Marc D. Goldfinger

The Legalization of Marijuana

Posted by Klaus

The legalization of marijuana has brought back many memories. Let me tell you a story about my life in 1967. I was struggling with heroin addiction and finally swore off the stuff. But back then being clean meant just not shooting heroin.

Marijuana was a nothing drug. Everyone smoked. When I kicked heroin, my parents let me move back into their house and 3 or 4 friends and I would play the stereo in my bedroom and smoke joint after joint to the music of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Leon Russell, God rest his soul, and all the psychedelic sounds that were popular in the 60’s. I had a steady job and was getting promotions.

Yeah, I remember the 6 I was there. My parents were thrilled that I had stopped shooting heroin and it was a no brainer that they could keep me safe from the police by having us smoke in my private sanctum instead of driving around in the car where we were at risk of getting arrested for narcotics.

You see, that was the strange double standard of the 60’s—they called marijuana a narcotic and it wasn’t anything close to being a narcotic. You could smoke every day for weeks and then just stop and there would be no withdrawal sickness whatsoever.

Marijuana isn’t a narcotic. Not even close.

There was a group of us who always hung out together and rode our motorcycles, danced with the strobe lights at clubs in Greenwich Village, and did we ever smoke. We’d laugh, we’d eat six donuts in fifteen minutes and we were always having fun.

No junk sickness—I was healthy and, like a racehorse, I would run 3 and ½ miles almost every day of the week. I thought all my troubles were over.

Then one day this chick that smoked with us periodically came to my house with another woman and asked me if I could sell her any pot. I laughed and told her that I wouldn’t sell her any reefer but I would roll a few joints and we could smoke up together.

But they said they had someplace to be so if I could sell them some weed, they would be very happy. I rolled up 3 joints and dropped them into her hand and told them to enjoy themselves—the reefer was on the house.

They said they couldn’t accept the joints for free—like, how much did I want for them? No, I told them to just take the joints and have a good time. It was during the dog days of August of 1967 and it was great smoking weather.

But the chicks insisted and asked how much I wanted. I just laughed and said for them to give me a dollar and we’d call it square. I didn’t want the money but they seemed to feel better if they gave it to me and I didn’t want to be a bring-down so I took the dollar.

Now, it was summertime and the days passed quickly and everyone was having a good time and the grass was always cheap. But it got us high and made the music dance and that’s all that mattered to us.

So, where am I going with this story? Autumn came and the leaves changed color and it was starting to get cold. It was election season and in two weeks people would be voting because it was the third week of October.

I was fast asleep at 5am in the morning and there was a pounding on the front door of my parent’s house. I looked out my bedroom window and the suburban street was filled with police cars and unmarked detective cars.

My father answered the door but they didn’t want him; they wanted me. It was the Sheriff of Essex County of New Jersey and they had a Sealed Indictment for my arrest for the sale of narcotics. They hustled in, picked around my bedroom a little—there was nothing there but some science fiction books—and then clamped the metal handcuffs on me and took me outside.

Flashbulbs were popping and they walked me to a shiny black unmarked Judas car and stuffed me in the back seat. Altogether, that morning, they made 13 arrests for sale of narcotics, to whit, marijuana.

It was old home week at the police station. I knew almost everyone there. My sale was for 3 joints. The biggest buy they made was 2 ounces from one of my friends. They set bail at $5,000 and those of us, like me, who couldn’t make bail were trundled down to Newark Street Jail in Newark, New Jersey.

That jail was so dirty you had to light a piece of newspaper and burn the bugs away from the toilet before you went to the bathroom. Just to let you know the nature of the justice system at that time—there were about 300 people in the jail and more than 280 were men of color. My friends and I were the minority representation but we were all in for the count of down street.

Little by little, we got bailed out. My parents hired a lawyer and he had the bail reduced to $2,500 and my parents posted Bond for me after staying in that miserable hole for 4 days. Remember, this was for 3 sticks of marijuana.

They made such a big deal out of it that we were on the front page of the Newark Star Ledger and the Livingston Tribune, which was the local newspaper in the town where I lived. They even did an editorial about it called “Where There Are Users, There Will Be Pushers.” When my boss saw that, I lost my job.

My police record was minimal before that bust so, at court I was sentenced to 2 years in prison, suspended for 2 years. I had to report to a Probation Officer once a week.

Ironically, that was when my drug use really took off. I was angry and bitter and decided that if they were going to charge me as a dealer, I was going to become one. I had to be really careful for 2 years but after my Probation period was over, I went wild.

But it wasn’t the marijuana that turned me—it was the indignity of being arrested and having to register as a Narcotics Offender back then until that law was overturned as unconstitutional.

When I walked into the voting booth this year, I knew how I was going to vote. Marijuana is legal now and it should be. That major arrest really changed my life and limited the jobs I could find because I was a drug offender. I thank God that marijuana is legal and that people won’t have to go through what I did just because of an innocuous weed. No one ever died from an overdose of marijuana.

Now marijuana and hard drugs won’t travel in the same circles. The legalization of marijuana was the one good thing that came out of this election. I’m not going to deal with the other stuff in this column. Thanks for reading and enjoy the holidays.

“Do Not Resist” – a movie about the militarization of our police force

Posted by Klaus

As I write this the outcome of the election is unknown. Many people will be happy; many people will be upset. The fact that our country could be so divided has brought about a police force that is now being gifted with weapons of war that are no longer being used in the mid-east.

For some reason, Homeland Security has disposition over stockpiled weapons/vehicles of war and is gifting local police forces and SWAT teams. Local police will be able to crush armed insurgency. Isn’t that nice? They won’t wear body cameras, but they will drive tank like vehicles to the scene of a domestic dispute?

In Concord, New Hampshire, a town of 42, 900 people, city councilors actually voted in favor of receiving a 20-ton military vehicle which is a cross between a humvee and a tank as a “gift” from the Department of Homeland Security. That will come in handy when angry citizens take to the street to express their first amendment rights to protest actions by government that they don’t agree with, like police executing young black men.

This gift is a giant war machine that cost the taxpayers of our country $250,000. To call it a “gift” is misleading. Our police are becoming militarized SWAT teams with weapons of war that put the honest citizens of our country under the boot heel of a standing army.

There was never supposed be a standing army in America. A film just being released, “Do Not Resist”, will be playing at the Museum of Fine Arts from November 3rd through November 26th. . It shows miles of these weapons of war up for grabs by our local police departments. These vehicles are called MRAP’s, which means Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles.

These vehicles can spin around town, piloted by the same police forces that refuse to wear body cameras, with weapons designed to blow away heavily armed insurgents thousands of miles away. Is this frightening you? It should scare you silly. Go to see “Do Not Resist”, and when you see these vehicles, you’ll know that the Constitution is being violated, as it forbids a standing army on our lands.

Dave Grossman, a retired Army Lieutenant Colonel, is holding classes with police departments across the country, telling them to be aggressive with the “enemy.” The “enemy” is us, folks: the citizens of the United States.

In one town the police raided a house that was called “terrorist based”. The people who lived there were a family of color who had a son in his early 20’s who worked as a landscaper. The police came in, viciously wrecked the house, and the only “crime” that was evident, after the fact, was less than a gram of marijuana.

In good faith, the son gave the police $876 that his boss had given him to buy a few lawn mowers and asked them to give the money to his boss so he wouldn’t get in trouble and lose his job.

The police, instead, confiscated the $876 as drug money. It would cost the family much more than that in lawyer fees to get the money back.

These machines, the MRAP’s, are not supposed to be used for riot suppression in the United States. But they made an appearance in Ferguson, MO, where they were used against the people who protested police brutality.

When Dave Grossman lectures the police about the joys of using these weapons, he tells police that “after a tense, “successful” raid you will go home and have the best sex of your lives.”

Grossman also tells the police that after a “successful” raid, they should pull the MRAP up onto an overpass that looks over the city that they “police” and picture themselves standing there with the capes of superheroes blowing in the wind. That makes me sick.

The documentary “Do Not Resist” has won the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival Award for Documentary of the Year.

The Most Frightening Election of My Life

Posted by Klaus

When George W. Bush was running for President, it was scary. I couldn’t think of a worse outcome than having George W. become President. Yet I find it even harder to believe that a man as unstable, dishonest and dangerous as Donald Trump is actually being considered to lead our nation at this crucial time. Donald Trump makes George W. seem like a gem. I’m not saying that Dubya isn’t flawed—I’m saying that Donald Trump—a misogynist, a liar, an arrogant bully—is the worst leader we could ever have for President.

Trump is a racist, a fascist, and his goal is to “destabilize” the election by having his supporters act as “deputized” but amateur poll monitors. The people of our nation, even with all its imperfections, need to really consider whether they want a man at the helm who cares nothing for the country but slavers at the power of the Presidency.

It frightens me to think about what this arrogant man will do if he becomes President. When I watch the antics of Donald Trump, I see Mussolini, Hitler and other maniacal leaders that almost brought the world to the brink of destruction.

When Trump claims that the election is “rigged” against him, he is playing to the worst of the worst of his blind followers, who have already shown that they do not care if laws are broken—as long as it’s okay with Trump.

Trump is destroying America’s political norms by claiming that there is a giant conspiracy between the media and the Democratic Party to elect Hillary by massive fraud. What is worse, Trump’s blind believers follow in lock-step behind his statements, reminding me of Hitler’s Brown Shirts.

I can’t think of anything more ridiculous than building a giant wall between the United States and Mexico. Will this be the new Berlin Wall? Trump appeals to the worst in people—people who want to change the country for the better but are blinded to the fact that Trump is a destroyer, not a builder.
Even worse, just think of the type of person a maniac like Trump will nominate for the Supreme Court of our land. Our next President will probably get to choose more than one Justice for the Supreme Court.

Donald Trump does not want to be the President of the United States—he wants to be the Ruler of the United States and we all stand to watch our country’s values shattered by this political upstart.

This is the first time any presidential candidate has ever complained about the system being “rigged” before the election has even taken place. It’s almost impossible to rig a national election because the system itself is so de-centralized that it would be too complex to rig a Presidential election in America.

Donald Trump is crying “poor loser” before the fact—which shows a total lack of character on his part. This is not a man who should sit in the office where “the buck stops.” If Trump loses, and I, for one, hope he loses, it will be because he didn’t get enough votes to win.

Trump will have no one to blame but himself. Maybe he’ll lose because of his expressed racism. Quite possibly he’ll lose the election because of his misogyny. Maybe Trump will lose the election because he’s been caught in too many lies.

Just recently Trump met with the President of Mexico and they discussed a few things, one of them being the wall that Donald Trump wants Mexico to build. After the chat, while being interviewed back in the United States, Trump said that the matter of the “wall” never came up.

The President of Mexico, Enrique Pena Nieto, when asked, said that the wall was mentioned and he said Mexico would not pay for the wall. So, already, in an international meeting, Donald Trump did not speak the truth.

For the most part, the United States is working towards becoming a free country. It will be a shame if a man with the nature of Donald Trump steps into the highest office of the land and starts to turn the clock of our country back into a place where racism, misogyny, and bigotry reign.

Donald Trump’s instability is extremely dangerous when I think his finger will be so close to the nuclear button. He is not fit, in my opinion, to be President of our country.

If you’ve read this far and are ready to rip my head off, that’s okay. Just don’t forget to vote. I’d rather see you vote for someone I dislike than not vote at all. That’s what makes this country great.

Dark Matter by Blake Crouch

Posted by Klaus

Dark Matter by Blake Crouch. Crown Publishers, an Imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York. www.crownpublishing.com

“What might have been and what has been
point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened.”—T.S. Eliot from “Burnt Norton”

Jason Desson is sitting at the dinner table with the family he loves very much. His son is fifteen and his name is Charlie. His beautiful wife is named Daniela and she watches him with her dark Spanish eyes.

Jason loves his life and can’t imagine anything different. He teaches at Lakemont College, a class in physics, and he enjoys that too. He could have been so much more if he had gone into the private experimental sector but he made a choice and doesn’t regret it.

Well, maybe sometimes he does have a twinge of regret. His wife was on the fast track in the art world and she gave all that up to raise a family and become a teacher too. The paths we choose change everything about our lives.

Then there is Ryan Holder, Jason’s friend and former colleague, who just won the Pavia Prize for identifying the pre -frontal cortex as a consciousness generator. Jason is at the celebration, where Ryan gives him a hard time because he thinks that Jason could have won the prize if he hadn’t gone into teaching.

Jason, who feels quite lucky to be married to Daniela with a wonderful son, fills with anger and leaves the celebration. And that is when the change begins.

It’s one thing to be kidnapped for ransom. But it is quite another thing to be kidnapped and sent to another world where your life is totally different and you become the award winning physicist, but lose your wife and family. Suddenly you are rich and famous, but alone and miserable, and not to mention scared to death about what just seemed to happen to your life.

It also raises the question of who has taken your place in the world you came from and how did that happen?

Advantage—you have all the tools to get back to your real life, but you lack the skill to use the tools. There is a Black Box, which gives you options of doors you can go through to find your correct life. But you don’t know the rules for choosing the correct door, and there are myriad doors to choose from. How do you find the world you want to get back to and who did this to you? Was it the man who took your place in the world you were taken out of?

That man is you, in your old world, yet he is not you. He is a pretender who is now sleeping with your wife. You are now him, in another reality, yet you really are not him. In the world you are now in you are the owner of Velocity Laboratories and you are rich and powerful, yet you can’t seem to get back home to your wife and depose the usurper.

Who is the real Jason Desson? How many Jason Desson’s are there? When Jason Desson goes into the Black Box that he created at Velocity Laboratories which allows him to visit myriad alternate realities, how will he discover the world he wants to re-enter? And he has a limit on the number of tries he can make to go home.

Whose place are you taking and who took your place? How do you use the Black Box? How do you choose the reality that will take you home? These are the questions facing Jason Desson in Dark Matter by Blake Crouch.

This book is dynamic and unbelievable yet, could it happen? It grabs your attention from the very beginning and takes you along on Jason’s travels and discoveries. A futuristic detective story/science fiction mix, Dark Matter is an exciting adventure about an unusual situation. It will definitely keep you interested and entertained, from first page to last.

I saw it at The Harvard Bookstore so go on in and grab it. But look out which door you leave the store by. Anything can happen.

Dead Man’s Blues by Ray Celestin

Posted by Klaus

Published by Mantle, an imprint of PanMacmillan, 20 Wharf Road, London NI 9RR www.panmacmillan.com

Dead Man’s Blues is a fantastic book that takes the reader back to the wild Chicago of 1928 where the booze and drugs flowed freely. The city is controlled by Alphonse Capone, a man in the grips of tertiary syphilis. The disease is in its third, incurable, stage.

Capone had syphilis for over fifteen years, before he went to an out of town doctor under a pseudonym, and got the bad news. It shook him to his core.

Capone was so upset by the news that he had his bodyguards drop him off at a sauna to relax his nerves. They waited outside while he reminisced the words of the doctor “If it develops into neurosyphilis, the spirochete, like a worm, will enter the brain and attack the frontal lobes—your personality may become exaggerated”. He sat in the sauna brooding until his mood changed when he rationalized that now he could do anything he felt like doing and blame his behavior on his illness.

With this in mind, Al Capone goes violent in the sauna before he leaves, riding off with his bodyguards afterward.

All the greats of jazz make their appearance in this thrilling crime drama—Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Henry Hines, etc. Chicago is the Big City and corruption is its first name.

Pinkerton Detectives Michael Talbot and Ida Davis play a major role in this book, hunting down a serial killer who likes to take out the eyes of his victims and leave them staring into space next to the corpse.

This is Ray Celestin’s 2nd book. His first book, The Axeman’s Jazz, took place in New Orleans in 1919, and a few of the same characters appear, more developed, in Dead Man’s Blues. Two of the main carry over players are detective Michael Talbot, married to a Black woman, which was a big deal back in that era, and Ida Davis, Michael’s Pinkerton’s partner, who is a light skinned Black woman who can pass for white, which she uses to her advantage.

Michael and Ida are offered $50,000, big money in those days, by a society belle, to find her daughter Gwendolyn. But because there is a conflict of interest here, they have to decide whether to take the job and leave the Pinkertons or decline and stay on the payroll.

The Axeman’s Jazz, Ray’s debut novel won the CWA John Creasey New Blood Dagger Award and was shortlisted for the Theakston’s Crime Novel of the Year 2014. Actually, as good as his first book was, Celestin’s 2nd book, Dead Man’s Blues, caps it and is much more cohesive. It appears that The Axeman’s Jazz was the introduction to what is going to be a four book series dealing with the era of Prohibition.

You might not hear much about Ray Celestin here in the United States but his books are both best sellers in Europe. It’s ironic that they deal with our history, the unwritten history of the mobs, the drugs, the brothels, and the free flowing liquor of the time. The story narrates one of the most corrupt periods of the United States.

Another main player in the story is Dante Sanfelippo, a gangster from Chicago, who made it big in New York City. But because of a tragedy unwittingly engineered by men he knew, Dante was responsible for the death of his wife Olivia and a bunch of New York mobsters. It so happened that champagne was laced with poison by guys who didn’t know what they were doing, but Dante was responsible for the distribution of the brew.

The poison brew also struck Chicago. But because of the quick action of a few bodyguards, the politicos and gangsters who drank the poison were rescued by prompt medical help. Al Capone, ironically, calls Dante back to Chicago to find the people at fault for the tragedy in New York and the near tragedy in Chicago.

Ever since the poison brew struck and killed Dante’s wife, he turned to heroin to ease the pain of his conscience. This puts him even more at risk to raise the ire of Alphonse Capone, who hates people who use and/or deal heroin, because he believes it makes them unreliable.

At one point, Dante scores a small block of heroin from his favorite shoeshine man, and goes to the beach to shoot up. While he’s shooting up, a stray dog comes over to him and watches. Afterwards the dog cuddles up to him so he takes it home. One of his friends names the dog Virgil, from Dante’s Inferno, and the name sticks.

Much of what I have related to you is just background information. I don’t want to reveal the main plots of the story because this is a book you should read and enjoy firsthand—after all, it’s a piece of American history that they don’t teach in school. Ray Celestin will be regarded as one of the great fiction writers in the near future. Currently, he lives in London, but you can buy his book, Dead Man’s Blues, at the Harvard Bookstore in Harvard Square.

Moving Through Time

Posted by Klaus

The world has changed so much since I was born. Sometimes it feels as if there is an evil force moving against us to keep us from improving the world. We know better but we act as if we don’t.

This is the hottest year on record so far since we’ve been keeping time. We used to talk about Global Warming and claim that we were going to do something about it yet nothing changes. The governments of the world act as if we can keep on building machines that emit fumes into the atmosphere and it won’t affect us.

I can’t imagine how many cars there are in the world. If we took all the exhaust pipes of every car in the world and fused them all together, how big would that pipe be? It’s actually beyond our imagination to picture the size of it and it’s pumping, pumping, pumping, foul stuff into our atmosphere.

Oh, maybe you doubt that? Why don’t you stick your nose into the exhaust pipe of a running automobile and breathe it for a while? Oh, in some places, kids do that to get high, don’t they? When I was young the dumber kids sniffed glue and the smarter kids drank codeine base cough syrup.

But that’s not too intelligent either way. Now we have a massive heroin illness that is spreading all over the world. Everyone knows someone who has a family member using drugs in our world.

What force is it that keeps us from working together to make this world a better place? I’m stymied. I just can’t figure it out. It seems like every time someone has an idea to change the world for the better, someone shoots them.

There was John F. Kennedy. Bang. There was Robert Kennedy. Bang. There was Dr. Martin Luther King. Bang. There was Malcolm X. Bang. There was Gandhi. Bang. I could go on and on, couldn’t I?

What brought this on was watching a movie about someone who goes back in time to stop the assassination of President Kennedy. The name of the book the movie was based on is 11/22/63, written by Stephen King.

One of the things that struck me was how beautiful the old cars looked. You could actually tell the difference between a Chevrolet and a Ford and a Plymouth, just to name a few. The cars had class and there weren’t as many cars on the road then as there are now.

I remember when my father was driving his Buick and someone drove past him going the other way with the same model car and they tooted at each other and waved. It was a friendly world.

Of course, there were exceptions. If you were Gay, forget about it. If you were Black, forget about it. In Germany the ovens were busy burning Jews, Gays, Gypsies and anyone who just didn’t fit in. What kind of power makes humans act like that?

I really believe there is some Force that works on us, tries to get us to do the wrong thing and hurt other people, and makes us continue to damage the only environment we’re going to get. Or is it just that humans are all on the verge of insanity?

I don’t believe in the devil. But there’s something out there that doesn’t want us to succeed. It makes some people so greedy that they want more even if they have billions of dollars in the bank, while others don’t have enough money to buy food or medical care.

I’ll be 71 years old in about 5 months and I really miss my youth. I know, I know, I sound like I’m whining and maybe I am, looking at the world through a fractured prism. But I remember when I ran up a flight of stairs without skipping a beat, and now I trudge up them, one by one, and sometimes I’m out of breath at the top. My doctor is on the 7th floor of a building and once the elevator was broken and I climbed all seven flights. I can’t begin to tell you how weary I was when I hit the top. When I was 10 years old, I could fly up seven flights.

No, I’m not a smoker. Yes, I was a smoker but I quit and I feel a whole lot better since I quit. I had my last cigarette on April 24th, 1999 and sometimes I still miss them. But I know that one leads to another and so on.

Of course, when I started smoking, I could stick a quarter into a cigarette machine and a pack would come out with two pennies taped onto it. That was a long time ago.

I’d be lying to you if I said I didn’t miss my youth. I surely do. I miss the fancy cars and now I can’t tell one car from another. But who needs those cookie cutter cars they make now that still spit poison into the atmosphere?

Who would have believed that a man with the value system of Donald Trump could be running for President of the United States, and, of all things, it’s possible that he actually might win! The world is changing; solutions slip away from us; it’s getting worse all the time.

I mean, we have computers and cell phones and people take “selfies”, pictures of their food, and videos of their dogs and cats, but what else is happening? Cops are still killing black kids, black men go to jail, the mentally ill, the homeless, the addicted still don’t have the services they need, and corporate CEO’s salaries and benefits are in 8 or 9 figures and growing all the time. There is no middle class, there is the 1% and everybody else.

But then again, I’m just one grumpy old guy who isn’t particularly sad that he doesn’t feel like he fits in anymore. I probably don’t have many years left. I didn’t particularly take care of myself when I was young. I’m hoping though, that some of you young folks have some ideas to stop the depressing trends in our politics and our economy, cause I’m just putting in my time these days, hoping that my grandchildren will know some of the good things in life that I enjoyed when I was young.

Underground Airlines by Ben H. Winters

Posted by Klaus

Underground Airlines by Ben H. Winters. Mulholland Books/Little Brown & Company, Hachette Book Group; Goldsboro Books, UK Ltd. Edition S & N.

“No future amendment of the Constitution shall affect the five preceding articles, . . . and no amendment shall be made to the Constitution which shall authorize or give to Congress any power to abolish or interfere with slavery in any of the States by whose laws it is, or may be allowed or permitted.”—–The Senator John C. Crittenden Compromise, May 9, 1861.”

Imagine if President Lincoln was shot before the Civil War took place and then, because of that, and the greed of humankind, the Civil War never happened. If you were Black and born into a slave state—there would be no way you could ever be a free man.

There were four states that embraced slavery and even if you ran, there were hunters, most often Black themselves, who work to break into the Underground Airlines, and bring you back. There was no safe place for a slave to hide—unless they made it into Canada. And even there . . .

Ben H. Winters’ new book alters history and tells the story of a Black Man who was a slave, and his price for freedom was to become a hunter of other slaves and in his thankless quest, Jim Dirkson, free since he was 14 uncovers the horrible truth of the Underground Airlines.

With a GPS Tracker buried in the back of his neck, and a merciless handler that he contacts by cell phone, there is no escape. This is not the United States we know, yet, it can be horribly close. It’s not unknown for Black people to be suddenly grabbed and sold into slavery—their entire previous life erased by the press of a button on a computer.

The man we know as Jim Dirkson is closing in on a “runaway” slave who is waiting for his flight. Yet neither of the men have any idea of the situation they are really in.

The horrors of the jobs a slave must do include long and monotonous days. Our runaway would, for twelve hours a day, pluck the loose threads from the collars of shirts as they continuously rode up an assembly line. They are the type of jobs no one in their right mind could do for long.

I can remember when I had a factory job where I would watch a piece of metal the size of a paper clip move along an assembly line through a magnifying glass. The pin would move; I would press a lever and make a notch on it; the pin would move; I would press a lever and make a notch on the other side. A new pin would move into place. Work like this can make a person mad, in the sense of a falling apart of the mind.

These were slave jobs. Imagine, in the modern world, there being 4 states where it was legal to own a thinking, feeling man or woman just because his skin color is darker than yours.

“Under the Fugitive Persons Law, those who escape from service are to be captured and returned, anywhere they are found in the United States, slave state or free.” This is why Canada is the only answer, or any other country that doesn’t condone slavery.

Back in history, the escape route was called the “underground railroad”; there were no aircraft. Times have changed. We have aircraft, and GPS trackers, yet slavery still exists.

In Underground Airlines, Ben H. Winters has written his best book yet. It is certainly his most frightening tale. I saw copies of this book in the Harvard Book Store, one of my favorites, in Cambridge. If they don’t have it, they will order it and it will come in quickly.

I can’t tell the story like Ben H. Winters narrates the Underground Airlines, so I won’t. I hate spoilers in book reviews and try to avoid them as much as possible. His last three books, The Last Policeman trilogy won the 2012 Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America. The second book of the trilogy, Countdown City, was an NPR Best Book of 2013 and the winner of the Philip K. Dick Award for Distinguished Science Fiction.

Ben H. Winters is truly coming into his own. Right now Goldsboro Books in London has a Limited Edition and the last time I checked they had some left. I’m sure these Signed and Numbered books will be collector’s editions in the near future.

Tales of Repairman Jack by F. Paul Wilson

Posted by Klaus

Tales of Repairman Jack by F. Paul Wilson: A Review by Marc D. Goldfinger / www.repairmanjack.com F. Paul Wilson is the creator of Repairman Jack published by Tor Books, New York, NY 10010 and Isher Books, distributed by the Gauntlet Press, among others.

Repairman Jack is one of the most exciting characters ever to come out of the mind of F. Paul Wilson, who in his spare time, when he is not writing, is a practicing physician in Wall, New Jersey. It would take a Jersey Boy to create someone as interesting and unique as Repairman Jack.

Some of the writers, beside myself, who are fans of Repairman Jack are Lee Childs, Stephen King, Charlaine Harris, Dean Koontz, Joe R. Lansdale, and Andrew Vacchss. That’s just a handful; there are more. Once I read my first Repairman Jack book, Harbingers, I was hooked.

I don’t recommend beginning there because that’s kind of the middle of a long story. Actually, I think wrong; I began with Infernal, which introduced me to Jack’s brother Tom, who is a practicing judge in Philadelphia.

It might appear that Jack is the black sheep in the family, but families have many secrets and sometimes our brothers and sisters might be in competition for that title. We don’t always know them as well as we think we do. In the book Infernal, Jack’s brother Tom cons Jack into going on a treasure hunt looking for a wreck off the coast of Bermuda.

As is often the case with Jack’s adventures, things go astray. I’m not going to ruin the book for you by giving you the storyline. I will tell you that Jack hangs out in a bar called The Spot, which is run by Julio, who becomes a close friend, and the search for treasure turns into a dark tale of mystery and power.

Repairman Jack doesn’t exist. Well, he is real, but a tragic event in his life causes him to have reason to stay hidden from society. He has no Social Security card, pays no taxes and because of his desire to protect the people he loves, Jack becomes a ghost in the machine of civilization. He is a repairman because he implements solutions to problems that can’t be fixed by legitimate means. They are problems that can only be solved by someone who can’t be traced or identified.

You will love Repairman Jack. What’s nice about that is the fact that there are over 16 books of his adventures, and they all tell tales that are continuous and yet, they also stand alone. You’ll know when you are nearing the end of the Repairman Jack story because his books tend to end with cliffhangers.

Perhaps you would enjoy starting with the book named Dark City, which is one of the early histories of Jack. It’s not the earliest history of Jack; the beginning of his story is told in a series of three books written for Young Adults.

We all have to begin somewhere, don’t we? The first Young Adult book is called Jack: Secret Histories and it begins with Jack growing up in the pine barrens of New Jersey, when he is in high school. I suggest you start reading about Jack here. Isn’t everyone really a young adult, a child who happened to get wrinkled and grey?

I remember flying up the stairs when I was young. Now I trudge up the stairway to the wonderful apartment where I live. However, I fly through the books I read and then I write about them. I even write about myself from time to time. I’ve heard many people say, “my life is so interesting I could write a book about it,” but they never do.

I found out through holding writing workshops that many people enjoy talking about writing but when it comes to picking up the pen and putting it to the empty page, that is another story.

F. Paul Wilson dares to put the pen to the page, and he has created a character whose adventures tear through a minimum of at least 16 books. Repairman Jack is not the only character Dr. Wilson created—he wrote a story called SIMS, divided into five novellas that deal with genetic engineering.

In the third book of the young adult series a tragic event takes place that changes Jack’s life forever. No, I won’t tell you what it is—but every boy, from a good home, loves his mother. Once you finish Secret Histories, Secret Circles, and Secret Vengeance, you are ready to enter the next trilogy, which takes Repairman Jack to the Dark City.

In the Dark City you will meet Abe, who is a mensch who runs the Isher Sports Shop. Abe becomes one of Jack’s closest friends. Does anyone reading this remember the Weapon Shop of Isher? Google it, my friend, and be enlightened. The writer A. E. Van Vogt would want you to do this.

Then there is Jacks adversary, Rasalom, who is first introduced in F. Paul Wilson’s book called The Keep. This story takes place during the hell of Nazi Germany, in the way back of 1941. The Keep is in the Dinu Pass, in Romania and it was created to contain—well, needless to say, one of the most frightening enemies of Repairman Jack series arises from The Keep. I cannot say more.

People clamor for F. Paul Wilson to write more Repairman Jack books, however, it appears that he may be done. Yet, one can always hope. Some might say—isn’t 16 + books enough? I say thee, nay, there can never be enough Repairman Jack. Now all we need is some movies. Really.

The Wolf Road by Beth Lewis

Posted by Klaus

The Wolf Road by Beth Lewis: A Book Review\ By Marc D. Goldfinger. Goldsboro Books, 23-25 Cecil St., London, WC2N 4E2, United Kingdom, S & N Limited Edition/and Crown Publishing Group, A Division of Penguin Random House

“Think on why I ain’t killing you.”—-Kreagar

Elka doesn’t remember her parents. She lives in the wilderness, after a war that destroyed civilization, with a man named Trapper. Trapper teaches her to survive in the wilds but hates the small towns around them; he has a terrible secret that he doesn’t want Elka to find out about.

For a brief time before living with Trapper, Elka lived with an old woman she called NaNa, but Elka got separated from her during a “thunderhead”, a giant storm that occurs sporadically since the wars, that the people refer to as “the Damn Stupid”, wrecked the infrastructure of civilization. From the description of the world, it sounded as if it was a nuclear war.

Elka was about 7 years old and wandering about in the woods when Trapper found her. He told her that he would take care of her until they found her NaNa. She was a little frightened of him because he had what looked like blue mud pictures on his face that didn’t come off.

One day Trapper came back and told Elka that her NaNa was crushed by a tree during the last “thunderhead”, but he said he would take care of her. Trapper taught Elka to hunt, build snares, skin rabbits, squirrels and deer, and generally how to survive in their world.

Trapper had mean parts to his personality, and one time Elka cut herself and spilled her blood over a snare. Trapper made her sleep outside by the snare for three days because he no animal would come near a snare that smelled of human blood.

The description of Elka’s life with Trapper takes place in the first 50 pages. At the end of her apprenticeship, Elka is about 17 years old and a really strong woman. This is where the story really begins.

So I haven’t told you a lot of the story, just some clues as to how the book begins. It’s really an exciting story where the tension builds as Elka goes to town for the first time and sees a Wanted Poster with the picture of the man she lives with. Elka knows him as Trapper but the Wanted Poster calls him Kreagar Hallet and says he is wanted for murder.

Elka is approached by the sheriff of Dalston, the nearest small town to where she lives. The sheriff, Jennifer Lyon, claims that the man Elka knows as her father is the killer of eight women and one child.

Elka is dumbstruck by this information. At this point she feels she needs to get out on her own and think things through, never realizing that the man she calls Trapper and thinks of as her Daddy, will track her, no matter where she travels.

The book is told in 1st person narrative. At first, Elka’s way of telling the story took a little getting used to, but once I got used to her thought pattern, the book was difficult to put down. This is Beth Lewis’s first novel and it is a wonderful beginning.

When a civilization breaks down, a feudal society fills the space. Women, on their own, need to know how to fend for themselves or men quickly take them into servitude. In today’s world, we call them pimps.

Elka meets friends along the road, and I use the term friends loosely. We cannot always trust someone we think of as a friend. Religion has its place in the world, and in a world where life is savage, so are so-called men of god. Blood is more than symbolic in one church that Elka stumbles into.

Luckily, Elka is quite strong and her naivety quickly dissipates which makes it possible for her to survive. Elka is hunted, by more people than her father, and her travels are full of interesting situations.

The Wolf Road gets its title from the nature of the path on which Elka finds herself. The world is strange and, at one point in the story, she camps at a lake that radiates warmth. She is lucky to get away with her body intact.

One of Elka’s friends camps there with her father and their story does not end happily. However, if that event didn’t take place, Elka would not have met Penelope, a woman of the same age who teaches Elka some useful things—yet there is something about her that makes Elka wonder if she can be trusted.

I purchased the book from Goldsboro Books, a specialty book-seller in Europe. It is a Signed & Numbered edition for a fair price. There were only 750 copies printed. I highly recommend that bookseller which can be found on the Internet. There were still some copies left the last time I checked.

Here, in the United States, the book will be released on July 5th, and by the time you read this, that date will have come and gone. I always recommend the Harvard Book Store, one of the few independent booksellers left. If they don’t have it in stock, they will be happy to order it for you.

The Wolf Road is a great summer read and I’m looking forward to Beth Lewis’s next book. It’s a great, if a bit dark, adventure.