Fiction: A Killing on a Bridge (76) A historical fiction

Saint Sebastian River Bridge
[Click image to call up
all published instalments]

By Roger Owens

Thursday,
December 15, 1921,
6:00 AM

The Lorelei, piloted solo by Anson “Bo” Stokes, led the Angelica, with Jim White and Alton Davis aboard. The north wind and winter swells buffeted their loaded boats, fetching their bows first up, then sideways and down, enough to make the average man puke his toenails up, or “chum the water” as they said when fishing.
    Their heading was north by northwest, having cruised from Rum Cay in South Bimini due west until clearing the Gulf Stream, then turned north towards the harbor used by the Rice gang. They would enter Jupiter Inlet, then follow the Loxahatchee River deep into the Everglades.

Frailty, dementia, and the loss of laughter

An attempt at humor
about something
few find funny

By James T. Carney

Motivated by the Yale News article, “Frailty, dementia raise mortality risk for older Americans after surgery,” about a study by Yale researchers that found striking differences in the mortality rate of older Americans within a year of their having major surgery, I have been reading a book on aging written by a medical doctor.

All Over the Place: A New Development on Ash Street

By Michael H. Brownstein

Since I went to see how the drunks on Ash Street were doing (January 31, 2021), there has been a new development.
    Smell has a lot to do with many things. When I would get off the train at 51^st or 43^rd, walk down the street or cross large patches of empty lots, sometimes the smell of violence permeated everything. For the most part, I knew on those days teaching would be difficult. When the odors were clean, I knew my day would be easier. This is also the way with racism.

Goines On: The E.U. coin zone

Click image for more vignettes
(That’s Sacré-Coeur Basilica in 2021,
out the Goineses‘ apartment window)

Goines cottoned quickly onto shops’ ways of stating prices, alternatively “1€90” or “€1.90,” and he liked being able to use the same coins and currency in both France and Germany.

    He had mastered the size difference between 1-euro and 2-euro coins and between 1-cent and 5-cent coins, the design difference between 1-euro and 50-cent coins, and the shape difference between 1-euro and 20-cent coins. But he wished they’d banish 2-cent coins, which would simplify the task of distinguishing among the relatively insignificant copper-clads.

Remembering Our Military Veterans

For all those who wore a uniform

By Ed Rogers

Today, November 11, 2022, we celebrate the Armistice of World War I (at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918). That was the war H.G. Wells said in 1914 would end all wars. But it didn’t quite work out. So, in 1954, the day was renamed to honor all those who wore a uniform.

    Happy Veterans Day to those who made it back, and may God hold in his hand our brothers and sisters who did not come home – may he hold them until the day we join them.
    Pictured from the left to the right: Ortega, Sucki (I never could pronounce his name, but that’s what we called him), and a young Ed Rogers.

Copyright © 2022 by Ed Rogers

Fiction: Sixteenth Anniversary(a short story)

By Pat Hamilton

Billy: “There’s only one God, and it ain’t you.”
    Paula has caught him writing at the computer to someone named Lisa. She doesn’t attack him immediately. Then she does, but Billy protests, “To cheat on a spouse is a sin. A bigger sin is to stamp out love wherever it has established a tenuous foothold in lives. An even bigger one is to play God and pretend to decide which love is good and which love you get to stamp out.”

Highways and Byways: Life of a Thousand Papercuts

By Maik Strosahl

Was having a conversation with a driver trainee who lost one family member and is losing another. The statement came up that really we have only one guarantee at birth: that our days will come to an end at some point.
    That led to a conversation on the causes of death, how a death certificate may state someone died of Covid, some blunt force trauma, or a heart attack, but really it is a series of events that brings us to our end.

Fiction: A Killing on a Bridge (75) A historical fiction

Saint Sebastian River Bridge
[Click image to call up
all published instalments]

By Roger Owens

Tuesday,
May 1, 1923,
5:00 AM

The day dawned clear and sunny, although it had rained hard the night before. Normally Red would have slept well in the rain, but it had the God damn cows bellowing all night. Hell, they bellowed all night every night, and all day every day too, and it was beginnin’ to wear Red’s nerves thin.

“The Last Persimmon” –Wasn’t that a Shakespeare play?

By Paul Clark
(aka motomynd)

What sweetness thou bringst after autumn frost,

what bitterness during the warmth of youth!

Why is it such with you, persimmon,

and not that way at all with women?

Copyright © 2022 by Paul Clark

All Over the Place: Mumbo Jumbo Joe Wants to Be a Teacher

By Michael H. Brownstein

The picture book below was written to encourage young children to enjoy reading. I decided to use five- to seven-year-olds from the nearby Robert Taylor Public Housing Projects to illustrate the different verses. Because Chicago had an annual strike just about every year, when I began teaching at Farren next to the Robert Taylor Public Housing Projects (at the time, the largest public housing in the world), I established a not-for-profit, The RAMP (Reading and Math Program), so my students would not miss any school. After the strike ended, I decided to keep the program going as an academic after-school program, started writing grants, hired some local teenagers to help out, and discovered I had an aptitude for grant writing. The Geraldine Dodge Foundation paid me a thousand dollars for the manuscript and then sent me the entire press run.
    Ken Satterfield, a librarian at the Missouri River Regional Library, has produced a recording of his expert reading of the book:

Goines On: Magic bubbles

Click image for more vignettes
(That’s Sacré-Coeur Basilica in 2021,
out the Goineses‘ apartment window)

Walking along the crowded Rue Poteau toward Monoprix, Goines reflected on the way most Paris walkers and joggers and bikers and skateboarders navigated the city’s fast, busy streets. A biker comes from behind on sidewalks within centimeters of walkers, who might step to one side or the other at any moment, and along curbs beside cars and motorcycles and trucks and buses, which in Paris seem to go as fast as they possibly can without killing anyone or inviting a police intervention.

Favorite Quotes of Ken Marks

Martin    Stevens
Berra    Carlin    Rizzo
Rubin    Stranger
Bush    Fields    Gervais
Keillor    Socrates
Aristotle
Hanh    King    Shaw
Faulkner    Marple
Mandela
Cicero    Schiller
Shakespeare
Dawkins    Plato

Discovered on
The Scratching Post

By Moristotle

Ken Marks began scratching on The Scratching Post the year after he left the staff of Moristotle & Co. After we ran the opening of his latest scratching last week, I clicked on its “About Me” link.

    Ken says little there directly about himself, leaving it to the reader to infer things about him from his pastimes, languages, reading habits, and favorite movies, words, and quotes.

     A telling quote with regard to his saying little directly about himself is the one by Socrates. Ken has a strong mind, not a weak one; he discusses ideas, not people.

Fiction: Four Vats(a short story)

By Pat Hamilton

Billy said that his talk of huevos con chorizo yesterday compelled him to tell the story of Carlos’s abuelita and her four huge, tall pots.
    “When I was newly arrived in El Paso, I met Carlito in a Lit class at UTEP. When he found out I played guitar, he introduced me to two guys in his apartment building who played and sang, and so he brought us all together, and that night was so great, it enhanced the bond between Carlos and me, one result being that one evening, he took me to meet his grandmother at her house.

Highways and Byways: Broad Street Diamond, Griffith, Indiana

By Maik Strosahl

I saw a picture recently in an Abandoned Railroad forum. It was identified as a crossing in Griffith, Indiana, that was one of the busiest in the nation.

Fiction: A Killing on a Bridge (74) A historical fiction

Saint Sebastian River Bridge
[Click image to call up
all published instalments]

By Roger Owens

Wednesday,
October 19, 1921,
8:00 AM

Captain J. S. Blitch, Warden of Raiford State Prison, with barely a sip of his second cup of coffee past his lips, was presented by his head of security, George Morford, with a letter from prisoner John Ashley, to his father Joe Ashley, C/O Miller’s Landing, Gomez Grant, Stuart, Florida.