BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Gross wanted to know "Why aren't you telling me to read Paul Auster's newest, "Brooklyn Follies"?

Ah, thanks for reminding me. I went to Miami to see Auster read from Brooklyn Follies a few weeks ago. It sounds like the type of novel that I would like, and, of course, it is an Auster work. I just plain forgot to order it from the library. Wait a few moments, please. I'll be right back...

Brooklyn follies
You are number 19 in the holds list
There are 21 holdable copies


Okay: it's ordered. I am number 19 in the hold list; but as there are 21 copies I should be getting it soon. Hiis wife was there too and I could have a lot to say about her too, but suffice it to say that she is very hot, and reads very well, and is definitely smarter than I am. Auster may be.

In the meantime: I went to Naples and spent Superbowl night with the great HR. I lost $5.00 betting on the Seahawks--I actually wanted to bet the Steelers because I like the guy with the long hair, but Hal wanted the Steelers and so he gave me the points and I rooted for the Seahawks. There were two Ref calls that hurt the Seahawks, I called both opposite to the Refs but my calls weren't allowed by Hal.

As it turned out my guy with the long hair wasn't as great as he was in the playoffs, and had I taken the Steelers I wouldn't have had much to cheer about anyway. Troy Polamalu is going to be around for a long time, I guess, as this is only his third NFL season, so I'll get to see him a lot more in the future. I just hope that there is no Delila around to cut his hair. Maybe Hal will let me take his team next year.

Anyway, watching the game with Hal was a lot of fun, except I kept thinking that I might never see him again as he is moving to the west coast. You guys missed out in not seeing the house as Mary did it.

I dragged Hal to the Naples Museum which is a pretty good small museum. He was a good guy and went along, although I am sure that he would rather have done something else, like bake a pie or go to church.

And I learned something in the museum thanks to HR. There was a special exhibit of Andrew Wyeth which I would have skipped, because, art snob that I am, I thought of Wyeth as an illustrator, like Norman Rockwell, who made pretty pictures filled out with false sentiment. Maybe Christina's World threw me off.

Hal went to see the Wyeths while I spent some time with second tier American artists and some Mexican contemporary artists in whose works I found some real emotion, though sometimes I worry that I can't tell the difference between truth, art, emotion and propaganda--like with Rivera, Orozco, and Siquieros. I like to look at their work; but it makes me think about Justice instead of feel. Is that art? Or is it propaganda?

Anyway Hal came down from the gallery where the Wyeths were being shown. I could see that he had been impressed so I went up to look at them. I figured that he has lived with Mary so long that some of her esthetic must have rubbed off. He might be right about liking Wyeth. -- It turned out that the Helga pictures were included in the show, and when I looked at them I could see how right HR was and how wrong I had been. Helga is painted over and over again with a meticulous intensity that only an artist obsessed and in love could have produced. Wyeth's wife never knew about Helga until about fifty or so paintings were discovered hidden in his studio. Wyeth freed his emotions from his mind and attached them to the canvases. Wyeth does it...at least in the Helga paintings. Now I have to look at Christina's World again. It was chilling. If the show goes to NYC let me know what you think.

I limited myself to two martinis, but of course we ate too much, and so I didn't sleep well, but early in the AM, before Hal awoke, I jumped into his pool which was ice cold and very, very refreshing. If only I could get the people in my building to allow the pool to get cold. They insist that it be warm, probably so that they can get away with peeing in it.

I swam a couple of laps furiously kicking my feet, not using my arms, as my rotator cuff is still a problem, but somehow it seems that the ice cold water helped it a lot. It still feels better. And I was in for only ten or fifteen minutes. Is that possible Doctors?

I didn't like leaving Hal -- I felt like I was losing something again.

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

No doubt your grandson is reading Keats, and a good thing it is.

Truth
Beauty
Justice

Can we live for these three things. Have we? Certainly the four of you have made an effort in those honorable directions. You have nothing of which to be ashamed. Whereas some of us have much for which to make up. Repairs. Note, when you re-read the poem that it is not Keats who makes the point; rather it is written on the urn. We do not know whether Keats believed that truth is beauty and beauty is truth.

Ode on a Grecian Urn

THOU still unravish'd bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape 5
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy? 10

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave 15
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair! 20

Ah, happy, happy boughs! That cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearièd,
For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love! 25
For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,
For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue. 30

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea-shore, 35
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul, to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e'er return. 40

O Attic shape! fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form! dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
45
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'
______________________________________________________
It seems to me on re-reading the poem for the first time in fifty or so years that the beauty of the urn is absolutely not truthful, as Keats tells us, more than once, that the articles of beauty depicted on the urn are not transitory, in fact that each article of beauty transits generations--and remains frozen in time. Unlike the reality of Therefore Beauty is not truth.

Whereas, we know that all things evanesce, change, are destroyed, as Shelly reminds us in Ozymandius:
___________________________________________
Ozymandius
I met a traveler from an antique land,
Who said--"Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert . . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandius, King of Kings,
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."

_________________________________________________________

Ralph warns us that it is our duty, in fact it is our only duty not to lie; that is to be truthful: but then what are we doing when we take ugliness and make art of it as in Strange Fruit, or Guernica? Are we truthful when we deny our essential loneliness; when we deny the predictability of chaos? But our loneliness is beautiful and so is chaos.


mek

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Dear Marty:

It was painful to watch the video; but its implication that there was a conspiracy involving Americans is laughable.

How many people would have been needed to install all the explosives that the voice tells us must have been used on the 103 floors of the WTC. They would have had to have been technical explosive experts.

How many people must have been needed to make sure that the airplanes were only partially filled? These would have had to have been a group of Continental employees and a second unrelated group of American Airline employees. Or, perhaps a group of hackers.

How many people must have been involved in "knowing ahead of time" that the attack was imminent? They would have been high administration officials.

How many people would have held back NORAD fighters? These would have been Dept of Defense or Air force staffers.

All these groups of people would be unrelated. What would their common goal have been? Who would have brought them together and convinced them (hundreds of them) to go along with this project.

Wouldn't there have even been one single doubter among the hundreds or thousands that would have had to have been contacted?

How could any investigation of the WTC center cost only $600,000? Some murder investigations by the NYC cost more.

Isn't obvious that no conspiracy of this size could not have remained secret for all these years--or even more obvious that no conspiracy of this size could have been kept secret before its detonation.

It's silly to pass this kind of stuff around. And, from the number of dead soldiers (1000+) this thing is pretty old.

I consider myself to be pretty far to the left--but this is only someone's idea for a novel or movie. It has zero believability.

Please pass this back to the sadly credulous people who sent this to you.

Thanks

Mike

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

The fight against pornography is a diversion, and is going to be used to retain the Republican base and divert the rest of the American people's attention from Iraq, the collapsing dollar, the national debt, and universal medical care. And look at the box that the Democrats will be forced into: Any Democrat defense of freedom of speech and ideas will easily be twisted into a position of pro-pornography.

According to AOL news, today, MSN has already delivered the information although its spokesman won't say yes or no; Yahoo has said that it has submitted to all government subpoenas.

mek

mek

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

I have obtained the Peter Watson book from the library. The Modern Mind

It is a weighty volume which I have looked through and it seems to me (at this point) that it is almost a quick, light,very long, bring-me-up-to-date-Charlie-about-what-happened-while-I- was-asleep-during-the-twentieth-century gossip column. Most of what I have skipped through was stuff that I already knew from general conversation and magazine articles.
Noting what I thought was another coincidence, I skipped over to the paragraphs on TH Lawrence, mistaking it, at first, for DH Lawrence who, as you probably remember, was the current subject of Dubin, the adulterous-lost-soul-biographer.

Of course, I excuse my mistake as it was three-thirty in the morning and I had woken myself from a disturbing dream involving Katz Drug Store, a fire, and an aged geriatric doctor whom I knew in Brooklyn when it was me that was a lost soul, among other things.

But then that wasn't really the Watson book that I was reading; rather, it was another heavy tome, by William T. Vollmann, called RISING UP and RISING DOWN, which I recommend to you, even though it is lengthy, although abridged from a seven volume essay on violence.

Even more than Vollmanns' essays I recommend his fiction some of which I previously recommened to you and which you may have read, namely, The Rifles.

Volllman: 730 pp (abridged from 3500 pp)
Watson: 850 pp.
Malamud 361 pp
............. 1941 pp

I will finish the Malamud, but I have little hope for the Vollmann and Watson.

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Dear Gross:

You know the story I like to tell about the time that your mother explained to me that in Russia her father's side of the family was called Katznelson, but that when they came to America they dropped the Katz, and became “Nelson.” And I responded that OUR name in Russia was also Katznelson, but that when we arrived in America we dropped the nelson and became “Katz.”

My joke may have gone over your head, but your mother got it.

Well, today I heard a story that may have topped that one.

I was speaking to the son of a friend of my father's whose name was Shapiro.
My father's friend was nicknamed "Shep" which, apparently was the nickname given to Shapiros in those days.

Shep had two sons; Larry and Peter and both went to Horace Mann about six years before we did. They also went to Raquette Lake.

Both boys went to Wesleyan (Connecticut.)

Peter Shapiro thought that changing his name from "Shapiro" to "Sheppe" might help his chances of getting into Harvard Law School. He changed his name, was admitted to Harvard and received his degree. He became GC of Time-Life.

Peter died early in life and Larry wanted to memorialize him by putting his name on a room at Wesleyan. He sent a check to a Robert Kelly, a person in charge of such donations, with the request that his brother's name, "Peter Sheppe" be placed on a plaque over a room in the gym. (By the way, If you do it for me, a room in the Osaka Shiatsu Club would be fine.)

Larry's letter requesting that his brother's name, “Peter Sheppe” be placed on the plaque confused Mr. Kelly, who called Larry for clarification.

"Mr. Shapiro,” Kelly said, “your letter says that you wish to memorialize your brother; but the name you gave us for the plaque is ‘Peter Sheppe’."

"Well," Larry explained, "the name was changed."

"Oh," Kelly replied, "I understand. By the way, which one of you changed his name?"

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

From Bernard Malamud, Dubin's Lives:

" 'Tell me about D. H. Lawrence, ' Kitty sometimes said as they sat alone in the room, and Dubin would make the effort to tell episodes from the man's life.

'You tell it so interestingly. Why is it so hard to write?'

'It resists the pen. The second thought hides from the first.' "

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com


Saturday, December 31, 2005

Good Riddance Annus Horribilis But,

Last night during Martini Time on the Terrace, the sun had come from behind some heavy, dark clouds in the West and there was a thin cloud cover overhead. the light faded almost to black at about six. Suddenly, startingly, from sand's edge to horizon, the sea became the color of violets dotted by tiny white caps. A very short, very rare, unnatural silence unmarred by the least sound made a few choice moments perfect.

mek

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Wm Vollman writes of a man who receives a letter from his lover, in which she begs him to return to him safely because she loves him, loves him passionately. He treasures the letter and rereads almost daily. But as time passes the letter loses its potency. "One night the letter was used up. Instead of tacit it seemed lukewarm. "

We are unknowable. We are nothing.

Later Vollman writes:

"Meager results: that's life. Not to be deterred by meager results: that's a kind of nobility."

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com


Gloria called to let me know that Brownie died about three weeks ago. I had no contact with him at all since I sold the business.

Basil wrote back:

Dear Mike:

That is sad to hear Mike. He was a unique. Thomas Mann would have called him a Delectable Mountain.

Dear Bas:

Well, Basil, you're right. But he was such a pain to deal with--he wanted so much of my attention, he constantly complained about the other workers, he tried to be such a goody two shoes--and really wasn't, he wasted so much of my time, took so much of my energy; his fingernails were always too long and dirty. He often left shaving cream around his earlobes. He was a manic-depressive and sometimes I worried that I would find that he had hanged himself in the cellar from the hot water pipes; he sometimes used the two-way mirror to ogle young girls.....it was hard for me to appreciate his uniqueness...but as my dear Mother constantly reminded me, de mortuis nil nisi bonum and so--

He had an amazing memory; he could remember the costs and selling prices of every item in the business. Not only that but also he could remember which wholesaler was cheaper on each item and further than that he could also remember what it cost last year and what we sold it for. This was especially important when gifts were a major part of our business.


He could recite all the parts of speech, including the most esoteric, some of which run of the mill grammar teachers had never heard. He could also recite all the states in alphabetical order, and then repeat it in reverse alphabetical order pronouncing the name of each state backward.

If asked he would drive people home in the worst of driving weather, and would offer to do so without being asked.

His mother had run a candy-news stand on the corner of Moore Street. They kept their stock in our cellar. (By the way, that cellar held the ovens in which Levy's Rye Bread was first baked)

Brownie was a big, strong boy who toted cases of soda up and down the stairs for his mother to whom he was overly attached. It was she who sold the Charlotte Russes that were kept in a glass box with two shelves, precariously balanced on top of a huge tub filled with ice and soda bottles. Of course, my father would never let my sister or me taste one. In his eyes their sterility was suspect.

At first, my father used Brownie to drive into NYC to pick up and deliver cosmetics that we were diverting to or trading.* Somehow, Brownie insinuated himself into a more formalized employment by my father--that was long before I was even a teen-ager

During the Korean War while on leave after Basic Training he stabbed his girlfriend, which made the front page of the New York Mirror. My father's friend Bill Kleinman (Leo Freedman's close friend too) defended him and he received a suspended sentence. **

In retrospect, I think, that after himself, and maybe even before himself, he was truly dedicated to my business.

I know that there was nothing Brownie wouldn't have done for me, had I asked him. I just couldn't stand to get close enough to him to ask.

mek

* It was Brownie who brought Willie the Red onto the scene--another sui generis if there ever was one. Willie hung out on the street corner, and when Brownie needed someone to sit in the car when he went into Manhattan on a delivery he could always find Willie. But more about Willie another time.

**Colonel Bill Kleinman had been, before the War, the Assistant District Attorney who prosecuted an acquantaince of Dad's who was Sid Luckman’s father, a gambler, for a murder which occurred at a craps game in the back of a garage on the corner of Moore and Bogart Streets. Mysteriously, the open and shut case against Luckman went down the drain when several witnesses took long vacations in Miami.

Several years later, Jack Nelson ran Lady Beth Ice Cream out of the garage, presumably after swabbing the blood from the floor.




mek

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com


"Kaput"
Curzio Malaparte

St Eve:

I am working my way into "Kaput."

You and the blurb writers describe it as a hellish description of the Eastern Front, and the depravity of man.

Although I am not far in, perhaps 60 pages, I am reading a master of description. Sights, smells, the deep Finnish forest, the endless lake, night and dawn--a master. There has been only a hint of what is to come, and because of my recognition of Malaparte's extraordinary power I am afraid.

Why is it that I shrink from artistic renderings of horrors, as in film or books, but at the same time I feel that in reality I would have little difficulty in living through them?

I know I have asked this question before; but why is that I might cry at a sentimental commercial but not at the side of an accident victim or a homeless woman?

mek

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

As you have not seen the windows in my apartment I shall have to describe them. I hope that I can describe them in such a way that you can understand how they look.

The windows cover most of the outside walls, east and south. But they are not one piece. They are normal sized windows so that a room might have seven windows facing east or four windows facing south, etc.

It is very hard for a boy like me who is no longer used to yoga type stretches to open the bottom half of the window and reach up to clean the upper half.

And -- when the top half must be cleaned and the bottom is pushed up, the bottom glazing blocks the top. It's an impossible job, I thought.

Maria hired a window cleaning company. I thought that they would strap on belts and work from the outside. But no--

they go at each window from the window next to it!

Striking the center of my forehead with the palm of my hand.

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

"...when he unzipped his head the sign in the mirror said "prisoner."

Rhonda H. Nelson

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Nov 2005, series of emails re Toots Shor…

Dear Mike:

I am trying to fact check the dates Toots Shor's was open for an article I am writing and wonder if you know whether it was still active in the 1960s. Thanks so much! Dina Kaplan
----------------------------------------------------------
sorry, Dina. Toot's went down for a few years.

But then a group of restuarant investors used him to front for a new Toots Shor place near Madison Square Garden. I don't have the dates in my mind.

When you finish the article send it to me, if you can. I'm interested.

Mike

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Mike

Thanks..but it was around during the 60s, right? During the lion's head and moochie's time..?

Dina
--------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Dina:

The Lion's Head real time was way back in the late forties and fifties when e. e. cummings, Dylan Thomas and Brendan Behan reigned along with the literate crowd of the day. The sixties may have been the time that young Pete Hamill and company grew out of short pants and into the place but I think that its reputation had already been made.

In 1955 or 56 my English teacher at Horace Mann took a few of us down to the Lion's Head to meet Brendan Behan who refused to talk until each of us, underaged gigglers that we were, drank a half-pint of Stout. Mr. Baruth, a giant among English teachers, was non plussed and stood on a chair so as to declaim from the Plow and the Stars.

For the most part there was little intercourse between the denizens of the Lions Head and Toots Shor --- except maybe, now that I think of it, Hamill and Norman Mailer, perhaps Jimmy Cannon. But I was just a lucky peanut shell on the floor.

Moochies was beyond my ken.


Mike

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

The Horace Mann class of 1956 was composed of 106 mostly Jewish boys. Thirty-six were admitted to Harvard, Princeton and Yale. Twenty went to Columbia. A sizable contingent went to Williams, Amherst and Wesleyan. Five went to Cornell. One brave soul found his way West to Stamford. A few went to MIT. The remainder went to colleges of lessor distinction. Buster Stronghart, your faithful correspondent, was 105th in this class of 106 and was sent up the river, away, to Ohio Wesleyan.

Many of us became doctors and lawyers. Several became college professors. A few went into their parent's businesses. Two of us may have worked for the CIA. One may still. We have no accountants. We have several self-made millionaires and several more who are caretakers of inherited wealth. We have a few who are dead busted.

One of my classmates, the one who was graduated 106, has written a textbook about neurology and still teaches out West. He also holds patents for some surgical instruments which I cannot explain to you. One boy, from Finland, is the equivalent of Surgeon General of Saudi Arabia. The highest number of wives is four and that honor belongs to a lawyer. A few have made their living in magazine and book publishing. Another, a left leaning student at HM and Harvard became CEO of a Fortune 200 corporation and is one of those responsible for the development of genetically modified foods.

Did I say that we had a few suicides and several deaths by accident besides the first two who died the summer of graduation in a convertible in Arizona? Yes, two of the best of us were killed in an auto accident the summer that we were graduated.

Most of us have had more than one wife. The highest number of wives is four, and that honor belongs to a lawyer. As far as I know, and my information is incomplete, few of us have been totally faithful.

Not too many joined the armed forces after college. One who did was killed in action. I guess that the part of the class that did serve joined the reserves--but my information is incomplete here too.
.
Today's classes do not do as well in college admissions, and the percentage who become doctors and lawyers is much smaller. Today the most popular careers seem to be in the entertainment, business and financial areas.

HMhas the highest percentage of full scholarships in the New York prep schools. This year's tuition at the high school level is more than twenty-five thousand dollars. Kindergarten through third grade is twenty-thousand. When I went to HM from 1951 through 1956 the tuition was $900. We had a dormitory. That was another $900.

The dormitory was about two miles from the school. Everyone was required to walk with all books in all weather. Except my friend, J. who was often seen getting a lift in an old Ford. Innocent that we were then, we now surmisethat he may have been having a special, peculiar relationship with Mr. X, a teacher of ancient Greek and owner of that old Ford.

The rest of us trudged bravely along, through snow and sleet, practicing to become mailmen in case nothing else worked out.

The school now accepts girls and no longer has a dress code. Chapeland Tuesday Morning Sings have been eliminated. Many of our parents were assimilated or assimilating Jewish couples,and during the 1950's it was said that our parents eagerly acquiesced to a subtext of the mission of Horace Mann which was to oversee what we cameto understand was the bizarre transmogrification* of us Little Jewish Boys into tweed jacket wearing WASPs.

*Apologies to Professor Baruth who would not have approved of my use of a two dollar word when a fifty cent word would have sufficed. But I couldn't resist.

HM has the highest percentage of full scholarships in the New York prep school world. This year's tuition at the high school level is more than twenty-five thousand dollars. Kindergarten through third grade is twenty-thousand. When I went to HM from 1951 through 1956 the tuition was $900. We had a dormitory. That was another $900.

The dormitory was about two miles from the school. Everyone walked with all books in all weather. Except my friend, J. who was often seen getting a lift in an old Ford. Innocent that we were then, we now surmise that he may have been having a special, peculiar relationship with Mr. X, a teacher of ancient Greek and owner of that old Ford. The rest of us trudged bravely along, through snow and sleet, practicing to become mailmen in case nothing else worked out.

The school now accepts girls and no longer has a dress code. Chapel and Tuesday Morning Sings have been eliminated.

Many of our parents were assimilated or assimilating Jewish couples, and during the 1950's it was said that our parents eagerly acquiesced to a subtext of the mission of Horace Mann which was to oversee what we came to understand was the bizarre transmogrification* of us Little Jewish Boys into tweed jacket wearing WASPs.

mek

*Apologies to Professor Baruth who would not have approved of my use of a two dollar word when a fifty cent word would have worked. But I couldn't resist.

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com


The phone has rung too many times this morning
No one’s been on the line though.
The de-humidifier the construction men left is way too loud.
They'll remove it tonight.

My porridge is just right.

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

My wife, my woman, that is, found a new haircutter,
He gave her bangs, and she looks so much
Younger. But I like women of my own age.
I leave the younger ones for cruder men.

We have more than four decades
Of memories, and two boys too, and a granddaughter
Who has diabetes and a wonderful smile.
She is very brave.
More than me, I think.
And, too, I think she’s smart.

We live in a big building
With no interesting neighbors. I’d
Like to pick their brains, but
there’s nothing to pick.

Am I too late for them? Have
They already been picked over? Or
Have they always been non-bearing?

mek November 14, 2005

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

'I don't just write people off and move on with my life. There is much pain, because no matter what it is that they've done, everyone brings something to the table. And it was those things that made them worth sitting down with. When you walk away from the table, you're also walking away from those good things as well."

From" Desiree's Blog: Only in Theory

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com


superfluous.....Every superfluous man wants to keep on living. And all men are superfluous.

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

SPECIAL EXTRA REPORT FROM FT. LAUDERDALE:


This morning I walked the entire building using the fire stairs, and I discovered that amazingly the entire thirteenth floor was apparently forced out of the building by the Divine Power of the Hurricane. (at least in the South Tower, which was the one that I toured).

I live on the twelfth floor and walked up to the twenty-fifth, penthouse floor, walking most of the corridors, inspecting the damage.

On my way back down I noticed that the number of each floor was painted onto the doors that lead from the fire stairs to the interior corridors.

As I came down the stairs I noted each floor number clearly painted onto the appropriate doors, but when I was on the fourteenth floor and continued down there was no thirteenth floor! One door said "14" and the next said "12."

What had happened to "13?"

I went back up to make sure that I had not missed it. I cannot tell you how carefully I checked. Believe me, I was careful. The thirteenth floor is missing. No doubt about it.

It's gone.

M