If you have never heard of John Stonehouse, it is probably because of Lord Lucan. The British peer, Lucan, disappeared on November 7, 1974, after the murder of Sandra Rivett, his children’s nanny, and the attempted murder of his wife, Veronica. Lucan was never seen again by any officials, even after extensive international searches. Many • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,753) on Friday, January 27, 2023. My tour of news sites that attempt to avoid the “bad news bias” continues with a site that is not exactly “good news” but is filled with good information—and probably the kind of information that you can apply directly • Read More »
Americans’ love of football remains undiminished despite the spectacle of Damar Hamlin collapsing on the field during the Buffalo Bills-Cincinnati Bengals nationally-televised game a couple of weeks ago. Hamlin had just taken a normal hit to the chest on the previous play, but this hit sent him into cardiac arrest. He nearly died. It was • Read More »
Freeman Wills Crofts is not a name that is heard these days along with Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers, but that’s because we’re living in the 21st century. If you were reading detective fiction in the 1930s, the “golden age” of the genre, you would be very familiar with Crofts and likely would have • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,829) on Friday, January 20, 2023. As promised in last week’s newsletter, I continue to present websites that attempt to avoid, as best they can, the “bad news bias” of many of the mainstream media. This week’s entry is YES! magazine. YES! emphasizes what it • Read More »
The world today knows him as one of the Old West’s most famous gunslingers, fearless associate of the famous lawman, Wyatt Earp. But in 1921, the world knew Bat Masterson as a world-class sports writer for the New York Morning Telegraph and one of the foremost experts on the second most popular sport of the • Read More »
Forty years ago, you could walk into a grocery store or drugstore and grab a bottle of Tylenol off the shelf. The only thing that stood between you and the medicine was an unglued carton, screw-on bottle cap, and a small wad of cotton. Today, if you grabbed that same bottle off the shelf, you • Read More »
Her work had been published in a variety of newspapers and magazines, but most of them were low circulation periodicals. Harriet wrote incessantly, sometimes as much as 15 hours a day, because the money that she received from her publications barely covered the family’s expenses. In 1859 she wrote a story that she believed was • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,753) on Friday, January 13, 2023. The “bad news bias” of the news outlet that I regularly visit has been all too obvious lately. I know enough about journalism not to blame the messenger. There’s plenty of bad stuff out there that we need to • Read More »
You have probably never heard the unusual name Metta Victoria Fuller Victor, but from now on whenever you hear the name Edgar Allan Poe, you should try to remember Metta’s name. Poe is the undisputed (mostly) father of American detective fiction. He wrote three short stories featuring Inspector Auguste Dupin, and he wrote about detective • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,753) on Friday, January 6, 2023. Some people blanche at the word “resolution” especially at this time of year. They believe, often rightly, that New Year’s resolutions are meaningless if not harmful because they raise expectations and often result in frustration. I don’t really subscribe • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2, 491) on Friday, December 30, 2022. As with most authors, I am of two minds when it comes to reviews of anything I have written. Reviewers who are kind are obvious geniuses able to perceive the many profundities—written with the appropriate amount of self-effacing • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2, 491) on Friday, December 23, 2022. In order to give myself a couple of weeks off, the newsletter this week and next week will be populated mostly by material from the JPROF.com archives. Much of this was originally posted a decade or more ago, • Read More »
When we read a book or see a play that has been written in another language and translated into English, what exactly are we reading or hearing? Are they the words of the author or the words of the translator? This is the eternal dilemma of translation. Each language has its own words, phrases, structure, • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2, 491) on Friday, December 16, 2022. This month brings to a close my four-and-a-half-year tenure as the writer-in-residence for the Blount County Public Library. This association with what has to be one of the best local libraries in the nation has been one • Read More »
We conclude that libraries remain an important part of communities’ cultural infrastructure, particularly in deprived areas, and call for further support to improve these services. That’s the last sentence of a summary of a report published by the Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport Committee of the House of Commons in the United Kingdom. The report • Read More »
When the trial of ex-football star O.J. Simpson opened in Los Angeles in 1995, only one person in the courtroom that day could match the defendant in fame and celebrityhood. He was seated in the first row behind the defense and prosecution tables in a place especially assigned to him by the judge. He was • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2, 491) on Friday, December 9, 2022. ’Tis the season for “traditions.” These are the things that we do in certain ways, and at certain times, at this end-of-year holiday season. These days are usually full of traditions. A friend of mine once told me • Read More »
Soccer, or what most of the world outside of America calls “football,” is once again in the headlines. It’s not just that the World Cup, the globe’s biggest sporting event, is underway. The headlines involve the politics of the sport, this year revolving around where it is being played. Such controversies are nothing new. In • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2, 491) on Friday, December 2, 2022. In a conversation I had recently with a friend, she and I were discussing certain authors, whose books we enjoyed reading. The name of one author, one who is quite well-known, came up, and we both agreed that • Read More »