Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

Some propaganda tricks seem to work over and over and over. The simple linking of two unrelated ideas in one sentence is remarkably effective. I  used this trick in my novel Lucy Goes Home. Lucy and her friends were orphans. The oligarchs in her country saw an opportunity to get free labor by convincing the population to force the orphans in government placement to work for their support. They started a propaganda campaign that linked the word criminal to orphan. Soon, every petty criminal was called an orphan, and every orphan was a criminal.

If some compassionate person pointed out that the orphans had never really commit a crime, the answer was that they were criminals because they lived at the government expense and weren’t working to pay back the money spent on their care, and that is stealing from the taxpayers. The belief became, existing without a family member to support you was somehow dirty and wrong. And, a large portion of the population fell for it. 

I could write the story I did, because I see this happening all around me. Something serious is going on through the linking of unrelated words and ideas.

We see this happening with the verbal linking between Mexican, immigrant and criminal just as I linked orphan and criminal in my book. We’ve heard the words Mexican, criminal, illegal, and immigrant linked so many times that way too many people have come to believe that any brown person coming to our southern border is illegal and a criminal just because they are standing at the border waiting to cross. Not only are people at the border illegal. Spanish speaking children in US schools are labeled illegal without any evidence of improper paperwork. I have a friend who came here from Spain. She introduces herself with, “I’m here from Madrid on a research Visa.” She’s afraid she’ll be mistaken for being of Mexican descent or undocumented because that has come to equal criminal. The words Mexican, illegal, immigrant and criminal are not the only case of destructive paring of words and ideas.

I find the linking of the words Christian with right wing to be particularly offensive. Religion at it’s base is about our spirituality. Some people need to feel connected to other people and to the cosmos in order to be at peace within themselves, to shut out all the unnecessary brain chatter and actually think. This has nothing to do with politics, or power over other people, or controlling others, despite what people of power have tried to practice for ages. All religions are basically about finding that inner peace. The media loves to use the words right wing Christians as they relate stories of horrific spiritual abuse cloaked in bibliobabble. There is nothing Christian about the content of the stories, and there is nothing validly right wing in spiritual assault. The word Christian along with the words right wing have become paired with an ugly vision of mean spirited abusive behavior. How divisive.

How many of us can hear the word Muslim without the word terrorist popping into our minds? I confess, I’ve heard the words Muslim and terrorists linked so many times that I have to mentally erase the word terrorist from my mind. Terrorists are terrorists no matter what color their skin is, or where they come from, or whatever the predominant faith of their culture is. Those who spread propaganda for personal gain and power have done an excellent job of manipulating the population into feeling afraid and trying to withdraw from interactions with others who have some really interesting perspectives, cool food, and exotic experiences.

How dismissive and divisive is the term feminist rhetoric? The problem comes in the word rhetoric-words. Some people can get really triggered by this pairing because the ladies are unjustly demanding special rights. I get pissed and have a knee-jerk reaction that makes me want to backhand the speaker for being dismissive of women for wanting equal pay for equal work, and not wanting to be assaulted or have their intelligence questioned.

One of the reasons the linking of unrelated words works so effectively is those pushing the propaganda can build stories around those words. Stories are very effective in teaching about difficult concepts. When I was working in the field of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, we used stories, hopefully humorous, to describe how specific brain damage links to specific behavior patterns. The syndrome we were talking about had been recognized over twenty years before we started our work, but the general population barely knew the problem existed before people started telling their stories. Telling stories works.

The story can be told two ways. The police pick up two men involved in a knife fight in a parking lot. My local paper might tell the story. At 11 PM Saturday night, two men were arrested behind Sporty’s bar and charged with assault. Alcohol was believed to be involved. 

​Now, the same story can be told pairing words. Carlos Cruz, under investigation for illegal immigration, and another man were arrested behind Sporty’s bar late Saturday evening. Cruz was found in possession of a knife when police arrived on the scene. 

The first telling of this story would rev up the small town gossip machine to full tilt as we wanted to know who was arrested. We would find out that Carlos is as great a guy as we always thought, but he gets belligerent if he drinks. He was, in fact, born on the ferry between here and Seatte, but the police did ask for his address and citizenship status. The attorney, who lost ten bucks betting on the fight, overheard the sheriff asking Carlos about his citizenship and filed complaints with the county. The other man was Chuck Smith. We all wonder what the community could do about Chuck, he’s dangerous. A few woman hope Carlos was able to cut Chuck in the balls. Jokes about Carlos gelding Chuck ensue. Alcohol was involved.

The word pairing telling of the story paints a very different picture, but it does something else. It gives enough facts that we don’t gossip—as much. We know that Cruz was arrested. We might wonder about Cruz’s citizenship, but because we have that name, we don’t overly embarrass his mom with a good, full-blown, small town gossip fest. We don’t get the back story or who else was involved. Also, the AP is not going to pick up a small town arrest. Someone doing internet searches for the propaganda media will pick up the story of the drunken illegal immigrant who attacked someone in a parking lot. They won’t investigate, but the story becomes part of the story-telling around illegal immigration. 

Yes, I know that occasionally an undocumented person does get drunk and get into a knife fight, the problem with how the story is told is that lots of people of all backgrounds get drunk and get into knife fights. The citizenship status is irrelevant to the story because it doesn’t drive the plot or illuminate the character. 

These pairings of words and ideas are so pervasive, we don’t really stop and think about them. I fully admit that despite my allergy to being manipulated and my attempts to be vigilant about thinking things through, these pairings of words do bring up negative images for me, and I will have a knee jerk reaction until I mentally separate the words from each other and from the stories that are told about them. I know, some people miss the oxymoron created around the paring of the words right wing and Christian and will adopt the description, thinking that means they believe in the Bible, but they miss how the right wing pairing diminishes their god to the level of a human being. When a sweet person, who genuinely cares about others, voluntarily identifies with a violent pairing of words, we can see the power of propaganda. These pairings do influence how we think, how we feel, and how we interact, as well as how others perceive us.

​

This excerpt from Lucy Goes Home was fun to write. It's the first time the mountain boy, T'Vun did something right. I got to play with the ideas of different cultures, particularly attitudes toward clothing.
​ 

Elan


​T’Vun thought longingly of his bed as he shuffled toward his dorm after a long night of carrying food and drinks to a group of important people who were having a meeting on the third floor of the middle wing. Mr. Corbain had been there and even spoke to him. “T’Vun, it’s better if you don’t mention this meeting to anybody.”

As he climbed the stairs to his dorm, T’Vun scratched under his arm. He wondered why he shouldn’t mention the meeting. Everybody had stopped talking and watched him set out the platters of snacks while he was in the room. Well, Mrs. Celia had spoke to him. “You might want to return home before the inauguration.”

 He rubbed at his eyes.

A scream punctuated the quiet just as he reached the door to his dorm.

He barged through the dining room door, sprinted across the room and threw the door to the bunk-room open so that it crashed into the wall.  Before him, his bunkmates stood around Elan’s bunk, laughing and pulling at his pajamas. Elan stood with his back to the wall, kicking at his tormentors.

The boys turned when the door crashed open. Mit laughed. “Oh, it’s only you. I thought it might be that dog, Troy.”

“What’s going on here?” T’Vun glanced between the boys and Elan who’d moved closer to the wall.

“We’re having fun with Elan. Look at him. He’s so skinny, he must be a girl. Bet he doesn’t have a barb.”  Mit laughed and grabbed at Elan’s pajama bottoms again.

“Yeah, he never takes a shower, so we’re going to give him one.” Bob lunged at his victim.

“Stop!” T’Vun reached for the mop standing beside the door. He swung the handle across his chest, holding it with both hands and strode toward the other boys. “Stop, I said.” 

Before Bob had time to move or recognize his danger, T’Vun twisted to the side, slid his hands together on the mop handle and brought it down hard on Bob’s legs with a swing that would make a golfer proud.  Bob rolled off Elan’s bunk and slithered away from T’Vun, noticing for the first time that T’Vun might be skinny, but the sinewy muscles in his arms looked powerful enough.

T’Vun shifted his weight, ready to take on Mit. He paraphrased something he’d heard his village shaman say. “Elan chooses to cover. It is the way in some cultures that the people cover. Don’t violate his customs.”  T’Vun glanced at Elan’s eyes opened so wide they appeared to be more whites than dark brown. He scowled at Mit and thought of his own courtships. “Do you wish to marry Elan as if he were a girl?”

Mit whirled to face T’Vun. “You dog. You filthy mouthed dog. I don’t like little boys.”

“Then leave Elan alone. Don’t pick on him for the customs of his people.”

Elan slithered along the wall until he could climb off the end of his bunk.  He ran out the door. They heard him slam the outer door behind him.

The boys stood frozen in place, breathing hard. T’Vun still held his mop. Bob lay on the floor, rubbing his legs. The veins stood out on Mit’s neck, and he stood poised to attack T’Vun. He towered over the native, but T’Vun’s authoritative tone and the way he held the mop caused Mit to pause and size up his opponent. For the first time, Mit noticed that T’Vun, though small, had the build and facial hair of an adult man.

Mit knew when to back down. “Hey, we wouldn’t hurt him. We were just having some fun. We didn’t know he came from some weird culture. Is it a religious thing with him?”

“I don’t know.” T’Vun lowered his mop handle slightly. “In my Culture Class, our shaman talked about cultures-that-cover.” He shrugged. “My village doesn’t cover except for ceremonies. The mountainside peoples do. They like bright colored clothing.” T’Vun scowled trying to remember his lessons. “I learned that nuns and priests cover.”

Mit blinked. For the first time since he’d met T’Vun, the mountain boy was admitting he didn’t know something. “I didn’t know Elan covered for religious reasons.”  He relaxed.

T’Vun set his mop in its bucket by the door and repeated another lesson from the village shaman. “He is also much younger than us, just a little boy really. It’s not honorable for a man to pick on a little boy.” He unbuttoned his uniform. “Mr. Corbain knows about different cultures. We can ask him more about Elan’s culture if we want.”

Mit swallowed his desire to torment someone weaker than himself, then realized T’Vun had just called him a man. He tried to frown when he stood up straight and said in a voice slightly deeper than normal, “I don’t think we should bother Mr. Corbain about lessons.”

T’Vun stripped off his pants, folded them and placed them on the foot of his bed.  “What? He likes to teach. His niece Violet was a teacher at our school, and he came and talked to us about government. He got me this job so I can learn about government and the outside world.”

T’Vun didn’t care about covering at all and climbed into his bunk, remembering how tired he was.
​
Faced with T’Vun’s bare backside, Mit saw the lack of tan lines. He scowled, still hungry for the power of frightening someone weaker than himself, but he felt that T’Vun, for all his ignorance, had a power about him that he chose not to confront.


​Lucy Goes Home is available in both Paper back and Kindle formats.

Kindle
https://www.amazon.com/Lucy-Goes-Home-Sewer-Book-ebook/dp/B07JYKKSF1/ref

Paperback 
https://www.amazon.com/Lucy-Goes-Home-MTK-Sewer/dp/1728670500/ref 

Every garden needs wildlife. When we built our house on an acre of land at the edge of a monoculture forest, I had visions of a garden full of birds and butterflies.  I had great plans for attracting birds and little forest creatures. Perhaps I’d even see deer or two. What on earth was I thinking?

My first project was the pond. The house had no landscaping when I scratched out a hole in a low spot and lined it with cardboard. Among the construction debris the contractor hadn’t carried away yet, I found a big piece of black plastic and put that over the cardboard. So far so good. I put the garden hose in my rough pond and began to fill it. 

I planned to edge the pond with broken tree limbs, ferns and a few rocks. I left the hose filling the pond and sauntered off to drag my tree limb to the pond area. I returned within ten minutes dragging my tree. I found a dragonfly buzzing over the water. He buzzed me as I tried to position my tree limb along the edge of the pond. With only six inches of water I’d already attracted wildlife to my yard. Hurray! 

As the pond filled more dragonflies came. I was still working on the edge when a bird arrived to check out the new pond. 

By dinner time, the pond was full and the edges mostly covered with the tree limb, a few rocks, bark, and a couple native ferns that looked beat-up from being transplanted. As we ate dinner, we watched the dragonflies perform an aerial ballet over the water. Birds fluttered down to the edge of the pond to cautiously take a drink before one brave wren took a whole bath. My pond was a smashing success. 

I should have done a reality check right then and there. This rough pond that I’d spent three hours building out of construction debris should have been a warning. 

The next evening, hubby stopped at the pet supply store and picked up some small goldfish to keep mosquitos from breeding in our pond. We carefully poured them into the water. During dinner I told Hubby about the deer that had looked in the kitchen window. We sighed over our home in the woods and watched the goldfish surface to grab mosquitoes that dared to land on their pond. 

The following morning, I sat with my morning cocoa and watched the breeze ripple the surface of my pond. It was the only pretty spot among the dirt and dust left behind after construction. As I planned where I would put my roses, a kingfisher swooped down out of a tree, splashed in the pond and flew back into the tree with one of my goldfish in his beak. I wasn’t so sure about that. I finally decided the kingfisher was pretty. I’d never seen one before. I’d certainly never realized that a kingfisher could eat that many goldfish so quickly. I called Hubby to pick up more goldfish on his way home from work—the war was on. 


I found a waterlily at the garden store and added it to my pond, hoping it would give the fish some shelter from the kingfisher. The goldfish hid under its leaves and around it’s pot. I’d foiled the kingfisher. The waterlily grew and soon sprouted a bud. 

Every morning I’d run out to look at my waterlily bud, anticipating the day it would open. The bud grew and the outer petals started to open. I went out for my morning inspection of the pond. The leaves on the waterlily were torn. The pot was tipped over and my bud was gone—just totally gone. I couldn’t find a sign of it anywhere. Looking carefully, I found footprints. 

I called Hubby to come look at the mess around my pond and at the footprints. We counted the toes and noticed the sharp claw marks. I stood up straight while the blood of war pulsed through my veins. A raccoon had taken my waterlily bud.

With the waterlily torn apart, the kingfisher returned, and I called Hubby again to bring home more gold fish.

At the proper time, we planted our new orchard. First, we thought the few deer we’d seen wouldn’t notice some dormant trees. We watched for signs of deer in the back. All seemed well.

In the same mail order as the fruit trees, I ordered some iris for the pond. I put them in and watched them grow, hoping the raccoons wouldn’t eat them. The raccoons seemed to ignore the iris. Yay, another win for the pond. 


One morning I heard the flap of wings and splashing in the pond. I looked out to find a pair of wild mallard ducks in my pond. My heart leapt with joy just before I ran out the door on the other side of the house to chase the herd of deer out of my orchard. 

I stayed in the orchard, examining my young trees to see why they hadn’t leafed out. After close examination, I found the buds where the tree had leafed out, only to have deer devour the new leaves. Hoping the trees would survive, I returned to the house to get money and my coat to go to town and buy wire and fence posts to build protection for my trees. 

I glanced out the windows on the front side of the house where the pond was. I smiled. The ducks were still there. They had their heads under water and their tails in the air. How cute. Wait. What could they possibly find to eat on the bottom of the pond? I closed my eyes as the answer hit me. They were chowing down on the roots to my water iris. 

I wanted to grieve the loss of the water iris, but I still needed the wire and stakes if I was going to save my orchard. So far, the wildlife was winning the war. 

Exhausted from building cages around all my baby fruit trees, I came inside and dropped down on the sofa to call my gardening friend and relate my woes.

“You need to get a big dog.” She told me. “When I was little, my dad always kept a dog to protect the farm.”
I called Hubby at work and told him about the fruit trees and the water iris. “I got cages around all the trees, but can you bring home some take-out? And, we need a dog.”

“We don’t have a fence for a dog yet.”

“I know, we’ll get one of those wire mesh kennels. I’ll go look for a dog I’m not allergic to.”

Hubby resisted getting a dog. I showed him pictures of poodle puppies. He wasn’t interested. Early one morning I heard him out in the garden yelling.  I rolled out of bed to see if he was okay. I met him as he came inside. “A great blue heron just ate all the fish in the pond. I can’t find a single fish, and they were getting big.” He looked a little red around the neck and a vein pulsed in his temple. “How much were those standard poodles you were looking at?”

“I want to get two to keep each other company.”

We got the kennel and two dog houses then picked up two beautiful poodles from the breeder who assured us these were bred for good health. “Their grandfather came from Germany. They are not as inbred as what we have in the states. Here we breed too much for show.”

We brought our puppies home and played with them. At bedtime we took them to their new kennel, shut them in, and went to bed ourselves. Just as we drifted off to sleep one of the poodles let out a deep throated woof. We heard the crashing of brush breaking and the pounding of hooves as the herd of deer ran. We pulled the covers up to our chins, thinking we’d won the war.

Did you know poodles were bred for hunting? Well, the ones in the US are bred for show, but in Germany they’re still bred for hunting. A week after the poodles came to live with us, we were trying to fence in our acre as quickly as possible. Meanwhile, we put the dogs on leashes and walked them every morning before bringing them inside to spend the day playing in the house, jumping on the sofa and chasing each other back and forth. 

The deer avoided the side of the house where the kennel was, but attacked my roses on the other side of the house. I tried putting up dryer sheets on the roses, planting garlic around them, and spraying the roses with the same bitter-apple spray I used to keep the dogs from chewing on the seat belts in the car. 

After two weeks of trying to protect the orchard and my roses while walking two energetic dogs, I stumbled half-asleep out to the kennel to bring the dogs inside. Before I could get a leash on either of them, one jumped on me knocking my glasses flying and the other bolted out the kennel door. Those hunting dogs spent a glorious day hunting, while I lay on the sofa and cried because my beautiful doggies were lost. They came home wet and muddy when they got hungry. This jail break inspired us to get the last of the fence up.  

With the acre surrounded by a six foot fence, the dogs could be loose in the yard. We took down the cages around the fruit trees and Hubby brought home more goldfish from the pet store. We sat at the dinner table watching the fish in the pond and tossing bits of our dinner to the dogs. 

Life passed peacefully with the deer outside our fence and the dogs inside until Hubby looked out the living room window and yelled. The dogs broke into a barking frenzy and ran out. The great blue heron flapped up into a tree with a fish in his mouth. The dogs stood on the ground and barked at him. 

I finally decided Harry the heron must have a mate on a nest nearby. Harry hung out in our yard, occasionally carrying off a six inch goldfish. We put up a heron statue because we’d read that blue herons are territorial and will avoid a heron statue. Harry would hunker down companionably next to the statue and pull his neck down into his shoulders until his beak rested on his chest. We’d find him there early in the morning. Harry seemed to know when the dogs took their nap, and he’d take one too, next to the statue by the pond. 

When Harry wasn’t sleeping next to the statue or carrying goldfish to his mate on the nest, he didn’t have much to do until he discovered that the poodles would play with him. He’d hide until I let the dogs out, then he’d sweep through the yard about fifteen feet off the ground. The dogs would chase after him, leaping and barking. The three of them could keep this game up for hours with the flapping wings and barking dogs. Occasionally Harry would disappear for a while then he’d be back circling the house about five feet off the ground until the poodles came outside, then they’d start the barking chasing game all over, running and circling back through the gardens until I’d be almost frantic with the barking and flapping. Some days I took the dogs for a car ride, just to get them away from the annoying bird. This didn’t feel like winning the war.

Still wanting birds and butterflies—well not birds with five foot wingspans—I hung up a hummingbird feeder and waited for the humming birds to come like in the magazines where fifty jewel-toned hummers would flock to a feeder. Hummy arrived and drank from the feeder, then perched on a branch nearby. Another humming bird approached, and Hummy shot from his branch like a missile toward his target. Alas, our local hummingbirds are territorial and will drive off even their own mate and children. We get one hummingbird per feeder, if we place the feeder where the birds can’t see each other. It’s a bit like raising preschoolers. Hummy turned out to be a sweet little fellow. Whenever I, the-human-who-brings-sugar-water, go out to garden, Hummy flies right up to my face, gives a little chirp and flies off to watch what I’m doing. He seems to approve of all the fuchsia and abutilon I plant for him. He hangs around wherever I’m working, occasionally chirping his approval. 

We enlarged the pond, placing more rocks around the edge and encouraging the willow that volunteered at one end. The pond developed mud in the bottom giving the goldfish someplace to hide. The ferns grew and flourished, becoming huge enough to provide significant shelter at one end of the pond. 

What we call a lawn is really just a bunch of low growing plants including baby tears, ajuga, violets and some native grass that must be mowed occasionally. One warm morning Hubby fired up the riding lawnmower and set forth to mow the lawn. He came in before finishing and sat down.

I looked at him. “Are you okay?”

“I just ran over a snake—a big one. It was close to three feet. I didn’t see it until after I’d run over it. Then I didn’t know what to do about an injured snake.”

“Where was it?”

“Out by the pond.”

“Figures. I guess you best get a shovel or an axe and cut its head off to put it out of its misery.”

When Hubby returned from dispatching the harmless garter snake, he said, “I’m not surprised that we have a snake by the pond. We’ve got pollywogs in there.”

“Oh pollywogs. I love them. I hope we get lots of frogs. I love the sound of the spring peepers. Wouldn’t a bullfrog sound wonderful.” I imagined a chorus of frogs. “By the way, the bird feeders are empty. Better fill them.”

“I just filled them two days ago.”

“I know, but the birds empty them every two days. That reminds me, we need to pick up another hundred pounds of bird seed.”  I pulled on my garden gloves. “I have garden workers coming next week. I think I’ll tell them to put any snakes they find over the fence into the woods.”

“Won’t they just crawl back?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. But, it’s just so awful running over them with the mower.”

I went out and found a dead rat next to my wheelbarrow and wondered if the cat had gotten it or if the dogs had. I praised all my pets and buried the dead rat. The dogs wagged their tails and the cat watched from under a bush. 

The next day, I found two dead rats on the patio.  Good dogs. Good kitty. Later that day I found a half eaten mouse beside my bed. “Good kitty. You’re a good hunter.” I disposed of the dead mouse.

The raspberries started to get ripe. I discovered the poodles liked to pick and eat raspberries. I didn’t mind them eating the few ripe raspberries on the lower branches.  They would go with me to the garden every morning to see how ripe the raspberries were. The dogs seemed to like the berries just a little more tart than I do. Still, the main crop wasn’t ripe yet. The dogs started to sniff the sugar content of the raspberries several times a day, occasionally eating one when it was ripe enough. I started washing my canning equipment to make raspberry jam. 

My morning routine now included removing dead mice from my bedroom, and dead rats from the patio then going out to check the sugar content of the raspberries. I rearranged my schedule to make jam the day after next and went out to pick a few raspberries for my breakfast. The poodles pranced beside me, tails wagging as we all anticipated a sweet morning treat. The dogs bounded ahead and I heard a low growl. The dogs began to circle the raspberry patch growling. My eyes darted over the decimation that met me. The canes were broken and crushed. I lifted a broken cane and found it devoid of berries. The dogs continued to sniff and growl. I thought there might still be a marauding raccoon in the berry patch but the dogs left the patch to sniff their way through the orchard towards the woods. 

I forgot my breakfast and spent my morning cutting back broken canes, while the dogs snuffled and dug in the woody corner of my garden.  

The weather turned warm. The polliwogs began to sprout legs. The plums began to get ripe. The dogs and I began morning excursions to check the sugar content of the plums. Once again, I noticed the poodles eating the plums they could reach when the sugar content was lower than I like, but the dogs were happy. 

With a fence to protect the orchard at night, the dogs now slept inside on the sofas. At one in the morning, just before the plums were ripe, one poodle started to bark and scrabble toward the door to go out. The other poodle bayed like a coon-hound. Hubby rolled out of bed, grabbed a flashlight, and ran to see what upset the dogs. The first dog got the door open, and followed by his baying brother, raced toward the plum tree. 

The only shoes Hubby could find at the moment were his cowboy boots. Wearing his boots, and undershorts, Hubby charged toward the plum tree armed with his flashlight. He returned shortly. “The dogs have treed a bunch of raccoons.” He dug through the closet for his Red Rider BB gun. Now, armed with his Red Rider he looked almost like a figure from the wild west as he strode manfully back toward the plum tree still in his undershorts and cowboy boots.

As Hubby reached the orchard, the young plum tree broke under the weight of the raccoons. The poodles were waiting on the ground. Hubby struggled to shine his light on the raccoons and take aim with his trusty Red Rider. The night descended into hissing, and growls punctuated by a crack and pops as the broken tree fell between the poodles. One dog grabbed a raccoon by the neck. The other leapt to the aid of his brother by grabbing the raccoon by the tail. While Hubby plinked at confused raccoons with his Red Rider, the dogs worked to dispatch their prey. 

Raccoons are tough animals. The two dogs fought their enemy for twenty minutes in a battle that raged back and forth across our acre and included incursions into the pond. The remainder of the raccoon pack gave Hubby the finger as he continued to hit them with BBs from Trusty Red Rider. 

At last, quiet descended. The score now stood at one broken plum tree, and one dead raccoon. The poodles nudged each other and wagged their tails as they trailed pond water into the house and hopped up on the sofas to relive their hunt in their dreams.

We all slept late after being up in the middle of the night battling raccoons. When I did get up, I disposed of the dead vole in my shoe and stepped on a dead bird in the bathroom, then I went to check on my poor tree. Sickened by the sight of the poor broken baby, I came into the house and made myself a cup of hot chocolate for solace. I took my cocoa and went to sit on the bench by my pond in hopes my sense of peace would be restored. I sat. The morning sun had grown warm. I sipped and tried to focus on peace and life. 

A disturbance in the water drew my eyes to the pond. I scowled. What was happening in there?  I made out three goldfish surrounding something. I looked closer. Three goldfish had captured a polliwog and were eating him alive.

​

         Lucy:  Fire Bombs
On the third floor of the Compound orphanage, a high, keening wail woke Lucy. Her feet hit the floor before her head left her pillow. Without thinking, she scrambled upright, shoved her feet into her fuzzy slippers, and grabbed her robe. The wail continued to rise and fall as Lucy fumbled her way out of her room and down the hall to the boys’ rooms.

U’Kee stood in the middle of the hall staring down at the wailing Alan on the floor. “We’d been playing cards and just went to bed when I heard someone in the hall. Major Michael was doing a check on us because the orphanage in Sylvana was fire bombed. I guess Alan heard the major and me talking.”

The gorge rose up in Lucy’s throat, but she put aside her own reaction to the news of a bombing to deal with Alan, who sat on the floor outside his room wailing and throwing his torso and head against the hall wall. 

Lucy grabbed his shoulder. “Alan, it’s okay. We’re safe. Please Alan, you’ll hurt yourself.”

Alan ripped himself loose from her grip as he threw himself backward against the wall.

Lucy looked up at U’Kee, who still seemed frozen in place, his face unreadable as he just stared at Alan. “Get Medic Kai. I think Alan has cut open the back of his head, and this meltdown isn’t going to stop without help.”

U’Kee turned and ran, thankful for something to do that took him away from Alan’s screams.

Backup arrived immediately in the form of Lizzie. The big white dog crawled into Alan’s lap stopping the forward motion of his rocking, thus easing the force with which he could hit the wall.

As Alan threw himself backward, Lucy tried to cushion his head with her hand, but his skull hit it so hard she yanked her hand back and held her wrist as pain shot up her arm. She wondered if her hand was broken.

“I’ll get his blankets and pillow.”  Nicole had arrived and darted into Alan’s room to retrieve his bedding.

Lizzie, Pooh and Thomas, the three big orphanage dogs, had been trained for therapy. Pooh loped down the hall, followed by some of his human orphan family. He spread his weight over Alan’s legs while his sister sat up and leaned heavily on Alan’s chest.

Martha knelt on Alan’s other side. “It’s okay, Alan. We’re all here. We’re safe. Just wrap your arms around Lizzie. Give Lizzy a hug. That’s right. Good job. Lizzie loves you. Hold her tight.”

Nicole and Lucy managed to stuff Alan’s blankets and pillows behind him to protect his head.

Subdued by the big dogs and somewhat comforted, Alan’s rocking slowed, but he continued his high-pitched screams.

The third dog, Thomas, arrived, inspected his siblings efforts, and carefully settled himself on Alan between his litter-mates. Lizzy shifted her weight again and started licking at Alan’s tears.

Lucy looked around at the crowd of kids from all the houses. Most of them were crying. “Does anybody know what happened in Sylvana? Are the children okay? Who’s hurt?”

“They were fire bombed. What do you expect?” Miranda screamed back. “Don’t you ever think, Lucy? They’re probably all dead. You’re so stupid. Those protesters will be after us next.” She broke down again in loud sobs.

Lucy stood and glared at Miranda. “Stop with the weeping, now. The kids at Sylvana could be fine. We were firebombed once, and we were fine.”

U’Kee and Kai arrived at a full-out run with Troy, Lizzie’s brother trained for security, loping beside them. Troy stood and wagged his tail at his siblings while Kai dropped to the floor beside Alan. “U’Kee, hold his arm for me. Dogs, hold him still.” He swabbed Alan’s arm then inserted a needle. Alan continued to scream and tried to hug Lizzy with both arms.

Lucy asked, “Kai, do you know anything?”
 
Kai removed the needle and rubbed Alan’s arm. “No, we passed two security agents in the hall. They didn’t know anything except they’d been ordered to their posts. What set Alan off?”

A chorus of voices answered Kai with conflicting information. Alan’s wail fell to a low moan, and he slumped sideways.

Lucy massaged her sore hand. “Kai, I think Alan may have cut his head open hitting it on the wall.” She glanced around at the hall full of whispering and crying youths. “I think we need to know what’s happened. I’m going to the president’s office.”

“You can’t go outside,” U’Kee said. “those protestors in the park will attack you and the building is on lockdown.”

“I’ll go through the attics.” Lucy patted Alan and said to the dog, “Good girl, Lizzy. Stay with Alan.” She stood.

The rest of the orphans fell silent. The thought of walking through the dark Compound at night sent shivers down everybody’s spine. Rats lived in the basements and scurried through deserted halls. Spiders and occasionally bats lived in the attics. The children feared fugitives, thieves, or squatters lived among the maze of unused rooms and dungeons.
​
Lucy grabbed Alan’s flashlight from his room. “Troy, take me to President Jake.” She set off toward the stairs with Troy at her side.

​

​CHAPTER ONE
 
​“Hal, there’s a customer wants to see you in the front office.”

I looked up from the engine well of the Firebird where I had been watching one of my two high-school interns install the intake hose on the new radiator.

Dutch, the owner of Dutch’s Antique Auto, had crossed the yard from the front office. He was a few years older than me, black and fit in a clean white tee-shirt, sharply-creased khakis, spotless loafers and a curl of frat-boy hair falling across his forehead. He kept his hands in his pockets, safe from dirt and grime.

I turned back to the two girls. “Time’s up. Finish what you’re doing and clean up.”
I picked up my cane from where it rested against the side of the car and fell in beside him.

“One of the cars you did last week,” he said. “The tune-up on the sixty-three Volvo.”

I frowned. “There’s a problem with it?”

Dutch shrugged. “Not that she said. She just wanted to talk to you and said I couldn’t help her.”

I remembered the Volvo, Olga, and her owner Mrs. Parker. I didn’t see how I could have made a mistake with a simple oil change and checkup. I had changed the timing belt and some hoses, cleaned the plugs, general TLC for the most part. I might have missed something, but I couldn’t think what.

Mrs. Parker waited in the lobby, a woman of energetic seventy with weather-worn cheeks, wearing a beige, shin-length skirt and buttoned blouse. She beamed at the sight of me. “Henry Crompton, I thought that was you. We were all so relieved when your mother said you were home from the hospital.”

Her dog, a German shepherd roughly the size of a steer, grinned at me with his tongue draped out one side of his mouth.

Dutch raised his neatly-groomed eyebrows and retreated to his office.

On entering the lobby, I’d instinctively cocked my head to conceal the scars that disfigured the right side of my face. I forced myself to face her squarely. “Call me Hal, Mrs. Parker,” I said, “Is something wrong with Olga?” I held my deformed right hand across the countertop for Baron, the dog, to coat with foamy saliva.

“Well no, not wrong,” she said. “I wouldn’t say wrong, but I would like to know what you did.”

“It’s all on the work order. I can get you another copy.” I turned to look for the three-ring binder that contained carbons of all the work orders we completed.

“No, I don’t mean that.” She dismissed the notion of a work order with a wave of one work-gnarled hand. “Anyone can do that sort of thing. I want to know what you did.”

I shook my head. “I don’t follow, Mrs. Parker.”

She leaned over the countertop and glanced from side to side for eavesdroppers. “You know.” She winked.

I shook my head again, completely bewildered.

She straightened. “Well, ever since you did her checkup, Olga…well, she arrives everywhere five minutes before we leave.”

“Five minutes…”

“Before we leave. I leave the house at three-fifteen and arrive at the supermarket at three-ten. I’ve timed it.” She held up the thumb-sized watch she wore on a chain around her neck. “Five minutes. Every time.” She grinned at her little pun.

Behind me, something tittered from the back of a shelf displaying models of vintage cars. Always teatime, never tea, Hal darling.

Mrs. Parker couldn’t see or hear Little Samoth, my unwanted demon familiar. I said, “You mean you’re actually turning up earlier than when you left?” A year ago, I would have dismissed the claim as nonsense, but lately, I’d seen stranger things than time-traveling cars.

“That’s what I said. Are you sure you don’t know how you did it?”

Apart from replacing the timing belt, I couldn’t begin to imagine.

Little Samoth shrieked with laughter from under the counter near my feet. 

I tried to think of the correct response for the circumstances. Please accept my condolences? Get well soon?

Mrs. Parker shrugged. “Well if you don’t know, I suppose I’ll just take my little time machine home. You’ll do all Olga’s work from now on, won’t you?”

“If that’s what you want, Mrs. Parker.”

She plucked her purse from the countertop. “I wouldn’t have anyone else touch her. Baron, come. Love to your mother, Hal.” 

Woman and dog exited the lobby. Mrs. Parker circled the front of the car, patted Olga affectionately on the nose, and held the door for Baron to squeeze in the back. Then she got behind the wheel, presumably to arrive home five minutes ago.

I stood for a good two minutes blinking at the open parking space at the curb. 

Behind me, Dutch said, “Well?” I turned around and found him in the door of his office with his thumbs hooked in his pockets and one eyebrow arched.

“Well what?”

The mechanics, Finny and Stick, crowded into the lobby through the back entrance. “What was it this time?” Stick asked Dutch.

Dutch just shrugged and looked at me.

Jasmine and Amber, the high-school interns, had come in behind the mechanics. “What was what this time?” Jasmine asked the room in general.

I looked from face to expectant face. “She called it her little time machine.”

Finny whooped and raised his hand to Stick for a high-five. “I get the pot,” he shouted.

“What pot?” I frowned at Dutch for an explanation, but he just raised one shoulder.

Finny was dancing in place. “I called it. Time travel. You said flying car, but I said, ‘Nah, it’ll be time travel.’”

Jasmine jammed her fists on her hips and pursed her lips. “What are you talking about?”

I raised my voice. “Somebody tell me what’s going on.”

Stick had an oddly high, thin voice for a man six foot six and three-hundred fifty pounds with a biker beard pouring down his chest. “We’ve been getting phone calls all week. Remember that teenage kid who bought himself a junker and his dad said he had to pay all the gas himself?”

I remembered the freckled and pimpled sixteen year old who might have a chance at stepping up the social ladder if he just had some wheels under him. He’d looked at Jasmine like Romeo looked at Juliet, and she’d had eyes only for the car, a seventies station-wagon the kid had bought for five-hundred dollars—the price being so stiff only because it actually ran.

Stick said, “Yeah, well, he drove it two weeks and brought it in a few days ago because he thought the gas gauge was broken. I gave it a look, and the tank was topped-up full. That old clunker should have drunk gasoline like an elephant, but the kid said he’d never put a drop in it since the first time he filled it up.”

I waited for Stick to explain the joke.

Jasmine said, “Cool.”

Finny said, “Oh man, plus the doctor who said he never hit a red light on the way to the ER, but he made up for it when he drove to the marina to take out his boat.”

Dutch leaned his shoulder against the frame of his office door and crossed his ankles. “The city planner who busted up his Jag three times this year driving too drunk to see straight. Now the Jag won’t start when he’s been drinking. Any other time, but not when he’s sauced.”

“He was not a happy man,” Stick said. “He said he’d never bring the car back here.”

Dutch grunted. “I’d have kicked him to the curb years ago, but it wouldn’t have been fair to the car.”

“That is so totally cool,” Jasmine said. “When you do mine, can you make it fly?”

Shy, blond Amber said, “What about making it so you never get lost?”

Jasmine tossed her head like a movie star. “That’s what cell phones are for. I’ll decide what I want it to do when I get it.”

I scowled at Dutch. “Nobody thought they should mention any of this to me?” I had worked on more cars than the ones they had listed. There was no way to tell how many people were driving around in time bombs. Time. I shuddered. Where was Mrs. Parker going to wind up if Olga took a wrong turn through time?

Finny said, “If we’d said anything, it might have jinxed the bet.”

“What bet?”

“You know, the one about what you’d do next. Stick said flying car.”

Stick interrupted. “Yeah, well, I wasn’t really taking it seriously.”

Finny ignored him. “I said time-machine like Doc Brown in those movies, and Dutch said being invisible to radar.”

Dutch looked sheepish. “I wasn’t taking it seriously, either.”

Finny jabbed an index finger at him and waggled it around. “Your loss. I was serious, and I got the pot.”

Jasmine pouted. “How come we didn’t get to bet? I’d have said...” She squinted at the ceiling, thinking.

“There’s a pot?” I asked.

“We put in twenty each.” Finny did a hip-wagging dance. “And I am forty dollars richer, thanks to you, Doc. That’s your name now, dude. You’re Doc Brown.”

I decided it was marginally better than Phantom Swordsman, which had been hung on me after I was caught on video fighting off a swarm of tentacled leviathans with the blade of my sword-cane.

Dutch pulled a roll of bills out of his pocket, peeled off three and handed them to Finny. “Are you going to finish the Pontiac before five?”
​
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Finny waved the bills in the air and hip-wagged out the back door, dancing to an inner beat.



Available on Kindle and in paperback Free until Oct. 30. https://www.amazon.com/White-Knight-Blackwood-Curse-Book-ebook/dp/B07J5MBG2Q/ref 
#Paranormal #Adventure
​

What don’t we know? 

Some scientists tell us that an electron can behave like either a wave or a particle. Oooookay. Actually, we’re pretty familiar with the properties of particles.They’re reliably solid. We can manipulate, weigh and measure them. We can interact with particles as we build roads, buildings and machines. Particles are the building blocks of our history. 

On the other hand, what is hidden in our history? Could it have been a basic understanding of how waves work that built Stonehenge? What have we dismissed as impossible? What science and knowledge has gotten thrown out as superstition or witchcraft?

We don’t have much information on waves. Most of what I was taught, even in college, has been proven wrong. I was told that sound waves are nothing more than a bunch of particles bumping into each other. Thoughts are particles in the brain arranged in such a way as to stimulate a certain sequence of neurons to fire, giving us the thought that we like chocolate ice cream. This has been our contemporary understanding.

However,  if electrons behave both as particles and as waves, how do we interact with them as waves? I think the recent historical answer is that we don’t. I suspect that answer is wrong. It is more probable that it is impossible not to interact with electrons as waves. We just don’t understand how that is done. We don’t recognize it when it happens. We are so immersed in Western logic and scientific thought that we cannot see something that has not been named and described for us.

We’ve long recognized the problem of not being able to see something because we don’t have a word for it, particularly in low descriptive languages. Some early languages don’t have a word for blue. It gets classed as dark along with black and green. Brown is often called orange. As an English speaker, I see a big difference between brown and orange and all the shades in between. People who don't have the words for brown or blue can't identify them as different from orange or green. We've all learned that people living in the far north have many words for snow. For those of us who don't live with snow constantly, we don't see many of the subtle differences and don't know what they mean.

In the same way that naming colors influences perception, recognizing those aspects of our lives that are influenced by wave mechanics might be easier if we named them. Perhaps we do have some names for encountering wave mechanics. 

We talk about energy waves, which sounds like a bunch of electrons acting like waves. The theory, I learned for feeling warm when the sun strikes me, is that a bunch of electrons get excited by heat from the sun and bounce around hitting me causing my electrons to bounce around faster, and I experience this as heat. I think we can talk easier about the phenomenon if we forget the bouncing particles and go straight to waves. Waves of energy from the sun strike my skin, and I experience this as heat. Who knows maybe the sun waves turn some of my electrons into waves? The point is, we don’t have words to describe the phenomenon.

However, we know humans have built machines that observe electrons acting as waves. What do we do with this information. Why is it important?

I think it is important because limiting ourselves to the use of particles only limits our potential. Refusing to look at waves and consider the possibilities is willful ignorance. Will understanding Wave Mechanics help us understand our history and the ancient myths and legends? What impact would an understanding of Wave Mechanics have on our spirituality or on our relationship to music? Where can we go? What can we do, and what can we be if we study waves? How do we study them? How do physicists begin?

Physicists don’t begin the study. Writers and artists begin the study by naming ideas and imagining what can be. We like to laugh at how many of the devices seen in the Star Trek episodes have been developed into actual products. Our flip phones couldn’t communicate with the space station, but we have developed means to communicate with the space station and with our explorers on Mars. We have a space station. We need our writers to name ides, concepts and possibilities so that we can talk about them and begin to play with the concepts. 

We need to relearn what the renaissance artists knew. Science and art are not two opposing fields, They are connected. Artists must have some sense of spacial relationships, human nature, perspective, and the properties of their materials before they can create. On the other hand, it is the imagination of the artist that gives birth to scientific study.

***


My daughter, Melissa doesn’t agree with me on the role that wave mechanics plays in quantum physics. We are only amateurs, after all, in the study of physics, but she performs her job as a writer by giving names and descriptions to the concept of overlapping universes in her Blackwood Curse series. She thinks her physical objects slide through overlapping universes. I’d write them as becoming waves that pass through matter, space and time. https://www.amazon.com/Blackwood-Curse-Queen-Corruption-ebook/dp/B077CWT6JB/ref