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!

Eight Years Ago Today: Virtue its own reward

By Moristotle

[Originally published on October 27, 2009, not one word different, but another image has been added and a different image of Spinoza substituted.]

Having learned a great deal from neuroscientist Antonio R. Damasio’s 1999 book about consciousness, The Feeling of What Happens: Body, Emotion and the Making of Consciousness, I decided to read another of his books.

Sketches from the Twin Cities: Still water

Stillwater mural

Birthplace of Minnesota

By Geoffrey Dean

[Editor’s Note: We appreciate your patience while we overcame the thorny technical glitch that on Saturday prevented us from showing you the photos accompanying these sketches.]

On the St. Croix River bordering Minnesota and Wisconsin, Stillwater, MN is a charming town with an old-time feel within easy driving range of the Twin Cities. As we discovered through the many historical markers along MN 95 between Stillwater and Scandia, this area is important as the cradle of Minnesota’s statehood and the home of its earliest European settlers (ca. 1838-1859).

Seven Years Ago Today: A funny from Bertrand Russell

By Moristotle

[Originally published on October 25, 2010, not one word different, but a better photo of Mr. Russell has been substituted.]

My wife didn’t laugh when I read her the following excerpt from Bertrand Russell’s 1909 essay, “Pragmatism,” but I did, and I hope you might too:

Fiction: Dancing at the Driftwood Hotel (#5)

A novella with some real characters

By Roger Owens

Lester knew they couldn’t stay in any of the white hotels or cabins, but the bad part was, they couldn’t stay at any of the black places either. He couldn’t believe what was happening to him. He was a white man, he could tell any nigger what to do, but if he stayed in a black establishment he knew damn well they would both wake up dead. And there wasn’t nothing he could do about it. He couldn’t call the sheriff, he’d be put in jail his ownself for causing a ruckus, and if there wasn’t a charge on the books for living in sin with a black woman, they would just make one up. Prob’ly get hisself hung before it was over. They had come across south Florida on Alligator Alley, and they had sure seen some. Fat black monsters that lay across the miserable excuse for a road and sometimes wouldn’t move for all the arm-waving and horn-blowing a man could do. God, he hated Florida.

Nine Years Ago Today: Rare...or frequent but not long-lived?

By Moristotle

[Originally published on October 22, 2008, not a word different, but with an image added and a bracketed phrase revealed at the end.]

Richard Dawkins, in the penultimate chapter of his 1996 book, Climbing Mount Improbable, addresses the general question about how and to what extent life may have arisen in the universe.

Sketches from the Twin Lakes: Still water

[Text-only version]

By Geoffrey Dean

[Editor’s Note: The photo version will be published as soon as we have overcome a thorny technical glitch.]

On the St. Croix River bordering Minnesota and Wisconsin, Stillwater is a charming town with an old-time feel within easy driving range of the Twin Cities. As we discovered through the many historical markers along MN 95 between Stillwater and Scandia, this area is important as the cradle of Minnesota’s statehood and the home of its earliest European settlers (ca. 1838-1859).

Correspondence: Diddling

Edited by Moristotle

[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:

Fiction: Dancing at the Driftwood Hotel (#4)

A novella with some real characters

By Roger Owens

Porcelain Jones was still terrified. Something had to go wrong. Everything in her nineteen years always had gone wrong, and there was no reason to think now would be any different. Her father had died, her stepdaddy lost his job like every other black man when all the white boys came home from the war, and took to drinking and beating her mother and everyone else near him. And worse. He’d tried to come to her bed more than once, but he’d always been so drunk she’d been able to fight him off. She worked a little at Mrs. Jeffries’ dance hall to make enough money to get out of the house, but she had known that sometime she would have to sell herself to live. There was no work anywhere. The service jobs that had sustained her family for generations were going to white women who were out of work for the same reason black men’s jobs were going to white men. The white men were back.

Eight Years Ago Today: Georgia O’Keeffe, at one with nature

By Moristotle

[Originally published on October 15, 2009, not a word different.]

Last night I watched my recording of Lifetime!’s 2009 TV movie, Georgia O’Keeffe, directed by Bob Balaban. The interplay between Joan Allen as O’Keeffe (1887-1986) and Jeremy Irons as Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946) is as scintillating cinema as the story of O’Keeffe and Stieglitz’s affecting 30-year relationship is fascinating drama. And as far as I have been able to tell, the actors were successfully cast for their physical resemblance to the principals.

Futures (a sonnet)

By Eric Meub

[Originally published on April 9, 2016]


 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
We had then (still) tomorrow, Saarinen,
a Trans-World tapered, curled, stiletto heeled,
and Kahn. We thought we’d live without a Penn
Station (what a leveled playing field).

Correspondence: Malevolent or incognizant?

Edited by Moristotle

[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:

Hoping you and yours are well

And what about everyone else?

By Moristotle

Yesterday morning I messaged a beloved cousin, “I hope you and all yours are well.” Even before I pressed Send, my “inner voice” spoke up to remind me that it represents my universally compassionate self, which avoids stepping on a bug or a little frog, which is sobered into silence whenever I eat the flesh of an animal that did not hope to be slaughtered to become food, which had been stirred the day before when I witnessed from a few feet away a frail-looking bird hovering on a branch of our persimmon tree, the mild wind ruffling its feathers.

Nine Years Ago Today: Learning experience

By Moristotle

[Originally published on October 11, 2008, not a word different, but with images added.]

“Are you sorry?” I asked the young head cashier at a local home improvement store. She had just straightened out my $25 discount coupon on a purchase of over $300 for building and gardening materials. I was getting set to build a raised planting area my wife wanted in the back yard.

On fanciful ideas

Reflections over the kitchen sink

By Moristotle

Spellbound at its revelations, my wife and I have been watching Ken Burns’s Vietnam War. Watching it is tearing at my heart, and hers too, I think. The war’s stupidity, our leaders’ pathological need to “save face,” the hundreds of thousands of deaths, square miles of beautiful land burned and bombed, the angst of soldiers, their families, their fellow citizens torn asunder by opposed stances on the war….

Fiction: Dancing at the Driftwood Hotel (#3)

A novella with some real characters

By Roger Owens

[Editor’s Note: On Saturday, this book finally became available in paperback. The long delay since its availability as a Kindle eBook owes to two things: (1) Hurricane Irma, which swept along the west coast of the author’s state, prompting him to evacuate, and (2) the ineptitude of the book’s cover designer ( m e ), who hadn’t noticed that some of the text originally extended into the area that gets trimmed off after each book is printed and bound.]

Correspondence: Tools of violence

Edited by Moristotle

[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.]

It has never been about a song

Slave trading block in
Fredricksburg, Virginia (1926)

A reply to “Choose Respect”

By Ed Rogers

The voices in the halls of Congress that cried out against slavery were drowned out by the sound of the slave auction outside. No discussion was to be had, you were for slavery or against it. The debate would go on until, at last, it started a war. The debate and the war changed nothing. Black men and black women were no longer called slaves, but they were treated no better than they had been.

Choose Respect

By Victor L. Midyett

My wish would be for the National Football League and its players to be open to a serious discussion about the American flag and our national anthem’s being off limits to anything other than our nation’s traditional habits of somber respect.
    Is change needed? Yes, and I completely agree with the players’ issues. Their reason is righteous. Their “tool” to advocate change is not.

Fiction: Dancing at the Driftwood Hotel (#2)

A novella with some real characters

By Roger Owens

Lottie Jane Miller was tired of walking. She knew what her momma had said about taking rides from strangers, but if she kept turning down rides she was never going to get anywhere. The sun hung flaming in the Florida sky, while both ends of the flat, empty highway disappeared into the shimmering September haze. She shaded her eyes with a hand that was at once delicately boned and roughly used. Her nails were broken and dirty, and calluses marred her palms. She dreaded another night out in the mosquito-ridden woods of Florida’s Big Bend, where the west coast takes a turn to the south. Last night she’d felt like a plate of ribs at Hank’s Barbecue back in Wewahitchka, where she’d run off from the other day, the damn bugs were that bad. “Wewa” was outside of Panama City, and she had considered going there; the air station at Panama made the place a real town. But for sure her daddy, the no-good bastard, would find her in Panama City. He was probably there right now, looking for her. She hoped he got run over by one of those busses that brought new draftees to the base, until she remembered the war was over and not so many recruits came there anymore. Well, as her mother would say if she wasn’t dead, one could always hope for the best. Maybe a farm tractor would do the job instead. The thought of Daddy mashed under big black tractor tires made her feel a little better. There would be a lot of blood. Maybe he would scream. She smiled, seeing it in her imagination. She peered north up the highway, where there seemed to be a shimmer in the haze. Was that a car?