Author Archives: wjduquette

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About wjduquette

Author, software engineer, and Lay Dominican.

Memories of the Heart

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Today is Easter Sunday, and Jane asked me
to include this remembrance she’d written recently. So this is Jane
speaking, and not me.

In my life there are a few days that come back year after year. At
Christmas dinner, I will always remember throwing Nerf balls at my
brothers the Christmas after my Dad died. We all needed to play, and Dad
wasn’t there to make us behave. Lent, Ash Wednesday, Good Friday, and
Easter services also bring strong memories.

Early in 1996 after nearly eight years of medical problems and
infertility, Will and I learned that I was pregnant. We tried to be
cautious, and waited until after we had seen the ultrasound before we
told anyone. We were so very joyous. Then, once again, everything went
wrong. I miscarried on Mardi Gras. I sat through the Ash Wednesday
service the next day and internally I raged at God. I lived Lent that
year, with prayers, tears, feeling abandoned by God, and deep grief, while
trying to pretend life was returning to normal. I went to church because
I should, not because I wanted anything to do with a God who teased me
with a child and then took the dream away.

Good Friday fit my mood perfectly, but I could not pay attention to the
service. The first reading at that service is Isaiah 52, verses 1 to 13. I
picked up one of the Bibles in the pew, and not being able to follow the
service I continued reading in Isaiah, reaching chapter 54. I was
stunned by what I found:

“Sing, O barren woman, you who have never bore a child; burst
into song, shout for joy, you who were never in labor; because more are
the children of the desolate woman than of her who has a husband,” says
the Lord. “Enlarge the place of your tent, stretch your tent curtains
wide, do not hold back; lengthen your cords, strengthen your stakes. For
you will spread out to the right and to the left; your descendants will
dispossess nations and settle in their desolate cities.”

Sing for joy? More children? Enlarge your tent? I was stunned. God
had not only heard me, he would give me joy and children even if I didn’t
understand the details. Hope came back. I was able to cry tears of
release rather than grief and rage. I began to accept the Lord’s peace.
He had heard me, and I knew he had a plan.

That next year was wild. We celebrated the 70th birthdays of both of
Will’s parents; my brother John got married; Will and I hosted a couple’s
Bible study; Will’s mother was finally diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s
Disease)), and we were told by the doctors that it was OK to try again to
have a child. After the prayers of many, I got pregnant. (As did every
other woman in our couple’s Bible study; be careful what you pray for!)

Then, Will’s parents realized that they could not stay in their home (the
house Will grew up in) and would have to move. After a few moments of
discussion and with much fear and trembling we offered to buy it from
them. We sold our old house and moved in on February 1st, thereby
doubling the size of our home–a much bigger tent, indeed.

On Ash Wednesday, just under two weeks later, our son David was born; we
had him baptized at the Easter Vigil service. We’ve since added James
and Anne to our family–God knew we needed that bigger tent.

I don’t know what plans God has for me, but each Lent and Easter season I
am reminded of both the intense sorrow and the amazing joy He has for us.

Liberal Arts?

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In a comment in a recent thread on
the 2Blowhards blog, I
admitted that I was an
economics major in college. Michael Blowhard asked, “How did you manage
to migrate from econ over in a more lib-arts kind of direction?”

By the time I saw the question, the thread was dead, and I’m not sure
Michael saw my answer. So I thought I’d answer it here, instead, and
point him at it.

The fact is, I didn’t migrate from econ over in a more lib-arts kind of
direction. Far from it. I started as an econ major, and somehow, by the
time I graduated from college I was an econ/math double major. I
completed the required General Education requirement, but took no
elective literature, history, or philosophy courses. (I now regret that
I didn’t take Prof. Rick Quinones’ Shakespeare class, which was famous.
The chances of Prof. Quinones ever seeing this post are slim and none, I
suspect, but if he ever does, he should know that his Western Civ class
was a hoot, and I appreciate it far more in retrospect than I
did at the time. Ah well.)

Then I did a year at Stanford University, where I got a masters degree in
an esoteric field called Operations Research. Those of you who are old
enough will remember the days when you went to the bank or the post
office, and there was a separate line in front of each teller. The guy
who persuaded them to use a single line instead was a practitioner of
Operations Research.

And from Stanford I went to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is
just a hop, skip, and a jump from where I grew up. Originally my intent
was to do Operations Research stuff there, but after about three years
the scales fell from my eyes and I started doing what I’m still doing
almost fourteen years later: writing software.

So all-in-all, I find it amusing that I can masquerade as a liberal arts
kind of guy well-enough to fool Michael Blowhard. A lot of credit no
doubt goes to my alma mater, Claremont McKenna College, and the quality
of its core curriculum; even if I focussed on mathematics, it’s still a
liberal arts school.

But mostly, I think, it’s because I read a lot. I don’t suppose that
surprises anybody who’s been following the site for any length of time.

Singing the Sadness, by Reginald Hill

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This is another book I picked up in Australia, and it’s rather different
than anything else of his I’ve read. To begin with, it’s not a
Dalziel/Pascoe mystery; it’s not even a police procedural. Instead, it
concerns a machinist-turned-private-eye named Joe Sixsmith. He’s black,
and he’s lives in the mean streets of Luton, which I gather might be a
redundant statement. At least, Hill doesn’t go out of his way to tell us
that Sixsmith is black, which caused a number of events in the book to be
rather perplexing until I finally clued in.

This is not the first Joe Sixsmith novel, but it’s the only one I found
while I was there. Joe’s Aunt Mirabelle is a staunch member
of the Boyling Corner Chapel, and a cornerstone of the chapel’s choir.
Joe, I gather, isn’t much of a member of the chapel, but thanks to his
singing voice and the wishes of his redoubtable aunt is also a member of
the choir, which is on its way to a choral festival in Wales. They’re
big on this sort of thing in Wales, so I’m given to understand. And
naturally once they get to Llanffugiol there are alarums and excursions
and Joe is called upon to help the locals–several different groups of
locals–with their investigations.

I haven’t made up my mind about this book yet. It didn’t hold my
attention nearly was well as Hill’s other books have, but I was suffering
from jet lag at the time, so it might not be Hill’s fault. And then,
Luton, not Llanfugiol, is really Joe’s place. It’s hard to judge him
without seeing him in his native surroundings.

I liked Joe
Sixsmith and his aunt, though we didn’t see much of her; I liked his
girlfriend, but we didn’t see much of her either; I didn’t like his best
friend particularly, and this book didn’t give me much reason to. I
might feel differently if I’d read the earlier books first, of course.
The book clearly suffers from being in the middle of a series; Hill
slacked off on the character development of the continuing characters.

So the book gets an extremely qualified thumbs up, in that I’d gladly
read more of the series. But that’s the most I can say.

A Town Like Alice, by Nevil Shute

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I first heard of Nevil Shute when I was in elementary school
and tried (and failed) to read On The Beach under the mistaken
impression that it was a science fiction novel. Whatever else it was, it
was completely over my head.

I first heard of A Town Like Alice when they made a
mini-series out of it on national TV, many, many years ago (the
mid-1970’s, maybe)? I didn’t watch it, though my parents did, and I saw
snippets. I knew it took place in Australia, and somehow I got the idea
that it was about a convict, a woman who had been transported to
Australia and was having to work as a housemaid. Possibly I’m conflating
two different TV spectaculars, but that’s how it stuck in my memory.

I didn’t put the two names together, or contemplate reading
A Town Like Alice, until
Ian Hamet wrote me a note and suggested
that as I was going to Australia I should give Nevil Shute a try. I’m a
history buff, I thought to myself, and A Town Like Alice is a
historical novel; and I’m going to Australia, and
A Town Like Alice is about Australia; and most likely I’ll
find a copy of it there.

And in fact, though I looked for it in several of the bookstores I
visited, I didn’t see anything by Shute at all while I was in Australia.
Go figure. But I found a copy shortly after I got back to the States,
and opened it, and finally stayed up late to finish it, which was a
really bad idea given my jet lag, but was satisfying none the less. And
this, even though everything I knew about the book was wrong.

It’s the story of an English woman named Jean Paget, and the action
begins during the second world war. Jean’s family has business
interests in Malaya, and after going to school in England she’s working
as a secretary in the company office there when the Japanese invade.
She’s captured and marched off to a POW camp with a
large group of other women and children–except that there is no camp to
receive them. Eventually, after many hardships and forced marches over a
good bit of Malaya, the surviving women, led by Jean, manage to settle
down in a village and wait out the war. During their marches, they
encounter an Australian POW named Joe Harman who’s being made to drive a
truck for the Japanese, and who helps the women out at the risk of his
own life.

Years later, when the war is over, Jean receives a legacy from a distant
relative, and becomes reasonably wealthy. She visits Malaya to say thank
you to the villagers who took her in–and while there discovers that Joe
Harman, a man she’d thought had been killed by the Japanese, is in fact
still alive, and everything changes for her.

It says something about the book that the plot I’ve summarized so far is
only part of the story; the best is yet to come, and I won’t spoil it for
you.

I’ve been trying to think what else to say about this book, other than
“Go find a copy and read it.” It’s a little slow getting started (though
not in a bad way), as the
story is narrated by the solicitor who is the executor of Jean Paget’s
legacy and it takes him a while to locate her and longer still for her to
begin to tell him her story. But once we’ve passed that, things take
off. I’m still pondering why Shute felt that the solicitor was necessary
to the story; he mostly serves to distance us from Jean Paget and Joe
Harman. Perhaps Shute simply felt that the horrors of war were still too
close to most people (the book was published in 1950), and that some
distance was needed. I dunno.

But the book works, and where it especially works is not the broad sweep
of the story but the little details along the way, especially the details
of frontier life in mid-20th-century Australia. (Rather like the Wild
West–and yet, very different.) I was especially
taken with the explanation of why Joe Harman didn’t die at the hands of
the Japanese–and it’s a great frustation to me, because if I tell you,
I’ll spoil it.

So.

Go find a copy and read it, or you’ll never know what poddy dodging is
all about.

Destiny, by Elizabeth Haydon

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This is the third volume in the trilogy that began with
Rhapsody and continued with
Prophecy, and it has a suitable
title. The events of the book are more-or-less destined to occur, and
they play out more-or-less as they are supposed to. The romance that
buds in the first book and blossoms in the second comes to fruition
after a suitable number of obstacles are overcome (most of them,
it’s only fair to say, are really rather novel); sundered kindreds
are united, old feuds are put aside, and Rhapsody and her beau usher in a
new era of gladness. Whew, I was worried for a moment that she might not
make it.

All in all…pretty good for a new author, though not perfect. If you
like epic fantasy, and you enjoy a little romance with it, you’ll
probably enjoy these. My major complaint is with Haydon’s handling of
history. More than anything else, this trilogy is about
about healing the wounds of past conflicts. The history of her world,
both recent and ancient, are key. And the problem is that real history
is complicated. It doesn’t flow naturally in ways that
support the story you want to tell. When history is presented too
simply, it looks comic book, as though it’s painted in all primary
colors, and I have trouble taking it seriously.

Maybe that’s just me, though; we aren’t all history buffs.

The Nursing Home Murder, by Ngaio Marsh

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In all of Marsh’s long career, she wrote only one novel with a
collaborator, and this, her third novel, is it. This is a medical
mystery, and appropriately enough her collaborator was a medical doctor
named Henry Jellett (not that you’d know that from the edition of the
book I have; I found it out on a web page some where, quite a long time
ago now, when I was looking for a complete list of Marsh’s books).

Full disclaimer: I actually read this before my trip to
Australia, and neglected to write a review before I left. Usually I
don’t let quite such a long time go by before writing about a book, but,
well, there were special circumstances.

The set up is simple: a prominent politician, the Home Secretary in fact,
suffers an attack of appendicitis just as he’s pushing for a new law that
will allow the government to pursue revolutionaries with vigor. This was
written in 1935, remember; the bomb-throwing anarchist was not forgotten,
and the Bolshevik was a real presence in England. The Secretary
collapses in the Halls of Parliament and is rushed to a hospital.
The operation is a complete success–except that he receives an overdose
and dies shortly after the operation. Who gave him the drug? It could
have been the surgeon; the Secretary had recently had a sordid affair
with the woman the surgeon loves. It could have been one of the nurses;
one of them is the woman with whom the victim had the sordid affair, and
another is a Bolshevik who laughed at his death. Was it thwarted love?
Politics? Or something else….

It’s not a bad book; none of Marsh’s books disappoint. I enjoyed it.
But it was a bit tedious, and if the excursions into Bolshevism aren’t as
absurd as the ones in A May Lay Dead, they still detract from
the picture. There’s better to come.

Martian Time-Slip, by Philip K. Dick

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I must be missing something. This guy’s books have a huge cult following
and I DON’T get it. This one was just plain bad. It’s dated, the premise
is stupid and the characters bored me to tears. I finished it, but only
because it wasn’t too long and I was too lazy to get up and get something
else to read. A co-worker of mine loves Dick and tells me he’s right out
of the 60’s drug culture which may explain it. My co-worker, from what I
can tell, is still halfway back in the 60’s drug culture which somehow is
interesting face to face but doesn’t really work very well on paper.

The story is that Mars has been colonized by Men. All of Earth’s
political and national divisions have been brought along to Mars. They
are using the canals dug by the, get this, indigenous Martians to
transport the precious little water they have up there. Everyone is
paranoid about mutations that have shown up due to the gamma ray exposure
during the long trip to Mars and autism and schizophrenia are seen as
manifestations of a mutation rather than as a neurological condition. The
native Martians are called Bleekmen and are sort of like the Australian
Aborigines in appearance except really small and kind of dried up. They
have a kind of mystical shamanist culture as well. And they are able to
communicate on some other mental plain that’s not really explained except
that that is where the autistic children and the schizophrenic’s minds are
really at.

That is the setting. I won’t go into the plot except to say that the 50’s
bored housewife messing around with the milkman comes into it, tediously,
and that it tries to imitate the social climate of the post war years,
badly.

Skip this one. Hated it. Hated it. Read something a little more developed
or thought out.

Magic Mountain

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For those who aren’t familiar with the Los Angeles
area, Magic Mountain is the local Six Flags amusement park. It first
opened six or seven years after I was born, as a simple little amusement
park. There was one roller coaster, the Gold Rusher, which sprawled over
one side of the mountain, and had no steep dips or drops; there was the
Log Jammer, your basic flume ride, on the other side of the mountain;
there was a sky ride, like a gondola-style ski-lift; a carousel; a bunch of
prettied up carnival rides; and a weird sort of ferris wheel thing called
the Galaxy. At the top of the mountain was the “Sky Tower”, with an
observation deck at its crown. A funicular railway went to the top the
hill, and a simple monorail called the Metro travelled around the park.
The park had a vaguely German/Alpine theme to it, and was presided over
(in lieu of Disney characters) by a wizard and a bunch of large rotund
trolls covered with pale blue fur.

One of the first times I went, they had a deal where you could get a
special shoulder patch called “The Red Badge of Courage” if you went on
five of seven scary rides. I don’t recall what they all were, but given
what the park has become, I find it rather ironic.

Over the next few years they added additional rides, including (in 1976,
tied in with the U.S. Bicentennial) the Revolution, the world’s first
looping roller coaster. (Last night I heard two guys discussing which
coasters they’d ridden on that night, and how many times, and
consequently how many loop-the-loops they’d ridden through. I believe
the total was 54.) Later they added Colossus, at that time the world’s
largest wooden coaster–and that, in my mind (though I’m no coaster
enthusiast) is when Magic Mountain’s destiny became clear. How was Magic
Mountain to survive against the competition of Disneyland and Knotts
Berry Farm? It became coaster city.

Since then it’s been bought by Six Flags. They’ve added a water park,
Hurricane Harbor, next door; and with the addition of Scream, a brand new
coaster that opens today, they have sixteen roller coasters.

The last time I’d been to Magic Mountain was before most of the new
coaster were built, something like eight or ten years ago. Jane and I
had thought about going a couple of times in the last few years, but
as she’s carried, delivered, and nursed three babies in the last six
years it hadn’t really been possible. But this week I got a bright idea.

See, this past week was Spring Break for my older son, David, who is in
kindergarten. Since Jane wouldn’t be needing to get David to and from
school, she decided that it would be an excellent week to get our younger
son potty-trained, which I’m sure he’ll one day be ecstatic to know was
discussed publically on the Internet. Obviously we wouldn’t be going out
and doing anything exciting as a family, but it would be a definitely
help if I could get David out of the house for a while.

And, for some reason, I thought of taking him to Magic Mountain. I did a
little research on line and verified that yes, they still had enough
rides he’d like to make it worth while. I also discovered that season
passes were really not that expensive–the same as two adult admissions.
Ho, I thought. I go, get myself a season pass, and then on our next date
night, Jane and I go together. She gets a season pass, good until the
end of the calendar year, and then if we went even one more time after
that, the passes have paid for themselves. And the park is close enough
to our house that going there in the evening for even just a couple of
hours is reasonable, provided you’re not paying full price each time.

So I’ve been to the Mountain twice this past week, once with Dave, and
once with Jane, last night, and we frequented entirely different parts of
the park. ‘Twas wonderful; it’s still the beginning of the season, and
with the new coaster not opening until tomorrow the park wasn’t very full
on either day. We pretty much walked on to most of the rides without
waiting.

Both Jane and I enjoyed reflecting on all of the changes we’ve seen take
place at Magic Mountain during the past thirty years. The trolls are
long gone, and mostly forgotten, replaced by Bugs Bunny and friends; the
kiddy rides are much better than they were when I was a kid; and while
some of my old favorites are gone, most remain: the Log Jammer, the Gold
Rusher (still a darn good coaster), the Funicular, the Metro, and the
Carousel.

Dialogues of the Dead, by Reginald Hill

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The Mid-Yorkshire Gazette is having a short-story contest, and the
preliminary judges find an unusual entry: a so-called dialogue, though
only one voice is represented, which describes a murder–a murder which
happened before the entry was received, but was not discovered until
afterward. And then the receive another such entry, and then another….

This is Hill’s latest Dalziel/Pascoe novel; I picked it up in Australia
(it’s not available here in the States yet) and read it on the plane on
the way home. It was a remarkably good choice, much better than the
books I read on the flight out, and kept me thoroughly occupied for
hours. It’s as good anything else he’s done.

Interestingly, this book covers some of the same thematic territory that
Lawrence Block‘s
most recent, but does so far
more convincingly–and the ending is far more chilling. You’ll have to
read both to find out what I mean.