He had never been married to or even cohabiting with the boy’s mother. The two had a brief affair and when the mother had the baby in 1987, she told Hatley that the baby was his.

A couple of years later, the mother applied for and received public assistance. The state demanded reimbursement from Hatley who agreed to make those payments believing the boy was in fact his son. In 2000, DNA tests showed that Hatley was not the biological father. A court ordered that Hatley be relieved of any obligations for future support of the boy. However, this order did not relieve him of the back payments owed when it had been assumed he was the father so Hatley continued making those payments from the money he earned at his job of unloading charcoal grills from shipping containers.

In 2007, Hatley was laid off from his job. Unable to afford housing, he lived out of his car. Nevertheless, he continued to make child support payments to the state out of his unemployment benefits.

However, he fell behind in his payments, was found in contempt of court and jailed. He was recently released because he is indigent. Soon after his release, a judge relieved him from any obligation to pay the support on which he was in arrears – but which he never should have owed in the first place.

It is good that Hatley is free and relieved of any future financial obligations in the case. However, this does not rectify the injustice that he has suffered. It does not return the money he already paid out of his extremely limited funds nor does it make up for the thirteen months he spent in jail.

The Hatley case illustrates a crying need for an overhaul of the child support system. Firstly, there is the fact that poverty is not a defense against the failure to pay child support. Even if the child had been his, the facts are that Hatley was unable to adequately support himself and did not have the money to support the child. However, the law took a jobless, penniless man living out of his car to jail for not making child support payments. This is a modern day version of the old Victorian horror of debtor’s prison.

People should not go to jail in 21st Century America just for being poor – but Frank Hatley did and so have many others.

Of course, the case began because of a misidentification in paternity. Many observers would criticize the mother as a liar and see her as someone who should be prosecuted for what is often called “paternity fraud.” I do not. The mother was there at the time of the conception but it is unlikely that she was taking notes. Human memory is extremely fallible and this fallibility is exacerbated by the emotionality of questions involving sex and reproduction. Given these truths, a DNA test should be routinely taken before paternity is assigned. If the DNA test is negative, a man could still voluntarily agree to assume the role of the father – with the financial responsibilities incurred as a result – but it would be his free and informed choice.

That we need to fix this system is obvious when a man has been treated as a criminal and jailed for failing to provide money he does not have for a child who is not his.

The song begins by telling of a rather commonplace activity: a couple who meet in secret, in a hotel or motel room, to engage in sexual activity. Both of them are secretive because both are married to someone else.

The narrator speaks of himself and his lover as being “like thieves and beggars when we meet.” These stigmatized terms are appropriate. Each is stealing the comfort and pleasure that has been sworn to another and stealing from their own spouse’s. They feel like beggars because their relationship has the “low,” embarrassing quality attached to begging.

Despite their guilt and sense of shame, they continue the affair because their feelings together are so very “sweet.”

However, the narrator ends by singing, “If he should want your love tonight, don’t turn away, don’t hurt his pride. Close your eyes and think of me in some room above a street.”

What is striking in the above passage is the narrator’s concern and empathy for the man he is cuckolding. This might not be as strange as it seems. Both the narrator and his lover take care to keep their illicit activities secret and probably believe – or at least hope – that what his wife and her husband don’t know won’t hurt them.

The narrator knows that his lover may be tempted to turn away from her husband out of a feeling, however irrational, that she should be faithful to the man whom she really loves or at least really desires. But the man singing also knows that while the husband may not be hurt by an affair he doesn’t know about, he will inevitably be wounded by a wife’s rejection. The narrator does not want their affair to cause another man such a psychic injury. Our singer feels for the husband as a human being, since humans of both sexes are hurt by rejection, and specifically as a man since men are usually the ones making advances and therefore the ones disproportionately apt to be rejected.

Does the man’s lover no longer desire her husband because he has lost the physical characteristics that once attracted her? That is a possibility. Another is that the passage of time and the familiarity of a long marriage have caused her passion for her husband to dull. However, her lover urges her to do something that a person of either sex can do: use an illicit passion to rekindle the fires of a marital one. It neither condones nor excuses adultery but it is an odd irony of life that extra-marital erotic stimulation can be brought home to the marriage bed. In Some Room Above the Street is a song that displays a sense of wisdom and caring even as it tells of a situation that is fundamentally sordid.

Conservative black American commentator has compared the injustice suffered by the Scottsboro Boys to the Duke Lacrosse players case. In the former instance, black men accused of raping white women were assumed guilty by much of the public despite scanty evidence of guilt and actual evidence to the contrary. In the second case, white men were assumed guilty by much of the public of raping a black despite a similar lack of evidence. Sowell sees both cases as reflecting racial perceptions of our different time periods.

As I researched the Scottsboro case, I became very emotionally wrenched by it, in part because of the sheer amount of suffering and waste of life that these false accusations – and the willingness of so many people to believe them – caused. The accused were mostly teenagers when the accusations were first hurled at them. These innocent men grew up in the purgatory of prison, their lives inevitably warped by the horrors they endured.

My story on this horror is up at http://www.crimemagazine.com/scottsboro_boys.htm
I would appreciate knowing what readers of this blog think of both the case itself and how I handled it.

We may disapprove of politicians getting into sex scandals, but we should not be shocked, regardless of the person’s moral beliefs. The simple truth is that monogamy is not a natural state for humans of either gender. Millions of years of natural selection mean that the human male is biologically programmed to spread seed, and the human female, biologically programmed to diversify it. We can rise above our biological tendencies, but we should not be too surprised when people act on them.

Some people took the above letter as promoting polygamy or at least the practice of having multiple sexual partners. It does no such thing. The truth is that monogamous marriage is a good ideal and should remain the ideal. For one thing, while monogamy is not a natural state for either men or women, jealousy comes naturally to both. If a person is in a committed relationship, respect and caring for the partner often means adopting the discipline of fidelity. Additionally, adherence to monogamy keeps down the rates of sexually transmitted diseases, problem pregnancies, and children raised in unstable situations.

What is natural is often not ideal and should not be what we strive to do.

I incorrectly described Mike as a construction worker in that column. He actually worked in the office of a construction firm. I made the mistake because I had seen him wearing a hardhat on a couple of occasions when he was looking over what was being done at a construction site.

Anyway, the two of us usually saw each other when we frequented a neighborhood convenience store.

I was on my way to the convenience store one bright morning when I spotted Mike off to the side of me on his way to it as well. He was running.

What is he running for? I wondered.

It wasn’t long before I found out. Mike got to the store just before I did. He opened the door and held it open while I walked through it.

“Thank you, Mike!” I exclaimed in delight. “You are a real gentleman.”

This surprising act of courtesy got my day off to a good start.

It also led me to ponder, as I have in previous columns, the meaning of the sorts of courtesies that men perform for women. As others have pointed out, their very existence tends to negate the perception that we live in a man’s world or patriarchy, in which the female sex is completely subservient to the male sex. One can hardly imagine a master rushing to open a door for a slave, a Brahmin running to perform such a service for an untouchable, or a wealthy person racing to do this for an impoverished individual.

Why are men taught to open doors for women? Journalist Adela Rogers St. John said, “They should open the doors for us because they’re stronger and it’s easier for them to do it.” This is true but the difference here is trivial. I open that door myself every day and so do other women.

However, I do believe that teaching men to perform special courtesies for women is related to the physical strength differences between the genders. It is a way of slipping it into their minds that they should not misuse their strength advantage but employ it for good.

Unfortunately, some women find these courtesies patronizing. I find them charming and believe that the majority of women do as well.

Men, please keep being gentlemen!

Thank you.

Pop! A stream of yellow goop spurted out. I put astringent on a cotton ball and applied it to the area.

Then I thought no more of it, expecting it to heal.

But it did not heal.

A scab formed but seemed to grow instead of shrink. I rubbed on it with Vaseline. It would not rub off.

I made an appointment with a dermatologist who did a biopsy.

“There is a cancer,” I was informed.

I was stunned. And scared.

However, I was soon assured that the type of cancer was unlikely to be fatal. It was a skin cancer but not a melanoma. It was a skin cancer called squamous cell carcinoma. Approximately 2,500 people die from it every year in the United States but mine was caught early and in a place that is unlikely to lead to death.

It was removed in an outpatient surgery. The doctor told me I should consider myself cancer-free and that the chief concern at this point is to avoid disfigurement.

Any kind of severe stress can trigger an increase in the symptoms associated with my disability. The cancer diagnosis did. The expense associated with treatment also adversely affected my already precarious financial situation so I am even more deeply in debt than I was before it.

However, I have my life. Bar something unforeseen, I should make it to turn 52 on August 10.

I also have a renewed appreciation for life.

This transformation came about courtesy of contracting and property management company Dan Woodley Communities, Inc. Owner Dan Woodley said his firm seized the chance to create the sort of mixed-use community that brings people together. “We see the desire and trend and need for a return to the lifestyle that used to be common of small communities with walkable amenities such as stores and shops and restaurants as well as offices and places to live and entertain and work out,” he states.

Dan Woodley began buying up parcels along Dresden Dr. in the mid-1990s. The company applied for and received a re-zoning of the area in 2005 and started developing it in 2007. “We did the development and the building and have done some of the real estate brokerage as well,” Woodley discloses. Village Place Brookhaven currently houses a coffee shop, a drycleaners, a home furnishings store, a home and garden store, a body spa and a nail salon. It will soon have more businesses as well as private residences and offices.

An aesthetically striking combination of historical and contemporary styling has gone into the Village Place Brookhaven. “It’s got some retro styling,” Woodley elaborates. “It’s got historical background in it with a lot of brick details like the early 1900s. Our windows are a German-engineered window product that has a very high-caliber as well as a very authentic wood grain look for the casement windows. The residential units have a somewhat contemporary look in that they have very clean, straight lines. People have the ability to customize the condominium unit: we have everything from stained concrete floors to hardwood floors to carpeted floors.”

To learn more, call Village Place Brookhaven at 404-816-2323 or visit its website at villageplacebrookhaven.com.

Denise Noe’s Lizzie Whittlings: Elizabeth Montgomery

Actress Elizabeth Montgomery won a permanent place in the hearts of Borden buffs when she took on the part of Lizzie Borden in the made-for-TV movie, The Legend of Lizzie Borden. For a movie-of-the-week, it was unusually well made and engrossing.
Elizabeth Montgomery was the right actress for the part. For one thing, with her medium blonde hair and snub nose, Montgomery bore something of a resemblance to Lizzie. That was a definite advantage since Lizzie’s visage is so very well known. Equally important, as an actress Montgomery was able to convey a sense of entitlement and ladylike restraint while suggesting layers of possibly homicidal rage boiling beneath a controlled surface. Montgomery seemed utterly comfortable in the period clothing. She also appeared believable in the startling scenes in which she was supposed to be out of those clothes and in the nude! This ability to act in a role in which the character is riddled with contradictions was especially vital to The Legend of Lizzie Borden, as the movie was deliberately crafted to suggest a lingering mystery. The film would show scenes happening in cinematic “reality” and its present tense, and then focus on Elizabeth Montgomery’s face to go into what might have been a flashback – or a scene from Lizzie’s overheated imagination.
The woman who would so memorably play Lizzie Borden was born on 15 April 1933 in Los Angeles, California, into a show business family. Her father was the famous screen actor Robert Montgomery and her mother was the theater actress Elizabeth Bryan Allen.
According to findadeath.com, Elizabeth Montgomery liked being called “Lizzie.” Often a shortened version of Elizabeth, Lizzie was Miss Borden’s actual name. Elizabeth Montgomery’s preference for the nickname provides an interesting link between her and Lizzie Borden.

Always an actress
Elizabeth Montgomery appears to have enjoyed a childhood that was both happy and privileged. The affluent Montgomery family split their time between Hollywood, New York State, and Great Britain. As a child, little Lizzie attended the Westlake School for Girls. According to a website called Bob’s Bewitching Daughter – Elizabeth Montgomery, “Her first acting role was at the age of five in a French language production of Little Red Riding Hood at the Westlake School; Elizabeth played the wolf.”
The family moved to New York City in 1950 where her father began his television series Robert Montgomery Presents. Unfortunately, the public triumph coincided with personal upheaval as Robert Montgomery and Elizabeth Bryan Allen divorced in December of that same year. After the divorce, the young Elizabeth Montgomery lived first with her mother and then with her father. She entered the Spence School, a college-prep institution exclusively for females, and then went to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. She attended the Academy before making her television debut in 1951, in her father’s series. She appeared in an episode called “Top Secret” in which Robert and Elizabeth Montgomery played a fictional father and daughter. By 1952, she was a member of the summer stock company on Robert Montgomery Presents.
The young Elizabeth Montgomery worried about being known primarily as Robert Montgomery’s daughter. She wanted to be seen and evaluated as an actress in her own right. She thought that perhaps she should change her last name in order to establish a truly independent identity in her career and mentioned this possibility to her father. Clearly disappointed, he asked, “What’s the matter, you ashamed?” She kept the Montgomery last name on her acting credits and would throughout her life.
In March of 1954, she married Frederic Gallatin Cammann. Cammann came from a family that was both wealthy and socially prominent. The Social Register dropped him from its roster for marrying an actress.The couple divorced in 1955.
In December of 1956, at the age of twenty-three, Elizabeth Montgomery wed actor Gig Young, who was forty-three at the time. Perhaps she felt this marriage would have more going for it than the previous one since they shared the same profession. If so, she was sadly mistaken. Gig Young was a heavy drinker and the union was marred by the problems associated with a partner’s boozing.
During this period in which her personal life was turbulent, Montgomery racked up professional accomplishments as a busy, working actress. She worked mostly in television. She appeared in the popular series The Untouchables and was nominated for an Emmy for her performance. It was the first of nine Emmy nominations she would receive although she never won the award.
Montgomery played in a feature film called Johnny Cool in 1963. While making that movie, she developed a romantic relationship with director William Asher. She soon divorced Young and married Asher.
It may have been lucky for Montgomery that she dissolved the union with Young when she did and especially lucky that she did so without physical violence. The troubled Gig Young would marry thirty-one year old Kim Schmidt in 1978, when he was sixty-five. Three weeks after they wed, Gig shot Schmidt to death and then turned the gun on himself and committed suicide.
Having worked as an actress all of her life, Montgomery told Asher she would like to abandon her career in favor of full-time homemaking and to have children. Asher was in favor of the couple having kids but preferred that she continue acting if the two of them could find a way to work together. He soon found the perfect vehicle for that purpose, a sitcom that he would direct and in which she would star.

Bewitched and a trademark twitch
The premise of Bewitched was a variant on the fish-out-of-water theme that has proved so resiliently effective in comedies. The television sitcom was inspired by two motion pictures, the 1942 I Married a Witch and the 1959 Bell, Book, and Candle. Both films were comedic fantasies about mortal men falling in love with good-hearted witches.
In the TV show Bewitched, Elizabeth Montgomery starred as the witch Samantha, the wife of mortal ad executive Darrin Stephens (first played by Dick York and then by Dick Sargent who replaced the former because a back injury left York unable to work). Samantha tries to settle down into the life of a middle-class suburban housewife and resolves to leave witchcraft behind. However, she always ended up using her special powers that could be both the source of humorous jams and her secret weapon to get out of them.
Elizabeth Montgomery’s winsome portrayal of the wholesome witch was a major reason for the program’s success. Another was the strong support her character received from the other cast members. Actress Agnes Moorehead brought a vinegary tang to her depiction of Samantha’s mother, Endora (so named after the Biblical witch of Endor). Endora’s powers of sorcery gave the role a special punch as she played a classically interfering mother-in-law who thought her son-in-law was not good enough for her daughter.
Despite the strong fantasy elements to the program, many viewers could undoubtedly relate to the bickering when Endora archly asserted, “Samantha, I will not stand here and be insulted by something which is 94 percent water” and Darrin replied, “Oh, yeah! Well, what about something which is a hundred percent hot air?”
The role of each member of Samantha’s supernaturally gifted family was sharply etched and played in a distinctive manner. Comedian Paul Lynde, as wizard Uncle Arthur, possessed a colorful sense of mischief. Marion Lorne was sweet and somewhat pitiful as Aunt Clara, the witch who never could quite get a spell right.
Elizabeth Montgomery sometimes branched out within the series itself, donning a black wig to play Samantha’s cousin Serena, a naughty witch who contrasted with Samantha’s nice witch.
Samantha’s trademark would be the supposed twitching of her nose that signaled that she was using her magic powers. It was actually the twitching of her upper lip that, in turn, moved her nose. Montgomery had a habit of twitching her upper lip when she was nervous. Asher decided to make this the sign that Samantha was using magic.
The cast of mortal characters was just as strongly defined as that of the witches. Both York and Sargent were excellent as the loving, well-meaning, and frequently exasperated Darrin. David White was friendly but suitably demanding as Darrin’s boss. Perhaps the most vivid mortal character was Gladys Kravitz, first played by Alice Pearce and then by Sandra Gould. Both actresses did a fine job of portraying this nosy neighbor who is certain that something very odd is going on in the Stephens house but can never manage to get anyone else to see what she has seen or believe what she says. It is an arresting comedic moment when Samantha asks Gladys Kravitz why she has come to the Stephens house and Kravitz replies, “I came over for a snoop, uh, a scoop of sugar.”
Bewitched was a program that could be enjoyed by the entire family with little fear that youngsters would be exposed to anything inappropriate. Interestingly, however, the show broke new ground in its depiction of marital intimacy by showing Darrin and Samantha sleeping in the same bed. Prior to the Stephenses, most TV married couples had slept in separate beds.
While Elizabeth Montgomery never left acting behind for full-time homemaking as she had once planned, she did realize her goal of having children. She was pregnant with her first child while the Bewitched pilot was filmed, and gave birth to William Allen Asher in 1964. Her next two pregnancies were incorporated into Bewitched storylines. Elizabeth Montgomery gave birth to Robert Deverell Asher in 1965, and Tabitha Stephens was born around that same time. When Montgomery delivered Rebecca Elizabeth Asher in 1969, Samantha Stephens brought forth Adam Stephens.
Bewitched enjoyed a very good run before its cancellation in 1972, and is fondly remembered by many fans decades after its demise.

Dramatic successes in twenty-two TV movies
Like many stars of hit programs, Montgomery did not want to be typecast. She steadfastly refused to twitch her upper lip and nose for fans after Bewitched went off the air.
She also tried to stretch her acting wings by eschewing comedy for drama. She appeared in several made-for-TV movies with a dramatic bent. In 1972, she played in the TV movie The Victim. It is a claustrophobic, creepy suspense movie in which Montgomery plays Kate Wainwright, a wealthy woman trapped in a house during a storm. The electricity and phone have gone out, a murderer has done in her sister, and Kate desperately tries to avoid being his next victim.
That same year of 1972, the ten-year marriage with Asher unraveled and the couple divorced in 1973.
While making another TV movie, Mrs. Sundance, in 1974, she met actor Robert Foxworth. The two were soon in a romantic relationship. Having had three marriages end in divorce may have left Montgomery reluctant to wed again. She and Foxworth soon began cohabiting.
She starred in the 1974 A Case of Rape. Like Samantha Stephens, Ellen Harrod, the character played by Montgomery, is a suburban housewife. But A Case of Rape was no humorous fantasy—it was an extremely serious movie that treated this sensitive subject in a manner that was compelling.
The Legend of Lizzie Borden in 1975, the extraordinary made-for-TV movie that has become a favorite among Borden aficionados, followed it.
This fine actress continued working for many years but took a hiatus from her profession in the mid-1980s. She returned to acting in 1990 with Face to Face, in which she played archeologist Dr. Diana Firestone, opposite her lover Robert Foxworth.
After cohabiting together for almost twenty years, Montgomery and Foxworth decided to marry. They wed on 28 January 1993.
In 1995, Montgomery was working on a television movie, called Deadline for Murder: From the Files of Edna Buchanan, when she started feeling constantly tired. At first, the actress believed that she must be fatigued from overwork. Later, she realized that she was really sick and went to a doctor. The physician diagnosed Montgomery as having colon cancer. Exploratory surgery showed that the cancer had spread to her liver.
Normally a slim, but healthy, 122 pounds, she had wasted away to only 82 pounds when she went into the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center on 8 May 1995. Physicians were unable to stop the merciless spread of the cancer. Morphine helped control the pain. She was discharged on May 15 and returned to her Benedict Canyon home.
According to findadeath.com, she and Foxworth “embraced, and she drifted off, never to wake again. Elizabeth Montgomery died quietly, alone, on May 18th.” She was sixty-two.

Elizabeth Montgomery’s legacy
Her body was cremated. At her memorial service, held on 18 June 1995, Amanda McBroom sang. She may have been chosen to sing, in part, because her last name seemed to pay tribute to the role for which Montgomery was best known. Montgomery’s image was displayed on a screen and those assembled gave the deceased actress a standing ovation.
Today, a nine-foot high bronze statue of Montgomery as Samantha, astride a broomstick, graces a park in Salem, Massachusetts, the home of the infamous 17th Century witch trials.
Massachusetts is also, of course, the home of the Borden murders. In his summation for Lizzie Borden at her trial, Governor Robinson would refer to the Salem tragedy of two centuries before when he told the jury that acquittal would show that “witches are out of fashion in Massachusetts.”
Ironically, in the century after that acquittal, the talented actress who fashioned herself into a sweetly adorable witch would also craft herself into an utterly enthralling Lizzie Borden.

Works cited
“Bell, Book, and Candle,” http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051406.
“Bewitched,” http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057733.
Bob’s Bewitching Daughter – Elizabeth Montgomery, http://www.bobsbewitchingdaughter.com.
“A Case of Rape,” http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071286.
“Deadline for Murder: From the Files of Edna Buchanan,” http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112821.
“Elizabeth Montgomery,” http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000548.
“Elizabeth Montgomery and the cast of Bewitched, http://www.findadeath.com.
“Face to Face,” http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099535.
“Gig Young,” http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0949574.
“I Married a Witch,” http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0034881.
“Legend of Lizzie Borden,” http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073273.
“The Victim,” http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069461.

I have quite a few reviews up at epinions.com. My reviews are on books and motion pictures. People who enjoy reading my blogs may very well enjoy reading my reviews. Epinions.com pays, albeit VERY modestly, and every little bit helps. Payment is based on how many ratings a review gets and on how high those evaluations are.

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From there input denisenoe into the members search. There you will find my reviews on a variety of books and movies. I hope you will enjoy them.

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Have fun!

Author’s Note: This was original published in “The Hatchet: Lizzie Borden’s Journal of Murder, Mystery, and Victorian History”

Borden buffs know William Henry Moody as one of the prosecutors of Lizzie Borden. Less well known are the facts that after the trial he went on to become a four-time congressional representative, a Secretary of the Navy, a U.S. Attorney General, and a Supreme Court Justice.

Indeed, it is hard to imagine a more extraordinary and accomplished career than that of William H. Moody. The man who would pursue that multi-faceted career, and earn himself a permanent place in Borden lore along the way, was born in 1853 on a farm in Newbury, Massachusetts. When growing up, he attended public schools in Salem and Danvers, Massachusetts. He graduated from Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts in 1872.

As a young man, he attended Harvard University where he proved himself a bright person and conscientious student by graduating third in his class in 1876.

Two Years Before the Mast

Moody studied law with Richard H. Dana, Jr. (1815-1882), author of Two Years Before the Mast. Since the world of the sea and ships would come to play a surprisingly significant part in Moody’s life, it is worthwhile to examine the life and work of Moody’s legal mentor. As Moody would after him, Dana attended Harvard. However, before he could graduate, he was stricken with the measles. This illness negatively affected his eyesight. Doctors suggested that a sea voyage might improve his vision.

How could a voyage improve vision? A writer on a medical newsgroup who calls himself “Zetsu” answered the question as follows: “A sea voyage would improve his vision because of the continuous wobbling and shaking about on the ship/boat. This movement causes the illusion in one’s field that the surrounding objects are moving in an oppositional direction. This illusion is restful to the mind and therefore improves the sight by relieving strain which causes imperfect sight.” The same writer elaborated, “I also presume that the recommendation was given because a sea voyage would improve his general health by being in the open fresh air, and by eating fresh seafoods.”

However, the Communications Administrative Manager for the American Academy of Opthalmology, Georgia Alward, wrote, “I do not know why a doctor would suggest a sea voyage to improve vision that was affected by the measles” and “I could not find any documentation where a sea voyage would help” with vision. She believed that such advice might be the product of “an old wives tale.”

At any rate, based on the advice Dana received, he became a sailor aboard a boat called the Pilgrim. The ship sailed to California, at the time a part of Mexico. He kept diaries during the voyage and, when it was over, worked from those entries to create Two Years Before the Mast. A website about Dana calleds it “one of the best accounts of life at sea.” The book also had positive practical effects as it led to reforms in the working conditions of sailors. Dedicated to that cause, Dana traveled throughout the United States and to Great Britain to give speeches about the importance of improving the lot of sailors.

Apparently, the voyage also had its intended effect as Dana’s vision had improved by the time he returned to the landlubber’s lifestyle.

Dana had a good bit of the crusader in him as he took on another controversial cause: that of the enslaved. As an attorney in Boston, he represented several escaped slaves against the federal government that sought to return them to their Southern owners. Dana took no fees for this work. He also suffered for his principles as one pro-slavery advocate assaulted Dana because of it.

Perhaps Moody was influenced by his mentor’s steadfast commitment to principle as well as Dana’s special interest in the lives and working conditions of sailors.

Entering the Borden case

Moody was admitted to the bar in Salem, Massachusetts in 1878. He began his practice in the Massachusetts city of Haverhill. There the young and ambitious man was soon active in local politics as a Republican. He served on the local school board, was city solicitor, and was elected Essex County district attorney. His intelligence and legal skill caught the attention of Massachusetts Attorney General Albert E. Pillsbury, who appointed Moody to assist Hosea M. Knowlton in prosecuting Lizzie Borden.

It was Moody’s first murder case. The junior prosecutor started by making what was arguably a major strategic blunder for his side. Leonard Rebello in Lizzie Borden Past & Present writes, “It was Moody who suggested George Dexter Robinson be retained by the defense.” The very able Robinson, who had once been Governor of Massachusetts, may have been largely responsible for winning Lizzie Borden her acquittal.

The young Moody gave the opening argument for the prosecution. He began with a description of the crime that was powerful in its simplicity: “Upon the fourth day of August of the last year, an old man and woman, husband and wife, each without a known enemy in the world, in their own home, upon a frequented street in the most populous city in this County, under the light of day and in the midst of its activities, were, first one, then, after an interval of an hour, another, severally killed by unlawful human agency.”

Moody immediately continued to the fact that an extraordinarily unlikely person became the suspect and then defendant, saying, “Today a woman of good social position, of hitherto unquestioned character, a member of a Christian church and active in its good works, the own daughter of one of the victims, is at the bar of this Court, accused by the Grand Jury of this County of these crimes.”

He suggested the root of the motive for the murders, saying, “There was or came to be between the prisoner and her step-mother an unkindly feeling” and briefly reviewed the tension between Lizzie and Abby over Andrew’s gift of a share in a building to Abby’s half-sister.

The junior prosecutor gave an extremely detailed description of the Borden home, noting that his depiction was “wearisome” but indicating that it was necessary to understanding the prosecution’s case. He detailed the movements of all those known to be in the Borden home at or close to the time of the murders, including Uncle John Morse, Bridget Sullivan, the victims, and the accused.

Toward the conclusion of the opening statement, Moody suggested that the jury would not be able to find “any other reasonable hypothesis except that of the guilt of this prisoner” to “account for the sad occurrences which happened upon the morning of August fourth.”

Taken as whole, Moody’s opening argument must be considered more than competent and genuinely eloquent in both its beginning and its ending.

Congressional representative and bachelor

Although Moody’s side was defeated in the Borden case, prominent Republicans respected the skill he had displayed in it and his career continued on a steady rise.

The ambitious Moody spotted an opportunity when United States Representative William Cogswell died, leaving a vacant seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. Moody was chosen to fill that seat in 1895.

When he gained this office, Moody was 42 years old. The vast majority of people are married by that age. However, like Abby Durfee Gray and Emma and Lizzie Borden, William H. Moody entered middle age without a spouse. Unlike Abby, but like Emma and Lizzie, he would remain single until his death.

It can be surmised that the constituency of the district he represented in the House appreciated his service since they elected him three times. A New York Times article reported he was “well and favorably known as an industrious and active member of Congress” and that he served on the Appropriations and Insular Affairs Committees. The Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships describes Moody as “making a reputation by his knowledge of parliamentary procedure and his perseverance in debate.”

Theodore Roosevelt’s friend and associate

The politically astute Moody cultivated friends in important positions. One who would prove most significant was Theodore Roosevelt, a New York police commissioner at the time the pair became close.

It is likely that the two men were drawn together in part because of a shared interest in seafaring matters. Moody had studied under Dana, the author of Two Years Before the Mast. Theodore Roosevelt was the author of The Naval War of 1812. It was T.R.’s first book, partially written while the young Theodore Roosevelt was still in college. The Naval War of 1812 would become a standard for naval strategy studies and was required reading at the Naval Academy in Annapolis for many years. In 1897, President William McKinley appointed T.R. Assistant Secretary of the Navy. He served little more than a year in that capacity before resigning to become Lieutenant Colonel of a regiment that would become famous as the “Rough Riders.”

Perhaps a shared love of athletics also helped bond William H. Moody and Theodore Roosevelt in friendship. Moody was a physically active and athletic sort who enjoyed walking, bicycling, riding horses, and playing golf. At one point, Moody served as President of the New England Baseball League. Pictures of Moody show a robust man with a ruggedly handsome face and slightly waved hair. The New York Times reported that some people actually mistook Moody for T.R. because of both their physical similarity and “a similarity in the decisive manner of both men.”

This friendship with T.R. would be crucial to Moody’s elevation to high office. In 1901, Vice-President Theodore Roosevelt became President Theodore Roosevelt after the assassination of President William McKinley.

In 1902, Secretary of the Navy John D. Long resigned his office. According to a New York Times article, about six people aspired to the position. After a brief time, the contest narrowed to two Congressional Representatives. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, a man much respected by the Theodore Roosevelt administration, sponsored Representative William H. Moody and the President appointed Moody Secretary of the United States Navy. At 49, Moody became the youngest member of the President’s Cabinet.

In January 1903, Secretary Moody was injured in an accident on the Naval Academy grounds at Annapolis. Accompanied by Senator Eugene Hale, who chaired the Senate Naval Affairs Committee, Moody was at Annapolis to inspect new buildings. Moody was in a carriage when a 17-gun salute was fired to honor him and the Senator. The horses pulling the carriage were startled by the noise and they suddenly swerved and dashed as the driver frantically but futilely attempted to control them. The carriage’s pole broke, further distressing the horses that ran even faster. As the horses madly pulled on the carriage, Secretary Moody opened a carriage door and leaped to the pavement. He landed on his face and was struck unconscious. The Secretary was lifted up and carried to a nearby home where he soon awakened. Luckily, he sustained only cuts and bruises from this mishap.

Moody served as Secretary of the Navy for two years.

Attorney General, Supreme Court Judge, and namesake

In 1904, the President appointed Moody United States Attorney General. Attorney General Moody helped craft the anti-trust campaign waged by the Theodore Roosevelt administration that helped dissolve the Standard Oil Corporation.

In 1906, Moody was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Thus, Moody had the distinction of serving in all three branches of the American government: Legislative, Executive, and Judicial.

As a Supreme Court Justice, Moody authored several important opinions. He pioneered the doctrine that corporations could be legally restricted in what they charge, in an opinion he wrote on the cases brought concerning the Knoxville Water Company and the Consolidated Gas Company.

He served on the Supreme Court for four years before retiring in 1910 because of his failing health. He suffered from a severe and disabling form of rheumatism. After resigning from the Supreme Court, he returned to Haverhill where he lived with a sister who, like him, had never married. No longer physically able to enjoy the sports he had loved throughout most of his life, the ailing Moody spent almost all of his time in the home.

William H. Moody died on July 2, 1917, at the age of 63. He is buried in the Byfield Cemetery that is located in Georgetown, Massachusetts.

Two years after his demise, on June 28, 1919, a Naval Fighting Ship commissioned Moody was launched. William H. Moody’s sister, Mary E. Moody, sponsored the ship.

The Moody would serve its country for eleven years. Among many other services, it brought torpedoes and ammunition from Rhode Island to California where it operated along the California coast. The ship was used on an inspection tour of Alaskan coal and oil fields. It was used in fleet exercises and good will visits. In 1927, the Moody was used in tactical maneuvers with the U.S. Fleet in the Caribbean. At one point, the Moody operated out of the Guantanamo port and out of Gonaives in the defense of the Panama Canal. Since negotiating the treaty that would lead to the construction of the Panama Canal was one of the major accomplishments of the Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, who had done so much to further of the career of William H. Moody, it was especially appropriate that the ship named after Moody was used to defend the Panama Canal.

In 1930, as a part of a disarmament agreement, the Moody was decommissioned. Much of the ship was sold as scrap metal. Her hulk was sunk in 1933. Like her namesake, the Moody is no more but like him she had had a very productive run—or sail.

Works cited

“Ex-Justice Moody Dies At His Home,” The New York Times, July 2, 1917.

“Justice Moody Resigns,” The New York Times, October 5, 1910.

“Moody,” Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, http://www.history.navy.mil/danfs/m14/moody.htm.

“Moody, William Henry,” Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=M000883.

Rebello, Leonard. Lizzie Borden Past and Present. Fall River, Massachusetts: Al-Zach Press, 1999.

“Richard Henry Dana, Jr.: (1815-1882) Two Years Before The Mast,” http://www.winthrop.dk/rhdana.html.

“Secretary Long Resigns,” The New York Times, March 11, 1902.

“Secretary Moody Hurt,” The New York Times, January 13, 1903.

“William H. Moody,” U.S. Supreme Court Media Oyez, http://www.oyez.org/justices/william_h_moody.

I will never forget the second.

The student hairdresser who would perform that styling introduced himself to me as Greg.

It occurred to me that we were both unusual in that beauty college setting. Greg was a man in a sea of women and I was a teenager in a sea of gray and white elderly heads.

Greg was a handsome young man. He had an attractive face with bright eyes and a ready smile. He was blonde and I’ve always had a special liking for yellow hair. His hair was shoulder length and styled so that it fell in waves.

I was immediately and strongly attracted to Greg – and just as immediately embarrassed by that feeling.

After he received the coupon, he asked, “Is there any special way you’d like me to style your hair?”

“No,” I said, smiling back and shrugging my shoulders.

“Just anything I want to do?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“I thank you,” he said, taking a little bow at what he seemed to take as my implicit compliment to his good judgment or perhaps the privilege of being the decision maker on what he would do with my hair.

I was charmed by the gesture of that bow. I was really getting a strong crush on Greg and feared it must show.

We went to the place where hair was washed. Greg shampooed my hair. Then we returned to the station where he began working on my cleansed and wet hair and putting it in curlers. “Do you know any good jokes?” he asked.

Tongue-tied, I didn’t dare start telling the vulgar jokes I heard – and told – to my high school acquaintances. “No,” I said.

As Greg worked on my hair, I noticed his arms. The muscles in Greg’s arms were not especially bulky but they were wonderfully well-defined and I enjoyed watching the way the bicep and muscles in the forearms naturally tensed and relaxed under his skin as he moved within that unbuttoned white coat that was the beauty school uniform. As he worked, I sometimes giggled from sheer adolescent self-consciousness at the feelings this man aroused and Greg would look into my eyes and smile as if to ask, “What is so funny?” I was reminded of the irony of my negative answer when asked if I knew any good jokes. It seemed we were both having a lot of fun despite the relative absence of conversation.

At one point a drop of water touched the top of my ear, sending a delightful tingle through me.

After Greg had put my hair in curlers, he escorted me to one of the rows of hair dryers. Before I went under the dryer, Greg asked, “Would you like a soft drink?”

“Would I have to pay for it?” I asked.

Greg chuckled. “I could buy it for you,” he generously offered.

“No, thank you,” I replied.

After my time under the dryer, I was back at Greg’s station. He took my hair out of the curlers, brushed and combed it. He appeared to be very interested in the hair and what he was doing with it. I remember being impressed by how much he seemed to enjoy his work. Of course, he was only a student hairdresser so he had not been doing it long enough to tire of it but I thought he was a lucky person to be doing something he liked.

When he had my hair fixed to his satisfaction, Greg waved a brush at one of the teachers and said, “Comb out check, please.”

At my previous beauty college hairstyling, the woman who performed it had not asked for a comb-out check so I knew it was not always done. I felt flattered that Greg asked for the check of my hair – perhaps unreasonably flattered as what he was asking her to look over was HIS work. Still that work was on my hair so I thought I must look very nice in the hairdo he had created.

The teacher was a woman with carrot-orange hair that she wore piled up on her head. The pair of them examined my hair and fussed over it, both seeming quite pleased with the job Greg had done. I gazed into the mirror, also liking what I saw.

“She has tough hair,” the woman said.

“Tough hair,” Greg seconded.

I wondered if they meant that my hair was somehow harder or more substantial than most hair or if “tough” was used in the slang sense of “good” but I didn’t ask.

I never saw Greg after that one styling but I thought about him often. I still think about him on occasion.

Greg’s image regularly popped into my mind in two very different contexts. One was during sexual fantasies. The other was when I heard someone complain about a job he or she disliked and I would think about how nice it would be if we could all be as enthusiastic about our work as Greg seemed to be when he fixed my hair.

Some readers may point out what they see as an irony in my having a crush on Greg since he was training to enter an occupation long known to be gay-friendly. It just so happens that I have been well acquainted with several male hairdressers – most of them straight. I have no idea whether Greg was gay, straight, bi, or asexual. I do know that he was heterosexual – and heterosexually hungry – in my frequent and fevered teenaged fantasies featuring him.

I have no way of knowing whether or not Greg is still alive. If he is, I’m aware that it is quite possible that in the decades since my memorable free hair styling, the waves of blonde hair I so admired on him may well have fallen off his head, leaving a bald dome or motivating the wearing of a toupee. I would prefer to imagine that Greg has aged into a gray-haired “silver fox.” I hope – and believe that I am not being unrealistic in hoping – that Greg is now an elderly man with nice, cleanly defined muscles, a twinkle in his eyes, a ready smile, and a charming manner.

I have no idea as to how long he worked in hairdressing or if he eventually went into other occupations. I’m aware that, if still alive, Greg is probably now retired. I wish that he could know what a powerful and lasting impression he made on a shy fifteen-year-old; I know that he cannot.

I’ll never forget the handsome young man who seemed so very happy in his work.

I hope that he was always as happy at whatever he chose to do as he was on the long-ago day that he fixed my hair. I hope that he is still happy at whatever he might be doing today.

Here’s to you, Greg!

In Possession, she takes a foray into fiction but sticks to the world of cops and pathological murderers with which she is so familiar. Her extensive knowledge of police detectives and attorneys shows in this novel as it is authoritatively detailed on their work and procedures and filled with utterly believable cop talk. It is also obvious that Ann Rule has either spent much time in the great outdoors or is intimately familiar with sources who have as her descriptions of life in the wilderness ring real.

Characterization in Possession is less secure. Interestingly, her best, fullest, and most sharply etched portraits are of the novel’s pathological characters. Lureen Demich, a neglected, physically attractive, none-too-bright, aimlessly promiscuous young woman is rendered believable in terms that are sympathetic without sinking into the maudlin. Her son, serial sex murderer Duane Demich, is made frighteningly in his heartlessness, semi-psychosis, mother-obsession, and addiction to violence.

The other major characters, the decent characters of Danny and Joanne Lindstrom, are less clearly drawn and ultimately not very engaging.

Where the novel falls down is when describing Joanne’s fear and grief-induced confusion, a confusion that leads her to depend on her rapist and ultimately come to love him and be his more-than-willing sex partner. Possession seems to go from a crime novel to a sexual fantasy. The sexual fantasy of a woman becoming passionately enamored of her rapist may be either a male or female fantasy but it simply does not work as Rule presents it.

Possession is an interesting read but it ultimately does not hold together as a novel.

Recently I watched, and very much enjoyed, a silent movie. This reminded me that there are many people who would not be able to enjoy a silent movie. For some this is merely a matter of taste, of disliking the exaggerated acting that is a convention of films without speaking.

However, there are many people who are unable to enjoy silent movies for a reason that is much more serious: they are blind.

My vision is imperfect. Indeed, my nearsightedness was a factor in my failure to learn to drive a car when I was young (itself something of a handicap in many parts of the United States). My vision is to a large extent corrected by my contact lenses (although I would require a new prescription were I again to try to learn to drive). As frequently happens when people age, I have also grown farsighted so I usually wear glasses to read.

Nevertheless, for most purposes I see well enough – and I certainly enjoy the gift of sight. It is one that many people lack.

I very much enjoy listening to recorded stories. Many people cannot because they are deaf.

Sight and hearing are senses that people usually take for granted but those of us who possess them ought to count them as great blessings.

My walk is often awkward because one of my legs is a bit shorter than the other. I also suffer from chronic lower back pain. But the fact remains that I DO have legs and I CAN walk – there are many who are not so fortunate.

Watching a silent movie and listening to a CD led me to count my blessings and then to write this blog about them. I hope it will inspire my readers to be grateful for what THEY have.

This is true regardless of whether the intimate relatioship is expected to be longterm or fleeting. Men propose marriage and ask for dates and hook-ups.

Within an ongoing relationship, marital, cohabiting, or dating, the man remains the one who usually initiates sexual activity. Which means he is usually the one who must repeatedly risk refusal, along with the sad emotions that accompany it: disappointment, dejection, embarrassment, and self-doubt.

We customarily refer to the person who does the asking in romantic and/or sexual relationships as the “aggressor.” This term obscures the vulnerability of the role. The term “supplicant” seems better suited to capturing that vulnerability.

It seems likely to me that the majority of men feel like supplicants in intimate relationships of all sorts. Men who are frequently refused may, with good reason, feel like beggars.

I didn’t expect it to happen. My computer was operating as usual and then — a gray screen and a little icon in the middle switching from one thing to another. I called in a computer repair service.

My computer had crashed. The machine could be restarted but the data could not be recovered, at least not by this technician. It had been a long, long time before I’d even thought of making back-ups and much of my life, including financial records and writing, was on that computer.

The part of the computer that held the data was shipped to a firm that specializes in recovering data in such cases. It can be recovered but that recovery will cost me about a month’s income.

As you might guess, I was crushed by this crash. My situation is always somewhat precarious as I am disabled both because of a severe psychiatric disorder and a back problem that causes chronic pain.

Even before the crash, I didn’t have the funds to spend Thanksgiving with my family. Plans to have it with a friend fell through because of his health problems.

Thus, I spent Thanksgiving at one of the few restaurants in metro Atlanta that is open on that holiday. I eat out quite often as it is hard for me to fix adequate meals at home and keep my place properly clean as I have a tiny kitchen with no dishwasher. Dining out is one of my few indulgences as I generally wear my shoes until they have holes in them.

The restaurant at which I was dining is expensive. Just as I was finishing up my turkey dinner, a server who had not previously attended my table came up to me and said, “You don’t have to worry about paying. My ladies picked it up for you because it’s Thanksgiving.”

I was astonished. I didn’t know the women at the next table and they had left without giving me a chance to thank them. Why had they picked me out for this wonderful largesse? Perhaps I touched their heartstrings because I was alone and everyone else in a group. Perhaps they figured from my dress that I was not as affluent as the others dining there. Or perhaps it just made sense to give your blessing to the party of one.

At any rate, I was very cheered up by this unexpected and beautiful act of generosity.

Unlike those ladies, readers of this blog know me. Would some of you like to send me something for Christmas? I’m not begging for anything and am certain not all my readers can afford a gift. However, just a card shows me that you are thinking of me in a kind light and would be appreciated.

If any of my readers can afford to be generous, the most appreciated gifts would be as follows:
1) Money.
2) Cassettes or CDs of audio dramas/comedies or recordings of stories.
3) DVDs or videos of motion pictures or television programs.

If anyone wants to help cheer me up for Christmas, they can send me a private email and I’ll give them an address at which to mail me.

The story poses as the memoirs of Richard Everett and, if he is the child Oates might have conceived, she can rightly congratulate herself for having rigorously practiced contraception – although I cannot specify all of the reasons for that without giving the plot away.

Richard is eighteen years old at the time he is supposedly penning his autobiography and was eleven when the traumatic events it describes supposedly took place. In this blackly comic novel, nothing is certain and Oates continuously plays with that uncertainty, toying with the reader’s expectations and frustrations.

Richard Everett is a larger-than-life character in every way: intellectually gifted, emotionally stunted, and a self-described glutton who is enormously obese.

He is also up on all the latest psychological theories and self-consciously aware that his mind may be playing tricks on itself. He notes that “if I tell [my story] now and not next year it will come out one way, and if I . . . forced [myself] to begin this a year ago it would have been a different story then. And it’s possible I’m lying without knowing it. Or telling the truth in some weird, symbolic way without knowing it . . .” Richard often interrupts his story to give us what he imagines reviewers will say about his book and to tell us how various mental health experts might diagnose.

The antagonist to Richard’s deliberately absurd protagonist is his mother, Nada Everett, a lithe, pale, and dark-haired novelist and short story writer.

This writer/mother is Oates’s most savage portrait of an egoist. Like many of Oates’s anti-hero(ine)s, Nada exalts freedom as the highest good. Since Nada is a mother, complete freedom means she often shirks responsibility. Richard craves the unconditional love and attention finds “Nada” — the nothingness symbolized by her name.

Throughout the novel, Oates lampoons concerns with materialism and status, suggesting such preoccupations leave people, and especially their children, as emotionally empty as Nada.

“Expensive People” is a wise and witty critique of human frailty and a fantastic and bizarre work of brilliant perversity.

Her sentence in turn follows an excerpt from “War As I Knew It,” the memoirs of General George S. Patton (“Old Blood and Guts). Patton writes, “I told him that although I would do my best to keep such incidents to a minimum there would unquestionably be some raping. I told him that he should forward the details of all such incidents to me so that I could have the offenders properly hanged.”

Brownmiller in turn writes, “It’s funny about MAN’s attitude toward rape in war. UNQUESTIONABLY there will be some raping. Unconscionable but unquestionable. When men are men, slugging it out, unquestionably there will be some raping.”

In war, men must “slug it out” in squalor, filth, sustained panic, and horror. They are immersed in brutality, killing and getting killed, watching as their best buddies are torn to pieces and living every second with the knowledge that they could be next.

“Unquestionably,” under the hideous and maddening conditions of war, some men who might live inoffensively in civilian life commit the atrocity of rape.

There are multiple reasons for this but two stand out in my mind.

One is that the conditions of war cause law and order to inevitably collapse. Thus, those men who are the least moral and well-socialized to begin with take advantage of the situation to commit this crime even though they might not have done so within the tighter structure of civilian society.

Another reason is that, under the enforced brutality and terror of war, the aggressive and sexual impulses of some men become confused. Their brutality “spills over” from its officially designated targets – other men in ground combat and specifically other men who are soldiers – onto women and takes a sexualized form.

Susan Brownmiller’s biases blind her to what is extraordinary about the attitude of men to rape in war, at least when we limit it to those men of the modern West who possess official power within its military.

It is truly something to make one pause to realize that the modern American military punished men who raped women with the death sentence. This is especially remarkable when one recalls that at the time Patton wrote — and at the present time — we American women enjoy an exemption from the military draft.

Does this mean that, as far as the male leadership in the modern West are concerned, we women are so very privileged as to enjoy an across-the-board exemption from all horrors of war? Not quite. Women have been injured and killed in every war in which bombs are dropped as nothing is more eminently non-discriminatory than a bomb.

However, rape, unlike bombing, is not something that military leaders in the modern West regard as a horror that is necessary to advance the war effort. Thus, in this one-on-one intimate level, women’s privilege is supposed to hold and the violation of that privilege punished in the most extreme manner.

The true question that Brownmiller completely misses in her fervor to indict all men for the actions of a minority of men, is why would male officials punish men so severely for committing this intimate atrocity against women while at the same time DEMANDING that men participate in the horrors of combat?

Interestingly, and significantly, the very same General Patton who asked to be sent details of rape cases so that he could “have the offenders properly hanged,” possessed not the slightest degree of patience with those men who could not face combat. Patton famously became furious at a male soldier who said he had been sent to the hospital because of his “nerves.” Patton swore at the man, screamed “coward” at him and obscenities, slapped him, and demanded that he be sent to the front lines. (Later, doctors discovered that one reason the man’s “nerves” were so bad was that he had malaria.)

The Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe, General Dwight D. (“Ike”) Eisenhower, demanded that Patton apologize for this outburst of rage and Patton did so.

Nevertheless, General Eisenhower also demanded that men, regardless of their individual temperaments or psychological make-up, must be subjected to the horrors of combat. Eisenhower confirmed the order of execution for desertion of the skinny and timid Pvt. Eddie Slovik.

The modern West has demanded that men expose themselves to the horrors of battle. It has punished with the most extreme severity men who commit rape.

“It’s funny about MAN’s attitude toward rape in war.”

It really is.

“them” focuses on Loretta, her son Jules and daughter Maureen. They are impoverished white people. They survive poverty but are warped by it.

The novel begins on a note of optimism. It is 1937 when we meet Loretta, a 16-year-old girl enjoying the budding of her sexuality. She maintains a sense of excitement and hope despite her tiring work in a dry cleaners and the depressing deprivation of her slum dwelling.

In short order, the sort of terrifying realistic violence for which Oates’ fiction is known works to burst the bubble of Loretta’s teenaged hopefulness. The young man she invited into her bed is shot and killed by her brother. Wandering the streets for aid, she finds police officer Howard Wendell. He attacks her but the rape scene is depicted by Oates in a romantic manner. In the next chapter they are married.

The book concentrates on Loretta and her two oldest children, Jules (of uncertain paternity) and Maureen. Oates understands the special attractions of city life even for the poor and underlines them when Loretta goes to live with Howard’s mother in the country. Oates writes that Loretta missed, “the lovely dirty city with its municipal buildings of fake marble and its department stores and elevators. . . . Loretta wept for her lost city and its dirty air.”

“them” is reminiscent of the best of Theodore Dreiser’s works as it takes a naturalistic approach is demonstrating how characters and choices are shaped by environment. We see Maureen believing she is rebelling against her mother’s life while inadvertently duplicating it. Oates’ powerful and poetic prose describes the process: “Maureen felt a certain hardness come over her, as if something invisible were blessing her, as if a shell were shaping itself out of her skin.” We also see Jules falling into criminality in his desperate ambition to rise out of poverty.

Oates makes many astute observations on poverty in America but they flow so naturally from the narrative that there is never a whiff of preaching in this novel. She takes a poke at the assumption that poverty is the unfortunate province of racial minorities in America when she has someone ask Jules, “Are you one of the poor people?” and he replies, “I’m one of the poor people.” The questioner presses, “But you’re not black. Are you very poor?” Jules answers, “You can’t get much poorer” and the baffled questioner muses, “I thought poor people . . . were mainly black.” Oates makes an equally astute comment on the sort of slumming common in the 1960s when Jules meets “a girl of about twenty, dressed in the familiar slovenly style of the neighborhood, a shapeless dress and bare legs and sandals. But, like the rest of the students who played at being poor, she had good teeth: being poor stopped at teeth.”

The winner of a National Book Award, “them” features fascinating characters in a powerful novel by one of America’s most brilliant writers.

The Kellie Pickler song, “Things That Never Cross A Man’s Mind” says “That joke is too dirty” is one of those things.

My good friend Blunner Huzka has worked as a cook for almost all of his life. He presently works at an expensive steak restaurant. He has told me that women working there have flashed their breasts at him, mooned him, and frequently make explicit sexual remarks and jokes. In fact, one of the several reasons he dislikes his job is that he dislikes the crude behavior of his co-workers, both male and female.

Hollywood Squares may not be a supreme authority. However, one question asked on a show was: “According to a recent study, who talks about sex more — men or women?”

The celebrity asked the question mulled it over for a moment and then said, “Women do.”

The host said that was the correct answer.

I’ve asked other people which sex they think talks about sex more and some of them have said it is women. Blunner Huzka believes women talk more about it than men do. I once worked with a woman who said that, especially if there are no men around, women’s conversation tends to get “rancid.” My ex-husband said he thought women tend to “talk dirty” more than men do.

I recently had an experience that may be relevant. I have to give some background for my readers to understand it. About every day, and usually several times a day, I go to a convenience store within walking distance. It is owned by a man I’ll call “Muhammad” and often worked at the cash register by “Abdullah.” The two are related.

At this store, I often talk to a construction worker named “Mike.” We’re not flirting or really friends but just acquaintances on friendly terms. He sometimes calls me “the candy monster” because I buy so much candy from the store.

Anyway, we were outside the store and I was talking to Mike and another man. I mentioned that I had recently read the Bible all the way through. Then I talked about the famous story of Adam and Eve and the Forbidden Fruit. “Everybody always says it was an apple that tempted Eve but the story in Genesis never says it was an apple,” I pointed out. “I think the Forbidden Fruit had to be the banana because the banana is the one fruit that resembles something we women often like to put in our mouths.”

“Oh, Denise!” Mike exclaimed as he grimaced. “I didn’t know you’d go there! You’re embarrassing us.”

“I’m sorry I embarrassed you,” I said. Then I changed the subject to something I’d read about math.

When I told my Blunner about this, Blunner said, “Well, you really shouldn’t make that type of a joke with someone you don’t know well and aren’t close to.”

“Do you think he really was embarrassed?” I asked. “I mean, he’s a construction worker.”

“Well, if you assume he’s a crude person because he’s a construction worker, then you’re stereotyping him,” Blunner pointed out.

“Do you think I was harassing him?” I asked.

“It doesn’t sound like harassment to me,” Blunner replied. “It sounds like a gaffe.”

Anyway, it was with some trepidation that I saw Mike again when I went to the aforementioned convenience store because I wondered if he would speak to me.

“Hi, Denise,” he said. “What are you reading?”

“It’s a book on backgammon,” I answered, showing him the slim paperback I carried.

“Abdullah, you’ve got to put a backgammon table up,” he said with a smile to the man behind the counter.

Your thoughts, dear readers?