Essra Mohawk at John and Peter's Place

 The day after I found out on Facebook that Essra Mohawk died I listened to one of her songs, I Am The Breeze, over and over on Youtube.

I am the breeze,

I can go anywhere.

It was hypnotic. I try to focus on reality these days, since I have to, but I couldn't help but be drawn back in memory to that night nearly fifty years ago the Essra played at John and Peter's Place in New Hope.

I was the bartender, and there was a buzz to the place I had never experienced before. The true hippie rock goddess of the time, for that's what she was, was going to play in New Hope. For the first hours of my shift her piano sat center-stage under the light, its bench empty but holding out hope of her arrival from the clouds. Her fans from out-of-town showed up and filled the small, dark, cramped room. It was one of the quietest crowd I had ever seen in there.

I had spent time in the Philly rock scene, where she grew into her legend, but I had never seen her perform. I went to college at Temple with John Oates of Hall and Oates, where we both majored in journalism. I hung out with John on campus and went to his gigs. I loved Nazz with Todd Rundgen, and Randy Monaco of Mandrake Memorial was in a band I worked with for a short time after Mandrake broke up.

None of those guys had the artistic reputation that Essra did. She was as hippie-authentic as they come, her lyrics poetic and her performances mesmerizing and trippy. I loved those old Philly bands I watched in those days, but Essra was up in rock heaven above them long before she passed away.

Dreaming of you

And being the breeze.

Shortly before she was to come on, Peter Price, the Peter of John and Peter's, came up to me and gave me some instructions respecting Essra's appearance.

"Just leave the cash drawer on the register open," he said. "Don't ring anything up. Just put the money in and leave the drawer open."

In those days of ancient hands-on commerce, the cash registers required that you punch in the drink total manually, hit a return button and a small bell would ring and the cash drawer would open. You'd calculate change in your head and give it to the customer after that sweet tinkling of a money-making transaction.

It was that bell and the jangling of change that Peter didn't want ruining Essra's performance.

She came down from the clouds (of smoke) on the second floor and out the door that opened onto the stage opposite from where I stood and went directly to the piano and sat down. All was quiet. If I had made a sale then and opened the cash drawer to ring its tiny bell, it would have sounded like Quisimodo was roping the bells of Notre Dame over Paris. The awed silence was that great. She was slender and shapely, with long straight light hair and a thin face that concentrated only on the piano before her. She looked like anybody, but would prove to be beautiful.

From the moment her fingers touched the keyboard, I knew Essra was everything she was depicted as in Philly rock legend. I had one of the best seats in the house, despite the fact I was standing about six feet from her. Her playing was powerful and her voice rose almost to screaming, with tender inflections and the holy expressiveness of poetry. I was transfixed. I couldn't have opened the register or poured a drink if my job depended on it. She grabbed me with her soul by the soul. She grabbed everyone by the soul from her soul for song after song. This is how a goddess transfixed her believers, I thought. Those who sat in the dark room as dimly lighted faces only where as I was, unwilling to move and partially paralyzed by the wonder of her playing and singing. Peter never had to worry about the cash register's bell disturbing her. For song after song, those rocking and powerful and those quieter and sensitive and poetic, the audience watched her in awed silence. It was power and poetry. I didn't sell a single drink during her performance.

Then it was over far too soon. She went back upstairs to the second-floor heaven with Peter.

I was stunned. The audience was stunned. This wasn't the usual down-and-dirty rock performance John and Peter's normally presented. It was an artistic realization dressed up in rock and roll garb. It was real art.

Maybe this sounds over-the-top to you. Maybe it sounds like the warped creepy memory of a broken-hearted ancient fan, and not true. Take this as you will. I can only say in my mind this was the greatest performance I have ever seen at John and Peter's. I loved Essra from that night forward.

Don't get me wrong. I barely knew her. She and Peter became an item, so she was often in the place, until that ended. She played there several more times, although it was never the same. The audience turned trashy on her. The second time she played, I sold plenty of drinks, and some people ignored her performance, which suffered for it. The last time she played there, it was awful. The audience was completely disrespectful, talking loudly and drunkenly screaming. Her voice was shot. Someone told me later that she destroyed her vocal cords with coke and had to have an operation to remove the nodes on them.

She continued to make wonderful rock throughout her life.

The friends she made that night still love her. They know she never lost her authenticity and artistic nature and hippie soul. It a world where peace, love and kindness can flower for only a short time, her spirit never lost them, and her art still testifies to that, as do those who remember her.

And now you know what her first night playing at John and Peter's was like. And now you know why I had to write this and why I felt a little wrecked when I heard this person I barely knew died.

I am the breeze,

I can go anywhere.

Now she really can.

Too bright for bird photography?

It's a rare thing to say for a photographer, but there was one day by the canal in Washington Crossing State Park in Pennsylvania that it was too bright to photograph bird in the water.

 The white of the great blue heron there was practically a flash bulb going off in my eyes, and the camera saw it that way, too.

Too bright to photograph normally.

It's said that Darwin commented that the creature that survives is not the strongest or the fittest but the one who adapts best to change. Some attributed that observation not to Darwin but another scientist. It doesn't much matter for the thing at hands.

I had to change my settings or not survive this contrasted, bright scene and take home some decent photos.

I had the camera set on standard, but with +2 saturation, +2 contrast and +1 sharpness. The plus setting in contrast was obviously a problem, but I didn't want to change it.

I simply lowered the EV exposure by one stop.

With one stop of light removed.

The result stunned me.

One simple adjustment made the great blue heron into a movie star.

I took more photos with the same adjustment. This was not journalism, but an attempt at art with common things.

I survived the contrasted situation that bird photographers fear and loathe.

Darwin would have been proud.

A story personally remembering the day President John F. Kennedy was killed.

 It was sixty years ago today that President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas.  I still remember what I was doing that day.

It's not so rare to recall clearly any event of such magnitude, but it's becoming rarer. After all, it was sixty years ago. At seventy-five perhaps I'm positioned to remember that day better than many. I was fifteen when Kennedy was killed in Dallas, Texas. That's young enough to have an impressionable mind that easily formed memories. At seventy-five I'm just at the cusp of things disappearing into the endless forgetfulness of old age.

I better write this down before it disappears into that infinite nothingness of the past.

I was in teacher Jim Craig's English class at about 1 p.m. that Friday afternoon when principal Jim Exum made an announcement over the loud speaker system. In those days there were round loud speakers built into the concrete block walls of each classroom. Whenever the principal wanted to convey messages of some import or interest you'd hear the cackling of the speaker and then Exum's marbled southern drawl asking for everyone's attention.

"There has been an event of great importance take place concerning the President of the United States," Exum said. "When there is more information, I will let you know. That is all for now."

Then the loud speaker went dead.

Exum was a Texan with a heavy accent that the students in Pennsylvania made fun of. You could see he was sensitive about being made fun of behind his back. You could see it bothered him and he wanted to be liked, not derided, but he was pacific. Still, he was six-foot-three-inched tall and nobody wanted to mess with him beyond making fun, and we'd scurry away before he could take us by the upper arm and drag us into this office, perhaps never to return.

"That's a relief," said Mr. Craig. "I thought he was going to say he got shot or something."

Yes, it was a relief. Even as kids we knew people got shot regularly in America and all around the world. It was a terrible violent world of wars and holocausts and radioactivity. We must have been thinking the same thing. Mr. Craig was a former professional baseball player who was going to make the St. Louis Cardinals one spring training and become a Major Leaguer as a pitcher, but he spun around on a pick-off move to second base in practice and tore up his shoulder so badly that he never played baseball again. I idolized him, since I wanted to become a professional baseball player. He was everything I wanted to be, except injured. It hurt me later that year when he was arrested for exposing himself to an unknown woman after coming home from his honeymoon. He had just been married, which should have been sexually blissful, I thought, and there he was exposing himself to a woman he didn't know for some dubious reason. I thought he must have gone nuts from losing his baseball career and then having some weird things happen on his honeymoon. My idol had clay feet.

About twenty minutes later, the loud speaker cackled to life again and that familiar Texas drawl made the awful announcement.

"The President of the United States has died in Dallas," Mr. Exum said. "All after-school events today are cancelled. We will finish out the rest of the day of classes and then we can all go home. Right now, we will come back to school on Monday. I repeat, the President of the United States has died in Dallas."

For me, that meant JV basketball practice was called off that afternoon.

That was a Friday. We didn't get much done in Mr. Craig's classroom, or in my next class, which I can't remember. I can recall Mr. Craig trying to talk to us about the assassination. We didn't know much about it other than it happened, but everybody was speculating about it. We were shocked. The Russians did it. We knew they were going to start World War III. We should blow them up with atomic bombs first before they blew us up. Ever since elementary school we had practiced duck-and-cover in the case of nuclear attack. We were taught to hide under our desks on our knees and bend over and cover our heads with our hands and stay as far away from the windows as we could, since they would shatter and spray broken glass all over the classroom and cut us to pieces. We knew about radiation. We knew that was worse and would probably kill us all.

Now the Russians were coming for us.

When we were getting on the school buses to go home on the chilly, bright afternoon the rumor passed through the squirming crowds of kids climbing onto the big yellow buses that a Russian fleet was spotted off the East Coast. We had to get ready to fight. They would invade the next day.

For some reason, that didn't happen.

Saturday morning was a normal Saturday morning, except it wasn't, since we were all still shocked and confused and suffering from fear. If the Russians didn't do it, who did? It felt good to be alive, but it felt bad, too. It felt bad to be confused.

Our JV basketball coach, John Rittenhaurer, told us before we left school on the day of the assassination that our Saturday morning practice would go on as usual. He was a tough Army veteran who wasn't going to be deterred by anything as normal as the death of a president. We had to be stronger basketball players than that. 

My father drove me to the school that Saturday morning, my gym bag in the back seat, and dropped me off. A few of the other boys were waiting outside the locked doors of the school, and it was cold. We were shivering and stomping our feet waiting for Mr. Rittenhaurer to come along and unlock the school so that we could play.

About half the team did not show up. 

When Mr. Rittenhaurer finally did show up, he told us to go home, practice was cancelled. Evidently, Mr. Exum had heard our JV practice was to go on and he blew up at Mr. Rittenhaurer and his lack of sensitivity. An admonished Mr. Rittenhaurer had to open the school so that we could call our parents on the pay phone to come pick us up. He seemed nervous and impatient, looking around and blinking and telling us to hurry. Like us, he didn't like being yelled at by the principal. Many years later he got a doctorate and became principal and years after that died in a terrible car accident that perhaps involved alcohol while he was still fairly young.

If the Russians didn't kill Kennedy, who did? We wondered that. Soon we had the answer. Lee Harvey Oswald, a former soldier who had defected to Russia at one point and worked for the communist Cubans, was caught the afternoon of the assassination after killing a police officer outside a movie theater. He was the one who did it, we were told on the evening news. He was a nut. A crazy lone gunman. But we got him that day and soon would have our answers why he did it.

A few days later, we had only more questions

I was watching the coverage of the ongoing events and investigations in Dallas on an old black-and-white television in my sister's room. I had to go to the bathroom and could not wait. I got up and when I was in the bathroom I heard my sister scream.

"They shot him!"

I had no clue what she meant, but rushed out to find the Texas police wrestling a heavy-set man in a felt hat and suit to the ground. Jack Ruby, a Dallas night club owner, had shot Oswald in the side as the police were transferring him to another station. An ambulance came to take Oswald away and the police, who all wore white cowboy hats and looked confused and angry, took Ruby into custody.

"You shot the president!" Ruby supposedly said as he killed the assassin.

It all seemed fishy, even then. Oswald died, silencing him forever. He had claimed he was a patsy, which suggested a larger conspiracy. Rudy never talked, or at least we never heard what he said. He died of cancer years later while in jail. He never opened his mouth about why he killed Oswald.

How many theories have there been about who killed Kennedy in the sixty years since then? The Mafia. The Cubans. The Cubans with the Russians. A nut. A lone gunman. Two gunmen. Former CIA chief and former president George Bush.

I don't know anything more about it than I did then.

How was a fifteen-year-old boy to understand any of it, especially while surrounded by so many unstable characters - a shy resentful confused principal, a perverted former baseball player, a tougher-than-nails ex-Army coach who no longer felt anything for anybody and didn't even realize he should? How could any of them understand what had happened? Especially since the people who should have known what was going on weren't saying.

The Warren Commission said Oswald was a lone crazy gunman and stuck to it. Since I could see no one was saying anything you could rely on, I never believed it.

Books were written disputing the commission, movies were made and TV shows went on an on in speculation for these sixty years. Nobody had come to a believable conclusion.

It was part of the paranoia and craziness of the Sixties those of us who were alive at the time experienced. I'm a little paranoid and crazy because of it, even now.

As I was writing this I realized that November 22, 1963 was a Friday. Today I got confused and thought November 22, 2023 is also Friday. It's not, but excuse me for the confusion. You can't blame me.

I'm far beyond that cancelled Saturday JV basketball practice, but I'm still the same boy standing out in the cold in front of my high school, waiting for someone to come along to unlock the door so that I can understand what happened that day in Dallas.

I guess I'll stand outside in the cold waiting forever.

A new dragonfly friend on an autumn day

 

A black saddlebags dragonfly on a leisurely autumn day.

I like dragonflies. I don't know if they like me, but this one did . I took nearly a hundred photos of him today before I got tired of it and he didn't. I had to walk away or go bug-eyed.

I like dragonflies mostly because they never before seemed to like me. When I see them on hot summer days they are usually too busy to bother with me, zig-zagging around at the speed of light over water trying to catch bugs to eat, or whatever they do. I thought maybe they never liked me because of that. I'm not a small tasty bug, so I guess they didn't care about me.

This black saddlebags dragonfly caught my eye. I hadn't saw one before, or at least I didn't remember seeing one. He's so unusual with those saddlebags that I would have remembered. I didn't.

My camera was inside, so I put the dog back on his leash and ran in to get it. Marvin was a little confused, since we came right back out. I hoped the weird-looking dragonfly was still there, and it was.

I got as close as I could with my lens and thought he'd say oh no, no you don't. He didn't. I think I could have gone up to him and kissed him, but I didn't like him that much. 

I think maybe he had had enough of life.

What else could explain the utter lack of interest he had in fleeing from me. It's autumn, and bugs don't like that season. It's when they die.

I hoped that wasn't the case, but it is the way of the world.

When that season comes around to just sit there and do nothing, waiting for the end, that's just what we do, insects and people, too.

I hope I don't find him on the ground the next time I go out.

It's not where either of us want to be.

Book review: The Age of Fat Asses

 

Pieter Pullin Holdemtite is so large and so great a messiah in Pineville's Holy Church of Knee-Sniffers that he has to be born of two mothers. He comes out in two pieces, a top and a bottom, and has to be glued together.

His mothers are consumed at birth by locusts, which lead him to hate all bugs, and his father is a worthless drunk and is soon killed by his son. 

Pineville is under attack by outsiders, and the Distinguished Fat Asses install Pieter as judge, jury and executioner of anyone who dares cross into town. 

Seven feet tall and seven feet around, Pieter overwhelms his victims in a manner befitting a giant with a huge appetite for cows and bugs. 

Although he's immense after just a few months of life, his mental faculties have not developed beyond those of a three-year-old, until a beautiful, red-haired young woman, Sarah Lesthanluki, is presented to him as a victim. 

He falls in love and can not kill her, but she is not accepted by the Distinguished Fat Asses. 

Sarah and Pieter meet and love secretly, until the inevitable betrayal.

On Amazon at: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08ZYSTP1V

Grim weather and a grim prognosis

The news is not good for my sweet old boy and photography friend.

The weather around here has been grim for five days. It's cooled down from summer and rained dismally for so long that it seems like forever.

The worst part is, my old photography pal Marvin, who's accompanied me on most mornings on my nature photography journeys, had a terminal diagnosis early in this stretch of bad weather.

Terrible news makes bad weather worse.

Marvin is 13, an advanced age for a lemon beagle. He has the disposition of a saint when we're indoors and the disposition of a devil when he sees a rabbit or squirrel outside. He goes crazy while I'm photographing and one of those devious little creatures shows up, making it just about impossible to get the shot.

I don't mind much, and try to take it with good humor. He's got his needs and I have mind.

Marvin has an enlarged heart. Most likely it's from a faulty valve, which makes it more difficult for the heart to pump blood. Working harder, the heart enlarges and presses against the trachea and allows the lungs to fill with fluid, since the heart beat isn't powerful enough to push the fluid along.

The veterinarian says he has six months to a year to live.

He coughs, sometimes endlessly. The coughing can be terrible. It keeps both of us awake some nights, which adds to the utter misery of the situation.

The weather reflects this misery and enlarges it.

I'm feeding Marvin better food, real food like chicken and chicken livers and kale cooked in chicken broth, along with bone broth. He loves it and the coughing has improved, become less severe. He seems happy and remains the sweetest dog on earth.

Six months to a year.

Who knows when the weather will break?

A day of satisfaction for a red-tailed hawk

A red-tailed hawk could not have been happier with this late-summer day.

 Fear is a constant companion of most creatures in nature.

Nietzsche said that one of mankind's greatest achievements was the elimination of the terror humans felt of many wild animals. We go outside without a second thought, without the fear something might rip us to pieces with a sudden attack.

That's not the case with most creatures.

It helps if you happen to be a predator, like this beautiful red-tailed hawk, but as a human try to get close to one and you'll find he feels terror, too.

So it was strange when at the park this morning that I drove right below this hawk on my way out and stopped to photograph her.

She couldn't have cared less.

I managed to take over fifty pictures of this lovely creature from twenty feet away without as much as a twitch from her.

She looked down, looked to the side and looked right at me.

It didn't matter.

This red-tailed hawk must have spotted a
mouse or other prey below. It didn't matter.
She might have been full or just enjoying
the sunny day.

What a rare thing it is to be able to relax, for birds or for us.

Nietzsche might have been right about our eliminating our fear of wild animals, but we unleash a thousand other terrors when inside alone surrounded by four walls and locked windows and doors.

It's as though we're conditioned by nature to fear, and if we can't find our fears outside, we create them inside ourselves and inside our houses.

Why can't we relax? Do we need terror to survive?

I suppose our minds are our greatest enemies at times.

But there is no greater terror than the terror of the self.

This hawk could relax because she didn't have that fear of self. She wasn't human.

For her, a fine summer day was just that.

Without anxiety, we can live in the moment.

Take a lesson from a hawk. Relax.

Spewing hate is the norm

 Just a few minutes ago, as I was coming home from the organic market and turning right off of the highway, the car in front of me pulled over in my driveway.

I did not know this car or person. The tags were from another state.

The passenger opened his door and vomited on the macadam.

The door closed and the SUV was on its way.

If a person is sick, that person deserves relief from the sickness.

But not by spreading the disease.

It got me to thinking.

Isn't that what's happening in this country today?

There is all sorts of illnesses around, both physical and mental.

Many do their best to see that if they are sick, you should be, too. 

Many wish you to remain as sick as possible, since then can then claim to be the cure. You are then under their control.

It's sad to say, it's not always evident who is ill and who is not. A demagogue can claim to be the healthiest person in the world.

Then they vomit out hate and tell you to do the same.

Chose wellness, not hate.

Hate disgusts as deeply as vomit.

Trump says he has done nothing wrong: that is not the issue.

 Notice that whenever Donald Trump is indicted he swears he has done nothing wrong.

This is disingenuous, a trick. 

The question is not whether or not he had done anything wrong, since the rightness or wrongness of any action can always be debated, but the issue is whether or not he has done things illegally. 

In all of his cases it appears he has. 

That is if all we know and have seen or heard in the media is correct, for there is no denying our own eyes and ears and we have seen his tricks often. 

By saying he has done nothing wrong he places himself above the law for he he saying the law is wrong to indict him. He is not a god but claims to be divinely inspired. His are not moral issues but legal ones and must be viewed that way.

There is little doubt he has done illegal things - many of them. 

He must be called to account in court and in public opinion not on what he says but what he has done illegally. 

No one has directly confronted him with the question of whether or not he has done anything illegal. The press must do so.

And then the legal system must take precedence over a mere opinion of a charlatan. 

Book review: SHORT SHORT STORIES FROM A LONG LONG LIFE

 

SHORT SHORT STORIES FROM A LONG LONG LIFE consists of stories gleaned from many years of living. 

Some are whimsical, some are terrible and some are totally imagined from a philosophical view of that long life. 

There is a story of a tragic high school love affair of fifty years ago set off from a chance meeting of sports photographers at a track meet. A confused innocent little boy shoots a little girl in elementary school. An idolizing woman spends the night with the ghost of Lincoln in the White House. A bully dies in Vietnam, despite his friend's efforts to save him from the war. Aliens appear in the form of paving stones. 

In all, there are sixteen tales from that long, long life. They are touching or thought-provoking or humorous or strange. They extend far back in memory from old age or happen today. 

Despite being fiction they are very, very real.

View on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CGMFKCCN

Book review: Elk Dreams: A Montana Memoir

From the first day a couple moves to Montana to fulfill their fantasies of going west and becoming nature photographers in that legendary state, a very different reality assaults them. 

Far from the Elk Dreams they've been living with, they find their pasts and the also legendary hostilities of the state nearly too much to bear. 

Everything and everyone seems to embody a prevalent bumper sticker: WELCOME TO MONTANA: NOW GO HOME. 

Add in a terrible streak of bad luck, emotional difficulties, a tremendous natural disaster, and other problems and you have a recipe for tragedy and personal disintegration. 

Far from becoming the nature photographers they dream of being, they instead discover just how trying and destructive living a fantasy life can be.

View on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005HAP6BQ

Book review: Leyla and the Sandmen

 

During the Iraq War, a squad of soldiers comes upon some collateral damage , a little girl dressed in a white burqa at the bottom of a blast crater. 

When they discover she speaks English and Arabic, they decide to take her with them on a rogue combat mission, despite the danger that presents to her and others. As soon as they find her, one soldier is maimed suddenly and horribly, but despite that the reputation for survival of their mad Captain, who decided to entrust the squad to the little girl, is not questioned. 

She becomes an object of luck and their hope of survival. While kicking down doors in search of terrorists, while fighting and dying and killing, two of the soldiers who are lovers take the little girl to their hearts and plan on saving her after the war. 

Fate has another plan. 

The violence and untrustworthy nature of war take over, and while thinking they've found a way to end the conflict that day, a very different result ensues. Still, that does not shake the belief and trust and love one soldier develops for the lucky little girl. This book contains extreme violence and very strong language.

View on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GA8XFMG

Book review: Three Horror Tales

As the title suggests, this offering contains three stories of the strange and grotesque. 

In "His Angels He Charges With Error" a priest is determined to discover why his brother, also a priest, committed suicide. He's forced to confront a bloody ghost who turned out to be someone he did not expect. 

In "The Euthanasians" a unique method of disposing of the terminally ill is depicted. Clients take turns in murder. 

And in "My Father's Watch" an ancient curse attempts to avenge a horrific massacre. The subject stirs up something better left forgotten.
 

View on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005899356

Book review: Skettleton's War

 

Joshua Skettleton, a narcoleptic Confederate soldier, is bat-shit crazy. 

The hope that he'll see his son Josh again and the friendship of another soldier, Jeb Charles, help him to cling to some semblance of humanity while the rank butchery, race, religious hatred and greed of the rich tear his soul apart and nearly destroy his body. 

Two separate stories intertwine in the book, that of his arrival home and his fight to remain alive in some of the most horrific battles of the Civil War - with the help of Jeb Charles.

 In alternating chapters, we see Skettleton's progress as he travels the final six miles home and then flash back to his participation in the battles of the Wilderness, Spotsylvania Courthouse, Petersburg and more. 

His attempt to reach home is interrupted by Lester and Constance Engles, a mad couple who give him food and shelter in exchange for a sympathetic ear and the skill he exhibits with his Mississippi rifle, while exploiting him for their own ends.

When the book switches to the battle scenes, Skettleton suffers from the uncontrollable urge to fall asleep in the middle of the horror, which allows him to cope and stay alive. 

Jeb Charles, who's been with him since the beginning of the war, keeps Skettleton alive despite the man's mental illness and propensity to doze off at the worst possible moment. 

Truly horrific battle scenes and the unfolding tale of his time coming home combine in the end as Skettleton discovers just how mad war has made him, but by then it's too late to salvage even a small piece of himself. 

War, religion and greed combine to plunge him into a Southern fantasy world where a racist horror is the norm and reality becomes a dream.

View on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0149ARSDI

Book review: Gatsby Girls

 

Gatsby Girls, a sequel to the classic novel The Great Gatsby, continues the saga of a Jazz Age dream gone wrong, that of Jay Gatsby for Daisy Buchanan. 

The dreamer is dead, but Daisy is unrepentant and plans an abortion before leaving her drunken, abusive husband, Tom.

 She enlists the help of a gangster, a drugged friend, and Nick Carraway, but her scheme fails and another deadly tragedy ensues.

Written in the style of the Jazz Age, Gatsby Girls magically recreates that golden era of flappers, jazz, gangsters and frustrated love.

Once again, the Roaring Twenties come to life.

View Gatsby Girls on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0053HAAQ4

Book review: Red Lights for Six Nights

 

After a devastating divorce, a man in late middle age travels to Amsterdam to experience all the lusts and pleasures he can in that city's famous red-light district. 

Charles Ranier wants to discover if a broken heart can be overcome by pure animal passion and throws himself into his quest with anger, humor, lust, doubt and a desire for revenge against the past. 

At night, he experiences one prostitute after another, always cataloging his feelings and watching his broken heart mend as his passions return. 

During the day, he drinks in the gorgeous city and its sights, all the while preserving himself for his nightly debaucheries. 

Red Lights for Six Nights a kind of Last Tango in Amsterdam, describing the secrets of the red-light district there explicitly and detailing his sexual encounters carefully.

Charles is a man on the mend, mentally and spiritually, but his healing doesn't come without a cost. This novel contains a great deal of adult content, as Charles visits one prostitute after another and lets them work their magic on him.

View on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0037Z6Z0Y

Book review: Omar and the Bomb

 

By the time Osama bin Laden arrives in Oklahoma City late in this satirical novel, Omar And The Bomb, it's pretty clear his protege Omar Urdu has botched his assignment to pull off another terror attack in the country's heartland.

 You see, hapless Omar has problems, ranging from the fact he holds conversations with his bomb to the fact that he's married to a flaky Reese Witherspoon look-alike suffering from depression after her first husband was killed in the 9/11 attacks. 

To avoid attention being drawn to him, Omar attempts to live a typical American lifestyle with his new wife, working at a typical job, living in a typical house and enjoying travel across the country. 

Just after the bomb is installed in his Infiniti SUV, and it begs him ascend to Paradise with it now, Omar instead travels to Yellowstone National Park for picnics and sight-seeing. 

It's there that Reese, his wife, throws the switch to the bomb prematurely, only to find that it doesn't work. 

Omar, as well as all the others involved in the plot, is thrown into a tizzy and immediately seeks help repairing his bomb, which has become quite angry with him. Not only is the bomb angry with him, but so are the right-wing conspirators he's aligned to back in Oklahoma City. They've joined with Omar and bin Laden in the hopes of pulling off a second, bigger Oklahoma City bombing. 

No matter how he tries, Omar can not get his talking bomb to work, despite the help and threats of his right-wing compatriots and his Arab co-conspirators. So finally bin Laden has to show up in Oklahoma City, intent on repairing the bomb himself, after he's come to believe that Omar is incompetent as a terrorist. 

With all the world against him, including his fellow terrorists, Omar comes to a bittersweet understanding about just how strange his world is, but by then it's too late ...

View Omar and the Bomb on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002P8MPW6

Book review: The Age of Fat Asses

 

Pieter Pullin Holdemtite is so large and so great a messiah in Pineville's Holy Church of Knee-Sniffers that he has to be born of two mothers. He comes out in two pieces, a top and a bottom, and has to be glued together. 

His mothers are consumed at birth by locusts, which lead him to hate all bugs, and his father is a worthless drunk and is soon killed by his son. 

Pineville is under attack by outsiders, and the Distinguished Fat Asses install Pieter as judge, jury and executioner of anyone who dares cross into town. 

Seven feet tall and seven feet around, Pieter overwhelms his victims in a manner befitting a giant with a huge appetite for cows and bugs. 

Although he's immense after just a few months of life, his mental faculties have not developed beyond those of a three-year-old, until a beautiful, red-haired young woman, Sarah Lesthanluki, is presented to him as a victim. 

He falls in love and can not kill her, but she is not accepted by the Distinguished Fat Asses. Sarah and Pieter meet and love secretly, until the inevitable betrayal.

The Age of Fat Asses is an hilarious satire on humans and their silly rites of government and religion and will keep you laughing and disturbed.

View The Age of Fat Asses on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08ZYSTP1V

Book review: Star Daze: Working at the Bucks County Playhouse in the 1970s

 

Star Daze: Working at the Bucks County Playhouse in the 1970s is a series of memory sketches drawn from the experiences of a parking lot attendant and wannabe writer with famous actors and actresses at the Bucks County Playhouse in New Hope, Pennsylvania. 

It takes place in the wild times of the early 1970s, when love was free and anything could and did happen. 

With the star system in place at the playhouse, a succession of luminaries from Hollywood, Broadway and television trekked to New Hope to perform and fall into experiences with the bumbling wannabe writer and parking lot attendant, who bemusedly recounts these peeks behind the curtain. 

Some of the stories are humorous, some sad, and others ironic. Viewed with the eyes of an insider who should have been left on the outside, the memory sketches include encounters with such stars as John Carradine, Tony Danza, Yvonne de Carlo, Tom Poston and others. 

It's a theatrical memoir from someone on the fringes of that world who happily stumbles into his encounters with the stars and lives to tell about them many years later.

View on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09Z78RGLN

Book review: In A Circle of Stars

 

In A Circle of Stars is an epic adventure revolving around the aftermath of one of the most famous battles in American History, The Battle of the Little Bighorn, only this time it's told as fiction from the point of view of the Native Americans who won the battle. 

Custer is dead, Sitting Bull is fearful about what revenge the U.S. Army is about to take on his people and Fallen Hawk, the fictional young warrior who killed Custer in the book, is still not satisfied his revenge is complete. 

Days later, it appears to Fallen Hawk that it's the U.S. Army that's taken revenge when he discovers his wife, Mountain Cloud, has been murdered in an odd, ritualistic way. Many blame him for the murder while others strangely insist he marry again immediately, but in a fury he goes on the warpath to find his wife's killers. 

The action continues with the U.S. military relentlessly hunting down Sitting Bull and his band, while the desperate Lakota Sioux use every possible means of escape and fight for their very existence. 

As Fallen Hawk learns more and more about the murder of his wife, the hopelessness of the Lakota's situation becomes apparent, but his fierce nature forces him to continue his quest for the killers. Fallen Hawk constantly seeks out the murderer and this leads him to many adventures and furious battles, to the love of a new wife, Kicking Up Dust, and on a spiritual quest. 

Fallen Hawk is nearly elevated to the position of war-chief, as he fights the U.S. cavalry, endures the mistrust of his tribe and closes in on capturing the killer.

 Finally, as the book ends in tragedy, Fallen Hawk discovers the astonishing reasons for his wife's murder and the person who perpetrated the crime. Many of the main characters of In A Circle of Stars are well-known. Characters like Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Gall and others have essential roles, but the main character, Fallen Hawk, is fictional. 

In A Circle of Stars re-creates the Native American west in a way that puts you on the Great Plains as part of the world of the Lakota, a world that vanished with the defeat of Sitting Bull and his people.