Category: biography

My Special Relationship with the Jewish People

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My maternal grandfather was born in Italy in 1879.  I don’t know where in Italy, I was told he would always say “in the mountains”.  Italy is full of mountains, but I suspected Tuscany and when I had my DNA checked a few years ago, yes, I did have Tuscan Italian DNA.  He was orphaned at a very young age.  He was taken in by a Jewish family, who treated him like a son and taught him their family trade of tailoring.  He was Roman Catholic.  When he was about 12, they brought him with them when they emigrated to America.  If it were not for these people obeying God’s rule for them to “take care of the orphan” I would not be writing this.  He died at 27 from pneumonia, so I never met him.

When we moved into our house (I was about 8 then), we lived in the Elmora section of Elizabeth NJ.  That neighborhood then  was about 90% Jewish.  I had Jewish friends, swam at the YMHA, and dated Jewish boys when I got older.  Wonderful times.

I pray that the current upsurge in ant-Semitism will go away.

I despise it more than words can say.

God bless everybody

Patty

Media Madness

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After spending most of the morning fiddling around with the media editor on the computer, I finally was able to add this file.  This is Lee shortly before I met him.  The photo is too dark and blurry, but it’s the best I could do before actually tearing all my hair out.

I will be back later–as now I have to take my car for a ride (as my mechanic told me to do) to encourage the battery.

My own battery could use some encouraging.

God bless everybody.

Patty

Our First Big Date

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It’s the day after Christmas–and let’s keep it going for a while.

It’s also the 48th anniversary of our first date, Patty and me.

We were both working at The Bayshore Independent: she was bookkeeper, I was managing (why did I almost write “manatee”?) editor. We had dinner at The Islanders restaurant–best Chinese food we ever had: long gone, alas–went to a movie (Voyage of the Damned, with its fantastic cast)–then to my favorite tavern (also long gone: and some said it was haunted) to meet my friends; and finally back to Patty’s house to have a drink and make plans for the next day.

We were engaged in early February and married August 8.

As for the video above–well, for Patty and me it’s definitely “Hallelujah!”

Students of History, Beware

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The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey · OverDrive: ebooks ...

Catherine the Great used to read history to calm her spirit. If it was good enough for Kate the Great, it’s good enough for me.

So I’ve been revisiting the case of Richard III, the king whom Shakespeare crafted into a bloodthirsty monster. Leaving the Bard out in the cold, I’ve just finished reading Josephine Tey’s The Daughter of Time. “One of best mystery novels ever written,” seems to be the critical consensus.

To me the most intriguing and instructive aspect of the book is its examination of how fake history, falsehood, folklore, propaganda, etc. get transmuted into “real history” and published widely, taught universally, and blinds posterity to the truth.

Other than that it’s pretty cool.

So who knew that that whole business of Richard murdering the little princes in the tower… was a lot of hooey?

Well, according to Josephine Tey, serious, fair-minded students of history have always known that Richard was innocent of that crime–innocent, in fact, of just about everything they ever charged him with. Establishment history was built on lies, sensationalism, Shakespeare’s play, Tudor truth-bending, and our attraction to a lurid story: some inner perversity makes some of us want evil stories to be true.

I think we are dangerously close to living in a time like Richard’s, and not far at all from inheriting bulging sacks full of lies and calling it “history.”  Oh, we are so close to that!

And as we also know from history… sometimes the Bad Guys win.

‘An Appreciation: Churchill’ (2017)

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Image result for images of winston churchill

Imagine a world without Winston Churchill. The very best we could hope for would be an America surrounded on all sides by hostile dictatorships. There’s no way Britain would have survived.

An Appreciation: Churchill

Of course, we’re so busy now tearing down statues and erasing our history, there are college graduates who never heard of Churchill, are only just barely cognizant that World War II ever happened, have no idea what it was about, and take the blessings of liberty for granted.

Which is how you lose them.

Oh, The Things I Should (?) Have Done!

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Amazon.com: Master of Life and Death eBook : Silverberg, Robert: Kindle Store

I read this book while I was still in grade school–Master of Life and Death by Robert Silverberg. Its theme was a harsh government response to “overpopulation.”

Now I’m reading Hell’s Cartographers, autobiographical sketches by prominent science fiction writers who had long careers; and the first essay is by Robert Silverberg.

Fascinating! And it’s a paradox. Silverberg attained financial success as a writer when he was still very young, and yet he was haunted by a conviction that all he’d done was to become a hack who cranked out reams and reams of bilge. And he tells you how he did it! Gee, I never even though of doing most of the things he did to grow his career. And I haven’t yet read how he resolved his inner conflict. All I see is that you can become a big success without doing anything worthwhile.

I suspect that one of the lessons I’ll learn from this book is that each and every published writer must follow his own path to “getting there.” My own path has been long and convoluted: didn’t get a novel published until 1986. If only I’d thought of schmoozing with other individuals in the publishing industry!

But would my own work have been the better or the worse for it?

Once upon a time I wrote a perfectly serviceable thriller that a major magazine would have bought and published–if, and only if, I rewrote it to plug in some sleazy sex scenes. I agonized over this for quite a while; but my wife warned me that if I did it, it would surely come back to haunt me. And how could I ever present such work to my Aunt Betty, the nun, or Uncle Bernie, a Methodist minister? So I didn’t make the changes, and that was that.

Hell’s Cartographers, I think, will be quite an adventure for me.

My First Short Story

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http://www.philsp.com/data/images/m/mike_shayne_mystery_198112.jpg

Look what I found! The December 1981 issue of Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine. Look at the cover carefully and you’ll see my name.

It was my very first published story. It was called “The Bun Man.” I went on to write several more stories that editor Charlie Fritch published, but “The Bun Man” was first. And I forget how many stories I had to write before I sold one. You wouldn’t believe how incredibly difficult it is to get a story published! I don’t mean self-published. I mean somebody pays you for your work.

Alas, there is no more Mike Shayne. No more Alfred Hitchcock’s or Ellery Queen’s, either. So many short story magazines gone exinct… as reading itself prepares to join them. What can a writer do but sigh? And pray that maybe someday people rediscover reading. Before we go extinct, too.

A Piece of the Past: It Speaks

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Image 1 - LST Group 49 Navy Department Official Mail June 8, 1944

We found one of these in Grammy’s house, after everybody died.

It was an official Navy Dept. postcard addressed to my father on May 12, 1944, informing him that the Navy had accepted him as a recruit. He hastened to report for training and made it to the Philippines shortly before the end of the war. Happily, he was assigned to an ammunition supply ship: admirals took pains to keep those ships far away from the shooting. No smoking aboard her, either.

Note the upper right-hand corner: “Penalty for private use to avoid payment of postage, $300.

Anyway, off my father went to fight in World War II. He’d only just finished school. Five years later he would have a wife, a son, and a job he kept for the better part of 40 years.

My father was a giant.

I don’t think they make ’em like that anymore.

Who Pulled Down London Bridge?

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London Bridge being pulled down in the Viking attack led by Olaf The Norseman in 1014 by Peter Jackson | London bridge, Historical pictures, History images

(Thanks to “thewhiterabbit” for suggesting biographical sketches)

Who doesn’t know the song, “London Bridge is falling down”? Ah–but why did it fall? Did someone pull it down?

In 1014 Olaf Haraldsson, a viking from Norway, joined a wider coalition of vikings–we would call them armed robbers, but to the Norse peoples in the 11th century, it was a perfectly respectable way to earn a living–and invaded England, attacking London. During the battle for the city, Olaf tied his ships to some of the bridge’s support beams and had his men row like mad. The beams were pulled loose and the bridge fell down. The defenders couldn’t get from one part of the city to the other to reinforce each other.

This Olaf Haraldsson is known to us today as St. Olaf, patrol saint of Norway and one-time king of Norway.

Olaf’s claim to the throne was no better and no worse than many chieftains’. He got to the top and made it stick for a little while–until King Canute the Great of Denmark engineered a revolt. In 1030 Olaf died in the Battle of Stiklestad. In 1031 he was canonized locally, and in 1164 the Church recognized his sainthood as having universal application.

Yes, yes, there is and always has been endless controversy as to Olaf’s character, his Christianity, his government, and everything else about him. But the fact, the indisputable fact, is that very shortly after his death, people all over the Northlands revered him as a saint and attributed miracles to him. A blind king of the Bulgars swore he “saw” Olaf, by then many years dead, rallying the Byzantine army against him. No one else could see him, but no one accused the Bulgar king of making up a story. Why, after all, should he have done that?

It is recorded in the sagas that Olaf insisted that the men who fought for him should all be Christians. After Stiklestad Canute was not able to hold Norway for long. For a thousand years St. Olaf’s holiness has been a spiritual anchor for Norway.

Not quite what you’d expect from a man who pulled down London Bridge.