On my way to watch my youngest niece in a gymnastics competition, I was talking with my mom on the phone. She asked me if I had gone to school with Forbes Smiley and I noted that I had. She asked if we were friends (which tells me volumes about what she remembers or knew or something about my life then) and I observe that we were not actively unfriendly - he did not torment me more than an average amount and was basically not unkind, mostly.
She asked if I knew what was going on with him - this struck me as odd, initially, but I presumed she meant something specific - and I did not know at all what was going on.
Forbes, it turns out, specializes in rare maps.
http://www.efsmaps.com/about.html is on his website, describing his business. This past June, he was arrested at Yale for stealing maps from antique books. (
http://www.yaledailynews.com/article.asp?AID=29520) He had, on his person $878,000 worth of maps, according to the reports. Some of it was caught on video tape (fiddling with the inside of his jacket, says the report, where later one particularly valuable map was found).
There is a string of such thefts that they are attempting to tie to him. I can't claim to be either shocked or not shocked - I did not know Forbes, as of 9th grade, nearly well enough to have an opinion on this. Nor do I have enough direct data to know if he is guilty or innocent, though (as the prosecution would wish it to be) the reported case against him at Yale sounds hard to void. (Knife, map in coat, video tape, etc.)
But my first reaction to all of this was:
How could he have destroyed those books?!![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
