Fiction: A Killing on a Bridge (65) A historical fiction

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

By Roger Owens

Friday,
September 1, 1922,
continued

When they pulled up to the fish camp, things seemed quiet, but Rosalijo jumped out, shouting at the Mexican boys to get in the main house and take up positions at windows looking west, towards the only road in, from Jackass Junction. The two Indians hopped down from the farm truck and promptly melted into the trees surrounding the main house, and Red figured that was good. They were the best scouts around and utterly fearless.

Animating spirit, first cause

13 Years Ago This Week

By Moristotle

[Published originally on September 27, 2009, the day after a walk with Ralph Earle, and republished in fond reminiscence of our conversation.]

A walk in the gentle woods of Hillsborough, North Carolina, yesterday prompted me to revisit what it is about “God” that I don’t believe. Not the walk, actually, but the conversation with my good friend Ralph, with whom I walked and talked. Ralph said two things that gave me pause. The first was that he finds it impossible to deny that God exists. While he is as clear as I am that “the Christian God,” as he puts it, does not exist, he says that God as the animating spirit of the universe, its first cause, does necessarily exist.

Goines On: The Old Rugged Cross

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Goines was wondering where all the “†hank you Jesus” signs had gone. He didn’t know how long it had been since he’d seen one in the development. Oh, they were still to be seen out and about, but not right around where Goines lived.
    More interesting anyway was how individuals bespoke Jesus in their own, idiosyncratic ways – like what Goines thought of as the “Old Rugged Cross” display a couple of blocks farther along his street. Whoever displayed this ornate trophy Cross ornament had really hacked away at the Crepe myrtle immediately behind it, much more severely than Mrs. Goines would ever have had Goines prune their own Crepe myrtle, which Mrs. Goines had planted ten or twenty feet farther back from the street but in a similar location at their house.

Fiction: From Chapter 6: New Orleans (Part 6)

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all published parts

Margaret Bayard Smith, wife of the president of the local branch of the Bank of United States and leader of the social circle of Washington ladies, wrote a letter on New Year’s Day, 1829 that came into John Eaton’s hands. He married Peggy that same night. He called her Peggy when they were alone together; he asked Edgar to use Margaret. Mrs. Smith said his bride’s reputation had been “totally destroyed” by her relations with John, General Jackson’s “bosom friend and almost adopted son,” and that none of the respectable ladies would attend the wedding or call on her, even though she was now the wife of the Secretary of War, as she had strayed from the path of virtue.

Fiction: A Killing on a Bridge (64) A historical fiction

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

By Roger Owens

Thursday,
August 31, 1922

Red and Jumper took a break from nailing fence rails onto posts, and Red pulled out a small flask and took a swig. He handed it to Jumper, who turned it up happily. Joe’s moderate attitude towards alcohol didn’t affect Jumper one bit.

All Over the Place: Beginnings

By Michael H. Brownstein

You know everything has its own inherent qualities. Mine are to be deep and hard

to cross.
          —King of the Ocean to King Rama
            in Phi Kah Phi Lam

Acting Citizen: Fletcher-Munson Curves

By James Knudsen

I imagine it is the experience of most that there are people we get to know when we are children and they are nearing the end of their lives. Our memories of them are formed in a child’s mind and the span of time we get to know them is shorter than most of our other relationships. And when they die, what we are able to learn about them after they’re gone is usually limited. And sometimes, we get a second or third chance to learn more about them.

Fiction: A Killing on a Bridge (63) A historical fiction

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

By Roger Owens

Friday,
August 18, 1922,
12:00 PM

Red sat at the plank table in his new house, which stood just about where Guy’s still had been, the last time they’d worked the cutting. The raw wood of the table and chairs had burrs and splinters, as did the rest of the house, because the lumber was green as new grass. Green oak or pine would warp so badly the house would be unlivable in a year, but this was cypress. If you needed to build it fast, you cut cypress. The splinters would smooth out in no time, with oil and a little use.

Museful Mornings: Pre-Pandemic Poetry (#7)

By Geoffrey Dean


Threesomes

got rear-ended
honor defended
license suspended

ladies befriended
here’s how it ended
life upended

At Random: Things I Will Never Be Old Enough to Understand

By Paul Clark
(aka motomynd)

Tailgating

Other than driving the wrong way on an interstate, tailgating is probably the most dangerous move a driver can make. Yet, if anything rivals the American obsession with sports in general, and football in particular, it’s tailgating. Let’s lay our lives on the line to get there one car length faster: good logic.

Fiction: A Killing on a Bridge (62) A historical fiction

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

By Roger Owens

Friday,
July 28, 1922,
concluded

“Okay, Joe, so, how do we do the surveys?” He’d done a bit of surveying himself, with one of his uncles up in Mayday Georgia, to determine logging rights, just like here. He also knew if somebody thought you’d jiggered the survey and stolen some land, you could get yourself killed over it.

Fiction: From Chapter 6: New Orleans (Part 5)

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all published parts

Though their union engendered a baby, her child and Walt’s was not born. At least not for well over a hundred years. She was to suffer miscarriages, intensifying her longing for a child more than for fortune or for love, which never was what she wanted it to be. She hoped she’d made more than love with Walt, on that March morning so inhospitable out of doors but so cozy in front of the blazing fire with the rum filling her with golden warmth, with this man who was not as old as he looked but seemed so avuncular, or even grandfatherly, he seemed, but how would she know what a grandfather was like? So safe, that’s what he was; that made her so happy. He deserved good love, and she was good, when she was loving, giving to one deserving, poor, lonely man. From that union, a magical thing happened, unique in Nature. Maybe. Or what if it happens all the time? If a child was conceived, not in the womb, but in the blood or genes or in the psyche or maybe in the hope, her hope for the child but also in a greater hope too much for her to think about, it lay dormant through many long generations, waiting to be born, when the time was right, when the need was greatest, when it could be of most service, when a great battle was prepared that only it could win. There would come a first battle to be fought over the slaves from Africa, and another over the far vaster race of slaves of all nations.

All Over the Place: Opera of the Wood

By Michael H. Brownstein

The silence of the forest is not the silence of the empty classroom, the teacher bent over

his desk grading papers, a book open to page 202, a soft breeze blowing through a crack

in the window. It is not the city at 3 AM, a residential street, everyone asleep, the cat

From the Alwinac: Oscar’s Opera Houses: A Virtual Tour

[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.]

As a follow-up to my Ashland Grand Opera House post, here are the briefest of sketches on some of the late 19th-century opera houses built to designs by Chicago theatrical architect Oscar Cobb (1842-1908). These 24 buildings represent about 12% of the 200 or more theatres Cobb designed. I have arranged them by state, with asterisks denoting the five that are still standing today. The other 19 were lost to fire or demolished; the year of destruction is given next to the year of construction. Images are always below the entry they illustrate.

ALABAMA
Selma Opera House, Selma, AL (1880s-1972). 1000 seats. Appears to be synonymous with the hall of the Selma Academy of Music and the Edwards Opera House, both of which were managed by Louis Gerstman until 1896. A period postcard depicts the exterior (see photo below). A movie theatre by 1914, it was known from 1938 as the Wilby Theatre. Lost to fire in 1972.

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Read on….

Copyright © 2022 by Geoffrey Dean

Fiction: A Killing on a Bridge (61) A historical fiction

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

By Roger Owens

Friday,
July 28, 1922,
8:00 AM

Red was shaving by the little creek with his Army-issue Gillette shaving kit, his button-down open and hanging around his waist, when he heard the deep burble of the G-10 Dodge. He’d driven a galvanized spike into a palm tree and hung the steel mirror from the kit facing east, so he and Guy could shave with the rising sun.

Museful Mornings: Pre-Pandemic Poetry (#6)

By Geoffrey Dean







Flood Warning

Near the banks of the northernmost reaches of the Mississippi

Birds time their song to the drum of incessant rain.

The thrill of settling near this storied waterway is

Drowned out by current concern: how well do rivers drain?

_______________
(5/18/2019)

Copyright © 2022 by Geoffrey Dean

Roger’s Reality: The Camper with a Whole ’Nother Story

By Roger Owens

So, when we left off the Camper Saga last October, I promised a “whole ’nother story,” and here it is.
    We’re in Virginia, having camped our way up the coast. We had yet to experience the great Camper Saga; that was on the way back. As I said in the Camper Saga, it was tough setting up and tearing down the very next day on the way, but having only used the camper three or four times, it was a good training exercise. And we only ran the AC at night, for maybe eight to ten hours. Now we’re on the swampy coast of Virginia. It hot, humid, in fact flooded. At first, I thought the horse pasture was a lake. We’re there for a week; the AC is running twenty-four hours a day.

Fiction: A Killing on a Bridge (60) A historical fiction

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

By Roger Owens

Tuesday,
April 30, 1918,
concluded

Thus had begun a long and mutually prosperous relationship between Duval County and Barnett Bank. Bion swore on the spot his bank would never charge the county a dime in transfer fees, if the county would simply deposit its funds with the Barnett National Bank of Jacksonville. From that day on, the fortunes of Barnett Bank began to increase.
    According to Geneva, every other Tuesday was the day the county’s receipts were deposited, by armored truck, at around six-thirty AM. Today was that day.

Fiction: From Chapter 6: New Orleans (Part 4)

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all published parts

“Okay. Here’s what it is. You’re a full-fledged woman, one who’s grabbed sexy and taken it beyond where anyone thought it should or could ever go.”
    “No, I have not!”
    “Yes, yes! You have! And you pretend not to know it, which is precisely what I mean by beyond. You take a man beyond what he believes is possible. And yet, at the same time, you’re innocent. It’s not that you seem innocent, but that you are. You’re a child. And I mean that as a compliment. Not a child, but childlike. You see me as a daddy. That’s the only reason you’re here. And I want to love you like a daddy, protect you, make sure you’re gonna be all right, but I see the willingness of your flesh, and I want that, too. So bad. You don’t aim to incite me, but I respond. But the need in you for daddy puts the clamp on the man in me who wants you in the nasty fun way. I want to embrace you, for the course of the night. But that’s all. Don’t ask me for more, for I know you want no more, and we can do no better for one another than to love each other in just that way.”

All Over the Place: How My Teeth Came to Be This Way and the Choices I Made Because of It

By Michael H. Brownstein

Have little to do with my wife’s obsession with snakes.

She turns off the heat a few hours before bedtime waking me early with a tired rhythm of cold blood.

Some mornings cold wipes the floor with Saran Wrap and she remains undercover till noon.

Other times she unhinges herself from bed in a slow stretch of wills to let in the sun.

Museful Mornings: Pre-Pandemic Poetry (#5)

By Geoffrey Dean


Symphonic Gr8ness

Mahler 8 is simply great –
What a way to celebrate,

Even with trumpeters who feel the need

To blast your ears until they bleed.

Fiction: A Killing on a Bridge (59) A historical fiction

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

By Roger Owens

Tuesday,
April 30, 1918,
6:00 AM

As the sun peeked up to his left, Joe was driving north in his new Isotta-Fraschini Tipo 8 with the custom-made light brown body panels, a dark brown stripe running the length of the car level with the bottoms of the windows.

From the Alwinac: Lazar Nikolov: Bulgarian Composer Centennial (1922-2022)

[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.]








Read my earlier Lazar Nikolov post here.
Listen to Nikolov’s second cello sonata:


Yesterday [August 26], on the occasion of Lazar Nikolov’s 100th birthday [1922], his long-time musical associate Dragomir Yossifov observed that Nikolov’s music continues to receive polished performances by leading Bulgarian musicians of the younger generation. This is a happy state of affairs. It is not by any means a “given” that any composer’s music will outlive the composer. I suspect that Lazar himself, who had been accustomed to the near-impossibility of getting an unbiased hearing of his own compositions, would enjoy the irony that now, almost two decades after his death [in 2005], young performers are voluntarily seeking his music out to perform.
    I was once one of those young performers. In September 1991, then a new arrival in Bulgaria, I wanted to meet the most celebrated living Bulgarian composer. The next thing I knew I was drinking tea across the table from Lazar Nikolov and his wife Hanna at their Sofia apartment. I remember the excitement I felt as he played recordings of his music, laid out the scores of several of his cello works, and invited me to play them. I remember that same kind of excitement, a sense of profound momentousness and child-like giddiness all wrapped up in one, every time I performed or recorded one of his works. Its echo comes back to me now as I write this....
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Read on….

Copyright © 2022 by Geoffrey Dean

Highways and Byways: The Drowning (Part 2)

The rest of my preamble, and the poem

By Maik Strosahl

I still remember driving on Indiana 128 on my way to a Frankton store to collect for the papers I had delivered all week. The sky was dark from an approaching storm and the winds were gaining strength.

Fiction: A Killing on a Bridge (58) A historical fiction

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

By Roger Owens

Tuesday,
April 23, 1918,
7:30 AM

Joe Ashley sat on the same canape as he had sat on that first time, eight years before, at Geneva’s North End mansion; when they had birthed the Dapper Bandit. The furniture was still overly ornate and insubstantial; a man feared to put his weight on a chair in case it broke.

Fiction: From Chapter 6: New Orleans (Part 3)

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all published parts

Shields had said, on that day six years earlier, “It feels like we’re Hamilton and Burr!”
    Lincoln had replied, “We are in no way similar. They had a long-standing enmity based partly on politics and more on hotheadedness.”
    “Okay. Plus they used guns, with which I might have had the advantage. But just the drama!”
    Lincoln replied, “Here’s the drama,” and he reached up, extending his arm as high as it would reach overhead and swung his saber, lopping off an overhanging branch.

All Over the Place: Why We Teach

By Michael H. Brownstein

Teaching is not for the selfish
nor those who have a jealous streak.
Teachers are not bullies
nor are they anger and flame.

We teach because it is our calling.
We teach because it fills us with song.
We teach because it is our passion

Coyote v. Groundhog

Graphic violence warning:
A groundhog was hurt during the filming

By Paul Clark (aka motomynd)

We live in the city but have wooded acreage around us. In recent years we have occasionally seen and heard coyotes, but this is the first photo/video proof we have of them. The video was captured by our Ring “pond cam,” which is aimed at a small pond I dug nearly 20 years ago and lined with a scrap piece of rubber roofing.

Fiction: A Killing on a Bridge (57) A historical fiction

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

By Roger Owens

Sunday,
March 31, 1918,
concluded

Moses sent Gaius running ahead to the prison, and by the time they got the wagon there, the gate was open and Warden Blitch was shouting and pointing, organizing a search party. Nine men galloped off right after the work gang got through the gate, all carrying twelve-gauge semi-auto shotguns and riding far better mounts than the poor mutt led by the young black convict.

Museful Mornings: Pre-Pandemic Poetry (#4)

By Geoffrey Dean


Slipped Up

I slipped in the shower once upon a time

From a major buildup of bathtub slime.

Moral is, I could have written “grime”

And who’ve cared – it’s still a rhyme.

_______________
(5/16/2019)

Copyright © 2022 by Geoffrey Dean