Goines On: 60 by ’60

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Out of the smudgy dark of a sleepless hour of Goines’ night emerged the memory that he had graduated from high school in 1960, and in a relatively lucid moment he realized that the year 2020 offered a unique opportunity to pun “60 by ’60.”
    Yes, 60 years – so many! – had gone by since he was 17 years old and eager to undertake the future....And now, in the life that remained, still these occasional moments of cunning pleasure.

Copyright © 2020 by Moristotle

BODY COUNT: Killers (a novel): Chapter 4. The Operation

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Captain Lenders was notified of Blake’s transfer and Blake spent the rest of the day at the Federal Building having his picture and fingerprints taken for his new identification. He filled out one form after another, guided through the maze by June, as Mrs. Warner now wanted him to call her. The whole process took three hours, after which June gave him her card and told him to go to any A.P.S. gate off Airways Boulevard across from the airport and they would contact a driver to escort him to the building he and his team would work in.

All Over the Place: Nine Ways to View a Bully

By Michael H. Brownstein

1
It is our nature to stop and view the lightning.

2
Stones, too, can be named.

3
The biggest mouth belongs to a fish.

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By Moristotle

It recently came to our attention that some of our followers’ subscriptions to Moristotle & Co. have been interrupted, in addition to our own! That is, they (and we) stopped receiving email notifications of Moristotle & Co.’s posts. And, ironically, anyone who follows us only by way of the notifications won’t see this post either ...unless they have gone to the “Subscribe to Moristotle & Co. via FeedBurner” field at the top of the sidebar and submitted their email address (we have done so ourselves). If you know of anyone who needs to learn this, please be so kind as to tell them.

Acting Citizen: Hope eternally springs

By James Knudsen

2020, or is it Twenty-twenty? 20/20? Anyway, it’s been an absolute excrement-extravaganza. However, contrarian that I am, I would rather shine a light than hurl curses into the darkness. For all the tragedy, suffering, and pandering political advertising this year has brought, I want to believe that some positive things have emerged.
    I still can’t get my brain to work the way the brain of someone who still supports President Trump works, so the silver linings I identify apply to those on the left side of the political spectrum. And, given that these apply, for the most part, to people who identify as Democrats and, more specifically, the Democratic Party, I must acknowledge that any lessons learned will likely be forgotten after a few campaign cycles, and the nation will be trying, desperately, to vote President Glenn Beck out of office. Still, hope springs eternal—

Goines On: Free offer for Trump supporters

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During a spell of malaise two weeks before the U.S. election, Goines found himself bemused by the surfeit of yard and roadside campaign posters. While he was developing an intense dislike for campaigning – all the lies, the vicious attacks, the distraction from trying to save life on Earth from the coming climate cataclysm – he did feel encouraged by the energy that people were injecting into the activity. Why couldn’t he inject a little into it?
    Okay, then. Goines thought of a variation for the Trump/Pence signs he was seeing. He logged onto his computer, found a useful example of the sign from among the plethora on offer on the internet, downloaded it, and opened it in Photoshop. Voilà! In a few minutes he had it.

BODY COUNT: Killers (a novel): Chapter 3. The Proposal

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Blake decided there wasn’t anything he needed to do at the office that couldn’t be done on his computer at home, so as he turned onto I-240 he called dispatch to inform them he was 10-10 and heading home.
    The meaning of the word “home” had changed twice for Blake after he and Beth started out in a big, 3-bedroom house off Poplar in East Memphis. That had been a nice house and easy for both of them to get to work from – three blocks from the bank where Beth worked in the finance department, and, after Blake made sergeant and no longer had to answer roll calls, all he needed to do in the mornings was call dispatch.

A Poem for Roy Dean

By Maik Strosahl

“You know, you may be right, Roy Dean.
I watched that. In fact, that was a damn
bit of poetry, that was.”
—From the movie Pastime

He’s been there,
had his cup of coffee,
put two pitches by The Man.
His next was sent soaring
to a great roar in St. Louis,
and no sooner,
his cup dry,
he was sent back to the farm,
thirsting for another taste.

Penny for Her Thoughts: Life with Hair

By Penelope Griffiths

So let me start by saying I am not a vain woman! However, I do have standards, but the last seven months have taught me that they’re not that high!
    I have had many hairstyles and hair lengths through my life. As a child my mother would cut my hair “bowl” shape. From small child to teen, I was mid brown colour but going blondish through the summer. At several points through my early days my mother would perm my hair; I had an “afro” before they became fashionable!

BODY COUNT: Killers (a novel): Chapter 2. June Warner

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Blake walked out into the warm sun and took a deep breath of air. He couldn’t understand how a person could be trapped in a job smelling that shit all day. He hit the button on his ignition key and heard the click of the doors unlocking on his Jeep.
    Back at the office, Blake placed calls to the captains in Germantown and Bartlett. He didn’t get to speak to either one of them but left a message for them to call him back. He kept busy the next few days with normal paperwork and cleaning up reports before he retired. The time passed faster than he had expected. A week had gone by without his hearing from either of the captains.

All Over the Place: The New Christianity

By Michael H. Brownstein











Everyone tried to take the staple out
after the list of lies became weeds –
the first a mistake,
the second an error in judgment,
but the third, fourth, hundredth, twenty
thousandth – a brick thrown through a window,
glass shattering into a void of intelligence.

Three Years Ago Today: Diddling

Edited by Moristotle

[Selected correspondence originally published on October 17, 2017.]

[Items of correspondence are not attributed; they remain anonymous. They have been chosen for their inherent interest as journalism, story, or provocative opinion, which may or may not be shared by the editor or other members of the staff of Moristotle & Co.]

Harvey Weinstein’s being thrown out of the Motion Picture Academy is like they’re overdoing it because nothing was done about Donald Trump. At least Weinstein was good at his job. “Right and Left React to Harvey Weinstein Reports” [Anna Dubenko, NY Times, October 13]. Excerpt:

BODY COUNT: Killers (a novel): Chapter 1. June Killer

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[Editor’s Note: A list of the novel’s Core Characters, along with its Prologue, appeared yesterday, following the announcment of the book publication of the final novel in the BODY COUNT series.]

Blake Harris turned 50 years old that May. He would complete his thirty years with the Memphis Police Department in four months and was looking forward to fishing and drinking beer all day. That was before a murder case crossed his desk that would change his life forever.

Final BODY COUNT novel in edRogers’ series now available

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By Moristotle

BODY COUNT: High-Heels was published this week on Amazon. It is the sequel to BODY COUNT: Killers, and BODY COUNT: Roatán. The series follows the exploits of a team of men and women dedicated to the task of uncovering and bringing down serial killers. All three titles are available in both electronic and paperback format.

Interview: Maik Strosahl, poet, encourager...

...trucker?
Interviewed by Moristotle

Maik Strosahl’s exquisite first poem on Moristotle & Co. appeared here a week ago today, and the second was scheduled for today...until I suggested that we have an interview instead, because I just had to get to know more about the poet who wrote “Irises across the Floor.”
    My questions arose from a short bio Maik sent me and from a reading of his first post on a blog he started last month. My questions are in italics.

Three Years Ago Today: Malevolent or incognizant?

Edited by Moristotle

[Selected correspondence originally published on October 13, 2017.]

[Items of correspondence are not attributed; they remain anonymous. They have been chosen for their inherent interest as journalism, story, or provocative opinion, which may or may not be shared by the editor or other members of the staff of Moristotle & Co.]

Trump’s lack of self-awareness is, as ever, awe-inspiring. I hope he will soon be examined by a team of psychiatrists and their consensus report made public: “Trump rips the NFL for disrespecting the flag. Then he jokes about a military flag ceremony” [Patrick Martin, Washington Post, October 12]. Excerpt:

Shakespeare Again [Eight Years Ago in a Couple of Months]

James Knudsen interviewed about writing for Moristotle

Interviewed by Moristotle

[I’m running this first interview of James Knudsen today because of the happy circumstance that he lauded Shakespeare on Saturday, in a comment on a post by Paul Clark titled “Who identifies with fake stories, fake lives?” in which James said:

My own experience is with [theatrical fiction], “...whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as ’twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.”
    I am not nearly as skilled with the pen (quill) as William Shakespeare, and so my pitch to students in my Theatre Appreciation class each semester is, if I, or any other actor of the stage achieves any sort of success, it is when an audience member sees my performance, and quietly thinks, “That’s me. I’m not the only person in the world who thinks, or says, or does that. I am not alone.” To feel not alone, is to be less afraid. To be less afraid, is to live with the sense that there is something greater than ourselves, and we are better creatures for it.

    The original interview was published on December 12, 2012.]

We recently approached James Knudsen about writing a guest article for Moristotle, even possibly doing a regular feature for us. James is a stage actor well-versed in Shakespeare and a teacher of theater craft. Last year at our own high school reunion, which he and his sister attended with their father, who was a teacher of ours and is now an honorary member of our class, James mesmerized us by reciting as his parting gift Hamlet’s uncle Claudius’s attempt to assuage his guilt [Hamlet III, iii].

All Over the Place: How to Really Claim You Rescued a Dog

By Michael H. Brownstein

We rescued another dog yesterday. I don’t mean we went to the animal shelter and rescued a dog from there. That’s not rescuing a dog – that’s rescuing a dog from a rescuer who should know better (they run an animal shelter, after all). What I mean is we went somewhere that was very nice and picturesque – a beautiful lake within a very nice forest – and found an injured dog. The owner freed it from its 24-hour lockdown when we came upon it in its cage. This is where the dog had been staying 24 hours a day with almost no human contact, no treats, living outside – and where we live it does get cold in the winter and very hot in the summer.

Poetry & Portraits: Passover

Drawing by Susan C. Price

Passover
By Eric Meub

[Originally published on January 13, 2018]

A breakfast table mystery: I see
each section – Datebook, Sports, Society –
but not the front page. Mother starts to shrink
when asked about it, busy at the sink.

Who identifies with fake stories, fake lives?

By Paul Clark (aka motomynd)

[Publisher’s Note: Paul Clark’s reflections below were prompted by a conversation that developed after he remarked, “This virus has a wicked sense of humor – the preacher who proclaimed ‘God is greater than Covid-19,’ only to be killed within 30 days by Covid-19, and the ‘virus doubters’ who have been afflicted, like Boris Johnson and Trump. This virus is like that serial killer character you admire, not just killing to kill, but to have impact, to express wit – who was that character, the man who walked safely among hogs instead of being eaten by them?”

As the World Turns: Just Another Saturday Night South of the Border

By Ed Rogers

Back in 1959, when I was sixteen and newly released from the hospital after being shot through the mid-section with a forty-five, I was with four friends and we were on our way back from Boystown, which is outside of Matamoras, Mexico. About three blocks from the international bridge we had a flat and there was no air in the spare. It was decided that, because of my condition, I would stay with the car along with one other of our friends. The other two headed off with the spare toward the bridge and the 24-hour gas station there that, at one in the morning, was all that was open.

Irises across the Floor (a poem)

By Maik Strosahl

—inspired by the painting
“Towards One” by Lee Krasner

To my mother,
it was a “vahz,”
fine cut crystal,
heavy glass hoisted to the mantel.
To my father,
it was just another
goddamn vase,
and who would miss it
when it broke to carelessness,
shattering and
scattering the blossoms
gathered in the morning sun?

Review: David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet

Well into the sixth of Earth’s major extinction events, he believes it is still possible for mankind to save itself

By Moristotle

My wife and I watched Sir David Attenborough’s biography of his (and Earth’s) life yesterday afternoon. Attenborough is 94 years old, near the end of his own life. And much of Earth’s life is also near its end, including human life, if we don’t act quickly to halt the Earth’s sixth major extinction event in its last 2.5 billion years. (The fifth occurred about 66 million years ago, following the collision of a large asteroid or comet – 7 to 50 miles in diameter – with the Earth, which led to the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs.)

Dying by Living (a poem)

By Paul Clark (aka motomynd)












When I was young, running wild and maybe a bit too free,
I sometimes wondered what would be the death of me.
Such an uninteresting thought, the sordid slog to forty,
and a burning determination to not even try for fifty.

Would I die by accident,
on a Caribbean calypso-crazed sort of night,
a hapless target of some mysterious incident,
or the victim of an unwanted, pointless fight?

All Over the Place: Edgar Allan Poe and my classroom

By Michael H. Brownstein

We just finished reading Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories. They’re rich in vocabulary and detail. “Morella” really got my class excited. They didn’t understand how the coffin could be empty, but then they went through the story again and discovered the baby began to breathe after the mother died, why we need to explore the lives of others, and how insanity moves within us.

Goines On: Stand by for Halloween

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Goines’ went to sleep Thursday night with some lines of limerick about the end of Trump bouncing around in his head. Once or twice, while peeing, he toyed with the wording, but nothing was clicking.
    He was heartened, then, upon arising on Friday, when Mrs. Goines rushed back into the bedroom with her iPhone raised. “Look at this! Trump has contracted Covid-19!”
    Goines’ first thought was that he could comment on Moristotle’s “Four Years Ago Today” column – another malady:

Four Years Ago Today: Insanity & other maladies

Edited by Moristotle

[Selected correspondence originally published on October 2, 2016.]

We shouldn’t be focusing on and condemning Donald Trump. Sure, he’s a despicable man, out for himself and the public be damned, narcissistic, [racist,] misogynistic, bullying, fraudulent, a conman, inveterate liar, [cheat,] and fantasist. But he also appears to be clinically insane.

Goines On: Drinking the whole Kubuli

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Goines awoke in a sweat. He had just realized – or had he been informed, as in a dream? – that Roger Owens’ caution to readers about “any resemblance to any actual person, living, dead, or anywhere in between” is a sly reference to zombies. Goines saw this only after finishing his reading of the novel the night before.
    A literary friend of Goines who hobnobbed with creative writers such as Owens had told Goines that Owens envisioned the end of the novel even before he began putting it to words. So, naturally, Owens knew exactly what he meant by that “anywhere in between.” What a cunning, playful writer! Goines envied his literary friend’s acquaintance with such a writer. Maybe Goines could be introduced to him?

Goines On: The morning after

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Goines’ first impulse upon waking from a sleep whose soundness was only interrupted a few times by a need to urinate is to check for news of last night’s “debate,” but he successfully resists until after he has prepared Mrs. Goines’ fruit and their coffee.
    The news is that “debate” definitely needs to be put in quotation marks.

Goines On: The debate

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Goines has been trying for several days to decide whether or not to watch tonight’s debate between President Trump and Joe Biden. A friend he has been discussing the pros and cons of it with thinks it’s a waste of time if you already know who you’re going to vote for, and Goines does know that – in fact, Goines has already voted, and so has Mrs. Goines. Anything is a waste of time, the friend summarizes, that makes no difference to the outcome.

11 Years Ago Yesterday: Animating spirit, first cause

By Moristotle

[Originally published on September 27, 2009.]

A walk in the gentle woods of Hillsborough, North Carolina yesterday prompted me to revisit what it is about “God” that I don’t believe. Not the walk, actually, but the conversation with my good friend Ralph, with whom I walked and talked. Ralph said two things that gave me pause. The first was that he finds it impossible to deny that God exists. While he is as clear as I am that “the Christian God,” as he puts it, does not exist, he says that God as the animating spirit of the universe, its first cause, does necessarily exist.

All Over the Place: Monotony

By Michael H. Brownstein

Day by day
only we can put out fire.

Clouds hunger for companionship,
a stain of precipitation.

Time slows to a penny,
a tone in the hand

Copyright © 2020 by Michael H. Brownstein Michael H. Brownstein’s volumes of poetry, A Slipknot Into Somewhere Else and How Do We Create Love?, were published by Cholla Needles Press in 2018 & 2019, respectively.

Acting Citizen: Science shows...

It could still get worse

By James Knudsen

Let me be the first to admit the obvious: 2020 is not over yet, it could still get worse. And lately, I’ve been learning a lot about the ways it could get worse. My wife, Andra, likes to fall asleep to something soothing, like scientific shows playing softly on the television. A recent favorite is, “How the Universe Works.” A better title would be, “How the Universe Will Eventually Conspire to Incinerate Planet Earth to a Cinder.” That’s usually what the scientists explain will happen should the topic of that evening’s episode happen. Actually, I misspoke, when the topic of that evening’s episode happens. Because given enough millions or billions of years, all of these things are going to happen. Things like...

Father’s Art: Works of Billy Charles Duvall [6]

Detail of “Island Woman”

Two Paintings
and a Bonus

By André Duvall

As you may have gathered from the Father’s Art posts so far, Dad favors working with oil paint. “Island Woman” is one of the few cases in which he uses some acrylic, in order to give a flat, two-dimensional look to the black portion of the painting. He also chose to use the rough side of the Masonite to give it more of a canvas look and texture. “Island Woman” is Dad’s second open-frame painting, inspired by the use of black in his first one, which will be featured in a future post.

Mary’s Voice: Posthumously speaking 18

Detail: signature, year

On the occasion of her 95th birthday (tomorrow)

By Mary Alice Condley (1925-2007)

[Editor’s Note: I am grateful to Mary’s & my cousin Billy Charles Duvall, the son of our mother’s sister Florine, for his discovery of today’s painting, and to his son, André Duvall, for explaining its background in tomorrow’s installment of his Father’s Art column. Thank readers in advance for their 24 hours of patience!]

Goines On: Handiness

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On his morning walk, Goines encountered a neighbor’s pruned cypress tree lying across the sidewalk, entirely blocking it. With hardly a thought, he easily kneed it onto the strip of grass between the sidewalk and the curb.

Ten Years Ago Today: Sacrifice is for the little people

By Moristotle

[Originally published on September 22, 2010.]

“Anger is sweeping America,” wrote Paul Krugman in “The Angry Rich” on September 19 in The New York Times. “I’m talking about the rich,” he said.

11 Years Ago Yesterday: Things as they were

By Moristotle

[Originally published on September 20, 2009.]

This morning, in that box in the garage, I found the freshman paper of which Vendler’s review had reminded me [“Things as they are,” September 19, 2009]. It was about an inch down in the stack, titled simply “The Necessary Angel.” In the inch above it, I was astonished to find even some papers I’d written in high school. If I needed any documentary evidence that I really did take seriously “the world of the mind that began to be revealed to me in high school,” I’d say that I have found it – I mean more by the fact that I’ve kept the papers than by the fact that I wrote them, for presumably my classmates were writing papers too. But could they, too, today, lay their hands on them?

All Over the Place: Endurance

By Michael H. Brownstein

She tells me she can no longer abide her Agent Orange pain

sleeting into her,

staining her skin into angry insect bites.

It’s like going to a party where you do not belong,

she explains, hands cracked,

and there are so many people you never wanted to know.

11 Years Ago Today: Things as they are

By Moristotle

[Originally published on September 19, 2009.]

This week I was reminded by a review in a recent New York Times Book Review (August 23) that my freshman year in college I wrote a paper for Philosophy I on a book of essays titled The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the Imagination, by Wallace Stevens (1879-1955). The review, “The Plain Sense of Things,” by Helen Vendler, was of a book of Selected Poems of Stevens, edited by John N. Serio.

Now available as a whole: Drinking Kubulis at the Dead Cat Café

Click image to go to the novel

By Moristotle

We now fulfill our promise to publish the whole of Drinking Kubulis at the Dead Cat Café, which you can read in its entirety at your own pace in our Back Pages. The author plans to have it available by the end of the year in paperback and as an e-book, for sale on Amazon.

The Parting (a poem)

By Shirley Skufca Hickman

He hands me a form stating:

Permission to withdraw from English 1-A.

His hands are shaking,
and he tries to make a joke.
“I got caught in a draft.”

Dreams of day and night

Photo by Vic Midyett

By Moristotle

The first is a dream of night, real as real:
    Siegfried has returned from having left us,
    from being gone away,
    his nubby hair stiff in short sprigs
    because it is weeks past his last grooming.
    It feels so real on my imagined finger tips,
    stroking him as he sleeps on top of our covers,
    himself as real as a character in a drama,
    as real as the person he had been for us:
    daily, nightly, always, forever.

12 Years Ago Today: The wisdom to know the difference

By Moristotle

[Originally published on September 15, 2008, without an image.]

A cousin wrote me yesterday that she’d meant to call some of our relatives in Arkansas to see whether they were okay in the wake of Hurricane Ike, but that “like always” she’d put it off and not done so. I told her that either our relatives are okay or they aren’t, and there’s nothing we can do about it.
    Her reply surprised me:

Side Story: A return to Tadpole Creek

With apologies to the 1961 American
musical romantic drama directed by
Robert Wise & Jerome Robbins

Ed, Paul Clark’s “Philosophical Nightmare” about feral pigs prompted a suggestion that we might re-run your Tadpole Creek story “about the wild pigs in the bottom [you] had to pass through to get to the church on New Year’s Eve.” Thank you for generously reminding me what you say below. —Moristotle

Reply by Ed Rogers

All Over the Place: Ends

(After an Aztec myth)

By Michael H. Brownstein

They gave me five wives for a year

and asked me to walk to the stone knife.

I did this willingly, not like the tales of history,

but because I had to.
I was a god,
the closest one to the sun,
the owner of the heart that grows larger.
Without me the sun will stop in the sky.
I alone walk the steps.
I alone meet the knife.
I alone give my heart.
I am sun.

Copyright © 2020 by Michael H. Brownstein Michael H. Brownstein’s volumes of poetry, A Slipknot Into Somewhere Else and How Do We Create Love?, were published by Cholla Needles Press in 2018 & 2019, respectively.

Poetry & Portraits: Surprise Party

Drawing by Susan C. Price

Surprise Party
By Eric Meub

My current flame has given me a vase.
A vase. I spread a smile across my face
And gasp and gush about the thing too long:
It’s bright, exuberant, completely wrong.

Feral Pigs: A Philosophical Nightmare…

for a non-hunting animal rights advocate

Part Three

By Paul Clark (aka motomynd)

Taking up arms, or not, was now a serious moral dilemma. So…back to Google and YouTube to see how one might go about shooting a few pigs. After watching just a couple of video clips I realized it might be a good deal more exciting than I at first imagined:

14 Years Ago Today: “The American’s Creed”

Site of the speech, more than
half a century later

By Moristotle

[Originally published on September 10, 2006, without an image.]

This morning I came across the text of my eighth-grade graduation speech. Typed single-space on seventeen 3x5 cards, its opening paragraphs say that the graduating class has just recited “The American’s Creed,” written by William Tyler Page. [I later found out that Page wrote it in 1917 for a contest, which he won, in competition with over 3,000 other entrants.] The eighth-grader I was says he’s privileged to speak on the second of the creed’s two paragraphs: “I therefore believe it is my duty to my Country to love it; to support its Constitution; to obey its laws; to respect its Flag; and to defend it against all enemies.”

13 Years Ago Today: All in or All out

By Moristotle

[Originally published on September 9, 2007.]

I have talked approvingly of what I understood to be Søren Kierkegaard’s view, on the question of belief in God, that it was nobler (as well as more accurate) to hang with one hand from one ledge of the narrow chasm of religious belief and with the other hand from the opposite ledge than to transfer either hand to join the other on the same ledge. Hanging precariously from both ledges symbolized doubt. Kierkegaard thought doubt nobler because it consigned the doubter to the perpetual angst of his uncertainty whether to believe or not to believe, since, as a matter of accuracy, the person could not be objectively sure which belief was right.