Shadow Flutter

Every now and then I get myself into a jam.  This is one of those times.  As of right now, I have 6 books in various stages of incompleteness.     Jonathan Strange, by Susanna Clarke The Forsyte Saga, by John Galsworthy Bleak House, by Charles Dickens Middlemarch, by George Eliot Stoner, by John Williams Demimonde: Winter, by Rod Rees And now I am about to start reading three more. Swan Song, by Robert R. McCammon Keeping Watch: A History of American Time, by Mike O’Malley A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller, Jr. I think this is a personality flaw and possibly an addiction.  My strengths have never included cold mental discipline; my frontal lobe has never mastered an impetuousness born out of my child-like desire for immediate gratification.  This flaw is all the greater because I can’t parallel process well.  I’m one of those people who can summon his intellect to focus on one task at a time: bear down on it, learn it, master it, ...

I have no intention of commenting on the Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman case.  I want to remain the only person who has refrained for commenting about it.  However, there was something that occurred during the trial that occurs all to frequently and seems wrong to me.    Zimmerman was charged and tried on 2nd degree murder.  After all the evidence was presented, all the witnesses questioned, and the defense and prosecution rested their cases, but before final arguments were given to the jury, the judge permitted the prosecution to add the “lesser included” offense of manslaughter to the list of charges the jury would consider, even though the defense objected.  Both sides then addressed 2nd degree murder and manslaughter in their closing arguments. Should the state be permitted to pile on charges after the defense and prosecution have rested their cases?  I don’t think so for several reasons. First, if the state is permitted to add lesser charges...

When I was a kid grandma owned a house on the beach, and every summer I would stay with her.  This is partly because the beach and teenagers make a perfect match, but it was also because my mom insisted.  This was when Polio terrorized the country, before the vaccines, and my mom had it in her head that I would escape Polio if I spent my summer vacations at the beach instead of in the hot and stuffy suburbs.  I was never convinced of this theory, myself, given that it is a teenager’s wont to spend the daylight hours on the beach where everyone else from the suburbs and the city has gone.  There are probably more people inhabiting a beach during summer than any other place on earth, and I figured polio went where the people went.  But that was her thinking, and who was I to argue.  Besides, I got to live on the beach, and I’m a surfer and a teenager.  So, once school shut down for the summer, mom hustled me off to grandma’s house. The daylight hours wer...

"Xenology is an unnatural mixture of science fiction and formal logic.  At its core is a flawed assumption -- that an alien race would be psychologically human." -- Roadside Picnic, by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky "Only the devil loves humans for what they are and rejoices in their cunning schemes against themselves, their shameless curiosity, their lack of self-control, their impulse to break a rule as soon as they hear tell of it, their willingness to forsake their immortal soul for nookie.  The devil knows that only those with the courage to risk their soul for love are entitled to have a soul, even if God does not."  -- Horns, by Joe Hill "Richard began to understand darkness: darkness as something solid and real, so much more than a simple absence of light.  He felt it touch his skin, questing, moving, exploring: gliding through his mind.  It slipped into his lungs, behind his eyes, into his mouth . . ." -- Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman.

On the drive up here I thought about how miserable this was going to be. I always enjoyed going to Grandma's house, meeting my cousins, sitting around the dining room table eating dinner with the family, sharing exaggerated stories about all the things that had happened to one another since last we met. This time was different. When we arrived, my aunt and uncle greeted mom and dad and walked together into the house. I lingered, remembering all the times as a child I would jump from the car, run up the front porch stairs, and shout, "Grandma! Grandma! We're here." The chestnut trees still litter the ground with their autumn harvest. When I was young, I would try roasting them in the fireplace like Nat King Cole told us to. Each Christmas they found their way into the house onto strings decorating the walls wishing good tidings to all who entered. The ivy, still covering the front yard, weaves its lush, emerald carpet along the ground up the latticework onto the fron...