Following Tangents

Henry & Eleanor together at 
I love that she's reading a book and he's asleep.

As some of you gentle readers know, I write novels. Two are in print, and there is a third in production. I am heavy on research and accuracy, especially in the new book where I am dealing with real events...even if they happened at the end of the 12th century. This means I have spent much of the last few years studying maps, travel times, battles, and armor. I confess, I'm better at clothing parts than almost anything else...years in the theater can do that to you, but I happen to find that particular time period fascinating because so much was happening and almost everything we read about it is from a single perspective: that of the Crusaders and the church. Life at the end of the 12th was messy, bloody, disease ridden, smelly, toxic, and really, really colorful. I love the people who populated that period: Eleanor of Aquitaine, Salah ad-Din, the Jews of al-Andalus, and the tribes of the Maghreb. Of course, Eleanor is my all-time favorite kick-ass heroine. She was one tough cookie who managed to pretty much live life on her terms. She was a force of nature, out-dealing both her husbands, and especially by outliving Henry II who was, even by history's loose standards, a total putz who couldn't keep it in his pants. 

I always thought Peter O'Toole did a fine job capturing his essence in THE LION IN WINTER, while Katharine Hepburn was a great Eleanor. Thank the playwright/screenwriter, James Goldman, for the fabulous script. I feel like I've spent enough time with those two, Eleanor and Henry, to think they must've sounded much the way Goldman wrote them. Their disagreements were legendary, as were how they behaved toward each other despite producing a whole lotta kids, 8 in all,  including King Richard the Lionhearted and King John - aka Lackland -  who happens to be best remembered for being the usurper-villain in the Robin Hood stories. Never mind that he was the one who signed off on the Magna Carta, but who's looking, right?

I confess, I love the research. I love digging into weird stuff, following tangents, and filling my head with wacko-factoids. Yeah, I'm usually pretty good at trivia, too, but this is different. When I was doing the research for Dream Dancer, I spent hundreds of hours in the libraries at the University of Minnesota because the internet was in its infancy and for the early research years, Google didn't exist. Yeah, I used Mosaic and some library-sharing sites, but they were in their user unfriendly period and answers were not fast or reliable enough. I did make some good friends in the U of Mn School of Mines and Metallurgy, especially in their maps library. These guys got so excited about my weird questions, that I had all sorts of help finding answers. It was fun. Whereas I was inventing a culture and a people for Dream Dancer, the characters in the new book lived in a real historical period in real places with some pretty real battles. Sometimes that made stuff easy, other times, it made it impossibly hard to make sure I was getting it right. Since lots has been documented, I was swimming in the sea of info-overload. 

Lately, it feels like it's enough already. The book has been through continuity, line, and copy editing, as well as a trip through the machete machine. I am in the death throes of getting this tome out the door to the woman who will do the interior design as well as the cover. I am just about ready to lock it down and send it off. I'm really excited about this, and really tired of looking at it. 

Retiring didn't mean I was gonna stop working. If anything, I'm working harder these days. There are three novels behind this one in various stages of completion, and one of them actually gets the most attention since it will be next. That one's about an art lawyer. And yes, I have a team of legal eagles who have been great about answering the endless stream of questions I send out. With any luck, that one will go to editors sometime next winter, probably around February, but don't hold me to it. I'm terrible with deadlines. 

Enough whining.

Apartments at the Rodney

I do want to mention the collapse of the condo building in Surfside. Until the folks retired to Delray Beach, we spent a whole bunch of Thanksgivings about 5 blocks from the building, at an oddly magical place called The Rodney. I have great memories of my whole family...aunts, uncles, cousins, all taking apartments along the row...and running amok. The Rodney was totally out of place amidst those gleaming buildings. I used to wish my folks would buy a place in one of them. They were so glamorous with their shining white balconies, with chandeliers in the lobbies visible from the street. Oh, to be on the ocean side and stand looking over the water. But having grown up on the South Shore of Long Island, I was pretty familiar with salt-water erosion. We saw it on a small scale at our beach club where every year, some structure was in need of new concrete and general "realignment." As I listened to the reports on the news today, they were talking about the same stuff our earth-sciences teacher was talking about in high school: the importance of properly established run-off paths, sand settling, stuff like that. And I have to wonder why in this day and age, when a report about just this issue was filed in 2018, no one acted on it. We have enough deep-earth-discovery technology that testing for stability should be routine on a sand bar...and that's exactly what Miami Beach is. This is a tragedy that could have been prevented with proper maintenance. What is wrong with our nation that a structure with routine safe inspections can fail catastrophically like this one? Are we so focused on cheap that the price of life is not even in the equation? Where are our priorities?

Maybe that's easier to answer than one might think. Our priorities have moved away from science into fantasyland not only with vaccinations, but with infrastructure as well. It's easy to call the pandemic the big lie...as long as someone you love hasn't died from it...the same way it's easy to ignore the cracks in the roadbeds of bridges or on the walls of tunnels. It's also about cutting costs, saving a buck, and accepting okay, not best, practices in construction. It's about pseudoscience replacing fact-based medical practice. Look at any penis-enhancing drug, or miracle weight loss beverage. Someone is buying that bull-oney hook, line, and sinker. 

We have become easily deluded into believing whatever slick nonsense is on television or the internet. We have chosen to believe the snake-oil salesmen because they wear expensive-looking suits and Rolex watches...real or fake. Doesn't matter because we are a gullible people, a nation of dupes. The sheer number of telephone scams people fall for should tell you something right there. The princes of Nigeria may be gone, but yesterday, I got a voicemail telling me there was an unauthorized charge on the credit card assigned to my Amazon account and to press 1 to report it. Not even the DO NOT CALL lists work. Clearly, I'm not the only one who thinks we are patsy nation. 

I don't see a lot of hope out there on the horizon for straightening out the priorities of this country. There is no middle ground any more, and too many MAGA hats are still running the GOP. Unless that changes, or the Senate goes blue, this stalemate will go on for yet another election cycle. I wish President Biden luck in his quest to get the GOP to move on any issue. Even one would be a baby step in the right direction. You just gotta hope.

The Wifely Person's Tip o'the Week

If you don't recognize the number, don't answer the phone.

If someone is for real, they will leave a message. 

Duh.