A View of The Lalaurie Horror

The Lalaurie Horror by Jennifer Reeser

(Today's post is just to point you in the direction of really great new release from Jennifer Reeser, a wonderful formalist poet who, I'm proud to say, is also my wife.)

Twice Nominated for Literature's Pushcart Prize.

On April 10, 1834, fire erupted at the mansion of wealthy, beautiful, twice-widowed socialite Madame Marie Delphine Lalaurie, a Creole of French and Irish heritage living on Royal Street in the famed French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana. First responders discovered seven slaves in the attic, victims of her torture chained to the mansion walls.

They were rescued, though to this day, at least seventeen slaves belonging to Madame Lalaurie remain vanished without a trace, and the roster of slave children, adults and elderly who mysteriously died in her care is considerable.  The lady herself escaped prosecution and was never brought to justice. 

Reports of hauntings and strange sights at the mansion have persisted through its 200 year history, with a long list of owners -- from humble school instructors to Hollywood stars such as the actor Nicolas Cage -- who each abandoned the house after a relatively short time, following a timeline of unfortunate events. At present, the Lalaurie Mansion is considered among the loveliest of homes in the United States of America, and reputed to be one of its most haunted, as well.

Jennifer Reeser conducts a spellbinding, poetic "ghost tour" through its chambers, exploring the real culture, cuisine, history, mythology and art unique to New Orleans, while at the same time creating an original story and fictional plot, told in a straightforward, classic form full of feeling, which should be clear to anyone, anywhere in the world. Readers will encounter such characters as Calavera, the Baron Samedi, and even Madame Lalaurie, herself.

What the literary journal, TRINACRIA, has described as, "...an amazing terza rima narrative of a tour through an old haunted house, done in unnerving Grand Guignol style."

A signed, print edition of The Lalaurie Horror can be bought for $8.00 at Saint James Infirmary Books.  A Kindle version, which can be read on any smartphone, or tablet, is available at Amazon for just $3.99.  Don't miss out on this unique tour of New Orleans.  And for those of you who are not big fans of poetry, this is a rare chance to read some of Jennifer's poetry that is a narrative form.  That's right, she tells a story, and what a story it is!

My View of Rosedown Plantation (Part Three)

Rosedown Plantation, St. Francisville, Louisiana.

Today's post is the final look at the historic garden plantation, Rosedown.  After our introduction in part one, and our interior tour of the house in part two, we'll now take a final walk around the grounds.  And as promised, I'll introduce you to a friend we met along the way.

Just off the southwestern corner of the house, you'll find the formal gardens.  Admittedly, during our visit, there were not many flowers in bloom.  It was early September, and most of them were still in heat-check.  However, we did see plenty of marigolds, ageratum, phlox (white and pink), as well as flowering crepe myrtles and butterfly bushes.

But don't worry, in this view on the left, from the formal gardens, you can see that even the pond looks picturesque in the late morning sun.  

As I mentioned in the first post on Rosedown, Martha Turnbull was inspired by her trip to Europe in the 1850's to build these gardens, which eventually expanded to 28 acres of lush, carefully planned walks and gardens.  The old brick wall in this picture is what is left of the original conservatory, where many of the plants would have been carefully raised.

According the Louisiana State Park web site, these were some of the largest private gardens in the United States in the 19th century.

Midway down the grand Oak alley that approaches the house, you will see this view of the North Garden's fountain and summerhouse on the left.  There is a corresponding summerhouse in the South Garden.  The playful sounds of the fountain were a special addition to the stillness of the gardens.  

It would be very easy to lose yourself in the solitude and peace that shrouds these grounds like the Spanish moss on the oaks above.

  As soon as we arrived in the parking lot, this tough-looking fella crawled out from under a car and introduced himself.  He was eager to show us around.  After we paid the entrance fee (as of this date, the entrance fee is $10 a person) he accompanied us as we began our walk through the paths of the North Garden.  He was not in the least interested in the spider-webs that spanned the pathways, nor the menacing banana spiders that brooded in the center of them.  He was short enough to pass under them without giving them the least thought.

However, he was happy to have company, rubbing himself against my ankles as I stopped to take a few snapshots.  He even made sure to get my attention so that he would make it into my blog.  I only noticed he was gone when I heard him crashing through the bushes after a very noisy and frightened pigeon.

The sun-dappled privet hedges and paths provide plenty of opportunity for visitors to take in this breath-taking plantation.  For those of you who are gardening enthusiasts, the bookstore at Rosedown sells copies of Martha Turnbull's extensive gardening journals, which detail the intricacies of the preparation and maintenance processes necessary to create and sustain such impressive landscaping.

A link is provided at the end of this post if you are interested in the diary.

  

This map, which is provided at the beginning of the tour, gives you an idea of the scope of the Rosedown gardens.  During the 1950's restoration, great care was taken to use the most accurate varieties of plants they could find.  Using Martha's diary, they were able to recreate her antebellum world.  

Many thanks go out to the staff of Rosedown Plantation for their friendliness and hard work.  It made for an enjoyable stroll beneath spreading oak trees, cypress trees, and even the oldest pine tree in the state.  We won't soon forget this world that is well off the beaten path of all that is ordinary.

And one last bit of advice for visitors:  There is no restaurant on the grounds.  However, just down the road in St. Francisville, you'll see Sonny's Pizza, a local joint with some of the best pizza I've had in a long time.  Don't hesitate to check them out.

Like the photograph of the approach to Rosedown at the top of this post?  It is available as a coffee mug at the following link.

Rosedown Plantation Coffee Cup

My View of Rosedown Plantation (Part Two)

Rosedown Plantation, St. Francisville, Louisiana.

Having taken a tour of the grounds around Rosedown Plantation in our last post, as promised, I'll give you a tour of the interior of the home on this trip.

The foyer of the house grabs your attention as soon as you step in out of the sunlight.  This open entryway is colorfully decorated with a wall paper that, while not original to the house, is an exact copy of the original wall-covering, manufactured by the original European firm that first supplied the design over one hundred and fifty years ago.

The home remained in the hands of the original family from the time it was built, in the 1830's, until the mid 1950's.  At that time, Catherine Underwood, a Texan, purchased the estate and spent $10 million on a ten-year restoration.  This included researching and commissioning the recreation of the wall décor.

Our tour was conducted by a very friendly guide, Sasha, who was full of wonderful information on the restoration as well as the history of the home.  A few rules were stressed, including the requirement that we not use a flash with our camera, and we were asked not to touch anything in the home.  It was easy to see why.  All of the furniture was original, and you could tell.  Not that it looked old and used.  Far from it.  It was all in excellent and remarkable condition, considering the humidity of Louisiana.  (Now the home is air-conditioned, which was a nice treat on that hot summer day.)   But you could simply sense that these marvelous pieces were not merely imitation tables and chairs and divans.  The Turnbulls, the family that built Rosedown, were extremely wealthy, and they furnished their home accordingly.

Being wealthy in the America South of the early 19th century, they were slave-owners.  A large plantation, Rosedown included about 450 slaves at one time.  According to the guide, this stairway was built for the Turnbulls with the skilled carpentry of their slaves.  As she pointed out, after over one-hundred and fifty years, they are still solid, and do not even creak.  A testament to the slaves' skill.

However, these were not the only stairs in the house.

In the back of the house, in the butler's pantry, between the dining room and Mrs. Turnbull's office, you can see these stairs that were used by the house servants.  When the house was restored, these stairs were left as they were found, in order to preserve their condition for display.  As you can see, the edge of the wooden steps are heavily worn down from a century of use.

This view is from the second floor, as it goes down into the butler's pantry.  At the top of these stairs is the attic, which we were not allowed to see.  (What a disappointment!)  However, it was the only part of the house we were not allowed to see.  As house tours go, it was a very thorough tour with near-total access.  Something that is not always the case in historic homes.

The dining room was still flooded with morning light, despite the fact that it was after 11 AM.  Here in the dining room, there was one main meal of the day, eaten around two in the afternoon.  According to our guide, the fan above the table was operated by a young slave who sat on a seat against the wall.  Though the guide did not mention it, I wondered if they hired servants to do this after 1865.  I'm just glad the fan above our own table is electric.

Just outside the front of the house, off to one side, was a small office built for the family's doctor.  Martha Turnbull had three children; Sarah, who would eventually raise 10 children at Rosedown, and two boys, one of which died of yellow fever at the age of seven.  Hired to care for the children, the doctor remained to care for not only the family but the entire slave population.  It was a rarity for a plantation to have a doctor on site for the slaves.

The plantation was ravaged by Northern troops during the war, and Sarah's family (she married James Bowman from the nearby Oakley Plantation) kept the plantation in operation with the aid of 250 sharecroppers.

Upstairs in the master bedroom, there was this little collection of sundries.  The wedding dress off to the left was a reproduction of Sarah's original dress.  Along the way I also saw swords, wicker bustle supports, shotguns, and lots of personal papers.

The personal papers were well preserved from the family, who never seemed to throw out any papers.  Receipts, notes, lists, sheet music, and schoolwork; it was all there for the preservationists to discover and examine.  Many of them have been laid out so that visitors can catch a glimpse of the Turnbulls' daily lives.

The master bedroom was not particularly large.  However, considering that Sarah and James had ten children, it was a fairly large (and busy!) room in comparison to the three smaller rooms that were used for the children.

Sarah lived until 1914.  Her four unmarried daughters, Corrie, Isabel, Sarah and Nina, became the sole inhabitants of Rosedown.  When Nina, the last daughter, died in 1955, they had managed to keep Rosedown debt-free, as well as held onto 3,000 acres of land, 28 acres of gardens, the house and its furnishings.  They were remarkable women, considering everything the plantation had seen, including the Civil War and the Great Depression.

The nursery looked very cozy.  It must have been, with all of those kids!  I was amused to see a fireplace in the nursery.  We are so safety conscious today, the Turnbulls might have been brought up on reckless endangerment charges for having a fireplace in the nursery.  However, as the guide pointed out, how else would they have heated the room?  And as my wife pointed out, there was probably a nursemaid on duty to keep an eye on them.  Or maybe at that time, kids were just so used to seeing fires that they weren't tempted to play with them.  Yeah, sure.

As the tour came to an end, we ended up in the library.  This beautiful room was graced with three bookshelves, one of  which you can see in the picture here.  They were not built on site, but were ordered from abroad.  They were supposed to be made with the same dimensions, but when they arrived, it was discovered that they were not of equal size.  Instead of having them sent back and others made, it was decided to offset the chimney.  This was not such a difficult decision when slaves were available to do such labor-intensive work.  Still, it seems a bit extreme.  It is sort of comforting, however, to realize that even the extremely wealthy have to deal with things like this.

Sasha did a great job of showing off the house and its history.  We were the only ones on the tour, so it was an unhurried, quiet tour.  The guide even treated us to her own rendition of Beethoven's Für Elise on the Turnbull's pre-Civil War piano.  It still sounded amazing.  Again, a difficult feat in the Louisiana humidity.  And yes, I too saw the irony in her playing a piano on which stood a card that clearly read please do not touch.

So be sure to take the time to tour the inside of Rosedown while you're visiting the grounds.  There is much more to see than what I've included here.

Next post I'll show a bit more of the formal gardens as well as introduce you to a friend I met while we were there.

Like the photograph of the approach to Rosedown at the top of this post?  It is available as a coffee mug at the following link.

Rosedown Plantation Coffee Cup

My View of Rosedown Plantation (Part One)

Rosedown Plantation, St. Francisville, Louisiana.

The sun was shining strong the morning we drove north on US Highway 61.  Just about twenty minutes north of Baton Rouge, in the quiet, historic town of St. Francisville, we arrived at our destination: Rosedown Plantation.  It was a splendid September morning, perfect for taking in the natural beauty of this one-hundred-and-eighty-year-old estate.  After passing through the entrance, we paid the ten dollar entry fee (per person) and were directed to enter the grounds through a small path that led through tall azalea bushes and even taller cypress trees.  Spanish moss draped the canopy above.  Right away, we discovered that Spanish moss was not the only material hanging about.

Spread across the path were many large webs with these rather alarming looking banana spiders sitting directly in the center of them.  These are actually a fairly common site down here in Louisiana, as my kids can tell you from growing up in the country.  Run around playing hide and seek in the myrtle bushes and you're going to run into this yellow fellow eventually.  My wife can still remember her childhood experience of walking into a web and seeing the spider start towards her.  Her uncle pulled her out of the web in time to prevent her from being bitten but not soon enough to erase the nightmares.  Though everyone here calls them banana spiders, they are actually golden silk orb-weavers.  Their webs are spectacular works of art, and though they will bite and their venom is similar to a black-widow bite, it is far less powerful.  But I didn't want to test that theory.  However, once we were on the paths of the North Garden, there was no way to get out except under and around all the webs.  So we crouched, and walked very slowly until we made it out into the open approach to the house.

There were no identifying marks that I could find on
these statues, so this could either be one that
represented a season or any of the mythological characters.

As we stepped into the open, we were treated to an iconic view of the plantation house down a lengthy avenue of oak trees.  On an ancient brick base, I found a faded plaque which read:

STATUES: THE CARRARA MARBLE STATUES WERE PURCHASED IN ITALY IN 1851 WHEN MARTHA AND DANIEL TURNBULL AND THEIR DAUGHTER, SARAH, TOURED EUROPE.  THOSE ALONG THE AVENUE ARE NAMED FOR MYTHOLOGICAL CHARACTERS AND THE SEASONS.  THE FOUR FACING ROSEDOWN HOUSE REPRESENT THE CONTNENTS (sic).

There was no statue on this base.  There were several bases which seemed to be missing their statues.  However, there were still several of the statues in attendance along the avenue, and the four figures representing the continents still face the house.  I wanted to linger along the avenue, however, the house tour was about to begin, as it was 10:55 and the tours begin every hour on the hour.  So we walked through the shade of the oaks and approached the front porch.

The front approach to the house, as seen from its
balcony.  Two of the Carrara marble statures that
represent the continents can be seen on the left.

The stately feel of that approach is truly spectacular.  These formal gardens were designed and built over a twenty year period under the direction of Martha Turnbull after that grand tour of Europe.  She is said to have been influenced heavily by the formal gardens she saw there.  I can believe it.  Having recently been to Versailles and the Tuileries gardens, I can say that Rosedown, while not as large as those sites, can certainly stand in their company without shame.  Rosedown's gardens were in fact some of the only formal gardens found in the United States in the 19th century.

Rosedown is far too extensive and fascinating to cover it in one blog, so I'll stop here for now.  Next post we'll look at the interior of the house.  A third post will cover the formal gardens.

The avenue of oaks leads to this idyllic walkway, which leads to the front porch.  It was easy to imagine
riding up the avenue in a carriage.  Despite the heat of the day, it was pleasant under the shade of the oaks.

This lady was surrounded by Spanish
moss, azaleas, and banana spiders.

Like the photograph of the approach to Rosedown at the top of this post?  It is available as a coffee mug at the following link.

Rosedown Plantation Coffee Cup

An Early View of New Orleans in 2014

If you are like me, you're always looking for a unique calendar.  It always seems like the same calendars show up on the shelves over and over again: wolves, Marilyn Monroe, rainbows.  They even use many of the same pictures.  Even when my wife and I look for calendars of our favorite cities, we usually just see the same tired old shots.

So I've taken matters into my own hands, and my own camera.  Last year I designed several Paris calendars.  Sold on the website Zazzle, I was happy to provide an alternative for many people throughout the US and Canada who were shopping for a calendar that didn't just have the usual photographs of the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe.  In addition to new Paris calendars for 2014, this year I am including calendars for New Orleans.  If you've been following Room With No View, you know I've been photographing that marvelous city quite extensively.

The first two calendars for New Orleans are now available.  Use the links below to order one (or both) of them after checking out a few of the photographs you'll find in the collections.

French Quarter Balconies Calendars by Jason Reeser

New Orleans' French Quarter Calendar by Jason Reeser

The Lady in the Lazaretto

This week marks the release of my second novel in the Lazaretto Trilogy: Lady in the Lazaretto.  If you missed out on the first book of the trilogy, you can read about it in my post A Preview of the Lazaretto.  The Lazaretto is a dark and disturbing world where travelers must endure a forty day quarantine before traveling from one planet to the next.  It is a passive quarantine.  Those travelers found to be carrying an infectious pathogen are not allowed to leave the Lazaretto.  The exile is a life sentence.

As he carves a new life on the quarantine moon first revealed in The Lazaretto, Gregor Lepov is hired to solve the perplexing disappearances of its citizens into a mysterious basement apartment. Detective Ed MacNally of Lazaretto Homicide is busy training his new partner, Menya Russell, with whom he is investigating the murder of a man whose body was recently uncovered after thirty years.

  Thieves, corpses, ladies and liars lure Lepov and MacNally into the Lazaretto’s disturbing past.  Has the killer that was active thirty years ago begun killing again?  And after Lepov is nearly killed by a woman who looks too much like Lilly Stewart, he must decide who he can really trust in a city that shuns faith and embraces fear.

The book is available in print and ebook editions.

Below is an excerpt from an opening scene of the book.

   Darkness had not yet settled over the Lazaretto as Lieutenant Ed MacNally and his young partner, Menya Russell, walked across the uneven surface of a West End landfill.  Shards of glass and broken sewer pipes mixed with decomposing soil to create an alien landscape that made walking both difficult and dangerous.  The sun, as much as could be seen through the overcast sky, was still out.  It would sink out of sight soon and already crews were assembling a large tripod topped with fiber optic lamps.  They were ancient, compared to the newer models MacNally’s partner had seen at the academy, but they would do the job.

   “Over here, detective.”  A haggard man in an ill-fitting suit waved MacNally toward a small ditch between two mounds of debris; the man’s skin as pockmarked and scarred as the ditch.

   MacNally found a semi-solid path that had been formed by a tracked vehicle and followed it into the ditch.  The soil there was dry and crumbly.  With all the recent rain, MacNally hadn’t thought that was possible.  Halfway down, MacNally realized it wasn’t dry soil.  It was plaster dust.  Each step he took crushed it into a trillion little dust particles that floated a few inches from the ground and never seemed to settle back down.

   Despite the freshly disturbed plaster dust, a body was visible in the deepest level of the ditch.  The fiber optic lamps cast a shimmer of light now, enough so the two detectives could see what all the fuss was about.  Midst the disjointed shapes of the broken soil and debris lay part of a body; the lower half of a human adult.  There was little left save for the bones and most of the synthetic clothes with which the body had been covered.  The legs were badly twisted; the feet buried in the soil.

   “It that all?”  MacNally asked the man with the scarred face.

   “We thought it was.  My operator stopped digging when he saw it.  We did some soft digging with hand shovels after he backed the rig out.  We almost gave up until we hit this.”

   MacNally’s eyes followed the man’s pointed finger.  A bundle of rags lay at the far end of the ditch, fifteen meters away.  MacNally made sure not to step on the lower half of the body and motioned for Russell to do the same as he traversed the ditch and stopped near the bundle of rags.

   “Looks like a match,” Russell said, no humor in his tone.

   The little dust cloud clung to the ground as if it were afraid to float away.  MacNally squatted down and fanned the plaster dust with big meaty hands to get a clearer view of the upper half of the body.  It was face down, its shoulders hunched forward, hands and arms strung out in front.  The rib cage, visible through the heavily torn shirt, was full of fresh soil.

   “I don’t guess it’s gonna help to take Visuals, huh?”  Russell held back a few steps and showed little interest in the skeleton.

   “Doesn’t matter,” MacNally shook his head.  “We run every Aspect.  Doesn’t matter that there isn’t much left.  There’s information here.  We just can’t see it yet.”

   “I didn’t mean that,” Russell mumbled.

   “What?”  MacNally turned with exasperation.  It didn’t take much for the young Arcobian to get on his nerves.  “If you’re gonna say something say it loud enough so I can hear ya.  I ain’t twenty years old anymore.”

   “I said I didn’t mean the Visuals wouldn’t pick up any data.  I meant we don’t have a reason to investigate.”  Russell did not raise his voice.

   “I still don’t hear him,” MacNally mumbled, though in fact he had.  He just hadn’t heard his partner make an attempt to speak louder.  “I say we investigate him and that’s good enough reason for you.  Okay?”

   Russell looked down at the rags with the same pinched expression he always wore when arguing with the Lieutenant, wrinkling his brow in a way that always made MacNally think the boy had swallowed a bug.

   “Okay,” he said.  “I’ll make sure the VTechs get a good set of shots.  And a full set of tests on the soil.  Do you want anything else?”

   “Maybe,” MacNally stood still for a few seconds, mesmerized by the remains of the man at his feet.  He felt around in his coat pockets until he found a pack of cigarettes and put one between his lips.  He put a silver lighter to it and his shadowed face was briefly lit.

   “You think he was buried here for a long time?”

   “I doubt it,” MacNally pulled the cigarette out of his mouth and used it to point.  “This soil looks fresh, it’s only been in it for a short time.  See how loose all this is?”

   “Well, that ain’t exactly soil,” the scarred man in the bad suit spoke up.  “This is debris from a building that was just torn down.  I figure the guy was inside the building—basement maybe.  When the rigs dug it up he was pulled out.  Something like that.”

   “Maybe he was just some guy who died before the building was erected,” Russell said, shrugging his shoulders.  “Maybe he died of natural causes and was buried and no one remembered he was there.”

   “Russell,” MacNally was almost patient in his reply, “I realize you had little warning before your transfer, but you could have bothered to learn something about this place.  The IHS is very particular about people here.  They keep a zero sum count of everyone here.  If you arrive, you either depart, you’re still here, or you die.  Besides, no one gets buried in the soil here.  There’s too much risk of contamination.  That’s why the burials are up on the high slope’s bedrock.”

   “Maybe your IHS isn’t as all-knowing as you imagine.”

   “Speaking of IHS, they ought to be here pretty soon.  Go back to the car and wait for them.  Tell them we got to get Visuals.”  MacNally watched Russell climb the unstable embankment.

   “He could be right,” the scarred man offered without invitation.

   MacNally glared at him until the man grew uncomfortable and retreated to the other end of the ditch.

   Once alone, MacNally knelt beside the skeletal remains, examining the outstretched hands.  With a flashlight no bigger than a pencil, he illuminated the bones of the right hand.

   “You stupid sonofabitch,” MacNally stuck his cigarette between his lips.  “I should have known you never made it out of here alive.”

   He brushed away enough of the dust to free the middle finger of the right hand and completely reveal a silver ring with a Cross of Lorraine on its crest.  MacNally gingerly removed the ring and dropped it in his coat pocket.

   A new cloud of dust appeared at his feet as he kicked at the debris surrounding the boney fingers, erasing the signs of what he’d done.

   This was the worst kind of end to a day.  A new investigation was about to begin, and while Ed MacNally knew the body’s identity, he wasn’t about to reveal it to anyone.  He was, in fact, going to have to keep anyone from quickly identifying those bones.
   MacNally watched Russell stumble back through the landfill with two VTechs in tow.  It was about to be one helluva week.

Below you can find the new versions (yellow is the print, grey is the ebook version) as well as a link to the first book.  If you are interested in a signed print copy, watch for it at rocketfirebooks.com.  It will be up on the website by the end of this week.

  

My View of a Classic Novel and Our Not-So-Classic Modern Mindset

The Pioneers, by James Fenimore Cooper

Lately, I've been seeing much honor being given to a recently deceased author whose famous "10 Rules of Writing" stress the importance of fast, non-descriptive, skip-the-boring parts narrative.  It warms me to know this late author would have hated James Fenimore Cooper's The Pioneers, as would his adherents.  I realize there are fewer and fewer readers out there who have the capacity or desire to appreciate this type of slow, highly descriptive, thoughtful work of fiction.  Even Mark Twain railed against Cooper's lack of action, and roundabout way of speaking.  Personally, I revel in it.

It is fitting that this book tells the story of the (then) wilderness of New York as it was being invaded by the hand (and ax) of man.  Trees were being felled, clearings replaced tangled forests, and the heartless laws of men were replacing the common-sense laws of the forest.  Natty Bumppo, known as Leatherstocking, is at the far end of his 70 years of life.  His life of freedom and love of nature are in jeopardy.  The world he once knew is no more.  He is beset by such laws as hunting out of season as well as the greed of those who believe he is hiding a fortune in silver.  Modernity is not a friend to Bumppo.

The same is true for books such as these.  We're too busy to take the time to read slow books like The Pioneers.  Someone sold us a bill of goods, years ago, and said we needed to read books that can be finished in just a few days.  We need to hurry up and get to the next book.  Perhaps this was just a marketing scheme to get us to spend more at the bookstore.  I never understand why people don't think it is a bonus to get a book that sells for the same price as a quick-read throwaway pulp fiction which is three times the length and written in such a way that you must slow down and pay attention.  It certainly saves the reader money.  One need buy far fewer books when they are written in this manner.

Is this modern New York, which James
Fenimore Cooper would not recognize,
so busy and distracting that his books
can no longer be read?

But time, or the lack thereof, is not the real problem.  It is that little phrase "pay attention".  We're too distracted now to sit with a book in a silent room and concentrate on the text.  We hear music and television anywhere we go.  Stuck in the waiting room of the doctor's office?  You'll have to work hard to read a book that requires your attention, since there is music playing, and other patients surfing on their phones while telling their neighbor about the latest stupid video clip they watched.  Reading at home?  Nine times out of ten someone will have the massive flat-screen TV turned on, blaring noise from surround-sound speakers that shake the house.  How about reading on the train, or while waiting for your car's oil to be changed?  More flat-screen TVs tuned to mindless daytime talk-shows.

Even as I write this, my laptop has beeped, to let me know someone has posted something on Facebook that I might need to see.  Switch over!  See if it is a funny picture or a sad news item.  Maybe a friend posted a picture of their entree that just arrived on their table at the best restaurant in town.  (Which now make me wonder what I'm going to do for lunch...perhaps the local diner, or maybe just stay in and reheat some leftovers...hmmmm.)

So anyway, about this...what was I writing about?  Oh yes, "The Pioneers".  So modernity is no friend to these classic novels of yore.  (Yore?  Is that right?  Now I'm off track again, checking on Google to see if yore is the right word.  When I type yore, Google suggests that I meant yorehab which turns out to be a site dedicated to the obsession of playing Yoville, a game where people pretend to have a house and pretend to buy pretend items for that house.  Yorehab actually helps you find the very best pretend prices for your most wished-for pretend couches and lava-lamps and...oh, okay, I see that yore is the right word.  As defined by by Google, yore is "of long ago or former times (used in nostalgic or mock-nostalgic recollection".)  To put it plainly, people today have trouble reading books that were written a long time ago.

So if our modern lifestyle has made it impossible for you to read The Pioneers, you'll miss out on the following:

Illustration for the James Feminore Cooper novel The Pioneers,
 art by Felix Octavius Carr Darley.
 Published 1861, W. A. Townsend and Company in New York.

  The opening scene involves a shooting of a deer and an argument over who deserves the credit for the kill.  The argument is easily won by the revelation that one of the shooters could not have hit the deer because he hit one of the men in the argument, who dramatically reveals he is hit to win the argument.
  A courtroom drama that highlights the fact that men were already losing their personal freedoms in the late 1700's to the overreach of local government.
  A contest of shooting acumen in which a turkey is placed so that only his head is visible to the contestants.
  Fights, jail-breaks, forest fires, and emotional death scenes.
  A panther attack which ends in a noble warrior's bloody death.
  The chance to find out about Leatherstocking's companion, a character named "The Slut".
  A story filled with conservationist propaganda and a condemnation of the terrible genocide that the whites perpetrated on the Native American populations.
  A wonderful, warm, historical, and exciting look at the early lives of those who tamed the wilderness of New York State.

But don't worry.  No one will make you read this long, slow, dull, dusty tome.  You'll have plenty of time to read the latest spine-tingling-can't-put-it-down-page-turner so that you can quickly buy the next one.  Just keep in mind that The Pioneers was seen in the same light two hundred years ago, when the population had more time on their hands and their comprehension skills were obviously more highly developed.

My View of Moonraker (No, not that one!)

Moonraker, by Ian Fleming

To continue my study of the Ian Fleming Bond (see my review on Thunderball at Goodreads for an explanation of what I mean) I decided to give Moonraker a read.  It is, quite frankly, the worst movie of the series, and I thought I'd see if the book might turn out to be better.  (I'd had a hint of this from GoodReads friend Tracey (see her excellent review here.)  I was happy to discover it was much, much better.

Keeping with the Fleming characterization of Bond, we still see him as a bit more lucky than skilled.  However, we begin to see flashes of his too-good-to-be-true accomplishments.  (I won't spoil it for you, but the welding torch bit is, well, ahem...tough to swallow.  If I tried that in one of my books I think I'd be embarrassed to let someone read it.  But I digress.)  He seems less petty here than he did in Thunderball.  In keeping with the lengthy golf game in Goldfinger, Fleming shows Bond at another "sport", this time the not so glamorous game of "Bridge".  I know this was a popular game back then, and my parents played it all the time, and I even learned to play it with them for a time, but this does date this book a bit.

I enjoyed the mystery here.  It is one of those stories where you really don't know what is going on for most of the book.  We are as clueless as Bond.  We aren't given any early warning from Fleming as to what Hugo Drax is or what he is up to.  This keeps the book mysterious, but leaves too much of a far-fetched revelation scene (yep, Bond and the girl, tied up, listen to Drax tell his life story and his evil plot all in one sitting).  Drax never really reaches the menacing point as Auric Goldfinger did.  But he does fill the role of evil Bond villain pretty well, with the massive concrete lair, evil doctors, and jumpsuited men running about.

The girl in Moonraker is Gala Brand.  So far, she is one of the best female characters I've ever seen in a Bond movie or book.  She is intelligent, beautiful (of course), an agent (not a victim) and she has her own ideas (it is her idea that 'saves the day' for Bond and all of England), including what man she wants to be with.  Yes, Fleming gets her out of her clothes at some point, but it is in an action scene (not to be confused with a scene in which Bond is getting some action) and Fleming actually points out that there is nothing sensuous about it.  Like Felix Leiter, who is a no-show in this book, I wish Gala Brand could show up again in another Bond outing.

Bond drives a 1933 Bentley 4.5 litre, similar to the Bentley
shown here in Moonraker.

The story takes place in Great Britain, which is supposed to be a no-no for the 00 agents.  But that is dealt with plausibly, I suppose, and I'm glad Fleming chose this location.  For those of us who don't live in Britain, it too, can be an exotic location.  Especially the Britain of the 1950's.  We are treated to a fantastic car chase (Fleming excels here) and Bond and Brand are also forced to deal with some uncommon physical extremes.  And there are no tricks to getting through them.  Just grit your teeth and deal with it.  (And again, Brand holds her own--no shrinking violet is she.)

One little extra I enjoyed was the behind the scenes look at Bond's office.  His secretary, Ms. Ponsonby, is a nice touch, and Fleming gives her some dignity and gallantry in the short scenes she appears in.  Also, during this book, there are only three 00 agents.  (007, 008, and 0011)  M gets a bigger role here than I've seen before, too.

All of it added up to a wonderful Bond adventure, which begs the question: what happened to the collective mind of the Broccoli production when they tried to make this movie?  Christopher Wood wrote the screenplay for it, and frankly, I hope he regrets it.  With this novel as the source material, I can't imagine what he (or the producers) were thinking.  I still believe that Bond fans should get together and plead with United Artists to scrub this movie from our collective memories.  I love James Bond movies, Roger Moore was my favorite Bond growing up, but this movie is just impossible to watch.

Sneak Preview of "The Lady in the Lazaretto"

"The Lady in the Lazaretto" is the second book in the Lazaretto Trilogy.  Watch for more information on it during the month of August.  The book will be released at the end of the month.

Microsoft Remodeling Company

I have to share my good fortune in finding a wonderful, quality home remodeling company to help me upgrade my older home.  And first let me assure you that no one at the Microsoft Remodeling Company has paid me in any way to pass on this glowing review of their services.

Our house before the Upgrade.

First, a little background:  My home is about five years old.  I know, I know, you're wondering how in the world I can stand to live in such an outdated house.  But give me a little credit, I was trying to be a good steward of my money, not wanting to completely lose out on my investment in what was supposed to be a top-of-the-line home when I bought it way back then.  Yes, it's true that its incandescent lights, while providing a soft, golden glow that makes my whole family feel warm and fuzzy, are ruining this earth by their very existence and need to be destroyed and replaced with the harsh glare provided by earth-friendly light-emitting mechanical orbs.  And lest you accuse me of dodging my responsibilities as a future grandparent, the sheer number of deadly pitfalls lying in wait to maim and sicken defenseless little children who might run innocently through my house is staggering.  I assure you that these dangers have been rooted out and banished as far as humanely possible.  (And of course, we'll be sure to teach those little blessings that running in a house is a safety no-no.  They'll learn it is much safer to sit and read the latest Consumer Reports warnings than actually run around and have fun.)

Okay, so I was surprised to find that when I advertised for bids to remodel my home, Microsoft Remodeling Company was the lowest bid to come in.  Actually, there were only two bids, and the higher bid, from iAAA Apple Construction, was not only nearly twice the lower bid price, it also came with some rather strange stipulations.  No matter what redesign I wanted, I had to make my doors so short and narrow that none of my friends (and most of my family) would never be allowed to use my house.  The garage door would have been so bizarre that I would have had to buy an entirely new car made exclusively by iAAA Apple Construction's sister company iCar Manufacturing.  They also demanded that I use 170 instead of 110 in my outlets.  (This seemed very strange indeed, and I spoke with my local electric company who assured me that while it would work, and it would have more power, there were no electronic devices that I could ever plug into 170.)  Needless to say, I did not go with the bid from iAAA Apple Construction.

Microsoft Remodeling Company assured me that they could provide everything I would want in my remodel.  They did, however, inform me that they would have to make some slight alterations.  Since they were the only company I could hire, I decided that I would go along with their slight alterations.  I'll admit I was a bit shocked at what they considered slight, but my friends and family assured me that I would eventually get used to the changes, so I allowed them to proceed.

Our house after the Upgrade.

Of course I see why they called the changes slight: they did not change the number of bedrooms, they did not change the layout of the rooms.  And their minor readjustments were really rather interesting, if I am to be honest with you.  When they told me they wanted to relocate the refrigerator from the kitchen to my bathroom, I was struck with the boldness of such a move.  After all, who would have thought of such a thing?  It was certainly ground-breaking.  And when they rerouted all of my water lines, which had originally run inside the walls and floors, to run on the exterior of the ceilings, I admit I had my doubts.  But when they pointed out that not only would repairs be simpler this way, but I would feel a leak as soon as one started, I had to go with the flow, so to speak.  Other changes came fast and furious, so much so that I cannot name them all here.  I will, however, mention one or two more.  It took some getting use to the fact that my driveway, which was on the left side of my house, and connected my garage to the street, now runs along the back of my house, out of sight (which is certainly a better aesthetic choice) and connects my back door to my neighbor's compost heap.  The fact that they completely eliminated my wife's greenhouse to de-clutter the backyard, insisting that she can use an off-site rental storage service for her plants, bothered me a little.  But as I said, I think I'll get used to this over time.

I only have one small complaint about my business dealings with MRC.  Though I have asked them to stop, they often show up at the house, usually in the middle of the night, and make even more minor adjustments to my home.  Last week they moved all of my outlets four inches to the left.  The handle that is used to flush the downstairs commode has been removed, and now the handle on the master bath commode flushes both commodes simultaneously.  Just last weekend, they ordered us all of out the house, insisting that they had to install an upgrade that would require shutting down the entire house for an hour.  The gas was shut off (and this meant all of the pilot-lights had to be extinguished) the electricity was cut off, the phone/Internet/cable line was disconnected, and my two cats and one dog were sedated.  By the time everything was turned back on and we were allowed back in the house, I could not find one thing that had changed in the house save for the fact that my older cat was suddenly more sluggish and drooled like a man in a dentist's chair.  The hair has begun to grow back on his tail so I'm pretty sure that was not one of the updates they worked on.

But really, I can't complain.  My house is now modernized, and continues to be modernized on a weekly basis.  And since they were cheaper than that bunch of crooks at iAAA Apple Construction, I'm completely satisfied.  The changes just take a little getting used to.

One last thing.  I sent a letter to MRC to ask where they moved the pilot light to my water heater.  They responded by saying that while they couldn't answer my question, there is a local community group of customers who get together to discuss topics like this.  They felt quite confident that another customer would be able to help me figure it out.  Now that's what I call service.