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Dane Allred examines the "Abundance" of the universe in his list of "1001 Thanks"
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Wednesday May 26, 2010
Wednesday May 26, 2010
MISERY
by Anton Chekhov
"To whom shall I tell my grief?"
The twilight of evening. Big flakes of wet snow are whirling lazily about the street lamps, which have just been lighted, and lying in a thin soft layer on roofs, horses' backs, shoulders, caps. Iona Potapov, the sledge-driver, is all white like a ghost. He sits on the box without stirring, bent as double as the living body can be bent. If a regular snowdrift fell on him it seems as though even then he would not think it necessary to shake it off. . . . His little mare is white and motionless too. Her stillness, the angularity of her lines, and the stick-like straightness of her legs make her look like a halfpenny gingerbread horse. She is probably lost in thought. Anyone who has been torn away from the plough, from the familiar gray landscapes, and cast into this slough, full of monstrous lights, of unceasing uproar and hurrying people, is bound to think.
It is a long time since Iona and his nag have budged. They came out of the yard before dinnertime and not a single fare yet. But now the shades of evening are falling on the town. The pale light of the street lamps changes to a vivid color, and the bustle of the street grows noisier.
"Sledge to Vyborgskaya!" Iona hears. "Sledge!"
Iona starts, and through his snow-plastered eyelashes sees an officer in a military overcoat with a hood over his head.
"To Vyborgskaya," repeats the officer. "Are you asleep? To Vyborgskaya!"
In token of assent Iona gives a tug at the reins which sends cakes of snow flying from the horse's back and shoulders. The officer gets into the sledge. The sledge-driver clicks to the horse, cranes his neck like a swan, rises in his seat, and more from habit than necessity brandishes his whip. The mare cranes her neck, too, crooks her stick-like legs, and hesitatingly sets of. . . .
"Where are you shoving, you devil?" Iona immediately hears shouts from the dark mass shifting to and fro before him. "Where the devil are you going? Keep to the r-right!"
"You don't know how to drive! Keep to the right," says the officer angrily.
A coachman driving a carriage swears at him; a pedestrian crossing the road and brushing the horse's nose with his shoulder looks at him angrily and shakes the snow off his sleeve. Iona fidgets on the box as though he were sitting on thorns, jerks his elbows, and turns his eyes about like one possessed as though he did not know where he was or why he was there.
"What rascals they all are!" says the officer jocosely. "They are simply doing their best to run up against you or fall under the horse's feet. They must be doing it on purpose."
Iona looks as his fare and moves his lips. . . . Apparently he means to say something, but nothing comes but a sniff.
"What?" inquires the officer.
Iona gives a wry smile, and straining his throat, brings out huskily: "My son . . . er . . . my son died this week, sir."
"H'm! What did he die of?"
Iona turns his whole body round to his fare, and says:
"Who can tell! It must have been from fever. . . . He lay three days in the hospital and then he died. . . . God's will."
"Turn round, you devil!" comes out of the darkness. "Have you gone cracked, you old dog? Look where you are going!"
"Drive on! drive on! . . ." says the officer. "We shan't get there till to-morrow going on like this. Hurry up!"
The sledge-driver cranes his neck again, rises in his seat, and with heavy grace swings his whip. Several times he looks round at the officer, but the latter keeps his eyes shut and is apparently disinclined to listen. Putting his fare down at Vyborgskaya, Iona stops by a restaurant, and again sits huddled up on the box. . . . Again the wet snow paints him and his horse white. One hour passes, and then another. . . .
Three young men, two tall and thin, one short and hunchbacked, come up, railing at each other and loudly stamping on the pavement with their galoshes.
"Cabby, to the Police Bridge!" the hunchback cries in a cracked voice. "The three of us, . . . twenty kopecks!"
Iona tugs at the reins and clicks to his horse. Twenty kopecks is not a fair price, but he has no thoughts for that. Whether it is a ruble or whether it is five kopecks does not matter to him now so long as he has a fare. . . . The three young men, shoving each other and using bad language, go up to the sledge, and all three try to sit down at once. The question remains to be settled: Which are to sit down and which one is to stand? After a long altercation, ill-temper, and abuse, they come to the conclusion that the hunchback must stand because he is the shortest.
"Well, drive on," says the hunchback in his cracked voice, settling himself and breathing down Iona's neck. "Cut along! What a cap you've got, my friend! You wouldn't find a worse one in all Petersburg. . . ."
"He-he! . . . he-he! . . ." laughs Iona. "It's nothing to boast of!"
"Well, then, nothing to boast of, drive on! Are you going to drive like this all the way? Eh? Shall I give you one in the neck?"
"My head aches," says one of the tall ones. "At the Dukmasovs' yesterday Vaska and I drank four bottles of brandy between us."
"I can't make out why you talk such stuff," says the other tall one angrily. "You lie like a brute."
"Strike me dead, it's the truth! . . ."
"It's about as true as that a louse coughs."
"He-he!" grins Iona. "Me-er-ry gentlemen!"
"Tfoo! the devil take you!" cries the hunchback indignantly. "Will you get on, you old plague, or won't you? Is that the way to drive? Give her one with the whip. Hang it all, give it her well."
Iona feels behind his back the jolting person and quivering voice of the hunchback. He hears abuse addressed to him, he sees people, and the feeling of loneliness begins little by little to be less heavy on his heart. The hunchback swears at him, till he chokes over some elaborately whimsical string of epithets and is overpowered by his cough. His tall companions begin talking of a certain Nadyezhda Petrovna. Iona looks round at them. Waiting till there is a brief pause, he looks round once more and says:
"This week . . . er. . . my. . . er. . . son died!"
"We shall all die, . . ." says the hunchback with a sigh, wiping his lips after coughing. "Come, drive on! drive on! My friends, I simply cannot stand crawling like this! When will he get us there?"
"Well, you give him a little encouragement . . . one in the neck!"
"Do you hear, you old plague? I'll make you smart. If one stands on ceremony with fellows like you one may as well walk. Do you hear, you old dragon? Or don't you care a hang what we say?"
And Iona hears rather than feels a slap on the back of his neck.
"He-he! . . . " he laughs. "Merry gentlemen . . . . God give you health!"
"Cabman, are you married?" asks one of the tall ones.
"I? He he! Me-er-ry gentlemen. The only wife for me now is the damp earth. . . . He-ho-ho!. . . . The grave that is! . . . Here my son's dead and I am alive. . . . It's a strange thing, death has come in at the wrong door. . . . Instead of coming for me it went for my son. . . ."
And Iona turns round to tell them how his son died, but at that point the hunchback gives a faint sigh and announces that, “Thank God!” they have arrived at last. After taking his twenty kopecks, Iona gazes for a long while after the revelers, who disappear into a dark entry. Again he is alone and again there is silence for him. . . . The misery which has been for a brief space eased comes back again and tears his heart more cruelly than ever. With a look of anxiety and suffering Iona's eyes stray restlessly among the crowds moving to and fro on both sides of the street: can he not find among those thousands someone who will listen to him? But the crowds flit by heedless of him and his misery. . . . His misery is immense, beyond all bounds. If Iona's heart were to burst and his misery to flow out, it would flood the whole world, it seems, but yet it is not seen. It has found a hiding-place in such an insignificant shell that one would not have found it with a candle by daylight. . . .
Iona sees a house-porter with a parcel and makes up his mind to address him.
"What time will it be, friend?" he asks.
"Going on for ten. . . . Why have you stopped here? Drive on!"
Iona drives a few paces away, bends himself double, and gives himself up to his misery. He feels it is no good to appeal to people. But before five minutes have passed he draws himself up, shakes his head as though he feels a sharp pain, and tugs at the reins. . . . He can bear it no longer.
"Back to the yard!" he thinks. "To the yard!"
And his little mare, as though she knew his thoughts, falls to trotting. An hour and a half later Iona is sitting by a big dirty stove. On the stove, on the floor, and on the benches are people snoring. The air is full of smells and stuffiness. Iona looks at the sleeping figures, scratches himself, and regrets that he has come home so early. . . .
"I have not earned enough to pay for the oats, even," he thinks. "That's why I am so miserable. A man who knows how to do his work . . . who has had enough to eat, and whose horse has had enough to eat, is always at ease. . . ."
In one of the corners a young cabman gets up, clears his throat sleepily, and makes for the water-bucket.
"Want a drink?" Iona asks him.
"Seems so."
"May it do you good. . . . But my son is dead, mate. . . . Do you hear? This week in the hospital. . . . It's a queer business. . . ."
Iona looks to see the effect produced by his words, but he sees nothing. The young man has covered his head over and is already asleep. The old man sighs and scratches himself. . . . Just as the young man had been thirsty for water, he thirsts for speech. His son will soon have been dead a week, and he has not really talked to anybody yet . . . . He wants to talk of it properly, with deliberation. . . . He wants to tell how his son was taken ill, how he suffered, what he said before he died, how he died. . . . He wants to describe the funeral, and how he went to the hospital to get his son's clothes. He still has his daughter Anisya in the country. . . . And he wants to talk about her too. . . . Yes, he has plenty to talk about now. His listener ought to sigh and exclaim and lament. . . . It would be even better to talk to women. Though they are silly creatures, they blubber at the first word.
"Let's go out and have a look at the mare," Iona thinks. "There is always time for sleep. . . . You'll have sleep enough, no fear. . . ."
He puts on his coat and goes into the stables where his mare is standing. He thinks about oats, about hay, about the weather. . . . He cannot think about his son when he is alone. . . . To talk about him with someone is possible, but to think of him and picture him is insufferable anguish. . . .
"Are you munching?" Iona asks his mare, seeing her shining eyes. "There, munch away, munch away. . . . Since we have not earned enough for oats, we will eat hay. . . . Yes, . . . I have grown too old to drive. . . . My son ought to be driving, not I. . . . He was a real cabman. . . . He ought to have lived. . . ."
Iona is silent for a while, and then he goes on:
"That's how it is, old girl. . . . Kuzma Ionitch is gone. . . . He said good-by to me. . . . He went and died for no reason. . . . Now, suppose you had a little colt, and you were own mother to that little colt. . . . And all at once that same little colt went and died. . . . You'd be sorry, wouldn't you? . . ."
The little mare munches, listens, and breathes on her master's hands. Iona is carried away and tells her all about it.
LITERATURE OUT LOUD
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Tuesday May 25, 2010
Tuesday May 25, 2010
Welcome to Biography
As a doctor, he saved lives, delivered babies, dispensed medication. Yet he refused to let other doctors diagnose his tuberculosis. He would later die at an early age, only 44 years old. But he is best remembered for his famous plays, which were said to offer a "theatre of mood" and a "submerged life in the text.” He once said, “What seems to us serious, significant and important will, in future times, be forgotten or won’t seem important at all”. You may recognize his most famous plays, “The Cherry Orchard”, “Uncle Vanya”, “The Seagull” and “The Three Sisters”. He worked closely with Constantin Stanislavski, the Russian actor and director. Who was this famous doctor, playwright, and author of many, many short stories? We’ll find out next on “Biography Out Loud”.
Anton Chekhov, Russian playwright lived from 1860 to 1904. He has been called “the greatest short-story writer in the history of world literature” by the Encyclopedia Britannica, and influenced many other writers. Trained as a doctor, he used his interactions with all different kinds of people to populate his stories.
He once said, “I feel more confident and more satisfied when I reflect that I have two professions and not one. Medicine is my lawful wife and literature is my mistress. When I get tired of one I spend the night with the other. Though it's disorderly it's not so dull, and besides, neither really loses anything, through my infidelity.”
His father went bankrupt and left the family, fleeing to Moscow to avoid debtor’s prison. Anton Chekhov helped his family and paid for his education by tutoring, selling goldfinches, and also sold short stories to local newspapers. He once said, “When you live on cash, you understand the limits of the world around which you navigate each day. Credit leads into a desert with invisible boundaries.” After becoming a doctor, he made little money treating patients and he charged the poor nothing.
Though he had many struggles in life, he said, “We learn about life not from pluses alone, but from minuses as well.” He also said, “The person who wants nothing, hopes for nothing, and fears nothing can never be an artist.”
He wrote about poor conditions on Sakhalin Island, a prison colony run by Russia. He was disgusted with the conditions he found there, where children were imprisoned with their parents. “Love, friendship, respect, do not unite people as much as a common hatred for something.”
He was disappointed with the first production of “The Seagull”, but Constantine Stanislavski restaged it in Moscow to critical praise.
Success with “The Cherry Orchard”, “The Three Sisters” and “Uncle Vanya” helped Chekhov gain national recognition, and then international praise. Raymond Carver called him “the greatest short story writer who ever lived”.
He worked for over a year on some plays, and once said, “You need to work continually day and night, to read ceaselessly, to study, to exercise your will.... Each hour is precious.” Optimistically, he proclaimed, “There is no Monday which will not give its place to Tuesday.”
Of his urge to write he said, “I have in my head a whole army of people pleading to be let out and awaiting my commands.” Once he became a successful writer he said, “I don’t care for success. The ideas sitting in my head are annoyed by, and envious of, that which I’ve already written.”
Of marriage, Anton Chekhov said, ““If you are afraid of loneliness, do not marry.” He did marry Olga Knipper, an actress he had first met in rehearsals of his play “The Seagull”. He also said, “I observed that after marriage people cease to be curious.”
Constantly plagued by tuberculosis, he moved to Yalta to improve his health. He once said of illness, “It’s even pleasant to be sick when you know that there are people who await your recovery as they might await a holiday.”
He died at the age of 44 from the tuberculosis which had plagued him for years. Of death he said, “Death can only be profitable: there’s no need to eat, drink, pay taxes, offend people, and since a person lies in a grave for hundreds or thousands of years, if you count it up the profit turns out to be enormous.”
At the end of the “Three Sisters”, Anton Chekhov writes, “Time will pass on, and we shall depart for ever, we shall be forgotten; they will forget our faces, voices, and even how many there were of us, but our sufferings will turn into joy for those who will live after us, happiness and peace will reign on earth, and people will remember with kindly words, and bless those who are living now. Our life is not yet at an end. Let us live.”
Anton Chekhov continues to live through his works, as one of the world’s greatest authors.
LITERATURE OUT LOUD
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Monday May 24, 2010
Monday May 24, 2010
Snow Day
I live where there are seasons. I really do feel sorry for people who don’t. The seasons really do help me mark time, and are a reminder of how little time we really have on this wildly spinning planet. You may sit on the beach in California thinking you have all the time in the world, but remember we are flying through space at 67,000 miles per hour on our yearly journey around the sun, and each day we have to spin at 1000 miles per hour to make it from night to day.
A reminder about the passing of each season is a great thing. I lived in California for two years, making the mistake of moving there in August. It was August there for two years. This winter, we have been blessed with great snow, both the light, powdery kind and the heavy, sticking kind. I’ve shoveled snow already, and at least once before the winter ends, I will have to go skiing.
It took me almost 18 years to ski. My friends took me to the top of the lift and left me. I made it down somehow. I try to ski every year, especially when I am getting really down about the cold and the snow. It changes my attitude about how wonderful snow can be.
When you are falling down the mountain, without falling, but are controlling that fall by using a couple of boards strapped to your feet, with the wind rushing in your face and the snow blowing around you, well, there really is no way to describe the feeling. It’s an exciting, compelling rush of a feeling much like those times you sped down the hill on a sled or a tube. It’s a way of being cold without feeling the cold, of feeling the exhilaration of gravity, speed and control.
So later, when you are shoveling another foot or two of snow, it’s a good reminder of the great reason for snow. And at least once this winter, I will see two or three frozen road workers trying to put some asphalt in a hole in the road, I’ll utter thanks that I get to work in a warm building all day. So why is it so exciting to make yourself cold by sliding down a mountain?
It’s a great reminder of how most of the things in life are relative. It’s a great reminder our attitude usually dictates how we are feeling about any particular moment. We can be strapped to skis and enjoying the ride, or we can be freezing on the way to work in a less than warm car with a soft top. It’s still the same weather, climate, temperature. It’s an arbitrary decision we make when we decide to hate Monday’s, and one of my colleagues has correctly pointed out it’s a miserable way to spend one-fifth of our working years. Bill Cosby has observed that his employees are in pretty bad shape by Monday, and it’s probably a good thing the weekend isn’t longer. Just remember, it really isn’t a Monday, but just an arbitrary name we gave an arbitrary part of what we call a week. We pass from one season to another without even paying attention at times. Don’t let the wonder of winter pass you by without some kind of acknowledgement. We are put here to pay attention.
Don’t get me wrong. There are times when we need to pay attention or we will end up doing cart-wheels down the mountain in the snow. Not a metaphor, by the way. And this was back in the day when skis were attached to you by short cords – not designed with snow brakes. This means as I was cart-wheeling down the mountain my skis were flying around my head, banging me on the back and my knees. It was only my second time skiing, and my ski pass was also scraped off my jacket. I went home and lived to ski another day.
But there are days where you are standing on the top of the mountain, looking down into the valley miles below, thinking about the hustle and bustle going on in every office, on every road, in everyday life. The wind is blowing lightly up from the slope below, and some of the loose snow is blowing into your face – normally not a very pleasant thing. But since you are about to hurtle down the mountain at slower speeds than most on the hill, but it still feels very fast to you, it is a time to realize there is more to life than complaining about the snow, or the wind, or the rain, or the heat. Try to enjoy the wintery frostiness – in six months it will be 101 degrees.
LITERATURE OUT LOUD
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Monday May 24, 2010
Monday May 24, 2010
Another episode from "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Dane Allred".
Clock time
Clocks are a reminder of where we are in our day. I wonder what it must have been like when there were only ten clocks in a village, instead of ten clocks in my kitchen. None of them have the same time. I wonder if listening to the town clock tower ring the parts of each hour gave villagers a comfort of the exactness of time.
I like the movie “The Gods Must Be Crazy”. There is one part where the narrator talks about the concept of time to a Kalahari bushman. There is no Monday, no 8:00 A.M. no quitting time. No deadlines about this hour, this day, this minute. Some things can be done this week; some can wait until next week. No rush hour, no such thing as late to work, no overtime, and no such thing as clocks.
Clocks have been a useful thing to standardize our world. How can you leave Japan at such and such an hour and arrive in New York at a particular time unless there is way to keep track of the seconds, the minutes, the hours and the days.
The atomic clock keeps track of microseconds, and every year or two we have to adjust the “world clock” because the earth doesn’t spin in a orderly and timely manner. It doesn’t know that slowing down a bit screws up our clock, but then, the earth probably doesn’t care if we have to reset our clocks.
Here’s the problem with time. I teach students who are three times younger than me, and I like to play a mind game with time with them. Here’s the scenario. Say I am your teacher and I am 45 years old. If you are 15, then I am three times your age. If you add 15 years to both of our ages, then I will be 60 and you will be 30. I am only twice as old as you. I tell my students, if I live long enough, you will catch up, and maybe even pass me.
I wait for them to try to understand how I can be three times as old, and then only twice as old. They start to fear I might be right, that they would continue to age and pass me by. I even say to them I will patiently wait while eventually they get older than me. They look skeptical.
I don’t really carry a watch. I do have the time on my phone, which is another strange development. When you ask someone what time it is, now instead of looking at their wrists, they dig out the cell phone and tell me the time. One cool feature is that my phone can be updated with the “correct” time. What is the correct time? It’s beamed to my cell phone from some cell tower which gets it from some satellite somewhere or something like that. I still don’t trust it, but it is the “official” time.
It still makes me wonder what happened back in the day. I can see the close approximation of noon – the sun is straight above. You could use a sundial if the sun was shining. I really don’t know when we became so pre-occupied with time, but as we mark the new year, just remember, it’s just an artificial date chosen from all of the available dates we could have begun our calendar with.
If January 1st, is too soon for you, then celebrate the Chinese New Year on the 26th of January. Sorry, that was 2009. The Chinese New Year begins on February 14th in 2010. It can be anytime between late January and late February. It’s the year of the Tiger in case you were wondering.
There are New Year’s celebrations in March, April, in the fall, and there were even two in the Islamic calendar in 2008. Well, not two for them. They had one, but during our year, they had two. See how confusing it can be.
Even worse, if you are paying attention on New Year’s Eve, you will realize many, many people will celebrate the arrival of that fateful hour before you. Time zones are another thing I really wonder about. You step one direction and it’s an hour later or earlier. One step one way or the other and it’s another day? This is why those who are really wise tell us to live in the moment. That way, you’re never late since that moment is now, I mean now, I mean now.
Really, living in the moment means paying attention, and if that means enjoying the tradition of marking a new year, you will have to pay attention to that moment. May your new year bring all the hopes and joys you desire.
LITERATURE OUT LOUD
Click here for a complete INDEX
LITERATURE OUT LOUD -- see and hear great literature Audio narrations with synchronized visual text
The Complete Collection of
SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS
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Essential Oils -- create your own business -- click on the logo to begin
Wednesday May 19, 2010
Wednesday May 19, 2010
CHAPTER SEVEN
“If I find out someone else has my money,” said Ray to himself, pacing in the rut that was once the carpet, “I’m gonna massage him with the butt of my gun and then shoot him.”
Ray had decided to stay in town and search the tracks for one more day. There really wasn’t a chance of finding the train now, and there was no practical way to search all those miles of track. He had also decided to go back to the town where Tommy was being held tomorrow and watch for evidence to be leaked to the press, like it always was in cases like this. Then he might have an idea if the cops had the money, and he could figure out what to do next.
Ray hated feeling helpless. It reminded him of the days he spent being beat on by his older brothers, who hated being beat by their dad. The pecking order in the Johnson household had ended with him, with the beatings usually getting worse as they were passed down the line.
Even when social services had split up the family and sent Ray to foster homes in the hopes of a better environment, most of the families he ended up with were in it for the money. They didn’t really care about Ray, and they usually had their own kids to prefer to the freeloaders the state had sent. Why else would someone want the kids no one else wanted?
Being cheated out his money just when it was in his grasp, ready to be spent, the golden dreams had been dashed again. Ray was determined that this time, he was going to get what was his, and he didn’t care who had to get hurt in the meantime.
Smitty had some good advice for Jones. There were a couple of ways to handle the investigation, and one was subtle, the other pretty obvious. Jones had decided to do both.
He was on the phone with the local television station. “Paula Rogers, please. This is Greg Jones.”
Paula was one of the local reporters who owed Captain Greg Jones a few favors for the quick and reliable information he had often shared with her. The scoops had made her a local celebrity, and the bigger stations were looking at her for anchor jobs. She knew Greg liked her, and Greg was more than happy to have her attention, if only for his sources. She picked up almost immediately.
“Greg!” He could almost hear the smile over the phone. “What have you got for me now?”
“How do you know I’m not calling you up for a date?” said Jones playfully.
“First”, she said, “you have never called me up for a date yet, and second, last week when I asked you out, you found some kind of paperwork you had to do.”
Now Greg was smiling. She was right. He wasn’t ready to take that step, but she really wanted him to. He knew she wanted him to. But he just couldn’t do it. Even though she had made it a point of “dropping in” every week or so, he still couldn’t work up the nerve. They had been on dozens of dates, all of which she had arranged.
“You’re right, I’m a big chicken,” he chuckled. “So are you ready for the hot tip of the day?”
“If you really did call me every day,” Paula said, “then that really would be something to get excited about.”
Now Jones was blushing. To stop this train of thought in its tracks, he began another conversation about another train. “Did you hear about the bank robber they arrested on the train here in town…?”
It was after lunch. John had been able to spend an entire lunch period talking with the guys he regularly ate lunch with without even raising the topic of money, which usually was a favorite topic around the table. Now John Graham was wondering what he would be able to tell his history classes today that would keep them from sleeping on their desks, and would keep him from thinking about that money.
Today they were scheduled to talk about Watergate and other topics from the ‘70’s, but the distraction of his newfound wealth was beginning to cloud every 30 seconds of thought. He decided to just strike out into the subject and see where his subconscious and the kids in class would lead him.
“So who here knows why we all know Richard Nixon’s name?”
“This is Paula Jones with another WGHH exclusive.” She was looking especially lovely today, thought Greg as he watched her from the sidelines. Her blonde hair flipped up at the ends and made her look much younger than she was, which he was sure was the desired goal.
Greg Jones was a little too shy for his own good, which is probably why he was still single at the ripe old age of twenty-eight. He had been involved with several women, only to be too slow to keep them interested. He had decided it was a personality fault, and that it wasn’t going to change anytime soon. He was not prepared, however, for the unique patience of Paula Rogers.
She had been burned twice by flashy rich guys. Paula had been engaged twice, and had come as close as M-Day minus one month until the last jerk had pulled the plug. She had her sights set on Greg Jones, and while he may not have known it, she was ready to be as patient as was necessary to catch this one. Though she was younger than Greg by a few years, she had much more wisdom than him when it came to catching a mate.
She smiled and looked over at Greg.
“Local Ridgeway police captain Greg Jones has been credited with recovering some of the $100,000 stolen two days ago from the First National Bank in Delan,” she intoned, without a pause, hitch, or hiccup. “Though all of the money has not been recovered, Captain Jones has been recognized by the state authorities for his quick response. Investigations will continue while officers inspect the money that was found for fingerprints.”
Greg was always amazed at the calmness with which Paula delivered the news, even when it involved grizzly details. She was a pro. She was looking into the camera to wrap it up. “We’ll keep you up to date with any new developments here at WGHH, and this has been another Paula Jones exclusive.” She always wrapped with that same tag-line, even when it wasn’t a story exclusive to her. She had explained it to Greg, “Only Paula Jones can have a Paula Jones exclusive.” It made the viewers think they were getting information they couldn’t get at another station, and it was one of the reasons her network had been rated number one since shortly after her arrival. It was the main reason so many other stations wanted Paula Jones to work for them.
Paula handed the microphone off, and took Greg by the elbow and ushered him off to their own little private corner of the office while the camera crew packed up. “So, how was that, boss?”
Greg could feel himself beginning to redden. “Thanks, Paula, that was exactly what I needed. We want whoever robbed the bank to come and try to get the rest of his money.”
Paula looked concerned. “Doesn’t that put you in danger? I mean,” she said, taking both his hands and pulling him to face her, “won’t that robber come armed and dangerous?”
“Well, probably, but I don’t think he’ll come in demanding the money,” Greg explained, pulling her hands down to his side. “We think he’ll just want to find out where it is, and then we can catch him trying to take it. We’ll put some surveillance on the office. I shouldn’t be in danger, but I think I can handle myself. I am a big, strong man, after all, you know.” He puffed up his chest.
She took the invitation to lean over and tousle his hair, with the other hand pressed on his chest. “I know you can handle yourself. I’m just wondering if you can handle a dinner with a friendly reporter.”
Greg blushed now. She was always able to throw him off his guard, just when he thought he was in control. He liked it.
“Sure, let’s go to the T-Bone,” he said, and took her hand, leading her out the door.
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Tuesday May 18, 2010
Tuesday May 18, 2010
CHAPTER SIX
Ray paced a trail in the cheap motel carpet. He was turning over the details of the day in his head. He had returned to Ridgeway the very next day, less than 24 hours after the train had been here and he had thrown the parcel between the wheels.
Could it have gotten caught in the undercarriage of the train? Did it get ground up into a bunch of zeros and ones? “Nah,” Ray thought to himself, since there would have been something left of the bills if they had been destroyed. But what if they had caught under the train, and had dropped off somewhere between here and this Hicksville where the train had stopped?
Maybe he had walked up and down the wrong part of the tracks, and the money was still sitting somewhere just a mile or so away, waiting patiently for Ray to come back and pack that bundle back to its proper home.
Or maybe someone else had found it first.
Ray knew he could go crazy trying to figure out what could have happened, so he decided to focus on what he would do next. It was time to make another list.
Officer Greg Jones had his own worries, which he tossed around in his mind, wondering how much longer he should ponder the possibilities before he called Smitty and bounced a few ideas off of him. There was definitely something wrong, but to find out what the real problem was would take some careful thinking, and some even more careful investigation. “This’ll be out of my jurisdiction, if I’m lucky” Greg muttered to himself, looking at the bundle which was still sitting on his desk.
“Smitty” Harold Smith had told him the robbery netted the thieves $100,000 or thereabouts. The bundle had $1800 in it, but was clearly designed to look more like $100,000 – or thereabouts. Was it the same robbery? If it was, then where was the rest of the cash?
In most cases, if John Graham had turned in a real stack of $100,000, Greg would have had to turn it over to the state immediately anyway. But the local jurisdiction regulations said he could keep amounts up to $2000 in the local evidence lockers as long as it was verified by at least two officers. His deputy had helped him fill out the proper paperwork and they had both signed off on the amount. State detectives would arrive tomorrow to take the money back to the bank. All the ducks were in a row, but something still didn’t make any sense.
Where was the rest of the money?
Smitty wondered the same question out loud. “So you have 18 one hundred dollar bills, but the package was made to look like it should hold more?”
Jones nodded into the phone, but said, “Yeah, and it’s a pretty good job of making it look like a big bundle of money. If someone was picked up and you found this on their person, you would probably not stop to count the bills until you got back to the station.”
Now Smitty was nodding. “So to you, this looks like it’s meant to mislead us long enough for the real money to escape?”
“Yeah,” said Greg. “But if you guys didn’t find the money on the train, and this was left on the tracks, where’s the rest?”
“I can think of three places,” Smitty intoned, trying to sound superior, like the city cop he was.
“I can think of four,” said Jones.
Smitty was not one to take a challenge lightly, so he started in on his three guesses, hoping to deduce the fourth on his way.
“Okay,” he said, drawing in a breath, “the three I’ve got are one, the money is still on the train somewhere; two, the small guy we didn’t find still has the money; or three, there is another package of money somewhere out there on the railroad tracks.”
Smitty came up empty. Harold Smith had to admit defeat and ask his friend for a fourth possibility. Just as an inkling was coming into his brain, too.
The friend. But Jones beat him to the punch.
“I hate to say this, Smitty,” said Jones as he drew in a quick breath, “but I think we have to watch my friend John Graham, too.”
He had talked about Francis Bacon. Christopher Marlowe’s name came up and the suspicious early death of this great writer came up, too. Woody Allen’s name came up, but only as comic relief to an otherwise deadly boring subject for high school students. John Graham liked to read Woody Allen’s essay called “But Soft…Real Soft” to his classes as a summary of how ridiculous it was that there were people at major universities worldwide who were paid handsome salaries to debate year after year who really wrote plays from 400 years ago. John Graham didn’t care who really wrote the plays, and certainly the students could give a flying leap less who wrote them. But it was one of the things John thought students who had taken a drama class in high school should know before they graduated and pretended to go out into the world trained and ready for the workplace.
But the lecture had the desired effect. He had been distracted, too, and realized that he hadn’t thought about the money for almost an entire hour. Now that class was over, however, his thoughts did return to another aspect of this new adventure in his life. He began to think how cleverly he had handled the entire situation, even planning several scenarios in advance in his mind.
Scenario one. If his police friend Greg Jones decided the money was really at John’s house, and got a search warrant for it, John had hidden the money in so clever a place that he was almost certain no one would ever find it. Result: he could keep the money and spend it slowly over a lifetime.
Scenario two. He became so overcome with guilt at having kept the money that there was no clear way to keep it without going crazy. John had decided that if this happened he would simply take the money to another town and drop it off at the nearest church or charitable organization. With the amount of time he was spending lately contemplating his options, he was smart enough to realize that this could be a distinct possibility. Crazy didn’t seem that far off.
Scenario three. He gets caught with the money, through insanity, as he had imagined before, or through carelessness. He could brag about the money to someone somewhere someday and find himself the center of suspicion. At this point, to plead insanity would not be a bad idea. Then he could return the money and beg forgiveness for his moment of weakness. His church preached repentance and forgiveness at least once a month, and it seemed to him that those with shortcomings were favored by pity at least, and usually respected more later by the congregation for having shown weaknesses.
Scenario four. John Graham knew there was another possibility out there, that there was always the unseen, the unexpected that always showed up and slapped you across the kisser with the Homer Simpson-like “Doh!” that someone who hasn’t thought everything through usually deserves. This was danger waiting to happen. John had once heard a Secretary of Defense call these the “unknown unknowns”. There was nothing you could do about it, so the best defense was not to worry about it. You could worry if you wanted to, but you would still get slapped up side of the head.
“Greg?”
“Yeah, this is Captain Jones.”
Smitty bent over the phone on his desk. “Hey, Greg, Smitty here.”
“Harold!” said Greg, a little too loud.
Harold Smith was trying not to talk too loud, because a major investigation had just fallen into his lap thanks to the help of his good friend in Ridgeway. He didn’t want to share this good fortune with anyone else in the department just now, and when a major event broke here at the office, everyone wanted a piece of the pie for their own claim to fame. “You were right on the money, buddy.”
“It’s from the robbery?” said Jones.
“The serial numbers match the last bills of $100,000. Whoever made the fake package may have had access to the entire amount,” said Smitty. “But why would they make a decoy?
“Maybe they made it on the train to distract us. So what do we do next?”
Smitty paused. “Wait just a minute. Zabronsky just came in the room. I’ll call you right back.”
Smitty had called Jones back earlier in the evening and filled him in on all the details. Unfortunately, there just wasn’t enough on the bank robbery case to work 24/7 on it, so when the next call came in, he was out the door with his partner.
It was way too late for the local gas station lights to still be on, especially when there was no one around watching the place. The police had been called by a guy who stopped for gas and had figured out after pumping it, there was no one to pay. Paranoid about being caught not paying for gas or else feeling his patriotic duty calling, he was still there when Smitty pulled up.
“This doesn’t look right,” he said, getting out of the car.
“Thanks for coming over so fast,” said the nervous customer, waving a twenty in the air. “I pumped my gas, but can’t see anyone to pay.”
Smitty looked around at the gas station, still fully lit though it was long past the posted closing time. One of the sliding glass doors was open, and music was playing inside the booth.
“Maybe the guy is in the john,” Smitty said, motioning to the back building. “Have you checked back there?”
The customer shook his head no, and Smitty motioned for his partner to check it out. Smitty walked over to the booth, and taking the information from the customer, also took his twenty. “Thanks for reporting this, and if there’s anything else we need, I’ll call you at your home number, or come by your house.”
There was no need to keep extra eyes around that would only keep asking stupid questions like, “Could you give me my change from the drawer?” Smitty explained that nothing could be touched until it they figured out what had happened, and that the change from the twenty would be mailed to him.
The now irate customer left muttering something about getting screwed by the cops every time he tried to do something good. Smitty called for another team to come in and help search the area. Then he called the corporate number on the booth to tell them one of their gas stations was unattended.
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Sunday May 16, 2010
Sunday May 16, 2010
O Captain My Captain
by Walt Whitman
O Captain my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up--for you the flag is flung for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths for you the shores a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head!
It is some dream that on the deck,
You've fallen cold and dead.
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
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Sunday May 16, 2010
Sunday May 16, 2010
CHAPTER FIVE
Officer Greg Jones had a few jobs to complete. But first he had to call his deputy, who was part-time, to come over and help him catalogue the evidence. Regulations said two people had to count money, and even if he wanted to flip through the pile and see if there were more bills inside, he would still have to wait for Larry to arrive.
He worried as he waited that his good friend John may have tainted the evidence, but this still seemed to be a straight-forward robbery, and the serial numbers on the bills would match, or they wouldn’t. It wouldn’t matter once Larry was there if they could reassemble the pile of papers and money to look exactly like it had, because they would take some Polaroids and those could be used as evidence as well.
That would be the next job. He would have to call the store and have the delivery boy bring over some more film. The stuff in the camera was so old Greg doubted it would still work, and delaying any more while they waited for film would destroy the fun of the investigation.
They would together and dissect this package, and try to figure out just what had happened. Why would someone make a bundle that looked like it was a lot of money when it wasn’t? And who had the rest of the money?
Raymond Johnson was not the most patient man in the world. He had once stabbed himself in the hand with a potato pitchfork, and rather than wait for an emergency room technician to pull it back out of his hand, he calmly walked over the concrete step and pulled it out himself. He also pulled dirt back into the wound and had to have intravenous antibiotics for 3 days, but the pitchfork was out. He even went to the doctor down the street and convinced him to sew it up rather than go the next town to the emergency room.
But with $100,000 sitting somewhere out here on the tracks, Ray had developed a patience he had never experienced before. This was his fourth trip down the tracks and he still couldn’t find the bundle. He was pretty sure where the train had stopped, since there were only two road/railroad intersections in the entire town. He knew it was farther south on the tracks than the Ridgeway city limits sign he had seen from the train.
This was the right place, but there was no package. It was beginning to grow dark as Ray tried to think of what would be the next step. Without the money, he could see no future prospects, unless he was to go and rob another bank himself. The fifteen years he had spent in prison for trying to rob a bank by himself had convinced him that it was best to have a partner these days, a front man, and his best front man was enjoying cable TV back at in jail.
Tonight, Ray would have to spend a few dollars on a motel in town. Then he would think about where the money might have gone. One way or another, he was going to find that money.
John Graham was not usually a nervous person. He was able to stand in line at grocery stores while clerks took their own sweet time trying to find the subtotal key on the register. He could sit in traffic that wouldn’t move, no matter how hard the people around him honked, just enjoying the radio. He even liked standing in long lines because it gave him time to notice what the others in line really looked like, and let him wonder where they came from and what the real story behind their lives really was.
But now almost $100,000 was sitting in his house, and John was a guy who didn’t like to break a $20 because the money would then vanish in a matter of hours. He had been daydreaming at work all that day about what he could spend the money on if no one found out he had it.
He had cycled through sports cars, motorcycles, motorized parachute flyers, ultra light airplanes, cruises, hot tubs, house remodeling, expensive watches, fine art, diamonds, rare coins, expensive electronic toys, shoes, suits, and safaris. Then he would chastise himself for even thinking about spending the money since it really wasn’t his and it would probably end up back at the bank safe in the depositors’ accounts.
Then the next cycle would begin, and to relieve the guilt, John would think about what he could by for Reba. Expensive clothes, figurines, exotic trips, jewelry, furs and fast cars. Then another wave of guilt for even considering spending this windfall on such ridiculous extravagances. He should be thinking of college and books for his daughters or their husbands, trust funds for his grand-children, contributions to his church.
Would. Should. Could. John recognized this ridiculous cycle of thinking for what it really was, and thought about the fact that he might not be the best person for God to tempt with such a great temptation. He wasn’t dealing with it very well, and he realized that his preoccupation with this would soon turn into some type of mental disorder, with the end result being an institution. He could almost picture himself being carried away in a straight-jacket muttering “Rings, watches, vacations, tuition. Rings, watches, vacations, tuition….”
It was time to get focused on the matter at hand, and that wasn’t how to spend money that wasn’t really his. It was time to talk about who really wrote Shakespeare’s plays to students who didn’t really care who Shakespeare was.
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Friday May 14, 2010
Friday May 14, 2010
Death Be Not Proud
by John Donne
Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not soe,
For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill mee.
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,
And better then thy stroake; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.
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Wednesday May 12, 2010
Wednesday May 12, 2010
by T. S. Eliot
S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question…
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair
[They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin
[They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”]
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?
And I have known the eyes already, known them all
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?
And I have known the arms already, known them all
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
It is perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?…
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep… tired… or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.
And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all.”
And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor
And this, and so much more?
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.”
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous
Almost, at times, the Fool.
I grow old… I grow old…
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
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