While not a religious man who accepts things on faith, I’ve experienced more than one occasion where the forces that run the Universe took the time to demonstrate to me that there’s more to this Cosmos than just a bunch of swirling galaxies and some accidental events.

On one occasion, I was taking a Wilderness Survival Course in a remote area. The instructor, a man with a long background in the outdoors, told the class of about 30 to go outside and ask some natural object if it had a message.

It was nighttime, and the cloudless sky was dazzling with a blanket of stars, none more prominent than the Big Dipper constellation. I noted some students standing before a massive oak tree, while others seemed to be wandering freely over the landscape.

Photo by Jensine Odom on Unsplash

Being of a practical nature, I simply looked directly at the North Star and asked, politely, if there was some message for me.

Imagine my surprise when I felt, not heard, the North Star respond.

“The whole Universe is watching what happens on Earth.”

I chalked it up to my imagination and returned to the classroom. The lead instructor then asked the group if anyone had received a message. I sat quietly in the back.

After a period of silence, a young man in front proclaimed, “The whole Universe is watching what happens on Earth.” He said he got it from the sky. Then a second, then a third, chimed in with the same message. A total of six or seven members of the class reportedly got the same message as I had received.

As hard as I searched my memory, I could not come up with any subliminal suggestion from any of the instructors or other students. No hidden microphones in the woods or around the rough classroom.

Since that time long ago, I’ve had similar experiences when, usually alone, I ask questions to Whatever Is Out There, and have received pretty profound answers.

For example, after a four-day “sit” in the woods of Northern Wisconsin, I looked up at the stars and asked, “How do I follow the lessons I’ve been taught during this time alone?”

The answer came swiftly and clearly, “Follow the breadcrumbs. Tracks will be provided.”

Okay, perhaps the answer sprang from my own subconscious mind, but, as my experiences have piled up, I’ve come to believe my subconscious mind is somehow connected to a greater consciousness. And that consciousness has no problem communicating with me when I ask the right question.

This communication extends beyond “heard” answers, as an experience taught me one late afternoon. I had decided to spend a night alone in the woods and found some private forest land, far away from any structures. As I started to walk across a field filled with tall grasses, I became aware of a strange sensation, experienced only once previously when stalked by a grizzly bear in Alaska.

The hair on my arms and the back of my neck was rising.

I stopped to analyze this growing sense of hidden danger and noted that the grass in front of me was being pressed down as if a large, invisible force was moving toward me from the woods. No wind was blowing, and I could not account for the grass’s strange behavior.

“Why are you doing this?” I finally asked. “I’m just heading into the woods for some communication with the natural world and you send this invisible beast to scare hell out of me. What’s your point?”

Within seconds, the grass returned to normal, my arm and neck hairs relaxed, and I continued my journey into the woods. Just inside the tree line, I discovered that someone had gut-shot a doe and left her to die a painful death.

Some years later, I was running a primitive Wilderness Skills workshop with maybe 20 inexperienced students when one of our instructors arrived and informed me that a major thunderstorm was heading our way. While all of the students had tents for shelter, a storm with lightning could cause safety issues.

A friend who was helping out and I walked to the edge of the woods and watched as black, swirling clouds, filled with flashes of lightning, marched toward us across a field.

Photo by Felix Mittermeier on Unsplash

“I got this,” said my friend, who was wise in the ways of Native Americans. He walked to his tent and returned moments later with a deerskin bag. I stepped back and watched as he laid a red cloth on the ground, pulled various objects from his bag, and laid them carefully on the red cloth. Then he began a sing-song chant.

I didn’t know what to expect and was surprised when the black clouds split and sent the heavy rain and wind moving to each side of our camp. The storm then slammed shut on the other side of our area, leaving us safe and dry.

After watching the dark, torrential rain move away, I turned to my friend. “Nice job,” was the best I could come up with.

He just nodded. “It wasn’t me,” he said. “I just asked for help in keeping the workshop safe.”

That night, the stars and moon poured silver light over the tents of the camp. The next morning, several students reported hearing chanting and drumming during the night. Others swore they had fireflies inside their tents.

I was awake most of the night and heard no drumming or chanting. And my tent had been free of fireflies.

It comforts me to know that something of Infinite Intelligence is willing to take the time out of what must be an incredibly busy schedule to answer my humble questions.

And while my finite mind can’t understand the nature of the source of the responses, the answers are simple enough for me to indeed “follow the breadcrumbs.”

When I was young and knew everything, I reasoned that all the world religions had some things in common, just different labels. I also noted that they all had a bunch of rules invented by old men who attributed them to divine origin.

Human characteristics made up by some pretty unhappy people became attributes of supreme beings. Vengeful Gods, angry Gods, and fearsome Gods were among the singular personalities in many religions. Fear of one’s creator seemed to be the overriding emotion.

I decided deities who punished transgression of the rules with fire and brimstone were not a group with whom I wished to be associated, as I was an unrepentant sinner at that time.

The other side of the religious coin, I observed, were loving Gods, playful Gods, and forgiving Gods. These religions had a stronger draw, but again, they still assigned human characteristics to all-powerful beings, which was a non-starter for me.

I wrapped myself in the absolute certainty of youth and argued my positions vigorously with other first- and second-year students at our table in the student union.

But while I rejected the idea of a Supreme Being,  it also occurred to me that this universe, from its swirling galaxies to the incredible intelligence of DNA, was possibly ruled by a single, all-knowing, and all-powerful Consciousness, of which we, as created beings, are a part. 

As a diverse bunch, my friends at the table were divided. Some agreed that the label for this Consciousness was God, while others claimed it was Allah. This consciousness seemed to often respond, no matter to whom or what we prayed. No sins and no retributions were an additional attraction.

Which brings me to the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics and quantum entanglement.

Three men, Alain Aspect, John Clauser, and Anton Zeilinger,  were awarded the most prestigious prize a physics professor can hope to attain for helping explain the phenomenon Einstein called “spooky action at a distance.”

It’s now known as “quantum entanglement.”

In brief, the yardstick for measuring distance in large numbers is the speed of light. Decades of experiments have demonstrated that nothing with mass, not even photons, can travel faster than the speed of light. 

For example, Sunlight, consisting of light photons, takes 8 minutes to reach Earth because the Sun is 93 million miles away and light travels at 187,000 miles per second.

According to quantum mechanics, some massive particles are paired. When one of the pair spins clockwise, the other immediately spins counterclockwise. The “spooky” action is that the particles seem to know which way their partner is spinning, even when miles apart.

If you’re in London with one of the paired particles, and its mate is in New York, the particles still work as if they are aware of the direction their partner is spinning. Stop the one in New York and reverse its spin, and the other in London will, at that instant, respond by changing its spin.

The three physicists developed a method to prove that entanglement, which had just been a theory, was genuine. According to this new way of looking at the world, information can be instantaneous, faster than the speed of light.

While it’s a leap, I propose particles are part of a single consciousness. And therefore,  as humans are composed of particles, we are all part of that consciousness, no matter what label is assigned to it.

Now that I’m old enough to realize I know nothing, it appears that Aspect, Clausen, and Zellinger have given credence to my youthful ideas.

And I’m grateful that I lived long enough to witness it.

The apartment was on the second floor of an older walk-up, and the first thing I noticed was that the stairs led directly up from the street door to the apartment. I remembered that, a couple of years previously, two FBI agents had been killed in exactly this kind of stairwell. If a shooter came out of the apartment, I thought, there is no place for me to go to get out of the line of fire.

It’s just a routine follow-up interview, I told myself. Stop being overly dramatic.

In addition, while it’s never wise to stand directly in front of a door when knocking, this hall arrangement made that impossible to avoid.

It’s just routine. I rapped on the door.

The dead body of Sadie, a 24-year-old woman, was discovered by her live-in boyfriend, Gary. She had a syringe in her arm containing liquid cyanide, and it was a case we should have rolled on immediately. However, the call came in during the night when the two investigators assigned to the night shift were swamped with a series of sudden deaths, so the scene investigation was left to the city police detectives.

The cops called it a suicide after interviewing the boyfriend and working the death scene. The body, brought to the Morgue, showed no signs of anything other than a death by cyanide poisoning. An autopsy was scheduled for later in the day.

Because I was a newbie in the department, I was working the Day Shift so I could learn the ropes before going on a later shift with fewer investigators. My assignment was to interview Sadie’s boyfriend at their shared apartment. It was a simple procedure designed to gather details to help us find Sadie’s family, who lived somewhere in California. The police had cleared the case, the body awaited an autopsy, and all we had to do was locate the family. Or so I was told.

Gary answered the door on the second knock. He was a thin man, maybe early 30s, with shoulder-length dark, greasy hair and a patchy, scruffy beard. His black sleeveless T-shirt sported a hand with the middle finger extended. I noticed he seemed a bit nervous, so rather than show my badge, I gave him a business card with the Medical Examiner’s logo prominently displayed in color.

Gary offered me the stuffed chair, but as it looked like it had recently been the scene of a grease fire, I chose to stand.

The questions I started with were about Sadie’s probable next of kin, her medical history, and any history of drug abuse.

As my routine questions began to flow, Gary seemed to relax. He lit a cigarette, got a chair from the small kitchen, sat down, and flicked the ash onto the linoleum-covered floor.

He had been asleep in bed when Sadie must have gotten some medicine, he said, and then killed herself. It was at this point that I realized he had taken me for a fool, since he had told the police he had been out of the apartment visiting a friend. Also, I knew the syringe contained cyanide, not medicine. As I continued playing dumb, he fell into the common interviewing snare we all used to see if he would keep lying.

I started asking questions to further explore the areas the police had covered the previous night, something I wouldn’t have bothered with if he hadn’t been inventing the tale as he went along.

Shortly into this phase of the questioning, he changed his story again about being in the apartment, then being with a friend, and some of the dialogue he had with the victim. Red flags were popping up, but I knew that the stress of an interview can play games with some people’s memory.

While speaking with him and taking notes on what he was saying, I also surreptitiously began writing down the names on the jars of a range of chemicals lining the walls.

Ammonium nitrate, red phosphorus, and potassium chlorate are three that I remember. I had enough chemistry in college and the military to recognize that these ingredients were used to make explosives and wondered why the police hadn’t moved on this guy last night.

Since the cops had searched the apartment the night before and found no guns, and Gary didn’t look like he’d be a problem in any physical altercation, I asked if he had anything to do with Sadie’s death.

I was just curious because things didn’t add up. Our office mandate is to determine the cause and manner of death, which means homicide, suicide, or accident.

This sounds like a stupid question, as I was unarmed and without backup, but I was young and not the brightest crayon in the box. We’ll call it ‘inexperience,’ rather than arrogance.

Gary immediately leaped to his feet and began speaking gibberish, all the while pacing and waving his arms around.

Time for the cops.

Here was an agitated, lying suspect, with bomb making chemicals, and a young woman with cyanide in her arm. I wondered again why the cops hadn’t hauled this screwball off for questioning.

This was before the cell phone era, and I felt that asking Gary to use his phone to call the police would not have gone over well.

So, I terminated the interview and made my way to the door.

Going down those stairs in that narrow hallway, with Gary’s door at my back, made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Only when I got outside and reached the Detective Bureau on the squad phone did I exhale and wipe the sweat off my forehead.

Later, I learned that Gary and Sadie were members of a terrorist organization centered in Los Angeles and were attempting to organize a splinter group in my city. The cops were part of a joint task force with the Feds and were watching Gary’s apartment to identify other members of the terrorist cell.

That afternoon, I met with a team of detectives who told me that when they saw me go in, they wondered what the hell I was doing there. They had used the sudden death investigation to search the apartment and had obtained warrants to place several listening devices and tap Gary’s phone.

Of course, they had a recording of my entire interview with Gary.

It would have been nice to know who I was dealing with and what I was dealing with in my “routine interview.”

Gary later went on trial on several federal charges, but was never convicted of the murder of Sadie. Her death was officially ruled a suicide.

Investigators usually do follow-up interviews alone, but the lesson I learned in this early case was to have a couple of cops with you if you’re going to toss around questions about offing someone with a witness or suspect.

Just in case the interview gets unpleasant and goes sideways.

“The man’s body lay sprawled on his back on the tile floor, his arms thrown akimbo. The haft of a dagger protruded from the center of his chest.”

“This isn’t a novel, Mister. It’s a f…king police report.” That was my boss at the Medical Examiner’s Office, a man with little appreciation for literary works or personal pronouns.

What had gotten his goat this time was that my report had been read aloud in court by our county’s Chief Medical Examiner. A smart-aleck defense attorney had handed my Chief my investigative report while he was on the witness stand, and asked him to read it to the jury.

Red in the face and loaded for bear, the Chief had come looking for me directly on his return from the courtroom. I, meanwhile, had been forewarned by my partner and had slipped out “on a case,” only to return a couple of hours later when he had cooled down and was busy taking apart another corpse in the Morgue downstairs.

At 3 o’clock in the morning, ennui sets in and, to paraphrase the great Vince Lombardi, “Fatigue makes writers of us all.” The dead of night is when my literary creative juices flow. Give me a barroom shooting at 2 in the morning, and I’ll give you a true story that rivals anything from Tombstone or Dodge City.

Here’s an example of what bubbles out of my 3 pounds of tofu brain in the cool of the evening or the heat of the night.

“The Harvest Moon rose behind the stark outlines of trees with their wintery bare branches, as we made our way down the hill, leaving the dead to themselves.”

Unfortunately, active verbs, eloquent phrases, and lofty adjectives were frowned upon by the staid executives of the Medical Examiner’s Office during my nearly 20 years there. So, most of the time, I stuck to the standard, acceptable rhetoric.

Here are a couple of examples. I ask you, which would you rather read?

“The witness, Stephen Smith, stated that he saw Amelia Roberts fire her weapon in the direction of the deceased, Nancy Jones.”

Or

“The serenity of the quiet inner-city street was shattered by the roar of the .357 Ruger, as Amelia Roberts pumped two slugs into her neighbor, Nancy Jones, according to witness Stephen Smith.”

I started the official report with that sentence, then continued with some background.

“The feud had escalated from hurling opprobrious epithets between the two women from the relative safety of their porches to a physical assault with a deadly weapon.”

That report got an eye-roll, but no threats. I took that as a win.

Violent death is always a serious subject. The grief and pain to the victim’s family, and the destruction of a life, require the investigation to be handled in a professional, dignified manner. I agreed with that premise, but that didn’t mean the reports needed to be dry or uninteresting. I made sure that all of the necessary facts were clearly laid out, but to give the reader, usually the Chief Medical Examiner, some sense of the drama of the incident seemed to me to enhance the accuracy of the narrative.

Our cases were inherently dramatic, often violent, stories that unfolded in three-dimensional spaces and were peopled by human players. To give the trier of fact a complete picture on a two-dimensional report was my goal.

The report I really liked, however, never made it to the courtroom.

“The apartment house is one of several in a former upscale neighborhood. But most have the sad look of neglect, like a prima ballerina who has stayed too long in the spotlight, and now covers her age with plaster and paint. Out-of-work actors, unpublished writers, and a few University students living on coffee and speed make up the tenants. The unmistakable mephitic odor of death permeates the bleak hallways.”

I thought it would sound great to a jury at trial, especially when read aloud in the sonorous voice of the ever-so-proper Chief Medical Examiner of the County.

But my boss, the top Investigator, rejected the report out of hand, and I reluctantly rewrote it in official prosaic style.

My opinion of the apartment house, the tenants, and the odor in the hallway was deleted completely, leaving only a brief description of the corpse.

“I was shown to the kitchen area of the apartment and examined the body of an adult white male, fully dressed for indoors, of about the stated age of 32 years, lying supine with an apparent gunshot wound to the anterior chest.”

However, I did have a small victory.

One of the city detectives had gotten a copy of my earlier unredacted report, and a week later I spotted it nicely framed, adorning the wall of the police Homicide Bureau. Under the picture of my report was a sign,

“The Hemingway of the Morgue,” it read.

It’s nice to be appreciated by your colleagues.

I love how writers of fictional mysteries use words and phrases to glamorize what, to me, was a job.

Death. A ringing note in the silence. A creature whose appetite could never be satisfied. What was man in the face of such a beast? What was left when the beast had devoured the soul? A handful of memories and the illuminated pointillism of a life, each dot soon scattered to the winds, a swirl of fireflies in the darkness, one by one winking out, until all was lost to the void.

(Khan, Vaseem. The Edge of Darkness: (The Malabar House Series) (pp. 61-62). Hodder & Stoughton. Kindle Edition.)

I don’t write like that, and I certainly didn’t investigate like that.

I’m a hack writer, and several of my regular readers have requested that I either write more true crime stories and/or republish those from previous blogs.

Therefore, starting on Tuesdays in September, I’ll do both. I’ll start with some of the more popular murder mysteries that I already published, and scrape my memory banks and Crime Scene notes to lay new cases before my discerning public.

There will be a couple where I was either a secondary character or not involved at all - those with my colleague, Tony Kemnitz, for example.

I’ll continue to change the names, but the events actually happened, much as I’ll tell them. Although I often write them from a different character’s point of view, I was present and active at most of the scenes.

So be forewarned, Tuesdays in September will be blood and mayhem.

The phone rings

“Hello.”

“Oh, hi, Tom. Is Ellen there?”

“No. She’s in the garage.”

“Um. Is something wrong with your car?”

“No. We no longer have a car. Our lease was up, and we decided to go without it for a while.”

“Oh. Is she using the garage for her crafts?”

“I don’t know, but she has no workbench out there.”

“Well, Tom. What is she doing in the garage? She’s not just sitting out there to get away from you, is she?”

“There’s no chair in the garage.”

“I see. So, what is Ellen doing in the garage right now?”

“I don’t know. I’m not in the garage.”

“Okay, Jerk. What do you THINK she’s doing in the garage?”

“I can only speculate.”

“Please do.”

“Well, today is wash day. Yesterday, she moved all the clothes-drying racks out to the garage. I speculate that she is hanging wet clothes on drying racks in the garage.

“Thank you. Please have her call me when she’s available.”

“Of course. Will do.”

This conversation, where I was purposely being a jerk with a good friend, reminds me of some of the conversations I had as a Forensic Investigator trying to get medical information about deceased persons when there were no apparent suspicious circumstances.

Some people, I learned early on, are either pathological liars or lie to anyone in a suit and tie who shows them a badge. Apparently, giving accurate information is somehow against their personal codes.

The following conversation took place in the residence of an older man who had died in bed during the night. The body was discovered by his son, who called the ambulance. Because of the decomposition, the ambulance refused to transport him and notified the police. Our office was contacted, and I was dispatched to check out the scene and interview the family.

At the residence, I did a complete examination of the body, and it showed no signs of anything other than a probable heart attack.

I approached the son who was in the next room.

“Are you Jacob’s son?”

“Well, he is my father.”

“When did you last speak with your father?”

“I dunno. Last week I expect.”

“Was he ill at that time?”

“No. He was feeling fine.”

“Has he had any illness in the past? Like a bad heart? Or high blood pressure?”

“No, nothing like that.”

“Was he seeing a doctor for anything?”

“Well, I don’t think so. Maybe.”

“Was he taking any medication? Did a doctor prescribe any pills from the drugstore?”

“He mighta had high blood, now I think about it.”

“Any medication?”

“He mighta took some pills.”

“I already checked the medicine cabinet in the bathroom and it’s empty. Do you know where he kept his pills?”

“My cousin come and took them all. Said he was going to get rid of them so none of the kids could get into them.”

“Why don’t you give me the name of your cousin so I can get the pills from him?”

“I don’t know which cousin it was. They was all here. It mighta been Dawg.”

“I’d like Dawg’s last name and where I can reach him.”

“He’s just Dawg. Or Dawgie sometimes, but I can’t recall any last name.”

“Could I have Dawg’s phone number?”

“No. I don’t have it. He come over with my other cousin Leonard. And Skip was with them, too. I got Prissy’s phone number. That’s the one I called.”

“You called your cousins over before you called the ambulance. Is that right?”

“Yeah. They come over and said I should call the ambulance.”

“Do you remember the name of the pills on the bottles or the doctor’s name?”

“I never seen the pills, and I don’t think he was seeing a doctor.”

At this point, I had the body conveyed to the County Morgue and drove back to the office.

Later, I discovered the dead man had a long history at a local hospital, regularly saw a doctor who was treating him for congestive heart failure, hypertension, and diabetes, and was driven to the hospital at least every couple of weeks by his son, the very man I had been interviewing.

The medications in the possession of “Dawg” were never recovered, although I did locate and interview several “cousins.

I found no one named Dawg.

It’s no secret that IQ scores across Europe and America are dropping.

The test itself has been modified several times to eliminate biases identified in earlier versions. In addition, the definition of general intelligence has changed, and the test has reflected these changes.

An IQ (Intelligence Quotient) test is a tool that measures one’s ability to reason and use logic to solve problems and answer questions. The modern test consists of: matrix reasoning, which measures abstract pattern recognition and problem-solving; letter and number series, which assess logical reasoning through sequences; verbal reasoning, which draws on vocabulary and general knowledge; and three-dimensional rotation, a test of mental spatial visualization.

In the early 1980s, researcher James Flynn examined the results of several prominent versions of the IQ tests since the 1930s. He noted that the average intelligence, as measured by IQ tests, was increasing by about 3% per year.

Better nutrition, access to early education, fewer siblings, and generally improved health among Europeans and Americans were among the theories proposed to explain the annual increase in test scores.

The Flynn effect was expected to continue, especially as we entered the information age, in which people had access to constant information across multiple electronic devices.

This was good news, as the IQ test is associated with better academic performance, higher-paying jobs, more life satisfaction, and even a longer, healthier lifetime.

Then, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, something unexpected happened. The IQ scores in Europe began to decline, showing a reverse Flynn effect. America soon followed, and psychologists and sociologists were stumped. A 13-year study of over 300,000 test-takers was examined, and the results were not encouraging.

Young adults aged 18 to 22 were the most affected.

Matrix reasoning and letter-and-number series scores declined alongside the overall composite scores, indicating reduced performance on abstract and logical reasoning tasks.

However, three-dimensional rotation scores increased, suggesting people are getting better at mentally manipulating objects in space. The increase in video gaming over the same time period could be a factor.

There is a corresponding decline in SAT and ACT scores for college admission.

Why is this happening, researchers asked?

The decline in intelligence predates the COVID pandemic years and the use of generative artificial intelligence. But it parallels the “post-literary” era, when reading novels and short stories dropped off, and smartphone use increased.

James Marriott, a columnist for the Times of London, argues that getting our information about our world from social media on our smartphones damages our intellect.

“Print requires writers to make a logical case for a subject,” Marriott said.

“A really significant feature of books is that if you make a case in print, you have to make it logically add up.

“You can’t just assert things in the way you can on TikTok or on YouTube… print privileges a whole way of thinking and a whole way of processing the world that is logical, that is more rational, that is more dense information, that is more intellectually challenging.”

Ongoing studies are attempting to clarify the reasons for the reverse Flynn effect, and although theories abound, no hard conclusions are currently available.

The worry is that if the decline in cognitive-logical reasoning continues, people around the world will be less able to make valid judgments about political and military leaders.

We live in a dynamic culture with new technologies and vast amounts of information constantly coming at us, and our ability to deal with this overload may require new skills.

This apparent decline may be an artifact of an older, less appropriate measure of our ability to deal with the reality of the rapidly changing world.

Or maybe we’re just getting dumber.

James Marriott and Jared Henderson, The Dawn of the Post-Literate Society, UnHerd, YouTube video, Aug 27, 2025, accessed August 10, 2026

Marriott, James, The New Dark Ages: The Death of Reading and the Dawn of the Post-Literate Society, Doubleday, pre-order summary, Kindle, 2026.

It goes back to when our ancestors climbed down out of the trees and began to live in small groups and villages.

When a predator, like a big carnivore, or a neighboring gang attacked the village, the people weren’t interested in listening to the wise leader who could predict storms and heal wounds. At the moment, they wanted someone who shouted, “I got this.”

Later, when the council of elders gathered and argued about who should be the headman of the tribe, the experienced and wisest were chosen as advisors, but the one who was confident in his ability to handle whatever problems arose was picked as the chief.

Painting pottery and philosophical discussions were great, but when the threat to the tribe or village reared its head, the one who shouted “follow me” was the one who was selected as leader.

However, times have changed, and the problems that threaten us are much more complex than an enemy horde coming over the hill. Climate change, economic issues, global politics, and artificial intelligence have replaced lion attacks and sudden enemy predation. Current problems require expertise, serious knowledge, and wisdom.

Humans, however, are still hardwired to turn to the most confident voice in the room, even if that voice is someone lacking in information or knowledge of the issues.

Worldwide, leaders are elected who promise to solve all the problems of their countries and end up causing hardship and suffering to the very people who sought them as their savior.

People mistakenly take confidence for competency.

People with real knowledge of complex issues know the pitfalls and the variable outcomes, and we rarely vote for them. In times of crisis, however, we have been able to lay aside our primitive bias for fools and chosen credible, competent leaders, globally. Lincoln, Churchill, and Roosevelt, for example.

Strangely, we have replaced leaders who can protect us from tigers and stampeding buffalo with those who have shown an ability to obtain riches or fame.

Democracies will continue to be ruled by the wealthy as long as people admire the rich, assuming they must be intelligent because they have money. Even though they may come from wealthy families, be ruthless, and focus exclusively on obtaining money, too often we assume that obtaining money must involve the ability to solve problems.

Intelligence is not a requirement for wealth. If elected to a position of power, a wealthy but unfit-to-lead person will surround themself with other incompetents, leading to a kakistocracy, a government by the worst, least qualified, or most unscrupulous.

Disastrous wars, failed economic growth, and reduced health are often the result.

Voters elect wealthy businesspeople to power, and expect them to understand and solve the troubles middle-class and low-income families experience. Currently, 51 % of Congress are millionaires, and the difficulties facing the voters who put them in office have gotten worse.

Empathy is not a trait of the morbidly rich.

Politics, worldwide, often follows the Dunning-Kruger Effect, the theory that incompetent people are too stupid to realize they are incompetent. Studies have shown that those who can’t solve a problem or perform a task are more likely to rate themselves as competent than those with true expertise.

People gravitate toward someone who makes decisions. We don’t vote for those who waffle, and candidates running for office know this. Bombastic speeches garner more votes than measured, intelligent rhetoric.

The existential challenges we face today are too critical to select the loudest voice in the room without investigating candidates’ knowledge and experience. We are no longer sitting around a campfire discussing hunting and gathering topics. The world around us is already burning; people are dying due to geopolitical disasters, and artificial intelligence is escaping the control of its masters.

In this age of information, we have no excuse for electing corrupt, ignorant, and incompetent leaders. We, the populace, must take an interest in seeking out the best among us for positions of power.

Our continued existence, not just as a democracy, depends on it.

As a hack writer, I often have difficulty putting some of my most meaningful experiences into words. Most have to do with feelings, like the sense of quiet comfort when encountering something profoundly beautiful. There are over one million words in English, but I often find words and phrases from other languages more expressive.

For example, the moonlight on the surface of a woodland lake on a summer’s night in Northern Wisconsin has a quality that is difficult to express in the English language. “Pretty” or “beautiful” don’t do it. “Magical” comes the closest for the way I feel, but even that seems limited.

Fortunately, a friend in Japan frequently sends me ideas and words in her native language that are close to the feelings I’m trying to express.

The peaceful sensation of being somewhere that feels right is Kokochi, for instance, and to experience the appreciation of the beauty of the moonlight on the water on an emotional level is Ukiyo.

But the word to express the profound, mysterious beauty beyond the visible, evoking thoughts and emotions without direct expression, is Yugen, the word I’m searching for.

However, I often have a sense of the transient quality of the moonlight on the water. In the depths of the emotion of peace lies the sense of impermanence. It’s a subtle, fleeting feeling that everything is in a constant state of change, or, as the Stoics say, “this too shall pass.”

The Japanese word for that sense is Mujo, and I feel it more as I age. Mujo also reminds us to embrace the beauty of the present moment, letting go of the past and future.

One of the ways languages evolve is by incorporating words from other cultures, and English is a prime example. We have many words borrowed from other European countries with roots in Greek and Latin.

For me, East Asian terms add to the richness of our native tongue by expressing the subtle feelings I struggle to communicate in my writing.

Translating these Asian words into meaningful expressions in English will remain an ongoing challenge.

The Battle of Midway came just six months after the attack on Pearl Harbor and is considered the turning point in the War in the South Pacific.

They were supposedly invincible.

The Imperial Japanese Navy had not lost a battle in 50 years, largely due to the Mitsubishi Zero, the fastest and most maneuverable fighter plane in the world.

On the morning of December 7, 1941, Japanese Naval bombers staged a surprise attack on U.S. military and naval forces at Pearl Harbor Naval Base in Oahu, Hawaii. Their objective was to destroy the only threat to Japan’s complete control of the Pacific Ocean and surrounding countries, including Australia and New Zealand.

In a devastating defeat, the United States suffered 3,435 casualties and loss of, or severe damage to, 188 planes, 8 battleships, 3 light cruisers, and 4 miscellaneous vessels. It was the greatest Intelligence failure in US History.

All the US had left of its mighty Pacific Fleet was 3 aircraft carriers and a handful of smaller ships.

Without the challenge of the American Navy, the Japanese rapidly conquered the Philippines, British Malaya, Singapore, and parts of the Dutch East Indies. Two British ships, the battleship HMS Prince of Wales and the battlewagon HMS Repulse, challenged them and were quickly sent to the bottom of the sea.

Six months later, the Imperial Japanese Naval Headquarters, led by Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, sought to destroy what remained of the US fleet.

Their plan, revealed after the war, was simple. Stage a diversion by attacking Midway Atoll, luring the US carriers into the open sea. Then, an overwhelming Japanese Naval force hidden nearby would strike suddenly and annihilate the American carriers.

The largest fleet the Imperial Empire ever put to sea, called the invincible Kido Butai—Japanese for “attacking force,” was assembled. On May 28, 1942, they set out from Japan to destroy the American fleet.

The Kido Butai consisted of 4 aircraft carriers with 300 planes, 7 battleships, 15 submarines, and 150 support ships. The thousands of sailors were led by the same man who had commanded the attack on Pearl Harbor in December, Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo.

After the American fleet was obliterated, there would be nothing to stop the Japanese bombing of San Diego, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, and bring the mighty America to negotiate for peace.

* * * *

But there was one thing the Imperial Japanese commanders didn’t know.

America had a secret weapon.

It wasn’t the atomic bomb, and it wasn’t the industrial strength of America. Those came later.

It was Joe Rochefort, a Lieutenant Commander, a methodical man who did not attend the US Naval Academy, but who loved crosswords. At the age of 17, he left school to join the Navy and rose through the ranks on the strength of his ability and perseverance. Now, this 41-year-old, quiet, pipe-smoking man was in charge of HYPO, the top-secret cryptography intelligence unit at Pearl Harbor, one of the most critical departments in the War.

Trained in cryptoanalysis by the Navy’s best, Joe led his team in breaking the toughest ciphers and codes the Imperial Empire could produce.

It helped that he had spent three years in Japan in the 1930s, studying the people and learning to speak, write, and read the difficult language.

Often described by writers as caustic, witty, unorthodox, tactless, intolerant, blunt but quick, intimate, and brilliant, he was despised by senior officers, who often took the brunt of his blunt speech, but loved by those who worked with him.

One of his fellow officers, who spent the most time with him, described him as “clean-shaven, occasionally smoked a pipe at his desk, was quiet-mannered and soft-spoken, a gentleman in all respects.”

Working 12 -hour shifts since December 7, ensconced in The Dudgeon, a cold, humid basement room in the Naval Headquarters Building in Pearl Harbor, Lieutenant Commander Rochefort and his 100-man team had broken about 10% of the hundreds of Japanese radio intercepts in the six months since the surprise attack.

The Imperial Navy had changed its codebooks on December 4, 1941, three days before the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the codebreakers (10 at that point) had not had the time to decipher the challenging double-encrypted Japanese code.

And now, in May of 1942, because of the intense radio traffic between Japanese ships, the US Navy brass knew something big was coming. But where, when, and how big was hidden in the new Japanese Naval Code JN25(b).

There are different ways of writing in Japanese, and the encoded messages could be in any of the three major scripts: kanji, hiragana, or katakana. Katakana was the most used.

The Japanese naval code clerk would write the message in katakana, then use a codebook to encrypt it into numbers. Then a second code book was used to add random numbers to the coded numbers. These double-coded numbers were then transmitted in Morse Code to awaiting ships.

The code breakers in The Dungeon got up to 400 radio intercepts daily, consisting of messages written in 5-digit numbers. Some of the Admirals in Washington felt the Kido Butai would hit and land troops on the Aleutian Island chain, and others thought Australia would be occupied. The West Coast of America was also a possibility for attack.

The pressure on the codebreakers was enormous. The fate of the US Pacific Fleet, and possibly thousands of American civilian lives, rode on their ability to find out where and when the giant Japanese fleet was planning to strike.

And time was running out. The Kido Butai was already at sea.

Rochefort, working a 20-hour shift, scanned one of the 140 radio intercepts in the JN-25 code and saw something strange. An ordinary Japanese supply ship, the Goshu Maru, received a message that made Joe sit up straight. The captain of the Maru was to advance to Imieji, a small Japanese Navy base near Jaluit, “load air base equipment and munitions of the Imieji (seaplane unit) and proceed to Saipan to join with the K Campaign.”

The “K Campaign,” Rochefort knew, was the Kido Butai. The message also used the geographic designator “AF,” which Rochefort knew to be the Midway Atoll.

The strike was to come from the Japanese-held Saipan and attack the US Marine airfield at Midway. A linguist, Joe Finnigan, with the help of cryptographer Ham Wright, worked out the date and time of the attack, June 3, 0700.

But what direction would they be coming from? Northeast or Northwest? In an ocean as vast as the Pacific, this information was critical.

Surprisingly, it was an intercepted message from Admiral Nagumo that gave the answer.

“As we plan to make attacks [roughly] from a northwesterly direction from N-2 days until N-day, request you furnish us with weather reports 3 hours before the time of takeoff on said day. Also, would like to be informed of any enemy activity or other important information... On the day of the attack, we will endeavor to... at a point 50 miles NW of AF and move pilots off as quickly as possible.”

Rochefort now had the place of the attack, Midway Atoll, the time of the attack, and the direction from which the attack would originate.

He reported to Admiral Chester Nimitz, in charge of the US Navy in the Pacific, and sent a coded message to the Admirals in Washington. Washington told Nimitz to move his fleet to Port Moresby, 2000 miles south of Midway, because they didn’t trust Rochefort’s analysis. They suspected the Kido Butai would gather at Port Moresby, Borneo, and launch an attack on Australia.

Nimitz knew the caliber of his iconoclastic Lieutenant Commander and risked his career and possibly the war in the Pacific when he overrode the order.

The result, as they say, is history.

A trap was set to surprise the Imperial Fleet at the famous Battle of Midway. The ambush worked, and the Japanese lost all four aircraft carriers, 292 airplanes, 1 cruiser, and 3500 men, many of them experienced, skilled pilots.

It was a crushing defeat for Japan and turned the tide in the Pacific War. Japan was now on the defensive and never regained the upper hand.

The Japanese believed their ciphers and codes were unbreakable, certainly safe from Westerners, and they never learned that it was Joe Rochefort and his remarkable team of linguists and codebreakers who had helped set the trap that led to the defeat of the mighty Kido Butai.

In a remarkable act of petty rivalry, Joe Rochefort was denied the Distinguished Service Cross, one step below the Congressional Medal of Honor, that Admiral Nimitz had ordered.

The Admirals in Washington had been wrong on where and when the Japanese were going to hit, and this sarcastic Lieutenant Commander had been right.

He was denied the medal because, according to the Admiral in Charge of the Navy, “his performance of duty was not in combat operations with the enemy.”

Joe was transferred to command of a floating dry dock in San Francisco Bay and never worked in cryptography for the Navy again.

He died at the age of 76 in 1976, but was awarded the DSC posthumously in 1986 by President Ronald Reagan.

1. Carlson, Elliot W. Joe Rochefort’s War: The Odyssey of the Codebreaker Who Outwitted Yamamoto at Midway (pp. 326-327). Naval Institute Press. Kindle Edition. - Appendix 2 in Carlson’s book has a great chapter on the steps Rochefort’s men took to break the Japanese codes. Highly recommended if you like cryptography.

2.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph Rochefort

3. Khan, David, The Codebreakers: The Comprehensive History of Secret Communication from Ancient Times to the Internet, Scribner Publishers, December, 1996

4. In the 1976 movie Midway, Rochefort is portrayed as a clownish character, but in the 2019 movie by the same name, he is portrayed closer to the brilliant cryptographer he was. The 2019 version is a much better movie, and I highly recommend it.

During my mid-summer break, I’ll be posting essays I published in past months and years. This is another one I find of special interest because it looks at how an investigator can remove their own emotions from dynamic and tragic events to get the job done.

As a Forensic Investigator, dead bodies were my bread and butter, and for nearly twenty years, they were a big part of my life.

I never looked at a dead body as once having been a living, loving person with hopes, dreams, problems, and fears. I left that for the poets and storytellers.

For me, a corpse was 150 pounds of evidence, with a host of questions attached.

What was the cause of death? How long since death occurred? Did the person die here, or were they moved? And about a hundred other questions that needed answers.

Now, as a storyteller myself, I raid the foreign land of my past for stories where, as L.P. Harley said, "they do things differently there."

The events I worked with are codified in police reports, pathology files, media films, and narrative summaries I dictated. These are the bones of my cases, the hard facts and documents.

But what comes to mind now, with my aged-softened edges, are my recollections of the people left behind: the mothers, fathers, siblings, and friends of the victims of sudden, violent death. I witnessed the grief or guilt, anger or fear, or a combination of emotions, on what was, for most, the worst day of their lives.

There were a few surprises.

I spoke at length to a woman who began as a witness and became a suspect in a murder. She claimed she had broken up with her boyfriend, left him depressed and threatening to kill himself at his locked residence, and called the police when she couldn't reach him. After the cops broke into the home, we recovered a one-line suicide note.

But he had a gaping laceration on the back of his head, and the phone lines had been cut. Only the note and her testimony indicated suicide. All the other evidence screamed murder, including a bloody rock found in the yard.

After further questioning, her story changed. A second boyfriend was located, and both the woman and the second boyfriend were convicted of murder.

Of the couple of hundred suicides we investigated each year, only a rare case was found to be a murder staged to look like a suicide. Most were pretty straightforward tragedies, with survivors trying to deal with the grief and guilt.

For example, I was called to the home of a 20-year-old man who had lived with his father, mother, and sister. The young man was found dead on the floor of his father's basement workshop, with a gunshot wound to his right temple. I immediately noted the pristine condition of the large room. All the tools, grouped by function and size, were hanging on the walls, with a workbench devoid of sawdust, oil, or scratches. Even the tile floor was highly waxed.

After examining the body and noting the myriad details, including the large caliber handgun nearby, I went upstairs to speak to the family.

I first realized that no one- neither his father, mother, nor sister- was seated. The father, an engineer, stood at the fireplace, smoking a pipe, and the wife stood apart, staring at the wall, her hands clasped in front of her. The dead boy's sister, 15 years old, was leaning in their kitchen doorway.

We each deal with grief in our own way, but most families, it's been my experience, huddle together on a couch or sit together at a table. This family stayed as far apart as they could without leaving the house. The father answered all the questions, even those I addressed to his wife.

The boy's room was immaculate, with hospital corners on the bed and highly polished furniture.

When the dead boy's girlfriend of two years arrived and entered the house, no one went to greet or hug her. In fact, I had to step in and break the bad news to her because no one spoke.

I get that. How do you tell a young woman that the man she had hoped to spend her life with had blown his brains out? Unfortunately, I had a lot of practice in that sad duty.

After the detectives and I separated the family members for more in-depth interviews, I realized it was the old story of a controlling father who demanded more of his son than the boy could give, and a mother too timid and fearful to defend her son. There was no physical abuse, but it was an important detail that the boy had killed himself when he heard the key in the back door just as his father returned from work.

It wasn't my job to judge people but to take note of whatever I saw or heard. And that has stuck with me. To this day, I try to evaluate situations, not people. Everyone I meet, I believe, is struggling with problems I'll never know anything about. I don't think I was put on this earth to add to their troubles.

Looking to my past for stories often uncovers forgotten exploits, but only a few of the events of death and mayhem are stories I wish to recall and enshrine in writing.

I've come to believe it is for us, the living, to create our own adventures before our stories, too, are residing in the foreign country of the past.

I know, however, that the light show to come will continue for 2 to 3 hours, bringing with it shades of colors stretching across the panorama that is the Alaskan sky. These colors change constantly, fading in one place, arising with brilliance in another. Pinks, corals, salmons, golds, silvers, blues, greys, and creams blend, one into another with no visible beginning or end. Ever shifting, yet always complete just the way they are, the colors arrange themselves in compositions of light. All the while, the sun slips further and further towards the frozen sea.

Thanks to Ellen for this guest posting.

This is a list of wandering thoughts, not quite a stream of consciousness, but pretty close. There is no pattern, other than what was on my mind at the time. I threw in a few of my favorite old age aphorisms to lighten it up a bit.

Each morning, my internal clock goes off at about 5:30 AM. It’s pretty precise for a reason I can’t fathom. In a short time, I’m sitting with my coffee, gazing out of the window, pondering the strange world in which I find myself.

That’s one of the things about getting older. There are more and more events, happenings, and occurrences that I can’t, and don’t wish to, fathom. Frankly, I no longer give a damn about most of them, and find a lot of the news of the world just tiring.

I ran across the following quote on Medium.com, and it started a train of thought.

“It has become clear to me, for example, that aging itself does not bring wisdom. It often brings regression to childishness, dependency, and bitterness over lost opportunities. Only those who are still intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually growing inherit the richness of aging,” according to Jungian analyst James Hollis. (1)

How does one identify this growth, or lack of it, is one of the big questions facing the aged. There were other big questions when I was younger, but I no longer wonder why I’m here and what my path should be, two of the major queries of my past.

If we’re only here to survive in as much comfort as possible, I missed the boat.

As I matured, I looked for meaningful experiences, and found that I bored easily if I just worked for money. There had to be more to life than just accumulating stuff, so my adult life included stints in hospitals, the Navy, bloody crime scenes, and wilderness adventures. It seemed I only made progress in life when I stepped, or was often knocked, out of my comfort zone. Being married to a loving woman who, in over 60 years, never fails to surprise me has made daily living itself an adventure.

For much of my life, I tried to listen to my deep mind, the inner world of animal senses and intuitive knowing that each of us brings into this world when we’re born. When I taught wilderness skills, I felt I came the closest. The tracks of animals spoke to me in their mysterious language, and the hawks, when I listened, graced me with important messages. Even the trees, at times, shared their wisdom.

I like to think that it’s my daily writing that keeps me from the “horrors of the shade,” as the poet says, but it’s really my wife Ellen, my family, and my close circle of friends. My cup of coffee and time to gaze out the window help as well.

I don’t think much about death anymore. Again, to quote James Hollis,

“Death is only one way of dying; living partially, living fearfully, is our more common, daily collusion with death.”

One of my biggest fears in life was not death, but not having lived. I needed to experience the reality of life, rather than the watered-down version I saw around me. I think it was Thoreau who said that the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. It was something I spent my life avoiding.

Reality, in all its forms, can be seen in the wilds, but also in the alleys and streets of the city. However, the wilderness held up an undistorted mirror in which I could see my true reflection, and it gave me a sense of profound peace. In the city, I found my image distorted by the way people interacted with each other and by the rules, written and codified, that governed their behavior.

More than 90% of the people I encounter are good people – kind, considerate, empathetic towards others. They believe in the social contract, that unwritten rule that we take care of each other. It’s what kept people from killing each other over petty differences, controlling the dangerous members of the human race, and seeing that we don’t obliterate our own species.

That social contract existed between members of society, governments of countries, and business corporations. It has now been ripped to shreds by stupidity, greed, and fear, and repairing it seems to be less and less likely before we become another extinct species.

Human beings are the most intelligent species on the planet. We can study and manipulate our own DNA, put a man on the moon, and conquer horrific diseases.

But we’re also the most delusional species, fighting catastrophic wars over petty jealousies, nationalism, and religion.

How stupid is that? Killing each other over vague beliefs bordering on mythology. Arrogance seems to be the major flaw of many powerful leaders, and cataclysmic wars are the result.

Our ability to choose our leaders has gone rapidly downhill. Even wolves and other pack animals choose the most capable to lead them, not the dumbest. Who votes for the least capable among us?

But, as I sip my morning Joe, I remember when we thought the world would end in the 1950s when Russia obtained the atomic bomb. We came close to WW3 during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 when the executive officer of Soviet submarine B-59, Vasily Arkhipov—stopped his crew from firing a nuclear torpedo. Except for Vassie, a lot of Floridians would have been vaporized as an opening salvo of a total thermonuclear catastrophe.

Other nuclear accidents have brought us close to Armageddon, and I’m sure they will happen again in the future. Hopefully, another Vassie will be nearby.

It’s been said that a successful life manages to accommodate both the world and the inner mind, the one we are educated out of by our society’s culture. It’s not an easy climb out of the abyss of banality that is imposed on us early in life, but many artists, performers, scientists, and writers manage it.

Although it seems we’ve fallen down Alice’s rabbit hole, we are a group that has survived. Over 90% of the other species that once lived here have gone the way of the dinosaurs.

If poorly treated, this can be a harsh, dangerous world.

But it’s also a planet that supports life, in all its myriad forms. Billions of years ago, the atoms that make up our bodies and this world were created in massive exploding stars. How those atoms came together to form our sentient ancestors is speculation, but it happened, and that miracle allows me to sip my coffee in the morning.

We could be living in a peaceful garden, with a pleasant, sustainable life for all humans and most other creatures. The resources are here, and the people who could produce and maintain it are available.

But we need to be smarter when we select those who lead us, and not let wealth, charisma, and untruths govern our choices.

Being rich does not make someone smart, and it does not make someone ready to care for the people who are inclined to put them in a position of power. Many times, they are just a carnival barker with a straw hat, cane, and an enticing rap selling snake oil medicine.

It’s really up to us, and I know we can do it. We’ve survived the first five eras of extinction, and we can survive this one too.

1. Hollis, James, Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life: How to Finally, Really Grow Up, Avery Press, May 2005, Kindle edition

2. Price, David, Nothing Happened, Again, Medium.com, July 22, 2026.

This is another flashback article I wrote over three years ago.

Here's an interesting way of solving a crime I found in a book I'm reading:

Crime and Punishment in Ancient China, by T'ang-Yin-Pi-Shih, translated by R.H. Gulik, Orchid Press, Thailand, 2007.

During the Ch'in Dynasty (350-394 CE), Tung Feng went off to study for the government examination, returning home three years later. Because of his absence, he didn't have a house of his own, so he and his wife stayed the first night with his wife's family. He awoke to find his wife stabbed to death on their conjugal couch.

Her older brother immediately accused Feng of murdering his wife and reported him to the Magistrate, Fu Yung.

In China, at that time, the local Magistrate was in charge of investigating crimes, interrogating the accused under torture, judging them guilty or innocent, and imposing their sentence.

Magistrate Fu Yung went to the crime scene and talked to the servants, neighbors, and family. He learned quite a bit about the accused, so he didn't subject him to torture. Instead, he asked the accused in court, "I heard that you previously had a strange experience about which you consulted the oracle. Is that true?"

"Yes, Your Honor," Tung Feng replied. "One night, I dreamed that I entered into a river on horseback, going North; then I went from North to South. Looking down, I saw two suns reflected in the water and noticed that the left flank of my horse was wet."

"What did the soothsayer say about this dream?"

"The soothsayer said: 'There is an anxiety of getting involved in a criminal case. Keep far from the two ablutions (one in the morning and one at night). Shun the two pillows of the conjugal couch.'

"When I arrived at the house, my wife prepared a bath and at night arranged our pillows. Remembering what the soothsayer had said, I refused both. Thereupon my wife took a bath herself, arranged her pillow, and went to sleep alone on our conjugal couch."

Magistrate Fu Yung opened his I Ching, often referred to as The Book of Divination.

"In the I Ching, the trigram k'an means water and North. The trigram li means horse and south. If a horse crosses the river in the North, then passes from North to South, that means that the trigrams k'an and li should be three times changed, which produces a hexagram where the middle stroke of li indicates a woman and that of k'an indicate a  man. As regards the left flank of the horse being wet, this means water on the left and the horse on the right; that is the character feng. Two suns you saw reflected in the water form the character Ch'ang.

"Could this mean that a man called Feng Ch'ang murdered your wife?"

At this point, Magistrate Fu Yung had a neighbor named Feng Ch'ang arrested. After being interrogated, he confessed. He had been having an affair with Tung Feng's wife, and they planned to murder Tung as he slept on the conjugal couch after his bath.

In the dark, Feng Ch'ang mistakenly killed Tung's wife.

I couldn't figure out what Fu Yung was talking about after I consulted my copy of the I Ching. I looked up the trigrams k'an and li, but maybe something was lost in the translation. Or, more likely, Fu Yung had a more complete copy of The Book of Divination close at hand. Knowledge of Chinese calligraphy would also help. 

If written a certain way, the trigram li can mean "The married woman rides in a chariot without curtains," which means, apparently, a woman of loose morals. And k'an implies water. The closest I could come to Fu Yung's interpretation had to do with being in a ravine that's filling with water, obviously a dangerous situation.

I have read translations of Chinese criminal cases from several dynasties that explained some of the methods used by magistrates to determine the guilt or innocence of the suspects, but this is the first time I read of the I Ching being consulted for criminal investigations. Forensic Science being far in the future, other procedures were employed to seek justice.

Over two thousand years ago, the Chinese knew fingerprints were unique to each individual. Records show they used thumbprints as proofs of signatures for government records in court. However, there's no evidence of them using fingerprints in forensic inquiries.

Apparently, keen observation at the crime scene, knowledge of human behavior, and insightful questioning of suspects, with or without harsh methods, worked for the detective magistrates for thousands of years. And for some, like Magistrate Fu Yung, the I Ching was a helpful tool.

The readership of novels and short stories has been declining for decades, and some educators and psychologists fear that we are witnessing the loss of complex reasoning, especially among our young. Stories enable readers to construct nuanced arguments and acquire long-term knowledge, according to neuroscientist Maryanne Wolfe. (3)

Many Americans no longer read anything other than text messages or short social media posts, and increasing numbers get their news from podcasts and YouTube.

According to Rose Horowitch, Atlantic staff writer, only 38% of American adults have ever read a novel or short story, down from 41% in 2017. A historian she interviewed said reading for enjoyment has become a “niche hobby, like stamp collecting or growing orchids.” (1)

The numbers are startling: 19% of Americans account for 82% of all books read, with the top 4% alone reading 46% of all books.

In 1992, 61% of Americans had read a book for pleasure in the previous year; by 2022, only 48.5% had, a 13-percentage-point drop over 30 years. (2)

Reading for pleasure predicts children’s life outcomes more reliably than their parents’ education level or socioeconomic background, per Reading Agency research (4). And it’s more important for children’s cognitive development than their parents’ level of education.

There’s a growing fear that Americans will soon lose some higher-order thought processes, such as critical comprehension. Sustained reading of complex books challenges our cognitive abilities to sort truth from fantasy, construct mental constructs from words, and untangle conflicting opinions and interests. These are all skills necessary for a knowledgeable voter base.

In addition, reading for six minutes reduces stress by 68%, which is more than listening to music or going for a walk. (5)

Book readers, according to a Yale University study, live 23 months longer, on average, than non-readers.

Entering college students in mandatory literature courses are “shutting down” when confronted with ideas they don’t understand, according to some professors.

“Students see reading books as akin to listening to vinyl records—something that a small subculture may still enjoy, but that’s mostly a relic of an earlier time.” (2)

“Books can cultivate a sophisticated form of empathy, transporting a reader into the mind of someone who lived hundreds of years ago, or a person who lives in a radically different context from the reader’s own.” (3)

According to Dr. Wolfe, so-called deep reading—sustained immersion in a text—stimulates several valuable mental habits, including critical thinking and self-reflection, in ways that skimming or reading in short bursts does not. The reader goes beyond the author’s wisdom to discover their own. (3)

Although Americans are not illiterate, we have entered what Horowitch calls the “post-literary” era. We can read, but we don’t. At least, not for pleasure.

I suspected there was a broader, nuanced reason why about half my followers were boycotting my short stories. Just as I taught people how to ignite a campfire without matches during the dot-com surge, I now write clever mysteries in the post-literary age.

There’s a lesson for me there somewhere.

(1) Horowitch, Rose, The Atlantic, newsletter@theatlantic.com, The End of Reading is Here, August,2026 issue, accessed July 12, 2026

(2) ibid, The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books, November 2024 issue, accessed July 12, 2026.

(3) ANDREW LIMBONG, NPR, WUWM, ‘How to practice ‘deep reading’ April 30, 2024, interview with Maryanne Wolfe, the director of the Center for Dyslexia, Diverse Learners and Social Justice at UCLA. Accessed July 12, 2026.

(4) The Reading Agency, https://readingagency.org.uk/our-work/our-research/reading-facts/, accessed July 12, 2026.

(5) Best Writing, https://bestwriting.com/book-reading-statistics, accessed July 12, 2026.

By the time I was 10, WWII had been over for only 6 years, so many of my early heroes were veterans of that fight.

Audie Murphy was first, I think, because his photo was on the cover of Life Magazine. As I’m sure you know, Murphy was the most decorated hero in US history, a young Army private who rose to receive a field commission as Lieutenant, then Captain.

He was awarded every combat medal for valor available at the time of his service (1942-1945), 33 in all. The list includes the Congressional Medal of Honor, Distinguished Service Cross, 2 Silver Stars, 2 Bronze Stars, and 3 Purple Hearts for wounds suffered on three separate occasions. France and Belgium also awarded him medals for valor in service to their countries.

After the war, he wrote his autobiography, which I read, entitled “To Hell and Back.” A movie of the same name, with him as its star, was made, and showed his incredible courage, athletic fitness, and intelligence.

Later, as a Western movie actor, he often played the gunfighter hero, and that also endeared him to my boyhood heart.

Gene Autry was also one of my favorite Western stars, with his horse Champion. Autry’s first movie, as a singing cowboy, was long before my time, 1929, but after the war in which he served in the Army Air Corps, he returned to Cowboy roles. His songs, “Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer” and other seasonal ditties, are still popular.

Never kissing the heroine, but sometimes his horse, and always a “straight shooter,” Autry instilled in my young mind what I thought was a pattern for proper behavior. Reality modified it in later years, but for a while, at least, I tried to live up to it. The “School Mar’m” was safe with me. Gene died in his 90’s, one of the richest men in California.

In 1952, High Noon was released, and I saw it in the old Juneau Theater in Milwaukee. I was 10; the ticket was a nickel, and theater popcorn was 10 cents a bag. The rap is that the film’s focus on moral and emotional conflict, unlike any Western before, made it controversial. I was ignorant of all that, and was looking for a shoot-um-up cowboy flick.

Gary Cooper won an Academy Award, and Grace Kelly, as his Quaker wife, played a major role in the movie’s success.

I’ve watched it many times since, and I can say that it’s still my favorite movie. Marshal Will Kane’s pleas for aid are rejected by the cowardly townsfolk, including Harry Morgan, who later played Colonel Potter on MASH. His friends had just celebrated Kane’s wedding and retirement with him hours before, but they have deserted him in his hour of need, and his wife Amy, religiously opposed to violence, is about to leave on the train.

When Kane steps out on the street alone, and the camera draws back to show how totally alone he is, I still get goosebumps.

He’s facing four gunmen, including actors like Lee Van Cleef, of the gun-slit eyes, Robert Wilke, the villain in about 100 Westerns, and Sheb Wooley, kind of a nice guy in other Westerns and a pretty good singing voice. Here, of course, he’s a black-hearted villain.

Dwight Eisenhower showed the film in the White House; Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan both stated it was their favorite movie, so I’m in distinguished company here.

John Wayne thought it was the most anti-American movie he’s ever seen, so I guess it was controversial. The role had been offered to him, but he turned it down after reading the script. He felt a marshal shouldn’t ask the townsfolk to help him with his job.

September of 1957 brought James Garner as Maverick to the black-and-white TV screen, and a whole new era in TV Westerns began. Maverick was a gambler, wore a black hat, and preferred discretion rather than valor in confrontations with bad guys, something new in the genre. His code of proper behavior included kissing the girl, something Gene Autry or Roy Rogers would never do, leaving town before things got rough, and mentoring out justice of a less violent nature.

The actor, James Garner, had been in the Merchant Marines in WWII and later served in the Army during the Korean War, where he earned 2 Purple Hearts. The actor had more of a moral code than his character Maverick, but I loved them both. His biography said that he met his wife at a political rally when he was 28, married her two weeks later, and stayed with her for 58 years until his death: no affairs, no separation, no Hollywood rumors.

These are the people, the movies, and TV Westerns that laid the foundation for proper behavior in an impressionable young man. Fiction and reality combined to give me a code that lasted until about the age of 12 or 13, when I discovered that girls are not just soft boys, and not all villains get their just deserts.

By then, life on the playground and my father had taught me to hit first, hit hard, and aim for their nose, something my heroes would never do.

I’m taking a mid-summer break and republishing an essay from a couple of years ago. It’s one of my personal favorites. It’s about another unsung hero. Hope you enjoy it.

Master Chief H. B. Knowles of the US Navy, my Seamanship instructor at the Naval Officer Candidate School in Newport, Rhode Island, was the master of the colorful language for which sailors around the globe are known. After a life of riding the waves, working to keep our fighting ships afloat during WWII, and "splicing the mainbrace" with his mates, the Chief had acquired a vocabulary that would send us raw recruits into peals of laughter.

With his cap at a jaunty angle, the Chief would swagger along the road leading to our whitewashed clapboard classroom, where he would enlighten our section 611 with subjects ranging from fire suppression to belaying lines aboard seagoing vessels.

Each morning, Knowles would start the lecture with a cup of coffee. I noticed that by early afternoon, the Chief was using a lot more salty sailor vocabulary than earlier, and I confirmed my suspicion that it wasn't coffee in the Chief's cup one day when I got close enough to smell it. Rum was my guess, but a classmate with more experience in liquor put the booze as brandy.

Seamanship had its subjects of interest. However, having to watch slides of feed water systems in a warm, dark room, dressed in our wool uniforms, after lunch, would make a wildcat in heat drowsy. We were encouraged to stand in the back of the room if we got sleepy on the mistaken theory that one cannot sleep standing up. If an Officer Candidate would fall asleep at his desk, Knowles would step behind the malefactor, grab the back of his chair, and dump the sleeper onto the floor.

During one particularly warm afternoon, I dozed off. When the Chief grabbed my chair, I felt the chair move and stood up suddenly. With a full morning of "coffee" under his belt, Knowles fell over backward, still holding my chair.

"Just how #@^$ much do you weigh?" he asked after discussing my Irish heritage, height, and weight in a language so picturesque that the whole class, myself included, roared with laughter.

But it was Chief Knowles' stories of his time in the Pacific, fighting the Japanese Navy, that I found most interesting. Those came in bits and pieces, usually in the afternoon.

Chief Knowles was aboard the USS Lexington (CV 2) during the months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. His ship, an aircraft carrier, had been transporting planes to Midway Island on December 7, 1941, so it was at sea while the US battleship fleet was being destroyed by the Japanese bombs.

The Lexington was one of only three American carriers able to engage the enemy after Pearl Harbor.

The Battle of the Coral Sea

After months of fighting, the Lexington was struck by a torpedo on April 29, 1942. Seconds later, a second torpedo hit as three bombs from enemy aircraft struck the vessel. Fires raged, and the ship began to take on water, listing to seven degrees.

"We fought fires for three days," Chief Knowles told the class. "And we got 'er on an even keel. Then the aircraft fuel vapors below deck exploded."

The fires and explosions that followed were devastating, and on May 8, 1942, Captain Frederick C. Sherman ordered all hands to the flight deck.

"The Old Man told us to abandon ship, so we went over the side. We got picked up by the tin-cans (Navy destroyers) and pulled away. The Old Man and the XO (Executive Officer, second in command) stayed until we was all safe, then they come aboard. The Phelps (USS Phelps, DD 360, Navy destroyer) put two fish (torpedoes) into her and sent the Lady Lex to the bottom."

I saw Chief Knowles pause and stare toward the back of the class. For a sailor like Knowles, the loss of 200 of his fellow crewmen was painful, and the way he told the story, I had the feeling that the scuttling of Lady Lex was like the euthanasia of a loved one.

His shipmates' blood was on her steel decks, and the men aboard his carrier had fought gallantly to keep her afloat. Putting her down, while the only option left to keep her charred wreck from the hands of the enemy, must have been tough to watch.

Back at OCS, the months flew by, and on a warm day in June, my wife, Mom, and mother-in-law were there to see me Pass in Review for the last time.

Unbelievably, by an act of Congress, I was now a commissioned officer, an Ensign, in the United States Navy.

After the ceremony, I returned to my barracks to pick up some gear and say goodbye to the men I had gotten to know. As I left the barracks and walked down the street where I had attended so many classes, I saw Chief Knowles in his dress blues, gold hash marks on his left arm, his cap still at a rakish angle. As I approached, I greeted him with a smile and a "Good morning, Chief."

To my surprise, he snapped to attention and gave me a crisp salute. "Good morning, Sir," he responded.

I knew he was saluting the rank, not the 24-year-old shavetail (military jargon for an inexperienced officer) who stood before him, but I had never before been saluted. I was deeply honored that Chief Knowles was my first.

And although it was a solemn moment, I couldn't keep the smile off my face as I straightened up and, crisply, returned his salute.

During much of the 1960s American Counterculture and Civil Rights Movement, Ellen, the girls, and I were safely ensconced in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, surrounded by 40,000 well-armed US Marines.

Although the base had Eastern rattlesnakes, copperheads, cottonmouth water moccasins, coral snakes, alligators, and black widow spiders, it was our home.

Leatherneck Magazine and the base newsletter occasionally published humorous pieces, and we recently found one while rummaging through memorabilia.

I don’t have room for the 35 Murphy’s Laws of Combat, but here is a representative sampling:

1. Suppressive fire – doesn’t

2. Friendly fire – isn’t.

3. Never climb into a foxhole with anyone braver than yourself.

4. If your attack is going really well, it’s an ambush.

5. No plan survives first contact with the enemy.

6. Try to look unimportant – the other guy may be low on ammo.

7. If the enemy is in range, SO ARE YOU.

8. If you are forward of friendly lines, your own artillery rounds will fall short.

9. The only thing more accurate than incoming enemy fire is incoming friendly fire.

10. Anything you do can get you shot, including doing nothing.

To this list, I’d like to add one I learned at the US Navy Officer Candidate School, which is more appropriate aboard ship.

When in danger or in doubt, steam in circles, scream and shout.

My plagiarism detector tells me that others have published one or two of these aphorisms, which isn’t surprising. To be fair, I’ll list them.

1. Editorial Archive 2003-2011 - ESP Lab. https://esplab.com/editorial-archive-2003-2011/

2. Stanley Frankel. http://stanley-frankel.com/chapter/appendix/

3. Murphy’s Laws — boards.ie - Now Ye’re Talkin’. https://www.boards.ie/discussion/284262/murphys-laws

Throughout the world, social manners are constantly changing. Originally, manners were designed to prevent people from drawing their swords or clubs when meeting others. They were a set of rules laid down in each culture to facilitate human interactions by showing respect and consideration for others.

But they change over time, as the culture develops.

The social manners drummed into me by both my mom and dad have changed in the space of one lifetime. That’s not a bad thing, although it’s taken me a bit of getting used to.

For example, my mother insisted that, when with a girl or woman, the man always walked on the street side. Although the chance of a runaway team of horses putting us in danger is relatively remote, I still always place myself on the street side when walking with a woman.

I admit that it’s pointless, and nowadays there is probably more danger coming from the building side of the sidewalk, but I get uncomfortable if I’m not on the streetside, keeping a keen lookout for a wall-eyed, runaway team. My wife and female friends seem okay with my old-fashioned, peculiar habit.

I don’t remember who taught me to rise whenever a woman approaches the table where I’m seated, but it’s a habit I developed in my youth. The waitress in a restaurant isn’t included, of course, for practical purposes, and it would just be silly to leap to my feet when she came to take my order.

The first time I went out on a date as a teenager, the girl I was with stood to go to the ladies’ room. She laughed when I jumped to my feet, and again when I leaped up when she returned. She said it was sweet that I did that, but it wasn’t necessary.

Sitting in a booth puts a whole different spin on the practice.

It’s only been the last few weeks that I noticed I no longer stand to shake hands with anyone, male or female. My training was that one never shook hands sitting down, but getting my plywood body to rise gracefully (a) takes too long and (b) is painful to watch.

Officers in the US Navy remove their hats, “uncovering,” when entering a building, unless they are “under arms,” military for packing heat. It’s considered a sign of respect. Long before I took on the role of Lieutenant, my father had made sure I was “uncovered” whenever we went into the library or the museum. We kept our hats on when we went grocery shopping, however.

For much of my adult life, I removed my hat when speaking to a woman outdoors if I happened to meet her unexpectedly. If it were winter, I would quickly put it back on.

Wearing a hat or cap while seated at the table was completely taboo for a man. Even now, weather permitting, I leave my hat in the car when we go to a restaurant. I’m aware that most modern men, of all ages, wear caps at a table in a restaurant. Why not?

As I slide into my dotage, I notice an interesting change. Now, young women hold the door for me and step aside to let me through first. I take it as a sign of respect for my age, not because I’m too infirm to open the door myself.

Although some social manners have changed or disappeared, I’m happy to see that others are still observed.

Even those that are totally unnecessary.

Some months back, I published a list of collective names for groups of animals, and it was so popular that I republished it on March 7, 2025.

Okay, maybe not that popular, but my grandson liked it.

In the same book that gave us animal group names, like “pride of lions” and “murder of crows,” there is another list of human group names. That list, I’m sure, will generate even more enthusiastic popularity.

So, I pulled up a copy of that fabled book, the Book of St. Albans, the same book from 1486, where I found the animal group names. Of course, being a modern hack writer, I went online for a second source, a site called Wordsmarts.

St. Albans was the name of the printers and of the village where they were located, but the book’s author is thought to be Juliana Bernes, the Benedictine prioress of St. Mary of Sopwell in England.

Most of the English populace was unable to read, so the book was aimed at the moneyed class of gentlemen who had the leisure to hunt and fish. The list of collective nouns for people was an addition that seemed more like a whim of the prioress and a Medieval way of throwing shade on certain groups that irritated her.

A Superfluity of Nuns

The word superfluity, according to the dictionary, refers to an excess or an amount of something more than what is needed or wanted. Apparently, the number of convents in 15th-century England, some 140, housed about 2,000 nuns. Many of the people working hard for a living felt that what the nuns provided could have been accomplished with fewer sisters of the habit.

I suppose Juliana Bernes would have known something about that, being the head of a Priory. One can but speculate about her own crowded convent and her regard for her fellow sisters.

An Abominable Sight of Monks

Monks were not as well thought of as stories like Robin Hood lead us to believe. They ate, prayed, chanted, and lived more comfortably than the villagers and farmers, so they were looked upon, in many quarters, with disgust. However, I suspect another reason for their collective epithet.

As a Priory is an offshoot of an Abbey, subordinate to the monks, perhaps Sister Bernes felt some animosity toward the Benedictine friars of St. Albans. Although I think the brand is a bit strong, they were, after all, her bosses, so they earned their place in this historical tome.

A Shudder of Clowns

Apparently, the fear of clowns is not a new phenomenon. Clowns didn’t scare me, but I also never found them funny, even as a kid. They just seemed ridiculous, although the tiny “Clown Car” was pretty humorous, I thought, filled with about 20 people. I wonder whether there was a fear of court jesters in Old England, or if this was a later addition to the list of collective nouns from another source.

A Misbelief of Painters

This was one I didn’t understand until I found it was specific for portrait painters, especially those commissioned by the wealthy to make them look good for posterity. Some of the paintings were unbelievably flattering, much like today’s AI renderings of a certain aged, overweight President.

A Neverthriving of Jugglers

Jugglers were talented, but financially poor. The term implies they were always on the edge of poverty, no matter who they performed for. Support for the performing arts was not universal in Merry Old England.

A Stampede of Philatelists

Whoever coined this collective noun had to be kidding. A Philatelist is a stamp-collector, and a stampede of that group is hard to imagine. The good Benedictine prioress, or whoever came after her and edited the book, was not without a sense of humor.

An Argumentation of Historians

I’m not sure where this one originated, but Wordsmarts defines “argumentation as the act or process of forming reasons and of drawing conclusions,” which is something historians do.

If you’re interested in more collective nouns, see my blogs on animals and humans. One is from April 11, 2025, and the other is from January 6, 2026.

1. Berners, Juliana, The Book of St. Albans, 1486, classical edition, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Saint_Albans, accessed June 23, 2026

2. Word Smarts https://wordsmarts.com/strangest-collective-nouns/?lctg=02762818-9713-4b54-9feb-c90eb22c328f