All Over the Place: A Good Day for Learning – But Still I’m in a World of Contrasts

From My Teaching Book

By Michael H. Brownstein

An anonymous donor sent us two checks for $250 each. I appreciate it a whole lot. The money will go for the development of a character-education program. It’s much needed at my school.
    Yesterday, for example, I found myself rushing into the eighth-grade classroom because of screams and ugly laughter. A student was actually punching the substitute teacher, who was twice her size and trying very hard to restrain herself from punching the girl back. My first problem was getting to the fight through some of the girls who purposely blocked my way. I found myself physically removing students. Fortunately, the girl calmed a little bit and I was able to get her across the hall into my classroom to join my class and the other three students who were earlier removed from their classrooms and placed in my room.

Covid: Horrific Random Killer, or Focused Societal Upgrade?

By Paul Clark
(aka motomynd)

Killing more than 550,000 people in the U.S., Covid-19 has been a national disaster. Lost in that huge number are individual stories of immense personal tragedy, along with some wry moments that almost make Covid-19 seem like a thinking killer with a dark sense of humor.
    Donald Trump mocked Covid in general, and people who wore masks in particular; UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson did the same. Covid struck both, not hard enough to kill them, but hard enough to destroy Trump’s first term as president and any chance he had at a second; Johnson’s experience with Covid seemed to affect him enough to make him sound almost civil for the first time in his political career. In between were the countless examples of preachers and churchgoers – mostly across the South – who confidently stated “God is greater than Covid-19” and refused to wear a mask or take social-distancing precautions – and wound up dead from Covid. Tragedy, tinged with irony.

Penny for Her Thoughts: Where, Oh Where?Part 3 [Final]

Kim & Tom

From There to Here

By Penelope Griffiths

Fast-forward five more years, when, with two kids in tow, I made my escape.
    Divorce is never pretty, but I just wanted out. My lawyer told me that if I left the marital home, I’d lose everything, but all I could think of was, if I didn’t leave, I’d be miserable and probably do something I’d regret – possibly with a heavy, blunt instrument. So, I left, but only after I’d made arrangements for my mother, who was living with us, to get an assisted-living house, and an agreement from my soon-to-be-ex-husband for me to have some of the furniture, along with our dog, Cindy.

Penny for Her Thoughts: Where, Oh Where? Part 1 [of 3]

To an Alternative Reality?

By Penelope Griffiths

I’ve only lived in the USA for three years, but I visited this country multiple times after the 1980s. The shortest visit was just for five days but most of my visits were for from three weeks to the full permitted twelve weeks.
    I’ve travelled east to west, north to south, taking in the sights and sounds from city to mountain to rural and back again. From the beginning, as much as I love the US, I have always felt the undercurrent of racism and homophobia in varying degrees, wherever I went.

Three Years Ago Today: Malevolent or incognizant?

Edited by Moristotle

[Selected correspondence originally published on October 13, 2017.]

[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.]

Trump’s lack of self-awareness is, as ever, awe-inspiring. I hope he will soon be examined by a team of psychiatrists and their consensus report made public: “Trump rips the NFL for disrespecting the flag. Then he jokes about a military flag ceremony” [Patrick Martin, Washington Post, October 12]. Excerpt:

All Over the Place: Dear Chase

By Michael H. Brownstein

Dear Chase Bank
    As a cardholder I am distressed by the Chase ad, currently running on the Golf Channel, with an African American male at a gas pump, prancing around and jiving about how wonderful his Chase card is, while apparently too stupid to know which side of the car the gas tank is on.
    Make no mistake, as an old white man I am glad to see a black actor featured in an Ad for a major financial institution. Especially since major banks are conspicuously absent from the historically black neighborhoods I drive through in Philadelphia.
    But in this era of Black Lives Matter, to have that actor portray a stereotypical racist image of a drug dealer on Speed getting gas and being stupid is not only offensive but blatantly reinforces our worst and deepest instincts. I trust my reaction is not what Chase intended. It’s definitely NOT FUNNY.
                                        —Neil Hoffmann

All Over the Place: My Town’s George Floyd Protest 2020

By Michael H. Brownstein

No life matters until all lives matter. Black lives matter, too.
Are we not human? Do we not love our children, eat with forks and spoons, go to school and go to work?
Give me liberty, give me justice, do I not have a right to breathe?
                    —Protest signs

We Will Be Heard

By Geoffrey Dean

Filled with feeling, yet stunned by disbelief,

I froze like a pond in the depths of winter.

This happened here?
This happened
Again?

Your final agony ended my long lethargy

As tears rushed down like a river of melted ice.

This cannot happen.
This cannot happen
Anywhere.

Thumper

By Eric Meub

As Harry Potter puts it, “You-Know-Who”
Is hexing Pennsylvania Avenue.
The President, we learn, is quite annoyed
At all the fuss surrounding Mr Floyd.
The protesters have vowed to make a mess
Of his insightful Rose Garden address.
There’s been no looting, curfew’s not begun,
And yet, by all means, something must be done.

The Policeman’s Club Descends

By Bob Boldt

With each blow the black crucifixion arises anew.

“You got to move”
blues echo down Wall Street.

Follow the long chain of slaves who traded in

cotton for the automobile assembly.

While pharaoh keeps killing black leaders

with all the brutal indifference
of a wheat harvester’s scythe.

Black blood has fertilized a reincarnation

the powerful will never understand.

They Marched

By Neil Hoffmann

They Marched in tens.
They Marched in hundreds.
They Marched in thousands.

They Marched in tens and hundreds of thousands.

Millions marching.

From Maine to California they marched.

From Florida to Alaska they marched.

From Texas to Minnesota they marched.
In towns and great cities they marched.
Across the land they marched.

Photo Op

Bret Stephen’s summation of Trump’s inversion
of Abraham Lincoln’s 2nd Inaugural Address

By Moristotle

The President of the United States

threatens military troops to quell unrest

How can this man be President,

this devil child playing at toy soldiers with real ones,

playing at war against citizens equal under the law?

He used police to clear the way for a photo op

Men with guns emptied the square with bangs and flashes and gas

They broke the crowd in pieces

Dream Deferred

By Moristotle

George Floyd died with a police officer’s boot on his neck in Minneapolis

Before him, it was Breonna Taylor, shot dead in her Louisville apartment

Before her, it was Botham Jean, shot in his Dallas apartment

Before him, it was Philando Castile, shot five times at close range in his car in a suburb of St. Paul, Minnesota

One day before him, it was Alton Sterling, shot at close range on the ground in Baton Rouge

All Over the Place: Reparations – Part 3 (2014-2016)

Because it never ends

By Michael H. Brownstein



Because America is not fair,
Because racism needs to stop,
Because ignorance has to end,
Because the police need to know their job,
Because we no longer can put up with bullies with guns.

All Over the Place: Reparations – Part 2

By Michael H. Brownstein











1898, election day, Wilmington, North Carolina,
the business elite include all races, all ethnicities,
lawyers and doctors, teachers and store owners,
no color boundaries, no issues with racism –
the city an integrated government duly elected –

All Over the Place: Reparations – Part 1

By Michael H. Brownstein











Outside the Mark Twain National Forest,
a cemetery, small and tidy, African-American owned,
and inside the park down a rough unmarked path,
the town that was before it wasn’t – a freeman’s space,
safe from the war racism constantly creates.

Roger’s Reality – The Jasper Chronicles: The Slave Quarters

By Roger Owens

If one does an internet search for the Stephen Foster Memorial or the Stephen Foster “Culture Center State Park” in White Springs, Florida, a veritable cornucopia of interesting information is presented. Directions to the site from Jasper, where I spent summers as a child, are basically “Get on Highway 41 and drive southeast until you see White Springs.” One will be informed of the camping, the hiking, the bicycling, and the carillon bells playing Foster’s most popular songs all day long. There are demonstrations of quilting, blacksmithing, and the making of stained glass. In January, there is Stephen Foster Day, and in May there is the Florida Folk Festival. Of course, much of the most interesting information, as is true with many histories and Federal investigations, is what is not revealed.

Fiction: Jaudon – An American Family (a novel) [9]

Click image for more of the saga

Chapter 9. Changing World

Claude came in late that night, long after James had gone to bed. Clara and he had a long and revealing talk. Claude had thought his father was turning his back on his new sister and her mother, and he was surprised to learn it wasn’t J.F. but Clara who had decided to raise the child on her own.

Roger’s Reality – The Jasper Chronicles: The Gas Station

By Roger Owens

My uncle Guy’s gas station sat just east of my Aunt Sue’s house, by the turn onto what is now known as North East 38th Street. But I much prefer the moniker it had back in the 1960s: “Buzzard Bay Road.” The station was just west of where Buzzard Bay met County Route 6, the main east-west highway, or what passed for one at the time, into Jasper, Florida. If you took Route 6 past the station and the house, you would arrive in Jasper proper in a few minutes; if you went Buzzard Bay way, you would meet up with County Route 51 north of town. The station sat on the north side of Route 6 facing a bit southeast, and across the road was a corn field that, to the eye of a child at least, appeared to begin at the barbed wire fence and form an impenetrable wall that just kept on going. Out the back was another just like it, but it contained some trees in the distance, which seemed to give a bit of perspective, and to suggest that these fields did not, indeed, continue unto the ends of the Earth.

Roger’s Reality – The Jasper Chronicles: Paint Cans and Pecans

By Roger Owens

If you head out of Jasper, Florida, going north on State Road 129, before long you will cross the Georgia state line, and pass through the small town of Statenville. As recently as 2010, Statenville boasted a population of just over one thousand souls. Once known as “Troublesome,” Georgia, Statenville is named for Captain James Watson Staten, a Confederate officer who is said to have opened the first store in the town, selling staples like rice, beans, sugar, flour, and coffee to the loggers and turpentiners who “cat-faced” the slash pines for the turpentine, something like how maples are tapped for the sweet sap used for syrup. Turpentining is about the hardest, most dangerous, and least profitable work a man can do; it was mainly done by poor blacks and white men on the run from the law, usually in concert with their production of bootleg liquor.