New Stuff

I've decided to create a new blog dedicated solely to bible study. I am now going through the seemingly un-sexy book of Joshua, but getting some great things out of it. I have written several, but only posted an intro and then two posts. Check out Ch. 1: http://middletree.wordpress.com/2012/03/15/joshua-ch-1/

Check out this new book: A Silence of Mockingbirds

It's almost April, and that means a new book release I'm really looking forward to: "A Silence of Mockingbirds," by Karen Zacharias, who wrote a book I fell in love with a couple of years ago: "Will Jesus Buy Me Doublewide?".

"Silence" is a tragic story of the short life of three-year old Karly Sheehan. It will be released in April to coincide with National Child Abuse Prevention month.

I have to be honest: I don't look forward to reading a story about a child's murder any more than you do. But while I had been under the impression that child abuse was pretty much licked in the US, I was recently shocked to find that, in the US, 5 kids are murdered every day. As an American, I am ashamed of this. The author believes that this book can empower and educate a nation that has been reluctant to admit that it has the highest rate of child abuse of any industrialized country in the world.

I am reprinting an interview with the author that should give you more insights into the book.

================================================

"A Silence of Mockingbirds is beautifully written by a very talented investigative journalist. But, even more, this is Karen Zacharias’s  own story too, one of trust betrayed. A tragic book that we should all take to heart. We cannot change the past but we can save children who are in peril now. Karen has given us Karly’s legacy, that of a small, bright spirit who loved and was loved. And yet destroyed by heedless caretakers. A must read. Compelling and heartbreaking."

Ann Rule – New York Times Bestselling Author

Karen Spears Zacharias is an author and investigative journalist who teaches First Amendment Rights at Central Washington University in Ellensburg, Washington. In her upcoming book, A Silence of Mockingbirds: The Memoir of a Murder, Karen turns her investigative eye to the murder of three-year-old Karly Sheehan of Corvallis, Oregon. At one time, Karly’s mother, Sarah Sheehan, lived in the Zacharias home and was embraced as a daughter by the family.   

What happened to Karly? What was Sarah’s involvement? And how did Karly’s father, an Irish immigrant, end up as the state’s primary suspect in the abuse investigation? A Silence of Mockingbirds is not a simple love story – it is the troubling tale of a father’s love for the daughter he was unable to protect.

 

Question: How did you meet Sarah Brill Sheehan? 

Karen: As a young teenager Sarah Brill was assigned to an in-school detention class that I was supervising. Sarah possessed the jaw-dropping beauty of Halle Berry, and the reckless nature of Casey Anthony. She embodied a certain dangerous vulnerability that I recognized, so I reached out to her in a mentoring way that teachers often do.

Question: How was it Sarah came to live with your family?

Karen: At age 19, Sarah got pregnant. She asked my husband and me to adopt that child. For a variety of reasons we didn’t, but after Sarah gave birth she came to live with us. We considered Sarah our “adopted daughter.”

Question: So Karly wasn’t her first child?

Karen: No. She adopted her first daughter out to someone I introduced to her. Karly was the daughter she had with David Sheehan. A native of Kenmare, County Kerry, Ireland. David met Sarah in Corvallis, Oregon, home to Oregon State University. David was an engineer in town for training at Hewlett-Packard’s Corvallis campus, when the two met. They married in a Reno rush, lived in Ireland for a short time, and eventually settled in Corvallis, where Karly was born in January 2002.

 

Question: What happened to Karly?

Karen: She was murdered on June 3, 2005.

Question: This book is true crime memoir. Can you discuss what that means?

Karen:  I worked the cop beat as a reporter in Oregon for many years, so I knew all too well the inherent dangers of writing true crime. Fortunately, I had the benefit of being a known commodity in my community. Our local police trusted me to get it right. I didn’t have that advantage with A Silence of Mockingbirds. Although I am an OSU alum, I knew no one in law-enforcement in Oregon’s Benton-County when I began my research. It took me years to gain the trust of some of the law enforcement and attorneys on this case.

I suppose it was natural for me to approach this story as a crime reporter – it’s what I knew. I had years of experience in courtrooms and courthouses. I spent three years writing and rewriting  

A Silence of Mockingbirds as straight true crime. When I sent the manuscript to my agent, Alanna Ramirez at Trident Media in New York, she read it and then called me early the next day. Alanna told me that while she thought I had written a very compelling true crime story, there was a problem with the manuscript. “What interests me in this story is your relationship with this family and you’ve told us very little about that,” Alanna said. “You need to rewrite it as memoir.”

I knew the moment Alanna said it that she was right. It’s the same sort of knowing you get whenever you hear truth. You can almost feel your bones shift and right themselves, but the knowledge of it sickened me. I went straight to my office, where a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth ensued. For six weeks, the then 435-page manuscript set on my desk staring at me like a flame-eyed demon. I had no idea, none at all, how I would deconstruct this book and start again, but I was determined to do so. Then one day I was cleaning up my desk (which is what writers do when they can’t figure out what to write) and I came across some of the letters I had written to Inmate Shawn Field, the man convicted of killing Karly Sheehan. It was one of those Ah-ha moments that Oprah speaks about so frequently. My Ah-ha moment came when I realized those letters were the opening for the true crime memoir, and I began to write. A year later, I had an entirely new manuscript.

 

Question: How does true crime differ from memoir?

Karen: Having authored three memoirs now, it’s not the differences between true crime and memoir I notice but the many ways in which they are similar.

Are you familiar with The Adversary: A True Story of Monstrous Deceptionby Emmanuel Carrere?  It’s a deeply disturbing account of Jean-Claude Romand, a Frenchman who is serving a life sentence for killing his wife, his children, and his parents in 1993. Romand was France’s Bernie Madoff. For years he lived a fictionalized life, reportedly working as a medical researcher for the World Health Organization, while bilking friends and family of funds to support his lies and lifestyle.

Carrere, who struck up a relationship with Romand after he was imprisoned, weaves his own personal narrative into the murderous account. The book opens:"On the Saturday morning of January 9, 1993, while Jean-Claude Romand was killing his wife and children, I was with mine in a parent teacher meeting.”

It does seem that the most compelling true crime stories are those in which the writer finds themselves entangled in personal narrative. That has certainly been the case for the beloved crime writer Ann Rule whose long-career started with her relationship with serial-killer Ted Bundy.

I met and interviewed Ann during my reporting years. She had suggested at the time that I turn my eye toward writing true crime. When I told her about Karly’s death, Ann said, “This is your Ted Bundy story.” I’m humbled and overwhelmed that Ann Rule has given such a resounding endorsement to this work, calling it “a must read”.

In my opinion, the pitfall for any memoirist is the temptation to cling to one’s own mythology. Unfortunately, some memoirists write as if they are elementary school boys trying to out-wee each other. Such writing isn’t about honesty as much as it is about trying to crank up the shock value. But when the writing is about the discovery of truth, it matters not whether one is writing true crime or memoir or fiction.

Question: Does the book contain specific recommendations for individuals and society in preventing child abuse?

Karen: Yes. Absolutely. The book is being released in April to coincide with National Child Abuse Prevention month. I have partnered with national advocacy groups such as Childhelp (Childhelp.org), Child Abuse Intervention Centers, the National Children’s Alliance (NationalChildrensAllianceorg) and Fathers and Families (FathersandFamilies.org) to help raise awareness about our nation’s child abuse epidemic.

Flannery O’Connor said it best: “The truth doesn’t change based upon our ability to stomach it.”

Abused children don’t need us to feel sorry for them. They need us to act on their behalf – as family, as friends, as neighbors, as teachers, as doctors, as law enforcement officers, as reporters, as pastors, and as legislators. That is the only way we are going to curb this crisis. We cannot fix this world but we can change it.

But we can’t even do that until we educate ourselves on what we are failing to do and what we need to do better. A Silence of Mockingbirds provides practical insights into the subtle, and sometimes glaringly obvious things we overlook, the multitudes of ways in which abuse insinuates itself into our neighborhoods, and our communities, and our families. Everyone in Karly Sheehan’s life was college-educated. Many of them were trained professionals who were supposed to be able to identify and prevent child abuse. Yet, Karly’s abuse had been ongoing for months prior to her death. These people should have known better. Why didn’t they?  

Question: Will you write another true crime?

Karen: I try to use my voice as a writer to speak for those whose voices have been marginalized and/or muted. So while I don’t think of myself as a true crime writer, dead people often play heavily into my work, so I suppose it’s entirely possible. 

For more information on this book, go to www.MacAdamCage.com. 

For more information on the author, go to karenzach.com

To schedule an event, please contact khandschuch@gmail.com

Embarrassing video clip--John Cougar

I recently stumbled across some Youtube gold: a live performance by John Mellencamp when he was Johnny Cougar. He appears to be have been about 23, and he's singing "Ain't even Done With The Night", in front of a fairly unresponsive crowd with Bobby Bare (?!) in the front seat.

Cougar/Mellencamp is dressed in a nerdy sweater and generally bears no resemblance to the singer as we knew him just 5 years later. He looks a lot more like Potsie from Happy Days than the guy who sang "Pink Houses". Certainly, there is no way to watch this and make a connection to the guy whose song "This is Our Country" beat us to death by overuse in pickup truck commercials.

But the real entertainment value from this clip comes from the guys behind Cougar. In hot-pink tuxedos, there are 5 Pips-like backup dancers/singers who don't sing, but clap their hands real well. They essentially spend the entire song performing cheerleader dance routines not unlike those seen at high school football games.

There is no band, which would lead you to think it's all lip-synced. However, Cougar ad-libs a few times as if to make it clear to us that no lip-syncing shenanigans are going on.

Those two elements (lack of a band + backup dancers) converge in an especially funny/awkward attempt to act out the sax solo. Yes, you heard that right--a backup singer who doesn't sing acts out a saxophone solo at the 2:45 mark.

Amazingly embarrassing video. I bet he wants all the copies of this burned.

Top Ten List: Things Much More Popular Than They Should Be

The following are either immensely popular, or very highly regarded, and all of them for no good reason.

1. Star Wars
2. In-n-Out Burger
3. The Social Network
4. Arcade Fire
5.Raging Bull
6. McDonalds burgers
7. Dances With Wolves
8. Lost
9. Fargo
10. Caddyshack

The Pursuit of the Coveted "Yes"

The living room is silent, despite being populated by a dozen people.  Every head is down, every eye closed.  A few guys get up from their comfy seats to lay hands on Bob, the man who just presented his prayer request. Finally, someone initiates intercession. This prayer is in line with Bob's request. It's short and sweet. More silence.

Then, a revelation comes to you, straight from heaven. You have something special, specific, and unexpected to pray concerning Bob. It's radical. Dang near prophetic.

It's a bit out of left field, but you don't let that stop you. You spill it out. Only problem is, you notice the silence. As you say out loud the things you are convinced God gave you (am I the only one who can no longer say "God laid this on my heart" with a straight face? I digress.), you cannot help but note that you don't hear anyone else agreeing with you.

Once you pick up on this, you feel awkward. If you don’t hear a “yes”, then that means that the prayer you are praying isn’t from God after all, and you’re probably surrounded right now by a bunch of disagreers.  You know that if you were to open your eyes right now, they’d all be glaring at you, with a scowl on their face. But as we all know, opening your eyes during prayer is against a commandment or  the Bill of Rights or something, so you have only your imagination to go by.

Oh, what you'd give for someone in the room to say "yes" to even one of the things that's coming out of your pie hole right now. If someone says "yes", then they are agreeing that your prayer really does come from God. It means you're not crazy. It's conclusive evidence that everyone in the entire room is on board with you and what you are praying on Bob's behalf. It says that you clearly have special insight into Bob's heart, and it validates you as a human being.

Ah, to hear the “yes.” It’s a goal worth pursuing. To not hear it would be devastating, and you'd pretty much want to crawl in a hole. But if you do hear “yes,” then your investment of prayer has been worth it. It's all about the "yes." It's the Holy Grail. I never occurs to you that you should hope for an answer to your prayer, and some help for Bob, more than you want that affirmation from the other people in the living room.

The "yes" is the thing. The fact that Bob's situation might actually be better as a result of all the prayer? Icing on the cake.

Ironic blog post

I can't define "irony", but I find the following actual true facts to be full of it:


1. Barry Manilow didn't write "I Write the Songs."

2. Westboro Baptist Church is neither Baptist nor a church.

3. Prince Fielder is a great hitter but not a good fielder.

4. Jimmy Fixx helped get the whole nation interested in running for health reasons, but then he died while running, at the too-young age of 52.

5. The song playing in the restaurant on the Italian cruise ship at the moment it hit the rocks? "My Heart Will Go On" by Celine Dion. AKA the theme from "Titanic".

6. The phobia of longs words has a name: Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia

7. Cy Young was a great pitcher, but he never was quite good enough to win a Cy Young award.