Category: Editor Picks

Editor Picks, General Fiction, Humour, Latest News, Short Fiction

Week 583: Mama Mama Please No More Step Dads

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Tomorrow is Mother’s Day in the U.S. of A. (In the UK and Ireland it was 15 March–a belated happy one to Diane and the rest of the Islanders), I am not a mother, but I had one and found her to be sufficient. She was the sort of Mother who would die for her children and often made this one wish she would do just that.

We are awfully unfair to our mothers. We either over praise them up to Mother Mary Poppins or we blame them for not just all the heinous shit we do but for all the heinous shit ever committed in history. Expecting mothers to maintain a higher standard than what we are willing to consider is one of humankind’s greatest failings. Still, objectivity is not something we associate with family members. But alack and alas, all in all, in the end, everything tabulated, I’m glad I got the mother I was stuck with (vice versa); I do not believe anyone else out there could have made me and–despite my plentiful laments on the subject of me–I am used to being the person I am, and I’ve never been one for wishing I was someone else.

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Week 581- Have You Never Been Melodramatic

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I am not a cynical luddite, but I believe everyone ought to have a little oldfashionedness in her for the sake of maintaining a soul. Still, progress isn’t completely evil. It brings more good than bad in medicine (at least it does when you compare modern TB and smallpox statistics to the way things were a hundred years ago). But I’m also convinced that as an animal, one whose evolution is influenced by long-term realities, we are not wholly prepared to accept sudden changes. Moreover, being small we are overwhelmed by reasons to feel worthless and dumb; and when it becomes clear that a ten-year-old can do more with our phones than we can, let’s just say it is not good for the self esteem. (Then again I can drive a stick and parallel park without an AI, so there you little Weaselings!)

For at least 99% of human history we lived the same way. It was hard to win a living from the soil and when we managed to light a fire with rocks and damp kindling and somehow outlasted another winter we felt like whatever the word for rock star was way back in the Middle Ages.

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Week 579: Further Adventures in Urban Wildlife

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(Sir Andy Hisster)

Due to his departure to the green fields of the PAWS’ center located about a half hour north of here, this is the first spring in which Andy Hisster (The Gray fella above this paragraph) does not rule (in person) the courtyard of my building in what feels like ten years. My uncertainty of the year is because I can not remember the moment I meet any Feral Cat, they just appear, magically, and it feels as though they have always been.

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Week 577: Can’t Teach a Shark to Kill Tofu

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(Elliott the Header Pigeon is on vacation this week. PDQ Peety is filling in and is also  filling  himself with PDQ Pilsner.)

Introduction

I again found myself undertaking the idea of the End of Humankind. Which is not to be confused with the End of the World because that will happen a few billion years from now when the sun dies, at which time it will greatly expand and obliterate everything on out to Jupiter. Like the rabid cur shot dead by Atticus in To Kill a Mockingbird a dead sun is still a dangerous sun.

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Week 573: An Elegy For a Friend and the A to Z of Adjectival Slight

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A friend from my youth died recently. His name was Kim. We were close through our twenties until he moved to Japan (due to marriage). The only contact we had for decades was the occasional Facebook “happy birthday like” (I fell out of using Facebook fairly quickly; too many ads and idiots, but the premise is a good one). I considered writing letters, which I (without modesty) am pretty good at writing. Maybe I should have–but to paraphrase James Taylor “I didn’t know where to send them to.”

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Week 571: Andy Fought the Law, and, Well, Andy Won

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Andy

Since late 2017 I have been feeding a Feral Cat named Andy Hisster (his image above, circa 2019). Simple math tells me that Andy, full-sized upon my meeting him, must be close to ten years old, which is a good age for a housecat and flat out Methuselah for a wild boy. And make no mistake, Andy is a wild wild wild one.

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569: More Grammar Gripes

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Every year or so I feel obliged to make a statement on behalf of proper grammar in the English language. Before the tongue is finally killed and left to rot in the Pop Culture Wood, I feel that it is the duty of writers long acquainted with the written word to get in a few shots at the would-be murderers. The killers of language are the Usual Suspects, namely the Selfish and Lazy (from here, “Sal”).

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Editor Picks, Short Fiction, Tom Sheehan Week

A Tribute to Tom Sheehan

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An image of Tom Sheehan, author, on his tribute page. A gentleman in a green T shirt sitting in a cosy-looking home in front of a laptop computer.

Today we present a small tribute to our late friend Tom Sheehan (1928-2025). Tom was a friend of our site since the early days and published an astonishing total of 228 stories with us, by far the highest sum in our eleven year existence. Below you will find links to five of his stories, which will shine a light on the man, who is someone who earned the right to be remembered long and well.

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562- Remembering a Wonderful Friend and Some Goofiness Regarding Genre

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A Friend

Dear Readers

Before we start this week’s silliness, I must relate the news of the passing of Tom Sheehan, who died 16 October, at age 97. Tom holds the site record of 228 stories. He and I coincidentally debuted on LS in August 2015, and Tom nearly doubled my output in less time, even though he was thirty-one years my senior. I doubt anyone will catch him.

But more importantly, Tom was a fine human being: A husband, father, grandfather, historian of Saugus, Massachusetts and a veteran of the Korean War. It is not my object to create sadness because 97 is a damn good run and Tom was still writing till the end. His final submission, an acceptance, of course, The Decoration occurred this past spring.

We will be running a far more fitting tribute to our friend in times ahead, so please keep an eye open. 

Leila, Diane, Hugh

Genre

I am not powerfully educated nor will my pride allow me to google every little mystery, but I feel that I have a fairly clear-minded grasp of genre.

I hear the word and Western, Science Fiction, Fantasy (not just impossible S.F.), Crime (or CMT), Mystery and so on pop into mind. In that regard “genre” is a useful list of things, and I highly approve of lists.

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