Richard L. Fricks

The Marginalian: Love After Life: Nobel-Winning Physicist Richard Feynman’s Extraordinary Letter to His Departed Wife

BY MARIA POPOVA

Few people have enchanted the popular imagination with science more powerfully and lastingly than physicist Richard Feynman (May 11, 1918–February 15, 1988) — the “Great Explainer” with the uncommon gift for bridging the essence of science with the most human and humane dimensions of life.

Several months after Feynman’s death, while working on what would become Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman (public library) — the masterly biography plumbing the wellspring of Feynman’s genius — James Gleick discovered something of arresting strangeness and splendor.

“My heart stopped,” Gleick tells me. “I have never had an experience like that as a biographer, before or since.”

In a mass of unread papers sent to him by Feynman’s widow, Gweneth, Gleick found a letter that discomposed his most central understanding of Feynman’s character. A generation after computing pioneer Alan Turing tussled with the binary code of body and spirit in the wake of loss, Feynman — a scientist perhaps uncommonly romantic yet resolutely rational and unsentimental in his reverence for the indomitable laws of physics that tend toward decay — penned a remarkable letter to a physical nonentity that was, for the future Nobel-winning physicist, the locus of an irrepressible metaphysical reality.

In high school, the teenage Richard spent summers at the beach in his native Far Rockaway. There, he grew besotted with a striking girl named Arline — a girl he knew he would marry. Both complement and counterpoint to his own nature, Arline met Richard’s inclination for science with ardor for philosophy and art. (The art class he took just to be near her would lay the foundation for his little-known, lifelong passion for drawing.) By his junior year, Richard proposed. Arline accepted. With the eyes of young love, they peered into a shared future of infinite possibility for bliss.

But they were abruptly grounded when a mysterious malady began afflicting Arline with inexplicable symptoms — a lump would appear and disappear on her neck, fevers would roil over her with no apparent cause. Eventually, she was hospitalized for what was believed to be typhoid.

Gleick writes:

Feynman began to glimpse the special powerlessness that medical uncertainty can inflict on a scientific person. He had come to believe that the scientific way of thinking brought a measure of calmness and control in difficult situations — but not now.

Just as Feynman began bombarding the doctors with questions that steered them toward a closer approximation of the scientific method, Arline began to recover just as mysteriously and unpredictably as she had fallen ill. But the respite was only temporary. The symptoms returned, still shorn of a concrete explanation but now unambiguously pointing toward the terminal — a prognosis Arline’s doctors kept from her. Richard refused to go along with the deception — he and Arline had promised each other to face life with unremitting truthfulness — but he was forced to calibrate his commitment to circumstance.

Gleick writes:

His parents, Arline’s parents, and the doctors all urged him not to be so cruel as to tell a young woman she was dying. His sister, Joan, sobbing, told him he was stubborn and heartless. He broke down and bowed to tradition. In her room at Farmingdale Hospital, with her parents at her side, he confirmed that she had glandular fever. Meanwhile, he started carrying around a letter — a “goodbye love letter,” as he called it — that he planned to give her when she discovered the truth. He was sure she would never forgive the unforgivable lie.

He did not have long to wait. Soon after Arline returned home from the hospital she crept to the top of the stairs and overheard her mother weeping with a neighbor down in the kitchen. When she confronted Richard — his letter snug in his pocket — he told her the truth, handed her the letter, and asked her to marry him.

Marriage, however, proved to be a towering practical problem — Princeton, where Feynman was now pursuing a Ph.D., threatened to withdraw the fellowships funding his graduate studies if he were to wed, for the university considered the emotional and pragmatic responsibilities of marriage a grave threat to academic discipline.

Just as Feynman began considering leaving Princeton, a diagnosis detonated the situation — Arline had contracted a rare form of tuberculosis, most likely from unpasteurized milk.

At first, Feynman was relieved that the grim alternative options of Hodgkin’s disease and incurable cancers like lymphoma had been ruled out. But he was underestimating, or perhaps misunderstanding, the gravity of tuberculosis — the very disease which had taken the love of Alan Turing’s life and which, during its two-century heyday, had claimed more lives around the globe than any other malady and all wars combined. At the time of Arline’s diagnosis in 1941, immunology was in its infancy, the antibiotic treatment of bacterial infections practically nonexistent, and the first successful medical application of penicillin a year away. Tuberculosis was a death sentence, even if it was a slow death with intervals of remission — a fact Richard and Arline faced with an ambivalent mix of brave lucidity and hope against hope.

Meanwhile, Richard’s parents met the prospect of his marriage with bristling dread. His mother, who believed he was marrying Arline out of pity rather than love, admonished him that he would be putting his health and his very life in danger, and coldly worried about how the stigma attached to tuberculosis would impact her brilliant young son’s reputation. “I was surprised to learn such a marriage is not unlawful,” she scoffed unfeelingly. “It ought to be.”

But Richard was buoyed by love — a love so large and luminous that he found himself singing aloud one day as he was arranging Arline’s transfer to a sanatorium. Determined to go through with the wedding, he wrote to his beloved:

I guess maybe it is like rolling off of a log — my heart is filled again & I’m choked with emotions — and love is so good & powerful — it’s worth preserving — I know nothing can separate us — we’ve stood the tests of time and our love is as glorious now as the day it was born — dearest riches have never made people great but love does it every day — we’re not little people — we’re giants … I know we both have a future ahead of us — with a world of happiness — now & forever.

On June 29, 1942, they promised each other eternity.

Gleick writes:

He borrowed a station wagon from a Princeton friend, outfitted it with mattresses for the journey, and picked up Arline in Cedarhurst. She walked down her father’s hand-poured concrete driveway wearing a white dress. They crossed New York Harbor on the Staten Island ferry — their honeymoon ship. They married in a city office on Staten Island, in the presence of neither family nor friends, their only witnesses two strangers called in from the next room. Fearful of contagion, Richard did not kiss her on the lips. After the ceremony he helped her slowly down the stairs, and onward they drove to Arline’s new home, a charity hospital in Browns Mills, New Jersey.

Meanwhile, WWII was reaching its crescendo of destruction, dragging America into the belly of death with the attack on Pearl Harbor. Now one of the nation’s most promising physicists, Feynman was recruited to work on what would become the Manhattan Project and soon joined the secret laboratory in Los Alamos.

Arline entered the nearby Albuquerque sanatorium, from where she wrote him letters in code — for the sheer fun of it, because she knew how he cherished puzzles, but the correspondence alarmed the military censors at the laboratory’s Intelligence Office. Tasked with abating any breaches to the secrecy of the operation, they cautioned Feynman that coded messages were against the rules and demanded that his wife include a key in each letter to help them decipher it. This only amplified Arline’s sense of fun — she began cutting holes into her letters, covering passages with ink, and even mail-ordered a jigsaw puzzle kit with which to cut up the pages and completely confound the agents.

But the levity masked the underlying darkness which Richard and Arline tried so desperately to evade — Arline was dying. As her body failed, he steadied himself to her spirit:

You are a strong and beautiful woman. You are not always as strong as other times but it rises & falls like the flow of a mountain stream. I feel I am a reservoir for your strength — without you I would be empty and weak… I find it much harder these days to write these things to you.

In every single letter, he told her that he loved her. “I have a serious affliction: loving you forever,” he wrote.

Richard and Arline at the Albuquerque sanatorium

In early 1945, two and a half years into their marriage, Richard and Arline made love for the first time. He had been too afraid of harming her frail health somehow, she too afraid of infecting him with the deadly bacterium consuming her. But Arline insisted that this pent up desire could no longer be contained and assured Richard that this would only bring them closer — to each other, and to the life they had so lovingly dreamt up for themselves:

I’ll always be your sweetheart & first love — besides a devoted wife — we’ll be proud parents too… I am proud of you always Richard –[you are] a good husband, and lover, & well, coach, I’ll show you what I mean Sunday.

But heightened as their hopes were by this new dimension of shared experience, Arline’s health continued to plummet. Her weight dropped to eighty-four pounds. Exasperated by the helplessness of medicine, which Feynman had come to see not as a manifestation but as a mutilation of the scientific method, he invested all hope in an experimental drug made of mold growths. “Keep hanging on,” he exhorted Arline. “Nothing is certain. We lead a charmed life.” She began spitting blood.

At twenty-seven, on the precipice of a brilliant scientific career, he was terminally in love.

On June 16, 1945, while working at the computing room at Los Alamos, Feynman received a call from the sanatorium that Arline was dying. He borrowed a colleague’s car and sped to the hospital, where he found her immobile, her eyes barely tracing his movement. Early in his scientific career, he had been animated by the nature of time. Now, hours stretched and contracted as he sat at her deathbed, until one last small breath tolled the end at 9:21PM.

The wake of loss has a way of tranquilizing grief with the pressing demands of practical arrangements — a tranquilizer we take willingly, almost gratefully. The following morning, Feynman arranged for his beloved’s cremation, methodically collected her personal belongings, and on the final page of the small spiral notebook in which she recorded her symptoms he wrote with scientific remove: “June 16 — Death.”

And so we arrive at Gleick’s improbable discovery in that box of letters — improbable because of the extreme rationality with which Feynman hedged against even the slightest intimation of metaphysical conjectures untestable by science and unprovable by reason. During his courtship of Arline, he had been vexed by her enthusiasm for Descartes, whose “proof” of God’s perfection he found intellectually lazy and unbefitting of Descartes’s reputation as a champion of reason. He had impishly countered Arline’s insistence that there are two sides to everything by cutting a piece of paper and half-twisting it into a Möbius strip, the ends pasted together to render a surface with just one side.

Everything that appeared mystical, Feynman believed, was simply an insufficiently explained mystery with a physical answer not yet found. Even Arline’s dying hour had offered testing ground for conviction. Puzzlingly, the clock in the room had stopped at exactly 9:21PM — the time of death. Aware of how this bizarre occurrence could foment the mystical imagination in unscientific minds, Feynman reasoned for an explanation. Remembering that he had repaired the clock multiple times over the course of Arline’s stay at the sanatorium, he realized that the instrument’s unwieldy mechanism must have choked when the nurse picked it up in the low evening light to see and record the time.

How astonishing and how touchingly human, then, that Feynman penned the letter Gleick found in the box forty-two years later — a letter he wrote to Arline in October of 1946, 488 days after her death:

D’Arline,

I adore you, sweetheart.

I know how much you like to hear that — but I don’t only write it because you like it — I write it because it makes me warm all over inside to write it to you.

It is such a terribly long time since I last wrote to you — almost two years but I know you’ll excuse me because you understand how I am, stubborn and realistic; and I thought there was no sense to writing.

But now I know my darling wife that it is right to do what I have delayed in doing, and that I have done so much in the past. I want to tell you I love you. I want to love you. I always will love you.

I find it hard to understand in my mind what it means to love you after you are dead — but I still want to comfort and take care of you — and I want you to love me and care for me. I want to have problems to discuss with you — I want to do little projects with you. I never thought until just now that we can do that. What should we do. We started to learn to make clothes together — or learn Chinese — or getting a movie projector. Can’t I do something now? No. I am alone without you and you were the “idea-woman” and general instigator of all our wild adventures.

When you were sick you worried because you could not give me something that you wanted to and thought I needed. You needn’t have worried. Just as I told you then there was no real need because I loved you in so many ways so much. And now it is clearly even more true — you can give me nothing now yet I love you so that you stand in my way of loving anyone else — but I want you to stand there. You, dead, are so much better than anyone else alive.

I know you will assure me that I am foolish and that you want me to have full happiness and don’t want to be in my way. I’ll bet you are surprised that I don’t even have a girlfriend (except you, sweetheart) after two years. But you can’t help it, darling, nor can I — I don’t understand it, for I have met many girls and very nice ones and I don’t want to remain alone — but in two or three meetings they all seem ashes. You only are left to me. You are real.

My darling wife, I do adore you.

I love my wife. My wife is dead.

Rich.

And then, with the sole defibrillator for heartache we have — humor — Feynman adds:

PS Please excuse my not mailing this — but I don’t know your new address.

Complement this particular portion of the altogether magnificent Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman with Rachel Carson’s stunning deathbed farewell to her beloved and Seneca on resilience in the face of loss, then revisit Feynman on science and religion and the meaning of life.

Flash Fiction: A Lesson in Letting Go

In the quiet town of Elmwood, Harold sat at his kitchen table, thumbing through a stack of old photographs. Each picture, a whisper from the past, showcased moments with Marion, his wife of 46 years. Both had been high school teachers, dedicated to nurturing minds and fostering dreams. But now, the house felt as empty as the classrooms during summer break.

Harold picked up a photograph taken on their first day at Elmwood High. Marion, radiant and eager, stood beside him, her smile wide, holding a globe, symbolizing her love for geography. He, a math teacher, held a calculator, the two of them poised for a life of shared equations and explorations.

Their lives had intertwined not just in love but in purpose. They had been partners, both in life and across the hallways where they taught. Retirement had been kind, offering them leisurely mornings and tranquil evenings, until Marion’s sudden illness swept through, as unpredictable as a pop quiz, and just as merciless.

Now, Harold faced mornings filled with silence instead of Marion’s humming in the kitchen. He missed how she would weave stories of historical expeditions into their morning walks, making every step an adventure.

As autumn crept in, Harold found himself walking to the school they had devoted their lives to. He wandered through the corridors, now lined with lockers that echoed the laughter and secrets of generations. Approaching the geography room, Harold hesitated before pushing the door open. Inside, the world map still hung on the wall, each country a testament to Marion’s teachings.

He approached her desk, touching the surface where lesson plans had been crafted and dreams encouraged. A pang of sorrow tightened around his heart. How many times had he watched her from his classroom door, her eyes alight with passion as she recounted the voyages of explorers?

Lost in thought, Harold was startled when a young teacher entered the room. “Mr. Watkins? I’m Emily, the new geography teacher. I heard so much about Mrs. Watkins. I hope I can fill her shoes.”

Harold smiled, his eyes moist. “Marion believed every place on that map could be visited, if only through imagination and knowledge. She left big shoes to fill indeed.”

Emily nodded, her expression earnest. “I’ve kept all her teaching materials. I use them to guide me. She had a way of making the world come alive.”

Gratitude washed over Harold. Marion had left an indelible mark not just on him but on countless others who had passed through this room. “She’d be thrilled to know her legacy continues with someone as passionate as you,” Harold replied.

As he walked home, the weight in his heart felt lighter. Marion’s presence in the school, in the very essence of the town, and in the minds she had shaped, was palpable. Harold realized that though her physical presence was gone, her spirit, like the lessons they both taught, would linger on, touching lives far beyond the classroom.

Harold no longer felt he was navigating his days alone; Marion was there, in the stories they had crafted together, in the lessons they had imparted, and in the budding dreams of every student she had inspired. He understood, finally, that letting go wasn’t about forgetting; it was about moving forward, carrying their shared past proudly, like a well-earned diploma.

The God Illusion: Turek Takedown:10 Concise Counters In 30 Minutes Flat!

Novel Excerpts–The Boaz Schoolteacher, Chapter 16

The primary aim of the "Novel Excerpts" blog category is to showcase my creative writing, specifically from the novels I've written. Hopefully, these posts will provide a glimpse into my storytelling style, themes, and narrative skills. It's an opportunity to share my artistic expressions and the worlds I've created through my novels.

The Boaz Schoolteacher, written in 2018, is my fifth novel. I'll post a chapter a day over the next few weeks.

Book Blurb

In the summer of 2017, Katie Sims and her daughter Cullie, moved from New York City to Katie’s hometown of Boaz, Alabama for her to teach English and for Cullie to attend Boaz High School . Fifteen years earlier, during the Christmas holidays, five men from prominent local families sexually assaulted Katie. Nine months later, Katie’s only daughter was born.

Almost from the beginning of the new school year, as Katie and fellow-teacher Cindy Barker shared English, Literature, and Creative Writing duties for more than 300 students, they became lifelong friends.

For weeks, Katie and Cindy endured the almost constant sexual harassment at the hands of the assistant principal. In mid-October, after Cindy suffered an attack similar to Katie’s from fifteen years earlier, the two teachers designed a unique method to teach the six predators a lesson they would never forget. Katie and Cindy dubbed their plan, Six Red Apples.

Read this mystery-thriller to experience the dilemma the two teachers created for themselves, and to learn the true meaning of real justice. And, eternal friendship.

Chapter 16

I decided to have Darla’s funeral Friday afternoon, mostly because of Labor Day and Cindy and her family’s plans to visit Six Flags in Georgia over the long weekend. Steve had planned the trip several weeks ago and it was going to be a surprise. After Darla’s body arrived Thursday afternoon he had to tell Cindy because she was brainstorming ideas how to support Nanny, Cullie, and me at the funeral I had decided would take place Sunday afternoon. After I changed the funeral times Cindy had invited Cullie and me to come along. I declined, but Cullie was ecstatic.

It really wasn’t a funeral. It was a memorial service. And, there was no casket or body or flowers, just a couple of songs, a few words by Pastor Warren, after an hour of public viewing, but without the viewing. This was what Darla wanted. At least that’s what we all learned from Ryan as relayed by Raymond who was still in jail. This wasn’t the only surprise from Ryan. Darla’s desire was to be cremated. “Granddad said he and Darla had discussed all this type stuff before they married and agreed on it.” Darla’s body hadn’t stayed long at McRae’s Funeral Home. They didn’t perform cremations but instead shipped the body to a crematorium in Huntsville. Her ashes wouldn’t be back in town until several days past Labor Day.

Cullie spent the night, again, at Alysa’s. It was becoming a tradition. Steve wanted to leave early. A good enough excuse for Cullie to be there and let me sleep in.

At 2:30 a.m., I shot upright in bed. The little woman in my head who had no respect for time or tiredness plastered a thought across the stage of my mind. She hadn’t done this, at this time, in quite a while. I was thankful for that. She wanted me to ponder something that Ryan had said when he and I discussed and planned Darla’s memorial service Thursday evening. “Granddad said he and Darla had discussed all this type stuff before they married and agreed on it.” This type stuff. What did that include?

Raymond Radford was 44 years old when he married my 19-year-old mother. That was Thanksgiving 1973. Darla was high school classmates with Randall Radford, Raymond’s son. During the same graduation party where Darla became pregnant with me an even more horrible thing had taken place. Two girls from the party, twins from Douglas, had gone missing. A Micaden Tanner, who also was at the party, was falsely accused of the girls’ disappearance. He was later charged with their kidnapping and murder, even though at the time their bodies had not been found. Within a few months of the party, Raymond had met Beverly (aka Nanny). She had learned how Raymond and the other four fathers of the Flaming Five (Randall and his basketball playing teammates) were attempting to force Darla and the other Boaz cheerleaders who had attended the graduation party to lie. He knew they would be called on as witnesses to the events of that night. Someway that I will never understand, a romance between Raymond and Darla had blossomed over all those horrible events and deplorable manipulation.

I had forgotten about the two journals Darla had packed in her suitcase. I had hidden them, along with the videotape, behind my collection of literature textbooks. Before this morning, my mind had decided they could wait, that I was simply too busy with school and Darla’s death. The little woman in my head had just decided otherwise. I got up and slipped on a nightgown, a long-ago present from Nanny. It was flannel and it was late summer, but the house seemed unusually cold. I slipped downstairs to the kitchen, made a pot of coffee and returned to my room and the elaborate little writing desk Papa had made me in high school from the giant oak in the front yard that had fallen during what many believed was a rare winter tornado.

I wanted to spend a few minutes without the journals; forecasting, I called it. It was my way of predicting what I would see. It connected my brainstorming or free-writing method with a purpose. After a timed fifteen-minute session I had concluded Darla’s journals would reveal her two biggest regrets: not going to college and not being a real mother to me.

The first journal was current. It covered the last several months. Almost a year of Darla’s life. I scanned half the pages, skipping every two or three. It appeared to be an accounting of Raymond’s legal troubles. Along with a sobering sage of how money, wealth, and other material things did not produce happiness.

The second journal was old. The first entry was dated, Thursday, May 24, 1972. It read, in part, “Mother gave me this journal as one of my graduation presents. She made me vow to record my innermost thoughts for at least a year. After that I would either be hooked or hate it. Sorry Journal, I must go party. My buds are here, Rickie is blaring her car horn. Nyra Sue and Gina, I’m sure, are screaming at her to stop. Later my dear.”

At 4:30 a.m., I was tired. I had read every entry and was only on page 128 out of 200 pages from the second journal. I had read more details than I could ever remember. Darla had chosen, since returning from her graduation party, to focus on the activities of that night and the events that led to her maturing romance with Raymond. I placed a pencil inside the journal to hold my place and was about to return Darla’s writings to their secret spot when I decided to read the last entry.

It was dated, Wednesday, November 21, 1973. Darla had written nearly a page about her wedding, even though it was taking place the following day, Thanksgiving. All three of her paragraphs were filled with little snippets of how Raymond had been so kind and generous and had showered her with jewelry and clothes. Darla was convinced Raymond truly loved her. The last sentence, a one sentence paragraph, followed the first three. It took a different route, “The only thing I regret is the damn prenuptial agreement.”

The final page in the journal, a continuation of the 21st entry, laid out Darla’s concerns and the details of the unwelcome agreement. If her and Raymond ever divorced she would leave the marriage with only what things she had owned when they tied the knot, which wasn’t much no doubt. Darla’s words showed some relief when she turned her attention to something other than divorce (she had written, “we’ll never divorce.”) because they revealed that if Raymond predeceased her in death and at a time the two continued as husband and wife, Darla would inherit all of Raymond’s property.

In the next paragraph, Darla described how Raymond had joked since he was 44 that his age when they married would be their number. It raised my question, “their number, what’s the significance?’ Darla provided the answer. If 44 years transpire and she passes away leaving Raymond a widower, then he retains all his and her property. It was a little joke between them. However, it seemed neither believed that Raymond would outlive Darla. Why would they? She was twenty-five years younger than him.

My mind still wasn’t fully engaged. It might have been that I was running late for my writing session in the basement. I placed the two journals behind the literature textbooks on my top bookshelf. I changed into a pair of baggy shorts and a New York Knicks tank-top, overheated from my mental gymnastics. I poured another cup of coffee as I passed the kitchen and raced down the stairs almost tripping on the thought the little woman in my head held up to me like a flashcard. ‘Motive.’

Darla and Raymond’s prenuptial agreement was no longer funny. And, my math skills were not seriously engaged. Darla was born in 1954 and had married Raymond in 1973 when she was 19. It was now 2017. That’s 44 years ago. Well, not quite, today was September 2nd. In less than three months, on Thanksgiving Day, Raymond and Darla would have been married 44 years. And, Raymond is still kicking. Motive? Yes, he or someone, maybe Ryan, had a motive to kill Darla.

As I was attempting to set aside these thoughts, one final one kept clawing onto the stage. What would happen to Nanny? The funds to pay for Sammie and run Nanny’s household, other than her Social Security check, were being paid by Raymond?

My writing session didn’t go so well.

Novel Excerpts–The Boaz Schoolteacher, Chapter 15

The primary aim of the "Novel Excerpts" blog category is to showcase my creative writing, specifically from the novels I've written. Hopefully, these posts will provide a glimpse into my storytelling style, themes, and narrative skills. It's an opportunity to share my artistic expressions and the worlds I've created through my novels.

The Boaz Schoolteacher, written in 2018, is my fifth novel. I'll post a chapter a day over the next few weeks.

Book Blurb

Read this mystery-thriller to experience the dilemma the two teachers created for themselves, and to learn the true meaning of real justice. And, eternal friendship.

Chapter 15

The call came during my Thursday morning planning period.

“Ms. Sims? This is Stanley Vincent with the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences. Is now a good time to talk?”

I told him it was. He said Greta Vickers, the School’s bookkeeper, had given him my cell number after he told her who he was.

“Marshall County Sheriff Wayne Waldrup said I should call you.”

“Have you completed my mother’s autopsy? Darla Sims, Radford?”

“Yes, the County is here to pick up her body and transport it to McRae’s Funeral Home. I wanted to confirm that was correct, what you wanted.” Vincent said. I could barely hear him. There was talking in the background. I imagined several of his peers moving about, opening, and closing doors to temporary vaults.

“It is.” I semi-yelled.

“I also wanted to tell you what caused your mother’s death. Of course, you will receive a copy of the autopsy report, but I didn’t want it to be a total surprise.”

“Thanks. I’m pretty sure I already know. It was the Clonidin, the Zanax, and the alcohol. Correct?” I said, more focused on my review of Hemingway’s Hills Like White Elephants, the story I would be assigning tomorrow.

“That’s what we thought at first. Sheriff Waldrup had alerted us to the possibility of a drug overdose, although the only drugs he knew about were the Clonidin and the alcohol. Then, we discovered the Zanax, but the drugs are not what killed her.”

“So, what did? Did she have a heart attack?”

“I’m sorry to tell you your mother died from a single gunshot to the head.”

“Oh my God. Why did our Sheriff or the Boaz police or somebody else not mention anything about this?

“They didn’t see it. It was easy to miss. We naturally found it because we scrutinize every square inch of the body. We also conduct multiple x-rays. The entrance wound was exceedingly small and just inside her hairline above the neck. Do you want me to give you the details now or do you want to wait and read them in my report?”

“Thanks for being so considerate, but I prefer you just tell me. I might have a question or two.”

“The low-caliber bullet, a 22 short, entered the cerebellum. This is located at the rear of the head. The bullet then almost severed the spinal cord, but virtually missed the brainstem, and lodged itself between the basal ganglia and the cortex. As I said, the bullet did not exit the head.”

“Would she have died instantly?” I said for the obvious reason. I was never close to my mother, but I would never want her to suffer.

“That’s what’s puzzling. Normally, the subject, sorry to be so impersonal, lingers. A small caliber bullet shot directly to any area of the cortex doesn’t usually cause instantaneous death, but through excessive intracranial pressure arising from either brain swelling or edema, will no doubt cause death sooner or later, normally within a few days.”

“You are referring to the cerebral cortex?”

“Yes, it’s the wrinkly outermost layer that surrounds the brain. It consists of tightly packed neurons. The cortex is divided into four different lobes, the frontal, parietal, temporal, and occipital, which are each responsible for processing different types of sensory information.”

“You seemed surprised that she died so quickly. Why is that exactly? I said feeling sterile when I should be an emotional wreck.

“One would have thought your mother’s injury would have been analogous to that of Abraham Lincoln’s. He lingered for several days because of the brain injury caused by a low-caliber bullet that didn’t exit his skull after being shot at close range from the back. What appears to be the cause of an instantaneous death from a gunshot to the brain is damage to the brainstem. It is the part of the brain that regulates heart and lung function. As you might recall, the subject bullet barely grazed your mother’s brainstem. Although my report states the bullet as the cause of death, quite frankly, I don’t know what caused your mother’s instantaneous death.”

“Could the volume of drugs in her system have contributed to her instant death after the gunshot?”

“Possibly, but I doubt it. I first thought the information I had received from Sheriff Waldrup was inaccurate. His incident and offense report had mentioned both the approximate time of your phone call with your mother on the morning of her death and the exact time she was found by a Mr. Williams. If we did not have such a tight timeline, I would have guessed your mother had died a slow death over a period of hours, maybe a day or more. Of course, we know that’s not what happened.

“Can I ask one final question, Dr. Vincent?”

“Sure. I have a couple of more minutes before I have to go.”

“What happened to the bullet or bullet fragment?”

“We extracted it and will be sending it to Sheriff Waldrup. I suspect he has a homicide on his hands. There is no way this was a suicide. Again, Ms. Sims, I regret having to share such horribly stressful news. I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you for your kindness. I’m sorry, but one more quick question. How would you describe the condition of the bullet fragment?”

“It’s not a fragment. The bullet is fully intact, in near-perfect condition.”

“Thanks doctor. I appreciate you calling. Goodbye.”

“Goodbye to you Ms. Sims and God Bless.”

“Thank you.”

I had been sitting at my desk in my little office all during the conversation with Dr. Vincent. When our call ended, I walked to the window and looked to a gray and dreary sky. I was praying that mother had not suffered when Cindy came in with her book bag and her normally eager desire to plan tomorrow’s lesson. I was thankful to have a good friend, especially one who, after seeing my sad face and serious tears, engulfed me in her arms and held me like I was her Alysa.

“I love you and so does God.” Cindy said looking directly into my eyes. I couldn’t help but think of Emily Fink in New York City, my best friend in the world up until now. Slowly, Cindy Barker was nudging to the head of my best-friends line.

Snowflake Summaries–The First Deadly Sin, by Lawrence Sanders

The primary aim of the "Snowflake Summaries" blog category is to showcase the creative writing of great authors. I use Randy Ingermanson's 'Snowflake' method to create these summaries. Here's a brief description of the one-sentence, one-paragraph, and one-page summary method.

Hopefully, these posts will motivate you to read great fiction and to write your own novel, whether your first or your fifteenth. 

The first great novelist I'll start with is Lawrence Sanders. Here's a short biography.

The First Deadly Sin, by Lawrence Sanders

**”The First Deadly Sin” by Lawrence Sanders** is a gripping and intricate crime thriller that follows the investigation of a series of brutal murders in New York City, intertwining deep personal dramas with intense detective work.

### One Sentence Summary:

In **”The First Deadly Sin,”** NYPD Captain Edward X. Delaney is drawn out of semi-retirement to track down a calculated serial killer using an ancient weapon, amidst personal challenges and a city gripped by fear.

### One Paragraph Summary:

**”The First Deadly Sin”** centers on NYPD Captain Edward X. Delaney as he faces a cunning and elusive serial killer who strikes seemingly at random in New York City, using an ice axe as his signature weapon. The novel unfolds with Delaney, who is on leave caring for his seriously ill wife, being coaxed back into service by the urgency of the crimes and his deep sense of duty. As he digs deeper into the case, Delaney employs his old-school detective skills and psychological acumen, uncovering chilling details about the killer’s motives and methods. Meanwhile, his personal life is equally fraught with challenges as he navigates his wife’s deteriorating health. The narrative masterfully combines elements of police procedural with psychological thriller, exploring themes of justice, obsession, and the moral complexities of the human psyche.

### One Page Summary:

**”The First Deadly Sin”** by Lawrence Sanders is a compelling mix of psychological thriller and detective noir, set against the backdrop of a 1970s New York City. The story begins when a series of violent murders starts to terrorize the city, each victim found struck by an ice axe, with little else to connect the cases. The NYPD is under pressure to solve the crimes quickly, but leads are scarce, and the police force is stumped.

Enter Edward X. Delaney, a seasoned NYPD Captain, known for his intellectual approach to crime solving and his success in cracking difficult cases. Currently on leave to take care of his wife, Barbara, who is battling a severe illness, Delaney is reluctantly drawn back into the fray by his sense of duty and the intriguing nature of the case. As he starts to work the crime scenes, Delaney’s methodical and thorough approach uncovers subtle clues that others have missed, gradually piecing together the profile of a killer whose crimes are as meticulous as they are horrific.

Delaney’s investigation leads him into the darker corners of the city and of the human mind, as he delves into the psychology of the murderer, discovering disturbing truths about the killer’s past and psyche. Sanders skillfully portrays Delaney’s inner turmoil and dedication, juxtaposing his professional life with his personal life, where he grapples with his wife’s illness and the emotional strain it places on both of them. This dual narrative enhances the depth of the character and the story, enriching the reader’s engagement with Delaney’s quest for justice.

Throughout the novel, Sanders utilizes a detailed, rich narrative style that brings 1970s New York to life, complete with its gritty, tense atmosphere—a city on edge, mirrored by the psychological tension of the chase. As Delaney closes in on the killer, the suspense intensifies, leading to a climactic confrontation that is both thrilling and intellectually satisfying.

In conclusion, **”The First Deadly Sin”** offers more than just a murder mystery; it is a profound exploration of the themes of sin, redemption, and the moral complexities that lie within each person. Sanders not only crafts a narrative that is engaging and suspenseful but also poses significant questions about law, justice, and humanity. Delaney’s journey through the novel is not only about catching a killer but also about understanding the deeper darkness that can drive human actions, making it a standout story in the realm of crime and mystery literature.

Novel Excerpts–The Boaz Schoolteacher, Chapter 14

The primary aim of the "Novel Excerpts" blog category is to showcase my creative writing, specifically from the novels I've written. Hopefully, these posts will provide a glimpse into my storytelling style, themes, and narrative skills. It's an opportunity to share my artistic expressions and the worlds I've created through my novels.

The Boaz Schoolteacher, written in 2018, is my fifth novel. I'll post a chapter a day over the next few weeks.

Book Blurb

Read this mystery-thriller to experience the dilemma the two teachers created for themselves, and to learn the true meaning of real justice. And, eternal friendship.

Chapter 14

“Mother, when are you going to let me start dating?” It was a question I had repeatedly heard from Cullie since the first of her eighth-grade year. Until now, she had said it, smiling her gorgeous smile and telling me with her eyes that she knew she was too young. Today was different. It was the first time she had asked the question since we arrived in Boaz. I had come out to Papa’s barn late Tuesday afternoon. The loft had become her favorite spot on the forty-acre plot to hangout and ponder her future.

“When you are old enough?” I said settling back against a stack of hay bales Mr. Crocker kept stored above a half-dozen abandoned cow, pig, and goat stables.

“You always say that but never discuss. I am old enough. All the popular ninth grade girls and probably half the mediums are dating.”

“Mediums? What the heck is a medium?” I said, looking over at Cullie stretched out on a bed of unbaled hay. She was tall, lean, and shapely. She was no longer my little girl, the one in pigtails in middle school, especially the sixth and seventh grader who secretly spent hours alone playing with Barbie dolls. Now, her too-tight jeans revealed a female who had evolved and shed her baby flab. I predicted within a few months her body would be as perfect as that of Brooke Shields in Blue Lagoon. I still could not understand why I had watched this 1980s movie two nights ago on Netflix curled up in my bed after midnight.

“Alysa explained to me those are the girls, midrange if you will. They are not popular or gorgeous. Not all popular girls are pretty, you know. And, the M’s are not homely either. They make good grades and show promise of someday transforming into a prospect.” Cullie said shifting backwards and up on her elbows. “Mediums are always girls, prospects can be boys or girls.”

“Prospect?”

“Someone who’s a real candidate for dating.”

“My gosh, I’m so out of touch. Now, I semi-understand more of the snippets I’ve been overhearing from my tenth Graders.”

“Grandmother was dating when she was in the ninth grade.” Cullie surprised me. Not so much that she had referred to Darla as her grandmother. That was truly accurate but also rare. Cullie did this when she used her subtle ability to play with my emotions. She knew how I had always longed to have had a normal, maybe an extraordinarily wonderful, relationship with my biological mother, like Emily Fink had with her mother in New York City.

“Did you hear me?” Cullie prompted as I sat beginning once again to feel sorry for myself.

“How exactly do you know that my dear?”

“Nanny told me. You know, sometimes when I get home from school and after you have visited a few minutes, I sit with her. About every other day she seems normal. Yesterday, I had asked her when she had let you start dating. She didn’t hesitate and said at the Valentine’s Dance in your tenth-Grade year. I didn’t like her answer, so I said, ‘what about grandmother?’ Her words, exactly, ‘that was Papa’s doings. Beginning of the ninth grade and it was the worst thing we did. She spread her wild oats and never stopped until she was pregnant with your mother.’”

“Nanny said all that?”

“Yep. Now that I know when grandmother started dating, isn’t it time I know who your real father is?” And I thought the, ‘when will you let me start dating?’ question was what I feared.

“Honey, I’ve told you a hundred times that I don’t know.”

“Katie, I’m not as dumb as you sometimes think. Miss Cindy told Alysa and me that most people tell you the minimum. She said this over pancakes Saturday morning when we were discussing A Good Man is Hard to Find. She said they rarely tell you all they know. Miss Cindy gave the grandmother in O’Connor’s story as an example. Said the old woman was highly manipulative with her son.”

Cullie sometimes called me Katie, always when she wanted to have a full conversation, one uncolored by our mother-daughter relationship. “I’m confused, are you studying Flannery O’Conner’s most popular story?”

“No, but Miss Cindy was lab-ratting us. Some angle she intended to explore with her students. So, show a little respect for your only child. Tell me who got Grandmother pregnant. I wish I’d tried out for cheerleader.” Cullie was now standing up and doing knee bends and arms rolls and kicks that looked like they would touch the weathered tin overhead.

Oh, the mind of a teenage girl. “Darla was wild no doubt. Believe me my baby, I don’t know, and I don’t know if Darla ever knew, who got her pregnant. It was during her graduation party. She was at a place where she shouldn’t have been doing things she shouldn’t have been doing. There were six guys present. The story is that Darla had sex with five of them. That’s where I got started.”

“Only one of the five can be your father. His little sperm found Darla’s little egg. Humans can’t have multiple fathers.”

“You now are an expert embryologist?”

“Something like that. No, but Alysa and I are pretty good researchers.”

“Honestly, I don’t know why Darla never sought a paternity test. I think she would have if she hadn’t gotten involved with Raymond Radford. It was her way, I think, of showing a weird sort of respect. You asked so I will tell you, but please keep it very secret. Raymond’s son, Randall, the one who is still missing or simply ran off, was one of the five who Darla slept with that fateful night.” I said not believing my little girl and I were having this conversation.

“Who were the other four?” I knew this was coming. Cullie had for weeks been revealing the makings of a future attorney.

I hesitated. What good could come of Cullie knowing who her grandmother had sex with and who might be her grandfather? On the other hand, being truthful, even when it hurt, couldn’t hurt the most important relationship in my life, one that needed to be grounded on a deep and wide foundation of trust. “Wade Tillman, Fred Billingsley, James Adams, and John Ericson.”

“And, Warren Tillman, Fulton Billingsley, Justin Adams, and Danny Ericson are their sons. So, Wade Tillman could be my grandfather, and his son, Pastor Warren, could be my cousin?” Cullie asked.

“In that scenario I think he would be more like a step-brother once removed, but I’m not really sure. I’d have to sketch that out.” This conversation was going nowhere fast.

“I think you need to find out who your father is. I’m glad I know Colton is my dad. Is he still coming for Christmas?” I almost envied Cullie’s ability to pivot. Her mind was so alive and spontaneous, hungry for knowledge. I hoped she someday found a real purpose to channel her intelligence and energy.

“We’ll have to see.”

“You never answered my question.” Cullie brought us back full-circle.

“Now if you want to, but with rules my dear, strict rules. Maybe a double date with Alysa at a cook-out. Cindy and I are getting pretty good at grilling chicken.”

“Yuck. To the chicken and the six-way. I’m okay with Alysa, me, and two prospects, but no parents allowed.” Cullie said, headed for the loft’s ladder.

“Rules my dear. I’m not about to turn you loose. No way. Men can be animals. Boys are just less imaginative and brave.”

In a sense I was trapped. We were now into the third week of my first-year teaching at Boaz High School. After my long and scary conversation with Cullie, and nearly two hours watching The Walton’s and eating from TV trays, I had come to my room, propped my pillows up on the headboard and started reading. I both loved it and hated it. I was caught in a schedule that required at least an hour, often two, per night, reviewing and commenting in the five Facebook groups I had created. I had been surprisingly pleased that the majority of my 150 students were actively participating. I enjoyed learning. I enjoyed being surprised by how teenagers thought, sometimes revealing intelligence that I could only envy. At midnight, reading and responding to the final student comments from my Creative Writing class, I was glad I hadn’t yet disclosed my plan to add five more Facebook groups, all focused on one class’s major writing project. Lying back and dozing my subconscious kept telling me it was too much, ‘just limit this novel writing project to your Creative Writing class,’ and one more Facebook group. Stick to short stories or even some flash fiction with your other four classes.’

I didn’t know where she came from but by Wednesday morning I was in full agreement with the wise and wonderful subconscious woman who resided deep inside my head.

The Marginalian: Legendary Cellist Pablo Casals, at Age 93, on Creative Vitality and How Working with Love Prolongs Your Life

Here’s the link to this article.

BY MARIA POPOVA

Long before there was Yo-Yo Ma, there was Spanish Catalan cellist and conductor Pablo Casals (December 29, 1876–October 22, 1973), regarded by many — including Yo-Yo Ma — as the greatest cellist of all time. The recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the U.N. Peace Medal for his unflinching dedication to justice and his lifelong stance against oppression and dictatorship, Casals was as much an extraordinary artist as he was an extraordinary human being — a generous and kind man of uncommon compassion and goodness of heart, a passionate spirit in love with life, and an unflinching idealist.

And yet, like many exceptional people, he cultivated his character through an early brush with suffering. In his late teenage years, already a celebrated prodigy, he underwent an anguishing spiritual crisis of the kind Tolstoy faced in his later years and came close to suicide. But with the loving support of his mother, he regained his center and went on to become a man of great talent, great accomplishment, and great vitality.

To mark his ninetieth birthday, Casals began a collaboration with photojournalist Albert E. Kahn that would eventually become the 1970 autobiography-of-sorts Joys and Sorrows (public library) — one of the most magnificent perspectives of the creative life ever committed to words.

Straight from the opening, Casals cracks open the essence of his extraordinary character and the source of his exuberant life-energy with a beautiful case for how purposeful work is the true fountain of youth:

On my last birthday I was ninety-three years old. That is not young, of course. In fact, it is older than ninety. But age is a relative matter. If you continue to work and to absorb the beauty in the world about you, you find that age does not necessarily mean getting old. At least, not in the ordinary sense. I feel many things more intensely than ever before, and for me life grows more fascinating.

Recounting being at once delighted and unsurprised by an article in the London Sunday Times about an orchestra in the Caucasus composed of musicians older than a hundred, he considers the spring of their vitality:

In spite of their age, those musicians have not lost their zest for life. How does one explain this? I do not think the answer lies simply in their physical constitutions or in something unique about the climate in which they live. It has to do with their attitude toward life; and I believe that their ability to work is due in no small measure to the fact that they do work. Work helps prevent one from getting old. I, for one, cannot dream of retiring. Not now or ever. Retire? The word is alien and the idea inconceivable to me. I don’t believe in retirement for anyone in my type of work, not while the spirit remains. My work is my life. I cannot think of one without the other. To “retire” means to me to begin to die. The man who works and is never bored is never old. Work and interest in worthwhile things are the best remedy for age. Each day I am reborn. Each day I must begin again.

For the past eighty years I have started each day in the same manner.

With great elegance, he contrasts the dullness of mindless routine with the exhilaration of mindful ritual — something many great artists engineer into their days. In a sentiment Henry Miller would come to echo only two years later in his own memorable meditation on the secret of remaining forever young, Casals writes of his daily practice:

It is not a mechanical routine but something essential to my daily life. I go to the piano, and I play two preludes and fugues of Bach. I cannot think of doing otherwise. It is a sort of benediction on the house. But that is not its only meaning for me. It is a rediscovery of the world of which I have the joy of being a part. It fills me with awareness of the wonder of life, with a feeling of the incredible marvel of being a human being. The music is never the same for me, never. Each day is something new, fantastic, unbelievable. That is Bach, like nature, a miracle!

Casals, indeed, finds great vitalization in bearing witness to nature’s mastery of the self-renewal so essential for the human spirit over the long run:

I do not think a day passes in my life in which I fail to look with fresh amazement at the miracle of nature. It is there on every side. It can be simply a shadow on a mountainside, or a spider’s web gleaming with dew, or sunlight on the leaves of a tree. I have always especially loved the sea. Whenever possible, I have lived by the sea… It has long been a custom of mine to walk along the beach each morning before I start to work. True, my walks are shorter than they used to be, but that does not lessen the wonder of the sea. How mysterious and beautiful is the sea! how infinitely variable! It is never the same, never, not from one moment to the next, always in the process of change, always becoming something different and new.

In the same way, Casals argues, we renew ourselves through purposeful work. But he adds an admonition about the complacency of talent, echoing Jack Kerouac’s fantastic distinction between talent and genius. Casals offers aspiring artists of all stripes a word of advice on humility and hard work as the surest path to self-actualization:

I see no particular merit in the fact that I was an artist at the age of eleven. I was born with an ability, with music in me, that is all. No special credit was due me. The only credit we can claim is for the use we make of the talent we are given. That is why I urge young musicians: “Don’t be vain because you happen to have talent. You are not responsible for that; it was not of your doing. What you do with your talent is what matters. You must cherish this gift. Do not demean or waste what you have been given. Work — work constantly and nourish it.”

Of course the gift to be cherished most of all is that of life itself. One’s work should be a salute to life.

Hence Ray Bradbury’s famous proclamation that he never worked a day in his life — further testament to the magic made possible by discerning your vocation.

Casals lived and worked for another four years, dying eight weeks before his ninety-seventh birthday. Joys and Sorrows remains an invigorating read — a rare glimpse into the source of this creative and spiritual vitality of unparalleled proportions.

The God Illusion: Why You Can’t Have a Relationship with God

Flash Fiction: The Unlikely Columnist

Born and raised in the heart of Georgia, Nathan had always been surrounded by the comforting embrace of Southern Baptist tradition. From a young age, he attended church every Sunday, his faith unwavering in the face of life’s uncertainties.

But as he grew older, Nathan found himself questioning the beliefs he had held dear for so long. He yearned for answers that seemed to elude him, grappling with doubts that gnawed at his soul.

It wasn’t long before Nathan’s journey led him away from the pews of his childhood church and into the realm of agnosticism. He no longer found solace in the certainty of faith; instead, he embraced the ambiguity of doubt, finding freedom in the exploration of life’s mysteries.

Armed with a pen and a passion for storytelling, Nathan embarked on a new chapter of his life as a sports columnist for a small-town newspaper in North Alabama. It was a far cry from the religious upbringing he had known, but Nathan found solace in the rhythm of the written word, channeling his thoughts and experiences onto the pages of his column.

Week after week, Nathan’s columns captivated readers with their raw honesty and introspective insight. He wrote not only about the triumphs and defeats of the local sports teams but also about the complexities of the human experience—the joy of victory, the agony of defeat, and everything in between.

But it was Nathan’s willingness to confront his own doubts and uncertainties that set his columns apart. In a region where faith was as much a part of life as sweet tea and fried chicken, Nathan dared to challenge the status quo, exploring the intersection of sports and spirituality with a keen eye and an open heart.

His columns sparked conversations in living rooms and coffee shops across town, igniting debates that often spilled over onto the pages of the newspaper’s letters to the editor section. Some praised Nathan for his courage and candor, while others condemned him as a heretic and a blasphemer.

But through it all, Nathan remained steadfast in his commitment to honesty and integrity, refusing to shy away from the difficult questions that lay at the heart of his own journey. He wrote not to convert or condemn, but to provoke thought and inspire reflection—to shine a light on the beauty and complexity of the human experience, both on and off the field.

And as the years passed and Nathan’s columns continued to resonate with readers far and wide, he realized that his journey had come full circle. From the shores of doubt to the hallowed halls of faith, he had traversed the landscape of belief and disbelief, finding truth not in the certainty of dogma but in the uncertainty of the human heart.

For Nathan, the path to enlightenment was not found in the pages of a holy book or the walls of a church, but in the simple act of living and learning, loving and growing. And as he sat down at his typewriter each week to craft his next column, he knew that he was exactly where he was meant to be—writing his own story, one word at a time.