Jeff—Saturday

The other day, as I reflected on my days spent in chic harborside eateries staring out beyond an armada of luxury yachts across a blissfully calm Aegean sea, I found myself thinking of the meaning of life.

Cue the violins.

I live on an island where temporal things matter. Big time. The island’s very existence depends on nurturing a sense in the hearts and minds of the hordes drawn there each summer that our very being is defined by what we possess or consume. The right table in the right restaurant, the right row of beach beds on the right place on the right beach, the right watch, the right late night club, the right bikini—or the right bikini wearer—all matter in the eyes of those who keep track of the things that determine your position in the governing pecking order.

Then I thought a bit longer. About other places I’ve lived: big, medium, and small cities, farm and academic communities, chic apartment buildings and shacks. They all use different measures, but inevitably the same dynamic is at work everywhere. Perhaps it’s what you do, where you live, where you (or your children) go to school, what you wear, what you drive, what courses you teach, your publisher, what ranks or distinctions you’ve obtained, but in some way or another they factor into the calculations of those who keep track of your position in their particular pecking order.

And I’m talking now about decisions made once the broader categories of race, religion, ethnicity, political party, and gender have been resolved.

Let’s face it folks, we live in world where categorization is a fact of life. Jeffrey the writer occupies a different position than Jeffrey the New York City lawyer or Jeffrey the exotic dancer (okay, so my examples aren’t perfect).

The bottom line is, to be truly free you must be happy in your own skin doing what you want to do. There will forever be persons out there judging you by their standards, and if you invest in playing by their rules, you will end up living someone else’s view of your life instead of living your own.

A word of warning to those who might think this is a curse of the capitalist class: Anarchists can be just as ruthless—if not more so—in determining the status of their adherents in the “anti-isms” rankings of their disparate pecking orders.

As Davy Crockett once said, “Be true to yourself and you shall not fear from any man [exotic dancer or not].”

Now back to staring out to see/sea.

Coronets please.

—Jeff

Say you were to spend the night in my house, or hang in the living room, lounge on the porch, or have a cup of tea in my study. I would be happy for your company. Yet you would probably notice you were sharing space with plenty of pillows.

Cushions are unavoidable in my home. This morning, as my husband Tony drank coffee on our couch which by its nature is made up of large, loose pillows, I asked him what he thought about the pillow situation in our home. My concern was piqued because he’d made a half-hearted grumble, a few nights running, about how many pillows it required for to sleep comfortably.

Tony answered me thus. “I think we have way too many, particularly the smaller ones. I think i need one or maybe two for sleeping. We have square ones, cylinder ones, and it’s a little much.” Deep breath. “To me.”

His last modest qualifier is exactly the kind of reason we have made it through seven homes and lasted thirty five years and counting.

I then asked Tony to guess how many pillows are in the house. He guessed fifteen. I told him the truth. We have more than sixty.

I’m the one who brought every pillow into our house. And it’s not like I’m trying to fill a vacated nest. You see, my passion for pillows started a long time ago. With a gift from Mom. Oh, how I wish I had a picture of my old room for you!

My mother designed a bedroom for me in second grade, right after my parents bought our home in the University Grove neighborhood of St. Paul, Minnesota in 1971. Mom was a genius at sewing and design, and she was firm about a pale pink and navy color scheme for my small bedroom that she thought would flex with me as I grew up (it did). With the help of a friend, she stripped 1950s wallpaper and painted the room the delicate color of a seashell’s interior. Shortly thereafter, my twin bed was dressed with a bedspread of dark navy cotton with small pink flowers and pink and white gingham check throw pillows edged in eyelet that she sewed herself. I was a pink fanatic (still love the hue) but she had an aesthetic sense wouldn’t allow the room to become a Barbie-pink, tacky zone.

Not only was I blessed to have my own room—I was selected as the only solo sleeper in our family of three girls—but I had a hideaway with a soothing color scheme and throw pillows that made my heart vibrate. My mother’s taste was everywhere. Downstairs, the Scandinavian modern chairs in the living room also were decorated by pillows covered in handmade embroidered covers that were either brought from India or stitched out of extraordinary fabric collected by my mother. who ultimately studied textile science at the nearby University of Minnesota. Even now, while in her eighties, every year that my mother visits India, she makes special trips to regional textile artisans and comes back with new cushion covers and fabrics.

I’m not gifted at sewing and design, but I learned from Mom that to make a home, throw pillows are not optional. I hold that every surface you can sit or lie on benefits from an assembly of contrasting cushions. I watched a video about pillow styling a few years ago, and that sent me on a track for different shapes, such as round pillows, small narrow ones, and the ultimate prize: an Uzbek silk embroidered Suzani square pillow, vintage, 18-inches square.

Almost all the pillows in my home have patterns. There are various paisleys from World Market’s various collections, the Liberty Print calico holiday design handmade by someone on Etsy, fine Indian embroidery and mirror-work from cushion covers gifted by friends, and an aged red silk pillow with vaguely Chinese embroidery and the very best back support. I once had an antique gold brocade recamier—a skinny Empire style daybed—that absolutely defined my home design aesthetic. After twenty-odd years of service, when several feet broke and it had become ratty-looking, I finally allowed it to leave home. Yet I obstinately kept its two perfectly useable brocade bolsters. How can you donate used pillows? Nobody wants old cushions or stuffed animals or mattresses because of the possibility of importing bedbugs and the like.

Here’s a practical reason that I love pillows: I’m a small person. I used to be five-four on my driver’s license. I’m now five-two. Short legs mean most modern chairs and couches have too deep a seat for me. Hence the pillows. They bring my body closer to the chairs edge, so I can actually bend my knees and sit ergonomically.

And what about all the pillows on my bed? I’ve lived with a stiff neck since 2016, and my back and shoulders make occasional complaints. My sleeping pillow collection contains seven different models. Two memory foam pillows have unique patent-pending construction, and while they feel great to lie down on, the shape is strange enough that I can’t usually go four nights without changing to one of the others. My pillow strategy is to keep changing things around for comfort. A physical therapist recommended to me a side-sleeping strategy of one pillow for the head, a long pillow behind the back, and a pillow in front of body to cradle an arm and leg.

I also rely on pillows while I am doing my morning and afternoon writing sessions. A supremely comfortable position for me is to write in bed, or on any loveseat or chair, with a bolster under my legs and my feet propped up on an ottoman. Then all I need to add is a firm, high pillow for the laptop or iPad, plus a back of the neck pillow and something for the lower back. An extra throw pillow beneath my right elbow relieves writing stress. With a pillow strategy like this, who even needs a desk? This kind of setup saves money, alleviates neck plain, and allows writing to happen anywhere: hotels, living rooms, beds, couches.

Some of my pillows are admitted strike outs. I rarely use with the weighted pillow meant to trigger calming—at least $50 if I remember right—that weight a whopping ten pounds on its own and is encased in drab navy terrycloth. It’s also too wide and heavy to fit into any kind of cushion cover. Other pillows that aren’t my favorites are lumbar pillows from Pottery Barn made of a scratchy wool-like fabric, and from Wayfair, some small, hard outdoor pillows that in a rough fabric that I do credit for being incredibly stain resistant, and also for coming in attractive colors. They aren’t treasures like my embroidered silk pillows. However, I’ve been using them for five years because they can live outdoors without getting spoiled and quite improve the atmosphere of my boring white-cushioned seats.

And that’s the thing about pillows. They liven up the ordinary, especially because they are ‘pops of color,’ as the designers say, adding energy. They’re a bit like having collections of books in a room, either on tables or in bookcases. Their existence reassures you.

At the same time, I realize that too many pillows can make a room feel cluttered. I challenged myself today to remove and store up on a spare bed on the third floor, a dozen pillows out of my grand battalion. I’ve started with bolsters, and gone on to worn-looking 12-inch squares. I only made it up to five pillows shifted to purgatory. Maybe in a few months, I will add more, and permanently remove whatever’s upstairs. I’m not ready to discard them.

Four years ago, we had a rodent problem on this third floor, which lies just under the attic. I discovered a sleeping pillow that had been gnawed open, a portion of synthetic fluff torn out, presumably to make a cuddly nest. I thought to myself: you dreadful mouse, why not just take the whole pillow? Make it easier for someone like me, who can’t let go.

It’s my pleasure today to invite James R. Benn, a fellow Soho Crime writer, to provide his take on how he’s kept his Billy Boyle series fresh. I just finished reading an ARC of #21—The Ninth Circle—which he kindly sent to me. It begins in Cuba in January 1945, and Billy Boyle is confronted with yet more villainy by the Nazis. It’s a great ride—bombs, impersonations, boat chases, high stakes—in a part of the world I don’t usually associate with WWII, which made it really interesting.

Without further ado, here is James —

Keeping a crime fiction series fresh for your readers (and you too).

As Ringo Starr sang:

It don’t come easy

You know it don’t come easy

Got to pay your dues if you want to sing the blues
And you know it don’t come easy.

Whether you’re singing the blues or writing a mystery series, you know it don’t come easy. Especially if you want your writing to stay fresh over the course of an entire series. I discovered that early on in my Billy Boyle WWII mystery series. I’d created a character who was likable and a bit of a wise guy, and I thought that would be enough to carry the series for a few books.

I had no idea at the time that we’d be up to twenty-one and counting.

The real eye-opener came when I was working on the second novel in the series, The First Wave. I’d kept Billy’s flippant Yank attitude upfront as it had been in the first book. I was in a writing class at Wesleyan University, run by the novelist Rachel Basch. She gave me some notes she’d written about the chapter I was working on. The last comment was “Jim, remember the story has to move down, as well as forward.”

Down, as well as forward. I’d been doing okay with the forward bit, bringing in lots of plot-centered action. But downward? I’d been coasting, keeping my character static. With her comment, I knew I needed to delve into the emotional effect the war would have on my protagonist. That understanding marked a turning point in how I perceived Billy Boyle. Now, his brashness hides fear and uncertainty, where once it existed simply as a defining trait.

At the same time, I stumbled across what I see as the two main archetypes of a main character, in thrillers and crime fiction, at least.

The first is the protagonist who moves through the world and struggles to overcome obstacles and meet challenges. At the end, they emerge from that conflict unchanged, but the world has been changed by them.

The second is the protagonist who moves through the world, struggles with obstacles and challenges, and at the end, emerges from that conflict in an altered state. The world remains the same, but they have been changed by events.

The second archetype is the one I find more interesting. As readers move through the Billy Boyle series, they share in his journey as he comes face-to-face with death and the horrors of war. This allows his story arc to be widened and introduces uncertainty in the reader’s mind. On the one hand, they know he’s the main character and has to remain center stage. But on the other hand, readers must wonder at the extent of the changes he’s endured. As C.S. Harris, author of the Sebastian St. Cyr mystery series said, “The more questions you can raise in your reader’s minds, the better.”

Of course, the first archetype can be incredibly effective. The prime example which springs to my mind is Jack Reacher. In the hands of a master storyteller like Lee Child, Reacher moves the story along perfectly and emerges from the conflict scarred physically but intact emotionally. I never worry about what will happen to Reacher. I do wonder how he will deal with the evil that comes his way, and the body count he’ll leave behind, but otherwise, in Reacher I trust.

There are your secondary characters to consider as well. Having a cast of interesting secondary characters allows you to bring each of them to the fore as needed. This brings a fresh mix to the story as their personal characteristics accentuate the narrative. I have three main secondary characters. Billy’s primary sidekick is Lieutenant Piotr Augustus Kazimierz (Kaz), a Polish baron of the Augustus clan, and an officer with the Polish Armed Forces in the West. Captain Diana Seaton of the British Special Operations Executive is his love interest, but their affair is often interrupted by dangerous assignments behind enemy lines. First Sergeant Mike Miecznikowski, known as “Big Mike,” works with Billy and Kaz. He’s an expert scrounger and strong as an ox.

These three unique characters provide for a variety of combinations, motivations, and desires which can be introduced in each book. Also, they can be brought forward or held back in the narrative as needed. This modulates the experience for readers, avoiding the repetition of familiar plots. And there’s no reason why any group of people should get along all the time. Introducing conflict amongst the main and secondary characters is another way to stir the pot and keep the recipe fresh.

Based on comments from readers, I’m convinced that they’ve bonded with these characters (as I have, big time). They worry about what will happen to Billy and Diana when the war is over. They ask where Kaz will end up, with Poland overrun by the Soviets. These concerns are key to keep a series fresh. A buy-in from readers on what the future holds for characters they care about is the best way I know to keep a series fresh.

Allison Montclair, author of the terrific Sparks and Bainbridge mysteries, said it beautifully. She called series characters “surrogate friends and avatars of our wishful selves.”

I should mention setting as another mechanism to freshen up a series. Think about all the exotic locales Agatha Christie had Hercule Poirot visit, such as the River Nile and a trip on the Orient Express. But I find myself somewhat constrained by the timeline of the Second World War in Europe. While that’s the bread and butter of this series, historically speaking, I felt that Billy, Kaz, and I all needed a break.

So this year’s title, The Ninth Circle, the twenty-first in the series, takes the lads to Cuba for a bit of Nazi spy-hunting at the bequest of Commander Ian Fleming. Rum drinks in the sun. What could go wrong?

To purchase a copy of The Ninth Circle, publishing September 1, click here: https://bit.ly/45MMOpm

We knew there was always one thing that could spoil the show.

Clouds.

On August 12, Asturias was directly in the path of a total solar eclipse, and here in Oviedo, anticipation had been building for weeks. By evening, crowds had gathered on the grassy slopes of Parque del Oeste, just behind my building, armed with eclipse glasses, phones, cameras, and the hope of witnessing something most of us had never seen before: the sun disappearing completely behind the moon.

Asturias, however, had other plans.

This green corner of northern Spain does not stay green by accident. Clouds are part of the bargain, and as the eclipse approached, a thick blanket of them stubbornly covered the western sky. Somewhere up there, the moon was steadily moving across the face of the sun. Down here, we couldn’t see a thing.

And then something remarkable happened anyway.

Daylight began to fade. Not like sunset, with its gradual lengthening shadows and warm colors, but rapidly and strangely. Within minutes, evening became night. At totality, the park and the surrounding neighborhood were plunged into an extraordinary darkness, at which point the crowd spontaneously burst into cheers and applause.

Then, almost as quickly, the process reversed. The light returned, and Asturias went back to being Asturias—clouds and all.

So we didn’t get the great celestial spectacle we’d been hoping for. No black disk surrounded by the brilliant corona. No dramatic view of the sun vanishing behind the moon.

But standing there as day became night and then day again, knowing exactly what was happening unseen above those clouds, was impressive in its own right.

The Asturian weather gods may have denied us the eclipse.

But they couldn’t quite hide it.

Compressed into 18 seconds, here is the entire Asturian Eclipse:

Sam

Here we are, praying for the end of war. Again. For me, such prayers began bef0re I understood any such a thing. All I knew was that I wanted my daddy back.

It was this time of year when WW II was finally winding down. The Germans had surrendered the previous May. On 15 August 1945, Emperor Hirohito announced surrender. On September 2, the document was signed on the USS Missouri at anchor in Tokyo Bay. Done. But…

At that point, my father Samuel Puglise had fought on Guadalcanal, Saipan, Okinawa, and Guam. The war was over, but before the Japanese would surrender to China in Tsingtao. Steps had to be taken.

The surrender ceremony. Sam is in there somewhere.

The Japanese had invaded China in 1937. With more advanced war materiel, they soon overwhelmed the Chinese, despite their home territory advantage. The Japanese were firmly entrenched. After the 1945 surrender, there were hundreds of thousands of Japanese soldiers who needed to be repatriated. Naturally, this was an operation that would take some time. The Japanese troops were kept in holding areas while the available ships were used to transport them home.

Japanese after the surrender.

But there was a big problem. The Chinese had reasons to want revenge on the Japanese for their brutality toward the Chinese. During the night, Sam told me, local people would crawl under the barbed wire and kill the Japanese. The solution was that after VJ Day, a contingent of 3,000 American Marines, including Sam, were dispatched to stop the vengeful. But, at first there were not enough Americans to properly patrol the perimeters and keep the inmates safe. The solution boggled Sam’s mind. The American commanders rearmed the Japanese officers and had them walk guard duty with the Marines. “Think of it, Sweetie,” Sam said. “A few weeks beforehand, we were trying to kill one another. And then, there we were, armed and walking guard duty together.”

Card Sam sent to my mother at Christmas 1945

After the repatriation was complete, Sam and his fellow Marines were kept on for a while, guarding Cheng Kai-shek’s supply lines in his war against Mao Zedong.

Sam in China

Sam’s time in China was not without challenges. His group—a contingent of the 6^th Marines—was attached to the 1^st Marine regiment. On the one side, assumptions were made that the 6^th would continue to supply them and on the other that the 1^st would. For a while, nothing arrived, not even rations. At one point, they managed to trade with the Chinese for a cow, which they butchered and ate. Sam made a chewing motion when he described this. “It was old and TOUGH. We named it ‘Confucius’ calf.”

Confucius’ Calf

Sam on the extreme right, dining on tough meat.

He made friends with a Dutch missionary priest, who later escaped the religious cleansing after the Communist victory. I wish I could remember his name. He came and visited us in Paterson, on his way home to the Netherlands. For years after the war, Sam corresponded with a doctor named Pfister, and his wife . I found their address on Pei Tai Road in the blue notebook shown in this collection of memorabilia:

Sam’s memorabilia

Sam’s souvenir photos of Chinese he served with.

Sam rescued a monk from a bombed out Buddhist temple. As they left, the man reached down into the rubble and took up a roof ornament and gave it to Sam. He kept it, and brought it home when, on 1 April 1946, the 6^th Marine Division was disbanded, and Sam was finally shipped Stateside. By “slow boat from China,” he said, and then train from San Diego to NYC, and them by inter-city bus to Paterson, and then by city bus to home.

Coming home!

He told me much later that people at the Paterson City Hall bus stop looked askance at him and asked why he was still wearing his uniform more than six months after the war ended.

When he walked into our house, was alone, sitting on the sofa where my mother told me to stay and not move until she got back from the store. I had turned five the month before. For more than a year I had been begging for a dog. My mom told me I had to wait until my father got home. She had written of this to Sam. He opened his duffle bag and gave me a dog, one that used to occupy the roof of a temple in China. Here it is:

My dog.

Sam brought home this Buddha carved from coal.

A few of the items Sam collected in China

During the first fifty years after coming home, Sam did not talk much about his war experiences. I remember only two rather benign stories. Here they are as accurately as I can recall them:

My mother had sent my father a package that contained pairs of socks, a cake, and a box of raisins thrown in at the last minute. The socks were something Sam had requested. He and his buddies had found that in the soggy climate of the South Pacific, in unrelenting battle, they often did not take off their boots for a week at a time. When they did, their socks were gone. With endangered supply lines stretching back to San Diego, there were often no replacement socks to be had.

When I saw this last year in London, it resonated with me. It was part of
an exhibition at the British Library about World War I

The cake was a mess of moldy crumbs. But the raisins! Drinking alcohol, except for wine at dinner, was not part of my father’s culture. His best buddy, a guy of Scottish descent from Connecticut, however, saw a marvelous opportunity. They were, at that time on a beach getting a few days of R&R. Sam climbed a palm tree and came down with five coconuts. They used their bayonets to cut off the tops, put a handful of raisins in each one, recovered them, and buried them in the warm sand. Three days later they dug them up and drank the fermented coconut milk. Sam laughed out loud when he recounted how after their “cocktail hour” he could not stand up, but had to crawl through the trees and underbrush to get back to his tent that night.

On Okinawa, after the last major battle, they were “mopping up.” Sam and two other Marines were patrolling a rocky part of the island pockmarked narrow caves, some of which went straight down into the ground. Snipers were hiding in these as well as in caves on the sides of the mountains. American patrols investigated the holes in the ground by shouting for anyone hiding in them to come out. If no one did, they dropped in a grenade to make sure no sniper would pop up later and kill them. Sam and two others from his platoon were on such a patrol after weeks of jungle fighting without any let up. “We did not look very spiffy,” he said. At one such hole, they stood poised and ready, with rifles pointed down and called for any one inside to come up. To their astonishment, a gray-haired gentleman in a perfectly clean linen Panama suit, complete with white shirt, tie, and vest emerged, followed by two equally pristine young women in silk dresses, wearing white gloves and fashionable little hats. “I never felt so filthy and smelly in my life,” Sam said, laughing.

Uncle Paul in his Seabees uniform

In true Sicilian fashion, even with the war raging, Sam managed to wangle transportation to visit family members who were also at the front. His older brother, who was beyond combat age, joined the SeaBees (Construction Battalions). When Sam was still on Okinawa after the conquest of the island, he found out that Paul was with a group building an airstrip on Saipan. Sam talked his CO into letting him hitch a ride on a transport plane and spent a day with his brother. He learned that my mother’s youngest brother Joe was on Peleliu. Following that battle, Sam found a way to get there and spend some family time. Sam could do that sort of thing. He was a modest, but thoroughly engaging and charming man. Whoever you were, his sincerity made him irresistible.

It was not until a few months before he died that Sam told the horror stories. The only family members he talked to about the awful parts were me and David. When you read them you will see why he did not want to talk about it.

During that mopping up operation on Okinawa, those same three who found the pristine people in the hole in the ground, on another day, emerged from the jungle toward a cliff overlooking the ocean. Scores of Japanese had been driven to the edge, but no one knew they were there. “Though there were only three of us, they must have thought we were leading a large force coming through the trees,” Sam said. “As soon as they saw us, some of them threw themselves off the cliff onto the rocks below.” Some killed themselves by falling on grenades. Pairs of them pulled the pin on a grenade held between them, embraced, and went over the edge headfirst.

This last story made Sam weep with anger and sadness when he told it to us more than sixty years after it happened. He and a member of his platoon were having a smoke under a tree. There was no enemy action anywhere in the area, and no one else was around. An elderly Japanese man, resident of Okinawa, came along the road walking with great difficulty with a cane, making very slow progress. The Marine sitting there with Sam picked up his rifle, aimed it at the old man, and killed him.

At ninety-four, Sam looked at us through his tears. “I spent my life trying to forget these things, Sweetie,” he said to me. “But I never could.

Jeff—Saturday

Ten years ago, I wrote this post with the intention of capturing the essence of the Mykonian style of gossiping about the state of their island. It remains one of my all-time favorite Murder is Everywhere posts.

The other day an old-time Mykonian stopped me along the harbor front. “What’s happening to our Island, Jeffrey?”

When he calls it “our” island I know what’s coming ain’t good. “My” island brings on bragging about something good.

“What are you talking about?” I asked in my most innocent voice.

“You know exactly what I mean.”

Oh, we’re playing that game. Yeah, I might know what he’s about to tell me, but if I say it, rather than waiting until he can’t resist blurting it out, he’ll be telling everyone what “Jeffrey said,” rather than generating the gossip on his own. Nope, I’m not biting at that one. Been down that road before.

“Sorry, my friend. Not sure what you’re getting at. If it’s the economy you’re about to complain about, get real. You’re living in a blessed bubble here on Mykonos. The German Bertelsmann Foundation just this week ranked Greece last among 41 countries in terms of its future viability with regard to economic policies, and that’s just for starters.”

He waved me off. “No, I know all about that. What has me riled up is… is...” he began waving his hands as if juggling pizza dough, “all the stuff I’m hearing people say we need to keep on the island to keep it popular.”

“Stuff?” I said.

“Yes, stuff. You know stuff.” He started in again with the hands.

“Okay, are you talking about there being more cars, motorbikes, quads, and private vans on the roads, than during rush hour on the LA 405 Freeway?”

“No.”

“About no place to park them?”

He gestured no with a quick upward jerk of his head. “No, not that either.”

“I’ve got it! Drivers who think of themselves as somehow protected by the gods of Delos, no matter the condition in which they’re driving.”

“Forget about the cars, Jeffrey. I’m talking about stuff.” He practically shouted the word.

“Oh, we’re back to that. Is this stuff animal, vegetable, or mineral?”

“Stop fooling with me, you know exactly what I’m talking about. It’s everywhere and everybody knows about it. Every day I hear Mykonians arguing over how important a draw it is to our island. Can you believe it?”

“If you say so, who am I to disbelieve?”

He shook his head. “We’re loosing our moral compass.”

“That seems a bit dramatic. After all, the needle on the island’s compass has been a bit wobbly for a quite a while.”

“But now it’s threatening to draw us way off course. This may be a party island, but we’re not party people. We’re different than those who come here.”

Ah, philosophy. How could I resist jumping in? “It’s certainly nice to think so, but unless you’re willing to act as if you truly are different, just saying so doesn’t mean a damn.”

“Are you suggesting that because we take their money in exchange for showing them a good time we’re like them?”

This time I shook my head. “What you just said strikes me as what’s called ‘a distinction without a difference.’ But to be fair, there is a difference. Those whom you allow to come here and party in an anything goes environment, will at the end of their holiday return to someplace else to live normal civil lives, while you and your families are left to deal with what they’ve left behind. Of all the messes they leave for you to clean up, one you cannot ever thoroughly erase is the basic lesson you’ve allowed your children and grandchildren to learn first hand: The sort of conduct the island tolerates in its visitors must be acceptable behavior to live by elsewhere on the planet. If you can live with that, who am I to quibble? But don’t disagree with the result, for that sort of self-deception will only prove disastrous to your families.”

“Yeah, that’s what I’m trying to say. You’ve got to write something about the stuff. Before it’s too late.”

“Here’s the bottom line. Whatever this stuff is that has you so worked up, if you want to stop it you better get serious. Otherwise shut up and learn to live with the consequences. Besides, you’re giving me a headache.”

“I have some stuff that might help for that.”

“Bye.”

—Jeff

So I thought I’d play a game – make a list of my own top five and see where they come in the top fifty (if at all). So here’s my go at that. In alphabetic order by author:

Razorblade Tears by SR Cosby.

Mixing southern Noir with themes about friendship and prejudice, Cosby pulls off a literary fiction thriller you can’t put down. A remarkable book from a remarkable talent.

I am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes.

A thriller with heart. We don’t often get that.

A Legacy of Spies by John Le Carré.

A retrospective of Smiley and the Circus from the view point of Peter Guillam – one of the insiders on the outside. It’s a poignant reminder of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. Le Carré’s son Nick Harkaway has written a continuation of the Smiley stories – Karla’s Choice - and it’s not at all bad, but not in my top five.

Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane.

Lehane was able to carry the reader to the end of the book before it all blows up in our faces. Incredible writing.

No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy.

Probably the second scariest villain every written in a totally believable setting where a little greed goes a wrong way. (The scariest is probably Hannibal Lecter but maybe that was Anthony Hopkins rather than Thomas Harris.) I guess everyone’s read this or at least seen the movie (a few times probably). It’s a masterpiece of suspense.

So how did I do? Well, it’s not a competition, but let’s see where my picks stacked in the NYT list (if at all):

Razorblade Tears #8

I am Pilgrim #38

A Legacy of Spies didn’t make the cut, but The Constant Gardener came in at #22. (Probably it’s a toss up between the two Le Carre books for me.)

Shutter Island #17

No Country for Old Men #5

And what was my reaction to the NYT’s top three?

Gone Girl #1. Not in that league for me.

Mystic River #2. I can’t argue, but I’d still put Shutter Island ahead of it for the sheer gut punch at the end.

In the Woods #3. I have to admit that I haven’t read it. I need to correct that urgently.

What are your top five?

But I was feeling more sleepy than patriotic. No, it’s wasn’t (just) because I’m that old. We’ve been learning German and Husband had the idea of playing us a German audiobook like a bedtime story (if we can learn in our sleep, why not?)

Unfortunately my German is just good enough to try to understand but not quite good enough to get anything understood which ended up with my brain churning around… and instead of joining patriotic neighbours cheering at celebrations, my National Day ended up mostly watching the celebrations in bed.

And thinking: I am older than my country.

Not older than Singapore the island, settlement, port or people who’ve been living and passing through here of course. But older than this independent Republic of Singapore.

And that’s something I have in common with a lot of people here because our nation is aging. What happens when a whole population starts aging?

There are signs everywhere of how we’re trying to deal with it: concessions on buses and MRT trains. Discounts on health checks and subsidised vaccinations, discount grocery days and discount meals…

This is my PAssion Silver ‘discount’ card.

For example an MRT trip from Changi Airport to Raffles Place (just under 20 km) that would normally cost about $2.27 costs me $1.07 during peak hours.

And now that I’m 65 years old, I’m also getting preventive healthcare reminders—at my age, influenza and pneumococcal vaccinations are strongly recommended and heavily subsidised.

There are also unofficial benefits. Like getting offered seats on buses and having energetic young people swoop in to help me return used bowls and trays. And then last Friday at the chicken rice stall, the boss lady ordered the young server to add a free braised egg to Aunty’s (ie my) takeaway order ‘because we must support each other’.

Was that because of National Day or do I need to think about dressing better or… still, I accepted the egg. I like soy braised eggs and I loved the sweet gesture.

I’m not sure how I feel about this waiver form I got from the yoga studio:

Not to be signed by me but by my ‘next of kin’ or ‘caregiver’. What?

I was surprised how much this irritated me. Okay, if I understand that if I keel over halfway through a Vinyasa class it would be useful to know who to contact. But couldn’t you have asked everyone for an emergency contact instead of demanding a senior waiver?

But I like the teachers there and it’s walking distance from home so… I decided I’m mature enough to accept this. Even though the person who signed on as my ‘caregiver’ is older than I am.

But what happens when the whole population is growing older? Singapore might be 61 years old but the median age of Singapore residents is 43.2 years now. Back when I was growing up, say up till 1990, the median age of residents was under 30 years. Growing older personally is part of a much larger demographic change.

Turning 65 also meant I had to have a medical examination before renewing my driving licence; just eye tests, agility and cognisance . It was quite fun, actually, because the doctor conducting this assessment was an old friend around my age—and he had my books displayed in his clinic!

And yes, I passed.

61 years ago, Singapore was concerned with survival. The first nine member PAP government cabinet was in their 30’s and early 40’s—Lee Kuan Yew was only 35 years old when he became our first Prime Minister. By 2011, before several senior ministers stepped down, the average age of the Singapore Cabinet was 59. The young people who stepped up to birth a nation based on equality, regardless of race, language or religion, evolved into its elder statesmen.

I think that’s something worth mentioning on our National Day. Not because we’ve perfectly fulfilled the challenge but because we’re still trying.

Happy Birthday, Singapore!

I cannot live without music. I was born into a family of music lovers. My grandfather was passionate about the opera. It and the tunes of the American song book played in my home during all my childhood. I grew up pretty much unable to function with music.

Regardless of the king of music, the voices of my favorite singers are delicious to my ears. Years ago, I was seeing the film The English Patient for the first time, in a theater, when, toward the end of the story, the background music ecame Ella Fitzgerald singing Cheek to Cheek. Ella had just died a week or so before. Here is what I heard:

Hearing Ella since, “Heaven. I’m in heaven,” I immediately thought, “If there is a heaven, for certain the angels are recruiting Ella to sing with them.”

Since then, my imaginings about Ella pop up when I admire the wonderful voices a many of my favorite singers. The angels must want them.

Louis Armstrong recorded that same song with Ella, and I say that Satchmo could teach the angels a thing or two about blowing the trumpet.

Lena Horne brings the heavenly choirs a voice that is passionate and that stands up for what’s right. Perfect for singing on the side of the angels.

Ditto and then some for Harry Belafonte, who could make a person believe in miracles.

Then there is Doc Cheatham, whose singing and playing the trumpet are nothing short of angelic.

Listen to this along with me. We can all use a break!

You smile and the angels sing!

How do I love BZ? Let me ask Waze.
I love she to beyond the left and right
My Soul can reach, when driving out of fright
Toward the ends of road and some unmarked place.
I love she to the measure of a way’s
Most secret paths, by day and darkest night.
I love she surely, as who pass on right.
I love she madly, as lost in a maze.
I love she in a fashion out of use
That once clung to maps with a childhood’s faith.
I love she with a love my beams did lose
in past wrong turns. I love she with the breadth,
Miles, gears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love she better now … betrothed as BZS.

And for those who still prefer the original version…

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

—Jeff

I’ll start by saying that I’m not afraid of bugs.

As a child, I picked up worms and ladybugs. Even now, I’ll go to the effort of carrying a cricket or Daddy-Long-Legs lost inside my house outside to safety. I treasure the wild world—and it’s my opinion that a lot of what ails our world comes from ignoring our role as participants in nature.

Summer is a special time for me, as my native plant garden shoots up. Most mornings I indulge in an early coffee alone on my porch. Here, stretched out on the wooden loveseat, I watched the denizens of my garden and its surroundings start their rounds. Birds chatter, squirrels take chase, and tiny chipmunks and larger squirrels and rabbits strike Beatrix Potter poses throughout the property. A few times each summer, I see a deer come into the garden; always, a large buck with ten-point antlers. Bucky, as I call him, comes to lounge in a favorite spot near a hedge, rousing himself eventually to munch on some flowers or weedy brush before disappearing to his home, which is most likely the forested Stony Run creek a block downhill.

My pocket-sized Baltimore City neighborhood, Tuxedo Park, was crafted from a large hunting estate sold to developers in the latter half of the 19^th century. The houses are a range of sizes built from the 1880s through the 1950s. All homes and apartment buildings have gardens, and tall street trees shade everything so that it’s usually a few degrees cooler than downtown, during summer’s hardest months. Hardly any homeowners treat their lawns with chemicals or spray for mosquitoes, so it’s a happy habitat for a lot of living things.

I’ve been enjoying my outdoor mornings for many years, June through mid-September. Last year, though, in mid-July I didn’t feel quite myself. My balance was off, and I had unmistakable vertigo. I also had some unexplained bug bites on my arm that I couldn’t remember occurring. Small red marks and a faint pink surrounding rash.

My first thought was that I’d blundered into a spider web (we have so many!) and picked up a spider without knowing it. But the bites didn’t itch. As the dizziness continued, I remembered Bucky’s recent visit, as well as the eye-to-eye contact I’d been having with chipmunks and squirrels who scampered on and off the porch. Had a tick piggy-backed on one of them and then made its way to me? I made a call to the Johns Hopkins Lyme Clinic, and a few days later, I went in.

Those of us who are regulars at the Johns Hopkins Lyme Clinic are all people who’ve had a tick-borne disease with chronic repercussions. My connection was an episode of treatment-resistant Lyme disease they helped me with from 2017 to 2018. As much as Lyme has changed my health picture, I credit my recovery to the doctors and nurse practitioners and allied researchers in this place. I’ve also volunteered for three studies on Lyme patients, in the hopes that more people can be helped.

When I first came to the Lyme Clinic in 2017, it was after my own GP had diagnosed the infection with a lab test he ordered. He wanted to rule out what I hadn’t been thinking about, because I had almost forgotten the strange insect bites I’d received in late summer, 2016. I’d been tired for a week, recovered somewhat, and then a few months later, I had neck pain and brain fog that wouldn’t abate. The Lyme Center treatment plan involved doxycline for many months. Although the infection was quashed, I was left with chronic inflammation showing that my body had transitioned to another disease—rheumatoid arthritis. Quite a few Lyme patients develop auto-immune diseases. But with the right medicine, life can be normal. I consider myself a healthy survivor.

Back to the new bug bites!

This time the nurse practitioner I know so well at the Lyme Center looked at my faded rash and discussed my symptoms with the center’s head. Based on the symptoms, they suggested I take 2 weeks of doxycycline. I agreed, and within days the dizziness was all gone. I made a full recovery. I felt so grateful that whatever insect-borne infection I’d had, it wasn’t Alpha-Gal Syndrome—the meat-eating allergy carried by Lone Star Ticks that has been documented as killing several people.

A recent article by in Atlantic Magazine by Sarah Zhang points out that since 2000, eight new tick-borne diseases have been discovered, and Lyme Disease has more than doubled. With so many of us using Deet and permethrin-treated socks pulled up over our pant legs, how can this be? Why would someone like me, who is a dilettante gardener and not a deep woods hiker, catch a tick-borne infection at least twice within ten years?

The argument is that two unusual patterns are tragically coinciding.

The first factor s a rise in deer populations. With a national rise in forested areas (Maryland is a leader in setting aside land that can’t be developed), and a decline in natural deer predators such as wolves, deer families are living their best lives—but there are so many of them, they are desperate to get enough food and thus are going into gardens everywhere. And deers’ big bodies are key feeders for ticks, who suck their blood without harming them, and then move on to feed on other animals, including the human.

The second reason for explosive disease is the power of ticks to reproduce. A single deer can feed 1,500 female deer ticks, each of which can lay 2000 eggs per breeding season. This means one deer could be spreading 3 million ticks, every spring-summer. If my greater neighborhood currently has forty deer—a simple guess--the level of peril our environment is grave.

What to do? All over the US, different methods are being tried, ranging from giving male deer vasectomies to feeding them tick pesticide on corn to the simplest, extending hunting season.

But a lot of people flinch at the thought of killing the problem away. Deer are sentient beings, with feelings like comfort and pleasure, pain and fear. The thought of killing deer in hunts has always been hard for me, but I have to admit that I will freely slap dead any mosquito on my body, and I am grateful to be in a country where malaria is controlled by occasional governmental mosquito spraying (I’m not talking people doing it in private yards).

I’ve heard about areas, such as Monhegan Island in Maine, where Lyme infections dropped when hunting season was extended. The idea seems to have real public health value. My own city government sent out an email survey and held public meetings asking citizens’ feelings about deer’s proliferation, including feelings about deer being shot.Clearly, there are some powerful strategies available to reduce ticks in suburban neighborhoods, but we will have to be brave to face up to using them.

I’m still drinking coffee on the porch, but whilst wearing a bug-repellant shirt and socks. And you know what? The mosquitoes are staying away, too.

I’m in Park City, Utah for the summer, and at our local library we have movie nights. The tickets are usually free, and often, the featured movies are Sundance films. Last week, my friend Anne and I went to see Union County, a film that was one of Sundance’s best (according to many reviews) and will release in U.S. theaters next week, on August 14, 2026. It follows Cody Parsons (Will Poulter) and his foster brother Jack (Noah Centineo), who are participating in a mandatory drug court program in rural Ohio amid the opioid epidemic. It’s been hailed as one of the year’s most powerful independent films, based on real life.

Just to give you a feeling for the setting … the theater at the Park City Library is on the third floor, and it’s a large auditorium with a huge screen. In the lobby, there is popcorn for sale, and if you bring your own (reusable) container, it’s $1 off.

The PC library (formerly the PC High School) was used as a screening venue for Sundance Film Festival for many years. Starting in January 2027, Sundance FF will be held in Boulder, Colorado.

The audience members all took their seats; the theater was quite full.

Before the movie began, the director Adam Meeks stood up and addressed the audience, talking about why he made the film and what he hopes it will accomplish. One thing he said that struck me and stuck with me was this: “The opposite of addiction is not sobriety. It’s connection.”

This reminded me of a line in a book I read a while ago, a memoir about addiction. I believe the line there was — I’m probably misquoting slightly — “I wasn’t addicted to heroin as much as I was addicted to escape.”

I know people in recovery programs might feel differently. Drugs alter a brain and make choices far more difficult. The addiction is not only psychological and emotional; it is often biochemical, and I don’t mean to discount the power of the physical addiction.

But watching this film, rooted in real life, I see Meeks’s point. The main character, Cody, has grown up in foster care. He has a foster brother, Jack, who is very troubled and unable to break the cycle of addiction, though he’s given many chances. Cody lives in his car, struggles to find a place to sleep and work, smokes instead of eating. Jack finds him a mindless, physically demanding job nailing together wooden pallets. Cody begins to attend NA meetings, with others who hear him without judging. And when tragedy strikes, the only thing keeping Cody from returning to heroin is a phone call he can make to Annette, a compassionate counselor and advocate. Cody’s recovery seems to hang on a thread, but the message is that the invisible threads of connection, built on trust and consistent care, are what can save people.

The movie employs both actors and non-actors, who are (real) participants in the program, which I don’t remember having seen before. (What other movies have done that, do you know?)

The film offers a raw, empathetic portrait of addiction and the slow, uneven, profoundly challenging path toward sobriety. I’d recommend it.

A few years ago, I watched two documentaries about the opioid crisis and read Patrick Radden Keefe’s book Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty. I read Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead, Mary Karr’s memoir Lit, and Beautiful Boy by David Sheff. They were all devastating.

Question: Have you read any other books about addiction that you would recommend? And if you see Union County, please share what you think.

Kwei on Wed 5 June 2026

One of the first cultural adjustments I had to make after moving to Spain wasn’t the language, the food, or even the bureaucracy.

It was the pace.

Not “slow” in the sense of inefficient—although sometimes it can be—but in the sense that many things don’t seem to require the urgency an American is programmed to expect.

I discovered this after my shoulder surgery for an old rotator cuff injury.

Like any conscientious American, I wanted to pay my bill as soon as possible. In fact, I expected it before the operation and asked the surgery coordinator when payment would be due.

“Later,” she said.

Later? When is that?

At my first follow-up appointment, I asked again.

“Not yet.”

A few weeks later, I asked once more.

“Don’t worry about it,” she said cheerily.

By now in the US, credit agencies would have been hunting me down. Finally, nine weeks after my operation during a routine visit to my surgeon, the coordinator walked into the waiting room to explain the bill. As she handed it to me, she gave me a friendly pat on the shoulder. “No hurry,” she said airily

That simple moment summed up something I’ve come to recognize about life in Spain. People have a different relationship with time. Not everything needs to happen immediately. Sometimes, it will happen when it happens.

Then there was the Great Toilet Seat Saga, which tried my patience.

The replacement seat for my apartment toilet had to be specially ordered. Weeks passed. I heard nothing. Finally, convinced they must have tried unsuccessfully to reach me, I went to the shop.

“No, it hasn’t arrived yet,” they told me.

On my second probing visit to the store after further weeks’ delay, I suggested they might call the shipper to find out if something was wrong? The attendant was somewhere between amused and baffled. “Don’t worry,” he reassured me. “We’ll let you know when it arrives.”

It eventually did—but only after teaching me another lesson in Spanish time. And what was funny is that I had shifted my perspective by then and it no longer seemed like it had taken an eternity.

The same philosophy of “no hurry”appears in restaurants.

In the United States, if you need the server, you might wave politely or catch their eye. In Spain, that can come across as impatient, even rude. The waiter will come when the waiter comes. Until then, you relax, talk, and enjoy your company (if you have any. Otherwise it’s people-watching or Instagram.)

And once you’ve finished eating?

Don’t expect the bill to appear automatically. In Spain, the table is still yours. Nobody is silently wondering when you’ll leave so the next customers can sit down. Some customers pay at their table, but many pay at the counter when they’re ready to leave.

The leisurely period after the meal even has its own word in Spain: sobremesa (“over table”) referring to the conversation and companionship that continue long after the plates have been cleared. English doesn’t really have an equivalent because, in much of the English-speaking world, we often move on to the next thing. Spain asks a different question: What’s the hurry? (As an aside, I have seen one Spanish YouTube influencer admittedly roll their eyes about how long the sobremesa can last.)

I’ve come to appreciate this “what’s-the-hurry” attitude. It encourages people to be present rather than constantly checking the time. Meals become social events instead of fuel stops. Coffee isn’t always something you grab on the run (coffee-to-go orders are still in the vast minority, at least here in Oviedo. It may be different in Madrid). A conversation can simply continue until it naturally ends.

Of course, there is another side to this relaxed approach. Sometimes that unhurried philosophy extends to areas where a little more urgency would be welcome. Medical appointments can be scheduled months into the future. Administrative processes may unfold at their own leisurely pace. Waiting becomes part of everyday life. Even Spaniards recognize their bureaucratic institutions can be unwieldy.

Living in Spain has taught me that patience isn’t just a virtue here; it’s practically a survival skill. A year ago, I probably would have found all this maddening.

Many online orders also take their time in arriving—with one notable exception. Amazon Prime apparently didn't get the “no-hurry” memo. It's still next-day delivery—even on Sundays. There are, it seems, some global forces too powerful for even Spain to slow down.

Here is my response. Alas, the fact that I wrote it twelve years ago, nearly to the day, does not make it one iota less germane.

I have written on this subject elsewhere in the past few years. My doing so did not make much of a dent in the most common American stereotype. And it’s unlikely that I will succeed this time. But I feel compelled to try.

Too often the American crime novelist, casting about for an identity for his latest villain, takes the easy way out and makes him Italian. Such writers raise my hackles in the process.

Even otherwise stellar writers, some my own blogmates and former denizens of these precincts, do so regularly. None of their good guys, hardly ever even a victim is Italian, but for some, almost invariably, their violent sleazeballs have Italian surnames that go with first names like Vinnie and Rocco. One even had his protagonist think of the criminal in the story as a “goomba.” This from a good and serious writer who, I am certain, would never dream of having his hero think the N-word about a criminal. That would be racist.

I imagine, for such writers, when the first thought about a criminal comes to mind, the Italian stereotype rushes into his or her mind and then runs down the arms and out the fingers without any conscious evaluation.

We Americans all know: criminals are Italian.

Well, yes. A few actually are.

The actor Paul Sorvino once remarked in an interview that according to FBI records, at the peak of their numbers, there were about two thousand Italian-American organized criminals in the United States. That would have been in the 30’s or the 50’s.

Given that there are, as of the 2010 census, 17,250,211 Americans who claim to be of Italian descent, 2000 criminals (if there are still that number) is .0000116% of the ethnic group’s population. Sorvino quipped that he had met more than two thousand Italian-American actors who were making a living playing mobsters in the movies and on TV.

At this point in my ethnic group’s history, we can boast (or lament) far, far greater representation among Supreme Court Justices, college professors, medical researchers, artists, musicians, and airline pilots than among organized criminals. Hell, we are probably over-represented among novelists and screenwriters.

Why is she so focused on this, you may be asking? You see despite the facts, if you are Italian-American—or even “worse” like me, Sicilian-American and born in New Jersey, there are vast numbers of people who are willing to assume that you are “connected.” Perfect strangers, on hearing about my heritage, assume that I must have relatives who are criminals, and that I most likely have shady events even my own past. Complete strangers in Alaska or Indiana, within approximately thirty seconds of finding out about my background, have said the word “mafia.”

Why is this stereotype so persistent?

Simply because people see the evidence in the movies or on television and in the crime novels written by my colleagues in the biz.

But why, by now, hasn’t some other ethnic group taken over as the criminals of choice?

I would say it’s authorial kneejerk writing. And a touch of laziness.

We all know we have to make our characters, especially on the screens—large and small—seem real. Three-dimensional. Interesting and believable. Not merely evil- doing stick figures.

In movies about non-Italian criminals, the bad guys are almost always one-dimensional. I once saw a movie about English organized criminals—The Krays. Ugly! The dastardly brothers were cold and nasty, through and through. They had no life but crime and vile behavior. In fact, the story was so all-of-a-piece that no matter how much the movie’s makers revved up the tension, they could not make their film interesting. I imagine that the screenwriters could not think of way to portray the Krays as bad AND human.

Consider, instead, The Sopranos. (A show, by the way, that I began by rejecting as more stereotype perpetuation but then succumbed to on Netflix) What made that crime family so much more interesting than the Krays? It was the relationships between the family members. An extreme example: Uncle Junior has tried to kill Tony Soprano, but when Uncle J is diagnosed with cancer, Tony goes with him to the doctor. It is a nephew’s duty, and criminal though he may be, Tony does it. And we believe it.

In American culture, I think we long for families that accept us as we are. People find it a whole lot easier to believe Italian families will stick together no matter what. I think this nearly universal assumption explains why fiction writers choose the bad guys they do. They want ones who are more than just criminal. They want villains with mothers who worry about them and nephews who will never desert them.

In our post-Freudian world, where parents are to blame for their adult children’s every unhappiness and 87.6% of the time the word “dysfunctional” is followed by the word “family,” we long for kin who will love us no matter how much they may disapprove of what we do. We all need people we can depend on to stand by us, whose loyalty is based on blood, not behavior. Looking for three-dimensional villains, fiction writers for screen and page take the easy path to making their characters “real.” When they want an evildoer to also seem like a real person, with parents and siblings who care about him, they make him Italian.

Some writers find more creative ways to round out the heinous among their imaginary friends. My favorite use of Italian culture to make a villain interesting is Hannibal Lecter. Hannibal is not Italian himself, but what makes him three-dimensional is how sophisticated and cultured he is. He can draw the panorama of Florence from the Piazzale Michelangelo from memory, and when he eats his victim’s liver, he does it with some fava beans and a good bottle of Chianti. He is fabulous. You would want to know him if it weren’t for the serial killer/cannibal part! Inventing him was an act of genius!

So my writer friends, next time you invent a villain, do it the hard way. By going beyond stereotypes, you may create a villain for the ages.

by Sara Johnson, 1^st Sunday

My N95 mask is off now that I’m back in North Carolina. Wildfire smoke chased my husband and me away from the North Shore of Minnesota. The ‘extremely hazardous’ conditions held us captive in our rented condo and blanketed the Lake Superior harbor village of Grand Marais (see below). The smoke was from fires in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW) which was being evacuated while we were there, a daunting and dangerous task for U.S. Forest Service employees.

Below is what the harbor usually looks like. The flagship sailboat, the Hjørdis, often plies the deep cold waters around Grand Marais, giving tourists a taste of Gichi-Gami.

This was our seventh summer escaping the NC heat on the North Shore. I have finished or edited several of my books there while my husband plays golf. And being World’s Best Husband, he returns from eighteen holes with World’s Best Donuts and the local paper.

We have developed an affinity for the Boundary Waters Journal, reading it cover to cover each summer. The articles are written by men and women who paddle, camp, fish, and portage the Boundary Waters. Grand Marais is a gateway to get there. I learned from the article “Slam It on Your Next Canoe Trip” that the ‘slam’ refers to catching a walleye, bass, northern pike, and a lake trout on one trip. Yee haw!

Grand Marais, population 1,800, swells in the summer. Every other car has canoes strapped to the roof, headed for the Gunflint Trail – a 57-mile scenic road leading to the Boundary Waters. The village is quirky and artsy. Drury Lane Book Store is next door to World’s Best Donuts. Out its tiny windows is Lake Superior. We love attending author events when we visit.

I appreciate that they carry my Alexa Glock forensic mysteries. (I’m between swell neighbors: Lisa Jewell and Ragnar Jonasson!)

I always buys books by Minnesota authors at Drury Lane. Last summer we saw Peter Geye there promoting his historical fiction book A Lesser Light, set on Lake Superior.

This summer I bought Geye’s earlier book, Wintering. The story took me into the Boundary Waters, in winter! It was tender and beautifully written. I collected these words from it: saults, brume, maw, muskeg, skerries, and knurling. Aren’t they delicious?

William Kent Krueger has been to Drury Lane. I’ve read all his Cork O’Connor mysteries which are set in the area. The second Cork book is Boundary Waters. Cork joins a search party for a missing woman in the more than two million acres of forest, also during the winter. What could go wrong?

Cary Griffith has been to Drury Lane. I enjoy his mysteries featuring U.S. Fish & Wildlife Officer Sam Rivers. Griffith also has two gripping non-fiction books: Gunflint Burning: Fire in the Boundary Waters and Gunflint Falling: Blowdown in the Boundary Waters, which is about a storm (called a derecho!) that blew through the Boundary Waters in July, 1999, flattening 30 million trees. Geez Louise.

I attended Griffith’s talk on Gunflint Falling at the Seagull Community Center on the Gunflint Trail a couple summers ago where the below photo was taken. Griffith answered questions for my author newsletter. I have shared one question below.

SARA: I was riveted by Gunflint Burning. What fueled you to write about that 2007 fire?
CARY: I love writing about non-fiction wilderness topics as much as fiction set in wilderness. The editor of my first two non-fiction books - Lost in the Wild, and Opening Goliath - thought I should take a look at the fire. It was quite dramatic and I am always interested in covering wilderness drama.

I’ll add one more Minnesota author, Joe Fredrichs. I ate up his book, Last Entry Point: Stories of Danger and Death in the Boundary Waters. Reading about hypothermia, drowning, lightning strikes, high winds, and fire glued me to the pages. Fredrichs, pictured below in his canoe, also answered a few questions and gives a vivid description of the Boundary Waters:

SARA: What compelled you to write a book about disasters in the Boundary Waters?
JOE: I wrote the book to create a tangible tool that can help people safely visit and return from a trip to the Boundary Waters, which is my favorite place on the planet.

SARA: The final chapter of Last Entry Point was not something you planned. How did your near-death experience in the Temperance River change you?
JOE: My own near-death experience in the BWCA taught me to slow down and not to confuse experience for expertise. We all need to listen to and learn from the experts I talk with in the book. The rules for safe travel in the Boundary Waters apply to all of us.

SARA: Describe the Boundary Waters for someone unfamiliar with it.

JOE: The Boundary Waters is a place where people walk on trails that connect more than 1,000 lakes. Some of the lakes are massive, others are small. People carry canoes on their shoulders while walking from lake to lake. Moose, bears, wolves, and other fascinating animals live in these woods, which include old-growth pine and cedar forests. Large fish swim in the abundant waters. There is much solitude and important history of people to be learned here. It’s one of the most amazing places on Earth.

You’ve figured out I love reading about the Boundary Waters. Authors like Kent Kreuger, Geye, Griffith, and Fredrichs bring it alive for those of us who have never portaged a canoe for twenty rods. (I prefer a kayak.)

A July 26th New York Times article on the fires in Western Europe stated: “Although it is difficult to connect a specific heat wave or fire to global warming, experts agree that human-caused climate change is behind higher temperatures that have made wildfires more destructive.”

To date, the Boundary Water fires are 46% contained and some areas in the BWCAW have opened for day use. I am lucky to be able to leave the smoke behind; people who live there, and in other parts of the burning world, don’t have that luxury.

Has wildfire smoke affected your summer? Let me know. Stay safe, readers.

Sara E. Johnson, 1^st Sunday

My how time flies when you live on a party island. Lord knows what’s happened to many of the memories I’d hoped to retain…as opposed to the (few) pesky ones that insist on hanging around to taunt my remaining “little grey cells.” This week as a courtesy to the grand folk at Mykonos Confidential Magazine who’ve been so kind to me over the years, I’ve taken the occasion of its 20^th anniversary as the Bible of Mykonian summers to publish my observations on how the island has changed in 20 years, and several significant ways in which it remains the same. It is titled, “The Entrepreneurial Spirit of the Island.”

*****

I first came to Mykonos more than forty years ago, and for the past twenty have lived here longer than practically any other place on earth. I’m not suggesting those shared decades entitle me to any credit or blame for what’s transpired. After all, each of us in our own way is merely an observer chronicling long ago memories that today loom so dramatic in hindsight but passed seemingly unnoticed and inconsequential at the time––much as an unprotected beach slowly vanishes under the relentless pressure of gentle waves or a virgin landscape is irrevocably violated by the acquisitive hands of determined man.

Twenty-year-old memories are particularly significant to me, for that is when I began work on the book that changed my life. I’d given up my position as a name partner in my own New York City law firm to live among my Mykoniate friends and write about the island’s people, culture and politics. Having settled on a mystery format as the best vehicle for exploring how a tourist island society might respond to a threat to its newfound economic glory, I titled the English language version Murder in Mykonos and the Greek version (published by Aikaterini Lalaouni Editions) Mystirio sti Mykono.

This was how I described old Mykonos town back then:

“Mykonos was famous for tantalizing tourists with brightly lit shops, colorful restaurants, roaring bars, and freewheeling dance clubs, but this still was a town where people raised families and shared strong traditions. Down the less traveled lanes, children played their games oblivious to the occasional tourists squeezing through their four-, five-, or maybe six-foot-wide playgrounds. Pairs of grandmothers, all in black, did duty watching the children. They’d sit on stoops in front of their houses or, if a shop occupied the street level, on brightly painted wooden balconies outside their second-floor homes; balconies with gates guarding pets, pots of geraniums, draping bougainvillea, and—if rented to tourists—clothes left to dry.”

I don’t think I could honestly write that today, as every nook and cranny seems converted into a profit center. Much the same has happened at the island’s beaches. That’s not to say there’s anything wrong with that, for Mykonians have the right to decide their own fate. Yes, admittedly I don’t agree with all that’s happened, but one thing I do agree with is that Mykonians succeeded in grasping the shifting desires and tastes of their island’s clientele.

The island’s natural beauty, glorious beaches, constancy of architecture, and ready acceptance of its visitors’ alternative lifestyle choices made Mykonos the draw it was back then; not trendy foreign tastes attempting to make Mykonos seem like somewhere else. Visitors came not looking for the shop or bar or fashion they knew back home. They came for legendary Mykonos.

Today, all that remains an attraction, but now visitors are just as likely to come looking to party at one or more of the world-class beach clubs they read about in some glossy travel magazine, or to compete for reservations at any number of its internationally acclaimed restaurants and tavernas.

If history is our guide, I’d say embracing entrepreneurial change is and shall remain Mykonos’ dominant driving force. And that well may prove to be its greatest asset in the broadening competition among its Aegean island neighbors for an increased share of the record numbers who flock to Mykonos each summer in pursuit of fulfilling their holiday dreams.

Yes, much has changed on our island and more undoubtedly shall as well. But among all that change some elements of life on Mykonos remain firmly the same…undoubtedly because Mykonians like it that way. Here are three:

One: Twenty years ago, Mykonians complained of too much traffic. Twenty years later they’re still complaining.

Two: Twenty years ago, Mykonians complained of too much construction. Twenty years later they’re still complaining.

Three: Twenty years ago, Christos Veronis was Mayor. Twenty years later he’s still Mayor.

As for my take on our island’s current state of affairs, the same words come to mind as I expressed in the article I contributed to the tenth anniversary issue of “Mykonos Confidential” at the request of its publisher and good friend, the late Petros Bourovolis:

We have entered a different world. We no longer exist as we once did. We are separate and apart. We are imagination and fantasy, dreams and aspirations, a place in the sun unlike any other, fulfilling the great expectations of our planet’s buyers and sellers.

We are Mykonos twenty years later.

––Jeff

I’m currently at my bush place at Olifants River Game Reserve near the Kruger National Park, enjoying my first visit here since last November. In mid-January the skies opened and it rained on and on. Summer (October to March) is our rainy season here, and our annual rainfall is around 20 inches. In two weeks in January we received 20 inches. That’s unheard of. February was a bit quieter but the rain returned in March with a vengeance. By the end of the summer we had received more than double the usual rainfall in just a few months.

The Olifants River flooded, damaging units. That’s happened before. The river has a wide catchment area upstream in the high country and we receive all of that water. What was so unusual was how much rain fell right here. Roads were turned into swamps, dams for water for the animals broke adding to the flood, the water table was above the ground in many places. Six months later, now in mid-winter, there are still pools with running water in roads and ditches. Some game viewing roads are still impassable.

Here is a short video of the Olifants River at the height of the flood. You can just about see the causeway crossing…

Fortunately, this was not a tsunami type flood. The animals got out of the way of the rising water and moved to areas with good grazing. Hippos are canny about river fluctuations and kept to the shallows. Some of the beautiful trees lining the riverbanks weren’t so lucky. Still, nature is about change, the environment will be different now, and most creatures will adapt.

The Mohlabetsi river is usually a typical African river - a dry sand bed…

This was a very personal reminder to me about the nature of change. We are seeing more of these previously unusual events everywhere. Heat waves in Europe and Canada followed by horrendous forest fires, tornados moving south, intense hurricanes and cyclones out of season, extremes or drought and floods.

Of course, it’s silly to suggest that any one event is the result of climate change. There are always outliers in any system. I’m certainly not an expert on climatology or on the complex models used to predict climate events, but I do know a bit about dynamical systems in general. When a system is near a stable point, the system tends to move around that point perturbed by random effects. However, when the system is significantly disturbed, perhaps by a change in its driving parameters, the stable point may no longer hold the system. The randomness will move it off towards another stable point that may not be particularly close. Thus, a relatively small nudge may, over time, produce a significant change in the behavior of the system. The symptoms of this “interim” behavior are unusual events. In the case of the global climate, just the sort of events we are witnessing these days.

In Africa people are already suffering from extended droughts or rainy seasons that flood their homes and crops. East Africa and the Horn of Africa are in the grip of a persistent drought. Oddly, the same general region suffered from persistent flooding. Like the animals at Olifants River Game Reserve, the people living in these areas will be forced to move once life becomes intolerable. How will they travel and where will they go? The chances are that they will not be welcome in more food-secure areas. They will already be inhabited.

At Olifants River Game Reserve the animals have been sparse, probably because they are spread over a larger area since they don’t need the river. Water is currently available everywhere. Over time, as things dry up, they will start concentrating in this area again. Animals are used to migrations and to living across wide areas.

For humans, this may be a lasting challenge and one that may eventually directly or indirectly affect us all.

There was a poignant moment when the protagonist Kim seemingly sacrifices himself (and any chance to see his motherless daughter again) to save the children of his two friends… [spoiler: he survives—so do their kids] which came starkly to mind this morning when I realised this looks like I’m watching over Sophia from the other side!

But yes, everything is temporary and time is passing fast!

I’m in the middle of revising the WIP right now. And the really tough part is saying no to the shiny new ideas that have started coming at me with full force! It seems like everywhere I turn there are potential projects but I know from experience I have to lash myself to the mast and get through this.

The problem is, it’s not ‘new’ and exciting anymore. It feels like doing reps in the gym or memorising noun genders in German—which I’m also doing, despite my giddy self trying to find a way to get away from!

Sophia has no interest in legacy or edits. Her life is purely in the ‘now’ which is a good reminder, because she’s not going to be in our lives forever. Princess Peach and Hermione (our other dogs) lived till 17 and 15 and as far we can estimate, Sophia is around 7 years old. So while she’s still willing to walk, we will walk!

Which is how I got this photo of a Fish Killer tree—

It’s also known as Putat Sungei (Sungei means 'river’) and Powder Puff Tree (because its night-blooming flowers are like pink and white powder puffs).

And yes, its bark, fruit and seeds contain natural toxins, used to ‘stun’ fish. Pounded into a pulp that’s thrown into calm or slow-moving water, the saponins they contain paralyse the fish gills, causing them to suffocate and float to the surface where they are easily gathered by hand or net. (horrible way to die, I agree).

Because only their gills are affected, the rest of the fish is safe to eat.

And yes, all parts of this tree are highly toxic to humans too, with the seeds and fruit being the most dangerous. If you had to kill someone (only on the page of course) and have access to one of these trees you’d most likely have the dried seeds ground into a powder and sprinkled or the dried fruit or bark soaked in a tea because the dose in one of the little square shaped fruits wouldn’t be enough to make your victim more than a little sick.

And yes, this body was removed from our premises yesterday—

Fortunately not a body, just the Turtle Boy’s old sundeck and ramp that got overgrown and overwhelmed by the jungle that took root on it.

It started with some ferns and a money plant. And it was nice, at first, that the red eared slider had foliage to walk around in. But it got to where the poor turtle was struggling to get onto the patio—

And though I loved my corner of wild greenery, I had to think about function.

Which is kind of at the same place my writing is at right now. Do I cut out all the beautiful, vibrant, wildly luxuriant stuff that doesn’t fit in with where the book is trying to go?

I’m still struggling but I think the answer is yes. Because not making the decision to cut is a decision too. And much as I want to see where all that energy could go, given free rein, I’ve got to watch out for Turtle Boy and the spine of my book too.

So yes, I’m cutting stuff. But I’ve got notes for the next three projects out of what I’m culling from here.

Singapore turns sixty-one years old next month, something I’ll probably write about in my next post. Yes, I’m older than my country, which may be why I feel just a little protective of it.

And one thing I’ve learned from watching all the changes in this very small island is that when you don’t have much space, you have think about what you want to dedicate it to.

So—back to the edits and revisions. I’ve been through the grind enough times to know that this is a stage I need to push through. I also know the grindstone gets worn down in the process and when I get done shaping this book (if ever) I’ll have been reshaped by it too!

See you at the end of all this!

It all started in a junk shop in western Maryland. My dear departed David and I came across a truly tacky image of Elvis Presley that someone probably had produced in her art class. We would be going in a week or two to surprise my brother Andy, 16 months older than I, who was about to celebrate his 50^th birthday. Andy and I were both passionate about music, especially jazz. We were not fans of Elvis.

I took home that funky “work of art,” gift wrapped it and put it into a set of increasingly larger gift boxes, until I had one that was big enough to hold a major league football helmet. David and I were sitting in a lovely restaurant near Andy’s home in Tennessee when he arrived. Surprise! And there was that package on the seat he was to occupy. When he opened it and finally got down to Elvis, he looked at me across the table and said, “You know what this means! War!”

Over the next 16 months, we sent to each other increasingly elaborate Elvis gifts: a hat for me, a tie for him, a tote bag for me… And so it went, until he sent me an Elvis bedspread, and I countered with an Elvis floor lamp.

When the time came for my 50^th, Andy and his wife Trish came the day before, and with my other brothers, celebrated my birthday. He said they had to leave very early the next morning. Andy gave me a nice gift saying the Elvis war was over. LIAR.

What I had expected for the next day was a nice dinner with friends, but David refused to tell me anything about it. The surprise was that he had arranged for a fabulous lunch in a wonderful restaurant with many friends and relatives. Andy and Tricia were there and told some cock and bull story about their flight having been cancelled. I took him at his word. I was too busy hugging all those lovely people to doubt him.

The piés de résistane came just as the cake was being presented: Andy’s gift—an Elvis impersonator to sing Happy Birthday to me.

Among the guests at that party were our dear friends Bill and Mary Kathryn McIntosh; Bill was a professor of literature and art history at West Point. He was among the many people who declared that the Elvis impersonator won the war for Andy.

In the next few days, Bill sent us a copy of an article he had published in a satiric literary journal, comparing the Elvis “worship” with the rise of a religion. That was when David and I hatched our scheme and knew what we were going to do with all that Elvis paraphernalia in our basement. We enlisted Andy, who also had such a collection. Like me, he was a consultant who traveled a lot and could ship stuff from post offices far and wide.

And so it began.

I mailed the first message to Bill from a post office, when I was in West Virginia on business. It arrived with a cover letter written in the hand writing of a “gas station owner” in rural WV (actually composed by my client). Here is that first message

Soon postcards began to arrive in Bill’s mailbox from all over the world, with pictures of Elvis and the message “The King is the King,” written in the local language. I supplied the cards, readily available in NYC (in those good old days when one shopped in stores). A friend of mine who was an international airline attendant passed them around to her friends who were flying all over the world.

Eventually, the address on the packages and postcards began carrying the title Director, The Elvis Library. At one point, Bill received the Shroud of Tupelo, which David and I had concocted with a worn-out linen sheet and a blue magic marker.

Only David, Andy, and I knew who was instigating it all. In the meanwhile, unbeknownst to us, Bill’s colleagues at West Point, seeing all the boxes and postcards coming into their post office, joined in the fun. When they traveled, they sent post cards to Bill, “the Director of the Elvis Library at Werst Point.”

As 1991 was coming to an end, David and I decided to fess up. We had been invited to a dinner party, chez Bill and Mary Kath. Behind Bill’s back, David and I told Mary Kath it was us. We had brought an Elvis “Collectable Plate,” which we slipped under the salad plate at Bill’s place at the table.

True to the clever man he is, Bill pretended not to notice.

When he and Mary Kath came to have dinner with us a few weeks later, after they had gone home, in a dim corner of our dining room, we found a perfect little tote bag purporting to contain the “remains of Elvis’s last meal”—a partially eaten ham sandwich and a half empty can of coke.

A few days later, a copy of Elvis’s Christmas album came to us with the following letter.

Today’s post is presented as a public service to any writer looking for an answer to the ubiquitous book event question, “So, where do you get your ideas?”

For me it’s often local newspaper(s) that cover the region in which you’re intending to place your tale. A particularly instructive example of such coverage drove the headlines in this week’s local Athens press, notably for my purposes, Ekathimerini and Protothema.

I’ve reproduced the coverage in full below (giving full credit to the appropriate publication) leaving it to you to mine the reporting for what I see as terrific plot points for any number of differing genre best-sellers. The only additional background information you may need is this brief bit from Wikipedia:

“The Revolutionary Organization 17 November (17N) was a Greek Marxist-Leninist urban guerrilla group formed in 1975 and named after the 1973 Athens Polytechnic student uprising that led to the end of the Greek Junta dictatorship [1967-74]. It conducted over 100 assassinations, bombings, and robberies before being dismantled by authorities in 2002. The group was largely eliminated in 2002 after a botched bombing in Piraeus allowed authorities to arrest its core members. Its key leaders were subsequently convicted and given multiple life sentences.”

Now on to this week’s big news:

From Ekathimerini, 22 July 2026

Prominent lawyer found dead at office overnight, homicide suspected

A high-profile lawyer was found dead overnight at his office in central Athens, with initial findings indicating he may have been beaten to death, according to police sources.

Stavros Georgiou, who had served as one of the prosecution lawyers during the trial of the November 17 terrorist group nearly two decades ago, was found with multiple head injuries and traces of dried blood at the scene.

A preliminary autopsy found no evidence of injuries caused by a sharp object or firearm.

According to police sources, Georgiou is believed to have been dead for several hours before his body was discovered, possibly since Tuesday morning or even the previous night.

Authorities said there were no obvious signs that the office had been ransacked. The area was sealed off as forensic teams examined the scene, while the investigation has been taken over by the Homicide Department.

The lawyer’s body was discovered by his daughters, who said they went to his office after being unable to reach him by phone.

Georgiou was widely recognized for his frequent television appearances, where he provided legal analysis on criminal law matters and commented on major court cases. Combined with his role in several high-profile trials, his media presence made him one of Greece’s most prominent and recognizable criminal lawyers.

From Ekathimerini, 23 July 2026

Police arrest suspect in Athens lawyer’s murder

Police are seen outside the building where 73-year-old defense attorney Stavros Georgiou kept his office, in the downtown Athens district of Agios Panteleimonas, in the early hours of Wednesday.

Police in Athens have arrested a suspect in connection with the killing of prominent criminal defense lawyer Stavros Georgiou, whose body was found late on Tuesday in his office in the central Agios Panteleimonas district.

The suspect, identified as a 28-year-old Egyptian man, reportedly confessed to investigators that he had met the 73-year-old lawyer before the incident and later accompanied him to his office, where a physical altercation resulted in Georgiou’s fatal injuries.

Authorities said the suspect was in Greece illegally after his asylum application was rejected, and was also wanted under a 2024 arrest warrant in a separate case involving the alleged sexual abuse of a minor.

Georgiou was found dead Tuesday night by his daughters at his office in a building on Tritis Septemvriou Street after they had been unable to reach him for hours.

Forensic examiners said the lawyer died from multiple blunt-force injuries to the head and chest. They found no evidence of stab or gunshot wounds. One scenario under investigation is that the victim’s head was repeatedly struck against a piece of furniture.

Police said there were no signs of forced entry or burglary.

Georgiou rose to national prominence as a defense lawyer in the landmark prosecution of members of the militant group November 17.

From Protothema 23 July 2026

Confessed killer of Stavros Georgiou taken before prosecutor

The 28-year-old Egyptian national walked out of Greek Police Headquarters with his head bowed, on his way to the Evelpidon courts complex where he is expected to face criminal prosecution

• A 28-year-old Egyptian national was escorted to the prosecutor on Thursday after confessing to the murder of 73-year-old lawyer Stavros Georgiou in Athens.

• Police identified the suspect using surveillance footage, fingerprint evidence, and an injury to his hand sustained during the fatal beating of the victim.

• The suspect admitted to killing the lawyer following a heated argument that occurred after the two men socialized together earlier that day.

• Authorities reported that the suspect had an outstanding arrest warrant from May 2026 regarding a case involving the indecent assault of a minor.

The man who has confessed to killing lawyer Stavros Georgiou, 73, was escorted out of the Hellenic Police Headquarters (GADA) building shortly before 7pm on Thursday, walking with his head bowed and his arm in a cast, the result of a fracture sustained while beating the victim.

Officers from the Homicide Division are taking the 28-year-old Egyptian national to the prosecutor so criminal proceedings can be brought against him over the killing. He is then expected to appear before an investigating magistrate, from whom he is anticipated to request, and be granted, time to prepare his defence.

How police identified the killer

Footage from cameras in the area, fingerprint evidence and an injury to his hand were the elements that led police to the confessed perpetrator of the brutal killing of lawyer Stavros Georgiou, which took place at his office in Athens.

According to reports, the man, who was already known to authorities for illegal entry into the country, savagely beat the lawyer, breaking his own hand in the process.

After the attack, he went to a hospital for first aid and, when doctors asked what had happened, told them he had been skateboarding and fallen. He then went to a friend’s house and slept there.

When he was arrested by Homicide Division officers, he broke down and confessed. The suspect claimed he had argued with the lawyer, that the dispute turned physical, and that he had killed him. Earlier that day, the lawyer and the 28-year-old had reportedly been socializing together.

According to the man’s account to police, the lawyer had offered to drive him home. He accepted, but on the way they stopped at the lawyer’s office, where a heated argument broke out that ended with the defendant beating him to death. The suspect has told police what triggered the altercation.

According to reports, the man maintained he did not take the lawyer’s mobile phone, wallet or cash, suggesting these items might still be hidden somewhere in the office. He did, however, admit to taking the victim’s laptop, which has not yet been located by authorities.

The defendant had submitted an asylum application in Greece in early 2023, which was rejected at both first and second instance. In 2024 he filed a new, subsequent application, which was also rejected, with the final decision served on him in late 2025. In addition, since May 2026 an arrest warrant had been outstanding against him in connection with a case involving the indecent assault of a minor.

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So, any ideas yet?

––Jeff