Tom Piccirilli is an author of noir fiction, thrillers, science fiction, poetry, and horror, among other things.  He's been extremely prolific in the last twenty-odd years, raking in lots of Bram Stoker Awards, a couple of International Thriller Writer Awards, and some nominations for others, like the World Fantasy Award and the Edgar.  The man is a production machine.

But he's not just about quantity; his work is solid, and he's well respected in his field for his writing style, kindness, and support of other authors.  In short, he's a mensch, and I suspected he was immortal until late last year.

That was when Tom discovered that his strange vision problems and killer headaches weren't just something simple.  They were being caused by a large, cancerous tumor in his brain.

So much for being immortal.

Tom went through the surgery and the chemical treatments while his wife, Michelle, dutifully kept everyone informed of his condition via Facebook.  Donations poured in from everywhere to help with the medical bills.

And he made it through.

Somehow, Tom kept working, too.  What he calls his "next LAST book" is due out in July 2013, titled The Last Whisper in the Dark, but before that, he put out a little book called What Makes You Die.  This book was published by Apex Publications, and to promote it, they held a poetry contest.  The rules were that the poem had to be titled "What Makes You Die", and they got a number of excellent entries.  I entered the contest with an original poem, and as fate would have it, I won!  The poem first appeared on the Apex Publications website (of course), but the editors were gracious enough to allow me to reprint it here.  (Thanks, Lesley!) 
 

What Makes You Die

(for Pic)

Back in the day, death was binary
Alive or dead, on or off, one or zero
Now, there is no zero state
Hit by a car?
Pick a new body. We'll restore "you" from backup
Brain cancer?
No worries! We'll grow another one
It's not about whether you live any more,
It's about what you create while you live

Art is the new yardstick
Content is the new blood
The more you bleed, the less you die, so
Open a vein and try to keep up

Whatever you do, don't keep it to yourself;
That is what makes you die.

-- Stace Johnson

I saw the very good '42', the new film about the first year of Jackie Robinson's major league life. Harrison Ford does a good job with Branch Rickey and the young guy who plays Robinson is fine. The story is told and it is a harrowing one, and it is told without much sentimentality. That is good. Robinson suffered the extreme racism of those times and the film captures that. There is a scene early in the film in which in JR's first year ('47), in a game in Philadelphia, when the Phillies manager (Chapman) stands in front of the dugout and yells 'nigger, nigger, go back where you came from, etc' and then we see a despairing and angry Jackie in the tunnel back to the lockers banging his bat against a wall. Rickey chose Jackie because he thought he would be a great player (which he was) but also because he wanted a mild force to handle the awful prejudice that would come with the first black player in the major leagues. Jackie had been a star player at UCLA (my alma mater) and knew life freed from extreme racism in L.A. The film is full of great emotional possibilities, and the relationship between Rachel his wife and Jackie is well done. This was a ceremonial link to the possible links with a future American scene that was at least race-neutral, as several great black athletes came into the major leagues.  Jackie Robinson is a man for all to behold, in his insistence and his capacities as an athlete. He ended a ten year career with a lifetime average of .311, several all-star occasions, as well as World Series triumphs. He is a member of Baseball's Hall of Fame. 

from Wikipedia:

Jack Roosevelt "Jackie" Robinson (January 31, 1919 – October 24, 1972) was an American baseball player who became the first African American to play in Major League Baseball (ML in the modern era.^[1] Robinson broke the baseball color line when the Brooklyn Dodgers started him at first base on April 15, 1947. As the first major league team to play a black man since the 1880s, the Dodgers ended racial segregation that had relegated black players to the Negro leagues for six decades.^[2] The example of Robinson's character and unquestionable talent challenged the traditional basis of segregation, which then marked many other aspects of American life, and contributed significantly to the Civil Rights Movement.^[3][4]

In addition to his cultural impact, Robinson had an exceptional baseball career. Over ten seasons, Robinson played in sixWorld Series and contributed to the Dodgers' 1955 World Championship. He was selected for six consecutive All-Star Games, from 1949 to 1954,^[5] was the recipient of the inaugural MLB Rookie of the Year Award in 1947, and won the National League Most Valuable Player Award in 1949—the first black player so honored.^[6] Robinson was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962. In 1997, Major League Baseball "universally" retired his uniform number, 42, across all major league teams; he was the first pro athlete in any sport to be so honored. Initiated for the first time on April 15, 2004, Major League Baseball has adopted a new annual tradition, "Jackie Robinson Day", on which every player on every team wears #42.

Robinson was also known for his pursuits outside the baseball diamond. He was the first black television analyst in MLB, and the first black vice-president of a major American corporation. In the 1960s, he helped establish the Freedom National Bank, an African-American-owned financial institution based in Harlem, New York. In recognition of his achievements on and off the field, Robinson was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal.

As I begin planning an MRI and a possible surgery on a damaged knee, I saw this piece in the WaPo and remembered all that pain involved in one of the US's most popular sports. I had a knee surgery in the 60s from an injury while linebacking at UCLA. The surgery was the old-time large incision variety, not the new arthroscopic that is much less obtrusive and seems to require less recovery time. But the whole area of injury from American Football is really a great sad saga of gladiatorial activity in youth that leaves people in terrible pain for the better part of their lives. I remember seeing the story of John Mackey, the great Baltimore tight end, and his travails with concussion-related dementia, pretty early on. And the sheer quantity of knee, shoulder, and leg injuries among former NFL players is staggering. Many of my friends with injuries from football days made sure their children played other sports, notably,  soccer football. Pain is just not a great contributor to quality of life. Take my word.

A Washington Post survey of retired NFL players found that nearly nine in 10 report suffering from aches and pains on a daily basis, and they overwhelmingly – 91 percent – connect nearly all their pains to football.

“I hurt like hell every morning when I wake up,” says former linebacker Darryl Talley, 52.

“I can’t run anymore,” says former offensive lineman Pete Kendall, 39. “I can’t play basketball with my kids, can’t walk for any extended distance.”

“I’m 40 years old going on 65,” says Roman Oben, another ex-lineman. “God knows what I’ll feel like when I’m actually 65 years old.”

The Post’s online survey of more than 500 retired players paints a rare portrait of thetoll a career in the NFL has on the long-term health of those who competed in the bruising game. The results also present a striking paradox: Nine in 10 said they’re happy they played the sport. But fewer than half would recommend children play it today.

WaPo May 19, 2013

I think that this elemental allegation of  scandal regarding the IRS and non-profit status is a concoction more than any sense of malfeasance by IRS employees. It looks bad, but if you look into the issue of the 501 C's, you get a different perspective, as Rattner tries to point out in his NY Times piece. I have been involved in many non-profits--in education, publishing and theaters.  In my experience, the non-profit status allows donors to contribute to institutions for the sake of education and art. This outrage over the targeting of  'teaparty' affiliates is really about how this group of organizations is trying to have it both ways. The example of Karl Rove having both a non-profit and a PAC is a good one. When the Supreme Court opened up unlimited campaign financing for corporations in its Citizens United case, all hell broke loose when it came to big money flooding the political system.  The whole thing, as Rattner argues, needs some serious revisions. 

 

By way of background, the decision in 2010 to target groups with certain words in their names did not come out of nowhere. That same year, the Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United case substantially liberalized rules around political contributions, stimulating the formation of many activist groups.

In the year ended Sept. 30, 2010, the division received 1,741 applications from “social welfare organizations” requesting tax-exempt status. Two years later, the figure was 2,774. Meanwhile, the staff of the division tasked with reviewing these applications was reduced as part of a series of budget reductions imposed on the I.R.S. by anti-tax forces.

A far higher proportion of the new applicants wanted to pursue a conservative agenda than a liberal agenda. So without trying to defend the indefensible profiling, it wouldn’t be that shocking if low-level staff members were simply, but stupidly, trying to find an efficient way to sift through the avalanche of applications.

One of the bigger ironies about the I.R.S. imbroglio is that it had nothing to do with taxes. These newly formed entities didn’t seek 501(c)(4) status to avoid taxes — these groups don’t earn profits and therefore don’t pay any taxes, regardless of their status. The important benefit that came from achieving 501(c)(4) status was freedom from having to disclose the names of any of their donors.

That’s right, what the I.R.S. was really deciding in these cases is which organizations have to disclose their funders and which don’t. And what it was trying to do — however dumbly it went about it — was to reduce the abuse of the campaign-finance rules, not the tax laws.

Without 501(c)(4) status, these groups would have had to organize as what are known colloquially as “super PACs.” While this would have afforded them greater flexibility to overtly support candidates, the names of their donors would have to be made public.

In theory, 501(c)(4)’s are supposed to be social welfare organizations. But the rules are vague and are often stretched.

Some groups have interpreted the regulations as permitting them to spend as much as 49 percent of their funds directly advocating for or attacking the election of candidates, maintaining all the while the secrecy of their donors’ names.

Perhaps most incredibly, a 501(c)(4) can even transfer a portion of its funds to a super PAC, which can — thanks in part to the Citizens United decision — freely support candidates for office

Karl Rove established just such a structure by pairing a 501(c)(4) organization (Crossroads GPS) with a super PAC (American Crossroads). By some accounts he raised as much as $300 million for these entities. And yet there’s no evidence that the I.R.S. ever questioned the 501(c)(4) status granted to Crossroads GPS.

So let’s, by all means, find the wrongdoers at the I.R.S. and punish them. But the biggest take-away from the I.R.S. mess should be that our campaign-finance system is in desperate need of overhaul.

 

Steven Rattner

NY Times 5-17-2013

Saw new Redford film The Company You Keep and thought it oddly not all there. It seemed like an attempt to bring the radical elements of the Weather Underground, a violent player in the anti-Vietnam movement, into some kind of narrative focus. But it comes across somehow as a vehicle for aged stars like Sarandon, Julie Christie, and Redford to have a kind of showcase for their political heritage. There is an affecting scene with Sarandon, who has given herself up to law enforcement, saying how important it was to fight against an illegal and devastating war in Vietnam with everything her group could muster. Asked if she would do it again, she said yes. Redford's man on the run character seems barely cohesive, though his exchange with some of his bretheren in the old movement fill in what is otherwise a kind of insinuated manhunt for a suspected terrorist. The Julie Christie character's reversal of direction as she gives herself up for the killing of a security guard at a Michigan bank way back when is the closing element, and then we see Redford walking away from custody with his daughter, speaking silently. I hope if Redford directs again, he casts the piece with actors other than pals who have seen better screen days. There is a documentary on the Weather Underground people that is much more interesting than this. The anti-war movement was a big part of many of our lives and many of us paid a high price in private lives and work lives which suffered because we were so utterly opposed to what looked to many of us like a devastating an unnecessary war that left so many Vietnamese and Americans killed for reasons of arrogance and stupidity. As McNamara finally admitted years after the fact: 'We were wrong, we were terribly wrong.' Indeed. 

 

--BP

Bob Cesca in the Huffington Post takes to task the Senate who voted down what the majority of the US population wants in terms of expanded background checks. Meanwhile the families of the Newtown children slaughtered don't even get a token victory. It is pretty shameless. 

 

If Dzhokhar Tsarnaev had somehow managed to evade capture and had traveled to a gun show in, say, neighboring Vermont, New Hampshire or Maine, he would've been able to easily purchase one or more military-style assault weapons without a background check thanks in part to the efforts of senators like Lindsey Graham, who voted to filibuster the Toomey/Manchin amendment by order of the extremists at the National Rifle Association last week. You know, because of the Constitution. Yet Graham is more than happy to indulge his own hysterical blindness by escalating the war on terrorism to include American citizens on American soil and all non-Al Qaeda terrorists, thus expanding the mandates of the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force and further enabling an endless war with accompanying endless war powers. Constitution be damned.

But regarding the successful filibuster of the Toomney/Manchin accord, I can't think of another display of mutual indulgence between Congress and a special interest group that comes close to registering on the outrage meter when compared with the failure of the background checks amendment in the Senate last Wednesday.

If we were unsure about this before, it ought to be abundantly clear today that the propagandists at the NRA wield staggering levels of power over the most exclusive lawmaking body in the world. The NRA owns the Senate. Sure, only 46 senators ultimately voted against extending background checks, but the fact that this relatively innocuous measure was the only gun control amendment that had a chance of passing indicates a broader epidemic of subservience to the gun lobby.

The Toomey/Manchin amendment would've merely expanded the background check system that's already in place to include gun shows and Internet sales -- two major loopholes that allow potential criminals and extremist groups to attain assault rifles and other firearms completely under the radar. Closing these loopholes should've been a no-brainer and approved by an overwhelming majority of the Senate, not haggled, belabored and filibustered as if it was a new and unusual trespass against liberty and American values.

Nearly everyone wanted this legislation to pass:

Spent the day at one of my favorite balnearios (hot springs) in San Miguel, Escondido. With friends from Milwaukee, Wayne (a retired alderman) and Robin, a psychiatrist in current practice there, we went through the major pool of hot water, with a chorro (intense waterfall) and got into various terrific conversations as the day was therapeutic and wide-ranging. We talked of psychotherapy, politics, poetry, life in San Miguel, the pace of life in the US as opposed to Mexico and various threads. We had a good Mexican comida, quesadillas and flautas, good cerveza, and it was a relaxing and fun day for three blokes in the warm Mexican spring. A warm day, close to 90, but clear and satisfying, as the natural world of Escondido greeted us. It has pools full of lily pads of various colors, frogs, and grounds that greenly sweep around the pools of water. The staff is good-natured and the day was a relaxing splendor that makes life here sometimes wondrous.