Baseball

Metaphor for life


    Baseball can be seen to be.


       Ready for the pitch?

On Reading New Work

As you read new work
  Before you tear it apart
    Look for the wisdom

My Maltese Falcon

This is going to be the most astounding thing you’ve ever heard and I say that knowing the caliber of person that you are, one who’s heard some incredible things in their time and always ready to hear another.  It was told to me as it had been handed down verbatim since the beginning of the story with each of those involved adding his installment as time passed and as the prize moved from hand to hand.

The Knights of Rhodes were expelled from there in 1523, they settled in Crete and stayed there for seven years when they persuaded the Emperor,  Charles V of Spain, to give them Malta, Goso, and Tripoli.  He gave it to them to use but they couldn’t sell it or give it away; they had to use it or it would revert to Spain, his only condition being that they give him each year the tribute of one falcon. 

You may not understand the extreme power and immeasurable wealth of the Order at that time.  No one has any idea of the wealth they enjoyed; they took spoils of gems, precious metals, silks, and ivory—the crème de la crème of the East as ships passed through their waters.  We all know that the Holy Wars were for them, as for the Knights Templar, a matter of loot.

Rather than give the Emperor an insignificant bird every year as a matter of form, these wealthy Knights looked for a more suitable way of expressing their gratitude.  Instead of a live falcon they gave him a  falcon made of pure gold and encrusted from head to foot with the most valuable jewels in their coffers; remember these were the finest that Asia had at the time.  There are three references to it in the archives of the Order of Saint Jean and more, however oblique, in other unpublished records of the time.

Grand Master Villiers had this foot-high jeweled bird made by Turkish slaves working in the keep, under torchlight and naked to prevent them from stealing precious metals and jewels, of the Castle of St. Angelo and sent it to Charles in Spain on a galley commanded by a French Knight named Cormiere, also member of the order.  It never reached Spain.  

Barbarossa (red beard) took the galley and  the bird back to Algiers where it remained for more than fifty years until it was carried away by Sir Francis Verney, the English adventurer, but there is no evidence that it remained with him or his family because he died a pauper in 1615.

The next reference to the bird is in Sicily when in 1713 Victor Amadeus II gave it to his bride as a wedding present.  They then took it to Turin when he tried to revoke his abdication.

It next turned up in the possession of a Spaniard of the Redondo family after they took Naples in 1734.  There’s nothing to say that it didn’t stay in that family until 1740 when it appeared in Paris when that city was full of Carlists who had to get out of Spain.  Those who took it there probably didn’t know its value because it had been enameled over to look like nothing more than a black statuette.

It knocked around Paris for 170 years with private owners and dealers who had no clue as to its value.  Then in 1911 a Greek dealer named Konstantidines found it in an obscure shop.  He knew what it was, and not being in a hurry to cash-in, he had it re-enameled to look the way it does now.  One year to the day after he acquired it, three months to the day after Gutman made him confess that he had it, his shop was burglarized and the bird was gone.  It was taken along with a lot of other things so the thief probably didn’t know the value of it.

Seventeen years later, and it took Gutman that long to locate the bird but he did, he was not easily discouraged, he wanted it so much that he continued to look for it that long,  he traced it to the home of a Russian general in a Constantinople suburb.  The general didn't know what it was; Gutman made him an offer and because he was afraid that he’d tipped his hand as to its value he sent agents to get it before the general guessed the value of what he had.

Well, the agents got it but Gutman didn’t; they disappeared with it.  He traced it to Hong Kong and a certain Miss O’Shaughnessy and her partner, a Mr. Thursby.  He made a deal with them to have it shipped to San Francisco on board the La Paloma in the personal care of the Captain, Captain Jacoby, to be met there by them and then the statuette would be sold to Gutman.

The ship was set on fire at the dock and Captain Jacoby was shot several times, yet he made it to Sam Spade’s office before he died and gave him the parcel containing the falcon.  It was used as evidence to convict Gutman, O’Shaughnessy, and a third conspirator named Cairo in a Federal Court for a variety of crimes international in nature and in Criminal Court for murder; it then once again disappeared from view, that was 1932.

I was surfing the Internet late one evening in June of 2010 when I saw a vague reference by a person in San Francisco in need of money and willing to put up a valuable black statuette for collateral.  Being a student of the Maltese Falcon, I contacted the person and arranged to get it.  This person, like most others in the long trail of the falcon, had no idea of its worth.  The details of my acquiring the statuette in San Francisco are thrilling and will be told later in long form. At this writing I will tell you that the last time we went there to visit my daughter, I went into the city by myself and at at a very late hour, in a booth in the dimly lit John's Grill, in exchange for a large amount of cash, that person gave me the bird.

Eight on the Break

The preliminaries were over; they’d wished each other luck. The loser of the toss tried to make a tight rack out of the fifteen numbered and colored balls that are used in the game of eight-ball, a courtesy and a sign of good sportsmanship and because the eight ball doesn't move much on the break. A loose rack invariably yields the undesirable result of the eight ball moving across the table.

Our hero set the cue ball about a half inch from the rail, just behind the second diamond on the left side of the kitchen, that area on the table from which the break has to be made. The game was about to be on.

Taking the break stick in hand, he slid it through his fingers a time or two to make sure it wasn’t the least bit sticky, set his bridge hand on the rail, put the tip of the stick to about four o’clock on the cue ball, and took a couple of preliminary strokes without hitting it. Then slowly and deliberately he concentrated his gaze on the second ball in the rack, the left one of the two balls behind the apex, drew back the stick and sent the cue ball to that ball with all the force he could muster.

A split second later the racked balls exploded, balls going in all directions. He looked at the roiling chaos and the black eight ball caught his eye as it rolled slowly toward the side pocket on the right and fell in!

Eight on the break! His team cheered loudly at this combination of skill and luck that occurs only once in a while. Score, one game to nil, rack them for the second game. The excitement subsided and it was time to concentrate on the next break.

The same scenario was repeated but this time the eight ball hardly moved from its position at the interior center of the rack. Seven shots later his opponent sank the eight ball making it one game each.

Our hero won the match after another four games transpired. His opponent left himself an impossible shot which allowed our hero to place the ball anywhere on the table and go out.

Happy Haiku Birthday Maggie

Have a big cigar
My little girl born today
Help me celebrate

So it was back then
In the shipyard drawing room
While you were with mom

Now you are out there
We are here in Kentucky
Still our little girl

Happy o Birthday
Give yourself a break today
Enjoy come what may.

Alice Le Cheval

J’ai beaucoup de memoires affectueusement pour les chevaux ces je montais dans les compétitions et un cheval en particulier que je montais souvent.

Elle s’appelait Alice et c’était une grande jument. Alice était blonde avec la criniére blanche et la queue blanche et des très grands sabots. Elle avait haute de seize mains au garrot, approximativement une mètre soixante centimètres. Je la montais avec un petit escabeau. Cet n’était pas autrement possible pour moi.
 
C’était une belle jument que j’aimais. Et elle m’amait aussi, si un cheval pourrait aimer. Toutes les fois j’entrais le pâturage et je sifflais doucement, elle élevait sa grande tête et elle dressait ses oreilles. Seulement pour moi parce-que au début je lui donnais toujours des carottes. Ensuite il ne fallait pas que je les lui donne, elle me reconnaissait par le sifflement. J’étais la seule personne qui l’approchait de cette façon.

Je découvrais tôt qu’elle était terrifiée par le fouet. Un fois, dans une grande competition à travers champs, elle a ralenti et je lui ai simplement montré le fouet, immédiatement elle a couru plus vite. Nous avons fini le cours en bon temps et je ne l’ai jamais frappé avec le fouet, pas une fois. Si je la frappe, elle deviendrait folle et courrait follement.

Un jour, je suis allé voir Alice et le chef de l’écurie m’a dit Alice est morte. J’ai senti une perte terrible. Alors j’ai rencontré Maggie, une autre jument. Elle était grise, seize mains aussi et une bonne sauteuse. Je n’ai pas oublié Alice mais il fallait que la vie commence. Avec Maggie, nous avons gagné le ruban bleu de la competition, mais Alice a gagné le ruban bleu de mon cœur.

Fin

Memorial

Do you remember
Old whatsizname?


What did he say?
What did he do?


He played
He repaid

He never said he'd either
But he did
He was there
Reliably


Didn't say much
Didn't have to
Talked about the weather
And how good it is

Turned the questions back
Fine, how are you?


Some talk a good game, and
The older they get the better they were


He didn't say, he did

Image

Be on a mission

When you walk be going there

It's what people see

The Language Mix/ a cute little story

John Lina
Fr 313
Devoirs pour mercredi, le 9e mars
One day, the good professor and bon vivant, Monsieur Beavei, decided to take his wife to get something to eat. Although he had carte blanche to go to any restaurant in New York City, he decided to go to Sardis. The professor is very important so he sent a courier in advance to arrange a table for two at two.
The restaurant is well known and filled with art deco pieces. On this particular day the menu was in calligraphy and difficult to read; the words seemed to be camouflaged on the page. Because of this they decided to order an aperitif and then a la carte from the menu to avoid any mistakes. Madame Beavei was particularly fond of the potatoes au gratin at Sardis.
The maitre d’ came to the table and was very upset with Madame Beavei. He said, “But Madame! Clothing is required.” You see, when she removed her coat the Madame was au naturel. The maitre d’ bundled her back into her coat, took the Professor and his wife, each by the arm, put them out the back door into an alley full of debris and pushed them on their way.
Madame Beavei said to her husband, “Do you remember the last time we went there? I wore denim and the results were the same.”

The Linas in Troy Missouri

 This entry is now available at http://www.amazon.com or as a Kindle Matchbook.

The French Chiropractor

It was Paris in the spring time and the American tax season. I had to make a trip into Paris from Chantilly to visit an office of Arthur Andersen for tax purposes, no big deal. On a separate and unrelated problem, I’d been having discomfort with my back and hip for a few weeks, it was annoying but not painful; so I wanted to take care of that as well.

Michel Lefrancois knew of a chiropractor (sort of) in Paris and it wasn’t far from La Defense so I decided to make one trip for the two issues. Carola came with me, her signature may also have been required, and we drove into Paris and to La Defense, parked in the public garage and made our way to the AA office. There we signed whatever documents were necessary and went on our way.

Michel had given me directions to the doctor’s office and we had our map of Paris, which was very good, and found our way to it. There may have been a few wrong turns on the way but none serious enough to say we’d lost our way.

I recall the slightest feeling of bladder pressure as we were leaving the office building in La Defense but decided not to pay attention to it. Now as we were driving through the streets of Paris, an exciting experience any time, the pressure was becoming more serious. I was not only looking for the doctor’s street but for a vespasienne as well.

We found the street but not a vespasienne. There were no parking spots on the narrow streets of the neighborhood; I drove around the block to be sure. The pressure was becoming intense. Voila, a parking spot but two streets away. I quickly parked, told Carola to lock the car and bring the keys. I’d pointed out the door to the doctor’s building and told her, fourth floor. I ran down the street to the building.

Inside the R-d-c, I encountered the concierge and verified the doctor’s office location. I began waiting for the elevator but the pressure was becoming unbearable for me. I took to the stairs, two at a time, up four flights to his level. There were four doors; I had to look at each until I found his name. I was dancing by this time, almost ready to burst. I rapped on the door.

He answered it, in his white lab coat, smiling, extending his hand, slowly and politely to graciously greet me. I was panting and yelled at him, “La toilette! Il est une emergencie! Ou est la toilette! Ou est la toilette!” He tried to shake my hand but I yelled even louder. “It’s an emergency!” and grasping my groin I loudly and emphatically asked, “Where’s the goddam toilet!”

He understood, and hurried me into his office and to the toilet door. I made it but it took a heroic effort to hold it in until I had myself clear of my trouser fly. I relieved myself, and what a relief it was, and returned calmly back to his office.

There I smiled and equally politely extended my hand in greeting, a gesture he politely ignored, told him my name and we got down to business. He tried to act as if nothing had happened except he seemed a little wary of my size and if he was causing me any pain.

So You Want to Write Book

There is an idea floating around in my head; I may have referred to it previously, it is a structure or a formula for writing and one that I think has been used by authors in the past but I am putting my imprint on it for my own purposes. A method of adding engaging detail to a story to keep the reader entertained.

Imagine a spread sheet with the story line going across the top row; each cell is a discrete part of the story, a segment where several related segments are/ become a chapter. In the second row is the first layer and so on through all of the sensual layers of the scene; time, time of day, place, lighting, temperature, color, location description, sights, sounds, smells, feelings, others in the scene- each on a line with descriptors of them, the details of which depend on the importance of the character. There is also a grammatical line where the tense of the segment is set so as to prevent morphing tense as the story unfolds.

The writing of a story is more than sitting down and letting imagination flow. The technicalities of it are such that one has to engage a reader from start to finish. I just finished a Michael Robotham book wherein he did just that. Some of it I could see coming as the story unfolded but there was a structure to it that allowed it to make sense from start to finish. Some of the story was quite titillating, shocking, even erotic, but as a whole it engaged me to the point that I had to finish the last few discs all at once instead of hearing it out as I drove in the car.

The structure above was evident in this latest story and was suggested by a writer’s workshop program that I had. It runs afoul of what Steven King, says in his treatise on writing; he proposes the stream of consciousness approach. The structured approach seems more business-like and lends itself to development of an integrated story that can be consistently told; I’ve read/heard too many that are not.

I am reminded of advice I gave to a fellow working for me about how to write a rather long paper about cost accounting for the machine shops at NNS. I told him to spend a lot of time on an outline of it and then write the paper. He eschewed my advice and wrote it in the “Steven King” style. He wound up re-writing it several times until he finally went back, made an outline, and then wrote the paper. It works in that context and it probably works in the context of fiction. Well, in effect that cost accounting method was a fictional story and not the reporting of facts.

A longer story, book length, would be about 200 to 250 pages; if my arithmetic is correct that there are 3 pages per 1000 words, it would seem that a book would be about 83,000 words, which is equal to 83 blog entries and I made 88 in two years. A book is a formidable undertaking.

The Time-Life books of the presidents that I am reading average about 150 pages. They are condensations of many references and not supposed to be at all fictional although they contain some opinions of the author. With a ton of material from which to choose the authors have to decide what to include and still tell the story as objectively as they think possible. These 150 pages represent about 50,000 words and deal with the birth, upbringing, professional, political, presidential, and post-presidential (where there was one) lives of the presidents; a lot of ground to cover in such a few words. Mercifully complete for the casual reader and a bibliography that will satisfy the scholar who wants to get deeper into the subject.

I think I got away with stream of consciousness for the few stories I wrote because they were short and could be revised/ parsed without much difficulty. But even The Ball Hawk seems to be a little more than one would want to read in the form in which it is presented. It is 4,000 words and 11 pages. It seems to be too long for my taste and no one else has commented on it. It seems that there would have to be a number of hooks included to bring the reader back to a level of enthusiasm necessary to finish the story. This is what Michael Robotham does so well.

The Ball Hawk would have to be rewritten with the structure above in mind and the length, without adding to the plot or story line, may increase by more than twice to get all of the layering and subplots necessary to make the story interesting for the reader. It is an oral story written without the reader in mind and, therefore, does not engage a reader all the way through in an entertaining way. The House With Six Chimneys is likewise an oral story that was written down from its original form; I find it engaging because I am listening to it as it is told, not necessarily reading it but that is just me.

The conclusion I am reaching is that a story that can be told orally is not a good candidate for a book unless it is written with a reader in mind as opposed to a listener. A listener can be engaged by the story teller’s performance as well as his words but the reader has to be engaged only by the words. Audio books are an anomaly in that the listener is not seeing a performance as he hears the words so he patiently listens to the whole story. A good plot, enhanced by engaging detail is what is necessary for the success of a written story.

Advice You May Not Even Need

Good advice for you
Don’t let marketing fool you
There are hidden costs

It is not the boobies
Not even the pretty shape
But the personality

It’s not the package
Not even the hard body
But the personality

Importance

Feeling important

A good thing for one to do

Not more important

The Ocean in a Teacup

There is a little humming bird, not six feet from me, drinking water from the bubbling fountain in the meditation grotto here in the back yard. He is remaining there, alit on the edge, wings quiet for a second or two and then he’s away in a soft whir. He’s back again and again, three times. It’s quiet and peaceful here; the water is gurgling and provides white noise.

This morning on our walk, we saw a large deer, a doe. She wasn’t afraid of us and waited until we were close to run away. We saw lizards along the path, and bizarre insects.

There are so many forms of life that one has difficulty remembering that life is manifested in all that is alive, animal, vegetable, and microbe. Life is on this planet and is now as much a part of it as the core, crust, water, and air. Energy supplied by the sun allows life to transform atoms, molecules, and minerals into structures that enable it to fulfill a purpose, or two, or three. Without life, the earth would be those other things reacting to forces but otherwise inert and basking in sunshine, unappreciated.

The fundamental purpose of life seems to be procreation. A second, and coupled with the first, may be to evolve into ever more ideal forms. Each generation of life is incrementally different from the previous; choices influence successors and some choices improve the species. Choice connotes decision making, and decision-making connotes intelligence. It is evolution, guided by incremental, intelligent choices.

An analogy is animal breeding, horses for example. Selective breeding has resulted in the establishment of recognizable breeds that have certain specific characteristics. There are many thousands of mixed breed animals out there but the breeders know the traits they desire and breed to get them and repeat them. The horses being bred have no idea; they are just doing what comes naturally. The fact that they are horses is the accumulated result of previous choices.

I remind myself that time is the passing of the present measured with an elastic ruler. This is a way of saying that the billions of years that the earth has existed are interesting but irrelevant. Only the present allows choices to be made. The past may have been influential; the future is yet to be realized, only the present is available.

Then too, we have to remember that life is always one generation away from extinction. This is a sad fact but we need not despair. The chain of life for individuals may be broken here and there but there is such an abundance and diversity of life that it will continue to exist in some form or another forever because this earth is never going to fall apart. If others think it shall— so what, as long as there’s tomorrow. Life goes on as if indestructible but paradoxically only one generation from extinction.

It seems that another important purpose of life is arranging what it needs to exist. The effects of sun and moon, and to a lesser extent other components of the universe, are such that there are forces acting on the earth that yield dramatic and never repeated results.

There are plate movements, climate changes, tides, storms, droughts, and a whole long list of other changes taking place in the long and short term. Yet within all of this chaos, life structures itself and that around it to enable its existence. This takes energy to accomplish, and there’s plenty of it supplied by the sun, but it also takes intelligence, the basis of which is contained in DNA molecules.

I go back to my original thesis, that life is part and parcel of this planet and we are, humbly, only one aspect of it. Life transforms the energy of the sun and the materials of the earth into that which supports its existence and fulfills its purposes. It will exist so long as it chooses.

The humming bird has returned. I hear the soft purr of his wings but I’m not showing attention except to slyly peek at him. He stays; so small that he’s taking a bath in the flowing water of the fountainhead. Life is good.

Added on 7-11-2015