Excerpt from the novel This Sweet Intercourse: Raymond in the dark
By Michael Hanson
[Editor's note: Another excerpt from the same novel appeared on December 30. Raymond is still in the 4th grade.]
Though he’d forget the fact, the springboards of change were situated all around, one of which slid beneath him on a Wednesday afternoon while he rummaged the dirtyclothes hamper in search of socks: the closet door accidentally closed behind him, and after the brief initial panic passed he decided to stick it out in the dark, see what it was like.
Edited by Morris Dean
[Anonymous selections from recent correspondence]
Limerick for Valentine's Day:
For this special day, will you be our Valentine?
Come on over; we'll have Paul's vegan galantine1,
give thanks we're not geriatric,
wassail our footnote hat-trick2,
and gift the girls their very own ballantine3.
Yes, we are
By Mandy Al-Bjaly
I remember like it was yesterday sitting in my 9th grade history class. We were studying different Christian religions and my teacher brought up Mormons.
A boy in class, one I happened to have a crush on at the time, shook his head and said, “Mormons aren’t Christians. They wrote their own book.”
I, a 14-year-old Mormon girl, was too afraid to raise my hand and correct him. I will never forget that day.
To make up for it now, I would like to write about how Mormons are truly Christian people.
I'm too busy to help an old friend; what should I do?
By Susan C. Price
[Questions are followed by answers and then, inevitably by ADVICE...you DID expect that...didn’t you?]
An old friend asked me to compose a few “Dear Abby”-type questions for you, but I’m kind of buried under with work. I’m coaching five students through their dissertations and theses in addition to my regular teaching responsibilities. What should I do? –Saul
Some good news, and some really bad news
By Paul Clark
(aka motomynd)
Being a lifelong LA Laker fan, I was pondering the idea of attempting to talk my wife into taking in a game on our next trip to California, instead of landing at LAX, renting a car, and immediately driving north, as we usually do. Not having spent much time in LA since the ’90s, when I had some peripheral involvement with the Baywatch crew and did paparazzi gigs at a few star-studded events, I thought it best to do a little online research to see what risk factors I might need to be aware of in modern-day LA. Back then, despite gang violence and the general edginess that was eroding the famed West Coast “laid back” atmosphere, LA was crime kindergarten compared to what I saw in NYC in the ’70s and Miami in the ’80s.
The physical world and
human perception
By André Duvall
An attempt to answer the well-known question “if a tree falls in the forest and no one is present, does it make a sound?” highlights one difference between physical and perceptual descriptions of sound. A falling tree will produce vibrations both within itself and against the ground it falls on. These vibrations will then send off repeated compressions and decompressions (rarefactions) of the molecules in the surrounding airspace. So, physically, yes, there are vibrations and resultant changes in pressure of air molecules, the occurrence of which is essential for sound production. However, there is no human ear, brain, and body present to perceive, process, and react to these changes in pressure, and therefore there is no experience of this sensation, at least by a human being.
An appropriate prologue
By Morris Dean
I suppose you regard inventor Thomas Edison more or less as I used to: you sort of revere him, or have a pretty favorable feeling toward him.
But maybe you don't know, any more than I did before watching the 40-minute 2013 HBO documentary An Apology to Elephants (directed by Amy Schatz), that he used an unwanted circus elephant to demonstrate the danger of alternating-current electricity. He hooked the elephant up and promptly transformed the stately beast into a tower of toppling electrocutional light and smoke. It's a horrific segment of archival black-and-white footage shown in the documentary. Nice, Thomas E., how instructive....
River
By Eric Meub
An unexpected gust puffs flames into
the candles, blowing suns across the glow
of water. Flashes let the waves slip through
like fabric over muscles in the flow.
Edited by Morris Dean
[Anonymous selections from recent correspondence]
One of the songs at the "Goodnite, Pete" concert tonight here in Berkeley was a Woody Guthrie song about migrant farmworkers, "Pastures of Plenty" here's Pete [Seeger]'s version:
The one-and-a-halfth
coming of Jesus Christ
By Art Street
Edited by Morris Dean
God, yes sir-eee bob, can tell us what's what any way He chooses. The Bible isn't The Almighty's only text. (Nor the "Ala-mighty's" Qu'ran or any other "Scripture.") All of Creation is Scripture for God. Why, just this morning, here in my little town, He spoke by way of this gas-station sign!—to people whose eyes are open, anyway. Like mine. The price of unleaded this morning was 333.9. Seldom does The Lord God of All speak so clearly.
My son says he's a girl; what do I do?
By Susan C. Price
[Questions are followed by answers and then, inevitably by ADVICE...you DID expect that...didn’t you?]
My son (25 years old) recently told me that he was born into the wrong sex of body, and he has begun a “transgender journey.” I am having so, so much trouble accepting this. I feel as though I am being expected to forget that I have a son (I gave him a special name when he was born!)—or to pretend that he is dead or never existed—and now accept this new girl person as a replacement, even though “she” looks and acts just like my son always has. It was a SON I gave birth to, not a DAUGHTER!
Please advise me what to do, or how to think about this. –Mom
Salt
By Jim Rix
It is obvious that for a business to stay in business for any length of time it must be profitable. This fact is true for the healthcare industry, which encompasses several entities: health insurance companies vying for your or your employer’s dollars; pharmaceutical companies anxious to push pills upon you; the meat and dairy industries promoting their unhealthy products; government agencies like the USDA setting health policies influenced by the above special interest groups; and last and least the medical doctor, also a puppet of all of the above, anxious to treat you ad infinitum to make a profit rather than to cure you with the truth. To obscure this truth, red herrings abound in the healthcare biz.
Edited by Morris Dean
Madison Kimrey, on stage
This month I'm looking forward to marching in Raleigh on February 8th and appearing in Les Miserables opening at the Paramount Theater in Burlington on February 21st. Last month I gave a speech at Girls World Expo to encourage other girls to get involved with the issues that are important to them:
The end of football?
By Morris Dean
Sure, it's clever scheduling to review the 2013 PBS Frontline documentary League of Denial: The NFL's Concussion Crisis on Super Bowl Sunday, but what difference does it make? We're all (who are interested) going to watch and probably enjoy the game anyway, so who cares about the head butts (and the tears and twists and strains and breaks in other body parts) suffered by the highly paid men engaged in about as ferocious combat as you can find outside the military?
It’s not about the poor, stupid—it’s about the rich!
By Ed Rogers
While debating how the Congress and your local elected representative act—or, more often, don’t act—toward the poor, I have seen idea, after opinion, after facts even when they are not facts, and a whole gambit of crap that has nothing to do with being poor.
I was raised poor and came from what folks called land-poor people. That is to say, before WWII, my family were farmers. My father and most of the young men who grew up helping farm the land joined the WPA as soon as they could. No one had money to buy your crops and it was cheaper not to grow more than you could use. Going to work for the WPA meant there would be one fewer mouth to feed.
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