Friday's Odds and Ends

Just when you thought politics had sunk to the lowest possible point, there comes a new story. Last week the campaign manager for a Democrat challenging a Republican-held congressional seat in Russellville, Arkansas had his cat mutilated and the body left on his porch with the word "liberal" painted on the dead body.

Come on, folks. It's bad enough you can't be civil with each other, but do you have to use a poor innocent cat to make a point in such a horrific way?

This past week Leonard Pitts had a thoughtful column on gun laws, or the lack of effective ones in the United States. In reflecting on the retirement of Gabrielle Giffords, he wrote that the shooters who have brought down so many political figures and activists, have been people who should never have had access to guns. He pointed out that Giffords' shooter was a man who legally obtained a gun despite the fact that he was mentally deranged who had been rejected by the army. "Which suggests that while Loughner (the shooter) may be unbalanced, American gun laws are insane.

"They are likely to stay insane as long as our politics remain a hatefully polarized affair where the two "sides" glower at one another like boxers in their respective corners and "compromise" is a dirty word."

Lest the NRA and gun owners get alarmed, Pitts does not suggest that guns should be banned. He just believes that we should have stricter background checks so felons, potential terrorists, and mentally challenged people can no longer get a gun.

I wrote several books about gun violence and how it touches the lives of our young people, and this same debate was going on back then. That was 20 years ago or better. There was one group of people who were pushing for strict laws governing the purchase of guns, and another group who as Pitts puts it, " still harbor the paranoid delusion that any talk of gun control is code for confiscation by jackbooted thugs riding black helicopters."

I support our Second Amendment rights to own weapons, and I am a gun enthusiast. Out here in the country one comes in very handy for chasing off wild critters you don't want eating your cats. But I still favor the idea of some kind of gun control that will keep the guns out of the hands of the kind of people who shot the Kennedys, Martin Luther King Jr.,Gabrielle Giffords, and so many others.

On another note, I just got the galleys for Stalking Season, the second book the the Seasons Mystery Series. The book has been under contract for over a year now and will come out in November. I don't even have cover art yet to share. It takes a long time for a book to be published via a traditional publisher, but the wait is worth it. While I enjoy the ease of reading e-books, there is something special about having a hardback version of your book. Maybe that's because I can still remember when paperbacks were considered the step-children of the publishing industry, and hardbacks were looked upon much more favorably. You were a real writer if you had a book in hardback. If you wrote for the paperback market you were considered a hack.

If you would like to leave a comment on any of these topics, please do. All opinions are welcome, and I am always open to hearing from the other side on issues.

Monday Morning Musings

Drama Camp is officially over. We had our last production yesterday and the response from the audiences was great. We had over 80 in attendance Saturday night and about 70 on Sunday. It is quite a challenge to put a show together in just two weeks, but it always seems to work. The kids did a terrific job and garnered lots of laughs and applause throughout.

Now I have my routine back and when I came into my office this morning I saw a very large spider. Maybe it wasn't as big as my fear made it, but thank goodness for my cat, John. He must have thought the spider was a small rodent because he pounced on it and killed it.

In last Thursday's Dallas Morning News I read a column written by Leonard Pitts in which he took journalists to task over the lack of integrity in the profession. The article was in response to the recent debacle at News of the World.  According to a Gallup poll quoted by Pitts, the general public ranks journalists between auto mechanics and lawyers in terms of ethics.

It is apparent that that code has been severely diluted in recent history. It used to be that the tabloids were the newpapaers known for sleazy journalism and reporters who crossed every line to get a good story. More recently we have heard of reporters from major publications fabricating stories or plagiarizing in attempts to further their careers.

The code that I learned early in my career, and that Pitts reminds us in his article is that "One avoids conflicts of interest. One does not plagiarize. One does not buy information. And one does not hack the voice mail of a missing child."

Okay, that last one was not specifically in the code that I learned, but I was taught to respect the dignity of the people in the stories I was pursuing. In that way I protected my integrity, as well as the integrity of the publication for which I was working.

Friday's Odds and Ends

Okay, who doesn't care about Weiner's wiener? Raise your hand. So glad to see all my friends and family waving madly.

Ack! Tell me it isn't true. The latest news report says Texas Governor Rick Perry is ready to launch a White House campaign. As my husband said, "O goody, now he can screw up the other 49 states."

Police in Kansas City, MO, are treating the death of an 18-month-old boy who drowned in a bathtub as a potential homicide, after a 5-year-old girl told social workers that she held him under water to stop his crying. Police said the girl, who was left with other children in the care of a teenager, was considered a possible suspect in the toddler's death last week, raising complicated legal questions about how a court could proceed with a case against such a young suspect.

I have nothing snarky to say about that. It is just a horrible tragedy, and I am glad I am not the person having to decide how to handle the case. How could a five-year-old even know what she was doing?

A recent column by Leonard Pitts quoted the results of a study of Historical Illiteracy that found that a majority of college seniors could not identify the words of the Gettysburg Address, and they didn't know the significance of Valley Forge. His column was in response to Sarah Palin's gaffe regarding Paul Revere and his infamous ride. The point that Leonard made so well is that, as a nation, Americans are poorly educated when it comes to history. Classes in history are no longer required at a lot of the nation's top schools.

Leonard ends his column by highlighting some of the most important events in history and writing, "And we allow all that to be forgotten at our own peril. How can our children write the next chapter of a story they don't even know?"

I have nothing to say to that, either. Leonard said it all.

Monday Morning Musings

Yesterday I decided to start the third book in the Seasons Mystery Series. In some respects it feels a little strange to be working on that one when the second book won't be out until November 2012, but I figured if it really is going to be a series, there should be more than two books. Open Season has been well-received since it came out in December, so I'm thinking that maybe readers will enjoy more stories about Sarah and Angel. The third book is tentatively titled Out of Season.

I read an interesting column by Leonard Pitts last week titled "Why WIlliam and Kate's Nuptials Matter".  He wrote, "To get married is to make a bet on always and forever."

He went on to point out how the always and forever isn't as common as it once was. "We marry less, we marry later, we make marriage a reality show, we see out cynicism validated by Hollywood marriages that pop like soap bubbles. A wedding then, is not just an act of faith, but also one of defiance."

And his final point was that given the tragedy of his mother's death and all the scandal surrounding it, it would have been understood if William decided to forgo the whole marriage bit, but he didn't. In defiance of the odds and the history, William decided to stand in public and declare his love and loyalty to Kate. Pitts wrote, "There is something in it to gladden the cynical eye and hearten the pessimistic heart."

After reading the column, I had a different perspective on the whole Royal Wedding issue, although I still believe there was just a bit too much made of it in the media.

On another note, I was stunned last night when the announcement was made that Osama bin Laden has been killed. US forces killed him in the military town of Abbottabad, 75 miles north of the capital. If you would like to read a full story about the military operation that brought him down, here is a link to The Christian Science Monitor While it is hard for me to celebrate someone's death, a part of me is saying, "Yes, finally."