Stephen King's From a Buick 8

My first exposure to Stephen King's 2002 novel From a Buick 8 must have been that same year, at a Thanksgiving lunch at my Mama Jan's house. Family tradition had it that we all gathered at my grandparents' to celebrate, and that year a new cousin on my maternal side of the family who did not normally attend the gatherings came, with a hardcover copy of From a Buick 8 in tow.

Even though we were at least all in our twenties, I and the cousins were placed at the kitchen table, the kids' table, while my grandparents, mother, uncles, and aunts all sat at the long dining table. This new cousin put down her copy of From a Buick 8 on the kitchen table, beside the side dishes.

"What's that?" I said.

"Stephen King," she said.

I asked if I could hold the book. I didn't flip open any of the pages. I just turned to the back and peered at the dust jacket, where the author's photo was. There was Stephen King, positioned in the corner at a cream-colored wall, bearded, his head cocked upward, his eyes toward the ceiling. Seemed typically creepy. What one would expect from a horror author. Head up, away from camera. Adam's apple exposed.

Memento

Memento amoris.

Norah Jones' Come Away with Me

Some music appears on the cultural scene and it feels like it was dropped from the sky. Norah Jones' first album is one of those musical experiences. According to Come Away With Me's Wikipedia entry, it is one of the bestselling albums of all time, the bestselling debut album by a female artist, and the third bestselling album of the twenty-first century.

The songs are comforting, like modern lullabies. They are uplifting. They are hopeful.

It's customary in any mention about how music affects one's mood for the better to say something about how one ought to listen to music because it rewires one's brain for the better. But we already knew that. No one needs a scientific study to know they feel better when they listen to Norah.

A Jury of One's Peers

A jury in New South Wales, Australia once returned a verdict of "not guilty" for a man convicted of cow theft provided, the jury said, the man return the cows he had stolen. The judge ordered the jury to return to session to deliberate further. The jurors returned, this time with a verdict of "not guilty" and, they added, the man did not have to return the cows.

Source: Barbara Holland, "Do You Swear That You Will Well and Truly Try...?" Smithsonian, March 1995, 108-117.

Mary Lee Settle on the Banality of Evil

American writer Mary Lee Settle had served the British war effort in London, 1944, doing journalism, at a time when England was subject to countless bomb raids by Germany.

When Nazi Germany fell and the Japanese empire was defeated, Settle had hopes that the Second World War had eliminated an evil from this world. She returned to America.

One night, she was having dinner in a New York restaurant with some artists, where one artist casually made a remark that was pro-Hitler, this only months after the defeat of the Third Reich. She was polite during the conversation but found the earliest opportunity to leave.

Afterward, she felt sick to her stomach, and felt guilty that she had not spoken up. Her first thought following the meal was that the war effort had done nothing to erase an undeniable evil.