A Dear Friend Completes Life's Journey: Rest in Peace, Camille Minichino

Camille Minichino, my dear friend of nearly 46 years, died Monday, May 6, 2024. She was companion, colleague, mentor, teacher, ally, and more to me and many many others. By any measure, she was an amazing person, one in a million, and will be sorely missed. It's hard to put thoughts into words at this point, so instead, I'll share a letter that will eventually be going out to those on her snail-mail "Christmas list" (assuming we can find that particular database on her computer!). Below the letter, I'll add links to tributes, obituaries, etc., as I find them. If you come across any postings/articles, feel free to contact me and I will add them.

I will eventually post information about a memorial/celebration of life, once we know more...

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Camille Minichino, Ph.D.
June 3, 1937 – May 6, 2024

Dear Family, Friends, and Colleagues of Camille Minichino, 

It is with sorrow we are informing you that Camille passed away on Monday, May 6, 2024, after a brief illness. What follows is an overview of her life, which in no way captures the amazing totality of a life "well and truly lived."

Born in Revere, Massachusetts, in June 1937, to Joseph and Helen Avallone Minichino, Camille was the first of two daughters; sister Arlene Minichino Polinene predeceased her. Camille often related how her father, a laborer, introduced her first to the joys of mathematics by showing her how to measure, multiply, and divide. After graduating from Revere High School, her love of mathematics and physics grew at Emmanuel College where several sisters took her under their wings and nurtured and encouraged her intellect and scientific curiosity. At the urging of these role models, Camille graduated with a B.A. in Mathematics in 1958. She then joined the Sisters of Notre Dame, where she remained for 18 years, and attended Fordham University, New York City, where she carried out experimental physics research in spectroscopy and obtained a Ph.D. in Physics in 1968, one of three women in a department of nearly 80 students. After leaving the order, she moved to California, and during her 30-year career at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory worked in high-temperature, high-pressure physics, provided technical support to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in pre- and post-Three Mile Island, and consulted at commercial reactors throughout the country. She also worked on problems of nuclear waste management and co-authored a book on the subject in 1982 (Nuclear Waste Management Abstracts, with Richard Heckman). 

As an educator and professor, Camille developed and taught physics, mathematics, philosophy, critical thinking, and interdisciplinary courses at all levels. She served on numerous academic faculties: Golden Gate University, San Francisco; Emmanuel College, Boston; St. John’s College, Boston; Dominican University, San Rafael, California; and John F. Kennedy University, Orinda, California. She also developed and taught writing classes and workshops at community colleges and through various writers’ organizations, including Emeritus College (Diablo Valley College), California Writers Club, and Sisters in Crime (an organization for mystery readers and writers). Which brings us to the third part of her professional journey…

 

Camille is the author of nearly 30 published mystery novels, plus numerous short stories and articles in both technical and popular magazines and websites. Her mystery series included The Periodic Table Mysteries, The Miniature Mysteries, the Professor Sophie Knowles Mysteries, The Postmistress Mysteries, The Alaskan Diner Mysteries, and the Sister Francesca Mystery.

She loved See's Candies, a well-crafted, bone dry, whole milk decaf cappuccino, Amici's margherita pizza (hold the sauce!), designing and creating "miniature" scenes and dollhouses, watching movies (especially The Godfather), throwing parties (including gatherings to celebrate the Academy Awards, Fourth of July, New Year's Eve, and birthdays), reading across the spectrum of fiction and nonfiction, and supporting her artistic friends by buying their jewelry, knit items, and crafts. She also was there to raise a hand when the call went out for volunteers for all the myriad organizations she belonged to, or when a friend, family member, or student needed a hand or a listening ear or just wanted to grab an ice cream cone and a chat at the nearby Loard's Ice Cream Parlor. Although she lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for 50 years, she still considered herself a "New Yorker," and regular trips to the Big Apple, with its museums and bookstores, helped feed her city-soul.

On her blog site, The Real Me, Camille described herself as follows: "I've been a factory worker, a translator, a teacher, an experimental physicist, a nuclear safeguards engineer, a writer, a waitress, a miniaturist, a paralegal, a nun, a minister, a short order cook, a ticket taker, an editor, a crafter, and a cotton candy twirler... plus a wife."

No overview of Camille's life is complete without acknowledging the deep devotion she shared with her husband, Richard (Dick) Rufer. Camille and Dick met at "The Lab" and married in 1977. Dick was, without question, the great love of her life. They watched movies together, conspired on solving crossword, acrostic, and jigsaw puzzles and creating cryptoquotes. Camille often fondly referred to Dick as her "24/7 tech support" and/or "The Cable Guy." He was the inspiration for her book How to Live with an Engineer. Over their nearly half-century of marriage, they exchanged nightly love-notes. Dick was always there for her, and she for him. Dick predeceased Camille by two months, shattering her world. Although her death certificate states a medical cause of death, all who knew Camille and supported her for those months after Dick's death know that she really died of a broken heart.

Camille is survived by a number of cousins and second cousins, and by legions of friends, colleagues, and students.

Yours in shared joy at having had Camille in our lives,

A small committee of Camille's friends

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LINKS AND OTHER TRIBUTES

• Mystery Fanfare: Camille Minichino, R.I.P.
• Camille Minichino obituary in:
•  the East Bay Times
• The Independent
• Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's In Memoriam

Thank you, mystery author Gabriel Valjan, for creating the lovely visual tribute below that captures all of Camille's mystery titles...

Credit: Gabriel Valjan

Wednesday's Random Slang-o-Rama: On the lam (oh yes, I am!)

When this post pops up, I will officially be on the lam. But not in the criminal sense...

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On the lam has a few definitions, according to Green's Dictionary of Slang. Starting in 1911, on the lam meant "quickly, at a run, at top speed." Then, in 1929, it took on the sense of "on the run from prison or the police, thus fig. on the loose." In 1939, on the lam also evolved to mean "elsewhere." 

Mental Floss has a nice article about the origin of on the lam right here, as well as some fascinating background on the origin of lam (which is the "mystery word" in this phrase, to my way of thinking):

...As a verb in its own right, however, lam dates back as far as the late 16th century. The Oxford English Dictionary has unearthed it in a dictionary compiled in the mid-1590s (alongside a long-lost equivalent form, belam), but back then the word’s meaning was considerably different: in 16th century English, to lam meant “to beat” or “to thrash someone harshly.”...

Lam survived in this original sense until the 19th century when, having steadily fallen out of everyday use, it began to crop up in the schoolyard slang of British (and later American) schoolchildren. By the mid-1800s, lamming out or lamming into someone was being widely used in reference to schoolyard fights and scuffles, and it’s perhaps through association with schoolboys running away before they were caught fighting by their teachers (or else, with the hapless victim running away before the first blow was thrown) that lamming finally came to be used to mean “to escape” or “to abscond.”

In this sense, lam first appeared in print on its own in 1886, in Allan Pinkerton’s memoir Thirty Years A Detective. In it, Pinkerton—the Scotland-born founder of Chicago’s renowned Pinkerton National Detective Agency—describes in detail the precise operations of a pickpocketing gang..."

You can read Pinkerton's chapter on how pickpockets worked their trade in the 19th century right here, courtesy of Internet Archive.  If you just want to go to the passage that mentions lam, here's the link. 

Meanwhile, I'm off and running. Running where? The photo below is a no-so-subtle hint.... 

Not a bad place to be on the lam...
Image by Jean-Philippe Fourier from Pixabay

Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: On the Q.T.

 The minute I typed on the Q.T. my mind turned to Slang-o-rama. This phrase sounded sort of World War II vintage to me, or maybe the Roaring '20s (the 1920s, that is).

Was I right, or was I wrong?

I was...

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... WRONG! 

Turns out, on the Q.T. has a lifeline stretching back into the19th century.

According to The Phrase Finder, on the Q.T. (meaning "on the quiet" or "secretly") is of British origin. Here's what the entry says:

The slang term 'qt' is a shortened form of 'quiet'. There's no definitive source for the phrase 'on the q.t.', although it appears to be of 19th century British origin - not, as is often supposed, American.

The longer phrase 'on the quiet' is also not especially old, but is first recorded somewhat before 'on the qt', in Otago: Goldfields & Resources, 1862: "Unless men can work [the gold] on 'the quiet', they are not likely to make 'piles' so rapidly as Messrs. Hartley and Riley."

As to on the q.t., in The Facts on File Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, Robert Hendrickson states: "A British broadside ballad (1870) contained the line 'Whatever I tell you is on the Q.T.'" It would be good to know the name of the ballad in order to follow up this assertion. Unfortunately, the author doesn't give it, from which we can only suppose he didn't know it himself. That first record is from new Zealand, but is soon followed by citations from the United Kingdom and the USA....

The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer notes that on the Q.T. was first recorded in 1884.

That means I could probably have a character in one of my Silver Rush books mutter, "This is all on the Q.T., if you please." (But would readers think the phrase anachronistic? Hmmm...)

Shhh... It's on the Q.T.
 Image by Sammy-Sander from Pixabay

Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Go with the flow

 I have to say, the phrase go with the flow has a very late-'60s (as in: 1960s) vibe to me, as in: "Hey man, be cool, go with the flow." But I figured I'd better take a look around and see when it first came into use, idiomatically speaking...

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The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer provides the definition to "move along with the prevailing forces, accept the prevailing trend," and adds this for its origin:

...[F]low in [this] colloquial term, which dates from the late 1900s, alludes to the ebb and flow of the tides and probably gained currency because of its appealing rhyme.

The Idioms website reaches waaaay back in history for the phrase's origin, noting:

This expression was first recorded to be used by the Roman Emperor, Marcus Arelius, in his writings “The Meditations”. He penned a lot about the flow of happiness and thoughts and he surmised that most things flow naturally and in his opinion it was better to go with the flow than to try and change society. Then sometime in 1960s America, this expression was ascribed to the hippies, who liked outdoor activities but also espoused a philosophy of taking life easy, not getting worked up, not struggling or fighting. These people drew an analogy from the way they kayaked and rafted on white water to the way life should be led, by going with the flow.

Green's Dictionary of Slang (which is an awesome reference work, by the way) also points to a more recent idiomatic "first use":

go with the flow (v.) [a mass popularization of the more complex dictum of US psychologist Carl Rogers (1902–87), who saw life as ‘floating with a complex streaming of experience’] to accept a situation and make no attempt to alter it, to act passively.

Green's also offers up a quote from the 1968 book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe as an "early" (possibly "first use?") quote: 

No one was to rise up negative about anything, one was to go positive with everything — go with the flow — everyone's cool was to be tested...

Curious, I checked Google books to see if go with the flow appears in italics in Wolfe's book, and it does! So, I'd be willing to bet this was indeed a very early appearance of this phrase, slang-wise.

Hey. I'm cool with that.

Image by Gordon Johnson from Pixabay 

Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Come in through the hawse-pipe

 As I head to Seattle for the Left Coast Crime mystery conference this week, it seems apt to highlight a fairly obscure (to me, anyway!) nautical expression that I bumped into while writing The Secret in the Wall: Come in through the hawse-pipe.

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I no longer recall where I first read this term, but do remember being befuddled. I had no idea what a hawse-pipe was, and as an expression, come in (or up) through the hawse-pipe clearly meant something idiomatic, although it wasn't at all clear to me what that meaning was. However, since the expression was nautical in origin and popped up in 19th century writings,  I really wanted to use it in my book. But first, I had to track down the meaning!

According to an article about nautical language on the Scarborough Maritime Heritage Center website, a hawse-pipe is a pipe in the ship's bow for the anchor cable to run through. The entry continues, "Anybody who has risen to Captain from lowly deckhand is said to have come up through the hawse-pipe." A page on the USS Constitution Museum site also provides the same definition :

... A person makes officer by "coming up through the hawse hole (or pipe)". Meaning, that person rose through the ranks from the lowest rating as an enlisted individual to that of a commissioned officer.

If you want more information about hawse holes (or pipes) and the restoration of the USS Constitution (aka "Old Ironsides"), please check out the whole article.

And with that, it's time for me to set sail, er, that is, hop a flight and head north to Seattle!

There's a hawse-pipe there, somewhere...
Portrait (circa 1895) of the full-rigged ship Canada, painted by Antonio Jacobsen (1850-1921). Portrait is part of the collection of the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, Halifax, Nova Scotia, accession number M96.43.369. Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain.

Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Catch as catch can

 When catch as catch can crossed my mind the other day, I stopped and pondered. I knew the definition of this phrase—hit or miss, or (as Merriam-Webster says) "using any available means or method"—but had no idea of the origin. 

And what a strange phrase, right?

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M-W goes on to say that the first use of this phrase in the sense of "hit-or-miss" was 1833. Okay, but where did it even come from??

After some looking around online, I found this explanation on the site Writing Explained:

...This phrase comes from an old style of wrestling that allowed participants to use many moves not usually permitted in wrestling. For example, catch as catch can wrestlers may hold each other below the waist or even trip each other. Therefore, catch as catch can wrestlers take advantage of any opportunity afforded to them, including opportunities not usually use by other wrestlers. Likewise, when something is described as catch as catch can, it is done in a way that allows any advantage possible to be used.  

Writing Explained then pointed to a reference I have on my (physical, vs virtual) blookshelf: The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer. This dictionary defines the phase as "by whatever means or in any way possible," and dates it from the late 1300s... which is pretty darn early.

I was curious as to the wrestling connection, and found a site called Old School Grappling which on its The History of Catch Wrestling page includes the following: 

Catch-as-Catch-Can (or catch wrestling) although its true origins have been lost in history, is deeply rooted in Lancashire England and is considered the ancestor of modern professional wrestling and mixed martial arts competitions. In old Lancashire English catch-as-catch-can is translated to “catch me if you can.”

I have to say that when I'm "wrestling" with an issue and "grappling" for a solution, I can appreciate the mental hit-or-miss aspects of making a catch as catch can decision.

Sometimes deciding which way to turn is a catch as catch can conundrum.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: A day late and a dollar short

 Well, I'm more than a day late and a dollar short on this post, but thanks to Blogger I can pre-date this entry so it appears I put it up Wednesday, March 27. However, I will confess that, as I type this, it is much later in the week....

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A day late and a dollar short sounds like a lament that could have originated at any time in history that the word "dollar" was in use... maybe even in the 1800s. The Grammarist has a post on this idiom, and says (amongst other things):

...Originally, the phrase a day late and a dollar short most probably referred to not having enough money to avail oneself of something. The oldest known use of the phrase a day late and a dollar short in print was in 1939. The idiom was most certainly in common use before this, and probably has its roots in the general poverty common among most American citizens during the Great Depression. The idiom is very popular in the American South....

And, folks, that's about all I can find about this phrase (much to my surprise). I guess I will have to accept that although a day late and a dollar short might "fly" in fiction taking place in the 1920s, it wouldn't for anything set in the 19th century.

Darn it.

Wiktionary definition of a day late and a dollar short:
"Too late and too feeble to achieve the desired effect."
 Image by heeyeon Sun from Pixabay