#lindbergh case

[cinemaquiles]

TOP 10 FILMES E MINISSÉRIES BIOGRÁFICOS / BASEADOS EM FATOS REAIS FEITOS PARA A TV SEGUNDO O IMDB 

[mulders-too-large-shirt]

s4 episode 4 thoughts

woohoo!! it feels, again, like our separation has been so long, but it has been about… 3 whole days. oh, how i miss the earlier months in which i had time to post episode thoughts every day… 

this episode sounds interesting!!! no idea how someone’s thoughts could be captured on film, but we do a lot of disbelief suspension around these parts, with varying levels of success.

wait. hold on. i just saw the description for the episode after this one. what the hell is mulder getting himself into with that. do we need more mulder ex lore? i don’t need that. it doesn’t make me feel warm and fuzzy inside. 

putting aside my many questions on that matter to focus on what is here in front of us.

(author’s note post-episode: …. woaghhh. scully…)

in all honesty, having processed my thoughts, i think this one was just a LITTLE bit too intense for me. which i recognize is okay, and to each their own. but i need to speak my Truth.

liveblogging commences below 

we begin with this sketchy looking dude, who is being rude as hell to a woman putting on lipstick before getting a passport photo taken. god forbid a woman want to serve… then he says to act natural while not acting natural himself. HYPOCRITE!

she goes in for a passport photo and…. she left her money in the car! she must return to this unfortunate man and go get it. but someone is following her…. 

he did something to her… and she gets back to the car to “billy”, but someone did something to him, too!! he appears to be dead and bleeding from the ear!! then she falls to the ground and tries to crawl to safety, but the mystery man in the yellow rain jacket comes back for her…. 

and the man in the photo store looks at the passport photos, but despite taking just a standard headshot, he sees the woman’s dying face in the images!!

oh. that is an unpleasant day on the job for such a nice seeming man.

this intro always makes me laugh... i’m sorrrrryyy the ufo pictures just remind me that this show is fundamentally unserious 

scully and mulder are rolling up to a town in michigan, while he asks her for any thoughts on the case. it appears this woman was abducted three days ago. and billy was punctured in the brain. yuck.

okay, so her name is mary. and this poor pharmacist…. he has to take people’s pictures, and give them drugs, AND deal with this nonsense 

they are at the pharmacy where the “druggist” (they keep using that term which i have never heard before) is showing them his camera, which he keeps under lock and key, and i notice he has some fun candy in the background. but i assume things are not fun at this time for him. 

scully wants to see the camera, and mulder takes a step back to let her pass. it kinda looks like he does that thing where he touches her back, but it’s hard to tell. and once again for all readers, that thing where men touch your back is only attractive when it’s mulder to scully and not between some randos!

scully notices something on the pharmacist’s foot, and also that the film is out of date. she is always noticing things. one of her many lovely qualities. 

mulder calls the pharmacist “bruno hauptman” and i don’t get that reference so i do what i do best: go to wikipedia. oh! bruno is the guy that was executed for kidnapping the lindbergh baby. i don’t know why i thought that mystery was unsolved. i guess it’s because the article is saying it was a heavily criticized and debated case. huh, a mystery for another time.

anyway, mulder is saying this all tauntingly with his stupid beautiful mulder smile, but scully is saying yeah, this nice old pharmacist doesn’t look like a usual suspect.

but she does point out that the film has heat damage, and a heater is right there… “so you think that would make it look like she posed screaming for a passport photo?” <- LMAO MAN LET HER FINISH

BAHAHA she is onto nothing 🔥🔥 

“plus, the film is two years out of date” “oh” the- the photographic chemistry could have changed” (mulder nodding) “uh-huh” “the- the dyes fade… they… alright, what’s your theory?” <- BAHAHA love that… you have to admit when you don’t know wtf is going on! i had full confidence she would pull something out of her science-y brain, but sometimes you just don’t know!

(this stupid scene had me giggling, as did her face of resignation)

mulder seems to ALSO have no idea wtf is going on, but as they discuss this, a police officer walks in and says they might have wasted the agents’ time…. what does that mean? did they figure it out that quick?

back at the house of the victims, they meet a postal inspector. okay!!! that’s fun and different. and i pause to write this down, and scully is SO beautiful, i actually might blow up. a full on explosion where once stood me is liable to go down. oh my gooooood.

okay: postal inspector is investigating a mail theft. mary had been working at the postal office, stealing people’s credit cards, and her boyfriend was signing them! oh! very illegal. inspector seems to think she faked her disappearance, but mulder points out that would not explain the stabbing of the boyfriend. also, they have this creepy ass broccoli magnet on their fridge which. bleugh. it did not spark joy.

mulder wants a camera from their house, and he finds one! did he just. take a picture of scully…? oh my god. he said “stand back, scully, it’s loaded” and took one… he didn’t even let her pose or anything… that's so cute... even if it's a little weird to use a dead person's camera from a crime scene... he wanted to take her picture

no, i am all wrong, for it appears he is just… taking random photos. because someone in the 60’s once claimed that he could concentrate really hard on undeveloped film and show his thoughts. uh. press f to doubt.

(man, i want to live in that very brief and exciting moment where i thought he was taking a cute little candid of her again… it was so blissful there)

wait. what da hell. he just clicked the camera a bunch of times and it comes up with the screaming mary photo again and again.

oh… he thinks that someone was stalking mary, and the stalker’s psychic energy altered the film by him coming in its proximity. i didn't realize that was how psychic powers worked but i am listening and learning

scully says that these images had to be doctored, which is, again, a reasonable conclusion, but he asks her to “what if” the situation and just think about it!!! just imagine!!!

cutscene to… someone crawling on the side of the road. it’s mary!!! she’s bleeding from her eyes (?) and not responding at all to the police car arriving behind her.

now she is in a stretcher at the hospital that our agents are helping to steer. they are kind like that. she had a “painkiller cocktail” in her system, but that wouldn’t account for her condition. scully orders a PET scan for her, a term i have never heard before. i love when she uses terms i have never heard before.

they’re putting mary in what looks like an MRI sort of thing to look at her brain. whatever it is, it is clearly very bad, as told by scully’s visible reaction and audible declaration of “oh my god”, while mulder looks at her and asks “what is it”? 

(and while i appreciate that this is a sensitive moment for our story, mulder not knowing wtf is going on with these medical things always is a favorite trope of mine, 1. because me too, and 2. he is usually such an insufferable know-it-all i love watching him admit when he knows nothing. humility!)

oh my god… “she has been given what’s called a transorbital lobotomy” <- oh that does NOT sound good… it used to be known as an ice pick lobotomy!!! oh my gosh i’ve heard of that one!! ice pick… eye sockets… i can feel myself growing faint…

but whoever did it, did it wrong… who would do a lobotomy without knowing how to do it the right way???

in the machine, mary is mumbling!! she is saying “unruhe” according to the closed captioning, but it just sounds like faint groaning to me. however, given that this phrase is the title of the episode, i venture to guess that it IS in fact relevant.

a policeman bursts in and says there has been a second abduction, and our agents look deeply sorrowful at this news, seeming to know what will happen next if they cannot crack the case.

oh! now we are seeing the new victim, and whoever took her is in fact saying “unruhe”, and other stuff in german! NO! he pulls out a pick…. fade to black. 

WHO in this small seeming town speaks german and has a psychic effect on cameras… ?? i hope this can be narrowed down to a slim pool of candidates!!

scully is going into the next crime scene, where mulder reports that a man has been murdered, and his secretary alice taken. this is not good.

mulder has been looking into what that word alice was mumbling means- first in a phone book, but then as a translation, i guess, because it means “trouble” in german.

WOAH, WHAT?

! SCULLY LORE REVEAL ! she took german in college!!! and knows that the word is more accurately translated as “unrest”! 

(oh my gosh, i need to get back into compiling lore reveals at the end of each season like i did for s1…. good thing i take such detailed notes so i can go back and do them for s2 and s3)

((we didn’t get a ton in the last 2 seasons, so i thought of doing one post for both seasons- but the organization freak in me wants to do 1 per season, so i’ll go through them again and see what i can find when i get bored someday))

scully hands him a photo from the first crime scene, but mulder says the criminal wasn’t there, because if he was, he would have altered the photos. scully seems annoyed that he’s looking for psychic photos and not crime scene evidence, but he explains that whoever did this has to be very good, and photos may be their only lead since he doesn’t seem to know he is doing it. but then scully sees something and her eyes go SUPER wide… and she says she wants to show him something. 

oh! they find a construction company’s logo at both sites. so maybe the criminal worked at places under construction and was able to kidnap the women…? this theory is brought to you by scully.

he says she might be right, but he is going back to DC to get analysis on the photo. she still is skeptical, but he says that since the woman’s time is running out, that’s all the more reason to analyze the one piece of hard evidence they do have, and that he’ll be in touch. 

he must have really cared if he said he’ll be in touch, because usually he just runs off to god knows where to do god knows what. 

(and how much time would they even HAVE if he has to drive all the way back??? that isn’t a quick trip, is it???)

the same criminal dude from before is now saying stuff in german and taping alice’s mouth shut, while mulder is back in the photo lab sitting practically on top of this nerdy yet attractive fellow, asking for the blurriness in the image to be reduced. and it reveals very scary looking demon things! 

mulder sees someone in the back of the photo… and they get a more enhanced image on the face, but it isn’t clear to me who it is. i felt like i was supposed to know who it was, but luckily i wasn't!

scully is ordering people out to canvas and investigate the employees who may have been working at both construction sites. i like when she does that.

mulder and the lab guy figure out that there is a shadow in the background of the photo from the kidnapper. “he’s standing over her, he means to pass judgement on her, like a god” <- an unsettling thing to say, mr. spooky

scully rolls up to one of the construction sites and i’m thinking, oh please, do not get kidnapped, please please, it’s not something we need today. she’s yelling “hello” and no one is answering... but she hears something….. 

it’s a… guy on stilts? it’s the foreman named gerry. oh… could he have made the big shadow in the picture his stilts? but he doesn’t sound german…

mulder calls and says the kidnapper’s legs are unusual, either he’s very tall or he wants to be. stilts man?!?! is it you?!

instead of playing it chill upon hearing this news, she hangs up on mulder, and turns to gerry and says “unruhe”, pulling out her gun. but he uses his stilts to jump across the building! only to collapse and fall. his getaway is thwarted as scully tells him to stop or she’ll shoot, and to prove her seriousness, she does so. but i’m not buying he’s the guy!! sorry my queen!!

NO!! I WAS FOOLED, WASN’T I??? she reaches into his pocket and pricks her finger!!! NOOO! it’s a huge pick in there! like we saw before at the kidnapping!!

is she gonna be drugged from that….

(thankfully, the pick itself did not contain the drugs)

they’re interrogating the dude, and he denies everything. i mean, i guess a lot of people could have stilts and a pick at construction sites. maybe they didn't grab the right fellow.

he says that tool is used to start keyholes in the sheetrock and all fixtures. a good excuse…

but he really does seem confused. 

however, mulder brings up that gerry was arrested before, for attacking his father with an axe handle until he spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair. OH! this is not promising.

gerry says that he was institutionalized, which mulder reveals was for a schizophrenic disorder. gerry claims that since his release, he had been taking care of his father 24/7, until he passed away in january. well i’m not entirely sure if that makes amends, but i guess it’s better than nothing?

“and how did you feel about that?” asks mulder about gerry's father's death, sounding very much like the psychology expert i sometimes forget that he is. then he reveals that the same year gerry attacked his father, gerry’s sister passed. connected….?

gerry is staring intently back at scully, saying that she looks troubled. oh! do not talk to her that way.

then mulder comes in with the enhanced photo from earlier, and asks if it shows gerry’s father. he seems taken aback, like it really is his father, and then further taken aback when he pulls out the full photo and asks if those demons figures are what he sees when he closes his eyes. this finally gets gerry to crack and say that he knows where alice is, and that she is safe, “from the howlers”. HUH? 

(is it bad my thoughts went straight to a howler monkey when he said that? i was thinking man, monkeys do not look like that at all. you and i have seen some different monkeys, gerry. but no, he does not refer to those types of howlers)

a ton of cop cars are arriving in the woods, to find alice, who is bleeding from the eyes, which can only mean one thing in this context. oh noooo. scully seems horrified and as if she is blaming herself 

oh, we get a very charged exchange here. she says it doesn’t matter what is in the photos, or if it shows gerry’s dreams or nightmares, because it’s over, and they couldn’t save alice. she starts the engine, and when i think she’s gonna drive off without mulder, he hops in. i bet that guilt that doctors feel when that cannot save a patient is even worse in her than in usual doctors, because she also has to deal with trying to rescue people from crime. :(

gerry is being taken in and photographed by the cops. but instead of a mugshot, when we see the picture, it’s the guy who was taking him in with a bullet hole in his head. oh! so that seems to confirm earlier suspicions on behalf of mulder. 

OH NO!! gerry reaches out and grabs the gun from the cop! NOOO! 

mulder points out that the image from that interaction showed the man shot in the head, but in reality, he was shot in his throat. so i guess it’s not based on reality as much as his intentions? sure, why not. and scully says there was a robbery at the pharmacy back where the very first photo was taken. no! our druggist friend!

gerry took all of the film in the store and a ton of drugs for more “twilight sleep”, which is a bad sign. i think i’ve seen this film before…

scully thinks that perhaps he was stalking his next victim at the construction site, and i’m thinking, girl i think he picked out his victim alright, but i don’t think she’s in the apartments.

mulder wants to wait a bit for his photo to come out. so he sends her to pull the car around and i’m screaming NO, NO, DON’T SEPARATE, NOT WITH A GUY ON THE LOOSE WHO LOOKED AT HER AND SAID “YOU LOOK TROUBLED” AFTER DOING 2 DIY LOBOTOMIES ON OTHER WOMEN AND KILLING 2 OTHER MEN! JUST WAIT A MINUTE AND WALK TO THE CAR TOGETHER!!!

but she cannot hear me….

NO! as she unlocks the car, a hand from beneath reaches out and pierces her foot with a needle NOOOO… and it’s gerry and she’s going down and NOOOOOO!!!!

AND MULDER PULLS THE PHOTO OUT TO FIND GERRY WAS THINKING OF SCULLY WHEN IT WAS TAKEN!

he is RUNNING after that car. despite his best efforts, even trackstar mulder is not as fast as a car, yet he follows her and screams her name regardless. until he realizes he will not win this race.

back at the police office, mulder is STARING at that photograph, the one showing scully being taken by these horrific creatures known as “the howlers”. he’s asking for any leads, including “does he have a summer house? a winter house?” which could be seen as desperation for answers or mulder being out of touch with how many people grew up with summer houses, take your pick.

OH! in gerry’s wallet was his father’s obituary. and his father was a dentist… and the name sounds german… 

so they go to his old dentist’s office, where they did an ad for the pain medicine cocktail he’s been cooking up. and mulder finds a footprint and a missing dentist’s chair. 

NO!! scully is in the dentist’s chair at some undisclosed location. waking up to find her arms and legs bound with a pick on the table and gerry in the distance. she’s watching him…. and she says to let her go. 

he begins his german ranting that has happened before the other lobotomies, and she… RESPONDS???? in clumsy german??? she says she has no unrest and doesn’t need saving, but he insists she does??? WHAT!!!

good on her for remembering some words after all those years :,)

he says everyone has some unrest, but especially her. she thinks she must remind him of his sister, and they talk about “the howlers”, who live inside your head, and make you say and do things you don’t mean.

so she turns the tables on this, and says maybe there are no such thing as howlers, and maybe he made them up to justify what his father did to his sister, which sets him off further. OH… so she thinks gerry attacking his father and his sister’s death were related. damn… that’s heavy

she tries to convince him that the “howlers” are just in HIS head, and no one else’s, as he approaches with a camera to try and prove they do exist. because cameras cannot lie!!

back at the dentist’s office, mulder appears to be losing it. mumbling about the 6 fingers the howler had in the photos, and yelling “WHY are there 6?” to no one in particular, as if he can find an answer through sheer willpower. one of the cops is asking him what to do while he looks at the obituary and counts five headstones…. and the father makes 6? sure, if that makes sense to you king!

they’re off to the graveyard while scully is still in a mystery location, with tears in her eyes as gerry shows her the photos he took. he takes the photos to mean he doesn’t have much time left, and tapes her mouth… and oh my gosh, i think of what would go down here if i knew she wasn’t gonna pull through… until gerry hears a tapping and MULDER IS LOOKING IN!! YES!!!

gerry is doing this in a camper van! by the graveyard!!! mulder is peeking in, sees a tooth keychain, and realizes she’s in there!!!! he’s yelling her name, and she’s yelling that she’s in here, while gerry tries to hold her down!!!

mulder’s BEATING on the window of the camper with his hands, and when that doesn’t work, he finds a giant metal pipe and SLAMS it into the window, goes in, and shoots gerry. this escalated quickly, but it was almost not quick enough.

mulder asks if she’s hurt, and neither of them say anything as she walks out, with mulder kneeling down to see that the last photos gerry had taken were of himself dead on the floor. it’s a terribly thick tension that reminds me of the ending to irresistible, but without the tension bursting like it did in that episode with her finally revealing her fear to him. i wish that she did it again this time. 

scully is doing the episode wrap up, sounding terribly solemn. she is reporting that gerry had written a diary intended as a letter for his father, including the list of the women he hoped to “save”. and her name is the last entry. she has no explanation for the photographs. but she empathized with him, which her survival depended upon.

“i see now the value of such insight. for truly to pursue monsters, we must understand them. we must venture into their minds. only in doing so, do we risk letting them venture into ours?” (said while there are tears in her eyes, as she looks at the photograph of her being pulled by the howlers)

WHAT THE HELL.

okay, so chris carter… you and i need to have some words. 

i have a lot of thoughts. perhaps number one: what if mulder had been 5 minutes later… can you imagine him never being able to cope with that….? oh my gosh. oh my gosh. no, i shan’t imagine. but i’m sure they both were imagining it. and that is probably why she couldn’t say anything as she walked out of the camper van. it was too horrific.

second. this was a dark one. i was giggling at first and then it got really dark. lobotomies… are a hard subject.

third. when the writers make the bad guy have a mental illness, i do feel it to be insulting, because we don’t often get a character where a guy with schizophrenia is just a guy doing normal things like working at the store or going to get his oil changed. no, he’s gotta be up to something nefarious. i wish that wasn’t the case and that these episodes didn’t use mental illness in that way, and i understand that things were kind of Like That in the 90’s and arguably still are in media, but it has been observed with distaste. 

okay, final thoughts? like i’ve said before, i believe in gender equality when it comes to kidnapping and rescuing, and i hope that will be evened out at some point. i understand that gerry had a fixation on women for his own personal reasons, but that’s the doyleist vs watsonian debate thing. and i want a 1:1 ratio on who goes about saving the day. although the ratio was uneven in s2, i’m not recalling the ratio from s3, and we’re 4 episodes into s4 with a 1:1 ratio. so i hope that overall, the entire series ratio evens out eventually. damsel in distress is gender neutral

i was actually really invested in this episode, probably because it let us look into scully deeper, and also because the stakes were high, the pacing fast, and the horror a new kind rather than a standard serial killer we get in a lot of episodes. 

but… while i appreciate that, i’m not sure i can say i enjoyed it, you know? because even a “scully speaks german” lore reveal cannot save me from the feeling of… something adjacent to fear? not horror as in “ahhh i’m so scared” but maybe a sort of horror as in “stop putting her into these fuckass situations, let my girl have a day off” and also a bit of terrible grief in knowing that lobotomies were a very real thing and did untold harm. and to be clear, i’m not saying that fact shouldn’t be explored and discussed, i just think that for me it seems to provoke some intense feelings that make me want some fluff. now. 

deliver it. to my door. as we speak. in fact, here is an incomplete list of things i want to read our agents doing in fanfiction form:

apple picking and apple cider sipping, hiking and sharing weird facts they know about the things they encounter (scully will be all “this type of spider has a unique silk production gland” and he’ll be all “this type of wildflower is used to induce hallucinogenic states” while they look at a pretty view), ice skating (can they ice skate? need to explore that), getting ice cream cones, a visit to the beach, decorating for various holidays, a very serious game night- perhaps uno or some sort of trivia where it turns into a real nerd-off, arguing over unsolved mysteries, more implications of them starting a family together if you feel bold and brave, even, but for those who like it more reserved we can just have an aquarium date, watching a meteor shower, scully attempting to understand his fascination with the various sports of the world by tagging along on an anthropological expedition to a knicks game with him, baking, movie theater trip, etc

well! i have gotten myself so enthused at the idea of them doing silly stuff like handing out halloween candy that i have forgotten all about my initial feelings, which shall surely resurface soon when i go through and edit my notes, but you’re gonna sit there and tell me you don’t want to play dolls in your head of them getting hot chocolate together? 

canon? what is canon? c’mere, kid. let’s daydream about them eloping without ever having the “what are we” conversation and ignore the suffering 

[copperbadge]

Hi Sam! I seem to recall you may be a true-crime aficionado. Maybe more than just museum heists? I'm watching Murder on the Orient, and was doing a little digging into the Lindbergh kidnapping. Do you have any opinions about whether Bruno Hauptmann was actually guilty? Seems a bit fishy to me, three years after the fact, that they hang the conviction on a blue-collar immigrant. Also here's my baby kitties!

AW ORANGE BABIES.

[ID: Three images of fluffy orange tabby cats; in the first one is lying on some silky fabric with a ball of yarn, and in the second two cat butts with tails are visible behind some blinds in a window. In the third a cat is lying on its back with front paws stretched over its head, displaying a very fluffy belly.]

I do enjoy a spot of true crime now and again although lately I've moved away from direct true crime media and more into analysis of it, which feels a little less exploitative. Some true crime reporting can genuinely be useful and informative and keep a dialogue open about victimhood, policing, the carceral state, and such, but it's a fine line to walk.

I had thought that we'd pretty much laid to rest the idea that Hauptmann had anything to do with the Lindbergh kidnapping, since the evidence used against him was I think mainly shit made up by reporters after the fact, but when I googled to see I found it's still very much under debate. I don't think there's any denying that Haputmann was brutally railroaded, but that doesn't necessarily mean he didn't do it.

I don't think Hauptmann did it simply because he was such an easy target, but I haven't done a deep enough dive on this case to have formed a strong opinion. The newer a theory of the crime is, the wilder it tends to be, so I'm skeptical of some of these "Lindbergh did it himself" theories, but they do at least point up what a weird fashy eugenicist Lindbergh was, and I think more people should know about that. (One of the more popular but rather unfounded theories is that the child was disabled in some way and Lindbergh killed him rather than admit he or his wife had "faulty" genes.)

I think ultimately who did it doesn't really matter, given everyone involved is assuredly dead by now; I think it's more useful as a jumping-off point to discuss the flaws in the justice system and the unfairness of privilege when it comes to who gets attention and who doesn't. I think it's much like how Hallie Rubenhold treats Jack the Ripper; when asked by "ripperologists" who she thinks Jack was, she says that she doesn't care -- she's interested in the victims and their place in society (both historical and contemporary) and the phenomenon of the deep misogyny that is at the heart of our discourse on Jack the Ripper.

[shoshiwrites]

Wishing you the happiest of birthdays, @mercurygray! ♡ Thank you so much for letting me borrow Fred and Cord — they were, and are, a delight, and for letting Jo poke her head into this universe. Go read these babes, friends, and go wish Merc a happy birthday! Also on Ao3!

in a sentimental mood

When Jo had applied to go overseas — arguing her case in front of her editors and then down in Washington, not to mention the paperwork, been through a battery of security screenings, had every inch of her life turned upside down like a suitcase and somehow stamped approved, not to mention the armful of immunizations that had left her queasy until lunch the next day — nowhere in her accreditation paperwork had it said anything about baby-sitting.

She could hardly complain though, since Spark Plug of Thorpe Abbotts was about the cutest date a girl could have for a Saturday night.

It was all less of a grouse, and more of a surprise, she thinks, lightly scratching her fingertips between the kitten’s ears. Spark Plug mreows softly in reply.

Outside, the light fades out of the sky — streaks of blue-gray and peach over the expanse of the runway, behind the black of the trees at its edge, the low outline of the town beyond.

England is beautiful, she thinks. Out here, by the coast, so different to London or to Philadelphia. Old and green and full of weathered stone, thatched roofs, rose gardens. Maybe her picture was rosy — as much as it could be with air raid sirens, with the hell that rained down, as one reporter said, bricks and ashes along cobblestones, fireweed growing in the bomb craters. 

The cold rain was different too, from the Georgia red clay that still stuck between the treads of her lace-up shoes. She’d watched a different group of men become infantry before her very eyes. It was something of a culture shock, coming here, finding the war well underway, men who’d been flying and training for years. Who’d grown up watching Lindbergh and Gable and Tracy, read the feats of barnstormers and even saw them, papered their rooms in clippings and posters, built model planes. 

Spark Plug fixed her with a very serious look, mreowed a little louder this time. “Now, mister, Fred told me you were very well fed before she left.” As well fed as any living being could be on this island, in 1943.

Spark Plug seemed to consider this; Jo was suddenly glad she’d made embarrassingly quick work of the bag of bridge mix sent by her friends back home. She can still taste chocolate on her back teeth, the slightly waxy sweetness, a sticky bit of raisin between two molars. She felt only a little guilty that she hadn’t offered any to anyone else. The human sort, of course. 

She’d spent the morning making edits and going through some of Kay’s photo proofs. She was fighting her better instincts now, not to return to work, having turned her attention to the stack of books on the table beside her — Betty Wason’s latest, which she’d actually started, and a copy of last year’s Best American Short Stories, and a dog-eared Jamaica Inn that Kay had somehow snuck into her luggage.  

The Red Cross girls had been kind enough to let her intrude on their lunch, after which followed a conversation on sweets they missed from back home, which spilled into the afternoon work of cleaning the fryers and coffee urns and writing reports, talk of almond cakes and Christmas cookies and mom’s shortbread. Candy too, and sweet coffee, sugar rationing be damned. Another reason Jo felt guilty for hoarding her supply. She’d share the next package, she decided then. 

She’d been at Thorpe Abbotts coming up on two and a half weeks, now. It had been a rocky start — new faces, sure, colonels and S-2s with no inclination to give Jo the time of day, not that she could blame them, much less get her name right. She’d put her foot in it more than a time or two about this or that, despite all the reading she’d done, the clips she’d bugged The Clarion for before she’d left. 

Turns out being here was a lot different than reading about it. Yeah, that was right. Jo smiled to herself, just a little. Half at Spark Plug, who was now making a furry doughnut of himself on the blanket beside her, half at the thought that maybe she was getting some kind of approval here, too. She told the folks at home about them, the pilots and the bombardiers and the gunners, the mechanics, the tower and the WACs and the Clubmobile and the office orderlies, the runway builders, the townspeople too. It was her job. It was something she did well, or so she hoped to think. 

And just last week she’d been trying to get an interview that could not be gotten, wondering if she should let it rest, when one of the majors had even jumped in on her side, the tall, dark-haired one who called himself, inexplicably, Bucky. “Even Buck likes her!” Jo knew by now that she was meant to take that as high praise. Buck, the blonde, who’d only agreed to a profile because it would mean something to his girl back home. 

Major Egan had taken up her case with the subject in question, a looey in the control tower, serious and studious and exactly the kind of temperament Jo imagined a pilot would want when being guided down from the sky. 

Jo, for her part, would have forgiven the lieutenant for never speaking to her again, given how Jo had first approached her fresh off the train and the Jeep from London — and not 12 hours after a fort had gone down with Callaway on the other end of the radio. Nobody had told Jo. Why would they? But somehow, Bucky’s reasoning had done the trick. Jo had even gotten a smile out of her, sitting there across from the two of them at the table, after Jo had politely told the major to can it and let the lieutenant speak.

And then there was Captain Brady, who was half the reason Jo was sitting here with Spark Plug at all this evening. The other half, she acknowledged, may have been her volunteering.

He was serious too, the way you had to be when you were responsible for a fort full of men. Men. He was a college kid, a musician, who just so happened to be a pilot. He was reserved, for the most part, except for the soft spot he held for his crew and for the lovely Miss Torvaldsen, Fred, even though the two of them tried to hide it.

They couldn’t hide it too much now, on Saturday night. At least not from Jo. He’d borrowed a Jeep, Captain Brady, to take his date all the way to Norwich. At that Jo thought of William, whose idea of a night out had been sandwiches after a ballgame. Her brow furrowed like she’d just imagined sour milk. The spot on her finger where her ring had been still felt empty, even if she knew it shouldn’t. She was here. He was back home. Trying to get here, probably. 

She much preferred to think of Fred and her date, the night they would have, listening to music and forgetting the war as much as they could. Jo would have lent her a dress if she had one that fit — she could hear Kay scoffing somewhere in the recesses of her mind — but Fred had managed with a little blue number from one of her colleagues, with a skirt in Swiss Dot that would be perfect for dancing. 

The rain had cleared for them, and Jo couldn’t think of anything lovelier than that.

And for all of Brady’s seriousness, she hadn’t had to try to get any stories out of him — not directly, at least. He’d approached her one day, maybe a week in, hands in his pockets. "Curt — Lieutenant Biddick — said you wanted to hear about a wheels-up landing."

She’d had a few conversations with Fred by that point, in the kitchen or by the truck, one or two in the Aero Club, which surely he’d seen, and she wondered now if that had had anything to do with it.

They’re good together, Jo couldn’t think of another way to say it. It felt hopeful, and cruel. 

They reminded her of Evie and Angelo, childhood sweethearts. Of couples the country over, steady and engaged and married.

There were things she didn’t dare think about, here — dark eyes and quiet conversations, times she felt free. A touch of whiskey at he the back of her throat. A dance she hadn’t wanted to end. 

She yawned then, or was it a sigh? She could blame the early mornings she’d been pulling to rise with the crews and the Clubmobile, the air raid that had kept them all up the night before. The air in the Nissen hut, home to her bunk and Fred’s and Helen’s and Tatty’s and the rest of the crews’, was warm and a bit damp from the rain, smelling of wool blankets and hair pomade and perfume and last night’s wood fire.

Her eyes fluttered closed, and she couldn’t tell whether it had been ten minutes or three hours when she opened them again, to darkness outside and Spark Plug purring contentedly in his sleep. There was rain once again, against the prefabricated steel, and outside, under the eave of the doorway, two figures saying their goodnights. Fred, and Brady. Jo wondered for a brief moment if she should pretend to be asleep again. But the door opened, the sound of the rain growing momentarily louder, and Fred shook off an umbrella she hadn’t left with before closing the door behind her. 

“I would have moved if he wanted to come in,” Jo said, only a little bit sorry for the look that crossed Fred’s face.

“Jo.”

Jo giggled, just a little, when she saw that Fred was smiling. 

“How was it?” Beside her she could feel Spark Plug’s little paws moving on the bed, as he nuzzled against the back of her hand expectantly.

She could see that she hardly needed to ask, seeing Fred’s cheeks pink with happiness, loose wisps of blonde hair curling around her face in the lamplight. 

“It only started raining the last few minutes of the walk,” she said. “We got lucky.” Jo smiled at that. “It was- it was wonderful.”

“I’m glad.” She thought a moment, starting to swing herself up to a seated position, absentmindedly smoothing a wrinkle in her trouser leg. “That’s a lovely umbrella there, Freda.”

Fred looked at it, where she’d carefully placed it by the door. Jo thinks of Captain Brady, walking home in the rain. She imagines she could be forgiven for picturing him whistling, his hands in his pockets. Fred’s mouth twitches, just a little. 

“How was our Spark Plug?”

Jo gives her something like a knowing look, something like a key in a lock. She eyes her pajamas, hanging on a hook next to the bed, the small jar of cold cream on the nightstand, her toothbrush. The rest of the girls would be filtering in at some point, back from the Aero Club for a few hours’ rest before the morning and fresh coffee, the truck parked on the gravel under early clouds, dew wet on the grass. It never stopped, of course — you were always a girl back home, for the boys over here. She hoped Fred had felt special, last night. Like she could let someone do something for her, for once. She hoped they’d lost themselves in a song.

“Just a darling. You’ll let me know the next time you need a sitter, alright?”

[justforbooks]

Regarded as one of Agatha Christie’s greatest achievements, Murder on the Orient Express was first published as a novel in 1934.

The very first publication of the story was in a six-instalment serialisation in the Saturday Evening Post in 1933 in the US, under the title, Murder on the Calais Coach.

The book is dedicated "To M.E.L.M. Arpachiyah, 1933" – Agatha Christie’s second husband, Max Edgar Lucien Mallowan.

It’s likely that the story was drafted when Christie was on an archaeological dig with Max in Arpachiyah, Iraq, although The Pera Palace Hotel in Istanbul has an Agatha Christie Room where, it claims, she wrote Murder on the Orient Express.

The story was partly inspired by the Lindbergh case; a shocking real-life case following the kidnapping of international hero, Charles Lindbergh’s, 20-month old son who was held for a $50,000 ransom. The ransom was paid, but unfortunately Lindbergh’s son was never returned.

The story was also inspired partly by an incident in 1929 when the Orient Express was trapped in a blizzard in Çerkezköy, Turkey, where it was marooned for six days! Two years later Christie was involved in a similar scenario when she was travelling on the Orient Express and the train got stuck for a period of time due to heavy rainfall and flooding, which washed part of the track away!

Christie first travelled on the Orient Express in 1928 which also happened to be her first solo trip abroad. This was to become the first of many trips on the train.

Agatha Christie’s notable attention to detail is evident throughout the novel. While writing it, she checked cabin layouts, door handles and light switches, noting down their positions. These crucial details would lead Poirot to solve the case.

The dust jacket blurb on the first edition reads: ‘Murder on the Orient Express must rank as one of the most ingenious stories ever devised.’

In 1974 the book was adapted for the big screen. Directed by Sidney Lumet and starring Albert Finney as Hercule Poirot, the film was the 11th highest grossing film of the year.

At the age of 84, Agatha Christie made her last public appearance at the royal premiere of the film in London.

In 2015 Murder on the Orient Express was ranked as the second World’s Favourite Christie, which ranked And Then There Were None in the top spot and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd in third place.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[blackswaneuroparedux]

The airplane seemed far more alive and human than any machine I had ever flown.

Charles Lindbergh

The cockpit in which Charles Lindbergh sat while piloting the first aircraft to make a solo non-stop transatlantic flight, the Spirit of Saint Louis, in May of 1927 was as pioneering as the flight itself.

It was an unusual design to an ordinary layout of a cockpit of that era. A periscope was used instead of a forward window. The Spirit was designed and built in San Diego to compete for the $25,000 Orteig Prize, which was offered by New York hotel owner Raymond Orteig to the first aviator to cross the Atlantic non-stop, either from New York to Paris or vice versa. Lindbergh, a U.S. Air Mail pilot, believed that a single-engine, single-seat, high-wing monoplane would provide him with the best chance of success.

Under his close supervision, the Spirit was designed and constructed in just 60 days. To enhance the centre of gravity and minimise the risk of being crushed in case of a crash, Lindbergh had the large main and forward fuel tanks placed in the front section of the fuselage, ahead of the pilot, with the oil tank acting as a firewall. As a result of this design choice, there was no front windshield, and forward visibility was limited to the side windows.

However, this arrangement didn't bother Lindbergh, as he was accustomed to flying in the rear cockpit of mail planes with mail bags in the front. When he needed to see forward, he would simply look out the sides. To address the need for some forward vision, Lindbergh enlisted the help of a former submarine serviceman to design and install a periscope. Inside the cramped cockpit, measuring 94 cm wide, 81 cm long, and 130 cm high, Lindbergh couldn't even stretch his legs.

[probablyasocialecologist]

Reagan’s Republican Party of 1981 was very different from Herbert Hoover’s of 1933: it had become the refuge of millions of formerly Democratic white conservative voters in the Solid South who resisted the civil rights reforms of the 1960s. Accordingly, behind his cheerful veneer Reagan made sure that he tapped into the fierce resentments of federal authority, dating back to the Civil War and Reconstruction, that fueled that resistance. Before they were done, the Reagan Republicans had absorbed into their coalition an array of aggrieved Americans, including quasi-theocratic white Christian nationalists, the gun-manufacturing lobby, antiabortion militants, and antigay crusaders. The antigovernment fervor that grips the nation today is the long-term product of the right wing that Reagan called to arms (literally, in the case of the National Rifle Association) forty-odd years ago. It was his attorney general Edwin Meese, in tandem with the newly formed Federalist Society, who started packing the federal judiciary with the conservative judges who have gutted federal protections for voting rights, abortion rights, and more, while inventing, with fake history presented as “originalism,” an individual’s Second Amendment right to own and carry military-grade armaments. It was the Reagan administration that eliminated the FCC’s fairness doctrine, which mandated that broadcasters provide balanced coverage of controversial public issues, paving the way for right-wing talk radio inciters like Rush Limbaugh and G. Gordon Liddy and, on cable TV, Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News to amplify antigovernment paranoia. The Reagan White House also harbored the former Nixon aide Pat Buchanan as its communications director. Buchanan’s politics were rooted in the 1930s America First isolationism of Charles A. Lindbergh and the diatribes of the right-wing “radio priest” Father Charles Coughlin, with their eccentric fixations on imaginary Jewish internationalist cabals. In the waning days of Reagan’s presidency, Buchanan remarked that “the greatest vacuum in American politics is to the right of Ronald Reagan.” He tried to fill that vacuum himself, nearly defeating President George H.W. Bush in the 1992 New Hampshire primary with his “pitchfork brigades.” His convention speech later that year laid out the culture wars to come. Then he followed up with another bid for the Republican nomination in 1996 and an independent campaign in 2000. All those efforts failed, but their stark themes of isolationism, lost national greatness, immigrant invasion, and racial fear provided a template for Donald Trump’s MAGA campaign a quarter-century later. “American carnage” was the favored far-right image at least two decades before Trump.

[mayamistake]

AT AROUND NOON on the 5 September 1936, a pair of fisherman came across a woman floundering her way through a bog in in Cape Breton, on the eastern shores of Nova Scotia. In the background somewhere was her single-engined Percival Vega Gull aircraft, its nose buried deep in the moss and the peat and its tail sticking in the air. Blood streamed down the woman’s face and black peat went up to the waist of her formerly white overalls: ‘I’m Mrs Markham,’ she told them. ‘I’ve just flown from England.’

Taken to a local farmhouse, the aviator asked for a cup of tea and for a phone. She was directed to ‘a little cubicle that housed an ancient telephone’ built on the rocks, ‘put there in case of shipwrecks,’ she recalled. Over the line she told the operator: ‘I would like the airport notified and could you also ask someone to send a taxi for me?’

Beryl Markham, 33, had just succeeded in becoming the first person to fly non-stop, solo, from Europe to North America. She was also the first woman to fly east-west non-stop, solo across the Atlantic. Heading against the wind and into uncertain weather, it was an audacious achievement, but because she had not reached her intended destination – New York City – she initially considered herself a failure.

Within hours, however, she realised that the world saw it differently. The feat placed her alongside the greats of the golden age of aviation, not least Charles Lindbergh – the first person to fly the Atlantic solo – or Amelia Earhart, the first woman to fly the Atlantic (she went east-west, like Lindburgh, with the prevailing winds) or indeed Britain’s Amy Johnson, the first woman to fly solo from Britain to Australia in 1930.

Congratulations flooded in from around the world. Earhart told the New York Times: ‘I’m delighted beyond words that Mrs Markham should have succeeded in her exploit and has conquered the Atlantic. It was a great flight.’ And a day later Markham arrived in New York where she was feted and given a hero’s welcome – including a motorcade through the city and a suite at the Ritz-Carlton. ‘America,’ she pronounced, ‘is jolly grand.’

[pxmun2]

(( Spoiler Warning!!!!))

======================================

Jewelry Bonney was waiting outside until the time Lilith needed her to finish Bartholomew Kuma's treatment. Bonney lost count of how long she had been waiting, in reality it hadn't been long but to her it felt like she had been waiting out here for centuries. Bonney would have gone around the ship or over to the Thousand Sunny to see how the Strawhats were doing, but they were nowhere in sight except for Franky, Robin, Jinbe, and Brooke. According to the cyborg shipwright and the giants, there had been a party on the Sunny, but between the time of the party up until they found the Sunny something had happened to the other half of the crew.

Franky and the others weren't too worried about their captain and the rest of the crew. They trusted them to handle themselves and look out for each other.

With that being said, the rest of the crew still planned on meeting up with each other on Elbaph and were getting ready to do so.

"Bonney- chan, are you sure you will be alright staying here on the ship? One of us could stay here with you." Robin asked.

"I'll be fine Robin. My dad needs me right now, so I don't want to leave him alone while he is in such a vulnerable state. Plus, Lilith and the giants are here in case I need help." Bonney assured.

"Alright, just keep a den den mushi nearby just in case, okay"? Robin advised.

"Okay, I'll keep one on me at all times." Bonney assured.

Robin looked a little more at ease. With that her and the others left for land.

Bonney returned to waiting, taking the time to think about what place was safe enough to send Kuma to.

"The Sorbet kingdom is a definite no, that would be the first place the government would look for him. A sky island would be out of their reach, but I don't have a way to get up there. Maybe Zou? From what Nami told me it's on a giant elephant that is always on the move which would make it hard for the government to track, plus Minks seem really affectionate. The only downside is that the elephant is loyal to Joyboy, if there was another big showdown where Luffy needed that elephant's help it could end up accidentally putting dad in harms way." Bonney thought.

Bonney felt like she was going to get a headache, this was hard. Was there anywhere in all the four blues that was safe for her dad to live in peace.

"Hey, what's that"? asked a giant.

Bonney looked up to where the giant was pointing, the rest of the Giant Warrior Pirates following suit. Something was rocketing towards them at a tremendous speed, leaving behind a vapor trail.

"Don't worry, I got this." Came the voice of Kashii. The giant wielding his axe, ready to swat away the possible threat.

Just as the giant was getting ready to swing, Bonney was able to catch a good glimpse of the approaching object.

"Don't swing! Their friendly"! Bonney called out.

This distracted Kashii long enough for the figure to zip by and land on the ships deck. When the exhaust cleared, the mysterious figure was revealed to be Lindbergh, the Southern commander for the Revolutionary Army.

"Hey Bonney, who is this guy"? Asked Kashii.

"That's Lindbergh, I met him at Marijoa while rescuing my dad. He's friends with Luffy's brother Sabo, so you can trust him." Bonney assured.

Lindbergh grinned.

"It's good to see you again Bonney! I should've known Kuma would have run off to find you". Lindbergh said.

"What are you doing all the way here at Elbaph? I thought the Revolutionaries were going to be super busy after the attack on the Holy Land"? Bonney asked.

"We are, but Sabo was really concerned about Kuma when he ran off on us, so I offered to go after him and bring Kuma back to our base." Lindbergh explained.

The cat Mink looked around his surroundings.

"Where is Kuma anyway? His Vivre card is showing that he should be somewhere on this ship"? Lindbergh asked.

Before Bonney could say anything, Lilith finally stepped outside.

"Alright Bonney, its time." Lilith announced.

"Time for what"? Lindbergh asked perplexed.

"Time for my daddy to have a new life. Vegapunk had an invention that could give my dad a chance at a free life, so I decided to use it on him. I just need to finish the process by using my devil fruit." Bonney answered solemnly.

The three entered the room where Kuma was resting. The man in question was asleep on his back.

"But Bonney, you're only twelve! Taking care of a child is a big responsibility! You're still a child yourself, you shouldn't be placing such a serious weight on your shoulders"! Lindbergh argued.

"Well what else am I supposed to do then? Just let my dad die or continue to rot until he is nothing but a robotic vegetable"?! Bonney shouted, tears falling down her face.

Lindbergh stepped back in surprise from the sudden outburst.

Bonney's anger soon turned to sadness.

"I just want to give my daddy the life he deserves. He's done so much to help everyone even after all the suffering those World Government bastards put him through." Bonney sobbed.

Lilith put a comforting hand on Bonney's shoulder.

"I'm sorry Lindbergh, I know you and the other Revolutionaries care about daddy too, but I can't let you take him back. If dad wants to rejoin you after he grows up again that's fine, but it needs to be because he wants to, not because he was influenced to do so by all of you." Bonney explained.

The Mink looked over to Kuma's sleeping form, then he knelt down to be eye level with Bonney.

"I agree with you. I may not know the full story, but from my time as a Revolutionary I know Kuma didn't have it easy, yet if it hadn't been for him I likely wouldn't have become the Revolutionaries Southern commander, let alone join them after I left home. " Lindbergh recalled.

Lindbergh then paused for a moment, in deep thought. From the expression on his face, Bonney could see that the Mink was heavily considering something. Eventually, Lindbergh readdressed the Supernova.

"Listen, I know of a place where Kuma can grow up safe with a very loving and supportive community, but..." Lindbergh paused out of hesitation.

"But"? Bonney asked.

Lindbergh let out a deep sigh.

"But you may not see him again until he is old enough to go out to sea, or ever if he decides to stay there." Lindbergh continued.

Bonney's heart sank. She was already lossing her father, but now she might never see him again on top of that? It shattered her heart. Nevertheless Bonney needed to do what it took for her father to live freely.

"Are you sure this place is safe from the government"? Bonney asked.

"Definitely, the residents have been living there since before the Void Century without a single hide or hair of the government popping up in its surrounding waters. Plus, the super thick fog and large thorny vines that surround the island makes it impossible for a normal Marine vessel to reach its shores." Lindbergh assured.

Bonney looked over her shoulder to glance over at Kuma before returning to address Lindbergh.

"Alright, I believe you. I'll let dad grow up on that island." Bonney decided.

Lindbergh nodded.

"I promise Bonney, the residents will do everything in their power to keep Kuma safe." Lindbergh told the girl sincerely.

Lilith helped Bonney onto the bed, it was time to finish the procedure.

Bonney took a moment to take one last look at her father, remembering all the happy memories and moments he brought into her life. It didn't matter if she didn't share any blood with him, Kuma was the best dad Bonney could have asked for. She gave Kuma the biggest bear hug she could give, holding onto him as she activated her powers.

It seemed to take forever before Bonney's toshi toshi no mi took effect. Little by little, Kuma began to change. Rough edges began to smooth out, wrinkles, crows feet, and grey hairs began to disappear. It wasn't until Kuma began to shrink that Bonney had to close her eyes to try to stay focused. It was getting hard to concentrate as she felt Kuma's form continuously shift, the grasp of her hug that was originally around his face shifted down to the neck, then to the shoulders, and eventually the torso. From that point it didn't take long until Kuma was small enough for Bonney to hold completely.

Once she was done, Bonney opened her eyes. There in her arms was Kuma, now an infant. Bonney held him close, the procedure was done.

Both Lilith and Lindbergh stood close for support. Lilith would eventually perform a check up on Kuma to make sure he was healthy. During the check up, Kuma began to cry. This caused Bonney to cry as well.

Kuma was crying, like a human. The serum had worked, Kuma's humanity had been restored.

The moment was bittersweet. Bonney was more than happy that Kuma had his humanity restored, but now she had just lost her father.

Lindbergh gave the young supernova time to calm herself before they could continue. In the meantime the cat Mink left to gather his ship and restock it for the trip ahead.

"The place we're heading to isn't that far away, we should be back the day after tomorrow. However, it is so secluded that den den mushis won't be able to send out or receive calls." Lindbergh warned.

"Where are you heading to anyway? I don't think we have any island like the one you described in Punk Records." Lilith asked.

"I can't give out that information. With everything going on in the world right now, and that I need to see first that you are truly unaffiliated with the World Government. I can't risk the well being of the locals." Lindbergh respond in a serious tone.

"Well how can I trust you with Bonney and Kuma? How do I know you won't betray us and do something horrible to them"? Lilith argued.

"Because the Strawhats and Revolutionaries will make sure that nothing horrible happens to them. If they feel that Bonney and Kuma are in danger, their going to track me down and turn me into a fur coat." Lindbergh assured.

Lilith couldn't argue with that, she had witnessed the Strawhats facing off against CP-0, the Seraphim, Kizaru, and an Elder Star. They were more than capable of taking down Lindbergh if needed.

"Alright, but you better get back here on time with not a single scratch on Bonney"! Lilith warned. She decided to leave out the part about Bonney mimicking the power of Nika just in case there was a confrontation.

"Will do"! Lindbergh responded.

Lindbergh checked his pocket watch.

"We better get going if we want to keep to schedule. Are you ready to depart Bonney"? Lindbergh asked.

Bonney replied with a simple nod, cradling Kuma.

"Alright, let's set sail then"! Lindbergh announced.

The cat Mink helped Bonney and Kuma on board. He released the ship from the dock and began to steer the vessel on course to a destination yet known. Bonney waved goodbye to Lilith as they sailed away.

[kindsoulbuddy]

Sad story alert featuring Charles Lindbergh:

Colonel Charles Lindbergh, along with being a Nazi sympathizer and into eugenics, also believed in the Watson method of parenting: parent children, even babies, like little adults.

I just read a biography about his wife Anne Morrow Lindbergh. Anyway he instructed Anne to do things his way and not to cuddle the kids.

(Book: Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Her Life by Susan Hertog, 1999. Susan spent time with Anne).

The kids had strict schedules.

Bedtime was before he got home in the evening.

Their first child, Charlie, would toddle over to him and Charles would push him away literally. He took a cushion and knocked him down. He did it over and over until Charlie gave up.

Charles had his wife Anne learn to be his copilot after they married, and she was an aviator in her own right. In fact she won medals for her accomplishments in flying and wireless communications.

Not to mention she was a successful author.

But Charles would make Anna go on long trips while she was pregnant and her kids’ babyhoods. Especially the babyhood of Charlie.

When they got home he didn’t recognize his parents.

When Charlie was 20 months old he was kidnapped and murdered. (The Lindbergh Baby case)

Charles got over it suspiciously fast. He may have had something to do with it since Charlie was a sickly child with rickets.

(Actually there’s another book out on the subject. Called “Suspect No.1, by Lise Pearlman, 2020. I’m curious….)

Charles Lindbergh was a prankster too but his jokes were cruel and sadistic.

He had hid baby Charlie for 30 minutes in a closet at least once while Anne and the Nanny searched frantically for him.

For example , in college his roommate almost died because Charles gave him a glass of gasoline instead of water.

Charles got over Charlie’s death very quickly.

Anne did not. She died in 2001 at age 94, haunted forever.

She wasn’t one to talk about Charlie until her death.

She had 6 kids total with Charles and she didn’t discuss Charlie.

When the other kids were teenagers Charles would travel and be gone for months at a time.

When he came home he immediately became colonel Lindbergh and ordered his family around like troops.

When he would finally leave again Anne and the kids could breathe.

Charles was fond of saying “this is not a democracy, this is a dictatorship!”

2 years after Anne’s death, it was discovered that Charles Lindbergh had 3 secret families and 5 children in Europe.

Anne never knew this. But maybe she knew something…no one’s sure.

Charles purposely had these families because he believed his superior Aryan blood should be spread after the Germans lost WWII.

Anyway, it’s a fascinating story about Anne. I don’t know what to really think of her since she kept being loyal to Charles and letting him order her around, and people suffered. They had influence even though many people thought them villains around the war.

But she was always begging God for forgiveness for Charlie being taken under her nose and her complicity with Nazi party in the 30s. Her whole life was accommodating Charles.

She was a victim of Charles too i think. But her life revolved around him, so she couldn’t say this.

I don’t know. She was very complicated.

One more thing. When Charles died of cancer in the 70s, he wanted a natural burial in Hawaii. He wanted room for Anne for when her time came.

She was never buried with him, she was cremated. I hope she found peace, I do. I’m not sure she did.

Rest in peace baby Charlie . He died 92 years ago, March 1 1932.

[kwebtv]

TV Guide -  November 16 - 22, 1963

James Grover Franciscus (January 31, 1934 – July 8, 1991) Film and television actor, known for his roles in feature films and in six television series: Mr. Novak, The Naked City, The Investigators, Longstreet, Doc Elliot, and Hunter.

His first major role was as Detective Jim Halloran in the half-hour version of ABC's Naked City. Franciscus guest starred on the CBS military comedy–drama Hennesey, starring Jackie Cooper, and on the NBC drama about family conflicts in the American Civil War entitled The Americans. CBS soon cast him in the lead in the 13-week series The Investigators, which aired from October 5 to December 28, 1961. He played the insurance investigator Russ Andrews, with James Philbrook as a co-star. Franciscus was also cast in the role of Tom Grover in the 1961 episode "The Empty Heart" of the CBS anthology series The DuPont Show with June Allyson. He performed in many feature films and television programs throughout the 1960s and 1970s, preceded by a minor role in an episode of The Twilight Zone titled "Judgment Night" in 1959, and a major role in episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents: "Forty Detectives Later" in 1960, and "Summer Shade" in 1961.  (Wikipedia)

Dean Jagger (November 7, 1903 – February 5, 1991)  Film, stage, and television actor who won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Henry King's Twelve O'Clock High (1949) 

In the 1960s, Jagger increasingly worked on television appearing in The Twilight Zone ("Static"), Sunday Showcase, Our American Heritage, General Electric Theater, Dr. Kildare, The Christophers, and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. 

Jagger achieved success with the television series Mr. Novak (1963–1965), receiving Emmy Award nominations for his role in 1964 and 1965, as well as the California Teachers Association's Communications Award, along with star James Franciscus, in 1963 for his portrayal of high-school principal Albert Vane.

Jagger's appearances in the 1960s included episodes of The F.B.I. and The Fugitive,  as well as the TV filmm The Brotherhood of the Bell (1970), with Ford, and an episode of The Name of the Game.

He had a semiregular role on the series Matt Lincoln (1970) as the father of the title character, and parts in Vanishing Point (1971), Bonanza, and Incident in San Francisco (1971).

In 1971, Jagger appeared on The Partridge Family. He played a prospector named Charlie in the Christmas episode "Don't Bring Your Guns to Town, Santa".

In his later career Jagger was in The Glass House (1972), Columbo, Kung Fu (Jagger appeared as Caine's grandfather, who wants little to do with him, but starts Caine on his series-long search for his half-brother Danny), Alias Smith and Jones, Medical Center, The Stranger (1973), The Delphi Bureau, The Lie (1973), Shaft, I Heard the Owl Call My Name (1973), Love Story, The Hanged Man (1974), The Great Lester Boggs (1974), The Lindbergh Kidnapping Case (1976), Harry O, Hunter, The Waltons ahd Gideon's Trumpet (1980)

He won a Daytime Emmy award for a guest appearance in the religious series This Is the Life.

His last role was as Dr. David Domedion in the St. Elsewhere season-three finale "Cheers" in 1985.  (Wikipedia)

[demi-shoggoth]

2024 Reading Log, pt 5

21. Spirit Beings in European Folklore 3 by Benjamin Adamah. This volume covers monsters from mostly Slavic countries, ranging as far east as Siberian Russia and as far south as Georgia and Turkey. Some common themes of the monsters covered include vampires and revenants, many sorts of imps and familiars to steal from your neighbors with, and variations on classic Russian monsters like leshies, domovoi and rusulki. The longer articles on more studied and better known monsters, like the aforementioned domovoi, are the best writing in the series so far.

22. Afterlives of the Saints by Colin Dickey. Dickey has written some of my favorite books about paranormal culture, including The Unidentified and Ghostland, and so I wanted to give some of his earlier writing a try. This book is about saints and their cults, and how the cultural legacy of the saint doesn’t necessarily fit into either modern ideas of Christianity by the laity or orthodox Catholicism. No dog saints, sadly, but it does talk about Saint Foy, prone to violent pranks, artistic depictions of memento mori in Bartholomew and Mary Magdalene, the eroticism of art involving saints Agatha and Sebastian, and the ambivalent attitude towards scholarship embodied by saints like Gregory of Tours and Jerome. Highly recommended, especially for the state of reading I’ve found myself in lately—each chapter is relatively short and standalone, making it good for reading in pieces.

23. Crimes of the Centuries: The Cases that Changed Us by Amber Hunt. A true crime book based on a podcast? Alarm bells might be going off for some folks. But this book is a respectful look at the cases involved, especially since most of them date back several decades and are solved. The premise of the book is, theoretically, to look at crimes whose investigations, trials and legacies have had an impact on how law and society are conducted in the United States. In practice, I think it has mixed success, with the legacy material being mostly confined to a sidebar at the end of each chapter. The cases vary from ones that are common historical knowledge (the Salem Witch Trials, the Satanic Panic, the Lindbergh baby kidnapping) to ones that I hadn’t heard of but have left long shadows (like the Bath Schoolhouse bombing, the first attack on a public school). The book is fine; I enjoyed it well enough, but I’m probably never going to want to read it again.

24. The Unnatural Order of the Three Eyed Skull’s Field Guide, Vol. 4 by Andrew P. Barr. After a several year hiatus, more of Andrew Barr’s work has been collected. The death of the literary version of Barr is referred to in the foreword, and then it’s on to more monsters. This time around, the art is in full color and collected into three themes. The first chapter, The October People, includes various monsters that have been witnessed in the month leading up to Halloween, such as mutant pumpkin monsters, the candy ghoul, trick or treating aliens and even victims of the jack o’lantern virus. The second chapter details the host of slashers that attacked Camp Pine River, New Jersey, annually from 1980-89. The third chapter is a miscellany of fungal witches, monstrous invaders, cyclopean crabs and other beasties. The art is as excellent as the other three volumes.

25. Snakes in Myth, Magic and History by Diane Morgan. Another in the list of “fine, but not as good as I wanted it to be” books I’ve read this year. This look at the cultural and mythological history of snakes is pretty good, but not great. It spends a lot of page count on recounting news stories of people being bitten by dangerous snakes kept as pets. This is not a long book—190 pages including bibliography and index, and about 10 pages of that is taken up with these stories. The book could also have used another editing pass, as it makes references to other stories before they’ve been told to us. That being said, the more mythical and folkloric stuff is excellent. And I enjoy the author’s pleasant bafflement on how evolutionary biology and especially phylogenetics works. Reading the book also reminded me of a magical moment from my childhood (when a garter snake seemingly gave me a flower for my birthday), so that was much appreciated.

[sabo-has-my-heart]

750 Followers Event

Wow, it’s been some time since I last did an event, hasn’t it?

Sabo: if you don’t count your 500 followers event, your last event was posted in May. 

Wow, yeah, it’s been a while. Time flies. Anyways, we’re at 750 followers, so here’s my milestone event! So over the years, I’ve collected writing prompts, scenarios, dialogue, all sorts of things to give me ideas for writing. I’ve chosen 20 scenarios, each scenario can only be used twice, I’ll update the list as we go. So pick a character, pick a scenario, and pick a dialogue prompt, then pick a secondary scenario, character, and prompt just in case I can't write the first one, and send it in!

Scenarios

She stood on the end of the pier, took a deep breath, and jumped into the freezing ocean. She was going to get answers, no matter what it took. [Reiju]

During a game of hide and seek you hide in the toy chest in the basement. After what seems like forever, and no one finds you, you decide to get out. You find the basement drastically altered and a layer of dust over everything. [Zoro] [Baby!Ace]

The hero shows up at the villain’s doorstep one night. They’re shivering, bleeding, scared. There’s also a slightly dazed look in their eyes-- they were drugged. They look like they were assaulted. Looking up at the villain, swaying slightly as they’re close to passing out, the mumble “... didn’t know where else to go…” then collapse into the villain’s arms. (doesn’t have to be hero and villain, can just be 2 rivals/enemies)[Killer] [Sabo]

The remains of the human race live in a glass dome with no entrance or exit, which protects them from the wasteland on the outside. One morning a dusty handprint appears on the outside. [Killer]

You and your partner bought rings that let you feel each other’s heartbeats. You couldn’t bear to take yours off when they were buried, it has just started beating again. [Kid] [Ace]

A is a talented pianist who meets B and offers to teach them how to play, unaware that B is already an equally talented pianist themself. B accepts so they have an excuse to spend time with A but gets discovered one day when A walks in on B practicing some high-level music.[Izou] [Sabo]

A is involved in some sort of accident. B finds out and rushes to the scene, calling A frantically. A doesn’t pick up, so B leaves A a series of voicemails as the race to the scene of A’s accident. [Ace] [Crocodile (not guaranteed, will try)]

She heard his voice before she saw him and she recognized it instantly. She knew him. She knew him all too well for all the wrong reasons. [Sabo] [Luffy]

This was it. He knew it would happen but now that it did it still shocked him. His whole body felt numb and right now he couldn’t say if this was something he would ever recover from.[Killer]

Waiting together in a small shop for the horrible storm to calm down and the electricity to work again definitely brings people closer together.[Usopp] [Ace]

The setting sun bathed everything in blazing orange, making it look as if the city was already burning. [Lindbergh]

Someone finding their friend’s/roommate’s dream journal and see that they themself seem to be in a lot of their dreams [Ace] [Law]

Your immortality isn’t the result of any curse, or blessing, for that matter. No, it’s just that you pissed off the God of Death so much he can’t stand the sight of you. [Ace]

For some reason, you always suspected that your high school classmate can read minds. Determined to trip her, you keep cracking jokes in your mind, hoping to make her laugh, to no avail. One day, while idly thinking about how it would be to date her, you see her get flustered.[Sabo] [Ace]

walking on the beach at dawn, as remnants of a ship wreck wash onto the shore. Among the wreckage, A finds B [Killer]

A merperson who gets injured and washed up on the shore of a beach unconscious, and is found by B. [Sanji]

During the annual Familiar summoning course for first year students at the magic academy, some students end up with creatures like Beetles to bunnies to even a lion, you on the other hand wound up summoning an Arch-Dragon in his human form [Ace/Sabo] [Sabo]

A 17-year-old girl is suddenly taken to a magical world. There, she manages to slay a dragon, become a queen, get married, have kids, and eventually pass away decades later. Only to wake up in her high school young and in her uniform again, as if nothing happened. That is, until she notices that her wedding ring is still on her finger.

You’re vacationing in a city you’ve never been in before. When you suddenly find yourself in a place you’ve seen hundreds of times in your dreams. The person you always see in those dreams is there too. [Ace/Sabo]

With her whole body quivering in shock, she let the dagger drop from her hands.

Sanji: Astra-swaaaan! I have those dialogue prompts you asked for!

In that case, here are the dialogue prompts:

Multipurpose

“Keep your eyes open, look at me.”

“I don't understand, why’re you doing this?”

“Just thinking about anything happening to you…I-I just lose it”

“Don’t worry, baby. I’m here now. I’m going to save you!”

“Am I going to see you later?” “Yeah, Sure.”

“I’m glad that you’re happy. That’s all I ever wanted for you.”

“The world doesn’t need me.” “But maybe I do.”

“So you’re really leaving?” “Ask me to stay.” “What?” “Ask me to stay, and I will.”

"Do I make your heart jump?"

“Let me do this, please.”

Fluff

“I think I still love you”

“Just say the word, Y/n. you know I’d do anything for you.”

“Are you trying to flirt with me?” “Yes. Is it working?”

“I love you. It’s as simple and terrifying as that.”

“I can’t stop thinking about you, no matter how hard I try not to.”

“There isn’t a word in the dictionary that can explain your type of beauty.”

“I love you, and I pray to anyone that will listen that you feel the same way. Because I don’t know what I’ll do with myself if you don’t.”

“I’m never leaving. I promise.”

“Hey, I love you, don’t forget that”

“I think i’m falling for you”

“Just kiss me already”

“Sorry, I couldn’t take my eyes off you”

“I need you, I love you”

“Come, I’ll take you somewhere special”

“Would you stay with me forever?”

Angst

“I never stood a chance, did I?” “That’s the sad part, you did once.”

“The worst part is, you didn’t even notice”

“I’ve lost so many things, but i can’t lose you”

“I lost you once, i refuse to lose you again”

“Not any of your business. You made your choice. You choose you.”

“I’m going to break your arm like you broke my heart.”

“Just let go!” “You know I can’t.”

“You left.” “Which time?” “Exactly.”

“I have never felt more alone than when I was with you.”

“There is always a choice to make and it seems like you made yours.”

“I’ve only ever been in love with one person.” “Do they love you back?” “No. They love someone else.”

“When did you stop loving me?”

“I miss you. I miss you so much it hurts.”

“Why does it hurt so much? Why do I feel like she’s broken my soul?”

“You weren’t here when I needed you the most, why now?”

NSFW

“Try to stay quiet for me. Can you do that?”

“I want to ruin you.”

“God, you feel amazing.”

“I want to see you, want to watch you cum.”

“I want it. I want to taste you.”

“I want you so bad.”

“Be good for me and I’ll untie you.”

“You know, I could always get you off right here, right now.”

“I want more, please, give me more!”

“Can you feel how much I want you?”

“Stop looking at me like that or my knees won’t hold me any longer.”

“You don’t know what you’re doing to me”

"You know, you always look so much better when I mark you up."

“God, you love it like this, don’t you?”

“I had this dream and- fuck- you couldn’t keep your hands of me.”

As always, you are free to choose a polyamory, love triangle, or basically more than 1 character, you can choose 1 prompt or 2 prompts if you do so choose. You can also choose character x character and not just character x reader. If you have more than 1 character, you can have 1 extra prompt per character.

I’ll get the fics out as soon as I’m capable and I hope you enjoy this event as much as you have my previous ones. 

[akascow]

reading about the lindbergh baby case and coming to the part where the kidnapper was purchasing gas and only used a 10$ certificate🧍🏻‍♀️ ten dollars, for all tha gas,,, i wish

[arthurdrakoni]

The Plot Against America by Philip Roth imagines an alternate 1940s where Charles Lindbergh has been elected President of the United States. This is my review.

I have a bit of a habit about putting books that are popular or widely praised. I don't consciously avoid them, it just kind of happens that way. Still, I get around to them eventually. Occasionally they're underwhelming, but more often than not, I do genuinely enjoy them. Such is the case with The Plot Against America by Philip Roth. 

The Plot Against America begins in an alternate 1940. Celebrity aviator Charles Lindbergh has been elected President of the United States in a landslide victory over incumbent president Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Lindbergh has pledged to keep America out of the war in Europe and the Pacific. In fact, he's signed a non-aggression treaty with Germany and Japan. Still, many Americans, particularly Jewish American, worry that Lindbergh is getting a little too chummy with the Axis Powers. The story follows the turbulent years of the Lindbergh Administration through the eyes of young Philip Roth and his family.

This was one of those books that wasn't too high on my reading list until it was. I can't say what exactly prompted me to give this one a try. Maybe it was the miniseries adaption that HBO put out. I haven't watched the miniseries yet, but I do plan to. Maybe it was the various alternate history Facebook groups I take part in. Maybe it was something else entirely. Honestly, I can't really say. I will say that this book being part of the Audible Plus Catalogue was a nice bonus. Audible Plus is a new thing that Audible is doing. It's like Netflix, but with audiobooks.

Whatever the reason, I finally gave The Plot Against America a try, and I loved it. You will occasionally see literary fiction authors dip their toes into speculative fiction. However, this is the first time I've seen a literary fiction author try their hand at alternate history. Philip Roth ruffled some feathers when he made some comments that seemed to imply that he believed that he had invented the concept of alternate history. I haven't seen exactly where that went down, so I won't really comment on that.

I will say that Roth does an excellent job of combining his signature style with the alternate history setting. I took a look at some of Roth's other books in order to compare the writing style, and The Plot Against America defiantly fits the mold. There are segments of the book that almost feel weirdly nostalgic at times. Roth describes daily life in 1940s New Jersey in such loving detail, it can be easy to forget that you're reading an alternate history novel. And yes, this is a Philip Roth book, so it is pretty much required to take place in New Jersey.

One aspect I liked is that Jewish Americans are not a united front against Lindbergh. Sure, there are plenty, like the Roth family, who are weary of his policies, and actively push back against him. However, there are also Jews who are supportive of Lindbergh, or at least, believe he isn't that bad and can be reasoned with. Minorities are not a monolith, so I felt this added more realism. 

I guess this book goes to show that you can still do interesting things with World War II alternate history than just the typical Nazi Victory scenarios. 

Have you read The Plot Against America?  If so, what did you think?

Link to the full review on my blog: https://drakoniandgriffalco.blogspot.com/2021/12/book-review-plot-against-america-by.html?m=1