Bellator Senex: People are a lot like cars

[Editor’s Note: Both Ed & I were born the year of this pickup –
him on today’s date, me 5 days later]

By Ed Rogers

People are a lot like cars. When new, they all (except for a few lemons now and then) run great, look great, and are able to fly down the road.
    Not all cars are equal, however. Some have parts that wear out before others. Some are driven too hard and just can’t endure the strain; they end up in the junkyard before their time. Others are cared for and pampered, but still break down.

Want to Know Who Set the Tablefor the Big Lie?

Go Look in a Mirror

By Paul Clark
(aka motomynd)

Even though I’m 67 years old, fairly world-wise and extremely well-traveled, it wasn’t until five years ago – when my son was almost two years old – that I fully realized that a shocking number of people are innately and almost maniacally dishonest. I had always noted that many people – including “good” people, and definitely not just “bad” people – routinely used exaggeration, partials truths and “white” lies in their normal conversation with me, but it wasn’t until I saw them blatantly lying to my toddler-age son that the point hit home.

Fish for Friday

Edited by Morris Dean

[Anonymous selections from recent correspondence]

Attached is a photo of an Eastern Screech owl's protective coloring that was in today's paper: "Nature photographer has the patience to capture award-winning shots." The photographer is Graham McGeorge taken in the Okefenokee Swamp.

Ask Wednesday: Officer Rodney Ward, Jr. on police work

A privilege and an honor

Edited by Morris Dean

The Police Department of the City of Mebane, North Carolina, practices “community-oriented policing” (COP) for the citizens in its jurisdiction. Officers are assigned to be the COP coordinator for particular communities. I live in the Collington Farms development and our coordinator is Officer Rodney Ward, Jr. Besides patrolling our neighborhood regularly and getting to know its residents, Officer Ward helped us set up our Community Watch network and has attended every one of our Community Watch Block Captains meetings.
    We are very grateful that he was willing to take the time to be interviewed. [Our questions are in italics.]

Fish for Friday

Edited by Morris Dean

[Anonymous selections from recent correspondence]

490,000 square miles! Ocean Conservancy's Ocean Action News: We Did It: The U.S. Creates the World’s Largest Marine Protected Area. President Obama has expanded the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument to include more than 490,000 square miles!

Acting Citizen: Old Enough to Understand

FWD
(front wheel drive)

By James Knudsen

In his September column, “At Random: Things I Will Never Be Old Enough to Understand,” Paul Clark (aka motomynd), chronicled some things he doesn’t like or just doesn’t get. Front wheel drive (FWD) made the list, and from his column it seems to fall in the category of something he doesn’t like. As the son of an early adopter of the FWD train layout (see my “Fourth Saturday’s Loneliest Liberal: About the Panhard,” November 2014), I found this troubling to the point of offensive, and so, today’s defense.

Fiction: A Killing on a Bridge (41) A historical fiction

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

By Roger Owens

Friday,
July 9, 1915,
concluded

The gang converged on the bank at what they thought would be near the end of the business day. They didn’t know about the workers coming in from Fort Basinger and Belle Glade, and as they wheeled into the crushed shell parking lot, the tangle of trucks and cars came as a surprise.

Roger’s Reality: The Camper Saga, Part 3

By Roger Owens

This is the bad part, with a very bright spot right in the middle of it. We’re in South Carolina, rolling down I-95 at a smart 63 miles per hour. That’s as fast as I can go without the transmission on my old Explorer shifting up and down, and it sucks gas bad enough without pushing it. Like I said, we’re not in a hurry. I reckon we’re getting about ten miles to the gallon, two hundred miles on a twenty-gallon tank. Just about right for breaks for old dogs, and old people as well.

Fish for Friday

Edited by Morris Dean

[Anonymous selections from recent correspondence]

Recent photo effort: Tulips currently sitting on my table.

Fiction: I Am a Prayer(Excerpt from the novel)

By Michael Hanson

[Editor’s Note: I Am a Prayer is the author’s latest published novel (Atmosphere Press, November 15, 2022). It is about loss and gifts, and the efforts we make to find meaning in life when tragedy is an inescapable aspect of love. Raymond Shackleford’s journey takes him to a variety of venues — from a dance club to the depths of his own past — but it will be a chance encounter with a stranger that changes everything.] 

My friend Lauren always said, ‘Write the ending you want.’

Correspondence: America has a tremendous fantastic president

By Moristotle

Who’s mutinying? I don’t see any impeachment quorum forming. “Trump’s Madness Invites Mutiny” [Charles M. Blow, NY Times, May 15]. Excerpt:

Fiction: Boystown: The Return (a novel)

Chapter 4. Pepe Espada

By edRogers

[Chapter 3 of Ed Rogers’s new novel appeared here on May 30. It is available in its entirety as a Kindle book.]

BODY COUNT: Killers (a novel): Chapter 12. BBQ

Click image to
access installments

The three of them drove up the driveway to Betty’s house at 6:00 sharp. Blake parked among the seven or eight other cars out front. As they disembarked the Jeep, they heard the sound of country music and loud voices coming from behind the house. “I don’t believe this 6-pack of beer is going to go very far,” Bobby said as he pulled the beer from the back seat.
    Blake nodded in agreement. “She never said it was a party, but then again she never said it wasn’t. Shelley, will you get those camera pens out of the glovebox? We might as well start getting pictures now. They walked around the corner, each with a ballpoint pen equipped with a small camera tucked in a chest pocket. Two clicks and it was on; one click and it was a writing pen.

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.

Duel with a Demon? Or a Streak of Crazy Coincidences?

By Paul Clark
(aka motomynd)

It was a quiet Sunday night at home, the winding-down of a great weekend. We had finished the house projects on our list, enjoyed a wonderful three-mile Sunday-afternoon walk/run along the shore of our favorite local lake, and were settling in for a quiet dinner.
    And not just any dinner! This was our post-hike family-tradition greatest-dinner-ever: a vegan, gluten-free, Mediterranean style Daiya frozen pizza, to which we added extra mushrooms, olives, and pineapple before cooking it absolutely perfectly in our air-fryer pizza oven. It isn’t often we have a perfect weekend and get to top it off with the perfect meal, but this weekend we achieved the near impossible.

Fish for Friday

Edited by Morris Dean

[Anonymous selections from recent correspondence]

Tundra Swans, which winter on both U.S. coasts, are at serious risk from climate change, according to Audubon's report on birds and climate change.

Fourth Saturday's Loneliest Liberal: The things we worry about

Almost none of them will happen

By James Knudsen

Back when I was in high school, I received some of the best advice I would ever get. I think it was in Leadership class, definitely not the place for me as it was filled with student council types, and that wasn’t me. But my girlfriend was in the class, so what more reason could I need?
    One day one of the school counselors addressed us about stress. She said, “You know, 95% of the things you worry about never happen.”

Third Saturday Fiction

Chapter 22. The High Country, from the novel Boystown: The Cocaine Highway

By edRogers

[James Hamilton has had to abandon his business and flee Mexico to avoid being killed by a Colombian drug cartel. Previous excerpt, "Santa Teresa," published here on August 30.]

Northern California is not like any other part of the state. I crossed the Golden Gate Bridge about six in the morning, a light fog hung over the water. As usual, there was a chill in the air, but fortunately, I wore my full leathers. Most of the traffic came across the bridge from the north at that time of day. The line of cars looked like ants as they broke from the darkness of the tunnel into the gray morning light. Each little soldier, sadly in search of a dream that required them to spend eight hours locked in an office. Then at the end of the day they would make the drive back across the bridge and start over tomorrow.

BODY COUNT: Killers (a novel): Chapter 4. The Operation

Click image to
access installments

Captain Lenders was notified of Blake’s transfer and Blake spent the rest of the day at the Federal Building having his picture and fingerprints taken for his new identification. He filled out one form after another, guided through the maze by June, as Mrs. Warner now wanted him to call her. The whole process took three hours, after which June gave him her card and told him to go to any A.P.S. gate off Airways Boulevard across from the airport and they would contact a driver to escort him to the building he and his team would work in.

All Over the Place: Hunger Pains (short story)

By Michael H. Brownstein

I’m finished with the second box of matzo and we still have a hundred or so miles to go. One piece of matzah every ten to twenty miles. It keeps me awake, and I like the way it crunches, changes texture, leaves a slight film in my mouth. I always take a five- to ten-mile break between each piece.
    “Hey,” I wake my wife, “I need a bathroom and I’m out of food. We’re coming on to Dwight. I’m going to get some food for us there.”