Moristotle 80th Birthday Interview

Interviewed by Geoffrey Dean

I posed a number of probing questions to Moristotle recently. His answers give us new insights into his mind and heart, while on a lighter note, they also helped me figure out what to give him for his 80^th birthday tomorrow!

     Thanks to my sister, Jennifer, for taking the photos above.

What three (or more) words would you use to describe yourself?

Skeptical, optimistic, helpful. I’m surprised how easily those three words came, and how confident I am of them….No, those came too fast; they need qualification, elaboration.

11 Years Ago Today: Oh, where are you, Charlie Thomas?

By Moristotle

[Originally published on October 21, 2010.]

Yesterday was one of those days when everything just felt wonderful and right and I was on a continual glorious ride of love and laughter and play. Everything clicking, to-do items getting checked off at a good clip. Not possible (I don’t think) to identify the reason or reasons for it. Just go with it and glory in it, enjoy.
    Much of the feeling remains, and I’ve laughed a lot today, too, despite having had to concentrate intensely much of the day on an editing task.
    But I do remember a few of yesterday’s highlights:

• About 8:30, my boss emailed the members of his department to please attend a brief meeting at 11:45. A few of us buzzed about a bit what might be up. I enjoyed asking two or three colleagues, “You’re near the center of the inner circle; what do you think’s going to be announced?” Of course, no one knew for sure. Meeting my boss himself in the stairwell, I asked him, “So, what are you going to announce at 11:45?” He smiled in his utterly boyish way. “Now, what could it be? Maybe someone in the department got arrested? Or won the Nobel prize? Or maybe...someones retiring?” He has worked hard and produced so much of late; we were all glad for him upon hearing the announcement.
• A little later my neighbor friend Bill telephoned with the news, “I got the job.” He’d not been regularly employed for many months. Bill and I go for walks and talks occasionally. He thinks that even though I’m not religious, I’m “spiritual.”
  

• My nephew whose three fine novels we tried to find a publisher for a few years ago emailed me that he was reworking his first one and would I like to help him prepare it for Amazon’s Kindle format? I replied, “I’d love to be involved with your publishing project, and I’m honored to be consulted.”
• When for exercise I was delivering to a friend an envelope from the mail room, I told her I recognized the name of the sender, an intern who’d worked in her office. “What a fine young man,” she said. “In his third year in law school, about to go intern for a judge.” I told her I’d actually been thinking about him, wondering whether he and another intern, with whom I had worked, were still....“Oh, yes,” my friend said, “wedding bells soon, I think.”
• After standing at my bus stop for 25 minutes after work and beginning to wonder whether I was going to have to telephone the commute van’s driver to please come pick me up (never been done before), an express bus that’s not supposed to service my stop (I’d not even attempted to flag it down) did stop for me. I told the driver, “I so appreciate your kind heart!”

So many nice things happened, I’m sorry that I waited too long to remember them all. But I do remember one more, the most jocular one of all.

Around two-thirty, I answered my phone and the voice sounded familiar, if perhaps a little older than the last time I’d heard it. “I just called the first person I was able to find at UNC.”
    Of course, my old IBM colleague Charlie would have lost my telephone number and would need to search a website or something to locate me. The wonder was that he could remember where I worked.
    “Charlie,” I said, “how wonderful to hear your voice!”
    “Charlie?” he said.
    “Yes, Charlie,” I said. “It’s you! And it’s so good of you to call. How long has it been? Two years, three? How are you?”
    “This isn’t Charlie,” he said.
    “Of course it is! You sound just like you!”
    “No, really.”
    “Are you sure?” I said. “The last time we talked, Charlie, you said you were getting Alzheimer’s. Are you finally to the point you don’t remember who you are?”
    “You don’t have to have Alzheimer’s,” he said. “But I’m not Charlie.”
    “Well,” I said, “okay. Then, who are you?”
    It was a complete stranger, calling from Pennsylvania. He said his name was Mert, which I guessed was short for Merton. He was trying to get in touch with an “old Army buddy,” who he thought might have gone on to be a professor of geology at the University of North Carolina.
    I took the particulars and promised to help find his old friend, if he could be found. I told him that Charlie, the last time I’d spoken with him, was herding Alpacas in a town in Ohio, next door to Pennsylvania. I told Mert that Charlie was about the same age as him and the friend he was trying to find – around seventy-five.
    “How old are you?” said Mert.
    I told him.
    “I didn’t think you were a young guy. Most young people, you ask them for help, they don’t want to spend more than a minute with you. Anytime I ask a young person for help, I get a geography lesson. None of them is willing to help you to the end result.”

Before nine o’clock this morning, I had a telephone call from Mert’s geologist. The secretary of the Carolina Geological Society, whom I’d emailed, had called him last night.
    It had been fifty years since the geologist and the man from Pennsylvania served together in the U.S. Army. The geologist thought he recognized Mert’s last name, but he thought his first name might be Mervin rather than Merton.
    On the van ride home yesterday, I enjoyed telling Donna and Ina about “Mert’s” call, and about my whackiness about Charlie Thomas’s Alzheimer’s. Today, I enjoyed telling them that I’ve already found Mert’s old friend.
    The van arrived at the Lowes Foods parking lot, where my wife and Siegfried waited for me, in our only car until we take delivery of our new Volvo. I said to today’s van driver, “Hope, thank you very much. You are the best driver in the fleet.”
    A few of the others looked at me. “I mean, besides Chris and Melanie, of course!”
    General laughter. “Hey, I’m ‘crazy.’ It’s fun.”
    Donna said, “We who have admitted we’re ‘crazy’ are on the road to recovery.”
    What a day! Another one.

Fiction: Walking the Dog (a short story )

By Steve Glossin

[Published originally on October 19, 2013.]

Farley was a small-time hustler and occasional thief who fancied himself a scam artist extraordinaire. His moneymaking larks were on the edge of brilliance, though more often than not their execution took a wrong step or Murphy’s Law intervened. The unexpected failures would have made another man want to don a monk’s habit and go into seclusion—but not Farley. Mr. Optimistic saw a rainbow on every street corner and was continually chasing the pot of gold that he felt was his due—if he could only get that one big break.

What denomination did you say that was?

Church humor

By Steve Glossin

After church, an elderly woman approached the Priest. “Excuse me, Father, could you help me?”

Fifth Monday Fiction

Chapter 4. Set the Hook, from the novel Far Stone

By Steve Glossin

[Editor’s Note: Chapter 2 of this unfinished novel appeared on March 21.]

The prisoner opened his eyes when he heard the key inserted into the lock at the end of the hallway. The light switch made a clicking sound when it was flipped and a glow filtered through the door seems. He sat up and waited patiently as the booted footsteps approached his cell. The steel latch opened with a clang and reverberated through the cell block like a dropped guillotine. The prisoner stood and with both arms behind his back, limped toward the door and the beam of light that penetrated the room.

Third Saturday Fiction

Chapter 2. Miguel Castro Maximum Security Prison, from the novel Far Stone

By Steve Glossin

[Editor’s Note: The opening chapter of this unfinished novel was published here on January 16.]

The 2x3 meter cell was the prisoner’s private black abyss when he lay down and let his mind wander to other places and times...A smothering coffin when his rage over betrayal and failure made him want to scream and beat his fists against the walls – but never did.

Third Saturday Fiction

Prologue & Chapter 1, Rainforest Day One, from the novel Far Stone

By Steve Glossin

[Editor’s Note: Begun over ten years ago, Far Stone remains so far unfinished. It features the character Big Bob Tilden, who has appeared on Moristotle & Co. before – most recently on August 26 last year, when Bob took a wild camel ride across a Saudi Arabian desert.]

By AD 900 the Classic period of the Maya was ending. Their major cities were being abandoned and the monumental architecture was slowly being claimed and hidden by the Jungle of the dense rainforest. The inhabitants of Masuul, located in the heart of Maya region between Calakmul to the south and Tikal to the north would stand vacant until it was rediscovered by the archaeologist Sylvanus Morley, on 3 May 1922.

Third Saturday Fiction

Reaching Out
(a short story), Part 2

By Steve Glossin

[In Part 1, which appeared on November 29, the body of a young man was discovered near the rubbish bin behind the M&P Furniture Emporium. Who killed Tim Riley?]

It was early the next morning when Sheriff Sloan pressed Ma Riley’s doorbell. The door opened a crack. “Ma, I hope I ain’t disturbing you this early in the morning.” Her gray hair looked as if it hadn’t seen a brush in a while and her blue housecoat was wrinkled and threadbare at the sleeves.

Fifth Saturday Fiction

Reaching Out
(a short story), Part 1

By Steve Glossin

William ‘Bill’ Green placed his left mocha-brown penny loafer on the pavement of the M&P Furniture Emporium parking lot, then his right, and slid out of his maroon ’73 VW Beetle. He made clucking sounds with his tongue as he glanced around the vacant parking lot, then shook his head in disgust. The small islands of trash scattered over the recently painted lot were not there when he closed the previous evening.

Thor's Day: If you're out there somewhere

Happy birthday, Mary Alice Condley

By Morris Dean

Today is my sister Mary Alice Condley's birthday. She would have been 89 (1925-2007). I am confident that almost everyone who knew Mary would agree with our sister Patsy's estimation of her as "the sweetest, kindest, most caring person [they] have ever known."

Ask Wednesday: What did you do on your summer vacation?

We went to Europe

By Morris Dean

Early this year we purchased tickets to fly from Charlotte to Sofia (by way of Munich) to visit our son and take in the Rila Music Exchange 2014. As it transpired, our son wasn't going to be in Bulgaria for the event. What to do? Our air tickets were nonrefundable. I was okay with simply not using them. The money's spent, so cut your losses.

Third Saturday Fiction

Excerpts from Chapters 20-25 from the novel Death Mask

By Steve Glossin

[Bob Tilden and his old boss Bill Holden are in Saudi Arabia, on the trail of the mysterious, fabulously wealthy collector – The Egyptian – believed to have purchased relics stolen from the grave of Tupac Amaru, the Last Inca....]

Third Saturday Fiction

Chapters 14-15, Paris, from the novel Death Mask

By Steve Glossin

[Relics have been stolen from the grave of Tupac Amaru, the Last Inca. The lead archaeologist and his intern Bob Tilden, who can identify the grave robber, travel to Brazil to investigate a rumored auction involving illicit international collectors. They arrive too late but learn that a shady Portuguese has sold the artifacts to a mysterious, fabulously wealthy Egyptian. Their recovery depends on the loyalty and resourcefulness of Bob and his old boss Bill Holden, who hopes his Middle East contacts from their days as United Nations weapons inspectors in Iraq can help them find the Egyptian. Bill has dispatched Bob to Paris....]

Fifth Monday Fiction

Jimmy High Tops (a short story)

By Steve Glossin

The slap to the back of Kenny Mayberry’s head made a sharp popping sound that echoed briefly as it bounced off the soundproofed walls of the interrogation room. The Fourth Street Station in the Twelfth Precinct had three “confessionals,” as they were called by the detectives who used them. Two of the rooms had one-way mirrors through which conversations could be observed. This one, a twelve-by-eight-foot room, was isolated and soundproofed, with a reinforced steel door that could be locked from the inside.

Third Saturday Fiction

Slip Sliding Away (a short story)

By Steve Glossin

[The previous Farley story, "Walking the Dog," was published in October.]

Farley in his new maroon sweatpants glanced up at the avocado green neon sign above the weathered yellow door. Moe’s Irish Pub, between two large flashing shamrocks. Three weeks ago it was Moe’s Tex-Mex, with a couple of pulsating cactuses, and next month it would probably be a rice and noodle dive. Farley liked Big Moe’s philosophy, give’em what they want and if they don’t like it...give’em something else. A good thing Moe’s brother-in-law was in the neon sign business.

Third Saturday Fiction

Walking the Dog
(a short story)

By Steve Glossin

Farley was a small-time hustler and occasional thief who fancied himself a scam artist extraordinaire. His moneymaking larks were on the edge of brilliance, though more often than not their execution took a wrong step or Murphy’s Law intervened. The unexpected failures would have made another man want to don a monk’s habit and go into seclusion—but not Farley. Mr. Optimistic saw a rainbow on every street corner and was continually chasing the pot of gold that he felt was his due—if he could only get that one big break.

Immodest tribute to a modest man

A photo by Steve published
on Moristotle's forerunning blog
(May 2006)

I'd learned more about my nephew Steve Glossin over the past dozen years than I ever picked up in our "youths." Working with him on several writing projects had us in touch by email often several times a day for several years.
    Extraordinarily talented, Steve is one of the most unassuming, modest people I know. When he approached me, in 1999, I think, with fifty pages of manuscript to look at (if I would; Steve would never presume), I didn't know what to expect. I'd never known Steve to write anything (that I can now remember trying to remember).

    Well, the story he had started writing, just for fun, commanded my attention with its sure voice and authority. It was set in Iraq and involved U.N. weapons inspections and a messianic imam. I recognized it for the real thing and encouraged Steve to continue. The story became his first novel, Prophecy of the Medallion.
    Another book followed in quick succession. Steve knocked out The Grail of Malta while I was editing Prophecy. It wasn't that I'm a slow editor, it was that he's a very fast writer. Set mainly on Malta, it had significant scenes in Germany and Jerusalem as well, and heavily involved the Roman Catholic Church, on whose "watch list" his two main characters are listed.

    And Death Mask quickly followed that, incorporating some characters from Prophecy, traveling them half-way around the world to cross swords with as sharply drawn an assassin as I've come across in fiction.
    Death Mask may be my favorite. While I was editing it, Steve set to work on a sequel, to be titled Far Stone. For a while, it looked to me as though Steve had found characters and their profession on which to base a series of novels; his two main characters were sort of salvage experts, to borrow a phrase from John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee.

I want you to know the contents of an about the author paragraph we fashioned for submission to prospective publishers:

Before settling down in Bavaria to write, retired U.S. Army Logistics Warrant Officer Steve Glossin served in Vietnam and Germany. A world traveler, Glossin is also a veteran speaker who has engaged many audiences, both military and civilian.

    All of Steve's books have been inspired by and set in places he has visited. Few travelers make so good use of their visits to foreign lands.
    So far, Far Stone has not been finished. Steve and I had worked hard to try to find a publisher for his books, but with no success in the New York publishing world or in any other publishing world I sent submissions to. He finally got fed up reading published thrillers inferior to his own—which no publishing house was snapping up—and stopped writing.
    But electronic publishing was getting big, and it became a why-not no-brainer to try. All three of his finished novels have come out on Kindle and Nook, but Steve has withdrawn them for further work.
    I hope he'll pick up Far Stone again. I'd love to read it.

Steve's fictional output also includes ten or so short stories—quite accomplished, too. One or two of them I thought I'd published on Moristotle, but if I did I can't find them. Perhaps Steve published them on one of his blogs.
    You can find some of Moristotle's posts that mention Steve here.

Steve's main writing now seems to be for his blog, Visitors, where he follows the exploits of the various scamps who grace his back yard in Germany.
    It was with Steve that I started blogging. I'm not sure why we did it—probably out of curiosity—but we experimented for a couple of months, both posting to a blog I set up on Blogspot, which had been suggested to me by an IT friend at work. After we got the hang of it, Steve started his own blog, and our joint blog became...Moristotle. In fact, a few of its first posts (from 2006) were written by Steve. As you'll see if you check them out, he was already an accomplished photographer (see his copious work on Visitors). But photography is another of the many things he does without crowing about them.

Out of the blue, Steve's story about motorcycling in the 1960's has just been published on Motomynd, which I featured on Thursday. What I find distinctive about it is the video that accompanies it, translated from an old 8 mm movie. I know it's an important video, for Motomynd told me: "Between Steve's effort and the bank ad video, I feel the fledgling moto site has two signature videos that do a better job telling people what Motomynd is about than all my words in between." Signature video, dig that. (And check out the bank ad video Motomynd mentions.)

Has Steve ever crowed about anything? Well, maybe one. He might have been crowing (it was many years ago) when he told me that he was a member of MENSA. I was impressed then, and I'm still impressed now.

Steve Glossin's Watch List now available on Nook [& Kindle]

Says Steve Glossin of his latest published novel:

This is the cover I decided to use for the Nook E Book. I shot the photo on a trip to Malta some years ago. It’s a set of armor that was on display in the armory at the Grandmasters Palace in Valletta.

    I love the way Steve re-inset a portion of the photo, which, for me, creates a sort of "infinite mirrors" effect. As you might appreciate after reading the novel, the story's intrigue has a similar effect. Thematic perfection in a book's cover—you don't often see it rendered this well!
    Here's the link to the book on Barnes & Noble's website.

Next day. Now available on Amazon's Kindle too, with an alternative cover design, also by the author. Isn't electronic publishing something?

Steve Glossin titles now available on both Kindle and Nook

I know that at least one of Moristotle's occasional readers owns Barnes & Noble's Nook rather than Amazon's Kindle. For that reason, I'm delighted to be able to announce that both of Steve Glossin's thrillers that were published for the Kindle are also now available for the Nook. (And both Amazon and Barnes & Noble provide free PC apps for viewing their eBooks on your computer.)

Prophecy of the Medallion. As I wrote of Steve's first thriller in my review on the Barnes & Noble website, under the title "Foreign setting, United-Nations premise, real characters":

Death Mask not quite yet available

I was about to announce that Steve Glossin's second published thriller has been brought out on Kindle, and, in fact, Death Mask was brought out by Amazon a couple of days ago. But when I claimed my copy (in Kindle-for-PC format), the cover didn't come with the book, so a bit of scrambling is underway to correct the situation. Stay tuned.
    But, in the meantime, Steve informed me that I had chosen the same new blog template for Moristotle that he had selected for his Prophecy of the Medallion blog. I probably didn't notice it because Steve and I chose much different looks in the sidebar. And I had quickly changed my main background color from the default color to the same dark green Moristotle has had since almost "forever"(#2F4F4F).
    Hmm, I wonder whether Steve has noticed the similarity between that color and the "turquoise" (#3D6658) in Death Mask. (Of course, to a better eye than mine, they may not look that "similar"; the code numbers aren't that close.)