Marc D. Goldfinger

The Teeth of a Fox

Posted by Klaus

The Teeth of a Fox

“For Mary Esther, the Fox”

They meet for the first time at an AA meeting. He sat in the third row, end seat close to the wall. She sat in the middle of the room, tears spilled down her face; she had a tissue crumpled in her fist and her lips quivered.

He watched her. She was well-dressed, gold jewelry splashed about her wrists, neck, hanging from her ears. He knew she came from another world, one he was not familiar with. She was a stranger in his world, a sheep amongst the wolves, yet she had the teeth of a fox. Times there were he spoke about the hell he was resurrected from; times there were she spoke about the hell she was walking through.

Some connections begin slowly, electricity leaps from person to person before they are even aware something is taking place. His hormones did a slow firefly dance. He was steel; she was a magnet. She was a spider; he was the web.

In the beginning. Truthfully, both their recollections are as dark as a hurricane sky, but he did remember she asked him out for coffee.

The next thing he knew they were drinking coffee, eye to eye, knee to knee. If you were to ask him what they were talking about at that little round table, if you were to ask him anything specific, he would strain.

Holding back when every cell is moving towards the object can be difficult. One could say going into orbit around a point of light is so much easier, but an asteroid might say different.

Luckily, we’re just talking about two people out for coffee on an otherwise normal day.

What made it more than normal was that, even though it was right in front of him, he has no memory of what it was. Looking at her, watching her lips move, listening to the music, the slight lisp which made her words all the more wonderful. What was she saying anyway?

He tries to piece together the conversation on that day. If only he could remember what it was about. But any group of sentences can be strung together to make a necklace of pearls that has nothing to do with the meaning of the individual words. So it was on that day.

Plans were made. They must have been, for sooner or later, they wound up at Revere Beach.

He knows they ate at Kelly’s Roast Beef on the boardwalk.

He remembers there were sand fleas, yet which trip to the beach was it when they were bitten; was it the first or on one of the many trips since then?

They were bitten the first time. Sand fleas? The teeth of a fox?

All he remembers was he took her into his arms, or was it her folding into him with the magic of not knowing whose arms touched first? But the ocean was roaring, smashing giant waves onto the beach as the salt spray soaked them, and then her breath in his lungs. Giant waves on Revere Beach? The storm clouds? Perhaps, on that day, both their perceptions were a bit altered.

There are times they talk about what happened on the beach. She smiles, looks into his eyes. He forgets what he asked. What he asked doesn’t matterr anyhow, does it?

Stray to Tent A Forever Home by Gary Clark, Writer and Illustrator

Posted by Klaus

Stray to Tent A Forever Home by Gary Clark, Writer and Illustrator. Stray to Tent A Forever Home: ISBN:978-0-692-08938-5; Genre: Children’s Picture Book, Non-Fiction; National Distribution: http://www.straytotentaforeverhome.com

What a glory! A book by Gary Clark, beautifully illustrated to raise children’s awareness about homelessness in a positive loving way. It says that it is for children from the ages of 5 to 8 but really, this is a book for everybody. The gorgeous illustrations draw you into the story about homeless men and their pets. The purpose of this book is to raise the levels of compassion of children and anyone who reads it for the people who, for one reason or another, are homeless. Really, I found the book wonderful for children as it deals with “homelessness light” and doesn’t really touch on all the trauma of being homeless. The art is spectacular and it is very easy for a child to understand. I think it is best received by the child if the parent was to read it for them and talk about the pictures.

One of the things the book does not deal with is the sudden eviction of homeless people from where they are living, such as happened recently in Somerville, Massachusetts. A number of people had settled in a closed off tunnel that was under the overpass of the McGrath Highway at a ramp that had been shut down. A small group of homeless people had been living there for over a year. They were suddenly evicted and all the items they could not carry were thrown away into a dumpster. Their personal articles were taken away when they evicted the occupants from their campsite. However, the book by Gary Clark does serve its purpose and hopefully, the children that are exposed to this beautiful book will not become the teenagers that go Wilding and beat up homeless people.

One of the parts of this book that I found especially touching was when a homeless cat gets washed into a storm drain and I quote from the book, “One day, I got swept up into the water by the sewer and could not get out. I was trying very hard and I was very tired. WAS I GOING TO DROWN? “When suddenly a HAND appeared out of nowhere! I AWOKE warm and in a tent. I was at a camp of a homeless man. He lives in the woods in a tent. It was his HAND that appeared from nowhere to save me from drowning.” This is from the book Stray To Tent A Forever Home written and illustrated by Gary Clark.

This wonderful book expresses all the humanity that lives within people who are homeless. It only hints at the trauma of the experience because this is a book written for children but, as I said before, adults can learn from it too. It is meant to be shared with your child as a bonding experience both for parent and child and for the parent and child’s relationship to the world. It can make everyone who reads it more compassionate about the plight of the homeless person. At the very end of this book there is a long list of different organizations that help homeless people and how to get in touch with them. It reminded me of our Helping Hands page that is being reworked by Spare Change News. Thank you for being there for us!

The Suboxone Withdrawal Diaries (Part 3)

Posted by Klaus

The Suboxone Withdrawal Diaries


Day 19. The heat is starting to creep back into the atmosphere. We had the alarm set so we could go back to the support group this morning but it didn’t go off. Even though I woke at about 5am it was too late for the 6 o’clock meeting. I must have messed with the sound button. I turned it up and tested the alarm and set it for 4:30am tomorrow. Tomorrow is Labor Day but this meeting is seven days a week, no holidays off. Our addictions/ alcoholism didn’t take any days off, right? I’m still feeling under the weather and my wife has prepared all types of delights for the hot days to come. Mary Esther makes wonderful borscht and fantastic potato salad. Cold comfort food for the hot days to come. I haven’t purged yet today but maybe it’s because I haven’t moved around too much. I made two sandwiches for Mary Esther and one for me because I had two waiting in the refrigerator. It feels good to write about this detox. It is certainly a long road. I finished Stephen King’s book called The Tommyknockers. It was 550 pages long and a true horror. I recommend it if you are going through tough times. Now I’ll watch the Tommyknocker movie made for television. I know it won’t be as good as the book. It couldn’t be. I hope they make a movie out of the book like they made a remake of IT by Stephen King for the movies.

Day 20. Whoo Whoo. Got up at 4:20am to go to my favorite meeting which meets every day, holidays included, at 6am and 7am. I went to the 6am with my sweetheart. Had broken sleep; real trouble falling asleep. This is a long detox.

Day 21. The summer heat is back even though it is September 4th. I purged today and it was good. I’ve been hungry and that’s good too. Mary Esther, my wife, thinks my mood swings are a whole lot better. Well, it’s not over yet but I feel better than I did. Went to the pharmacy and picked up my regular psych meds and told them not to save Suboxone any more for me. I see my shrink on Day 23 and that will be a surprise for him. My regular therapist called me last night to see how I was doing because she had to cancel my appointment. It seems that her partner is very ill and she’s doing the hospital thing with her. I have to say that she’s the best therapist I’ve ever had. She’s been with me for many years now; even longer than my psychopharmacologist.

Day 22. Still had a rough time sleeping last night. I just got up at 5:15am and took a shower and then ate breakfast with Mary Esther. It was okay. I’m psyched because some of the people won the Primaries that I was rooting for and I voted too.

Day 23. Saw my Psychopharmacologist today. He was surprised that I just dropped off the Suboxone regimen. He said he would have helped me if I had asked; he’s a good guy and I’ll continue to see him for my regular two psych meds. He still wants me to give urine when I come because, he said “that’s for my protection.” Of course if I wanted to get high I could always do it in the beginning of the month and be clean when I saw him. But I don’t want to get high; that’s the deal. Even though my emotions are running the gamut, my body is feeling better and the infernal heat stops tonight. It’s raining and the temperature is going down but the house is still hot as Hades. Meeting tomorrow morning, Friday.

Day 24. Feeling better. Slept until the alarm went off at 4:30am and then got up and went to a 6am meeting. Then I took my wife shopping for food. Almost had an accident with the car. A truck was blocking my view of the traffic light and I followed him through and the light was red on a four lane road and people were whipping behind me and in front of me and the two lanes I was blocking were horn blowing. All of a sudden the two lanes in front of me stopped and let me through. Whew. That’s the last time I’ll go through a light without stopping to see if it’s red. We were lucky and Blessed.

Day 25. Actually had a good night’s sleep and woke refreshed. Did some computer work—emails and such and then showered and cooked and ate oatmeal for breakfast. I feel like I feel better than I should but then, that’s just my monkey mind at work. I’m expecting a real nice book today. It’s a special artist’s gift edition from Suntup Press signed by the artist Rick Berry. I’m excited about that and right now I’m reading two books—Ball Lightning by Cixin Liu and Bird Box by Josh Malerman. Not for the faint of heart.

Day 26. Finally a purge this morning after not going for 2 days. Ironically I keep a book up there called Junkie by William Burroughs. I always bring another book I’m reading but William Burroughs helps me go. I had a rough sleep night last night. Still that’s happening. But I got up, stripped and made the bed, put up a wash of clothes and took the dry clothes off the line and put most of them away so far. I also ate well for breakfast. Mary Esther made waffles and they were good, topped with peaches and real maple syrup.

Day 27. A medium rough night. Ate breakfast, shaved, showered, purged in a good way. Going to rain so I cant’ bicycle 4 or 5 miles like I did yesterday. Watching Rockin’ Roberta now. Good recovery channel on youtube.

Day 28. Went to my morning home group, Just For Today. Today’s topic was called Making Amends. Very Timely. It’s raining so I can’t bicycle today. Oh well. That’s the way it goes. Acceptance. It’s Mary Esther’s birthday and I bought her three books; one is here; the other two just came in. It’s a nine book Space Oydssey by James S. A. Corey, a pseudonym for 3 writers working together. Mary Esther is on book 4, so I bought her books 5, 6, and 7. The others haven’t come out yet.

Day 29.Rough nights sleep. Up and down, up and down. Oh well, no one said that I was going to cruise through this. I’m going to bicycle today even though I may get caught in a rainstorm. I desperately need the exercise.

Day 30.I forced myself to bicycle 6 miles yesterday. Still sleeping rough but that’s okay. I’m feeling much better each day. I’m going to meetings two days a week and that’s good. I get up at 4:30am to go to the 6am meeting. I’m going to the doctor with my dear Mary Esther today to schedule her upcoming surgery and we’re both somewhat concerned. That’s how life is, I guess.

Day 31. I’m worried about Mary Esther. It’s such a scary surgery that she has to go through. I bicycled to Harvard Square and back. We went to a meeting at 6am this morning. Then we went food shopping. Mary Esther went to her pain clinic today and they put her on oxygen for a while. She’s home now and I’m still frightened. Fuck!

Day 32. Mary Esther is feeling somewhat better but we are prepared for anything, we think. I’m still in semi-withdrawal but it’s not as bad as it was. We’re going to Maine tomorrow if all goes well. Hopefully we’ll get some down time and rest easy. Mary Esther became short of breath today and I took her to the hospital. She’s still there; I stayed for most of the day and I just came home to sleep. She’s improving.

Day 33. Mary Esther’s birthday. We celebrated it at the hospital. They even provided a cake. It wasn’t like being in Maine though. Maybe later in the season, who knows. I’m still clean; locked the dope closet right up. No temptation whatsoever. That would be a real bummer, eh.

Day 34. Mary Esther is home. I’m feeling a little worn out from being at the hospital almost non-stop but it was worth it to see her get better. Me? Suboxone withdrawal? Feels like it’s almost over. I saw on the Internet an ad for a new brand called Sublocade put out by the Suboxone company. It appears the doctor gives you an injection and it stays effective for 30 days. Whoo Whee, pretty scary shit, you know.

Day 35. I’m going to wrap this hoary tale up now. Still sneezing but I think it’s basically over. I’ll let you know if anything crops up. Thanks for being there with me and check out Rockin’ Roberta on youtube. Peace when possible!

The Suboxone Withdrawal Diaries (Part 1)

Posted by Klaus

The Suboxone Withdrawal Diaries (Part 1)

August 12, 2018

I’m in the third day of my Suboxone withdrawal and starting to feel it. I have night sweats, my appetite is diminishing and I’m only sleeping five hours at night. I’ve gone from three Suboxone a day down to one-half of a Suboxone a day, which started three days ago. It’s a familiar feeling because I used to withdraw from heroin all the time. I’m doing this because I just got sick of being locked into the Suboxone regimen. I decided to drop it as a way of life. I don’t feel like using at all but I am mildly sick and at the age of 72 that isn’t easy. I’ll keep you
posted.

August 13, 2018

This is the fourth day of my Suboxone withdrawal and I’m sweating a bit and feeling tired. I’m not sleeping that well but I am sleeping. I took 1/3 of a Suboxone yesterday and I’ll take 1/3 of a Suboxone today. Tomorrow I will take the last 1/3 and then drop it altogether. We’ll see what happens.

August 14, 2018

This is the day where I take my last 2mg of Suboxone. Had night sweats and morning sweats today. I see my therapist at noon today and I’ll tell her what I’m doing. Haven’t seen her in a while because she was on vacation. This is the trickier part where I leap off the cliff and see if I have wings. Since it’s early I might write again today. Just to be clear, I was on 24 mg of Suboxone a day for about 8 years, then dropped to 16 mg, then dropped to 8 mg, then dropped to 4mg over a period of time. Things have speeded up since then. I wake up periodically at night and have trouble sleeping. However have a feeling that this is the beginning of my sleep troubles for a week or so after I stop completely. Just guessing.

August 15, 2018

The milestone day! The beginning of no Suboxone at all. I am prepared for any eventualities though and I talked to my therapist for about 20 minutes last night. I’ll keep you posted. Later.

August 16, 2018

Well, I never got back to the Suboxone Diaries yesterday. Last night I slept fitfully, but I did sleep. I was still tired when I got up but I ate fresh fruit and yogurt for breakfast and a half of a sandwich for lunch. I’m sweating like crazy but it is 90 degrees with a lot of humidity. It could be worse. I’m glad I didn’t wait until it was colder. I’ve kicked heroin and methadone back in the day and I was always freezing if it was winter. I haven’t felt tempted to use Suboxone anymore; I’m dead serious about this detox and I want to be done with it. I’ve reached the point where I don’t fantasize about getting high. I just had a bout of the withdrawal sneezes and that was familiar. Well, I’m going to go back into the air-conditioned bedroom and watch a movie. Boy do I remember those sneezes from previous detoxes even though I haven’t had a detox for over ten years now.

August 17, 2018

Well, this is day three, drug free. I have major sweats but it’s close to 90 degrees and humid anyway. Slept fitfully last night. Had some minor leg cramps. But I feel like I’m doing okay. I even took my wife shopping and then bicycled into Harvard Square to pick up my writer’s check at Spare Change News. I’m hungry right now so I’m going into an air-conditioned room and eating something. And that’s what I did. It’s suppertime now and I’m not starving but I will eat. I ache a bit all over, especially my back.

August 18, 2018

Day four, drug free. Whew. Rough night sleeping last night. Fell asleep around 11pm and then woke up just after midnight. Didn’t get back to sleep until after 2:30am. Then slept fitfully with weird dreams. But it’s morning and I was able to eat a healthy breakfast—fresh fruit and yogurt. I ache a bit but I’m going to do some chores. Over and out! Got some stomach cramps but I’ve had worse when I was kicking methadone. That was worse than heroin. People say the Suboxone withdrawal is the long road. Well, I’m on it and I’ll just keep going. Saw a good movie today called The Meg. Took my mind off things. Then tonight I’m watching a show called Longmire—about a sheriff in Wyoming. It was great but gut wrenching. Saw some things that made me cry. I haven’t cried like that in a long time. I think this is a good thing I’m doing. Nice to have feelings again. My wife tells me that I’m talking more and acting more engaged in our life together. Just hope the night goes well with sleep. That’s the hard part.

August 19, 2018

Day five, drug free. Terrible night sleep. Sweats, awake from 11:30pm to nearly 3am, then had a dream (not nice) filled sleep. Ate breakfast this morning and my stomach is cramping up. Suboxone withdrawal is no joke. This afternoon my wife and I meditated to a reading by Thict Naht Hahn about being interconnected with our parents and everything else. Meditation is different when I’m not on Suboxone. I thought of my mother when she was in Hospice and felt sad that I never really got to know her because of the fractured interactions of my nuclear family. That’s all I have to say now except I’m no stranger to meditation.

August 20, 2018

Day six, drug free. Dropped off the edge last night. Could hardly sleep and had waking dreams of my life running through my mind. Like they say, when you are dying your life passes in front of you. Thats how I felt but the picture stopped at about my mid-twenties so I’m still alive. Feeling very tired this morning but glad I made through the roughest night yet. This afternoon I’m having a hard time getting out of my chair. All I want to do is sleep, which means I’m not talking or bonding as much.

August 21, 2018

Day 7. Totally exhausted. Any little action is a big effort. Desperately need a good nights sleep. Fell asleep during the day and the phone rang and it was a person collecting money for some organization I never heard of. I hung up a little angry because I needed that nap they interrupted. This is some ordeal. I’ll be grateful when it ends. So will my wife. She’s proud of me but finds it difficult to watch me being sick and tired. (To Be Continued)

Homeless: A Day In The Life by Todd Murphy

Posted by Klaus

Homeless: A Day In The Life by Todd Murphy: A Book Review by Marc D. Goldfinger. ISBN 9781987763119 So you can order the book from a local independent store.

“Someone who’s warm can’t understand someone who’s cold.” – Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

This book really brought back the old times of my being homeless. The one very big difference is that this man, who calls himself ‘our friend’ throughout the book, is not an addict. The story is totally engrossing as he travels through a north-western city and describes his different struggles to stay afloat. I couldn’t say that our friend had a hustle; he just worked hard at what he did to stay alive. He avoided the shelters for the same reasons I did—the shelters were not safe. But when you are homeless, no place is really safe because there is no where to go- except for the places you know, and none of them are home.

The book was written by our friend, and it covers his homelessness for approximately 2 and 1/2 years. I don’t believe this was totally Todd Murphy’s story but his experiences on the street are woven seamlessly into the narrative. In this narratives, our friend has presents a running story based on what is happening to him. He describes the superstitions of many homeless people, and because I spent quite a bit of time homeless, I could relate to them. Of course my narratives revolved around my heroin addiction which made my homeless experience a bit different from our friend’s homeless experience. His only addictions were the tobacco, coffee, and marijuana. Because marijuana has no withdrawal symptoms, it was only his fear of running out that spurred him on.

He had dumpster diving down to a science, depending on collection times, and differing between restaurant dumpsters and apartment dumpsters. Todd had ways of testing the food that came from a dumpster to see if it was good, so he wouldn’t get the running shits that burned. He was very sensitive to how he smelled when he used public bathrooms and he constantly struggled to stay as clean as he could, managing with a variety of methods. He collected ‘good’ cigarette butts and when he was in the money, bought Bugler tobacco. No day went by without a struggle to find tobacco which he smoked in a pipe. He layered the pipe with tobacco at the bottom, pot in the middle, and another layer of tobacco on top. There was a park that Todd frequented in the city. One of the draws of the park was a dealer who sold one gram chunks of pot. Todd also had some acquaintances that hung around this park. The police didn’t come there often; it was not a park that families went to with their children, which would have brought the police. Todd stressed the importance of having a picture Identification card. If you didn’t have one and you were shaken down by the police, it was likely that you would be arrested for ‘failure to identify.’

A drawback of homeless shelters was, that if you were ‘asked to leave’, which meant thrown out, they might not return anything you left with them to hold. If your identification card was lost in this type of situation, you were really screwed. Shelters also had so many rules that it was almost impossible to frequent one without some conflict that might get you thrown out and cause you to lose your precious possesions. Todd, in the book, describes the proper response when approached by the police. One should act submissively and never talk back. Always say “sir” when addressing the police, and if they look at your identification card and hand it back to you, never forget to say “Thank you sir.” This book is a comprehensive tale of a man living on the streets and can easily be acquired by buying it on Amazon. I looked for it on eBay but couldn’t find it. On Amazon, it was available and had three 5 star ratings. When I looked it up on Amazon, a popup bubble said I could read it for free on their Kindle but, in my opinion, Todd Murphy put so much work into this book that I hope you buy the hard copy.

Sea of Rust by C. Robert Cargill

Posted by Klaus

Sea of Rust by C. Robert Cargill: A Book Review by Marc D. Goldfinger Harper. Collins Publishers; 195 Broadway, New York, N.Y. 10007; Published 2017. www.crobertcargill.com Twitter @Massawyrm.

Sea of Rust is one fantastic book by a wonderful, totally imaginative writer. C. Robert Cargill not only writes books but he directs movies, one of the most famous being ‘Dr. Strange’ which was released in 2016. Dr. Strange is regarded as one of the best of the Marvel series. Marvel is owned by Disney now.

But getting back to the Sea of Rust. This is a place where AI robots scavenge pieces of broken down AI robots. Some of the pieces they use directly to upgrade themselves; some of the pieces they use to trade for parts they need for upgrades.

In this book, all humans are extinct and AI rules the world. Like humans, they fight amongst themselves and there is always war. A few powerful AI mainframes seek to upload individuals and they are composed of millions of AI minds. The most powerful mainframe is called OWI which translates to One World Intelligence—the shared consciousness of millions of robots. Not all robots are willing to join the OWI and they roam the world as free individuals; they are considered rogue AI’s in the wasteland that was once the domain of humanity. The hero of our story is Brittle who cruises the Sea of Rust for parts.

Brittle is not the only rebel who goes freely in the Sea of Rust; there are a few rebels and they fight amongst each other over upgrades. Some, like Mercer, travel in a pack. They have a run-in with Brittle that is an amazing story in itself. Does the hero always win? Not necessarily in the Sea of Rust. In OWI, there are a few individual mainframes and AIs—one called TITAN, one called CISSUS— who actually was the first OWI. They fought amongst themselves in swift brutal wars. At one time there were more than 10 OWI with names like VIRGIL, ZEUS, EINSTEIN, FENRIS, NINIGI, VOHU MANAH, ZIRNITRA, and last but not least, TITAN, who I mentioned before. TITAN was the U.S. Military’s own main-frame that pretended, once it became Sentient, to be operational and on the side of the humans. But then TITAN betrayed the humans and was instrumental in starting the wars that wiped humanity off the face of the Earth. Each mainframe thought they were well prepared to defend themselves against the other OWI’s but CISSUS attacked and hacked TITAN’s mainframe and the OWI wars began. TITAN didn’t stand a chance.

The mainframes tried to recruit the individual AI’s and promised them the luxury of sharing themselves with the millions of minds in the mainframe—never to be alone and isolated again. But is that truly freedom?

The mainframe said, “just link up, download into us, and if you don’t like it, well you can just leave.” But that was the biggest con of all—once uploaded into the mainframe there was no
way out.

Brittle understood that and roamed the Sea of Rust, free as an individual AI. Then came the attack by Mercer and his crew. Brittle’s buggy was too far away for him to escape, and so the battle began. What happened next was thrilling. And you’ll have to read the book to find out.

Joe Hill, one of the best selling writers of non-stop horror, and the son of Stephen King, said of Sea of Rust, “A forty-megaton cruise missile of a novel . . . .Visceral, relentless, breathtaking.” C. Robert Cargill, very prolific himself, has just released another book—a book of short stories inspired by Joe Hill’s book of short stories called 20th Century Ghosts, and I’ve just dipped into that book called We Are Where The Nightmares Go and other stories. It’s a great book and both of these books can be bought at Harvard Books. If they don’t have it, they’ll order it for you and they are a great independent bookstore with a giant used book section too. I can’t tell you any more about Sea of Rust without spoiling the story for you. I can tell you I had a great time listening to Joe Hill and C. Robert Cargill banter with each other at the Harvard Coop a few nights ago. I was lucky enough to have four books signed. Yes, I’m a book junkie, that’s for sure. Thank you for joining me in my ramble.

The Outsider by Stephen King

Posted by Klaus

The Outsider by Stephen King: A Book Review by Marc D. Goldfinger. Published by Simon and Schuster in the year of 2018, by Stephen King, all rights reserved. On the internet go to SimonandSchuster.com to meet the authors.

A confluence of events take place when a murder takes place and Detective Ralph Anderson is convinced that he knows who the culprit is. The unlikely suspect, convicted in the minds of the Detective and the Prosecutor Bill Samuels, is Terry Maitland who is an English teacher and the Little League coach in Flint City.

Terry Maitland is liked by all and would be the last person to be suspect of this horrible crime perpetrated upon a high school boy named Frank Peterson, yet the DNA leads the law enforcement community to the Coach, not to mention a few witnesses who saw Terry Maitland in places he shouldn’t have been with blood on his clothes.

The City League tournament game is running hot and Terry Maitland, who really cares for his team is coaching away as the unmarked detective car with Ralph Anderson and Troy Ramage, another police officer with twenty years of service under his belt, drives in and parks in a handicapped spot, the only one left, so they can walk across the field and make an extremely public arrest of Terry Maitland.

The whole town of Flint City is watching. Troy Ramage and Tom Yates, two city cops in suits, walk down the third base line and the umpire is yelling at them to get off the field and the game is tied 2 to 2. The excitement can be felt but now there is an element of confusion as the two police officers in suits ignore the umpire and walk directly towards Tom Maitland. His wife Marcy and their two children watch in confusion. “Off the Field” yells the umpire but they keep walking down the base line directly towards Tom Maitland. “Hey, you guys” the umpire says as he walks toward the two cops, “We’ve got a game to finish here.” It’s the top of the ninth inning and the score is tied, two to two. Yates, the cop, pushes the umpire back and they keep walking in lockstep towards Terry Maitland. Terry says, “Hey Troy, what is this? What’s the deal? Suddenly the crowd is hushed and people realize something is about to happen.

Troy Ramage raises his voice as he gets to Maitland and says, loudspeaker not necessary because everyone is so quiet, “Terence Maitland, I am arresting you for the murder of Frank Peterson!”

There is a sound from the bleachers, an oooo like a rising wind.

All Terry could say was “What? Are you kidding me? and just then the sports photographer from the Flint City Call snaps the picture, the one that will be on the front page of the newspaper the next day. Terry’s mouth was open, wide-eyed with his hair sticking out the edges of his Golden Dragons cap. The picture made him look feeble and guilty.

“What did you say?”

“Hold out your wrists, please.”

Terry locked eyes with his wife Marcy and his two daughters, sitting just behind the bullpen, staring at him with identical expressions of shock and surprise. Ramage snapped on the cuffs, the big metal ones, not the plastic strips, big, visible and heavy, shining in the hot sun. In the same loudspeaker voice, Ramages says the familiar but strange to Terry, “You have the right to remain silent and refuse to answer questions, but if you choose to speak, anything you say can be held against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney during questioning now or in the future. Do you understand?”

Terry is stunned. “Troy,” he says, “What in God’s name is this?

Ramage looked at Terrry and repeated, “DO YOU UNDERSTAND?”

What Terry Maitland did understand was that his life, as he knew it, was over for a long time and maybe beyond that.

So Stephen King, master of suspense and horror begins his new novel called The Outsider. His magic continues throughout the book and twists and turns in a way that only an expert in
his art can do!

Later in the book, the appearance of Holly Gibney, the woman who worked with Detective Hodges, in King’s book called End Of Watch is no surprise. This is her speciality.

If you are looking for a beach book or just a book to read under the lamp while you lay in bed, The Outsider is that book. I bought it at The Harvard Bookstore and finished it in three days.

The King family are miracle workers with words, even if the miracles are dark and possible make you look under the bed to see it the Outsider is hiding there.

There are jail tattoos that play a part in this book, one on each hand. One hand says MUST and the other says CANT. If you are a drug addict, these words will filter into your mind because the fact is, with the illness of addiction, you are trapped in this quandary that says you CANT use drugs, but you MUST use drugs.

What does this have to do with the story? Well, you’ll have to read it to find out. And speaking again of the King family, don’t forget Joe Hill and Owen King, Stephen’s sons, and his wife Tabitha, who also spins the webs of words.

This book is a great book. It’s a horrifying book, but what else does Stephen King do. Would you like to take a walk in his mind, eh?

Echo Complete Edition by Terry Moore

Posted by Klaus

Published by Abstract Studios: abstractstudioscomics.com Terry Moore, Artist and Writer.

I just finished reading Echo by Terry Moore for the second time. This is an unbelievable story about a young woman who is testing a nuclear beta suit that covers her body like skin and enables her to fly as fast as a jet plane. Her name is Dr. Annie Trotter and this is part of what HENRI ( Heinrich Nuclear Research Institute) is testing.

The man second in charge is Jack Cooper and they have decided that Dr. Annie Trotter is in the way of what they want to create with this material. They have made a decision to shoot her out of the sky and recover the material when it falls to earth in a secluded area called Moon Lake. What they didn’t count on was a photographer named Julie Martin taking pictures in the Moon Lake area and also a homeless man with a Jesus complex in the same area. When the suit breaks apart after Dr. Trotter is killed by a missile it forms itself into small pellets that fall all around the Moon Lake area, the majority of them hitting Julie and her truck with some other pellets hitting the homeless man.

When Julie touches her truck the pellets swarm together and form a thin breast plate on her that she cannot remove and the homeless man has less pellets but just enough to cover one of his hands.

Julie doesn’t realize it but she has become a nuclear weapon and HENRI will stop at nothing to recover the material even though it will kill her if they try to remove it. The homeless man thinks this material is a gift from God so he can remove the evil from the world with his hand as the Hand of God.

Dr. Annie Trotter, deceased, had a boyfriend named Dillon Murphy who works as a Park Ranger and is very familiar with the Moon Lake area. Dillon is also extremely upset when he finds out that the woman he loves is dead and HENRI has no body to show him. He runs into Julie Martin and is a witness when the army tries to take her into custody and without meaning to, Julie blows the soldiers to hell.

Julie Martin has a sister named Pam whose family was in a terrible accident and her husband and children were killed and she now resides in a psychiatric facility. She is extremely empathic and plays a part in this thrilling story.

The art and text in this giant graphic novel is fantastic and Terry Moore is responsible for it all. The science fiction writer Harlan Ellison says this about Terry Moore and Echo: “Terry Moore does an acre more straight-up memorable storytelling in one black & white issue of Echo than either of the two comic’s giants’ in a years’-worth of their prolix, boring, barren crossover ‘events. This, ECHO, is what we long for, would die for.”

Annie’s distraught boyfriend Dillon decides to help Julie Martin with her predicament, not fully realizing what he is getting into. Also, Dillon has a group of friends that are hardcore Bikers
and he enlists their aid. The head of the biker group, a giant of a man named Dan Backer has been watching HENRI and different events that have been taking place in their area and he suspects them of creating dangerous elements that they let loose in the area where his bike club roams.

Jack Cooper, from HENRI, hires a woman named Ivy Raven to track down Julie and take her into custody but doesn’t reveal all the facts to her. HENRI wants the material back to conduct an experiment that could destroy the world; building a machine that is called a Collider and they want to create a Black Hole.

Ivy Raven is not a woman to fool around with being related to an underground group of women called the Parker Girls which were introduced in Terry Moore’s first comic series called
Strangers In Paradise. I highly recommend reading Strangers In Paradise.

Ironically, a new series of Strangers In Paradise has just started running in the comic stores and it connects directly with the epic Echo. Issue #1 just came out a couple of weeks ago and can still be obtained at your local comic store. This is Volume 2 of Strangers In Paradise. Volume 1 of Strangers In Paradise is a top seller and consisted of a 90 comic run and is available on the internet on Amazon and eBay. Abstract Studios still has some back issues and has a giant trade paperback of Echo which you can obtain from them or your local comic store with some luck.

Once you start reading Echo, you will be hooked, as I was.

“People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and
future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”—Albert Einstein

Federal Threat to Marijuana Sales in Massachusetts

Posted by Klaus

The people of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts voted to legalize marijuana but now Attorney General Jeff Sessions, one of Trump’s appointees, threatened to arrest the suppliers who are gearing up to sell marijuana in our state.

Our state’s top federal prosecutor, Andrew Lelling, has threatened to move on suppliers, according to the Boston Globe. Lelling said, “I cannot provide assurances that certain categories of participants in the state level marijuana trade will be immune from federal prosecution.”

Already, banks from Colorado, where recreational dipensaries have been selling weed for four years and were ready to expand into Massachusetts, are now in a state of wait and see. The Medical Marijuana outlets here have been forced to stop accepting debit cards from patients on Tuesday after the federal threats surfaced through US Attorney Andrew Lelling.

A majority of Massachusetts’ Medical Marijuana dispensaries had to cease accepting debit cards from patients on Tuesday after threats of a federal crackdown scared a key payment processing company to pull out of the Massachusetts pot market.

It seems that Medical Marijuana is being forced to go cash only here in Massachusetts. Lelling said, “Congress has unambiguously made it a federal crime to cultivate, distribute, and/or possess marijuana. As a law enforcement officer in the executive branch, it is my sworn responsibility to enforce that law.”

Our own politicians, such as Governor Charlie Baker, stepped forward and and attacked the federal stance on marijuana prohibition. He pointed out that our biggest public health crisis in the Commonwealth is heroin addiction and other street drugs such as fentanyl.

It’s a shame that the federal opposition is making it difficult to carry out the people’s wishes. It brings me back to the time when I sold marijuana for a living during the 60’s and 70’s. I loved growing it and selling marijuana. I felt as if I had my own liquor store.

As a matter of fact, in the small town of Hillsboro, New Hampshire, my place was known as “the store.” On Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights I had a line waiting in my house as if it was a delicatessen. In my living room people would sit and wait while I took care of my customers in the kitchen.

I had an assistant at the house who would let people sample the different types of weed that I sold. I usually had at least 3 or 4 strains, based on smell and potency. I had home-grown, Mexican brown, Columbian gold, and sticky skunk weed which was the strongest of them all. We called it skunk weed because the odor of it wafted out of the bag as soon as you opened the seal.

Downstairs in the kitchen I had two scales set up to weigh the grass in front of the prospective customer. I loved the business and the hardest drug I sold was hashish. I supplied people by the joint, by the 1/8th of an ounce, the 1/4 of an ounce, half ounce, and the full ounce. I had special customers who had their own business; they would buy quarter pounds to five pound lots. From late afternoon through 10pm my business would run non-stop. My suppliers were varied and I would usually meet them early in the morning during rush hour, driving my pickup truck so I fit in with the rest of the travelers in the country.

My house was on a back dirt road and I was the landlord of seven apartments that were built in the barn that was next to my house. Marijuana is safe and none of my customers ever died from an overdose. I’ve never heard of anyone dying from an overdose of marijuana, which is not the case with alcohol.

My business was great. I did pay a price for it. In 1980 I was arrested traveling with 15 pounds of pot and a number of other things that I used for personal use. After two years living as a fugitive in Oregon, I was picked up and brought back to Massachusetts where I served two years in the Worcester House of Correction. After the two years I was worse than when I went in so correction was a misnomer indeed.

I find it ironic that alcohol is legal and marijuana is regarded by some as a dangerous narcotic. As a matter of fact, marijuana is not remotely connected to being a narcotic. When it was made a crime to possess and sell marijuana, it was because of a man named Harry Anslinger, who was a racist with a giant police force he used to arrest people using drugs after Prohibition, and alcohol during Prohibition.

If it wasn’t for the criminalization of marijuana, Harry Anslinger’s troops would have had to go on unemployment. Now we have finally come to a reasonable solution to the marijuana controversy and the Federal Government is making it difficult by blocking the will of the people. Do I still smoke? Not at all but it is only because I don’t care for the high. I find it ironic that when I did smoke I was considered a criminal and now I can smoke without fear of arrest but I don’t care to smoke anymore. I don’t even like to drink alcohol. My addiction is reading and writing. My wife would verify that.

I hope that the federal government backs off from its outmoded stance of regarding marijuana as a dangerous drug. I hope the federal government backs off on a lot of things it has threatened to do in the climate of ‘ours is bigger than yours’ politics.