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Saturday, March 31, 2018

There's nothing like raking out hot tar to clear a man's mind

There's nothing like raking out hot tar to clear a man's mind

fiction
edward w pritchard

There's nothing like raking out hot tar to clear a man's mind. Sometimes as I work at my job of raking out drying tar at the parking lot of a new Mall or local business I use the time to order my thoughts and philosophies. I balance my local problems in my little life with those with nations, civilizations and cultures past in time and space.

There's a gentle odor of progress and reality to slowly drying tar. Inevitably, the tar will dry and a new concept is born. A parking lot for cars, pedestrians and children racing on bikes has been created from the essence of the tar I work with and my efforts of raking steadily and methodically have created a work of art. Concrete evidence of order and stability in the world.

The job is done. The tar slowly dries. Something new has been created.

Thursday, March 29, 2018

Hear the firm strike of the hammer feel the nail enter the wrist

Hear the firm strike of the hammer feel the nail enter the wrist

fiction
edward w pritchard

We are supposed to not just revel in the rapture of the ascension three days hence but to quietly meditate on the pain and suffering of Christ on the cross. It was few long hours.

Of the unknown number of fellow crucified victims only Jesus Christ in name and reputation is remembered to history and has dozens of intricately worked master paintings displayed throughout the art museums of the world for us to remember and reflect on. Grunewald, Rembrandt, and Rogier der Weyden all left us masterpieces of art displaying Jesus' suffering on the cross and ascension.

Hear the firm strike of the hammer and feel the nail enter at the wrist. Experience the thirst, Grasp the betrayal. For a moment reflect on the ordeal of the cross.

it's all so pre-programmed

it's all so pre-programmed

fiction
edward w pritchard

Squirming in our seat so to speak after a long life the five act play of life that we are engulfed in becomes obviously so pre-programmed that we out of boredom at times wait and watch with authentic interest for one of the actors to move suddenly backward across the stage in large circles speaking his part in rewind backward gibberish at triple speed as the other veteran actors that fill the stage cover cleverly and professionally their fellow thespians temporary meltdown.

Who the master programmer and how the intricacies of design that put this all together? The play of life goes on and on approaching finis the final curtain call.

These intricacies of design are beyond comprehension to me. I remember I started as a child so long ago and now I doodle about the stage dusting furniture and props fighting the urge to peer across house lights at the audience.

a large crash and a mumbled voice is heard stage right


Thursday, March 22, 2018

current southwestern art; set it gently in the garbage

current southwestern art; set it gently in the garbage

fiction
edward w pritchard

At the church charity store I frequent for life's necessities sometimes in the a quarter for a twenty year old used magazine rack there will be a magazine or two hawking southwestern art by modern painters.

 The prices are atrocious and the subject matter of the pictures silly and insulting to the ancient Americans living in ancient New Mexico in times past.

First off if one wants good native American art and subject matter in Ohio there's the Butler Museum of Art in Youngstown which has an excellent collection of native American and "cowboy art" by masters such as Remington.

The prices for modern authentic southwestern native american art sold in galleries now across the Country are high. Most of the pictures lack the edge and vim that the old nineteenth century American West was about. Instead attempts by modern artists to recapture the spirit of the old Southwest have a Courier and Ives or Norman Rockwell patina that has lost it's glimmer.

Drive to the Butler museum in Youngstown and climb the steps to the second floor and look at a few of the pictures of old southwest Indians families as their  villages in New Mexico were vanishing back in 1880 or 1890. There is a haunting sadness in the faces in the authentic pictures of the old native American women and children that the artists of times past have captured that is missing from southwest art produced today.

Perhaps I am being overly critical. When was the last time you saw a modern painting that could compare with the works of the Italian masters of the 14th to 16th century?  Note to my sons; take the old man to the Butler museum soon he's rambling again. Perhaps his life like his writing needs a good edit.

Tuesday, March 20, 2018

attendance at the ancient Roman coliseum was free right

attendance at the ancient roman coliseum was free right

fiction
edward w pritchard

Attendance at the ancient Roman coliseum was free right. How many ancient grown concerned Roman working adults must have nagged their aging widowed parent to get out of the stuffy apartment and spend the day watching the atrocities at the ancient roman coliseum?

Note to young readers; there was no internet back in the first to fourth  century AD. So Mom or Dad would have to wait to till they were in their seats at the ancient coliseum of Rome to find out what specific acts would be playing today. Although there was a general routine order to the Man vs. Man gladiator beheading, throw Christians to the lions and death by fire routines part of the fun and suspense would be to not know in advance what one would observe.

Now that this somewhat voyeuristic subject has been breached by this modern author displaying a typical lack of discretion he asks was this ancient practice good wholesome fun and maybe a catharsis in the ancient Greek watching a tragic play with chorus sense or was something sinister and perverse at work?

Moral relativism? The sophisticated and common sense way to go or needing a rethink? When in Rome do as the ?

Sunday, March 18, 2018

for our few Russian readers

for our few Russian readers

fiction
edward w pritchard

For the most part author as he ages has become like a medieval peasant anonymous to the world and future. Nameless and faceless in the place and times in which he lives. Perhaps your life is the same.

Most of us wake up one day to find we do not habitat in Paris, London or Moscow and on Sundays
we don't journey to Chartres cathedral to enter god's house.

Downtown where I live is a sad little place, the inner city, for the last year and maybe the next two a blighted construction zone of demolished buildings roads and sidewalks to nowhere. To my eye as I drive by our downtown ten or twenty construction workers are trying to rebuild fifty years of the lack of growth and vitality as progress moves somewhere else.

Our main industry here is a hospital or two to treat the sick. The once prosperous University that I matriculated is shrinking as students wise up to the student loans realities of the last twenty years.

Still this is a pleasant place to live. My grandchildren are here and once or twice I have taken my grandson into the magnificent catholic cathedral in our town to see the stained glass windows. South of here is a beautiful campus of a college built and maintained by the catholic church. Fifty miles north is a world class city with excellent museums, sports venues and a nice large inland lake.

Places don't change we do. Still tomorrow morning it would be nice to be in France and spend a half hour trying to find eternity in the stained glass windows of the Chartres cathedral. 

Friday, March 16, 2018

speak no more of battlefields

speak no more of battlefields

fiction
edward w pritchard


Speak no more of battlefields,
or empty chairs, or missing chairs,
or children grown, changed and mystifying,
or memories and cherished beliefs doubted,
or changing gods and vanished deities,
or paradoxes of invisible friendships solvable only by linguistics and vanished logic,
subtract one grain of sand and a heap is just a heap, the weaker argument can never be the stronger,
let us be simple, tied up in small busyness,
forgetful of past and unawares of unanticipated future,
stuck in 30 seconds of present,
praying not for delusional double rainbows,
after every disappearing storm,
god is everywhere, and custom and comfort is King.

Wednesday, March 14, 2018

Doctor Krenshaw snake charmer extraordinaire

Dr. Krenshaw snake charmer extraordinaire

fiction
edward w pritchard

Back when Warren Crenshaw was a resident early in his medical career some rainy mornings at 4:30 AM after a double shift he would catch a few winks by finding an empty room somewhere on a quiet ward and catch an hour or two of much needed sleep before starting his next very long day.

Today was forty years past Dr. W. Crenshaw's residency and out of ancient habit after driving four hours on a snowy night from Cleveland to Mansfield General Hospital he awoke in a strange bed to find twenty young medical students and nurses surrounding the bed he was sleeping in. Glancing quickly Warren groggily blinked his eyes to reorient himself to time and place; it was 3:45 AM as Warren remembered last night, actually about an hour ago, finding an empty room and bed in a long  dark out of the way hall and room of the Mansfield Hospital he was to lecture at later this morning in hopes of catching a few of hours of shut eye before work.

The young residents taking notes crowded close to his bed. The chief Physician obviously from  Neurology and a bit too pompous was finishing up a long answer to a student question concerning medical ethics and billing choices as Dr. Crenshaw quickly surmised to his dismay they were talking about himself. He was the patient they were talking about in the example that the chief Physician was discussing and he was the patient in the story example that had been unconscious for a few days and had not signed the legally required intake forms as required by Medicare. 

In a panic but thinking carefully Warren looked again to his wrists to check his watch for date and time and verified he had no watch but he did have an IV in his left arm. Moving only his eyes he glanced from student to student and despite his predicament had to smile a bit at their boredom. Been there done that he thought. 

The chief Physician droned on about the medical billing question. Sadly Dr. Crenshaw couldn't speak to interrupt when they called the patient in the story a snake charmer, as if that had anything to do with Medical billing ethics anyway thought Warren.

Tuesday, March 13, 2018

the discernment of the Belgium women

the discernment of the Belgium women

fiction
edward w pritchard

Among-st the endless chitter-chatter of sexual gossip that sloshes about the politics of our times it behooves us to look back into history to other societies to see how the matter successfully was handled in other times and other places.

Different strategies are most fruitful to change the gossiping behaviors of men and women and today we will look at how the Queen of ancient Belgium taught the women of her court discernment.

The bayeux tapestry is over 200 feet long and the actual sewing of the piece was done by the women of Belgium. As they sewed the women often talked quietly among themselves of many things.

As punishment to ladies of the court who tended to gossip of the personal matters of others Queen Matilda wife of William the Norman conqueror would require women at court who gossiped about the sexual matters of others to sit and sew without speaking for weeks and weeks at a time. Listening without talking was considered back in ancient Belgium strict punishment indeed, back back then in ancient times, in Belgium. Today one never hears about the women of Belgium, even now, alleging they were unfairly taken advantage of, what we would call sexual harassment, while being pursued
in times long past. Even the French say, even now, that the people of Belgium are indeed a civilized county.

things had changed at the university

things had changed at the university

fiction
edward w pritchard

Fifty seven year old Bernard Patoophee found him self in a strange position this warm March day at the local business college for there was a 60% chance of rain this Tuesday and on his first day back to business school in forty years cadet Patoophee came to find out things had changed here at the local University.

Cadet Patoophee was having trouble traversing the stairs down to section 4 of business secured debt instruments level 1 in the basement of old bolder hall. Each cadet as he ran down the steep stairs past the struggling Bernard three at a time would turn his head slowly to one side make brief eye contact with Mr. Patoophee and like a piano player in formal boogie woogie concert taking a stage bow with just his head and eyes after playing a difficult section of a jazz piece yell loudly as he smiled Sir before racing through the sealed closed iron door of the glass walled classroom. Through the glass of the classroom Bernard  watched each cadet as he entered the classroom bow to the instructor at the long desk in the front of the room remove his army style waterproof poncho and immediately plug his computer into the yellow console and begin to type frantically. Within a few seconds like the other students the new arrivee would using only his left hand interrupt his typing briefly to don an ultra slim pair of khaki headphones and commence to bob his head gently left to right repeatedly as he worked.

As he finally entered the heavy iron door Cadet Patoophee accepted the formal bow from his new teacher and took a seat next to the pretty blond girl in the rear of the room. A woman training for the military. Things had certainty changed here at the local university since Cadet Bernard Patoophee's day.

Monday, March 12, 2018

school shooter

school shooter

fiction
edward w pritchard

There is a sagacity among Amish women
that allows 300,00 Russian soldiers to surrender to a few thousand German soldiers, more than once,
marching eyes downtrodden hands reaching skyward to wait out behind barb wire until the next war.
Amish women,  barns, 8th grade finished educations,  and shopping at the goodwill for a doll without a face.
Silent Amish women with anachronistic quaint bonnets and all knowing eyes.
What do you think?
When America's iceman
slips in the door of your one room schoolhouse
and shoots with a rifle at your little girls?

Thursday, March 8, 2018

where to another time or just another place

where to another time or just another place

fiction
edward w pritchard

Where to my friends another time or just another place?

Sometimes I awake from dreams with time juxtaposed rather oddly. Tonight waking at two thirty in the morning vividly dreams upset my equilibrium.

In dreams I was twelve years old on the football field again and while scrimmaging with some of the gang one of the offensive players who passed away a few years later was prophesying to us about the internet of the future when suddenly he started telling us that we might have to fight in the trenches of WW1 as a group. I awoke suddenly and to calm my mood,

I am imagining myself in another place, a pleasant place of peace and serenity, neither past or present
just somewhere else, somewhere I have been before and enjoyed.

Tonight I imagine and remember myself at the National Art Gallery of London one of the world's premier art galleries. In mind's eye I remember a pleasant two hour walk among-st the exquisite paintings.

First among paintings to me at the National gallery of Art is the Arnolfini Wedding by Van Eyck. You know the work he holds his right hand up formally and wears a funny black hat while she smiles while pregnant. Detail and symbolism abound but what does it mean?

Complete your walk by viewing the Leonardo's Virgin on the Rocks, Raphael's Pope Julius the second, a Vermeer, a few Rembrandt self portraits and the Rokeby Venus by Velazquez.

The national Gallery of Art in London it's a nice another place to spend a little time; better by half than a tour of duty in the trenches as a British or French soldier in WW1.

Time to awake soon and get back to the real world.

Wednesday, March 7, 2018

Hecate at the cross roads

Hecate at the cross roads

fiction
edward w pritchard

Three faced Hecate keeps on the move but rests at the cross roads, two forks in the road to uncertainty. Maiden, woman/mother and crone she looks at you with understanding and bewilderment. Sometimes she lets glimpse plans and schemes. Listen carefully for nothing is written down, her character was formed before people could write in any language.

To see her in the dark look back with twisted head over left shoulder. As you walk away listen obliquely; on rare occasions she sings three part harmony in obscure melody. Far away and forgotten her footfalls echo through dark forests. Six impressions of blurred footprints up the sacred snowy mountain.

Saturday, March 3, 2018

the bus ride ends soon

the bus ride ends soon

fiction
edward w pritchard

another metaphor of where the country is going with no indication of why and with no driver

A bump in the road startles one from sleep sitting on the bus and for a moment or two you have no recollection of where you are going. There's a dull ache in your lower back and your shoulder hurts from being pressed against the dark streaked window.

The couple in the seats ahead of you are fighting again, She is very pretty but her face is in a scowl looking away from him and she won't hold his hand. He is strangely quiet looking sad. You can see their reflections in the window. He supposed to be driving the bus but the bus moves forward through the countryside on auto pilot, bouncing along the dark roads.

Behind you in the seats back there you can hear children murmuring. They are talking about the future. They want the bus to stop so they can look around outside. That would be dangerous you think.

Then the vibrations of your head against the cold damp window puts you back to sleep to unfinished dreams. Unless the bus hits a big bump unexpectedly the journey goes on and on.

Friday, March 2, 2018

Denzel Washington as Higgy in " the iceman cometh"

Denzel Washington as Higgy in " the iceman cometh"

fiction
edward w pritchard

We have never watched the play live or a movie of it in it's entirety but we enjoy the play by Eugene O'Neil a little at a time. It's said O'Neil borrowed the concept from Russian writer Gorky's " the lower depths".

In any event this reviewer would like to take the train up to New York and watch Denzel's performance, but that won't likely happen.

It is a very demanding role, the role of reformed alcoholic Higgy.. Kevin Spacey looks from the clips we saw of his performance like he handled the complicated role well. He is one of the premier male leads working today, if he is still working which would be sad if he isn't.

With more than a dozen characters on stage most of the time Iceman is  a good venue for  the actors unions. It would be amazing if you tube or Roku could bring a TV showing live of the play Iceman in it's early run to us in the hinter lands of America. They call us hicks there in NYC sometimes but we have our pipe dreams too and we enjoy good live theater one good play per decade of our lives or so is about enough for us.

In any event we are rereading O'Neil's iceman one more time to review and revisit our own pipe dreams and to update their current status.

the zero one program

the zero one program

fiction
edward  w pritchard

Author writes recently of  Immanuael Kant's antinomies of space and time; you find yourself here now but you want to be there.

Some subjects should not be broached by some people of limited intellect. Author has been ruminating too much on the zero one program and has came too close to understanding the burden god himself has carried since things began.

If you find everything is either zero, nothing or one, something then given infinite time, which time exists outside of god, everything then has the potential to happen.

Everything is therefore beyond even god's understanding.

The aspects of everything given infinite time to ruminate will worry and overwhelm then even god
who by definition must know and understand everything which by definition can't be known or it wouldn't be everything.

Don't ruminate on the zero or one program. Better nothing than everything. Nothing is familiar, comfortable. Everything is unknowable.

Between zero and one are an infinite number of fractional possibilities eventually  ending in  everything but everything is not a fraction.

One divided by one is not a fractional possibility. One is everything. Everything is unknowable.

Stick to what you know. Avoid thinking about the zero one program. Also don't study Mathematics, calculus, Bertrand Russell, space-time Quine or St Augustine. It's too confusing you will be sorry you learned it.














Thursday, March 1, 2018

Immuaels Kant's antinomies of space and time; you find yourself here now but you want to be there

Immuauel Kant's antinomies of space and time; you find yourself here now but you want to be there

fiction
edward w pritchard

After a lot of soul searching I try not to think about it anymore. My life is what it is and it's all I have.

I work now in C section on a large mineral transport in space over loaded with product heading home to Earth a few light years out in deep space. I am no scientist just a grunt; I separate valuable mineral  product from chaff and robotic technicians handle the rest including steering the ship back to earth.

In my spare time if I am not sleeping I play keno with fifteen other mineral technicians  who also work in C section to try to strike it rich by hitting 20 of twenty numbers. The odds are astronomical of picking the right twenty numbers but the rewards are fabulous and  in addition to becoming an instant billionaire a special spaceship gets you back to earth very quickly.

Originally we had two hundred technicians in our Keno games that I participate in but by attrition we are now down to fifteen including me. For you see each week after scoring one's success at per cent of goal achieved at reaching a satisfactory progress toward hitting the dream hit of twenty numbers at Keno, one person, the one with the lowest success rate in our C section is removed from the team and the robotic workers who pilot the ship incinerate the poor soul for fuel to help power the spaceship back Home.

That's about it really. One of the scientists here on the spaceship says it just another one of the philosopher Immanuel Kant's antinomies; you find yourself here now and you want to be there. Of course with this space time stuff everyone knows that the longer you stay in space, here on the ship the less you age relative to someone back there on Earth. So in my case for me who wants to be rejoined with someone back there on Earth once I make good and strike it very very rich they will be extremely old not like I remember them or maybe no longer conscious even at all.

Sometimes when I am laying on my bunk before I go to sleep the inequity of it all seems a bit absurd. But just before I go to sleep, after a lot of soul searching, I try not to think about it anymore; my life is what it is and it's all I have.