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Lewis Books a Trip

2012-05-27T12:42:45Z

Scene: Indian woman sitting behind counter with bored expression. Man walks in, fashionably attired.

Birdy (looks up): Help you?

Lewis: Yes. Is this Indian Guides?

Birdy: It is. I’m Birdy.

Lewis: “Birdy?”

Birdy: Yeah, “Birdy.” Short for Birdwoman. How can I help you?

Lewis: My name is Meriwether Lewis. I’m forming an expedition to the Pacific. I need a guide who knows the way.

Birdy: (taps the nameplate on the counter) Like the name says, Indian Guides. “If you can pay, we’ll show the way.”

Lewis: Are you an Indian?

Birdy: Of course I’m an Indian. Don’t I look like an Indian?

Lewis: Well, yes, but…”Birdy”?

Birdy: “Birdwoman” is a translation of Sacagawea. I stopped using it because everybody screws up the spelling, not to mention the pronunciation. I can’t tell you how many versions I’ve heard. So, when do you want to leave?

Lewis: As soon as possible.

Birdy: It’s November. You’ll have to wait until spring. It’s stupid to try the mountains in winter. There’s hardly any game up there in the summertime.

Lewis: Really? I kind of thought the area would be teeming with wildlife.

Birdy: Usta be. Palefaces come. Shootum up animals. Noble red man plenty hungry. Shootum up palefaces. If you want the complete environmental analysis, go to the EPA. The only wildlife around here is sitting right in front of you. So, April all right for departure?

Lewis: Uh, yes. I guess so.

Birdy: One-way or round trip?

Lewis: We definitely intend to come back.

Birdy: Great Spirit willing and the creeks don’t rise. That’s ‘creeks’ with a small ‘c’.

Lewis: I beg your pardon?

Birdy: Little Indian humor there. The Creek Indians are actually in Alabama. How many in your party?

Lewis: There’ll be around fourteen of us.

Birdy: Your transpo or ours?

Lewis: I’m sorry?

Birdy (patiently): Do you want us to provide the means of conveyance, or will you supply your own?

Lewis: Oh, I see. Ah, we’ll need to have you do it.

Birdy: Okay, that’ll be two pirogues and horses.

Lewis: What’s a pirogue?’

Birdy: Heap big canoe. You’re not from around here, are you?

Lewis: I’m actually from Virginia. But horses? How are we going to feed horses going over the mountains?

Birdy: We can’t. They’ll starve. When they do, we’ll eat them and then we’ll make it over the mountains. Trust me, it’s the only way.

Lewis: That seems awfully…cruel.

Birdy: Yeah, well, man up. This is the Wild West. (pulls out abacus, calculates) That’ll be two hundred and forty dollars.

Lewis: I say, that’s a scalper’s price.

Birdy: What can I say? We’re Indians. Half up front, other half when we get to the Pacific.

Lewis: Just a minute, Miss…ah, Birdy. If I give you the rest of the money when we get to the Pacific, what incentive is there for you to bring us back?

Birdy: Good point. It was worth a shot. Okay. Half to book, balance when we get back.

Lewis: Will you take a check?

Birdy: Are you kidding? Take a paleface check? The only paper more worthless is a paleface treaty. Gold only.

Lewis (shrugs): As you say, it was worth a shot.

Birdy: Quarter Eagles or ten-dollar Eagles. We’ll still take French 40- franc pieces, even though the French are gone.

Lewis: All right. Here (counts out money).

Birdy: Thank you. Here’s your receipt. Come back in April.

Lewis: Who will be our guide?

Birdy (consults schedule): Lessee. March 15 through end of April...according to the rotation, that’ll be yours truly.

Lewis: But you’re pregnant!

Birdy: Hey, I’m an Indian, not some soft white squaw. The kid’s due in February. I’ll be good to go by April. Not to worry, I’m the best in the West. They’ll probably put me on a gold coin some day.

Lewis: That I do not doubt. See you in April.

The End

Please visit www.stephenelderauthor.com for information on Stephen Elder's books.

Musings about Ring and Me (Not I)

2012-05-20T12:31:28Z

The small town of Niles, Michigan has given two literary luminaries to the world: Ring Lardner and yours truly. Lardner shines much brighter.

Ring Lardner was a humorist and sportswriter in the early 20th century. Often underestimated and underappreciated by lit students today, he had an uncannily accurate ear for the speech of the common man and invented a vernacular that was at once universal and uniquely his own.

The connection between Ring and me goes beyond a mere coincidence of birthplace. My uncle Donald B. Elder wrote the first biography of Niles’ famous son. His book Ring Lardner appeared in 1956.

By coincidence, I’ve also met Ring’s second biographer, Jonathan Yardley, whose book Ring (subtitled A Biography of Ring Lardner) appeared in 1977. In his Footnote on Sources Yardley says: “Elder was a competent, witty writer, but he had the misfortune to lose interest in his subject, and the book shows it.”

Personally, I suspect that my uncle’s larger problem was injudicious choice of material: he seemed to be more interested in presenting a psychoanalytical portrait of Ring, and so included lengthy quotes from sources only peripherally relevant. Yardley’s material is more on point. Family pride aside, I also have to say that Yardley is a better writer.

According to my mother, Yardley’s book also benefitted from the passing of several of the Lardner women, who were fierce guardians of Ring’s reputation. Ring’s sister Lena in particular rigorously sanitized Ring’s legend. She was also my piano teacher when I was six. I have a dim memory of her as an old, large (to me) woman of surpassing patience.

My mother knew many of the Niles people in Ring Lardner’s life, including the Arthur Jacks family. I mention this only because my paternal grandfather’s second wife was Hardin Jacks. Looking back, I regret being too disengaged to ask my mother more questions about the Lardners and the Jacks. Too young, too dumb.

And finally, there is this connection between Ring and me. Yes, I said “between Ring and me.” One of my pet grammar peeves is the wildly common and egregiously erroneous phrase “between you and I.” I have labeled it Objective Case Abuse (OCA), or The Me’n Herbie Principle. While re-reading my uncle’s book the other night, I discovered that Lardner had also written about OCA in a 1921 book review:

“We say ‘He come up to me in the club,’ but we also say. ‘He come up to I and Charley in the club.’ Charley’s presence in the club seems, for ‘some reason another,’ to alter my case. The other night I was reading a play script by one of this country’s foremost dramatists; and recurring in it was the stage direction. ‘A look passes between he and So-and-so.’ But this playwright wouldn’t think of writing or saying ‘She passed he a look.’

“My theory on this point is that when the common American citizen whom we will call Joe, was in his last year in school (the sixth grade), the teacher asked him how many boys there were in his family. He replied: ‘Just Frank and me.’ ‘Just Frank and I,’ corrected the teacher. And the correction got Joe all balled up.”

In my version (see my 12/26/10 blog) I invented a third-grader who was punished so severely for OCA that he could never again bring himself to say “Herbie and me,” even when it was correct. For the backstory, we flash back to the infamous Sister Grammatica’s third grade class:

Sister Grammatica has just asked little Sammy to describe his summer vacation. Sammy, an enthusiastic kid, begins…

“Me ‘n Herbie went to the…”

WHAM! Sister Grammatica’s ruler descends on Sammy’s soft little hand.

“Herbie and I,” she says sternly.

“Ow! Okay. Herbie and I went to the seashore. We had fun. When it was too cold, me ‘n Herbie would…”

WHAM! WHAM! WHAM!

“I told you, Sammy, it’s ‘Herbie and I.’ Now go to the board and write ‘Herbie and I’ one hundred times.”

Sister Grammatica has reduced Sammy’s writing hand to a bloody pulp so the blackboard assignment hurt like hell. Little Sammy will never forget it.”*

When I read my uncle’s book 45 years ago, Ring’s anecdote possibly lodged between a couple of defective brain cells (I have a lot of them) and then was reincarnated in my Me’n Herbie principle. With typical writer’s egotism, I like my version better than Ring’s.

Or it could be a case of GMTA (“Great minds think alike”). When I suggested the “Great Minds” hypothesis to my Nearanddear, her brow furrowed. “For that to be the case,” she asked, “wouldn’t you both have to have great minds?”

*Sidebar: Little Sammy grew up to be a sportscaster on ESPN, which is why all ESPN personnel say “between you and I.”

Please visit www.stephenelderauthor.com for information on Stephen Elder's books.

Louie's Loans

2012-05-13T12:50:30Z

On a side street in Trenton, New Jersey is a well-known establishment called “Louie’s Loans.” There is no sign over the door, but everyone knows what’s there. Many of them have availed themselves of Louie’s services over the years. Some of them still walk with a hitch.

“Louie” is Louis “the Zamboni” Zabbani, so nicknamed by the locals because, like the popular ice resurfacing machine, Louie smooths out things so well for clients that ne’er a ripple is left of the client’s problem (and sometimes of the client).

An unusual Friday afternoon meeting of Louie’s Loans is taking place. The company would normally be at the Meadowlands Racetrack today, but a problem has arisen. Gathered around a table in the back room are Louie and his Field Service Associates: Knuckles Caan, Big Bat Bailey, Thaddeus Bloomington III, and Mary the Fairy.

Bloomington III, the largest man in the room (as well as in the entire city), inquires in that dreaded soft voice, “So, Louis, why are we here?”

“Yeah, boss, whassup wid dis meetin’?” seconds Knuckles Caan, the linguistic antithesis to Bloomington III. He is almost as large, with huge hands misshapen through abusive use.

“Gentlemen. You too, Mary,” Louie begins. Mary the Fairy acknowledges her inclusion with a lazy sweep of her overlong eyelashes. A small, almost child-like woman, she is the company closer and the deadliest of the four. She handles loans in default by using her deceptively innocent charm to lure deadbeats into the Pine Barrens, where they disappear forever. Her well-developed forearms come from digging, not playing tennis.

“We got a problem,” Louie says. “The Bank of U.S. has just opened a branch down the street.”

A snort comes from Big Bat Bailey, a smallish but extremely fit man who walks softly and carries etc. “BFD, Louie. Their clientele is diff’rent from ours. They’re a bank, fuhcrissake.”

“The problem,” Louie retorts, “is that our customers are going over to them because they think they’re getting a better deal.”

Big Bat asks incredulously, “Wait a minute, Boss. Are you sayin’ that we’re a better deal than the bank?”

Louie looks at Bloomington III. “Thaddeus, why don’t you explain it to your colleagues?”

Bloomington III says, “All right. Look at it from a client’s viewpoint. Let me play Devil’s Advocate for a moment.”

Big Bat and Knuckles look at him blankly, wondering WTF does religion have to do with this?

“Let’s say our borrower–we’ll call him Sammy the Schmuck–wants a C-note for a week. We’ll lend it to Sammy, five for four. After seven days he will owe us a hundred plus $25 interest. Now, let’s say he doesn’t have it on the due date. He will then have to pay us at least the interest and our collection fee of 15%. If he does that, we’ll roll the loan over for another week. That’s another automatic $25. At the end of two weeks he will owe us $165, the original $100 plus the vig. Right?”

Mary gives her nails a bored examination. “Yeah. So?”

“Sammy knows this up front because we give him a piece of paper and let him know, with delicacy of course, that we collect promptly and rigorously. ‘Hmm,’ Sammy says to himself, ‘Louie’s Loans is too expensive. Plus my knee still hurts from the last collection.’”

Big Bat chuckles to himself. Bloomington III glances at him and continues, “Sammy thinks, ‘I’m going to go to the Bank of U.S. instead because they’re a bank and they charge less. Plus they have to be honest, because they’re regulated.’”

Everybody cracks up. Louie shakes his head and remarks, “And they call us crooks.”

Bloomington III waits patiently. “So Sammy goes to the Bank of U.S. and takes out a $100 loan for one week. The Bank of U.S. only charges him $10. That is less than our $25, so Sammy thinks he’s gotten a good deal. But Sammy doesn’t read the fine print because, like most people, he can only make it to “c” if you spot him the “a” and the “b.” At the end of the week the bank dips into his checking account and takes out their $100 plus their $10. No problem, Sammy thinks, because he believes his paycheck will cover it. But, the bank doesn’t credit the paycheck until the end of the day. But that day Sammy made two small debits, one for $6.48 for lunch and a $4 latte at Starbucks. These are deducted as soon as they hit the bank. Guess what. Sammy didn’t have enough money in his account to cover them. It’s overdraft time! Each overdraft costs Sammy $30. At the end of one week Sammy now owes the Bank of U.S. $70, whereas our charge would have been only $25. In fact, we would have charged him only $65 for two weeks!”

Mary the Fairy lets Bloomington III’s pleasant tones go in one ear and out the other–she is thinking about her date with a deadbeat this evening. The poor sap is cute, so she is looking forward to some pleasure before business.

Knuckles and Big Bat struggle to follow the math, but they get there. “That’s un-American,” Big Bat exclaims indignantly.

“Actually, it’s very American,” Bloomington III sighs. “What’s un-American is that the Bank of U.S. is fleecing our lambs better than we are. That’s just wrong. And there’s more. The bank will also be happy to enroll Sammy in a prepaid credit card (for a fee, of course), charge him a fee to “activate” it, charge him a fee to “load” money into it, and charge him a monthly fee on top of everything else. Some banks will even tack on a charge every time he uses it.”

“Walk me through that, Thad,” Big Bat demands, his plant-like intelligence not quite up to the task.

“Okay. Let’s say that Sammy the Shmuck, whose credit doth suck, gets one of these prepaid cards. That’s three bucks. The bank loads $100 into it. That’s another three bucks. Sammy has to call to “activate” the card. That’s another three.”

“Ya mean Sammy owes nine bucks awready an’ he hasn’t even used the f------ thing?” Knuckles asks in amazement.

Bloomington III looks pained. Profanity is beneath him. “That’s right, Knuckles. So, Louis, what should we do? It’s your call.”

Louie announces, “We shall act in a democratic manner, meaning we treat all our competitors the same way. Remember Larry the Leech from Manhattan? The one who thought he’d open up a branch here?”

The illumination of epiphany wreathes the Associates’ faces. Smiles of remembrance follow.

“Now, I have done some reconnoitering.” Knuckles wonders what “reconnoitering” means. Whatever it is, the boss apparently didn’t connoiter properly the first time.

Louie continues. “This branch of the Bank of U.S. is a small shop with only four people–the manager, his assistant, and two tellers. Mary, I want you to help the manager commune with nature, such as we have in the Barrens.”

“Will do, Louie. There are still a lot of empty plots. In fact, there’s one right next to Larry the Leech.”

“Good. Thaddeus and Knuckles, suggest to the tellers, as only you can, that they transfer to another branch. A good time to do that is when they’re picking up their kids from day care. And Big Bat, there have been some vicious muggings where the assistant manager likes to pub-crawl.”

The Field Service Associates nod their understanding. No business can operate if they can’t keep staff.

Louie then steeples his fingers and looks off into the middle distance “When you think about it,’ he muses, “we’re much more humane than these big banks. When Big Bat puts the wood to a kneecap, the guy will normally be up and about in a year or so. But when the Bank of U.S. lays the lumber to your credit rating, you may never walk again. So I ask you, who’s gentler and kinder here?”

And on that unarguable note, the company was off to the races.

The End

Please visit www.stephenelderauthor.com for information on Stephen Elder's books.

Cartagena Revisited

2012-05-06T12:34:57Z

I have a group I like to call my Consultancy. Several members have recently weighed in on the Cartagena Incident.

My own take on it? It was gross stupidity, a case of the lower brain overruling the upper brain. In some men, teenaged foolishness lasts well into middle age. There’s a saying in German: “Wenn der Pimmel steht, da sitzt die Vernunft.” (When the dick stands, reason sits.)

One Consultant opined that the whole fiasco was so ridiculous and messy, it just couldn’t have happened by accident (see postscript to my blog “Don’t Cry for Me, Cartagena”). Some things are just so far-fetched that they couldn’t have been dreamed up. The Cartagena Incident might be one of them.

Another Consultancy member (renowned in our little group for his breadth of vision) advanced the following hypothesis: merchant sailors have an unwritten Code of the Sea that requires them to pay any lady of negotiable affection her asking price. Chiseling the price down is a breach of the code, especially after service has been rendered. According to this Consultant, whose experience in this area is vastly greater than mine: “Breaking this code has the dire consequence of casting a curse on the ship and its entire crew, assuring at minimum a rough voyage with a real risk of disaster at sea.”

Who can deny that the Secret Service has had in fact a rough voyage with disastrous consequences?

A third Consultant’s theory reflects a growing sentiment in the popular press, namely, if the Secret Service had had more female field agents, Cartagena would never have happened. This particular Consultant occasionally borders on radical feminism, but then, how radical is it when she’s right? The civilizing effect of women on society has been known for thousands of years. The problem peculiar to our times is that this “effect” has not adequately penetrated the strata of society where it is needed most. Congress, for example.

The Circle of Life

2012-04-29T12:46:02Z

The Circle of Life

(the animals’ prayer from The Shining Man’s Wife)

From Earth comes the Grass

And Mast for the Grazers.

Thence Food for the Hunters,

And Cleaners come last.

All Growth ends in Death

To start Growth anon.

The Circle of Life is the

Will of the One.

Don't Cry for Me, Cartagena, or, How To Think Like the Right Wing

2012-04-22T16:08:40Z

Everyone knows that the Right Wing has hijacked the concept of patriotism. Now they’ve also cornered the market on paranoia. If the Middle and the Left are going to successfully oppose the Far Right, these factions need to weaponize their thinking. Paranoia is not just for conservatives; it’s the God-given right of every American.

Obama’s recent trip to the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena was intended to focus on the economy and the area’s investment opportunities. The proposed trade pact even had the approval of the American business community.

The President’s trip was upstaged by the Secret Service fiasco. One way of looking at the incident is to call it an ill-advised party that got out of control.

But what if there was a more sinister agenda? What if it was a conscious attempt to derail the conference and discredit America?

Even worse, what if it was actually a conspiracy to assassinate the President, concocted in the smokiest of back rooms?

Let’s say that a Right Wing cabal planned to set a number of honey traps for the unwary Secret Service agents by loosing highly trained agents provocateur upon our boys in order to wangle an invitation back to the hotel. Let’s say that among these “specialists” was a trained assassin whose assignment, once she had gained access to the site, was to disable her john with her artistry, wait until the President arrived the next day, and then do her sinister worst.

Why can’t the Middle call the Cartagena Incident a despicable plot hatched by the Far Right? Why can’t they extend the spin-doctoring by saying that the plot failed only because a cheapskate john contested the value of the actual service rendered by the professional paramours, thus focusing unwanted attention on the partiers, attention unwanted by both the Secret Service and the secret plotters. Why not also include sound bites for the media, clichés like “When the lower brain stands, the upper brain sits.”

See how easy it is to spin this as a conspiracy? With a little practice, there is no reason why the Middle can’t compete in the paranoia race.

Post script: Upon serious reflection, the Cartagena Incident was so outlandish and convoluted that one has to wonder if it could have really happened in the natural course of bad behavior without some more nefarious aim.

Heart Problems

2012-04-15T12:00:58Z

The Unlikely Assassin introduced county detectives Simone Fitzhugh and Michael Demidov, known to their departmental colleagues as The Odd Couple. Relentlessly following a trail of obscure clues, the detectives managed to track down a senior citizen turned assassin.

The intrepid pair returns in Heart Problems. A county Medical Examiner discovers that a series of deaths presenting as heart attacks are actually murders in disguise. He alerts his old friend Michael Demidov. Now retired, Demidov turns the matter over to his wife, homicide detective Simone Fitzhugh. The Odd Couple soon establishes that the murders are related, and that a serial killer may be at work.

Demidov suggests that Simone go to the FBI. However, Simone’s past history with the FBI, the people who hijacked her case in The Unlikely Assassin, makes her reluctant to bring them in. To her surprise, the federal agency turns out to be cooperative and even enlists their help in a joint task force.

Demidov is invited to use his innovative interrogation techniques to help the Agency unravel a tangled web of illegal drugs, a gunrunning militia, and a sinister terrorist plot to bring down the US government hatched by a shadowy figure called The Spider. But complications arise. Demidov’s Russian Mafia father tries to draw his estranged son back into the fold. With Simone’s help, Demidov manages to extricate himself from the clutches of his father, but there are unforeseen consequences that prove to be both a great boon and a heavy burden.

Heart Problems is now available in print and e-book format from lulu.com. It will soon be available from www.barnesandnoble.com and iTunes. Please visit www.stephenelderauthor.com for information on my books.

The Round Earth Heresy

2012-04-08T12:03:06Z

As the elephants come thundering down the home stretch, a huge problem looms at the finish line–the general election. Persuading the base will no longer matter. The candidate–be it the ever popular Mitt, the sanctimonius Santorum, the omniscient Newt, or Uncle Ron–will now have to address those whose IQ is above room temperature.

Various pundits have aired their opinions on the main problem confronting the Republican candidate. Some believe that the right wing missteps concerning abortion have alienated a sufficient number of women so as to make victory in November impossible…maybe.

Some believe that Obama’s oratorical skills will overwhelm his opposition…undeniably true, but will that be enough?

Some believe that the improving economic climate (despite concerted Republican opposition), plus vindication of the auto and bank bail-outs by virtue of loan repayment, will carry the day for the President…that could happen.

The political experts have a number of valid arguments, but they are overlooking the key point–the Round Earth Heresy. I believe that the steadfast belief in a flat earth will trip the conservatives up in the end. The rise of the religious right has also caused conservatives to question global warming (only about a third of them believe it is happening). To top it all off, Creationism has even developed its own scientific theories of human origins.

One of my all-time favorite cartoons depicts two dinosaurs clinging to a small rock surrounded by water while watching the Ark receding in the distance. One says to the other, “Oh crap. Was that today?” Some creationists maintain that Noah took the dinosaurs on the ark with the other animals, and post-flood environmental changes did them in. How can they buy this and dismiss global warming, another environmental change? It’s all very complicated.

I mentioned these issues to one of my right-leaning friends, who admitted that they were problematic. He also confessed to a crisis of faith concerning his long-held belief in a flat earth. It seems that he took a transcontinental flight recently and was shocked to the core when he saw the earth’s curvature from 42,000 feet. “I had thought it was liberal propaganda,” he said, “just more nonsense from those science people.”

Unwittingly, my friend put his finger on the problem. A recent study in the American Sociological Review entitled “Politicization of Science in the Public Sphere” contained a number of interesting findings. That the bottom of the gene pool distrusts science has been a long established fact. What’s new is that educated* conservatives trust less in science “because they have a more sophisticated grasp about what types of knowledge will conform with or contradict their ideological positions, and they will prefer to believe what supports their ideology.” If the “educated” conservative is a politician, he will perforce choose what plays to the base.

Another author quotes a study showing when people stop deliberating, endorsement of conservative ideology increases. This explains why right-wingers shout instead of debating. It’s much easier to scream out a sound bite than to construct a reasoned argument.

Personally, I have long believed that the current brand of conservatism is a heavy burden, one that cannot be borne sober. To prove my hypothesis, I tried to find a correlation between alcohol and belief in a flat earth. The only thing I found was a study showing that inebriation tends to push discourse to the right and, interestingly, this holds true for both liberals and conservatives. Tank up, and you veer right because alcohol notoriously short-circuits the thinking process. I will leave it to others to spin this concept out to its logical conclusion.

*The study’s author also used the term “high-information” as an alternative to “educated.” That may suggest a distinction.

The Theory of Everything

2012-04-01T11:46:48Z

The Holy Grail of physics is the Theory of Everything, a theory that ties everything together and explains the connections.

I have found it.

Well, not the physics Theory of Everything, but a social Theory of Everything. It revolves around Population Density.

Every social problem confronting mankind can be explained by population density: food shortages, transportation deficiencies, behavioral aberrations (which are on the rise), the decreasing social intelligence of Joe Sixpack and Suzy Cellfone, diminishing communication skills, poverty, and so forth.

Name any social malaise, and I’ll wager that examination will show that it’s ultimately caused by too many people in one place. The higher the population density, the greater the number of social ills.

For example, take the widening rift between the left wing, that boneless gutless appendage desperately seeking direction in a sea of mindless hostility, and the right wing, that stiffly self-contradicting appendage futilely seeking purchase on theories that do not support.

Liberal policies, while ostensibly seeking a fair shake for everyone, almost guarantee that standards for education, behavior, and accomplishment are pulled down to the lowest common denominator. It is not possible to tug policy in all directions to fit everyone, especially where there are too many everyones. Liberals are, however, dimly aware of the social complications that excessive numbers bring.

Conservatives, on the other hand, aren’t. They yearn for 1776, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution, while completely ignoring the fact that these documents were written for a country of three million people, not three hundred million. They also ignore the other writings of the Founding Fathers as well as the fact that the Constitution has been changed over the years. These changes are called “amendments.” To date there have been 27 of them. Their existence suggests that the original document did not cover later exigencies. Duh.

Things have changed since 1776. The freedoms that the wide-open spaces providentially provided to our forefathers cannot exist to the same extent today for the simple reason that the wide-open spaces aren’t wide open anymore. They are full of too many people. That is exactly why we have more laws and restrictions. For the mentally challenged, a restriction is a kind of law.

When the liberals begin to realize that standards of performance are still needed for a society to advance, and the conservatives realize that over two hundred years have passed since the time they think they’re living in, then maybe the rift will start to narrow. As of the present, neither side has adapted to the fact that there are too damn many people.*

*To those who say “but look at all the empty unpopulated spaces in this country. How can you say we’re overpopulated?” I say, “Yes, but those spaces have to be (a) habitable, and (b) desirable. Ask yourself, where do the talented flock in search of a career or an opportunity? Nebraska or New York City?”

To Write or Not To Write

2012-03-25T12:08:28Z

The business of publishing has changed significantly in the past thirty years. Nowadays the first question a literary agent or a publisher asks is not “Is this stuff any good?” but rather, “How can I sell this?” If there is no quick and easy answer to the question, the submission goes into the slush pile.

What this implies, of course, is that writers should have a target audience in mind before submitting their work. Writing gurus typically advise aspirants to “identify your audience,” Guruspeak for “figure out who you want to speak to, then tailor your writing to appeal specifically to this group.”

Writing niche-specifically is the recipe for success (money), agents say. They’re on the lookout for category submissions because it makes their marketing efforts much easier. They don’t have to be bothered with trying to sell something on the merit of good writing; they can just chuck it into the appropriate niche and roll out some boilerplate.

Incredibly (as I have noted before), J.K Rowling was turning down twelve times before she found a publisher. The problem with Harry Potter was his lack of niche-ability. A boy magician didn’t fit into any of the existing pigeonholes. This should say something about the acumen of the professionals who judge this sort of thing. They’re not always right about guessing what will sell. There are numerous other examples of “Oops! There goes 15% of a billion dollars.” Well, maybe not a billion, but you get the point.

In my opinion, Rowling’s early writing was not as good as her later writing, but the concept and her story-telling were superb from the get-go. That said, there is a second question that the scribbler gurus do not address: a writer must ask, “why am I writing this work? Am I writing this because I have something to say and my muse is directing me to say it in this way? Or am I writing this solely to make a buck?”

If the latter, then go ahead and pick your niche. For example, choose “vampire.” Then choose between the subgenres of “bloody classical vampire,” “vampire with teenage angst issues” (very popular), or “horny vampire.” Then crank something out. Almost anything will do.

OR, write the book that is inside you. Rely on quality of writing and vision to sell the work. This is admittedly very idealistic, especially in today’s market. It is not a road for everyone. While it doesn’t always lead to success, it is honest. For whatever that is worth.

The Shining Man's Wife

2012-03-18T12:50:20Z

ANNOUNCEMENT! The sequel to Frank (Samhain Publishing, 2007) is finished. Finally! The second Saint Francis story is entitled The Shining Man’s Wife and will be available from online venders by mid-April, or you can get it from your brick-and-mortar store. An e-pub version for Kindle, Nook, etc. will be available by the end of April.

At the end of Frank, Saint Francis was released from his centuries-long emissary duty to marry Elaine Azerian, a small-town veterinarian. In The Shining Man’s Wife, the saint is recalled to “active duty,” and is sent west on a mission to a national park where a startling chain of events unfolds. A local TV station films Frank and Elaine’s dramatic rescue of a bison herd, and the clip goes nationwide.

Elaine’s “Ride through Fire” makes her a hot commodity on the talk show circuit. She appears on Larry King and Oprah, and Ms. Winfrey inspires her to start up a foundation to help the underfunded national parks.

Elaine soon attracts the attention of a secretive philanthropic organization called Filiae Mundi (Daughters of the World). The Daughters ask Frank and Elaine to solve an environmental problem at their remote mountain headquarters. In between helping the Park Service and Filiae Mundi, Frank and Elaine’s godson is discovered to possess a strange healing power. The saint and his wife must protect the child from unwanted attention.

Daughters of the World, the third installment of the Saint Francis cycle, is planned for release in 2013.

On the horizon, Heart Problems, another Demidov and Fitzhugh detective novel.

ANNOUNCEMENT 2: I have updated www.stephenelderauthor.com to reflect recent output (Ye Gods!, The Unlikely Assassin (print version), and The Shining Man’s Wife). Please drop in and browse.

On Circadian Rhythm, Contraception, and Sex

2012-03-11T12:23:17Z

While listening to the latest GOP eructations, the phrase “circadian rhythm” popped into my mind for some reason. When I first heard the term years ago, I thought it had something to do with periodic insect hatchings, but no, that’s cicadian. So who exactly are these Circadians, I wondered?

I thought the word might have something to do with a contraception method used by Circadians (presumably some ancient tribe), so I turned to a Republican friend because the R’s recently held a hearing on contraception.

Alas, it seems that Republicans are clueless when it comes to sex. Who else would convene a hearing about contraception without a single woman on the committee? (Apropos of contraception, the topic hit the news recently when a leading Republican intellectual, Tush Limpbough or something like that, called a Georgetown University law student a whore for being interested in contraception.) Other Republican luminaries have also held forth on the subject of contraception—which is why their campaigns have more ups and downs than a honeymoon blanket.

Although Republicans have a simple answer for everything, I was forced to conclude that they were a dry well on this subject. Some of my left-leaning friends even went so far as to say that the well was poisoned. They said those bad old oil companies were fracking with the groundwater. You don’t have to be a religious conservative to know that fracking is not nice—you can tell just from the sound of the word. But I digress.

Since I wasn’t getting anywhere with the “rhythm” part, I decided to concentrate on “Circadian,” figuring that any information on these people might in turn shed light on “rhythm.” I consulted all manner of reference material, but was unable to find either an ancient or modern people known as “Circadians.” I found Canadians, Acadians, Circassians, Lusitanians, and Ukrainians, but no Circadians.

When all else fails, go back to the roots. I looked up the word in an etymological dictionary. Turns out “circadian” comes from Latin circa “around” and dies “day,” and means “recurring naturally on a twenty-four hour cycle, even in the absence of light fluctuations.”

Hmmm. “Circadian,” meaning “around the day.” Daily? All day long? Even in the dark? It still sounded like sex to me. I’m going to pass this information on to my Republican friend. His people could use some sex ed.

The Color Purple Redux

2012-03-04T13:40:01Z

The Republican nomination process is Rushing to a climax with much spleen-venting (speaking of Rush, he has stepped in it yet again). Meanwhile, party poobahs are wringing their hands in despair over all that juicy invective the candidates are wasting on each other rather than leveling it at the Archenemy. Even worse, the Archenemy and his minions are stockpiling the stupidities to sling them back come the general election. Ah yes, moments to remember.

The Republicans exemplify the degree to which civility in politics has waned. If you think they have treated each other badly, just wait until the victor has emerged and can then train his sights on Mr. Obama, whom the Republicans have hated with unreasoning intensity from Day One—accent on “unreasoning.” I have frequently remarked on this phenomenon.

Over a year ago I wrote a piece on the growing divide between Red and Blue. It bears repeating. For those of you who missed it, here it is again:

The Color Purple

I’m tired of the Red-Blue controversy. I’m tired of the myopic, head-in-the-sand, raving cant of the right wing, those “ignorant racist fascist knuckle-dragging NASCAR-obsessed cousin-marrying road-kill-eating tobacco-juice-dribbling gun-fondling religious fanatic rednecks” (thank you, Dave Barry). I’m just as tired of the shrill, hyperpolitically correct, Doomsday pronouncements from the left, those ”godless unpatriotic pierced-nose Volvo-driving France-loving left-wing Communist latte-sucking tofu-chomping holistic-wacko neurotic vegan weenie perverts” (thanks again, Brother Dave).

Personally, I’m neither red nor blue. I’m actually what you get when you mix the two colors. I’m to the left of Mother Teresa on some issues, and to the right of Genghis Khan on others. For example…

The people who scream about abortion (either pro or con) rarely scream about the reasons why a woman would consider it, and therein lies the real crime. I believe it was, is, and always should be a woman’s choice. Men should keep their mouths shut about abortion. They don’t have to carry the child and usually don’t have to take care of it after it’s born.

Other people scream about the death penalty, citing the Sixth Commandment, “Thou shalt not kill,” a mistranslation of the original Hebrew, which actually said “Thou shalt not murder.” Killing simply means causing death. Murder means unlawful and/or malicious killing, and as such is a legal concept. Killing and murder are not the same thing. I am very much against murder. Killing, on the other hand, depends greatly on the circumstances (war, self-defense, legal punishment for certain crimes).

I think everyone has a right to a gun (after all, this is America). A rifle. Not a handgun, not an AK-47, not a street-sweeper. A rifle. That said, I can’t help remembering what a woman once said to me about gun-lovers: “If they had dicks, they wouldn’t need guns.”

I am very much for health reform and election reform (2000 still leaves a bad taste in my mouth).

I am especially for reform of our runaway financial institutions. The hodge-podge of hedge funds, puts, calls, futures, and derivatives are nothing other than legalized gambling. These toxic financial instruments are simply toys that testosterone-driven twenty-somethings play with. They add nothing to the bottom line of companies that actually produce a tangible product. They cause decisions designed to profit sort-term investors, often to the long-term detriment of the companies invested in. Regulation does not stand in the way of business, it is what makes business possible.

These are a few of my positions. If you stir them up together, you get the color purple. In his novel Empire, Orson Scott Card describes a new American civil war, this time between the left and the right. So far another American civil war remains fiction. In the novel’s Afterword, which prophetically descries the increasing polarization in American and the lack of civil discourse, the case is made that we’re not far from civil war. What Card advocates is reining in the rhetoric. His comments were written in 2006—it is shocking how prophetic they have turned out to be. The recent Michigan militia affair is a striking case in point.

It’s high time this country realizes that the American eagle needs both a left wing and a right wing to fly. Orson Scott Card says we need to not only rein in the extremists in the other party, but also the ones in our own particular party. I couldn’t agree more.

The Day the Earth Turned White

2012-02-26T13:57:35Z

Last week I awoke to a horrific experience. This is not unusual because I am old. Every day brings a new terror of some sort—watching the news on TV, checking my bank account, fighting my way through a phone tree, attempting a conversation when English is no longer spoken—these are just some of the fearful things facing the aged.

At any rate, when I peered blearily out the window, I discovered that the world had turned white while I slept. It must have just happened because it wasn’t there the last time I looked, which was two hours earlier (I usually sleep like a baby—I wake up every two hours crying).

What had happened? I asked myself, trembling with fear. There seemed to be a blanket of a mysterious white substance covering the ground. Was it some kind of celestial dandruff? Was it pollution that had solidified perhaps? A killer mold heralding the end of the world? What?

I desperately needed answers. Then my feverish brain was tickled by a distant, almost ancestral memory of my youth in Michigan. I had seen this before! Suddenly frightening images came rushing back from a time I have mightily sought to suppress all my life, images of white stuff not the mere inch thick that lay on the ground outside my window, but feet deep! It was a cold crystalline substance they call “snow.”

Snow! Here in central North Carolina! Here in Not-Michigan! Who can save me? But wait! I thought. I am not alone. I am connected because I have the Internet. Why not avail myself of the collective wisdom of millions of sixteen-year-olds?

Away to my computer I flew like a flash and Googled “snow.” Sure enough, the stuff existed. I pulled up lengthy treatises about snow, defining what it was, and explaining where it tended to be found. Most of the locales where “snow” is found were in northerly latitudes and higher elevations. My county wasn’t mentioned. I mean, was the stuff even legal here? I thought that was a good question, so I called up the sheriff’s department. When I asked, the voice paused for a moment and then said, “No, sir, it’s not illegal. Uncommon perhaps, but not against the law.”

“Well, who do I complain to?” I asked.

The voice became even more patient. I’ve heard this patronizing tone before and have always found it somewhat irritating.

“Sir,” it said, “we can’t help you there. We don’t have a direct line.”

“But what do I do?” I asked, panicked.

“Call someone, sir. Get help.” Click

Snow.

Here.

Oh well, the Mayans predicted something like this.