MM: Meat on the Bones But No New Hope
Mar 5, 2018 2:19:52 GMT
debris, Aristotle, and 6 more like this
Post by oldguy on Mar 5, 2018 2:19:52 GMT
The bewildering complexity of this case demands the creation of order and sequence. Hence the accepted canon of attacks and their sequential numbers. So, for example, if anyone on this board writes “Attack #3’ we envision the struggle between mom and EAR. And his leisurely stroll down the street sans pants.
But numbers lack human context. In Attack #3 three females, two still not now elderly- confronted stark terror as evil invaded their lives. Numbers do not tell anything of how their existence was altered one day at a time. Three people, 42 years ago- with 45,990 days affected. Affected in one way or another. From one attack. And the ironic thing is…even in trying to describe the human reality, I default to numbers. Multiply the dozens of victims by years, by children, by siblings, by parents, and the numbers of days reach into the millions.
But Michelle painted small telling vignettes. A husband gnawing the bindings off his wife’s feet. A female victim lapsing into hysterics because she blew a fuse and her house darkened. (Her elderly neighbors had to come over to calm her.) A brother cleaning up the blood after investigators leave. He could not wash out the blood under his fingernails.
She did put meat on the bones. I for one value that.
But hope? I do not think so based on those printed pages. In one chapter an investigator-years on the case says he believes EAR had a plane. He flew from north to south. Possession of a pilot’s license and piloting access to aircraft, much less ownership-presupposes so much about personal assets-psychological as well as financial. Yet in the next chapter they look wonderingly at beach bum stoners. Could one of them be EAR? Consideration of two such disparate characters is an admission that you have learned nothing. Nothing from all the documents of your thumb drives or the “mother lode” of boxes of papers.
The most telling words (to me) in the book “…So much wasn’t considered relevant then. Clark can’t explain why. It kills him.” (p. 281.) That is the truest statement between the covers. And reconstructing traffic stops from 40 years ago is well, hopeless.
At times she seems to miss a probable leap. Paul Holes found the Danville papers in 2011. And investigation enlisting the aid of landscape architects shows the “The Map” reflects planning and architectural sophistication. But if EAR dropped it…did he create it? Look at it as the conceptual scribbling of a parent developer. Little angry EAR planning punishment for his father and the other dull normals he houses. That would be in synch with the resentful unaccomplished narcissist author of “Mad is the Word.”
Somewhere in the documents is the identity of EAR. Not yet enough is known to connect the right data points, to triangulate to an iron truth.
I wish she were still with us.
But numbers lack human context. In Attack #3 three females, two still not now elderly- confronted stark terror as evil invaded their lives. Numbers do not tell anything of how their existence was altered one day at a time. Three people, 42 years ago- with 45,990 days affected. Affected in one way or another. From one attack. And the ironic thing is…even in trying to describe the human reality, I default to numbers. Multiply the dozens of victims by years, by children, by siblings, by parents, and the numbers of days reach into the millions.
But Michelle painted small telling vignettes. A husband gnawing the bindings off his wife’s feet. A female victim lapsing into hysterics because she blew a fuse and her house darkened. (Her elderly neighbors had to come over to calm her.) A brother cleaning up the blood after investigators leave. He could not wash out the blood under his fingernails.
She did put meat on the bones. I for one value that.
But hope? I do not think so based on those printed pages. In one chapter an investigator-years on the case says he believes EAR had a plane. He flew from north to south. Possession of a pilot’s license and piloting access to aircraft, much less ownership-presupposes so much about personal assets-psychological as well as financial. Yet in the next chapter they look wonderingly at beach bum stoners. Could one of them be EAR? Consideration of two such disparate characters is an admission that you have learned nothing. Nothing from all the documents of your thumb drives or the “mother lode” of boxes of papers.
The most telling words (to me) in the book “…So much wasn’t considered relevant then. Clark can’t explain why. It kills him.” (p. 281.) That is the truest statement between the covers. And reconstructing traffic stops from 40 years ago is well, hopeless.
At times she seems to miss a probable leap. Paul Holes found the Danville papers in 2011. And investigation enlisting the aid of landscape architects shows the “The Map” reflects planning and architectural sophistication. But if EAR dropped it…did he create it? Look at it as the conceptual scribbling of a parent developer. Little angry EAR planning punishment for his father and the other dull normals he houses. That would be in synch with the resentful unaccomplished narcissist author of “Mad is the Word.”
Somewhere in the documents is the identity of EAR. Not yet enough is known to connect the right data points, to triangulate to an iron truth.
I wish she were still with us.