First Monday with Characters

Edited by Morris Dean

Paul Clark, aka motomynd, in growing family in North Carolina

In a bit of news that may be every bit as petty as it sounds, I am very pleased to announce that not only did my step-daughter not yet dethrone me as fastest half-miler in the family, but I almost had to carry her back from a trail run because I goaded her into a speed workout on hills. Next month we go back to track workouts and I am doomed, but this month age and guile again trump youth and superior athleticism.
    Oh, we did have additions to the family: The resident white-tail does that hang out in our backyards in NC and VA both gave birth to fawns in June and paraded them out for formal introductions.

The Rogers, in growing family in Costa Rica

We now have an addition to our little family. We have been adopted by a black-and-white kitten. I was sitting on the front porch when she jumped into my lap and declared this her new home. I had not wanted a new pet. Our cat in the states died from the shots the vet gave him in order to bring him to CR. I had made up my mind that would be the last animal I would see die.
    My cat in the states would take your arm off if you tried to hold him. This one doesn't want to be put down. The two cats are like night and day. The good thing about my old cat was he could care less if you patted him or not. This one wants attention all the time.
    Had her fixed and she now has a hoody, which she hates. She is an outdoor, indoor cat; more indoor now that she is wearing a hoody—don't want some redneck shooting her, trying to stand his ground. Sorry, I had a flash-back, this is Costa Rica. The crazy gringos are only here during the dry season.

    On Friday, the wife went back to the States for 20 days. Should be able to get some writing done. Wives are wonderful and I love mine to death, but I do believe that they spend every waking hour thinking of things their husbands need to do. My list has turned into a Novel. I'm calling it “Are You Kidding Me?” That is just the working title; “Oh Crap” is right up there with it.
    Speaking of writing; has anyone else noticed how 99% of Action Adventure books now have women as the lead character? I wouldn't care so much, and I know they're fiction, but how do they get away with treating the reader like he/she is stupid? A 110-lb, fall-down, knockout blond, with a body to kill for, is not going to take out two or more 200-lb men. I don't care how many black belts she has. Being a leading character is one thing...being a kick-ass leading character, that is a whole different ball game. I'll drop this subject, before the hole gets too deep for me to crawl out of.
    That's about it, sunshine in the morning and rain in the afternoon. Pura Vida, Ed & Janie

James T. Carney, in arbitration

June seems to have been my month to serve as an arbitrator. I spent three days in Martinsburg, WVA serving on an arbitration panel that heard a dispute about the allocation of stalls at a racing track. A racing track has to have about 1,200 stalls because horses race only once a month. With that workload, I wouldn’t mind being reincarnated as a race horse. On the other hand, the retirement benefits are not good unless you like glue factories. So maybe I will stick to being an arbitrator. At least everyone has to laugh at my jokes.
    As I write this, I am about to head out to Gary, Indiana for an arbitration case dealing with the selection of an investment advisor for a multi-employer pension plan. The union and employer trustees have deadlocked over the question of whether or not the current investment advisor should be retained. This case could be considered sexy only if one thinks that money is sexy. Of course, all women do. One thing one learns being an arbitrator is that most arguments lawyers make are so flimsy they would be better off not making them. The depressing thing about this realization is that the same criticism could be made of many of the arguments I have made. (I hope not too many.)

Dawn Burke, in expectation of excitement

I'm a boring, do-nothing, go-nowhere type of character, so I am sorry but I really have no update that would interest anyone. I wish I had an exciting update but I don't get very far off the home place. I did see my Mum & Pa recently and they were good. Maybe more excitement will come into my life for the next update. Or I could imagine something that I wish would happen.

The Neumanns, in the Delta

We pineapple people had a fabulous June. The weather has been delightful for boating and we had a trip to Portland to see our oldest niece graduate from college.
    One boating trip of note in June, we visited Delta Yacht Club. Since 1941, this organization has leased a 36-acre island on the San Joaquin River from the City of Stockton. Prior to that the Island was used for recreation by troops returning from WWII. The Delta tends to be a bit rough around the edges but Delta Yacht Club isn't! Only a small section of the island is "developed" but that small section includes a solar-heated, in-ground pool and a pitch-and-putt golf course. Their docks also have 30-amp shore power. Many of the private islands on the Delta do not have power at all and some of the marinas only have 15 amp. So this is a big deal. We continue to discover more and more great places to visit.

Geoffrey Dean , in residence at the Killington Music Festival

André Duvall, in Memphis
    But not before being newly added to the list of our columnists [see sidebar].

Wednesday last week was my last day in Arkansas. The next night  I performed a solo concert in Memphis, then, yesterday, a solo/duo concert for the Mid South Food Bank, also in Memphis. Included were works by Debussy, Beethoven, Bach, and several fun patriotic medleys (including a transcription of a Sousa march for piano four hands).
    Today I'm off to Greensboro, where I'll be teaching at the UNCG Summer Music Camp for two weeks, followed by an intense week-long workshop for historical pianos (also in Greensboro) led by one of the leading fortepianists of our time, Malcolm Bilson. There will be several instruments in residence that week representing different periods in the history of the piano.

Jim Rix, into magical music

Abracadabra Tahoe! Mark Twain referred to Tahoe as “The fairest picture the earth affords.” Spanning two states, California and Nevada, Lake Tahoe is indeed a magical place to live. And believe it or not, the major casinos bring magic to the lake. No I’m not referring to razzle-dazzle bright lights, gaming, superb cuisine, night life etc. I’m referring to something more magical.
    Before I moved to Lake Tahoe 22 years ago, I would travel miles and miles to see rock 'n roll concerts. But now, thanks to casino magic, Rock 'n Roll routinely appears in my backyard. The summer concert series opened last Saturday night with The Steve Miller Band: “Abra-abracadabra I want to reach out and grab ya!” Over the years, to name a very few, I’ve seen: John Fogerty of Credence Clearwater Revival; Jackson Browne; Bob Dylan; Lynard Skynard; Bachman Turner Overdrive; Foreigner; Journey; Chicago; Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young; ELO; Steely Dan; The Moody Blues; and a most memorable performance by Elton John.

James Knudsen, in summer pause

Summer is officially here but it began for me a bit earlier. Four days of early June were spent at the Magic Kingdom. Then off to the Palm Springs area for a couple of days before returning home. Coast time awaits and then back to the classroom starting the second week of August. And now a request:
    I know that some of the contributors are quite computer savvy. But I am not. Please convey to those Mt. Dew-swilling, Funyun-munching, anti-social computer types that computer technology cannot be considered to have advanced to true user-friendliness until we have computers that are sensitive to the emotional state of the user. Specifically, we...I need a computer that responds to threats. Because I have screamed, “I'm going to fucking kill you!” at this thing and it keeps doing the same thing.
    Happy Summer to all!

Ralph Earle, lately in Wales

The photo is of me at Tinturn Abbey in Wales earlier this summer. It wasn't intended to be a literary vacation, but we kept crossing the pathways of Wordsworth, Dylan Thomas, Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, John Fowles, and even Geoffrey of Monmouth.

Here's a Wordsworthian Fourth of July poem for your readers' pleasure:

Lines composed a few feet above the lake in Duke Gardens
                  [Durham, North Carolina]

Fourth of July, exotic ducks beg us
for food, shaking their feathers,
paddling to the ledge where we lie.
She notices the lines between my eyebrows
have vanished, those canyons, those ravines,
those legal tangles, ropes dropped to my son,
nets to snare old friends, feelers
like the feathery antennae of moths.

On afternoons this lazy, lines of desire
and wanderlust wash out and our faces
ease back toward the beautiful teenagers
we were, explorers bound across the water,
toward the prairie horizon where tall grass
curls like smoke from distant camp fires.

Tom Lowe, in slow progress

Because of the foot issue I mentioned last month, which is progressing slowly, this has been a fallow period creatively. So I'm offering a six-month photo retrospective as my First Monday submission. Two of the women are colleagues in Community Activists Against Hunger, LaToya and Ecaterena; the other is a friend from the ASSETS Senior employment project I worked on the last half of the 2000s, Bonnie. The black and white image was an experiment in the Silver Effects program. The cat is Katie, who I'll be pet-sitting when this comes out; the flowers are from the yard of the house where Katie lives.

Above-average sunrise about June 21

Vic Midyett, off the road for awhile

We're not going anywhere right now. We are really happy where we are in the far Northern table lands area of Queensland. Yes, I know you haven't heard from me in a while, but there's so much going on around here all the time, I don't seem to get a chance to contemplate my navel on the laptop these days. Very sorry. I'm also doing a few much-needed redesign and repairs on our van.
    Last night, for instance, we had a "music" night in the "shed." There were about 30-35 of us enjoying singing along with and playing music. I play an African acoustic drum and the harmonica, tambourine, or anything involving percussion. It was a good night.

The shed early of a morning

    I will, however, do my best to come up with a new story in time. Thanks for remembering me.

Allen Crowder, in preparing to fight
    As reported last time, Allen won his May 31 fight in Wilmington, North Carolina, and his new approach to preparing to step into the ring no doubt affected the way the fight went:

Usually hours before my fights I would start listening to intense music to hype myself up. But for my last fight I changed things up. My beautiful girlfriend showed me a new app on my phone where I rent books from the library and it reads them to me, so I decided to keep listening to the book The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest all the way up to an hour before my fight. It kept my body relaxed and my mind off worrying about all the what-ifs that could happen in a fight, and just on concentrating on all the things I had prepared for.

Allen's brother videographed the fight, so you can watch all 143 seconds of it:


Morris Dean, in sight
    When I saw my retina surgeon on June 11, I of course told him about the crooked knife I was using to slice fruit with my left eye. He said he couldn't say for sure what might be causing that, he hadn't studied metallurgy in medical school. No, he didn't say that, but he did say it might clear up, so I should give it a couple of more months—for a full three months of healing following surgery.
    I also told him about the added tilt rightward of the left eye's image. I asked whether that didn't mean I would need my spectacle prisms to be adjusted. He agreed, but again he said I shouldn't think about a new prescription for my glasses until the three months have passed.
    It would, of course, be great if the tilting also "clears up"—especially if something that seems to go with it also clears up: The center points of my left and right images don't seem to be aligned anymore.
    How to describe what I'm seeing? Picture a straight horizontal line, then rotate it about 4 degrees counterclockwise. That's the "horizontal" line I see with my right eye. Now, leaving the first line there, rotate a duplicate of it about 10 degrees clockwise (what my left eye sees), with the two lines intersecting in the center of your visual field. Now move the intersection to the left of center about two or three degrees. That's what I see when I look with both of my eyes at the horizontal line of a counter or a building.
    Maybe it'll clear up?
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Copyright © 2013 by Morris Dean

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