Farewell to Moristotle & Co.

By Paul Clark
(aka motomynd)

It seems fitting that my internet went out as I was attempting to write this. I was drawn into the Moristotle family by accident, spent most of my time wondering if I fit in as anything more than the proverbial red-headed stepchild, and now an accident was preventing my properly saying goodbye.
    Over the years, Moristotle has become an amazing literary amalgamation that I hope somehow survives and evolves and gains more respect even as you, Morris, move on to other uses of your time. When I was allegedly gainfully employed in the magazine industry, I worked with various publishing houses across the country, but I never knew a group with more talent spread across a wider array of interests and perspectives than I came to know at Moristotle. I hope that you, Morris, and everyone involved, take great pride in what you have been part of.

Parting Words from Moristotle

Portrait of Moristotle
by Susan C. Price

By Moristotle

Why am I retiring from blogging? For a long time, I have known my sun was slowly setting, but it seems now to be sinking fast, as memory and memories fade. Some mornings even my fingers can’t remember what was the best way I’ve yet found to hold the coffee grinder to brush out the shards of bean.
    But the existing content will still be here, and more posts are already scheduled for August – a few more statements of farewell (suggested by Maik Strosahl, to whom I’m indebted for the idea), a “Father’s Art” column by André Duvall, and poems by Maik, Michael H. Brownstein, and Eric Meub, whose sonnet “Afterlife” will appear last because its title rather caps my going off.

From Rus in Urbe Backyard Buck: On Coyote Patrol

By Paul Clark (aka motomynd)

[Columnist Paul Clark fashioned Rus in Urbe: Country in the City from his family’s one-acre suburban lawn, turning it into a wilderness retreat for them and their neighboring wild creatures.]

At our place in Virginia, our backyard deer have their fawns the last two weeks of May. Not coincidentally, our ever-present but seldom seen coyotes show up in greater numbers the first two weeks of May.

At Random: In Defense of Worrying

By Paul Clark
(aka motomynd)

Worry is thought by some to be avoided, an unhealthy stress. But I consider worrying and plain old thinking to be basically interchangeable terms. In most cases, thinking instead of ignoring is the first step toward taking action, and worrying is second-level thinking, taking a further step toward action.
    I find the more I worry about something instead of “just thinking” about it, the more likely I am to do whatever I can to help whatever cause.
    For example, in the case of worrying about people in this country who are likely to attempt an autocratic takeover, DeSantis and Trump top my list. What I’m doing about this might be the subject of another column. Or not.

Copyright © 2023 by Paul Clark

[Before] Acting Citizen: Our need for centripetal force

When Acting Citizen
Was Loneliest Liberal

By James Knudsen

[Acting Citizen’s Fourth Saturday column appeared here originally 10 years ago today, as “Fourth Saturday’s Loneliest Liberal: Our need for centripetal force.” It was great then, and it may be even better today. Plus, 15 thoughtful comments ensued over the course of the following few days – comments thoughtful then, and still relevant.]

It’s late and I’m facing a deadline. I can’t blame writer’s block, I don’t lack for ideas. If anything, I feel like John Travolta in Phenomenon where his character has so many ideas that picking one is the problem. For instance, I think I know the cause of many of our problems with guns. Or how ’bout this one—a compare and contrast of the artistic model versus the capitalistic model? As a last resort I could just go on an extended rant, like the one I posted on Facebook last night, regarding the mendacity of conservative opinion makers of the lower biological orders. Or motomynd’s taste in cars...too easy.

Return of the Cheshire Cat? (a short story)

By Paul Clark (aka motomynd)

[Note: There’s a postscript at the bottom about the real cat.]

Chainsaw in hand, he eyed the fallen tree and wondered if he should tackle it first, or the one next to it that was leaning but had not yet toppled. Another storm, another downed tree. The joy of owning a wooded property.

At Random: A Reply to Acting Citizen’s Defense of FWD

By Paul Clark
(aka motomynd)

James, what a fabulous and informative article (“Old Enough to Understand,” November 26). I had no idea about the history of FWD. After reading your historical account, and having driven a few FWD vehicles, I’m not at all surprised the first attempt at FWD was slow and clumsy and ended in disaster. If only humanity had the wisdom to abandon the sordid concept, then and there, instead of resurrecting it and foisting it on unenlightened and unsuspecting drivers of the 20^th and 21^st centuries. Not that the original Austin Mini wasn’t cute and charming, and a thrilling and fairly safe car to drive—at golf cart speeds.

Acting Citizen: Old Enough to Understand

FWD
(front wheel drive)

By James Knudsen

In his September column, “At Random: Things I Will Never Be Old Enough to Understand,” Paul Clark (aka motomynd), chronicled some things he doesn’t like or just doesn’t get. Front wheel drive (FWD) made the list, and from his column it seems to fall in the category of something he doesn’t like. As the son of an early adopter of the FWD train layout (see my “Fourth Saturday’s Loneliest Liberal: About the Panhard,” November 2014), I found this troubling to the point of offensive, and so, today’s defense.

At Random: Things I Will Never Be Old Enough to Understand

By Paul Clark
(aka motomynd)

Tailgating

Other than driving the wrong way on an interstate, tailgating is probably the most dangerous move a driver can make. Yet, if anything rivals the American obsession with sports in general, and football in particular, it’s tailgating. Let’s lay our lives on the line to get there one car length faster: good logic.

Coyote v. Groundhog

Graphic violence warning:
A groundhog was hurt during the filming

By Paul Clark (aka motomynd)

We live in the city but have wooded acreage around us. In recent years we have occasionally seen and heard coyotes, but this is the first photo/video proof we have of them. The video was captured by our Ring “pond cam,” which is aimed at a small pond I dug nearly 20 years ago and lined with a scrap piece of rubber roofing.

Story Challenge #2

Featuring
an unnamed character in first person

By Moristotle

Thanks to Contributing Editor Paul Clark (aka motomynd) for today’s challenging beginning.

How can we grow our readership?

Our writers 

deserve more

By Moristotle

My leading question is addressed to anyone and everyone who is reading this. The writers of Moristotle & Co. provide valuable content, and they express it artfully. I believe the subtitle states a truth: Our writers deserve more [readers].

    The fairly small readership we have so far been able to furnish them is worrisome, a burden to me to contemplate. That’s my immediate prompt for issuing this appeal for help in increasing our readership. I want Moristotle & Co. to reach a wider audience for our writers. Help me find ways to do that.

Mind’s Eye (a poem)

“The Mind’s Eye,” watercolor
by Jennifer Wigg

By Paul Clark (aka motomynd)

When he fell in love with her,
she had her father’s mind,
and her mother’s glamour.

Her mother had the mind of a model,

a cynical wit cloaked by a cackling laugh,

and a body that made all forgivable.

Quantity of life, or quality?

By motomynd [aka Paul Clark]

[I published “the timely communique below” 11 years ago, on March 15, 2011 – before “Moristotle” became “Moristotle & Co.” It’s published again today to celebrate the author’s answer to his opening question, and to recognize again the part he played in “& Co.” being added.]

Original note: [The timely communique below comes from a mystery friend who calls himself “motomynd.” Anyone who can write this well and significantly can find a receptive editorial staff here any time.]

Your intriguing posts about the conundrum of leap-year birthdates, and your follow-up about tiredness, motivated me to question why we even bother to measure life in years.

At Random: Tonga and the Gaia Hypothesis

By Paul Clark
(aka motomynd)

Listening to a BBC radio newscast about Tonga this morning, it occurred to me that maybe there is something to the Gaia Hypothesis after all, and its forces might be in play.
    While the rest of the world has been plagued by the pandemic for more than two years, Tonga has so far had only one Covid case. Isolation obviously has its advantages. Tonga’s luck ran out on another front, however. A massive volcanic eruption [“2022 Hunga Tonga eruption and tsunami”], described as a blast larger than an atomic bomb, spawned a tsunami that created great destruction. The extent of the damage is not yet fully known because of a damaged undersea cable, but relief efforts were launched.

At Random: How Government Works

By Paul Clark
(aka motomynd)

A snowstorm may cover all, but it doesn’t hide the truth.
    I grew up on a ¼-mile dead end street with a cul-de-sac at the end that was approximately 40 yards in diameter. The street was bordered by 16 featureless brick houses built in 1958, all set to the front of ¼-acre featureless lawns. Our house, the 17th house on the street, was built in the 1850s – or maybe built in the 1700s and added to in the 1850s, depending on which rudimentary notes you choose to believe from that era. It sat off the street, on a partially wooded two-acre remnant of what was once a farm of several hundred acres.

Want to Know Who Set the Tablefor the Big Lie?

Go Look in a Mirror

By Paul Clark
(aka motomynd)

Even though I’m 67 years old, fairly world-wise and extremely well-traveled, it wasn’t until five years ago – when my son was almost two years old – that I fully realized that a shocking number of people are innately and almost maniacally dishonest. I had always noted that many people – including “good” people, and definitely not just “bad” people – routinely used exaggeration, partials truths and “white” lies in their normal conversation with me, but it wasn’t until I saw them blatantly lying to my toddler-age son that the point hit home.

January 11: Maybe Something to That Astrology Stuff After All?

By Paul Clark
(aka motomynd)

Zodiac. Astrology. Palm readers. Fortune cookies. Horoscope. They all go together. When I was growing up, our local paper printed the daily horoscope right next to the comics. That made the point, said all that needed to be said.
    At least that’s what I thought, until my son was about 14 months old. He was always precocious – took his first step a week before his seventh month birthday, insisted on walking into his 12-month doctor’s appointment on his own, “hands off dad, I got this!” – but shortly after he turned a year old, he began to outdo himself.

At Random: A Man Walked into a Convenience Store

A dispatch from 

the land of :

“Hell yeah! 

We know how 

to do stupid!”

By Paul Clark
(aka motomynd)

Over the years I’ve been called out by various Moristotle readers and writers because the stories I claim as factual accounts sometimes seem so far-fetched, people assume I must be embellishing, à la Hunter Thompson…or Fox “News.” When I try to explain that these stories are simply examples of the idiocy that swirled around me as I grew up in Southwest Virginia, and that I rediscovered when I moved back from the Northern Virginia/Washington DC area to SWVA, few seem to believe me.
    “How could such stupidity and absurdity possibly be real?” people ask.

Ray Just Being Ray (a poem)

By Paul Clark (aka motomynd)

He stands on his back porch and stares,

crosses his arms, flexes his forearms, glares,

he shoots a finger, just before he turns away,

yet another day of Ray just being Ray.