After piecing together a patchwork of time spanning about a year, I finally finished reading Cervantes’ masterpiece Don Quixote. I found it lively and quite entertaining, and wish I’d had time to read it all at a stretch.
The reason I found it entertaining was because I feel like the early part of my adulthood might have been taken right out of this book.
I haven’t forsworn books of chivalry quite yet, though.
I took a little time to read A Rip in Heaven, by Jeanine Cummins. Jeanine did a wonderful job relating the story of her family as they dealt with the assault and murder of her two cousins, Julie and Robin Kerry. This was of enormous significance to me. Julie, Robin, and I were all students in high school together. Julie was the only junior in my trigonometry and pre-Calculus classes. Robin was in my French class. They were really good young ladies, and I think about them often, even though I had neither seen nor spoken with them after I left high school.
One of the reasons I’ll always remember Julie (and I’m pretty certain she never knew this) was because she was the first girl who ever asked me for a date.
Julie, Robin, and their cousin Tom were out on the Chain of Rocks Bridge in St Louis on Thursday, 4 April 1991. They encountered four men, Marlin Gray, Antonio Richardson, Reginald Clemmons, and Daniel Winfrey; these boys attacked the girls and eventually pushed them into the river and forced Tom to jump. Tom survived, and after a brief debacle during which the St Louis Police accused Tom himself of the murders, they eventually were brought to their collective senses and found the felons responsible. The trial results: Antonio Richardson received the death sentence (later commuted to life without parole). Marlin Gray was sentenced to death (sentence was executed on 26 Oct 2005). Reginald Clemmons was sentenced to death and still appears to be on death row. Daniel Winfrey was sentenced to 30 years in prison as a result of a plea deal, and has apparently apologized and will be released in 2007.
After the murder, I went through a little period of private rage. I remember hearing the story on TV in the middle of the day. I leapt into my car and sped down to the Mississippi, stopping probably less than a mile upriver from where Jeanine’s cousin Tom climbed out of the river about fourteen hours prior. I don’t really know what I’d hoped to accomplish, I suppose I meant to search the riverbank and scout out the shore of Mosenthien Island as best I could. It was useless. All I got for my trouble was some jeering by some 25-somethings who laughed as they shouted at me "What are you doing, trying to find a body?" I let it pass, and just left the area.
I left the area, yes, but I didn’t stop quite yet. I started doing some flight planning. My mission the next day was going to be to fly my own search-and-rescue. My Dad, who absolutely hates flying, offered to come along and bring some binoculars and a camera. I was actually pretty moved by that gesture. In any case, the next day it was too cloudy for me to fly legally. Despite the fact the aircraft owners knew what I meant to do, they wouldn’t give me the keys to the airplane. In retrospect, they were probably right. All I would have done would have been to violate a lot of flight laws, which would have cost me my license and them their airplane.
I was left wishing for the next several years "If only I’d happened to be out there on the bridge with an assault rifle. . . ." I’d been to the Chain of Rocks Bridge one time, so there was little imperative for me to go, it just wasn’t something I felt like I ever had to do, especially since I’d done it once. Also, I didn’t own a gun, so wishing I’d been out there with one was just that–wishful thinking.
Although I already knew most of the details of the case, it was really good to learn what Jeanine and her family went through. I wish I could have helped them in some way. All I can think to do is recommend you buy her book. (Click here for a link to Amazon.com. Click here for a link to Barnes & Noble.com).
I finished reading Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment. The villain went to jail, did his time, and married the woman who waited for him.
Did Raskolnikov think he had a Napoleon complex?
Next up: Real Estate Investing for Dummies.
On deck: Don Quixote
A blur. Yes, that’s a good word to describe the past week. It’s been a lot of non-stop helter-skelter, hurry-scurry, running to-and-fro trying to tie up the little bits and pieces of life that underpin it and allow us to do the big things.
Although I could eat fast-food all the time, I’d rather make a couple trips to the grocery store to buy some salads, soups, and sandwiches and get the refrigerator stocked. Getting the essentials into stock at the house is, well, essential. But there’s more to it, of course. The salad wouldn’t taste good without croutons and some sort of dressing, and since I couldn’t ship any of that from my last household, I had to buy replacements for all the things that were in my refrigerator in Germany.
Yesterday I had the satellite dish installed. Yet another first for me! I’ve never had to have satellite-related equipment installed before. I’m not sure anyone else in my family has ever had satellite TV before.
I’m told that in Germany, the satellite dishes are more prevalent in poorer areas than in more well-to-do areas. Most of the genteels have cable TV. Satellite is apparently for immigrants who want to get a broadcast from back home, wherever that might have been–Russia, Turkey, Romania, etc. I pointed out that the little American enclaves we tend to live in all have satellite dishes, too. Why criticize poorer immigrants, we Americans don’t bother trying to assimilate into the local culture, either. I guess the difference is a DEROS!
In what little spare time I have, I’ve been trying to read Crime and Punishment. It’s pretty lengthy, and I haven’t quite figured out what’s going to eventually happen to the anti-hero. If one of my literary friends wants to e-mail me and converse regarding the deeper meaning of this book, by all means, get in touch!
I need to wrap up Don Quixote as well. It was too big to carry from Germany to Japan, and I was only halfway finished reading it when I departed Europe. I like it a lot, maybe because I feel like I sympathize with the good Don?
I should have Internet access within the next week or so. Until then, blogging will be somewhere between ‘virtually nonexistent’ and ‘I won’t be doing it.’
Oh, did I mention I tried a mini-Triathlon last weekend? It was a 400m swim, a 10k bike race, and a 5k run. I finished in 1:07:02. It was something like 21 minutes slower than the guy who won. I did alright on the swim, I was in the end of the middle of the pack. But the bike race killed me. Now, I had to use my wife’s steel-frame mountain bike (I don’t own a 12-speed or a racing bike or anything, and my aluminum-frame mountain bike was down for repairs that I couldn’t perform). I did okay going uphill, which constituted the first 1 km of the bike race, but once we got to the level, quite a few people went racing on by me.
I said "participants" because since I’ve never tried a Triathlon before, my goal was to finish. Most of the rest of the folks were "competing." One of the folks told me I ought to try competing next year, and an easy way to start would be to get a racing bike!