For starters: I won this book in a Goodreads giveaway. The copy I read was an Advanced Reader Copy, and I believe I’m posting this review just before publication date.

My recommendation: HIGLY recommended! Although this is the third book in Gary Corby’s series, you do not have to have read the previous two books in order to understand what’s going on. So if you haven’t read The Pericles Commission or The Ionia Sanction, just pick this up now and dive in anyway. You can go back and read the other two later.

(Off-topic: Last year I told my daughter about ARCs, and how in the publishing industry they use them to drum up some advance reviews, but mere mortals like us don’t ever get our hands on them. She was excited when I won this copy, but we’re still mere mortals. Oh, and although she wanted to read it too…no. Parents will want to excercise discretion in whether they allow their children to read it; this is an adult book with some hints at sexual situations and one graphic death. But I’ll still photograph her holding the book.)

The setup, with no spoilers: It’s the Olympic Games of 460BC and one of the top athletes from Athens is accused of murdering one of the top athletes from Sparta. The already-tense political situation has been even further upset by this crime, so if Nico can’t solve the murder by the last day of the Olympic games, his friend Timo will be executed…and most likely Sparta and Athens will go to war.

What I really liked: Nico has a great personality. He’s in over his head, but he’s earnest and smart, and he’s very relatable. His wife is brilliant, and he treats her with respect (plus, they just have a great rapport.) Nico’s younger brother is Socrates (yes, the Socrates) and some of my favorite scenes involve Socrates as a brilliant and somewhat geeky annoyance to his older brother. I also really liked the depiction of Markos’s character, but I’m not going to say why because it’s spoiler-y. Although the mystery itself is serious, there’s plenty of humorous moments, and they all arise naturally from the interplay of the characters.

Go ahead and read Sacred Games without reservation.

I should have replied, “I already love you,” but instead she meant she had a bag for me in her car. My friend’s mother, in the process of cleaning out her house, had given her a bag of stuff and said, “Can you use these?”

My friend looked in the bag and said, “No, but I know someone who can!”

(You can click on any of the photos to see them larger if you want to geek out too.)

Whoa!

Yeah.  This is a stash of knitting tools assumed to be from my friend’s grandmother and great aunt, and any other relatives who passed along knitting needles.  I sat at the kitchen table for about half an hour playing with the stash, and another half hour browsing through the patterns.

(I love how some of the needles were stored in a Thin Mint box.)

Some of the knitting books date back to 1936. (!) And the needles — some are plastic needles, but there’s a set of metal needles so much heavier than my aluminum needles that they pretty much have to be made of steel.

After I finished geeking out over all the needles, I started doing the geek-thing and analyzing, and I realized…knitting is the same, but the knit-tech is a bit different.

First off, whoever’s stash this was, they loved socks. There are sock needles galore in here, so many that in the needle case there’s no more room in the size 2 and 3 slots, so the extras are bunched up at the ends.

But no zeros or smaller. And oddly enough, no needles larger than a size 8. (I used my needle sizer and verified that the sizing is consistent with what I’m using today.)

So what’s the difference? These are the needles of a Real Knitter. And I’ll prove it, because I also have her patterns. And based on her patterns, what is she knitting?

1) Socks, lots of them. Argyle socks for the most part, but also some textured socks. No lace socks, but lots of cables and ribbing.

2) Hats, mittens.

3) Sweaters

Everything had colorwork. I can’t do colorwork because I haven’t learned it yet, but there’s colorwork in just about every pattern (at least those I could see — not all the patterns have pictures so you can tell what the finished object should look like.)

What’s not there? Shawls. Lace. Pretty decorative stuff. Weird things like Ken joked about in a recent comment (“tree sweaters”). Because this person was knitting to keep people warm, as opposed to knitting because it’s kind of cool to knit.

What’s also not there? Large-size needles. Nothing you could use to knit chunky yarn or super-bulky yarn. Maybe in part because it would be hard to do colorwork on super-thick yarn, but maybe also because no one was doing that.

What else isn’t there? Circular needles. I guess because a) no really long shawls and b) sweaters were all being done flat and seamed up, rather than being knit in the round.

A couple of years ago, my mother gave me my great-aunt’s crocheting tools for my birthday, and they’re just amazing too, working with the tools of people who used these tools to provide warmth and cover (or income) for their families.

This isn’t quite the same as putting your nose to the F-holes of an old violin and smelling the scent of Time. But it comes very close to touching Love.

Then I woke up about ten days ago, and in my head I felt a push: don’t give up; do four repetitions of .75 miles. I figure that has to be angel-speak, because that morning I tried it, and it worked!

Yay! Goal attained!

By now I’ve done this four times, which means the next step: figuring out how to run outdoors. And finding a 5K without chickening out.

I called my friend The Runner. Ages ago, before I ever even though of running, she informed me she runs alone. “Nothing personal,” she said. It’s her time to put on her headphones and wall out the world, and hey, as an introvert, I totally get that. So when I called her, I started with, “I know you run alone, and I’m not asking you to run with me.”

My request: if you ever sign up for a race, can I please sign up with you? You don’t have to run with me. I just want a partner to get me there.

She was excited for me. “Sure! I’ll run with you! I’ll show you the Angelborough 5K route! Let’s go right now!”

This is when I discovered just how much of a chicken I am, because I cannot do it. First, and logically, I need to learn to run on actual pavement, rather than on a nice cushy treadmill in an air-conditioned gym with speed controls, no hills and my water bottle on the shelf in front of me.

She told me the route, though, and it starts on Main Street (awesome) and then takes a turn by the library, curves over onto Steep Avenue, then makes a right onto Climbing Hill Road, another right onto Twisted Mountain Avenue, and a final turn onto Breakneck Cliffface Drive. In other words, a second loop of roads in Angelborough that are all uphill.

I pointed out, “I’m  slow.”

Her: “You’re not slower than I am. I’m really slow.”

Me: “I’m glacial.”

{repeat 5 times}

Finally she told me her “really slow” time. Her warmup speed is faster than my top speed, and her regular running speed is two minutes per mile faster than I am.

So I begged off the immediate run, and she warned, “You’re psyching yourself out.”

I ran on the street solo for the first time last Wednesday, and new muscles hurt (hills, dontchaknow) but I did pretty well. It was Saturday morning that I faced the horrible truth: I don’t want to run where people can see me.

In the gym, people expect you in the workout clothes, doing your thing. But on the street, regular people will see me.

No one has been anything but supportive to me in this whole endeavor. People most certainly have not said, “Gah, you’re too fat and ugly to run!” or “I’m surprised you got that ass on a bike without it collapsing under you.” When I passed people while jogging outside last Wednesday, I got smiles and not guffaws. And I don’t really care what any specific person thinks of me (if they do actually look at me, well, they deserve whatever horrible thing befalls them.)

But Saturday morning, faced with streets that would have drivers, other joggers, pedestrians, and my horrible body in running clothes — I chickened out and went back to the gym.

I may be able to do a 5K race someday. But I’m going to have to do it invisible. Bwuk bwuk bwuk.

1. Don’t pay the ferryman.
2. Don’t talk to strangers.
3. Don’t answer me (I guess that’s if you break Rule 2 and talk to strangers.)
4. Don’t let it show.
5. Don’t be cruel, and don’t bring me down.
6. Don’t give up on us. (Similarly, don’t dream it’s over.)
7. Don’t fall in love with a dreamer (especially dreamers who are dreaming it’s over).
8. Don’t let the sun go down on me
9. Don’t look back (and don’t stop thinking about tomorrow.)
10. Don’t stop believing
11. Don’t stand so close to me

It’s hard to keep track of all this advice, but don’t worry, baby.

Why all these rules? Don’t ask me why.

In March, I pitched the idea to my Patient Husband, who asked, “What’s a CSA?” I said, “It’s where you give money up-front to a farm, and then as they harvest things during the summer, you get a portion of it. So you’re eating a lot of seasonal vegetables, but they’re organic and fresh, and they’re locally produced, and you’re supporting a farm.” He said, “Great, but what does CSA stand for?” and I had to go looking it up while my Patient Husband stood behind me saying things like “Communists Stuff for Alimentation.”

Turns out it’s Community Supported Agriculture, and it’s a big thing around here. Angelborough has maybe five thousand residents, and the CSA seems to have five hundred members and a 90% retention rate. I never realized how much everyone loved Angelborough Farms.

So I came home from the orientation filled with trivia about how a farm works and how a CSA works and what kinds of goodies we’ll be bringing home, and how Mrs. Farmer says the stuff straight from the field is better than the stuff from the grocery store (she has to say that because, you know, otherwise she’d shut down and go to Costlies like the rest of us).

The owner of the farm took over about eight years ago, and apparently before she was allowed to buy the farm, she had to present a community vision to our Council Of Elders (or whoever is running this place) and demonstrate how she’d be nurturing the land and sheilding the environment from certain destruction.

At this my Patient Husband laughed.  ”This is so East Coast American.”

I paused. “Why?”

He said, “Because everyone around here wants to farm, but no one wants to dig.” He lived in the midwest for over a decade. “Back home, the farmers didn’t wax poetic about seasonal eating and nurturing community spirit. They fed the animals, milked them, slaughtered them, planted the wheat, grew the wheat, cut down the wheat, and planted more wheat. And if you wanted to grow tomatos and squash and snap peas, you went out back with a trowel and you dug.”

I said, “Well, this makes sense. None of us wants to get dirty.”

He said, “Everyone here thinks farming is important, so we’ve all figured out a way we can support agriculture without actually changing anything about our lifestyles.”

A non-American friend of mine once accompanied me to a farm outside Angeltown. I said, “You’ll like this. You can feed the goats and the sheep, walk through the fields, watch the kids play in the hay maze, and pick your own apples.”

My friend replied, “Let me get this straight: you’re pretending to farm?”

It wasn’t until that moment when I realized — that’s pretty much it. The main method of survival for thousands of years is now an afternoon’s entertainment and a five dollar admission fee.

But this summer, it’s not just entertainment. It’s also food. Once a week we go to the CSA  and will harvest the bounty of the land from the bins in the barn. Potatoes: Take Five Pounds. And yeah, we’re farming without getting our hands dirty.

That was Kiddo#3, nine years old, while I was driving. I had a momentary disconnect, because at his age, I’m certain I had their entire discography memorized (well, the ones my mother played) and I’d heard about them so often that the Day The Music Died was not when Buddy Holly died, but the day the Beatles broke up.

It wasn’t only me. My entire grade school class could hold discussions about Beatles music, discuss the history of the Beatles, talk about their movies, and recite their lyrics. My 5th grade strings concert was all music by the Beatles.

But for all that, I guess Kiddo#3 didn’t get that kind of indoctrination. There aren’t huge album covers to prop in front of the stereo anymore, just the itty-bitty iPod screen. So instead of choking with laughter, I replied, “Yeah, I’ve heard of them.”

His teachers had played Octopus’s Garden for music class. He wanted to hear it again. I said, “Would you like to hear any other songs they wrote?” Yes. Yes, he would.

For the past year, I’ve had to play through an endless Weird Al Yankovic playlist whenever we take a long drive, which happens about once a week. I like Weird Al. He’s a brilliant guy, and what he does guarantees an endless variety of musical genres. But still, you know. I seized opportunity by the throat and created a 62-song playlist of Beatles favorites, and then on the next car trip, I plugged it in, leading off with Octopus’s Garden, and then the songs I thought would appeal more to younger kids. Yellow Submarine. When I’m Sixty-Four. With A Little Help From My Friends.

They sing in the back of the car. “O-da-blee, o-ba-da…” It’s cute. I don’t really want to correct them.

And Kiddo#3 hates Twist And Shout. “Why are they all singing like they have sore throats?”

We drove to New York. We listened the whole way.

While looking at my star ratings, I discovered I haven’t given many of their songs five stars. There are a lot of 4s and 3s, but I can only figure that when I did the ratings, I wasn’t comparing their songs to everyone’s songs, but rather to their own songs. PS I Love You would be the pinnacle song if any other group produced it, but the Beatles did it and I gave it four stars because it’s not quite Eleanor Rigby.

And my Patient Husband and I discovered once again that when we like the same groups, we don’t like the same songs. He five-starred “Get Back,” whereas I think of that as three, maximum. He’s not sure why I’d give five stars to We Can Work It Out.

Regardless, now I have small boys wandering the house half-reciting Beatles songs and telling each other “that’s a three-star,” as if they have iPods of their own (they don’t.) And it’s very cute.

—

I have just effectively had a quarter of the year trashed by big companies and their technology. Early in January I got my MacBook Pro upgraded 2 system jumps, and there are still things I can’t do. The helpful Apple Centre geniuses mentioned that this machine would be declared “vintage”, by which they meant “buy something new or go away”.

My ISP was bought by a large telecom and shut down. We naturally had to move to something else, so on 15 January we signed with a new, large telecom for phone and internet. They would supply a cable modem, wonderfully fast and fully featured. We didn’t have a cable, or even a pipe, so we had to go through all that. A technician finally put a cable into our study, leaping from the skirting board to the desk in an elegant arc that would be easy to trip over. He turned the modem on and went on his way with a cheerful, “Just start up your browser. It’s all automatic.”

Which was partly true. The modem took control of our portal and tried to access the registration page. Then came back an error message that said we couldn’t register at that time, and to try again tomorrow. In cheerful innocence I believed it at first.

For the next 45 days our browser would do nothing else but go around this loop. We called for help and went through another loop. The person on the end of the phone (in the Philippines or India) could not solve the problem. They would pass it on to an activation team, and someone would call me back the next day. They never did. No one could or would explain what the problem was. At the end a technician admitted that there was a problem with the new software that was trapping thousands of new users in this loop.

Unwired was to shut down on 28 February, so we were getting a little desperate. On 22 February, out of the blue, our local federal member of parliament rang up. She was a student of Jan’s and wanted her help in a local project. There’s a federal election coming up and this makes political parties a bit ready to connect with local voters.

We mentioned our problem with the telecom. The MP said to drop photocopies of our dealings down to the electorate office on Monday morning. Which we did. That afternoon the phone began to ring with apologetic telecom technicians, activation team leaders, official apologisers. We had 6 returned phone calls over the next two days. On 28 February, at midday, a technician turned up (not at the appointed time, of course) with a new user name and password scrawled in texta on a piece of cardboard. He did something to the modem and we were away and registered in an instant.

The next couple of weeks were spent updating our online presence. This creeps up on you over the years. I had a two-page list of places where my email address was used in a meaningful way. It took a long time to update because of all those passwords. The most security conscious financial institution kept me going for an afternoon. Log in and add a new password. Wait for an email telling me that I’ve added a new email and need to confirm it. Change the new email to be the primary one. Wait for an email . . . Delete the old email. Wait for an email . . .

Last week we sat down to calmly survey the damage and look for the way ahead. Exactly 3 months ago we had a home network linking seamlessly 4 computers and 2 printers. Relatives and friends could come with their laptops, phones, pads and I could just add their MAC number to our access list and all would work slowly but reliably. Now nothing worked with anything else. So I pulled it all apart and put the cables in a drawer and started again. One cable modem wirelessly to one Mac, with a colour printer plugged directly to it. The rest of the stuff didn’t fit into the picture at all. So we thought we would get some new technology. Jan bought an iPad mini. I got out an iPod which I had acquired some time ago and never been able to use because of software incompatibilities. Now it worked. We set up Jan with her own personal email address. Up till now she had to use the school one or mine. Of course the incoming/outgoing mail settings were different from the leaflet that came with our new modem, but I was able to read the account the technician had set up on my machine.

Then, in the snail mail, we got a threatening letter from our new telecom wanting to cut off our service because we hadn’t paid any of our accounts. What accounts? It seems that although the technical department could not give us internet access for 45 days, the billing department efficiently sent our January and February bills to an email address we never had and are never likely to have. I got that sorted out.

On Friday afternoon I got a call from a bubbly voice henchperson of our telecom. She said they had noticed that I just changed my email address and wondered if everything was okay and working properly. I gave her a sardonic account of the past three months. She didn’t seem the slightest bit disturbed. Either she was used to hearing the story, or she hadn’t yet done the official grovelling apologiser course. Inevitably we got to the date of birth question. She said I sounded younger than that and that my attitude to technology reminded her of her dad. She said it might be a generational difference. She said we was twenty . . . well, you know what I’m going to say. The driving force underlying all art and commerce of Western Civilisation — the energetic 23-year-old woman. I ended up agreeing that the new service was all fabulous. Later I thought about not being like someone’s dad and 1967 — a great year for music.

Saturday. I got some Beach Boys music for the iPod and went into the garden. The darn device locked itself on CoverFlow and wouldn’t shift. So I couldn’t change the volume. So I couldn’t hear above the noise of the lawnmower. Jan called for help with her new iPad, which had gone to a blank blue screen and wouldn’t shift. I said, “I’ve had it with technology. I’m going to read a book.” So I went and sat of the teak seat under the shade of the melaleuca tree in the back garden. Later Jan bought me a cup of tea, and very unkindly pointed out that there was a contradiction between escaping technology and reading a Kindle DX. I said that’s not technology. That works.

My new definition of technology. Offers you heaven: leaves you in hell. You can’t get it to a stable point where you can just use it for work and play. Someone has to keep moving the bits. It’s like a carpenter having to spend all their time fitting new handles to a hammer head and never getting to use it to hit a nail. I said to myself, I wish I still had a typewriter.

Sunday the grandkids came and I was thoroughly escaping technology. In the garage I found some old boxes we hadn’t got around to in our pre-retirement cleanup. I pulled out a vinyl LP of Also Sprach Zarathustra, which was #1 on the hit parade around the time when the movie 2001 A Space Odyssey was showing. I asked #1 grandson what it was. He replied with all the confidence of his 4 years that it was a DVD. I hear that cheap turntables are available again.

Also in the box were the last few audio cassettes we still have. One was a large wraparound plastic pack containing 6 cassettes of the Beach Boys; the Capitol Years. I started listening to it in the afternoon. It reminded me a earlier times when I thought things were possible. There used to be a booklet with it. I wondered if I could find a copy still around. After all, we have this wonderful internet stuff which contains all human knowledge. So I googled. I couldn’t find the booklet. I couldn’t find any mention at all the cassette version. A Wikipedia page mentioned a 6 LP and a 4 CD set. Frequently I find that information on the internet is inaccurate, misleading or simply missing. Of course it only contains what people put there.

Over supper Jan and I considered what to do. Then we remembered that we are old and rich, so we said, right, we’ll just buy new stuff. After she went to bed I sat holding the Beach Boys cassettes and thinking about the inadequacies of the internet and its many betrayals. It only contains what people put there. But wait, I’m a people! So I signed up to be a Wikipedia contributor and made my first addition.

This morning I sat pondering what to do with the old technology. Then I realised that I do have a typewriter. There is a functioning Macintosh and a functioning laser printer, which work together. All my problems had been with connectivity. I could still write and print out things for editing. And I can cable the two Macs together and pass stuff via the drop boxes.

One day, perhaps, I can get back to a point where I can use all this technology to do actual work.

Ken Rolph

Blacktown Australia

1) I’m going to call PerNoWriLent an unreserved success. Although there were several times I wanted to take a day off (which would have turned into several days, which would have turned into a stall) I managed to nail my word count on just about every day of Lent. (Well, after I resolved to do Personal Novel Writing Lent, that is.)  The upshot is I think I managed to do 35,000 words, and I’m now in the penultimate scene. The final scene will be easy to write, but the one I’m in kind of has me stuck. I may just slap something together and rewrite it when I get back to it during the editing phase.

Overall, I really think this book is good. I’m still in that ♥♡♥♡My Book♡♥♡♥ phase, not yet in the phase where I want to drop-kick the manuscript into the ocean but refrain for fear its foulness will slaughter the fish.

2) I finished knitting a pair of socks. The color scheme and pattern are based on Hobbits. Do these remind you of hobbits?

3) After some back-and-forth, Lee Jeans finally settled on jeans they thought would answer all my complaints in my Dear John letter. I honestly believe the cutomer service rep when she says they don’t want to lose a customer who’s been brand-loyal for 20 years. I believe them. I even told them I would trust their judgment and that if they had 98% cotton / double-seamed jeans, I’d be delighted to try them again. They picked them out for me, and mailed them, and guess what? Single seams up the inseam.

But yes, it’s all-cotton, so maybe that makes a difference. I don’t know. I’m honestly sick inside about that. They just don’t make the product anymore, and they want me (us) to like them, but the fact is, the product that worked when they made it correctly just doesn’t work when they make it the way they do now. One set of stitches up the inside isn’t the same as two, and what gets me is that they don’t even know it, and yet they still make the men’s jeans the same way they always did.

I wasn’t sure if I should just send them back. People here are telling me no, just give them a try. Maybe the all-cotton will make a difference in whether they tear themselves apart during regular walking-around.

4) I’m still working toward being able to jog a 5K by June. I don’t think I’m going to succeed, but I’m going to fail trying rather than just failing. I’m tired of failing because I gave up at things, you know? So now I’m just going to fail all the way.

Currently, I can jog 1 mile at speeds that would make your great-great-grandmother want to push me out of the way, after which I walk for a little while and then do another mile. Apparently the Couch To 5K program thinks we’re supposed to be able to do a 10 minute mile, though (hahahahahaha!!!!!!  I mean, um, hahahahaha!!!) so I’ve started introducing brief sprintlets at 6mph into my standard one-mile jog at “glacial.” I’m up to 2.75 miles for the total workout, with over half a mile of that at walking speed.

In other words, don’t sign me up for any races yet.

As I was finishing the last, my daughter and two friends came into the living room. What are you watching? I’d already gone on the balcony and said, “Kiddo2! White smoke! White smoke!” and she’d cheered, then explained to her friends. So now they kind of hovered, and I explained we were waiting for the announcement of who the next Pope was.

Of the two girls my daughter had over, one is Jewish and the other is atheist. The atheist declared, “I don’t care who the next Pope will be,” and I said, “That’s perfectly fine. I didn’t ask anyone to care. I’m watching it because I want to.”

They started asking me questions, though. Yes, that balcony is called the Loggia. Yes, it’s raining in St. Peter’s Square. Yes, there are like a quarter of a million people standing there in the rain. No, it’s not nuts — people have done worse to get One Direction tickets. They all decided they wanted to be called back inside to watch when the “master of ceremonies” cardinal came out on the balcony to introduce the new Pope.

At that point my computer was running out of charge, plus the feed crashed, so I plugged it back in and had two computers side by side running separate news feeds, that way if one crashed we’d at least have the other (Catholic Geek in the Information Age, TYVM) and I settled on listening to CBS’s reporting but looking at Reuters’ pictures. The time came. I called them back.

There was a round of “Who?” when the cardinal announced the name, and then my daughter started shouting, “POPE! POPE! POPE! POPE!”

And then, so help me, her two friends started jumping and screaming, shrieking, “He’s here! He’s here!” and cheering. Kiddo3 was there too, staring with wide eyes. “This is history!” shouted the atheist friend. “This is so cool!” And for a minute, we had something I have to call spontaneous ecumenism. There was no preaching, no arguments with attempted conversion, no pretended “tolerance” while everyone glared daggers. There was just genuine rejoicing from three girls with different viewpoints, unrestrained joy that Catholics once again had a pope. And they listened to his speech, and they were pleased.

I was shocked. This was awesome. I looked up more and more about Pope Francis, and I related it to them, and they kept sighing. He rides the bus. He kissed the feet of AIDS patients in hospice. He lives in his own apartment and cooks his own meals.

Later that night, I said to my Patient Husband, “I feel like I should invite Pope Francis over for dinner. Except he might actually show up.”

“Oh, don’t do that,” he replied.

But I can see it happening — the Pope “just happens” to be in the greater Angelborough area, and we get a phone call: would it be okay to stop by for dinner? So I throw something together and invite Father G from the parish (“You really, really need to be here!”) and we clear out one of the Kiddos’ bedrooms for the Pope, and in the morning he wanders downstairs and I’m like, “Well, you can have a bagel or some cereal, your Holiness… Eggo Waffle, maybe?” and then the Swiss Guard comes in and glares at me, saying, “We’ll just be going now.”

He just seems like that kind of guy, you know? The kind of guy who collects his own luggage from a boarding house and pays his own bill rather than sending a Vatican flunky to do it for him. He might just show up for coffee, and if he did, I’d have to tell him how for a just a few minutes, he had three girls screaming about him as if One Direction were standing on the Loggia.

I have no idea who sent me a copy of “Candle In The Darkness” by Lynn Austin. I like Lynn Austin’s work. I’m following her on Goodreads. But her novel arrived in my house via third-party seller, and I have no clue who sent it.

There was no packing slip. No one has admitted to sending the book. There is no tracking number and no order number. I don’t think it was on my Amazon wishlist. But that means whoever ordered it must have known my address *and* must have had access to my Goodreads profile, and very few people have both.

So. Well. If you sent me a book as a Random Act Of Kindness, I think you. I will enjoy the book, and I’ll enjoy the mystery of how it arrived.