Goines On: Birthday books

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Goines was at first bewildered by the heft of The New Yale Book of Quotations that his son gave him for his 80^th birthday, along with a paperback volume of Rainer Maria Rilke’s Duino Elegies and The Sonnets to Orpheus, translated by Stephen Mitchell, who his son knew was Goines’ favorite.
    Upon extracting the Yale book from its thick fabric bag (which Goines assumed the publisher had clothed it in), Goines said he thought it must weigh two to three pounds. “Five,” said his son.

Fiction: One Lazy Day(a short story)

By Pat Hamilton

One lazy night, after they’d lazed in bed all day and taken their properly cooked but previously frozen lasagna and a ring of shrimp with cocktail sauce into the den to dine while watching Happy Christmas, Paula asked whether Billy preferred traveling or staying at home. They’d already spent three years locked down at home, and this plague kept returning just when everyone began to act as if it were gone.

Hobnobbing with the Philosophers: Here Lies Officer Burnett

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

By Maik Strosahl

I love a good Spoon River poem. I have mentioned this type of poem before when dealing with the death of Stephen Foster (“Dear Friends and Gentle People,” November 10, 2021).
    Edgar Lee Masters created an entire history for the fictitious town of Spoon River, Illinois, with the voices rising from those resting in the cemetery. His poems expressed their regrets, humorous stories and greatest scandals.
    I have played with different variations on his themes. I find it is interesting to experiment with thoughts of what could haunt a ghost.

Goines On: His willed power

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Goines didn’t celebrate Christmas for its religious significance. Thinking about his upbeat spirits one holiday morning, he saw that he did, though, celebrate Christmas for the people it brought to mind, from cards received, memories evoked.
    He acknowledged 2022’s particular contribution to be the spark provided him by his encounter with a certain “life coach,” whose gift of her book bore a touching inscription testifying that the encounter with him had sparked her too.

Happy 80th Birthday (a poem)

For Moristotle

Welcome to the other side of 80. 

The water is about the same,
but not as deep.

Life has been enjoyable,
and enlightening.

You know how they said
don’t burn your candle at both ends?
I think I’m on about my third candle.

Copyright © 2023 by Ed Rogers

All Over the Place: The House I Never Lived In

By Michael H. Brownstein

1.

The door in the wall led to an inner sanctum

and the path through the garden to a paved road

narrow and bent, through and over.

We took it, step by step, against ancient brownstone,

gray brick and rock, until the house
we never lived in became something distant.
We wandered away, sometimes not eating for days,
water a memory a week at a time, air the source
of everything living. Fifty years we walked:
We never made it back home.

Moristotle 80th Birthday Interview

Interviewed by Geoffrey Dean

I posed a number of probing questions to Moristotle recently. His answers give us new insights into his mind and heart, while on a lighter note, they also helped me figure out what to give him for his 80^th birthday tomorrow!

     Thanks to my sister, Jennifer, for taking the photos above.

What three (or more) words would you use to describe yourself?

Skeptical, optimistic, helpful. I’m surprised how easily those three words came, and how confident I am of them….No, those came too fast; they need qualification, elaboration.

On Franklin Hill Farm: Chicken House Blues

By Bettina Sperry

Slipping out the door, I always seem to walk more quietly when heading to the chicken house. There’s always a gathering of colorful eggs from my assortment of chickens, even here in winter. Some small, some average, and often a really large egg that sometimes contains two yolks. I relish the simple life here on my farm. It is where I gather in the quiet, escaping public chaos to appreciate days paced by Mother Nature for living slowly.

Fiction: I Have Seen the Past(a short story)

By Pat Hamilton

Flick flick flick sounds.
    Frustrated, Paula screams, “I just need to light this one last ciggy. I just need it right now! “
    Here we are in the present.
    Click click click.

Hobnobbing with the Philosophers: The Old Folks Place

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

By Maik Strosahl

After 1915, a postcard made its way to many a mailbox in Russia. The picture was of a painting done by Isaak Brodsky titled “Fallen Leaves.”
    Isaak Brodsky was born of Jewish descent in what is now part of the Ukraine. One of his famous paintings, a portrait of Vladimir Lenin, actually bears an autograph by Lenin himself, as requested by the artist. The Russian leader is reported to have said, “I am signing to what I don’t agree with for the first time.”
    “Fallen Leaves” was painted in 1915 and came to my attention as a reproduction of one of those postcards that were mailed around the Russian landscape. It spoke of other abandoned homes I have enjoyed exploring, and I felt a story brewing inside that image, one that was asking me for words.
    Of course, I had to oblige.

For Jim Rix’s 80th Birthday (on January 15)

Jim’s Most 

Famous Column?

By Moristotle

Jim Rix’s wry, witty discourse on the Greek legend of Psyche and Eros, “Thirst Satyrday for Eros: Understanding Eros (subtitled ‘...merits ardent investigation’),” was published on Saturday, September 6, 2014. Over eight years later, on December 28, 2022, our administrative staff received a notice from Blogger unlike any other we had ever received in our almost 17 years of posting, to wit:

​Quartina in Orbital Harness (a poem)

Click image to visit the
Highland Park Poetry website

For Jennifer Dotson,
my adopted bosun

By Moristotle

When I republished the quartina “Love your enemies deciphered in quartina” on November 29, 2022, I also submitted it to poet Jennifer Dotson, the founder and program coordinator for Highland Park Poetry, up in Highland Park, Illinois, for possible publication. Jennifer promptly let me know that she would publish it.

All Over the Place: Finding an Inside/Out

By Michael H. Brownstein

Tried something different—a play on word rhythm and rhyme. Thought a bit of new and experimental would be a grand way to enter 2023.

Finding an Inside/Out

the poetics of Jung
swung
aesthetics/synthetics

From “The Scratching Post”: 2022: Stories of the year

By Ken Marks

[Opening from the original on The Scratching Post, December 24, 2022, published here by permission of the author.]

Each year, I try to pick the most important story of that year, the one most likely to affect our immediate future. This year, however, I’ve picked two stories. They seem to have little in common but are strangely inseparable, at least to me. Perhaps it’s because they share the same theme — the death spiral of a monster.

The first story involves the war in Ukraine, which started late last February. It was supposed to be a quick mauling of any Ukrainian forces that resisted the Russian invasion. It was anything but. To understand why, we have to imagine a dictator who is among the greatest fuckups in history, and also one of the cruelest, most impulsive, and most vengeful — Vladimir Putin. If you’re wondering what he could have done to earn these distinctions, here’s a record of ineptitude that may challenge your credulity:

• Putin’s first responsibility was to gather intelligence, and in this he failed utterly. The estimate of Ukraine’s readiness and will to resist missed the mark completely. The estimate of the West’s commitment to Ukraine also erred badly. The West quickly agreed on crushing sanctions that all but crippled Russia’s economy. Then it followed through by providing Ukraine with advanced weapon systems, technical assistance, military intelligence, food, clothing, medical supplies, and infrastructure support. Putin failed to realize there was no way to intercept supply lines without invading NATO nations and triggering a doomsday scenario. In effect, Putin found himself fighting against the entire industrialized world, minus China, India, and Iran.
• He never bothered to understand the logistics of fighting a war. He had no access to Ukraine’s rail system, so he sent countless military and supply vehicles down Ukraine’s roads, where they stalled and became targets. The glut of traffic was so immense that fuel, munitions, spare parts, and other materiel couldn’t be efficiently moved to troops in forward positions.
• He put quickly trained — and therefore poorly trained — soldiers in the field. Moreover, he sent far too few of them. Approximately 150,000 to 190,000 Russian soldiers, regulars and irregulars, were in the initial invasion force, facing a country of 44 million people. That’s a ratio of 4 Russian soldiers for every 1,000 Ukrainian inhabitants. Data from modern warfare shows that roughly 20 soldiers for every 1,000 inhabitants are needed to conquer and pacify a hostile population. This explains why Putin has been desperate to find more soldiers. He has hired mercenaries and offered convicts freedom if they agree to fight. He has gone so far as to institute a draft, but this caused such an uproar that he had to give it up.
• Last April, Russian troops halted their advance on Kyiv. It was the perfect moment for Putin to cut his losses and pretend he had delivered a harsh warning to Ukrainians who dared to collude with NATO. Sadly, he was too proud to accept the rebuke he was dealt. He redeployed Russian forces to the East and South, where many Ukrainians identify with Russian culture. The Russians were brutal in asserting their claims to these regions. Rockets destroyed urban centers and residences. People on the street were indiscriminately executed and consigned to mass graves. Many of the survivors were tortured; women were raped. The new strategy was to demoralize Ukrainians by subjecting them to a barrage of war crimes. The memory of this savagery will evoke Ukrainian hatred for centuries. Even if Russian reverses its record of screwups and losses, it will never pacify a single acre of Ukrainian territory. Russia hoped to avoid sharing a border with a NATO country. Now they will share a border with something far worse, a blood enemy. And if Ukraine is ever in a position to dictate the terms that will end the war, Putin and his surviving generals will certainly face war crimes trials, imprisonment, and execution.
• He is oblivious to the enormity of his crimes. This winter he has doubled down. He’s sent missile barrages against Ukraine’s infrastructure, depriving Ukrainians of light, warmth, water, and food supplies. He has actually weaponized winter. This strategy will never drive his foe toward capitulation; it will have exactly the opposite effect.
• He has never had a contingency plan for a long war. After 10 months of fighting, he’s using charity drives to supply soldiers with medicine, sleeping bags, felt boots, woolen socks, mittens, scarves, and body armor. One charity event raised the equivalent of $45 thousand. Contrast this with the $45 billion that Congress recently passed for emergency assistance to Ukraine and NATO allies. The appropriation includes a critical infusion of Patriot anti-ballistic missiles.

    The war will end in either of two ways. One, Russia loses in the traditional way — they capitulate and Ukraine dictates terms, which will undoubtedly include Putin’s removal (if he isn’t already dead), loss of the Crimea, and war reparations. Two, Russia loses in the pyrrhic way; that is, they win but pay a staggering price in lives, leadership, prosperity, and reputation. If it’s the second way, it won’t be called “pyrrhic,” because no winning military in world history will have paid such a disastrous price. It will be called a “putinic” (poo-TIN-ic, with two short i’s) victory. It’s amazing to think that the likelihood of a no-win scenario has probably never occurred to Putin.

The second story begins….
[Read the whole thing on The Scratching Post.]

Copyright © 2022 by Ken Marks Ken Marks was a contributing editor with Paul Clark & Tom Lowe when “Moristotle” became “Moristotle & Co.” A brilliant photographer, witty conversationalist, and elegant writer, Ken contributed photographs, essays, and commentaries from mid-2008 through 2012. Late in 2013, Ken birthed the blog The Scratching Post. He also posts albums of his photos on Flickr.

Guest “Pome of the Season”

16 Years Ago:
The 2006
Christmas Pome

By Bill Keene

[This delightful light verse had not been re-run (until today) since its appearance here on December 24, 2006, at 6:47 a.m.]

A lot of folks don’t know that Santa only has one eye.

The other is a glass replacement through which he can spy

all the little boys and girls, moms and daddies, too.

At any time of year he could be looking right at you.