My wife never got over watching the second tower of the World Trade Center crumble to the ground from our apartment on the twenty-first floor on West 43rd Street in Manhattan. Nor did she ever get over the loss of her friends in Ladder Company No. 1 down the block. Each time we walked past the firehouse and saw the purple bunting draped across the garage bay we relived September 11th all over again.
The epiphany seized Sondheim at breakfast. The morning after he had seen, or rather dozed in part through, the Japanese movie on television. Scenes had flitted through his dreams and he was still in a vaguely Japanese mood as he descended to breakfast – or what he thought would be breakfast. There was none. To his query as to why not, his wife was dismissive. “My morning run,” she said; her white running shoes flashed briefly in the burst of sunlight before the door closed.
That’s another week in folks, they are flying by! Week 140 is now upon us.
It’s weird where I get inspiration to bore the be-Jesus out of you all. (Is that how you spell that word? And should ‘be’ not be capitalised as it is part of Jesus Our Lord and concept or should I say con??)
Continue reading “Week 140 – Double Standards, Method Acting And ‘Do You Want To See Some Puppies?’”
Calvin Allen and Leo ‘The Lip’ Grady were superstars in the world of boxing during the seventies. Their three fights against one another are legendary. Allen won the first bout with a TKO in the eighth. A year later, Grady would turn the tables with a fourth round knockout. But it was their rubber match that people still talk about today. It was the lanky, reserved, black man from New Jersey against the stocky, white, Irishman from Queens. The crowd was divided in their loyalties. Back and forth the two boxers went, bobbing and weaving, each landing devastating blows on the other. One would be knocked to the canvas and then the other. The sold-out arena was in a frenzy. It was the closest, most brutal, of their three meetings. Round after round it continued, with neither fighter giving an inch.
When the bell rang, signaling mid-morning break, the floors of the factory shook as workers scrambled away from their stations, rushing to vending machines or out exit doors for a smoke. Morning break was eight minutes. The men on the loading dock kept working. They kept working because they were blind and eight minutes was not enough time to navigate from one place to another.
Continue reading “The Manufacturing Of Sorrow by Bob Thurber”
5:50 A.M., 21 August 2017, New Town Cemetery, Charleston, WA
“Have you met yourself in a Legend yet, darling?” Emma says. Her Spirit and that of her love, Lewis Coughland, have just gathered-to, as always, in the oak, prior to daybreak.
Continue reading “A New Book of Numbers (Part I) by Leila Allison”
I don’t think anyone could have missed the inspiration for week 139!
There was a wee bit of a stramash this week. The fight between Mayweather and McGregor was another one I didn’t see as I only have council TV.
I used to enjoy following the boxing, but now that Sky has monopolised everything I see very little. I think Sky is going to be like Skynet from ‘The Terminator’ films and it is the beginning of our end. But to be truthful, no-one will notice as they will all be watching the varied box-sets that are available. Dying in front of the TV is now more of a certainty than pneumonia!
Continue reading “Week 139 – Pugilism, Diggstown And A Vagina With Teeth.”
Back in 1949 or 1950 when I was six or seven, my grandfather took me on my first trip on ‘the Slave Road,’ ‘the Hidden Highway,’ ‘the Nigger Byway,’ ‘the Devil’s Footpath,’ or ‘the River Styx Trail.’ All these names and more for a narrow, dark path, a little over a half-mile long, that saved almost a mile and a half between our farm and Corn Row Road. The “Row” was a dirt road, where our black friends and relatives lived.
The entire world had gone mad. Completely bat-shit crazy which was really saying something in this over-sexed, social-media crazed, smartphone obsessed cesspool that made up modern life. Douglas Garuder had long been a man whose time had passed him by. Hell, he still had an ancient flip phone with a long, spidery crack up the screen. Not that he ever used it. Since Joan had passed away some five years ago, there really wasn’t anyone he cared to talk to. Most of the time if he even remembered to look at the damn thing, he always expected her to call, reminding him to pick up eggs or some other mundane item at the grocery store. That feeling was always followed by the crushing, black sadness that he would never hear his wife’s voice again. At least not in this life anyway.
Liam paces the floor of his “study” which is a bedroom in the home that he and his wife Eileen are renting. The new addition screams its head off. He wishes the thing would shut up. Not the thing. That’s terrible. The girl. The baby. They cry constantly, babies. They cry because they’re infants, then they cry because they’re teething, then they cry because they’re in the ‘terrible twos.’ It seems different names for the same dreadful screeching. He has no idea why anyone would have a baby. He has no idea how he ended up with one.
literally stories 