By Gene Novogrodsky
Transition
Twilight passed,
Sliver of silver moon,
Dim outline in the south ….
Caged, Leashed and Free
She walks with a yellow bird in a dark cage,
The cage swinging, bird perched on a rod.
She walks with a white duck, leashed with clothesline,
Behind her, needing a pull, sometimes.
A white dove on the warrior’s fence,

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Road stops
…and the former West Texas high school footballer, now driving an 18-wheeler between Texas and the Pacific, rolled in around 5 a.m., 600 Christmas trees, each weighing between 80 and 90 pounds, each fresh, green and woodsy (piney, too), and crept into the back of his cab and went to sleep ….
…about three hours [...]

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by Gene Novogrodsky
The news comes at dawn,
Papers, Internet, radio, TV ….
From house warm,
From house cool,
I can select what drama will
Agitate me.
From plate full,
From clothes clean,
I sort the news,
Keeping, discarding ….

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by Kathy Raines

The sky, meadows and water were the big show at Laguna Atascosa yesterday. Its mass of quiet lands offered grasses and brush alive with color: brick red, pink, amber, yellow and all shades of green. Water from the lagoon and bay glimmered in pastels. Though overcast at first, all but [...]

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by Gene Novogrodsky
She Tells Me
I tell her that the white clouds
Have been billowing, scudding ….
She tells me that I missed the grey
Blotches below each, caught, held,
The grey ….
I tell her that I missed that.
She says I must look harder
And not be blinded by the white in the blue ….
I don’t tell her about seven brown [...]

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from Mark Clark
EXHIBITIONS:  ”CLICK”  &  ”MUSE”
Opening Reception:  Wednesday, 02 December, 6:00 p.m.
“Click” features Brownsville Herald photographers Brad Doherty and
Daniel G Lopez exhibiting unpublished photographs in the downstairs galleries.
“Muse” freaures Bruce Lee Smith and Michael Mascha in the upstairs
gallery, showing two perspectives of one model, Jody Montalvo.
Through 24 December.
NOCHE DE PEÑA
Sunday. 29 November, 7:00 [...]

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A photo

Click on the image

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It’s a little hard to be compassionate with some of these folks, but you can nearly taste the fear that drives them. Quote worthy of note: “When you’re right, you don’t have to compromise. Compromise is for people who are wrong.”

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By Jack Moffitt
Happy Thanksgiving!
I hope you had a great one, and that you were able to eat something local with that special meal. Our turkey was store bought, we just couldn’t do the deed to our Bronze Turkey, which we ambitiously named ‘Thanksgiving’. So, Thanksgiving will be with us for some time to come, working [...]

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Recorded by Ernest Tubb
Written by Eddie Miller and Don Sessions
For your Thanksgiving celebration, we present an appropriate song.
CHORUS
[G] Thanks, thanks a [Em] lot
I got a broken [G] heart that’s all I [Em] got
You made me [G] cry and I [C] cried a lot
I lost your [G] love, [D] honey, thanks a lot. [G]
You told our [...]

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by Gene Novogrodsky
I started to list,
You know, panoply.
And then the list dwindled ….
To grim faces in cars and trucks,
Grim, and locked in, windows up ….
To thousands of heads and eyes down
At the blue glow of the phone in hand ….
To the eyes on lottery tickets,
Scratch, tossed to the ground,
Sometimes ask the clerk to check,
Tossed to [...]

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by Ruth Wagner
He Had a Dream
More than forty years ago.
More than forty years ago.
More than forty years ago.
In Memphis, a garbage workers’ strike.
In South Carolina, in Gullah Country, a cabin retreat being built.
Shots ring out.
An unfinished life.
An unfinished cabin.

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A photo essay
mildly revised Nov. 24

Theft, I said, pure and simple, theft. I was remarking on the takeover of the boardwalks behind the South Padre Island Convention Center that, for the last decade or so, have been free and open to the public. Sometime soon they will be padlocked on the Convention Center side and [...]

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A photo essay

Rovan’s was one of the two places to go for a breakfast when you were on South Padre Island through the Eighties and Nineties. There were probably others, but the baked goods at Rovan’s and the sweet stacks of pancakes with plenty of butter and syrup made it pointless to look elsewhere. That [...]

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by Jack Moffitt
Greetings Local Food Fans!
A few weeks ago I mentioned Michael Pollans latest book In Defense of Food – An Eaters Manifesto and now I am reading the diatribe in it about how we have been misled about our food for a good while. Ironically, the news this week is abuzz about how the [...]

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by Stan Raines
I’ve added a link to Ben Christensen’s blog, Digging for Fire. Christensen is the Marine who wrote regular posts for the Brownsville Herald during his Iraq tour. They were quite well written, in my recollection, and delivered some measurable part of the experience he was living. Now he’s working through the notes he [...]

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from the Onion

FDA Approves Depressant Drug For The Annoyingly Cheerful
Take note, all you Pollyannas! You have hope of hoping less!

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by Jack Moffitt
Editor’s note: This is in response to “The Lloyd’s Prayer” and Jack King’s “The People’s Lament” completing a meaningful trilogy, according to Jack Veggie.
we believe in one fraud, and the dollar almighty,
elector, and creator of mirth;
and in our party,
the only one, our lord,
which was conceived in self promotion,
financed with taxpayer funds
subject to [...]

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by Gene Novogrodsky
The kids use stones for soccer goals.
Two stones – one goal – were in the street.
The kids weren’t home from school, yet.
They’d only have to find two stones for the other goal.
Then, they will start to play.
Ages, three to 13.
The three cries a lot when the ball hits his face or head.
One big [...]

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By Jack Moffitt
Greetings to you all!
“The wise man should consider that health is the greatest of human blessings. Let food be your medicine.”
- Hippocrates
I really wonder what food had Hippocrates concerned. From this quotation, it seems pretty clear that he made a distinction between food which was beneficial and food which was harmful. Would he [...]

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A response to “Lloyd’s Prayer” by Jack King

Our economy
Which art in shambles
Lesson be thy name.
The banks lent wrong
The money’s gone
We’ve been priced out of Heaven.

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from CNBC
Our Chairman,
Who Art At Goldman,
Blankfein Be Thy Name.
The Rally’s Come.
God’s Work Be Done,
We Have No Fear Of Correction.
Give Us This

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by Gene Novogrodsky
After a Haircut
A glance at the car mirror,
A glance at the shop’s mirrors,
Capturing a break, a moment of self
Before the next call, next message ….
Baseball’s Final Week

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National Hurricane Center
…IDA NEAR HURRICANE STRENGTH…STILL MOVING NORTHWARD… Now scaled to depression.

Updated information at the the National  Hurricane Center.

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by Gene Novogrodsky
Out in the humidity, 4:45 a.m.,
And I walk with stick in hand,
Some hot coca from the all-night convenience
Store in the other.
“It’s been a slow night,” the clerk told me.

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