31 July 2024
This past month has to have been one of the longest in terms of spin cycles for The Media. And they are not over yet!
This past week, I retrieved a couple of bags of clothes from which I’d had to distance myself. The detached garage as the Storage Unit for a novel that I’m trying to avoid writing (my Muse’s modus operandi in the Peach House in Newcastle) has taken on a newer function: stowing away garments that remind me of mourning.
That mourning for me took place during this past year. I had to say “so long” to Chance, my beagle, and to Gabrielle, my Snowshoe cat. The needlework that I’d achieved with amazing persistance and productivity during the weeks before the death of Chance — that creativity was present on many of those pieces of attire. I’d initially planned on donating them to Goodwill, or so I told Dear Husband.
My wonderful spouse knows me so well that he placed the donation bundles safely in a corner of the garage, and said nothing. I suppose he knew the day would come when I’d go in search of those items I’d temporarily forsaken. That day came, on Monday. Today, I hand-washed the clothing. They are now hanging out to dry in my garage.
A person undergoing any loss is wisely counseled not to make any large or irreversible purchases or decisions during her time of grieving. I’ve applied that sage advice to parting from mementos in my closet. Those tangible souvenirs of mourning in my life thereby became precious souvenirs of morning, lighting up my life.
We in America have been advised that “things” will be revealed to us “In the Wash” regarding the nasty, treacherous undercurrents in our government(s). By now, that dirty laundry just might be hidden, stuffed away in subterranean locations, such as basements or wine caves. This reaction by Powerful Unknowns to the attempted assassination of an American Hero and former President is not new in the history of our still-young nation.
The power-broker machinations at the top of the power pyramid of the constitutional republic called America are vicious, and vital; for how else can the levers of power function without the corrupt grease of expediency? I’d long believed that those hidden but heinous forces making America strong were also the forces that believed in a strong America. In 2016, I was shockingly disabused of that notion. In order for the words, Make America Great Again, to have instantly provoked so much shrill, panicked, pornographically hate-filled actions and scuzzy propaganda against the patriots of my homeland, the power-forces of the federal government had to have been infiltrated by the most slimy of citizens in the U.S.A.
Propaganda ain’t what it used to be. In the U.S.S.R, state-run deception approached an art form. Here, in the U.S.A, official-fraud is tacky beyond belief. The Digital Era has certainly altered the modus operandi of the How the Bigwigs Wear Their Wigs, Flip Their Wigs, and Procure New Wigs.
It’s a quaint tradition that goes all the way back to the English barristers!
Sir William Blackstone (10 July 1723 - 14 February 1780) was a Tory, during an epoch when a Tory was a Tory. Billy wrote his Commentaries on the Laws of England, which became a smash hit, famous for succinctly yet precisely describing the doctrines of the English common law.
English common law is not common, in the sense of that word in American English. What we American commoners do to settled law is to upset it, routinely, with claims of saving democracy by blowing it up.
So gauche.
We’ve got a real common, i.e. trashy, and sticky, scenario here in the States where tangible evidentiary proof is concerned. Instead of the Zapruder tape of 22 November 1963, we’ve got dozens, if not hundreds, of cell-phone pix & videos, downloaded, uploaded, stored, emailed, e-published, e-everything for posterity.
Eternity lasts a lot longer on earth than it used to. It used to just be for Government Programs; now it’s for Government Plots! Excuse me, alleged Government Plots, although I think the “alleged” descriptor applies to the government, and not to the plots.
Season 5, Episode 14 of Murder, She Wrote is entitled From Russia . . . With Blood. No, Putin’s not in on this scandal, or dossier, or desecration of democracy. This hit-show from the mid-1980s was filmed during glasnost, when we were all gonna get along, but, of course, nothing of the sort was gonna happen. Perestroika got a little out of hand for the Cold War warriors, on both sides of the nuclear-button. The U.S.S.R. didn’t have a post-Soviet-government strategy, which is why we’re all watching Vladimir Putin age and behave like a typical bully. And the Defense Department of the U.S.A. didn’t believe Reagan, which is why we’re all watching Political Dinosaurs age and behave like typical bullies.
Jessica Fletcher is in Moscow to attend the International Artist League Conference. The portrait of Pushkin adorns the conference wall as Jessica is told by a Politburo Official that the little matter of royalties is a burdensome concept to the Russian way of doing business!
She gets invited to a Soviet shin-dig, a big-wig gala where Mrs. Gorbachev wears a peach satin off-the-shoulder, as detailed by the sufficiently snooty secretary at the U.S. Embassy.
I particularly enjoy this episode because it’s so reminiscent of my secretarial/clerk-typist days for the federal government!
Unfortunately, Jessica becomes involved in an international imbroglio because a canister of microfilm gets slipped into her purse by a waiter during the dinner. A murder takes place, as it always does whenever Mrs. Fletcher arrives anywhere; and it turns out that her much-trusted colleague, Sergei Chaloff, is not as trustworthy as she’d believed.
Jessica quickly forgives him, as any literary soul (except myself) would. She then sets out to spring him from a dark and dirty Soviet jail by finding out the truth about the murdered waiter. Finding out the truth about anything in the U.S.S.R. could have landed her in a gulag. She’s assured they don’t do gulag, anymore, which, I’m sure helped her to sleep much better that night!
If one can ignore the atrocious attempts at a Russian accent, this hour-long who-done-it from the Gorby-archives plays extremely well. In some ways, it’s more relevant today than it was in 1985. The traitor within the ranks of the Soviet politburo is discovered. Mr. Chaloff will be released from jail, hopefully soon. Jessica is calmly handed back her passport so that she can return to that backwater tuna-ville in Maine, Cabot Cove.
At the airport, she is greeted unexpectedly by Chief Inspector Bernicker, the man who was in charge of investigating the murder, despite the territorial turf war undertaken by a fonctionnaire of the KGB. Jurisdictional disputes were standard in the Soviet swamp, but I’m certain that Putin has put an end to that sort of internecine warfare with his background of KGB efficiency!
Jessica, clearly concerned about the fate of the Soviet big-wig who was quite kind to her, inquires about that fate. Bernicker replies:
“The Soviet hierarchy has a very protective attitude towards its own. Too much dirty linen on the line, people might wonder if all the clothes are not soiled. Of course, I do not condone such things. But I am merely a poorly paid policeman. Again, thank you.”
He hands the mystery writer a slim rectangular box as a going-away present. Jessica replies, “Thank you, very much.”
As she turns to walk toward her outbound plane, the Chief Inspector comments:
“I think that you may find the almond nougat particularly interesting.”
Underneath the nougat-lid is the microfilm. Any French sniffer-dog, as the beagle is known in that part of the world, can smell the plastic of deception device!