Friday's News

 No morning liturgy today. I overslept. However, I did get to the grocery. Which was lucky, since K came over after the group session and I had no time for shopping. She is going to type some of my "Chasing Ashes" chapters. Then I piddled, snacked and napped. My back was hurting. A hot shower put paid to that. What else did I do tonight: some reading and a revision of a story. Check that below.

I got a rejection from Fiction on The Web:

Unfortunately your story "The Revenger’s Tale" will not be published at Fiction on the Web.

I have a couple more tabs open for submissions, and not all that tired, yet. 

My other big project for the evening was this post. It's done for the night.  

You got to watch out for Hoosier women: Indiana woman says tea laced with pills given to ex-fiancé was a chemistry experiment (CBS News)

Okay, it is the Advent Fast and I had to go on a liquid diet earlier this week, so I am of a mind for eating out: 9 Indiana All-You-Can-Eat Seafood Buffets That Keep Families Coming Back 

Heidelberg Haus has been around since I was a kid living in Indy. That's more than 50 years now. However, I was only in it with my ex-wife, who wanted to get in touch with her German roots. It seems to be going on just fine: Indiana Dining Gem Known for Its Hearty, Flavor-Filled German Comfort Food 

There were once three Koran restaurants and Heidelberg Haus in the Lawrence area; I always assumed it was because Fort Benjamin Harrison was also there. Get a foreign bride and then open a restaurant.

I do not hunt, but I am fascinated with stories like Why ‘Largest’ Means Something Different in Indiana—And Hunters Can’t Agree. We wiped out the deer population around 1949; when I was a kid, you might find them in southern Indiana. Then they spread from cornfield to cornfield. I started noticing them around Central Indiana in the late-Eighties, maybe the early Nineties. They can be a threat to drivers at night. About twenty years ago, I was fishing in White River, a few hundred feet from the Scatterfield Road bridge, when a buck ran across the river to my left. So, we got them and they are big.

I saw the remake of Breathless at the theater and not seen it since, but I found it more congenial than the original, so I like what Catch Your Breath Again: 1983's Breathless Remake Deserves a Second Look (CrimeReads) has to say.

I have seen all but one of the movies described in Five Screwball Thrillers that Kill (CrimeReads), but Out of Time did not seem screwball to me.

Elementary came out when I was in prison; what I saw I liked, and never had any problem with Lucy Liu as Watson (it was good to see in a role that did not reduce her to sex kitten), and reading Elementary is a Masterclass in Sherlock Holmes Adaptation (CrimeReads) makes me wish I had seen them all. I have been too long from Sherlock Holmes.

“The Famous Mr. Handel”: Baroque music’s glorious revolution by Charles King (Lapham's Quarterly) a well-told history of the man and his time in England.

For all of Trump making America great again, he never really makes clear to me what he means - other than have mediocre white men run things. I can quibble with a few points in For Better, For Worse: George Orwell and American Character by Jonathan Clarke (The Hedgehog Review), but it is worth reading and thinking about and wondering if this country falling apart might not be good for our character. 

My quibbles? They are what I got from watching all those old movies when I was a kid: Gary Cooper not being imposed upon nor imposing upon others; James Cagney's toughness that didn't hide his intelligence; Henry Fonda standing up for decency without ever descending into crudity; the can-do spirit without having to lord it over everyone. It is what I got from growing up in Indiana before they instituted class-basketball - anyone could have a chance at the big time, that brains and speed could outdo mere brawn. And I am not ignoring the casual and not-so-casual racism of Indiana, but growing up in a city of 60,000 taught me, too, the limits of that racism, we knew them and they knew us, we worked with and for one another. We may have been an exception to Faulkner's idea that the North liked African-Americans as a group but disliked them as individuals.

 From there, go read The Utility Of “Antifa” (Sheila Kennedy). I am antifa. So was my second step-father - I expect he shot more than a few in Europe during World War Two. My maternal grandfather thought the American Legion was fascistic, and he got gassed in WWI. My first step-father told me had no problem shooting Germans, even though he might still have cousins over there, but all the same the US Army sent him to the Pacific. I'm not sure where my mother's cousin was serving in WWII, but I don't see him as being anything but antifa; being Roman Catholic, I can't imagine him having love for today's version of the KKK. I'd say being antifa is a family tradition.

I spent some time reading EPOCH magazine before sending them a version of "Agnes" that I revised tonight. Give it a read. 

NASA announces incredible discovery that may have settled the 'life on Mars' debate just makes me miss David Bowie.

To Reach the Literary Editor by Mark Jay Mirsky (Fiction Magazine) was a wonderful piece to read, even if I am not sure what the magazine wants. That is, probably anything I have written. It is an encouragement to keep trying.

I read Robert B. Parker when I was a teenager until I ran out of steam with him in the early Eighties. I was not a fan of Spenser for Hire. Although, it is far better than any other version I have seen of the character. While in prison, I went back to reading him and found him a delight - he writes great dialog. Elmore Leonard embarrasses me because I did not read him until prison. Another great writer of dialog. Elmore Leonard and Robert B. Parker's Crime TV Legacies goes into more detail on this, go read it.

Speaking of Leonard, here is a video reviewing one of his books:

 

A history of Indianapolis that is actually pretty good:

 

I remain fascinated by Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain in a way that I am not with James Joyce's Ulysses. Could it be that the latter is expected, and the former is not? Perhaps. Anyway, I suggest give it a try. The Master of Contradictions by Morten Høi Jensen review – how Thomas Mann wrote The Magic Mountain (The Guardian) might give you an idea why you should do so.

Morten Høi Jensen’s approachable and informative study of The Magic Mountain positions Mann as a writer who was contradictory to his core: an artist who dressed and behaved like a businessman; a homosexual in a conventional marriage with six children; an upstanding burgher obsessed with death and corruption. Very much the kind of man who would send someone a book and tell them not to read it.

Despite the doubts Mann expressed to Gide, The Magic Mountain – a very strange, very long novel – was embraced throughout Europe, and three years later in America, too. Its publisher there ignored the strangeness and proclaimed its “use value … for the practical life of modern man”. While that makes it sound like Jordan Peterson-style cod philosophy, in fact it stands alongside In Search of Lost Time, Ulysses, The Man Without Qualities and To the Lighthouse as one of the summits (apologies) of literary modernism.

 Another show my mother ought not have let me watch:

 I am closing out, looking to add links to this post, when the YouTube algorithm turned up 10 Most Dangerous Places in Indiana.

 It is a little funny, a few shockers.

 

 sch