Sex and the Court of Public Opinion

By Jonathan Price

Matt Lauer calls a woman into his office, locks the door via remote control under his desk, gets her to remove her blouse, then sexually assaults her from behind until she faints, and a nurse is summoned. Or that’s what I remember from the vivid and arresting account in the New York Times. The general direction of the article was that Lauer was summarily removed from his position on the Today show at NBC; though later a former NBC executive asserted that there were no complaints, rumors, or suggestions of sexual harassment while he had run the network. It’s fairly clear that there was a significant time lapse between the office assault and Lauer’s departure.

Five Years Ago Today: 2012 highlights of Moristotle & Co.

When the United States had a President we could honor

By Moristotle

[Originally published on December 31, 2012, but with a different subtitle. It’s still my daughter’s birthday, but she’s more likely at home than on a boat.]

Yesterday I went through the blog's 2012 archive [accessible through the bottom section of the sidebar]. The blog began the year as "Moristotle: A sometimes ironic celebration of life on Earth" – or was it still "An ironic celebration of life, love, laughter, and learning" or "...of evolving life and learning on Earth"? However exactly it started out the year, you can see by the masthead how we think of it now.

On the eighth day...

This turd is not a local finding, but “a strange
sort of copros” that recently appeared on a
driveway in Los Gatos, CA, whose owner [of the
driveway] sent me the photo to see, “given
[my] expertise,” whether I could “id the
originator” – I could not.

Of the Poop Patrol

By Moristotle

I don’t think I knew, when I published “Unique new evidence for divine intervention” on December 22, that “the Poop Patrol” might become a daily thing. But for one week and a day, anyway, it has, and I have filed daily reports on both the official and the unofficial Facebook group pages (official by virtue of the approval and moderation of the community’s homeowners association’s board of directors).

Eleven Years Ago Today: The Sadness of the Food Chain

From ChinaDaily

By Moristotle

[Originally published on December 28, 2006, without the image added today, purportedly a photo (dated December 15, 2011) of dogs being saved from slaughter in China.]

My “dogs” post of yesterday [December 27, 2006] can be interpreted as expressing a great sadness. And I have to admit I wrote it in a solemn mood. But meditating on the food chain (how animals are violently killed and eaten by bigger or stronger ones) can bring on sadness. Every time I eat flesh I feel sad for the mammal, fowl, or fish that was once alive to enjoy being alive – or not to enjoy it much, if it was raised in a cage only to be slaughtered. In fact, I guess, we are in a sense all in a cage by virtue of the apparent fact that being alive today means we will die tomorrow.

Fiction: Walking the Dog (a short story )

By Steve Glossin

[Published originally on October 19, 2013.]

Farley was a small-time hustler and occasional thief who fancied himself a scam artist extraordinaire. His moneymaking larks were on the edge of brilliance, though more often than not their execution took a wrong step or Murphy’s Law intervened. The unexpected failures would have made another man want to don a monk’s habit and go into seclusion—but not Farley. Mr. Optimistic saw a rainbow on every street corner and was continually chasing the pot of gold that he felt was his due—if he could only get that one big break.

Five Years Ago Today: Homicide detective on a case

Blog-related murder in sestina

By Moristotle

[Editor’s Note: Originally published on December 26, 2012, in the Ask Wednesday slot for an interview. Yes, in those days I was actually doing a regular weekly interview.]

You knew it would happen sooner or later. We’d not have an interview back in time from any or our prospective interviewees.
    I knew it would happen too. Fortunately, I had thought of an idea for a sestina that I wanted to try. And here it is [questions in italics]:

Tells us first, what was the crime, detective?

Fiction: Dancing at the Driftwood Hotel (#14)

A novella with some real characters

By Roger Owens

Louise jerked awake, snorting, a sharp pain stabbing into her neck. Florencia and the other girls lay all around her on the floor of the ample Quonset hut where they’d been “billeted.” The Waves, the Navy women’s corps, had set them up with a few blankets and pillows, and they had grabbed four or five hours of sleep. Oddly enough, it had been good for her, with the rain hammering on the curved metal roof, and she felt rested and sharp. A woman not much older than herself noticed her standing and waved her over for a cup of coffee. The storm had blown over in the night. Louise’s heels on the concrete expanse of floor woke the other girls, and by the time the sun lit the high windows they were all up and ready to go.

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year to all!

From William & Marylin Silveira

The Loneliest Liberal’s Letter to Santa

By James Knudsen

Dear Santa, I must confess, this electronic form of communication is very convenient and a real boon to those who put off making their Christmas Wish List until the very last minute. And yes, I do realize it is the very last minute, but I know you will do your level best. This Christmas:

Unique new evidence for divine intervention

Remember: “God” backwards spells “Dog”

By Moristotle

By the half-way point of our walk this morning (about 3/4 of a mile into it), Siegfried and I had found (and I had collected) seven piles of poop (presumably dog poop). Hot damn! We had just tied the record set only a few days ago. It had more often been four or five piles, sometimes six.

Reflections on personal values

By Moristotle

An entry in our back pages directory in sidebar caught my eye the other day, and I clicked on its New Ten Commandments link to revisit them and see whether I even remembered them. (When I formulated them, ten years ago, I hadn’t put up a stone monument of them in my front yard to remind me, and, even though I did inscribe them in my back pages, I don’t read them every Sunday, let alone every day.)

Tax Bill December 2017

By Bellator Senex

I had my first job when I was eleven years old. I set pins at a blowing alley on Harlingen Air Force Base, in Texas. Even though I made little to nothing, my employer took out for Medicare and Social Security. From that day, until I retired from business about five years ago, I paid into those government programs.

Fiction: Dancing at the Driftwood Hotel (#13)

A novella with some real characters

By Roger Owens

Louise Dedge stood with the dual rear wheels of the school bus behind her legs to help shield her from the blasting wind. She huddled between the buses with Jim and about a dozen Navy men and their girls, along with one civilian male and his girl: Horace Ball. Horace had astonished her by showing up at Excilencio and Healy’s bungalow, and he continued to surprise her now. He and his gorgeous Cubanita clung together as he calmed her with his fluent Spanish. He told her, Louise gathered, that they would stick with the Navy hombres because, after all, it was a sea storm and they of all people should know what to do. Horace spoke with confidence. The frightened girl nodded numbly, dripping wet and shaking in the cold wind, wanting to trust him. The white girls gathered while their men shouted in each other’s ears, trying to form a plan in the screaming gale. They ignored Horace’s lady until Louise grabbed her by the arms, pulled her into their group and hugged her close. The other girls hesitated for only one second, and then closed around her in a cooing mass, all arms and love, while she sobbed with fright. In the rain her tears poured unseen across Louise’s shoulder. Sand and seashells, tossed by the wind, battered the far side of the bus.

The Old People Party

By Bellator Senex

I have news for people over 65 or those coming close to it. You are no longer a Democrat or a Republican, or members of any of the other known parties. You, my friends, now belong to the party of old people.

Susan’s Stuff: for december

Detail

tell your children the loud booms are thunder

By Susan C. Price

the painting is large, on two panels, total 60" x 44", 12-2017. the title is from some quote earlier in the year, when a foreign attack appeared imminent.

Sankt Nikolaus im Kindergarten

By Rolf Dumke

As another Christmas approaches, I want to share three of my own, very personal experiences of Sankt Nikolaus. The title refers to the third of them.

Sheep No More?

By Sharon Stoner

Ever ask yourself why people have “overlooked” the sexual misconduct of powerful men?
    Has it been out of respect for their positions, admiration for all they own, a hope someday to acquire similar power and wealth?

Fiction: Dancing at the Driftwood Hotel (#12)

A novella with some real characters

By Roger Owens

Louise Dedge was in heaven. The New Year’s Eve Ball was a huge success, in spite of the storm. Not just the students but their parents, the teachers, and even some grandparents were still swirling about the polished wood floor to the music of a band that were in no hurry to load up their instruments in a pouring rain. Mr. Thompson had come, hovering near the punch bowl everyone knew had tropical rum in it. And to top things off, Ernest Hemingway had given the dance a pass. Chalk one up for Captain Niko. Louise had danced the entire evening with Jim, already a graceful and accomplished footsman, without a single interruption. Quite a few other Navy fellows were there, but they all had their own sweethearts and were not interested in cutting in. And no high school boy would have dared risk his life by horning in on a military man’s date. The one man she had noticed other than James Donald Owens had been, of all people, Horace Ball, who danced with any girl he could coax onto the floor and turned out to be astonishingly good. When the music played, Horse Balls lost his stoop, his hesitant nature vanished, and he became smooth as ice cream, gliding across the hardwood floors wearing an outdated brown suit and vest like an actor from Hollywood.

Penny for Her Thoughts: The State of Man

By Penelope Griffiths

Every day it seems that some rich or powerful, or both rich and powerful, man – on both sides of the pond that is the Atlantic Ocean – is being outed for sexual harassment or worse! It is never acceptable to be exposed (sometimes in more ways than one!) to a sexual advance that you don’t want. But what I can’t understand is why these women (or men, in a few cases recently reported) have left it so long – sometimes for decades – before reporting these heinous events, which, according to media reports, have greatly affected their lives.

Delay (a sonnet)

By Eric Meub

[Originally published on June 11, 2016]


 
 
 
 

 
 

 
 
The plane has just left Denver, so they say
at six. At eight, The crew are on their way.
A surly rabble mills about the gate:
I’d lose my job if I was always late.

Thunder Down Under: Delinquent Crows

By Vic Midyett

Over the last couple of months, two crows have made me laugh at their behaviours. Their actions have caused me to assume they are young, although they look fully grown.

Citizens Again

By Bellator Senex

I don’t know when it happened, but at some place and time in our history, we forgot we are all American Citizens. Being a Baptist, Methodist, Catholic, Presbyterian, Jew, or Muslim is your religion, not who you are. Any more so than being a Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, or Socialist is who you are. It is only how you vote or voted or where you go on a certain day of the week. You are first and foremost an American Citizen. When in Mexico and asked who are you, your answer is not Baptist or Democrat, it’s, “I’m an American.”

Fiction: Dancing at the Driftwood Hotel (#11)

A novella with some real characters

By Roger Owens

Well, we’d been fishing for shrimp for a couple of months in the Straits and out in the Gulf, and we hadn’t done that bad. Blackie spent some money refitting the Horny B. with the trawling booms and nets, and cousin Lester had proven his mechanical abilities many times over. He did most of the welding himself, after careful calculations as to the weight and drag and so on, and I gather it was a painstaking job to weld those booms in the right places. Engineering was never my strong point. Then it was Joe Hook who once again showed us how things worked, operating the diesel-powered compressor to let out and retrieve the nets like he was born to the job. How he knew stuff like that was beyond me. Blackie mutely shook his head when Lester asked him how Joe might have learned how to trawl for shrimp in upstate New York. In any case, we would load the hold with shrimp and pack it in the ice Blackie bought in Key West, and every week or ten days we would pull in to the port and sell it all at a nice profit.

Senate Republicans meet in secrecy to address their President’s mental instability

Satire in the style of Andy Borowitz

By Moristotle

A handful of Republican Senators met behind barred doors this week to detail their plan to contain President Trump, remove his access to weapons, and have him evaluated.

Boldt Words & Images: History’s Rhymes 9/11/73

Convergences

By Bob Boldt

[The poem below comes from a portfolio of poems that I submitted during fall semester for the “Poetry Workshop” at Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri. I hope in the coming months to publish a few more of these poems on Moristotle & Co.
    As a frame for today’s poem, I have adapted from the essay that accompanied the portfolio some hopefully relevant reflections on poetry and a poet.]

Fiction: Dancing at the Driftwood Hotel (#10)

Photograph of autographed
copy from author to editor
[cover slightly curled]

A novella with some real characters

By Roger Owens

James Donald Owens was sweating more than usual as he headed up Roosevelt Boulevard, the warships at the base standing on the skyline behind him like ugly grey buildings. It was rarely so cold you couldn’t take a swim anywhere in the Keys, even on Christmas Day or New Year’s, but this still, silent heat was oppressive. It felt more like August than December. The south-east wind, which folks considered more or less permanent in these parts, seemed to have died an unfortunate death. It would be sorely missed, he thought with his normal good humor.

The Loneliest Liberal: Standing up for the right to silently kneel

By James Knudsen

Look, I get it, Facebook is a part of our world now; it links people from around the globe and helps bring people closer together. That is, when it doesn’t resemble a bathroom wall filled with scrawled screeds from people who really haven’t considered all the sides of an issue – or, at a bare minimum, two.

Thanksgiving Special

How our Thanksgiving goose got cooked

By Pam Palmer

[Editor’s Note: Originally published on July 20, 2013 as a Third Saturday Fiction. Sharing this wonderful story by Pam Palmer at Thanksgiving has become a tradition of Moristotle & Co., and we are grateful to Susan C. Price, in her execution of Ms. Palmer’s estate, for conveying the story to us, and for her wry stories about her friend.]

“We should have roast goose for Thanksgiving,” Martin said.
    It was 1976, and David, my husband, and I had just bought a house across the street from our long-time friends, Martin and Joan. Two weeks after we moved into the house, David left for a six-month stint on a research ship in the Antarctic. It would be my first Thanksgiving in my first house and I felt overwhelmed. Of course, I could go to my in-laws’ house but it was a long drive from Long Beach to Mission Viejo by myself. My parents were going to the desert so having dinner with them was not possible.

Interview: Sean C. Ewing on seeking public office

Never down, never out

Interviewed by Moristotle

The first yard signs we saw in our neighborhood for the November 7 election of three City Councillors in Mebane, North Carolina advertised Sean C. Ewing. It was his first run for a governmental office, and he was opposing the three popular incumbents whose terms were ending. All of the incumbents had served at least two terms already, and two of them had served at least six terms. Sean seemed to be in for an uphill battle.

Fiction: Dancing at the Driftwood Hotel (#9)

A novella with some real characters

By Roger Owens

Lester Clayton, after helping clear the docklines, was down in the engine room when he felt the boat rock to the right (starboard, he thought stubbornly), and he listened carefully for a heartbeat before he went back on deck. The engines sounded good. Lester had been Assistant Parts Manager at the Ford dealership in Prosperity, South Carolina, nearby Birdswood, and before that he’d been a Ford mechanic for six years, ever since he got out of high school. Two of those years had been on contract to the US Army, which service had kept him out of the war. The only reason he drove a Buick was because his daddy had given it to him when he’d bought a new one, and he admitted to himself, with a dose of guilt, that he had loved it. It was a really nice car. He hated to let it go, but it had provided a nice nest egg for him and Porcelain, which he would need when they found a place to live.

Eleven Years Ago Today: [Three light verses]

By Moristotle

[Originally published on Thursday, November 16, 2006, under the title, “In preparation for Serena Joy’s memoriam (and Southern Writer’s).” We have added an image, deleted the footnotes, revised the last line of the second limerick, and added the third limerick, which was contributed as a comment at the time. We also tried to contact the two good ladies memorialized, but so far have heard from neither. In 2006, the first lady’s blog may have been called “Miss Begotten,” and nowadays the second lady does her blogging on Google+.]

Eleven Years Ago Today: Secular rituals?

By Moristotle

[Originally published on Wednesday, November 15, 2006. We have corrected a couple of typos, corrected the note at the bottom, and added an image from the magazine cited.]

From the September 2006 interview of Sam Harris in The Sun Magazine:

Fiction: Dancing at the Driftwood Hotel (#8)

A novella with some real characters

By Roger Owens

Well, that Deputy Undersheriff Carl Willard Schoolie, as he identified himself, thought he was a hell of a man, that was plain as grass, and he went about the Horny B. like she was his very own, with us all bitchin’ and complainin’ at his fat rear end to no effect whatsoever I could see. The sweat soaked his armpits and the back of his shirt and I for one was glad. I hoped he was suffering. I wished for a time that he might fall on the deck and die gasping from heat exhaustion, but as I have already admitted I was much less forgiving back in those days. We all knew if Blackie was here he’d have run him off so fast he’d think he was back home at the orphanage, being sodomized by the older boys, but nothing we said impressed him. Like I said, he was already too all-fired impressed with himself to hear much of what we were saying. Blackie was meeting a new buyer for our future catch and wouldn’t be back for another few hours.

Wash (a sonnet)

By Eric Meub

[Originally published on May 14, 2016]


 
 
 
 

 
 

Big downpour up the canyon fills these halls
in no time, flooding ten feet high in zones
like this, or more, then spilling waterfalls
from basin into basin as it hones
the red-rock, widening the canyon walls,
and carving picture windows in the stones.

As the World Turns: Control the throne

A new strategy for Democratic government

By Ed Rogers

From my most recent novel, Unwanted President:

Adam Weishaupt realized that the real power was with those who controlled the seat of power, not with the one who happened to be sitting on the throne. [p. 71]
    [President] Benton forgot the rule of rules: the power is always in the dark behind the throne. [p. 277]

Fiction: Dancing at the Driftwood Hotel (#7)

A novella with some real characters

By Roger Owens

Well, after what-all had happened that night already, I sure wasn’t expecting to hear how we were going to Miami to buy and run a fishing boat. After Blackie shooting somebody deader than hammered dog shit, and Joe Hook turning out so cold-blooded and all, I didn’t know what to think. But when Blackie told us his plan and said should we ask if the guy and his colored girlfriend wanted to come, we all said yes right off. He told us we would need about six or seven hands to run the size of boat he had in mind, but if Joe Hook and Lottie were thinking like me right then, I figure they thought fishing in the sunshine for a living sounded mighty good to them if we had enough hands or not, and they were. Thinking like me, I mean. So I told him we all said not just yeah but hell yeah. Blackie laughed at that. He said it was one of my “alpine aphorisms,” or as I would laugh with him and say if he were here today, one of my “mountain mouthfuls.” Damn, I wish he was still on this Earth somewhere. I said it back then and I’ll say it again now. Blackie Wainwright was special. He made this place more interesting.

Boldt Words & Images: Upon watching the film “The Mona Lisa Curse”

Losses of a world

By Bob Boldt

I am about as far away from any understanding of the contemporary art world of the last nearly forty years as it is possible to be. I left my artist friends in Chicago when I moved to Missouri back in the early eighties, a time when respect for artists and aesthetics still transcended finances, popularity, and notoriety, even though we in the Windy City were feeling some trends blowing out of the East.

I’m being targeted

Pro & con

By Jim Rix

I recently viewed an episode of Adam Ruins Everything (truTV)^* in which comedian Adam Conover exposes internet services like Facebook and Google for eavesdropping on your e-mail and activity and then providing your profile to prospective advertisers.

Fiction: Dancing at the Driftwood Hotel (#6)

A novella with some real characters

By Roger Owens

Lester Clayton Tottenmann couldn’t believe he was still alive, that Porcelain would not be raped and killed, that anything might ever be all right again. How had this happened? He was a dead man. If it had been him on the other end of that oar, the son of a bitch on the ground would have been a goner for sure and for certain. What had he, a piece of racist shit not much better than the slab of meat sprawled on the white sand by his feet, ever done to deserve to keep on living? What right did he have to keep his girl, the only girl he ever loved? His head began to clear, and he wondered if he would be in any better shape with these white men than he had been with the others. He thought maybe he had a chance with these folks. They didn’t seem to be in the game the way backwoods people up home were, the way salt-water folks seemed to be here. But then again, they hadn’t seen Porcelain yet.

Four Years Ago Today: Ne’er so well expressed

Learning from English epigram

By Eric Meub

[Originally published on October 29, 2013, not one word different, but more urgent than ever.]

Words are like leaves; and where they most abound,
Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found.
                            –Alexander Pope
    Here is a sentiment that many of today’s high school students might heartily commend, at least according to Kyle Garza’s overview of the state of teaching English (see “Tuesday Voice: Our amusing age,” October 1). Our educators are the canaries in our cultural coalmine: we ignore them at our peril. Some of today’s students will go on to lead entertainment and media corporations, or programs for the endowment of the arts, or institutes of higher education. Some will be news anchors or reviewers. A few will become Speaker of the House, or President. Any malaise affecting our youth has potentially drastic ramifications for the culture at large.

The Loneliest Liberal:In my mother’s country

On the coast

Four days in Portugal

By James Knudsen

I’ll confess, it is a mystery to me how the serial writers of the 1930’s did it. Keeping details straight over an extended period of time is taxing, and it’s only been a month – less than a month!