1859 slave memories pre juneteenth

 1859 slave memories pre juneteenth

fiction

edward w pritchard

five minutes from freedom

fiction
edward w pritchard

Usually a hazy swirl surrounds our recollections of the past. But to this day I can vividly remember the slave auction house there on tenth street in Wheeling Wv [ then called Wheeling Virginia] one rainy Tuesday afternoon at 2 o'clock in the afternoon back in 1859. My Mother's great grand Mother rode in a wagon by the large auction house building as a little girl and her Mother ordered her to close her eyes so she couldn't see
the chained slaves waiting to be taken to be sold.

Of course my Mother's relatives were too poor to own slaves but by circumstances they found themselves in a slave owning country and state. 

To this day I recall my Mother's great grandmother thinking as she peeked at the chained slaves back in 1859 that they were only five minutes from freedom. Up over the roof of the slave auction building on tenth street in Wheeling Wv and ten miles North across the River to Martin's Ferry Ohio and a colored person could be free.

Today I live in Ohio, north of the Ohio River about ten miles south of some all black neighborhoods. The fact that we had slavery in the United States saddens me. If I had lived back in civil war times I suppose I might have been killed as a soldier fighting in an Ohio regiment. Many people in America sacrificed to end slavery in the past of our Country's history.  Me, today I enjoy black blues music; scrapper blackwell, tampa red, lead belly, elmore james, muddy waters and many others. The music is the memory of the suffering of the past.

be glad you are poor

 be glad your poor

fiction

edward w pritchard

Be glad you are poor. You have never screwed a friend  over money and you are not fretting over the stock markets eating up your hard earned savings . 

You are star dust you are golden. We have got to get ourselves back to the garden. [ Crosby, Stills and Young.]

the future lives in the past

 the future lives in the past

fiction

edward w pritchard

The future lives in the past. 

Rather than electric, hydrogen or gasoline being the future of the auto industry and peoples preferences of perpetual locomotion economic and environmental  circumstances will dictate  trains as the new source of locomotion for Americans. 

Heed the future. Look for trains as the next best thing. 

all the news that's fit to print

 all the news that's fit to print

fiction

edward w pritchard

Everybody at some time in their life finds themselves working in some kind of a job to support themselves. In my case I sit in a very small space capsule traveling very fast at the edge of the solar system and transmit the stock market action across the universe as far as humans have settled to investors millions and millions of miles from home. What I do is routine but of great importance because I am the last link in the mother economy stretching from earth to the next galaxy. Still sometimes I get exasperated being involved with persons obsessed so much with money and I sometimes get in trouble for the  sarcasm that I sneak into my financial reports

As example during the worse crash in the stock indexes in twenty years I began to sing during my broadcast the Kinks song " celluloid heroes" between my commentary on the DJ Industrial 11% fall this morning.

I remember myself singing " everybody's  a dreamer, everybody's a star, and everybody's in movies, it doesn't matter where you are". I like to think that the writer of the song Ray Davies of the Kinks would smile if he could hear me now. Of course broadcasts traveling back to earth on financial matters are forbidden  for a 30 day period as everyone knows. So it will take  about five weeks for my boss to reprimand me for my disobedience. 

wall street may 09, 2022

 wall street may 09, 2022

fiction

edward w pritchard

Another debacle on Wall Street today. Could be the start of serious times. 

Here's today's summary of today's wall street action from Henry James in 1904, " The American Scene" New York chapters.

" confusion carried to chaos for any intelligence", any perception, any welter of sounds in which relief, detachment, dignity, meaning, perished utterly and lost all right. "

Couldn't have said it better myself.   

the new future done arrived

 the new future done arrived

fiction

edward w pritchard

 New future done arrived,

nobody heard the door bell ring.

 Everybody forgetting to grow vegetables,

 store of value gone empty.

Here when we live electricity doesn't work anymore,

 houses shaken off foundation,

 Everybody's neighbors be missing,

 winds increasing steadily,

 fires of Hell spread across  old neighborhood;

who can hear for the silence,

 Romans knocking down last cross,

tearing apart heavy boards,

soldiers stacking rough hewed wood for posterity,

someone used boards at future time,

to construct a rocking chair for Nietzsche,

to spend his final ten years staring into the past.

inflection point

 inflection point 

Several times in my life I have met a person facing their inflection point and have struggled to decide should I offer my opinion on their cage that is currently restraining them. Often[ twice] the person was a pretty bar maid  stuck in a cage of a job restraining their true personality. Of course she was pretty. Should I speak out?

The environment is always dark for them, melancholy music always on the jute box and two hundred twenty four men a month routinely bores them with their pick up lines and life stories. The tips are good. 

Should I speak out and offer her my be true to thy self lecture covering Buddhism, Greek philosophy, and Lucretius. 

I note I am too old to get to know them these days.