Fifth Monday Fiction

Excerpt from a novel in progress

By Michael Hanson

[Editor’s Note: Raymond is now 40, and he still refers to his mother as JP, which stands for Janie Poo.]

Though she’d sometimes make mention of the Big Guy, JP didn’t seem to buy into the conventional Catholic Creator she was raised to believe in, and although I never pressed for specifics on what that all-important word meant to her, how did she define it, I did ask her about Heaven and Hell (having been scared shitless ever since Sunday School): did she believe these existed as actual places the way we were taught? Her response confirmed how far she’d strayed from the Catholic course.

Sunday Review: Turn (TV series)

Strong and true

By Morris Dean

Yesterday I said to my wife, "I miss Anna Strong. I want Season 2 of AMC's Turn to be here already." Alas, it won't return until Spring 2015, according to AMC's website.

Fourth Saturday's Loneliest Liberal: Attending to detail

The color of blood

By James Knudsen

First, I’m going to tell you what I was going to write about. Then, I’m going to write about what I’m writing about.

Fish for Friday

Edited by
Morris Dean

[Anonymous selections from recent correspondence]

Highly creative people tend to connect the dots.
    If there's one thing that distinguishes highly creative people from others, it's the ability to see possibilities where other don't – or, in other words, vision. Many great artists and writers have said that creativity is simply the ability to connect the dots that others might never think to connect.

Thor's Day: Moral quandary

Omnivorous

By Morris Dean








What a plight to be of the human race –
grabbing everything, claiming every place,
    eating all kinds of animal
    (no laws yet make it criminal) –
were I pig or cow instead, I'd have no face.

Ask Wednesday: What other birds did the editor see at the beach?

By Morris Dean

First he shares some more photos of the Blue Martins and the Pelican at Carolina Beach (that is, in addition to those he displayed on June 15):

Tuesday Voice

Ocean lighthouse therapeutic painting plus (detail)

Therapeutic art is more

By Vic Midyett

My wife Shirley calls the painting shown below HER therapeutic painting. She started painting it well over a year ago. At first it was only clouds in vivid orange, red, pink, and white splashes, almost like an atomic explosion. Then it toned down a little, but still with dark, angry-looking clouds. She would put it away and go back to it over the months, changing its mood each time.

Fourth Monday Susan Speaks

Adventures of the lab rat continue

By Susan C. Price

Alzheimer’s dementia has existed in my family, and in Mike’s. Both of our mothers died of it. My grandmother and my uncle as well (but NOT my aunt). No one has had early onset (before age 75) so it’s not super genetically linked. Who knows what my odds are...maybe 50%. Yet, I fear it. And, because I have yet to find a regular volunteer activity that “fits,” I have started to seek and join in any and all aging and dementia-related studies I can find. I am a lab rat.

Sunday Review: Rectify (TV series)

Southern gothic

By Morris Dean

Rectify's first season left his Georgia town asunder,
was releasing Daniel Holden from the pen a blunder?
    Some wanted to make him pay,
    others rushed to bar their way;
Season 2 started Friday – how much longer must we wonder?

Third Saturday Fiction

Fact following fiction...sadly

By Paul Clark (aka motomynd)

The Huffington Post article "Satao the Elephant Killed by Poachers in Kenya" tells of the tragic killing of Satao, half-brother of the allegedly fictional Mastodon, who was mentioned in the chapter from Poacher that was published here last August 31 ["The Melon Gambit," by motomynd (aka Paul Clark)].

Fish for Friday

Edited by Morris Dean

[Anonymous selections from recent correspondence]

A very few years ago most poacher patrols spent more time in villages educating locals about the importance of preserving wildlife to attract tourists, than they did in the bush actually hunting poachers. The poachers they did have to track down were more likely to be local villagers snaring "bush meat" to supplement the meager nutrition gleaned from their small farms, than hardcore professionals trying to make money from their efforts.

Thor's Day: Faith in faith

Personal wish-fulfillment

By Morris Dean

When we believe in things that are but wraith
(resurrection, heaven), we must have faith in faith;
    with nothing to evidence
    our beliefs, we reference
our head's own wish-fulfilling lathe.
_______________
Copyright © 2014 by Morris Dean

Comment box is located below

Ask Wednesday: Vernon DeWayne Voss on killing cancer naturally

Even if the doctors consider it whacko

Edited by Morris Dean

My cousin DeWayne Voss was a boyhood friend. We played chess together, we boxed (although hitting each other in the head quickly lost its appeal). We drew cartoons and made posters for church. He would invite a few children from the neighborhood and we would play tent revival – DeWayne taking the role of the preacher, of course. He was as gifted an orator as he was a cartoonist. (Some of his current cartoons are starting to appear in our "Fish for Friday" column.)
    I learned earlier this year that DeWayne, whom we now call Vern, has cancer, and several weeks ago he and I had a long telephone conversation from his home in Tucson, Arizona. What Vern told me was so remarkable, it seemed almost imperative that the story of his dealing with the situation be shared with others. We are grateful that he agreed to be interviewed. [Our questions are in italics.]

Tuesday Voice: A seventh red herring of the healthcare biz

A cartoon

By Jim Rix

After “Risk factors,” my previous red herring, was published, the editor suggested in retrospect that I might have used this cartoon, which he saw on his doctor’s bulletin board and thought sounded pretty healthy:

Third Monday Musing: Art and oblivion

By Eric Meub

Sister Susan finds these Musings difficult. She claims the fault is hers. That’s just her way of being gracious. I know my failings far too well to imagine that a turbo-charged conversationalist like Susan should find a properly constructed Musing difficult. So let us build a better Musing. Here are some suggestions:

Sunday Reviewer's day off

[Click to enlarge]

At the beach with my camera

By Morris Dean

The place was Carolina Beach, North Carolina. The Pelican shown to the right was lounging out near the boat dock on the marina inlet from the Intracoastal Waterway, and the Purple Martins shown below were at work feeding their young, or so I gathered.

Second Saturday’s Sonnet

Theseus

By Eric Meub


 
 
 

 
 
 
 
The king gave me protection, and the god
the body of an ad for underwear,
but on the docks of Troezen in a fraud
of both I tempted every sailor there.

Fish for Friday

Edited by Morris Dean

[Anonymous selections from recent correspondence]

As much credit as John F. Kennedy gets, he never understood the poor. Most of what he did he was forced to do in order to save face. Johnson came the closest to understanding and trying to help the poor, but he was such a contradiction it is hard to tell if he really understood or was just politically smart.

Thor's Day: Faith's one big fear

By Morris Dean

A few people have quoted Mark 9:24 to me in an attempt to bolster their faith, or maybe just convince me that they are right to be concerned about losing their faith. I'm not sure which. Anyway, Mark 9:24 says [in the King James Version]:

Ask Wednesday: What is the aging editor doing this week to keep his brain adroit and agile?

[Click to enlarge]

Harder than it looks

By Morris Dean

After considering learning Norwegian or taking up C# programming in web framework ASP.NET MVC5 using the Object-relational mapping technique Entity Framework 6 for SQL Server (Azure) databases, with the front end stack Knockout + jQuery + Underscore + Bootstrap 3 to try to qualify for a job opening in a Coy Lee Pittman startup company, he decided to try something really challenging and therapeutic – he'll master two-thumb typing on his Motorola Droid.

Tuesday Voice: Why I paint

By Shirley Deane/Midyett

I paint because I must. Children are born with an innate desire to extend out into their world in different ways, like making mud pies. I started by taking different coloured leaves and little brown twigs and used them to make clothes. I lived in a fantasy-filled world, creating stories. I made up a language and produced little books filled with pictures and symbols.
    Things changed when I went to school. Not only did the teachers not like my endeavours, they wanted me to learn theirs, so I stopped.

Second Monday Music: Voices

Make or break

By Morris Dean

Sam as a kid sang sweeter than he spoke,
but after age thirteen, when his voice broke,
    no matter how he squeezed his throat,
    he couldn't croon a single note;
he could, though, squeak and squawk and screech and croak.

[Authorial Note: I drafted the limerick in a dream between approximately 3 & 4 a.m. on Tuesday, May 27, after which I abruptly woke up, seemingly worried that I wouldn't be able to remember it. After going over it a few times to try to make it stick, I proceeded to write a limerick commenting on what had happened. Unfortunately, I have no recollection of the second limerick.]
_______________
Copyright © 2014 by Morris Dean

Comment box is located below

Sunday Review: The Attack

A perfect life deconstructed

By Morris Dean

Spellbound last weekend, my wife and I watched The Attack (2012, written & directed by Ziad Doueiri), a film in Hebrew & Arabic with English subtitles.

First Saturday as the World Turns

Education and hunger

By Ed Rogers

I believe, as we look ahead and see the road much shorter than the one behind us, we have moments where we reflect on where things went wrong. Everybody thinks that the movement in the sixties was about the Vietnam War, but that was only a part of it. There was a war on the poor even back then and many a debate centered around what we could do about the poor. While Nixon was bombing the hell out of Vietnam with operation Rolling Thunder, his "Re-elect the President" campaign was blaming those on welfare for pulling the economy down.

Fish for Friday

Edited by Morris Dean

[Anonymous selections from recent correspondence]

Given your digiscoping efforts, you seem to have an avid interest in birds, so I'm attaching a couple of photos to see if you can help ID this bird. They were taken with my handheld mini zoom camera yesterday evening. The photos are cropped, as the bird appears to be the size of a cardinal, or very possibly smaller, and it was singing in the tops of the tallest pine trees on our route.

Thor's Day: Value experience for its own sake

It's an art

By Morris Dean

A passage in John E. Smith's study of The Spirit of American Philosophy recently brought me full-stop. It was like the birth of Minerva from my own skull.
    The passage was in Chapter IV, on the philosophy of John Dewey, and it was about Dewey's conception of art. It provided a formula or metaphor for me to express my own personal sense of the holy or sacred.

Ask Wednesday: What's blooming this week around the editor's office?

Gardenia

Lots of flowers

By Morris Dean

 
 

Tuesday Voice: Four paintings by Shirley Deane/Midyett

She's my wife

By Vic Midyett

The editor recently wrote me that I hadn't sent him any of my wife's paintings lately, and would I please do so, maybe write an article about them? Well, they can speak for themselves, they have that much voice, on Tuesday or any other day!

First Monday with Characters

Edited by Morris Dean

Dawn Burke, at Decoration

I went to Decoration with my two daughters. Two of my three brothers went together, and my third brother took our Mum, since he and she would be staying a shorter amount of time than the rest of us. Mum only went to visit Pa’s grave; otherwise she would have stayed home.
    It wasn’t as hot as usual, Hallelujah! The girls and I got there right before 10 a.m., and the others arrived soon thereafter. I put our flowers out first. Then we took a shady spot and got our chairs out of the van and set up for visiting. It wasn’t too long before André Duvall’s parents and his Aunt Lisa arrived and joined us. We had a real good visit with them and others, including cousin Ernest Story, whose dad died in a water well with his brother when they were overcome by a pocket of natural gas they hit while digging the well. Ernest never knew his Dad. His mom was around seven months pregnant with him when this happened. So tragic and sad! This happened on August 21, 1936.

Sunday Review: African Cats & Chimpanzee

Their personal wild

By Morris Dean

I returned the African Cats Blu-ray disc to the library unwatched the first time. It was, after all, just a Disney nature documentary and, besides, I could catch it another, slower time. That turned out to be only two days later. The librarian said it was on the shelf. Would I like to borrow it? And Disney's Chimpanzee was there too, so?