It’s quite obvious, from where history stood that the media people and the government are using the same scare tactics used to alert us minions about certain unfounded bumps in the night, and the latest Corona virus is no different.

We can go back as far as the 17th century when the hysteria of witches were all the rage, starting in Europe and ending up in Salem, Massachusetts.

What had just begun to guide people into this hysteria? The invention of the printing press, the first mass social media outlet.

Every incident there after, that warranted fear and ultimately a repression of peoples’ rights can be traced to the government’s will over the people by instilling unnecessary fear into the social psyche, exploiting the press as their personal propaganda machine:

• Fear and persecution of minority groups.
• Repression of political ideas.
• Paranoia of change to the fabric of the social order.

In subsequent years where major breakthroughs in the means and method of spreading news and information, or lies and disinformation, the media and the government have walked hand in hand to tell the masses this new threat is on the horizon and we all must be vigilant to avoid catching this or that.

I’m not a naysayer in this latest news outbreak. Corona is a real virus that is spreading and has the potential of killing people if not treated. Prevention is more the key here then anything.

What I have issue with is the bombardment of misinformation that has come with this. It instills more fear that this is something that could kill anyone by just being near someone who looks Chinese, or coughs, or whatever.

Stop the hysteria, the disinformation, the bias and the propaganda. Let the healthcare professionals do their job and allow our government to fund the crisis as best they can.

My mother in law, Lillian is here. She arrived from Yakima yesterday and will leave with her common law husband, Tom. He’s a cowboy in the classic sense. The camper we bought is now home as of Friday night. Unfortunately we had to deal with issues that were never resolved.

But, that is another issue for another time. My wife and I spent the day getting the camper readied. Then we went shopping when she got the call from her mother that they overshot the exit they needed to take. They were at a Fred Meyers store in the Spokane Valley and were hopelessly lost. Lillian ran the navigator unit to get the directions to our house. She hadn’t any idea how to get here from there.

My wife told me what the situation was and I thought for about three seconds and told her, “Tell them to go north.” North being the northbound street that was a block from the department store.

“Just say on that path until they get to Wellsley, and wait for us or Terry(stepson).” It is always a good idea to have an alternative route in one’s mind when your in-laws get lost because I’m sure Tom would have just back tracked to Spokane proper, and perhaps compounded the problem.

We just arrived to our house when I heard the dogs barking after Stephanie let them outside to relieve themselves. I was in the garage with the intention of putting the groceries in our spare refrigerator, when I saw Terry getting out of an F-350 and Tom riding high on his steel steed wearing his cowboy hat and his gray, bushy mustache hiding a toothy grin as he pulled up in front of my Ram 2500, its camper sitting proudly upon the truck for all to see.

“They’re here,” I called out to Stephanie.

“They are? How?” She asked more to herself than to me as I walked toward the big truck and wondered why he didn’t bring something that was more fuel efficient.

Lillian got out first as Stephanie and Tom did a ballet of vehicle moves to make everyone happy. Lillian and I hugged each other. Once Tom was parked horizontally to my truck and Stephanie’s Buick was parked next to my truck, I shook Tom’s hand we then set about to getting the camper readied for them to have a comfortable night’s sleep.

We got the heater going and the bedding in placed, but still couldn’t get that silly slide out to work. Hopefully that will be resolved Monday. As it was, it is fortunate that both Tom and Lillian are not robust individuals. Tom was tall and wiry; Lillian is a petite 85 year old woman, who one could assume was frail, though she would challenge you on that point. They squeezed between the inverted camper without issue.

It is the largest camper one can have. The manufacturer recommended using a one ton duelly for such a unit. Which was why we had to buffet the truck up to support such an RV. It has added struts, springs and supports that will hold the truck. When driving home I felt like a hippo tipping her toe in a shallow lake.

It’s the next morning and they’re in the TV room watching Net-Flix. I heard no complaints from them. She usually don’t and Tom has been known to sleep on bare ground with just a saddle blanket over his body and his saddle for a pillow. I think they’re happy with the accommodations.

I knew the moment I saw the news report that it wasn’t as the authorities were reporting. On January 26, 2016, Dr. John Marshall went for a jog along the banks of the Spokane River and seemingly disappeared until a day later when his body was discovered several miles downstream.

Now the Washington Attorney General has stepped in to launch the investigation where there now appears that foul play was involved. I always believed this was more than a mere accidental slip on some ice and fall to his death into the icy waters of the Spokane River.

I also figured there had to been a connection of some sort going on, which was verified in this KREM 2 news investigative report four years later that placed the widow front and center into the investigation.

According to the report, she was impatient to have the cause of death determined so she might get life insurance benefits, and the medical examiner determined the cause of death accidental. Later, though rumors spread about a possible relationship between Dr. Marshall and someone seemingly unrelated, Brenda Thurman, who died weeks earlier when her husband accidentally shot her while cleaning his handgun.

It is quite the mystery that has all the earmarks of a love connection and murder through jealousy. As the news report indicated Dr. Marshall’s did not have the bruising, bumps or lacerations one would expect to have on their bodies after falling over a hundred feet into the river.

It is a truism that facts are stranger than fiction. I couldn’t make this story up. It’s just too juicy to make it any less. I believe it most likely was the jealous husband who discovered this relationship between Dr. Marshall and his wife Brenda. The husband, by the way, was convicted for manslaughter in the death of his wife. The jury didn’t buy his story that it was an accident.

Well there I was sleeping when my wife crawled into bed next to me and asked, “You asleep?”

“No,” I lied, figuring she had something to get off her chest.

“My son got arrested. He’s in jail,” she told me in a matter-of-fact tone that told me how upset she was with her son.

I was fully awake now. “What for? DUI?”

“No, driving without a license and no license plates on that car he bought.”

It’s no secret that the police in this town of nearly 500,000 have better things to do with their Friday nights, and going after a car that has no license plate, isn’t high on their priority lists, unless of course, the officer was a rookie on his or hers first ever patrol.

Or, he did something else equally stupid, like drive too fast, weaving between the lines, driving too slow or not using his turn signals. All of which are tell-tale signs of someone under the influence of drugs like marijuana or alcohol.

She rambled off some more before she drifted off to sleep. I stayed awake, not so much because of my stepson, but the stories I’ve worked on. I’m almost done reformatting the third book in the Four Seasons series and was looking at the next three books that will come up hopefully later this year.

This morning I finally remembered the title of the one story I wanted used in book number five. Now that that is squared away, I can start organizing that into a coherent format for both e-book and print versions.

Now it appears we have to drive into Spokane Valley, where he parked his car last night. Hopefully, it wasn’t impounded.