Mark W. Tiedemann's Blog, page 7

Courtroom Chaos

I answered my civic summons to jury duty this week. One day, Monday. I confess to being annoyed by this as I have Things To Do this week and would have preferred another week. I do not object to being called to jury duty. I think it’s important. The last time, I was selected but never got the chance to serve because the judge had had a ruling overturned and they had to start all over. I was disappointed in that one, it would have been fascinating as both lawyers appeared to at the top of their game and it was a murder trial with some interesting features.…

A Mechanics Of Grief

We have an emotional field, generated by what goes on inside. Much like a gravity field, the space-time field, it distorts in the presence of other bodies. The degree of distortion is relative to the size of their presence in your life, which can explain why someone we never met can be the cause of genuine grief when they’re gone. That well created in the field you project is a result of how much value you put on their place in your life.

The orbits thus created shift and jostle for equilibrium. When one disappears…

Back in the Age of Burgeoning Awareness (the Sixties through the Nineties) many introspection disciplines advised us to leave nothing unsaid.…

That Kind Of A Week

Because I really don’t want to write anything heavy or long, accept a couple of new photographs. I’m fine, I just need to recoup.

Thank you.

 

 

…

Hank

He did not care for his name, either his given one—Henry—or the nickname he ended up being known by, Hank. At his last job, he became known as Hank the Crank. It was an affectionate sobriquet. He managed a department full of engineers and took care of them. One of the first things he did when he took over was get them all raises which had been long overdue.

He flourished in that job. At the end of decades of struggling, moving from one place of employment to another, seeing opportunities die, usually in the mismanagement of others, he came to a place where all his unique and quirky skills and proclivities came together.…

A Word About The Loyal Fan Base

CNN aired its town hall with Trump and received some criticism for it. But it had been scheduled for a while and since the Right likes to accuse the Left (which CNN is at best only an honorary member) of Cancel Culture, the question to air or not to air doubtless prompted them to err on the side of not canceling. Nevertheless, opinions about the man on the stage notwithstanding, I have no carp about that. The only downside to something like this is that it took up space where something else of presumably more value might have been aired. As that seems rarely a consideration in the board rooms of media companies (what is value?…

Bending the Timestream

At the recent book release event at Left Bank Books, the question was raised if I am ever tempted to bend history. After all, I write fiction. I said no, that sticking to history is important to me.

Thinking about it since, I have to backtrack a little. I took the question to mean am I ever tempted to substitute a wholly fictional history for genuine history. I mentioned James Michener, who wrote dense, lengthy historical novels with such authority that one could be forgiven for believing things actually transpired that way. It is difficult to see where what really happened parts from what Michener intended as story.…

Going Forward

The new novel is officially launched. Last night at Left Bank Books, in conversation with the owner, Kris, whom I am privileged to call friend, Granger’s Crossing was introduced to the public. The event was streamed and recorded.

It was a terrific evening. Good conversation, a good response from the audience, even a couple of new connections.

Now I have to plan on the next thing. I know what I want to do, the question is, as always, can I pull it off. I’ve already started work on the next Granger novel. As mentioned in the video, I’d originally intended a very ambitious series, but that was a decade ago.…

…And In Other News

A new look.

I know, important things happened, yesterday, today (someone got fired) but here is mine. New website.

Today is the release date for my new novel, Granger’s Crossing, and I feel like being symbolic. There are things I’ve wanted my website to do for a long time and never got around to actually figuring it out. Well, I didn’t this time, either. I must give a tip of the hat to Danielle, who has done this, and will from time to time help me tweak it to make it even more…what I want it to be.

With this book, I’m stepping outside my usual comfort zone.…

New Stuff

So I had to replace my old phone. I am still a bit ambivalent about cell phones and I remain nonplussed at the gismos and gadgets (otherwise known as apps) available and the possibilities, but I now can’t really get along well without one, so…

I bit the bullet and bought a high end. One of the things I was always disappointed with my old one was the camera. I’m a photographer. I have standards. I suppose I could have learned to work with it eventually, but it never inspired me.

This one, though…

I went for a walk the other day and did a few images and played with them. I’d like to share. I’m more than slightly pleased with these.

 

Obvious Things

Another school shooting.

And inevitably the posturing of those grimly determined to make it about something else. Gun rights. The deaths are pushed to one side, because it’s the guns that must be protected, because they (so the excuse-making goes) are what stand between our freedom and a tyrannical government, and that any price is worth paying to preserve the means by which such freedom might be maintained, whether that freedom actually manifests as imagined or not.

At this point one thing should be obvious: for the Second Amendment Absolutist, no reasoned argument can be sufficient to change their position, because it is not about what is right, only about what they believe and feel. If it were possible to completely demonstrate and prove that the Second Amendment as written and conceived by the Constitutional convention of 1789 did not give carte blanche to gun rights, it would not matter. These folks want what they want and will not be persuaded, even by logical argument, demonstrable social science, or historical truth. You can make any argument you want, they will not concede that they must surrender what they are convinced is their deity-granted right to go armed.

This is very much akin to the stance of the absolutist anti-abortion advocate. No matter what might be demonstrated or argued in terms of biology or civil rights or medical necessity or any other argument one might deploy, they want what they want and will not be swayed. They are not looking to win the debate, they are looking to have their way, regardless.

So I say stop arguing. Those of us not locked into an ahistorical mode of thinking should do what we think best for the situation now.

The other day I saw a post listing all the things “we defend with guns” as if it all added up to a sound argument against those wishing to enact laws to curtail availability of certain types of firearms. It begged the question, of course—why should we have to defend all those things with guns? It was phrased as if guns were the only solution, which is on its face nonsense.

I hate to break it to them, but this is not freedom, so what is it they’re trying to defend? Because if you have to live your life prepared constantly to kill another human being just to keep your stuff, you are not free. That is a cage. The bars may be invisible, but they’re there.

Seems obvious to me that in this instance  Freedom has been confused with Power. Oh, they are related, but real freedom is living without fear. For yourself and especially for your children. And if you’re insisting that you have to be always ready to draw down on someone, you are living in fear. All the time.

It’s reasonable then to ask—do you want the rest of us to live in fear all the time, too? Because that’s the most effective way to keep us from sitting down at the table and coming up with something better.

The irony, of course, is that there are people less dogmatically dedicated to these positions who simply want control, and have learned how to use your fear to gain it and keep it. Some of them represent the very thing you claim to need your guns to defend us all against, but you see them as allies and advocates. The longer you can only see solutions as single objects, the longer they can play you and harm the rest of us. Because this is harming all of us, the idea that we can find no better solutions because it might mean giving something up. Something, by the way, which no longer has the utility you claim for it. If it ever did.

But I’m done arguing. Argument will not gain traction against the single-minded zealot who will bend and twist everything to suit a desired outcome, regardless of the damage it causes. It’s time to move on. Moving on, of course, means going back to some basic principles and re-examining the assumptions encoded within them, changing direction in more than just the surface of matters, and that is perhaps a bit scary for even those not locked into a one-mode-fits-all narrative.

In the past, major change came about as a consequence of major breakage. That entails other kinds of misery before repairs and solutions can come into play. I would like to think we are smarter than we used to be. On the other hand, maybe the sheer momentum of heading for the break point is just too much. I don’t know. But I do know trying to argue with those leading us to the precipice has gained us too little to date.

Just some thoughts in the aftermath of another instance of insanity.