Lynn L. Clark's Blog: Writing in Retirement, page 2

TV Thrillers

It's September, and new seasons/series are about to air. For fans of thrillers, here are three to check out:

The FX series Trust, which stars Donald Sutherland and Hilary Swank and is directed by Danny Boyle, tells the story of the gruesome kidnapping of John Paul Getty III, the heir to the Gettys' oil billions.

A BBC One series The Bodyguard is a new series from Line Of Duty's Jed Mercurio. It follows Richard Madden's heroic yet volatile war veteran David Budd, who's assigned to protect ambitious Home Secretary Julia Montague, played by Keeley Hawes.

Another BBC One series Killing Eve is a unique take on the cat-and-mouse assassin tale because both assassin and MI5 agent are women. The story follows Sandra Oh's Eve, a "bored MI5 security officer whose desk job does not fulfil her fantasies of being a spy." She becomes obsessed with Jodie Comer's fearsome Villanelle.

Stay tuned for some other upcoming TV thriller series in next week's post.

A Fifth Book in the Works

I've been working on a new novel in one of my favourite settings: a lighthouse. The novel spans forty-five years in the life of the lighthouse keeper Elijah Jones, beginning with the night of his retirement and then looking back to the start of his career.

Here's a sneak preview:

Chapter 1

My name is Elijah Jones, and I've been a lighthouse keeper for forty-five years. You might be surprised to learn that Canada still has fifty manned lighthouses. To my way of thinking, that's good. None of the fancy beacon technology in the automated sites amounts to a hill of beans when you're watching some drunken idiot wash his boat up on the rocks or you find a bloated corpse from a capsized vessel.

I've seen just about everything in the last forty-five years. At one time, I'd hoped one of my sons would take over from me as I'd done for my dad. But they had no interest in it at all. Rob, the oldest, works for the federal government in Ottawa. My younger son Billy is a teacher in Scarborough. The small town nearby the lighthouse couldn't hold their interest. Now they're both happier in the city, and I don't begrudge them that. All in all it's probably for the best.

I've trained my replacement, and he's ready to go. He's a bit arrogant but then so was I forty-five years ago. The isolation will round off his edges and make him more humble. It does that for all of us who've chosen this vocation.

The isolation is probably the worst of it. You get to imagining things: voices, misplaced objects, unexplained sounds.

This is my last night of work. But, truth be told, I'm badly frightened because I fear this may well be my last night on earth if They decide to return.

Chapter 2 : Looking Back

I'm twenty-two years old with a freshly-minted degree in sociology. My father insisted that I get a university education so I'd have some choices in life that he never had. But in the end I came back here—to this lighthouse. I'd known since I was a young boy that this was where I belonged.

Dad's retiring, and he's showing me the ropes this week. He runs through the logbooks he's kept all these years, telling me stories of the past. There're the smugglers who came ashore because they thought the lighthouse beacon was a drop-off signal; the fishing vessel whose crew lost its bearings in the fog; and even a drunken sailor who miraculously survived the sea. My father is the consummate storyteller, and I've listened to his tales since I was a small boy. There's always been a reverence in him: a respect for the sea and its vast energy.

I'm proud to be replacing him although I realize I'm probably a bit too cocky to truly understand the toll this job will extract from me.

Dad seems particularly serious tonight: his last night on the job. “Son, the loneliness of this job will prey on your soul. You won't recognize it at first, but it will creep up on you slowly until you're not sure whether it's night or day or if you're truly alone. The old-timers call it 'the willies'. They always tell the younger ones not to let the willies get them. And that's the best advice I can give you. Don't be afraid. You'll recognize them when they come.”

My dad died a week later in his bed with an expression of terror carved on his features. The coroner dismissed it as rigor mortis. . . .

Remembering Heather Heyer

Heather Heyer died after being plowed down by a car driven by a neo-Nazi in the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally last year.

I watched an interview with Heather Heyer's mother recently and marvelled at her calm demeanour and her stated purpose of continuing her daughter's message of tolerance. This, despite the fact that her daughter's grave has been desecrated by urine and messages such as "now it's okay to be white". As if there was any question that whites still control the majority of wealth and power in the United States.

Donald Trump's race-baiting has had the effect of openly legitimizing hatred and xenophobia. As Spike Lee recently said, "It's no longer a dog whistle. It's a bullhorn.".

Let's remember Heather Heyer by her last post:

If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention.

The Message of George Romero

It's been a little over a year since the passing of George Romero. In honour of his memory, I'm reprinting the post I wrote at the time of his death for my other blog, Behind the Walls of Nightmare. It seems appropriate to remember Romero's work at a time when racism and intolerance have become the norm in America under the presidency of Donald Trump.

It was with great sadness that I learned of the death of George Romero. Although he has been lauded as the master of the modern zombie genre, his signature film Night of the Living Dead was also an important social commentary on the racial divide in the United States, and it is for this that I will always remember him. As a Hollywood source describes it:

Night of the Living Dead arrived at a time when American idealism was starting to sour. The momentum of post-war progress and the hope of early 60s counterculture had all but evaporated in the year of the Watts riots and assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy. The film was a potent piece of speculative satire: a low-budget, tightly scripted horror film that posited as its protagonist a young black professional (played by Duane Jones) who struggles to navigate the neuroses and hysteria of his white counterparts while fending off an undead horde. The film's closing moments, in which Jones is 'mistakenly' shot by the police cleanup crew, remain one of the most stinging incidences of irony in cinematic history.

In fact, Romero had been asked to write an episode for the television series The Walking Dead, but declined, saying that the show was more soap opera than social commentary.

Mr. Romero made a guest appearance at the Ottawa ComicCon this past May, much to the delight of my son Tim, who has all of his movies and admired him greatly. My son was able to meet him and because it was nearing the end of the convention and not overly busy, Mr. Romero took the time to talk to Tim and even have a picture taken (without charge) of the two of them. Tim had ordered, through eBay, foreign movie posters of the Living Dead franchise. He took them with him to ComicCon to get autographed. Mr. Romero was delighted to view the posters, which he had not seen before. He was a kind man who made an indelible impression on my son.

The light of the horror world is dimmed greatly by his passing.

RIP George Romero: 1940-2017

Putting Food to Good Use

It's a staggering statistic: 40 million Americans do not have enough to eat every day while 40 per cent of food in the U.S. goes into dumpsters as waste.

One young woman, who cried when she had to throw out expired products at her church's food pantry, decided to do something about this.

While in high school, Rose Marie Belding developed the idea of creating an online database that would match facilities who had food to give away with charities in need of it. Unfortunately, she didn't have the programming skills necessary to make it work. After graduating, however, she met Grant Nelson, a law student who was developing code on his laptop. About nine months later, the two of them launched MEANS, "a free online platform that connects businesses with extra food to charities that feed the hungry."

In an interview with CNN, Belding explains how the system works:

It's pretty simple. If you want to get food from MEANS, you have to be registered as a legal charity in the United States. So, when a soup kitchen, homeless shelter or a food pantry needs something, they tell our system. And when a grocery store, caterer or food retailer has something they want to donate, all they have to do is go online and say, 'This is where I am, this is what I've got, and this is when I need it gone by.' Then the system automatically notifies all of those who have said, 'I need things within these parameters.' We're able to match up excess and need very, very quickly. At this point, MEANS has about 3,000 partners in 48 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. The Emerson Act -- a 'Good Samaritan' law passed in 1996 -- protects donors from liability.

We're also part of a great partnership with the Rhode Island Health Department called Rhode to End Hunger, which encourages businesses to donate food to nonprofits. One of the shining stars of that is the Twin River Casino. They'll post hundreds of pounds of food, and somebody in Providence -- like McAuley House, which is feeding a lot of folks who are struggling -- will claim it really fast. The average in Rhode Island is about 10 minutes for things to move.

To read the full text of this story and to view the corresponding video, please see https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/19/health....

Anyone Have Half a Million Dollars to Spare?

British inventor Richard Browning is selling his own Iron Man suit, known as the Gravity Industries Jet Suit, for a little over $500,000 at the upscale Selfridges Department Store in London.

The suit is propelled by mini jet engines on the arms and back. It goes 32 miles an hour and rises to 12,000 feet. It runs on jet fuel and diesel.

Browning has created quite a stir by flying the jet suit over busy streets. For photos of the flying suit, please see https://www.cnn.com/travel/gallery/fl....

When I first heard about this suit, I must admit I was hoping Donald Trump would buy it and be carried off into the stratosphere. Alas, the jet suit can only travel for nine minutes before refuelling.

A Comeback for Poetry in the United States

As a writer of poetry in my young adult years, I was pleased to see that it is making a comeback. A recent survey reports that 28 million American adults read poetry in the past year, which is the highest percentage in 15 years.

Young adults, African Americans, and Asian Americans largely account for this increase in readership. The popularity of cellphones and YouTube videos as instant forms of communication, as well as the use of poetry in music, have contributed to its growth in popularity.

A national alliance of poetry organizations, The Poetry Coalition, promotes the role of poetry in all its forms.

For the full text of the PBS article, please see https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/poe....

It would be interesting to know whether there's a similar surge in the popularity of poetry in Canada ... something for me to research further.

Raccoon 10: Lynn 0

After living in the country for twenty years, we've more or less adjusted to the myriad of animals who share our space with us: deer, skunks, porcupines, squirrels, chipmunks, and lots and lots of mice.

Recently, however, I find myself engaged in a battle of wits with a raccoon. Sad to say, I'm losing the battle. We suspect that this raccoon was live-trapped and transported to the country from the city. He's fairly domesticated, invading garbage cans in the evenings and sleeping in the trees during the day.

He also seems a bit cocky as if he knows no human is a match to outwit him. My husband has seen him climb our porch stairs to reach the top of our garbage bin. We have bricks piled there so he isn't able to pry open the lid. Not to be defeated, however, our raccoon friend climbs down the bin and manages to pry open the doors, which don't shut properly from years of use. This is the true battle at which he excels. He manages to remove the bricks and boards that I have stacked (ineffectually) against the doors and reach inside to snag his prize: new garbage. So far I've discovered he has a fondness for cheese, salad dressing, and other raccoon delights.

Should I give up and admit that I've been outsmarted by a raccoon? Perhaps. Stay tuned....

A Review of Michelle McNamara's I'll Be Gone in the Dark

Michelle McNamara's non-fiction book, I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer, was published posthumously in February 2018, almost two years after her death. It was updated and finalized by true crime writer Paul Haynes and her widower, the actor Patton Oswalt.

As a teenager, Michelle was deeply affected by the unsolved murder of Kathleen Lombardo two blocks from her own home. This murder shaped not only her passionate interest in crime-solving, but also her compassion for the victims of crime. This compassion is apparent throughout her book and, I think, is responsible for making I'll Be Gone in the Dark such a compelling read.

Michelle McNamara started her website True Crime Diary in 2006, establishing a network of crime researchers, as well as writing numerous articles relating to unsolved crimes. She used 21st century technology to bring to light possible clues to a killer's identity. It was Michelle herself who coined the phrase "Golden State Killer" after authorities connected the crimes of the Original Night Stalker and the East End Rapist through DNA analysis. As a serial killer, rapist, and burglar, he committed at least 12 murders, 50 rapes, and over 100 burglaries in California between 1974 and 1986. He is thought to have begun as a burglar known as the Visalia Ransacker before his crimes escalated to rape and murder.

The author's observations about her childhood and how she became passionate about unsolved crimes are fascinating in themselves:

...When I meet people and hear where they're from I orientate them in my mind by the nearest unsolved crime.... Mention that you're from Yorktown, Virginia, and I'll forever connect you with the Colonial Parkway, the ribbon of road snaking along the York River where four couples either disappeared or were murdered between 1986 and 1989.

What is remarkable about this book is not only the excellent narrative, but also the author's ability to avoid sensationalizing the crimes and the killer, choosing instead to make us aware of the actual victims, often forgotten in true crime accounts. Michelle McNamara re-creates the crime scenes of the Golden State Killer, always mindful of the small details of the victims' lives, in a manner that creates an intimacy between the author and the reader.

A Review of James Comey's A Higher Loyalty

This is a well-written book that will appeal to both students of history and those interested in the 2016 US election and its subsequent outcome.

For those who listened to the media hype following the release of James Comey's book, you might think that it is a diatribe against the presidency of Donald Trump. This is not the case. The book documents Comey's life from his teenage years and his service under three presidents: George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump. In fact, his discussion of his interactions with Trump do not begin in earnest until page 212 of this 250-page book.

It is obvious from his life account that Comey is painfully honest—even if it shows him at a disadvantage; totally devoted to his wife Patrice and his daughters; and fiercely loyal to the FBI and the upholding of the US Constitution.

If you are a Hillary Clinton loyalist, you unfortunately will find nothing new in his defence of the actions he took during the Clinton e-mail investigation, including his announcement of the re-opening of the investigation just a few days before the 2016 election, an action many believe—myself included—contributed to Hillary Clinton's defeat.

I think the important elements of the book for historical purposes are his insights into the three presidencies. He has lingering doubts, for example, about whether he did enough to intervene in the Bush administration's sanctioning of torture (under the lead of Vice-President Dick Cheney, who maintains the same beliefs to this day) following 9/11: a concern that drove many of Comey's later efforts to be more upfront in decisions that involved the Department of Justice.

Perhaps unconsciously, I think President Obama becomes the yardstick by which Comey measures the inadequacies of Trump as president: Obama's regard for the opinions of others; his careful listening; his ability to temper self-confidence with humility; and his sense of humour.

In regard to his analysis of Trump's place in US presidential history and the silence of the Republican party in the face of a morally bankrupt leader, I'll leave the last word to Comey:

Policies come and go. Supreme Court justices come and go. But the core of our nation is our commitment to a set of shared values that began with George Washington—to restraint and integrity and balance and transparency and truth. If that slides away from us, only a fool would be consoled by a tax cut or a different immigration policy.