Henry Granju Case Update

It’s taken a turn for the macabre and, I must say, it screams cover-up to me. When you’ve made a point of telling a newspaper’s readership all about the state of a kid’s brain, it raises an eyebrow that said brain comes up missing, you know?

But What If I Were a Know-It-All Witch? Hmm.

Mary came over to my house a while ago for what I thought was the second time, but turns out it was the first. That’s one thing I like about this house–it always feels to me like people have already been here.

Anyway, I was showing her around and she asked, “Are you a witch?”

And I didn’t answer her because… I don’t know… what do you say to that?

But today, man, today I had a moment or two I felt like I had totally slipped off the path and into the wild, the kind of moment where a woman doesn’t answer the question of whether she’s a witch not because she doesn’t know how to answer it, but because it’s not a question you do answer.

I am really, really enjoying the Taves book. I promise, I’m over half-way done, so you’re about done with hearing about it. But I just feel like someone has plopped down in front of me and explained how all the things I enjoy fit together.

And man, do I feel like the Bell Witch story now, more than ever, is not an anomaly, but fits in quite well with all the rest of these types of phenomenon, once you’re aware that these phenomenon are there. Same with the Watseka Wonder. And reading this book, it makes sense that the Bell Witch would be a kind of exterior phenomenon (with Betsy Bell acting as the medium in the 1850s meaning of the word) with the Watseka Wonder being a more interior phenomenon and with Lurancy Vennum acting as a medium in the 1870s sense of the word.

Which is actually interesting–medium means the actual medium through which the spirits can manifest. It makes sense, but I didn’t know that. And it used to be that a medium didn’t need to have any more psychic powers than the power to attract spirits. She could then travel with a clairvoyant whose job it was to interpret the noises of the spirits. But then, by the latter half of the 1800s, those two roles had been combined into one.

It’s funny, when I was in grad school, I went to church once with one of my roommates and they spoke in tongues, which I had never seen before, and then someone else would interpret. And I thought that was the weirdest thing ever. But my roommate had a Biblical explanation for it (which, of course, I did not buy, but listened to respectfully), but now! Now I see too, how that set-up has one parent in the… what we might call “Trance History of America.”

That’s what delights me. Things like that.

I Was Going to Do Something With My Day

But I revised my to-do list down to:

1. Send unsolicited weird text about booger-eating to the Professor

2. Wash bedding

3. Read book

4. Have fire

I just feel bad for the dog, who I’m sure was hoping for a trip to the park. Here’s a cool post about writing from Susie Bright.

Live-blogging a Mystery

So, here’s the deal. It’s not a very exciting deal, but it is amusing to me. Last night the Butcher comes in and says “Oh, the light is off.” Now, I didn’t think anything of it. Who even knows what fucking light is off, right? He’s in the kitchen. I’m half asleep in the living room. And I do my best to shirk my duties as the responsible problem-solver of our duo.

But this morning, I go to have breakfast and I see he means the motherfucking light in the fridge.

Because, apparently, he is missing the part of his common sense that says “Oh, if there’s no light in the fridge, there might not be any electricity in our motherfucking fridge” and so… yes… the fridge is not on.

It’s a new fridge.

Well, as new as we’ve owned the house.

So, my guess is that the whole fuse is out. That seems to me more likely than “fridge mysteriously dies.” Especially since the Butcher was out in the back yard last night, which necessitates flipping the fuse to the shed.

I’m just saying, someone was in the fuse box. And that same someone noticed there’s no light in the fridge.

So, the live-blogging part is that I’m about to go check the fuse box and I will tell you what I find.

Eh, what can I say? It’s my first day of vacation. The thrills are small around here.

Update!!! Yeah, of course, it was the fuse. I flipped it. The fridge is working again. I also went in and sang this dramatic song to the Butcher vaguely along the tune of “Bridge over Troubled Waters.”

When your fridge light doesn’t come on

And there is water all around

It’s not the lightbulb that’s burned out

It is the fu-uu-use and you need to go flip it.

He tried to pawn it off on me like it was my responsibility because he told me the light was out, but I was all “You had like 18 beautiful women over here last night! If you marry one of them and move to her house, you’re going to have to know basic things like “When your fridge light is out, first check to make sure the whole fridge is still working.”