to take in everything with proper responses. Before he could get reconfigured, David was jerking him out of the car, and, once his shoulders came available, Joey and Mark grabbed him as well. His time on his knees was short as they pulled him to his feet. Abby was around the front of her car by then, pulling at their arms. “Please stop,” she was screaming. “Don’t do this.”
Ben was struggling now but against an All-State linebacker forty-five pounds heavier. Mark had Ben’s arms pinned behind him, pulling him up off any possible leverage while David got in his face. “We have some business to take up with this geek-ass,” he growled in best movie tradition. The alcohol smell was overwhelming.
Abby was trying to pull him away. “No, don’t,” she pleaded. “David, please. Don’t do this.” Then she realized the engine of her car had just died. She turned and saw Joey removing the keys and holding them up for the others to see. “What are you doing?!” She confronted Joey as he returned to his friends, but he had already put them in his jeans pocket. Then he tossed David a roll of duct tape, ready to pull. “Stop it!” she screamed. “Stop it now!”
“Been a little change in plans,” David drunkenly told her as he tore off a strip of the tape. “We decided just dumping him with the bikers wouldn’t make us even for what he did.” He held the strip up to Ben’s mouth, but he twisted his head away. Mark used one beefy arm to go from pinning back Ben’s arm to a choke hold which immobilized Ben’s head. David slapped the tape over his mouth roughly.
“Don’t hurt him! Don’t hurt him!” Abby cried helplessly. She had not noticed Joey hurry up the dirt road to David’s Jeep, parked with light off a few yards away. But now Joey skidded up to a stop, and David and Mark began to manhandle Ben toward the vehicle.
“What are you doing?!” she yelled. “What are you doing to him!? You can’t do this! You can’t do this!”
The two giant young men picked Ben up and dumped him into the back of the Jeep like a bag of mulch. Abby heard him groan as he hit, then lose his breath as Mark leapt in to sit on top of him. David sat in the passenger seat. “David, please!” she begged. “Don’t do this! Goddamit! You’re hurting him!! Please don’t do this! Please!”
David smiled at her and pushed her away. “You’ll get your keys back in a few minutes,” he assured her. “Just wait here. We’ll take care of geek-ass. And,” he paused, “thanks for all your help.”
Abby’s eyes went wide. “NOOO!!!!” she screamed as they spun out in the gravelly dirt and sped off down the path. “David!! NO!!” The dirt kicked up after them shut her voice. She stood there staring and stomping and then squatted, her hands over her face, crying uncontrollably.
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