Mark W Tiedemann

Month: December 2011

The Ancient Past

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

Over the weekend my mother presented us with something that surprised, pleased, slightly embarrassed, and produced a slew of other less-definable reactions.  Mothers do this sort of thing, I’m told.  We have no children to whom we might have inflicted this on, so I’m unable to say what must go through a parent’s mind on such occasion.

But it’s sweet and important and after my initial “What the hell…” reaction I was really very pleased.  She came out with a big file folder full of “stuff” from my grade school years.  Among the items were class portraits and…well…

 

  Yes, this is me, circa 1965. …

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Books, 2011

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

It seems unlikely I’ll finish another book before this Sunday—if I do it will probably be Stefanie Pintoff‘s second Simon Ziele mystery, A Curtain Falls.  I read the first in the series, In The Shadow of Gotham, not too long ago and enjoyed it.  It’s a period mystery, set in 1905, and features a progressive police detective from New York—Ziele—who teams up with an amateur criminologist, Alistair Sinclair, who is attempting to construct a science of criminal behavior.  Ms. Pintoff avoids many pitfalls by keeping the level of expertise firmly locked in 1905 and Sinclair makes as many if not more wrong conclusions as right, but it was an entertaining piece of work and the evocation of 1905 New York was excellent. …

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Season’s Wish

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

We didn’t get around to sending out cards this year.  It’s been busy and in some ways not particularly festive, but we’ve had worse years, so there really is no excuse.  Time just got away from us.

Which happens more and more lately.  So in lieu of a card (which we promise to send out next year) I thought I’d post this and for those of you who come by, we can wish you well and hope for a terrific next year.

We had Changes of Great Significance happen in 2011.  I signed with a new agent(s) and promptly spent a good chunk of the year rewriting a pair of novels at their requests, which is a good thing. …

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Many Lives

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

This is just very yeah.

When asked why I write, I have many answers, but this captures the entire inner gestalt of why.

Not getting to live all the lives I wanted to. I know what she means. I assumed at one time I would be a writer, an actor, a musician, a producer-director, and all the other things that attach to these ambitions. In a way, I did get to do them, but not the way I thought I would.

Anyway, this is marvelous.…

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Tilting At Icons: Christopher Hitchens 1949 – 2011

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

Unless you’ve been living on Mars or under a layer of primordial loam these past few decades, you know who Christopher Hitchens is. He has died. He was an unapologetic pragmatist, atheist, and iconoclast to the end. For an extended obit, go here.

I only knew Hitchens through his work, of which I’ve become quite impressed and even fond in the last few years. He did not tilt pointlessly at windmills. Rather, he spoke truth in the face of sham, questioned revered assumptions, and generally made us all twitch over some specious bit of received wisdom we thought reliable. And he did it in ways and under conditions that often ran counter to public courtesy.…

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Speech, Money, Personhood

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

Senator Bernie Sanders is sponsoring a Constitutional Amendment to deny corporations the right to be considered persons. His speech is worth a listen.

What amazes me is that this needs to be explained at all. This is one of those no-brainers that anyone on the street ought to be able to understand without much thought. Obviously a corporation is not a person.

But in the esoteric realm of political philosophy, we entertain all manner of chimera for the purposes of achieving certain ends. What we have demonstrated in the Citizens United case and previous court pronouncements regarding money as speech is that when yo break something down far enough, you find you can reassemble it just about any way you want.…

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Destabilizing The Family

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

This is an unscientific response to a ridiculous claim.  Rick Santorum, who wishes to be the next Bishop In Charge of America (or whatever prelate his church might recognize) recently made the claim that Gay couples are going to destabilize the family in America in order to accommodate their lifestyle.

We’ve all been hearing this claim now for, oh, since gays stopped sitting by and letting cops beat them up on Saturday nights without fighting back.  Ever since Gay Pride.  Even on my own FaceBook page I had someone telling me I was blinded by the “Gay Agenda” and that the country was doomed—that because of the Gay Agenda little children were being taught how to use condoms in school and this—this—would bring us all to ruin.…

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No Politics

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

Not this morning.  It’s hard, I know, because so much is going on that I could  comment about, but…

The novel revision I mentioned a couple of posts back is done.  Done and at my agent.  I did a top to bottom revision, adding in the new material that desperately wanted to be included, and except for yesterday it all went remarkably well.

Yesterday, though…yes…Murphy was in residence.

We went to the gym and then Donna had an errand to run, so I descended to the dungeon  office and began.  I’d already started the final work on the last chapter a couple days earlier, but I had Other Things To Do on both Tuesday and Wednesday that kept me away. …

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Poll Positions

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

Comes a point when it is obvious that one’s sympathies lie in a particular direction, whether we want to admit to them or not.  Politically, I tend to try to find something worthwhile across the Left-Right spectrum.  I am, in some ways, a conservative guy.  I’ve never had much issue with a sensible fiscal conservatism, but it has grown increasingly difficult to find anything supportable in the Republican Party.  The kind of conservatism I found sympathetic at one time is such a minor part of the public face of conservative politics these days as to be almost gone.  It is not enough to say to me “Well, it’s still there, once they get in office that will come to fore.” …

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Payment and Positions

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

I have been assiduously working on the rewrite of the book I mentioned in the previous post and not much else has gotten done.  I’m 3/4 through and into the difficult part, where the plot actually veers, and I’ve been thinking about game changers as a result, which brings me in a painful arc to…

Newt Gingrich?  Are you serious?

I have no idea who the Republican nominee will be by the end of August 2012.  It’s too soon to make solid predictions.  One thing has been clear, once again, the sensible candidates will not have a prayer.  (I say that ironically.) …

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