Villains - The Literary Sort 3/18/2015

[ I am back working through my prison journal. It is out of order… Well, the order is as I have opened boxes. The date in the title is the date it was written. I hope this is not confusing. What you are reading is what you get for your tax dollars. sch 10/13/2025] 

I read a bit of another inmate's novel. He did not like my critique. He had started with the villain as a small boy, and, then, in the second chapter, makes him the villain with a typical villainous speech. I thought he had a really good first draft, the skeleton for an interesting story. He went away very glum. I got to thinking about villains.

Three novels came particularly to mind: Moby Dick, Elmer Gantry, Crime and Punishment, A Hero For Our Times, and Goldfinger. Those I have read. Paradise Lost also came to mind, but I've not read all of that. 

The better villains make us feel sympathy for them. That is Crime and Punishment. Maybe I should note Richard Wright's Native Son here. I'm not so sure Elmer Gantry ever becomes sympathetic - I found Raskolnikov and Gantry far more sympathetic. But Sinclair Lewis does what Lermontov did in A Hero For Our Times, he makes the villainous understandable. By giving us an understanding of the character, we have a better insight into human nature. Auric Goldfinger does nothing more than kickstart the plot.

 How to make villains more sympathetic? Let us see the world from their point of view. Neither Elmer Gantry nor Bigger Thomas saw themselves as evil or doing evil. Think of the great evildoers, those of whom we've made bogeyman: Genghis Khan, Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and so on. They all thought themselves do-gooders. One thing I learned from the years I practiced law was that do-gooders are the most dangerous people - they brook no opposition, all means are justified by their goals, and all their goals are righteous. Satan as written by Milton,, certainly wrote him as being righteous ("It is better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.") Captain Ahab is a bit harder - but he makes fierce arguments for his hatred of the White Whale. But the method of Crime and Punishment works best.

And why do this? Increase the dramatic stakes. How else could Milton make Paradise Lost interesting other than make Satan interesting? Richard Wright makes a better case against American racism with Bigger Thomas than with a typical hero.

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Toni Morrison's Legacy

 "Toni Morrison and the Geopoetics of Place, Race, and Be/longing" - Marilyn Sanders Mobley - is a horrible (academic) title. When the talk gets to "Beloved" and why there is a ghost, my attention really perked up. Vanity being that thing where one's crazier ideas get validated by people far smarter. 

Anyway, if you are a reader or admirer of Morrison, this is better than it sounds, the speakers obviously admire Morrison, and their enthusiasm for the woman and her works shines through. But since I am also one of those people who think Morrison is a great writer, I may be biased.

sch 11/10

Death and Repentance 3/18/2015

 [ I am back working through my prison journal. It is out of order… Well, the order is as I have opened boxes. The date in the title is the date it was written. I hope this is not confusing. What you are reading is what you get for your tax dollars. sch 10/13/2025] 

I always had a fixation on death. I thought of death as the great escape. As miserable as I thought life, I thought there would be peace in the grave. I was trying to come out of this thinking before I got arrested. The Canadian women's curling team almost gave me a glimpse of a practical purpose to my life. I screwed up that chance, of course.

Odd thing now, I find death more troublesome, less peaceful, than I once did. I put this down to my readings in Orthodox Christianity. The Orthodox make something positive out of life, everyone's life. I do not worry so much about these writings - that is for the moment. (Besides, says the cynical voice in my head, I may be a writer more interesting dead than alive.) No, I worry mostly about changing my ways, of repentance, of atonement - and having the time to do so. Then, yes, there exists a worrisome question of faith about resurrection. I hope for the resurrection - meanwhile I need to do as much as lies within my abilities.

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Armistice Day

 Either I am not hearing the alarm or it was not set (I do not want to admit I am too tired to hear the thing go off), but I had a late start. 

I managed one blog post that will be published next month under Pretrial Detention. With my usual wisdom, it was what should have been the basis of this blog back in 2010. Oh well, never too late to start at the beginning.

CC woke before I could get away to the laundry. Last night, I promised her French Toast. This I fixed before I left. Along with the usual milk and eggs, I added vanilla extract; while frying, I sprinkled cinnamon on the flip side, and when when finished, I added peanut butter to the plain side. The vanilla extract, I learned in the Boy Scouts. Cinnamon, we did as kids. The peanut butter is an idea I came to in prison. 

Paul S sent me a camera. All I wanted was some ideas on a camera, and he goes and buys one. This is friendship. I am absolutely gobsmacked and humbled.

DM just sent a reply to an email, writing about humility. This camera is a lesson in humility.

Laundry is done. I plan on shepherding CC to Ball State, where there is a gallery showing I want to see and a print sale.

 Blanket Gravity Magazine rejected "Agnes":

Unfortunately, your submitted work has been declined for publication in Blanket Gravity Magazine. Thank you so much for sharing your art with us. We really appreciate your interest in our magazine, and we are grateful for the opportunity to have considered your work. Judgment of art and literature is highly subjective; another editor at another publication could disagree. Thank you for your submission, and we wish you the best in your life as an artist.

Sincerely,
Readers and editors at Blanket Gravity Magazine 

We have been listening to WITT this morning. CC cannot believe the stuff they get away with, and I like the unpredictability. See what you think. It is out of Zionsville.

I just noticed there is no longer any unasked for assistance from Google in propagating links.

Cc just let me know she has to take care of some business, so I am staying here writing. 

I forgot to take a moment at 11 AM. It is Veterans Day, once upon a time it was Armistice Day.

Meet the 2025 National Book Award Finalists - I found the National Book Award books to be some of the best things I have read (better than the Pulitzer choices).

Take a look at Gregg Stagg's Most Men Are Losers for its title (I did) and stay for what he has to say about this year's Booker Prize winner.

David Szalay’s Flesh has won the 2025 Booker Prize. (Literary Hub) (Which as a link to a novel excerpt.)

Today, at a ceremony in London, David Szalay was awarded the 2025 Booker Prize for his novel, Flesh. The judges called it “a disquisition on the art of being alive, and all the affliction that comes along with it, but it is also an absolute page-turner. It’s nearly impossible to put down. The emotional detachment of the main character, István, is sustained by the tremendous movement of the plot. The pace of this novel speaks to one of the greater themes; the detachment of our bodies from our decisions.” 

 And the federal government considers me to be ever so dangerous: Ghislaine Maxwell being treated like a ‘guest in a hotel’ at new prison, expert says. 

Eli Frankel: I Was the Last Person to Interview the Black Dahlia Murder Witness. - Another instance where the "genius" predator killer is actually police incompetence. If there is one crime fiction trope that annoys me most, it is the genius serial killer.

More problems with MW's appeals. My eyes are tired, the sky is gloomy and it is cold. I am taking a break.

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More What Kind of Morons Run Indiana?

 I do not see any reason for adding much commentary to Matt Greller's op/ed piece in the Indiana Capital Chronicle, Income tax repairs would give Indiana cities and towns a better chance at success under new system.  If you can read, you will understand why I lapped my title on this post.

As local governments move through their first full budget cycles under Senate Enrolled Act 1, a clear trend is emerging: the law significantly restricts long-term revenue growth at the very moment cities and towns are confronting rapidly rising costs. When revenue growth is compressed and fiscal uncertainty increases, the outcome is predictable — major cuts to local services.

Because employees account for the largest share of municipal budgets, hiring freezes and the anticipated elimination of positions have been the most common responses so far. But personnel decisions are only part of the story. New public safety buildings and equipment are being shelved, neighborhood sidewalk programs are being canceled, community amenities that were expected to open in 2026 are now on hold, and some communities can no longer afford to match Community Crossings grants needed to upgrade failing infrastructure.

If SEA 1 is not adjusted, what does the next decade look like on the ground?

It looks like delayed or canceled police and fire stations, and departments that can’t field enough personnel to meet call volumes. It looks like increased response times when seconds matter.

It looks like streets and roads going longer between repaving, and recent projects deteriorating faster because basic maintenance has been pushed off.

It looks like shuttered pools, reduced hours at parks and community centers, fewer programs for kids and seniors, and less support—both financial and in-kind—for the parades, festivals, and local events that define small-town Indiana and city neighborhoods alike.

***

These fiscal pressures are not confined to a single city or one part of Indiana. Under SEA 1, local leaders are wrestling with:

• A lack of reliable state revenue projections for 2026, 2027, and 2028 income tax revenues, which makes responsible long-range budgeting far more difficult.
• A new annual adoption process for the income tax that introduces instability, particularly for communities under 3,500 residents that must petition their counties each year for distributions.
• Technical complications with debt coverage and TIF neutralization that put infrastructure and economic development projects at risk.

To be clear, local leaders are not opposed to tax reform. They are asking for balance. Communities across the state are already stretched thin as they work to meet residents’ expectations and maintain the amenities that attract new residents and businesses. Any tax reform must be crafted in a way that supports — rather than undermines — the fiscal health of municipalities. If state and local leaders approach the 2026 session with that shared understanding, it can be productive for everyone.

***

In November, Aim is convening regional roundtables — including in Mishawaka and nine other communities — to hear in detail how SEA 1 is affecting local budgets and services on the ground. Based on what we are already hearing from our members, Aim has prepared a package of technical fixes to SEA 1: improvements to the annual adoption and distribution process; clearer and more dependable revenue projections; adjustments to rate splits so municipalities are not structurally disadvantaged; greater fiscal certainty for small communities; and corrections to debt-coverage and TIF provisions so local infrastructure and economic development tools continue to function as intended.

At the same time, we took seriously the message from lawmakers in 2025 that local government must continue to modernize and pursue efficiencies. Alongside our SEA 1 proposals, Aim is advancing a series of modernization and efficiency ideas to help local governments operate at an even more effective level. A key priority is updating the state’s government modernization statute to make it easier and more flexible for units to restructure, share services, and collaborate where it benefits taxpayers. We are also exploring streamlined service-delivery approaches and better use of technology and data so communities can stretch every dollar as far as possible.

These problems affect Republicans as well as Democrats - even if our cities lean more to Democrats. I assume they affect the towns and townships in the rural areas where Republicans hold sway.

Which raises two questions: 

What were the Republicans in our General Assembly thinking? 

What are Indiana Democrats going to do to fix the hold morons have on the General Assembly?

sch 11/10 

 

 

 

Immortal Diamond 3-17-2015

[ I am back working through my prison journal. It is out of order… Well, the order is as I have opened boxes. The date in the title is the date it was written. I hope this is not confusing. What you are reading is what you get for your tax dollars. sch 7/5/2025] 

Larry Bolanger lent me his copy of Richard Rohr's Immortal Diamond: The Search of our True Self (Jossey-Bass, 2013). Rohr is Father Richard, a Franciscan priest. This has given me much to think about. Not a little bit are the echoes of - and even citations to - the Orthodox tradition. Nietzsche would have fits of Christianity. Yet, Rohr argues this is the proper attitude of Christianity. I found the same ideas in Orthodoxy as Rohr. I also find a problem - that of fear, of ego - cited by Rohr in the nature of religious organizations limiting the religion within borders. In our case, it is the ethnics - essentially all Greeks - disliking the non-ethnics. Whether they doubt our sincerity or dislike our SO status, or consider us as Americans trespassing, we have no idea and no remedy other than our faith in endurance for a great goal.

 Rohr identifies our ego as a false self and our soul as our True Self. I find nothing heretical in his ideas. That Protestantism has drained life - and quite possibly meaning - by its legalistic legalism, I agree with. That the Great Schism deprived the Western Church of a ready source of mystical energy seems a likely explanation from my own readings besides this book. Christianity is about love. When has love ever thrived on logic?

 Some thoughts from Father Rohr's book:

... I am going to make a rather absolute statement: people who risk intimacy are invariably happier and much more real people. They feel like they have lots of "handles" that allow others to hold onto themselves. People who avoid intimacy are always and I mean always imprisoned in a small and circular world.Intimacy is the onkly gateway into the temple of human or divine love.

Chapter 8: "Intimate with Everything" 

***

I would say a very small percentage of Christians let the corporate Body of Christ carry both their goodness and their badness, both the weight of the glory and the burden of their sin, to use two of Paul's felicitous phrases. Western individualism has really done us in. It has created either ego-inflated or ego-deflated people or, more commonly, a daily seesaw between both - yet both of them are illusions. Neither your worthiness nor your unworthiness is yours alone, and it is a burden to try to maintain them a if they were. What a relief. This might be the very recipe for God's peace, which is an underlying vastness and abundance that can absorb all negativity and watch it pass away.

Chapter 9: "Love Is Stranger Than Death"

Think about what Rohr writes. Read his book. 

I wonder if my problems with intimacy explain my doubts of fiath. Eh, TJ, or A, or T2, any thoughts on this?

Sorry about the length but I hope it's wholeness worked for you.

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FWIW: Eight Democratic Senators Are Morons

 Used to be, I thought John Fetterman would show Democrats the way into the Promised Land. No longer.

I had to get that off my chest. This whole post is me getting stuff off my chest because I am coming late to this party.

I am limiting myself to Once Again, Senate Democrats Show They Don’t Get Who They Represent (The New Republic), and Dems Reward the Hostage-Taker (The Bulwark).

 My reaction was we need to get Chuck Schumer out of the Minority Leader job. Only he voted against the deal. I listened to the following video, and if there is any reason for dumping Schumer it is that he either lacked the power or the will to keep the defecting 8 within the fold. The 8 either are not up for re-election, or not up for re-election next year. 

 

What did they get? A promise to maybe talk about Obamacare. A chance at a hand job, to be rude about it.

The defecting 8 got nothing for bending over and spreading their nether regions makes them morons.

That they are not up for re-election next year makes them joining the Republicans seem not just dumber, but flavors their stupidity with cravenness, 

And the Democratic leadership cannot understand why people have such a distaste for the party?

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