Easter Uprising

Spread the Word

A Parable

By Moristotle

God the Father’s people thank Him for resurrection.

His Son had been assailed with “Flog him!”

“Crown him with those thorns!” “Crucify him!”

“Nail his hands and feet!” “Mortify him!”

God‘s people kneel and worship Him for Jesus’ restoration.

Trump’s proud people stand by, they demand his restoration.

They’re very special people; he needs them.

They rally and smash her office; he loves them.

They storm the Capitol. “Get heavy!” “Trash them!”

“Make America great again.” They bring the pain of insurrection.

Copyright © 2021 by Moristotle

BODY COUNT: Killers (a novel): Chapter 46. Countdown

Click image to
access installments

The FBI plane had a bar, and Wayne and Tony toasted a lot in flight. They were in a much better mood as they drove back to the Hideaway, Wayne in his car and Tony on his 1942 Indian Flathead motorcycle.
    A meeting was in process as they walked in. Blake, Taylor, Shelley, Peter, and Mary were gathered around the big screen. Tony shouted, “What, no welcome for the returning heroes?”
    Blake stood and walked toward them. “Glad you’re back! I guess we can put another case to bed.”

Highways and Byways: Scots’ Dike

By Maik Strosahl

I came across the term “Debatable Lands” in late 2020 and wondered if it could be used to illustrate the political turmoil we all witnessed here in the United States. So, I chased one of my rabbit holes to see where it went.
    The Debatable Lands were an area of dispute along the English and Scottish border. For many years, rievers – raiders of livestock – plundered the farms of the area, a lawless region run by several clans, one of note being the Armstrongs. Throughout time, both the Scots and the English tried to bring the lands under their rule, but it wasn’t until the 1500s that the land and their peoples were tamed. Scots’ Dike became the official border of the two countries.
    My chase did not result in a political poem, rather it led to a play on the sounds of words and the differences in language, telling the history of another chaotic time, another land divided.


The Rievers flow
over battable land
from the Solway Firth
inland to the Muckle toon of Langholm,
four hills in the Esk valley and
home of Clan Armstrong.
The wool grows thick on plunder
as they graze the threap grasses
of the Liddell and the Sark.

nexus

(noun): A connection or series of connections linking two or more things

By Paul Clark
(aka motomynd)

On March 28, Michael H. Brownstein published a wonderful account titled “A Lesson in Hats.” It was an entertaining and heartwarming piece about Michael and his son successfully navigating what were apparently some dangerous streets, with the punchline being that it you wore the wrong cap with the brim turned the wrong way, then angry men might beat you senseless with a baseball bat – all because of their mistaken belief you had a gang affiliation they didn’t approve of.
    The article and Michael’s follow-up comments all made for a tender, happy ending – but for some reason the article left me livid. Not angry. Livid. All in all, it was the most visceral reaction I’ve had to anything I’ve read in years.

From “The Scratching Post”: Owning our sins

By Ken Marks

[Originally posted on The Scratching Post, April 26, 2016]. Republished here by permission of the author.]

I want to introduce a new word – or repurpose an old one; I’m not sure which. The word is “bibliopath,” a person whose thinking is disordered by blind reverence for a book or a particular interpretation of that book. In most cases, the book is a sacred text, like the Holy Bible or the Quran.
    In America, most bibliopaths live in Red States, with a heavy concentration in the South. They think of homosexuality as an abomination; that’s the biblical label for it. I don’t think the Bible has a classification for changing one’s gender, but doing so repudiates what God has made, so I guess it’s an abomination, too. Gays who marry defile both themselves and a holy institution. They double down on sin.

All Over the Place: The Science Fair (Part 4 of 5)

Some Things Can Only Get Worse

By Michael H. Brownstein

Friday afternoon the office buzzed my room. “We’re sending an aide to you so you can take an important phone call.”
    Only emergency phone calls are this urgent. I rush to the phone. It’s the teacher’s union. They can’t read my writing. It’s a problem of a change of address. I’m immediately relieved.

Acting Citizen: Let Us Consider

By James Knudsen

I am blocked. Obstructed, hindered, barricaded. From any useful thoughts on the subject of Moristotle, Morisco, Acting Citizen, Fourth Saturday, Fifth Dimension, Marilyn McCoo, Age of Aquarius…. what is the proper tone for the final musical number in Hair?
    Let us consider the plight of the artist for a moment. Tasked with bringing order to chaos, evoking thought, wrenching emotion, and creating works that will stand for eternity. Heart on sleeve, the artist plunges into the task and gives the viewer everything. If you encounter this person, run.

Father’s Art: Works of Billy Charles Duvall [8]

Oil and acrylic on masonite; 48" x 34". July 1984.
Photo by Moristotle, 2015

Mujer Tropical

By André Duvall

Today, April 23, in honor of Billy Charles Duvall’s birthday, I offer a new installment of Father’s Art. Happy Birthday and much love, Dad!

Sketches from the Twin Cities: Shakespeare’s Songs

By Geoffrey Dean 

Today – Friday, April 23 – I am celebrating the birthday of William Shakespeare (1564-1616) with some of the music that was heard in productions of his plays during his own lifetime. For this purpose I have the valuable aid of Shakespeare’s Songbook, a comprehensive anthology by Ross W. Duffin that is both musically fascinating and visually delightful.
    Throughout his written oeuvre, Shakespeare reveals himself as a savvy scholar of music. In Henry VII and other plays, he refers at length to Orpheus, the most famous musician of Greek mythology, to show the power of music to affect our emotions and behavior. He also mentions “the music of the spheres,” the harmonious sounds emanating from the outer reaches of the universe that the Greek philosopher Pythagoras claimed to be able to hear.

BODY COUNT: Killers (a novel): Chapter 45. Shelley Saves the Day

Click image to
access installments

It was late at night by the time they parked at Wayne’s apartment. They had had a good, wild time in Destin Beach. Now they both crashed and didn’t move until their cell phones went off around 8:00 the next morning. Wayne headed to the shower and hollered at Tony on the couch, “Roll out! Blake wants us at the Hideaway ASAP, with our go-bags. Looks like our vacation is over.”
    They parked in front of the Hideaway at 9:40. Taylor was pouring coffee behind the bar. “Do you two want a cup?”

Highways and Byways: Wharton Creek

By Maik Strosahl

I was driving from Omaha this afternoon when I heard a song come on the radio that brought back some memories. Back in 2003, my nephew and nieces were visiting for the summer while I lived in Indiana. As we were driving, they asked me to put in a new CD they bought, they wanted me to listen to this cool spooky song they heard.
    The album was “Fallen,” by the band Evanescence. I had already heard one hit from it entitled “Bring Me to Life.” The song they wanted me to listen to was titled “Hello,” and I listened to it over and over. It is a pretty piano and voice-driven song, but with very dark lyrics. I remember the hair on my neck standing up when I thought I had figured out its meaning. I was convinced it was someone discovering they had another personality inside themself.
    I lived for many years with a person who was diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder (DID), previously known as multiple personality disorder (MPD). They would be in mid-conversation and suddenly would become another personality. It was very confusing sometimes, but I came to know many of their traits.
    The way I understand it, DID occurs usually when someone is faced with something dramatic they cannot handle. The person’s brain protects them by creating a personality to deal with that issue. If it starts early in one’s development it can happen many times, to the point that there can be dozens of distinct personalities. Treatment involves dealing with the issues that caused the fractures of personalities with the eventual goal to reintegrate them into one healthy state of mind. The problem that I remember the most was the fear of individual personalities who felt that integration was somehow a death to them. There were many long late-night discussions about this.
    While the song seemed to deal with the discovery of a personality, I had an idea that involved the healing of an individual, and addressed that in the poem below.

Two Poems from America’s Vietnam Era

By Shirley Skufca Hickman


Withdrawing

He hands me a form:

Permission to withdraw from English 1-A.

His hands shake but he jokes.
“I got caught in the draft.”

Duel with a Demon? Or a Streak of Crazy Coincidences?

By Paul Clark
(aka motomynd)

It was a quiet Sunday night at home, the winding-down of a great weekend. We had finished the house projects on our list, enjoyed a wonderful three-mile Sunday-afternoon walk/run along the shore of our favorite local lake, and were settling in for a quiet dinner.
    And not just any dinner! This was our post-hike family-tradition greatest-dinner-ever: a vegan, gluten-free, Mediterranean style Daiya frozen pizza, to which we added extra mushrooms, olives, and pineapple before cooking it absolutely perfectly in our air-fryer pizza oven. It isn’t often we have a perfect weekend and get to top it off with the perfect meal, but this weekend we achieved the near impossible.

All Over the Place: The Science Fair (Part 3 of 5)

The Next Morning

By Michael H. Brownstein

8:25 in the morning and already there are warnings of trouble. This may be hard to believe, but when you work in the inner city long enough, you can smell the potential of the day as you walk from the train to the school. When I leave the train – the Green Line at the 43rd Street Station – there is an unmistakable odor of violence already and violence to come. (I’m not sure this works when you drive to work. I don’t think the walk from parking right in front of the school or in the school parking lot is a long enough walk.)

Book Review: Nate’s New Age

Michael Hanson’s novel (upper left)
on display at Flyleaf Books
in Chapel Hill, North Carolina

A Wild Ride

Reviewed by Moristotle

Like the life of the central character of Michael Hanson’s novel Nate’s New Age, reading it can be a bit of a bumpy ride, especially if you make the mistake I did at the start: trying to read it only a few pages at a sitting. After a couple of weeks of sporadic sittings, of having to thumb back to be reminded who Brenda was, or Max, or Shuly, or Margaret, or Rebecca, or Kimberly, or his therapist Lynn… I finally realized I needed to buckle down and read continually. That worked much better, and I recommend that other readers approach it the same way.

Fiction: Excerpts from Nate’s New Age

By Michael Hanson

Nate is a 28-year-old skydiving instructor at Psycho Sky Sports. Having recently quit a bartending job in an effort to rein in his own drug/alcohol dependency, he decides to travel to Europe for a solo hiking adventure.
    These excerpts were selected from that particular story line of the many that make up Nate’s tale.

For over a thousand years people have made the journey across Spain’s northernmost margin, on El Camino de Santiago. Though started by Christians (who made the march to the burial place of St. James in Santiago de Compostela as a kind of penance for their sins), the hike has become a popular pilgrimage for people from all walks of life, making the trek for their own personal reasons.

BODY COUNT: Killers (a novel): Chapter 44. Louisiana Blues

Click image to
access installments

It took Wayne and Tony two weeks to cover all of the shifts at the truck shops east of Baton Rouge on I-10. It was time-consuming work. They were able to cover only a few miles of interstate highway in a day, what with having to check three shifts at each of the truck stops. Then they had to backtrack to check the weekend crew. The frustrating thing about the slow progress was that outside of the one girl – Tammy – no one knew anything.
    After that they went all of the way to Sulfur, Louisiana, and began to work their way back to Baton Rouge. Tony was happier now that it was April. The rains still came but it was warm rain, and flowers were coming up everywhere. Tony estimated that at the rate they were going it would be into May before they would have hit all the shifts along the freeway.

Highways and Byways: A Bad Day for Casey

By Maik Strosahl

It’s baseball season! 
    I have mentioned before a favorite project I got to be involved with where our poems inspired by museum pieces were put on display along with the art pieces. This poem also was created from that walk through the now defunct National Art Museum of Sport in Indianapolis.
    Outside the main building was a courtyard containing a sculpture titled “Casey Stengel,” by Rhonda Sherbell. It captures the “Old Perfessor” toward the end of his career when he was the coach of the expansion New York Mets from 1962-65.
    The Mets were a replacement team for many New Yorkers after both the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants left for California. Casey was hired out of retirement to manage the team, but even with his winning reputation he could not lead the severely short-talented players to success.
    As with the sculpture, the poem attempts to capture the frustration of a successful player and manager leading a team that was going nowhere.

From “The Scratching Post”:Intolerance

By Ken Marks

[Originally posted on The Scratching Post, April 13, 2015. Republished here by permission of the author.]

The kerfuffles late last month in Indiana and Arkansas confused a great many. There was broad agreement that the issue was intolerance, but what kind of intolerance? The Bible thumpers and the Republicans who curry their favor – pretty much the entire party – told us they were addressing religious intolerance. Of course, they were instead legitimizing sexual intolerance, and any other intolerance that could be tied to scripture.

Correspondence: Good-bye to Prince Philip

Otherwise, Hello to Same-old Same-old

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.]

“Authentic stoicism.” This article is great: “Prince Philip’s Death and the Last Embers of British Stoicism” [Anthony Lane, New Yorker, April 9] Excerpt:

On Hearing, or Not

By Dan Fame

Like many people my age, I am partially deaf. In my case, like many males, it is the higher frequencies. This is the consequence of age and military experience.
    There are some downsides and some upsides to this condition.

All Over the Place: The Science Fair (Part 2 of 5)

Let It Begin!

By Michael H. Brownstein

So here it is, 9:00 a.m.: The children are lined up to come inside, and I have thirty minutes to go before the science fair begins. We split up my class – they stay outside and have gym with 211 – and I go through the final touches.
    9:30: Over a hundred projects are on display in the gym and I’m feeling really good about this. One judge does not show, but no problem. The social worker volunteers to take his place and so does a parent volunteer.

Poetry & Portraits: An Essay on Ma’am

Drawing by Susan C. Price

An Essay on Ma’am
Sequel to “Ode to a Department Store”

By Eric Meub

[Originally published on Sept. 9, 2017]

We had a creed — I shop therefore I am;
We had a name — the honorific Ma’am,
that word of light whose bright acoustics beam
about the altars of the old regime.

As the World Turns: The Changing Climate

By Ed Rogers

A warming trend followed by a freezing trend may be a sign that the greenhouse effect is increasing because of human activity. Global warming is often linked to the burning of fossil fuels – coal, oil, and natural gas – by industries and cars. These chemicals are also called greenhouse gases. This is the wisdom of those who are in charge of knowing such things. I not only believe in climate change but I believe some of these things they attribute to climate change are causing damage to our planet. We as humans would be happier without all these emissions even if they did nothing to change the climate.

Covid: Horrific Random Killer, or Focused Societal Upgrade?

By Paul Clark
(aka motomynd)

Killing more than 550,000 people in the U.S., Covid-19 has been a national disaster. Lost in that huge number are individual stories of immense personal tragedy, along with some wry moments that almost make Covid-19 seem like a thinking killer with a dark sense of humor.
    Donald Trump mocked Covid in general, and people who wore masks in particular; UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson did the same. Covid struck both, not hard enough to kill them, but hard enough to destroy Trump’s first term as president and any chance he had at a second; Johnson’s experience with Covid seemed to affect him enough to make him sound almost civil for the first time in his political career. In between were the countless examples of preachers and churchgoers – mostly across the South – who confidently stated “God is greater than Covid-19” and refused to wear a mask or take social-distancing precautions – and wound up dead from Covid. Tragedy, tinged with irony.

Highways and Byways: Waiting for a Trailer

By Maik Strosahl

I tend to write in cycles and lately I have been feeling a bit bound-up. I do not really enjoy winter, so I try to write my way out of it. But every year, shortly before spring, I find the ideas don’t quite work, the words just do not flow, every thought gets jumbled into a mess until one day the sun shines just right and all is right with the world again.
    Oh, I have had longer streaks of the dreaded writer’s block. The last few years of my first marriage were less than inspiring and I wrote very sparingly, but for the most part, this yearly cycle has become my way.
    This last Saturday, apparently, was the day. I didn’t see it coming, but it hit while waiting for a trailer.
    I started the day just outside of Des Moines, my Friday cut short by a brake problem that developed on the road. I found a truck stop to get some help and was shut down for the night. A mobile mechanic arrived during my 10-hour off-time to repair it while I slept. By morning, I was back on the road, heading to the Distribution Center for another load.

Boldt Words & Images: Screen Savior

By Bob Boldt

Watching star beams float over and around

mushrooms in a pastel forest of soft, silk soil,

I was, for a second, maybe less, in my parent’s

living room listening to “Captain Midnight”

BODY COUNT: Killers (a novel): Chapter 43. More Killers

Click image to
access installments

Taylor and Wayne dropped their rental cars off in Memphis and picked up their own cars. By the time they reached the Hideaway – Blake had decided the bar didn’t need his name on it – Rainbow’s 1942 motorcycle was parked outside. Wayne and Taylor pulled in beside it.
    Inside, at the big table, were Peter, Blake, and Tony, aka Rainbow. They all had beers and were laughing. Taylor jokingly shouted, “So this is what goes on when I’m not here!”
    Blake hollered back, “Get a beer from behind the bar and join us. We were just talking about your latest case.”

For Ralph Earle on his 70th Birthday

In Remembrance of Half His Life Ago

By Moristotle

Ralph’s friend Judith Valerie occasioned my writing the poem below. I was on her distribution list when she notified no doubt scores of individuals who love Ralph to please contribute something to the collection she planned to read to him today. Her including me meant a lot, and I thank her for it.


April 4, 1986 – was that Ralph Earle’s first day
as a tech editor at IBM in Cary, North Carolina?
I’d like to think so, like to believe it was,
love it more if it really was the day I met
this extraordinary human being,
my colleague for several years in Cary.

All Over the Place: The Science Fair (Part 1 of 5)

Today’s Going to Be Great!

By Michael H. Brownstein

Every day this week I worked on the all-school science fair. Monday I judged all of the classroom science fairs (with the help of two handpicked seventh graders). Tuesday and Wednesday students from the fourth to eighth grades came to my room to be judged and/or show me the improvements they made so they could be in the science fair. On those days, my seventh graders assisted every student who wanted to enter, but were in need of help.

Lights, Camera, Action!

Two Poems of Old Age

By Moristotle

The first poem below more or less wrote itself one morning, in the moments after I experienced the internal argument whether or not to flip that light switch. In the days that followed, my ruminations grew to include the ideas of the second poem, and I thought at first that I could work those ideas into the first poem. But I soon learned that I couldn’t – or it would be better not to. For better or worse: “Practicing to Die” and “Rehearsing to Live.”


Practicing to Die

Don’t do it! 

Do it! 

No, don’t do it!
I yell at myself in the silence of my mind.
I remind myself I’m carrying a tray,
better safe than sorry.
I used to lift a finger to flip off the kitchen light
as I passed toward the dining table.
I have done it many times.

Adventures from Bulgaria: Autumn Memories

By Valeria Idakieva

A lot of people had been waiting for the winter, not only to go skiing, but also to enjoy the mountains covered in snow – white, clean, serene…. Undoubtedly they are beautiful, especially when the sun rays make the snow sparkle and the blue sky seems bluer than ever.

More Dollars than Sense

By Paul Clark (aka motomynd)

Just when we think rich people might run out of ways to show off how much money they can afford to lose, we mere financial mortals are proven wrong yet again.


Used to be that if you were a rich businessperson who wanted to show off your stunning across the board business acumen, you bought an NFL football team. After all, if you are genius enough to become a billionaire, surely you can assemble a winning team, right?