Book Review: Rhino Dreams

10 Reasons
to Read This Novel

Reviewed by Moristotle

I chose the “10 reasons why” approach for this review because – in full disclosure – I said yes to Jon Price’s request that I please help a writing colleague in California – Kathy Williams – market her just-published book. (I’m not one to say no to a friend, and I might have been hoping to receive a free copy of the book, which I soon did.)

From “The Scratching Post”: Unanchored minds

By Ken Marks

[Opening from the original on The Scratching Post, June 26, 2022, published here by permission of the author.]

If you’re a regular viewer of “Real Time,” Bill Maher’s weekly HBO series, you know the last segment is always a barbed commentary on something in the news that’s been gnawing at him. (A damn good theme for a personal blog, if you ask me.)
    In a recent show, Maher’s closing speech asked how a country [America] could solve any of its problems when “its people are so intractably, astoundingly, mind-numbingly stupid.” To illustrate his assertion, he showed excerpts from man-on-the-street interviews, most notably from “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” and Jay Leno’s old “Tonight Show.”

Spry for her age

    The interviews are surreal. One woman, when asked where Queen Elizabeth was from, said, “Egypt?” Another was asked, “What is the largest city in the world?” She answered, “Europe.” In a clip from a TikTok show, a collage-age couple was asked, “Who was the first person to land on the Sun?” They didn’t know. A shopper was asked, “If you were born in 2021, how old would you be?” She answered, “21.” OK, maybe she was flustered, but what about the woman who was training to be a teacher? She was offered $100 if she could name the country where Venice, Italy, is located. She said, “Gee, I should know this … Paris?” I have no doubt these interviews are genuine. If you need convincing, go to YouTube and search for “dumb Americans.” Here’s a link I picked at random.
    Only a few years ago, I would have found all this hilarious and would have agreed fully with Maher’s opinion of the hapless people in the videos. But gradually, I began to see things differently….
[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.

Fiction: A Killing on a Bridge (38) A historical fiction

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

By Roger Owens

Monday,
June 7, 1915

Always an early riser, John woke in the inner cell Monday morning just after dawn and heard the Sheriff and his day crew shuffling in, passing a quiet word here and there with the boys on the night shift heading home.

Correspondence: January 6 Hearings & SCOTUS Ruling on Roe v. Wade

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.]

All Over the Place: Choir

By Michael H. Brownstein

The fist of God slammed into the light gray drizzle cloud,

her blue-black arm exploded with wind, an avalanche of hail,

an earthquake of rain, and the valley of racists went black.

In every direction over the mountains, the sky was full of peace,

a perfect blue, but in the valley, a thickening blue black skin.

Acting Citizen: Trump’s Notes on the Hearings

By James Knudsen

June. Summertime. Vacation. Committee Hearings. It’s reminiscent of the summer of 1973, except summer school programs are a thing of the past thanks to the efforts of Howard Jarvis and Grover Norquist. Millions of Americans are watching the hearings, millions are not. One particular American is watching the hearings and making notes in crayon and these notes may well have the greatest impact on our nation in the years to come. That particular American is the particularly loathsome former President Donald J. Trump.

Fiction: A Killing on a Bridge (37) A historical fiction

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

By Roger Owens

Thursday,
June 3, 1915,
9:00 AM

The searing pain in John Ashley’s jaw and eye had subsided, in the last few months in the Miami city jail, from a screaming agony to a background ache he could live with. He’d grown awful fond of Dr. Agramonte’s morphine in a surprisingly short time and had resolved to watch out for that shit. No wonder people couldn’t give it up.

Goines On: Poetic invocation

Click image for more vignettes

The daughter of Goines’ high school teacher who had been instrumental in Goines’ learning about casting out 9s asked him by email if he enjoyed writing. He wondered why she had to ask that question, because she was familiar with his blog and ought to know the answer.

    But as soon as he started to word a reply, he remembered what he had titled his first published paper, and the remembering set off fireworks in his head: “Invoking the Muse of Technical Writing.”

Highways and Byways: The Birdhouses

By Maik Strosahl

Dear Reader: I apologize for the delay in Part 2 of “The Boss Retires” while I was working through issues with my cellular service on the road. Please forgive me for asking one more week’s indulgence while I tweak the piece a bit more. Barring any further phone problems, I should have it for you next week.
                                          —Maik

My friend Jenny Kalahar posted a picture she took while walking around:

Fiction: A Killing on a Bridge (36) A historical fiction

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

By Roger Owens

Thursday,
August 31, 1922,
12:00 PM

Red hadn’t eaten since his breakfast that morning about four, so when he walked in Jimmie’s Flamingo Café the smell of frying catfish and hushpuppies hit him right in the gut. He could swear just the ring of that little doorbell could make his mouth water. His stomach started growling like a pissed-off hound dog, and he was glad to see Greyson Stikelether at his usual table by the big window.
    According to the clock on the wall it was five minutes to nine. One of the neon legs of the flamingo had gone out, but it stood on the bent one just fine. Tom “Millions” Turpins’ “Buffalo Rag” banged from the Aeriola.

From the Alwinac: That Fellow with the Cello: Mello-Cello Strikes Again

[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.]

I’m starting out this post to the somewhat unlikely soundtrack of “Mello Cello,” a meditative instrumental piece by Steven Halpern and cellist David Darling:

I say unlikely because my own meditation today on cello mellowness is centered around the type of Tin Pan Alley song popular in vaudeville about a century ago—a slightly different style of music.
    The tradition of rhyming cello with mellow goes back a long way, at least as far back as the anonymous poem “To my violoncello,” published in a Southern paper in 1819 (“What joy to hear the notes so mellow/Of thee, my aged Violoncello!”). The phrase “mello cello,” with this spelling and often hyphenated as if to reinforce its onomonopiac implications, seems to have really caught hold in American popular culture in the 1910s. The songs I’ve discussed in previous mello cello posts—Charlie Chaplin’s “Oh! That Cello” of 1916 and the Neil Moret/Harry Williams song “Mello Cello”  of 1921—were in fact later arrivals on the mello cello scene.
_______________
Read on….

Copyright © 2022 by Geoffrey Dean

All Over the Place: A Breath of Fortitude

By Michael H. Brownstein

Based on an image by artist Vony Razom, who is currently producing art from a bomb shelter in Ukraine


in the madness of the fertile lands,
a red blossom and its red leaves—
and from its seed, red caterpillars
bending into Red admirals, strong
in wing and shape, a rugged Vanessa

Goines On: Casting out 9s

Click image for more vignettes

In the hours after Goines’ muse reminded him of the “casting out 9s” method of double-checking arithmetic calculations, he remembered where and when he had first heard of the method. Because Goines had been his high school’s “bright boy,” his math teacher (and the schools future principal), Mr. Loren Court, invited him to attend a teachers’ retreat in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas during the summer break of 1959.

Fiction: A Killing on a Bridge (35) A historical fiction

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

By Roger Owens

Thursday,
August 31, 1922,
morning

Despite having killed a man for the first time in his life, Red Dedge couldn’t remember when he’d slept so well. It probably didn’t hurt that he was in the best bed, with the cleanest sheets, where he’d ever laid his head. Or that thing Jenny had done with her mouth; Red reckoned he’d have to tell Guy he was right, as much as it pained him to admit it.

Sketches from the Twin Cities Poetic Diversion (or drive version): License Plate Haiku Varié

By Geoffrey Dean 

During the warmer months of 2021, I started considering the possibilities for poetic realization suggested by the automobile license plates of Minnesota. The typical MN plate has six symbols—a series of three letters followed by three numbers, or vice versa. How might the information on an MN plate be interpreted as the structural basis of a haiku-like poem?

From the Alwinac: Happy 167th Birthday, Alwin!

[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 honor of Alwin Schroeder’s 167th birthday, here are the Sarabande and Gigue from the Suite in E minor by Julius Klengel, his Leipzig cello colleague. This was Klengel’s very first opus (at least that has an opus number and was later published), written around 1874-5, when Schroeder was just starting his self-study of the cello.

    My Schroeder/Klengel post details their years together as the two leading cellists of Leipzig, 1880-1891.
_______________
Read the original….

Copyright © 2022 by Geoffrey Dean

Goines On: Freed to be himself, or not?

Click image for more vignettes

Goines felt a quiver of thrill at the insight that offending people – if that was what he did occasionally – had to be expected, if he wanted to go on just being the way he wanted to be. Acting on a fantasy of earlier that morning was unnecessary.
    The fantasy had been to try to reach his group therapist of 30 years earlier for another lesson in how other people saw him. But what this therapist had helped him see then was still true: not everyone would like Goines, and it was unrealistic to expect them to.

Fiction: A Killing on a Bridge (34) A historical fiction

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

By Roger Owens

Wednesday,
August 30, 1922,
concluded

Bobby Frankenfield stepped from the mangroves with a pistol in both hands. Big, silver automatics. Both were pointed at Red Dedge. Son of a bitch. They’d all forgotten about Bobby.

All Over the Place: War and Beauty

By Michael H. Brownstein

Let us say the colorful hummingbird symbolizes peace.

Let us say the two legged giant with weak arms is the gray of cruelty—

The hummingbird swift and agile, a glitter of texture;

the giant clumsy and slow, the creator of tools of destruction.

Fiction: God’s Greatest Irony—Unremitting Sexual Longing Well Past a Man’s Pull-By Date

From the blog
Uncle Guido’s Facts

By Ronald Parlato

[Editor’s Note: I discovered “God’s Greatest Irony—Unremitting Sexual Longing Well Past a Man’s Pull-By Date” from a Yale Class of 1964 news item, and recognized immediately how much it resonated with the thoughts of my own character Goines. It was written by a classmate whom I had not had the pleasure of knowing at Yale. He published it on his blog, “Uncle Guido’s Facts,” on March 23. I am grateful to him for permitting me to republish it here.]

Fiction: A Killing on a Bridge (33) A historical fiction

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

By Roger Owens

Wednesday,
August 30, 1922,
continued

Frank’s house was now flaming fiercely, scorching the trees. The two houses were lighting up the area and Red could see some of the other men.
    The last five men had taken one boat to the middle island, to go after Cooter Summerlin while Hell broke loose on either side of him.

An Ode to My Muse

Luis Morris: “Artist’s Muse” 2009

By Moristotle

[On May 12 I submitted this poem to Highland Park Poetry’s Summer Muses’ Gallery – ODES. Though I told Jennifer Dotson at the time that “I think it worthy of submission,” I wasn’t sure it was, nor even sure it qualified as an “ode.”
    Today, however, I received an email from Mary Beth Bretzlauf, an associate of Jennifer’s, that “We selected your poem ‘An Ode to My Muse’!” I guess it IS an ode! It was fashioned from my April 7 lyric poem, “When Your Muse Whispers.”]

Fiction: A Killing on a Bridge (32) A historical fiction

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

By Roger Owens

Wednesday,
August 30, 1922,
continued

The western sides of these islands were much less overgrown by the forests of mangroves. The tidal flow, back and forth every six hours or so, scoured channels of deeper water around their shorelines.

Goines On: Okie blows

Click image for more vignettes

The morning after Mrs. Goines read to him from The Dreamt Land (which is about the state of water in California), Goines knew what to call them when he had applied a thumb to each nostril and blown his nose: Okie blows.
    He was out back taking up their now-unused rock light fixtures and collecting them in the utility corner to await their deciding where to create a sort of museum, or “rock light plaza,” when he simply had to blow his nose. Using a thumb was by far the most convenient way to accomplish it.

All Over the Place: The Seymour Brownstein Most Improved Student Award

From My Teaching Book

By Michael H. Brownstein

More than two dozen years ago, my father, Seymour Brownstein, passed away. He was a hardworking individual who established in his children the same principles and values that he himself followed. I remember discussions with him about a number of issues—corporate welfare; the necessity of a good education; the need to be a good reader; how the poor are not poor because of weak character traits, but because of circumstances oftentimes beyond their control; and when you try as hard as you can, many times it is as gratifying as winning.

“You could have heard a pin drop”

Anecdotes from correspondence

Edited by Moristotle

JFK’s Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, was in France in the early 60s when De Gaulle decided to pull out of NATO. De Gaulle said he wanted all US military out of France as soon as possible.
    Rusk responded, “Does that include those who are buried here?”

Fiction: A Killing on a Bridge (31) A historical fiction

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

By Roger Owens

Wednesday,
August 30, 1922

Well before dawn, seventeen men gathered along Dixie Highway across the Indian River from a spot called Wabasso. There were a few small islands in the river near the east bank, and that was where the Frankenfields had their compound.

Goines On: Savoring

Click image for more vignettes

Goines picked his coffee cup up again, but it was empty.
    Mrs. Goines must have been observing him, because she said, “Me, too, I would like to have another cup, but we shouldn’t. You’ll just have to savor the one you had.”
    “Savor it? But how – it’s gone?”
    “Savor its memory.”
    Later, Goines returned to what his wife had said. Could a person really savor memories? Memories were for Goines more reminders of loss than lingering presences to be enjoyed again.

Highways and Byways: The Boss Retires (Part 1 of 2)

By Maik Strosahl

I was recently reminded of meeting my boss at Werner Enterprises. I wrote about it for a column last spring [“Meeting the Boss”], but I always intended to tell the rest of the story at a later date. I suppose there is no better time than the one-year anniversary of that Saturday in Omaha.