SNOW

It doesn't look like much, but we had enough snow to put schools on a 2-hr. delay this morning. Then again, this was the first real amount of snow we've had this winter. It rained last night and then turned to snow, but not before icing everything in the process. So while town roads were okay, I can imagine that back roads were a mess. To make matters worse, it was snowing heavily early this morning. I took that picture at 1:00 P.M. -- just a little while ago -- after the road was plowed and salted.

We have enough snow to make this Infiniti Commercial "Snowball" 

> 5:00 P.M. IDIOTS ON PARADE... I sat in Little M's elementary school parking lot this afternoon observing the kids as they filed out and headed home. So many of them were inadequately dressed for the weather. It was a blustery 24* and snowing steadily, yet there were a number of kids whose jackets were open and flapping in the wind. Some didn't even wear jackets. Most of the kids wore no hats, and almost all wore no gloves or boots. There was a woman janitor who was talking on her cell phone as she was salting the walks. She was wearing sneakers, jeans and a thin t-shirt. None of these people lack the funds for winter clothing; they simply chose not to wear it. When I was a kid, even the poorest kids had winter clothing. No one thought it looked 'cool' to go outside without a winter coat. The kids these days are idiots.

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THIS LAWYER IS A PIECE OF WORK

Have you ever read a book and didn't like the main character? That's the problem I'm having with The King of Lies by John Hart. Jackson Workman Pickens, known as "Work," is a lawyer who makes idiotic choices. He drinks to oblivion and then acts, he cheats on his wife, and he's spineless.

As an adult, he didn't stand up to his bastard of a father to help protect his sister and their mother. One night the father backhands the mother, knocking her down a flight of stairs, killing her in the process. The father disappears the same night and turns up murdered eighteen months later.

What does Work do? Well, he didn't man up when needed. Not that I blame him for his father's actions. His despicable father clearly killed the mother, whether "accidentally" or not. But Work could have stood up to his father and done something to help protect his emotionally battered sister and mother, and he didn't. Then the father extracts Work's co-operation:

"It was an accident, boy. You see that, don't you, son?"

I looked into his eyes, saw for the first time that he needed me, and felt myself nod; it was an irrevocable step." 

Good boy," he said. 

Then the ground fell away and I tumbled into the deep well of self-loathing. 

I have yet to find its bottom.

When the father's body was discovered with two bullets in his head, leaving a $40 million estate, the police naturally want to speak with all concerned. So what does Work, the lawyer, do? He once again drinks to oblivion, uses his long-suffering girlfriend for comfort, and misses one appointment after another with Detective Mills. When Work finally meets with Det. Mills, he lies.

I get the impression John Hart wants me to sympathize with Work, but I don't. I can't, because the character, as written, is an idiot. In fact, I find Hart's ploy insulting.

And while I'm at it, I've got one more criticism, and it's a biggie. The sex scenes are not only gratuitous, they're horrible. To be fair, most writers simply cannot write sex scenes. Hart obviously relishes writing about sex. One scene involves the rape of a teenage girl. Hart went into unnecessary details, larding the passage with far too much description, so much so that I skipped over half of it. I could almost picture Hart salivating over his keyboard. So far, the only writer who has a talent for writing about sex (in my opinion) is Janet Evanovich in her Stephanie Plum books. The scenes are pithy and fit the narrative, and they leave enough to the imagination to tingle my expectations without delving into syrupy, sloppy passages. (I've read the first ten books, or so, in the series.)

If the story was a dud, I would have ditched "The King of Lies" long before now. I'm about a third of the way into the book, and the story is finally picking up. I want to find out what happens. It's a shame that Work is such a spineless, unlikable character. So far, the only character I do like is Det. Mills.

"A STRIKING NEW TALENT"?  Yes, I'd agree John Hart does have talent.

"READS LIKE A BOOK ON FIRE"?  Not quite. The sloppy sections extinguish any flames.

"EXCEPTIONALLY DEEP AND COMPLEX"? Hardly.

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In other news...

> Not everyone is having mild weather.  Alaska town buried in 18 feet of snow; National Guardsmen recruited to help

> Man wears ‘crack jacket’ to court:  A man accused of drug trafficking showed up for court Friday in Fort Lauderdale sporting a jacket that bore a cartoon-style recipe for cooking crack cocaine.

> Greece Bank Run Shows No Sign Of Stopping: Deposit OutflowsContinue In November: The year is not over yet, and already Greece's banks have lost €36.7 billion of their deposit base in 2011, and a whopping €64.6 billion since the beginning of 2010, which is down from €233 billion to €173 billion in under two years.

> The Mafia Is Now "Italy's Largest Bank"

> C-SPAN Gets Romney Penis Question 

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"PRIDEFULLY IGNORANT" OR JUST NOSTALGIC?

One afternoon while my mother was next door with Granny Harris, rocking and chatting with her on her front porch, Granny’s telephone rang. The call was for my mother. Mrs. Goodier, the telephone operator, could see from her switchboard directly across the street that the reason my mother wasn't answering her own phone was because she was next door with Granny Harris. So Mrs. Goodier rang Granny's number to get in touch with my mother (a.k.a. call forwarding).

The time was the mid-1950s, when women were known as Mrs. or Miss, a time when a small town's informational superhighway was nothing more than a lady with a headset and a memory for details. 

In the village where I grew up, there was no Ma Bell conglomerate, just the Dimmock Hollow Telephone Company situated in the living room of a home on Main Street. Owing to the low population, the phone numbers were just three digits. Ours was 112 and my grandparents' was 290. But it really wasn't necessary to know anyone's number since the operator knew everyone anyway.  That picture is of Mrs. CA Bruning, switchboard operator and German translator, in Iowa,  but it looks pretty much the way I remember the Dimmock Hollow Telephone Company back in the mid-1950s.

On one particularly nasty winter's morning, my mother had trouble driving to work because the roads had not yet been sanded. When my mother called her boss -- which meant, of course, going through Mrs. Goodier first -- he advised my mother not to bother until the roads were safe. Later that morning, Mrs. Goodier rang my mother to inform her that the roads had been plowed and sanded.

There were no cell phones or beepers in the 50s, just the switchboard operator. Doctors made house-calls back then, and should you need to contact him while he was making his rounds, the operator knew exactly where to reach him. You could always count on the operator during any emergency -- fire, accident or whatever. Best of all, the operator was the first one to learn when school was closed for a snow day.

What generated this flood of memories was The Attack of the Pridefully Ignorant: "I pointed out that we were in the Information Age and that practically everyone who communicated did so using digital tools. About five seconds into my response, I just changed the subject; I am not prepared to argue with the pridefully ignorant." 

I'm not a Luddite; I'm not one to thwart progress. We have one PC and two laptops at home. I readily admit cell phones are indispensable. Each of our four grandchildren has one. They master technology long before I ever do. They can txt ms and tweet and type their stream-of-consciousness into their FB pages with ease. But suggest they write a letter...? Which is why in this reach-out-and-touch-y'all society, we seem to communicate less on a personal level. I'm from an age when there used to be an informational highway without much of the fuss. It has been my experience that for the acquisition and dissemination of data, you couldn’t beat the switchboard operator.

Speaking of cell phones... My butt just hung up on you.

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On to today's news...

We have our first snowfall of the season. It's a blustery 30*, with a wind chill of 16*. Tonight the mercury will dip to 4*.  This should please our neighbors, a young couple from Florida who have been anxious to see snow for the first time.

Since New Year's was on a Sunday, today is a legal holiday. Of course. I'm waiting for tomorrow when life should kick into gear again, when the mailman is back on his route and Rush is back on the air and all's right with the world.

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