Beyond Rivalry

Like many people, my favourite section of the newspaper is the obituaries. Some papers are better than others, and the Portland Press Herald in Maine is one of the best I've found for homey, chatty, detailed, quirky obits. Among the 5-15 obits that appear most days are some people who have led unusual lives and who have done extraordinary and ordinary things. And then there are the descriptors, some of which appear in almost every obituary ("deceased was happiest when spending time with family" in obituaries written by ... well, the family) and some of which you'll only read once in a lifetime.

Some clips from obits I've enjoyed in the last week or two:

"He enjoyed watching Nascar and having a Bud Light. " (Lance Morton, b. 1948?)

"She collected music boxes, dolls and unicorns." (Roberta S. Potvin, b. 1926)

"In his spare time he enjoyed clock repair."  (David L. Adams Sr., b. 1939)

"He was a brilliant applied mathematician and solved one of his mathematical problems on the Eniac. ...  Between 1963 and 1968, he was the first solo circumnavigator to sail in a fiberglass boat. His trip took him through the Panama Canal, onto Cape Horn, and around the Cape of Good Hope. ... Other work included participation in seeding clouds in order to create clear spaces over airports and lead capsule protection that shielded the men on Admiral Rickovers' first nuclear-powered submarine." (Alan Gates Eddy, b. 1930)

"On a king-size Tempurpedic, holding the hands of her daughter and new son-in-law, May Madeline Carter took her last breath, closed her eyes and left her body; instant peace filled the loving home of three. May's final days on Earth were comfortable, serene, and beautiful. In her last hours, May could not say a word; her shirt said, 'Love is all you need.'" (May Madeline Carter, b. 1951?)

"His leisure time was spent walking the streets of his beloved town, riding his bicycle or driving his muscle car. He loved the town, the woods, the tracks and the beach. He will be sadly missed by all those who have loved him, known him or have laughed with him, including his pug, Maevis Pudge, and his tuxedo cat, Mandy Marie." (David M. Couri, b. 1958)

"She loved lighthouses and went on a lighthouse tour of the Cape with her sons and their wives to celebrate her 70th birthday. She was an avid football fan. Her favorite team was the Green Bay Packers, particularly Brett Favre. She studied every aspect of the game and had won some fantasy football leagues. She was especially proud of the week that she picked every game in the NFL right.  ... Another joy of hers was to sit peacefully on her porch observing nature and watching the birds come and go from her feeders." (Joanne Marie Parks, b. 1932)

"Although she was a brilliant hairdresser, the job May truly accelerated [sic?] in was motherhood."  (May Madeline Carter, b. 1951?)

"Joseph was always on the move and could often be found repairing small engines. He had a very unique way of sharing his opinions." (Joseph 'Grandpa Joe' E. Lanham Jr., b. 1932?)

"She loved her family dearly and lived through her children." (Laurabelle Wing Small, b. 1942)

"Hans' enjoyed three hobbies during his life, tournament chess, stamp collecting, and building several large format H.O. scale model railroad layouts."  (Dr. Hans Willem Verleur, b. 1932)

"There was always plenty to eat and drink for anyone who happened to stop by. Ed was very proud of his backyard garden, where he grew a beautiful mix of vegetable and flowers. He loved to fish and make daily shopping trips to most of the supermarkets in Southern Maine." (Edmund Wilfred Rombalski, b. 1939)

"Mrs. Small was very fond of gardening and keeping up the grounds of her home and also, keeping a very tidy household. She enjoyed preparing holiday meals for her family and enjoyed having her family around her. She was a feisty woman right up till the end." (Laurabelle Wing Small, b. 1942)

"May encouraged, supported, admired, and inspired her children; they were simply her universe. Unfortunately, May suffered the loss of her mother, father, stepfather, son and two brothers. Finding out cancer would reunite her with these losses brought joy to a special place in her heart." (May Madeline Carter, b. 1951?)

"She was a head surgical nurse in brain surgery at University Hospital in Ann Arbor, Mich. ... The Walls traveled extensively, including a four and a half month trip around the world on a freighter. ... Above all, she loved a good party." (Ruth Alberta Walls, b. 1908)

"She was a simple woman who loved vegetable gardening, cooking and making quilts." (Marjory J. Greenleaf, b. 1926)

"Her interests were varied. She enjoyed hunting and fishing, skeet shooting and motorcycles." (Margaret 'Peggy' Beaudoin, n.d.)

"In his free time, Robert enjoyed puttering around his home." (Robert E.L. Stevens, b. 1935?)

"She was a loving mother and grandmother who taught her family to 'believe in the Lord with all your heart and he will show you the way.'" (Mary Ann Lakin, b. 1943?)

"Her favorite memories of that time involved sledding before breakfast in the winter ...." (Katherine Jewell Fiori, b.1951)

"Her favorite week of the year was the one she spent with Terry and her family in Jonesport every summer. She enjoyed doing crossword puzzles, e-mailing her friends and family, and spending time with her cats Gert and Mary, who will miss her dearly." (Dona J. DeRoche, b. 1942)

"Valeriye's greatest passions were her love for the Lord, her family, and her country." (Valeriye R. Johnston, b. 1935?)

"He often noted that having been raised by Victorians synchronized his values to an earlier generation."  (David W. Adams, b. 1923?)

"She was never without a book in the evening. ... One of her other interests was tap dancing, and she would often entertain at family and school reunions." (Janet B. Lynds, b. 1919)

"Decked out in his favorite duck billed cap, a plaid shirt, glasses, comfortable shoes, and mostly brown pants, he never seemed to be in a bad mood."   (Franklyn Hunter Goldsmith, b. 1914)

"He was enthusiastic about sports, particularly baseball, and at one point in his life was able to attend every single world series game for 24 consecutive seasons." (Carl Roger Wright, b. 1925)

"In 1972 he bought a cabin in Friendship, coming closer to his childhood dream of being a lighthouse keeper. A fourth-generation Freemason, he often headed out in a dory to fish with fellow Mason and curmudgeon, Jake Overlock, for silence and Jake's recitations of the Masonic ritual. ... He loved breakfast out with friends and family and a good joke, although he never could remember the punch line." (David W. Adams, b. 1923?)

"Wayne enjoyed swimming, fishing and mowing the lawn." (Wayne P. Hobart, b. 1958)

"She also enjoyed traveling, camping, gardening, flower-arranging, bowling, archery, painting, playing the piano, sewing, needlework, and reading." (May Harmon Rowe, b. 1924)

"Buff found her first, true avocation as a tender, empathetic mother, bearing three children over six years. She taught by example, always having time for conversation and play." (Elizabeth 'Buff' Grant McDonald, b. 1938)

"Fran became engaged to Jack in Tuckerman's Ravine, was married in Cape Elizabeth and honeymooned aboard the 'Loon,' their friendship sloop. ... Frannie was a natural athlete. She played golf at Purpoodock Golf Course and won the President's Cup at age 88. ... [S]he finally gave up her downhill skis when she was nearing 80, but continued to cross country ski when the snow conditions allowed."  (Frances Dana Jordan, b. 1918)

"Kay was a strong and independent woman before it was common. During the 1940s, she would drive a florist truck full of flowers and vegetables to sell at Haymarket Square in Boston." (Katherine Pilsbury Cobb Mercier, b. 1914)

"Donald enjoyed playing bingo and going to the Casinos at Foxwood and Las Vegas." (Donald E. Cobb, b. 1944)

"Florence is predeceased by two infants ...." (Florence R. Gray, b. 1919)

"He was planning to work in Dubai in January." (Fred A. Pickering III, b. 1952?)

"Connor D. Chute was born and died on Saturday, Nov. 22, 2008, at Southern Maine Medical Center, Biddeford. He was the first born child of Michael C. and Kelly J. (Noel) Chute. ... 'Curious George will be watching over you.'" (Connor D. Chute, b. 2008)

and this one, almost in full:

James A. Creighton Jr., 89 THOMASTON -- One of Thomaston and Cushing's notable characters passed away early Sunday, Dec. 14, 2008.

James A. Creighton Jr., a World War II veteran, was 89 years old. Jim Creighton was born in Harrisburg, Pa., but moved as a boy to the town of Hamburg in western New York. He worked summers during high school in the blast furnaces of Bethlehem Steel and later studied metallurgy at the 'hardest college I could find,' which turned out to be the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Certainly one of the proudest experiences of his life was his Naval service, for which he volunteered before the war started. He served in every theater of war except the Indian Ocean, as an engineering and deck officer, first on a minesweeper and then a destroyer escort rising eventually to the rank of Lieutenant Commander. On the early part of his service, his ship guarded supplies for the D-Day invasion of Normandy, was assigned to the Mediterranean and North African landings, and guarded against submarines in the North Sea. Later as the war progressed, Jim joined the Pacific fleet and participated in the invasion of the Philippines, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. In 1945 his ship was put out of action by the attack of a Kamikaze plane.

He told so many war stories about his Naval adventures-including being washed overboard in the mid-Atlantic -- that his wife urged him to write them down, and his book, No More War Stories, is in its second printing.

Jim stayed in the Navy through 1951 and returned to Bethlehem Steel as a metallurgical engineer, working in the Lackawanna and Burns Harbor, Indiana Plants. He was promoted to Superintendent of the Burns Harbor plant in 1967.

After his retirement he moved to midcoast Maine, where his family had lived since the early eighteenth century-one David Creighton, in fact, had been separated from his scalp during a fort battle in the 1730s. His family eventually became sailors, shipmasters, shipbuilders and lime manufacturers in Thomaston. In his retirement, he worked enthusiastically for Mothers Against Drunk Drivers and the Maine Highway Commission.

He himself embraced unusual driving techniques. One of his more dubious practices was his 'moose avoidance procedure,' which entailed driving close, if not on, the dividing line, in rural Knox County. This permitted him to prepare for animals emerging on either side of the road.

As an eager competitor throughout life, Jim Creighton helped organize and build community skating rinks for hockey games, construct tennis courts, and invented a type of duplicate bridge. 'Bridge Match' is regularly played in and around Knox County. His love of numbers and statistics extended to his golf playing and his health. His physician compared his blood pressure records to the Dead Sea Scrolls. Jim will be remembered not only for his optimism, loyalty, and leadership, but also for his love of sailing, tennis, bird watching, and the Boston Red Sox.

He loved 'hunkering down' in Maine winters. He will no doubt be remembered as well for his eccentric opinions. Known within the family as Gump, he was also referred to as Captain Budget, and his pronouncements about life, money, and manners were kept in a red notebook. He proclaimed early on, for example, that he wanted 'one dog, one cat, one wife or any combination thereof,' but the limits he set in the animal line were never honored. His family pets besides numerous dogs and cats over the years included white rats (complete with their own apartment complex), a green heron named Pookie, and an enterprising crow named Woody. In his later years he and his cracked corn earned a devoted following among the mallard duck and seagull populations in Pleasant Point, Cushing.

Just finished Reginald Hill's The Price of Butcher's Meat (2008; published as A Cure for All Diseases in the UK), which was strong on Dalziel (still recuperating), introduced budding psychologist and sharp observer Charley Heywood through her emails, and brought back Franny Roote, who I'm convinced is a sociopath despite his own musings that he's not. Pascoe, Wield, Novello and Hat had minor roles this time, and Ellie was absent.

Some of my favourite bits:

Dalziel to Roote: "I can work out that you've been here long enough for our landlord to know you drink parrot piss!"

Roote: "Cranberry juice actually. ... Full of vitamins, you really ought to try it."

Dalziel: "Mebbe after morris dancing and incest."

Roote, describing Lady D: "She is, I believe, a very good hater."

In some Yorkshire pubs, the appearance of a stranger cuts off conversation like a toad in the blancmange ....

When Charley entered the lounge, Dalziel, occupying one of Tom Parker's low-slung Scandinavian chairs like the USA occupying Iraq, tried to lever himself upright but had difficulty formulating a satisfactory exit strategy.

Dalziel let out a sighing groan, or groaning sigh, the kind of sound that might well up from the soul of a tone-deaf man who has just realized the second act of Götterdämmerung is not the last.

PC Scroggs: "Thought it would be all right as he came along with the Super."

Some things didn't change. If the Prince of Darkness came along with the Super, that would be passport sufficient for all subsequent horned and hooved arrivals.

He spun around on his stool. The expression on his face made Munch's Scream look like a smiley.

"It occurs to me now, for the first time, that film critics are the only people in the world who go to the cinema when they're not feeling well. Normal people slump in front of the telly and watch wall-to-wall Poirots until their eyes start to bleed. But the deadline of deadlines was looming. Captain Hastings was beginning to get on my nerves and the first blockbuster of the summer was in town. There was nothing else for it."

-- Marcus Berkmann, film critic, in The Oldie, July 2008.

PD James' latest Dalgliesh crime novel, The Private Patient (2008), is set largely in Devon at a manor house-cum-plastic surgery center. Central themes seem to include worthiness and what we deserve, revenge, redemption, forgiveness, the inability to forgive.

When the book opens, the reader is in the mind of the soon-to-be murder victim, Rhoda, and after her death, at various times we're privy to the thoughts and feelings of a number of other characters, including suspects and police. Rhoda turns out to be a rather single-minded and self-focused woman whose actions have been at least partially responsible for others' pain and harm, and by allowing us the victim's pov at the start, I think James aids our ability to sympathise with her.

Speaking of her family of origin, Rhoda recalls:

"Those outbursts of violence, the impotent rage, the shame, had done for them all. The important things had been unsayable. And looking into her mother's face, she asked herself how could she begin now? She thought her mother was right. It couldn't have been easy for her father to find that five-pound note week after week. It had come with a few words, sometimes in shaky handwriting: With love from Father. She had taken the money because she needed it and had thrown away the paper. With the casual cruelty of an adolescent, she had judged him unworthy to offer her his love, which she had always known was a more difficult gift than money. Perhaps the truth was that she hadn't been worthy to receive it."

Later, Dalgliesh, Kate and Benton are discussing the case over wine:

Benton says:

"People die because of who they are and what they are. Isn't that part of the evidence? I'd feel differently about the death of a child, a young person, the innocent."

Dalgliesh:

"Innocent? So you feel confident to make the distinction between the victims who deserve death and those who don't? ... Moral outrage is natural. Without it we're hardly human. But for a detective faced with the dead body of a child. the young, the innocent, making an arrest can become a personal campaign, and that's dangerous. It can corrupt judgment. Every victim deserves the same commitment."

This reminded me of a comment I read recently, attributed to Gil Bailie:

"Anything one does to champion the cause of the victim creates new victims, so then you have a shift in the marker, and the moral boomerang comes back upon those who were trying to champion the cause of victims and therefore made victims and therefore became victimizers and therefore the whole thing begins to shift again."

I think Dalgliesh is saying the same thing, though the line seems to so fine and the task so daunting -- to hear the victim, to do what one can to stop the making of victims (including recognising oneself as complicit in the ways we are), without making the avenging of victims a campaign, a cause to champion, a justification for victimising others.

Finally, James nicely summarises the way that finding an appropriate scapegoat brings order and peace to a community. Dalgliesh is musing about how suspects feel about the police:

"At first he and his team are awaited and greeted with relief. Action would be taken, the case cleared up, the horror which was also an embarrassment would be salved, the innocent vindicated, the guilty -- probably a stranger whose fate could cause no distress -- would be arrested and dealt with. Law, reason and order would replace the contaminating disorder of murder. But there had been no arrest and no sign of one. It was still early days, but for the small company at the Manor there was no foreseeable end to his presence or to his questioning. He understood their growing resentment .... "

Later she alludes briefly to the psychology of suspicion:

"Murder was a contaminating crime, subtly changing relationships which, even if not close, had been easy and without strain .... It wasn't a question of active suspicion, more the spread of an atmosphere of unease, a growing awareness that other people, other minds, were unknowable."

Just finished The Likeness by Tana French, which follows on her evocative debut of last year, In the Woods, both set in Ireland. The Likeness would be a great readlike for Donna Tartt's The Secret History, with its focus on a closely knit group of college-aged students (grad-school-aged, in this case) who have secrets.

French's writing and emotional sensitivity are both superb.

The elements that most interested me are the thread of sacrifice woven throughout the book, French's evocation of sadness, and her portrayal of the settled, harmonious, familial, habitual, insidious, dysfunctional, oppressive, romanticised and idealised relationships and lifestyle among the five friends. I think that besides sacrifice, one of the major themes of the book is home: what constitutes home, family, the places we are free, the places we are held; and how some people sacrifice everything to create home, and some feel it a threat they have to run from, and some never find it, and some luck into it for a week, a year, a decade, a lifetime.

Sacrifice

"I don't tell people this, it's nobody's business, but the job is the nearest thing I've got to a religion. The detective's god is the truth, and you don't get much higher or much more ruthless than that. The sacrifice, at least in Murder and Undercover ... is anything or everything you've got, your time, your dreams, your marriage, your sanity, your life. Those are the oldest and most capricious gods of the lot, and if they accept you into their service they take not what you want to offer but what they choose." [Cassie]

"Look at the old wars, centuries ago: the king led his men into battle. That was what the ruler was: both on a practical level and on a mystical one, he was the one who stepped forward to lead his tribe, put his life at stake for them, became the sacrifice for their safety. If he refused to do that most crucial thing at that most crucial moment, they would have ripped him apart -- and rightly so: he would have shown himself to be an impostor, with no right to the throne. ... But now ... Can you see any modern president or prime minister on the front line, leading his men into the war he's started? And once that physical and mystical link is broken, once the ruler is no longer willing to be the sacrifice for his people, he becomes not a leader but a leech, forcing others to take his risks while he sits in safety and battens on their losses. War becomes a hideous abstraction, a game for bureaucrats to play on paper; soldiers and civilians become pawns, to be sacrificed by the thousands for reasons that have no roots in any reality." [Daniel]

"Regardless of what advertising campaigns may tell us, we can't have it all. Sacrifice is not an option, or an anachronism; it's a fact of life. We all cut off our own limbs to burn on some altar. The crucial thing is to choose an altar that's worth it and a limb you can accept losing. To go consenting to the sacrifice." [Daniel]

"[J]ust like Daniel, I've always known there was a price to pay. What Daniel didn't know, or didn't mention, is what I said right at the beginning: the price is a wildfire shape-changing thing, and you're not always the one who chooses, you're not always allowed to know in advance, what it's going to be." [Cassie]

Near the end [spoiler alert], Cassie considers mercy, which you can also look at in terms of what people are willing to sacrifice, including themselves:

"There's so little mercy in this world. Lexie sliced straight through everyone who got between her and the door, people she had laughed with, worked with, lain down with. Daniel, who loved her like his blood, sat beside her and watched her die, sooner than allow a siege on his spellbound castle. Frank took me by the shoulders and steered me straight into something he knew could eat me alive. Whitethorn House let me into its secret chambers and healed my wounds, and in exchange I set my careful charges and blew it to smithereens. Rob, my partner, my shieldmate, my closest friend, ripped me out of his life and threw me away because he wanted me to sleep with him, and I did it. And when we had all finished clawing chunks off each other, Sam, who had every right to give me the finger and walk away for good, stayed because I held out my hand and asked him to."

There's also some philosophising about content and discontent, with language about 'the sacred' and 'exterminated at all costs':

Abby says:

"our entire society's based on discontent: people wanting more and more and more, being constantly dissatisfied with their homes, their bodies, their decor, their clothes, everything. Taking it for granted that that's the whole point of life, never to be satisfied. If you're perfectly happy with what you've got -- specifically if what you've got isn't even all that spectacular -- then you're dangerous. You're breaking all the rules, you're undermining the sacred economy, you're challenging every assumption that society's built on."

Daniel takes it up:

"I think you've got something there. ... Not jealousy, after all: fear. It's a fascinating state of affairs. Throughout history -- even a hundred years ago, even fifty -- it was discontent that was considered the threat to society, the defiance of natural law, that danger that had to be exterminated at all costs. Now it's contentment. What a strange reversal."

The Friends

"On weekends they worked on the house; occasionally, if the weather was good, they took a picnic somewhere. Even their free time involved stuff like Rafe playing piano and Daniel reading Dante out loud and Abby restoring an eighteenth-century embroidered footstool. They didn't own a TV, never mind a computer ....  They were like spies from another planet who had got their research wrong and wound up reading Edith Wharton and watching reruns of Little House on the Prairie."

"They were very tactile, all of them. We never touched in college, but at home, someone was always touching someone: Daniel's hand on Abby's head as he passed behind her chair, Rafe's arm on Justin's shoulder as they examined some spare-room discovery together, Abby lying back in the swing seat across my lap and Justin's, Rafe's ankles crossed over mine as we read by the fire. ... I was on full alert for any kind of sexual vibe ... and that wasn't what I was picking up. It was stranger and more powerful than that: they didn't have boundaries, not among themselves, not the way most people do. ... [A]s far as I could tell, everything, except thank God underwear, belonged to all of them. The guys pulled clothes out of the airing cupboard at random, anything that would fit; I never did figure out which tops were Lexie's and which ones were Abby's. They ripped sheets of paper out of each other's notepads, ate toast off the nearest plate, took sips out of whatever glass was handy."

This is what I am always looking for, and idealised as it is, I have sometimes lucked into it.

Sadness

"I was a wrecked thing smeared over with dark finger marks and stuck with shards of nightmare, and I had no right there anymore. I moved through my lost life like a ghost, trying not to touch anything with my bleeding hands, and dreamed of learning to sail in a warm place, Bermuda or Bondi, and telling people sweet soft lies about my past."

"We did something good. I thought that meant no damage could come of it. It's occured to me since that I may be a lot dumber than I look. ... If I learned one thing ... it's that innocence isn't enough. ... I didn't even try to explain to him what I was seeing, the fine spreading web through which we had all tugged one another to this place, the multiple innocences that make up guilt."

I've watched most of season 5 via Hulu on my laptop. "Lucky Thirteen" (5x05) -- genius show. "Joy" -- again the realisation that House says what most people are really thinking but automatically censor because it's cruel and would cause conflict to say aloud (particularly, in this episode, about Cuddy becoming a mom; what he says is truly cringe-worthy -- and yet it's part of what was in my thoughts, too).

A few bits:

Wilson to House: "I'm leaving."
House: "What? Are you going to take another two months. Boy, you're really milking this bereavement thing, aren't you? [Pause] I mean good for you. Take all the time you need."

(Dying Changes Everything, 5x01)

House to Cuddy: "You have to stop Wilson from committing career malpractice."
Cuddy: "Talk to him."
House: "I already talked to him. Twice."
Cuddy: "Mocking him and insulting him --- let's see --- yes, technically those are categories of conversation.... Talk to him. Deal with his grief. Talk to him about what he's going through."
House: "That's a brilliant idea. I'll take him out for a beer. That'll make up for the fact that Amber's in a pine box and that there's randomness and chaos in the universe."

(Dying Changes Everything, 5x01)

Cuddy: Why do you think Wilson's leaving?
House: How many times do I have to use the word "idiot"?

(Dying Changes Everything, 5x01)

Cameron to Wilson: "You think you're making a rational choice. You think the worst is over. And then six months later you look back and you realize you didn't know what you were doing."
Wilson: "Are you saying the pain doesn't go away?"
Cameron: "It gets easier. Not in two months. Not in two years. But no. It never really goes away."
Wilson: Being here -- this building -- I was just in the lounge. I kept staring at Amber's locker."
Cameron: "I saw a guy wearing a scarf this morning. The color reminded me of his eyes. We lived 500 miles from here."
Wilson: "I have to do something."
Cameron: "Then do it. But don't think it's the right choice. Because there isn't one."

(Dying Changes Everything, 5x01)

Lucas (House's' PI, speaking about Wilson): "You want to find out he's pining. You want to find out if there is something about him that will tell you he's going to come back. Or something you can use to make him come back."
House: "Is there?"
Lucas: "No. No, there's nothing. Sorry."

(Not Cancer, 5x02)

Lucas (PI) to Cuddy as she walks away: "Hey, I like the shoes by the way."
Cuddy (tentatively): "Thank you."
House to Lucas, "You don't like her shoes, you like her legs."
Lucas: "It sounds less creepy if you say shoes."
House: "Less creepy, more gay."
Lucas: "That's my firm's motto."

(Adverse Events, 5x03)

Wilson: That's how we met: I was in jail.
Sheriff Costello: This guy was a total stranger to you and you bailed him out?
House: It was a boring convention. I had to have somebody to drink with.

[after Wilson breaks a stained glass window by throwing a bottle]
House: Still not boring.

(Birthmarks, 5x04)

House to Wilson [after pressing down the accelerator while Wilson's driving and being pulled over by a cop]: You "lost track of your speed"? I think that was Hitler's excuse. Lost track of the Jews. No one held him responsible.

(Birthmarks, 5x04)

House: [giving his father's eulogy] There's a lot of people here today. Including some from the Corps. And I noticed that every one of them, is either my father's rank, or higher. And that doesn't surprise me. Because if the test of a man is how he treats those he has power over... it was a test my father failed. This man you're eager to pay homage to, he was incapable of admitting any point of view but his own. He punished failure, he did not accept anything less than... He loved doing what he did, he saw his work as some kind of sacred calling, more important than any personal relationship. Maybe if he'd been a better father, I'd be a better son. But I am what I am because of him, for better or for worse.

(Birthmarks, 5x04)

Foreman to House: "There are ways of getting to know people without committing felonies."
House: "People interest me, conversations don't."
Foreman: "'Cause conversations go both ways."

(Lucky Thirteen, 5x05)

Wilson: House, you are a drug addict. You go to prostitutes. You can't be judgmental.
House: And yet...

(Lucky Thirteen, 5x05)

Cuddy: Why do you have to negate everything?
House: I don't know.

(Joy, 5x06)

House to Cuddy: There's a reason that we've evolved the feeling of awkwardness -- it tells us not to talk about things.

(The Itch, 5x07)

Cuddy: House, you OK? ... Your hand --

House: That's weird. I usually don't get the stigmata until Easter.

(The Itch, 5x07)

House: You want to change your life -- do something. Don't believe your own rationalisations.

(The Itch, 5x07)

(Image credit: Triny's World)

"Then, last week, I went to see an acupuncturist as a last resort for back pain I’ve had for over a year. The woman asked me how old I was. When I told her I was 42, she said, “You look so old! I thought you were much older.” I would have been offended, but I felt like she was saying what I felt and that the back pain was making this true. My face evidently was showing tough times too. She promised to fix me—that remains to be seen—and, as I was leaving, she said, You need to change your life today. Go outside. Not so much sitting anymore. You need to be happy, find a way. I walked out thinking I’d gone to a therapist or a fortune-teller. I felt sick for a few hours after that, possibly more from what she’d said than from the needles, and when I woke from a nap, I went directly to the animal shelter." -- Hard Times Dog by Colette LaBouff Atkinson

I like Magic Molly's 'For the faint of intuition'

"For someone who frequently and automatically monitors herself (am I hot? cold? tired? desirous of a cookie?), I'm still not so good at coming to a diagnosis."

Not sure of the diagnosis but I think the treatment is almost always, Have a light snack!

Not sure why Booker-prize-winning novelist Ian McEwan (Amsterdam, Atonement, Saturday) was asked for his opinion on climate change policy and the new U.S. administration, but in this piece in the WSJ (8 Nov. 2008), he wrote this lovely bit:

"The contest for the presidency, like all elections, had the self-enclosed quality of a squash game, a chess match, a post-modern novel -- and this one was far better than most. While the candidates appeared to address an external reality, they were bound by strictly ethereal requirements: to cast spells on large crowds while seeming ordinary, to trample their opponent into oblivion while seeming pleasant, to be inspirational yet sensible, to avoid offending a score of sensitive constituencies, and, an old wizard's touch, to promise the electorate various gifts without further borrowing or raising taxes. ...

btw, McEwan argues that Obama must act decisively on climate change, taking advantage of the "unearthly powers" now attributed to him.

Shelf Awareness briefly interviews one of my favourite crime novelists, Reginald Hill, for their daily email, timed for the publication of his latest Dalziel and Pascoe mystery, The Price of Butcher's Meat -- which, tragically, is not yet listed as 'on order' or owned by any library in my community's library loan system. It's available now!

Turns out he's enamored of literary classics written by George Eliot, Dickens, and Austen, as well as contemporary works by the likes of Terry Pratchett, Markus Zusak, and David Mitchell.  Not a big fan of JK Rowling, whose first Harry Potter book (Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, paperback version) he bought for the cover, "'but only because there was also on offer a version with a dull anonymous cover so that sensitive adults didn't have to reveal they were reading a kids' book on the train! That struck me as really sad, so I bought the original and flourished it for all to marvel at my childishness on the way home. Didn't enjoy it all that much though, but who am I to disagree with x million readers across the whole age range?'"

I've lauded Hill before, here and here, oh, and here, at least.

(Photo from Fantastic Fiction.)