text: This 12 pound Okeechobee Bass was caught by Tim Ludlasik from Rockford Ill.. Tim and I have fished together several times now, and Tim is very good about sending me new clients and friends. Tim and I fished together several times in January and obviously Tim is a very good student. We talked about what type of cover to look for and what to look for in areas to fish. To make a long story shorter, Tim fished for a couple of weeks on his own out of his houseboat after we fished together twice in January. One sunny afternnoon Tim hit on the mother lode of giant spawning female Bass, he caught an 8 pounder, a 9 1/2 pounder and this giant 12 pound fish in the same afternoon. What a catch!


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Szabo joins Redbirds football staff
NORMAL -- Illinois State football head coach Brock Spack filled one of the openings on his coaching staff Friday when he announced the appointment of defensive coordinator and linebackers coach Steve Szabo.
"I've known Steve for a long time and he was actually the first coach to come by Rockford East High School when I was a junior during the start of my recruiting process," Spack said. "A lot of the things I did as a linebacker coach throughout my career I got from him. Steve has coached at every level possible and wants to help us become a championship football program, which is why we brought him in here."
Szabo replaces former Redbird linebackers coach Jay Peterson, who earlier left the program to assume a similar role at his alma mater Miami (Ohio). Phil Elmassian, who served as the defensive coordinator for the last two seasons, has been named assistant head coach and will continue to work with the ISU secondary.
During a coaching career that has spanned over 40 years, Szabo has coached the defensive line, linebackers and defensive backs at both the college and NFL levels. He has coached in the Super Bowl and in two games where the national collegiate championship was on the line (1980 Rose Bowl and 2007 Rose Bowl).
"The single factor in me coming to Illinois State was the opportunity to work with Brock," Szabo said. "I think the world of him as a person and a coach and have known him for a long time. I would like to do everything I possibly can to help him be successful, because I think he's the epitome of what a college coach should be."
Szabo comes to Illinois State from Eastern Michigan, where he spent the 2009 season as the associate head coach and linebackers coach. He took over that position after spending the 2008 season as the defensive coordinator at Colgate, a Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) program from the Patriot League. In his only season with Colgate, the team won the Patriot League Championship and was the only non-scholarship program to reach the FCS playoffs.
Prior to taking over the defense at Colgate, Szabo served as linebacker coach for two seasons under Lloyd Carr at Michigan. In 2006, the Wolverines were 11-2 and ranked eighth in the country with the top-ranked defense against the rush. During his tenure, four Wolverine linebackers earned all-Big Ten honors, including David Harris who was a Butkus Award semifinalist. Michigan also played USC for the national championship in the 2007 Rose Bowl and participated in the 2008 Capital One Bowl in Szabo's two seasons in Ann Arbor.
Szabo joined the Michigan coaching staff after spending 12 seasons as a coach in the National Football League. He was the defensive backs coach with the Buffalo Bills during the 2004 and 2005 seasons. Prior to his stint in Buffalo, Szabo worked with the New England Patriots during the 2003 season, when they won Super Bowl XXXVIII, and spent eight seasons with the Jacksonville Jaguars (1994-2002). During his time in Jacksonville, he helped the team advance to two AFC Championship games (1996 and 1999) and helped develop Kevin Hardy into a Pro Bowl linebacker in 1999, the same year the Jaguars ranked first in the NFL in scoring defense.
Szabo also has experience running his own program, after serving as head coach at Edinboro for three seasons (1985-87). At Edinboro, he was named coach of the year in the small college division in Western Pennsylvania by the Pittsburgh Press in 1986.
After his head coaching stint at Edinboro, Szabo was the defensive coordinator at Boston College for three seasons (1991-93), helping the Eagles improve to a national ranking in 1993. He also worked for two seasons at Colorado State (1989-90) and one at Missouri Valley Football Conference member Northern Iowa (1988) prior to that and was also was an assistant at Western Michigan, Ohio State, Iowa State, Syracuse, Iowa, Toledo and John Hopkins.
Szabo played his college football at the United States Naval Academy (1961-64), alongside Hall of Fame quarterback Roger Staubach. He participated in the 1964 Cotton Bowl against national champion Texas and also played midfield on three National Championship lacrosse teams at Navy (1963-65), before being stationed in Quantico (1965-69) and serving a year in Vietnam.

subset: commoncrawl


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Much like Becky Chambers, who wrote an amazing article on the new Tomb Raider for "The Mary Sue," I too had conflicting views with Lady Lara Croft. I was seven years old when I came across my first female role model (my mother aside), Lara Croft. Given my age, I didn't really understand the plot of the original Tomb Raider. But what I did know was that I was playing a strong female lead for the first time. From Link, Mario, and Cloud I was always a man rescuing a woman or saving the world… or both. The concept of video games providing predominantly male protagonists never really hit home until I played as Lady Croft for the first time. She made me realize that woman can have a place in the gaming world, and that women were just as capable of saving the world as men were. Lara–as a character–filled my imagination. I bragged about getting to play the game at school and ran around the fields during recess pretending I was being chased by tigers. The school playground became the lost city of Atlantis. She was a girl, like me, and that was all I needed to know to idealize her in my head as a hero.
But as I grew older, my imagination was not enough to sustain Lara's heroic traits in my head. She became one dimensional to me and I could no longer relate to her. Everything from the clothes she wore to her lack of emotional depth made me realize that I needed something else in order to revivify my childhood idol into an adult role model. Sadly, I began to look at Lara as an objectified male sex-symbol rather than a character meant to be cherished for her skills and personality. I continued playing the Tomb Raider games for the love of the puzzles and strategy, but my connection to Lara was gone.
One summer's eve, watching the E3 event for 2012, I saw her. Lara was covered in dirt and blood. She was bandaged up wearing relatively ordinary and practical clothing. Her voice was nervous, desperate, but also resonated with a defiant confidence. I knew this was the Lara I had been waiting for. She is a Lara that defines the complex dimensions of human emotion; a Lara that is flawed but still manages to face adversity. At that point I rushed out of the room and began doing research… this was going to be my game of the year. With my excitement, I was perplexed as to why many people appeared to be concerned with Lara's origin story. Would it simply fit into the rape and revenge trope? Would Crystal Dynamics ruin one of the leading ladies in the gaming industry? Perhaps it is because I am an idealist, but I went into the game in full confidence that it would shine a new light on my old friend, despite the concerning trailers.
I will say that the story of the Tomb Raider reboot could have easily fallen victim to the rape and revenge trope, in which a female character is only empowered by a traumatic event that befalls upon her. However, in my opinion Lara's characterization and development allow the game to dodge it with ease. When I first put in the game I was amazed at my immediate emotional connection to Lara. From the voice acting to the claustrophobic camera angles, I felt like I was living vicariously through her. Both her emotional depth and psychological strength were astounding to me. From the very beginning Lara is an empowering character who remains herself despite what she endures. While her character may evolve throughout her trails, I do not believe her strength is a direct reaction to what is occurring to her. In fact, her skills in extreme adaptability seem to be innate in her personality. It is not revenge that drives her, but the survival of herself and, more importantly, of her friends. Sure, Lara is rather violent towards her adversaries (and getting head-shots with the bow is pretty great) but revenge is not something she is after. There are moments where Lara almost sympathizes with the lack of humanity left in her captors, questioning why they are doing the things they do and asking them to stop. She does not want to spill blood unless she has to… and obviously she ends up having to spill quite a lot of it.
Lara expresses her own flaws in the guilt she feels towards dragging everyone into the chaos on the island in the first place. And we can also see more of her flaws through the fact that she is not loved by everyone in her group. While she is held in high regard by many, Reyes often expresses her annoyances with Lara's actions. But by accepting her own flaws, Lara is not driven or "made better" by revenge, but through the sheer will to survive and the desire for redemption within the love she holds for others. She feels guilt, but that guilt fuels her and establishes her as a relatable character. She may feel angered at the men who are tearing her life apart, but who wouldn't? Whenever Lara's enemies ask her to give up and she replies "…not a chance you bastards," I always find myself beaming in confidence and pride for what she has become. She may complain some about having to climb up a mountain, but she never complies; she is her own. Despite Roth's warning against saving a pilot, she says that she has to; not because others want her to, but because she feels morally obligated on her own accord. Overall, Lara is terrified, exposed in her environment, and desperate. But she is also strong, confident, and merciless in her tenacity for survival. This is a Lara that cannot be objectified. This is Lara that is human. This is a Lara that I can idolize once more… and hopefully this is a glimmer of hope for female role models in the gaming industry for men and women alike.
(Article published on Gameranx.)


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Linux supports a wide variety of hardware nowadays, like modems, net adapters, printers and storage devices.
Do most of them have dedicated drivers for a particular model (provided by the manufacturer or the community) or do most of them work with generic drivers?
For example if I connect a Samsung telephone with modem – does it use Samsung driver that Linux project has put into the kernel or does it work because it's just a standard modem?


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Consultant Biography
Mr Niaz Islam is Consultant Ophthalmic Surgeon (Medical Retina and Cataract Surgery) at Moorfields Eye Hospital London. He graduated from Guy's and St Thomas' Medical School, London in 1996. He trained at Moorfields Eye Hospital London, for 8 years – including two medical retinal fellowships and Locum Consultant (Medical Retina / Uveitis) in 2007.
He was appointed Consultant Ophthalmic surgeon in 2007 and set up the macular degeneration diagnostic and treatment service at Queen's hospital, Essex. He was lead clinician for Havering and Barking & Dagenham diabetic retinopathy screening service. He was educational supervisor and clinical tutor for all Ophthalmic trainees within his NHS hospitals.
In 2012 he was nominated for a National Macular Disease Society Award by patients for excellent service delivery & clinical care. He is a high volume topical anaesthesia cataract surgeon and surgical trainer. He has a passion for education and teaching. He has published over 25 articles in peer-reviewed journals and written book chapters and co-authored "Crash Course in Ophthalmology". As an undergraduate, he was awarded the Charles Oldham Essay Prize for Ophthalmology.
Mr Niaz Islam has a particular interest and experience in retina (age related macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy, anti-VEGF and retinal laser treatment, uveitis) and cataract surgery (monofocal and multifocal intraocular lenses).


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Vol. 27, #2
April 2001
"We can eradicate sociological illiteracy if we take the time to rethink what we are doing."
Robert Wortham at the 2001 Annual Meeting
NCSA President-elect Robert Wortham shared his views on Eradicating Sociological Illiteracy with more than 180 other sociologists who attended the NCSA annual meeting in Durham on Feb. 16. "We can eradicate sociological illiteracy if we take the time to rethink what we are doing," Wortham said.
Sociologists must make structural changes in what they teach and how they teach. Wortham suggested that our best opportunity to reach students is in the introductory or principles course. Sociologists don't like to talk about marketing, he noted, but "we're about marketing."
Students need the tools to understand sociological concepts. Why wait until the end of their undergraduate careers for theory and methods courses? Students need a firm grounding in theory and methods in the principles course, he suggested.
Sociologists must convince students that they need what we offer--marketable skills and insight into social process. Faculty must consider as well how they are perceived by students. Do they see our love and passion for what we do? Wortham also addressed the issue of teachers of entertainers and encouraged the use of creativity to get students' attention.
Finally, eradicating sociological illiteracy must involve changing how the general public perceives the discipline. We must remind the public that we have something important to offer, Wortham concluded.
NCSA Welcomes Guests for the 2001 Meeting
NCSA President Ron Wimberley welcomed
a number of guests. These included Kenneth Spenner, Chair of the Sociology
Department at Duke; Kenneth Land, President of the Southern Sociological
Society; Johnny Underwood, Past-President of the NCCCSPA; and Nan Lin,
Immediate Past Vice-President of the ASA. "North Carolina is truly
the state of sociology," Wimberley proclaimed proudly.
Our Annual Awards Luncheon
At the annual Awards Luncheon, members
of the NCSA posthumously recognized the service of Pat Wyatt of Catawba,
who had served as secretary-treasurer for years before her untimely death
last spring.
Edith Bolick from Catawba College made
the following statement to the assembled members of NCSA at the Awards
I have the privilege of joining you today to recognize the contributions of the late Dr. Pat Rector Wyatt to sociology in North Carolina. I first met Pat 25 years ago. I was fresh out of graduate school and had returned to teach at my alma mater, Catawba College in Salisbury. Pat was my first star student: industrious, bright, reflective. I once told her that before she graduated I would make out a test she couldn't ace, but I never did!The association also presented a Contributions to Sociology Award to Mike Wise of ASU. Catherine Harris of Wake Forest University introduced Mike Wise. Mike Wise did not know he was going to receive a Contributions to Sociology Award and was surprised.
When Pat completed her graduate studies at UNC, she entered the business world. From 1983 to 1991, she rose through the ranks at the Sara Lee Corporation in Winston-Salem, from Assistant Sales Planning Manager, to Director of Sales Planning and Research, to Director of User Services. I was happily surprised when Pat decided to leave Sara Lee to teach at Catawba.
She joined our faculty in 1991. As the newcomer, she had her share of introductory sociology courses. She accepted the challenge of teaching and made Introduction to Sociology and Social Problems two of the most popular courses in our general education curriculum. She was committed to the value of our discipline for students of all majors. Both in the corporate world and in the college setting, Pat did a great deal to combat sociological illiteracy
As a professor, Pat expected the best from her students, and she was the epitome of efficiency, fairness, and impartiality. When I once asked a student to characterize Dr. Wyatt's relationship with her students, he responded, "She treats us with respect."
Pat valued her students' insights as they explored the world of sociology and encouraged them to reflect on its relevance for their academic and personal growth. Pat served as Secretary-Treasurer of the North Carolina Sociological Association from 1992 until her untimely death last spring.
Pat had an enormous impact on the students she taught during her nine years at Catawba. In her quite and unassuming way, she represented our discipline well in the corporate world and in higher education. It is fitting that we honor her today with an award for her outstanding contributions to sociology.
Professor Bolick Presents Award to
Larry Wyatt, in Memory of His Wife Pat
Professor Mike Wise
Christine Dave
Shannon Davis
Davis describes her research as follows:
Much of the previous research
on transitions into parenthood examines factors which affect women becoming
mothers. Little work has examined factors which affect couples' becoming
Using data on married couples collected in the National Survey of Families and Households, I test competing theoretical frameworks, the neo-classical economic approach and the doing gender approach, for their ability to predict the timing of couples' first births. Further, I test whether a combined model including factors from the economic approach and the doing gender approach better describes the process through which married couples decide to become parents.
The results suggest that this combined theoretical approach is the better model for explaining the couples' transitions into parenthood, with both economic factors and measures of each spouse's beliefs about gender affecting the timing of their first marital birth. The finding suggest that the family must be examined as both an economic unit and as a location where men and women enact their beliefs about gender.
After the luncheon more afternoon sessions addressed issues of concern to members of the NCSA.
When students in introductory sociology classes are asked what words come to mind to describe theory, they often respond, "Boring, abstract, and hard."
Steve McNamee told the audience that since students resist theory as a chore, he shifts from theory in itself to theory in us in contemporary society.
"Focus on the issues," he said, "and use theory to make sense of contemporary society."
Among the theoretical topics he suggested that could be used in a contemporary sense were Marx on the consequences of industrialization, Weber on bureaucracies, Durkheim on social integration, and Simmel on postmodernity (real versus not real).
M.E. Hughes emphasized that since scientific inquiry is grounded in observation, sociologists should emphasize methodology, sampling, and research design.
Hughes also suggested that students may find it useful to read good research data and methods in order to dissect them.
Hughes concluded that practical examples and hands-on problem solving do most to engage students in theory and research.
Chien Ju Huang also noted that students perceive theory as not applying to modern times and being about "dead white guys." She suggested that instructors use modern questions to connect to theory and to discuss how to apply it to our society. She uses GSS and telephone interviews in teaching research and recommends SPSS because it is more user friendly. She posts notes on-line for students to read before coming to class.
The annual meeting concluded with a short business meeting. Secretary-treasurer Sue Pauley reported that 82 professionals and 100 students registered for the meeting.
Ron Wimberley announced the results of this year's election. Rick Dixon of UNC Wilmington will serve as president-elect and next year's program chair. New council members include Angela Jones of Elon, Teresa Scheid of UNC Charlotte, and Caroline Whitehead of Craven Community College. The proposed changes and additions to the NCSA constitution concerning replacement of nonperforming officers were passed by the membership.
Changes planned for SOCIATION TODAY, Membership Listings, Listserv, Website
Changes are planned for the way the NCSA publishes its bulletin, SOCIATION TODAY, as well as for how it collects and disseminates information to its members.
At its March 23 meeting, the NCSA Executive Council voted to move in the direction of an electronic journal and newsletter and to seek permission from all new and returning members to list specific contact information about them on its web site.
"This year will be a transition year," explained Lee Dodson, editor of SOCIATION TODAY. "Members will continue to receive a printed version of our bulletin three times a year. Beginning in the year 2002, we will publish an electronic edition of SOCIATION TODAY twice a year on the NCSA website while sending out only one paper edition. The paper edition will contain materials needed to register for the annual meeting, candidate information and ballots for officers." These changes will reduce the cost of printing, mailing and preparation while contributing in some small way to the reduction in the amount of paper crossing members' desks.
Electronic postings may also speed up the movement of announcements and news by reducing the time between an event and its coverage on the web site.
In part because of these changes, the NCSA will rely on its Listserv to contact members with news and announcements. Members will be asked to add their names and contact information for inclusion on the NCSA web site membership listing as well. As membership applications and renewals are returned to the secretary-treasurer, the relevant information will be shared with the Listserv administrator.
Contact information, for those members who give their permission for its use, will be posted on the web site.
These changes will begin to take effect with registration for the 2002 meeting and collection of membership dues and applications for the same year. NCSA members will be asked to give their permission to list the following contact information: name, institutional affiliation, e-mail address, and phone. Members may chose which information, if any, they want posted on the NCSA web site. Members who provide e-mail addresses will be added to the NCSA Listserv. Members of the NCSA Executive Council tentatively plan to continue publishing the paper directory of members' names, addresses and contact information, at least for another year. The membership directory has been published every other year for the last six years.
A new edition is due out for the 2002 meeting. If you have comments or questions about these proposed changes, please contact any member of the NCSA Executive Council (names and contact information on the web, or use the Listserv to share your concerns with those members who subscribe to this service.
Graduate Programs Emphasize Finding Compatible Areas of Interest
Representatives from NC State University, UNC Greensboro, Fayetteville State University, Duke, UNC Charlotte, Appalachian State University, and North Carolina Central University were present at the North Carolina Sociological Association's 2001 meeting to give information about their respective graduate school programs and to field any questions attendees may have.
Panelists told what degrees and specializations are offered at their institution and what makes their program unique. However, in the midst of all the institution specific information, a general consensus formed among the speakers.
Every single representative emphasized that students need to make sure they are applying to a school that is compatible with their area of interest. In other words, do not bother applying to a school that does not have a strong demography curriculum when that is where your main interest lies. You cannot expect to be happy or successful in a program where your interests and theirs do not match.
Do some research to find out which schools cater to your interest. Become knowledgeable about a school's specialties, degrees offered, entrance standards, faculty dynamic and size of program before applying. Once you decide what programs meet your standards it is time to apply and let them know you meet theirs. Each school has its own idiosyncrasies surrounding the application process but for the most part they all look at the same traits in their applicants.
Quantitative standards are evaluated by GRE scores and GPAs. Recommendation letters are also looked at as part of the application. The panelists made sure to point out to get recommendations from professors who really know you well. Do not just ask someone who had you in class once. Also make sure you give them ample time to write the letter for you. Writing samples proved to be weighted heavily in every graduate school program present. They want to see how well you can communicate and how well you mesh with their program. Finally the panel emphasized applying early, especially if you want to be considered for any form of financial aid. Other words of advice from the panel were to take your theory, methods and statistics courses very seriously. These courses are closely look at during the application process.
Panelists also recommended utilizing their school web site. There you can find all the details about their program along with faculty contact information. Use the contact information to start a dialogue with a faculty member from programs you are interested in. Seek further information and assistance and to distinguish yourself from other applicants.
Here Are Some Tips about Pursuing a Career in Sociology
by Cathy Coker,
Elon College
Students and job seekers received some practical advice from career counselors, professors, and state government employee about pursuing careers in sociology at the NCSA's annual meeting in Durham. The theme of the session could be described as "thinking outside the box."
The career opportunities for sociology majors are endless. You do not have to remain in the traditionally prescribed teaching and social work professions. However, no matter what career path you choose you need to know how to market yourself.
To "think outside the box" when you are searching for a job, you must not limit yourself to looking for jobs that specifically ask for sociology degrees. Instead look for jobs for which you have the skills.
Panelists strongly emphasized the word skills over and over in their presentation because employers are no longer looking for just certain types of majors. They want employees with skills.
This is extremely beneficial for sociology majors because they can offer an array of skills. Sociologists have extensive backgrounds in research, communication (written and oral), and they "know" people. These characteristics are valuable in any field, which is why sociologists have begun to be employed marketing, government careers, film, etc.
Employers want to see how you have fine-tuned and used your skills during you collegiate career. Careful preparation of a strong resume will help present a favorable view of your skills. Employers want to see a balanced student--someone who not only excelled scholastically but who also demonstrated active involvement in organizations at school or in the community. Employers want to see a happy medium of the academic achievement (GPA) and social and community involvement.
The panel also had suggestions on interviewing for jobs. They suggested making a one minute "infomercial" about yourself.
Always be prepared to tell why you are a sociology major, what you can bring to their institution, basically what skills you have and how you have used them. This can be used in formal interviews or just casual networking.
The general population is still automatically classifying sociologist as social workers, which is not a bad thing if that is what field you want to pursue. However, if that is not the case, you have to educate others that you are capable of doing just about anything and that they can only benefit from having a sociologist in their corner.
The panelist warned students about saying "I want to help people," or "I like to work with people." While this may be true, employers hear this all too often and it becomes meaningless. Instead, once again, emphasize to your skills. The job search may be discouraging at times. The panel also addressed this issue.
They advised students to have a plan B or C, a fall-back plan in case the first one doesn't work. Sociologists have the qualifications that are very job transferable. Also one of the best ways to get employed is to be employed. In other words do not stay out of the work force while you are searching for a job. Go to a temporary agency and get a job or do volunteer work.
It does not matter what the job is; this is just get to something to show employers that you are qualified. Panelists emphasized talking to your career services center on your campus. They have more information and assistance than you think and can help you get your foot in the door (or even more than one door).
Attention Graduating Seniors, Major Advisors, and Professors!
Please remember that outstanding papers by undergraduate and graduate students may be considered for the Himes Award next year. You may submit any papers written this spring to be considered for the 2002 awards. For more information, please contact Steve McNamee at 910-962-3421.
See back issues of Sociation Today
Return to the Home Page
The Sociology of North Carolina Postings
See More Pictures from the NCSA Meeting 2001 in Durham


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No documents found.
We can now offer club t-shirts and polo shirts available in a range of colours, sporting the DHPC logo on the front and a copy of Steve Ham's brilliant illustration on the back.
Visit the shop »
Showing 11 - 20 of 147 Articles | Page 2 of 15


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New Jersey police have opposed the release of Sundiata Acoli, who killed a state trooper more than 40 years ago, since he became eligible for parole in 1992
A former Black Panther who turns 80 next month has been denied release from prison and ordered to wait 15 years before seeking freedom again.
Sundiata Acoli is serving a life sentence for the 1973 murder of a New Jersey state trooper during a shootout in which Assata Shakur was also arrested. Shakur escaped in 1979 and fled to Cuba, where she was granted political asylum.
New Jersey state police have actively opposed Acolis release since he first became eligible for parole in 1992. But the decision still shocked his supporters.
This is a punch to the gut, said Soffiyah Elijah, an attorney who represented Acoli for decades and visited him days before he learned of his latest denial on 21 November.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/29/black-panther-sundiata-acoli-murder-denied-release-prison


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In a library collection as deep as the one at The Huntington, it's not unusual for scholars to encounter items that propel them on new paths of research. That's what happened recently to The Huntington's 2015–16 Los Angeles Times Distinguished Fellow, Shirley R. Samuels, when she examined an extra-illustrated copy of a 19th-century book of poetry by actress Adah Isaacs Menken (1835–1868) and was surprised to see almost 100 images of Menken among its pages. Here are excerpts from a discussion with Samuels, a professor of English at Cornell University and the author of several books, including The Cambridge Companion to Abraham Lincoln and Reading the American Novel: 1780–1865.
Q: Who was Adah Isaacs Menken?
A: In the 19th century, Menken was a household name. She was an actress with an outsized personality who had caused a sensation for her role in a play called Mazeppa, based on a poem by the English romantic poet Lord Byron. In the poem, a Ukranian gentleman, Mazeppa, has an affair with the young wife of a count. The count punishes Mazeppa by tying him naked to a horse and letting the horse run wild. In performances from New York to London, Menken played Mazeppa, riding a real horse on stage and wearing a body stocking that made her appear nude. The cross-dressing and nudity created a scandal, further amplified by tabloid news that proclaimed Menken had been married at least five times, possibly bigamously. Her last name came from her second husband, Alexander Isaac Menken, a musician from a prominent Jewish family. Menken would later claim she had been born Jewish, though questions remain about her true origins.
Q: Tell us about the book you found.
A: The book is called Infelicia (1868) and contains 31 of her poems. Menken wanted to be known as a writer, but most people recognized her as an actress. She was tied romantically to the writers Algernon Charles Swinburne and Alexandre Dumas (père), and she hobnobbed with many literary icons, including Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, and Charles Dickens—to whom she dedicated her book of poetry. But it was not until shortly after her tragically early death, at age 33 (probably of tuberculosis), that her poems were published.
Q: Infelicia was in print up until 1902. What is so unusual about The Huntington's copy that you examined?
A: I came upon the book while doing research on several women leading lives that were outside of the typical roles for women at the time. Menken was one of them. A librarian directed me to this copy. Inserted into its pages were almost 100 images of Menken by celebrity photographer Napolean Sarony (1821–1896). They showed Menken as the barely dressed Mazeppa, as Lola Montez with a fan, and as a man in a sword-fighting duel. The photos were outlandish—but I was more intrigued by who had put them there.
Q: What's your hunch about who included the photos, and how did you arrive at this conclusion?
A: I feel convinced that this was a loving tribute to Menken, created by celebrated theatrical entrepreneur Augustin Daly (1838–1899). The Huntington purchased the volume at a 1900 estate sale of Daly's. Inside the volume was a letter to Daly in Menken's hand. "I write in memory of one of the pleasantest incidents of my life—our old acquaintanceship," Menken wrote. I also learned that Daly was known to have collected photographs of famous actors, many of them taken by the same Sarony. Menken's letter implores Daly to write to her. I have no way of knowing whether he acted on her invitation.
Q: What about her poems? Were they as scandalous as her personality?
A: The poems in Infelicia (meaning "unhappiness") are full of passion and carefully staged. Her yearning for an identity commensurate with her personality appears, for example, in the poem "Judith," recounting the Bible story of the Book of Judith, in which the beautiful widow seduces and then beheads the Assyrian general Holofernes, saving Judith's city of Bethulia. In Menken's poem, the speaker appears with "the strong throat all hot and reeking with blood" and ends by declaring, "Oh forget not that I am Judith/And I know where sleeps Holofernes." Clearly, this voice needed to be heard.
Q: The last image included in The Huntington's copy of Infelicia was an engraving of Menken's tomb. What do you make of it?
A: I believe the image is a testament to this tragic young life cut short. In the last years of her life, Menken had been living and performing in London and Paris. She fell ill while in London, ending her acting career. She moved back to Paris and worked on preparing her poems for publication. She didn't live long enough to see the book in print. She died in Paris on August 10, 1868, and was buried in Montparnasse Cemetery. Infelicia was published several days later.
On her tomb are the words "Thou Knowest." They make me wish I knew even more about this complex, fascinating woman.
You can read the Verso post "Reading the Aftermath of War" by Shirley Samuels here.
You can download the lecture "Looking at Lincoln" by Shirley Samuels here or listen to it on iTunes U.
Diana W. Thompson is senior writer for the office of communications and marketing at The Huntington.


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Friday, August 21, 2009
He called me up when he was there, and asked, "blue and red or green and yellow?" I happened to be wearing this dress, so I said green and yellow. This fabric arrived when he did and I love it! The dots are about 2" in diameter. Cute.
You will also notice he got me some cool 1 1/2" buttons, and yes, a cover buckle kit!
Here it is up close:
You can order several shapes and sizes at Maxant Button & Supply.
You, and I, and everyone else out there can cover our own buckles easily. Yeah man! That was the option I was hoping for from my previous post.
Enjoy ladies, and tell everyone you know about this wonderful discovery.
8 comments:
- MiriamFashion said...
super dressss
- August 25, 2009 at 2:41 AM
- Jean said...
Hi T, I am a huge fan of your work and style! I am not much of a sewer but I want to try it out. I really like your dress form. Could you tell me where to get one like it? Thanks!
- August 28, 2009 at 4:53 PM
- Sugardale said...
Hello Jean,
That is actually just a mannequin not a dress form. I got it used at this place called Farkas fixtures in San Diego. I am not sure if you actually want a dress form (which can get pretty expensive) or a mannequin. Farkas sells online at:
Hope that helps.
- August 31, 2009 at 2:20 PM
- Pam said...
I have been looking for covered buckle kits for years. I've scored a few on Etsy, but hadn't found a contemporary seller. Thank you for the link!
- August 31, 2009 at 11:26 PM
- Jean said...
Thanks! I'll check it out. Is yours similar to your size?
- September 4, 2009 at 1:35 PM
- Badly Behaved Better Dressed said...
Thanks for this posting about self-covered belts. I've been an admirer of your blog (from afar) for a while, and I really enjoy your work. But I have to say, where have you been for the last little while? I'd really enjoy some new updates from you! (Strange place to leave a comment concerning that, since it's not your latest, but oh well.)
Question: Do you think that you could just make this in a sash-style if you leave out the little metal prong/eyelets? Sort of a tuck under/over thing? Not really sure how to describe it.
- January 16, 2010 at 3:16 PM
- celeste said...
Thank you for sharing this info!!!
Beautiful work and great workspace :)
- February 13, 2010 at 8:47 PM
- Tj said...
Thanks for the info on the covered buckles! I had big smile on while reading your post-my patner's in Japan right now and yesterday he sent me picture of fabric he picked up for me (so I can get the patterns decided before he gets back =). It is such a nice a thing to do isn't it?
- February 6, 2012 at 6:53 PM


text:
Who was the first of the great Trojan Champions to go down before the onset of Patroklos? The first was Sarpedon who had come with an army to help Hector from a City beyond Troy. He saw the Myrmidons fight round the ships and break the ranks of the Trojans and quench the fire on the half-burnt ship. He saw that the warrior who had the appearance of Achilles affrighted the Trojans so that they turned their horses' heads towards the City. The Myrmidons swept on with Patroklos at their head. Now when he saw him rushing down from the ships Sarpedon threw a dart at Patroklos. The dart did not strike him. Then Patroklos flung a spear and struck Sarpedon even at the heart. He fell dead from his chariot and there began a battle for his body—the Trojans would have carried it into the City, so that they might bury with all honour the man who had helped them, and the Greeks would have carried it away, so that, having his body and his armour, the slaying of Sarpedon might be more of a triumph for them.'
'So a battle for his body went on. Now Sarpedon's comrade, Glaukos, sought out Hector, who was fighting in another part of the battle-field, and he spoke to him reproachfully. "Hector," he said, "art thou utterly forgetful of those who came from their own country to help thee to protect thy father's City? Sarpedon has fallen, and Achilles' Myrmidons would strip him of his armour and bring his body to the ships that their triumph over him may be greater still. Disgraceful will it be to thee, Hector, if they win that triumph."'
'Hector, when this was said to him, did not delay, but came straight to the spot where Sarpedon had been slain. The Greek who had laid hands upon the body he instantly slew. But as he fought on it suddenly seemed to Hector that the gods had resolved to give victory to the Greeks, and his spirit grew weary and hopeless within him. He turned his horses' heads towards the City and galloped from the press of battle. Then the Trojans who were fighting round it fled from the body of Sarpedon, and the Greeks took it and stripped it of its armour and carried the body to their ships.'
'It was then that Patroklos forgot the command of Achilles—the command that he was not to bring the battle beyond the ships and that he was to return when the Trojans were beaten towards their City. Patroklos forgot all that, and he shouted to the immortal horses, Xanthos and Balios, that drew his chariot, and, slaying warrior after warrior he swept across the plain and came to the very gates of Troy.'
'Now Hector was within the gates and had not yet left his chariot. Then there came and stood before him one who was thought to be the god Apollo, but who then had the likeness of a mortal man. "Hector," said he, "why hast thou ceased from the fight? Behold, Patroklos is without the gate of thy father's City. Turn thy horses against him now and strive to slay him, and may the gods give thee glory."'


text:
Canada- Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's office said he talked to U.S. President Donald Trump today about his administration's decision to investigate auto imports as a threat to national security, a day after Trudeau said the idea was based on flimsy logic.
Trudeau spoke with Trump by phone, according to a readout from the Prime Minister's Office. The PMO said the two leaders also discussed bringing North American Free Trade Agreement negotiations to a "timely conclusion."
"The prime minister also raised strong concerns about the U.S.'s section 232 investigation on automobile imports, given the mutually beneficial integration of the Canadian and American auto industries," the readout said.
A White House statement on the call turned out to be much briefer, mentioning only that the two leaders spoke about ongoing NAFTA talks.
"President Donald J. Trump spoke today with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada about the North American Free Trade Agreement and other trade and economic issues," the statement said.
On Wednesday evening, the White House issued a statement saying U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross was initiating an investigation under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 to determine "whether imports of automobiles and automotive parts threaten to impair" U.S. national security.
"There is evidence suggesting that, for decades, imports from abroad have eroded our domestic auto industry," said Ross in a statement.
The investigation will look at the impact of imports of automobiles, SUVs light trucks and auto parts.
Section 232 was the section Trump used to slap tariffs on steel and aluminum imports back in March. This week's notice did not single out any country or automotive brand asTrudeau reacts to Trump's investigation of the auto industry.
Responding to the move Thursday, Trudeau said he could not understand the basis for the investigation.
"I am — even more than I was with steel and aluminum — trying to figure out where a possible national security connection is," Trudeau told Reuters. "Taking that a step further into autos seems to me to be on even flimsier logical grounds.
"But we know that this is very much linked to ongoing negotiations around moving forward on NAFTA."
U.S. tariffs could cause chaos for a Canadian auto industry that is heavily integrated between Canada, Mexico and the United States. Canada is home to major plants operated by General Motors, Ford, Fiat Chrysler, Honda and Toyota.
Congress originally set a deadline of May 17 for reaching a new NAFTA agreement, saying it needed the time to conduct a proper analysis of the deal before the midterm elections.
House Speaker Paul Ryan later walked back that statement, suggesting a more flexible deadline might be possible.


text:
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Brief Synopsis
As darkness descends over the flatlands of West Texas, every Friday EVENING, from September through December, a dazzling, disorienting glow, visible on the stark horizon for miles around, ignites the blackened sky. Looming over the landscape, Ratliff Stadium, the country''s biggest high school football field, overflows with 20,000 spectators, their voices raised in the trademark chant: "MO-JO! MO-JO! MO-JO!" The crowd''s jubilation rises to a fever pitch as the Permian Panthers--Odessa''s "boys in black"--take to the field like warriors in an ancient coliseum. Once a week during the fall, this town and its dreams are carried on the padded shoulders of these young gridiron heroes. The exalted players are illuminated beneath the autumnal glare of those Friday night lights; the radiant glare serves as a beacon of hope to the townsfolk of this dusty West Texas town. Since their first season in 1959, the Panthers established themselves as the most successful football program, not only in Texas, but in the entire country. Now, in the last days of summer of 1988, the Permian High School Panthers begin the season with one thing on their minds--winning their fifth straight championship in their thirty-year team history. For their coach, Gary Gaines, it all comes down to his definition of perfection: "Being perfect is about being able to look your friends in the eye and know you didn''t let them down. I want you to put each other in your hearts forever--because forever is about to happen. Can you live in that moment as best you can, with clear eyes, with love and joy in your heart? If you can do that, then you''re perfect."
In Odessa, Texas in August of 1988, the Permian High School Panthers football team, headed by Coach Gary Gaines, is under intense pressure to reach and win the state championship. All of Odessa is focused on high school football, showering the team with money, attention, devotion and the concurrent obligation to win at all costs. As pre-season begins, the team is confident, despite the players' overall small size, because of the skill of their star tailback, James "Boobie" Miles. Boobie, arrogant and charismatic, sees football as his ticket out of small-town Texas, and basks in his many college scholarship offers. Even the team's practices are crowded with talent scouts and fans, including Boobie's adoring uncle L. V. and Charles Billingsley, the father of starting tailback Don. Charlie is a former champion Panther who is disappointed in what he sees as his son's inability to stand up to pressure. After one uninspired practice, Don brings a girl home, where his drunken father duct-tapes a football to his hands and beats him. The team's talented quarterback, Mike Winchell, is shy and insecure despite his skill, and is further hampered by his dedication to his chronically ill mother. The man under the most scrutiny, however, is Gaines, who knows he will be forced to move out of town if the team does not succeed, and who stoically accepts the "advice" and vague threats of the town's rabid fans. The whole town attends the first Friday night game, during which Boobie dominates. When they have a comfortable lead, Gaines replaces Boobie with second-string, junior tailback Chris Comer, but the rookie cannot find his helmet and so Gaines returns Boobie to the field. When Boobie is hit, he crumbles, and although the doctor fears he has torn a ligament, an injury that would keep him from playing and possibly ruin his entire future in football, Gaines tells the team not to worry. Without Boobie, the team loses the next game 49-6, and the fans, who blame the coach for Boobie's injury, admonish him to come up with a new plan to win. Gaines exhorts Mike, who feels acutely the burden of fame, to put aside the anxiety of caring for his mother and "get the job done," promising him that if he accepts the challenge, he can be exceptional. The team next plays Cooper, and although at first the rival team advances, when Comer gets the ball, he proves to be a lightning-fast runner and invigorates his teammates. After the win, Boobie goes to the Midland hospital, where he refuses to accept the doctor's recommendation that he recuperate further, and instead lies to Gaines that he is capable of playing. The next game is against arch-rival Midland Lee, and if the Panthers win, they will go on to the state championship playoffs. When Midland is winning by seven with only minutes to go, Gaines bows to coercion and puts Boobie in the game, but the boy is immediately tackled and collapses in pain, his knee crushed. The team rallies under Mike's direction, but they lose in the last seconds. On the way home, Charlie drunkenly kicks out the car windows, excoriates his son and tosses his championship ring out of the car. At the same time, Mike tells Gaines that he feels cursed, and the coach replies that all curses are self-imposed. Because there is a three-way tie for first place, Permian, Cooper and Midland hold a tense coin toss to determine which two teams will go on the playoffs, and Cooper loses. The next morning, Charlie apologizes to Don, explaining that he knows firsthand that this year of glory is all there is to life. Don hands his father his ring and walks away in silence. Soon after, Boobie collects his gear from the locker room, and although he affects his customary cocky attitude, in the car with L. V. he breaks down, sobbing that football is all he has. Permian enters the playoffs, and as they win each game on their roster, so does Dallas-Carter, an all-black, powerhouse of a team. When the two teams are ready to compete for the championship, the coaches gather to discuss the logistics, and the Dallas managers, concerned about racial tension, insist on a neutral stadium and a mixed-race referee staff. They agree to play in the Houston Astrodome, and as the bus leaves to drive there, Boobie arrives, on crutches, and asks to accompany them. The game, which for most of the players marks the climax and conclusion of their football careers, begins, with Dallas taking an early lead. The burly players dominate the Panthers, who return to the locker room for halftime. There, Ivory Christian, typically a quiet, religious boy, delivers a rousing speech, after which Gaines announces that his constant admonition to be "perfect" refers not to whether or not they win but whether or not they extend their strongest effort. Entreating them to think of Boobie, Gaines tells the boys that they are in his heart. The team returns to the field with renewed vigor, lead by a dynamic Mike. A series of spectacular plays put the winning touchdown in their grasp, and with two minutes to go, they move the ball to a mere four inches from the end zone. Gaines calls a special play and Mike, who has been hit repeatedly by Dallas' defense, struggles to maintain his strength. The entire audience rises to their feet when Mike takes control of the ball and scrambles down the field. As the bell signals the end of the game, he lunges for the end zone, missing by inches. The team, as well as the town, is devastated. On the field, Charlie embraces his son, slipping his championship ring onto Don's finger. The next day, as the boys gather their gear and take their final leave of the Permian locker room, Gaines begins to prepare the next year's football roster, unaware that the 1989 team, led by Comer, will have an undefeated season and take the state championship trophy.
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|World premiere in Los Angeles: 6 Oct 2004
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A Brian Grazer Production; A Peter Berg Film
DVD from Universal
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|Universal Pictures, Imagine Entertainment
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text:
One thing that will you most certainly face at some time as a DBA is dealing with deadlocks. A deadlock occurs when two processes are trying to update the same record or set of records, but the processing is done in a different order and therefore SQL Server selects one of the processes as a deadlock victim and rolls back the statements.
You have two sessions that are updating the same data, session 1 starts a transaction updates table A and then session 2 starts a transaction and updates table B and then updates the same records in table A.
Session 1 then tries to update the same records in table B. At this point it is impossible for the transactions to be committed, because the data was updated in a different order and SQL Server selects one of the processes as a deadlock victim.
To further illustrate how deadlocks work you can run the following code in the Northwind database.
To create a deadlock you can issue commands similar to the commands below.
--open a query window (1) and run these commands
begin tran
update products set supplierid = 2
-- open another query window (2) and run these commands
begin tran
update employees set firstname = 'Bob'
update products set supplierid = 1
-- go back to query window (1) and run these commands
update employees set firstname = 'Greg'
At this point SQL Server will select one of the process as a deadlock victim and roll back the statement
--issue this command in query window (1) to undo all of the changes
--go back to query window (2) and run these commands to undo changes
Steps to capture dead lock information into error log file
1. Enable trace flag 1204
2. Create the event alert for the error number 1205 so that it should send response to required operator.
Capturing deadlocks with Profiler
a. Start à Run à Profiler
b. Go to File menu à New Trace
c. Select Server Name
d. Click on Options
e. Connect to a database = Browse Server
f. Yes
g. Select Northwind (required database)
h. OK
i. Connect
j. Enter Trace Name: Northwind_DeadLocks_Trace
k. Use the Template : Tuning
l. Select checkbox – Save to File à Save
m. Select "Events Selection" tab
n. Select checkbox – Show all events
o. Under Locks node select DeadLock graph and DeadLock chain
p. Run
q. Go to SSMS à Run the above queries
--open a query window (1) and run these commands
begin tran
update products set supplierid = 2
-- open another query window (2) and run these commands
begin tran
update employees set firstname = 'Bob'
update products set supplierid = 1
-- go back to query window (1) and run these commands
update employees set firstname = 'Greg'
At this point SQL Server will select one of the process as a deadlock victim and roll back the statement
r. Stop trace in Profiler
s. Under Event Class click on Dead Lock graph
Each user session might have one or more tasks running on its behalf where each task might acquire or wait to acquire a variety of resources. The following types of resources can cause blocking that could result in a deadlock.
- Locks. Waiting to acquire locks on resources, such as objects, pages, rows, metadata, and applications can cause deadlock. For example, transaction T1 has a shared (S) lock on row r1 and is waiting to get an exclusive (X) lock on r2. Transaction T2 has a shared (S) lock on r2 and is waiting to get an exclusive (X) lock on row r1. This results in a lock cycle in which T1 and T2 wait for each other to release the locked resources.
- Worker threads. A queued task waiting for an available worker thread can cause deadlock. If the queued task owns resources that are blocking all worker threads, a deadlock will result. For example, session S1 starts a transaction and acquires a shared (S) lock on row r1 and then goes to sleep. Active sessions running on all available worker threads are trying to acquire exclusive (X) locks on row r1. Because session S1 cannot acquire a worker thread, it cannot commit the transaction and release the lock on row r1. This results in a deadlock.
- Memory. When concurrent requests are waiting for memory grants that cannot be satisfied with the available memory, a deadlock can occur. For example, two concurrent queries, Q1 and Q2, execute as user-defined functions that acquire 10MB and 20MB of memory respectively. If each query needs 30MB and the total available memory is 20MB, then Q1 and Q2 must wait for each other to release memory, and this results in a deadlock.
- Parallel query execution-related resources Coordinator, producer, or consumer threads associated with an exchange port may block each other causing a deadlock usually when including at least one other process that is not a part of the parallel query. Also, when a parallel query starts execution, SQL Server determines the degree of parallelism, or the number of worker threads, based upon the current workload. If the system workload unexpectedly changes, for example, where new queries start running on the server or the system runs out of worker threads, then a deadlock could occur.
- Multiple Active Result Sets (MARS) resources. These resources are used to control interleaving of multiple active requests under MARS
- User resource. When a thread is waiting for a resource that is potentially controlled by a user application, the resource is considered to be an external or user resource and is treated like a lock.
- Session mutex. The tasks running in one session are interleaved, meaning that only one task can run under the session at a given time. Before the task can run, it must have exclusive access to the session mutex.
- Transaction mutex. All tasks running in one transaction are interleaved, meaning that only one task can run under the transaction at a given time. Before the task can run, it must have exclusive access to the transaction mutex.
All of the resources listed in the section above participate in the Database Engine deadlock detection scheme. Deadlock detection is performed by a lock monitor thread that periodically initiates a search through all of the tasks in an instance of the Database Engine. The following points describe the search process:
- The default interval is 5 seconds.
- If the lock monitor thread finds deadlocks, the deadlock detection interval will drop from 5 seconds to as low as 100 milliseconds depending on the frequency of deadlocks.
- If the lock monitor thread stops finding deadlocks, the Database Engine increases the intervals between searches to 5 seconds.
- If a deadlock has just been detected, it is assumed that the next threads that must wait for a lock are entering the deadlock cycle. The first couple of lock waits after a deadlock has been detected will immediately trigger a deadlock search rather than wait for the next deadlock detection interval. For example, if the current interval is 5 seconds, and a deadlock was just detected, the next lock wait will kick off the deadlock detector immediately. If this lock wait is part of a deadlock, it will be detected right away rather than during next deadlock search.
To help minimize deadlocks:
- Access objects in the same order.
- Avoid user interaction in transactions.
- Keep transactions short and in one batch.
- Use a lower isolation level.
- Use a row versioning-based isolation level.
- Set READ_COMMITTED_SNAPSHOT database option ON to enable read-committed transactions to use row versioning.
- Use snapshot isolation.
- Use bound connections.


text:
The Devil Amongst the Lawyers: A Ballad Novel
Each day is a journey, and the journey itself home.
--- matsuo bashō
Two hours west of Washington, Henry Jernigan finally gave up on his book. This Mr. John Fox, Jr., might have been a brilliant author --- although personally he doubted it --- but the clattering of the train shook the page so much that he found himself reading the same tiresome line over and over until his head began to ache. The November chill seemed to seep through the sides of the railroad car, and even in his leather gloves and overcoat, he did not feel warm.
He thought of taking a fortifying nip of brandy from the silver flask secreted in his coat pocket, but he was afraid of depleting his supply, when he was by no means sure that he could obtain another bottle in the benighted place that was his destination. Prohibition had been repealed eighteen months ago, but he had heard that some of these backwoods places still banned liquor by local ordinance. He repressed a shudder. Imagine trying to live in such a place, sober.
A man lay dead in some one-horse town in the mountains of southwest Virginia. Well, what of it?
The only thing that made death interesting was the details.
In point of fact, the death of a stranger no longer interested Henry Jernigan at all. In all his years on the job he had seen too many permutations of death to take much of an interest anymore, but even if the emotion was lacking, the skill to recount it was still there in force. Jernigan would supply the telling particulars of the story; his readers could furnish the tears. All that really mattered to him these days was a decent dinner, a clean and quiet place to sleep, and a flask of spirits to insulate him from the tedium of it all.
He brushed a speck of cigar ash from the sleeve of his black wool coat. Henry Jernigan may have been sent to the back of beyond by an unfeeling philistine editor, but by god that didn't mean he had to go there looking like a yokel. True, his starched linen shirt was sweaty and rumpled from the vicissitudes of a crowded winter train ride, and his shoes, hand-stitched leather from a cobbler in Baltimore, glistened with mud and coal grit, but he fancied that the essential worth of his wardrobe, and thus of himself, would shine through the shabbiness of the suit and the dust of the road. Henry Jernigan was a gentleman. A gentleman of the press, perhaps, but still a gentleman.
He looked without favor at the book in his lap, and with a sigh he closed it, marking his place only because he was reading Fox's novel for research, not for pleasure. After sixty interminable pages he had begun to think of the book as "The Trail of the Loathsome Pine," a quip he planned to spring on his colleagues as soon as he met up with them. At last winter's trial in New Jersey, clever but ugly Rose Hanelon had made a similar play on words with a Gene Stratton Porter title. When the family governess had committed suicide, Rose took to referring to her as the "Girl of the Lindbergh-Lost."
No doubt Rose was on her way here, as well. He thought of going to look for her on his way to the dining car when it was closer to dinnertime. At least one need not lack for civilized conversation, even in the hinterlands.
He knew all the big wheels on the major papers, of course. The places changed, but the faces and the greasy diner food stayed the same, no matter where they went. He didn't see those smug jackals from the New York Journal American, though. That was odd. The word was that the Hearst syndicate had paid for an exclusive on this trial, so he had expected to see their people. Either they had already arrived, or they had what they needed and went home, relying on local stringers to send them the facts of the trial.
Henry's paper seemed ready to fight them for dominance of the story, though. They had even assigned one of the World Telegram photographers to accompany him to this godforsaken place.
Rose Hanelon of the Herald Tribune would be here, though. Henry was fond of Rose. While technically she was a competitor, they got along well, and he flattered himself that his serious readers and the sentimental followers of her sob sister columns were worlds apart, so that, in fact, no rivalry existed. He even looked the other way when Rose slipped Shade Baker a few bucks to take photos for her, too.
The brotherhood of the Fourth Estate: it was as close to a family as Henry had these days. He went back to thinking up clever epigrams to entertain Shade and Rose at dinner.
They never printed their heartless little jests, of course. Mustn't disillusion their readers, who saw them as omnipotent and benevolent deities meddling in the affairs of mortals. At least, Henry liked to think his readers imagined him in such an exalted position, if only for a few fleeting hours before they wrapped the potato peels in his newspaper column, or set it down on the kitchen floor for the new puppy. Sic transit gloria mundi.
The train clattered on, and he stared out at the barren fields edged by a forest of skeletal trees. In just such a landscape, the broken body of a child had been unearthed.
Now that had been a story. A golden-haired baby kidnapped . . . Father a dashing pilot, who gained worldwide celebrity as the first man to fly nonstop across the Atlantic . . . Mother an ambassador's daughter . . . Frantic searches . . . Ransom demands, and then all hopes dashed when the child's remains were found in nearby woods in a shallow grave . . . that story had everything. Wealth, culture, celebrity, tragedy, and since it had all happened in New Jersey, a comfortable distance from Washington and New York, the reporters had been able to make excursions back to the city.
That had been the perfect assignment. All of them thought so. A case that transfixed the world, enough drama and glamour to sell a year's worth of newspapers, all set in a civilized locale convenient for the national press. And for a grand finale: the execution of the guilty man, a foreigner --- a detested German --- who had been caught with the ransom money hidden in his garage. If they had invented the tale out of whole cloth, they couldn't have done better.
In this case they wouldn't be so lucky. This time a backwoods coal miner had got his head bashed in, and because the culprit --- or the defendant, anyhow --- was a beautiful, educated girl, the newspaper editors thought that Mr. and Mrs. America would eat it up. Provided, of course, it was served to them in a palatable stew of sex, drama, and exotic local color. Henry Jernigan was just the chef to concoct this tasty dish.
He directed his gaze out the window, hoping to soothe the pain in his temples with the calming effect of the austere view: more brown, empty fields, bare hillsides of leafless trees, and beyond that the distant haze of blue mountains, indistinguishable from the low- lying clouds at the horizon.
In the stubbled ruin of a cornfield, he saw a ragged scarecrow swaying in the wind, which summoned to mind a favorite verse from the Japanese poet Bashō: "A weathered skeleton in windswept fields of memory . . ." He looked around at his fellow passengers, bundled up in drab clothes, sleeping or staring off into space. Surely he was the only person present conversant with the works of Bashō. Yes, once Henry Jernigan had possessed a soul above the cheap pratings of a tabloid newspaper, and in his cups he still could quote from memory the masters of literature from Li Po to Cervantes. But what good had it done him?
Scarecrows in dead land.
The chiaroscuro vista sweeping past him only succeeded in further quelling his spirits. Jernigan hoped he liked the countryside as much as the next man, but as a city-dweller born and bred, he preferred nature in cultivated moderation: a nice arboretum, for example. This temperate jungle spread out before him, tangled underbrush and dense forest, hedged by dark, forbidding mountains, simply reinforced his belief that he was leaving civilization. At least, he was leaving single malt scotch and the Paris-trained chefs of Manhattan's restaurants, which amounted to the same thing.
It was the fault of Mr. John Fox, Jr., that he was on this journey in the first place --- all the more reason to loathe the man's book. Still, he would persevere, hoping that if he kept reading, the text might provide him with a few wisps of atmosphere to spice up the story he would have to write. The book, first published in 1908 and popular again now only because of the film currently being made of it, took place in the 1890s, but surely nothing had changed around here in the ensuing four decades. Besides, where else could you turn for a primer on the backwoods culture of the Southern mountains? He needed some telling details, a few quaint folk customs, some strands of irony to elevate the sordid little tale to the level of tragedy.
Details were Henry Jernigan's specialty. Well, all of their specialties, really. Each of his colleagues-cum-rivals, all of whom were probably holed up somewhere on this interminable train, had his own forte in transforming an ordinary account of human vice and folly into an epic saga that would sell newspapers. Jernigan's own skill lay in framing an incident in the classical perspective, so that every jilted lover was a thwarted Romeo, every murdered wife a Desdemona. He regaled his readers with his cultural observations, making allusions to historical parallels and literary counterparts, working in a telling quote to elevate the tone of even the most sordid little murder. High- brow stuff, so that the readers could tell themselves they weren't wallowing in the squalor of poverty and misery; they were gaining a new perspective on the essential truths of classical literature.
He was lucky to work for a newspaper that could afford such literary extravagance. Some of his colleagues had to stagger along on blood and gore accounts not far removed from the True Detective pulps, and the sob sisters had to manufacture a beautiful and innocent heroine in every dung heap of a case they covered. He had heard that there were reporters who could do the job cold sober, but he wouldn't like to try it.
His gaze returned to the infernal book on his lap, The Trail of the Lonesome Pine. Absolute hokum and melodrama: Harvard engineer romances pure mountain gal against the backdrop of a feud. Its author had much to answer for. Of course, except for the geographic location, the novel was not even remotely connected to the death in question, but if Fox's book had not existed, Henry Jernigan would be back in New York or Washington, enjoying a leisurely dinner in convivial company, instead of hurtling through the Virginia outback along with the rest of the carrion squad.
Bring out your dead, he thought. The phrase was apt. It made him think, not of plague corpses on London carts, but of the influenza victims in the Philadelphia of his youth. He shuddered, and pushed away the image. He and his colleagues scavenged not on carrion, but on the hearts of the victims: the loved ones of the slain; the family of the accused; and all the peripheral little souls whose lives were besmirched by the crime of the moment.
He was so pleased with the erudition of this observation that he looked around the car for some fellow sufferer to share it with, but the only other colleague he recognized was his assigned photographer, Shade Baker, slouched down in a window seat, with his hat over his eyes. Pity. Epigrams would be wasted on him. Baker was a son of the Midwestern prairie, an artist of blood and bone, using his artistry to illuminate the bruises, the blood-stained bodies, and the pathetic artifacts of the crime scene.
Last year Shade's photos had illustrated the lurid stories that had waxed poetic over the battered body of little Charlie Lindbergh, unearthed from that shallow grave in the Jersey woods, so heartbreakingly close to the house from which he was taken. The Lindbergh case was the last time they had all been together.
Elsewhere, Luster Swann, whose gutter press tabloid made Henry shudder, was probably chatting up the most angelic-looking girl on the train, wherever she was. Swann, a gaunt bloodhound of a man, was invariably drawn to vacant-eyed blondes who looked as if they had just wandered out of the choir loft. The irony was that there was no greater misogynist than Luster Swann, who thought all women either treacherous or wanton, or occasionally both. He seemed always to hope to find some ethereal innocent who would convince him otherwise, but he never succeeded, which was just as well, because his journalistic specialty was a judicious mixture of cynicism and righteous indignation. To Swann every female defendant was a scheming Jezebel, and every weeping victim a little tramp who deserved whatever she got.
Jernigan scanned the car one more time, but no familiar faces gazed back at him. None of the others were around, but they might turn up later on in the dining car.
Oh God, he needed a drink.
"In death Pollock Morton would inconvenience a great many more people than he had in life." A good lead, he thought, maybe even worth the smudge of ink his fountain pen had made on the cuff of his one good shirt. Writing in his notebook on the train passed the time, and, though he never would have admitted it, it made him feel important. He imagined his fellow passengers watching him scribbling away, and thinking that this was not just a scrawny adolescent on his way to visit kinfolks. In truth he wasn't all that much older than his looks suggested, but he was a college graduate, and now he had a job that made him feel entitled to the occasional fl ash of self-importance.
He looked up from his notes to watch the fields and woods flash by as the train rumbled along the river. The November day was dreary with its brown grass and clabbered sky, but the branches of the bare maples made a tracery of silver against the dark hills, and the mist hung between the folds of ridges, white patches on a quilted autumn landscape. The valley was tame land, sectioned into farms and villages, but its beauty lay in its setting, among wild mountains that must have looked just the same when Daniel Boone passed that way, a century and a half ago. Some of the old-timers swore they could remember when wolves and buffalo roamed these hills. He wished he could have been here then. In those days there were Indian raids and gold mines and an unbroken wilderness to be settled. But those days were gone for good. Nowadays, some hysterical female brains her daddy with a slipper, and they call it news.
He tapped his pen on the lead sentence. Now what? At least it was a start. Most of the meat of the story would have to wait until he had seen the town and conducted some actual interviews, but he knew that a compelling beginning was essential to an in-depth story, and no matter what else he might learn, that sentence was inarguably true. The late Pollock Morton was causing a lot of trouble to a lot of people.
Twenty years ago, murdered or not, that man would have lived and died in the obscurity of his little southwest Virginia coal town, and no one past the county line would have remarked on his passing. But the world was getting smaller, what with airplanes and telephones, so that now, in a manner of speaking, the whole country was looking over your back fence. One ordinary man who could have passed through life without once seeing his name in a newspaper was now a source of wonder to thousands, and to maybe a hundred people he was a downright inconvenience.
To his daughter Erma, for instance, in jail for killing him. And then to a bunch of lawyers and witnesses whose lives were suddenly going to revolve around the investigation into the circumstances of his demise. It was funny how one death might cause ripples that spread out into widening circles until they touched even strangers who knew nothing of the dead man at all. Such musings had no place in a little Tennessee newspaper, though.
He supposed that this conceit would cast him in the trifling role of a nosy neighbor, but he figured that a little humility was good for the soul. If he started giving himself airs about being the voice of truth or some such rubbish, he'd never hear the end of it back home.
Gettin' above your raisin', are ye, Carl?
A-lord, he hoped so. People always meant that remark as a dig, but Carl couldn't see why they would think it so. His own never-expressed reply was: If some of us didn't get above our raising, then all of us would still be living in caves.
The Morton trial would take him well above his raising in journalism, too. The big Eastern newspapers were all sending people to cover the story, and part of his joy in the assignment was the prospect of associating with these eminences of the fourth estate. When he was still in college, he began going to the library to read the works of the most celebrated journalists of the day: H. L. Mencken of the Baltimore Sun; Fulton Lewis, Jr., of the Washington Herald; and the eloquent Henry Jernigan of the New York Herald-Tribune. Even the lady reporters Kathleen Norris and Rose Hanelon were streets ahead of him in experience, and he would have been honored beyond words to meet them. They were all familiar to him from their photographs, which appeared from time to time in their respective newspapers. In fact, so faithfully had he read their works over the years that he felt that he knew them already.
He was only a newly minted reporter on a no-account paper in a one-horse town, but it was a start. He was still a long way from smoky bars in Paris, or from striding over battlefields in a trench coat and cavalry boots, but if he didn't make a hash of this assignment, maybe someday he would get there.
Right now, though, the extent of his "foreign correspondence" was crossing the Virginia state line. It wouldn't be much of a train ride— Johnson City to Abingdon, Virginia. He'd pay for that one himself, since, strictly speaking, it was not part of his assignment. Then tomorrow another train ride— Abingdon to Kingsport, change trains, and then on to the small coal town of Wise, not more than four hours at most, even if the train made more stops than a dog at a tree farm.
The only reason Carl got the assignment at all was because sending him would save money for the newspaper. His father's first cousin Araby had married a much older man who had prospered in the timber business, and they lived in a large house in the town of Wise. Araby Minter, now a childless widow, had turned her home into a boardinghouse, taking in businessmen on mine-related business, and sometimes tourists or traveling clergymen. Because of the Morton trial, she would have more guests than she could handle, but since Carl was family, and could be accommodated in makeshift style, she agreed to make room for him, and, of course, she would not charge a relative for lodging. The fortunate coincidence of having a relative in Wise had won Carl the assignment over his more seasoned colleagues.
He could have skipped Abingdon and headed straight to Wise, but his editor had said that the big-city journalists would probably stay over at the fancy new Martha Washington Hotel in Abingdon, just a block from the train station. Carl hoped he was right, because then he wanted a chance to meet them before the start of the trial. He figured he could learn a lot from the aristocrats of journalism, if he managed to ingratiate himself with them. If he could contrive to be friendly and natural in their presence. If he didn't act like a tongue-tied hayseed. After all, this wasn't just an excursion. He had a job to do. He was a man with a mission. And somebody else was paying his way.
"A JOB." The burly man at the news desk had eyed him skeptically. "You're wanting a job. Well, who doesn't these days, what with banks failing like houses of cards, and the government sitting on its hands while honest people starve. A job. Just how old are you, boy?"
This was a sore point with Carl Jennings, who had not yet turned eighteen and who looked even younger. He decided on a diplomatic evasion. "Sir, I am a college graduate," he said, drawing himself up to his full five- feet- eight.
He had tried to look both mature and presentable for the job interview, although his brown suit was a little short at the sleeves and ankles since his last growth spurt, and the collar of his Sunday- go-to-meeting shirt was frayed from four years of wear. But he had shaved twice, and slicked back his brown hair with the tiniest dab of lard from his mother's kitchen. He hoped his diploma would count for more than his looks. He knew he was jug-eared and unprepossessing behind his rimless spectacles, but he was smart enough. He had managed to finish college at seventeen, by the simple expedient of skipping the first two grades of primary school. On his first day in grade one, when his teacher had caught him hiding a Zane Gray novel within the covers of his copy of Spelling Is Fun, she had promoted him to third grade on the spot. Perhaps he had not been mature enough to be up there with the nine-year-olds, but in a little country schoolroom nobody cared about that sort of thing. He could read, which qualified him for a desk with the third-graders, and that was that.
He was accepted at East Tennessee State Teacher's College in nearby Johnson City, but tuition was not within the family's means. His father worked in the machine shop at the Clinchfield Railroad shops in Erwin, and he was lucky to still have a job, but his salary would not stretch to paying for an education. He had offered to speak to the shop foreman about getting Carl on at the railroad, but the boy would not be swayed, even by hints that another salary would be a godsend to the family. Instead, he had worked his way through college ten cents at a time. At night he set up pins in the bowling alley, and in the summer he picked blackberries for a dime a bucket, and he ate a lot of peanut butter on stale bread, but he made it through in three years because he couldn't afford the luxury of taking four.
Now he had a job and he paid his parents ten dollars a month rent for his old room. He was a dutiful son who was feeling more and more like a stranger. When he wanted to talk about ideas and books and the news of the world beyond the neighborhood, the person he chose to visit was his young cousin who lived back up the mountain. They were kindred spirits.
The week before he got the assignment was clear and cold, with that sharp wind that people referred to as "the hawk flying low." He had hitched a ride up to the Bonesteel farm on Ashe Mountain, because he was itching to talk to somebody about the world; that is, somebody who wouldn't fuss over what he had for lunch, or ask him if the book he'd just read would put any extra money in his pay envelope. Nora wasn't much more than a kid, but they saw things the same way. Carl thought of them as the family changelings.
He had found her sitting on the velvet sofa in the parlor in front of a hickory log fire. She was bent over her needlework, and her dark hair glinted copper in the firelight.
"Why are you making another old quilt, Nora?" he asked her. "You could buy a better bedspread in the Wish Book."
She glanced up from her sewing, but she didn't smile. At twelve she had the fine-boned grace of the Bonesteels and a self-possession beyond her years. "I reckon you could if you had the money," she said. "But this coverlet won't cost a cent. I'm using scraps from old clothes. All the same, we are grateful to Mr. Sears Roebuck for sending us his catalogue. It lasts us a good couple of months in the outhouse."
Carl laughed. "Just as long as you all don't use my newspaper out there."
"No." A spark of mischief flashed in her eyes. "No, we generally light the kindling with it." Seeing the look of chagrin on his face, Nora relented, "But we wouldn't burn any page with a story written by you, Carl. I always check."
He smiled and stretched, leaning back against the back of the applewood rocker that their great-grandfather had made when he came back from the War. It was so peaceful up here on the mountain that he always hated to leave, but he wondered how he would have turned out if he had been brought up here so far from town.
Carl's father had grown up on a hill farm over the ridge from this one, but at eighteen he had moved down the valley to Erwin to work for the railroad, taking along his new bride, Sarah Bonesteel. He had known her all his life from school and church, and probably they were fourth or fifth cousins somewhere down the line, since all the residents of Ashe Mountain were descended from the same dozen pioneer families who had settled here in the 1790s. If you had to go and live in the town, it was a comfort to have with you someone who thought the same as you did.
In the sepia photographs in the family album, Carl's mother had the look of her niece Nora: the same wavy hair and cold blue eyes set in an angular face, striking without exactly being beautiful. It was a face you didn't forget.
Sam and Sarah Jennings had progressed from a rented wooden shanty near the railroad to a trim brick house on a corner lot in town, where Carl had grown up. If they missed that peaceful world high up the mountain, they never said so. From time to time they went back "up home" to visit the families, and every summer when the church had Homecoming Sunday, they always went with a basket of homemade pies, so that Carl never felt like too much of a stranger among his country kin. But he was always aware that he lived in a different world, although it was not as simple as "past" versus "present." No one loved technology more than his uncles up the mountain.
Back on the farm, his father's eight brothers, the mechanically- minded Jennings boys, had produced their own electricity when the town was still making do with gaslights and coal oil lamps. The Jennings brothers had rigged up a generator to run on water power from the creek, and they had strung wires to the house and to all the outbuildings, so that even the cows and chickens had electric lights, which burned all the time, because they hadn't installed any switches to turn them off.
Carl's uncles had a car long before most of the people in town had acquired one, but they seemed to think of it more as a toy than as a means of transportation. Before 1920 they pooled their money and bought a Model T Ford. When they got it back to the farm, they pushed it into the barn, broke out the tools, and proceeded to take it completely apart. Then they spent many happy hours figuring out how to put it back together. Once they had worked out how the car was assembled and what made it run, they took turns driving it around the pasture, dodging apple trees.
There had been eight young uncles up on the farm when Carl was still a toddler, but most of them had moved away by now. One had married and stayed to farm the homeplace for his aging parents, and two got farms of their own, but the rest had found jobs in keeping with their mechanical inclinations. The twins worked in logging camps over on the North Carolina side of the mountain. One found a job in Erwin with the railroad, thanks to brother Sam. The two youngest boys had gone off to Detroit to work in the car factories. Life in a Michigan city seemed to Carl like the biggest possible change from the placid life on the mountain. What did they make of urban life? Were they content up there?
Now the mountain settlements were mostly populated by the old folks and those of their children who were still too young to leave.
Carl knew that his world would have been smaller if his parents had stayed up here on the mountain. He might have left school at fourteen as some of his cousins had. By sixteen they were married, and by the time they had reached his current age of twenty, they were well into middle age, with a growing family and a job that would lead them nowhere but the grave. It wasn't that they were backward or unintelligent. Some of the folks up here were smarter than anybody he had met at the college, and they read everything they could find, so that they salted their conversations with phrases from Milton, Homer, and Shakespeare. So why were they content to remain here? He wasn't sure, but if he had to put a name to his hunch, he might have called it shyness or, more precisely, since it was not fear, a disinclination to involve themselves in the machinations of society. They had no truck with currying favor with the powerful, or telling social lies in their own self-interest, or any of the other forms of artifice. More than they wanted wealth or comfort or security, they wanted to be left alone.
There was a lot of that in him, too, but he considered it a fault, and he fought against that tendency to hang back, to be forever a stranger in any company. Perhaps he had chosen journalism for just that reason. Being a newspaperman forced him to talk to strangers, to encounter new people and new situations every day. Carl thought that if he kept at it long enough, he might be able to do it without having to force himself. He still wasn't very good at ingratiating himself with people who outranked him, but he thought that maybe being smart and working hard would go part of the way toward making up for that.
Now that he was a newspaper reporter, observing other people's adventures if not having them himself, he felt he had gone a step beyond his father's achievements, and miles past what some of the cousins had done. He hoped that little Nora would have more of a life than some of the other women he'd seen, old at thirty, living and dying without leaving so much as a ripple in their wake. Nora was too fine for that. He liked to stop in when he could, to tell her of the doings out in the world, to give her something to aspire to, something beyond this solitary mountain.
Now he was sprawled in his customary position in the apple-wood rocker, while Nora sat on the old sofa, with the quilt pieces spread across her lap. He set his glass of mulled cider on the floor and took a deep breath of mountain air, tinged with wood smoke and the beeswax from the newly polished furniture. From the kitchen came a hint of apples and cinnamon, which meant pies in the oven. Nora's quilting was her way of passing the time of his visit until she was called to help with the supper preparations. Nora was always busy doing one chore or another, but as a visitor Carl felt no urge at all to turn his hand to anything. As far as he was concerned, this place was a respite from the real world. This was his sanctuary.
No matter how hot it was on a July day in Johnson City, up here on the Bonesteels' mountain farm it would be spring. The chestnut trees, shaggy giants with trunks bigger around than he was, shaded the yard, and the little spring-fed creek at the bottom of the garden always ran cold as snow melt. They didn't have ice or refrigeration up here on the farm. They didn't need it.
It was peaceful up here, like a journey to another time. Telephones and electric lights hadn't reached this far up the mountain yet. He expected they would in a year or two, and then he would give Nora a radio for her birthday, but for now, his uncle's place was like an island, afloat in the twentieth century, but untouched by it.
Nora had gone back to her needlework. He thought she made a pretty picture with the red and black velvet patchwork covering her lap, and her dark hair curling a little at the nape of her neck. It wasn't the sort of picture they'd run in the newspaper, though. You'd need to capture the colors of the scene to do it justice. The scarlet of the quilt squares, and beyond the parlor window the complementary quilt in the pattern of the landscape: the brown sweep of lawn, falling away to a vista of golden fields and bare gray forests in the valley far below. Beyond them lay a haze of blue mountains wreathed in clouds. It would take a landscape artist to capture the scene, he reckoned, and there wasn't likely to be one of those passing by.
Summer or winter, Carl was happy to spend an afternoon visiting his favorite cousin and staying to supper, but he wouldn't live up here. In town his course was set firmly toward the future.
"What's it like being a reporter?" asked Nora. "Are you having adventures?"
"I'm too far down in the pecking order for that," said Carl. "All the fires and sudden deaths go to the fellows who have been working on the paper as long as I've been alive. Mostly, I get assigned to do the stories none of them wants."
"I expect that will change," said Nora, still intent upon her sewing.
He looked up sharply, turning her words over in his mind. That was the thing about the Bonesteels' bloodline. They might be content to drift along in this backwater remnant of the pioneer past, but folks said that when they had a mind to, the Bonesteels could see just as far into the future as they could into the distance.
Carl's mother had been a Bonesteel, but he reckoned that the Sight must have skipped because she had never showed a sign of having the gift. He had inherited the family's blue eyes, the angular body, and the quick intelligence, but their knack of knowing things before they happened had passed him by, as well. A pity, that was, because it would have been a useful thing for a newspaperman to have. Imagine being able to know the future: when and where things would happen. But when he had mentioned that thought once to Nora, she said it didn't work that way.
"The Sight never tells you what you want to know," she told him. "And I don't think it even lets you see the most important things. It's just…flashes in the dark, kinda."
He had persisted in trying to get her to explain. Nobody in the family liked to talk about the Sight, but he wanted to understand it. "Can't you focus on what it is you need to know?"
Nora blushed and shook her head. She didn't care much for talking about it, either. "It's like…well, like what you said once about tuning a radio after dark. Sometimes you get a faraway station for a minute, and then all you get is a crackling noise, and the next voices you hear will be something else altogether. It's like that. Hard to make sense of."
He persisted. "But sometimes you know things." There were stories in the family. Little Nora seeing the funeral wreath a week before it was placed in the church. Or telling her mother to bake a cake for the neighbors who did not yet know they were bereaved. "Sometimes you do know, don't you?"
Nora sighed and plucked at the quilt square with restless fingers. "Every now and again," she conceded. "But I can't make it happen. And it might be better not to know at all, because you can't change anything."
"Why can't you? Surely if you know…Well, say you get a vision that your dog is going to be bitten by a copperhead. You can keep the dog in, so that it won't happen."
She shook her head. "But you don't know when it's going to happen, Carl. You can't keep the dog penned up forever. Or if you tried, like as not he'd slip out the door one day, and that's when it would happen. Our Grandma Flossie used to say, 'Knowing is one thing. Changing is another.' Be glad you don't have the Sight. It's awful to know what's coming, and be powerless to stop it."
"Well, do you see anything headed in my direction, little cousin?" He put the question to her lightly, but in his eyes she saw the anxious look that people always had when they asked her that.
She shrugged. "Maybe a train ride." When a few more minutes had passed in silence, she looked up again from her needlework. "Well, Carl, aren't you going to tell me what's going on in the wide world?" she asked.
He smiled. "Why, Nora, I thought you said you had been reading that newspaper of mine before you used it for tinder."
"Well, I think there's more going on in the world than you tell about in your newspaper."
He smiled. "After we finish recounting the local weddings, the funerals, the recipes, the advertising, and the high school football stories, I reckon we put in as much else as we can. What did you want to know about?"
"Well, I wish you could tell me that Will Rogers didn't die in that plane crash in Alaska, but I reckon he did."
Carl nodded. "You're not the only one missing him. The column he wrote was about the most popular thing in the newspaper. When it stopped, folks came in to complain, and when we told them he wasn't around to write it anymore, why, some of them started to cry. I never met a man who didn't like him."
Nora smiled to show that she understood the jest. "He's not buried yet, though."
"Well, hon, he must be. That plane crash was back in August."
She shook her head. "He's shut up somewhere in California, but he wants to go home." She shivered a little, and drew the quilt closer around her. "Carl, what about that fellow that got convicted of kidnapping Mr. Lindbergh's baby?" she asked.
"Bruno Hauptmann? Nobody's crying for him, little cousin."
"But have they executed him yet?"
"Set for April, I think. Why?"
"Well, your paper said that the governor of New Jersey visited him in his cell last month with a lady interpreter who spoke German, and I wondered why he did that. Maybe the governor's not entirely sure he did it."
Carl shook his head. "I don't know who I'd trust the most: a convicted murderer or a Republican governor."
But this time Nora did not smile. "Sometimes in trials they get it wrong," she said. "And newspapers get it wrong, too."
Newspapers get it wrong, too. He had looked into the details of the plane crash in Alaska, and found that Will Rogers's body was in storage in a vault in California. Like most people, he had assumed that they buried him back in Oklahoma. Little Nora must have heard that somewhere, he told himself.
But maybe a train ride, she had said. Now here he was rumbling along in a drafty Clinchfield Railroad coach car, bound for a trial in a little Blue Ridge coal town. It was just a coincidence, he told himself. A lucky guess, that's all. But he wondered what else she might know.
Excerpted from THE DEVIL AMONGST THE LAWYERS: A Ballad Novel © Copyright 2011 by Sharyn McCrumb. Reprinted with permission by Thomas Dunne Books. All rights reserved.
The Devil Amongst the Lawyers: A Ballad Novel
- Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction
- hardcover: 336 pages
- Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books