Three Beautiful Things 10-11-2024: Wealth and Justice, Voodoo and Psycho Dice, Jazz Is Just Right

1.  Any contact I have with wealthy people almost always only happens through reading about them. 

As I near the end of the book, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, I'm reminded page after page that the wealthy, yes, can possess and I think, at times, they might even enjoy, copious luxuries. 

Their wealth can also have a sizable impact on the courtroom, primarily because the wealthy can afford to spend, spend, spend, spend, spend, and spend some more on mounting a defense when indicted for a crime, spend, spend, spend spend, and spend some more on appealing each and every guilty conviction, and, can afford to keep a court case continuing for years.  

The wealthy can afford to run out the clock. 

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is about more than Jim Williams' lengthy effort to be acquitted of murder. It's also about the social goings on in, oh, let's say the 1980s, in Savannah, GA, the eccentricities of the wealthy and the peculiarities of those who aren't wealthy at all, and about grudges, petty spats, power struggles, sexual mores, hypocrisies, and secrets, racial realities, and other aspects of life in Savannah.

But, this book would have come to a much earlier conclusion if Jim Williams were of modest means. Instead, it covers a span of nearly ten years because Jim Williams can afford to be tried repeatedly for having killed Danny Hansford. 

I have about twenty pages left to read and the trials are not over, nor do I know what the future holds for Jim Williams. 

2. A dimension of this book that I find fascinating (from afar) is that Jim Williams seeks help in the midst of his trials from Minerva, a woman living in Beaufort, South Carolina, who practices voodoo. The book's author, John Berendt, takes us into Minerva's world of voodoo, her world of roots, powders, rituals, incantations, graveyards, and more.  

Not only does Jim Williams seek spiritual aid from voodoo, he is also certain that through mind control, through sustained mental concentration, he can bring about results he desires in his life. He practices this commitment by spending hours playing a game of his own creation called Psycho Dice in which he exercises his mental concentration to bring about the dice rolls he desires.

3. While I've been reading Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, I've had the Sirius/XM station Real Jazz playing at a low volume in the background. Mostly, I don't really hear it, but somehow it's perfect, even if at a subconscious level, as accompaniment to this book. Every once in a while the music pulls me away from the book. Say Dave Brubeck's combo is playing "Take Five". Or say the station suddenly features the vocalist Samara Joy. I surely do not know if jazz music is popular in Savannah, but in my little world of reading and having jazz music on, the fit is just right.