Book for sale: 5 billion smackers

Posted on September 10, 2010 by admin

By Joel Thurtell

Like all book prices, the value I’ve set on this one is purely arbitrary.

Totally unrelated to cost of production, author’s royalties or any other mundane publishing considerations.

In fact, $5 billion may prove too low.

Why, I don’t even have the book yet.

Maybe when — or if — I get my hands on this 299-page volume, the price may have to change.

Upward, of course.

Because they want it.

And they will be willing to pay for it.

Won’t they?

My book is called Operation Dark Heart. It was written by Anthony Shaffer.

Anthony Shaffer once upon a time was a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army. He took part in some secret operations in Afghanistan. He was even awarded the bronze medal for his efforts.

Col. Shaffer wrote a book about his adventures. The New York Times described it as a “breezily-written, first-person account” of Shaffer’s experiences.

Why do I think it’s worth five billion?

Well, as I said, I may decide it’s worth a lot more.

Once I get my hands on it.

You see, they want my book.

They want it very badly.

“They” are military intelligence.

Remember the old joke about “military intelligence” being the perfect example of a contradiction in terms.

Well, Col. Shafer’s book is a classic example of how dumb military intelligence can be.

He submitted his book to Army censors last January. They asked for some changes, which he made.

The book was to be published by St. Martin’s Press on August 31.

Late in the summer, military intelligence finally started reading the book.

Maybe they’d just finished their crash course in literacy and wanted to show off their new reading skills.

The Defense Intelligence Agency, Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency began nitpicking the book, claiming it gave away all sorts of spy secrets.

They were a bit late. The book had been printed. Review copies had been mailed out. Despite the August 31 publication date, copies were on hand at booksellers. This, by the way, is the norm in publishing.

So, The Times got wind of the story and its reporter ordered the book online.

Now, my blood boils when I hear about attempts by government or anyone to censor authors.

The guy cooperated and made the changes they asked for back in January, for chrissake. How many shots do they get? They could keep a book off the market forever at the rate government agencies work, if “work” is an appropriate description for whatever it is they do.

Anyway, now the government is negotiating to buy all of Shaffer’s books.

Problem is, the book is still for sale online.

Maybe not for long.

That’s why I set my coffee down, put the newspaper aside and scrambled to my computer.

I ordered my copy of Operation Dark Heart.

Now I’ll wait to see what happens.

Will they intervene to stop the sale?

Will Shaffer’s book actually be delivered to my home?

Right now, I’m auctioning the book, starting at five billion big ones, based on my virtual possession.

Once I take possession for real, of course, the price will only go up.

I’m curious to find out if I will actually receive the book.

Maybe I should try to corner the market.

But why be greedy?

Five billion will last me a good while.

There’s only one buyer: the government.

Or is there?

Why, I could start a bidding war between the DIA, CIA and NSA.

I always wanted to make a living off books.

Finally, I’ve found a way.

They’ll have to buy my book. Otherwise, I’ll review it here on JOTR and maybe give away some state secrets.

They could buy up every other book, but if my copy is in my hands, no telling what I might do with it.

Sell it.

Those idiots will pay me handsomely.

No point spending money on more of Shaffer’s books.

One is enough.

Cash only, please — no plastic.

Drop me a line at joelthurtell@gmail.com

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Tank Town

Posted on September 9, 2010 by hro50ta1

By Joel Thurtell

Tank Town -- Hummingbird re-fueling station. Joel Thurtell photo.

Love to watch hummingbirds?

Hummers feeding, hummers making war — it’s one of my favorite sports.

For years at our Michigan home, I hung a nectar feeder under the eave of our house. It got so I’d hang several around the house, so we could watch these little buzzers from most any room of the house.

My favorite spot — just outside our big back window, where I could watch the birds whiz in while I took it easy reading the newspaper on the couch.

I think of April as a good month to put the feeders out. But there were seasons when I’d forget or procrastinate, and maybe it would be June by the time I got around to putting up a feeder.

I always wondered, How late in the hummingbird season can you put up  a feeder and hope to attract rubythroats?

I got my answer this year.

We spent the season in Canada. Among the chattels we purchased with our cottage in McGregor Bay were seven hummingbird feeders. Our predecessors, Ian and Joan Burney, must have loved watching these amazing birds, too. I found hooks they’d hung from trees, one near the bunk house and one near the cottage, and figured they were meant for feeding the hummers.

Over the course of the summer, the hummers learned they could rely on me to keep several feeders full of sugar-water.

Nothing magic about the formula — a quarter cup of sugar for a cup of water. Usually, I make a big batch, heating eight cups of water to nearly a boil with two cups of sugar. I stir a bit towards the end, making sure I can’t see any cloudiness, which tells me the sugar is suspended in the water. After cooling, I pour it through a funnel into my plastic feeders.

Our island and its insular neighbors have big populations of hummers. I’d watch birds zoom across Eaton’s Channel from Garden or Vim islands, no doubt having plundered feeders at Zoe McDougall’s place or maybe even farther north at Donna Zajonc’s. Some flew in from the east, maybe after slurping nectar at Marshall and Sue Morrow’s cottage on Burnt Island.

Lots of hummers. They paid no attention to me, buzzing close enough to make me wonder if to them I even existed.

Wonderful territorial duels took place while I sat or stood a few feet from the feeders and watched pairs squabble over feeding rights. A couple of hummers would tear away from the feeder and shoot 30 feet high, peeping their staccato cries and maintaining a tight formation just a couple inches from each other.

At home in Michigan, though, my friends the hummers were getting nothing from me this season. I felt bad about that, but had no way of filling feeders when I was an 11-hour drive away.

When I got home, though, there was still time in the hummer season. I decided to find out how late I could put nectar out and attract hummers.

Hummer finds Tank Town. Joel Thurtell photo.

Oh yes, I did find out. Late the morning of Sunday, August 28, I hung two feeders from our eaves. Less than two hours later, a hummer zeroed in on one of the feeders. For all I know, they might have been hitting the feeders right after I put them out, since I wasn’t exactly keeping a steady watch.

Well, if two feeders would bring one bird, maybe more feeders would attract a flock. By the end of that day, I’d hung five feeders.

Unlike the Bay, there was no constant parade of hummers to my feeders. No battles royal, no aerial dogfights, no buzzing of the proprietor as if he were a nonentity.

But they’ve been coming. We see them often, and fluid levels in several of the feeders are going down.

Pretty soon, the hummers will depart for Mexico. My hope is that my little tank town will help fatten them for that long flight over the Gulf of Mexico.

I’m pleased that they found me, or rather, the little nourishment I could provide.

A couple years ago, in Michigan, I watched hummers all summer long as they tapped our feeders. The latest I saw a hummer come in for a feed was on October 7 of 2008. It’s September 9 today. I figure I’ve got a bit less than a month of hummer watching before these amazing little creatures are gone for the season.

By the way, I’m not worried that my feeding will somehow disrupt their departure. Their internal clocks will tell them when it’s time to head south.Unlike us humans, hummers know when to back away from a free lunch.

Drop me a line at joelthurtell@gmail.com

Posted in Bay, Wildlife | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Of rats and humans

Posted on September 8, 2010 by hro50ta1

By Joel Thurtell

What kind of human being would do this:

Fire 6,000 employees, freeze the pay of those who remain and then demand they take 12 percent pay cuts.

And give himself a 50 percent raise, banking $4.7 million in a single year.

What kind of human being would pay herself $4 million, almost a 280 percent raise from her earlier $1.4 million?

And take part in the firing and “furloughing” of thousands of workers.

How did she arrive at the number of human beings to be fired?

Maybe by computing how many employees’ salaries would have to be cut to equal her desired raise in pay and the raises her top-ranked pals had planned?

I really wonder what kind of people these are:

Craig Dubow, head of Gannett, the newspaper chain that owns the Detroit Free Press and controls the Detroit News, snatched the $4.7 million.

Gracia C. Martore, Gannett’s chief financial officer, nailed the $4 million.

They allowed a third alleged human being to have a place at their trough: David Hunke, now heading a losing proposition known as USA Today, but former commander of the Free Press and News.

Like his pals at the top of Gannett, Hunke got a big raise in 2009: $1.9 million, including his $355,000 bonus.

We have to assume Hunke’s bonus was for hoodwinking Detroit newspaper unions into the belief that the papers were in financial trouble so the workers could be gulled into accepting pay cuts and health benefit concessions while the bigwigs laughed on their way to the bank.

According to The Newspaper Guild Local 22 website, “We agreed to a wage freeze.  Employees have been without wage increases since January 2008.  We agreed to unpaid furloughs.  We agreed to higher monthly payments, co-pays and deductibles in health benefits.  The concessions saved millions of dollars.  The question is:  What have these savings been used for?  What are these concessions funding?”

Now I ask you, what kind of human being could justify taking so much money while shafting so many people?

Are they so rich and powerful they don’t have to justify themselves?

Greed, together with unfettered access to the trough, led them to make such hogs — I mean, well-fed human beings — of themselves.

But you know what? Once upon a time, my wife and I raised pigs. I found pigs to be very intelligent and even articulate creatures. I liked them. They were in a way humane.

Whereas these three human beings I’ve just described just don’t fit my stereotype for hogs.

Another mammal comes to mind.

It is far less savory than the swine metaphor.

And yet, it may be more apt.

Let’s think about this: The entire newspaper industry is in trouble. Gannett has described itself in peril. If you were a top manager and had unrestricted access to the treasury, and if you were convinced that your enterprise might go bust pretty soon, might you not (if you lacked ethics and humanity) be tempted to grab whatever money you could get now and the future of the company be damned?

What kind of animal knows instinctively when a ship is on the way to Davy Jones’ locker?

What knowledge do these three rats have that they won’t share with the rest of the world?

Is Gannett that close to folding?

So, my former Guild brothers and sisters, to answer your question of what has happened to all the money you gave up so the company could survive, you’d need to examine the personal checkbooks of Dubow, Martore and Hunke to find out what these rats are spending their salaries on.

The unions were suckered once by these greedy rodents.

Question is, What can they do about it now?

Drop me a line at joelthurtell@gmail.com

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Who’s corrupt?

Posted on September 7, 2010 by hro50ta1

By Joel Thurtell

A retired newspaper reporter was fuming about John and Monica Conyers.

How could John Conyers, the Detroit congressman, not have known his wife was awash in bribe money while she was a member of the City Council?

I need to mention that this was coming from an American who worked for American papers.

Because when I agreed with him, adding that I was frustrated by a similar know-nothing stance from editors at my old paper, the Detroit Free Press, when I tried to pursue articles about Congressman Conyers illegally assigning congressional staffers to do campaign work, babysit his kids and tutor his wife, my editors made me back off.

Rightly so, said the retiree.

Taking bribes is one thing, he said. That is corrupt. But who could blame a public figure for putting his or her relatives on the payroll or assigning staffers to do personal work on government pay? Isn’t that the American way?

Wait a minute, I said. Another congressman from Detroit, Charles Diggs, was convicted of fraud for assigning congressional staffers to work at his family’s funeral home, paid for by taxpayers.

Not the same as taking bribes. my friend told me.

Taking a bribe = felony, I said. Ditto falsifying pay reports. Diggs found out. He went to prison.

Not the same at all, my friend told me. There is a certain dignity and a certain expectation that officeholders will help themselves to the government payroll. “I seen my oportunities, and I took ’em,” said George Washington Plunkitt, the notorious Tammany Hall pol.

But taking money to sway government decisions is a no-no.

I stress that this guy is an American because right now Americans are doing their usual hypocritical condemnation of officials in another country for blatantly behaving corruptly.

The foreign corruption du jour is in Afghanistan. Another time, it might be Mexico or practically any place where American interests collide with local culture, including the culture of corruption. We are not comfortable with other people’s corruption, though we can feel right at home with our own, to the point that we don’t even recognize it for what it is.

On Sunday, September 5, 2010, The New York Times’ Week in Review took to task the current corruption bad boy country, “Corrupt-istan.”

Which is to say, Afghanistan.

No doubt about it, the Afghan government the U.S. is supporting is very corrupt.

According to the article, “Since 2001, one of the unquestioned premises of Americans and NATO policy has been that ordinary Afghans don’t view public corruption in quite the same way that Americans and others do in the West.”

Really?

How is it that Americans view public corruption?

As I mentioned, an American friend who worked for many years at a leading American newspaper perceives a difference between different categories of public filching in the U.S. Taking bribes is bad. Faking the payroll is okay.

It’s a curious differentiation, since you’d think it would cut the other way. At least the bribe-taker isn’t stealing from the public treasury.

Monica enriched herself with bribe-givers’ money. Hubby received free services at taxpayer expense.

But any differentiation justifies corruption.

When Americans justify corruption at home, how can they condemn corruption in other countries?

When I pleaded to be allowed to pursue the Conyers story, an editor told me, “They all do it.”

What he meant was that all congresspeople are corrupt.

Somehow, by a logic that I don’t follow, if everyone is corrupt, that would not be a story.

Only if Conyers were alone in his corruption would it be worth pursuing as news.

Now we have a fascinating story coming out of Great Britain about how Scotland Yard severely limited its investigation of corrupt news gathering practices by the Rupert Murdoch-owned News of the World, whose reporters and editors hacked into hundreds of people’s cell phone voice mail accounts and made news from illicitly-gotten tips.

Scotland Yard concentrated on illegal surveillance of royal family phones, maybe because the cops and the journalists had an unspoken but mutually beneficial arrangement by which police shared information with reporters in return for stories we American reporters call “blow jobs” about the cops. Wouldn’t want to blow the whistle on the entire British tabloid culture that happens to dote on the bobbies, would they?

If everyone were doing it — reporters tapping phones all over the place or every congressman screwing his/her taxpaying constituents, wouldn’t that make one hell of a story?

Corruption in Afganistan?

How about a system of financing political campaigns with “donations” that would better be called bribes to lawmakers who blatantly deliver the goods to their benefactors? Right here in Michigan we’ve been watching Manuel “Matty” Moroun pay elected officials and hopefuls large amounts of money in hopes of stopping a government-proposed bridge that would rival his decrepit Ambassador Bridge’s monopoly over truck traffic between Detroit and Windsor.

Why go to Afghanistan?

If you want to see corruption, Michigan and the U.S. are a veritable theater of political payola.

Drop me a line at joelthurtell@gmail.com

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They never ask the dog

Posted on September 3, 2010 by hro50ta1

By Peppermint Patti

JOTR Columnist

It’s not fair to blame it all on the two-leggers, Sophie.

And yet.

It’s hard for me to see how I myself could be to blame.

Was it my decision to load up a car till it couldn’t hold any more of their crapola and then put all sorts of stuff into that ugly plastic thing on top of the car and then tie a boat to the back and fill the boat up with junk and then hightail it to Canada?

What kind of idea was that?

Does anybody ever consult the dog?

What about it, Sophie, dog that you are, did anybody ever ask you if you wanted to live here or there or wherever?

Didn’t think so.

They never ask the dog.

Now, I’ll admit last year was a blast. They took me to a big pile of Canada rock with trees every which way and water beyond and more trees and rock and water.

The water I can do without, except for those rides on the vessel with the thing that groans.

Overboard motor.

How glorious!

Not that I like the noise of the overboard motor, mind you. But to ride along with your mustache blowing back against your cheeks and your snout sniffing the air.

Glory be!

Brush-butts — sniff them?

Small potatoes. Sophie.

In Canada, they have creatures that make brush-butts look like toys.

These creatures are giants next to, say, a black-and-white stink-butt or a bandito raccoon.

Up there, they have overgrown gophers with needles for fur.

That’s not an end of it, either.

Dogs that are humongous and would eat you, Sophie, black lab that you are, for breakfast.

The really big creatures are just plain huge — big black hulking lummoxes.

From the vessel that groans, running at high speed, you can smell all of these creatures.

Glory.

So it started swell, up there in Northern Ontario, and then the two-leggers — wouldn’t you know — had to spoil it.

“Why don’t we go home? We forgot this or that.”

Ask the dog?

Nary a hint.

So home we went. Back to that boring back yard with the boring brush-butts.

Five minutes at home, and wham!

Snapped my ACL.

Know what an ACL is, Sophie?

Antonomal Crusticular Lunatic, that’s what.

Part of the Caninepatoid Ligamarole.

Right there where your leg bends. You have one, too, Sophie. So do two-leggers.

Except they only have two. We have four.

How did I snap my ACL?

Tell you in a future column, Sophie.

It’s called suspense.

Secret of story-telling. Two-leggers are into it. You can lead them by the nose if you hold back the snapper to a story. They love waiting around for a story to end.

Dogs see right through it. No dog will wait patiently for somebody to draw out a story to the bitter end. But that’s two-leggers for you.

And , we’re writing for two-leggers here.

So I’ll reveal how I snapped my ACL another time.

Right now, suffice it to say, I was in what Chrysler engineers call “limp-home mode,” like one of those automatic transmissals that go haywire and leave you just short of hoofing it home.

Shank’s mare.

I felt like Shank’s mare, believe me, and I couldn’t chase brush-butts with my left hind leg dragging like a dead branch.

Enter the two-leggers — again.

How do you go back to Canada with a dog that can’t walk?

To be continued.

Posted in Peppermint Patti | Tagged | 2 Comments

What’s wrong with the yard

Posted on August 30, 2010 by hro50ta1

By Peppermint Patti

JOTR Columnist

I’ll tell you about my summer from hell later, Sophie. Right now, I want to know what in the world happened to all the bush-tails?

When we left this place, there was a spring crop of shavetail bush-butts waiting to be chased back up the trees.

The lawn was rampant with ignorant, impudent brush-tushes.

A dog can’t go away for a minute without some calamity happening to the wild game population.

I tell you, Sophie, I’m back what — this is my third day — and not a single brownback to be chased.

What gives?

Way up there, high in the sugar maple, I see one, no, I see two — wow! three!! — little bush-tails romping in the branches. I keep thinking one of the brainless little dimwits will slip and fall, but no. They frolic away forty feet up and never a sign of coming to ground.

Something else a little weird, Sophie. Now that I notice. Where are all the birds?

My male two-legger can’t get enough of the little ones that fly backwards. They sound like a power transformer about to catch fire. He’s put out four or five sugar-water offerings and the breezy little guys with their scarlet ties are catching on.

Between you and me, Sophie, I don’t consider those hum-bums real birds.

But that begs the question — where ARE the real birds?

Know what I think, Sophie?

No matter how much sugar-water he puts out, it won’t bring in the TRUE, straight-flying birds.

And if he won’t feed the big birds, the bush-tails won’t come down.

If the bush-tails won’t come down where I can get ’em, what’s a high-spirited pup gonna do?

The perfect bird feeder is one that dumps two seeds on the ground for every one it gives the birds.

Get it, Sophie?

“Feed the birds, bait the squirrels.”

Posted in Peppermint Patti | Tagged | 1 Comment

Florent Tillon’s ‘bonus’

Posted on August 9, 2010 by hro50ta1

By Joel Thurtell

French filmmaker Florent Tillon e-mailed the “bad news”: Instead of including our July 2009 motorboat trip up the Rouge River as part of his main feature movie, “Detroit Wild City,” he turned our river excursion into a 12-minute stand-alone video.

This is “bad news”?

Sounds great to me.

Instead of playing a bit part in a big picture, I’m co-star of a short feature, along with Detroit photographer Geoffrey George.

I played the “river pilot.”

Florent was in the bow of my boat as I drove slowly up the Rouge, re-tracing the route taken four years earlier by photographer Patricia Beck and me.

The only difference: In 2005, Pat and I were powered not by an outboard motor. We were paddling a canoe, sometimes against 30 mph gusts.

Our report was published in the Detroit Free Press in October 2005 and won the Water Environment Federation’s 2006 Henry E. Schlenz Medal for public education about the environment.

We turned our adventure into a book, published in 2009 by Wayne State University Press. The book is Up the Rouge! Paddling Detroit’s Hidden River.

Florent’s “Sanctuary” film, to be shown October 8-10 in Detroit’s Burton Theater,  is about the irony of our unceasing need for industrial products that cause irreparable harm to the world around us. We may rail at ravages of industrial pollution, but we still use our cars and for that matter, motorboats whose manufacture leads to the very contamination we deplore.

The Rouge River is a perfect example of this irony: For nearly nine miles, we slowly cruised along the ugly side of industrial America — piles of coke, ore and slag from two working steel mills; heaps of salt, gypsum, and four miles of river literally paved with concrete to prevent flooding caused by construction of homes, stores, offices, hotels, factories on terrain naturally prone to flood.

As if somebody touched a switch, just north of Michigan Avenue the concrete disappears. Suddenly, it’s urban forest with cardinals calling and kingfishers sailing overhead.

Welcome to the Henry Ford Estate, a rich man’s sanctuary. It was created by auto magnate Henry Ford and seems quite rural, except we know better. We had just passed the factory sprawl and eternal mess Ford and other industrialists created just downstream.

In his e-mail, Florent wrote:

I have bad and good news…

The bad news is that the Rouge scene will not be in the final editing of the feature film… Because it’s was too much difficult to include this scene without creating confusion about the story of the film… and also because it’s like a mini-movie by itself, with a special rhythm, too much independent from the rest of the film. Anyway ; it’s not in the film for a lot of different reasons.

The good news is that I made a 12 minute short-movie of our experience with you: it’s on the web, as a kind of premier of the feature, a cut-scene, and certainly a future “DVD bonus.”

I’m looking forward to the premier. Hope you’ll be there, too.

Drop me a line at joelthurtell@gmail.com

Posted in Adventures on the Rouge | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Susan Tompor: ‘We did win!’

Posted on August 5, 2010 by hro50ta1

By Joel Thurtell

JOTR favorite Susan Tompor has won the Detroit Free Press charity popularity contest.

I was curious about what had happened after I urged readers on July 23, 2010 to vote for Susan in the paper’s “Reader Envy” contest.

I sent her a note and received this e-mail from Susan:

“We did win!”

That means the Free Press will donate $500 to Susan’s favorite charity, Sheltering Arms.

And some lucky reader/voter will get to go shopping with Susan or maybe get her help figuring out their household finances.

Susan is the Free Press’s savvy personal finance columnist.

I think highly of the aim of Sheltering Arms in Southfield and Auburn Hills. It is to give quality time to people with Allzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases while relieving their loved ones temporarily of care-taking duties.

If we helped in any way, I’m glad.

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Blasto!

Posted on August 4, 2010 by hro50ta1

By Joel Thurtell

We nearly lost our star columnist.

Last time I wrote about Peppermint Patti, she’d undergone surgery to repair a snapped anterior cruciate ligament. They shaved her left hind leg and a veterinary surgeon reconnected the ligament in her knee. It was not a happy time for a writer, and Patti wasn’t motivated to pen her column.

Last summer, she had a grand time exploring the rugged terrain around our cottage in McGregor Bay. She scared the mink away from our dock and chased the squirrels into their trees.

This summer, following the vet’s orders, we kept Patti inside, mostly. As she felt better and her leg got stronger, we let her out more. I gave her swimming lessons at our dock.

But something happened that was not good for Patti.

Something happened that nearly killed her.

This is the dog who, as a puppy, gobbled up some rat poison and got very sick. We took her to a vet who scoffed at my description of an iridescent green poop I found on our back lawn. The vet said he would not believe she ate D-Con unless I could say I’d seen her do it. I could not, and so he sent us home. Patti got weaker and weaker and finally, we took her to an emergency vet service where they saved her life.

This is the dog who managed to jump high onto a desk and dislodge a large bar of dark chocolate, which she ate. Again, a very sick Patti and back to the emergency vet service to save her life.

This is also the dog who tried to chase a squirrel up a tree and impaled herself on a downed maple branch. Back to the emergency vet.

Then came the snapped ACL and you’d think Peppermint Patti would give her death wish a rest.

This time, though, her only mistake was an activity we all do all the time: breathing. Being alive.

I noticed her coughing here in the Bay when I had her swim a few feet to shore.Thought maybe she got some water in her throat.

The coughing continued, and got worse. It was hurting her to cough. She lost energy. Our speedy little dog, our little white bullet, was nearly comatose.

No interest in chasing squirrels.

The mink got brave and started fooling around the dock.

At that insolence, Patti got motivated, yet had no energy for the chase.

What could be wrong with our beloved little dog?

The word is “blastomycosis,” but we didn’t hear it till almost too late.

We were home in Michigan last week and pretty worried about Patti.
She’s a ca. 15-pound mix of bichon, maybe, and who knows what else,
but the best dog in the whole world. A happy, kindhearted (except to
squirrels, which she calls “bush-tails”) little dog who has brightened our lives at some low times.

Home in Michigan, the first vet examined her a week ago Monday and found nothing wrong, other than the cough. Heart strong, breathing normal. Sent us home with mild cough syrup.

My wife, an M.D., was not satisfied with his failure to
diagnose. A friend recommended another vet, so we took her to the new
doc a week ago today. This vet is very thorough and ordered x-rays
and a blood workup. The pictures showed a cloudy area near Patti’s
heart. The blood testing showed an elevated white cell count.
Theory: the unidentified mass was crowding her trachia, causing the cough. Diagnosis: pneumonia or maybe cancer. We were to try treating her with
antibiotics and give her a powerful human cough suppressant with
codeine.

Things got worse, fast. Patti’s eyes gummed up with mucous. We found sores
on her chin and side. The codeine made her almost comatose. At J & G Marina on Birch Island, I talked to Harold McGregor. He recommended a vet office in Mindemoya.

I googled and found the Islands Animal Hospital. Couldn’t get through
on Monday — holiday in Canada. So we drove Patti down to Mindemoya, a town in central Manitoulin Island, on August 3, 2010 and found Dr. Cathy Seabrook.

Dr. Seabrook, aka “savvydoc,” knew right away what is hurting Patti. Coughing? X-rays show cloudy area near heart? Sores? Infected eyes? Blasto!

As Elizabeth Quinn pointed out in her excellent article, linked above, our vets and physicians in urban and suburban areas don’t see blasto and often don’t think of it when they see its signs.

In Georgian Bay last year, one human and three dogs died of blasto because they were not correctly diagnosed and tgreated.

Without Dr. Seabrook, we were on track to lose Patti.

Blasto is a fungus that lives in damp earth near bodies of water. Well, that would be us in McGregor Bay. The spores can be inhaled into the lungs. They love that environment and multiply, traveling through the blood to other areas where they thrive, such as the eyes. They commonly cause infections on the skin.

“Multi-systemic,” Dr. Seabrook told us.

While there is no surefire diagnosis, the manifestation of infections in eyes and skin, the presence of a cloudy area in the lungs all point to blasto.

Patti is lucky. The fungus is not yet well-seated in her lungs. According to Dr. Seabrook, she sees cases of animals with “snowstorms” in the photos of their lungs. Patti did not have a snowstorm in her x-ray.

It is not too late to help her.

We now have two kinds of drops for her eyes, an antifungal medication to treat the
blasto and anti-pain meds. Less than 24 hours later, she seems to feel better.
Not cured — that could take a couple months. But improving.

And we’re concerned about her right eye, because the pupil was really small. In
addition to drops for both eyes, we have special drops for that eye to prevent the pupil from setting in that small position. The fear is that she may lose some or all of the sight in that eye.

Blasto is real in McGregor Bay. It may be real on other areas where veterinarians and physicians aren’t tuned to it and therefore don’t see it when it’s looking right at them.

Drop me a line at joelthurtell@gmail.com

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Not so easy, this journalism thing

Posted on July 29, 2010 by hro50ta1

By Joel Thurtell

I’m a fan of Sara Paretsky and her V.I Washawski private eye novels.

Hadn’t read Paretsky in years.

My wife brought the Warshawski detective novel, Blacklist, on our vacation to Canada. I read it, enjoyed it, and then found a copy of Paretsky’s first novel, Indemnity Only.

It’s a great read. I’m about halfway finished, and having trouble getting other things done. There’s painting, there’s organizing all the clutter at or around the dock at our cottage here in Georgian Bay. Sunfish sailboats, masts, anchors, anchor lines, gasoline jerricans, anchors, that swim ladder I can’t figure out how to attach to the dock, the flagpole I want to put up, anchors and a hundred other projects that seem to be adrift as I enjoy my way through this brash, funny, suspensful book.

But I have one bone to pick with Paretsky, and with other authors who try to write what is supposed to pass for newspaper prose to amplify and intensify their plots.

Paretsky, I believe, has a PhD in history. But I don’t believe she ever worked as a journalist.

It shows.

In her book Indemnity Only, Paretsky presents a newspaper report of a police action:

Police have arrested Donald Mackenzie of 4302 S. Ellis in the murder of banking heir Peter Thayer last Monday. Asst. Police Commissioner Tim Sullivan praised the men working on the case and said an arrest was made early Saturday morning when one of the residents of the apartment where Peter Thayer lived identified Mackenzie as a man seen hanging around the building several times recently. It is believed that Mackenzie, allegedly addicted to cocaine, entered the Thayer apartment on Monday, July 16, believing no one to be at home. When he found Peter Thayer eating breakfast in the kitchen, he lost his nerve and shot him. Commissioner Sullivan says the Browning automatic that fired the fatal bullet has not yet been traced but that police have every hope of recovering the weapon.

I won’t quibble about how the cops know the suspected murder weapon’s maker when they don’t have the weapon in hand. Presumably Chicago cops have ways of figuring out the manufacturer of a gun from either the bullet or the trail it left through the dead body. I doubt it, but that’s not my beef.

My complaint is that this passage, had it been published in the real world, could get its author and the newspaper in a peck of trouble.

You don’t have to go to J school to learn pretty quickly, if you work in a newsroom, that nothing about a homicide suspect gets published until a warrant is authorized. Usually, the suspect has to be arraigned before news media will publish the suspect’s name.

Why all the caution?

Well, what if the man or woman police suspect didn’t do it?

More to the point, what if the “suspect” is never charged?

In Paretsky’s case, Donald Mackenzie not only is tagged as a murder suspect, but he’s called a cocaine addict.

The story has libel stamped all over it.

Paretsky better hope Mackenzie is charged.

If not, her reporter and the newspaper could be in a jam.

Since the book was published in 1982 and is fiction anyway, Paretsky has nothing to worry about from the lawsuit angle.

But the passage, to me, is not believable.

Authors of any kind of fiction who concoct newspaper accounts ought to be aware that to be credible, to seem authentic, fictitious news reports need to follow the rules of good journalism. For instance, how could a reporter possibly write such a story and not include the suspect’s age? Another tip — leave the precise address out of the story. Just say the 4300-block of S. Ellis. It’s never wise to pinpoint crimes too precisely in case the address is in error or the entire account is laced with sloppy police accounting.

A cardinal rule of journalism is, Don’t commit libel.

Following from that come rules about how to report and write the story in ways that avoid lawsuits.

The problem for the writer of fiction is that those rules might get in the way of the murder mystery plot.

Putting that worry aside, here’s how Paretsky might have written her fake news report had she attended a workshop for fiction authors at Joel’s J School. My apologies, too, Sara, for translating the action to Detroit, a helluva lot more exciting news venue than stodgy ol’ Chicago. Why, we’ve got a mayor in jail.

A 42-year-old Chicago man was arraigned Saturday in Detroit’s 36th District Court on an open charge of murder in Monday’s slaying of 19-year-old banking heir Peter Thayer. Judge Ralph Schtungelmayer ordered a $100,000 bond and set the preliminary hearing for Oct. 6. Thayer’s body was found in the kitchen of his Chene Park apartment. According to Wayne County assistant prosecutor Portly Demeanor, Thayer died of a gunshot wound to the head. The murder weapon has not been found.

I’ve omitted the blarney from the police commissioner about how great a job the cops did. Best wait for the trial, if there is one, and see how well the police evidence holds up.

I’ve omitted the twaddle from a neighbor who supposedly saw Mackenzie “hanging around.” That kind of hearsay won’t get Mackenzie bound over for trial.

“Allegedly addicted to cocaine” is a no-no. “Allegedly” won’t save your butt if the guy says he’s not a cokehead. He isn’t being charged with drug abuse, and if he was, scuttlebutt alone wouldn’t convict him.

How does anybody know what Mackenzie “believed” about the victim being alone? Hearsay put him “hanging around” the building, but what evidence put him in the building and who crawled into his brain to mine out what he “believed”?

Ditto for “lost his nerve and shot him.”

Who says?

The problem for this whole passage is that it’s unlikely a prosecutor would have authorized a warrant of murder on such flimsy evidence.

But in the end, who cares?

Indemnity Only is a novel — and a very good one.

It’s a fun read.

I just hope that before she writes any more news reports, Sara Paretsky enrolls in one of our Joel’s J School seminars for authors on “Writing News For Fiction.”

Meanwhile, stay tuned for my essay on what journalists can learn from V.I. Warshawski.

Drop me a line at joelthurtell@gmail.com

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