Dear readers, it’s been a busy month for us but I didn’t get much work done. Fortunately, Bill did.
I’ve been busy traveling back and forth to Delaware. It’s very difficult to watch someone die slowly, inch by inch. This is the dark side of the miracle of modern medical care, the part that you never see celebrated in the media. Who wants to discuss cleaning an adult’s bowel movements? It’s easy to joke about baby diapers because you know that it will end as baby grows up.
It doesn’t end with a sick old man or woman. It just gets worse. You travel in reverse order, from him being able to manage the toilet on his own because he can still totter about with a walker, to being almost bedridden and having to have help using the portable commode next to the bed. The next step is the bedpan or going directly to adult diapers.
No one talks about that or makes cute jokes or cuter memes. There’s no dignity for anyone involved. The meat sack has to be tended to and there’s no pretending that our consciousness doesn’t have a physical basis. It’s all very real, heartrending, and cruel.
The bureaucracy involved with health insurance, Medicare, Hospice care, and Veterans’ benefits is eye-wateringly complex. I did not know that if your loved one in Hospice has to enter the hospital, hospice care stops and the hospital bed in your living room goes away. Did grandfather leave hospice? Yes, he did. The rationale is that there should be only one payer and as a taxpayer, I get it. Thus, when grandfather comes home from the hospital with stitches in his skull and a fracture in his neck vertebrae from getting up in the middle of the night and tripping over that damned catheter and foley, you get to do all the Hospice paperwork over again. Another bed has to be delivered, hopefully before the medical transport team shows up.
As I said, no one ever, ever talks about the reality in the media. It’s all been sanitized for your protection so you can pretend that you’ll never need someone else to bathe you, toilet you, tend to you night and day, because you can’t be left alone, even while sleeping.
So I’m not getting much work done. That life/work balance, you know? Work does not care about life and life does not care about work.
Let’s talk about something more pleasant: our books!
<2h>“Murder, She Watched”
I am keeping up with the Agatha project. It’s a relief to have the chance to sit in front of the TV and escape for an hour or two even if I have to write a review afterwards. My new, varied schedule has made the review posting on our website and Instagram more random but what can you do?
If you want to find out what we’ve seen, we list them on our website.
“The Vanished Pearls of Orlov”
I’m slowly making headway on editing “The Vanished Pearls of Orlov.” God knows when we’ll press [publish].
“The Complete, Annotated Man in the Brown Suit”
Bill has been able to keep up as he stays home while I drive back and forth. He finished and published “The Complete, Annotated Man in the Brown Suit.” That’s one of Agatha Christie’s finest pieces of escapism and I highly recommend it if you need some romantic suspense and high adventure. Our edition (it’s out of copyright) is loaded with footnotes, essays, illustrations, and some nifty maps so you can better follow Anne Beddingfeld’s adventures as she travels through Africa.
“An English Reporter in Gilded Age New York”
He’s nearing the finish line on a charming, long-out-of-print book entitled “An English Reporter in Gilded Age New York.” Originally published in 1882 as “Small Change; or, Lights and Shades of New York,” it is a collection of 30 newspaper pieces from a London-born reporter.
The author, Harry Marks, came to the U.S. and settled in Texas, where he built a reputation as a tough guy reporter. Moving to New York, he wrote these pieces about hotel detectives, a pawn broker to high society, Italian organ grinders, a man who trained monkeys, humorous store signs, and French Communists. What we call human-interest stories today.
If you’re interested in the Gilded Age or New York history, this will entertain and educate you into what life was like back then. Unlike our Complete, Annotated books, these don’t have footnotes or clarifying essays. We did add period photographs, and Bill found newspaper stories that details Harry Marks’ curious history, involving an affair that went wrong, blackmail, financial chicanery and lawsuits.
“An English Reporter in Gilded Age New York” will be on sale by March 1.
Sale on “Fed, Safe and Sheltered”
We’re also running a sale this week on my book “Fed, Safe, and Sheltered.” Through Sunday, Feb. 27, the ebook is 99 cents. If you want to better prepare your family for hard times, you can start here. Our full pantry and way of life have sure made traveling back and forth easier. I never have to worry about food on the table and I have savings to cover emergencies. Those are two fewer worries.
Bill’s also heading to the finish line on our last annotated Agatha Christie. This is her sixth novel, Hercule Poirot’s third outing, and it’s the one that made her name for the next few hundred years as the premiere mystery novelist of our time. It’s “The Complete, Annotated Murder of Roger Ackroyd.” It cemented her reputation as a fantastic writer and plotter; her eleven-day disappearance coming a few months after publication ensured that everyone who hadn’t read the novel, did so. It’s a great read and Bill’s giving it the full Peschel Press treatment.
So that’s where we’re at. We persevere in the face of adversity because it’s that or lay down and give up. Keep reading, keep writing, and watch spring arrive. The world renews itself every day, no matter what our troubles are. Birds sing and flowers bloom and the stars come out at night.
Thanks again for reading.