Substantially Similar--A Blog on IP Issues, Writing and Film
Native Americans and the Coronavirus: Vulnerable Again
by John Aquino on 04/06/20Their story is well known. At the end of the Indian Wars as the 20th Century dawned, there were just over 200,000 Native American who were forced to live on reservations. Their number had been reduced by genocide and disease from a population that was once over 20 times an had once dominated the entire country. As we have remained at home due to the cornavirus, a neighbor asked for a book to read and mentioned Dee Brown's 1970 Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, which describes in detail the displacement of Native Americans. We were happy to lend it to her. And although the number of those who identify themselves as Native Americans grew during the 20th century, they were not well treated. When I was executive director of a tribal environmental association 15 years ago, a study we helped develop estimated the number of hazardous waste sites that existed on tribal land, which were mostly the result of dumping that the U.S. government had permitted over the years (see http://www.zendergroup.org/docs/Final_Report.pdf ; that report is still the last study of the topic I have been able to find.
And now, Native Americans are bracing for the onslaught of the coronavirus and everything that comes with it.
Native Americans have especially high rates of diabetes, cancer, hypertension, kidney disease, and asthma, which makes them especially vulnerable to the coronavirus. About half of Native Americans live on reservations in close-knit communities that operate in a way that is the opposite of the social distancing that is recommended to combat the virus. Some homes do not have running water, which makes the continued hand-washing recommended to guard against the virus, difficult, and have multi-generational residents living in close quarters. Poverty is not uncommon. (At the association I managed, we used to provide travel and housing funding for tribal members to attend our conferences. I discovered that some of those who were sent to attend had no money to eat while at the conference. ) Medical facilities may be few and not well-equipped; the federal agency that provides medical assistance has long been underfunded.
It is true that some tribes have prospered as a result of allowing casinos on their land and used their share of the revenue to provide health and educational services for their peoples. But only 240 of the 570 federally-recognized tribes have casinos, and not all of them are as large and successful as the Mohegan Sun or the Foxwood Resort. While non- or small-casinoed tribes may be especially ill-prepared to deal with the coronavirus, more prosperous ones have another problem. As a result of the virus, Native American casinos are closed or closing, and the revenue elimination (an estimated $37 billion) and unemployment (an estimated 700,000 direct and indirect jobs) are massive
The National Congress for American Indians asked Congress for $20 billion to compensate for job loss and economic instability. The Native American Gaming Industry requested $18 billion. According to the Huffington Post, the Trump Administration wanted to give them $0, But members of Congress, primarily Democrats, got that up to $10 billion--$8 billion from a newly-created tribal stabilization fund and $2 billion from a supplemental appropriation. The lobbying efforts on behalf of Native Americans has become more efficient, thanks to the fact that casino tribes have become a major employer.
The money to be provided, however, is half of what tribes requested, and the $8 billion from the tribal stabilization fund requires the tribe to certify the specific health-related needs to the Secretary of the Treasury. The president of the Navaho Nation told the Washington Post that the money should have gone directly to the tribes as it has to the states and that, once again, the federal government had put tribes at the bottom of the list and forced them to beg for money.
The upcoming weeks will be a difficult time for all. But once again, Native Americans may be especially vulnerable.
Copyright 2020 by John T. Aquino
Lacking Actual Baseball, Here Are Baseball Films to Watch
by John Aquino on 04/02/20During stay-at-home orders and in the absence of actual baseball, I thought it might be interesting to review (and maybe later look at) some fictitious and fact-based films about baseball.
Fictitious Baseball Movies
There are too many films to count let alone review in which baseball is a major plot element. Here are some important ones and some of my favorites.
They Learned About Women (1930). Directed by Sam Wood and Jack Conway. An odd, early M-G-M musical film about two vaudevillians who are also professional baseball players and who fall in love with the same woman. The stars, Joe Schenck and Gus Van, were vaudevillians and baseball fans. Two things are interesting about it. It includes actual pre-1930 footage of games at Yankee Stadium that are well blended in with scenes shot on studio sets and are wonderful to see. And it inspired (without credit) a better-known Take Me Out to the Ballgame (1949), which was made by the same studio, starred Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra, and is about two vaudevillians who are also professional ball players, although it is set in the 1890s and not the 1930s. In They Learned About Women, it is also interesting to see Bessie Love, a fabled silent screen actress discovered by D.W. Griffith and a co-star of John Gilbert. She gives a plucky performance. At the end, when Van scores the winning run and collapses, she and the rest of the fans crowd around him and she is stuck in the back of the mob and can't get to him. She crawls on her knees through the crowd, comes out the other end, dusts herself off, and embraces Van. Co-director Wood went onto direct the Marx Brothers in A Night at the Opera (1935) and A Day at the Races as well as Pride of the Yankees (1942) (see below). The other director, Jack Conway, was later in charge of Viva Villa! (1934), A Tale of Two Cities (1935), and The Hucksters (1946).
It Happens Every Spring (1949). Directed by Lloyd Bacon. Screenplay by Valentine Davies. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPXHxV-MZR4 )This is, perhaps, my favorite baseball film. It's about a chemistry professor, played by Ray Milland, who discovers a composition that repels wood. Underpaid, he cannot afford to marry his sweetheart, and so, he leaves the campus, manages to join a major league team as a pitcher named Kelly, and becomes a strikeout ace as batters swing at his pitches, which seem to bounce over their bats. No actual professional teams are mentioned because the baseball commissioner Happy Chandler denied permission to use the names, feeling that the film condoned cheating Admittedly, baseball is still reeling from the Houston Astros signal-stealing scandal. But Chandler's decision amuses me because the movie is a fantasy. There was and is no such chemical composition. The screenplay was written by the same woman who wrote the script for A Miracle on 34th Street (1947). Also, Major League Baseball did cooperate two years later with the film Angels in the Outfield, where the protagonist is clearly the manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates. In that film, angels help the players perform better than they normally do--a kind of cheating, I think. And five years after that, MLB supported the film Damn Yankees (1958) in which the protagonist sells his soul to the devil in return for which the man becomes young again and leads the Washington Senators to win the pennant over the New York Yankees. Both of these later films deal with a form of cheating and both are fantasy too. Anyway, It Happens Every Spring conveys a wonderful feel for the game of baseball. Paul Douglas, who was new to films, is marvelous as Milland's catcher Monk Lanigan, and Ted de Corsica, who usually played villains, excels as the gruff and reasonable manager. (Dolan says, "Kelly's not indispensable!" Lanigan says, "I know, but the team can't get along without him.") When Kelly during the last game informs Lanigan that his special pitch is gone, Lanigan reminds him he has seven guys behind him backing him up. It's a charming, feel-good film. Milland tried to repeat the magic two years later with another baseball film titled Rhubarb about a cat that inherits a baseball team. But it's not as good. Disney borrowed the idea of It Happens Every Spring in The Absent Minded Professor (1961) in which a professor creates a substance that, when placed on the soles of basketball players shoes, helps them jump higher.
Angels in the Outfield (1951). Directed by Clarence Brown. Screenplay by Dorothy Kingsley and George Wells. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=337WMg4rygA ) In this film, angels help the Pittsburgh Pirates win ballgames. Paul Douglas is again marvelous as the loud-mouth, foul-tongued, but gentle-at-heart manager. The special effects are non-existent (in contrast to the 1994 overproduced remake) ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeqTU5KRFRo ), but the cast is wonderful--Janet Leigh as a reporter who falls in love with Douglas; Spring Byington as the nun in charge of the little girl, played by Donna Corcoran, who is the only one who can see the angels; Lewis Stone as the commissioner; James Whitmore as the unseen voice of the head angel; Bruce Bennett as a dying pitcher; and Kennan Wynn as a skeptical sports broadcaster. There are cameos by Ty Cobb, Joe DiMaggio, and Bing Crosby, then part-owner of the Pirates. The story is simple, funny, and compelling, Again, a feel-good M-G-M film that Disney felt was good enough to remake.
Damn Yankees (1958). Directed by George Abbott and Stanley Donen. It's more a musical than a baseball film, but, as a native Washingtonian, the story about a Washington Senators fan named Joe who sells his soul to the devil so that he can play and help his team win holds a special place in my heart. (Please note that, as far as we know, a Washington D.C. team won the World Series in 2019 without the help of the devil.) The songs, especially "Heart," are good, the cast, mostly imported from the original Broadway show except for Tab Hunter as the lead, enjoyable. The filmmakers used footage of the Senators' home run hitter at the time, Roy Sievers, to double for Joe Hardy.
Bang the Drum Slowly (1973). Directed by John Hancock. Screenplay by Mark Harris from his novel. The story was first adapted from Harris' novel by Arnold Shulman for a 1956 television broadcast starring Paul Newman and Albert Salmi in the roles played in the movie by Michael Moriarty and Robert De Niro. It's an elegiac story of a pitcher who learns his catcher is dying of cancer and who makes sure his teammate finishes his last season. There's a good supporting cast in Vince Gardenia, Phil Foster, and Ann Wedgeworth. It's beautifully acted and speaks of teamwork and love.
The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings (1976). Directed by John Badham. This welcome film has a great cast of African-American actors in a story inspired by Negro league baseball of the 1930s. Actually, the film's tale is about players who, fed up by the league's treatment of its players, go barnstorming on their own throughout Midwest towns. It's great to see James Earl Jones, who seems to be enjoying himself tremendously, Billy Dee Williams, and especially, Richard Pryor, who is constantly trying to break into the still-segregated Major League Baseball by pretending to be, first, a Cuban, and then a Native American. It's enjoyable, delivering its message about racism earnestly but not in a heavy-handed manner.
The Natural (1984). Directed by Barry Levinson. Screenplay by Roger Towne and Phil Dusenberry. A magnificent cast--Robert Redford Glenn Close, Robert Duvall, Wilford Brimley, Darren McGavin (unbilled), Kim Bassinger, Barbara Hershey, Robert Prosky--in a lovingly producer film that is based on a great novel by Bernard Malamud. It loves the game and its myths. The only problem is that it distorts the bleak ending of the novel and replaces it with a feel-good if implausible finish ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjk3RsytFZg ).
Bull Durham (1988). Written and Directed by Ron Shelton. A little raunchy for some tastes, but, overall, a very smart baseball movie. It's about Crash Davis (Kevin Costner), a minor league catcher, who is assigned by his manager to shepherd a hot young pitcher, Ebby Calvin "Nuke" LaLoosh (Tim Robbins), who's a little wild. Meanwhile, a fan, Annie Savoy, tells Crash and Ebby that she will sleep with one of them throughout the season. Crash opts out, Ebby goes with Annie, but she's really attracted to Crash. Meanwhile, we're given a full picture of the minor league team amid squabbles on the mound about proper wedding presents and Crash trying to mold Ebby into a reliable pitcher. Shelton really knows and loves baseball.
Major League (1989). Directed and Written by David S. Ward. The new owner of the Cleveland Indians puts together a horrible team so that she'll have an excuse to move it to another city to her profit. The team actually bonds together and wins. The movie was modeled on the efforts of Minnesota Twins' owner Calvin Griffith to move the Twins from Minneapolis. (He had previously moved the Washington Senators to Minneapolis where they became the Twins.) The film treads some of the same territory as Bull Durham from the year before, but cast has an easy charm and the dialogue and situations are funny (David S. Ward, who wrote the script and directed, also wrote The Sting (1973)). The movie spawned two sequels.
Field of Dreams (1989). Directed and written by Phil Alden Robinson. This iconic movie--in which the ghosts of baseball players, some of whom were part of the Black Sox 1919 World Series scandal, come from an Iowa Farmer's corn field to play ball again--is not really a movie about the playing of the game. It's a movie about its myth and spirit. Some may get a bit confused about the bit of time travel that involves the character played by Burt Lancaster. But it is a weird and joyous film. Kevin Costner, who had appeared in Bull Durham the year before, stars.
A League of Their Own (1992). Directed by Penny Marshall. This fictional film was inspired by the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, which was formed during World War II to help keep baseball alive while male players had gone to war. One drawback of the film is that it suggests the league was unpopular and had to rely on bizarre gimmicks to attract fans. Actually, the league was immediately successful, especially because the teams played in the Midwest in towns that had never been able to watch professional teams. The movie coined an iconic line as the bewildered male coach portrayed by Tom Hanks, reacts to one of his player's tears by exclaiming, "There's no crying in baseball!" It's an amusing and touching film, well acted by Hanks, Geena Davis, Lori Petty, Madonna, and Rosie O'Donnell, which sheds light on what to many was a forgotten part of baseball history.
For the Love of the Game (1999). Directed by Sam Raimi. Written by Dana Stevens. Costner again, this time as a pitcher who, during what may turn out to be a perfect game, looks back on his life and concludes that it has not been perfect. A film that does indeed exhibit great love for the game and yet, at the same time, doesn't produce a great deal of warmth, and there is little humor. Well acted by Costner and Robin Wright, it still tanked at the box office. It's a film that anyone that loves the game should see. But be in a sober frame of mind.
Fever Pitch (2005). Directed by Bobby and Peter Farrelly. Baseball fan comedy about a Boston Red Sox fan who is forced to make a decision about whom he loves more, his team or his girlfriend. This film focuses on fervent baseball fandom. It was fortunate enough to be in production when the Red Sox finally broke the "Curse of the Bambino" (which sprang from the Red Sox trading Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees in 1919) and won their first world championship in 86 years. The ending was reworked to take advantage of the victory. Otherwise, it's a pleasant romantic comedy that ends with the heroine (played by Drew Barrymore) jumping onto the field and spiriting to her love at the other end, evading security guards as she runs. This was filmed after an actual game with the stands half-full.
Fact-Based Baseball Movies:
The Pride of the Yankees (1942). This biography of Lou Gehrig was directed by Sam Wood and co-written by Herman J. Mankiewicz, the year after he won the Oscar for co-writing (really for writing) Citizen Kane. Made pending the approval of Mrs. Gehrig, it's an enjoyable film, generally factual, with sharp dialogue and broad characterizations. A caveat is that Cooper does little ball-playing--he had never played before, had to learn to bat left-handed, and was doubled a lot. Still, he projects the dignity and humor of Gehrig, especially through the scenes of his discovering and suffering through the illness that now bears his name (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYyUWn224AE ). It's also enjoyable to watch Babe Ruth playing himself. Gehrig's story was retold in a 1977 television movie titled A Love Affair: The Eleanor and Lou Gehrig Story with a badly miscast Edward Hermann as Gehrig (an attempt to capitalize on his playing Franklin Roosevelt the year before) and a story that is really Mrs. Gehrig's.
The Babe Ruth Story (1948). Directed by Roy Del Ruth (no relation). ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMwj5efrjFI ) It's good to see the usually dependable William Bendix in a starring role for a change. But he doesn't resemble Ruth physically or in his manner, the script is clunky and factually inaccurate. Ruth was still alive, although dying, at the time of the film's release, which explains the inconclusive ending. Bendix also had to learn and hit left-handed because he was a righty. Two years later, Bendix played an umpire in Kill the Umpire. Ruth appeared as himself in Pride of the Yankees and the now-lost 1927 silent The Babe Comes Home.
The Jackie Robinson Story (1950). Directed by Alfred E. Green. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UyeibL5yEc )Jackie Robinson portrays himself, the first African-American to play major league baseball and does a believable job. It's an inexpensively produced, hackneyed, but sweet film on an important event in baseball history. It ends halfway through his career (which lasted six more years), leaves out such events as his WWII court-martial that was prompted by his race ,and includes silly comic relief from Ben Lessy as a player appropriately named Shorty. Robinson's story was told again in 42 (2013).
The Winning Team (1952). Directed by Lew Seiler. A sometimes accurate biopic of Grover Cleveland Alexander, who had the unique distinction of being named after one president and played by another--Ronald Reagan. It has a good feel for the game and depicts Alexander's battle with epilepsy and alcoholism. The ending, in which he is asked to take over in the seventh inning of the seventh game of the 1926 World Series when the starting pitcher develops a blister and goes on to pitch flawlessly (striking out Yankee Tony Lazzeri with the bases loaded), even after Alexander had already pitched two winning games in the series, is surprisingly true (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3QAnVF70Gs ). The only deviation from fact is he didn't strike out the final batter to win the game, although that is the better dramatic ending; Babe Ruth was called out trying to steal second. The always reliable Frank Lovejoy delivers again as player-manager Roger Hornsby. The love story between Alexander and his wife Aimee is the focus of the film. To some degree, his struggles with the bottle are not emphasized enough. After the events portrayed in the film, Aimee divorced Alexander because of his alcoholism, remarried him, and divorced him again. He died destitute two years before the movie was made. Overall, a good baseball movie.
Eight Men Out (1988). Written and directed by John Sayles. This film dramatizes the Black Sox Scandal when Chicago players accepted bribes to lose the 1919 World Series. It's a very respectable film, well produced, well acted, especially by David Strathairn as Eddie Cicotte. The actors seem to know what they are doing on the field. Sayes reportedly cast Charlie Sheen and John Cusack as much for their playing abilities as for their thespian skills. Any inaccuracies are generally due to the book on which Sayles' screenplay was based. It is not, however, a feel-good baseball film.
The Babe (1992). Directed by Arthur Hiller. Screenplay by John Fusco. Another film biop of Babe Ruth, which goes to the other extreme from the Babe Ruth Story. Rather than the hulky, uncoordinated but goodhearted Bendix, Ruth is shown as a grossly fat from the start (Ruth became fatter as he career continued but he started fit and was said to have the grace of a ballet dancer), slovenly, and selfish. There are scores of minor inaccuracies, but the biggest complaint is that this Ruth is just not very likable.
Cobb (1994). Directed and written by Ron Shelton from a book and article by Al Stump. Tommie Lee Jones, who plays Cobb, is usually dependable, but he overacts in playing the very nasty Cobb. The title character is never likable or even sympathetic, and the film's accuracy is totally dependent on Stump's book, which was based on interviews with Cobb. Some have suggested that either Cobb or Stump or both made most of it up. Stump is a character in the film. Shelton did, however, direct the excellent fictitious baseball film, Bull Durham (1988).
Moneyball (2011). Directed by Bennett Miller. Screenplay by Steve Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin. Chronicles Oakland A's manager Billy Beane's efforts to develop a team on a small budget by using computer analytics in acquiring players--which is how, almost a decade after the film came out, the game is now played. Well written by Sorkin and Zaillian and acted by Brad Pitt, Robin Wright (again, after For the Love of the Game), Jonah Hill, and Philip Seymour Hoffman, it's a fun film.
Copyright 2020 by John T. Aquino
More Poems to Pass the Time Under Current Circumstances
by John Aquino on 03/31/20In my last post, I offered some clerihews--humorous short poems of two rhyming couplets of varying length, some by W.H. Auden and a few of mine, to amuse during state-wide self-quarantine. As the stay-at-home orders continue, here are some more of my clerihews.
Alexander Graham Bell/Sometimes just swore like hell/But Mrs. Bell demanded he/Spoke on the phone with propriety.
Bond-Girl Ursula Andress/Had a body that spoke of undress/But her voice caused the producers to will/She be dubbed by Nikki Van der Zyl.
William Shakespeare before he was dead/Left his wife his second-best bed/But of choices there was only one/The best went to the Earl of Southampton.
Peter, Paul, John, and Ringo/ Cut their hair and hollered "Bingo"/It was so elemental/That they cut it "existential."
Rocky Marciano/Was a boxer and paisano/It hasn't been repeated/That he retired undefeated.
Being at home in self-quarantine/Isn't as hard as it may seem/While wiping things down, wearing a glove/At least I'm with the one I love.
Copyright 2020 by John T. Aquino
Poems to Pass the Time During a Time of Stress and Worry
by John Aquino on 03/25/20As the cornovirus affects the world and people are sheltering at home. I thought some poems designed to be humorous might be of interest.
Two years before he died at the age of 66, the British poet W.H. Auden published a book of poems in 1971 titled American Grafitti. It is an illustrated collection of 60 clerihew, which are short, humorous poems--really just two rhyming couplets of irregular length. The poet Edmund Clerihew Bentley pioneered the form in the early twentieth century with lyrics like this:
It only irritated Brahms/To be tickled under his arms./What really helped him compose/Was to be stroked on his nose.
Toward the end of his life when publishers were still willing to issue anything he wrote, Auden clearly didn't intend his clerihews in American Grafitti to be in the same league as his "The Age of Anxiety" or "The Sea and the Mirror." But they pass the time.
Anyone who has struggled with the works of the philosopher Hegel, could appreciate this Auden clerihew:
No one could every inveigle/George Wilhelm Fredrich Hegel/To offer the slightest apology/For his Phenomenology.
Or this one, about another philosopher, Immanuel Kant:
When the young Kant/Was told to kiss his aunt/He obeyed the Categorical Must/But only just.
Or this one,
Sir Humphrey Davy/Detested gravy/And lived in the odium/Of having discovered sodium.
Or this one, which was unpublished, on Joseph Lister, the 19th century British surgeon and pioneer in antiseptic surgery:
Joseph Lister/Never worried his sister/By becoming an alcoholic/His vice was carbolic.
"Carbolic" meaning disinfectant.
I modestly offer a few clerihew of my own:
Michelangelo Buonarroti/Threw an extravagant party/ But it really didn't matter/Because he stayed high on a ladder.
Edgar Allen Poe/Was a difficult man to know/He drank just like a raven/And went around unshaven.
Henry Wadsworth Longfelllow/Was really not a strong fellow/He cried when a reviewer/Wrote his lyrics could be truer.
William Shatner was really irked/That he could no longer play Captain Kirk/He thought to continue this feat/But was unable to fit into the seat.
Fastballer Max Scherzer/Also has a great curve. Zer/Way he batters batters/To him is all that matters.
Copyright 2020 by John T. Aquino
Mary Higgins Clark Remembered
by John Aquino on 02/06/20Mary Higgins Clark, suspense novelist, died on Jan. 31, 2020 at the age of 92. She wrote 51 stand-alone novels, 12 novels in the Alvirah and Willy series with her daughter Carol Higgins Clark, six novels in the Under Suspicious series with co-author Alafair Burke, numerous short stories and radio scripts, two children's books, and a memoir. Her works were adapted for four theatrical movies and 25 television movies. With that output, her writing is very well known. She usually created plots about women living everyday lives who are suddenly caught up in suspenseful situations. In that, she mined some of the same vein as filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock, who was also a raised a Catholic. She lacked his edge but provided a warmth that he didn't have (or probably didn't want).
I met her once through her Catholicism. I was a board member of the John Carroll Society, whose members have historically been mostly Catholic attorneys and medical professionals, and in 2004 she spoke at one of the group's Sunday brunches after Mass. The Catholic Standard newspaper didn't have a reporter in attendance, and, since I am a journalist, I was asked if I could write an article for the newspaper freelance on her remarks.
Remembering her on her passing, I am quoting portions of the article here.
"A nice, Irish, Catholic girl from the Bronx is how I describe myself," mystery novelist Mary Higgins Clark, who is also a Dame of Malta, a Dame of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre, and a Dame of the Order of St. Gregory the Great, told the John Carroll Society November 24 at its November brunch. And while she said that she does not feel that it is her role to preach, she believes that her writing is "true to my Catholic faith and upbringing. I don't use sex and violence in my novels. At the end of the evening, my heroines leave their boyfriends at the door.
Clark said that she is often asked why she chose to be a novelist and always replies that she didn't. "It was decided for me. I think of those legendary godmothers who stand around the cradle and bestow gifts. We're all blessed by God with gifts--some get so many they don't know what to do with them all. Well, the godmother who could have given me the gift of being a great singer--she didn't show up." Neither, Clark said, did the godmothers who could have made her a great dancer, cook, or seamstress. "The one who did show up said, 'You will be a storyteller.'''
Clark was aided in her writing by her heritage--her father was born in Ireland. "If you're going to be a storyteller, it helps to be born into an Irish family." Her natural gift was also supplemented by her life experiences--she became the secretary to an ad agency executive where she learned the advertising business and was also a Pan Am flight attendant--and by her decision to take short story classes at New York University to learn the craft of writing. "It's like a singer who has a voice but has to be trained in how to use it," Clark observed. She was taught to take a true life experience and turn it into fiction by first asking "Suppose…," and second, "What if?" She said she added a third question, "Why?" "I could suppose a situation and ask what if five people had the chance to do the deed, but in suspense stories you need motivation. Why does one person go over the edge and commit the murder?"
Clark also spoke of perseverance. Her first short story "Stowaway," based on her experience as a flight attendant on the "last Pan Am flight out of Czechoslovakia in 1949" was finally published in 1956--after six years and forty rejection letters.
Her greatest joy, Clark said, is hearing from young people who say that reading her work made them want to read more and to explore writing. She recalled her own experience in which her mother would encourage her to recite her poems aloud, "Just as you put a glass around a candle flame to protect it from the wind, there are few things greater than kindling and nurturing a child's enthusiasm. If I can help on that path, I'm delighted," Clark said, although she remembers the thirteen-year-old who wrote her saying, "Mrs. Clark, I love your books, even the boring parts."
Those of us who are mystery writers admire your prodigious output and your success, Mary Higgins Clark. God bless you. Rest in peace.
Copyright 2004 and 2020 by John T. Aquino
