10 Must-Read Books

Every now and then, you read one of those books that captivates you so much, or educates you to such a degree, that you just can't help but think that everyone should read it.

It happens to me a lot.

So without further ado, and in no particular order of significance, here is a list of the ten books that have most impacted, entertained, educated, and/or influenced me, and which would make valuable additions to anyone's reading list.  I've included Amazon links to each book.

1) Liberating the Gospels by John Shelby Spong

John Shelby Spong is the retired Bishop of Newark in the Episcopal Church.  A widely-read scholar and theologian and a prominent voice for progressive Christianity, he is an outspoken critic of fundamentalism and traditional Christian theology.

I've read all of Spong's books and they are all recommendable, but the one that impacted me the most was undoubtedly "Liberating the Gospels," which is subtitled "Reading the Bible With Jewish Eyes."

That subtitle is important because the book demonstrates the importance of understanding the first century Jewish context in which the New Testament gospels were written - particularly Mark and Matthew, the first two gospels.  Modern Christians tend to approach the gospels - and indeed the whole Bible - as though they were written in a vacuum for modern sensibilities.  They weren't.  They were written by first century Jews practicing first century Judaism and incorporating their understanding of their Jewish teacher, Jesus of Nazareth, into their distinctly Jewish worldview, which was itself heavily influenced by the Jewish scriptures, laws, and customs.

Spong's book his highly readable and aimed at a general reading audience.  He explores the Jewish roots for the stories of the gospels and highlights how they were profoundly influenced by Jewish scriptures.  It may go without saying that his conclusions fly in the face of virtually everything you ever heard in church or Sunday school.  

At the risk of be hyperbolic, this book left me staggered.  It completely altered my view of how to understand the biblical stories of Jesus.  When people ask me to recommend a book on Christianity, this is always the first one I name.

Liberating the Gospels: Reading the Bible with Jewish Eyes

2) Sphere by Michael Crichton

Before his novels became a veiled political platform for anti-environmentalist claptrap, Michael Crichton was a exceptional thriller writer.  "Jurassic Park," of course, made him famous, but "Sphere," which was published in 1987, several years before "Jurassic Park," was easily one of the best scientific thrillers ever written.

The first time I read "Sphere," I read it in one sitting.  It reads like a movie and the pages just fly by.  I was captivated from practically the first sentence and every page riveted me.  I've since re-read the book four or five times.

Set mostly in an underwater laboratory in the Pacific Ocean, the book tells the story of a scientific investigation into an unknown spacecraft discovered buried under the ocean floor.  The narrative very quickly becomes a psychological thriller as it becomes more and more difficult to tell the difference between what is real and what is imagined.

"Sphere" is, quite simply, a brilliant thriller novel.

Sphere

3) Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett 

A massive, thousand page tome, "Pillars of the Earth" is British thriller writer Ken Follett's masterpiece.  In this book, which was published in the late 1980's, Follett diverged from his normal duties writing spy thrillers and embarked on a historical novel set in 12th century England and centered on the building of a cathedral.

A thousand pages about the construction of a cathedral in the 1100's sounds about as much fun as a root canal, but take my word for it: "Pillars of the Earth" is one of the best historical novels of the entire 20th century.  When I first read the book in 2005, I read it in about a week.  I simply could not put it down.  It is a sprawling saga of medieval England that draws you in with its rich descriptions, captivating characters, scheming intrigues, well-crafted suspense, and heart-wrenching romance.

If you like historical fiction and have not read "Pillars of the Earth," you need to buy or borrow it right this minute.

The Pillars of the Earth

4) Jesus by Marcus J. Borg

In the same way that "Liberating the Gospels" is the first book I always recommend when talking about Christian scholarship in general, the first book I recommend to anyone wanting to know more about the study of the historical Jesus is Marcus Borg's fantastic book "Jesus: Uncovering the Life, Teachings, and Relevance of a Religious Revolutionary."

Of all the books I've read on the historical Jesus - reconstructing his life and times, his purpose, his message - none is even in the same category with Borg's "Jesus."  It is simply the finest resource I am aware of on understanding who Jesus was, where he came from, and what his life and message was all about.  Like all the other books on this list, once started, it is difficult to put down.  You keep wanting to come back to it to learn more.  I practically devoured this book.

Borg is a well-respected Christian scholar and theologian and, like the aforementioned Spong, writes his books for a general reading audience.  He has spent a significant amount of his scholarly career focusing on the study of the historical Jesus, so he knows the subject intimately.  In this book, he argues convincingly that Jesus was a peasant healer, prophet, and voice for social change, working against the cultural norms and powers of his day, providing a radical reinterpretation of God and the Jewish scriptures, and offering a new way of life to his followers.

If you ever wanted to know what Jesus was really like, what his life and message was really all about, without all the theological pomp and circumstance that the Church has draped over him for 2,000 years, this is a book that you simply must read.

Jesus: Uncovering the Life, Teachings, and Relevance of a Religious Revolutionary

5) 1984 by George Orwell

"1984" has always been the book I traditionally say is my favorite novel.

I first read this book in a 10th grade English class and absolutely loved it.  I then had it assigned again for a 12th grade English class, and since I had liked it so much the first time, I went ahead and re-read it.  I enjoyed it so thoroughly the second time that as soon as I had finished it, I immediately started it again and read it for a third time.  By the time I was 25 years old or so, I had read it five or six times through.  

Even after 65 years, "1984" is still disturbingly relevant, with its dystopian view of an authoritarian government ruled by the seemingly omniscient Big Brother.  Stalin's communism (which inspired the novel) may have collapsed in Europe, but the major themes explored in this novel are still playing out in the modern world with disturbing frequency.  Of note is the novel's description of "doublethink," and the Party's revision of language, which is called "Newspeak" in the novel.

Orwell describes doublethink as "holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them...[telling] deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them."

Orwell might as well have been talking about modern politicians, news media personalities, or fundamentalist religious figures.

1984

6) River God by Wilbur Smith

Wilbur Smith is my favorite novelist.  Born in Zambia in southern Africa during the waning days of British imperialism there, he has been publishing grand adventure novels consistently since the mid-1960's.  Every one of his more than 30 novels is set primarily in Africa, and the time period of his novels spans from the ancient world to the modern, with most set during the 19th and 20th centuries.

"River God," published in the early 1990's, was the first book of his that I read, and it captivated me from the very first sentence: "The river lay heavily upon the desert, bright as a spill of molten metal from a furnace."

Set during the so-called "Middle Kingdom" of ancient Egyptian history (roughly 1800 B.C.E.), the novel is a sweeping saga of adventure and romance, narrated in the first person by the slave and eunuch Taita, whose master is Lostris, daughter of the powerful Egyptian king.  Smith's strength is the richness of his prose, his vivid descriptions, and his ability to draw his reader into the world of his characters.

If you like historical fiction, and especially if you are fascinated, as I am, by all things ancient Egypt, this is a novel you absolutely, positively, must read.  Its sequels - "Warlock," "The Quest," and "The Seventh Scroll" - are fantastic too.

River God: A Novel of Ancient Egypt

7) Misquoting Jesus by Bart D. Ehrman

It's a simple fact: every Christian should read this book.

Bart Ehrman is a UNC religion professor and a major voice in the world of modern New Testament scholarship.  A widely-published and highly-decorated scholar who writes books for both academic as well as general reading audiences, he has published more than twenty books and routinely appears on television.

I don't like the title of this book because it is intentionally sensational and also misleading: very little of the book has to do with the actual words of Jesus.  (If I recall correctly, Ehrman even notes in the book that the title was not his own, but was chosen by his publisher.)

In any case, the book discusses the textual history of the Bible.  In prose that is easy to follow, Ehrman takes a very complicated subject (papyrology, linguistics, and the general study of ancient texts) and makes it not just easy to understand, but actually fascinating.  Specifically, he focuses on how and why the actual words of the Bible were changed over the centuries by scribes who copied the texts during the Middle Ages, before the advent of the printing press.  Most people don't often consider the fact that for the first 1400 years of Christian history, no Bible was ever produced without it being hand-copied.  This copying naturally resulted in countless mistakes and slips of the pen, as well as a number of changes to the texts that could only have been intentional, motivated by theological perspectives.

Ehrman catalogues a number of major variations among existing ancient manuscripts of various New Testament books, and discusses the significance of these variations on major points of commonly-accepted theology.

"Misquoting Jesus" totally changed my perspective on the Bible, how it came to be the book it is today, why it says what it says, and why anyone who suggests that it is "infallible" is simply ignorant of the Good Book's own history.

Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why

8) 11/22/63 by Stephen King

This is the "newest" book on my list, published in late 2011.  I only just read it in January and it immediately went onto my list of favorite novels.  I simply could not put this book down.  It is the first and only book I've ever read by Stephen King that I absolutely loved.

I've always had a turbulent relationship with the King of Horror.  I've read roughly half a dozen of his books (which is, admittedly, not very many), and with the exception of his non-fiction book on the art of writing, I've always been mostly dissatisfied.  "11/22/63," however, grabbed me from the start and I practically swallowed it whole.

As the title indicates, this is a novel about the Kennedy assassination.  Starting out in the present day, the main character, Jake, discovers a time travel portal inside an old diner that always takes its traveler back to 11:58 a.m. on September 9, 1958.  No matter how long a traveler stays in the past, once he returns through the portal, only two minutes have passed in the present.  Jake eventually decides to use the portal to stop the Kennedy assassination, and thus alter the course of history for the better (so he believes).

The Kennedy assassination has always been a popular topic among modern Americans, and who doesn't love a time travel story?  This book is a perfect blend of both, and has a healthy amount of suspense to keep you turning the pages.  The characters feel like your best friends, there's an underlying love story that provides a nice romantic counterbalance to the suspense, and (unlike many King novels that I've read) the ending is actually satisfying.

11/22/63: A Novel

9) The Wolf's Hour by Robert McCammon 

One of my absolute favorite thriller novels of all time, I almost never read "The Wolf's Hour," and when I finally did, it was on a whim.

My sister had loaned me this book, telling me it was really fantastic.  Based on the cover, I could see that it was a horror/thriller novel about a werewolf who doubled as a World War II British spy.  I thought it sounded silly and nothing at all like what I would typically read.  Not wanting to hurt my sister's feelings, I took the book and stuck it on my shelf and subsequently ignored it for about two years.

One day I was browsing my bookshelves, looking for something to read.  I had gotten caught up on all my "to-be-read" books and was thinking about re-reading something.  My eye caught the tattered, 15-year-old copy of "The Wolf's Hour" that my sister had loaned me several years before, and I decided that, since I didn't have anything else better to read, I'd give it a whirl.  I figured I'd read a chapter or two and probably end up abandoning it.

I was blown away.

This book hooked me from page one and I was stunned by just how much I loved it.  If you like spy novels or thrillers, and especially if you enjoy those kinds of novels against a backdrop of World War II, you should move this book high up on your "to-be-read" list.  I enjoyed this novel so much it led me to check out the rest of McCammon's bibliography, and he has become one of my absolute favorite novelists, right up there with Mr. Smith and Mr. Orwell.        

The Wolf's Hour

10) The Closing of the Western Mind by Charles Freeman

This book is a bit more "academic" than the other non-fiction books I have recommended, but it is still written for a general reading audience.  Freeman is a British historian of ancient Greece and Rome, and this book details how the pursuit of knowledge and reason, championed during the height of the Greco-Roman period, was supplanted in late antiquity by superstition and ultimately led Europe into a centuries-long dark age.

Freeman talks extensively about the influence of Christianity on this social move away from reason and knowledge.  Once the Catholic Church took control of the Roman Empire in the early 4th century, there was an intentional and systematic war waged against science, technology, reason, medicine, and even literature and history.  While these subjects flourished in the East under Muslim rule, the West decayed and the Roman empire crumbled, leading to the so-called "Dark Ages," where western Europeans suffered for centuries with a standard of living significantly lower than that enjoyed by their ancestors several hundred years earlier.

This book will educate you and will challenge some of your preconceived notions about where we come from and why we believe the things we believe.  It left me with an overwhelming sense of "what might have been" if not for the intentional suppression of knowledge that was carried out in the name of God and power by the early Christian church.        

The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason

Notes from the Cave

As I mentioned in my last report, I went to see my cardiologist a few weeks ago as a follow-up to an ER visit I made due to heart palpitations.  Everything checked out fine and both my cardiologist and my primary care doctor agreed that the palpitations were normal and benign.  That doesn't necessarily make them any less alarming when they occur, but I am learning to deal with them.  There is absolutely no question that stress and worrying about them make them worse.

In addition to that, my cardiologist decided to cut my two heart medicines in half.  I take a so-called ACE Inhibitor, which reduces the stress on the heart, and a beta blocker, which helps lower blood pressure.  During my appointment, my pulse was in the 50's and my blood pressure was also low, so that, apparently, indicates that I no longer need the higher doses of these two medicines.  I can only assume this is due to the fact that I have been eating so healthy, losing weight, and getting a lot of exercise.  My heart is getting stronger and healthier.  So this is very good news.

He also has taken me off of my blood thinner.  He had originally told me I would need to take it until the beginning of June, so this was essentially a planned move.  I hated taking that medicine because it caused me to bruise easily and also caused me to bleed endlessly from minor scrapes and scratches.  I felt like a walking murder victim half the time because the slightest scrape on the arm, or picking at the cuticles, would bleed like a stab wound.  I once unknowingly scraped my forearm and it was bleeding without me knowing it.  I then brushed my arm across a door at work to push it open and I left behind a huge swath of blood that freaked out all my co-workers.

Despite this, I was very uneasy about going off the drug.  I felt vulnerable without it because it helps reduce the risk of a blood clot forming in the stent.  This can happen while the stent is still healing and growing into the heart tissue.  Apparently, based on the type of stent I have, this becomes less of a risk after the first few months.  Also, my particular stent is the widest possible because I have large arteries, and my cardiologist said he doesn't remember anyone ever coming back to the ER with a blood clot in this size stent.

So....after angsting over it for a week, and getting a second opinion from a heart surgeon I happen to know, I went off the medicine a few days ago.  So far so good. I'm almost eager to cut myself so I can see if I bleed normally again.

I've also continued to lose weight.  In my last update, about two weeks ago, I said I was 226.  Yesterday, I weighed in at 218.  Last weekend, we went to the lake for Memorial Day and I didn't exactly eat the way I would have in past years, but I also didn't stick religiously to my new normal eating habits.  I came back Monday expecting to have gained a pound or two, and instead had lost a few.  Not sure how that happened, but I have dropped another couple of pounds since then.  I think I've lost 5 pounds in just the last week or so.  It would seem, perhaps, that my metabolism is starting to increase.  Either that, or this is just one of the normal patterns of ebb and flow when it comes to weight loss.  You just creep along for weeks, half a pound at a time, and then suddenly, without changing anything, the weight starts to come off more quickly.  Who knows.

I hate that all my Notes from the Cave lately have been almost exclusively about my health and eating habits, but it seems like that is the only thing of significance to really talk about.
 

Notes from the Cave

A lot of people have asked me in recent weeks about my cholesterol before my heart attack.  I've been telling people that when I had it checked in 2005 it was high, but I had not had it checked since then.  I couldn't remember what the number actually was.

Last night, I was skimming through my journal and discovered that I had actually written about it back when I had it checked.

To begin with, it was in 2006, not 2005, so it was seven years before my heart attack.  Ironically enough, I had the blood drawn March 20, 2006, and got the results "a few days later," which means that I may have learned about my high cholesterol seven years to the exact day before my heart attack (which was March 23, 2013).

Anyway, I didn't record the individual components (HDL/LDL/triglycerides) but my total number was 268.  Under 200 is the recommended healthy level, and anything over 240 is considered "high cholesterol."  According to the American Heart Association, anyone with cholesterol over 240 is more than twice as likely to develop coronary artery disease than people under 200.

For six weeks after that test, I altered my eating habits, reduced my drinking (actually quit drinking all together because my liver enzymes were high too), and started generally watching what I ate.  I remember the doctor specifically said that, because of my high liver enzymes, he didn't want to put me on cholesterol medicine because it can be hard on the liver.  

I was re-tested in early May of that year and the liver enzymes were back to normal, and my cholesterol had dropped 26 points.  I didn't record the conversation with my doctor, but apparently he was satisfied that my cholesterol was dropping and probably encouraged me to keep eating healthy and to get the cholesterol re-checked the following year.  As far as I remember, no discussion was had again of putting me on cholesterol medicine.

For the next seven years, I never had my cholesterol checked again.  During that period, my eating habits went downhill dramatically and became the nightmare I have previously described, I gained about 40 pounds, I had a second child, I started full time night classes while still working full time during the day, I began smoking, and I developed sleep disturbances, including mild sleep apnea, with abnormal sleep patterns.

I'll never know for sure what my cholesterol was by the time I had my heart attack, but there's little reason to believe it was anything other than through the roof.  If it was nearly 270 in 2006, it was probably 350 by 2013.  Even if it was still "just" 270ish, that's still very high.

I'll be having my cholesterol checked in about a month, and I'm very interested to see what it will be after three months of the healthiest living I've ever done as an adult, plus a high-dose cholesterol medicine.

In other news, I was off yesterday and today because this is my weekend to work.  I'll be going in a 10:30 tonight.  My third shifts are different now that I am healthier and don't smoke.  I used to have no trouble sleeping all day and therefore being alert and ready to go for an all night shift, and it helped that I took a lot of smoke breaks.  I usually also ate a very large meal in the cafeteria.  Now I sleep like a normal person, which means I have trouble sleeping during the day before a third shift, which results in being super tired all night, and of course I don't smoke anymore so I don't have that stimulant to keep me awake.  I also don't consume caffeine or sugary drinks anymore.

The result is that I tend to dread my third shifts now, instead of looking forward to them like I used to, because I know I'll be tired and lethargic.

Last weekend I went to the ER because I was having heart palpitations.  I've had them all along since my heart attack, but it alarmed me because I was having more than usual, and they felt more "intense," so I went to the ER as a precaution.  Blood work and EKG were both fine, but they put me on a 48-hour heart monitor just to be sure.  I wore it until Monday night and returned it Tuesday.  I'm going today to see my cardiologist to get the results.  I didn't really feel like I had many, if any, palpitations while I was on the monitor, so I'm curious to see if I had them and just didn't know it.

At my last weigh-in, which was Wednesday, my weight was down to 226.  That's nearly 30 pounds from my pre-heart attack weight.  Another 30 or so and I'll have reached my goal.

Call Me Nostradamus

In February of 2003, just before the start of the Iraq War, a Gallup poll showed that 93% of Americans believed it was either "certain" or "likely" that Iraq had so-called weapons of mass destruction.  You may recall, of course, that the existence of these WMD's (as they are called) was the primary justification for invading Iraq in the first place.  Unless you live under a rock, you probably also know that, when it was all said and done, no weapons of mass destruction were ever found.

The Iraq War officially began on March 20, 2003.  On March 28, 2003, I wrote a very lengthy entry in my journal, hashing out all my feelings after the first week of the war and talking specifically about the very widespread (at 93%, it was almost universal) belief at the time that Iraq had those pesky WMD's.   

Here's what I wrote: 

Why do I feel like the lone voice of reason in a vacuum of insanity?  Is the whole world insane, or am I the one who is crazy?  It’s an interesting question, and with each passing day, I get further away from knowing the answer...I mean, clearly, there are plenty of anti-war people out there who would agree with every word I've written tonight, but they are a small few.  Is it possible that the vast majority of Americans are just wrong on this count?

Deep down, I believe yes.  And I believe time will back me up on this.  This war is wrong, our reasons for being involved in it our wrong, our justification for it is wrong, and I believe history will show it to have been a big mistake for this country.  I do not believe much, if any, good will come from this war.  Sure, we will probably get rid of Saddam.  But you can’t bomb people into democracy... 

I guess we’ll see in another ten years whether you should call me Nostradamus.  

I don't want to say "I told you so," but....

:)

10 Fun Facts About James Madison

James Madison, the 4th President of the United States

1. The oldest of twelve children, James Madison was born in 1751 in Virginia, the son of a prominent and wealthy plantation owner.  Called "Jemmie" by those who knew him, Madison's parents provided him with a classical education from a very young age, and Madison was fluent in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew.

2. Graduating in 1771 from Princeton University, Madison studied law and theology for another year before returning to his home in Virginia and becoming active in politics.   He became closely allied with Thomas Jefferson and served in the Virginia state legislature in the late 1770's, where he helped author Virginia's laws on religious freedom.  He also served in the Continental Congress during the 1780's.

3. Madison was instrumental in arranging for the Constitutional Convention of 1787, and his so-called "Virginia Plan," which he wrote shortly before the start of the convention, became the basis for the U.S. Constitution.  Among other things, Madison's plan called for three branches of government - executive, legislative, and judicial - two houses of congress, and a system of checks and balances among the branches.

4. Following the Constitutional Convention, Madison played a key role in ensuring its ratification by the states by helping to the author the so-called "Federalist Papers."  These papers were actually a series of articles published in major newspapers addressing questions about the Constitution and how it would work if put into place.

5. After the Constitution was ratified and the new government put into place in early 1789, Madison was elected to the House of Representatives, where he served until 1797.  During his first few months in office, Madison proposed a slate of amendments to the Constitution which became the Bill of Rights.

6. Madison did not marry until the mid-1790's, when he was 43 years old.  His wife, Dolley Payne Todd, was a widow whose first husband and youngest son had died in a Yellow Fever epidemic.  James and Dolley married in 1794.  Despite the fact that Dolley was only in her early 20's at the time of the marriage, and already had given birth twice, she and James never had children.  Dolley's sister was married to a nephew of George Washington.

7. Madison briefly retired from politics at the end of Washington's second term in office, returning to oversee the affairs of his plantation.  When his friend and political colleague Thomas Jefferson became president in 1801, however, Madison returned to Washington, D.C., and became Jefferson's Secretary of State.  In that position, he was instrumental in securing the Louisiana Purchase from France and maintaining neutrality in the Napoleonic Wars that were raging in Europe.

8. Madison was the obvious choice to succeed Jefferson to the presidency in 1808.  With the old Federalist Party of Washington and Adams in ruins, Madison won easily, winning nearly 65% of the popular vote.  His presidency was marked primarily by a growing economy, unity in politics, and the War of 1812, in which Madison and his cabinet was forced to flee Washington from the invading British.  Madison's vice-presidents did not fare well: his first, George Clinton, died in office in 1812, while his second, Elbridge Gerry, died in office in 1814.

9. Madison left office in 1817 and retired to his plantation of Montpelier.  His plantation, however, was in decline and Madison suffered financial troubles for the remainder of his life.  He also became obsessed with his own legacy, going so far as to edit and modify letters, papers, and diaries from earlier in his life, worried about how future generations might view him.

10. Almost 80 years old in 1829, Madison served as a representative to a Virginia convention aimed at amending Virginia's constitution.  It would be his last official duty in politics, though he would continue to publish political papers and support certain causes.  A slave-owner his whole life, he became a supporter of the movement to provide a homeland in Africa for former slaves.  He died at age 85 in 1836, the last of the Founding Fathers.

10 Fun Facts About John Quincy Adams

John Quincy Adams, the 6th President of the United States

1. John Quincy Adams was born in Massachusetts in 1767, the son of John and Abigail Adams.  His namesake and maternal great-grandfather was John Quincy, a colonial British politician and military officer.  Adams' middle name was pronounced "Quinzy."

2. Adams spent much of his childhood in Europe with his father, earning a degree from Leiden University, in the Netherlands, when he was only 14 years old.  After his return to the United States in the mid-1780's, he studied law at Harvard and opened a practice in Boston in 1791.  He was fluent in most of the languages of Europe.

3. Though he initially resisted the urge to follow his father into a life of public service, he reluctantly agreed to serve in several overseas diplomatic posts during the Washington administration, and following those services, he remained in politics for the rest of his life.  Under Washington, he served first as the minister to the Netherlands, and later to Portugal.  During his father's administration in the late 1790's, he served as minister to Prussia.

4. While serving in his father's administration, Adams married Louisa Catherine Johnson.  Louisa's father was an American diplomat in London, and her mother was British.  Louisa and her siblings were all born in Great Britain, making Louisa Adams the only First Lady in U.S. history who was born and raised in a foreign country.  Together they had four children; in 1848, their youngest son, Charles Francis Adams, would run for vice-president with former president Martin Van Buren on the ticket of the Free Soil Party.

5. After his father lost his re-election bid to Thomas Jefferson in 1800, Adams returned from Europe and began practicing law again.  He ran for Congress in 1802 and lost.  Following this, however, the Massachusetts legislature elected him to the U.S. Senate (direct election, by popular vote, of U.S. Senators would not occur until the 17th Amendment was passed in the early 20th century).  Following his term in the Senate, Adams returned again to diplomacy, serving under James Madison as the minister to Russia and later Great Britain.

6. In 1817, Adams became Secretary of State for James Monroe, serving until 1825.  In that office, Adams was instrumental in obtaining Florida from the Spanish, establishing the modern border between Canada and the United States (in the Treaty of 1818), and authoring the influential Monroe Doctrine, which asserted U.S. interests in North and South America against European influence.

7. Adams was nominated for president in 1824, running against three other candidates in an election that is among the most controversial in U.S. history.  When the votes were counted, Andrew Jackson had the most popular votes and electoral votes, but not enough electoral votes to win the presidency (the Constitution requires the winning candidate to have a clear majority of the electoral votes).  As a result, the election was sent to the House of Representatives for a Constitutionally-required run-off election.  Speaker of the House Henry Clay was an opponent of Andrew Jackson and used his influence to sway the House to support Adams.  They elected him on the first ballot and Adams immediately rewarded Clay by making him the new Secretary of State.

8. Andrew Jackson was, needless to say, displeased with the result of the House run-off and accused Adams and Clay of corruption and backroom dealing.  With virtually no electoral mandate to speak of, and the enmity of Jackson's supporters in Congress, Adams' presidency was doomed almost from the start.  He served only one term before being decisively defeated in a rematch against Jackson in 1828.  The two men had become such bitter enemies that Jackson refused to pay the traditional courtesy call to Adams in the final weeks of Adams' term, and Adams did not attend Jackson's inauguration.  

9. Following his term as president, Adams became a respected elder statesman and, in 1830, was elected to the House of Representatives, serving 17 years.  He is the only U.S. president to serve in the House after his presidency.  In 1843, he had a series of photographs taken, making him the earliest-serving president to be photographed.  During his last term in Congress, he served alongside Illinois representative Abraham Lincoln, making him possibly the only man in U.S. history who personally knew George Washington and the other prominent Founding Fathers and Abraham Lincoln.  

10. Adams collapsed on the floor of Congress during a debate in February 1848 of an apparent stroke.  He died two days later in a room inside the Capitol building.  He was buried next to his parents in Quincy, Massachusetts. 

Notes from the Cave

This is my weekend to work, so I am off today.  I always enjoy these middle-of-the-week days off, but unfortunately they always lead to an unpleasant succession of work days; this time around, it will be Thursday through the following Friday - nine days.

Since my heart attack one month ago, I have made some pretty radical changes in my lifestyle.  Ironically, most of them are changes I have been wanting to make for a long time, but felt overwhelmed with facing.  I had tried to make headway with a few of them in recent months/years, but had never really gotten anywhere on a long-term basis.

In short (and literally overnight), I have given up caffeine, nicotine, junk food/processed foods, and virtually all meat.  I have also begun going to bed at a normal hour, rising at a normal hour in the morning, and exercising on a regular basis.

At my weigh-in last Saturday, I was down about 20 pounds from my pre-heart attack weight of 250 pounds. I haven't been in the low 230's since about the time I started radiography school in 2007.  My doctor has advised me to "get below 200 pounds," so I still have a long way to go.  I haven't been below 200 pounds since college.

Me, in October 1995, age 20, weight probably 180.

A run-down of the changes I've made:

Caffeine: I have replaced coffee and all soft drinks, diet or otherwise, with Perrier.  Perrier and tap water, in fact, are pretty much all I drink, except for an occasional glass of vanilla soy milk.  I've found that Perrier is a fantastic substitute for soft drinks, mimicking the fizz, but not containing the caffeine and chemicals.

Nicotine: I had quit smoking tobacco in late December, but had replaced tobacco with e-cigarettes, which deliver nicotine in a vapor mist.  Though I was no longer inhaling the carcinogens and other toxins associated with cigarette smoke, I was still ingesting and remaining addicted to nicotine, and was probably using nicotine even more heavily, because I used the e-cigarette more often than I ever smoked real cigarettes.  My cardiologist advised me that even without the cigarette smoke, the nicotine was harmful for my heart, so I gave up e-cigarettes as well.

In the case of both caffeine and nicotine, I gave both vices up cold turkey.  Strangely, with the exception of a brief period of severe irritability about 48 hours after my last cigarette, I never missed smoking and have never had even a moment of temptation to indulge.  I did crave a cold can of Coke almost the entire time I was in the hospital, but by the time I got home, I was over the caffeine as well.

Meat: I have always liked the idea of vegetarianism and have "flirted" with it for a few weeks at a time in the past, but I had never been able to make it stick.  I think I made it three months in 2010, and actually lost quite a bit of weight, but then I ended up falling off the wagon.  In any case, I have not gone to total vegetarianism in the wake of my heart attack, but what I like to call "virtual vegetarianism."  I am eating heart-healthy fish twice a week, and on a couple of occasions over the last month I have eaten small portions of grilled chicken, but I have given up pork and beef completely.  I'm not saying I'll never eat pork or beef again, but my intention is to make it a very rare indulgence.  There is simply too much sodium, saturated fat, calories, and cholesterol in most red meat products.

Junk food/processed food: Anyone who knows me knows that I ate a lot of crap in the past.  Not just unhealthy foods, but large quantities of them.  I was, in fact, pretty much a binge eater.  Pizza, fast food, chips, ice cream, cookies, sugary soft drinks, microwave snacks - these were all regular, staple foods for me.  In fact, many of them had become (without me even quite realizing it) comfort foods.  I especially enjoyed coming home from work in the late evenings, stopping for 12 dollars' worth of Taco Bell, or fixing myself three cheese covered, frozen burritos at home with a side of half-a-box of Cheez-Its, pounding away a few thousand calories, washing it down with a Mt. Dew, and topping it off with four or five cigarettes on the porch.  Obviously I can't do that anymore if I want to stay healthy and alive.

Giving these things up was, and continues to be, significantly more difficult than quitting smoking.

I can't say that I have completely and totally given up all junk food all the time, but - like meat - I have made it something that I only eat in small portions on infrequent occasions.  For instance, I might eat some Cheez-Its or pretzels when I come home from work.  But for the most part, I either eat no junk food or processed food at all, or I buy "healthy" junk food.  For instance, I have been buying low fat, low sodium popcorn or kettle chips, whole grain cookies from the organic aisle, or sweet potato and radish chips.  A few weeks ago, when the family went to LaRosa's, I ordered the "skinny" pizza with veggie toppings - only 100 calories per slice or something.

What it boils down to is that I have started making fruits and vegetables, either eaten whole or juiced/blended, as well as whole grains and nuts, the main substance of my daily diet.

I've been using this Breville juicer to increase my daily intake of fruits and vegetables.  The resulting juice is pretty good as long as you use enough fruit to sweeten it.  It's also very densely packed with nutrients.

I have dramatically increased my fiber intake, as well as lowering my sodium and increasing my vitamins, minerals, and heart-healthy nutrients.  I have lowered my overall caloric intake, and (with the exception of heart-healthy fish) I have made meat and junk food a very rare indulgence.  Some things - like fast food, processed baked goods (think of Little Debbie or Hostess), soft drinks, ice cream, and most chip brands - I have given up entirely.  I have also stopped my very, very bad habit of not eating breakfast or lunch, and then eating very large dinners and very large late-night meals.  I now eat three square meals with healthy snacks in between.

Exercise: I had been trying to turn over a new leaf on the exercise front since the beginning of the year; hence, the reason I was biking just before I had my heart attack.  Since the heart attack, I have not yet had the courage to get back on my bike, but I have resumed doing push-ups and sit-ups, which I had been doing earlier in the year, and I have also started walking on a daily basis.  I have been doing brisk, 45-minute walks through my very hilly neighborhood.  I have been thinking about the possibility of buying a treadmill and free weights as well, or perhaps joining the gym at the hospital where I work.

Sleeping: As with eating, anyone who knows me knows I had terrible sleep habits.  Working second shift, I routinely stayed up until 3 or 4 in the morning, then would frequently sleep sitting  on the chair in the family room, stay sleeping until noon or later, before finally getting up, taking a shower, and going to work.  On weekends or when I had the following day off, I might stay up until dawn and sleep until the afternoon.  I took naps all the time.

I now go to bed within an hour (usually less) from the time I get home in the evenings.  I set my alarm every morning for 9:00 (which gives me well more than eight hours of sleep).  I have taken maybe two naps since getting out of the hospital.  Together with the dietary changes and the exercise, this normal sleeping habit is now easy for me to do and I sleep well at night.  I haven't slept a single night on the chair or couch.

As a result of all of this - diet, exercise, and sleep - I feel better now, one month removed from a completely unexpected heart attack at age 38, than I have felt in years.  I have more energy, I feel better about myself, I feel more motivated, and I feel less stressed out.  I feel that my mood and demeanor is much more stable and less up and down.  In addition to losing weight and feeling physically and emotionally better, I have noticed that my infamously shaky hands are not nearly as shaky as they used to be.  When I was observing my hands the other night at work, even my coworkers agreed that I have not been shaky like in the past.  I don't know if this is the result of better nutrition, less stress, or better sleep - or all three - but it's a pleasant surprise because I have always been embarrassed by what my doctor had said was a "benign tremor" in my hands (not to be confused with a "benign tumor").

As I have noted before, I had started trying to change some of my bad habits back in January.  Motivated by having quit cigarettes in late December, I decided to start packing my lunch more often and to begin doing push-ups and sit-ups at home.  I fell off the wagon with the push-ups and sit-ups by mid-February, but was managing to pack my lunch at least two or three days per week up until my heart attack.  As a tool of motivation, I took three pictures of myself shirtless when I first started my work-out routine in January.  I wanted to be able to track the changes in my body.  I did lose some weight in January and February, but had gained it all back by mid-March, right before my heart attack.  The day I went biking, in fact, was my attempt to get "back on the wagon."

Anyway, I still have those "before" pictures, and maybe once I get down to my target weight in the 190's, I'll post some before and after shots.  I'll only be able to suffer the embarrassment of those "before" pictures if I have the "after" pictures to brag about.

My Life-Changing Saturday

At this time last Saturday, 5:30 pm, I was in the Cath lab having a stent put in my heart.  

Around 3 pm last Saturday, I did some sit-ups and push-ups while watching basketball.  I had started the new year doing daily exercise, but had fallen off the wagon in mid-February.  Last Saturday, I was motivated to get back into my routine.  At 3:18 pm, I tweeted that I had just completed said exercises, and was about to go for a bike ride.  My wife and kids were out of town for the day and I was home alone.

I went for that ride at around 3:30 and rode for maybe 10 minutes.  It was the first time I'd been on my bike since late last summer.  Just before turning into my driveway, I made a last minute decision to go on down the street to the cul-de-sac and come back up to the house.  It's downhill to the cul-de-sac, thus uphill back to the house.

I made that decision thinking that I needed to "push" myself, because I was already tired and wanted to stop.  As I came back up the hill I realized very quickly that it was too much and I should just get off the bike and walk it back up to the house.

However, there were some young adults standing in front of one of the houses near mine, and I felt embarrassed having to walk my bike in front of them.  Instead, I pushed on and rode all the way back to my garage.  

As soon as I got off the bike, I knew I had overdone it.  I went into the garage and tried to catch my breath, but I felt like I couldn't.  My body, and especially my legs, felt very weak.  After several minutes, I finally decided to go into the house and get some water.  As I walked up the two steps from the garage into the house, I nearly fell because my legs were so weak as I tried to go up the steps.  

Not long after getting into the house I began to feel panicky, worrying that I might have seriously harmed myself in some way.  I felt this way because I could not seem to catch my breath.  As the symptoms of a panic attack started to come over me, I felt lightheaded and dizzy and even more weak and breathless.  I assumed that these symptoms were primarily resulting from the panic, and that I just needed to calm down.

In an effort to lighten my mental state, I tweeted at 3:54 pm that I had just returned from a bike ride and was dying.  "Good bye cruel world," I joked.  I hoped that joking about my very real panic would help it to subside.  

I spent probably 15 minutes trying to calm down.  I took the normal steps I take when having a full blown panic attack, but for whatever reason, I couldn't get calmed down and I couldn't catch my breath.  

And then I started having chest pain.  

I don't know exactly when it started, but I felt it as a dull ache all across my chest, and it felt like it went through my chest all the way to my back.  In addition, it would occasionally radiate down both arms and also up into my neck.  At one point, both my hands started feeling numb and tingly.  The pain was dull, not sharp, and spread across a wide area of my upper torso, rather than a single spot or region.  It was not horrible pain - I think I later told the EMT's it was a 5 out of 10.   

This was something new that doesn't typically occur when I have panic attacks, but I still continued to try to calm myself down for a few minutes and deny that I was actually having a heart attack.  Finally, after speaking with my mother, who is a nurse, I drove myself to the local Urgent Care, which is just a mile or so up the road.

They gave me an aspirin and said I probably wasn't having a heart attack (based on my age and lack of family history), but they wanted to send me to the ER to be checked out.  They called an ambulance, which I recall arriving very quickly, and I was loaded into the back, put on oxygen, and hooked up to an EKG.  Because I was shaking so much with panic, the EKG would not read properly.  

The EMT's decided to take me on a non-emergency run to the local hospital.  En route, however, while I lay in the back of the ambulance, they were finally able to get a good read on the EKG and it indicated I was, in fact, having a heart attack.  

The instant he told me this, the chest pain stopped and never returned.

I have suffered from anxiety and depression my entire adulthood, and much of my panic disorder is expressed through severe hypochondria.  It is well-controlled with the anti-depressant that I take, but I have frequently worried about my health throughout my adulthood, and went to the doctor a number of times in my 20's (prior to starting the anti-depressant) over concerns about my heart (which were always without merit).

To be in the back of an ambulance with shortness of breath and chest pain, and be told I was having a heart attack, was literally a nightmare come true.  

Yet, as I noted, the moment he said it, the chest pain stopped.  Furthermore, I felt a sense of calm wash over me and I just laid my head back and began breathing deeply as he started an IV and told the driver to switch to an emergency run and go to a different hospital.

Everything after that is a blurry sort of dream.

I called my wife and sister-in-law from the ambulance, but could not reach either of them, so I called my brother-in-law.  Then I called my mother.  I remember as they unloaded me from the ambulance, worrying they would drop the stretcher.

I recall meeting the eyes of a unit clerk at the desk as they brought me into the ER and smiling sadly at her, and she sort of smiled and looked away quickly.  Everyone was staring at me but no one wanted to meet my eyes.  

I remember realizing, from my own work in emergency rooms, that they were on squad alert for me.  For me.  

I remember a kind doctor's face hovering over me and confirming I was having a heart attack.  I remember him telling me he had gone through this too.

I remember being asked if I had done cocaine that day.  

In the end, I had one artery that was 100% blocked.  This artery was stented in the cath lab at St. Elizabeth's Hospital.  Another artery showed a 40-60% blockage but nothing needs to be done about it at this point in time, other than monitoring and medicine.

I am on five new medicines - a blood thinner, an aspirin, two heart medicines, and a cholesterol drug.  Prior to this, I took only my one anti-depressant every day.

I have also been told to get below 200 pounds, which means losing about 50-60 pounds from where I was before the heart attack.

I have been told to never use nicotine in any form again.

I have been told that I can make a full recovery with no long-term damage if I do what they tell me to do.

I was told about 7 or 8 years ago that I had high cholesterol, but my doctor did not put me on cholesterol medicine at that time, and I never had it checked again.  I started smoking in 2007 and had just quit at the start of 2013, though I was still using nicotine with an electronic cigarette.  I have also been steadily gaining weight since about the time I went back to school in 2006, having gotten into the low-end of the "obese" scale on the BMI calculator for the last few years.

So I had several risk factors for heart disease, but one notable risk factor I did not have was a family history of early heart disease.  In fact, no one in my family - parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, or siblings - has ever had any sort of heart disease, much less a heart attack, even less a heart attack before 40.  

Obviously those "good genes" didn't matter in the face of my diet, smoking, and cholesterol.

I am slowly getting better.  For me, getting better is as much about my mental state as it is about my physical state.  Obviously, a heart attack will cause anxiety and depression for anybody, but especially for someone who already suffered from it, and someone who has a history of anxiety-related hypochondria.  But I have resources and tools at my reach and I am putting those to use.  

From here, I am just taking things one day at a time, learning to get used to a radically new normal with my lifestyle habits.  

The Wrongful Conviction of Ryan Ferguson

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I realize this post is long.  If you don't want to read it all, I don't blame you.  But please take my word for it that this person has been unjustly convicted of murder based on unbelievably flimsy evidence, and deserves a new trial.  As such, please go to Change.org and sign the petition urging a new trial.  If you don't want to put your name on something like that without knowing more about it first, then read on.
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As I've mentioned before on Serene Musings, M and I love to watch the news show 48 Hours Mystery together every Saturday night at 10 pm.  The show always highlights some murder case that is either ongoing or has recently been resolved, gives the background of the case and the parties involved, then reveals the verdict at the end.  In reruns (shown currently on TLC), they frequently give new updates to old shows.  One of their frequent tricks is to tug you back and forth during the episode, making you initially think a suspect is guilty as sin, then swinging you back the other direction to make you question your initial certainty.  It makes for entertaining television.

48 Hours, of course, isn't the only news show that presents murder cases like this.  There is also a Dateline series that does something similar and an old series called Cold Case Files that highlighted cold cases that had recently been resolved.  I like watching them all, and since TLC reruns both the Dateline and 48 Hours shows, I can watch them frequently.

The point is telling all this is to say that, over the years, I have seen dozens, probably hundreds, of hour-long news reports about various murder cases.  Sometimes I agree with the verdict, sometimes I'm torn, and other times I'm pretty sure the suspect is probably innocent.  But only once have I not been able to get a particular case out of my mind; only once have I been so certain that a suspect had been victimized by the justice system that I felt the need to do something; only once have I wished I was a prominent celebrity who could use my wealth and influence to help get a wrongfully-convicted person freed.  It concerns the case of Ryan Ferguson.

THE MURDER

In the early morning hours of November 1, 2001, Kent Heitholt, Sports Editor for the Columbia Daily Tribune, was murdered in the parking lot of the newspaper office after leaving work just after 2 a.m.  Just before the murder, he had a brief conversation in the parking lot with fellow reporter Michael Boyd, who was in his car getting ready to leave.  After this conversation, Boyd drove away, later testifying that the time was about 2:15 to 2:20.  He said he saw nothing suspicious.

Shortly after 2:20, a janitor named Shawna Ornt came outside to smoke on the loading dock near the parking lot.  She saw two white males crouching behind Heitholt's car and quickly went back inside to get a co-worker, Jerry Trump.  The two returned to the loading dock and one of the people behind the car came out and said: "Somebody's hurt, man!"  The two suspects then fled in the opposite direction.

During the 911 call that took place several moments later, Jerry Trump told the operator that he could not give a description of the two suspects, beyond stating that they were white males.  Later that same day, he told the same thing to police investigators, stating that he had not gotten a good look at their faces.  He did mention that one might have been wearing a hat, and that one was taller than the other.

Ornt, however, did get a good look at the face of one of the suspects.  Her description was used to create a composite sketch.  She described him with blonde hair, muscular, and in his early 20's.

Heitholt was murdered next to his car.  The pathologist determined he had been hit over the head eleven times with a blunt object, but there was no skull fracture or significant brain damage.  Instead, the cause of death was from strangulation; Heitholt's belt had been removed and had been used to strangle him.  Only the broken belt buckle remained at the scene.  The remainder of the belt, as well as the blunt object used to hit him over the head, were missing and never recovered.  The only things taken from Heitholt were his car keys and his watch.

THE EVIDENCE

The murder scene in the newspaper parking lot was rife with physical evidence.  Fingerprints were found on the car that belonged to Heitholt.  Other fingerprints, however, did not match his or anyone in his family.  Additionally, there were two bloody footprints discovered near the car.  Neither the fingerprints nor the footprints matched any of Heitholt's co-workers who had come to the scene before police got there.  Finally, a strand of bloody hair was found in Heitholt's hand that did not match Heitholt.  This hair undoubtedly belonged to one of the murderers.

A K-9 unit was used to trace the bloody footprints.  The K-9 unit led police to the nearby campus of the University of Missouri, where the scent was lost.

THE CASE GOES COLD

Despite having two eye witnesses, with one being able to give a firm description of one of the suspects, and a significant amount of physical evidence, police were unable to solve the crime.  All their leads proved dead-ends.  For two years, the case remained cold.  During this time, there was a significant amount of local media coverage of the case, and, subsequently, a lot of pressure to get the case solved.

A SUSPECT STEPS FORWARD

In late 2003, the Columbia Daily Tribune ran a story about the case, coinciding with the 2-year anniversary.  A 19-year-old drug-user and local "troubled kid" named Chuck Erickson read the reports and began having dreams of himself murdering Heitholt.  He soon began to tell friends about these dreams, suggesting to them that he was starting to think maybe he had committed the murder with another friend.  He had not remembered committing the murder initially, but the news reports had started to spark his admittedly drug-hazed memory.

On the night of October 31/November 1, 2001, Erickson believed he had been out drinking with his friend Ryan Ferguson.  At the time, both had been 17-year-old high school students, but had used fake I.D.'s to drink at a bar after leaving a Halloween party earlier in the evening.  In January of 2004, Erickson contacted Ferguson and told him about the dreams and about his belief that the two of them, together, had committed the crime.  Ferguson told him he remembered the night well, and that they most definitely had not had anything to do with the murder.

Erickson continued to tell friends about his suspicions, and one of them finally called in a tip to police.  In March of 2004, Erickson was brought in an interviewed by police.  He eventually took a plea deal and plead guilty to the crime and is currently serving a 25-year sentence.  In his plea deal, he agreed to testify against Ryan Ferguson.  

ERICKSON'S STORY

Erickson claimed that he and Ferguson had been at a bar near the newspaper office, drinking, when they ran out of money.  Not wanting to go home, Erickson claimed that Ferguson suggested they go rob someone.  Erickson thought this was a great idea.  He stated that Ferguson retrieved a tire tool from his car and handed it to Erickson, then the pair walked towards the parking lot of the Tribune and noticed Heitholt.  Erickson said he hit Heitholt over the head with the tire tool, after which Ferguson strangled him.  Erickson testified that he got sick and vomited on the ground.  He stated that he believed Ferguson had taken Heitholt's wallet.  

Around this time he testified that a "cleaning lady" came out and he called to her that someone was hurt, and then he and Ferguson walked quickly away.

Following this, he stated that the two fled across a nearby street, washed their hands off in a creek, then came across a friend named Dallas Mallory who was in his car stopped at a red light.  Erickson stated that he told Mallory what had happened and that someone was hurt.  After that, the two went back to the bar and continued drinking until they finally left again and Ryan drove him home.

ANALYSIS OF ERICKSON'S STORY

Already you might have noticed some problems with Erickson's story.  Heitholt's wallet was not taken from him - only his keys and watch were missing.  Erickson went so far as to tell police that Ferguson had told him, several months after the murder, that he (Ferguson) was in big trouble because his Dad had found "the wallet" and now suspected his son was involved.  Heitholt's wallet was not stolen (it was found in his car), so this testimony cannot be true.  When questioned, Erickson said nothing about a watch or car keys.    

Additionally, there was no vomit found at the crime scene, even though Erickson was certain he had "gotten sick" while Ferguson was busy strangling Heitholt.

There are numerous other inconsistencies as well.  To begin with, Erickson stated that Heitholt was lying face-up while Ferguson was strangling him.  Witnesses testified that Heitholt was lying face-down when he was found, and the pathologist who examined the body stated he was strangled in a face-down position.

Erickson seemed to know that Heitholt had been bludgeoned and strangled, but these facts had been reported in the media.  He told police more than once that he had only hit Heitholt one time, unaware that the investigators had already determined that Heitholt had been hit 11 times.  He also stated that it was a tire tool of some kind, though blunt force from such an object would have done far more damage to Heitholt's head than what the autopsy showed.

Additionally, Erickson initially stated that he didn't know what Ferguson had used to choke Heitholt with.  He initially demonstrated Ferguson using his hands to choke Heitholt.  After being pressed, he said it might have been "a shirt or something."  After being told it wasn't a shirt, he said it might have been a bungee cord or a rope.  He was incredulous when the interviewer finally told him it was Heitholt's own belt, stating "I don't remember that at all."  When asked if the belt rang a bell, he stated: "Not at all."

Erickson stated that the "cleaning lady" was carrying a "cord" or a "vacuum" as was busy doing something when he saw her.  In fact, she had simply stepped out to have a smoke and was not holding anything in her hands.  Media reports had identified the cleaning lady as an eyewitness.  Erickson testified that he told the cleaning lady that someone was hurt, but later admitted he had read this in the newspaper.

Erickson stated that Ferguson searched around in Heitholt's car before they fled.  Yet none of Ferguson's fingerprints were found there, despite the fact that Erickson also testified that neither of them was wearing gloves.  Recall, also, that Heitholt's wallet was found untouched inside the car, and Erickson had testified that the whole reason for the crime was robbery.

When taken to the crime scene, Erickson was not able to identify the place in the parking lot where the murder had actually occurred.  Furthermore, the bloody footprints on the pavement indicated the murderers had fled in a completely different direction from what Erickson stated.  Finally, Dallas Mallory, the friend Erickson said he had told about the murder on a street corner that night, denied the story, and testified he had not owned a car or had a driver's license at the time.  City records also proved that the intersection where Mallory was stopped that night had flashing yellow lights, so he couldn't have been stopped there at a red light.  Two girls who Erickson said were in the car with Mallory have never been identified or stepped forward.  

Erickson's time table also did not fit the known facts.  He stated that he and Ferguson had left the bar, killed Heitholt, then returned to the bar until it closed (presumably using the money from Heitholt's non-existent wallet).  The bar closed that night at 1:30, the bartender testified he had personally left by 2:00, and other patrons confirmed the bar closed at 1:30, which was required by law.  The murder occurred around 2:20.  Erickson stated that he and Ferguson had to stay at the bar until after 4:00 because a police officer was right across the street.  Records show no police officer in the vicinity at that time.  No patrons, passers-by, or anyone else ever corroborated Erickson's story that the bar was still in full swing until 4 a.m.  One witness stated that she saw Erickson and Ferguson leave the bar between 1:15 and 1:30 and get in Ferguson's car and drive off (this evidence was not presented at trial, because the defense team did not learn about it until after the trial was over).  Erickson maintained that they walked to the murder scene and back, and only got in the car after returning to the bar and staying until after 4:00.

The ultimate conclusion to draw here is obvious: even though he confessed to it, Chuck Erickson probably had nothing to do with this crime.  He got virtually every fact about the murder wrong, except for those details that had been released to the press.  Throughout his police interviews, he routinely stumbled over his details, contradicted himself, and provided information that is provably incorrect.  He routinely told police that the whole event was hazy and dream-like in his mind, and that he was possibly just "freaking out" and making the whole thing up.  He admitted to having a long history of drug abuse, including heavy use of pills, cocaine, and alcohol.  He stated that he frequently drank to the point of blacking out, smoked pot three or four times a day, and experimented with LSD and mushrooms.  He also admitted he had no memory of the murder until reading newspaper accounts of the story.  He even stated: "I'm making presumptions based on what I read in the newspaper."  He admitted telling friends he wasn't sure if what he remembered came from dreams or actual memory.

Investigators gave Erickson false police reports indicating that eye-witnesses could match him with the murder.  They told him he could potentially get the death penalty.  They also told him that Ferguson was  thinking of doing a plea deal and testifying against Erickson.  All of these things were false information, used by the police to convince Erickson he needed to plead guilty and testify against Ferguson to save himself from the death penalty.

When he finally testified in Ferguson's trial, his story was coherent and consistent with the facts of the case.  Based on his police interviews in 2004, it is clear he had changed his story to fit the facts given to him by the police.

FERGUSON'S STORY

At the time of the crime, Ryan Ferguson was 17 years old.  He had no criminal record.

During his questioning, Ferguson stated that he arrived at a Halloween party earlier that evening, right after it had gotten broken up by police.  Erickson was coming out, so he got in Ferguson's car and they drove to a local bar, where they used fake I.D.'s to get in.  Ferguson bought drinks for himself and Erickson.  They stayed until about 1:15, at which time the bar lights came on in preparation for closing and Ferguson drove Erickson home before going home himself.  He stated that he made a number of phone calls while sitting on the curb outside his home.

ANALYSIS OF FERGUSON'S STORY

Ferguson has maintained his innocence from the beginning.  His story is consistent with eye-witness accounts that say the bar closed at 1:30 and he left with Erickson around 1:15 and got in his car.  Cell phone records prove he was on his phone from about 1:40 to 2:10; unfortunately, they do not show where the calls were made from.

THE EVIDENCE

Recall that significant physical evidence was found at the crime scene, including fingerprints, shoeprints, and bloody hair, none of which belonged to Heitholt.

There is no long story to tell here: the simple fact is that none of the prints, hair, or blood matched either Erickson or Ferguson.  One would think this would virtually exclude either of them from arrest, much less conviction.  One would assume wrong, however.

In addition, the murder weapons - the blunt object and the belt - were not found in Ferguson's possession, and neither were the missing keys or the watch.  A common tire iron found in Ferguson's car was ruled out as a possible murder weapon because there was no forensic evidence tying it to the scene, and expert witnesses testified that if a tire iron had been used, Heitholt's head injuries would have been significantly more serious.

Finally, recall that eye-witness Shawna Ornt - the "cleaning lady" - had gotten a good look at one of the suspects she saw near the car.  She was the only person who got a good look at the suspect, and was the only person whose description was used to make the police composite drawing.  She told police definitively that the person she saw was neither Ryan Ferguson nor Chuck Erickson.  Furthermore, she had stated that the person she saw was in his early 20's, about six feet tall, and about 200 pounds.  Both Ferguson and Erickson were significantly younger, shorter, and leaner than that.

FERGUSON'S TRIAL

I have already mentioned that Erickson's trial testimony was radically different from the garbled, incoherent, and largely inaccurate accounts he first gave to police.  He had clearly been coached and fed information and his story was consistent with the facts of the crime.  In his interviews, Erickson demonstrated no knowledge whatsoever of details of the crime that had been withheld from the public.  In fact, virtually all of the details he gave, which only the perpetrator could have known, were wrong.  Only after interrogators provided this information to him in his interviews did he begin to incorporate them into his story.  This can be illustrated by reading the transcripts or watching the interrogation videos, then comparing them to his trial testimony.  By way of example, he initially told investigators that he and Ferguson fled by a certain route from the scene.  Later, investigators took him along the route sniffed out by the K-9 unit, which was different than the route given by Erickson.  At trial, Erickson's route testimony matched that of the K-9 unit.  

As we have seen, no physical evidence connected Ferguson to the crime.  Numerous witnesses contradicted Erickson's timeline and version of events.  Shawna Ornt testified at the trial, but because she had already told police that the man she had seen was neither Ferguson nor Erickson, she was not asked by the prosecutor if Ferguson was the man she had seen - meaning the jury never heard her state this definitively.

Ultimately, Ferguson was convicted on two pieces of evidence: the testimonies of Chuck Erickson and Jerry Trump.  These were the only two witnesses who testified against Ferguson.  We've already looked at Erickson's story.

Recall that Jerry Trump was the custodian who, along with Shawna Ornt, saw two men crouching by Heitholt's car on the night of the murder.  On his 911 call, which happened just minutes after the fact, and in his police interview which occurred about an hour later, he stated that he called to the men several times before they ran off, but that he did not get a good look at them.  The 911 operator tried several times to get him to give a description, but he kept saying he did not really see their faces.  All he could say with certainty is that they were white males.  He told more or less the same thing to police.

A month after the murder, in December of 2001, Trump was sent to prison for a parole violation connected to an earlier sex-crime conviction.  He was released in 2004 about six months after the arrests of Ferguson and Erickson.  At trial, he testified that while he was in prison in 2004, his wife sent him a newspaper showing the photographs of the newly arrested Erickson and Ferguson.  He stated that when he opened the package containing the newspaper, it was folded in such a way that only the photos were visible, not the headline stating who they were.  He stated that, before even realizing they were suspects in the crime, he immediately recognized them as the two men he had seen that night in the parking lot.  Trump's wife was interviewed by investigators before the trial, and she said she had no memory of sending him the newspaper - an event that had occurred just a few months earlier.  His wife's denial of sending the newspaper was not mentioned in trial, and Ferguson's defense team did not learn about it until later.

During his testimony at the trial, Trump positively identified Ryan Ferguson as one of the men he had seen that night.

The trial ultimately lasted only 5 days.  The jury got the case on a Friday afternoon, deliberated for just a few hours, then returned a guilty verdict.  Ferguson was sentenced to 40 years in prison.

POST-TRIAL DEVELOPMENTS

You might be asking yourself, as I did, how someone could be convicted of murder under these kinds of circumstances?  In the American justice system, a defendant is innocent until proven guilty, and "proof" is defined as "beyond a reasonable doubt."  This is the standard we go by in this country to convict people of crimes.  There is no question that the jury in this case did not have all the information that I have explained above (I've already noted at least two facts that were not noted at trial), but they still had the majority of the story I have related.  How on earth could this jury convict Ryan Ferguson based on this evidence (or lack thereof)?  Who in their right mind could consider this evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Ferguson was guilty?

I was outraged and disgusted and flabbergasted after watching the 48 Hours episode that highlighted Ferguson's case.  I could not believe he had been lawfully convicted by a jury of his peers.  I felt completely hopeless to help, and still feel that way, quite honestly.

In any case, I have followed up on Ferguson's case over the last few years, and there have been a number of interesting developments.

To begin with, Jerry Trump has recanted the testimony he gave at trial and has admitted that he lied on the stand about being able to identify Ryan Ferguson as one of the people he saw the night of the murder.

During the trial, Trump stated that he saw Ferguson's picture on a newspaper sent to him by his wife, and that he saw this picture, and recognized Ferguson's face, before even knowing Ferguson had been arrested for the murder.

He has since stated that, in fact, he never saw that newspaper until prosecutors showed it to him when he met with them in December, 2004, shortly after his release from prison and several months before Ferguson's trial.  Recall that his wife had denied ever sending the paper to him.  He has stated that his motivation for lying was due to pressure from the prosecutor to identify Ferguson, and his fear of being sent back to prison.  He had gone to prison in 2001 for a parole violation that involved failing a polygraph test about his sexual activity (he was a convicted sex offender).  He testified that he felt his probation had been wrongly revoked and he feared something similar would happen again.  He believed that if he helped the prosecution, they might help him out in the future.

He has reasserted what he had said from the beginning, just moments after the crime: he did not ever get a good look at the faces of the two men behind the car.  In addition to this, five different acquaintances of Trump have signed affidavits attesting that, following the Heitholt murder, Trump told them he had not seen the suspects' faces.

Considering that Trump could now face perjury charges as well as parole violations for committing perjury, and considering he was given no immunity or deals by admitting to perjury, it is difficult to imagine that his recantation is false.  He clearly never saw the suspects' faces, and he clearly did lie in trial when he identified Ferguson as one of the people he had seen.

In light of this, it may be worth noting that one of the jurors who convicted Ferguson told CBS that Trump's trial testimony was vital to Ferguson's conviction.  He told the jury Ferguson is the person he'd seen.  As far as they were concerned, that meant Ferguson had to be guilty.

As if that's not shocking enough, Chuck Erickson has also admitted that his testimony against Ferguson was false.

To begin with, he has stated that he has no memory of the murder.  He recalls going to the bar with Ferguson and using alcohol and drugs earlier in the night, but does not remember leaving the bar or going home.  He stated that when he woke up the next morning, he did not remember murdering anyone and had no blood or other physical signs of violence on his body or clothes.

He has admitted that, following the time of the murder, his drug and alcohol use increased "a lot."  He recalls a conversation with Ryan a few days after the murder where they marveled about someone being murdered so close to where they were partying.  There was no indication in that conversation that either them had anything to do with it.

After reading about the murder in 2003, he began to get curious about it because he realized that he couldn't actually remember going home from the bar that night, and he knew the bar was in very close proximity to the crime.  This, coupled with the fact that he thought the composite sketch looked a little bit like him, made him start fearing he had committed the crime in a drug- and alcohol-fueled blackout.  Erickson admitted that, from the newspaper articles, he had gotten all his basic knowledge of the crime - two white male suspects, the blunt object and strangling, one suspect saying something to a cleaning lady, etc.  

At a New Year's Eve Party in 2003-2004, Erickson asked Ferguson whether they had committed the crime.  He had grown increasingly paranoid that he had somehow been involved.  Ferguson first thought he was joking.  When he later brought it up again, Ferguson assured him they had not committed the murder.

Erickson wasn't convinced and continued to worry about his involvement and began to grow paranoid that others suspected him.  He finally talked to two other friends about it, telling them he thought that he and Ferguson might have been involved.  He admitted to being being under the influence of alcohol and cocaine when he talked to his friends about the murder, and testified, in fact, that he only talked about it when he was high and drunk.  He testified that he had used alcohol and cocaine the night before his arrest and initial interviews, and had smoked pot that morning.  He claimed that he lied to police about Ferguson's involvement because he had become convinced he was guilty and didn't want to take the blame alone.

Recall that the police had given false police reports to Erickson in order to convince him to take a plea deal and testify against Ferguson.  Erickson has since stated that these false reports convinced him that Ferguson was not only going to admit involvement, but also try to pin the actual murder on Erickson.  Erickson might get the death penalty if he didn't agree to work with the prosecution against Ferguson.  One of these false reports included supposed testimony from Dallas Mallory (the person Erickson had claimed they ran into at an intersection just after the murder) stating that Mallory had seen Erickson leaving the crime scene with a weapon in his hand.

Convinced by the false police reports that the police had solid evidence against him, and now convinced utterly that he and Ferguson really had done this crime (after all, Ferguson, so he thought, was ready to plead guilty), and wanting to avoid the death penalty or life in prison, he agreed to plead guilty to a lesser charge and testify against Ferguson.  He has stated that he does not now, nor has he ever, had any memory of the murder of Kent Heitholt, his own involvement in it, or Ryan Ferguson's involvement.  He has stated that the testimony he gave at Ferguson's trial was completely false, based on drug-fueled dreams, confusion, and ultimately police misdirection.

HOW IT STANDS TODAY

Ferguson was convicted on two pieces of evidence: the testimonies of Erickson and Trump.  Even the prosecution admitted that no other evidence connected him to the crime.  Both have now signed sworn affidavits, and testified under oath in appeal hearings, that they lied in their original testimonies.  Neither was given any promise of leniency or immunity for recanting their testimonies.  Both could face serious perjury charges stemming from these admissions.

Ferguson should have the conviction overturned, right?  Surely.

Nope.

Recently, a judge denied a motion to throw out the conviction.  He essentially ruled that the recantation from Erickson was not credible.  He agreed that Trump had clearly lied in the original trial, but he felt that even without Trump's testimony, Erickson's alone was enough to convict Ferguson.  As far as the judge was concerned, Erickson was telling the truth originally, and now he is lying, for whatever reason.  I won't go into all the particulars, but it simply goes to show you that our legal system is not built to be inherently self-correcting.  No matter how unjust a conviction may have been, and no matter how much firm ground a person has to prove he was wrongly convicted, it's simply not that easy.

HOW CAN YOU HELP

First you can visit the website set up to help free Ryan Ferguson.

Second, you can visit Change.org and sign the petition to grant Ferguson a new trial.  It needs only a few thousand more signatures.

Finally, you can "like" the Facebook page set up for Ryan, and tell others about it.

Men Cry

Twenty-five years ago today, on March 4, 1988, my grandfather, Oscar Kirby, died.  I was 13 years old.

A few years back, I wrote a poem about that day, and about his funeral.  It's probably not a very good poem, but I'm going to post it here, in his honor.

----

Men Cry

“Your grandfather died today.”

I can still hear the words in my mind.

They echo and resound like a leaden knell,

Spoken in gentleness by my father,

As he sat behind the wheel of our car.

It was a Friday afternoon in March.

Sunny, as I remember it –

The hint of spring in the air.

I had just climbed out of the school bus –

Strange that my parents were there to meet me;

I always walked home from the bus stop.

A Friday afternoon surprise, I figured,

In my 13-year-old mind.

No one spoke when I first sat down in the car –

I suppose I was waiting for an explanation.

I thought little of it;

I was completely unconcerned:

Thinking of the weekend ahead;

What was for dinner;

What was playing at the movies.

My grandfather was the last thing on my mind.

And then my father spoke those words.

Those words.

A phrase which has remained firmly etched in my brain

For sixteen years.

An epitaph to my childhood.

We drove in silence for several moments.

My mother, her face wet with tears –

Strange I hadn’t noticed it before now –

Turned and asked me if I was all right.

“Yes,” I said, with pubescent brevity.

How dare she suggest otherwise.

I was a man. 

I had pubic hair, for Christ’s sake.

Of course I could handle the death of my grandfather.

No big deal. 

I hardly even knew him, I tried to convince myself.

Only saw him a few times a year.

Forget all the memories –

Fishing at the family farm, reeling in catfish and bluegill;

Sitting in the family room while he smoked,

Listening to the police scanner;

Relaxing on the porch,

Whittling a branch of cedar;

A long walk into the woods to cut down a tree

For firewood;

Feeding the goats and pigs;

The smell of pipes on Christmas Eve;

Drives in the old red truck with the windows down;

Sharing a Dr. Pepper on a summer afternoon –

All those things were just silly kid stuff.

I was a man, and men don’t cry for grandfathers they only saw

A few times a year.

And so I didn’t.

I don’t remember the drive from Louisville,

Down the Western Kentucky Parkway

To Muhlenberg County.

I don’t remember seeing my grandmother

For the first time.

I don’t remember the conversations,

The gathering of family at the house.

But I remember the moment I saw my grandfather.

Walking into that sterile, cheerless funeral parlor,

I felt choked with grief.

There he lay at the front, down a narrow aisle –

God, that aisle must have been a mile long.

And it took a lifetime to walk down to the casket.

The women were crying.

But I was a man, and men don’t cry.

The visitation lasted an eternity.

Unfamiliar faces.

A lot of old people.

I couldn’t help but wonder which of them

Would be next.

“He’s soooo peaceful,” I remember my aunt saying

At least a hundred times.

It was her coping mechanism.

If he was peaceful, then she might have peace too.

There were a lot of tears.

But I didn’t cry.

The funeral was gut-wrenching.

They played a few old-time hymns

On one of those electronic organs you only find

In small-town funeral homes.

My grandmother wound her watch while the pastor spoke.

I remember thinking:

Why is she doing that at a time like this?

When it was over, everyone filed past the casket

One final time.

Us pall-bearers went first.

I remember standing there in my suit –

My uncle had helped me with my tie earlier –

Next to my cousins,

Looking down at my grandfather.

And one of my cousins whispered:

Bye buddy.

Just a simple little good-bye.

He hadn’t even meant for anyone else to hear it.

But I heard it.

The finality of it struck me like an arrow.

I felt my face expand.

No! I screamed inside.

I was not going to cry.

Men don’t cry.

And I was a pall-bearer –

Such a dreadful, yet lofty job.

The job of a man.

There would be no tears from this pall-bearer.

No sir.

Not in front of my older cousins –

I was the youngest grandchild,

But, by God, I was not a baby.

The pall-bearers lined up at the back of the parlor.

Three on each side, standing by the door.

As family and friends filed past the coffin,

They were ushered out to the waiting cars.

The funeral procession would be a long drive

Through the countryside,

To the peaceful plot of land my grandparents

Had purchased years before

At the Mount Pisgah Baptist Church.

I stood there, hands clasped before me

Like my older cousins.

Like a man –

Somber.

Emotionless.

But my face burned like a fire.

It was a physical sensation –

As though my cheeks and eyeballs

Might pop with the pressure of the building tears.

Bye buddy.

I kept hearing it in my mind.

Granddaddy was gone.

He was dead.

Deader than a doornail.

When people die, they don’t come back to life.

I would never see him again.

No more fishing trips.

No more walks in the woods.

No more police scanner.

No more scent of pipes on Christmas Eve.

But I was a man.

I was somber.

I was emotionless.

No one had to know my face was about to burst.

But then I saw my mother.

She walked beside my aunt.

That slow gait of women in mourning.

They were both crying,

Comforting each other.

And –

The river of tears, dammed up behind

My somber, emotionless exterior,

Burst forth in a torrent.

I wept.

Wept like I have never wept before,

Or since.

My mother held me,

And still I wept.

I heard others crying around me.

They saw the little boy weeping for his grandfather.

I was no man.

I was just a kid.

A 13-year-old who loved his Granddaddy.

I felt my cousin’s hand on my back.

A loving gesture.

It was okay to cry.

He was crying too.

They were all crying.

Later, at the burial site,

Another cousin put his arm around me –

It was windy and cold;

I was shivering, and he wanted to warm me.

He’s an FBI agent now, and I was never close to him.

But that day we shared our grief,

And the boundaries of our vast age difference were torn asunder.

We were just two grandsons mourning our lost grandfather.

And that was all we needed in common.