Duma Key

by Stephen King

Pocket Books. 2008. 

800 pages. ISBN-13: 978-1416552963

This is a superior entry in the King canon. As you'd expect, it has the supernatural horror elements common to his work, but what stood out for me was the quality of the writing. It's outstanding, well above his usual level, and sustained throughout the book. 

The book concerns Edgar Freemantle, an ordinary man who suffers an on-the-job brain injury and develops clairvoyant abilities. His first name may be a veiled reference to the psychic Edgar Cayce, and his last may be telling us that the accident has freed his mind and made him a mentalist. 

These powers are amplified by an evil supernatural entity, Perse, who uses them to bend events to its will. As for what that entity is, that is never fully explained, although "older gods" are mentioned. So is H.P. Lovecraft, which makes sense because Perse would be right at home in one of his stories. A chthonic entity, as HPL would have termed it.

To give you a sense of how much I liked Duma Key: I began listening to it in audio book form during a long driving vacation. During vacation, I got through about two-thirds of the book. The very day we got home, I downloaded the Kindle version and continued reading. Last night I fell asleep reading it, woke up around 1:30 am and stayed up reading until I finished the book around 2:30 in the morning. That's how strongly the story and writing grabbed me.

Among the things I liked about this book: the depiction of Freemantle's relationship with his ex-wife and daughters (as a child of divorce, I can relate to that), and the character Mary Ire, a tough old broad who I found entirely believable from my 30 years in the Sunshine State.

I didn't care for the way King makes Jerome Wireman constantly use Spanish phrases, especially  "muchacho." True, there's a tie-in to the plot, but in this character's mouth it sounded false and overdone.  And I was amused to find that the idiosyncratic phrase "lookie-loos" is used to describe gawkers on pages 172, 264 and 325. This peculiar saying recurs in at least two other King novels. 

I have read many of King's books, a few twice (e.g. Salem's Lot, It and Pet Sematery). As I worked my way through this one, the Sarasota setting, artist protagonist and slowly approaching death-ship were unmistakably familiar territory. I decided that I must have read it before. But maddeningly, I had absolutely no recollection of vast parts of the plot. How did I forget all that material? This led me to wonder if I'm going senile, or if I'd just read parts of it before and somehow neglected to finish it. As it turns out, the book is an expansion of his short story Memory. That's what I read, or listened to in audio book form, years ago. Memory was later expanded into Duma Key. Mystery solved. I'm not senile! Not yet, anyway.

The Troubled Air

by Irwin Shaw

Dell Publishing Co. New York. 1951. 

509 pages. ISBN 0-440-18608-0
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
The Communist witch hunt of the 1950s takes its toll on the entertainment industry in this gripping story with believable, nuanced characters and nicely drawn color about life in post-war New York. Shaw is a first-rate writer (the sort of fellow I'd like to be), and he tells a good tale here, as he did in The Young Lions  and Lucy Crown.  

In The Troubled Air, Shaw gives us a whole cast of secondary characters that are interesting and well developed, even if you despise some of them. But there's more. He also has something larger to say about integrity and principles, and the agonizing conflicts public figures faced during the Red scare. No doubt that's because Shaw himself was blacklisted during the Red scare.  

I can't wait to read more of Shaw's work. He reminds me of Herman Wouk, which is not surprising, since they come from the same city and the same era. I came to both authors by the same road: my father, who was the same sort of reader I am, and had their books around the house.

Angelopolis

By Danielle Trussoni
Viking New York. 2013. 320 pages. 
ISBN-13: 978-1-101-60606-3

Angelopolis by Danielle Trussoni
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is a worthy sequel to Angelology, book #1 in this series. In some ways, it's even better. Here Trussoni goes much deeper into the world of descendants of angels who walk among us. But this isn't a spiritual book, or one that is preoccupied with religious messages. It's a fantasy novel set in the real world. 

Book #1 is an absolute prerequisite to this one. Angelopolis assumes that you understand that there are Nephilim (plural of Nephil), whose ancestors were angels cast out of Heaven for falling in love with human women. It also assumes readers know that there are angelologists, humans who seek to track down Nephilim. You must understand these things, and more, before you attempt to read Angelopolis. The plot quickly becomes quite complex and the list of characters grows like Topsy. But the writing style, lush and accessible, kept me reading.

It's filled with the same features that made the first book so tantalizing: apocryphal religious texts (in this case, The Book of Jubilees), real-life figures (such as John Dee, Peter Carl Faberge, Rasputin and the Russian royal family) that are obliquely related to the plot, and the general sense of esoteric knowledge moving beneath the surface of what people think is reality. Wait until you read the "truth" about the origin of Easter eggs. 

I don't like to be critical, but books aren't perfect and no review can be all positive. So, as to my issues with the book: Trussoni introduces so many characters that I had to create a sort of reader's guide listing them and their relationships (see below). Also, the author occasionally resorts to forcing plot exposition language into the mouths of the characters, but the thinking here is rich and original, so I can easily forgive that. 

A third installment in the series is reportedly in the works. In the meantime, I can't wait to read Trussoni's gothic novel The Ancestor (2020).

This is a list of key characters in "Angelopolis." Years have passed since I read the first book. The plot of the second one became so convoluted that I found it necessary to put this reader's guide together for my own aid - and to help me understand the third and final book, which has not yet been published. Warning: This list may contain spoilers.

Watchers: angels banished from Heaven for falling in love with human women. Imprisoned in "The Devil's Throat," a cavern in Bulgaria.

Nephil, Nephilim: evil descendants of ancient families of angelic origin. Originated when The Watchers interbred with humans. Have extraordinary physical characteristics. Live among humans, but  humans barely notice them. Their influence underlies humans' social, economic, political structures. Hunted by angelologists. The most powerful live in Russia. Infiltrated most of the ruling families of Europe, especially Russia. 

Evangeline Cacciatore: central character of both books. Raised by nuns at St. Rose convent. Has both human and Nephil characteristics. Mother: Angela Valko. Father: Lucien. Grandmother: Gabriella Valko. Grandfather: Percival Grigori, a Nephi. Descendant of "the great Semyaza, great-grandaughter of Sneja." 

Percival Grigori: Nephil seeking to engineer an alternate world wholly constructed for Nephilim.

Grigori: a family of particularly vicious Nephilim.

Lucien: angel hatched from a Faberge egg. Not Nephilim, he is something higher up in the hierarchy. Evangeline's father. 

Angela Valko: One of the most daring angelologists. Child of Raphael and Gabrielle Valko (or Percival Grigori and a human woman, according to Merlin Godwin - ???). Creates a virus that kills Nephilim. Breaks into Merlin Godwin's laboratory.  Gives Faberge egg to Vladimir Ivanova. Murdered. Husband: Luca. 

Raphael Valko: Angela's father. An angelologist. Explored The Devil's Throat in Bulgaria. Made three Valkine amulets for self, Angela and wife Gabriella Valko. In book 2, he is 100 years old and continuing his research in his Bulgarian mountain laboratory. 

Vladimir Ivanova: Visits Evangeline in the convent in book 1.  Gives Faberge egg to Evangeline. Dead by the time book 2 gets underway. Wife: Nadia. Daughter: Xenia. 

Nadia: Angela Valko's assistant. Parents were servants to Tsar Nicholas who brought eight Faberge eggs out of Russia during the revolution. Nadia hides them in safekeeping for decades before the events of book 2.

Verlaine: angel hunter. In love with Evangeline. 

Bruno: angel hunter. Head of Paris bureau of "The Society." Trained Verlaine. 

Merlin Godwin: turncoat angelologist who works with Nephilim to remove weak Nephilim from the population.

Azov: angelologist. Trying to replicate the medicine of Noah cited in the apocryphal Book of Jubilees. 

Eno: an Emim angel. Assassin. Exceptionally powerful.

Emim: an order of angels that serve Nephilim. Assassins, enforcers.

Gibborim, Raiphim: an order of warrior angels.

Mara, Golobium: orders of lesser angels. 

View all my reviews

Pennsylvania: Getting Vaccinated

Prepare for frustration when it's your turn to be vaccinated. Scheduling an appointment is a major headache. That's the case even though I'm over 65. 

My state, Pennsylvania, announced eligibility for everyone in the over-65 class before adequate supplies of the vaccine were available.  The Pennsylvania Department of Health's website informs us: "Supplies are extremely limited, so we must prioritize who gets vaccinated first — starting with those most at risk." 

But the state has thrown open the doors to everyone over 65, healthy or not. Primary care physicians are not involved in the selection process. Instead, the state delegated scheduling decisions to pharmacies and hospitals. There is no involvement by anyone who understands my medical condition, and no central point of contact for scheduling. Since the vaccine is scarce, why not allow my doctor to prioritize her patients within the over-65 class? 

I've had to spend many hours on web searches at the local pharmacy and hospital level, only to find no appointments available for months. By sheer luck, my wife finally found an appointment in another county over an hour away. But that's only because we're retired and able to devote days to searching for a provider. 

It seems to me that Britain and Israel are executing the vaccination process much more effectively. In Britain's case, perhaps that's because there is already a nationwide network in place, thanks to what some  call "socialized medicine." Israel appears to have something similar. 

Our decentralized, for-profit health care system is lagging behind in getting the job done. This is a complex policy issue, but perhaps it's time for a change. "Medicare for all"... perhaps Bernie Sanders is onto something there. 

Hollywood's Hard-Luck Ladies

23 Actresses Who Suffered Early Deaths, Accidents, Missteps, Illnesses and Tragedies 
By Laura Wagner
McFarland & Company, Inc. Jefferson NC. 2020.
ISBN (e-book) 978-1-4766-3833-1

I'm tempted to say I enjoyed this book. But these women had such sad lives that one is left feeling mildly depressed by the litany of "early deaths, accidents, missteps" and all that other stuff listed in the title. It aggravated my pandemic-induced blues. 

But I did find it interesting. It rips the lid off the Hollywood studio system of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. In those days, an actor's success was defined by obtaining a contract to make films with a particular studio - MGM, RKO, Warners Brothers, etc. But those who were able to get a contract found their careers virtually held hostage by the decisions of powerful studio bosses. 

We can't blame the studios for all the hard luck described in these pages, though. Many of these ladies created their own problems. Particularly sad are the ones with mental illnesses such as bipolar disorder, who had no access to the medications available today. 

The book itself is nicely put together: amply illustrated with photos, well written and well researched, with nearly 70 pages of references to sources used. Many of those sources are newspaper stories from the days when these women were still in the public eye. A surprising number were written by gossip columnists of the day. One wonders how much trust can be placed in the accuracy of gossip columnists’ writings, but perhaps there wasn’t much other material to use. 

I was drawn to this book when researching the actress Patricia Dane, who gets a 14-page treatment herein. Her bawdy behavior is virtually unmatched by any of the other women in the book, but her life didn’t turn out as badly as most of them. She lived until age 77. She wasn’t drug-addicted, mentally ill, married multiple times, left paralyzed by a horrible accident, killed by a drug overdose or treated badly by a succession of abusive boyfriends - at least, as Wagner tells the story. Depressing or not, this is fascinating stuff.

N.B. Read the Wikipedia article about Patricia Dane here.

WQED-FM Tower Climbers

My favorite radio station is WQED-FM, a classical music channel. Normally I listen for a couple of hours each day.

But WQED has been off the air for weeks due to technical problems. Now a “tower crew” is preparing to climb hundreds of feet up the antenna tower in the middle of a Pittsburgh winter to make repairs. You can read about that by following the link above.

The tower is on the University of Pittsburgh campus. Pandemic-sequestered Pitt students can take a break from their studies (if they are studying) to gawk at the tower climbers doing their dangerous task. 

 In the meantime, I am listening to WQED's internet stream. But it’s not the same as listening in HD radio format. WQED normally broadcasts two HD subchannels. I have an old Sony XDR F1HD tuner that does a great job of pulling in both of them.

 This is the sort of thing that takes on great significance when you’re stuck in the house for a nine-month pandemic, like Eskimos huddled in our igloo, waiting for winter to be over. But winter has just begun.

Sony has discontinued production of the XDR F1HD tuner, but used units are easy to find on the Internet. It's a component that connects to your stereo or AV receiver.

Richard Williams Goes Disco

Noted music critic and English hipster Richard Williams has just published a list of his favorite disco songs. 

When he was writing for Melody Maker, back in the 1960s, I read his articles religiously. This was the heyday of titanic acts like Cream, Traffic, King Crimson, Jethro Tull, Clodagh Rodgers (heh heh) and the like. So it's a bit of a shock to learn that Williams even listened to disco. And to think of him taking the time to compile a list of his favorites... well, I'll be damned, as my father used to say. What is this world coming to? What the hell is going on here?

And I have to ask: why isn’t Boogie Oogie Oogie on this list? And what about Boogie Night? I’m Your Boogie Man? (I like songs with "boogie" in the title.) Lowdown? Stayin’ Alive? And of course: Do the Hustle???

 Seriously, I like a good disco song now and then. But a whole record of them… a whole night of it… how dreadful.

Read his blog entry: It's A Disco Night (Don't Stop).

Donald Trump v. The United States: Inside the Struggle to Stop a President

by Michael S. Schmidt

Random House. New York. 2020. 432 pages.

ISBN 978-1-9848-5466-7

This is a responsible, well-researched account. Schmidt, a New York Times reporter, appears to have obtained some cooperation from FBI Director James Comey and White House counsel Donald McGahn. Most of the book is built around their experiences.

Even those who have followed Trump's presidency closely will find it helpful (and distressing) to see this partial account of his misdeeds and bizarre behavior gathered together in one volume. It tends to put individual events into perspective. As Schmidt points out, there is something about Trump's behavior, and the volume of his public statements, that leaves one too shocked and disoriented to do much analysis in real time. Just as you think you've wrapped your mind around the latest outrage, along comes another shocker and you're too busy riding the crazy train to Trumptown to reflect on the last one. 

Schmidt does tend to overdramatize, but this appears to be a writing style issue rather than a distortion or misrepresentation of facts. His book contains the best account I've read of the whistleblower incident which brought the Ukraine telephone call to light, triggering Trump's impeachment. 

Schmidt also puts forward the unsettling hypothesis that Robert Mueller had deteriorated to a shell of his former self by the time he was appointed Special Counsel. This is more rumor and innuendo than fact-based reporting. Schmidt merely reports that a number of people (none specifically identified) worried that Mueller no longer had the "mental acuity" needed to do the job. The cause, if any, is never established.

Reviews by:

The New York Times

The Guardian (UK)

Kirkus Reviews

Why I Did Not Vote for Trump

 I’ve just signed my mail-in ballot for the November 2020 election. I voted for Joe Biden. Not Donald Trump. And I shall tell you why. 

• Trump did not provide effective leadership during the coronavirus pandemic.
• Trump is an authoritarian threat to American democracy.
• Trump interfered with and attempted to influence Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation and the House of Representatives’ impeachment effort.
• Trump's 2016 campaign welcomed and amplified Russia’s social media campaign to influence the presidential election.
• …and a host of lesser issues.

 The rest of this post expands on these points.  Follow the links to view my sources.

Did not provide effective leadership during the coronavirus pandemic.

I agree with the recent editorial in The New England Journal of Medicine, which stated: “When it comes to the response to the largest public health crisis of our time, our current political leaders have demonstrated that they are dangerously incompetent. We should not abet them and enable the deaths of thousands more Americans by allowing them to keep their jobs.” 

Trump chose to “downplay” (in his words) the coronavirus problem, instead of coordinating a national action plan. Here are just a few examples.

• Delegated pandemic response to state governors. 
• Told states to handle their own medical equipment procurement (“We’re not a shipping clerk.”) Argued with states about how many ventilators they needed.
• Slowed down testing, as he stated at a campaign rally in June. [Trump suggests US slow virus testing to avoid bad statistics. AP News. June 21, 2020]
• Refused to follow his own experts’ advice on wearing a mask and social distancing. [Face coverings recommended, but Trump says he won’t wear one. AP News. April 4, 2020. ]  [Trump, still infectious, back at WhiteHouse — without mask. AP News.  October 5, 2020.]

An authoritarian threat to American democracy.

Trump has made a number of statements that deeply trouble me: 

• “When somebody is the president of the United States, the authority is total and that’s the way it’s got to be. … It’s total.”  [Washington Post] 

• “I have an Article II where I can do whatever I want as President.”  [C-Span]

He fired FBI Director James Comey while the FBI was in the midst of investigating Russia's interference in the 2016 election. This was a move of astounding proportions for anyone (such as me) old enough to remember Nixon firing special prosecutor Archibald Cox during the Watergate investigation. It's hard to be certain of Trump's reasons, because at first he blamed it on the handling of Hillary Clinton's e-mails. But I am inclined to believe the statement he made to Russian diplomats after the firing: "I faced great pressure because of Russia. That's taken off." The implication is that firing Comey took the pressure off.   

He raised the possibility of postponing the 2020 election (the sort of thing dictators do) and declined to commit to an orderly transition of power after the 2020 election before voting even began.

During the final weeks of the 2020 election, he tried to use his presidential power against his political rivals – a tyrant’s tactic. Specifically, he pressured Attorney General William Barr to indict Biden and other political adversaries, and ordered Secretary of State Pompeo to declassify Hillary Clinton’s e-mails.

During the 2020 campaign, Trump engaged in what could be termed voter suppression tactics. He attempted to discourage use of mail-in ballots (which tends to hurt Democrat voters) by seeking to limit the number of drop boxes. Just a few months before a record number of ballots needed to be mailed, he threatened to cut funding to the US Postal Service. His political appointee launched a cost-cutting initiative at the USPS during the same time period.

Trump also encouraged his mail-in vote supporters to vote twice unless they could get proof their ballot was tabulated. See my post on this topic.

 Mueller Investigation

Trump attempted to interfere with and influence the investigation conducted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. The Special Counsel’s March 2019 report stated that the investigation:“...found multiple acts by the President that were capable of exerting undue influence over law enforcement investigations, including the Russian-interference and obstruction investigations….The President’s efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful, but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the President declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests.” (volume II p. 157)  

 

Other key findings of the Mueller report included:

• The investigation “established multiple links between Trump Campaign officials and individuals tied to the Russian government. Those links included Russian offers of assistance to the Campaign. In some cases, the Campaign was receptive to the offer.” (volume 1 p. 173)

• "Trump Campaign affiliates promoted dozens of tweets, posts and other political content created by the IRA.” (volume I p. 33. The IRA is the Internet Research Agency, a Russian organization that “conducted social media operations targeted at large U.S. audiences with the goal of sowing discord in the U.S. political system.”). Those campaign affiliates included Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, Kellyanne Conway and Michael Flynn. 

Highlighting the severity of these findings, over 400 former federal prosecutors published the following statement soon after Mueller's report was issued:

“Each of us believes that the conduct of President Trump described in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report would, in the case of any other person not covered by the Office of Legal Counsel policy against indicting a sitting President, result in multiple felony charges for obstruction of justice.” 

Nevertheless, Congress declined to impeach Trump for these acts. Instead, they waited until the Ukraine affair came along. 

Impeachment

In its impeachment report, The House of Representatives stated that Trump solicited the interference of Ukraine in the 2020 election and obstructed the House investigation into the matter. According to The House Judiciary Committee’s December 2019 report:

“President Trump solicited the interference of a foreign government, Ukraine, in the 2020 US Presidential election… by a course of conduct that included soliciting the Government of Ukraine to publicly announce investigations that would benefit his reelection, harm the election prospects of a political opponent, and influence the 2020 US Presidential election to his advantage” ( p. 2).

“Trump abused his power of his high office through the following means: 1) Directing the White House to defy a lawful subpoena by withholding production of documents sought therein by the Committee. 2) Directing other Executive Branch agencies and office to defy lawful subpoenas and withhold the production of documents from the Committee. 3) Directing current and former Executive Branch officials not to cooperate with the Committees.” (p. 3)

“President Trump, by such conduct, has demonstrated that he will remain a threat to the Constitution if allowed to remain in office, and has acted in a manner grossly incompatible with self-governance and the rule of law.” (p. 3)

It is worth remembering that the Ukraine affair was not the first time Trump encouraged a foreign government to assist him against a political rival. At a July 27, 2016 press conference: 

"...just thirteen minutes into the press conference, Trump addressed himself directly to a foreign adversary in a way that no reputable presidential candidate ever had before. 'Russia, if you're listening,  I hope you're able to find the 30,000 e-mails that are missing,' Trump said, referring to those of Hillary Clinton's e-mails that had been deleted. 'I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.'  ...here was the Republican Party's candidate encouraging - soliciting - Moscow's interference in his race against Clinton." (Donald Trump vs. The United States: Inside the Struggle to Stop a President. Michael S. Schmidt. Random House. 2020. page 57.)

Senate Select Committee Report

 In August 2020, the Senate’s Select Committee on Intelligence reported that Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign:

• encouraged and amplified the messages of the Russian social media campaign to interfere with, influence 2016 election. (page vii)
• promoted and disseminated Russian-hacked Wikileaks documents
• sought to maximize the impact of Russian intelligence and leaks to aid Trump's electoral prospects, sought advance notice about those leaks, and encouraged further leaks. (page vii)

 Other Issues

• Undermined longstanding relationships with allies, damaging the world leadership position and credibility of the United States.
•  Did not provide effective leadership on climate change. Doubted the truth of climate change (“I think science doesn’t know”). Left the Paris climate accord and dismantled various Obama-era environmental policies.
• Trump commuted the prison sentence, fine and probation of Roger Stone, a convicted felon. Trump's attorney general William Barr withdrew the government’s prosecution of Michael Flynn, despite Flynn’s admission that he was guilty.
  
•  Did not provide effective leadership in response to Charlottesville protests. Would not speak out against white supremacists. 
• Refused to make public his tax returns.
• Threatened to cut federal dollars for certain big cities that "have permitted violence and the destruction of property to persist and have refused to undertake reasonable measures to counteract these criminal activities.” It seems that most of those cities are in states with Democratic governors.
  
• Sept. 29, 2020 debate: Ungentlemanly (and unpresidential) conduct towards Biden which resulted in a debate that I view as a low point in US political history. This is only one of many egregious examples of how Trump has generally lowered the standard of political behavior. His crass public attacks on a wide range of people have degraded the tone of public discourse and set a terrible standard for young people. If this is how the game is to be played, how can we expect any decent person to get involved in politics?
• Trump would not condemn the Proud Boys far-right organization when asked to do so during the September 29 debate. Instead, he said that Proud Boys should “stand back and stand by.” That was bad enough, but the next day, he said: “I don’t know who Proud Boys are. But whoever they are they have to stand down, let law enforcement do their work.” This is just one example of his penchant for saying one thing today, and then distancing himself from it later. He did something similar in 2016 regarding David Duke. The man is not trustworthy.

Trump famously promised to "drain the swamp." But as amply demonstrated by all of the above, he has made it much worse. And now, having committed this litany of outrages to writing, I hope to put it behind me once and for all. Of course, that will be much more difficult if Trump is re-elected.

Support the Police?

The often-seen statement "We support our police" strikes me as too broad. 

My support is conditional. I support police officers who use good judgment, act like professionals and are slow to anger. 

I believe that covers most of them. But I won't make a blanket statement of support for everyone that wears a badge. They have to be held to standards of conduct, just like the rest of us. The same applies to "Support our troops."

Pandemic: Rounding the Final Turn?

 

This graph shows Covid-19 data for the entire USA (source: The New York Times).  It’s not encouraging. 

 

The average daily case counts go up and down, but we’re six months into this and the virus is still out there, cutting an unpredictable path across the nation. Meanwhile, we’re approaching 200,000 deaths.

In my opinion, there’s no telling how long it will last. This data gives me no confidence that we’re "rounding the final turn," as Donald Trump recently predicted. And I’m skeptical of his claim that a vaccine could be ready "within weeks."  

Why do I lack confidence in those predictions? Not to belabor the obvious, but the pandemic has become too politicized, at least in the US. With this administration leading the effort in an election year, it’s going to be very tough for researchers, drug companies and regulators (such as the Food and Drug Administration) to make good scientific decisions. With all the pressure to get something approved and into production, it wouldn’t surprise me if the first-generation vaccine turns out to be ineffective.

Dame Diana Rigg

With the news of Diana Rigg's death, I've been thinking about why she made such an impression on me. I first became aware of her when I was a 13-year-old boy, living in England and avidly watching The Avengers. Like any normal man I was smitten, stung by Cupid's dart.

Rigg once told an interviewer that the name "Emma Peel" was chosen because the show's producers wanted a female character who had "M-appeal," or male appeal. She certainly had that. It wasn't just her beauty and that posh English accent, which slays me whenever I hear it. Diana Rigg had something more. She radiated intelligence, independence, strength. A woman not to be trifled with.

At first, that was just the Emma Peel character. But as the years went by, I was impressed with her behavior in interviews and her determination to continue her theatrical career. She kept taking on the challenging classic roles. She's shown here with Anthony Hopkins in a 1972 production of Macbeth.

And then there was her reappearance in 1989 as the host of a PBS mystery series. She apparently hadn't felt the need to fight the aging process with plastic surgery. I liked the fact that she wasn't afraid to show the wrinkles. I suppose she just didn't think it was important enough to be bothered by.

When she reappeared on television again in 2013, in A Game of Thrones, the aging process was complete. It's nice to think of her surrounded by admiring actresses on the set, smoking and swearing. 

 Obituaries:

• BBC News
• The New York Times
• The Telegraph
  

Trump Suggests Polling Place Double-Check for Mail-In Voters

 [Cartoon by Kevin Kallaugher. The Economist.]

Every few weeks, The President of the United States says or tweets something that irritates, amazes or just plain drives me half-crazy. As to whether this is a deliberate strategy, or just the man’s mental incontinence and quick trigger finger, I cannot decide.  This article by AP News documents the most recent outrage in pretty objective terms.

Trump suggests polling place double-check for mail-in voters
 By Christina A. Cassidy and Deb Riechmann

Some news outlets depicted this as “Trump encourages people to vote twice.” It’s not quite that bad. According to the AP story, he said or at least meant “that people who vote early by mail should show up at their local polling places on Election Day and vote again if their ballots haven’t been counted.” 

But I have to ask: if you’re willing to go to the polls in person to check whether your mail-in ballot has been received, why even bother to vote by mail? Just vote in person. 

I doubt Trump thought it through that way. There are many possibilities. Perhaps he felt an urgent need to rally his troops in a strident call to action, but ended up just shooting from the hip without thinking it through at all. Or perhaps he’s laying the groundwork for a future claim that the election was rigged, a hoax, invalid, fake news, and it’s all because some people’s votes weren’t counted and others were counted twice. That will come in handy if he happens to lose the election. 

Or maybe he simply delights in trying to stir up trouble and confusion, to distract people from something else. 

Whatever his motives, there are all kinds of problems with the approach he’s suggesting. Imagine the chaos if crowds of people show up at the poll in person on Election Day demanding to vote again unless someone can prove to them that their mail-in vote has been "counted." Poll workers would have to deal with disputes and temper tantrums while everyone else waits in line, infecting one another with covid-19. 

In addition, giving people that second chance to vote is bound to increase the risk of an inaccurate count. No system is perfect, and the more people are allowed to vote twice because we can’t find their mail-in ballot, the greater the risk that duplicate votes go undetected. That hurts the public’s confidence in the system. In the worst case, it would give Trump a reason to refuse to accept the results of the election.

Of course, Trump's approach to politics has already hurt confidence in so many things. Never did I imagine that people in this country would come to doubt the fairness of our elections, but somehow it has happened. Two people I know personally are deeply concerned that their vote will not be counted, or will be somehow stolen. Trump's "polling place double-check" idea plays directly to this paranoia. It doubtless appeals to conspiracy theorists and disaffected voters who suspect that shadowy forces are at work, pulling the strings like a diabolical puppet master behind the scenes, trying to thwart the President’s efforts to drain the swamp and Make America Great Again.

It borders on irresponsible for an elected official to make a proposal like Trump's just two months from Election Day. If we're going to consider changing our election process this way, it should be done deliberately and with care. Let's consult experts, such as whoever oversees the election in each state.  Get input from the public. Hold Congressional hearings. Do it carefully and with transparency, not in haste.

Personally, I don't think any of that is necessary. Our election system has worked pretty well for the past 200 or so years. I think mail-in voters should just trust the system to capture their vote effectively. If they cannot get comfortable with that, then they should forget the mail-in idea and vote in person on Election Day.

This post began as a response to someone’s comment on a Facebook post. But at my wife’s insistence I’m trying to avoid doing battle on Facebook. So I turned it into a blog post instead.

Steve Bannon Arrested for Money Laundering and Fraud

This is the text of an e-mail I was going to send to a close friend. Not wanting to hurt feelings or ignite a feud, I wisely (???) decided to turn it into a blog post.

I’m sorry if my comment about Steve Bannon’s arrest offended you. I was just reacting to this story in The Economist and BBC News. 

Bannon was once Donald Trump’s chief strategist. In that role, he was quite vocal about wanting to dismantle the "deep state" and "drain the swamp." Before that, he was the executive chairman of Breitbart News. 

But now, Bannon has been indicted by a federal grand jury for money laundering and fraud in connection with the President’s promise to Build The Wall. 

Please do not try to turn this aside by reminding me that a former FBI lawyer has pleaded guilty to making false statements in an effort to put surveillance on one of Trump's campaign staffers. That doesn't advance the discussion, nor does it do nothing to mitigate my concern, which is simply this: Trump has too many associates (Stone, Manafort, Flynn, Cohen, Papadopolous and now Bannon) who have been accused, and some convicted, of wrongdoing. There must be a reason for that. It can’t all be a tissue of lies in a diabolical plot designed to bring down Trump. It is plain to see that this must stem from a failure of judgment, or character, in the President himself.

 References

The Economist. August 20, 2020. Steve Bannon is Arrested for Fraud. Yet Another of the President's Cronies Is In Trouble.  

Dunleavy, Jerry. The Washington Examiner. August 19, 2020.  Ex-FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith pleads guilty in Durham investigation.

Whose Body? by Dorothy L. Sayers

Published in 1923, this British detective novel has an ingenious story line and well-drawn characters. For me, however, it was spoiled by unkind references to Jews that some would call offensive at the least. 

The murdered man, Sir Reuben Levy, is Jewish. Nobody else in the book is described as Anglican, Catholic, Presbyterian, Methodist, or of any religion at all. Only Levy is singled out for his faith, and almost always in negative terms. Levy is described as "a little Jewish nobody, " a "sheeny" and one of those "self-made men of low origin" who don't take care of their teeth and are terrified of dentists. When discussing an investment, Levy "shrugged up his shoulders and looked like a pawnbroker." Other examples:

"I don't hold with Hebrews as a rule."

"I remember so well the dreadful trouble about her marrying a Jew."

"I'm sure some Jews are very good people, and personally I'd much rather they believed something."

Given the context in which these things are said, perhaps the author is merely pointing out the casual anti-Semitism of the British upper class. It's hard to tell. But for me, there's too much of this distasteful material in "Whose Body?" I understand the same sentiments crop up in her other books. I'm not sure I want to read any of them for that reason alone.
 

The Burning Girl by Claire Messud

The Burning Girl by Claire Messud

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

If you liked Megan Abbott's "Dare Me" and Tana French's "The Secret Place," you'll love "The Burning Girl." I certainly did. You can tell by the length of this  review.

This is a coming-of-age story (or "bildungsroman," as the Library of Congress' classification system would have it). Two sixth-grade girls spend a summer exploring an abandoned mental asylum in the woods near their town:

"We ventured daily up the grand staircase to long corridors of almost identical rooms, in which torn blinds still dangled at the cracked and smeary windows, or in which sinks encrusted with dessicated black slime hung askew from the walls, their taps useless."

With that delightfully gothic scene as prelude, it's no surprise when one of the girls, Cassie Burnes,  has one problem after another when her mother's strange lover moves into their single-parent household. When that's combined with puberty and adolescent social anxiety, the tension level in the house gets cranked up to unbearable levels.

Messud is a pleasure to read because she has a sure hand in crafting beautifully phrased descriptions of ordinary things without overwriting: 

"The kittens were sisters from the same litter, two tortoiseshells, small enough then to hold in your hand, with tiny white teeth and opalescent claws that dug pulsingly but painlessly into your jeans when you set the creatures on your lap."

 I was also struck by this, early in the book, as the narrator describes her best friend:

"All you had to do was to look into her eyes - still blue eyes that turned gray in dark weather, like the water in the quarry -- and you could see that she was tough. Strong, I guess is a better word. Although in the end, she wasn't strong enough."

As I read that for the first time, I thought: well, what about that quarry? What's going to happen there? And what wasn't she strong enough to handle? I had to find out, and that kept me reading. (Just as a teaser, the quarry is right behind the old mental asylum.)

Don't let those quotes fool you into thinking this is a cozy mystery. Messud takes on some deep issues, but is skilled enough to do so in a way that fits naturally with the plot. Even though the protagonists are mainly adolescents, this is dark, adult stuff, such as: it's hard to know what is true, because we shape our own reality so it makes sense of who we think we are. Whatever choices we think we make, whatever we think we can control, has a life and destiny we cannot fully see.  And finally, referring to a dream in which Cassie puts on a black cloak:

"Now I know, for what little it's worth, what it means to be a girl growing up. Maybe you can choose not to put on the cloak, but then you'll never be free, you'll never soar. Or you can take on the mantle that is given you; but what the consequences may be, what the mantle might do, what wearing it may entail, you can't know beforehand. Others may see better, but they can't save you."

It seems to me that the cloak represents the choices we make and the identity we create for ourselves. And Messud gave Cassie the last name Burnes for a reason: she is the burning girl.

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