Today’s Thorn In My Flesh

     Get a load of this:

I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm over escapism as fiction's driving force. It's been something of a stitch in my side for a while now.

I'm not against escapism. It's good to dream. I'm concerned that too much escapism, without the moral compulsion to pioneer what we…

— Daniel P Riley (@Misterdpriley) September 9, 2026

     Bloody hell. Just how far would I have to travel to get away from people who try to tell me what I should and shouldn’t do? Now it’s come to what I read and write. That is the veritable “crossing of the line,” the unforgivable sin.

     People read fiction for a variety of reasons, but paramount among them is the desire to step away from their real lives and cares. In other words, to escape! Escapism is at the root of all consumption of fiction. Stories about the lives and cares of fictional characters provide us with some distance from what bedevils us personally. If that temporary separation from reality brings usable insights, that’s a wonderful bonus, but the great majority of fiction readers don’t insist on that.

     A lot of fiction tells us what we already know to be true. Indeed, the reinforcement of the “eternal verities” is one of fiction’s principal services to us. The truly great storytellers all do so. But telling someone what he already knows doesn’t detract from a story’s value as a personal escape hatch.

     Some of the very worst fiction ever written is anti-escape. Those stories practically demand that the reader suffer. I have a few “classics” in mind, though I shan’t name them here. Well, all right, but just one: A Death in the Family. If you want to put a young person off reading for the rest of his life, insist that he immerse himself in that dreary exercise in grief.

     If there is a maxim every storyteller must follow, it’s this:

Give the reader
Something he cannot get
From “real life.”

     If you can’t – or won’t – do that, you have no business telling stories. No matter how literate you are, how erudite, how eloquent in print or in speech, you will not serve the reader.

     I do it by telling stories about heroes that don’t exist, places the reader can’t visit, and events so improbable that they can only occur in fiction.

     Take it from a grizzled old veteran of the Pixel Wars: that is how to make your readers love and praise you. And who knows? They might even make you wealthy and famous. But they assuredly won’t do any of that if you mire them in troubles much like the ones they read to escape.

Anniversaries

     Anniversaries pile up on us as we get older. Birthdays, wedding anniversaries, the days of our beloveds’ passings, other significant events accumulate until the calendar seems to hold nothing else. We’re chided about forgetting them, sometimes very harshly. We’re asked what we’ll do to commemorate the ones we remember.

     This whole year has been treated as an anniversary: the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, which the late Gene Burns called the birth document of our nation. In truth, it announced our political separation from the Crown of England and proclaimed the thirteen original colonies to be “free and independent states,” but that’s mostly word-mincing. George Washington led a unified army against the British, and there was little doubt that the liberated colonies would unite politically after the Revolution was won.

     But today, specifically, is an anniversary of another sort.

     I have no fresh fountain of words to spew about Black Tuesday, September 11, 2001. I’ve emitted enough verbiage on that subject over the years behind us. If you’d like to pick at some leftovers, nibble on these. I have nothing new to say about it.

     The date remains vivid in my recollection for both historical and personal reasons. I’m sure it will remain so for as long as I live.

     I lost friends on that day twenty-five years ago. Of course, many other Americans could say the same. I have no idea whether the day remains as vivid for them as it does for me. It’s a subject I’m reluctant to broach.

     Today, in this Year of Our Lord 2026, we’re not the nation we were back then. We were united, animated, energized. We were ready to put forth our power to take vengeance, to slay and spare not. We could have taught the whole would the unwisdom of striking the United States of America. We could have made it a lesson that would ring down the centuries.

     Needless to say, we didn’t. We restrained ourselves. President George W. Bush, a good man if a so-so president, limited our counterstrike to the nation that harbored the architect of the atrocity. No doubt he felt that wholesale slaughter would be morally and geopolitically wrong. I haven’t got it in me to argue with his decisions.

     But from where I sit this morning, it looks like those who struck us are winning.

     A memorial event has been scheduled for later today, at the World Trade Center site. I can’t be there, and in truth I wouldn’t attend even if I were capable. Perhaps some of my Gentle Readers will go. If so, please let me know about the mood of those that gather there. Bloodthirsty? Weary? Defeated? What and who are we today, anyway?

     And however you choose to spend the twenty-fifth anniversary of the greatest atrocity ever inflicted upon these United States of America, the day nearly three thousand American lives were ended by murderous Muslim savages in service to the most violent and primitive creed ever foisted upon men, the day that Muslims here and elsewhere were seen celebrating the deaths of our countrymen and the destruction of New York City’s proudest edifice… well, do have a nice day.

Light, Sweet, Crude

     [A short story for you today. This one is for all the men in overalls and hardhats. The ones with dirt under their fingernails. The guys who actually make things work. If they were ever to down tools and mean it, we prissy white-collar types wouldn’t survive a single winter.
     This short story first appeared at the “V2.0” site on September 11, 2024 – FWP]

---

     I’m not a typical roughneck. I look the part—I’ve got the brawn, the bruises, and the broken fingernails—but the illusion dissolves the instant I open my mouth. I can’t help that. Working class origins and all, academia can do a number on you.
     Most of my colleagues on these rigs are high school graduates at best. Not that I think less of them for that. They’re competent, sturdy, and tough. If there’s one life lesson I’ve absorbed in its fullness, it’s Take what they have to give you, and ask for nothing more.
     These guys would give their lives for one another… and for me.
     Still, I get lonely, spending month after month here with no one to play chess with, or discuss physics or philosophy with. My breaks are precious to me; they allow me to go back east and immerse myself in what I’ve been missing. Yet I’m unsure that it’s a wise practice. The semiannual week I spend at McGill is time I could have spent bonding with the guys, learning from them, and figuring out how to be one of them. Not to mention that management gives me the stink-eye for demanding the travel vouchers I need, even though they’re part of my agreed-upon compensation.
     I was contemplating staying in Calgary for a change when Colin Atwood came by the dorm with a “request” that was really a command.
     “Mike?”
     I looked up from my Kindle. “What’s up, Colin?”
     “New hire. I need someone to walk her through the procedures, make sure she knows her stuff.”
     Her?
     “You committed to going back east next week?”
     I winced. “Actually, I hadn’t decided.”
     He grinned. “Two weeks at double time if you stay and keep her from getting herself killed.”
     “Well… okay.” I set my Kindle aside, stood, and stretched. “I can use the money. Where is she?”
     He looked back over his shoulder. “Janet!”
     And in she walked.
     I don’t think I could have been more surprised. She looked to be in her mid-twenties. She was a blue-eyed blonde, barely five feet tall. She couldn’t have weighed a hundred pounds. She was dressed to the nines: white linen skirt suit, high-heeled pumps, a couple of tasteful bits of gold, and perfect makeup. She looked ready for an interview with a white-collar firm, not for what we do. She was way too pretty and delicate to be a roughneck.
     She stood there smiling as if the total incongruity of her presence was a dismissible detail, a trifle.
     “Janet Kaczmarek,” Colin said, “this is Mike Pryor. Mike, Janet. Get to know each other.” He turned and made to leave. It took a lot of self control to keep my mouth shut until he’d closed the door behind him.
     She stuck out a hand. “Good to meet you.”
     We shook. “Likewise.”
     She must have sensed my puzzlement. “You really want to say ‘what the fuck are you doing here,’ right?”
     The profanity made me start. “Well, yes. Did you really apply for a gig as a roughneck?”
     “It seemed like a good opportunity. The money’s good, anyway.”
     I grimaced. “You might not think so after you’ve done some shopping in town.”
     She cocked an eyebrow. “They bleed you?”
     “They know how much we make, and besides, we’re a captive audience.”
     She sniffed. “Well, shit.”
     “Uh, yeah. I assume you’re new to oil rigs and such?”
     “New like a newborn… Mike, was it?”
     “Yeah. Well,” I said, “it’s hard, dangerous work. Pardon my saying so, but you look like you belong in a… more refined environment.”
     She shook her head. “Not with the mouth I got.”
     “Oh.”
     “That gonna be a problem around here?”
     That made me chuckle. “Janet,” I said, “that way at least, you’ll fit in better than I do. Would you like to get some dinner, meet some of the guys? The cafeteria’s actually decent.”
     She straightened, made an exaggerated turn, and stuck out an arm. “Lead the way.”
     So I did.

#

     Janet knew her stuff, all right.
     Yes, she was short. But she was tough and strong. Yes, she needed a little help wrestling with some of the big assemblies and high-torque fittings. I helped her out a few times. Okay, more than a few, but then, Colin did ask me to be her rig-rabbi. But she was game for anything and everything. Sweat and dirt didn’t faze her in the least. And the guys loved her, especially after she demonstrated that she could and would banter, josh, and swear with the best of them.
     She had qualifications for roughnecking that I lacked.
     After I was sure she had the know-how and the skills she would need, I hung back. She charged ahead in ways I hadn’t as a new hand. Before her first week was over, she was “one of the boys” in all but sex.
     More so than I was, honestly. They didn’t shun me, mind you. They just treated me a little differently than they treated one another. As if I were someone from the corporate office whose presence was unexplained. Someone who couldn’t be trusted all the way. Someone to be kept at arm’s length.
     I envied her, a little. But I didn’t let that interfere with her as she bonded with the guys. Once it was clear that she needed nothing from me, I resolved to keep my distance.
     There was one episode in the cafeteria that was noteworthy. I’d finished my lunch and was checking some commodities brokerage sites through my Kindle. Janet and the other guys were bantering back and forth, all of them more comfortable with her than they’d ever been with me. There was enough profanity in the mix to make any Navy man feel right at home. At one point she stopped, turned to me, and said “Whatcha readin’, Mike?”
     I looked up. “Futures trading website. Call contracts for the third quarter.”
     “Huh?”
     “You know, bets on whether the prices of stuff will go up or down. Stuff like what we produce.”
     “Oh.” She squinted at me. “Oil seems to have a pretty good future.”
     “It better,” Al Dumont interjected, “or we’ll be out of work.”
     “Be out of work anyway,” Chaz Engram said, “if the new field don’t turn out.”
     “Yeah.” I peered at the quote for light sweet crude. “But if it does, the bonuses are going to be very substantial.”
     Dumont snorted. “Get him. ‘Very substantial.’ Couldn’t get him to say ‘fucking huge’ if you put a gun to his head.”
     “Come on, Al,” I droned, “leave off with that crap.”
     “Oh, crap!” Dumont said. “You’re ridin’ the edge now, Mike. What’ll it take to get you to say shit?”
     I shrugged. “Maybe if I get my hand caught in a gear. Anyway, light sweet crude is at a fifty-two-week high. Whatever we pull out of this field will sell fast.”
     “Good to know,” Engram said. “I like having my bills paid.”
     “What’s light sweet crude?” Janet said.
     I looked up. She was looking directly at me.
     I started to explain the various grades of oil, but the sight of the other guys rolling their eyes at my exposition made me shut down in mid-sentence. “Anyway,” I said, “it’s what we get from this field.”
     “Gotcha,” Janet said. “Light sweet crude. I like it.”
     “Hm?”
     She stood up and pushed her chair against the table. “Give me a good look, Mike,” she said. “I’m light, right? And I know I’m crude. Sounds like this gig was made for me.”
     “Well…” I hesitated. “What about sweet?”
     She shrugged. “Like the man said in the song, two out of three ain’t bad.”

#

     You don’t exactly see the process by which a new hand melds with the bunch. But if you watch with attention, the peripherals are pretty obvious. The morning welcomes. The invitations to the card games. The ribbings, the ripostes, and the tone they take. I could go on.
     Janet fitted in with the guys like a perfect puzzle piece. Most ways, anyway.
     There isn’t much serious conversation. What would a bunch of roughnecks have to talk about, anyway? While we’re here, the rest of the world ceases to matter. On breaks, the rigs are the furthest things from our minds. When we come back from a break, the one and only question anyone asks is “d’ja get laid?” Ours is a social camaraderie expressed almost exclusively in expletives and grunts.
     But Janet liked to talk. And the person she picked to talk to was me.
     Not while we were at work, mind you. That wouldn’t have gone over at all. It’s way too dangerous to have your attention split when you’re wrestling with a rig. Either they get your full attention, or pretty soon you’re wearing a sheet and a toe tag. No, she looked me up during our off-times. Usually after dinner, when most of the crew is playing cards or watching TV. And damn if she didn’t pretty herself up to do it.
     After I got over the surprise, I strove to reciprocate. Conversationally, that is. I didn’t have any nice clothing in the dorm; my suits and ties were all far away. But her obvious interest in me was as flattering as it was puzzling.
     The subjects of her chatter were a good distance from anything that had ever mattered to me. Fashion. Soap operas. Pop music. Prominent entertainers. I listened and responded as best I could. Mostly I listened. If she could tell that those things were alien to me, she never let on.
     She needed to talk. That was obvious. And she charmed me, potty mouth and all, with her attentions.
     There came a time when, dolled up as usual for her visits and talking a blue streak about some TV show, she stopped in mid-sentence and said, “You’re not into any of this shit, are you?”
     It set me back. I decided on candor.
     “Well, no. Not really.”
     Her expression shifted to something like resignation.
     “Okay, I’ll stop. Nice talking to you.”
     She rose and started toward the door. I practically shouted “Wait!”
     “Hm?”
     I was off my bunk and had my arms around her before I knew what I was doing.
     “Janet, I…” I shook my head, then did it again. I strove to marshal a few words.
     “I don’t know anything about your—your interests, no,” I said, “but I’m flattered all the same. I love having you come to chat with me. It’s… it’s too complimentary for words. Please don’t go!”
     She looked up at me, unspeaking, for what seemed an hour. Then she nodded.
     “Okay. But one thing.”
     “What?”
     She freed herself from my embrace, went to my door, closed and locked it, and returned to me.
     “Enough with the bullshit preliminaries. Let’s get to the main event.”
     And her fingers found my belt buckle and unlatched it.

#

     That evening I learned more about Janet than I’d expected. For one thing, she wasn’t on the Pill.
     “Makes me feel like a bloated sack of shit,” she said.
     “Ah, okay. Should I head into town, pick up some condoms?”
     She nodded. “Gonna have to, if you want to do anything more than what we just did.”
     “Tomorrow, then.”
     She grinned. “Good. I was starting to think you weren’t into this shit, either.”
     I cringed. “Ah, no, I am ‘into this shit.’ Most definitely.”
     That goosed a laugh out of her. “You’re starting to sound like me.”
     I hugged her. “Just quoting you, dear.”
     “You know,” she said out of the blue, “you could fuck me in the ass if you want. I wouldn’t mind.”
     I couldn’t think of anything to say to that, so I just hugged her again.
     After a few moments’ silence, she said “So what happens next?”
     I took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
     “You mean tonight?”
     “Yeah. I wasn’t thinking about running into town and getting hitched.”
     “Well,” I said, “we get a night’s sleep. You can do that here or at your place. Might be better at your place.”
     “Hm? Why?”
     “Because,” I said, “there’s gonna be talk. Even from just these visits. And if we start spending our nights in the same bed, it’s gonna get worse.”
     She peered at me. “You’re worried about a little gossip?”
     “Janet,” I said, “you’re the only woman on the rigs. That’s already cause for talk. I’ve heard some of it, and it’s been pretty rough. It got rougher when you started coming to my bunk. Now you’ve picked a lover. The others will notice. They don’t miss much. And when they do, it’ll get a lot worse. I guarantee it.”
     “I don’t mind being talked about,” she said.
     I didn’t reply.
     “Anyway,” she said, “this is our private business, isn’t it? We have a God-damned right to do as we please in our off-time, don’t we?”
     What could I say to that? “Yeah.”
     She snorted. “Then let ‘em talk. You want to know what else they talk about?”
     The intonation got my attention. “What else?”
     She grinned. “You.”
     “Well, yeah,” I said. “I’m the crew oddball. The guy who doesn’t drink, or play cards, or watch TV. The intellectual who thinks about something other than booze and sex. And oil, of course.”
     She shook her head. “Not even close, Mike.”
     “Well, what then?”
     “You’re their idol.”
     My mouth dropped open. “What?”
     “You’re the go-to guy. The God-damned number one rigger on this field. Yeah, they tease you about the way you talk, but if they had to choose an indispensable man, it would be you. Whenever one of them doesn’t know what to do, or doesn’t think he’s up to it, he comes to you. You’re bigger, smarter, stronger, and tougher than they are, but you don’t swagger. You don’t strut like you think you’re king shit. You help out, and you never say anything about it. They love you.”
     I was speechless. But it was her addendum that floored me completely.
     “And so do I.”
     She got up, dressed herself, and made her exit.

#

     Yes, it was noticed. Yes, there was more talk. But that’s all there was, and it was a lot more respectful than I could have expected.
     The guys treated it as what they expected. A pretty-much anticipated development. And while we got a little more ribbing, I couldn’t detect any envy or resentment in it. Janet, God bless her, let it roll off her back.
     Management was a different story. After we’d been together for a couple of weeks, we got a company-wide bulletin. There was an all-hands meeting coming up. A mandatory training meeting. On Saturday, our off-time, when the field gets a skeleton crew whose only duty is to sound an alarm if one of the rigs ruptures or runs wild.
     About sexual harassment.
     I wasn’t the only one taken aback. The guys were uniformly gobsmacked. The prevailing comment on the announcement was “Can you believe this shit?” Unfortunately, I could. It was all too clear that Janet and I were the reason.
     Yeah, the guys knew it, too. But they didn’t say a word about it.
     I blew a lunch period to look up Colin and ask about it. He had nothing to say except “It’ll be in the cafeteria. You’ve got to be there. I do too.”
     So I was. We all were. Janet and I walked in hand in hand. I seated myself, and she sat in my lap. With her arms around me and her head on my shoulder. We figured we might as well be open about it, seeing as to how we were the reason for it.
     The “trainer” was, of course, a woman in a pantsuit. A podium and lectern had been erected for her. She strode onto it and stood before the podium, drawing herself up as if she were the prime minister. Her eyes went directly to Janet and me. She glared at us in a fashion designed to intimidate, to assert dominance.
     Janet wasn’t having it. She hopped off my lap, stood next to me, and returned glare for glare.
     It visibly shook the trainer. I saw her flinch, as plain as daylight. She resettled herself, and started her pitch.
     Janet wasn’t having any of that, either.
     “Stop right there,” she said. “This is bullshit. You know it, and so do we.”
     Outrage blossomed on the trainer’s features. She said “Do you have something relevant to say, Miss?”
     “You’re God-damned right I do,” Janet said. “This is because Mike and I are lovers, isn’t it? After all, I’m the only girl on the rigs! And before you rev up again, nobody’s said one fucking word about it. These guys are fucking princes. They’re all gonna be at the wedding.” She swept the cafeteria with a grin. “Open bar, boys.”
     Yes, that was the first I heard about her long-term plans. No, I wasn’t unhappy about it, not at all. Still, it did come as a surprise.
     That silenced the trainer. But the guys were something else. To a man, they stood and applauded. And applauded. And applauded some more. Every face in that crowd of two hundred plus roughnecks was split by a huge smile.
     It went on for a long time. Janet and I just stood there, stunned.
     The trainer fled.

#

     Colin was slightly miffed. Not because he disapproved of what Janet had done. Not at all. It was because, alone of all the men who worked on that field, he’d had no idea about Janet and me. But he did agree to come to the wedding. Open bar, remember?
     And today, on our silver anniversary, we’re surrounded by the men we’ve worked with since then. Princes, all. They threw us a huge surprise party. A lot of them go all the way back to the days when Janet was new to the rigs. She doesn’t roughneck anymore. I stayed at it, though. Why not, after all? I already had the brawn, the bruises, and the broken fingernails. So what if I can’t play chess or talk physics or philosophy with the guys? We talk about other stuff. Politics, football, hockey. Booze, sex, the rigs. The price of light sweet crude. You know, the sort of thing that interests roughnecks. So what if we swear a lot?
     Besides, the money’s really good.

==<O>==

Copyright © 2024 Francis W. Porretto. All rights reserved worldwide.

“The Winning Side”

     I’ve been having some exchanges with a brilliant fellow, Armond Boudreaux, about the different mindsets of materialists and theists. My contention is, in essence, that it’s about premises and ontological boundaries. The materialist bounds his ideas and his questions in the material realm; the theist goes beyond that. In neither case can anyone argue about the choice. Premises are like that.

     Boudreaux observed that there are villains whom material forces and social mechanisms don’t punish. Inarguable! Moreover, there always have been and always will be. Such persons choose to do evil. Those that escape their just deserts in this life are emulated by others.

     That’s the Siren song of evil: “You’re clever! You can get away with it!” It appeals to persons of malformed conscience and excessive self-regard. And yes: some of them do “get away with it.” Temporal mechanisms for correcting and deterring evil conduct are imperfect, as is everything else about Mankind.

     The great danger lies in the perception that the villains are “on the winning side.”

     We joke about that, sometimes: Come to the dark side! We have cookies! But it only stays funny so long as that perception fails to attain a critical mass. That ignites a positive-feedback cycle. Should the successes of the villains become irresistibly attractive to too many people, that society is doomed.

     Once again, I’m in mind of a passage from C.S. Lewis:

     “Hang it all—the preservation of the human race—it’s a pretty rock-bottom obligation.”
     “Well, personally,” said Feverstone, “I’m not indulging in any Busbyisms about that. It’s a little fantastic to base one’s actions on a supposed concern for what’s going to happen millions of years hence; and you must remember that the other side would claim to be preserving humanity, too. Both can be explained psychoanalytically if they take that line. The practical point is that you and I don’t like being pawns, and we do rather like fighting—specially on the winning side.”

     Discerning the “winning side” involves a limited view of things – a choice of premises and ontological boundaries. Lewis tried to expand that from the purely material to the eldila, a quasi-angelic race of spirits, one of whom functions as evil’s chief agent on Earth. The materialist won’t go that far. But even theists make some assumptions about “the winning side.” James Blish demonstrated this in his novel Black Easter:

     ‘Impossible!’ Father Domenico cried, though choking with the dust of the exploded crucifix. ‘It is written that in that war you will at last be conquered and chained!’
     OF COURSE, BUT WHAT DOES THAT PROVE? EACH OF THE OPPOSING SIDES IN ANY WAR ALWAYS PREDICTS VICTORY. THEY CANNOT BOTH BE RIGHT. IT IS THE FINAL BATTLE THAT COUNTS, NOT THE PROPAGANDA. YOU MADE A MISTAKE – AND AH, HOW YOU WILL PAY!

     The speaker in capitals above is a Prince of Hell, the demon Put Satanachia, after the workings of a black magician have brought about Armageddon.

     Good and evil both make promises. Evil has an advantage: its promises can be fulfilled in this life. Good must work overtime to counter that lure.

     Should the villains ever seem to get the upper hand – think of that as “Cthulhu’s Return” – we’ll be in mortal trouble.

* * *

     Concerning that “limited view of things,” the C.S.O. and I saw an excellent movie just recently: The Witch, which stars the young Anya Taylor-Joy. The scripting and performances were both impressive, but the capper for me was the demonstration of how that limited view of things can function to corrupt a previously innocent soul. The central character, Thomasin, is the eldest child of a 17th Century New England family that has chosen to live apart from other society. That family is beset by a series of tragedies, which Thomasin’s mother and siblings put down to witchcraft. I won’t go any further than that, except to say that the movie demonstrates the ways in which seemingly unmerited suffering can make one see evil as “the winning side.”

     It is part of the moral duty of the good man to counter those influences that make evil, whatever form it may take, appear to be “the winning side.” Too many subconsciously equate might with right, and victory with moral or ideological superiority. When we speak of “the still, small voice” that tells us to avoid evil and to remain aligned with good, we are appealing to a standard that doesn’t always offer temporal rewards. It’s why we must be faithful to that standard. Unless admirable men, men of honor who are satisfied to live honorable lives, outnumber the villains, the perceptions of persons of weak, poorly formed conscience will be swayed.

     You wouldn’t want to hang around after that.

I Almost Missed It

     Glory be to God! Today, as I’ve only just discovered, celebrates my favorite ASCII character: one without which a great many important phrases – including a lot of company names – would be both longer and less memorable:

It’s World Ampersand Day!

     Yes, Gentle Reader, the mighty ampersand has been honored with a special day to be celebrated around the globe for its contributions to concision, calligraphy, conjunctionless conjunctions, and…and…

     Well, and!

     According to the National Day Calendar, here are the facts:

• The ampersand used to be the last letter of the alphabet.
• It is a ligature of “e” & “t”? That’s “et” in Latin, meaning “and”!
• The word “ampersand” is a slurring of “real words” run together over time.
• Even the plus sign is actually an ampersand!

     Why, there’s even a website devoted to Ampersand Art!

     So get out there and use it! It’s fun! It’s quick! And it’s international! The ampersand isn’t just an American thing; it’s celebrated around the world for its contributions to our written and printed text.

     Here’s a teaser for you: My novel Doors contains more ampersands than any of my previous novels! Yes, Gentle Reader: I’ve embraced the glory of this elegant and supremely useful character. And if I can, so can you!

A Study In Passion And "Cool"

     [This piece first appeared at the old Eternity Road website, on November 12, 2004. – FWP]

---

     Your Curmudgeon had a strange experience this morning. His group is part of a larger, project-oriented software department which meets every Friday for general status review. Now and then, the department head will use that meeting to introduce some question or topic for general consideration and input from the troops. Today was such a day. The question was: "Do employee appreciation events (e.g., company parties and comparable special events) have a positive effect on employee morale?"

     As you might expect, most of the other engineers there mumbled something ambiguous and unengaged. Your Curmudgeon did not. Almost without intending to, he lit off on a grand tirade about how "employee appreciation events" missed the whole point of employee morale, that morale is not about time-delimited events intended to compensate for the travails of one's job, but rather about the time one spends actually doing it, and whether the holistic experience is interesting, exciting, and comfortable -- in short, whether the employee can be induced to love his work.

     The reactions were mind-expanding. The department head was stunned -- wide-eyed, open-mouthed, speechless, and unable to continue. The other engineers and group leaders were distributed across a spectrum that ranged from baffled to resentful.

     Probably the most piercing reaction came from one of your Curmudgeon's own group members, an older man about a year from retirement. He characterized the meeting as "a complete waste of time, pure bull****."

     In some ways, this seems consistent with what your Curmudgeon knows of himself and of most other working people. As a rule, engineers are embarrassed to admit their enthusiasm for their work. Most employees of any sort would be unwilling to tell their supervisors that they love their jobs and have committed to them voluntarily; it would seem a stick to beat them with at some unspecified future time. But there's more, apparently stemming from the societal worship of "cool."

     Passion of any sort is widely regarded as embarrassing. A raised voice is an unacceptable disordering of the social norm. A Juggernaut-like charge into difficulty, with the intent of smashing obstacles flat by sheer power of will, is considered disrespectful toward one's more restrained colleagues. It's "uncool."

     The "cool" phenomenon is a promotion of disengagement over enthusiasm. "Be cool, man." Don't commit yourself. Don't invest your emotions. Don't let anyone know that there's something that lights your boilers, charges your condensers, and gets you greased and ready to kick ass.

     Your Curmudgeon, despite his scholarly demeanor, is anything but detached, anything but "cool." He has much more animation and much less inhibition in him than the average guy. He's a fighter and a lover. He's most definitely "uncool," and always has been.

     But it's not "in" to be "uncool," to pledge one's life, fortune and sacred honor, to lead charges and build barricades, to declaim on subjects such as love, commitment, and passion for one's work. Such a recognition can leave a passionate person feeling very much alone.

     Do the "cool" folks have any idea how they're shortchanging themselves?

     Your Curmudgeon is an old man by the standards of the engineering trade. Most of his departmental colleagues are in their twenties and thirties. It feels massively incongruous to outmatch them so on the field of passion. But there's no denying the facts.

     Peer pressure might have had something to do with it. In sober retrospection, it almost certainly did. Large meetings are like that. Embarrassment at being lifeless and unexceptional when an oldster was an uninhibited firebrand probably had something to do with it, too.

     In one sense, it was saddening, but in another, it reminded your Curmudgeon how much he has to be thankful for.

     Our passionate moments are the times when we're most alive. The rejection of passion in favor of the slightly bored, can't-arouse-me demeanor known as "cool" that's held the favor of the youth culture for God knows how long now is a poorly disguised rejection of life itself. Its incongruity against the surging fire of life that burns in the body and brain of a young adult is an irony that defies capture in mere words.

     Your Curmudgeon will continue to engage himself. He'll continue to sing in the car. He'll charge up the hill with his torch and his pitchfork whenever the fit takes him. And he'll be glad that his is a personality unmarred by "cool."

     Let the Limbo people, the willfully disengaged and uncommitted ones, the gray souls who prefer a twilight world in which there's neither true life nor true death, have their "cool." They'll never know what they've missed. More's the pity.

Enforcers

     A great many people, most of them good and decent people, have fallen for the notion that if something is generally deemed “bad” by some widely held standard, then it “should” be illegal. Beneath that conviction lie two others:

1. Not to outlaw it is somehow to condone it;
2. Outlawing it will have net positive results.

     The second of those beliefs can be tested. The first is more difficult to cope with. That having been said, in combination they explain the great majority of all the laws that have been fastened on suffering Mankind throughout recorded history.

     Yet there is evidence that in the great majority of cases, outlawing some variety of conduct either has no measurable effect on its frequency, or correlates with an increase in it. Now, correlations are interesting, but we must not immediately conclude that they reveal causes. Still, they’re evidence that we should not assume a proposed law will have only the effects we expect from it.

     Take the matter of violence in defense of one’s home or other property. Until fairly recently, he who could honestly claim to be defending what is rightfully his was granted the presumption of legal and moral justification for what he does for that purpose. Under that presumption, the aggressor bore the responsibility for what flowed from his aggression. That is no longer the case in much of the United States.

     The change brought unintended consequences. Street assaults and home invasions increased in frequency and in the violence they occasioned. No one wanted those consequences, of course. But we’re not guaranteed to get what we want.

     Nonviolent conduct presents an even more perverse picture. Outlawing alcoholic beverages – i.e., the Prohibition era – caused an increase in drinking, moonshining, and bootlegging. Outlawing private gambling produced state-run and state-licensed gambling that rakes in many billions of dollars per year. Outlawing recreational use of drugs has brought about an explosion in organized crime and police corruption. Yet the laws involved were passed by well-meaning people, with malice toward none.

     In commenting on laws intended to reduce prostitution, H.L. Mencken delivered the verdict on well-meant legislation many years ago:

     There is no half-baked ecclesiastic, bawling in his galvanized-iron temple on a suburban lot, who doesn’t know precisely how it ought to be dealt with. There is no fantoddish old suffragette, sworn to get her revenge on man, who hasn’t a sovereign remedy for it. There is not a shyster of a district attorney, ambitious for higher office, who doesn’t offer to dispose of it in a few weeks, given only enough help from the city editors. And yet, by the same token, there is not a man who has honestly studied it and pondered it, bringing sound information to the business, and understanding of its inner difficulties and a clean and analytical mind, who doesn’t believe and hasn’t stated publicly that it is intrinsically and eternally insoluble. For example, Havelock Ellis. His remedy is simply a denial of all remedies. He admits that the disease is bad, but he shows that the medicine is infinitely worse, and so he proposes going back to the plain disease, and advocates bearing it with philosophy, as we bear colds in the head, marriage, the noises of the city, bad cooking and the certainty of death. Man is inherently vile—but he is never so vile as when he is trying to disguise and deny his vileness. No prostitute was ever so costly to a community as a prowling and obscene vice crusader, or as the dubious legislator or prosecuting officer who jumps at such swine pipe.

     With regard to the general improvement of public morals, what has proved effective is the disapproval of others, and the consequences that follow. The evidence suggests that morals and ethics are best imposed through social mechanisms: customs, education, denunciation, ostracism, etc. Many a practice of times past was dedicated to exactly that sort of improvement. If the community has behavioral standards that its members are willing to uphold through public disapproval and ostracism, those things usually suffice to curb disapproved behavior – to hold it to an irreducible or “threshold” level.

     From a strictly practical standpoint, the social-improvement crusader “should” be persuaded by that argument. All too often, he reverts to the “But leaving it legal would condone it” position. That’s a tougher nut to crack. At present I have no suggestions for cracking it.

     Perhaps we might consider bringing back dueling under the Toth Convention:

• The challenged party gets the choice of weapons.
• The duel must be refereed by an impartial individual.
• It must take place in the pre-dawn hours, when there’s little light.
• Challenger and challenged must both bring seconds to act as witnesses.
• The deciding rule of the contest must be agreed upon: first blood or incapacity?

     Under that convention, the infliction of death, even if unintentional, is considered shameful and subjects the offender to ostracism.

     I know the idea will horrify many. After all, we’re civilized now. We abhor violence, especially when we’re its target. But the prospect of being challenged and compelled to stake one’s blood, if not his life, on his words or deeds would inhibit quite a lot of bad behavior. The question is whether we could tolerate that manner of enforcement.

     That question is troublesome. At present we don’t even tolerate police violence very well. But the correlation between the end of the “nightstick era” and the explosion of street violence suggests that that might have been a wrong turning. Upon which note I believe I shall leave the field to my Gentle Readers.

“They Say That I Am Mad, But I Am Not Mad…”

     I have a mountain of chores and obligations before me today, so this will be brief. I was thinking about bygone fads and trends: the sort of thing Charles Mackay wrote about in Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. In our time, characterized by mass communication technologies that didn’t exist when Mackay wrote, one of the more charming fads was the hallucinatory-nonsense lyric.

     The music of the Sixties occasionally brought us “novelty songs” that were intended – I hope — to be funny. Some of them were memorable, such as “Love Potion #9,” “The Witch Doctor,” and “They’re Coming To Take Me Away, Haha!” But they’re largely gone now, except for fleeting manifestations such as the Dixie Chicks’ “White Trash Wedding.”

     But the novelty songs had companions that lurked behind the drapes: the hallucination songs. Some lyric writers specialized in them: Pete Brown, who wrote for Cream; Robert Hunter, who wrote for the Grateful Dead; and the incredible Keith Reid, the lyricist for Procol Harum.

     Where are their inheritors? Who writes such stuff today? My acquaintance with 21st Century pop music is slight, so I can’t say. But surely someone is still pursuing that art form! Or has the national supply of LSD dwindled too far to support such endeavors?

     Well, anyway. If you want a taste of the very best Sixties music has to offer, you can’t go wrong with Procol Harum’s first, eponymous album. It’s both lyrically and musically brilliant, one mesmerizing hallucination after another from beginning to end. Below is my favorite track from that album, with Keith Reid’s lyrics.

Outside the gates of Cerdes sits the two-pronged unicorn
Who plays at relaxation time a rhinestone flugelhorn
Whilst mermaids lace carnations into wreaths for ailing whales
And Neptune dances hornpipes while Salome sheds her veils

Phallus Phil tries peddling his pewter painted pot
But Sousa Sam can only hear the screams of Peep the sot
Who only sips his creme de menthe from terra cotta cups
And exhales menthol scented breath whilst spewing verbiage up

Down technical blind alleys live the wraiths of former dreams
And Greeps who often crossed them are no longer what they seem
And even Christian Scientists can but display marble plaques
Which only retell legends whilst my eyes reach out for facts
Yeah, my eyes reach out for facts

The Darkness At The End Of The Tunnel

     Starting in 2007, I wrote a series of essays collectively titled “The Mask Slips” at the late, lamented Eternity Road website. They concerned the steady erosion of an idea that decent Americans would have thought unassailable: a human being’s right to life. I argued that that idea was being attacked at its most vulnerable margins: abortion and euthanasia.

     Attacks on a moral-ethical idea at its tender margins should always be closely scrutinized. Often they’re harbingers of a larger campaign to invalidate the idea altogether – not in a logical sense, but as a premise from which ordinary people reach other conclusions and decisions. For the most important moral and ethical ideas are not logically provable. They can be undermined, worn away by gradual incursions until they’ve become historical curiosities, obiter dicta.

     Just yesterday, I received an email from a reader of one of my books:

     The premise of The Death Cults is difficult to overlook because you're not simply examining particular movements or ideas, you’re organizing them around a much larger question: what happens to a civilization when the value of human life itself becomes negotiable?
     I found that framing particularly interesting.
     What stood out to me is that the book seems less concerned with cataloguing individual threats than with identifying the common principle you believe connects them. That makes the argument much more ambitious than the title initially suggests.

     I was thrilled. Someone had actually grasped my point. That’s a rare thing these days. Yet it was exactly that point that motivated me – along with copious chivvying from my friend Pascal – to compile the essays that became The Death Cults into a separate publication.

     The common principle, of course, was hostility to the right to life. I saw each of the several “marginal attacks” as excrescences of that hostility. I believed that the attacks were converging, such that the human right to life would eventually be discarded as a moral premise. I still do believe it.

     But all that is prefatory. Attacks on the right to life are part of a bigger picture. How big? Pour yourself another cup of coffee and read on.

* * *

     There has hardly been a more valuable voice added to America’s national discourse than Constitutional scholar and law professor Jonathan Turley:

     Pennsylvania state representative and Democratic Socialist Chris Rabb is the latest Democrat to reaffirm his alliance with virulent antisemite Hasan Piker. What is most notable, however, is his attack on establishment Democrats as “institutionalists,” a new label reflecting the radical agenda for changing our constitutional system. It is a term that is now in vogue on the far left by those who want to tear down our institutions and scrap our Constitution.
     Across the country, attacks are growing on Democrats and independents who are viewed as insufficiently radical. Those of us who continue to celebrate the Madisonian democracy as creating the most successful and stable republic in history are now “cultists” and “institutionalists” who are trapped in “nostalgia.”
     The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) have drawn support from many who want a literal revolution. DSA Steering Committee member Cliff Connolly declared on one podcast that they are “famous for” “Our hatred of the United States Constitution.”

     Please read it all. It put me in mind of an observation by one of the greatest minds of the Twentieth Century:

     The craving for power which characterizes the governing class in every nation is hostile to any limitation of the national sovereignty. – Albert Einstein

     The Founding Fathers convened in Philadelphia in 1787 to define a national government. As I’ve said before, to define is to delimit: to say what the thing being defined is and is not. The Constitution was the Founders’ attempt to do exactly that. They had history, John Locke, and Adam Smith for guidance.

     History told the Founders what will follow when The State is unrestricted. Adam Smith, in his Theory of Moral Sentiments, codified men’s half-formed sense for right and wrong. John Locke united theory with practice in delineating the concept of a right and whence it originates. The Constitution, together with the original Bill of Rights, was the Founders’ attempt to reify those ideas. Those documents set out, in clear and specific terms, how the national government would be determined and what it must and must not do.

     The modern Left, through its political arm the Democrat Party, seeks to eliminate those documents as working principles. Of course! The Left aspires to be “the governing class.” Therefore they’re “hostile to any limitation of the national sovereignty.” The incursions they’ve made so far have been grievous, such that another few decades of marginal chipping-away might just lead to a de facto “retirement” of the Constitution. But they’re impatient. They want the remaining limitations to fall now.

     Professor Turley says it plainly:

     The media eagerly publishes these radical views, such as the New York Times column, “The Constitution Is Broken and Should Not Be Reclaimed,” in which Ryan D. Doerfler of Harvard and Samuel Moyn of Yale call for the nation to “reclaim America from constitutionalism.”
     Brown University’s Corey Brettschneider called the Constitution a “dangerous document” that is driving this “threat to democracy.”
     George Washington law professor Mary Anne Franks condemned the “cult of the Constitution” that has been defended to advance “white male supremacy.”
     Now, to support our constitutional system is to be an “institutionalist,” a pejorative term that is as bad as being an “oligarch” in the new revolutionary lexicon.

     If the Constitution should fall, whether de jure or de facto, all legal protections for Americans’ individual rights will fall with it.

* * *

     Just as we saw in compiling the attacks on the right to life, the marginal attacks on Constitutional constraints have been elements in a converging assault on constitutionalism itself: the thesis that there must be a Supreme Law that binds governments as clearly and absolutely as moral precepts bind men. It’s foolish to think that there could be any other terminus. It’s even more foolish to imagine that the men driving those attacks are innocent of that aim.

     “When a man shows you who he is, believe him,” said poet Maya Angelou. The men of the American Left have shown us who they are, and by implication where they’re headed. This is no time for decent Americans to say to one another that “They don’t really mean it.”

Aspirations

     First, a little music:

     (If you’re not familiar with Gentle Giant, the group was part of a Seventies surge into experimental forms within popular music. The title of their second album, Acquiring the Taste, says a lot about what it takes to enjoy their oeuvre. Yet several of their recordings, especially Octopus and The Power and the Glory, have joined my list of favorites. Give them a try.)

     And now for something completely different…

* * *

     In pursuit of a project I’m following with brilliant video composer Hazel Williams, I spent a couple of hours yesterday seining through the five novels of the Realm of Essences series. Hazel, who’s composing a “trailer” for Chosen One, needed a concise biography of the character I’m most abused for killing: Louis Redmond. My intention was to assemble the most relevant bits of the novels that follow Chosen One for her edification. I think I succeeded at that, but alongside the intended outcome came another.

     Reviewing those books brought me to tears.

     It was a remarkable experience. I hadn’t read those books for many years. You might find that natural. After all, they’re my creations; why would I reread them when they came from my imagination? We read for the novelty of experiencing other writers’ creations, don’t we?

     Well, yes. But when revisited after a long time away, one’s own creations can seem like the products of another mind. I wrote the last of the Realm books, Statesman, ten years ago. Coming back to them after such a long interval was unexpectedly affecting.

     It put me in mind of why I set out to write fiction in the first place.

* * *

     The writer and the reader usually have some compatible aims. The reader is there to be entertained and moved; the writer knows it and is there to see to it. Good fiction must entertain at the very minimum. If the writer can give the reader a memorable emotional journey as well, he’s achieved on two counts.

     But I set out on the Realm series for other reasons, as well. I wanted to do something that a great many writers appear to have abandoned: the depiction and exposition of true heroism. I wanted to create characters that exemplify my conception of a hero: one who puts himself at risk for someone or something else that he values more than his own interests.

     It’s for the reader to decide whether I met that goal… but in going back through the Realm novels for the first time in more than a decade, I was “the reader.” I was thrilled by Louis’s adventures. I derived a huge refreshing dollop of the inspiration I felt in those early years, when nothing seemed quite as important as telling a heroic tale to the best of my ability.

     That has always been my aspiration: that my readers should feel exactly that sense of uplift, and to experience the renewal of purpose that’s the central animating filament of a memorable, heroic character.

     The question we all face – “Why am I here?” – is one that every hero must answer. Good fiction helps us to face it. Not to answer it; merely to confront it open-eyed.

* * *

     Sometimes, a hero must be “soft-pedaled:” depicted in a fashion that downplays the essence of his heroism. Superman gets to wear a gaudy costume, but that’s a job requirement for a comic-book superhero. Real-life heroes sometimes wear uniforms, but they’re seldom that gaudy.

     One of the writers from whose example I learned the most was the late Roger Zelazny. Here is his most striking depiction of heroic essence: unprepossessing, unglamorous, but resolute and definite:

     "Oh man of many bodies," said Taraka, "why do you begrudge me a few days within this one? It is not the body you were born into, and you, too, do but borrow it for a time. Why then, do you feel my touch to be a thing of defilement? One day you may wear another body, untouched by me. So why do you consider my presence a pollution, a disease? Is it because there is that within you which is like unto myself? Is it because you, too, know delight in the ways of the Rakasha, tasting the pain you cause like a pleasure, working your will as you choose upon whatsoever you choose? Is it because of this? Because you, too, know and desire these things, but also bear that human curse called guilt? If it is, I mock you in your weakness, Binder. And I shall prevail against you."
     "It is because I am what I am, demon," said Siddhartha, hurling his energies back at him. "It is because I am a man who occasionally aspires to things beyond the belly and the phallus. I am not the saint the Buddhists think me to be, and I am not the hero out of legend. I am a man who knows much fear, and who occasionally feels guilt. Mainly, though, I am a man who has set out to do a thing, and you are now blocking my way."

     [From Lord of Light]

     “I am a man who has set out to do a thing.” Could there be a more compact description of what animates a hero? For Sam / “Siddhartha” has embraced a costly purpose: the liberation of a whole planetful of people. He knows it to be a purpose that will try him sorely. He accepts it anyway.

     Have another snippet, this one from Steven Brust’s novel Phoenix:

     “Just out of curiosity, how long has it been since blood has been spilled here, in the Jhereg Wing?”
     “Not since the Interregnum, Lord Taltos.”
     “It would be bad for the Organization interests to have any sort of violence take place here, wouldn’t it?”
     “Very bad. I hope you aren’t suggesting any.”
     I leaned on his shoulder, very slightly. “I? No, no, not at all. I wouldn’t think of such a thing. I was just making conversation.”
     “I see. What was it you wanted to know?”
     “Who arranged to have those Easterners arrested?”
     There was the faintest hint of a tightening of muscles, but no more. “Why, the Empress, Baronet Taltos.”
     “At your request, Count Soffta. And I’m very anxious to learn which of my colleagues asked you to make the request.”
     “I believe you have been misinformed, Baronet Taltos.”
     “Have you heard of me, Count Soffta?”
     My hand didn’t leave his shoulder, but neither did it tighten, nor did I make any other movement. He said nothing for two or three heartbeats, then he said, “It may take me some time to find out, and I’m expecting a rather large number of visitors very soon.”
     “Yes, I imagine you are. But under the circumstances, I’m willing to let it take as much time as necessary. I’m sure your visitors will understand.”
     “It could be very expensive.”
     “I’m prepared to pay. It is my wife, you know.”
     “Yes . . . .”
     “So the cost is irrelevant.”
     “I guess it is.”
     “Perhaps it would be best if you could gather the information?”
     I could almost feel him weighing the odds, attempting to select the best thing to say, the best thing to do. “There may be repercussions—”
     “I have absolutely no doubt that there will be. I accept them.”
     “All of them?”
     “Whatever may happen.”

     “I accept them.” Vladimir Taltos – witch, assassin, and crime lord – accepts that he’ll most likely lose his life to save the life of his estranged wife. There’s a hero for you.

     The two heroes above had conscious purposes for which they were prepared to give everything.

* * *

     We don’t usually think of heroes in terms of their aspirations. That word feels too close to achievements. Yet there is a difference.

     Many young men aspire to be heroes without fully grasping what heroism entails. Few of us become genuine heroes. But all of us are asked to give something of ourselves – time, labor, money, love, other values – no matter what it is we set out to achieve. Often, the young man gives without recompense: he never achieves what or as he’d hoped. But what he gave is not returned to him.

     Ultimately, it’s the aspiration that matters. The more clearly the young man sees the probable costs, the more laudable is his quest. If the fulfillment of that quest would be to others’ benefit rather than his own, we may legitimately call him heroic, even if by far the greater part of his life is as common as dirt.

     We never see superheroes doing utterly mundane, body-and-life maintenance things. Those moments don’t make it onto the big screen. Note that at no instant of 24, throughout eight long seasons, do we ever see Jack Bauer take a “pee break.” We see his risks and his derring-do. And we see what he’s prepared to give to fulfill his purpose.

     I’m not exhorting anyone to be a hero. I won’t encourage others to do what I know I never could. But to aspire:

     Come, my friends,
     'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
     Push off, and sitting well in order smite
     The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
     To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
     Of all the western stars, until I die.
     It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
     It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
     And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
     Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
     We are not now that strength which in old days
     Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
     One equal temper of heroic hearts,
     Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
     To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

     [Alfred, Lord Tennyson]

     That is incumbent upon us all.

     Thank you for suffering through all that. Have a nice day.

On Making Things Up

     That’s what writers do.

     As my Gentle Readers know, I write in the speculative genres. (Yes, considering how romances are conducted these days, I consider romance a speculative genre.) Those who read my novels know it going in; Amazon makes it perfectly plain, as do the covers and the promotional blurbs. So the reader should be prepared for a little speculation: i.e., imaginative depiction of how things might be in a different reality, or in the future.

     Some aren’t. At least, that’s the way they express themselves in their reviews.

     Of course, the misguided-review problem isn’t mine alone:

I would love to correct the factual record on one of my reviews on Goodreads, but I won't.

My favorite one-star review was on Monster Hunter Files. The header was "This is a collection of short stories." And the review was simply "I don't like collections of short stories."

On… https://t.co/tGUUoVFMon

— Julie Frost--That Werewolf Writer🐺🦉 (@JulieCFrost) August 30, 2026

     That unnamed reviewer simply had to express himself or explode. Tragic, eh? I hope he headed off the crisis before detonation. But enough of that.

     Speculative-fiction writers must speculate. They’re required to change something about contemporary / real-world / this universe reality. The specifics of the writer’s speculation are what determine the genre – the “marketing category” (Steven Brust) – into which his book will be thrust, there to beckon silently yet importunately to Amazon doomscrollers forever more.

     It hardly need be said, though in my inimitable fashion I’ll say it anyway, that a reader who dislikes speculation in fiction should browse among the non-speculative genres, and leave the speculative ones for persons of different tastes. But things are as they are. This aspect thereof cannot be easily changed.

     The tweet embedded above caused me to remember an event that brought me some perplexing thoughts. It was early in my auctorial career: the Year of Our Lord 2000, if memory serves. Two persons of whom I had (and have) a high opinion had started a small press. They declared themselves dedicated to the speculative genres. They’d fulsomely complimented two short stories I’d sent them, so I decided to try one of my novels on them: a Christian-speculative tale over which I’d labored hard and of which I was proud.

     (A digression: Those Gentle Readers who casually end sentences with prepositions can’t imagine my agony over the previous sentence. De gustibus non est disputandum, and all that. Digression ends.)

     Well, to cut to the chase, they didn’t like it. “Not orthodox,” came the reply. Their objections focused on the speculative elements in the novel. They bore on matters Catholic doctrine does not address: the possibility of magic and the exact nature of the afterlife.

     Hm. Well, you can’t please everyone, and only a fool would try. But it was a disappointment as well as a surprise. The implication was that the Church has told us everything, and that to go beyond Church doctrine to any extent is unworthy, even if the author takes great care not to contradict an explicit Church teaching.

     That wasn’t the first time a reviewer objected to a speculation in a speculative novel or mine. While I shrug it off when it occurs, it always puzzles me. It makes me want to ask the reviewer: What are you here for?

     But I’m not here to grump about a couple of misguided reviews, nor about the rejection of a novel. This is more of a reflection about accepting things for what they are.

     In The Vision of the Anointed, Thomas Sowell makes a piercing point about the application of standards:

     Many have argued that capitalism does not offer a satisfactory moral message. But that is like saying that calculus does not contain carbohydrates, amino acids, or other essential nutrients. Everything fails by irrelevant standards.

     To judge a thing relevantly, one must judge it by the relevant standard. To apply an irrelevant standard guarantees that it will “fail.” After all, the creator didn’t have that standard in mind when he labored on his creation. Its prescriptions and proscriptions were not on his mind. No reasonable person expects that his shower stall will be equipped to allow him to check his Facebook status as he scrubs.

     And now, having written the last sentence above with glee, I am once more in mind of the “No True Scotsman” fallacy. Have we entered an age in which everything we own is expected to do everything we ever want? Has that become “reasonable?” Must our refrigerator remind us that it’s time to change the oil in our car? Must our lawnmower remember that we need bread, milk, and to schedule a chat with our financial planner?

     I feel a headache coming on. Perhaps it’s time to lie down for a while. Do have a nice day.

Crosses And Virtues

     Today’s Gospel reading was from Matthew, chapter 16:

     From that time forth began Jesus to shew unto his disciples, how that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day.
     Then Peter took him, and began to rebuke him, saying, Be it far from thee, Lord: this shall not be unto thee.
     But he turned, and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men.
     Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.
     For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?
     For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works.

     [Matthew 16:21-27]

     Jesus made that statement about “taking up [your] cross” more than once. There’s been a fair amount of squabbling over what He meant. Today’s Mass celebrant tried to paper it over with a lecture about being ready and willing to help others. That’s that priest’s particular shtick; I come at it from a different angle.

     When I studied Latin many years ago, I came into contact with the school of philosophy called Stoicism:

     Philosophical discourse is paramount in Stoicism, including the view that the mind is in rational dialogue with itself. Stoic ethics centers on virtue as the highest good, cultivating emotional self-control, a calm problem-solving state of mind, and rational judgment to attain lifelong flourishing (eudaimonia). At the same time, passions, anxieties, and insecurities are viewed as misguided reactions that ought to be controlled through self-disciplined practice. Of all the schools of ancient Western philosophy, Stoicism made the greatest claim to being utterly systematic. Central to Stoic ethics was the idea of living in accordance with nature, which meant aligning one's life with one's sense of reason and the rational order of the universe.

     When we speak of a man as stoic, we hearken back to that school of philosophy. We mean he exemplifies the virtues the Stoics valued, beginning with Zeno and flowing thence to Marcus Aurelius:

• He controls himself.
• He is not easily disturbed.
• He does not complain, or parade his sufferings.
• He strives to put his reason in command of his emotions.
• He tempers wild impulses, sudden passions, and the onset of worry and fear.

     Those virtues are the heart of Stoicism. Every man bears burdens of some sort. We admire most greatly him who bears them Stoically.

     Few of us will depart this life by being crucified, and thank God for that. But whatever our burdens may be, bearing them with grace and quiet patience is at the core of what Western Civilization has esteemed most highly: the man who does what he must and asks little of others in the doing. Moreover, whatever his burdens may be – physical, mental, or spiritual – they are his. It’s rare that they can be shunted onto other shoulders. We think little of a man who tries to do so. Others might choose to assist him with some of them, but the responsibility for bearing them is his alone.

     That pair of recognitions demands stoicism from us. A society that lacks it, or fails to appreciate it, isn’t likely to endure and prosper. It may be held together by force for a while, but it’s likely to dissolve under a tide of predation and sloth.

     The cross, in First Century Judea, represented the greatest burden imaginable at that time. Crucifixion was ignominious, protracted, and excruciating. (Note the etymology of excruciating.) To accept such a fate silently and patiently – stoically – marked a condemned man as greater, in that regard at least, than those who had condemned him.

     In that metaphorical way, Christ instructed those who chose to follow Him in what He expected of them: the virtues Zeno and his successor Stoics elucidated and praised. That a number of the Apostles and lesser disciples experienced real crucifixion is barely relevant.

     Lord, though my burdens are far inferior to those You bore, help me to be as stoic in bearing them as You were on Your cross.

     May God bless and keep you all.

An Announcement

     I’ve been reading some horrifying stuff lately. Just a day or so ago, I learned about a mother who killed her 11-month-old son rather than surrender custody to his father. Just a moment ago, I read about a North Dakota mom who cut her children’s throats. And of course, the news is full of the unexpectedly protracted Lindsay Clancy trial.

     I’ve lived long enough to have seen a lot of horrifying stuff. I doubt I could have avoided seeing it. Our news media has long abided by a well-known maxim “If it bleeds, it leads.” And there are enough predators, filled with rapacity or lust, to commit any number of heinous deeds. To whatever extent we follow the news, we hear about them. We can’t help it.

     But mothers killing their own children?

     Could this be a counter-movement to the “traditional mother / homemaker” movement that’s been gaining steam these past few years? Is an evil force attempting to “restore the balance?”

     Women tend to follow consensus to a greater degree than do men. Has a consensus arisen among women that murdering one’s kids is “the thing to do?” Or are we merely in a “node” in which maternal violence toward their children is temporarily well above the usual level?

     I’m sure I’m not alone in noticing these maternal crimes. I’m equally sure that as a fraction of the homicidal total, motherly murders are vanishingly small. But I sense something trending.

     Many women are unhappy about their lots in life, but that’s always been the case; many men are just as unhappy. Prior to our era, we didn’t hear about mothers killing their progeny nearly as often as we have been lately. That might be because our numbers have increased so greatly. Or it might be an artifact of more extensive, greatly intensified coverage; our news media have never been larger nor more attentive to events, especially the most lurid events. But it’s still something to ponder.

     Mine is not a popular, well-heeded voice. Even so, I want to “do my part.” So allow me to make this clear:

Mothers everywhere:
Killing your children is evil.
There is no imaginable excuse for it.
If you begin to feel an urge toward filicide,
Get away from them and get help!

     I have spoken.

An Old Slur In A New Incarnation

     One of my pet peeves is – surprise! – the twisting of the meanings of words for unholy purposes. Yes, it’s a common occurrence in political cut-and-thrust, but it also features in exchanges between common citizens. Humpty Dumpty thought he could get away with it, but the rest of us need not be Alices.

     A long, long time ago, an elderly friend wrote a piece for a very minor publication I edited in which he argued that even in a wholly anarchic society, a State exists locally and temporarily wherever like-minded persons can muster a local preponderance of force. If we look at The State as its function – i.e., to wield coercive force for particular purposes – rather than as an institution, Ed was absolutely correct. Wherever you have a group united on a purpose and large enough to get its way, you have a State for local and temporary purposes.

     A lynch mob is functionally a State. That should give a few people pause for thought.

     That doesn’t mean that the anarchic society is impossible. It means only that our expectations of it must be tempered by our grasp of human nature. People do get exercised over things. They do band together for specific purposes. If they’re not opposed by equal or greater forces, they can impose themselves on others, against those others’ wills.

     Another friend of more recent vintage liked to say that “Anarchy is the perpetual Loyal Opposition.” He saw anarchy as beckoning from the sidelines. It keeps politicians and bureaucrats mindful that an alternative to them exists and always will. He had a good point.

     When a disorderly movement “pops up” in the midst of a normal – i.e., State-ridden – society, it sometimes gets its way. You may remember the Occupy Wall Street affair that arose in New York City in 2011, during Michael Bloomberg’s mayoralty. Bloomberg refrained from directing law enforcement to quell it for several weeks. It was a good illustration of the transient and conditional nature of State hegemony.

     Whenever a miscreant is treated gently by the “official” justice system, he faces the possibility that an “ad hoc State” will arise to impose a greater penalty. The more heinous his crimes, the more likely he’ll face “private justice.” Say what you will about vigilance committees, that was their genesis: “the authorities” had either failed to act against violent criminals or had given them the proverbial slap on the wrist. It doesn’t happen with perfect predictability or unanimous approval of the results, but it does happen. It’s why men convicted of raping children fear to go to prison.

     Heinlein made a point of this in his magnum opus The Moon is a Harsh Mistress:

     “All our customs work that way. If you’re out in field and a cobber needs air, you lend him a bottle and don’t ask cash. But when you’re both back in pressure again, if he won’t pay up, nobody would criticize if you eliminated him without a judge. But he would pay; air is almost as sacred as women. If you take a new chum in a poker game, you give him air money. Not eating money; can work or starve. If you eliminate a man other than self-defense, you pay his debts and support his kids, or people won’t speak to you, buy from you, sell to you.”
     “Mannie, you’re telling me that I can murder a man here and settle the matter merely with money?”
     “Oh, not at all! But eliminating isn’t against some law; are no laws—except Warden’s regulations—and Warden doesn’t care what one Loonie does to another. But we figure this way: If a man is killed, either he had it coming and everybody knows it—usual case—or his friends will take care of it by eliminating man who did it. Either way, no problem. Nor many eliminations. Even set duels aren’t common.”

     When young Fran first read that passage, he was as nonplussed as Stuart LaJoie, the tourist being tutored in Lunar ways by protagonist and first-person narrator Manuel O’Kelly Davis. But it’s the way human societies self-organize in the absence of a State. History does provide examples thereof, including medieval Iceland before Denmark incorporated it and pre-British-invasion Ireland.

* * *

     The above disquisition was triggered by – drum roll, please! – a slur aimed at a perfectly nice young woman on X who goes by the moniker “Libertarian Goth:”

You support pedophilia because you oppose State force to stop it. A libertarian fantasy society is a pedophile tolerant society.

— Sterling Reece 🗡️🇺🇸 (@SterlingReece26) August 28, 2026

     Anyone who might say such a thing to me would be invited to a pre-dawn kaffeklatsch with pistols at ten paces. Libertarian Goth was more restrained:

Despite me directly telling you my beliefs you say that I believe something else right after. Can you please tell me who my favorite band is? I want to listen some music. Or maybe I don’t. Do I? You tell me. 🤷🏻‍♀️ https://t.co/SdF6AyB8Q9

— 🥀 🖤𝔏𝔦𝔟𝔢𝔯𝔱𝔞𝔯𝔦𝔞𝔫 𝔊𝔬𝔱𝔥🖤🥀 (@LibertarianG0th) August 28, 2026

     I applaud that young lady for limiting herself to ridicule in response. Were I in her place, I might have used the kzinti method of issuing a challenge:

     Speaker-To-Animals said one thing more before he turned back to his table. "Louis Wu, I found your challenge verbose. In challenging a kzin, a simple scream of rage is sufficient. You scream and you leap."

     In short, the absence – or passivity – of a State does not imply the absence of justice. Pedophiles know it. Verbum sat sapienti.

A Concise Diagnosis

     I’m in a bad way just now, so rather than blather on my own account, I’d like to introduce my Gentle Readers to the works of a writer I encountered recently: Holly Chism. One of her books, Certified Public Assassin, has a great deal to say, and says it most entertainingly. Here’s a snippet from near the end:

     “Back when the country was founded, the average person was easily able to corner his or her government representative and give them an earful. When that stopped being possible as the population grew, they stopped paying attention to what people were actually upset about, and started trying to steer society where they thought it should go without any regard to how it affected their constituents. That trickled down through the higher education system, and through the legal system. Came to a head when I was little.”
     Bryce nodded. “I think I see. I mean, yeah, there’s the argument that it’s better for a lot of guilty to go free than an innocent be punished, but…”
     “But the way things were going,” Molly continued his thought, “it was only the powerless getting punished. Pushed toward pleading ‘no contest’ to not have to spend potentially a decade trying to defend themselves. Utter bastards buying lawyers and judges and experts to get off when the evidence was overwhelming.” Molly sipped her coffee. “It’s the latter that triggered the proposal and passage of the Last Contingencies for Justice Act that legalized assassination at this level, and for these reasons.”
     “But elected officials are usually the worst bastards,” Bryce said, puzzled.
     “Yeah,” Molly agreed. “And they knew it. Do you really think they’d leave themselves vulnerable to having justice served on them? Some animals being more equal than others?”

     Molly McGuire was forced to become a Certified Public Assassin by events within her family. She grew into the job. She found a measure of fulfillment in it. Holly’s tale of Molly isn’t just a feel-good story; it points in some directions most of us would prefer not to think about.

     Give it a try.

We Interrupt This Program…

     I don’t know how embed a YouTube “short.” There doesn’t seem to be a convenient way. But at least I can give you this one’s address. I urge you to take the three minutes it asks of you and pay attention to the event it describes.

     I’m a poor evangelist. I lack something that makes other evangelists effective. I don’t know what that is. But that short video may have the answer.

     “If today you hear His voice, harden not your heart.” (Psalm 95). Sometimes your words and voice are distractions, even obstructions. Let Him speak instead.

     May He bless and keep you always.

“While The Balance Of His Mind Was Disturbed”

     Boromir strode up and down, speaking ever more loudly. Almost he seemed to have forgotten Frodo, while his talk dwelt on walls and weapons, and the mustering of men; and he drew plans for great alliances and glorious victories to be; and he cast down Mordor, and became himself a mighty king, benevolent and wise.
     […]
     He rose and passed his hand over his eyes, dashing away the tears. ‘What have I said?’ he cried. ‘What have I done? Frodo, Frodo!’ he called. ‘Come back! A madness took me, but it has passed. Come back!’

     Surely you know where that’s from.

     In that scene, Tolkien exploited the idea that the One Ring could overwhelm those near to it with power-lust. There had to be a flaw in their characters for it to take firm hold, but if the Ring could find such a chink in their moral-ethical armor, lust for it would penetrate and take command of them. In this fashion, Tolkien did several things concurrently:

1. He displayed Boromir’s pride and ambition;
2. He depicted the Ring’s technique for corrupting those near it;
3. Through contrast, he emphasized the character of the other members of the Fellowship.

     Fortunately for us fallible, corruptible mortals, there is no One Ring of Power to tempt us thus. But there are other powers in the world. Any of them could disturb the balance of a mind, given the right circumstances. Some of them even come with rings.

* * *

     The possibility of seizing power over others is irresistible to some. Once they have sensed it, they become fixated on it. Some are consumed by it, such that nothing else in this world matters to them. And as I’ve written on previous occasions, for the worst power-lusters there’s no such thing as enough.

     But there are many situations that involve an inequality of power. Some are transient; others persist. One arises in literally every household into which a child is born.

     It’s never been my lot to have to raise a child from the cradle. Still, I know of some of its aspects. The early months, while the baby is learning to sleep through the night, must be very stressful. For a couple of years at least, parent-to-toddler communication is exceedingly difficult. Then come the Terrible Twos, when Junior decides it’s time to assert himself against parental authority. Those continue roughly until puberty, when adolescent rebellion enters the fray. If you can get the miserable ingrate out from under your roof without having threatened him with death even once, you have earned the Medal of Parental Forbearance, with an “F for Freedom” cluster.

     Given that parents are held to be responsible for their preadolescent children – for their care and feeding, for their supervision, for their education, for any harm they cause, and so forth – while the children are deemed to be free of any responsibility under the law, who has the power in that situation? Who is capable of tormenting whom, and who would be required to bear any consequences for succumbing to it?

     We don’t condone mothers killing their children. It’s not nice. But when the little tyrants start to “pile it on,” fantasies of relief through homicide will sometimes arise. If Mom isn’t quite well – postpartum depression can be a serious condition, especially when there’s no other adult around to help – terrible things can happen. We get the Susan Smiths and the Lindsay Clancies.

     I refuse to excuse women who kill their kids. I’m interested in preventing as many infanticides as possible. And I think that recent trends in economics and family structure have been wholly negative in this regard.

* * *

     The multigenerational household is rare today. There are reasons for that, but among its consequences is that a couple that elects to have kids is frequently – perhaps usually? – without the assistance of the grandparents of those kids. That puts Mom “eyeball to eyeball with a screaming infant” (Robert S. Mendelsohn) ten to sixteen hours of every day for months, perhaps years. It’s got to be hard to take.

     Of at least equal importance is the virtual disappearance of the “neighborhood mothers club.” That was seldom a formal organization with officials and a charter. But when mothers didn’t need to work for wages, they could provide one another with a considerable degree of support in their domestic duties. Even just the ability to chat over the back fence with a kindred soul was worth something to a mother nearing the end of her tether. But the kindred soul isn’t there any more, even if the fence is.

     Add the intense pressures to earn money, the heightened expectations placed upon the families of minor children, the deteriorating social environment, the increasingly competitive nature of child-rearing itself, and fathers who come home more exhausted and more burdened than ever before, and what would be more likely than a rash of infanticides?

     There’s more to the collapse of First World fertility rates than mere self-centeredness.

* * *

     Once more: I will not excuse the murder of children. But we ought to be thinking hard about the vise that’s tightening on parents, especially the newest parents. Their power to manage and improve their situations is close to nil. While it’s not mensurable, the burden children place on their parents appears to be greater than in any previous generation of Americans. They cost more, demand more, and inflict more worries and fears on their parents than previous litters did.

     Parents need help. The best source of such help is other parents, especially other mothers. Yet we have contrived a situation in which that help is nearly absent.

     I don’t like what I foresee.