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.