Fiction: A Killing on a Bridge (30) A historical fiction

Saint Sebastian River Bridge
[Click image to call up
all published instalments]

By Roger Owens

Monday,
August 28, 1922

Guy was halfway his normal self when Red had come to visit Monday morning early. He was getting stronger every day, and at night Jenny and Senegal took him out the back into the river bush and helped him walk with crutches and eventually a toilet plunger Senegal had turned upside down and hooked onto some old suspenders to go over Guy’s shoulder and hold it on.

From the Alwinac: Tale of Two Cellists: Alwin Schroeder and Julius Klengel

[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.]












Klengel dedicated his Op. 2 cello pieces to Schroeder. Listen to the opening, Berceuse:



During the 1880s, two outstanding cellists represented Leipzig on the European music scene: Leipzig native Julius Klengel and his Gewandhaus Orchestra and Leipzig Conservatory colleague, Alwin Schroeder. As this timeline shows, their early careers developed along similar, sometimes intertwining lines.

1855
On June 15 Alwin Schroeder is born in Neuhaldensleben. His father is a local music director, and his three older brothers, younger sister, and younger brother all pursue music professionally.

1859
On Sept. 24 Julius Klengel, the son of an amateur musician, is born in Leipzig. Julius’s grandfather Moritz Klengel had been Gewandhaus Orchestra concertmaster, and his aunt married a later Gewandhaus concertmaster, Engelbert Rontgen. Julius’s older brother Paul, also a musician, is five years older (born in 1854).

1862
Alwin, age 7, begins violin and piano studies in Neuhaldensleben with his father and eldest brother Hermann.

1869
Julius, age 10, begins studies with ….
_______________
Read on….

Copyright © 2022 by Geoffrey Dean

All Over the Place: Just Because a Leader Is Mad Does Not Mean You Must Follow Him

By Michael H. Brownstein

Putin tries to poke holes into the body’s work of a nation

but the body’s work of the nation cannot be poked through—

 

gut-shot punctuation, terrorist renderings, vocabulary of madness

and Russia bleeds fire, cruelty, vocabulary of an insane man's mind.

Acting Citizen: Among Favorable Reviewers

By James Knudsen

A casualty of the ongoing pan/endemic is college enrollment. Students are fewer, and – for a part-time, sorry, adjunct faculty member – the dwindling numbers mean that the usual load of two or three classes becomes one. This fall one becomes none.

Fiction: A Killing on a Bridge (29) A historical fiction

Saint Sebastian River Bridge
[Click image to call up
all published instalments]

By Roger Owens

Saturday,
August 12, 1922,
concluded

“Why’re you so hot to get the Ashleys? Not that I mind, yer Honor, but other than slippin’ through your fingers in an extradition hearing, what’d they ever do to you?”

From “The Scratching Post”: Not enough data

By Ken Marks

[Opening from the original on The Scratching Post, yesterday, May 25, 2022, published here by permission of the author.]

I like data, gobs and gobs of data. I like gigabytes, terabytes, petabytes, and whatever comes next. I'm particularly fond of data about groups — their preferences, predilections, penchants, partialities, and politics. Yes, I'm aware of the tyrants and lowlifes who use data destructively to abuse people and amass power. This is a drawback that powerful things — like corporations, nuclear power plants, the wired world, gene editing, artificial intelligence — have in common. We need them, but they can be dangerous. The answer is regulation, not rejection.
    I like to imagine the topology of data, the hills and valleys of data we have about every subject that we've deemed fit to study. There are some subjects — say, the global distribution of Formosan subterranean termites — that can boast a ton of data. Conversely, there are subjects, many that are keenly important, with a dearth of data. One such subject is comparative cultural values. We need a set of metrics that tells us how close (or far apart) the values of any two cultures are. If we had a way to reliably measure cultural distance, we'd have a tool that could show where cultural collisions might occur. Forearmed, we could use the science of mediation to find the roots of our value differences and work at reconciling them....
_______________
[Read the whole thing on The Scratching Post.]

Copyright © 2022 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.

Highways and Byways: Pineville, West Virginia

By Maik Strosahl

On loan to another distribution center in Northern Kentucky, I was sent east, spending the latter half of Friday and most of Saturday in the mountains of West Virginia, where there is no such thing as a straight, flat highway. It was quite a workout navigating curves where rock walls were just outside the solid white line, threatening to scratch up the side of the relatively new trailer I was pulling.
    My third and last delivery on a very humid afternoon was in Pineville. We were halfway through when the thunder started rumbling and in just a short period of time there were raindrops. The workers huddled under cover of the doorway and I just watched both the people and the storm from my vantage point in the trailer.

Fiction: A Killing on a Bridge (28) A historical fiction

Saint Sebastian River Bridge
[Click image to call up
all published instalments]

By Roger Owens

Saturday,
August 12, 1922

Red Dedge sat in his truck, the back full of produce, at the market well before dawn. He hadn’t yet set up the scrap of canvas he used for a sunshade. He was hoping Senegal Johnson would come early, and he could pay off some of his debt for Guy and get the hell out of town.
    But the sun rose over the waters to the east, he set up his bit of canvas, and the other farmers and tradesmen gathered in their groups. It was the citrus boys on the east side; other produce on the west where he was; leather goods, tools and equipment vendors took the south side, and the purveyors of animals and feeds on the north.

Goines On: Hard thing to question soft love and desire (a sestina)

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Sometimes, passing that house, Goines felt a thing

whispering in his ear that he found hard

to dismiss, something he felt strong desire

to contemplate – a ghostly fragrance, soft,

a haunting presence, like an absent love,

like a note reminding him to question,

All Over the Place: The Money Garden

From a themed book I’m working on:
“The Tattoo Garden
of Capella”

By Michael H. Brownstein



A grove of money trees loiter on the hill
covering emeralds and diamonds rich with coal.
No one is allowed to dig for anything,
orders of the Mistress of the Tattoo Garden,
and no one can touch the trees without permission.

Goines On: Virtues of vices?

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Goines thought of the two Korean women in Soo Hugh’s drama series Pachinko talking about coffee. One remembered how good it smelled when she was poor and couldn’t afford to have any. And then, years later, when she tasted it, it put her off, she found it so bitter.
    Mrs. Goines reminded him that flowers were like that. Some of the most poisonous ones smelled the best.

Fiction: A Killing on a Bridge (27) A historical fiction

Saint Sebastian River Bridge
[Click image to call up
all published instalments]

By Roger Owens

Wednesday,
June 2, 1915,
concluded

The man ran in front of the truck and pointed the rifle right at their windshield. Annalee screamed. Thomas Duckett slammed on the brakes.
    The man jumped on the passenger side running board and shouted at him over the terrified Annalee. “I’m Bob Ashley and you’d better get your ass moving right God damn now!”
    Shaking, Duckett started the truck moving.
    “Faster! Git goin’!”

From the Alwinac: Violoncello Without a Master: Alwin the Auto-Didact

[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.]

Alwin Schroeder’s status as a self-taught cellist gained widespread notoriety from at least as early as 1885. That year the Leipzig Musicalisches Wochenblatt (LMW) published a biographical sketch of the then 30-year-old Gewandhaus solo cellist emphasizing the unusual nature of Schroeder’s cellistic beginnings:

Those who hear Alwin Schröder play without knowing about his studies will assume that he has been playing his instrument since early childhood. … And yet that is not the case: Alwin Schröder did not discover his love for what is now his main instrument until very late in life, and the level he has reached at present is clear evidence of his great talent, since as a cellist he is completely self-taught, i.e., had no teacher.

    With certain variations and embellishments, the 1885 account of Alwin’s switch to cello would be repeated throughout Schroeder’s career, in sources including the Riemann and Baker biographical dictionaries of musicians and the Wasielewski and Van der Straeten histories of the violoncello and its players. The LMW profile tells it like this:

During this period, as chance would have it, he found a cello left behind by his brother Carl at their parents’ house and felt the urge to learn the familiar solo from Rossini’s William Tell Overture. As a joke, the next time his brother Carl visited their parents, he played it for him, but Carl took the successful attempt very seriously, and told Alwin to continue his studies of the cello in earnest. Alwin took his brother’s advice and used the free time he had – he had meanwhile taken a post with the Fliege Orchestra as a violinist, which took him to St. Pe tersburg – to continue studying the cello. He worked so hard that only a few months later he was able to exchange the violin for a cello. In autumn 1875 he became the first cellist in the Liebig Concert Orchestra…

    This narrative raises a number of questions that I will now explore.... 

 _______________
Read on….

Copyright © 2022 by Geoffrey Dean

Highways and Byways: The Des Moines

By Maik Strosahl

Dear Reader: A slight departure today on these Highways & Byways. I decided to handle the following story in the style of the original Moristotelian’s Goines series as a tribute, reviving my character Flanagan for the process.

Goines was out driving one afternoon with the Missus when he saw an Iowa license plate and started wondering about the meaning of the French word “Moines.” He did a quick internet search, finding a statement from the ever faithful Wiki that the city of Des Moines, capital of the great state of Iowa, is named after the Des Moines River and its full French name translates to “the river of the monks.”

Fiction: A Killing on a Bridge (26) A historical fiction

Saint Sebastian River Bridge
[Click image to call up
all published instalments]

By Roger Owens

Wednesday,
June 2, 1915,
continued at
6:47 PM

Miami Police Officer John Reinhart Riblet was talking to Desk Sergeant Edwin V. Stevens, who was sitting in a rocking chair on the porch of City Hall, two blocks west on 12^th Street from the city jail and Wilber Hendrickson’s house. Stevens wanted to talk about his application to become a lieutenant.

14 Years Ago Today: ​Sometimes, if rarely, smoking saves your life

By Moristotle

[This spot was originally occupied by a premature “Goines On” piece, “What about This Thing />called ‘Having a Thing’? (a sestina).” I realized a day or two later that it was far from ready – so far from ready that I felt ashamed to have posted it…so, I unpublished it and let the spot remain open for a couple of days. Today’s repeat of a 14-year-old post is offered in recompense. 

    I will publish a better version of that sestina in a week or two. Thank you for being kind.]

I found Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy such a good read, I decided to read his Autobiography as well. I’m enjoying it even more than his history of philosophy, and there have been many, many passages I’d have liked to share, and might have shared if I hadn’t been so preoccupied lately with moving out of our house of twenty-five years. Last night, for the first time in several weeks, I felt relatively relaxed, and today I feel up to reporting the following amusing passage. Soon after World War II, when Russell was about 75 years old, and

All Over the Place: The Dance of Two Coat Hangers

By Michael H. Brownstein

Something soft, perhaps indelible.

Make sure the bathtub water is cold to the touch,

but not unbearable—lean into your body—

find your quiet space.
But first, the door must be locked.
No one can disturb you.

Westward (prose lined as a poem)

By Paul Clark (aka motomynd)

I had all but forgotten Mary Oliver until listening to a recent Sunday morning NPR program. A quick read of a couple of her poems reminded me of how her writing is often described as “unadorned.” I think that is as an understatement. Her writing is sparse, vivid, brilliant prose. But is it poetry – and is she a poet, as she is generally described?
    In attempting to sort out her work, I’ve arrived at what is likely a stupid question: What exactly makes most of her work poetry, as opposed simply to great prose written in a funky, disjointed fashion? Examples abound at “10 of the Best Mary Oliver Poems.” Thinking about this brought me to my own bit of prose, which I chose to turn into an alleged poem by breaking it down in a funky, disjointed fashion. I titled it “Westward”:

Fiction: A Killing on a Bridge (25) A historical fiction

Saint Sebastian River Bridge
[Click image to call up
all published instalments]

By Roger Owens

Wednesday,
June 2, 1915
6:35 PM

Deputy Sheriff Wilber W. Hendrickson Sr. sat at his dinner table with his wife, Marion Platt Hendrickson, and his son, Wilber Jr. Wilber wiped his face with one of the nice new cloth napkins he’d bought his wife on sale from Sears and Roebuck catalog.
    Wilber loved his wife of thirteen years and liked to indulge her when he could. She had come from the Lake Worth Platts, who were not rich but “comfortable,” as the saying went, and her family had been less than enthusiastic about her choice of the young fellows who had sought her hand. He’d been a shopkeeper at his uncle’s store in Lake Worth for ten years when they met in 1899. He was set to inherit the business as his uncle had no children, but the old man was hale and hearty yet so that was a distant dream. In 1904 the store had burned down, but his uncle was a sharp businessman and had purchased insurance.

Goines On: Postmister

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The Goineses’ local post office had acknowledged their hold request for April 28 - May 9, when they would be away to visit family in California and Minnesota, and on May 9 their next-door neighbors handed them the few items that had evaded the hold.
    They expected their carrier to deliver a huge stack later that first full day back – probably to their front door, because it would be thick with Sunday editions of The NY Times, various magazines, and numerous glossy political ads for the upcoming primary.
    But the mail truck came and went, and their box remained empty.

Highways and Byways: Poinciana

By Maik Strosahl

A couple of months ago I stumbled on Vic Midyett’s December 2016 posts, “Thunder Down Under: Four little paintings for Christmas,” which featured art works his wife, Shirley Deane/Midyett, had done for Christmas gifts. I really liked her 5" x 7" painting of a Poinciana (#4), 12/29/2016, but didn’t know much about it.

Fiction: A Killing on a Bridge (24) A historical fiction

Saint Sebastian River Bridge
[Click image to call up
all published instalments]

By Roger Owens

March 1915,
concluded

Hanford had been hit in his upper right arm, and although it missed the bone it was a nasty wound. The same bullet had passed through his arm and punched a thumb’s worth of flesh from Frank’s left shoulder as he turned at the sight of the old fuck with the damn antique artillery.
    “Civil War shit,” Frank said over a few snorts of ’shine, back to the homestead. Shook his head. “Who’d’a thunk?” He didn’t admit it, but the old man and his surprise weaponry had scared the hell out of him. He’d never been shot, and had never killed anyone before either, although that too he kept to himself. John had. Hell, even Hanford had killed a man, at just seventeen years old. By God, if they could do it, he sure could.
    Bob Ashley had been trying to figure how to break John out of the Dade County Jail. He’d gone to the big Army tent and pressed Kid Lowe and Shorty for ideas, thinking they might know something he didn’t, bein’ big-time Chicago gun-thugs an’ all.

Goines On: Tightening a loosening grip

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Goines had been noticing that whenever he picked up his new iPhone and turned it over to look at the screen, its “I’m locked” icon immediately changed to “I’m unlocked.” If anybody just picked up his new phone, would it immediately unlock for them? What kind of security would that be?
    He thought of a way to check. He grabbed the T-shirt that he was about to put on for the day and held it over his face before carefully picking up his phone, turning it over, and then peeking an eye around the edge…. Voilà! – the phone stayed locked! 

All Over the Place: For Mothers

From My Teaching Book

By Michael H. Brownstein

[Too often I have witnessed toxic mothers and devoted children who enable their toxicity. I wrote the following in my first chapbook, The Shooting Gallery (Samisdat Press), which might even be available from Amazon. It’s a small section from the story ”YO Mama.” 

    Happy Mother’s Day to all of the mothers out there who are doing their best and trying their hardest to make a positive difference in the lives of their children.]

Because he was new and dressed well, the biggest bully in our class got into his face and said, “Yo mama. What’cha goin’ to do about it?” Then she spat, almost hitting his new and clean shoes. “Yeah,” she spat again, and we knew for sure fists would fly.

From the Alwinac: Have Cello, Will Travel: Alwin’s Toothbrushes

Schroeder with (presumably)
his 1824 Pressenda cello
[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.]


In the late 1890s, Alwin Schroeder and his family spent their summers in the Rangeley Lakes region of Maine. In her book The Islanders, Elizabeth Foster recalls, “Whenever Grandfather invited [Schroeder], he would accept promptly, adding, ‘— And I will bring my “toothbrush.”’ ‘The toothbrush’ was his pet name for his ’cello.” The only way to reach the Lakes was by narrow-gauge train, but “Schroeder’s ’cello was too large to go through the tiny door of the parlor car, and too valuable to make the journey in the baggage car, so it was always placed on the rear platform where Schroeder could watch it and stop the train immediately if by some dreadful chance it fell off.” At the end of one of his visits, Schroeder had boarded the train to depart from the Lakes, and the train was already pulling out of the station, “when he rushed out on the back platform wildly waving his arms and screaming, ‘Stop the train! Stop the train!’
    “‘What’s the matter?’ yelled Grandfather, running after him in an attempt to stop it.…
    “‘Mein Gott! I have left my “toothbrush!”’ cried the frenzied musician.
    “Grandfather caught up with the engine, and the train backed slowly into the station again, where Schroeder’s ’cello was put on board the rear platform and peace restored to the parlor car.”
    The “toothbrush” in question was likely a cello made by Nicolo Amati (1596-1684), a third-generation member of the distinguished family of instrument makers from Cremona, Italy. It came into Schroeder’s possession in or before 1885, when a Leipzig concert review refers specifically to Schroeder's “excellent Amati ’cello.” Two years later Schroeder “sang delightfully on his Amati cello” on another Gewandhaus concert. As he debuted in various American cities during the 1891-2 season, Schroeder garnered critical praise for his playing, but critics did not comment on what make of instrument he might be playing. The old Italian instruments played by the members of the Kneisel Quartet, including Kneisel’s own 1714 Stradivarius violin, became the subject of commentary in the US only after the quartet’s 1896 London concerts, in the wake of English commentary on the superiority of the Kneisels’ instruments to those of other world-class quartets of the time. The Chicago Tribune reported in fall 1897 that “the instruments used by [the Kneisel] quartet are said to have cost $14,000.… Mr. Schroeder of the quartet owns an Amati cello of unusual value.” Elsewhere that value was stated to be $6,000 (about $200,000 in today’s dollars) and the instrument declared to be “one of the finest Amati ’cellos in existence.” I have not found any mention of the year this instrument was made, and only van der Straeten identifies which Amati created Schroeder’s cello, describing it as “one of the most perfect specimens of Nicolas Amati’s work…”
_______________
Read on….

Copyright © 2022 by Geoffrey Dean

Fiction: A Killing on a Bridge (23) A historical fiction

Saint Sebastian River Bridge
[Click image to call up
all published instalments]

By Roger Owens

March 1915

Kid Lowe had readily admitted to shooting John, in front of the whole family back in Gomez. “He was back inside reloading. Smart, like, so’s the front-seat guy can shoot, ya know? Like he knew what I was thinkin’.”
    Lowe’s nasal whine irritated Hanford Mobley no end, and he was disgusted by the sucking up, but he listened closely to what was being said.

“Goines On” Goes On to Win

State Library of North Carolina
2021 Writing Contest

By Moristotle

My “Goines On” portrait includes a string of eight fictional vignettes from Spring 2020 that I’m especially proud of because they investigate some dark disparities of life and come to a light resolution:

Highways and Byways: Tolls of the Road/This is How

By Maik Strosahl

There are tolls on this road I travel. The life of a trucker can be very taxing on one’s home life. That same driver who charges across the country to make sure everything you need is available on the store shelf has sometimes payed a high price to do so.
    As with many other drivers, it was the financial aspect that drew me to the road. Driving can be a solution for those looking to catch up their bills and provide for their families. But what they don’t sell to you is that it can be lonely on the road and for those who are waiting for their family member back at home. Thus, many relationships are strained by the distance. Unfortunately, that has taken it’s toll in my family.

Fiction: A Killing on a Bridge (22) A historical fiction

Saint Sebastian River Bridge
[Click image to call up
all published instalments]

By Roger Owens

Thursday,
February 25, 1915

John Ashley woke to a deep, throbbing pain in his face. He tried to look around, but it hurt to move, and his right eye was dark, the whole right side of his face heavily bandaged.
    He could tell he had been given morphine, and while the pain was bad, as was typical on morphine, he just didn’t seem to care all that much. He’d tried it. He’d taken it a few times when he was injured and needed it. He ran morphine sometimes, and a man should know what his product does.
    He knew perfectly well what good ’shine did for a man, but he never drank too much. He knew what guns could do but tried never to shoot anybody he didn’t absolutely need to. A man who didn’t know what his product did was a fool, but a smuggler who used too much of his own goods was destined to fail or die.
    He tried to speak, but his voice came out as a garbled moan.

Adventures from Bulgaria: The Most Unanswered Question

A Requiem 

for My Nephew

By Valeria Idakieva

A month after my 33-old nephew took his own life, when the rivers of grief and tears that had flooded us shrank a bit, I decided to take my mother out, change the view from four white walls, and breathe some fresh air.

All Over the Place: A Need to Only Play Basketball

From My Teaching Book

By Michael H. Brownstein

After school in the After School All Stars, the boys tell the gym teacher and me that they want to play basketball.
    Not an option, I explain. We play all kinds of sports. Not just basketball. When you signed up for the gym program, you knew this.
    But we’re black. Basketball is what black people play.