Martin Beck's Loveless Marriage I was supposed to be making music with some friends of mine on New Year's Eve, but then we had four or five inches of light fluffy snow and they all cancelled, so I suppose I could be miffed, but then again, things turned out pretty well.

My brother Rob and I initiated a great New Year's tradition a long time ago when we gave all the dogs a piece of baloney and went to bed early. It's actually more fun to celebrate New Year's Day, the first day of the year.

So I filled up the woodbox (it's nasty, windy cold), futzed around the house, came up with several brilliant ideas for the GoNOMAD Travel Website, and lined up six new blog entries including 'Ernie Pyle's Private Hell' and 'Tip O'Neill meets JFK.'

Now that's exciting stuff. But the most exciting is curling up and reading about Martin Beck's loveless marriage. The Martin Beck series by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo is definitely on a par with the Maigret series by George Simenon.

Both authors do extensive research in law enforcement techniques and prodedures and create an engaging, personal atmosphere. So you're interested not just in whether this crime is solved, but how it is solved by these characters.

Martin Beck is a Swedish homicide detective who is unhappy at home and has indigestion all the time. A super fun guy to hang out with.

But when a dredging crew finds a naked body in a Swedish lake and nobody in the entire country can figure out who she is, it is Martin Beck who identifies her and even finds the man who murdered her, and it's fascinating to follow the process step by step in the first book, Roseanna.

Part of it involves sending requests to policemen all over the world to collect travelers' photos and movies of their trip on a Swedish canal boat. And some lady from Michigan has movies showing the victim with the guy who turns out to be the killer.

Now I'm on to another book in the series, The Fire Engine That Disappeared. And there's another great one: The Man Who Went Up in Smoke where Martin Beck goes to Hungary and finds a detective a lot like himself behind the Iron Curtain.

But I have to say, they're all great, The Abominable Man, The Man on the Balcony -- and there's a bunch more.

I especially like Beck's colleague, the man of action Gunvald Larsson, who you know is going to crash through a door at some point. What's amazing is that he always crashes through a door at exactly the right time. That's the trick, right there.

Oh and by the way, Martin winds up getting a divorce and finding a hot girlfriend.  ¶ 7:12 PM 2 comments

  Way to Go, Pickering! When I heard my old college chum Kris Pickering had been elected to the Nevada Supreme Court, it went a long way toward restoring my faith in democracy.

Anyone who has ever played bridge with Kris will tell you the voters of Nevada have made a very wise choice. Playing bridge with Kris, your best strategy is to grab the seat opposite her so as to be her partner.

I remember so well playing with Kris and Geoff Walker and Larry Maloney in the lavishly comfortable crypt of a building erected by Cornelius Vanderbuilt which we had appropriated, for a time, in the name of the revolution, but I guess that's another story.

What I would give to sit down to bridge with those three extraordinary individuals.

Pickering was a poet and a presidential scholar in spite of having cut most of her classes in high school, and she had been featured in Seventeen Magazine.

"Show us how you feel when you write a poem," the photographer said.

Kris and I were in an Old English literature class taught by the estimable Dewey Faulkner. I did my paper on Piers the Ploughman and she did hers on the Pearl poet. We had lots of discussions of the meaning of the "precious pearl withouten spot."

It's based on the biblical story of the jeweler who sells all his jewels for a single pearl.

After many years I realize that Kris was the pearl. Her dad was a wonderful man who passed away just a couple of years ago, a physician with a true calling to help others, and he loved her dearly, as well he might. And the love that is expressed in 'The Pearl', I think, has to be the love of a father for his daughter.

This came to me as Sarah was growing up. I was giving her a bath when she was two, and I looked at her and thought, "My precious pearl withouten spot!"

Anyway, Pickering had the good sense to dump me. Twice! And she was right both times.

So you see, the newest justice on the Nevada Supreme Court has a long history of making wise and sensible decisions.  ¶ 8:32 PM 1 comments

  We Laugh and Laugh I go see my mom at lunchtime every day, and we laugh and laugh. She has lost all her marbles and doesn't know who I am, but I never quiz her (Alzheimer's patients hate that) and I pay close attention to whatever she has to say, and they like that.

Lots of Alzheimer's patients I worked with preserved their old memories, but just couldn't form new memories. Sally lost the whole works really fast. Back in the summer of 2007 we both remarked that Barack Obama was the real deal when we met him up in Conway, New Hampshire.

Since that time, she has lost almost all her memories, old and new. When Sally, a professor of literature, could no longer recognize Shakespeare, I wondered how much further this could go, and I learned from friends that it can go much further, to the breakdown of hygiene and then toileting and then nursing home.

That's why I count our blessings: Sally's in her own house and still takes a bath and brushes her teeth and changes her underwear as far as I know. And she's happy. That's what I'm really thankful for.

I visited her today and we worked on a jigsaw puzzle and she said she had to go upstairs.

"I forgot my ring," she said. "I was washing my hands."

She came back down with the ring on. "Is that your wedding ring?" I asked.

"Yes. But I don't remember..."

"Getting married?" I supplied.

"Yes," she said.

"I'm the same way," I said. "I go out for a couple of beers and I wake up in Shanghai with a full beard."

By this time we're both laughing our heads off. Somehow we get around to last night's movie. I get the movies from the library, but my dad Bob always gets the rap. She hates them all. If there are ladies shaking their bottoms, she hates that. If there's a lot of shooting, she hates that. She even hated ET. How cold you hate that? I thought she would love it.

And the pickings at the South Deerfield library for VCR tapes are getting a bit thin.

So Sally is talking about last night's movie. "There were these people," Sally says, "and they put on clothes to look like cats. It was the stupidest thing I've ever seen."

At this point we're just about rolling on the floor laughing.

"I don't know," I said. "Sounds pretty funny to me."  ¶ 8:33 PM 1 comments

  Visiting the Old Brownstone At reunions and other gatherings like that where you run into a lot of people you haven't seen for a while, I got sick of asking people what they were doing and started asking them what they were reading. I think you find out a lot more about them that way.

I never know what I'm going to be reading, but once I get going on a good book, if I'm visiting somewhere in the dead of winter and I left it in the car, I'll get up and get dressed and go out and get it, even though there are lots of other good books around.

Lately I'm rereading old Nero Wolfe books by Rex Stout. It's such a pleasure to visit his old brownstone in New York. It's located on West 35th Street, probably in the 900 block, which according to the maps is in the middle of the East River, but don't you believe it.

Wolfe lives there with his employee, Archie Goodwin, his cook, Fritz Brenner, and then the guy who helps him take care of the 10,000 orchids on the roof, Theodore Horstmann, who seems to have his own place after the first few books.

Wolfe weighs about a seventh of a ton (286 pounts) and never leaves his house on business, and so, according to the wacky premise, Archie Goodwin, who is very dapper, a good dancer, and an experienced gumshoe, ambles around talking to people and gathering evidence and comes back and reports to Wolfe, who then solves the crime because he is a genius.

I happen to know a guy who weighs in at a seventh of a ton and is a genius, so maybe that's why I'm digging up these old books.

Anyway, Wolfe loves to drink beer and he's a gourmand and a gourmet, so we'll hear him in the kitchen in a long debate with Fritz about fennel or something. He once endured the indiginity of a trip to the Kanawha Spa, where, naturally, he had to solve a murder, simply to get the recipe for saucisse minuit.

I love the routine of the household and the interplay of the characters, and the dynamic between Archie, who is always known by his first name, and Wolfe, who never is. The only guy who ever calls him Nero in all the 30-odd books is his old friend from Montenegro, Marko Vulcic, who ran Rusterman's, the finest restaurant in New York, until he got murdered...

It's an exploration of how our imagination and our creative faculties interact with our practical, problem-solving faculties. In most people the creative side is like a child and the practical side is like an adult, but Wolfe's child genius has grown up by making certain compromises, including allowing Archie to pester him to work when the bank balance gets low.

That's the other fun part about these books: you're always wondering not only who did it, but also how Wolfe will end up collecting a big fee to pay the fertilizer bill for all those orchids, and Archie's salary, and Fritz', not to mention the grocery bill.

And Archie, who narrates, is a genius himself, at times. It is he who coined the adage, "There are times when a principle should take a nap" -- a profound truth if ever there was one.

Archie is also an appreciater of feminine beauty (which Wolfe is not, though in one book he seems to have a daughter) and he writes something somewhere -- I wish I could remember this right -- something about not liking women who wiggle their hips when they walk.

Later in the book he meets a woman who "walks like a Prussian drillmaster." Ouch. I knew a woman like that once, and if she asked me to push a peanut with my nose across the rotunda of the Capitol Building, I would definitely consider it.

Some of the peripheral characters get kind of cartoony, and plots fall down once in a while, but for gross tonnage of pure enjoyment over years and years, reading after reading, Rex Stout is hard to beat, and I know so many friends who love these books too.

By far the best one is the first, Fer de Lance. It's a real masterpiece.  ¶ 8:20 PM 0 comments

  If You've Got It, Give It I've been to two Alcoholics Anonymous meetings as a condition of probation on my DWI conviction, and both meetings have given me invaluable insights into what is beautiful and uplifting about the human race.

Leaving aside their value for me as a person, they inspired the journalist in me and even awoke my dormant -- not to say moribund -- inner novelist. Such poignant stories, so beautifully expressed.

As for the journalist, here is a program that saves millions of lives and enriches millions and millions more with an operating budget of zero. Think of all the social service programs dedicated to helping people (I don't belittle their efforts in any way) and here's one that costs nothing.

I heard a guy stand up and say he owed his life to AA and there are millions and millions like him all over the world. Then think of his family and all those other families. And think of all the crime that is being prevented. More than 70 percent of all violent crime is directly attributable to alcohol.

And it's all thanks to two guys named Bob and Bill.

My moribund inner novelist wakes up later in the meeting when a group of alcoholics and drug addicts addressed a question posed by a new member: What do you do instead of drinking and using?

We hear a lot of good answers from playing the guitar to crocheting to volunteering, and one woman says she gives people rides. "If you've got it, give it," she says.

I think that says a lot about the beauty of the human race, and a lot about what's missing in American society. We need to give each other rides.

I think everyone, whether they drink or not, should go to an AA meeting. That way, if they ever know somebody who needs help, they can tell them about this network of helpers that is always there if they are needed. Alcoholism is not something anyone should tackle alone.

You can't go purely as an observer; you have to bring yourself. But with that one caveat, I guarantee you'll learn a lot.  ¶ 8:49 PM 1 comments

  A Message from a Weary Pilgrim I guess every journalist can remember their first by-line. A by-line is always a bit of a thrill, even after thirty years in the business.

A slightly cooler thrill is listening to a senator deliver a speech or a statement that you wrote for them on statewide television. I'll never forget that. I'll bet watching a good theater company perform a play you wrote might be cooler still.

But as a journalist/thrill seeker, I've found something way beyond these egocentric thrills -- the thrill of helping a weary pilgrim.

Back in 2005 my friend Susanne Hoder went to the Holy Land and spoke with Christians, Moslems and Jews about the problems there. She was part of a peace delegation from the United Methodist Church of Rhode Island, and she asked people in Palestine what kind of assistance would be most welcome. She was thinking they might want stethoscopes, or x-ray machines.

They said, "Tell our story."

Susanne was raised on a farm in Georgia, and when she was a little girl, members of the Jewish faith came to her congregation to say, respectfully, that racial segregation was wrong. Martin Luther King, in his Letter From a Birmingham Jail, acknowledged the work of Herschel Goldhirsch, later known as Harry Golden, in advancing the cause of justice.

I met Susanne when she drove all the way from Rhode Island to address a group of eight people in Hadley, and I could see that she was tired. But I could also see her passion. She was not going to quit. She reminded me of Natalia Solzhenitsyn who came to America in 1979 to ask Christians here, "Where were you when our church was being destroyed?"

So I arranged for Sony Stark to make a video of Susanne that we could show to a wider audience, people like me who know next to nothing about the conflict in the Holy Land. I was thinking it would at least give her some more time to spend with her family.

I know no one cares a whit about my opinions about the occupation of Palestine. Why should they?

But I truly believe every American should hear what Susanne Hoder has to say, and now it's going to happen. Our video is airing on Amherst Public Television soon, Northampton's next, and I have twenty copies in hand for public access stations all over the United States.

You can bet I'll send one to my hero, Rachel Maddow, and don't be surprised if you see Susanne on Oprah. Susanne's efforts are supported by true friends of Israel all over the world, including Holocaust survivors.

I you feel like it, you could give me and Susanne and Herschel Goldhirsch a hand with this. There's a public access station in your city or town, and as a citizen you can ask them to air whatever you want. Email me and I'll send you a copy.

Peace is possible, but it's up to us.  ¶ 7:45 PM 1 comments

  Lucky Lindbergh Communes with the Spirits










  ¶ 6:18 PM 1 comments

  The Tragedy of the Mumbai Attacks The world has watched with shock and horror as a trained cadre of demented men acted out scenes of destruction they had no doubt seen in action movies and imagined themselves to be heroes in the cause of righteousness.

We have no evidence that they were deluded by patriotism or religion or the cause of world revolution, but chances are it was one of those three.

I don't believe this was an attack by any country on another country. I believe it was yet another case of murderous crimes by demented people, usually men, with guns and grenades and other implements of destruction, deluded by some righteous cause or other.

I can only hope that India, a more mature democracy than ours, will teach the US and the world a lesson and treat these atrocities as crimes, a matter for the police -- not just the Indian police, but the police of the world.

So many conflicts in the world can be seen in a completely different way if we view them as conflicts between the people who want war and the people who want peace.

The demented people who want war, and the peace-loving people of the world.

The US would be much better off if we had taken this view of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Now, clearly the Taliban had supported the criminals responsible and deserved to be overthrown, but it is just as clear that the attacks of 9/11 were not an attack by the people of Afghanistan on the people of the United States.

It was an attack by an international group of criminals and we should have concentrated on bringing them to justice. Hind sight is 20/20, they say, but I said the same before the invasion of Iraq.

But if the government of India proceeds as I expect they will, I believe the whole world can learn a lesson about seeking justice. I hope they will ask and receive the cooperation of law enforcement all over the world and find out who planned and carried out these attacks.

Not just for the sake of revenge, but to find out how we can protect decent people from crimes like this. And to show the world how justice can be done without pitting nation against nation. And to show how glorifying war creates horrendous crimes all over the world.

I don't know this for a fact, but I am very confident that there are people in the Indian government who ask themselves the question every good Christian ought to ask three or four times a day:

"What would Gandhi do?" I definitely do not have the answer, but it's always a good question to ask.  ¶ 9:10 PM 2 comments