Susan’s Stuff: Mind, Memories & Hips

Detail from “Anxious Magpie”

By Moristotle

Hear this! “Mind, Memories & Hips,” a big art show of the work of Columnist Emeritus Susan C. Price, is underway through October 15 at The Artists’ Gallery (TAG), on Museum Row, at 5458 Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles, California. From TAG's website:

Susan Price paints with acrylic and oil sticks on paper and canvas. Her abstract forms come from a figurative base that may or may not be visible, letting the audience dictate the open interpretation. Her work has been featured in juried shows at Barnsdall Park, LA Municipal Gallery, Gallery 825, Laemmle Theaters, and different venues via Women Painters West.
    Price has studied art formally since 1963, at Pitzer College, UCLA, & UCLA Extension, with an emphasis on private workshops. She is involved as a member with Los Angeles Art Association/Gallery 825, Women Painters West, and FIG Gallery.

Highways and Byways: The Pickle Bucket Drummer

By Maik Strosahl

Mom didn’t buy us clothing that had logos on them, but she knew I liked baseball at an early age and bought me a dark blue shirt with the shape of a man holding a bat to his shoulder, one word below spelling “Sox.” If she had realized that stood for the Chicago White Sox, I am sure it would have stayed on the store shelf.

Correspondence: Sacrosanct ideas

And other questionable things

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.]

You must read this – the obituary “John Shelby Spong, 90, Dies; Sought to Open Up the Episcopal Church” [NYT, September 19]. It says that “Spong called on Christians to reject sacrosanct ideas like Jesus’ virgin birth and the existence of heaven and hell.” Excerpts:

Through more than 25 books, as well as…Bishop Spong urged his church to reconcile with modernity, even if that meant setting aside supernatural ideas like Jesus’ resurrection….
    Bishop Spong became a national celebrity in the mid-1980s, when he began calling on the church to reconsider its position on gay rights. He urged his colleagues not only to accept openly gay clergy, but also to welcome openly gay and lesbian worshipers into their congregations and to bless same-sex unions....
    ...He taught that the Gospels should be considered artistic interpretations of Jesus’ life, not literal accounts of it, and he called on Christians to reject ideas, like original sin, that could not be explained by science....
    As a white progressive minister in the South during the civil rights era, he often found himself at odds with his community, especially when he insisted on preaching to Black congregations. He and his family faced regular threats and harassment, and he later claimed that the Ku Klux Klan of eastern North Carolina had labeled him their No. 1 enemy.

Well, if you ask me (and you didn’t), here are my two cents on the President’s speech last night [September 9]: 

    It was a hell of a good speech and about time. The funny thing is, right after the speech came the World News on ABC. David Muir covered the speech but added his own interpretation. He kept saying that Biden ordered most of this and most of that. 

    Biden never used the word “most.” He said flat out that if you wanted to work for the government you will get a shot or you will not work for the government. That includes anyone that gets money from Medicare; like hospitals and nursing homes.
    I don’t know how you feel about it, but the virus has cost me a year of life and now these [people, expletive deleted] that will not take a shot are costing me another. We have very few years to lose, and these two we’ll never get back. The schools in Desoto Co. [Mississippi] are opened back up for the 3rd time, still no mask mandate, so it will not be long till they close again. Stupidest [expletive deleted] people in this world.

Until now I hoped I was the only person with a Trumpist neighbor actually crazy enough to threaten to kill someone because they supported Biden. But I’m not: “Texas Man Arrested After Allegedly Killing Woman, Shooting Her Husband Because They Voted for Biden” [Ally Mauch, People Magazine, September 13]. Excerpt:

On Sept. 8, the El Paso Police Department SWAT team and detectives arrested Joseph Angel Alvarez — nearly a year after Georgette Kauffmann was killed and her husband Daniel Kaufmann’s was shot, police said in a press release issued last week. Alvarez, 38, is currently incarcerated at a county detention facility after his bail was set at $2 million for the murder of Georgette and $500,000 for the aggravated assault of Daniel.
    The couple was attacked in their El Paso home on Nov. 14 last year, one week after Biden was declared the winner over incumbent President Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election.

This salute was posted on Nextdoor, a local site for lost animals and the like:

HATS OFF TO OFFICER BENNY. High speed chase this morning and he threw spike stripes out. Very Dangerous but to see officers in action is emotional for me. They try very hard and so many get a bad rap. I just want to thank all of our Southaven Police Officers!

The saluter forgot to add that the car ran into a pole after its tires blew: “Man charged after fleeing from officers with 6-year-old daughter in car, deputies say” [Newsbreak, September 15]. Thankfully no one was hurt. Excerpt:

Tuesday around 8:30 a.m., DeSoto County Sheriff’s Deputies said they attempted to stop a white Infiniti SUV on Church Road near Highway 51 in Southaven, Miss., for a traffic violation. The driver refused to stop and continued east on Church Road to Getwell. DCSD said the vehicle was known to flee from law enforcement and had done so several times recently.
    Southaven Police Officers put down stop sticks and blocked traffic to help keep the public safe. [They] used a tactical vehicle intervention to stop the SUV...the suspect’s vehicle caught fire...[They] rescued the suspect’s six-year-old daughter, who was in the vehicle during the pursuit.

Stupid people are everywhere apparently, not just where I live. Amazing that more people aren’t killed when idiots try to drive away from the police and ignite high-speed chases.
    With all the trackers and electronics on vehicles that show how it was being driven over a period of days, where it has been, etc, why isn’t there a remote, computer controlled kill switch? That way police could make a phone call, enter a code, and ZAP! the vehicle would be shut down. No heroics necessary, no innocent victims injured or killed.

Public health measures
to prevent the spread
of COVID-19 have
decreased RSV activity

Just when you think you can go back into the swimming pool, a turd floats pass: “A Deadly Virus Is Spiking In Mississippi, And It’s Not Covid” [Matt Lillywhite, Newsbreak, September 18]. Excerpt:

The CDC has issued a serious warning about a virus in Mississippi with similar symptoms to COVID-19. It’s known as the Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV), and luckily, hospitals in Mississippi are well-prepared to fight it.
    RSV, like Covid-19, is primarily spread by respiratory droplets caused by coughing or sneezing and direct contact with a contaminated surface. It’s also the leading cause of bronchiolitis and pneumonia in children under the age of one in Mississippi and several other states.
    RSV infections are most frequent in the United States during the autumn and winter. However, due to the deployment of public health measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19, RSV activity decreased substantially in 2020.

Grateful for correspondence, Moristotle

From the Alwinac: On This Day in 1891: Schroeder Arrives in the US

[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.]


Listen to David Popper’s Adagio, Op. 65, No. 1, published in 1891 and dedicated to Alwin Schroeder

130 years ago [September 22], Alwin Schroeder and his family arrived in New York on the SS Aller from Bremen. In the passenger list, Schroeder is described as “artist of music.” The youngest of his three children was just 7 months old at the time. He and his family settled in at 8 Myrtle St. in Brookline, MA, renting a 600-square-foot house that still stands today.

    One of the questions I was asked by his relatives when visiting Alwin-related places in Germany was why Alwin Schroeder left Germany at all. I don’t think he really wanted to leave. If there had been a suitable position in Dresden or Berlin at the time, I am convinced that he would have stayed. As it was, he was likely more enticed by the idea of where he was going, by the thought of expanded professional horizons. Pianist Jan Ignace Paderewski, who came to the US for the first time that same year (1891), put it like this: “America, then as now, was a ‘promised land’ to all European artists, a land of fantastic and fabulous legend, with money and appreciation flowing out to meet the artist from the great and lively and generous American public.” (Paderewski, Memoirs, p. 188)
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Read on….

Copyright © 2021 by Geoffrey Dean

All Over the Place: The Big Party

By Michael H. Brownstein

There was no elephant in the room,

only a pimple that just now sprouted

exactly one hour before the biggest party ever

and there it was in her mirror, big as her nose,

off to the right another face on her forehead,

so big she wanted to scream.

Acting Citizen: Auditioning (Part 1)

By James Knudsen

“Once more into the breach.”
    The famous words that propelled Henry’s forces against the walled town of Harfleur. This time it’s a far less heroic task, auditioning.
    In recent years, auditioning has become something I’m rarely asked to do. This has nothing to do with my fame, I have none. Nor my talent, I have only a little more of that. It is the result of the people casting shows knowing my work. The people involved with the group I auditioned for this past weekend may have seen my work, but their policy is, “everyone auditions.”

Roger’s Reality: The Camper Saga, Part 2

By Roger Owens

So, when you buy a boat, or a camper, first you really check it out, figure out how things work, and then it’s time to try out your new toy. We called it a “shake-down cruise,” in keeping with the nautical theme. Cruises plural, rather. On three short trips we learned that the swaying of the trailer was a bit uncomfortable, between the wind and the big rigs blowing by the old farts doing 63 in the camper. We’re not in a hurry. I have driven many trailers, but none with this high of a profile. We call it being “under sail,” because, buddy, the wind and the truckers’ slipstreams are pushing you around like a sailboat whether you like it or not. Of all the crap we’ve packed, we sort out what we’ll really need and what we can ditch back at the house. Once home, I purchase a sway brace and install it on the trailer. It works. Lesson One learned.

Goines On: Ringing

Click image for more vignettes

Goines was late putting out bird seed one morning. He had maundered during breakfast, thinking dreamy apple thoughts, and missed the time by which he usually had their seed out.
    As he raised the silhouette shade over the door from the kitchen onto the back porch, he fantasized – he hoped – that some birds were watching, waiting until he brought out their treats. He hoped they now noticed the shade being raised and were beginning to announce the event. Goines imagined them tweeting, “He’s coming, he’s coming!” Did each species have its own sentinel?

Highways and Byways: The Prospector

By Maik Strosahl

Eureka! Since 1849, this word has appeared on the California seal. It comes from the Greek and means “I have found it.” For many years, the word was probably used to refer to the discovery of gold, but as many more followed the 49ers to the coast, it also came to mean they had found paradise: the land of the sun and endless beaches.

Adventures from Bulgaria: Gifts of Spring

By Valeria Idakieva

At the height of Summer, as the heat waves were roasting most of the greenery around us, I was reminiscing about the exquisite flowers, tender colours, and superb views that Spring was gifting us with in the higher mountains, where the heralds of Spring were following on the heels of the withdrawing snow and frost,

From “The Scratching Post”:Axioms

By Ken Marks

[Originally posted on The Scratching Post, September 18. Republished here by permission of the author.]

Mr. Dinkel taught me all about axioms in my high school geometry class. You begin with a set of self-evident truths – axioms – and from them you derive all the complex postulates of Euclidean geometry! I was astonished that so much knowledge could be derived simply by using logic.
    Much later it occurred to me that each person is a kind of Euclid. Each of us comes to see the world as a set of self-evident truths and, consciously or unconsciously, each of us extrapolates a worldview from them. The difference is only this: when Euclid stated that the shortest distance between two points on a flat surface is a straight line, he was irrefutably correct. Our axioms, however, are different. They are self-evident truths to each of us but not necessarily to our neighbors, who have their own sets of axioms. And here’s the fascinating bit: the lack of a consensus about personal axioms does nothing to weaken our convictions about their truth. That’s one of my axioms – what you might call a “meta-axiom.” It makes coexistence challenging.

[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.

All Over the Place: The Bad Luck Child

By Michael H. Brownstein

did not know the scar was a charm grafted to the sole of his foot:

he did not die.

In time he met the mascara-faced man

and the woman with the tattooed smile.

He sampled war,

his day brightened with the first snow,

his scar changed color with the thaw,

but he could not understand its purple and green,

its red to yellow,
the fold of skin at his heel,

the fractures of bent toes and injured toenail.

A Couple of Maroons: Making a Big Splash

Detail from “Sun Glass”

By Craig McCollum & Maik Strosahl

[Editor’ Note: Today we launch a new column, under the byline of Columnist Maik Strosahl and his guest, Craig McCollum.]


This isn’t about me, Maik Strosahl.
    I was an awkward teen – I mean who wasn’t? But maybe I was a bit farther left field than most. I was the one who thought it would be funny for my friends and me to put Hostess wrapper characters in our Velcro wallets and flash them at people as if they were some special badge for a secret society. I was the one who wrote a satire called “The Cabbage Patch Massacre,” about a crazed German student who went around shredding 1982’s must-have Christmas present, making cole slaw and sauerkraut out of their stuffing. When that handwritten masterpiece got lost being passed around from student to student, I wrote the sequel. I encouraged a few brave classmates to stand on the street corner at lunch, pulling up our pantlegs to show passing cars our ankles, just trying to get reactions. And after reading the classic 1984, I decided it needed a sequel too, and created “1994,” where Big Momma was defeated by Veto Bomb Missiles – hidden in plain view as tubes of Aim toothpaste on billboards.

Goines On: The bumps

Click image for more vignettes

Over several days, Goines further cogitated the “bump problem” that arose when a 00 non-leap year came along and interrupted the standard 28-year cycle, with its pattern of 6₁-11-6₂-5 sub-cycles. He believed he could specify a pattern for the 400-year stretches as well, each one comprising three 00-years that aren’t leap years.
    He had already traced the 6₁-11-6₂-5 sub-cycles back to 1909, within 8 years of the 1900 non-leap year, and up to 2099, where the 6₁-11-6₂ portion of 28-year cycle butted up against the 2100 non-leap year. He now needed to examine that bump at 2100, and the bumps at 2200 & 2300 as well.

Highways and Byways: Night Climbing

By Maik Strosahl

Was trying to sleep through another “refer” night, pulling a temperature-controlled trailer across Missouri. I set up Netflix to play old Star Trek: Next Gen episodes to nod off, but I am still awake and contemplating a Dyson Sphere.
    Freeman Dyson (1923-2020) was a theoretical and mathematical physicist. At four, he is said to have been obsessed with calculating how many atoms there were in the sun. He took pride in going against conventional wisdom and felt that it was better for a prophet to be wrong than to be vague about his ideas. Today, his name is borne by several concepts, including the aforementioned Sphere, which is a theoretical way an advanced space-faring civilization could harness their nearest star for almost unlimited energy by enclosing it with an artificial structure. It was also a great way for the second Star Trek series to bring back James Doohan in his signature role.

At Random: A Man Walked into a Convenience Store

A dispatch from 

the land of :

“Hell yeah! 

We know how 

to do stupid!”

By Paul Clark
(aka motomynd)

Over the years I’ve been called out by various Moristotle readers and writers because the stories I claim as factual accounts sometimes seem so far-fetched, people assume I must be embellishing, à la Hunter Thompson…or Fox “News.” When I try to explain that these stories are simply examples of the idiocy that swirled around me as I grew up in Southwest Virginia, and that I rediscovered when I moved back from the Northern Virginia/Washington DC area to SWVA, few seem to believe me.
    “How could such stupidity and absurdity possibly be real?” people ask.

From the Alwinac: Bel Canto Cello: Adrian Bradbury Plays Piatti’s Opera Fantasies

[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.]


Bradbury and Davies perform Piatti’s Fantasy on Bellini's La Sonnambula.

British cellist Adrian Bradbury’s 2020 2-CD release of Alfredo Piatti: The Operatic Fantasies is a musical celebration of the greatest hits of Italian opera, as reimagined for the cello by one of the most outstanding virtuosos of the 19th century. A project backed by significant scholarship and consummate skill, it is also an illuminating document of Bradbury’s own journey with a previously-neglected part of Piatti’s compositional legacy, from Bradbury’s discovery of unpublished Piatti fantasies in the cellist-composer’s archive in his native Bergamo, Italy, through a decade-long process of learning, performing, and ultimately recording them.

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Read on….

Copyright © 2021 by Geoffrey Dean

All Over the Place: After the Broke Hip Is Repaired

By Michael H. Brownstein

In the great lakes of injured bone,

a spinal tap      temperature      a reading of the pulse.

When he arrives from the water’s bottom to the light

Recovery      no pain      a stomach of animosity.

Laying in his bed, they welcome him back

warm water      salad      something soft to chew on.

He sighs. Pain tears away from its cocoon

blood work      pulse rate      temperature      blood pressure.

He refuses pain pills, calms himself, lets the wind outside in,

and when he falls asleep      a current of coolness,

grass carp darting to the side      pain sinking into mud.

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.

Ray Just Being Ray (a poem)

By Paul Clark (aka motomynd)

He stands on his back porch and stares,

crosses his arms, flexes his forearms, glares,

he shoots a finger, just before he turns away,

yet another day of Ray just being Ray.

Goines On: Not a rave review

Click image for more vignettes

Almost every week, Goines had been buying a carton of Envy apples at Costco so he and Mrs. Goines could enjoy slices of a deliciously flavorful apple for dessert following their usual dinner of peanut butter on toasted bread.
    But Costco had no Envy’s on their most recent shopping trip, and so, of the three sorts on display, he selected a carton of Rave’s, an apple he’d not heard of. He was setting the carton in his cart when a woman startled him by asking how Rave’s were, and it twisted open and one of the apples tumbled out. He told her he hadn’t tried them, but—

From the Alwinac: Bel Canto Cellists in America: Gaetano Braga

[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.]


Listen to Souvenir d’Amerique.

The Italian composer and cellist Gaetano Braga (1829-1907), wrote his earliest musical works in his early teens, while a student of Mercadante at the Conservatory of S. Pietro a Majella in Naples. His main cello teacher was Ciaudelli. In the two decades prior to his tour of the United States, Braga’s musical career developed along two parallel paths: as an opera composer, with productions in Naples, Vienna, Paris, and Milan, and as a leading cellist, with solo, chamber music, and orchestral performances across Europe. In London he acquired the 1731 Stradivarius cello known today as the “Braga” Strad, and in Paris he struck up a friendship with Rossini, performed with Liszt, Rubinstein, Bizet, Gounod, Saint-Saens, and Bottesini, and was also sought after as a voice teacher at the Theater Italien. Braga successfully applied the bel canto singing style to the cello, and considered “broad, impassioned, vibrant singing” an essential characteristic of truly beautiful cello playing, even in more technically demanding pieces. With cello compositions ranging from variations on opera themes to concertos, Braga is best remembered for his Angel’s Serenade, a song with cello or violin obbligato that is beautifully suited to solo performance on the cello.

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Read on….

Copyright © 2021 by Geoffrey Dean

Highways and Byways: Someone Left the Door Open

By Maik Strosahl

From 2001-2008, I ran a newspaper distributorship northeast of Indianapolis. Many nights I had a route or two to deliver. I really did not enjoy the winters, but driving back-country roads was a great time to think and observe a normally unseen world.

Side Story: Why not have leap years every 20 years, or 40, or whatever?

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

Moristotle, your “Goines On: Before 1901, after 2099?” piece really did a thing on me yesterday. I would like to talk about it. —Paul Clark

Talk by Paul Clark

Goines On: Before 1901, after 2099?

Click image for more vignettes

Goines looked at his archives and discovered that he had years ago pieced together more about calendar recycling than he was currently re-piecing together. He had tackled the subject in some depth eight years earlier, even written a sestina about it for the Goineses’ 47^th wedding anniversary.
    While he didn’t think he still had the brain power those earlier investigations required, he was pleased that he was managing to re-tool a thing or two for his “parlor trick.”

All Over the Place: Parents

From My Teaching Book

By Michael H. Brownstein

F. transferred from my classroom. That’s not such a big deal. A few years ago, one of my students transferred after I called DCFS because her mother was selling her to old men. I caught her in the act. The next day DCFS knocked on her door and the entire family vanished out through the back. We were able to trace them to a town in Indiana where they vanished again.

Who? (a poem)

By Shirley Skufca Hickman

Who will dry my tears
    when you are gone?
Who will hold me tight
    when you are gone?

Who will talk with me
    when you are gone?
Who will hold my hand
    when you are gone?

Who will kiss my lips
    when you are gone?
Who will warm my bed
    when you are gone?

Who will dry my tears
    now that you’re gone.

Copyright © 2021 by Shirley Skufca Hickman

Roger’s Reality: The Camper Saga, Part 1

By Roger Owens

When Mom passed and the dust had settled, with the usual bickering over her estate, we got some money and I decided to get us a camper. Cindy and I had always thought we would go back to a pontoon boat for our retirement, but it was clear we are no longer up to boating. Plus, we would be limited to the waterways nearby. But with a camper trailer, we would be going back even farther, to our days as master tent campers. We had it all, double inflatable mattresses so you’re just like in a bed, reading lights, side tables, fans, shower, our own toilet, and a separate room in the tent to put it in. I mean, we were pros. In the intervening years we rented motor homes several times, and the ease with which we could get into the wilderness and then just pack up and leave impressed us greatly. So, a camper it would be.

From the Alwinac: Bel Canto Cello: Resignation and Rebellion in Verdi’s I Masnadieri Prelude

[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.]


A central feature of Italian opera through the 19th century, the bel canto singing style also influenced cellists of the Italian school such as Piatti, C. A. Casella, and Braga, all born in the 1820s. But “Beautiful singing” was more than just an approach to singing or playing: bel canto also referred to the kind of music intended to be performed in the bel canto singing style, including the many fantasies with variations on famous opera arias by Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini, and Verdi that these and other Romantic-era cellists were fond of composing and performing.
    A more unusual example in the bel canto cello repertoire is the “Preludio” of Verdi’s early opera I Masnadieri – unusual because it is a self-contained piece (i.e., it can be played independently) and it is not a cellist's a paraphrase of existing vocal music. In the summer of 1847, when I Masnadieri (The Robbers) was premiered in London, commentators questioned why Verdi had not provided a more bombastic orchestral overture and thought that the prelude, seemingly unrelated to the rest of the opera, was too insubstantial to serve in its place. It certainly showcased the talent of Alfredo Piatti, the new first cellist of Her Majesty’s Theatre, and there was general agreement that his playing of the prelude was a highlight of the opera’s premiere. It can also be argued that giving the lone cello centerstage IS related to the subject of the opera as whole, because it brings out the idea of isolation so central to The Robbers, a tragic story driven by student-turned-robber Carlo’s estrangement from his family and fiancé, and culminating in his calamitous choice of fidelity to the robber band over his love for Amalia. The isolation idea has important implications for interpreting the cello solo – is its character one of unalloyed melancholy, or is there a stronger vein of personal rebellion running through it

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Read on….

Copyright © 2021 by Geoffrey Dean

Highways and Byways: Longyearbyen

By Maik Strosahl

Last month I went back to my hometown for my 35th high school reunion. It was really nice to catch up with old friends, get to know classmates I could not recall (we had a large class), and just relive the days of our youth.
    I didn’t really keep in touch with my high school crew through the years. Truth be told, those days were tough times long ago buried. But I finally decided to attend a gathering in 2016, the 30th reunion. I was very nervous about the whole event.