Let's have some Discreet Activities!

   Do you watch some of those crime shows on TV, not the true crime stuff, but those things like Law and Order and CSI? One of the things that always bothers me is when the good guys threaten people with the IRS or something similar to get people's "cooperation". Isn't that a little illegal not to mention a bit like blackmail?  I used to love the shows until I started watching stuff like this go from fiction to reality. Hmmm. Not so much fun anymore. But in truth, most of our 'heros' like Ironman, Spiderman, the A-Team (remember them?), and 007 all operate outside the law and who wouldn't want someone to come and save us when legal channels don't work anymore?  Today's work by Claude Bouchard has just such a group. They work at the fringes of the law to keep us all safe (though the murder was a bit much!) and that is what we want in our heros. This group has lots of Discreet Activities going on. It is what they do, after all.


Discreet Activities
By Claude Bouchard
Publisher: Claude Bouchard (January 29, 2012)
Print Length: 258 pages
ISBN: 0986666556


From Amazon
     As a result of information gathered via electronic surveillance by intelligence agencies in the U.S. and Canada, a budding terrorist organization, the Army for Islam or AFI, is suspected of planning an attack, its target possibly NYC, Burlington, Vermont or even Canada's famed Montreal...
    When four foreign students from Pakistan with known ties to the AFI's Montreal cell arrive in the area on New Year's Eve, Discreet Activities' head, Jonathan Addley, along with Chris Barry and other DA consultants are more than willing to take on the additional workload.
...After two of the DA team members die violently in an AFI related suicide-bombing, the job becomes getting revenge on those responsible for this Holy War...

He Used to Be Somebody

He Used to Be Somebody: A Journey into Altzheimer's Disease Through the Eyes of a Caregiver

by Beverly Bigtree Murphy
publisher:  Gibbs Associates, Boulder CO, 1995

Available at Amazon

There are a number of books out there (at long last) designed to help families and friends deal with the frustrating and discouraging task of taking care of folks with Altzheimer's and dementia, but this book is, I believe, a significant departure from the approach most books on the subject take.  It may be because it predates many of them.

"He Used to Be Somebody" is not about understanding what happens in the body, or knowing the stages of Altzheimer's (although both are certainly part of the book).  Instead, it takes the reader into one specific journey, the life of one Tom Murphy, who finds himself recently married, at the peak of his highly successful career, finding that he's slowly losing the considerable talent and strength of character on which he's built his life.