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Don’t let the smile fool you Author Pat Bertram posted an interesting piece on her blog today called “Pain Management,” in which she talked about the problem of doctors prescribing lower than needed doses of opioids so that patients have to live in pain and/or the issue of pharmacies’ refusing to fill prescriptions because they think they have a right to second guess what’s on the script. I know the problem in spades. My wife and I have both been yelled at by doctors who didn’t like the meds other doctors were prescribing. (We yelled back.) We’ve fought medication-related battles with doctors and pharmacies many times, so I was tempted to write a post about it. Turns out, the subject makes me too angry to write about coherently.
- Aw, China is ticked off about our shooting down its weather balloon.
I’m enjoying another Kathy Reichs novel, Grave Secrets. It’s been fun, but I think the novel suffers from too many plots. Here’s the blurb on the novel’s Amazon page: “They are ‘the disappeared,’ twenty-three massacre victims buried in a well in the Guatemalan village of Chupan Ya two decades ago. Leading a team of experts on a meticulous, heartbreaking dig, Tempe Brennan pieces together the violence of the past. But a fresh wave of terror begins when the horrific sounds of a fatal attack on two colleagues come in on a blood-chilling satellite call. Teaming up with Special Crimes Investigator Bartolome Galiano and Montreal detective Andrew Ryan, Tempe quickly becomes enmeshed in the cases of four privileged young women who have vanished from Guatemala City—and finds herself caught in deadly territory where power, money, greed, and science converge.”
I don’t understand how one political party says “there is no border crisis,” in spite of news reports like this one from the Associated Press, “A surge in migration from Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua in September brought the number of illegal crossings to the highest level ever recorded in a fiscal year, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.” And. the opposition party says it has no solution. This is why I don’t trust the two major parties.- The photo at the top of my blog is a stand of sea oats, a protected plant in Florida. I’m very fond of them because I saw them so often while more or less living at the Gulf coast while growing up.
–Malcolm
Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of novels primarily set in Montana and Florida.
Rainy and wet today here in Northwest Georgia. Robbie, our indoor/outdoor kitty is inside. He must know that heavier rain is coming. All in all, a good day to stay inside and work on the next novel in my Florida Folk Magic Series set in Tallahassee and a fictional town near the Apalachicola River. Perhaps there’ll even be something fun to watch on TV tonight like, hmm, another episode of “Swamp People” on the History Channel.
The Guardian story about the police murder in Memphis is headlined: “Tyre Nichols’s death after police encounter was ‘failing of basic humanity’, says Memphis chief.” The newspaper notes that there were 1,176 “police-involved” killings in 2022. The daily news routinely includes a police atrocity like this or a mass shooting by some thug from the community. Many newspapers and commentators say that inflation or possibly problems at the U.S./Mexico border are the country’s top news stories. They’re wrong, I think. Violence ought to be at the top of the list.
No, I don’t plan to watch the upcoming Super Bowl Game. I haven’t cared for years, though if the Atlanta Falcons were playing, I might watch. I tend to watch college football, especially if the Florida State University Seminoles are playing. They had a decent season, though not as good as the University of Georgia’s Dawgs, a team I only root for when they’re playing the University of Florida Gators.
The temperature is 16° up from 13°. The wind chill is -2°, though it was lower during the night when the winds were brisker than necessary.
I read in the news that Putin wants to end the war with Ukraine. Okay, just withdraw your troops and stop shelling civilians and you’ll get your wish. I’m sure you recognize your spent rockets. Just don’t fire any more of them and the war will be over. It’s not rocket science.
Téa Obreht’s Inland reminds me of the prose style of Cormac McCarthy. She uses two overlapping timelines and that makes reading a challenge. As you read, you may well wonder how so many well-meaning people come to ruin.
As look at today’s national weather stories about the possibility of a bomb cyclone, I’m really happy I no longer live on the Illinois/Wisconsin border. You’ll notice that the graphic shows a few flakes drifting across the state line into Georgia. We’re promised little to no accumulation.
Our nearby horse/dog/cat rescue and retirement farm is fighting higher and higher prices this year from maintenance to bales of hay. If you’re looking for a great organization to support, directly or via Amazon’s smile program, please consider 
I enjoyed reading Kathy Reich’s first book in her Temperance Brennan series Déjà Dead. I doubt it ever saw a slush pile because it’s filled with enough chopped-up bones, high-quality forensic anthropologist work, unco-operative policework, and real scares at Brennan’s house to satisfy any reader of crime novels. Readers will learn a lot about saws, cutting bones, Montreal, and possibly a little québécois. I started the series with the last book, then the second-to-last book, and now the first book. I might have gotten hooked. something I never thought would happen (and am a little embarrassed to admit) with a police procedural. Perhaps this is better called an autopsy procedural.
Facebook has been filled lately with photographs of weird stuff in cooking pans that people are looking forward to eating (the stuff, not the pans). I think most of the “food” in the photographs looks trashcan ready even though these posts get lots of likes and recipe requests. I’m tempted to say that these culinary catastrophes look like stuff swept off the kitchen floor and dumped into a Dutch oven with a quart of water. But I don’t: (a) because I’m a polite person, and (b) because I don’t want people to come back and say that my books look like something vacuumed (or Hoovered if you’re English) out of a slush pile.
Based on my glowing recommendation, a close friend of mine just began reading Wolf Hall, the 2009 historical novel by the late Hilary Mantel. I worry a little when I recommend novels and hope the friend is still speaking to me when they finish the book (assuming they finish the book). I have high hopes, especially when I see experts’ reactions like this one in Wikipedia: In The Guardian, Christopher Tayler wrote, “Wolf Hall succeeds on its own terms and then some, both as a non-frothy historical novel and as a display of Mantel’s extraordinary talent. Lyrically yet cleanly and tightly written, solidly imagined yet filled with spooky resonances, and very funny at times, it’s not like much else in contemporary British fiction. A sequel is apparently in the works, and it’s not the least of Mantel’s achievements that the reader finishes this 650-page book wanting more.”
Florida State University in Tallahassee, where I received my BA, hasn’t been the powerhouse football team for some years it once was, so I’m happy with every win, especially against in-state rivals Miami and the University of Florida. Last night, the Seminoles beat the Miami Hurricanes 45-3. Meanwhile, Houston won the World Series. I should mention that the term “Seminole” is not a mascot but the name of the team with the written permission of the never-conquered Seminole Nation. FSU and the Seminole Nation have been working together for decades on cultural and educational programs.
Many southerners won’t use fifty-dollar bills because they don’t like Grant’s picture on them. If I could, I would avoid using the twenty-dollar bill because Jackson’s picture is on them. He killed Indians in Florida with a vengeance and is the architect of and the force behind the inexcusable Trail of Tears. Fortunately, his picture is scheduled to be removed by 2030. That’s not soon enough for me. However, time is needed to design the anti-counterfeit system for the currency.
The next book on my reading list now that I’ve finished rereading The Tiger’s Wife is Inland, also by Téa Obreht. The novel was released two years ago which shows how far behind I am in my reading. In its review, “Entertainment Weekly” wrote, “What Obreht pulls off here is pure poetry. It doesn’t feel written so much as extracted from the mind in its purest, clearest, truest form.” I hope that turns out to be the way I feel about it. None of you should be surprised when I say that I’m always attracted by good novels written in the magical realism genre.
NPR’s interview with author Richard V. Reeves 
I see Yahoo “news” because one of my e-mail accounts in on their system. Every day, I see headlines like these: “Salma Hayek Took Everyone’s Breath Away in This Daring & Curve-Hugging Ombre Gown at the LACMA Gala” and “Kendall Jenner’s Skirt Slung So Low, It Showed off the Hem of Her Sheer Bodysuit Underneath.” My first response is “Who cares.” My second is, “Why does Yahoo have a daily feature story (or two or ten) about celebrities wearing revealing outfits?” I have no answers for such things.
The Lords of Discipline by Pat Conroy has been the perfect book for re-reading on this dour Sunday afternoon. In the novel, we read of the terror of attendance at the “Carolina Military Institute.” So many people–including the Citadel’s top brass, I suppose–saw the 1980 novel as a veiled and not very flattering account of education at the Citadel. So, they banned him from the campus for two decades. Conroy is my favorite author and I much prefer South of Broad and The Prince of Tides to this novel.
I see this free and downloadable magazine “Learning Justice” from the Southern Poverty Law Center as an excellent chance to consider how teaching should be happening in our schools. According to the center, “Current censorship efforts and attacks on inclusive schools show that education is indeed the battlefield for justice, and the new issue of Learning for Justice magazine highlights the fact that the fight for democracy is built on intersecting struggles for justice.” (Download your copy of Issue 3, Fall 2022 Learning for Justice magazine: 
If you’re a constant visitor on Facebook, you’ll remember seeing photographs people took years ago under the designation of FBT (Fall Back Thursday.) One of my favorite FBT pictures shows what happened a lot when we first moved here since the fence around the adjoining pasture was always falling down. The most fun comes when the cows get out at night and we all go out to round them up in the dark when we can hardly see them. Seriously, you don’t want these heavy critters in the yard because they create mini-potholes wherever they go. Those play havoc with the riding mower for weeks.
In a recent post called 
If you like the artist Edward Hopper as much as I do, you might enjoy this article in The Guardian about an upcoming documentary film, 
As a pacifist, I really shouldn’t say this, but I think the world would be a whole lot safer if Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin met with an unfortunate “accident.” Maybe Abby and Martha, the aunts in “Arsenic and Old Lace” can invite him over for spiked “elderberry wine.”
Sometimes I look at the latest books on Amazon and don’t feel like reading any of them. That means returning once again to the comfort zone of books on my shelves where there’s always something to re-read. This week it’s Gods and Generals, Jeff Shaara’s prequel to his father’s book about Gettysburg, The Killer Angels. Gods and Generals follows the Union and Confederate principals at the point when secession occurs as a knee-jerk response to Lincoln’s election.
Grist ran a strong article called 
I know your eyes will glaze over, but we’ve been making a squash casserole for years that fits our comfort food addiction. It’s easy to make and lasts for three dinners with only two of us in the house–not counting the cats. Years ago, we used it as a side dish. But as we’ve aged, we have less room for big meals.
I was intrigued by Charles Passy’s article 
My wife’s birthday is today. Her age is, of course, classified. She has told me to stop referring to her as my trophy wife. The photograph, with my granddaughter Freya, was taken at Disney World several years ago. We’re kind of low-key about our birthdays. We exchange cards but stopped buying birthday gifts some years ago because both of us order the stuff we need/want Online and don’t need a separate birthday list. So, we’ll have some comfort food for supper and find something interesting on TV to watch other than anything about the monarchy. Our next “road trip” is scheduled for Thanksgiving when we visit my daughter, her husband, and my two granddaughters in Maryland.
Malcolm's Round Table 