Murder

Crime captivates the world. Crime fiction and dramatizations of real crime take up rows upon rows in the bookstore, hours on the television every week. Some people disdain pat whodunnits, while others (like myself) find their predictability and cheerful acceptance of the facts to be comforting. Others prefer true crime, delighting to stare death in the face and ponder the existence of criminals among us. I recently finished The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie. Whole courses can be given on crime fiction, focusing on the phenomenon of popular culture (I should know, I once took one). This particular book is quite perfect in that it reproduces the comforts of a nearly bloodless whodunnit but with the upsetting notion that perfectly well anybody--even somebody we feel intimate with--could murder.

Tenacity

Some of the most inspiring stories are about talented people who work hard to make the most out of whatever situation they happen to be in, ultimately making it big. But one story has inspired me more recently, and it's the story of someone who is completely unremarkable in his "sheer ordinariness." Red Pollard, famous Seabiscuit's jockey, had no extraordinary talents or advantages. He survived numerous accidents in the course of his job that crippled his body with chronic pain. He was even blinded in one eye and kept it a secret from his employers (and everybody else) so he wouldn't lose his job--as he certainly would have if they had known. But even the knowledge that he should not have been a jockey did not stop him from being one anyway. He was blind, injured, in pain, struggling with alcoholism, poverty, and inadequacy, but he clung tenaciously to his dream and, what's more, he succeeded. He rode Seabiscuit to win the $100,000 Santa Anita cup. Not everything in his life was rosy, obviously. But he lived his ultimate dream, and that is something that not many of us can say. Too often have I been waylaid by the mere thought of pain, failure, or mediocrity. Imagine persisting in the certainty of all those things.