Thursday, October 24, 2024

My Favorite Quotes on Writing

 

Reading is like breathing in. Writing is like breathing out. Pam Allyn


When I encountered the above quote, I was immediately captivated, finding it concise and wise. I asked myself what were my favorite quotes regarding writing and, to supplement these, went through websites that collected pithy bits of wisdom. I present my selections below. 


The Obsession.


If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster. Isaac Asimov


"It's Harder Not To." Carl Van Doren, when asked if it was hard to write.


What moves those of genius, what inspires their work is not new ideas, but their obsession with the idea that what has already been said is still not enough. Eugene Delacroix


On Getting On With It.


Start before you're ready.  Steven Pressfield


Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way. E. L. Doctorow


We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down. Kurt Vonnegut


There's no such thing as writer's block. That was invented by people in California who couldn't write.  Terry Pratchett


Where Writing Comes From.


You want to tell a story? Grow a heart. Grow two. Now, with the second heart, smash the first one into bits. Charles Yu.


Our stories are the tellers of us. Chris Cleave


Tears are words that need to be written. Paulo Coelho


I write to discover what I know. Flannery O'Connor


Stories aren't made of language: they're made of something else... perhaps they're made of life. Philip Pullman


We are cups, quietly and constantly being filled. The trick is knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.  Ray Bradbury


The Multiple Lives of Writers.


We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect. Anaïs Nin


Writers live twice. Natalie Goldberg


Writers aren't people exactly. Or, if they're any good, they're a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person.  F. Scott Fitzgerald


Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia. E.L. Doctorow


Rules. 


There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are. W. Somerset Maugham


Instructions for living a life:

Pay attention.

Be astonished.

Tell about it.

Mary Oliver


Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I'd have the facts. Harper Lee


The road to hell is indubitably paved with adverbs. paraphrasing Stephen King (I added the word indubitably.)


An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.  F. Scott Fitzgerald


Prose is architecture, not interior decoration. Ernest Hemingway


You don't write about the horrors of war. No. You write about a kid's burnt socks lying in the road.  Richard Price


Ideas and Inspiration. 


If you wait for inspiration to write, you're not a writer, you're a waiter.  Dan Poynter


You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have. Maya Angelou


Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen. John Steinbeck


Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions.  Albert Einstein


Editing. 


The first draft is you just telling yourself the story.  Terry Pratchett


I'm writing a first draft and reminding myself that I'm simply shoveling sand into a box so that later I can build castles.  Shannon Hale


You can always edit a bad page. You can't edit a blank page.  Jodi Picoult


The secret of being a bore is to tell everything. Voltaire


So the writer who breeds more words than he needs 

is making a chore for the reader who reads.  Dr. Seuss


When you are describing a shape, or sound, or tint, 

don’t state the matter plainly, but put it in a hint. 

And learn to look at all things with a sort of mental squint.  Lewis Carroll


General Advice.


How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live. Henry David Thoreau


A good story is a dream shared by the author and the reader. Anything that wakes the reader from the dream is a mortal sin. Victor J. Banis


You may tell a tale that takes up residence in someone's soul, becomes their blood and self and purpose. That tale will move them and drive them and who knows that they might do because of it, because of your words. That is your role, your gift.  Erin Morgenstern


As a writer, you should not judge, you should understand. Ernest Hemingway


You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant. Harlan Ellison


Easy reading is damn hard writing.  Nathaniel Hawthorne


Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.  Tom Stoppard


If you get to like it, grammar reveals the hidden meaning of history, hides disorder and abandonment, links things and brings opposites together. Delphine de Vigan


I think life is too serious to be taken seriously. Ray Bradbury


Don't listen to writing advice and, most especially, don't listen to me. Martin Hill Ortiz



Miscellaneous.


Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.  Groucho Marx


The pen is mightier than the sword, and considerably easier to write with. Marty Feldman


I'm writing a book. I've got the page numbers done.  Steven Wright


If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second-greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first-greatest, of course, is to shoot them now while they're happy.  Dorothy Parker


The following sources have further quotes on writing and, on some occasions, longer versions of the above quotes.


Sources: 

https://www.inc.com/glenn-leibowitz/50-quotes-from-famous-authors-that-will-inspire-yo.html

https://www.audible.com/blog/quotes-writing

https://www.nicolemgulotta.com/blog/25-inspirational-quotes

https://storyempire.com/2021/09/24/quotes-on-writing-from-famous-writers/

https://getfreewrite.com/blogs/writing-success/55-motivational-writing-quotes?srsltid=AfmBOopI0czyArIVM-qCp3SIMDUd6PTPQ918RdhX-HwFP3oM1uKfKdxP

https://writergadgets.com/funny-writing-quotes/

https://www.bryndonovan.com/2020/10/26/20-funny-quotes-about-writing/

https://jerichowriters.com/99-quotes-about-writing-by-the-worlds-greatest-writers/

https://ronovanwrites.com/2016/05/19/16-quotes-of-for-writers-obsession/

me.


Martin Hill Ortiz is the author of several novels including most recently the thriller, Floor 24. 

Floor 24
Oliver-Heber Books

"From the mob underworld to the tops of new skyscrapers, Floor 24 is a heart-thumping New York 1920's historical mystery!" - Holly Newman, bestselling author of A Chance Inquiry mystery series.


Saturday, September 14, 2024

Floor 24: Themes of the Novel

 



Floor 24, Martin Hill Ortiz 
Oliver-Heber Books.

"From the mob underworld to the tops of new skyscrapers, Floor 24 is a heart-thumping New York 1920's historical mystery!" - Holly Newman, bestselling author of A Chance Inquiry mystery series.



My novel, Floor 24, is the first installment in a trilogy called The Skyline Murder Mysteries. Taken together they tackle an ambitious theme: What went wrong in the 20th century. The skyscrapers rising in Manhattan symbolizes the wild growth of the 1920s: a vertigo of optimism that would soon meet the crash of the Depression. 



        The modern world began at Number 50 Broadway—a lot of blame to place on a single building. . . . the architect settled on an impossibly tall and thin design. All the buildings which had come before, like beetles, had been supported by their outer shells, becoming as big and as brawny as their stone or brick walls could be stacked. Castles and cathedrals reigned as the tallest buildings in the world. The Tower at 50 Broadway took its cue from evolution: creatures could grow taller and more immense using internal skeletons. So, the architect cried, "Let there be life!" and constructed his new beast using an inner framework of steel, thus giving birth to a modern breed of titans, giants with spires that raked the sky. (From Floor 24)



Actual buildings figure prominently in the book. Two iterations of Number 50 Broadway, the Adams Express Building, the Vanderbilt Mansion at 666 Fifth Avenue, the World Building, the Capitol Theater, the Gotham Hotel, and the Columbia Trust. Others make brief cameos. 



Number 50 Broadway, the Tower Building (center)
The first building to be fully supported by an internal steel skeleton,
providing the template for skyscrapers.
Photo taken after it had been dwarfed by its neighbors.

 

Cliffs rose around Wall Street. The masses and the masters separated. Those above owned the sun and towered over the rest of us, who were cast into a pit of shadows. With the people and the prestige separated, New York became even more concentrated as a center of power, until that power became a monster, more imperious and more controlling than the cathedrals and palaces of yesteryear. (from Floor 24)



666 5th Avenue. Vanderbilt Mansion 
It's creepy and it's spooky, it's altogether ooky.



The New Century


The 20th century began with wild optimism. New inventions including electrical lighting, motor cars, and telephony were creating a modern world. European wars seemed to belong to a distant age, as far away as the days of Napoleon. Modern thinkers explored the mysteries of the universe and the mind. Women began to have rights. With motion pictures, the people had a populist medium and stories promoted the triumph of the underdog as expressed by the works of Charlie Chaplin. Flooded by immigrants, America boomed. But all was not well. In 1914, longstanding jealousies and grievances plunged the world into its first global war. New inventions were created to enhance killing. Every new medium for communication becomes co-opted by propagandists. In 1915, the film, The Birth of a Nation, revived the Ku Klux Klan who promoted an anti-minority and anti-immigrant nativism. This revolution swept over the United States. In the 1920s, a boom of wealth for a moment masked our hatred and divisions. Women had the vote. In 1928 Catholic was nominated to be president, a Jewish man to be the governor of New York. The skyline of Manhattan grew with ever-taller buildings. But behind the official sobriety of Prohibition was rum-running, gangsterism, and corruption. The wealth of the roaring twenties proved illusory.


With the Depression, around the world despots took advantage of the economic turmoil. The new medium of communication, radio was conscripted as a propagandist tool to bring long-simmering hatreds to a boil.


The demolition of the Vanderbilt Mansion (1926)
is featured in my book. The "S's" in the stairway railing
stand for Stanford White, the architect.
Construction versus destruction is a theme of my novel.



This is the simplified story of the rise and fall of the early 20th Century, the backdrop to my novel and to the series. The world could have turned out very differently. In January 1933, Hitler managed to become Chancellor of Germany after receiving only 33% of the vote. In 1928, Franklin Roosevelt won the governorship of New York by a mere 0.6%, launching him into position to take the White House four years later. He was inaugurated as President on March 4, 1933. On March 5, Hitler held the last multi-party elections in Germany, consolidating his power.


Progress versus regression and building versus destruction have been at constant war with one another.


Martin Hill Ortiz


The Adams Express Building, center




The Columbia Trust Building.
Originally, The Knickerbocker Trust.


The Capitol Theater, Movie Palace.


Saturday, August 31, 2024

A Very Entertaining Death. My First Alan Priest Story

 

This story marked the first appearance of Alan Priest, the one-handed journalist who is the protagonist of my mystery series, The Skyline Murder Mysteries. The first in the series, Floor 24, will be available September 17.


A Very Entertaining Death, Mystery Magazine, March 2016. 


A Very Entertaining Death

Martin Hill Ortiz


While waiting for the spectacle to begin, I cut and shuffled a deck of cards with my left hand, keeping the ace on top, practicing a skill I would never again use. I stopped mid-cut: the goose-honk of a squeeze-bulb car-horn announced the arrival of the hearse. I dropped the deck into my jacket pocket.


Giggling bathing beauties stood planted on the running boards of the approaching lemon-yellow Packard. Its nose-end acted as a ship's bow, parting the crowd which swept back in rippling waves. Curtains cloaked the windows of its stretched-out cargo hold. The vehicle rolled to a stop at the brink of a neatly-carved rectangular pit.


Flappers in their tube-like dresses, the tassels on their knee-high hems shimmying, strained against the cordoned-off perimeter. Some blew kisses. Dandies, resuscitated after a night of celebrating Prohibition—genteel gentlemen for whom daylight was a curse word—balanced on their toes to witness the hullabaloo. Young nippers roosted on tombstones; some braved the roofs of mausoleums.


With dainty back-kicks, the beauties sprang from the running boards. The front and back cabin doors swung open and five beefy men climbed out. They glared at the offensive sun, tugged at their cuffs and screwed on their top hats. After delivering indifferent waves to the audience, they rounded the hearse. One opened the rear compartment, grabbed the handle at the head of the coffin within and hauled it backwards on its rollers. The others took hold of the side grips and lifted. They lugged the pine box, carrying it over to and setting it down beside the gaping grave. The casket lid flipped and presto! Richard French, The Famous Frenchini, popped up to the cheers of the crowd.


"Hello, my fine admirers!" the magician called out, his arms spread wide as though he could embrace the entire breadth of the mob. "Prepare yourselves to bear witness the single greatest feat in the history of mankind: An escapade not to be beheld by those of feeble in breast or weak in constitution. I, the Famous Frenchini, will slip free from the bony fingers of the merciless reaper and escape the bonds of death!"


I had to hand it to Richard: he knew how to throw a funeral. Lurking in the shadows cast by the spotlight of Houdini's fame was a pack of aspiring escape artists who hungered to be the latest -ini. French had risen above the ambitious rabble. With the bonny good looks of a photoplay star and the bombast of P.T. Barnum, his celebrity had swelled well beyond his mediocre skills as an illusionist.


Not fair. Showmanship is a crucial part of the magic trade, and Frenchini was a master of pure audacious theater. I was a master of jealousy.


"Alan!" Someone recognized me and slipped through the crowd, heading my way. It was Mark Buchanan, the Amazing Something or Other. He had an act so forgettable even those who knew him couldn't remember his stage name. Nice guy, though. He reached out to shake my right hand and, in a moment of shock I'd seen hundreds of times before, noticed it was not there. I shoved the stub of my wrist into his hand.


"What . . .?" he couldn't even finish his question.


"I lost it during the Great War," I told him. "I checked the Army's Lost and Found. Lots of body parts, none of them mine."


He didn't know what to make of my sense of humor or whether it was humor, and not just angry spitting in the sand.


"I thought you were here with the magician's crowd," he said.


"Forced retirement. I'm covering this event for the Evening World." I tapped a knuckle on the top page of note papers taped around the forearm of my right sleeve. "I usually handle the city hall beat, but Cobb, my boss, knows about my pre-war stage act, so he sent me here. He wants a front page scoop on how it's done."


Under normal circumstances, I'd never rat out an illusionist, but Frenchini dared his fellow artists to do just that, offering a five hundred dollar reward to the first person who could show how he performed his miracle—how he had escaped being buried alive. He vowed the coffin and all items devised to secure him would be made available afterwards for inspection. In my estimation, that seemed like too reckless a promise: the Famous, not-even-great, Frenchini was begging to be exposed.


A pair of policemen in brass-buttoned coats affixed handcuffs to French's wrists. "Tighter!" Frenchini shouted and, as the manacles pinched his flesh, the magician grimaced and demanded again, "Tighter!"


With his wrists suitably crushed, Frenchini lofted his hands over his heads, saying, "To prove I have no key in my possession I ask that my clothes and my body should now be thoroughly searched." One of the bluecoats patted him down and poked a finger in his mouth. The search was laughably brief.


"He possesses not a key," the policeman announced in a brogue so thick he had to be a vaudevillian shill. "I swear by me dear Mother Molly's soul!" So phony. The crowd loved it.


The first principle of any magic trick is misdirection. While the crowd watched the pallbearers wrap The Famous Frenchini in a chain so bulky each link was as big as a fist, I watched the real show. The other magicians and escape artists, a sullen group, milled about in a roped off corner, covetous of the five-hundred-dollar reward.


They all hated French. Prominent was Jim Crandall, who had publicly accused Frenchini of stealing his illusions. Standing in back and a head taller than the rest was Devlin Rastofsky, the Red Devil, whom Frenchini had humiliated on stage. Along for the show was Jon Ketcham, The Toymaker. A genius at fashioning elaborate contraptions, he could transform a second-rate illusionist into a first-class star. He held a grudge against most every magician, penny-pinchers all of them, who gave him neither proper payment nor recognition. Now, in his eighties, the left side of his face drooped from a recent stroke. Hell, even Benny, the Evening World's photo boy was bitter from the time Frenchini had smashed his camera gear after taking an unflattering picture.


With the chain cocooning Frenchini's arms and torso, a padlock the size of a wall clock was snapped in place in front, connecting the two end links. Its keyhole was roomy enough to stick a thumb inside.


Frenchini took this opportunity to make a speech. "I do hereby pledge this oath before all of you and before the ever-listening ears of the Almighty. In one hour, when you seek me in this pine vessel, you shall find neither my body nor my bones. I will have crossed over. Shakespeare, the majestic versifier, declared death to be 'the undiscovered country.' I am its explorer! The Egyptian pharaoh, Cheops, nay, even Ramses himself, whose very daughter plucked the castaway Moses from the hinterland of bulrushes, spoke of the City of the Dead. The secret entrance to this necropolis has been passed on to me by the venerable calif of Khartoum. In my hours free of this world's shackles, I shall promenade that purgatorial city's boulevards, brushing shoulders with Lincoln and Socrates, history's greats and its lesser-knowns. The fortunate among you will witness my resurrection at the Hardy Theater on 44th and 9th at the hour of eight this evening. That is, those of you who have purchased tickets."


The five pallbearers hefted the immobile magician and his chains into the wooden box. At this moment, I fully expected the pallbearers to shut the casket before lowering him into the grave. The magician's number one rule about being buried alive: don't do it. Instead, make sure you have an escape hatch and get out of the coffin before you go below. Houdini escaped from a six-foot deep sandy grave in 1915 and it almost killed him, the weight of the sand crushing his chest. This soil was moist, loamy and heavier and Frenchini possessed maybe half of Houdini's strength. Possessing more bravura than brains, French ignored common sense. Ropes were looped through the coffin's handles and the still-open casket was lowered into the earth.


Lying there in the death box, wrapped in chains, Frenchini called for the photographers. "Time to fill your front pages, boys." With the depth of the grave and its block of shadows, it was hard for the cameramen to angle their cameras and flash plates. Flames blazed, shutters snapped and the soot of flash powder drifted down.


The ropes were detached. A pallbearer lowered the end of a pole into the grave, hooked a latch on the lid and swung it shut. The Toymaker, leaning heavily on a cane carved with the figures of gargoyles, flipped over a big-bellied hourglass. The five pallbearers made quick work of shoveling dirt. Even the bathing beauties helped toss in handfuls. A four-piece band began playing Sousa, heavy on the tuba and kettledrum, light on the rhythm and melody. The crowd didn't know what to do. The shuffling of feet became milling about, muttering became groaning. Resurrection makes for good entertainment but it needs a warm-up act.


I tore the top sheet off of the notepad taped to my sleeve, creased the page and sunk it in my jacket pocket then used my Ever-Sharp pencil to continue to jot down some more colorful phraseologies for the evening edition.


After twenty-some minutes, when my thoughts ran dry, I wandered over to the magician's clique to collect some quotes. "Have you figured out the trick?" I asked Rastofsky.


The Red Devil tweaked the point on his beard. "He hasn't escaped yet, has he? I suspect after an hour we'll dig him up and he'll jump out of the coffin and claim the joke is on us."


Jim Crandall said, "He went down with the coffin. If he does disappear, you can lay odds you'll find this grave is set over a sewer pipe. A trap door out and a slimy crawl through the muck. That would be his class."


Huh. I had suspected comments along the lines of, "I'm saving my solution for the prize money." Instead, both seemed disturbed for the same reason I was: Frenchini really did bury himself alive.


I took the illusion apart, piece by piece. Handcuffs? Easy. The frisking was amateur at best. His policeman confederate could easily have slipped the key into Frenchini's palm. Even with the stricture of the chains, he could pop the manacles open before the thump of the closing coffin lid had time to fade.


The chains? They looked heavy and gave a hefty clunk as they were wrapped around him. I supposed some links could be painted balsa wood. No—he had promised we could inspect the materials afterwards. While the handcuffs were tight, the chains were just thick and heavy. He would need to pop the big padlock on top of the chains to get some wiggle room. A second key. Then he could squirm his way free of the chains. A painstaking task, a true athletic feat considering the size of his enclosure.


And then what? Opening the lid with a half a ton of dirt on top? Impossible. No, no, no. He had promised to disappear and reemerge on stage, not claw his way up through the soil. Maybe Crandall was right: a trap door down to a sewer. But wouldn't that show up on inspection? 


"Oh, crap," I muttered. I recognized the central lie in the illusion. The reward. No matter how well-conceived, a magic act could be figured out. Five hundred dollars? Three months wages? Frenchini must have arranged in advance to have a confederate who would declare how the trick was done. He'd probably pay the guy ten bucks. My hopes at striking pay dirt were dead and buried.


I noticed the Toymaker eyeing the hourglass, glancing at his watch and wrinkling one side of his nose. He cast a droopy eye my way. I smelled a story.


"Al-an," the Toymaker said. His voice was thick, Hungarian. His name Ketcham came as a gift from the folks on Ellis Island. "You are not the same as these riffraff. You are a straight shooter. Can I hold you to a truth?"


"I'm a news hack now. I can't afford truth." He looked at me with his sagging miserable face, the corner of his lip trembling. "But, okay, I'll hold on to your secret, just you and me. Off the record."


"It is past thirty minutes. Now, thirty-seven. Mr. French said he would signal me in one-half an hour if all went as planned.


"What kind of signal?"


"He said he would be free and in fresh clothes and disguise, standing in the Henderson crypt. He is not. If his escape is blocked, then his life is in peril and he needs our rescue. But . . . if he is merely delayed, he will damn me for my efforts which revealed his trick."


"How long can he hold out with the air down there?"


"In the practice session, forty minutes and then he blacked out."


The Toymaker looked to me to make the life-or-death decision. I knew what my paper wanted: Wait out the hour. Hope for a last-minute rescue, settle for a dramatic death.


I knew what I had to do. I snuck up behind the vaudeville policeman and picked his pocket. Then I held the phony police badge over my head and called out: "We have an emergency here. I need the pallbearers to grab their shovels and dig up the grave as fast as they can!"


The crowd rustled to life, surging forward, roaring and yelping. The hemp and post barrier that cordoned them off toppled as they pressed on to the edge of the gravesite. One of the bathing beauties fainted.


As the pallbearers dug furiously they hurled flung fresh dirt into the crowd of onlookers. One swung his shovel to scare back the mob which threatened to spill into the ever-deepening pit. When the tip of a spade thumped against the wooden box, all but one of the gravediggers climbed out. The last stood at the margin of the casket and raised its lid.


Richard French lay there, the handcuffs to one side, the padlock open, the heavy chains spread out as though he had squirmed halfway free. In his chest was a hole, a gunshot wound. Benny, God bless him, snapped a photo.


Now the crowd surged the other way as if the gunman were still present and ready to strike. "Is there a doctor?" I yelled but with the noise and confusion I doubt I was heard beyond the inner ring of the crowd. I had rudimentary medical training from my days in the army, most of it involving what to do when your comrade met with a bullet. I jumped down into the pit, landing beside the body.


French lay in a puddle of his blood. His chest was not moving. I couldn't find a pulse. The Red Devil bounded into the grave next to me. He concentrated on freeing French, tossing the handcuffs and padlock out of the grave, loosening the chains and hauling him out. With the help of the pallbearer, he heaved the body up and laid it out on a patch of grass.


"I'm a doctor." The man appeared too young for that to be true, but, as he bent over the body, he seemed to know what he was doing. He felt for a pulse, parted an eyelid, and banged tendons, checking for any reflex or response. He lit a match, pinched French's nose, and held the flame over his mouth to check for a whisper of breath.


I mulled over the chest wound. I'd seen enough of them. This was a gaping maw speckled with the shrapnel of a bullet shell, the blast of a dumdum. But how? When?


French was alive and unharmed when the coffin lid fell. He had bled to death by the time the coffin was opened. If he had managed to direct a gun at himself, where was the gun? I inspected the inside of the coffin lid: no hidden panels, no space to hide a pistol that would shoot him when it closed. I searched for any kind of hiding place. None.


The baby-faced doctor pronounced him dead. I didn't know medicine, but I'd seen enough death to concur with his diagnosis. The doctor was not playing the shill. This was not part of the magic act.


Crandall appeared beside me. His smile was rapturous. "Finally, the Famous Frenchini has performed a worthwhile illusion!" He leaned in and whispered. "He went into the coffin with an explosive bullet already implanted in his chest. That had to be the case."


Suicide? An elaborately staged death? Not Frenchini. The man was a narcissist of the first order, not someone wishing to die. He didn't just want acclaim, he had to be around to hear the applause.


That's when I made the connection: noise. Noise was the weak link. How was it possible to not hear the gunshot? There wasn't space beneath the coffin lid to point a gun barrel, much less one with a Maxim Silencer. I recalled a wire story of a lady in South Carolina where the packed dirt on top of her grave wasn't enough to muffle the sound of the still-alive occupant beating on her coffin. Which led me to the question. . . What kind of four-piece band has a tuba and a kettle-drum? 


The tuba player leaned against his instrument smoking a hand-rolled cigarette. I introduced myself as a scribe for the Evening World.


"Do you know Heywood Broun?" he asked. "I really like his column."


"Yeah, great guy. I thought I'd ask you for your thoughts on all this."


"Me? Don't got none. Long as I get paid."


"Who's paying you?"


He told me and then the tumblers clicked into place. I walked over to the killer and invited him to meet me at Lindy's, up Broadway: great cheesecake and they make you check your gun at the door.


***


While the waiters were rude, the owner's wife served as a charming hostess and the cheesecake made life worth living. I was not alone in these opinions, Jon Ketcham agreed with me on each point.


"I was born in Budapest in 1838," he told me. "I sometimes visited Houdini's family, the Weiszes. I knew the great illusionist when I was in my thirties and he was too young to escape a diaper."


"You're friends with Houdini?"


"No. He was too much the idol when I met him again."


I set down my mechanical pencil. "I figured you for the killer when I thought about that wretched Souza band. With the pains he took to present such a well-choreographed spectacle, no way French would have hired them. Along with five feet of dirt to act as muffling, the bang of a kettledrum and a tuba were just the right sounds to drown out the explosion of a gunshot."


He cast down his gaze but remained mute, so I went on. "It took a master engineer to come up with a device that would shoot French while in his coffin. I've sorted through several reasons why you chose to kill him. He was a detestable man. You made his illusions work, but he stole the glory."


"Did you consider money? I am old. I have no family on this continent. My apoplexy has made my art a near-impossible effort. Because I was too slow with my handiwork, Richard seized my schematics for his coffin escape and presented them to another craftsman to build them. I threatened to expose his trick. In response, he devised a swindle: the five hundred dollar reward. Since he knew I would reveal his secret, he sold the method to the Herald, which they promised to run only after the feat was completed. Their paper paid him for it and yet he was ready to announce they had won the reward. I have been cheated once too many times and I vowed this would be the last. I could have sold that illusion to others." He took a long, wheezing inhalation through his flaring nostrils. "One of my lungs has shut down. I cannot breathe and I cannot walk without a cane. In my situation, five hundred dollars would have seen me through to the end of my life."


The Herald paid for the scoop on the coffin escape—only the joke was on them. The illusion never took place. That was no longer the story. I was sitting across from the story. I said, "The World pays for confessions all the time. Yours will be a sensation, two-inch tall letters in front page headlines. I'll guarantee you they'll pay you in the hundreds."


"Such money will serve me no use on the electric chair."


"We'll pony up for a lawyer who'll have you out on bail and who will delay the trial for long enough to let you die at home."


"You will do that and pay me five hundred dollars."


It would be a hard sell to the Pulitzer boys but this story would double circulation. For a day. "Agreed."


The Toymaker inhaled as though it were the first time he had breathed fresh air in years. "When the casket lid shut on Mr. French he had four tasks: open the handcuffs, open the padlock, slip free of the chain and kick open the panel at the foot of the coffin. That panel was sealed with only the most gossamer of nails and beyond a veneer of dirt was a slender earthen tunnel. After passing out of the coffin, he would reattach the panel with sturdier nails, slide further down the tunnel and cause the ceiling of dirt behind him to collapse. The end of the tunnel connected to a nearby family crypt."


The collapsed tunnel, the thicker nails: he had rigged not only an ingenious escape, but the perfect cover-up.


We both sat in silence as he finished his cheesecake. He clinked the fork against the plate, signaling "more." I passed my half-finished slice over to him. Food seemed unimportant to me right now and, besides, I was scribbling as fast as I could so as to not miss a word. "But how did you manage to shoot him inside the coffin?" I asked.


"The padlock was rigged so the same small key which opened the handcuffs also opened it. However, I had time to plan. I substituted a similar-looking lock in its place. Hmmph. I overheard that fool, Crandall. He was half-right. The bullet was never shot. When the Famous Frenchini turned his key in the padlock, it was a trigger. A slot opened in the base of the lock and a spring-action bullet was propelled into Richard's chest. The bullet point was sharpened so it entered like the tip of a syringe. The impact initiated a chemical reaction and soon the bullet exploded, ensuring its deadly mission and disguising its odd shape. To all appearances, he had been shot with a hollow-point bullet." He smiled as much as his half-dead face would allow.


Sometimes I get a ghost pain, a message from the hand I no longer possess. It spoke to me now, reminding me of the blast that had taken it away. My left hand, my only physical hand, froze up in a spasm. I had had enough of this confession. I'd keep my promise and make sure The World paid Ketcham. Working together, they would manipulate the legal system and keep him alive and free until he died a cozy death at home. And yet I couldn't help but feel The World and the Toymaker were part of some deadly machine. The same machine which dug trenches and lobbed grenades.


I'd once seen a man lose his hand in the wheels of a printing press.


I looked around the restaurant. There was Damon Runyon, writer for The American, sitting across the table from his gangster buddy, Otto Berman. Charles Luciano wielded his utensils like they were weapons. Jolson and his pals were celebrating his latest Broadway sensation, Bombo. Scattered about were newshounds from the Tribune and the Daily Express, from the Times and the Daily News.


Maybe the waiters should roll out a cart. For tonight's special: the fresh meat of Richard French. All of the hungry would dig in.


Floor 24. Available September 17.




Thursday, February 29, 2024

Fred Trump's Housing Project

 


I suppose that Old Man Trump knows just how much racial hate 
He stirred up in that bloodpot of human hearts 
When he drawed that color line. . . 

Folk singer Woody Guthrie (famed for This Land is Your Land, This Land is My Land) complaining about Fred Trump in song. From: https://woodyguthrie.org/Lyrics/Old_Man_Trump.htm


The multi-building project called Shore Haven, an FHA (Federal Housing Authority) supported project.


Fred Trump's Housing Project


Fred Trump, father of ex-president Donald Trump, was a real estate and housing developer active in New York City. In the 1970s, he was sued for discriminating against minorities as tenants with employees testifying that they were not to rent to blacks or Puerto Ricans. 


I decided to take advantage of census information and look at the make-up of Fred Trump's tenants at an earlier time.


Census material is available to the public only after 70 years and the 1950 census is accessible online


Along with identifying where individuals lived, this census included race listed as: W (White), Neg (Negro), American Indian (Ind), Japanese (Jap), Chinese (Chi), Filipino (Fil), and other (spell out). The country of birth was noted (as well as other information). 


The Shore Haven Housing Complex.


According to a seminar on the history of the neighborhood presented by CUNY:


"In 1949, Shore Haven Apartments were built by Fred Trump on 21st Avenue near the Belt Parkway. The apartments were built over 16 acres and were mostly six-story buildings. Thirty-eight buildings were built, resulting in 1,344 apartments for families. Also, parts of Cropsey Avenue were used to built (sic) a shopping center as part of the housing project. At that time, this was the largest private housing development in Brooklyn."


The above article goes on to say that this neighborhood was the fictional setting of such movies and television shows as Saturday Night Fever, Welcome Back Kotter, and the Honeymooners.


Census Data


Census information regarding the Shore Haven Apartments is available online and listed as Enumeration Districts 24-2405 to 24-2409, Kings County, New York, comprising 149 census pages and 5 summary pages. Up to 30 individuals are presented per page.


I went through the pages and hand-counted households, number of residents, ethnicity, and country of birth. Very few apartments at Shore Haven were listed as vacant. 


The census enumerated 1301 households with 3717 tenants. 


So, what is the racial make-up of the entries? This was easy to determine: page after page, the same. All the entries (100%) where race was noted were W (white). There were not any labeled as Negroes, Chinese, Japanese, American Indian, Filipino, or Other. There were two tenants listed as born in Africa (country unspecified) and white, two born in China and white, one born in Japan (white), and one born in Haiti (white). The Japanese birth is listed as an infant and it is quite possible that the parents had been there for military reasons.


Countries of birth were noted with 589 individuals identified as born outside of the United States. These are the countries, other than America, with at least five individuals:


Russia 202

Poland 86

Austria 48

England 33

Italy 28

Germany 27

Romania 23

Canada 22

Hungary 19

Czechoslovakia 14

France 9

Holland 8

Lithuania 7

Chile 5

Switzerland 5


I did not attempt an analysis of surnames, however, I did note that there were many classically Jewish names, suggesting little to no exclusion for this reason. The large number of Eastern Europeans may also have reflected Jewish immigration. 


I realized early on that, among the countries of birth, Ireland was not mentioned. I eventually ran into one entry, listed as a mother-in-law, suggesting that the wife (born in the U.S.), was also of Irish ancestry.


Were the Irish also discriminated against? Of course, you don't have to be born in Ireland to have Irish heritage. The only other way of approaching this matter was to look at surnames. I could not determine the origin of all surnames and some surnames can be either Irish or from another country. As a compromise, I decided to search the listings for what are described as the top twenty Irish surnames in the United States. I came across a single entry: a family named Murphy. It can be argued that Bensonhurst is not a particularly Irish neighborhood. Nevertheless, out of over 3700 individuals, so few being Irish seems beyond chance. Bensonhurst is not a particularly British neighborhood, and yet there were 33 entries born in England and two in Scotland.


The 1970s lawsuit against Fred Trump also said that he discriminated against renting to Puerto Ricans. One tenant in the census was listed as born in Puerto Rico: listed with another family. Her occupation, maid, presumably a live-in maid. 


The large predominance of foreign-born individuals in the Shore Haven project came from Europe. Ex-President Donald Trump has recently complained of immigrants from virtually every continent but Europe. 


"They’re poisoning the blood of our country," Trump told the crowd at a rally in New Hampshire. "That’s what they’ve done. They poison mental institutions and prisons all over the world, not just in South America, not just to three or four countries that we think about, but all over the world. They’re coming into our country from Africa, from Asia, all over the world."


Trump Tower


The folk singer, Woody Guthrie, moved into another Fred Trump housing complex in late 1950, Beach Haven. His song summed up the situation:


Beach Haven is Trump's Tower

Where no black folks come to roam.


Fred Trump in the 1980s




Tuesday, July 11, 2023

The Ballad of Darryl O'Day


I wrote The Ballad of Darryl O'Day in the mid-nineties in response to a challenge to write a beer-drinking poem. I've performed the piece dozens of times including in theatrical settings and at a national performance poetry competition (I scored well).


I have a half-dozen other pieces of this rousing sort of narrative poetry. This one has been my most popular.


The Ballad of Darryl O'Day

There’s a legend that’s told in the neighborhood pubs,
In the smoke-filled gin joints and the posh country clubs,
In the places beer flows, be it froth or in dregs,
They say Darryl O’Day is the king of the kegs.

Now Darryl was sixty but still keeping fit;
His house by the brewer kept a hose joined to it.
With his kidneys still fearsome, his balance still fine:
When he chewed on a grape he could spit it out wine.

Yet, a decade had past since he’d fought for his title
And a rumor went ’round that Darryl ‘d grown idle.
Soon a brewhead named Stuart came after his throne.
From outside Darryl’s window he made his claim known.

He cried to the world, “It’s come time to acknowledge,
A new king’s in town, I’m the champ of my college.
I maintain Darryl’s finished, his panties are silk.
His head’s full of glue and he drinks buttermilk!”
Darryl hadn’t much words and had even less fear,
He said, “Let’s settle this now, I’ve a brewery right here.”

But Stu didn’t answer: his visage fell flat.
He drank from the hose then he turned and he spat.
First his face gave a twitch, then his neck made some twists,
His eyes became snakes and his hands became fists.

What was stewing in Stu only Stuart could say.
“This sissy-stuff brew, I could drink it all day.
If you want a real test,” Stuart sneered in his anger.
Then you’ll come meet me down at the aeroplane hangar!”

What could Darryl do if not take up the bait?
With the town at his side he went after his fate.
He marched out to the hangar to meet with his peril:
A foul bubbling cauldron, a twelve foot beer barrel.

‘Twas an ale beyond pale, ’twas a beer so unfit,
It wore through the tongue that swore upon it.
A fermented, demented toxic waste lager
Made part from old boots, and part gutter declogger.

Stuart paused to inhale, and then, licking his chops,
With a skip and a jump he went after those hops.
He chugged down eight quarts, and a pint and a gulp
‘Til his legs turned to rubber, his brain to a pulp.
Soon swaying, displaying his snarl with a gat,
Still standing, demanding, said, “Darryl beat that.”

Darryl sucked in his belly and tightened his bladder
Then strolled to the wall where he set up a ladder.
With pretzel in teeth he climbed up to the rafters:
The crowd half in cheers and the other half laughter.

His mouth opened widely, the daredevil Darryl
Took a leap from his perch to plunge into the barrel.
He drank as he swam and he swam as he drank
He made it look easy while draining that tank.
On down to a puddle he guzzled and slurped
Then said, “What, no more?” out of grieving, he burped.

Then he sucked dry his clothes until no longer damp.
Just one drip remained: he who challenged the champ.
The crowd at first gasped, then hoorayed with a clangor
And even Stu cheered from the floor of the hangar.

Throughout this wide world you’ll find fools who are talky
But there’s damned few out there who can walk the Milwaukee.
So, wherever men teeter with wobbly legs
They say Darryl O’Day is the king of the kegs.





Along with poetry, Martin Hill Ortiz is the author of three mystery novels and nearly fifty published short stories.

More of his work can be found through mdhillortiz.com

Tuesday, December 6, 2022

Dow Jones Performance during Presidencies

 


Continuing my look at Dow Jones performance, in this post I look at the numbers for each six months in office. This is much more insider information than the previous post and may only be interesting for those who like to go into great detail. 



Percent Increase or Decrease in the Dow Jones Industrial Average over the First Four Years of Individual Presidencies. FDR is Franklin Delano Roosevelt. TR is Theodore Roosevelt.

The Dow Jones has been around in a daily form since May 2, 1885, about seven weeks after Grover Cleveland began his first term. Here is a list of the percent increase in the first six months of each presidency. I included only the first term and for Cleveland, I began with the first index. The website (now defunct) mentioned adjusting the early data (it started as the Dow Jones 12). 


For this analysis, I still had the database going back to 1885. I couldn't relocate this database for my other analyses.


The first six months.


Below are the figures of change in the stock market for the first six months. On the one hand, having an equal amount of time for the presidents made the playing field equal. It wasn't like the comparison for full terms which could have been two plus years up to twelve plus. This study and the following ones allowed all the presidents to be included that could not be included in the four year analysis. However, on the other hand, how someone performed in six months wasn't often indicative of how they performed overall. Comparing one six month period to later time points, sometimes presidents did well in a single six month spurt and no other.

Rank, President, (party), %increased/decreased

1. FD Roosevelt (D) +79.4

2. McKinley (R) +34.6

3. Cleveland (D) +22.6

4. Hoover (R) +21.4 (he started off strong)

5. Taft  (R) +20.4

6. Truman (D) +17.2

7. Bush Sr. (R) +15.2

8. Coolidge (R) +14.3

9. Obama (D) +11.3

10. Biden (D) +10.3

11. Clinton (D) +9.3

12. Johnson (D) +9.1

13. Trump (R) +9.0

14. Kennedy (D) +7.66

15. B. Harrison (R) +5.14

16. Bush Jr. (R) -0.10

17. Reagan (R) -0.12

18. Wilson (D) -0.6

19. T. Roosevelt (R) -2.8

20. Carter (D) -4.0

21. Eisenhower (R) -6.3

22. Harding (R) -9.5

23. Ford (R) -9.7

24. Nixon (R) -10.4 (six month anniversary date was the same as the first moon landing)


Twelve months. First year. 


Here is a list of the percent increase after the first year of each presidency. This didn't include the 19th century presidents.


Rank, President, (party), %increased/decreased

1. FD Roosevelt (D) +96.06%

2. Obama (D) +34.85%

3. Trump (R) +31.49

4. Truman (D) +30.59%

5. Johnson (D) +25.19

6. Clinton (D) +19.81%

7. Bush Sr. (R) +19.80

8. Coolidge (R) +17.10%

9. Harding (R) +15.11%

10. Taft (R) +13.48%

11. Biden (D) +11.90%

12. Kennedy (D) +10.46

13. Ford (R) +4.19

14. Wilson (D) +1.83%

15. Eisenhower (R) +0.4%

16. T. Roosevelt (R) -1.42%

17. Bush II (R) -7.70

18. Reagan (R) -11.02%

19. Hoover (R) -12.86% (it would go a lot lower)

20. Nixon (R) -16.47

21. Carter (D) -18.28%


Eighteen months. 


Here is a list of the percent increase (or decrease) in the first year-and-a-half of each presidency.


Rank, President, (party), %increased/decreased

1. F. Roosevelt (D) +71.4%

2. Coolidge (R) +37.0%

3. Harding (R) +35.4%

4. Bush I (R) +32.5

5. Obama (D) +28.7%

6. L. Johnson (D) +28.5%

7. Trump (R) +26.4%

8. Ford (R) +22.0%

9. Eisenhower (R) +17.2%

10. Clinton (D) +15.0%

11. Truman (D) +7.2%

12. Biden (D) +2.8%

13. Taft (R) -3.8%

14. T. Roosevelt (R) -4.4%

15. Kennedy (D) -9.1%

16. Wilson (D) -11.5% 

17. Reagan (R) -12.3%

18. Carter (D) -12.6%

19. Nixon (R) -21.2%

20. Hoover (R) -24.8% 

21. Bush II (R) -26.5%


Twenty-four months (2 years).


Rank, President, (party), %increased/decreased

1.  F. Roosevelt (D) +90.5%

2.  Coolidge (R) +54.0%

3.  Obama (D) +48.7%

4.  Harding (R) +39.3%

5.  Eisenhower (R) +36.5%

6.  L. Johnson (D) +33.1%

7.  Ford (R) +26.4%

8.  Trump (R) +24.6%

9.  Clinton (D) +19.4% 

10.  Bush Sr. (R) +18.4%

11. Reagan (R) +12.6%

12. Truman (D) +8.4%

13. Biden (D) +6.6%

14. Kennedy (D) +6.0%

15. T. Roosevelt (R) -21.7%

16. Wilson (D) -5.3%

17. Taft 0% (R) (59.92 on March 4, 1909. 59.92 on March 4, 1911)

18. Nixon (R) -8.7% 

19. Carter (D) -12.7%

20. Bush II (R) -18.9%

21. Hoover (R) -42.3% (it would go a lot lower)


Thirty months.


Rank, President, (party), %increased/decreased

Compared to the previous lists Gerald Ford and Warren Harding did not make the two-and-one-half-year list.


1. F. Roosevelt (D) +146.3%

2. Coolidge (R) +79.1%

3. Eisenhower (R) +59.1%

4. Obama (D) +58.2%

5. Clinton (D) +43.7%

6. Trump (R) +37.0%

7. Wilson (D) +36.5% 

8. Bush Sr. (R) +34.9%

9. Reagan (R) +29.2%

10. Johnson (D) +23.2%

11. Truman (D) +14.2%

12. Kennedy (D) +9.4%

13. Taft (R) -5.3%

14. Bush Jr. (R) -6.0%

15. Carter (D) -13.6%

16. Nixon (R) -21.2%

17. T. Roosevelt (R) -28.8%

18. Hoover (R) -57.7%


Thirty-six months (3 years).


Rank, President, (party), %increased/decreased

1. F. Roosevelt (D) +191.0%

2. Coolidge (R) +85.1%

3. Eisenhower (R) +61.3%

4. Obama (D) +60.0%

5. Clinton (D) +59.9%

6. Wilson (D) +55.1%

7. Trump (R) +48.0%

8. Bush Sr. (R) +45.6%

9. Reagan (R) +32.4%

10. Truman (D) +13.0%

11. Johnson (D) +11.7%

12. Taft (R) +1.0%

13. Bush Jr. (R) -0.1%

14. Nixon (R) -2.25%

15. Carter (D) -9.06%

16. T. Roosevelt (R) -15.1%

17. Hoover (R) -72.6%


I haven't performed a three-and-a-half months analysis. This would be interesting in part because it captured a picture of near-peak stock market turmoil during the COVID-19 crisis.


In contrast to the previous post with the overall performance after the first four years of the administrations, these numbers show how variable one six month period could be compared to the next. Some presidents who performed well early on, ended poorly (Hoover). Some who began poorly, ended well (Reagan). Several presidents did poorly only in their first quarter and then came back to break even (Carter). 


With so many factors in play it is difficult to determine what are the causes behind the varied performances. Clinton who had one of the best performances had the best record of lowering the yearly deficit over his administration, finishing with a surplus. Franklin D. Roosevelt greatly increased government spending and had remarkable increases. Trump set a record in yearly deficit (3.31 trillion in 2020) and had a good year. 


I hope in these analyses I provided some perspective to presidential performances in the stock market. It is easy for the media to exaggerate the upside or downside of particular administrations. 


Next up, I will look at how presidents ran into or avoided recessions and depressions.


Martin Hill Ortiz is also the author of over 45 short stories, three novels, and one novellaHis epic poem, Two Mistakes, won second place in the Margaret Reid/Tom Howard Poetry Competition. He can be contacted at mdhillortiz@gmail.com. His website is mdhillortiz.com.