Days, Nights, Surrogates, Trials, And Untold Stories

And that's just in the last few books I've read!

Yesterday at work while business was slow I finished reading a book I started in ... according to the sticker, Main Street Books got this in its used book section in January, Days of War, Nights of Love authored by members of the CrimethInc. Workers' Collective. Published in 2001, but no ISBN because by its very nature it won't go through traditional publishing channels. I'm not sure I should say this is anarchic, but its emphasis on going with one's personal morals instead of an overarching ethic (read article of faith, rule of law, and etc.) and making politics personal, joyous, and exciting rather than deciding how it affects a nation or the planet is not relevant to us because we are NOT the nation (or the planet) comes across ... no, it just comes.


The book that wounded me without stabbing me.


I'm not sure I would be that proud of the technological terror I'd spawned, either, with the creation of surrogates (formally, virtual selves that you and I from the comfort of our homes in the near-future can plug into to interact with others). The Robert Venditti & Brett Weldele graphic novel The Surrogates: Flesh and Bone (ISBN 9781603090186) set in the late 2030s finds patrolman Harvey Greer investigating who was behind the murder a teen committed with his dad's surrogate and brings in race, technology, and some people's plain unwillingness to change disguised as religious fervor. Religious fervor, as opposed to article of faith.


With those last two sentences I think I can relate (more) to Rumplestiltskin. Scary thought.


In the last two episodes of Once Upon A Time for this season (broadcast on the same night but we had to watch them two days apart), we find Henry the son of Emma and Regina -- Emma's by birth, Regina's by adoption -- seeking to destroy magic using the Olympian Crystal brought back from the Underworld and the Holy Grail he and Violet find in the New York Public Library (I'm guessing from the stone lions). Since Rumple needs magic to break the Sleeping Curse on his wife Belle and wants magic for his own protection, a choice he makes when between Belle and the Crystal he chooses the Crystal, all the main characters end back in Storybrooke after a sojourn for some in the Land of Untold Stories. And we see at least two denizens back in Storybrooke before fading to black.


With that, I fear OUAT has jumped the shark.


But I digress. If you could separate the good and bad parts of you, could half of you live? It may add to an explanation of my interest in the Nuremberg Trials where the chief Nazis were tried after World War II ended in Europe. Paul Roland's The Nuremberg Trials (ISBN 9780785826071) amply illustrates and diligently presents what led up to the Trials themselves, setting up standards for international law (no matter how incongruous a term I find that) that weren't just a case of the winners doing whatever they want to the losers, as most of our history has been. Keeping the Trials from becoming an entirely American show was a feat in itself, and I'm not surprised at that. If only what's happened then and what's happening now doesn't set us back another seventy years!


So from mayhem to magic to mayhem again, I return home.


And for a while last night, it was just me at home. I called Martha and let her know I'd likely be late because a person called me and said they'd be getting into Minot especially late and could I please stay open a few extra minutes ... not that I believe it's good karma, but I was pleased to do so. Martha had the kids with her at choir practice and I ate the three meat Totino's pizza they got for me and settled in before they came back. Yes, the kids got to bed a mite late so we all could catch "An Untold Story" (the season finale for OUAT, see two paragraphs above) but with school coming to an end for them next Wednesday, we can give a little. Sarah with her fourth grade had a field trip to Bismarck our state capital, and tomorrow Jeffrey with others in his class gets his summer birthday celebrated! It's an exciting time for everybody at my house.


And we will have many stories still to tell,

David