BODY COUNT: Killers (a novel): Chapter 37. Wayne and the Klan

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Wayne pulled out of the Kroger parking lot and took a left at the corner. He crossed over the railroad tracks and went from the white world into the black. Other than the older buildings, the most noticeable thing was the roadway. It went from being well maintained to being full of potholes, and some side streets were still gravel. Wayne felt as though he had stepped back in time – nothing had changed in that part of town since 1950. He had stopped at a church in this part of town earlier and spoken to a number of people on the street. He had been told that the Short Rib Café was the place to go. It was the heart of the community. It was sort of his last hope.

All Over the Place: Needles on the Sidewalk

From My Teaching Book

By Michael H. Brownstein

This was published in Education Week on March 1, 1990, back when I ran an afterschool program called “The Reading and Math Program” (RAMP). Every student came from the Chicago Housing Authority.


“We can’t take them,” one of the boys told me. “We don’t have room.”
    Another child said, “My mother told me books aren’t allowed in the house.”

Save the text of a comment before you try to post it!

...in case there’s a problem

By Moristotle

A reader emailed me this morning, “I wrote a comment on...and hit preview, and my comment vanished!” And his wasn’t the only such email.
    In fact, I had a few minutes of very unusual activity surrounding my own initial attempts at commenting this morning. (Blogspot is only human.) But everything cleared up shortly and I was soon back in business, posting comments again with no problem at all. I didn’t even have to re-enter the initial comment, because I had saved it to the pasteboard before I clicked to preview.
    Always save the text of a comment to the pasteboard before clicking to preview or publish. And do it when commenting on other websites as well. It’s easy to do (especially after developing the habit), and it will save you from frustration and rework.

Copyright © 2021 by Moristotle

Missionary Kid: Majestic Mt. Everest

By Vic Midyett

Recently someone sent me a group of pictures of which one was of the highest mountain in the world, Mt. Everest. It reminded me of my semi-personal experience with its magnificence – a memory from when I was 6 or 7 years old that I have never written about.
    I was born and lived in the State of Assam, India, as it was called then. It is now Bangladesh. We had no electricity or running water. Water came from a well that was brought into our home in buckets. We did, however, have a refrigerator, which ran on kerosene. With no electricity we didn’t even have a fan.

The Old Songs (a poem)

By Shirley Skufca Hickman

They wiped their feet politely,
Knocked at Ellis Island,
And came to find America
Singing the old songs in their fear.

Men packed into black trains
Like fat sausages rode
To Colorado mining towns
Singing the old songs on their way.

BODY COUNT: Killers (a novel): Chapter 36. Rainbow and the Klan

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Kirk Johnson was a big man. He wasn’t just tall at 6'-2" but also broad across the shoulders and chest. His family had been in the lumber business since the first Johnson set foot in Morgan County in 1832. The first Johnson, Hugh Johnson, ran the sawmill with slaves and supplied the South with railroad ties during the North’s invasion. After the war, Hugh Johnson’s son, Herman Johnson, helped form the Morgan County Ku Klux Klan and they hanged three of Grandpa Herman’s slaves from the tree at the entrance to the mill. The slaves had thought they were free and started their own logging business. It was the first and last black-owned business for 100 years.

Highways and Byways: The Woodline

By Maik Strosahl

The recent coup in Myanmar brought to mind my Burmese coworkers from my days in an Amazon warehouse. Many of them had escaped the constant wars and religious persecution in the Chin province. When I was working on an ekphrastic project and looking for inspirational photos, one friend shared two watercolors painted by Chin refuges. I found them haunting and, after some research, the words quickly flowed. Here is the first of those, along with the painting that inspired it.

By Lian Tuang

Boldt Words & Images: Back to Work

By Bob Boldt

“Smartassed kid,”
the foreman grumbled,
throwing his cards down
on the worn, wood plank

Outside the wagon window,
a cloud broken sun awoke
from the rain. A clatter of spades
announced our return to the ditch.

BODY COUNT: Killers (a novel): Chapter 35. Career Decisions

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Once back in Memphis, Blake was on the telephone all morning setting up a retreat location for Shelley. He was kicking himself for not sending her to one after the Betty Walker shooting. He had watched her closely on the trip back from Seattle and noticed some classic signs of PTSD. He wondered whether the signs had been there all along and he had missed them.
    He reached out to some of his friends from the past and was told of a ranch buried deep in the Smoky Mountains whose specialty was treating people suffering from PTSD. They could have a room waiting for her.

All Over the Place: For the Hope and the Need

By Michael H. Brownstein

–For Tika

No one wants to read a poem about dead pets,

a dog scratching its way to a fresh dug hole,

its throat punctured, its heart and thorax crushed.

No one knows why the magic leaves the mind,

why words stop forming to end a rhyme,

how images fade into cloud-work and night skies.

Acting Citizen: All Night Long Radio

By James Knudsen

“Hello?” I muttered into the telephone receiver. My voice sounded like I had just woken up, because I had. I had just woken up because it was the middle of the night.
    “Could ya turn down the radio?” the voice on the other end implored.
    “Of course.” There was no reply, just click.

Adventures in Greece: Part 2 [Final]

Edda Hofer & Ed Rogers
around 1976

Diving and More

By Ed Rogers

Back in Athens, we took a room in a hotel, and I placed the vase on the window ledge along with the clothes that had been close to it. Later we bought a small plastic bag to slide the vase into.
    We called the couple we had met on Hydra and made a date to go out for dinner with them. They said they would take us to a Greek restaurant called a bouzouki. We met them at 10 that night. They explained that Greek people go to work in the morning and close at noon and reopen at four in the afternoon; therefore, they eat late at night. It was a very large restaurant, with a roof that opened. We watched the moon set and the sun rise overhead. Before the war, singers in a bouzouki had been paid by the number of plates that were broken. If the singer moved me to stand and dance, whoever was at the table with me had to break the plates we had eaten off of. At this place, you could buy a stack of plates but were not allowed to break the ones on your table.

BODY COUNT: Killers (a novel): Chapter 34. Evergreen Park

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Shelley knocked on Bobby’s door at 8:00 Monday morning. Getting no answer, she went to the lobby. The night desk clerk was filling out his paperwork, getting ready to go off duty. “Excuse me, I’m looking for my partner. We checked in Friday night. He was in room 346 and I was in 348.”
    The clerk looked at his call sheet. “Yes, here it is. He had a 6 a.m. wake-up call. At 6:15 he showed up here dressed in running attire.”
    Shelley’s alarm bells went off – too much time had gone by since 6:15. She rotated the call sheet and noted that two others also had a 6 a.m. wake-up. “So, you haven’t seen him since he left for his run?”

Highways and Byways: Equilibrium

By Maik Strosahl

A friend of mine passed recently after a long battle with Pancreatic Cancer. I met her in the 8th grade, but we really hadn’t been in contact since graduation until after our 30-year graduating class reunion.
    I had a dream about a year ago that I was there when she passed. It troubled me for hours until she posted something on Facebook and I knew she was still there. I wrote this poem on the truck while waiting for some proof of life from my friend.
    I know her pain has ended. I know her struggle has been a hard one, but her smile and laughter and the way she tried to be positive throughout the whole ordeal have been an inspiration for all who knew her.
    We will all miss you, Velvet. Thank you for your strength, your presence, your friendship.

Adventures in Greece: Part 1 of 2

Edda Hofer & Ed Rogers
around 1976

From Salzburg to Greece

By Ed Rogers

Around 1976, my soon-to-be-wife (Edda Hofer) and I took a trip to Europe. Edda came from a very old family in Salzburg, Austria, which even has a statue of her great-great-great grandfather in its town square. Her mother, who was a twin, married a doctor who had been a member of the SS [the Schutzstaffel, a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler] during the Second World War.