Stuff

Last night I mentioned the sadness you always saw in Richard Jewell's face. Today was a chemo day. I decided to reread my favorite Agatha Christie The Body in The Library. I know, I know--Agatha Christie. Well, if she was good enough for Raymond Chandler she's good enough for Ed Gorman of Cedar Rapids.

I brought two Christies actually, giving one to the seventy-three year old woman I always spend a little time with on chemo days. She's had three kinds of cancer in ten years and is still receiving chemo. She started reading mysteries because I brought her some. Now she's a Christie fan.

What's remarkable about her is that she radiates humor, wisdom, patience and great good cheer. Her face is the opposite of Jewell's. You see the beautiful things in her life in her smile--her children and grandchildren, her love of horses, her fondness for the movies of the Thirties on Turner Classic, the ranch she lived on for her first twenty years. And yes, her five year stint as a runway model in Chicago. And nary a discouraging word.

We should all be as tough and wise.

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There's a great interview with Bob Randisi on Saddlebums currently. Well worth your time to read about the life and times of this remarkable writer.

And speaking of Bob, he reminded me that in the bio for my new novel (now out--Amazon awaits) Fools Rush In there appears under my photo the phrase "The beloved author of." I'm NOT beloved. Nobody beloves me. I don't WANT to be beloved. I've hired a private eye to find out who wrote it. And once we identify the varmit, and once my lawyer gets out of prison, it's lawsuit time baby!

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Ran across an interesting comment by Louis L'Amour. He said that while the convention was to think of the frontier west as unhealthy and back East a paradigm of well-being, cities were actually much unhealthier than the outdoors. And from my limited knowledge (researching Chicago and New York in the 1860s) he was right. All you need to prove it is to read the hospital stats of the time. You were often healthier to stay out of the hospital than in it, even if your malady was life thratening.