Fish for Friday

The new economics of horse racing
are making an always-dangerous game even more so

Edited by Morris Dean

[Anonymous selections from recent correspondence]

Bettina Sperry’s column this week reminded me of this March 2012 article from the NY Times: “Mangled Horses, Maimed Jockeys” [Walt Bogdanich, Joe Drape, Dara L. Miles, & Griffin Palmer] Excerpt:

Second Monday Music: Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610

Claudio Monteverdi
by Bernardo Strozzi, c. 1630

Performed by the Seicento Baroque Ensemble

By Chuck Smythe

Five years ago, Evanne Browne, the music director at Boulder’s First Methodist Church, made a great leap of faith. Her chancel choir, augmented by ringers such as myself, were occasionally performing major works. She decided, at that time, to do Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610. She is a specialist in early music and knew the piece to be fairly difficult, not least because it used musical styles strange to the modern singer. It also requires a full orchestra of 17th century instruments and a large corps of virtuoso vocal soloists. And it had never been done in Colorado before. Still, we did it, and it was a great hit.

Sunday Review: Leviathan

Biblical proportions

By Morris Dean

I can’t remember another Russian film I’ve seen recently, but if there are others of the caliber of Leviathan (2014, directed and co-written by Andrey Zvyagintsev), I would like to see them. The setting is the fictional Russian town Pribrezhny, for which serves the actual coastal town of Teriberka, whose shores are littered with the hulls of broken boats and the huge skeletal remains of a whale, which seems to be the symbolic touchstone of the film’s title. It might even be a reference to the whale in the Book of Jonah, because the film abounds in biblical and Orthodox Christian references: encounters with clergy of the Orthodox Church, a church ruin where teenagers gather to drink, away from their parents, and, especially, an explicit comparison of the central character, Kolya, to Job.

First Saturday Growing Up in America

Trouble in Cleveland

By Rolf Dumke

[Sequel to “Chippewa on the Lake,” July 28]

The wind whipped over the frozen lake, creating innumerable ripples and swirls with the newly fallen snow. Long, white, fragile strings danced and curved over the dark blue ice, unwinding slowly on their path up to our shore, or, with a sudden jerk, disappeared and piled into the snow banks at the edge.

Fish for Friday

Maremma sheepdogs of Middle Island, Australia

Edited by Morris Dean

[Anonymous selections from recent correspondence]

“Australia Deploys Sheepdogs to Help a Penguin Colony Back From the Brink.” [Austin Ramzy, NY Times] Excerpt:

Thor’s Day: Eroticism and its discontents

A response to last week’s column on pornography

By Bob Boldt

Moristotle asked me whether Kyle Garza, in his column last week, “Why Christians Aren’t Celebrating Playboy’s PG-13 Move,” left any room to distinguish pornography from erotica.

Ask Wednesday: How can truth be both objective and subjective at the same time?

An approximate representation

That seems to be the only way it can be

By Morris Dean

A better way of asking the question might be: How can truth not be subjective for everyone, and how is objective truth even possible?
    Anyone’s perception of anything is his or her own perception. Objective truth depends on everyone involved’s agreeing on a procedure by which objective truth can be determined, or approximated as closely as possible – everyone may even agree that their procedure leaves room for doubt and revision. Science is that way, for example, and is stronger for it by forestalling the jumping to conclusions; everyone acknowledges that further information might change the consensus view.

Tuesday Voice: Truth

It does not alter

By Vic Midyett

It escapes me who it was, but a famous person once said something like this: “Truth does not alter according to our desire or willingness to accept it.”
    A funny example (that I know to be true) is when a three-year-old girl had what she considered a terrifying experience with a medical nurse. Back then all the nurses wore white stockings. A short while later this little girl saw her first live chickens. What did they have if not white legs! She was absolutely terrified of chickens and saw no point in their existence.

First Monday with Characters

[From ozphoter.com]

Susan C. Price, recently in Italy

This was REQUESTED, so...if it’s not funny or interesting, blame the requestor :-) (Oh, and yes, i have a sort of shopping...interest / addiction / whatever. In the years when i was working it made sense, as i wore something different five days a week. i still have the appetite...but not the...oh, lets call it “need”…I buy things anyway...and...i’m working on it, so judge away...but don’t expect me to listen.)

Fifth Saturday Fiction

The farm table (short short story)

By Bob Boldt

“The secrets in the world are infinite. The secrets in families are even vaster.” –Daniel Reeves

The mashed potatoes circled the table as slowly as a silent storm cloud. The only sound heard was the occasional click of the serving spoon on bowl or plate.

Fish for Friday

Edited by Morris Dean

[Anonymous selections from recent correspondence]

“My Dark California Dream” [Daniel Duane, NY Times] Excerpt:

Josh Churchman, a 63-year-old commercial fisherman who lives near Stinson in a legendary hippie hide-out called Bolinas, told me a story about sitting in his living room back in the early ’70s. A neighbor stopped by, offering to sell Mr. Churchman a nearby home for $20,000. “I had the money in cash, in the room, but I was building a new fishing boat so I turned him down,” Mr. Churchman says, in a California tale many times told. “In a single generation,” says Mr. Churchman, “my hometown went from where a guy like me could afford a home to ‘Not in your wildest dreams.’ ” As for the waters that gave Mr. Churchman a living, well, he hardly bothers fishing for salmon anymore, with the record low catch. [read more]

Thor’s Day: Why Christians aren’t celebrating Playboy’s PG-13 move

By Kyle  Garza

In case you didn’t already know, millions of Americans buy pornography subscriptions for their children every year, especially on Christmas or birthdays. No, they aren’t filling out the paperwork to have Playboy or Hustler delivered to their doorstep once a month in finely wrapped plastic. They are, however, buying them small handheld portals to pornography, like iPhones and iPads.

Ask Wednesday: What might “experiencing something” be...

if that something isn’t really there?

By Morris Dean

Luminous shadow
spun of mind’s own filaments
enshrouds its temples

Copyright © 2015 by Morris Dean

Tuesday Voice: Guilt

Both positive and negative

By Vic Midyett

In all things, including feelings and emotions, there is a negative and a positive. Consider guilt.
    At great risk to my longevity, I say that in American and Australian societies, with both of which I am familiar, the female gender uses guilt to such an extent from a very young age, it begs the question whether it’s genetic. Not that men don’t also use guilt, especially if their first answer to most requests is a stupidly blurted “no.” Bosses and leaders – political or otherwise – and religious organizations are masters at using guilt in manipulating people to achieve their objectives.

Fourth Sunday from Jingle Jangle

Relative Truth (Chapter 11 of Jingle Jangle)

By Jim Rix

[Editor's Note: From the September 2015 review by Joe Kilgore in The US Review of Books:

Jingle Jangle is a recounting of the kidnapping, rape, and murder of Kim Ancona, plus the trial, conviction, appeal, retrial, upheld conviction, additional appeal, and subsequent overturned sentence and release of Ray Krone. The tale is told by Krone’s cousin, Jim Rix, a computer programmer and software developer turned chronicler of this fascinating foray into forensic sleuthing, questionable policing, dubious prosecution, alarming conviction, and incarceration of an innocent man.]