Man Proposes God Disposes

 

About three weeks ago I posted a short entry detailing the next six books I wanted to read now that the family is established down in Texas.

(By the way, things are flowing nicely: the wife is nearly a month into her new job, the main reason we moved down here; the little ones are getting used to their new schools and schedules and are starting to make friends, kicking and screaming; my job hunt is progressing with a promising second interview tomorrow; and the house is nearly unpacked and fully operational, for now.)

Since I’m not working and have a full day with other activities such as walking, weightlifting, ferrying children here and there, and a daily honey-do list, I allow myself about an hour a day escape: reading. I have a myriad of interests, but I’ve kept unpacked only the most interesting books from the move. These include some classic fiction, and a few nonfiction tomes on the JFK assassination, an old obsession, and World War II, my current obsession. Six books, to be read in a specific order.

That was what I proposed.

Indeed, of those six books of 3,429 pages, I got through the first two: one third done. I wanted to get through all six by Halloween. But now a monkey wrench has been thrown into things, as monkey wrenches are wont to do, especially when it comes to my reading plans.

Patch, the only one in the family with a reading appetite as voracious as mine, wanted to get a library card.

So two weeks ago we google’d and Waze’d the town library and visited it. Housed adjacent to town hall, it’s a modern four-story appealing reservoir of books. Upon entrance we were greeted with friendly smiles and easy assistance procuring a pair of new cards. Patch then went off to find some reading materials (among which, interestingly enough, was an adult horror novel written by the Goosebumps author R.L. Stine. The little ones are going through a Goosebumps renaissance, mainly for nostalgia reasons.)

Having a reading plan I did not wish to borrow any books. So I browsed to get a feel for the quality and quantity of books here.

Man proposes, God disposes.

Immediately, this book jumped off the shelf at me:

 

Wow! Since childhood I’ve been a Roger Zelazny fan. A strong second-tier SF master who should have been more widely read outside the genre, Zelazny was prolific from the mid-60s until his death in 1995. He specialized in series where classical mythology – Greek, Egyptian, and Indian, for example – are translated into a science fiction setting, but also wrote a score of stand-alone novels. I first read To Die in Italbar (1973) as a kid of twelve (Patch’s age right now, interestingly enough), and re-read it twice over the years as an adult. Additionally, I’ve read:

This Immortal (1966)

Lord of Light (1967), twice

Damnation Alley (1969)

The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth (1971)

The Guns of Avalon (1972)

A Dark Traveling (1987)

But nothing since summer 2015.

His output numbered at least fifty books, which includes numerous collaborations with other famous SF writers (including one with Philip K. Dick, on my Acquisitions List), but does not include works of poetry and short story collections and anthologies.

So imagine my surprise when this book leapt out at me – the Chronicles of Amber, ten books in one twelve-hundred-plus page omnibus. Now, Guns of Avalon, Book Two of the Amber series, I did read back in 2012. Unfortunately, that was around four hundred books ago, so I do not recall the plot, but I do note that I ranked it as an “A” in my reading log.

This really appeals to me. The past year I’ve generally been reading doorstops nonstop. The average length of these books is probably around 450 pages, and the average weight of each book is about four pounds. So although this Amber anthology might weigh a bit more than that, each book clocks in at less than a third the amount of pages, so I can put some mileage on the brain reading-wise.

On the old Reading Plan I’ve read The Witnesses, the Warren Commission testimonies, and Little Big Man, a classic Western, which I’ll review in the next few days. I think later today I’ll crack the first of the Amber books. I’m always on the lookout to fall into new worlds Should be enjoyable, and I’m anticipating the re-read of Book Two especially.

Oh, and unpacking I came across a small book on naval warfare by one of the masters of the field, John Keegan. It’s basically divided into four long segments. The third is on the Battle of Midway and the fourth on two caravans sunk during the Battle of the Atlantic. I think I’ll read the Midway section concurrent with the first Amber novel, as I’m missing the daily fiction/nonfiction reading balance the past five weeks of sticking to one book at a time.

Happy reading!

411 Elm Street

 

Last Sunday the Mrs. decided to take us all out for sushi. But it couldn’t be any old sushi den. It had to be the hippest, trendiest sushi place in all of the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area. She is, after all, hooked into all the relevant Dallas Instagram pages and such. That’s just the way she rolls. The place she selected required days-ahead reservations, so we found ourselves heading south towards Dallas at 5 o’clock in the evening, sun still shining bright and high in the sky.

As we neared the city we saw this tower:

 

We’d been into the heart of Dallas two weeks earlier and the Mrs. remembered it vividly. “I need to know the story of that tower,” she said now.

So while seated and awaiting our sushi rolls I did some smart phone research. The tower struck me as an homage to Soviet-style architecture – klunky iron junk. But it does light up brightly in the night sky, with moving colorful images, as I remember from two weeks earlier. Turns out it’s called the Reunion Tower, and it was built in the late 70s, and it is an icon – but to the city of Dallas. It even appears every now and then in television shows, including, appropriately enough, that prime time soap opera from the early 80s, Dallas.

I also discovered the tower is 1,000 feet from the site of the JFK assassination.

Furthermore, a quick search revealed that Dealey Plaza was but two miles from the sushi restaurant in which we sat dining.

I announced an impromptu post-dinner destination. My wife would drive to Dealey Plaza, turn that left onto Elm Street, drive past the Texas School Book Depository, past the grassy knoll, and under the triple overpass. I’d be in the passenger seat snapping as many pics as I could on the cell phone. (I commissioned both girls to also take pics, but they were nursing engorged bellies in the backseat from overconsumption of raw fish.)

Here are the four best pictures I took:

 

1. The Texas School Book Depository

I didn’t catch it at first. We were driving along a canyon of somewhat rundown buildings when suddenly the street ahead opened up. My wife took a left (the Waze app was not clear on directions here) and stopped at a light. I glanced behind me and instantly and shockingly saw that famous façade: The TSBD! I had seen it hundreds of times in black-and-white photos, and here it was in color, framed by trees, behind us. I realized we took a wrong turn and were on Houston Street, so I told her to make a right onto Main. Elm would be parallel to our right.

I actually got shivers staring at this building, knowing the great transformative events that had taken place nearly a lifetime ago. It was very, very surreal.

 

2. The Grassy Knoll

I’d have to go back and check but I think there’s a wall in the center of the pic where the “Black Dog Man” – a darkened figure allegedly armed with a rifle – stood according to some conspiracy theorists. Zapruder would have been standing just beyond the right side of the picture when he filmed the assassination.

 

3. The Picket Fence

Witnesses say gunfire came from the direction of this fence, and some said they saw puffs of smoke. Another encountered a man on the other side who flashed some official credentials – the “Badge Man” – but who could have been an assassin himself. Afterwards investigators found cigarette butts and numerous footprints behind the fence.

 

4. The Triple Underpass

The famous underpass where the limo can be seen rocketing down at the tail end of the Zapruder film: Jackie Kennedy climbing on the trunk of the limo to retrieve parts of JFK’s head, a secret service agent hauling himself up on it to protect her, the vehicle accelerating from 10 mph to over 60 to get to nearby Parkland Hospital.

 

We went through the underpass and made a U-turn and drove back up, but couldn’t get onto Elm for a closer look with the way traffic is routed in the area (and which we were quite unfamiliar with). However I was satisfied with this initial run. A nice, neat, thrilling surprise.

I remember years back, a decade or so ago, wondering if I’d ever get the chance to walk through Dealey Plaza and see all the significant markers live and in person. Never would thought I’d be here now, but here I am. Still planning an extending visit here in the Fall, with more time to spend, walking about, and taking better photos. I’d also refresh my memory a bit better on the conspiracy angles, and if any information I’ve given here (most off the top of my head) is incorrect, it’s merely due to a rusty memory concerning my studies of that day in November 58 years ago.

 

Book Review: The Witnesses

 

© 1964, 1965 by the New York Times Company

 

The cover reads: the testimony of 75 key witnesses to the assassination of President Kennedy and the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald … selected and edited from the Warren Commission’s Hearings by The New York Times with an introduction by Anthony Lewis.

I’m glad I picked this book up. I found it randomly at a used book store back in December and later realized it would be something good to read as soon as we moved down to Texas. Dealey Plaza is, in fact, 32 miles straight south from our new home. I think in the fall I’m going to take the girls down there for an afternoon, to see the Texas School Book Depository (now the Sixth Floor Museum of the assassination), the “grassy knoll” of the plaza, and the X that marks the spot on Elm Street where JFK was gunned down.

I had never read the actual testimony. Well, I do remember borrowing the first book of the Warren Commission report from the library (if I remember correctly it’s a summation of sorts, I think), but I never got more than a dozen pages in. From 2009-2012 I was pretty heavily into the assassination. I must’ve read eight or ten books on the subject. Mailer’s book on Oswald was good, Posner’s and Bugliosi’s books were good on the Lone Gunman theory, and probably convinced me of that.

This book, too, was good on the Lone Gunman theory.

Or is that what they want us to believe???

Anyway, reading the testimonies of Marina Oswald, Jack Ruby, Ruth Paine, George De Mohrenschildt, the Dallas Police officials, brought a sense of déjà vu to me. I’ve heard a lot of this before, paraphrased, in other books. But – and I’m only partially being facetious here – not warped or cherry-picked to advance a particular theory or point of view. And strangely enough, it was a page turner. Far from being dry.

One part of the testimony stuck out to me – almost in a laugh out loud way. This exchange between Gerald Ford, Allan Dulles, Robert Inman Bouck of the Secret Service, and Samuel Stern, one of fourteen assistant counsels for the Warren Commission:

 

FORD: How often do your people check to see procedures which are used by these various agencies for the determination of whether an individual is a dangerous person?

BOUCK: We don’t do that systematically. We frequently have such discussions but they are usually on a specific basis. Our representatives will call up and say, “We just received this information. Would this be of interest to you?”

DULLES: Have you made any study going back in history of the various attempts that have been made, and successful and unsuccessful attempts, that have been made against Presidents or –

BOUCK: Rulers.

DULLES: Or people about to be President, or who have been President?

BOUCK: Yes, yes. We have not only studied all of our own but we have studied all of the assassinations that we could find any record of for 2,000 years back. And strangely enough some of the thinking that went on 2,000 years ago seems to show up in thinking of assassinations today.

STERN: Do you increase protection on the Ides of March?

(pages 552-553)

 

A good worthwhile read for any armchair historian interested in the assassination.