A few more letters and...

...you're in California.

From time to time I receive sweepstakes offers through the mail, and regard them with some suspicion since small-company capital reserves can be targeted by insistent anti-capitalism foes asserting 'freedom of speech' and therefore "funds" are redirected and released as potential sweepstakes winnings instead.

A portion of the sweepstakes mail comes now routinely from Hicksville, NY -- a name new to the mapping industry and somewhat perilously close to the name 'Hinckley' in spelling. Most recently, a by-mail form was sent in to acknowledge a $25,000 giveaway conducted by Liberty Cash Awards, with sponsor listed as 'Belmo Sales' on Cantiague Road.

The name 'Belmo' can be found at both http://www.barnesandnoble.com/ and http://www.amazon.com/, with some Internet keyword help, as the nom de plume of an author of some rock-and-roll paperbacks. 'Belmo Sales' is also listed with a link to a New York daily newspaper with an article that describes a court action against the company in 1995 as a result from its giveaways.

That some populations cling to the 'Belmo' tag as a possible linguistic doorway to balmy coastal northern California is probable. The actual company name is now Modern Handbag and Novelty Company, Incorporated, changed from Modern Leather Novelty Company; 'Belmo Sales' appears to demonstrate a wish to distribute royalty payments in particular ways and/or to continue authorship endeavors and maybe award winnings so as unload Belmo books in a predictable and orderly way such as textbook re-designation.

Logically, perhaps we are all really wanted to support a demand to order Belmo into the penitentiary system so as to author a book about John Hinckley who shot at a Presidential version of performer John Lennon, as a hoped-for "Why don't you..." kind of response to the mailings. Such a scenario would require that Belmo be granted access to the prison and prisoner to conduct an interview with Hinckley and also schedule interviews with fellow prisoners and others outside the prison setting. Belmo is perhaps pressed to provide legal fees for Hinckley that might secure his release after personal testimony, as a measure of good faith that authored books demonstrate a real interest in music discipline.

Amazon Books offers three Internet reviews of Belmo books that describe them in unprofessional terms, which means that Belmo quite probably has been selected solely as a use of the mental association with the name 'Belmont' -- perhaps even as an allusion to eroding shorelines which should be documented within some kind of scholarly compilation. Why Belmo is instead engaged with a company giveaway operation is anyone's guess, other than the fact that some of us receiving the sweepstakes literature want funds to support our own literary efforts.

That aging lighthouses have been restored is celebrated; that aging bells rust freely in the elements in various places as possible respectable future restoration work is quite possibly another reason why the Belmo tag is again handed into mailboxes.

{See www.edward.de.leau.net/who-killed-John-Lennon-20081228.html.}