Writing Again!
I”m not sure what my problem is with my WIP. I just checked my records, and up until about two months ago, I was averaging just about 460 words a day, as was writing pretty steadily - at least every other day. Then it just stopped. Did the story really dry up, or was I just getting lazy? The more I’m thinking about it, I vote for lazy. I say that because it occurred to me last night that I’ve been looking at my writing as a hobby, not as anything really serious, like an occupation or job, or source of income. When I sent an email out to several people about the Blog Fiction Project, I even made light of my writing. Heck, more people who know me know that I’m a Christian than know about my writing, and I don’t broadcast my faith (which is another issue I need to work on, but that’s a different post).
Anyway, last night as I was watching the kids take their baths, I got just over 400 words written, and it feels like I’ve got a lot to say today, so maybe I’m finally getting serious about it.
In Illinois, Kicking Drugs (And the Prison Habit)
Maybe someone finally got it right.
In Illinois, they’re trying a new program. They’re desparate to find a way to keep some of the 40,000 inmates due to be released this year from re-offending and returning to prison. The solution? A multi-prong approach. Treat the addictions. Give job training. And perhaps the most important part, help them find housing away from their old neighborhood, with its traps and dangers.
I’ve said before that the last part is perhaps the most critical. If we really want to break the cycle of offense-incarceration-parole-offense, then we have to help the inmates and parolees break their old habits. They’re told not to associate with felons, drug dealers, and so on as a condition of their parole. But with no skills, and one or more prison terms on their record, who’s going to hire them, and pay them enough to have a reasonable chance to stay away from the places they should.
Parolees go back to their old neighborhoods because they have no where else to go. The have no money, and usually no skills. So they end up surrounded by the things and people that got them in trouble in the first place.
Maybe this is how you start to change things.
The New York Times reports.
The End of an Era
The Village of New Rome, Ohio, one of the most notorious speed traps in the country, is no more, dissolved in September of last year. But the village left behind a number of debts. An auction was held a few days ago to help pay off those debts.
The sale of village property raised just over $50,000. Half of that came from the two lots the village offices occupied. The rest came from the sale fo the triple-wide trailer ($11,000), the two police cruisers (about $8,000), an old church pew used by the police department ($1,350), and miscellaneous office equipment.
Good riddance.
More: Kelo v City of New London
The Strata-Sphere has a list of eminent domain cases that will likely be affected by the Kelo decision, and it’s incredibly disheartening to see what all is going on. I knew about a couple of the cases (Cypress, CA trying to take property away from a church for a CostCo, for example).
I’m not sure SCOTUS was looking far enough ahead regarding the ramifications of their decision. Granted, that’s not part of their job. But maybe it should be.
You can find Justice Thomas’ dissent here.
Incredible
Incredible
What was SCOTUS thinking?
Today, they handed down a 5-4 decision in the case of Kelo v. City of New London, No. 04-108. Kelo had sued New London to block the city from condemning her home and taking it through eminent domain. Why were they taking it? To put businesses in its place. New London felt that the businesses would provide more income to the city, in the form of higher tax receipts.
Eminent domain is usually used to take property for the construction of streets, roads, city utilities or public safety facilities, or any other structure that serves the greater public good. In this case, the greater public good is supposed to be economic revival for the city.
Years ago, New London was a whaling city, but with the demise of the industry, so went the city. The city wants to take some house to go forward with a revitalization project.
Justice O’Conner wrote a stinging rebuke in her dissent:
“The specter of condemnation hangs over all property. Nothing is to prevent the state from replacing any Motel 6 with a Ritz-Carlton, any home with a shopping mall, or any farm with a factory.”
“Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private property, but the fallout from this decision will not be random,” she wrote. “The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms.
“As for the victims, the government now has license to transfer property from those with fewer resources to those with more. The Founders cannot have intended this perverse result.”
Justice John Paul Stevens wrote the majority decision, saying that just as government has the constitutional power of eminent domain to acquire private property to clear slums or to build roads, bridges, airports and other facilities to benefit the public, it can sometimes do so for private developers if the latters’ projects also serve a public good. He went on to say, “Promoting economic development is a traditional and long accepted governmental function, and there is no principled way of distinguishing it from the other public purposes the court has recognized.”
I noted in one story that according to the Institute for Justice, more than 10,000 properties were threatened or condemned in recent years nationwide.
The majority noted that property owners are still entitled to “just compensation†in such cases, and I expect more court cases will come up regarding how compensation is ruled to be just.
Findlaw has the decision and more background on the case. Other stories can be found here, here, here, and here.
Glenn Reynolds talks this decision up over at Slate. I really like the title. And he’s right.
Creation Science
A recent editorial in the Columbus Dispatch slammed intelligent design pretty harshly, suggesting that it’s nothing more than a nice idea that has no grounding in “real” science.
Small doubts in legitimate science open the door for “theories” such as intelligent design to masquerade as science.
It’s interesting that they use the word “theory” in such a derogative way. The last I knew, evolution was only a “theory,” not having been proved (yet, as many scientists would say loudly).
But what of evolution? And by evolution, I’m talking about macro-evolution: where a particular species changes into another species. There’s long been talk about the evolutionists call the “missing link,” or the creature that came between ape and man. But what of the missing link between alligator and …uh…no, wait. How about the missing link between bears and…..hmm. Need a better example. How about the missing link between the platypus and…what? Ducks, otters, and…something else.
Evolutionists believe that most changes took thousands and thousands of years. Erosion is a prime example. Those who think the earth is billions of years old also believe the Grand Canyon was formed over the course of thousands upon thousands of years of water wearing the rock down. But there’s a canyon south of Mount St Helens that exhibits the same striation as the Grand Canyon, but it was formed in a matter of days, not centuries. How? By the huge quantity of water that moved through after Mount St Helens exploded in 1980. So if a large volume of water can do that on a smallish scale, can’t it do it on a much larger scale?
Imagine the volume of water it would take to cover Mount Everest. Now imagine that most of that water goes away over the course of nine months, evaporating and being blown about. That’s a lot of water. It’s perhaps more water than the human mind can comprehend. But then again, it’s hard for the human mind to comprehend what the platypus evolved from.
Thanks
I wanted to say thanks to all who visited during the Going Twice Blog Fiction project. I’m looking forward to the next one, whenever that may be.
I hope you all took the time to read the stories. There are some great writers out there, even if we are a violent bunch!
The Sad Girl
Life was pretty good. I was eighteen months into my parole, and was staying out of trouble. I had a job. Heck, I had my own company, and with it came money. Not a lot at first, but it was starting to pick up. I had a girl now, too, who accepted me with all the baggage that came with a convicted felon. It almost couldn’t get better than that, you know? Then I saw her.
It was more than a little odd that I even found her. Usually the departments I got stuff from were pretty consistent about erasing files and such, so I don’t know why she slipped through the cracks. And I hardly ever double-checked them, just because they had gotten so consistent.
Even more strange was that there was a case number attached to her. That was the first time since I started my little internet auction house for that. Well, maybe not. There was that department up in upstate New York a few months ago, but it was their first time shipping stuff to me. I had been working with the department that sent her to me almost since the beginning; they had helped me work out my rules, so they knew the drill. I shook my head. Very strange.
I sat there for a quarter of an hour, looking at the seventeen images on my screen, but not really focusing on them. I think it was her eyes that sent me over the edge. Even Maria commented on it. “You know, I think that’s who that guy had in mind when he wrote in that line, ‘restless and reckless and lost’.â€
She was pretty; she was young. Long black hair framed a small face in six photos; in three, it was pulled back into pigtails, and in the rest, it was pulled into a single ponytail or braid. The clothing changed every so often; there were three outfits. The locations were unremarkable. Most were inside. Some of those were on a couch; one showed her cooking. The outside shots looked posed, and could have passed for high school graduation photos, if she had been old enough to graduate. She looked happy outside.
There was something haunting about her, though. The look in her eyes was distant, and maybe a little bit sad. I understood what Maria meant with her comment about the song by Meat Loaf, especially the restless and lost parts. I sang the song in my head, and other lyrics seemed to fit her. “And all around the city you see the walking wounded and the living dead.†She had been hurt; that much was certain. The resolution on the pictures was good enough that I could see she had been crying in a couple of the last ones.
I finally shook off the willies that were creeping up my spine, and went back to checking out the rest of the memory cards in the box. There were about forty more, and after what I had already found, I decided to check all of them.
After the hour taken there, the rest of the day seemed to fly. I could see the results of my work piled by the back door waiting for UPS to pick them up, but I couldn’t tell you anything about any of the auctions. Usually something stuck in my head about each batch of stuff I sent out. I could tell you where some of the stuff was going, or something about my contact at one of the departments. Today though, I was still stuck on The Sad Girl. Maria had named her that, and it fit.
Before she left for the day, Maria handed me a manila folder, firm with pages. “I did a little research while you were packing today’s outbounds. Something to read over dinner.â€
Teresa saw it in my face as soon as I walked in the door. “What’s wrong?â€
I shrugged. I really didn’t know how to explain it, so I handed her the folder. Maria had printed all of the photos off, I knew. I had glanced at a couple of the photos during the bus ride home, but had stayed away from the web printouts.
“Pretty. Who is she? She looks awfully young to be so sad.â€
I nodded. She was young, and seemed terribly sad. “Maria quoted Meat Loaf: ‘restless and reckless and lost’. I don’t know. She was on a memory card I got from a client.†I tried to recall details about the department, but all I could come up with was Alabama.
“She might be fourteen. In my line of work, I should know better than to ask, but what could be going on in her life for her to look like that? Anything else interesting?â€
“Couple cameras. Jewelry. Nothing special. A few dozen memory cards. That’s where she was.â€
She had dinner ready for us, and we ate and talked about her day, which had been much less unsettling than mine. She had picked up a few new “clients,†as she called the probationers she kept track of, giving her almost forty. Made for some long nights sometimes. We talked through dinner the chatter of an old married couple, despite the fact that we had only known each other for a year, and had been dating for half of that, and cohabitating for a third of that.
She showed me why I loved her as I did the dishes. She trusted me in whatever I was going to do about The Sad Girl; I knew that. But she had seen that it was affecting me, and so was furthering Maria’s research. After the dishes were done, I pulled another chair over to the desk and rested my chin on her shoulder as she worked her magic with the search engines. It was odd to me that I had taken so well to the online auction work that I did, but search sites like Google could reduce me to a gibbering idiot. But that was another reason I loved her; we seemed to complement each other, which never failed to amaze me, especially when I considered my former and her current career.
We spent the rest of the evening in front of the computer, searching all kinds of news stories. It was sadly enlightening to see how many missing kids websites and news stories are out there. I finally realized we weren’t going to get anywhere with the resources we had, and decided to call the department tomorrow.
“What do you mean there were pictures on those cards? I erased them all myself.”
I assured Sergeant Ross that there was only one card with images, but there were indeed seventeen of them, and I had a case number to boot. “What can you tell me about the case?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“I’m nosy, OK?” I stopped for a second. Why did I want to know? She wasn’t anyone I knew, and I certainly wasn’t involved in the case at all. But that look in her eyes made hair stand up on my arms. I heard him typing, then muttering a bit. It sounded like he was reading to himself from the computer screen. “Hmm. Hang on a sec.” The on-hold music was some Top-40 singer I had never heard of. I listened to what the jocks today called classic rock. It was popular before I went to prison, which meant that I was old.
“Detective Thomas. How can I help you?” There was little enough of a drawl that I doubted he was a native Alabaman.
I explained again about the auction business—that I got stuff from police departments and sold it on consignment—and how I had come by the pictures and the case number. “I guess I’m just curious about her. It’s not often that I come across photos like this. Your property guy is usually pretty diligent about erasing stuff.”
“I see. Well, there’s not much I can tell you. It’s an open investigation, although it’s a few years old.” That meant it was a homicide or missing person, and they didn’t know squat. And a missing case a few years old was usually a homicide anyway. Crap. I thanked him for his time, and went back to work. There were boxes to open, pictures to take, and auctions to run.
The next day, there was a familiar Ford sedan in the parking lot. Dominic, my parole officer, waved to me as he talked on his cell phone. I had coffee waiting for him when he came in.
“Business or pleasure?” Aside from checking up on me every so often, Dom stopped by every couple of weeks to see what I had; I had hooked him up with some nice stuff on occasion.
“Business, I’m afraid. Did you ever give a DNA sample when you got out?”
“Not that I recall. I think that was just for violent guys when I got out. They didn’t extend it until a few months ago.”
“You mind giving one now?”
My eyebrow went up, along with the warning flags. I had only done a bank job, but I knew enough to know that parole officers don’t just stop by one day to get a DNA swab.
“Dom, I’m clean. I only did that bank. You’re not going to hook me up with anything else.”
“I know. But I’m told I need to do this. You know the rules, Danny.”
“Why now?”
“Can’t say. I just got a phone call asking me to hit you up for this, and the guy on the other end of the phone was not someone I can say no to.”
I sighed. At least he let me wait until Maria got in. it wasn’t that I was worried about anything. I just hated the reminder that I was still on a leash, and still basically beholden to the man. For crying out loud, it was only a bank, and no one even got hurt. They even got all but about 2 grand back the day they busted me, and they got the rest of that a year ago after my auction business took off. Who knew an ex-con could make money selling recovered police evidence?
Dom and I made small talk on the way to the clinic. I told him about The Sad Girl; he was mildly interested when he found out where I found her, but as unsurprised as I was that I couldn’t find out anything else.
He bought me an early lunch on the way back to the office as an offhand apology. I liked Dom, such as I could. I had heard horror stories about parole officers, and knew I had gotten lucky with him. He went over the rules when we met, and told me if I didn’t give him any trouble, he would return the favor, and he had been true to his word. Of course, it helped that I had a plan before I got out.
I was in a mild funk the rest of the day over the swabbing, for what it represented more than anything else. It didn’t hurt, and I didn’t have to pay for it, but it still pretty much sucked.
For the next week, I basically forgot about her. That’s not entirely true. It was more that I didn’t have time to think about her. I had been talking to several fairly large agencies, and they all bit at once. Then a reporter got wind of the whole thing, and suddenly my auctions were going nuts. Even the junk stuff I put up was getting bid on. We were slammed with shipments coming in and packages going out. I needed to hire someone else to help, but I didn’t even have time to think about an ad, much less write one. Teresa came in a few times to help out, joking it was the only way she could see me. She said it with her musical laugh, but I knew she missed me.
I did manage to glance at a couple of the photos one day as I wolfed down a burger Teresa brought me. I was starting to analyze the backgrounds, to see if I could see anything special about them. I had finally decided they were hotel rooms; the walls that I could see were bare except for the corner of a painting in one. The day Dom had stopped by, I had checked the other cards I got with The Sad Girl, and saw that at least a couple more had come from the same case. The card she was on was only 32 megs, but the other two I found were both half-gig cards. That made for a bunch of photos, or even video if someone was so inclined. I wondered out loud if anything was recoverable from the cards.
Two days later, I had my answer. Maria had a friend who did data recovery as a business, and he checked out the cards for me, after reminding me about how computers really handled deleted files. I bought a data scrubber software package from him as my way of paying for his time.
The stuff he had been able to recover turned my stomach. The Sad Girl was no older than fourteen, I had decided (with input from Maria and Teresa), and I refused to believe that a just-teenaged girl knew about some of the things she was doing. Maria’s friend hadn’t been able to recover everything, and I was glad for that. I had begun thinking of her as a sister, or a daughter, and seeing her like that hurt.
Three weeks later I was working on my second cup of coffee of the morning. I was starting my day in my favorite way, alternating between reading the news on the web, and watching cars and people in the lot. I had chosen a spot in a strip mall, mainly because the rent was cheap. The advantage was that we had nice big windows, so I managed to get the occasional walk-in customer. The glass allowed me to people-watch on those rare days that I wasn’t busy.
I saw Dom’s car pull in, and realized he wasn’t alone. The guy with him was huge. Dom is about six-four, and a solid two-forty at least, and this guy was taller and a little wider. He had a couple of three-ring binders under his tree-trunk left arm. I met them at the door. “Business?”
Dom nodded. “Maria here yet? This will probably take a while, and we’ll need some privacy.”
I knew then what people meant when they said their heart sank. I showed them to my office, pointing out the coffee maker on the way, then went back out front until Maria showed up. Her eyes went to the office before she was all the way through the door; she knew Dom’s car as well as I did. I told her what we had coming in and going out, and headed for the office.
They both had coffee in front of them, but neither one was drinking. I sat down, watching them study me.
“This is Detective Thomas from Westwood PD.”
“Where’s Westwood PD?”
“We’re just north of Mobile, Alabama. Smallish town, maybe thirty thousand in a good week.” He wasn’t a native; his accent was too mild.
“Welcome to Corvallis, detective. What did you do to get sent way out here?”
“Danielle Cumberland Dawson,” he said after a minute, not looking at my eyes.
I nodded a bit as the name thudded around in my head.
“You know her?” Dom asked.
“No, but even I will admit the names are more than a little interesting. I have a unique last name. I’ll admit that.” One of these days I wanted to see where the name Cumberland came from.
“Could she be a long-lost sister, or cousin?”
“Not likely, detective. I’m an only child of two only children. I haven’t talked to what little extended family I have since long before I did my time.”
“What about Angela Marie Dawson?”
We all listened to the clock for a minute or two. A Monty Python sound clip told me I had email, and still we stared at each other. At least it looked like I was staring at them. Mentally, I was in San Francisco and it was the summer of 1991. The city was beautiful that year, and so was Angie. I had lost track of her. Prison will do that to almost any relationship.
I nodded again, finally. “I knew her.”
Thomas shifted in his chair; it creaked ominously. “How well?”
“Carnally.” No point in prancing around the truth. It had been an incredible summer though. Angie loved me that summer the way she did everything in her life—completely.
He nodded. “In 1992, Angela Marie Dawson had a daughter. She named her Danielle Cumberland Dawson. There was no father listed on the birth certificate.”
Suddenly I knew. I had a daughter, and she was dead.
Blog Fiction Project - Going Twice!
What happens when 26 people write a short story on the same topic? You get the Blog Fiction Project, of course.
Several weeks ago, I got an email from Bryon Quertermous, who participated in the first BFP (called “Junk in the Trunk”) a while back. He explained the idea, and asked if I was interested.
The basic idea is we give the same story starter idea to all the participants who then have about a month and a half to write the story.
The story idea last time involved getting stopped by the police with something in your trunk, and the stories were very entertaining. At any rate, I decided to give this a try. I’m not used to short stories. I’ve never written one, and for the last several looooong weeks, I’ve not gotten anywhere on either of my novels, so I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to churn out anything that looked at all good. But I’m finished, and the stories are supposed to be up today, so I will post it shortly. Below you’ll find the list of all the participating authors.
Your goal is to write a 3,000 word story involving an object that eventually appears in a police auction. If you’ve ever been to or seen a police auction you’ll know the object can be anything. Your job is to tell the story of how the object gets to be in the police auction.
Check them out!
Bryon Quertermous- bryonquertermous.blogspot.com
Dave White- jacksondonne.blogspot.com
Dave Zeltserman- hardluckwriter.blogspot.com
Ray Banks- thesaturdayboy.typepad.com
Duane Swierczynski- secretdead.blogspot.com
David J Montgomery- www.crimefictionblog.com
John Rickards- johnrickards.blogspot.com
Bill Crider- billcrider.blogspot.com
Gwenda Bond- bondgirl.blogspot.com
Scott Neumyer- www.scottwrites.com/neumyer.htm
Paul Guyo- paulguyot.blogs.com
Stuart MacBride- halfhead.blogspot.com
Gerald So- geraldso.blogspot.com
Sarah Weinman- www.sarahweinman.com
Christin Kuretich- secretlifeofmissconscience.blogspot.com
Bob Mueller- bob.ravensbeak.com
Megan Powell- meganpowell.net/wordpress
Pat Lambe- patlambe.com/Initiation.htm
Steven Torres- www.steventorres.com
Graham Powell- www.myboogpages.com
Jennifer Jordan- humanunderconstruction.blogspot.com
Jon Jordan- centralcrimezone.blogspot.com
Bob Tinsley- theshortofit.blogspot.com
Aldo Calcagno- acalcagno.blogspot.com
Rochelle Krich- rochellekrich.typepad.com/
Alina Adams- www.alinaadams.com