Fiction: She Likes It Cold(a short story)

By Pat Hamilton

Even long before the wedding, Paula knew they were doomed.
    She liked it cold. Windows-open-in-winter cold. Air conditioners from the 1970s set on 8 in November. Running barefoot in the snow and freezing sleet to retrieve the mail. She’d bring the old-lady neighbors their mail, too. Barefoot in snow.

Hobnobbing with the Philosophers: How to Love Another Man’s

Detail from “The School of Athens”
a fresco by Raphael (1483 – 1520)
[Click image to call up
all published instalments]

By Maik Strosahl

I was digging through a box of memories when I found a scrap piece of paper with a handwritten poem scribbled on it.
    In my newspaper days, it was common for me to compose poems on the paper that was used to protect the freshly printed papers. On other occasions, any clean piece of cardboard could bear words that would surely have been lost if I didn’t get them out of my cluttered mind onto some sort of record.
    The one below was scribed on just such a piece of packaging and long ago forgotten.
    Until today.

The Christmas Miracle: From the Chronicles of Meth Mountain

A Piece of Flash Fiction

By Michael H. Brownstein

When Christmas day dawned, there were no Christmas trees, no gifts, no cookies, no glasses of milk—only small plastic bags of meth.
   It’s Christmas, she told her companion. Get up. Let’s see what Santa sent us.

From the Alwinac: Wooden Angels: Silent Night for Cello Ensemble

[Click on image to
go directly to
the Alwinac’s home page]

[The Alwinac blog is part of the schroeder170 project, honoring the life and musical career of cellist Alwin Schroeder (1855-1928) and exploring the history of cello playing in the US.]

Looking up from the organ loft at St. Trinitatus church in the Thurginian town of Holzengel (“wooden angel”), home of Alwin Schroeder’s paternal forebears, a musical score comes into view. Foregrounded diagonally within a music-themed quadrant of the church's painted wooden ceiling, the meticulously reproduced sheet music is readily identifiable as the soprano and alto parts of Gruber’s Christmas carol “Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht.” With my warmest wishes for love- and music-filled holidays, I hope you will enjoy this cello ensemble version of Silent Night, performed by the cellists of the Philharmonia Orchestra.
_______________
Read on the Alwinac website itself….

Copyright © 2022 by Geoffrey Dean

Fiction: A Killing on a Bridge (85) A historical fiction

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

By Roger Owens

Saturday,
November 1, 1924,
10:47 PM

Terry Miller and Steve Davis were drunk. They’d been to Miss Lottie’s for the cheap drinks, but they had some money tonight due to Terry’s uncle, and another’s leavings didn’t suit them this night. They were headed to Senegal’s Sumptuous Palace of Delights, to sample some new flesh reported to have arrived recently enough not to smell like old fish.

All Over the Place: Daughter

By Michael H. Brownstein

A Christmas gift to my daughters, my four granddaughters, and my wife, who is a daughter too.

Acting Citizen: At a Cars and Coffee Meet

By James Knudsen

I ended last month’s column with mention of a very rare, very beautiful, and very expensive automobile, the Ferrari GT 250 Lusso. Rare (only 351 were built) beautiful (subjective, yes, but trust me it’s beautiful), and expensive (it cost $13,375 in 1964; the same amount would buy you two Cadillacs off the showroom floor). This was a car for the few.

Goines On: What does Goines want for Christmas?

Click image for more vignettes

Goines almost always asked his wife what she wanted for Christmas. He wasn’t good at thinking up what she might want. Besides, in theory, they didn’t get each other Christmas gifts anyway. They just went on being one another’s gift to the other. Goines liked that. And it simplified things.
    But what about asking himself what he wanted for Christmas? The idea was prompted by a questionnaire he had been sent that included the question, “If you could have anything you wanted, regardless of cost, what would it be?”

Fiction: Movie Night(a short story)

By Pat Hamilton

“Remember you told me I’d have to tell you about all my lovers someday,” Paula reminded, “but I was so cool that I never did? Haha!”
    “I do remember, and yes, you are so cool. I said you didn’t have to.”

Hobnobbing with the Philosophers: Pasticcio Pudding

Detail from “The School of Athens”
a fresco by Raphael (1483 – 1520)
[Click image to call up
all published instalments]

By Maik Strosahl

Back in the summer of 2019, I heard a word that kept me up all night, trying to figure out how I could use it in a poem. That word was Pasticcio.
    Pasticcio is another term for pastiche, which refers to an artistic work consisting of a medley of pieces taken from various sources.
    For me, it brought to mind a poetry collaboration and because it sounded so close to pistachio, reminded me of my favorite summer moments in Wisconsin, eating Almond Pistachio pudding turned into ice cream, then playing on the shore and in the waters of Lake Ripley. What if we did an artistic collaboration about our memories with pudding?

Fiction: A Killing on a Bridge (84) A historical fiction

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

By Roger Owens

Saturday,
November 1, 1924,
8:57 PM

Stuart Police Chief Oren B. Padgett was the second cousin, once removed, of the Padgett brothers over at the Sheriff’s Office, who would later that day be sent to Fort Pierce. He was sitting at a window table in the Victory Hotel finishing his coffee when he saw George Mariot coming out of the grocery across the street.
    George had an awful lot of groceries for just him and his wife Lola, John Ashley’s estranged sister, Padgett thought.

Goines On: What three words?

Click image for more vignettes

Goines was asked what three words he would use to describe himself. He was surprised how quickly came the three words “skeptical,” “optimistic,” and “helpful.“
    But he soon realized that those descriptors had come too fast; they needed qualification, elaboration.
    “Skeptical” pertained mainly to incoming information, the “news,” or opinions expression by others. For Goines, “being skeptical” was questioning things, refraining from judgment – neither outrightly dismissive nor quickly accepting and storing as “knowledge.”

All Over the Place: Michael’s Story

By Michael H. Brownstein

I was raised on a farm with no indoor plumbing

and her long strands of rainbow and leprechaun glitter slides down her back.

Let’s remember Michael, she says.

Return of the Cheshire Cat? (a short story)

By Paul Clark (aka motomynd)

[Note: There’s a postscript at the bottom about the real cat.]

Chainsaw in hand, he eyed the fallen tree and wondered if he should tackle it first, or the one next to it that was leaning but had not yet toppled. Another storm, another downed tree. The joy of owning a wooded property.

Fiction: A Killing on a Bridge (83) A historical fiction

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

By Roger Owens

Friday,
October 31, 1924,
1:30 PM

The top of the telegram read “Postal Telegraph”, followed by the triangular shield of the US Postmaster, then “Commercial Cables.” The recipient was listed as “JAMES MERRITT, SHERIFF, SAINT LUCIE CTY.” The body of the message was straightforward, as telegrams were charged for by the word.