Category: Uncategorized

I took yesterday off, which meant making a few phone calls, doing a little work related reading and then switching to fun reading, which currently is Ishiguro’s Remains of the Day. I tried to read it without seeing Anthony Hopkins (who played the lead role in the movie version of the book) but Hopkins got the character so right it was hopeless. I’ve surrendered to it.

Today I’ve got choir rehearsal, and then tonight a book party for a very very very interesting sounding book: Muses, Madmen, and Prophets: Rethinking the History, Science, and Meaning of Auditory Hallucination by Daniel B. Smith. This book could potentially be both fun and work-related. I’m interested in the subject regardless of the book, AND it’s related to what I’m writing about.

Poll Question: Do you ever hear things? Voices or footsteps, or anything? (I used to sometimes hear music that wasn’t there. My mind seemed to resolve noise into music, ie, an air conditioner would sound like a brass band. It was unnerving, and I was glad when it stopped!)

I had to shrink this down to fit so for those who can’t read the tiny type, we’re doing a selection of the music of Ralph Vaughan Williams, and the concert has a theme: Concert for Peace.

Friday, May 11 at 8:00 pm
Grace Church, Broadway at Tenth Street
Tickets: $20 at the door, $15 in advance (from me).

I had a total mini-meltdown in the shower yesterday. I was feeling so good and then freaked out in the shower. It was kinda like a panic attack. I guess I’m feeling more stressed out than I thought. It made no sense, I’m ahead of schedule, everything is going well. As soon as I got out of the shower I signed up to learn something that was developed at UMass Medical School called MSBR (Mindful Based Stress Reduction). Sounds new-agey, I know, but I read the results of one study and I was planning to do this later in the year. So, instead I’ll do it NOW.

Then I had lunch with a friend who, coincidentally, specializes in addressing stress, and she told me that even if it didn’t make sense, and I’m on top of my to-do list and all, I could still be feeling overwhelmed. That made me feel better almost immediately. Thank you, Cori! I took the rest of the day off. I might take today off, too. I’ve been wanting to see the movie The Lives of Others.

PS: This flyer was designed by Mary Horenkamp, the owner of the fabulous Darcy, whose picture you saw last weekend.

Finney decided that sleeping under the cat bed was better than on top of.

I’m in such a good mood. I’m completely on my schedule for this book. The next chapter is going to be a challenge, though. It’s going to be a lot of Duke University politics that will set the stage for the Parapsychology Laboratory leaving Duke and parapsychology in Russia.

It’s a challenge because I know my editor has had enough of Duke politics, and I’m not so interested in parapsychology in Russia. Sounds like a potential disaster, I know. My plan so far: make it really short. Somehow I have to make this chapter un-put-downable. And short.

The chapter after that will be three ghost stories I’ve found a long the way, and I can’t wait to get to that. Nothing better than a good ghost story.

American Idol Comments. Normally I’m unable to see it in one so young, but that Blake is a sexy little thing. His version of “It’s The Time of the Season,” was very be-still-my-heart for me. His take on the line ‘what’s your name, who’s your daddy,’ was dark and interesting. For me, it’s Melinda and Blake now.

Remember that little boy I wrote about who went missing in California in 1960? I called his mother and it went terribly? There is an incredible update to this story. Another writer, Weston DeWalt, who was investigating another boy who went missing in California, Tommy Bowman, actually came across new evidence! Now the LAPD Cold Case Squad is investigating a serial killer named Mack Ray Edwards for murdering Tommy, and they’re also considering him for the murder of Bruce Kremen and up to 13 other children (I think that’s the total, but I could have that wrong). I believe the LA County Sheriff is part of the investigation, or maybe it’s a joint investigation — I don’t understand the jurisdictions out there, I’m sorry.

There’s an article about everything here and an update here. It’s an amazing story. Ultimately horribly sad, but just amazing what DeWalt has uncovered and now look what’s happening.

I had originally called the Missing Person’s department of the LAPD, to ask where the case was left, figuring my section in the book would end with something sad like “the last lead in the Bruce Kremen case was over forty years ago.” But then Missing Persons told me the Cold Case Squad was working on the case. I got very excited, because I knew that meant a new lead. The detective on the case, Det. Vivian Flores said she’d call me back, and then recently I got email from DeWalt telling me what had happened.

Weston DeWalt, by the way, wrote a book with Anatoli Boukreev called The Climb, which was written as a rebuttal to Jon Krakauer’s book Into Thin Air. I remember reading a debate on Salon about the two accounts, and it was positively riveting. When he wrote me I immediately thought of the movie Zodiac, which I had just seen. The movie shows how obsessed this cartoonist, Robert Graysmith, gets with the case. It also shows how Graysmith, unlike the cops who have lots of other cases to investigate, can put everything he has, all his time and energy into this one case. He can live and breath this one case.

I experienced this with my last book. I became obsessed with one of the unsolved cases I was writing about, and unlike the detectives, who were working 15 – 25 cases each, I could concentrate on one.

So that’s how I imagined DeWalt, like Graysmith. The LA cops have a kabillion other cases, never mind one more than forty years old, so he could dig deep in a way that was simply not humanly possible for them. Except now I’ll bet Det. Flores is living and breathing this case.

I can’t wait to see where this all leads, and read DeWalt’s book about it, which I think he said will be out next year.

Here’s my munchkind head, hanging out with me while I work. He’s cute and all, but every once in a while a paw will reach around and try to pick off a key from my keyboard, which I just had replaced by the way.

John Maclay, our choir director, said this at the end of his last email. It’s about our upcoming Spring concert.

When we call this a “Concert for Peace,” we mean not just peace in the literal, immediate sense (though we all devoutly wish it), but the peace that comes from knowing that through all its tortured ages, and even from the depths of war and all its carnage, human beings have an innate capacity for reconciliation, the spine to stand up to tyranny, and an ability to seek out the “new heavens and the new earth” that lie beyond. Armies can be defeated; human beings — soldiers, civilians — cannot.

The first step to ending a war is to remember what peace feels like. These voices – yours, and those we read from – are powerful reminders.

I’ve been feeling very jaded and hopeless these past few years. I’m astounded by Bush and those who surround him. Historians are going to look back and shake their heads at us and wonder why we didn’t do more to stop them. I’ve probably already posted that line before. I think it a lot. I do wonder what I should be doing, because I know I should be doing something.

Anyway, I liked John’s hopeful email. Horrible people will eventually be subsumed, the pendulum will swing back (after many more dominoes fall as a result of the Bush Administration–sorry!).

You know, believe it or not, I’m in a good mood today. I have a pretty yellow shirt on, I like my hair, I over-paid on my taxes so I don’t have to write a great big check this month, choir rehearsal is tonight and I will come home to American Idol after, and pizza, and cats, and the book is going well, my apartment is very clean, I mean the list goes on.

Seriously, what should we be doing about Bush that we’re not doing? How can we make the world better? There was a guy on Jon Stewart the other night, who was like me, that this is bad on a truly horrible level, but he felt there was reason to hope and things we could do. Who was that guy?? I forget.