Melborp

                Parents and students are stocking up on note paper, notebooks, glitter, glue and goodness knows what else in preparation for the start of a new school year next month. I don’t recall such a mass purchase-a-thon when I was a kid. Back in the dark ages all we had to buy was notebooks, paper and a few pens. Looking back and comparing all the extras kids in even the most fiscally strapped schools today have with what I had, one can only wonder how I learned anything at all.

                Here was my school day for eight years. Lining up in silence outside and entering the school in subdued rows (kind of like prisoners going to the chain gang.) Lessons in one classroom with one teacher until lunch – which we brown bagged and ate at our desks. That’s right – no cafeteria. No library for that matter, unless you called the bookcases in some of the classrooms a library. Then we ran around outside on the theory we needed exercise. You guessed it – no gym either. Back to more classes in the same room with the same teacher, followed by about three hours of homework it was worth your life not to complete. Eight years of that. Kind of builds up a high level of tolerance in a person, doesn’t it? 

                That would constitute an academic problem of giant proportion today but a funny thing happened on the way to blessed release, uhmm, “graduation.”

 I learned to learn. How to teach myself was a life lesson I figured out pretty much on my own because no teacher ever attempted to make learning fun or interesting. They just scared me to death and piled on the assignments. So maybe that eight year sentence to academic hell wasn’t a problem after all but a non-problem, a “melborp” (problem spelled backward), because a surprisingly good outcome came from a bad situation.

 

What a Name!

                In one of the Big Bang episodes, Sheldon Cooper acquired a bunch of cats when what passes for his love life hit a bump in the road.  As he explained to his flabbergasted mother, the “bunch” of cats is more correctly called a “Clowder” or a “Glare.”

                 Who knew?

                That got me wondering what other strange names we attach to animals based on their species, age or sex. Turning to the internet, here’s a sampling of some of the really weird attributions.

A congregation of alligators

A raft of Auks

A cete of badgers

A cloud of bats

A sleuth of bears

A sute of bloodhounds

A wake of Buzzards

A peep of chickens

A lap of Cod

 A bed of clams

A quiver of cobras

A bask of crocodiles

A convocation or aerie of eagles

A leash of fox

A tower of giraffes

A cackle of hyenas

A crash of rhinos

Just to name a few, but my favorite is:  a  Murder of Crows  - It makes me think of  Edgar Allan Poe.

Three Muskateers of Medicine



                This bad boy is called a Kelly Clamp and I encountered it for the first time during my operating room rotation as a student nurse. It’s one of many instruments used during surgery, especially useful for using or removing sponges from ...well, never mind.  Imagine my surprise when, following Hubby as he scoured every corner of his favorite tool and hardware store one day, I saw old Kelly sitting on a shelf with a price tag of only a few dollars. How did he escape the operating room? I nabbed him right away.

                So far, he’s proved terrific for digging out the lint that hides deep in the filter area of my dryer. Clamp a cloth or sponge in his long teeth and you can reach just about anything that needs cleaning. He’s even recently proved useful for getting socks on when one can’t reach their toes because of injury.

                There are other medical items or terms that have particular surnames as well as Kelly clamp. There’s the Foley catheter designed to remain in the bladder for more than a day. Lest we leap to the conclusion the Irish (Kelly and Foley) have a lock on medical engineering, there’s a position named Trendelenburg in which the patient’s head is lowered and the feet are raised. It is used to prevent shock by keeping blood flowing to the brain while blood pressure drops due to hemorrhage.  I heard a physician remark that whoever Trendelenburg was, he gets more famous every time a doctor shouts “Trendelenburg position!” He sounded almost jealous.

                So there’s the Three Musketeers of the medical world. Remember Trenedlenburg in case you need to use it, grab Kelly if you can and I hope you don’t need Foley.

               





Open Mouth Insert Foot

                It seems Paula Deen reaped the whirlwind with one powerful word uttered years ago. Let’s be honest. How many times have you wished you could grab words that flew out of your mouth and stuff them back, way down inside, never to see the light of day? As Paula has spoken tearfully about her moment of folly, people who must be perfectly insightful saints have said Paula “just doesn’t get it.”

                What’s not to get? Words can hurt as well as soothe, incite as well as quell, express love or shower hate. We even have laws against hate speech, but be careful of your definition of hate speech. Adolf Hitler’s rhetoric would fall under that definition but would you believe a lower court decided the verses someone quoted from the Bible was hate speech because the verses spoke against the activities of a group of people?

                Supposedly we have freedom of speech in America. They can’t throw you in jail for saying something against the latest zeitgeist, against the latest politically correct flavor of the month. But people and businesses can shun you, fire you, or cancel contracts with you. This is not freedom of speech! The government does not have to squash us; we the people, influenced by the government, will do it instead. 

               What is lost when a man or woman becomes persona non grata because they uttered something another finds offensive? We lose the grace as a people to acknowledge that we’ve all been there, perhaps not so egregiously, but been there never the less. We lose the ability to forgive even when we are hurting. And sometimes we need to acknowledge the fact that somewhere, sometime, someone will say something that deeply offends us. That’s the price of living in a free society.

What happens when we are so fearful of offending anyone that we bury our thoughts, insights and discoveries? We will eventually be afraid to speak the truth with love, to speak against the majority (IRS investigation, anyone?) and declare the Emperor has no clothes and is stark naked.

Personally, I think the old boy is “starkers” now.  So sue me. 

 

Indie Ink

                The first short story I sold was to Green’s Fiction for the Family magazine back in the mid 70’s. It was a story about a boy with a stuttering problem trying to fit into his new school and it was told through the point of view of a girl in his parochial classroom. I found the editor’s comment interesting. “You have the nun talking in clichés, but then that’s the way they do talk. Consider Jack Frost sold.”

            Nothing like editorial comments and suggestions! Authors commonly rewrite entire novels at the direction of the editor of the publishing house opting to purchase their work – and that’s after they’ve rewritten huge sections on their own before submission. I will take a hardnosed stance and say if you’re not willing to edit and rewrite, take up something else.

            The hardest part of being a serious writer is getting your work published. Gone with the Wind was rejected 25 times before it was sold! Now you could write the equivalent of that American classic and be rejected by a publishing house because you don’t have a large enough platform. The name of the game is selling books and if the author does not already have a following through social media, teaching, previous sales, public speaking (all of that is the platform), chances are his or her tour de force will languish in the slush pile of rejected manuscripts.

            Enter the brave new world of indie publishing. Writers can independently upload their books into e-books or arrange for publishing at point to sale so the actual book is created upon purchase and then sent to the buyer. Indie authors get to keep much more from each sale as well. There are many excellent indie books out there and even the big names in the literary world use indie as well as traditional publishing now.

            This gives us readers many more books at much lower cost, such as free to 99 cents. On the down side, there’s a lot of poor writing being uploaded and even the reviews are slanted. I wrote a review for a friend but admitted in my first sentence that she was a fellow writer. I did feel comfortable giving her a good review because it was really an excellent book, but some reviewers are trying to do a friend a favor without being honest about the book. I do have hopes that good books will rise to the top of reading lists and the lousy ones will sink into the oblivion they deserve.              

            Still the publishing houses need to sit up and smell the coffee. They need to give the new, promising authors more promotion if they don’t want to become an anachronism. For starters, “platform” should not be a factor in selecting manuscripts, but rather, quality writing. The fact is the traditional publishing houses are now in competition with the very people who used to be their clients – not a winning market position to be sure. Many are developing an independent publishing arm to assist writers who want to self publish quality work.

            Publishing is in flux and that’s not even looking at e-magazines and writing content for the internet! Johannes Gutenberg would be flabbergasted.

Accidents Will Happen

 

 

 

Chapter 10

 

 

 

Bucci scanned the laboratory and reached for his cell phone. As he waited for the crime lab to answer, the detective opened the top drawer of the one desk in the room and pawed through its contents. Pulling up a plastic employee ID card, Bucci recognized the balding man who had given them directions to the lab. Next to the ID tag, sat a silver key.

            “Henderson, run down and see if you can grab the guy we met on the way in.”

            “On it.” Henderson replied, flinging open the lab door.

            Bucci picked up the key and found it opened the lower left drawer. Under a pile of files, Bucci’s thumb scraped against a small latch. Pulling up on the metal edge revealed a hidden compartment in which sat a lone USP flash drive. Suddenly Bucci heard the lab director’s voice on his phone.

            “Yeah, Gene. We need some of your eggheads pronto. I’m in the University chem lab and have no idea what to look for that would tell me anything about that designer drug you guys identified.”

            By the time the CSI team arrived, Bucci had the flash drive inserted in one of the lab computers and was staring at formulations that looked like cuneiform scratchings.   As he scrolled down, a list of Middle East embassy names and numbers appeared. Whatever Leere was working on was international in scope and deadly in plan. His next calls were to Homeland Security and Officer Henderson.

             Agent Denis of Homeland Security followed Lieutenant Henderson as he boarded the 747. Having found the door to Leere’s apartment open and the rooms torn apart as if the tenant had been in a rush, Henderson had ascertained the nervous man at the University was on the lamb. When he spoke to Bucci, his friend directed him to the county airport.

The two government men walked slowly down the center aisle and stopped at 22c. Without a word, a balding man rose from his seat and allowed the cuffs to clamp shut over his wrists.

Three hours later, Agent Denis and Detective Bucci sat in a back booth in Salty’s Bar.

“When we re-interviewed Trevellian’s wife, she remembered she had gone into the kitchen to cut a few more, what she called, “sausage thingyies” but she dropped the knife and put it in the dishwasher. Turns out that was the prop knife but she didn’t know that.  She left the real knife she used to cut the sausages on the counter. Apparently, Trevellian used that for his rehearsal, thinking it was the prop.”

“So how did that lead you to Leere?” The agent took a sip from his lager.

“Trevellian’s latest “protégé” had been an unwitting guinea pig for Leere. What she thought was a love potion was really the designer drug. When we raided his lab we found the evidence that he was planning on selling his formula to the highest bidder.”

“Terrorist, you mean.”  Denis thought for a moment. “In other words, the death of the Professor led to the discovery of the plan to sell LSD that is 40 times more powerful and modified to be mixed in the public water supply.”

Bucci nodded. “And it wasn’t murder or suicide so the grieving widow gets 5 million bucks of comfort. Who knows, maybe for a nice honeymoon with Conan Farrell after a suitable mourning period, of course. 

“Whew! All because of a misplaced prop knife… I guess accidents will happen!”  

THE END

 

Meet the author of this chapter: 

Gene LeDoux, a retired CSI chemist, has been a model railroad buff since his teen years when he wrote several articles for Model Trains magazine.  Writing about his favorite hobby led to writing scientific articles and professional reports throughout his forty years in the Monroe County Crime Lab.

 

Accidents Will Happen

Chapter 9

     Detective Bucci leapt out of the police wagon before the tires stopped rolling. Lieutenant Henderson met him on the University steps, a sheet of paper waving from his fingertips.

“I got the warrant to search the place. Judge Bean wasn't too happy about it. I interrupted him in the middle of his dinner party.”

“Tough, the old man needs a few less calories anyway.” Bucci mumbled, grabbing the warrant from the young officer's hand. “Come on, we gotta find this guy Tim Leere before he gets away with the evidence.”

The two men hustled up the cement steps leading to the science building.  Bucci recognized the merri-cupola vine engraved on the mammoth door.  

Just a few yards in front of them, hurrying from the front staircase, a balding man toting a laptop, was shooting sinister looks their way.

“Hey Mister,” Bucci yelled. “Can you point us in the direction of the chem lab?”

“Chemistry?” The man asked as he pawed his straggly hair. His eyes darted from side to side as he fidgeted with the keys he pulled from his coat pocket.   “Upstairs, second floor, room 282.”

     Bucci and the Lieutenant took the steps two by two. The hall upstairs was nearly empty as they rushed down the corridor, finally arriving at their destination. Bursting inside they were disappointed to see no one in the lab and obvious signs that someone had made a frantic effort to destroy possible evidence. Their murder investigation was about to escalate.

Meet the author of this segment: Linda Sawicki loves to write and has done so all her life. She has recently published her first YA novel, "And The Fifth Element Is Fear," available on Amazon.com. She also participated in a collection of stories included in "Hapless Halloween - Twenty five Twisted Tales of Terror abd Suspense " (Amazon.com e-book.) Visit her at Lindasawicki.com or e-mail her at linda25247@yahoo.com