Chapter 10. The Hippie Experience, from the novel Boystown: The Cocaine Highway
By edRogers
[The first-person narrator is James Hamilton, a 1960’s draft dodger and entrepreneur. In this chapter he’s checking out the market for a certain product in San Francisco.]
BUDDY stepped outside, turned his collar up, and headed for his bike parked at the curb. The wind blew across the city from the bay. The air was cold and damp and the chill ran up and down my spine. I shook badly as I turned to close the door, and the key fell from my hand. The last thing I thought I wound need when I left Texas for California was a coat.
“What do you want me to do with the key?”
Edited by Morris Dean
[Anonymous selections from recent correspondence]
A man and his wife tried and tried to have a baby, but without success. Years went by and they went on trying, but no luck. They liked each other, so the work was always a pleasure, but they grew a bit sad along the way.
Finally, she got pregnant, was very careful, and gave birth to a beautiful eight-pound-two-ounce baby boy. The couple were besides themselves with happiness. At the hospital that night, she told her husband to stop by the local newspaper and arrange for a birth announcement, to tell all their friends the good news.
First think next morning, she asked if he'd done the errand.
"Yes, I did," he said, "but I had no idea those little notices in the paper were so expensive."
Other people can point them out to us
By Morris Dean
We don't need the Bible to tell us we're sinners. We can know it quite well by listening to the judgments of other folks who sin in ways different from ours.
Creative empowerment
By Geoffrey Dean
This January, I had the pleasure of meeting Heather Broadbent, an American violinist now living in the city of Gabrovo in central Bulgaria, where she is a member of the Gabrovo Chamber Orchestra and founder of the ensemble Sintez (Fusion). I recently suggested to Heather that we do a piece for Moristotle & Co. about her global activities as an online violin instructor and creator of the popular Violin Secrets Academy.
By James T. Carney
Squiggles has five siblings – four canine and one sub canine: Teddy (aka James Theodore Carney III) pictured, as appropriate, at the end of this column.
Thunder struck
By Chuck Smythe
I haven’t anything musically interesting to say this month. Instead, I’d like to offer the delicate art of our new Baroque Chamber Group, 2Cellos. Enjoy!
That question yet again: can art rescue us from World War II?
By Jonathan Price
The Oscars have just been awarded, and I’m going to write about two films that those Oscars largely ignored, for different reasons: The Book Thief, because it got nominated in only one category and seemed a minor film in comparison with the others; and The Monuments Men, because it opened too late to be considered for this year’s Oscars. Both are films about World War II and, for me at least, raise interesting questions about that key twentieth century event, which, for most of us in 2014, some 70 years after its ending, is just history, the past: but each succeeding year is still good for a film or two.
Munchkin
By Eric Meub
That smile’s not just for anyone. You know
your falling houses, gingham dresses, To-
to too, with flowerbed discernments keen
enough to tell the good witch from the green.
Edited by Morris Dean
[Anonymous selections from recent correspondence]
People who like to beat, torture, and sexually abuse cows now have yet another safe haven in which to do so. Idaho has passed an "ag gag" law that makes it illegal for those concerned with animal welfare to take any of the logical undercover steps to expose abuse. Similar laws were previously enacted in Iowa, Utah, and Missouri. By the way, yes, you did read that correctly: some people who work on dairy farms apparently enjoy sexually abusing cows, as documented in an undercover operation in Idaho in 2012. Under the new Idaho law, anyone convicted of working undercover to expose people sexually abusing cows is now in more legal trouble than the abusers. Got milk? Excerpt:
By Kyle Garza
I suppose I should begin in a way that lets you see my worldview as best I can explain it, just so you know where I’m coming from. I will try to go from broad to specific. I originally intended for this to be a very different post, but it took a turn I didn’t expect mid-way through.
Can you help me and my spouse? We are fighting about money!
By Susan C. Price
[Questions are followed by answers and then, inevitably by ADVICE...you DID expect that...didn’t you?]
My spouse and I are fighting a lot about money. We are barely paying our bills right now and it is really taking a toll on our marriage. –Concerned about Money
Protein
By Jim Rix
Not infrequently when friends notice that my dinner plate is devoid of animal products and I tell them that I eat a plant-based diet, they ask “Where do you get your protein?” I look over at their plates, observe, say, a nice juicy piece of meat, and answer their question with this question: “Where did the cow that donated your steak get its protein?” Sometimes they figure it out but if they present a dumbfounded look, I reply, “That cow, as well as all large land mammals, like elephants and giraffes, is a vegetarian.” If they still don’t get it, I say “If there’s enough protein in plant foods to build these large animals, there must be enough to build a puny human being, don’t you think?”
Edited by Morris Dean
The Rogers, staying close to home
Hello from Costa Rica!
A certain part of our road has been washing out over the years. It became so bad they at last had to do something. They dumped a couple truckloads of rocks to fill the hole and covered it with dirt. I’m not saying they will not get around to fixing the road, but it took two years to get the rocks dumped.
By Morris Dean
The BBC's serial Last Tango in Halifax must have caught me in a stupor the first time I started to watch it, for I formed the superficial impression of a sappy love story involving a man and a woman even older than I am (Alan and Celia, played by Derek Jacobi and Anne Reid). I told my wife to go ahead and watch it, but I would skip.
Why have homes lost value?
By Ed Rogers
I had a thought the other day. It came to mind that house prices going up and down made no sense. If it cost you $100,000 to build a house today, and five years from now it cost $150,000 to build the same house; why would your house only be worth $75,000.
The first answer I could come up with, in my mind, was it had to be the banks. I’ve always believed in the saying, “Follow the money.” In the past, as it is now, market value has little to do with what your house is worth. Before all the crooked dealing throughout the nineties, the cost of labor and material set the bottom line for value. These costs the bank covered by a building loan, which the contractor paid off from selling the house.
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