Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Valentine's Day

So I'm sitting here with one of the fat cats on my lap, a light snow falling, waiting for the sun to rise.

I feel much the same anticipation about the looming publication date for Twelfth and Race.   It's all about to happen, yet I can't quite see what It  is.  The interview on WVXU, Cincinnati's NPR affiliate, will air this Sunday night, February 19th, sometime between 7 & 8 pm.   The interviewer, Barbara Gray, is someone I used to know, way back in the day.  Hadn't seen her in twelve or thirteen years.  Knew I knew the name, but couldn't find the context until I entered the booth at the radio station down in Cincinnati.

Just last week, a reporter at the Cincinnati Enquirer contacted me about an interview for an article the newspaper is going to run before the Mercantile Library reading on February 28th.   So it's all coming.  Because after the Mercantile is AWP, then several weeks of appearances.

And reviews?   Who knows. 

The bare limbs of the trees outside my studio window are now outlined against the lightening sky.  Soon, it will be full morning.

3 comments:

  1. Eric,

    Are you the same Eric Goodman who wrote both a GLAMOUR Magazine article and an unpublished book on the Michael Ipsen / Linda Van Housen molestation lawsuit back in the 1990's?

    If you're not, then please just ignore what follows.

    If you are, then are you aware of the latest with Michael Ipsen? Well, up until a couple of months ago (and just a few hundred miles from you, BTW), Michael Ipsen had been working for a-year-and-a-half as a teacher's aide / girls' cross country track coach at Dickinson Intermediate Fine Arts Academy, a South Bend, Indiana public high school.

    Well, something that Ipsen may have said or done---I'm not sure what exactly---prompted parents at the school to do what the amazingly incompetent School District HR Department failed to do...

    Google: "Michael +Ipsen"

    Well, these parents went ballistic with what they found, going to the local press. Two reporters then went to Ipsen's house and confronted him. Ipsen, now 68, admitted that he was the same Michael Ipsen from the 1990's lawsuit, but, then as now, steadfastly maintained his innocence. He furthered defended the propriety of his woefully incomplete employment application to the school district.

    (Apparently, a $1.1 million verdict and finding against him for child molestation must have just slipped his mind while filling in the "Past Employment History" section of the application, or was just old news/ancient history not worthy of inclusion.)

    The story hit the press just two days before Christmas, and a day later, School Superintendant Carole Schmidt immediately suspended Ipsen without pay. In early January---the soonest possible date after the holiday break---Schmidt asked the school board to approve her immediate termination of Ipsen. In her statement to the press, Schmidt cited the "omissions and misrepresentations" Ipsen made in his employment history as the justification for her firing of him. I cannot find any further on-line information about Ipsen's current employment status, or whether or not the School Board approved the termination.

    In one of the stories covering this, a reporter tracked down and interviewed Linda Van Housen, now married and living in Atascadero, California. Like the female victim in the Roman Polanski case, she has long since moved on successfully with her life.

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  2. Dear LA Teacher Guy,

    Yes, indeed, I'm the same Eric Goodman who wrote the Glamour article. I'd not heard about the Michael Ipsen story, but I did know that Linda was married and living in Atascadero.

    How did you know about the unpublished book, which was titled, A SPECIAL LITTLE GIRL (which is what Ipsen would say to Linda), and is a pretty typical line of approach for men interested in children. As it turned out, the OJ and Susan Smith murder cases killed the book I worked on with Linda. Between the time we signed the contract for Pocket Books (the publisher of the paperback edition of my novel IN DAYS OF AWE) and the time we delivered the manuscript, child sexual abuse and psychological damage was no longer sufficient. And so the book went unpublished.

    Thanks for getting in touch

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  3. Eric,

    I remember reading your GLAMOUR article, and of the book that was set to follow, yet never did. Who knows? Perhaps if it HAD been published, Ipsen would never have weaseled his way into a position where he could victimize again.

    The book's subject matter has been in the news lately here in Los Angeles. The other day, this got me thinking, "Whatever happened to Ipsen, Van Housen, etc.?" My curiosity led me use "google" and find out the stunning and very recent developments.

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