Stuff

I tells ya Orrie Hitt is taking over the mystery sites. In the new and as usual excellent Paperback Parade (#74) there's a long and well documented story on the life and work of Mr. Hitt. Among several other solid items are pieces on Ted Lewis of Get Carter fame, Geoffrey Holmes, restoring paperbacks and a selection of covers from the Avon Fantasy magazine from the forties. I'm not sure I knew what lurid meant until I saw these. :) Well worth your money and time.

--------------Movie star, MD,

Over the past eight years I've had the same doctor oversee my radiation sessions. She's very easy going and bright and we have a lot of laughs together. Yesterday after I finished the ole sizzle and glow I waited in her office to see her. She was fifteen minutes late, unusual for her. When she came in she looked a bit frazzle and I asked if she was all right. First she told me that so far things looked good with me and that we'd continue on course. Then she told me about the patient meeting she'd just come from. A family doc had sent this woman to see my doc hoping that my doc could convince her she needed to have radiation. She said the woman was very pleasant and very matter of fact when she said that radiation was poison and that she'd be better off without it and that she had this book that told her about an alternate course to surviving breast cancer--yes, she'd read a movie star's book about health and cancer. And the star was still alive so she must be right, right? I was laughing not out of meanness but because somehow this folded into teabaggers, deathers, birthers, yada yada and yada. We've become a nation of conspiracy nuts. My doc wasn't laughing. She's very worried about this woman. She'd walked the woman through the history of radiation as a tool against cancer, gave her the stats on the hundreds of thousands of lives it's extended and/or saved and finally convinced her to think about it a few days and then call my doc again. Alternate medicine is well worth exploring but I'm sorry this movie star ain't exactly Jonas Salk.

--------------Spinetingler Awards

Thanks to those of you who wrote to congratulate me on being nominated for Best Novel in the Legend category of the Spinetingler Awards. I'm really in august company and I'm appreciative that my Mom was able to swing the deal.