...I netted this kitten outside a convenience store and brought her home with me. I fell in love with a kitten that lived in a convenience store parking lot.  After 2 weeks of trying to get her, I used a landing net to grab the little darling.  A woman there went ballistic over this and accused me of hurting the cat.  Her massive boyfriend stood by and I was really worried.  I explained what I was doing and why, but this skirt kept running her mouth.  When I left with the cat I saw her writing down my license plate number. The cat is named Mischa.  She is on my knee while I write this. To our minds cats are insane.  Their logic is not ours, their manner of affection bizarre.  When we were all boarded up during the hurricane, Jango cried out all night Why?  Why I no go out?  Why?  Why?  Jinjur was very troubled by the storm,  Mingo fell asleep, and Mischa spent the night stalking the others.  What fun she had! ...

   In 1827 William Corder murdered Maria Marten in what became known as The Red Barn. He lured her there by telling her they would elope together, then shot her in an eye.  His handkerchief was wrapped around her neck when the body was discovered some 11 months later, perhaps she didn't die fast enough and he strangled her, or he may have used the cloth as a cinch so he could drag her to the makeshift grave.  By today's standards the forensic pathology work was pathetic, but it was in it's very infancy at this time.  This Wiki article can tell far more about this than I can or will- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Barn_Murder   This murder was a sensation at the time, and numerous plays were performed over the years.  My picture is taken from the high melodrama fashion in which it was presented.  The following article has a link to a marionette performance that will give one a very clear idea of journalistic standards at the time....

 Fiction in any form has always intended to be realistic. Old-fashioned novels which now seem stilted and artificial to the point of burlesque did not appear that way to the people who first read them. Writers like Fielding and Smollett could seem realistic in the modern sense because they dealt largely with uninhibited characters, many of whom were about two jumps ahead of the police, but Jane Austen’s chronicles of highly inhibited people against a background of rural gentility seem real enough psychologically. There is plenty of that kind of social and emotional hypocrisy around today. Add to it a liberal dose of intellectual pretentiousness and you get the tone of the book page in your daily paper and the earnest and fatuous atmosphere breathed by discussion groups in little clubs. These are the people who make best sellers, which are promotional jobs based on a sort of indirect snob appeal, carefully escorted by the trained seals of the critical fraternity, and lovingly tended...