Musings & Perusings and Goines 0n have been published

Publication Date: Dec. 24, 2025

75th Birthday Gift Fulfilled

By Moristotle

On January 8, 2018 , in his post, “An Immodest Proposal: A Birthday Surprise Ruined in 750 Words," Geoffrey proposed that I put together a collection of my writings in book form. On several later occasions I apologized for not having yet acted on the proposal, which came from Jennifer as well. Now, at last, I can announce that I have completed the project. Or, rather, Geoffrey and I have completed the project, because he provided consultations and invaluable editing without which I might neither have completed the project nor have achieved as good results as I think we did.
    Musings & Perusings: A Moristotle Reader is available in both paperback and ebook on Amazon. 

Publication Date: Dec. 23, 2025

Goines Has Delivered!

Almost two years ago, after his retirement from blogging, Goines submitted the manuscript of his book Goines On: A self-portrait in fictional vignettes to an agent in the William Morris Endeavor agency. He never heard from the agent, so he decided to self-publish the book along with Musings & Perusings: A Moristotle Reader. Goines is grateful to everyone who encouraged him along the way and helped him get the Goines On book out. He hopes his words of acknowledgment in the book’s front matters adequately convey his thanks.
    Goines On: A self-portrait in fictional vignettes is available in both paperback and ebook on Amazon.

Both books can be accessed from my author page on Amazon.

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Copyright © 2025 by Moristotle

Goines On: Happy his birthday

Click image for more vignettes

On his 79th birthday, Goines discovered something amazing: He enjoyed more happiness saying “Happy My Birthday” to other people than he derived from hearing them say “Happy Birthday” to him or from receiving their birthday cards – not that their saying “Happy Birthday” to him or sending him a birthday card was not enjoyable; it was.

Poetry & Portraits: Theseus

Drawing by Susan C. Price

Theseus
By Eric Meub

[Editor’s Note: I chose to republish this Poetry & Portrait pairing today because, 79 years ago today, my mother gave birth to me, and I noticed that the last time I republished the pairing was the day after my 78th birthday – though no god gave ME the body of an ad for underwear. Eric’s poem & Susan’s drawing first graced us as Second Saturday’s Sonnet on June 14, 2014, which happened to be the date of my late sister Flo Elowee’s 84^th birthday. I trust that her husband, Don Story, DID have such a body….]


The king gave me protection, and the god
the body of an ad for underwear,
but on the docks of Troezen in a fraud
of both I tempted every sailor there.

For Ralph Earle on his 70th Birthday

In Remembrance of Half His Life Ago

By Moristotle

Ralph’s friend Judith Valerie occasioned my writing the poem below. I was on her distribution list when she notified no doubt scores of individuals who love Ralph to please contribute something to the collection she planned to read to him today. Her including me meant a lot, and I thank her for it.


April 4, 1986 – was that Ralph Earle’s first day
as a tech editor at IBM in Cary, North Carolina?
I’d like to think so, like to believe it was,
love it more if it really was the day I met
this extraordinary human being,
my colleague for several years in Cary.

78-14 Years Ago Today: “Will you still need me, will you still feed me...?”

By Moristotle

[Originally published on my 64th birthday, January 8, 2007, without an image.]

Goines On: Ho, ho, I’m so jolly

By Moristotle

“Ho, ho, I’m so jolly,” Goines recited under his breath. “Ho, ho, I’m so jolly.” He had woken up with some determination he wouldn’t be depressed today. Not on his birthday. “Ho, ho, I’m so jolly.”

Forty-Five [plus Six] Years Ago Today: Happy Birthday!

By Moristotle

[Originally published on December 21, 2012, as part of that year’s regularly scheduled Fish for Friday column.]






Limerick of the Week

Forty-five [plus six] years ago today, my son
Was born; I’d passed [along] some genes, Nature’d won,
    Life [it] would proceed,
    Nature [would] succeed....
Happy birthday to [you], my son, have fun!

Copyright © 2012, 2018 by Moristotle

An Immodest Proposal

A Birthday Surprise Ruined in 750 Words

By Geoffrey Dean

Cover Design by
Jennifer Dean Neumann

The project started in my mind as a collection of Moristotle poems that I could read to his granddaughter. Of course, he could read them to her himself, or record them for her, or even write new poems for her, but these are other projects and not how the one I’m writing about here evolved. I got my sister involved early, and we agreed that the goal was a full-fledged publication of the “Selected Poetry of…” sort that we would present to Moristotle on his birthday in 2018. I’ll call this Plan A.

Standing in the rain arguing

The evolution-creation question is settled. Man evolved and was not created. To argue the question with a creationist would be like standing in a driving rain and letting him try to convince you that it wasn't raining. Or vice versa. No mileage there. Forget it.

Same thing as regards arguing with jehovahs, evangelical Christians, Islamists, or other fantasists whether heaven exists or some other superstition is true. Especially Muslims with dynamite strapped around their torsos.

Putting that out there for you is my gift to myself and to you for my birthday today. Happy my birthday to you too.

Later the same day

Shortly after publishing those paragraphs, a birthday card arrived from one of my sisters. She appealed to me to read the Billy Graham clips she'd enclosed. There are three of them, apparently from a Q&A column of Dr. Graham's titled "On Christianity."

Question 1:

DEAR REV. GRAHAM: Do you think Christ will come again and the world will end in 2009? I get very discouraged when I see the way the world is going—the economic situation, terrorism, crime, warfare, etc.—and I wonder how much longer God is going to let this continue.

Do you get even more discouraged when you realize that there is no heaven and your body isn't going to be restored to its young sexiness?

Question 2:

DEAR REV. GRAHAM: My friend (who doesn't believe in God or religion) tells me that if I really believe the Bible, then why don't I follow all the laws in the Old Testament? I do believe the Bible is God's Word, but am I doing something wrong by not following these laws?

No, dear, and neither would the ancient Israelites have been wrong to ignore them, except that the religious elders would have banished them from the community.

Question 3:

DEAR REV. GRAHAM: If God is real, then why are there so many religions in the world? They can't all be right, can they?

They sure can't all be right, now, can they? Lots of people (who still want to believe in heaven) think that it almost doesn't matter what you believe. In Charles M. Blow's December 27 op-ed piece in The New York Times ("Heaven for the Godless?"), he reports on the June publication of

the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life['s] controversial survey in which 70 percent of Americans said that they believed religions other than theirs could lead to eternal life.
    This threw evangelicals into a tizzy. After all, the Bible makes it clear that heaven is a velvet-roped V.I.P. area reserved for Christians. Jesus said so: "I am the way, the truth and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me." But the survey suggested that Americans just weren't buying that....
    And they didn't stop there. Nearly half also thought that atheists could go to heaven—dragged there kicking and screaming, no doubt—and most thought that people with no religious faith also could go.

I hope that puts my sister's mind at ease.

Birthday pie

Yesterday the age given in my blog profile increased by one....My wife baked a wondrous three-fruit pie for the occasion (using dried apricots, dried cranberries, and golden raisins):

Here again in close-up (and you can click on either photo to see it larger):

I hope that everyone had a happy my birthday. I did.

"Will you still need me, will you still feed me...?"

At the stroke of midnight, timely on cue,
I clicked and updated my profile view,
    With its number on stage
    For reporting my age.
Happy my birthday, everyone of you!

My title was taken from a pertinent Beatles song. For those of you too young to know who the Beatles are (and I met a teenager at our party last night who'd never heard of them), there's an interesting article about the song in Wikipedia.