A thought from Stan Raines
I was standing in line at HEB yesterday and the man in front of me, someplace in his fifties, mustachioed and trim asked me how I was and I gave him my usual non-commital “Doin’ fine” and returned a “How you doin’?”

“Ah, you know,” he said, “another beautiful day in Brownsville.” [...]

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From Gene’s Notebook

…a bargain, the gallon of water in convenience stores, $1.29, beats the sodas and sports drinks …. I love tipping the plastic jug to my mouth ….
…and the turtles, all over the roads, maybe the rain, and most do not make it across, and are crushed; I picked one up on 281 [...]

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From Gene’s Notebook

…and how rare is it, rain, a lot in Brownsville, rain since early Friday, much like snow in the North when cabin-fever hits, especially in early February; here, in early July, with about seven deep weeks of summer to go, the rain is like snow, cabin-fever time …. But I go out: bike [...]

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From Gene’s Notebook

…smoky, smoky enough for choking, the grills, the barbecue grills, some with charcoal, some with wood, some with gas …
…always men, little boys to old men, circling the smoke, women away, unless one comes by to ask an unwelcomed question …
…the smoke, so thick, the men, shadows in the smoke, the fires dim, [...]

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A travel note from Sta
We’re done roaming for a month. A week ago Thursday, we headed up to San Antonio and visited Joseph, number one son, and his friend, Veronica, had a couple of pleasant meals at SA bistros, jammed a bit, visited with old friend Linda Reeves and husband Jim and had a pleasant [...]

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From Gene’s Notebook
…went to Austin with wife/friend/companion/pal/partner/guardian of my solititude and guardian of my togetherness because she asked me to; she was an Obama delegate at the State Democratic Convention, and I now share two images ….
…the more than 12,000 people in the Austin Convention Center, EVERY face in Texas, EVERY language in Texas, and [...]

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A poem by Rudy H. García

I listen to the River,
Because my body is molded with its fertile clay
My blood mingles with its rejuvenating water,
Cleansing my spirit free.
I listen to the river
Because I hear over and over from the Eagle and the Jaguar
That the name is El Rio Bravo…The Brave River
I too am brave.

I listen to [...]

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from Gene’s Notebook
sultry, hot morning, this one of the three longest weeks of the year ….
…and down by the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo Sunday twilight at still-another anti-wall vigil, I felt like I was at a wake, funeral, burial …and the river, green bushes on the sides flowed on, chocolate-green …and the wall got closer and [...]

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A notice
Dancing on the head of a pin,
As passé as drinking gin,
Who you nailin’ down again?
The elite, they’s not like me,
the elite, why we let them be?
Susan Jacoby, author of The Age of American Unreason, has a thing or two to say about the denigration and the most common misuse in political discourse of the [...]

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From Gene’s Notebook
…continuing those never-ending moments, and they come faster and faster as my end nears ….
The man has a Marine cap. I say, “Former Marine?”
He leaps at me and growls, stopping short of hitting me, and says, “Never former, never ex, always a Marine!” Shoppers jump back at his growl.
“What war?”
“Three, WW Two, Korea [...]

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A poem by Thomas Thornburg from Ancient Letters
1
SWEET Lesbia, would you know the half
of all my pleasure when your husband laughs
delighted at your flyting and the flashing spite
that lights your countenance when we two fight?
watch out, my girl, your fat fool’s treasure,
I may absent myself and rob the only pleasure
he takes in both of us. [...]

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From Gene’s Notebook
…and the cat made its way along a wall near the Gateway Bridge fence, white cat, going west …. And I made my way east in today’s pre-dawn, though even before 6 a.m., pink and blue played with the eastern clouds - true dawn ….
I was pedaling to the airport to bid two [...]

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A journal entry in the old style
Ah.. rested at last. Not well-rested, mind you, but some-rested, and better than the last few nights.
Friday night, trying to sleep, and the nose would not stop dripping, so every ten minutes or so I had to blow it out. Then it dried up suddenly and swelled and closed [...]

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A nostalgic comment by Stan Raines
Hillary Clinton’s recent comment that her husband’s clinching his first nomination in June of 1992 and of Bobby Kennedy’s assassination in June, 1968 was peculiar not only because it was in poor taste in the second part, but because no one has noted that, in former times, it was usual for the [...]

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From Gene’s Notebook
Steamy and humid out there on another Bob Dylan birthday weekend, Dylan and the Nunnayerbizness writers, nice, inspiring … supreme beings, moons ….
…and he’d been wanting to sell the seven red cattle, finally, and stick to pigs and chickens, much easier, and cheaper to feed …but the cattle are still around and hungry, [...]

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A poem by John Goggin
Ms. Hillary Clinton
seems hell bent on
staying the course
but it looks like she’s beating a dead horse.

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From Gene’s Notebook

Vehicle lovers and developers, who long have had plans to turn the railroad tracks from the B&M Bridge out to Wal-Mart on Alton Gloor into a toll or regular road, are still active.
Texas State Transportation officials will hold a explanatory meeting next Thursday (May 29th) from 6-8 p.m. at ITECC.
I have wanted the [...]

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From Gene’s Notebook
…in a local club, two women and eight men sit around a table, drinking a lot of beer, all college people, some with Greek fraternity letters on caps; they’re part of the academic world, or were very recently. Friends all.
Then, in come two scruffy men, and one woman; they draw stares from the [...]

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An advertisement

Come and support your rights. You only have the rights you exercise.
Your first right is the right to think and then to express your thoughts.

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by John Goggin
Pat Buchanan
thinks that he can
still pontificate.
He should stay home and masturbate.
The Right Reverend Wright, when
he was told to sit tight, then
incurred public pillory;
although he has a life-long friend in our Lady Hillary.
Chris Matthews
discussing issues
always shouts.
I never know what the fuck he’s talking about.
Monsieur Colbert
finds himself quite “cher”.
As a master of smarm
I [...]

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A new clerihew by John Goggin
Ms. Brittany Spears
confirms our worst fears
that fame’s but a drug.
Perhaps she just needs a big old hug.

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A comment from Stan
The lead editorial in this morning’s Brownsville Herald, concerning an alleged rebound in the Valley’s real estate market, acknowledges that the current banking system (if you can call it that given that the the development of subprime lending means that the so-called bankers had given up due diligence) boldly asserts that one [...]

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An opinion by Stan Raines
The politicians seem to have noticed, perhaps three or four years late as usual, that there’s a problem with fuel prices: They are going up and there seems to be no end in sight. People have been grappling with it for a while, though, not only at the gas station, but [...]

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Memoir
Memory is such an untidy thing; leaves cabinet doors open, clothes on the floor and crumbs on the counter. You can’t sweep it away, and no matter how you try to clean it up, it is what it is.
Jimmy R. and I were drinking at the Carriage House, the only gay bar, at the time, [...]

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Memoir
Memory is a scourge, unless conflated, synthesized and expressed. All memoirs are fiction. Initials are only used to protect the not-so-innocent.
This must have occurred in 1978, I suppose. NunnaYerBizness was still a working musical concern, and S. and I were winding down from a gig. He was driving me home in that robin’s-egg blue Chrysler [...]

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