All Over the Place: A Dance to How We Rewrite

By Michael H. Brownstein












Here we go into the foray of dance and rhythm,

the purple water fountain, the bragging men, the room of beauty and form.

Everywhere the whisper of life lifts its curious head, everywhere a movement.

But then—but then—the evil men with no skin find a reason to destroy,

Six Years Ago Today: Where the spirit lives

Bilingual dream work

By Ralph Earle

[Originally published on August 28, 2014.]






How we struggle to frame our dreams
in language not entirely familiar, dreams
of finding the way by car to the gathering,
or rolling secretly off a train
headed to the wrong town.

Goines On: Poised for the day

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Goines was in the home stretch of his reading of Julian Barnes’ book about Dr. Samuel Pozzi and France’s Belle Époque (1871 – 1914). The doctor has died (of gunshots fired by a disgruntled patient), and his measure is being taken by many, including his friend the French aesthete Count Robert de Montesquiou. Barnes introduces the Count’s measure by saying:

Nine Years Ago Today: Science vs. religion

David Deutsch

A battle of the memes

By Moristotle

[First published on August 26, 2011.]

A book you might like to read: The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World, by David Deutsch (illustrated. 487 pp. Viking. $30—or borrow it from your local university library).

Goines On: Leveler

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Mostly low in spirits for several days, Goines wasn’t going to turn away inspiration from any direction it approached him, even if he didn’t recognize it immediately. This morning, as often happened, Mrs. Goines was already tearing into the NY Times and the Washington Post on her iPad as he finally finished preparing his own breakfast and sat down to it.

All Over the Place: Can a Jew Join the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS) against the State of Israel…

Or Can a Jew Be
Anti-Zionist and
Still Be a Jew?

By Michael H. Brownstein






Judaism is my mother – pure and simple –
not my ethnicity, my skin color, my nationality.
I never was a Zionist, but I was proud of Israel,
her history my history, her identity a piece of my identity,
and then I read a chapter in Carolyn Forché’s book

Acting Citizen: Emails from Donald J. Trump

By James Knudsen

I’m willing to bet that most readers of this blog do not receive communiques from the Trump Campaign. Fear not, I am following that old adage, “Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.”
    The first thing to be aware of is that you need an email account with unlimited storage, because you’re going to be getting a lot of emails. I can count on at least 10 per day. And please note: I have not contributed a single penny.

Side Story: Alaska Bear Encounter Recorded on Video

With apologies to the 1961 American
musical romantic drama directed by
Robert Wise & Jerome Robbins

Someone who didn’t identify himself emailed me a link to a story about a bear encounter in Alaska that was captured on video. I guess they sent it to me because of my moose story about encountering a bear. Apparently I’m not the only person who has incredibly great luck with grizzly bears. Do you know who might have sent it to me? —Paul Clark

Reply by Moristotle

A Message of Compassion

By Blake Adamson

Sometimes our lives feel meaningless and full of darkness, like we’re dropping endlessly into a hole. Other times, our lives are too bright, like looking directly into a spotlight, revealing all our flaws and insecurities to the world, most of all to ourselves.
    In these times, compassion is our greatest weapon. Not a sword in hand, but a branch held in the beak of a dove – a symbol of mercy and of new beginnings. It’s a lesson worth learning again.

Independence Day in Bolinas (a poem)

By Ralph Earle

Precarious bungalows
cluster
on the headlands.

A big blonde girl
on a cell phone
on a skateboard

West Coast Observer: A Tale of “Murder” in Kings County

By William Silveira

A murder case in nearby Kings County gives off a whiff of the social control of women portrayed in The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. A woman was charged with murder following the stillbirth of her baby with toxic levels of methamphetamine in its system.^* The woman sought to have the charge dismissed as a misinterpretation of the murder statute, Penal Code 187, in charging her with the drug-connected stillbirth.

Penny for Her Thoughts: Lock down...Day 123....

By Penelope Griffiths

The struggle is real. My whole body aches with longing to get out of this pandemic prison I’m locked in…Who am I kidding? – it’s a blast!
    So, the coronavirus continues to spread and devastate everywhere. Wear a mask, don’t wear a mask, stay three feet away – no, stay six feet away! Don’t socialize or, if you do, be responsible. Think of others, don’t be selfish – this and even more advice is given, but many people are ignoring it.

All Over the Place: When You Die, Can You Still See the Moon?

By Michael H. Brownstein











You told me graveyards are that loud
and you were right. Noise skittles over crab grass
and dandelion greens, over locust stone and devil’s claw
thick with spikes and wooden lures bloody for light.

13 Years Ago Today: A gutsy book about a milestone criminal case

By Moristotle

[Originally published on August 15, 2007.]

Jim Rix, the author of Jingle Jangle: The Perfect Crime Turned Inside Out, lives in South Lake Tahoe, California, and Neighbors Bookstore there is the first bookstore to display his gutsy book about the Ray Krone case, a milestone in the annals of criminal justice.
    The second store to carry the book is the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Bull’s Head Bookshop, which displays it alongside Sister Helen Prejean’s bestselling The Death of Innocents, this year’s Summer Reading Program selection for incoming Tar Heel freshmen, who will discuss the book in many concurrent seminars on Monday afternoon, August 20. The jacket of Jingle Jangle proudly displays a blurb from Sister Helen:

Goines On: Smithereens

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Goines didn’t know exactly what he was thinking about on Wednesday morning when the carafe of the French press coffee maker he was drying slipped from his hands and shattered into smithereens against the granite counter top to the left of their kitchen sink. He did have the fleeting thought that it more flew from his hands than slipped, but of course it didn’t do that.
    And what did “smithereens” mean, anyway? He said that without knowing (until he checked later) that scholars think “smithereens” likely developed from the Irish word smidiríní, which means “little bits” (the diminutive of smiodar, “fragment”). And little bits of fine glass was what most of the carafe had become upon impact with the granite.

Daring the Sun to Disinfect Them

By Marc D’avegan Rubin

Down the slippery slope
little man by little man,

pinch by pinch, down
past the bottom of the bottomless

dark pit of the past.
Out of the shrieking stretched

mouths of man-children in black
and blue big man suits

Goines On: How to leave the show?

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The evening before Goines did 60 push-ups at one go for the first time, he and Mrs. Goines had watched the episode of the BBC show MI-5 (Spooks in the U.K.) for which the writers had had to write actor Keeley Hawes’ character (Zoe Reynolds) off the show because the actress needed to move on.
    The writers had contrived for Zoe to be brought up for a political “show trial” (in the words of her boss, Harry), indicted for the murder of an undercover policeman her department had not been informed of. Though Harry has been promised by someone in the Home Office that Zoe would only have her wrist slapped, she is found guilty and sentenced to 10 years in prison. To save one of his “most valuable officers” from that, Harry gives Zoe a new identity and a Chilean passport....

Goines On: Pushing up

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One morning, Goines had a pronounced feeling that death was drawing close. He felt this so strongly that on his walk that morning he did 60 pushups at one go when he reached the electrical box off which he routinely did them.
    He may have felt death’s closer approach even the day before, because he had told Mrs. Goines about managing 50 pushups that morning and felt he might be ready to go for 60. He believed he had actually done 51 on a recent walk, the most he had ever done at one go. And even as a vigorous younger man, he had never, so far as he could remember, done more than 30 at one go. But now, this year, he had often done 40 at one go and sometimes done two or three sets, a couple of times doing more than 100 in a day.

All Over the Place: Sliding into Second

—Will We Ever Have the Baseball Feeling Again?

By Michael H. Brownstein



The bases not loaded, but could be,
our best hitter coming to bat,
not fourth in the lineup I don’t know why
but seventh, and today two men on
and we can do this – the sun a lemon rind,
the clouds a willow wisp of breeze –

Poetry & Portraits: Seventeen

Drawing by Susan C. Price

Seventeen
By Eric Meub

“When I was seventeen” is how it goes,
Sinatra’s song that everybody knows,
Each decade orbiting some sweet affair
Of village greens or limousines or perfumed hair.

14 Years Ago Today: Procrastination

By Moristotle

[Originally published on August 7, 2006, without an image.]

I’ve successfully put off doing a simple clerical task for several years. This morning, like an unexpected gift, I noticed that I am now ready to do the thing. In fact, in the time that’s elapsed since my noticing my readiness I could almost have done it already – already have boxed up most of those four or five feet of old files for university archives....

Adventures from Bulgaria: The Peony Mountain

By Valeria Idakieva

As time goes by, and the mind and the body, driven by curiosity, have wandered off to faraway places, the mind starts longing for familiar sights and feelings from the past, and the body has no other choice but to follow it. As years passed by, memories from my childhood started popping up more and more often and my mind started longing for the scents, colors, and sights of the mountain near which I was born. And I couldn’t help following my mind to the fragrant meadows of my childhood.

West Coast Observer: Too Much Already, and More to Come

By William Silveira

Two  urgent books, The Room Where It Happened, by John Bolton, and Too Much Is Never Enough, by Mary Trump, provide shocking insights into the malignant individual who is the United States’ current president. Bolton was the head of the National Security Council before resigning. He recounts numerous instances of Trump’s chaotic mismanagement of foreign affairs.

When You Are 65

A Fable

By Paul Clark (aka motomynd)

When you are 65, you are finally able to understand why Ernest Hemingway shot himself at age 62, and you are ever more amazed that Hunter Thompson managed to wait until he was 67 to do the same.
    When you are 65, and you take your six-year-old son to the playground, you finally get used to young women saying, “Your grandson looks exactly like you!” And you learn to savor their reactions when you say, “Well, that’s good news, because he is actually my son.”

Sketches from the Twin Cities: Walk-Around

By Geoffrey Dean 

I stepped out at half-past eight,
Sauntered off to perambulate;
Strode on down the boulevard,
Tip-toed through a neighbor’s yard.

Took a turn, strolled through a park,
Ended up at “Noah’s Ark”;
Stumbled out where they load kegs,
Plodded on to stretch my legs.

All Over the Place: Green Grass

—Will We Ever Have the Baseball Feeling Again?

By Michael H. Brownstein






Sunlight littered left field with large swipes,
ivy covered walls christened green and darker green,
the outfield a perfect place for a picnic and the infield
a diamond of sweet grass and art.
We were two of the lucky ones,
able to enter the park late afternoon
after the crowds were gone, the garbage picked up.

Memes to minds as viruses to bodies

By Sharon Stoner

meme noun
1: an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture

Memes (discrete units of knowledge, gossip, jokes and so on) are to culture what genes are to life. Just as biological evolution is driven by the survival of the fittest genes in the gene pool, cultural evolution may be driven by the most successful memes.

—Richard Dawkins

—Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Some believe in Trump so badly they can’t comprehend the mistake they made in voting for him. They literally soak up his pronouncements into the sponges of their minds, devouring any memes that seem to justify their support for him and whatever else he wants them to believe.