The Loneliest Liberal:This Day in History

Photo by Jim Rix, 1976

By James Knudsen

Did you know that on this day in history, April 28, 357, Constantius II visited Rome for the first time?
    Me either. Or that April 28 is the day on which Benito Mussolini was killed by Italian partisans? Or that Charles DeGaulle resigned as President of France on this day in 1969? None of those events are committed to memory for the simple reason that they haven’t had much impact on my life. However, on this date in 1967 something did happen that has had a profound impact on me (and many others), I got another sister, Morissa Camille Knudsen. Here are some things you may or may not know about her.

Look alive!

Stay awake!

By Moristotle

Our friend Mark, the Man of Montmartre, wrote recently that he was “back from you-know-where...and currently exhibiting a primo case of PDS (Paris Deprivation Syndrome).” He reported that a main bus that serves Montmartre “passes in front of the building where Marcel Proust used to live...,” which led him to ask how I’m doing with my reading of In Search of Lost Time.

Every Field of Paradise (a poem)

By Ralph Earle

[Previously published in StorySouth, Summer 2015, and in The Way the Rain Works (Sable Books, 2015). Republished here by permission of the author.]





In the moment between day’s
end and settling into sleep,
things that have broken
vanish in a glowing sphere

Eleven Years Ago Today: 443rd birthday/391st deathday

AIFS Study Abroad

Today it’s his 454th/402nd

By Moristotle

[Originally published on April 23, 2007, but without the image or the second footnote.]

Let us today remember the birthday of William Shakespeare, born on April 23, 1564—so far as scholars can make out. One measure of Shakespeare’s enduring memory is that the Sixteenth Edition of Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations¹ devotes sixty-three 2-column pages to him, while devoting only two-thirds that number to The Holy Bible.

Brain Tangles published by Shirley Deane/Midyett

Under the imprint Change Foundation

By Moristotle

Brain Tangles was released three days ago for world-wide distribution. Barnes & Noble and Amazon are already selling it online, in paperback or as an electronic book: Barnes & Noble; Amazon.

A Schroeder Etude

By Geoffrey Dean

Like so many other cellists, I grew up using a collection of studies that are often affectionately referred to as “the Schroeder Etudes.” In 2012 I started thinking about the man who compiled them just over a hundred years ago, and I realized how little I knew about his life. What more could I learn about him? The few brief biographical paragraphs about Alwin Schroeder that were readily accessible online didn’t seem to do justice to an artist who was once hailed as “America’s Greatest Cellist.” I set out to learn more about him and give him the more complete biography he deserves, using mainly online resources such as historical newspaper and magazine articles and especially performance reviews to create a picture of the kind of performer Schroeder was and trace his career path from Berlin to Leipzig, from Leipzig to Boston, from Boston to New York, and then (briefly) to Frankfurt, and finally back to Boston. Written over the course of 2012, the resulting sketch was, as far as it goes, adequate and in any case an improvement on the biographical information that had been available to that point.

Roger’s Reality: A bit of poetry

Upon waking Wednesday

By Roger Owens










With our penchant for neo-syllogisms,
We feed the man behind the mask.
The One, Who could save us, if He only would.

Ed Rogers’s latest book is close to home

His books keep coming

By Moristotle

Prolific author Ed Rogers has published a new book: Tadpole Creek & Other Stories: Children of the Soil, stories of his growing up in rural Mississippi in the late fifties, stories of three young boys – two black and one white – and their coming of age. “It was a time,” Ed says, “that shaped me and my beliefs for the rest of my life.”

I believe

By Victor L. Midyett

I believe our minds, through focused contemplation and meditation on our spiritual being, faith, and our true inner self, can change us. Even heal us.
    Although I don’t understand what this energy source is, I believe we can tap into it.
    I believe we need to believe in miracles. Miracles are when reality is created by possibility. Be still and know.

Copyright © 2018 by Victor L. Midyett

Same popular book, but with a new cover

Lots happening with its author

By Moristotle

Prolific author Shirley Skufca Hickman’s popular book Fall in Love with an Orange Tree or a Book, about a teenager whose immigrant parents are deported back to Mexico, has a new cover. Explains Shirley:

Memories of The Empress

All is forgiven

By Moristotle

My young family and I visited Vancouver Island, British Columbia’s, Empress Hotel in the early 1970s, so when I read this story about a hilariously comic incident there 17 years ago, my laughter was extra loud: “40 Sea Gulls Wrecked His Hotel Room. 17 Years Later, a Pepperoni Pardon” [Yonnette Joseph, NY Times, April 14].

Paris Journal: The best croissants not in Paris

Interview with Chef Benjamin Messaoui

Interviewed by Moristotle

My wife’s and my absolute favorite bakery anywhere in the world outside Paris is The French Corner Bakery, in Durham, North Carolina, right around the corner from Elliotte’s Pet Spa, where we regularly take Siegfried for baths and grooming. (It seems to be Elliotte’s and James’s favorite bakery too, judging by how often one of them pops out of the spa to go around the corner.)

Poetry & Portraits: Willamette Valley

Drawing by Susan C. Price

Willamette Valley
By Eric Meub

1
A white circus tent
looms beyond the ridge of spruce:
first snow on Mt Hood.

How our President copes with his lack of imagination

By Moristotle

A headline in today’s New York Times: “Trump Calls Comey ‘Untruthful Slime Ball’ as Book Details Released” [Eileen Sullivan].

Thunder Down Under: Bikini butts

By Vic Midyett

There is a very old seaside cafe just north of us a bit that has had these table/ umbrella-stand things for years. I’ve always thought I needed to get a picture of one and share it for a giggle. I did one day last week and here it is!

Susan’s Stuff: other paintings that i might include

“what lies beneath, a landscape” (detail)

in my first solo show in an art gallery

By Susan C. Price

[Editor’s Note: Three other paintings that are likely to be included in Susan’s first solo show were shown here on March 26. Today we show you four more:]

Off to see Bears Ears

Yvon Chouinard

The President is stealing your land

By Moristotle

Wilderness adventurer Chuck Smythe wrote me Friday that he and a hiking buddy “are shortly headed to Bears Ears, to see it once more before the criminals trash it.”

Adventures from Bulgaria: Summer in the Mountains – Days 6 & 7

Under the scorching sun

By Valeria Idakieva

[Sequel to “Days 4 & 5,” published on March 2.]

When I got up early in the morning and started walking, the sun was still hiding behind the grand ridges surrounding the gorge of the river I was following, and the fresh, cool air was sharpening my senses.

Boldt Words & Images: Martin Luther King Jr. & Me

By Bob Boldt

[I covered Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as an electronic journalist for WFLD-TV in Chicago. Behind the scenes, I saw many things that most people weren’t aware of. Dr. King is arguably the greatest man of peace of this or any other age; his inspiration strongly influenced my radicalization and social and political activism.
    I will deliver the reflections below at a meeting later this month of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Jefferson City, Missouri, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the King of Love’s killing (on April 4, 1968).]

Still under assault 50 years later

Tomorrow will be the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

By Moristotle

In “What the Supreme Court Doesn’t Get About Racism” [NY Times, April 2], the Editorial Board of the NY Times reminds us that Dr. King

Boldt Words & Images: Easter Seder

By Bob Boldt

I thought it might be a tradition worth starting to post an Easter Seder E-card. So here goes.
    I replaced the more secular Rabbit response with something of my own that is perhaps a little more indirect – one that fans of Barry Levinson’s 1990 film, Avalon, might reference.