Happy “anniversary.”

To add insult to the injury that is always mid-March for me, I carefully reread Eye of the Chickenhawk (Simon Dovey, 2023).  It is devastating but I wanted to reread it in the wake of the revelations of participants in and the web surrounding the Epstein/Maxwell child trafficking operation.  The book doesn’t get any easier to read.

At the suggestion of a reader, I finally finished 33 Degrees of Deception, An Expose of Freemasonry (Tom C. McKenny, 2011/2017).  Dates and locations surrounding the OCCK abductions have long engendered speculation about Free Masons, religious meanings, and other weird mapping and coordinate usage that I am not wired to easily understand.  I’m not going to lie, my interest was piqued by information people have sent me concerning man about Europe and Birmingham, Michigan, H. Lee Busch.  This was also a disturbing read, because who does this shit or believes in it?  Seriously.

Probably because it was Oscars season, the 1980 movie Ordinary People showed up in my YouTube feed.  The film received many awards that year, including Best Picture and Best Director (Robert Redford).  It was based on the 1976 book by Judith Guest, a U of M graduate who was born in Detroit.  The book was given to me in March 1977 by a dear friend’s mother–one of just a literal handful (maybe less) of adults who acknowledged Tim’s loss to me.  (Thank you again, dear Jill.)

The book and film examine the impact of traumatic loss of a sibling–a loss that is by my own experience, rarely acknowledged in society, no matter the age or circumstances.  The book was really helpful to me and the movie is amazing, if hard for me to watch.  As I have written before, my brothers and I would have welcomed a drowning in Lake Michigan over what happened to our brother Tim.  And maybe even a little electroshock therapy.  (Check out the swim coach in the movie–he nailed the typical reaction back in the day.)

I am trying to start The Highest Law in the Land, How the Unchecked Power of Sheriffs Threatens Democracy (Jessica Pishko, 2024).  I need a break from this stuff right now, but since it’s clearly not a summer read, I have a few weeks to wade back in.   Of course it plays into my inherent biases, but I do not deny my general and well-earned contempt for law enforcement.