G. K. Wuori

Iron Filings - 74

March 31, 2022

Cold Iron – 234

Iron Filings - 74

Every once in a while I swing over to the Breitbart (far right wing) website to find out just how terrible Joe Biden is and to remind myself that it's really okay to be a Democratic Socialist Liberal Communist so long as you don't mind being called a corrupt traitor who wants to dismantle the government and put us all into one world order. Speaking of one world order, isn't that kind of what most religions want? Anyway, during one of those times when I'm feeling rather calm and mellow it's kind of fun to see the pure hatred, vitriol, and contumely that spews forth in the comments to various articles. I mean, these people don't just disagree with you, they want to disembowel you and shove your innards down your dog's throat.

Here's a fun one from Breitbart's comments: "So do the research ... that Obama was gay and had a long time male partner Michael La Vaughn Robinson ! However Obama was up for president and so Robinson ( the girls were his by a previous marriage) transgendered to become Michelle !"

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Slowly, like a Covid-throat emerging in a fog of denial, the Spring to-do list rears its energetic head. First thing, done early, is the cutting of the ornamental grasses. We have pampas grasses and other grasses that flop around all winter and look pretty cool, but they have to be cut in the spring to make way for new growth. Then there's the thirty-two house and sunporch windows to be washed inside and out. Our wind chime is next, followed by two concrete bunnies that go into separate gardens. Whew! Have to give the car a spring cleaning and then wash out about ten pounds of salt on the garage floor, attach the hose to the sump pump outlet, check the gutters and downspouts, cut last year's blooms off the hydrangea bush, clean the six ceiling fans, and tune up the lawn mower. Other than that ...

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I would be remiss if I did not recommend two whopping good movies, each at opposite ends of the spectrum: Wild Mountain Thyme (sweet) starring two terrific actors in Emily Blunt and Jamie Dornan, and Tom Hanks' Greyhound (not a dog in sight, but your adrenaline will surge).

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Although I'm no longer much of a basketball fan (and definitely not the pros), I can still get a bit excited over the annual March Madness caper. That is, until every team that I could possibly root for gets bounced. Exit Loyola and sweet little Sister Jean, the same for Illinois, Wisconsin, and Indiana. Seems like the championship game often involves something like Southeast Delaware State versus Northern Washington Tech, or Duke versus Bangor Theological Seminary, which leads me to search frantically for reruns of The Big Bang Theory.

Here's A Little News Story I'm Sure You Haven't Seen: "A dog in North Carolina is looking for a new home after his previous owners dumped him at an animal shelter because they said they feared he might be gay. ...

" ...The reason? Fezco apparently humped another male dog, and the dog's owners assumed the canine was a "gaynine" and didn't want him around so they left him at the shelter."

I don't make these things up.

* * *

I'm normally (I like to think) a pretty upbeat guy. But this morning I was looking out the window of my office and saw that it was a typical early spring day: dark, heavy clouds, temp in the forties, pretty dreary. Then it occurred to me that this is just about how the world is these days. We have a war in eastern Europe, but that shouldn't bother me since in all my seventy odd years I've lived with war in about fifty of them. We have self-aggrandizing and hateful politicians shredding our democracy for no greater purpose than being a quick clip on the nightly news. Our atmosphere is boiling and bubbling with radical change, our seas are filled with islands of discarded plastic, our racial, gender, and sexual characteristics are far more often ridiculed than respected, and what should have been a united and rational response to the threat of a terrible disease became instead a politicized shit show of truly awful proportions. Sometimes you just gotta say it. I feel better now. Thank you.

* * *

Of course I'd like to write a good piece about Ukraine, but I really can't do it until I'm able to answer the question that so many, many others are asking: How is it that one man in this "modern" world can wreak such havoc and horror on humanity?

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And all the world can do is take away his coin purse?

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Photoillustration by the author

Selected Works

Novel

HoneyLee's Girl

I think this book would appeal to anyone who likes a dark crime story set in a rural, somewhat remote part of Maine in a time when the radicalism of the nineteen-seventies was sweeping the country.

An American Outrage

Ellen DeLay, an upstanding citizen of Quillifarkeag, Maine, suddenly and unpredictably leaves her happy, twenty-five year marriage for a lonely cabin deep in the Maine woods, where she makes a living dressing hunters' kill - bears, moose, deer. It seems an idyllic life, punctuated only now and then by rifle fire as she shoots into the air to scare off cheeky teens who come to taunt "the crazy woman."

Novella

Infidelity

A small-town lawyer in the middle of a gruesome murder case finds salvation in the world of a homeless woman and her daughter.

Now That I'm Ready To Tell You Everything

A young woman's morning walk through her small town finds her immersed in a small tragedy, an indifferent government, and the "science gone mad" of her best friend's husband. Quirky, goofy, nutty - yes, but a gentle look as well at some of the values that keep us from falling off the planet

Essay

Reflections In A Keyhole Eye

A hint of generally true autobiography, this piece is part of Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill's "How I Became A Writer" series.

Stories

Nude In Tub

Quillifarkeag is a state of mind, one marked by innocence and regret, by guile and sympathy. The people there will let you into their lives - but not very far. Go too far inside and things start to echo, people get close. Honesty becomes negotiable. Bare all and someone might still say, "Were you naked or nude?" It's an important distinction. In a small place like Quilli the naked truth is hurtful. The nude truth is not so bad.

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