Fish Book Reviews

"If I Am Missing or Dead" by Janine Latus

2011-10-01T16:12:00.000-07:00

"If I Am Missing or Dead", by Janine Latus

Here's a book as much about the author and the author's family as it is about the murdered woman.

Janine Latus, a provocatively good writer, an expert at the understatement, tell story of her family and her sister Amy, who went missing in the spring of 2002 and was found dead. Amy died at the hands of her lover at the time, a n'er-do-well she met on the Internet.

Amy was mistreated and abused by this man she dared to love. She often phoned her sister Janine with the problems with this man and Janine counseled her.

Only as the reader continues along the reader discovers that Janine has male issues of her own and they are very shocking. To all the world and to her troubled sister, Janine looked to have it all. She was married to a doctor, did not want for material things, had a beautiful home and a happening career as a journalist.

Latus doesn't shock the reader with the snippets of her life with a very weird and perverted man, no matter what the outside world saw. Instead the reader is guided through her young life in a rollicking family headed by a real nut case for a father. Janine, and Amy's, father was a bit of a pervert, spanking his daughters until they were well into their teens, talking trash and saying things that a father should never say to his daughters. The reader moves on to Janine's adulthood, her struggle to complete her education, obtain a college and extended degree, her life in a ghetto.

In fact so much of the book is about Janine Latus that I was left wondering when the murdered woman would merit a mention. Which is not to say Janine's story was not a compelling one but potential readers should know that Amy 's story is but a small part of the story.

Janine's husband, to my shock, was a genuine asshole of the highest order. He monitored everything Janine put in her mouth, he weighed her every day, he pressured her into having two breast augmentations. The most humiliating of all was how he demanded that she wear very short skirts, tight tops, very high heels and other provocative attire in public. In fact the more stares of shock his wife got the more Janine's husband was delighted, even if in front of his children.

It took a while for Janine to gather the courage she needed to leave her abusive spouse even as she constantly counseled her beloved sister Amy to ditch the creep she was living with. An affluent life is not worth the cost of a human soul even if Janine's husband didn't murder her as Amy's former lover did.

I found myself wondering what the Latus family thought of this book. There was no attempt to disguise the characters. Latus' ex-husband the pervert, once a respected doctor, and still a respected doctor for all I know, is depicted as a pervert for all the world, his medical colleagues and his children, to read at will. Janine's father is also a weirdo. Janine's siblings have all turned out well, even her murdered sister Amy was successful at her career.

But the rock over the creeps is definitely turned over and what's underneath is really ugly.

Here is Janine's Simon and Schuster web site.

"Who Named the Knife"; "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil"

2011-09-21T07:10:00.000-07:00

Two Books reviews: “Midnight In the Garden of Good and Evil” by John Berendt and “Who Named the Knife” by Linda Spalding. One a study of murder and life in Savannah, Georgia, the other, also a true crime genre, is a lesson in just how silly liberals can get.

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”Who Named the Knife"by Linda Spalding

Here’s a twisted tale that began in 1978 going on with the latest update in 2009.

It’s a book as much about the author as it is about the subject.

It’s a book about justice and juries and court trials and two innocent males who met their death because two selfish young people went on a killing spree and murdered them for pretty much no reason.

Male in picture above is victim murdered in Hawaii, Larry Hasker, NOT William Acker as the text indicates. My mistake. Woman is Linda Acker.

Let’s begin with the author, Linda Spalding. Spalding was a juror on this case. Circumstances caused her to be late the morning the jury was charged with delivering the verdict against Maryann Acker and an alternate was put in her place. Spalding declares that she would have found Maryann innocent.

Only the jury legally qualified to vote on the verdict found Maryann Acker guilty and she was subsequently sentenced to life in prison.

Spalding then began on a life quest to try and free Maryann Acker from the Hawaiian prison for the crime Spalding sincerely believed the woman did not commit.

Maryann and William Acker were young newlyweds when they jointly went on a murder spree that had them robbing and murdering two young men. One was lured by Maryann from a bar in Hawaii to his home where both William and Maryann robbed him then drove him to a secluded roadside where one of the Ackers shot and murdered him. This duo later murdered a man in California, a fellow who stopped and picked them up when they were hitchhiking by the side of the road. While both the Ackers were convicted of murdering the California man, only William was charged with using a gun in the commission of a crime. For the Hawaiian murder, both William and Maryann were charged with using a gun.

Make no mistake, there is some question as to who pulled the trigger to kill these men. As is often the case, lesser charges were also filed against William and Maryann, one of which was the use of a gun in the commission of a felony. Maryann was not found guilty of the use of a gun in the murder of the California man but she was found guilty of murder. Just because she wasn’t found guilty of using a gun, Maryann Acker was very much found guilty in murder in the first degree for the murder in Hawaii. Since she was sentenced to life in Hawaii, the state of California hadn’t a chance to try Maryann but had she been released in Hawaii she would have had to face the judiciary in California.

The testimony of William Acker was all over the place, even to a point of perjury. For Acker testified in California that he shot and killed Lawrence Hasker in Hawaii. He recanted that statement in the 2009 re-trial, saying he lied under oath only to try and get his ex-wife out on parole.

Local stories of that trial HERE and HERE.

William later testified in the Hawaiian trial that it was Maryann who pulled the trigger that killed Lawrence Hasker.

Odd. First, husbands are not normally required to testify against their wives. William so testified willingly. Second, it is asserted that William was hinted at a possible early release if he testified. The jurors in Hawaii, which included, at the time, the book’s author, did not know this, could not weigh the fact that William’s testimony might be tainted by that promise.

What was not disputed was the fact that both of this couple participated in the murder of two men, one in Hawaii and one in California.

Maryann, over the years in her Hawaiian prison, began to create a story that she was completely innocent, that it was her husband William who murdered those two men, that she had nothing to do with it, could not stop him, was totally unaware of it all.

If this writer’s opinion means anything to yon reader, and mileages do vary I get this, sweet little Maryann was knee deep in the murder of these two men. This book’s author, remember, was on the jury for this crime and due to a fluke, was not present to vote the “not guilty” she alleges she would have delivered. Which would have caused a hung jury because Maryann was, in fact, found guilty. Not once, yon reader, but TWICE. Could all of those 24 jurors who voted her guilty be dumbbell boobs with only author Linda Spalding having the brains to see the truth?

At the time of this book’s writing the additional trial had not been complete. As Maryann’s attorney was preparing for the retrial, the author was what I consider a stupid, misled, usually silly liberal, believer in the innocence of the guilty.

They’re everywhere, these people with teeny tiny little lives with nothing more going for them in their life than to embrace the innocence of some very guilty criminal type. They’ll get themselves so emotionally wrapped up in the jailed n’er do well, who is probably yukking it up over having so fooled this fool, that they visit them in jail, write them endlessly, there are stories of stupid lonely women up and marrying a murderer, remaining loyal to them until their release, only to themselves be murdered by the guy whose innocence they so believed.

Linda Spalding is a bit different in that she a)is smart enough to write a book and a very well-written one at that and b)was involved with the criminal she so adored in a more unusual manner by actually being a juror on her trial.

Beyond that, Spalding is a bit of a dim bulb. Dear Lord, does she really believe that Maryann and her young husband picked up not one, but TWO men, who both ended up very dead, without knowing a thing about how these men keep ending up dead all around her? Maryann and her husband thought they were Bonnie and Clyde and I got a bridge through some swampland to sell this author if she thinks this precious innocent she is wasting her life on knew nothing about the young men who died, both who made the horrible mistake of helping Maryann and her husband out.

Linda Spalding would do way better spending her time doing something for the very helpless, innocents who lost their life before having a chance to live it. Instead she throws away her time and money on the evil witch who murdered them in cold blood.

The book’s title is an allusion to testimony at the trial that alleged that Maryann carried a knife that had a name. Spalding said she felt, as a juror, that whoever named that knife was the guilty one.

Maryann Acker named that knife…”JUSTICE”….I have not a single doubt.
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9/21/11

As a follow-up to the above review, I chose this book as MY choice for my book club. I thought that perhaps it was just me who was silently muttering about this dingbat writing this book, how it was not only silly but downright pernicious to involve one's self in the release of this woman who took the lives of two young men, young men who should now be alive, likely married, probably raising a family.

The book club went ballistic as I gave my summary as to why I chose this book, my somewhat odd need to have my concerns made valid that this author was a crazy person without a meaningful life. One book club member called her "whiney". The other members shouted to the heavens that Linda Spalding felt so guilty about her little life that she adopted a ridiculous cause and that she was not a good writer to boot.

And so it ends. I still sit and ponder that there are people out there like Spalding, tiny people with little logic, who think it is somehow noble to set the guilty free. A cop killer is going to meet the needle today and as always, there are many Linda Spaldings who have somehow convined themselves that the guilty man didn't heartlessly snuff out the life of a young cop who was trying to prevent an assault on a homeless man.

How can these people live with themselves?

Juries aren't perfect, we know that, but put a jury of average citizens up against a passel of self-serving politicians and I'm sure the juries would come up half again as honorable. And yet silly little people like Linda Spalding, who said, remind, at the beginning of this book, that had she been able to make it on time as a juror to murderer MaryAnn, she would have hung the jury.

Sheesh. Just sheesh.

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”Midnight In the Garden of Good and Evil” by John Berendt

Here’s a book as much about Savannah, Georgia as it is about the famous murder that happened there. For a young, handsome and virile Danny Hansford did end up dead, killed by a bullet shot from a gun held by his ersatz room-mate, Jim Williams.

Williams was a Savannah resident of cosmopolitan tastes and European culture. He purchased and fixed up those old Victorian type of homes that filled Savannah’s inner city streets. Williams was a beloved Savannah fixture whose annual Christmas party invites were cherished as any gilded treasure.

Williams was a homosexual. Danny Hansford was a heterosexual who sold his body for money to Williams or, at times, local fellows who hung out in Savannah’s sleazier districts for just such a purchase.

While the story of this book is true, much of it is fictionalized, based, on author assertion, gleanings of truth and Savannah folklore gathered from his research. The author was in pursuit of the story of the Hansford murder, spending many months actually living in Savannah, meeting the local characters, researching the facts of law.

Jim Williams claimed that he did shoot Danny Hansford but only in self-defense. Hansford was a loud lout of a guy. The classy home owned by Williams and shared with Hansford was often the scene of arguments and cussing by Hansford, as any one of Williams’ neighbors would attest. Williams claimed that Hansford was approached while he was sitting at his desk. Hansford had a gun in his hand and shot at the vulnerable Williams. The bullets shot by Hansford failed to hit Williams so he opened the desk drawer, grabbed a gun stored there, and shot Hansford dead before the angry young man could fire off another shot.

The book is full of colorful characters, rich with local lore, and saturated with the kooky, sophisticated traditions of Savannah. Jim Williams was tried three times by a very inept prosecutor. The author spent many hours with Williams as he endured the hung juries of two trials. Williams was nonplussed by being constantly under attack by the prosecutor, smug and secure his innocence would be affirmed.

For there were holes in Williams’ story, big ones. Danny Hansford had NO gunpowder residue on his dead hands, very unusual for someone who’d so recently shot a gun. The prosecutor’s theory was that Williams, out of a final rage and anger at this young man he so obviously loved, got a gun and finally shot him dead. The juries of Williams’ peers in Savannah, Georgia were not buying it. Whether this was because of their true belief in Williams’ innocence or due to Williams stature in Savannah’s gentile society is unknown.

Williams spent a fortune in defense attorneys though musing often to the author that he is as well served by the local voodoo witch doctor than the plethora of defense attorneys who hadn’t managed, through two trials, to get him a not-guilty verdict.

Williams did finally get a defense attorney that pleased him, this defense attorney finally finding one missed fact through the many trials that arguably poked a fatal hole in the prosecutor’s case.

This is a very well-written book. For sure it’s a peek into an intriguing part of America that eschews entry into a more modern world for living in a quaint past.

There are many colorful characters in the book which the author assures us might not exist on a one by one basis but as combined to one fictional name they very much existed in the Savannah he visited and studied.

It’s a great look into a justice system filled with flaws and as far away from justice as can be.

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"Devil in the White City" by Erik Larson

2011-08-22T14:57:00.000-07:00

We’ve got a book review of a book that tells a most amazing story. It might be a tale of a famous world’s fair or it might be a shocking story of a serial killer. It mesmerizes, it teaches, it leaves the reader with so much to ponder. It’s “Devil in the White City”.

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”Devil in the White City by Erik Larson

It was a major effort to wrap my mind around the subject of this book. Which might be because the book had so many subjects the mind gets boggled.

The commonality in all of the topics covered in this book, written in 2003, is the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893. This fair was called the White City but as the author amply illustrates, it was surrounded by the black of despair and horrible murder.

There were a bevy of famous people featured in this book. There were famous architects, including the designer of Central Park in New York as well as Jackson Park, the Chicago locale for Chicago’s world’s fair. The inventor of the Ferris wheel, George Ferris, built his first ride bearing his name at the Chicago World’s Fair. The Fair featured Buffalo Bill, Annie Oakley and such luminaries as Thomas Edison and Theordor Dreiser were part of the Fair’s surround.

One of the major subjects of the book was a fellow named Henry Holmes. The author alternated the various book chapters amongst the subjects of the Fair.

Holmes was a serial murderer and his connection to the fair was more logistical than as in any part of its creation.

I found myself hurrying through the sometimes mind-numbing tales of the angst of creating the fair to come again to a chapter about the infamous Holmes. Because it’s difficult to believe that such a cold-blooded human being could have walked this earth, murdering woman and children so cavalierly that it chills one’s soul.

In fact, Holmes own a pharmacy and hotel near the Chicago fair. He specifically had a special room housing a kiln that could hold an extremely high heat. He also would, if in need of money, hire a surgeon to strip bodies of his victims of all skin and flesh and would sell the skeletons to medical schools.

The author acquaints the reader with several of Holmes known victims, which included his own child. There were many females who succumbed to Holmes’ infamous charm and eventually met their faint in his chamber of horrors.

Which is not to say that the story of the Chicago World’s Fair wasn’t compelling. There was the assassination of the Mayor, the state of the country’s economy, desultory, streets filled with homeless, despair.

The infamous fair itself was a most magnificent creation for its era, as the reader learns. The Midway was a walk of wonder and a pre-cursor of Midways of fairs across the fruited plains, no doubt.

The author ends the book with the story of Holmes and how he eventually was captured and met his own fate.

It’s a teaching book. This reader learned so much about this major American event that I’d never known of even with an education all the way through college.

I was left with a lot of questions but they were good questions, questions an author who did his or her job would want the reader to have. I pondered an endeavor that cost so much in terms of money but also human life during such a dark economic time in America. I pondered such a wanton murderer could operate so blatantly and not get caught for so many years. I pondered that the Chicago World’s Fair might well have been the birthplace of modern architecture, both in building and landscaping.

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2011-07-15T08:19:00.000-07:00

Book Rev-“A Thousand Chestnut Trees”-a novel about Korea.

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”One Thousand Chestnut Trees” (a novel of Korea) by Mira Stout
So I’m a bit fascinated by Korea in that I am confused as to why this tiny country is divided in half and why the northern half has to suffer so while the southern half explodes in a economic bomb of capitalism. Indeed a famous Internet picture gone viral depicts a view of the Korean peninsula shot from outer space, allegedly. The northern part of the peninsula shows few lights while the southern half is light-filled, very telling when contrasted between north and south.

One can almost hear the song and the shouts of busy vendors from the peninsula’s southern half with only the sound of bored crickets coming from its north.

Further, America once engaged in some kind of military action on the Korean peninsula, back even before I was born, and it ended up like Vietnam and probably like Afghanistan will, unresolved, more of the same, the country still divided.

“One Thousand Chestnut Trees” is fiction, written by Anna. Anna’s mother was born in Korea, her father was American.

The book was a choice of my book club so it’s not something I picked out, or would have picked out on my own. Still, I was quite delighted at the choice because, as stated above, I’ve had an intrigue with Korea for quite a while.

Kim Jong-Il, a real little basket case of human being, makes me wonder what this creep wants, as he allows his citizens to starve or forces them to serve in the military, while he watches endless porn films. He’s a puppet of the Communist Chinese, as I understand it, but I wonder why.

To my surprise, according to this book, Korea’s always been a country kind of dominated by other far eastern cultures, particularly the Japanese!

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Stout is a very good writer, let me state up front. She was but a young thing when this book was published, in the late 90’s.

She does like to write about food but I took no offense.

"the BI BIM BAB was delicious, a steaming mound of moist rice topped with smoky morsels of marinated grilled beef, pickled vegetables, sweet cucumber slices, toasted sesame seeds, and red chili sauce, crowned with a glistening fried egg"

Above is but one example of Stout’s many descriptions of Korean food. It’s as if the reader will better understand the Korean culture the more she describes their food, their food stores, their gardens, their pantries.

Well I thought it was okay and if that was the intent, it worked. As I read, Koreans do seem to spend a lot of time preparing their food. Korean homes have cellars filled with foodstuff, barrels of kimchee in every room, pickling is a cultural must and there must always be a great deal of spicy heat in Korean food.

As an aside, once in my rather restricted life, I actually went to a Korean restaurant. It was husband’s idea, he being a man that thinks you can’t possibly make food too spicy and Korean food is known far and wide for bringing tears with each hotly seasoned bite.

Of course they served us a little dish of kimchee. Kimchee is hotly spiced cabbage. Not sure what the Korean fascination with cabbage is but most cultures do tend to eat those foods that grow well in their climate. Cabbage is the sort of vegetable that likes a colder climate and Korea does have brutally cold winters.

Anyway, the one and only time I ate kimchee, well it was okay. The cabbage wasn’t shredded, as the Germans shred cabbage for sauerkraut. The kimchee we had consisted of little “wedges” of cabbage. Hey, I like cabbage but husband never met a vegetable he liked so was really taken aback.

As I recall is was quite fiery and while I’m glad I got a taste, I doubt I’d have any stocked in my fridge.

Just what a culture’s food preferences tell about that culture is unclear. Mexicans, for example, like spicy food. Far eastern cultures are known for their love of spicy food; Chinese, Thai, even Japanese, food is considered spicier than more Anglicized cultures eat.

Do cultures who love spicy food have more emotional people than the Norwegians and their lutefisk?

Does a culture than spends so much time in preparation of its food indicate a populace that is more oriented to hearth and home than fast-food America that loves to eat on the run?

Whatever the conclusion, the reader of “One Thousand Chestnut Trees” would very likely conclude that its author considers such cultural eating habits as telling as to the people of the culture, if for no other reason than Stout has food descriptions on every other page it seems.

Moving on beyond the food, this was a well-written book, a great story, revealing a glimpse of Korea beyond what they eat and how they prepare it.

The book begins with “Anna”’s mother telling the story of her childhood. They were a noble Korean family, hints of a royal lineage abound, whatever that means in Korea. Much of the book is taken up by the details of a life in a country under control of the Japanese.

I’ll stop now and note that Stout mentions North Korea and Kim Jong-Il infrequently. Most of the discussion of Korean history is about that country’s domination by the Japanese. There is a section toward the middle of the descriptive about the Korean war and the split up of the country.

Still and so, I was quite astounded that Korea was so dominated by the Japanese. In fact, Anna’s mother, as she tells her story, had to learn Japanese, attended schools taught by Japanese, lived in fear of the Japanese overlords.

I think of Korea as being quite far removed from Japan. Further, I find it hard to wrap my mind around the mild-mannered, ever-bowing Japanese people as being warlike and domineering. Of course there was once an emperor of Japan, who did order the bombing of America, quite a dumb thing to do. America dropped a couple of bombs and I suppose that’s when the era of the Japanese as conquerors and overlords ended.

At some point the Chinese got all involved with Korea and it’s not at all clear to me why. At some point, as we know by, if nothing else, the long-running TV series “MASH”, America got involved in Korean affairs.

Couple of things caused me thought as a result of reading this book. There must be something logistically positive about the location of Korea. It is a peninsula, this is well-known. If a country wanted to invade Asia it would seem that Korea would be a good launching point.

Second, Koreans are really a very peaceful bunch, maybe because they spend so much time preparing their food.

For while Anna, and her mother, tell the stories of their lives in Korea, they don’t dwell in great detail on this history and the politics of the region.

But that was not the intent of the book.

Anna is depicted as a half-Korean/half-American struggling to find her heritage and identity through a long visit to her mother’s homeland and a search for the one thousand chestnut trees planted by a relative as monument to the mansion of their land, its harmony, peace with nature, love of all Korea had to offer. Anna’s mother tells her story of an oppressed childhood, her survival of the Japanese oppression, her job at the American army base and eventual move to the United States.

While I tongue-in-cheek poke a bit of fun at all the food emphasis while pondering the meaning of this, I did conclude that the Koreans are a clannish lot, very polite, bending over to a dictator rather than fight. Beyond Kim Jong-Il and his forced conscripted army, Korea is not a people of soldiers. Americans would never have tolerated another culture’s takeover of its country, forcing all to learn their language and be taught by their teachers.

And yet I come away with respect for the deep love Koreans have for their country, how they kept their heritage tight in their hearts even as another culture stomped all over their daily lives. A reader grasps quite well that no matter how many armies should invade, there will always be a Korea and there will always be Koreans. No conqueror or invading army will ever erase their culture and their love of their land.

Stout is a gifted writer. This book is filled with jolting adjectives, descriptive words that surprise in the usage yet cause the reader to stop, if only for a millisecond, to ponder the oddity of some pairings. It’s a good writing technique, a sign of a writer not afraid to challenge the reader to consider for just another part of a second what is being expressed.

I’d recommend this book for anyone looking into an insight of Korea. It’s a good read, I hasten to add, but the desire to learn more about that mysterious peninsula of the far east is needed for complete enjoyment of this novel.

Crichton's "Pirate Latitudes"

2011-06-05T14:29:00.000-07:00

It was the last book written before his death, Michael Crichton’s “Pirate Latitudes” is full of action, color and a true history or pirates and Jamaica.

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”Pirate Latitudes” by Michael Crichton
Let us begin with some interesting background. The manuscript for this book was allegedly found on Crichton’s computer AFTER his death. It’s not clear if the manuscript was complete because, as I figure, if it was surely he would have submitted it for publication. Crichton is a well known author of considerable acclaim and the manuscript would have been accepted for publication no doubt without any hesitation.

Next, I too consider Crichton a formidable and talented novelist. My first exposure to Crichton’s word was “The Andromeda Strain” and then there’s “Jurassic Park” and on to the long-running television series “ER”.

A major difference between a very successful writer like Crichton and the more mundane is good writers, those who are actually WRITING a book instead of a screenplay, write prose, not stage/movie dialogue.

“Pirate Latitudes” is not written for the big screen though research shows the rights to this book have been purchased by Spielberg and it will no doubt be a movie soon enough.

And what a movie it will be as it was quite a book.

The book is based loosely on some real people living in 17th century Jamaica. The story begins with a bit of background, the establishment of Jamaica as an English colony, the worldwide presence of Spanish galleons, on to a society that frowned on piracy and considered it a crime.

Yet when Captain Charles Hunter began his journey to capture a Spanish galleon from a nearby Spanish island fortress, he did so at the behest, and with the financing, of the Governor of Jamaica.

The story of the trip begins and it’s action-packed with every passing word. Hunter’s ship is first taken over by a Spanish warship. After escaping this horror, the crew arrives at the Spanish island fortress of Matanceros. The story then keeps the reader sitting at the edge of the seat as Hunter’s crew climbs mighty cliffs and suffers nature’s most horrific offerings to finally arrive at their destination.

The Spanish ship is plundered of its treasure but escape is a bit more than a quick jaunt away by Hunter’s ship.

Coral-filled coves must be negotiated, cannons must be jury-rigged and retrofitted, enemy ships must be commandeered and to add to it all, before the reader can even begin to relax, a giant monster of the sea, a Karaken, believed to be giant squid, attacks Hunter's ship.

Hunter finally makes it back to Jamaica but more surprises await. For the Governor of Jamaica has been removed and the governance of the island has been taken over by a nasty fellow. Hunter is surprised at how he is greeted upon his return, booty in tow.

A final heart-breaking betrayal begins the story’s finale as the reader still chews fingernails in torment.

There’s not much more need be said except the book is written by one of the best, it’s a real page-turner, it’s filled with drama, history, action and yes, there’s some romance.

What more could the reader want?
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Devil In the White City

2011-06-01T14:21:00.000-07:00

"The Murder Room" by Frank Capuzzo-Is It Fiction, or Non-Fiction?

2011-05-23T04:53:00.000-07:00

We’ve got a book review of a book that’s nebulous as to weather it’s fiction or non-fiction. It’s True Crime, the story of a cabal of murder investigators of the highest merit. They solve the unsolved crimes of the era and they’re quite a group. It’s “The Murder Room” by Mike Capuzzo.

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”The Murder Room” by Mike Capuzzo-

So okay, let me say right plain up front, that I loved this book. Add to my joy that it was a selection by my book club and who knew that someone would choose a book about True Crime, my favorite book genre nowadays?

Well hey, even to this day I don’t know if this book was fiction or non-fiction and frankly I don’t want to know. I did find a couple of obvious errors as to the “true” crimes covered in the book, which makes me suspicious.

The Vidcoq society is a group of dedicated crime solvers that spring from all walks of criminal investigation genres.

Frank Bender is a sculptor, a man who “sees” victims, even if given only a partial skull from which to work. In the book, Bender is given credit for accurately picturing one of my more memorable true crime criminals, John List. Bender re-created List as he would look some 25 years after he committed his horrific crime.

List killed his mother, his wife and his two children, methodically and purposefully, one fine day. He then packed his bags and disappeared. According to the book, it was Bender who created the sculpture of how List would look so many years after his horrific murder spree.

Detective Richard Walter is an expert profiler, Bill Fleisher is a federal agent and serves as an organizer of many of the Vidcoq events. There are other members of the Vidcoq society but no one is permitted entry unless they come with an excellent reputation in their investigative field.

And these are real people, the VIDCOQ does exist.

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Other famous crimes the VIDCOQ society allegedly investigated include Marie Noe, the woman who had eight babies of all ages die of SIDS. There’s also a famous Pennsylvania crime of a young boy called “the boy in the box” an obsession by most investigators of that era.

I did find what I consider one factual error by the author. In the book, Capuzzo mentions that Ted Bundy was supposed to have buried a victim’s head in his fireplace.

I frankly think I’ve read every word about Ted Bundy and never did I read such a thing. Ann Rule is considered the definitive expert on Bundy, having once worked with him and using Bundy’s murder spree as the launch of her true crime writing career. Ann Rule never mentioned this head found in Bundy’s fireplace.

So I’m not sure if all the detail in Capuzzo’s book is the stuff of non-fiction.

Capuzzo does a terrific job of telling the story of the VIDCOQ society, interspersing stories of the many cases they work to solve throughout the book. There is also a good spread of pictures of both the victims written about in the book and the vaunted members of the VIDCOQ society.

Capuzzo also writes extensively about the grand detectives of the VIDCOQ society, providing clues to what makes them tick.

It’s a good book, tightly written, action-packed, designed to keep the reader turning the pages.
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"Men At Work"-George Will-A Story of Baseball

2011-05-02T13:45:00.001-07:00

We've got a book review for Baseball Fans-George Will's "Men At Work". Yes the man's a Conservative Pundit but he knows a thing or two about baseball. Or a thousand, or a million, things or two.

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”Men At Work”-George Will

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So who knew that George Will was such a baseball fan?

I do know that Will is a very good writer and has mostly Conservative political leanings. It wasn’t until my book club choice was Will’s book-“Men At Work”, that I discovered Will’s astounding insight and knowledge of baseball, both as a business and as a sport.

This is not a recent book, make no mistake, having been published in the early 80’s. And I’m no major baseball fan though I have been at times in my life. I am an Oriole’s fan, being from Baltimore and all that. I’ve never belonged to a book club before but think the idea is great, being an avid reader and a writer of sorts.

Thus all three things came together and I found myself sitting down and reading all sorts of statistics and minutiae about baseball that I never thought my mind could handle.

Actually, my mind couldn’t handle a lot of this book in that way I figger, George Will must live life operating strictly from the left hand side of his brain. The brain’s left side is the part that processes at the data and detail of life. Such as emotions spring from the brain’s right side.

Some facts about this book: Will evidently used Tony LaRussa and the Ripkin family for much of the source data. I deduce this based mostly on the fact that Will quotes these folks extensively throughout the book.

Will keeps the book categorized in terms of the Manager, the defense, the pitcher and the batter.

"To understand the primacy of defense, try this. Imagine that the rules of baseball were amended to require four outs to retire a side. What would happen? Scores would soar, games would go one and on and on. A 33% increase in the number of outs almost certainly would result in much more than a 33% increase in runs. But mediocre defense does just that: It gives the other team four-out innings.

The above quote is an example of how the “work” of baseball is affected by one of the four major “jobs” of the team.
Will’s pre-occupation with details, stats and outright minutiae is a bit much for the casual baseball fan. Such as myself.

In fact, since this was my book club’s monthly choice, we did chance to discuss, beyond the book, BASEBALL! The book club member who suggested the book had been a coach of several youth league baseball teams. I chanced to ask him, for whatever reason, just what is a knuckleball and how is it thrown. The former coach then stood up and illustrated the pitch and in a burst of enthusiasm, then showed how many other sorts of pitches are thrown, how to effectively field balls, on to other information that kept me mesmerized, unfortunately, way more than Will’s book.

In summary, Will’s “Men at Work” book was a great read. The casual baseball fan will probably skip through a lot of the detail; the more enthusiastic fan will revel in that same detail.

For I did finish the book thus do not think it detailed a more casual baseball fan into dropping the whole read. But I did skip through a lot of the verbiage, looking for, I think, just how a knuckleball is thrown and how to better field a ball.

That I learned in discussing Will’s book, rather than in the reading.
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Book Rev-"One Thousand Chestnut Trees"-Mira Stout

2011-05-01T15:21:00.000-07:00

midnight

2011-05-01T13:59:00.000-07:00

Reviews: "Hair" by Eric Groce; "Chicken Soup for the Soul-Grandmothers"

2011-03-24T14:27:00.000-07:00

Got a book review on the 60’s musical “HAIR”. Yes it’s a musical that defined a generation. This book, titled, appropriately, “Hair” by Eric Groce is chock full of history, pictures, lyrics and memories of this former ersatz hippie.

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HAIR by Eric Groce, with a foreword by co-creator of HAIR, James Rado

It was a totally "you hadda be there" era.

For the "Hair" generation, life was tough, changing, confusing.

One major aspect of that time that today's youth will likely never experience is the military draft. Being subject to forced conscription, and make no mistake, this is what it was, changes everything about how you live your life.

I was a young woman, newly married to my childhood sweetheart. We were both born on the exact same day (same year!) and this fact might seem more like serendipity than of major import but not so, read on.

We were the very first generation, born in 1950, subject to the infamous military lottery.

I wonder if today's youth could ever imagine such a thing, if this same youth could ever wrap their minds around a notion that by a mere spin of some wheel somewhere, you're life, or death, might be changed or determined by the spin.

June 26 came in like the top ten. My 19 year old husband was very likely to be drafted, to be sent to that hell called Vietnam, our lives would be uprooted and changed by a force in line with an earthquake of life.

He wanted to move to Canada. I was very conflicted. I loved my country; I for sure didn't want to leave it, probably forever.

It cost us our marriage, yes it did. We fought over what to do, we began to fight over everything. I refused to desert to Canada. He was ready to go right after reporting to the draft board.

I saw the play "Hair" the first time it came to DC. I was hooked.

Like I said, you hadda be there in the late 60's, when men were coming home in body bags after fighting a war America seemed determined not to win. Nobody even seemed to understand the purpose of that hellish war. Vietnam tore more than my marriage apart. It was tearing this country apart.

Hair is the story of a young man too conflicted about what to do about the draft. He belongs to a "tribe", a loose group of "hippies" of the era, all smoking dope, making love and not war, viewing a world that would send them off to a distant rice paddy to die for God only knew why, as a nasty place, polluted, not worthy of any allegiance.

-

Of course the irony here is that even though through the years I'd seen the play Hair on every occasion that I could, even though I wore the long granny dresses of the era, hell yeah, I smoked dope and made lots of youthful love...today I would be considered by most a Conservative of the highest order.

Well hell, today I now know that the Vietnam war was being overseen by Democrats who never knew how to fight a war in any fashion save raising the white flag of surrender. In fact, at that time most of congress and the presidency was controlled by Democrats and any time you have bad times it's usually because a Democrat's in charge and hey, I know that now.

I also have had a child since that era of peace, now a grandchild. Pretty much nothing makes you grow up more than being responsible for another life. The hippie era was also the time of the birth control pill, the hayday of its introduction in fact. There were few young children around when the pot flowed and love was made.

It wasn't about children or futures or plans. It was about the now, feeling good today, taking some moments from such as jobs and ongoing education, chilling out. Most of us born during the baby boom spent a year, maybe two or three, being a hippie or some facsimile thereof. Then life went on.

So I picked up this colorful and very large book detailing how the rock musical Hair came to be. The book has the lyrics to all the Hair tunes, and I do know them all.

It was two hippie type of fellows, one Gerald Rado and James Ragni, who came up with the concept of Hair. The book chronicles the story of how backing was obtained for the show, how a theater was found for its first venue, how the musical travelled around the world and through the ages, its most recent revival in the twenty first century, 2010 in fact.

I learned some things about the show I did not know. Two fairly famous entertainers started out appearing in Hair, one the very uptight Diane Keaton, the other the black singer, Melba Moore.

Hair has been one of the longest running ongoing musicals ever. Today it's more of a historical story while I saw it, felt it, lived it, loved it, breathed it, cried it and screamed it right during the time the musical was satirizing/exposing/mocking.

The young member of the tribe, Claude Bukowski, decided to go to Vietnam. He didn't come back alive. The emotion poured through me, my young married self to a husband who too might not come back alive, who would not, as Claude did, honor his country's draft notice, who would desert to Canada. Without me.

Ah yes, Hair is in my blood, even today, even as a grandmother now living a quiet mousy semi-rural life.

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In reading the book, I learned that
--the infamouse nude scene:

"found a law on the books that said nudity was legal if it was in a tableau, with no movement."

Yes, Hair had a nude scene and the actors did, in fact, come up behind a curtain and stand before the audience completely naked. Hey, I don't know why the nude scene but it sure got the musical a lot of attention.

Finally, I found this in the book--

"The opinion of the NY Times had an even more profound impact on a Broadway show's success in 1968 than it does today."

You got to smile. But the above is true. The NY Times has grown into a pretty predictable bore nowadays, and for sure has lost the power it once had.

Another example of how the times have changed since Hair came along and moved a generation.
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”Chicken Soup for the Soul-Grandmothers”

So I got a story in this book, released just the day of this writing-3/22/11.

It’s a Chicken Soup for the Soul thing, the stuff to read at the beauty parlor, the doctor’s office. The writing is generally well done, the stories are true and more precious for their truth than the quality of the prose.

My story is about a grandson I’ve never known.

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David Baldacci's "Absolute Power"

2011-03-01T15:24:00.000-08:00

For TV, we review a silly, but somewhat truthful, fashion show-TLC's "What Not to Wear". Also, some commentary on Jeopardy's Watson.

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TLC’s “What Not to Wear”

TLC web site for this show.

So Stacey and Clinton barge into an unsuspecting person’s life every week, give her a prepaid credit card with $5,000 on it, go through the “victim’s” wardrobe, critiquing and finally throwing all ugly/unfashionable items within into the trash.

Hey, makeover fashion shows are like that. For it only takes about fifteen minutes for the Big Reveal. The rest of an hour’s got to be filled with something.

But of course one must like fashion type shows to even get to a point of finding this show on the upper cable channels and I am one such person. These sorts of shows are the absolute best for multi-tasking cause almost half the time is taken up with silly commercials, another twenty minutes is filled with activity not requiring the sort of concentration that, say, and episode of “24” might require.

Sometimes I sit and read a book while watching these sort of fluff shows, raising my eyes to a passing concentration during those times when Clinton is earnestly explaining to a fashion disaster why a nice form-fitting cropped jacket with a loose flowing blouse would look much better than the garish thing with big pink polka dots the fashion victim might be currently sporting.

It’s not the stuff of serious but as I figure, I watch plenty of grave TV, including all Sunday political talk shows and Fox news most of the other time. At times I gotta give the ole brain a rest and these sorts of shows are just the ticket.

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Although, I must state here, “What Not to Wear” can be a learning experience, I suggest softly.

Because name me someone who doesn’t care how they look, who wears ugly and un-matching without a proper thought applied, who declares that “comfortable is more important than fashion”…and I’ll show you a big slob bucket.

If what you wear had no affect on anything, why ever have a dress code? Why dress up for a job interview? Why ever comb your damn hair?

Like most everything else in life, it’s all a matter of degree.

For I’ll never be convinced that extremely pointed toed shoes as Stacey London prefers is a requirement for proper fashion and Clinton? Well right there you gotta wonder what’s with a guy getting all involved with how women dress. I’m just sayin’.

In the end of the show, as with most of these shows, be they fashion or home décor, comes the Big Reveal. The fashion victim, along with buying an entirely new wardrobe of appropriately fitting and classier clothes, the target is given a complete hair transformation as well as a makeup application that changes her appearance entirely.

Stacey and Clinton stand proudly as their fashion student enters the room three different times, each time wearing a different stylish outfit. The made over fashion victim then stands before a full length mirror as Stacey and Clinton point out the wisdom of this blouse and the punch of that accessory.

The fashion victim then returns home to her friends and family who nominated her, wearing a smashing new outfit, sparkling and sophisticated accessories, sporting a new hairstyle with artfully applied makeup. She enters the room to a dramatic gasp of the people in her world.

There’s always a bit of pathos in these fashion victim’s lives, added because a)there are true stories that affect how we dress and b)it makes the show have a bit more gravitas. Often the fashion victim has successfully recovered from a cancer bout. Often they are busy Moms with almost no time to take care of themselves in terms of dress and fashion care. You’ve never seen so many females sob on a fashion show, insert smile here.

“What Not to Wear” is the crown jewel of fashion shows. Indeed both Stacey and Clinton have had spin-off types of shows and Stacey is shown in many commercials featuring fashion and/or fashion comfort.

It’s a good show, I quite enjoy it, and someday I have every intention of nominating my daughter for just such a fashion makeover.

Jeopardy’s Watson

Jeopardy Web site HERE
I am a devoted Jeopardy aficionado, not that I’m proud of this and not that I am all that good at it. I do track my running score and I average around 20 correct answers on the entire board. Remembering please that as a TV viewer I’m not subject to the quickness of the buzzer and I don’t deduct for incorrect answers I may give.

I’ve also, twice now, taken the online Jeopardy quiz and never heard a word from them.

Heh.

Still, husband and I have quite enjoyed the new competitor, Monsieur Watson.

It’s absolutely amazing how well Watson has done. Those IBM programmers had to put their hearts and soul into programming that thing.

Still, Watson’s made a couple of boo-boos that aptly illustrate his…eh…”non-humanness”.

First, what Watson DOES and for which he can’t be beat, is buzz that buzzer faster than human thumbs are able. Saw Ken Jennings on Fox one morning and he said that the human hand simply can’t buzz that thing as fast as Watson, even though, get this, Watson IS hooked up to some kind of thumb mechanism and uses the Jeopardy buzzer just like the human players.

My biggest Watson laugh came with the question “What are members of the same graduating group in school called?” Myself shouted out “alumnae” but that was wrong. Watson answers, get this…CHIC! The correct answer was CLASS. Get it? CLASSy people are often considered quite CHIC. Come on, smile here. A human being would never even consider guessing that the noun for all graduating members of a senior level in school as a CHIC. What the hell is a CHIC? The programmers need to teach Watson the difference between a noun and an adjective I’m thinking here.

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Watson also got a bit confused and thought that Toronto was an American city. Also, when Watson got a Daily Double. Heh. Watson bet some kind of el strango amount like $1,239.58. Which is perfectly legal but humans tend to make things easier and bet rounder sorts of amounts.

Finally, the question was about a famous Olympic athlete and a major distinguishing physical feature. Ken Jennings managed to beat Watson to the buzzer and said “What is a missing leg?” This was a wrong answer. Watson buzzed in, heh, and its answer was “What is leg?”

I don’t know what Watson was thinking but Trebak chastised Watson as this was, one supposes, already guessed by Jennings.

I doubt we’ll ever have to worry about a phalanx of Watsons taking over the world. If they do, be prepared to have your children graduate in a CHIC and all money amounts from tips to lotteries will be calculated to 1/100th of a penny.

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Reviews: "Chicken Soup for the Soul-Shaping the New You", "Changing the Conversation"-Gary Klaben

2011-02-13T14:34:00.000-08:00

Book Reviews: "Chicken Soup for the Soul-Shaping the New You"-my own contribution inside and lovely email from a fan. "Changing the Conversation"-Gary Klaben teaches how to separate emotion from your pocketbook.

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"Chicken Soup for the Soul-Shaping the New You"-A Review from a Contributor

Subject: Hello
Hello Ms. Patricia,

I guess you are the one who wrote the wonderful story "Right in my backyard own," from the Chicken Soup for th Soul series, right? My heart was so touched and deeply moved for the most beautiful heart touching article I have ever read in my life. The story had a very positive impact on my life. It greatly warmed my heart and gently touched my soul. The author's writing style is very rich.

Best regards,
Hamza Balol
Saudi Arabia

I received the above via email and, frankly, I was flabbergasted.

I'd submitted my story of my morning backyard exercises to the famous "Chicken Soup for the Soul" anthology as a result of a request for our stories of personal unique methodologies to achieve, or maintain, a fit body.

Perfectly timed, the anthology hit the stores in late December. Wisely, the book's compilers did not try to make the Christmas gift rush. Gifts given with a theme of getting fit are hardly fun type of things to receive on a festive holiday that is probably the last time of year folks want to be thinking about such as exercise and diets.

However, aha, AFTER Christmas, such a book would be pulled off the shelves in droves by shoppers resolved to get fit for the New Year.

I received the above email a week after New Year's 2011, from Saudi Arabia, no less.

Well my story is a good one, my exercise method is quite original. I daresay the book's producers would not have accepted my contribution had not the shine of truth and simplicity been evident from the story and the words.

Well no, I would never suggest that my story would be anybody's most heartfelt story read in their lives. That thought boggles my mind.

There are over a hundred other stories of very non-professional folks like myself contained in this book and they've all got good stories. Somewhere in the book there is contained the perfect method to achieve fitness, whether for the handicapped, for the very busy, for those with no resolve...if it's YOUR problem, the solution is somewhere between the covers of this book.

Also, well my own story is in there and read the above, the writing is very rich.

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"Changing the Conversation-Transformational Steps to Financial and Family Well Being"-Gary Klaben"-Better Read When Young.

Gary Klaben is a financial guru who advises people on how to handle their wealth. He is very conservative, a graduate of West Point, he is very conservative.

There is nothing in this book that is new to me. But then I am 60 years old.

Thus throughout my reading I kept exclaiming, in my innermost mind, that it would be great if: a)my 34 year old daughter were to read this or, barring that, b)that my granddaughter begin the read when she becomes a young adolescent.

Which is not to say, I must caution, that the lessons, examples, experiences as given by the author would be for naught for a person struggling with life's journey even if well in to their 40's or 50's. As we age, not to state the obvious, we are always going through ages we haven't experienced before.

Loss of a spouse, changing a job, becoming a grandparent, retiring...these are all things we go through as we grow older. Since it is new to us, Gary Klaben effectively covers it in this well-written, conservative and exemplary piece of non-fiction.

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The bigger caution would be for any potential reader to think that this book is all about money. How we handle our finances is a major force in the book, for sure. What author Klaben does well is tie in our emotional reactions to how we handle our money. Which all, as is illustrated in many chapters, come together is some fashion, possibly good, possibly bad, depending on whether our mind rules or our heart rules.

I sure would love for this book to be required reading for young people, perhaps around Middle School, High school, even a college freshmen.

It's a lesson for a happy life and if don't get this sort of teaching as we go through life's educational journey, I must ask, why not?

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Review-"The Great Deluge" by David Brinkley. A Tome But Worth the Read

2011-01-20T09:11:00.000-08:00

Book Review "The Great Deluge" by David Brinkley. Took me two months to read this book. Bus as a Hurricane Katrina aficionado I had to do it.

The book made me realize the REAL reason the aftermath of Katrina was so chaotic. AND it changed my mind on how George W. Bush handled it all.

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”The Great Deluge”, by Douglas Brinkley

It took me almost two months to read this book. Number one, I started over the busy Christmas 2010 holiday season and of course was pulled away from it quite often. Number two, I am a bit of a Hurricane Katrina aficionado and I really did want to read the entire tome carefully. Number three, TOME is definitely the correct word for the book is over 700 pages long.

In fact, I have an entire Blog devoted to Hurricane Katrina as, number one, I am fascinated by hurricanes being an east coaster and having lived through many of them and number two, if ever one natural event would effectively illustrate the weakness of a body politic run amok, is this hurricane and its horrific aftermath. At the end of this review I have links to my Hurricane Katrina Blog, all written and posted AS the hurricane was happening.

Finally, after reading this book and what with my close attention to the events, I have determined what was the BIGGEST and most DAMAGING problem in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. I kept my Hurricane Katrina blog for the benefit of my granddaughter, who was but three years old at the time of the storm. I want her to have the benefit of a true life journal of events before the liberals re-write history.

Let us begin with some big kudos to Douglas Brinkley for writing a wonderful well-documented book. Brinkley is viewed by man conservative types like myself as a bit of a liberal and prone to coloring his historical books with a slightly leftoid bent.

“The Great Deluge” is no different, for Brinkley did tend to play up some elements of the story while playing down others. This is the prerogative of a writer some might say but it’s no mind. Brinkley mostly got it right, he footnoted all of his information and rarely inserted his editorial into the story. But he did from time to time. Fortunately I knew enough of the story to even out the keel.

Something Brinkley also did, to my own surprise, is convince me of some things that before I read this book I’d never have admitted. Such as I now slightly agree that George Dubya Bush could have done a better job in handling this storm, a notion I’d have spit at before reading the book. Which is not to say that the President of the United States ever should be getting in all deep and dirty with a local disaster such as a hurricane. That’s the job of the locals, I said this before reading the book, I still say if after reading the book, I’ll say it to the day I die.

But Hurricane Katrina was more, so much more, than just your average hurricane.

Brinkley positively excoriated New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and as well he should have. Louisiana Governor Blanco doesn’t fare much better in Brinkley’s eyes and she too was a boobaloob. President Bush is way down on the list of political figures deserving a lambaste but after reading the book I’d have to suggest that Bush too should have handled things better.

Brinkley begins from the beginning of the storm, leading up to the date of the storm and a couple of terrible decisions made by local politicos that cost thousands of lives.

Local Parish President, Aaron Broussard decided to remove all operators of the huge pumps that pump storm overflow from the “bowl” that includes the lower ninth ward of New Orleans. This was a move that caused major property damage and loss of life.

"It was also...illogical to evacuate essential personnel to a site 110 miles away. That was the case with the pump operators, who ended up in the town of Mount Hermon, near the Mississippi line. ...it took them hours to return to Jefferson Parish ...and assume their posts. During those nine hours, thousands of homes in Lakeview and Metairie that might have remained dry were destroyed."

NO Mayor Ray Nagin decided against forcing mandatory evacuations. This was another mistake that cost many lives. Nagin, as well as Governor Blanco, didn’t want to be responsible for the cost of getting buses and bussing these people out. The SuperDome was opened as a place to go for refuge from the storm should the citizens in the lower 9th ward require, but if they didn’t want to leave they wouldn’t have to.

A picture of hundreds of school buses sitting, unused, in many feet of water is an image that will forever encapsulate this very bad decision.

After the storm, Brinkley tells the story of many of the survivors, in their own words. The scene at the SuperDome and later, the Convention Center, isn’t pretty, but it was never as bad as the frothing media made it out to be.

Citizens of New Orleans were left to languish in the oppressive heat, often without water or food, in the SuperDome, in the Convention Center, on the Interstate I-10 off ramp, often for four to five days. The reader is shocked that a country that is over in Thailand after a huge tsunami within a day, pulling survivors out of the havoc, or in Haiti within hours of a major earthquake….the USA left its own citizens to languish desperately on roof tops, to suffer, to thirst, to hunger, without medical care, without, as so many New Orleaneans left in the flooded bowl after the storm had to think, a soul in the world caring whether they lived or died.

Meanwhile, FEMA head Brown didn’t have a clue where to begin and Director of Homeland Security Chertoff demanded that fellow Americans traveling to help the citizens of Louisiana take “diversity” classes first, as any good bureaucrat would demand.

Governor Blanco moaned, wrongly, about the National Guard:

Governor Blanco….re the National Guard…" 'Their first responsibility is to local disaster recovery efforts. We didn't have our Louisiana National Guard stateside.'
Yes, she did. Instead of setting up outside the New Orleans bowl, north of Hurrican Alley, like the U.S. Coast Guard did in Alexandria, the Louisians National Guard chose to set up at Jackson Barracks in the below=sea-level Lower Ninth Ward. The rest, as they say, was history."

I was fascinated in the reading. At times I wept at the tragedy, at times I cursed the stupidity.

At the end I was able to discern what the biggest problem with Hurricane Katrina was.

The hurricane itself was, really, naught but a hurricane. Yes hurricanes are horrific events but the Monday after Katrina hit the pubs of New Orleans were alive with celebrants. They’d dodged the “Big One”. The electricity was out, things were a bit wet, but the city was there, the Mardi Gras would go on the following year.

Then the levees broke. Then Lake Pontchartrain poured into the “bowl” that was New Orleans. Citizens climbed into their attics, then onto their roofs. Some looted the stores, others searched for lost pets and loved ones, many died.

President Bush kept abreast of what was going on with New Orleans. But he did make one major, major mistake and it will forever haunt him, his leadership, and cast a pall on his presidency.

For the BIGGEST problem of them all after Hurricane Katrina is what ultimately caused more confusion, death and chaos than anything else.

THERE WAS NO EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION FOR MANY DAYS!

And THAT, yon reader, is what felled them all. President Bush cared about New Orleans. It’s just that he was getting bad reports from FEMA. FEMA was getting bad reports from the locals because they only spoke to the few national guards assigned to the Superdome. The New Orleans cops, shameful, shameful, almost all abandoned their posts. Mayor Nagin holed up at the Hyatt Regency, close to a mental breakdown. Governor Blanco chewed her fingernails and blamed the Iraq war for taking all the national guards out of her state.

It could be a comedy if it weren’t so damn tragic.

Nobody had any kind of effective communication with anybody. Nobody knew what was going on. The citizens were unable to contact their family outside of Louisiana as the cell lines didn’t work. A few folks has satellite phones, but a very few and often they didn’t work.

It wasn’t until almost a week after the storm that the extent of the breeched levees, the sad state of the Convention Center where so many NO citizens went in their desperation for help, the dead hospital patients, the people stuck in roof tops or in attics….it was one of the biggest snafus in American history.

Brinkley describes President Bush as "remarkably incurious". This seems like a hurtful description. Throughout our history there’ve been hurricanes in many, many states. Hurricane Andrew dealt Florida one awful blow. I remember how Hurricane Agnes literally destroyed entire Maryland eastern shore islands in its path.

It was never the job of Presidents to be “remarkably curious” about hurricanes.

Beyond getting updates from Homeland Security, it’s never been the job of Presidents to get involved in hurricanes, local rescues, that sort of thing.

Hurricane Katrina was, to beg the wit here, the perfect storm.

The local politicos were simply too damn dumb to handle the job, from local parish president to New Orleans Mayor to Louisiana Governor. The city of New Orleans, carrying cause and effect back a few more steps, shouldn’t even be there, much less a heavily populated area such as the 9th ward, right in the center of a “bowl” just waiting for the lake to fill it to the top. The levees, Lord knows how well they were built. There are other cities on this planet, Amsterdam for one, that are below sea level. Levees and pumps, properly built without corruption and graft, keep them safe.

Surely some fault goes to the citizens of New Orleans themselves. Most of the residents of the city DID, in fact, evacuate, at the pleading of the local government. Those that didn’t, well they took a chance. To be fair, I’m not sure that having a lake pour unceremoniously into the town was something those that stayed behind considered. They were planning to ride out a hurricane and if it had stopped after the winds and rain, they likely would have done it handily.

The communication issue was the biggest problem AFTER the storm passed. Absolutely no one knew what was going on, where to go. Hospitals had patients but no one to help them evacuate. Citizens holed up in attics or on roof tops, no one even aware there was a problem.

Those running the show, the NO cops, FEMA, the local politicians…they didn’t know up from down.

At around day three after the storm, dawn began to break over American heads. Something was seriously wrong in New Orleans. It was at this point that the remarkably incurious president Bush should have taken over the reigns and gotten things done. With one phone call Bush could have stopped the nonsense of Chertoff and his “diversity” training of would-be rescuers. With another phone call Bush could have gotten the busses so desperately needed to bus those poor souls out of the hell they were living in.

The buck, as the saying goes, does stop somewhere. I don’t think for a minute that President Bush wished one bit of suffering on the citizens of New Orleans. It’s just that he, and those who were reporting to him, didn’t know what a hell the place had become. For sure Bush could have avoided that ridiculous pep rally thing where he shouted what a good job “Brownie” was doing at FEMA.

Brownie, and his merry band of bureaucratic minions were doing a lousy job. That poorly planned exercise in public relations didn’t help a damn thing.

Below, the links to my Hurricane Katrina Blog.

Fish Katrina Main Blog

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"Going Rogue" by Sarah Palin

2010-11-14T13:38:00.000-08:00

a book review of Sarah Palin’s “Going Rogue”, it’s a great book that the liberal critics hated as much as they hate her TLC program showcasing Alaska.

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I won’t say that this book was a “can’t put down” affair. I am a bit of a political junkee but you can take what I know about Alaska, put it up the behind of a flea, and it would still rattle around like a BB in a box car. Well now I know a bit more about Alaska. The bigger point is that an Alaskan would be more absorbed in at least the first half of this book than I was.

Which is not to say this is a boring book either, although I’d suggest it’s the sort of thing that would appeal mostly to someone involved with politics, even if only on a passing level.

My daughter is, well she’s my daughter, which means she gets some exposure to politics of a sort, although my jibber-jabbering might be but background noise to her. But she’s hardly a junkee on the matter and this book IS her book. She lent it to me. She did read it, almost to the end so she tells me. Daughter is a huge Palin fan and the book was a gift to her from her husband.

The last half of the book was the part that held me spellbound. For this is the part in which Palin tells of her experiences on the campaign trail with John McCain. It is the part that held my interest, as I scanned for names and brickbats.

As is her wont, Palin did NOT write one bad thing about John McCain. McCain was, ahem, not the most favored candidate by the GOP base out here in la-la land, his carefully crafted image as a “maverick” not appreciated except perhaps by the Democrats and the Blue Blood GOP Ruling Class. In fact, it was only the presence of Palin that the GOP base had any enthusiasm at all for the presidential election of 2008.

“I appreciated Reagan’s passion and conviction, and the way he so plainly articulated his love for our country. Like millions of others, I related to him personally-he was one of us. I liked him, and I liked the fact that he was never afraid to call it as he saw it.”

While I definitely consider myself a conservative of the highest order, I was never a big fan of Ronald Reagan. This was because during the term of Reagan’s presidency I was just coming down off of that silly high young people go through when they attend college, think they become super smart, and become dumb liberals.

Jimmy Carter, God Bless this worst president ever, so far worse than Obamer as I see it, changed a lot of that for me as such as long gas lines and 18% interest rates brought me back to reality. I still thought I was cool and hip, however, and while I voted for Reagan, I distrusted him in that manner of the young of my generation who mistrusted those over 30.

I wasn’t a big political junkee in that day although I did, insert smile here, attend Reagan’s inauguration. Now I chance to hear speech tidbits of Reagan and marvel at a Republican with enough courage and confidence to say the things he said. I understand why Reagan is so beloved by today’s conservatives, who feel as if they wander in the desert, lost and leaderless save for the likes of McCain and Karl Rove.

Palin makes a good case of her allegiance to Reagan throughout the book and by reading of the trials of her life, how she governed the city of Wasilla and the state of Alaska, the reader can tell that Palin believes in the principles of both fiscal and social conservatism and practices that belief.

“But lessons learned on the micro level still apply to the macro. Just as my family couldn’t fund every item on our wish list, and had to live within our means as well as save for the future, I felt we needed to do that for the state.”

Palin really did govern Alaska in a fiscally conservative manner. The quote above is really in the book, and if some day Palin should run, and win, for President, well we can sure use those very simple, and true, words to keep her in line right? I daresay you’ll not find anything like that in “Dreams of My Father”, just throwing it out there. Obama’s wife got a job making $300,000 a year at a Chicago hospital for doing nothing while Todd Palin had to work the North Slope in Alaska to feed his family.

It was Palin’s story of her campaign for Vice-President that was most interesting. She tells of the Couric interview, the treatment she and her family received by the McCain campaign staff. Whoever this fellow called Schmidt is, he’s a nasty dude.

We learn of wardrobes that she did NOT buy, library books she did NOT ban, ethics violations she did NOT make.

Finally Palin had to resign her governorship because the Obama administration’s pack of jackals filed ethics complaints against her with no merit. And while the Alaskan AG could use state funds to follow the puppet masters in the Democratic party, the Palins had to pay for Sarah’s defense out of their own funds.

It was the right thing to do.

Palin is not exactly coy about her future plans. Everyone, of course, wants to know if she intends to run for the Big Job. Palin never leaves out that possibility.

I think she is a classy lady who didn’t bite the McCain hand that fed her, who followed her own beliefs, who was beloved by Alaskan citizens at an 80% approval rating.

Read this book before the kick up to the 2012 campaign season folks. She’s not a rich Romney, a Gingrich has-been, a Jeb Bush not time yet if ever, a Huckabee aw shucks talk show host. She’s an up and comer and they’re going to throw everything at her.

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"Justice" by Dominick Dunne

2010-10-16T08:42:00.000-07:00

Book Review of a gossipy gem by Dominick Dunne, "JUSTICE"...Crimes, Trials, and Punishments”. It’s a great read whether you’re a True Crime aficionado or not. Crimes and trials covered include his daughter’s murderer’s trial, OJ Simpson, Martha Bulow, the Menendez Brothers, a little known Delaware Blue Blood murder of Diana Hironaga from here in the swamps, Martha Moxley and others.

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”JUSTICE” by Dominick Dunne

I found this book after a trip to Georgetown, Delaware’s brand new library which has become a huge waste of taxpayer money.

So what else is new under the sun?

Make no mistake Georgetown needed a new library as the old one was smaller than my house. But the thing they built is HUGE, way bigger than little Georgetown could possibly need. This is an age, may I remind, of electronic books.

There has also been quite a bit of confusion over this new library, including an announcement by the county council that they do not have the funds to pay for the library operating costs such as electricity, heat and telephones.

In fact, as of this writing, the Georgetown library is CLOSED and no one seems to know why. It’s been closed for two weeks.

It’s how they do, folks, the politicos, they spend money not needed, money not there, money our children and grandchildren will have to repay.

When I visited the Georgetown, Delaware library and checked out this book “Justice” by Dominick Dunne, fully one full floor had not one single book in it.

Dominick Dunne is known by me mainly as a professional name-dropper, if there is such a thing. He’s part gossip-columnist, part investigative reporter, part journalist, part fiction writer.

What I did NOT know was that Dunne’s own daughter had been murdered by her very possessive, borderline insane boyfriend.

In this book, Dunne gives gossipy, intriguing insights on many famous crimes and trials, including his daughter’s murderer’s trial, OJ Simpson, Martha Bulow, the Menendez Brothers, a little known Delaware Blue Blood murder of Diana Hironaga from here in the swamps, Martha Moxley and others.

It’s good stuff. I was spellbound. Dunne has a gossipy way of writing and by me we’re all born with a bit of a gossipy snoop in us.

I thought I knew everything there was to know about the OJ trial. But Dunne tells the story of OJ’s maid, Rosa Lopez the perjuror, how she became engaged to a 28 year old ventriloquist from Baltimore named Mike Gabriel. Gabriel saw her testifying on TV, became smitten, followed her to El Salvador where she agreed to marry him.

They divorced. Gabriel’s old girlfriend took him back. Her name is Samantha, she acts in porn, she has recently filmed her first anal-sex scene, as Gabriel informed Dunne.

Isn’t that just the coolest tidbit? I love Anne Rule but she seldom gets this kind of stuff from her sources.

Here’s another Dunne scoop:

P aula Barbieri, signed for three million dollar book deal.

Barbieri was, if yon reader recalls, the woman OJ was dating when he killed his wife and Ron Goldman.

"The sounds of their lovemaking in Robert Kardashian's house on the night before Nicole's funeral, according to an inside source, woke up the household."

Imagine that. This smirky creep took two innocent lives and on the night before the funeral of his children’s mother, he’s making loud love to his girlfriend. I’m so glad they finally got this guy in jail.

He could have, just throwing it out there, went away quietly after being granted two free murders by nuts on that OJ jury, none of whom ever wrote a book by the way cause who would read such a thing ? Instead OJ tried every trick in the book to avoid paying restitution to Fred Goldman as lawfully ordered by a court. That stupid stunt with the gun in Las Vegas….well hey, OJ’s in jail and good.

This is a great book, folks. Well-written, mesmerizing, not the same-old rehashed details of crimes, but chock full of new inside info.

Dunne’s daughter should be alive, poor child. Instead she was murdered by a crazy man who managed to get just a few years behind bars and who threatened other women in his life with his insane jealous rage.

Get the book.

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"Reasonable Doubt" by Steve Vogel

2010-09-02T14:30:00.000-07:00

“Reasonable Doubt” by Steve Vogel is a book of my fave True Crime Genre. It’s hardly a recent publication but the story is compelling in that manner of crimes the more ordinary amongst us commit. Dave Handricks was a religious man, yet he brutally murdered his wife and three children.

Here’s the story of the crime and the trial. You’ll be transfixed.

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”Reasonable Doubt” by Steve Vogel

David Hendricks was a very religious man. He was, in fact, a leader of his church, a little known sect that met in parishioner houses instead of any church.

Hendricks had a great marriage to his wife Susan, and they had three children, Becky, Grace and Benjy.

This book is the True Crime story of David Hendricks’ arrest, trial and defense for the horrific murder of his wife and small children, all bludgeoned to death with an axe, said weapon left on the bed of the bloodied and very dead children.

At times the narrative overwhelmed with the attention to crime minutiae. There were many chapters dedicated to the defense arguments as to how long it takes consumed food to be digested unrecognizable and why prosecutors got it all wrong with their claim that very identifiable mushrooms and pepperoni do not mean the eater was killed within hours of the meal.

Which is how it happened, so the prosecution alleged.

Susan Hendricks went out the night of the murders to attend a wedding shower. David minded the children, taking them to Chuck E. Cheese around 7:00 pm or so and just making the bookmobile to return some books at around 8:00 pm. The children ate, as would be expected, pizza at this famed pizza place.

David Hendricks left, he alleged, at around 10:30 pm for a business sales trip many miles away, a trip for which there had been no appointments made in advance for David to pitch his orthopedic device. David does not recall locking the sliding glass door leading into his house from his deck.

After David kissed and bade his family goodbye, the defense asserted that evidently some thieves entered through the unlocked sliding door, robbed the place as there were drawers obviously rifled through in their search for goods, then killed Susan Hendricks and all the Hendricks’ children. This with an axe from their own home.

At least as David Hendricks alleges because he was by the time of the murders many miles away without a clue that anything was amiss in his house until the next day when he repeatedly tried to phone his wife and could not get a response.

I don’t know or have I ever heard of Steve Vogel. This book was not recent by any stretch but it was right there on the shelf of my library and I hadn’t yet read it. Vogel did an okay job with the book but hey, he’s no Ann Rule.

Vogel provided some background of the defendant, for, make no mistake, David murdered his family because…what? He suddenly decides to make an out-of-town trip with no prior appointments made that any busy medicos would be prepared to see his pitch? He leaves his wife, already in bed so soon after returning from her wedding shower at 10:30 and all children sleeping soundly after a hectic night at Chuck E. Cheese and chasing the bookmobile all over town, and doesn’t insure the doors are locked, in fact he leaves the sliding door unlocked? Most astounding, the thieves who supposedly broke into this most ordinary of neighborhood homes to viciously murder an entire family, didn’t even bring their own weapons! They had to use the axe coincidentally found in the home. Not to mention valuable jewelry still left even after the staged rifling of various dressers and such.

The stomach contents of those children were a large part of the story. Because pepperoni and mushrooms were still identifiable as to what they were. Various scientists and medicos argued differently, but in order for a mushroom to still look like a mushroom when removed from the human stomach, death would likely have had to occur within two to three hours of consumption. Longer than that and the mushroom would look like the first part of its name…”mush”.

Those children were wantonly axed to death around ten pm that night, less than three hours since they’d eaten that pizza and before David Hendricks, by his own admission, left for his trip hundreds of miles away for his “sales” presentations.

Either somebody murdered those children before David left on his trip or somebody broke into his house and did the deed while David was still inside.

The story of why David killed his family is intriguing. Perhaps because Vogel is a male author, it comes off as a bit dried and boring in the book. Ann Rule would have done a much more intriguing and compelling job with the tale.

It was about sex, religion, lies and a need to be free while keeping some sense of respect with family, friends and other church members.

Aa the concluding chapter of the book, Vogel does his best job of the entire narrative. At the beginning of the book Vogel vows he will present just the facts with no preconceived notions.

Thus the reader is presented, fairly, with the arguments of the defense. Cold sales calls are quite common in the medical profession we learn. I think of my busy doctors and to-the-second appointments and think how unlikely this is.

As to such as stomach contents, the arguments raged. The author’s beginning vow to present all facts might have been a bad idea as after a bit I had to move on by all the experts testifying to how long a mushroom remains a mushroom after being digested.

Whatever the experts say, we’ve all been there and done that. Food does not always stay in the stomach like it should. Perhaps we’ve had too much to drink, perhaps a touch of food poisoning. My gut told me that if the mushroom as consumed by one of the Hendricks children still looked like a mushroom at the autopsy it probably wasn’t that long ago since it was eaten. But then I’m no highly-paid defense expert, just a woman whose thrown up a time or two in the past 60 years.

The testimony of the orthopedic models took a lot of space in the book but this wasn’t quite as boring as reading endlessly about stomach contents.

At the conclusion Vogel gives a very believable scenario as to how David Hendricks likely killed his wife and children. For there were some unexplained oddities about the crime, the most glaring being how on earth David could have engaged in such bloody carnage without leaving any blood in the drains in the house on any clothes found in the house or on his person.

The author gives a very believable reason for this as well.

It’s a book worth the read for True Crime Afficiandos. It lacks the soft feminine insight of an Ann Rule but hey, there is only ONE Ann Rule.

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"Unexpected Treasures" by Dr. Mikel Brown

2010-09-01T14:31:00.000-07:00

”Unexpected Treasures” by Dr. Mikel Brown is full of bromides and homilies but they’re all true and the book is worth the read.

In fact, I’d make this book a part of school curriculum and even better, couple this little gem with Dr. Brown’s course.

It’s bound to make a better person of any reader.

Pic of the Day

”Unexpected Treasures” by Dr. Mikel Brown

…"72 Ways to Uncover Your Hidden Wealth"

I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I thought this book was about such as Flea market type of items one might find in one’s attic.

Heh.

Even after reading the book I still don’t know how to categorize the prose in my confused mind.

Dr. Mikel Brown is, evidently, a self-help guru of some sort. The book cover itself asserts that Brown is:

President and CEO of CJC Enterprises, through which he conducts seminars and special events.

Not that there’s anything wrong with this.

It was difficult at the beginning of my twilight years to find something in this book useful to me. Not that it wasn’t a pleasant read; not that I didn’t find myself nodding in happy agreement with the sentiments within, not that I didn’t drift into memory-land with some of the bromides and holilies shared liberally throughout.

An example of such a bromide: "Become a Success Where you Are and you will be a success where you are going"

Hey, the book is chock full of these sorts of things and there’s not a single lie in any part.

But I’ve already learned all the things of which Brown writes. There’s not much new in it to us “older and wiser” folk.

I did enjoy, well “enjoy” might not be the correct word, but I did become immersed in Brown’s story of his own divorce, the angst, the defeat. It was almost refreshing amidst all the upbeat happy hoopla that fills so many of the book’s pages. It was calming, in a fashion, to know that he who could wipe away all the world’s personal woes with his words too was in a hellish pit and had to climb out. Lectures are always more believable when coming from the experienced.

Brown’s deep religious faith is evident on every page and for this I was thankful. For without our God no pretty words will change a thing.

If my review seems negative, I hasten to say…not so. I sat and imagined my own daughter reading the prose, how enlightened and encouraged she would be at the positive messages within. Accompanied perhaps by actual attendance to one of Dr. Brown’s seminars I think this book could change lives infinitely for the better.

I ponder my own life, hardly passed by any measure but so much of my career is behind me, and I know that had I a chance to read and believe the words of wisdom and encouragement contained between the covers of this book I would have been better served. Had I chose to be a success where I was I would have been so successful where I was going. This is not to say I wasn’t a success, but the message of pride of place and position was not lost on my older self. It sure was on the younger me who only wanted to get beyond the bottom rungs of a career ladder to quickly ascend to the top.

I’m not sure that such messages would have changed the way I lived my life but I’m quite sure I would have been happier about it all.

Thus I’d not only recommend this book to readers needing optimism and hope, I’d encourage readers to seek out Dr. Brown and combine the book with his seminars.

It could never, under any circumstance or scenario imaginable, hurt.

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"Everything She Ever Wanted" by Ann Rule

2010-08-17T13:29:00.000-07:00

Book Review:-"Everything She Ever Wanted" by Ann Rule. Pat Taylor Allanson liked to cook for folks but she had a heavy hand with the arsenic. Her story is shocking, a story of a woman who wanted so much that she'd kill with no compunction to get it. A riveting read.

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”Everything She Ever Wanted” by Ann Rule

I held the impressive tome in my hand at the local yokel library and marveled.

The cover looked brand new. Indeed the entire book looked brand new. I thought I’d read every book written by Ann Rule but here was a book copyrighted in 1992 and further, I felt pretty sure I’d watched a movie with the same title on Lifetime.

I put the big book in my bag and pondered that I’ll probably read a few chapters when I will realize that I’d already read the thing. This would be nothing new, especially with Ann Rule books.

The saga of Pat Taylor captured my imagination immediately. Indeed her crimes, those that she got officially charged with plus those the reader will rightly suspect, took place in the early 80’s on through the early 90’s.

Pat Taylor was a piece of work.

And no, I had not read this Rule book before and over the next couple of days I enjoyed that curious but satisfying joy that comes when I’m reading a book that I enjoy so much that I look at the thickness of the pages I have left to read and get excited the thicker it is and get a kind of sad as the “read” thickness begins to build up while the “unread” thickness gradually decreases.

Well, maybe you hadda be there.

Rule provides a background like no other True Crime author I’ve read, such as the following gem:

"The white marble Fulton county Courthouse took up the entire block and was constantly being refurbished and expanded, so that its bulk hunkered over sidewalks and seemed about to burst into lanes of traffic. There were six huge columns on the Pryor Street side and wide steps leading to three double doors. Bronze pedestals supported a profusion of round white lights, and sheriff's cars and vans nudged the curb in front.

Ann Rule told the story as only Ann Rule can. Pat Taylor was a beautiful woman who wanted things in life. And if she didn’t get those things, she had no compunction about killing to get them.

Yet to all the world she would seem a most ordinary genteel southern bell.

Indeed Pat’s parents, and likely the sources of the reason Pat Taylor was so spoiled and with no concept of deeds and prices to be paid, were law-abiding, well-respected folks of Georgia. Margureitte and Colonel Radcliffe of Georgia only broke the law when it came to daughter Pat.

Most of the book dwells on the strange marriage of Pat Taylor and Tom Allanson. Tom Allanson was a man so smitten with his manipulative wife that before he knew it, this normally big galut of a genuinely nice guy done shot and killed his father AND his mother.

How the hand of Pat Taylor played into this horrific event (and trust that via a complicated series of actions she likely brought the tragedy about) is never resolved. Tom Allanson went to jail for the crimes and while he was in jail Pat went on a mission to kill Tom’s grandparents!

Only this time Pat got caught and went to jail. She was not successful in her quest. They found arsenic in both Walter and Carolyn Allanson’s hair and fingernails.

Both Pat and Tom eventually get out of jail but they divorce. It was never an intent for Tom to survive that shootout in the basement of his parents at any rate and Pat moved on to other elderly prey.

In due course, and in the strange ways of a bureaucracy, after Pat was released from jail she was assigned a job taking care of elderly patients. And Pat found some elderly patients with some money. She was charged again with attempted murder and was again sent to jail.

This is a convoluted story of strange events, possible murder attempts-some on Pat’s own daughters!

I do remember watching a movie on Lifetime. The Lifetime movie concentrated more on the attempted arsenic murder of Pat’s husband’s grandparents as he was in jail for the murder of his parents.

Pat Allanson wanted, you understand, to inherit all of the Allanson wealth. But first she had to get rid of the grandparents, the parents and, of course, her husband Tom.

And she did try to kill them all.

The Lifetime movie didn’t move on to Pat’s second attempted murder or did it deal with the many other strange events that seemed to happen to all involved with Pat Taylor Allanson.

This is one of those cases where only a book will do.

And a great book it is. An Ann Rule masterpiece and I’ll never know how this book came out of nowhere to sit brand new on my library’s shelf but it was a great read.

Pat Taylor is still alive, might even be out of jail by now.

Should you come across her in your travels, do not eat any food she may prepare for you.

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Review: "Brayn Food" by Gary Bray

2010-07-26T15:14:00.000-07:00

8/1/10

If you’re a Conservative, If you’re a Tea Partier, here’s a book that you have GOT to read.

FreeRepublic regular Gary Bray penned the book “Brayn Food”, subtitled “For the Tea Patriot Hungry for The Truth”.

It’s a little Coulter, a little Levin, a lot Gary Bray, who finally took to publishing his whimsical, thoughtful and very true thoughts in a book that the world, even liberals, can finally “get it”.

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”Brayn Food” by Gary Bray

The book is subtitled “For the Tea Patriot Hungry for The Truth” and it is, indeed, almost required reading for the Tea Partiers across the fruited plain.

Disclaimer: I know this author by my association with the web site FreeRepublic. He is a poster to that online politically Conservative forum and for about four years now I looked forward to his essays on that forum.

Not that this fact matters in that this is a book I would read and enjoy had I never met the author in any form or fashion.

The book is formatted in a most intriguing manner. Each chapter begins with an appropriate biblical quote that aligns with the chapter’s content. Also, Bray writes in an online manner. I have no problem with this at all, being very familiar with online shortcuts and quotations but if an alien from Mars that had never read anything on a computer screen were to read this book, well it could be confusing.

One more caveat…Bray not only editorializes with his words, but also with how he spells and uses these words. Thus the name George Soros will be typed as George $oro$ and “government” will be referred to as “gummint”. None of this should confusing and it all does, indeed, add to the book’s pleasurable read.

Bray begins the book by detailing the story of his conversion to the political ideology of Conservatism. His is a compelling but very American story. Throughout the book he will add interesting personal details of his life, such as an ideological debate with his son’s college professor.

The subjects dealt with in this book are many, varied and mesmerizing. Bray throws his unique and literally picturesque words at the reader, as well as thoughts that roil from the pages into the reader’s brain to agitate that organ to compelling thought.

The Earth is not a Greenhouse, there’s no roof so why do the Global Scammers refer to it as one? The reason they use the term Greenhouse gasses, is the same reason they call killing babies, “choice” or “women’s rights” to create a false visual. They want everybody to imagine walking through a Greenhouse so you can feel the heat and humidity you feel inside a greenhouse. If they can label gasses greenhouse then you fear these gasses will somehow make a roof to hold in the heat to make the oceans boil or freeze, whatever. This is as phony as the claim babies Choose to die.

The book is filled with such explanations as above and he’s right on.

Other subjects dealt with by either derision, sarcasm or mockery to an eventual truth include Iraq, Rush Limbaugh and the NFL, Joe the Plumber and Hurricane Katrina.

Bray writes with a touch of wit and has a whimsical touch of Coulter. He presents his argument to the reader then moves on to that final truth that leaves the reader mentally saying “ahhhh…so that’s what it’s all about.”

It’s a new era, the era of the Tea Party. No matter how they mock and deride us, it’s folks like Gary Bray who will keep presenting their lies with a bit of mockery his own self.

This is a book that belongs in the library of every Conservative and should be especially cherished by Tea Partiers.

The writing is terrific, the thoughts challenging, the truths indisputable.

Get this book today.

Even if you’re a liberal might not hurt to know that someone’s got your number.

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"Robot Hearts"-Review of this Compilation of Online Dating Escapades

2010-06-27T14:00:00.000-07:00

Robot Hearts" is a well-written compilation of online dating adventures, the good, the bad and the ugly. My own story-"We Did It!"- is included in this collection and it may well be the only one with a happy ending.

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”Robot Hearts”-Edited by Cara Bruce & Shawna Kenney

For in the interest of fairness and full disclosure, I must now reveal that The Wise I is a contributor to this book and probably one of the best.

That assertion, of course, must be taken with the proverbial grain of salt in that, well I am the one asserting this.

I did, however, read the entire book, every story about online dating, the perils, the pitfalls, the humor, the heartbreak…all of them.

MY story is the one with the happiest ending.

The short front cover synopsis of this book states it contains “true and twisted tales of seeking love in the digital age”.

This books contains some of the saddest and most depressing stories one would likely read about online dating. There are quite a few very humorous stories and besides mine, maybe two others with somewhat happy endings.

Because folks, online dating is not for everyone. For the record, I assert that my husband and myself are possibly one of the longest survivors of a relationship that began with a computerized encounter. We have been married now for 22 years and right there you got to know that when husband and I began our digital affair it didn’t start on the Internet. For there was no Internet back then.

We both had a Commodore 64 and belonged to a network service called Qlink. The 64 in the Commodore stood for how my KILObytes of RAM the machine had. The disk drive on the thing weighed around 75 pounds. It used a telephone dial up, a TV set for a monitor and a keyboard that held the machine’s power supply.

But it had email and online messaging and the President of Qlink did go on to become the President of America Online so there’s an auspicious beginning with it all.

Plenty of people, however, do participate in online dating and I know lots of couples who met that way. I don’t know many couples who have been married any length of time who met via online dating but that doesn’t mean they’re not out there.

I’d offer that the contributors to this book were, obviously, good writers. This book is, I’ll state right now, remarkably well-written.

Writers, heh, are a strange lot, some might say. To be a writer you got to be a lot of things: a dreamer, a romantic, imaginative, protective, jealous, permanently angry. There’s very few placid and ordinary writers around is what I’m saying here so this makes me ponder if that’s why so many of this book’s online dating stories are so, eh, strange.

Most of the contributors are also politically liberal. Not that there’s anything wrong with that but liberals, well they’re all a strange lot, tending to see the world exactly like it is NOT.

Thus I’m not sure if this book, or any book with a collection of this kind, accurately reflects the world and end results of an online dating experience.

Further, well the fact is that online dating is certainly not for everyone. A large percentage of the stories in this book are told, very well I must add, by older women, females who’ve had life long lives with partners who’ve died or who finally ended decades of an unhappy marriage by divorce.

These are exactly, I assert by my instinct alone, the types of folks who will not likely find their next love on MATCH.com. Or if so it will probably take a while. I could be wrong. But my gut is that fellows who probably should be looking for fine women like this are likely writing profiles that they hope will attract young, lusty, curvaceous beauties half their age.

Still, folks, this was one terrific little book, great beach reading. Again I must mention the terrific writing. Every one of these contributors are good writers and it adds to the enjoyment.

Further, it’s a must-read for anyone ready to take a dive into online dating themselves.

And dear Lord don’t forget to read the submission by Pat Fish. It will alternately have you crying with joy and standing on your feet applauding.

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Reviews-HP 210 Mini Computer-Book-"What Sex Is a Republican?"

2010-06-13T15:31:00.000-07:00

Here a couple of reviews on a book review blog but as a bonus, a review of the latest and greatest HP mini-computer 210.

The book is “What Sex Is a Republican” by Terri McCormick. But it’s not a book about sex in any fashion. It IS a book about politics and it’s a book especially designed for new and wannabe political activists. Tea partiers, this is your book!

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Product Review-The HPMini 210..Waaaay Better Than an IPAD

So okay, when I first heard about Apple’s new gem, the IPAD, I was intrigued. In fact, I was more than intrigued. I was enamored.

Bearing in mind that my kitchen counter was already filled with a monitor, a keyboard, a mouse and its pad. A cupboard below it was filled with a big CPU, speakers, external disk drives and wires everywhere, even creeping through silverware drawers, over and under counter edges. In the bedroom we had a similar setup because I compute in both places. The kitchen is the command center of the home and I am the head of all the brain activity. Such responosibilities as this requires a computer. The bedroom is the place of afternoon respites after morning exercises and daily chores. It is also the place to retire in the evening to watch the night time shows and, of course, surf the net at leisure to find out what’s going on in the world. Of course this place requires a computer.

The computer has taken such a big place in our lives that, naturally, we might require a computer on our front porch as we watch the 6pm news and regard the front gardens. But of course we need a computer on the dining room table as by now we read our books online and one always reads while eating a meal, right?

From time to time we need a computer on our back decks as we watch the pup romp about and once in a while we might go on a trip somewhere and of course we must take our computer along.

Obviously we cannot setup that impossible conglomeration of cords and nonsense in all these home and outdoor spaces and for sure we can’t easily transport it all.

Add to the above truisms that fact that frankly I was sick of all the cords and takeover of valuable kitchen space and I saw the neat little IPAD as just the solution.

Well dang, we can get the Internet everywhere. We can carry gigabytes of storage space on our keychains. We can remove the storage devices from our cameras and recorders and plug them in the computer to retrieve the contents and our music players attach to the machines to get new downloaded tunes or to rearrange the playlists.

There’s no reason whatsoever to have huge piles of wires and devices all about. Devices can be plugged and unplugged as required, batteries keep a charge for many an hour. Thus and so, it’s time to unload the whole mess and get a small computing type thing and get up with the rest of the world.

Only that little portable computing device would NOT be an IPAD because a)a blazing fast typist such as myself is simply not ever going to take kindly to a monitor keyboard affair and b)Apple computer leaves me stone cold with its proprietory software, batteries that can’t be recharged and its snooty nose in the air as if what they’re making can’t be repeated soon enough by some geeky schlub in his garage.

I have an IPOD. Thing cost $300 when I bought it. I like it, make no mistake. But Itunes likes to convert downloaded songs to some sort of Mp4 type of song that can’t be copied anywhere and hey, I bought my granddaughter a little MP3 player for $50 this past Christmas and it doesn’t take songs, rightfully paid for songs I might add, and convert them into something that only one kind of player recognizes.

Plus my Ipod, which really isn’t used battery powered all that much, it being a cherished auto music device taking its charge from a car battery, all of a sudden won’t keep a charge of more than 20 minutes and while there’s all kinds of laments across the Internet over this sudden turn of events in an Ipod and instructions on how to “cure”, turns out you can’t even buy a new battery for the thing, not that mine should need a new battery but there you have it…it essentially worthless as a battery powered device and all the songs downloaded from Itunes can’t be copied should I get common sense and purchase a normal MP3 player.

Apple is a nothing company with pretty much nothing going for it. Y’all can have it, the Iphone, the Ipad and the Ipod.

Some might say my adoration of this most precious of little computing power is more my changeover to a more modern and compact world and my disdain of Apple than the greatness of the device.

Could be, so keep that under advisement.

By me, this little HP 210-1030 NR is about as well designed as anything Apple will create and you can buy a new battery for it.

First, the keyboard. Well hey, it’s a little computer keyboard. But I remain that blazing fast typist and I am murder on keyboards. It’s okay. I do hook it up to a full size keyboard at the kitchen counter, which is where I do most of my computing/writing and I also hook a regular mouse to the thing.

This is personal preference, of course, but it’s simple enough to plug in a mouse and keyboard and pull the things out when I want port it out to the porch. I type plenty on this little keyboard and have no problems with it.

I will never understand why they removed the HOME, PAGEUP and PAGEDOWN key. I suppose some keys had to go but I have to navigate all around Excel and Word documents and those keys were real timesavers.

The built in mouse is one of those window thingies and what can I say? It doesn’t take long to master this thing although for big jobs I still prefer a conventional mouse. But for packing up and moving around, I’d rather have the HOME-less keyboard and thumb-driven mouse than the pain of moving all the froufrou hither and yon.

There’s a place to connect an SD card so I can get the info off of my camera and cell phone easy enough. There’s a place to hook up an external monitor although I’d never see the need for this.

The monitor,btw, is very bright and easy to see. My eyes aren’t the greatest but I see everything just fine.

It has a built in network wireless card and so far I’ve managed to hook into my home network, the other two computers, and the network printer and I managed to do it within fifteen minutes of taking it out of the box! It found the computers, talked to them and swapped programs, found the printer, went out to the Internet and found the needed drivers…God bless America.

The batteries, per the manual, will last for 9 hours. I’ve never tried for that long but I do, on a regular basis, have it off of electricity for four to five hours and so far the battery’s never been below 50%.

The cost? This one was on sale, $275!

Why pay almost $500 for that Ipad monstrosity?

Try this HP gem.

You’ll love it.

”What Sex Is a Republican?”

So okay, I am the perfect person to do a review of this book.

I am, ahem, a Republican, not that I’m necessarily proud of this. I wrote a book, hand to God, titled “Republican Sex” although I have not published the thing.

My book, however, is an R-rated affair, fiction, with a helluva plot and a good story but let’s not go there. When I saw this book up for review I decided it was good for me.

I am nothing like this book’s author, either. As the book’s cover asserts: “ Terri McCormick,M.A.-is a public policy and leadership innovator. She was a State Rep to the Wisconsin legislature from 2000to 2006.”

I am a common Blogger.

Here’s what Terri McCormick has to say about Bloggers, from the book:

"Realize that bloggers represent their own interests and are not credible, reliable or subject to the ethics code below"

The little bit of bemused justice here is that this Blogger of her own interests gets to review might Terri McCormick….M.A.(why is this part of her author’s title?)

Which is not to say I did not enjoy the book. In fact I did enjoy the read, I found McCormick’s observations and experiences to be right on, I consider this book a must read for a certain sort of individual, more on this later.

Let’s begin with the title. It makes no sense at all and has little to do with the book’s contents.

McCormick does write almost exclusively about the Republican party and by me she’s got the party mentality, issues and problems nailed dead on. But it has nothing whatsoever to do with sex.

Methinks Ms. McCormick was trying to attract a salacious sort of attention to her offering, a salacious attention that MY book should, without misleading anyone, attract.

Not that my book’s published or anything but we’ve already dealt with that. I’d be too embarrassed to publish my book for the sex scenes but maybe someday, under a pseudonym.

McCormick guides the reader through her story of entry into the political scene, through her trials, and tribulations, in the Wisconsin state legislature. She does give some background of her life, tales of her parents, their story.

This book is not, however, a book written by someone who sees his or her self as a future candidate. Two things make this not the case.

First, Terri McCormick now runs a political consulting firm and leads to the next conclusion that this is not a “meet the candidate” tome…specifically the way it is written.

For rather than getting up close and cuddly with the reader, McCormick writes to an audience learning the political ropes. In fact, this book is written exactly as if for a Political Science course.

It has bolded chapter topics, bulleted chapter conclusions, inspirational quotes to begin the chapter and summaries at each chapter’s end.

Thus it is hardly the stuff one would take along to the beach.

It is, however, a great insight to political machinations. There are morals to each story. There are great hurrahs and ways to overcome and at times one can almost hear the Battle Hymn of the Republic faintly in the background during the read.

I offer that this is a good thing. I admire Terri McCormick, how she had an idea, how she stuck to her guns. I admire this book which exhorts those with similar ideals should carry on, HOW they should carry on, WHY they must carry on.

It’s not a Pollyanna world, as McCormick readily explains. Her verbally graphical explanation of the “front row” versus the “back row” as well as her run-ins with her nemesis, the “speaker” in the Wisconsin legislature, make clear that there are obstacles but obstacles can be overcome.

It’s a perfect book for a novice political activist. A Tea Partier, for example.

Buy the book. Read it before the upcoming November elections.

Read it before throwing YOUR hat in the political ring.

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Book Reviews:"Dark Tide"; and "Mafia Wife"

2010-05-01T16:59:00.000-07:00

She’s Jewish but she married a Mafia hit man. What did she know and when did she know it?

In this review of ”Mafia Wife” I found an intriguing look into a life of luxury filled with terror and ignorance.

A flood of molasses fills the streets of Boston and kills many in its path? Surely this is science fiction! A review of ”Dark Tide-The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919”. It really happened.

Pic of the Day

”Mafia Wife” by Lynda Milito with Reg Potterton

Lynda Milito is Jewish. Which is of no import except she married a Mafia guy and this book tells her story.

Louie was Lynda’s husband. She married him when she was a very young and naïve woman.

Over the years Louie got involved more and more in deeds that were nefarious, to say the least.

Amazon.com Widgets

The crux of this story is how it’s possible, if one keeps eyes, minds and common sense closed, to live with a really bad guy, a murderer even, and not even know it.

I believed Lynda’s story.

The narrative was good enough to guide the reader through life as lived by Lynda and Louie. In fact, I believed that Louie was not really a bad fellow, that he adored his wife and family and yeah, sometimes he killed people.

There’s a divide, as I see it, in the deeds of Mafia types and their emotional ties. “Some folks need killing,” is how I’ve heard it expressed.

So while the more mundane amongst us cannot fathom putting a pistol behind somebody’s ear and blowing their head away, then going home to a quiet family meal…I think Louie was very capable of minding that mental divide.

As for Lynda, she certainly comes across as a very intelligent lady, very able to run her own very legitimately business. But she had a blind eye when it came to Louie. Louie wasn’t beyond slapping his wife around once in a while.

Eventually Lynda and Louie went separate ways. Eventually Louie disappeared, not to be heard from again.

The writer of this book did a great job. I was immersed in the story from the first page.

The ending of Lynda’s story is a bit down. The story of what happened to her son is horrific.

Louie and Lynda, two folks living a very odd life.

I could never live like that; most of us couldn’t. But some do and their story is intriguing.
=================

”Dark Tide-The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919” by Stephen Puleo

My husband knows this author.

Which has absolutely nothing to do with the review or even the reason that I read the book.

It’s a very old book.

Amazon.com Widgets

For over several years now I’d passed by this book even though on an occasion or two I’d pull it down, read the book jacket, consider a story about a flood of molasses of all things and…well I’d put it back. Molasses flowing through the streets and killing people in its path? This, to me, was the stuff of science fiction and not True Crime as it was categorized.

One day I pulled the book down off the library shelf, I read the jacket and synopsis of the story, and my mind was boggled. A flood of molasses gets loosed upon the streets of Boston, innocent folks are killed in its sticky path, dear Lord, I just had to read this thing.

It’s how it goes sometimes when I’m considering library books for my reading pleasure.

Husband chanced to see the book lying around. Husband hails from around Boston way. He picked up the book, bounced it around in the air, and told me how he knew the author, how he was a nice fellow.

So husband’s acquaintance with the author is pure happenstance.

There were two entities responsible for the great Molasses flood. Yes, a huge container of molasses, a component used to make gunpowder in those early days of the 1900’s, did spring a leak and many were killed who chanced to be in the path of the killing fluid.

The company that built the huge container of molasses right on the Boston seaport, USIA…or U.S. Industrial Alcohol, and the Boston municipal authorities who allowed this monstrosity to be built directly in the center of Boston were the two entities that allowed this very sad thing to happen. Some of the victims of the molasses flood died slow and excrutiating deaths.

The author tells the story from the build-up to the horrific event. It seems an accountant…you read right…an ACCOUNTANT, oversaw the building of the big container, a round thing that looks much like big gasoline containers of today. This guy should have stuck to numbers.

Because Boston does get cold in the winter. It also gets warm in the summers. Any container holding many thousands of gallons of molasses, a substance that changes physical dynamics greatly when cold compared to, say, when it gets warm, needs special capabilities…like being able to stretch to accommodate a thinning but expanding fluid should it get warm. Any container meant to hold the stuff properly should account for this sort of thing. An Accountant is hardly trained for this.

I don’t know what the hell the Boston municipal authorities were thinking. The city did get money for rental of the space for the big container. But dear Lord, a huge, HUGE container of molasses sitting directly on the seaport of Boston, adjacent to the center-city fire department, in full view of nearby city housing?

It was 1919 and things were different one must suppose.

That big container could often be heard deep into the night, yawning and yowling as the molasses melted from the daylight sun and solidified to some degree by the nighttime chill. Many nearby residents had nightmares over that alien thing blighting the Boston skyline and intruding on their sleep.

That it would eventually break was inevitable.

USIA blamed the collapse of the container on “anarchists”. There were groups of people referred to as anarchists during that era. I suspect they were like those people with no lives who are always around during U.N. conferences and such.

The author tells the story of the lawsuit, the attempt to get recompense for the almost 20 people who died when that big container erupted.

A lawyer with a conscience…seriously.

It’s a good read. It really happened. After the read I pondered why I waited to long to read about such a fascinating piece of our urban history.

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"The Road to Hell" Documents the Infamous "Chicken Coop" Murders With Details From One of the "Victims"; "False Arrest" is the First True Crime Book t

2010-04-18T13:48:00.000-07:00

It's two True Crime book reviews, one of an older book and one brand new.

The so-called "chicken coop" murders detailed in "The Road to Hell" left me mesmerized and spell-bound with excellent writing and a compelling story.

"False Arrest" is about a woman who was innocent of the murder charged against her. At least the author convinced me.

Pic of the Day

The Old and the New

It was just the weirdest thing. I’d posted a book review on a web site I frequent. It was of an older book but I do book reviews on all books that I read, even those whose dust I must blow when yanking it off the library shelf.

One individual, who could have, just throwing it out there, went right on by my post as it was plainly labeled on the header page, book title and all, got on the thread and thought it a great hoot to mock the presentation of an older book review.

I mean you’d have been yukking all over the place at this woman’s (dim) wit. She even made the hilarious comparison that dag, suppose’d you’d have read “Moby Dick”, hahahaha, a book that is, I agree, quite old. As if no school child today should ever do a book review of “Moby Dick” because…well the book is older as I imagine this dim bulb considers.

At any rate, I did read an older book and I read a new book and I decided to do a review of both lest I offend. At least I assume the book about the Wineville so-called “chicken coop” murders is new in that it was on the library bookshelf under the placard stating “NEW ARRIVALS”.

The older book is “False Arrest” and was written sometime in the 80’s. It was an okay kind of read. This books claim to fame as it fits in my experience is that it is the first book I’ve ever read in my almost 60 years of life written about an alleged “innocent” person wrongly convicted of a crime that I believe IS REALLY INNOCENT!

“The Road Out of Hell” is a great read, a great true crime story, a book I could not put down yet forced myself to put down so I wouldn’t use it all up at once. These sorts of books are rare in my life.

Let’s move on to the reviews.

"The Road Out of Hell"…Anthony Flacco with Jerry Clark

Jerry Clark is Sanford Clark’s son. Sanford Clark is the protagonist of this book. He was 13 years old when his uncle Gordon Stewart Northcott took him from his Canadian childhood home to live in California to help out on the uncle’s newly acquired chicken farm.

The entire Northcott family is insane, let’s get that out of the way. Uncle Stewart was the most insane of them all.

Sanford Clark was very sane but his two years at the hell of Uncle Stewart’s chicken farm almost sent him over the brink. It is a testament to the human spirit that Sanford Clark survived it.

Anthony Flacco is likely the composer of the prose for this book and here’s a fellow who writes beautifully. Non-fiction books don’t lend themselves all that well to fluidity and pretty words, especially the true crime type of this particularl book, but Anthony Flacco managed to pull it off, kudos to him.

The terrific writing coupled with the totally captivating story of the tale kept me immersed for several days. This was one of those rare books that has me looking to see how much I have left to read and hoping the thickness of the remaining pages will stop decreasing that I may enjoy it longer.

And though a crime of a horrific nature, the book had a nice ending with Uncle Stewart getting his due as he deserved, dear Lord, that had to be the best scene of the book.

Wineville was the name of the California town in which Uncle Stewart had his chicken farm. The crimes of Stewart Northcott were so heinous that Wineville residents changed the name of their entire town.

Adolescent Sanford did as his Uncle Stewart commanded, taking care of the chickens, doing all daily chores, fixing Uncle Stewart’s meals and, of course, helping to murder and dispose of Uncle Stewart’s young victims.

Ah yes. Uncle Stewart was one mean, mean, mean son of a bitch. He got his jollies by being mean and Sanford was also the object of Uncle Stewart’s mean-ness. Young Sanford suffered more than any child his age should ever have to endure.

With beautiful prose and a continuing theme of a young boy surviving an aching “heaviness” as he buried young boys alive, was himself often thrown into a small pit to survive days on end, had to swing an axe at a young boy’s skull to aid in the kill, the book carries the reader through the days and mind-numbing hours of Sanford’s survival.

His own grandparents, who were full aware of Uncle Stewart’s strange-ness, left Sanford to suffer so horrifically until the young boy lost all touch with reality and a civil world.

Through a series of mis-steps, that crazy family, including the nutty grandmother and insane Uncle Stewart were finally stopped from their crimes.

If I had one complaint about this book it’s how unclear it was to me just why Sanford Clark was guilty of any crime. Yes it was frustrating to this reader that young Sanford would avoid escape or reporting the horror around him but knowing the story even in this day of age with phones and email of young people captured and held when it would seem that escape was very possible, I know these “prisoners” accept their captive fate that a casual observer would fine bizarre. Sanford Clark lived through his hell during an era when most people didn’t even have telephones. In fact, it was Sanford’s sister who finally had to drive down from Canada to save Sanford for the lack of communication available in the early 1900 era that the chicken coop crimes occurred.

Sanford was sent to an American reform school of some sort and I deduce that it was as much to keep him away from that insane family of his as any “crime” this victim might have committed.

I can’t recommend this book enough to True Crime afficiandos or any devout reader appreciative of fine prose and a captivating story.

Amazon code for this book

Wiki link to a movie made about this story…”The Changeling”

"False Arrest"-Joyce Lukezic and Ted Schwarz

Amazon link for this book.

Let us begin by asserting firmly that this book was written confidently, orderly and logically. It is not the stuff of pretty prose but there is a certain sanity in the presentation of the facts.

For the most part.

The author obviously believed his co-writer to be innocent of the crime for which she was accused. The book is written firmly with that belief and the reader is expected to know that Joyce Lukezic was not guilty of arranging the murder of her husband’s business partner and this book is simply an orderly compilation of the facts.

It might be giving away the ending but Joyce Lukezic was found not guilty, finally, at a third trial. She was found guilty at her first trial. She was granted a second trial. That trial ended with a hung jury, ten jurors believing Joyce to be innocent and two not budging from a guilty vote.

This is hardly a monsoon of belief of innocence and besides, a “not guilty” verdict does not necessarily mean the defendant is innocent of a crime but that the state failed to prove the case.

Still and so, I believe that Joyce Lukezic did not plot to have her husband’s business partner killed. This is the first time I have ever read one of these “he/she is really innocent” books and believed that assertion. I have no statistics but I’d bet a small fortune that most folks who end up in jail are usually guilty. I certainly have no problem with such as re-trials or any relook at the facts. The innocent don’t belong in jail. Jurors are very responsible people, much more responsible than crooked politicians who cheat and lie to keep their jobs. This True Crime afficiando has read entirely too many books and seen too many documentaries featuring jurors and I hear what they say. We all can identify with the terror of having our freedom, even our lives, taken away for a crime for which we are innocent. The OJ jury, notwithstanding, of course. Jurors want to get it right.

I will never understand why the investigators went after Joyce Lukezic for arranging the contract murder of her husband’s business partner. Her brother was involved in nefarious activities and was mixed up with Ron Lukezic’s partner, William Redmond. Joyce’s husband, in fact, Ron Lukezic, had way more reason to have his partner murdered than Joyce.

First, Joyce had a prenuptial agreement that left her getting nothing out of her husband’s business if her marriage with Ron Lukezic didn’t work out. Second, Joyce paid very little interest to her husband’s business affairs. Third, there was a bevy of folks around William Redmond far more likely to want him dead than his business partner’s wife.

The biggest source of evidence presented against Joyce was some jailhouse snitch. There was also a bunch of bad facts presented at trial and, in fact, because of this Joyce was granted a new trial.

I have two issues with this book. First, the author starts out straightaway with a horrible story of a lesbian attack of Joyce during her first few weeks in jail. I suppose that the author immediately wanted to put the reader in sympathetic mode that right from the start poor Joyce Lukezik suffered in jail for a crime she did not commit.

I thought that scene to be more prurient than informative. While the lesbian rape had every right to be part of the documentation of Joyce’s jail ordeal, to feature it at the beginning of the book, in your face, was confusing to this reader.

My second concern is that the author really didn’t give enough information about just why all the investigators, the entire first jury and two folks on the second jury, all seem to think Joyce was guilty. The author did a fine job of convincing ME that Joyce’s jailhouse accuser was a liar so why couldn’t he give me some idea why so many folks were out to get Joyce Lukezic?

There had to be something about this woman, the evidence, something, something, that had so many folks so eager to lock up her innocent self.

This book is a good read but going back to my original contention, it’s an older book. By me, it will be a stand out as being the first book I’ve ever read trying to convince me the book’s subject is innocent of the crime as charged.

And I believed it.

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Review-Morgenstein-"How To Find a Woman...Or Not"

2010-03-21T14:25:00.000-07:00

We’ve got a book review on an author’s first non-fiction offering and it’s a mixed bag.

For Gary Morgenstein’s “How To Find a Woman…Or Not” is about the funniest thing I’ve read this year even though the man is wrong about so much.

The book is rated at least an “R”, maybe an “X”, but mature adults should enjoy it for the humor and men might even find a bit of truth in it.

Pic of the Day

”How To Find a Woman…Or Not” by Gary Morgenstein

Amazon code for this book.

Amazon’s list of Morgenstein books.

I’d reviewed two other fiction books by Gary Morgenstein. When he approached me about his most recent non-fiction book I jumped at the chance. I prefer reviewing non-fiction books at this point in my life and Gary Morgenstein’s two prior fiction books that I reviewed proved him to be a fine writer. The thought of reviewing a fiction book by him gave me joy.

The former Morgenstein’s fiction reviews include:”Jesse’s Girl” and ”Take Me Out To the Ball Game”.

It would be a gross understatement to softly suggest that this non-fiction effort by Morgenstein is as far from his fiction works as Obama is to common sense.

First, let’s establish right now that Morgenstein is an excellent writer. I’m a writer but more than that, I’m a reader of the highest order. His fiction books are well-written and fast-paced, the words making a movie in the reader’s mind.

Non-fiction books do not lend well to shady characters, sudden and surprising turns of plot and unexpected endings.

Still and so, to my surprise, Morgenstein writes an extremely humorous book on this topic. There were few hints to the well-toned sense of humor this author possesses in his fiction efforts and it was a pleasant turn of events.

Gary Morgenstein takes to first person for this quasi self-help advice book. He uses his own experiences as a middle-aged divorced guy seeking female companionship to present his methods and lessons learned or to be learned for other fellows too seeking a female significant other in the treacherous world of dating.

The funny stories, the tongue-in-cheek, the sudden and vibrant truth in the midst of it all, make this a most delightful read. In one chapter Morgenstein might advise the reader on blind dates. He might move on to his own blind date experiences then to situations to avoid on to ending a chapter with a section he calls “Suggested Study Guide Questions”. Throughout the book Morgenstein inserts what he calls his “Morgy Rules”, little snippets of wisdom that might well advise to avoid females with rodent-type pets at all costs on to his list of online dating rules.

Yes there’s plenty of sex in the book, be advised. This is not a book to be leaving for your adolescent son to peruse.

But what kind of dating book would it be if it didn’t deal with that tricky matter of sex and dating/when to have it/how to lead up/how to consummate/what to do when it’s over?

I’d recommend this book for anyone looking for a good read filled with plenty of humor, smiles, even a bittersweet grin or two. Yes I’d recommend it for fellows looking to…well meet a woman.

For at this point I must take some exception to Morgenstein’s advice and I ponder what position am I playing at this point in the review…a book reviewer, someone who considers herself a sort of friend of Gary Morgenstein, or just a female around Morgenstein’s age in general?

Because if I were to debate Morgenstein on many of his rules on women, his generalties and knee-jerk explanation of female behavior…I’d be rebutting the author all night and part of the next day.

While Morgenstein is close to the truth at many points, I say emphatically, GARY MORGENSTEIN IS NOT A WOMAN! Half the time he don’t know what the hell he’s talking about.

So hey, females, get this book and read it yourself. You’ll be screaming and railing at the gods that ain’t this just like a man, to assume something so damn wrong about women as to be the stuff of mockery.

Want an example? How about when he justifies an experience with a prostitute (a chapter Morgenstein could have left out of the book completely as a)it had not much to do with the book’s subject matter and b)it was really gross) to female readers by asserting that wouldn’t we women all love to have a bedroom session with George Clooney?

Is this author out of his loving mind? Women might like to dream or fantasize about a sexy tryst with Mr. Clooney but most females of maturity wouldn’t have this man on a damn dime. He’s vapid, shallow, probably disease-ridden and his bed probably couldn’t hold much more than Clooney and his ego.

It’s how a man thinks women think is what I’m saying here.

To wrap it up, I have issues with Morgenstein’s assessment of the females in his surround but I’ve no doubt that his summaries, analyses, and opinions represent 95% of male thinking about women.

This, I’d offer without a whole lot of passion, makes him somewhat of an expert. For the most part, however Morgenstein might wrongly assess female thought behind actions, he does almost always get it right on with the appropriate male reaction, how to do it, when to do it…always with a smile, laugh or even a great big guffaw.

Read it. Women, give him hell when he’s off the mark. Fellows, mind what he writes. Sure he thinks like a man thinks women think but his thinking is right on with how most men think women think.

Unravel that sentence I dare you.

I recommend this book highly, despite my objections. It’s a riot on so many levels.

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Review-"Burning Bed"

2010-02-25T13:47:00.000-08:00

Here’s a review of “Burning Bed” by Faith McNulty. It’s an old story, a movie was made of it with Farrah Fawcett famously playing abused Francine Hughes.

I’d never, under normal circumstances, agree that setting a sleeping man on fire is the right thing to do, much less that the perpetrator should go free for such a heinous act.

In this case, we must make an exception. Because Mickey Hughes really needed to die.

Pic of the Day

”Burning Bed” by Faith McNulty-Some Folks Need Killing

Amazon Link for this book HERE

Mickey Hughes really did deserve to die. I’m not sure his wife, Francine, did it the right way, of course, because pouring accelerant around a sleeping man as he snored in bed then lighting it afire seems rather, eh, premeditated.

Francine Hughes could have, on any occasion, simply taken a gun, if she had one, and shot Mickey dead on the thousands of times he decided to beat her silly, often choking her to near death as one more lucky time, she managed to get away.

Had Francine killed Mickey in this fashion she wouldn’t have gotten into so much trouble with the law cause that bed thing really isn’t good PR. Although, like I said, Mickey needed killing real bad. Francine did the world a favor. The world is a way better place without Mickey Hughes in it.

Let’s get a few factoids out of the way here. First, Francine DIVORCED Mickey Hughes as she was told to do by the various welfare, law enforcement and legal folk who advised her as she beseeched any and all for help to escape this crazed man.

Second, Francine owned the house in which Mickey lived. She couldn’t get him to move out even though she went to every gubmint agency available desperately seeking help, none of which came from those paid to give it.

Not in a million years would I ever condone what Francine did to Mickey Hughes and yon readers, if not getting the chance to actually read the book of this review, surely saw the movie made famous by Farrah Fawcett who played Francine on screen.

Francine was not a tough soldier, let us not pretend here. She was a very nice lady, uneducated, very passive. She had four kids. She was a good mother and a good wife.

Mickey Hughes, he knew just who to abuse. He never abused his kids cause you can go to jail for abusing children. He only abused his poor dog and his wife cause they were there just for Mickey to abuse and eventually murder.

Mickey Hughes left his dog outside in the freezing weather as she was giving birth. The pups were being born frozen solid. One puppy got caught in the adult dog’s birth canal but oh no, Mickey would not let the dog inside of the warm house. Francine pulled the puppy out of the dog, she and the children filled her dog house with warm clothes and hay. Still the dog froze solid overnight because…well Mickey Hughes liked to abuse females of all kind.

The only reason the dog was pregnant to begin with was that when she went into heat and Francine tried to bring her inside, well Mickey was having none of this. He chained the female dog, in heat, outside and all of the male dogs had at her, as is their wont. The female dog howled and screamed at the horror from which she could not escape but Mickey Hughes would not allow her inside the house because…well who knows why? This guy needed to die.

In due course he would have killed Francine, there was no doubt. God knows what was wrong with Mickey Hughes but again, he was smart enough to know who he could mistreat and who he couldn’t. He regularly treated Francine like crap, spilling meals he didn’t like on the floor, making her get on hands and knees and clean it up, throwing it back down again once she cleaned it, laughing, hitting her, mocking her.

Like I said, he needed to die.

Normally I’d be on a high horse shouting that this woman should have gotten help, she should have gotten out, that surely there was someone who would help her. She was divorced from this guy, it was HER house.

Except Francine spent days, endless, endless days, going from gubmint bureaucracy to gubmint bureaucracy, begging for help. She just wanted Mickey Hughes to go away. Francine and her four children had nowhere to go. Mickey’s parents, who must be so proud of this fine boy they raised, lived next door and this was, or course, very unfortunate, the result of an early marriage decision that could not be undone when it was realized the horror of that mistake.

Francine Hughes was a weak woman, yes. But she wasn’t a bad person. She didn’t deserve what fate befell her. She tried, she really did. The law enforcement people came, they shushed Mickey up or took him away to jail if need be. They knew about him. The welfare people knew about him. The legal people knew about him. Mickey’s parents knew about him.

So when Francine took that keg of gasoline and poured it around Mickey’s bed when he burned all of her school books that she was using to get a GED diploma…well yeah, it wasn’t the right way to go about doing what needed to be done.

Mickey Hughes needed killing. Francine could have killed Mickey plenty, hundreds, thousands of times, with full justification and no prosecutorial danger. There were many times that Mickey almost killed her.

The prosecutor, well hey, prosecutors have jobs too. We can’t have women pouring gasoline around husbands’ beds and setting the sleeping men afire. I understand this.

The prosecutor could have maybe thrown a manslaughter charge, maybe a second degree murder charge out there. The prosecutor here decided Francine needed the death penalty.

Four kids the woman had, four kids who would not have a mother for the rest of their lives. The world was a better place without Mickey Hughes. It wasn’t a wise course to seek first degree murder charges on Francine Hughes.

The jury saw it as an unwise choice as well.

Juries are composed of folks like us, ordinary types, filled to the brim with common sense. We can spot a system that failed and the system failed Francine Hughes.

The author does a wonderful job of documenting how the system failed Francine time and time again. Mickey’s descent to increasing sadism is also documented, Francine’s story as told by her, simple and straightforward. I didn’t see the movie but I ponder that this is the sort of thing that isn’t normally handled well by the movie.

Francine finally got some help from the system. Her attorney, Aryon Greydanus, put up a temporary insanity defense. Said defense usually results in a lifetime behind bars somewhere. Greydanus found a way to give Francine a chance at life anew via a good presentation of defense experts, a wonderful challenge to the prosecutor, who really had a client to prosecute who had the sympathy of the world, and a jury that decided that the best justice here was to let Francine go home and raise her kids in the peace she should have had while alive.

The jury did that and it was the right thing to do. Cause Mickey Hughes needed to die.
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May God Have Mercy-A True Story of Crime and Punishment…John C. Tucker

2010-02-14T13:52:00.000-08:00

This is my favorite read of these three, even of the past six months. It’s by John C. Tucker and, heh, it’s a heartfelt very sincere story of a guilty lying murderer who convinced a whole bunch of liberals that he was innocent.

Only he wasn’t and the advantage of me reading this book so long after Donald Coleman met the electric chair he so deserved is my ability to chuckle at the idiots who declared him the victim of an obsessed court system. Only later DNA tests proved…SURPRISE!…the liberals were all wrong! Donald Coleman laughs at them all from his perch in hell.

This is a good one folks. It’s “May God Have Mercy-A True Story of Crime and Punishment”…

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”May God Have Mercy” by John C. Tucker

I must begin by stating plainly that I only checked this book out of the library for one reason, even though it was about an old crime and its premise was one that I do not enjoy in the genre known as True Crime.

I went ahead and slipped the book in my bag for checkout at the library because weather forecasts had two blizzards heading my way and I wanted to have lots to read. Many times before I’d fingered this book but after a perusal of the dust jacket had put it back. For the synopsis described the novel as an attempt to prove innocence of a criminal and I mostly don’t like those books.

I’ve yet to read any such bleeding heart type of book and be convinced that the wrong guy was in jail, that the wrong guy was going to the gallows.

My summary is that books like this are written by authors who embark on the task mostly to write a book that will sell and not because there’s necessarily any truth to any of it.

So the subsequent discoveries after I’d read this book delighted and shocked me.

Amazon link for this book.

This book is the story of Donald Coleman. Donald Coleman was charged with stabbing, strangling and raping his sister-in-law, his wife’s sister. The crime happened in a little mining town in the hollows of Virginia and the locale alone made it the target of legal beagle who were looking to make local investigators look silly and release innocent men.

In fact, one of the first groups to become involved with the attempt to convince us that Donald Coleman was innocent was The New Centurions, a group famous now for having discovered a few criminals in jail that more modern DNA tests have raised enough doubts to secure releases.

There’s never really been any discovery of consequence. Most of the thugs this group gets released are given freedom more that new DNA tests show the presence of unidentified DNA, thus raising doubts.

This is fine but do not be fooled that this, and other similar groups, are freeing death row inmates by the score for recently discovered irrefutable evidence.

It is Kitty Behan, however, a naïve, really dopey lib gal…now an active Democrat by the way, who got herself dumbly involved in the Donald Coleman case and she ended up looking stupider than stupid.

I read the story carefully. The author, I’ll grant, went to great pains to document the crime, how it came about, the evidence against Coleman, the personalities of the investigators….that sort of thing. But the author was on a mission to convince ME, the reader, that Donald Coleman was innocent.

And there were, as there always are in cases like this, some rather questionable concerns. One witness swears that Coleman had been talking with him the night of the murder until after 10:30 pm. Further, this witness had proof that right after he got done talking with Donald he clocked into work and his clockcard does show him clocking in at around 10:45. He was a very plausible witness with no reason to be defending Donald Coleman with a very provable time frame.

Kitty Behan, the snot nosed liberal who came down from the hallowed city of DC, found quite a few other problems but dumb, damn she was dumb. And just a kid I would add.

First, Behan was convinced, CONVINCED I TELL YA, that Donald Coleman was innocent, that the rubes of the coal towns of Virginny had the wrong guy and further, heh, Behan knew who the REAL killer was.

Behan spent so much time trying to pin the crime on one Donald Ramey that after a while it was laughable. Let us make clear that the blood type of the rapist was determined by taking a sample of the semen found in the victim’s body. This was how it was done in the late 80’s when this crime took place. The rapist was a type B blood type, a not very common blood type let me add. Donald Ramey was a type A blood type but this fact didn’t stop the dedicated and dumb Kitty Behan.

That woman went to such lengths vilifying Ramey that he finally sued her law firm, and WON, for an undisclosed sum.

I could tell in my read that the young woman was nuts. Further, I can’t imagine that her law firm, a prestigious DC firm, allowed her to do the things she did, once even hinting that Ramey had somehow killed a witness she’d found who was willing to testify that Ramey had once raped her. This “witness” died of a drug overdose. By me, a little older and wiser than this Behan lib on a mission, the witness was a druggie. Behan accused Ramey of killing her.

Oh, and get this…the fine, fine Donald Coleman had been accused, found guilty and incarcerated for rape once before AND he was charged with indecent exposure by two librarians but how do all of Coleman’s dumb defenders explain this. They all lied. The woman who accused Coleman lied, the jury who convicted Coleman lied, the librarians…they lied.

At one point, which the author does, admirably, point out in the book, Behan managed to get a court to allow a DNA test of Coleman to DNA found on the victim. But guess what? The fine, fine Coleman refused to take the DNA test. Why? I mean, hey, I’m on death row, I’m innocent, this simple test will forever prove me innocent…why would I refuse?

Coleman says that when he was jailed right after the murder that some woman who delivered the food to jail seduced him. Coleman said he was afraid that the government would take a semen sample from THAT woman and say it came from the victim.

Say what?

Right then and there, and this revelation was made about a third of the way into the book, I knew that Donald Coleman was guilty. No innocent man would refuse a DNA test based on that stupid reason. Donald Colement knew the jig was up once that DNA test proved him, without a doubt, as the murderer.

I was at the point where I was laughing out loud at all the histronics in this novel when I chanced to do a search on…”Donald Coleman”. I wanted to check out if there was any further info on this crime, the trial, the subsequent execution because yeah, Coleman met Sparky.

I found this.

I was shocked. It would turn out that the very, very dumb Kitty Behan had managed to convince a bunch of Democrats that the judges and juries in this country were out of control. It was during the senate hearings for the confirmation of Sam Alito for the Supreme Court and the Democrat hyenas glommed onto this case as the reason to refuse Alito a spot on the court. For it is judges like Alito that caused poor Coleman to be innocently executed, or so went the hysteria.

Coleman finally had the DNA tests, the first one in the early 90’s. It would turn out that as DNA tests evolved they got more sophisticated. The first DNA test showed Coleman as the perp but it was the later DNA test, in 2006 as indicated in the linked Spectator article, that proved beyond any doubt, that Coleman was the guilty guy. Of course by this time Coleman had already mean the hangman but the libs were praying that this DNA test would prove Coleman innocent and this at the behest at the very, very stupid Kitty Behan.

Donald Coleman’s had every kind of blood test, DNA test, hair test, known to man. THE GUY DID IT!

Kitty Behan, though looking like the fool of all fools, is still on the loose.
Kitty Behan…a Rising Star?

In fact, she’s out trying to prove yet another death row denizen is innocent.

You can’t make this stuff up folks.
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"In His Sights" by Kate Brennan

2010-02-14T13:51:00.002-08:00

The writer of “In His Sights”, listed as one Kate Brennan but this is an alias, is herself a writer and this shows.

Here’s a splendidly written and insightful story of one woman, stalked by an obsessed nut case. Stalkers might not be all that unusual but RICH stalkers are an even bigger problem.

Although hey, this author is one smart lady, I tell you I’d have spotted this guy’s nuttiness right from the start. Read the review for mine own insight into this idiot.

Pic of the Day

”In His Sights” by Kate Brennan

Amazon link for this book.

Here’s a good book on two important levels. First, books about True Crime might be in abundance but well-written True Crime books, especially about the crime of stalking, are rare.

In fact, while I know about stalking, don’t we all, I’ve never read even an essay, much less a book, about this crime.

Once upon a time, in fact, stalking was not even considered a crime. Women (although men too are stalked, although far less frequently) would simply have to tolerate lives where a man could follow her everywhere while the local authorities took a lackadaisical attitude about it. “So he follows you around. What’s it hurt?” was the prevailing thought.

Kate Brennan is an alias, as this author states right from the start of the read. She is also a writer and this is evident by the beauty and flow of the prose. I enjoyed this read as much for the tale of horror within as the fine writing of an author who writes for a living.

One could probably find out who Kate Brennan is in real life if one had a proclivity to do so for whatever bizarre reason. She gives enough clues about her life, her job, her home, and her family that her true identity is probably easily discovered.

There’s no need to do so and her stalker already knows who Kate is and, as she tells the story, everywhere she goes.

For Kate Brennan lives no ordinary life though Kate would probably consider her life normal and my life the stuff of dregs. Kate travels all over the world, regularly, with no second thought. She stays with friends in foreign lands and family in distant states. I marvel at how easily she can contact a friend in northern Italy and arrange a stay at her estate for months at a time.

Which makes the tale of her stalker even more mind-boggling in that this fellow manages to follow Kate all over the world.

Kate’s stalker is, like most stalkers, a former lover. She lived with the guy for a couple of years and in due course discovered that he was a bit of a nut. Stalkers are mostly not mentally normal people and enough odd things happened to Kate’s stalker that this reader at least could see he was a nut case even as Kate was describing how she was falling in love with the guy.

He was very wealthy, Kate’s former lover and eventual stalker of her endless torment. This fact added a huge dimension to the man’s ability to follow her. He could hire people to stalk Kate is what I’m saying here. And he had endless funds to do so. Stalkers of more normal economic means are restricted to stalking duties that they can afford or find the time to do while doing the normal acts of life as required. Kate’s stalker could, by a mere phone call, summon an employee of his company or other eager person willing to run an errand, such as following Kate for a day, for a handsome fee. Kate’s stalker consisted of many stalkers, all hired by one fellow who enjoyed the hunt.

Kate tells the story of how she met Paul, her wealthy ex-boyfriend. She tells the tale of a romantic, handsome and mostly personable guy, a fellow most any woman would swoon over at the thought.

She was only living with him for a few months when she discovered two things about the guy that would have me, go with me here, throwing this rich, handsome guy out on his ear. Kate, ah, she was a fine, liberal, educated woman.

First, she discovered the guy was seeing a therapist for sex addiction.

Now there isn’t enough money in the world to keep me living with a guy who is in therapy for sex addicition cause a)I’m not sure there is even such a thing and b)if there is such a thing, it’s icky and hardly the stuff of true love, I don’t care how many therapists the guy is seeing. I’d be packing and leaving and Kate was free to do so once she made the discovery.

Remember, Kate wasn’t married to this guy so she could have packed up her bags and left right at that discovery.

Even more horrifying, she discovered, through a series of incidents, that ole Paul was into…ah…shall we say “younger” women.

First clue, Kate found details about a trip to Thailand that Paul had taken. She did confront him with questions about whether he indulged in sex acts with young adolescents, the sort of thing Thailand is famous for. Paul denied it. He only had sex with “legal” Thai prostitutes he asserted and hey, even that would have been enough for me. I might not be a wonderful writer who travels the world on a regular basis but I don’t regularly lie with men who engage in such decrepit activity and for sure wouldn’t continue doing so had I not known about it all before getting moving in with the guy.

But Kate stayed with this fine fellow even though she expressed written doubts that Paul only had sex with legal age prostitutes in Thailand. I’m trying to imagine living with, making love with, a man who I really believe paid for young adolescent girls, we’re talking 13 and 14 here, to sexually satisfied him. Kate felt that so long as he was going to a therapist then it was in the past. Me? I’d have been gone.

To add to her suspicion, Kate tells of an incident when Paul, on some occasion, openly expressed a lust for young adolescent girls. She even recounts his bizarre statement about a teenage athlete and her budding breasts. Matter-of-factly he states how erotic is the emerging sexuality of a young girl, how much it turns him on.

At this time Kate finally decided she’s had enough and it’s a good thing. By me she knew the guy was a lecher and there was questions about the guy and his possible involvement in the death of his father AND his mother many years earlier.

He was a bad dude, Kate, no matter how much money he had. This mundane non-traveling female reader figured it out right away. Kate had the monetary means to get away from this guy. Why she stayed for the two years she did is beyond me.

Kate details how she dealt with the police, once she finally reported Paul’s stalking. Police departments are more modern and they take stalkers much more seriously than in the past. Still, the crime of stalking is difficult to first-catch in the act and second-prosecute. A stalker can always claim presence somewhere for a perfectly innocent reason, that they were certainly NOT following a prey.

It’s an intriguing read, again, very well-written. My heart ached for Kate and I admired her for how stoicly she tolerated the insufferable attack on her life. For Kate’s stalker had endless resources. While most of us, if unlucky enough to fall prey to a stalker, could at least move across country and be freed from the torment. Kate Brennan could not get relief even if she moved across the planet.

This book is a fine read, mesmerizing, enlightening. I’d recommend it highly.
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"Men In Black" by Mark Levin

2010-02-14T13:51:00.001-08:00

In view of the recent Supreme Court Ruling turning over that bit about only Democrats having free speech while the rest of us should shut up, here’s a book review of Mark Levin’s (“the Great One”) “Men In Black”.

It’s the story of the Surpreme Court, its terrible rulings, and how this once vaunted branch of our government is ruled by not only politics but by FOREIGN LAW!

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”Men In Black” by Mark Levin

Amazon Link for this book

So let me throw a gibe at my most despised Republican, that of Senator John McCain. What the hell was this alleged “conservative” thinking when he passed McCain-Feingold? That was a blatant assault on our Freedom of Speech and what part of “congress shall pass no law abridging freedom of speech” doesn’t McCain understand?

Recently the current Supreme Court, the one with Alito and John Roberts, Justices who don’t legislate from the bench, struck down that part of the McCain-Feingold law that took the ability to speak freely by businesses away from them.

No wait! You say that good old McCain and Feingold exempted radio and TV from that shut-your-mouth law? Like Levin explains so clearly in this book, that was just a “nicety” of the legislators. The stupid legislature didn’t exempt those media businesses because of any good intentions except they thought it would keep the public quiet. “Well the radio, newspapers and TV can still talk about candidates a month before an election so it must be okay” was how the corrupt legislature thought we would view it.

WHY SHOULD ANYBODY, BUSINESS OR PERSON, HAVE TO SHUT UP IN THE WEEKS LEADING UP TO AN ELECTION!? Just when we need a national dialogue the most the legislature, led by the Republican “Jackal of the Senate”, John McCain passes a law to shut us up. And you don’t think soon they’d go after the media, especially those big mouths in talk radio?
"Since the Democrat Party is and has always been less successful at raising funds from small contributors, some of its wealthy donors have discovered they can simply divert their contributions to these 527 groups, which can in turn use the money to help Democrat candidates. and that's exactly what has happened. For example, billionaire financier George Soros has committed tens of millions of dollars to Democrat-related groups. The washington Post reported, "Soros's contributions are filling a gap in Democratics Party finances that opened after the restrictions in the 2002 McCain-Feingold law took effect."

So in celebration of this historic and GOOD Supreme court ruling, I took to reading Levin’s “Men in Black” and folks, I was shocked.

The Supreme Court has made rulings through the years that effectively make these nine UNELECTED men in black de facto legislators.

They do it via that thing they call “by prior ruling”. Levin takes the reader through how a case is tried, how the trickier judges manage to insert some language into a ruling that, at some future date, will be there to be used to base a new, more freedom-robbing decision, on.

Dismiss any notion you might have that the Supreme Court is America’s mighty backup to out of control administrations and legislators.

As Mark Levin illustrates in his most spell-bounding verbiage on what could be a very dry subject, the Supreme Court has BECOME THE PROBLEM!

Read this book and be forewarned.
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"Beyond the Veil" What It's REALLY Like in Saudi Arabia-Seymour Gray

2010-01-27T15:25:00.000-08:00

We got a book review this week. The book is Beyond the Veil….The Adventures of an American Doctor in Saudi Arabia…by Seymour Gray, M.D.

It’s an older book, to be sure, but even in its 1983 publishing date Saudi Arabia was centuries behind the times. Dr. Gray writes of his experiences as a doctor serving in a Saudi hospital, his encounters with Sharia law, a female populace caught in a horrible time warp, the struggles of a country as it tries to reconcile life under an oppressive religion in this modern era.

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”Beyond The Veil-Adventures of an American Doctor in Saudi Arabia”-by Seymour Gray.

Amazon link for this book.

First, this book was written in 1983. I noted this factoid first thing and for several minutes I pondered if it was worth the read. This is over 25 years ago and things have changed quite a bit since that time. The book was written well before the attacks of 9/11/2001, well before the war on Terror, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. What the hell, the author spells the main religion of Saudi Arabia as “MOSLEM”.

Yet I was intrigued.

As it would turn out, things haven’t changed all that much in Saudi Arabia. The country is still ruled by a bunch of sons of camels with not much going for them in terms of charisma and leadership save,…well I don’t know what. I do know that there’s a whole bunch of folks with the surname of Saud and for some reason they are worshipped as princes and kings.

Kind of like the Kennedys in New England.

Women in Saudi Arabia still are not allowed to drive and still cannot go out in public without the accompaniment of a male relative. Women still cannot participate in any social activities with the opposite sex and they must always wear a veil in mixed company.

There is still a board of morals and vice or some such, a bunch of zeroes with the authority to go “arresting” people for doing stuff in violation of that awful Koran thing.

People still get their hands cut off for thievery and are beheaded in public in Saudi Arabia.

Worst of all, men are allowed up to four wives and if they tire of one, boom, he says “I divorce thee” three times and the troublesome wench is out of his life.

Let’s get that bit about same-sex marriage passed and toot de sweet we’ll get multiple marriages that the Muslims can be happier in this country which is so old-fashioned as to only allow marriage between just one man and one woman.

Man, what a fine, fine country Saudi Arabia is. How damn happy those citizens have to be. Imagine, just imagine, such a life here in America or any other free country.

And yet the author really does his best to tell the story of his experiences in Saudi Arabia in a somewhat pleasant light.

He describes his inadvertent witnessing of an actual public beheading. He shares his insightful talks with a half-Saudi/half-American woman, how she is torn between her mother’s American culture yet called back to the culture of her paternal ancestors. She has a love/hate relationship with Saudi Arabia that the author tries to describe to the reader. HE does a right decent job of it although I don’t buy it.

A rich son of a camel Saud prince gets sick. His wives and many various children get him confined to a hospital. He is old and dying yet is simply more convenient to leave him at the hospital. The old guy yearns to go home to die but the laws are vague, the hospital is owned by the Sauds, the guy dies in a strange hospital, never seeing his home in the last year of his life.

The Saudis basically are gentle, sensitive, law-abiding people. Swearing at a Saudi is a criminal offense and punishable by a fine. A hearty slap on the back may be construed as assault and battery. Striking a Saudi, even in self-defense, is illegal and may lead to a jail sentence, fines, or deportation. The use of abusive language in public may be punished by imprisonment. In the event of an auto accident, both drivers are jailed pending an investigation. Anyone found drunk in public is jailed and deported, if he is a foreigner. Moslems caught drinking alcohol are lashed.

Yet the author doesn’t paint a bleak picture of this strange land. Not at all. He describes various activities, both in the Aramco area populated mostly by Americans, and parties, even a wedding, in Saudi Arabia proper.

Slavery was outlawed in 1962 in Saudi Arabia, my what a happening land. Yet many still serve as servants, treated nicely but hey, they’re servants is what they are.

Gray kept me through the read. The writing was solid, not overly flowery but frank, simple, to the point.

He struggles to create an image of a country that one might curse and vilify. But it’s not all that bad, the author might say.

The Saudis mean well.

I think the women are as unhappy as hell although none openly admit it to the author.

Cause no normal woman would ever be happy married to a camel-loving, smelly, sweaty dude with three other wives while confined to her home, no freedom of movement.

No matter how hard he tried, and I give him kudos for attempts to be fair to his Saudi hosts, I think that place is hell on earth.

And some 25 plus years after Gray wrote this book, not a single thing has changed.
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Book Review-The Restless Sleep by Stacy Horn…A Look Inside New York City's Cold Case Unit

2010-01-10T15:20:00.000-08:00

A Book Review of “The Restless Sleep” by Stacy Horn… "Inside New York City's Cold Case Squad". It takes dedication and concentration to read this intriguing and spell-binding tale of old crimes, the investigations, the victories, the defeats, as well as the politics of a cold case unit that explains so much.

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The Restless Sleep-Stacy Horn
"Inside New York City's Cold Case Squad"

Amazon code for this book.
"Right now you have an almost 50% chance of getting with murder in New York; 49.3% of the murders committed in 2003 remain unsolved. That figure of the murders committed in 2003 remain unsolved. That figure will drop in 2004, but not by much. An unsolved murder has up to 5 to 10% chance of being cleared within one year after it goes cold. After two years, that chance decreases to less than 1 percent . If you murdered someone in 2000 and you're not in jail already, you're in the clear. You got away with it. Congratulations.

Let us begin, now with the extraneous out of the way, with one iron clad rule as concerns this book: it is not for the faint of heart.

By that, I mean that the reader should be dedicated to understanding the details, a genuine True Crime afficiando and one who reads to understand the nuances and enjoy a depth of minutiae that would intimidate a more timid reader.

This is, as indicated, a story of a cold case unit. Along with the details, trails, evidence, alibis and other investigative information of the crimes chosen to be illustrative of a cold case in this book, there is also the intriguing political and corporate process involved in setting up, financing, supervising and in general, running a cold case unit.

Fascinating stuff. But again, not for the faint of heart.

To a reader devoted to the convoluted stories of the sad crimes left unpunished and unresolved, this is a compelling read. The author did a fantastic job with the detail, the presentation of the details, and with how the book was written.

The author chose several unsolved crimes that were being investigated by the NY cold case unit. The crimes were varied enough to provide the reader with the many sorts of crimes that are part of the cold case unit and the many difficulties, the heartbreaks, the differences in who was killed, those left behind and, of course, the investigation of them all so many years after the fact. The author tells the story of individual investigations, not all at once, but in “chapters” of the cold case investigation. She’ll give details of the crime, the assignment of the cold case, the background of the investigating detective, the research involved, the search for long forgotten witnesses. Just when a major climax is reached in the investigation, the author moved onto another cold case. After a few more introductions of other cold case investigations, the author returns to the original cold case. And so on like so throughout the book. This method kept this reader spellbound for the entire story.

Linda Leon and Esteban Martinez were drug dealers. They were also parents of three small children. These children were in the home when their parents were so brutally murdered. It’s a compelling story of the investigation, the lies, the travel, the sorry lives of those who committed the crime.

The murderer of Jean Sanseverino had yet to be brought to justice. Someone strangled Sanseverino and defecated all over her dead body. The reader follows the investigation of this case, over twenty years past at the time of the book’s writing. The reader too tries to deduce which of Jean’s many lovers might have been so angry with her to do such an awful thing or wait, could it have been Jean’s estranged husband? There’s hints of another possible perp but for whatever reason, he was never investigated, his alibi never fully verified.

Christine Diefenbach was just 14 years old when she was murdered, so brutally beaten that her ears were torn off. The reader silently roots for the investigating detective to find the monster who took such a young girl’s life. Christine would have been 28 years old when I read this book. She should be married or in love, maybe with children of her own. Yet someone murdered her and no one knows why. Her parents suffer her loss every day of their lives.

It’s these stories and more, mob hits, cruel deaths, that remain unsolved. Cold case units receive more funds today with the advances of DNA evidence. In this book, like the reality of cold case units, some of the cases are solved, some have the perps brought to justice, some remain unsolved. Some times the murderers get caught, many years long after they thought they’d gotten away with it. Often they don’t.

In every case it’s a fascinating story as investigators re-trace history, lost evidence, dead witnesses and find one murderer all warm and happy after leaving the innocents behind that they killed and it’s all worth the effort, time and money.

True Crime afficiandos of the strongest and most devoted will absolutely love this book.
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A Brain Infection? A Medical Journey Surpassed by Few

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Review-Gary Morgenstein's "Jesse's Girl"

2009-11-08T15:15:00.000-08:00

Book Review-Gary Morgenstein's "Jesse's Girl".

A movie in a book will keep the reader on the edge of their seat.

The plot changes, the characters shift relationships, danger abounds, justice prevails and a father and son finally make their peace.

Pic of the Day

”Jesse’s Girl” by Gary Morgenstein

Amazon code for this book here.

Let us begin with the firm assertion that this book could be a movie. I’ve no doubt that this book was written by an author who was watching the movie in the theater of his mind as he typed the words of the plot.

Which is not, I again firmly assert, a bad thing.

And because “Jesse’s Girl” is a book and not a movie, the subtle emotional nuances are more effectively presented in the narrative that a book always bests a movie media at.

This and the fact that Gary Morgenstein does dialogue better than most any writer I’ve ever read.

Jesse is a troubled teen, the adopted son of the book’s protagonist, middle-aged Teddy Mentor. Teddy is the troubled father of the troubled teen and the book’s plot takes Teddy and his son Jesse on a hardscrabble jaunt from Montana to Kentucky. The father-son meet up with a female, Theresa, who is introduced in the story as having one relationship with Jesse then the tale veers into a different direction when it is revealed that Theresa is not who Teddy thought she was, in terms of her relationship to his son Jesse as well as who she presented herself to be.

The book/movie has it all, a love interest for Teddy, appropriate maudlin moments for the female movie audience, and adventure and action for the restless males in the movie seats. There’s lots of plot twists and turns as father/son and in some cases Theresa herself drive across Kentucky trying to avoid both the law and an errant individual who wishes them all great harm.

Protagonist Teddy is a decent fellow. So while he finds his more normal geeky PR executive self in a dangerous situation he’d never have imagined in his former life, Teddy never really causes anyone any great harm. In fact, Teddy’s greatest wish is to save his son’s life and reach a connection with him that had eluded him until Jesse embarked on a mission to find the blood family he never knew. A Quote:
”Alone. He’d never really been alone with Jesse. He’d hid behind Molly, deferred to her superior parental instincts, and then when she died and Jesse went completely off the rails, he was only too eager to send his son away. Forget the agony, poor Teddy and his guilt, he could’ve found one last alternative.”

This is a riveting book, never boring, always surprising. There’s plenty of characters in the mix, some bad, some good, most like the majority of humankind I suspect-good, bad and mostly trying to survive in an often difficult world.

I’d recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a great movie with all the elements to entertain but it’s a book. Which makes it all the better.

NOTE- Gary Morgenstein is a Conservative and has a daily show- WIMS Radio, 1420, out of Michigan City, Indiana? Gary’s on Sundays from 10:30-11AM, ET, offering the conservative perspective. You can listen to it online.
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BookRev-"Google Bomb". Free Speech Run Amok, the Court Case, the Amazing Verdict, Your Protection

2009-10-11T07:55:00.000-07:00

Sue Scheff ran a little business referring troubled teenagers to appropriate programs based on a diagnosed need. Her lawyer John W. Dozier Jr. sucessfully prosecuted the case to a multi-million dollar settlement.

What you don't know about Google, search engines, laws on free speech and how to defend reputation and business could ruin your life.

These two authors give a compelling narrative on how it came down and how to avoid the same happening to you.

Pic of the Day

Google Bomb-John W. Dozier Jr./Sue Scheff

Amazon code for this book.

Because of a chapter in this book I signed up for a Google service that will notify me, via email, of any reference to a specific phrase of my choosing in any Blogs, comments or web sites on the Internet.

The book is about a woman, co-author Sue Scheff, who was attacked by a viciously mean crew of folks to such an extent that she finally sued for damages done to her reputation and livelihood. She won too, being awarded recompense in the millions of dollars. Her lawyer, co-author John Dozier, gives insight to search engines and how to avoid being in the same trap as Sue Scheff. “Make the search phrase your name or the name of your company”, as I paraphrase Dozier’s advice. Well I thought it was a great idea and didn’t even know that Google offered such a service.

“Pat Fish” I told Google to find and notify me anytime this phrase shows up on an Internet web page. It is, ahem, my real name. I figured what with me being such an important Blogger and everything that I’d be inundated with email of web site URL’s containing my name. First day I get an email from Google with notification that my search phrase had been found. I clicked in. It was in a camping page, within which were instructions on how to cook that fabulous fresh fish caught in the sparkling lake just prior to pulling out the fry pan.

“Pat fish dry then roll in bread crumbs…” was the text.

I am humbled.

So while I am a Blogger with some experience on the Internet it’s evident I have not been a victim of what the authors call a “google bomb”, or an all out assault to cause a person or company huge damages by filling web pages with URL’S and commentary deriding the object of their anger. Folks who make google bombs know all the secrets.

I am familiar with the power of almighty Google on the success of a Blog or web site, I bow to the east and the gods of Google at this discussion. I once got put in what is called a Google trash bucket and for three months I got no hits on my Blog. I don’t know why I got put in the trash bucket as Google decides what Google decides and they are the amighty, all powerful, all knowing. Eventually I got removed from the trash bin but that was one awful few months.

And so too can Google destroy reputations and businesses, albeit along with some help from wise humans who know how to play the Google rating game.

Sue Scheff ran a business that referred troubled teenagers to various schools and institutions that deal with these adolescents in many diverse ways. Her business was known as PURE and it was via a client who sought advice from Scheff that Scheff’s nightmare began.

The trouble maker was a woman named Clark who did, in the end, turn out to have a monetary interest in obtaining the name of a troubled teenager who Scheff once gave a referral. Scheff would not reveal the name of the adolescent to Clark, as one might expect as such things are confidential.

The enraged Clark launched into a campaign to destroy Sue Scheff and her company and I don’t think I’ve ever read of such viciousness.

Dozier provides legal insight to the trials and tribulations of taking the case to court, the problem with having a company such as Google having such a disproportionate inpact on the very definition of “success” in this country, how “freedom of speech” is no such thing but a phrase to cover destructive attacks while avoiding responsibility for reputations destroyed.

I took exception to Dozier’s somewhat snide reference to “citizen journalists”, ie Bloggers, as being mostly bad for the Internet influence. There’s good and bad in every bunch of apples and while I certainly do understand Dozier’s disdain for the ungoverned, unregulated frontier known as the Internet, there’s no need to sniff at what is increasingly a replacement for a corrupt mainstream media that no longer does its job. Consider me as having a dog in this race and take this sniff for what it’s worth.

I also had a problem ascertaining when Dozier was writing and when Scheff was writing. At the book’s beginning the reader is told that different typefaces would indicate who is the narrator. Well the typefaces were different but you almost need a magnifying glass to see the differences readily. Or perhaps I’m just getting too old and crotchety.

These issues being said, I bow to Dozier’s assertion that once grievances are known, careful and thoughtful law making is needed to address the matter. There’s no pride in allowing nasty, misguided people to attack the innocent at will under the guise of freedom of speech.

Dozier also provides valuable insights as to how search engines work, how to use paid ads to fight back against Internet attacks, how to guard and protect your name, the ins and outs of the all-important “search engine optimization”.

In short this well-written book is a must read for anybody doing business on the Internet, which is, these days, almost everyone.
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"Bringing Elizabeth Home"- Review of Parent's Story on the Abduction of Elizabeth Smart

2009-08-30T14:34:00.000-07:00

Ed and Lois Smart tell the harrowing tale of the search for their abducted daughter Elizabeth.

She'd been taken from her bed in her own home one night and as the Smart family suffered the insults of a community the Salt Lake Police blew this case so bad that Elizabeth suffered many more months for their dereliction of investigative duty.

Pic of the Day

”Bringing Elizabeth Home”

by Ed & Lois Smart with Laura Morton

Amazon link for this book.

So okay, I figured as I fingered this book at the local yokel library, I’ll bite.

For the story of the abducted Elizabeth Smart was one of the more compelling true crimes of the era.

Elizabeth Smart was a young adolescent at the time a homeless kookoid named Brian David Mitchell, AKA Immannuel, broke into her house and took her from her bed.

Mitchell had an even kookier wife, Wanda Barzee, and the two of them not only took Elizabeth from her bed, they kept her captive for almost nine months before she was finally discovered, alive and well and in the company of these two nut cases. This no thanks to the totally inept Salt Lake police department.

Understand that this awful police work is a deduction made by this reader. The Smarts made no such assertion as they are entirely too polite to do such a thing. But they told the story and this reader has brain cells to arrive that two plus two plus the Salt Lake Keystone Kops does not equal four.

Right now consider it firm that Elizabeth’s sister, Mary Katherine, God bless the child, told the story of Elizabeth’s abduction, she never wavered from her story and in the end, after the Keystone Kops of Salt Lake totally ignored the girl to go after a dead end lead fellow who eventually died, in the end…Mary Katherine had been right all along.

It was when Ed Smart took the case to America’s Most Wanted that Elizabeth was found. The Salt Lake City Kops were still blaming it all on the dead Ricci guy.

I, of course and I’ll admit, was curious about what happened to Elizabeth during what had to be a miserable captivity. Right from the start the Smarts make it clear that they will not be discussing details from Elizabeth’s ordeal, that if she wanted to tell her story it would be up to her to do so some day.

The Smarts are a fine, religious American family that took the homeless into their homes to help with home repairs, chores, etc. This turned out to be a big mistake and as I recall during the uproar after Elizabeth’s disappearance, the Smarts were criticized brutally for it. Brian David Mitchell AND the Ricci fellow were both such homeless people who came into the Smart home to help with chores and hey, this reader has learned a lesson from it and I’ll not be bringing drifters and such in my home under any circumstances.

In fact, the Ricci fellow actually stole Ed Smart’s vehicle and it was an ordeal for them to get it back. It was Ricci that the Salt Lake Keystone Kops honed in on as Elizabeth’s abductor and many months were lost as the Salt Lake Kops ignored Mary Katherine’s story and Mary Katherine had it right, yes she did, yes she did and the child even NAMED the abductor of Elizabeth, I hope those Kops sleep well at night for failing to keep at least a small focus on the one and only witness on the case. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

John Walsh, however, host of “America’s Most Wanted”, did NOT ignore Mary Katherine’s description of Elizabeth’s abductor and after his description was televised Elizabeth was finally found.

Elizabeth was sexually and physically abused during her captivity. One knows this by the charges brought against Mitchell. Beyond that, not many details of her captivity were revealed in this book by Elizabeth’s parents. I say enough was revealed to give a feeling of how it all came down and the comedy of investigative errors that allowed it to continue.

Someday this will be a good movie, perhaps a Lifetime movie. Elizabeth deserves any profits made from her story. And the Smarts are really good people, too good some would argue.

There are many great pictures in the book of the Smart family as well as Lois’ family. I did quite enjoy the story, thought it was told well and look forward to someday reading the story as told by Elizabeth.

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TV Reviews of Hell's Kitchen where Chef Ramsey keeps cussing the wannabe chefs keep smoking.

Also a dark horse HGTV reality contest for interior designers…."Design Star".

And as "America's Got Talent" rapidly gains as a challenge to "American Idol" it now has a final top 20.

First guess at the top five here with pics and video you'll find nowhere else on the Internet.

HERE
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Ed and Lois Smart tell the harrowing tale of the search for their abducted daughter Elizabeth.

She'd been taken from her bed in her own home one night and as the Smart family suffered the insults of a community the Salt Lake Police blew this case so bad that Elizabeth suffered many more months for their dereliction of investigative duty.

HERE
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For one can never get enough Ted Kennedy.

But more importantly, on Thoughts this week we have a tender story about butterfly babies and backyard habitats. Plus a story about a new computer malware that is particularly nasty.

And of course, as we all need more of the wonderful Ted Kennedy in our lives, my tale of just how I shall explain the story of Ted Kennedy to my granddaughter.

Much more.

HERE
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"Beyond the Body Farm"-a Book About Dead Bodies & Bugs

2009-08-23T17:01:00.000-07:00

”Beyond the Body Farm”

by Dr. Bill Bass and Jon Jefferson

The “Body Farm” is a place in the University of Tennessee that was set up for the study of human decomposition.

Really.

It’s a place where dead bodies are taken and allowed to decompose under all sorts of conditions. The study of the timing and circumstances of the decomposition provide valuable information for future homicides or other circumstances of death.

Web site for Bass’ books.

Evidently this team, a bone detective and a writer, founded this Body Farm and wrote a first book all about it. So now we have, of course, BEYOND the Body Farm.

The cover blurb notes:
"a legendary bone detective explores murders, mysteries and the revolution in forensic science"-cover blurb

This book is not for squeamish. In fact I had to quickly scan some of the chapters. Such as detailed minutiae of insect activity on a dead body is hardly appetizing.

Some of the cases Dr. Bass investigated were quite fascinating though. Bass is called in as a consult for all sorts of death studies, some criminal, some accidental, some personal.

Richard Jamieson, for example, was found burned in his car. Law enforcement wanted some help on his death as Jamieson had been dead in that car for quite a while. Was it a murder or an accident?

Bass did an autopsy and discovered that Jamieson’s body had many burned insect larvae in it. Which could only mean that Jamieson had already been dead and had already decomposed to the point of having massive insect activity. With the larva of these insects burned as well as Jamieson’s body, it could only mean that someone loaded Jamieson’s already decaying body into that car, or that he had been in the car already dead and decaying, when likely his murderer torched the car.

It’s discovering this sort of information that makes for helpful criminal investigations and successful prosecutions.

Bass provides other examples of his craft, including personal pleas to identify found skeletons, bureaucracy requests to identify airplane crash remains and one study in Iran for anthropological artifacts.

It’s quite an interesting book, well worth the read for those interested in my favorite literary genre-True Crime.
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Review: Ann Coulter-"Guilty"…How Liberals Make Victims to Keep Their Power

2009-08-16T13:21:00.000-07:00

Ann Coulter informs us and entertains us with her latest blockbuster…"Guilty".

A review of this book and reasons why you should read this book even if you think you already know everything.

Pic of the Day

”Guilty” by Ann Coulter

Amazon link for this book

I am going to take the easy way for this book review and go overboard with the praise. Not that every word isn’t deserved but let me give it a try.

I enjoyed every single word of this book. I bounced out of bed in the morning with the happy thought that there was still plenty of Ann’s book left to read. I took in a couple of chapters in the evening and I’d force myself to put it down, that I had to save some until tomorrow. I kept checking how much I had left to read. I was happy when there were still many unread pages left and grew sadder as the unread pages grew shorter.

I laughed and shook my head and got angry and thanked God for books and Ann Coulter and a snarky writing style that lifted my heart.

I get a little leery of political books because they tend to make me upset. I know the politicos want to shut us up and for the most part I’m up enough on current events that very little new is revealed to me.

Not so with Coulter’s book. There was a plethora of information provided that I didn’t know and, of course, this made me enjoy the book all the more.

Terry Schiavo was a young woman who had a heart attack that deprived her of oxygen enough that while she survived she was hopelessly retarded. She had to be fed through a tube in her stomach but judging from video snippets shown during the Schiavo hysteria, she seemed to be in there.

Terry was loved by her parents and they were willing to keep her in their home, take care of her and assume all expense for her medical care. So why was the government, in the form of Terry’s husband, so eager to kill her?

The media of the era kept flashing polls at me that the majority of the American people thought food should be cut off from Terry, essentially starving her to death, that the American people thought congress should stay out of it, that Terry had no reason to go on living.

I was demoralized. They weren’t cutting off breathing machines from the woman after all. They would be denying her FOOD for God’s sake. And that bit with her husband was suspect as all get out. First, the guy had long been living with a new female in his life, even had a couple of kids with her. So why one earth did he want to kill Terry when her parents were willing to take her off his guilty, sinning hands? Plus the fine Mr. Schiavo had a very suspect shark of a lawyer who was obsessed with death and had written a few books on the matter.

For if they starve Terry Schiavo to death based on the questionable request of a husband who long ago moved on with his life, won’t they do this to any one of us?

What I didn’t know that polls taken with all the facts, such as revealing the status of Terry’s husband, came in overwhelmingly that the American public thought Terry should not be denied food and allowed to die, essentially be murdered.

This is just one of the many insights Coulter provides to the reader and this reader prides herself on knowing the scoop on almost all current events. Ann not only provides these insights that blow liberal lies out of the water, she documents and footnotes it all!

Another insight that had me shaking my head in wonder was the case of George W. and the arsenic in the water. It seems that the Clinton administration, before leaving office, deliberately changed the standards for allowable arsenic in the water. This despicable act was all planned. They knew that sound bytes about arsenic in the water would get public attention and start the new president off on shakey ground.

It turned out that the new standards as changed by the fine Bill Clinton who so sullied our oval office would cost millions of dollars to correct in water treatment plants across the country. Bush was forced to change the arsenic standard and the Media, as is their job and as they are trained, hyped the hysteria oh dear Lord this new, and illegally elected president, was going to kill our children by leaving arsenic in the water.

I remember all that noise and didn’t understand what it was all about. Again, Ann enlightened me on the truth of the matter and I am disgusted.

What disgusts me even more is why George W. Bush never defended himself.

The man never did, he never did, he let “no weapons of mass destruction” become a mantra of truth when Saddam had millions of oil dollars that would get him a nuclear bomb in but a day and he never asked his critics if they thought the world would be better with Saddam Hussein still alive. I mean the Saddam’s own countrymen hung him, go on. He’d already started a war in the early 90’s and we didn’t take him down then. But the media carped about no weapons of mass destruction when Saddam could have, with but a snap of his fingers, order a delivery of fine nukes and likely would have at some point in time. But did George Dubya ever counter his critics? No. But hey, Saddam is no more and the world is much better off for it.

At any rate, I cannot recommend this book enough and right now I am going to go and get any other Coulter books she’d written that I avoided because I thought I already knew it all.

Thank you Ann for documenting the truth so artfully, precisely and with a humor that keeps us laughing through the read.

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Review:"Take Me Out to the Ballgame"-a combination political, baseball and thriller of a book by Gary Morgenstein

2009-08-09T06:52:00.000-07:00

"Take Me Out to the Ballgame" is a book that combines sports, politics in a page-turning thriller.

If that sounds impossible, read the review then get the book. Because it's a well-written story that you'll not put down until you figure out what Cal is up to.

HERE

Pic of the Day

Review “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” by Gary Morgenstein

Amazon Link for this book HERE.

I was contacted by the author to do a review of this book, just for fair and balanced coverage here. I have no problem reviewing books at an author’s request just so long as it is understood that I will always give an honest review, even if a bad one.

This book, as one might ascertain by its title, is about baseball. But one does not have to be a baseball fan or even all that knowledgable about baseball, to enjoy this book. However, the book will be particularly appreciated by baseball fans.

Another caveat here, Morgenstein tends to tell his story via the dialogue of the characters. While there’s nothing wrong with this, I found that it took some concentration to follow the plot line this way. It takes some talent to tell a story this way and my hat’s off to Morgenstein for using this device to move the plot along as well as giving us more insight into the characters than narrative might allow. Morgenstein provides narrative via sports columns written, in italics throughout the book, by one of the characters in the story.

Harry Witowsky is owner of the Buffalo Matadors, a desultory baseball team until a new gang of PR folks move in and change the dynamic. Witowsky oversees the transformation of his very mediocre baseball team and in due course imagines himself running for high political office.

Eddie Olds is a crusty old-time sports writer that finds himself pulled into the transformation of the Matadors way more than he would have liked.

Cal, Mickey and Nino are a couple of average fans only Cal’s a bit more into baseball, particularly his beloved Buffalo Matadors, than might be wise or mentally healthy.

The plot follows the story of a baseball team and its struggles to ascend to victories as well as PR gimmickry that will bring in new fans and revive the existing ones. The Buffalo Matadors’ ascendancy into a player for the championship tends to take on a life of its own. At some point the fans, the sports writer, the owners, and various politicians, aided and abetted by a PR baseball guru with little morals, takes on a nasty turn that is overlooked for the thrill of the win.

One fan named Cal is put on overload by it all until the reader is no longer reading a story of a lackluster baseball team achieving a new glory but is pulled into a page-turning thriller as Cal conspires to do anything to help his team win. Anything. Including murder.

Morgenstein creates these characters with that great dialogue and he leads the reading into the story without guile. While I enjoyed the interplay of the characters, that great dialogue and the political sub-plots of the book, I found the story of a sick and determined Cal to be so compelling that I would wake up in the morning happy that I could read on to find out what happens to Cal and Harry Witowsky for that matter.

This is an entertaining, well-written and page-turner of a book that I highly recommend. Morgenstein would be well served to get this book out in front of baseball fans across the fruited plains because the tale is how it could happen, yes it could.

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Book Review-Deadly Greed-Joe Sharkey

2009-06-28T15:29:00.000-07:00

SPAN STYLE="background:yellow"> He claimed a black man carjacked him and his pregnant wife. The carjacker then shot his wife and almost killed him.

His name is Charles Stuart and while he might be unknown today, several years ago he had the entire country in the grip of his terrifying story.

Only it was all a lie.

Here's a book review of Stuart's story by Joe Sharkey..."Deadly Greed".

Pic of the Day

”Deadly Greed”-Joe Sharkey

Amazon code for this book

If one were to utter the name Charles Stuart most of us would likely shrug in non-recognition. Yet a few years back Charles Stuart was on the national news almost 24/7. For Charles Stuart had just attended a birthing class with his expectant wife Carol and as they were driving home their car was hijacked and his wife was shot dead by a bullet to her head.

Charles too was shot and almost mortally wounded but he managed to survive. The infant of Charles and Carol Stuart was removed from his dead mother’s womb but he too died from lack of oxygen via the placenta of his dying mother.

Even though the incident happened in Massachusetts, the nation was shocked. It was the nightmare of all of middle-class white America, the fear that a ride through the bad part of town would have the dark-skinned criminals come out from the shadows to rob and kill us without mercy.

Charles Stuart’s wounds were deadly, so deadly that the cops dismissed the notion that Charles had killed his own wife and set up this criminal scenario. For the word out in the ghetto where the Stuarts were attacked was that no self-respecting robber would shoot the woman BEFORE killing the man. The Boston police too questioned this sequence of events, indeed the entire manner in which the crime went down. Carjackings like this just weren’t normal in the ghetto. And the small time hood who Charles identified as the killer, one Willie Bennett, was considered too shrewd to attempt what was basically a small time robbery in such a dramatic way.

But Charles Stuart almost died from his wounds. If Stuart himself shot his wife and then shot himself to make it all look believable, would he damn near kill himself in the process?

Except Charles didn’t mean to harm himself so badly. In fact he’d read about the proper way to shoot oneself in the gut that would cause the bullet to enter basically the fat area and exit another skin and fat area without causing much damange.

Carol Stuart died shortly after the bullet hit her head. She did not, however, die immediately. It was death thrashings that caused Chuck to shoot himself in the gut in the wrong place and at the wrong angle.

“Deadly Greed” is the behind-the-scenes story of Charles Stuart, a man who wanted more out of life, indeed who rightfully DESERVED more out of life. He wanted the most bucks. He wanted the prettiest girl. He wanted to go on the best vacations, to dine in the best restaurants, to drink in the swankiest clubs and he for damn sure didn’t want a bunch of kids around using up all his funds.

Chuck Stuart was not smart enough by half to carry off this crime. In fact it was only his miscalculation of his shot to his own torso that had him half getting away with this crime. Otherwise he’d have been caught right away. For Chuck Stuart also included two of his brothers in his dirty deeds and how dumb is this?

If Chuck Stuart is to be respected for one thing during his sorry life, it is the fact that he was brave enough to climb to the top of a tall bridge known across the state of Massachusetts for the execution of successful suicides. Chuck Stuart climbed this bridge and threw himself off to his death after his brothers came forth and told the police the truth about that fateful night.

Chuck Stuart saved the country the expense of a trial, the cost of housing him the rest of his life, who knows, maybe God will forgive Chuck Stuart at some point during the expanse of all eternity.

It’s a good read. Author Sharkey was a Massachusetts newspaper reporter at the time. The book is not a big read; it is, after all, a short and very pathetic story. But it’s written well and all facts are presented without prejudice.

Good for a quiet afternoon’s reading enjoyment.
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Review "Mean Justice" Book. Author Tries to Convince Me Perp Is Innocent. I Ain't Buying.

2009-06-21T14:32:00.000-07:00

Here's a well-written book by Edward Humes titled "Mean Justice".

The author tries to make a case that Pat Dunn was wrongfully convicted of killing his wife Sandy via a "mean justice" that includes lying witnesses, runaway prosecutors and a right-wing public with little patience to get at the truth.

Only there's gaping holes in the author's arguments and I take them on in this book review.
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Pic of the Day

”Mean Justice” by Edward Humes-an A+ True Crime Read

Amazon URL for this book.

Before writing a word re my opinions, thoughts and fine analysis on this book, let me say that Humes, a Pulitzer Prize winner according to the book jacket, is an excellent writer and that this book kept me involved and intrigued from page to page-turning page.

Humes managed to coordinate all the parts and pieces of this somewhat complicated story of a man, Pat Dunn, who was charged and convicted of killing his wife, Sandy Dunn.

But did Humes convince this reader of Pat Dunn’s guilt?

Not really.

In the interest of fair and balanced, I consider myself a True Crime buff but hardly any expert. I have, however, read many true crime books, watched every Dateline and 48 Hours crime documentary and monitor ongoing crimes and investigations as they occur. I even have a Blog devoted to True Crime.

None of this, of course, makes me an expert. I have no law enforcement experience whatsoever. Still I’d argue that one with such a strong interest in a subject tends to get knowledgeable over time.

I also have a tendency to disbelieve assertions of prosecutor misconduct although I have as open a mind as anybody. But common sense creeps into my attitude as I can’t help but think that a prosecutor would just as soon prosecute the REAL criminal as the wrong one. Sure I understand that some suspects are easier than to convict than others but, silly me, I still harbor the notion that prosecutors generally want to see that justice is done and locking up the right guy isn’t much harder than locking up the wrong guy.

In fact, refer to my book review on another book that was based on
a story of runaway prosecution which, interestingly, is also covered in this book. I didn’t believe a word of this Hollingsworth book and Humes presents a similar public hysteria as part of the prosecutorial background which caused Pat Dunn to be wrongfully convicted.

Finally, hey, Pat Dunn was convicted by a jury of his peers. 12 people believed that Pat Dunn killed his wife and, in fact, the author’s main source of data for the book, Laura Lawhon, the defense team’s private investigator, spoke to some of the jurors to gain insight to what she considered their faulty logic. The jury system did its job in this case and if they got the verdict wrong, well it’s how the jury system works. Which is not to suggest that putting a fellow away for the remainder of his life is a thing of fluff but for all the arguments presented by Humes in this book re Pat Dunn’s innocence and prosecutorial misconduct, be reminded that 12 other people bought the argument of the prosecutor and Pat Dunn DID have a defense.

In fact, if the reader is to believe the facts as so artfully organized and presented by Humes, the truth of the matter is that Pat Dunn had a lousy defense team. Or else, I whisper softly, author Humes leaves out major gaps in the story.

It was a penciled in comment by another reader who’d evidently checked out the library book before me that made the lightbulb go on over my head. Until then I’d been reading along, enjoying the fine, no-nonsense writing, almost believing the narrative when I chanced upon a courtroom scene that was supposed to rouse my ire at the unfairness of it all.

Montes was Sandy Dunn’s housekeeper. I quote the text from the book exactly regarding Montes’ testimony: "Montes made this point from the witness stand in a very low voice, so low that the defense team didn't catch what she said"

Montes had been testifying that Sandy went on her early morning walks always wearing her expensive jewelry. Handwritten by a former reader was a note “It is defense job to get this! Ask clerk to repeat the witness statement.”

I was stopped cold in my tracks. The author almost convinced me that the poor hapless defense team, AND the jury, were cheated from the truth yet again; that Sandy Dunn NEVER wore her jewelry on her early morning walks but Montes gave her testimony so low that no one heard what she said. It was important whether or not Sandy Dunn wore her jewelry on her pre-dawn walks as Sandy Dunn’s jewelry was found at home AFTER her murder. But if she always wore her prized jewelry on her morning walk, why was it left at home on the morning she was murdered? Did Pat Dunn remove the valuable trinkets before he put her body in that shallow grave rather than lose the value?

In fact Sandy Dunn did NOT wear her valuable jewelry on her pre-dawn walks, at least as the author’s narrative convinced me. Still, if the housekeeper’s testimony was too low, like the scribbler noted, why the hell didn’t the defense have her repeat her answer? Am I to believe that Pat Dunn’s erroneous conviction was arrived at because witnesses were allowed to testify too low without the defense able to hear the words?

The author spent an inordinate, almost mind-numbing, amount of time on the testimony of one Jerry Coble. Jerry Coble testified that he saw Pat Dunn loading up his wife’s body in the back of his pickup truck on the night she was allegedly murdered.

Jerry Coble was a small time hood in Kern county California. He was looking to help out a prosecutor with damning testimony to avoid another trip back to the slammer where obtaining his cherished heroin fix would be very difficult. The author convinced me almost from the start that Coble was a lying conniver and yes, how prosecutor Jagels believed this guy surely cast aspersions as to where his head was leaning.

In fact, the author lays out a time and era during prosecutor Jagels’ time in power and he is painted as a man proud of his conviction record and who might do anything to keep it. Which is, of course, often the case when criminals and their champions argue as to their innocence. The prosecutor wanted his record to remain stellar, the criminals argue, so he took the easy course, which was to lock up poor innocent me.

Goodness Jerry Coble’s own brother testified that he was lying about what he saw that night, that he’d even told him that he was going to arrange a lie with a prosecutor that would keep him out of jail. AND Coble was caught casing Pat Dunn’s house by a friend of Pat, with Pat’s friend even getting the license plate number of Coble’s mother’s Mustang. Coble was probably trying to get the details on Pat Dunn’s truck for the false testimony he was preparing to give to prosecutor Jagels.

The big problem here is that several members of the jury said they didn’t believe a word of Coble’s testimony. So the author convinced this reader that Jerry Coble was a liar but so what? That jury found Pat Dunn guilty of murdering his wife and would have done so without the testimony of Jerry Coble. Still and so, I accept the argument that prosecutor Jagel’s quickness to believe this lying con man indicates something shady about the prosecutor if nothing else.

The author tells the story of the hysterical witch hunts on child abusers going on across the country at that time, and pointed out that Kern county California was one major suburban area consumed with day care child abuse. The author makes good arguments that the many indictments of innocent people might have created an atmosphere of over-confidence for prosecutors, perhaps a notion that investigations need not be bulky when a quick indictment of the mostly likely perp will do. As I linked earlier, I too thought that the day care child abuse hysteria of that era was bogus and, indeed, has been found so in the rearview mirror of future calm.

There were, however, some very questionable things about the death of Sandy Dunn that I would think worth another look. However, all requests for another trial, and there were many, were turned down.

There was NO physical evidence in the Dunn house that anybody had been brutally murdered. There was a very unusual, almost ceremonial, wound to the anus of Sandy Dunn, a wound not likely to be inflicted by a husband who killed her in an anger flash. Sandy Dunn had signed her will indicating her wish to leave all her worldly goods to her husband, thereby removing any obvious motive.

In summary, I admire Humes for such an organized, well-written book. I think he made a damn good argument for the innocence of Pat Dunn in the murder of his wife. I suspect this author might have, as authors do, tried to hoodwink me or gloss over things a bit too quick.

For now, I think prosecutor Jagel is an asshole, I’m pretty sure that Jerry Koble is a lying con artist, and I do believe that Pat Dunn had one lousy defense team.

None of these things make Pat Dunn an innocently jailed man.
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Bachelorette Jillian keeps looking for a "connection" in The Bachelorette series now with 7 contenders left vying for her heart.

The Wise I tells Jillian what she really needs to look for in these contenders and first she needs to find out what the hell a "pizza entrepreneur" is.

With pics and video you'll find nowhere else on the Internet.

HERE
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Two would-be Food Network Stars have been sent packing and in this update based on the episode aired 6/14/09-we review the remaining contenders, who looks promising, who desperately needs to go and the foods they serve get a close eyeball.

Brussels Sprouts Hash?

All with pics and video you'll find nowhere else on the Internet.

HERE
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Two fine, fine liberal ladies show us their stuff to the innocent who mistakenly call them…LIZ or MA'AM.

Nasty names them.

In this THOUGHTS post we have the whole story of Elizabeth who shall destroy those who call her Liz and Barbara Boxer must NOT be called Ma'am.

Plus a letter that sums up the tea parties and the feelings of us peons across the fruited plains.

Good Guys of the Week, Bad Buys of the Week, Quips of the Week and it all Ends With a Smile.

HERE
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The gardens of 2009 grow well here in Serendipity Shore.

A native plant helps to create a living fence and a flower that had always refused to grow adds stunning vertical interest to the gardens.

With pics, of course.

HERE
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"In Pursuit of Something Better"-Jack Rooney Brings a Lackluster Corp to Life-Book Reviews

2009-06-14T14:13:00.000-07:00

"The Pursuit of Something Better" is a story of a small cellular service company that rockets from the bottom of the pile when a new and visionary CEO joins the team.

Read this story by David Esler and Myra Kruger about how paying attention to ALL employees and good leadership brings results in both employee morale and the bottom line.

Plus, how could my local Walmart benefit by a lesson from Rooney's "Dynamic Organization"?

Pic of the Day

The Pursuit of Something Better by Dave Esler and Myra Kruger

This past week I made a trip to a super-super Walmart near me. I needed a lot of things and intended to stock up in a store that I think is the least expensive of any other in my area, hands down. I rode an extra fifteen miles out of my way just to purchase those items in one large trip that would keep me from such a jaunt for a few more months.

I needed some cheap wash cloths. Sure we all put out our prettiest things for company and such but I wanted a couple to hang behind the shower doors and put to gritty use.

Sure enough I found nice, adequate wash clothes for $1.00 each. They weren’t the softest in the world and would likely only survive thirty washings or so. But get enough of the things and I’d be set for wash clothes for a couple of years.

I got three rust colored wash cloths and two oatmeal colored ones. I I also needed some dish towels and quick I found some for $1.50 each, indeed I purchased five dish towels in the same color combination.

The cashier rang up all of the dish towels, no problem. She rang up the three rust colored wash cloths, no problem. The two oatmeal colored wash clothes…no UPC code.

She presses the thing that makes the problem light come on at her station. “I am going to need a UPC code on these,” she said and continued to ring up the rest of my considerable order. In fact, the total of my order that day came to over $310.00 so I was a customer who’d spent some bucks at the store.

I shrugged because since she had to ring up the rest of my order I didn’t care if the light blinked until help arrived to find the UPC code of the oatmeal wash cloths. Which were exactly the same as the rust wash cloths at $1.00 each and the dish towels were $1.50 each so the cost was no big deal to ascertain is what I’m saying here. I asked the cashier why she didn’t use the UPC code of the rust colored dish cloths because the price was the same.

“They are a different color,” she said, firmly and in a tone that would brook no nonsense.

Of course she rings up the total order of over three hundred bucks and still whoever was supposed to show up to find the UPC code of oatmeal color wash clothes was nowhere to be found. There were a couple of people in line behind me after my big order and the cashier just, poof, stopped and waited for the phantom savior or missing UPC codes to show up as I, the customer who’d just spent three hundred bucks, and others, tired and ready to ring up their orders, waited.

“So we should just stand here and wait?” I asked.

The cashier shrugged. “Somebody will be here soon.”

“Serious…” I continued…”you can’t use the rust colored cloths UPC codes?”

“They are a different color,” she said. Well hey, I get this. But they are the same PRICE. We were talking a transaction here with a grand total of…count ‘em…TWO DOLLARS. For this she was holding up a customer who’d just spent considerable money and others waiting in line?

I told her to just forget the oatmeal colored wash cloths. She shrugged, completed my sale and that was that.

Now I understand that inventory is affected in these sorts of transactions. Had she used the rust colored wash cloths’ UPC codes well damn, the system would have deducted two rust colored wash cloths from the inventory while two oatmeal colored ones would have remained in the inventory and we can’t have that.

This sort of thing would NEVER happen at U.S. Cellular under the leadership of Jack Rooney. Because in that company, with a reknown CEO who has gained a reputation far and wide for bringing his company from the dark shadows of obscurity to one that wins awards and became the benchmark for corporate success.

That Walmart cashier could have used the UPC codes of the rust colored wash cloths and made a note for some IT type to manually adjust the inventory. Computers have the ability to do such things but obviously Walmart is not headed by Jack Rooney, the man who changed U.S. Cellular to a company of corporate envy.

Amazon Code for “Pursuit of Something Better”

Employees of U.S. Cellular, via a closely watched system of surveys and leadership encouragement, would learn almost immediately upon hiring that leaving a customer standing like I was left cooling my heels, or the folks in line behind me, all to maintain a COMPANY convenience, would never do.

Walmart has the ability to keep prices low and very competitive down pat. Walmart obviously doesn’t think enough of its employees to trust the MOST important person on the Walmart team to lead the charge to better service to, well lead the charge to better service. Who is most visible to most Walmart customers? That would be the cashier!

U.S. Cellular is mostly a Midwest company, marketing, as its name would imply, cellular phone services. It was in competition with mighty Sprint and Verizon. It was the era when cellular phone companies had the advantage as cell phones were being bought by every American as the technology and mastery of manufacture made prices affordable by the vast majority of the public.

Enter Jack Rooney.

Rooney made a name for himself as CEO of other technological companies before being hired on by U.S. Cellular. Jack Rooney had a vision.

He called it the “Dynamic Organization” and yes, many called it meaningless psychobabble.

If Walmart were a Dynamic Organization that cashier would have smiled, rung up my oatmeal washcloth using the rust colored one’s UPC code. Discretely she would have made a note of the transaction and when appropriate she would approach her leader and asked that a manual entry be made to correct any inventory error that might remain because of how she handled the sale of the oatmeal wash cloths.

Her leader, in a Dynamic Organization, would have congratulated the cashier for how deftly she handled the situation and praised for having sent a customer home happy, kept the ones in line unaware of any snafu and would insure that the inventory affected would be handled by the department in charge of such things with a smile and good wishes.

The word “dynamic” implies any energy, a pleasant movement, brought about by an interaction in which all participants in the interaction get involved and work with all other participants eagerly to a pleasant outcome.

A Dynamic Organization would therefore be one that has all parts of the company working with joyful energy with all other parts creating a zeal and joy that almost feeds upon itself.

Jack Rooney did more than just talk about an organization that had all parts working together to achieve the final goal of a profitable company with happy customers. Jack Rooney followed his concept through, using “Culture Surveys” that had employees feedback on how well they perceived the company was doing as well as thoughts on their own leaders.

These “Culture Surveys” became the engine that drove Rooney forward to achieve that Dynamic Organization. They were not just mindless employee surveys that were dutifully taken and just as dutifully ignored. The Culture Surveys were closely watched. Issues as addressed in the surveys were addressed by leaders in charge of the manner. In due course employees at U.S. Cellular became intrigued, almost enchanted, that the company REALLY did care about them.

Dave Esler and Myra Kruger write a clear and happy book about the U.S. Cellular success story. It’s a story of how a struggling little known company came from obscurity to win five consecutive J.D. Power awards for customer satisfaction.

As I read the book I became eager to sign up for a company with a leader such as Jack Rooney. For in my lifetime I’ve had the opportunity to be a leader of many departments for various and diverse employees. I was Accounting Manager of a busy hospital accounting department as well as of a government contractor. I managed up to 15 employees. I know too well the value of a dedicated employee and I’ve learned that in order to inspire employees to better things there is nothing more important than leadership that presents a good example and follows through.

It’s not as much about a Dynamic Organization or any other catchy names one might put to it. It’s about a leader who cared and continually cared. It’s about a CEO who didn’t sit back and ride it out until retirement.

Read “The Pursuit of Something Better” for a real lessons, well-written with optimism and the sound knowledge that it CAN be done inculcated into every upbeat word.

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In this TV post we take a look at NBC's newest summer offering-"The Listener". The main character's cute and has ESP. But does this make a hit show?

Also, HGTV's $250,000 challenge where families win even if they lose. It's fun and on a subject ALL females are concerned about.

BravoTV's The Fashion Show reality contest continues on and it intrigues. But a "jock" look with fringes on stockings?

Finally, Dancing With Stars sexy Marini has new role and how did Kris Allen really win American Idol 2009?

HERE
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"The Pursuit of Something Better" is a story of a small cellular service company that rockets from the bottom of the pile when a new and visionary CEO joins the team.

Read this story by David Esler and Myra Kruger about how paying attention to ALL employees and good leadership brings results in both employee morale and the bottom line.

Plus, how could my local Walmart benefit by a lesson from Rooney's "Dynamic Organization"?

HERE
==========
The protagonist of this story "Can of Peas" grew up believing that a humble can of peas saved her parents from certain death on the rocky immigrant boat of their passage from Italy to America.

But was it a can of peas or something that sounds like a can of peas that saved the lives on that vote and changed the fortunes of the believers soon to be born of the survivors?

HERE
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Food Network begins its annual foodie contest "The Next Food Network Star" and it began with a bang and intrigue.

Plus some boring dishes, some lying contenders, some awful desserts and questionable personalities introduced to an eager public looking for the next Guy Fieri.

HERE
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So okay Michelle Obama wears an outfit obviously created by a bedazzler and a handy glue gun. What the hell was she thinking? We've got pics, natch.

Also, Bad Guy of the Week, David Letterman, and his hilarious liberal talkinig points and Republican Good Guy of the Week, Sen. Grassley, who didn't let President Obama get away with protecting his child pervert California political patron.

We've got it all in Thoughts of the past week.

HERE
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Review-"Red Zone"-Aphrodite Jones, When Nuts Raise Killer Dogs People Die

2009-03-21T14:07:00.000-07:00

Here's a book Review for Aphrodite Jones' true crime book-"Red Zone".

For Marjorie Knoller is an idiot, married to an idiot, and when idiots raise killer dogs, innocent people like Diane Whipple die horrific deaths.

The amazing behind the scenes story of the San Francisco dog mauling case.

Pic of the Day

”Red Zone” by Aphrodite Jones

Amazon link for this book.

Like most of America, I’d heard of the story of the San Francisco woman killed by two rare breed dogs called Presa Canarios. This incident caused citizens across the fruited plains to discuss and argue the merits and concerns of having dangerous dogs in populated areas, indeed even owning them at all.

While most Americans were familiar with pit bulls, Dobermans and other dogs considered dangerous on some level, the Presa Canario was a relatively unknown breed.

This book is the inside story of Robert Noel and his wife, Marjorie Knoller, two of the weirdest and possibly stupidest people to populate this planet. Take two rather stupid people, add a couple of dangerous, vicious and unpredictable dogs and you have a disaster looking for a time and place to happen.

Which happened to be an apartment complex in the Pacific Heights area of San Francisco when the dangerous elixir finally came to fruition. Diane Whipple was innocently returning to her apartment after a trip to the grocery when she was attacked by Noel and Knoller’s two Presa Canario dogs and was killed by the severity of the wounds the dogs inflicted.

As I recall the debates raged as defenders of pit bulls assured their friends that it is not the DOGS that are the problem, but rather the owners. Many declared that such dogs should perhaps be banned and this horrible incident added the new breed of the Presa Canario to the roster of dogs considered dangerous.

More information on Presa Canarios HERE.

Indeed if the common wisdom that it is the dog OWNERS who are the problem rather than the dogs, Noel and Knoller re-enforce this stereotype more than any other fact.

Noel and Knoller are both lawyers and God help us that folks of this sort somehow got a law degree. These two mockeries of defenders of justice loved to file court cases on behalf of criminals in the jails and as a clock is right twice a day, sometimes they won.

At some point these fine judges of humanity got involved with a prisoner Paul Schneider, who ran a dog breeding operation from within the walls of his prison. These two lawyers and Schneider, along with various other persons involved with this criminal managed to obtain and raise Presa Canario puppies, all for the Aryan Brotherhood, that quasi-Nazi organization of white supremacy. The ultimate goal of the entire scheme was to sell Presa Canario dogs to Mexican drug cartels and other criminal organizations which would consider having such a dog to be an asset to the activities of such groups.

Two more self-centered individuals than Noel and Knoller do not exist on this earth. When Diane Whipple lay dying from the wounds inflicted on her by Knoller’s dogs, all Marjorie Knoller could do was usher her dogs back into her apartment, not even calling for help for Whipple.

Neither of these two fine attorneys even queried about Whipple’s wounds, whether she survived or died, until they were informed by law enforcement personnel.

This book gives intriguing looks into the mindset of Noel and Knoller, plus insights into other “normal” people somehow pulled into this crazy scheme by a prisoner. It was the perfect storm that would lead to the inevitable, the death of an innocent by the crazies involved in this whole thing.

Jones also delves into the personalities of the prosecution, the victim, the politics of the trial until the very unusual decision by the judge to overturn the second degree murder conviction by the jury. This weird ruling allowed Marjorie Knoller to get out of jail after serving a short two year sentence for her heinous disregard of the helpless Diane Whipple, who would be forever dead.

I was pleased to learn that after this book was written, the stupid ruling by the judge in this case was overturned and the jury’s verdict of second degree murder would stand.

From the LA Times:

Marjorie Knoller was originally sentenced to four years in prison on a lesser charge of involuntary manslaughter, after a judge threw out the jury's second-degree murder conviction in 2002.

Superior Court Judge James Warren said at the time that there was not enough evidence that Knoller knew her two Presa Canarios -- each weighing about 100 pounds -- would kill. One of the dogs, Hera, is pictured above.

Knoller served about half of her sentence and was paroled in 2004, later moving to Florida. But the California Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that Warren interpreted the murder statute too narrowly and said that a judge must reconsider the more serious conviction.

Last month, Superior Court Judge Charlotte Woolard reinstated the second-degree murder conviction. She sentenced Knoller Monday morning. Dennis Riordan, Knoller's attorney, said his client plans to file an appeal.

Makes me feel good to know that the fine, fine Marjorie Knoller will be going back to jail. Couldn’t happen to a more vapid, thoughtless person.

More on Diane Whipple HERE.

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In thoughts this week, the Bad Guy of the Week is actually a chubby female. The Good Guy is, surprise, a Republican who showed some gonads.

Also, time for some serious cute, with a visit to a pet store caught on video.

Much more.

HERE
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ABC's "Dancing With the Stars" 09 had the first dancer eliminated this past week.

Find out the dancer every contender wants to get hurt, the dancer that surprised everyone with an amazing comeback and finally, Melissa Rycroft's parents decide to show up!

All with pics and video you'll find nowhere else on the Internet.

HERE
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It was Grand Ole Opry night and a good time was had by all in American Idol 2009.

Carrie Underwood returned, and not a single contender sang anything that sounded like a genuine country/western tune.

With pics and video you'll find nowhere else on the Internet.

HERE
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We catch up on Trump's rather lackluster 2009 Celebrity Apprentice. Tom Green goes home but we learn things about his testicles we'd didn't need to hear.

Also, a review of the very odd copycat of every cooking show on TV, NBC's "Chopping Block".

HERE

A Book That Will Change or Re-Affirm How You Feel About the Death Penalty

2009-03-14T14:21:00.000-07:00

Here’s a Book Review on a book that will keep you awake at night.

It’s short, beautifully written, a true crime story that will have you tossing and turning and maybe crying a little bit.

It’s “A Rip in Heaven” by Jeanine Cummins.

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”A Rip In Heaven” by Jeanine Cummins

Gray was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder and was executed by lethal injection on October 26, 2005.

I am so glad Marlin Gray is dead. In fact, I wish we could bring him back to life so we can kill him again.

Before I read this book by Jeanine Cummins, I would have, at the least, cared not a whit about Marlin, at the most, regretted the state’s action in killing a citizen, an action that I waffle about from time to time.

For sure the issue of the death penalty is an onerous one and I’m sure I am not the only citizen wrestling with the nuances of the matter.

First, there’s the news that breaks through on occasion that new DNA evidence reveals an already-convicted criminal was innocent and this is bound to give any of us pause. Second, as I am to understand, putting a criminal to death actually costs the taxpayers more than locking him or her up for life, NO possibility of parole. Third, sentiment is slowly changing here in America as our more liberal colleagues across the planet regard us as heathens for our tough death penalty stance.

Which is not to say that I have a concrete position as regards the death penalty but I do tend to accept the prevailing wisdom that perhaps it’s best to avoid this thorny issue all together. For sure spending one’s life in prison is sufficient penalty for the more heinous, so long as parole is no possibility. Although that slippery slope could be an issue in that someday maybe the bit about no parole might fall by the wayside and that’s not acceptable.

Marlin Gray and a few of his fine friends, whose parents must be so proud of their boys, decided to attack two sisters and their male cousin as the trio strolled innocently across an abandoned bridge in Missouri. They wanted “to get mean with someone”.

They raped the two girls, Julie and Robin Kerry while holding down their cousin Tom. Tom had to listen to his cousins’ torment and horror and could not help them.

After the vicious attack, the still-naked girls and Tom were forced to stand at the edge of the bridge of their torture, and without even a whisper of a thought, those fine boys pushed the three off of the bridge, to fall into a freezing Mississippi river over 70 feet below.

The history of our country is filled with victims of crime but in this case, the crime victims were to go on to suffer even more torment by the St. Louis police department and fine celebrity members of the media, one is Ricki Lake-who should be shot at sunrise.

Tom survived his plunge into the Mississippi River. He suffered a fractured hip, such was the force of hitting the water. Julie also survived the plunge but was unable to swim to safety. Tom tried his best to save his cousin but he could not. He was himself badly injured and too weak to hold on to her without drowning himself. Julie’s younger sister, Robin, did not survive. Her body was never found. Julie’s body was found a few weeks after the incident.

The book goes on to detail the events after Tom finally summoned help by climbing up a steep embankment and summoning a passing truck.

In the saddest turn of events, the St. Louis police actually thought that TOM raped and killed his cousins. Tom told his story of horror to the police, of course, begging them to please go to the river and try to find his cousins. The details are murky but the police handling of this case was as atrocious as it comes. My bile still rises at the story.

Tom did fail some sort of lie detector test. As the author points out, who is Tom’s sister by the way, sleep depravation is a major cause in failure on lie detectors. By the time got around to giving Tom a lie detector test, he had already had precious little sleep in over 48 hours.

First, the reader has to wonder what the hell those cops were thinking. If Tom had, indeed, raped his cousins, why would he include that in his story? He could have just reported them missing if he had anything to do with their demise. Further, Tom had serious injuries that were NOT tended to for the silly concentration of the St. Louis police on HIM as the criminal. He did not get medical help for a fractured hip for a few days after it all and for the St. Louis police, a fine, fine lot of gumshoes there…maybe they would have given pause as to a fellow who would rape and drown his cousins, giving himself a fractured hip from the plunge as well.

Later in the book we learn that Tom did successfully sue the St. Louis police and won a cash settlement. Wikipedia says his settlement was $150,000. This makes me happy. If ever there was dumb police work it is this sad mockery of a criminal case.

One of the fine, fine boys who participated in this crime was a kid with a very low IQ. Ricki Lake, just one of many media liberals who latched onto this case, had some sort of campaign to keep this so-called retard from the death penalty. And, indeed, Richardson’s stay of execution was granted and the creep still lives.

Ricki Lake asserted that Richardson was a juvenile and mentally retarded. When Richardson was 26 years old when the execution was scheduled and while having a low IQ, this is not QUITE the same as mental retardation. Further, it was the fine, fine Richardson, whose mother is so proud of, who pushed those nude girls off the bridge. He also managed to rape them first. He was smart enough to do that with no conscience.

Marlin Gray, as stated above, is dead. This fine, fine fellow DID get a needle and as I said with no compunction, I am glad. The world does, as I now consider, need to rid itself of creeps with no social value; creeps that rape and kill for fun; creeps with no conscience that might someday rape and kill RICKI LAKE!

Finally, as Tom’s sister describes, Tom witnessed the death of Marlin Gray but not because he wanted revenge. No. All Tom wanted was to see some sort of regret, an apology perhaps, for so horribly pushing two terrified naked girls off a bridge to their deaths, this after raping them.

Tom did not get his wish. Marlin Gray is dead, thank God. He never expressed a regret one for what he did.

The world is so much better off without him. Julie and Robin should watch him burn in hell from their perch in heaven.

Web Site for this book.

In this week’s THOUGHTS for the week we’ve got what could possibly be a doctored pic of Paris Hilton. Think Britney Spears. She shows us her shoes but shows the camera a whole lot more. Warning, graphic.

Also a rant on Walmart, some smart thoughts on monitoring bills and, as always, political rants, good guys, bad guys and other wisdom deemed worthy of the written word.

HERE

ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars” Premiered on 3/9/09 and it was great fun.

We’ve got a guy who is more of a comedian than dancer, the required old fart…this is a must see. Plus…tada….Melissa of Bachelor fame is a dancer and remember who spotted that entire fraud business first.

All with commentary, pics and video you’ll find nowhere else on the Internet.

HERE
“American Idol” 2009 is getting serious now and the top 13 performed on 3/10/09. As this reality contest begins its great build up to the winner, we scrutinize closely the song choices, fashion, style and singing talents of the contenders.

If God is in his heaven the contender who should win is a dark horse but I see it plain as day. Should God be busy, there’s another who is a shoo-in.

All with commentary, pics and video you’ll find nowhere else on the Internet.

HERE

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Book review-Shallow Grave in Trinity County-Harry Farrell

2009-03-01T08:26:00.000-08:00

Not posted yet. Please come back later.

Book Reviews-Joe McGinnis-"Never Enough" and Ann Rule's "A Fever In the Heart"; The Community Flea Market

2008-07-20T16:14:00.000-07:00

Rob Kissel was murdered. Only we know who murdered him; it was that nut of a wife of his. Seems she wanted the local blue collar cable guy who must have been dragging the ground if you get my drift. But who killed Andrew, Rob's brother?

Joe McGinnis dwells on Rob Kissel in this True Crime book "Never Enough". Perhaps McGinnis will regale us True Crime buffs with a book about Andrew Kissel, a loser if ever there was one.

And as you read one "Gabby" Moore burns in agony in the fires of hell. For this man, a nut who actually taught discipline in the form of sports for the young, got himself so obsessed with a woman that all rationality left the man. The result is one death of a father of two, a kind, gentle Morris Blankenberger, as well as the death of Gabby himself. But THAT couldn't have happened to a nicer fellow.

Here's a review of Ann Rule's "A Fever in the Heart".

Finally, just for fun, we visit my community's flea market.

Most remarkable, I sold more of my own books in my own driveway than I ever did in the biggest of venues.

Pic of the Day

"Never Enough" by Joe McGinniss

It's nice to once in a while turn from my beloved Ann Rule to a different true crime writer. Joe McGinnis is a very good writer with “Fatal Vision”, “Blind Faith” and “Cruel Doubt” to his credit. I’d read at least the novel “Fatal Vision” before but until I opened this novel about the tragic Kissel family I’d forgotten what a good writer McGinniss is.

Rob Kissel and his brother Andrew were wealthy. Only Rob came by his wealth as an investment banker honestly. Brother Andrew’s claim to wealth was more questionable.

Andrew Kissel would not be of much import for this book beyond that of a family member of the victim. Except Andrew Kissel was himself murdered, like his brother Rob. The reader knows who murdered Rob and it was a killer of the most extraordinary loony tunes in-love-with-herself variety of murderess. The reader does not know who killed Rob’s brother Andrew except it wasn’t Rob’s wife Nancy. She was in jail for murdering Rob when Andrew was killed.

Joe Mcginnis knows his stuff about retail banking. Or else he did a whole lot of research on the matter as well as life in Hong Kong.

For Nancy, Rob Kissel and their children lived half their lives in Hong Kong. It seems there’s a somewhat segregated segment of Hong Kong society that consists solely of American men immersed in the world of investment banking, their wives and children. They live in almost pristine American colonies in grandiose high rises that are fully self-contained and require little interaction with the Chinese world outside the complex.

Nancy Kissel lived in this rarified world. She also lived in the United States. Nancy Kissel and her children straddled two cultures and two continents. During a recent stay in her American home, Nancy Kissel fell in love with a trailer park two-bit blue collar cable guy.

Yes. It’s almost like a Lifetime movie ain’t it?

Obviously Nancy Kissel is a dingbat not worthy of freedom from jail again, forever and ever. For this woman cold-bloodedly fed her husband killing poison then sat around and waited for Rob Kissel to die.

The rest of the McGinniss book deals with the custody of Rob’s children, what with Rob dead and the fine, fine Nancy in Hong Kong prison. Andrew’s wife, Hayley, tried to get custody of the children, hoping as much for their millions left to them by their dead father as from any maternal instinct. This was not going to happen as Hayley and Andrew were getting a divorce. Beyond this, Hayley was naught but an in-law aunt to those children.

McGinniss mentions the murder of Rob’s brother Andrew as part of the book but Andrew’s true crime, his murderer and the story behind it was not the subject of “Never Enough”.

Nancy Kissel has only herself to blame for her life in prison. She killed her husband and the father of her children for the cable guy! Now she doesn’t have a husband, the cable guy, her children or her lifestyle of luxury she once enjoyed.

Read this book yon True Crime afficiandos. If nothing else you’ll get a real hoot out of this cable guy who knew a good thing when he saw it and how he got out when the getting out was good.

Readers will shed no tears for Nancy Kissel, the idiot.

”A Fever in the Heart” by Ann Rule

So in the book review above we read the story of one tiny, selfish woman who had a husband who loved her, two healthy children, riches beyond compare but hey, she had to have the cable guy, her stupid ruthless self. So she killed her husband mercilessly and lost it all, even that fabulous cable guy who lived in a trailer park.

This book by Ann Rule, “A Fever in the Heart”, is the story of another very small man with no character who lived for today and his own silly obsessions.

Gabby Moore was a sports coach who was beloved by his students. One such former student was Morris Blankenbaker. Morris Blankenbaker was married to Jerilee and they had two children.

Morris once offered his former coach a place to stay when the coach was going through rough times. Coach Gabby Moore thanked Morris by running off with his wife. Jerilee did divorce Morris to marry Gabby. Only Jerilee realized her mistake soon enough and with a year or her error she left Gabby and went back with Morris.

Gabby Moore never let go of Jerilee.

This true crime is the story of a man obsessed with a woman. A man so obsessed that he murdered a man in cold blood. Only Gabby wasn’t the murderer of Morris Blankenbaker.

No. This thoughtless piece of crap had to further involve those students who loved him by convincing one of them to do the crime. This provided Moore with an alibi when suspicion was cast on him for Blankenbaker’s death.

But it doesn’t stop there.

The student did kill Morris at Gabby’s urging but it wasn’t enough. Jerilee was quite distressed at the death of Morris, her ex-husband and father of her children. So Gabby schemed up this plan to have that same student who shot Morris to shoot him.

Except the plan went awry and Gabby ended up dead. This was not, as one might imagine, the original plan. The original plan as hatched by the evil Gabby, was for his fine self to take a harmless bullet in the upper arm where there would be little harm.

It’s debatable whether Angelo “Tuffy” Pleasant really meant to kill Gabby Moore. All Gabby wanted was a small wound to convince his beloved Jerilee that he had killers out to get him so he could not possibly have been involved in the murder of Morris.

Like I said…right out of Lifetime but true.

Gabby Moore burns in hell even as yon reader peruses this review.

This Rule book is one of her books that includes short stories of other strange and unusual true crimes. There’s a story of a man who pretended to be in college when he was not. Comes the discovery and his wife ends up dead in a faked car crash that almost fooled the police.

There’s a few more intriguing stories, all well told in that Rule way, all mesmerizing, all very sad.

Focus on Book Reviews
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ANN RULE BOOK REVIEWS
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Review Ann Rule's "Every Breath You Take"

Shiela Bellush had quadruplets and, unfortunately, two daughters with Allen Blackthorne.

Blackthorne had everything a man could want. But he didn't have Shiela.

So he murdered her and left her babies toddling all about their mother's body.
Review Ann Rule's "Every Breath You Take"
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Ann Rule's "Heart Full of Lies" and "Bitter Harvest"

Liysa Northon was featured in Rule's "Heart Full of Lies". Liysa was pretty, intelligent and fortunate enough to live in two homes, one in Hawaii and one in Bend, Oregon. She was married to a Hawaiian Airlines pilot, Chris Northon, and was a talented photographer and writer in her own right.

Dr. Debora Green was a physician married to another physician, a Cardiologist, Dr. Mike Farrar. The couple owned a luxury home in Prairie Village, Kansas.

Both women had beautiful children; Liysa had two precocious boys while Debora had a son and two daughters. Both women wanted their husbands dead. One succeeded, the other gave it a try. Debora Green's house burned down and two of her precious children perished in the flames.

Both of these women are crazy as loons.

Ann Rule's "Heart Full of Lies" and "Bitter Harvest"
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Ann Rule's "No Regrets"

A book review as Ann Rule does it again with "No, Regrets".
He piloted mighty boats and lived past 80 years but his own wife ended it all for him.

Ann Rule's "No Regrets"
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Ann Rule-"And Never Let Her Go"

And Never Let Her Go" is the true crime story of Thomas Capano, scion of a wealthy Delaware family, lawyer and political insider. It wasn't that long ago that this case was splashed in all the newspapers in this area and I vowed that when someone wrote the book I would look into it immediately. I was delighted that Ann Rule wrote the book.

Ann Rule-"And Never Let Her Go"

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Ann Rule "Last Dance, Last Chance"

This book by Ann Rule is unique out of all her novels in that Rule actually got to interview the victim who almost died at the hands of the idiot around who the story is based.

Ann Rule-"Last Dance, Last Chance"

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Ann Rule "Kiss Me, Kill Me"

This book is one of Ann's famous true crime "compilations" in that there are several stories compiled into one novel.

The book begins with the story of Sandy Bowman, murdered over 35 years prior to the book's writing. Many of the stories in this book involve crimes that went unsolved for many years to be eventually solved in this era of more modern DNA techniques.

Ann Rule-"Kiss Me, Kill Me"

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Ann Rule "Too Late to Say Goodbye"

This book review involved this Blogger again in a fashion that surprised me. For under my "True Crime" headers I'd written about the very fine Barton Corbin and even received an insightful and thankful email from Jennifer Corbin's father for my blogging activity in helping to keep this story alive.

Because Barton Corbin had the worst luck of most any man on earth.

He fell in love, even married, women who seemed to commit suicide all around him.

By Ann Rule, we review "Too Late to Say Goodbye".

"Too Late to Say Goodbye"

OTHER TRUE CRIME BOOK REVIEWS
==============================
"WITNESS-Amber Frey's story."

She did the right thing in turning in the fine Scott Peterson.

Did anyone ever teach this woman the art of birth control?

"WITNESS-Amber Frey's story."
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"Tainted Roses"

So here you have it. A truly AWFUL true crime book that I'm bothering to write a review on that readers be warned.

A murderer, Paul Mack...alias Sean Lanier, meets up with a recently divorced woman, sweet talks her into romance and marriage, then is exposed on "America's Most Wanted" to his new wife's horror.

Guess who his wife was? Margie Danielsen.

That's right. The book is written by the "victim" of Sean Lanier and so far as I'm concerned, this woman is a certified idiot.

"Tainted Roses"
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The Summer Wind-George Anastasia

Anastasia is a reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer and attended the trial of Capano. His perspective on the reporting is distant and less personal than Rule?s account. If someone held a gun to my head and only had one choice to read about the nefarious Thomas Capano, I'd suggest they go with the Rule version. Maybe it's a woman thing, but Rule always brings that female insight often lacking in the prose of male true-crime writers. Nonetheless, Anastasia did a fine job and his skill as a writer is quite evident.

The Summer Wind-George Anastasia
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"Fatal Analysis" by Dr. Martin Obler and Thomas Clavin

A Book Review of a true crime book "Final Analysis" by Dr. Martin Obler.

It's a good true crime story about a serial killer, his shrink and efforts to stop the killing.

Only thing, although proclaimed to be true, I didn't believe a word of Obler's psychobabble nonsense.

It's almost a sin to classify this book as non-fiction.

"Fatal Analysis" by Dr. Martin Obler and Thomas Clavin
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Shattered" by Debra Puglisi Sharp

Also, a Book Review of a book by an author that promised me an interview but she didn't deliver. I read the book anyway, here's the review but I don't think much of people making promises they don't keep.

She was held hostage by a crack-crazed nut for six days, hog-tied and repeatedly raped and tortured until she finally got to the phone to freedom.

It's a compelling book, this "Shattered" by Debra Puglisi Sharp.

Too bad she's not a woman of her word for all her heroism.

Shattered" by Debra Puglisi Sharp
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"Unspeakable Acts" by Jan Worthington

A True Crime Book Review of "Unspeakable Acts". This book is more accurately a tome. Half of it could have been deleted. For this tale of two hippie doctors eliciting tales of abuse in a daycare center in the hysteria of the mid-80's is almost entirely fiction.

This is a great study of how the Lamestream Media creates a story from thin air.

"Unspeakable Acts" by Jan Worthington
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"Missing Beauty"

A True Crime book review-"Missing Beauty" by Teresa Carpenter, tells the story of a very intelligent scientist who gets caught up in the world of prostitution, drugs...and murder.

"Missing Beauty"
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"Unfinished Murder" by James Neff

A book review, "Unfinished Murder" by James Neff. The book title is indicative of a True Crime that is considered by many to be a killing crime not quite complete. He's a serial rapist and this is a story of his life and how he got caught.

"Unfinished Murder" by James Neff
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2 BOOKS ON JONBENET RAMSEY-PERFECT MURDER, PERFECT TOWN-Lawrence Shiller, JONBENET BY DETECTIVE STEVE THOMAS

It was never my intention to become an expert on the Jonbenet Ramsey case, but given my complete and total absorption in the two books most recently read following the colon, I must say I'm pretty much up to snuff on all the players, suspects and victim: "Jonbenet" by Detective Steve Thomas; "Perfect Murder, Perfect Town" by Lawrence Schiller.

2 BOOKS ON JONBENET RAMSEY
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"Evidence of Love" by John Bloom and Jim Atkinson

I could not put this book down.

For if ever there were two couples so very, very odd while appearing for all the world to be so perfectly normal, it would be the Montgomerys and the Gores of Collin County, Texas.

Then there was the Methodist church and the strange preachers combined with weirdly devoted parishioners and oddball church-sanctioned "marriage counseling" that added to the reader's perception that this book HAD to be fiction; surely churches and normal people don't behave like this.

"Evidence of Love" by John Bloom and Jim Atkinson
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"A Wife's Revenge" by Eric Francis

A rather unique book review here. We've got "A Wife's Revenge" by Eric Francis. Coincidentally as I read this book this story of Susan Wright was featured on CBS' "48 Hours".

Thus we have video of this book's subject, a pretty woman who killed her husband in a most heartless and horrific manner.

"A Wife's Revenge"

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"The Doctor, The Murder, The Mystery" by Barbara Damato

....the true story of Dr. John Branion murder case.

I remember this case vaguely. It occurred back in 1967 and involved a wealthy doctor and the mysterious shooting of his wife.

The doctor was Dr. John Branion, a wealthy doctor married to Donna Branion. Donna was also from a wealthy medical family.

First things first. The contention of this novel is that Dr. Branion was innocent. Right there I have issues.

" The Doctor, The Murder, The Mystery "

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"The Michigan Murders" by Edward Keyes

Here's a True Crime book written in 1976 and it was a bit of a time warp to read a story written so long before the advances in DNA and crime detection that makes investigating murders so much easier in this new century.

Seven women were murdered in Washtenaw county, Michigan, all in the vicinity of the University of Michigan. The perp's name was James Armstrong and he was, like most serial killers, a fellow who looked as all-American as they come.

" The Doctor, The Murder, The Mystery "
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REVIEW TWO BOOKS ON SCOTT PETERSON CASE:

- "A Deadly Game...the untold story of the Scott Peterson Investigation" Catherine Crier
-"For Laci"- Sharon Rocha.

Both of the above books give details about the investigation into Laci Peterson's murder by her husband, Scott Peterson.

Catherine Crier's book, however, is a veritable tome with not much new. Rocha's book has details and an insight into Laci that only a mother can provide.

Review of Crier and Rocha's Books on Scott Peterson Case

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"Murder in the Heartland" by M. William Phelps

This is a very personal, almost painful review. For it was this Blogger who originally was scheduled to write the story of the very troubled Lisa Montgomery, a woman who cold-bloodedly killed a young mother and ripped her unborn baby from her body.

A very handsome and talented M.William Phelps wrote the story instead, with a minimum of help from me. I did, however, know a few members of Lisa Montgomery's family and this gave me an insight into how Phelps wrote the book, the skewed points of view within the book's covers and the very, very wrong title for the book titled "Murder in the Heartland".

"Murder in the Heartland"

Book Reviews:"Murder in the Heartland" and Ann Rule's "Too Late To Say Goodbye"

2008-07-08T13:25:00.000-07:00

Two True Crime book reviews here.
One is a very personal, almost painful review. For it was this Blogger who originally was scheduled to write the story of the very troubled Lisa Montgomery, a woman who cold-bloodedly killed a young mother and ripped her unborn baby from her body.

A very handsome and talented M.William Phelps wrote the story instead, with a minimum of help from me. I did, however, know a few members of Lisa Montgomery’s family and this gave me an insight into how Phelps wrote the book, the skewed points of view within the book’s covers and the very, very wrong title for the book titled “Murder in the Heartland”.

The other book review involved this Blogger again in a fashion that surprised me. For under my “True Crime” headers I’d written about the very fine Barton Corbin and even received an insightful and thankful email from Jennifer Corbin’s father for my blogging activity in helping to keep this story alive.

Because Barton Corbin had the worst luck of most any man on earth.

He fell in love, even married, women who seemed to commit suicide all around him.

By Ann Rule, we review “Too Late to Say Goodbye”.

Web Site Worth the Visit
It’s the Season for WATERMELONS!

Watermelon Carving Site HERE

”Murder In the Heartland” by M. William Phelps

Amazon link for this book.

It was in December of 2004 when I, a relatively new and inexperienced Blogger, chanced to post the first news about the tragic and horrific death of Bobbie Jo Stinnet.

Bobbie Jo was pregnant almost to term when she invited a woman purporting to be interested in purchasing a rat terrier dog into her home. This same woman, Lisa Montgomery using an alias, then proceeded to murder Bobbie Jo then cut out her baby from her womb.

It was a crime that shocked the nation.

Since I was one of the first Bloggers to cover this case, the many, many comments came, HERE, and for a while my Blog was the place to be to discuss the Lisa Montgomery crime.

As time passed much more information came out about the case, all discussed HERE.

In due course, what with all the activity on my Blog, I was contacted by Lisa Montgomery’s ex-husband, Carl Boman. I also chanced to meet, electronically, one of Lisa’s very sweet daughters. Phelps changes the names of Lisa’s children in his book thus I too will not reveal their real names.

There was a discussion about me possibly writing this book but, alas, first, everyone involved in this crime lived in either Missouri or Kansas. Second, the fact of the matter is that I would much rather read a true crime book than actually write one.

Which brings me to the author, M. William Phelps, who has other true crime books to his credit and who did a mostly fine job with the story of Lisa Montgomery and Bobbie Jo Stinnet.

I engaged in a small correspondence with Mr. Phelps. I directed him to my web site and Blog posts on the matter. I had quite a few emails I had received from Carl Boman and Lisa’s daughter but I did not provide these to Phelps because, hey, they were private emails. I agreed to answer any questions Phelps might have but he managed to finish the book just fine without me.

I have some thoughts on Lisa Montgomery’s rather odd family, all accurately documented in the book and I have some issues with the writing contained within the book.

First complaint…this book was entirely too much about Carl Boman and I’m going to admit it right now, I KNEW that Boman would be a problem in trying to pen this novel.

Of course Carl Boman played a very important part in Lisa Montgomery’s life, no doubt. He was, at one point in time, Lisa’s step-brother, his father once married to Lisa’s mother, Judy Shaughnessy. Carl Boman also married Lisa Montgomery not once, but twice. Finally, Lisa and Boman had four children together.

So the input from Carl Boman was valuable indeed in terms of deducing Lisa’s background and the environment in which Lisa began her mad mission of killing a pregnant woman to steal her child right out of her womb.

But this story is NOT about Carl Boman and I give Phelps credit for downplaying Boman’s input as much as possible. However, this story is as much about Jeb Stinnet and Kevin Montgomery as it is about Carl Boman and only bits of information on these two players were provided, necessarily I assume, by Phelps.

For sure Lisa Montgomery sprang from a strange, dysfunctional and convoluted family. Her mother had been married, divorced and remarried so many times that I finally lost track. If one were to hold a gun to my head and tell me how many children Judy Shaughnessy had I’d have to guess and I’d probably be wrong.

Insight into the psyche of Lisa Montgomery was handily provided, by Carl Boman I must suppose. I’d argue that someone needs to lift the top of Kevin Montgomery’s skull and see what mush lies within. Because this is a man who totally believed his wife somehow went into the hospital, gave birth, then phoned him up to meet her and their newborn baby at a nearby Long John Silver drive in.

What the hell…?

Kevin Montgomery had three sons, as Phelps revealed in the book and which I did not know. It’s not like the very, very dumb Kevin didn’t know about childbirth or anything is what I’m saying here.

As for Carl Boman, I did consider him a gentleman and he obviously was totally in love with Lisa and never quite fell out, judging by how he followed the woman around the country. Boman did remarry but forgive me, Carl’s wife should have married Kevin Montgomery that these two airheads should be together till death by stupidity do they part.

It was Carl’s wife Vanessa who allegedly got a job stuffing envelopes at home (ALWAYS a scam) and promised Lisa $45,000 in back child support just as soon as she stuffed enough envelopes. This incident, mentioned prominently in Phelps’ book, might well have launched Lisa Montgomery on her quest to steal an infant because that $45K wasn’t likely to come from Vanessa Boman’s job stuffing envelopes, money it is believed Lisa planned to use to purchase a black market baby.

I was most impressed by Phelps’ listing of source information provided at the back of the book. Phelps researched his subject well. When I looked over the long list of reading material and such that Phelps used to research I was thankful I did not embark on such a task. I admire Phelps for it, however.

Finally, come on Mr. Phelps…you couldn’t have come up with a better title than “Murder in the Heartland”? It sounds like a “48 Hours” show. But maybe that was the intent?

By me, this was the story of a woman so desperate for a baby that she committed a most horrific crime that shocked the nation. Phelps’ title should have captured that part of the story…”Murder for a Newborn”, something like that. As it is, Phelps’ title could have been any murder in Tornado Alley.

Lisa Montgomery, by the way, got the death penalty for her crime.

The REAL book here would be one about, and in conjunction with, one of the following three:
-Lisa Montgomery
-Kevin Montgomery
-Jeb Stinnet

Get me one of those three and maybe I’ll write it.

”Too Late to Say Goodbye” by Ann Rule

Amazon link to this book.

Once again I find myself remotely involved with this book, and/or the crime. For Barton Corbin was also a fellow whose crime made it to my True Crime posts and received comments along with personal notes by those who knew or were related to the victims.

Once again it was a far better, more experienced and much more dedicated True Crime writer who sat down, researched and wrote the story in the form of Ann Rule.

As regards this Blog, we begin HERE, with my thorough analysis of the crime and many comments on same.

We move on to HERE, posted after Corbin pleaded guilty to the murder of BOTH Jennifer Corbin and Dolly Hearn. This post included an interesting comment by a former school chum of Dolly.

We end up HERE with the posting of an email from Jennifer’s father who also announces that Ann Rule is writing a book about this case.

Barton Corbin is a dentist, currently in jail for “most” of the rest of his life (more on this later) for the murder of his wife, Jennifer Corbin and a former girlfriend, Dolly Hearn.

I love Ann Rule but at times I lament she is just too damn nice. Although I’ll allow that she needs access to law enforcement and such for her research. But the case of Dolly Hearn was totally mishandled by Richmond county investigators. Which might be while Scott Peebles took such an earnest interest in the REINVESTIGATION of the death of Dolly Hearn. Because Dolly was murdered in cold blood fourteen years prior by the lovely Bart Corbin. If those Richmond investigators had did their damn job, especially Scott Peebles’ FATHER who was a lead investigator, perhaps Bart Corbin wouldn’t have had the nerve to repeat the same crime on his wife and mother of his two sons.

Rule was kind to the Richmond investigators but never was one reason given, not even the DNA excuse for old cold cases, for why Bart wasn’t arrested for the death of Dolly Hearn. There was a WEALTH of evidence implicating Bart Corbin and by me those Richmond investigators should be embarrassed and ashamed.

In fact, once Jennifer Corbin was discovered dead by a gunshot wound to her head that obviously could not have been delivered by Jennifer, soon enough it was discovered that Barton Corbin, a most unfortunate fellow, had yet another lover who too committed suicide in a manner not humanly possible.

THEN, heh, the Richmond investigators not only re-opened the Dolly Hearn case, they opened it BEFORE the Gwinnet county investigators could gather all the information on Jennifer Corbin’s death.

Ann Rule never mentioned this blatant audacity by the Richmond county investigators who didn’t do their job fourteen years earlier but were only too eager to hone in on the publicity on the Jennifer Corbin murder. Also come on, the whole world was scratching their heads and wondering why those guys didn’t do their job when it mattered, just ask the family of Dolly Hearn for example.

It turned out that Gwinnet county prosecuted the case despite the Richmond county’s total joke of a performance and their outrageous behavior.

In an interesting aside, it turned out that Jennifer Corbin had been having an online dalliance with a fellow, who turned out to be a woman, whose last name was Hearn, all entirely coincidental. Jennifer’s fine husband, Bart, had murdered a woman name Hearn oncit but there was no relation.

Bart Corbin pled guilty to the murders of both Dolly and Jennifer and was given two CONCURRENT life sentences. Which means every day in jail is a day for Dolly and a day for Jennifer’s murder.

It seems unfair but as Rule explains, Corbin will likely be behind bars for a good 28 years and if he should get released he won’t have much of a life left.

As always, Ann Rule did a wonderful job. She did not, as I complained, go into that joke between the two investigative authorities but I sure did on my Blog links.

In the end, justice WAS served, for both Dolly and Jennifer.

I’ll never quite get over how Dolly Hearn’s death was left to get cold until Bart Corbin killed yet ANOTHER woman in his life because hey, he got away with the first one, right?

More Book Reviews HERE
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2008-06-02T14:17:00.000-07:00

Two Book Reviews here plus an intriguing update on an old one.

First, two girls go missing under similar circumstances in Oregon. One woman feels certain the suspect is right in front of investigators' eyeballs. "Missing: The Oregon City Girls" tells the sad story of Ashley Pond and Miranda Gaddis, two happy young teens who should be alive and planning their weddings today. The book is by one woman and her struggle to move the investigation in the right direction against all odds.

I broke away from my beloved True Crime book genre to read a book about The Beatles. For as a teenager I adored this Fab Five. I never heard of author Tony Bramwell but his book "Magical Mystery Tour" contained details about the Beatles, their business and private lives, their failures and pluses, in a detail that could be only be known by someone who knew the Beatles well.

Finally I complained about a lack of pictures in a previous book review. The book was "Unfinished Murder", a story about the Cleveland rapist and a prosecutor who got him jailed for life. Only thing, while the lovely rapist Ronnie Shelton was described and "handsome" and "all-American", there were NO pictures of him in the book.

A reader sent me a pic of Mr. Shelton whose mother is so proud of her boy. Click and judge his good looks for yourself.

Pic of the Day

"Missing:...The Oregon City Girls" by Linda O'Neal, Philip Tennyson and Rick Watson

This book's Amazon link.

So okay, first odd thing here, why does this book require three people to write?

The book is mostly about Linda O'Neal, a woman related to Ashley Pond via a complicated series of marriages, who is also a private detective.

The book's intrigue is more about the story of the investigation rather than the True Crime Itself.

In fact Ashley Pond once lived with her murderer. Again, via a complicated series of relationships by marriage and proximity, Ashley moved from her mother's home into the home of her friend. Said friend had a father who was a bit too close to Ashley, reportedly allowing the young girl to sleep in the same bed with him.

Finally Ashley did tell someone about her friend's father and an alleged rape.

Then Ashley disappeared.

A few months later, ASHLEY'S friend, Miranda Gaddis, disappeared, abducted from possibly the same bus stop as Ashley.

Linda O'Neal details the investigation into the Oregon girls' disappearance as it unfolded and it's a sad story indeed.

For the mighty FBI got all involved; there were various jurisdictions involved in the investigation. Meanwhile the real murderer had a secret hidden under a concrete floor for a new patio and a real stench in a shed on his property.

The thing that puzzles me about this book is I question why all the investigators involved in this thing and an arguable two-bit private detective knows all the answers, including the big answer of just when and how Ashley Pond first disappeared. Everyone else assumed that Ashley went missing early in the morn. Linda O'Neal presents a compelling argument that Ashley went missing the evening before.

This timing makes all the difference in the world.

Yet with the FBI, local cops, cops from other jurisdictions and the variety of views such a concoction would bring, only Detective O’Neal has a glimmer that there could be a critical time factor in play and that time factor, recognized early on, could have led to the discovery of Ashley and perhaps saved the life of Miranda Gaddis.

This is another book where the intervention of the FBI into the investigation is greatly Unappreciated. I’ve never read a True Crime book where the FBI involvement is ever wanted by the local investigators.

Only in this case the politically correct FBI involvement in the ongoing investigation was a hindrance that possibly held up the discovery of the bodies of the Oregon girls for several months.

”Unfinished Murder” …Update

In this book review for “Unfinished Murder” I lamented the lack of pictures in this True Crime book, particularly a pic of the perp.

The book is the story of a serial rapist who terrorized the Cleveland area, his capture and court trial. His name was Ronnie Shelton and throughout the book he was alleged to have come across as an All-American boy, good-looking, clean-cut and polite. When an author basis the story of a criminal on his or her looks, a picture of the perp would be most appropriate.

A reader of my review sent me a pic of the All-American Ronnie Shelton. The reader found this pic easily enough by looking in the investigative database of jailed criminals.

So why couldn’t the book’s author do this?

“Magical Mystery Tour” by Tony Bramwell

I was 14 years old when a British group from a town with the unlikely name of Liverpool blazed across my screen on the Ed Sullivan show. I was the perfect demographic to fall in love with the Fab Four and so I did.

Now my chest still throbs as my quadruple coronary bypass heals entirely too slow. John Lennon is dead, shot by a nut case. George Harrison is dead, felled by lung cancer. Paul McCartney married for love, became a widower, then married a one-legged beauty who did him wrong. Ringo Starr is I don’t know where. The Beatles have long since ceased to exist, both as a group and as human beings in some cases.

I’m far away from that 14 year old who fell so in love with George Harrison (every Beatlemaniac had one favorite Beatle, it was the rule) and who listened to Beatle 45 records over and over.

I have no idea who Tony Bramwell was, either back when the Beatles were wowing the world or even now, after reading his book about the Beatles: “Magical Mystery Tour”, Amazon link here.

"They say once bitten, twice shy. There's also the phrase, "Once is happenstance, twice is a coincidence, three times is enemy action." So maybe the gods decided to play a long running joke on me, because I lost all my money three times.

I think Tony Bramwell would be called a record promoter. Although in this case Tony was a friend of John, Paul, George and Ringo and ended up becoming a record promoter by virtue of his friendship with the Beatles and their manager, Brian Epstein.

The quote above is part of the confusion I have about Tony Bramwell and what he does. He says he lost all of his money three times and by me, I still don’t know WHAT money and how he made it. I do know that Bramwell describes some of his duties on behalf of the Beatles, which included fetching food and getting rid of unwanted females.

Which is not to say that Bramwell’s book didn’t provide an insight to my favorite singing group of my adolescent self, to include a macabre insight into the tortured soul of Brian Epstein, the Beatle manager that I vaguely understood to be homosexual and troubled.

There are tales of famed Beatle femme fatales, to include Patty Boyd, who married George Harrison, Jane Asher, who romanced Paul McCartney, Linda Eastman, who married Paul McCartney, and, of course, a wealth of information on the very strange and greatly disliked Yoko Ono.

Bramwell is also a bit of a name dropper. Readers are treated to vignettes of such celebrities as Phil Spectre, Joan Collins, Christine Keeler, Richard Branson (didn't like him) plus all kinds of singers...Rolling Stones, Cilla Black, Marianne Faithful, Gerry and Pacemakers, Peter and Gordon, Eric Clapton.

I’d recommend this book to all current and former Beatle fans.

For the Fab Four weren’t quite as cherubic as Brian Epstein would have us believe. These formerly middle-class kids from the blue collar city of Liverpool had known a mostly normal life and were thrown into a life of sex and drugs. Bramwell’s crafts their story of reaching the pinnacle then the struggle to return to normal roots.

I don’t think I could ever have a kind thought about Yoko Ono after this book. Further, I can’t have much respect for John Lennon, who let this woman run his life like the steel magnolia she wanted to be.

In fact, this book is worth the read for the insight into the sometimes sad romantic life of these lads who should have been the happiest of us all.

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