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In Sorrow All Our Days
Adam and Eve, the love story . . .
Even now, in the small towns north of Boston, people can tell you about the week ten years ago when Feeney and his crazy friend Scooter kidnapped two women from a halfway house for the mentally ill and ran off into the first blizzard of winter, pursued by the hospital maintenance man and his half-wit nephew, by the police, of course, by art lovers and gallery owners, and by the media, baying about free-love hippie lunatics and the real meaning of the Garden of Eden. She was Marigold Jannsen, suicidal and brilliant, painting the first murals of her short and meteoric career. He was the mayor’s grandson, a serious young man on his way to law school. And they were in love.
Even now people can tell you how her wild, erotic paintings of Adam and Eve, left that week on the walls of abandoned buildings, sparked joy in some and religious outrage in others. How families put baskets of food out, hoping the loonies would choose their barn to hide in that night. How a mob of local men, angry and drunk, conspired to corner the runaways in a gypsy salvage yard down by the salt marsh, and burn them out like rats. And how the town, in all its shame, sought to atone for its crime by creating a monument of art so astonishing and miraculous that the lost, the lonely and the permanently distracted still make their way up the hill to be healed. Even now.
Even now, in the small towns north of Boston, people can tell you about the week ten years ago when Feeney and his crazy friend Scooter kidnapped two women from a halfway house for the mentally ill and ran off into the first blizzard of winter, pursued by the hospital maintenance man and his half-wit nephew, by the police, of course, by art lovers and gallery owners, and by the media, baying about free-love hippie lunatics and the real meaning of the Garden of Eden. She was Marigold Jannsen, suicidal and brilliant, painting the first murals of her short and meteoric career. He was the mayor’s grandson, a serious young man on his way to law school. And they were in love.
Even now people can tell you how her wild, erotic paintings of Adam and Eve, left that week on the walls of abandoned buildings, sparked joy in some and religious outrage in others. How families put baskets of food out, hoping the loonies would choose their barn to hide in that night. How a mob of local men, angry and drunk, conspired to corner the runaways in a gypsy salvage yard down by the salt marsh, and burn them out like rats. And how the town, in all its shame, sought to atone for its crime by creating a monument of art so astonishing and miraculous that the lost, the lonely and the permanently distracted still make their way up the hill to be healed. Even now.
257 pages, Kindle Edition
First published July 15, 2010
1 person want to read
About the author
Christopher Burns
11 books7 followersChristopher Burns started his career as assistant to the Director of the Yale University Press, and at the Director’s suggestion, enrolled in IBM’s new course on the fundamentals of computing, intended to train professional programmers and systems analysts. During his years at the Yale Press, he wrote a major industry study on computerized production technologies and built the first database of books for the Yale Co-op bookstore. Years later, he designed the Onyx database of book data now used by Amazon and publishers around the world.
In the spring of 1968, after graduating from Army Officer Candidate School, he was assigned as chief of computer operations at a secure communications center serving the White House, the Pentagon, and other classified organizations on the East Coast. Then, as Command Information Officer for the 25th Infantry Division in Vietnam, he led a detachment of reporters and photographers putting out a weekly newspaper, a monthly magazine, and two books, one of which was later named the best Army publication of the year.
On his return, he joined the Harvard University Press where he launched the new Harvard Paperback series. He was later recruited by Arthur D. Little, Inc., a well-known Cambridge research and consulting firm, and began a long practice in the future of new information technologies, office automation, and online publishing. As a consultant and large-scale systems designer, he led the development of digital publishing systems for United Nations headquarters, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and the governments of the U.S., Ireland, and Iran, as well as dozens of the country’s largest corporations.
In 1980, he went to the Washington Post Company as Vice President/Planning, still focusing on the future of computer technology and the media. And from there he moved to the management side as Senior Vice President (general manager) of the Minneapolis Star and Tribune. After three years he returned to systems design and technology consulting with his own practice, and for the next 25 years followed the rise of the internet and the birth of digital information services, deeply involved in the development of new online networks for several governments and most of the major companies in the information industry sector. He spent a year as Executive Editor of UPI, the worldwide news service, and served on the boards of the Information Industry Association and several information industry startups.
Mr. Burns has two patents on online information technology, covering the field of consumer networks and the emerging Internet of Things. In the last few years, he has turned primarily to writing, having published Deadly Decisions (Prometheus), The Seashell Anthology of Great Poetry (Random House), Vietnam Album, a history of the war, The New Old Age (Seashell Press), Immortal Poets (another anthology of poetry with history and biographies), and several novels.
In the spring of 1968, after graduating from Army Officer Candidate School, he was assigned as chief of computer operations at a secure communications center serving the White House, the Pentagon, and other classified organizations on the East Coast. Then, as Command Information Officer for the 25th Infantry Division in Vietnam, he led a detachment of reporters and photographers putting out a weekly newspaper, a monthly magazine, and two books, one of which was later named the best Army publication of the year.
On his return, he joined the Harvard University Press where he launched the new Harvard Paperback series. He was later recruited by Arthur D. Little, Inc., a well-known Cambridge research and consulting firm, and began a long practice in the future of new information technologies, office automation, and online publishing. As a consultant and large-scale systems designer, he led the development of digital publishing systems for United Nations headquarters, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and the governments of the U.S., Ireland, and Iran, as well as dozens of the country’s largest corporations.
In 1980, he went to the Washington Post Company as Vice President/Planning, still focusing on the future of computer technology and the media. And from there he moved to the management side as Senior Vice President (general manager) of the Minneapolis Star and Tribune. After three years he returned to systems design and technology consulting with his own practice, and for the next 25 years followed the rise of the internet and the birth of digital information services, deeply involved in the development of new online networks for several governments and most of the major companies in the information industry sector. He spent a year as Executive Editor of UPI, the worldwide news service, and served on the boards of the Information Industry Association and several information industry startups.
Mr. Burns has two patents on online information technology, covering the field of consumer networks and the emerging Internet of Things. In the last few years, he has turned primarily to writing, having published Deadly Decisions (Prometheus), The Seashell Anthology of Great Poetry (Random House), Vietnam Album, a history of the war, The New Old Age (Seashell Press), Immortal Poets (another anthology of poetry with history and biographies), and several novels.
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September 24, 2024
I found this book at a local used bookshop in a section of local authors. I was intrigued by the plot and the fact that it was set on the north shore. After a shaky start I was pleasantly surprised by how the story unfolded.
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