I got into quite the bruhaha on Twitter … er, X … a few weeks ago. Some guy posted that there was no evidence for God. I told him to take a deep breath, go outside and stand in the sun, think a complex thought, and then watch some birds. There you go.
It was like throwing garlic at a vampire.
Not only this guy but several others piled on with vitriol and sneering and insults, all of which I found hilarious. I kept asking what evidence would convince them – burning bush in the backyard, engraved invitation to Heaven’s golf course, Jesus’ face in their pancakes? – but all that did was make them madder. Hee Hee. Questioned my parentage, my humanity, my education, my morality, all of which I acknowledged were substandard, all the while asking what would convince them. One guy finally said a recording and a photograph.
Dude, have you not heard Beethoven? Have you not seen the stars?
I subscribe to the teleological school of God’s existence, that the apparent design in the universe demands a designer. You don’t get habitable zones, gravity, particle physics, atoms and molecules oh my of this elegant and complex interaction and exactitude without somebody whipping up the recipe in the kitchen somewhere. Ah ha, one of my haters decried, that what you call ‘design’ is merely our brains creating a pattern out of observed data. Well, yeah, because apparent design is observable. It makes me laugh when people decide to redefine a word like ‘design’ to support an anti-design stance. It’s like saying the word ‘woman’ has no definition.
All of this combat is due to one reason: don’t want anything to interfere with the party. If there is a God, then there’s a possibility we might actually be responsible for our behavior. Can’t have that. It also means we are not the center of the universe, that our sneering and cruel behavior towards others might engender consequence so we might actually have to control ourselves. Oh no.
But it also means, in a realm we cannot see but from which we feel its effects, there stands our Creator.
I spent three days at the biggest book fair in the world, the Frankfurt Buchmesse. A ‘messe’ is a fair, which is different from a ‘fest’. I guess; dunno, don’t speak German. A messe celebrates a thing, while fests just celebrate. Think Octoberfest and all the attendant mayhem. A messe is also mayhem, but with a theme: in this case, books. Not beer. Although there was plenty of that, and I got a bit messe – dup.
See what I did there?
I attended by invite from the “And I Thought,” Ladies, Jade and Wilnona, who are poets and entrepreneurs and dynamic publishers and representatives and I can’t say enough about them, even if their true powers remain a mystery to me. I have never been one to grasp the workings and subtleties of any business, let alone the publishing industry (as evidenced by my sales), but these two are masters of it. Simply watching them work was impressive. Even if I didn’t understand it.
The Buchmesse has been an ongoing concern since sometime in the 12th Century when people swapped handwritten books in a field there, and really took off after Gutenberg showed up. When you’ve been doing something for this long, it tends to grow and, wow, is this thing big. Acres and acres of buildings, themselves acres and acres of hallways and stairs and passageways connected by moving walkways so I managed to get from the entrance to our little table at 5.1, 5.1 (which is the unique German way of indicating the second floor of building 5) without collapsing. Although I did have to stop and catch my breath a lot.
Lots of people there. Lots and lots. Every publisher/literary agent/artist/editor in the known and unknown world attended because, well, it’s their Superbowl. Less inclined to attend and with less of a purpose were writers such as me, gazing wistfully at the assemblage and hoping one of the rich and powerful would deign a glance and maybe toss a shilling into the tattered cap. Like Marc here, a Swiss wannabe. These people are the movers and shakers, not the assembly line workers, and one could not even glance in the direction of a literary maven without first having obtained an appointment. Or having caught the eye. I did neither, but still made some interesting contacts.
The Ladies apparently know everyone in the publishing industry, all of whom made it a point to drop by and say hi, including Aussies and Zealanders who told us hilarious stories about TSA inspections and queries they endured upon transiting the US: “Do you intend to marry a US citizen?” Stunned pause; “Is that mandatory?”
All this visitation wasn’t all that easy given that our table was the size of a family rowboat and just as crowded; along with the aforementioned attendees, we had Deborah Franklin Publishing, Madville Publishing, and Susan Mattaboni, who is a big deal author (unlike me), arrayed about the place, along with books and assorted giveaway items like bookmarks and geegaws. I don’t know how many times my clumsy self knocked various combinations of these throwaways all over the floor every time I squeezed by.
The public was allowed entry on Friday through Sunday, and they stalked the halls in a relentless effort to find and purchase any and every book available in English. I don’t know why, but the Germans are gaga over English books. That superior German education system making English pretty much their second language helps although, given the recent and obvious decline of the English speaking world, they may be better off learning Chinese. The Ladies decided to attract a little attention with a themed approach, and the first day they were 1920s flappers and I was Al Capone, and then a Great Gatsby day where they were flappers and I was a Peaky Blinder’s thug. Don’t ask me what that has to do with Great Gatsby. It worked because I sold practically every book I brought with me, which has never happened to me in any other conference I have ever attended, where I usually count on one hand the numbers sold. Had to use two hands and a foot to keep up here.
Incidentally, practically everyone drifting by greeted me as “Sherlock Holmes!” Really, bud? See a deerstalker hat and a tartan rain cape anywhere in this scenario? Sheesh.
The Ladies then squired me through the real Buchmesse, which is the after-parties held at the various booths by the various publishers, where the real deals are made, usually the purchase and selling of translation rights and services. The Aussie/Zealander reps hoisted a beer with us at the Zealand booth, and the Irish booth had its own Celtic band and, of course, Guinness. I made excellent contact with Korean and Canadian publishers. We’ll see how that goes.
My brother and nephew showed up and I ran around Frankfurt with them for awhile, specifically to a hamburger place called Goldies which my nephew swore made the best hamburgers in Germany, about which he wanted an American’s opinion. Goldies turned out to be a window in a building where you placed an order and then received your hamburger, eating it over a trash can on the street. Great ambiance. And quite popular, with a line out the door and down the street where patrons were in constant danger of vehicular assault. The hamburger? Meh. In this American’s opinion.
After the Buchmesse closed, I took a Flixbus from Frankfurt to Heilbronn and the family compound. I love Flixbus; it beats the train for price and speed. I visited my mother, who is quite ill, and then went out with my sister to a local plant store to do a little shopping. ‘Plant store’ is an understatement; it’s a mega WalMart type place with its own Christmas market and restaurants. Should open one of these here. My sister met up with friends and it turned into the Five with me as the hapless male. The last time I went with my sister to visit her friends I almost jumped off a building. Almost did here, too, although the ladies are quite nice and fun including Sovie, the Norwegian owner of a neighboring house slowly being eaten by sentient plants, and Hannalore, whose husband, Herman, had recently passed. He was a good guy, in the 1950s escaping East Berlin where he was a Border Guard.
I stayed at the airport Holiday Inn because they give us old fart retired guys a military discount, and it was a rather decent place with a rather decent restaurant. I took prohibitively expensive taxis back and forth until I figured out the S Bahn and Underground system, which was rather inexpensive, and oddly run. It’s on the honor system; you don’t actually have to buy a ticket to get on or get out. No trestles, no validation machines – just enter the station and wait for your train. But God help you if the conductors find you without a ticket.
I had a devil of a time both getting to and leaving Germany because I used Space A. It’s a privilege extended to us old fart retired guys, equivalent to waiting at a port for a tramp steamer to come by and signing on with the crew. I tried to get on a military flight out of BWI but apparently every other military member in the tri-state area wanted to get on that plane, which was the only one flying that week, so I missed it. Three days later, I ended up on a C-17 out of Dover AFB, which is probably the unfriendliest airbase for Space-A travelers. It took me four days to get back to Dover from Ramstein, with potential rides canceled or moved or mysteriously disappearing. I slept in expensive hotel rooms, in passenger terminals, and even hotel lobbies until I finally snagged a ride home. Life is an adventure.
I think the trip was worth it, as a test of endurance more than anything because it’s getting harder and harder for an old fart like me to make such trips, especially with all the medication I lug around. Still, a conclave of book lovers is an event to be experienced.
I’ve told the story, well past the point of boredom, as to how I became a reader. Not how I learned to read, that was from Marvel comics, but an actual reader. In 1962, I was a second grader in Miss Hale’s class at BC Swinney Elementary in Lawton, Oklahoma. During story hour, Miss Hale read chapters from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and I was enthralled. Tom’s antics, running around with Huck, ‘First pipes, I’ve lost my Knife,’ oh, man, I couldn’t get enough. That was the life I wanted, carefree and riverbound and filled with adventure and I asked her, when she had finished, if I could read it. She was unsure because it’s a bit advanced for second grade but I was already a decent reader, thanks to Marvel, so she gave me her copy. Just gave it to me, like that, which was even more thrilling and I swear I read that volume twenty times at least.
So about a month ago, I happened to be in Quincy, IL for an Indies United Publishing House conference, and Quincy is a mere 20 miles away from Hannibal, MO, Samuel Clemens’ hometown and the place Tom Sawyer is situated. So I went. And I saw Tom’s house.
The most infamous episode of Tom Sawyer’s con artist life is, of course, the whitewashed fence. And here it is. Not much to an adult but condemnation at hard labor for a ten-year-old and I can see Tom’s scheme forming the moment he arrived at the first board.
Tom’s room. You can see him sneaking out the window.
Look at this, Becky Thatcher’s house:
And look at this, Huck Finn’s house:
And the river, on which I took a ride on a faux steamboat. Hey, everything today is a simulation.
That lighthouse is where the Widow Douglas’ house stood.
This is Lover’s Leap, which is where star crossed Indian maidens/Indian braves leaped to their death, just like from every other Lover’s Leap in America. And maybe Canada. The Captain even told us that old Watch Out for Falling Rock joke which I first heard in 2nd grade.
The pylon marks the location of the treasure cave, the one Tom and Becky got lost in. With the murderous Injun Joe on their trail. Didn’t happen, of course; the model for Injun Joe lived well into his nineties. But it’s a cool story that made my second grade heart pound with terror.
I have no idea what happened to that book. Sometime during the numerous events of my life, it got lost. But, Miss Hale, I never lost my love for reading.
I think anthologies are the Chinese buffet of writing. You can choose from this or that writer, some of them you’ve never heard of, and, if you like their stories, give their other works a shot. It’s also the midnight snack of reading: just grab a bunch of stuff out of the fridge and enjoy. I think I own more anthologies than any stand-alones because it expands my library far beyond what my limited space and budget allow. I haven’t read all of them, of course, Workin’ on it. But I have read lots of anthologies, and these are the ones I remember with the most fondness, for various reasons:
10. Alfred Hitchcock’s Ghostly Gallery. Published in 1962 for kids, I remember it because I read it as a kid and it helped spur my love of reading. My favorite is The Wonderful Day, by Robert Arthur, which is a be-careful-what-you-wish-for story. Arthur was a West Point graduate who also wrote the Alfred Hitchcock Three Investigators series, which I also read as a kid.
9. The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. Richard Bausch, 1978. You know a Norton collection is going to show up sometime and somewhere and this one is my favorite because it contains a lot more ‘normal’ stories than I usually spend time with. Although The Rocking Horse Winner by D. H. Lawrence, is hardly normal.
8. The Book of Swords, Gardner Dozois, 2017, and Dozois needs no introduction, especially if you’re into anthologies. He founded the Year’s Best Science Fiction anthologies and edited Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine. I loved this book, and it’s hard to pick a favorite out of it so, coin toss, and I Am a Handsome Man, said Apollo Crow by Kate Elliot wins.
7. Twilight Zone, the Original Stories. Martin Harry Greenberg, 1985. Greenberg compiled almost 1300 anthologies, and was one of the cofounders of the Syfy channel. This is a collection of the stories that inspired Twilight Zone episodes. My favorite is To Serve Man, by Damon Knight. One of the best last lines in fiction.
6. Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Vol 1. Robert Silverberg, 1971. Silverberg is a grandmaster and it’s hard to say whether his work as an editor or writer is the most important. This is a collection of scifi stories written from 1929-1964, my favorite being Nightfall, by Isaac Asimov.
5. There were, apparently, so many good scifi stories written from 1929-1964 that they printed another Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Vol II but broke it into ‘a‘ and ‘b,’ both edited by Ben Bova. My favorite from ‘a’ is Who Goes There, John W. Campbell, which is what The Thing movies are based on. From ‘b’ it’s The Big Front Yard by Clifford Simak.
4. Dangerous Visions and Again, Dangerous Visions. Harlan Ellison. You can’t talk about one without the other, but I think the first one is the better, with A Toy for Juliette by Robert Bloch a favorite. Dangerous was published in 1967, all the stories original, while Again was published in 1972. Both were considered cutting edge, avant garde because they were blatantly sexual and brutal. Kind of old hat today. Ellison was a prolific writer and editor who had what we would call an unfortunate personality.
3. Dark Forces. 1980 Kirby McCauley. McCauley was a literary agent who represented some heavy hitters like Stephen King and George R. R. Martin. This is where I first read Stephen King’s The Mist, which remains a favorite.
2. A Treasury of Great Science Fiction, Anthony Boucher, 1959, which came in two volumes and included such great things as Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination, and The Man Who Sold the Moon, Robert Heinlein. My favorite is Poul Anderson’s Brain Wave. Boucher was a writer and editor who sometimes used the pseudonym H . H. Holmes, a 19th century serial killer. Read about him in The Devil in the White City by Eric Larson.
1. Tomorrow’s Children. Isaac Asimov. 1966. Obviously an Asimov was going to show up here and of all the ones he did, this is my favorite, with his story, The Ugly Little Boy, being my favorite in the collection.
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I don’t know how many short stories I’ve read in my life. It’s well over the number of books, so, using 8-years-old as a starting point, figure 2-5 books a month for 60 years, time off for good behavior, maybe … 2-4 thousand. But I read a lot more stories than books, as have you, because stories are how we started. We had Dick and Jane, Dr. Seuss, fairy tales, and on and on from there. Especially because my Dad built a room over the garage which became my bedroom. It was also the place that Dad kept his bootleg muscadine wine and his Playboys. I never had any trouble going to bed. Because of the stories of course. Playboy published a lot of excellent stories and I read them. No, really.
Out of all those stories over all these decades, some of them remain with me. Either a scene or a theme or something that makes me remember them these years later, as follows:
10. The Lonesome Place- August Derleth, 1962. Derleth was a prodigious writer and editor, starting Arkham House Publishing and coining the term “Cthulhu mythos” to categorize the work of his friend, H P Lovecraft. Two boys imagine a monster living in an abandoned silo near their home, scaring each other delightfully. After they grow up, a young boy is mauled near the silo and the two are convinced their imagination created the monster.
9. The Great Nebraska Sea- Allan Danzig, 1963. I can’t find a lot on Danzig. He appears to be an infrequent contributor to Galaxy and wrote a lot more reviews than stories. I believe I read this in Galaxy but not in 1963 because I was too young, so possibly in a later anthology. A series of faults in the Midwest drops the west coast of the US into the ocean. Reading more like a history article, I remember the closing scene of sailors strolling the seaports of Wyoming and Missouri.
8. Passengers, Robert Silverberg, 1970. Silverberg is, of course, writer and editor extraordinaire, even wrote soft porn at one time. This is a brutal story of an alien presence that randomly seizes the minds of people and makes them do unspeakable things. The ending is chilling.
7. Inconstant Moon, Larry Niven, 1971. Niven wrote Ringworld and, with Jerry Pournelle, has turned out a goodly collection of scifi novels, like The Mote in God’s Eye. People are amazed by how bright the full moon goes one night, until somebody realizes the sun has gone nova and we’ve only got until the earth turns to survive.
6. The Nine Billion Names of God, Arthur C. Clarke, 1953. The grandmaster. An eastern religious sect believes that if they transcribe the 9 billion names for God, then the universe will end. They purchase a computer to assist them in this, and the two installers scoff at the whole concept. Until …
5. Examination Day, Henry Slezar, 1958. I definitely read this in Playboy. Slezar was a prolific story writer and copywriter who used dozens of pseudonyms. He supposedly coined the term, “coffee break.” In some bleak dystopian future, a kid is getting ready to take mandatory state examinations and is urged by his mother not to study so hard. You’ll soon see why.
4. The Crooked Man, Charles Beaumont, 1955. Beaumont dropped out of school in tenth grade and joined the Army during the closing days of WW2. He wrote short stories and television episodes and full-length movies and had a lot of influence on other writers like Ray Bradbury and William Nolan. In the future, heterosexuality has been outlawed and those attracted to the opposite sex have to meet furtively or risk internment in a concentration camp, where they will make a new man out of you. Yes, indeed.
3. All Summer in a Day, Ray Bradbury, 1954. I have dozens and dozens of favorite Bradbury stories because he was my favorite author growing up, but this one stands out. It constantly rains on Venus but, once every 7 years, the sun appears for two hours, and a class of elementary students are preparing to go outside and see this. The cruelty of children.
2. A Pail of Air, Fritz Leiber, 1951. I read this in a Science Fiction Book Club anthology. Yeah, I was a member. Sue me. The world has frozen and the only way to breathe is fetch a pail of air and dissolve it slowly over a fire.
1. It’s a Good Life, Jerome Bixby, 1953. Known more for his script writing, like four episodes of Star Trek, this is Bixby’s best remembered short story, one that was turned into a Twilight Zone episode starring Billy Mumy, and even into a Treehouse of Horror episode. When Little Anthony was born, the doctor screamed and tried to kill him, but Anthony whisked the town away somewhere, don’t know where, and all the townspeople are now his playmates. Even if they don’t want to be.
There is another one but, for the life of me, I cannot remember its title. Set in a dystopia, people are going back and forth to work when an old man starts reminiscing about the better days in the past, causing the workers to stop and listen. So a SWAT unit is sent out to find and arrest him because nostalgia is against the law.
UPDATE: The story is called To the Chicago Abyss, in Ray Bradbury’s The Machineries of Joy. Kudos to @JohnMustReadMore on Youtube for spotting it.
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Call them really long short stories or too-short novels, there’s some good reading in them even as they defy an exact category. Novellete? Yeah, yeah, there’s agreed-upon definitions but who gets to decide that? So I will: if you can finish it before the evening’s out, then it’s probably a novella. Or novellete. Or long short story. Whatever.
10. Beggars in Spain. This is a story about a group of people who, through genetic modification, no longer need to sleep, which makes them vastly more talented and intelligent than everyone else because, well, you’ve got more time to learn things like nuclear physics. And you’d think forgoing sleep would be a good thing but, oh no, it’s not. The title comes from a philosophical stance along the lines of what do productive and talented people owe the beggars in Spain.
9. The Mist
Written back when Stephen King still wrote horror, this is one of his best, although it’s not really horror so much as it’s scifi. Scary scifi, to be sure. An Army experiment breaches a dimension where terrifying monsters live and they pour into the small town of Bridgton, Maine and, actually, the entire world. A really good movie was made out of this which has a completely different ending than the novella, so you can enjoy both.
8. A Boy and his Dog- Harlan Ellison’s brutal post-apocalyptic classic, this has also been turned into a fairly decent movie starring Don Johnson of Miami Vice fame when he was little more than a teenager. The nuclear wars have created a series of mutations allowing an orphan to telepathically connect with his dog so the two of them can survive a truly horrendous world.
7. The Third Man- Graham Greene is an old master of the suspense thriller detective police – you name it – story that rarely has a happy ending. Hack writer Buck Dexter is invited to visit his old friend Harry Lime in post war Vienna, only to arrive just in time for Lime’s funeral. Apparently, he died in an accident. Or was it? Also turned into a decent film with Orson Wells.
6. The Horla- Guy de Maupassant’s best known story in English, I’m guessing, is about a man who waves at a passing ship and, next thing you know, something is living in his house, drinking his water, and driving him slowly insane. Rather creepy 1960s movie made from this called Diary of a Madman.
5. A River Runs Through It- by Norman Maclean and, yes, the first thing you think of is the extraordinary film with Brad Pitt and, yes, the film is rather true to the story. But the story itself is a lyric, an ode to a self-destructive man as seen through the eyes of the brother who loved him.
4. Notes From the Underground- this is, as far as I am concerned. Dostoyevsky’s masterpiece. It is the ruminations of a very bitter retired civil servant who rejects every convention and standard of society. Parts of this just soar into almost psychedelia and is sheer unadulterated genius.
3. Siddhartha- like any teenager of the 1970s, I read everything by Herman Hesse because, you know, metaphysics. Of all his novels, this is the one I remember best, primarily because of the river metaphor. The last part, where Siddhartha sits on the banks and watches his life flow by is perfect summary.
2. The Halloween Tree- anything by Ray Bradbury is going to get my vote although mostly those are disconnected short stories, as in R is for Rocket. This one, though, is a series of stories following the attempts of eight friends to save a ninth who has been spirited away into the Land of the Dead. Juvenile, yes, but compelling.
1. The Dragon Masters- this is the first Jack Vance I ever read, and it remains my favorite. Set in a future so far away that people can actually wield magic, it is the story of a human band that has genetically altered their alien enemies, turning them into war beasts. Typical Vance with crazy dialogue and wild battle scenes.
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The criteria for this is very simple: someone from a book that I still remember to this day, no matter how long, or short, ago I came across them. They are memorable. Every once in awhile, I’ll recall something about them while doing something else or I’ll make a reference to them or simply take inspiration. Such as:
10. Tom Sawyer. He was my first literary hero, the character that spurred my lifelong love of fiction and reading. Tom was everything I was not: brave and defiant and ever willing to break the rules and try something new and a great friend and fearless protector. And he tormented his little brother, Sid, with an almost genius capacity for mayhem, some of which I tried on my own little brother.
9. Scout. She was the center of To Kill a Mockingbird, the one who watched the world and all its currents and storms flowing hard and fast right through the center of her life. She met everything with a calm and thoughtful gaze, learning from it, enduring it. And showed us how to take everyone, from the different to the wounded, on their own terms.
8. Breq. The ancillary in Ann Leckie’s Ancillary trilogy, she was human then AI and a battleship then human again, or partially human, but, whatever the form, she was loyal to her friends and family, so to speak, and fought for her commander and her empire, even when she knew it was wrong. Indeed, she was responsible for correcting a lot of those wrongs; well, as best as they could be. Just considering all of the devastating and traumatic changes she went through as she changed form and purpose is mind blowing.
7. Mai. The bride of an arranged marriage to the Qin commander, Anji, she is, at first, docile and subservient, but she turns into a tiger. As she adjusts to the very dangerous world of the Hundred, she rises from a simple household member to admired confidant and a fighter in her own right. Half the fun of the Crossroads Trilogy is watching her development.
6. Maris. While out searching for her dog, Maris finds the stone that transports her to the Great Land, where she teams up with talking bugs and squirrels and a particularly brave ant to defeat the evil creatures taking over. I first read Shelia Moon’s Knee Deep in Thunder when I was 12 or 13, and it’s stayed with me, especially the last scene of the book, where Maris watches the boy walk away.
5. Chrisjen Avasarala. The foul mouthed, ruthless, downright murderous UN Secretary of Earth, she gave no quarter nor asked for any in her single-minded devotion to protecting Earth from Belters and Martians and revolutionaries and the proto-molecule. Constantly exasperated by James Holden and his optimistic humanism, she often found her plans undone and was often in serious danger, but you don’t mess with her. You just don’t.
4. Bob Lee ‘the Nailer’ Swagger. The protagonist of practically every single Stephen Hunter book, he is a former Vietnam-era sniper who earned his nickname from his mutant-like accuracy, the able to drive nails with a bullet. After amassing a rather astonishing kill record, he leaves the Army for an Arkansas farm and just wants to be left alone. But, of course, people just gotta bother him. To their detriment.
3. Schaffa Guardian. The Guardian responsible for Damaya’s training in NK Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy and introduced in the first book, The First Season, Schaffa is a cruel and demanding task master. But, it soon becomes clear that Schaffa is a compassionate and empathic trainer, forced to extreme methods because the Fifth Season is rapidly approaching and Damaya has to be ready. Reminds me very much of the character Patrick Foley in the Australian movie The Earthling.
2. Chad Buford. He is the main character of a book I loved since I was 13, The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come by John Fox, Jr, published in 1903. Yes, execrable title, but it was the first book to sell a million copies in the United States. Orphaned in the hills of Kentucky shortly before the Civil War, Chad is adopted by a mountain family and then, through an odd series of events, ends up the protege of a wealthy Kentucky planter. When the Civil War starts, Chad makes a decision that goes against his family and friends and culture, and is the main reason I admire him. Very racist novel, though. Very racist.
1. Half-cocked Jack. So named because of an unfortunate childhood accident, he is a pirate and adventurer and a mercenary and a reaver and thief, and exactly the guy you want on your side in a fight. He is one of many unforgettable characters in Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle, appearing in the first novel, Quicksilver, and remaining alive through the rest of them, although I have no idea how. I guess Stephenson liked him, too.
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When I was six-years-old, I was lying on top of our storm shelter in the backyard of our house in Lawton, OK, watching the thunderheads build. If you’ve ever lived in Oklahoma then you know the terrific storms we get, and these clouds were monstrous and bright with the sun outlining their edges in silver and I immediately knew God existed. I’ve believed in God ever since.
Not continuously. I was a black flag anarchist/atheist in my teenage years, hating the world and everything in it. If you’d had the childhood I did, you’d probably be the same. The problem with that: you eventually end up a completely shriveled hate bag, devoid of humor and humanity. Unless you look up. I did, and I saw those thunderheads again and there was God, looking at me.
God is mercy and grace. I am not.
And while most of the churches I attended focused on how you acted and the impossibility of ever pleasing God, there were a few that were different. They taught from the original languages and, turns out, much of what the King James says is a bit off message. Because God is mercy and grace, not rage and punishment. The churches don’t really want you to know that. Cuts into the collection plate, doncha know.
So I got curious about this God of mercy and grace. Not what He could do for me and what He expected from me, but who He, Himself, is. I wanted to know His nature. I wanted to know His name. And it took me a good sixty years plus, but I finally discovered what He is.
God is the library.
I don’t mean some random building or a collection of books; He is THE library. Itself. He is all of the knowing, all of the understanding, all of the subtleties, the underlying principles, everything properly shelved; not only that, He is the impetus, the source of all the actions or the inactions of the universe, the One who wrote and invoked the books. He is a library so vast that we have barely scratched the number of volumes available, or what they say. But we’re trying.
Just take a quick overview of what we’ve found out in the last thirty years or so – the way the blood and the breath work; the particles racing to and fro across the galaxy; the medicines and observations and theories and forces and drifts and the causes and effects of many, many things. Each time we stumble across something, scientists proclaim they have found the Answer, but, two seconds later, there’s dozens more questions. And we discover levels of existence of which we had no prior clue. Our operating principles have to be discarded and rewritten.
All science does is read the next paragraph. And every time we do, we reveal more of Him. These are the volumes of God. They are endless.
We will never get to the end of them.
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I went to my 50th high school reunion just a bit ago. I wasn’t going to attend because my closest friends wouldn’t be there. Tom died decades ago; Don decades after that, and I found out the day before the reunion that Drew had also died. Turns out I’m the last man standing. Should have started a tontine.
But a relentless campaign at almost the felony level by one of the organizers forced my surrender. And I’m glad, because it turned out great, just great. I got to say something to someone I’ve wanted to say for fifty years. You know who you are. I reforged a friendship with someone I’d abandoned years ago, Carol. And I was completely surprised by someone else, Barbara.
There were 405 of us in that class, and only about 100 showed up. Out of that 405, 88 have already died. That gives us a mortality rate of about 22%. Not looking good for the home team.
I’m not going to show you any pictures because it would look like outtakes from the Night of the Living Dead. Not going into specifics because we only knew each other, and you know only each other, and you don’t want to hear boring stories of glory days. But I did realize something; I don’t want to go back and do it all over. Oh no, not at all. I had some really bad times in high school. But I do want to go to the Rufe’s basement.
The Rufe’s lived across the street from my apartment complex. The Rufe’s daughter periodically rounded up all the orphans living there and herded us into the basement. It became our hangout, our sanctuary. Home. Mrs. Rufe fussed over us and fed us and Mr. Rufe teased us and was always there to listen and it was a family. It’s why I love That 70s Show so much. It was just like that.
I had two other safe havens: Don’s house and the Willingboro Karate Club, and I moved between all three of them seeking shelter from the storm (enough with the song references!). I guess I had a rather traumatic childhood and adolescence, and it was the Rufe’s, Don, and Forrest who helped me survive it.
But as much as I would really like going back to the Rufe’s basement, the current owners would probably call the police. And I’m not really sure what that would accomplish, anyway. No doubt, it’s now filled with old furniture and our wall carvings have been plastered over, so what’s to see? Somebody’s old stash hidden behind the water heater?
No. I think what I really want, what everyone wants, is the sense of it, the peace and satisfaction of it. It was a place where all your crazy friends did crazy things and you just wished the night would go on forever. Man, I miss that. You do, too. All of you had a place like that. It might have even been your home. And we all want to go back.
And. you know, you may think I’m crazy, but that next morning when I was sitting on my brother’s porch sipping his really sucky coffee thinking about all this, I heard a word, probably in my mind but I’d like to think it was whispered in my ear: “Wait.” Just have to wait. In whatever method and at whatever time, we’re all going back to the Rufe’s basement. Don, Drew, and Tom are all there now, warming the place up.
So Jane, George, Butch, Bob, Jayne, Selina, Karen, Wash, Kathy, Carol, Marie, Kevin? I’ll see you all there. Got dibs on the big couch.
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I have a couple of ongoing prescriptions with the VA. To refill them, I can either mail in a refill request, and they will mail the medicines back, or I can drive 40-something miles to my nearest VA facility and ask for a refill … which they will then mail to me. Apparently, the VA is convinced every one of us troops enlisted circa the Spanish American war and needs to maintain its services at a technical level we can understand.
Our generation invented the computer, ya know.
Anyway, I was perusing the forty or fifty thermal printed sheets of instructions and warnings and side effects that come with every prescription these days because, Lord Knows, we can’t figure out that taking an entire bottle of digitalis with a half quart of vodka might be detrimental, when I noted there was an option to the Post Office refill system: refill online. Really? You mean, there’s a 21st century solution? My goodness, what’s next, bandages and drugs instead of leeches and poultices?
So I go to the recommended VA website which is very happy that I am there and asks me to login with my VA credentials, which I can’t remember. No problem, hit ‘forgot username’ and that very much pleased the site and they said, Great! In order to retrieve it, use your DS Logon.
Oh. No.
For those of you uninitiated in the ways of military administration, the DS Logon is the single most complicated, irrational, incomprehensible and downright evil means ever devised for accessing military sites, especially those containing personal or personnel information. Like your pay and benefits. DS stands for “Defense Self-Service ” which already clues you about the overthinking involved. The DoD is so terrified someone will gain unauthorized access to a veteran’s information that they make it nigh on impossible to do so. It’s easier to break into Ft. Knox than log into your own account.
First, there’s the user name. Which you would think would be easy, but there’s lots of people who have served in the military and there’s lots of similarity in names. In my unfortunate case, my Dad and I both served and I am named after him, the only separation of our two identities being “Jr.” Which DS Logon does not recognize. When I first established my account, you have no idea how long it took me to convince the Pentagon computer system I wasn’t some nefarious Nazi spy trying to obtain information on a WW2 veteran who died 20 years ago. Ve vill get back that Luger you took during the Battle of the Bulge, American! Finally, it compared the differences in our service numbers, which I had to provide from his old records and relented. Then it asked for a password.
Oh. No.
The DS Logon password is a cruel and hateful string of nonsensical letters numbers symbols whathaveyou that bear no logic nor ability to memorize. It’s akin to the symbols you see above a cartoon character’s head to simulate profanity. The password has to be sixteen characters long, cannot contain a recognizable word or sequence, and must have some capital letters and the aforementioned numbers and symbols. And you have to type it out twice before it gets accepted. And it changes every six months.
Guess how long it’s been since I’ve logged on?
So, yeah, password expired, so I have to log on with the old one to get a new one. Fortunately, I wrote the old one down and entered it … and got rejected. Several times, almost to the ‘permanent lockout’ point, so I said ‘figidabowdit’ and hit ‘forgot password.’
First thing DS wanted, my username, So I provided it. “Wait a minute … that’s the name of a WW2 veteran who passed 20 years ago! Are you a Nazi spy?”
Oh, Lordy. A few iterations later, it finally went, “Oh, THAT D Krauss. Alright, let’s answer your security questions.”
Oh, Lordy.
DS security questions are not the conventional ones you expect, like your Mom’s maiden name and the name of your first pet. Oh no. They’re along the lines of, “What is the compression ratio of a rebuilt 1967 Dodge Charger?” “Who was the first member of the Moldavan royal family?” and “What was your Dad’s third assignment after his first release from active duty?” So there are real answers to these questions, not ones you just type in, and DS knows. It knows. So, after some research, I was able to answer the ones they asked me. And, glory hallelujah, I got to change my password.
Except the nonsensical sixteen characters I selected were suspiciously close to a previous password I used about seven years ago, so no go. Since they are all nonsensical, there is no way to know what you used before, so I changed my mental algorithm to something never used before and came up with a series that passed muster. Immediately wrote it down because it’s not possible to memorize. So I’m in.
Great! VA says. What took you so long? Whatever, you can now access the VA site. Which I did. Great! Good to see you! To verify you are who you say you are, use your DS Logon to proceed.
Grumble, grumble, grumble, there. First use of new password.
Good, great! Do you want to see your prescriptions? You do? Well, use your DS Logon to access it!
Nonsensical symbols floating above my head like a cartoon character, then logged on again with only one mishap that caused the US to go into Defcon 3 and threatened me with a drone strike if I got the password wrong again. So I was real careful.
So you want us to renew your prescriptions? Great! Guess what you have to do?
Five. More. Times. Before I got the renewal confirmed. Expecting a drone strike at any moment.
