Baby Steps-A religious walker recovers from knee surgery

When I first started to write this I was 5 days post-arthroscopy. In late March I'd come downstairs in the wee hours of the morning, head half-fogged by sleepiness and the fugue calculus of character arc for a short story I'd been working on. I needed a glass of water before bed. In my reverie I missed the last step on our ancient stairs and ended up on my ass with my left leg twisted under me. It didn't feel great but after a quick self-assessment, assuring myself I'd been careless, but had broken nothing or had done no permanent damage, I rose gingerly, shook it off and continued my walking regimen in the days that followed. After each workout, I typically paid a little in pain premium the next day but I didn't think much of it. With exercise, once I got going, my reliable endorphins kicked in and I'd be fine.

Then three weeks later in April came "the afternoon of the big backpack." Typically I meet my youngest son after school two to three days a week. We walk the 2.5 miles home and I shoulder his 18 pound backpack, brimming with textbooks. I have strong concerns about a 10 year old back shouldering that kind of weight, so I cheerfully relieve him of it. That night I was a bit more ginger than usual.

The next day, when I awoke, I could barely walk.

Stiegless in Seattle, Stockholm, Philadelphia and Everywhere

At the end of last week, I finished reading "The Girl that Kicked the Hornet's Nest," the third book in Stieg Larsson's startling trilogy. I'd first heard about Larsson in 2008 on NPR in one of Martha Corrigan's erudite but effortlessly seductive book reviews. Corrigan, a writer, lecturer at Georgetown, is one of NPR's jewels, the type you sit in the car with the engine off, just to hear the end of her latest installment. Don't know if it’s the timbre of the voice or the whip smart things it says, but I remember exactly where I was, when I first learned about Stieg, Blomkvist and Salander, (heading north on 11th, turning on Arch Street. I remember exactly what I thought, (that though I'm not much of one for mystery novels, this sounds just off-kilter enough for my tastes).

Perhaps, I was more receptive because I'd just finished reading Eliot Patttison's brilliant Skull Mantra, itself an offbeat murder mystery set in post-occupation Tibet. So okay, okay, I've found my "MM niche." Give me a tale of culture totally alien to mine own, kill off some characters in a grizzly fashion and let me follow the trail of a whip-smart investigator and I will read and read …