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For instance, I also wanted to include a section on speech-bubbles in children’s fiction. Not graphic novels, but illustrations with speech bubbles that accompany a continuous story. It can be very difficult to read them aloud in an order that makes sense. But trying to explain why it is such a problem took too much space, so I cut it.

Also, I probably should have mentioned that when I say this is a recent trend, I am talking about this millenium. The forensics book was copyright 2007.

"The Poisoner's Handbook" and Reading About Real Evil

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Recently I read The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York, by Deborah Blum. I was originally looking for information on poisons for a possible new mystery novel, but got caught up in the stories of poisonings, both accidental and deliberate, and the development of techniques for detecting them—not to mention the story of Prohibition in New York, and the politics that was inevitably involved along the way.
It was a very good book, but there was nonetheless something sort of creepy about reading an interesting story about a poisoning and remembering, suddenly, this really happened. Mary Frances Creighton really did kill first her brother, then a friend, with arsenic. A group of three people really did take out insurance on an old drunk, and then kill him with carbon monoxide after several attempts to kill him in other ways failed. Some people—too many—really are capable of doing evil things.
This brought to mind an incident from years ago, in college. Our class had been assigned a reading on pornography by someone whose name I have now forgotten. She described in impassioned terms some incredibly degrading images and corresponding attitudes toward women. Seriously, to say that these people were treating women as objects fails to recognize how much more carefully and gently we treat most of our inanimate possessions. It was extreme.
A number of us were sitting on the steps outside, waiting for class. One young woman started talking about the article, basically saying that it had seemed kind of over-the-top to her. “Who really thinks like that? None of the men I know,” she said.
An older student in the class, a soft-spoken man in his late twenties or thirties, heard her. “I’ve known men like that,” he told her. “They’re out there. Believe me.” I think everyone went quiet for a while after that.
So now I’m thinking maybe I should read about people who do horrible things, if only to remind myself that some people are capable of knowingly and willingly inflicting terrible suffering on others.  I do read about terrible things in the newspaper, but there’s a difference between reading about, say, dictators, who deal in evil on a scale that’s hard to comprehend (and often dealt out through intermediaries), and reading about quite ordinary individuals carrying out quite specific and describable crimes.
I’ve been lucky enough not to have had to deal with anyone really evil. Even people who are merely very unpleasant have generally been on the fringes of my life, not a daily part of it. As a result, perhaps, I tend to look for a charitable explanation for people’s actions.  
Often this is a good thing. But as the cases in The Poisoner’s Handbook show, sometimes there’s no room to wonder whether a person’s intentions were misunderstood or their actions excusable. Killing someone for insurance money makes one’s attitude toward other people quite clear. Sometimes, people really are just that bad.
It’s something to keep in mind.
Till next post.

Garden Battles–fighting for my tomatoes (and roses)

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In my imagination, a garden is a place of tranquil enjoyment where people move about slowly, smelling the roses and picking the fruits of their labor. Many public gardens are like this—well-tended spaces where visitors can soak up the atmosphere in comfort.
Not so in my backyard.
The problem isn’t with the work of gardening. Digging, planting, pruning, composting—I’m comfortable with those. I’m also okay with the fact that gardening takes time. I plant a fig and wait… and wait…three years now, and no fruit. But some day it will get there, I’m sure, as will the still-flowerless pomegranate bush. I’ve got time.
The problem is the pests. The four-footed pests, the six-footed pests, and those that have no feet at all.
The largest of the four-footed pests is the deer. Suburban deer are more and more numerous all the time. They are the main reason my landscaping is relatively boring. The back yard has plastic fencing attached to the chain-link to raise the height to nearly eight feet, but the front and sides of the house are undefended. As a result, my choices are limited. No hostas (deer candy), no roses (thorns will not stop them), no zinnias, no coneflowers. Even the azaleas get nibbled and so flower poorly. So I depend on rosemary, lavender, and irises where there is enough sun, and ferns and lamium in the shade.* The rest of the plants are restricted to the fenced backyard.
The fence doesn’t keep out other four-footed pests, though. The worst of these are the squirrels and the voles. The squirrels help themselves to my fruit before it has even ripened, running off with strawberries, green peaches, and half-ripe tomatoes. No fence will keep them out—I would have to cage my garden in chicken-wire to do that. 
While the squirrels attack from above, the voles attack from below. They leave neat little holes where plants once were. Sometimes I find a plant suddenly wilted and discover it no longer has any roots. I have lost whole rose bushes to voles, as well as tomato starts.
I haven’t included moles on my list of garden pests because they don’t eat plants and may in fact be snacking on the grubs of a different garden pest, the Japanese beetle. The Japanese beetle is certainly one of the most annoying of my six-footed pests, since it particularly likes the unopened buds of roses. Grasshoppers do damage to the leaves of plants, as does a mysterious brown beetle that only comes out at night. And then there is the tomato hornworm with its voracious appetite. It’s easy to pick off, though, so the worst thing about it is coming upon it unexpectedly when handling a tomato plant. (Shudder.)
Weeding is part of gardening, and I actually have fond feelings for the weeds that our guinea pigs used to enjoy: chickweed, wood sorrel, purslane, and dandelions. But sometimes a weed goes too far. I had just one summer of not being able to weed, and now the stiltgrass (Microstegium) is threatening to take over my entire yard. I am not kidding here. Naturally I would also like to be rid of the Youngia japonica and the mock strawberry (which does indeed mock me with a strawberry-like fruit that doesn’t taste like strawberries), but at least they aren’t growing knee-deep and dense enough to hide anything on the ground, from the garden hose to a yellow jacket’s nest.
The tiniest pests of all still make themselves felt in a big way.  I’ve lost rose after rose to black spot, a fungus, and a different fungus contributed to the deaths of two very well-developed apricot trees. I was afraid to replant apricots, lest the new ones go the same way, so now there is a fig in that spot. So far the fig is serenely unbothered by pests of any kind.
I have saved the very worst pest for last. This creature doesn’t eat, infect, or otherwise harm a single plant, but it has a bigger impact than any of the others. It is the mosquito. I can’t stay out more than ten minutes without long pants, long sleeves (in summer!), and DEET on all remaining exposed skin. Mosquitoes not only make it difficult for me to pull weeds, pick off bugs, and remove diseased leaves, but they also prevent me from enjoying my garden—which was the whole point of gardening in the first place.
And I can’t fence them out.
Till next post.
*Actually, I also have catmint, chives, thyme, sage, aromatic aster, assorted mints, and a pomegranate outside the deer fence. So far, they have not been eaten.