Betsey Culp

On the third planet from the sun, the following appeared in the New York Times on September 14:

In some sense, Ms. Palin has become a metaphor for Alaska itself, and as grand a landscape as Alaska is, the current discussion is less about a geographical location than about a state of mind, or states of mind.

Elsewhere, in a parallel universe, a group of men sat around a campfire, tired from riding the range all day. It was a scene familiar to American moviegoers, straight out of “Blazing Saddles.” A fierce wind blew down the prairie, stirring up little eddies of dry dirt. A coyote howled in the distance. Overhead, the stars shone a chilly light. The men shivered and drew closer to the fire. One of them spoke.

“Did you ever hear the story of how John McWayne rescued Sarah Paleface? It’s a true story. I heard it from McWayne himself. It was a cold night like this, and he was heading for camp after a hard day of Royal Mountie work. He was feeling kinda low, because he’d only captured three outlaws from sun-up to sun-down, far from the round dozen he usually sent off to the hoosegow.

“Because he was feeling kinda low, he wasn’t watching where he was going. He just let his horse take itself along the trail toward camp. Royal Mountie McWayne rode along, lost in thought, remembering the long-gone days when a man’s derring-do counted for something.

“Suddenly, from the other side of a row of bushes, he heard a voice. A woman’s voice.

“‘Help! Somebody help me!’ the voice said.

” McWayne sat up tall in his saddle and looked around. His sharp eyes were unable to pierce the dark. He turned his horse in the direction of the voice and rode slowly off the trail.

“‘Who’s there?’ he called softly, not wanting to stir up trouble if trouble was waiting beyond the bushes.

“‘Help!’ the voice said again. “It is I, Sarah Paleface.’

“Sarah Paleface! The fairest female in all the West! And she needed his help.

“McWayne squeezed past the bushes and found himself next to a train track. How could he have forgotten that the B&B Railroad had completed the line only the day before? The first train was due to roll through in just a few minutes.

“‘Sarah Paleface!’ he called. ‘I’ll help you. Where are you?’

“‘Down here.’

“Her sweet melodious voice was faint and fearful. What had happened to her? He looked down and saw, nearly under his horse’s feet, the lovely features of Sarah Paleface, peering up at him from a cocoon of white rope. She was tied firmly to the tracks.

“‘Who has done this dastardly deed to you?’ he shouted, as he leaped to the ground. ‘Never fear! John McWayne is here!’

“‘It was those dreadful B&B men,’ she sobbed. ‘They thought they could have their way with me because I’m just a home-loving girl from the West. But they soon found out that big-city bullies are no match for small-town virtue.’

“McWayne pulled out his trusty Bowie knife, shiny from years of use, and began to cut through the stout bonds holding her immobile. Sarah Paleface gazed up at him, her dark eyes filled with gratitude. The rope was thick. Precious minutes passed as he worked to free her.

“From far off in the distance came the faint whistle of a locomotive. McWayne doubled his efforts.

“The whistle grew louder. He could hear the roar of the engine as well. Sarah Paleface said nothing. She continued to look up at him calmly, her face showing the faith she placed in him.

“The train rounded a nearby bend and headed toward the figures on the track. McWayne worked his knife faster. And faster.

“With one last swipe, he cut through the bonds and pulled her loose. They tumbled backward into the bushes as the train roared past, showering them with heat and gravel. They were safe.

“Sarah Paleface sat up and brushed her wayward hair back from her forehead. ‘You saved my life,’ she said softly. And then she reached one soft pink hand, pulled his grizzled face toward her, and gently kissed his check.

“‘I can never properly thank you,’ she added. ‘But if you take me home, my father will reward you handsomely.’

“As John McWayne helped her to his waiting horse, he smiled. ‘Aw shucks, ma’am,’ he said. ‘It was the least I could do.

“Now ain’t that the greatest story?” the voice continued. “And don’t it make you proud to be a man of the West?”

The men around the campfire shuffled in their seats. Finally, one of them spoke up. “Ya know, boss, that ain’t quite the way I heard it. The way I heard it was like this… it wasn’t Sarah Paleface who was tied up on the railroad tracks. It was Royal Mountie McWayne. It was Sarah Paleface who saved his life.”

But that’s just one woman’s opinion. Thanks for reading.

[As always, click on a thumbnail image to see it more clearly.]

On the third planet from the sun, the following appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle on July 13:

The green thumbs were covered with brown dirt Saturday at San Francisco’s Civic Center when 150 people who like to eat their vegetables planted an updated version of a World War II victory garden.

Elsewhere, in a parallel universe, a young queen was just finishing her morning toilette. She absent-mindedly scratched her head and removed two or three lice before picking up the sleekly pomaded wig that was her trademark. She smoothed a few stray wisps of  hair and settled it on her head. A quick glance in the mirror, a few minor adjustments, and she was ready to begin the day.

She turned to address the assembled courtiers.

“I’m bored. Let’s find something new to do today. What shall we do?”

Her words dropped into a deep and uncomfortable silence, as each of the assembled guests held back, hoping that someone else would throw out the first suggestion, which was almost always rejected.

“Well,” she repeated, “what shall we do today?”

Her eyebrows lifted into high arches as she looked around the room. A balding soldier sat in one corner, examining his fingernails. A young, well-dressed lady-in-waiting coughed gently into her handkerchief.

“Mr. Orr,” the queen said sharply. “Do you have a plan?”

The gentleman in question rose to his feet and bowed gracefully.

“I was thinking, Your Majesty, that we might arrange a painting party and decorate some of the apartments being constructed for the deserving poor. Psychologists have discovered that bright, cheerful surroundings are most effective in turning wayward paupers away from the streets.”

The queen pouted. “Not poor people again! Mr. Orr, we did that last week!”

Orr sidled toward the overstuffed cushion he had just vacated. His face was the color of a ripe eggplant.

“Well?” The queen snapped her fingers. “Are you all sleeping? Lady Kaye, what are your thoughts?”

A lean, dark-haired woman curtseyed deeply, her elbows jutting out at right angles above her waist as she endeavored to keep her balance.

“My lady,” she stammered, “perhaps you would care to organize a parade. It’s been many months since the last one” — she caught herself and gulped loudly — “and I’m sure the public has forgotten how you hid the route at the last minute. Today is too windy to carry torches, but a procession of handsome athletes carrying baseball bats would surely stir the populace.”

The queen drew herself up to her full height and pigeoned out her bosom.

“How dare you mention the last parade! Even the sight of the dowager queen showing off her toothpick legs in running shorts could not pacify those disappointed spectators.”

“Come, come,” she went on. “I will not sit idly today. We must do something, something visible, so that our loyal subjects will not forget our presence.”

At that very moment, the door opened and an old woman burst into the room. She wore a broad hat and a flowing magician’s cloak. Brandishing a rough staff half again as tall as she was, she swept up to the dais where the queen stood.

“Your majesty.”

The queen responded. “Biddy Babbling Brook.”

The newcomer pointed the leafy tip of her staff toward the queen and crumpled into a heap at her feet. Two pages rushed to her side and helped her rise.

“Your Majesty,” the old woman began again. “I have come to ask for your assistance in a grave matter facing our country. In this time of economic turmoil, many citizens go to bed hungry. I beseech you to follow the example of your ancestors and set aside a little plot of land to grow food that will ease their hardship.”

“I grow food? The queen had a shocked look on her face. “Would that involve digging in the dirt?”

“Only symbolically, my lady. You would have at your disposal a whole army of gardeners willing to get dirt under their fingernails for the good of the country. All you need to do is turn over the first shovelful of soil, using, of course, a dainty silver trowel especially designed to fit your tiny hands.”

The old woman stared at the queen, who was beginning to waver.

“Farms are messy, ugly places, crawling with unpleasant creatures and laid out in boring straight lines, Biddy Brook. I would not want to look at that every day.”

“May I suggest, Your Majesty, that you employ your finest landscape architects to create a new design. There is no requirement that gardens be arranged in close, parallel rows. I’m sure they could devise something else — a web of circles, perhaps.”

“But gardens take a long time to mature. I could not stand to wait. And I would find it distasteful to stare at bare dirt while the seeds were sprouting.”

“Then command that only large seedlings be planted. An instant garden is an exceedingly happy concept.”

The queen clapped her hands

“I will do it. Direct my stewards to begin preparations in the park just outside my window. And surround it with a sturdy fence so that thieving passersby cannot invade the space.” She thought a minute. “A sturdy fence, but a pretty one.”

The old woman bowed.

“I’ll deliver your orders immediately. But I do think, ma’am, that you might dispense with the fence entirely, in favor of a low, more welcoming wall. You could still control access by a few strategically placed gates. With a veggie patrol at night, that should suffice.”

The queen opened her arms wide.

“I can see it now,” she said, “hills of beans and corn and squash, surrounded by happy singing children. Soon all the world will know that I am truly the Green Queen.”

The courtiers bowed and murmured, “The Green Queen!”

The old woman slipped out the door. Once in the hall, she grinned and raised a triumphant fist. “Let a hundred flowers bloom,” she said, “and a hundred gardens prosper.”

Thanks for reading. I’m outta here till Friday.

Once upon a time, there was a mayoral election. One of the candidates was the mayor’s “hand-picked successor.”

Young and handsome, [the candidate] was a political moderate: he was popular with business — particularly the tourist industry — because of his tough stand on the homeless problem, but he still retained the [present mayor's] affinity with labor, including the big unions in city government like the transit workers.

Another candidate

was a firebrand lawyer from the Green Party who was interested in controlling development and improving the lot of the citizenry in San Francisco’s poorer neighborhoods, like the Mission and Hunters Point. His base was built in those neighborhoods, but he had other supporters throughout the more liberal districts like the Haight and the Castro.

But wait! There was a third candidate,

a conservative businessman involved in retail. He had the support of the “downtown” business interests, including banking and real estate, and was popular in the predominately Chinese neighborhoods of the city, like Chinatown, Sunset, Richmond, and Visitacion Valley.

Did you think I was talking about the Newsom-Gonzalez race of 2003?

I’m not. Nor am I Noodling on the News. But someone else is.

The three candidates are characters in Runoff (Bleak House Books, 2007), a whodunnit by San Francisco mystery writer Mark Coggins. The setting is San Francisco, strewn with bodies. Yes, plural. The book has as many violent deaths as the last act of Hamlet. Maybe more. And private investigator/jazz musician August Riordan is responsible for a number of them.

Riordan channels Sam Spade, even to the point of occupying an apartment on the corner of Post and Hyde. His voice sometimes echoes the master detective’s, as in this description of a cheap motel room on Lombard:

He gave me a key for a first-floor room next to the ice maker and the concrete stairwell. Inside was a carpet with the sort of pattern you see when slime mold grows on split pea soup, and several badly done imitations of the paintings of the kids with big eyes. There was also a bed with a sagging mattress that enveloped your butt like gel in a dental mold and a TV with one of the color guns on the fritz. The stains on the ceiling looked worse than most people’s garage floors.

But Riordan is far more free with his fists… and his knife… and his Glock automatic… and a few stray cleavers… than Dashiell Hammett’s “blond Satan” ever was.

The action takes place between the time of an election and the runoff that followed. At issue is whether the preliminary election was rigged. If it was, who did it? How? And why?

The “why” part is easy. The city’s “most precious resource” is real estate — in other words, housing. And two developers stand to profit if their candidate wins. On the Green side, there’s Ralph Wood, head of the Nautilus Housing Development Corporation, commonly known as NHDC. Supporting the incumbent and his successor is Arthur Calder, pro-development head of the San Francisco Home Builders League. The prize: the key to Hunters Point shipyard.

It turns out that the “how” part isn’t much more difficult. Unlike author Mark Coggins, who’s a Silicon Valley veteran, August Riordan is a techno-klutz, unable to program a cellphone. But he has a friend, Chris Duckworth, who knows better. Duckworth’s alter ego is Cassandra, a jazz-singing

Mae West-like medley of swaying hips, heaving bosom and wafting perfume.

But by day, he’s a font of information about “all matters technical.” And Riordan quickly discovers that

electronic voting machines, or more accurately, electronic voting systems and processes, are vulnerable at many points — when the software is being developed and installed, at the precinct when the votes are cast, when the USB drives are collected from the machines, at election headquarters where the votes are tallied. All of those places.

The “who” part of the puzzle is harder to unravel. And more fun. Particularly when you add in Leonora Lee, “The Dragon Lady of Chinatown.” And Tony “Squid Boy” Wu, who studied at Oxford and heads the San Francisco branch of a major Hong Kong gang. And an anarchist who calls himself Roadrunner. An ex-priest named Maurice Salaiz. A rogue backhoe driver known only as Red. You get the picture. It’s the San Francisco we know and love, writ large.

Who did it? And equally important, who won the election? There’s the rub. You’ll have to peruse the pages of Runoff to find out.

On May 4, the Chronicle ran a piece by Eddie Muller on San Francisco mystery writers. This posting is the first in an occasional series on the authors that Muller discusses.

In preparation for the article, Muller interviewed 30 writers, asking them,”Why do you feel this area has attracted, or bred, so many writers?” Mark Coggins replied:

I think San Francisco has served the same function for literary types roaming the country as a lint collector in a dryer. Writers like Twain, Hammett and Kerouac came to San Francisco as much because they’d come as far west as they could go as any other reason. The fact that San Francisco offered more in terms of culture and appreciation of literature and creative endeavors than the typical western city made it possible to stay — or at least stay long enough to write something of lasting significance.

Thanks for reading. I’m outta here till Friday.

On the third planet from the sun, Bob Egelko wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle:

San Francisco — Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, a now-defunct organization that was once on the government’s terrorist list, said it learned it had been a surveillance target from a document that the National Security Agency inadvertently turned over in 2004.

The foundation returned the document at the government’s request. The Ninth U.S Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in November that the document was so sensitive that Al-Haramain’s lawyers couldn’t even rely on their recollections of it to establish wiretapping.

Elsewhere, in a parallel universe, a lawyer named Joseph L. walked down a long corridor in one of those gray nondescript buildings that houses government bureaucrats. In front of him, a uniformed guard stood beside a closed door. The door’s frosted glass was lit from behind. It was labeled with black lettering that read, “International Trading Corporation.

As L. approached, the guard held up his hand. L. stopped. He shifted his briefcase to his left hand and began to reach into the inside pocket of his suit jacket. The guard stepped forward and grasped L.’s wrist.

“Keep your hands where I can see them,” he said.

L. withdrew his hand and waited.

The guard snapped, “Identification, please.”

“It’s in my pocket,” L. said. “May I get it out?”

The guard pulled out an electronic wand and waved it over L.’s body. The wand emitted a soft beeping sound.

Satisfied, the guard stepped back. “Go ahead,” he said.

L. pulled out his wallet and handed his driver’s license to the guard, who read it carefully and consulted a list by his side.

The guard turned and pressed a button on the doorframe. L. could hear the sound of a buzzer on the other side.

The door opened. A small dark man looked out and motioned to L. to follow him.

The two passed through a large empty anteroom and into another hallway. After they had walked about a hundred meters, they came to a doorway flanked by two guards. One took L.’s briefcase and scanned it with an electronic wand. The other held up a small device that looked like a camera and pointed it toward the irises of L.’s eyes.

The guards nodded, and the small dark man rested his forefinger on a sensor near the door. The door swung open. He led L. into a small windowless office and seated him before an antiquated computer.

“This is where you’ll prepare your brief,” he said.

L. nodded. He knew the drill. How many times had he done it before, in the same office with the same unnamed man by his side? And yet the man never showed signs of recognizing him.

L. began to type. His task was simple: to prepare a brief in support of his client’s case, in response to the government’s arguments. He had never seen the government’s arguments and never would. They were based on classified documents, and their release might endanger national security. It was up to him to imagine what those arguments might be and to frame an appropriate response.

L. typed steadily for two hours, pausing only occasionally to rub his wrists. He was a poor typist, plagued by misspellings. All the while, the small dark man sat on a straight-backed chair, staring at the wall or examining his fingernails. The only sound was the soft click of the computer keys.

Finally, L. leaned back in his chair and stretched. He pushed the Print button on the computer and waited while his brief was spewed out page by page. He read what he had written, made a few corrections, and printed it out again. This time he handed it to his companion. He knew his own security clearance was so low that he could not expect a copy. He had no idea if the judge would receive one. He knew that the judge would never see the documents on which it was based.

The small dark man unplugged the computer and ran L.’s first draft through a shredder. He emptied L.’s briefcase and shredded his notes as well. Silently beckoning to L., he led him back the way they had come, down the long corridor, through the anteroom, and out the door.

L. walked quickly out of the building. When he reached the sidewalk, the sound of the passing traffic seemed deafening. The warm pungent air assaulted his nostrils. He paused, sloughing off the constricting atmosphere he had just left.

He wondered if he should call his client and tell him how the session had gone. There wasn’t much point to it. He never dared say too much, on the assumption that their conversations were being monitored. In any case, he was never sure that his efforts would bear any fruit. But he had to try. The knowledge that L. was working for his release would bring some measure of hope to his client, even if that hope soon turned out to be unfounded.

He pulled out his cellphone and dialed the number of the Terrorist Detention Camp.

Meanwhile, back on the third planet from the sun, Patrick Radden Keefe wrote in the New Yorker:

In October, [lawyer Lynne] Bernabei wrote a letter to the Justice Department. The attorneys representing Al Haramain had been dealing with a novel quandary of legal ethics. If they had a reasonable belief that any telephone conversation with Seda or Buthi might be monitored by the N.S.A., could they talk to their clients without violating attorney-client confidentiality? Bernabei requested confirmation that the government was not intercepting her “written or oral communications” with her clients. Two weeks later, she received a response from the lawyers at the Justice Department. They wouldn’t confirm or deny.

Thanks for reading. I’m outta here till Monday.

On the third planet from the sun, the New York Times wrote in an editorial,

[John C.] Yoo, who, inexplicably, teaches law at the University of California, Berkeley, never directly argues that it is legal to chain prisoners to the ceiling for days, sexually abuse them or subject them to waterboarding — all things done by American jailers.

His primary argument, in which he reaches back to 19th-century legal opinions justifying the execution of Indians who rejected the reservation, is that the laws didn’t apply to Mr. Bush because he is commander in chief.

Elsewhere, in a parallel universe, The Sink pulled his chair nearer to the window and looked out. The courtyard below was empty except for a few gardeners who were planting bushes for the afternoon’s brush-cutting. How he enjoyed that exercise! He was glad he’d instituted the custom when he moved into the Sink Hole.

But it was only 11:00, and he still had a few issues of state to solve before lunch. He perched his chin on his hand and sighed. “Sometimes,” he thought, “being The Sink stinks.”

He mentally leafed through the problems facing him. There were tremors in the economy, with stocks threatening to fall on Wall Street like Humpty Dumpty teetering on his wobbly perch. Not his fault. He’d done his best to calm things down. Time to sit tight and let the Sink 44 clean up the mess.

Those fellows in Iraq were at it again, threatening to tear each other and the entire country apart. Not his fault. He’d done his best to calm things down. Time to sit tight and let Sink 44 clean up the mess.

But there was that torture thing. He’d begun to hear rumors that people weren’t happy with the way he’d been treating prisoners. He’d done his best to calm things down, but somehow the old slogans weren’t working any more. He definitely didn’t want to sit tight and let Sink 44 clean up this mess, because he might be swept up in the process.

Once, several years ago, he thought he was safely barricaded behind a powerful set of legal arguments. What was the name of the nice young man who devoted so much time to the construction work? Oh, yes. John Mee. He’d called him Johnnycake.

But even though it was obvious that the arguments rested on firm historical precedents and even though they were cemented with fine constitutional reasoning, they caused a ruckus when they were finally made public. It would have been far better to have kept them secret, like so many of his other decisions. What people didn’t know couldn’t hurt him. It’s when they found out things that trouble started.

Maybe it was time to call on Mee’s services again. If his arguments were successful, Mee would become a hero. If they failed, he’d be run out of town for trying to subvert the government, but The Sink would escape unscathed. He could already see himself appearing on television, shaking his head ruefully at the misguided zeal of the youthful advisor.

Mee used to be in the capital, at the Department of Justice. But recently, the place had turned into a ghost town. Where had he gone?

A call to an aide provided the answer: “John Mee is now Inexplicable Professor of Constitutional Law at Guantanamo University. I’ve connected you.”

The Sink picked up the phone. “Johnnycake. Come back. I need you.”

On the third planet from the sun, Cecelia M. Vega wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle,

A series of new television and radio commercials, billboards and bus shelter signs will soon go up around San Francisco advertising the fact that the city by the bay is also a sanctuary city for illegal immigrants….

Officials said the public awareness campaign was prompted in part by a series of federal immigration raids around the region last year that left undocumented immigrants hesitant to come forward to seek medical treatment or report crimes, out of fear they might be deported.

Elsewhere, in a parallel universe, a handsome gray-haired man pushed open the doors of City Hall and walked quickly down the long row of marble steps toward a waiting limousine. Engrossed in conversation with a young woman, he nearly lost his footing as the rays of the western sun hit him full in the face. She reached out for his elbow, realized he had righted himself, and released her hand.

“No, I’m fine,” he said. “Just couldn’t see where I was going for a minute. Good thing the press missed my slip though.”

She smiled.

They took two steps and a man appeared below them, suddenly, as if he’d popped up from nowhere. He began to climb the stairs, staring down at his feet. A baseball cap pulled low over his forehead blocked their view of his face.

Two more steps, and he stood directly in front of the couple. He pulled out a handgun, aimed it at the gray-haired man’s chest and fired once, then ran toward the bushes that lined the stairs.

But the escape route was blocked. A short, dark man stood directly in his path, watching the encounter in horror. The assailant had no room to maneuver. He ran right into the onlooker, and the impact knocked off his cap.

No matter. He twisted to one side, found an opening in the bushes and disappeared.

The young woman screamed. “Mr. Mayor!”

Two uniformed guards ran up the stairs from the limo. One knelt beside the mayor, who had collapsed on the steps. The guard ripped open his shirt and pressed a handkerchief against the gaping wound in his chest.

The other guard turned toward the man standing near the edge of the stairs. “Did you see his face?”

The man nodded.

The guard pulled out a cell phone and called 911. The police arrived within minutes.

From this point on, the story is procedural. The police did their job. The witness did his. The mayor spent several weeks in the hospital but eventually recovered. His assailant was captured, tried, and convicted.

But that’s not the end of the story. In fact, it has two endings.

In one, the short, dark man was a Palestinian named Salim Beidas. He was an architect, trained in Paris. He had come to City Hall because it was one of the major buildings in the city, and had just happened to arrive in time to witness the attack on the mayor. He was a tourist who had been in the United States for ten days. The city awarded him a certificate of honor in gratitude for his help.

In the other ending, the short, dark man was a Palestinian named Salim Beidas. He was an architect, trained in Paris. He had come to City Hall because it was one of the major buildings in the city, and had just happened to arrive in time to witness the attack on the mayor. He was an undocumented immigrant who had worked in the United States for ten years. The city turned him over to the federal immigration authorities, who deported him.

On the third planet from the sun, Roger Runningen wrote in Bloomberg.com,

The U.S. wants to start construction next year of a missile site in Poland for 10 interceptors and a fixed radar site in the Czech Republic to counter a potential long-range missile threat from Iran.

And Randal C. Archibold wrote in the New York Times,

In a sweeping use of its authority, the Department of Homeland Security said Tuesday that it would bypass environmental reviews to speed construction of fencing along the Mexican border.

Elsewhere, in a parallel universe, Pfc. Sven Larsson emailed his mother in Minneapolis:

Hey Mom,

I’m on duty in a few minutes but I wanted to let you know that everything is OK here and I’m doing fine. I can’t tell you exactly there “here” is, but you already know it’s way south of where you are.

I can tell you that it’s beautiful. Nobody told me there were flowers in the desert. I thought it was all cactus and sand. Maybe it’s because it’s spring and we’ve had a little rain — my buddy who grew up around here says this is the rainy season — anyway, there are wildflowers everywhere. Red ones and yellow ones and purple ones and white ones. John tried to teach me what they’re called, I think he said something about monkey flowers and ocotillo, but my brain refused to fasten on them.

And more animals than I’ve even seen just wandering around in the wild. No, no camels. But in the few days I’ve been here, I’ve seen foxes and deer. Nearly stepped on a rattlesnake taking a sunbath. And Mom, the most beautiful bird I’ve ever seen. A golden eagle. Must have had a wing span of over six feet.

Most of what we’re doing is classified, but everybody knows that Fort Chertoff is part of a missile chain. Remember the article you cut out of the Star Tribune just before I left home? The photographs didn’t capture the size of the place — it’s enormous, with every imaginable kind of missile and technological doodad, just waiting for somebody to try to sneak across the border or send a long-range weapon our way. I spend a lot of time sitting in front of a computer screen, just watching not much of anything happening. Pretty cool army service, no?

Big excitement yesterday. The Sink — that’s military talk for the C-in-C, the Commander-in-Chief — The Sink stopped by unannounced. I guess he thought our morale needed boosting, because he told us what a good job we were doing and how vital our position was to the safety of the homeland blah blah blah.

But he told me something I didn’t know, how many years ago somebody suggested building a wall across the southern border of the U.S. to keep out terrorists and illegals, and people got all fired up because the project was going to take away their property and do all sorts of damage to the environment.

That was when Michael Chertoff just beginning to get the Department of Homeland Security into shape. And he said no way, we’re not going to copy the Chinese and build a wall. We’re going to use our heads and our scientific know-how and do it better. He said instead of building missile bases all over the world, why not just put a few good ones around the country here at home?

You’ve seen those pictures taken from outer space that show the U.S. ringed with lights. That’s us. I’m one of those lights.

And then the Sink gave us a plaque with a quotation on it, to put over the main entrance to the fort. He said it was by an old poet named Robert Frost.

It says, Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.

Right on.

Gotta run, S.

On the third planet from the sun, Gwen Knapp wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle,

For the most part, Zito didn’t throw harder than 84 mph all day. He knows his fastball has lost velocity, and doesn’t quite understand why.

Elsewhere, in a parallel universe, the fans roared with displeasure as the Big Z walked out to the pitcher’s mound. Once the standard-bearer of a bright new future, he had begun the season 0-3, after an embarrassing 9-25 the year before. The boos were deafening: their vibrations rattled the bleachers and whipped the pennants around their staffs. A sea gull hovering overhead in the hope of grabbing a crumb or two darted off in alarm.

Z just smiled. After months of experimenting, he’d come up with a new pitch — a really new pitch — and he knew it would work.

When he reached the mound, he stood still for a minute, staring at the batter. The noise from the stands poured over him like a cold shower, alerting every nerve.

Z inhaled deeply. Time to show them what he’d got. At the top of the windup, instead of doing his usual one-legged curl to the chest, he stretched his right leg straight up to the sky. Kicking the moon, like Warren Spahn and the Rockettes.

The crowd gasped. Something strange was happening.

He cocked his arm and sucked in his gut, preparing for the release. It came, with a lunge forward and an arcing of his arm so fast that the movement became a blur. He followed through, letting his fingertips linger for a nanosecond behind the trajectory of the ball.

But the ball hardly moved. It hovered two inches beyond the spot where Z’s fingers had pointed. Then slowly, ever so slowly, it began to float toward the batter’s box. Sixty feet, six inches, is a very long distance when it’s being traveled inch by inch.

The catcher crouched, his mitt poised, waiting. The batter stared intently. Then, as the seconds turned into minutes, he relaxed and his eyes began to wander. By the time the ball reached the strike zone, his eyes had glazed over and he was lost in the world of his own private dreams.

The ball fell softly into the catcher’s mitt.

Strike one!

The stunned crowd came to life and laughter filled the ballpark, followed by cheers. Z hadn’t thrown a strike in his last three trips to the mound. The batter lowered his bat and looked at the home plate umpire, who grinned back at him.

The next pitch clocked in at about 85 miles an hour, sailing right past the still shell-shocked batter.

Strike two!

As Z began the windup for his next throw, the batter visibly upped his concentration. He wasn’t going to get caught napping again. Again Z thrust his right leg to the sky. Again he released the ball and rested his fingers ever-so-gently in its wake. Again the ball hovered over the path to the batter’s box.

Again the batter stared blankly as the ball drifted by him.

Strike three!

The crowd went crazy. Grown men spilled their beer as they leaped to their feet and hugged their neighbors. Kids threw their caps into the air. Even the granny fans lost their composure, whooping and waving their orange sunhats.

This was only the beginning. Z retired the side and went on to pitch a perfect game, his new throwing technique completely baffling all his opponents, who were accustomed to the hyped-up tempo of a supplement-stimulated game.

Drawn by his success, other pitchers followed suit. By the end of the season, six-hour games were common. Stadium vendors and TV advertisers loved the new format. Personal trainers searched frantically for injectable substances that could help players to slow down their reflexes, while coaches turned to yoga and zen. And the seventh-inning stretch began to truly live up to its name, as fans got to their feet, awakened their slumbering muscles, and prepared for another two hours of baseball.