Penny for Her Thoughts: What to take, what to let go

By Penelope Griffiths

What things should you, would you keep when downsizing from your home of 17 years to a small – much smaller – apartment?
    Sounds easy, really. Just take what you need or what fits.
    Well, aside from what furniture or clothes to take, it isn’t easy, as I found out and am indeed still finding out!

Fiction: Unwanted President. Chapter 2

A Reporter Is Born

By edRogers

Tom had been riding high for the twenty-four hours after the paper hit the streets. The New Daily scooped everybody, including the FBI. Their online edition had over two million hits and was still climbing. It just didn’t get any better than that. Everybody wanted to buy him drinks and shake his hand. He was now like the star of a new hit movie, titled, “Cahill Done It.”

When Ruben & Juan are deported...

...economic & human misery follow

By Shirley Skufca Hickman

Lured by the offer of a good job and a better life, Ruben entered California from Mexico illegally to work as a farm laborer. He lived here for many years, married an American citizen, and they had a son. Eager to get a green card, he collected documentation showing he was a reliable and steady employee, had paid taxes, and had no police record. His son’s pediatrician even provided a letter describing what a good father he was.

Thunder Down Under: Kimberly Vastness

“Kimberly Vastness”
(detail: Boab tree)

Painting by Shirley Deane/Midyett

Text by Vic Midyett

A friend of ours has been wanting a painting of Shirley’s for years and finally decided what its subject should be. She is from the Kimberley region of Western Australia, and part Aboriginal.

Fiction: Unwanted President. Prolog & Chapter 1

Prolog
& Three Days After

By edRogers

Prolog

Two years after the election of Theodore Allen Benton to the White House the voters were having second thoughts. Not only were there no new jobs as promised, but under Benton more companies were moving overseas and getting larger tax breaks to help pay for the move. The wars in the Middle East were raging and instead of ending the wars, Benton had sent fifty thousand more troops. The economy, which had been growing at the time of the election, was now in a tailspin with no hope of its recovering.
    Yet, in spite of all that, his party had run away with the mid-term elections. For two years already, they had controlled the House, the Senate, the Supreme Court, and the White House. And now they were set to do it for two more years.

Correspondence: Je suis avec vous

By Moristotle

Moristotle, that verse you wrote about Trump retreating “to private room to grab your pussy,” has anyone commented that the verse presumes the generalized reader, which includes men, to have a pussy?

For the fifth anniversary of my retirement

Why I decided to retire

By Moristotle

In the final hours of overnight between Thursday and Friday, the remnants of sleep inundated me with what felt like some hidden layers of past remembrances, with feelings of loss, of shortcoming, of empathy for a few people along the way.

Missionary Kid: Pugla Walla

(Bengali for crazy man)

By Vic Midyett

[Editor’s Note: After the author submitted the story published yesterday, “I do not know him...but I respect him,” which refers to the Pugla Walla in today’s story, we discovered that he had never submitted his “Missionary Kid” story about the original Pugla Walla. Here it is, at last. And may Vic discover a few other such stories he hasn’t submitted yet!]

Thunder Down Under: I do not know him...

…But I respect him

By Vic Midyett

A few years ago I wrote a story about a “Pugla Walla” (Bengali for crazy person) in the village near our home in India in the 50’s. The villagers protected, fed, and respected him even though he was not considered “mentally normal.” This is the Indian societal way – and specifically the way of the Hindu faith – of honoring and holding in reverence every living creature.

Correspondence: Extraphenomenal

By Moristotle

Could this be just another tall tale?: “Tall story? Men and women have grown taller over last century, study shows” [Nicola Davis, Guardian, July 2016]. Excerpt:

Ayard in springtime

By Moristotle

“We can go abroad, or aloft, why not ayard?” –An old book of adverbs

Boldt Words & Images: Are you in Holosync?

By Bob Boldt

[Notice: This is in no way intended as a commercial for Centerpointe, Holosync, or Bill Harris.]

Fifteen years ago, Ex-Wife #1 sent me a packet of CD’s that introduced me to an interesting system of meditation called Holosync. The promise was that you would immediately begin to “meditate as deeply (actually more deeply) than an experienced Zen monk, literally at the touch of a button.” (No kidding.) The program promised to allow you to instantly begin achieving the kind of deep meditative states formerly achieved only by adepts after years of spiritual practice. That promise seemed too good to be true, and like most similar claims, that proved to be the case.

Today is Anzac Day

Lest we forget

By Victor L. Midyett

[Editor’s Note: This piece was originally published for Anzac Day in 2015.]

Saturday [in 2015] was Anzac Day. Anzac Day [today this year] is the day to remember fallen soldiers and past wars. In Australia, it is more celebrated and honored than Australia Day. Every memorial everywhere in Australia, no matter how small the monument or the town, will have four soldiers or cadets standing at the north, south, east, and west corners of the memorial all night long, on guard until dawn facing away from the monument, with their heads bowed. Mostly silent, haunting dawn services will be held everywhere with a lone bugler or bagpiper playing as the first rays of the sun appear.

Happy Birthday, William Shakespeare!

If you were alive today....

By Moristotle

If you were alive today, William Shakespeare, how would you treat Donald Trump? Would you tend toward tragedy, or farce?

The Loneliest Liberal: Small change and big

It can’t be denied

By James Knudsen

This year has seen a number of changes, big and small. At the national level we are continuing to see changes as a new administration goes about trying to make a great nation great again...? At the local level, the City of Tulare saw the oldest of its three high schools officially retire its mascot and all references to the name “Redskins.”