Summer Reading

J. D. Robb

Nora Robert’s pseudonym for her In Death series, she has a prequel to one of the novels written as Nora Roberts, which is also a pseudonym by the way. Hot Rocks is a romantic suspense about the daughter of a con artist and thief who has never physically hurt his victims but joins with a sociopathic thief to pull off a diamond heist he can’t resist. The daughter has taken her stepfather’s name, owns an antique shop in a small town, finally putting down the roots she never had as a child, though not telling her new friends about the past that comes to haunt her as the diamond heist goes bad and the sociopath comes looking at her to find her father and his share of the diamonds.

A quarter of the diamonds are never recovered, which sets up the story for J. D. Robb’s novel Big Jack, the only In Death novel without the words in death as part of the title. It was first published as part of an anthology in Remember When, also the name of the store the daughter in the first book owned. Big Jack is about that daughter’s granddaughter some fifty years later. The granddaughter publishes the story of her grandparents, who met over the theft of the diamonds and fell in love.

In the first book, Jack is the daughter’s father. Someone believes his great granddaughter has more information on the diamonds than she reveals in her book and starts killing people who get in the way of finding that information. Eve Dallas, the In Death New York City police lieutenant who solves each murder of those novels, has to find the killer and the diamonds. Most of the villains in this series tend to be stereotypical. The villain in Big Jack has the best character build up, which makes him more believable and creepier.

Romance Novels on the Sweeter Side

Dark Harvest by Karen Harper is the second book in a trilogy about the Amish in Ohio and outsiders who become important to them. I haven’t read the first book. This one gives enough details to make clear what happened there. This story stands alone fine. A wounded female police officer goes undercover to find those responsible for hate crimes against the Amish community. Sort of a reverse Witness except the threat comes from the surrounding community. The characters are believable, the suspense keeps you reading. Only thing I didn’t like, and that tends to happen a lot in suspense novels, is the stupid mistakes the main character made as she investigated, used to set up following conflicts.

I very much like the voice of writer Barbara Bretton in Someone Like You, a novel strictly about relationships—parental, sibling, and love interests. No villains. Two sisters come to terms with parents who were ill equipped to parent and their own hang ups at committing to emotionally intimate relationships. Fun, somewhat snarky use of metaphors and well-developed characters you care about, though the men were on the too-good-to-be-true side. Good read.

Really Watching the Olympics

Really Watching the Olympics

I like ice skating competitions in the winter games and gymnastics in the summer games and rarely watched other events in previous years. For the Brazil Olympics, I watched what competitions I could from the opening to the ending ceremonies, mainly from self-serving motives. What better way to get character names of various nations for my stories than by getting examples from a venue where so many nations are represented?  A funny thing happened on my way to making my list.

I started to recognize names and people. I hadn’t realized how many of the sports had elimination rounds or heats to find the best to be in the final medal rounds. I heard many stories of the athletes’ lives and started to root for those who touched me or seemed the most skilled. I thought volleyball was boring, didn’t know there were two types—beach with two players each side and indoor with six.

US women’s beach-volleyball team Kerri Walsh Jennings and April Ross especially captured my imagination. Their teamwork, shot setups, and execution deserved the words poetry in motion. I actually groaned out loud when they lost their chance at gold and was mollified when they won the bronze medal. I couldn’t help laughing at the testosterone-driven facial and vocal displays of the indoor male volleyball competitors.

World Harmony

The Olympics is a microcosm of world relations. It was heartwarming to see one female runner, who accidently knocked over a runner of another country, stop and help her to the finish line. It was disheartening to see water polo rivals Serbia and Croatia play out some of the antipathy between their countries in the pool. The playful camaraderie of Jamaica’s Usain Bolt and a rival runner, I think from Ethiopia, coming in first and second respectively during a heat to advance them to the finals kept me smiling for hours.

In ice skating, I have seen preference shown for certain countries during previous Olympics. I noticed nothing like this in Brazil. Rules seemed equally applied and challenges to rulings were fairly and swiftly dealt with, such as the one by the American women’s relay-race team. A member of another team accidentally jostled a runner as she was to receive the baton, which was dropped and caused the US team to be eliminated from the final race. They challenged the ruling, saying they had been impeded, and were allowed to rerun the heat by themselves. They qualified for the finals and won the gold medal.

Gender Issues

The only preference between the sexes I noticed was that the women’s gymnastics competitions were televised during primetime, very little of the men’s. That surprised me. An issue still needing to be resolved is the matter of transgender athletes. One publicized athlete born male but identifying as female easily outdistanced the other female runners in the track and field race in which she competed.

They thought to measure testosterone as a means of deciding where these athletes should compete, but no scientific data exists suggesting that makes a difference in ability. I don’t understand why that should be the criteria. It is well known that the male body generally has more muscle and therefore more power and stamina than a female of the same size. I haven’t seen any transgender female-to-male athletes competing with other males. They can’t compete. I doubt most female athletes can compete with a male-to-female transgender athlete either.

I hope the committees looking into this come up with a fair and humane solution before the winter Olympics, which I will again watch with interested attention and no doubt greatly enjoy.

I'm Melting

I’m Melting

I hate not being able to open my windows at night and air out the house. Of course sometimes I have to close them when skunks take an acceptance to something in my yard, and birds wake me right at dawn, not to mention the roar and clanking of garbage trucks, the neighbor’s motorcycle. So the air-conditioner noise mutes outside cacophonies and filters out most of the skunk stench and tropical humidity—okay, I get the posts I’ve been seeing on Facebook of people in love with their air conditioners.

Thunder storms and power surges right at the hottest point of the day when my house is groaning with the heat are cause for panic. How can we survive without air conditioning? To save power, I set our unit in the upper seventies. When shut off, the house rapidly goes to the eighties and a great deal more, I’m sure, if it stayed off for any length of time.

Outside Errands and Chores

My yard is dreadfully overgrown. Not the grass, obviously, but the bushes and weeds, which seem unfazed. They’ll wait for cooler weather. Shopping and visiting my mother have also suffered. It’s never cool out there and you can burn your tush sitting in a car after it has been sitting in a parking lot, even for an hour.

The news has been reporting the dangerous temperatures of such things sitting in the sun as playground equipment and car door handles. Hope everyone tests surfaces before trusting them, especially with the more delicate skin of children. We all know better than to leave children or pets in closed vehicles, yet the unthinkable still happens and little ones die. There are a number of good products on the market to prevent forgetting a child who has quietly fallen asleep in the back. I also like the idea of leaving something you need when you get out of the car—purse, cell phone—on the seat with the child as a reminder to look back there.

Brain Drain

The heat causes physical side effects—headaches and other body aches if hydration becomes an issue, heat rashes, and general malaise that saps the energy and may affect the ability to think or control your temper. I bet the fast-food restaurants are doing a booming business. No one wants to add heat to the house, cooking. Yes, I know one can use the microwave and slow cooker, but having to plan, prep and cook adds heat to the temper. That’s my story and no one better argue in my house.

The Christian Voter

The Christian Voter

The Christian voter, from what I’ve heard and read, seems just as confused or adamant in his or her opinion about this year’s Presidential election as every other voter. At a time when even-tempered leadership is sorely needed, the Christian message of forgiveness and treating others as we would like to be treated is sorely missing. I’m sure there are Christians out there who are holding on to and encouraging others to hold on to these principles, but sensationalism and conspiracy theories are far and above winning the day.

What I find reprehensible is not choosing whatever candidate one feels the least objectionable or best suited, but trying to imbue that candidate with attributes and motives he or she clearly does not own. Spreading gossip or virulent pictures and messages about the opposing candidate, a lame attempt to make our choice more palatable, is on a par with lying.  

Take the Road Less Traveled

Taking responsibility for our choices does not include whitewashing them. None of the candidates are perfect or without drawbacks. If we feel the need to justify our choice or want to persuade others to our way of thinking, simply stating the attributes we do like in our candidate and not giving in to the prevailing pressure to unkindly badmouth the competition seems most in line with Jesus’ very clear teachings to love our enemies and do only good to them, which includes blessing and praying for them.

It is not fashionable or popular to honestly assess the good and bad in all candidates with a respectful, nonjudgmental attitude. Maybe doing just that, as well as listening to others’ opinions in the same manner and not giving in to the strong urge to feel superior at what we consider another’s poor choices, is the gift Christians can bring to this troubled election.

Don't Tease the Cat

Don’t Tease the Cat

Cleaning up the blood—he refuses to grow up, takes risks, a self-serving garnering of attention, expectation of awe—in his eyes, anyway—at his daring.

We are getting old, on the cusp of senior-citizen status, and he no longer bends easily to wipe up the floor. Sprays and pooling, black-red on green fibers and then beige tile, hobbling into the bathroom, blood squirting.

He teased the cat. Back claws swiped, found a vein, a rapier hole unnoticed. Little of the fallout fell on his skin. He felt the sticky puddle beneath his foot.

Now he is woozy, clamping a dirty towel over the pulsing wound. I scramble for a wad of gauze pads—pressure, pressure—grab disinfectant wipes. They absorb the red, spread the red. Switch to paper towels, no—rags. The sprays dry, the pools congeal. I overlay the blackening mess with chemicals, clean his feet, wrap round the gauze, tight pressure.

Too wide the soiled carpet. I step on the sopping stink of pink-tinged cleaner to fetch a pail of water. Blot, scrub, blot. I’d like to break his crown. Change the water. Repeat. My knees hurt.

Do NOT tease the damn cat!