A Good Man

"Let there be no more argument about what a good man should be. Be one."
- Marcus Aurelius

Thanksgiving

Raleigh, North Carolina - Today, America is one of the wealthiest nations on the planet. One of the largest nations on the planet in population, and considered the strongest militarily. Often, when foreign wars are about to break out, a word from our commander in chief has stayed it. Our president is the leader of the free world, we are one of the freest nations on the planet. And all of this came from a small group of pilgrims clinging to the Eastern Seaboard, half of them dying their first winter, freezing and starving to death. Truly, Americans have much to be thankful for. Good night everybody, and a happy thanksgiving.

Andrew C. Abbott

Sherlock Holmes

“I submit for your inspection one John H. Watson: medical man, late British army surgeon, raconteur, journalist…. Knight of the Battered Tin Dispatch Box, valiant and loyal friend.”

One doctor created another. In 1887, around Christmas, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a doctor of small practice, published A Study in Scarlet. In it, Watson has just come back from the war, and has a wound. Living on army pay, he needs to find “comfortable rooms at a reasonable price.” A friend tells him he knows of someone who may wish to share a room, and takes the good doctor to meet him.

The man is highly eccentric (he comes into the story beating a dead body with a stick to calculate the effect of bruising after death), smokes, and plays the violin. His name is Sherlock Holmes, and the flat number is 221B, Baker Street.

The first book was not well received. It did not sell out, and got poor reviews. However, three later Doyle tried again, this time with greater success. Not long after, a series of twenty-four stories were ordered by Strand Magazine. (It was the Life of its time.) Soon, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson were rushing all over London and the English countryside, Watson with his revolver, Holmes with his pipe, Holmes shocking people by telling them a great deal about themselves through deduction, Watson writing everything down. Some people did, and some whom I have met still do, think Holmes to have been real.

After twenty-three stories, Moriarty, the great criminal mind, the second greatest in London, second only to Mycroft, Holmes brother, decides that Holmes has “inconvenienced” him once too often. It is the story of The Final Problem. When it appeared, ending in the seeming death of Sherlock Holmes, himself and Moriarty, in a death struggle, falling over the abyss and into Reichenbach falls, over twenty thousand readers of Strand canceled their subscriptions immediately.

Three years later, Watson is visited by a book seller, who asks him if he would like some rare books, to hide a bare spot on the shelf, Watson looks at the spot, turns around, and sees Holmes throwing away his disguise.

Holmes had returned, having survived by landing on a ledge and going into hiding to escape Moriarty’s men, to capture Colonel Sebastian Moran. And so the adventures continue, the deductions go on, until Holmes goes on to retire, just before coming out of retirement one last time to save Britain from the Germans in World War I, in His Last Bow.

Andrew C. Abbott

50 Years

Greensboro, North Carolina – Fifty years ago today John Fitzgerald Kennedy, President of the United States, was shot and killed in Dallas Texas. I am told by those that were alive that it was a shock to the national system. Children who were in the second grade playing on the playground had it announced to them over the loudspeakers, and they still remember.

Today, fifty years later, it is the feature of newspapers, the subject of television specials, twitter and Facebook posts. Even foreign newspapers, such as The Guardian, stop to remember the man from Camelot, who lived just over 1,000 days in the White House.

Putting aside who shot him, where the bullets came from and went to, how many films were taken, what happened with the bag-man, whether the Irish Mafia was involved, or who Jack Ruby was, the real mystery remains to be how the nation remembers them

At his time, the Kennedy family was the height of good looks. “When knights and fair ladies roamed Washington” according to the book A Women Named Jackie. And even though we now know that much of it was fake, that he had back problems, his wife was not exactly the nicest person in town, (she once ordered passengers off of an airplane, according to one author, so she could have seats she had not booked) and they were drug abusers.

Still, the Kennedys still manage to hold their place. Such as when a video in tribute to a lesser member of the dynasty, Ted, was shown at the DNC Presidential Convention in 2012, and the president, when talking up his party during one his campaigns, stated “we are still the party of Lincoln, we are still the party of Kennedy.” There was even a nephew of Jack’s in congress until two years ago.

Even now that the dynasty is mostly broken up, the moon has been reached, the missiles have left Cuba, and Jackie is no longer around to flaunt her hair-do, the story continues to enthrall, which is why the book on them by Richard Reeves was called Camelot.

Andrew C. Abbott