Fifteen Days to Election Day!
With Halloween coming up, it’s time for ‘horror stories.’ Here’s one I wrote a dozen years ago that is set in the ‘over 55’ community in which I live in Floriduh.
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And now that the mood is set, here’s another for your ‘Halloween’ enjoyment. It’s a bit ‘educational’ (read the footnotes) but it does indeed involve a ghost.
A Ghost of a Chance (With Apologies to Bill Shakespeare)
Jack Lippman
“It’s fine
with me, but there are consequences,” she responded to Claude’s1 suggestion.
They had
been lovers on the sly for years. It had
started shortly after she married his older brother and realized, after only a
few months, that she had made a great mistake in her choice of which one of the
King2 brothers to marry.
“Gertie3, I hate him as
much as you do. But believe me, if
anything happened to him, no one would ever suspect us. We’re his family! What are you worrying about? In fact, let me
tell you why I came to see you today. It’s about our plan and what I have to
say may make you feel a little better about it.
I’ve gotten my hands on some new kind of poison that is absolutely
undetectable and untraceable. Something
the CIA developed, but even they’re hesitant to use. My source guarantees that even the latest
autopsy techniques will confirm that he died of a sudden heart attack. You have
nothing to worry about.”
“Wonderful,
but even if no one suspects that something rotten4 went on, won’t we have it on our consciences forever … what we
did I mean?”
Claude
smiled at her. “Come on, Gertie. Did you ever lose any sleep over what we did
in his bed every time he went out of town?
Why are you so worried, anyway?”
“The
kid,” she answered. He loves his Dad.
Hamilton5 and his father are much closer than he is toward me, what with
Little League, camping trips, teaching him how to hunt and all that kind of
stuff. With that father-son bonding, I
just don’t know how he’ll take his best pal’s sudden death. I really don’t want to hurt him, and this
will.”
“Don’t
worry about it. He’s young. He’ll get over it.”
“I hope
so, but he’s such a sensitive boy. He
dreams6 a lot.”
“But he’s
a big boy now, Gertie. Away at college
now, anyway. When we call him with the
sad news, he’ll come running home. In
fact, the shock may wake him up to the realities of life and turn him into a
better man. And as for him suspecting
anything, I don’t think there’s a ghost7 of a chance of that happening.”
So they
did it, and it worked out just as Claude had envisioned it. The family mourned appropriately, some more
sincerely than others. The couple were married a year later, and although they
were not Jewish, what they did was not unlike the ancient Hebrew tradition of
an unmarried brother being obligated to wed his deceased brother’s widow.
Hamilton
graduated from college, receiving a Bachelors’ degree in theatre arts, and then
went into the Army with an ROTC commission.
One evening about a year later while he was home on leave, he had joined
his mother and stepfather for dinner.
After
coffee and danish8, he took a deep breath and asked, “Do you guys have any plans
for this Saturday evening?”
They
didn’t and they told him so.
“Great,”
he said. “A buddy of mine from school
has written a play9 and it’s running right now
and getting some really nice reviews at an off-Broadway theatre. He’s given me three front row tickets for
Saturday evening. It’s kind of spooky7, but still you
might enjoy it. We can all go, the three
of us. Okay?”
Gertie
and Claude were quick to agree. Hamilton kissed them both, embracing his mother
with unusual warmth, and left.
“Ah,
yes,” he thought as he walked down the steps of their East Side brownstone, “I
hope that I’m wrong, but I can’t wait to see what they think of the play I
wrote.”
On
Saturday evening, an ashen-faced Claude stalked out of the theatre in the
middle of the first act, with Gertie following closely behind him. The hollowness in her eyes, which she took
pains to avert from her son’s view, made words unnecessary.
Within a
few weeks, Hamilton had avenged his father’s murder, but most sadly, in doing
so, lost his own life as well.
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The
following footnotes are intended for those who may not be familiar with the
plot of “Hamlet.”
1 Claude = Claudius, King of Denmark
2 King brothers – They were indeed a “royal” family
3 Gertie = Gertrude, Queen of Denmark and Hamlet’s mother
4 Something “rotten” went on – “Something is rotten in the state of
Denmark” (Act 1, Scene 4)
5 Hamilton = Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
6 Hamlet was indeed a dreamer.
See his soliloquy. “To sleep, perchance to dream: Ay, there’s the rub”
(Act 3, Scene 1)
7 “Ghost of a chance” and “kind of spooky” comments allude to when his
father’s ghost tells Hamlet of the murder (Act 1, Scene 5)
8 What else would the royal family of Denmark have for dessert?
9. “Written a play” comment alludes to the play Hamlet staged for Claudius and Gertrude, duplicating the ghost’s description of the murder. “The play’s the thing wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King” are the concluding words of Act 2.
JL
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Shame on
Evil Thinkers
The
motto surrounding the emblem of England’s order of the Garter reads
‘Honni soit que mal y pense.’ That
translates from the French as ‘Shame on those who think evil of it.’ That motto should be affixed, at least in our
minds, to the Declaration of Independence and to the Preamble to the
Constitution of the United States. This
might move the Supreme Court to think carefully about how it interprets the
Constitution and its Amendments.
JL
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Please Forward this Blog posting to
your friends, relatives, and neighbors, or direct them to visit https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com
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Statistical Report
I alert about 55 email recipients whenever I
send out a new posting of Jackspotpourri.
With luck, perhaps 25 bother the check out the new posting. (I am a realist.) Each of those that do is asked to forward
the posting to others. Most do
not, but some do. The week before last
was a typical week, during which approximately 197 people in the United States
checked out Jackspotpourri.
While a few ended up there in the course of a
google search, most accessed it as a result of my emails. Here is a summary of last week’s ‘hits’ on
the blog.
First of all, for some strange reason, 243 of
them were from computers located in Vietnam.
This has never happened before and probably will not happen again. Things like this occasionally happen. Discounting them, along with about 60 ‘hits’
from other locations outside of the United States, notably including 21 from
Russia, leaves about 190 ‘hits’ in the United States resulting from the two
postings of the blog during that period.
These numbers, provided by Google, may not be precise, but they are
pretty accurate.
I conclude that perhaps 50 of them are from
those alerted to the postings by my emails twice during this period. That means that about 140 are the result of
their forwarding the blog directly to others or directing them to https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com to
read it. Some these 140 may be the
result of those to whom you might have forwarded it, sending it on to others!
Thank you all for helping to get my messages
out. Considering that the blog is
usually posted twice a week, it could mean that a significant number of newer
readers are accessing it, many who got there by it having been forwarded to
them! That’s all I ask. And your help in accomplishing that is truly
appreciated. Thank you.
JL
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Please Forward this Blog posting to
your friends, relatives, and neighbors, or direct them to visit https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com
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Two Good Reasons to Buy Assault Rifles
and Two Bad ones
There are four reasons for a civilian to
purchase an assault rifle, be in an AR15 or version of it. These weapons are not intended for hunting
nor for self-defense, unless one is hunting an entire herd of game or whose
home is being attacked by a regiment.
They are intended for military use, the word ‘assault’ being
self-descriptive.
A civilian might want one if (1) they are a
collector of weapons, as some people collect stamps, (2) they intend to shoot
it at targets at a legitimate target shooting range, (3) they intend to use it
in an attempt to overthrow our government, or (4) they intend to use it to
murder as many innocent people as possible as quickly as possible.
Only two of these reasons are legitimate. The other two are criminal. The Second Amendment was not intended to
benefit such criminals despite the misguided opinions of a Supreme Court that
chooses to ignore its first thirteen words, reducing its credibility
tremendously and making it complicit in many murders carried out with such
weapons.
JL
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Okay, To How Many People Have You
Forwarded This Blog Posting?
That’s Not Enough!
https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com
Go for a half dozen more!
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