Claverack. “A Trick of the Light” Louise Penny. Three Pines. Linda Epperson. Mali. Radisson Blu in Mali. Agatha Christie. “Murder at Hazelmoor” Paris. Ca’Mea. Hudson, New York.
Today was a startlingly beautiful day; a perfect early fall day, the sun shining brightly with the temperature scraping near 60 degrees. The best part is that it is now late November!
I woke early and watched the sun glitter on the creek while sipping my morning coffee and reading the NY Times on my iPhone.
It has been a good day. I finished reading “A Trick of the Light,” a Louise Penny murder mystery set in the fictional town of Three Pines in southern Quebec. There are twelve or thirteen of them. My friend, Linda Epperson, told me about them some years ago and I have been working my way through them.
When I was in, I think, 3rd grade and was home sick, restless of course, my mother tossed an Agatha Christie at me. It was “Murder at Hazelmoor.” It converted me to being a mystery fan and a bit of an Anglophile. Thanks to my friend Dalton Delan, I am the proud owner of an original edition of the book.
Three Pines is a little village filled with eccentric characters and a disproportionate amount of murders per capita. What it does remind me of, a bit, is my little town of Claverack without the disproportionate number of murders.
A few years ago the son of the man who owns the house two doors down from me did, apparently, an amazing number of drugs and shot his father and then killed himself. I was out of town. The father lived and is still in the house.
But that moment haunts our street, just as all the murders in Three Pines haunt that village.
I am writing on about mysteries because I don’t want to think of the mystery which is the world.
Today’s tragedy was in Mali. Al Qaeda terrorists burst into the Radisson Blu hotel there and killed, at last count, at least 21, screaming “Allahu akbar” [God is Great, I think] while slitting one man’s throat and rampaging with automatic weapons.
It is over now. They are counting the dead. At least one American is gone. Another day, another tragedy played out. In Africa, where there have also been all the atrocities from Boko Haram.
Tuesday night, the night before my birthday, my friend Larry took me to dinner at one of our favorite spots, Ca’Mea, great northern Italian cooking. We talked about Paris; he and his wife, Alicia, had been there not long ago.
He was torn, thinking on one hand he wants to know what is really happening in the world and, on the other hand, not wanting to be overwhelmed by it.
I totally understand. Sometimes I just want to retreat to my two little acres of land and listen to jazz and watch movies and not think about what is happening out there in the world.
But I can’t.
I care too much.
Tags: "A Trick of the Light", Agatha Christie, Claverack, Linda Epperson, Louise Penny, Mali, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Murder at Hazelmoor, Radisson Blu in Mali
Letter from the Vineyard 
November 21, 2015 at 3:23 am |
But tempting at times, no?