BITS & PIECES

Openers:  "Mary Vetrell," he said, his dark, malevolent eyes flashing, "I want your answer."  The girl looked into his crafty face.  It had power, and one glance was enough to know he would stop at nothing to gain his ends.  His figure was dark and sinister against the linen fold paneling.  He was taller than Mary -- a good six feet, which seemed even more due the long black robes he wore.  He was all dark -- hair, eyes, under thick black brows which met over his nose.  His skin was sallow, and craft had etched deep lines beside his narrow, cruel mouth.  He was handsome in an evil way, and, without the churchly robes and tonsure, might have been a fine figure of a man.  The only touch of color about him flashed from the jewels on the huge cross he wore suspended from a gold chain about his neck and the ring on his finger, which was a ruby heavily mounted in gold.

Mary Vetrell was afraid of him.  Fear flowed through her like angry waters, but she held her head up high and let no trace of it show.

If the man was dark Mary was light itself.  She was tall and slim with all the grace of a young willow tree.  Her eyes, brown with little golden flecks in them, under straight brows with heavy lashes, looked calmly at the man who threatened her.  She had a mobile face, exceedingly lovely, her hair was a deep bronze -- what little could be seen under her coif, which was of the type Holbein painted.  She wore a rose-colored gown over an underdress of heavy green satin.  The stiff skirts billowed away from her slender waist which was encircled by a gold girdle.  The low cut square neck of her dress was outlined in gold thread and the glint of emeralds shone from the embroidery, of which there were also touches on her sleeves.

-- "The White Lady" by Dorothy Quick (from Weird Tales, January 1949)

Abbott Tevla is trying to force Mary to wed his nephew, a union he desperately needs for both political and financial reasons.  But Mary is in love with her childhood playmate, John de Winton.  As Mary discovers, it is not wise to thwart the Abbott, who has influence with both the king, Henry VII, and his current bride, Anne Boleyn.  Little does Tevla realize that Mary has the silent support of the spectral White Lady... 

Dorothy Gertrude Quick (1896-1962) met Mark Twain in the summer of 1907 while sailing on the Minnetonka en route to America.  They formed a quick friendship, bonding over shuffleboard. and corresponded for the next three years until Twain's death.  The young girl was interested in writing and twain encouraged her.  In 1961, Quick published Enchantment:  A Little Girl's Friendship with Mark Twain, filmed in 1991 as Mark Twain and Me, with Jason Robards as Twain and Amy Stewart as Quick.

Quick may be best-known for her nearly two dozen science fiction, fantasy, and horror short stories, most of which were published in Weird Tales.  She was an accomplished poet and published nine volumes of poetry between 1927 and 1960, as well as a planetary romance novel, Strange Awakening (1938), and a series of cozy mysteries featuring Diana Blakeley and her psychologist husband Allen.  Her "Patchwork Quilt" series of three stories in Unknown in the early 40s, about the eponymous quilt which allowed person to time-slip to various era; the demise of Unknown dur to World War II paper restrictions also brought an end to the promising series.

Many of Quick's short stories are available online in issues of their original magazine appearance.

Incoming: 

• Steve Alten, The Loch.  Cryptid-enthused thriller.  "Loch Ness holds secrets, ancient and deadly.  Does a monster inhabit its depths, or is it just a myth?  Why, after thousands of reported sightings and dozens of expeditions, is there still no hard evidence?  Marine biologist Zachary Wallace knows, but the shock of his near-drowning as a child on Loch Ness has buried all memories of the incident.  Now, a near-death experience suffered while on expedition in the Sargasso Sea has caused these long-forgotten memories to resurface.  Haunted by vivid night terrors, stricken by a sudden fear of water, Zach finds that he can no longer function as a scientist.  Unable to cope, his career all but over, he stumbles down a path of self-destruction...until he receives contact from his estranged father...a man he has not seen since his parents divorced and he left Scotland as a boy.  Angus Wallace, a wily Highlander who never worked an honest day in his life, is on trial for murdering his business partner.  Only Zachary can prove his innocence -- if he is innocent, but to do so means confronting the nightmare that nearly killed him seventeen years earlier."
• "Victor Appleton II" (house pseudonym, used by Jim Lawrence this time), Tom Swift and His Electronic Retroscope.  A Tom Swift Jr. adventure, the 14th in that series.  "Enraged Jaguars, violent winds of hurricane force, and a mysterious 'giant' who roams the jungle around the Mayan village in Yucatan, where Tom is encamped, are only a few of the perils that the young inventor encounters during his thrilling expedition.  But even more feared by the young inventor is an unknown saboteur, intent of destroying Tom's two latest inventions -- the electronic retroscope camera and his 'parachute' plane, designed for landing in small areas.  Undaunted by the hazards that surround him and assisted by the friendly natives, Tom perseveres in his objectives.  He tests his paraplane for landing maneuverability in densely grown jungle areas, and uses his retroscope (magic to the natives)  to restore -- photographically -- ancient carvings and writing on old Mayan ruins.    Tom is astounded when he discovers that some of the carved symbols are similar to the mathematical symbols used by his mysterious friends in outer space to communicate with him."  I've read and enjoyed the original Tom Swift novels despite their racism and jingoism, but I've never been able to get into the Tom Swift Jr. books. I thought I might give them one more try.
• Kelley Armstrong, Tales of the Underworld.  Urban fantasy collection with eight stories from her Underworld series.  "Some of Armstrong's most tantalizing lead characters appear alongside he unforgettable supporting players, who step out of the shadows and into the ight.  Have you ever wondered how lone wolf Clayton Danvers finally got bitten by the last thing he ever expected:  love?  Or how the hot-blooded  bad-girl witch Eve Levine managed to ensnare the cold ruthless corporate sorcerer Kristof Nast in one of the Otherworld's most unlikely pairings?  Would you like to be fly on the wall at the wedding of Lucas Cortez and Paige Winterbourne as their eminently practical; plans are upended by their well-meaning friends?  Or tag along with Lucas and Paige as they investigate a gruesome crime that looks to be the work of a rogue vampire?"  No, actually, I haven't wondered any of those things because I have not read any of Armstrong's 15 Underworld novels or her six Underworld story collections, nor any of the spin-off novels or collections.  I do have some of them buried on Mount TBR though, and I'll be reading them real soon.  Sometime. 
• Lawrence Block, Writing the Novel from Plot to Print to Pixel.  Non-fiction.  An updated and expanded edition of Block's 1979 book Writing the Novel:  From Plot to Print.  Block's advice on writing is always interesting, always welcome.
• Suzette Haden Elgin, The Communipaths.  Science fiction, one half of an Ace Double.  "Gentle Thursday was not so gentle to Anne-Charlotte ir her baby.  Four Fedrobots came and took the baby away.  Later they charged Anne-Charlotte with high treason against humankind because the baby was needed as a Communipath.  Anne-Charlotte screamed foul and dreadful things, and her mind projected an obscene sticky blackness the tried to drown us.  She flew over the ground like a low-flying bird, and then teleported herself in fits, popping up all over the landscape.  We don't know what to do about Anne-Charlotte.  Patrick says she is insane and not responsible.  But what if her baby is insane too?  Now we won't know until the baby gets mad enough to rip apart the galaxy..."  Bound with Louis Trimble, The Noblest Experiment in the Galaxy.  "In the midst of his uneventful life, Zeno Zenobius awoke to find himself a gentried citizen of Wooten Dorset, England -- a most unusual little town.  A utopia of perfect, pleasant weather.  A cornucopia of jasmine, eucalyptus and banana trees. He gave little thought to the mazing anachronisms amid the Victorian elegance:  hovercrafts, electric lights, typewriters, and Zeno's very own computer.  But the a nagging worry just below the depths of his conscious finally burst out like an infected boil, and Zeno discovered there were two of him:  Zeno Past and Zeno Present, Zeno I and Zeno II.  And the purpose of Zeno I was to find out what Zeno IO was doing in Wooten Dorset..."
• Ed Gorman & Martin H. Greenberg, editors, Once Upon a Crime.  Twenty-four original crime stories reimagining fairy tales.  Authors include Bill Crider, William L. DeAndrea, Edward D. Hoch, John Lutz, Simon Brett, Doug Allyn, Sharyn McCrumb, and Ed Gorman.  Sounds like fun.
• Sue Grafton, N Is for Noose and O Is for Outlaw.  Omnibus of two Kinsey Millhone novels.  At one time I read (and enjoyed) each of Grafton alphabetical novels as they came out.  For some reason I stopped at M and I really don't now why.  It's time to pick up where I left off.  I've met that author several times and found her to be a gracious and kind woman; she was truly thrilled when I asked her to sign one of her father's mystery novels.  I am sorry she never got to complete the alphabet.
• "David Grinnell" (Donald A. Wollheim) & Lin Carter, Destination:  Saturn.  An Ajax Calkins science fiction novel, one-half of an Ace Double.  "In his own way, Ajax Calkins was a modest man.  Modestly wealthy -- he was just a multi-billionaire.  Modestly ambitious -- he only wanted a world of his own.  Modestly cooperative -- he'd let the rest of the universe alone if they would let him alone.  and he did have a world of his own, too.  the strange planetoid Ajaxia with its load of pre-asteroidal science was all his -- and even Earth recognized that, provided they could some to an agreement.  But it was the sneaky Saturnians that were upsetting his applecart.  Rather than make a deal, they fabricated their own Ajax Calkins, set him up, and walked off with Ajaxia.  It was the sort of thing sure to make Ajax lose his modesty -- and set off after his kidnapped world single-handed -- with the rest of the Earth-Mars fleet too many millions of miles in the rear!"  Bound with Philip E. High, Invader on My Back.  "What are you, stranger from a century to come?  Are you a Delink:  Tough, warped, always anti-social, impossible to trust?; Are you a Scuttler:  A seemingly nice guy who dares not go out in the daylight, who scuttles along in shadow and fears to look up?;  Are you a Stinker:  The kind of person everybody else want to kill on sight, someone they've got to stamp out in fury real fast?; Are you a Norm?:  A guy who just wants to get along in the world, and never will with all those others around?;  Or are you one of the terrible new ones -- a Geek:  Who thinks the world is his oyster and that everyone else has got to be crushed ...and maybe has the talent to do it?  Because whatever you are, you better find out why and fast -- or, stranger from the future, there isn't going to be any future for you or for us, your ancestors, either!"
• Stuart Kaminsky, The Rockford Files:  Devil on My Doorstep.  Television tie-in novel, the second of two Rockford novels by Kaminsky.  This one "has Jim Rockford in one hell of a mess -- the credit card companies are after his stuff, his buddy Angel has cooked up another scheme that is a sure thing (sure to get them both killed), and he's way behind on everything.  When a beautiful young girl shows up at his door claiming to be the daughter of an old flame, he's dubious.  When she claims that she's his daughter, all the bells go off.  She's on the run, scared, and tells Jim that she thinks someone has killed her mother...and that that someone is her stepfather.  Whatever the outcome, Jim will do what it takes to find the truth, no matter how painful it may be.  And he'll even try not to get killed in the process."  It been more than twenty years since I've read Kaminsky and I've never read either his Rockford or his CSI tie-ins.  It might be time to rectify that.
• Laurie King.  The Moor.  A Mary Russell-Sherlock Holmes mystery.  "In the eerie wasteland of Dartmoor, Sherlock Holmes summons his devoted wife and partner, Mary Russell, from her studies at Oxford to aid in the investigation of a death and some disturbing phenomena of a decidedly supernatural origin,  Through the mists of the moor there have been sightings of a spectral coach made of bones carrying a woman long-ago accused of murdering her husband -- and of a hound with a single glowing eye.  Returning to the scene of one of his most celebrated cases, The Hound of the Baskervilles, Holmes and Russell investigate a mystery darker and more unforgiving than the moors themselves."
• James Patterson & Brendan DuBois, The Summer House.  Thriller. "Is there anybody who doesn't like the idea of getting away from it all?  But seclusion can have its dark side.  Take the Summer House.  Once a luxurious getaway on a rustic lake in small-town Georgia, then a dilapidated crash pad, and now the grisly scene of a nightmare mass murder.  Eyewitnesses point of four Army Rangers -- known as the Ninja Squad -- recently returned from Afghanistan.  To ensure that justice is done, the Army sends Major Jeremiah Cook, a war veteran and former NYPD cop, to investigate.  But Cook and his elite team are stonewalled at every turn.  Local law enforcement resists the intrusion, and forces are rallying to make certain that damning secrets die alongside the victims.  With his own people in the crosshairs, Cook takes a desperate gamble to find answers -- even if it means returning to a hell of his own worst nightmares..."  Bought because of DuBois, who has never been less than readable.
• Stefan Petrucha, Ripper. Thriller.   "There is a killer loose in New York City, and Carver Young is the only one who sees the startling connection between the recent string of murders and the most famous serial killer in history:  Jack the Ripper.  Time is winding down until the killer claims another victim; but Carver soon sees that, to the Ripper, this all a game that he may be destined to lose."
• Robert Thorogood, The Marlow Murder Club.  Mystery, the first in a series.  "To solve an impossible murder, you need an impossible hero...Judith Potts is seventy-seven years old and blissfully happy.  She lives on her on in a faded mansion just outside Marlow, there's no man in her life to tell her what to do or how much whisky to drink, and to keep herself busy, set sets crosswords for national newspapers.  One evening while out swimming in the Thames, Judith witnesses a brutal murder.  the local police don't believe her story, so she decides to investigate for herself and is soon joined in he quest by Suzie, a salt-of-the-earth dog walker, and Becks, the prim and proper wife of the local vicar.  Together, they are the Marlow Murder Club.  When another body turns up, they realize they have a real-life serial killer on their hands.  And the puzzle they set out to solve has become a trap from which they might never escape."   Thorogood is best -known for creating Death in Paradise (I'm anxiously awaiting the 14th season, now being filmed).  The first season of The Marlow Murder Club premiered in the UK this past March.
• Richard Wheeler, Richard Lamb. Western.  "Richard Lamb was a peace-loving man hoping to live out the rest of his days with his Indian wife and their large extended family, but the Partridge brothers had other plans -- deadly plans to advance their careers.  All they needed was a little Indian resistance."  Few people wrote of the historical west better than Wheeler; he should be on everyone's reading list.

Roger Corman:  The "Pope of Pop Cinema" and the :"King of Cult" died this week at age 98.  Known for his low-budget independent films, Corman still managed to become a major force in cinema, helping to launch the careers of noted directors Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Ron Howard, Peter Bogdanovich, Joe Dante, James Cameron, Jonathan Demme, and John Sayles, and the acting careers of Peter Fonda, Jack Nicholson, Dennis Hopper, Bruce Dern, Diane Lane, Robert Vaughan, George Hamilton, and William Shatner, and hired scripters such as Richard Matheson, Charles Beaumont, Robert Towne, R. Wright Campbell, Ray Russell, and Howard Browne.  Corman gave us a slew of films inspired by Edgar Allan Poe titles (if not the plots), and he gave us Little Shop of Horrors.

He also gave us a gazillion forgettable but enjoyable films, such as 1961's Creature from the Haunted Sea, starring absolutely no9 one you have ever heard of:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I18mPuhGPMk

Duane Eddy (1938-2024):  A lot of instrumentalist have had hit records, but Duane Eddy made the twang cool.

Rebel-Rouser:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGPG_Y-_BZI

Forty Miles of Bad Road:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoZymsInDEA

Peter Gunn:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=296wS9ome4M

Cannonball:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3wMQ7fi0_U  

Raunchy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Q9XVizZ2mU

 

Julian of Norwich:  Julian (c. 1343 - after 1416) was a British anchoress who was seriously ill and thought to be on her deathbed 651 years ago on this day in 1373, when she received a vision (or visions, accounts vary) of Jesus (or the Virgin Mary (again, accounts vary and there was no one there taking notes).  Tradition has it that she asked the vision why there was so much suffering in the world.  The answer was simply that all will be well again.  This is a message that I have had to hold onto at various times in my life, and it was the message of one of my favorite songs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqssaNRv9Ko

Ole Worm:   What a great name!  Put an accent over the e and you're celebrating the little critter sometimes found floating in a bottle of tequila.  Even without an accent, you might be referring to Ole Yeller's more unfortunate cousin -- the one with trichinosis.  But Ole Worm was a real person, a Dane who was born in 1588 and shuffled off this mortal coil some 66 years layer in 1654.  His name has often been Latinized to Olaus Wormius, and under that name he has been immortalized by H. P. Lovecraft as the fictional translator of the Necronomicon from Greek to Latin; Lovecraft's Olaus Wormius did the translation in 1228, some three centuries before the real-life Ole Worm lived -- Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn, indeed.

But who was the real-life Ole Worm, and why does he merit our attention (other than that today would be his 436th birthday, of course)?  Worm was a physician, natural historian, and antiquary who taught at the University of Copenhagen and was the personal physician to Denmark's King Christian IV  
When a bubonic plague raged through Copenhagen in 1654, he remained in the city to tend to the sick, an act that led to his own death from the plague.

Many of his scientific contributions were in the field of embryology.  The small bones that fill the gaps in cranial structures are named the Wormian bones in his honor.  In the field of natural history, Ole Worm was a bridge between science and superstition.  In 1638, he determined that unicorns did not exist and that purported unicorn horns actual came from narwals.  He was unsure about the supposed poisonous properties of the horns, however, and -- Kristi Noem take note -- ground up narwal horns and fed then to his pets to see if they become poisoned; I'm not sure whether this proved the poisonous properties of the "unicorn horn" or not, but the pets survived -- on second thought, Kristi Noem, don't bother.  Worm also proved that lemmings were rodents and not spontaneously generated by the air.  He was the first to show that the bird of paradise actually had feet -- there were a lot of strange ideas floating around before Worm came on the scene.  

Worm was a great collector of curiosities, many assembled from the new world.  He had taxidermed animals, fossils, and samples of many minerals, plants, animals, and man-made objects.  Worm had a pet auk and his drawing of the bird is the only one of a living auk in existence.  Engraving of his collection , along with musings (some pretty speculative) about them were posthumously published as the four-part Museum Wormianum.

Worm was also a great student of Danish runes.  Fasti Danici, or "Danish Chronology," 1626, examined Danish runic lore; Runir seu Danica literatura antiquissima, or "Runes, the Oldest Danish Literature," 

1636, transcribed runic texts; and Danicorum Monumentorum, or "Danish Monuments." 1643, was the first written study of runestones, and depicted many runestones and inscriptions that are now lost.  At least once Worm saw more than was really there -- he "read" a word inscribed on one rune that turned out to be just a natural striation of the rock

Ole Worm, at heart, was a perpetual student, aiding in this endeavor by coming from a wealthy family.  It didn't hurt that his wife, a daughter of a friend and colleague, also came from a prominent and wealthy family.   His father-in-law was a noted mathematician and physicist who coined the terms "tangent" and "secant."

Worm's peripetetic curiosity helped set the stage for an age of scientific discovery, and he should be honored for something other than a fiction translation of the Necronomicon.

"...and Sullivan":  Today is also the birthday of Arthur Sullivan (1842-1900), who collaborated with W. S. Gilbert on fourteen light operas, including The Pirates of Penzance, H.M.S. Pinafore, and The Mikado.

Who can forget this classic Gilbert and Sullivan "song"?

https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=mississippi+jon+hurt+sinfgs+gilbert+and+sullivan&mid=62CB4316462A1676F48962CB4316462A1676F489&FORM=VIRE

Gef, the Talking Mongoose:  Today is also the birthday of Nandor Fodor (born Nandor Friedlander, 1895-1964), a leading authority on poltergeists, ghosts, mediumship, and other paranormal phenomena during the 1930s, although by the 1940s he rejected the paranormal and became a skeptic and offered a psychoanalytic approach to paranormal investigations.  (Fodor had at one time been an associate of Freud and worked with him on subjects such as prenatal development and dream interpretation.)  One of Fodor's investigations concerned the "Darby Spook," also known as Gef, the Talking Mongoose.  To be fair, I'm more interested in the mongoose than I am in Fodor.

Gef was owned by the Irving family, farmers in Cashen's Gap, near the small town of Darby on the Isle of Man.  In September 1931, James and Margaret Irving and their 13-year-old daughter Voirrey met an "extra extra clever mongoose" named Gef, who claimed to have born in New Delhi in 1852.  Gef told them that he was "a  ghost on the form of a mongoose" and that "I am a freak.  I have hands and I have feet, and if you saw me you'd faint, you'd be petrified, mummified, turned into stone or a pillar of salt."  Well, eventually they him.  Gef was the size of a small rat, with yellowish fur and a bushy tail.  The Irvings and Gef developed a nice symbiotic relationship.  They fed him biscuits, chocolate, and bananas left in a saucer hanging from the ceiling; Gef took the food when he thought no one was watching.  in return, Gef watched over the farm, guarding the house and warning them of any approaching persons or unfamiliar dog.  If they forget to put out the stove fire at night, Gef would fo that for them.  He woke them up when they might oversleep.  If mice invaded, Gef would scare them away (which he preferred to killing the rodents).  Gef would often accompany them to the market, staying hidden in bushes while still talking to the family.  Gef soon became the talk of the village (and soon, of the country).  Several neighbors claimed to have heard him speak, and several claimed to have seen him.  James Irving died in 1945 and Margaret and Voirry left the farm (and.presumably, Gef).  The new owner, Leslie Graham, claimed that he had shot and killed Gef in 1946, but the body he produced was black and white and much larger that Gef was said to be.  So perhaps he's still there.

The story of the talking mongoose brought many investigators to the Irving farm, including noted  paranormal investigators such as Harry Price, Hereward Carrington, and Nandor Fodor.  Alas, there was not much physical evidence; Footprints, hair samples, and stains on the wall supposedly from Gef turned out to be from the Irvings sheepdog; a few blurred photographs supposedly of Gef also turned out to be of the dog.  Harry Price was careful not to call Gef a hoax, but he noted that the double-walled structure of the farmhouse's interior rooms, left air spaces that could be a type of "speaking tube."  Fodor did not believe that Gef was a deliberate hoax; instead he came up with a complex psychological theory about the 'split-off part" of James Irving's personality.  The most logical explanation, and the one most favored, was ventriloquism, usually pointed toward the young daughter.  One reporter wrote that when he caught Voirry making certain noises, James Irving tried to convince him that the noises came from elsewhere.  Voirry died in 2005, denying that Gef was her creation.

A 2003 film, Nandor Fodor and the Talking Mongoose, starred Simon Pegg, Minnie Driver, and Christopher Lloyd, also featured the voice of Neil Gaiman as Gef.  Gef and Fodor are also part of a 2022 audio drama, Doctor Who:  The Eight Doctor Adventures: What Lies Inside?

Other May 13 Birthdays:  Boxer Joe Louis, novelist Daphne du Maurier, Golden Girl Bea Arthur, Weaver Fred Hellerman, scum of the Earth cult leader Jim Jones, science fiction great Roger Zelazny, "My Guy" singer Mary Wells, Stevie Wonder, and Stephen Colbert.

National Apple Pie Day:  What can be more American than that?  For my money, the best apple pies use at least two, preferably three, varieties of apples, blending both tart and sweet flavors.  Some people claim one should use only one kind of apple so the slices cook evenly, BUT THEY ARE WRONG! 

Here's one recipe that sounds pretty good:

https://www.livewellbakeoften.com/classic-apple-pie/

Quote:  "The love of beauty is one of nature's greatest healers." -- Ellsworth Huntington  (I realized that the first time I saw my wife.)

Florida Man:

• Florida Man Alexander Deltoro Jr. shot his mother to death in an argument with his father on December 14, 2019.   Deltoro failed this week to have the charges dismissed  by using the state's "stand your ground" law.  The family had been out for dinner celebrating Deltoro's 28th birthday,  On the way home, the son got into an argument with his father.  At home the argument devolved into pushing and shouting.  When 60-year-old Cynthia Deltoro stepped between the two and separated them, Deltoro pulled out a concealed gun and shot her in the face.  Deltoro said that he wasn't wearing his glasses and couldn't see and that he was convinced that his father was armed.  Florida's stand your ground law is pretty lax, but this was just a step too far.
• Florida Man If You Can Find Him Virgil Price, 39, of West Palm Beach has vanished after freediving a World War II wreck some 13 miles southwest of a Fort Pierce inlet.  Price was last seen diving for the wreck of the USS Halsey, a 435-foot-long ship destroyed by a German U-boat in 1942; all crew member managed to escape and the ship now lies in three pieces buried in the sand some 65 feet from the surface.  Deputies are hoping that Price is not below the surface and have asked that if anyone has seen him to notify the authorities.
• Florida Man "El Gato," aka Julio Alvera-Hernadez, 54, has been arrested for beating a man with a golf club before stabbing him in the neck and stealing the victim's wallet and gold chain.   Alvera-Hernandez also allegedly threatened the man with a gun.  The golf club used in the attack was shattered into three pieces.  Alvera-Hernandez is being held without bail.  In a sadly typical reporting error, the WFLA news story of the event said at different times that both the victim and the accused was known as "El Gato."  Fact-checking is a lost art.
• Somewhat outside the purview of this Florida Man review, we have 42-year-old unnamed Alabama Man Who Really Should Have Been a Florida Man who crashed his car into a pole outside the Bass Pro Shop in Leeds, Alabama, then stripped naked, ran into the store and dove into a fish tank, playing in the water for about five minutes before law enforcement arrived.  When the cops arrives, the man exited the water, shouted at the cops, then jumped back into the aquarium, before exiting a final time, falling on the concrete floor, and knocking himself out.  The man's family told police that he is suffering from mental health issues.  I am just so sad that this did not happen in Florida because it should have.  It really should have.

Good News:

• Man with 25-year history of diabetes cured by stem cell treatment      https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/59-year-old-man-who-had-type-2-diabetes-for-25-years-is-cured-by-stem-cells/
• Dogs shown to make a big difference in mental health and academics among elementary school children       https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/dogs-placed-in-elementary-schools-making-big-difference-in-academics-and-mental-health-for-michigan-students/
• Cancer vaccine triggers "fierce" immunity in malignant brain tumors   https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/cancer-vaccine-triggers-fierce-immune-response-to-fight-malignant-brain-tumors/
• Number of fish on US "overfishing" list reaches an all-time low      https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/the-number-of-fish-on-us-overfishing-list-reaches-an-all-time-low-led-by-mackerel-and-snapper/
• Drones find dozens of land mines in Ukraine so they can be defused     https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/drones-find-dozens-of-landmines-littering-ukraine-so-they-can-be-defused/
• Here's a rope-dangling rescue of young mountain lion cubs before an oncoming deluge      https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/watch-rope-dangling-rescue-of-young-mountain-lions-before-dam-deluge/

Today's Poem:

(Untitled)

When I was ten, I thought the greatest bliss

Would be to rest all day upon hot sand under a burning sun...

Time has slipped by, and finally I've known

The lure of beaches under exotic skies

And find my dreams to be misguided lies

For God!  How dull it is to rest alone.

-- Daphne du Maurier

(a hand-written poem found on a sheet of paper hidden behind a photograph; the other side of the paper had another unknown handwritten poem, titled "Song of the Happy Prostitute")