From Gene’s Notebook
…with the New Year here in Asia and Oceania, there are some hours before it is here in the humidity and sun ….
…Border Patrol helicopter cruises over the riverbanks in the hazy sky, and a motorcyclist on the flat ground slams on his brakes, fishtails, keeps his balance (no helmet) and does not [...]

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An opinion from Gene Novogrodsky
Recall ninth grade civics classes? I doubt if most schools have that subject. We learned that lawmakers, at any level, are supposed to serve all the people, not special interests. However, federal, state and county elected officials have not followed that course in three recent instances.
Federal lawmakers have visited two wars [...]

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From Gene’s Notebook
…an ex-con, or more politely, a former convict with all his obligations served, accomplished …and I know that I’d forgotten a promise I had made four months ago, to get him registered to vote now that he was out of the penal system’s arms; he yells, “Obama!” as he had wanted to register [...]

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A remembrance
Hewing wood, fetching tamales mid December, getting drunk by the garage fire with the in-laws as the Norther rages at all that was and is warm. And the women cook, and talk and watch TV inside. Men by common agreement and innate concordance converge apart from the split tails free of female censoriousness and [...]

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From Gene’s Notebook
…and when the mind drifts, easily induced on a walk in drizzle and cold, walking stick striking the sidewalk and pavement ….
- The Matamoros roofer, just back from roofing in Corpus Christi, tells me that Mexico is mi tierra, and the United States mi trabajo. I joke with him and tell him to [...]

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From Gene’s Notebook
…and she came back from South America, journal full, ideas bursting, wanting to share and tell …and everyone was busy … …and with a late-afternoon rain sweetening Monroe City, Missouri, on the prairie that rolls, barely, to Kansas, I ask an old farmer in a pickup about where the main street is, and [...]

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A note from Stan
I’m saddened to note that Harold Pinter, esteemed British playwright, died yesterday at 78.
My induction into theater at the Charmichael Repertory Theater at Ball State University in the 1970’s included playing Teddy in Pinter’s “The Homecoming” and the company’s repertoire included “The Caretaker” and “The Birthday Party.” I never made it into [...]

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Some wishes from Stan

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A thought from Stan

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A poem by Gene Novogrodsky
Dropped boxes, dropped cartons,
On the sleepers,
See them descend, the boxes, the cartons
And the sleepers are encased ….
Breathing packages ….
Eugene “Gene” Novogrodsky
December 22, 2008

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An announcement
Thursday Dec. 25th, 2008
Acquire your dose of Holiday Spirit as Art Expressions arouses your sense for fine dining. December 25, 2008. With our grand celebration of Hanukkah, and our musical entertainment by Ensemble La Mission from Brownsville, Texas. With an eclectic musical repertoire, join us as La Mission pleases the night with their profound [...]

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From Gene’s Notebook
… the train engineer met her when she was on the border “to help the poor.” They wed, bought a small farm and orchard, had some kids and lived surrounded by trees, goats and brush critters. He’d get up six mornings a week, well before dawn, and go down to stilled train, get [...]

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From Gene’s Notebook
…and I reach over, more precisely turn into her, snug beneath a sheet and two covers; outside the wind moves the huge ash, and clouds and moon take the sky …. Very secure, very safe.
I tell her that our nest isn’t the case in the Congo where rape is a major part of [...]

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From Gene’s Notebook
One
…and she tells me that teaches elementary school in Matamoros, and that she just had a spat with her boyfriend and that her purse and phone are in her boyfriend’s grandfather’s car and she is walking to the old man’s house, hoping though to catch a bus ….
I tell her in my tolerable [...]

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A reminder from Marianna Nelson
At the Valley Byliners Jan. 10 meeting, Eileen Mattei will present “Re-envisioning Family Memories,” how to capture family memories from a different perspective. Based on a Gemini Ink course that Mattei attended in San Antonio, the session will include a brief writing practice. Everyone should bring of snapshot of a relative [...]

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From Gene’s Notebook

He dies in an Omaha, Nebraska, trailer park.
No one in his family had heard from him for 16 years.
He had a neighbor, two trailers over, and she knew everyone in his family: seven sons, three daughters, and the abandoned wife.
He’d told 16 years of detailed family stories.

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A poem by Gene Novogrodsky
The curtain falls,
A lumpy mass,
Dusty, and wall
Lights throw yellow-white
On the fabric ….
Eugene “Gene” Novogrodsky
December 17, 2008

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An announcement from Virginia Gause
“Sell Your Fear” is a conference and graphic arts exhibit that deals with the broad aspects of fear in the 21st century. The role of marketing and selling fear via the arts touches all disciplines.

We highly welcome and encourage submissions from sociology, political science, psychology, women studies, economics, theology and philosophy [...]

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An announcement from Chris Maley
14th Annual “On the Roadside” Blues Jam!

“The blues grabbed mama’s child and tore it upside down”
-Robert Johnson
Featuring
ROCKY BENTON & Phive

Rocky Benton

With special guests

MOJO Soul
Fresh Squeeze Blues Band

Saturday December 20th 8pm
VFW Post 2410
2006 Whalen Rd., San Benito
Off of business 77
(956) 399 4011

$10 donation
Free BBQ while it lasts
Blues/Jazz cd giveaways [...]

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A meditative response from Kathy Raines
In The Dark Knight, the newest Batman movie, Batman takes the fall so that an abused and disillusioned but fallible district attorney near and dear to the people’s hearts can die blameless. He and Spiderman live without love and, presumably, sex, so they can devote themselves to their mission of [...]

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A story by Edgar Clinton, Jr.
She was just an easy piece. A well soaked one at that. He’d never thought that a girl so drunk could make love so well. Like a lot of other stuff this convergence ( He didn’t really want to dignify it by calling it a relationship) had met it’s end [...]

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A prose poem by Rudy García
I am Opie Taylor, the little guerito boy who ran around the Carolina country town of Mayberry, in his black high Top Converse, playing cowboys and Indians in the back yard of my Mexiquito home, with Beaver the Cleaver and My big brother Wa-Wa.
I used to gallop barefooted, straddling my [...]

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From a friend

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

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An announcement from UTA
United Through Art Gallery Features
Monica Maria Ramirez is an Mexican raised artist. She has been exhibiting her work for more than 26 years. Her style depicts abstract figurstic and, she likes to express herself with surrealism.
Ramirez paints in oil, acrylic, and tempera she used different textures because for her life is [...]

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A poem by Roberto Cruz, Jr.
I’d chooose her before I’d choose an orchard of cherries.
I’d choose her before I’d choose a life without disease.
I’d choose her and swap my legs for a wheel-chaired life instead.
I’d choose her from a line-up of supermodels and smirk as I picked her instead of a bunch of under-fed bitches.
I’d [...]

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