Picking Cotton

The latest in my incredibly insatiable appetite for books- or is it my insatiable appetite to get other people to read the books I think they should? Hard to say.

Enough questioning my motives. This one’s important:

Jennifer Thompson-Cannino was a college student who was raped at knifepoint in her apartment shortly before she graduated. She not only managed to survive the attack, but she memorized her attacker’s features, then escaped and gave a detailed enough description for the police to make a sketch, release it to the public, and find a suspect who matched it. Jennifer then identified him in a photo array, then a line-up, and her identification was so positive that the man was convicted in a matter of hours. His name was Ronald Cotton. 

He was the wrong man. 

Here’s what’s most amazing about this story: Ronald Cotton himself. After eleven years of prison for a crime he never committed, this man’s grace and forgiveness to all the people involved in his conviction will — I almost guarantee it– leave you stunned. The story is written from first Jennifer’s point of view, then from Ronald’s, and then as the DNA testing is about to finally go forward, it switches back and forth between the two of them. Two years after his release, they met, and Jennifer finds her own way to forgiveness because of Ronald’s influence and friendship. 

Now, the two of them speak together about the importance of better testing availibility, better eyewitness identification procedures, and their own story– so poigniantly put in the subtitle–of injustice and redemption.

Read this, seriously, and if you’ve never heard of The Innocence Project, then get over there a.s.a.p. and learn about it. Sign up for the e-newsletter, too, so you know when you’re supposed to be zipping emails to your elected officials.

BTW if you’re in Ohio– and you don’t know about Senator David Goodman’s latest sponsored bill, SB 77, check it out, then write to your senator and tell them they’d better get on board because you personally do not want innocent people in prison and guilty ones on the street. And tell them you’d really like an amendment that requires sequential lineups because that would help a lot. Standard lineups force people to think well, he looks most like the guy– at least more than all these other guys–so that must be him. When in fact, looking one at a time and answering “yes” or “no” has a much higher degree– much higher–of accuracy in eyewitness identification. And post-conviction DNA testing shouldn’t be subjected to a prosecutor’s decision, it should just be allowed. Really, how does this hurt anyone?

All right. That’s your book for the month. Get reading. And get writing. Because your state may not have a David Goodman, so you’ll have to make your senator become one.

 

Food

If you want to change your life, consider this: In Defense of Food An Eater’s Manifesto.

Well, I love eating. I never had a manifesto before, given that it brings all things Unabomber to mind. But it’s safe to say I probably needed one. Thanks to Michael Pollan, now I have a delicious one.

How’s this for fascinating: Back when margarine was first put on the market, the government tried to force the manufacturers to dye it pink. Pink! Can you imagine? Who would want to eat something that was supposed to be like butter–and wasn’t even yellow?

Well, that was kind of the point. Pink, so as not to confuse the consumer who might mistakenly believe he was actually eating butter. (Said consumer must have been deprived of butter all his life in order to be confused, but that’s beside the point.)  And surprisingly, the margarine manufacturers mounted a vigorous defense–successful.

You have to read this to believe what’s been going on in the U.S. all these years, and even after you read it, you still won’t want to believe it, but let me just put it this way. Here’s what’s changed in my life in the week after I read Pollan’s book:

1) An infernal cheapskate — a woman who studied the Tightwad Gazette as if she could find salvation in its pages — is now paying $2.59 for a dozen eggs. That’s right, and they’re awesome. And the chickens don’t mind either.

2) Said cheapskate also logged onto localharvest.org, found herself a CSA near her, and shelled out over $400 to buy a share of a farm. We’re going to pick up our share of the harvest once a week all summer. And learn how to prepare vegetables we’ve never brought into the house before.

3) She tossed all her coupons for fruit rollups. And bought actual fruit instead for the three money suckers to eat.

4) Learned how to make yogurt. It’s actually easy. And everyone loves it.

Here’s the scary part: The CDC reported in 2003 that one third of children born in the year 2000 will develop diabetes in their lifetimes. 39% if your child born that year happens to be a daughter. Do you remember hearing about that? Do you believe they said will develop not could develop diabetes?

Read this book. I’m serious. If you don’t have time to read it, get the audio version– check your library to see if they have digital checkouts of such things– and listen to it. And don’t believe anything you hear from experts about food again.

And then eat something. It’ll be yummy. And one day your kids may look at an ingredients list and protest: “That’s not food.”

 

Facebook

It’s official. I’m hooked. After all these years of ignoring Facebook, except with general interest in the news, etc., I activated, and I’m getting friend requests every day. It’s hilarious. 

What I love the most is the people that I didn’t think would be really into this, posting a lot. And somehow it’s funny, seeing what everybody is doing regularly, even across the country.

I can see this becoming a real problem.

 

Puppies and Financial Considerations

Two months ago, I lost my dog to congestive heart failure, which came on rather suddenly. (Note that if your dog is ever coughing, a vet visit and x-rays are immediately in order. Dogs don’t get coughs, they get heart disease and other bad things.) It took about a month before the kids started asking for a new dog. Normally we visit the animal shelters for dogs, because, well, that’s where they keep them. We already own four cats (an accident), two gerbils, one mouse (although with the new cat door, sometimes we own multiple mice, temporarily at least. We’re just not always aware of it). We also keep a handful of fish, and as a result, my “pets” budget is usually drained dry. Clearly we’re sort of okay with a lot of animals in the house, but my first thought about animals usually is, “What’s it gonna cost?” (My second thought, unfortunately, is usually “Ah, what the hell.”)

The fish aren’t such a burden, thanks to Pet Guys, an online store that sells aquarium foam filters for a third the price of the local shop. Gerbils and mice aren’t too bad, but twenty dollars for a cat-proof lid here, another bag of ground corn for bedding there, means you’d better consider it in the budget. One of the cats cost me over a hundred dollars recently for an abcessed cat bite. (We’re quadrupally exposed for those fun incidents.)

Hershey the giant dog

We didn’t go to the shelter–$100 plus adoption fees–but not because of the cost. We heard about a year old chocolate lab whose owners worked full time and couldn’t really give him the attention he needed. We have five people, including three teenagers, and someone’s home nearly all the time. He’s huge, though–huge! 85 pounds, so this dog eats four cups of dog food a day. Four cups! That’s more than twice what Foxy ate. His name is Hershey, and he also takes twice the dosage of Frontline Plus. Another cost saving measure of mine is extra large dog tubes of Frontline, syringed out in mililiters for the cats. (This is perfectly safe and saves an enormous amount of money.) But Hershey will need 2.86 ml each month, plus a dose of Heartgard ($8 per monthly pill).  (I found out they sell generic heartworm prevention in Australia, though. Nice shop at Petproductsontheweb.com. Free shipping.)   

Plus all that food! We haven’t had him a month yet, but I can’t see a bag of dog food lasting that long on that appetite!

He’s also chewed up one of my fancy snap-n-seal food storage containers, so that’s a check in the loss column. Then we had to pick up a batch of stuffed animals at the thrift store–he just tossed a stuffed rabbit in my lap a few minutes ago. Soggy.

All in all, he’s a lot of fun. And he’s fairly well behaved for a puppy. Except when he puts his front paws in the kitchen sink to lick the dishes.

Perspective shot-- average sized 13 year old boy vs. big giant dog

 

Maxed Out!

Here’s a guy who was studying hard, long before the teacher announced there’d be a test– James Scurlock, author of the companion volume to his documentary, both entitled Maxed Out.  Anyone who’s held a credit card in their hot little hands probably knows the subject of these projects, but what’s amazing is the prescience with which Scurlock announced the house of cards Americans were living in. I haven’t seen

the film yet, it’s on hold at the library, but I read the book last night and today, and with a copyright date of 2007, plus the lag time of the publishing industry, you have to be sort of astonished at the questions Scurlock asks. Questions like: how long can we sustain this faulty American Dream of living on credit, backed up only by the illusion that home prices only ever go up?

The answer, as it turns out, is until about the middle of 2008. 

Reading the last chapter made me recall the days when I’d get credit card offers, with limits up to about $10,000. I’d open them up and shake my head, asking my husband if these people realized that I didn’t have a job. The answer, of course, is yes, they knew all the important things like that, because credit isn’t based on your ability to repay it, the way it used to be, it’s based on your history of making payments on the debt. I remember when my mother couldn’t get a credit card, because she was divorced, because she didn’t make all that much money, because it would be difficult for her to pay back the unsecured loan. I often wonder how much better off we were growing up that way. I didn’t have everything I wanted– white leather Nike’s with a powder blue swoosh come to mind immediately–but in the early years my mom’s little family wasn’t given the opportunity to overextend ourselves to the point of collapse. We couldn’t buy a house for years, because she couldn’t qualify for a mortgage that she couldn’t repay. Not a problem anymore, in the days–or maybe they’re now the former days?– of interest only, creative financing. If home prices were limited to a person’s actual ability to repay a mortgage, they never would have flown so high in the first place, would they? Okay, you wouldn’t have made a couple hundred thousand on your 4,000 square foot house in Vegas in one year’s time, but then again, you wouldn’t be heading to bankruptcy court either… unless maybe that new law means you can’t do that either.

The problem is, as Scurlock says in his book, bankers used to understand that simple truth of human nature: If you give someone credit, they will probably use it.  And if you give them more credit, and more and more, then you create a trap that Scurlock descriptively refers to as the bear-trap–I’ve seen a picture of one of those things, and felt it from Citi, Chase, and all the others. I commented to my husband last night that there’s nothing so peaceful as sitting in a financial firestorm with no debt outside of a reasonable mortgage, and money in the bank. Not enough money, he pointed out. Where’s your Dave Ramsey fully funded emergency fund? Working on it.

In the end of the book, the funny part is… well, funny might not be the word exactly…that all the regulations that banks once were forced to operate under –you have to read this book to remember them– were largely put in place to protect banks, to protect consumers, and they were instituted as a result of, well, the Great Depression, and the fallout of unregulated lending of that infamous era.

God willing, we’re headed back to a time of better regulation. For now, I’m heading over to Americans for Fairness in Lending to see what else there is to do. The only people who don’t have lobbyists are the ones with illegal arbitration clauses in their credit card agreements.

By the way, if you’re in Ohio and you haven’t voted yet, the correct answer is Yes on Issue 5.

 

oh my goodness.. it’s Erin Hunter

 

Quite a thrill

Yesterday was the most exciting day of my daughter’s young life. Yes, Victoria Holmes, aka, Erin Hunter was in town, and for close to three hours we were permitted to bask in her glory.

If you don’t know who Erin Hunter is, you must not be spending much time with any tweens lately.  She’s the main author and originator of the Warriors series, which causes eleven year old girls to spend inordinate amounts of time on YouTube making tribute videos to Firestar and other Warrior cats with similarly bizzare names. (Fun fact–Victoria is tired of coming up with these names and now all the fans create them for her. Someone compiles all the suggestions into a spreadsheet for her and when she needs a new cat name, she just opens up her spreadsheet and picks one.) This is in between devouring new books in the series. I just found out there’s a Warriors Wiki out there in cyberspace.

I was planning on bringing my own reading for this event (The Good Guy by Dean Koontz, very nice), but it turns out Victoria Holmes is British, which is always fun to listen to, she’s absolutely hilarious, and she talks to children like they’re adults, which was a hoot.  She also shushes them sharply when they talk out of turn.  What’s not to love?

And she dislikes cats immensly. Nasty little creatures, she called them.  The kids she called greedy, which is why she has to have help churning out these books. 

I wish I had an idea for childrens books, just to get those rapt adoring fans. That was something to see.

Cover to Cover, waiting for a signature

 

Oxygen

In the never-ending quest to find a really great novel, I tend to consume a lot. I don’t consume much junk–at least by my definition–anymore, because I’m past thirty-five, which was the age I stopped finishing everything I started. There’s not as much time left, and I guess I subconsciously knew that.

And every once in a while I find one that sucks me in and makes me stay up too late, read during the daytime (a strict ban in my life) and parks me on the couch when I should be doing something else like cleaning this rathole up before my mother shows up unannounced again. Or worse, my aunt.

Slick was that kind of novel. That one kept me reading through dinner, which is not technically allowed in my house. I try not to break the rules I make too often, because it sort of usurps my own authority, but with Daniel Price’s hilarity rising to yet another crescendo every time I turned a page, I pressed on in anticipation and fixed the behavior problems of the family later. Besides, at that rate of reading, we’re only talking about checking out for a day and a half. That was four years ago.

This week, joy of joys, I found Oxygen. The irony here was I had just finished reading Pushed, a non-fiction work subtitled “The Painful Truth About Childbirth and Modern Maternity Care.” Having birthed the last two babies at home myself, this was right up my alley. But it must be said that coming off the dim view of doctors to pick up a novel about a doctor, a doctor involved in a medical malpractice suit over the death of a young girl– an anesthesiologist no less, one of those doctors who in her spare time performs epidurals on laboring women in too much pain from Pit Drips to survive another second– it’s a testament to Ms. Cassella’s golden keyboards that she sucked me into the hospital again, willingly and enthusiastically.

Try reading the first page and see if her words of breathing don’t make you want more. There’s a wonderful story behind that, full of description that set my writers’ envy on full tilt, characters who have depth and breadth of fully human beings, and a gut wrenching ending that a writer with less courage would never have inflicted on her heroine.

In my opinion, few have deserved to reach that fairyland world of published fiction more in years.

 

Fleecing little dreamers…

A guy in my church sent this around. It’s called The Cult of House Worship by Thomas Crowther.
Favorite quote: “Fleecing little dreamers with no safety nets and no financial acumen is a terrific business, but a risky one.” You can read it here:

The Cult of House Worship

And then come back.

I think it’s interesting– mostly because of his point about predatory lending, fleecing the dreamers, so to speak. Right now they’re trying to pass a bill in Ohio that would effectively put the Check Cashers out of business, and the uproar is unbelievable. I’m writing all my reps about it, and if it passes– and the governor swears he’ll sign it– I’ll lose a third of my income within a year, since as a guy I work with said recently, it sucks that our job security is based on other people’s poverty. And perhaps some fleecing, as well.

And I will so gladly find other ways of making money, or spend less, if it meant they’d stop selling two week little dreams to all the people in my neighborhood with ‘no financial acumen’.

I’ve just found all of this interesting from the stand point of how much debt can this country carry along… and how much the entire economy is built and depends on consumerism; and since it does, the only answer seems to be that we have to make people buy more — because what else could happen? Our personal experience currently, going from debtors to savers, has me thinking about this in a microcosmic way. There’s a very real crunch in the middle where it’s like… well, no money on non-necessaries at all. (My iPod broke the week of this budgeting transformation. The one thing I could not live without. I honestly believe God was making sure I was serious. )

And since then, the only ‘items’ I’ve purchased in two weeks is a wallet, on clearance at Target, for 4.88 (5.21 with tax), because the Velcro wore out on my old one and now that I’m carrying around cash for food and gasoline, I feel the need to have a secure closure on the thing. And six pairs of socks at Big Lots, for $4.00 ($4.27 with tax) for #2 son. And one new exhaust system for a paid for car. ($310.93) That’s our consumerism for the week. So much for the Economic Stimulus payment, which is sitting in the savings account minus one exhaust system. Earning interest.

My point is that for our family now, trying to make the switch from being debtors to savers means that while in the past we spent money we didn’t have, and in the future we might spend money we do have, in between those times we’re buying one wallet, six pairs of socks, and a muffler. And I don’t think we’ll be needing mufflers for a while now.

But we will not be a family of debtors, enslaved to credit card and car payments that equal our mortgage, and threaten it besides. We are not doing much to keep the American economy going. But I couldn’t see how we could keep our family going the way it was, and I honestly don’t see how we can keep the country going as it is.

They may put the check cashers out of business in Ohio… but they can’t legislate an ethos of living within your means. Especially when it won’t help the country out of a recession, so there’s not much governmental incentive to suggest such things. Instead we send people money to get them out shopping–knowing damn well people in America spend more than they make, so of course they’ll spend more than they get.

I’m no economist, but if there’s some people like me–and much as I like to disbelieve it, I don’t think I’m terribly unique– they’re looking around and going, whoa. This is not working. Not for me, not for my family, and not for America.

And if they do something about that– what happens to our economy that is utterly dependent on them spending more than they earn?
I think there’s a crunch time in there before it gets better. Feels like it in this microcosm, I’ll tell you that. But it feels more peaceful than credit.

Ironically, from what I’ve been reading lately, the last time people couldn’t bear to go into debt? After the Great Depression.

That’s not what the article’s really about. It’s really about greed. But I do think it ties together.

 

Sigler Fools Day–the Adventure Begins

April 1st dawned gray and chilly, but the dreariness of the Ohio weather would not dampen our enthusiasm nor deter us from our mission. The schedule was packed full; only a brief half-hour available at noon to fulfill our quest. A scramble of activity before and after, but the mission deserved our sacrifices, and Scott Sigler, our unwavering devotion.

Soon, we spotted the destination, the site where the dawning of the new era would be manifested. There was no parade, no brass band playing to herald the arrival of the new age. All appeared less than extraordinary.

We knew different. Inside, we checked the places of honor, disappointed that the likes of lesser artists were displayed in plain view. Even the custodians of the symbol of the new dynasty seemed unaware of the true value of the object we sought, the true value of what they stored inside their sacred walls, blind to the power it represented, and frankly, not even certain of its exact location.

But we would be deterred. Like all great pieces of art, its worth was under appreciated and underestimated. Perhaps our seeking demonstrated to the custodians that proper respect should be paid. (Or at least slightly rearranging the table to move the stack of books to the corner spot. It was something.)

Our quest was over. The new era has begun. We have witnessed –and help to make– history in a Barnes and Noble’s bookstore.

We are INFECTED.

 

Sorry for the laziness

I didn’t even want to look at the last time I posted here, it’d just make me feel guilty. I’ve been flip-flopping between writing this book– or ditching it and writing another one I’m thinking about– or pushing everybody involved to get the podcast going on my second novel. So as is par for the course for me, I’m sort of doing all three and not very well.

I think since I’m feeling ambivalent about Iced Out, which is normal midway through a novel, I’m losing touch with it. Also got stuck, so that’s probably why I started feeling ambivalent in the first place. Then since I was stuck, the question was whether I should even be doing any of this, is it worth the effort, am I any good at all, yada yada. My friend Nick calls all this boring-to-everyone-in-earshot garbage “Artist’s Angst.” He’s a singer/songwriter and very experienced in the condition and its symptoms, and since he’s actually quite wonderful at what he does, I imagine there’s no correlation between the angst and ability levels. Or maybe it’s inverse– considering the number of people who get rejected at American Idol tryouts, all the while protesting: “I know I can sing!”

I know I can’t sing, so I’m angst-free on that front. As for the writing front, I can’t say.

Meanwhile, I thought I’d throw up a chapter, see if anyone cared, and then make some pizza for my kids.

I will be blogging soon– with pictures this time– because Scott Sigler’s amazing novel Infected will be in bookstores on April 1st. Danny & I are going to B&N on his lunch hour to buy it and prove to Scott that even Buckeye fans have their good points too.

Okay, here it is: Lucky 13. As it turns out, this is kind of lucky, because this scene was the first one I thought of, before I had an idea for the book. My friend Lennox once made a comment about wanting to be in a movie where all his character did was make funny comments about what was going on around him. Whether Henry has turned out to be funny is not a question for me to answer, but I woke up in the middle of the night soon after, with an image of three guys sitting in a restaurant booth, griping about the weather. What the hell they were doing there, I didn’t know until quite some time later, but fortunately I wrote it down that night.

If you like it, let me know! Iced Out, Chapter 13