Will iconic images recorded in the grooves of an ancient vase unite the Holy Land or rip it further apart?

THE VASE

A novel by Mark M. DeRobertis

Muhsin Muhabi is a Palestinian potter, descended from a long line of potters. His business is run from the same shop owned by his ancestors since the day his forebears moved to Nazareth. The region's conflict saw the death of his oldest son, and rogue terrorists are in the process of recruiting his youngest in their plot to assassinate the Pope and Israeli prime minister.

Professor Hiram Weiss is an art historian at Nazareth’s Bethel University. He is also a Shin Bet operative on special assignment. With the help of fellow agent, Captain Benny Mathias, he plans to destroy the gang responsible for the death of his wife and only child. He puts a bomb in the ancient vase he takes on loan from Muhsin’s Pottery Shop.

Mary Levin, the charming assistant to the director of Shin Bet, has lost a husband and most of her extended family to recurring wars and never-ending terrorism. She dedicates her life to the preservation of Israel, but to whom will she dedicate her heart? The brilliant professor from Bethel University? Or the gallant captain who now leads Kidon?

Harvey Holmes, the Sherlock of Haunted Houses, is a Hollywood TV host whose reality show just flopped. When a Lebanese restaurant owner requests his ghost-hunting services, he believes the opportunity will resurrect his career. All he has to do is exorcise the ghosts that are haunting the restaurant. It happens to be located right across the street from Muhsin’s Pottery Shop.




Saturday, July 7, 2018

Homeland-First Two Episodes Season Seven

Well, after watching the first two episodes of season seven of Homeland, my theory of the new president being drugged seems to be wrong. This Wellington dude does not seem to have taken control and I'm not sure this makes the show better or not.

It's turning out that the other option is what is happening. The new president turned loony. Ultra paranoid might be a better description. And as far as Wellington is concerned, he might be the loony one. Well, insofar as he was willing to murder someone to keep his job.

But none of that matters. My biggest complaint is that the show has turned America, and/or Americans into the bad guy(s). So since season six and now into season seven, we have Americans fighting Americans. It's all a domestic scenario now instead of an international one.

And again, it's not what I signed up for when I started watching the show. One of the reasons I liked the show so much was that Peter Quinn was a bad ass assassin. But now that he's gone, the show seems one dimensional. It's now only about Carrie.

At first Carrie was good enough to "carry" the show. With Quinn's addition, it made the show twice as good. But the character of Quinn was so good, he was stealing the show as I've pointed out before. So they get rid of Quinn and we're back to just Carrie. It was like they tried to improve the show through subtraction. That only works when you had a character who was a detriment to a show. And that was NOT the case with Quinn.

He was an equal hero to Carrie's hero, and now the result is the show's quality has been halved. Add that point to the point that they are changing gears as to the show's antagonists it makes for a huge disappointment to a show about which I had been raving.

No more raves seem to be in store for Homeland. But with seasons one through five, I suppose it had a great run. It seems most TV series tend to run out of gas eventually. It happened to Blacklist after its third season. So there you go.

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