Wordless Wednesday: Dragons of summer

Be kind one to another...

"Be kind to people and don't judge, for you do not know what demons they carry and what battles they are fighting."
                                                                                        - Vashti Quiroz-Vega 

Loneliness. Chronic illness. Feelings of worthlessness. Addiction. Worries about one's children. Obesity. Anorexia. Money worries. Loss of job. Humiliation. Loss of a loved one. Maybe even worse, the feeling that one has failed a loved one. Demons that bedevil many of us at one time or another in our lives.

The thing that we have to realize is that everybody has them. It is part of what makes us human. But even though those demons are gnawing away at us on the inside, other people can't always detect them.

That must be the way it is with people who suffer terribly from depression. People like Robin Williams. Even extremely successful and admired people, people who appear outwardly to us to be at the top of their game, rich, surrounded by those who love them, even these people can feel worthless and alone and depressed to the point that death seems preferable to continuing in a life full of psychic pain.

How sad that a man like Williams who brought so much joy to the world should have felt so isolated and alone. Whether or not his death was a deliberate suicide, it seems likely that those feelings of depression contributed to it.

And let that be a cautionary tale to us about making judgments of others. As Quiroz-Vega said, it's better to be kind to people, remembering that they, too, have their demons and they are fighting a life or death battle, whether or not we can see it.

  

The Private Patient by P.D. James: A review

(Note: My review of The Private Patient was originally published on Goodreads on January 24, 2009.)

The Private Patient by P.D. James
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

When you pick up a P.D. James mystery, you know that you are in the hands of a master.  Cleanly plotted, meticulously detailed, characters revealed layer by layer, hers are the epitome of the "British mysteries" in the tradition of the great Agatha.  It is a tradition that I know and love.

The Private Patient is her latest entry in the saga of Commander Adam Dalgliesh of New Scotland Yard.  It is a police procedural with, as usual, James' touch of humanism.

We find that Dalgliesh is about to marry his beloved.  Their romance has had its rocky bits as most romances do, but finally they have decided to join forces officially.

Before that can take place though, Adam is confronted with another mystery, the murder of a famous, and apparently rather notorious, investigative journalist, who has a reputation for ruthlessness in her profession.

Said journalist had decided, after some 30 years of living with it, to have a disfiguring scar removed from her face.  She selected a surgeon who maintains a private clinic in Dorset for his patients who seek privacy.  And there, after successful surgery on her face, is where the journalist is murdered.

In short order, a second murder, of a friend of the journalist who had followed her to Dorset, takes place and the plot thickens.

Dalgliesh and his team pursue every clue, interview all the principals, eliminate all the red herrings, and eventually are zeroing in on the "prime suspect" when things come to a head in a (perhaps) not unsurprising way.

It is always a joy to read James' books and just to watch the way she works.  This was not her best effort, I thought, but still, it was a satisfying read, one that I would certainly recommend to fans of the genre.


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Poetry Sunday: Cheerios

So, yesterday was my birthday. It was one of those which contains a zero, always a time for special reflection on the past decade and all the decades that went before - and the decade to come.

There are things to regret, of course, sad memories of those loved ones lost in the past decade, but also happy memories of joyous days, seeing new places, having new experiences, learning new skills, as well as time spent in the company of dearly loved old friends and companions.

The decade ahead will offer new challenges, but maybe more joys and new experiences as well. Then perhaps one day I will even open the newspaper and happily learn as Billy Collins did that I am as old as...

Cheerios

BY BILLY COLLINS

One bright morning in a restaurant in Chicago

as I waited for my eggs and toast,

I opened the Tribune only to discover

that I was the same age as Cheerios.

Indeed, I was a few months older than Cheerios

for today, the newspaper announced,

was the seventieth birthday of Cheerios

whereas mine had occurred earlier in the year.

Already I could hear them whispering

behind my stooped and threadbare back,

Why that dude’s older than Cheerios

the way they used to say

Why that’s as old as the hills,

only the hills are much older than Cheerios

or any American breakfast cereal,

and more noble and enduring are the hills,

I surmised as a bar of sunlight illuminated my orange juice.

This week in birds - #120

A roundup of the week's news of birds and the environment:

The beautyberries are ripening and the mockingbirds have discovered them. Mockingbirds love berries of just about all kinds, but beautyberries are particular favorites. This one was gobbling up those berries as fast as he could. You might notice that he looks a little raggedy. That's because he is still going through his summer molt. In a few more weeks he will be sleek and beautiful again, every shiny new feather in place.

*~*~*~*

Birds that are found sick or injured on the streets of New York City have a friend in need, a friend indeed in New York Wild Bird Fund which operates a hospital to care for the birds. It was founded in 2001 and has since treated more than 10,000 feathered patients.

*~*~*~*

And on the other side of the country, humans have come to the rescue of a flock of flightless geese that had become stranded because of California's extreme drought. The geese had become helpless prey for foxes and other predators because their pond had dried up. Rescuers moved in to capture them and transfer them to other areas that had more water.

*~*~*~*

An oil refinery in Delaware is in danger from the rising sea levels. This is something that we will see more of in the future as global warming continues to melt polar ice and raise the sea, but it is something that is happening in Delaware at present. The oil refinery has asked the government for help in holding back the sea.

*~*~*~*

Seasonal articles and regional summaries detailing last year's Christmas Bird Count are now available at the Audubon website.

*~*~*~*

There is growing concern about the decline in population of the Blue-footed Boobies of the Galapagos Islands. There is speculation that the decline is related to a decline in sardines which are a major food source for the birds.

*~*~*~*

How did birds ever learn to migrate and how did they develop their migratory routes? "Not Exactly Rocket Science" has a blog post about the evolution of migration.

*~*~*~*

California's Tri-colored Blackbird is in serious trouble and the state is considering emergency measures that it can take to help the bird and keep it from becoming extinct.

*~*~*~*

The "Rewild" blog is featuring a series of posts about invasive species in California. This week's blog features the bullfrog.

*~*~*~*

The survival of many penguin species is at risk because of habitat degradation. In this, they are not different from many threatened and endangered species.

*~*~*~*

The pangolin, a small scaly ant-eating mammal, is being eaten into extinction. The Chinese consider it a delicacy. A campaign of education is under way to try to stop the decimation of the little creature.

*~*~*~*

Many once-common marine birds of the American Northwest are disappearing from those shores. Their decline is apparently related to a similar decline in the species of fish on which they prefer to feed.

*~*~*~*

The U.S. Energy Information Agency has announced the release of a mapping tool that will show flood risks to our existing energy infrastructure.

*~*~*~*

Friends of Animals has sued to prevent further killing of birds around airports. FOA considers that most such killings are excessive and that less lethal means can be used to shift the birds.

*~*~*~*

"Native Plants and Wildlife Gardens" has a very interesting post about some very useful wasps - the stingless ones. Many of these species parasitize insects that are pests in the garden and so they are very handy little guys for gardeners to have around.

Catching up with "The Wire"

"The Wire" premiered on HBO on June 2, 2002. It ran for five seasons, 60 episodes, and ended on March 9, 2008. I never watched it during that time and, in that, I was a member of the majority. The show was never particularly popular and never garnered big audiences.

It also never won any of the major television awards, but it was greatly admired by critics, many of whom considered it one of the best television dramas of all time and it had a devoted hard core following.

In all the years since the show ended, I've read time and again about how good it was and I've heard the same opinion expressed by my husband, who did watch it. All that praise from people whose opinions I respect made me curious and I decided that I needed to watch it at some point. HBO-GO makes it easy enough to do that, so this summer, I've been catching up with that twelve-year-old show. Now I see what all those critics were raving about. "The Wire" is excellent television.

The UK's The Telegraph once wrote that "The Wire" is "arguably the greatest television programme ever made."  I've now watched three seasons of the show - two more to go - and I find myself pretty much in sympathy with that assessment.

The show was very much a product of its time, i.e., just after the attacks of 09/11/01 and at the beginning of the so-called "war on terror." Government resources were being diverted to fight that "war" and local law enforcement was getting short shrift. The needs of large American cities like Baltimore, which is the central character in the series, were being overlooked unless they could be directly related to the government's obsession with terrorism.

Though the stories that "The Wire" tells are now several years old, they still seem fresh and current. We see the city of Baltimore (which could be a stand-in for many American cities) through the eyes of many different characters, mostly police or gangsters, but also ordinary citizens, or "taxpayers" in the patois of the ghetto which is the main language of the show. The stories are very Dickensesque in that they explore Baltimore's social structure from the squats of the homeless junkies to the uptown political fund-raisers in their swank surroundings. But mostly - at least through the third season - they focus on the drug dealers on the streets and those "businessmen" behind them.

It is interesting that the police and the purveyors of the drug trade have worked out their relationship and each group has its code that it (mostly) adheres to, and they sometimes cooperate, even though they are (mostly) adversaries.

For the drug dealers, who are often involved in their own violent conflicts over territories, they don't bat an eye at gunning down a competitor, but part of the code of "the game" is that they never attack "taxpayers." Moreover, they don't go gunning for anybody on Sunday. Sundays are sacrosanct. Thus, one of the drug kingpins, Avon Barksdale, is appalled when some of his "soldiers" attack one of their enemies, Omar, on a Sunday while he is escorting his grandmother to church. The old lady is injured and her hat - her "church crown" - is destroyed. This represents a loss of face for Barksdale and he must make restitution to the grandma.

The creator of "The Wire" was David Simon. Simon had a background, before his television career, as a police reporter for The Baltimore Sun. His writing partner was Ed Burns, who was himself a former homicide detective who had worked on investigations of violent drug dealers using surveillance technology and had found himself frequently frustrated by the Baltimore police bureaucracy. Basing the stories on his experiences certainly gave the drama its verisimilitude.

The two writers set out to portray an American city in all phases of its social, political, and economic life and they succeeded beautifully. This is not just a police procedural. It is much richer and more ambitious than that. If it were a novel, it could be categorized as literary fiction for its realistic portrayal of urban life and its unflinching exploration of social and political themes.

Another thing. The characters here are portrayed warts and all. There's hardly a one of them that is entirely likable and yet one finds oneself pulling for some of them. Even though some of them are very bad guys indeed. Like Omar.

Barack Obama has said that he was a fan of the show and that his favorite character was Omar. Of course, being Barack Obama, he hastened to add that he wasn't condoning Omar's actions, merely that he saw him as an interesting character. And he is indeed one of the many interesting characters on the show. But maybe the most interesting character of all is Baltimore.

I'm very glad that I finally caught up with "The Wire" with all of its pathos, heartbreak, and, yes, humor. Sometimes laugh-out-loud humor. Were it not leavened with a few laughs, it would be almost unbearable.

I look forward to finishing seasons four and five before the end of summer. Then I can join the ranks of the few and the proud who have watched one of the best television shows ever produced.

The Terrorists by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo: A review

The Terrorists by Maj Sjöwall
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I am in mourning. I've just finished the last of the Martin Beck mysteries. There will be no more regular visits with Beck and his doughty but quirky band of Swedish policemen as they battle to rid their society of the evil that afflicts it.

It seems fitting somehow that this last book featured terrorism as its theme, since terrorism has become such an expected part of our lives in the twenty-first century. This book was published in 1975 but it seems as fresh as today's news. Indeed, all ten of the books in this series, starting with Roseanna in 1965, seem current and not at all dated in their outlook. They seem very relevant for the times in which we live.

The Terrorists begins and ends with acts of terrorism - the first in an unnamed Latin American country and the second in Stockholm. These acts are committed by a very well organized international terrorist organization for which terrorism is a business. But Sjowall/Wahloo seem to be exploring a much wider definition of terrorism including that which is perpetrated by the bureaucratic apparatus of the state which is always portrayed as a hapless, insensitive, incompetent villain in these books. The writers were always looking at the wider cultural issues that plagued Swedish society during the time about which they were writing and that, in fact, continue to plague Western societies today. That wider cultural focus is, I think, why these stories remain so fresh while some others from the same period seem hopelessly dated.

At the beginning of The Terrorists Gunwald Larsson is sent to that unnamed South American country as an observer of the security measures taken for a state event. As an observer, he is present when a bomb explodes, killing the president of the country as well as several other people. What he has learned from the experience, primarily, is that the terrorists are very skilled at their jobs.

Back in Stockholm, we meet a young teenage mother who is caught in the coils of red tape produced by that aforementioned incompetent bureaucratic apparatus. She responds by attempting to borrow some money from a bank. Her actions are misinterpreted and she is arrested for bank robbery. The gears of the bureaucracy continue to grind her up.

Then a millionaire pornography filmmaker is murdered and the search is on for his killer. That particular crime is cleared up in fairly short order when a confession is secured, but during all of this, while investigating the everyday crimes of Stockholm, the police must also prepare themselves for the upcoming state visit by a very unpopular United States senator. An act of terrorism is expected, perhaps an attempt to assassinate the man, and Martin Beck is put in charge of the security detail which must try to prevent that from happening.

He assembles his team which includes most of the names that we are familiar with from the previous nine books and they put a plan in place. It's never clear right up until the event itself whether that plan will actually work, but, throughout, the narrative is rendered in crisp and elegant prose and the pace is brisk. The reader is never bored.

As we say a sad farewell to Martin Beck, at least we are leaving him in a far better place than we found him. When we first met him, he was dyspeptic and morose, constantly battling an oncoming cold, and trapped in a loveless marriage with a woman who didn't appreciate him. Finally, after several books, he extricated himself from that marriage and since then, he has been happier and has been building a life that better suits him. He has found a woman, Rhea, whom he loves and who loves him and who makes him very happy. The only fly in his ointment seems to be the job, even though he is very good at it.

In the conclusion of the book, his friend, Lennart Kollberg, who has resigned from the police tells Martin Beck that he has "the wrong job. At the wrong time. In the wrong part of the world. In the wrong system." That is the Sjowall/Wahloo indictment of that "system" which they obviously felt soiled everything that it touched. These books have a point of view and the reader is never in doubt as to what that is.

One further note: One of the many pleasures of the editions of the books that I have been reading has been their introductions penned by present-day crime fiction writers. Those essays in themselves could stand alone and they have been a treat to read. This last one was introduced by Dennis Lehane and it is a worthy member of that collection.        





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