I’m taking part in a new series on the Investigation Discovery channel called “Hardcover Mysteries,” where I join Sandra Brown, Linda Fairstein and others in presenting true crimes, and I just spent a couple of days in Los Angeles to help present the show to the Television Critics Association.  Dave Cargill, who produced the series, is from Scotland, and that soft brogue has persuaded stronger people than me to do more unlikely things.  The story we worked on was a sad case of domestic violence in my home town of Lawrence, Kansas.  It will air on October 25; the series as a whole debuts on October 11.

Because I was on Chicago time, I was  out looking for cappuccino by six.  The only other people out that early were Hispanic-looking people watering the lawns and trimming the shrubs of Beverly Hills.  I followed a “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” policy, but something told me that many of these servants of the rich and powerful probably did not have green cards.

A gardener trimming hedges on a Beverly Hills estate

Which brings me to the Age of Fear.  I did an event at the Mystery Bookstore in LA while I was there, and someone asked why V I refers to the Age of Fear in Hardball. It’s easy these days to catch the Panic Express, with jobless rates at close to 10 percent for over a year, and the endless war in Iraq/Afghanistan bringing ever more casualties, ever more reprisals, ever more depression.  But we have a 24/7 cable and Internet news cycle that deliberately stokes the engines on the Panic Express, deliberately panders to everyone’s fears, and is turning us into a nation of hysterical xenophobes.

Just one example.  9/11 responders have major health issues, including abnormally high mortality rates, apparently from inhaling the dust at Ground Zero in the months they worked on the site. A recent bill in Congress would have provided funds for their health care. Republicans blocked the bill; one apparently said ”people get killed all the time.”  But they are out pounding the drums of fear over plans to build a mosque and community center four blocks from Ground Zero.  ”Peace-loving Muslims, refudiate this plan,” one talk-show host demanded, with a quaint disregard for the English language.  Plans for mosques are under attack all over the country now: we don’t want Muslims in our back yards, our front yards, or, apparently, in our country, although several conservatives hastened to assure the country that even though they’re opposed to building mosques, they’re all about religious freedom.

For immigrants, the picture is even more hysterical.  We’re getting the call to repeal the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, the one that guarantees us equal protection under the law, regardless or race, creed, or previous condition of servitude, and the one that says anyone born in these United States is a citizen (unless they’re Barack Obama, in which case 27 percent of the country is sure  his Kansas mother was a Space Alien.  As a Kansas woman myself, I kind of resent our citizenship being impugned, but that’s another story.)  I know a Polish immigrant who is sure that Mexicans are destroying her life and that of her daughter–but I have never seen any signs that she wants to be up at six a.m. trimming a hedge on a rich white person’s estate.

Fear is the absolute sure-fire killer of creativity.  We live in very difficult times and we need to feel free if we are going to come up with creative solutions to our economic woes, and to the instability and terrorism at play in many countries and societies these days.  Turning ourselves into an armed fortress where we’re ready to arrest and deport anyone who looks or believes differently than we do is about the most enslaving activity we can indulge in.

I am not immune to the Panic Express, and I could  write about the way it infects me.  But I long for the Freedom Train and its journey to laughter and creativity.

We’re happy to announce three winners of advance reader copies of Body Work. These people knew their V I and were lucky in the drawing:

Celeste Day Moore, Lorraine Flatt, and Stine Bakkelokken

Congratulations and thanks for taking part.

… to enter the “How well do you know V I Warshawski” contest. Your chance for a signed advance reader copy of Body Work is just a mouse click away.

We’re making a video, a sort of “day in the life” in V I’s Chicago.  I’m also taking part in Discovery Channel’s new “Hardcover Mysteries” series.  I’ll let you know the run date.  That, getting ready to launch Body Work, and trying to come up with a storyline for a new book have kept me from attending to this blog–sorry to leave everyone hanging, but I’ll be back with a new post soon!

I’ve received bound galleys of Body Work, the new V I novel, from Putnam’s, and I have three to give away to the people who know V I best.

Answer these five questions correctly, and your name will go into a hat for a drawing on August 2.  Send your answers to: vi-bodywork@mindspring.com if you want to keep them secret, or answer them right here on the comments page.

1. What is V I’s middle name?

2. How many wine glasses did V I’s mother bring with her from Italy?

3.  Where did V I go to university?

4.  How many dogs does she have?

5. What did V I’s father Tony Warshawski do for a living?

of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, promote the general welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do establish and ordain this Constitution of the United States of America.

Yesterday was the Fourth of July, and I went with my husband, dog and granddaughter to watch fireworks.  We had a traditional chicken dinner, and ice cream, and a good time was had by all, except the dog, who’s scared of fireworks.

And then I woke up this morning to see that Congress is not renewing unemployment benefits, and I thought how tired I am of the millionaires who “represent” us forcing the neediest in the country to tighten their belts.  Almost half the members of Congress are millionaires, many times over, and those whose net worth looks small on paper are actually hiding their assets, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.  They get rich from investment opportunities, in companies like Goldman Sachs.

I’m also tired of the 2nd Amendment being the tail that wags the nation’s dog.  The Fourth Amendment, which is supposed to let us be secure in our persons against unreasonable search and seizure has been so decimated that it almost doesn’t exist.  The current Supreme Court has ruled that it’s okay for the cops to break down doors of people’s homes without checking to see that they’re at the right home because when they do make a mistake–as happens several hundred times a year–Tony Scalia explained that people have the right to sue the police.  We have warrantless wiretaps on our phones and Internet accounts.  We have warrantless entry into the homes of people on welfare, because they don’t count.  But all this doesn’t even merit a yawn from the public.  And the First Amendment is in tatters, too, with the wall between church and state sandpapered down so it’s about a micron wide these days.

I am tired of public figures ranting about God or Jesus or both, and ignoring Isaiah, who tells us that our duty is to “to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house and to cover the naked.”

I’m tired of ignoring the reality of handguns.  States that allow everyone to carry weapons have five times the homicide rate of those that don’t.  Now that the Supremes have ruled that states can’t control people’s access to them, let’s watch the murder rate rise.

And while I’m ranting about stuff I’m tired of, I’m tired of women not counting as people in the eyes of church and state.  When Sister Margaret McBride was excommunicated recently for her role in agreeing to an abortion for a woman whose life was endangered by her pregnancy, the sister was instantly excommunicated, and the church explained that “innocent life,” meaning fetal life, always trumps the mother’s life.  Congress triumphantly excluded abortion coverage from the health care reform act.  Women are messy, complicated creatures, it’s true, but why do we give men in the legislatures, the courts, and the church the right to choose life or death for us?

Yesterday, a jury found former Chicago police commander Jon Burge guilty.  Not of the torture which it’s alleged he committed and/or oversaw in his years as a detective and commander in Chicago Police Area 2, but of lying about the torture under oath.

Jon Burge at the Federal Building on June 8 this year

Many hundreds of people were (allegedly) tortured, some into confessing to crimes they didn’t commit.  Others were never charged with a crime.  Despite notifying the Cook County State’s Attorney of at least fifty incidents of torture, and despite an array of lawuits against Burge, his cohorts, and the city, Burge continued as a detective, and a torturer, for over a decade.  Burge was finally forced to retire in 1993.  He moved to Florida, where he’s been living ever since on a full pension.

John Conroy covered the story for the Chicago Reader, going back to 1990.  I followed the story for years.  When the Abu Ghraib scandal broke, I believed one could draw a line from the south side of Chicago to the prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan where American service people tortured people in custody.  I chose to turn it into fiction, in Hardball, where V I Warshawski has to come face to face with the torture of suspects in custody, and find out what role her beloved father played in that police district.

Several brave people brought the original story to light.  You can read about them in full in the Chicago Reader files.  Some of the torture victims were what prosecutors like to call “the worst of the worst–” a title they gave the hundreds of men scooped up and sent to Guantanamo.  Some were innocent.  None deserved to have a current run through electrodes on their genitals and ears.

I sat through part of Burge’s trial.  It was impossible to know how the jury was reacting.  Burge himself seemed not only confident but cocky, smirking with his lawyers, leaning back in his chair at ease.  I didn’t know what to expect, but I feel a certain relief that the jury found him guilty.

Kathy Lyndes, a friend of mine, and her partner are drawn to the lives of wolves.  They just came back from eight days on Isle Royale, assisting in a project to track wolf habits and habitats.  The whole trip seemed so fascinating, and yet so physically challenging, that I asked her to share the adventure with you.  So what follows is my first guest blog.

In June, 2010, my partner, Louis, and I were two of seventeen volunteers to collect moose bones as part of the fifty year Isle Royale wolf-moose research project, the longest running predator-prey study in the world. The experience was an 8-day backpacking and hiking trip in areas of Isle Royale rarely seen by the average visitor.

On the fourth day of our trip, we walked through a quarter inch carpet of moose hair, the area about the size of a small bedroom. This was the only kill sight we saw where parts of the skeleton were still intact, including one set of leg bones from the femur to the hoof. It was amazing to see, especially since all other moose bones we found were scattered; a wolf may carry the pelvis to the den for the cubs to play with, and scavengers may move bones as far apart as 70 or more yards. Apparently moose hooves rank on wolves’ good eats scale almost as highly as moose’s internal organs and noses. This was better than any science course I ever took and a backpacker’s paradise. That’s right: sanctioned off trail hiking, and I felt like an early prospector finding gold. Problem was, this was the trip where my beloved thirty year old hiking boots decided to call it quits, and, as a result, I had two feet with festering blisters and a mouth of choice swear words that I don’t use even in Chicago traffic.

On the last day of the trip, we had to hike 8 miles with our 40+ pound packs to get back to base camp. Greenstone Trail, a 40 mile path that runs the middle ridge of Isle Royale reaching heights of close to 1400 feet, is one of the most scenic footpaths I’ve ever seen, sometimes overlooking Isle Royale interior lakes and Lake Superior at the same time. Tears rolled down my cheeks, though, not from the beauty of my surroundings but from the pain. In between my alternating crying and swearing fits, I tried to sing, “Put one foot in front of the other” (remember that song from the old stop-motion flick Santa Claus Is Coming to Town?), but if it weren’t for Louis making sure I wasn’t alone should I break a leg, I’m not sure how I would have made it back to camp. His company and his jokes fortified me.

Moose Pelvis photographed in situ

As several of the other volunteers admitted, this was the most physically and emotionally challenging hiking and backpacking they had ever done. We had tramped through a cedar bog only to find ourselves slipping up to our knees in water in an old beaver dam, the habitat changing as rapidly as it does in Chicago, from the mansions in the Kenwood neighborhood where President Obama owns a home to the poverty-stricken projects on the south side of the Loop only a few blocks away.

We had been warned that the trip would be arduous, but, after 12 weeks of intensive training, I hadn’t banked on my stamina not being sufficient. I’ve consistently exercised for years, run marathons, backpacked in the Boundary Waters and Sylvania Wilderness, and written a dissertation, which has nothing whatsoever to do with Isle Royale backpacking except that it, too, was a challenging process that involved impressive strings of swear words. Still, I hadn’t expected to be the slowest trekker in my group. Worst of all, I wasn’t prepared to feel cautious of the wilderness; I’ve hiked and camped off trail before, and here on Isle Royale, we didn’t have to worry about poison ivy, poison oak, ticks, or poisonous snakes (there are only two non-poisonous snakes on Isle Royale). Still, at age 47, I was surprised to experience dread – both realistic and unrealistic – about being left alone or getting lost, about twisting my ankle or worse, about being uncomfortable from the combination of rain, sweat, smelly latrines, and pine needles down my neck. Maybe, I thought to myself, I just don’t like being outdoors after all, and, out of spite, I swore to the nature gods that I would buy a gas guzzling Hummer H3 Alpha and never again would I “Recycle, Reuse, Reduce.”

I met one backpacker, Will, who, at age twenty had wisdom that has stayed with me. He took it for granted that when he camped, he’d wake up every two hours. Why is that some folk, like Will, accept that poor sleep is just part of the wilderness experience and is worth it for the sheer pleasure of being outdoors, while others, even if we don’t whine (much), add to our wretchedness with our LFT (what I teach in my psych courses as Low Frustration Tolerance)?

My father said that this Isle Royale trip was for the young, but there was a 57 year old volunteer as well as the legendary 72 year old who had returned nearly every year for 19 years. So I concluded that this trip is for those who have attitudes like Will’s, and I aspire to accept that discomfort, even pain, is part of living, not in some romanticized way, but in a realistic acknowledgement of limits. I also know that I managed to cope because of my team’s patience and good-natured spirits:  Rob gave me high fives after particularly difficult terrain; Ben, our leader whose speed rivals that of cheetahs, helped me through a rough beaver pond when I was dehydrated; and Velda told stories, including those of army training jingles (“If you don’t mind, it don’t matter!”), that kept us in stitches. Any time I found myself thinking, “I can’t…” or “I don’t know how…” I was inspired by them to soldier on, not that I ever gave up on my fantasy of being air-lifted off Isle Royale.

In my better moments on and off trail, I took comfort in my skills as a slower, more methodical researcher, but finding a moose bone was often the luck of location and light. One time, I was only two feet away from Rob who found a bone just after I had walked near it. Yet bones are amazing story tellers despite who finds them, with every set of bones chronicling a unique narrative about its life, death, and relationships with wolves. Sometimes the moose died from starvation. We novices could tell because the bones weren’t gnawed, and experts could tell because the bone marrow was so low in fat content.

When the moose did die from wolf attacks, we’d check the pelvis, if we could find it, for signs of arthritis; if a moose was arthritic, its lower hip socket had fused shut or become misshapen. Ben showed us an older bull moose whose teeth were so worn and full of gingivitis that he (the moose, not Ben) had serious need of national dental health care coverage. We also learned a bit about how lesions on the skull demonstrate the presence of osteoporosis. 12 years is old for a moose

In a recent Wall Street Journal article (May 29-30, 2010), I read how some decent, caring folk in Wisconsin are afraid that their kids are going to be attacked by gray wolves. I can understand their frustration when wolves eat one of their pets or steers (one person who said she lost her hound to a wolf, reportedly led the resolution calling on the state of Wisconsin to cut the wolf population from 700 to 350), but why do we turn to fear instead of to facts when making choices about hunting and trapping wolves? We’ve taken away their habitat and then wonder why they attack our livestock. There are no documented reports of healthy wolves harming humans; they aren’t the senseless killers they’re sometimes still portrayed to be. Wolves are selective hunters, typically picking the weakest and most ill. On Isle Royale, they have to be selective to avoid getting thrown against a tree or receiving a broken rib from the stronger, more agile moose’s front hooves (no wonder wolves find moose hooves delectable). It takes as many as ten attempts for wolves to find a moose weak enough to bring down. One of the head researchers on the project, Rolf Peterson, in his book, “The Wolves of Isle Royale,” recounts his witness of a blind moose who kept off a pack of wolves for three days until they got tired and went to look for food elsewhere. 4 years is old for a wolf.

The other common thoughts about wolves, that they kill just for pleasure and are wasteful hunters, are also myths. In fact, wolves kill because they’re hungry, and rarely do they leave a kill uneaten, facts which make them genetically unrelated to me who often buys food in wasteful packaging and sometimes eats not from necessity but for comfort. If moose are plentiful and relatively easy to kill, wolves sometimes do leave a moose carcass less than ravaged, however, this bounty then leaves more food for scavengers such as ravens, eagles, and foxes. There has to be solutions to the problem of wolves killing livestock that benefit both humans and wolves.

It was oddly disconcerting to be swearing off camping ever again, only to find myself taking detailed notes on my team’s gear for my next trip. The whole experience was profoundly humbling, both in terms of all there is to learn about nature and its unpredictability, and in terms of learning from those who graciously accepted challenges. If nothing else, this trip may have helped me to finally accept that I am, indeed, aging. One of my favorite psychologists, Heinz Kohut, calls this acceptance of limits a transformation of narcissism, and I feel just a bit less easily ruffled about growing older as a result of this trip. Though the verdict is still out whether I’ll ask to participate in this most amazing study again, I hope to live to a ripe old age, and I wonder if someday a researcher will be able to tell what I’ve learned – and how I’ve lived – by studying my bones. 110 years is old for a human.

I bought StreetWise today from Roarke E Moody, the vendor I know best.  Moody is a Vietnam vet, and a poet, and for the Memorial Day issue of the paper he wrote,

Naked-eyed toy soldiers take few shortcuts through hell.  We all had our own piece of hell.  In this mess of a war, in this distant land, it does not matter what you are fighting for…a patch of dirt, a piece of tail, war whores trapped in hell.

We were all there through the monsoons, through the doom and gloom–one and all, and all in one–we were there.

Pressing on, past the limit of human behavior.  We took no short cuts through hell.  War, what is it good for?!

On any night in America, there are 150,000 homeless veterans, mostly from the Vietnam war.  People I know who work with the homeless guess we are about to start seeing the first big wave of Iraqi veterans land in our streets.  They say there’s a five-year spiral from the end of deployment to when a vet suffering from PTSD exhausts family and personal resources and ends up homeless.

I am not a blanket pacifist, but there are few occasions in five millennia of recorded history that seem to merit the slaughter of our youth, the concomitant rape of women, the destruction of homes and families.

I buy a poppy every May.  One of my brothers is a Vietnam vet, a Marine, my husband served in the Second World War, my uncles in Korea and in the Second World War, my great uncles in World War I, my great-grandfather in the Civil War, and on back to King Philip’s War.  Until this current useless tragedy in the Middle East, my family, out of duty, out of adventure, out of necessity, has served in every war our country has fought.

My upcoming novel, Body Work, deals in part with an Iraqi vet suffering from PTSD.  I can’t bear the thought that we sent all these young people to war, for no reason other than the egos of the Halliburton-Cheney-Rumsfeld Neocon crowd, and that we bring them home terribly damaged in body and mind and pay no heed to them.  I can’t fix it, I can’t end it, I can only bear witness to it.

I sometimes march with the Sisters from the Eighth Day Center for Justice, who hold a peace vigil every Tuesday morning at the Federal Building on Jackson and Dearborn in Chicago.  We prayed that Barack’s election would bring a swift end to our fighting in Iraq and Vietnam, and it is another heartbreak that it hasn’t.

Meanwhile, in Flanders Fields the poppies continue to grow.