Dragons - Chapter 79 (DRAFT)

The rest of that Friday, and then Saturday, and then Sunday passed with an unremarked numbness. I did things. I spoke to my wife. I played with my son. I did my share of the housework. I ate my food. I took my showers. At the end of each day I went to sleep, and each morning I woke up. And throughout it all I tried to keep my mind off of what was waiting for me back in the office. I tried and I failed. No matter what I did, no matter how I tried to occupy myself and my mind, nothing could keep those dark and desperate thoughts far from my consciousness, and they cast their fretful and numbing pall over everything I did.

Only two things from that long weekend do I remember distinctly. The first was the phone call I placed back to Julie Prescott, Steve Anderson’s assistant, in order to set a day and time for my conversation with him the following week. Miss Prescott was a champion of pleasant efficiency, genuinely glad that I called, and expressing her professional concern that we find the best possible time for me and Mister Anderson to connect on our important business. It was no trouble at all, quickly resolved by a close comparison of two calendars, one in my home and the other on her desk in far off Philadelphia. Tuesday? Yes? Tuesday afternoon? At 2 P.M.? Eastern? Yes, that will work. That will work splendidly.

The second was listening to the voicemail that had been left for me by someone in the office, which I intentionally did not listen to until much later in the day on Friday. I had, after all, called in sick, and had to at least pretend that I was unable to engage in my professional responsibilities.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the voicemail was from Bethany, her hushed and mousy voice apologizing for disturbing me, wishing me a speedy recovery from whatever was ailing me, and pleading with me to give her a call as soon as I was able, even if that meant over the weekend. It was Wes Howard. Always and forever, it seemed, it was Wes Howard. He was making trouble and Bethany needed my help, needed me to do something about it. She left a lot of details on the voicemail, but I had trouble focusing on them; wishing, preferring, that I could just turn all those details into vapor and let them blow away on the wind.

Her voicemail was one of the things that hung over me all weekend. I was determined not to actively engage in whatever nonsense it represented until I was back in the office on Monday and to put it entirely out of my mind. I was only successful in doing the first thing.

She cornered me early on Monday morning, much as I should have expected.

“Are you all right?”

We were standing in the breakroom, me just closing the fridge on my sack lunch. “Yes, much better,” I said, remembering to pretend that I had been sick on Friday. “Thanks.”

“What was it? The flu?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Migraines, maybe. I just couldn’t get myself out of bed. Dizzy and nauseous. I slept most of the day.”

I don’t think it was intentional, but she was standing in a position that effectively prevented me from leaving the room. Her arms were folded across her chest and she seemed to be glaring at me.

“Did you get my voicemail?”

“Yeah,” I said, trying to dissipate her accusatory tone with feigned innocence. “I didn’t see it until Saturday, and we were wrapped up most of the weekend in family matters. I figured we would talk about it this morning and come up with a game plan.”

“I asked you to call me,” she said pointedly. “I was waiting all weekend. Goddammit, I needed you to call me, Alan.” She looked like she was about to cry, her eyes shining and her lower lip quivering.

“I’m sorry,” I said quickly, self-consciously looking around to verify what I already knew -- that no one else was in the breakroom with us. Knowing that someone could walk in at any moment I suppressed an innate impulse to touch her -- to caress her shoulder or, God forbid, to hug her -- to comfort her in some way. Reacting negatively to the impulse, I turned suddenly cold. “I was busy, and I figured we would talk about it today. What’s the big deal?”

The look she gave me could only be described as horrified. She teetered on the edge of snapping back at me, but pulled her anger back when Angie Ferguson suddenly entered the room, an oversized lunch thermos -- the kind only arctic explorers would use -- clutched tightly in her pudgy hands.

“Good morning,” she said, navigating easily around us and pulling open the refrigerator door.

“Good morning,” I said absently as I maintained eye contact with Bethany. The look on her face turned quickly from anger to betrayal.

“Good morning,” she said icily, and then left the room.

“Is she all right?” Angie asked me.

“Yeah,” I told her. “She’s just under a lot of stress right now.”

Angie nodded. “We all are,” she said matter-of-factly, and then barreled her way out of the room.

I was left alone with a choice. Go and apologize to Bethany, ask her to share her secret fears with me, and take the burden of those fears off her shoulders and place it on mine; or go back to my office and press my nose to the grindstone perpetually waiting there for me.

I chose the latter.

+ + +

“Dragons” is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. For more information, go here.

This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

Image Source

http://lres.com/heres-why-amcs-need-to-pay-close-attention-to-looming-regulatory-changes/businessman-in-the-middle-of-a-labyrinth/

Wizard’s First Rule by Terry Goodkind

I may have mentioned this before: I read a lot of fantasy novels as a teenager. Back in the day, my go-to was Piers Anthony. I didn’t read everything he wrote, but looking at his Wikipedia page today, I can confidently check off the major portions of the Battle Circle, Xanth, Tarot, Apprentice Adept, Incarnations of Immortality, and Bio of a Space Tyrant series. In fact, looking even closer at his Wikipedia page, I would estimate that I fell off the Piers Anthony wagon around 1988 -- and that he has clearly been writing a whole lot since then.

But fall away I did, primarily because I felt I was outgrowing the stories I was reading. I remember his work as being clever, and exciting it’s own way, but increasingly I found myself wanting something more, something outside of what I perceived to be a fairly limited palette. 

Anthony’s output is enormous. Indeed, that same Wikipedia page I looked at says that Anthony claims that “one of his greatest achievements has been to publish a book beginning with every letter of the alphabet, from Anthonology to Zombie Lover.” And that’s kind of my point. Somewhere along that journey I began to feel that quantity was more important to the author than quality, and that in order to achieve his goals, it was necessary to stick to similar stories over and over again -- stories with simple protagonists that found themselves constantly in awkward situations (usually including their nudity and the nudity of others), and all of them finding just-so escape hatches that stretched my credulity.

But I still have fond memories. And so every once and a while I find myself in a used book store looking over the fantasy novels, hoping that I can find something in that genre that challenges my grown-up brain the way Anthony initially challenged my teenage brain.

It was with this hope that I picked up Wizard’s First Rule by Terry Goodkind. I knew nothing about it, but couldn’t help but notice the plug from none other than Piers Anthony on its paperback cover:

“A phenomenal fantasy, endlessly inventive, that surely marks the commencement of one of the major careers in the genre.” --Piers Anthony

Okay, I thought. Let’s give it a try.

For 640 pages it was a fairly lackluster fantasy adventure story. You know. The one where the hero is of humble origins, who gets swept up onto a magical journey with some mysterious strangers, and who discovers that he has latent powers that are just the thing needed to vanquish some evil tyrant. Yeah. That one. But then, on the bottom of page 641, this happens:

The pain of the sword’s magic hit him like a waterfall of icy water on naked flesh. The blade never reached her. The sword clattered to the ground as the pain took him to his knees, ripping through him, doubling him over.

Hand still on her hip, smile still on her face, she stood over him, watching as he clutched his arms across his abdomen, vomiting blood, choking on it. Fire burned through every inch of him. The pain of the magic consumed him, took his breath from his lungs. Desperately, he tried to get a grip on the magic, tried to put away the pain as he had learned to do before. It did not respond to his will. With rising panic, he realized he no longer had control of it.

She did.

He is Richard Cypher, our hero, the one of humble origins, now come to understand that he is something called the Seeker, a long-foretold conqueror of evil, with magical powers over a magical sword, which must be used sparingly because of the pain it inflicts on its user, but which can absolutely destroy Darken Rahl, the evil tyrant taking over the land.

And she is Mistress Denna, a sadistic sorceress known as a Mord-Sith, sent by the evil tyrant to capture the Seeker and to bend him to her will. 

He collapsed to his face in the dirt, trying to scream, to breathe, but couldn’t. He thought about Kahlan for an instant; then the pain took even that from him.

Kahlan is the woman he loves; also a sorceress of sorts, something called a Mother Confessor, who also has the power to end the evil, and who Richard thinks he needs to protect at all costs.

Not one of the men moved from the circle. The woman put a boot on the back of his neck and an elbow on her knee as she leaned over. With her other hand she grabbed a fistful of his hair and lifted his head. She leaned closer, the leather creaking.

Yes, Mistress Denna is dressed in leather. As described earlier: “She was sheathed in leather from neck to ground, cut to fit like a glove. Blood-red leather.”

“My, my,” she hissed. “And here I thought I was going to have to torture you for days and days before I finally made you angry enough to use your magic against me. Well, not to worry, I have other reasons to torture you.”

Through his pain, Richard realized he had made a fearful mistake. He had somehow given her the control of the sword’s magic. He knew he was in more trouble than he had ever been in in his life. Kahlan was safe, he told himself; that was all that mattered.

“Do you want the pain to stop, my pet?”

The question enraged him. His anger at her, his want to kill her, twisted the pain tighter. “No,” he managed with all of his strength.

She shrugged, dropping his head. “Fine by me. But when you decide you want the pain of the magic to stop, all you have to do is stop thinking those nasty thoughts about me. From now on, I control the magic of your sword. If you so much as think of lifting a finger against me, the pain of the magic will take you down.” She smiled. “That is the only pain you will have any control over. Just think something pleasant about me, and it will stop.

“Of course, I too will have control over the pain of the magic, and can bring it to you any time I choose, and I can bring you other pain too, as you will learn.” She frowned. “Tell me, my pet, did you try to use the magic on me because you are a fool, or because you fancy yourself brave?”

The pain let up the smallest bit. He gasped for air. She had relaxed it just enough to allow him to answer.

“Who … are … you?”

She took a fistful of his hair again, lifted his head, twisted it around to look into his eyes. As she leaned over, the boot on his neck sent a shard of pain through his shoulders. He couldn’t move his arms. Her face was wrinkled in a frown of curiosity.

“You don’t know who I am? Everyone in the Midlands knows me.”

“I’m … Westland.”

Her eyebrows lifted in delight. “Westland! My, my. How delicious. This is going to be fun.” Her smile widened. “I am Denna. Mistress Denna to you, my pet. I am a Mord-Sith.”

“I’ll not … tell you … where Kahlan is. You might as well … kill me … now.”

“Who? Kahlan?”

“The … Mother Confessor.”

“Mother Confessor,” she said with distaste. “Why in the world would I want a Confessor? It is you, Richard Cypher, that Master Rahl sent me for, no one else. One of your friends has betrayed you to him.” She twisted his head up harder, pushed her boot down harder. “And now I have you. I had thought it might be difficult, but you hardly made it any fun at all. I’m to be in charge of your training. But then you wouldn’t know about that, since you are from the Westland. You see, a Mord-Sith always wears red when she’s to train someone. That’s so your blood won’t show so much. I have a wonderful feeling I’m going to have a lot of your blood on me before I have you trained.”

She dropped his head, and leaned her full weight on her boot, holding her hand out in front of his face. He could see that the back of her gloved hand was armored, even the fingers. A blood red leather rod, about a foot long, hung loosely from her wrist by an elegant gold chain. It swung back and forth in front of his eyes. “This is the Agiel. This is part of what I will use to train you.” She gave him a smooth smile, arching an eyebrow. “Curious? Want to see how it works?”

Denna pressed the Agiel against his side. The shock of the pain made him cry out, even though he had had no intention of giving her the satisfaction of seeing how much it hurt. Every muscle in his body locked rigid with the agony of the thing against his side. His mind was filled with the want of having it off him. Denna pushed the slightest bit harder, making him scream louder. He heard a pop, and felt a rib crack.

She took the Agiel away; warm blood oozed down his side. Richard was covered in sweat as he lay in the dirt, panting, tears running from his eyes. He felt as if the pain were pulling every muscle in his body apart. There was dirt in his mouth, and blood.

Denna gave him a cruel sneer. “Now, my pet, say ‘Thank you, Mistress Denna, for teaching me.’” Her face came closer. “Say it.”

With all his mental strength, Richard focused his hunger to kill her, and envisioned the sword exploding through her head. “Die, bitch.”

Denna shuddered and half closed her eyes, running her tongue over her lip in ecstasy. “Oh, that was a deliciously naughty vision, my pet. Of course, you will learn to be seriously sorry you did it. Training you is going to be exquisite fun. Too bad you don’t know what a Mord-Sith is. If you did, you would be very afraid. I would enjoy that.” Her smile showed her perfect teeth. “But I think I’m going to delight in surprising you even more.”

Richard maintained the vision of killing her until he was unconscious.

Okay. I quoted that at length because of how far out of left field it seemed to come in the novel. And because of what follows it -- about sixty pages in which Richard is straight-up tortured and abused and turned into a docile slave for Mistress Denna and her master Darken Rahl. He is re-programmed, as any mortal would be, by the pain and the brain washing, the whole thing dressed in the sexual themes one would expect in a trashy BDSM novel. In the end, he is the Gimp, living in chains, and taken out only when Denna or Rahl want to use him.

Except -- not really. Because, of course, Richard is our hero, and he can’t end up that way. So he manages to escape (with his sword) and shortly encounters -- wait for it, a talking dragon, also in the service of Darken Rahl, who decides to eat him.

“Speak,” the dragon snorted. “But make it short.”

“I’m from Westland. I’ve never seen a dragon before. I always thought they would be fearsome creatures, and I must admit, you certainly are fearsome, but there is one thing I wasn’t prepared for.”

“And what would that be?”

“You are, without a doubt, the most stunningly beautiful creature I have ever seen.”

It was the truth. Despite the deadly nature of it, it was strikingly beautiful. The neck of the dragon made itself into an S shape as it pulled its head back, blinking in surprise. The eyes frowned a little, doubting.

“It’s true,” Richard said. “I’m to be eaten. I have no reason to lie. You are beautiful. I never thought I would see anything as magnificent as you. Do you have a name?”

“Scarlet.”

Of course. Because, you know, it’s a red dragon, and what else would a red dragon name itself?

“Scarlet. What a lovely name. Are all red dragons as stunning as you, or are you special?”

Scarlet put a claw to her breast. “That would not be for me to say.” The head snaked its way toward him again. “I have never had a man I was about to eat tell me such a thing.”

An idea began forming in Richard’s mind. He put the sword back in its scabbard. “Scarlet, I know a creature as proud as you would not be at the beck of anyone, much less one as demanding as Darken Rahl, unless there was terrible need. You are too beautiful and noble a creature of that.”

Scarlet’s head floated closer. “Why would you say such things to me?”

“Because I believe in the truth. I think you do too.”

“What is your name?”

“Richard Cypher. I am the Seeker.”

Scarlet put a black-tipped talon to her teeth. “Seeker.” She frowned. “I don’t believe I’ve ever eaten a Seeker before.” A strange, dragon’s smile crossed her lips. “It will be a treat. Our talk is over, Richard Cypher. Thank you for the compliment.” The head floated closer, the lips pulling back in a snarl.

“Darken Rahl stole your egg, didn’t he?”

Scarlet pulled back. She blinked at him, then threw her head back, jaws wide. An earsplitting roar made the scales on her throat vibrate. Fire shot skyward in a booming blast. The sound echoed off the cliff walls, causing little rock slides.

Scarlet’s head whipped back to him, smoke rising from the nostrils. “What do you know about that!”

“I know that a proud creature such as you would not subject herself to such demeaning duties, except for one reason. To protect something important. Like her young.”

“So you know. That will not save you,” she snarled.

“I also know where Darken Rahl is keeping your egg.”

“Where!” Richard had to dive to the side to avoid the flames. “Tell me where it is!”

“I thought you wanted to eat me now.”

One eye came close. “Someone should teach you not to be flippant,” she rumbled.

“Sorry, Scarlet. It’s a bad habit that has brought me to grief in the past. Look, if I help you get your egg back, then Rahl would have no hold on you. If I could do that, would it be worth helping me?”

“Helping me how?”

“Well, you fly Rahl around. That’s what I need. I need you to fly me around for a few days, help me look for some friends of mine, so I can protect them from Rahl. I need to be able to cover a lot of ground, search a lot of area. I think if I could do it from the sky, like a bird, I could find them, and have enough time to stop Rahl.”

“I don’t like flying men about. It’s humiliating.”

“Six days from now, it will all be over, one way or another. If you help me, that’s all I would need. After that, it won’t matter, one way or the other. How long will you have to serve Rahl if you don’t help me?”

“All right. Tell me where my egg is, and I will let you go. Let you live.”

“How would you know I was telling the truth? I could just invent a place, to save myself.”

“Like dragons, real Seekers have honor. That much I know. So, if you really know, tell me and I will free you.”

“No.”

“No!” Scarlet roared. “What do you mean ‘No’?”

“I don’t care about my life. Just as you, I care about things more important. If you want me to help you get your egg back, then you will have to agree to help me save the ones I care about. We will get the egg first, then you help me. I think it more than a fair trade. The life of your offspring, in exchange for flying me about for a few days.”

Scarlet’s piercing yellow eye came close to his face; her ears swiveled forward. “And how do you know that once I have my egg, I will keep my end of the bargain?”

“Because,” Richard whispered, “you know what it is like to fear for the safety of another, and you have honor. I have no choice. I don’t know any other way to save my friends from living the rest of their lives as you are living now -- under the heel of Darken Rahl. I will be putting my life at great risk to save your egg. I believe you to be a creature of honor. I will trust your word, with my life.”

Scarlet gave a snort, backing away a little, peering at him. She folded her huge wings against herself. Her tail swished about, knocking stones and a few small boulders skidding across the ground. Richard waited. One arm came forward; a single black-tipped talon, thick as his leg, sharp as his sword point, hooked through the sword’s baldric, and gave a snug pull. Her head came close.

“Bargain struck. On your honor, on mine,” Scarlet hissed. “But I have not given my word I will not eat you at the end of the six days.”

“If you help me save my friends, and stop Rahl, I don’t care what you do to me after that.” Scarlet snorted. “Are short-tailed gars a threat to dragons?”

The dragon unhooked her talon from him, “Gars.” She spat the name. “I have eaten enough of them. They are no match for me, not unless there were eight or ten together, but gars don’t like to gather together in numbers, so that’s not a problem.”

“It’s a problem now. When I saw your egg, there were dozens of gars around it.”

Scarlet gave a grunt, and tongues of flame licked out between her teeth. “Dozens. That many could pull me from the sky. Especially if I were carrying my egg.”

Richard smiled. “That’s why you need me. I will think of a plan.”

I quoted this section at length, too, hopefully to prove a point. As I read the previous section describing Richard’s training at the hands of Mistress Denna and her Agiel, and kept thinking about how this -- if true and treated with the seriousness that it would in reality have -- would be a mind and character-altering experience for our fantasy adventure hero. Richard Cypher was being subjected to one of the most traumatic and self-erasing experiences that a human can endure, and that there is no conceivable way that he would ever be able to return to the scrappy and confident hero that this story would demand.

And yet, literally in the next major scene after his escape from the soul-destroying forces of torture and madness, we find ourselves back in the just-so hijinks that are such a staple of the genre that I found increasingly tedious as a maturing teenager. Richard has never even met a dragon before, but, with all his identity and confidence just tortured out of him, he is still able to hoodwink the beast with simpering flattery, and then bend her to his will through a combination of extortion and appeals to her honor.

In the end, the novel was too much like this for my taste. The evil characters are oddly evil: not just in the typical all-consuming-power kind of way, but in a darkly sadistic sexual kind of way, some preferring to groom and rape children in order to satiate their wicked compulsions. And this is placed amidst the fantasy adventure tropes of dragons, wizards, and magic, both as if it belonged there, and with no lasting impact on any of the victims it creates.

It’s schizophrenic -- and I just couldn’t wrap my mind around it. 

+ + +

This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

Dragons - Chapter 78 (DRAFT)

“Jennifer Larson?”

I looked at my watch. Thirty-seven minutes had elapsed since the experiment began and, given the several minutes that had elapsed while we struggled with their form, I judged it to be a success. Forty-five minutes. Every fucking time.

“Come on, Jacob,” I said, standing up and extending my hand with the idea that he would come and take it.

No response. I could partially see him under one of the ramps of the jungle gym, one little leg extending out to the side, his shoe gone and his sock mostly off.

I gave Jenny a look as she struggled to get to her feet, me only absently remembering to extend her an arm and to help her.

“Go get him,” she told me, as she started making her way towards the beckoning nurse.

I went over to the jungle gym and crouched down next to Jacob. All the other children had been called away by their parents and he had been playing by himself for the last ten minutes or so. I saw that he had found one of the many coloring books that were scattered around the playzone like fallen leaves, most of their pages already marred with the monochromatic smudges of oblivious toddlers pushing crayons back and forth across any and all lines. The pages of the one Jacob had found were relatively uncrumpled, and he was working hard at coloring something that looked like an especially cartoonish version of Noah’s Ark.

“Come on, Jacob,” I said with feigned excitement. “It’s time to go see the pictures of your baby sister.”

Still no response. He sat there in the relative shadow, the book between his splayed legs, his fingers holding a lime green crayon, carefully filling in the body of an elephant.

“Alan,” I heard Jenny call from behind me. “Let’s go.”

“Jacob,” I said, adding some stern Daddy tones to my voice. “Let’s go.” And then, with something that felt like an epiphany, I added, “You can bring the coloring book with you.”

Still no response. He was in his own world, ignoring me, perhaps willfully, perhaps not. I lacked the clinical discernment to know one way or the other. All I had was the boiling rage of a spurned and inexperienced father. I reached out and grabbed him by the upper arm, and began to pull him out from under the ramp.

“Owww! Owww! Owwweeeeeee!”

“Alan!” Jenny cried. “What are you doing?”

I released Jacob immediately. I had only moved him a matter of inches, but he quickly recovered that lost ground, retrenching behind his battle lines, and silently returned his full attention to the coloring book.

“He won’t come!” I shouted back over my shoulder.

“Then leave him,” Jenny counseled wisely. “You stay out here with him. I’ll go in alone.”

I turned and looked at her. She was right. She always was. Despite the fact that we had all come here together with the intention that we would all see the ultrasounds of the newest addition to our broken family, in the final analysis, it wasn’t worth fighting over. And it certainly wasn’t worth risking a full blown tantrum in another public place.

But the unfocused rage within me fought against this cool logic. He wouldn’t come? The HELL he wouldn’t. I was in charge here, goddammit, and he was going to do exactly what I told him to do. Who the living fuck did he think he was?

What stopped me was not the look on Jenny’s face, but the look on the face of the nurse that stood next to her. Both of them, the nurse and Jenny both, they saw the rage monster rising within me, and whereas Jenny’s face gave way to the subtle fear that helped shape the nadirs of our relationship, the look on the face of the nurse was a strange mixture of disgust and authority, the police officer watching the sloppy drunk tip and teeter as he walked the straight line of our society’s sobriety test. Unlike Jenny -- unlike myself -- the nurse, a young woman of no more than thirty and standing no more than five foot two, had real power in this situation. A power that she had used before and wouldn’t hesitate to use again.

“Okay,” I said as obsequiously as I could, rising from my crouch and standing in front of the remaining witnesses of the waiting area. “I’m sorry, honey.”

Jenny didn’t respond to that. She turned and went through the door, the nurse following close behind her. When the door shut completely I went back and retook my position in the chair I had left only moments before. I stole a couple of glances around and found no one actually looking at me, but I had the overwhelming sense that I was being watched very closely, probably from some secret location, maybe through the use of sophisticated surveillance equipment.

We’ve got an abuser in obstetrics. That’s what they were saying in the secret place. A man who beats his children and probably his wife. They were both watching me and taking Jenny to that same secret location, asking her if she felt safe in her home, if there was anything she wanted to tell them that she wouldn’t be able to say if her husband was present.

For ten minutes or more I was absolutely petrified. My eyes were constantly darting around and every time someone who worked at the clinic walked towards me, I started sweating, confident that they were coming to talk to me, or detain me, or arrest me. At one point, far down the concourse and back up by the reception desk, I saw an actual police officer -- a squat, thick man with a bald head and a goddamn gun on his hip -- and my bowels almost let loose. I couldn’t take my eyes off him, even moving to another chair to get a better look. As I watched, he had what appeared to be a casual dialogue with the intake nurse for a few minutes, and then turned and walked away, heading down the corridor that led to the exit.

Looking back on it now, I’d like to think that I was overreacting. I mean, how many screaming kids and arguing parents did they see in that clinic every day? But in that moment, with everything else going on in my life, I was convinced that I had crossed the line, that I was trapped, that I was going to lose my wife, my children, everything that really mattered to me.

Eventually, I was able to calm down a little. Jacob was still quietly absorbed in his coloring book. Several people had come and gone from the waiting area, and no one seemed to be paying any attention to me. Composed enough to know that I needed a distraction from these escalating fears and thoughts, I fished my phone out of my pocket.

There was another call that I had evidently missed, the little light blinking to tell me that they had left me a voicemail. I pushed the right buttons and held the phone up to my ear to hear this second message. “Hello, Mister Larson,” an unfamiliar female voice said into my ear. “This is Julie Prescott, executive assistant to Steve Anderson. Mister Anderson asked me to arrange a call with you sometime next week. Please call me back so we can compare calendars and get something set up.” She then went on to leave her phone number and to thank me for my trouble.

It was the lifeline I needed. I would call Miss Prescott back as soon as I got myself and my family home. I would call her from the secluded refuge of my own domain, and I would work with her -- two professionals speaking to each other on the telephone -- to set an appointment for next week to speak with Steve Anderson. The crystal ball of my beleaguered imagination couldn’t see any farther into the future than that, but it was enough. In my dark and terrible moment of uncertainty and worthlessness, it was enough.

+ + +

“Dragons” is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. For more information, go here.

This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

Image Source

http://lres.com/heres-why-amcs-need-to-pay-close-attention-to-looming-regulatory-changes/businessman-in-the-middle-of-a-labyrinth/

A Holiday Break: Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis

Books are always the best holiday gift for me. The only thing I like better than the anticipation of reading a long sought after title is the fondness that comes with remembering the discovery of an unexpected treasure.

As I look back on all the books I've profiled here in 2021, the one I'd most like to revisit is Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis, which I blogged about back in November. On the surface, it is the story of Martin Arrowsmith, a young doctor who vacillates between the two opposite poles of all physicians -- the life of the clinician and the life of the researcher. But in Lewis’s capable hands, the tension between these two objectives takes on a more universal and philosophical importance.

As Martin vacillates, the reader is presented with competing ideals and competing understandings of the world. What is the thing that matters? Practical success? Or esoteric greatness? And why is it not possible to have both? For that, as we read and enjoy all of Lewis’s prose describing Martin’s vacillations, is the underlying truth of it all. Whichever one chooses, the other has to be sacrificed in order to attain it.

For me, it is reminiscent of the same choice that Charles Strickland makes at the beginning of The Moon and Sixpence. To achieve something, something else must be sacrificed. In the most general of terms, if you want comfort, you must sacrifice art; and if you want art, you must sacrifice comfort. There’s no other way to approach it, and that may be what I like best about Lewis’s novel.

As you enjoy your holiday break, I hope you find some time to curl up with a good book. I know I will.

+ + +

This post was written by Eric Lanke, an association executive, blogger and author. For more information, visit www.ericlanke.blogspot.com, follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

Taming the Big Data Tidal Wave by Bill Franks

I didn’t dogear a single page or scribble a single marginal note while reading this 304-page business book.

I don’t blame it. From my distant perspective, it seems like a good overview of its subject, even though some of its content undoubtedly aging as the years keep passing by (it was published in 2012). But to be fair, I don’t think I was the intended audience.

The primary focus [of this book] is educating the reader on what big data is all about and how it can be utilized through analytics, and providing guidance on how to approach the creation and evolution of a world-class advanced analytics ecosystem in today’s big data environment. A wide range of readers will find this book to be of value and interest. Whether you are an analytics professional, a businessperson who uses the results that analytics produce, or just someone with an interest in big data and advanced analytics, this book has something for you.

I picked it up because I thought I might have been at least one of those things. If the book subsequently taught me anything, it is that I am clearly none of those things -- at least not at the scale or level that the author expected.

+ + +

This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

Dragons - Chapter 77 (DRAFT)

Going to the clinic where Jenny saw her doctor was like going to another world -- an alien world where everything had its place and everything was in its place, even the broken and suffering human creatures that had journeyed there, often at great risk and peril to themselves. The building had four wings that spread out from a central core like the splayed limbs of a condemned man -- one, seemingly, for each of that man’s ages: birth, youth, adult, and old age, better known to the medically-literate as obstetrics, pediatrics, internal medicine, and geriatrics. The wayward and shuffling souls that each made their way through the whooshing automatic doors went first up to an enormous reception desk to make their offerings of insurance cards and co-pays, where, once recognized and registered, they would be sent down to one of the spacious waiting areas at the center of each wing, each customized for those whose ailments and concerns brought them to that temporary destination.

Lots of mothers with small children, obviously, found their way to the obstetrics waiting area, and, as such, it was appropriately decked-out with comfortable recliners, small, private lactation chambers, and, for the elder siblings of the soon-to-be-birthed, an elaborate and modular jungle gym of sorts -- a series of ramps, platforms, and slides that even toddlers could push around in order to create unique configurations of their play space.

Needless to say, Jacob loved this jungle gym. It was the thing that we could use to consistently coax him to both behave and to go peacefully to the doctor. They had a larger and more elaborate version in the pediatrics waiting area, but even the one meant for toddlers in the obstetrics area was usually enough for him. We had used it again that morning, simply reminding him of its existence and how much fun he could have with it. Suddenly, he had no longer wanted to stay home and play with his trains. He wanted to go to Mommy’s doctor and play with the jungle gym.

Not that getting there and getting settled in was any easier after that. Even with Jacob fully on board we couldn’t get to the clinic any sooner than ten minutes past Jenny’s appointment time. We hustled as quick as we could down the throat of the beast and arrived breathless at its thumping, thriving heart. There, we received a disapproving look from the school marm that sat there, her day evidently ruined by the need to wait for the tardy Larson family to arrive.

Jacob was already tugging on my arm and Jenny told us to go -- knowing both where we would be going and that he would just be a distraction as she went through the ritual of getting checked in and placed in the queue. Once we got within eyesight of the Holy Land I let Jacob go and he half-jumped, half-ran the remaining distance, too excited to do either one consistently. As I settled into one of the ordinary waiting room chairs (not the recliners, oh no; even if vacant, a man sitting in one of those was akin to parking on top of a handicapped person in one of their coveted spots), I watched Jacob immediately set about to start re-arranging the modular pieces in the way that scratched his particular itch.

There were two other kids already playing there, their parents among the half dozen or so adults scattered about. I carefully avoided eye contact with all of them, and used my kindest parent voice to caution Jacob to play nice with the others.

Soon Jenny came waddling down the concourse, a clipboard in one hand and her heavy purse slung over the opposite shoulder. She came and sat down next to me, exhaling deeply as she settled into the ordinary chair.

“How is he?” she asked.

“Fine,” I said, looking up to see Jacob in some kind of friendly discussion with another one of the children, each navigating how to compel the other to create the playzone each preferred, but apparently doing it amicably. “No screaming or tears, yet.”

“Good,” Jenny said, turning her attention down to the form attached to her clipboard and beginning to scribble the information it requested with the provided pen. It was a simple ballpoint, but it was taped to a large and long tongue depressor, which in turn was taped to a three foot length of heavy twine, the other end of which was in turn taped to the shiny metal clip at the business end of the clipboard. It appeared like an entire roll of tape had been used to create the contraption.

“Do they think you’re going to steal their pen?” I asked.

Jenny mumbled a response.

“And why do they make you fill out that same form every single time?” I asked, my annoyance springing from some unknown place. “They must have all that information already. We’ve been coming here for years.”

“It’s just their process,” Jenny said, the pen continuing to scratch its way across the form. 

“Well, their process is stupid.”

Jenny shushed me. “Alan, keep your voice down.”

“Keep my voice down?” I asked, unconsciously lowering my voice. “Why? Are you afraid of being kicked out by the stupid process police?”

She gave me a sarcastic smile. “Here,” she said, pushing the clipboard into my hands. “I’m done. Go put this in the bin for me. My feet hurt.”

“I’m sure they do,” I said, pretending to be more upset than I actually was. I got up in a feigned huff and went over to the door that led back to the various examination rooms. This was also part of the stupid process. I wrapped the tethered pen around the top of the clipboard and placed it along with Jenny’s completed form into a large document bin that had been attached to the wall next to the door. Next to the bin was a small panel with a series of lighted buttons on it, each one labelled with the name of one of the doctors that were busy working today. I pushed the button that matched Jenny’s doctor and made sure the light came on. Somewhere within, I knew, there was a matching panel, and the same little light had just gone on there, alerting whoever’s job it was to monitor such things that Doctor Mauser had a patient patiently waiting. 

My assigned task in the ritual completed, I went back to sit down next to my wife. As I passed, I happened to catch the gaze of another of the expecting mothers, waiting for the light that corresponded with her doctor to also be noticed so that she could be called back into the inner sanctum. She gave me only a passing glance, but it felt overly hostile.

Jenny was already deep into one of her magazines when I sat back down. “I just got the stink eye,” I whispered to her.

“From who?” she whispered back, not looking up from the glossy photographs.

“That woman over there,” I said, just as the door opened and a nurse in scrubs called for the very woman I was referring to. She got slowly to her feet, gathered her paraphernalia, and started making her slow way out of the waiting room.

Jenny watched her go. “You’re imagining things,” she told me, and then turned back to her magazine. “Now, sit there quietly and stop making trouble.”

I decided not to dwell on that one for very long. It seemed to me that I could either be imagining things OR I could be making trouble, not both. But Jenny, typically, saw things from a different angle than I did. In her view, two opposite things could be true at the same time.

Instead, I turned my attention back to Jacob and his playmates and settled in for what I called “the long wait.” No matter what time one arrived at the clinic, twenty minutes early or twenty minutes late, you were always left to stew in your own juices in the waiting area for at least forty-five minutes. They were either chronically behind schedule, or they had determined that patients had to marinate for an designated period of time before they were ready to be poked and prodded.

Deciding to test my theory, I brought up the stopwatch function on my watch and set it going.

+ + +

“Dragons” is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. For more information, go here.

This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

Image Source

http://lres.com/heres-why-amcs-need-to-pay-close-attention-to-looming-regulatory-changes/businessman-in-the-middle-of-a-labyrinth/

Madness and Civilization by Michel Foucault

This is the second work of Foucault’s that I’ve read. Both of these works contain what I often call a “big idea” -- a way of looking at the world and our place in it (i.e., a philosophy) that provides new and intriguing explanatory powers. In The History of Sexuality, Volume 1, the big idea was that sexuality is not a science, subject to an empirical understanding of its tenets and mechanisms, but an ideology, constructed out of a particular sociological context with no other binding effects. Here, in Madness and Civilization, the big idea is similarly that madness is also essentially an ideology -- something that existed in another form prior to the Age of Enlightenment, but which was re-contextualized into its current abhorrent configuration during the initial rise of that civilization. As is well summarized on the back cover of my paperback edition:

What does it mean to be mad? In Madness and Civilization, perhaps his masterpiece, Michel Foucault examines the archaeology of madness in the West from 1500 to 1800 -- from the late Middle Ages, when insanity was still considered part of everyday life and fools and lunatics walked the streets freely, to the time when such people began to be considered a threat, asylums were first built, and walls were erected between the “insane” and the rest of humanity.

The quotation marks around “insane” in that last sentence are really doing a lot of work, because it’s not that Foucault is claiming that the insane did not exist prior to the Renaissance, just that they weren’t treated as something antipodal to the new civilization, people to be excised from that enterprise, almost like the lepers of the previous age. Indeed, as Foucault sets up the premise for his case, he will describe in the historical disappearance of the leper colony both the context and the structure for the new “insane.” As the leper was removed from the body of the Church in order to save both his soul and the souls of the unaffected…

If the leper was removed from the world, and from the community of the Church visible, his existence was yet a constant manifestation of God, since it was a sign both of His anger and of His grace: “My friend,” says the ritual of the Church of Vienne, “it pleaseth Our Lord that thou shouldst be infected with this malady, and thou hast great grace at the hands of Our Lord that he desireth to punish thee for thy iniquities in this world.” And at the very moment when the priest and his assistants drag him out of the church with backward step, the leper is assured that he still bears witness for God: “And howsoever thou mayest be apart from the Church and the company of the Sound, yet art thou not apart from the grace of God.” Brueghel’s lepers attend at a distance, but forever, that climb to Calvary on which the entire people accompanies Christ. Hieratic witnesses of evil, they accomplish their salvation in and by their very exclusion: in a strange reversibility that is the opposite of good works and prayer, they are saved by the hand that is not stretched out.

...the lunatic will come to be removed from Civilization using the same mechanisms and for the same reasons.

Leprosy disappeared, the leper vanished, or almost, from memory; these structures remained. Often, in these same places, the formulas of exclusion would be repeated, strangely similar two or three centuries later. Poor vagabonds, criminals, and “deranged minds” would take the part played by the leper, and we shall see what salvation was expected from this exclusion, for them and for those who excluded them as well. With an altogether new meaning and in a very different culture, the forms would remain -- essentially that major form of a rigorous division which is social exclusion but spiritual reintegration.

But there is more to the argument than “the insane are the new lepers.” Much more. Because, with a glance back at those quotation marks, we can come to understand that the “lunatics” of the Renaissance are not the same “lunatics” that freely moved about the landscape of the Middle Ages. No, because the very definition of insane will also change to better encompass those who are increasingly at odds with the tenants of the new civilization.

To inhabit the reaches long since abandoned by the lepers, they chose a group that to our eyes is strangely mixed and confused. But what is for us merely an undifferentiated sensibility must have been, for those living in the classical age, a clearly articulated perception. It is this mode of perception which we must investigate in order to discover the form of sensibility to madness in an epoch we are accustomed to define by the privileges of Reason. The act which, by tracing the locus of confinement, conferred upon it its power of segregation and provided a new homeland for madness, though it may be coherent and concerted, is not simple. It organizes into a complex unity a new sensibility to poverty and to the duties of assistance, new forms of reaction to the economic problems of unemployment and idleness, a new ethic of work, and also the dream of a city where moral obligation was joined to civil law, within the authoritarian forms of constraint. Obscurely, these themes are present during the construction of the cities of confinement and their organization. They give a meaning to this ritual, and explain in part the mode in which madness was perceived, and experienced, by the classical age.

That, like a lot of Michel’s writing, is a dense paragraph, but it well summarizes the ideological forces at work as the “new insane” were defined and then confined in practical “cities” of incarceration. No longer just the motley fools and village idiots of their pastoral precedents, these new lunatics would include the poor, the unemployed, the shiftless -- any and all who would be perceived as failing to properly embrace the spirit of the new age and, because of the moral force given to civilization and its gatekeepers, they, like the lepers before them, could be seen as being very properly punished for their sins of accident, ineptitude, and opposition.

If there is, in classical madness, something which refers elsewhere, and to other things, it is no longer because the madman comes from the world of the irrational and bears its stigmata; rather, it is because he crosses the frontiers of bourgeois order of his own accord, and alienates himself outside the sacred limits of its ethic.

In fact, the relation between the practice of confinement and the insistence on work is not defined by economic conditions; far from it. A moral perception sustains and animates it. When the Board of Trade published its report on the poor in which it proposed the means “to render them useful to the public,” it was made quite clear that the origin of poverty was neither scarcity of commodities nor unemployment, but “the weakening of discipline and the relaxation of morals.”

In this, it seems, we see the beginnings of one of the great moral canards of not just this civilization but ours as well: that the poor are not just morally deficient, but that they are poor because of their moral deficiency, and that we, their moral superiors, are morally justified in making them pay for their “sins.”

The edict of 1657, too, was full of moral denunciations and strange threats. “The libertinage of beggars has risen to excess because of an unfortunate tolerance of crimes of all sorts, which attract the curse of God upon the State when they remain unpunished.” This “libertinage” is not the kind that can be defined in relation to the great law of work, but a moral libertinage: “Experience having taught those persons who are employed in charitable occupations that many among them of either sex live together without marriage, that many of their children are unbaptized, and that almost all of them live in ignorance of religion, disdaining the sacraments, and continually practicing all sorts of vice.”

In 1657 in France the power to regulate these moral infractions was given to the “Hôpital Général” -- a new kind of institution that saw to the infirmities of both the body and the soul.

Hence the Hôpital does not have the appearance of a mere refuge for those whom age, infirmity, or sickness keep from working; it will have not only the aspect of a forced labor camp, but also that of a moral institution responsible for punishing, for correcting a certain moral “abeyance” which does not merit the tribunal of men, but cannot be corrected by the severity of penance alone. The Hôpital Général has an ethical status. It is this moral charge which invests its directors, and they are granted every judicial apparatus and means of repression: “They have power of authority, of direction, of administration and punishment”; and to accomplish this task “stakes, irons, prisons, and dungeons” are put at their disposal.

This is all leading somewhere. In Foucault’s estimation, this power to both define the cage and to place people within it is about more than just an expansion of our collective understanding of who is and is not insane. His chapter on this subject is called “The Great Confinement,” referring to the thousands who suddenly found themselves behind bars, but it could just as easily have been called “The Great Conflation,” since in this time two separate forces appeared to have been conflated together in a way not previously seen.

Thus we see inscribed in the institutions of absolute monarchy -- in the very ones that long remained the symbol of its arbitrary power -- the great bourgeois, and soon republican, idea that virtue, too, is an affair of state, that decrees can be published to make it flourish, that an authority can be established to make sure it is respected. The walls of confinement actually enclose the negative of that moral city of which the bourgeois conscience began to dream in the seventeenth century; a moral city for those who sought, from the start, to avoid it, a city where right reigns only by virtue of a force without appeal -- a sort of sovereignty of good, in which intimidation alone prevails and the only recompense of virtue (to this degree its own reward) is to escape punishment. In the shadows of the bourgeois city is born this strange republic of the good which is imposed by force on all those suspected of belonging to evil. This is the underside of the bourgeoisie’s great dream and great preoccupation in the classical age: the laws of the State and the laws of the heart at last identical.

This, indeed, may be Foucault’s second big idea in this short work. What we call madness and who we identify as madmen is ideology, yes, but the effect of that ideology in our age is to conflate the State with the “moral city,” and those who transgress one are, by definition, transgressing the other.

+ + +

This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.