From Gene’s Notebook
…by the mud and twisted limbs of the Red River in North Dakota, I come upon a couple with a big white dog.
I ask about the Spring flood that left the the mud and twisted limbs.
The man, in a thick East European accent, tells me that it was mighty flood.
“What did you do?” [...]

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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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Request for plant ID
Our friend, writer and loyal commentator Jack King has asked for help identifying the plant pictured below.

Mr. King writes, “About 8 years ago someone brought me a little potted plant about six inches tall from Colima, Mexico. The plant is now four feet tall and has produced its first fruit.”
If you can [...]

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by John Goggin
I: Lore
Somewhere, out there, there is a box
Of gopher wood and cedar
Inlaid with royal porphyry.
It’s sealed with seven golden locks;
inside are golden keys.

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from Gene’s Notebook
…and she is counting money, and also using a Lone Star Card ….
She wants to put her chicken back, and get a cheaper one.
The cashier tell her that would be fine, but then adds: “The larger chicken, though it costs more, is tastier.”
The woman listens and says, “Don’t put it back. I’ll take [...]

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By Gene Novogrodsky
Health and war. They connect.
For millions in the United States, neither health or war are concerns.
They have adequate insurance, and they do not know or have anyone involved in the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Yes, self-interest …and if no one else is interested in me, then I must be for myself. Understandable, but [...]

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From the Edge Tales
I walk into the North Dakota night. Below, in the American Legion, a young blues guitarist, fresh from the local blues festival, tears up the floor.
I hear on the sidewalk, Spanish, a lot. It drowns the below blues and above US-Mexican border music. Yes, border music and Spanish in North Dakota.
I start [...]

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From the edge
…and in Rensselaer, NY, a lay-over for more than an hour before The Lakeshore Limited leaves for Chicago, so an old man with his former mother-in-law’s cane – (I’m the old man) – and two young men and two young women from Detroit who had been to Boston for a [...]

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From Gene’s Notebook
…trains and more trains, the Burlington Northern and the Santa Fe (BNSF), east to west with empty coal cars, and then back, the black coal heaped; the whistle blasts shake homes, cars, stores and street, but the grain elevators, bursting with last year’s what, corn and soybeans hold firm ….
Eugene [...]

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From Gene’s Notebook
…the 83-year old soybean and wheat farmer, truck driver, too, is burning rubbish. “The doctors messed up my medication. I can’t walk without gasping. I’ve rented out my sections (640-acres per section), and this is the first year
I haven’t driven a truck or put in a crop in decades, except for [...]

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From Gene’s Notebook
…The Empire Builder – train from Chicago to the Pacific Ocean – drops me in Fargo, North Dakota, around 3:45 a.m., and in five minutes I’m speaking with two mildly drunk Indians who are sitting on porch steps of a falling house; they greet me, and then return to their beer; when I [...]

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By John Goggin

It’s chilly and wet in Lindau; a grey sky scudding overhead, light rain now and then. We sleep in, still a little lagged. I’m awakened by a tour group outside in the street below. Still in my sleep attire (i.e., nothing), I pop my head out the window, and see them all looking [...]

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By Kathy Raines
Ruff! Ruff! Ruff! Molly’s coughing bark smashed its way into a lush thicket of whorling dreams. Rather engrossed, I thought, I‘ll stay cozied up here, with the barking, mere white noise, a soundtrack. Then she stopped. Ah, blessed silence. Two-thirty a.m., read the clock. Let’s just ease on back into [...]

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By Kathy Raines
“Thou shalt not suffer a roach to live.” (Exodus 22:18). All right, King James says witch, or evil sorceress. Different translation. At summer’s incipience, as per two-year tradition, I, like one of those rigid old Puritans, stamp out the crusty, scampering evil, my own private Inquisition. I am judge, jury and executioner. Wouldn’t [...]

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By Jack Moffitt
Bell Rings at 8a.m., last sale at noon!
Vitamin pills– good? bad?
I like to listen to Dr. Dean Edell, the talk radio doctor. The guy seems like he is giving an honest opinion when he talks, and he keeps his game interesting by stirring controversies like the vitamin pill controversy. He relies on [...]

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By Gene Novogrodsky
And when the Texas Eagle, late as always, snakes its way into San Antonio, there are women in their 50s who are meeting military men.They have served, and are now retired with full pensions and benefits in greater San Antonio. The women have met them, often on-line, and have agreed to marry them, [...]

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From Gene’s Notebook
…eating at our favorite veggie restaurant, La Naranja, on First Street, south of Morelos, in Matamoros, we’re eating and talking, and two men at the table tell us that their electrical-component companies are closing in Matamoros and are moving to China; the men, as engineers, have a chance to go to China with [...]

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By Gene Novogrodsky
Smoke in her hair,
Hair just dyed – blue-black,
She drinks beer upon beer, and
I pay.
Watered beer?
Karaoke blares.
Pool cues smack balls.
I can’t hear her.
She can’t hear me.

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from Gene’s Notebook
…and the man in the Lopez Four line speaks of the puente George Washington in Spanish, so I cut into his conversation and say, “My grandparents used to live near the George Washington Bridge in New York City after they moved from a poorer section up to the bridge.”
He listens. And I ask [...]

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An outrage noted by Joe Premont
This is from a Yahoo news story:
At Permian High School in Odessa, Texas – made famous by the H.G. Bissinger book “Friday Night Lights” – school officials spent $70,000 for a chartered airplane to fly the football team to visiting games. Meanwhile, the school’s textbooks were 15 years out of [...]

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By Gene Novogrodsky
Before the urban animal control truck
Came to take the dark grey possum
To the still-wild brushland,
A white possum came to the trap -
A visit – and then ran across a cracked yard,
Slanted street and under a rotted-board
House when the truck stopped ….

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By Gene Novogrodsky
…and even if locked inside, my mind would race, but outdoors, it’s faster ….
- Woman wins eight dollars with scratch cards, while a Vietnam vet, in line, is patient, and shakes his head as she hopes and wishes ….
- The two youngest farmers left in South Texas tell me about onions, and then [...]

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by Gene Novogrodsky
Hardly the bunny and egg people. Hardly the backyard grillers. Hardly the cars backed up to beaches, bridges, restaurants. Four people on the road.
Three first. A woman and two men stand next to their two thousand-dollar touring bikes, saddle bags heavy. They just came down to the border, getting an SUV lift from [...]

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by Gene Novogrodsky
VFW (Veterans Of Foreign Wars)
The same, any smoky hall
Where male vets gather,
They who fought afar,
Not in the homeland ….
You want to tell them
About the hazards of smoking,
Fried foods?
But you don’t,
Knowing that world-over
The vets gather from mid-afternoon
Deep into the night, even the morn,
Their time ….
I’ve walked in and out,
No vet of foreign wars am [...]

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A comment
I’ve been trying to get some information on a tax protest that’s supposed to come to fruition at Noon, April 15th at the Federal Courthouse, according to the KURV afternoon shock jock Colonel Ray (last name unposted on KURV’s Web site). Of course, there’s the problem–the source, this repeater in the Great Right Wing [...]

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