Having just finished nearly all of the John Le Carré novels, I thought I would turn to something just as dystopian (Le Carré's are not in that genre, even though sometimes they feel that way) but more fun. The future inundation of the planet sounded like a good time. Read more about Reading the Summer Away
A Fairy Tale
Barbara Stoner Read more about Tricky Dick and the Dragon Lady
You might not buy the thesis of Dominion: How the Christion Revolution Remade the World, by Tom Holland (A galloping tour of Christianity’s influence across the last 2,000 years, NYT Read more about Dominion
“Oh, dammit all to …” Adriana Mercer wished she had a typewriter instead of a laptop. Deleting wasn’t nearly good enough for the romantic tripe she had just spent a tortuous hour composing. She wanted to rip it out of the machine, crush it into a spiky ball, and toss it on top of the heap in the circular file, just as she had imagined countless other authors doing with countless other first drafts of their work.
Adriana Mercer wanted to be a writer. Read more about A Walk in the Park
A Fairy Tale
Once upon a time, a wicked crack dealer lived in a dingy motel room on a bad stretch of road in the lower part of town. His name was Raymond, but everyone who knew him, or knew of him, called him Rayban. His was a dark soul.
Every night he sat at his window looking down on the street below keeping a close eye on his boys. Young and hungry, they lounged in the driveways of no-tell motels or hung out at the Jack-in-the-Box waiting for customers, glancing up now and then seeking the approval of the dark face in the window. Read more about Saturday Night in the Big City
A Fairy Tale
It had been as hot and humid as only Iowa could be on that awful July day. Tom and Dick had taken the twins, Harry and Lucy, to the pond where the older boys had rigged a tire swing from an old cottonwood tree and took turns swinging out over the pond, dropping in, and swimming back while the younger ones played in the muddy shallows.
Tom had just started swimming back when he heard his brother, Dick, holler, “No, no! Harry! Turn around. It’s too deep there.” Read more about The Corn
A Fairy Tale
Once upon a time there were three princesses named Jennifer, Colleen and Alison. Read more about The Three Princesses
A Song for Huddlestone
A Fairy Tale
by Barbara Stoner
There was once a hard-working student named Calvin who lived in an attic above a grocery store, and he had nothing in the world of his own. There was also a hard-working grocer named Mr. Palmer who lived and worked on the first floor, and he had the whole house for his own. Huddlestone was an old man of the streets, and he had nothing in the world of his own either, not even an attic. But Mr. Palmer was a kindly grocer, and in bad weather allowed Huddlestone to sit inside, guarding the back door to his shop. Read more about A Song for Huddlestone
Pink Chop at the Crossroads
A Fairy Tale
Barbara Stoner Read more about The Crossroads
It seems that every time someone is introduced as a speaker on MSNBC lately we are told that, besides impressive professional credentials, they also have a podcast. But I don’t have time to check them out. I’m busy enough with the four I already follow. Add that to the number of shows I’m streaming, the 1500 piece crossword puzzle I’m working on, and a couple of video games I find challenging and amusing, it’s a wonder I have time to write this paragraph. Still, I feel I should carry on, since these are podcasts that I really like and it would be lots of fun if you did as well. Read more about My Favorite Podcasts