I received quite a few responses to my last posting, “Traffic Court.” That’s typical. There are about 850 people on this distribution list and they (you) respond in droves whenever I post. (I post on the Web too, at http://tolovemercy.com/frank_joseph_blog/, but I don’t think anyone reads it there. I’ve spoiled you all.)

The responses are gratifying indeed. Despite the salutation, I don’t actually have 850 personal friends (though nearly everyone on the list is at least an acquaintance, if only via email).

My postings have diminished sharply in the last year, as long-time “Friends of Frank” are aware. When I started this list about three years ago, in the rush of early discovery I posted once a week or oftener. Then the frequency started to decline, eventually dwindling down to less than once a month. As they say in email-land,  .

The principal reason the postings have declined is simple and crass: This blog or e-blast or whatever you call it was for the purpose of marketing my first novel, TO LOVE MERCY. And it worked. Many of you guys bought, read, and (if you’re telling the truth) loved TO LOVE MERCY. Not only that, you advocated for it, posted lavish praise for it on Amazon.com and BN.com, became my ambassadors. Thank you, thank you and thank you again: I am forever in your debt.

But TO LOVE MERCY, like most novels, had its day — and that day has passed. Right now, with TO WALK HUMBLY still not finished and TO DO JUSTICE a mere distant gleam in my eye, I ain’t got nuttin’ to market. So, few posts. How’d that go again?  .

There’s a lesser reason why I’m not posting very often, and that is that it takes way more time than you’d think. I get 20-30 responses, say, and of course I must reply. Some of those replies are no more than a  :)  or a  , but even that takes time.

And when, in response to something I’ve written, someone pours out his or her heart, or takes me to task, or riffs on my riffs, why, I have to respect that, take focus and respond appropriately. That takes LOTS of time. When I was posting a lot about race a year or two ago, for example, I sometimes was responding for 2-3 days following a particularly provocative posting.

This last posting, I retold a personal experience (in traffic court) that startled me. FYI, I wrote almost the entire draft of that post in the 20-30 minutes it takes the Metro to get from Judiciary Square to Friendship Heights. I finished it sitting in the sun at a table outside Starbucks: Total elapsed time, no more than 45 minutes. It was fresh in my mind and it poured right out. As I wrote, I realized it was great material for a short story almost as written, and I plan to turn it into one.

You guys responded vigorously, as usual, and — as is often the case — many responses were surprising. You didn’t always read my story the way I thought I wrote it. Some of you focused on aspects and drew conclusions that didn’t jibe with what I thought you “ought” to think and feel. But hey, that’s the fascinating thing about writing. It’s always that way, and writers like me ought to get a life, pull up our socks, sit back and enjoy it.

So now, presenting … the response I enjoyed most. This is from Lynn Rotman Ansfield, one of the many on this list with whom I went to high school. (Yes, I promoted TO LOVE MERCY to my fellow Rich High alums, and boy was THAT a good idea. I wrote an email to the high-school alumni list that I still think is one of my most brilliant direct-marketing pieces ever. It had my 18-year-old, crew-cut graduation photo on top, and the headline was: “Here’s How I Came Out.”)

Lynn now lives in Madison WI where she has a happy life indeed, married to a doctor, three great kids, a long and successful career as an aide in the Wisconsin Legislature. All three of her kids are writers in one way or another, and she says that writing was her secret ambition. I’m not surprised. Read what Lynn wrote:

Dear Frank –

I, too, received a speeding ticket this year after 50(!) ticketless years of driving. I deserved the ticket and sent in the fine without complaint. But I have to tell you about the ticket I didn’t get.

I was driving my 16-year-old grandson to a Wendy’s Drive-in just minutes from his high school, after driving him all the way home. He became “starved” for his usual after-school three cheeseburgers the minute we entered his home. As I retraced our route back past the high school, we discussed a movie he wanted to see, and I missed a stop sign that I had seen nearly every day for years.

I stopped just past the intersection and called the local police on their non-emergency number. “I just ran a stop sign with my grandson in the car,” I told the dispatcher.

I could hear in her voice her recognition of the lesson I was trying to teach my grandson. She told me that she couldn’t issue a ticket, since my offense wasn’t seen by an officer. “But,” she told me, “take this as a personal warning and concentrate on your driving.”

I turned to my grandson for his approval of my honesty. “Grandma,” he said, “that was the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen you do.”

On second thought, he probably is right.

– Lynn

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. No P.S. this time. Ain’t nuttin’ to flog. Direct-marketing secret: Did you know the P.S. is widely believed, among direct-marketing practitioners like myself, to be the second most powerful place in any sales letter? That’s believed to be so because prospects read the opening, then drop immediately to the P.S. — looking, presumably, for the juiciest stuff.

P.P.S. Oh what the hell. All right, there IS a P.S., and here it is: I have a carton and a half of copies of TO LOVE MERCY sitting on the credenza behind me that’d make great presents for, um, Memorial Day. Or Independence Day. I mean, whatever. Just buy ‘em. The cover price is $14.95 but for you, dear Friends of Frank, this week only, such a deal, $9.99 (OK, $10) but I eat the postage. And autographed! Try to beat that on Amazon.com, I dare you.

I appeared in Traffic Court today. I’d been stopped for going 44 in a 30 zone. I was guilty but, naturally, crestfallen. Despite the careless way I drive (anyone will tell you so), I hadn’t had a moving violation on my record for a long time — 10 years or more.

That’s what I told the officer — minus the part about the habitual carelessness, not to mention a certain insouciance regarding traffic laws in general. She said, “Why don’t you go down and tell that to the judge?” “Would it do any good?” I asked. “You never know,” she replied.

So I suit up — one always wants to look one’s best in court; if you doubt it, watch any random episode of Judge Judy — and find myself before Hearing Examiner Mark Green in Rm. 1145 of the D.C. Municipal Building, Bureau of Adjudication. It’s more like a large office than a courtroom, with the hearing examiner seated behind a desk with a keyboard and screen in front of him. Along each side wall are rows of chairs where we miscreants sit. There are only two of us.

The other is a large and bulky white woman of advancing age. She is very white indeed. Her white hair flies around in unruly fashion. She wears a men’s dress shirt with blue and white stripes, exaggerating the pale effect. She is squeezed into a pair of jeans a size or two too small, and she is a woman who should never wear jeans to begin with. She has on brown suede sneakers that don’t go with anything else. Her head is a mallet. She looks for all the world like a female version of Arnold Dornfeld, my sainted editor at City News Bureau of Chicago a lifetime ago. If she wore muddy work boots and a red-checked flannel shirt, I’d have taken her for Dornie.

On her large bosom rests a large brown wooden cross, the kind you see on nuns in mufti. Given her lack of courtroom style sense, I think, maybe that’s what she is.

Her case is called first. She has been accused of running a stop sign in Northwest D.C. a few blocks from where I was stopped, though on a different day. As she takes her seat at a long wooden table in front of the judge — the only courtroom-like accessory in the room — she slips me a conspiratorial look. I respond with a perfunctory smile and look away, annoyed. I am not her ally.

She pleads not guilty and explains at length, punctuating her testimony with digressions, asides, and inappropriate laughter. She goes on and on, saying too much, laughing when she shouldn’t, looking sidelong toward me for support. But my gaze is now directed purposefully toward Hearing Examiner Green and Officer Santos.

She winds down at last. The hearing examiner taps and taps at his keyboard, for minutes. What in the world is he writing, a novel?

Finally he looks up and asks whether she has anything to add. She looks flustered for the first time, as if she’s been asked an unexpected question by a severe teacher. She flounders a bit, then says no. He taps more. She squirms with discomfort in the silence.

Then she starts to talk. She repeats portions of her story, adding semi-snide commentary. She makes a point about the black SUV in front of her, if you want to see someone who REALLY ran that stop sign. She reminds the hearing examiner how small her car is and how defenseless against SUVs like that big black one. It’s red, she says, not for the first time. A Festiva. 1994.

More taps. She squirms again, then launches into a complaint about how many hours, days actually, it took to schedule this hearing. The hearing examiner looks up inquiringly. “Of course,” she says, “you probably can’t do anything about THAT.”

More taps, more silence, then the ruling is rendered. Hearing Examiner Green recounts the facts, the applicable section of the D.C. Municipal Code, and pronounces his decision: Waive the points but pay the fine. Wow, lady, I think, you lucked out.

I hear a sound and shift focus from the hearing examiner to her. Her shoulders are sagging from their cocky elevation into a slump, and she is sobbing.

“That’s an awful lot of money,” she chokes out.

No one says a word. In the silent room, her sobs are the only sound.

After a minute or two, she regains control enough to ask what’s next. the hearing examiner says she can go to Rm. 1157 and pay the fine.

“Can I use a credit card? That way I won’t have to pay until next month’s Social Security check comes in.”

The hearing examiner doesn’t seem to know. “You can pay on line too,” he says.

“I’m not on line,” she says.

She stands up; collects her giant blue bag with stuff overflowing from it and the blue plastic water bottle she filled at home; turns, opens the door, and stalks out. The hearing examiner calls me to the chair. As I’m getting seated, the door opens behind me and she sticks her head back in the room.

“Thank you,” she says, and closes the door.

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. I admitted with explanation, told my story, and asked that he waive the $100 penalty because I’d misread the website instructions. He waived the penalty and the points but let the $100 fine stand. I said thanks, picked up my stuff and headed out the door, thinking I’d had a pretty good day.