On Reading Crime Series, Bosch et alia.

13 November 2023

 

Warm day today, high 60s F. Very humid. Did one load of laundry. Just stuff that dries no matter how humid it is. Walked 1.67 miles this morning at a pace that was faster than 3 mph.  Have a couple more walks to do before bed. Bought a Christmas tree topper These are the easy things to identify and list. I have not checked my email or the news. My stomach can't handle it yet.

 

For the longest time I have not been reading.  In the early part of last week, I decided to ease back into it. For me when I want to start reading in earnest again I begin with a crime novel, or a police procedural if you like. Picked up a stand-alone book by a gentleman who writes tons of crime series. The book was The 6:20 Man by David Baldacci. And then I finished four more Baldacci books, the John Puller series. And then much to my surprise I found a Bosch book I had not yet discovered. My iPad is earning its keep right now.

 

I think reading these crime novels is a throwback to the time when I was a kid and math was still interesting. I mean for me the idea that there are immutable facts like 1 + 2 = 3 was a very comforting one. To some extent crime novels are like math formulas.  If the gun is of a certain caliber, and if the bullet came from the gun, and once we are able to identify the fingerprints as belonging to that guy, he did it. Immutable. But in reality crime novels are more akin to further advanced math problems with a number of variables and we are told to solve for whatever =x. There is much mental fun in making logical leaps when diving into these trashy tales.

 

Crime novels have an order of operations.  From my experience it runs like this: 

 

Identify there is a crime as opposed to self-harm or misadventure. Identify the crime's nature.  Focus on the obvious suspect with the help of a neighbor, or that guy in the crowd who offers only two words, points and disappears. Rule out the principal suspect due to DNA or an unknown hair on the murder weapon. Have the investigator put in mortal peril only to be saved by either a.) a burgeoning love interest or b.) a fellow investigator who hates the hero but is committed to truth and justice. Have the investigator come back to “the basics,” or “reread the file.” When he or she looks at the crime scene crowd shot photo and sees that guy in the crowd who said two words the mental light turns on. This is telegraphed to the reader by the hero's thought of, ‘If he just got there how did he know about the frozen banana found in the victims colon?’ Finally comes the mad dash to stop the perp before there is another crime and another victim. Tragedy is averted and the criminal is caught or killed. Bruised and battered, there is an implication that the hero and the love interest or the former despised coworker have a long future together.

 

When I finish the Bosch story I have to move on to some serious literature. Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending is next in the queue. Don’t know the story, but it is a Booker Prize winner. Usually, I enjoy reading either the actual Booker winner or another book by the author who penned the winner. Can’t let the mind atrophy. Plus I’ve got time.

Times Are Dark, Let Us Work Together

 

Sunday has come again. There is no doubt in my mind that this is the case because I can hear the congregation across the courtyard singing. But has anything changed?

 

Each day this week I read the headlines. They screamed destruction and death, distrust and dysfunction. Oh, the horrible things that are now the resting state of our world. A week ago, following a similar seven-day assault on my spirit’s reserve of hope and compassion, I started to write a piece stating our world rested on a precipice. Ultimately the piece concluded with a statement that I didn’t know if our sphere would go over the cliff head first or step back from the edge. I even looked up the term precipice to make sure I was using it correctly. Here it is. 

 

Precipice - prec·i·pice /ˈpresəpəs/ (noun), A very steep rock face or cliff, especially a tall one; "we swerved toward the edge of the precipice".  I searched for a definition of the phrase standing on a precipice.  If you say that someone is on the edge of a precipice, you mean that they are in a dangerous situation in which they are extremely close to disaster or failure. “The king now stands on the brink of a political precipice.” – Collins Dictionary (collinsdictionary.com).

 

Around me I see a complex world, a planet filled with hatred. This virulent animosity is more often than not, fueled by economic disparity cloaked in righteous indignation. Individual or group righteous indignation can arise from many sources but two main ones stick out: tribal and religious (and these two can be very, very intertwined). Ours is a world stuck in a cycle of conflict generation after generation. True believers vs infidels, red vs blue, baby killers vs individual rights advocates, blue eyes vs brown eyes, and dark skin versus light skin pigment; pick one, pick two, and you will find people willing to kill and die for the distinctions. But if you dig down the real battle is about who gets more rice, beans, bread and drinkable water.

 

Samuel Clemens in his later years was bitter. He endured the death of most of his family, an era of economic depression, bankruptcy, and his works falling out of favor. He was a learned man and a skilled writer. As his fortunes declined and his woes increased people abandoned him. Ultimately, the world’s ugliness beat him down and he hated the world and its people for it. I am not there yet, but I can get there. Still, I have some small measure of hope left alive inside of me that the world can right itself at least enough to avoid climatological or nuclear destruction based on divisions that at their root are economic.

 

The world needs complex answers, not simple ones. We are far beyond the stage where “simple” fixes anything. But yet we yearn for easy answers. We long for quick fixes.

 

Watching America from afar it seems many people just want an authoritarian to step in and make things right. This is the path of people looking for an easy fix and it won't work. The person they are drawn to is not someone who has the demeanor, the intellect, the vision or the stamina to fix all the things needing to be addressed and addressed fast. The person they are drawn to is not a consensus builder, but rather someone who plays on racial, sexual, and economic prejudices.

My old law school professor once said, “If you want the A you must do the work.” The man I am speaking of has never been willing to do the hard work, and do it honestly. Bluster and rage will not conceal the fact that his primary talents are manipulating balance sheets and crushing the little guys hired to work for his companies. He doesn’t have the capacity to do the work, he has never had it.

 

Authoritarians don’t have an impressive record of fixing problems or treating citizens fairly or well. Hitler, Stalin, Kim Jong-Un, Putin, Franco, Pinochet, Salazar, the Duvaliers and the list goes on. They didn’t listen to competing, rational voices in opposition, they erased them. Pretty much each and every one of them had a slogan containing an implied promise of moving forward and making things better. Their PR people may not have come up with something as catchy as “Make America Great Again,” but it was all the same noise and gibberish. Wealth flowed one way and pain and deprivation the other.

 

Children are dying and hostages are at risk. Large swaths of the world’s waters are severely polluted. Global temperatures are increasing, the last 12 months being the hottest on record. Oceans fill with trash and microplastics. Deserts are expanding and ice caps are melting. A selfish, angry authoritarian is not the solution to our problems. Please don’t buy into bad choices based on a desire for a return to a world that never really existed. Face the world we have and work to fix it.  To my mind that means abandoning the previous President and moving on.

Grace Notes Late at Night

 

Grace notes – 1: a musical note added as an ornament especially : appoggiatura.

2 : a small addition or embellishment.

 

A small addition or embellishment…that second definition doesn’t quite capture how we use the phrase in non-musical parlance. A grace note in our lives is something lovely, but not a major theme of our existence. A grace note could be joy discovered serendipitously. Or it could be something that was bound to happen, but was beautiful in its occurrence. If you think about it I am sure you can come up with a wide array of grace notes populating small spaces in your life. For me a night spent in some cottages on the north side of Prince Edward Island, the Blue Crest Cottages to be exact, drinking a beer on a late August's chilly night while watching the northern lights is a perfect example of a grace note. 

So many nights in these recent years I have found myself at 2 in the morning contemplating the, "What should I have done?"s. I have played out the 'I really screwed that up's, and the 'I can’t make it right's of my life. There is almost always a great deal of reflection, (I guess that is the best term), I do before eventually drifting off to sleep. Intellectually I know the past is the past and it cannot be changed but sometimes I wish it could. Yeah, I know it is pointless allowing such thoughts to steal the hours I should sleep from me, but I can’t help it.

I think my parents hard wired my guilt, second guessing, and my near constant angst into my soul. Okay maybe it was them in conjunction with the Baptist church. Remember kids the part that burns most in hell is the part you sin with. At this point we stop and fan our nethers. Between the need to achieve and the fear of doing the wrong thing, my head just got so damn weird. Years of living have added only more crossed wires and smoking junction boxes.

When I first retired I had about two years where I fell asleep immediately.  The stresses from work retreated and the vacuum they left in my psyche was so large. When my head hit the pillow I was drawn deep down into the dark abyss of dreamless sleep. But with plotting the move to Portugal and making decisions about stuff back in Michigan the angsty second guessing and night nerves returned. Don’t get me wrong the move was a good move, but there were so many moving pieces that it tripped the old switch releasing doubts and angst about almost every decision I have ever made.

The other night as I waited for sleep to come I thought of a moment I had not thought of in years. I was in my dorm room during late fall 1977.  It was just turning five in the evening. As I stood there looking out the leaded panes of my window to the west the light through the trees was a beautiful amber color. The bells of the nearby People’s Church began to strike the hour. My room's radiator clanged as if it was thinking about supplying some heat, something it never did. Music drifted down the hall, something very mellow and mellifluous. For a moment, a small moment I was empty of all doubt and angst. I was happy and at peace. I felt at ease in the universe. A grace note in my life's symphony, that is what that particular moment was.

The duration of the moment I was remembering lasted maybe a minute but certainly not two. As the chimes stopped I turned, closed the door, and headed down to the scrum of the dinner line in the cafeteria. As brief as it was, that moment was a real grace note in my life. When I focused on that moment, taken out of context of all the college dorm drama (and God was there drama), I realized pondering all the what ifs, and why did I dos, didn’t matter. I have had a good life so far.Yeah it has been, and remains, an enjoyable run. And as my mind bounced around looking for more grace notes, those small moments of joy, sleep came quickly.

Your transition to sleep from the waking hours may not be as troubled as mine. You may have few or no regrets. Still, there are times when we all lose focus, when we struggle with the nonsense that surrounds us. When those uneasy moments overtake you look for the grace notes you have accumulated over your life's span. These collected moments of joy and beauty remind us of the importance of living in the moment and being accepting of life's wonder. Cherish your grace notes.

Sunday, and Suddenly I am Humming the Doxology

The choices we make daily make us who we are. As today opens in front of you, choose compassion.

Hersch Wilson

Lisboa offers me a bright Sunday morning today. Been raining a bit. Two huge storms passed north of us causing much damage in the region of France.  However, big wave surfers must be ecstatic.  Nazare waves are supposed to be 30 meters or more. Those 98-foot-tall waves are something I would love to see. Might grab a bus and head there tomorrow. 

 I said it has been raining for quite some time now.  Seeing the sun and comparing two different forecasting apps I decided to hang some laundry out on the line. First load is washed and hung out to dry. Second load is in the machine and will go out in about half an hour. The final load won’t hit the line until one.  If it doesn’t dry by sunset, I am off to a self-service lavendaria for 15 minutes of drying on the high cycle.

I opened the window when I sat down to type. I am listening to the bells of one of the igrejias ringing right now which means mass is about to begin.  Shortly I will hear the strains of old familiar protestant hymns coming from the evangelical Baptist church across the courtyard. I look forward to this. Hearing How Great Thou Art and In the Garden in Portuguese resets my body’s calendar and refreshes my soul. Amazing how a simple melody can carry you away and lift your spirits.

This week was filled with stuff we did or got done. On Monday morning we replaced Francie’s subway pass. We thought she dropped it at the Baxia-Chiado metro stop but it was not turned in. Luckily it had only two days left on it. Getting the replacement took about an hour and a half of waiting time, a fast turnaround by Portuguese bureaucratic standards. On Monday afternoon having found our correct health center we stopped by and applied for our national health numbers. We were told it might take a bit to process this.  I submitted our request at 4:30 pm and we had both cards by 11 am the next morning. Such a turnaround from what I have been told is extremely fast. 

On Thursday night we attended to the symphony in the Gulbenkian hall. The pieces performed were a short symphony by Mozart and his Great Mass. I was raised on rock n’ roll and it was only when my oldest was in an orchestra that I got exposure to the classical. The symphony was wonderful and the Great Mass was very enjoyable.  I am not an avid fan of operatic soprano voices and the mass had a great deal of that singing. I got tickets for a New Year’s Eve concert by the Gulbenkian choir at the Sao Roque church. Loren my youngest has agreed to accompany me to this.

On Friday we travelled to a Christmas bazaar held by the various diplomatic corps with embassies in Lisbon. The French, Chinese and Indians had the biggest booths. Lots of colorful wares. We picked up a tanjine from the Moroccans and a table runner from the Indians. The tanjine has a number of preparation steps before it can be used. Right now, it is soaking in water for twenty-four hours. The drying in the oven and the oiling will come later. The table runner can be seen above.

After the bazaar we had lunch at a mostly vegetarian place. I had lentil meatballs and Francie had grilled tuna salad. Thefood was delicious and the company, the folks who invited us to the bazaar, was absolutely fantastic.

Yesterday was low, low key. Hit the men’s coffee hour at another location. Taught someone how to use Google Translate'sphoto application. Last week I gave him instructions on how to renew his metro pass at a nearby ATM, well any nearby ATM. The highpoint of the rest of the day was buying a pitcher for my ice tea. We also bought our first real Christmas decorations, a garland and balls to go on the table where our router is. What am I saying? The real high point was Francie’s dinner preparation, osso buco made with ox tail. Really, really tasty. Low and slow is the way to go.

Francie said something on the phone last night to a friend. Moving to Lisboa has been like moving into the dormsfreshman year at university. Nobody knows anyone and nobody knows how anything works. So, when you hear someone who speaks the same way as you do, you talk to them. When you go out with people you learn their backstories and you share yours. This is in some ways, the most connected I have felt to people in years.