Highways and Byways: Woke (Part 1)

By Maik Strosahl

A night spent in a truck sleeper birth is hardly still. You are constantly being woke by the tractor auto-starting (for heating, cooling, or just to charge the batteries), someone or something moving outside the truck (truck stops are never fully asleep), or even just the jostle of a strong wind. So, when the weather is more moderate and I am in a place where no traffic is coming and going, I like to take out the keys and just enjoy the quiet.
    Tonight, that worked well until about midnight, when I woke in a sweat from the humidity. I resisted starting the truck for a while, first just tossing, then opening the window by my head for a little air, then finally giving in, going to the front, and turning the ignition.

Goines On: Ashes with ashes

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When Goines learned of a friend’s loss of his beloved dog, and of the friend’s burying his dog’s remains in his back yard – the dog’s “Forever kingdom” – Goines’ thoughts returned to an action he and his wife had taken a couple of years earlier, less than a month after the loss of their own dog, Ziggy.
    On April 4, 2019, they visited Memorial Grove on the UNC campus in Chapel Hill, where they had decided to have their ashes strewn when the time came.

West Coast Observer: California’s Fishing Problem

By William Silveira

Lynda and Stewart Resnick, the wealthy landowners I mentioned in Friday’s column – the couple who are irrigating desert land in Lost Hills – made the Los Angeles Times yesterday. In an op-ed column entitled “The Fate of the Salmon Is a Grim Indicator of Our Future,” author James Pogue notes that immense power is wielded in Sacramento by large agribusiness interests and their lobbyists. He mentions the Resnicks specifically as “the Beverly Hills-based planter billionaires” and notes that they “have donated more than $350,000 to Governor [Gavin] Newsome since 2018.” The following instructive paragraph immediately follows the mention of the Resnicks:

All Over the Place: Poems from Two Grandfathers

By Nguyenvan Luat and Michael H. Brownstein

Nguyenvan Luat is my Vietnamese counterpart. I translated the two poems, but I’m too new to know if I’m any good at it. Each Vietnamese translation is shown first, with the English version below it.


The Poem by Nguyenvan Luat

Capella Evelyn, Nick name Bao La
Bao La!
Cháu gái bé Bao La
Từ bên kia trái đất
Chào đời! Chào cả nhà!
Chúc An khang Thịnh vượng!
Bao La tình nghĩa Mẹ – Cha!
Bao La bông lúa củ khoai tình ngườii!
Bao La bừng sáng bầu trời:
CHÂN – THIÊN – VIỆT – Mỹ đời đời Bao La!
Grand Father’s Bao La

Acting Citizen: Grandson and Grandnephew in One Person

By James Knudsen

It is well and proper summer now, but the vacationing that typically accompanies the summer solstice began two weeks ago. Less than 24 hours after Andra finished her year at Edison High School, we boarded a plane for Seattle. Cooler climes are certainly reason enough, as we’ve already had temps in excess of 110 here in Fresno, but that was not the main draw. The main draw is…Cameron.

West Coast Observer: California’s Water Problem

By William Silveira

A friend on the East Coast recently sent me a link to the New York Times article “The Central California Town That Keeps Sinking” [by Lois Henry, May 25]. Its opening sounds a siren:

CORCORAN, Calif. — In California’s San Joaquin Valley, the farming town of Corcoran has a multimillion-dollar problem. It is almost impossible to see, yet so vast it takes NASA scientists using satellite technology to fully grasp.
    Corcoran is sinking.

[You can read the whole article here, after I provide a context for you.]

Goines On: Go be gone

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When his Father’s Day card arrived addressed to “Grandpa Go,” both Goines and his wife did a double-take. “‘Go’?” Mrs. Goines exclaimed. “I thought the only people who called you ‘Go’ were your college chums.”
    It was sort of true. Before Goines moved into the freshman dormitory in college (51 years earlier), the only person who had called him “Go” was Goines himself, when he made up that 8th-grade campaign poster with the slogan, “Get mo’ with Go!” – his second draft, after rejecting “Mow with Go!”
    “Get mo’ with Go!” had seemed to work – he won the election to become student body president. But “Go” hadn’t thenceforth become his nickname, although a certain wise-cracking friend in high school might occasionally refer to him that way.

Highways and Byways: Flanagan Writes Again

By Maik Strosahl

I thought I would do a tribute to Moristotle’s “Goines On” series. I don’t know where he got the name Goines from (I didn’t find it in the ones I went back and read), but Flanagan is the name the old man called me who was my neighbor when I was six and was watching him work on his lawn mower. He taught me many things as I grew and I don’t think he ever called me Maik. I never had a chance to tell him thank you.

In Memoriam: Our Dog Del

By Ed Rogers

Del was a rescue puppy from Costa Rica, where Helene Wirt, a wonderful lady from Austria, operates a rescue kennel – Dogland – in the mountains outside of San Ramon. She found Del on the streets of San Miguel shortly before my wife and I visited Dogland in search of a puppy, in 2014.
    Janie and I had been in Costa Rica for two years, and for Mother’s Day, I wanted something special for her. I’ll never forget her asking me, “How will we know if it is the right dog?” I told her we were not going to pick out a dog, the right dog would find us.
    Helene keeps around 230 dogs at Dogland at any given time, and all of them are craving attention. Inside one of Dogland’s larger pens, I sat at one of five or six concrete tables that dot the yard. The dogs swamped me. They were on the table behind me, pushing to get around in front of me to be petted.

All Over the Place: For Father’s Day

By Michael H. Brownstein

I Think about My Son
While I Cut a 
Quarter Acre of Lawn

The father trims trees; his son trims trees –

they stand together before a mosaic of large bark,

new blossoms, a glitter of leaf, each one

holds a clipboard and a small golf-scoring pencil,

their heads bent towards each other discussing

length and circumference, distance and height,

dry rot, the mulberry growing out of the maple,

the small tree forming in the elbow of dogwood

From “The Scratching Post”: Tyranny

By Ken Marks

[Opening from the original on The Scratching Post, June 17, 2021, published here by permission of the author.]

In 2017, as America was beginning its obsession with a tyrant, a short book titled On Tyranny was published. Its author, Timothy Snyder, writes brilliantly about political tyranny, but I wish he had explored other forms of tyranny. As I studied it, my mind drifted to the Jefferson Memorial and the words inscribed there: I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. Every form of tyranny. Was Jefferson’s conception of tyranny larger than Snyder’s? I’m inclined to think so. I understand tyranny as Jefferson did: a cruel, oppressive power that denies life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in all of human experience.

    In its simplest manifestation, in the family and the neighborhood, tyranny is a leech, sucking the joy from our conscious hours and leaving despair behind. I think of child abuse, spousal abuse, elder abuse, and bullying on the play ground. I think of gangs on inner city streets using swagger, contempt, and intimidation to hold their egos together. In their ambit, there is suffocating unease.

[Read the whole thing on The Scratching Post.]

Copyright © 2021 by Ken Marks Ken Marks was a contributing editor with Paul Clark & Tom Lowe when “Moristotle” became “Moristotle & Co.” A brilliant photographer, witty conversationalist, and elegant writer, Ken contributed photographs, essays, and commentaries from mid-2008 through 2012. Late in 2013, Ken birthed the blog The Scratching Post. He also posts albums of his photos on Flickr.

Goines On: Entrepreneuring

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Goines’ conversation with a young man he met at a family gathering in Virginia stayed with him as he drove himself and Mrs. Goines home on Sunday afternoon. The young man’s profession was business consulting, helping businesses “solve problems and develop strategies.”
    The word “entrepreneur” hadn’t come up in the conversation, but now Goines found himself thinking about his grandson, who wanted to be a successful entrepreneur. His grandson was only a few years younger than the young business consultant, and Goines got to wondering whether the consultant ever counseled young entrepreneurs. Might he be willing to talk with Goines’ grandson?

Highways and Byways: Infatuation (Cassini’s Last Pass)

By Maik Strosahl

My nephew recently posted a photo purporting to be the last shot taken by the Cassini spacecraft before it plummeted into Saturn in 2017. While the image was beautiful, it turned out to be an artist’s rendering that was released by NASA.

From the Alwinac: Happy 166th Birthday, Alwin Schroeder!

[Click on image to
go directly to
the Alwinac’s home page]

[The Alwinac blog is part of the schroeder170 project^*, honoring the life and musical career of cellist Alwin Schroeder (1855-1928) and exploring the history of cello playing in the US.]


On June 15, 1855, Alwin Schroeder was born in Neuhaldensleben, Germany, into “an atmosphere intensely musical.” He followed his father and brothers into music, then ventured further than any of them when he came to the US 130 years ago.
    1891 was an “intensely musical” year in the United States. Tchaikovsky was in New York for the opening of Carnegie Hall, and Dvorak had accepted a new job at the National Conservatory in the same city. Pianists Paderewski were taking the country by storm on their first US tours, and several leading vocalists of American birth had just returned triumphantly from Europe. Among the Leipzig musicians recruited that year for the competing orchestras of New York and Boston were violinist Adolphe Brodsky (as concertmaster of the New York Symphony Society) and cellist Alwin Schroeder (as principal cellist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra).

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Read on....
* Note from Geoffrey Dean: The schroeder170 project celebrates the 170^th anniversary of the birth of German-American cellist Alwin Schroeder. Based on my research into his life and musical career, the project is inspired by Schroeder’s “170 Foundation Studies for Violoncello,” a famous compilation known affectionately as “The Schroeder Etudes.”

Copyright © 2021 by Geoffrey Dean

Goines On: The loaner

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When the Goineses returned from visiting their son and his family and in-laws in Minnesota, their 2011 Volvo V50 (a small station wagon) wouldn’t start. They were glad they hadn’t had to park it at the airport because a neighbor had offered to drive them. Back home on Monday evening, they needed to shop for groceries in the morning. Hard to do with a car that wouldn’t start.
    The car’s battery had previously misbehaved, so Goines assumed it had run down during its 11 days of idleness. The first neighbor Goines approached had a lithium recharger and had their car going in a minute. The Goineses had never even known there was such a device. Goines had expected to have to push the car out of the garage so the neighbor could pull his car alongside for a jump.

We invite you to Geoffrey Dean’s channel on YouTube

By Moristotle

Contributing editor and cellist Geoffrey Dean has launched a YouTube channel in his name and started by posting videos of four of his performances. They feature little-known compositions that he discovered mostly by scouring newspaper items on 19th and early 20th century concerts in the US.
    I enjoyed these videos very much, and I encourage you to watch them. Geoffrey’s sister shared the playlist with a friend of hers who recently told her she is thinking about switching from violin to cello (she played piano as a child and has been trying the violin). After checking Geoffrey’s channel, the woman commented: “OMG! I had no idea! I just watched one piece so far (it’s late), and it was exquisite!”

All Over the Place: Because You Tell Them You Are More Depressed

By Michael H. Brownstein

you make the decision to die

but you do not

the breath of fresh-air dawn waking you,

a few laps around the track nearby,

salt water and the texture of shade and light

you wish the world solid gray,
not black and white
the rocks around you conglomerates
not a char of coal and granite
and day changes to evening,
evening to moonlight
dying is not a competitive sport

Copyright © 2021 by Michael H. Brownstein Michael H. Brownstein’s volumes of poetry, A Slipknot Into Somewhere Else and How Do We Create Love?, were published by Cholla Needles Press in 2018 & 2019, respectively.

Goines On: Mask down!

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Goines came home from shopping in a giddy mood. He had carelessly splashed gasoline on his pants because he pulled the nozzle out before clicking it off. How stupid or inattentive can a man be who has put gasoline into a car – what, a million times?
    But, he told his wife, though neither Walmart nor Walgreens had had the throat lozenges she required for her dry throat, he had been told at Walgreens that they were still requiring masks even though the governor was going along with the president and the CDC about vaccinated people no longer being advised to wear masks.

Highways and Byways: The Noisy Outback

By Maik Strosahl

I love sounds. Yes, in music, nature but especially in poetry. I used to experiment a lot with onomatopoeia, but have not for a long time.
    I was reading a piece by Vic Midyett detailing an event that took place while he lived in Australia. Our leader put the article under the heading “Thunder Down Under,” a series that I as a newer member was not familiar with. I took a quick look through the archive articles and came across a painting of a Kookaburra done by Vic’s wife Shirley Deane/Midyett.

All Over the Place: The Eighth Grade Teacher/Student Basketball Game

From My Teaching Book

By Michael H. Brownstein

When I exited the “L” train at 43rd on Chicago’s southside, I took a deep breath of air at the top of the stairs and then again in the large empty field leading to where I taught seventh grade. There are days where you smell nothing at all and there are days when you smell violence and chaos. This day there was a soft perfume mixed with the sour taste of wine, the kind of scent that does not tell you anything about how your day is going to go.

Highways and Byways: A Cold and Less Significant Pizza (My Very Excellent Mother Just Served Us Nothing)

By Maik Strosahl

Yes, I am a rebel. Striking out at the windmills that still haunt me. Today, that windmill is change. Specifically facts I was taught as a child that fallen by the wayside.
    For example, I was very good at math. Yet, when I try to explain to my kids how to figure out equations, it becomes an effort of futility as my math has become a foreign language.

Roger’s Reality: The Great Copal Caper

By Roger Owens

We decided to go to Belize in 2012; we just had to see the temples before the end of the world, you know. That whole Mayan calendar thing was a huge joke there, with tee-shirts showing cartoon Mayans saying things like “Down tools, everybody, we lost the contract,” to a crew of stonecutters, or one stonecutter to another, “People in 2012 are really gonna freak out over this!” Of course, the world didn’t come to an end, but we sure saw some incredible temples.