Blog – Page 58 – Erin Penn's Second Base

Other Cool Blogs: Onomastics Outside the Box

January 23, 2025January 4, 2026 Erin Penn

What is in a name?

A lot actually.

The history of language shaped over time. People who have worn the name with honor or infamy. Family members. Religious ties. Locations. Countries. Word forms with constants and vowels. A thousand different things to hold meaning.

Carrie-Ann has a website dedicated to names:

Onomastics Outside the Box: Names beyond the Top 100, from many nations and era

I ran into her during A-to-Z April blogging, and her themes include “Apple Names”, “The Many Forms of Sarah”, and longer series like “Theophoric names” which is up to part 14.

Her most viewed post of all time from October 12, 2020 is “Doll and Puppet Names.”

If you are a writer and stuck on a name, you might want to hit up this blog for ideas.

If you prefer to copy and paste instead of direct links – here is the link to her blog: https://onomasticsoutsidethebox.wordpress.com/

Book Review (SERIES): Mrs. Pollifax

January 21, 2025January 3, 2025 Erin Penn

Movie Poster from the 1971 Movie: Mrs. Pollifax Spy

I was introduced to the Mrs. Pollifax series in college, read through all of them, and then went on to read through the author’s, Dorothy Gilman, entire catalog. She passed in 2012 and I had to move on to other authors.

Fast forward to 2024. I had been hired to work in a library. Who knew that working for a library would mean I would have virtually no time to read? I was constantly shelving books, working on programming, or helping patrons. Faced with the challenge to keep up on my reviews, I thought “why not try audiobooks?” Normally, my version of neuro-spicy hates background noise, but I had a long half-hour commute on a mostly empty highway each direction (more like 45 minutes in the morning). I like my music, but I was missing fictional stories.

I had been shelving audiobooks and noticed Mrs. Pollifax and thought “Perfect!” A comfort read that I could turn off easily arriving at work or arriving at home. These are the three audiobooks I read while working for a library system.

Mrs. Pollifax is a widow of a certain age that when she had nothing left to live for, contacted the CIA to become a spy. This a series of unexpected shenanigans, she received an assignment and survived the results. Her name went into Carstairs rolodex and whenever a random older lady could get through a situation that a normal spy would be pinged immediately, he would brush the dust off and call her again. Fourteen books resulted.

I read books ten, eleven, and fourteen of the series this time around. The entire list from BookSeriesInOrder.com:

The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax (1966)
The Amazing Mrs. Pollifax (1970)
The Elusive Mrs. Pollifax (1971) – Movie come out this year
A Palm for Mrs. Pollifax (1973)
Mrs. Pollifax on Safari (1976)
Mrs. Pollifax on the China Station (1983)
Mrs. Pollifax and the Hong Kong Buddha (1985)
Mrs. Polllifax and the Golden Triangle (1988)
Mrs. Pollifax and the Whirling Dervish (1990)
Mrs. Pollifax and the Second Thief (1993)
Mrs. Pollifax Pursued (1995)
Mrs. Pollifax and the Lion Killer (1996)
Mrs. Pollifax, Innocent Tourist (1997) – a direct-to-DVD movie starting Angela Lansbury come out in 1999
Mrs. Pollifax Unveiled (2000)

Amazon Cover

BOOK BLURB ON AMAZON for MRS. POLLIFAX AND THE SECOND THIEF

The assignment is a snap: Mrs. Pollifax just has to shoot some pictures at a quiet funeral outside Washington and take them to Sicily, where her old friend Farrell — a former CIA agent turned art dealer — anxiously awaits them.

But like all Mrs. P’s assignments, so ostensibly suitable for the CIA’s favorite garden club member, this one quickly turns lethal. Her welcoming committee in Palermo includes a most unlikely CIA agent and several unseen enemies. Unfriendly eyes also observe Mrs. P’s rendezvous with Farrell in a secluded mountain village and weapons are soon displayed. With mysterious forces hot after them, she and Farrell scurry for safety to a fortified country villa, where the bizarre chatelaine, once a star on Madison Avenue, is almost as unnerving as the dangers she’s protecting them from.

So, though the sun shines brightly, the food is delicious, and romance is in the air, Mrs. Pollifax is too busy handing out karate chops and playing catch-me-if-you-can with an assassin to enjoy the amenities . . . .

MY REVIEW for MRS. POLLIFAX AND THE SECOND THIEF

Read through a local library audiobook. The audio was crafted by Brilliance Audio with a multi-member cast.

I forgotten just how good this particular Mrs. Pollifax is.

I love John Farrell and his admiration of his “Duchess”. The love story. The eccentric aunt of Kate. The village. The return of Aristotle. The political intrigue. The Second Thief is picture perfect Mrs. Pollifax.

Amazon Cover

BOOK BLURB ON AMAZON for MRS. POLLIFAX PURSUED

The last thing Mrs. Pollifax expects to find in her junk closet is a young woman hiding. Kadi Hopkirk insists that she’s being followed by two men in a dirty white van. Under the cover of darkness, Mrs. P. tries to drive Kadi back home to Manhattan, only to have a dark green sedan give them a run for their money and, Mrs. P. begins to suspect, their lives.

Finally Kadi shares the startling truth: her friend, Sammy, is the son of the assassinated president of an African country and, unbeknownst to the young man’s bodyguard, he passed her something under the table during a recent meeting. Ever resourceful, Mrs. P. puts in a call for help to her CIA colleague, Carstairs, who installs them in a safe house—at a carnival! Before Mrs. P. knows it, a dash to safety expands into an assignment that leads to hair-trigger violence in exotic places. . . .

MY REVIEW for MRS. POLLIFAX PURSUED

I’m exploring whether I can listen to audiobooks while driving and I thought I would dive into a comfort favorite. I haven’t read Mrs. Pollifax since the Nineties – this book was originally published in 1995 and is part of a series started in 1966 and ran until 2000. I listened to the Brilliance Audio version, recorded in 1995. Words and situations like “VCR” and “gypsy” and the “quaintness of Africa” all date the book, but the listen was still very enjoyable. I managed to listen to the book going to and from work for three of the four discs but couldn’t wait for morning to finish and listened to the last disc while sewing at home.

Mrs. Pollifax finds a young woman hiding in her closet. This escalates and intertwines with a kidnapping Carstairs is helping the FBI with. Humor and adventure, mystery and murder, carny and spy action ensues. I love Mrs. P as an older protagonist.

While the book has aged, and may not be accessible to younger readers, I still enjoyed the revisit.

Checked out through the local library.

Amazon Cover

BOOK BLURB ON AMAZON for MRS. POLLIFAX UNVEILED

After facing down hijackers on a flight to the Middle East and saving the lives of the passengers on board, a young American woman steps off the plane in Damascus in a blaze of celebrity and disappears. The CIA believes Amanda Pym was kidnapped, possibly murdered.

Masquerading as Amanda Pym’s worried aunt, Mrs. Pollifax begins her determined search, slipping through Damascus’s crooked streets and crowded souks . . . and trekking deep into the desert. Yet she is shadowed by deadly enemies, whose sinister agenda threatens not only Mrs. P. but the fragile stability of the entire Middle East. Only a miracle–or a brilliant counterplot– can forestall a disaster that will send shock waves around the world.

MY REVIEW for MRS. POLLIFAX UNVEILED

Re-read through audio performance by Brilliance Audio.
Unlike the two previous Mrs. Pollifax I listened to by Brilliance Audio which had a cast, this version only had a single performer. It still was a lovely read listening to a woman’s voice.

The last of the Pollifax series (due to Ms. Gilman’s (the author) failing health) our intrepid spy lands in Syria to find a lost American woman, who may not want to be found. With Farrell at her side, they arrive as innocent tourists looking for their “family” member. The police state tears Farrell away from Emily, with her being injured in the process, and now Mrs. Pollifax, or Duchess as the painfully missing Farrell calls her, must meet their objective alone in a country where she doesn’t speak the language and the people are ruled by fear.

But being Mrs. Pollifax, she endures and makes friends. Still finding one person in a country alone is like finding a needle in a haystack.

The story, now twenty-four years old (published in 2000) is becoming dated. Amanda Prym is always referred to as a “girl” though she is a full-grown adult – college age, so forgivable by our team of world-wearied adults. Other technology issues have gotten better, the mix of politics in the mid-east have gotten worse, stuff like that. Still a wonderful yarn.

I hope Mrs. Pollifax and her Cyrus live on forever happy having their adventures.

Flash: The Back Room

January 19, 2025February 13, 2025 Erin Penn

Photo by Tomoe Steineck on Unsplash

The inn’s Back Room cracked windows released the some of the excessive heat created from the afternoon sun beating down on the building just mere hours ago, but soon the keeper or one of his sons would need to come into the well-appointed space and close them to keep the temperature necessary for sleeping against growing the late autumn chill as the sun dipped below the mountain range. In the meantime, a young nobleman paced while an older man sprawled on the settee, a book dangling between fingers to mark his place while he waited for Nigel to wind down.

“Have you made the decision to run?” Matthews asked. “I can have a ship ready for you before you make it back to Seaport.”

“I can’t do that, you know I can’t do that.” Nigel turned on the knotted wool rug to walk the other direction. “If I was going to do that, I wouldn’t have come this far. I would have run while in Kylar.”

“Then tomorrow morning we go through the pass.”

“Gods.” Nigel threw his head back in frustration, before executing another turn. “It’s so stupid. I thought I was safe.”

The old solider chuckled. “I know I taught you better than that.”

“There is no safety in war.”

“And?”

“The crown is either at war or preventing it, and therefore they are always in a state of war.” Nigel crossed the carpet again. “But Jackel has two children already. It should be one of them.”

“They are too young, considering.”

“Exactly.” Nigel ran both hands through his top-cut before throwing them out at his old mentor. “Thirty-two! ‘Considering.’ How is this even a consideration?”

“Treaties are made.” Matthews gave up waiting for the twenty-four-year-old to calm. Picking up his bookmark, he slid it between the pages and tucked the leather-bound treatise on horse breeding back into its velvet bag for storage with the other two books he had brought on this trip. “The merchant trade alone is worth a princely reward.”

The glare Nigel shot glanced off Matthews careless manner without effect. He hardened its steel and stared. Knocking on the door to the Back Room, startled him and drew both their eyes to the wooden barrier as it opened and the noise of the main room flooded in.

“My pardon, your Grace, your …,” the innkeeper coughed, cutting off his speech for a moment, as Nigel raised his eyebrows, “Sir.” He entered, a veiled lady traveler on his arm. “This good lady arrived seeking succor, and, as you know, with the harvest holiday, things are … hectic in the front rooms. May she share the Back with you?”

Rarely did anything trump Matthews station as Duke of Seaport. But a quick glance at the woman’s silk veil indicated crafting, if not necessarily nobility, the lacework being minimal around the eyes, then at least high merchant class, the delicate thinness of the fabric while retaining opaqueness was beyond the reach of all but the deepest purses, and as Nigel’s present dilemma revealed, accommodations needed to be made for those who ruled the trade routes. The duke stood, indicating with a hand sweep to the keep to install the woman the best seat of the room. She sunk, carefully arranging layers of green and teal skirts around her, heavy red clay clinging around the hems. She untucked the edges of her veil from the laces holding her bodice and blouse together so the bottom foot of fabric pooled in her lap.

Once settled, she turned her head toward the keep and nodded. “My Lords, it is my pleasure to make Mistress Zeriff’shazeriff known to you.” He stumbled over the foreign name. “Mistress, these are his Grace, my own Duke of Seaport,” Matthews ruled the land between the pass and the port and bowed acknowledgement of the introduction, the woman tilted her head slightly in return “and … Nigel, Knight of the Order of the Icey Pansy, Lord of … Ground-swell?” The keep looked toward the two noblemen for confirmation.

Matthews nodded, impressed the man had pulled one of Nigel’s lesser noble titles from the heated air, while his old squire grabbed his hat where he had thrown it hours ago and bowed excessively and said, “A pleasure.” The woman veil had puffed out when Nigel was introduced, but her head moved not at all after his obeisance.

“Your meal should be here shortly,” the plainfolk bowed to the men before turning to the woman and saying in a nervous rush, “and Mistress, I will have that foot bath ready for you straight away.”

The two soldiers shared a glance, Nigel giving a quick finger signal they used to exchange when he was squired to the duke to indicate troublesome officers with delusions of grandeur. The innkeeper hadn’t batted an eye having Matthews stay in the Climb’s Start for a week while the letter he sent ahead found Nigel and brought the young man back home from his most recent escapade, nor had he cared when Nigel finally arrived other than delivering the wanderer directly to his old mentor, yet this woman had already managed to get into the Back without a title and had the man rushing to meet her demands over the nobles. What kind of harridan was now ensconced with them for the evening and how soon could they extract themselves from the situation?

(words 899, first published 2/5/2025)

The Back Room series

Geeking Science: Artemis Accords

January 16, 2025May 22, 2024 Erin Penn

Government provided logo for the Artemis Accords

The Artemis Project (returning mankind to the Moon by 2026 to develop a testing station for technology to use when visiting other planets, a research station for learning about our Moon, and port for jumping off to explore Mars) has created the opportunity for the Artemis Accords. Over forty countries have signed the Accords, that is a fifth of Earth’s nations. (Note that the biggest “competitors” to the USA in space, China and Russia, have not joined.)

This is something to Geek About!!!

“The accords establish a practical set of principles to guide space exploration cooperation among nations. … The Artemis Accords reinforce and implement key obligations in the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. They also strengthen the commitment by the United States and signatory nations to the Registration Convention, the Rescue and Return Agreement, as well as best practices NASA and its partners support, including the public release of scientific data. More countries are expected to sign the accords in the months and years ahead, which are advancing safe, peaceful, and prosperous activities in space.” (Bardan)

That said, the Artemis Accords are very USA centered in the interpretation of how space law should work, including the commercial activities such as mining. Both Russia and China object to that base. (Wikipedia)

The key principals in the Accords is as follows (from Lea):

Peaceful Exploration of space
Transparency / public release of scientific information
Emergency Assistance
Registration of Space Objects
Preserving Heritage – Preserving robot or human landing sites of historical significance
Space Resources – Extracting and using resources from celestial bodies is needed to explore space and permitted.
Orbital Debris.

The full Artemis Accords wording can be found here: https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Artemis-Accords-signed-13Oct2020.pdf

The Orbital Debris (Section 12) is an interesting addition and includes both reduction of the present debris and requiring all new space structures come with a de-orbit plan for safe disposal. I also adore the Transparency section.

Fingers-crossed, the spirit of international cooperation will continue.

Biography

Bardan, Roxana. “NASA Welcomes Greece as Newest Artemis Accords Signatory.” NASA. 2024 Feb 9. (https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-welcomes-greece-as-newest-artemis-accords-signatory/ – last viewed 5/22/2024)

Lea, Robert. “Artemis Accords: What are they & which countries are involved?” space.com. 2024 May 16. (https://www.space.com/artemis-accords-explained – last viewed 5/22/2024)

NASA. “The Artemis Accords.” (undated) (https://www.nasa.gov/artemis-accords/ – last viewed 5/22/2024)

US Mission Unvie. “An Interview with NASA’s Kevin Conole.” US Mission to International Organizations in Vienna. 2022 February 25. (https://vienna.usmission.gov/nasas-kevin-conole-on-the-artemis-accords/ – last viewed 5/22/2024)

Wikipedia. “Artemis Accords.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_Accords – last viewed 5/22/2024

Editing Rant: Medium Matters

January 14, 2025April 18, 2024 Erin Penn

“The movie isn’t as good as the book.” “I don’t know why people think this statue is so great, I mean look at this photo of it.” “This song is awful (when played on my phone).”

“Medium” in art covers both the skill set needed to create the art (painting, photography, scrapbooking, violin, orchestra), and the materials used to create the artwork (marble, wood, instrument).

And when judging art, Medium Matters. One of the most amazing books I read was an urban fantasy by Darin Kennedy, The Mussorgsky Riddle. The mystery centered around a piano suite in ten movements (Pictures at an Exhibition) written by Mussorgsky, inspired by paintings at a show in the Imperial Academy of Arts from Viktor Hartmann. Plot, piano, and paintings mixed together (and if you hear it on audiobook, another artist is added into the mix).

Not any one medium is better than the other, but being aware of the limitations can help one appreciate the transference of art from one medium to another. How is a painting different from a sculpture? What happens when pop music is played by an orchestra (as sometimes happens with songs by Queen)? Should we judge a book against a movie or are they two different things with two different audiences?

I recently heard people comparing a single book to the three-season television show which spun off it, saying the secondary characters, which developed as the television show ran beyond the original story, lacked depth in the book. No kidding. Yet both the book and the television show felt the same as they explored victory and growth, adulthood and loss.

Other conversations I had recently compared black and white movies to technicolor television. Comics to graphic novels – and I’m not talking about long comics, I’m talking about well-loved science fiction and fantasy novels translated to book format, for example “More than Human” by Theodore Sturgeon (published 1953) released as a hardback graphic novel in 1978. Each of these have their own particular imprint on my soul.

Pulling this back to writing and reading. Medium Matters. Figure out what best fits your story. Is it a flash (under 1,000 words) or novel (75,000 words)? Should it be shrunk to a short story (5,000 words) or will a novella length be better (20,000 words)? Will one hundred words, precisely, for a drabble be the right size? Should it be a play, or a serial? Could it work in audiobook, and, if so, should one person or a cast read it?

Choose the presentation of the story. Write it to the end, then carve it like a statue until only the parts that should be there remain.