A little painting for Christmas

Painting by Shirley Deane/Midyett

Text by Vic Midyett

[Editor’s Note: Originally appeared on December 28, 2016, along with three other little paintings for Christmas. All four can be seen here.]

Here is the third of four little paintings Shirley created as gifts for Christmas 2016.

A Quiet Saturday Night (Part 3 of a short story)

By Paul Clark (aka motomynd)

After returning home from shopping, unpacking, and having a late dinner, she put their son to bed while her husband tended to their cats. Then he sat at the dining table for his evening shot of whiskey.
    She came out of their son’s room and sat across from him.
    “Scotch?” she asked. “You know I hate the way that makes you smell.”
    “Yes, I do. That’s why I’m having a shot of mezcal instead. Sombra. It’s the best.”
    “So, after what happened tonight, you actually think I might let you close enough to me that I could smell what you are drinking?”
    “I always have high hopes.”

Goines On: Library due notice

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The local library’s due notice was addressed to Goines as “Dr. Goines,” at sight of which he grinned, pleased that he seemed to be highly regarded locally, at least in book circles. “Please note,” the notice said, “the due date on the following items…Machines like me: and people like you / Ian McEwan.”

All Over the Place: For Hanukkah and for Christmas

By Michael H. Brownstein

Because years later, we celebrate the Festival of Lights

Do you see the lights in the distance?
The fog erased outline of our treasure?
We are not comfortable with what you did to the Name.

Late afternoon, a spit of sun, sand,
A triumph after the last bloodletting.
Where do we need to go from here?

Happy Birthday

To all good people
born on December 21

By Moristotle

Because today is the birthday of my son, Contributing Editor Geoffrey Dean, I would like to dedicate today’s publication of poet Bob Boldt’s “Caruso in Honduras” to him and to all other good people born on this date, in whatever year.
    Honored individuals (and everyone else, good or bad): don’t deprive yourselves of the joy of reading Bob’s poem and watching and, especially, of listening to his video performance and the video performances of Luciano Pavarotti & Lucio Dalla and Andrea Giuffredi.

Boldt Words & Images: Caruso in Honduras

By Bob Boldt














A couple stands by the wind-blown bus sign.
His chin, still fuzzy, merely a boy,
an unstrung guitar string hanging there.
With three strings he begins his song.

Boldt Words & Images: Gate of Ivory Gate of Horn (a poem revised)

(“Glad I was Chicago born”)

By Bob Boldt

[Editor’s Note: Earlier version appeared on November 16.]

For Deborah, whom I knew long before we met. A famous Yogi (I think it was Yogi Berra) once said, “Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be.” What started out as a love poem to the past turned into a love poem to my ex-wife...To be read over music background:

It’s 1954. Dearborn and State. Gate of Horn Saturday night.

My best friend, Tom Clemens to my right, and to the left of me,
standing at the bar, Roger McGuinn¹.
I have no idea who he is, just another pair of ears listening:
                        “That old Bilbao moon,
                        I won’t forget it soon.
                        Just like a big balloon.”²

Goines On: Geometry lesson

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A more intellectual subject that morning of the buzzing topics made relatively little sound in Goines’ mind. Maybe it just resonated the buzz of the other topics. This one was how to configure a geometrical model to represent an individual consciousness or world view relative to other people’s consciousnesses.
    A circle would represent an individual world, its center point standing for that individual’s consciousness, or perspective. Most circles did not touch, because any given person of the billions on the planet knew only a few other people. Some circles only grazed one another, representing people who may only have seen each other in a parking lot or checkout lane and paid each other no more mind.

Fiction: Jaudon – An American Family (a novel) [28]

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Chapter 28. Rodrigo Family

Things were going well for Ricardo. He had hired the company that J.W. Hankins used to drill his three dry wells and hid the entire thing through a fake corporation in New Hampshire. His three wells in Corsicana were top producers. His import/export business was doing better than he had ever hoped, as were his other investments. After the snowstorm of ’85, he foreclosed on two well sites whose owners couldn’t make their payments, and he now had five wells pumping oil. Claude had picked up four more wells and was now pumping seven.

Mary’s Voice: Posthumously Speaking 17

Detail

Back in the country

By Mary Alice Condley (1925-2007)

[Editor’s Note: I am grateful for the second time in a row to Mary’s & my niece Dawn Stella Story Burke, daughter of our sister Flo Elowee, for sharing two more paintings by Mary that Dawn acquired after Flo went into a nursing home. These show Mary again in her beloved countryside.]

A Quiet Saturday Night (Part 2 of a short story)

By Paul Clark (aka motomynd)

And so they went from the Builders Depot parking lot to wander Lots of Stuff. And she looked at aisles of curtains, and rugs, and her son looked at toy cars, and finally chose four he deemed worthy of some of his birthday money. And then her son and husband went to the back of the store, to look for a solar-powered light with a stout steel stake that she had seen in an ad. She went the opposite way, for toiletry organizers and a new rug for the bathroom.

Goines On: Getting to agreeing to disagree

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Goines’ relative who slipped an evangelical pamphlet in with his Christmas card refused at first to discuss politics with Goines. Curbe (his name was pronounced the same as Kirby) insisted at first that they would just have to “agree to disagree.” But Goines nevertheless managed to engage Curbe in more than a dozen email exchanges in which they told each other their primary political principles. Perhaps surprisingly – and reassuringly, for the sake of family relations – they seemed to pretty much agree on the ones they actually discussed:

All Over the Place: Fire in the study

By Michael H. Brownstein

The ending is not always simple:
one day you wake to sunlight,
the next day you go berserk.
Please, do be a stranger.

Poetry & Portraits: Rival

Drawing by Susan C. Price

Rival
By Eric Meub

Why must my solitude expire so soon?
Right through the velvet sleeve of afternoon,
Through flourishes of leaves, the tires arrive
To sweep across the asphalt of the drive

Goines On: The magic “ha! ha! ha!”

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While Goines craned his neck back to squeeze artificial tears into his eyes, he became aware that, with each breath, he was emitting a barely audible “ah” sound. The repetition of “ahs” put him in mind of Philip Glass’s glorious music in the final act of Akhnaten, which he and Mrs. Goines had gotten to listen to on the car radio four days earlier, as they drove home from another foray of theater-broadcast opera in Chapel Hill. Saturday’s opera hadn’t been live, but a recording of the Met’s premier live broadcast from 2006, of Julie Taymor’s abridgment of Mozart’s The Magic Flute.