Review of “The Black Cat” (1941)

trailer from YouTube

Our last pizza and bad movie night of the year! We watched the flick with a black cat snoozing on the couch on his bed between us—after we finished the pizza. Unfortunately, the little guy can’t be trusted around pizza.

The Plot:

Elderly, infirm Henrietta Winslow (Cecilia Loftus) has called her family together to let them know the contents of her will. The news that the family has come together has also drawn a realtor, A. Gilmore Smith (Broderick Crawford), an acquaintance of Mrs. Winslow’s granddaughter Elaine Winslow (Anne Gwynne), and an antiques dealer, Mr. Penny (Hugh Herbert).

The groundskeeper (Bela Lugosi) tells them to leave their car outside the grounds. Since a car killed one of her (many) cats, Mrs. Winslow doesn’t allow cars on the grounds. The elderly woman’s caretaker, Abigail Doone (Gale Sondergaard), refuses to let Mr. Smith and Mr. Penny into the house, so they go around to a back entrance.

Mr. Smith is allergic to Mrs. Winslow’s small herd of cats and sneezes often. Mr. Penny chuckles to himself a lot, making high-pitched “hoo-hoo” sounds. Mr. Smith’s sneezing is far less annoying.

Mr. Smtih’s sneezing gives them away. They are soon ushered into the room where Mrs. Winslow hasn’t finished reading her will. She sits in her wheelchair with a Siamese kitten in her lap who plays with the papers she’s holding. The heirs seem content with their expected windfalls, except for Mrs. Winslow’s son-in-law, Montague Hartley (Basil Rathbone), who receives a mere $10,000. As it turns out, he has some heavy debts.

Later, Mrs. Winslow takes an unfortunate cat to the crematorium on the grounds. Many urns line the shelves. A statue of a black cat moves on its base, revealing the entrance to a secret passageway. Mrs. Winslow knows the person who comes but is surprised. She then screams in terror.

Her family finds her dead, stabbed with a knitting needle. Poor Grandma must have fallen and hurt herself. How tragic! How unlike murder!

Thoughts:

While Edgar Allen Poe is mentioned in the credits, this movie bears little resemblance to his short story of the same name. The two share creepiness—Mrs. Winslow’s cat crematorium and shrine, where she plans for her earthly remains to be entombed—are just one example. On the other hand, given her greedy family, I can understand why she prefers the company of her cats.

When it becomes apparent that Mrs. Winslow’s death was no accident (ya think?), Mr. Smith tries to determine who is responsible. Contacting the authorities is out of the question. Someone has cut the phone wires, and the bridge to town has washed away in the storm.

Many stock threats appear in the movie: a hand reaches out from behind a drape and empties something into Mrs. Winslow’s milk. Mr. Smith, on the hunt for the will, receives a stunning punch in the face from behind a drape. Sinister-looking groundskeeper Eduardo hangs around by windows, listening to conversations no one means him to hear.

Mr. Smith decides to find out who killed Mrs. Winslow. Unfortunately for him, he goes off half-cocked, annoying the family and making himself look like a fool in front of the girl he’s trying to impress, Elaine.

In the meantime, Mr. Penny is evaluating the various furnishings, “antiquing” them by damaging and destroying them. He also stumbles across a series of secret passages, not realizing what they are, and ends up in the bedroom of the sourpuss maid, Abigail. He finds her lying in a footlocker with a black cat…

Abigail recovers.

Much of the movie reminded me of an even more ancient flick, The Old Dark House.

In true murder mystery fashion, nearly everyone involved is not what the viewer expects. I did not guess the bad’un. While I liked it, I have to admit that many things are unlikely, and silly, and might try the patience of the average viewer. It can work if you know what you’re getting into and don’t take it too seriously.

The movie can be watched here.

Happy 2024 to all.

Title: The Black Cat (1941)

Directed by
Albert S. Rogell

Writing Credits
Robert Lees…(screenplay) and
Frederic I. Rinaldo…(screenplay) (as Fred Rinaldo) and
Eric Taylor…(screenplay) and
Robert Neville…(screenplay)
Edgar Allan Poe…(suggested by story by)

Cast (in credits order)
Basil Rathbone…Montague Hartley
Hugh Herbert…Mr. Penny
Broderick Crawford…A. Gilmore Smith
Bela Lugosi…Eduardo Vidos
Anne Gwynne…Elaine Winslow

Released: 1941
Length: 1 hour, 10 minutes

Review of “Now They Call me Infidel: Why I Renounced Jihad For America, Israel, and the War on Terror” by Nonie Darwish

The Stuff:

This memoir was written by Egyptian-American Nonie Darwish who spent her childhood in Gaza. Her father, Colonel Mustafa Hafez, served as commander of the Egyptian Army Intelligence in Gaza, then under military control of Egypt. Hafez was assassinated by the Israeli Defense Forces. Darwish’s brother was wounded in the same attack. The surviving family returned to Egypt. Darwish’s father was revered as a shahid, a martyr.

According to Darwish, her education and upbringing included a constant indoctrination of hatred against Israel and all Jewish people, though she admits she doubts she had ever met anyone Jewish.

She notes that while she came from a privileged background, most Egyptians live in dire poverty. Later, she married and immigrated to the United States. The move changed her perspective on many things. She met Jewish neighbors, who turned out to be something other than the slavering demons her upbringing taught her to expect.

She later becomes a Christian, a political conservative, a writer, and a speaker.

Thoughts:

Darwish writes in an easy style, albeit the text might have benefited from another pass through the typewriter. Picky me.

Despite the tragic loss of her father, she seems to have had a happy childhood surrounded by family. The reader understands how much she misses Egypt and Gaza. The author offers poignant memories and cute anecdotes, all the things that breathe life into a memoir.

As the daughter and niece of immigrants myself, I am fully in sympathy with her immigrant experience, and her longing for home while discovering new conventions in the United States.

However, her view of the world is simplistic. Islam is oppressive, teaches its adherents to hate, and leads to violence; the West is liberating—nothing in between. She touts the personal liberties offered in the United States without a glance at its history of racism. None of the Muslims I’ve known or worked with offered a threat to life or limb. The point is, I don’t see things as black and white as portrayed in the book.

It would be interesting to see what she has to say about the current Israel-Hamas War, with both sides responsible for many civilian deaths and committing what certainly appear to me to be atrocities. She was the founder of a group called Arabs for Israel and a director of an organization called Former Muslims United. The Southern Poverty Law Center has declared some of the groups and their affiliated groups to be anti-Arab and Islamophobic.

While she does come down hard on Islam in the book, she calls for its reform, particularly concerning the treatment of women. She also speaks of mosques as places of recruitment for terrorists—something that just ain’t so any more than a church recruits abortion clinic bombers.

Darwish’s story is interesting. The book is a quick read, but I can’t buy her worldview or politics.

Title: Now They Call me Infidel: Why I Renounced Jihad For America, Israel, and the War on Terror
Author: Nonie Darwish (b. 1949)
First published: 2006 (updated 2007)

Review of “Ring of Terror” (1961)

trailer from YouTube. At least it’s short.

This is our latest Saturday pizza and bad movie entry, a black-and-white foray into college days. Uh-huh.

Plot:

The main story is framed by a graveyard keeper, R.J. Dobson (Joseph Conway), looking for his cat, Puma. He finds the feline by the headstone of one Lewis B. Moffitt (George E. Mather), with dates 1933-1955 and the engraving “I feared not.” Dobson laughs, turns to the camera, and spins the tale of Lewis’ life.

Lewis is a medical student dating a girl named Betty (Esther Furst) and pledging to an unnamed fraternity. He is hitting the books pretty hard. Nevertheless, he can still break away for a dance concert at the college cafeteria.

(College cafeterias must have changed from the 50s to the time I got around to going.)

Lewis is so gung-ho he even asks Professor Rayburn (Lomax Study) if he can assist him with an upcoming student autopsy. At first, the Professor demurs. It’s a job for seniors, who usually make excuses why they can’t—but since Lewis asked, well, okay.

Lewis isn’t afraid or squeamish. He explains this to Betty, too.

After the interminable autopsy, which opens with a glimpse into the “gastrovascular cavity” ( Ahem. And poor John Doe is still wearing his gold ring, huh?), Lewis has trouble sleeping. His roommate (Norman Ollestad) watches him having a nightmare and listens to him mutter, “Don’t turn off the lights.”

Is Lewis afraid of the dark?

Each member pledging the fraternity receives some task before being accepted into the brotherhood. One guy has to ask for a penny from each person on a particular street. Lewis—fearless Lewis—must retrieve the gold ring from the autopsy subject’s hand.

What could go wrong?

Thoughts:

This is a study in fear and the lies we tell ourselves. Unfortunately, several flaws make it hard to watch. First, the pacing is weird. Rather than ratching up tension, it wanders. The dance at the cafeteria is meant to be light-hearted but breaks action for some fat jokes, holding a heavy couple up to ridicule. The musicians are not playing the music heard. For example, the score includes a trumpet. The scene does not.

Lewis is portrayed as an intense young man, but clearly, the actor is much older than the twenty-something of the role. None of the actors are exactly fresh young faces.

Lewis spends the entire movie assuring everyone how unsqueamish he is. The dude doth protest too much, methinks. Only late in the story does he understand the meaning of his nightmares, which are connected to a childhood trauma.

The scenes are dark but not so dark it’s difficult to see what’s happening. The audio is a different matter. We watched this with Mystery Science Theater 3000, making it even harder. When I rewatched it on YouTube, it was still difficult to understand, particularly when many people were in a scene.

The autopsy that-would-not-end begins with Professor Rayburn telling the assembled guys (and they’re all guys) that this will be their first “gastrovascular autopsy” and showing them the “gastrovascular cavity.” I wondered what this was and looked it up. Humans don’t have them; they’re more common in flatworms and jellyfish, where ingestion and excretion occur through the same port. That’s exactly what it sounds like.

The guys were all medical students. The women were not. It was unclear what, if anything, they were studying. Their purpose seemed to be dating the various guys.

A better treatment of a similar idea—fear—is in the 1961 Twilight Zone episode, “The Grave.” While I wouldn’t call it high art, it did the one thing this movie didn’t do—it cared. The sad thing is, if the people making this movie had given a damn, it might have been a decent flick.

This gem can be watched here.

Title: Ring of Terror (1961)

Directed by
Clark L. Paylow

Writing Credits
Lewis Simeon…(original story)
Lewis Simeon…(screenplay) and
Jerry Zinnamon…(screenplay) (as Jerrold I. Zinnamon)

Cast (in credits order)
George E. Mather…Lewis B. Moffitt (as George Mather)
Austin Green…Carl
Esther Furst…Betty Crawford
Norman Ollestad…Lew’s Roommate
Lomax Study…Professor Rayburn

Released: 1961
Length: 1 hour, 11 minutes

Review of “America’s Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines” by Gail Collins

This Stuff:

This is a survey of the history of women in America following European colonization until the end of the 1960s. It is broad, covering some four hundred years, and seeks foremost to cover the everyday life of women from all strata of society. What was childbirth like in colonial New England? How did one seek a mate in Victorian society? How did a woman (…and it was the woman for most of the time) arrange a household and raise children?

Author Collins shows outliers as well as everywoman. For example, a handful of women fought in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War, some alongside their husbands. One, Margaret Corbin, took over for her husband after he was slain at the Battle of Fort Washington, was wounded herself, and received a military pension until her death in 1800.

It is stories like these that make the book eminently readable. Collins is at pains to include African American as well as different ethnic groups with the waves of immigration in the 19^th century.

Thoughts:

It is the nature of a survey to be broad but not necessarily deep. In addition, the book is old enough now that some additional information has come to light. For example, Collins states that Margaret Corbin, she of Revolutionary War fame, was buried at the West Point Cemetery. When she wrote the book, this was the best information available. In 2017, it was discovered that the remains exhumed and reburied there belong to an unidentified male. The whereabouts of Margaret Corbin’s remains, assuming any exist, are unknown.

There are harrowing stories of women’s fight for suffrage during the 19^th century. Some women in Great Britain went on hunger strikes and were force fed. Others, like Susan B. Anthony, voted before women were granted the right to do so, and simply refused to pay the fine she received. It didn’t change the law, but it makes for a good story.

One of the shortcomings of surveys like this is there is little room or time to examine many issues closely. On page 310, Collins writes:

“In the most spectacular act of British militancy, Emily Davidson threw herself in front of the King’s horse during the running of the English Derby in 1913, achieving instant if gruesome martyrdom for the cause.”

Davidson did indeed run onto the racetrack, carrying a banner with a suffrage message, and was killed, trampled by a racehorse. Feminists branded her a “martyr,” but precisely what happened is less certain. Recent analysis of newsreel film taken that day* shows her trying to tie a scarf to the horse’s bridle.

Her actions were foolhardy, perhaps. This article came out long after the book was published, but from the beginning, there has always been uncertainty as to what Davidson was doing. Collins makes no allowance for that uncertainty.

Initially, the press seemed to have recorded confusion.

A second example shallow information arises during the story of Collins recounts of Elizabeth Eckford (pp. 418-420), one of the Little Rock Nine who integrated the high schools in 1957, and Hazel Bryan Massery, who is captured in a picture screaming at Elizabeth. Collins quotes Massery shouting things like, “Go back to Africa.” Other sources expand on her comments: “Go home, nigger! Go back to Africa!” Massery later apologized. Collins writes, (p. 420), “the two women became friends.”

They did, for a while, but their relationship was complicated, as depicted in this article.

My understanding is that the two women have parted company but are not enemies.

I recommend this book because it is full of fun anecdotes, and it makes for great reading. Collins spent some time researching. Just the same, I would have to regard it as a starting point rather than a conclusion.

*The clip is easily assessable online. I chose not to watch it because I can’t watch a human being trampled to death, even though I know it was a long time ago and the troubles of everyone in the film (including the horse) are long over.

Title: America’s Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines
Author: Gail Collins
First published: 2003

Review of “A Haunting in Venice” (2023)

from YouTube

For our traditional Saturday pizza and bad movie night, we watched a recent flick, an updated Agatha Christie murder mystery.

Plot:

Famous Belgian private detective Hercule Poirot (Kenneth Branagh), who emigrated to England, has lost his faith in God and retired to post-WWII Venice, no longer investigating, despite the long line of people seeking his help. Instead of a valet, a bodyguard accompanies him in the person of former police officer Vitale Portfoglio (Riccardo Scarmacio), who keeps the unwashed masses at bay, sometimes rather forcefully.

An old friend, Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey), arrives and invites Poirot to a party and séance at a palazzo said to be haunted. Ariadne is a writer whose last few books haven’t done well. A famous medium, Joyce Reynolds (Michelle Yeoh), is coming at the behest of the owner of the palazzo, Rowena Drake (Kelly Reilly), a famous opera singer. Rowena’s daughter Alicia (Rowan Robinson) died by suicide.

In the spirit of Halloween, Rowena Drake is hosting children from a local orphanage for goodies, magic lantern shows of dancing skeletons, and a silhouetted puppet show, telling the gruesome story of how the palazzo came to be cursed. It was once an orphanage. When the Black Plague struck, the doctors and nurses abandoned the children they were supposed to protect. So now, their ghosts take their vengeance on doctors and nurses…

“But none of you are doctors or nurses, are you?” the puppeteer (David Menkin) asks. “So, let’s enjoy!”

When Poirot asks if such a horrible story isn’t too much for children, Ariadne tells him. “Scary stories make real life a little less scary.”

After the children go home, the séance begins. The medium is good, convincing even Rowena that she speaks in the dead Alicia’s voice. She throws in the tidbit that daughter Alicia did not die by suicide; someone murdered her.

Poirot exposes the medium as a fake, and she dies a gruesome death before the night is up.

Thoughts:

The film is based on Agatha Christie’s 1969 Hallowe’en Party but bears little resemblance to the book. It adds horror, a taste—a possibility—of the supernatural, and the richness of a setting in a medieval Venice palazzo. It deals with the horrors of war. While many scenes are darkly lit, these posed no difficulty in seeing the action.

Poirot uncovers a side plot of skullduggery in addition to the murders that is not strictly a red herring. Someone attacks him. Is it an attempt on his life or a case a case of mistaken identity?

Before her death, Alicia was experiencing mental illness and claimed to be hearing the ghosts of the children in the house. Did she indeed die by suicide, or did someone kill her? If so, for what purpose?

Another child, the precocious Leopold Ferrier (Jude Hill), claims to see and speak to the ghost children. Leo cares for his father, Dr. Leslie Ferrier (Jamie Dornan), a man broken by his experiences during the liberation of the death camps.

Even Poirot hears singing and sees a child trying to tell him something. When he turns, the child disappears. Was the child ever there?

The film is moody and haunting in the figurative sense. Scrambled or not, Poirot’s little gray cells see through to the truth of the things to point the finger at the bad’un. The answer is logical without being obvious. The bad’un gets their comeuppance in a scene that leaves open the possibility of vengeance from beyond the grave—or was it just a trick of the night, the storm, and Poirot’s eyes?

I liked this flick, as gloomy as it was. I didn’t mind the open-ended questions about the supernatural.

The film won the 2023 Hollywood Music In Media Awards (HMMA) for Best Original Score in a Horror/Thriller Film for composer Hildur Guðnadóttir. The music is fantastic.

This is too recent a work to download for free, but it’s available online for rent or purchase, and if you’re lucky, your local library will have a copy of it.

Title: A Haunting in Venice (2023)

Directed by
Kenneth Branagh

Writing Credits
Michael Green…(screenplay by)
Agatha Christie…(based on the novel Hallowe’en Party by)

Cast (in credits order)
Kenneth Branagh…Hercule Poirot
Dylan Corbett-Bader…Baker
Amir El-Masry…Alessandro Longo
Riccardo Scamarcio…Vitale Portfoglio
Fernando Piloni…Vincenzo Di Stefano
Lorenzo Acquaviva…Grocer
Tina Fey…Ariadne Oliver

Released: 2023
Length: 1 Hour, 43 minutes
Rated: PG

Review of “Empire of the Ants” (1977)

Now that I can eat pizza again and stay awake for a while, we resumed our Saturday night pizza and bad movie fiesta. This one was silly.

Plot:

Somewhere off the Florida coast, figures in red hazard suits dump barrels marked “Danger Radioactive Waste” and “Do Not Open” into the water. At least one barrel washes ashore near a rickety pier. Ants gather around, licking up some mercury- (and special effects-) looking substance oozing from the barrel.

Marilyn Fryser (Joan Collins), a sleazy real-estate developer, is gathering a tour of prospective buyers for a resort she’s building in the swamp, Dreamland Shores. Her salesman and present main squeeze is Charlie Pearson (Edward Power). Aboard the yacht that will take the marks—prospective buyers— is the captain, steely-eyed Dan Stokely (Robert Lansing).

Charlie and Marilyn take the group of eight or nine people on a two-hour tram tour of the resort that-will-be. (“The pool will be here. The tennis courts will be here…”). An alternative screen shows a black grid with a series of circles displaying the tram’s activities, like a bank of television sets in a store.

…Someone is watching our heroes. Someone who clicks…

When the group stops for a picnic under a tent, Thomas and Mary Lawson (Jack Kosslyn and Ilse Earl) wander off. Thomas is looking for something to prove this is all a scam. He finds PVC piping near a fire hydrant that he can pull out of the ground with his bare hands. “This isn’t connected to anything!” Thomas tells his wife.

“What’s that sound?” she asks.

Alas! They never make it back to the picnic.

Thoughts:

The movie bears little resemblance to the 1905 H. G. Wells short story of the same name that inspired it, outside of murderous ants. It’s hard to watch this and not see a little debt to the superior Them! (1954), a movie also involving mutated-by-radiation giant ants who like sugar but don’t mind munching people.

I was a little surprised at the PG rating. The film is quite bloody. I’d be careful about showing it to kidlets. There is no sex. One guy forces his attention on a young lady and gets kneed in the groin for his bad manners.

My biggest gripe with the film is that the characters are plot devices rather than people. The dialogue is as fresh as a carp left the counter for five days. Marilyn, for example, praises Charlie’s prowess “in the sack” within hearing of steely-eyed Captain Dan. The two biggest sleazebags abandon their respective partners to their fates with the ants.

Some minor gripes involve pacing: How long after eating the radioactive quicksilver do the ants grow to the size of milk trucks? The film doesn’t specify, but it implies all it takes is a weekend bender.

The special effects aren’t bad for the time. The ants are clearly crawling across pictures, which leads to some odd visuals at times. Less-than-perfect special effects don’t bother me.

An odd twist is the super-ants can control the minds of humans. The townsfolk must return once a week for their dose of mind-control spray. This leads one helpful farmwife to warn our heroes who have just escaped the horror of ants in the swamp, “Don’t let them take you to the sugar refinery.”

This really was a mixed bag for me. It could have been a much better film had it bothered to have more than stick figures for characters. The idea of psychological threat following prolonged harrowing physical danger is a solid one. Just when you thought it was safe—

However, if I laughed, it was more in delight than derision. Yes, it was hokey. Yes, it was silly. But it was a lot of fun. As for a recommendation—you won’t be disappointed if you go in with few expectations.

This movie can be watched (with a LOT of commercials) here on Tubi.

Title: Empire of the Ants (1977)

Directed by
Bert I. Gordon

Writing Credits
H.G. Wells…(story)
Jack Turley…(screenplay)
Bert I. Gordon…(screen story)

Cast (in credits order)
Joan Collins…Marilyn Fryser
Robert Lansing…Dan Stokely
John David Carson…Joe Morrison
Albert Salmi…Sheriff Art Kincade
Jacqueline Scott…Margaret Ellis

Released: 1977
Length: 1 hour, 29 minutes
Rated: PG

Review of “The Little Grey Men” by B.B.

The Stuff:

This is a children’s book written and illustrated by a British naturalist. It features four gnomes, reputed to be the last in Britain. They regard themselves as brothers and live under a tree root by Oak Pool. Cloudberry, the most adventurous of the four, has left to find the source of the Folly Stream, which they live by. He has not yet returned.

The other three gnomes, Baldmoney, Sneezewort, and Dodder, begin to worry about him. Baldmoney and Sneezewort build a boat to work their way upstream to find him. Dodder, the eldest and most stubborn, refuses to join them.

Baldmoney and Sneezewort are not deterred. They leave in their boat, Dragonfly. Dodder becomes lonely in a day or two and follows them, only to find the wreckage of the Dragonfly by Moss Mill and no sign of Baldmoney or Sneezewort.

Thoughts:

My friend Tracy gave this to me, saying neither she nor her adult daughters could finish it. I can see why; saccharine oozes from its pages. It’s a children’s book from a bygone era. I’ve finished it. I don’t know that I would give it to a child, but not because of the saccharine.

One of the most enjoyable things about the book is the depiction of the natural settings. The author’s love of being in the wild appears on every page. It took me a bit to realize the names of the gnomes are also names of flowers.

The book even veers into a bit of nature worship. Pan is the overseer of the animals. The gnomes speak of him as a power or deity. The gnomes and (most of) the animals are friends, but they have nothing to do with humans if they can avoid it.

One of the things that never made sense to me was renaming the animals. Rabbits are Bub’ms, for example. A fox is a wood dog. The wood dog is an enemy—Dodder lost one leg to a wood dog as a young gnome.

Despite warnings of danger, our heroes stop at Crow Wood. Here, the gamekeeper is a vicious human named Giant Grum. So efficient is he at keeping “vermin” down that there are no songbirds in Crow Wood. He’s killed them all. He shoots Otter in the Folly, who has done nothing more than help tow the gnomes’ boat. The gnomes are horrified, but it gets worse. They later find Otter’s carcass nailed on a “gibbet” along with the remains of several other animals and birds.

Dodder vows revenge and, of course, gets it.

In 1942, when the book appeared, more people lived on farms and were familiar with slaughtering animals for food and killing pest animals. In this book, Otter was a character, a friend, and a decent person. He was only in Crow Woods and not with his wife and children because he was helping the gnomes. He’s killed in cold blood, and his body hung up to dry like a game trophy. ICK

The author illustrated his book with black-and-white drawings using his own name. These are a nice touch, but some are hard to make out. Or maybe it’s just my old eyes.

Dodder begins his lonely journey up the Folly Brook

The book won the 1943 Carnegie Medal for children’s literature. Reading through places like Goodreads, I find that many people have happy memories of reading this book as children.

I enjoyed the adventure and the portrayal of the outdoors. Still, many things make me hesitate about recommending this book, either for its intended audience of children or for adults who need a break—and I’m not talking about the gnomes smoking tobacco.

There are one or two sequels (depending on who’s counting): Down the Bright Stream and The Forest of Boland Light Railway.

Title: The Little Grey Men
Author: B.B. (pseudonym for Denys James Watkins-Pitchford) (1905-1990)
First published: 1942

Adventures in Breathing

Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay

About a week ago, my husband woke me up and said, “You may as well get dressed. We’re going to the emergency room. You’re breathing like you do when you have pneumonia.”

I don’t recall the time. Perhaps midnight or shortly thereafter. I was, indeed, having trouble catching my breath. I’ve had pneumonia maybe eight or nine times since I was twenty and seem to come down with it every year or two recently. I was tired and wanted to sleep. I sure as hell didn’t want to wait around a cold emergency room when I could be home sleeping.

“I’ll go in the morning,” I told him. Besides, trips to the emergency room cost upwards of $500. [Insert argument for universal coverage here.] I didn’t want to spend that much money if I didn’t have to—especially on something so dreary.

“No, you’ll go now.”

My dearly beloved seldom insists on anything. So, we got up. I fed the cat (who never gets fed at home). We played with the happy little guy for a while. He must have thought this was a new adventure.

In the meantime, I heard my lungs whistling. Breathing had become a competitive sport. My lips and my mouth were dry. I was moving even slower than usual.

At the hospital entrance, the security guard (bless him) asked me if I wanted a wheelchair. I declined. I apologized for forgetting a mask—which I intended to bring. He held out the box and said, “Take as many as you want.” He further asked if I felt like I would vomit. I thanked him for his concern, but no, that wasn’t an issue—happily.

When I later discussed the encounter with my husband, he told me, “You looked pretty bad.”

Inside, a nurse drew what seemed like a pint of blood but was undoubtedly a lot less.

The emergency room doctor asked questions like whether I had pain in my left arm or chest pains. No. Did I smoke? Had I ever smoked? No, and no. Of all the bad habits I have, that’s one I missed.

(I reflected on the recent loss of a relative to lung cancer days before his sixty-second birthday. He’d smoked two packs a day for years.)

She ordered a chest x-ray, a CAT scan with a vile-tasting contrast dye to drink, and an EKG. As foggy as my mind was at the moment, it could pick up on the theme. I tried not to panic. I mean, this was only my old friend pneumonia, right? This episode wasn’t anything life-altering like a heart attack, right…?

At the end of the night, the doctor told me that I had an elevated white cell count, so there was an infection somewhere, but my heart and lungs looked fine, and I wasn’t running a fever. She prescribed a couple of antibiotics, then said, “How are you feeling? I’m on the fence about you. I can send you home or keep you.”

Oh, for the love of god, send me home! “My biggest complaint right now is that I’m tired. I just want to go home and sleep.”

She could have admitted me but sent me home. I slept. My dearly beloved picked up my drugs while I slept.

The emergency room doctor called early the next morning to say that there had been an “overread” (whatever that is) of the CAT scan and that it looked like pneumonia after all. I wheezed a sigh of relief. At least I was in familiar territory.

Review of “A Fever in the Heartland” by Timothy Egan

The Stuff:

This is a nonfiction book about the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s in the Midwest. Their traditional center of power was the South, the states of the former Confederacy. Most of the events it covers transpire from roughly 1921 to 1925, reflecting a rapid rise and a even more rapid fall.

In Indiana, a man named D.C. Stephenson rode the groundswell of the Klan to become Grand Wizard of the Indiana Klan. (With a title like that, who wouldn’t want to have the job?) The Grand Wizard also took a cut from every initiation fee paid and every uniform sold, making him an exceptionally wealthy man.

“I did not sell the Klan on hatreds,” the author quotes Stephenson. “I sold it on Americanism.” Yet those who joined the Klan swore an oath that one race and one religion (theirs, of course) were superior to all others.

Stephenson was hardly a benevolent dictator but had a habit of brutalizing his various wives, intimate partners, and any woman around him. He was the most powerful man in Indiana. Who was going to stop him?

Madge Oberholtzer had been an educator and was working as an aide to Stephenson. She agreed to ghostwrite a book on nutrition for him, which he would then sell to the Indiana school system whether they needed it or not.

One night, twenty-eight-year-old Madge returned to her parents’ house from a date to find multiple messages from Stephenson. The messages demanded she meet him at his hotel room that night for consultations about the book. Yeah, about the book.

Thoughts:

The Klan of the 1920s differed from the Klan of Reconstruction in several ways. First, it was more political, trying to win over people by insinuating itself into places of power rather than simple brute terrorism toward black citizens—though, of course, they didn’t abandon terrorism. They also branched out in its targets of hate. Not content to oppress only the emancipated slaves and their descendants, they focused their hatred on immigrants (those who talk funny), as well as those who prayed differently—the Jews and the Roman Catholics. Perhaps one could describe it as a fascist snob social club with an enforcer wing. There was a woman’s auxiliary and (really) a children’s brigade, the Ku Klux Kiddies.

Though the political maneuvering of the Klan has parallels to the rise of the Nazi party, the author writes little of the latter. He does mention Nazi Germany defended its 1936 eugenics law by using the U.S. as a role model. (p. 347) Placing Klansmen in positions of political power (e.g., the governor of Indiana was a Klansman) to push the Klan’s agenda of bigotry, enrich the Klan elite and allow them to flout laws such as Prohibition has echoes of the worst accusations against a certain political party active at present, yet Egan never alludes to the present-day turmoil.

Ferinstance, Clifford Ford, governor of Georgia, told a Klan rally in 1924 the U.S. should build ”a wall of steel, a wall as high as heaven” to keep out those pesky immigrants. Yeah, no new thing under the sun.

Egan does not pretend to be neutral, nor does he need to, IMseldomHO. Without apology, he describes the message of the Klan as one of hate, its members as “ghost-sheeted marchers” and the organization itself as “the hooded order.”

I can easily recommend Egan’s recounting of the ugly slice of history, albeit with the warning that this is not a happy read. The worst did not come to past—and no one destroyed half the continent—but it is a reminder that we dodged a bullet.

Bio: Timothy Egan is an American journalist and author of ten books, most notable of which is The Worst Hard Times (2006), an oral history of survivors of the Dust Bowl of the Great Depression.

Title: A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan’s Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them
Author: Timothy Egan
First published: 2023

Review of “The Willows” by Algernon Blackwood

31) “The Willows” by Algernon Blackwood

Plot:

The narrator and his friend, known only as the Swede, take a canoe trip along the Danube. They plan to ride the river from its source in the Black Forest to the Black Sea. The narrator and the Swede have made similar trips in the past, but as the narrator tells the reader, “but the Danube, more than any other river I knew, impressed us from the very beginning with its aliveness.”

Things go well until after they pass “Pressburg” (Hungarian, Poszóny, the narrator helpfully tells the reader)—that is, present-day Bratislava in Slovakia—into Hungary. A Hungarian officer warns them against continuing. With the river in flood, they may take a side channel that dries up and leaves them in the middle of nowhere. With no farms or towns for miles, they could very well starve. They buy extra provisions but don’t worry about the flooded river. They go ahead.

The river flattens out, even in the flood stage where it is now, creating and destroying little islands in its wake.

The wind picks up, and the two find an island to camp on. The island is about an acre in size, with stunted willows growing around it. They have plenty of provisions and set their tent up in a broad depression, out of the worst of the wind.

While they gather driftwood for firewood (“willow bushes drop no branches,” the narrator informs the reader), they glimpse what appears to be a drowned man rolling in the river’s current. After it dives, they decide it was an otter—a big otter.

Thoughts:

From the beginning, Blackwood describes the Danube in terms of a living being. He depicts canoeing on it as being carried on the river’s shoulders. It plays with them roughly sometimes but remains friendly (until it doesn’t). They hear it singing to the moon at night.

The description is lovely, and the writing is enchanting, creating a palpable atmosphere. When things go south, it is all the more intense. The wind howls all night.

Having camped in wind strong enough I opened my eyes to find the tent’s walls a few inches from my nose, I was right there with the narrator and the Swede. How did they manage to eat? The wind blew my plate over. We had to sit in the car, which these guys didn’t have.

Even with the wind howling, the narrator hears things—the patter of little feet and something dropping onto the tent. He sees things—smoke or something rising from the willows. The Swede sleeps undisturbed.

In the morning, they find their canoe has been slashed. An oar is missing, along with some provisions—even though they are alone on the island. And there is a faint sound like a gong.

This is creepy and atmospheric. It takes a while, and not everything makes sense, but this is a nice scary tale when you’re alone with a cup of hot tea and the weather is cold and maybe stormy.

This story can be read here.

This story can be listened to here.

Bio: Algernon Blackwood (1869-1951) was an English writer, playwright, journalist, and broadcaster. Much of his fiction deals with ghosts and the supernatural. He wrote approximately 200 short stories, plus essays, plays, novels, and some children’s works. During WWI, he volunteered as an ambulance driver but served in Switzerland as a spy.

His interests in Eastern philosophy and religion, as well as occult studies, influenced his writing. H. P. Lovecraft was a fan. Blackwood influenced many other writers, including William Hope Hodgson and Ramsey Campbell.

Among his best-known writing are the two novellas, “The Wendigo” and “The Willows.”

Title: “The Willows”
Author: Algernon Blackwood (1869-1951)
First published: The Listener and Other Stories, 1907

Note: Wow, what a trip theses reviews have been—a lot of work but a lot of fun. I’m glad they’re done. I hope people have enjoyed them or have found a good read or two. Happy Halloween!