First Monday with Characters

Edited by Morris Dean

Tom Lowe, in remembrance

Fella by the name of Clemens complained years ago, “The coldest Winter I ever spent was a Summer in San Francisco”....He left too soon. From the middle of September to around Thanksgiving the Bay Area experiences the warmest part of its year. That’s where we are right now, with afternoon temperatures in the mid-eighties some days, and foggy mornings. A good season to get some work done, I’m hoping. Finishing my “Spring cleaning” would be a start.
    As far as past work is concerned, here’s a preview of the next "Looking Glass column," shot at Oakland’s City Hall Plaza during Philipina Fest.

    In case anyone has wondered, my contributor image was shot not in my room, but in Jane Handshy’s apartment (where I was plant-sitting while she was visiting friends on Martha’s Vineyard). It was taken on my birthday, and the pose was her idea. Jane (1944-2008) was a special friend. She died of cancer in October 2008, and I still grieve. She was from Pacific Grove, California, by way of Alaska, where she was a Special Ed teacher, a jewelry maker, and an AIDS caregiver during the darkest days of the epidemic. She was married three times – all firemen – widowed twice. Very intelligent, and socially involved, but apolitical.
    This picture was taken during 2007’s Jazz on 4th Street in Berkeley.

Sharon Stoner, in a state of mock shock

Interesting accident, here in Jacksonville. Big rig, driving eratically, stopped twice, no tickets, drives straight into the rear of a stopped school bus, no braking, bus driver sees the rig, slams down the gas peddle, moves the bus enough to avoid any deaths – just injured children and, oh, the naked woman who was ejected from the big rig.
    People, make your own deductions as to what was happening inside the truck....

Susan C. Price, in consideration of the year

time to "let it be"
a good Yom Kippur lesson perhaps
i have spent much dreaming this past year (my 66th year) envisioning fame or more fortune...(and i know i should not tempt the Fates in this way
i have been lucky beyond"...any singing of it.." (Cry the Beloved Country) family, friends, etc
i dont notice the pigeons in this charming beachside city/town ...(only the seagulls)
so i have tried, set up my online store, put two works in a "show"...looked at "ALLTHAT" and...
what is,...is what is supposed to be
i do the art JUST FOR ME...i am on youtube...but so is the entire universe...
and i will make brownies on sunday

Ralph Earle, in burning verse

In the City of Fire

You were the liberator,
ne plus ultra,
je-n’sais-quoi,
my savoir faire.

Did we keep it light,
carry a torch,
re-kindle the spark,
hold the flame aloft?

Did we forget to talk
or remember the words
beyond the tongues of the city?

Golden letters on a mid-town
wall: the Greek playwright
tells of Prometheus bringing fire,

the gift in its bright vessel,
how it illuminates,
how it consumes.

Chuck Smythe, in prep

I'm preparing for my next gig.

I do expect to review the concert. I know “Dies Irae” only as a standard section of every requiem I’ve heard. Verdi wrote a notably bombastic one, fun to sing.

André Duvall, in gallery & garden

The weekend a week ago, the consistently fantastic Dixon Gallery and Gardens in Memphis offered free admission. I viewed a wonderful exhibit of Charles Curran's work, and I enjoyed a stroll through the beautiful surrounding gardens, which include a formal garden and a woodland garden. The Autumnal Equinox brought with it mild temperatures during the day, and cool evenings.

Dawn Burke, enjoying the season

The Burke Bunch has had two nice outings lately and kids are busy in school. Hoping to see cooler weather soon. Hope everyone has a nice Autumn!
    Beaver, Arkansas, Home of Arkansas's"Golden" Gate Bridge:

    Lake Fort Smith State Park 8 miles north of Mountainburg, Arkansas:

Jim Rix, doing chores

Everything's ok. Been busy doing maintenance on house and building. Painting house and fixing leaky roof on building. Next task is to take boats out of water before winter sets in. [I guess in the photo the editor chose I'm taking a break?]

Allen Crowder, working the weights

No fight scheduled. I just continue to work out regularly. I go heavy [weights] one month, then for reps the next. I don't let my body know what to expect. In the ring, you never know.

Jill Auditori, for chili

Last week I invited friends and associates to Destination Downtown Mebane's event, First Thursday Chili Cook Off. With their eyes on the prize, 16 Downtown Mebane proprietors cooked up their best batches of chili for visitors to taste and judge! Bragging rights and a very coveted trophy were great inspirations.

Ed Rogers, published!

As most of you know, my wife Janie and I retired two years ago and moved to Costa Rica. We have a slower way of living that sets well with our life in these later years. I have always enjoyed writing, but mostly for myself. Thanks to Morris, I now have a published book on Amazon [Boystown was reviewed yesterday].

The Midyetts, back to house & singing

It has been harder for Shirley than for me to "settle" back in a house again. She still goes into our van, sitting on the front yard, to read or paint, disappearing for ages.
    Me? I just had to get used to an outside door being so far away and requiring so many more steps to get to. Ha!
    I have already gone back to being an active member of the Bunbury Men of Song. I got an very warm welcome when I showed up for practice again for the first time. They had been weak in their bass line and that's the part I sing.
    I cannot express, for me, the absolute joy of learning a piece and performing it to near perfection. (I believe it is extremely rare for any piece of music to be "perfect.") There are some songs that generate emotion in the audience and in me, the harmony is so beautiful. It is an added bonus that the men are such misfits, cut-ups, and so much fun to be around. A total transformation happens when our director raises his baton and everyone gets down to the business of song.
    They already have me pegged to be part of upcoming events, although the committee still has to meet in a couple of weeks to vote officially on my re-entry as a member.
    The fellas had been busy the past three years while we were away, and I'm not in any of these clips, but....






Find more videos here.

[Editor's Note: In tomorrow's "Tuesday Voice" column, Vic, a former missionary kid, will tell us about an upcoming book that he's involved with.]

Geoffrey Dean, checking out SLC

One of the surest signs that Salt Lake City is not just LDS central is the presence of a number of local coffee and brewing companies. (For the uninitiated, members of the LDS church do not drink coffee or alcoholic beverages.) Some of these local businesses, such as the Wasatch Brewing Company and Jack Mormon Coffee Company, go so far as to reference the reigning religious establishment in ironic ways.
    As the proprietor of Jack Mormon Coffee explained to me recently, there are at least two versions of “who” Jack Mormon “is.” The moniker is applied by LDS members, either to an LDS non-member who is respected as a good neighbor whose demeanor closely conforms to LDS norms, or to an LDS member whose demeanor does NOT follow LDS norms.
    The creative team at Jack Mormon Coffee are predominantly Mormons, giving the company’s products and slogans an added degree of insider humor. Adding an extra phrase to Brigham Young’s famous exclamation upon viewing the Salt Lake valley from Ensign Peak back in 1847, the sign above the Jack Mormon stand at the SLC Farmer’s Market declares, “This is the place (for fresh roasted coffee beans).”
    In the old days, local commerce in SLC got a big boost early on when Zions Cooperative Mercantile Institution, one the earliest department stores in the US, was founded in 1868. This huge cooperative brought together Mormon merchants to counter the rampant price-gouging perpetrated by non-Mormon businesses and was active through the 1990s. The difference from modern SLC cooperatives was of course that the major stake in ZCMI was held by the church. But what did you expect – after all, ZCMI was Brigham Young’s idea.

Kyle Garza, in camp & in essays

Below are Grand Canyon photos from my trip to Lost Canyon, Arizona, where I spent a week last month mentoring and having fun with 7th and 8th graders. The first one is of me being a camp counselor, exhausting kids with camp antics:

    I had a wretchedly busy week last week with essay grading and my own essay to write, for which the prompt was to identify and critique a “myth” that seems to exist in contemporary science. I chose to tackle our limited understanding of the mechanism of natural selection, specifically how it is unavoidably anthropomorphic (thus suggesting agency), and how it purports to be a goal-less, unguided process, yet somehow produces highly goal-oriented systems such as the reproductive parts in a cell. The idea started out quite gelatinous in my head, but it's coming together very well, and I'll share it on Moristotle & Co.

Morris Dean, inside a revealing book
   
I took Bart Ehrman's latest book, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher on the Europe trip and managed to read two or three chapters, which was about all I had the strength for. I mean that literally, as the book is extremely interesting and a very good read; it was entirely a matter of what I had strength and attention for - the trip wasn't easy for me, as my post of September 24 indicated.
    I would have read Ehrman's book anyway (I've read several of his books), but the reason for reading it now was the need to find counters to Kyle for the third installment of our "Christian-atheist conversation." Ehrman writes that when he was a few years younger than Kyle is now, he was such a committed, fundamental believer that even Billy Graham was too liberal for him. Of course, over the course of his subsequent scholarship, Ehrman came to see the error of his thinking. For this reason, I've recommended How Jesus Became God to Kyle. Better he read it for himself than me have to endure the spiritually burdensome task of pursuing a "conversation" for which I no longer have the strength, patience, or mental agility.

Copyright © 2014 by Morris Dean