Update on Patrick McLaw

More details are coming out about Patrick McLaw, the author of two books about school shootings who was removed from his teaching job last week. It now seems that Mr. McLaw was removed because of a number of issues, mostly centered around a letter he sent to a school official that was described as "suicidal". From there authorities performed a limited search of Mr. McLaw's home, which he consented to, and found a model of a school building and some more material they deemed worrying. Currently Mr. McLaw is not under arrest, although no one can reveal where he is or whether he's permitted to leave, citing HIPAA.

I'm a bit torn on this one. On one hand, the school seems a bit more justified in wanting Mr. McLaw vetted, and there's no indication as of yet that he's being held against his will or treated badly. Also, the State's Attorney claims that everyone knew Mr. McLaw had authored his books back in 2012, which is heartening; if true, it would tend to rule out the idea that Mr. McLaw is being persecuted for writing fiction.

On the other hand, if this is all above board then the details of the investigation were released/leaked in the worst possible order for the school and the officials involved. And I'd note that Mr. McLaw has no recorded history of violence, certainly nothing that's been reported, and he's an upstanding and well-liked teacher. That he's been "disappeared" is troubling, though it's likely his family knows where he is and, if he actually needs the help, it's far better that he have his privacy than not.

The official narrative is that Patrick McLaw is cooperating with authorities while they do due diligence on a bunch of minor but troubling incidents. No one's accused Mr. McLaw of being an actual threat up to now, thankfully, and there isn't much evidence that anything illegal or abusive is being covered up by authorities. I still think it's likely the risk posed by Mr. McLaw is being overestimated, but as heavy-handed tactics go we've seen a hell of a lot worse in the past few weeks.

I'm going to keep an eye on this and see how it develops. There are a few petitions on Change.org to the school superintendent and the county sheriff, if you feel like signing them; otherwise there doesn't seem to be much that needs doing. I do hope everything turns out well, for Patrick McLaw and everyone else involved.

Patrick McLaw and the Terror of Words

This story crossed my feeds today and scared the living crap out of me. Short version: author Patrick McLaw also works as a middle school teacher. He wrote two books set in the United States two hundred years in the future, dealing with a pair of school shootings. When school board officials found out about this, Mr. McLaw was put on administrative leave and taken in by the police for an emergency psychiatric evaluation, while the police searched the school for bombs and guns and came up empty. He's also been banned from county and school district properties.

Another story. In high school I wrote a short story for my school's literary magazine. The story involved two friends blowing up a chihuahua-focused dog show. It was a dumb comedy, really a rip off of Mark Twain's story Tom Quartz, in which a cat gets blown up in a mine shaft. I don't know where the chihuahuas came from. I expect if I read it now I'd be happy with the voice and nothing else.

The story was published without incident, and a few months later the Columbine shooting happened. A few days after that, I was called in to see my guidance counselor, who asked me a few questions about the story and myself to make sure I wasn't planning to shoot up the school. Luckily I was an AP student with no history of misbehavior, and that was the end of it. (Nobody really knew I played video games, including Doom II, all the time at home.)

Now, all that happened to me was I got talked to for a few minutes, and it was still one of the scariest experiences of my high school career. I was worried I could be suspended, maybe even expelled.

Today, that would be the least of my concerns. I would be immediately escorted off school property, temporarily if I were lucky, and handed over to the police. I'd be charged with issuing threats and almost certainly end up in court, with the full weight of the local legal system gunning for me. Saying that I was ripping off a story from the 1800s to practice my writing and had no intention of doing anything wrong would be no defense. I would be doomed and damned, my education cut short and quite possibly locked away for years.

Patrick McLaw wrote two books and self-published them. He did not write a manifesto, or a lunatic chatroom screed. He wrote two pieces of fiction and sought to sell them for money. So far as anyone knows that's the extent of his crime. He was nominated for Teacher of the Year and helped a student self-publish his work on Amazon. There is no hint in the stories I've read that he had a truly violent impulse in his body. Yet he's been banished from his workplace and detained, while police stand by in his district's schools to make sure he doesn't come back.

I understand the need to prevent school shootings. I don't see how throwing a respectable teacher onto the street does that. I'm relieved, and sick, to think of what could have happened to me. And I'm terrified to think of what could happen to my son in a few years, in an environment where even pointing a finger and saying "Bang" can get you suspended or expelled.

Mr. McLaw's book, The Insurrectionist, is still available on Amazon. It wouldn't be a terrible idea to give it a look; at the moment I have no idea what else can be done to help the man. But I wish him better luck than he's had so far.

Correction: Police searched the school, not Mr. McLaw's home. This post has been corrected.

Correction again: As of yesterday afternoon police have searched Mr. McLaw's home.

BP Broke The Gulf

Unless you've been hiding under a rock for the past few months (and that rock would have to be outside the Gulf of Mexico), you're aware of the oil spill BP has foisted on us. But unless you're really following events, you're probably not aware that the well is compromised "down hole", and that short of getting the relief well drilled before the entire Gulf floor collapses there isn't a damn thing we can do about it.

And you're probably unfamiliar with the Kremlin report that the sea floor is fractured, and that unless we nuke the damned thing post haste we're looking at an unstoppable ecological catastrophe.

Why isn't the media reporting about this? I don't see anything about it in the Washington Post, or the New York Times, or on CNN or Fox News or MSNBC. Hell, there's barely any reporting on the subject in the first place. The Kremlin article, and others, suggest that BP and the United States government are working together to cover up just how bad the spill is. In fact it's pretty hard to deny that we're being told some kind of lies by people who should damn well know better.

I am not, in general, a passionate environmentalist. Mostly, I only get concerned about pollution that might keep me from eating more Maryland blue crabs.

I am delicious.

This is one of those things.

If you're at all worried about the prospect of a shattered Gulf, if you even think there's a possibility that this stuff might be true... Please, write your Congressman, repeatedly. Print the articles out ten times each and send them in. Make sure the people who can, conceivably, do something about this mess are paying attention.

And if that doesn't work... well, there is an election coming up soon, and I know of at least one candidate who doesn't appreciate people messing with the sea floor.

Still a better choice than Palin.

--David

Muse in the News: Guatemalan Sinkhole

Here's something to know about writing: Ideas are easy. You can get them anywhere. Look at this picture: It's an aerial shot of the sinkhole that's trying to eat Guatemala. Tell me you're not thinking about some crazy science fiction story, or a terrorism thriller, or an apocalyptic epic of some sort. You'd be in good company.

If you ever need an idea for something to write about, you could do worse than looking in your local paper, or browsing to your favorite news website. Here's a few starters I pulled off of CNN in about five minutes:

• Sources: Bat used to kill Peru woman - The actual story involves a baseball bat, but the headline makes me think of a murder mystery involving a rabid bat slipped in through a window.


• Cops follow 9-mile trail of blood, tissue - Oh God, the horror stories you could get out of this one. What sort of monster can create a 9-mile trail of blood? Is it squamous or rugose?


• Belief blog: Has market become God? - What sort of market would we have if we thought that all the ups and downs were caused by a higher power, independent of companies' actual performance? Or, what if churches traded on stock exchanges? Or, what if there was a church dedicated to the market's power?


• Man found four days after car crash - Alive, as it turns out from the article. So what was he doing for those four days? Who'd he meet? Was he running from somebody?


• Wallet returned after 70 years - I think Letters to Juliet covered this sort of thing, and Sarah assures me that was a good movie. With a wallet, of course, it doesn't have to be a romance. Maybe a cursed wallet gets passed from owner to owner? Or maybe it's something that was found in a dead man's effects.

You could get a few quick stories out of any one of these, easy. All you'd have to do is come up with some characters to get into these weird situations. And, of course, an interesting series of events that happen before, during and after. And an appropriate setting, and some good prose, and interesting dialogue...

Which is, I guess, where the real work comes in...

--David