That’s me on the left, aggressively continuing
cross examination of a witness during
a break for lunch at
The Strange Uncharted Mountains Cafe.
Marshall Artz, Attorney at Law
Aggressive Representation to Get You
What You May or May Not Deserve.
“We never let up, we never give up.
And we pull no punches!”
Res Ipse Dixie!
(🤫 Pssst…Hey reader–The above ad was created by Dave, included here just as a teaser to introduce you…🧠)
Dave, my late husband of 38 years, is one of the most creative people I’ve ever encountered. A voracious reader, he became well known for his geopolitical expertise, teaching at a private high school for many years. It seemed he was everyone’s favorite teacher, full of knowledge and stories and jokes that oozed from his pores.
While teaching, Dave devoted his summers to collecting research, doing a little writing, and developing this fictitious world of Nibbling, MN and its cast of characters, as a setting to communicate his ideas. He was excellent at research, something he had excelled at in law school several years before choosing the teaching path.
He began developing ads, some of which you see on this site, using public domain photographs, mostly ancient.
Then came the year he discovered Robert McKee. Everything became about Story—his own life, nations, history, current events, and the Bible, which he loved.
As he read McKee, he began to see how beautifully McKee’s criteria for what makes a story sublime fit with the story in the Bible. Then began a new arduous task of evaluating the story in the Bible through the eight stages of story as outlined by McKee. He gathered quote upon quote and strung them together into the outline you see on this site.
It was about this time that we began noticing a strange cluster of symptoms – his speech became progressively slurred, his lips couldn’t perform the task of keeping his prolific production of saliva in his mouth, occasionally, embarrassingly, dribbling down his chin. He began to stumble frequently; he dropped things constantly. We had to stop talking on our daily walks, as it eventually became all he could do to concentrate on putting one foot in front of another. And when he began staggering off the sidewalk and into the grass, we gave up walking together.
Several months later came a nasty fall, one that broke a rib or two. The pain drove him to visit a doctor, something he loathed to do. After a quick referral to a neurologist (just the place we needed to go), we took further tests. Then, Dave’s neurologist, out of the goodness of his heart, gave us his lunch hour to deliver our expected, but dreaded diagnosis—Dave had Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) or Lou Gehrig’s Disease.
The day we received that news was a brilliantly sunny day, just a few days before Thanksgiving. As I wheeled him out to our handicapped van, the reality of our situation filtered into our heads and hearts, and he began to weep. I’m talking Pseudobulbar1 weeping, a syndrome Dave had in spades. When he recovered enough to speak, I asked him what was on his heart. His hoarse voice, powered by feckless lungs grated out the words, “I’ll never finish the work!”
He was right. It was a couple of months later that he lost his ability to speak intelligibly, and only a month after this his fingers wouldn’t obey his brain and he lost the ability to type. For a time, he managed by pecking the desired keys using his forefinger of his right hand, supported at the wrist with his left hand…one key at a time. But soon, he couldn’t type at all.
He succumbed to the disease about 7 months after the diagnosis, unable to swallow, then unable to breathe.
It has taken me a few years, but now, here I am, pulled up to the table set with a feast—Nibbling, the characters, and all the research. It was Dave’s desire to present this material in the creative format of this fictitious world, using his cast of characters.
The ads I’ve used are all but exactly as he created them. I had to cut several of his characters as well as create and add a couple of characters of my own to his cast—Rosetta and Logan, and I had to add a place—Nibbling County Community College, to make the story work. Otherwise, it’s all his brainchild.
When he died, this little slice of Dave’s research was mostly a collection of quotes with very little writing. It has been my challenge to follow his quote strings to discover his line of reasoning and add Hector’s voice to draw it together. I recognize the material is woefully underdeveloped.
Yet, it is still my profound pleasure to see this small portion of Dave’s work launched in publication. Nibbling and her endearing characters finally came to life, seeing the light of day! And at least this small portion of his work, while not finished, is available to those that find it interesting. Dave would be thrilled.
I hope you enjoy this strange website, so dear to my heart.
- Pseudobulbar syndrome (more commonly called pseudobulbar affect or PBA) is a neurological condition sometimes experienced by people with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis in which a person has sudden, involuntary episodes of laughing or crying that may not match—or may greatly exceed—their actual emotions. It is caused by damage to brain pathways involved in emotional expression. ↩︎
Welcome to Nibbling 